Category: Marketing Automation

Today’s buyer’s journey includes a number of interactions across various touchpoints and channels. There’s rarely a conversion of sale that occurs based off a single interaction.
Rather, conversions and sales often stem from a mix of interactions via a variety of sources such as blog articles, social media posts, webinars, in-person events, conversations with reps, content on your website, email marketing campaigns, and more. All of these touchpoints play a role in getting your customers to convert.

Attribution allows you to give credit for conversions to those marketing touchpoints and channels throughout the buyer’s journey. Multi-touch attribution takes this a step further.
Multi-Touch Attribution
In this blog post, we’ll cover the definition of multi-touch attribution, what makes it unique from other types of attribution, and multi-touch attribution models. Let’s get started.
What is multi-touch attribution?
Multi-touch attribution, which may also be referred to as fractional attribution, is how you determine the value of each touchpoint throughout the customer journey that results in a conversion.
In other words, it’s when credit for a conversion is given to every touchpoint that a customer experienced throughout the buyer’s journey.
Why is multi-touch attribution important?
The reason multi-touch attribution is so important is that it allows you to pinpoint all of the channels that contribute to a conversion and which of those channels have the most impact on a conversion. It gives you a clear picture of how your channels and touchpoints influence every conversion.
This is valuable information that you can use to enhance those touchpoints for future prospects to improve the customer experience and buyer’s journey. It shows you exactly how different touchpoints and channels work together to influence deals on an individual level.
You can also use this information to better understand what matters most to your target audience throughout the buyer’s journey and which aspects of the customer experience are most influential when they’re making a decision.
You may have heard about other types of attribution before, such as first-touch and last-touch. Let’s talk about what makes multi-touch attribution unique next.
Multi-Touch Attribution vs. First-Touch Attribution vs. Last-Touch Attribution
Multi-touch attribution is unique from first-touch and last-touch attribution because it doesn’t attribute a conversion to the first or last marketing touchpoint a customer has prior to converting.
For example, say a HubSpot customer read a blog post, attended INBOUND, interacted with a social media post, and then became a customer.
First-touch attribution would conclude that the blog post that the customer read gets the credit for their conversion whereas last-touch attribution would give the credit to the social media post they interacted with. Meanwhile, multi-touch attribution would consider all of these touchpoints and assign credit to each of them.
Meaning, multi-touch attribution is unique because it takes all touchpoints into consideration and then assigns credit to each of those touchpoints based on the amount of influence it had a customer’s decision to convert. First and last-touch attribution — which may also be referred to as single-touch attribution — do not. These methods feel slightly outdated when compared to multi-touch attribution because they don’t account for the many touchpoints and channels that exist for prospects and customers to engage with.

Multi-Touch Attribution Models
There are a number of attribution models that you can use to determine which touchpoints are the most important in the buyer’s journey — and different multi-touch attribution models weigh the multiple touchpoints in different ways.
Here are four of the most common multi-touch attribution models to help you get started.
1. Linear Attribution
A linear attribution model, also known as an even-weighting attribution model, gives equal credit for a conversion to every touchpoint in the buyer’s journey. This can be considered the “standard” when it comes to multi-touch attribution models.
Who should use linear attribution?
Linear attribution is great if your prospects are often in the consideration phase of the buyer’s journey for an extended period of time because it shows you the impact that all of your content and messaging has during that extended phase.
It’s also ideal if you want to know the ways that your touchpoints work together to influence a deal or if you’re new to multi-touch attribution and don’t have a baseline understanding of how your touchpoints tend to do among your audience.
2. Time Decay Attribution
A time-decay attribution model is when you organize your touchpoints based on their percent influence on a conversion so that the least-influential touchpoint (with the lowest percentage) is first and the most-influential touchpoint (with the greatest percentage) is last.
Who should use time decay attribution?
Time decay attribution is ideal if you’re measuring the success of short-term touchpoints like campaigns.
3. U-Shaped Attribution
A U-shaped attribution model, also known as a bathtub model, gives the first and last touchpoints in the buyer’s journey a higher percentage of credit than the touchpoints in the middle.
Who should use u-shaped attribution?
U-shaped attribution is ideal if your team wants to focus on the impact of the first and last of your multiple touchpoints. There’s less emphasis on touchpoints that support the middle stages of the buyer’s journey.
4. W-Shaped Attribution
W-shaped multi-touch attribution gives credit to the first and last touchpoints in the buyer’s journey as well as gives value to the touchpoints that occur in the middle of the buyer’s journey. Then, all remaining touchpoints are assigned equal credit.
Who should use w-shaped attribution?
W-shaped attribution is helpful if you want to understand which touchpoints actually convert leads but also identify the touchpoints that encourage customers to engage and continue to move through the buyer’s journey.
In addition to the four multi-touch attribution models above, you can also create customize your multi-touch attribution model using attribution software.
Multi-touch attribution software — like Wicked Reports — has the power to make the process of identifying which of your marketing touchpoints are succeeding or failing among your prospects simple.

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In fact, Wicked Reports gives you a complete view of how customers interact with your brand and tracks incoming clicks against your CRM and sales data so you can identify the most important clicks in relation to your team’s unique marketing goals.
Pro Tip: Seamlessly integrate Wicked Reports with your HubSpot CRM platform.
Use Multi-Touch Attribution
Multi-touch attribution is a powerful process that marketers can use to identify the various factors that influenced a purchase decision for a customer. It also helps marketers understand which of those factors were the most influential in their decision.
This information can be used to improve the buyer’s journey and the marketing content and communications shared throughout it as well as provide an understanding of what matters most to your business’ unique prospects when making a buying decision.

In 2020, I looked up more recipes than I ever have. Mostly Italian if you’re wondering.
I also spent a lot of time watching videos on YouTube, letting the autoplay feature take me down a rabbit hole of videos covering all kinds of topics.

Most consumers were doing the same thing.
So, what should marketers expect on YouTube in 2021? Read on and find out.
Consumers want videos that reflect their daily life.
If 2020 showed marketers anything, it was the necessity for agility and authenticity.
Every marketer had to shift their priorities and deliver marketing collateral that reflected the time we were all living through.
YouTube data from July 2019 to July 2020 shows a 215% increase in daily uploads for content with “self-care” in the title. From the viewer’s side, TV screen watch time went up over 180% for videos relating to well-being, such as fitness, meditation, and yoga.
Now, in 2021, consumers are still seeking out content that reflects their current state of mind.
This isn’t to say that your brand should start a “30 Days of Yoga” series. It’s to highlight how closely tied current events are to the type of content we consume. If you stay in tune with how your audience is feeling and the type of content they’re seeking out, you can embed it into your YouTube strategy.
“Viewers really want content that not only educates them but also engages them. Our new style is putting big stock in the authenticity and personality of its presenters,” said Jamal Meneide, associate video producer/editor and on-screen talent for HubSpot’s YouTube Channel.
Brands must now pay attention to the social climate and general consumer feelings, and incorporate these elements into the content.
Not sure how to keep your finger on the pulse? Jump to this section to learn how to research YouTube trends.
Short-form video is growing in popularity.
In September 2020, YouTube launched “Shorts” in India, a new short-form video platform on YouTube. It’s now making Shorts available in the US, as of March 2021.
Similar to other short-form platforms, videos on Shorts are formatted vertically to be viewed on a phone. Although it’s still in beta, users can create 15-second clips, edit them with several tools and add music from YouTube’s music library.
According to a Search Engine Journal article, Shorts already gained steam, gaining over 3.5 billion daily views. But why would YouTube, a platform known for long-form content invest in this strategy? Meneide has a theory.
“YouTube is trying to compete with TikTok, which is evident in their play to introduce ‘Shorts.’ For a time, it felt like there was a pendulum swing toward really long, unedited content,” said Meneide.
“While this is still prevalent,” he adds, “it seems like we’ve swung back the other way with short to mid-length content really killing it. Viewers want easily consumable, entertaining content that won’t be as demanding on their time.”
This is an opportunity for brands to experiment with short-form content on YouTube and see what audiences are responding to.
One strategy is using Shorts to create teasers for your upcoming videos or create condensed, shareable versions of your long-form videos.
But long-form videos aren’t going anywhere.
Even with the push toward shorter videos, consumers still enjoy the traditional long-form approach.
In June 2020, YouTube reported that 46% of survey respondents said they were more likely to watch videos over 20 minutes long than they were six months ago.
Some YouTubers creators credit long-form video content for their engagement rates, and they’ve got data on their side.
A 2019 Pixability study found that branded videos over 10 minutes long had higher engagement than shorter videos.
But length won’t be enough to keep your audience’s attention.
“Driving music and animation also play a big part in building engagement. Whenever you see animation as a viewer, you know it’s either reinforcing a key concept or adding to a joke,” said Meneide.
“In either case, you’ve been delighted by that extra visual we decided to throw in. With music, we can shift the tone and mood of a video – from driving hip hop beats, to chill jazz.”
He adds that music creates a sonic bed for the viewer to situate themselves on, inviting the audience to lean in as you speed things up or sit back and relax as you slow things down.
“These kinds of stylistic and production choices are ones that many large channels on YouTube have decided to make,” Meneide said. “While content with a more ‘homemade’ feeling still crushes it, there is also an audience who wants to see well-produced, highly engaging content.”
Marketers will start leveraging audio ads.

In November 2020, YouTube introduced audio ads, a new way for brands to reach consumers.
It was a surprising announcement, given that the platform is known for video content. However, according to a Think With Google article, over two billion people go to YouTube for music.
The article also reported a 100% increase in watch time for live music performance between July 2019 and July 2020. This sets the stage for marketers to include YouTube as an ad platform for their audio content.

How To Research YouTube Trends
We’ve covered a few YouTube trends for 2021, but marketers need to know how to identify trends as they come.
“On the HubSpot YouTube team, we’re always looking at trends, which we corroborate with monthly search volume and keyword research to help define our content strategy,” Meneide said. “We want to serve our audience content that they’re looking for when they’re looking for it, and being sensitive to when a topic bubbles up is key to the process.”
Your first resource is Google Trends, a free online resource that is updated with real-time data on the popularity of certain topics and search terms on YouTube.
You can also rely on tools like VidIQ and TubeBuddy to determine which ideas are worth pursuing. A good rule of thumb, according to Meneide is asking what big “how” or “why” questions you can answer for your viewers.
Then, you have keyword research – this tells you what consumers are searching for and if it’s worth your time and resources.
For instance, let’s say your brand wants to cover the latest tech apps in your next video. You go to Google Keyword Planner and find out that it has a monthly search volume of about 100. This may indicate that while there is some interest, it’s not high enough to warrant a whole video.
It’s also important to look at the news and see what topics are trending. However, know the difference between something that’s just in the news cycle and a trend worth incorporating into your YouTube strategy.
One way to decipher between the two is asking, “How far does this reach, and will it matter in a few weeks or months?”
“Hopping onto news can be just as explosive for growth or your marketing strategy as trends, but makes it a bit harder when you’re always relying on the latest, ‘hottest’ news piece to inform your content strategy,” Meneide said. “By focusing on longtail trends, you can ride out a wave of sustained interest in a topic, rather than capturing what could potentially be a fleeting interest.”
As we navigate through this year, more trends will likely pop up and might inform your YouTube strategy. What’s most important is being flexible and knowing when something is worth exploring further.

A few years ago, I got hired as a content marketer at a small web design company.
At the time, I thought one skill — and one skill only — would serve me well enough to succeed: the ability to write.
I was a proud English graduate who had no idea how to make it successfully as a content marketer.
Fortunately, I’ve picked up some critical skills over the years that’ve enabled me to grow as a content marketer. Most of those skills have nothing to do with writing.
Whether you’ve been a content marketer for years or you’re looking to get hired for your first content marketing role, you’re in luck. Here, let’s explore the skills you’ll need to hone to excel as a content marketer in 2021 and beyond.

Content Marketing Skills
1. Copywriting
More likely than not, the vast majority of your role as a content marketer requires you to create content that converts leads and drives sales. To do this successfully, you need to be a good copywriter.
However, it’s important to note — copywriting for marketing purposes requires different skills than it might if you were writing for non-business purposes.
For one, copywriting for a business requires a consistent commitment to writing in a brand’s unique voice.
This can get particularly difficult if you’re a freelance content marketer who creates content for different businesses and industries. However, it’s critical you develop the ability to write in different styles depending on the needs of a business.
For a sales blog, for instance, you might need to write short, concise, straightforward sentences, since salespeople are often strapped for time and need answers immediately.
Marketers, on the other hand, have a bit more time to appreciate writing for writing’s sake, so you can take the time to use more creative, long-form sentences.
Additionally, how you write a video script for an insurance company varies significantly from how you write social copy for an e-commerce business.
Developing a brand voice — and knowing how to alter your writing style depending on business needs and audience persona — is a critical skill in content marketing.
2. Editing Skills
Along similar lines as copywriting, it’s vital you become a proficient editor if you want to succeed as a content marketer.
Good, clear writing can be powerful enough to persuade hesitant prospects to buy. And, on the flip side, messy, error-prone writing could cause new visitors and prospects to abandon your site entirely.
In short, the ability to edit is the difference between mediocre writing and compelling, engaging, high-converting content.
No pressure, right?
Learning how to create content quickly is a critical skill of any content marketer, particularly if you’re responsible for creating content across a variety of channels for your business. Editing, then, is a mandatory step for cleaning up that copy and making it sound as professional and polished as possible.
3. SEO Skills
This skill was a tricky one for me to master, but it is vital for ensuring my content ranks online and reaches the right audience when they need it most.
As a content marketer, your role isn’t just to create high-quality content. It’s also to create content that converts readers, listeners, or watchers into customers.
And to do this, you need a basic understanding of SEO.
For instance, if you’re a content marketer who’s in charge of your company’s YouTube page, you’ll want to know how to conduct keyword research to discern what people are looking for on YouTube, and then write compelling, SEO-optimized titles and video descriptions to attract viewers to those videos.
Alternatively, as a blogger, you’ll need to know how to create SEO-optimized content — including using appropriate alt-text in your images, using relevant keywords in your section titles, and thoughtfully incorporating keywords throughout your content (rather than keyword-stuffing).
Ultimately, SEO ensures the content you work hard to create is served to the right audiences, at the right time. Without an SEO foundation, then, it will be difficult to succeed as a content marketer.
4. A Talent for Interviewing
As a content marketer, you’re often tasked with creating content around unfamiliar or complex topics.
It can feel daunting to do the research necessary to create an informative, helpful piece of content on a topic for which you’re a novice at best. This is where interviewing can help you level up as a content marketer.
For instance, when I needed to write about Google’s rel=nofollow announcement last year, I knew I’d have a hard time determining why it mattered to our audience if I didn’t speak to an SEO strategist. Which is why I interviewed my colleague, Victor Pan, to add expert advice and help my audience understand the topic on a deeper level.
5. Time Management & Organization Skills
One of the most important skills any content marketer can foster is the skill to stay organized even under tight deadlines.
Being a content marketer means publishing content on a consistent, effective basis to ensure you’re reaching and converting audiences into leads for your sales team every month. As such, being organized and adhering to a content calendar that aligns with your company’s goals is a critical aspect of your role.
Additionally, writing can get tiring, so time management is important for avoiding burnout. For instance, if you’re required to write four blog posts per week, it will be helpful if you can block off time in your calendar for “Writing Time” during your peak productivity hours. Writing those four blog posts the night before the posts are due won’t set you up for success as a content marketer.
Consider using project management software to ensure your content remains organized even as your team scales. 
6. Data & Analytics Skills
If you don’t have the skills necessary to analyze how your content is performing, then it will be difficult — if not impossible — to iterate on your strategy over time and achieve new levels of growth.
A content marketer’s role includes the ability to analyze industry trends, keep up-to-date on your audience’s preferences and behavior, and use all that information to make strategic decisions and expand your brand’s reach.
When I first started creating content for HubSpot’s Blog, I was vehemently opposed to data. I enjoyed the creativity of content creation, and data felt like the exact opposite of all that.
However, over time I realized it didn’t matter how creative or unique my content was if no one read it.
This is where data came into play. It helped me iterate on the types of content I was writing, choose new topics to tackle that I knew my audience liked best, and stay ahead of industry trends to ensure my content aligned with conversions happening with marketers across the globe.
Ultimately, data is vital for ensuring you have a strong, effective content strategy. 
These are just a few skills you’ll need to master as you level up as a content marketer. Ultimately, the ability to remain flexible and figure out the needs of your own company’s unique goals is critical to succeeding as a content marketer for the long-haul. 

In an ideal world, marketers would have limitless budgets to invest in experimental initiatives and new programs. After all, the customer acquisition and retention landscape are evolving faster than ever. The challenge, however, is that marketing budgets are often limited around what’s proven to work — which tends to look different from company to company.
That’s why it’s so important to have access to industry data. By knowing where we stand against our peers and competitors, we’re better positioned to uncover areas of opportunity. And, given that overall marketing spend is expected to grow by 14% in 2021, you definitely want to know what your competitors are doing.
In this post, we’ll discuss data-backed areas that marketers are focusing their investments in 2021.

What Marketing Leaders Are Investing in This Year
Growth Marketing
The HubSpot Executive Marketing Leadership Survey posed the following question to respondents: “What areas of your marketing do you wish your team invested more in 2021?” Most respondents said they wanted to spend more time on growth marketing.
In brief, growth marketing describes the experiments and resulting processes that businesses used to build and retain a customer base over time. This can involve running A/B tests to ensure that all of your marketing efforts directly result from data that clearly explains your best practices in terms of converting and retaining customers. It’s closely related to conversion rate optimization, where you’re updating your content to increase acquisition.
Growth marketing can also involve using design elements and unique content to connect your brand with your audience to help you stay adaptive, consistent, and recognizable to your target market.
Featured Resource: A Data-Driven Approach To Growth Marketing
Reacting At Speed
63% of marketing leaders say that the coronavirus pandemic has impacted their teams’ productivity and responsiveness, and 11% say that responding to global environments is a barrier to productivity.
Because of this, marketers report that they will be investing more time in 2021 in being able to adapt and react at speed. Not only to changes within their industry but also to global challenges, which has proven to be more critical during the current pandemic.
Marketers say that the main issues to reacting at speed are developing unique, creative content at a fast pace and adapting quickly to trends.
They say they’ll combat this issue by taking stock of their current content and coming up with an action plan for future adaptations, interviewing their audience about their struggles, restructuring teams, and simply being ready to making changes when issues arise, even at a moment’s notice.
Investing in Marketing Technology
60% of marketers indicated that they are set to increase their marketing technology spending in the next 12 months. Investments in marketing technology are directly related to the above marketing trends of reacting at speed and growth marketing, as it will help marketers retain and delight their audiences and react at speed when necessary.
As a refresher, marketing technology, often referred to as martech, is a term used to describe the software and technology used to attract and retain customers. As of 2020, there are 8,000 different martech tools to choose from, ranging from data analytics platforms to CRMs, to internal team collaboration tools.
Regardless of the tools they use, a martech tech stack helps marketers streamline their processes and take a systematic approach to their day-to-day activities. And, as remote work becomes more commonplace, access to these technologies makes it easy for teams to work together, regardless of physical location.
Featured Resource: How to Stay Current on Emerging Tech
Continued Investment in Diversity Marketing
Early 2020 brought many businesses to a reckoning, as increased attention to social justice issues was at the forefront of conversations during the first few months of the year.
Consumers care now more than ever about the stances businesses take on public issues, demanding change and awareness from brands on diversity, equity, and inclusion. One of the ways they want to see this represented in businesses is diversity marketing.
It’s an effective practice for marketers to commit to, especially considering that people are more likely to consider a product after seeing an ad they think is diverse or inclusive, and 64% actually take action after seeing an ad they believed to be diverse and inclusive.
Thus, marketers will make a continued and improved effort to focus on diversity marketing in 2021 and be representative of the communities they serve that drive their revenue and keep their businesses afloat.
However, in the same vein, it’s even more critical that businesses are genuine about the diversity measures they take. Consumers can see through the fluff, and a recent survey found that 59% of consumers think that companies need to follow up on their statements on diversity with concrete action, or they risk being seen as exploitative and opportunist. Read this post to see examples of businesses that have exemplified the practice of inclusive marketing.
Personalization
Personalization is the way you interact with your audience and customers in a way that feels individualized, as you use data and buyer personas to create content that tailors to their likes and interests.
While 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences, marketers like the practice; 96% of them say it helps advance customer relationships. Given this, Think With Google names personalization as an area of focus for marketers in 2021.
How can marketers prepare? By leveraging the other trends on this list — investment in marketing technology that helps you with personalization, like powerful data analytics platforms to learn about customer preferences and email marketing services that help you personalize the messages you share with customers. In addition, a focus on and commitment to diversity marketing also ensures that your audiences are interacting with material that they can relate to and is relevant to their interests.
Join other market leaders in leveraging these trends.
Although not an exhaustive list, marketers are focusing on and investing in the trends mentioned above for 2021. Understand how each one will affect your business, and join other marketers in these investments.
To learn more about the state of marketing in 2021, read this post to hear directly from marketing experts about trends they expect to see throughout the year.

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Whenever I’m driving and see a Herb Chambers billboard, I smile.

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At this point, I can recognize the short, humorous, memorable ad copy as a Herb ad without even needing to see the brand name.
 And, after years of seeing those ads, I feel like I know the Herb brand, and can describe it like an old friend: He’s funny, likes a good pun, and doesn’t take himself too seriously.
Now that’s the power of brand voice: the power to make your brand come to life.
Consumers prefer brands with strong, unique personalities. In Sprout Social’s 2020 Index, for instance, 40% of consumers listed memorable content as a factor that helps brands stand out on social; 33% voted for distinct personality; and 32% said compelling storytelling.
What do memorable content, distinct personality, and compelling storytelling have in common? Brand voice.
Here, let’s explore what brand voice is, and examples of some of the most powerful brand voices today. Plus, how you can create your own.

What is brand voice?
When a friend calls you, consider — beyond the name that appears on caller ID — how do you know it’s her?
More likely than not, you can deduce this information from how she speaks. The common phrases she uses, how she tells a story, her tone and inflection, and even what information she chooses to include (and exclude) in a given sentence all highlight her unique voice and personality.
Alternatively, think about the last time you chatted with a stranger. In mere minutes, I bet you start to get a sense for their personality. Through a brief conversation, you can start to deduce whether they’re outgoing or shy, serious or funny, and more.
Ultimately, a person’s voice is synonymous with their personality, as it relates to how they communicate.
And brand voice isn’t much different.
Brand voice is the personality your brand takes on in all of its communications.
Brand voice is a critical factor for creating consistency across communication channels, regardless of who creates the content. For instance, brands with strong voice will sound the same on social media, email communications, and blog posts — even if three different teams create content for those channels.
Good brand voice makes your brand stand out from the noise, and helps consumers remember and relate to your brand. This, in turn, creates stronger brand loyalty.
Plus, brand voice can help attract new prospects before they even learn about your product or services.
For instance, consider the humor used in MoonPie’s social posts:

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Before I’d even purchased a MoonPie for the first time, I followed them on Twitter. Why? Because I liked the brand’s voice — it made me laugh, and felt relatable.
Of course, a brand voice doesn’t have to be funny to be powerful. Other powerful brand voices can be inspiring, emotional, bold, casual, formal, poetic, or direct.
To see this in-action, let’s take a look at some impressive examples of brand voice, next.
Brand Voice Examples

1. Spotify

Whether you’re watching a TV ad, driving past a billboard, or scrolling Spotify’s social accounts, you’ll see consistently funny, edgy, direct, and concise language used to develop Spotify’s brand voice.
For instance, take a look at this video, which is part of a Spotify advertisement campaign from 2019, ‘Let the Song Play’:

As you can see, Spotify doesn’t take itself too seriously. The ad makes fun of people who get so emotionally-invested in a song that they won’t resume their plans until the song ends.
You’ll see a similar brand voice play out on Spotify’s social channels. On its Twitter account, for instance, the brand often posts tweets related to new music in a casual, friendly manner, like this one:

If I were to describe Spotify’s brand voice as a person, I’d say she’s witty, sarcastic, and up-to-date on today’s pop culture references. You’ll see that personality play out across all of Spotify’s communication channels.

2. Mailchimp

For this next example, we can look at Mailchimp’s Content Style Guide to derive important information related to Mailchimp’s brand voice.
In the Style Guide, Mailchimp writes, “We want to educate people without patronizing or confusing them. Using offbeat humor and a conversational voice, we play with language to bring joy to their work … We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

Even in the Style Guide, you can hear Mailchimp’s brand voice shine through. The brand consistently achieves a conversational, direct, playful voice in all its content.
For instance, in this blog post, the brand writes about various “highly unscientific personas”, including the fainting goat, which links out to a hilarious video. “When startled, its muscles stiffen up and it falls right over”, strikes the appropriate casual tone that is a staple of the brand’s voice.
As you can see from this example, you can evoke brand voice in subtle yet effective ways. If the blogger had instead written, “If a goat is scared, it becomes nervous. The animal’s muscles contract and it faints as a result”, the writer would’ve evoked a voice more aligned with a scientific journal than Mailchimp.

3. Fenty Beauty 

On the About Us page for Rihanna’s beauty company, it says, “Before she was BadGalRiRi: music, fashion and beauty icon, Robyn Rihanna Fenty was a little girl in Barbados transfixed by her mother’s lipstick. The first time she experienced makeup for herself, she never looked back. Makeup became her weapon of choice for self-expression.”
It’s clear, even just through this short snippet, that Fenty Beauty’s voice is bold, direct, and poetic, using language like “transfixed by her mother’s lipstick” and “her weapon of choice for self-expression”. However, the tone is also undeniably casual — the way you might talk to your best friend.

You’ll see this voice play out across all Fenty social channels, including this YouTube video description: “The blur is REAL! Rihanna wanted to create a light coverage, easy-to-apply, flexible skin tint that instantly evens out your complexion and gives a flattering blurred effect. Eaze Drop, paired with Fenty Skin’s HYDRA VIZOR for added SPF protection, is the perfect combo for a natural, no-makeup makeup look, or for when you want to look effortlessly put together.”
The first statement, “The blur is REAL!” — along with phrases like “No-makeup makeup look”, and the shortening of the word “combination” — all evoke a sense of friendliness. The brand voice matches its target audience perfectly: youthful millennials and Gen-Zers who care about makeup as an opportunity for authentic expression.

4. Clare Paint 

Clare, an online paint site, has created a mature, spirited, and cheerful brand voice to evoke a breezy, girl-next-door feel to their branded content.
For instance, consider the title of one of their recent blog posts, “6 Stylish Rooms on Instagram That Make a Strong Case For Pink Walls”.
The post — which uses phrases like “millennial pink”, “pink walls have obvious staying power”, and “designers and DIY enthusiasts alike have embraced the playful shade with open arms” — uses a friendly, chic, professional tone to relate to its readers while simultaneously demonstrating the brand’s home decor expertise.

This voice is clear across channels. Take a look at this Instagram post, for instance:

“When baby’s first bedroom is on your grown-up vision board” makes the brand feel like a good-natured older (and more fashionable) sister, and the reference to the COO’s baby boy is another opportunity to make authentic connections with Clare followers.  

5. Skittles

Skittles often posts hilarious social media posts that strip away any promotional, phony language so you’re left with something much more real.
Take a recent tweet, for instance, that reads: “Vote Skittles for Best Brand on Twitter so we can keep our jobs!”

The brand voice, which is clever and original, does a good job making prospects and customers feel like they’re chatting with a mischievous employee behind-the-scenes. The Oh my god, I can’t believe they just posted that factor keeps the content fresh and exciting.
Plus, the brand does a good job referencing pop culture references, like this Mean Girls reference, to highlight the brand’s youthfulness.

Now that we’ve explored five impressive examples of brand voice, let’s dive into how you can create your own brand voice.
Creating a Brand Voice
1. Start with your company’s mission or value statement.
Your brand’s mission or value statement can help you determine some key characteristics of your brand voice.
For instance, consider A Good Company’s Values page:

You’ll see these values — transparency, eco-friendliness, and modern instead of traditional — embedded in every piece of content you read from A Good Company.
For instance, take a look at this blog post, Agood Recommends: The Best Second Hand and Rental Marketplaces:

The writing is clear, straightforward, and direct, to support the brand’s transparency values. The writer takes the angle of eco-friendliness in the opinions expressed throughout the piece (i.e. “so much stuff already exists in the world”).
And, finally, there’s a casual, informal tone to the voice, hinting at a company that isn’t old-school and doesn’t take itself too seriously (i.e. “pick up some ‘on fleek’ style bargains).
You’ll want to consider your own values when creating a brand voice. Those values can become key characteristics of your voice.
2. Research your audience and use your buyer persona as inspiration for brand voice.  
Your audience will be the ultimate test of whether you’ve created a successful brand voice. If your voice doesn’t resonate with your audience, then it probably isn’t the right voice.
When creating a brand voice, then, it’s vital you consider your buyer persona.
What is she like? Does she like to read more formal, journalistic-style pieces, or casually skim funny memes on social media? Does she like humor in the content she consumes, or would she prefer the content be straightforward and to-the-point?
Your buyer persona will influence the voice you create.
Additionally, audience research can help you determine other types of content that perform best with your audience, which is undeniably helpful when creating a strong voice. For instance, perhaps you survey your audience or use an analytics tool like Google Analytics to determine other sites your readers frequent.
Figuring out what else they consume is helpful here — your voice should be different if your readers often consume Buzzfeed content, versus the New York Times. The Buzzfeed audience might prefer more casual, funny writing, while the latter probably likes more academic-style content.
3. Look at best-performing pieces and consider why they work.
If you’ve already been publishing content for a few months or even years, then take a look at your top-performing pieces and write down key characteristics of the voice used in those pieces.
Is your top-performing piece more poetic? Does it include trends and pop-culture references? Does it dive deep into a topic and include original research to back up its claims?
Ultimately, these pieces are already resonating with your audience, and it’s likely (at least in part) due to voice. Take note of which aspects of the voice you feel can, and should, be replicated across your brand as a whole.
4. Make a do’s and don’ts list.
Oftentimes, determining brand voice starts by asking: “What don’t we want our brand voice to be?”
Figuring out what you don’t want your brand voice to be is a critical step in choosing the right voice for your brand.
For instance, perhaps your team brainstorms the following statements:

Our brand voice is not uppity or pretentious.
Our brand voice is not too serious.
Our brand voice is not grandiose.
Our brand voice is not unfriendly.

Once you’ve taken a look at these statements, you can begin forming the antithesis to this: 
Our brand voice is down-to-earth and authentic. It’s funny and casual. It’s humble. And it’s helpful.
5. If necessary, use a third-party agency to determine brand voice.
Forbes’ BrandVoice is a media partnership program that helps brands reach and resonate with their audiences through expert consultancy and direct access to Forbes audiences.
Take a look at how Cole Haan worked with Forbes to create content related to style, arts, travel, social impact, and more. Each piece uses a unique voice to target the intended audience for that category.
Consider the voice used for a staycation, travel-related piece:

… Versus the voice used for a style-related piece that highlights a sustainable home goods company:
As you can see, different voices are necessary for reaching and resonating with these very different audiences. And Cole Haan, with the help of Forbes’ BrandVoice program, is able to use both.
If you’re struggling to create a unique brand voice or you need to use different voices for different aspects of your business (like a Sales blog versus a Marketing blog), consider using a program like BrandVoice or a third-party content marketing agency to hone in on a voice that makes the most sense for your business.
6. Create a communications document so all of your content is aligned on brand voice.
Once you’ve created your brand voice, you’ll want to ensure your entire company is aligned in using that voice when creating any marketing materials.
If your company only uses internal writers, consider creating a training course for new writers to learn how to write for your brand. If you work with external guest contributors as well, you’ll want to make public-facing guest contributor guidelines to ensure all your writing captures the appropriate voice.
7. Fill out a brand voice template with 3-5 core voice characteristics.
Use a table to formalize your process. Write down the 3-5 core characteristics you’ve determined are important for your brand’s voice, and how your writers can use these traits in their writing.
This step is important for translating ideas into action — how can your writers create a “humble, authentic voice” in their writing? Give some examples or tactical advice to make it easy for your brand voice to come through in all of your content, regardless of byline.
To explore what a template will look like in-practice, let’s take a look at the following brand voice template — along with a downloadable version, so you can get started right away.  
Brand Voice Template

Looking to make one of these for your own brand? Click here for the blank Google Sheet template so you can copy-and-paste your own brand voice characteristics, fill out the remaining cells, and send along to your team. (It’s important to note, you’ll be prompted to make a Google Drive copy of the template, which isn’t possible without a Google account.)
And there you have it! You’re well on your way towards building a strong, compelling brand voice for your own business.
Remember: A good brand starts with good content. And good content, always, starts with voice. 

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Choosing the right pricing for your product is a little bit like Goldilocks.
Too high, and you risk alienating a large majority of your potential customers.
Too low, and you likely won’t have enough revenue to run a sustainable business. Plus, consumers might not value your product or brand as highly if they see a much lower cost than competitors’.
But how can you get it just right?
That’s what we’re going to explore in this post. Let’s dive into the pros and cons of A/B testing your pricing — and how to do it. Plus, some alternatives to A/B testing your pricing if you’ve determined the weaknesses outweigh the strengths. 

Product pricing is undeniably one of the most important decisions for your company.
Your price can determine how consumers see you in the marketplace — for instance, Ray Bans’ expensive sunglasses suggests they’re higher-quality than the ones I can find at CVS. Sure, the price might limit the amount of total consumers Ray Ban attracts, but the price also attracts high-intent prospects based on perceived value.
This premise is known as value-based pricing: a strategy that chooses pricing based on how much a consumer believes a product is worth. I believe Ray Ban sunglasses are high-quality, and more importantly, I have a good perception of the brand, which makes me feel the sunglasses are worth the hefty price.
Value-based pricing is most impactful if your brand reputation is good. If you’re a newcomer to the marketplace, it might be harder to persuade consumers that your product is worth the expense — people need to know (and love) your brand, first.
There are a few other factors to consider when choosing a price, including what competitors’ are charging (competition-based pricing), or how much it will cost you to produce your product or service, plus how much you want to profit (cost-plus pricing).
To learn more about different pricing strategies, take a look at The Ultimate Guide to Pricing Strategies.
However, even once you’ve chosen a pricing strategy that works for your business, you might be unsure if the specific dollar price is going to return maximum revenue.
For instance, your pricing strategy might show a range of $50-$60 is best for your product. However, you need to find the “sweet spot” within that range. Charge it for $50, and you might be missing out on the revenue you could’ve received if you’d charged it at $60.
Charge it for $60, alternatively, and you might limit the amount of people willing to purchase your product — which could also decrease the amount of revenue you can receive.
This is where A/B testing comes into play. Let’s explore how to A/B test your pricing, next. 
How to A/B Test Your Pricing
It’s important to note — many advise against A/B testing your pricing, for a few reasons.
There are a few major disadvantages or pitfalls associated with A/B testing a price. These include: 

It introduces an element of unfairness to buyers. It doesn’t seem fair that person A is able to purchase your product for less money than person B, which could cause harm to your brand’s reputation. Plus, it could ultimately dissuade a potential buyer from purchasing — for instance, if a prospect pitches a new software solution to her boss for $30/month, and then her boss logs onto the site and sees the product is $50/month, the confusion and frustration over the increase in price could prevent them from purchasing your product at all.

You’ll have a group of customers paying an outdated price for your product. Let’s say you ultimately decide to go with the $30/month variant of your test — but you already have 40 customers who are paying $50/month. What do you do with them? You’ll need to either migrate them to the $30/month plan and potentially deal with reimbursement requests, or keep them on an outdated model … which could cause frustration and high turnover rates when those customers learn they’re paying more than others. 

It can be difficult to get statistical significance. You need a certain amount of people to purchase both price options for your test to be statistically significant, rather than pure chance. For many SaaS companies or companies that work with larger clients or more complex deals, you likely won’t have enough people to ensure your results are even useful.

It requires the development of multiple SKUs and other systems functionality, which can be a large (and potentially unrewarded) effort.

However, if you are going to A/B test your pricing, here’s how you’ll want to do it.
1. Choose two different products (or plans) within the same category type.
To ensure you’re being ethical and fair with your prospects, you don’t want to test two different prices on the same product. Consumers will eventually catch that you’re charging different users varying prices, and it could permanently damage your brand’s reputation.
One alternative to this is testing two different products, or plans, within the same category type to see how much people are willing to pay for your product.
For instance, if you sell social media software, you might choose a Basic plan and charge people $50/month. Within this plan, consumers receive 10 social accounts and 1 user. Then, you might choose your Professional plan, and charge people $140/month, which includes 20 social accounts and 2 users.
By doing this, you’re testing how much people are willing to pay for a social management tool, and whether there’s a cut-off. Technically, the Professional plan offers double the value of the Basic plan, but charges more than double each month ($140/month for 20 accounts and 2 users can be broken down to $70 for 10 accounts and 1 user — whereas a Basic plan is $50 for 10 accounts and 1 user).
Then, you’ll want to track if the conversion rates are higher or equal on both Basic and Professional. If there seems to be a drop-off of buyers for the Professional tool, you might want to lower your pricing on that product and see if it can positively impact revenue.
2. Figure out the price points you want to test.
You’ll want to determine the prices you want to test within a given range based on a variety of factors, including competitor pricing and operational costs.
You’re hoping to gauge price sensitivity, or the degree to which demand changes after a certain price point. For instance, you might find if you price your product at $100, the amount of people who will purchase your product drops dramatically.

Ultimately, you want to choose realistic price points to figure out the highest price you can go, while still maintaining the highest number of potential customers.

3. Measure revenue to determine price.
A small but important detail — measure revenue, not conversions, to determine which price wins out on your A/B test.
You’ll likely have much higher conversion rates on lower-priced products, but that doesn’t mean you’re able to hit your revenue goals. If you price a product too low, you might still struggle to meet revenue goals even with thousands of additional customers. This is why it’s important to measure revenue, not conversions. 
4. Iterate on results and re-test two new price points, if need be.
If you’ve tested $30/month against $50/month and found $30/month equates to the most conversions and possible revenue, consider re-testing between $30 and $40, or $30 and $35.
Iterating on your results enables you to find a highly specific price point that will provide you with maximum revenue. 
5. Choose the price that equates to maximum revenue.
Finally, choose the price point that suggests maximum revenue by determining the highest price that still converts enough customers to meet your business goals.
Alternatives to A/B Testing
If the potential risks associated with A/B testing pricing outweigh the benefits for your own business, there are plenty of alternative options to test a product’s pricing.
For one, you could try A/B testing the pricing page — including different layouts and CTAs — to figure out the best page for optimal conversions and monetization. Maybe your pricing isn’t the issue, but your landing page is.
Alternatively, if you’re releasing a new product, consider launching the product in one market only to gauge market reaction and performance, before rolling the product out on a broader scale. This enables you to make tweaks to your pricing or product before releasing the product to the entire marketplace.
Finally, you might consider conducting a survey and simply asking prospective customers how much they’re willing to pay for a similar product in the industry.
For instance, if you’re selling a website design tool, you might ask: “What features are most important to you in a website design tool?” and, “At what point would a website design tool be too expensive?” or “What is the maximum price you’re willing to pay for a website design tool?”
Ultimately, pricing is about determining your product or service’s value, and how much consumers are willing to pay for that value. It’s an incredibly important factor to consider when running a business, but it’s not something you can A/B test — at least not without potentially losing consumers or damaging your reputation when consumers find different prices every time they visit your site.
If you are interested in A/B testing, we’d suggest using the process to test out the design of your pricing pages or product landing pages. Perhaps by altering how you display your product’s value on a page, you’ll raise the amount consumers are willing to pay.

Since its inception in 2009, real-time bidding (RTB) has become one of the most popular ways to purchase ad inventory online.

But even for experienced marketers, this type of programmatic advertising can be a very confusing concept. I, for one, get intimidated just by reading the word “programmatic.”
So let’s break down what RTB is, how it works, and the pros and cons of using it – all while keeping it jargon-free.
Before we dive into RTB, let’s cover a few basics.
An impression, which is when an ad is displayed on a user’s screen, is the currency used in RTB. Publishers – i.e., the owners of the webpages and mobile apps on which ads are displayed – typically charge for every 1,000 impressions the ad gets. Advertisers know this as the cost per mille (CPM) and place their bids based on the value of each impression.
How do you determine that value? By evaluating the user against your targeting parameters (more on that later).
Are there real-time bidding platforms?
There are no RTB platforms because real-time bidding is a method of purchasing impressions, not a channel. Still confused? Let’s picture a real auction.
Imagine you want to bid on a car. You hire someone to go to the auction for you – that’s your demand-side platform (DSP). The person putting the car up for auction is the publisher and the venue is the marketplace. Raising your hand to indicate a bid is your real-time bidding process.
To purchase ad inventory through RTB, you’ll have to use a DSP, which is a media buying platform on the advertiser side that facilitates the purchase of an ad campaign and monitors its performance. Learn more about that here.
How The Real-Time Bidding Algorithm Works
To understand how the algorithm works, you’ll need to first understand the platforms involved in the process.
On the advertiser side, marketers use DSPs to set up their ad campaign and track its performance. Publishers, on the other hand, use supply-side platforms (SSPs) to list their ad spaces (also known as ad inventory) and the price they charge. They then meet in the middle at the ad exchange, the marketplace where the real-time bidding actually takes place.
To determine what ad inventory to bid on, advertisers will set targeting parameters. For instance, a brand may only want to take users who are in a specific region or have visited their website recently.
So, advertisers, or specifically their DSPs, evaluate ad potential in real time and decide whether or not to place a bid and how much to bid.
So, now that we’ve covered the key elements needed for a real-time bid, let’s go through an example of how it works.
Let’s say Silk is a UK-based beauty brand that just launched a new brow line and is running a campaign. They set up their campaign on a DSP and are targeting users who regularly shop for makeup products, are located in the Manchester area, and are between 18 to 30 years of age. The brand also wants its ads to only show on sites related to beauty and lifestyle.
A user visits a publisher’s site. The publisher’s SSP sends a bid request to the ad exchange where Silk’s DSP will be evaluating the value of the impression. The DSP will then determine if the user meets the parameters outlined in the campaign. If so, the DSP will submit a bid.
If Silk has the winning bid, the user will see the ad once the page loads. This process happens thousands of times on different webpages during the length of Silk’s ad campaign.
Silk’s paid ads manager will also be monitoring their ad’s performance on the DSP to see if it’s reaching the desired audience, or if the parameters should be adjusted.
The Benefits of The Real-Time Bidding Process
Better Tracking
With RTB, advertisers can monitor their campaigns easily without relying on vendors. No need to reach out to multiple publishers and ask for reports, you can get them yourself on your DSP.
This also gives marketers the agility to pivot quickly if their campaign isn’t performing as expected. For instance, you might find that switching out one keyword for another may boost your campaign’s performance and align better with the audience you want to reach.
Better Targeting
When purchasing ads through RTB, you buy one impression at a time. This means that every time a website visitor or mobile app user visits a publisher’s site, you’re able to assess that person’s particular profile and see if it matches your target audience.
It makes for more accurate targeting as you can ensure your ads are only reaching the right people at the right time.
More Cost-Effective
The precision of the real-time bidding algorithm allows marketers to spend their ad dollars on high-value impressions.
Too often, brands launch marketing campaigns that only reach a portion of their target market, leaving the rest of the budget wasted on users who don’t fit the profile.
In addition, RTB takes much of the manual labor out of the online advertising process, allowing marketers to focus on other efforts.
Challenges of Real-Time Bidding
Brand Safety
Where your ad shows up is as important as who sees it. This is because consumers judge brands’ ads based on the surrounding content.
A 2019 Ad Colony survey reported that 60% of consumers have a negative perception of brands whose ads appear near inappropriate, hateful, or offensive content. This can be anything from a site that hosts pirated movies to sites promoting hate speech.
Due to the nature of RTB, there is a risk your ad may appear on a site with content you wouldn’t want your brand associated with. However, brands can limit this issue by putting certain keywords and sites on a deny list. This protects brands from showing up on webpages or mobile apps that don’t align with their identity.
Ad Fraud
Cheq estimated that in 2020, ad fraud would cost digital advertisers $35 billion, with 10.5% of digital ads reaching bots.
Beyond cost, the rising sophistication of bots can also cause brands to gather inaccurate data on their campaigns.
Some deceitful publishers fabricate impressions to steal from advertisers. One way to combat this is by using a DSP or ad network with fraud detection software.
Real-time bidding makes the online advertisement process fast and easy. Marketers can skip the back-and-forth previously associated with ad buying and focus on tracking the results.