Category: Marketing Automation

This is my first time taking the exam. Comparing Marketo prep notes from previous years, it seemed like that made some minor changes. I went through the study guide on the website, core concepts II as suggested and did some practice tests. I was wondering if others has taken the exam and what did you guys think about the exam? Any study tips or things to look out for? Thank you in advance!
submitted by /u/natseason [link] [comments]

In an ideal world, you’d know just how your product or business idea would be perceived before it’s released. This knowledge could help you make alterations to what you’re offering for the best possible reception, and better inform your sales projections and marketing strategy.
Sadly, you’ll never know exactly how what you’re selling will be received by your target audience, which is why companies conduct market research.
But, while mass data collection through surveys provides you with necessary quantitative information, it doesn’t offer as much qualitative insight into your target market’s view or opinion of what you’re selling.
This is where a focus group comes in.
So, what is a focus group, and how can it help you navigate your market research? Let’s explore those two questions, next.

What is a focus group?
In the context of market research for businesses, a focus group is a cohort of individuals participating in a guided discussion about a business, brand, product, and/or service.
Typically, a focus group is facilitated by representatives from the business and is composed of individuals in the business’s target market who share their thoughts and opinions on the topic or offering in question.

A focus group is usually moderated by a representative or representatives of the company, who ask 5-10 questions to the participants over the course of 30-60 minutes, with another facilitator keeping notes on the focus group questionnaire.
Follow Along With a Free Focus Group Questionnaire Template

HubSpot’s Market Research Kit includes a questionnaire template to use in your focus groups, as well as four more templates to aid you in your market research efforts. You can download the kit here to help you plan your focus group and market research.
You can also read more about the process of conducting an effective focus group in our blog post, How to Run a Focus Group for Your Business.

Next, let’s explore the pros and cons of a focus group. 
The Pros of a Focus Group
1. You get the story behind the data.
In focus groups, qualitative data takes center stage. Survey data is unbelievably powerful, but it’s hard to understand the rationale for the numbers without context. Focus groups are a way to understand how someone truly feels about your business and provide the why behind the data.
If someone answers a question in a way that interests you, you’ll have the chance to dig deeper. Ask “Why?” See how the other participants feel about the specific answer. Gauge facial expressions and tone of voice to see how people react to what you’re talking about. You’ll end up with the emotional input from your target market that your surveys may not be able to provide.
2. Focus groups are interactive.
Those responding to a survey or a questionnaire can’t pick up your products or use them, but they can in a focus group. If the subject of your focus group is tangible, observe and ask questions about how participants use the product and feel about the packaging and design.
Here, you’ll see your product through the end-users’ eyes, which can help you realize something you hadn’t before.
3. They’re more efficient than interviews.
Interviewing individuals can take much longer than running focus groups with the same amount of people. Say you want to interview 100 people, and each interview or focus group takes one hour. Getting the opinions of those 100 people would take 100 hours if interviewed, but only 20 hours if participants were broken up into groups of five.
This way, you can get qualitative feedback from multiple people in a shorter amount of time — an enormous time saver, especially if most of your participants think alike.
The Cons of a Focus Group
1. They’re not entirely representative.
What you gain from depth of opinion from focus groups, you lose in sample size.
Because focus groups take longer than surveys, you’ll hear from dozens or hundreds of people in more time than it could take you to hear from thousands of people through your own surveys or exploring secondary research, such as previously conducted studies or surveys.
This constricts the amount of people whose input you’ll receive, which means your findings may not represent the opinions of your entire target market.
2. They could encourage groupthink.
Have you ever been in a meeting where one or two people voice an idea you disagree with, but everyone else agrees with the idea before you have the chance to say your piece?
As a result, maybe you decide to go along with the idea … even though you’re not its biggest fan?
That’s called groupthink, and it happens when a group rallies behind a vocalized idea that not everyone believes is correct for the sake of moving on or attempting to avoid a conflict.
Focus groups can quickly turn into one or two participants providing the bulk of the answers while the other four or five silently nod in agreement. The problem is you’re now only getting input from two participants – not the entire focus group, as intended.
You can avoid this by calling on specific group members to answer in-depth, but some may be reluctant due to shyness or disinterest.
3. Your focus group moderators may have confirmation bias.
Focus group moderators are often attached to the project in question, and can come into the session with an idea of where they think it will — or want it to — go.
For example, one moderator may want a product to be priced, packaged, or colored a certain way, and can lead the discussion towards that conclusion. This is known as observer dependency.
For instance, let’s say one moderator wants a product to be colored blue, and poses the open question to the group: “What color should this be?”
After everyone responds — and no one says blue — she might ask, “What about blue, would that work?” Everyone silently nods, and she notes that the group agreed blue would be a good color, despite that being far from the perfect truth.
To overcome this, focus group moderators should be explicitly instructed to put their personal preferences aside and act as an objective group facilitator. You could also work with a market research firm, which typically has less interest in the product or subject than those from the business who are actually creating it.
Focus groups may not be the most efficient source of gathering data, but when used appropriately, they can put a face and an emotion behind the statistics and quantitative data you’ve gathered to better inform your business, marketing, and product development.
Remember, focus groups are most effective when moderators organize their thoughts ahead of time and take notes during the session on a focus group questionnaire — which you can access for free here in our Market Research Kit.

Id like to have controlled the URL Categories which are empty of product, anyone can help me? ​ thanks
submitted by /u/Kardushian [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/timothrua07 [link] [comments]

Have you ever accidentally wasted an entire day in Photoshop?
I have. It’s not like you start out aimlessly. You have a simple goal in mind, like cropping a photo, improving the resolution, or changing the size of the canvas. But then, you look at how many options there are — and trying to figure out which buttons to press to execute a single task suddenly turns into an attempt to solve The Riddle of the Sphinx.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just press a button, and magically, do what you wanted to do? Well, we’ve got good news for you: It turns out there are a wealth of Photoshop shortcuts that pretty much work just that way.
By pressing a few keys on your computer keyboard at the same time, you can select tools, manipulate images and layers, and even make adjustments to your project’s canvas. But if we’re being honest, if you’re just starting out with the software, there might be far too many Photoshop shortcuts to remember them all. That’s why we created this guide — for you to bookmark and return to next time your design project leaves you stumped.
Note: All of these shortcuts can be accessed on PC and Mac, but sometimes, they’re different on each operating system. We’ve included both types below, and in the cases where they might be different, Mac instructions appear in italicized parentheses. Also, in these formulas, the plus sign (+) is present only to represent the combination of key commands. On occasion, it might be part of the command itself, like when you press the plus sign to zoom into a part of an image, but otherwise, don’t press the plus sign between commands.

65 Photoshop Shortcuts to Save You Time

Getting Set Up
Choosing the Right Tools
Using the Brush Tool
Using the Marquee Tool (for Slicing/Selecting)
Using Different Blending Options
Manipulating Layers & Objects
Saving Your Work for Later

Getting Set Up
You’d think setting up your content in Photoshop would be second nature. But sometimes, the shortcuts to change the background size, or zoom into your project aren’t what you think. Here are some of the most crucial fundamental shortcuts to know:
1) Control + Alt + i (Command + Option + i ) = Change the image size.
2) Control + Alt + c (Command + Option + c ) = Change canvas size.
3) Control + + (Command + + ) = Zoom in.
4) Control + – (Command + – ) = Zoom out.
Control + ‘ (Command + ‘ ) = Show or hide the grid, the automatically-generated horizontal and vertical lines that help align objects to the canvas.

Choosing the Right Tools
These shortcuts will activate different groups of tools, like “Lasso,” “Brush,” or “Spot Healing Brush.” Within these tools, though, there are different functions. Under the “Magic Wand” tool group, for example, you have the option to execute a new selection or add and subtract from a current one.
Each one of these tools has a keyboard shortcut, and we’ve outlined some of them below.
5) v = Pointer, a.k.a. Move Tool  
6) w = Magic Wand
7) m = Rectangular Marquee, a.k.a. the Select Tool
8) l = Lasso
9) i = Eyedropper
10) c = Crop
11) e = Eraser
12) u = Rectangle
13) t = Horizontal Type
14) b = Brush
15) y = History Brush
16) j = Spot Healing Brush
17) g = Gradient
18) a = Path Selection
19) h = Hand
20) r = Rotate View
21) p = Pen
22) s = Clone Stamp
23) o = Dodge
24) z = Zoom Tool
25) d = Default Foreground and Background Colors
26) x = Switch Foreground and Background Colors
27) q = Edit in Quick Mask Mode
28) x = Change Screen Mode

Using the Brush Tool
With the brush settings, you can change the size, shape, and transparency of your brush strokes to achieve a number of different visual effects. To use these keyboard shortcuts, first select the Brush tool by pressing b.
29) , or . = Select previous or next brush style.
30) Shift + , or . = Select first or last brush style used.
31) Caps Lock or Shift + Caps Lock (Caps Lock) = Display precise crosshair for brushes.
32) Shift + Alt + p (Shift + Option + p) = Toggle airbrush option.

Using the Marquee Tool (for Slicing/Selecting)
When used correctly, the marquee tool will let you select individual elements, entire graphics, and determine what is copied, cut, and pasted into your graphics.
To use these keyboard shortcuts, first select the Marquee tool by pressing m.
33) Control (Command) = Toggle between Slice tool and Slice Selection tool.
34) Shift + drag = Draw square slice.
35) Alt + drag (Option + drag) = Draw from center outward.
36) Shift + alt + drag (Shift + option + drag) = Draw square slice from center outward.
37) Spacebar + drag = Reposition the slice while creating the slice.

Using Different Blending Options
Blending options include a number of features to enhance the look of your graphic. You can always choose a blending option by going to the top menu bar, under Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options. Or, you can double-click any layer to bring up the options for that particular layer.
Once you open blending options, you can use keyboard shortcuts to select them without moving your mouse. To use the shortcuts, select the Move tool (“v”), and then select the layer you’d like to use the blending options on. Below are some of the most popular modes.
38) Shift + + or – = Cycle through blending modes.
39) Shift + Alt + n (Shift + Option + n) = Normal mode
40) Shift + Alt + i (Shift + Option + i) = Dissolve
41) Shift + Alt + k (Shift + Option + k) = Darken
42) Shift + Alt + g (Shift + Option + g) = Lighten
43) Shift + Alt + m (Shift + Option + m) = Multiply
44) Shift + Alt + o (Shift + Option + o) = Overlay
45) Shift + Alt + u (Shift + Option + u) = Hue
46) Shift + Alt + t (Shift + Option + t) = Saturation
47) Shift + Alt + y (Shift + Option + y) = Luminosity
For more niche blending shortcuts, check out these tips from Adobe.

Manipulating Layers & Objects
If you want to modify an object or get complex with multiple layers, here are some shortcuts you might like to know:
48) Control + a (Command + a ) = Select all objects
49) Control + d (Command + d ) = Deselect all objects
50) Shift + Control + i (Shift + Command + i ) = Select the inverse of the selected objects
51) Control + Alt + a (Command + Option + a) = Select all layers
52) Control + Shift + E (Command + Shift + e) = Merge all layers
53) Alt + . (Option + .) = Select top layer
54) Alt + , (Option + ,) = Select bottom layer
Note: In shortcuts 55-57, the brackets ([ ]) are the keystrokes in the command, and “OR” refers to the actual word — as in, press one bracket OR the other, not the letters “o” and “r.”
55) Alt + [ OR ] (Option + [ OR ]) = Select next layer down or up
56) Control + [ OR ] (Command + [ OR ]) = Move target layer down or up
57) Control + Shift + [ OR ] (Command + Shift + [ OR ]) = Move layer to the bottom or top
58) Shift + Control + n (Shift + Command + n) = Create a new layer
59) Control + g (Command + g) = Group selected layers
60) Control + Shift + g (Command + Shift + g) = Ungroup selected layers
61) Control + e (Command + e) = Merge and flatten selected layers
62) Control + Shift + Alt + e (Command + Shift + Option + e) = Combine all layers into a new layer on top of the other layers. Note: This step gets you one, combined layer, with all elements of that layer in separate layers below — which is different than a traditional merge-and-flatten layers command.
63) Control + t (Command + t) = Transform your object, which includes resizing and rotating

And Finally — Save Your Work for Later
Congratulations — you’ve finished working on your project, and now, you want to share it with the world. Save time saving your project by using these simple shortcuts:
64) Control + Shift + s (Command + Shift + s) = Save your work as …
65) Control + Shift + Alt + s (Command + Shift + Option + s) = Save for web and devices

We all know that traffic alone doesn’t pay the bills. Ultimately, our traffic must do its job to convert prospects who have problems that we can solve. One way of getting the right people into the pipeline is by creating compelling content offers that practically beg for the opt-in. There’s just one problem: Making sure we generate enough demand for the offer to be successful.
So if your content is just sitting on your website not getting too many downloads or leads, your promotion might be the problem. That being said, read on to discover the best techniques for marketing your ebook, whitepaper, guide, or other lead-generating resource. 

1. Consider a co-marketing campaign.
Before your create your helpful content offer, consider if there’s any partnerships that you can leverage. Co-marketing provides an opportunity for cross-collaboration on content so that two parties “own” that content and benefit from it. 
Here are some reasons why co-marketing is a good idea:

Sharing resources for the offer’s creation doubles the value of the content and diminishes the cost/effort of its production
Promoting to two networks increases the reach of the campaign exponentially
Both partners have vested interest in the results of the promotion because both reap the benefits (the leads generated from it)

2. Utilize industry influencers for their thought leadership and reach.
Whether you decide to do co-marketing or not, you can’t deny the power of good old-fashioned personalized outreach. Think through your existing partnerships as well as other major players in the industries or social circles you want to reach. 
Consider these thought leaders’ goals: finding relevant articles to share with their fan base, increase their reach, and further establish themselves as an authority. 
You can appeal to these goals by featuring them in your content offer. For example, ask them for a quote that you can incorporate into your content offer or link to another article they wrote. When you finish the piece, send them a complimentary copy. I’d suggest telling them how much you’ve appreciated their expertise and that you were delighted to include them.
Don’t forget to mention that you’ll be promoting the offer to your network. Because they’re featured in the content, this acts as an incentive for them to share your offer to their audience as well. 
The key to this tactic is to make your personalized outreach unique and worth their while. After all, they likely get bombarded with messages asking them to share content.
3. Use email marketing to promote the ebook with your existing audience.
Admittedly, outreach is arduous. Don’t forget about the network you already have. Your email subscribers have already expressed interest in similar content offers, and if this new ebook continues to provide value for problems they need help with, this is another opportunity to continue engaging them. 
As you continue to provide value, you’re establishing more credibility and authority in their eyes. As you stay top of mind in this way, you’ll be first on their list when they are ready to make a purchasing decision.
To achieve maximum success with this tactic, it helps to have a segmented audience so that you’re always providing relevant, timely, and personalized content. 
You don’t want to email a specific ebook to your entire contact database because it probably doesn’t relate to all your contact lists. When you don’t segment emails, your engagement will be lower and your success will be diminished.
Here’s what I mean: 
On one of your opt-in forms, you could have visitors identify what they need help with. For an inbound marketing agency, it might say, “What Does Your Business Want to Improve?” with options to select: 

Grow our web presence
Rank higher on Google
Generate more leads

That way, if an ebook was created around SEO, it could be sent to all the subscribers who have already shown interest in ranking higher on Google. 
4. Promote your ebook on your highest trafficked (but still relevant) blog posts.
In addition to your other methods of promotion, you want to make sure that you’re converting organic traffic as well. But here’s the problem: A user can’t convert on a landing page they never land on. They can never be interested in a content offer they don’t know about. 
Content offers aren’t an “If you build it, they will come” scenario. Instead, see how you can capitalize on the traffic you’re already getting for its promotion.
By putting the CTA (call to action) on new blog posts, all you’re doing is making a gamble. Mainly because you don’t know if that blog post will ever generate traffic. After all, it’s brand new.
However, you can put a CTA on an existing blog post that has proven success, pushing that ebook to a known source of demand. 
Promote your offer on relevant blog posts that already get traffic to put your ebook in front of the audience you have.
5. Create a PPC campaign to advertise your content offer.
If you know your content offer has a clear path to revenue, organic plays alone are not always the best route for promotion, especially if there is clear demand as people search for resources just like yours. 
PPC is a quicker tactic than SEO and is a great way to promote not just your company and its services but also campaigns to offers you create. A successful PPC campaign boosts visibility and downloads to your offer by driving high-intent users to the landing page. 
6. Announce your content offer on social media.
Email is a great tactic for promoting to an existing audience, and so is social media. An additional benefit is that social media promotion can reach beyond that existing audience much more easily.
Be sure to post on your social channels once your offer is live, conveying the value it contains for the reader and including an image to attract their attention. Mix these posts in with your other content so that your readers aren’t put off by too much promotional content.
7. Consider putting advertising budget behind it.
On some social channels (I’m looking at you, Facebook), organic reach isn’t what it used to be. Boosting posts helps to increase reach to both your followers and beyond. Alternatively, you can also create an ad that promotes your ebook and do paid promotion to a targeted audience. 
Just keep in mind that people don’t browse social media with buying intent, so you’ll have to ensure that the offers you promote and the way you promote them piques interest and conveys value. Otherwise, they’ll just see it as an ad and scroll on past.
8. Repurpose your content into different formats.
The first time they see your post, they may not click and convert right away. Like with anything, it can take multiple “impressions” to attract attention and pique interest. At the same time, if you continue posting the same thing over and over, your content gets stale. 
Enter repurposing. 
Your ebook can easily be turned into a slideshare, infographic, quiz, or other format. By having multiple “versions” of your content for promotion, your ebook can go farther while getting more eyeballs on it. 
9. Connect with niche readers on social media.
Look on Twitter and LinkedIn for users that have been sharing similar content to what you have created. Just by searching on Twitter for #inboundmarketing, I can see who is sharing inbound marketing blogs, guides, and resources. Plus, I can see who is getting the biggest reach in terms of likes and retweets.
Reach out to these individuals with a simple message that encapsulates “Hey! I saw you shared [this article] and I thought you might like [this related content offer]”. This way you know that the individual is probably interested in what you’re writing because they’ve been interested in similar content before.
This tactic might not work as well as the influencer tactic in tip #2 since you’re not providing mutual value, but many of these individuals spend a lot of time curating content for their audience, and you might just be helping them out.
10. Submit to a content community or online group.
Chances are, search engines and their social feeds are not the only places your audience hangs out. If your ebook contains specialized or niche information, you might be able to target these niches through content communities and online groups. For example: 

Niche Facebook groups
Niche LinkedIn groups
Reddit
Quora
Slack groups
NextDoor neighborhoods
Industry forums

For example, if you’re a roofer in St. Louis, join your community group on NextDoor.com and offer your content there. When your neighborhood gets hit by a hailstorm, your infographic on “Assessing Storm Damage as a Homeowner” can come in handy to the community’s residents.
Content communities are also a great resource for getting feedback, starting discussion, and sharing your passion for your services with others.
11. Find other linking opportunities.
Using tools like Ahrefs, you can see other websites who have linked to content like yours. Reach out to them with your content offer link and see if they want to include a link to your resource. I find that this is most helpful when you can find a broken link that your new link can replace. Webmasters generally appreciate when someone lets them know of a problem with their website links, and if you can provide a link to replace the broken one, it might get placed.
Alternatively, use a tool like BuzzSumo or Mention.net to find mentions of your company online. You’ll be able to see who has mentioned you or your content offer and determine whether they have linked back to you or not. If they haven’t included your link, reach out to that website and explain it might provide their readers a better experience if they could find the article that is being mentioned.
If you’re looking for more backlink opportunities, I highly recommend Backlinko’s “17 Powerful (Yet Untapped) Backlink Sources” to find other places you could get a link from!
12. Guest blog on popular websites with your ebook as CTA.
You may also have an opportunity to capitalize on a third party website’s organic traffic and promotions through guest blogging. If your buyer persona goes to a popular website that provides solutions to the problems they’re experiencing, your content offer should be there too (as long as it’s similarly relevant and helpful, of course). 
Once you nail down which websites your buyer persona is reading to get information, see if these websites offer the opportunity for industry leaders to guest blog. Some websites will require an application or an article proposal, but once you get accepted blogging for one website, it becomes much easier to get accepted on other websites.
When you write your articles, keep them educational and don’t self-promote. Remember, you’re trying to help the reader solve a problem with your expertise and industry knowledge. A the conclusion of the article, use your ebook as a next step CTA so if a reader finishes the article and wants more information, your content offer is there.
Content that just sits on your website can’t properly do its job and bring in leads. But worry not, by using these promotion tips you’ll see a little bit of extra effort can really take a content offer from zero to hero.
If you’re interested in creating attractive ebooks that capture attention and bring more leads to your business, check out the FREE resource below (see what we did there?).
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, so keyword-optimizing your videos on the platform is just as important as keyword-optimizing your blog posts for Google.
Even if you’ve just created the next “Charlie bit my finger” video, you must remember that an algorithm dictates which videos YouTube will serve to its audience — and which ones it won’t.
One of the best ways to keyword-optimize your videos for YouTube is leveraging tags. Below, we’ve put together a guide that will explain exactly what YouTube tags are, why they’re important, and some best practices to follow. 

What are tags for YouTube?
YouTube Tags are words and phrases you can include in your YouTube videos’ description. They let your viewers, and YouTube, know what your videos are about and can help them rank higher in the platform’s search results.

Why are YouTube tags important?
YouTube tags function to help YouTube grasp your video’s content and context. This way, YouTube can understand your video’s topic and category, and associate it with similar content, which can amplify your video’s reach. The rise of semantic search has made YouTube tags less important over time, but they’re still a strategic element you can use to your advantage.
Even though YouTube sites the title, thumbnail, and description as being more important for video SEO on their platform, studies do indicate that there’s a slight positive relationship between keyword-optimized tags and ranking (Backlinko). Neglecting to use them isn’t a dealbreaker, but they can definitely help.
They’re even more important in cases where your target keyword is commonly misspelled because you can tag the misspellings without including them in your title and description.
As a secondary benefit, tags even help you organize and find your own content if you do self-reference tagging (e.g. “Ireland trip 2019”).
YouTube Tags Best Practices
To leverage YouTube tags to their fullest potential, check out these tips and tricks.
1. Make your first tag your target keyword and order the rest by importance.
YouTube heavily accounts for your video’s first few tags when ranking content in their search results, especially the first tag. So make sure your first tag is the exact keyword you want to target.
2. Use some broad keywords that describe the overarching topic your video falls under as other tags.
Using broad keywords as other tags helps YouTube understand your video’s context. For example, if you’re creating a video called “How to Hit a Baseball”, you’d want to add “Baseball” as a broad tag to indicate to YouTube that your video’s overarching topic is about baseball.
3. Use some specific keywords that describe the topics you covered in your video as other tags.
Using specific keywords that describe the topics you cover in your video as other tags helps YouTube understand your video’s content. For instance, in the same “How to Hit a Baseball” video, adding “hitting off a tee” or “hitting batting practice” as specific tags would indicate to YouTube the exact topics your video covers.
4. Keep most of your tags between 2-3 words.
While you should certainly include long-tail keywords and a few broad match variations, YouTube seems to prefer 2-4 word phrases (Briggsby).
5. Do not go overboard with tags.
The point of tags is to help the algorithm understand what your video is about so it can surface it to users that are looking for a video like yours. Using too many keywords can cause confusion for what your video is actually about. Research suggests that the optimal number of tags is between 31 and 40 (when used correctly, of course). More than that dilutes their power.

Image Source
6. Get inspiration from videos that are currently ranking.
If you know what you want to rank for, take notes from those who are already ranking on the topic. Their keyword tags might give you a good starting point for research and inspiration.
7. Get inspiration from YouTube auto-suggest.
Auto-suggest is a feature to help users find what they need. YouTube isn’t surfacing these suggestions willy-nilly. Chances are, there’s a reason these keywords are suggested, so don’t be afraid to go straight to the horse’s mouth, so to speak, to draw inspiration.

Best YouTube Tag Generators
To discover the keywords you can tag in your videos and help them rank higher in YouTube’s search results, here are three of the best YouTube Tag Generators to try.
1. Keywordtool.io

After plugging your target keyword into its YouTube search bar, Keywordtool.io will provide you with suggested keywords, their search volume, how they’ve trended over the past 12 months, and questions, prepositions, and hashtags that also include your target keyword.
2. Rapidtags

Entering a seed keyword into Rapidtags and then hitting the button will generate a number of related tags for your YouTube video. Best of all, there’s a copy button for you to easily pull the text without entering it manually.
3. YTube Tool

This tool helps you extract the tags from a competitor’s YouTube video. All you have to do is enter the URL, and the tool will then return your results.
4. Keyword Keg

Using Keyword Keg, you can enter your target keyword into the tool and it’ll serve up its search volume, cost-per-click, competition, on-page difficulty, off-page difficulty, SEO difficulty, CTR scope, keyword power, trends, and suggested keywords. You can also filter your results by country and language.
5. VidIQ

VidIQ will display your target keyword’s related keywords, related score, search volume, search score, competition score, and overall score, which is a combination of a keyword’s related score, search score, and competition score.
With these tools and types for generating optimized YouTube tags for SEO, you’re well on your way to getting your content found on YouTube. Continue optimizing other elements of the video as well and monitoring your channel’s growth.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

A couple weeks ago, my brother Max sent me his resume in a text message, and asked me to ‘spruce it up a bit’ for him.
Undoubtedly, I needed to do more than copy-and-paste the text into a Word document. To truly stand out, I knew the resume needed to demonstrate a level of professionalism and effort — something content alone can’t always convey.

Fortunately, with the help of Zety, I was able to input Max’s resume information, choose a template, and have Zety design the piece for me, within a span of 20 minutes:

Looks a little better than a text message, doesn’t it?
Resume builders are incredibly helpful when creating a resume, and can help you showcase your unique personality. Best of all, they look a lot sleeker than whatever you can design in a Google Doc.
To ensure you can create a resume for free, we’ve compiled this list of the best free resume builders we’ve discovered. Keep reading, and then get to work designing your own — trust me, with these tools, it’s almost as easy as sending a text.

Featured Resource: HubSpot Resume Templates

Download these free templates and plug in your experience and information for a custom, well-crafted resume.
1. Resume Genius

Resume Genius is undoubtedly one of the easiest and fastest free resume tools you have at your disposal. With a clean and easy-to-use interface, the tool walks you (speedily) through categories including education, work experience, and references, and offers eight different templates varying from ‘Taj Mahal’ to ‘Classic’. Resume Genius provides you with easy fill-in-the-blank sections, so you can have an impressive, comprehensive resume in no time.
2. My Perfect Resume

My Perfect Resume allows you to either start from scratch and input information into a blank template, or upload a pre-existing resume if you already have one. Additionally, the tool provides you with expert recommendations as you move throughout the process, including suggested phrases you can include for specific roles.
My Perfect Resume also enables you to include optional sections like certifications, accomplishments, and affiliations, which is vital particularly if you’re just starting out, or switching industries. This tool is particularly useful if you’re applying for a creative role and want to add color or a unique design to your resume.
To use My Perfect Resume for free, click “Download” on the left toolbar once you reach the final step of the builder — instead of selecting “Save and next”. Then, choose “Plain Text (.txt)” to download your resume for free.
3. Standard Resume

Standard Resume allows you to import your information straight from LinkedIn, making it an ideal time-savor if your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date. Plus, the white background and minimalist features enable you to focus on what really matters — your content. You can switch back and forth between “Write” and “Design” to see how your resume looks as you go along, and download as a PDF when you’re finished. Best of all, the tool also makes your resume mobile-responsive, so you can view it on your smartphone.
4. Canva

If you’re applying for a creative role or want a resume that truly lets you stand out, you might consider using one of Canva’s hundreds of free, designer-made templates. Canva’s selections are incredibly varied and unique, so you’ll undoubtedly find one you like, and inputting resume sections can be as easy as copy-and-paste. Additionally, the templates are separated into categories, such as ‘Graphic Design’, ‘Corporate’, and ‘Creative’, making it easier to choose based on your preferred industry.
5. Indeed

Creating an Indeed resume is an incredibly quick process, and best of all, the site allows you to automatically share your resume with employers on Indeed as soon as you’re finished. If you’ve already completed a resume, it’s still a good idea to upload to the site for exposure to potential employers. While it admittedly doesn’t offer as many options for creativity as some of the others in this list, Indeed is an impressive option if you want to create a more traditional resume and start sharing it immediately.
6. Zety

Zety is an excellent online resume builder because of the state-of-the-art templates. You can easily start from scratch and input your information. My favorite element of this tool is that the site will walk you through the process. All you need to do is fill out the information and then voila — you have a resume. While this tool is free, you will need to make an online account.
To use Zety for free, click “Download” on the left toolbar once you reach the final step of the builder — instead of selecting “Save and next”. Then, choose “Plain Text (.txt)” to download your resume for free.
7. Resume.com

With Resume.com you can build a beautiful resume in minutes. This tool is a great option if you’re looking for recommendations on what to include in your resume. Additionally, the site has popular templates for various job categories to help you stand out among the competition.
To use this for free, when you’re at the last stage, you’ll see a pop-up that says to create an account — instead, just click “Skip for now.” Then, in the top right-hand corner, you can click the download button.
Building a resume can feel like you’re staring at a blank canvas. But with an online resume builder, you can get recommendations and build a beautiful document that will stand out without needing a graphic design degree.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.
As our three-part series comes to an end, there’s one last question (or two) we need to address:
Does the surround sound strategy really work? And what results have we seen since we started using it?
The TL;DR answer is yes. It’s working and we’re sharing our preliminary results in this article.
So if you’re looking to use surround sound in 2021, the two of us (that’s Irina Nica and Alex Birkett) thought we’d end this short series with a handful of resources: the formula HubSpot uses to measure progress, our proprietary surround sound tracker (aka the SERP Tracker), and a sample of results to hopefully inspire your own endeavor.

What is the surround sound strategy?
At HubSpot, “surround sound” is the name Alex Birkett gave to a content marketing approach that aims to make HubSpot products visible every time someone searches for a product-related keyword (e.g. “best help desk software” or “best live chat software”).
The goal is for potential users to see HubSpot mentioned in all or most of the pages that rank in Google top results for those keywords. Check out the first two articles in the series for a deeper-dive into what is the “surround sound” effect and how we scaled the program at HubSpot.
Surround Sound vs. SEO
Here’s where a lot of people get confused: The definition of surround sound says its goal is to improve visibility in search engines, but isn’t that what SEO does, too?
The answer is surround sound includes SEO results, but doesn’t stop there.
Here’s an example: say we want to increase our visibility in search engines for the keyword “free CRM.”
A first step would be to make sure our own domain ranks well for that keyword. That’s the “job” of the SEO function.

But visibility in SERP doesn’t stop there.
When potential customers are looking for a free CRM, they might not stop at the first results. Instead, they click through different suggestions of curated lists that they find in search results.
Our product awareness goal is to make sure HubSpot is visible in as many results as possible, especially on third-party domains. The level of SERP real estate that HubSpot is mentioned in (including owned and third-party domains) is what surround sound measures.

That’s why we say that in order to measure surround sound results, we need to measure our visibility in SERP, for a particular keyword or topic, beyond SEO.
But surround sound isn’t really a “mainstream” product awareness tactic — yet. So there are no methods or tools to measure visibility in SERP, beyond rankings (as far as we looked). That’s why, in order to scale our efforts, we had to build our own systems from scratch.
How HubSpot Measures Surround Sound Results
Let’s talk about scale.
If HubSpot were to have only one high intent keyword in our purview (say, “best marketing automation software”), it wouldn’t be insane to measure our visibility manually.
Once per month, you could simply open Google, search “best marketing automation software,” and count how many of the top 20 pages mention HubSpot.
This clearly becomes a problem when you add more than one keyword, however. Imagine the frustration of doing that for 600+ keywords per month.
In order to make this strategy “scalable” (a phrase I dislike, by the way, because it has been weaponized by curmudgeons who can all too easily shut down interesting ideas by saying ‘this won’t scale’), we needed to do a few things:

Build custom tools and infrastructure to automate aspects of the strategy
Educate others on the surround sound process and playbook
Evangelize and excite others into buying into the idea

The latter was easiest; once you get some results, others can easily grasp the importance of an idea.
I’ll focus here on building custom tools. First, I want to explain the value of investing in custom tools, automation, and infrastructure, because I can already sense the objections:

“We don’t have the technical resources to build our own tools and automations!”
“Won’t building custom tools cost us a lot of money and time?”

To address the first point, there’s always a creative solution. If you don’t have internal resources to code up new tools, you can easily outsource this as long as you have good specifications. Sites like Code Mentor or even Upwork are great for this. Additionally, this is a good excuse for (mythical) non-technical marketers to build some new skills.
Second, building tools to reduce the marginal cost or effort in the long run increases the expected value of the program.
Lots of jargon in that sentence, so let me unpack that with an example from experimentation.
Why invest in tools, automation, and infrastructure?
Imagine the expected value (the “predicted value of a variable, calculated as the sum of all possible values each multiplied by the probability of its occurrence”) of an A/B test is $1,000.
Some proportion of A/B tests will fail, which means you only “lose” during the time of the experiment, some will do nothing, and some will win (and those that win will do so by varying levels). All in, if you averaged out these values, a given A/B test could be predicted at a $1,000 value.
Now imagine every time you wanted to run an A/B test, you needed to get two engineers, one designer, and an analyst not only to set up the test from scratch (you’ve got no testing tool here), but also, you have to do minimum one month of research, wait two weeks for approval after you submit your hypothesis, and then you have to sit through, on average, four meetings with this crew.
What’s the cost of all that? Over $1,000? Congratulations, the expected value of your A/B test is now negative.
But what if, on the other hand, you had a testing tool that made it easy to set up and analyze experiments (with trustworthy data), and also imagine you prioritize to focus on only high impact tests. Now you lower the upfront cost of each additional test you run (the marginal cost), which increases the expected value of each test (just slightly). On a program level, though, now you are rewarded for running more tests, since the expected value is positive, and you’ve got very low marginal costs. You spent a little time investing in tools and automation, and you’ve drastically increased the ROI of your program without even improving your win rate.
This is exactly what we needed to do to make the surround sound strategy economically viable.
The amount of effort to manually audit, measure, and store SERP visibility, as well as the manual cost of outreach and relationship management, would forever outweigh the positive benefits of the placements we could get on a SERP. That is, unless we could lower the costs of data collection and storage as well as outreach and relationship management.
Enter: the SERP Tracker
Now we have a functional tool that does all this for us! We call it the “SERP Tracker.”
Here’s the aesthetically-gorgeous interface:

(For any fellow nerds, it was written in R and it’s hosted and deployed with Shiny. We’re using serpapi.com to get Google’s search results, and we’re also using Bing’s API [free up to a certain number of credits]. I have an older version of the generic script here available for viewing — we’ve since updated it many times, but this version will still be functional.)
I’ll walk you through how it works, but you can also watch this Loom tutorial if you prefer video:

Here’s a quick tutorial on how you can use the tool and what kind of data it can give you.
First, you have to validate by entering a password. Since we use various APIs, we want to limit the usage to converse credits (again, we track some 600+ keywords, so it’s a weighty endeavor)
Then you can enter whatever keyword you’d like (like “best form builder” or “best help desk software”).

Then you can select a region and the number of search results you want to pull (up to 10 pages, or 100 results).
Finally, you need to enter the URL that you want to check the search results against.
In other words, if you want to check for the search keyword “best live chat software,” then you could enter “hubspot.com” or “drift.com” to see how many of the URLs that rank for the search keyword “best live chat software” mention that URL.
I have preset options for HubSpot URLs to check our product page, blog posts, or generic hubspot.com pages:

You can also enter a custom link by clicking “other.”

This allows for, among other things, competitor searches and custom HubSpot URLs (for example, if you just wanted to see who mentions our Forms product page or who mentions Academy pages – it’s also a workaround to check affiliate links, because they’re often structured like “affiliatesite.com/ref/hubspot” so you could just enter “hubspot” in the URL to check for those):
We use SEMRush’s API to pull keyword search volume, but there are times that SEMRush doesn’t have values for search volume. In this case, it just prints an error message:

If all information is entered correctly, click “Submit” and it will start computing. After some processing time, this is the report it will create:

You get a nice visual pie chart, beloved by analysts and data visualizers worldwide, representing how many ranking URLs contain the link (and how many don’t). This shows that, of the top 20 search results for the term “best live chat software,” our URL “hubspot.com” appears on 2 of them.
I also made it pull keyword level data as well (in the above example it shows that “best live chat software” gets 390 searches a month). This helps weigh the relative importance of a given keyword (ie if a keyword gets 10000 searches a month or 100, that matters strategically)
Then below that, you get a full data table that contains the domain and URL of all pages that rank for that keyword, whether or not the link you chose to check against is included (TRUE or FALSE), the keyword you searched (just for reference and if you want to pull the data to Excel), the number of links included, and the full link (so if you checked “hubspot.com” and the ranking page references “blog.hubspot.com/marketing/form-builder-tools,” it will pull that full link URL for you):

Like I mentioned above, you can use this to check other websites’ links as well. This one shows how many of the top 20 ranking pages for “mailchimp alternatives” mention appsumo.com (which makes SendFox, an email marketing tool):

And like I mentioned above, you can choose the region. Currently, I have options for Germany, France, Spain, and Japan, though we can add more regions fairly easily. This is going to be incredible for international expansion (more on that later)

This just changed the database to a different region (ie if you choose German, it will show what ranks in google.de). This report shows how many hubspot.com links appear on pages that rank for “marketing automation software” in Germany:

Next Level: Automating Report for 600+ Keywords with Google Data Studio and Scripts
This data from the SERP Tracker, on its own, is valuable. One can quickly audit the search results pages for product mentions, compare to other websites, and even do a bulk audit.
However, to truly get the wheels turning on the surround sound Strategy, it’s imperative to store and access data across time in order to track results and identify gaps and opportunities.
To do this, we extract data from the SERP Tracker, transform it and blend it, and load it to BigQuery so we can visualize it and create reports using Google Data Studio.
All of this is done automatically with an R script that runs once per month. It pulls all SERP data for our list of keywords, stores the data in Sheets (in the future we’ll write directly to BigQuery). BigQuery is connected to Sheets, so we filter, clean, and blend the data with a quick SQL script. This is then connected to Data Studio, where all filters are applied and we visualize our reports.
Our reports start with the way we map our target-keywords against the features, products and Hubs. This database is the source for the SERP tracker as well and the Google Data Studio reports which we use to track progress and communicate with stakeholders.

First, we use a birds-eye view of all of our product Hubs to understand overall progress and how each Hub stacks against the others. If you’re familiar with HubSpot’s products, it won’t come as a surprise that our Sales and Marketing Hubs lead the way when it comes to surround sound Visibility.

Our reports go one layer deeper and we can see in one chart how different features (e.g. HubSpot Email Marketing vs HubSpot Forms) perform against each other.

For a deeper analysis, we have feature-dedicated dashboards. In the example below, we see how one isolated feature (HubSpot CMS) evolved, as well as how our visibility changed for the most important keywords related to that feature.

1. Surround Sound: The First 6 Months
The main thing that you need to accept before starting a surround sound program is that you can never be fully in control of your visibility.
There are many factors that play a role into how your visibility evolves:

Search engine updates cause the Top 20 results to fluctuate (sometimes quite dramatically)
New content appears in Top 20 for the keywords that you’re focusing, maybe outranking you or results that mention your brand
Competitors and other third-party pages appear in Top 20 results, but don’t mention your brand

Even despite these challenges, the results we’ve seen in the first 6 months of our surround sound program prove you can make a change in your visibility by partnering with other websites.
If you want to learn more about how to execute a surround sound program, check out the previous article in this series.
In the chart below you can see how HubSpot’s visibility in SERP changed since April. The Google May 2020 core update changed the SERP landscape quite dramatically, causing a lot of articles that used to mention HubSpot to disappear from the Top 20. After that, our visibility started climbing gradually, as we built more partnerships (e.g. more websites joined our Affiliate program).

If we only look at all the pages that mention HubSpot, for the 600+ keywords we’re monitoring for surround sound, about 50% of these are now influenced by our surround sound program.

Conclusion: Final Thoughts
There is still a lot of work and opportunities to tap into for our product awareness program. But the most important learning we had so far is that surround sound is a marathon, not a sprint.
It takes time and effort to build genuine partnerships and, as Brian Halligan always “add value > extract value”.
Also, having a strong brand name helps a lot, at least when first reaching out to a potential partner. In fact, it’s fair to say that if HubSpot were a startup, this progress wouldn’t have been possible in just 6 months. It takes time to build a brand and get others to recommend it.
As with everything, there’s no silver-bullet solution. While we share a lot of our process and tools, the way we do surround sound at HubSpot might not work exactly the same for other brands. The main thing we hope you take away from this is: there’s another way of looking at your visibility in SERP that’s not just SEO.
Have you thought about adding surround sound to your content marketing and acquisition strategies in 2021?
Want to learn more about the strategy and execution behind the surround sound strategy? Read part one and two of this series.

submitted by /u/indusnet_marketing [link] [comments]