Category: Marketing Automation

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As a marketer, I’d like to believe all my marketing efforts are high-impact.
Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.
Consider the blog post that resulted in 25 views, and 0 leads — or the Facebook campaign that totally flopped, with a much lower ROI than expected.
Of course, high-impact marketing is any marketer’s goal. High-impact marketing means you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck, and that your time and resources are having a strong, positive impact on your business’ bottom-line.
But high-impact marketing is easier said than done. Here, we’ll explore what high-impact marketing is, examples of high-impact marketing, and finally, how you might maximize your own marketing efforts for highest possible impact.
Let’s dive in.

What is high-impact marketing?
High-impact marketing is any marketing efforts that have significant impact on your business’ bottom-line.
High-impact marketing can range depending on your business goals and industry — additionally, high-impact marketing doesn’t necessarily correlate with the amount of money you spend.
For instance, perhaps you create a low-budget YouTube video that results in thousands of views, and a 15% lead conversion rate. That’s high-impact, regardless of the amount of money you put into the video.
Fortunately, this means high-impact marketing doesn’t have to break the bank to be effective. 
Of course, which types of marketing will have a high impact on your bottom-line depends on your unique marketing goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, perhaps you find Instagram has the highest impact. Alternatively, if your goal is to establish thought leadership, perhaps you find you have higher impact by guest posting on various blogs.
Examples of High-Impact Marketing
To fully understand the definition of high-impact marketing, let’s consider a few examples of high-impact marketing in-action:

A YouTube strategy that increases leads for your company while reaching new audiences and increasing brand awareness.
A podcast advertisement that increases sales for your new product.
A PR campaign that increases positive perception of your brand, as measured by a public perception survey.
A blog post with a 10% conversion rate, higher than industry standards.
An Instagram post that receives high engagement rates and increases your account’s follower count.
An online co-marketing webinar that enables you to reach new networks via your partner’s channels.

There are many more, of course, but ultimately, these examples are meant to demonstrate just how wide-ranging high-impact marketing can be.

High-impact marketing will depend on your goals, industry, and the types of marketing best-suited for your brand. What results in a high ROI for one company could be a waste of time for another.

Next, let’s dive into some specific high-marketing techniques you might implement depending on your goals to drive lasting results for your company.
How to Maximize Your Marketing’s Impact
1. Ensure you’re targeting the right audience.
Best for: Brand awareness, increased leads.
To create the highest-impact marketing campaigns, it’s critical you do your research to ensure you’re targeting your ideal audience.
Of course, your audience will vary depending on your goals. For instance, perhaps you’re putting together an online event targeted towards entrepreneurs. If that’s the case, you’ll want to target a wide audience by identifying any social media users who’ve shown an interest in entrepreneurship. Since your goal is to get as many attendees as possible, you don’t need to get too hyper-targeted.
Alternatively, let’s say you’re looking to increase sales on a new product. If that’s the case, you don’t want to target a large audience — instead, you want to focus on a select group of people who seem ready-to-buy. In that case, you’ll want to target viewers who’ve visited a landing page for your product, or viewers who’ve clicked on an ad for that product over the last six months.
Ultimately, you don’t want to spend too much money or resources targeting people who are never going to convert, so for truly high-impact marketing, it’s critical you take the time to target the right audiences.
Take a look at How to Find Your Target Audience to learn how to identify the right audience for your own goals.
2. Create a strong partnership program.
Best for: Reaching new audiences.
A partnership program, or co-marketing campaign, can help you reach new audiences, demonstrate expertise in your industry, create high-quality content for leads and customers, and so much more.
Additionally, backlinks from other companies is invaluable for SEO, so a partnership program is a win-win on all accounts.
To create a truly impactful co-marketing campaign, consider hosting a webinar with a partner, creating an e-book with a partner to share with the partner’s network and increase brand exposure, or writing a series of guest blog posts for each other’s sites.
Co-marketing campaigns can have high impact by delivering exceptional value to leads and customers. For instance, consider this actionable guide HubSpot created with LinkedIn to help viewers learn how to get the most out of their LinkedIn marketing efforts.
While HubSpot could have written its own content regarding LinkedIn best practices, it’s higher-value when it combines forces with LinkedIn. Additionally, this ebook is now shown to both HubSpot and LinkedIn networks, ensuring broader reach.
Best of all, co-marketing efforts don’t have to be high-budget. In fact, partnership programs can be incredibly cost-effective, since you’re dividing the amount of resources needed by half.
3. Publish on various social channels.
Best for: Increased brand exposure, establishing thought leadership in an industry.
Social media is one of the most effective opportunities to achieve any of your marketing goals.
Don’t believe me? Consider this: 54% of social browsers use social media to research products.
Additionally, 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.
Best of all, social media is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies.
Of course, a social media strategy needs to be comprehensive to be as high-impact as possible. For instance, to increase thought leadership, you might consider asking executives to post thought leadership content regularly on LinkedIn and share it with experts in the industry. Alternatively, perhaps you’ll want to post advice from industry leaders on your own Instagram or YouTube accounts.
Additionally, it’s critical you ensure you’re using the best platforms to reach the right audiences. There’s a wide variety to choose from — including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, YouTube, Twitter, and more.
Conduct research to find where your target audience spends the most time, and then alter your strategy accordingly.
4. Maximize referrals.
Best for: Increased sales.
Considering it costs anywhere from five to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, it makes sense that you’ll want to leverage existing customers for high-impact marketing.
The inbound flywheel is made up of three sections: Attract, Engage, and Delight. To create sustainable, long-term growth, it’s critical you enable your flywheel to reach maximum speed.
To do this, you might create a formal referral program, in which existing customers earn a discount for recommending new customers.
Additionally, you might consider encouraging current social media followers to refer new followers to your social pages. To incentivize them, you could host a giveaway — if a follower tags 3-5 friends in the comments section, they have the chance to win.
You’ll also want to ensure customers have a good experience with your brand, start-to-finish. If customers are impressed with your customer service, for example, they’re more likely to recommend you to friends for free.
Now that’s high-impact.
5. Optimize for SEO.
Best for: Demonstrating expertise, increasing exposure to new audiences.
Finally, optimizing your website, blog posts, and even social media pages for SEO is critical for long-term marketing success.
Your blog posts, for instance, will be much higher-impact if they appear in search results for related queries. Otherwise, email and social media traffic can only get you so far.
Additionally, your website will have much higher-impact on your company’s bottom-line if it ranks in the top ten search results for related keywords.
Consider, for instance, the impact your website might have on sales if prospects are able to find your company whenever they search for products or services related to your industry.
An SEO strategy is a long-term play, but it’s one of the best opportunities you have for creating content that continues to impact your bottom-line well into the future.

It’s Friday afternoon, and your team is jonesing for Happy Hour.
For the last few weeks, you’ve been going to the same ol’ bar by your office, so you decide it’s time to try something new. What do you do? Step outside and walk around until you find a new spot? No, you hop on Google and let it conduct the search for you.
Your ideal post-work pub is nearby, open right after work, and offers a few gluten-free options so your entire team can partake. You plug these criteria into Google, and you’ve got three viable options at your fingertips — in a handy map format to boot.
Pause. Have you ever wondered how Google can whip up such accurate, precise answers in so little time … and present them in such an easy-to-read way? Moreover, what are those restaurants doing to get featured so dominantly on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs)?
Heck, I’d love my business to pop up when consumers search for criteria relevant to me … wouldn’t you?
No one knows exactly how Google’s algorithm works — but, there are a few ways to organize and optimize your website content so Google knows what content to feature on the SERPs for the various searches people conduct to find you.
This is where structured data comes in. Structured data can make your organization more visible to potential customers and increase your click-through rate by up to 30%.
Not sure what structured data is? That’s OK. By the end of this guide, you’ll be a structured data wizard — and your website will reap the benefits.

We know that what searchers see online is much different than what search engines see.
While searchers see this…
Source
… search engines see this:

View the source code for any website by going to View > Developer > View Source.
This behind-the-scenes code tells browsers how information should be organized on the website (as part of its website development) and tells web crawlers what’s on the page.
Structured data is also at play here. Embedded tags of code (a.k.a. “markup”) throughout the HTML of a webpage tell Google and other search engines what information to display in the SERPs and what this information represents. It also helps social media platforms synthesize your social media posts into snippets that preview the content using Open Graph Protocol (which we touch on later).
This markup is important. It educates search engines on what specific content is on the page. This creates more relevant, informed searches and makes the site a candidate for enhanced results like featured snippets, rich snippets, image and video carousels, knowledge boxes, and more (which we’ll touch on later).

Google’s SERPs weren’t always as easy on the eye as they are today. Don’t remember? Check out this Google result for “pool tables” from 2008.

Source
Let’s compare. Here’s the same result from today.

Wow. That’s a world of difference. Not only are these results easier to read, but the extra features make for a much more informative, intelligent searching — and shopping — experience. Between the sponsored content and live map (plus the product carousel, question snippets, and related searches not shown in the screenshot), Google provides pretty much everything I need to know about pool tables.
Heck, sometimes I search for something and find the answer right on the SERP — I don’t even have to click on a result. Does that ever happen to you? If it has, you can thank structured data.
How does structured data work?
At this point, you might be asking: How can there exist a language (markup) that is consistently recognized by search engines and people alike?
In order for this markup to be accurately and universally understood, there are standardized formats and vocabularies that should be used.
Let’s go back to basics for a minute. When conveying information, whether you’re communicating with a human or a computer, you need two main things: vocabulary (a set of words with known meanings) and syntax (a set of rules on how to use those words to convey meaning).
Most terminology surrounding structured data markup can be organized into these two concepts — vocabularies and syntaxes — and webmasters can combine whichever two they need to structure their data (with the exception of Microformats).

VocabulaRY
SYNTAX

Schema.org
Microdata

DCMI
JSON-LD

FOAF
RDFa

Okay … that’s enough of the fancy developer speak. What should you be using for your structured data?
Schema.org is the accepted universal vocabulary standard for structured data. It was founded and is currently sponsored by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex. It’s flexible, open-sourced, and constantly updated and improved.
Note: Schema is called such because it features markup for a wide variety of schemas — or data models — for different types of content.
Here’s an example of Schema Markup language (which is good for SEO) pulled from my article on branding.
“@context” : “http://schema.org”,
“@type” : “Article”,
“name” : “The Ultimate Guide to Branding in 2019”
“author” : {
“@type” : “Person”,
“name” : “Allie Decker”
},
“datePublished” : “2019-04-02”,
“image” : “https://blog.hubspot.com/hubfs/branding-2.jpg”,
“url” : “https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/branding”,
“publisher” : {
“@type” : “Organization”,
“name” : “HubSpot”
As for syntax, there’s no correct answer. Google recommends JSON-LD (and defaults to that syntax when using its Structured Data Markup Helper — as you see below). JSON-LD uses Javascript code and embedded widgets to dynamically display your content, which is typically a simpler development process.
Google also recognizes Microdata and RDFa. Both of these syntaxes use HTML to identify properties within structured data. Microdata is typically only used in the page body, whereas RDFa is commonly used in both the page head and body.
On the other hand, JSON-LD is only placed in the page head, meaning, for certain types of markup, JSON-LD makes it so you don’t have to navigate subheaders, supporting copy, and related styling that’s included in the page’s HTML. This is why JSON-LD is considered simpler than the other two.
Ultimately, it all depends on the data you’re trying to implement, what the benefit is to your website, and what would be easier to share with your team.
Structured Data and Mobile
Structured data affects mobile a little differently — through Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Accelerated Mobile Pages is a Google-backed, open source project to help all mobile pages load quickly regardless of device.
Pages with AMP markup appear within Google’s special SERP features, such as Top Stories and News Carousels. Here’s how to create an AMP HTML page.

Source
Structured Data and Social Media
Structured data markup works a little differently for social platforms. This requires Open Graph Protocol and similar languages that ensure your website and blog content appear in an easy-to-read way when you promote this content on a social network. Two common social media features that use Open Graph Protocol are Pinterest Rich Pins and Twitter cards. We talk more about how to do this below.
Here’s an example of Open Graph Protocol language (which is good for social media) using the same source.
<meta property=”og:title” content=”The Ultimate Guide to Branding in 2019”/>
<meta property=”og:type” content=”article”/>
<meta property=”og:URL” content=”https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/branding”
<meta property=”og:image” content=”https://blog.hubspot.com/hubfs/branding-2.jpg”
<meta property=”og:admins” content=”Allie Decker”
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”HubSpot”
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Discover how to create and manage a brand that helps your business become known, loved, and preferred”
Note: Unfortunately, structured data doesn’t impact your organic search ranking (besides helping you grab a spot in a knowledge panel or Featured Snippet at the top of the list). It also doesn’t change how your content looks or behaves on your website — it only affects how and where it might appear on SERPs.

Examples of Structured Data
To the average internet user, structured data can’t be seen. It’s hidden among the code that makes up our favorite websites and online platforms. So, how does structured data affect what we (and our customers) see? What does it look like to the “naked” eye?
When webmasters adhere to structured data standards, search engines like Google and Bing reward their websites and organizations by featuring their content in a variety of SERP features (another reason to use structured data).
Source
Let’s talk about those features — specifically on Google. Google SERPs display a wide variety of information, but the ones we talk about below are specifically influenced by structured data.
There are also a couple of ways that structured data can benefit your non-SERP marketing efforts on social media and email marketing.
Content Features
Content features appear as separate search results among normal search results.
1. Carousels
Carousels show up as images with captions related to a search, such as movie actors, cars, or news articles. Searchers can click through these images to access a separate SERP for that search. Here’s how to use structured data to show up on Carousels.

2. Videos
Videos function similarly to carousels but feature videos instead of images or other listings. Searchers can scroll through these results to directly access and watch each video.
Based on how you mark-up your content, you may also qualify for video enhancements such as LIVE badges and video host carousels. Here’s how to use structured data to show up on videos.

3. Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets display information relevant to a query — and link to a third-party website (which sets them apart from Answer Boxes and Knowledge Panels, which draw from public domain databases). They don’t count as one of the ten organic results on a SERP, so if you “win” the Snippet, your website shows up twice.
Featured Snippets can also be displayed as quotes, tables, jobs, rich cards (for movies and recipes), or the question section titled “People may ask”. Here’s how to optimize your content for Google’s Featured Snippet box.

4. Knowledge Panels (a.k.a. Knowledge Graph Cards)
Knowledge Panels pull together the most relevant information from a search and display it as a separate panel on the right side of a SERP. They typically include images, dates, and category-specific information, such as stock prices for companies or birthdays for celebrities. You can use a structured data markup like Schema to tag your content with all of these categories, but there’s no guarantee that Google will reward you with your own knowledge panel.
In fact, structured data doesn’t promise anything, it only makes it easier for search engines and social networks to interpret your content.
Also, Knowledge Panels aim to answer queries without requiring a click-through … good news for searchers, and bad news for businesses. Here’s how to make your site easier for bots to crawl (to increase your chances of showing up in a Knowledge Panel).

Enriched Search Features
Unlike content features, enriched result features enhance regular search results. They’re also called rich search results or rich snippets.
1. Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs “indicate a page’s position in the site hierarchy,” according to Google. Breadcrumbs appear on mobile devices, in place of a URL, above the title of the results page, and next to the site’s favicon (as of 2019). They help searchers understand a page’s relationship to the rest of a website. Here’s how to use structured data to display breadcrumbs in your results.

2. Sitelinks and Sitelinks Searchbox
Sitelinks are additional links displayed beneath a search result that navigate to different parts of a website. Google pulls them into a SERP when it thinks additional results would benefit a searcher. Websites with intelligent anchor text and alt text that’s informative, compact, and avoids repetition have a good chance of displaying a result with Sitelinks.

Sitelinks Searchbox is like Sitelinks with a search bar directly featured in the result. That search box uses Google — not the featured website — which creates a brand new SERP. Sitelinks Searchboxes only show up in branded searches.
Here’s how to get a Sitelinks Searchbox for your website.

3. FAQ
FAQ can be used on any page that lists questions and answers — not just traditional frequently asked questions (FAQ) pages.
This feature allows searchers to access your questions and answers right from the SERP; it also extends your result vertically, taking up even more SERP real estate and helping your site stand out. Here’s how to use structured data to display FAQ in your search results.

4. How-To
The how-to feature is similar to FAQ in that it displays a page’s content (if it fits certain criteria) on the SERP so searchers can see that information. It walks searchers through a set of steps and can feature video, text, and images.
Unlike FAQ, the individual steps in how-to result aren’t linkable; however, searchers can access the entire list of steps by clicking your results. These results can show up in two formats: standard accordion layout or rich result carousel, depending on the content. Here’s how to use structured data to display how-to content in your search results.
Source

Non-SERP Features
Structured data can also be used to enhance to non-SERP features.

1. Social Cards
Social-specific markup doesn’t have a big impact on SEO, but it’s still important for marketers to understand. Not only does this markup enhance your social posts and ad efforts, but it can also be read by search engines — which could contribute to any SEO changes in the future.
Social cards display images and rich text when links are shared on social media. Any organization who uses social media to share content should be using proper social markup, such as Open Graph Protocol.
Here’s how you ensure your social content displays social cards:

Open Graph Protocol (for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram)
Facebook Validation Tool
Twitter Cards
Twitter Validation Tool
Pinterest Rich Pins
Pinterest Validation Tool

2. Email Marketing
Have you recently booked a flight or ordered something online? If you have Gmail, you might’ve seen your reservation or order details summarized at the top of the confirmation email. This is due to email markup.
If you send emails for orders, reservations, confirmations, or bookings, consider using email markup to make your email recipients’ lives easier. Here’s how to get started with email markup in Gmail.

The concept of structured data might seem confusing, but its implementation isn’t nearly as complicated. In fact, there are a number of structured data tools that can help you along the way, namely Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper and Testing tools. Sure, you can implement structured data by hand, but Google’s tool ensures accuracy — and makes your life easier.
It’s important to note that adding structured data markup on your website doesn’t guarantee a Featured Snippet or Sitelinks Sitebox. Google can take weeks to crawl your new HTML markup, and sometimes, the information doesn’t show up at all.
However, taking the steps to implement structured data is critical. Google might be smart, but it can’t (yet) understand everything on its own. It might seem like a lot of extra work, but using the correct structured data markup will ensure Google can make sense of your content and can help you potentially increase your click-through rates and visibility.
Here’s how to implement structured data by using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper tool.
1. Open Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
Open up Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper tool.

2. Select your data type and enter the URL.
Make sure the Website tab is open. Choose the type of data to which you’d like to add the HTML markup. Plug the web page URL (or the HTML code) at the bottom, and click Start Tagging.

3. Highlight page elements and assign data tags.
When the tool loads, you should see your web page on the left side and data items on the right. Highlight different components of your web page to assign data tags such as name, author, and date published. (The tool will suggest different data tags for different types of data, i.e. Events or Book Reviews.)

As you select and assign data tags, you’ll see the information pop up under My Data Tags on the right panel. You can also add any missing tags that might not be visible on the web page; just click Add missing tags.
4. Create the HTML.
When you’re finished tagging and assigning data items, click Create HTML in the upper right-hand corner.
5. Add the schema markup to your page.
On the next screen, you should see your structured data markup on the right side. The tool automatically produces the script as JSON-LD markup, but you can change it to Microdata by clicking the JSON-LD drop-down menu in the top menu.

Click Download to download the script as an HTML file. To read more about adding structured data to your article (or any other data type), click Articles in the right corner above the markup.
To “publish” your markup, copy and paste the new HTML markup into your CMS or source code of your web page. Lastly, click Finish in the top right corner to check out Google’s recommended Next Steps … one of which will bring you to this next one.
6. Test your markup with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Open up Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. You can enter any URL of a web page you’d like to test, or you can enter HTML code. (In the example below, I’m analyzing the code previously produced by Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper Tool.) Click Run Test to begin.

7. Diagnose and fix any detected issues.
The tool will show you your HTML markup on the left side and the markup analysis on the right. Note any red errors or warnings. Click on any data row to highlight the corresponding markup on the left.
If necessary, you can edit any errors in the HTML directly in the tool panel before “publishing” the tested HTML markup.
8. Be patient.
This last step is simple but arguably the hardest — to sit back and wait. Google can take weeks to re-crawl new HTML, and even then, your content isn’t guaranteed to show up in rich snippets or other SERP features.
As long as you follow the correct structured data standards and markup, give Google all the information it needs to know, and be patient, your website and business can benefit greatly from structured data and enhanced SEO.
Structured Data Testing Tools

1. Google’s Rich Results Test

Supports structured data in JSON-LD, RDFa, and Microdata. 
Price: Free
Google’s tool is an easy, free option for quickly checking any web page — or even an individual snippet code — to ensure your site is structured correctly. The tool will flag any errors that could be preventing your site from ranking on search engines, and offer suggestions for improving your site or snippet’s structured data. 
The Rich Results Test allows you to share the test results with anyone for up to 90 days, so if you need to send the results to your web developer or IT team, you can. 
Best of all, the tool shows you how your page might look on Google search results, which means you can make changes to your structured data in real-time and see how those changes positively or negatively affect how your page shows up on various Search results layouts, including both desktop and mobile. 
(It’s important to note, Google used to provide a Structured Data Testing tool, but that tool is now being deprecated and replaced with the Rich Results Test.) 

2. Bing Markup Validator

Supports structured data in HTML Microdata, Microformats, RDFa, Schema.org, and OpenGraph.
Price: Free
Since Bing is the second largest search engine, it makes sense to try out Bing’s own structured data tool to assess your website’s health and performance and ensure you’re following structured data protocol to get your website ranking on the major search engine. 
Bing’s free Markup Validator is part of Bing’s larger Webmaster Tools, which enable you to monitor the health of your site, see for which keywords you currently rank, and see how Bing crawls and indexes your website. 
Unfortunately, Bing’s Markup Validator doesn’t support HTML structured code, but it’s still a good option to check out, particularly if you’re looking to improve your ranking on Bing.  
3. SEO Site Checkup
Supports structured data in HTML, and offers website SEO analysis.
Price: $39.95/month 
This is the only tool in this list that isn’t free (although it does offer a 14-day free trial for you to initially check a few web pages), but for good reason — it offers a more well-rounded, comprehensive SEO analysis of your website, as well. 
Along with offering feedback on your structured data (and competitors’ URLs, if you’re interested), you can use the tool to assess overall SEO health, including page load speed, URL redirects, broken links, mobile responsiveness, and much more. 
Apart from evaluating your site’s standard data, the tool will check your website for SEO issues such as page load speed, URL redirects, nested tables, broken links, mobile responsiveness, and much more. It serves as a one-window solution for optimizing your site for search engine ranking.

4. Chrome Extension: Structured Data Testing Tool

Supports structured data in Microdata, Schema, RDFa and JSON-LD. 
Price: Free
If you primarily use the Chrome internet browser, this is a good alternative to Google’s Rich Results Test, since it’s essentially the same tool for Chrome users. The tool uses Google’s Structured Data testing tool to scan websites, and delivers both warnings and error codes. You can then export these error codes to your clipboard. 
Best of all, you can use this extension on websites in the development or staging phases, or password-protected pages, to ensure your structured data is clean before launching your site. The extension will scan structured data and check your rich snippets, as well. 
Get Started with Structured Data Today
Google and other search engines continuously improve how they aggregate and present information. They offer enhanced, intelligent search experiences with the customer in mind. It’s up to you as a business to keep up, and you can do so through structured data.
Structured data benefits businesses — through increased visibility — and consumers — through better usability. Use this guide, tools, and resources to optimize and organize your website and make your customers’ lives easier.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Stores and websites aren’t a mishmash of products with no discernible organization for a reason. People want a sense of direction and a positive customer experience, even when they are “just browsing.” They also want to know they are in good hands when it comes to the product category they’re exploring — whether that’s kitchen tools, breakfast cereals, or winter coats.
Product category marketing helps your brand stand out among related items, so your company’s products wind up in the shopping cart — whether real or virtual.

What is a product category?
A product category is “a particular group of related products,” according to the Cambridge Dictionary.
Your distinct offerings and customer personas should guide the organization and grouping of your product categories.
For example, REI Co-Op offers a wide range of outdoor gear. To guide customers, they split their products into interest-based categories, such as running, climbing, and snow sports. For fashion retailers, it makes more sense to organize categories by product type, such as shoes, shirts, and pants.
Product category marketing amplifies why a company is the best choice within that group of products. Why should customers opt for your offering rather than your direct competitors?
Gaining brand recognition and appreciation across a product category means greater returns for your marketing efforts. When consumers have positive experiences with a specific product category it also builds brand trust, which often expands to other categories through the halo effect.
Product categories are sometimes confused with product classification. Both are organizational strategies and both help guide marketing decisions, but classifications are much broader (think convenience goods, shopping goods, and specialty goods).
Let’s take a look at nine product category marketing examples to inspire your own.
9 Product Category Marketing Examples
1. Fenty Beauty

Product category: High-end foundation makeup
Admittedly, it helps to have singer and business powerhouse Rihanna at the helm. But Fenty Beauty innovated the idea of foundation makeup “for all,” and its commitment to inclusivity made the brand an instant hit.

Image source

Beyond foundation, the Fenty Beauty Face products include bronzer, highlighter, powder, and concealer in shades that work for everyone. The launch was an industry transformer, with established brands expanding their foundation color lineup in response.
The marketing for Fenty Beauty Face products zooms in on the wide palette of available colors, and features models and influencers across the shade spectrum.
2. Orvis

Product category: Dog beds
This Vermont-based retailer has been a big name in fly-fishing and outdoor gear since 1856. But they’ve also carved out a product niche with dog gear — and dog beds in particular. The brand draws people who want comfortable dog beds for their furry pals in styles that enhance their home decor.

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by The Orvis Company (@orvis)

The marketing images of dogs sleeping or lounging on Orvis beds is enough to inspire a nap. They’ve made their site a resource for dog health and behavior topics. And their social feeds are chock full of irresistible images and videos of dogs, including puppies in a hammock (!).
3. Ikea

Product category: Bedding
Putting together their furniture may be a tough task, but at least Ikea supports your relaxation too. The marketing of their bedding shows off playful sheets and prints for the kids and a mix of bold designs and neutrals for adults. The bed linens product category is grouped under ‘home textiles’ together with curtains, quilts, pillows, and towels.

Image source

A playful Ikea ad campaign in the UK even featured bottled bedding and pillows, connecting the dots between a restful night’s sleep and health. In the current pandemic, the company marketed the idea that comfortable bedding was essential — especially when your bed is doubling as your office.
4. Swarovski

Product category: Jewelry
For more than a century, Swarovski has put the sparkle in gowns, tiaras, jewelry, and decorative sculptures. For their jewelry product category, Swarovski puts luxury within reach with a mix of modern and classic crystal necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and watches.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by SWAROVSKI (@swarovski)

They sustain brand awareness with seasonal collections, collaborations with designers and celebrities, such as Karl Lagerfield and Penelope Cruz, and pop culture-inspired releases. This fall, their #SparkDelight social media campaign featured influencers sharing tips for finding joy in the little things since big events were off the social calendar.
5. Target

Product category: Grocery essentials
Target is known for its positioning across product categories, including affordable fashion, electronics, and cleaning supplies. Though they’re grocery section is smaller than most supermarkets, they cover all of the ‘must-haves’ on any shopping list — from milk to salads to pasta.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Target (@target)

In 2019, Target added its own brand of grocery essentials with their Good & Gather line, which includes frozen berries, cereals, snack foods, and eggs. Their Instagram Stories showcase easy snack and meal ideas, and feature foodie influencers like TikTok and Instagram sensations Tabitha Browne and Lisa Lin.
6. Dove

Product category: Skin care
Launched in 2004, Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ campaign was far ahead of other brands in promoting body positivity and self-acceptance. Their ad campaigns for body lotions and soap have long featured women with a wide variety of body types and skin colors.

Rolls, wrinkles, cellulite, and stretch marks are all on proud and beautiful display across their social channels. Today, their skin care brand identity is equated with self-confidence, and Dove body lotions and soaps are frequent flyers on ‘best of’ lists for affordable skin care.
7. Michaels

Product category: Holiday and seasonal decor
The company known for DIY is also a go-to spot for holiday and seasonal decorating. Michaels stores transform every month or two with festive decor for spring, summer, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, July Fourth, Mardi Gras, and Pride Month.

Black Friday deals = an extra merry holiday haul 🙌 #SpottedAtMichaels📷: @vickiboutin pic.twitter.com/dxmiIq9zbC — Michaels Stores (@MichaelsStores)
November 28, 2020

Their social media and weekly ads herald each season with ready made decorations galore.
8. Patagonia

Product category: Eco-friendly outerwear
Patagonia’s tagline is “We’re in business to save our home planet” and the company’s marketing efforts lead with their commitment to sustainability across product lines. Their website urges consumers to “Buy Less” and prominently features a section of “Used Gear.”
When you visit their Facebook or Instagram pages, you have to hunt a bit to find posts highlighting particular products. Instead, the feeds focus on pressing issues, such as environmental stewardship and fair labor practices.

 

 

 

 

 

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When you do need to purchase a new (or used) piece of outerwear, consumers know they are supporting a company actively minimizing their negative impacts.
9. Grove Collaborative

Product category: Green household cleaning supplies
Grove Collaborative is another company focused on sustainability. Their goal is to make it simple and affordable for people to choose green household products that are non-toxic, sustainable, and cruelty free.
The company offers eco-friendly cleaning supplies, including concentrated soap and detergent refills and reusable glass bottles, which they send out in recurring monthly shipments.
Their marketing reflects their minimalist ethos, with images of their cleaning products at the ready in pristine kitchens and bathrooms. Grove uses Instagram Stories to attract new customers with product images, cleaning tips, and even humorous videos.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Grove Collaborative (@grovecollaborative)

The company also shares ideas for holiday meals and decorating, and releases a monthly ‘Sustainability Snapshot’ of their environmental impact, such as the number of single-use plastic bottles they keep out of land-fills.
Each of these brands has clarified where their products fit in larger retail categories. This helps them market their distinct value to target customers and, ultimately, earn a greater market share within these product categories.

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Implementing a content strategy is hard work. Going through all of the trouble to outline your process, write, edit, and optimize your content, only to have no one read it, engage with it, or use it as a resource, is a big bummer. It’s especially difficult when you know that there’s tons of value there,…
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How you go about advertising your company online matters greatly for your email marketing strategy. The whole point of digital advertising is to generate traffic back to your site, where you can convert that site traffic from plain ol’ visitors to leads. But to achieve this, you need to maximize your ad potential on the…
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After months of working on a marketing campaign, nothing’s worse than realizing you aren’t seeing the results you expected.
Unfortunately, many of us have been there. We’ve put all of our creative effort, time, and numerous resources into a campaign that sounded like a great idea, but had nowhere near the expected ROI or engagement. Then, on top of watching our project fail, we’ve had to deal with the awkward scenario of sharing bad performance data with our teams.
No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to know exactly how well a campaign will do before you run it. However, there’s a strategy that gets pretty close.
It’s called predictive marketing.

While predictive marketing sounds like some futuristic technology you’d only see on a show like Westworld, using data to estimate an outcome isn’t new.
Predictive marketing is fueled by predictive analytics, which dates back to the 1930s. It enabled mathematicians and computers to calculate and analyze the possible successes, failures, and results of various scenarios — such as health or weather conditions.
Later, in the 1990s, when analytics tools became more available to brands, marketers at companies like eBay and Amazon began to combine marketing data with similar formulas or algorithms to predict and strategize around potential consumer behaviors, purchases, and marketing campaign performance.
In the early 2000s, with the presence of “Big Data” many more brands and online advertising platforms embraced predictive analytics and marketing technology.
Now, predictive marketing is all around us. Below are just a few common instances of it, along with explanations of how brands can leverage it.

Examples of Predictive Marketing
1. Predictive Product Suggestions
Have you ever considered buying a product, researched it, and then saw the same product — or a very similar one — in a promotion that showed up on a social media feed, in your email inbox, streaming platform, or another website’s banner? You’re not alone.
Ecommerce site algorithms regularly collect data about your product interests based on what you’ve viewed or purchased from them. Then, these algorithms use that data to predict which products you’re most likely to buy next. This data is then used in the ecommerce ad or promotion a prospect sees.
Need an example? Below is an EyeBuyDirect ad that appeared on my Facebook News Feed.

As an EyeBuyDirect customer, I’ve bought many pairs of glasses with similar styles, shapes, or patterns to the pairs seen in the ad above. To compare, here are two of my recent purchases:

If I needed new glasses, EyeBuyDirrect’s ad would be very appealing to me because it shows product offerings I’m very likely to view or buy.
Rather than presenting the same ad or product to every audience member, predictive marketing tools can help you to direct customers to products they might be most interested in.
If you’re planning to bring your business online and want to use predictive marketing to make more sales, several affordable ecommerce tools enable you to send predictive product suggestions to your audiences. You can learn more about them here.
2. Predictive Lead Scoring
Predictive marketing doesn’t just stop after you get a contact, customer, or lead.
Once you build up your list of contacts, you’ll want to continue marketing to them or potentially direct them to a sales rep. But, if you try to market your brand continuously to every single one of your new contacts, you might waste serious time if they aren’t serious about buying your product or signing up for more content.
To avoid giving too much time to unqualified leads, brands can use tools like HubSpot’s Predictive Lead Scoring feature to analyze contact data profiles and estimate which prospects are most likely to make a deal in the future.

When you have a huge database of contacts with varying levels of interest in your product, brand, or service, predictive lead scoring data like that above can give you insight on which prospects to prioritize in your marketing or sales efforts first. In turn, this could give you a leg up on brands that waste crucial time and resources on deals that never happen.
3. Automated Social Media Suggestions
A handful of social media tools, including HubSpot Marketing Hub, use predictive analytics and audience data to estimate and suggest the best times to post your content on a given channel.
On top of simple content timing suggestions, some tools go even deeper with social media content predictions. For example, when social media managers upload two or more images to the social media scheduling tool, Cortex, the platform will use historical data to determine which photo’s colors will be most eye-catching to followers.

Image Source
On top of the social media tools that can suggest strategies based on predicted outcomes, social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest also offer some predictive tools within their ads platforms.
For example, in 2018, news outlets obtained documents from Facebook revealing that it secretly launched a “Predictive Loyalty” feature within its ads. The feature reportedly analyzes Facebook user behavior, interests, page likes, and other data points to circulate ads to people that had the highest likelihood of clicking them, rather than just directing ads to a brand’s audience targets.
Since Facebook’s predictive advertising news, Twitter’s also acknowledged that it uses predictive ad algorithms specifically for movies, TV, and entertainment-related promotions.
Aside from predictive ad targeting, social platforms like Facebook and Pinterest also use algorithms to make predictions related to multivariate or A/B testing. With these types of tests, a brand will often submit two or more variations of their ad. When the ad goes live, the social media platforms will immediately analyze which variation is clicked on the most and predict which will have the best conversion outcome. From there, social media ads will begin to display the winning variation.
4. Customer Churn Prevention Tools
While many marketers focus primarily on gaining new customers, some might focus on creating content and offerings that continue to engage, retain, and even upsell current customers.
But, sometimes, it can be hard to tell when customers need new, engaging content or when they’re likely to churn. That’s why some major companies have implemented predictive analytics as well as marketing strategies to identify and re-engage customers that are about to churn.
Take Sprint for example. Back in 2014, when the cell-phone giant saw an all-time high customer churn rate, marketers and service reps began to use predictive analytics tools to determine which customers were most likely to cancel their service. Once they did this, they were able to target those customers with re-engagement communications, messaging, and special offers that would keep them signed up.
According to a case study, Sprint’s predictive strategy led to a 10% decrease in customer churn, and an 800% increase in upgrades within 90 days of implementation.
While your brand might not be able to implement complex, customer churn prediction tools, there are other ways you can use data to predict and prevent lost audiences.
For example, by tracking email engagement data and which contacts are less likely to open or click on emails, you can create a list segment of contacts that are at-risk of unsubscribing and send a re-engagement email like the one below:

5. Predictive SEO Tactics
As a marketer, a major part of your job might involve creating blog posts, web pages, or other online content aimed to attract and convert audiences. Because search engines can provide major traffic wins and brand awareness to brands, you’ll likely want to produce valuable content that shows up on page one.
But, once you’ve landed your high search result page position and gained solid organic traffic, you can use predictive data to prevent the future loss of your ranking and all the traffic that comes with it.
This process, called predictive SEO, is when content strategists use traffic and search ranking analytics to determine if a web page is at risk of losing its traffic momentum from search engines.
For HubSpot, our predictive SEO process involves using our At-Risk Content Tool — which analyzes data from SEMRush, Ahrefs, and other software — to determine when we’re losing our ranking on search engine pages.
For example, if one of our posts shows up in the first spot on a Google search result page, then steadily goes down to spot three or four, our At-Risk Content Tool might flag the post as in danger of losing search traffic.
Here’s what our At-Risk Content spreadsheet looks like. When a blog post begins to see declines that could potentially continue, a formula in the spreadsheet notes the blog post as “At-Risk” in the Status column on the right:

If you’re a marketer who focuses primarily on web content, creating a strategy like this can proactively help you monitor the performance of many web pages at once, learn when old content really needs an update, or identify old content strategies or formats that need to be re-worked — all before you lose major search traffic.
Want to replicate the predictive SEO strategy above? Here’s a detailed post with the full step-by-step process we used.
What to Know When Using Predictive Marketing
While predictive marketing can be a handy tool for justifying a new tactic or strategy, there are important things marketers should keep in mind if they want to leverage it.

It’s not perfect: Even if an algorithm or marketing formula seems to give accurate estimates 99% of the time, the fact that marketing strategies rely on human engagement to succeed can cause a prediction to be wrong. While you can use predictive marketing data to justify investments or proposed strategies, you should have a plan for what to do if unexpected results occur.

It can be pricey: While some predictive tools, such as HubSpot, can be affordable and easily accessible to smaller brands, other tools and predictive marketing projects that require analyzing large amounts of data can get costly. Be sure to start with scaleable affordable predictive tools or tactics first.

It requires data: While some tools, such as ad or SEO software have access to historical consumer data, creating your own predictive marketing strategy from scratch might require you to have your own data set. Collecting, cleaning, and organizing this data so a predictive tool or algorithm can leverage it can take quite a lot of time which should be built into your predictive strategy.

Want to learn more about how predictive analytics and data can fuel your marketing strategy? Click here for a handy blog post, or download the free resource below.

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