New copy isn’t better just because it’s new.

You can’t just give your copy a “refresh” or aimlessly fiddle with headlines to get a huge boost in conversions. These kinds of false hopes (and complete lack of a process) are why so many conversion copywriting projects fail, and so many new sites perform worse than the old ones.

If you want to make sure your new copy hits a conversion home run, keep reading.

Last October, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the team at HubSpot to rewrite their copy as part of their site’s redesign. It was a conversion copywriter’s dream come true!

In this post, I’ll share the exact process we used to fine-tune the messaging and nearly double the site’s conversion rate.

Diagnosing Issues and Setting Goals

The first step to improving your copy and conversion funnel is to learn what’s not working. To do this, Josh Garofalo (who also wrote copy for this project) and I turned to a few sources:

Internal Interviews

We grilled HubSpot’s product development, sales, and support staff to get their inside perspective.

• The product team gave us a better perspective on the evolution of the HubSpot software into the Growth Stack, so we could write about the product as it is now instead of how it was in the past. The HubSpot Growth Stack consists of HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and CRM software.
• The sales team illuminated the questions, objections and pain points most frequently mentioned by leads on calls. They also shared their most successful ways of overcoming objections and answering questions — things we could mimic with the site’s copy.
• The support team shared the recurring questions and frustrations expressed by leads. We pored over support chat logs, highlighting recurring questions that we could solve proactively on the new site

We learned that HubSpot customers didn’t understand HubSpot had evolved into the Growth Stack: multiple tools that accomplish different goals individually, but are even more powerful used together.

Making this clear became a huge priority for the new copy.

Analytics & User Journey Mapping

HubSpot’s internal team consulted their analytics data and user journey maps and confirmed that clarity was an issue. Conversion flows were tangled as leads struggled to understand what they were signing up for.

We needed to simplify the path from interest to action.

Copy Audit

As HubSpot grew rapidly, the copy on their website was written by multiple people with multiple perspectives. This caused style guide inconsistencies, a lack of unified positioning and an inconsistent voice across the site.

This was our chance to bring consistency to HubSpot’s messaging and showcase their solutions in words that clicked with their customers.

Now, we just needed to find out what those words were.

Conducting Customer Research

To tell a persuasive story that your leads can see themselves in, you need to understand four things about them:

• Pain points: The challenges and frustrations they face
• Anxieties: The obstacles and fears that keep them from buying
• Desired outcomes: What success looks like for them
• Priorities: Which pain points, features, and benefits are most important to them

Instead of guessing at these things, why not just steal the words right out of their mouths?

Customer research is all about capturing your customer’s challenges, fears and desires in their own words so that you can use those same words in your headlines, body copy, and calls-to-action.

And when you know your customers’ priorities, you know exactly what features and benefits to emphasize, too.

Sneaky, right?

Let’s dig into how you can start stealing like the pros.

Segment Your Audience

Depending on what you want to learn, some segments of your audience will be more informative than others.

We identified three important segments to talk to in order to fully understand our audience:

Customer Type	Why?
Active (3 – 6 months or longer)	This group purchased recently enough to describe their pain points and priorities, as well as some benefits they’d realized. (Make sure that you’re surveying customers who have had enough time to evaluate your product and find success with it.)
Leads	Leads are deeply in tune with their pain points and anxieties — perfect for learning frustrations with the existing website and the obstacles they’re facing.
Dead Accounts	This customer group can help us understand what went wrong and how we could mitigate those problems.

We also segmented these groups across HubSpot’s different products to make sure we were talking to people who actually used each tool.

Create Your Research Docs

Whatever you do, don’t skip this step!

There’s a temptation to jump right into talking to your customers — but first, you need a plan for pulling all the feedback together and keeping it organized. Josh and I developed a spreadsheet that saved us hours of headaches and dramatically sped up analysis. You can download a copy for yourself here.

Memorable Quote	Type	Theme	Feature	Notes	Where & Who?
“I have time for double the work now. I can create my blogs in a few hours, manage my calendar, analyze my data, and still have time to break for lunch.”	Benefit	Efficiency	Content Planner	Sticky. Well-said; possibly revamp into headline: + “Grow like a team twice your size”	G2 Crowd, Joe Shmoe

To use this spreadsheet:

• Copy and paste standout customer quotes into the first column.

• Categorize the quote by pain point, benefit, anxiety or priority. If the quote applies to more than one, choose the most appropriate and list the others in the “Notes” section.

• As themes emerge, add them in the third column. Don’t worry about filling this column on a first pass — themes usually surface during review.

• If the quote pertains to a specific feature, add it to the “Feature” column. This will make it easier to sort later on, giving you a cheat sheet for every feature.

• Use “Notes” for your own reference. Remind yourself why you like the quote or how you might use it. If it’s a quote you might think about stealing copy from, tag it as “Sticky”.

• List who said it and where. This will make sure you can go back to the source.

Collecting Customer Feedback

To get fast feedback at scale, so we turned to two channels: email surveys and review/testimonial mining.

Email Survey

Email surveys can reach a huge number of customers in a short time period — but to get actionable feedback, you need to ask the right questions.

Your respondents have limited time and energy, so you need to keep your survey focused. That means defining what you need to learn and crafting your questions around that goal.

We structured our survey as follows:

• Qualifying questions
  We asked respondents to describe their role (helping us segment) and how they used HubSpot. Any respondent who said they didn’t use HubSpot anymore was pushed to a different set of questions to help us learn why they quit.
  
  We accomplished this “on-the-fly segmenting” by using Typeform’s Logic Jumps.
  

• Preferences
  We asked how they liked to learn about software — whether by watching videos, reading landing pages, calling support, chatting online or reading reviews. This helped us decide if things like video or live chat should be included to support the copy.
  

• Early experiences
  We asked respondents, “What was going on in your business when you sought out a solution like HubSpot?” This gave us a goldmine of insight into their pain points, purchase triggers and desired outcomes.
  

• Priorities
  We had respondents rank the criteria that were most important to them when making a purchase decision (price, ease of use, access to support, etc.).
  
  We also had them rank the features most important to them. This gave us a roadmap for which features we needed to call out early and often in the new copy, and which features weren’t as important to mention.
  

• Results
  We finished up the survey by asking leads what they’d been able to achieve using HubSpot. This gave us insight into the outcomes people wanted, the wins they’d achieved, and what made them happiest about using HubSpot.

Review and Testimonial Mining

You can learn a ton about your customers by reading reviews, testimonials, and case studies. As the email survey was collecting responses, Josh and I pored over 100 reviews on TrustRadius, G2 Crowd, Capterra and more. 

We also analyzed reviews for competitors, looking for the most common objections or frustrations so we could position the HubSpot Growth Stack as the superior solution.

We cross-referenced the things we read with the primary data we collected to make sure we weren’t just hearing from the vocal minority.

Analyzing the Feedback

When analyzing feedback, how do you know which quotes to consider and which to ignore? Here’s what to look for:

Find Recurring Themes

On your first read through the responses, keep a running tally of the themes you see emerging. As an example, when analyzing HubSpot’s customer responses I tracked:

• Which specific features were brought up most often as difference makers (like pipeline management or email automation)
  
• Which pain points were frequently mentioned, and how they were described (e.g. a need for more sales, more flexibility, time savings, etc.)
  
• How many responses mentioned specific benefits or outcomes (like saving money, generating leads or automating processes)

Below are just a few examples of the responses we got to one of our surveys. In these examples (and dozens of others), a theme emerged: a need for a CRM the customer’s sales team would actually use.

This type of analysis helps you pinpoint what is motivating your audience to action. Now, you know exactly what pains to agitate and benefits to emphasize on your new pages. Better yet, you can borrow the ways your customers explained them so that the copy is immediately relatable.

Pay Attention to Frequently Used Words

Look for the terms people use to describe you, their problems, and their ideal solutions. As a shortcut, you can paste customer responses into a word cloud generator:

Just like the recurring themes, you can pull these terms and phrases into your copy to make it stick.

Uncover Those Well-Said / Fresh Soundbites 

You don’t want your message to be drowned out in a sea of sameness. Because your customers aren’t under pressure to try and craft the “perfect line,” they’re great at finding compelling ways to talk about their pain points and benefits.

Flag responses that immediately jump out as interesting or clever. For example, we loved this quote from one of our survey respondents:

I have time for double the work now. I can create blogs in a few hours, manage my calendar, analyze my data, and still have time to break for lunch.

We played with this quote a little, tied it to a need we saw coming up over and over (growth) and used it to inspire our homepage copy.

Creating a Cheat Sheet

Josh and I created a cheat sheet like the one below for each different product. It tied together our customers’ highest-priority pain points, the benefits of solving them, and the sticky pieces of copy we’d found.

Everything we needed to write a page was right in front of us.

	Pain Point Eliminated	Benefits	Top Quotes	Notes
1)
2)

Wireframing

Hold on — isn’t wireframing the designer’s job? Absolutely! … sort of.

Copywriters need to understand how the compelling copy they write will translate to the web to avoid creating intimidating walls of text. Designers need to know how to arrange the visual elements of the page to make consuming the copy an effortless and engaging experience.

As for who should take the lead, there’s no debate: copy should dictate design — cramming copy into a pre-defined design makes it difficult to tell the best possible story.

Building HubSpot’s Page Templates

With 36 feature pages, three core product pages, and a brand new homepage to create on a rapidly approaching deadline, we needed to find efficiencies to get this project done on time. To speed up the process, the copy and design teams worked in tandem to build copy-driven, conversion-focused templates for similar page types.

To make your design-copy collaboration productive, you can follow these steps:

Let the Research Drive 

After discussing everything we’d learned about our customers, the copy and design team had a reasonable idea of what information we’d need to share to drive a conversion. We knew that every feature page would need a hero section, a space to discuss the top two or three benefits, a spot to share integrations, and a call-to-action.

Create a Mockup to Review

Drawing on these early conversations and some high-converting templates that had been tested in the past, the design team mocked up a new wireframe for us to work from. We used this as our foundation.

Writing

Finally, it was time to pull all that sticky copy into the new wireframes we’d created and use customer priorities to guide what we talked about and when. To illustrate how we used our customer research, I’ll outline three examples of changes we made to HubSpot’s copy and page structure.

Solving the Clarity Problem

You’ll remember that one of the biggest problems plaguing HubSpot’s old site was a lack of clarity:

• Customers had no idea HubSpot had evolved into the Growth Stack — three different pieces of software that worked both separately and together.
  
• Leads didn’t understand which tools they needed to solve their problem or what they were signing up for.

Between copy and design, we solved this problem in a few different ways.

Before, HubSpot’s homepage offered little context or insight into what each of the tools did, or that they were separate:

HubSpot’s homepage prior to the update.

For the new homepage, we introduced a confusion-busting section that explained that the HubSpot Growth Stack was “a full stack of products” customers could use alone or together.

We listed each solution and shared a quick bit of copy on what a lead could accomplish with each — then gave leads the opportunity to dig deeper on the one the were interested in.

A section added to the homepage during the update. See it here.

Below this section, we added clarity by using copy pulled from customer quotes to explain what each tool could be used for. We arranged these features based on the highest-priority outcomes of our customers:

The CRM description as it appears on the updated homepage. See it here.

But we didn’t put all our eggs in the homepage basket. We brought that clarity into the product pages, too.

On the old product pages there was no mention at all that the tools were connected and could be used together. For the redesign, we added a section to our templates that told the story of how each of the tools connected:

The Growth Stack as explained on individual product pages. See it here.

But just in case a lead jumped straight to the “Get Started” page without reading the homepage or product pages, we made sure that the copy on the “Get Started” page also explained the challenges each tool could solve:

The updated “Get Started” page. See it here.

Notice how HubSpot’s design team complemented the copy by breaking all of the products out visually, making them separate and distinct? That’s copy and design pulling in the same direction, baby!

As a result, leads can see that HubSpot offers a full stack of products and are better equipped to choose the right solution.

Making Pages More Compelling

After analyzing the survey responses and reviews, we had a very clear picture of the features and benefits our leads actually cared about. We structured every page around our lead’s priorities.

For example, on the HubSpot Sales page, we organized the different features by how often they were mentioned in our survey results. All of those subheadings — “Uncover new leads, connect with more leads, close deals faster and manage your pipeline” — are direct quotes from customers as to the benefits of using the feature being highlighted.

Even the crosshead (“Sell more. Work less.”) came from the way a customer explained what they could do thanks to HubSpot Sales!

By organizing the page this way, we’ve made sure the most compelling features and benefits are seen.

Alleviating Anxieties

Thanks to analyzing chat logs and interviewing HubSpot’s support team, we knew where there were gaps in a lead’s understanding and the fears the old copy wasn’t alleviating. That meant we could be proactive about addressing those with the new site.

For example, one of the biggest questions people have about HubSpot Sales is whether or not it’ll work with their email provider, so we added “Works with Gmail and Outlook” to the microcopy by the call-to-action. This leaves the lead no excuse not to get going right away.

Microcopy beneath this HubSpot Sales CTA mentions specific email providers. See it here.

We also learned that a large number of CRM users were frustrated with how long it took to learn other platforms.  New leads were concerned about how long it’d take to master the HubSpot CRM, so we obliterated that anxiety early on in the CRM product page:

HubSpot CRM automates the tasks salespeople hate and takes minutes to learn – not months. That means doing more deals and less data entry.

Revisions

As much as I’d like to say all of that glorious copy I just shared came out of our first drafts, it didn’t – and yours won’t either. Every draft went through multiple revisions, including:

• Accuracy Control
  All pages of copy were run past team members who worked directly on those products. You should do the same.
• Voice/Tone 
  Every draft was run past HubSpot’s team to make sure the copy stuck to HubSpot’s style guidelines and spoke with a unified voice.

When writing new copy — especially when you have multiple authors — give one person the responsibility to enforce a consistent style guide. We didn’t pass drafts around the entire company for feedback, and neither should you. That’s a surefire way to kill your messaging. Dozens of competing priorities will always water down your copy.

Instead, HubSpot designated a small, multidisciplinary SWAT team and agreed to limit the exposure of the drafts to those people inside of the team. This small group could stay agile and avoid writing copy by committee.

When you steal your copy from your customers, great things happen. 

A few weeks after HubSpot’s redesign went live, the results were eye-popping:

• The new “Get Started” flow nearly doubled the site’s overall conversion rate.
• There had been a 35% increase in the total volume of demo requests.
• There’d been a 27% increase in the total volume of product signups post-launch.

Copy can’t take all the credit: an improved conversion flow and dramatically different design were huge factors, too!

But if there’s one thing I want you to leave this piece understanding, it’s that you can’t write high-converting copy in a vacuum. The only way we were able to refocus HubSpot’s messaging and bring clarity to their conversion funnel was by getting to know their customers. Talk to yours!

After this project, HubSpot has a proven, repeatable process they can use to write copy that converts — and now, so do you!

At the dawn of Snapchat’s IPO, the marketing and financial worlds alike are simply buzzing with speculation.

Will it sink or swim? Will it thrive, despite allegedly slowing user growth? And will its public-traded life get off on the right foot — or will it stumble, in a fate similar to social network IPOs past? We know we’ve spent the past several months emphasizing the importance of Snapchat to marketers, and despite these questions, we stand by it. 

The thing is, Snapchat has one major factor that sets it apart from other social networks that have sought IPOs: A physical product, the Spectacles. And to many analysts, it’s this product that could truly reinforce Snapchat’s standing and potential as a money-maker. 

Our friends at Mediakix created this handy infographic to illustrate why they believe Snapchat Spectacles will be “the next $5 billion product.” Spoiler alert: It has a lot to do with its mobile nature. As internet use via mobile continues to outrank that of desktop, it seems that gadgets are following suit. The adoption rates of the Apple Watch, for example, appear to be beating out those for the iPhone, suggesting that consumers are interested in wirelessly communicating without the use of their phones.

And while we’ll admit that not all mobile gadgets share such success — after all, look at what happened to Google Glass — there’s reason to believe that Snapchat, an app with fundamentally mobile roots, will have better luck. Read on to see why.

If your website takes longer than three seconds to load, you could be losing nearly half of your visitors, according to data from Akamai. 

It’s pretty simple: the faster the speed of your website, the happier your visitors will be. Optimizing page load time leads to noticable improvements in customer experience, conversion rates, and ultimately, your sales revenue.

In fact, reducing your website’s page load time can have a surprisingly positive impact on your entire marketing and sales pipelines. Up to 79% of customers who are dissatisfied with a website’s performance say they’re less likely to buy from the same site again. But can big business issues actually be solved simply by shaving off a few milliseconds on your website’s page load time?

To see the real power of page load time, we compiled 12 case studies from real companies in the infographic below. These examples illustrate the impact reducing page load time 

Take a look at the 12 case studies presented in the infographic below to learn more about the benefits of optimizing page load time.

It used to be that Snapchat was seen as a platform geared mostly toward teens and pre-teens. But over the last several years, Snapchat has added features and made changes that have helped to move it into a much broader space.

No longer is it a niche photo-messaging service — it’s become an established media platform valued at over $19 billion and with over 161 million daily users. As for the age range of its user base, eMarketer reports that 34% of all Snapchat users in the U.S. are between the ages of 18 and 24, and comScore found that 69% of U.S. smartphone users ages 13 to 24 use Snapchat.

That’s why brands from every industry and with all manner of target demographic — from Sour Patch Kids to General Electric, and even HubSpot — are using Snapchat to connect with fans and customers in a way that’s low-cost, but highly personal and engaging. You’ll notice the content these brands post on Snapchat isn’t polished: it’s raw and scrappy and fun. After all, Snapchat is all about letting your brand personality shine and relating to your target audience on a totally human level.

Before we list the best brands to follow on Snapchat, let’s be sure we all know how to follow brands on Snapchat and view content in the first place.

(Click here to skip ahead to the best brands on Snapchat.)

How to Follow Brands on Snapchat

To follow brands on Snapchat, you’ll first have to make a Snapchat account of your own. Snapchat accounts are nothing fancy: no profile picture, no bio, no URL to your website. All you really have to do is download the free Snapchat app (for iOS here or for Android here), and then create an account by entering your email, a username, and a password.

Once you’ve made an account, you’re ready to find and follow brands (and other users).

Step 1: Open the Snapchat app and swipe down on your screen. You’ll be taken to your home screen (below).

Step 2: On the home screen, add friends by clicking the “Add Friends” option.

Step 3: Time to add some friends. You can add friends in a few ways: by username, from your address book (i.e. your phone’s contacts list), by Snapcode, or from someone nearby.

To add folks by username, you’ll have to type in exact usernames to find people, as there is no account suggestion option like other social networks have. For example, Sour Patch Kids’ Snapchat username is @sourpatchsnaps, not @sourpatchkids — but you’ll have to type that.

To add a user by scanning a Snapcode, simply take a picture or screenshot of a user’s Snapcode with your mobile device. Then, find the “Add by Snapcode” option by following the steps outlined above, and choose the photo you took of the Snapcode. The app will recognize the Snapcode and add the person automatically.

(The list of brands below includes each brand’s Snapcode, so if you’re reading this post on your mobile device, you can try adding these brands on Snapchat by screenshotting the Snapcodes as you read. Then, later, open the Snapchat app and find “Add by Snapcode” — and you can add each brand one-by-one by finding the corresponding screenshot in your saved photos.)

Step 4: Once you follow the brands you want on Snapchat, you can view Snapchat content the same way you’d view your friends’ Snapchat Stories: Open the Snapchat app, and then swipe the whole screen left to get to your Stories.

Brands aren’t set apart from other users, so you’ll have to find the brands among your friends. Click on a brand’s username to view its Story.

Now that you know how to find and follow brands on Snapchat and view Stories, let’s get into the best brands to follow on Snapchat.

14 of the Best Brands on Snapchat

1) Sour Patch Kids

Username: @sourpatchsnaps

Many of the earliest adopters of Snapchat were teenagers, which gave the snack company, Modelez, an incentive to hop on the platform to promote its Sour Patch Kids candy brand.

In 2014, one of the company’s major goals was to grow awareness among its core demographic: candy-loving teenagers in the United States. Because teenagers were reportedly spending more and more time on Snapchat, the brand decided to go there to create fun content teens could share with one another.

The video below is an excerpt from one of its first campaigns back in 2014, called “Real-life Sour Patch Kid.” For the campaign, the company teamed up with Logan Paul, a social media influencer and comedian, who spent five days recording pranks around New York City via Snapchat. It was a play off the brand tagline, “First they’re sour, then they’re sweet,” as the pranks went from “sweet” at the beginning of the five days to more “sour” pranks as the week went on.

Each month, new Stories were released showing the “Real Sour Patch Kids” acting like regular teenagers. Below is an example of them showcasing their “favorite Halloween costumes”:

Source: Shorty Awards

More recently, Sour Patch Kids started experimenting with Snapchat Spectacles to film a Tasty on BuzzFeed-style “recipe” video — although it’s not quite the same. The Snapchat Story purports to show viewers how to bake cookies with Sour Patch Kids in them, but the baker is as mischievous as the candy Kids. This silly snap showcases the fun and prankster spirit the brand is known for while also demonstrating the neat circular video filmed using Spectacles.

Source: Ad Age

2) Everlane

Username: @EVERLANE

The retail company Everlane was another early Snapchat adopter, but with an even more daring approach to the then-new social platform. In November 2015, it wrote this on its official blog: “We’re here to make a bold claim. Snapchat is going to become the de-facto social channel for Everlane. Over the past month, we’ve been testing it in small batches and we’re in love.”

Why did Everlane love it so much? Because it found it was an even better way to showcase its radical approach to transparency than other social networks like Facebook.

“Facebook is a spot for updating our community and having one on one conversations,” read the post. “But Snapchat is completely different. Snapchat gives us the chance to explore transparency in a completely new way. No fancy cameras. No editing. Just raw, live, footage. It’s beautiful, and it’s the platform for the modern generation.”

Almost two years later, Everlane hasn’t turned back. The folks at Everlane use Snapchat as kind of a backstage pass into its ecommerce business, events, and culture. It uses the Snapchat Story feature to create narratives around giving tours of Everlane spaces, interviewing customers in brick-and-mortar stores, and previewing new products. As Everlane’s social media lead told Business Insider,

We’re trying to find little bits of what’s going on here daily at headquarters to share with our consumers. I think it’s a rare opportunity for them to see how a brand is being built day in and day out. A lot of bigger companies have already established their brand, so what they’re seeing is something that’s a finished product, whereas we have such a long way to go.”

On #TransparencyTuesday, for example, Everlane uses Snapchat to record a walkthrough of its business or factories — every single one of which team members personally visit.

Source: Tech Insider

The social team also personally answers questions sent via Snapchat:

Source: Tech Insider

3) Cisco

Username: @wearecisco

Let’s face it, networking and telecommunications technology aren’t the most engaging topics on social media. (To be honest, I’m not totally sure what those mean.)  So instead of trying to explain or show highly technical devices on its Snapchat channel, Cisco showcases the other side of its organization: the humans who work there.

In Cisco’s “Day in the Life of an Account Manager” Snapchat series, it chronicles the workday of an account manager as he or she visits different cities and plans on behalf of Cisco. Using emojis, jokes, and lenses, the star of the Story gives the brand a more human side.

Cisco’s Snapchat is a great lesson for B2B marketers who want to engage on social media but aren’t certain of the subject matter. If you don’t think your product or service is that exciting, focus on other aspects of your organization, such as the company culture or lives of employees. Things like events, parties, and behind-the-scenes tours will give your brand personality and will give you more ideas for content to feature.

4) General Electric

Username: @generalelectric

Would you ever have guessed that General Electric, a multinational conglomerate corporation, would have an active and effective presence on Snapchat?

The brand has actually done an awesome job of using its platform to showcase its geeky personality and to encourage interest in science — something GE has done well on other social media networks like Instagram and YouTube.

One of the best ways GE uses the platform is in a series in which it answers users’ questions by explaining scientific concepts in a concise and fun way. For example, it recently shared some of its findings from its emoji science curriculum, which GE established along with the National Science Foundation.

.@WhiteHouse In honor of the #WHScienceFair we’re doing some #EmojiScience on our Snapchat. Check it out! cc: @POTUS http://pic.twitter.com/WWjeIWicbp

— General Electric (@generalelectric)
April 13, 2016

In addition to sharing emoji science findings, GE also encourages Snapchat followers to interact directly. “Just add ‘generalelectric’ on Snapchat, send us an emoji, and we’ll send you some science,” GE wrote on its Tumblr. Here’s an example of the “science” followers might get in return:

GE’s global director of innovation Sam Olstein said about Snapchat, “The disappearing nature of its content encourages repeat usage and provides us with a unique way to celebrate invention with an expanding community of young fans.”

(To learn more about GE’s creative content, check out this episode of The Growth Show.)

5) Gatorade

Gatorade doesn’t have a Snapchat account of its own, but thanks to its epic sponsored lens Snapchat at the Super Bowl last year, we think it deserves a place on this list. (Note: A Snapchat lens is essentially a creative filter for your selfies. It’s what you see when your friends send Snapchats of them puking rainbows. Learn how to use Snapchat lenses here.)

Here’s what Gatorade did: When a football team wins a game, it’s customary that the team dumps whatever sports drink is in the team cooler onto their coach’s head. During the Super Bowl football game in 2016, the folks at PepsiCo-owned Gatorade released a genius Super Bowl Snapchat lens that let anyone give themselves a Gatorade bath, too.

Image Credit: Adweek

To create the ad, the folks at Gatorade partnered with Snapchat to purchase a sponsored lens, which costs around $450,000 per sponsored lens on normal days, and up to $750,000 on “peak days” like holidays and the Super Bowl.

Then, Gatorade had professional tennis player Serena Williams — whom Gatorade sponsors — star in the ad above. The ad shows her getting virtually “dumped on” by a cooler of orange Gatorade, thanks to the lens. The company tweeted out a GIF of the Snapchat to get the momentum going, and by the end of the day, the sponsored lens had reportedly been viewed over 100 million times.

6) Warby Parker

Username: @warbyparker

At Warby Parker, Snapchat is used for a variety of topics: everything from showcasing products (“Today on Snapchat, we try on our favorite Crystal frames in 15 seconds”) to giving users a chance to hear from the company’s co-founder Neil Blumenthal (“Our co-founder Neil Blumenthal is inside the secret room today. Tune in on Snapchat as he answers your questions!”).

Warby Parker has several Snapchat series, including one called “Desk Job.” In one recent Snapchat Story, Warby Parker featured one of its brand creative managers for his five desk essentials. Once a Snapchat Story is up, the brand promotes them on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. (I noticed it didn’t promote them on Facebook, which is probably a good thing: On Facebook, it’s important not be selective about what you publish and focus on quality, rather than quantity, of posts.)

Tune into Snapchat for Desk Job—today, Brand Creative Manager Matt discusses his five desk essentials! http://pic.twitter.com/QblOWLOv2x

— Warby Parker (@WarbyParker)
April 19, 2016

7) GrubHub

Username: @grubhub

GrubHub, also an early Snapchat adopter, has been putting out content on about a weekly basis since late 2013. But Grubhub uses Snapchat a little differently than many of the folks on this list. Rather than producing one-way content, GrubHub focuses on building out an active community by sending out Snapchat messages that require responses, like exclusive coupons, contests, giveaways, and promotional codes.

The screenshots below are from a story it released where followers could send back a Snapchat of a “food doodle” for a chance to win a prize. (You can watch the Story in its entirety here.)

Image Credit: Fast Company

During the 2016 holiday season, GrubHub set out to “deliver joy” by posting Snapchat Stories filmed from the perspective of a delivery person wearing Snapchat Spectacles. Snapchat is all about authentic, behind-the-scenes looks at a brand, and most people don’t think of the point-of-view of a delivery person when they think GrubHub. This campaign gave the brand a more personable, human side while showcasing some cool new tech.

8) The New York Times

Username: @thenytimes

The writers, editors, and other folks at The New York Times use Snapchat a little differently — sometimes poking fun at their misunderstanding of it, other times using it as a storytelling platform (and then analyzing it in writing later).

For example, check out the Snapchat Story below from Nick Bilton, one of The Times’ writers. The Story is very meta: It shows his friend teaching him how to use Snapchat so he can write a story for The Times about how to write Snapchat Stories.

Like other brands, it’s very much a raw, behind-the-scenes look into the life of the writer. “I’m not actually writing right now. I’m just kind of pretending,” says Bilton at one point during the Story.

Here’s another example of a Snapchat Story from The Times that’s a little more serious. This one was part of an analysis of what makes an objectively good Snapchat Story, which later culminated in this piece by Talya Minsberg. For the piece, she recruited journalists at The Times to participate in a mobile challenge to create an objectively good Snapchat Story.

So, what makes an objective good Snapchat Story? Minsberg says it’s nearly impossible to define, but “the best Snapchat stories generally are ones that tell a narrative in a personal, visual way that pulls in and keeps the viewer.”

Another important takeaway from her piece is this: “Even Snapchat stories must uphold the same standards as anything else published by The Times. There are just more doodles and emojis in a Snapchat story than you would see in print!”

9) DJ Khaled

Username: @djkhaled305

DJ Khaled may not be your typical brand, but he has single-handedly redefined the celebrity presence on Snapchat — and there’s a lot brands can learn from him. In March 2016, less than a year after DJ Khaled had even heard of the app, it was reported that his Snapchats were attracting around 3 million to 4 million viewers each.

What’s his secret? First, his style of shooting videos is really effective. He likes to pair mundane daily routines — like putting on deodorant and watering his plants — with funny commentary and one-liners.

He has some mantras he repeats like “another one” and “bless up,” which he’s parlayed into some really expensive merchandise. He also likes to share “keys to wisdom,” and even got his own geofilter on a road trip to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve (which anyone can do, by the way).

The combination of backstage pass-like topics, hilarious one-liners, and fun use of emojis makes Khaled’s account very shareable and followable.

10) Domino’s Pizza UK

Username: @DOMINOS_UK

The folks at Domino’s Pizza have never been afraid to experiment with new social media channels. It was the first brand to use Tinder as part of a 2015 Valentine’s Day campaign, and its “Tweet to Eat” campaign let fans order pizza via Twitter by sending a pizza emoji.

As for its global presence, Dominos’ social media teams around the world have adopted the platform at different times. For example, Domino’s Australia started using Snapchat as early as 2013, sending out Snapchat Stories (like the one screenshot below) that aligned with campaigns the brand was doing elsewhere on social media.

Image Credit: brandchannel

The U.K. team at Domino’s Pizza didn’t get on Snapchat until January 2016, but it started out with a pretty cool experiment that led to a lift in orders. On January 20, 2016, Domino’s U.K. turned its Snapchat Story into a short film, titled “Dough to Door.”

The film follows the journey of a Domino’s delivery driver who hits a few obstacles on his way to deliver a pizza to a customer — including an alien invasion. According to The Drum, it also showed a sequence of random letters throughout the film that amount to an exclusive discount code customers could then use online.

The folks at Domino’s found that the low-budget effort led to an increase in orders. “The film drove a lot more orders then we would’ve expected even though it wasn’t really a massive driver for us,” Nick Dutch, Dominos’ head of digital strategy, told Business Insider.

Because Snapchat doesn’t offer much in the way of analytics (unless you are using Snapchat for paid advertising), the only way Dutch’s team was able to attribute that increase in orders to Snapchat was because of the unique discount code — so keep that in mind when you’re creating Stories of your own.

11) The Washington Post

Username: @washingtonpost

The Washington Post uses Snapchat to cover breaking news stories. In fact, starting this year, the newspaper will begin covering breaking news for Snapchat. The Washington Post covers each and every breaking political and news story out there, and by sharing Snapchat coverage, the paper can provide its followers with a behind-the-scenes look at what’s going on in Washington much faster than if reporters had to write up and publish an article.

Here’s a Snapchat Story The Post recently published about the President’s joint address to Congress. The story features narration and captions to explain what’s going on, behind-the-scenes details, and includes short video hot-takes with members of Congress that viewers wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Check it out below:

In just a few minutes, The Washington Post used Snapchat to cover a story that might require a lot more time to read or watch on the news. If you create content for a blog or publication that covers breaking news, experimenting with Snapchat might be an easy way to get stories out faster.

12) NASA

Username: @nasa

NASA publishes fantastic explainer video series on its Snapchat, and it makes them entertaining and easy to follow whether you’re a space nerd or a casual visitor. It uses Snapchat to cover breaking news stories about space, to explain complicated concepts, and to interview people.

In the Snapchat Story below, NASA reviews the return of Astronaut Scott Kelly a year after the end of his yearlong space mission. It also hypes a new study NASA is running based on DNA samples from Kelly and his twin brother to investigate the viability of long-term human missions to Mars.

This story is undeniably cool — who isn’t curious about what’s on Mars? It’s also a well-constructed Snapchat Story that uses narration, images, text, and emojis to tell a story quickly and effectively.

13) Bustle

Username: @bustledotcom

Bustle uses its Snapchat channel to produce original or repurposed content in the same style as content on its website: listicles. Bustle produces a ton of entertaining and informative list-style content, and it features instructional videos and lists in step-by-step format on Snapchat.

In this Snapchat Story, Bustle provides DIY beauty instructions in a fun, easily replicable way. The useful and affordable beauty hack caters to its target audience of real women.

In another Story, Bustle creates a Snapchat version of a Black History Month booklist. It echoes the structure of a lot of its list-style blog posts. The summaries are a nice touch to pique viewer interest, too.

Marketers can easily create original or repurposed content in this Snapchat format. Break down a recent blog post, give followers advice, or simply record a behind-the-scenes look at how your organization does a common process. It’s unique, engaging, and doesn’t require a ton of creative lift behind it.

14) HubSpot

Username: @hubspotinc

While there are a lot of B2C brands doing cool things with Snapchat, there are far fewer B2B companies that have successfully built a following. This is a challenge we wanted to take on here at HubSpot, which is why we launched our Snapchat channel in March 2016.

To make our Snapchat channel valuable, we’re using it to serve as both a marketing and a recruiting channel — a place where we can showcase our unique culture and perks, our awesome employees, and the inbound philosophy.

On the marketing side, we like to give followers a good look inside the company and showcase our culture. The goal here is to be educational, informative, and lovable, which are very familiar goals on our marketing team.

For example, when MTV News Editor Rachel Zarrell (formerly of BuzzFeed News) came to HubSpot to speak about viral content, we showcased some of her talk — and what employees thought about it afterward — on Snapchat.

On the culture side, we want to position HubSpot as a destination — and hopefully spur viewers to check out our other online offers like our blog, website, careers page, and so on. The key for us is using a human voice that fits in the Snapchat world, rather than a voice that’s stuffy or ultra-professional.

We’re also committed to community service and involvement, so we like to feature that aspect of our culture on Snapchat, too. Here are our chronicles of a recent bone marrow registry drive we hosted for HubSpot employees:

       

What are your favorite brands to follow on Snapchat? Share with us in the comments.

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

When you’re trying to get somewhere — by foot, train, bus, or car — how do you pass the time?

I’m one of those people who always has to be listening to something. Whether it’s a new Spotify playlist or the latest episode of a podcast, I use pretty much every opportunity to consume audible content.

I’m hardly the only one who’s partial to audio in this way. According to the 2016 Edison Research Infinite Dial report, despite our content consumption becoming increasingly digital, we still love sound and sound alone. Online radio listenership, for example, has increased by 35% since 2005. But what does that have to do with us? 

We believe that this listening behavior creates a tremendous opportunity for marketers — especially those in the B2B sector — to create branded, audible content. Audio is often associated with consumer marketing, but those kind of assumptions create a missed opportunity for B2B brands. After all, here at HubSpot, we create content for marketing and sales professionals in a variety of formats, and if you read our blog, it’s no secret that we’re constantly nagging you to do the same — even with audio. So let’s explore the ways that can be done, starting with a look at the science behind the act of listening.

The Listening Process

Before you start creating audio content, it might be helpful to understand how and why people listen. The act of listening, according to Merriam-Webster, is “to hear what someone has said and understand that it is serious, important, or true.”

It also helps satisfy different physiological goals. We listen to alter our moods, stay alert, and figure stuff out. In humans, that’s been the case for pretty much as long as we’ve been in existence. The process starts when we receive auditory stimuli, which our brains then have to interpret. That’s aided by other senses — like sight — and helps us better figure out what we’re hearing.

Once our brains have interpreted these auditory signals, we follow a series of steps that consist of recalling, evaluating, and responding to the information we consume:

Source: Matthew Edward Dyson

It’s that third step in the process — recalling — that might be the most important one for marketers. Numerous studies have discovered how listening triggers a widespread network of activity throughout the brain. That activity is what links auditory stimuli so strongly to memory.

That might be why we love to talk about things we’ve heard, like a great song, for example. We’re actually sharing a story about our memory of what we heard. And that comes back around to what we do as marketers. We share the stories of and about our brands in a way that will get people to pay attention and listen to us.

So, let’s get started, and begin creating content that people will listen.

4 Ways to Use Audio in B2B Marketing

1) Podcasts

Branded Podcasts

According to Edison Research, podcast listenership has been on a steady rise since 2006 — in fact, it’s grown by 25 percentage points. 

Source: Edison Research

People often make the mistake of thinking that podcasts are largely consumer-facing. We think of those that are aired on public radio or hosted by celebrities for the masses of bored commuters trying to pass the time. But in reality, there are a number of B2B podcasts out there, like Duct Tape Marketing, ZenDesk’s Relate, and HubSpot’s The Growth Show.

But when it comes to creating branded podcasts, many B2B marketers make similar objections that we used to hear about blogging — such as, “I don’t have time,” or, “I don’t have anything to say.” Podcasts, like blogs, follow the pillars of inbound marketing, in that you’re creating valuable, educational content for people who are searching for information on what your business does best. That’s one way The Growth Show works, for example. Because HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and CRM software comprise a growth stack, we use our podcast to discuss related topics with business leaders who have accomplished notable growth, and who have good stories.

“Companies — especially B2B companies — have such a hard time telling their organization’s story,” says Kierran Petersen, The Growth Show’s associate producer. “Creating a branded podcast is the perfect opportunity to do that. It’s such a personal way to give people insight into what you do, by showing your audience who you actually are.”

That’s where the answer to the second objection — “I don’t have anything to say” — comes in. When people tell us that’s why they can’t invest time in blogging, we usually say, “Write what you know.” The same thing goes for podcasting, but instead of writing, you’re speaking about what you know. And for some, that might even come easier than writing.

Of course, creating a branded podcast isn’t as simple as recording 30 minutes of stream-of-thought remarks on your business. It helps to approach this content creation the same way you would for a blog, and create an editorial calendar to plan and outline different topics, as well as people who you’d like to interview. You should also consider how you’re going to distribute that content and the different platforms that your audience can use to consume the podcast. For beginners, we recommend free tools like SoundCloud, or experimenting with different ways to share the audio across social media.

Repurposing Blogs as Podcasts

If you’re still feeling a bit uncertain about creating an original podcast, you can start on a smaller scale by repurposing your existing content. On some blogs, you may have come across the option to listen to an audio version of the post. That’s one fairly easy way for businesses to create original audible content — take what you’ve already written, and turn it into a spoken-word version.

There are several ways to pull that off. Some brands turn their blog posts into full-blown podcasts of varying length, complete with an introduction, music, quotes, and sound effects. That’s what National Public Radio — better known as NPR — often does with its various news stories. Notice how this piece, for example, has both full text and audio, the latter of which can be heard below.

But others, like The Atlantic, take a different approach, and dictate the full text of articles, treating it like an audiobook. Check it out:

There’s no “right” way to repurpose existing content for audio this way — that largely depends on the length of the piece, or if you want to abridge the writing for the spoken word. The important thing to remember is that it’s not impossible, and with a bit of creativity, there are numerous ways for B2B marketers to create audible content of this kind.

2) Audiograms

Snippets

In February, you may have noticed that HubSpot’s co-founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, penned a special post on the Marketing Blog dedicated to the 2016 year in review. But it didn’t end there. Across our online presence, HubSpot distributed year-in-review messages in various formats, including nifty little audiograms.

“But what’s an audiogram, Amanda?”

I thought you might ask that. Well, an audiogram is a snippet of — imagine that — audio that overlays a still image. We curated a collection of these on our website, and posted some on Facebook, like this quote from Bertie Ocampo, Hubspot’s APAC event & field marketing manager.

Audiograms can be shared on Instagram, too, which is “mobile first, so odds are good that folks will have their headphones in,” says Marissa Emanuele, HubSpot’s social media manager. But she encourages providing context — don’t just post a snippet over a picture and expect people to understand its purpose. “Audiograms are always better,” she explains, “if they incorporate text or captioning of some kind.”

… Or Longer

This strategy can also work with longer audio files, says Chelsea Hunersen, a social media manager at HubSpot. “We’ve shared some videos,” she says, for example, “that play an episode of The Growth Show, with an image that says, ‘this is audio’.”

That means you can use this same technique with audio samples that are “longer than 30 seconds,” says Hunersen. So when you’re thinking about ways to distribute your podcasts, here’s one — consider turning them into audiograms, or pairing them with these images-as-video.

3) Facebook Audio

Source: Facebook

In December 2016, Facebook announced its latest live content feature: Live Audio. “Sometimes,” read the official announcement, “publishers want to tell a story on Facebook with words and not video.” That’s usually due to two reasons:

1. Audio is often a bit lower-maintenance than video, in that it requires less hardware — like cameras — and lower connectivity.
2. It’s also a bit easier on the listener. “Audio is a really low commitment way to consume content,” explains Hunersen. “I can have the audio open in my browser and listen to something like I would a podcast, even if I don’t watch it at the same time on Facebook.”

Facebook Live Audio has flown a bit under the radar since this announcement, and it’s unclear whether or not it’s actually available to marketers yet — so far, we haven’t seen it used. Plus, Hunersen explains, “It’s supposedly only available on Android” devices.

But it does present another audio content distribution option for marketers, however: To double a podcast recording as a Facebook Live broadcast.

How does that work, exactly? Well, perhaps you’ve seen videos of radio hosts broadcasting live videos of themselves in the recording studio, and sharing a visual version of the interviews they’re conducting, for example. Here’s one example of a German radio station that created this kind of content with independent musician Astronautalis:

While that example might fall into the B2C realm, it can easily be adapted by B2B organizations. It also shows how a Facebook Live stream of your podcast recording or interview can be repurposed as pre-recorded video later on. Film a brief intro from your guest, and follow it with a clip of one of the most interesting moments from the conversation. It also brings up a great way to keep the audience engaged — ask them for questions they’d like to ask your guest in real-time.

4) Other Spoken Content

When marketers set out to create content, accessibility isn’t always something that’s top of mind. For individuals with visual impairment, for example, something like an infographic or a flowchart isn’t the most consumable piece of content.

That’s just one reason why adapting your visual and written content into audio versions can be so valuable. Not only does it create a way to consume what you’ve created in a portable way, but also, you’re making it available to a broader audience.

It’s like creating audible versions of books, for example — that allows people to enjoy or consume novels or nonfiction when reading isn’t an option, like while driving. B2B marketers can do the same thing with their ebooks and whitepapers. But be certain that it’s still interesting to the listener. There’s nothing less engaging, for example, than a computerized dictation of written content. When you record the spoken versions of this content, make sure it’s read aloud by someone who can bring energy to the words, instead of just reciting them in a monotone fashion.

Start Talking

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited. I feel a newfound motivation to get out there and create something for people to listen to, and I hope you do, too.

As these examples show, using audio in B2B marketing doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking — it can be as simple or as large-scale as you want, depending on your resources. You can create something completely new, or repurpose what you’ve already got.

Just remember: Always keep it engaging. And whatever you create, we can’t wait to hear it — we’ll be here, listening.

How have you used audio in your marketing? Let us know in the comments.

Video marketing is quickly crossing into buzzword territory. From blogs to online news to social media platforms, video is everywhere. The use of video content for B2B marketers jumped from 8% to 58% in 2014 alone, while the number of videos brands publish on Facebook has continually increased by 3.6x year over year.

But is all this video really helping marketers succeed?

In short, yes.

Social media posts that contain videos boost views by 48%, and visual content on Facebook specifically increases engagement by 65%. Not only are more people seeing your content as a result of video, but they’re actually engaging more with it, too. That’s value.

Not sure where to start with video for your social media account? We’ve got you covered. HubSpot and Wistia have teamed up to bring you an interactive guide… with videos. This guide will show you how you can start making videos that are optimized for each social media platform today.

You’ll learn:

• How to create & implement a video social media strategy
• How to make awesome videos by turning your office into a DIY studio
• The best lighting, microphones, and tools to help you shoot high quality iPhone videos

View the free interactive guide to get started with video today.

At INBOUND, we launched a major iteration of HubSpot.com. Since then, we’ve been monitoring performance, running experiments, and collecting a substantial amount of performance data.

We can now confidently say that the results are in, and we have some big learnings to share with you. So let’s get to it.

Like most major projects at HubSpot, this one began with compelling data that pointed to a few big opportunities in our site. While we’re always iterating on HubSpot.com, we tend to push one or two major iterations per year, resulting from the culmination of these incremental learnings. In this case, we were focused on:

User Experience

HubSpot.com was suffering from what I like to call Design Debt. This is what happens when you run a bunch of experiments and the site is performing well quantitatively, but the experience of using it just isn’t all that great.

Design patterns may be inconsistent, navigation flows may feel disjointed, and critical parts of the site may end up looking like they were an after-thought (that’s because they were). When this happens, you have to refactor your site and scale your learnings across the entire design, creating an updated and consistent experience.

Conversions

By applying the learnings from our individual experiments across the site, we knew that we’d be able to increase conversion in a meaningful way and build a strong foundation for CRO efforts going forward. Experiment results shouldn’t live in isolation; they need to be distributed across teams and designs, and we were ready to do that in a big way with this project. But perhaps more importantly, our product was changing.

Multi-Product, Internationalization, and Accessibility

Prior to INBOUND 2016, we knew we would be launching the HubSpot Growth Stack, which includes free versions of all of our products. This meant our conversion flow would be fundamentally changing — not just for US customers, but for every HubSpot user around the globe. It was an incredible opportunity to reassess how we introduced our product, and brought users into it.

Ultimately, we would be rethinking our approach to HubSpot.com altogether. An initial audit indicated that this would require a refactoring or redesign of around 70 critical pages on HubSpot.com. And it would all need to happen over the course of 3 months, in time for launch at INBOUND.

But we didn’t just begin with such an ambitious and resource-intensive project based on some data and a few hunches; we still needed to prove out the concept with a live MVP (minimally viable product), and ensure that it was the right thing to do.

Proof of Concept

Over the course of a few days, Matthew Barby and I silently launched an MVP with HubSpot Sales. We wanted to see what would happen if we took all of the data, hypotheses, and wild ideas that we had and put them into a single design without reservation.

I’m talking illustrations, big drop shadows with simulated depth of field, colors that broke our style guide, new CSS animations, copy with a completely different tone of voice, atypical CTAs — you name it. We put it all in there, no holds barred.

A look at the MVP design.

And it worked. The conversion rate was over 20% higher than the control, and user testing favored our new approach. This was a good indicator that we would benefit from rethinking HubSpot.com, and so we decided to proceed with the project.

Predictably, in further testing after the project launched, we also discovered we did plenty of things wrong (I got a little too intense with those drop shadows). As it turns out, there’s a reason why two rogue individuals don’t generally determine the design direction for an entire company. But we weren’t after perfection here — we would chase that later when we brought the proper team on board. This time around, we just wanted to prove out an idea, and we were able to do that.

Kickoff

We formed a small “SWAT Team” of individuals who would have autonomy over their areas of expertise in the project. This included CRO, SEO, copy, data analysis, design, development, product research, and project management.

Three executive stakeholders were then selected to make the final call on approvals and major decisions. That may sound like a lot of people, but for a public company with over 1,500 employees, it’s pretty lean. Pro tip: In big companies, keeping teams small and focused can help avoid scope creep.

Research

Before designing anything, we dove deeper into research, expanding upon the insights that we already had. This started with a comprehensive audit of our conversion flows.

Each product had multiple unique flows, some of which were considerably more complicated than others (ranging from three steps to seven). Products that had less conversion flows and less steps in those conversion flows would convert at a rate that was 2 to 3 times higher than their more complex counterparts.

Our learning here was simple: we needed to consolidate our conversion flows and drastically reduce the steps from landing on HubSpot.com to being inside of the product.

A look at our conversion flows before and after we simplified them.

We also started to look at our user journeys in HubSpot. This gave an idea for how these conversion paths were playing out for actual users, and it helped shine a light on areas where the process was confusing.

People were sometimes even unsure about which product they were signing up for. In particular, many were struggling to understand how HubSpot CRM and HubSpot Sales worked together. User interviews with non-customers, paying customers, and HubSpot employees helped pinpoint what could be improved.

I didn’t continue the process because your website is too damn cluttered. It doesn’t flow; it makes no sense. I can’t make any sort of decision as to how or if this would benefit my company.

We’re big fans of direct, honest, and even atypical feedback. So we took this stuff to heart and conducted follow-up interviews with outliers and customers that fit the profiles we were trying to learn about. Couple this with a few studies on how users preferred to learn about products (and what would make them convert), and we had some pretty interesting data to work with.

When evaluating software, how do you prefer to learn about it?

This all resulted in the creation of a new, simplified conversion flow that featured a “Get Started” CTA on the homepage and in the global navigation.

Once clicked, it would take visitors to a new “Get Started” flow, where they would have the option to request a demo of HubSpot Marketing, or sign up for each of our three free products.

With this new conversion flow mapped out, we focused our attention on 39 core HubSpot.com pages. This was an important development; while we initially were looking at around 70 pages, we soon were able to identify the most critical pages that we could reasonably tackle in our aggressive timeframe.

Content and Copy

A cornerstone of this project was that we used copy-first design, meaning that the copy would inform the design (not the other way around). To achieve this in such a short timeline, our copywriting was done in tandem with wireframing to ensure that designs were supporting and amplifying the messaging laid out in the copy.

We knew we needed to craft copy that explained the value of our products using language that was easily understood by our users. And given that we’ve found it can sometimes be difficult for visitors to understand what HubSpot actually sells, we also wanted to make it clear through our copy that HubSpot sells software – both marketing and sales, as well as a free CRM.

Last but not least, we wanted to show how each of our products were powerful alone, and even better when used together, which supported our new Growth Stack positioning.

In previous copy vs. copy tests, we had seen conversion rate increases in the neighborhood of 20%. So it was inevitable that this would also play a role in helping us to hit our CRO goals. For this reason, the positioning of our new copy relied heavily on the data that we gathered during research, as well as guidance from our product marketing team.

We’ve come to identify high quality research as the primary determining factor in the success of copy. The best copywriters are also great researchers. 

Evaluating Design

Armed with proper context for the project, we returned to our MVP and started to consider how it would influence our new design direction. Structurally, we knew the design was pretty solid. But we needed to make sure everything looked right, too.

The truth is, aesthetics can be a difficult thing to get right, and an even more difficult thing to measure. Oftentimes, we’ll get caught up in subjective debates over what we personally think looks best. But if we reposition the way we think about aesthetics, we can get pretty close to measuring them objectively.

The main distinction is this: The best aesthetics account for what the users consider to be beautiful more than what the stakeholders consider to be beautiful. And that’s something we can measure.

So we launched qualitative tests using our exploratory design (to see how it was doing), our current designs (to get some benchmarks), and designs that we admired (to see what we should really aspire to). We learned that we were on the right track, but a few of the things that we loved had to go:

Illustrations

Despite the fact that we internally loved the idea of using illustrations in our designs, they didn’t test well with users. We tried a range of different styles, color schemes, and characters. In the end, users just couldn’t agree on an illustrative direction.

Some loved them and others thought they were childish and unprofessional. So we removed the illustrations from the design, with a plan to run some tests around them in future iterations.

Intense drop shadows and visual treatments

While it’s tempting to implement the latest trends, the truth is that many users don’t understand or appreciate those trends. Across the board, clean and conservative designs performed better than their more “design forward” counterparts.

Truly, it is both eye-opening and humbling to run tests like these. I can’t stress enough how important it is to let the your audience influence your design direction more than yourself. They offer a completely different and, in many ways, invaluable perspective.

Wireframes and Mockups

We quickly moved into building out our new designs and styles. Because we needed to create a truly scalable design, we worked on a template level, producing numerous iterations of each design.

This would mean that styles could be updated globally as we iterated in the future. I started by creating and testing different wireframes, while the talented David Carberry and Amelia Towle worked on the visual direction. You can see an example of this process here:

Wireframes and mockups 

Global header, footer, and CSS

This resulted in over 100 wireframe iterations, 60 visual designs, and 4 full InVision prototypes. That’s partially because we were constantly testing and refining our designs, and partially because we were working on an aggressive timeline where copy and design were being created in parallel.

Click heatmap and Deuteranopia color blindness simulation

We then ran our designs through final conversion, aesthetic preference, and accessibility testing before touching any code. As we were doing this, we simultaneously produced assets like product images and videos to finish out the content that would populate the designs.

Video

From our research, we learned that 65% of our users preferred to evaluate software by watching a video. For each of our main product overview pages, we created custom tailored videos. Additionally, we leveraged auto-playing MP4s to demonstrate each of the products on the homepage.

Heatmaps showing video button clicks on the MVP and the final design

We can see here how even in our original MVP, the video CTA was a point of high engagement. This trend continued as we produced more iterations and final designs.

After launching the site and tracking the relationship between video engagement and conversions, we found that the presence of video increased our conversion rate by 300%.

Development

This was a major development undertaking, even for HubSpot’s standards. Over 130 pages would be published across .com, .es, .de, .fr, .jp and .br at INBOUND. This included updates to our pricing, contact pages, demo and sign-up flow, and international product pages.

But more importantly, of those 130 pages, 39 of them were brand new core pages on HubSpot.com. This included a new homepage, “Get Started” conversion flow, overview pages for every product (four in total), two integration pages, and feature pages for every major feature (31 in total).

Plus new typography, global style guide elements, faster load times, a smart sales line, an updated live chat experience, an all new navigation and footer, and several unique experiences on mobile. Oh, and it all had to launch perfectly during Christopher O’Donnell’s INBOUND keynote.

The team worked overtime to ensure that we would not only have a smooth launch, but that it would exceed the standards that our audience had come to expect. Of the 130 pages that we had planned to launch, every single one of them went live on November 9th during the keynote. CSS assets were reduced by 67%. The new site was alive and healthy.

Results

Upon launch, we began tracking over 90 different conversion paths. Using a roubst implementation of HubSpot Analytics, Google Analytics 360, and Amplitude, we’ve built a dashboard that pulls in every key metric across the website on a daily basis and lets us know how we’re doing. After allowing the data to run, we’ve discovered that:

• We doubled the conversion rate of HubSpot.com with our new “Get Started” flow
• There was a 35% increase in demo requests by total volume, which are high quality MQL’s for our product
• This is supported by the fact that our new demo landing page design is converting 57% better than the previous design
• Sales chat volume increased by 38% and inbound call volume doubled, meaning that more users are going through channels that have a very high close rate
• This ultimately resulted in a 27% increase in product signups by total volume, which translates into more revenue and retained users for the business

We place this project amongst our growing list of confirmations that a strong focus on User Experience and Conversion Rate Optimization will drive the greatest performance impact on a design.

Multi-disciplinary teams that think beyond the pixels and understand not only what they’re designing, but why they’re desinging it, are positioned to create the most thoughtful and impactful solutions.

 

The downward spiral of traditional advertising’s effectiveness started nearly two decades ago, when marketers simply cut and pasted print ads onto their digital properties.

Today, a clever ad is no longer enough to stir up consumer interest in a brand. It’s become clear that companies desperately need to rethink their marketing strategies, focusing on owned content instead of advertising.

Consider the pitiful state of online ads. More than half of consumers feel ads are insulting to their intelligence, according to research by HubSpot and AdBlock Plus. Another 63% feel most of these ads don’t look professional. If that doesn’t convince you of the futility of online advertising, maybe this will: Just 7% of consumers find them compelling. Online ads are not just hard to like — they’re deceptive, unimaginative, inefficient, and ineffective.

Medium’s recent abandonment of paid ads should put an exclamation point on the general consensus of online advertising’s ineffectiveness. Unfortunately, many enterprising agencies continue to waste money, time, and effort on traditional marketing pathways.

The Cost Vs. Benefit of Online Advertising

Instead of pontificating on how ineffective online ads can be, I’d rather paint a much brighter picture — one where agencies transform into newsrooms and evolve toward a more journalistic ethos.

In my opinion, smart brands should run from antiquated paid solutions and embrace owned media. Blue ocean opportunities abound for any agency that focuses on what consumers desire: advice, information, stories, and sometimes entertainment. It’s no longer about talking at consumers but rather to them.

This shift represents a much more efficient use of funds. In 2015 alone, eMarketer found that display ads cost companies $4.6 billion in invalid traffic. Another $1.1 billion was lost to malvertising, in which attack code is hidden in legitimate online advertising to spread a virus or spyware.

Not to mention that a continued devotion to paid media wastes much more than money. It also drains agencies of precious time and resources as they scramble to understand each new technology, constantly pivot as media platforms change algorithms without notice, and scramble to justify ambiguity to tight-fisted brands.

My company recently worked with a large brand that was so disillusioned with the ambiguity tied up in paid media that it elected to pull its entire seven-figure marketing budget, discount its product, and instead sink money into channel partnerships and slotting fees.

This product wasn’t new to the market. It was an iconic staple of homes everywhere, and it had a proud advertising heritage. But its ads, both online and offline, were no longer generating any measurable value, so the brand pulled the cord. A modest owned media initiative was put into place and, after 12 months, proved to exceed the ROI of the paid efforts at 25% the investment. 

Sadly, paid media’s lack of results hasn’t precluded the majority of agencies from fighting to keep spending and efforts status quo. These agencies are simply stuck in a bygone era, and will either have to catch up (and fast) or will risk being left behind entirely.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: 3 Reasons to Focus on Owned Media

A shift in mindset from the value of paid advertising to the value of owned content can be a challenge for many brands. Content creation has its own set of trappings, and you may have the impulse to spit out as much content as possible to see what sticks.

Like paid advertising, owned media requires a strategy for the content to effectively reach and engage an audience. But once you do the legwork to understand the needs of your customers, produce the content they want, and earn their trust, the gains can’t be beat.

The upsides include:

1) More robust lead generation

Developing owned content offers the rare opportunity to practice what you preach. And if you adhere to a strict content calendar, it’ll drive new business to your door, thanks to carefully crafted calls-to-action and API connectivity to your favorite CRM.

But don’t just produce content to produce content. You must make a concerted effort to stand out from the pack.

Enlist the help of staff to create thought leadership based on their areas of expertise. Look at what consumers want in information and advice, and then develop content around those needs. Move beyond just building your business — strive to own your category with content. With a true ethos you can start to create industry vernacular and set the tone and tenor for your peers and competitors.

2) The expertise of a delta force of specialists

Full-time employees will always be preferred when it comes to content creation, as it can be risky to hand over the voice of your brand to a complete stranger. But the publishing business model does lend itself well to leveraging contract writers and editors and building a strong team of specialists. You can task them with hyper-specific assignments — and on an as-needed basis, no less.

To make the best use of guest writers and editors, you’ll first need to start thinking like a publisher. What will your publishing schedule look like? Will your content be short and snappy or long-form and serious? Do you need writers who can turn in super-polished prose, or do you have staff members who can elevate writers’ initial drafts?

Find professionals with experience in your subject matter. You’ll often find that they can offer unique angles on the topic at hand. With the help of contract staff, you’ll be able to curate a ton of content without ever having to pay payroll taxes. It’s a relatively risk-free way to break the old-school advertising mold, venture into the world of content, and have a team of pros at your disposal.

3) Fewer overhead costs

With proper editorial standards and protocols, a progressive agency can leverage more junior writers — in other words, more affordable employees. Given proper direction, we’ve found the output of younger writers to be double that of more senior ones. They also have a natural inclination to drive positive company culture.

But don’t just hire anyone in an effort to save a few bucks. Look for young writers with real potential and the ambition to leave their marks. Then, team them up with your more experienced writers so they can learn the ropes. This pairing can be a lethally effective combination as far as content creation goes.

Owned content offers brands the unique opportunity to lessen their marketing load while increasing results. After all, it’s not like many consumers go around sharing or retweeting ads with their family and friends. But they will share informative, engaging content, getting your business in front of individuals who are more likely to be qualified leads.

Instead of throwing ads out there, hoping the right eyeballs will see them, create some useful content. There’s no real code to crack — go for it.

 

There’s quite a bit of information out there to support the claims that people are moving farther away from broadcast television, and closer to the digital realm. And within that landscape, people are straying from their desktops and laptops, and opting to get online via mobile with more frequency.

At least, that’s what the folks at Nielsen and Google have found in their research. As the latter puts it, mobile devices are no longer “secondary,” and people aren’t just using them to get online — they’re using them to get social.

That is, for social media, at least. It’s used by no fewer than 2.8 billion people — which also happens to be the same number of people roaming the planet in 1955. And within that population, many users are on multiple social networks — but who the heck are they, and where, exactly, are they hanging out online? 

When marketers develop their social and mobile strategies — which we strongly encourage you to do, if you haven’t already — these are important questions to ask. After all, you want to reach the right audience. So in addition to determining your buyer personas, you have to know where to find them. Not all of them are going to be using Instagram, for example.

Luckily, our friends at Tracx compiled all of that information into a handy infographic that breaks down the state of social media demographics — who’s using which social network, and for what.

With this information, figuring out how to best reach your personas on social media doesn’t have to be such a daunting task. So read on, and start distributing your content in the right places.

The word “guerrilla,” in its written form, seems very intense. It conjures images of rebellion and conflict. Put it next to the word “marketing,” and it makes a lot of people ask, “Huh?”

But guerrilla marketing isn’t some sort of combative form of communication. After all, that would be highly disruptive, which violates the inbound methodology. In fact, it’s actually a very unconventional form of inbound marketing, in that it raises brand awareness among large audiences, without interrupting them.

Because it’s so unconventional, however, it’s not the easiest concept to explain. Guerrilla marketing is often best understood when it’s observed, so that’s how we’re going to approach its best practices and takeaways here. 

We’ll start with some basics around where it came from and how it works, followed by an examination of how it’s been carried out successfully.

What Is Guerrilla Marketing?

Roots of Warfare

When we hear the term “guerrilla marketing,” it’s hard not to think of guerrilla warfare — which makes sense, since that’s where this style of marketing got its name. In the warfare context, guerrilla tactics depend largely on the element of surprise. Think: “Ambushes, sabotage, raids,” according to Creative Guerrilla Marketing.

But how does that translate into the work we do every day? In marketing, guerrilla techniques mostly play on the element of surprise. It sets out to create highly unconventional campaigns that catch people unexpectedly in the course of their day-to-day routines. You’ll see what that looks like in some the examples below.

The term itself was created in the early 1980s by the late business writer Jay Conrad Levinson, who wrote several books about guerrilla tactics in a number of professional areas. Of course, at that time, marketing in general looked very different, and while guerrilla marketing is still used today, the ever-growing digital landscape is changing what it looks like. Again — you’ll see what that looks like in some of the examples below.

Budget-Friendly

What marketers really enjoy about guerrilla marketing is its fairly low-cost nature. The real investment here is a creative, intellectual one — its implementation, however, doesn’t have to be expensive. Michael Brenner summarizes it nicely in his article on “guerrilla content,” where he frames this style of marketing in the same context as repurposing your existing content, like taking certain segments of a report, and expanding each one into a blog post. It’s an investment of time, but not money, per se.

In a way, guerrilla marketing works by repurposing your audience’s current environment. Evaluate it, and figure out which segments of it can be repurposed to include your brand.

Types of Guerrilla Marketing

As niche as it might seem, there are actually a few sub-categories of guerrilla marketing, as outlined by the firm ALT TERRAIN:

• Outdoor Guerrilla Marketing. Adds something to preexisting urban environments, like putting something removable onto a statue, or putting temporary artwork on sidewalks and streets.

• Indoor Guerilla Marketing. Similar to outdoor guerrilla marketing, only it takes place in indoor locations like train stations, shops, and university campus buildings.

• Event Ambush Guerilla Marketing. Leveraging the audience of an in-progress event — like a concert or a sporting game — to promote a product or service in a noticeable way, usually without permission from the event sponsors.

• Experiential Guerilla Marketing. All of the above, but executed in a way that requires the public to interact with the brand.

We know — without context, the whole idea of guerrilla marketing can be a little confusing, so let’s see how it’s been executed by a few other brands.

7 Guerrilla Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Brand

1) Bounty

Source: TOXEL.COM

Here’s a fun fact about your neighborhood marketing blogger: I. Spill. Everything. Coffee? Check. Olive oil? You got it. Generally, I am simply a mess, and like to have paper towels nearby at all times.

Naturally, I couldn’t help but be impressed by this guerilla marketing installment from paper towel company Bounty. By installing life-sized “messes” throughout the streets of New York — a giant, knocked over coffee cup and a gigantic melting popsicle — the brand found a unique way to advertise its product and the solution it provides, with minimal words.

You might ask, “Wouldn’t a concise billboard ad accomplish the same thing?” Well, not really. Culturally, we’re starting to opt for every possible way to eradicate ads from our lives. That’s why we love things like DVR and ad-free options on streaming services like Hulu and YouTube. This campaign, unlike an ad, isn’t as easy to ignore. After all, if you stumbled upon a melting popsicle the size of your mattress on your way to work, would you stop and look? We would.

The big takeaway: Identify the biggest problem that your product or service solves. Then, find an unconventional way to broadcast that to the public — preferably without words.

2) The GRAMMYS

Okay, this one might not be entirely fair, since it wasn’t pulled off “in real life.” But how cool would it be if it was? To promote the nominees for its Album Of The Year category, the GRAMMYS music awards show created a video to show what would happen if posters for the nominated artists just began singing.

It might sound impossible to actually carry out something like that. But imagine — what if you could create musical posters for your brand? Again, it’s different than a billboard ad, because when we walk by a wall of paper advertisements in, say, New York City, we don’t expect them to start moving. Now, we’ll admit that this idea isn’t exactly a budget friendly one, as it might require some technical work to bring to fruition. But even if you could include a single moving or digital image among a sea of still ones — in a place where it would come as a surprise, like a brick wall — it would catch people off guard and, therefore, get their attention.

The big takeaway: Think about the things that your audience might just pass by every day — and make those things do something that’s both unexpected and interactive.

3) Frontline

Source: Marketing Ideas 101

When I first saw this photo, I’ll admit that I fell for it. “Someone, get that dog away from those flies!” I frantically thought. Then, I realized that the dog wasn’t real, and neither were the flies. The former was a photo, and the latter were actually humans.

That’s because Frontline, the makers of flea and tick prevention products for dogs, were able to fill the entire floor of this large, public space with this image. The brand knew that many people walk across that space every day, and that a good number of people would also see it from the building’s upper levels, creating the dog-and-insect illusion. It’s hard to miss — and to not look twice.

Again, this campaign is different than traditional marketing, because it’s not just plastering a single message somewhere that’s likely to be ignored. It creates a form of accidental human interaction that reminds the viewer what the product does.

The big takeaway: Figure out how humans might involuntarily interact with your marketing messages. While your product or service may not address the issue of, say, insect removal, there are ways to make people part of the campaign.

4) Burger King

Source: seventeen

Breaking up is hard to do in person, let alone when it’s publicly played out online. That’s what happened — allegedly — when one Instagram user left a comment on this post sharing a tale of his “girl” procuring food from Burger King. There was just one problem. This guy does have a girlfriend, but she was nowhere near a Burger King. So, who was he referring to? The drama ensued, via Instagram comments:

After the comments began to make headlines, many speculated that the entire exchange may have been staged by Burger King. And if it was, we can’t help but salute them — what a way to get your brand into the zeitgeist. Burger King has roughly one million followers on Instagram. Compare that to the 2.1 million followers of its chief competitor, McDonald’s. And while we’re not sure how many followers the former had before this famous breakup, it makes sense to assume that this at least drew more attention to its social media presence, at least on this particular platform. People may have already been observing the brand on Instagram, but before now, were they actively discussing it?

The big takeaway: Guerrilla marketing has gone digital. Think about where your audience already exists digitally — then, give ’em a show. While we can’t condone lying, we can applaud creativity, so don’t be afraid to use the comments to get people talking.

5) UNICEF

I’m as guilty as anyone of wasting money on bottled water. I have no excuse. I have a reusable one. My workplace offers filtered water from a machine, not a traditional cooler, and yet, it remains a bad habit.

That’s why this guerrilla marketing campaign from relief organization UNICEF resonated with me. It posed the question, “What if those bottles of water you waste money on were filled with dirty water?” It was a way of reminding the privileged masses that in too many parts of the world, entire populations have no access to clean drinking water.

So instead of frivolously spending that money on bottled water, UNICEF suggested putting it toward efforts to bring clean drinking water to these areas. It did so by creating makeshift vending machines that sold bottled dirty water, with each button labeled as a disease caused by a lack of clean drinking water.

The big takeaway: Guerrilla marketing works in the not-for-profit sector, too. And while scary, saddening images are often an impactful way of communicating your mission, there’s a way to convey it by creating something less in-your-face and interactive for the public.

6) GoldToe

Source: ALT TERRAIN

Are you an underwear company looking for an unconventional way to market your product? Why, just try placing an enormous pair of briefs on an iconic charging bull statue.

Really, we can’t make this stuff up.

It’s so simple, in theory, that it sounds like fiction. But when the GoldToe brand needed a way to tease and promote the launch of its new undergarments, that’s exactly what it did — casually placed these new items of clothing on statues throughout New York. And while we can’t be sure that it’s the route GoldToe took, we sincerely hope that those bull-sized briefs were made with leftover manufacturing fabric, helping to make this campaign even budget-friendlier.

The big takeaway: Don’t overthink it. Sometimes what looks like your silliest idea might be the best one.

7) Greene King

When you make plans to catch up with friends and family, what are the two things around which you inevitably gather? We’ll take a stab at guessing:

1. Food
2. Drink

When pub and brewing company Greene King feared that small, neighborhood establishments — notably, the pub — would start to be overtaken by large corporate retail, it launched a campaign to communicate just how important these local businesses really are. Even better, the content was almost entirely created by those who understand this predicament best: Pub owners, bartenders, and patrons.

These individuals were given cameras to capture video of the most meaningful moments and gatherings they’ve experienced inside these local pubs — from weddings, to funeral receptions, to birthdays. These videos were shared on Greene King’s YouTube profile and posed the question, “Without these neighborhood meeting places, where would we share these moments?”

The big takeaway: It’s okay to get a little sentimental with guerilla marketing. Think about the emotions invoked by what you offer. Then, invite your audience to create content around what your brand means to them.

Guerrillas in the Wild

Starting to make a little more sense?

When we set out to write this post, we were disappointed with just one element of it — we found virtually no B2B examples. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible within that sector. It just requires extra creativity.

Hopefully, you’ll be inspired by these examples, especially if you’re promoting a smaller brand. Don’t be afraid to crowdsource the content for these campaigns, for example — after all, it’s creative approaches to your work that help maintain guerrilla marketing’s budget-friendly, inbound nature. Remember: Catch people where they are, and insert your brand there. Don’t interrupt, but invite them to participate.

How have you used guerrilla marketing? Let us know in the comments.