“Lisa has recommended you!”

Awww, she has?!

When I get a LinkedIn recommendation from someone I respect and admire professionally, I feel both honored and encouraged to return the favor. But for some reason, I always get writer’s block. I never know how to start or what to say — only that I like this person’s work and I want others to know it.

Unfortunately, simply writing “Lisa is the best!!!!” isn’t reflective of Lisa’s skills — plus it makes you look like a total goon.

Luckily, in the past few weeks I’ve written a couple of LinkedIn recommendations that I think turned out pretty well, and they reflected a pattern that’s easy to replicate in subsequent recommendations. I thought I’d share that pattern with others that suffer the same writer’s block.

Download our ultimate guide to LinkedIn here for more tips about how to use LinkedIn for professional networking.

Here’s a quick little “template” you can use that makes for a LinkedIn recommendation that’s specific, honest, succinct, and helpful for the person you’re recommending.

1. Explain the nature of your professional relationship.

That sounds really serious, but it’s simply a helpful piece of context that acts as an “intro” for your recommendation. Whether it’s a coworker you’ve worked closely with for years, a manager, a direct report, a point of contact at an agency, or something else entirely, it sets the stage for the reader to learn why you’re writing this recommendation.

For Example:

I’ve worked alongside Lisa for close to two years now.

2. Provide details of the position for which you’re recommending the person.

Are you recommending this person for their work in one position? Or are you writing about their work across multiple jobs they’ve held while you worked with them? Either way, a great next step is to explain some of the notable parts of their job(s). It may feel strange — kind of like you’re listing out their job description. But this is very helpful for anyone reading the recommendation, looking to get a feel for what precisely it is they did in their job.

Resist the urge to create a laundry list of their job duties. If they’ve really worn that many hats, I recommend contacting them to see if there’s a certain part of their role they’d like emphasized over others.

For Example:

In those two years, I’ve seen her not only excel at the core elements of her job — like copywriting and copyediting — but also learn other tasks that extend well beyond the scope of her role, like email marketing, event planning, and even championing our company’s internal communications.

3. Explain how they’ve grown at the company.

If this person reports (or once reported) to you, this aspect of a LinkedIn recommendation can go a long way. Explaining how the person you’re recommending has grown — either in their role or from one role to another — can demonstrate an ability to adapt as the organization expands.

Just be careful not to overstate any low points in the person’s career that can dilute the value of the growth you’re trying to highlight.

For Example:

Lisa has grown as quickly as our business has, and her willingness to learn and take on these new responsibilities is something to be desired in any professional.

4. Indicate how their contribution helped grow the team or company.

This could be an explanation of how their performance helped hit hard metrics, or it could demonstrate a contribution toward more esoteric things, like leading their teammates or fostering new initiatives.

For Example:

Lisa’s mastery for both her core role, and the projects that extend beyond it, have been critical to the company’s growth. In fact, her taking on internal company communication aligned with a sharp increase in employee happiness.

5. Explain what these achievements reveal about that person.

By now, you’ve included some specifics — so let’s explain what those specifics mean for the larger theme of your recommendation. Do the examples you’ve detailed reveal that person is hard-working? Ambitious? Great for team morale? Connect their accomplishments with their attributes.

For Example:

This rare mix of productivity and ambition sets a great example for the rest of the team, and explains why everyone loves working with Lisa — no matter where they fall on the org chart.

6. End with a note about the personal aspect of working with him/her.

In this section, hit the message home with a mention of how you felt working with the person, your hopes for their career, or simply a prediction about their future.

For Example:

While Lisa’s work has continued to pay dividends long past her tenure here, I certainly miss working with her every day. I have only optimistic predictions for her career trajectory.

LinkedIn Recommendation Examples

Recommendation From an Employee

In the recommendation below, a person discusses how their supervisor progressed at the company and how this person mentored them so they too could grow as an employee. 

Recommendation from an Employer

In this recommendation, an employer explains how an employee progressed and executed on projects that made a big impact on their company:

LinkedIn Recommendation Sample (for a Manager)

Now, writing a LinkedIn recommendation can seem easier said than done. What if the employee you’re recommending is your superior? This can make it more difficult to recommend the person — even if you’re saying stellar things about them.

To avoid sounding patronizing or tone deaf when addressing a higher-level professional, here’s a sample LinkedIn recommendation — written in full — that a manager would be proud to receive (notice how it embraces every step outlined above).

I’ve worked for Lisa for two years, and in those two years, I’ve seen her quickly take on new responsibilities while having the time to teach this information back into her employees. By inheriting tasks like campaign analytics and email A/B testing — both of which extend beyond the scope of our team — she’s made our department much more agile, and set me up for a promotion last month. Lisa is as great a person as she was a manager, and her next employer will be lucky to have her.

Now proofread, and hit send. Remember, the recipient has the opportunity to review and request changes to your recommendation, so if you’re concerned you haven’t written a recommendation in the most helpful way possible, they can still get in touch with edit requests.

Editor’s note: This blog post was originally published in July 2018, but was updated in November 2019 for comprehensiveness.

Let’s say you’re hiring a freelancer or two to help improve the marketing effort of a campaign. You’ve identified the project they’ll be working on, about how many hours it should take, and the context they’ll need to be successful — but you still haven’t decided on the hourly rate.

Instead of spending hours figuring out how much you should pay your marketing freelancer, take a look at the data we’ll pull for you. We’ve rounded up the national freelance hourly rates of marketing consultants, PR professionals, and SEO specialists.

But, before getting into the details, here’s a basic formula to calculate the hourly rate of freelancers.

Freelance Hourly Rate Calculator

To calculate an hourly rate, start with an estimate of yearly income and divide that by how many hours you typically work in a year. Though the number of hours worked might change depending on industry and job functions, it’s safe to assume that most professionals work 40 hours a week for 50 weeks.

The other two weeks are likely spent on a vacation or sick days. With that in mind, the average full-time professional works about 2,000 hours in any given year.

This makes the basic formula:

Rate = Annual income / Hours worked in the year

This is illustrated in the graphic below:

If your goal is to make $58,000 a year, here is how you’d use the formula to find an hourly rate:

$58,000 / 2,000 = $29/hour

We will continue to use this formula for different industries and professions within the freelance industry.

Hourly Rate for Freelance Marketing Consultant

Marketing consultants are professionals in the marketing industry who act upon strategies built by market research and the professional’s experience. Their primary goal is to drive sales by delivering fresh marketing campaigns and expertise.

Businesses hire a marketing consultant if they need a new outlook on a current project or an entirely different project that’s being taken in a direction that’s usually foreign to the business. Hiring a marketing consultant is a more cost-effective way to bring on more help, since it’s freelance consultants aren’t full-time staff.

The industry standard for a marketing consultant is $47,682/yr in the US, according to Glassdoor. This is illustrated by the graphic below.

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If you were to use the formula above to find an hourly rate for this salary, you would divide $47,682 / 2,000 for an hourly rate of $23.84.

Let’s say you’re looking for a marketing consultant with years of professional industry experience to work on a project that will take several months. For these levels of experience, you might find hourly rates to range from $125-$150 an hour.

It all depends on your budget, your reasons for hiring, and what’s best for your business. All of these factors come into play again when calculating the hourly rate for public relations freelancers.

Freelance Public Relations Hourly Rate

Freelance public relations professionals help coordinate and define the image of a brand. They also have a hand in managing public perception of their clients’ products and can serve as a point of contact for press inquiries about those clients as well.

Businesses might hire a freelance public relations professional if they are looking for an outside perspective to gain insight into brand building or garner press about their company. Freelance public relations professionals also are a cost-effective way of hiring more help, like marketing consultants.

The national average for a freelance PR professional’s yearly salary is $54,114/yr, according to ZipRecruiter. This is illustrated by the graph below.

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To use the formula from above, taking $54,114 / 2,000 = $27.05/hr.

Next, we’re going to look at calculating the hourly rate for an SEO specialist.

Freelance SEO hourly rate

Ahrefs is a marketing tool driven by data and powered by backlinks and keywords. Last year, they surveyed over 300 freelance SEO specialists about their hourly rates.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) makes sure a business’s online content ranks highly on search engines to gain organic engagement. Typically, marketers use websites like Ahrefs to run data reports on where content is being ranked on Google, which words are garnering traction, and where a business falls on search engines.

A business might want to hire a freelance SEO specialist to gain insight into how people are finding their business (or how they aren’t). They also might look into hiring a specialist in this field to gain valuable online data that previously hadn’t been calculated. Ahrefs found that the most popular hourly rate is $100-$150 for SEO specialists.

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It also provided a graph on how much specialists tend to charge based on years of experience. For example, a specialist with less than two years’ experience is more likely to charge $75 per hour, while someone with over ten years’ experience is more likely to charge $150 per hour.

All it takes is a simple formula to find the hourly rate for freelancers. By using some industry benchmarks, you can easily find a freelancer that fits your budget and goals. And, for freelancers and businesses looking to hire freelancers alike, we have the ultimate guide on that very subject. For more information about the ins and outs of freelancing, check out our post here.

Just like Sharpay Evans from “High School Musical” says, “It’s out with the old, and in with the new.”

Although Sharpay is talking about fabulous summer plans, that adage also applies to podcasting.

With 32% of the population listening to podcasts regularly, podcast shows should continue to evolve as the industry does.

Of course, in order to build a successful podcast, you need the right tools and services at your disposal.

Let’s review the top podcast tools and services to level up your podcasting game.

These tools can help make your show more efficient and professional. Below, we’ll break down the tools and services into four categories: podcast recording equipment, podcast recording software, podcast editing software, and podcast hosting sites.

Podcast Recording Equipment

To take your podcast show from good to great this year, you need to have the right equipment.

1. USB Audio Interface and Recording Bundle

The first thing you need to record your podcast is a microphone, headphones, and a USB audio interface or mixer. In order to bring your podcasting game to the next level, you can consider getting higher-quality equipment.

For instance, on Amazon, you can find bundles that sell all of this equipment at once. However, you can also buy the equipment separately. If you do that, make sure you buy a cable that will connect your microphone and USB audio interface.

2. Adjustable Microphone Arm Stand

Once you have a microphone, headphones, and audio interface, you’ll want to consider getting a microphone arm stand. A microphone stand will make it easier for you to record your podcast, so you aren’t chained to your desk or have to sit in an awkward position.

Most microphones will come with an adapter that’ll connect with any microphone arm stand. Before you buy a new stand, make sure you have that adapter.

Podcast Recording Software

Now that you have all the equipment to make your podcast the best it can be, you’ll need to make sure you’re using the right recording software.

3. Skype

Price: Free.

With Skype, you can record video and audio right in the program. When you’re on a call, you can click the three dots on the bottom right and then hit “Start Recording.”

Skype is a great option for podcasters because it’s free and easy to use. There are also other options, if you want better audio quality. For instance, you can download recording software on your computer or buy an external digital recorder.

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4. Zoom

Price: Free+

Zoom is another excellent free option. You can easily record right in the program, by clicking the “Record” button and choosing where you’d like to save your audio file.

Skype and Zoom are fairly similar options, however, the recording files differ. Skype will give you a mono file, which means both yours and your interviewee’s side of the conversation is on one audio track. However, Zoom splits both sides of the call, giving you two separate audio tracks. This is helpful when it comes to cutting and editing in post-production.

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5. Ringr

Price: $8/month+

Ringr is a long-distance podcasting and broadcast interview recording program. Although this option isn’t free, it has excellent sound quality. If you’re focused on bringing higher-quality sound to your interviews, Ringr is a good choice.

Additionally, they have three different plans you can choose from. With the basic plan, you’ll get a mono audio file, and unlimited calls and storage. If you decide to go with the premium or enterprise plan, you’ll get a split-track audio file, plus better sound quality and the option to use conference calling.

6. Squadcast

Price: $5/hour or $20/month+

Squadcast is an easy-to-use podcast recording software. Once you sign up, all you have to do is set up a meeting, click “Record,” and you’re set.

One unique element of this software is that you can pay by the hour, if you don’t think you need a monthly plan. Even with the hourly plan, you can host up to three guests and will receive a high-quality WAV or MP3 file.

Additionally, Squadcast plans to add video recording and transcription, which will help with your show notes and posting your podcast to YouTube.

One of the top reasons to use a podcast recording software like Squadcast, as opposed to Skype or Zoom, is that you’ll have a library of all your recordings in one place, online, where you can access them at any time, any place.

7. Pro Tools

Price: $30/year+

If you’re ready to move beyond the beginner recording software above, Pro Tools is an excellent option.

Pro Tools is an advanced recording and editing software. You can record, edit, and mix numerous audio tracks. However, this is for the more advanced audio recorders/editors. The user interface (UI) isn’t as intuitive for beginners and may seem overwhelming at first.

Although, because it’s advanced, it also offers much more robust features. For example, since Pro Tools is known in the music industry, it has virtual instrumentation available, which can be helpful in creating the music to put in your podcast. Additionally, it offers plugins, collaboration, and hands-on audio mixing.

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8. Reaper

Price: $60 one time payment+

Reaper is another advanced recording, editing, and mixing software. This type of program provides higher-quality recordings and more capabilities when it comes to editing and mixing.

The UI isn’t as intuitive as programs like Zoom or Squadcast, but it offers higher-quality sound. With your audio interface and microphone attached, you can record directly into the program, with as many audio tracks as you’d like.

The recording feature is more robust, offering simultaneous recording inputs, a dozen audio formats, and recording tracks.

Additionally, it also has strong editing capabilities as well.

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9. Logic Pro

Price: $200 one time payment+

Logic Pro is the advanced version of Garage Band for Mac users. It’s a higher-quality recording program offering an easy-to-use UI.

Recording is as simple as setting up your microphone and USB audio interface and pressing record.

Logic Pro offers up to 1,000 audio tracks, software instrument tracks, and hundreds of plugins to complete any project.

Additionally, it has advanced editing capabilities.

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10. Whereby

Price: $10/month+

Whereby is another option for recording remote interviews. It’s excellent for beginners and is easy to use.

Although there is a free plan, recording is only available in the Pro or Business plan. Recording is as easy as hitting the “Record” button, once you’re on a call. This will record both video and audio, so it’s easy to post to YouTube if you want.

While this is an easy option, it isn’t the highest quality recording.

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Podcast Editing Software

Once you record your podcast, it’s time to edit it. As you’ve read above, many software includes both recording and editing capabilities. Below are some software known for its editing, rather than recording.

11. Adobe Audition

Price: $20/month+

Adobe Audition is an excellent mid-level audio editing software. You can create, record, mix, edit, and restore audio content.

It offers high-quality sound, plus comprehensive tools to deliver polished sound. For example, Adobe Audition comes with a podcast template, which helps you set up a multitrack recording so you can mix and edit different audio tracks and voices. Plus, you can work in both waveform and multitrack editors, for more well-rounded editing.

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12. Audacity

Price: Free.

Audacity is an excellent free option for editing your podcast. It’s especially easy if you plan to use only one take, with few cuts. The UI is easy to use and beginner friendly. However, if you have to make a lot of cuts or move audio around, it’s a little more difficult because of the simplicity of the program.

This option is great for beginners because of the simple cut, copy, and paste functionality. It isn’t the highest quality sound, but it gets the job done.

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13. Garage Band

Price: Free.

Garage Band is a free editing software that is available on and comes with most Mac computers.

It’s mostly used as a beginner editing program, but is capable of mixing up to 255 audio tracks. It comes with basic editing features including volume levels, cut, copy, and paste. You can use plugins to finish off your track and use audio effects such as compression.

Additionally, it features a sound library with effects that you can include in your podcast.

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Podcast Hosting Sites/Services

Now that you’ve bought your equipment, recorded, and editing your podcast, you may be wondering what’s next? After you’ve produced your podcast, it’s time to find the right hosting site and service to publish it on.

14. BuzzSprout

Price: Free+

BuzzSprout is an excellent hosting option, because it gets your podcast listed in all the top podcast directories including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher.

Additionally, it offers advanced metrics, so you can track the progress of your podcast. You can see statistics about your listeners, total plays over time, and where people listen to your podcast. Plus, you can transcribe your podcast in BuzzSprout.

With paid plans, you’ll have unlimited storage and episodes hosted indefinitely.

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15. Libsyn

Price: $5/month+

Libsyn is a hosting service that will get your podcast published on your audience’s favorite apps and platforms.

A unique feature is its monetization options. For example, it offers premium content subscriptions and opt-in advertising. These options keep you in control and allow you to customize your monetization.

You’ll also have access to detailed audience statistics, so you can also see what’s working and what isn’t.

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How to Setup a Podcast Studio

Once you have your equipment, recording and editing software, and hosting services, it’s time to figure out where you’re going to record your podcast.

You’ll want to set up a podcast studio. This can be as basic as having the right equipment in any room or as advanced as creating a dedicated space for recording.

To setup a podcast studio, follow these steps:

Step 1: Buy the equipment — Before you can get your studio set up, you need the equipment. You’ll need a microphone, microphone arm, headphones, audio interface, desks, and chairs. You’ll also want to consider buying more than one of these items, in case you decide to bring people in for interviews.

Step 2: Set up room for sound conditioning — In order to achieve the best sound, consider buying soundproof foam wall panels to attach to the walls. This will stop the sound from bouncing off the walls. Additionally, you can buy pop filters for the microphones to reduce popping sounds.

Step 3: Set up lighting and cameras — Many podcasters choose to film their podcasts so they can post to YouTube or other social media. If you want to do this, you’ll need to set up lighting and cameras.

Anyone can start a podcast. That’s why you want your podcast to stand out among the rest. To take your podcast from good to great, make sure you purchase the right equipment, software, and studio setup.

All around us, we’re seeing implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on our daily routines. When was the last time you used Google Maps to get someplace? Or asked Siri a simple math question, or picked something to watch from your Netflix recommendations?

While it’s easy to think about a distant future where robots take your restaurant order and sell you a house, similar advancements may be closer than we think, and some of that may be due to this new revolution.

This change in technology means a change in how products are marketed to consumers, meaning marketers should take note. So what is the “4IR,” as some have abbreviated it?

As Schwab explains, the revolution builds directly upon the Third Industrial Revolution (3IR). The result of the 3IR was digital — it brought the invention of electronic systems, information technology systems, and the birth of the idea of automation. Due to the creation of these systems and technological advances, the 4IR is built upon this.

Why the Fourth Industrial Revolution Matters to Marketers

Some of the key technologies driving this revolution include artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, virtual reality (VR), and the Internet of Things (IoT). An example of this revolution at work is AI finding patterns in large amounts of data, quantum computing organizing that data at an incredible speed, and the Internet of Things displaying this data in the form of recommending a Netflix documentary to you.

What does this revolution mean for marketers? How will we be affected?

1. More data means more personalized marketing

The advancements of quantum computing and AI data collecting means there’s an influx of data available to marketers about their target audience. To illustrate, because of quantum computing, Facebook can pull your most recent Google searches and then suggest ads based on your search history, thanks to AI.

Information, such as demographic and psychographic data, is collected and used by software such as social media analytics tools.

This data can help marketers create a more personalized strategy –– one that target audiences can identify with. For instance, if your data sets are telling you that your target audience prefers to make purchases via eCommerce options, why not look into including Instagram Shopping into your social media strategy?

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In the above dashboard captured from Twitter analytics, you can see examples of the demographics Twitter can track and provide insights on. This data is available thanks to advancements in AI, and has become a critical component of building impactful marketing strategies.

2. More connected devices mean more chances to build your brand

With all of the elements that make up the Internet of Things (like voice assistants, smart appliances, and wearable tech), marketers have the chance to build brands that align with this new internet.

For instance, the IoT makes it possible for you to send personalized discounts to customers signed up to loyalty rewards program while they’re browsing in the store, based on their proximity to your products. Further, you can use IoT to track which and how many customers have been looking at products when they browse online and then send that customer a discount based on those numbers.

I for one, wholeheartedly wish my favorite local coffee shop would send me coupons while I am in the supermarket searching for new coffee grounds. Convenience at its finest.

3. Data systems assist with streamlined processing

The rise of AI means that you can make the data collection portion of your job easier. Tools powered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution can keep you from spending a significant portion of your time trying to find ROI in social media strategy.

Social media analytics tools tell you the rate at which your brand is engaging with customers. Digital advertising tools provide real-time data on the impact of the ads you put out. All this can be done by machines in a fraction of the time it would usually take to collect and interpret that data manually — time you can spend doing other things.

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Tools like Buffer Analyze can tell you how your marketing strategy is reaching audiences and what you can do to improve that reach. Buffer is an automated software that lets you schedule social media posts and watch their performance. In this screenshot, Buffer is analyzing the impact of Instagram Stories for a brand.

4. The fusion of technology leads to the need for specialized roles

All this new technology means marketers are defining job requirements differently. Not only does a marketer in the Fourth Industrial Revolution need to learn new skills like interpreting new types (and a much larger volume) of data, the functions of a marketer’s core role will need to shift.

Though it’s dependent on the industry, roles for marketers are becoming more specialized. For instance, a marketing team in 2020 might consist of a full-time SEO specialist, a blogger, a brand specialist, and a social media coordinator.

Previously, these roles might’ve been consolidated under one person (and still is one person in many SMBs), but larger companies are finding they need employees who specialize in certain functions. These important skillsets ensure brands are operating at their highest potential as new technology emerges.

We are in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and we are constantly finding new advancements in something. While much of the shift of process and function is happening online, many of these advancements benefit marketers. This is because marketing can be faster, data-driven, and personalized.

Here’s a little exercise for you: Check the timestamps on the emails you’ve gotten in the past day. What have you found? For me, I noticed that most of my emails, especially my subscription emails, were sent between 9-10 AM, or 5-6 PM.

This isn’t a coincidence, either.

While the answer to “What’s the perfect time to send an email to my customers?” isn’t an exact science, there are some key findings we’ve discovered through heavy research, and those times listed above are right in line with what we found. Keep reading to find out the best time to send an email, according to our findings.

Why Email Matters For Your Business

Automated email marketing provides a chance for you to improve sales conversions — maybe even by 14%. It’s a way to send customers unique offers — such as product sales or newsletters updates — with information your reader can’t get anywhere else.

Emails should be personalized with what your customers want to see, allowing you an instant way to communicate with them. Your emails should contain information your customers are interested in learning more about, such as discount offers, business updates, or product/service launches.

HubSpot‘s marketing email tool allows users to create and send automated emails for free. It also gives you the option to schedule your emails according to the preferences you’ve set. Then, your emails will then be sent to the list(s) of contacts you select.

When you reach this option in your automated email tool, you probably spend some time wondering when exactly your audience would like to receive your email, especially if it includes a limited-time offer. You want to make sure the highest number of customers possible are reading your emails. We’ll go over what we found next.

When is the Best Time to Send an Email?

When it comes to what time and day you should send an email and days, we found some researched-backed best practices.

These numbers are from GetResponse, an email marketing software that combed its data to compile a report of email marketing benchmarks. They analyzed 4 billion emails from 1,000 active senders.

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The highest line of the graph represents the open rate. The purple line (i.e., the one below it) represents the click-to-open rate. Below that, the dark blue line, represents the click-through rate. The almost transparent data counts the number of messages sent in percent value.

Keeping your audience in mind is a good tip for figuring out the time to send your emails. If your buyer persona is a professional with a nine-to-five job, sending emails during their ideal downtimes are the best. For instance, HubSpot sends emails between 8-9:30 AM ET to match our audience’s daily routines.

If you’re sending emails that include a sale or promotion, try sending them during the times your audience tends to take their lunch breaks.

Just keeping up on daily routines isn’t the only metric that factors into marketing emails. Others, such as click-through rate (CTR), click-to-open rate (CTOR), and open rate (OR) are also helpful to look at when creating emails.

Click-through rate

Click-through rate refers to the number of people who open a link or image in an email. This number will always be smaller than the open rate of emails opened due to the fact that it’s calculated using the total number of emails sent. CTR reflects conversions through email. So if you send 500 emails and 250 are opened, but only 75 links are clicked, your click-through rate is 75.

Click-to-open rate

When comparing the number of people that opened your email and the number that clicked on any links, that data is called click-to-open rate. This metric helps you identify which information in your emails is relevant to consumers. Finding CTOR is done by diving CTR by the open rate and multiplying it by 100%. For example, if your email receives 200 clicks and 120 opens, your click-to-open-rate is 60%.

Open rate

The open rate, then, is the percentage found from the number of subscribers who opened your email campaign. Emails that have great open rates have short, effective subject lines. Plus, they’re optimized for previews and preheader text.

This gets into the best day to send through an email. CampaignMonitor collected data from millions of emails used on their service. They put together the best day as it pertains to data collection.

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From this data, it looks like the best days for seeing a good blanket of success fall during the workweek. People are mostly opening and reading through emails in the middle of the week. It’s also good to keep in mind the lowest unsubscribe rate: during the beginning of the week.

CampaignMonitor also reported that Marketing and Advertising is one of the top industries that see success with email marketing, so making sure those emails are memorable is key to delighting customers.

Email marketing can be a tricky subject. There are so many industries taking advantage of it in their own way and making an impact. How do you measure up?

Your subscribers are already interested in your content. They appreciate what you are offering as a company, and as long as you’re sending them emails that relate to that, you have a good chance of obtaining great metrics.

When was the last time you ran a competitive analysis for your brand?

And most importantly, do you know how to do one efficiently?

If you’re not sure, or if the last “analysis” you ran was a quick perusal of a competitor’s website and social media presence, you’re likely missing out on important intelligence that could help your brand grow.

A competitive analysis helps you learn the ins and outs of how your competition works. It also helps you identify what they’re doing right and opportunities where you can easily one-up them by using a strategy they haven’t taken advantage of. 

Competitive Analysis in Marketing

Every brand can benefit from regular competitor analysis. By performing a competitor analysis, you’ll be able to:

• Identify gaps in the market
• Develop new products and services
• Uncover market trends
• Market and sell more effectively

As you can see, learning any of these four components will lead your brand down the path of achievement. But before you get too excited to start, we need to nail down a few important basics.

Once you identify your true competition, you’ll need to determine what metrics you’ll be comparing across the board. Below, we’ll give nine specific factors to compare and tips on how to identify this competition in the first place.

1. Determine who your competitors are.

First, you’ll need to figure out who you’re really competing with so you can compare the data accurately. What works in a business similar to yours may not work for your brand.

So how can you do this?

Divide your “competitors” into two categories: direct and indirect.

Direct competitors are businesses that offer a product or service that could pass as a similar substitute for yours, and that operate in your same geographic area.

On the flip side, an indirect competitor is one that provides products that are not the same but could satisfy the same customer need or solve the same problem.

It seems simple enough on paper, but these two terms are often misused.

When comparing your brand, you should only focus on your direct competitors. This is something many brands get wrong.

Let’s use an example: Stitch Fix and Fabletics are both subscription-based services that sell clothes on a monthly basis and serve a similar target audience.

But as we look deeper, we can see that the actual product (clothes in this case) are not really the same; one brand focuses on stylish everyday outfits while the other is workout-centric attire only.

Yes, these brands satisfy the same need for women (having trendy clothes delivered right to their doorstep each month), but they do so with completely different types of clothing, making them indirect competitors.

This means Kate Hudson’s team at Fabletics would not want to spend their time studying Stitch Fix too closely since their audiences probably vary quite a bit. Even if it’s only slightly, this tiny variation is enough to make a big difference.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should toss your indirect competitors out the window completely.

Keep these brands on your radar since they could shift positions at any time and cross over into the direct competitor zone. Using our example, Stitch Fix could start a workout line, which would certainly change things for Fabletics.

This is also one of the reasons why you’ll want to routinely run a competitor analysis. The market can and will shift at anytime, and if you’re not constantly scoping it out, you won’t be aware of these changes until it’s too late.

2. Determine what products your competitors offer.

At the heart of any business is its product or service, which is what makes this a good place to start.

You’ll want to analyze your competitor’s complete product line and the quality of the products or services they’re offering.

You should also take note of their pricing and any discounts they’re offering customers.

Some questions to consider include:

• Are they a low-cost or high-cost provider?
• Are they working mainly volume sales or one-o purchases?
• What is their market share?
• What are characteristics and needs of their ideal customers?
• Are they using different pricing strategies for online purchases versus brick and mortar?
• How does the company differentiate itself from its competitors?
• How do they distribute their products/services?

3. Research your competitors sales tactics and results.

Running a sales analysis of your competitors can be a bit tricky.

You’ll want to track down the answers to questions such as:

• What does the sales process look like?
• What channels are they selling through?
• Do they have multiple locations and how does this give them an advantage?
• Are they expanding? Scaling down?
• Do they have partner reselling programs?
• What are their customers reasons for not buying? For ending their relationship with the company?
• What are their revenues each year? What about total sales volume?
• Do they regularly discount their products or services?
• How involved is a salesperson in the process?

These helpful pieces of information will give you an idea of how competitive the sales process is, and what information you need to prepare your sales reps with to compete during the final buy stage.

For publicly held companies, you can find annual reports online, but you’ll have to do some sleuthing to find this info from privately owned businesses.

You could find some of this information by searching through your CRM and reaching out to those customers who mentioned they were considering your competitor. Find out what made them choose your product or service over others out there.

To do this, run a report that shows all prospective deals where there was an identified competitor.

If this data is not something you currently record, talk to marketing and sales to implement a system where prospects are questioned about the other companies they are considering.

Essentially, they’ll need to ask their leads (either through a form field or during a one- on-one sales conversation) to identify who their current service providers are, who they’ve used in the past, and who else they are considering during the buying process.

When a competitor is identified, have your sales team dive deeper by asking why they are considering switching to your product. If you’ve already lost the deal, be sure to follow up the with prospect to determine why you lost to your competitor. What services or features attracted the prospect? Was it about price? What’s the prospect’s impression of your sales process? If they’ve already made the switch, find out why they made this decision.

By asking open-ended questions, you’ll have honest feedback about what customers find appealing about your brand and what might be turning customers away.

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can start scoping out your competitor’s marketing efforts.

4. Analyze how your competitors market their products.

Analyzing your competitor’s website is the fastest way to gauge their marketing efforts. Take note of any of the following items and copy down the specific URL for future reference:

• Do they have a blog?
• Are they creating whitepapers or ebooks?
• Do they post videos or webinars?
• Do they have a podcast?
• Are they using static visual content such as infographics and cartoons?
• What about slide decks?
• Do they have a FAQs section?
• Are there featured articles?
• Do you see press releases?
• Do they have a media kit?
• What about case studies?
• Do they publish buying guides and data sheets?
• What online and offine advertising campaigns are they running?

5. Take note of your competition’s content strategy.

Then, take a look at the quantity of these items. Do they have several hundred blog posts or a small handful? Are there five white papers and just one ebook?

Next, determine the frequency of these content assets. Are they publishing something new each week or once a month? How often does a new ebook or case study come out?

Chances are, if you come across a robust archive of content, your competitor has been publishing regularly. Depending on the topics they’re discussing, this content may help you hone in on their lead generating strategies.

From there, you should move on to evaluating the quality of their content. After all, if the quality is lacking, it won’t matter how often they post since their target audience won’t find much value there.

Choose a small handful of samples to review instead of tackling every single piece to make the process more manageable.

Your sampler should include content pieces covering a variety of topics so you’ll have a fairly complete picture of what your competitor shares with their target audience.

When analyzing your competitor’s content, consider the following questions:

• How accurate is their content?
• Are spelling or grammar errors present?
• How in-depth does their content go? (Is it introductory level that just scratches the surface or more advanced topics with high-level ideas?)
• What tone do they use?
• Is the content structured for readability? (Are they using bullet points, bold headings, and numbered lists?)
• Is their content free and available to anyone or do their readers need to opt-in?
• Who is writing their content? (In-house team? One person? Multiple contributors?)
• Is there a visible byline or bio attached to their articles?

As you continue to scan the content, pay attention to the photos and imagery your competitors are using.

Do you quickly scroll past generic stock photos or are you impressed by custom illustrations and images? If they‘re using stock photos, do they at least have overlays of text quotes or calls-to- action that are specific to their business?

If their photos are custom, are they sourced from outside graphic professionals or do they appear to be done in-house?

When you have a solid understanding of your competitor’s content marketing strategy, it’s time to find out if it’s truly working for them.

6. Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor’s content.

To gauge how engaging your competitor’s content is to their readers, you’ll need to see how their target audience responds to what they’re posting.

Check the average number of comments, shares, and likes on your competitor’s content and find out if:

• Certain topics resonate better than others
• The comments are negative, positive, or a mix
• People are tweeting about specific topics more than others
• Readers respond better to Facebook updates about certain content
• Don’t forget to note if your competitor categorizes their content using tags, and if they have social media follow and share buttons attached to each piece of content. Both of these will a ect engagement activity.

7. Observe how they promote their marketing content.

From engagement, you’ll move right along to your competitor’s content promotion strategy.

• Keyword density in the copy itself
• Image ALT text tags
• Use of internal linking

The following questions can also help you prioritize and focus on what to pay attention to:

• Which keywords are your competitors focusing on that you still haven’t tapped into?
• What content of theirs is highly shared and linked to? How does your content compare?
• Which social media platforms is your target audience using and the most active on?
• What other sites are linking back to your competitor’s site, but not yours?
• Who else is sharing what your competitors are publishing?
• Who is referring traffic to your competitor’s site?
• For the keywords you want to focus on, what is the diffculty level? There are several free (and paid) tools that will give you a comprehensive evaluation of your competitor’s search engine optimization.

8. Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms

The last area you’ll want to evaluate when it comes to marketing is your competitor’s social media presence and engagement rates.

How does your competition drive engagement with their brand through social media? Do you see social sharing buttons with each article? Does your competitor have links to their social media channels in the header, footer, or somewhere else? Are these clearly visible? Do they use calls-to-action with these buttons?

If your competitors are using a social network that you may not be on, it’s worth learning more about how that platform may be able to help your business, too. To determine if a new social media platform is worth your time, check your competitor’s engagement rates on those sites. First, visit the following sites to see if your competition has an account on these platforms:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Snapchat
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Pinterest

Then, take note of the following quantitative items from each platform:

• Number of fans/followers
• Posting frequency and consistency
• Content engagement (Are users leaving comments or sharing their posts?)
• Content virality (How many shares, repins, and retweets do their posts get?)

With the same critical eye you used to gauge your competition’s content marketing strategy, take a fine-toothed comb to analyze their social media strategy.

What kind of content are they posting? Are they more focused on driving people to landing pages, resulting in new leads? Or are they posting visual content to promote engagement and brand awareness?

How much of this content is original? Do they share curated content from other sources? Are these sources regular contributors? What is the overall tone of the content?

How does your competition interact with their followers? How frequently do their followers interact with their content?

After you collect this data, generate an overall grade for the quality of your competitor’s content. This will help you compare the rest of your competitors using a similar grading scale.

9. Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

As you evaluate each component in your competitor analysis (business, sales, and marketing), get into the habit of performing a simplified SWOT analysis at the same time.

This means you’ll take note of your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats any time you assess an overall grade.

Some questions to get you started include:

• What is your competitor doing really well with? (Products, content marketing, social
  media, etc.)
• Where does your competitor have the advantage over your brand?
• What is the weakest area for your competitor?
• Where does your brand have the advantage over your competitor?
• What could they do better with?
• In what areas would you consider this competitor as a threat?
• Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?

You’ll be able to compare their weaknesses against your strengths and vice versa. By doing this, you can better position your company, and you’ll start to uncover areas for improvement within your own brand.

How Does Your Business Currently Stack Up?

Before you accurately compare your competition, you need to establish a baseline. This also helps when it comes time to perform a SWOT analysis.

Take an objective look at your business, sales, and marketing e orts through the same metrics you use to evaluate your competition.

Record this information just like you would with a competitor and use this as your baseline to compare across the board.

Ready to get started with the full ebook and template? Click here to access the complete Competitive Analysis Kit. 

Editor’s Note; This post was originally published prior to July 2018 but was updated in November 2019 for comprehensiveness.

How did your grandparents, parents, and younger siblings grow up gossiping about the latest party? I bet they’d all have different answers.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a trip back in time.

First, we sent letters. If you think handwriting a card took a long time, think about the time it took to receive a response by plane, train … or pony.

The 1800s brought many new technologies, including the telegraph. It may sound cool, but think about how long it took to translate details into morse code. I’ll give you a hint: .. – / – — — -.- / .- / .-.. — -. –. / – .. — ..-.-.

Years later, the fax machine allowed us to send messages and images over telephone lines. Unfortunately, the earliest machines cost tens of thousands of dollars, and you still had to create a hard copy of your message.

Then came “leave a message after the beep” … voicemail. We’ve all put off listening to that 3-minute long message. It’s easy to ignore or it can be the start of an endless game of phone “tag”.

After voicemail came “you’ve got mail.” While revolutionary, inboxes quickly became overwhelmed. Your thoughtful email lay forgotten under a pile of spam and promotional messages.

Then the people who brought us email rolled out AIM or instant messenger. As the name implies, this was the first instant messaging service. Except your friends weren’t always online. Sometimes their away message was set to Outkast lyrics. Shake it like a Polaroid picture, anyone?

Around the same time, SMS texts hit mobile phones everywhere. You can now text your friend all of the essential party details and 🎉🎉🎉emojis.

Finally, we arrived at live chat. Live chat allows for instantaneous responses. You write a quick message and see those three little dots signaling a reply. The days of waiting for weeks to hear from someone are over – conversations are always happening.

With HubSpot’s free live chat software, you can connect with your website visitors in real-time to convert new leads, close more deals, and provide better support to your customers.

With each new iteration of technology, our accepted response time has changed — friends make plans faster, families stay closer, and businesses provide answers instantly. In the age of live chat, customers expect conversations to happen how, when, and where they want.

Sounds intimidating, right? Don’t worry; it’s not as complicated as you think. While the technology we use to communicate has changed, the core elements of communication have stayed the same. People always have and always will expect conversations to be helpful, personal, and empathetic. The only difference now is we have the technology to have those conversations at scale. That’s the power of conversational marketing.

Let’s talk about conversational marketing and its benefits, how it will help your business grow, and what you need to build a successful conversational marketing strategy.

Check out our Introduction to Conversational Marketing course from HubSpot Academy.

For example, many startups have created user groups on Slack. These groups allow customers and prospects to ask questions and get advice on a channel they’re already using to communicate throughout the workday … but wait, weren’t we talking about conversational marketing? How did we get started talking about customer support?

See, here’s the thing with live chat, it’s an incredibly powerful communication channel that has a strange way of breaking down the walls between support, sales, and marketing.

Sure, conversational marketing is the topic of the day, but we believe it is just one small piece of the puzzle. Conversations should take place across your entire business. In the future, businesses will need to develop a comprehensive conversational growth strategy to deliver better customer experience throughout the entire customer journey.

Conversational sales will play a huge role in helping reps connect with prospects in a more helpful, organic way. And customer success teams have already seen significant benefits using chat as one of their many support tools. While you’re developing your conversational marketing strategy, consider how it can impact every part of your business.

The Key Elements of Conversational Marketing

OK, you may be thinking, “conversational marketing sounds a lot like my current marketing strategy. I’m on multiple channels. I’m having conversations with my audience.”

If you’re a customer-focused marketer, chances are you’re almost there. Here are the four key components of conversational marketing and how to best refine your strategy.

1. Conversations happen in customer-time.

Conversational marketing is an asynchronous relationship. Meaning conversations should occur whenever the customer prefers — whether that’s in real-time, after finishing their meeting, or later that night when they have a spare moment. While it’s important for businesses to be able to chat in real-time, it’s just as important for them to be able to finish a conversation at whatever pace the customer wants. Sometimes that means starting a conversation at 7 a.m. over their first cup of coffee and finishing at 9 p.m. after they’ve put their kids to bed.

HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah says, “Customers should be able to pick up things right where they left off whenever it is convenient for them to continue. The key is to remember that conversational marketing should be designed around the needs of the customer — not the needs of the business.”

2. Conversations are scalable.

Because conversations happen on customer-time, all conversations need to be scalable. A customer doesn’t care if you’re talking with 50, 500, or 5,000 other people — they only care about the issue they need to be solved. Businesses, especially SMBs, shouldn’t get left behind due to a lack of resources or manpower. This is where chatbots come in. Bots make 24/7 support possible by providing answers to common questions based on data that already exists. Businesses shouldn’t sacrifice human interaction for scale. Rather, bots offer quick access to information or a human.

3. Conversations have context.

Conversations can’t exist in a vacuum; they need context and should get smarter as you collect more information. This is important for two reasons. First, it’s what customers expect. Think about it: If you called a company yesterday to report a defect in something you ordered, and then you chat them the next day about needing return instructions, you’d expect the person you’re talking with to have access to previous interactions and know which product you’re sending back.

Second, context is what makes messaging convenient. Without it, bots or a support rep would need to ask people the same qualifying questions every time they interacted with them — wasting their time and testing their patience. If you’ve ever called customer support, you know how frustrating it is to repeat your account number time after time as you’re passed around to different departments.

People want to get the answer to their question as quickly as possible and with the smallest amount of effort. This is why it’s so important to make a CRM part of your conversational marketing strategy. Context means gathering, storing, and making accessible customer data — from recent orders to visits to pricing pages to their job title. The more you know about the customer and the more you can demonstrate that in the conversation, the more helpful you’ll be.

4. Conversations meet customers where they are.

Inbound Marketing is about providing value to your audience and meeting them where they are. Conversational marketing is just a part of that now — thanks to the mass adoption of messaging and new tools and technology.

And that means conversations should happen on the channel that best suits your customer — that might be over the phone or on Facebook Messenger, with a human or a bot. People don’t want to be forced to call a 1-800 number if they could easily send a quick chat message and grab a link to a knowledge base article. HubSpot’s bot expert Brian Bagdasarian states:

“Businesses should strive to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right person, with the right information, on the right channel, every single time.”

Conversational Marketing Is More Than Just Live Chat

Some people equate conversational marketing with live chat — something that’s been around for a while. But it’s much more than that. Conversational marketing isn’t about a single tool. While Facebook Messenger, Slack, SMS, email, and others allow conversations to happen, this is about the changing communication preferences of consumers that in turn, should change how you view one-to-one conversations.

For example, social media giant Facebook is drastically changing the way its users engage with businesses. There are over 65 million business pages on Facebook, and over 2 billion messages are exchanged with these businesses each month on Facebook Messenger. That’s a lot of conversations happening. Consumers are using Facebook Messenger and other popular messaging platforms to get content delivered, shop and buy, and access support.

With access to new technology, businesses can use these emerging platforms to easily meet consumers where they are already spending their time. Still not convinced? 85% of consumers spend their time in five popular apps, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. And according to Facebook’s February earnings, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger had 1.5 billion and 1.3 billion monthly active users, respectively.

But remember, businesses should not only be communicating on a variety of channels, but they should also be prepared to continue those conversations across all channels without missing a beat.

The Benefits of Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing isn’t new — we have conversations every day, and as you saw from the timeline above, it’s been that way for a while. So why wouldn’t we use tools that optimize conversations for business? Let’s talk about a few of the key benefits.

1. Conversational marketing is a more delightful way for customers to get answers.

People are increasingly turning to mobile to shop and make purchases. As a result, more people are interacting with content that is more mobile friendly. Consumers that use their phone as their primary internet device have grown to prefer video content, social content, and messaging-based interactions.

Think about how many times you pick up your phone during the day. According to TechCrunch, consumers spend 5 hours per day on their phones. It makes sense. I’m guessing it’s your first line of defense when looking up an answer to a quick question. Conversational marketing channels like messaging apps and email are innately mobile friendly. It’s a lot easier to chat with a rep or even a bot to get an answer than spend time scrolling and clicking through a company’s website. Messaging apps allow customers to provide information specific to their problem so businesses can give quick, personalized support.

HubSpot recently experimented with delivering content offers via Facebook Messenger and saw some incredible results – the test saw a 2.5X increase in open rates and 6X the number of clicks when compared to email. This improved performance is due in part to the channel’s push notifications, but it also aligns with how people want to shop, buy, and engage with companies today.

And conversational marketing doesn’t just present an opportunity in the U.S. In fact, in many regions, messaging apps like WeChat and WhatsApp are the primary channel for both personal and professional communication.

Source

2. Conversational marketing is a great way to gain new, valuable insights about your customers.

Think about it, when else do your customers tell you in their own words what they want to do, learn, or change? You don’t get that candor with a website or an advertisement.

HubSpot’s Conversational Marketing Manager Connor Cirillo states,

“Your conversational marketing audience is much more insightful than your other channels. They’ll tell you in their own words how they want to interact with your business. There’s no inferring or guessing, like with web traffic.”

And with conversational marketing, you can gather that data at scale. This especially holds true for messaging channels. Chat interfaces can record data that can then be used to optimize for better customer interactions, product improvements, more helpful content, and more.

For example, CNN uses a bot to provide their audience with tailored content based on keywords. Users simply send the bot a message with a topic they’re interested in, and it will send back related news stories. Not only is it a quick, easy way for readers to get the news they care about most, CNN is collecting valuable consumer data with every chat.

Once businesses collect consumer data, they can use it to define trends and make more informed decisions. For example, imagine that your company redesigned its website or provided a discount on merchandise. If a prospect or customer has a difficult time navigating the new website or applying the coupon, they can live chat with a representative to receive instructions on how to best navigate the issue.

Not only does live chat help solve the immediate customer’s concerns and keep them on the site, the information from that chat can help you determine if you need to fix a part of your website’s UX or send out more detailed instructions on how to apply the discount. Being able to determine common customer pain points as they occur can save a business thousands of dollars.

And not only is conversational marketing data helpful for recognizing tech issues and common customer pain points, it also can identify opportunities for cross-sell and up-sell. If a customer is chatting with a rep about a product they are considering buying, the rep could take that opportunity to point out other items customers frequently bought based on previous interactions.

3. Conversational marketing is a great way to build relationships.

With messaging apps and social media, we’ve found a way to talk with more friends, more frequently. Conversational marketing can drive lead generation by reaching new audiences on different channels or by giving people a more convenient way to get in touch with support.

According to Harvard Business Review, messaging apps “provide a continuous thread between customers and brands”. This thread allows for continuous communication which makes conversations more natural and “opportunities to cross-sell, encourage sharing, solicit input, and flow seamlessly between commerce and support” more frequent.

According to TopBots’ Adelyn Zhou,

“Questions that are awkward or annoying coming from a brand are socially acceptable and even welcome in chatbot interactions.”

Bots allow companies to collect a lot of information in a natural way. Instead of coming face-to-face with a long form, customers can share a little information over the course of multiple conversations. HubSpot was able to attract 20% more qualified leads by merely adding live chat as a communication channel. What would a 20% increase in qualified leads look like for your business?

And not only is conversational marketing more convenient for customers, it’s also a great way to show off your brand’s personality. Through copywriting, images, emojis, and videos, you can give your messaging conversations a personality — one that reinforces your brand. Customers and prospects are likely to keep engaging with your brand if you make it enjoyable and easy to do so!

1. Domino’s Pizza

Domino’s recent Domino’s AnyWare initiative allows customers to order pizza from, well, literally anywhere. This includes conversational channels like Slack, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and text message — by simply texting the pizza emoji.

Source

Customers must first enable text ordering and set up an “Easy Order” on their Domino’s profile, which is what they’ll order when texting 🍕. Beyond that, however, ordering a pizza doesn’t get much simpler.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot allowed people to register for its Four Days of Facebook Campaign through multiple channels, including Facebook Messenger. Users loved the conversational UI and were quick to encourage their friends and coworkers to sign up as well.

And success wasn’t just about getting people to register for the live event. Facebook Messenger was the highest converting source of new product users to HubSpot Marketing Free via the campaign.

3. London & Company

London & Company walks prospective mortgage customers through their Mortgage Finder form. But instead of a lengthy form with multiple fields, London & Company displays a chatbot/ messenger format with one question at a time.

Source

This conversational format is user-friendly and easy to navigate, which likely helps London & Company collect information from and convert potential new leads.

4. HelloFresh

HelloFresh, a subscription meal service, launched their Freddy Freshbot chatbot in 2017. Customers can chat with Freddy through Facebook Messenger.

Source

Freddy provides customer service, recipe ideas, answers to frequently asked questions, and meal reminders. With Freddy Freshbot, HelloFresh does a great job providing support well beyond the order and delivery process, ensuring its customers feel comfortable cooking its meals and eventually renewing their subscriptions.

5. Sephora

Sephora used Kik messenger to learn more about their target market by asking them if they wanted to participate in a quick, social-like quiz about their beauty habits. Once users accepted, they answered questions about their age, makeup preferences, and favorite products. From there, the app was able to deliver relevant content such as how-to videos and product reviews based on the individual’s answers.

A chatbot makes it easier for customers to find and purchase products they like and frees up human employees for other tasks.

Source

Conversational Marketing and Inbound Marketing

At this point, you’ve probably noticed the similarities between the core ideas behind conversational marketing and inbound marketing. That’s because conversational marketing is a piece of inbound marketing, just like email marketing or blogging. Inbound Marketing is all about creating value where your target customer is spending their time — that could mean writing a blog, interacting on social media, or sharing a video on YouTube. Now that technology has made conversational marketing a possibility, it’s a key part of inbound marketing.

HubSpot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah states,

“Conversation marketing is not new. Not only have we long been having conversations with customers — even the term itself has been around for at least a decade. The reason for the renewed interest in conversational marketing is that because of advances in technology and shifts in consumer behavior, conversational marketing can now happen at scale. We can have direct, one-to-one conversations with individual customers on their timeline — not ours.”

Although conversations are nothing new, our ability to have 1:1 conversations at this scale and across multiple channels is. With inbound marketing, you can first attract potential customers to your brand. You can then use conversational marketing to allow people to initiate conversations when they want, where they want, and how they want – giving your audience the control.

How do conversations fit into the inbound methodology? Well, we see conversations taking place throughout the entire customer lifecycle, though there’s not a strong case to be made for it in the attract stage as the discovery of brands on messaging platforms is still immature.

Facebook Messenger’s Discover tab, which launched mid-2017, is one attempt at solving this. But conversations can be used in place of forms to attract and capture leads, by sales teams to convert those leads into customers, and by customer success teams to delight customers with quick and convenient support. For example, using live chat during the sales process could help convert more leads because it allows prospects to interact in a way they already prefer to buy.

How Conversational Marketing Will Grow Your Business

Okay, we know conversational marketing is all about improving 1:1 relationships, but how can businesses actually start to build out a strategy for success? Cirillo recommends starting with one goal and then working backward.

“Know what you want to get out of the conversation and what data you need to make that happen. Every conversation should add value to your business.”

Analyze your answers and work to create the best possible experience for your customers. While there are many things you can do to help optimize your conversations, here are a few essentials:

Your CRM and Conversational Marketing

When you have a conversation with a friend, you don’t expect to have to remind them of things like your name or where you live — the same holds true when customers have conversations with a business. That’s why using a CRM is so important. A CRM is like a digital memory that allows you to have conversations with customers like you know them.

A successful conversational marketing strategy is dependent on fast and reliable access to a shared knowledge base that includes data such as communication history and necessary customer information. Companies who want to do conversational marketing will need a way to store and organize that data in order to have more seamless interactions with customers. With the help of a CRM, you can organically promote events and products, distribute content, and provide support all through chat.

So, what data should marketers collect? You don’t need to know everything about them, but you should know the basics and details of past conversations. Cirillo encourages marketers to think first about why they’re using chat:

“Success with conversational marketing will look different depending on the use case. There’s not an overarching metric for this world. Track the ‘time to solution’ or conversion rate if you’re solving for utility. If your experience is less about a particular action, then retention might make more sense.”

Start with what you want your customers to be able to accomplish via chat and then build out processes for acquiring the necessary information.

In addition, you can’t implement a conversational marketing strategy without a process for tracking performance, moments of confusion or drop-off, and new questions. You should always be gathering data and optimizing the experience.

Adding Automation with Chatbots

Once your CRM is set up, it’s time to think to think about how you can scale your conversations. This is where chatbots can help.

Business isn’t just happening in one city, in one state, or in one timezone — it’s happening all around the world, every minute of every day. As I mentioned earlier, adding automation with chatbots is crucial in keeping up with a volume of conversations and to have a fighting chance at 24/7 support. Bots allow SMBs to compete with enterprise-sized businesses.

Customers expect to be able to connect with businesses whenever they need to. According to research from Aspect Software, 65% of consumers feel good about themselves and the company when they can handle an issue without talking to a live person, and 61% think that chatbots allow for faster answers.

Here are few ways chatbots can help:

• Answer FAQs or customer-specific questions where data is already available
• Qualify Leads
• Promote events, products, and content
• Schedule meetings
• Get feedback from customers and prospects

Keep in mind that while chatbots can do many things, they should never be used as a barrier between customers and a human. 86% of consumers want the option to transfer to a representative if their request is too complicated for a bot to handle. Bots can’t replace human talent, but they can help augment teams during off-hours or when conversation volume is too much for a small group to handle.

Learn how to build the fundamentals of your Conversational Marketing strategy.

An Inbound Approach to Conversations

Developing a conversational marketing strategy can take time – it’s not easy to think about process when you’re trying to keep up with the day-to-day demands of running a business. That’s why HubSpot’s Brian Bagdasarian created some tips for building a conversational marketing strategy. Conversational marketing isn’t something you can set and forget, you have to continuously optimize your strategy to see the best results, but there are five things you should keep in mind: Personalize, contextualize, standardize, empathize, and optimize

Personalize

When speaking with a customer or prospect, conversations should be personalized with relevant shared knowledge. Shared knowledge is the foundation of good conversations. Think about it: If you’ve already given a business you’re phone number, do you really want to waste time reciting it every time you have a simple question? Personalized details make the conversation feel more natural and help you to get to the root of the issue as quickly as possible.

Contextualize

Conversations that have context not only improve the end-user experience, they also help minimize misunderstandings and get straight to the heart of the issue. Because you don’t have to waste time collecting information you already have access to, you’re able to provide immediate value. Context is necessary to help answer the right question, at the right time, in the best way possible.

Conversations that aim to answer the most important question first will provide the best user experience. Even though it’s a conversation, this isn’t like a conversation with friends. When customers interact with your business, chances are they don’t want to spend time talking about cat videos or their weekend plans. They want to solve their most immediate need in the fastest and easiest way possible. Spend time analyzing your interactions to determine what data will help improve your customer relationships.

Standardize

However, it’s important not to get too caught up in personalizing your messages. While personalization and contextualization are important, standardizing elements of conversations helps bring a level of professionalism and consistency to your business. Conversations should be repeatable and predictable.

Figure out your customer’s most frequently asked questions and draft approved answers for bots and marketers to use. Repeating conversations will help automate, optimize, and improve future interactions. Predictable conversations help to users have a natural dialog with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Standardization is crucial to delivering clear, consistent answers, across conversations and users.

Empathize

When involved in a conversation, we often have to deliver the right answer before correcting the problem. For example: Let’s say you receive an email with a coupon code from one of your favorite stores. You spend a half hour scrolling through their products trying to decide what to buy, but when you finally enter the code to make your purchase, it doesn’t work.

You’re understandably annoyed that you wasted all that time when you weren’t even planning on buying something without that code. The business should emphasize with your issue and assure you that they understand the problem before the can move forward with providing a solution. Emphasizing helps customers feel valued and heard.

Optimize

Finally, it’s crucial to optimize. Learn from your past conversations so you can improve them in the future. Optimize for the strengths of the channel and for the answer – aim to provide answers that people would receive in a real, one-to-one conversation.

For example, live chat or phone might be better for providing support, while Facebook Messenger could be a better choice for content delivery. Listen to your customers and observe their behavior as you build out your strategy and make changes where needed. Conversational marketing is an iterative process — what you thought might work may not always provide the best experience. Take time to ask your customers for feedback. Their advice will help you delight your next customer. Remember, every conversation should be impactful and help add value to your business.

Moving Forward: Why Conversations Are the Future

Phew, you made it to the end. Good convo guys.

We’ve come a long way from letters and telegrams. For the first time, people are having meaningful conversations with businesses on a massive scale thanks to automation with bots, a CRM, and new channels. Conversational marketing is changing the way companies talk with their customers by making interactions seamless and faster than ever before. Your customers are having conversations. Why not join in?

The most important things to focus on are the channel, the conversation, and how the strategy fits in with your overall inbound marketing strategy. Channels should be simple for businesses and consumers to use, conversations should follow a clear process and serve a purpose, and your inbound marketing strategy should inform your conversational marketing strategy.

Remember, humans have been having conversations since the beginning of time. Technology is only making it easier and more productive for businesses and their customers to connect. While the days of communicating by the Pony Express may be over, thoughtful, friendly conversations (and gossip) will continue to stand the test of time and technology.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In the content marketing industry, setting objectives can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, constantly raising the bar can incentivize your team to sustain your growth rate over long periods of time. But on the other hand, it can also incentivize your team to prioritize your company’s needs over your customers’ needs.

You might be thinking that this is the nature of content marketing today — in order to grow, you need to stay laser-focused on hitting your numbers. And, sometimes, to hit your numbers, you need to do what’s best for the business, even if it’s not the best move for your customers.

But contrary to popular belief, solely focusing on the results doesn’t actually produce results. Focusing on serving your customers is what produces results. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, is famous for sparking this customer-centric movement. In 2015, he spoke at Goldman Sach’s Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco, and a reporter asked him what were some of Apple’s biggest accomplishments from the past year. He responded, “We’re not focused on the numbers. We’re focused on the things that produce the numbers.”

In content marketing, one of the most influential things that produce the numbers is a passion for your craft. But, sometimes, we can get so obsessed with optimizing for results that we forget what actually generates the views and leads we desperately desire — compelling content.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to set realistic marketing objectives that will help you craft audience-centric content, prioritize your customers’ needs, and hit your numbers, all at the same time. Read on to learn how to identify your marketing objectives’ purpose and process and why it’s just as important as the numbers you aim to hit.

In many ways, marketing is a game of trend watching. The marketer who’s best at spotting and using trends earns their business market share, brand recognition, and ultimately, revenue.

But how do you search for trends? And where do you start? Well, since they own about 92% of the global search engine market, the answer to both of these questions is, “Google.”

To thrive as a small business, you need press coverage. But, unfortunately, coverage doesn’t just come naturally — you need to work for it.

Enter: The press release.

Press releases are important for increasing your brand awareness and helping your public relations (PR). But if nobody sees your release, you won’t get very far. You need to distribute it effectively to get your story picked up by national newspapers, magazines, or blogs.

In this guide to press release distribution, we’ll cover the following to help you put together a plan of action that results in coverage:

• What is press release distribution?
• Why is press release distribution important?
• How to distribute your press release
• Distribution mistakes to avoid
• Should you use distribution services?

Keep reading to learn how you can properly create, pitch, and distribute a press release for optimal brand awareness.

Remember to Keep the Relationship Alive

When you need to create a press release, follow the distribution steps in this guide to boost your chances of landing coverage.

But remember — not every press release will get picked up and turned into a news story, so don’t get too disheartened if it takes a while to gain some traction.

Keep tweaking and refining your approach until you see success. Your first piece of coverage could well be the domino that starts the run. A story picked up by one news outlet can soon snowball from publication to publication.

Plus, if your story does get picked up, don’t forget to thank the journalist. It can facilitate a relationship with the journalist which you can then nurture, and might lead to easier coverage down the line.

Ultimately, you can never have too much good press!