Whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, chances are, you have an opinion about forms.

Trust us — they’re not evil. We still use them, and still believe that many marketers should continue to do so, too. But truth be told, the “Should we gate our content?” question has been flying around HubSpot for a few years now. We’ve looked at the topic through various lenses, from SEO, to lead generation, to channel-specific implications.

After all, gated offers tend to provide fairly consistent lead volume and lead-to-customer conversion rates.  

But at the same time, it turned out that we had a lot of landing pages for our offers — the gates, if you will, that weren’t getting much organic search traffic. We might have been optimizing the landing pages for search, but we weren’t doing the same for the juicy, valuable, in-depth content inside the offer itself.

We had a lot of questions. Among them:

• Is locking all that valuable content behind a landing page and disallowing Google from ranking it ultimately hurting us from an SEO standpoint?
• Are PDFs dying as a format?
• Is there a way we can get people to convert on our offers when they live directly on a webpage?

Then, we thought, maybe we could find a best-of-both-worlds scenario. Maybe, if we took an SEO-heavy approach to un-gating our content, we would find ourselves with more keyword-optimized indexed pages that could appear in search engine results pages. The idea: a partially un-gated version of the page, where users could scroll to a certain point, and have to fill out a form to “unlock” the rest of the content. That would mean phasing out PDFs, and replacing them with new HTML site pages with offer content optimized for both search and conversions.

And so, we designed an experiment to answer the question: Will the combination of more organic traffic + smarter conversion assets on HTML pages lead to net better organic conversions?

We split this experiment into two parts. Below is an overview of Part I — stay tuned for Part II.

Does Un-gating Offers Improve SEO and Conversion Rate Optimization?

The Hypothesis and Objective

We hypothesized that, with these variations, Google would have enough content to crawl on these new HTML pages to give it a significant SEO boost — but that by partially gating the content, we could still generate leads from it.

We were interested to see how the lead volume would change here, which was easy to measure, but we also wanted to know would affect user experience — which was a little tougher to measure.

So, we had two pillars to the experiment, each with its own sub-hypothesis.

The SEO Test

Hypothesis: We have a lot of offer landing pages that aren’t getting much organic search traffic. By un-gating these offers, we’ll be able to increase organic search traffic.

Objective: Increase organic search traffic and Google search engine results page (SERP) ranking of offer content.

The Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Test

Hypothesis: If we un-gate offer pages and then gate the content with a on-page form that triggers on scroll, the net conversions will exceed the PDF versions of the pages.

Objective: Increase organic traffic and conversion rate on new site pages to meet or surpass net conversions of original landing pages.

The Experiment

Choosing What to Un-gate

To start, we organized all of HubSpot’s current offers into broader topic categories. Then, we looked at data from each offer to see how much of the following it was generating:

• Net-new leads
• Opportunities
• Customers

That helped us determine which of the offers (and overarching topics) had the greatest impact on revenue. From there, we were able to identify a list of between 20-30 offers that had the highest potential for adaptation from PDF to site pages, and prioritized them based according to SEO performance, SEO potential, and lead-to-customer ratios.

Based on the findings below, we determined that we’d start with the following four topics: blogging, buyer persona, case studies, and lead generation.

First Conversion Topic Cluser	Organic Traffic	Lead to Opp rate
Blogging	HIGH	29%
Buyer Persona	HIGH	81%
Case Studies	LOW	59%
Lead Generation	LOW	62%

We started with four offers:

• Two with high organic traffic, but low-to-average conversion rates.
• Two with high lead-to-customer rates and really great content, but that weren’t ranking well for search in their original form.

This may seem like too small of a sample for us to truly understand whether retiring PDFs works. That’s why we framed Part I as a “test to refine the test” — a test that would help us iron out the kinks in our logic before we scaled it.

For each one of these offers, we ran an A/B test.

• Version A: A completely un-gated version of the page. In this version, there were other conversion opportunities sprinkled throughout the page, including an embedded form at the very bottom for a related offer.
• Version B: A partially un-gated version of the page, where users start reading the offer, scrolling to a point on the page where the content blurs and they’re greeted with an interstitial form, which they’d have to fill out to continue reading the content on the page. Here’s what this ended up looking like:

Moving From PDF to HTML

After we chose the list of offers to test, we moved the content of each of one from PDF to HTML. The steps we took were as follows:

1. Assess which keyword(s) the offer’s landing page is currently ranking for.
2. Update/re-write the offer’s PDF content so it is fully optimized for those keywords.
3. Compress any images using TinyPNG to save on page load time (this is an important step for SEO).
4. Place the optimized content onto a new site page.
5. Create a new campaign for the site page, to which all URLs on the new page are linked to track clicks/conversions.
6. Optimize the page for conversion by adding CTAs, with tracking URLs, that we felt fit into the context of what the site visitor is already doing.
7. Create a B variant of the page, and create new tracking URLs for those site pages, so we could track conversions individually for both versions of the page later.
8. Choose a secondary offer on a topic related to the one on the page that could be linked to via an embedded form at the very bottom of the fully un-gated page.
9. Publish the page, and redirect this new URL to the original one to leverage any existing authority the author might have — then, submit the page to Google to re-crawl.
10. Wait for statistically significant results.

The Results

The SEO Test

In the end, we were only able to increase organic search traffic and Google SERP ranking to the pages that were already performing well for organic search — and, therefore, had pre-existing search authority.

Unfortunately, our fourth offer was redirected without our knowledge, so we weren’t able to collect results during the same time period. When we returned to the Lead Generation Process page results later, we found no positive impact on organic search traffic that we could attribute to un-gating the content.

The Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Test

Truth time: We failed to optimize these pages for conversion to the point where they even came close to matching — much less surpassing — the net conversions of the original landing pages.

What We Learned, and What’s Next

When it came to the SEO side of our experiment, it was surprising to us that we were only able to see organic traffic increases from offers that were already doing well in search. From an organic standpoint, then, one might conclude that we should focus on un-gating only the offers that are already generating significant organic traffic, and have pre-existing search authority.

As for the CRO site, clearly, the partial gating template didn’t work for conversions. We decided to apply a fun hashtag to the outcome — #FailFast — and conclude that it was time to experiment with other forms of gating and CRO.

Next steps? In order to avoid putting a lot of conversions at risk, the results indicated that we had to conduct our CRO tests on the offer landing pages that we already experimented with — until we found a conversion method that works well. Once that happened, we could replicate it on other, high-organic-traffic landing pages.

We also saw that, in order to warrant un-gating more pages, we’d have to run a series of CRO tests with the goal of increasing organic conversion rates significantly enough.

These are just some of the things that you can look forward to reading about in Part II — stay tuned.

On any given day, most of our email inboxes are flooded with a barrage of automated email newsletters that do little else besides giving us another task to do on our commutes to work — namely, marking them all as unread without reading, or unsubscribing altogether.

But every now and then, we get a newsletter that’s so good, not only do we read it, but we click it, share it, and recommend it to our friends.

Exceptional email marketing campaigns need to be cleverly written to attract attention in busy inboxes. Marketing emails also need to be personalized, filled with interesting graphics, and designed for desktop and mobile devices. And above all, emails must contain a meaningful call-to-action. After all, if brands are taking up subscribers’ time — and inbox space — with another email, every message must have a point to it.

You probably receive enough emails as it is, and it’s tough to know which newsletters are worth subscribing to, so we’ve curated a list of some of our favorite examples. Read on to discover some great email campaign examples and what makes them great — or just skip ahead to the brands you already know and love.

1) charity: water

2) BuzzFeed

3) Uber

4) TheSkimm

5) Mom and Dad Money

6) Poncho

7) Birchbox

8) Postmates

9) Dropbox

10) InVision App

11) Warby Parker

12) Cook Smarts

13) HireVue

14) Paperless Post

15) Stitcher

15 Examples of Effective Email Marketing

1) charity: water

When people talk about email marketing, lots of them forget to mention transactional emails. These are the automated emails you get in your inbox after taking a certain action on a website. This could be anything from filling out a form, to purchasing a product, to updating you on the progress of your order. Often, these are plain text emails that marketers set and forget.

Well, charity: water took an alternate route. Once someone donates to a charity: water project, her money takes a long journey. Most charities don’t tell you about that journey at all — charity: water uses automated emails to show donors how their money is making an impact over time. With the project timeline and accompanying table, you don’t even really need to read the email — you know immediately where you are in the whole process so you can move onto other things in your inbox.

2) BuzzFeed

I already have a soft spot for BuzzFeed content (“21 Puppies so Cute You Will Literally Gasp and Then Probably Cry,” anyone?), but that isn’t the only reason I fell in love with its emails.

First of all, BuzzFeed has awesome subject lines and preview text. They are always short and punchy — which fits in perfectly with the rest of BuzzFeed’s content. I especially love how the preview text will accompany the subject line. For example, if the subject line is a question, the preview text is the answer. Or if the subject line is a command (like the one below), the preview text seems like the next logical thought right after it:

Once you open up an email from BuzzFeed, the copy is equally awesome. Just take a look at that glorious alt text action happening where the images should be. The email still conveys what it is supposed to convey — and looks great — whether you use an image or not. That’s definitely something to admire.

Without images:

With images:

3) Uber

The beauty of Uber‘s emails is in their simplicity. Email subscribers are alerted to deals and promotions with emails like the one you see below. We love how brief the initial description is, paired with a very clear call-to-action — which is perfect for subscribers who are quickly skimming the email. For the people who want to learn more, these are followed by a more detailed (but still pleasingly simple), step-by-step explanation of how the deal works.

We also love how consistent the design of Uber’s emails is with its brand. Like its app, website, social media photos, and other parts of the visual branding, the emails are represented by bright colors and geometric patterns. All of its communications and marketing assets tell the brand’s story — and brand consistency is one tactic Uber’s nailed in order to gain brand loyalty.

Check out the clever copywriting and email design at work in this example:

4) TheSkimm

We love TheSkimm’s daily newsletter — especially its clean design and its short, punchy paragraphs. But newsletters aren’t TheSkimm’s only strength when it comes to email. Check out its subscriber engagement email below, which rewarded fellow marketer Ginny Mineo for being subscribed for two years.

Emails triggered by milestones, like anniversaries and birthdays, are fun to get — who doesn’t like to celebrate a special occasion? The beauty of anniversary emails, in particular, is that they don’t require subscribers to input any extra data, and they can work for a variety of senders. Plus, the timeframe can be modified based on the business model.

Here, the folks at TheSkimm took it a step further by asking Mineo if she’d like to earn the title of brand ambassador as a loyal subscriber — which would require her to share the link with ten friends, of course.

5) Mom and Dad Money

Think you know all about the people who are reading your marketing emails? How much of what you “know” about them is based on assumptions? The strongest buyer personas are based on insights you gather from your actual readership, through surveys, interviews, and so on, in addition to the market research. That’s exactly what Matt Becker of Mom and Dad Money does — and he does it very, very well.

Here’s an example of an email I once received from this brand. Design-wise, it’s nothing special — but that’s the point. It reads just like an email from a friend or colleague asking for a quick favor.

Not only was this initial email great, but his response to my answers was even better: Within a few days of responding to the questionnaire, I received a long and detailed personal email from Matt thanking me for filling out the questionnaire and offering a ton of helpful advice and links to resources specifically catered to my answers. I was very impressed by his business acumen, communication skills, and obvious dedication to his readers.

6) Poncho

Some of the best emails out there pair super simple design with brief, clever copy. When it comes down to it, my daily emails from Poncho — which sends me customizable weather forecasts each morning — takes the cake. They’re colorful, use delightful images and GIFs, and are very easy to scan. The copy is brief but clever with some great puns, and it aligns perfectly with the brand. Check out the copy near the bottom asking to “hang out outside of email.” Hats off to Poncho for using design to better communicate its message.

7) Birchbox

The subject line of this email from beauty product subscription service Birchbox got my colleague Pam Vaughan clicking. It read: “We Forgot Something in Your February Box!” Of course, if you read the email copy below, Birchbox didn’t actually forget to put that discount code in her box — but it was certainly a clever way to get her attention.

As it turned out, the discount code was actually a bonus promo for Rent the Runway, a dress rental company that likely fits the interest profile of most Birchbox customers — which certainly didn’t disappoint. That’s a great co-marketing partnership right there.

8) Postmates

I’ve gotta say, I’m a sucker for GIFs. They’re easy to consume, they catch your eye, and they have an emotional impact — like the fun GIF in one of Postmates‘ emails that’s not only delightful to watch, but also makes you crave some delicious Chipotle.

You too can use animated GIFs in your marketing to show a fun header, to draw people’s eyes to a certain part of the email, or to display your products and services in action. 

9) Dropbox

You might think it’d be hard to love an email from a company whose product you haven’t been using. But Dropbox found a way to make its “come back to us!” email cute and funny, thanks to a pair of whimsical cartoons and an emoticon.

Plus, the email was kept short and sweet, to emphasize the message that Dropox didn’t want to intrude — it just wants to remind the recipient that the brand exists, and why it could be helpful. When sending these types of email, you might include an incentive for recipients to come back to using your service, like a limited-time coupon.

10) InVision App

Every week, the folks at InVision send a roundup of their best blog content, their favorite design links from the week, and a new opportunity to win a free t-shirt. (Seriously. They give away a new design every week.) They also sometimes have fun survey questions where they crowdsource for their blog. This week’s, for example, asked subscribers what they would do if the internet didn’t exist.

Not only is InVision’s newsletter a great mix of content, but I also love the nice balance between images and text, making it really easy to read and mobile-friendly — which is especially important, because its newsletters are so long. (Below is just an excerpt, but you can read through the full email here.) We like the clever copy on the call-to-action buttons, too.

11) Warby Parker

What goes better with a new prescription than a new pair of glasses? The folks at Warby Parker made that connection very clear in their email to a friend of mine back in 2014. It’s an older email, but it’s such a good example of personalized email marketing that I had to include it in here.

The subject line was: “Uh-oh, your prescription is expiring.” What a clever email trigger. And you’ve gotta love the reminder that your prescription needs updating.

Speaking of which, check out the clever co-marketing at the bottom of the email: If you don’t know where to go to renew your subscription, the information for an optometrist is right in the email. Now there’s no excuse not to shop for new glasses!

12) Cook Smarts

I’ve been a huge fan of Cook Smarts‘ “Weekly Eats” newsletter for a while. The company sends yummy recipes in the form of a meal plan to my inbox every week. But I didn’t just include it because of its delicious recipes — I’m truly a fan of its emails. I especially love the layout: Each email features three distinct sections (one for the menu, one for kitchen how-to’s, and one for the tips). That means you don’t have to go hunting to find the most interesting part of its blog posts — you know exactly where to look after an email or two.

I also love Cook Smarts’ “Forward to a Friend” call-to-action in the top-right of the email. Emails are super shareable over — you guessed it — email, so you should also think about reminding your subscribers to forward your emails to friends, family, or coworkers.

13) HireVue

“Saying goodbye is never easy to do… So, we thought we’d give you a chance to rethink things”. That was the subject of this automated unsubscribe email from HireVue. We love the simple, guilt-free messaging here, from the funny header images to the great call-to-action button copy.

Not only are the design and copy here top-notch, but we applaud the folks at HireVue for sending automated unsubscribe emails in the first place. It’s smart to purge your subscriber lists of folks who aren’t opening your email lists, because low open rates can seriously hurt email deliverability. 

14) Paperless Post

When you think of “holiday email marketing,” your mind might jump straight to Christmas, but there are other holidays sprinkled throughout the rest of the year that you can create campaigns around. (Download these email marketing planning templates to keep yourself organized throughout the year.)

Take the email below from Paperless Post, for example. I love the header of this email: It provides a clear call-to-action that includes a sense of urgency. Then, the subheader asks a question that forces recipients to think to themselves, “Wait, when is Mother’s Day again? Did I buy Mom a card?” Below this copy, the simple grid design is both easy to scan and quite visually appealing. Each card picture is a CTA in and of itself — click on any one of them, and you’ll be taken to a purchase page.

15) Stitcher

As humans, we tend to crave personalized experiences. So when emails appear to be created especially for you, you feel special — you’re not just getting what everyone else is getting. You might even feel like the company sending you the email knows you in some way, and that it cares about your preferences and making you happy.

That’s why I love on-demand podcast/radio show app Stitcher‘s “Recommended For You” emails. I tend to listen to episodes from the same podcast instead of branching out to new ones. But Stitcher wants me to discover (and subscribe to) all the other awesome content it has — and I probably wouldn’t without this encouragement.

I think this email also makes quite a brilliant use of responsive design. The colors are bright, and it’s not too hard to scroll and click — notice the CTAs are large enough for me to hit with my thumbs. Also, the mobile email actually has features that make sense for recipients who are on their mobile device. Check out the CTA at the bottom of the email, for example: The “Open Stitcher Radio” button prompts the app to open on your phone.

These are just some of our favorite emails. Don’t just follow best practice when it comes to your marketing emails. Every email you send from your work email address also can be optimized to convert. Try out our free email signature generator now, and check out some more of our favorite HubSpot marketing email examples.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2013 and has since been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

May’s talk on #modernwaystogrowanagency came from Dave Parkinson – a 26 year veteran of Nissan and digital – from IT Manager to EMEA Head of Digital.  From managing a digital transformation to initiating the social media plan (and launching the Qashqai on the way) Dave knows the brand person’s world. So what are they really thinking at pitch time?

Since the word ‘digital’ crept into marketers vocabulary the gap between doing a digital project and actually becoming a digital business started to form, and brands and agencies have debated how business strategy can and should link to digital plans.  From inside and outside a brand it can be difficult to understand what the appetite and indeed capacity to be a fast paced digital business is. Ask yourself this, if your favourite retailer is so fast moving and digitally nimble – why don’t they have contactless payment in their shops yet?

Here are Dave’s key insights into how a brand person judges your pitch:

 Money

• Brands have a 5 year plan but marketers have a 12 month budget. That budget is requested once a year and can be cut at any time.  Having an understanding of where a brand is in its cycle should guide your conversation. 

 People

• It’s age old to say that ‘people buy people’ so appreciating both the business objectives and the personalities of the people in the room will contribute to the success of the conversation. Know about any highs or lows the company’s marketing team have had recently, but before telling them where they went wrong remember the people in the room probably signed off on what you’re about to rubbish.
• Remember everyone in a brand moves role every 2 – 3 years so they’re generalists not specialists. Appreciate the knowledge they have across the board and bring them specialists who will impress.
• Expect that they may have researched you too, does your digital profile stand up to the scrutiny of a digital marketer?

 Politics

• Brands have a lot of politics. Right down to where people sit and who you have to ask to get something done. It’s always worth checking what politics might prevent the pitch you’ve been asked to take part in – are you really going to be allowed to beat their global incumbent however great your single market idea is.

 Timing

• It’s not just budget that changes over the year, with so many job moves the team you’re working with/ pitching to/ have just been hired by, might change. Be prepared and ask the right questions to ensure you’re talking to the right people.

 Need

• We, as agencies, need to fix brands problems. Often that’s a business problem, a specific long term objective, but it might be that your brand person needs a quick win to show their boss. Do what it takes, but be honest about why you’re all doing something.

So Dave, we’ve considered all that – what are your top tips for falling at the final hurdle, or getting this project over the line:

 Bad ideas

• Putting the clients picture in an idea for an Instagram post
• Free lunches 
• Presents – most people can’t accept them anyway!

 Good tricks

• Honesty – we’ve looked at what you asked for and we think you need this
• Simplicity – this answers your need, and we can explain it succinctly
• The right people – Don’t put a sales person in if they can’t bring something to the party
• Practice – Know your pitch timings, who is saying what and when, and what’s the story, then prepare for questions

 Understand and remove the barriers to buying and your brand person will buy.

The importance of revenue attribution is just one of a number of factors that marketing agencies need to track in order to measure their performance.  

Factors such as cost-per-lead, customer value, traffic-to-lead ratio, and others let marketing agencies know how they’re doing—and how to tweak their performance to become fine-tuned revenue generating machines.

How to Track Cost Per Lead

Leads aren’t an unmitigated good. Getting a new lead is good, but the goal is to get inexpensive leads that turn into lucrative opportunities. Doing this the wrong way around is a short path to insolvency.

HubSpot has already done a bit of helpful research that details the average cost of a lead by industry. The cheapest is media and publishing, with costs ranging from $11-$25 per lead, and the most expensive being financial services with costs of $51-$100.

Calculating your cost per lead is as easy as taking one month’s marketing spend and dividing it by one month’s new leads. If your cost per lead is wildly under or above the numbers in the linked chart, however, it’s not necessarily cause for either worry or celebration. Other corroborating factors will help determine whether there is a problem.

Corroborating Cost Per Lead with Customer Value

If you’re spending more on average for leads than is customary for your industry, you may also want to take a look at the value of your customers. After all, it may be worth spending more per lead if you’re also bringing in business with a higher than average lifetime value.

Again per Hubspot, calculating customer value is outwardly simple. At a minimum, you’ll know that it will be equal to the amount you charge per month, times the number of months in their contract, but there are other sub-factors that can make this much more accurate.

• Modeling the behavior of similar customers will show how often they renew contracts
• Add a shrinkage factor to understand how many customers will leave early
• Project-based and contract-based clients will have slightly different equations

Upselling project-based clients and renewing contract-based clients is the best possible way to improve customer value. It’s worth paying more for leads that result in lucrative long-term customers.

Converting Leads with Your Site and Landing Pages

Leads cost money—and time is also money. If it takes a lot of time to generate leads relative to the number of people visiting your website – that can be a sign of a problem. Perking up your traffic-to-lead ratio may depend greatly on where your site’s visitors end up.

In one example, research shows that websites with up to 40 landing pages generate 7 times more leads than sites with just 1-5. You should find more ways to create offers, such as creating more gated content, more webinars, content kits, in-person events, and other media that would inspire someone to fill out a contact form.

On the other hand, your site’s architecture may be to blame. One of the most commonly cited statistics in marketing is that a delay of one second will push conversions down by 7%. Find ways to optimize your site with lightweight images, or invest in a CDN that can accelerate your loading times.

Buying Signs: Converting Leads to Customers

Generally, if a person has signed up for an event, requested to be contacted by a representative, or proactively contacted the business, that prospect is ready to be contacted directly by the sales department—they’re a sales qualified lead.

On the other hand, if they’ve completed a low-interaction process, such as downloading a white paper, the lead will probably need a few more touches before he or she becomes an opportunity. Marketing should coordinate with sales in order to determine how best to approach both kinds of leads, but they should be most concerned with the rate at which their MQLs convert.

Remember that your conversion rates are all part of a linked system. Converting leads to customers is essential, but it’s most important when those customers provide a high lifetime value. Similarly, it might make sense to scrutinize how much you pay per lead, but if those leads result in high-value customers, they could be worth the cost.

The thing to stress here is “could be.” The important part about tracking metrics isn’t the numbers themselves—it’s context.

In order to get the right context for your metrics, you need to keep a close eye on all of them. That’s the one surefire way for your marketing organization to become a successful business.

 

When a video pops up on your Facebook feed, what do you usually do first? My guess is that you take a peek at its length, ponder whether it’s worth your time, and let that thought process influence whether or not you press play.

Once you do actually press play, how many times have you abandoned the video just a few seconds in and scrolled down to the next post? I know I have. I don’t finish half the Facebook videos I start.

It seems impossible to hold people’s attention nowadays. Phones buzz with distracting notifications and promise instant gratification, tempting people to check their screens every five minutes. This has diminished the human attention span so much, some studies claim it’s now shorter than a goldfish’s.

Video marketers know we lack patience. So they’re starting to tailor content for our dwindling attention spans. In fact, 56% of all videos published in the last year are less than 2 minutes long.

But marketers must innovate further because users expect different video lengths on different platforms. Odds are, they’re more willing to watch a 2 minute long video on YouTube than on Twitter.

If you don’t customize video length for each platform, then you’re not fully catering to your audience. Sooner or later, the attention they give to your brand will wither away.

That’s why we decided to create this handy, bookmarkable infographic about the optimal video length for the most popular video channels. To help you better engage your audience on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, we extracted insights from HubSpot’s own social and YouTube data, and combined it with exisiting research in the area. 

We also provided a video example for each channel, if you ever need some inspiration.

So check out the infographic below and start creating optimized videos for these four native video platforms!

HubSpot Video Examples for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube

Instagram: State of Inbound

 

A post shared by HubSpot (@hubspot) on May 17, 2017 at 6:21am PDT

The original State of Inbound video on YouTube is two and half minutes long. We cut it down to 30 seconds on Instagram so it would meet our audience’s time length expectations.

You might wonder how a video that’s ⅕ the length of the original version could successfully promote our annual research report. Well, it’s because our audience couldn’t keep their eyes off such a clear, concise, and dynamic video.

Viewers who watch the first 3 seconds of a video are most likely to finish it, so we made sure our video hooked them with a vivid first frame.

After that, we held our audience’s attention by constantly cutting to new frames and animating the video’s graphics. The voiceover and subtitles also conveyed the video’s main takeaway well.

Twitter: Summer Startup

Imagine winning $100,000 + mentoring from @JaySimons (@Atlassian), @PattyMccord1 (@netflix), @dharmesh (@HubSpot)? Enter on Facebook now 👉 http://pic.twitter.com/kI1yF3oUkE

— HubSpot (@HubSpot)
June 27, 2017

Our Summer Startup video on Facebook is 1 minute long. But we cut it down to 44 seconds on Twitter, which is right under the optimal video length we discovered in our research.

This video resonated with our audience because they felt a personal connection to each of the faces we presented. People respond well to the human face. It captures their attention, builds familiarity and trust, and evokes emotion.

And since enthusiasm is contagious, the thrilled faces we showcased injected a lot of excitement into our viewers.

Facebook: Monthly Social Media Round Up: April Edition

When we analyzed our Facebook data, we discovered our audience engages the most with videos right under one minute. So we decided to cap most of our Facebook videos at around 60 seconds.

We also discovered that 95% of viewers watch our videos on mute. This meant we needed to ensure they understood each video’s key point without hearing a single word.

We crafted a lot of our Facebook videos like the one you just saw because the subtitles clearly communicate the video’s insights while the visuals provide context and absorb our viewers’ attention.

YouTube: Topic Clusters: The Next Evolution of Content Strategy

On YouTube, our audience engages the most with videos right under two minutes. So we try to keep them around 120 seconds.

That might not seem like enough time to dig into a substantial topic, but the two minute video above explained a concept that could take a blog post 1,000 words to describe. Watching a two minute video instead of reading a ten minute blog post saves our audience time and heaves a mental load off of their shoulders.

Short but potent videos aren’t just a recording of yourself reading a script, though. Since the human brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, you need to leverage dynamic graphics and visual storytelling so your audience can quickly grasp your message. If you don’t, your video will elapse the optimal length and wilt your viewers’ attention.

I like to think of Microsoft PowerPoint as a test of basic marketing skills. To create a passing presentation, I need to demonstrate design skills, technical literacy, and a sense of personal style.

If the presentation has a problem (like an unintended font, a broken link, or unreadable text), then I’ve probably failed the test. Even if my spoken presentation is well rehearsed, a bad visual experience can ruin it for the audience. Expertise means nothing without a good presentation to back it up.

No matter your topic, successful PowerPoints depend on three main factors: your command of PowerPoint’s design tools, your attention to presentation processes, and your devotion to consistent style. Here are some simple tips to help you start mastering each of those factors, and don’t forget to check out the additional resources at the bottom of this post.

PowerPoint Tips: Style

Step 1: Don’t let PowerPoint decide how you use PowerPoint.

Microsoft wanted to provide PowerPoint users with a lot of tools. But this does not mean you should use them all. Here are some key things to look out for:

• Make sure that preset PPT themes complement your needs before you adopt them.
• Try to get away from using Microsoft Office’s default fonts, Calibri and Cambria. Using these two typefaces can make the presentation seem underwhelming.
• Professionals should never use PPT’s action sounds. (Please consider your audience above personal preference).
• PowerPoint makes bulleting automatic, but ask yourself: Are bullets actually appropriate for what you need to do? Sometimes they are, but not always.
• Recent PPT defaults include a small shadow on all shapes. Remove this shadow if it’s not actually needed. Also, don’t leave shapes in their default blue.

Step 2: Create custom slide sizes.

While you usually can get away with the default slide size for most presentations, you may need to adjust it for larger presentations on weirdly sized displays. If you need to do that, here’s how.

1. In the top-left corner, choose “File.”
2. Select “Page Setup.”
3. Type the height and width of the background you’d like, and click “OK.”
4. A dialogue box will appear. Click “OK” again.
5. Your background is resized!

Tip: Resize your slides before you add any objects to them or the dimensions of your objects will become skewed.

Step 3: Edit your slide template design.

Often, it’s much easier to edit your PowerPoint template before you start — this way, you don’t have design each slide by hand. Here’s how you do that.

1. Select “Themes” in the top navigation.
2. In the far right, click “Edit Master,” then “Slide Master.”
3. Make any changes you like, then click “Close Master.” All current and future slides in that presentation will use that template.

Step 4: Make sure all of your objects are properly aligned.

Having properly aligned objects on your slide is the key to making it look polished and professional. You can manually try to line up your images … but we all know how that typically works out. You’re trying to make sure all of your objects hang out in the middle of your slide, but when you drag them there, it still doesn’t look quite right. Get rid of your guessing game and let PowerPoint work its magic with this trick.

How to align multiple objects:

1. Select all objects by holding down “Shift” and clicking on all of them.
2. Select “Arrange” in the top options bar, then choose “Align or Distribute.”
3. Choose the type of alignment you’d like.

How to align objects to the slide:

1. Select all objects by holding down “Shift” and clicking on all of them.
2. Select “Arrange” in the top options bar, then choose “Align or Distribute.”
3. Select “Align to Slide.”
4. Select “Arrange” in the top options bar again, then choose “Align or Distribute.”
5. Choose the type of alignment you’d like.

PowerPoint Tips: Design

Step 5: Get more control over your objects’ designs using “Format” menus.

Format menus allow you to do fine adjustments that otherwise seem impossible. To do this, right click on an object and select the “Format” option. Here, you can fine-tune shadows, adjust shape measurements, create reflections, and much more. The menu that will pop up looks like this:

Although the main options can be found on PowerPoint’s format toolbars, look for complete control in the format window menu. Other examples of options available include:

• Adjusting text inside a shape.
• Creating a natural perspective shadow behind an object.
• Recoloring photos manually and with automatic options.

Step 6: Take advantage of PowerPoint’s shapes.

Many users don’t realize how flexible PowerPoint’s shape tools have become. In combination with the expanded format options released by Microsoft in 2010, the potential for good design with shapes is readily available. PowerPoint provides the user with a bunch of great shape options beyond the traditional rectangle, oval, and rounded rectangle patterns, unlike even professional design programs like Adobe Creative Suite or Quark.

Today’s shapes include a highly functional Smart Shapes function, which enables you to create diagrams and flow charts in no time. These tools are especially valuable when you consider that PowerPoint is a visual medium. Paragraphing and bullet lists are boring — you can use shapes to help express your message more clearly.

Step 7: Create custom shapes.

When you create a shape, right click and press “Edit Points.” By editing points, you can create custom shapes that fit your specific need. For instance, you can reshape arrows to fit the dimensions you like.

Another option is to combine two shapes together. When selecting two shapes, right-click and go to the “Grouping” sub-menu to see a variety of options.

• Combine creates a custom shape that has overlapping portions of the two previous shapes cut out.
• Union makes one completely merged shape.
• Intersect builds a shape of only the overlapping sections of the two previous shapes.
• Subtract cuts out the overlapping portion of one shape from the other.

By using these tools rather than trying to edit points precisely, you can create accurately measured custom shapes.

Step 8: Crop images into custom shapes.

Besides creating custom shapes in your presentation, you can also use PowerPoint to crop existing images into new shapes. Here’s how you do that:

1. Click on the image and select “Format” in the options bar.
2. Choose “Crop,” then “Mask to Shape,” and then choose your desired shape. Ta-da! Custom-shaped photos.

Step 9: Present websites within PowerPoint.

Tradition says that if you want to show a website in a PowerPoint, you should just create link to the page and prompt a browser to open. For PC users, there’s a better option.

Third party software that integrates fully into PowerPoint’s developer tab can be used to embed a website directly into your PowerPoint using a normal HTML iframe. One of the best tools is LiveWeb, a third-party software developed independently.

By using LiveWeb, you don’t have to interrupt your PowerPoint, and your presentation will remain fluid and natural. Whether you embed a whole webpage or just a YouTube video, this can be a high-quality third party improvement.

Unfortunately, Mac users don’t have a similar option. Agood second choice is to take screen shots of the website, link in through a browser, or embed media (such as a YouTube video) by downloading it directly to your computer.

PowerPoint Tips: Process

Step 10: Embed your font files.

One constant problem presenters have with PowerPoint is that fonts seem to change when presenters move from one computer to another. In reality, the fonts are not changing — the presentation computer just doesn’t have the same font files installed. If you’re using a PC and presenting on a PC, then there is a smooth work around for this issue. (When you involve Mac systems, the solution is a bit rougher. See Tip #11.)

Here’s the trick: When you save your PowerPoint file (only on a PC), you should click Save Options in the “Save As …” dialog window. Then, select the “Embed TrueType fonts” check box and press “OK.” Now, your presentation will keep the font file and your fonts will not change when you move computers (unless you give your presentation on a Mac).

Step 11: Save your slides as JPEGs.

In PowerPoint for Mac 2011, there is no option to embed fonts within the presentation. So unless you use ubiquitous typefaces like Arial or Tahoma, your PPT is likely going to encounter font changeson different computers.

The most certain way of avoiding this is by saving your final presentation as JPEGs, and then inserting these JPEGs onto your slides. On a Mac, users can easily drag and drop the JPEGs into PPT with fast load time. If you do not use actions in your presentation, then this option works especially well.

If you want your presentation to appear “animated,” you’ll need to do a little tinkering. All you need to do is save JPEGs of each “frame” of the animation. Then, in your final presentation, you’ll just display those JPEGs in the order you’d like the animation to appear. While you’ll technically have several new slides in place of one original one, your audience won’t know the difference.

An important consideration: If your PPT includes a lot of JPEGs, then the file size will increase.

Step 12: Embed multimedia.

PowerPoint allows you to either link to video/audio files externally or to embed the media directly in your presentation. You should embed these files if you can, but if you use a Mac, you cannot actually embed the video (see note below). For PCs, two great reasons for embedding are:

1. Embedding allows you to play media directly in your presentation. It will look much more professional than switching between windows.
2. Embedding also means that the file stays within the PowerPoint presentation, so it should play normally without extra work (except on a Mac).

Note: Mac OS users of PowerPoint should be extra careful about using multimedia files.

If you use PowerPoint for Mac, then you will always need to bring the video and/or audio file with you in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation. It’s best to only insert video or audio files once the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a portable drive in their permanent folder. Also, if the presentation will be played on a Windows computer, then Mac users need to make sure their multimedia files are in WMV format. This tip gets a bit complicated, so if you want to use PowerPoint effectively, consider using the same operating system for designing andpresenting, no matter what.

Step 13: Bring your own hardware.

Between operating systems, PowerPoint is still a bit jumpy. Even between differing PPT versions, things can change. One way to fix these problems is to make sure that you have the right hardware — so just bring along your own laptop when you’re presenting.

Step 14: Use “Presenter View.”

In most presentation situations, there will be both a presenter’s screen and the main projected display for your presentation. PowerPoint has a great tool called Presenter View, which can be found in the “Slide Show” tab of PowerPoint 2010 (or 2011 for Mac). Included in the Presenter View is an area for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation display.

For many presenters, this tool can help unify their spoken presentation and their visual aid. You never want to make the PowerPoint seem like a stack of notes that you use a crutch. Use the Presenter View option to help create a more natural presentation.

Pro Tip: At the start of the presentation, you should also hit CTRL + H to make the cursor disappear. Hitting the “A” key will bring it back if you need it!

Conclusion

With style, design, and presentation processes under your belt, you can do a lot more with PowerPoint than just presentations for your clients. PowerPoint and similar slide applications are flexible tools that should not be forgotten.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Sometimes, I think that we here at HubSpot are just a bunch of mad scientists.

We love to run experiments. We love to throw bold ideas at the wall to see if they stick, tinkering with different factors, and seeing how what happens can be incorporated into what we do every day. To us, it’s a very hot topic — we’re writing about it whenever we can, and trying to lift the curtain on what, behind the scenes, we’re cooking up on our own marketing team.

But we’re going to let you in on yet another secret: Experiments are not designed to improve metrics. a systematic method to determine the relationship between factors affecting a process and the output of that process.” So, much like the overall point of conducting experiments in the first place, this method is used to discover cause-and-effect relationships.

To us, that informs a lot of the decision-making process behind experiments — especially whether or not to conduct it in the first place. In other words, what are we trying to learn, and why?

Experiments Are Quantitative User Research

From what I’ve seen around the web, there seems to be a bit of a misconception around experimentation — so please, allow me to set the record straight. As marketers, we do not run experiments to improve metrics. That type of thinking actually demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what experiments are, and how the scientific method works.

Source: Carson-Dellosa Publishing

Instead, marketers should run experiments to gather behavioral data from users, to help answer questions about who these users are and how they interact with your website. Prior to running a given experiment, there may have been some misinformed assumptions about users. These answers challenge those assumptions, and provide better context to how people are using your online presence.

That’s one thing that makes experimentation such a learning-centric process: It forces marketers to acknowledge that we might not know as much as we’d like to think we do about how our tools are being used.

But if it’s your job to improve metrics, fear not — while the purpose of experimentation isn’t necessarily to accomplish that goal, it still has the potential to do so. The key to unlocking improved metrics is often the knowledge gained through research. To shed light on this, let’s take a closer look at assumptions.

Addressing Assumptions

In reality, many marketers build an online presence based on what I call a “pyramid of assumptions.” That often happens when we don’t thoroughly answer the following questions prior to that build:

• Do we know who is finding a particular page?
• Do we know why they are visiting a particular page?
• Do we know what they were doing before visiting a particular page?

When you think about it, it’s kind of a looney concept to build online assets without these answers. But hey — you’ve got things to do. There are about a hundred more pages that you need to build after this one. Oh, and there’s that redesign that you need to get to. In other words, we understand why marketers take these shortcuts and make these assumptions when facing the pressure of a deadline. But there are consequences.

If those initial, core assumptions are wrong, conversions might be left on the table — and that’s where experimentation serves as a potential opportunity to improve metrics. (See? We wouldn’t leave you hanging.) The data you collect from experiments helps you answer questions — and those answers give you context around the customer journey. This context helps you make more educated decisions on what to build, and why. In turn, these educated decisions help to improve metrics.

Experimental Design: A Hypothetical Framework

The Experiment Scenario

Let’s say you’ve been hired as the marketing manager for the fictional Ruff N’ Tumble Boots Co., a.k.a., RNT Boots. Now, let’s say this brand has a product detail page for its best-selling boot, which goes in depth as to why this particular boot is perfect for the most intense hikes. This page’s conversion rate is “okay,” at best, with about 5% of visitors purchasing the boot. And overall, the page is well-designed.

But did you catch the assumption that this page makes? It was built with the presuming mentality of, “People are buying the boot for hiking.” Core assumptions, like this one, must always be validated on high-value pages.

The hypothesis: By modifying the value proposition of the product details pages, we’ll be able to observe any difference in purchase rate between them and build better product pages with higher conversion rates.

The objective: In the scientific method, your objective should be to answer a question. Here, our objective is to learn the optimal way to position the boot product in our online store. Improving metrics is a potential downstream effect from gaining this learning.

Success indicators: If this experiment shows a difference in purchase rate between value propositions of +-3 percentage points or more, we will consider it successful. A result of this degree will signal whether people purchase this boot for hiking — or not.

The Experimental Design

First, we need to determine whether our experiment can hit statistical significance within a reasonable amount of time — one week or less. Here’s a calculator that can help with this step.

Source: VWO

Then, we need to establish the control of our experiment: the untouched, unmodified, pre-existing assumption that the value proposition of product pages should be activity-focused. In this case, that activity is hiking.

Next, we’ll determine three variants, or experiment groups pertaining to product page value propositions:

• Variable A: Work or task; e.g., construction or landscaping tasks.
• Variable B: Seasonal; e.g., snow, mud, or hot weather.
• Variable C: Lifestyle; e.g., these boots fit into and are imperative to a lifestyle that is athletic and outdoorsy, but also trendy.

The Results

This experiment has three likely outcomes.

1) The control group will outperform the variant groups.

This isn’t necessarily bad — it means that the experiment has validated your preexisting assumption about the product page’s value proposition. But, it also means that the value proposition isn’t what’s causing the less-than-stellar conversion rate. Document and share these results, and use them to figure out how you will determine the cause.

2) One or more variant groups will outperform the control group.

Wowza — you just learned that most people do not visit this page to purchase the boot for hiking. In other words, the experiment has invalidated your preexisting assumption.

Again, document and share the results, and figure out how you’ll apply these findings. Should you fully swap out the value prop of the product details page? Should you also move the needle on your target audience? These are the questions that should stem from an outcome like this one.

3) Nothing — all groups perform about the same.

When nothing changes at all, I like to always take one step back, and ask a few clarifying questions:

• Did different buyer segments show contrasting behavior on different variants?
• Are these segments evenly distributed?
• Could it be that none of these value propositions are resonating with our audience?
• Are they not resonating because users arrive at the product page already having decided to buy the boots?

In sum, according to your hypothesis, this outcome is inconclusive. And while that means going back to the drawing board and redesigning your experiment (and its variables), use the answers to the above questions to guide you.

If you’re not eager to jump back into another experiment — after all, they can require resources like time and labor — there are some alternatives to consider.

Was an experiment the only way to challenge these assumptions?

Aha — here we are, back at the great do-we-need-to-run-this-experiment question. The honest answer: Probably not.

There are other tactics that could have been applied here. For example, something like a quick survey or seamless feedback tool could be added to the purchase flow of the boot.

However, that type of tactic is not without its flaws. Sometimes, for instance, there’s a difference between what people say on a survey, and the behavior they actually carry out.

As marketers, we sometimes refer to this concept as the “lizard brain”: When someone might say that they plan to use the boots for hiking, but in reality, is more likely to purchase the boots if he can be convinced that he’ll look good in them — which creates a degree of consumer bias.

So if you’re going to “build a story with surveys and interviews,” as my colleague, HubSpot Tech Lead Geoffrey Daigle puts it, “validate that story with data.”

Your Experimentation Checklist

Now that you have all of the context on what experiments are, why we run them, and what we need to run them, let’s circle back and answer the original question: When should you run an experiment? Here’s your criteria:

• A page has enough traffic volume to statistically prove experiment results within a reasonable amount of time.
• The page is built on top of unvalidated assumptions, and you’ve identified:
• What the unvalidated assumptions are.
• The stability of those assumptions.
• You are unable to validate assumptions by leveraging other methods.

And as for determining alternatives to experiments, here’s a checklist of questions to ask:

• Do you have existing quantitative or qualitative data that you can leverage?
• Can you run a quick survey?
• Can you run a moderated user test?
• Can you run a user interview?

How do you approach the decision-making process and design of experiments? Let us know about your best experiments in the comments –and hey, we might even feature it on our blog.

The next evolution of marketing is upon us.

The sharp uptake in consumer use of messaging apps, the shift in content consumption from text to video and audio, and the finally consumer-ready advancements in artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and voice recognition all signal that marketers and consumers alike are in radically new times. Everytime consumer behavior evolves, marketers have new opportunities that were never before available.

I was talking to a colleague the other day about these changes, and she noted how endlessly marketing channels shift. “There aren’t many other fields where the game reinvents itself so often,” she said.

“That’s because we fuck everything up,” I told her.

Let me explain.

Scorched Earth Marketing AKA “Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”

There is a desperation at play in most marketing organizations. A low grade panic to solve for short-term needs  —  the lead goal that month, for example, or a choice media placement. Attention is as fleeting as Snapchat videos, and for many companies, grabbing a moment of it can feel like gasping for oxygen. I get it. I have been there myself, so I’m not passing judgement.

The enemy of remarkable marketing is impatience.

There is so much competition for attention these days that the moment a blue ocean channel or new marketing strategy opens up, marketers flock to make the most of it. At the root of the problem is the channel-based mentality that causes us to obsess over hacks and mechanics more than a great message and engaging experience.

Early adoption is a good thing. It can be the breath of fresh air marketers and consumers alike are looking for. And typically the early days leveraging a new channel or format in your marketing strategy are as pure and innovative as they should be.

But then something happens. We cross the line into a sort of scorched earth marketing mentality where we forget the reason consumers were drawn to that channel to begin with — and we beat the living daylights out of it.  We start to solve for our own goals, instead of our customers’.

New channels emerge in part because we marketers ruin old ones.

Our earnest exploration of emerging channels all too often turns into rabid gaming of the system if we aren’t careful. And consumers, exhausted by our antics, are forced to move on to find new communication and content channels free of spam and brands. It happened with email. It’s happening with content. And if we think messaging and video are any different, we’re kidding ourselves.

How We’re Messing Up Content

Remember when content first emerged as the antidote to disruptive advertising and direct marketing? It was eye-opening.

Before content, if you were a marketer you were primarily using email and advertising to gain prospective customers. Those were the channels and, oh, did marketers use them. They so overplayed them that consumers began to adopt technology to filter them out. They blocked ads. They set up inbox filters. They reduced the noise and took control of their own purchase process. Much of that process began not with the company but on Google, where a buyer would do all the independent research they needed before making a decision.

So instead of pummeling buyers with ads or email, smart marketers started to create useful content designed help the consumer rather than sell them. If good and relevant, this content would find its way to the top of the search results page and, without costing the company anything in ad spend, deliver a compounding stream of incoming traffic.

The world of ebooks and webinars took shape in earnest. Let’s offer something of true value that consumers would otherwise pay for in exchange for nothing but their contact details and permission to reach out.

It sounds silly today because of how commonplace ebooks and lead forms have become, but it was genuine and mutually beneficial at the start. It was a new way of interacting with online consumers when quality, trustworthy information was scarce.

But then we (marketers) scorched the earth.

The volume of content went up, the quality often went down. Content farms popped up. And brands started to fund the spread of bad content through paid channels. As content offers increased, they became less valuable, and then they crossed the line into utter noise.

Good content still exists, but you have to sift through an awful lot of cheap content to get to it. So where did we go wrong?

We over-solved for the long tail.

The long-tail of search was what initially made content so exciting. You may not have had enough authority to win a top spot in the search results for highly competitive keywords, but there were any number of keyword variations you could shoot for.

It was field-leveling. I get it. I pitched it. But the problem with solving for keyword variations is there are thousands of them out there, which means you have to make thousands of attempts to capture that traffic. All of that has lead to high volumes of mediocre content.

We’re guilty of this too. In the past, we created hundreds of individual blog posts mapped to long-tail keyword variations that got repetitive. We didn’t realize how much it would all add up and clutter the internet.  Since then, we’ve implemented a strategy to update old posts with higher quality and updated information instead of launching into a new post and to redirect repetitive or irrelevant content.

On our Sales Blog, we’re focusing on topics over keywords, mapping each new post to a larger topic or pillar page. This creates a more organized site architecture that’s easier for Google to crawl and index and signals our authority on a subject, rather than a bunch of long-tail keyword variations.

While marketers were busy filling the web with content, Google also got smarter about how it handled search queries. Updates to the algorithm enabled Google to start serving up content that better matched searchers’ intent — not just their keywords. With this in mind, exact keyword optimized content only addresses a sliver of the question and isn’t going to help you get found in the same way it once would have back in 2012.

SEO has changed. It doesn’t reward content for the sake of keywords anymore. SEO in today’s world comes down to architecture and quality content more than it does keywords. And this is a very good thing for readers. It means that instead of writing mountains of content, our new goals should be about creating more value out of less content.

How We Risk Messing Up Messaging

Facebook Messenger will be the next great marketing channel, and it is arguably the best way to engage with the Facebook community as a marketer. My first reaction when I started to see messaging rise as a communication channel was, “Thank god you can’t buy Messenger accounts like you can buy email lists.”

This is an important point: You can’t buy and sell lists of Messenger addresses. You can’t be spammy or impatient in the same way that is possible via email.

That said, marketers are inventive. We can still mess up messaging.

We have to resist the urge to treat messaging like email. This is not a mass communication channel. It’s not a high-volume communication channel. Messaging should be reserved for short, on-demand, personalized exchanges. They should be triggered, whenever possible by the customer, not the company.

Email is company driven. Messaging is customer driven.

Even with behavior-triggered marketing automation, email is still pretty much a guessing game of what the recipient will find interesting. Messaging apps and the bots that live within them allow the recipient to pull the content they want from your repository. It can be completely custom. You can and should have endlessly differing content subscriptions with endlessly differing cadences based uniquely on the person at the other end. That is the promise of messaging: A frictionless exchange that gives the user exactly what they’re seeking and nothing more.

As marketers we need to respect Facebook’s ecosystem and the experience of the conversational UI that is a messaging interface. Let’s have bots help us deliver rich, personal, and helpful experiences. Let’s use Facebook Instant Articles to load web experiences within Facebook instantly. Let’s give our prospects and customer exactly what they need and nothing more.

Ok, so lets say we all agree with that in concept, here’s where our resolve will be tested. Messaging conversion rates are incredibly high right now. Like … gold rush high. In early experiments we’ve run at HubSpot, we’ve seen 4X the conversion rate on Facebook messenger versus email.

HubSpot’s Messenger bot allows prospects to book a meeting with a sales rep.

There’s a reason those conversions are so high right now. It’s because marketers haven’t yet eroded the trust of consumers on messaging. For the sake of everyone, let’s keep it that way.

If appeals for a better customer experience aren’t enough, consider this. At this time there is one company that largely controls messaging. Facebook has the keys to the castle on more than 1.2 billion users. Its primary incentive is aligned with the happiness of those users. So if Messenger gets abused, Facebook could turn around and remove this option for marketers. And they’d be right to do so.

Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends Report outlines the potential of messaging for businesses.

How We Risk Messing Up Video

Remember when infographics first became popular? There were infographics on everything.  Infographics on account based marketing. Infographics on geo-political conflicts. Infographics on world octopus day and shades of poop. Some were interactive and meticulously researched. Others were little more than powerpoint slides and poorly sourced. The internet was absolutely littered with them.

Source: Google Image Search

Infographics became so prevalent over the past 10 years it prompted Megan McCardle, former senior editor of The Atlantic, to call the whole practice a plague, writing:

The reservoir of this disease of erroneous infographics is internet marketers who don’t care whether the information in their graphics is right … just so long as you link it.

We can be better than this. And we have a chance to be. Today, we are on the verge of the same reckless abandon happening with video.

Video, once a resource-intensive format has become vastly simpler to create. Marketers can stream video at the touch of a button, and pre-produced videos can now benefit from everything from free b-roll sources to voice over marketplaces. This democratization of video production has come just in time for a mobile- and social-led surge in video consumption. The combination of the two creates the perfect conditions for marketers to run amok.

I can’t believe I have to say this, but, let’s make video responsibly.

A responsible video strategy starts with being specific about why you’re making a video in the first place.  How does this video fit into your marketing strategy?

Is it designed for top-of-the-funnel awareness? Build it to be native to Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram (Pick one — don’t one-size-fits-all it). Solve for time spent watching. Don’t try to drive conversions — drive interactions.

Is it designed to inform buyers on their way to a decision? Incorporate it into your sales process. Wistia, Viewedit, and Loom all offer quick video recording solutions to create custom explainer videos for your buyers. Use it as a way to save your prospects time with the basics before hopping on a call. Record a recap video after a demo. Solve for personalization over anything else. These videos should feel like a direct portal into the customer’s sales rep or account manager.

Don’t know? Don’t make a video.

Want it to solve for all of the above? Really don’t make a video.

HubSpot’s Marlon De Assis-Fernandez puts his cartoonist skills to work in a prospect video.

Just because a format has gotten easier doesn’t mean we should run it into the ground. Videos should be an integral part of our strategy rather than an add-on or afterthought.

In the past, we’ve made videos just because someone said, “We need a video!” It felt flashy and impressive to have a video for a campaign launch. But because we didn’t consider if video was really the right format for a particular story or how someone would actually discover the video, we saw disappointing results and ultimately, decided it was a waste of time.

The problem isn’t that video isn’t effective or valuable. We just didn’t ask the right questions before pressing the record button.

Let’s Save Ourselves From Ourselves

Every time people flee from overcrowded channels into new untouched ones, companies crop up to build on them. But evolving with customers is less about predicting the next big marketing channel and more about seeing through it to the customers on the other side.

It’s time we stop obsessing over channels, and start focusing on the people within them. Because if history has demonstrated anything, it’s that what’s new now may be scorched earth tomorrow. So yes, dive in. Explore every new channel that comes our way. But more importantly, look at the bigger picture of what the adoption of a channel says about how people want to interact with each other and brands.

Let’s make our mark on marketing by doing it the right way.

 

One of the most controversial phrases in the marketing today is, “pivot to video.”

It strikes fear into the hearts and minds of writers, as we worry that our skills will be replaced by the looming popularity of videos.

Luckily, our research has shown that audiences still want to read blog and news content.

But the fact remains: People want more video content, too. So how can marketers get started creating videos that help spread the message of their brands just as effectively as the written word?

We’ve created a framework to help you figure out where you should focus your efforts when creating your first marketing video, and which type of video to start with. All quiet on set? Let’s dive in.

How to Get Started With Marketing Videos

Before you start filming your first marketing video, you first have to determine what the goal of the video will be. Ask yourself these questions to start narrowing down how to get started on video marketing:

1) What resources do you have?

Let’s evaluate what resources you’ll have to create with.

• Do you have an audio/visual production team that can film and edit the video, or will you be doing it yourself?
• Do you have enough budget to hire a freelance video producer? Or to purchase equipment and software to create and edit the video yourself?
• How much time do you have to devote to filming, editing, and promoting your video?
• If you don’t know the first thing about producing videos, do you have the time (and patience) to take courses, or teach yourself how to use filming equipment and editing software?

The headcount, budget, skill level, and time you have at your disposal will determine if you’re able to invest in creating a high-tech, animated video, or if you should produce a more lightweight video of a talking head to start out.

I asked HubSpot Multimedia Content Strategist Megan Conley what she recommends for marketers just starting out, and she noted the importance of allotting resources to make your first marketing video as comprehensive as it can be.

“The last thing I want is for someone just starting out to create one of those slideshow-style videos with photos accompanied by text and a soundtrack,” she explains. “The world needs far, far fewer of those.”

It’s possible to create exceptional video content with a smartphone and limited skills — you just need to make sure you’re creating one for the right purposes and media. More on that later.

2) Where does your marketing funnel need the most help?

If you’re not sure what your first marketing video should contain, take a look at your marketing funnel, and evaluate where a video could be of the greatest help.

“Company explainer videos are good options, but too often people put a lot of time and resources into that and then don’t create anything afterward, because they didn’t have a comprehensive plan,” says Conley. “Or, they create that first — before they have any real experience — and it’s not as great as it could be … and will probably have to be redone later.”

In case you need a refresher, here’s the Inbound Methodology:

Ideally, you’ll have videos at each stage. But if you’re time or resource-strapped, choose the stage that needs the biggest boost.

Take inventory of your inbound funnel and identify where it needs the biggest boost. Here are some ideas for videos you could make to help each stage achieve its respective goal:

Attract Stage

If you’re having trouble generating leads at the very top of your funnel (TOFU), you might want to make an explainer or animated video to attract visitors to your website via organic search and social media. (Click the links to skip down for examples of each type of video.)

An eye-catching animated video, or a comprehensive breakdown of a trending topic in your industry will draw people to your social media platforms and blog pages. Conduct keyword research and review topics that are trending to choose a subject that’s captivating to your audience, and create a video that answers a question for potential leads. Then, if your video satisfies their queries, they will keep watching (or reading) to learn more about you, and — hopefully — convert.

Here’s an example of a TOFU explainer video we created to drive traffic from our YouTube channel to a new research report on a topic we want our audience to learn more about from us: topic clusters.

Convert Stage

If you’re having trouble moving leads along your funnel to get them to try a product demo, free trial, or download a free tool, you might want to make a demo video first.

During the convert stage, leads have provided their contact information, but they might not be ready to get on the phone with a salesperson to talk about buying a product. So if you want leads to take steps closer to the bottom of the funnel, consider creating a video demonstrating how to use one of your products or services to achieve good outcomes. Then, leads might be more interested in trying out one of your free products or requesting a demo — moving them further down the funnel towards your sales team.

Here’s a demo video we produced showcasing a new tool available in our free CRM. The video shows, rather than tells, the benefit of using the tool, and it might make people want to download it and check it out.

Close Stage

If your sales team is having trouble closing leads and making the sale, you might want to make a customer case study or testimonial video.

Your brand advocates are the best form of advertising for your business, because people trust other people’s recommendations — it’s the principle behind social proof. By showing a real person and a real business that have been positively impacted by your product or services, leads might be more interested in signing a sales contract — because the video has proven your company’s value.

Here’s a testimonial video featuring happy, successful customers — talking specifically about why they chose our product. This is helpful for generating awareness of HubSpot, but it helps make a case for why people should choose us over another product, too.

Delight Stage

If your customer success team is having trouble retaining and delighting customers, you might want to make a how-to video first.

Most customers today want to quickly and easily find answers to their questions by searching for the information online. If they can help it, they want to avoid getting on a call — they want to save time and solve the problem themselves, with help from a comprehensive knowledge base on how to use your product or service.

A how-to video showing how to do something helps customers succeed on their own time. It doesn’t have to be about how to use your product — it can focus on a widely useful topic that’s helpful to your customer and sows good faith with them.

Here’s a how-to video that breaks down how to create a Snapchat geofilter. It’s not HubSpot software-specific, but it’s important to always be helping, and this video helps anyone — including our customers — get to the next level with their marketing efforts.

3) Where are you posting?

Based on the answer to the question above — where does your funnel need the most help? — you should be able to determine where your first marketing video should live once you’ve filmed and edited it.

Attract Stage

If you’re trying to attract people to learn about your brand — possibly for the first time — publish your first marketing video in a blog post, on YouTube, or on social media. That way, visitors will come across your content — and your brand — while conducting online searches or while checking social media news feeds.

Convert Stage

If you’re trying to convert prospects and move them down your marketing funnel, include your first marketing video in email campaigns, on your brand webpages, or on a landing page that prompts leads to download software or request a demo.

Close Stage

If you’re trying to help your sales team close prospects, share your first marketing video in two places: on YouTube and other social media channels to increase general awareness and word-of-mouth recognition, and on your website wherever you discuss your customers’ success stories, or why customers should choose your brand to achieve their goals. Videos can show — rather than tell — potential customers about your value proposition.

Delight Stage

If you’re trying to help customers succeed using your product or service, share your first marketing video within your knowledge base for customers so they can quickly and easily access the information they need to get the job done.

8 Types of Marketing Videos to Create

Here’s a quick rundown of the different types of marketing videos you can start creating to achieve results anywhere in your marketing funnel.

1) Demo Videos

A demo video can — you guessed it — demonstrate how your product or service works by taking viewers on a tour of your software, unboxing and testing a product, or showing a user setting up a product. Here’s one of my favorite examples — an unboxing video from Casper:

2) Brand Videos

Brand videos showcase your company’s vision, mission, or products and services. Brand videos build awareness around your company, attract your target audience, and help establish your brand as a thought leader and influencer in your industry. Here’s an eye-catching example from Slack that’s all about its philosophy and product:

3) Explainer Videos

Explainer videos tell a story by breaking down a topic or problem for easier, more digestible understanding. These can be used at the top of your funnel to explain terms and concepts in your industry, or you can make a brand-specific explainer video all about your products.

Vox nails explainer videos — here’s one I loved:

4) How-to Videos

How-to videos teach your audience something new to help them achieve their goals — hopefully, with help from your products or services.

Here’s a how-to video from Adobe Creative Cloud about how to use its products to make fun, shareable GIFs:

5) Animated Videos

Animated videos can be a great format for tricky concepts that need visuals, graphics, and captions to be properly understood. Here’s an incredible video from Tech Insider that animates the depth of the ocean:

6) Case Studies and Testimonial Videos

One of the best ways build trust is by creating videos featuring your happy customers. After all, customers are your best advocates. Customers can talk about their challenges and how your company helped them meet their goals to convince future customers to follow suits.

Here’s a supercut of happy Evernote customers in one of its videos:

7) Live Videos

Live videos can give your viewers a behind-the-scenes look at your company. Broadcast interviews, events, and presentations live in real-time and encourage people watching to comment with questions to get a conversation going — and prompt them to share.

Here’s a live video we streamed here at HubSpot with a behind-the-scenes look at — what else? — our team filming a video.

8) Ephemeral Videos

Ephemeral, or disappearing, videos can live on social media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Like live videos, they can show a more authentic, behind-the-scenes look at your brand, and you can use them to promote time-specific campaigns and events with your audience through different channels. Follow HubSpot on Instagram or Snapchat to check out our latest stories.

What was the first marketing video you ever produced? Let us know in the comments.

Where does customer loyalty come from?

Think about those brands that you purchase from over and over, even when there are cheaper options out there. Do you usually fly on a particular airline? Do you buy your coffee from the same place every morning? Do you recommend a specific restaurant whenever out-of-towners ask for suggestions?

Often, the reason we stay loyal to brands is because of their values. The best brands strive to combine physical, emotional, and logical elements into one exceptional customer — and employee — experience.

When you successfully create a connection with your customers and employees, many of them might stay loyal for life — and you’ll have the chance to increase your overall profitability while building a solid foundation of brand promoters. But achieving that connection is no easy task. The companies that succeed are ones that stay true to their core values over the years and create a company that employees and customers are proud to associate with.

That’s where company vision and mission statements come in. A mission statement is intended to clarify the ‘what’ and ‘who’ of a company, while a vision statement adds the ‘why’ and ‘how’ as well. As a company grows, its objectives and goals may change. Therefore, vision statements should be revised as needed to reflect the changing business culture as goals are met.

Check out some of the following company vision and mission statements for yourself — and get inspired to write one for your brand.

The Difference Between Mission and Vision

Let’s start with a bit of a vocabulary lesson. A mission statement declares an organization’s purpose, or why it exists. That often includes a general description of the organization, its function, and its objectives.

A mission statement often informs the vision statement, which describes where the company aspires to be in the future. These two statements are often combined to clearly define the organization’s reason for existing and outlook for internal and external audiences like employees, partners, board members, consumers, and shareholders.

So, what does a good mission and vision statement look like? Have a look at the examples below.

12 of the Best Vision & Mission Statement Examples From Real Companies

1) Life is Good: “To spread the power of optimism.”

The Life is Good brand is about more than spreading optimism — although, with uplifting T-shirt slogans like “Seas The Day” and “Forecast: Mostly Sunny,” it’s hard not to crack a smile.

There are a ton of T-shirt companies in the world, but Life is Good’s mission sets itself apart with a mission statement goes beyond fun clothing: to spread the power of optimism. This mission is perhaps a little unexpected if you’re not familiar with the company’s public charity: How will a T-shirt company help spread optimism? Life is Good answers that question below the fold, where what the mission means is explained in more detail, with links to programs implemented to support it: its #GrowTheGood initiative and the Life is Good Kids Foundation page. We really like how lofty yet specific this mission statement is — it’s a hard-to-balance combination.

2) sweetgreen: “To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food.”

Notice that sweetgreen’s mission is positioned to align with your values — not just written as something the brand believes. We love the inclusive language used in its statement, letting us know that the company is all about connecting its growing network of farmers growing healthy, local ingredients with us — the customer — because we’re the ones who want more locally grown, healthy food options.

The mission to connect people is what makes this statement so strong. And that promise has gone beyond sweetgreen’s website and walls of its food shops: The team has made strides in the communities where it’s opened stores as well. Primarily, it provides education to young kids on healthy eating, fitness, sustainability, and where food comes from. The sweetlife music festival attracts 20,000 like-minded people every year who come together to listen to music, eat healthy food, and give back to a cause — the sweetgreen in schools charity partner, FoodCorps.

3) Patagonia: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

Patagonia’s mission statement combines both the values that bring them market success (building safe, high-quality products) and the values that contribute to a better world (philanthropic efforts to help the environment). For the people behind the brand, “a love of wild and beautiful places demands participation in the fight to save them.” In the name of this cause, the company donates time, services, and at least 1% of its sales to hundreds of grassroots environmental groups around the world.

If your company has a similar focus on growing your business and giving back, think about talking about both the benefit you bring to customers and the value you want to bring to a greater cause in your mission statement.

4) American Express: “We work hard every day to make American Express the world’s most respected service brand.”

Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.

— Simon Sinek (@simonsinek)
April 16, 2014

The tweet above is from Simon Sinek, and it’s one that we repeat here at HubSpot all the time. American Express sets itself apart from other credit card companies in its list of values, with an ode to great customer service, which is something it’s famous for.

We especially love the emphasis on teamwork and supporting employees, so that the people inside of the organization can be in the best position to support their customers.

5) Warby Parker: “To offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price, while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses.”

Speaking of quirky, this “objective” statement from Warby Parker uses words that reflect a young and daring personality: “rebellious,” “revolutionary,” “socially-conscious.” In one sentence, the brand takes us back to the root of why it was founded while also revealing its vision for a better future.

The longer-form version of the mission reads: “We believe that buying glasses should be easy and fun. It should leave you happy and good-looking, with money in your pocket,” which further shows how Warby Parker doesn’t hold back on letting its unique personality shine through. Here, the missions statement’s success all comes down to spot-on word choice.

6) InvisionApp: “Question Assumptions. Think Deeply. Iterate as a Lifestyle. Details, Details. Design is Everywhere. Integrity.”

These days, it can seem like every B2B company page looks the same — but InvisionApp has one of the cooler company pages I’ve seen. Scroll down to “Our Core Values,” and hover your mouse over any of the icons, and you’ll find a short-but-sweet piece of the overall company mission under each icon. We love the way the statements are laid out under each icon. Each description is brief, authentic, and business babble-free — which makes the folks at InvisionApp seem like trustworthy, B.S.-free types.

7) Honest Tea: ” … to create and promote great-tasting, healthy, organic beverages.”

Honest Tea’s mission statement begins with a simple punch line connoting its tea is real, pure, and therefore not full of artificial chemicals. The brand is speaking to an audience that’s tired of finding ingredients in its tea that can’t be pronounced, and have been searching for a tea that’s exactly what it says it is.

Not only does Honest Tea have a punny name, but it also centers its mission around the clever company name. For some time, the company even published a Mission Report each year in an effort to be “transparent about our business practices and live up to our mission to seek to create and promote great-tasting, healthier, organic beverages.”

8) IKEA: “To create a better everyday life for the many people.”

The folks at IKEA dream big. The vision could have been one of beautiful, affordable furniture, but instead, it’s to make everyday life better for its customers. It’s a partnership: IKEA finds deals all over the world and buys in bulk, then we choose the furniture and pick it up at a self-service warehouse.

“Our business idea supports this vision … so [that] as many people as possible will be able to afford them,” the brand states.

Using words like “as many people as possible” makes a huge company like IKEA much more accessible and appealing to customers.

9) Nordstrom: ” … to give customers the most compelling shopping experience possible.”

When it comes to customer commitment, not many companies are as hyper-focused as Nordstrom is. Although clothing selection, quality, and value all have a place in the company’s mission statement, it’s crystal clear that it’s all about the customer: “Nordstrom works relentlessly to give customers the most compelling shopping experience possible.” If you’ve ever shopped at a Nordstrom, you’ll know the brand will uphold the high standard for customer service mentioned in its mission statement, as associates are always roaming the sales floors, asking customers whether they’ve been helped, and doing everything they can to make the shopping experience a memorable one.

10) Cradles to Crayons: ” … provides children from birth through age 12, living in homeless or low-income situations, with the essential items they need to thrive – at home, at school and at play.”

Cradles to Crayons divided its mission and model into three sections that read like a game plan: The Need, The Mission, and The Model. The “rule of three” is a powerful rhetorical device called a tricolon that’s usually used in speechwriting to help make an idea more memorable. A tricolon is a series of three parallel elements of roughly the same length — think “I came; I saw; I conquered.”

11) Universal Health Services, Inc.: “To provide superior quality healthcare services that: PATIENTS recommend to family and friends, PHYSICIANS prefer for their patients, PURCHASERS select for their clients, EMPLOYEES are proud of, and INVESTORS seek for long-term returns.”

A company thrives when it pleases its customers, its employees, its partners, and its investors — and Universal Health Services endeavors to do just that, according to its mission statement. As a health care service, it specifically strives to please its patients, physicians, purchasers, employees, and investors. We love the emphasis on each facet of the organization, by capitalizing the font and making it red for easy skimming.

12) JetBlue: ” … to inspire humanity – both in the air and on the ground.”

JetBlue’s committed to its founding mission through lovable marketing, charitable partnerships, and influential programs — and we love the approachable language used to describe these endeavors. For example, the brand writes how it “set out in 2000 to bring humanity back to the skies.”

For those of us who want to learn more about any of its specific efforts, JetBlue’s provided details on the Soar With Reading program, its partnership with KaBOOM!, the JetBlue Foundation, environmental and social reporting, and so on. It breaks down all these initiatives really well with big headers, bullet points, pictures, and links to other webpages visitors can click to learn more. Finally, it ends with a call-to-action encouraging website visitors volunteer or donate their TrueBlue points.

Which company mission statements have inspired you the most? Share with us in the comments below!

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