Category: Marketing Automation

If your marketing team and the systems you have in place to attract leads are working properly, you’re likely seeing anywhere from 10s to 1,000s of new leads each week. If you’ve got a robust sales team, they may be able to contact every single lead within a few hours.

However, if you’re like most companies, your sales team has to prioritize in order to reach out to the “best” prospects quickly, while saving the “less likely” prospects for last. This doesn’t mean that they can’t be converted, there’s just a lower chance of securing those prospects as customers.

Time spent courting the wrong prospect is not only an exercise in futility, but it takes time away from your salespeople and prevents them from closing sales and making your company money. How then, do you make the job easier (and more lucrative) for your salespeople?
Predictive Lead Scoring can take the guesswork out of following up on leads. Let’s take a look at what it is and how it could help your business grow.
What is predictive lead scoring?
Before we define predictive lead scoring, it’s important to understand traditional lead scoring and its limitations.
Businesses have struggled with prioritizing lead follow-up for decades. In many cases, salespeople are left to their own devices, using their best judgment to decide who gets contacted first. Marketers and salespeople use data such as demographic info (age, marital status, industry, role), to rank potential customers as to how likely they are to buy. Those who rank high on this scale are contacted first, while others are contacted last, or if time doesn’t permit, not contacted at all.
The problem with this subjective process is that it’s … subjective. Salespeople are forced to rely on “gut feelings” and factor in their own historical experience to make this decision. Neither of these proves to be consistently accurate causing quality leads to slip through the cracks as they chase prospects unlikely to buy.
Predictive lead scoring is machine learning that takes this theory one step further by using predictive modeling algorithms to analyze data from past customers and current prospects to predict future outcomes. Put another way, predictive lead scoring has the ability to create an “ideal customer” profile based on past buying behavior, and then identify which current prospects best fit that profile. It removes the possibility for human error or bias and instead relies on hard data to make its predictions.
The Benefits of Predictive Lead Scoring
If your marketing and sales teams have been struggling with identifying top leads and are unable to follow up with everyone that enters your database, predictive lead scoring may be exactly what your company needs. With a multitude of benefits, it’s like hiring another department to assist in new customer acquisition.
The benefits of predictive lead scoring include:
1. Create Harmony Between Marketing and Sales
When there are so many leads coming in but not many sales being closed, these two departments may turn on one another. The marketing department doesn’t understand how they’re providing a large number of leads that Sales can’t close. And the sales department believes that quantity is more important than quality, and they aren’t getting any good leads.
Incorporating predictive lead scoring will help these two departments work together and produce more.
2. Save Time
An automated lead scoring system means that your marketing and sales teams no longer have to waste time vetting potential customers. Their time can be better spent bringing in more leads and following up on the right ones.
3. Remove Human Error
No matter how good (and quick) your employees are at reviewing potential customers, there will always be an inherent bias. People can’t approach a situation without drawing on memories of the past. No matter how objective they attempt to be, this bias will creep into every decision they make. Using a computer algorithm to make these decisions removes the possibility of human error or judgment.
4. Lightning-Fast Results
While it takes a little bit of time to set up, once predictive lead scoring is up and running, you’ll receive results considerably faster than you would if a person were doing the work. You receive high-quality, data-driven leads before a human employee could even get their coffee.
5. See Continual Improvement
As you close and service more customers, you’ll collect more data. The more data you have, the better predictive lead scoring works and the more data points you’ll have to work with.
Predictive lead scoring is ready to work for you and make your marketing and sales teams more efficient.
How to Incorporate Predictive Lead Scoring in Your Business
Now that you understand predictive lead scoring and how it can revolutionize your business, how do you get started?
HubSpot offers Predictive Lead Scoring software that integrates with your Enterprise CRM, providing machine learning that reviews thousands of data points across your contact base to identify your best leads.
These data points are drawn from analytics (website and email behavior), firmographic information about the contact’s company and their relationship within HubSpot, and interactions that have been logged in the CRM.
To use this feature:

Click the Settings icon in the main navigation bar of your HubSpot account.
From the left sidebar menu, navigate to CRM > Properties.
Search in the Contact Information property group for Likelihood to close and Contact priority.

Likelihood to close is a score that represents the probability of a contact closing as a customer within the next 90 days. It used standard contact properties and behavior to predict this. If the score or probability value is 22, that means there is a 22% chance of closing as a customer in the next 90 days.
Contact priority uses the Likelihood to close score to filter segments of your best and worst leads.
As you accumulate more data, the system will improve itself, providing even better predictions and guiding you towards the most important leads. Because the program requires data to do its job, you will not begin seeing values for Contact priority until you have reached 100 contacts.
If you want to see your organization grow and your team members flourish, predictive lead scoring is essential. Imagine what your business will look like in five, 10, or 15 years when the system you use to attract and acquire new customers is fully optimized.
Give your marketing and sales teams a leg up on the competition and try predictive lead scoring today.

It’s late and you’re working on a project that’s due soon.
You feel overwhelmed by your tasks and aren’t quite sure how you got here. You make a self-promise to resolve this issue but you don’t know how, so the cycle continues.
Consider this your WebMD diagnosis: You’re likely struggling with bad time management.

The good news is, time management is a learned skill. By following the tips below, written with cross-functional teams in mind, you can be on your way to getting back control of your time and working efficiently.
What can time management skills help a person do?
Time management is necessary for a successful personal and professional life.
When you manage your time well, you can be more productive and efficient. You have a solid understanding of what each task requires and you can plan accordingly.
It allows you to maximize your time and perform better.
Managing your time well also helps you produce high-quality work. When we struggle with this skill, we often rush to complete our tasks and can easily feel overwhelmed.
1. Learn your pattern of productivity.
Everyone has a different productivity pattern.
We’ve long separated people into two categories: Morning people and night people. However, there are many more facets to productivity.
Perhaps you’re more efficient during short sprints of focus, following the Pomodoro technique. Or you might prefer knocking out your top priorities in one stretch.
Find out what makes you most productive and use that to your advantage. If you notice you’re most productive in the early morning, use that time to cross your focus-heavy, high-priority tasks off your to-do list.
Building your work schedule around your natural patterns will make it easier for you to focus and be more efficient in your workflow.
2. Prioritize your tasks.
Name a better feeling than crossing something off a to-do list.
There’s something about completing a task that fills you with a sense of accomplishment and builds momentum.
My colleague and marketing manager for Channel Promotions at HubSpot, Jennifer Kim, calls written to-do lists her holy grail.
“At the beginning of each day, I like to take the time to manually write out what tasks I need to complete for the day,” she says. “It’s key for me to write out tasks manually versus typing them out because I’m able to get a better sense of what tasks will take the most time and what I need to prioritize as well as mentally get myself in the headspace to take each one on.”
She then cross-references this list with her Google Calendar to plan out her day.
Now that you have every task written out, how do you decide what to tackle first? Meg Prater, senior manager of the Marketing, Sales, and Service blogs at HubSpot, has some advice.
“I prioritize based on impact to the business. Is there a planning meeting with our VP? The prep work for that should probably come first in my week when I’m freshest,” she says. “When I prioritize based on impact, I end the day knowing that I handled the tasks that were most valuable to the business and our goals – it’s my North Star.”
Ranking your tasks ensures that you tackle the most important work first and can keep you from feeling overwhelmed.
3. Track your activities.
One issue many people face when managing their time is correctly assessing how long a task will take to complete.
It can be hard to stick to a schedule if you over- or underestimated certain tasks. The task that was supposed to take 30 minutes took two hours and that can throw off your entire day.
To avoid this slippery slope, take a week to track your activities.
Write down your most common tasks. For example, as a writer, my tasks include research, media creation, and sourcing, writing, editing, uploading. I also have administrative tasks to complete throughout the week.
Use a time tracking app like Toggl or Clockify to figure out how you are spending your time.
“Timing myself helps me to concretely see where I’m spending my time. Where are the time sucks? Am I giving myself enough time to recharge between tasks?” says Prater. “This allows me to be more efficient with my time allocation, and set time boundaries for tasks I’m spending too much time on.”
Once you know exactly what each task requires, you can make an accurate schedule and make adjustments to create a more efficient process.
4. Make collaborating easier.
If you work on a cross-functional team or project, it’s vital that you set up tools that will make it easier for you to work together.
Senior Audience Growth Manager at HubSpot Pamela Bump, who often works with several teams, has a few recommendations.
“If you’re in a role where you must do projects for different teams, like creating ad campaigns or email promotions, set up a form that cross-functional colleagues can fill out so your requests will all go to one place and can be reviewed at the same time.”
Consolidating your requests to one place makes it easier to review and ensures nothing gets lost somewhere.
Bump adds that you should notify your cross-functional teams once you’ve launched the form and how you would like them to use it. You can inform them via email, Slack, or even an internal blog post that can be easily bookmarked or referenced.
5. Take regular breaks.
You’ve created your schedule for the day. You’ve been working since 8 a.m., it’s now 1 p.m. and you can’t seem to focus.
Next thing you know, it’s one hour later and nothing has been accomplished.
Sometimes, we try to push through slumps when all we need is a break to decompress and get re-energized.
Whether it’s taking a walk, watching an hour of TV, or catching up with a colleague, it’s important to take some time away from your work.
6. Be flexible.
Not every day will work out exactly as planned, and that’s OK.
Managing your time efficiently also means leaving some room for the unplanned. Perhaps, you planned on working on task A and that’s not panning out.
If that’s the case, don’t be afraid to swap it out with another task. As long as you keep the momentum going, you can still be successful.
When Bump hits a roadblock in a task, she pivots.
“I look at my to-do list and see if there are any super-quick items I can tackle before getting started on the bigger item,” she says. “For example, if I pause to return an email or quickly schedule a piece of content to go live, I feel energized by knocking something off my to-do list and will be more motivated to work on the bigger task.”
Having structure is important, but leave room for tasks to move around.
7. Protect your time.
Protecting your time is one of the most important ways to manage your time well. It can look like saying no, delegating, and deprioritizing a task.
Saying “no” at work always feels like a risk, like it’s sending a signal that you’re not a team player. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Not every ask that comes your way is a fire that needs immediate extinguishing. Many things in our professional lives can wait,” Prater says. “Prioritizing those asks as they come in, saying ‘no’ when an ask isn’t in scope, and realizing when something is OK to wait until tomorrow to work on has been key for me.”
Prater adds that learning to delegate has been huge for her growth.
“I used to feel like I needed to control as much as possible in my sphere – to prove myself, or some nonsense like that,” she says. “Now, I trust the folks around me and view delegation as an opportunity for someone else to grow and develop. It frees up more of my time and has energized folks on my team with new skills.”
Don’t be afraid to redirect your colleagues when your plate is already full and lean on your colleagues for help.
8. Use project management software.
Are you bad at managing your time or do you just not have the right tools to support your workflow?
With project management software like Asana, Jira, and Monday.com, you can streamline your workflow and make cross-team collaboration that much easier.
It can also be a valuable resource when you feel overwhelmed by your tasks.
“Asana has been a huge help in organizing out my tasks. My team has an ongoing sprint board where we write out our top 3-4 priorities for the week,” Kim says. “In the case that if I ever find myself overwhelmed with all that’s going on, I can fall back to that sprint board and center myself on where I need to spend my time.”
The great thing about these tools is that they work well for individual and group projects.
9. Establish a routine and stick to it.
Imagine taking a different route to work every day. It would be hard to be consistent about when you’d arrive at work. I also imagine this constant change would create some unease and stress.
Humans are creatures of habits and we crave consistency. At work, having a routine helps you maintain productivity.
Whether you’re going to the office every day or working from home, set a routine for your day. Be consistent about the time you wake up and your pre-work tasks.
This process will help you get in the headspace to work once you’re finally at your desk. If you find that your current routine has some kinks in it, try something different.
10. Lean on your team.
While you decide how you manage your time, you can also get support from your team.
“I really lean on my manager to talk through situations when I do feel that there’s a lot going on,” says Kim. “It really helps to have her bigger picture perspective on what projects are most in line with my team’s goals. We’re also able to talk through whether there are areas that we can support each other’s load.”
Your manager can help you prioritize your tasks in alignment with your team’s broader goals. They can also help you protect your time when it comes to cross-functional projects.
Bump encourages honesty with your colleagues and your manager about your bandwidth.
“When working with cross-functional teams, it can be easy to agree to too many tasks and not have time to complete them all,” she says. “If you foresee a time crunch, reach out to your colleagues or manager and see what can be moved or adjusted if needed due to your changing priorities.”
The work doesn’t get done alone. So, make sure you’re leaning on your team to help you manage your time and achieve your goals.
11. Stack your meetings.
Ever have meetings spread out throughout the day? Doing work in between those can seem impossible.
It can feel like just when you’re getting in your groove, you have to stop to jump into another meeting.
“I find that when my meetings are scattered throughout the day without any significant chunks of free time I can devote to my own tasks, I’m unable to focus and do what I need to do,” says Kim.”
One way to prevent this is by stacking your meetings back-to-back, whenever possible. Have multiple one-on-ones this week? Try to knock them all out on the same day in a block of time.
Kim says this tactic helps her get into focus mode.
“I’m able to do my best work when I can get into the right headspace – whether that’s meeting mode or working mode – so this has been really effective for me.”
Bump suggests scheduling plan-oriented meetings on specific days of the week.
“This will leave you some wide-open time at the end of the week for larger projects like creating content or brainstorming new strategies,” she says.
12. Limit distractions.
You’re trying to get work done but your email inbox is pilling up and you keep getting pinged.
Distractions like these make it impossible to focus on your tasks and manage your time well. Thankfully, many of these communication platforms offer features to limit your distractions.
For instance, productivity software Boomerang offers a “pause inbox” feature that temporarily stops new emails from populating in your Gmail or Outlook account.
You can also use the “do not disturb” feature on your messaging software to prevent notifications.
You can also put a status like “Heads down – slow to respond” to let your colleagues know you may be unavailable for the next few hours.
13. Declutter your space.
Your space is a reflection of your mind.
If your space is messy, it can make it harder to focus and manage your time effectively. It can also contribute to feelings of being overwhelmed.
With this in mind, make sure your work environment reflects the state you want to be in. Remove non-essentials from your desk, add affirmations like “You can do it!” and “Breathe” to motivate you throughout the day.
You can even add essential oils to create a calming environment and play some soothing music in the background.
14. Take accountability.
You may be responsible for keeping track of your progress toward achieving your goal, and holding yourself accountable to the timelines and benchmarks you’ve established will help you stay motivated and positive at work.
Personal accountability leads to increased feelings of workplace satisfaction, creativity, and innovation, and there are a few ways to promote that while working on your long-term project, including:

Sharing progress toward goals with others
Setting up a personal reward system for each benchmark you achieve on the path to project completion.
Tracking your progress so you can visualize what portion of your project you’ve successfully completed.

15. Review past performance.
Analyze and report on successes and challenges of projects for future goal-setting.
Once you’ve successfully completed a long-term project, don’t move on to the next one without first reflecting on your strategies for project management. What went well, and perhaps more importantly, what didn’t?
If your work is primarily comprised of long-term projects, you will need to continually refine and improve your approach to be as efficient as possible.
Document your processes and share them with your team so they can learn from your triumphs and struggles for their projects as well.
Managing your time is a learned skill that requires a lot of discipline and flexibility. It’s also something that requires support from your team, as those interactions impact your ability to complete your tasks.
While you may be an expert time manager tomorrow, following these tips will definitely help you improve your current process.

You’ve spent months perfecting the script, storyboarding, finding the right taazyent, shooting, and editing. The end result? A blockbuster brand or product video.
With all that time invested, you can’t stop at just embedding the video on a homepage or sharing it on social media and hoping someone watches. Running a series of YouTube ads is one way to make sure more of your target audience finds the video content you’ve produced. And with new formats and tracking capabilities, you can also use this information to report on its ROI.

In this post, you’ll learn everything you need to know about YouTube ads and how to launch advertisements successfully as part of a fruitful YouTube marketing strategy. Let’s get started.

What’s New With YouTube Advertising
Advertising on YouTube is very different from running a PPC or paid social media campaign. There are specific creative constraints and a ton of options for this platform, and you need basic knowledge before you even scope out your next video project to make the most of the paid possibilities.
In recent years, Google has rolled out a series of changes that makes YouTube advertising an extremely worthwhile investment. Let’s take a look.
Targeting Based on Users’ Search History
A few years ago, Google announced it would allow advertisers to reach more viewers on YouTube — especially across mobile devices, where 50% of YouTube views take place. Among the changes it rolled out, possibly the biggest announcement was that advertisers would be able to target viewers based on their Google search history, in addition to their viewing behaviors YouTube was already targeting.
Marketers can now target ads at people who recently searched for a certain product or service. If the content of a video ad is closely related to a search the viewer has been researching, they might be more likely to watch the entire ad or click through the ad to the website.
Audio Ads
Audio has grown lately — you needn’t look further than podcasts and the new social media app Clubhouse. To keep up with the changes, Google is now allowing YouTube advertisers to create audio-only ads. While we’d recommend starting with a video ad first, you can later consider using audio once you’ve perfected your brand voice and learned what your audience likes to engage with the most.
Upgraded Data Attribution Models
Google has also upgraded YouTube’s data attribution model so you can better measure how users engage with your ads. You can also determine cost-per-conversion and see your YouTube ads’ performance alongside your Search and Shopping ads’ attribution reports.
Keywords are relatively less expensive to target on YouTube than in traditional Google Search, where the average cost per click is estimated to be between $1-2.
While great content is bound to be found, it’s important to be proactive about gaining the attention of prospects and educating those who are unfamiliar with your brand. YouTube ads allow you to do just that. It’s a cost-effective way to target your audience with a more engaging form of content — video or audio.

The Types of YouTube Video Ads
There are several key types of video ads in which you can invest on YouTube. Google outlines the basic formats here. Below, we go into more detail.
1. Video Discovery Ads

Video discovery YouTube ads show up on the YouTube homepage, search results pages, and as related videos on YouTube video watch pages.
This ad appeared after performing a YouTube search:
Once a user clicks on the ad, the destination video page features a spot on the right-hand column where a companion banner display ad will appear.
2. TrueView In-Stream Ads (Skippable Ads)
TrueView ads are the standard video ad type on YouTube. Advertisers only pay for TrueView ads when viewers watch or interact with their ad (for example, by clicking on a call-to-action), and videos can be easily customized to share a variety of content.
Advertisers only pay when a user watches the ad for at least 30 seconds or until the end of the video or if the viewer takes an action, such as clicking on a call-to-action. YouTube requires that skippable TrueView ads be between 12 seconds and 6 minutes in length.
TrueView in-stream ads play before someone watches the video they’ve selected on YouTube. Viewers sometimes have the option to skip the ad after watching it for five seconds. You can also make them play anywhere in the Google Display Network (GDN) — or sites that purchased Google video ad space.
In-stream ads let marketers customize video ads with different CTAs and overlay text, as highlighted in the skippable in-stream ad example below from Grammarly.
Notice that there’s another CTA from Grammarly on top of the right-hand suggested video columns.
What TrueView Videos Can Include
TrueView video campaigns can include people, dialogue, and music that was retrieved with permission — or is considered royalty-free. However, it’s best not to run a standard promotional commercial. Because these videos can be skipped, you need to give your audience a reason to keep watching, and product plugs historically don’t get the views you might expect.
Instead, tell a story with the time you have in this video. People love seeing case studies of those who faced a struggle that they can empathize with. It’s a source of entertainment that makes your brand memorable and less tempting to skip.
With TrueView ads, advertisers can gain a ton of information about the performance of their ads for optimization and testing purposes.
Using their Google Ads account, YouTube account managers can collect data on an ad’s completed views, partial views, channel subscriptions, clickthrough rates on CTAs, views sourced from a user sharing the content, and views on the brand’s other content that can be attributed to a person initially viewing a video ad.
These actions help advertisers better understand the full value of their video ad spend and where to allocate budget to increase results.
3. Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads

Non-skippable ads can play before, mid-roll, or after the main video. They can be 15 to 20 seconds in duration. Here’s an example:
Non-skippable mid-roll video ads appear midway through a YouTube video that’s 10 minutes or longer. On the desktop, viewers will see a five-second countdown, and on the app, they’ll see yellow markers where the ads are placed.
What Non-Skippable Videos Can Include
Non-skippable ads give you just as much freedom as TrueView ads in their allotted content. You can include people, dialogue, audio, and more elements that you find best represent your brand in 15 to 20 seconds.
Because non-skippable ads can’t be skipped, these videos are best created with a call-to-action (CTA) so you can optimize the attention you do have from the viewer. In other words, encourage viewers to click on your ad and receive something in return. Perhaps you’ve released a new product or are promoting a major event this season — use non-skippable ads to get those clicks.
Keep in mind that YouTube sells non-skippable video space on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. Make the click worth it.
4. Bumpers

Bumpers are the shortest type of YouTube video ad available to you. At just six seconds per bumper, these ad spots play before a viewer’s chosen video. It’s also non-skippable.
Bumper video ads obviously can’t tell a good-enough story in just six seconds, but they make terrific complements to larger video campaigns on a new product launch or event. Just be sure to use the six seconds wisely, and include only the components of your brand you want your audience to remember.
5. Overlay Ads

Overlay ads are a banner ad that hovers at the bottom of the video, as shown below. This type of ad is ideal to supplement your other in-stream video campaigns. A banner ad is a great way to avoid advertising your product in an intrusive way.

How to Advertise on YouTube: Launch an Ad Campaign

Once you’ve created a marketing video you want to advertise on YouTube, it’s time to create your video ad campaign.
If you haven’t made a video yet, here’s how to get started with Animoto or Wistia, along with a few great examples of YouTube ads.
Then it’s time to upload your video to YouTube.
Now, you’re ready to set up your advertising campaign. First, go to your Google Ads account. If you haven’t made one already, you can sign up with a Google Workspace email (either personal or business).
When you first sign up, the screen might prompt you to start creating a campaign right away. Look for an option that says “Are you a professional marketer?” or “Set up without creating a campaign” and click. That way, you can get to your brand new Google Ads dashboard.
When you access the dashboard, click the button that says “+ New Campaign”.

Goal and Campaign Type
You’ll be prompted to select a goal, then a campaign type. Choose whatever goal you’d prefer. Under campaign type, select “Video.”

Campaign Subtype and Strategy
You’ll be prompted to select a campaign subtype: Video reach campaign, outstream, or ad sequence. Choose “Video reach campaign.”

In the same screen, select your method for reaching your goal: Either “Efficient reach (Bumper, Skippable in-stream, or a mix)” or “Non-skippable in-stream.”

Campaign Name
Next, enter a name for your campaign. Leave the bid strategy as is.

Budget
Set your budget per day or for the entire campaign. Setting a daily budget can help you keep daily costs low while ensuring you don’t run out of money too quickly. Setting a campaign total budget can help you establish a fixed investment amount that Google won’t go over.
After that, choose a start and end date.

Networks, Locations, and Languages
Decide where you want your ad to appear.

YouTube search results: Your video ad will appear in results for searches and will appear on the YouTube homepage, channel pages, and video pages.

YouTube videos: This runs TrueView ads that appear pre- or mid-roll during a YouTube video.

Video partners on the Display Network: With this option, you can choose for your video ad to appear before or around videos across the Google Display Network.

You should create separate campaigns for YouTube search results and YouTube videos, as this will help you to better track performance metrics. These ads are served to people performing very different activities and require a different amount of commitment from the viewer, so it’s best to monitor performance separately.
Next, define the location of users whom you want the ad to be shown to. You can also exclude certain locations.
Last, choose the languages that your target audience speaks.

Content Exclusions and Excluded Types and Labels
These options are for those who wouldn’t like to advertise their brands on videos that have profanity or sexual content.
Choose between “Expanded inventory” (excludes videos that have excessive profanity and graphic content), “Standard inventory” (excludes videos with strong profanity and graphic content), and “Limited inventory” (excludes videos with moderate profanity and graphic content).

Under “Excluded types and labels,” you can also prevent your ads from showing up in embedded YouTube videos and live-streaming videos. In addition, you can exclude content based on their content labels (G, PG, MA, and so on).
Related Videos
You have the option of adding related videos to appear below your ad. You can add up to five.

Advanced Settings
In the advanced options, you can specify the operating system, device, and carrier for more granular targeting. This is especially useful for mobile app ads, and there’s an option to increase or decrease your bid based on if the video ad is shown to someone on a mobile device.
You can set beginning and ending dates for your campaign, create a custom schedule for when your video ad should be shown, and limit the daily impressions and views for users. This all helps you to get the most return for your ad spend.
Demographics and Audience Segments
Next, define the audience you would like the video to be shown to — options include gender, age, parental status, and household income. You can also target individuals by their interests, such as beauty mavens, cooking enthusiasts, horror movie fans, etc.
Try running multiple campaigns to target different groups of users to discover who is most engaged, rather than including everyone you want to target in one campaign.

Keywords, Topics, and Placements
You can also target individuals by keywords, topics, or placements where you would like your video ad to appear. Keyword targeting with in-display ads can be a powerful tool for finding individuals who are looking for a visual answer to a question. Be sure to do your research, and try testing out different groups of keywords to see which leads to more views, clicks, or conversions.
Additionally, you can use video ads to remarket to people who have been in contact with your brand already. This can help you to re-engage those who are already familiar with your brand.

Bidding
Next, determine the max price you will pay for each view, which you can adjust to increase the number of projected views your video may receive.

Creating the Video Ad Creative
Last, insert the YouTube link for the video you would like to run the ad for. You will then choose whether you want this to run as an in-stream ad or an in-display ad.
For in-display, you’ll need to include a title and short description, which is entered on two separate lines. Note: Titles are limited to 25 characters, and the description lines are limited to 35 characters each.
In-stream ads provide you with the option to overlap a display URL on top of the video. You should use a vanity URL that directs to another final URL to make it more memorable. You can include advanced URL tracking options. In addition, a companion banner made from images from your video will appear on the right side of the video ad.

Click Done, then click Create Campaign.

Finished! Google will then prompt you to put in your credit card information (if they don’t have it already) so they can begin running your ad.
Linking Your Account
You should link your Google Ads account to the YouTube channel where the video is hosted if you haven’t already. On the top navigation bar, click “Tools & Settings.” Under “Set Up,” go to “Linked accounts.”

Choose YouTube from the screen, and you’ll be prompted to add a channel.

10 Tips for Optimizing Your Video Ads
Launching a video ad campaign is a great step, but there are some things you should set up prior to starting to pay for views. That way, you make the most of your budget and see the highest return on investment.
1. Define your metrics and goals.
When analyzing the results, there are four main categories of metrics you can track for each video.
Views and Impressions
Under the “views” category, you can better understand what percentage of the ad people viewed and understand how the ad drove earned views. You can also see how it increased views on your brand’s other videos.

Audience
This category can be used to track engagement metrics split up based on age, gender, household income, and parental status.

View Rate
The view rate could signal if the creative and message are interesting or entertaining enough for people to watch the ad. By increasing your view-through rate (VTR), you will lower your cost per view.

Conversions
Conversions will help you better understand if your ad is driving leads and returning a high ROI for your brand.

Depending on the goals for the brand, you should determine a few goals based on these metrics and formalize a plan for optimizing creative and trying different targeting criteria to improve results. Your goals should also determine the type of content you will feature in the ad — some metrics are better for branding goals and others will drive leads and conversions.
2. Track low performing placements.
If you’re running in-display ads that will appear across the Google Display Network, you can review where the ad has appeared in by navigating to Video Targeting > Placements > Where ads were shown > Display network from your Google Ads Campaigns dashboard. Review this list to see if any particular sites are contributing to poor performance for your desired metrics. Exclude these sites from your ad campaign moving forward to increase your average CPV.
3. Use a custom thumbnail image.
Design or use a high-quality still image from the video to entice a viewer to click on your video. Remember, this image needs to be legible by users on different devices, including mobile. If your image contains a person, make sure they’re looking into the camera. If you are featuring a product, make sure the background isn’t distracting.
4. Drive people to buy with cards.
A YouTube card is teased with a small “i” symbol, which the viewer can click to expand. You can time this appearance so only users who engaged with the video and content will see the notification.
With cards, you can feature a product related to or featured in the video to drive product purchases. You can also use cards to drive fundraising donations, traffic to a URL, or traffic to other videos as shown in the example below from our YouTube channel. Each format will allow you to customize the card with text, images, and other options.

5. Create calls-to-action.
When promoting a video on YouTube, you can include call-to-action overlays that link to a URL. You could link to a landing page, product page, information page, career page … whatever you’d like. You could also send people to a favorable report or interview featuring the brand.
6. Create a YouTube end slate.
Create an end screen to drive subscribers to your channel, promote your social networks, or increase interest in your brand. If someone has watched a video until the end, it’s a good sign they enjoy your content and might be interested in subscribing to your channel for future updates.
This end slate by HubSpot increases subscribers and social media fans while also highlighting other interesting topics its host has featured. Once you build the image, you will be able to annotate the end screen in YouTube’s video editor.
7. Use negative remarketing.
If you are running a campaign for a longer period of time and want to only attract new users to a brand, consider creating a list of people who your ad will not be shown to.
You can stretch your campaign budget and target only unique users by excluding those who have previously viewed the specific video, who have visited your YouTube channel, or who have shared, liked, or commented on any of your videos.
8. Use close captioning to cater to viewers’ needs and wants.
This tip applies to all YouTube videos — but it’s a general best practice that’s not followed by many brands. Include a quality video transcription you’ve generated and approved. Only user-uploaded transcriptions are indexed by Google because YouTube’s automatic captioning can be less than reliable. Depending on your target audience, you may also want to include transcriptions in various other languages. You can also offer users the option to download or visit a site page with the full transcription in your video description.
9. Qualify viewers.
Sometimes, your ad will be seen by people who have no interest in your product. Encourage them to skip the ad if the content isn’t relevant so you don’t have to pay for the view and they don’t waste their time watching irrelevant advertising.
10. Consider making your ad longer.
When it comes to TrueView ads, if the ad is under 30 seconds, you pay only if a viewer watches until the end. If the ad is longer than 30 seconds, you pay if the viewer watches it for at least 30 seconds. In both cases, you pay if the viewer interacts with your ad before it’s over. Consider this when you are coming up with ideas for content for the ad. You may want to put messaging at a certain point so uninterested viewers can skip the ad, or you might provide special offers towards the end of the video.
The Future of Video is Bright
Video content is a must-have part of your content strategy. This is even truer now that YouTube lets marketers target users based on their search histories. YouTube advertising is more targeted than ever, and it’s less competitive real estate than the world of Google Search because video content is newer to the content scene and less popular than blog posts.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Competition is essential for growth, but only when a business properly evaluates its competitors and betters itself to keep up. Even in marketing, analyzing the competition is healthy and can help inspire you to learn and adapt the business to better meet consumer needs.

Part of the way to do this is by understanding direct and indirect competition and how each can impact your work. Once you know the differences, you can determine how to best identify and evaluate your competitors — both direct and indirect.
What is direct competition?
When you think of a marketing competitor, you likely think of your direct competitors. Direct competitors are other businesses offering the same services for the same client needs in the same market as you.
So, let’s say your marketing firm primarily works with restaurants in the western U.S. There are certainly other firms focused on restaurant marketing specifically in the western U.S., and those firms would be your direct competition.
Even the smallest markets will have direct competition, which is important to prevent monopolies.

Direct Competition Examples
There are many examples of direct competition. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King are all direct competitors. Similarly, consider the infamous fast-food chicken sandwich wars, when major restaurant chains like Popeyes, KFC, Wendy’s, Zaxby’s, and more all launched chicken sandwiches to appeal to the same consumer base across the U.S..
Competition doesn’t just apply to huge, national or international brands. Two women’s fashion boutiques in a small, rural town are also direct competitors.
Digital companies also see direct competition. For example, Instagram and Snapchat offer very similar features, like disappearing stories and direct messaging, to their target audiences.
Indirect Competition Examples
Let’s say we have a client base in a small town. The customers are hungry, and often frequent the main drag to have dinner. Here, there are four major restaurants — all of which offer different types of food. Although the products they offer are different, the restaurants all stand for the same purpose: to feed hungry clientele in the town.
Similarly, consider a client who needs to buy gifts for a birthday party. One store sells clothing. A store across the street sells jewelry. Despite the different products, the two stores are competing for the same customer.
Direct and Indirect Competition in Marketing
When it comes to marketing, knowing your direct and indirect competition can help you improve your campaigns and even reach new audiences.
The aforementioned chicken sandwich wars are a great example here. Popeyes launched its highly touted fried chicken sandwich with a powerful marketing campaign. Direct competitors — other fast-food restaurants that sell chicken sandwiches — were able to use marketing to showcase their own entries into the so-called competition. 
The result? The chicken sandwich wars have been heavily covered by major media for the past couple years. Customers have lined up in droves at various fast food restaurants to try the latest and claimed-to-be-greatest chicken sandwiches.
On the other hand, analyzing your indirect competition can help marketers tap into a wider audience. If you know people shopping for gifts are choosing between your store and similar shops that offer different products, you can create campaigns to draw in those customers. Digitally, indirect competitors might be targeting the same keywords, and understanding that can help boost SEO and get your business to the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
1. Customer Feedback
One quick way to identify your competitors is to ask your current clients or potential clients. For example, if you have a potential customer come in with questions about your products or services, ask them some other businesses they are considering for this purchase. Send feedback surveys that ask customers what other brands they were considering and why they went with yours.
2. Market Research
This requires some digging on your end. If you have a brick-and-mortar, you’ll need to review similar stores, their websites, and their social media to get a better idea of their businesses. Customer surveys can also fall into the market research category.
3. Social Media
Many people share their purchasing experiences on social media and forum websites like Reddit. Check out the recommendations people are sharing for products or services that you also sell to help identify top competitors in your market.
4. Keyword Research
For indirect competitors, turn to keyword research. You can use the keywords you are targeting to identify other businesses that are targeting the same keywords, and ultimately, the same top spot on the SERP and the same audience.
5. Review the SERP
Speaking of the SERP, it can also be a handy tool to identify your competitors. Search your keywords to find what businesses are ranking highly for these keywords to see your indirect competitors.
Tracking and Analyzing Competitors
Now you know the differences between direct and indirect competitors, and you’ve narrowed down a list of both related to your business. What next?
It’s time to conduct a competitive analysis, which will help you improve your own business strategies when comparing them to your competitors.
There are several items to include in a competitive analysis: direct and indirect competitors, products/services sold, competitors’ sales tactics, pricing and sales, marketing and content strategies, and social media and websites.
This comprehensive data will give you a better idea of how your competitors are operating on every level, from the products they sell to their customer service, all online and offline.
Researching competitors, products, services, keywords, and marketing tactics adds up to a lot of data that needs sorted and organized, so HubSpot’s competitive analysis templates can make light work of these tasks.
For example, this Content Marketing Competitive Analysis Template can help you track competitors’ strategies across social, blogs, email, and SEO.
This multi-feature scorecard will allow you to compare your company to its competitors based on a number of customizable attributes.
There are many different templates to consider when creating a visual competitive analysis, so find the one that best suits your needs. You might find using multiple for different comparisons can also be useful.
Use Direct and Indirect Competition Analysis to Your Benefit
A little healthy competition never hurt anybody, but you have to know how to play the game. By identifying and analyzing your competitors, you can get a leg up on the competition by improving your marketing strategies, focusing on your target audience, and reaching potential new clients.

Traditionally, the marketing field emphasized creative thinking over technical skills. But to build a successful career as a marketer today, you need more than a knack for pitching ideas and coming up with clever copy.
That’s where technical skills come in. These skills are earned from experiences or education (think, data analysis, project management, and computer programming).

Now more than ever, employers are emphasizing skills over pedigree. LinkedIn data from the past year shows a 20% increase in managers who don’t have a traditional four-year degree. This trend highlights the push toward skills-based hiring, which prioritizes a person’s capabilities over their credentials.
Hiring for skill rather than a degree is a good step forward for all, and it’s wise to leverage your strengths when going after a new role or promotion. That’s why you want to make sure you have the right technical skills for your career path to stay competitive and advance in your career.
Let’s walk through all you need to know about technical skills and which ones you should look to develop as a marketer.
What are technical skills?
Often known as hard skills, technical skills are easily defined and measured competencies you gain through training or education. They allow you to complete a job-specific task and often vary from one industry to another.
While technical skills are typically required for engineers, business analysts, mathematicians, and scientists, more industries than ever need employees with technical knowledge. In fact, Gartner found that 58% of the workforce needs new skills to successfully do their jobs. This is largely due to the digital transformation and massive increase in data, which requires people who can use technology to interpret data and take action to drive a company forward.
Before scrambling into a data analysis course, it’s important to realize that there are dozens of technical skills that don’t require you to become part marketer, part computer scientist. Let’s take a look at the different types of skills so you know which are right for you.
Types of Technical Skills
With rapidly advancing technology, nearly every role requires some sort of technical skill. Here are several types you may come across in the marketing world.

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While the skills associated with creativity, negotiation, stress management, communication, and public speaking are usually considered “soft skills,” categories like technology and analytical thinking involve technical skills.
Similar to technical skills, soft skills are learned through experience or education. These skills are harder to measure, but you’ll need them to communicate with your team, negotiate a project deadline, come up with creative ideas, and prioritize your workload.
For example, a project manager may have a positive attitude and excellent time management skills (both soft skills), but understanding the ins and outs of the company’s CMS system (a technical skill) is crucial for timely deliverables and successful projects.
Here’s an overview of the types of technical skills needed for different marketing roles.
Digital Media and Design

Graphic design software (Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere)

Content management systems (CMS)
Image and file management
Content curation

Project Management

Project management software (such as Asana, Trello, or ClickUp)
Budget planning
Risk management
Project planning
Content management systems (CMS)
Task management

Marketing and Content Creation

Data analysis
Campaign management
Budgeting
Content management systems (CMS)
Interviewing
Vendor management
Pitching
Copywriting
Editing
Researching and reporting
SEO/SEM
Digital ad management
Social media marketing
Content strategy

Technical Skills in the Workplace
Now that you know what type of technical skills apply to your field, how do you know which to develop? To understand which skills are most important for the future, LinkedIn performed a study to find the most in-demand skills—several of which apply to marketers.

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Technical skills like analytical reasoning, affiliate marketing, and business analysis are essential to succeeding as a marketer. But you’ll need more than those to build a thriving career. To understand the skills you need in the workplace, start by looking at job descriptions for positions you want now — and in the future.
Hiring managers often create a list of “required” and “recommended” skills they want candidates to have. Required skills are often the technical skills you need to perform the job well after you’re hired, while recommended skills are capabilities the company is willing to help you develop through training.
Once you’ve scoured job descriptions and created a list of technical skills employers look for, it’s also smart to talk with your manager about the skills you need to advance your career. They should be able to point you in the right direction for your individual development.
If you work for a supportive company, your manager may offer resources to help you work toward those skills. This could include stipends for books, courses, certifications, or schooling. Or it could mean putting you on projects that give you hands-on experience, like managing the budget for a social campaign or designing the visuals for the weekly email newsletter.
Technical skills in marketing vary by role, so it’s important to do your research and consider your career path before asking your manager for help. If they don’t know which direction you want to go, they won’t be able to provide the specific skills you’ll need to get there.
Look at the examples below to highlight the skills you already have and learn more about which ones you may need.
Examples of Technical Skills in the Workplace
Digital Media and Design

Graphic and web design (Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere)

UX/UI research and design

Database management

Animation

Interactive media management

Usability testing

Photography

Content management systems (Notion, Asana, Monday, Trello, WordPress, Squarespace, Wix)

HTML, CSS, Java, or other coding languages
Data visualization
Video and audio production
Typography
Wireframing
Prototyping
Color theory
User modeling

Project Management

Microsoft Office
Google Suite
Content management systems (CMS)
Project management software
Budget planning
Risk management
Project planning
Task management

Marketing

Campaign management
Managing budgets
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine marketing (SEM)
Content management systems (CMS)
Vendor management
Social media management
Ad targeting
Content strategy
Brand positioning and strategy
Paid media management
A/B testing
Digital strategy
Email marketing
Web analytics
Automation software
Conversion rate optimization
Omnichannel strategy
Event planning
Product management

Content Creation

Copywriting
Technical writing
Editing
Pitching
Researching and reporting
UX copywriting
SEO/SEM knowledge
Content strategy and management
Social media
Email marketing

Analytics

Data analysis
Demographics reporting
Digital media testing
Google Analytics
Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint
MATLAB
Python
SQL and NoSQL
Identifying key performance indicators
Setting metrics benchmarks
Linear algebra and calculus
Data visualization
Data cleaning
Working with APIs
Tagging

Technical Skills to Put on a Resume
After scanning the above lists, you may have more technical skills than you realized. So which should make it on your resume?
You want to highlight the skills you already have, or can easily develop, that are most relevant to the position. Aim for a list of 10-20 skills with a mix of both soft and technical skills. Pay attention to the skills listed in the “required” section of a job description because listing those on your resume will make you a more competitive candidate.
If you have a unique technical skill for your field that an employer is looking for (say, you’re a Social Media Manager and an Adobe InDesign whiz), bump it to the top of your skill list to make your resume stand out.
Keep in mind, certain skills are more in-demand than others. Here are the top 20 skills you should consider adding to your resume (if you have them), according to Indeed.

Cloud computing
Artificial intelligence
Sales leadership
Analysis
Translation
Mobile app development
People management
Video production
Audio production
UX design
SEO/SEM marketing
Blockchain
Industrial design
Creativity
Collaboration
Adaptability
Time management
Persuasion
Digital journalism
Animation

Of course, you don’t want to oversell your capabilities. Make sure you actually have every skill listed on your resume. If a future employer catches you in a lie, that will be the end of your opportunity for landing the job — and it could tarnish your reputation for future roles as well.
Importance of Technical Skills
Marketing, especially digital marketing, revolves around data. The global marketing data market is projected to grow to $52.3 billion in 2021, with nearly 62% of senior industry experts using a data-sharing solution to support their teams’ marketing and advertising efforts.
Marketers use data to connect with audiences, create innovative campaigns, convert people to customers, and keep buyers coming back. But leveraging data requires certain skills.
Having the sought-after technical skills lets you excel at your job and makes you a more competitive candidate for future roles. The more skills you have, the more opportunities you have to take on senior-level positions and earn a higher salary.
Consider the difference between the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics national wage estimates for Marketing Specialists versus Marketing Managers. Marketing Managers, who have considerably more experience and technical skills, make an estimated $80,500 more per year than Marketing Specialists.

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The correlation between income and technical skills is also consistent with other industries. In 2021, the largest average salary premium in the North American technology industry was estimated to be nearly $24,969 for IT automation expertise, followed by AI and machine learning with $14,175, and fintech with $13,799.
Needless to say, learning technical skills is one way to boost your income. But it’s not all you need for long-term career success.
Soft Skills vs. Technical Skills
Creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence are common soft skills, which are just as important as technical skills for landing a job and growing your career.
Whether you’re a social media specialist or a digital media analyst, you’ll need certain soft skills to complement your technical knowledge and get the job done. Each marketing role has its own requirements, so do the same research that you did for the technical skills. If you get stuck, consider if you have any of the following in-demand soft skills.

Ability to meet deadlines
Decision making
Handling criticism
Attention to detail
Critical thinking
Teamwork
Time management
Multitasking
Organizational skills
Prioritizing
Problem-solving
Working independently
Working remotely
Collaboration
Persuasion
Adaptability
Emotional intelligence

Technical Skills Over Time
Mastering the technical skills you need as a marketer is never done. Technology evolves, algorithms change, and new social media platforms pop up often.
To stay on top of your game, you have to keep your technical skills sharp. Use them as frequently as possible, and pick up new skills when needed. I’ve witnessed many situations where a junior marketing hire teaches a seasoned pro a thing or two about developing a social media strategy or how to reach a certain audience.
Honing your technical skills is a life-long process. So never assume you’re safe to kick back and do well at your job without learning anything new. And when you do pick up a new skill or enhance a skill that you have, add it to your resume and LinkedIn profile.
Because for any role, employers want candidates who have the skills they need to do their job effectively and drive company growth.

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Learn more about why your About Me page is so important if you’re a photographer and discover 11 tips to creating the perfect one.

Are you wondering, how to create the perfect Email Marketing Strategy,? Please check out this guide – https://digitalthoughtz.com/2021/06/07/email-marketing-strategy/
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