If you’re familiar with the HubSpot Academy, then you know it offers online certifications and free tools to help people all over the world learn how to market, sell, and grow an inbound business.

Recently, HubSpot Academy launched its Education Partner Program, which helps college and university professors teach inbound marketing, sales, and provides guidance on using the HubSpot Marketing Software and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The mission of the program is to bring the theory and practice of running and growing a business into the classroom — and to give students the hands-on experience they need to launch their careers right out of school.

But when it came time to drive even more value for this program, there was much more we could for students. The program already provided educators with the software, resources, community and support to build leading marketing classes. We wanted to do even better at providing students with valuable, market-ready skills — by way of certification.

Here’s what happened when we challenged 11 marketing students to get their HubSpot certifications in one semester — and build an inbound strategy for a real company in the process.

How HubSpot Certifications Helped Build an Inbound Strategy

The Hypothesis and Objective

The Certification

HubSpot Academy certifications are designed to help marketers stay up-to-date on the latest marketing and sales techniques, while also boosting their resumes. They allow users to take their inbound skills to the next level, with a confirmed completion of a qualifying exams.

When we looked at which certifications were being assigned by Education Partner Program professors — and which ones students were receiving — the HubSpot Marketing Software Certification (HSMC) was missing. But we didn’t despair at that finding. Rather, we looked at how we could address those barriers to adoption.

To say that the HMSC is “difficult” is a tremendous understatement. It involves an exam, a mastery of the Inbound Methodology, a practicum component, and a proven ability to achieve results using the HubSpot Marketing Software.

Having this certification can help a marketer stand out during a job search — especially a recent graduate.

The prospect of more students receiving their HMSC was a mutually beneficial goal for instructors, students, and their respective institutions. We wanted to show that students could get their HSMC within a single semester, so we created an experiment to do that, with the mentality that if it was successful, we could roll it out across the entire Education Partner Program community.

The Framework

The biggest HSMC adoption barrier for students seemed to be the practicum component, which requires users to carry out actual inbound marketing activities using HubSpot Marketing Software — and achieve tangible results. That meant we would need a real business to agree to let these students use its HubSpot portal to complete these tasks, while working toward the HSMC.

But a barrier to adoption didn’t have to be a deal-breaker. In fact, it turned out to be quite the opposite — in addition to building an experiment to show that students could get their HSMC within a single semester, our objective would now also require them to complete real-world marketing work on behalf of an actual business. Around here, we call that a “win-win.”

Using those factors as a foundation, we determined our hypothesis: Students will be able to earn their HubSpot Marketing Software Certifications within a single semester.

The Experiment

What We Did

To test the hypothesis, we first pitched the experiment to Randy Harrison, a senior member of the affiliated faculty at Emerson College’s Department of Marketing Communication. He had previously spoken of his desire for his students to become certified, and was eager to give them the real-world experience that came with completing the HSMC.

Since HubSpot has roughly 30,000 customers, we (optimistically) figured that at least one of them would be willing to let a classroom of eager students do free marketing work on behalf of the company. The idea was that the customer would add the students as users in its HubSpot portal, who would then work to complete the practicum requirements of the HSMC by way of the aforementioned marketing work.

But Professor Harrison was already way ahead of us. After we approached him with the experiment he convinced one of his business contacts to not only become a new HubSpot customer — but also, allow his students to carry out the marketing work for their HSMC.

Before jumping right in, we established some guardrails. If the experiment was successful, we wanted it to be designed to scale — and more seamlessly replicable by other educators in the future:

• Every student should become certified.
• The class would visit the HubSpot office at least once.
• A member of the HubSpot team would visit the class at least once.
• Professor Harrison would work with a member of the Education Partner Program team to design the course.
• Professor Harrison would document this experience and allow it to be used publicly.

How We Would Measure Success

Success would be measured according to the following metrics:

• Every student meets the practicum component of the certification.
• 80% of the students complete the HSMC in its entirety.

The Spring 2017 semester began — and we were ready to get to work.

The Results

All in all, the experiment was a success.

Every student completed the practicum component with flying colors — which meant they were able to accomplish the objective of applying the Inbound Methodology to build and execute an inbound strategy for a real business.

Meanwhile, 66% of the students passed the entirety of the HSMC — which meant they both completed the practicum and passed the certification exam. And while we didn’t reach the 80% metric we originally established, the benchmark was high enough for us to take the experiment out of beta, tweak it to even better set up students for success, and replicate for the following semester.

And finally, here’s our favorite part: The company that became a customer for this experiment hired four of the students before they even graduated.

Where We Go From Here

Next Steps

As we mentioned previously, following the success of the experiment, we structured it in a way that has allowed it to become an official offering of the Education Partner Program. Working with our Customer Success team, we have established a system to match professors who want their students to obtain the HSMC with HubSpot customers, using criteria like product fit and shared expectations.

How Marketers Can Use What We Learned

When we carried out this project, we didn’t just learn more about Education Partners — we also learned some valuable lessons about experimentation in general.

Go Big

Pick experiments that, if they’re successful, will produce significant results. Design them with impact and scale in mind — for many, time is the most valuable resource, so don’t let it go to waste on an experiment that will only have minimal impact.

In our case, we needed a way to dramatically increase the value of the Education Partner Program for participating schools, professors, and students, and knowing whether the students could become HSMC in one semester was crucial to that. Even if our hypothesis was proven wrong, we would know to look for a different potential value source.

Recycle When Possible

Unless your company was founded yesterday, you likely have a wealth of resources to draw upon for your experiments — things like previous experiments, marketing collateral, fellow employees, and historical data.

Notice that we didn’t actually create any net-new assets to conduct this experiment — the only investment was sweat equity and time. Additionally, the other major stakeholder in the experiment, Professor Harrison, agreed to document the experiment, regardless of the outcomes. That meant we would be creating a new value point for the program, as we paved the way for other professors to get their students certified … or cautioned educators on what we learned, had it failed.

And About That Documentation

Document everything like your life depends on it. Use the scientific method, and be sure to debrief when it concludes — remember, if it succeeds you’ll be repeating it, and regardless of the outcome, you want to discuss ways to improve upon it.

And remember this: Many times, an experiment is more valuable if it fails. For that, we use this famous quote from Thomas Edison — “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

What are some of the ways you’ve used HubSpot Academy certifications? Let us know about your best experiment in the comments — and hey, we might even feature it on our blog.

At this point, you might be asking yourself: Do I really need a privacy policy for my website?

If you’re starting any kind of company today, the answer is likely yes, you really do.

Starting a new business can be overwhelming — there are a lot of moving parts to manage all at once, and it’s easy for your privacy policy to get overlooked (or completely forgotten) in the shuffle. But with so many new data privacy regulations and lawsuits cropping up, skipping out on a privacy policy is just asking for trouble.

To give you an idea of what you’re up against, here are a few examples of regulations that require a privacy policy:

1. California Online Privacy Protection Act
2. Privacy Shield
3. EU General Data Protection Regulation (effective May 2018)
4. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule

Regulations around privacy policies don’t just end at your website: any tool that collects information from your site — such as website analytics, online forms, or chat widgets — will require a policy too. Google Analytics, the most popular web analytics tool out there, even has a privacy policy requirement in its terms of use.

And if you’re planning on running any online ad campaigns, both Google and Facebook require privacy policies in place if you’re collecting any user information. This is especially important for Facebook Lead Ads, which require a privacy policy URL link within each ad you create.

The FTC isn’t afraid of enforcing punishments for companies that violate consumers’ privacy, regardless of size or prominence. They’ve taken action against many companies — even ones as big as Google and Facebook — for failing to properly disclose how they used their customer’s data.

Okay okay, enough scary stuff. You’re hopefully convinced by now that you should probably get one of these privacy policy things.

But what exactly is a privacy policy?

Basically, a privacy policy usually lets your customers know what type of data you’re collecting, and what you’re doing with that data. It also generally provides information about how you’re collecting data, whether it’s through a form, or cookies on your website.

They also usually outline your policy for storing customer data. How long you’re planning to store data is a big deal — are you storing someone’s info in perpetuity, or do you promise to delete it after 90 days? Privacy policies typically inform users how long their data will stay in your possession.

Depending on where your company is located, you might also have to include where the data is being stored. Even if you’re not storing it yourself, you’d need to disclose the physical data center (e.g. an AWS US-East server in northern Virginia).

Privacy policies may also include information on who has access to the customer’s data. This can mean giving customers the right to request data if they want, and a process to do so. And it usually involves providing contact info if they have a question about the privacy policy. You may also want to provide an opt-out notice for users that don’t agree with the policy.

Finally, privacy policies often include the security policy you use to protect the data you’re collecting. This usually means an outline of the security measures taken to safeguard customer data by you, or the vendors you use. Here’s HubSpot’s security policy for reference.

Ultimately, privacy policies provide a safeguard for both you and your visitors. If you’re collecting data from visitors or users, it’s recommended to tell them what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and how it’s being safeguarded. The privacy policy serves as a declaration to visitors and customers what you’re doing with their data.

When writing a policy, it should be clear and explicit so any user can understand it.

So how do I get a privacy policy?

Ultimately it’s up to you to determine what kind of privacy policy your business needs, and you should consult with a legal professional.

However, here are some helpful links like this sample Privacy Policy from the Better Business Bureau to get you started. Likewise, there are privacy policy generators that often offer basic privacy policies for free (here’s an example of one focused on the aforementioned Facebook Lead Ads use case: link).  Additonally, the FTC’s website has a bunch of information to help guide US businesses in particular.

Again, we emphasize that you should consult with an attorney on what type of policy is best for your needs.

And Now, Some Legalese …

This blog post has provided information about the law designed to help our readers better understand the legal issues surrounding internet marketing. But legal information is not the same as legal advice — the application of law to an individual’s specific circumstances.

Although we have conducted research to better ensure that our information is accurate and useful, we insist that you consult a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is accurate.

To clarify further, you may not rely upon this information as legal advice, nor as a recommendation or endorsement of any particular legal understanding, and you should instead regard this article as intended for entertainment purposes only.

Who else loved baking brownies when they were a kid? My favorite part was drizzling the chocolate syrup on top as a finishing touch.

As it turns out, one of my beloved childhood memories was a product of co-branding: Betty Crocker partnered with Hershey’s to include chocolate syrup in its signature brownie recipe.

There’s something brilliant about that co-branded product: It’s a fun way to marry two classic brands into one delicious experience for fans of baking and chocolate alike. In fact, these brands still create new co-branded products to this day.

Co-branding is a strategic marketing and advertising partnership between two brands wherein the success of one brand brings success to its partner brand, too. Co-branding can be an effective way to build business, boost awareness, and break into new markets, and for a partnership to truly work, it has to be a win-win for all players in the game. Both audiences need to find value — like chocolate-loving fans of Betty Crocker and Hershey’s.

There are a ton of great examples of co-branding partnerships out there — too many to list in one post. Below, we’ve curated a list of 10 examples of great co-branding partnerships to inspire you.

10 Examples of Great Co-Branding Partnerships

1) GoPro & Red Bull: “Stratos”

GoPro doesn’t just sell portable cameras, and Red Bull doesn’t just sell energy drinks. Instead, both have established themselves as lifestyle brands — in particular, a lifestyle that’s action-packed, adventurous, fearless, and usually pretty extreme. These shared values make them a perfect pairing for co-branding campaigns, especially those surrounding action sports.

To make the partnership work, GoPro equips athletes and adventurers from around the world with the tools and funding to capture things like races, stunts, and action sport events on video — from the athlete’s perspective. At the same time, Red Bull uses its experience and reputation to run and sponsor these events.

“GoPro camera technology is allowing us to complement the programming by delivering new athlete perspectives that have never been seen before,” said Sean Eggert, Red Bull’s director of sports marketing. The collaboration allows exclusive GoPro content to enhance both companies’ growth.

While GoPro and Red Bull have collaborated on many events and projects together, perhaps the biggest collaboration stunt they’ve done was “Stratos,” in which Felix Baumgartner jumped from a space pod more than 24 miles above Earth’s surface with a GoPro strapped to his person. Not only did Baumgartner set three world records that day, but he also embodied the value of reimagining human potential that define both GoPro and Red Bull.

2) Pottery Barn & Sherwin-Williams: Color Your Room

One of the biggest benefits of co-branding campaigns is the opportunity to expose your product or service to a brand new audience. That’s exactly what home furnishing store Pottery Barn and paint company Sherwin-Williams did when they partnered together back in 2013.

Together, the two brands created an exclusive product line of paints, and then added a new section of Pottery Barn’s website that helped customers easily select paint colors to complement their furniture choices.

Source: Pottery Barn

Customers could coordinate paint colors with picture-perfect Pottery Barn furniture for a mutually beneficial partnership — and style assistance for both brands’ customers to boot. “Paint Landing,” Pottery Barn’s landing page for the partnership, contains helpful blog posts and how-to ideas for do-it-yourself painting and decorating.

3) Casper & West Elm: Test a Casper Mattress

You may have already heard of Casper — it’s an online mattress and bedding brand that sells mattresses in a box.

Casper mattress unboxing videos like this one have become a hit on YouTube, but despite the brand’s 100-day return policy, some shoppers might still be hesitant to buy a mattress without getting the chance to roll around in it first.

Enter West Elm, a high-end furniture company. Casper and West Elm partnered so shoppers could try out the comfy mattress before purchasing — and so West Elm could advertise its chic bedroom furniture.

Source: Casper

This is another example of a mutually beneficial co-branding partnership. It helps both brands appeal to a broader group of shoppers — after all, Casper doesn’t sell furniture, and West Elm doesn’t sell mattresses. It also provides shoppers with options — to try a mattress before buying, or to feel what it would be like sleeping in a bed frame.

4) Bonne Belle & Dr. Pepper: Flavored Lip Balm

Dr. Pepper-flavored lip balm. I mean, it’s genius.

Bonne Belle first debuted Lip Smacker, the world’s first flavored lip balm, in 1973, starting with flavors like strawberry, lemon, and green apple. Just two years later in 1975, they’d forged their first flavor partnership with the timeless Dr. Pepper brand. The result? A lip balm flavor that’s been famous for decades among teenage girls.

If you’re thinking the connection between lip balm and Dr. Pepper is a little thin, consider the copy on one of their vintage ads: “It’s the super shiny lip gloss with lip-smacking flavor… just like the world’s most original soft drink.” And later, “From Bonne Belle of course: the cosmetics company that understands your taste.”

Source: Click Americana

5) BMW & Louis Vuitton: The Art of Travel

Car manufacturer BMW and designer Louis Vuitton may not be the most obvious of pairings. But if you think about it, they have a few important things in common. If you focus on Louis Vuitton’s signature luggage lines, they’re both in the business of travel. They both value luxury. And finally, they’re both well-known, traditional brands that are known for high-quality craftsmanship.

These shared values are exactly why this co-branding campaign makes so much sense. In their partnership, BMW created a sports car model called the BMW i8, while Louis Vuitton designed an exclusive, four-piece set of suitcases and bags that fit perfectly into the car’s rear parcel shelf.

Source: Louis Vuitton

Although the four-piece luggage set goes for a whopping $20,000, the price is right for the target customer, as the BMW i8 starts at $135,700. A price like that kind of makes that luggage set seem like a drop in the bucket.

Not only does the luggage fit perfectly size-wise, but its design and appearance fit perfectly with BMW’s image: sleek, masculine, and high-quality. Turns out both the luggage and some parts of the car’s interior use carbon fiber, strong-yet-light composite material.

“This collaboration with BMW i epitomises our shared values of creativity, technological innovation and style,” said Patrick-Louis Vuitton, head of special orders at Louis Vuitton. “Our craftsmen have enjoyed the challenge of this very special project, using their ingenuity and attention to detail to create a truly made to measure set of luxury luggage. This is a pure expression of the art of travel.”

6) Uber & Spotify: Soundtrack for Your Ride

Music-streaming app Spotify partnered with ride-hailing app Uber to create “a soundtrack for your ride.” This is a great example of a co-branding partnership between two very different products with very similar goals — to earn more users.

Here’s how it works: When riders are waiting for an Uber ride, they’re prompted to connect with Spotify and become the DJ of their trip. Users can choose from their own playlists to determine what they’ll listen to.

Source: The Verge

This smart co-branding partnership helps fans of Uber and Spotify alike enjoy better experiences thanks to the app. And they might be more interested in picking Uber and Spotify over competitors knowing they can enjoy their next ride listening to their favorite tunes.

7) BuzzFeed & Best Friends Animal Society

Some co-branding campaigns are more complicated than others. This example from BuzzFeed and Best Friends Animal Society is one of the simplest ones out there — and it goes to show a great co-branding effort doesn’t have to take months of planning or millions of dollars.

For this campaign, the folks at Best Friends Animal Society wanted to leverage BuzzFeed’s readership of over 200 million people. To do this, they partnered with the folks at BuzzFeed to set up and publish an article called, “We Interviewed Emma Watson While She Played With Kittens And It Was Absolutely Adorable,” which you can read here. The article is exactly what it sounds like: Harry Potter and Beauty and the Beast star Emma Watson answered fans’ questions while she played with cute kittens.

Source: BuzzFeed

The article ends with a CTA advertising that the kittens featured in the video are, in fact, adoptable — a win-win for both partners.

8) Alexander Wang & H&M

Anyone who’s designer-conscious knows Alexander Wang and H&M aren’t exactly the same caliber when it comes to quality. Shoes by Alexander Wang tend to go for around $350 a pair, whereas shoes sold by H&M tend to go for more like $35 a pair. See what I mean?

But that discrepancy in pricing is exactly why the two brands decided to partner with one another. To support their brand positioning as trendy and fashionable, H&M has traditionally paired with high-end fashion brands to offer exclusive branded items for a limited time.

In exchange, those high-end brands — like Alexander Wang — can expose their brand name to “a new generation of potential consumers, who will increasingly aspire to owning more pieces from his high end collection,” writes Michelle Greenwald for Forbes.

Source: Snobette

9) CoverGirl & Lucasfilm: Light Side and Dark Side Makeup

Whenever a new installment of the beloved “Star Wars” series is released in theaters, it causes global pandemonium, and the release of “Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens” in 2015 was no exception. The series’ parent company, Lucasfilm, partnered with CoverGirl to capture a broader audience to get fans new and old excited about the movie’s release.

You might be wondering, “What do “Star Wars” and makeup have in common?” And the cleverness of this partnership is evident in the answer.

In the past, the space-age action movies were almost exclusively advertised and targeted toward men and boys. But in this day and age, that’s nonsense — because people of all genders can be interested in space exploration and makeup contouring alike.

The line was designed by famed makeup artist Pat McGrath, and it features two styles: the Light Side and the Dark Side, which loyal “Star Wars” fans will recognize as the sides of good and evil in the movies.

 

In a galaxy far, far away @COVERGIRL+@StarWars have partnered on beauty looks created by @patmcgrathreal and limited-edition makeup inspired by #StarWars #TheForceAwakens. It’s a #beautyforce like never before, channeling the duality that is within us all. #LightSide, #DarkSide—which will you unleash today? #droid #stormtrooper

A post shared by COVERGIRL (@covergirl) on Aug 13, 2015 at 6:59am PDT

This co-branding partnership was a win for both brand. Lucasfilm captured more attention and got CoverGirl shoppers (many of whom are young women) excited about the film’s release. And CoverGirl hopped on the “Star Wars” advertising bandwagon that took over the internet, stores, and TV leading up to the film’s release.

10) Nike & Apple: Nike+

Athletic brand Nike and technology giant Apple have been working together since the early 2000s, when the first line of iPods was released.

The co-branding partnership started as a way to bring music from Apple to Nike customers’ workouts using the power of technology: Nike+iPod created fitness trackers and sneakers and clothing that tracked activity while connecting people to their tunes.  

Source: Apple

The partnership has since evolved to become Nike+ — which uses activity tracking technology built into athletic clothing and gear to sync with Apple iPhone apps to track and record workout data. Tracking transmitters can be built into shoes, armbands, and even basketballs to measure time, distance, heart rate, and calories burned.

It’s a genius co-branding move that helps both parties provide a better experience to customers — and with the popularity of fitness tracking technology, Nike+ is ahead of the curve by making it easy for athletes to track while they play.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2016 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

 

Ask any social media manager what they stress out about on any given day, and the answers you receive may vary.

Some worry about having enough content to publish while others might worry about posting on the company page from their personal account. But almost all social media pros will agree upon one: news feed algorithms.

Social media algorithms are designed to serve audiences up the most relevant, interesting content possible — after all, social networks are about being social, and Instagram and Facebook want you spending more and more time within the apps interacting with friends — and content — you love.

But recent algorithm changes on major social networks have also made it tougher for brands and publishers to get content noticed and surfaced in busy news feeds — where billions of people are sharing content every day around the world.

We’ve started experimenting with different ways to leverage content on social media. Posting more frequently isn’t the answer — it’s posting great content that people want to share and interact with. Read on to learn more about the experiments we’re running and the early results we’ve seen.

How We’re Increasing Engagement on Social Media

1) Using Influencers and Gamification to Leverage Engagement

Facebook and Instagram each adjusted its respective news feed algorithm a few times last year. Instead of showing news need updates in chronological order, both algorithms now favor content from friends and family over publishers, and content that users interact with — by liking, commenting, viewing, and sharing posts.

Social media algorithm changes can be tricky for publishers and marketers — especially when we read stress-inducing statistics about Facebook’s algorithm reducing organic reach for publishers by roughly 40% over the last few years.

The answer to getting noticed in busy news feeds is to get people clicking, viewing, and interacting with your posts. But how can you get noticed in the first place — especially when there are so many users and pages also competing for attention?

We started experimenting with mobilizing and incentivizing our Instagram audience to engage more frequently with our posts. We’re rewarding people we think will love our content and engage with it by helping them see it first — and in some cases, win prizes.

Influencer Pods

The Goal:

We want to cultivate more engagement with our Instagram posts by creating our own influencer pod. Influencer pods are made up of — you guessed it — influencers in a particular vertical. They join specific, invite-only groups to engage with one another’s posts in an authentic and mutually beneficial way. Pods help content get viewed higher up in the Instagram feed, which makes it easier for even more people engage with the content — in their feeds, or in the Explore tab.

The Experiment:

We created our own influencer pod with several other well-known companies creating great content in similar worlds to us, such as social media, technology, and design companies. Whenever someone posts new content, they let the group know, and if the other companies find the post interesting, they will like the post and write a genuine comment on the post. Check it out in action:

The Results:

Our pod has started to generate 10-20 additional comments per Instagram post from relevant influencers within HubSpot’s vertical. These engagements help us (and fellow pod members) rank in Instagram’s feed, and they inspire a little social proof, too. If Instagrammers see influencers and companies they know and love engaging with HubSpot on Instagram, they might want to check us out, too.

Instagram Comment Contests

The Goal:

We want to help our audience engage with content we think they’d love by running an Instagram comment contest. We want to generate authentic comments on our Instagram posts from fans — and reward them for it, too.

The Experiment:

We created the #First60 contest on Instagram. Here’s how it works:

1) We encourage followers to “Turn on Post Notifications” from HubSpot to make sure they didn’t miss the contest announcement.

2) We post an Instagram Story when we’re getting ready to publish a new Instagram post as part of the contest that urges followers to be among the first people to comment “#First60” for the chance to win a prize.

3) Our followers comment on our posts, and we select prize winners and send them swag.

We’re rewarding people who love our content and engage with it by helping them see it first, and in turn, we’re able to generate a lot of engagement on our posts.

The Results:

Like the influencer pods, this Instagram contest generates 10-20 additional comments per Instagram post. The engagement helps us rank in the feed, turning on notifications helps us get our content in front of more of our fans, and everybody likes swag — the contest fosters good will with our audience, too.

Tl;dr: Social Media Engagement

Just like how we thought about different video devices like on-page SEO for social media, think about generating buzz and engagement on social media the way you think about optimizing search engine results with off-page SEO elements.

Inbound links from websites with high domain authority signal to search engines that your content is authoritative and worth clicking on.

Similarly, comments, likes, views, and shares are signals to social media algorithms that the content is authentic and that people like it. These engagements signal that the content should be bumped up higher in news feeds, which will help it then get discovered by more people to engage with it down the line.

P.S. We recently launched our first Facebook comment contest — with a much bigger prize offering. Check our the HubSpot Summer Startup contest here:

3) Rethinking How Social Media and PR Work Together

We’ve only just started this last experiment, so we don’t have detailed methods and results to share yet. But we wanted to give you a rundown of how we’re changing the way we use social media — to earn PR placements, instead of simply promoting them.

Simply put, everyone lives and breathes on social media. In fact, when you factor in messaging apps, social media is where people spend more than half of their time on their mobile devices — with Facebook at the helm.

And where PR used to be all about traditional media placements — in news outlets — it’s transforming to be about social, too.

We’ve found that, when pitching press outlets, you ned to help drive traffic through social to make it worth the effort of PR professionals. In addition to traditional outlets, publications are now generating traffic from native content within social platforms. So if you want to engage with members of the press and PR professionals today, you need to analyze their social media pages to learn what kind of content they’re sharing — before pitching.

The stories you pitch need to be relevant to their audiences — and not just yours. Whatever you learn about the outlets you want to target, incorporate that knowledge into content that you create.

The Goal:

We wanted to see if a social media-based PR campaign would get us more press placements and mentions on Facebook.

The Experiment:

With the Summer Startup contest, we pitched the story to journalists with accompanying data — about what people’s career dreams are, and what they love (and don’t love) about their jobs — to create a newsworthy, research-based story that earned coverage for our contest.

We waited until our video had achieved a meaningful number of views to use social proof to strengthen our pitch — which, in turn, drove more video views when publications started writing about it.

(Additionally, we spent significant budget boosting the post on Facebook, which contributed to the significance of its reach and view numbers on Facebook. We recommend sharing content on Facebook, waiting to see what picks up organically with your audience, and boosting high-performing posts.)

The Results:

We’ve earned more social media press mentions for the Summer Startup contest than any other campaign we’ve done in the past — and we’re not done yet.

Tl;dr: Social Media PR

Social media managers across industries are revamping their social media strategies to engage with their audience. If you want a press outlet to share your native social media content, tailor your pitch to its presence on Facebook or Twitter — whichever it shares on more frequently. We recommend incorporating social media into PR pitches to craft a story that translates — in print, and in apps.

How lucky are you and why? How many times heavier than a mouse is an elephant? How many square feet of pizza are consumed in the United States each year?

Hiring managers have heard about using these “creative” questions to identify the best candidates. Fortunately for intelligent and qualified candidates everywhere, studies have found that the brainteaser interview questions made famous by Silicon Valley and Wall Street are just as silly as they sound. (In fact, Google started to phase out brainteasers from its interviews several years ago.)

But when you’re interviewing people to join your team, you have to get creative. After all, there’s only so much questions like “What’s your biggest weakness?” and “Are you a team player?” reveal about who your candidates truly are.

To help give you some ideas for the next time you’re screening candidates, here are some of the best job interview questions to ask with the answers you should expect.

16 of the Best Interview Questions & Answers to Use in Your Next Job Interview

1) “Tell me about a time you set difficult goals. What did you do to achieve them? Walk me through the process and purpose.”

If you’re looking for a candidate who is goal-oriented and results-driven — as most hiring managers are — then this question will help you gauge whether they’ll be able to handle the audacious goals you have in store for them. A great answer shows they understand what difficult goals are, and they put a lot of effort into attaining their goals while maintaining a high standard of work quality.

2) “Pitch [name of your company] to me as if I were buying your product/service.”

This is a unique and more challenging approach to the generic “What does our company do?” question. It forces candidates to drum up the research they’ve done to prepare for the interview, and also to craft a compelling message on the fly.

This will come more naturally to some candidates than others — for example, someone interviewing for a sales or marketing position might find it easier than someone interviewing for a more internal-facing role — and that’s okay. You aren’t necessarily assessing their delivery. But it’ll be interesting to see how each candidate thinks through and gives their answer.

3) “Tell me about the relationships you’ve had with the people you’ve worked with. How would you describe the best ones? The worst?”

Each team is different, so this question helps you tease out whether the candidate would be happy, productive, and well liked on your team. Their answer will tell you how they interact with others — and which kinds of interactions they want to happen.

Many candidates are hesitant to bad-mouth their coworkers and bosses, so it will also be interesting for you to hear how they navigate a question about their worst working relationships.

4) “What single project or task would you consider your most significant career accomplishment to date?

Lou Adler, author of The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired and Hire With Your Head, spent ten years searching for the single, best interview question that will reveal whether to hire or not hire a candidate — and this was the one. Candidates’ answers will tell you about their prior success and sense of ownership. A great answer will show they are confident in their work and professional choices while being humble and giving credit to others.

5) “What have you done professionally that you succeeded at, but isn’t an experience you’d want to repeat?”

A candidate’s answer to this question will give you an idea of how they viewed work they weren’t very happy with, which is bound to happen to everyone in every job at one point or another. HubSpot’s VP of Global Customer Support Michael Redbord says candidates’ answers generally fall into a few categories:

1. Something menial (e.g. envelope-stuffing). Pay attention to whether they understand the value of this getting done for the business, or whether they just think they’re too good for a job like that.
2. Something really hard. Why was it hard? Was it because it was poorly planned, poorly executed, or something else? Where do they put the blame on it being such an unpleasant experience?
3. Something team-related. Follow up with questions about the team, what their role on the team was, and so on.

Even the category of what they consider an experience they wouldn’t want to repeat is interesting, says Redbord. When you talk about extreme experiences that get people emotional, it can be very revealing.

6) “Is it better to be perfect and late, or good and on time?”

For most companies, the correct answer is “good and on time.” It’s important to let something be finished when it’s good enough. Let’s face it, every blog post, email, book, video, etc. can always be tweaked and improved. At some point, you’ve just got to ship it. Most managers don’t want someone who can’t hit deadlines because they’re paralyzed by perfection.

If your candidate responds with “It depends,” then hear them out — the interview question itself is phrased in such a way that candidates can sense there is a right and wrong answer, and they’ll be looking for signs from you that they’re heading in the right direction. Try to remain neutral as they feel out their response. If their conclusion errs on the side of “good and on time,” then their priorities are probably in the right place.

7) “In five minutes, could you explain something to me that is complicated but you know well?”

This is a much better test of intelligence than a college GPA, and it’s also a great gauge of a candidate’s passion and charisma.

The “something” in this question doesn’t have to be work-related — it can be a hobby, a sports team, something technical … anything, really. Their response will tell you how well your candidate comprehends complex subjects and how well they can articulate a complex subject to someone who doesn’t know much about it. Candidates who are passionate and knowledgeable about something — and can convey that well — are more likely to be charismatic, enthusiastic, and influential at work.

8) “What’s your definition of hard work?”

Some organizations move at very different paces, and this question is an effective way to tell whether your candidate will be able to keep pace with the rest of the team. It also helps you identify someone who is a “hard worker in disguise,” meaning someone who might currently be at a slow-moving organization or in a role that is not well-suited to them, but wants to work somewhere where they can really get their hands dirty.

9) “If I were to poll everyone you’ve worked with, what percent would not be a fan of yours? Then, if I were to interview these people, what words would they most frequently use to describe you?”

At work, you can’t please everyone all the time. The answer to this question will help you find out if your candidate has enough drive and conviction to have alienated a small percentage of their colleagues, but not so many that they are a polarizing figure.

The word-cloud follow-up is more important than the percentage they give in the initial question. In their answers, you should be encouraged by words like “passionate” and concerned by words like “stubborn.”

10) “Tell me about a time you screwed up.”

An oldie but goodie. This is a tried-and-true test for self-awareness. (Honestly, well-prepared candidates should see it coming and have an answer ready.) Someone who takes ownership of their mess-up and learns something from it is usually humble and mindful. Candidates who blame others or give a “fake” screw-up (something like “I worked too hard and burned out.”) are red flags.

11) “Who is the smartest person you know personally? Why?”

These questions test what the candidate values and aspires to by forcing them to think of a real person they know, and then articulate what makes that person smart. Ideal answers vary, but could include specific examples of the person they’ve chosen’s ability to think ahead several steps and execute. They could also touch on the person’s decision-making skills, ability to connect, desire for learning, or application of the things they learned.

12) “What is something you’d be happy doing every single day for the rest of your career?”

While it’s important to hire for skill, it’s also important to hire someone who’s likely to be happy in the job you’re hiring for. A question like this will help uncover what makes each candidate happy at work — which is a great way to gauge whether they’d enjoy their role and stay at the company for a long time.

13) “If you had $40,000 to build your own business, what would you do?”

This question is a favorite of HubSpot Marketing Team Development Manager Emily MacIntyre‘s. First, the type of business they choose to talk about can reveal a lot about their interests, values, and how creative they are.

Second, it’ll give you insight into how business-savvy they are. By giving them a specific amount to work with (in this case, $40,000), they have the opportunity to parse out how they’d spend that money.

The best answers will get specific: They’ll offer an overview of the business, and get into the logistics of where that money would go, whom they’d hire first, and so on.

14) “What’s the biggest decision you’ve had to make in the past year? Why was it so big?”

Here’s a great way to figure out how a candidate approaches decision-making. Were they quick to make that big decision, or did it take them a long time? Did they spend most of their time reflecting on it by themselves or fleshing it out with others? How did they make a plan? Their answer could be work-related or personal — and if they ask you to specify, tell them either.

15) “What’s surprised you about the interview process so far?”

This is a question no candidate can really prepare for, and it’ll give you some indication of how candidates are feeling about the whole thing. Plus, you can see how they think on their feet. You’re looking for specifics here — something about the office space; the personality of the team; an assignment they were given to complete.

16) “Do you have any questions for me?”

This is another classic interview question, and like the one above, you’re seeing how candidates think on their feet. The answer to this question also reveals what’s important to the candidate.

Are they wondering about company culture, or compensation? Are they curious about growth potential, or learning opportunities? There are no right or wrong answers, but personality and communication style are important factors when considering hiring someone to join your team, and you can get a sense of these factors with their answer.

If you happen to be on the other side of the interview table, you can make your resume even more appealing to potential employers by becoming a certified inbound marketing professional with HubSpot’s free marketing certification. Get started here.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2014 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

 

By now, you’ve probably realized that the bots have us surrounded. If recent success stories like Arby’s hilarious pizza slider bot are any indication, the future of brand awareness as we know it just might rest in the little digital paws of chatbots.

They might seem like “the simpletons of the artificial intelligence world,” but chatbots offer marketers from any industry the opportunity to engage with consumers on a personal, direct level — as long as they can capture (and hold) users’ attention with an engaging narrative.

The emergence of accessible artificial intelligence gives us unprecedented access to consumers, but the tech needs to be fed by compelling creative work to be used successfully as a marketing tool.

As AOL’s David Shingy writes in Adweek, “The challenge [with chatbots] will be thinking about creative from a whole different view: Can we have creative that scales? That customizes itself? We find ourselves hurtling toward another handoff from man to machine — what larger system of creative or complex storytelling structure can I design such that a machine can use it appropriately and effectively?”

Some brands already seem to be getting the balance right. A bot needs to capture a user’s attention quickly and display a healthy curiosity about their new acquaintance, but too much curiosity can easily push them into creepy territory and turn people off. They have to display more than a basic knowledge of human conversational patterns, but they can’t claim to be an actual human — again, let’s keep things from getting too creepy here.

To inspire your first (or next) foray into the weird and wonderful world of chatbots, we’ve compiled a list of seven brands who’s bot-based campaigns were fueled by an astute knowledge of their target audiences and solid copywriting. Check them out below, and start considering if a chatbot is the right move for your own company’s next big marketing campaign.

7 Brands Already Using Chatbots for Marketing

1) National Geographic’s Genius

Image Credit: Top Bots

Who wouldn’t want a little Albert Einstein at their disposal to answer pressing questions about space, time, and the meaning of life?

Back in April, National Geographic launched a Facebook Messenger bot to promote their new show about the theoretical physicist’s work and personal life. Developed by 360i, the charismatic Einstein bot reintroduced audiences to the scientific figure in a more intimate setting, inviting them to learn about the lesser-known aspects of his life through a friendly, natural conversation with the man himself.

“Rather than having the campaign speak for Einstein, we wanted Einstein to speak for himself,” Layne Harris, 360i’s VP, Head of Innovation Technology, said to GeoMarketing. “We decided to pursue a conversational chatbot that would feel natural and speak as Einstein would. This provides a more intimate and immersive experience for users to really connect with him one on one and organically discover more content from the show.”

Unfortunately the Genius bot is no longer active, but apparently he had a pretty good sense of humor — persistent existential dread aside.

2) Whole Foods

Tonight’s dinner plans could be just a single emoji send away.

Whole Foods’ Facebook Messenger bot — launched in 2016 at MobileBeat — lets users search for recipes, products, and food inspiration without leaving Messenger.

The friendly foodie bot was developed by Conversable, and the team plans to expand its capabilities in the near future to include coupons, a saved recipe library, and direct shopping. 

If you aren’t sure what you’re looking for, you can give the bot some details about your dietary restrictions and flavor preferences, and it will serve up some options. And if you’re in the mood to embrace every millennial stereotype, you can just send an emoji of a food item for instant recommendations. The future is truly now.

3) Aerie

Image Credit: VB

With a predominantly millennial and Gen Z target audience, it makes sense that lingerie and apparel retailer Aerie was quick to adopt bot technology in their marketing approach.

Available on Kik, the bot helps users select products with an engaging game of this or that: you’re presented with two product images, and you select the one that most suits your body type and preferences. After a few rounds, the bot is able to make personalized product recommendations based on your selections.

“We worked closely with the Aerie team, including copywriters, designers, and brand voice to create a chatbot with a distinct persona that celebrates body positivity and promotes confidence in young women,” said Lauren Kunze, the CEO of Pandorabots, the company behind Aerie’s bot.

4) Harper Collins

Having trouble finding your next read? Harper Collins’ Epic Reads chatbot is here to help. With a few simple questions about your past favorites and genre preferences, this powerful little Facebook Messenger bot can find a book that matches your unique literary tastes.

The Epic Reads bot caters specifically to teens, but Harper Collins hasn’t forgotten adult readers — in early 2017, they launched a second book recommendation bot, Book Genie, which offers up a broader range of book suggestions for all ages. 

5) Marvel’s Spiderman

You might not ever be able to fight like a superhero, but now you can at least chat like one.

Marvel released a choose-your-own-adventure style Facebook Messenger bot to build hype for the summer blockbuster’s theatrical release.

The good news is that the bot will give you a cool nickname. The bad news is that the nickname it gave me was “The Wobbler.”

Through some urgent back-and-forth with the users, the bot eventually reveals panels of a secret comic. If you share your location, the bot will instruct you to “report for duty” by purchasing the full comic book in stores.

6) Starbucks

Image Credit: GeekWire

Perfect proof that simplicity can be the best route, the Starbucks Barista bot for Facebook Messenger serves a very specific, very important purpose: it orders you coffee.

When you have a desperate need for a java fix with minimal human interaction and effort, this bot has you covered. According to a demo led by Gerri Martin-Flickinger, the coffee chain’s chief technology officer, the bot even understands complex orders with special requests, like “double upside down macchiato half decaf with room and a splash of cream in a grande cup.”

That’s pretty impressive. I, an adult human and problematically frequent Starbucks customer, barely understood that. 

7) Duolingo

Image Credit: Duolingo

Learning a new language takes a lot of practice, and if you’re doing it on your own, you might miss out on gaining valuable conversational knowledge. Enter online language-learning platform Duolingo’s chatbot service.

Available in a wide variety of foreign languages within the Duolingo app, the bot helps language students overcome the fear of embarrassment that often comes with speaking a new language in a conversational setting by providing them with virtual, judgment-free option.

“A very common request that we get is people want to practice conversation,” said Duolingo’s co-founder and CEO, Luis von Ahn. The company originally tried pairing up non-native speakers with native speakers for practice sessions, but according to von Ahn, “about three-quarters of the people we try it with are very embarrassed to speak in a foreign language with another person.”

The chatbot offers the perfect solution: a friendly bot companion to practice with, any time of the day, with no fear of embarrassment. “As far as we can tell,” von Ahn told The Guardian, “computers can’t judge us.”

Which branded bots are you engaging with these days? Let us know on Twitter.

 

Workplace diversity isn’t just good for your employees’ wellbeing — it’s also good for business.

Back in 2015, a McKinsey report found that companies with management teams in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were also 15% more likely to have returns above their industry means.

Image credit: McKinsey

But diversity isn't a just business play. It's a human play.

But diversity isn’t a just business play. It’s a human play. And as more companies start to incorporate diversity programs into their training and hiring practices, many are failing to develop truly meaningful, empathetic initiatives that go beyond surface-level quotas and checkboxes.

A recent investigation by Harvard Business Review found that some common tactics like mandatory skill assessment tests to reduce hiring bias, annual performance ratings to evaluate pay gaps, grievance systems to rehabilitate biased managers, and compulsory diversity training programs to educate employees just aren’t doing enough to bring organizations into the 21st century. In fact, some of these initiatives might even have an adverse impact on organizational health, reinforcing bias instead of alleviating its damage.

Laboratory studies show that this kind of force-feeding can activate bias rather than stamp it out.

According to sociology professors Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, “Those [diversity initiatives] are designed to preempt lawsuits by policing managers’ thoughts and actions. Yet laboratory studies show that this kind of force-feeding can activate bias rather than stamp it out. As social scientists have found, people often rebel against rules to assert their autonomy. Try to coerce me to do X, Y, or Z, and I’ll do the opposite just to prove that I’m my own person.”

By no means does this study indicate you should abandon your company’s diversity program for fear of failure. It means it’s time for a more empathetic, self-aware approach to diversity — in the workplace and beyond. 

Adam Foss, a former Assistant District Attorney in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston and the founder of Prosecutor Impact, sat down with The INBOUND Studio to discuss diversity, empathy, and the complexity of privilege.

At Prosecutor Impact, Foss builds training programs for prosectors, teaching them to take a more empathetic, conscious approach to their work and the betterment of the communities they practice within. He’s found that cultivating empathy, rather than diversity alone, is necessary for creating real cultural changes.

“Empathy is the ability to share and understand the feelings and experiences of another. That is not what diversity means. Diversity just literally means ‘difference.'” – Adam Foss

“Empathy is the key driver of success in the criminal justice system, because its so devoid of empathy, or anything that requires empathy,” Foss explains in the interview. “I think that’s why we’re in the mess that we’re in now with the incarceration population, the size that it is and who it’s affecting. It has marginalized people — period. To really start turning that corner and succeeding and seeing that change, there’s been a drive to create empathy as part of the education of folks.“

The training at Prosecutor Impact focuses on building empathy through both academic and experiential learning, educating prosecutors on subjects that deepen their understanding of the communities they serve, and confronting them directly with the realities of incarceration to strengthen their capacity for empathy. 

“People are on board with that part of it: getting this new visceral experience, learning these new things,” Foss says. “Where it gets difficult is when you have to start tackling harder issues like what is the role of race, what is the role of gender, and religion, and sexual orientation.”

“When you start having those questions, people get defensive, or negate their privilege by talking about how they had [difficulties] and how they made up for them. And both of those things are really dangerous and counterproductive when you’re trying to change culture.“

Refocusing Diversity Initiatives in the Workplace

Foss admits that discussing privilege is “a difficult conversation to get started,” but it’s a conversation worth having. Becoming aware of the privilege you possess is the first step to leveraging it in a meaningful way, and many conventional diversity programs fail to address this.

Focusing on empathy and self-awareness over quotas and trainings aimed at instantly stripping away biases is a more holistic, realistic approach to embracing a more diverse workplace and world.

 

At HubSpot, our one-minute Facebook videos usually receive more views than our longer videos. So how is it that our third most viewed video right now is almost four minutes long?

Facebook will boost a video’s organic reach if it deeply engages viewers, so we knew our video needed to grip our audience from start to finish — especially since it’s four times longer than the majority of our videos. If it didn’t captivate them, Facebook could squash the video’s organic distribution.

To maximize audience engagement, we implemented psychology-backed hacks throughout the entire video. Let’s check it out and the takeaways below to learn how to fully capture an audience’s attention.

6 Psychology-based Hacks for Making Engaging Videos

1) Spark Curiosity

To spark on-demand curiosity, George Loewenstein, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, recommends leveraging the information gap theory of curiosity.

The theory states that sensing a knowledge gap between what you know and what you want to know compels you to take action to fill it, like clicking through to a story.

We evoked curiosity in our viewers by using a simple, yet thought-provoking headline: Entrepreneurship is Back.

This title can trigger loads of questions from our audience, like “Entrepreneurship was gone?”, “What does it look like now?” and “How can I be an entrepreneur in today’s age?”, increasing the odds that they would click on our video.

By stimulating curiosity and leaving questions unanswered, we could succesfully create a gap between what the reader knows and what they want to learn.

2) Hook Your Audience

When Facebook analyzed their users’ video consumption data in 2016, they discovered that 45% of people who watch the first three seconds of a video will keep watching it for at least 30 seconds.

This helped us realize that sparking our audience’s curiosity wasn’t enough to engage them. We needed to instantly hook our viewers in the first three seconds. The human attention span isn’t long enough to be entertained by sluggish content.

What hooks people, though? According to Buffer, an effective video hook visually engages viewers and previews the video’s core message. Hooks are potent because they can simultaneously grab your viewers’ attention and generate interest in the rest of the video.

During our video’s first three seconds, we rapidly cut between numerous Shark Tank pitches. The swift frames caught our viewers’ eye. And if they recognized the entrepreneurs, they knew exactly what the video was about.

The narrator quickly summarizes the video’s main point too. He cuts right to the chase, informing the viewer that the video covers the rise of entrepreneurship. Many of our viewers dream about starting their own business, so this quick sketch of the topic definitely piqued their interest.

3) Make It Visual

When we were babies, we relied on vision to associate objects with behaviors, like a ball meaning play time. Vision was the only way to learn about the world.

That’s why you can understand visual information in 250 milliseconds (almost two times faster than a blink of an eye) and why your visual system activates over 50% of your brain. Watching something has always been the best way to learn.

Since visual storytelling helps people grasp concepts and data easily, we decided to complement our video’s text and narration with dynamic graphics, popular movie scenes, and footage of real people.

Each time our narrator expanded on a concept or some data, our viewers could listen to the information and watch a visual representation of it. This helped them form a concrete understanding of the video’s central idea.

4) Tell a Story

When someone tells you a story, they can plant their personal experiences and ideas directly into your mind. You start to feel what they feel.

Powerful stories evoke empathy because they activate parts of the brain that’d operate if you actually experienced the stories’ events. If someone describes eating a plate of lobster mac and cheese, your sensory cortex lights up. If someone recounts scoring their first touchdown, your motor cortex enlivens.

By using our memories to recreate the story’s sensory details, we turn its events into our own idea and experience.

Our video told a story about entrepreneurship. More specifically, entrepreneurship’s history, its economic benefits, and the reasons for its recent rocky past, current resurgence, and hopeful future.

By weaving these facts into a narrative, our viewers could place themselves into the modern entrepreneur’s mind. This allowed them to relate to the lack of fulfillment the “work to live” mentality provides and the impact their potential entrepreneurial pursuits could have on themselves and the world.

5) Inspire Your Audience

According to Psychology Today, brand preference is largely an emotional decision. Humans associate the same personality traits to brands as they do with people.

Choosing your favorite brand is like choosing your best friend, and since we spend time with the people who make us feel good, we engage with the brands that also make us feel good.

If you want your videos to resonate with your viewers, then they need to kindle warm feelings. In fact, happiness, hope, and excitement are some of the most common emotions that drive viral content.

By highlighting the digital age’s low market entry costs, a diminished need for investors, and the ability to efficiently build unprecedented amounts of brand engagement through social media, our video inspired entrepreneurs everywhere to keep pursuing their dreams because their futures look brighter than ever.

6) Make it Credible

Trust is pivotal in the inbound marketing world. If our viewers didn’t trust us, they would never consume our video content. And just because we stamped the HubSpot brand on the video doesn’t automatically validate its points.

That’s why we featured clips of Jack Delosa, Founder and CEO of The Entourage, backing up our points about finding a problem before you provide a solution, the purpose behind starting a business, and the power of social media.

He’s an established entrepreneur and an outside source, so his backing helps bolster our video’s credibility and, in turn, our audience’s trust in our content.

On Facebook, video isn’t king. Engaging video is king. And to create gripping videos, you need to be able to understand and predict human preference and behavior.

Nowadays, psychology isn’t just a college prerequisite anymore. It’s the core of marketing.

How do you convince your visitors to take the plunge on your website?

There are so many elements that a top-notch landing page needs, and making those elements the “best” they can be often depends on what your landing page goals are. 

Take form length, for example. It’s just one of the many components you need to optimize, but best practices will tell you that both short and long forms perform well — it all depends on whether you want to generate a lot of (potentially) lower quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher quality submissions.So if you’re looking to up your landing page game, it’s helpful to know what goes into a great landing page and see a few examples of these nuanced elements in action. Surprisingly, when I started doing research into the latter, I realized there are hardly any sites out there with examples of modern, impressive landing pages that are more than just a sign-up form on a homepage. So we decided to compile a list of landing pages we love ourselves.

Big, big caveat here: I don’t have access to any of the stats for these pages, so I can’t tell you how well they convert visitors, leads, and customers. Still, these examples have some of the best combinations of those nuanced landing page elements I’ve ever seen. Obviously, if you feel inspired to try any of these tactics on your own site, the only way to know whether they’ll work for you for sure is by testing them out for yourself.

16 Examples of Great Landing Page Design 

1) Wistia

First up is Wistia’s landing page for their Free Wistia Account. Right off the bat, you notice the one-field form to create your account — the blue, minimally patterned background contrasts nicely with the bright white form field.

The length of the form field combined with the prominent placement eliminates nearly all friction to create an account … but if you’re having doubts, you can always scroll below to read answers to top FAQs. By separating these two sections with stark color contrast, Wistia makes it much easier for you focus on converting.

2) Unbounce

It’s no surprise Unbounce is near the top of this list — they’ve actually written the book on creating high-converting landing pages. Although there are lots of amazing things about this landing page, the two that I absolutely love are: 1) The use of a chat window instead of a classic form, and 2) the detailed — but well packaged — information below the form. 

The first helps direct attention to the goal of the page — for you to fill out the form — in a way that’s unobtrusive and feels less like a chore. The second gives this page an SEO boost (search engines will have more content to crawl) and assuages any worry from folks who need to know more about a piece of content before handing over their information, all while not distracting people from the chat window.

3) IMPACT Branding & Design

Full disclosure: IMPACT is a HubSpot partner — but that’s not why they’re included here. IMPACT’s landing pages have long been a source of design inspiration. I love the simple layout of the page, from the large headline copy and detailed featured image, to the outline that surrounds the form, to the colors and fonts that are very pleasing to the eye.

Notice that they’ve included a check box to subscribe to their blog, which is automatically checked. Note that while adding a check box field to your landing page forms is a great way to increase subscribers, it’s better to leave it unchecked and let users opt in. Otherwise, you’ll risk adding a lot of low quality subscribers to your contact base.

4) Muzzle

Landing pages help users decide whether or not your product or service is actually worth their precious time and energy. What better way to clearly and straightforwardly communicate your value proposition than by confronting visitors with the very problem your app solves? 

Muzzle, a mac app that silences on-screen notifications, fully embraces this show don’t tell mentality on their otherwise minimal landing page. Visitors to the page are greeted with a rapid-fire onslaught of embarassing notifications in the upper left of the screen. Not only is the animation hilarious, it also manages to compellingly convey the app’s usefulness without lengthly descriptions. 

5) Bills.com

Often, people think landing pages are static pages on your website. But with the right tools, you can make them interactive and personalized.

Take the example below from Bills.com. To see if you’d benefit from their consultation, you answer three questions before you are shown a form. It starts with this one:

Then, you answer two more questions, like the one below:

And here’s the final landing page form where you fill out your information:

I’m not sure how the algorithm works (or if there’s one at all), but while I was filling it out, I had some anxiety about not qualifying. Once I found out I did, I was excited to fill out the form, which I’m sure most people who are in debt and using this tool are. By making this offer seem more exclusive before the form appeared on the landing page, I’d bet that Bills.com increased conversions pretty significantly.

6) Trulia

Trulia did something very similar to Bills.com with their landing page. It starts with a simple form asking for “an address” (which sounds less creepy than “your address,” although that’s what they mean). Below this simple form field is a bright orange button that contrasts well with the hero image behind the form, and emphasizes that the estimate will be personalized to your home.

Of course, the address itself won’t be enough to estimate the value of a home. It just denotes the home’s neighborhood. That’s why the next page follows with more questions about the property itself, like number of beds and baths. Below, you see the copy “Tell us where to send the report” — with a disclaimer that, by entering this information, you’re agreeing to connect with a real estate agent. This is a great example of a company giving value to their visitors from the get-go, while setting visitors’ expectations about what will happen as a result. 

7) Teambit

Whimsical isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind when you think of HR software, but Teambit’s illustration-heavy landing page is exactly that. A simple, one-field form is accompanied by a delighful office full of animal characters — all of whom are very pleased with Teambit, in case you were wondering. An animal cartoon appears beside each informational section of the landing page, keeping visitors scrolling down to learn more.

Teambit’s landing page is perfect proof that you don’t need to have a conventionally “fun” product or service offering to create a fun landing page. 

[Click here to see the whole landing page.]

8) Landbot

Landbot, a service that creates chatbot-based landing pages, puts their own product front and center on their chat-fueled landing page. Visitors are greeted by a friendly bot — complete with emojis and GIFs — who encourages them to provide information in a conversational format, instead of via a traditional form. 

9) Webprofits

For a little contrast … what about long landing pages? With just a few tricks, you can make even the longest landing page feel short. Webprofits’ landing page below shows us how.

Right at the top, there’s a prominent CTA button to learn more — with a nice contrast against the background so it stands out, and a downward arrow to encourage scrolling. By not putting a form field up front, they help reduce friction and create an opportunity for visitors to learn more before being presented with a conversion option.

They also make it easy for you to figure out what Webprofits actually does. The rest of the page offers detailed information about what you’ll get when you give over your information. Plus, it includes strategic CTAs throughout to take you back to the top to fill out the form, like “Let’s Talk.”

10) Inbound Emotion

Even if you don’t speak Spanish, you can still appreciate the conversion capabilities of this HubSpot partner site. My two favorite features of the page? The form stays in a fixed, prominent position as you scroll through the site. I also love the hands that serve as directional cues toward filling out the form and sharing the page with others.

11) H.BLOOM

Sometimes, you’ve just got to stop and admire a landing page for being beautiful. Using high-resolution photography and lots of white space, H.BLOOM’s landing page is a pleasure to look at. 

Aside from its beauty, the page has some great conversions elements: an above-the-fold form, clear and concise description of what’ll happen when you fill out the form, and even the bright orange “Submit” button. The only thing we’d change up? The copy on the “Submit” button — that could be more specific to the offer at hand. 

12) Velaro Live Chat

Sometimes the smallest details make the biggest difference. They’re what make Velaro Live Chat’s landing page awesome, for example.

That small PDF symbol over the feature image helps set expectations for what format the download will be in. The arrow in front of the subheadline helps further direct your attention to important copy they want visitors to read. Like IMPACT, they also have an auto-checked box to subscribe to their newsletter on their form — which, if turned into an opt-in check box, is a great way to increase subscribers. All of these small, seemingly insignificant details help bring together a solid, admirable landing page design.

13) Airbnb

To help convert visitors into hosts, Airbnb offers some enticing personalization: an estimated weekly average earnings projection based on your location. You can enter additional information about your potential accommodations into the fields to get an even more customized estimation. 

If you visit the page already convinced, the clear call-to-action at the top of the page makes it easy to convert on the spot. 

14) Conversion Lab

While I wouldn’t typically include an example of a homepage with a form on it in a post about landing pages, this website is special. The homepage is the entire website — the navigation links just take you to the information below.

When you click “Get Help With Landing Pages,” the entire site moves over to make room for the form. Here’s what it looks like before you click:

And, when you click that CTA, check out how the form appears: 

I love how you don’t have to leave the page to fill out the form, yet the form won’t feel intrusive to casual website visitors. 

15) Industrial Strength Marketing

Right off the bat, this landing page pulls me in with a compelling, punchy header: “Don’t Make Me Zoom.” It directly speaks to a common experience most of us have had when we’re browsing on our phones or tablets — and it’s a little sassy, too. 

But that’s not the only thing keeping me interested in this landing page. Notice how the color red is strategically placed: It’s right at the top and bottom of the form, drawing you even closer to the conversion event.

Plus, this design is meta to boot: It looks and works great on mobile, too. Keep in mind that a lot of visitors will be accessing your landing pages on their smartphones or tablets, and if the design of your website doesn’t work well for them, they might give up and leave your page.

The folks at Industrial Strength Marketing made the fonts and form field big enough so that visitors don’t have to pinch-to-zoom to read and interact with the content, for example. 

16) Shopify

Like many of the other landing pages in this post, Shopify’s trial landing page keeps it simple. The user-oriented headline is just a few words, for example, and the page relies on simple bullets, not paragraphs, to communicate the trial’s details and benefits. There are only a few fields you need to fill out before you get started. All of this makes it easier for you to get to the point: selling online with their tool. 

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness. 

 

Do you like to argue?

I do. I come from a long line of debaters, negotiators, and general question-askers — and now, it turns out, sparking these discussions has become part of my job.

That often manifests itself during our team’s lively Slack discussions 

around everything between what’s for lunch and the latest marketing news — the latter of which often includes a healthy amount of debate around which tools and channels we prefer to use, both as marketers and consumers of technology.

So when my colleague, Marketing Blog Staff Writer Sophia Bernazzani, recently covered an entire discussion around which is better — Snapchat, or Instagram — I thought, “That’s a great idea. What else can we debate?” 

This time, the contenders were some of the major live video platforms out there: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. I opened up the discussion on Slack …

… and, a la Bernazzani’s approach to her debate, decided to open it up to our inbound.org community members.

We asked marketers the following:

1. Which is your preferred platform for live video?
2. Do you use different platforms for different purposes?
3. Why do you prefer this/these platform(s)?
4. Do you particularly dislike the non-preferred platforms, and if so, why?

And now, we’re sharing some of marketers’ biggest reasons why they prefer each platform — read on for some of the highlights of the debate below.

Why Use Facebook Live?

1) There’s more engagement.

According to Facebook Head of Video Fidji Simo, about 20% of all videos on the channel are live, with the time spent watching them having grown 4X over the past year.

Video already makes for a popular content format on Facebook, with roughly 100 million hours of it consumed on the channel each day. So when you consider that 20 million hours of that is comprised of live video, the data speaks for itself — people are engaged with this kind of content. It’s no wonder that HubSpot marketers agreed:

2) There’s greater reach.

Notice that, in his quote above, HubSpot Academy Senior Growth Marketing Manager Eric Peters also spoke to Facebook Live’s reach.

To date, Facebook has 1.28 billion daily active users. On top of that, it continues to rank as Pew Research Center’s most popular social media channel. In other words — when content is shared on Facebook, it’s done so with a bit of a built-in audience.

With so many people already using Facebook, users often come across content from creators that they don’t already follow because it’s recommended by the platform’s algorithm, or one of their friends engaged with it or shared it, which shows up as activity on their feeds.

Therefore, when marketers share content on Facebook, viewership isn’t necessarily limited to the people who already like their Pages — it also has the potential to reach new audiences in the ways we mentioned above. HubSpot Social Media Marketer Nick Carney agrees:

3) It’s easy to use.

Carney also spoke to the fact that, when it comes to broadcasting live video with convenience, Facebook emerges as a leader once again.

As he points out, Facebook Live not only seamlessly integrates with a number of other platforms, but it’s also responsive across more than one viewing or recording medium — like desktop or mobile. And when you’re a marketer trying to capture an event unfolding, or provide a spontaneous look at what your brand is doing, that sort of translatable use is important.

Maybe that’s why social media strategist Christine Gritmon had the following responses to our questions:

4) The actual content outlives the live broadcast.

Gritmon also mentioned the somewhat evergreen nature of Facebook Live video content. Unlike other ephemeral content platforms, she explains, viewers can continue to consume her live video content long after the broadcast has ended.

Notice how she addressed the idea of repurposing Facebook Live content elsewhere. While non-live Instagram posts, for example, can be shared and embedded elsewhere — Stories and live video cannot. Using Facebook, Gritmon explains, allows this specific video content to continue existing elsewhere, long-term, so that it can still reach those who didn’t catch the live broadcast.

Why Use Instagram?

1) It’s good for short-form content.

When it comes to streaming live video on mobile, Fresh Egg’s Social Media Manager Mark Longhurst says that Instagram Live is his go-to platform:

Here’s where discoverability comes into play. Instagram, similar to Facebook, is a platform where users are scrolling through a feed of multiple pieces of consumable content. They’re not looking for anything in particular, and haven’t arrived at this destination as a result of searching for something. Rather, they’re here just to see what’s new and what might be interesting.

That’s especially true of Instagram’s “Videos You Might Like” feature, which includes hand-picked Stories, live, and pre-recorded videos that it’s determined a given user might like, based on her viewing behavior on the platform — and which, personally, has led to following more than one previously undiscovered profile.

That said, people aren’t necessarily looking to consume a long piece of content while they’re scrolling, even if it does come in a live video format. About two-thirds of viewers prefer video that’s under one minute, and in a crowded feed of content, it’s likely to be even less. So as Longhurst says — when it comes to this platform, keep it short.

2) Sometimes, the content seems a bit more natural.

Pre-produced and formal live videos are great — in a certain context. If you’re hosting a webinar, for example, or a longer sit-down interview that you’ve teased or promoted in advance, viewers have a better idea of what they’re in for — in fact, they’ve probably already registered for or planned to watch it before the broadcast begins.

But there’s a time and a place for that, says Greater Kalamazoo Association of Realtors Director of Marketing Angela M. McMillan — and Instagram Live isn’t it.

When it comes to Instagram Live, focus on short, helpful videos with aesthetic appeal — and content that doesn’t need to stick around after its initial live broadcast has passed.

These criteria make Instagram an ideal platform for live videos that are update-like in nature — a way to say “hello” to viewers and show them what your brand and its people are up to. For example, maybe there’s a trendy industry event where you might have a presence — Instagram Live provides a great avenue for letting your audience know that you’re there and that you’ll be bringing them a glimpse of all the cool action that’s taking place. Later on, if you want to do a compiled review of the event that’s a bit less spontaneous in nature, find a different platform for it.

Why Use YouTube?

1) It’s valuable to those who already have an audience there.

When Gritmon was weighing in on live video platforms, she noted that “YouTube Live is wonderful for those who have an audience there,” but that it’s simply “not where my audience is.” For that reason, if you’re just starting out on YouTube, it might not be the best venue for your live videos.

However, if you already have an established YouTube presence and typically use it for pre-recorded content, it can be a valuable platform for a “special edition” of something, or an event that your audience should “tune in for” — which you can promote and tease with a non-live video prior to the broadcast.

Here’s an example of how Sony Pictures Entertainment did just that to tease its live Hangout with the Amazing Spider-Man 2 cast:

2) It’s better for long-form content.

As we noted above, YouTube is a better platform for longer live videos — especially when you’ve promoted them in some of the ways we’ve discussed above. That’s especially true on mobile, says Longhurst — in fact, check out the latest edition to the platform’s listing in the iTunes store:

That wasn’t always the case — according to TechCrunch, the listing previously read, “YouTube – Watch, Upload and Share Videos” — with no mention of live content. But from a consumption standpoint, we haven’t noticed anything remarkably different about the live viewing experience on here than on the other channels we’ve discussed. While it does allow users to minimize the video into a corner for continuous play while browsing elsewhere within the app, Facebook offers the same feature.

It seems, then, that the platform may be making an attempt to catch up with other platforms in the realm of live mobile viewership. And from a marketing standpoint, recording and streaming live video via mobile is currently only available to verified accounts with at least 100 subscribers — making it less than ideal for short-form, spontaneous content.

Why Use Snapchat?

Truth time: We didn’t hear from a ton of marketers who are too crazy about using SnapChat for live video.

For her part, Gritmon says she uses Snapchat for the sake of “staying in the game” as a social media strategist, and that she doesn’t believe it’s used by the demographic that she or her clients are trying to reach. She also noted that it appears to largely be used for sharing private content with a select group of friends — not for reaching new audiences with live content.

In sum, it seems the verdict is in:

• Facebook = Good for engagement and reach, especially with longer-form live videos.
• Instagram = Good for discoverability, with spontaneous, shorter-form live videos.
• YouTube = Good for marketers with a pre-established audience on this platform already, who can upload pre-recorded videos on their channels to tease live broadcasts.
• Snapchat = Good for sharing among friends — not new audiences.

Many thanks to the HubSpot and inbound.org community marketers who participated in this discussion. Where do you stand on the debate over the best live video platform? Let us know in the comments.