Category: Marketing Automation

“This could have been an email.”
Those six words can take the wind out of an office. They mean that time has been wasted, employees are frustrated, and leadership has been ever-so-slightly undermined.
Unjustified meetings are inefficient and grating. Haphazardly putting time on colleagues’ calendars — only to fumble with its purpose, conduct it without direction, or spend all your time talking at attendees as opposed to collaborating with them — takes a toll on everyone involved.
Here, we’ll review some criteria you should look for when deciding whether a meeting is worth everyone’s time, see a few definitive signs that an issue doesn’t warrant a meeting, and go over some of the more prominent, effective meeting alternatives.

When You Should Hold a Meeting
The issue at hand is urgent and time-sensitive.
If the information you need to convey is must-hear and timebound, don’t think twice — book a meeting. You don’t want to run the risk of sending a mass email about a pressing issue, only to have some employees gloss it over or ignore it entirely.
Some things are need-to-know and can’t wait, and your response to those instances needs to reflect that kind of urgency. Don’t be overly passive. Don’t count on your team members to get to the information on their own time. Book a meeting, and get those points across.
You need a space for thorough discussion and multiple perspectives.
Some issues call for some degree of collaboration and thinking out loud. Those kinds of brainstorm sessions and general discussions warrant actual meetings. The spur of the moment thinking and flexibility for your team to bounce ideas off one another is hard to replicate via mediums like instant message or email.
Collaborative meetings foster creativity and critical thinking. If you feel you need your team to immediately run thoughts by one another on the fly and tease ideas out of each other in person, booking a meeting is probably your best bet.
Decision-making is at play.
When the content of a potential meeting is high-stakes — as in “involving decisions that have significant implications on the company’s future” — you have to get everyone together.
You can’t take these situations lightly. In these cases, stakeholders need to know what’s going on and have a forum to air concerns and provide input. An email chain, message board, or pre-recorded video presentation won’t provide that.
When You Don’t Need a Meeting
You don’t have a definitive agenda.
One of the biggest meeting blunders you can make is going in without a plan. Never wing a meeting. Just going in and trying to figure things out as you go is frustrating and obnoxious for your team members — it’s an unproductive waste of time.
If you don’t put an agenda together, you’re also undermining your ability to determine whether the issue at hand actually warrants a meeting in the first place. When you take the time to organize your thoughts, concerns, and materials, you’re giving yourself a chance to see the situation in a more objective light.
With that kind of clarity and perspective, you can more thoughtfully determine whether the information you need to convey is better suited for a mass email, instant message chain, or any other less time-and-energy-consuming format.
You don’t have all your information together.
This point ties into the one above. If you’re not thoroughly prepared or the information you’ve gathered so far presents an incomplete picture of the situation at hand, you’re best off holding off on booking a meeting.
The most effective meetings are thorough, thoughtful, and provide actionable guidance. If you only have a piece of the bigger picture, you probably won’t be able to definitively set your team on the right track — and there’s no getting that time you with everyone booked back.
If you have some information on hand that you feel your team should know. You might be better off touching base with them over a less personal, time-consuming medium and letting them know you’ll have more insight to offer sometime soon.
The meeting is going to involve too many people.
If you’re finding your list of potential meeting attendees seems excessive, you might want to explore other options for getting the information in question out. Massive meetings are often unproductive and typically involve a fair amount of people who don’t actually need to be there.
If the meeting is going to be packed to the rafters, you probably won’t see much thoughtful, organized discussion. Plus, if that many people need to know what you need to say, it’s probably more of a one-sided announcement than an issue that lends itself to focused collaboration. In most cases, that kind of content is generally better suited for email.
1. Email
Email might be the most prominent alternative to meetings. It’s an excellent resource for announcements and less pressing, more general internal communication — information that doesn’t necessarily require an immediate response. It allows you to easily get your message out while providing an opportunity for individual questions and thoughtful collaboration.
2. Video Presentations
Pre-recorded video presentations can be an excellent way to thoroughly and thoughtfully convey information without getting the team together. Resources like Loom allow you to conduct demonstrations, record messages, and offer updates that your team members can watch on their own — making for less friction and saving some time that a full-scale meeting might waste.
3. Instant Messaging
Instant messaging is one of the better ways to replicate some of the more immediate, spur-of-the-moment aspects of a collaborative meeting. With these kinds of programs, you can receive quick responses from team members in real-time. The format is best suited for quick questions and conversations that aren’t necessarily significant enough to warrant full-scale meetings.
4. Wikis and FAQ Pages
Wikis and FAQ pages offer materials that address common questions and concerns that your team members might run into. These mediums are also effective in the long term. By committing information to a web page, you can offer your team an evergreen reference point for concerns and stave off unnecessary meetings, down the line.
Quiz: Do you really need that meeting?

 

Meetings need to be booked carefully and with intention. Your colleagues can’t get that time back, so you need to know that you’ll be productive every time you circle up with them.
If you’re thinking of booking time with your team, be sure to consider the points on this list. You don’t want to deal with the groans and eye rolls that come with a meeting that “could have been an email.”

Did you know that the virtual and augmented reality global revenue is expected to grow from over $13 billion this year to more than $67 billion by 2024?
In fact, virtual reality startups are valued at more than $36 billion on paper.
For marketers, virtual reality’s surging popularity and ability to deeply engage people in immersive experiences and transport them to places they could only imagine going to makes it one of the most exciting emerging technologies in the industry.
But branded VR experiences are still in its infancy. Most marketing teams don’t know how to use the technology to its full potential.
To help you learn how to effectively leverage VR, we decided to make a list of the top VR startups and showcase how they’ve been able to use the technology to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and build successful businesses.
If you want stay ahead of the VR curve in 2021 and beyond, check out these startups.

8 VR Startups to Keep an Eye On In 2021
1. Magic Leap

Magic Leap, a company valued at over $6 billion, is an augmented reality platform focused on providing VR solutions to businesses.
With its wearable spatial solutions, you can easily incorporate VR/AR into your day-to-day. For example, you can use the headset to meet with coworkers and colleagues remotely, collaborate, share content, and even visualize complex 3D models.
Innovative businesses can use VR/AR to make remote collaboration easier.
2. Niantic

Niantic, the company that launched Pokemon Go in 2016, has become a top leader in augmented reality in that short 5 year time span. The business is even valued at over $4 billion.
This company focuses on building VR/AR games that get people moving. In fact, Niantic’s mission is to use emerging technology to enrich our experiences as human beings in the physical world.
This is a great company to keep an eye on to see how they market emerging VR/AR tech. Plus, you might even be able to use the games in your business as a part of a team building exercise.
3. Lightricks

Lightricks, a company founded in 2013 and valued at $1 billion, is an excellent leader in the VR/AR industry.
This business develops apps for social media marketers, creative content creators, or even small businesses. With these apps, you can use AR technology to edit social media posts, create videos with animated graphics, and more.
4. Surgical Theater

The third highest cause of death isn’t a ravenous disease or motor vehicle accidents — it’s medical errors. These errors are usually due to the extreme difficulty of treating each unique patient with absolute precision, especially during surgery.
It’s even harder to mitigate this prevalent problem because the only way surgeons can prepare for an operation is usually by planning and practicing surgery on a generic two-dimensional model of the human body.
Fortunately, with Surgical Theater, a VR system that can combine a patient’s MRIs, CT scans, and angiograms to reconstruct a 3D model of their brain’s unique anatomy, neurosurgeons can explore each of their patient’s arteries, bones, and tissue, accurately plan the surgery, and even practice the upcoming brain surgery on the 3D model.
Brain surgeons also use Surgical Theater to walk patients through their brain’s anatomy and the entire process of their surgery, making patients feel more informed about the details of their procedure.
Neurosurgeons can train with Surgical Theater similar to the way fighter pilots train with flight simulators, and some of the country’s top academic hospitals, like UCLA, NYU, University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai, and Stanford University, have implemented the technology to advance their neurosurgery efforts.
5. VirtualSpaces

Selling a property that hasn’t been constructed yet is one of the biggest challenges real estate professionals face today. Blueprints don’t do the potential property justice — it’s almost impossible for people to sense its scale, size, height and depth. The human imagination can only visualize so much.
On top of that, most people are too busy during the week to tour property, so a lot of real estate professionals heavily depend on the weekends to showcase their realty. Getting people to walk through properties that are far away is also another challenge for real estate professionals.
But with VirtualSpaces, a mobile VR technology that can build immersive, three-dimensional visualizations of properties with only a blueprint, real estate professionals can overcome these common challenges.
With VirtualSpaces, real estate professionals can send digital properties to their potential clients at any time, transport them to the property from the comfort of their own couch, and walk them through its entire concept. And this allows them to provide unprecedented convenience, get potential clients excited about the property’s potential, and expedite their sales cycle.
6. Virtual Speech

Practicing a speech without an audience can be helpful, but the experience doesn’t truly emulate the pressure of an evaluating crowd. You can nail a dry run ten times in a row on your own, but when you actually step on stage and see an ocean of people staring at you, the nerves can debilitate your public speaking abilities.
Fortunately, VirtualSpeech can help you hone your public speaking skills — the app places you on a virtual stage with a virtual crowd, where you can practice your speech or presentation in front of an audience that imitates the mannerisms and sounds of real people. Their movements and noises are fully customizable, so you can ramp up the distractions and virtual judgement as much as possible.
At the end of your virtual speeches, the app will analyze and score your verbal and nonverbal communication. You can also add your own slides into your virtual presentation, practice for job interviews, learn how to network, and sell in a wide range of sales situations too.
Virtual Speech offers soft skills training courses and packages for individuals, teams, and companies too.
7. Neurable

Mind control of everyday objects might seem like science fiction today, but with virtual reality, it’s already a proven concept.
Using Neurable’s wireless brain-computer interface platform, people can interact with virtual and augmented reality applications with only their brain activity, avoiding lag-prone technologies like eye-tracking and voice commands.
Neurable leverages machine learning and a non-invasive method of monitoring brain activity called electroencephalography or EEG to accurately and instantly detect what your brain wants to do. And since using your brain is faster and easier than using controllers, brain-computer interface platforms like Neurable could be the future of VR.
8. Vivid Vision

Most healthcare VR startups provide solutions for doctors and surgeons, but Vivid Vision focuses on the people who truly need help: patients. By designing VR games that treat lazy eye, Vivid Vision provides a non-invasive cure to a common eye issue people can suffer from for their entire lives.
Vivid Vision also partners with over 180 eye clinics around the world to provide their most advanced and personalized treatment for lazy eye. But if you just want to do their vision therapy at home, you can get a prescription from your doctor to buy their less complex treatment program.
VR/AR has been around for a long time now, and the industry is only growing. As new startups continue to innovate, we’ll begin seeing VR/AR in several areas of our life, including work, healthcare, and entertainment.

Hey guys! First of all thanks for stopping by to read this post. It’s been 2 months since I’ve been working on the an eBook where I want to understand and emphasize on the working of big dollar sales eCommerce businesses run at least 3-4 times in a year! It’s an intriguing concept as there are user trust issues with regards to the quality of products on sale, the amount these businesses need to shell out from their pockets, and so on. So, finally now that the eBook is completed, I’d like to ope it for your review. Yes! Reddit has been a close knit and reliable community for me and your POV matters A LOT! So please get access to the free eBook here and let me know your thoughts. TIA
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This week marked an important milestone for HubSpot. The company Dharmesh and I founded over 14 years ago welcomed its 100,000th customer and passed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.
We’ve come a long way since we began banging the drum about inbound marketing, and yet, it feels like HubSpot is just getting started.
In many ways, it feels like the whole world is just getting started … or re-started.
The events of the past year have transformed entire industries, upended the way we work, and re-shaped human behavior en masse. The technologies we embraced and new habits we formed during the pandemic will not retreat when the coronavirus eventually does. Rather, they will come to define “the next normal.”
This represents one of the most profound outcomes of these times: that never before have companies, and the products and services they provide, had a greater capacity to influence human behavior.
When gyms re-open, people will still workout from home, facilitated by fitness apps. When offices re-open, people will still work from home, facilitated by work productivity and communications tools. When theatres re-open, people will still watch live concerts and new movies from home, facilitated by streaming services.
Without these products and services, many of which have gone from being novel to necessary in the past year, life during the pandemic would look very different. And it would be much more likely to snap back to the way it was in 2019.
Instead, we’ve witnessed countless companies urgently pivoting their plans to meet new customer needs. They’ve innovated, they’ve adapted, and they’ve re-shaped their products.
I’ve been inspired to see many of HubSpot’s 100,000 customers adapt and innovate in the face of uncertainty, and in doing so, play an instrumental role in defining the new ways in which we live, travel, work, and build a better future.
Mindfulness for the Masses
Take mindfulness apps, for example. One unequivocally positive outcome of these turbulent times has been the increased importance we all place on our mental wellness. Over the past year, HubSpot customers like Calm, Talkspace, and Headspace have gone from being helpful tools for people looking to practice mindfulness to vital services that millions of people use in their daily lives.
When Headspace was founded in 2010 — at a time when meditation was still largely the preserve of religious and spiritual organizations —  the key question its founders asked was: “How do we put Headspace in places you wouldn’t expect to find it?” Now, 10 years later, it is a multi-media organization with a podcast division, a partnership with Sesame Street, and a recently announced Netflix series.
This progress would not have been possible without the level of scale the company has been able to achieve in the past 12 months. On the eve of the pandemic in February 2020, the app reached two million paid subscribers, and since then, its rate of downloads has increased by 20%. And when you look at data from the first few weeks of U.S. lockdowns, downloads increased by 100% against pre-pandemic levels.
Headspace was growing steadily prior to the pandemic, but when society was plunged into a period of unprecedented uncertainty, the need for its services surged. Thanks to a deep-rooted passion to serve its customers, the company was able to scale through 2020 and usher in a new era in which mindfulness is practiced by the masses.
New Tools for a New Way of Working
As the intertwined relationship between work and location continues to unravel, online productivity tools have gone from being a useful supplement to traditional workstyles to an indispensable part of the remote worker’s toolkit.
Numerous HubSpot customers have played a vital role in facilitating this shift: Trello has helped parents to manage their kids’ homeschooling schedules, SurveyMonkey has supported nearly a quarter of a million surveys about the coronavirus, and G2 has helped companies find new software solutions, seeing a 1,100% increase in searches for virtual classroom tools and a 550% increase in searches for webinar software in the weeks following the coronavirus outbreak.
Another HubSpot customer, Monday.com, had been growing rapidly in the years prior to the pandemic, announcing $120m in annual recurring revenue in February 2020 as its software helped thousands of scaling companies to collaborate more effectively. And then, as the ability to collaborate remotely became a critical need for all companies, the company changed its product roadmap to meet the sudden change in customer needs.
Among the new releases it prioritized were embedded Zoom calls, online whiteboards, and image annotations — all of which could add immediate value to customers. The impact of these changes was significant. Not only did Monday.com accelerate its hiring, increasing its headcount by 27% between April and June 2020, it also announced a new valuation of $2.7bn. Monday.com was even singled out for praise by Fast Company for its remarkably smooth transition to remote work.
The way we work has changed forever, and the impact of this change is still reverberating across multiple industries, affecting commercial real estate prices, triggering mass migrations, and reducing carbon footprints as commute times plummet.
At the heart of these major societal changes are companies like Monday.com, which initially sought to help scaling companies collaborate more effectively, and now finds itself providing an essential tool that is accelerating a once-in-a-generation shift in human behavior.
Destination: Anywhere
While the pandemic has forced entire populations to stay in one place, it has also dramatically changed the ways in which we move in the world. One HubSpot customer at the forefront of this shift is Airstream.
For decades, Airstream has been building its much-loved state-of-the-art travel trailers, and in doing so, has become one of the most iconic brands in the United States. As the pandemic unfolded, the company was quick to produce new, relevant resources about everything from how to exercise in small spaces, to how to learn and work remotely. As Airstream CEO Bob Wheeler put it, “these virtual products looked very different than the vehicles we’re used to producing.” But it was through this innovative adaptation to the new habits and interests of its customers that Airstream achieved a 45% year-on-year increase in sales in May, and a 100% increase in June.
The pandemic has made work less location-dependent and leisure less time-dependent. It is now possible for many to travel while working and adventure without taking large amounts of time off work. By recognizing this new dynamic and quickly adjusting its strategy, Airstream has gone from providing a means of travel between destinations to providing the destination itself.
Even after the pandemic has been brought under control, ongoing economic uncertainty and fears of a resurgent virus are likely to result in a continued reluctance to travel internationally. As a result, staycationing and domestic location-hopping are set to remain popular choices for years to come. By re-positioning its value proposition to suit the new habits of its customers, Airstream has further accelerated the shifts triggered by the pandemic, while also continuing to scale as a global business.
Scaling Better for Society
As the pandemic sent people indoors, racial injustice brought many out onto the streets to protest long-standing inequality in our society. Over the past year, customers have increasingly come to expect the companies they spend money with to be a force for good in the world.
Lemonade, the insurance provider and HubSpot customer, is an example of how companies can have the type of positive societal impact that now customers demand, while also scaling rapidly in the process.
Lemonade is a certified B-corp that gives all of its unclaimed premiums to non-profit organizations chosen by its customers. As the company’s website says, “Social good is baked into the core of our business model.”
When the pandemic hit, Lemonade allowed customers experiencing financial hardship to defer payments (and even in more normal times, it allows customers to cancel their policy at any time and receive a full refund). It also gave its customers the opportunity to switch their non-profit-of-choice to an organization directly involved in fighting the coronavirus outbreak — and tens of thousands of them took them up on the offer. And late last year, the company’s CEO, Daniel Schreiber, called on companies to encourage their employees to get vaccinated. 
While using its influence to help in the fight against the coronavirus, Lemonade also showed its support for artists facing financial hardship during the pandemic by launching an Instagram campaign to highlight works of art it commissioned.
The insurance industry has not been immune to the downward economic pressures triggered by the pandemic, and yet, Lemonade was one of 2020’s most impressive growth stories. In December, after just four-and-a-half years in business, the company announced that it had passed 1 million clients. And just a few weeks after that, its stock hit an all-time high. The company achieved this level of scale while also racking up $1.1million to donate to nonprofits, including ACLU, March For Our Lives, and 350.org.
According to Edelman’s 2021 trust barometer, business is now the most trusted institution when compared to government, media, and NGOs. As Lemonade scales its business while simultaneously having a positive impact on the world, it represents the newly defined role companies are expected to play in society — where they are both for profit and for good.

This new expectation of companies and their CEOs creates a responsibility and an opportunity for businesses to play an active role in building a better future for all in the next normal.
Preparing for the Next Normal
I’ve witnessed more change in the past 12 months than I did in the previous 12 years. But now, on the occasion of HubSpot welcoming its 100,000th customer and passing $1 billion, I’m not looking back as much as I’m looking forward.
The next normal won’t look anything like 2019, and it won’t look very similar to 2020 either. It will be an era unique in the trends it ushers in and the opportunities it presents. At HubSpot, it will be our job to help our future and existing customers take advantage of those opportunities, while also continuing to support the likes of Headspace, Monday.com, Airstream, and Lemonade as they scale and shape the behaviors that will define the next normal.
We plan on doing that first and foremost by listening to our customers, and by then using their feedback to provide a world-class CRM platform as unique as the times in which we live and capable of empowering scaling companies to thrive for years to come.
I want to thank every customer, partner, and employee for helping us get to where we are today. Without their passion, advocacy, trust, and feedback, the past 15 years would not have been as exciting, and the next 15 would not look as promising.
Our mission is to help millions of organizations grow better. This week, we reached an important milestone on that journey. But, just as the next normal is getting started, so too is HubSpot.

Email marketing has been around so long that some may think it’s becoming outdated. And there’s no denying how annoying it is to constantly unsubscribe from unsolicited emails making their way through spam filters. However, it might surprise you that email marketing is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies in 2021. Email marketing…
The post How To Use LinkedIn Contacts For Email Marketing: A Step-by-step Guide For Startups appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

The new Email Marketing Benchmarks report is here, packed with the latest email marketing analytics data for Q3 2019 – Q2 2020. Find out the average email open rate for your industry – and more key insights and trends – to get your email marketing campaigns up to speed for 2021.

Have a presentation coming up that involves PowerPoint slides? Creating the content and design for a new presentation can be a daunting task.
Between outlining, deciding on a design, filling it out, and finalizing the details, it’s not uncommon for a few questions to pop up.
Where’s the best place to start? Are some steps better to take before others? How can you make sure you aren’t missing anything? And how on earth do you master those essential — yet slightly technical — design tricks that can take a presentation from good to great?

We’re here to make the process a little easier for you. We’ve talked to some of the best presenters at HubSpot and have included their tips throughout this blog.
With the following tips in your arsenal, you’ll be able to navigate PowerPoint much more fluidly and give a standout presentation that’ll leave your audience wanting more.
How to Structure a Powerpoint Presentation
1. Decide on a working title and the main takeaways.
Beyond picking a topic, your first step should be coming up with a working title for your presentation. A working title is more specific than a topic: Think “How the Right Nutrition Can Strengthen Your Kids’ Bones” instead of “Raising Healthy Kids.” Keep in mind that a compelling presentation title is much like a compelling blog post title: short, accurate, and valuable.
Once you’ve got your working title, make a list of the main takeaways of your presentation to begin to give it some structure. This’ll help you stay focused when writing your outline and elaborating on those sections.
Aja Frost, the Head of English SEO at HubSpot, says, “I try to structure my presentations around a story. Not only does this make the presentation more memorable and engaging, it’s also easier to figure out which information is relevant.”
To do this, Frost says to pick a protagonist. She adds, “It might be your team, your audience, your customer…. Then, identify the rising action, problem, climax, and falling action. It’s just like grade school. This structure works whether you’re talking about an accomplishment, a challenge, a big question—anything, really.”
2. Create a short text outline with your audience in mind.
Once you have your main takeaways and your story in mind, it’s time to begin outlining the content of your presentation in more detail, while keeping your specific audience in mind. A presentation on any topic should sound different if you’re speaking to an audience of college students versus an audience of investors, for example. The tone, words, design, and delivery of your presentation should all cater to your specific audience for maximum impact.
Ask yourself: What do your audience members already know? What new information can you teach them? What are they expecting from your presentation? What’s going to be interesting to them? What will keep them focused and engaged? Then, make choices during every stage of the presentation process accordingly.
Justin Champion, a content professor at HubSpot, says, “Before diving into a presentation, I create an outline of how it’ll flow. I do this by creating an intro (what they’re going to learn), the body (what they’re learning), and finish with a conclusion (recap what they just learned) I use bullet point slide a lot for talking points I can expand on. Pro tip: use animations to guide the story. For example, instead of showing all the bullets at once, click through to each via animation.”
3. Formulate your content as a narrative, if possible.
This may not apply for more formal presentation that have rigid structures (like performance reports), but for presentations that have more flexibility, presenting your content as a narrative can be much more compelling.
Stories appeal to people’s emotional side in ways that information, facts, and figures can’t. They help you relate to your audience — and in turn, they’ll make you and your message far more interesting to your audience. They also help make complicated concepts more easily understandable to your audience, who may not share the same experience level or work in the same industry.
Kyle Jepson, a senior professor at HubSpot, says, “Since I’m an educator, I always structure my presentations around the learning outcomes I want to achieve. If there are three things I want my listeners to understand at the end of the presentation, I’ll have three sections. Whenever possible, I put some sort of interactive element at the end of each section to assess their understanding. In a virtual event, this might be a poll or a question for people to respond to in the chat. In an in-person setting, workshop activities or small-group discussions work well.”
4. Collect data and examples.
While sweeping statements can help you set the stage, supporting those statements with evidence will make your argument more interesting and credible. Data and examples give your argument content, and people will understand what you’re saying much better.
But don’t just slap random stats on your slides and expect to “wow” your audience. Be sure your data comes from a reputable source and that you’re presenting it in a way that’s easy to understand, like through accurate charts and graphs.
Finally, don’t overwhelm your audience with too much data. According to psychologist George Miller, we can only remember approximately five to nine bits of information in our short-term memory at any given time. Keep that in mind as you collect your evidence.
5. Engage with your audience.
During a presentation, it’s important to connect with your audience. But how can you do that when you’re just talking at them?
Anni Kim, an INBOUND professor at HubSpot, says, “Staying engaged during a virtual presentation is tough, so provide plenty of opportunities for participation. You should add a slide at the beginning that points out how people can take advantage of the chat and ask questions throughout the presentation.”
Once you’ve set the expectations, keep up on the chat and answer questions as they arise.
Now that you have a structure in mind, you’ll start to write the content. Below, we’ll give tips for how to start and end your presentation.
How to Start a Powerpoint Presentation
1. Start with a story.
Not to be repetitive, but storytelling is one of the best ways to capture your audience’s attention in general. Presentations are no different. Starting with a hook is a great way to get your audience invested in your content.
Champion says, “The best way to start a presentation is with an interesting story that connects to the content. A great way to keep you audience engaged is to make the content interesting.”
2. Be yourself.
On the other hand, while you want to tell a story, you also want your audience to connect with you as the presenter.
Jepson says, “During the introduction, I think one of the most important things to do is to set expectations for your style as a presenter. You don’t always need to start with a joke or a story. Start out by being you, and then keep being you for as long as you’re on stage.”
3. Include surprising or unusual information at the beginning.
While you’ll most likely use a standard approach with session title, presenter’s bio, and an agenda, you don’t want your audience to get bored.
Jepson adds “I think the standard approach (session title, presenter’s bio, agenda) is pretty effective except that it’s usually super boring. I try to include the standard information but sprinkle in things that are surprising or unusual.”
Some examples include:

Adding a photo of your family on the About Me slide. “A lot of presenters put a picture of themselves on their About Me slide. But I think that’s silly because I’m standing right there,” Jepson says. “If people don’t know what I look like, they will by the end of the presentation! So I’ve started putting a picture of my wife and kids on that slide and saying something sweet or silly about that.”

Asking people to use their phones. “A lot of in-person presentations start with a request to silence cell phones,” Jepson comments. “Sometimes I’ll do the opposite and say something like, ‘Before we get started, I want you all to pull out your phones. You probably think I’m going to ask you to silence them. But I’m not. I’m here from HubSpot, and I’m here to help you however I can. So if there’s anyone from your team who might have questions or need help from a HubSpotter, I want you to send them a message and tell them to send their questions to you before we get to the Q&A section of presentation. To give you time to do this, I’m going to send a text to my wife to let her know I made it here safely.’ And then I’ll literally pull out my phone and send a text message on stage.”

Now that you’ve structured your post and have ironed out the details of your introduction, it’s time to work on the end of the presentation.
How to End a Powerpoint Presentation
1. Recap what the audience has learned.
First and foremost, the end of your presentation should tie everything together.
Champion adds, “Recap what they just learned, explain next steps based on learnings, and offer any associated resources to continue learning.”
This will help people remember the content and give them resources to learn more or reach out if they have questions.
2. Q&A.
Another great way to end a presentation is with a Q&A.
Jepson remarks, “I always end with Q&A. The only tricky thing about that is knowing how to cut it off if you’re getting more questions than you have time to answer or if you aren’t getting any questions at all. In both of those situations, I do essentially the same: I cut it off and tell people to come talk to me individually.”
For in-person meetings, Jepson will tell the audience to come find him after the presentation to ask more questions. However, for virtual meetings, he’ll let people know how to reach him, whether that’s via LinkedIn or email.
3. Call to action.
Calls to action are an important component of any piece of content and presentations are no different. What do you want your audience to do with this information?
In your recap, include actionable ways for your audience to incorporate your information into their day-to-day (if applicable). You can also let people know to reach out to you with questions so they know the next steps in case they want to discuss the presentation further.
Now that you have an idea of what you’re going to be talking about and how you’ll be laying it out, it’s time to open up a new PowerPoint presentation and apply those basic design elements.
Outlining Your PowerPoint Design
1. Pick a color scheme.
Before you begin translating your text outline into PowerPoint, you’ll want to start by adding some very basic design elements to your PowerPoint slides. First, choose a color scheme — one that has enough contrast between colors to make colors stand out. Whether you decide to use two, three, or four different colors in your presentation is up to you, but certain color combinations go together better than others. Read the sections on creating color schemes in this blog post to figure out a good color combination.

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2. Design your slide backgrounds.
In PowerPoint, less is more. You don’t ever want to let the design distract from your message. But at the same time, you want to get more creative than a plain, white background — even if you’re going for a very simple design.
The three main ways to add a background design to a PowerPoint presentation are: 1) to use a predesigned template from PowerPoint; 2) to create a custom background using a solid color; or 3) to create a custom background using an image. Here’s how to do each of those things.
(We also have a few general PowerPoint templates available for download here, which come with a series of videos to teach you some basic PowerPoint creation tips.)
How to Browse Predesigned Templates in PowerPoint
PowerPoint comes with a series of predesigned templates to choose from.
To browse these templates on a Mac: Click on the slide or slides you want to add the background to. Then, click the “Themes” tab at the top of the screen.

You can either scroll through your options up there, or you can access the themes gallery in a bigger window by hovering your mouse over the theme previews and clicking the dropdown arrow that appears below them.
Right-click the background style that you want. To apply the background style to the selected slides, click “Apply to Selected Slides.” To apply the background style to all of the slides in your presentation, click “Apply to All Slides.”
To browse these templates on a PC: Click on the slide or slides you want to add the background to. Then, click the “Design” tab at the top of the screen. In the “Background” group, click the arrow next to “Background Styles” to open up the theme gallery.

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Right-click the background style that you want. To apply the background style to the selected slides, click “Apply to Selected Slides.” To apply the background style to all of the slides in your presentation, click “Apply to All Slides.”
Pro Tip: You can also apply any PowerPoint presentation or template you already have as a theme, even if it doesn’t show up in the theme gallery. To do that, click the “Browse Themes” option you’ll find at the bottom of the dropdown themes gallery, and navigate to wherever the given presentation, template, or theme is located on your computer. Then, click “Apply.”
How to Create a Custom Background Using a Solid Color
Want your slide background to be a simple, solid color? The steps to do this are almost identical on a Mac and a PC.
Simply right-click the slide(s) you want to add a background color to, then click “Format Background.” In the window that appears, click “Fill” and then “Solid.” Notice you can also adjust the gradient or make the background a pattern. Click “Apply” at the bottom to apply the changes.

How to Create a Custom Background Using an Image
Sometimes, making the slide background a high-definition image can really make that slide pop. It also encourages you to cut down on text so that only a few keywords complement the image. PowerPoint makes it easy to create a custom background using an image you own.

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First, choose your image. Size matters here: Be sure it’s high resolution so that it can fill your slide without becoming blurry or distorted. Here are the 17 best free stock photo sites to help you find some large, great quality images.
To create a custom background using an image on a Mac: Click the slide that you want to add a background picture to. To select multiple slides, click a slide and then press and hold CTRL while you click the other slides.
Next, click the “Themes” tab at the top of your screen. In the “Theme Options” group, click “Background,” then “Format Background.”

In the window that appears, click “Fill,” then “Picture or Texture.” To insert a picture from a file, click “Choose Picture…” and then locate and double-click the picture you want to insert. If you want to use this picture as a background for just the slides you selected, click “Apply.” If you want to use the picture as a background for all the slides in your presentation, click “Apply to All.”
To create a custom background using an image on a PC: Click the slide that you want to add a background picture to. To select multiple slides, click a slide and then press and hold CTRL while you click the other slides.
Next, click the “Design” tab at the top of your screen. In the “Background” group, click “Background Styles,” then “Format Background.”

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In the window that appears, click “Fill,” then “Picture or texture fill.” To insert a picture from a file, click “File” and then locate and double-click the picture you want to insert. If you want to use this picture as a background for just the slides you selected, click “Close.” If you want to use the picture as a background for all the slides in your presentation, click “Apply to All.”
Filling In the Content
1. Fill in the text on your slides using concise language.
Your slides are there to support your speech, not replace it. If your slides contain too much information — like full sentences or (gasp) paragraphs — then your audience members won’t be able to help but read the slides instead of listening to you. Plus … that’s boring. Instead, use slides to enhance keywords and show visuals while you stand up there and do the real work: telling a story and describing your data.
When it comes to your slide text, focus on the main phrases of a bullet point, and cover details verbally. We recommend using up to three bullet points per slide and making any text as simple and concise as possible. A good rule of thumb is this: If you’re using more than two lines per slide or per idea, then you’ve used too much text. Depending on the type of presentation, two lines might even be a little text-heavy.
Are you planning on sending your slides to your audience afterward? If you’re concerned about putting enough information on the slides for people to understand your presentation when they go back to it later, you can always add little details into the slide notes in PowerPoint. You can find the Notes pane at the bottom of your PowerPoint screen, right below your slides. Click and drag the edge of the pane to make it larger or smaller.

2. Brainstorm your final title with someone else.
Once all your content is there, you’re ready to finalize your title. First, refine your working title as best you can on your own. Is it compelling and interesting enough to engage your audience from the very start? Does it accurately reflect your presentation?
Next — and this is important — connect with someone else to brainstorm the final title together. Read this blog post for a helpful walkthrough on writing a great title and title brainstorming with others.
Filling In Your PowerPoint Design
1. Choose a font that’s easy to read.
Choose either one font to use throughout your presentation, or two (one for your headers and one for your body text) that contrast each other well. Here’s a list of 35 beautiful fonts you can download for free to get you started.
If you decide on two fonts, your header font should be bold and eye-catching, and your body text font should be simple and easy to read. (For more guidance on what fonts work best together, take a look at this visual guide.)
2. Embed your font files.
Fonts changing from one computer to another is one of the most common problems PowerPoint presenters have — and it can really mess up your presentation and flow. What’s actually happening in this case is not that the fonts are changing; it’s that the presentation computer just doesn’t have the same font files installed.
If you’re using a PC and presenting on a PC, then there is a smooth workaround for this issue. When you involve Mac systems, the solution is a bit rougher.
On a PC: When you save your PowerPoint file, click “Save As” and then “Save Options.” Then, select the “Embed TrueType fonts” check box and press “OK.” Now, your presentation will keep the font file and your fonts will not change when you move computers (unless you give your presentation on a Mac).
On a Mac: In PowerPoint for Mac, there’s no option to embed fonts within the presentation. So unless you use ubiquitous typefaces like Arial or Tahoma, your PowerPoint is likely going to encounter font changes on different computers. The best way to avoid this is to save the final version of your presentation slides as JPEGs, and then insert those JPEGs onto your PowerPoint slides. In other words, make each slide a JPEG picture of your slide. (Note that the file size of your PowerPoint will increase if your presentation includes a lot of JPEGs.)
Mac users can easily drag and drop the JPEGs into PowerPoint. If you don’t use actions in your presentation, then this option works especially well.
If you want your presentation to appear “animated,” then you’ll need to do a little tinkering. All you need to do is save JPEGs of each “frame” of the animation. Then, in your final presentation, you’ll just display those JPEGs in the order you’d like the animation to appear. While you’ll technically have several new slides in place of one original one, your audience won’t know the difference.
If you’re a Mac user and want to use this option, then be sure to add this to your checklist as the final step.
3. Adjust the font sizes.
Once you’ve chosen your font, you can start playing around with font size. Carefully choose the font sizes for headers and text, and consistently use the same font face and sizes on all your slides to keep things clean and legible. Be sure your font is big enough so even the audience members in the way back of the room can read them.
4. Adjust line and character spacing.
The biggest PowerPoint no-no is using too much text on a slide. The most effective slides use text sparingly and present it in a way that’s easy to read. One trick to make text more legible without changing the font size or layout is to increase or decrease the space between each line and each letter.
To adjust line spacing:
Select the text you’d like to adjust. On the “Home” tab, in the “Paragraph” group, click “Line Spacing” and choose “Line Spacing Options.” In the Paragraph dialog box’s “Spacing” section, click the “Line Spacing” dropdown list and choose “Exactly.” In the “At” text box, adjust the value accordingly. Click “OK” to save your changes.

To adjust character spacing:
Select the text you want to change. Then, on the “Home” tab, find and click the “Font” button.” Choose “Character Spacing Options” from the dropdown menu. Adjust spacing as needed.

5. Add images.
Great visual cues can have a huge impact on how well your audience understands your message. Using gorgeous images in a slide presentation is the perfect way to keep things interesting.
It’s important, though, that you don’t use images to decorate. This is a very common mistake. Remember: Images are meant to reinforce or complement your message, but they can be distracting. Focus on finding high resolution images so that they look good when expanded without becoming blurry or distorted.
If you don’t have your own images to use, check out our roundup of the 17 best free stock photo sites.
Pro Tip: If you’re finding that the background of an image is distracting, you can actually remove it before putting it into your presentation directly inside PowerPoint — no Photoshop required. Read this blog post for instructions.

6. Use multimedia, but sparingly.
Using multimedia in your presentation, like video and audio, can be an effective way to capture your audience’s attention and encourage retention of your message. In most cases, it’s best to avoid using more than one or two video or audio clips so you don’t detract from your talk or your message.
PowerPoint lets you either link to video/audio files externally, or embed the media directly in your presentation. You should embed these files if you can, but if you use a Mac, you cannot actually embed the video. We’ll get to that in a second.
PC users: Here are two great reasons to embed your multimedia:

Embedding allows you to play media directly in your presentation. It’ll look much more professional than switching between windows.
Embedding also means that the file stays within the PowerPoint presentation, so it should play normally without extra work (except on a Mac).

Mac users: You need to be extra careful about using multimedia files. You’ll always need to bring the video and/or audio file with you in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation. It’s best to only insert video or audio files once the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a portable drive in their permanent folder.
If your presentation is going to be played on a Windows computer, then Mac users need to make sure their multimedia files are in WMV format. That can get complicated, so if you want to use PowerPoint effectively, consider using the same operating system for designing and presenting no matter what (if that’s something you can control).
7. Design your title slide.
The title of your presentation is often the first impression it gives off — especially if it’s going to be on display as people file in to your presentation — so it’s important to put some time and careful thought into its design.
Here are 20 layout ideas for PowerPoint title slides from Chris Lema:

8. Add any consistent elements, like your company logo.
There’s a reason this is at the end. If you add things like your logo that you want to be in the same place on every slide, any adjustments you make to individual slides could slightly alter the alignment … and you’ll have to go back and adjust them all over again.
Preparing For the Presentation
1. Review and edit your slides.
Spend some time on your own flipping through your slides while practicing your talk. Make sure you can check all of the following off the list:

Your slides flow well and align with your talk.
Your slides are free of all grammatical, formatting, or design errors.
Your multimedia files work.
You’ve double-checked any mathematical calculations you made yourself.
You’ve properly attributed any statistics, data, quotes, ideas, etc. to the original source.
You’ve double-checked you’re actually allowed to use the photos/images you used. (Don’t skip this step. Here’s a cautionary tale about internet copyright law.)
You’re sure nothing in your presentation could potentially harm any of your partners, stakeholders, audience members, or your company.
You’ve checked with a friend that nothing in your presentation might offend certain people in your audience — or, if so, that it’s worth it.

2. Know your slides inside out.
The best presenters don’t read off your slides, so it’s important to prepare and practice your presentation ahead of time. You never want to be the person finalizing your talk or presentation half an hour before an event … that’s just poor planning. Plus, what if the projector fails and you have to give your talk without slides? It can happen, and if does, you’ll be incredibly happy you spent so much time preparing.
3. Practice using “presenter view.”
Depending on the venue, you might have a presenter’s screen available to you in addition to the main projected display that your audience can see. PowerPoint has a great tool called “Presenter View,” which includes an area for notes, a timer/clock, a presentation display, and a preview of the next slide.
Make sure “Presenter View” is turned on by selecting it in the “Slide Show” tab of your PowerPoint.
To practice using “Presenter View,” open the “Slide Show” tab within PowerPoint. In the “Presenter Tools” box, click “Presenter View.”

4. Bring your own laptop and a backup copy of your presentation.
This isn’t just a bonus step — it’s an essential one. Technology can mess up on you, and you need to be prepared. Between operating systems or even between different versions of Microsoft Office, PowerPoint can get a little wonky. One way to avoid problems is to ensure you have all the right hardware with you. Bring along your own laptop when you’re presenting, just in case.
Even if you bring your laptop, but especially if you for some reason cannot, bring a backup copy of your PowerPoint file on a flash drive.
What other tips do you have for nailing PowerPoint presentations?
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Social media is everywhere. For many people, social media is used daily for entertainment, socialization, and even news consumption — myself included.
Additionally, over the last two decades, it has become one of the primary marketing channels. 
With over 53% of the world’s population on social media, it’s critical that your business has an effective social media strategy that helps you reach your intended audience. 
But, whether you’re pitching a social media campaign to your boss or deciding which social media platform your business should put paid advertising behind, it’s vital you use data to support your efforts. 
Here, we’ve compiled a list of essential social media stats to ensure you know where to focus your marketing efforts in 2021 to get the highest ROI .

Social Media Marketing Statistics 2021

As of Q1 2020, 420 billion people are active on social media.  (Statista) 
In 2019, 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers were active social media users. (eMarketer)
54% of social browsers use social media to research products. (GlobalWebIndex)
Each person spends an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes on social networks and messaging. (GlobalWebIndex)
1.3 million new users joined social media every day in 2020. (Hootsuite)
Millennials are logged on to social media for an average of  two hours and 38 minutes daily, while Gen Z logs on for  two hours and 55 minutes . (World Economic Forum)

Facebook Statistics

Facebook usage among teens is dropping gradually.  While 71% of teens claimed to use the platform in 2015, the number has now dropped to 67%. (GlobalWebIndex)
69% of U.S. adults use Facebook and 76% have visited the platform in the last month. (Pew Research Center, GlobalWebIndex)
Facebook had 1.84 billion daily active users in December 2020. (PR Newswire)
98.3% of Facebook users access the platform on mobile devices. (Statista)
Videos drive the most ad clicks on Facebook. (DataBox) 
Facebook ads are used by 70% of marketers, and there were 9 million active advertisers on the platform in Q2 2020. ( Social Media Examiner , Statista) 
16% of all Facebook profiles are fake or duplicates. (Statista)
The best time to post on Facebook is Wednesday at 11 AM and 1-2 PM. Sundays show the least amount of traffic. ( Sprout Social )
Facebook Stories have 500 million daily viewers. (TechCrunch)
Political content is the most viewed genre of Facebook Stories. (Statista)
Video promotions are equally as important as photo promotions. (Social Bakers)
81% of businesses prefer video marketing on Facebook. (Buffer)

For more stats related to Facebook, Facebook Stories, and Facebook Ads, check out this detailed list.

Twitter Statistics

Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users in Q1 of 2019. (Twitter)
The platform reached almost 200 million monetizable daily active users in Q3 of 2020, up 29% YoY. (Twitter)
Twitter’s 2020 Q3 revenue was $936 million. (Twitter)
In 2019, 22% of U.S. adults used Twitter, down from 24% in 2018. (Statista)
Link clicks account for 92% of all user interaction with tweets. (HubSpot)
The best times to post on Twitter are Wednesday and Friday at 9 AM, and Saturday has the least engagement. ( Sprout Social)
Tweets with hashtags get 100% more engagement. (Twitter)
Socially responsible ads on twitter perform 12% better than standard ads. (Magna)
93% of Twitter community members are open to brands getting involved in conversation, such as providing help and support. (Twitter)

For more on Twitter, check out Twitter Marketing in 2020: The Ultimate Guide. 

Instagram Statistics

In late 2019, Instagram Stories had 500 million monthly active users. (Statista)
67% of Gen Z and 57% of Millennials use the platform, in comparison to only 38% of Gen X. (GlobalWebIndex)
64% of Instagram users are under the age of 34. (Statista)

98% of marketers say Instagram is the most influential platform for influencer marketing, which is 44% higher than Facebook. ( Sprout Social)
Videos get 21.2% more interactions compared to images and 18.6% more interactions compared to carousels. (Sprout Social)
90% of people on Instagram follow a business. (Instagram)
83% of people use Instagram to discover new products and services and 87% said they took specific action, like making a purchase, after seeing product information. (Facebook for Business)
The best times to post on Instagram are Wednesday at 11 AM, and Friday between 10-11 AM. Sunday is the worst day for engagement. (Sprout Social)
eMarketer estimated that Instagram added 26.9 million users between 2016 and 2020 — almost double the incremental users expected for Twitter, and far more than any other social platform tracked. (eMarketer)

In 2019, an estimated 20% of Facebook’s total revenue came from Instagram. (The Motley Fool)
For more Instagram stats,
click here.

LinkedIn Statistics

LinkedIn has more than 722 million active users in 200 countries and regions worldwide. (LinkedIn) 
In Q4 of 2020, LinkedIn sessions increased 27% YoY, expected to reach 31% in Q1 2021. (Business of Apps)
In Q1 of 2021, LinkedIn revenue is up 16% in YoY growth. (LinkedIn)
LinkedIn made more than 8.1 billion in revenue in 2020, a 20% increase from 2019. (Business of Apps)
Marketing Solutions is LinkedIn’s fastest-growing segment. It grew 44 percent year-over-year in Q1 of 2019. (LinkedIn)
In 2020, LinkedIn was voted the most trusted network. (Business Insider)
“>LinkedIn is the top paid and organic social channel for B2B businesses. (Content Marketing Institute)
82% of B2B markers report finding the greatest success on LinkedIn. (LinkedIn Marketing Solutions )
Over 46% of all social media traffic to company websites comes from LinkedIn. (LinkedIn)
The best times to post on LinkedIn are 8-10 AM and 12 PM on Wednesdays, and 9 AM and 1-2 PM on Thursdays. Sunday is the worst day for engagement. (Sprout Social)

Want to learn how to up your marketing game on LinkedIn? This post walks you through the ins and outs of using LinkedIn for business. 

YouTube Statistics

YouTube is the second-largest search engine globally. (Alexa)
YouTube is the second most popular channel for businesses sharing video content. (Buffer)
54% of all people want marketers to put out more video content, and this is an excellent place to begin. (Hubspot)
Q3 of 2020 showed that U.S. men and women use the platform at equal levels. (Satista)
On mobile devices alone, YouTube reaches more adults aged 18 to 24 than any TV network. (YouTube)
18-to-34-year-olds use YouTube to view video content on TV, 7.9% more often than basic cable, and 14.5% more often than premium cable. (Variety)
YouTube accounts for more than 25% of total worldwide mobile traffic. (Sandvine)
85% of U.S. teens were active on YouTube in 2019. (Statista)

TikTok Stats

As of January 2021, TikTok has 689 million global active users. (DataReportal)
Douyin, TikTok’s original standalone app in China, had 300 million users at the time Musical.ly merged with TikTok. (The Verge)

TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2020. (Apptopia)
By February 2019, TikTok hit 1 billion downloads, beating Instagram and Facebook in app stores. (Business Insider)
A majority of U.S. TikTok users are between the ages of 10 and 19. (Statista)
41% of global TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24. (GlobalWebIndex)
58.8% of U.S. TikTok users are female. (Statista)
TikTok’s average engagement rate is high at all follower levels. (Influencer Marketing Hub)
In 2019, U.S. TikTok users spent more time on the app than any other social media site, with an average session duration of 10.85 minutes. (Statista)

For more on TikTok, check out this blog post on its growth and popularity.
Reddit Stats

In 2020, Reddit had 52 million daily active users, up 44% YoY. (Reddit)
The site receives more than 50 billion+ monthly screen views. (Reddit)
While Reddit was reportedly sold for $20 million , the company’s valuation grew to 1.8 billion after 2017 funding rounds. (CNBC)
Most Reddit users in the U.S. are male, but 15% of U.S. adults say they use the platform. (Statista)
Only 8% of female U.S. adults say they used Reddit in 2019. (Statista)

Want to determine if Reddit is right for you? Read this blog post for 27 more Reddit stats.
Social Media Consulting Services 
Many businesses hire external social media consulting agencies to manage their voice and reputation online. Alternatively, some businesses create roles in-house for a social media consultant — this is someone who is responsible for increasing brand awareness , responding to customer service complaints across social media platforms, and engaging with your audience online. 
Whether you’re considering hiring an external social media consulting service or creating a role in-house, take a look at these trends that demonstrate the importance of social media consulting: 

Answering a complaint on social media can increase customer advocacy by 25%. (Convince & Convert)
79% of consumers expect brands to respond within a day of reaching out over social media, but average brand response rates across all industries is lower than 25%. (Sprout Social)
73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business. (Buffer)
54% of social browsers use social media to research products. (GlobalWebIndex)
54% of Gen Z and 49% of Millenials say social media is their preferred channel for ad influence. (Pitney Bowes)
79% of people say that user-generated content on social media significantly impacts their purchasing decisions. (Stackla)

Social Media Consulting Proposal 
All these stats have given you the data you need to work with — now it’s time to put your knowledge to use and create your own social media consulting proposal.
If you’re a social media consultant and you’re pitching a branding, marketing, or advertising campaign to a client, it’s critical you’re able to show how you’ll help your client grow their business.
Here are six steps you’ll need to take to ensure your social media consulting proposal or business plan is effective: 

Set clear goals. Figure out exactly where your company or client wants to go as far as their business and social media numbers. The clearer and more detailed the vision, the better. Follow SMART Goal guidelines to ensure that you’re on the right track.

Understand your customers. Know who your target demographics are, because these are the people you’re trying to reach and engage. Gather your own social media statistics and use existing data your company or client might already have to figure out who’s interacting with the business and who might be good future prospects to reach. After you’ve done your research, you can create useful character personas to help you better understand and categorize customers.

Understand your competition. Those “similar-but-different” companies are going to be out there. And, as with most aspects of the business world, the better you know them, the better you can know how to have a leg up on them. You can conduct this research at the same time you’re researching your customers, because chances are they’re interacting with competitors as well. Once you’ve gathered the data on your competitors, one of the most effective ways to use it is to figure out where there might be voids in their services that your business can fill.

Be familiar with any existing social media presence. If you’re hired to run a company’s social media accounts, it’s critical you know about any previous social media postings, accounts, and experiments. By understanding what your client has already tried, you’re better equipped to take them where they need to go in the future.

Don’t forget to pull your data. Before your new implemented strategies go underway, it’s important to collect a baseline of how it was before, so that you have something to measure against in the future. For example, if you take inventory of how many views you’re getting on Instagram Stories before the new strategy is in effect, you can see if the new ideas are improving these numbers or not. It’s important to keep a close eye on what is affecting your growth (positively or negatively) so that you know when you’re on the right track or when you need to try something new so your business can keep growing.

Develop your strategy based on your findings. Define what your content will be, what platforms it will be distributed on, and how it will vary between platforms. Figure out smaller details at this stage too, like your client’s tone and voice on social media (either what it currently is or what it should be), along with design and style elements. Always be sure you’re staying true to your company or client’s brand by consulting with existing materials like mission statements, guides, or brand books.

Finally, take a look at HubSpot’s free Marketing proposal template (useful for both PDF & Word) to get you started creating a comprehensive social media consulting proposal. 
Let Data Drive Your Social Media Strategy
Social media marketing statistics can show you the state of the business world today, where it might be going, and how you can ensure your business is continuously meeting customers where they want to be met. Use these statistics to your advantage to help you understand what you need to do to effectively use social media for your business today.
Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in August 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness and freshness in February 2021. 

When I was in grade school, Valentine’s Day was one of my favorite holidays. There were cards. There was the possibility that your crush actually liked you back. And, there was the chocolate — so much chocolate.
Little did I know that the roots of this holiday bore little-to-no resemblance to my childhood experience of it. We were never taught that Valentine’s Day actually originated with an arguably gruesome ancient festival, where there was no chocolate or exchange of cute, red-and-pink cards.

But love it or hate it, those are the types of things we associate with the holiday today. After all, there’s a reason roughly 114 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged each year — it’s what’s become expected of us.
So how the heck did we get from an ancient Roman festival to a holiday that compels many of us to spend no less than $147 on celebrating it? That story, it turns out, is thousands of years old — but we’ll try to condense it.
How Valentine’s Day Began and Evolved
Ancient Rome
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The roots of Valentine’s Day are cited by some sources to lie in the ancient Roman festival Lupercalia, largely because it took place annually on February 15 — the day after what is today the observed date of Valentine’s Day — and involved some very primitive forms of courtship and matchmaking. But it was also ancient Rome that saw the famous execution of a St. Valentine on February 14, around 278 A.D. According to legend, he wrote a letter on the night before his execution to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended, and signed it, “From Your Valentine.”
Over two centuries later, Pope Gelasius ordered that Lupercalia be replaced with the February 14 observation of St. Valentine’s Day. That set the tone, some believe, for the day’s forthcoming tradition of exchanging “love messages,” perhaps in remembrance of St. Valentine’s farewell letter.
The Romans are also credited with constructing the idea of Cupid — a god of love often depicted with arrows that, as the legend goes, inflict love upon those who are hit by them. The Roman version of Cupid was adapted from Eros, a god of passion and fertility in Greek mythology. It seems that no one is quite sure when cupid became associated with Valentine’s Day, but the fact that both have origins in ancient Roman culture suggests that there may have been some very early overlap between the two.
Shakespeare (and Chaucer) in Love
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When NPR’s Arnie Seipel set out to explore the history of Valentine’s Day, he found that it first became romanticized by classic authors like William Shakespeare in the late 16th century, and Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1300s.
Chaucer
Dartmouth English professor Peter Travis cites Chaucer’s epic poem The Parliament of Fowls, which was one of the first literary references to St. Valentine’s Day, or “Seynt Valentynes day,” as Chaucer spelled it. One such mention is made, Travis explains, alongside the line, “Now welcom somer, with thy sonne sonne, That hast this wintres weders over-shake.” In other words, when we celebrate love in the coldest depths of winter — in February, for instance — it’s so heartwarming that it makes summer feel less far away.
Shakespeare
Some literary historians credit Shakespeare for the permeation of love into popular culture with his composition of “Sonnet 18” — said to be written between 1593-1601 — a.k.a., “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” It’s unclear when or how this particular work became associated with Valentine’s Day, but like Chaucer, Shakespeare compares love to the seasons.
“While summer days may fade and fall into” colder months, writes Shakespeare analyst Lee Jamieson, “his love is eternal.”
Of course, Saint Valentine’s day is alluded to outright in Hamlet — written between 1599-1601 — when the character Ophelia recites a song about a young lady’s experience with the holiday, which includes lyrics like, “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,” and, “To be your Valentine.”
The 17th Century and Beyond
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By the 1700s, it’s said that Valentine’s Day made its way from Europe to the United States, which aligns with the establishment of the North American colonies between 1607-1770. It became traditional, according to HISTORY.com, “for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes.” That was more common in England, however, where the Industrial Revolution began earlier and eventually included the production of “fancy valentines [that] were extremely expensive to import.”
It’s said that one American woman, Esther Howland, was so intrigued when she received her first English valentine greeting in 1847, that she became infatuated with the idea of manufacturing them in the U.S. She was an early entrepreneur, and instinctively believed that there could be an American market for these formal, English-style greetings. After procuring materials like high-quality paper and lace from her father, a stationer, she created what many credit as the earliest American Valentine’s Day greeting cards.
Today, Howland is still honored with the nickname “Mother of the American Valentine,” with many citing her work as the start of a multi-million-dollar industry. But it didn’t happen overnight — let’s take a look at how her work paved the way.
A Brief Timeline of Valentine’s Day Marketing
1714
Charles II of Sweden begins communicating with flowers, by assigning a different message to each type. This tradition allegedly assigned love and romance to the red rose, setting the stage for this flower to be exchanged during the later, commercialized era of Valentine’s Day. However, it remains unclear if a specific brand is responsible for first marketing flowers as part of Valentine’s Day gift-giving.
1822
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In England, where Valentine’s Day had by now already been celebrated with the exchange of gifts and cards for many years, the Cadbury chocolate company sells the first heart-shaped box of chocolates.
1849
In Massachusetts, Howland produces a dozen sample Valentine’s Day cards and sends them off with her brother to distribute during a sales trip for their father’s company — S.A. Howland & Sons — hoping to earn $200. Instead, he returns with 25X that amount, indicating a much higher-than-expected demand.
Here’s an example of a card Howland created around this time.

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1850
The first print advertisement for Howland’s cards appears in the Worcester Spy.
1866
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Conversation candies are developed, when Daniel Chase — brother of New England Confectionery Company (NECCO) founder Oliver Chase — uses vegetable dye to print words onto confections.
1870
Howland incorporates her booming card business as the New England Valentine Company, operating out of her home via an assembly line that was largely comprised of her friends.
1879
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The New England Valentine Company moves operations from Howland’s home to a Main Street factory in Worcester, Massachusetts. That same year, the company publishes the Valentine Verse Book, which contained 131 “verses” that people could cut out and paste inside of cards that came without a greeting — or those with a greeting that the buyer didn’t like.
1880 – 1881
Howland sells the New England Valentine Company to the George C. Whitney Company.
1888
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Whitney has acquired at least 10 competitors, including Berlin and Jones, which had become New York City’s “largest manufacturer of Valentines.” Ten years later, the company moves to large-scale headquarters on Worcester’s Union Street.
1894
The Hershey Chocolate Company is founded, bringing what was previously “a European luxury product” to the U.S.
1902
Conversation candies become heart-shaped.
1906
American Greetings is founded, eventually becoming one of Whitney’s chief competitors.
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1907
The Hershey Chocolate Company introduces its Hershey Kisses candy product. Interestingly enough, the product was allegedly named Kisses because whenever a piece of chocolate was dropped on the conveyer belt at the Hershey factory, it sounded like a kiss.

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1910
That January, a massive fire destroys much of Whitney’s headquarters. However, most of the Valentine’s Day products had already been shipped for the season, having little impact on that particular holiday.
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That same year, Hallmark is founded. Meanwhile, 1910 also saw the creation of Florists’ Telegraph Delivery — today known as FTD — which pioneered the remote ordering and delivery of flowers, providing a way to send them to far-away loved ones.
1913
Hallmark produces its first Valentine’s Day card.
1948
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The De Beers diamond company launches its “A Diamond is Forever” campaign, sending the message that gifting high-end jewelry can be used as an expression of love.
1985
In the ’80s companies like Hallmark began launching more Valentine’s Day related commercials. In 1985, one commercial, which dubs Hallmark as “The Valentine’s Store” shows off all of the cards and heart-shaped products you can buy for your loved one in their locations.

1986
As if Kisses weren’t romantic enough based on their name, Hershey’s enforced them as a Valentine’s Day staple with one slight design tweak. The company began packaging Kisses candies in pink and red foil specifically for Valentine’s Day.
2004
As marketers continued to embrace new media, we saw an influx of high-quality and insanely high-budgeted commercials mark the holiday from the ’80s until now. One of the most iconic and beautifully shot commercials was a mini-romance drama, called “Le Film,” promoting Chanel No. 5 perfume.
In the ad, a man falls in love and runs away with a starlet, played by Nicole Kidman. In the end, she returns back to her life of fame. As she walks down the red carpet, he notes all the things he’ll remember about her, including the smell of her Chanel No. 5 perfume.

2005
Valentine’s Day begins to go digital. On February 14, 2005, YouTube — which originated as an online dating site — makes its debut. Co-founder Steve Chen still credits its invention as the brainchild of “three guys on Valentine’s Day that had nothing to do.”
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2013
Ride sharing company Uber rolls out “Romance On Demand,” allowing users to send flowers on Valentine’s Day via the app. This initiative would continue to progress, with on-demand skywriting becoming available the following year.
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2016

Well aren’t you accurate today, @netflix #HappyValentinesDay pic.twitter.com/pUK05gQ8Rs — Tiffany Bukowski (@TheTiffy)
February 14, 2016

NetBase, a social media analytics platform, releases a Valentine’s Day Sentiment Analysis, measuring how people engage with and discuss the holiday on social media. In total, it measured nine million mentions of Valentine’s Day, with the vast majority of them mentioning a specific brand — Netflix. The top hashtag was #happyvalentinesday.
2017
In the earlier years of the Google Doodle, Google used Valentine’s Day to spread awareness of a rare species. In 2017, a series of Google Doodles shown in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day highlighted the stories of pangolins, the only mammal species with scales, as they give each other Valentine’s Day gifts or serenade their mates. Here’s one example:

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While, at this point, Google didn’t need to market themselves with Doodles, this shows an early example of a brand that used its platform to creatively market another cause on the holiday.
2018 to Present Day
In recent years, Valentine’s Day marketing campaigns have gone completely digital, with a particularly strong presence on social media. With these new opportunities, smaller companies that don’t have Hallmark’s budget can easily spread awareness of their own brands during the holiday. Here’s one example of an Instagram post which highlighted a fine Italian restaurant ahead of Valentine’s Day:

While these real dog’s mimicking Lady and the Tramp grabbed attention, especially from the animal lovers on Instagram, this post’s caption encourages audiences to interact with the brand.
What Marketers Can Learn from Valentine’s Day Marketing
Like so many other holidays, Valentine’s Day has experienced a transition into pop culture that has shaped the way it’s perceived, discussed, and celebrated. Sure, it’s often accused of being nothing more than a money-making marketing holiday. But next time you hear someone label Valentine’s Day as a “Hallmark holiday,” you’ll have a wealth of historical information to respond with.
From our hearts to yours, Happy Valentine’s Day. We’ll be keeping an eye on its continued evolution. 
Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in February 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.

Whether you’re in the process of launching a new business or already have one, having a strong online presence for your brand is extremely important.
In fact, consumers learn about local businesses online more than anywhere else. In 2019, 70% of shoppers surveyed say the ability to shop in-person or in a store was important when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from.
Small business owners looking for a way to track ROI and brand awareness need digital marketing. Not only is digital marketing a must-have for promoting your products or services, but optimizing your online assets is also critical to your business’ overall success.

For local businesses, it’s equally as important to have essential and updated information readily available for potential clients.
If you’re a small business owner with little experience in online marketing, this might all sound like a foreign language to you. Have no fear — we’ll go through what all these words mean, and why you should care about them!
In this post, we’ll help you build and optimize your marketing strategy using inbound marketing, setting you up to attract new clients and ultimately grow your business.
Small Business Marketing
Marketing is meant to raise brand awareness and build a pipeline of qualified leads that turn into sales. With a small business, getting the word out can be challenging due to less visibility and lack of resources (like budget or time). However, there are key strategies that can help you scale your small business’s marketing efforts.
Whether you’re struggling with a limited budget, the time restraints caused by having a smaller team, or even a lack of direction, a marketing plan that’s appropriate for your business can provide guidance as you scale.
These strategies are fundamental as you generate awareness and revenue for your organization:
1. Know your audience.
A key mistake is thinking that “anyone” is your buyer. Larger companies may be able to appeal to a wide market, but they say, “the riches are in the niches” for a reason. A niche is where you’ll have the most leverage as a small business. And to develop a niche and appeal to buyers within the niche, you must understand their pains, problems, triggering events, and priorities.
What is pushing them to make a purchasing decision? What does it look like if they succeed? Knowing these things will help you craft messaging that resonates and makes a compelling case for your solution.
Start by thinking about your existing customers and who you’d like to work with. Then, create a buyer persona to start the process of getting into the head of your ideal client.
2. Emphasize your value proposition.
If there’s no difference between you and your competition, there’s no reason why a buyer would be compelled to work with you. Your value proposition is what will differentiate you from others in your space and make up your prospects’ minds that you’re the provider to go with. What do you do better than anyone in the industry? Conveying this makes a compelling argument.
3. Stay focused on singular goals and objectives.
If you’re exploring the world of marketing, you may have noticed that there are a gazillion directions you can go in. It’s tempting to do it all at once and craft a complicated machine in hopes that you covered all your bases, and it’s easy to take on too much.
Instead, identify where the biggest impact will be. Where is the biggest blind spot in your marketing that’s prohibiting your growth? Set a performance goal around that one key area and focus your resources on the activities and tactics that will achieve that one performance goal. You can expand your efforts or pivot to other initiatives when you’ve made more progress toward that singular goal.
4. Capitalize on short-term plays.
Start scrappy. As you scale, it’s critical to see ROI sooner. This will give you the momentum and cash flow to put toward larger projects, long-term plays, and more sustainable growth models.
Tactics that take time to build (such as SEO) are poor fits for your primary initiatives because you won’t see a return soon enough for your liking. If you have enough resources to start there, great, but don’t put all your eggs in that basket.
If you have evidence that people are taking to Google with purchasing intent for your particular solution, you may find that paid ads will give you that short-term ROI.
5. Double-down on what works.
Once you have your initiatives running and you’ve experimented with a few things, pay attention to the data. This can inform you of what’s working. As you scale, it’s a good idea to double-down on proven methods of generating revenue.
6. Understand the power of existing customers.
A 1990 study by Bain & Company and HBR, found that it costs, on average, five times more to acquire a new customer than close an existing one. This means you shouldn’t stop marketing once they’ve made a purchase.
Identify your opportunities for repeat purchasing, upselling, and cross-selling. Because your existing customers have already made a purchase, they already know, like, and trust you. If you’ve provided a good experience, you’ve given them a reason to do business with you again should the need ever arise.
Even if the need doesn’t arise (in cases where it’s a one-and-done purchase with no upsell opportunities), you should still delight your customers. Word of mouth is a powerful (and free) promotional tool.
7. Use free promotional tools.
Speaking of free promotional tools, it’s important to note that since you’ve committed to a limited goal and scope, there’s no need to inflate your overhead with gadgets. Use free promotional tools where possible, and only commit to paid tools if you know they will drastically improve existing operations or performance. Here’s a helpful list of marketing tools (some free and paid).
8. Create a website to own your online presence.
Having a professional-looking website is one of the most important assets you will create for your small business. This is where you will show who you are, what you offer, where you are, and how a potential customer can get in touch with you.
It is a channel you will always own (unlike other platforms which may change policies or go in and out of style), and it has the capability of generating organic traffic in addition to being a place to send traffic from advertising and other marketing initiatives.
Your website isn’t just a simple brochure, either. You have the capability of turning it into a 24-7 salesperson by understanding how to convert traffic and turn them into leads (more on that later).
For one of the best website tools, check out HubSpot’s CMS.
9. Consider blogging to attract prospects for your website.
Blogging is a great way to generate organic traffic, particularly for those prospects who have not reached a purchasing decision yet. In addition, it can establish credibility in your space and position you as a thought leader.
To start a blog, you can use an inexpensive or free website tool to make a free site and use one of their templates. Even if you only publish once a week, it will improve your website’s visibility online and help educate your potential customers on why they should trust your company. If you’re planning to write your posts yourself, check out this beginner’s guide to writing.
Once you start writing, you can add a call-to-action on your posts for visitors to subscribe to your blog and receive emails This is a great way to start collecting leads and offering potential customers a way to get information if they aren’t ready to buy anything from you yet.
10. Promote yourself on social media.
Social media might seem like it’s just a fun platform for people to socialize and connect, but it’s actually a powerful business tool. Social media can help you increase your domain authority, improve your search engine rankings, and engage with potential customers. Why wouldn’t you want to be seen where your potential customers spend their time?
11. Invest in ads.
Organic traffic takes a while to build, and as a small business, you want to invest in short-term plays. Pay-to-play tactics that target buyers with high intent are great for short-term wins to jump-start other objectives.
Google Ads are perfect if you know that your target audience is searching the web for your product or solution. If they aren’t, you might consider social media ads instead. Individuals on social media have less buying intent, but with highly targeted ads and enough impressions, you’ll gain the interest of your audience.
12. Make sure you’re capturing web prospects’ information.
We’ve been talking a lot about visibility and traffic but haven’t really covered how these will help drive revenue yet. One simple way to start generating leads or customers from your website is to implement a conversion tool.
A simple, free option is HubSpot Marketing Free. By using this tool to add a pop-up widget to your website, you can start collecting the email addresses of potential customers. From there, you can send out promotions and offers and convert them into paying customers. You can also implement any of these 24 conversion tools to help you optimize your website and use it to drive leads.
13. Use email marketing to nurture leads.
Just because you’ve converted website traffic into leads doesn’t mean those leads are ready to buy yet. It’s important to stay top of mind and move them closer to a purchasing decision.
Email marketing is a critical part of your marketing toolkit. In fact, 73 percent of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.
This strategy is an easy, free, and scalable way to communicate with both new and existing customers.
Once you have an email marketing tool in place (many are inexpensive or even free), experiment with emailing out newsletters (with your sleek new blog posts), and other promotions to your database. We know small business owners don’t have tons of free time to devote to digital marketing, so consider using marketing automation to make this process even easier for yourself.
To get started planning your email marketing strategy, check out this guide and template from HubSpot.
14. Manage relationships with a CRM.
Email marketing works best when you’re sending personalized, targeted emails. This begins with a customer database or customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Your CRM stores information about your leads, prospects, and customers so that you can keep track of customer interactions and identify sales opportunities more effectively.
HubSpot has one of the best CRMs (and best of all, it’s totally free).
15. Lean into word of mouth as a promotion channel.
As mentioned previously, delighting customers can have a big impact on your business, primarily in repeat purchases and word of mouth. If you provide a great experience, your customers will be more inclined to leave reviews, give testimonials, and tell their friends about you.
That’s why it’s a good idea to measure customer satisfaction and encourage customers to spread the word.
1. Determine your brand’s identity.
Having a consistent brand identity to promote your business will make you look more professional and help you attract new customers. According to a 2020 study, nearly 9 out of 10 people are brand loyal with nearly 25% of them climbing to be more brand loyal in 2020 compared to 2019.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has described a company’s branding as “what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” In other words, your brand is the feelings and emotions people have when hearing your company name. It’s is a combination of your brand name, logo, aesthetic, and the design of all your assets.
2. Identify your buyer persona.
When you imagine a customer searching for your product or service, what are they like? What are their pain points? What is their job? Creating a buyer persona that tells a story of your ideal customer can help you make a website that’s optimized for them.
By learning more about your target customer through creating a buyer persona, you can better figure out what types of things they may be searching for so you can include those terms on your website.
3. Design a logo and other assets.
To start getting the creative juices flowing, consider your color scheme and peruse palettes with Adobe Color or Coolors. You can create your own or look through pre-made or customized color palettes.
To create a logo, I’d recommend checking out Upwork or Freelancer. There are free and less expensive options for designing your own logo online, although using a freelancer or agency can give you a higher quality product and connect you with a designer who can change and update your brand assets as your company grows.
4. Build your website with a CMS template.
If you’re a fairly tech-savvy small business owner, you’ll probably want to build your own website. A CMS (content management system) makes the process simple.
Most CMSs offer customizable templates for your site that you can get for free or a small fee. There are templates for various skill levels — from beginner all the way to advanced.
Once you’ve created your website, most CMS platforms offer plugins to help you optimize your content for search (look for SEO plugins). This will help you rank better in Google — which we’ll discuss more in-depth in a bit.
5. Track your site with analytics tools.
If you’ve never made a website before and aren’t entirely comfortable with the technical elements, there are a variety of free tools and services to help you get started. When you create your website, make sure you implement Google Analytics or HubSpot Marketing Free (both of which are free products) so you can easily track who’s looking at your site.
6. Consult agencies or freelancers for web design help.
If you aren’t on the technical side and want a website built for your small business, you can use a freelancer or a marketing agency that specializes in web design. This is a great option for businesses that already have a website but need it to be updated and revamped for SEO (search engine optimization) to help improve your Google ranking.
To find a freelancer or marketing consultant in your area, you can use Upwork (filtering by design/creative), Codeable (for WordPress experts) or Freelancer.
7. Boost your Google ranking with SEO.
If you already have a business, have you ever searched for yourself or your product/service online? If so, did you think, “Why isn’t my website showing up on Google?” If so, you probably thought, “How do I rank on Google?” or “How can I improve my Google ranking?”
There are a lot of factors that play into why a certain site or page appears in the top spots on the Google (or another search engine) search engine results page (SERP). Backlinko reports some of Google’s top factors, which include having relevant keywords (and their placement on your site), the length of your content, having high-quality content, how fast your page loads, how often you post content, and more.
When it all boils down, Google essentially tries to find the best piece of content to present to the person searching. For example, if I’m searching for the best salon in Newport, Rhode Island, it wouldn’t be helpful for me to find a web page of a salon that has closed down and is located in Newport, Kentucky. It would, however, be helpful for me to find a salon in my area with great Yelp reviews, an easy-to-navigate website, and contact information readily available. Google always wants to surface the most relevant, highest-quality piece of content.
To rank higher on Google, you can leverage the power of SEO, or search engine optimization. To start learning everything there is to know about this powerhouse marketing tactic, check out The Ultimate Guide to SEO.
HubSpot explains SEO as “techniques that help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This makes your website more visible to people who are looking for solutions that your brand, product, or service can provide via search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.” In other words, it’s the basic concept of structuring your website and blog posts to be in the best shape for appearing first on search engines.
SEO strategy usually consists of a few things. These include buyer persona research, keyword research, and on-page SEO research. These three areas can help you learn how your target market is searching online, and position your business to get discovered by the right people.
8. Research keywords opportunities.
Keyword research is an extension of buyer persona research. You can use the personas you’ve created to search for the best keywords for your brand, then use a tool like KW Finder to find related keywords for your target audience.
Then, you can do some on-page SEO research and optimization. This is where you put those keywords in the correct places on your website — like in the meta-description, page titles, and H1 tags.
9. Optimize your website for mobile devices.
Most Google searches are done on mobile devices, so it’s important to have a site that looks clean and easy to navigate when someone enters it on their smartphone. A mobile site can also be beneficial for SEO, with search engines like Google which rewards you with a higher ranking if you have a mobile site.
You don’t have to be a tech expert to build a site that looks good on mobile. In fact, most CMS platforms like HubSpot already offer mobile-optimized templates.
10. Write optimized blog posts.
Content and blogging are extremely important when it comes to your search engine ranking. The more often your desired keywords appear in your high-quality and helpful content, the more likely you are to appear in search results. A great way to become an authority on your topic, product, or service is to blog.
Make sure you’re writing with SEO in mind — use this SEO checklist for bloggers, or a WordPress plugin like Yoast.
11. Experiment with photo and video content.
According to HubSpot Research, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands. Additionally, most social media apps, like Facebook and Instagram are embracing more visual layouts. To keep up with these trends, it’s a good idea to make a few marketing videos. If you use these tips, producing a few can be quite inexpensive.
12. Hire a freelancer to help you scale your content.
If you need some help creating regular blogs or promotional content, consider hiring a freelancer over investing in a full-timer. Try Upwork for a freelance blogger, videographer, or photographer. You could also consider hiring a marketing agency for a larger project.
13. Launch business pages on Facebook and Yelp.
If your business is focused on a local area, the most important accounts for you are Facebook, Yelp, and Google’s business feature. Having high Yelp reviews improves your authority online and helps your search ranking. You can claim your business on Yelp for free, customize your profile and add pictures, and start asking for reviews.
The same thing goes for registering your Google business page. You can register your business with Google (for free) and add pictures. (If you’ve ever searched for your business in Google Maps and been disappointed not to see it, it’s because you haven’t claimed it yet!)
On Facebook, you can create a Facebook business page so that people can find your location and hours.
For any business, having up-to-date social media accounts will help you be found and engage with prospects. Create a Twitter account, Facebook page, learn how to use Instagram, create a Pinterest page (if relevant), and use them as a way to discover new clients.
14. Build out your social media strategy.
While Facebook and Yelp will be great tools for local searches and reviews, platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter will offer you even more opportunities to share your posts, content, and promotions.
If your customers can purchase your products or services online, these platforms will also give them another way to find you.
Be sure not to spread yourself too thin by joining too many platforms at once. To make strategizing easier, here’s a guide to the five types of social media platforms and the pros and cons of each.
15. Use social media for customer service.
Once you’re on your chosen platforms, be sure to answer customer or follower questions when they ask them through post comments or direct messages. This will make your company look responsive and credible. Here are some great examples of how brands have used Twitter for customer service.
If you have the means, consider hiring a social media manager with community management experience. On top of posting content on a regular schedule, community managers are charged with responding to questions or concerns of followers. Interested? We published a guide on what it takes to be a great social media community manager.
16. Build interesting landing pages.
A landing page offers your potential customers a free resource in exchange for filling out a short form of contact information. When they receive the resource, they might be even more pleased by your company and more interested in buying the full product.
Because landing pages raise your chances of customer conversion, you want yours to look enticing. To get started, read this landing page guide to learn more about what makes this strategy successful. Then check out these free and professionally designed templates.
17. Plan an email marketing strategy.
Once you start creating regular content and building out landing pages, you’ll want to share them with the prospects who seem most interested in learning more about your product. For this reason, we suggest building an email marketing strategy.
While you want to be careful not to bombard those who sign up for your email list with too many emails, you want to send just enough to keep your prospects informed and engaged. Here’s how our metrics improved when we streamlined our email marketing strategy.
If you’ve never sent regular newsletters before, you can use HubSpot or a number of other affordable tools to create and send an email with a professionally designed template. Many email tools also offer basic analytics that allow you to track open and click rates.
18. Offer coupons in newsletters or on landing pages.
Placing a coupon in your marketing emails can engage and delight your audience. After buying a product or service at a discounted rate, they also might be more willing to pay for it in full price. If you have a subscription service, it can also be helpful to offer prospects a code for a free trial so they can test it out.
19. Share your distribution channels on your website.
Once you have a few social media accounts and can allow people to sign up for your newsletter, highlight this on your website so your visitors can follow you. One way companies do this is to display all of their linked social icons and a newsletter sign-up call to action on all pages of your website. A good place to include these is on the top right corner or on the footer of each page. This way they are visible but aren’t distracting from any content.
20. Offer a free webinar.
A webinar allows potential customers to sign up for a short online course hosted by you. These courses are usually between 30 minutes to an hour and allow you to give tips and answer questions related to a topic your brand is familiar with. While this strategy can help you boost your credibility in your field, it can also offer you potential leads and sales opportunities.
21. Consider PPC Advertising.
If you’re working hard on SEO, but are still looking for an extra boost, consider PPC — or pay-per-click — advertising. With this search engine marketing technique, you use Google AdWords or Bing Ads to show up higher. and as an advertised listing, in search results. Before you dive into PPC, you’ll want to make sure your landing page is as optimized as possible. If you are paying by the click and those who click on the page don’t convert, you will lose advertising dollars.
To help you get started, read this Ultimate Guide to PPC. Then, use this PPC planning template to plan an optimized campaign. You can also use a few handy tools and software to edit, track, and report on your campaigns.
22. Advertise on social media.
Most of the major social media platforms offer affordable advertising options that can help you target your posts to a specific audience. While many small businesses have been advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for years, Instagram now allows brands to advertise through its Shoppable tool.
23. Experiment with influencer marketing.
Is there someone in your area with a high social media following who’s considered an expert in a field your company exists in? If you’re able to reach out to them, see if they’d be willing to share an experience they’ve had with your product or service on social media. This will alert their follower base of your product. These followers may also trust your product more because an expert is endorsing it.
If you can’t find an influencer to volunteer, you can also consider paying one or two on a freelance basis. To learn more about this strategy, check out our Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.
24. Try co-marketing.
Is there a local business in your area that isn’t a direct competitor but offers a product or service to a similar target audience? Consider working with them on a cobranded campaign where you promote each other on social media, via email, or in your blog. While you’ll give your partnering company added promotion, it will also allow their fanbase to learn more about you.
25. Draw up a go-to-market strategy.
Once you’ve activated all the tools you need to promote your product or service, you’ll need to create a promotional plan that aligns with the customer journey. Consider which content will attract, engage, and delight your prospects and how you will convert them into a customer.
To help you plan out this process, use this template.
26. Encourage happy customers to share their experiences.
When a happy customer talks about how great your company is on social media or a review site, your product or service looks like a good investment. Even on social media, word of mouth is still a huge factor in someone’s purchasing decision. If a prospect sees a friend raving about your business on Facebook or if they post a photo of a meal from your restaurant on Instagram, they could be more likely to go. After all, 71% of consumers are more likely to purchase based on social media referrals.
If customers are telling you they love your product, encourage them to share about the experience on Yelp, Google, or social. If you have a physical business, you might also want to place signs up with your account handles so customers know who to tag if they post a picture of your product.
27. Try out marketing experiments.
If there’s a new social platform you’re interested in or a new marketing trend, don’t be afraid to experiment. If an experiment goes well, you could be ahead of the game, and it never hurts to be a thought leader in your industry.
When you experiment with a new marketing strategy, be sure to have a solid hypothesis or question in mind. This will keep you focused on the end goal and reduce the desire to chase the next big thing as it comes along. Also, prepare for what your next steps will be if you get good or bad results. Here’s a quick guide to leading a successful marketing experiment.
Well, there you have it. Here’s a round-up of the key takeaways from this article:

Start Marketing Your Business Today
You probably have a long road ahead to build your online presence, but any steps you can make will have a huge impact on your business. Some things like blogging definitely take a few months to start kicking in and generating traffic, but social media posts pay-per-click ads can have immediate effects. If you’re still not sure which direction is the perfect fit for your business, brainstorm your ideas in this marketing plan template.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.