In a perfect world, B2B marketing begins with picking the right clients to market to and serving them the right message, every single time.

Think about how much easier marketing is when you know exactly which companies to target — and not only who your target clients are, but what marketing messages would best resonate with them. That’s the dream, right?

While we don’t live in a perfect world, we do live in a world where inbound marketing and account-based marketing (ABM) exist. And, when these two strategies work together, this dream can become a reality.

You may be pretty familiar with inbound marketing: creating content that delights customers.

You may also know a thing or two about account-based marketing: aligning marketing and sales to deliver a consistent, personalized buying experience for prospects. But, because of their definitions, perhaps you think you have to choose between the two.

Fortunately, you don’t have to choose. In fact, instead of thinking “ABM versus Inbound,” you should be thinking “ABM and Inbound.”

To clarify, let’s define and differentiate the two — and offer some tactics you can use to work these strategies into your existing marketing campaign. If you have no idea what account-based marketing even is, don’t worry — that’s what we’re going to cover next.

What is account-based marketing?

Account-based marketing is a highly targeted, focused growth strategy. It works by aligning marketing and sales functions to create a personalized experience for accounts, rather than an individual buyer.

Instead of treating each of those buyers as an individual entity, ABM is a strategy that says, “Let’s make sure we plan how to market and sell to all of those buyers as one account.”

This starts with alignment of sales and marketing teams to mutually choose a select set of accounts. Then, they’ll create targeted marketing and sales strategies for them. This saves time for marketing and sales, and it delivers a far more consistent buying experience for the account.

Businesses that are typically a good fit for using an ABM strategy are those that sell high-value products or services to other businesses, like B2Bs.

The alignment of Sales and Marketing when using an ABM strategy helps you make more streamlined business decisions. It eliminates the time you would spend trying to sort out the best accounts to target, and instead, speeds up the process of delighting those prospects.

ABM treats accounts as if they’re individual buyers, and because of this, you’ll be able to delight the key decision-makers with a personalized content strategy.

So, ABM is a go-to strategy for shortening sales cycles, increasing ROI, and effectively selling to your highest value accounts in the way they each prefer to buy — but how is it comparable to inbound marketing? Let’s talk about that next.

What do account-based marketing and inbound marketing have in common?

ABM allows you to delight high-value accounts with a focused approach. Inbound marketing is a methodology which lets you attract customers through the creation of valuable, SEO-optimized content. Inbound marketing provides audiences with the information that’s important to them in an organic manner.

But what do they have in common?

Both strategies require a deep understanding of your target buyer to inform what type of content you’re creating & how you choose to deliver it. This increases discoverability by that target.

According to HubSpot’s ABM Product Marketer, Ryan Batter, “Every growth story begins with the same foundational elements of inbound marketing — building great content, crafting a publishing strategy, optimizing search presence to enable discovery of your brand and generate leads.”

You can repurpose content and use the same channels for ABM as you’ve already put into place with inbound. ABM is often just taking that foundational content and personalizing it a level deeper.

Both inbound and ABM are focused on delivering a great buying experience across the entire flywheel. ABM helps accelerate the flywheel once inbound foundation is in place.

Additionally, the two strategies focus on targeted, personalized content. ABM hones in on delighting the right customers through content that is specifically created to cater to their challenges, an essential function of inbound marketing.

Finally, the two help with the happiness and retention of your customers. Because an ABM strategy focuses on a set of specific accounts, you’ll have more opportunity to focus on the happiness and retention of those clients, which is another essential part of the inbound marketing flywheel.

That’s not all, though — you can also use the two in a partnership to elevate your entire strategy.

“For some stories, companies benefit immensely by complementing their inbound foundation with account-based strategies that provide more personalized, tailored buying experiences for a subset of high-value leads,” Batter says.

Put another way: inbound marketing helps you attract the right customers. Then, account-based marketing uses marketing and sales to speed up the process of the flywheel and provide a valuable customer experience. In the end, both strategies enable you to win those target accounts.

It’s critical you approach your account-based marketing, the inbound way: provide valuable content and customer experiences to those high-value accounts.

Using the two together helps you offer a more robust strategy.. Plus, software, like HubSpot’s CMS, allows you to experiment with the creation of campaigns that align with your businesses’ goals.

For more information about how to align ABM with inbound, as well as some tactics for stellar account-based marketing tactics, be sure to check out this ultimate guide.

Next, we’ll go over how to conduct account-based marketing as part of your inbound strategy.

How can I do account-based marketing?

This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.

Consistent content creation is a cornerstone of community growth. To keep your community members returning regularly, they need to see new things each time they return.

Think about social media: the platforms remain addictive because you can refresh your feed and see new material any time you visit.

Different types of people want to engage in communities in different ways.

Some seek out one-to-one connections with like-minded people whom they can call on for advice or input. Others prefer to participate in large discussions and collect a variety of perspectives. Some love giving feedback because they’re invested in making your product or service better.

And, inevitably, there are lurkers: people who don’t like to engage actively at all, but who read and watch content to expand their knowledge.

Long story short, there should always be a variety of opportunities for engagement available. But community management typically falls on one person’s shoulders.

How can you feasibly create enough content to get your community members returning regularly when daily community management and moderation tasks could justify a full-time role themselves?

Here at HubSpot, one way we’ve scaled our community content creation is by leveraging internal teams’ expertise and time to provide value to the community members.

Getting buy-in from those teams is often a lighter lift than you’d imagine when you ensure there is something in it for them.

Here are eight ways you can leverage your internal employees’ time and expertise to generate varied, interesting content and engagement opportunities for your community.

Discover the best forum software for creating an online community for your business.

1. Text-Based AMAs with Your Product Team

Host an “ask me anything” (AMA) session with a member of your product team over a text thread. Alert your community a week in advance and allow them to submit questions about your product on that thread. On a specific day, have your AMA hosts come in to answer the questions.

Community members can ask about the product itself, where it’s headed in the future, and how the team developed it to the point where it is today. If you have multiple products or product lines, consider running specific AMAs for each one.

You may need to experiment to find the right scope — one where there will be enough questions to have a good discussion, but not so many that it becomes unmanageable to respond in a timely manner.

These are great opportunities to make your customers feel like they’re part of your company’s journey. Here at HubSpot, we’ve found that giving customers a look at what we’re building shows customers that we’re constantly considering their feedback and working to create a better product for them.

AMAs also gives your product team insight into what confuses your customers and what they’re most excited for. Your customers can also reveal product use cases you weren’t aware of.

Be sure to have the host tag in the users who asked the questions if your community platform doesn’t automatically send them a notification letting them know that someone has replied.

2. AMAs with Your Leadership Team

Run an AMA featuring one of your executives. Your customers will be delighted that the people at the top want to take the time to chat with them. Providing them access to an executive is particularly special because executives tend to be short on time.

Because executives have such packed schedules. when you pitch them, make sure to show them what’s in it for them: the chance to interface with many customers at once and get an unbiased pulse check on how your customer base thinks about a given topic, your company, or your product.

A text thread is a perfect format for executives because they can answer questions in the small pockets that come up between meetings — there isn’t pressure to carve out a large block of time within the day.

Consider pairing the executives with folks on your team as behind-the-scenes backups to help find the answers to questions, draft replies, or polish written answers before posting to lighten the load on the official host.

3. Strategic AMAs

You almost certainly have subject matter experts at your company, and those experts are often looking to build their personal brand. By providing thoughtful and honest responses to your community’s questions, they can build credibility as a thought leader in your space.

For example, we hosted a community AMA with an in-house expert on brand building who was looking to build his LinkedIn following. He enjoyed the process of answering the questions, crafted thoughtful responses that customers appreciated, and gained LinkedIn followers along the way.

4. Live AMA Sessions

Host any of the types of AMAs mentioned above in a webinar or virtual meeting format. Allow customers to submit questions on a thread or in a survey ahead of time and register to watch the host answer them on a certain date.

Provide your host those questions a day or more in advance to allow them time to prepare, and then interview them live on the specified day.

If it’s a small audience, host it over a virtual meeting software. If it’s larger, host with webinar software that allows attendees to submit questions through a chat pane.

The content produced can live on longer than the live session, too. Post written key takeaways one day and the recording the next. You can also repurpose sections of the recording for social media or blog content. If the host is an executive or subject matter expert, provide them with the key takeaways to post on their personal blog or LinkedIn.

5. Feedback Surveys

If your customers are taking the time to visit your community, they’re probably invested in your product and its future. Members of the HubSpot Community have provided thoughtful and thorough feedback through product feedback surveys. Experiment with asking for feedback in different formats, with different lengths of surveys, and on a variety of products.

We’ve found at HubSpot that community visitors also love engaging with simple, one-question polls. Pin the poll to the top of the community or, if your platform allows, float it in the bottom corner of the site.

Since the product feedback will directly benefit the team creating those products, ask them to create the survey or poll and spend your time tweaking the language to be community friendly and user-focused.

Don’t be afraid to push back if you think the survey is too long, not appropriate for your member audience, or not user-centric.

6. Virtual Coffee Chats

Some people will always prefer speaking with others to typing out their thoughts. Organize a virtual coffee chat on a particular topic that binds community members together to give those people the opportunity to spend time with each other.

To get started, put together a few icebreaker questions and collect additional questions that your customers have for one another through the registration process.

Equip a community manager or customer success team member with those questions and a set of best practices for facilitating conversation and give them license to run a 45- to 60-minute discussion.

You can post the recording in the community later and pass it along to any members of your customer success team or product team who might benefit from hearing how customers think about your product or what’s on their minds.

7. Adapted Support Tickets

Has your team been seeing an issue pop up again and again in customer support tickets that can’t fully be addressed by a knowledge base article? Anonymize and edit the content of existing support tickets on that issue.

If a couple of your customers mentioned it in support tickets, many more probably share the same question.

Ask your support team to send over several tickets that represent the hottest issues popping up. Make sure to edit out any details that would compromise your customers’ privacy if shared publicly, and then post the ticket itself as a question or the answer as a hack to share with the community.

8. Product Clinics

Most applicable for technology companies, product clinics are structured like AMAs but are less focused on the host and more on solving product issues.

What’s a particularly confusing or troublesome part of your product? Maybe you’ve identified that area from support volume, anecdotes from your customer success team, or poor reviews.

Host a product expert in your community and hold a skill-building or troubleshooting Q&A in that area. Promote the thread in advance and have the expert pop in every few hours over the course of a day or two to answer questions.

You’ll show your customers you care, surface more insight into what’s really confusing your customers, and help them overcome their roadblocks in a public forum that can help other users later.

Over to You

If you’re inspired by any of these ideas, remember: you should have a baseline understanding of who your community members are before you seek out team members who will partner with you to create content.

You don’t want to ask for your team’s time only to have it provide little value to both your community and your colleague.

At the same time, keep in mind that not everything you think will be a hit will end up resonating, and there are plenty of ideas you may not be considering right now that actually would succeed.

Plan a variety of content out for the future, including some experimental topics, and then pay close attention to what performs well, iterating to grow engagement and find the right cadence for each content topic as your community matures.

2020 has brought with it unexpected levels of stress, anxiety, and fear for people across the globe.

And the workplace isn’t insulated from the realities of our global situation.

Some of my colleagues, for instance, are now working half-days — and essentially becoming elementary or middle school teachers while their children’s schools are closed for the other half.

Other colleagues are dealing with increasing anxiety as a result of tight living quarters. As we can all probably attest, the boundary between “work” and “home” life is quickly shrinking. (I’m currently typing this in the same spot I do my afternoon yoga, after-work ‘happy hour’ with friends, and nighttime movie-watching.)

Of course, many of our remote life challenges are insignificant compared to the pandemic sweeping the globe — but the risks posed to mental health aren’t minor at all.

For instance, 19% of fully-remote employees say loneliness is their biggest struggle when working remotely – and if that doesn’t seem like a big deal, consider that loneliness has been proven as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Fortunately, there are strategies you can implement to decrease levels of anxiety or sadness when working from home. To explore options for protecting our mental health while working from home, I spoke with Dr. Willard, a psychologist, consultant, and author who specializes in mindfulness and positive psychology.

Let’s dive into Willard’s tips for practicing mindfulness during times of stress, avoiding burnout from too many virtual meetings, and finding moments of gratitude even in difficult circumstances.

How to Protect Your Mental Health When Working From Home

1. Practice mindfulness to focus on the present moment and feel calm during times of stress.

If you’re anything like me, meditation is on the back-burner at the moment. During times of stress and anxiety, I typically take the “white-knuckle and get through it” approach, focusing on happier future times rather than dwelling on the present moment.

Of course, that often lends itself to more stress and anxiety, not less.

Fortunately, it sounds like we don’t need to set aside 30 minutes a day to reach calm.

Instead, Dr. Willard suggests, “Between calls, give yourself a break by taking five breaths, or looking out the window and noticing a few beautiful things. Sip your coffee with all five senses. Notice five sounds you hear. All of these kinds of things really do settle us down and bring us into the present.”

Additionally, he says, “With more time, take a walk around the neighborhood without your phone in-hand, or do your calls standing or walking if possible.” You might also practice mindfulness when you’re lounging on the couch, or eating a meal.

Alternatively, Dr. Willard mentioned that when we’re stressed, our perception is often distorted. If you find yourself overwhelmed with thoughts like “When will this end?” or “Will I get fired?,” try adding the statement, “I’m having the thought that ___.”

This can help you gain some perspective and understand that your thoughts might be driving you further into anxiety or stress — but they might not be grounded in reality. 

Lastly, if you are interested in trying meditation, take a look at apps like Headspace or Calm, which break meditation down into easy-to-digest categories like “5 Minutes for Sleep” or “2 Minutes of Breathing”.

2. Combat virtual meeting fatigue by alternating with phone calls or reading actual books or newspapers.

We all know the feeling of back-to-back Zoom meetings that leave you, within 2-3 hours, absolutely exhausted in a way physical meetings never did.

If you feel like you’re alone in your exhaustion around virtual meetings, you’re not (I’d recommend reading this article for more information on ‘Zoom fatigue’ and how to minimize it).

Fortunately, Dr. Willard had a few key points he’d suggest for combating ‘virtual meeting fatigue’ — “I think getting out for a bit, or looking away from the computer — for instance, perhaps every 20 minutes, you take 20 seconds to look 20 feet in the distance — can be helpful for alleviating fatigue as a result of virtual meetings.”

Of course, we can’t always take breaks in-between meetings. If you don’t feel like you have much time to get outside or look away, try phone calls to switch things up, as Dr. Willard advises: “Alternatively, instead of all Zoom meetings, perhaps you try phone calls to connect with people, and take a walk as you do.”

He adds, “I’d also suggest reading an actual book or magazine … I got a newspaper yesterday, and I was surprised by how different and better it felt to read it rather than consuming all my news online.”

3. Practice gratitude, and reflect on positive moments with a journal.

If you’re doubtful of the effect of gratitude on happiness levels, I’d suggest giving this TED Talk a watch:

Ultimately, practicing gratitude can be critical for maintaining perspective and finding joy in difficult circumstances.

Gratitude can be found in minor details and seemingly trivial things, as well. For instance, when was the last time you paused to reflect on how lucky you are to have access to clean water, or a warm shower?

As Dr. Willard stresses, “Psychological health, perspective, and happiness can be found through practicing gratitude each day, and just reflecting on the few good moments in a journal or with friends or family.”

Additionally, if you’re feeling overwhelmed with a sense of When will this all end?, Dr. Willard says a little consideration for the future isn’t such a bad thing: “Setting reasonable goals in the morning, and thinking about what you’ll do after this, can help you raise happiness levels. Why not plan a vacation? Even if you’re unsure when you’ll take it, research shows it actually boosts your mood.”

4. Reach out to friends and family, limit social media consumption, and set boundaries with people in your life.

Whether you’re working at home for the time being or your full-time job is remote, it’s critical to figure out positive, healthy ways to maintain strong relationships without feeling pressure to over-maintain them.

For instance, while you’re likely craving social interaction, it can become burdensome to feel like you need to be a support system for all your friends and family. If that’s the case, Dr. Willard urges, “Set negative or positive boundaries with roommates, family, partners, parents, or others in your life.”

“Additionally, if you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, consider who that is.”

Here are some other tips Dr. Willard suggests for relationships:

• Get multiple text threads going, even with old college roommates or colleagues you haven’t spoken to in a while.
• Take a walk and call someone.
• Try writing postcards or starting a pen-pal relationship with a friend.
• Block unhelpful people on social media.
• Join online AA groups, support groups, meditation groups, spiritual gatherings, or partake in online yoga.

Finally, if you’re feeling overwhelmed in this moment, Dr. Willard suggests remembering the CALM acronym, which can help ground yourself and relax tension in your body — all you need to do is squeeze and release the muscles in your Chest, Arms, Legs, and Mouth, which are areas where we tend to hold a lot of tension.

Finally, it’s critical to remember that the stress and anxiety we feel due to full-time quarantine is temporary.

As Dr. Willard told me, “The people who cope best are those who maintain perspective and remind themselves, every day, that this will end. We don’t know when, but we know it will. This right now is the longest slog, and there will be more and different requirements in the future. And the world will look a little different, but this ‘stuck in our house, six-feet apart at the grocery store’ thing will end.”

In today’s day and age, marketing is all about personalization.

It’s about reaching the right people in the right place at the right time. Account-based marketing (ABM) is no different and has been growing in popularity in recent years.

In fact, 87% of account-based marketers say that ABM initiatives outperform other marketing investments.

Plus, one in five accounts targeted through ABM becomes considered a qualified sales opportunity.

That’s why ABM is an important tactic to implement if you sell high value B2B products or services to a finite number of companies who have a multi-person buying committee and require personalized content and engagement.

As a marketer, that might seem like a daunting task, because you’ve probably felt the pain of tools that were hard to use, didn’t integrate with your systems, or made collaboration among teams hard.

That’s why using marketing automation and ABM software to make the process seamless is a good idea.

Below, let’s review how to automate your account-based marketing strategy.

1. Create your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Before you can get started with ABM, you’ll need to define your ideal customer profile. This is similar to a buyer persona, except it’s built around targeting entire organizations, rather than individuals.

You’ll want to know what types of companies you want to target. For example, your ICP should include information on company size, revenue, industry, and location.

With software, like HubSpot’s ABM software, you can use ICP workflow templates to help you spot common traits that can be used to classify companies in your database by how well they match your ICP.

Ultimately, automation should help you identify and organize your target accounts. Once you’ve created your ICP, you should be able to use this information in your ABM software to manage your audience.

2. Set up your target accounts.

Once you’ve created your ICP, you should be able to set up your target accounts in your ABM software.

Target accounts will allow you to manage your audience. For example, with HubSpot’s ABM software, you can use the ICP Tier property to rank your accounts. Your priority accounts will be marked Tier 1, while lower priority accounts will be marked Tier 3.

Additionally, a great ABM software will use AI-powered target account recommendations to automate the process of researching companies that are a good fit.

These types of tools will help you manage and then segment your lists so you can deliver personalized content to your target accounts.

3. Integrate your ABM and marketing automation software.

Before you can build your ABM campaigns, you’ll want to integrate your ABM software with your marketing automation software.

For example, with HubSpot, you can use many of the ABM software features if you have Marketing and Sales Pro.

Integrating your marketing tools is important in the automation process. If your ABM software doesn’t interact with your email marketing software or your ads tools, then you won’t be able to automate the process.

By integrating these tools, you’ll have your ICP research, target accounts, and content all in one place.

4. Build your campaigns.

When you have your ABM software and marketing tools set up, it’s time to create your campaigns.

To start, you’ll want to decide what channels you want to use and what actions will trigger an automated workflow.

First, look at your target accounts and find out where they spend their time online. For example, you can build an ad campaign based on people’s job title or company on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Then, you’ll want to think about your customer journey and set up automated workflows. For instance, you can have a task created for a sales rep when someone who works at one of your target accounts interacts with an email, your website, or blog content.

5. Personalize your content.

You probably got started with ABM so you could personalize your marketing campaigns. To do this, you’ll want to create your content, and use your automation tools to segment your audience.

For example, with HubSpot’s ABM software, you can use company lists to create an ad audience or use company ad targeting for your LinkedIn ads.

With your ICP set up, it should be easy to create your content based on your target audience. The content in your ABM campaigns will be similar to other marketing content, except that you’re now targeting specific accounts and companies.

Ultimately, your messaging should address specific pain points, and appeal to solving your target account’s problems.

6. Set up a dashboard to assess ongoing efforts.

The last step to automating your ABM strategy is to track and measure your efforts. With your ABM software, you’ll want to see information at-a-glance.

For instance, on your dashboard, you might include information on your target accounts such as company score, open deals, total pipeline, and the number of decision makers identified.

If your ABM software has company scoring available, you should use it. This is similar to lead scoring, where you assign a score based on the properties in your software.

Additionally, you should consider running A/B tests when you get started with ABM automation so you can see what messaging appeals to your ICP.

While ABM might seem difficult to implement, when it works with your marketing automation software, you can collaborate with other teams and track your progress.

For more information on HubSpot’s ABM software, read about HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Enterprise.

For the last few months, businesses around the world have had to rapidly adapt to the impact of COVID-19.

In a time where it seems like things change every day, it can be difficult to gauge whether the challenges your business is facing are widespread.

That’s why we’re publishing week-over-week benchmark data for core business metrics like website traffic, email send and open rates, sales engagements, close rates and more. These core metrics are split by region, company size, and industry cuts so you can explore on your own to see data for companies most similar to your own. You can find the data, and more context on the dataset and sources, here.

Because the data is aggregated from our customer base, please keep in mind that individual businesses, including HubSpot’s, may differ based on their own markets, customer base, industry, geography, stage, and/or other factors.

These insights are refreshed every Thursday morning ET, and will be accompanied by this short writeup. You can find past writeups using this timeline.
We hope to establish useful benchmarks to measure your business against, and serve as an early indicator of when short- or long-term adjustments may be needed in your strategy.

What We’re Seeing

Here are the three key takeaways from the most recent week’s data:

1. New deal creation is trending positively week-over-week, with some countries and industries trending above global averages.

The volume of new deals created globally increased 6% week-over-week. While this is 12% below pre-COVID levels, when compared to the previous low of 30% below pre-COVID benchmarks during the week of April 6, this metric is trending in the right direction. We hope the last few weeks of acceleration in deal creation will be reflected in closed-won deals in the second half of May.

See More

After last week’s drops in deals created, all industries we’re tracking experienced an increase the week of May 4. Interestingly, four out of the seven had deal creation volume close to or above pre-COVID levels. Computer software is slightly below pre-COVID averages, while manufacturing (+2%), consumer goods (+8%), and construction (+8%) have slightly exceeded pre-COVID levels. The other three industries — travel, human resources, and entertainment — have been structurally impacted by COVID-19 and are keeping global averages low. All industries are still trending below pre-COVID averages for closed-won deals.

There’s also some promising signs in countries that have begun reopening parts of their economy. Germany, Italy, and Spain are all seeing an acceleration in sales activity above global averages. In Germany, the volume of new deals created increased 14% and closed-won deals increased 16% last week. Italy saw a 23% increase in new deals created, and a 5% increase in closed-won deals. Spain had the largest week-over-week increases, with a 35% jump in new deals and 61% increase in closed-won deals. New Zealand and Australia largely held with global averages.

It’s important to note that with the exception of Australia, where deal creation has nearly recovered to pre-COVID averages, these countries are all still trending below pre-COVID levels. The accelerations seen in Germany, Spain, and Italy are anchored by significant drops in these metrics in March. Explore macro regional data here.

Deal pipeline metrics are also available by company size.

2. Prospecting continues to increase across the board, while sales engagement is holding flat.

After a dip the week of April 27, email prospecting increased 7% the week of May 4. Call prospecting saw a 10% increase. Sales response rate was flat week-over-week, and is holding at 29% below pre-COVID levels.

Last week, the data suggested that sales teams were replacing the time they spent calling prospects with emailing instead, which has been ineffective in converting interest to date. Call prospecting typically acts as a forcing function for doing better research and pre-qualification, so we hope to see this balance shift back toward calling.

The volume of meetings booked saw a 5% lift week-over-week. This is somewhat encouraging, but would be more so if this increase was proportional to the higher volume of sales emails. For now, sales teams are still emailing at levels far above pre-COVID levels, and the corresponding increases in deals created and meetings booked shows that only a small portion of these efforts are paying off. This will not be sustainable in the long term, and we’ll be watching closely over the next several weeks to see how downstream metrics like deals created and closed-won deals continue to shift as prospecting strategies evolve.

3. Newly available data on advertising spend reveals an opportunity for businesses that may have paused campaigns.

Globally, total advertising spend was 18% below pre-COVID levels the week of May 4, and has essentially been flat at that level since March 16. This trend held across all company sizes and most industries.

It’s understandable that advertising campaigns have been on pause for the last few months as businesses assessed their outlook. However, in that same time period, the volume of marketing emails has reached 33% above pre-COVID benchmarks, while engagement with those emails has exploded to 20% above pre-COVID averages. Marketers are putting a very small amount of money back into advertising campaigns, but we’re a little surprised that more investment hasn’t been made here at a time when marketing engagement has been steadily increasing, and when businesses seem to be regaining some sales velocity.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, consumer goods is the only industry trending above pre-COVID levels for ad spend. This makes sense given the transition from offline to online that many businesses have made out of necessity in the last few months.

What This Means for Businesses

Sales teams need to reinvent how they prospect.

While sales results are incrementally improving week-over-week, salespeople are still spending a great deal of time reaching out to poor-fit prospects. The deal pipeline metrics are an encouraging sign that more businesses are reentering buying processes, but it’s still too early to tell how much of this growth will be sustained. For now, it’s a safe bet that your sales team should continue prioritizing high-interest, good-fit buyers rather than indiscriminately prospecting.

Resources to Help

• Watch the replay of our Adapt 2020 webinar on selling through uncertainty
• Refresh your email outreach with these sales templates.
• Start using video in your sales outreach to engage more prospects.
• Use this guide to increase your sales close rates.
• Lead with empathy in sales emails to build rapport and increase response rates.

Consider whether online advertising is a fit for your business.

The significant dip in advertising spend tells us that many businesses have paused their ad campaigns either temporarily or indefinitely. There’s an opportunity for companies to enter a more affordable market. Whether or not this approach is right for your company entirely depends on your audience and offering, but if online ads work for your business, now may be a good time to un-pause campaigns.

Resources to Help

• Attend next week’s Adapt 2020 webinar on advertising with empathy during a crisis.
• Get up to speed on using Facebook Lead Ads with this beginner’s guide to building audiences and ads.
• Read our ultimate guide to online advertising.
• Plan your investment with this guide to budgeting for advertising.
• Set up and run campaigns using HubSpot Ads, Facebook Lead Ads, or Google Ads.

Free Software to Get Started

• HubSpot CRM is free and comes with included advertising and sales acceleration tools, including free 1:1 video, meetings, and chatbot tools.
• Gmail and Google Calendar integrations with HubSpot
• Zoom integration with HubSpot
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration with HubSpot
• Check out what HubSpot’s app partners are offering at this time with this list of relief initiatives.

According to HubSpot research, Facebook is the top distribution channel for content, and provides the biggest ROI for marketers.

In fact, over half of marketers agree that Facebook is where they see the most ROI, and Facebook Advertising is one of the top features for hitting those goals. Are you one of the marketers that can relate?

To illustrate, do you always have a tab devoted to Facebook Advertising efforts? Is one of your daily tasks to check the performance of your landing page ads?

Further, are you testing those ads before they get published?

Facebook offers so many ways to test the performance of your ads before they go live. One of the most popular tools Facebook offers is A/B testing.

A/B testing, or split testing, is a term used to describe the process of running marketing experiments to see which version connects better with your audience. Usually, they’re tested simultaneously, and the variables can be anything from layout, copy, or multimedia.

A/B testing is a very popular marketing method because it gives marketers an idea of what types of ads or UX visuals earn the highest conversion rates. Essentially, if you run an A/B test, you can begin to identify the performance of a piece of content before publishing.

Here, let’s dive into how you can A/B test your marketing ads on Facebook.

A/B Testing Facebook Ads

On Facebook, you can create A/B tests in multiple ways. This is dependent on the variable you want to test.

Fortunately, you can create an A/B test within the Ads Manager Toolbar. The Toolbar will let you use an ad campaign you’ve already created as a jumping off point for your new test.

Toolbar isn’t your only option, though — in the next section, we’ll cover all the ways you can A/B test your ads.

When A/B testing on Facebook, you can either access the Toolbar from your Ads Manager, duplicate a campaign or ad set, or use the Experiments tool.

First, let’s go over the Toolbar method.

How to use Toolbar to create Facebook A/B tests

Toolbar lets you quickly perform a test using a dropdown box located in Ads Manager. Here’s how:

1. Select “A/B Test”

When you access Ads Manager, go to the “Campaigns” tab. Under that tab, you’ll see an option for “A/B Test.” Keep in mind that you’ll need to have an existing ad campaign or campaign draft in order to complete the test.

When you choose that option, this is what you’ll see if you don’t have an existing campaign:

Select your desired campaign, and then you can choose which variable you want to test.

2. Choose A Variable

There are several different options for variable testing, and they’re categorized based on the goals of your campaign.

The variables are as follows:

• Audience —This variable will look at the effectiveness of your ads based on the audiences you aim to reach. For instance, you can test different audiences based on region.
• Creative — Creative A/B tests will focus on the visual assets of your ad. So if you want to test different images, videos, or carousel, you will choose the “Creative” option.
• Placements — If you want to test where on Facebook your ad will be most effective, you’ll want to pick “Placements.” This option allows you to test automatic placements.
• Delivery Optimization — This A/B test option is used to compare ads with budget optimization and without, in order to gauge the performance of both. For instance, if you are unsure if you should spend more to optimize a certain ad to gain more conversions, this would be the proper test to run.
• More than one — Let’s say you want to test multiple variables on an A/B test in order to compare a strategy that’s more complex. In this case, you’d want to choose a “More than one” test, which will allow you to test based on the same cost per result or cost per conversion lift.
• Product Set — If you want to test different sets of products, you’ll want to go with this choice. You can choose two product sets to run on Facebook.

All of these variables can be managed from the “Ad Set” tab in Ads Manager, which is right next to the “Campaigns” tab.

Once you’ve chosen your test type, you’ll be ready to perform your test. You can check the status of your test in Ads Manager, and choose how long you want your test to run. To find the progress or check the status of your ads, check your “Account Overview” tab, and look for the icon that resembles a beaker:

If you find that you want to go with a different route for your A/B test, there are also options to set them up differently. For instance, let’s talk about duplication next.

How to use Duplication to create Facebook A/B tests

When you choose this option, you can easily create a test by changing one variable in a nearly identical campaign or ad set. This is for ads or campaigns that have already been created.

1. Access Ads Manager

When you go to Ads Manager, go to your “Campaigns” tab. Here, you’ll see a list of your campaigns that are currently running. You’ll also see your drafted campaigns. You can choose either for duplication.

2. Select “Duplicate”

After you’ve decided which campaign or ad set you want to test, highlight the section under the title and you’ll see a “Duplicate” option. When you click it, this is what you’ll see:

Select the option that notates creating a duplicate specifically for an A/B Test. Remember, this option will let you choose a variable to change to analyze performance, so choose a campaign that fits that criteria.

3. Choose A Variable

If you’re choosing an ad set to duplicate, Facebook will provide suggestions of which variable to change for you, and you can pick from there. I chose traffic, but you can choose based on your ad type or audience.

4. Publish To Test

After choosing your variable, you’ll see your tests next to each other in a preview. After making any necessary changes in this stage, you’ll be ready to publish. To do this, click the green button underneath the audience you’ve selected:

When you publish your test, audiences will be able to interact with them, so make sure you’ve ironed out all the details before finalizing. However, you’ll be able to check back on your test in Ads Manager to access the most current insights.

Next, we’ll cover my favorite option: Experiments.

How to use Experiments to A/B create Facebook A/B tests

The Experiments tool lets you create or duplicate ad campaigns to test. The difference between using Experiments to test instead of Ads Manager is the ability to fine-tune and learn more about the impact of your test while it’s running.

1. Access Experiments

This test won’t run in Ad Manager. Instead, you’ll go to the top of your Business account and select “Experiments” under “Measure & Report.” You can also search “Experiments” in the search bar. This is what you’ll see when you access the Experiments page:

 

2. Select “A/B Test”

Click “Get Started” underneath the “A/B Test” option. When you do this, you’ll be taken to a menu that lets you fill in the ad details. For example, you’ll have to choose the campaign you want to test:

 

Here, you can schedule the run time of your test, fill in the test name, and even decide how you want Facebook to choose the winning campaign. You can either choose cost per result or cost per conversion lift:

 

When you’re finished filling in the details, Facebook will show you how powerful your test is. Essentially, this is to make sure that your draft fits the criteria of an A/B test before you publish. After filling out this menu, you’ll be ready to push your experiment live.

Facebook uses the same base technology to run your A/B tests. The different versions of tests you can run help you make the best choices to optimize ad performance. No matter which test you run, however, you can see all of your results in “Test and Learn” when they’re finished.

Next, let’s go over some best practices for running your A/B test on Facebook.

Facebook A/B Test Best Practices

Keep these best practices in mind before you begin your split test — they’ll help you run tests that are valuable and applicable to your next campaign.

1. Choose one variable that’ll help you reach your goals.

When you A/B test on Facebook, make sure you’re only choosing one variable to test. There’s a separate multivariate test that you can run, but for A/B, one variable is key. Your test results will be more conclusive with only one variable.

2. Pick audiences that you want to reach with ads.

Choose a new audience for your test. They should be large enough to provide measurable results, but shouldn’t be the exact same audience as a campaign you’re already running. If they’re the same as a drafted campaign, that’s okay because they’re not published.

However, if you choose the exact same audience as a campaign you’re already running, Facebook’s system might mix up your ads and provide contaminated results.

3. Use hypotheses that are measurable and valuable.

In order to analyze your test results so they’re the most valuable to you, make sure your hypothesis is measurable. To put it another way: Make sure your hypothesis is clear, easy to understand, and able to be determined with an A/B test.

Your hypothesis can be as simple as, “Which method of delivery do my audience members respond the best to?” This question can be answered by using the Delivery Optimization A/B test on Facebook.

4. Make time frames that are ideal.

Recall that when you set up your A/B test, you can choose a time frame. You can choose to run your test for up to 30 days. Facebook’s Business Center suggests at least four days, which is enough time for the technology to produce accurate results.

5. Choose a budget that works for your business.

Facebook can provide an ideal budget for you based on your test details, or you can choose an ideal budget for yourself when you’re filling in test details. Setting an ideal budget will help you determine a winning strategy — it factors in Ad Spend into the success of your test.

According to one of HubSpot’s Paid Ads specialists, Nicole Ondracek, “A big value of split testing is being able to prevent audience overlap so you know that the same audience is not seeing multiple variants which could affect the results. That way, you can confidently say which one is the clear winner.”

A/B testing gives you a better understanding of audience behavior. Performing them on Facebook streamlines the process and gives you more comfortability with Facebook’s ad system.

Additionally, Ondracek mentions that depending on split testing results, advertisers can begin to shape what type of creative they need to use for the future.

How will you use split testing on Facebook to help your creative advertising efforts?

As a habitual spender bee, the day before payday is, sadly, one of scant spending.

Some of the marketing teams I’ve been on have had similar budget issues (although those weren’t brought on by online shopping like mine).

While having a tight marketing budget can make the job harder, there’s still plenty you can do.

Below, let’s review the top tactics to implement when you’re marketing without a budget.

1. Improve content marketing.

Content marketing is one of the top ways to market your brand when your team is on a tight budget.

For example, you can start a blog. Blogs are a great way to reach your audience and build organic traffic to your site. Plus, you can use this space to answer customer questions and attract leads.

If you run out of content ideas, don’t forget that you can repurpose old content. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every post. You can create an infographic or video to attract new audiences on different platforms, like YouTube.

Additionally, you can strengthen content partnerships by guest blogging on other sites and accepting guest submissions on your blog. This is an excellent way to expand your audience for free.

Vana Korrapati, a digital marketing strategist, says, “Identify your target audience and their pain points. Write blogs that address their pain points with at least one key takeaway. This helps you build a list of leads that could turn into sales. Content marketing is a powerful tool and if you don’t have the time, you can hire content marketing consultants or agencies at low prices.”

To help you get started, marketing software like HubSpot’s Marketing Hub can make this a seamless process.

2. Produce your own podcast.

Another cost-effective way to reach your audience is through podcasting. Plus, if you implement this strategy, you’ll diversify your content marketing plan.

When you’re first getting started, you can repurpose old blog content into a podcast topic. Then, you can promote it through your owned media channels.

Korrapati adds, “Having your own podcast will get you loyal followers and, ultimately, a lot of champions for your product. Not to mention the personal and brand reputation.”

3. Offer a free trial period.

While this might seem like a corporate or financial decision, offering a free trial period is actually a great marketing tactic.

When you offer a free trial, you’ll build trust with your customers and improve your brand reputation.

Korrapati says, “You should let the customer have one foot into your product to experience how amazing it is. You’ll pamper them so much they’ll never want to leave. Even if you lose a few people after the trial period, you’ll get valuable feedback.”

4. Arrange collaborative giveaways.

Whenever you can tap into someone else’s audience to market your own, you should. Running a collaborative giveaway is a win-win situation.

These giveaways should be helpful and enticing to potential customers, while also making sense for your business strategically.

With a collaborative giveaway, you’ll improve your brand reputation and reach an audience you might not have otherwise.

While you can expect some attrition immediately following the giveaway, you should still leave with more leads or followers than you had before.

5. Encourage user-generated content.

Have you ever wondered, “How can I get marketing content for free?” One way? User-generated content.

User-generated content is usually a part of a crowdsourcing campaign when a company asks users to submit ideas or content they can republish.

For example, Lay’s has done a “Do Us a Flavor” campaign for years, where their audience can submit new chip flavor ideas. Or perhaps you want users to submit photos of themselves using your product and a hashtag on Instagram.

Either way, this can improve your online presence and reputation for free and help your team make product and marketing decisions.

6. Dominate your social media presence.

Social media has continued to be a prevalent marketing tactic for any company. In fact, it’s one of the main ways that Gen Z learns about new products.

Plus, it’s free to get started and build your own online community.

To truly dominate the social media world, you can use your posts, live video, or stories to talk about your company culture, encourage user-generated content, interact with your audience, and build your brand.

To get started, consider using social media software like HubSpot’s Social Media Management Tools.

7. Increase community engagement.

When it’s possible, being involved in your local community can help you build your brand among local audiences and increase your online presence. You can sponsor community events or host an event for your community.

Being engaged with your community can be a cost-effective way to increase your brand awareness and overall audience.

8. Plan a webinar.

Inbound marketing is all about using helpful and holistic tactics to solve your audience’s problems and attract leads to your company.

One way to do this is through webinars. Kristen Baker, a marketing manager at HubSpot, says, “Webinars provide businesses with a way to host a digital, interactive event for members of their target audience and customers, no matter their location. They can be used to boost conversions, improve brand awareness, increase revenue, and establish yourself as an expert in your field.”

Additionally, you can use webinars to gather leads and build your email list. Ultimately, hosting a webinar and conducting email marketing drip campaigns afterward should be cost-effective. You can use free email marketing software like HubSpot’s to get started.

9. Review your online directory listings.

Having an online presence is one of the main goals of any marketing department. One way to help you do this is through online directory listings.

Online directories like Yelp, Google My Business, and Facebook provide your company information (name, address, phone, website) for consumers when they’re searching online.

That’s why you need to be listed on as many directories as possible. Usually, updating these listings is free to do and you can provide more information about your company to optimize your listing.

10. Enhance your SEO strategy.

SEO can be a daunting task, but in actuality, it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to increase traffic to your site and improve your organic reach.

To enhance your SEO strategy, consider conducting keyword research, setting up a blog, creating a link-building plan, and optimizing your website content.

These tactics should help you build brand authority, increase brand awareness, and improve traffic on your site.

To get started, consider using a marketing software that has SEO tools, like HubSpot’s SEO marketing software.

Ultimately, marketing doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. You can use several tactics with a tighter budget. In fact, most of the strategies above only require the staff it takes to produce the content.

What do you use spreadsheets for?

If you’re anything like me, you likely use them for data collection, to track campaign or blog post analytics, or to keep track of weekly assignments.

But have you ever thought about using spreadsheets to make a calendar?

Remember the “Tide Pod Challenge?” That horrendous time at the beginning of 2018 when adolescents filmed themselves ingesting laundry detergent?

While it was a funny (albeit dangerous) start to the new year, this small boost of infamy was a PR mess for the detergent brand in question, Tide, whose crisis communication team had to figure out how to respond to America’s teens swallowing their toxic product. Tide’s parent company, Procter & Gamble, was swift in their response, thanks in large part to their communication plan.

Communication plans can help you clarify the purpose of a product launch or new initiative and officially determine the messages you want to deliver to your intended audience(s).

Additionally, a communication plan can help your business during a time of crises if a previous marketing message or business decision damaged your reputation with internal stakeholders or customers.

If companies don’t have a communication plan, they’ll be unprepared when disaster strikes. It may be unlikely that your company will find teenagers eating your product for internet fame, but not so unlikely that you’ll never find yourself needing a procedure to effectively handle difficult situations.

Now that we’ve gone over how a communication plan can be helpful, let’s learn how to write one that will be effective.

Featured Resource: Communication Plan Template [Download Now]

Need a free, easy-to-use communication plan template? HubSpot has 12. Check out this toolkit for everything you need to build your own.

This is part of a template offered in the toolkit. For this particular template, the organization is separated into phases, a description of that phase, and who needs to complete that action.

Communication plans can get tricky, but writing an effective one will prove itself with its longevity.

Download this Template for Free

This communication checklist below, by Prezly, gives a great overview of the details of a crisis plan from beginning to end. It can be used as an effective guide when drafting a crisis management strategy.

Image source: Prezly

1. Conduct an audit of your current communications materials.

Before sitting down to get rollin’ on your plan, you need to first decide where it’ll fit into your business. So it’s important you complete a “state of the union”, or an audit of the current climate of communications within your company. This can help you identify any problem areas.

For instance, let’s say you need to create a communications plan for a new product launch. To create your plan, you’ll first need to perform an audit to identify gaps in your current marketing approach.

After performing the audit, you might find there is a major gap in your marketing materials in which you rarely discuss a topic that aligns well with your new product. You’ll want to ensure this topic makes it into your communications plan.

To conduct an audit, you’ll need to carefully gather and interpret data on your current marketing plan performance and build a path forward based on those results. Additionally, you might consider hosting focus groups or sending surveys to your audience to find gaps in your current communications materials.

Of course, you’ll want to have the goal of your communications plan in-mind when conducting an audit. In the example above, noticing you’re lacking material on a certain subject only matters if your goal is to drive leads and conversions to a product that aligns with that subject.

For instance, if you’re launching a new email marketing tool and you notice you’re lacking content on Google Ads, this might not be relevant information for your communications plan. However, if you’re missing content on email marketing best practices, that’s important information you can use to tailor your communications plan appropriately.

2. Set SMART goals for your communications plan based on the results from your audit.

After your audit, you’ll want to lay out a few goals based on the data from the results. What do you want to achieve with this plan?

When in doubt, remember that your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.

For instance, if a small agency is writing a communications plan for its client, they might write a goal along these lines: “We plan to increase employment applications for our client by 25% over the course of one quarter.”

Alternatively, perhaps your HR team needs to write a communications plan to pitch designing a new growth matrix for individual contributors who don’t want to become managers.

If that’s the case, your HR team will need to identify specific goals they hope to achieve as a result of their plan, even if the results are less quantifiable — for instance, their goal might be to “increase employee retention rates by 10% over the next year” or even “increase employee satisfaction, as indicated by their next NPS scores.” They’ll need to pitch these goals to stakeholders to get leadership on-board.

3. Identify the audience to whom you plan to deliver your communications plan.

Good communication starts with knowing and understanding your listener. In this case, if a crisis communication plan is for stakeholders, which one(s) are you writing for? Stakeholder examples include employees, investors, customers, local government officials, or media outlets.

If you’re writing for media outlets, a press release detailing your goals is a good idea for that audience. There should be a process for who will speak to the media outlets, an outline of what they will say, and an action plan put in place moving forward.

Alternatively, if your audience is your employees, you might want to create an up-to-date internal document for employees to refer to, as well as the contact information for the internal DRI if they have follow-up questions.

4. Outline and write your plan, keeping your audiences in-mind.

When you’re ready to outline and write your plan, it’s likely easiest if you start with a table or chart to identify the messages you need to promote, to whom you’re targeting those messages, and on which channel(s).

Once you’ve created a general outline, here’s how you’ll want to structure your communications plan (feel free to copy these sections into a Table of Contents for your own plan):

• Purpose (what is this communications plan for)
• Escalation Framework (including ‘first line of defense’ and ‘greater response team’)
• Roles and responsibilities of each employee
• Do’s and Don’ts
• How to maintain an effective response plan

(If you need help writing a communications plan, download our free, ready-to-use communications plan templates.)

When writing your communication plan, work with groups or representatives from your stakeholders to improve accuracy. Strategies should solve for goals or potential risks.

For instance, if you work for an agency aiming to promote a client’s product, a risk might be spending money on paid ads without a guaranteed ROI. To solve for that risk, the agency should detail different steps to ensure the ads are effective before going public.

5. Determine the channel(s) on which you need to deliver your messages.

The channels you choose to communicate with your audience depends on your message, and to whom you want to deliver that message. For instance, if you’re creating a communications plan for internal employees, you might send out your communications plan in a company-wide email, or use in-person team meetings to deliver your message.

Alternatively, if you’re communicating with customers, you might determine it’s best to communicate via an email newsletter, or via a press release.

Of course, the channel(s) you choose will depend on your goals, but it’s important as you’re writing your communication plan that you keep your distribution methods in-mind.

6. Decide which team members are responsible for delivering the message.

Once you determine your audience and channel(s) on which you’ll deliver your communications plan, figure out the DRI for delivering the message.

For instance, if your HR team is pitching a new growth matrix to leadership, you might ask your Director of HR to deliver the initial pitch in the first meeting. Once leadership is on-board, you might ask each HR representative to deliver one training session for each internal team to ensure every employee understands what’s changing internally, and why.

7. Estimate a timeline for how long each step should take.

You should have a ballpark estimate of how much time each step in executing your strategy will take. For instance, if your plan needs to go from the higher-ups down to the employees, it’s good to take into account how long going through the chain of command will take. It’s also smart to infer how long a media cycle will last.

For instance, for a minor slip-up on an ad campaign, the advertising agency might estimate the cycle for controlling the issue will take a month — including meeting with the client, stakeholders, and employees to discuss steps moving forward.

8. Measure the results of your plan after presenting to stakeholders, and determine successes and areas for improvement.

There’s always room for improvement. Measure the results of the plan after presenting it to stakeholders, and determine aspects that went well, and areas for improvement next time.

For instance, the ad agency might not have met its goal of increasing prospective applications by 25% within a quarter. They might rework their goals to give themselves more time or pivot their quarterly focus to fit those goals.

Alternatively, if you notice certain language in your communications plan evoked a level of stress or fear with internal stakeholders, consider how you can re-word next time to ensure your communications plan feels helpful, beneficial, and positive.

Some aspects of building a communication plan can be a “choose your own adventure” journey. The key is choosing aspects that best reflect what your business needs in times when effective communication is key. What do your stakeholders need to know, and how are you going to best communicate that?

Communication Plan Examples

A basic communication plan should include an analysis for the stakeholders you’d respond to and the procedures for what to include in those conversations. You might also include an overview of your business, potential communication challenges, and risk management strategy.

Bright Hub Project management has an example that includes how to put this information — and more — into your communication plan as a project manager.

This example is great because it details how communication managers write crisis plans and acknowledges that sometimes the busy marketer or project manager does as well.

Source: Bright Hub

The National School Public Relations Association has a free version of a sample communication plan in PDF format. It’s a great example of how to format a crisis strategy and how to fit your budget into the plan:

Finally, here’s an example of a Billing Upgrade Project from Simplicable. As you can see, the communications plan includes necessary sections including audience, goals, format, and DRI:

Source: Simplicable

Finally, here are some extra tips to keep in mind to help your plan shine: when describing procedures for handling crises, include who the situation involves. This lets stakeholders envision decision-making processes.

Additionally, if you’re part of a larger company with a broad stakeholder list, it’s okay to split up target audiences for your plan.

For instance, maybe your audience is more than just “consumers.” Split stakeholder groups for easier comprehension and more distinct solutions.

Ultimately, your communications plan needs to clearly and succinctly provide necessary information to everyone involved in the business decision, product launch, or PR crises. Use the strategy mentioned above, as well as our communication plan templates, to ensure yours is as effective as possible.

B2B marketing has hit a wall. Audiences are getting harder to reach, campaigns are fractured across channels and, for many brands, performance is flatlining. Whatever audiences want, they want it now.

As marketers, we have an obligation to earn our audience’s attention. We already know that the B2B journey is powered by content. Channels never mattered to the consumer. Prospects want to self-educate, and content is how they choose to do it.

Increasingly, B2B companies are turning to thought leadership content to enhance brand reputation, build decision-makers’ trust, open the conversation, and help close business, according to research by Edelman and LinkedIn.

In fact, 56% of B2B marketing executives stated “positioning our company as a thought leader” as their top objective in a recent Economics Intelligence Unit study.

What exactly is thought leadership marketing? Simply put, it’s the art of using content to position your company as a leader in its field. The goal is to demonstrate domain expertise and offer a unique point of view.

If you want your brand to earn respect from your audience, you need to provide value. But what’s valuable? The short answer is offering your audience the content they want and need – when and where they’re looking for it.

Depending on your industry, demonstrating thought leadership can take different forms. However, if you’re looking to increase brand authority in 2020, Quora is a great place to start.

Here, let’s explore why Quora makes sense for thought leadership content, how to build brand awareness on the platform, and best practices for advertising on Quora.

Why Quora Makes Sense for Content Distribution

What makes Quora unique is why people come to the platform. It’s not search, and it’s not social media. It’s somewhere in-between, with over 300 million people coming every month to conduct research, evaluate products, ask for tips, and learn more about the world around them.

This knowledge exchange is conducive to people who are receptive to new ideas and looking to discover new products. This includes people looking for reliable information about your company, products, competitors, or industry as a whole.

Aside from a growing high-intent audience, Quora works to build a platform and ecosystem that is optimal for readers, writers, askers, and seekers of information. Unlike other platforms where content gets buried or disappears, the knowledge shared on Quora is evergreen. This means your answers aren’t just relevant for a day — they’re still easy to find months and years later.

Additionally, people aren’t one dimensional. We have multiple interests. Quora personalizes the content based on what people want to learn more about so it’s always relevant.

For instance, I’m learning how to surf, so I follow Surfing to understand the terminology and etiquette. I also have one-year-old at home, so Parenting helps me be a better father. Digital Marketing keeps me updated on the latest trends in our industry. And Personal Finance provides expert advice on how I can prepare for retirement and practical ways to start investing.

Plus, it’s a lot of fun reading analysis and opinions of the latest Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker movie, so I can keep up with what my nerd of a wife is waxing eloquent about.

Now that we’ve explored why Quora is a powerful channel for brand awareness and distributing content, let’s explore who you’ll find on Quora and how to know which audience(s) to target.

How to Find Your Audience on Quora

Quora has a greater concentration of P18+ users with a HHI > $100K than other publishers such as WSJ, LinkedIn, HuffPost, and Reddit.

Additionally, Quora users are highly educated, with 65% having a college degree and 28% having a graduate college degree. In addition, 54% report having a HHI > $100K annually.

Here are a few ways to find your audience on Quora:

1. Start searching on Quora. Leverage existing high-performing keywords and topics, and look for question opportunities that offer a solid follower count on topics. This will give you a good idea of potential audience size for a given topic.
2. Search your competitors. Are people talking about them? Are they active on the platform writing answers or running ads? If not, then take advantage of this by adopting the platform first. If they are utilizing Quora, you might be missing out on engaging conversions with potential customers.
3. Create an ad account. https://www.quora.com/business
4. Install the Quora Pixel. Add the pixel on your website and then create a website audience to understand how many of your website visitors are on Quora.
5. Create a List Match Audience. Upload your email list in Quora Ads Manager to understand the match rate and overlap. Most Quora users use their personal email address when signing up so business email won’t work as well here.

Now that you’ve identified and targeted your ideal Quora audience, let’s dive into how you can create a robust marketing flywheel on the platform.

The Quora Flywheel Effect

The flywheel effect, described by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, describes a massive, 5,000-pound metal disc mounted horizontally on an axle. He asks the reader to imagine pushing it, so that it turns around that axle. At first, getting it to move at all is extremely difficult. But with each push, it gets fractionally easier and the flywheel begins to pick up speed.

It’s a great metaphor for marketing, and Quora is one of the only platforms where marketers can create a robust marketing flywheel.

Here are three best-practices you can employ to create your own momentum on Quora:

• Share: contribute to the conversation by adding and answering questions. This is how you will demonstrate your expertise.
• Engage: interact with high-intent audiences and potential prospects by being an active participant on Quora. Upvoting, commenting, and resharing answers shows that you’re interested in being a part of the community.
• Thought leadership: gain authority and establish trust on topics by consistently providing valuable answers and a unique point of view. This leads to more followers and people asking you to answer their questions.

How to Get Started on Quora in 4 Easy Steps

The truth is, thought leadership doesn’t have to be costly or difficult. Remember 300+ million people come to Quora every month to learn more about the world around them, which includes your products or services.

According to the 2019 study of B2B content marketing from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 9 in 10 of the “most successful” B2B content marketers prioritize their audience’s informational needs over their own sales/promotional messages.

Since the questions on Quora are demand-driven, it’s an excellent platform for marketers looking to address the informational needs of their audience.

Step 1: Contribute to the Conversation

To turn the flywheel, you must contribute to the conversation. On Quora, that means answering questions. Your answers demonstrate your expertise, give you credibility as a thought leader, and position your voice in conversations about your industry or products.

They are seen by people actively looking for an answer and who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. Plus, your answers can lead to further exposure, since many Quora answers show up in Google searches, or sometimes get picked up by the media, like how Justin Kan‘s answer got featured in Apple News:

As a writer, your answers are algorithmically matched to people who are interested in the topic. This helps ensure that the right people see what you write — people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say.

These can range between a few thousand to hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers per topic. Because of the way Quora sends out your answer, you have the ability to reach these topic followers right away, before they’re even following you as an individual.

How to Map Question Intent to the Buyer’s Journey

According to CMI, 90% of top-performing B2B content marketers put audience’s informational needs first. This means producing content that directly addresses customer issues and intent.

On Quora it’s important to understand the intent of demand-driven questions as it relates to the buyer’s journey. Many marketers split the journey into three distinct sections.

1. Top of the funnel (TOFO) focuses on brand awareness and site traffic. ToFu content grabs attention. “What is . . .” questions.
2. Middle of the funnel (MOFU) focuses on lead generation and nurture. MOFU content educates and informs. “How to . . .” questions.
3. Bottom of the funnel (BOFU) focuses on conversion to paid service or product. BOFU content is personalized and product focused. Product review and comparison questions.

Generally, the broader the question, the more views it will receive as it appeals to a larger audience. For example, “What does CRM stand for?” is a general question that has over 100 answers and 40k views.

In contrast, the more specific the question, the lower in the funnel it is thus receiving less views since it appeals to a smaller audience. For example, “What is a good CRM tool for a small e-commerce business, or alternatively, marketing software which includes a CRM function is a very specific question with 20 answers and over 4,600 views.

The middle stage of the funnel is the best place to influence and shape the buyer’s journey.

Which is why Quora is such an attractive platform for marketers. Since people come to Quora looking for answers and solutions, it only makes sense to have your brand present in order to capture this high-intent audience.

Winning on Quora with High-Quality Answers

Now that you have identified topics and questions related to your business, it’s time to answer them. Ask yourself, what makes you an expert or thought leader and why should others care?

To get started, simply answer questions relevant to your industry and expertise. Look for missing information in available answers and provide additional informational value. Authentic and credible answers will grow your following faster which, in turn, will increase answer views.

Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and former ceo/co-founder of EchoSign, is a great example of someone who has really invested in the Quora flywheel. He’s been a writer on Quora since 2010, and has written over three thousand answers on Quora, gaining 46k followers and over 54M answer views. Jason realizes the value of thought leadership on Quora, which has fueled the growth of his annual SaaS specific conference, SaaStr.

Content marketing on Quora looks a little different compared to a company blog or a social media post. Content on Quora is usually in the form of high-quality answers related to your industry and/or business. But what does high-quality mean?

On Quora, it means answering the question that is asked (don’t try to fit your answer into an existing question, if it’s not a good fit), being thoughtful and unique, using good formating, and providing your rational and experiences to back up points.

Providing the best answer is key for driving success on Quora. Remember, the primary goal isn’t the amount of views, it’s providing the best answer to your audience’s question.

Here are a few guidelines for what makes good content on Quora:

1. Demonstrate credibility, and make sure you’re factually correct.
2. Structure your answers clearly and ensure they’re easy to read (formatting, actionable items, images, etc … ).
3. Include unique or interesting facts, personal stories of failures, mishaps, or successes.
4. Bonus tip: Answer a question as quickly as possible after it’s posted. The question will be fresh in the mind of the person who posted it, and they’ll be more likely to upvote your answer or engage you further.

Plus, answers continue to be useful on Quora, even years after they are written. If you write answers that don’t “expire,” they will continue to be read and useful for future audiences.

Convey Expertise with Your Quora Profile

When you start writing answers, it’s important to convey your expertise and build trust by filling out your Quora credentials and bio. Unlike other user-generated Q&A sites, users on Quora create profiles based on their real identities.

Quora has active moderation policies in place to ensure that discourse is civil, content quality is high, and people feel safe sharing their knowledge.

By adding your title, company, bio, interests, and website links, you signal who you are and why readers should trust your answers. It also helps people find you when searching for experts and/or the best people to answer their questions.

Step 2: Engage with Your Audience on Quora

There’s a natural exchange of information that happens on Quora. People answer questions by sharing their knowledge and experiences and users upvote, comment, and share answers they find useful and helpful. Community engagement helps ensure the best answers surface to the top of questions and get more visibility in your home feed.

However, there are some marketers who only use Quora to write self-promotional answers and don’t engage with the community. Be better than that.

Engage with the Quora community and your target audience to establish yourself as a trusted member. For example, if someone comments on your answer, give a response rather than letting it go unnoticed. That’s what Gabriel Weinberg, CEO and Founder of DuckDuckGo, does in his answers, and the community rewards him for it.

A great way to start engaging on Quora is to follow influencers for topic areas of interests. Our influencers are the 10 writers with the most answer views in the last 30 days called “Most Viewed Writers.” For example, if you’re interested in Lead Generation then start following the Most Viewed Writers of this topic to get an idea of the types of questions they’re answering, how often they write answers, and their writing style.

Then, take note of how the community responds by reviewing their engagement, which questions are getting the most views, and where information gaps exist to determine how your answer could provide unique value to a reader. And don’t forget to interact with them by upvoting and commenting on their answers.

Another way to engage with the Quora community is by asking questions. By asking questions, you can solicit ideas and experiences from an audience you’ve selected and quickly gain visibility.

Plus, you can perform market research to gauge audience interest about potential products or services by adding specific questions. If the question isn’t on Quora, add it and provide the answer. This is great for questions commonly asked about your company like FAQs.

Be an active participant on Quora, engage with the community, follow other thought leaders and top writers to grow your influence as a trusted member.

Step 3: Gain Authority and Establish Trust with Your Followers

You’re doing it. Your flywheel is picking up speed as you consistently answer questions and actively engage with the community.

If you’re an expert in productivity tools, don’t just write about how much you know. Write answers and provide a point of view tackling specific challenges in the world of team productivity tools. Not only will your audience be more interested in reading an answer that could help them, but you’ll earn their trust and gain credibility.

Let’s take a look at Asana, a web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. They built a presence on Quora through the voice of their co-founder and head of product, Justin Rosenstein. His answer to a 2015 question on top productivity tips has been viewed more than 456,000 times and was featured in Forbes, Inc., Time, and Quartz.

Content Distribution and Amplification

Distribution is often a neglected area of content marketing, but it’s crucial to success. Even if you write the greatest piece ever, it doesn’t mean much if no one sees it. If you have content you’ve already written on your blog or website, repurpose it into a helpful answer on Quora.

Get more mileage out of previously written content by sharing it to grow your audience and influence on Quora. Sharing your blog post as a Quora answer rather than a Quora blog post is preferable in most cases, since questions already have a following and are more easily discoverable by search engines.

Consider making Quora your one source of truth for FAQs related to your organization. Ask and answer your list of FAQs on Quora, and link to them from the FAQ page on your website. Or link to Quora answers that serve as testimonials for your business. If there’s content on Quora that helps people understand what you do and promotes your business, make sure they find it by linking to it.

If you’re looking to increase awareness of your Quora content consider these two ideas:

• Amplify distribution with other social media networks: Share your Quora answers with your existing social media audience. You can do this easily by clicking the Facebook or Twitter icons below the answer.
• Direct your customers to your answers: Share links to your Quora answers with visitors to your website, or email subscribers. It’s a great way to help them learn more about a question or topic without having to fit all of the information in a small text field.

Another key factor for consideration when you’re evaluating the ROI of writing on Quora is this: Your answers aren’t just available through our site. Quora pages consistently rank highly in Google searches, generally on the first page of results, and oftentimes, as the number one result. Quora’s strong SEO directs people from Google to your answers so more than just the established Quora community can read it.

Measuring Performance

How do you figure out where to spend your time on Quora? Quora offers a free analytics tool that allows you to track your questions, answers and blog posts by clicks, views, shares, and upvotes. Use this information to determine what works best on the platform so you can focus on sharing content that engages the community.

Step 4: Accelerate Growth with Promoted Answers

The research also revealed that 84% of respondents have used paid distribution channels in the last 12 months (91% among the top performers).

Businesses and individuals often want to reach a larger audience on the platform for their answers. With Promoted Answers, anyone with a Quora Ads account can extend the reach of their answers on Quora.

Promoted Answers have the same targeting capabilities that are available for all other ad formats on Quora, allowing both businesses and individuals to build a following that will be ready to engage with future answers they write.

How Promoted Answers Work

Promoted Answers allow you to share detailed information about your product or service that goes beyond the characters allowed in normal ad copy. They also facilitate engagement through upvotes, comments, and follows.

Promoted Answers are a great way for businesses to join and steer the conversation surrounding your brand.

When it comes to the types of answers that one could promote, businesses can use Promoted Answers to share detailed information about their product or service. Thought leaders can boost their existing content on Quora to bolster their presence and build a following.

Here are some best practices on using Promoted Answers to boost your content:

1. Establish thought leadership. Answers a business might promote are positive employee experiences or thought leadership answers by a company founder.
2. Write answers that are useful. Provide knowledge that is reusable by anyone who is interested in the question.
3. Choose high-quality answers. A good answer is credible, factually correct, and helpful to anyone who wants to know the answer to the question.
4. Ensure that the answer isn’t too short. Clicks are measured when someone clicks on the preview of the Promoted Answer to read it in full.

Quora Ads enable your organization to:

• Reach a coveted audience. Quora has a worldwide audience of more than 300 million unique visitors. They give advertisers the opportunity to connect during the consideration phase of the buyer’s journey, making their ad platform ideally suited to influence future decisions.
• Target for greater efficiency. Reach and influence your target audience through contextual and behavioral targeting options. You can choose to target certain content on Quora or reach people signaling an interest in your product or service.
• Deliver your message in a premium environment. On Quora, your message will only appear alongside content that’s on par with your brand. Quora values content quality above all else. Users trust the platform to provide expert answers and surface topics relevant to their interests.
• Measurable results. Quora’s ads platform makes it easy to measure the ROI of your campaigns. View standard metrics in ads manager and track conversions using Quora Pixel or integrate with our third party measurement partners.

Lily Rouff, Social Media Strategist at DuckDuckGo, recognized early there were already several conversations happening about their service and competitors on Quora.

As a result, they decided to accelerate the flywheel by promoting answers written by their CEO and founder, Gabriel Weinberg, to augment their presence on the platform in an authentic way.

Rouff told me, “We’ve been really excited about the [Promoted Answers] CTR. I think it just goes to show how engaged the Quora community is.”

“When users are looking for answers already, they’re obviously going to be a bit more engaged. We’re investing in Quora because our Promoted Answers really seem to resonate with Quora’s audience.”

By leveraging both community content marketing and paid advertising, DuckDuckGo takes full advantage of Quora’s flywheel generating over 1.8 billion views on their answers.

Quora is a unique marketing platform where businesses can share knowledge to build their brand and engage their target audience with industry thought leadership and content marketing. Businesses can also influence high-intent buyers with relevant, highly targeted ads on the platform.

To review, here are three ways to get started on Quora:

1. Build Your Brand

• Get exposure to the more than 300 million monthly visitors to Quora, reaching a large audience from day one, without having to build up a large following.
• Leverage personalized content distribution to millions of users via the Quora Feed and the Quora Digest.
• Content written on Quora is evergreen, delivering leads and driving influence even years after being written.

2. Engage Your Audience

• Personal and Business Profiles can be used to answer questions about your product or service.
• Establish your brand and leaders within your organization as experts by answering questions about your industry or vertical.

3. Influence with Quora Ads

• Use Quora Ads to influence high-intent prospects during the research and consideration phase.
• People come to Quora to research important decisions. Questions on Quora are organized into topics and there is a wide diversity of topics on the platform today.

Ultimately, thought leadership on Quora can be a fun, interesting hobby or personally rewarding, but also is something that every business and leader should be investing time in.

Marketers focused on delivering high-quality, engaging, and inspiring content can positively influence the buyer’s journey to purchase.