Category: Marketing Automation

When it comes to creating reports for your data, sometimes a pre-built dashboard, table, or template will do the trick. But what happens when your current tool doesn’t have a pre-built report that meets your needs or includes the metrics and dimensions you want to use?
Well, that’s when a custom reporting tool comes in handy.
What are custom reporting tools?
Custom reporting tools provide the ability to create personalized and unique (or customized) reports for your data. In addition to selecting the data you’ll display in your report, you can also customize a report’s metrics, dimensions, appearance, and more.

There are a number of custom reporting tools available today including options that come with other perks like no necessary coding, easy installation, different pricing plans, support, and integrations (e.g. for data analysis and one-click sharing).
Many custom reporting tools, like HubSpot, often come with pre-built templates and dashboards as well for instances in which you don’t need or want to customize your report.
Here are 9 custom reporting tools to help get you started.

1. HubSpot Marketing Analytics Software

Source
HubSpot helps marketers surface a combination of customer insights and data to better understand what’s working and what’s not among target audience members. All of these insights and reports are available at your fingertips — alongside your CRM — without SQL.
The custom report builder offers access to all of your data in a single location without the need for spreadsheets. Use the custom builder to organize all of your business data including contact, company, deal, marketing email, landing page, and blog engagement data.
Other Unique Features:

Use custom objects to capture your unique business data, create new segments, build custom reports, campaigns, and workflows.
Build custom, shareable dashboards to see all of your metrics on one screen with a no-code, drag-and-drop editor.
Report on data that’s unique to your business such as product usage or inventory data.
Use behavioral events to track custom interactions that are unique to your business and indicate when a customer is ready to take the next step in the buyer’s journey (then trigger or schedule the next touchpoint for after that event is completed).
Connect every customer interaction to a contact in your database and the associated revenue generated by using the revenue attribution reporting feature.
Monitor the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts within the account based marketing (ABM) dashboard and then adjust your playbook accordingly to reach your highest-value accounts.

2. Demand Sage

Source
With Demand Sage, easily move your HubSpot reporting and analytics data into Google Sheets. The tool offers custom and automated — with automatic data sync and pre-built dashboards and templates — reports.
Other Unique Features:

Get very specific with your data by creating reports that are record-level.
View your data any way you’d like using Demand Sage’s no-code analytics and table builder.
Install the free Demand Sage add-on, click “Start” in the add-ons menu, and immediately begin creating custom reports.

Integrate Demand Sage with your HubSpot CRM and Marketing Software.

3. Cyfe

Source
Cyfe is a tool for making fully-customized business dashboards to monitor, display, and analyze your data. The tool is described as an all-in-one dashboard because you can monitor all of your company’s data including (but not limited to) sales, web analytics, social media, and support.
Other Unique Features:

Create benchmarks to measure your progress against your business objectives. Then, receive alerts from Cyfe when specific benchmarks are met (via email or SMS).
Customize all aspects of your report including the domain name, background, logo, and colors.
View data from multiple sources (e.g. Google, Facebook, Mailchimp) by tapping into Cyfe’s app ecosystem of 1,500+ apps.
Customize dashboards with data from your SQL database.
Integrate Cyfe with your HubSpot CRM, Marketing Software, and Sales Software.

4. Supermetrics

Source
With SuperMetrics, you can easily move your marketing and sales data into Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Google Data Studio, BigQuery, API, Snowflake, and Uploader. Once you bring your data into any of these products, fully customize your reports with the Supermetrics templates.
Other Unique Features:

Display and manage all of your marketing data in a central location.
Organize and filter your data in Supermetrics to analyze what’s working and what needs improvement.
Automate marketing reporting and data transfers to save you time.
Integrate Supermetrics with your HubSpot Marketing Software.

5. Domo

Source
Domo is a business cloud that allows you to easily integrate and visualize your data as well as use (or create) intelligent apps to tailor reports in a way that makes them valuable to your team.
Your interactive and customizable reports are updated in real-time. Based on the type of data you bring into Domo, the tool will recommend certain visualizations it thinks are best-suited to display your information.
Other Unique Features:

Customize your reports by annotating charts, adding governance tools for your team, and refining the data points that are most important to you.
Bring all of your marketing and sales data together to create insights and action plans based on the real-time information in your dashboards.
Determine how the various aspects of your dashboard interact with custom links/ filters.
Integrate Domo with your HubSpot CRM.

6. Dear Lucy

Source
Dear Lucy is a dashboard for B2B sales. Choose the metrics that matter most to your team and bring them into a single dashboard to display your data. On your dashboard, show pipeline-based or activity-based forecasts so you know what to expect in relation to the goals you set.
Other Unique Features:

Customize your entire dashboard with the drag-and-drop editor to show the metrics and data you care about most.
Use the red and green light feature to be notified when your team is on target or is falling behind so you can make necessary adjustments.
Define unique goals for things like activities, revenue, offer base, and hit rate to compare your performance versus targets.
Customize the way you filter your data for your reports (e.g. by customer type) so it’s tailored to your team and goals.
Integrate Dear Lucy with your HubSpot CRM, Marketing Software, and Sales Software.

7. Analytics Amplifier

Source
Bring your HubSpot contact data into Google Analytics with ease using Analytics Amplifier. Add HubSpot field properties or custom behaviors (e.g. lifecycle stage, deals won, email unsubscribes) to Google Analytics for viewing. This tool is meant to help you optimize your business paths and drive business intelligence by offering access to data about your contacts in Google Analytics.
Other Unique Features:

View your HubSpot object-level data metrics including lifecycle set, deals won, persona set, lead score, number of associated deals, lead status, email unsubscribes, and NPS rating.
Create and generate rich, custom reports in Google Analytics using contact data from HubSpot to understand how your contacts and customers interact and engage with your business.
Use insights derived from your reports to help you reach people who look like members of your target audience.
Integrate Analytics Amplifier with your HubSpot CRM, Marketing Software, and CMS.

8. Ultimate Data Export

Source
Ultimate Data Export, by Datawarehouse.io, allows you to export all of your data — such as contacts, deals, web analytics, tickets, and emails — to Excel. You can also back up your data as well as restore, query, sync, integrate, analyze, and share it. This tool is ideal for users who want to move data out of HubSpot and into a platform of choice, all at a low cost.
Other Unique Features:

Export all data from your HubSpot system (e.g. contacts, companies, deals/ deal history, web analytics, owners, campaigns, engagements, emails, products, tickets, forms, pipelines, and more) and view it in a custom report in Excel.
Connect to business intelligence tools like Tabelau and PowerBI for deep insights into your data.

Integrate Ultimate Data Export with your HubSpot CRM, Marketing Software, and Sales Software.

9. Google Analytics

Source
Google Analytics has a custom report feature that allows you to choose the dimensions (e.g. city) and metrics (e.g. page views) for your report as well as decide how that data will be displayed. If you’re a Google/ Google Analytics user, or use a reporting tool with a Google Analytics integration, custom reports are easily accessible to you.
Other Unique Features:

Export and share custom reports in seconds.
Choose from a list of unique dimensions and metrics for your custom reports.
Create categories to organize your custom reports into groups for easy access.
Use the Custom Tables feature to back up your custom reports if you’re an Analytics 360 user.

There are many custom reporting tools available today that have the power to help you uncover valuable insights and analyze all of your business’s data. So, while trying to determine the best option for your team, think about which types of data you want to dive deeper into, where you want to conduct reporting and analysis, and how you want to share and distribute that information.

A brand is a powerful tool for agencies and clients alike, providing a framework for how an organization presents itself to the world and interacts with customers. But brands are only useful when they’re consistently used and applied. 
Fortunately, email marketers have a few secret weapons to enforce and maintain brand standards for their clients, starting with the ever-important custom email marketing template. With the right tools and a little convincing, you can help your clients become brand powerhouses and provide an irresistible service they can’t live without.

Explaining the importance of brand consistency to clients
It’s easy for many agency marketers to grasp the value of brand consistency, but it’s not always a priority for some clients. 
Even if it is, that care and consideration might not extend to email. While email is often recognized as a powerful tool for communications and sales, its importance as part of the brand experience is sometimes overlooked. 
If you can sell your clients on the importance of brand consistency in their emails, it’s good business for you, too. If you’re their go-to expert that understands their brand better than anyone, you become much ‘stickier’ and make a stronger case when pitching email to your accounts. Make sure your clients are aware of some of the most important benefits of brand standard enforcement:
Cross-channel consistency has a huge impact on overall performance.
Consistency in experience and message between email and other channels, both digital and traditional, improves a brand’s overall reputation and makes customers more likely to buy. It’s an “all ships rise with the tides” situation: consistency between an email and a website makes a social media post that much more engaging, which in turn helps that radio ad stand out more, which makes the next email more likely to be opened, and so on.
Research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau indicates that consumers viewing a constant message across a variety of channels can improve purchase intent by 90% and brand perception by 68%.
Here’s a great example of leveling up cross-channel marketing to really hammer home a big promotion. Taco Bell is running a campaign featuring a giveaway of the new Xbox console, and making sure the message and branding for the campaign can be seen everywhere. It’s in emails, social posts on the restaurant’s web site…even on its cups (thanks to @RoxieThorne for the picture of the cups).

Improving the all-important customer experience.
The customer experience has evolved to become one of the most important competitive differentiators and factors in consumer decision making. A survey from PwC found customers are willing to pay up to 16% more for a superior experience, and 63% say they’re more willing to share information with brands that can offer great experiences. On the other hand, about one in three will abandon a brand they like if they have a negative experience.
Consistent, cohesive branding is a huge part of delivering a good experience. But inconsistency can be confusing and frustrating, disrupting the customer journey and leading to lost business and loyalty. When it comes to meeting expectations for experiences, companies in most industries have some work to do.

Even a little consistency can go a long way in the inbox. 
Emphasize that it’s not a huge effort to incorporate the basics for your brand into an email strategy. Even just the fundamentals—featuring a familiar logo, using on-brand language, and presenting content with the same color scheme, can be enough to make a difference.
We love this simple, powerful example from Insomnia Cookies. The cookie delivery and pickup service makes sure a mobile-friendly version of its logo appears in the email client. And just like Pavlov’s dogs, it gets customers’ mouths watering every time they see it—even before they read the subject line or open the email. Small adjustment, powerful result.

The easy way to adapt your client’s brand standards
Adapting and incorporating another company’s brand guidelines into your own workflow and tools can be tedious, especially if the client doesn’t have a rigorous document detailing colors, logo versions, font styles and so on. 
If you’re in need of a quick, easy way to “port over” a client’s branding into your custom email marketing templates, the Campaign Monitor platform has you covered. The built-in branded templates tool makes it easier than ever for you to build beautiful custom newsletters that look like they were painstakingly crafted just for them. Just input your client’s website, and we’ll take care of pulling out color schemes, logos and more for you to add right into your templates!
This tool also works great if you operate on more of a ‘self-serve’ model where clients do most of their own email sends while you support and advise them. It’s easy to activate and make the functionality accessible to clients through your agency account, minimizing frustration and development problems.
Building foolproof custom email marketing templates for clients
Designing a custom template for a client can make them feel like they’re getting the royal treatment. The Campaign Monitor email builder helps you craft special templates that look great and perform well without requiring a lot of resources on your end.
To get started, navigate to “My Templates” in the platform and choose the desired option for your needs:

Option 1. Choose a design: Our pre-built, mobile-ready designs are ready to be adapted and modified in any way needed. They’ve been artfully crafted and scientifically optimized for performance: the perfect starting point for any custom template. You can select a design you like, and save it as a template to customize and use again later.

Option 2. Select from recent emails: Take an email you’ve worked on recently and update it for a specific client. This is especially effective if you have a template layout you know works for one client that you want to translate over to another account’s brand standards.

Option 3. Start from scratch: Begin with a blank canvas and save time by not removing everything in a template design first. If you have the design and coding talent available, this is a good option to build something particularly spectacular or experimental.

Option 4. Upload from HTML: Already got a great email template coded up? Just upload it and modify it as needed.
Click here to learn more guidance and tips for building your own email templates.
Locking a branded template
 
When appropriate, you may wish to ‘lock’ certain components of your custom templates in place once they’ve been designed. This minimizes the extent to which the email can be edited and adjusted.
 
Though locking a template reduces customization options, those limitations come with several benefits for an agency. 
 
By minimizing the variables that can be altered, you reduce the opportunities to ‘break’ the template by adjusting a piece of content or changing a setting. That’s useful if you’re passing the template off to someone who’s less technically proficient or unfamiliar with the brand. When you hand it off to a client who’s not much of a coding expert, or bring in a freelancer for some extra help, they can jump right in and get to work with minimal fuss.
Template locking is also a great way to set and enforce brand standards. When building a custom email template, you can determine what content modules and branding elements should be part of the brand experience. By locking them in, you ensure that they find their place in every email of that style that’s sent out. 
This prevents someone from accidentally forgetting a critical part of the email (like the client’s logo) or gets a little too adventurous with their creativity (like changing CTA colors to something off-brand).
Locking a template is easy to do with a Campaign Monitor agency account.
To lock sections in an existing email builder template, click the cog icon below the template thumbnail and select Edit.

When editing the template, click to the side of a section to select it, then click Content locking in the left sidebar, then select a lock setting.

When you select a lock setting, it will be applied immediately. To edit your section and its settings again, select Unlock everything.
You can also lock header or footer content by clicking either in your template, then clicking Header content locking or Footer content locking in the left sidebar. When you are done, click Preview, then Finish & save template.
 
Learn more about locking template sections in this comprehensive email builder template guide.
Wrap up
Brand standards are a huge part of effective marketing, including (perhaps especially) when it comes to email. Strong, consistent branding in the inbox and across channels improves the customer experience and grows overall marketing performance, but doesn’t require a ton of effort to achieve significant results back.
Agencies can help clients create and enforce brand standards by generating and using custom email templates tailored to each account. Tools like an intuitive template builder and template locking features make it easy to build branded templates and keep them aligned to brand guidelines.
Bring the power of branded templates to your clients and become essential to their business. Learn how a Campaign Monitor agency account helps your agency grow.
 
The post Effortlessly Maintain Your Clients’ Brand Standards With Custom-Designed Email Templates appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Newsjacking is a way for businesses of all sizes and types to draw attention to their content by associating it with a big or breaking news story. One reason it has become so popular is that trending hashtags on social media get plenty of searches, and therefore represent a chance for you to get your…
The post 6 Tips for Newsjacking Your Way to More Leads appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

Last Updated on December 2, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta Looking to transform the way your sales team sells? When you integrate your business document generation software with your CRM, your reps will gain efficiencies that will allow them to spend … Continue reading →

I’d like to create an exit-intent popup on each of my blog posts that lets visitors get a PDF version of the post in their inbox (with “save this for later” type messaging). Is there any way to do this without going in and creating a new popup every time I post? I use Convertkit for my emails and popups. Best solution I’ve got so far is to copy the popup and all its settings each time, then attach the new PDF. But maybe there’s a better way to do it?
submitted by /u/ljfreddy [link] [comments]

Whoever said “You never have a second chance to make a great first impression,” makes a valid point. You only get one opportunity to have your first interaction with another person … and the last thing you want is for that first interaction to be a bad one. After all, humans are known to remember negative experiences more vividly than positive ones.
Great first impressions matter when meeting someone, going to a new place, and even visiting a website.
In a world where virtually every business has a website, creating a positive first impression when your target audience members click on your site via the search engine results page (SERP) is critical. That’s because your landing page is your site’s “destination page”, or the first page that visitors land on when they open your site.
Also, to really put the pressure on, you only have about 7 seconds to make that great first impression with your website before the average visitor decides whether or not they’re going to stay or bounce elsewhere.
So, how do you ensure that the first interaction your target audience has with your website is a positive one?
The answer: Great landing page design.

Landing Page Design
Landing page design is the process of creating an enticing site page for your target audience and website visitors. It should encourage them to convert from leads into subscribers or customers. Effective landing page design is on-brand, includes your product or service and company information, and incorporates relevant offers and calls-to-action (CTAs).

Responsive Design
You may have also heard about responsive design, or responsive web design, before.
A web page with responsive design is automatically viewable via any device — meaning, web pages change as needed to fit any screen or device (i.e. desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone).

Source
Since so many more people search the Internet from different devices and locations, responsive design is necessary to ensure visitors and customers have a pleasant experience on your site.
Although it’s recommended that your entire website is responsive, it’s critical to have responsive landing page design — again, this is the first page every visitor interacts with and sees when they open your website, so outstanding user experience (UX) is crucial. 
Web pages without responsive design can make for a frustrating experience for visitors — they’ll be dealing with images and text that don’t fit their screen. This can potentially cause visitors to abandon your site completely or even visit a competitor’s site instead.
Note: Depending on the landing page design software you choose to work with (we’ll cover some options shortly), responsive design might be an automatic feature for you. In this case, you won’t have to worry about responsive design — when you design your landing page, it’ll already be responsive.

In addition to having a responsive design, there are many other aspects of creating and designing a landing page that impact your ability to convert visitors into customers and enhance UX. So, let’s review some of the most common and important steps for you to take into consideration while designing your landing page.

1. Identify your target audience and their needs.
No matter which part of your business you’re working on, you should be thinking about who your target audience is and how you can resolve their pain points — and designing your landing page is no exception to this rule of thumb.
While planning your landing page design, think about what your target audience expects and needs to see when they open your site. Ask yourself the following questions to help you with this:

What questions does the landing page immediately need to answer for your audience?
How can you brand your landing page so your audience knows they’re in the correct place?
What attention-grabbing headline, relevant content, and CTA can you include on your landing page to efficiently and effectively meet the needs of your audience?
How can you ensure your landing page is unique in comparison to those of your competitors?
How can you prove the value that your company, products, and services provide to your audience?

If you need additional help thinking about who your target audience is, try creating buyer personas for your business.
2. Ensure the landing page has a specific purpose.
For your landing page design to be successful, it needs a clear purpose. When visitors come to your landing page, they should immediately know why the page exists.
For example, you can use landing page design to clearly define the purpose of your page in the following ways:

Increase conversions by sharing relevant CTAs

Enhance brand awareness by including an email newsletter sign-up form

Boost sales by displaying your top-selling product

Develop greater interest in your product or service by incorporating information about how they solve your visitors’ pain points

Without a defined landing page purpose, your visitors may feel confused about what to do once they’ve landed on the page or uncertain about whether or not they’re in the right place. This may cause them to lose interest and abandon your page entirely. So, use your design to ensure your landing page has a clear purpose.
3. Choose a landing page design software.
There are dozens of software options made to help you build and design a landing page. The key is finding one that works for you. Review the five software options we recommend below and the various features they each offer below.
4. Write enticing leading page headers.
The purpose of a header is to catch your visitors’ attention and/or make them want to do something — meaning, headers should be enticing, impactful, and action-oriented.
This is most likely one of the very first (if not the first) things your website visitors will have read about your company. For this reason, your landing page headers should also complement the tone and copy everywhere else on your site (and your meta description).
When you use enticing and value-driven vocabulary in your landing page headers, you ensure your visitors know they’re going to get something worthwhile out of converting and spending time on your site.
For example, look at HubSpot’s Buyer Persona Generator landing page. The headline says, “Make My Persona … A Buyer Persona Generator From HubSpot.” Thanks to the header, visitors know where they are and what they’ll get out of visiting the landing page.

Source
Visitors are then automatically directed to the second part of the landing page which also includes enticing and value-driven language.

Source
The design includes two CTAs visitors can click based on their needs and interests. The headers on this landing page are useful, relevant, eye-catching, and on-brand
5. Make the landing page beautiful and helpful.
We’ve talked a lot about the fact your landing page is the first thing your website visitors are going to see when they open your website. So, in addition to compelling headers and language, you also want your page to be beautiful and helpful.
Make your landing page beautiful by:

Incorporating consistent, on-brand colors and fonts
Keeping your page organized
Remembering less is more while designing
Including aesthetically-pleasing visuals (images and/or videos)
Designing obvious and exciting CTAs

Make your landing page helpful by:

Incorporating content that pertains to your target audience’s needs and challenges
Designing CTAs that provide visitors with value
Including information that tells visitors why they should convert
Making sure visitors know how to convert
Ensuring visitors have easy access to your contact information

6. Publish and test your landing page design.
Once your design set, it’s time to publish and test it among your audience members. After your landing page is published, you can A/B test different design elements (e.g. colors, CTA buttons, phrases, font, etc.) to see which options lead to the highest number of conversions.
This way, you can ensure your landing page meets your audience’s needs while also guaranteeing you’re getting the best results that will impact your business’s bottom line.

In addition to keeping these landing page design steps in mind, consider these landing page best practices as well. You’ll notice some of these best practices are also directly tied to the specific steps we’ve just reviewed above.

While we review the following best practices, we’ll be referencing the following annotated image of HubSpot’s landing page: 

1. Remember your audience throughout the design process.
As we reviewed above, the first part of designing your landing page is identifying your target audience — Remember to keep them in mind throughout the design process. This way you’ll create a design and incorporate content that resonates with your audience. By doing so, you’ll have a larger chance of increasing conversions among site visitors.
2. Write a compelling and helpful headline.
Add a compelling headline to your landing page to immediately grab your visitors’ attention. A great landing page headline should be eye-catching and helpful.
For example, HubSpot’s landing page says, “There’s a better way to grow.” This headline gets visitors in the mindset of HubSpot being something they need to improve and expand their business.
Additionally, “grow better” is a saying HubSpot uses throughout all marketing materials. It’s something the company works to do every day — to help other businesses grow better. This makes the headline on-brand too (which is another best practice we’ll talk more about momentarily).
3. Include unique and engaging visuals.
Include engaging visual content on your landing page. Whether it’s a photo, video, or animation, you want your landing page design to somehow pique the interest of your visitors.
The HubSpot landing page’s visual content is unique to the company — the animated design and colors are on-brand. They also don’t take attention away from the written content on the page.
4. Keep it simple.
Although you want to include a headline, written content, CTA, and visual content on your landing page, that doesn’t mean you want your design to be too busy. In fact, you want the opposite.
Remember: Less is more when it comes to the design of your landing page (and your entire website for that matter). This keeps things clean, organized, and simple to understand and navigate for your visitors.
As you can see on HubSpot’s landing page, although the visual takes up a lot of the page, the headline, written content, and CTA are organized in a simplistic and aesthetically-pleasing way.
The navigation at the top of the page is minimalist and the live chat on the bottom right can collapse to make the landing page appear even cleaner for visitors.
5. Make sure it has a responsive design.
Remember, the chances of your website visitors, leads, and customers visiting your website via a mobile device or tablet is high. So, ensure your landing page has a responsive design that automatically changes format based on the device it’s being viewed on.
For example, here’s what HubSpot’s landing page looks like via my iPhone. As you can see, all of the content is the same and it includes the same CTA and visuals, but it’s organized and formatted in a way that fits my screen.

Source

6. Keep it on-brand.
When a visitor comes to your landing page, they should automatically know it belongs to your business. Brand your landing page in a way that complements the rest of your marketing content, logo, and colors. Your visitors should be able to immediately know your landing page belongs to your business due to the branding you incorporate.
HubSpot’s landing page does this well — it adheres to the requirements found in HubSpot’s Brand Guidelines. The HubSpot logo lives at the top of the landing page.
7. Optimize your landing page with CTAs.
Your landing page should include at least one relevant CTA, located above the fold (meaning, visitors don’t have to scroll to get to the form because it’s in view as soon they hit the page), so visitors can come to your landing page and convert within seconds. This CTA might be used to learn more about your product or service, purchase your product, sign up for a special offer, or subscribe to your email newsletter.
HubSpot’s CTA button is one of the most obvious features on the landing page. The CTA button clearly states what visitors get out of converting. Since the CTA button has the word “free” in it, it becomes even more enticing … who doesn’t love free? Lastly, it’s located above the fold of the page, so it’s visible to everyone the moment they open it.
8. Add your contact information.
Your visitors may come directly to your site in search of your contact information or determine they want to contact you for assistance or support after spending some time on your page.
To avoid wasting their time and causing them any unnecessary frustration while trying to locate your contact information, place these details on your landing page. This keeps the process of contacting you as simple and straightforward as possible for your visitors.
HubSpot has contact information listed under the navigation bar at the top of the landing page. This is a great option if you’re looking to keep your landing page as minimalist as possible.
9. Include live chat on the landing page.
If possible, include a live chat function on your landing page. This way, visitors can get the immediate assistance they want and need from the moment they open your page.
HubSpot’s landing page has a live chat feature for easy access to immediate support. The location of the collapsible chat box keeps the page looking organized.
Once you’ve designed your landing page, don’t feel locked in — this is an iterative process. For instance, feel free to test your designs among your target audience to determine which colors, CTA buttons, headlines, visuals, and written content resonate with them best (and result in the most conversions).
To do this, you may A/B test designs. After reviewing your results, you’ll know which design works best for your target audience and increases conversions — stick with that design until you have a new and improved design to share, your product line changes, or your branding is updated — then, start this process again.
Next, let’s take a look at the software options you have to get your landing page up and running so you can begin converting more visitors into customers.

Landing Page Design Software
There are many landing page design software options to choose from, all of which can help you design your entire website (not just your landing page). The following five options simplify the design process and don’t require you to have any previous web or design experience.
1. HubSpot Free Landing Page Builder

HubSpot’s free landing page builder helps you create multiple landing page designs for free. The software includes a free built-in library of responsive landing page templates and an on-page editor for adding images and copy.
When you upgrade to a paid plan, you can also create personalized CTAs, content, and forms for visitors to help you boost conversions. HubSpot also provides you with the ability to test and analyze the performance of your landing page design so you can make improvements.
2. Instapage

Instapage allows you to design and publish custom post-click landing pages with a variety of template options. The page builder is easy to use and offers the ability to A/B test different designs to determine which works best for your audience. The software also helps you optimize your landing page with dynamic text replacement so you can automate the opt-in content on your page.
3. Unbounce

Unbounce has a landing page creator with over 100 templates to choose from so your design complements your brand and content. Templates are organized by business type and include options for SaaS companies, agencies, and ecommerce businesses. Unbounce landing pages are responsive and completely customizable.
4. Mailchimp

Mailchimp allows you to design your landing page in minutes, thanks to their drag-and-drop page builder. You can also set up your other website content to populate your landing page, further simplifying the design process. Add custom CTAs to entice your target audience to convert or sign up. And, if you need help personalizing your landing page, review and reference the variety of tutorial videos Mailchimp provides users.
5. Leadpages

Leadpages is a landing page design software with a drag-and-drop builder that makes it easy to customize your landing page to suit your brand, and you can A/B test your designs with the software to efficiently determine which option converts the most visitors.
As you begin thinking about your landing page design and working through the details we’ve provided in this guide, you may feel as though you need additional design inspiration. If this is the case, check out our blog post on great landing page design.
Download dozens of free landing page examples to inspire your business’s design.
Begin Designing Your Landing Page
Your landing page is the first thing any visitor who comes to your website sees and experiences. That’s why great landing page design is so important — it’s every visitor’s first impression of your website … and possibly their first impression of your business as a whole.
A great landing page has the power to help you generate more leads, close more deals, enhance your website’s user experience, impress visitors, and ensure your site has a professional, on-brand feel. Work through these landing page design steps and best practices above to ensure your landing page accurately represents your business and makes your leads want to become customers.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August, 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Does any aspect of your job intimidate you?
For content creators, sometimes the most stressful part of the role can be opening a completely blank document to start a new project.
Whether it’s writing a blog post, designing an infographic, or creating an ebook, it’s challenging to start creating a new piece of content from scratch, especially if you’ve never done it before.
Here in the HubSpot content shop, we want to take the work out of it for you. Instead of trying to master how to create every type of content in existence, cut down on the stress and inefficiency and read about our collection of nearly 400 free, customizable content creation templates.
We’ve broken this list down by each type of content marketing template represented. Jump ahead if you specifically want:

Content Management & Calendar Templates
Written & Editorial Content Templates
Design Content Templates
Social Media Content Templates
Email Content Templates

Content Management & Calendar Templates
A Content Planning/Goal-Setting Template
(Download the content planning template here.)
HubSpot teamed up with Smart Insights to create a content planning template that will help you put together an effective content marketing plan for either your business or those of your clients. These templates will help you complete a SWOT analysis on your content marketing efforts (and develop a plan to improve them), define the right objectives and KPIs for that plan, brainstorm content ideas and map these across your funnel, and create a timeline for your content plans.

A Content Mapping Template
(Download the content mapping template here)
You know you need a content marketing strategy in place to support the success of your inbound marketing and sales organizations. But how do you get started? We’ve created a content mapping template so you can walk through your target audience’s buyer’s journey. The template helps you identify buyer personas, their challenges and needs, and to brainstorm content that provides solutions. You’ll come away from the template with tons of targeted blog post ideas to attract your audience to your site and convert them into leads.

A Buyer Persona Template
(Download the buyer persona content template here.)
Marketing with buyer personas means marketing smarter. This buyer persona template will help you easily organize your research to create your very own buyer personas. Use it to create beautiful, well-formatted buyer personas that you can share with your entire company, while learning best practices for persona research along the way.

Blog Editorial Calendar Templates
(Download the blog editorial calendar templates here.)
Having an editorial calendar for your marketing content will save you a whole lot of time — not to mention sanity — as you plan your content release timeline. We realize there isn’t a one-size-fits all solution, so we’ve created three editorial calendar templates to use at your leisure: one for Google Calendar, one for Excel, and one for Google Sheets. (Read this blog post for a step-by-step guide for using the Google Calendar template.)

Social Media Content Calendar Template
(Download the social media content calendar templates here.)
With so many different social networks to manage, a social media manager’s life becomes a lot easier when they can plan which content to share on each account — and when. This easy-to-use social media content calendar for Microsoft Excel lets you organize your social media activities far in advance. Use it to plan your updates and learn how to properly format your content for the six most popular social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and Pinterest.

On-Page SEO Template
(Download the on-page SEO template here.)
The more content you publish to your website, the more traffic sources you’ll want to prioritize. One of those sources is organic traffic. To make on-page SEO easier, we’ve rolled out a handy planning template to help you create a website structure that organizes each webpage, what its purpose is, how long it should be, and how to optimize the metadata associated with each new page you publish.

Written & Editorial Content Templates
6 Blog Post Templates
(Download the blog post templates here.)
Here’s the thing with blogging: There isn’t one, easy template you can fill in to produce a quality content offering. You need to spend some time brainstorming a title, outlining core content, and so on. Our templates will walk you through the critical steps for creating the following six blog post types:

How-To Post
List-Based Post
Pillar Post
Infographic Post
Newsjacking Post
What is? Post

We’ve seen these formats crush it on our blogs, and we would love for you to use them to hit your own goals.

18 Ebook Templates
(Download the ebook templates here.)
Year after year, marketers cite lead generation as one of their top content marketing goals for the year. If you want to succeed at lead gen, then you need content offers — like ebooks — to help you get there. Our internal creative design team went to work building 18, beautiful ebook templates — for use in either InDesign, PowerPoint, or Google Slides — for you to download, customize, and use.

4 Free Memo Templates 
(Download the memo templates here.)
Memos are essential content for effective internal communication. While they might not be customer-facing, they can align your team to ensure better, more aligned content is created by everybody on your team. 

28 Call-to-Action Templates
(Download the call-to-action templates here.)
Redesigning your call-to-action buttons can improve clickthrough rates by 1,300% or more. That means visitors will spend more time on your website, and it’ll encourage them to become leads. To help you design clickable calls-to-action, we’ve built 28 pre-designed CTAs for you. These CTAs are super easy to customize, so you don’t need to know any fancy design programs — just PowerPoint or Google Slides.
Bonus: There’s also a handy free tool in there that lets you track your CTA clicks in real time so you can see the exact number of clicks that your designs are reeling in.

A Press Release Template
(Download the press release template here.)
While public relations has adapted to be more lovable and less spammy, press releases can be effective when used correctly. Our press release template takes this into consideration and provides an inbound-optimized version. This means the template can help you script press releases and do so in a format optimized for sharing on your company blog. You can easily adapt and customize as needed for your PR needs.

Design Content Templates
195+ Visual Marketing Templates
(Download the visual marketing templates here.)
Not a designer? Not a problem. We partnered with graphic design software company Canva to create over 195 visual marketing templates that are easy-to-use, work for any industry (finance, dentistry, agriculture, law — we’ve got ’em all), and are completely free. Best of all, they’re ready to edit in Canva’s online design tool, which is included for free with this set of templates. The templates include…

Infographics templates
Facebook ad templates
Facebook post templates
Twitter post templates
Email header templates
Blog title templates
Facebook cover photo templates
Twitter header templates
LinkedIn cover photos templates

15 Infographic Templates
(Download the infographic templates here.)
We’ve created fifteen, pre-designed infographic templates right in PowerPoint (+ five bonus illustrator templates). That way, marketers can skip the frustrations and start creating the graphics right away. Within each template, we even provide guides to teach you how to use the templates effectively.

 

Social Media Content Templates
50 Social Media Graphics Templates
(Download the social media graphics templates here.)
Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content. But we know well that creating visual content takes more time and resources — which why we’ve created these 50 customizable templates for you. These templates are in Google Slides, so they’re very easy to edit — no Photoshop skills required. Simply customize the text on an image, save it, and post it to social media.

11 Facebook Cover Photo Templates for Businesses
(Download the Facebook cover photo templates here.)
With how frequently businesses change and improve on their Facebook pages today, it’s crucial that you have new material in the pipeline. Double-down on your Facebook designs with these 11 templates dedicated to your Facebook cover photo. Get these designs by clicking the link above or the graphic below.

Email Content Templates
15 Email Templates for Marketing and Sales
(Download the email templates for marketing and sales here.)
Did you know that workers spend almost one third of their time at work reading and replying to emails? There are many ways you can streamline your inbox to save time, but you ultimately will still have to create and send emails. That’s where these content templates come in. We’ve written the copy for 15 emails marketers and sales reps are likely to send over and over again to save you time and get you results.

Email Marketing Planning Template
(Download the email marketing planning template here.)
Give purpose to and set goals for your email marketing planning with this free template. Available via Excel and Google Sheets, this template can help your marketing team plan out an effective email marketing campaign. 

There you have it, content marketers: nearly 400 templates to help you start creating content easily and quickly and further your inbound success.

 

From P&G’s “Thank You, Mom” to American Express’s “Small Business Saturday” to Dos Equis’s “Most Interesting Man in the World,” marketing campaigns have a way of sticking with us long after an impression or purchase.
Why is that? Well, campaigns make companies memorable. They promote a focused effort that guides consumers towards a desired action. They also give brands identity, personality, and emotion.
Marketing campaigns can do the same for your business. That’s why we’ve compiled this guide — to provide a clear, concise approach to your next campaign.
Keep reading to get started or use the links below to jump ahead.

Marketing campaigns don’t include all marketing efforts for a brand. In fact, the word “campaign” is defined as “a connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result.”
That’s why politicians campaign for a specific election and militaries campaign for a specific battle.
Great marketing campaigns follow a consistent theme and promote a single or focused idea or goal (as we’ll discuss.)
For example, every Nike advertisement you see or hear on the way to work probably isn’t part of a campaign. But, if you see a Nike billboard, scroll past a Nike sponsored Instagram post, and receive a Nike email all promoting the same product … you’ve definitely witnessed a marketing campaign.
You’ve also probably heard the word “campaign” used for both marketing and advertising. What’s the difference?
Advertising is a component of marketing. Marketing is how a company plans to raise awareness of their brand and convince customers to make a purchase, while advertising is the process of creating the persuasive messages around these broad goals.
In terms of campaigns, an advertising campaign might be a facet of a bigger marketing campaign strategy. For example, if Nike were campaigning about the release of a new product, their advertising would be one piece of their broader marketing efforts, which might also encompass email, social media, and paid search.
So, campaigns are focused, acute marketing efforts to reach a singular goal. Despite their simple definition, marketing campaigns can take a lot of work. Keep reading to learn how to create and promote a successful one.

Marketing Campaign Components
Multiple components go into the planning, execution, and benefiting from a stellar marketing campaign.  

Goals & KPIs: Identify what the end goal of your campaign is, quantify it, and explain how you’ll measure this result. For example, your content creation campaign might be measured by organic traffic, with each post goaled on driving 1,000 views per month and 10 new contacts, and metrics being measured in Google Analytics and Looker.

Channels: Where will your content and messaging be distributed? For example, if you’re running a social media marketing campaign, you might specifically prioritize growing the channels most relevant to your audience and omit those where you’re least likely to grow a loyal following.

Budget: Not all marketing campaigns require an incremental budget, but many still do. Factor in agency, advertising, and freelance costs, if appropriate, and factor these numbers into any ROI analysis for your campaign.

Content Format(s): Determine what kind of content you will be creating to fuel the campaign. It’s common for marketers to include multiple content formats in a singular campaign. For example, a branding campaign could include video ads, press releases, and guest blogs.

Team: Who are the individuals you’re relying on to get the job done? Before kickstarting your campaign, make sure you have a roster of people who can help you with copywriting, website building, design, budget planning, video, or whatever elements you’re employing in the campaign.

Design: Lastly, a great marketing campaign has a noteworthy design. Whether it’s a sleek website design, a logo at the end of a video commercial, or an interactive infographic, make sure your design is professional and fitting for the purpose of the campaign.

How to Create a Successful Marketing Campaign
Creating an entire campaign might be complex, but it’s a pretty straightforward process — if you do it correctly. Planning your campaign is just as important as designing the fun stuff, such as the creative advertisements and conversion assets.
Before you create what your audience will see, you must consider what you want them to do when they see it … or read it or hear it. (You get the gist.)
I’ve organized this section as a marketing campaign template of sorts. All you need to do is answer the questions — as accurately and in-depth as possible — to ensure a thorough, successful approach to your next marketing campaign.
Also, don’t skip ahead! Your responses to previous questions will guide your ideas and answers as you move along.

Planning Your Marketing Campaign
This step is crucial to the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. The planning stage will determine how you measure success and will guide your team and campaign when things (inevitably) go awry.
Featured Resource

Free Marketing Plan Generator

1. What’s the purpose and goal of your campaign?
Let’s start simple. Why are you running this campaign? What would you like your campaign to accomplish for your business?

If you’re having trouble defining your campaign purpose, start broad. Take a look at the goals below. Which one is most aligned with your own?

Promote a new product or service
Increase brand awareness

Gather customer feedback or content
Generate revenue
Boost user engagement
Advertise an upcoming event

This is hardly a definitive list, but it gives you an idea of some general business goals that a campaign could help reach.
For the sake of demonstration, I’m going to move forward with the third goal: Gather customer feedback or content. We’ll use this example throughout this guide.
Now, let’s take our broad campaign purpose and turn it into a SMART goal. To classify as “SMART”, a goal must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. SMART goals keep you accountable and provide you with a concrete goal for which to aim.
Continuing with our example from above, turning our broad purpose into a SMART goal would look like:
“The goal of my marketing campaign is to gather customer feedback or content.” vs.
“The goal of my marketing campaign is to gather user-generated content from 100 customers via a branded hashtag on Instagram featuring our new product line by December 31, 2020.”
The goal is Specific (user-generated content), Measurable (100 customers), Attainable (via a branded Instagram hashtag), Relevant (featuring the new product line), and Timely (by December 31, 2020).
See how my broad campaign purpose instantly transforms into an actionable, attainable goal? Determining such distinct measures for your campaign is tough — I get it. But making the hard decisions now will make your life — and campaign — much easier in the future.
Featured Resource

Free SMART Goal-Setting Template

2. How will you measure your campaign?
The answer(s) to this question will look different for everyone. You might answer this with “email open rates,” “new Facebook Page likes,” “product pre-orders,” or all of the above.
These answers will depend on your overarching campaign goal. Here are a few examples of metrics based on the campaign objectives I mentioned above.

For promoting a new product or service: Pre-orders, sales, upsells
For increasing brand awareness: Sentiment, social mentions, press mentions
For gathering customer feedback or content: Social mentions, engagement
For generating revenue: Leads, sales, upsells
For boosting user engagement: Blog shares, social shares, email interactions
For advertising an upcoming event: Ticket sales, vendor or entertainment bookings, social mentions

If your campaign involves multiple marketing efforts (such as social media, direct mail, and radio ads), it’s wise to define how you’ll measure your campaign on each medium. (Read more about these channel-specific metrics below.)
For example, let’s say I was running my user-generated content (UGC) campaign on social media, email, and on our blog.
First, I’d define my key performance indicators (KPIs) for each medium, which may look like:

Instagram engagements (likes and comments) and profile tags
Email open rates and click-through rates
Blog views, click-throughs, and social shares

Then, I’d define my primary campaign KPI: Instagram branded hashtag mentions.
While the above KPIs indicate how well my campaign is reaching and engaging my audience, my primary KPI tells me how close I am to reaching my SMART goal.
Lastly, let’s think about another question: What does “success” look like for your company? Sure, it’s exciting to reach a predetermined goal, but that’s not always possible. What (outside of your goal) would constitute success for you (or serve as a milestone)? What would make you feel like your campaign is worthwhile if it doesn’t involve meeting your goal?
When determining how you’ll measure your campaign, consider setting up some checkpoints along the way. If your campaign involves boosting brand awareness and your goal is to reach 50 PR mentions by the end of the year, set up some benchmark notifications at 10, 25, and 40 mentions.
Not only will it remind you to keep pushing toward your ultimate goal, but it’ll boost morale within your team and remind you that your time and money investments are paying off.
3. Who are you targeting?
Ah, the beloved “target audience” section. This is one of my very favorite things to talk about because your alignment with your audience can make or break the success of anything marketing or sales-related … especially a campaign.
Imagine constructing a bulletproof marketing campaign only to be met with crickets. *chirp* *chirp*
In that case, you might think you chose the wrong marketing medium or that your creative wasn’t witty enough. Regardless of what it might be, all of those decisions come back to one thing: Your audience.
The first step to answering this question is figuring out what stage of the buyer’s journey your campaign is targeting. Are you trying to bring in new customers, or are you attempting to gather feedback from existing clients? Are you marketing your brand to those who recognize it, or are you introducing a new brand identity altogether?
Your marketing message will vary depending on whether your campaign audience is in the Awareness, Consideration, or Decision stage. It’s important to note that a marketing campaign can include collateral for people in various stages of their journey. For example, while your campaign might target current customers, it might also bring brand awareness to new consumers.
Next, identify your audience interests and pain points. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team to better understand your audience.

What are my audience’s general interests? What magazines do they read? What TV shows do they watch? How do they spend their free time?
Where does my audience hang out online? For what purpose do they use Instagram, Facebook, and other networks? Do they engage or merely browse?
What kind of content gets my audience’s attention? Do they respond to straightforward sales messages, or would they rather consume witty, humorous content? What cultural references would they understand?
What kind of problems do they have that my product, service, or brand could solve?

Becoming well-acquainted with your campaign audience will help you confidently answer these questions and any others that may arise during the campaign.
Featured Resource

Buyer Persona Generator

4. What’s the concept of your campaign? Who and how will you create your marketing? 
It’s time to talk about the campaign itself. At this point, you know why you’re running a campaign, how you’ll measure it, and who it’s targeting. Now, let’s talk about what the campaign will look like … literally.
Marketing campaigns are like their own brand. They require a mission, a vision, and a visual identity. Great campaigns are an offshoot of their parent brand, both visually and creatively — they stay consistent with the business brand but maintain their own identity.
When creating their campaign assets, some businesses use an in-house team while others opt for an agency. Another alternative is hiring a freelancer or contractor to complete a specific portion of the project, such as the copy or design.
Depending on your specific campaign goals, I’d recommend starting with your in-house team and moving forward from there. They are likely the experts on that portion of your business and can speak to what your campaign needs to succeed.
Following the example of my Instagram UGC campaign, I’d start by consulting with my social media team. They’d be the most familiar with what Instagram content performs well and what our Instagram audience likes to see. From there, I could assign the campaign to them, or outsource the creative part to an agency or freelancer.
This step will likely take the longest since you’ll be creating your campaign concept from scratch. Next, we’ll dive into how you’ll distribute your campaign assets and connect with your audience.
Featured Resource

Market Research Kit

Distributing Your Marketing Campaign
This stage is all about the public-facing part of your campaign, including what your audience will see and when. If you’ve combed through the previous section, you should have all the answers you need to guide you through this step.
5. How will you reach your audience?
Let’s think about what type of marketing your campaign will use. This choice depends on your audience preference, budget, and brand engagement levels, among other factors.
Take a look at the current media channels you use to promote your company. Which perform the best? Which allow you to pay for advertisements? Which have the best engagement? Most importantly, where are your customers hanging out?
Also, while using multiple media is highly recommended, it probably wouldn’t be wise to publish your campaign on a brand new medium on which your business has no presence. So, stick to those marketing channels on which you’re already killing it.
Need a few ideas? Take a look at the PESO model, which breaks up distribution channels into Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned.

Source
Start by choosing two or three channels for your campaign. For example, I might promote my UGC Instagram campaign via social media (on Instagram, of course), email, and through my blog. I’d then pay to boost my social media campaign posts so they’re viewed by more of my audience.
Depending on your campaign goal, certain channels might not make sense. In terms of my UGC campaign, it wouldn’t make sense to invest in print advertisements or direct mail since the campaign is purely digital and my audience is mostly online. On the other hand, multinational product launch campaigns would probably involve most (if not all) of the media choices above. They’d want to reach the widest audience, both in-person and online.
Remember that you’ll need to alter or expand your marketing assets to fit whichever media channels you choose. Your campaign images, video, and copy might vary between social media, email, print, etc.
Lastly, even if you choose not to actively promote on a certain medium, you can always optimize it to at least mention your campaign. For example, you can update your social media bios, change your email signature, install a website header notification bar, add small calls-to-action (keep reading for more on these) at the bottom of blog posts, and more. These efforts don’t require much extra work or resources but they promote your campaign nonetheless.
6. How and when will you publish?
This section is all about timing. Establishing a deadline for your campaign (the Timely part of your SMART goal) gives you a much better idea of when, how, and how often you’ll promote it.
First, build a general campaign timeline. On a calendar, mark your campaign start date and deadline. This gives you parameters to work within.
Next, take a look at your marketing assets and chosen promotional marketing channels. Based on your people and financial resources, how often can you afford to post and promote your campaign content? Create a promotional calendar for each marketing channel. Decide on a cadence for each channel and map out your scheduled posts, emails, etc. on your calendar.
Why should you map your campaign visually? It’ll help you evenly disperse your campaign promotions and publish equally on each medium. It’ll also give you an idea of where your time and energy is going so that you can look back when assessing the effectiveness of your campaign.
If your promotional calendar seems very, very full, don’t fret. Social media and email scheduling tools can alleviate the pressure of posting daily. Check out tools like HubSpot, Buffer, and MailChimp to help you schedule and manage your campaign promotions.
The promotional stage is all about getting your campaign in front of your audience. But, how are you supposed to get your audience to follow the purpose of your campaign? Next, we’ll discuss how to optimize your campaign to convert customers.

Converting Customers Through Your Marketing Campaign
So, campaigns are a connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result. We’ve talked about the “connected” part, and we’ve covered the “operations” part. This stage — the conversion stage — is all about how your campaign can lead to that “particular result.”
7. How will your marketing drive the desired action?
Even if your campaign is effective and drives a ton of traffic, it still needs to complete its desired action. By “the desired action,” I’m talking about that SMART goal you initially defined. Let’s take a moment and reiterate that goal.
For my sample campaign, my SMART goal was “to gather user-generated content from 100 customers via a branded hashtag on Instagram featuring our new product line by December 31, 2018.”
This step is all about calibrating your marketing efforts and channels to lead your customers to complete your desired goal. This is done through conversion assets like calls-to-action, landing pages, and lead forms.
These assets can be used separately or in conjunction with one another, such as featuring a lead form on a landing page, or creating a call-to-action asking your audience to fill out a form.

Calls-to-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) is a direct ask of your audience. It’s an image or line of text that prompts your visitors, leads, and customers to take action, and it’s absolutely crucial to your campaign success.
CTAs cut through the noise of today’s marketing and advertising world and give your audience a clear directive. But, there’s no one-size-fits-all for CTAs, especially in the case of marketing campaigns.
Your campaign CTA can’t simply ask them to complete your goal. You must also consider how your audience would benefit from completing your action and include that in your CTA.
If my UGC campaign CTA was “post a picture of our product with this #hashtag,” my campaign would seem uninspired and a tad bossy. CTAs might be direct, but they’re also meant to encourage, inspire, and convince.
In this case, a better CTA would be “Share a photo featuring our product and this #hashtag, and you might be featured on our Instagram page and next promotional video!”
The same benefit-driven CTA applies to product launches, brand awareness campaigns, upsell efforts, and other types of campaigns. Your audience won’t complete your “desired action” unless they understand how it benefits them, too.
Featured Resource

50 Free Call-to-Action Templates

Landing Pages
Landing pages give your campaign a home, a destination. They are a dedicated space for your audience to visit and learn more about what your campaign consists of and why they should participate. It also sets your campaign apart from the rest of your website and content.
Your landing page should be ripe with benefits for your audience, especially the unique value proposition (UVP) of your campaign. Don’t forget to repeat your CTA and make it clear how your audience can engage (i.e. with a download or by filling out a form).
High-converting landing pages also contain social proof and a variety of marketing assets like images, strong copy, and video.
High-converting landing pages also contain social proof and a variety of marketing assets like images, strong copy, and video.
Featured Resources

77 Brilliant Examples of Landing Pages, Blogs, and Homepages
How to Optimize Landing Pages for Lead Generation

Lead Forms
Lead forms are web forms dedicated to capturing information about a visitor. By filling out the form, the visitor then turns into a lead. Lead forms are not necessary for all campaigns (they wouldn’t do much good for my UGC Instagram campaign, for example), but they can be great assets for most others, such as product pre-orders and content offer downloads.
Lead forms transform anonymous website visitors into hard data you can use to make sales and learn more about your audience. They put your landing page to work. Try our Free Online Form Builder to build out your campaign form.
8. What metrics can you monitor?
The campaign effectiveness metrics you’ll monitor will depend on what type of marketing campaign you’re running and what channels you’ve chosen. This section merely serves as a baseline list to give you an idea of what to watch.
Also, it’s tempting to focus on vanity metrics like generated traffic, click-through rate, and impressions. A bump in these is definitely a good thing, but since they don’t necessarily indicate a bump in revenue, they can’t be the only metrics used to measure the effectiveness of your campaign.

Here’s are some metrics to watch per marketing channel.
Email Metrics

Click-through rate
Bounce rate
Conversion rate

Social Media (Paid) Metrics

Click-through rate
Conversion rate
Cost per click
Cost per-conversion

Social Media (Organic) Metrics

Passive engagements (likes and shares)
Active engagements (comments)
Follows
Click-through rate

Lead Magnet/Content Offer Metrics

Opt-in rate
Cost per opt-in
Follow-up email open rate
Opt-in conversion rate

Display Ads/Paid Media Metrics

Cost per thousand impressions
Click-through rate
Conversion rate
Cost per conversion

Direct Mail Metrics

Response rate
Cost per conversion
Average revenue per conversion

Content/SEO Metrics

Click-through rate
Bounce rate
Time on page
Page scroll depth
Conversion rate

This may seem like a lot of metrics (depending on your campaign), but keeping an eye on these numbers can help you assess your campaign accurately and better understand how to improve.

Assessing Your Marketing Campaign
The post-campaign stage determines your success just as much as the planning stage. Measuring and analyzing your campaign data can provide unique insight into your audience, marketing channels, and budget. It can also tell you exactly how (or how not) to run your next campaign.
9. How will you know if your campaign worked?
Well, it depends on how you define “worked.” The easy answer to this question is whether or not your campaign met your initial SMART goal. If it did, great! If it didn’t, it can still be considered successful.
For example, if your goal was to increase organic blog views by 100K, any bump in views would be considered successful. But there’s a difference in a campaign that works and a campaign that’s worthwhile. A worthwhile campaign gives you an ROI that’s proportionate to the time and energy you put into it.
While it’s okay to celebrate any bump in pre-orders, leads, views, or engagements, don’t assume that’s enough. There’s a reason the very first thing to do is set a campaign goal. Sticking to that goal and calibrating your investment will ensure your campaign is worthwhile.
10. What will you do with the campaign data?
This step helps maximize your campaign’s business impact. When you analyze and apply your data, its value increases tenfold — not only did it help you measure and assess your campaign results, but it’ll also give you direction and clarity on your audience, marketing methods, creative prowess, and more.
Let’s return to my UGC Instagram campaign. Of course, images shared by my customers are helpful because they help me gather user content for my social channels and they promote my product to my audience’s followers. But this “data” also provides insight into who my audience is, when and how often they post on Instagram, what language they use, and how they use my product (assuming it’s the same as in the shared photo).
See how my campaign “data” provides more value than simply reaching my campaign goal? The same can go for your data. Whether you collect lead information, pre-orders, social engagements, or offer downloads, your data can equip you to not only meet your campaign goal but also expand your marketing efforts as a whole.
Lastly, spend time with your team reviewing your campaign. Ask yourselves questions like:

What could’ve been done differently?
How could we have saved money?
For anything that went wrong, why do we think it went wrong?
What did we learn about our audience or marketing channels?
What kind of feedback could we gather from participants or customers?

Final Thoughts
So, marketing campaigns involve a lot of information, decision-making, ideas, and observation. But the process of creating and running one isn’t as scary as you thought, was it?
If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at some great campaign examples below. Now that you know what goes into each one, you might have a better idea of how to build one for yourself.

Great Marketing Campaign Examples (and Why They’re So Great)
This wouldn’t be a HubSpot Ultimate Guide if I didn’t show you some examples from the pros. Sometimes it’s helpful to see concepts at work, and that’s why I collected some of the best below.
Cheerios’s #GoodGoesRound
General Mills ran a non-profit campaign called Good Goes Round via their Cheerios brand, lobbying to raise enough money to fund one million meals. The campaign featured its own landing page, video marketing assets, and hashtag (#GoodGoesRound), separating it from its “parent” brand and making it shareable among its audience. They also paid to promote the Good Goes Round URL on Google.

 Apple’s “Shot on iPhone”
Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” series highlights the high-quality videography and photography that customers can capture on the iPhone X. It’s a product launch campaign that focused on one specific feature of the new Apple smartphone. This campaign was unique, because it’s similar to a user-generated campaign but was also promoted heavily by the brand itself. Apple launched its own Instagram account to share the #ShotoniPhone content, collaborated with professional photographers and videographers, and ran official TV advertisements. 

Metro Trains’ “Dumb Ways to Die”
“Dumb Ways to Die” was Australia’s PSA campaign that took the advertising world by storm. Created in Melbourne, the campaign was Metro Trains’ effort to encourage railway safety. The campaign was initially shared on social media in 2012 but went viral soon after.
According to CampaignLive, “The musical video, which shows animated characters dying in amusing circumstances, has already racked up 50m views on YouTube, over 3.2m shares on Facebook, been retweeted over 100,000 times on Twitter and become the third most viral ad of all time. The music track was popular, too, charting on iTunes in 28 countries.”
The campaign also has its own Wikipedia page and live website on which visitors can play games or shop for toys and apparel. 

Pepsi’s “The Pepsi Challenge”
During the height of the infamous cola wars, Pepsi cemented its place as the only alternative to Coca Cola with The Pepsi Challenge. With a series of commercials pitting these two beverages against one another, Pepsi was able to gain substantial market share in its market – which is why the debate still goes on today. 

Hess’ “The Hess Truck’s Here”
Is it really the Holiday season if you don’t hear “The Hess Truck’s back, and it’s better than ever!”?
An ongoing Christmas campaign, The Hess Truck commercial hooks viewers in with its familiar jingle before introducing them to the new design and features of each year’s addition. It’s the perfect mix of looking back and ahead – and why we look forward to Hess’ new commercial heading into each December. 

Paranormal Activity’s “Test Screening”
The promotion for this found footage horror film switched the camera from the audience’s perspective to the audience itself. By highlighting actual reactions from a test screening and promising a terrifying theatrical experience, turning an initial $15,000 budget into a $193 million box office success. It became the most profitable movie ever made. 

If you’re looking for more excellent campaign examples, check out these other HubSpot blog posts:

14 Offbeat, Extreme, and Downright Unusual Ways Brands Have Promoted Their Products
11 of the Best Olympic Marketing Campaigns, Ads, Commercials & Promotions This Year
Converse, Old Spice & More: 6 Famous Brands That Made Inspiring Comebacks
7 Feel-Good Examples of ‘Joy Marketing’ Campaigns
Throwback Thursday: 7 Old Marketing Campaigns We Miss

Over to You
Marketing campaigns aren’t easy, but they’re valuable and integral to growing a successful brand and business. Campaigns set apart certain deliverables from general promotional efforts and touch your audience in creative and exciting ways. If you’re not sure where to start, consider what would be valuable to your audience … and go from there. Your audience is, after all, the lifeblood of your campaigns and company.

Emotional intelligence has long been discussed as a critical component of leadership.
The ability to regulate your own emotions — as well as the emotions of others’ — has proven invaluable on an individual level.
Consider, for instance, the supreme importance of having a boss who doesn’t cry or yell every time a meeting doesn’t go her way.
Alternatively, think about how important it is to have a leader who encourages positive, effective conflict resolution between teams when misalignment or miscommunication occurs.
All of which is to say: emotional intelligence matters.
But Kristin Harper, CEO of Driven to Succeed and author of The Heart of a Leader: 52 Emotional Intelligence Insights to Advance Your Career, takes it one step further, arguing that emotional intelligence can (and should) be fostered by brands, not just individuals.
Here, let’s dive into how you can nurture and develop emotional intelligence for your brand as a whole — and why it matters in the first place.
[Note: the italic headings are the questions we asked Harper. The subsequent text is Harper’s direct quotes.]

1. How can brands nurture and develop emotional intelligence?
Let’s start first with the definition of emotional intelligence for individuals, which is the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
EI is a combination of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
For brands, I define EI using four pillars:

Brand Consciousness: Defining the brand identity including its attributes, values, heritage, tone of voice, and personality in a way that resonates with your target audience and distinguishes itself from key competitors

Brand Management: Providing relevant, predictable brand assets and experiences that delight the target audience, address their unmet needs, and build loyalty

Customer Intimacy: Taking a genuine interest in the challenges, concerns, feelings, perspectives, and unmet needs of its customers and stakeholders to build an emotional connection

Customer Engagement: Activating marketing campaigns while engaging in thoughtful, intentional, two-way dialogues with customers

Whether people or brands, the most effective way to develop emotional intelligence is through unbiased curiosity. Spend time learning, observing, asking questions, and discussing what’s on people’s hearts and minds. Doing so in a non-judgmental way will increase empathy, emotional intelligence, and naturally lead to more relevant products, services, and advertising.
2. How can a brand learn to measure its emotional intelligence? Are there any quantitative or qualitative opportunities to measure EI in companies?
It’s not uncommon for mature brands to measure brand consciousness through equity studies.
In addition to awareness, performance attributes, brand imagery, and purchase behavior, these quantitative studies can also measure customers’ feelings and attachment towards a brand and how it changes over time.
However, in a competitive marketplace where consumers are evolving, the pace of business is accelerating, and there is more data than people know what to do with, it’s important for brand teams to complement their brain power with heart and intuition on a regular basis.
This is best done through lively, meaningful conversations with your customers or target audience. At Driven to Succeed, we offer online Community Dialogues, where we uncover deep insights around brand perceptions and opportunities for growth.
3. Which brands stand out to you as examples of ones with high emotional intelligence?
The insurance industry’s response to the economic challenges caused by COVID-19 is a prime example of brands demonstrating high emotional intelligence.
From Allstate to Nationwide and beyond, multiple insurance brands have adapted to these unprecedented times by issuing premium refunds, deferring payments, and communicating with customers with an on-time message and an empathetic tone of voice.

Image Source
4. How can emotional intelligence impact a business’ bottom line? In other words, why does it matter for brands to try to develop and demonstrate emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence leads to empathy, action, and increased market share for brands.

When a brand is in-tune with their customers, they can develop and charge a premium for innovative products and services, deliver more relevant advertising, and engage with customers in a way that is distinct and preferred versus their competitors.

Ultimately, demonstrating emotional intelligence builds loyalty, increases market share and helps to drive top and bottom-line growth.
Kristin Harper is CEO of Driven to Succeed, LLC which provides market research, brand strategy consulting, and keynote speaking on leadership and emotional intelligence. She is also author of The Heart of a Leader: 52 Emotional Intelligence Insights to Advance Your Career.

Owning an e-commerce business means understanding that sales boosts are seasonal. Holiday sales can make or break your business. In particular, the holiday period from Black Friday through New Year’s can be one of your most profitable, so preparing your small business for holiday sales means maximizing your profits. If you think about all the…
The post 8 Ways to Prepare Your Small Business For Holiday Sales appeared first on Benchmarkemail.