Birthdays can be fun to celebrate. They’re like our own personal holidays where people wish us a happy birthday, wait staff sings and brings us free desserts, and our social media feeds are filled with best wishes and adorable memes. It’s also fun to watch the birthday offers roll in

Free dinner at our favorite restaurant? Yes, please.

Free ice cream at the best ice cream shop in the city? Don’t mind if I do.

25% discount on our preferred brand of makeup or beer? Where do I pay?

Thankfully, receiving a birthday wishes email from your favorite businesses isn’t just good for the consumer. It’s also great for the business.

Happy Birthday Emails

A happy birthday email is an automated marketing email that is sent out on or near a customer’s birthday. While these emails celebrate the “personal holiday” and give the customer a special offer to help sweeten their day, they are actually designed to increase customer sales and retention.

Benefits of Sending a Birthday Wishes Email

As we mentioned earlier, birthday emails benefit the business as well as the customer. There are a variety of reasons to send a birthday email including:

• Staying top of mind with your customers
• Reminding potential customers that you exist and likely have the solution they need
• Showing loyalty to existing customers and subscribers
• Garnering goodwill that will likely lead to word-of-mouth marketing and referrals
• Increasing sales (the birthday holder may get a free meal, but they’re probably not dining alone)
• Increasing retention (80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention)
• Improving customer engagement
• Creating a sense of community

According to Experian, birthday emails can be a powerful play for businesses. Their survey found that birthday emails had a 481% higher transaction rate, resulted in 342% higher revenue, and had a 179% higher unique click rate when compared to other promotional emails.

Ready to start celebrating your customer’s birthdays with them? Check out the format below to get started.

Happy Birthday Email Template

When it comes to designing your birthday emails, creativity counts. Your email service provider should have multiple templates to choose from that can be customized to better reflect your brand.

A birthday email should be friendly and fun and provide something (besides well wishes) to the customer. You can offer a discount, special offer, or a free gift with purchase.

Include your customer’s name in the email or subject line to make the email feel more personal. If you collect any information about your customers’ geographic area, hobbies, interests, or family, you can add this to the email to personalize it further.

Keep the email brief and highlight what you’re offering them to help their celebration. You can send these emails out before or on their birthday. However, you’ll need to make sure that your copy reflects the option you choose. Include all the promotion details so customers know exactly what they’ll get if there are any requirements (like a purchase) to receive it, and the expiration date so they don’t miss out.

Here’s a sample template you can follow when crafting a birthday email for your customers:

Subject Line: Happy Birthday, [Customer Name]

Happy birthday to you! We’d love to treat you for your special day. Celebrate with a [XYZ special offer] the next time you order.*

*Offer expires on [Expiration Date].

Need some more inspiration? Check out these birthday email examples.

If you don’t want to send a happy birthday email from scratch, there are a number of tools you can use to send digital e-cards and gifts. Rybbon integrates directly with your CRM to send e-gift cards and offers to your contact list. 

For more personalized gifts, Sendoso can help companies send direct mail, and physical gifts within one easy-to-use platform.

Birthday Email Subject Lines

A birthday email is only as powerful as its subject line. Why? Because if you don’t catch their attention the moment they see it in their inbox, they won’t bother opening the email and all of your work will be a moot point.

There are a variety of email subject lines that will pique your customer’s interest. Here are a few to consider:

• It’s your birthday! (We want to help you celebrate)
• A special gift for your birthday
• Make a wish
• A special gift of $10 off for your birthday
• Have your birthday dinner on us
• An important birthday is coming up
• A little bird told us it’s your birthday

Whether you choose to go with one of these options or construct your own, you’ll want to include:

• What your email is about
• What you are offering them
• A catchy or intriguing sentence to catch their attention
• An expiration date to express urgency

Remember that the average person’s inbox is flooded with marketing emails on a daily basis. Make sure your subject line is able to capture their attention.

Sending happy birthday emails to those on your email list (whether they’ve purchased from you in the past, or not), is a great way to help your contact celebrate their birthday, and for your company to build a stronger relationship with its audience.

You’re working in a spreadsheet and you want to use a function.

You write the formula, excited to get the results, then you see “Formula parse error” leaving you feeling confused and a little defeated.

Let’s cover what that actually means and what probably lead to that error message.

It’s like trying to speak a different language without taking the time to learn it first.

The software can kind of make out what you’re saying, but not well enough to give you an accurate result.

There are two likely causes for this error: There’s a typo in your formula, or the order of operations is unclear.

We’ll go over some examples of each so that you can identify and fix them in your own formulas.

Common Formula Parse Errors

Usually, a formula parse error happens because of:

Incorrect syntax
– E.g.: Typing =+ instead of =, forgetting to put quotation marks around text values, putting two operators next to each other without anything in between them


Incomplete syntax
– E.g. Leaving out a parentheses.

Another reason why you may be getting these errors is that you’re trying to use text values where numbers are expected.

Let’s dive into the specific types of errors you may encounter:

#N/A Error

One of the most common errors is the #N/A error. It occurs when a formula can’t find what it’s looking for.

For example, if you’re using the VLOOKUP function to find a value in a table, and the value you’re looking for isn’t in the table, you’ll get the #N/A error.

#DIV/0 Error

This happens when you try to divide a number by zero.

For example, if you have a formula =A17/B17 and the value in B17 is 0, you’ll get the #DIV/0! error.

#REF! Error

When a formula contains an invalid cell reference, you will get this error message.

For example, if you have a formula that references cells A17:A22 and you delete row 21, the formula will return the #REF! error because it no longer has a valid reference.

#VALUE Error

The #VALUE! error occurs when a formula contains an invalid value.

For example, if you have a formula that multiplies two cells and one of the cells contains text instead of a number, you’ll get this error.

#NAME Error

This error occurs when a formula contains an invalid name.

For example, if you have a named range called ” Prices” and you accidentally type “price” in your formula, you’ll get the #NAME? error.

#NUM Error

The #NUM! error occurs when a formula contains an invalid number.

Say you have a formula that divides two cells and the result is too large to be displayed, you’ll get this error.

Now that we know what can cause a formula parse error, let’s look at how we can fix them.

How to Fix Formula Parse Errors

The best way to avoid getting formula parse errors is to carefully check your syntax as you type it out. If you’re not sure what order the operations should go in, refer back to the order of operations suggested by the software you’re using.

If you’re getting formula parse errors, here are some steps you can take to fix them:

• Check your formula inputs and make sure they’re correct.
• Use the IFERROR function and display a different result if an error occurs. E.g. “Not found.”
• Check your spelling and make sure all the parentheses are in the right places.
• Make sure you’re using the correct operators.
• Use cell references instead of hard coding values into your formulas.
• If you’re using text values, make sure they’re enclosed in quotation marks.

By following these steps, you can avoid formula parse errors and get accurate results from your formulas.

Google Sheets is a great tool for tracking, analyzing, and organizing data for your company or business.

While the application is user-friendly, it can be a bit tricky if you’re new to organizing data in a digital spreadsheet. But, don’t worry! Read on for an easy introduction to sorting in Google Sheets.

First, know that there are many ways to sort data in Google Sheets. Some of the most common features marketers like you will use when working in Google Sheets are:

• Pivot tables – Useful for gathering data from a large database
• What-If analysis – Allows you to experiment with different scenarios for values and formulas to understand possible outcomes
• Charts – A simple way to visualize data in the form of a graph, diagram, or table

While these features can also be found in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets may be the better option for you. Unlike Excel, Google Sheets doesn’t require a paid subscription.

The tool is free for anyone with a Google account or Google Workspace account. Many users also find Sheets a more optimal tool for collaborative projects when compared to Excel.

So, how do we get started sorting in Google Sheets? Let’s dive in.

Sorting by Sheet Vs. Sorting by Range in Google Sheets

The latter is especially helpful if your spreadsheet contains multiple tables and you want to organize one table without disrupting the others.

For example, the spreadsheet below is sorted by sheet. The titles of the books (column A) have been sorted into alphabetical order.

In the second example, the titles are sorted in reverse alphabetical order. In both cases, each book’s author, publishing date, and genre remain with the corresponding title.

The example below has two separate graphs on one sheet. Notice the graph containing book titles, authors, release date, etc … is organized by alphabetical order, while the book log below it is not.

That’s because the graph of book titles was sorted by range so it wouldn’t disrupt the book log below it.

How to Sort Columns and Rows in Google Sheets

Knowing how to sort rows and columns in Google Sheets is key to organizing your data. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Alphabetical or Numerical Order

Step 1: Open a spreadsheet in Google Sheets and highlight the group of cells you’d like to sort. In this example, we’ll use the graph of book titles.

If your sheet has a header row (like the green header row in the example), you’re going to want to freeze that row so it stays in place as you sort.

To do this, select the header row, click the “View” tab, click “Freeze,” then click “1 row.” If you do not have a header row, then you can move on to the next step.

Step 2: Click the “Data” tab then “Sort Range” then “Advanced range sorting options.”

Step 3: If your columns have titles, click “Data has header row.”

Step 4: Select the column you want to sort first then choose the sorting order. A-Z and Z-A will put your data in alphabetical and reverse alphabetical order respectively.

If you’re working with numbers, A-Z will organize the data in ascending order and Z-A will organize it in descending order.

Step 5: To add another sorting rule, click “Add another sort column.” Then click the green “Sort” button.

Step 6: To sort an entire sheet, right-click the letter of the column you want to sort by, then click sort A-Z or Z-A.

How to Filter Your Data

Filtering your data is especially helpful if you want to hone in on specific information from a large data set. It’s also great if you only want certain information displayed when people first open your spreadsheet.

Step 1: Select the range of cells you want to filter.

Step 2: Click the “Data” tab then click “Create a filter.”

After clicking “Create a filter,” your graph should look like the example below. Notice the filter icons next to each column header name and the new border around the graph.

Step 3: Let’s say we only want to see book titles that are historical fiction. To do this, we’d click on the filter icon next to “Genre,” then click “Filter by values.”

Step 4: Then, we’d uncheck everything but “Historical Fiction,” and click “OK.”

This can also be done by clicking “Clear” and typing in “Historical Fiction.” The latter method is great if the value you want to sort by isn’t listed and you want to add your own.

No matter which method you choose, the end result should look like this:

How to Sort Your Data by Color

Let’s say the book titles are all color-coded by genre with historical fiction being orange, science fiction being blue, and coming of age being purple.

To sort these color-coded titles so that coming-of-age books are at the top, do the following:

Step 1: Select the range of cells.

Step 2: Click the “Data” tab then click “Create a filter.”

Step 3: Click the filter symbol in the genre column, then sort by color, fill color, then purple.

After doing so, all coming-of-age titles will appear at the top of the graph.

If you’d like to turn the filter off, simply click “Data” then “Remove filter.”

Remember that your filter will be visible to anyone with access to the spreadsheet. If someone has permission to edit your spreadsheet, that person can also change the filter.

And that’s how you can sort and filter your data in Google Sheets. Now you’ll be able to organize your data digitally in one application.

Remember, Google Sheets is available for free to anyone with a Google account or Google Workspace account. It’s also ideal for collaborative projects thanks to Google’s sharing and editing features. Happy sorting!

When you think of online advertising, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Google? Facebook? YouTube?

If you limit yourself to those digital media giants, you could be missing out on a more targeted market that is reaching 300 million users every month.

What Is Quora? And Who Uses It?

Quora is a social question-and-answer website, founded in 2009. Over the years, Quora has earned a reputation for crowd-sourcing the best responses to questions based on a Q&A engine of curious and highly engaged users.

In June 2017, Quora launched its advertising services, and businesses are seeing significant ROI from advertising on Quora. Why? Quora users are 20% more likely to have authorized a business purchase. They’re 65% more likely to report a college degree. They’re also 37% more likely to be a manager. And they’re 54% more likely to report an annual household income of more than $100K.

Even more interesting? 63% of Quora users conduct research before major online purchases. In the United States, Quora users are highly educated and primarily live in West and East Coast metropolitan areas.* With demographics like that, Quora Ads might be the perfect way to connect with your target market.

Let’s dig deeper into why Quora makes sense for advertising, explore what advertising options are available, and delve into best practices for running ads on Quora.

Quora Ads

When you’re ready to launch your first Quora Ad campaign, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, which makes it an ideal platform for beginners. You only need two lines of text and a landing page to get started.

While it’s quick and simple to launch your ads on Quora, don’t underestimate the platform’s power. Being able to pinpoint users who are interested in specific topics and/or questions means that Quora Ads provide a level of niche targeting that most other ad platforms can’t deliver.

There are several objectives to choose from, including conversions, traffic, awareness, app installs, and lead generation. And you can target your ads based on users’ interests, behavior, location, what they’re reading, and more.

If, for some reason, you get stuck as you set up your first Quora advertising campaign, you can always get help by clicking the ‘Talk to an Expert’ button at the bottom of the Quora for Business page.

How much does it cost to advertise on Quora?

You can start advertising on Quora’s self-serve platform for just $5 a day, which makes it almost risk-free to experiment and discover what advertising tactics work best for your organization.

Quora Ads uses a live auction system. In the way auctions commonly work, buyers — in this case, advertisers — offer a bid for the items being auctioned (i.e., ad placements). Final costs vary depending on the competitive landscape and your targeting selections.

Major debit and credit cards are accepted, and you’re only charged when your spend meets specific billing thresholds. The first threshold is $25 USD, and the threshold rises with each successful charge to $50, $250, $500, and $750. You are charged either when you hit your current billing threshold, or on the first week of the month, whichever comes first.

Types of Quora Ads and Where They Appear

Choose from text ads, image ads, or promoted answers to launch your campaign. Quora ads can appear on a user’s personal feed, topic feeds, and question pages. You can also opt-in for placements in the Quora Digest e-newsletter. (To subscribe to the Digest, go to ‘Settings’ and then select ‘Email and Notifications’. There, adjust your ‘Digest’ settings to your preferences.)

There are 10 targeting types available on Quora Ads, giving you several options to match your targeting to your advertising goals. Businesses are encouraged to utilize two or more targeting methods for a balance of contextual, behavioral, and audience targeting.

The Quora Pixel is required if you intend to run Conversion campaigns, or if you want to attribute conversions to specific campaigns, ad sets, or ads. Quora’s pixel not only allows you to track multiple conversion events, but also allows you to utilize Website Traffic Targeting, Lookalike Audience Targeting, and Conversion Optimized bidding. To install the pixel, visit the “Pixel & Events” tab in your Ads Manager and click “Setup Pixel.” A prompt with instructions will appear. You have the option of installing the pixel directly to your website, or through Google Tag Manager.

Quora Ads Best Practices

The key to success in advertising on Quora is to focus on answering questions, rather than being overly salesy. People come to the site to get their questions answered. Giving them what they want is the best way to showcase how your business is a good fit for them. This also makes Quora an ideal place to establish brand leadership.

As with any advertising option, there’s no “one size fits all” strategy when using Quora Ads. What works for one business, may not work for yours. The best practice is to test each targeting type or retest them with different groups of topics, interests, or keywords.

Not sure where to start? See what other businesses have done by studying Quora’s Success Stories.

And be sure to review Quora’s Ads Success Checklist before going live with your first campaign. To facilitate your onboarding, they’ve compiled a checklist of key steps to guide your campaigns. While completing each step doesn’t necessarily equate to success on Quora Ads, checking off each action item will help ensure your campaigns are optimized for scalability, measurement, and long-term success.

Is Quora advertising worth it?

While the answer to that question will vary depending on your organization’s priorities, Quora’s team has found key differentiators between successful and unsuccessful ad campaigns. Those differentiators can be found on Quora’s blog.

Speaking with one of Quora’s Ad Experts is another great way to determine if advertising on Quora is right for you. Their experts work on understanding your brand’s funnel, potential limitations, and even your team’s structure.

Advertising on Quora offers both advantages and disadvantages.

First, Quora features a high-quality audience. Unlike other online environments, Quora’s user base is overwhelmingly positive and informative. An internal team of moderators, along with the Quora community, ensure there’s very little negativity or name-calling. Answers are generally well crafted and carefully thought out. That means your ads are getting in front of a high-quality audience there to solve problems, not make them.

Second, the community on Quora is generally safe and constructive. The Quora community is positive by design. A team of human moderators oversees content, and posts must be attributed to verified real names. Advertiser controls are robust with exclusion capabilities. Only high-quality pages are eligible to run ads.

Finally, Quora’s Advertising dashboard is similar to Facebook’s and Google Ads’, making it very familiar. If you’ve used either of those platforms, you won’t be starting from scratch when creating and analyzing your campaigns.

No platform is perfect, and there are a few disadvantages to advertising on Quora.

First, Quora does not offer video ads. Video content, as opposed to text-based or image-based content, tends to draw in more viewers, but it’s not an option with Quora Ads.

Second, Quora metrics and customization are not as dynamic as those you may be used to with Facebook or Google.

Facebook Ads and Google Ads are currently the two largest digital advertising platforms in terms of ad spend, and they’re likely to remain so for a long time to come. So, it makes sense to continue to use them as the foundation of your online advertising strategy. But supplementing with Quora Ads might be the perfect way to boost your sales and brand authority.

What is the first thing you do when you need new marketing ideas? What about when you decide it’s time to find a new accounting software? Or even when you notice a flat tire in the car?

My guess is you turn to Google.

Impact Plus reported that 61% of marketers named SEO as a top marketing priority in 2021. And so, it’s a cold, harsh truth that without at least some presence on Google, your business faces a digital uphill battle. In this guide, you’ll discover a strategy to build your online presence — Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ll learn what SEO is, how it works, and what you must do to position your site in search engine results.

But before we begin, I want to reassure you of something.

So many resources make SEO complex. They scare readers with technical jargon, advanced elements, and rarely explain anything beyond theory.

I promise you, this guide isn’t like that.

I’m going to break SEO into its most basic parts and show you how to use all its elements to construct a successful SEO strategy. (And to stay up-to-date on SEO strategy and trends, check out HubSpot’s Skill Up podcast.)

Keep on reading to understand SEO, or jump ahead to the section that interests you most.

When asked to explain what SEO is, I often choose to call it a strategy to ensure that when someone Googles your product or service category, they find your website.

But this simplifies the discipline a bit.

There are a ton of ways to improve the SEO of your site pages. Search engines look for elements including title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links (also known as backlinks). Search engines also look at site structure and design, visitor behavior, and other external, off-site factors to determine how highly ranked your site should be in their SERPs.

With all of these factors taken into account, SEO primarily drives two things — rankings and visibility.

Rankings

This is what search engines use to determine where to place a particular web page in the SERP. Rankings start at position number zero through the final number of search engine results for the query, and a web page can rank for one position at a time. As time passes, a web page’s ranking might change due to age, competition in the SERP, or algorithm changes by the search engine itself.

Visibility

This term describes how prominent a particular domain is in the search engine results. Lower search visibility occurs when a domain isn’t visible for many relevant search queries whereas with higher search visibility, the opposite is true.

Both are responsible for delivering the main SEO objectives – traffic and domain authority.

What’s the importance of SEO?

There is one more important reason why you should be using SEO: The strategy virtually helps you position your brand throughout the entire buying journey.

In turn, SEO can ensure that your marketing strategies match the new buying behavior.

Because, as Google admitted, customer behavior has changed for good.

As of June 2021, 92% of internet searches happen on a Google property.

What’s more, they prefer going through the majority of the buying process on their own.

For example, Ststista found that 60% of people research a brand online before making a purchase. What’s more, this process has never been more complicated.

Finally, DemandGen’s 2022 B2B Buyer’s Survey found that 67% of B2B buyers start the buying process with a broad web search.

But how do they use search engines during the process?

Early in the process, they use Google to find information about their problem. Some also inquire about potential solutions.

Then, they evaluate available alternatives based on reviews or social media hype before inquiring with a company. But this happens after they’ve exhausted all information sources.

And so, the only chance for customers to notice and consider you is by showing up in their search results.

Featured Resource

• 22 SEO Myths to Leave Behind This Year

How does Google know how to rank a page?

Search engines have a single goal only. They aim to provide users with the most relevant answers or information.

Every time you use them, their algorithms choose pages that are the most relevant to your query. And then, rank them, displaying the most authoritative or popular ones first.

To deliver the right information to users, search engines analyze two factors:

• Relevancy between the search query and the content on a page. Search engines assess it by various factors like topic or keywords.
• Authority, which is measured by a website’s popularity on the Internet. Google assumes that the more popular a page or resource is, the more valuable its content is to readers.

And to analyze all this information they use complex equations called search algorithms.

Search engines keep their algorithms secret. But over time, SEOs have identified some of the factors they consider when ranking a page. We refer to them as ranking factors, and they are the focus of an SEO strategy.

When determining relevance and authority, following the E-A-T framework can help tremendously. E-A-T in SEO stands for “expertise”, authoritativeness”, and “trustworthiness”. And although these are not direct ranking factors, they can improve your SEO content which can impact direct ranking factors.

As you’ll shortly see, adding more content, optimizing image filenames, or improving internal links can affect your rankings and search visibility. And that’s because each of those actions improves a ranking factor.

What is SEO strategy?

An SEO marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan to get more visitors to your website through search engines. Successful SEO includes on-page strategies, which use intent-based keywords; and off-page strategies, which earn inbound links from other websites.

 

Three Core Components of a Strong SEO Strategy

To optimize a site, you need to improve ranking factors in three areas — technical website setup, content, and links. So, let’s go through them in turn.

1. Technical Setup

For your website to rank, three things must happen:

First, a search engine needs to find your pages on the web.

Then, it must scan them to understand their topics and identify their keywords.

And finally, it needs to add them to its index — a database of all the content it has found on the web. This way, its algorithm can consider displaying your website for relevant queries.

Seems simple, doesn’t it? Certainly, nothing to worry about. After all, since you can visit your site without any problem, so should Google, right?

Unfortunately, there is a catch. A web page looks different for you and the search engine. You see it as a collection of graphics, colors, text with its formatting, and links.

To a search engine, it’s nothing but text.

As a result, any elements it cannot render this way remain invisible to the search engine. And so, in spite of your website looking fine to you, Google might find its content inaccessible.

Let me show you an example. Here’s how a typical search engine sees one of our articles. It’s this one, by the way, if you want to compare it with the original.

Notice some things about it:

• The page is just text. Although we carefully designed it, the only elements a search engine sees are text and links.
• As a result, it cannot see an image on the page (note the element marked with an arrow.) It only recognizes its name. If that image contained an important keyword we’d want the page to rank for, it would be invisible to the search engine.

That’s where technical setup, also called on-site optimization, comes in. It ensures that your website and pages allow Google to scan and index them without any problems. The most important factors affecting it include:

Website navigation and links

Search engines crawl sites just like you would. They follow links. Search engine crawlers land on a page and use links to find other content to analyze. But as you’ve seen above, they cannot see images. So, set the navigation and links as text-only.

Simple URL structure

Search engines don’t like reading lengthy strings of words with complex structure. So, if possible, keep your URLs short. Set them up to include as little beyond the main keyword for which you want to optimize the page, as possible.

Page speed

Search engines use the load time — the time it takes for a user to be able to read the page — as an indicator of quality. Many website elements can affect it. Image size, for example. Use Google’s Page Speed Insights Tool for suggestions on how to improve your pages.

 

Dead links or broken redirects

A dead link sends a visitor to a nonexistent page. A broken redirect points to a resource that might no longer be there. Both provide poor user experience but also, prevent search engines from indexing your content.

Sitemap and Robots.txt files

A sitemap is a simple file that lists all URLs on your site. Search engines use it to identify what pages to crawl and index. A robots.txt file, on the other hand, tells search engines what content not to index (for example, specific policy pages you don’t want to appear in search.) Create both to speed up crawling and indexing of your content.

Duplicate content

Pages containing identical or quite similar content confuse search engines. They often find it to be nearly impossible to display any of those pages at all. If search engines do find them, your website can be penalized. For that reason, search engines consider duplicate content as a negative factor.

Featured Resource

• How to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit

2. Content

Every time you use a search engine, you’re looking for content — information on a particular issue or problem, for example.

True, this content might come in different formats. It could be text, like a blog post or a web page. But it could also be a video, product recommendation, and even a business listing.

It’s all content.

And for SEO, it’s what helps gain greater search visibility.

Here are two reasons why:

• First, content is what customers want when searching. Regardless of what they’re looking for, it’s content that provides it. And the more of it you publish, the higher your chance for greater search visibility.
• Also, search engines use content to determine how to rank a page. It’s the idea of relevance between a page and a person’s search query that we talked about earlier.

While crawling a page, they determine its topic. Analyzing elements like page length or its structure helps them assess its quality. Based on this information, search algorithms can match a person’s query with pages they consider the most relevant to it.

The process of optimizing content begins with keyword research.

Keyword Research

SEO is not about getting any visitors to the site. You want to attract people who need what you sell and can become leads, and later, customers.

However, that’s possible only if it ranks for the keywords those people would use when searching. Otherwise, there’s no chance they’d ever find you. And that’s even if your website appeared at the top of the search results.

That’s why SEO work starts with discovering what phrases potential buyers enter into search engines.

The process typically involves identifying terms and topics relevant to your business. Then, converting them into initial keywords. And finally, conducting extensive research to uncover related terms your audience would use.

We’ve published a thorough guide to keyword research for beginners. It lays out the keyword research process in detail. Use it to identify search terms you should be targeting.

With a list of keywords at hand, the next step is to optimize your content. SEOs refer to this process as on-page optimization.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization, also called on-page SEO, ensures that search engines a.) understand a page’s topic and keywords, and b.) can match it to relevant searches.

Note, I said “page” not content. That’s because, although the bulk of on-page SEO work focuses on the words you use, it extends to optimizing some elements in the code.

You may have heard about some of them — meta-tags like title or description are two most popular ones. But there are more. So, here’s a list of the most crucial on-page optimization actions to take.

Note: Since blog content prevails on most websites, when speaking of those factors, I’ll focus on blog SEO — optimizing blog posts for relevant keywords. However, all this advice is equally valid for other page types too.

Featured Resource

• Guide to On-Page SEO Strategy

a) Keyword Optimization

First, ensure that Google understands what keywords you want this page to rank. To achieve that, make sure you include at least the main keyword in the following:

• Post’s title: Ideally, place it as close to the start of the title. Google is known to put more value on words at the start of the headline.
• URL: Your page’s web address should also include the keyword. Ideally, including nothing else. Also, remove any stop word.
• H1 Tag: In most content management systems, this tag displays the title of the page by default. However, make sure that your platform doesn’t use a different setting
• The first 100 words (or the first paragraph) of content: Finding the keyword at the start of your blog post will reassure Google that this is, in fact, the page’s topic.
• Meta-title and meta-description tags: Search engines use these two code elements to display their listings. They display the meta-title as the search listing’s title while the meta-description provides content for the little blurb below it. But above that, they use both to understand the page’s topic further.
• Image file names and ALT tags: Remember how search engines see graphics on a page? They can only see their file names. So, make sure that at least one of the images contains the keyword in the file name.

The alt tag, on the other hand, is text browsers display instead of an image (for visually impaired visitors.) However, since ALT tag resides in the image code, search engines use it as a relevancy signal as well.

Also, add semantic keywords — variations or synonyms of your keyword. Google and other search engines use them to determine a page’s relevancy better.

Let me illustrate this with a quick example. Let’s pretend that your main keyword is “Apple.” But do you mean the fruit or the tech giant behind the iPhone?

Now, imagine what happens when Google finds terms like sugar, orchard, or cider in the copy? The choice of what queries to rank it for would immediately become obvious, right?

That’s what semantic keywords do. Add them to ensure that your page doesn’t start showing up for irrelevant searches.

b) Non-Keyword-Related On-Page Optimization Factors

On-page SEO is not just about sprinkling keywords across the page. The factors below help confirm a page’s credibility and authority too:

• External links: Linking out to other, relevant pages on the topic helps Google determine its topic further. Plus, it provides a good user experience. How? By positioning your content as a valuable resource.
• Internal links: Those links help you boost rankings in two ways. One, they allow search engines to find and crawl other pages on the site. And two, they show semantic relations between various pages, helping to determine its relevance to the search query better. As a rule, you should include at least 2-4 internal links per blog post
• Content’s length: Long content typically ranks better. That’s because, if done well, a longer blog post will always contain more exhaustive information on the topic, thus keeping a reader on your site longer. That’s called dwell time, and it’s an important ranking factor for the search engines
• Multimedia: Although not a requirement, multimedia elements like videos, diagrams, audio players can signal a page’s quality. It keeps readers on a page for longer just like longer content does. And in turn, it signals that they find the content valuable and worth pursuing.

3. Links

From what you’ve read in this guide so far, you know that no page will rank without two factors — relevance and authority.

In their quest to provide users with the most accurate answers, Google and other search engines prioritize pages they consider the most relevant to their queries but also, popular.

The first two areas — technical setup and content — focused on increasing relevance (though I admit, some of their elements can also help highlight the authority.)

Links, however, are responsible for popularity.

But before we talk more about how they work, here’s what SEOs mean when talking about links.

What is a backlink?

Links, also called backlinks, are references to your content on other websites. Every time another website mentions and points their readers to your content, you gain a backlink to your site.

For example, this article in Entrepreneur.co mentions our Not Another State of Marketing Report page. It also links to it allowing their readers to see other stats than the one quoted.

Google uses the quantity and quality of links like this as a signal of a website’s authority. Its logic behind it is that webmasters would reference a popular and high-quality website more often than a mediocre one.

But note that I mentioned link quality as well. That’s because not all links are the same. Some — low-quality ones — can impact your rankings negatively.

Links Quality Factors

Low quality or suspicious links — for example, ones that Google would consider as built deliberately to make it consider a site as more authoritative — might reduce your rankings.

That’s why, when building links, SEOs focus not on building any links. They aim to generate the highest quality references possible.

Naturally, just like with the search algorithm, we don’t know what factors determine a link’s quality, specifically. However, over time, SEOs discovered some of them:

• The popularity of a linking site: Any link from a domain that search engines consider an authority will naturally have high quality. In other words, links from websites that have good quality links pointing to them will yield better results.
• Topic relevance: Links from domains on a topic similar to yours will carry more authority than those from random websites.
• Trust in a domain: Just like with popularity, search engines also assess a website’s trust. Links from more trustworthy sites will always impact rankings better.

Link Building

In SEO, we refer to the process of acquiring new backlinks as link building. And as many practitioners admit, it can be a challenging activity.

Link building, if you want to do it well, requires creativity, strategic thinking, and patience. To generate quality links, you need to come up with a link building strategy. And that’s no small feat.

Remember, your links must pass various quality criteria. Plus, it can’t be obvious to search engines that you’ve built them deliberately.

Here are some strategies to do it:

• Editorial, organic links: These backlinks come from websites that reference your content on their own.
• Outreach: In this strategy, you contact other websites for links. This can happen in many ways. You could create an amazing piece of content, and email them to tell them about it. In turn, if they find it valuable, they’ll reference it. You can also suggest where they could link to it.
• Guest posting: Guest posts are blog articles that you publish on third-party websites. In turn, those companies often allow including one or two links to your site in the content and author bio.
• Profile links: Finally, many websites offer an opportunity to create a link. Online profiles are a good example. Often, when setting up such a profile, you can also list your website there as well. Not all such links carry strong authority, but some might. And given the ease of creating them, they’re worth pursuing.
• Competitive analysis: Finally, many SEOs regularly analyze their competitors’ backlinks to identify those they could recreate for their sites too.

Now, if you’re still here with me, then you’ve just discovered what’s responsible for your site’s success in search.

The next step, then, is figuring out whether your efforts are working.

How to Monitor & Track SEO Results

Technical setup, content, and links are critical to getting a website into the search results. Monitoring your efforts helps improve your strategy further.

Measuring SEO success means tracking data about traffic, engagement, and links. And though, most companies develop their own sets of SEO KPIs (key performance indicators), here are the most common ones:

• Organic traffic growth
• Keyword rankings (split into branded and non-branded terms)
• Conversions from organic traffic
• Average time on page and the bounce rate
• Top landing pages attracting organic traffic
• Number of indexed pages
• Links growth (including new and lost links)

Local SEO

Up until now, we focused on getting a site rank in search results in general. If you run a local business, however, Google also lets you position it in front of potential customers in your area, specifically. But for that, you use local SEO.

And it’s well worth it.

46% of Google searches are for local businesses. They look for vendor suggestions, and even specific business addresses.

What’s more, they act on this information: 72% of searchers visit a local store or company’s premises within 24 hours of the search.

But hold on, is local SEO different from what we’ve been talking about all along?

Yes and no.

Search engines follow similar principles for both local and global rankings. But given that they position a site for specific, location-based results, they need to analyze some other ranking factors too.

Even local search results look different:

• They appear only for searches with a local intent (for example, “restaurant near me” or when a person clearly defined the location.)
• They contain results specific to a relevant location.
• They concentrate on delivering specific information to users that they don’t need to go anywhere else to find.
• They target smartphone users primarily as local searches occur more often on mobile devices.

For example, a localpack, the most prominent element of local results, includes almost all information a person would need to choose a business. Here are local results Google displays for the phrase “best restaurant in Boston.”

Note that these results contain no links to any content. Instead, they include a list of restaurants in the area, a map to show their locations, and additional information about each:

• Business name
• Description
• Image
• Opening hours
• Star Reviews
• Address

Often, they also include a company’s phone number or website address.

All this information combined helps customers choose which business to engage. But it also allows Google to determine how to rank it.

Local Search Ranking Factors

When analyzing local websites, Google looks at the proximity to a searcher’s location. With the rise of local searches containing the phrase, “near me,” it’s only fair that Google will try to present the closest businesses first.

Keywords are essential for local SEO too. However, one additional element of on-page optimization is the presence of a company’s name, address, and phone number of a page. In local SEO, we refer to it as the NAP.

Again, it makes sense, as the search engine needs a way to assess the company’s location.

Google assesses authority in local search not just by links. Reviews and citations (references of a business’s address or a phone number online) highlight its authority too.

Finally, the information a business includes in Google My Business — the search engine’s platform for managing local business listings — plays a huge part in its rankings.

The above is just the tip of the iceberg. But they are the ones to get right first if you want your business to rank well in local search.

What is black hat SEO?

The final aspect of SEO I want to highlight to you is something I also hope you’ll never get tempted to use. I mean it.

Because, although it might have its lure, using black hat SEO typically ends in a penalty from search listings.

Black hat practices aim at manipulating search engine algorithms using strategies against search engine guidelines. The most common black hat techniques include keyword stuffing, cloaking (hiding keywords in code so that users don’t see them, but search engines do), and buying links.

So, why would someone use black hat SEO? For one, because, often, ranking a site following Google’s guidelines takes time. Long time, in fact.

Black hat strategies let you cut down the complexity of link building, for example. Keyword stuffing helps users to rank one page for many keywords, without having to create more content.

But as said, getting caught often results in a site being completely wiped out from search listings.

And the reason I mention it here is that I want you to realize that there are no shortcuts in SEO. And be aware of anyone suggesting strategies that might seem too good to be true.

Doing SEO Yourself

Be honest with yourself — are you interested in learning SEO? Do you have time to learn the basics? Do you have the resources to bring in help if you redesign your website and accidentally deindex several pages? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then you might not want to take on the responsibility of SEO yourself. SEO is a long term play, and just like a muscle, you have to work at it consistently to see results. That can take a substantial amount of commitment. If you have any doubts, try the next best thing — delegating the work.

Delegate SEO to a Team Member

If you’re not quite sure about taking on SEO yourself, consider delegating the work to a team member. If you have a person who’s interested in growth marketing, development, or even web design, this would be a valuable skill to help grow their career. You could also hire a full-time search engine optimization specialist if you have the budget.

The person in this role can report to the marketing team, development team, or even design team. Because SEO touches nearly every function of a business while maintaining a unique set of skill requirements, this position won’t be subject to frequent changes if departments need to be restructured later on. The person you delegate to this job will contribute cross functionally more often than not, so you’ll have some liberty with managing them.

Outsource SEO to an Agency

You don’t have the interest in SEO, your team’s at full capacity, and you can’t spare the budget to fill a full time SEO role. Now what? The best bang for your buck is to outsource SEO to a reputable consultant. Why? First, a well-respected SEO consultant is highly skilled in bringing organic traffic, leads, and conversions to businesses. They do this day in and day out, so they won’t need the ramp up time that you or a member of your team would need in order to learn the basics.

Second, a consultant can be less expensive than hiring someone full-time for the role because they don’t require insurance benefits, payroll taxes, etc. But how much exactly would you be looking at for outsourcing your SEO?

SEO can cost between $100 and $500 per month if you do it yourself with a keyword research tool. It can cost between $75 and $150 per hour for a consultant, and up to $10,000 per month if you hire a full-service marketing agency. Small businesses generally spend less on SEO than big brands, so be sure to take that into account.

Incurring SEO costs can mean one of two things: the investment in your organic search strategy, or how much you pay for paid search engine marketing (SEM) services like Google Ads. If you’re paying for a tool, consultant, or marketing agency to help you optimize your web content, your bill can vary wildly with the depth of the services you’re receiving.

SEO Resources & Training

This guide is just a starting point for discovering SEO. But there’s much more to learn.

Here are online training resources to try next if your or someone on your team wants to take on this skill:

• The HubSpot SEO Academy
• Google Analytics Course
• SEO That Works course

You can also pick SEO knowledge from industry experts and their blogs. Here are some worth reading:

• SEMrush
• MOZ
• Yoast
• BrightLocal (local SEO advice)
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Watch
• Search Engine Land
• Bruce Clay Inc.

Over To You

Without actively positioning its content in search results, no business can survive long.

By increasing your search visibility, you can bring more visitors, and in turn, conversions and sales. And that’s well worth the time spent becoming an expert in SEO.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

At many companies, it can feel as if there are 100 miles between sales and marketing. In a recent LinkedIn survey, 60% of global respondents believed that misalignment between sales and marketing could damage financial performance, yet there are a number of disconnects between the teams from strategy to process.

One of the most critical steps for aligning your sales and marketing efforts is creating a service level agreement (SLA). Traditionally, an SLA serves to define exactly what a customer will receive from a service provider. But SLAs serve internal operations as well, and sales and marketing agreements are among the most crucial.

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Ultimately, a service level agreement is designed to create alignment between two parties by setting clear expectations and mitigating any issues before they happen. With that in mind, there are multiple types of SLA depending on your use case.

1. Customer Service Level Agreement

A customer SLA is just what it sounds like: an agreement by a vendor to deliver a certain level of service to a particular customer. Here’s a fun example:

In the TV show The Office, the company, Dunder Mifflin, supplies paper to various organizations. They might have a customer SLA stipulating that Dunder Mifflin will supply [Company X] with 50 reams of paper per month, shipped every Monday to [Address 1] and [Address 2] by Darryl Philbin — with a confirmation of delivery sent to Jim Halpert. (Sorry, we had a little too much fun with the references in that one.)

2. Internal Service Level Agreement

An internal SLA only concerns parties from within the company. While a business might have an SLA open with each of its clients, it can also have a separate SLA between its sales and marketing departments.

Let’s say Company X’s sales department has to close $5,000 worth of sales per month in total, and each sale is worth $100. If the sales team’s average win rate for the leads they engage with is 50%, Company X’s marketing director, Amir, can work with the sales team on an SLA, stipulating that Marketing will deliver 100 qualified leads to sales director, Kendra, by a certain date every month. This might include four weekly status reports per month, sent back to Amir by Kendra, to ensure the leads Kendra’s team is receiving are helping them keep pace with their monthly sales goal.

3. Multilevel Service Level Agreement

Multilevel SLAs can support a business’s customers or the business’s various internal departments. The point of this type of SLA is to outline what is expected of each party if there’s more than just one service provider and one end user. Here’s an example of a multi-level SLA in an internal situation:

Company X’s sales and marketing teams partner up on an internal SLA that delivers leads from Marketing to Sales every month. But what if they wanted to incorporate a customer retention strategy into this contract, making it an SLA between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service?

After sales closes 50 new deals for the month, it’s Customer Service’s job to keep these customers happy and successful while using the product. In a multi level SLA, Company X can have sales director, Kendra, send monthly “customer friction” reports to Joan, the VP of service, based on dialogue the sales team has regularly with its clients. This helps the customer service team build a knowledge base that better prepares them for the pain points customers call them about.

You can learn more about customer service’s increasing role to business growth in the HubSpot Academy.

What does an SLA include?

The details of an SLA will differ among internal and external agreements. Nonetheless, there are common building blocks that each SLA should include, whether the recipient of the service is your customer or your sales team.

Featured Resource: Free Marketing & Sales SLA Template

Download this Template

HubSpot’s Sales & Marketing SLA Template is the ideal resource for outlining your company’s goals and reaching an agreement between these two crucial teams. Download it now for free.

1. A Summary of the Agreement

The first item on your SLA should be an overview of the agreement. What service have you agreed to deliver to the other party? Summarize the service, to whom it’s being delivered, and how the success of that service will be measured.

2. The Goals of Both Parties

In external SLAs — those between a business and its customers — the goals stated in the agreement are primarily those of the customer. If this is your intention, work with your client to marry their needs with the abilities of your product, and come up with a measurable goal that your company can feasibly meet for the client on a regular basis.

Is this an internal SLA between your sales and marketing departments? Both teams should have their goals outlined in this section of the contract, while making sure that when Marketing hits its goal, Sales can reach its own goal as a result.

3. The Requirements of Both Parties

SLAs should include what each party needs in order to reach their goals. In agreements that serve a customer, keep in mind their needs might go beyond simply “the product.” They might need more than that to reach their goals — such as weekly consulting, reporting, and technical maintenance from you.

SLAs between sales and marketing teams should describe what they might need from the opposite department in order to help them hit their targets. Marketing, for example, might need weekly status reports on Sales’ pipeline so the marketers can adjust their lead-generating campaigns accordingly.

4. The Points of Contact

Who’s in charge of making sure each party’s goals are met? Sort out which team does what, and who talks to whom, in this section of your SLA. Is there a separate employee using the services, in relation to the employee who reports on performance every week? Make it clear who’s involved in the SLA, and how.

5. A Plan if Goals Aren’t Met

You might not want to think about it, but there should be formal consequences when a goal isn’t met as part of an SLA. Don’t freak out, though — these consequences aren’t always business-ending situations. Include a form of compensation to the service’s end user for when the service doesn’t meet their agreed-upon goals. In external SLAs, according to PandaDoc, this compensation can come in the form of “service credits.” Grab PandaDoc’s free SLA template here to find out more.

For Sales and Marketing SLAs, work with your sales team to establish a plan for how any lost revenue is to be made up as a result of an unreached sales quota. You might settle on a strike system that holds certain employees — in both Sales and Marketing — accountable for diagnosing and resolving issues of low performance.

6. The Conditions of Cancellation

Under what circumstances will your SLA be terminated? Whether your contract serves a customer or two internal departments, you’ll typically find yourself putting the SLA on the chopping block when it’s just not working. Maybe your goals have gone unmet for the last three months, or the current agreement simply doesn’t have buy-in from everyone involved.

Come up with formal conditions under which you’d cancel the current SLA in pursuit of, hopefully, a better SLA.

Examples of SLAs

While an SLA will be unique to your needs, here are some examples and templates that can give you an idea of what an SLA may look like.

1. HubSpot’s Marketing & Sales SLA Template

As previously mentioned, HubSpot has a template for marketing and sales service level agreements. Instead of being overly complicated, the template provides straightforward, no-nonsense sections so that any party can skim at a glance.

What we like best: It’s laid out in a two-column style to easily denote which team is responsible for which activities and metrics. Having them side-by-side like this further underscores the goals of partnership and alignment.

How to Implement This in Your SLA

Simplicity is the key to recreating this SLA template. Whether you use HubSpot’s offering or create your own, effectively implementing this type of SLA means resisting the temptation to list out every possible outcome and instead focus on the big picture of goals, initiatives, and accountability.

2. Hivehouse Digital’s Marketing & Sales SLA Template

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This sales and marketing SLA template focuses heavily on metrics, making it a great choice for high-performance teams. The design relies on tables for easy information input and even comes with prompts/examples to help you define the agreement.

What we like best: The document is organized step-by-step, making it a great choice for teams without a formalized SLA process (yet).

How to Implement This in Your SLA

Implementing the Hivehouse model for your SLA means leaning into its step-by-step strengths. By breaking down SLAs into smaller and more manageable steps, there’s less chance of you and your team getting overwhelmed.

3. Lucidchart’s Marketing and Sales SLA Template With Examples

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Instead of going through the process of creating an SLA, this template organizes sections by the marketing and sales process itself, from goals to lead qualification, handoff, and nurturing.

What we like best: The template takes a visual approach with columns for marketing, sales, and shared goals. This makes ownership of deliverables crystal clear throughout the process.

How to Implement This in Your SLA

Seeing is believing in this type of SLA template. While the nitty-gritty details are there, this approach uses color and shape to highlight important categories and actions. If you’re planning to take this approach to your SLA, use color psychology and graphic design principles to create a visually appealing SLA.

4. AT&T’s Small Business Service Agreement Example

Here’s a real-world example in the wild. Not all SLAs are between marketing and sales teams or even other internal departments. Here’s an SLA that lays out a service agreement between AT&T and its customers, setting expectations for the engagement. They make this SLA publicly accessible for all their users.

What we like best: The agreement is plain and simple, leveraging bullet points to make each detail clear and understandable.

How to Implement This in Your SLA

AT&T’s real-world example highlights the importance of calling out what matters — in this case, by using bullet points. Applying the same approach to your SLA means distilling larger and more complicated outcomes into easily-understood snippets that don’t leave room for confusion.

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5. Microsoft Azure SLA Example for Cloud Services

As a service provider, Microsoft Azure also makes its SLA for customers public. The SLA uses bullet points to clearly identify its offerings and customer promises, which are unique depending on the plan and services rendered.

What we like best: The SLA is organized with headings for quick navigation to the offerings that are most pertinent, and information is kept concise with an optional “View full details” link.

How to Implement This in Your SLA

In-depth SLAs are naturally complicated, making it easy to get bogged down in the details despite best efforts to keep things simple. Microsoft’s example offers a streamlined approach to implementation: Call out the key details and then provide links to the full SLA text.

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6. PandaDoc’s Multi-Page SLA Template

PandaDoc provides another option for provider/client agreements and is a great choice for more formal arrangements.

What we like best: This template makes for a clear and concise SLA with times, dates, and solid expectations.

How to Implement This in Your SLA

While this type of SLA leans more toward legalese with language like “whereas” and “therefore”, it has the advantage of a solid narrative structure to describe expectations. If you’re planning to implement something similar, consider using a template to speed up the process rather than starting from scratch.

How to Make an SLA for Marketing and Sales Alignment

While SLAs are common between businesses and new customers, they can also improve internal alignment. When one exists between sales and marketing departments in particular, this agreement details marketing goals (like number of leads or revenue pipeline) and the sales activities that’ll follow and support them (like engaging leads that were qualified by the marketing team).

Both the sales and marketing departments use this document as a commitment to support each other based on concrete, numerical goals. And guess what? 87% of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration between sales and marketing enables critical business growth.

Now, if you don’t have a Sales and Marketing SLA in place, fear not: We’ve outlined how to create one below so that you can easily start aligning your sales and marketing teams.

To draft your SLA, you first need to align your Sales and Marketing teams around a shared set of goals — or, as we put it before, the harmonious “Smarketing.” This alignment can then dictate the creation of a written SLA that reflects these goals. Here’s how to create an SLA with “Smarketing” in mind:

1. Calculate a numerical marketing goal based on the sales team’s quotas.

As a marketing department, not only should you have a concrete goal for each campaign you run, but you also should have a high-level numerical goal that aligns with the sales team’s operations. At the end of the day, that’ll mean qualified leads and actual sales from those leads.

Salespeople are driven almost entirely by their sales quotas — the numerical goals that correlate with their compensation and job security. If Marketing commits to a similar, related numerical goal, it shows that the team is being held accountable in a manner similar to Sales. The trick, however, is to make sure your numerical goal can effectively power the sales team’s numerical goal.

In order to calculate the marketing side of your SLA, you’ll need the following four metrics:

• Total sales goal (in terms of revenue quota)
• % revenue that comes from marketing-generated leads (as opposed to sales-generated ones)
• Average sales deal size
• Average lead-to-customer close %

Then, it’s time to do some calculations:

• Sales quota x % revenue from marketing-generated leads = Marketing-sourced revenue goal
• Marketing-sourced revenue goal ÷ Average sales deal size = # of customers needed
• Customers ÷ Average lead-to-customer close % = # of leads needed

2. Segment your goals by specific intervals during the year.

It might also be a good idea to reevaluate the marketing side of the SLA each month, as a variety of factors can change the numbers used in your calculations over time. To do so, create a document that tracks your SLA calculations by month, which should include the following metrics:

• # of marketing-generated leads
• # of those leads that became customers
• Revenue from those closed customers
• Total revenue closed that month from marketing-generated leads only
• Total revenue closed that month

You will also need:

• The average sales cycle length

With the figures above, you can re-calculate the metrics you started with on a monthly basis, or at whichever interval suits your business — quarter, year, etc. Just make sure the same measure of time is used for both Sales and Marketing to maintain alignment. Have a look:

• # marketing-generated leads that became customers ÷ # marketing-generated leads = lead-to-customer close %
• Revenue from closed customers ÷ # of marketing-generated leads that became customers = sales deal size
• Total revenue closed from marketing-generated leads / total revenue closed = % revenue from marketing-generated leads

You could also take it one step further, and incorporate quantity and quality into these metrics. The above calculations provide you with a quantitative volume goal of marketing-generated leads. However, we know that not all leads are created equal, and as a result, some may be considered higher- or lower-quality than others.

For example, a decision-making executive might be a more valuable contact than an intern. If that’s the case, you can do the above analysis for each subset of leads, and set up separate goals for each type/quality level.

Want to take it even further? Measure in terms of value, instead of volume. For example, a CEO may be worth $100, for instance, while a director is $50, a manager is $40, and so on.

3. Calculate sales’ figures and their goals.

The sales side of the SLA should detail the speed and depth to which a salesperson should follow up with marketing-generated leads. When establishing this end of the SLA, consider these two sales statistics:

• Salespeople who follow up with leads within an hour are nearly seven times more likely to have meaningful conversations with a decision maker on the other end.
• However, only 7% of leads respond to a follow-up contact within five minutes after filling out a form.

Bottom line? Not all leads may be fit to send to sales immediately. They often need to meet some minimum level of quality, like reaching a certain activity level, which can only take place after being nurtured by Marketing.

Nonetheless, engaging a lead the short time after he/she converts is critical to maintaining a relationship with them — the question you have to answer is what that engagement should look like. Either sales or marketing should take action to start building that relationship, make nurturing easier, and set up the sales rep for success when she eventually does reach out.

Keep in mind this advice is futile if you don’t consider the bandwidth of your sales reps. Sure, in a perfect world, they’d make six follow-up attempts for each lead — in reality, though, they may simply not have enough hours in the day to do that. For that reason, you’ll also need to factor in the number of leads each rep is getting (based on the marketing SLA), how much time they spend on marketing-generated leads versus sales-generated leads, and how much time they have to spend on each one. If you’re looking to conserve time, some of the follow-up — email, in particular — could be automated, so look into options there.

4. Set up marketing SLA reporting.

Now that you have your SLA goals, it’s time to track your progress against that goal — daily.

To start, graph the goal line using this formula:

(1÷n x g)

Where n is the number of days in the month and g is your monthly goal.

That should determine what portion of your monthly goal you need to achieve each day. You’ll want to graph that cumulatively throughout the month and mark your cumulative actual results on the same chart. We call that a waterfall graph, and it looks something like this:

5. Set up sales SLA reporting.

For the sales SLA reporting, you’ll have two graphs — one monitoring the speed of follow-up, and the other monitoring the depth of follow-up.

To graph the speed of follow up, you’ll need the date/time the lead was presented to sales, and the date/time the lead received her first follow-up. The difference between those two times equals the time it took for sales to follow up with that particular lead.

Take the averages of lengths of time it took for sales to follow up with all leads within a particular timeframe — day, week, month — and chart it against the SLA goal.

To graph the depth of follow-up — e.g., the number of attempts — look specifically at leads that have not been connected with, since the goal of the follow-up is to get a connection. For leads over a certain timeframe that have not received outreach, look at the average number of follow-up attempts made, and graph that against the SLA goal.

6. Communicate, celebrate, and address the achievement (or lack thereof).

Maintaining strong communication regarding how each team is performing on goals boosts transparency. If either team isn’t reaching their goals, addressing that confirms their importance, while celebrating hitting those goals can aid motivation.

If you’re not sure where to begin when it comes to setting these goals, check out our free Marketing & Sales Lead Goal Calculator, designed to help you determine and track the goals that will eventually become part of your SLA.

To ensure you’re getting the most from SLA creation, implementation and management, it’s worth aligning your efforts with industry best practices. Some of the most common include:

Define Realistic Goals

While promising the moon might seem like a good idea, things can quickly go off track when SLA outcomes aren’t met. As a result, it’s worth starting SLA creation with a brainstorming session that includes relevant stakeholders. Here, the goal is to define what you want to do, what you can do, and what you can reasonably offer.

Ensure Everyone is On Board

Next, make sure all relevant parties feel like their needs are being met with your draft SLA. Better to find out up-front that there are potential problems — and make proactive changes — than face pressure to scrap in-place service level agreements and start over.

Get Specific

Specificity is what makes SLAs work. For example, if you’re an IT service company drafting an SLA about uptime, the number of “nines” — 99.999 percent, 99.9999 percent, etc. — defines exactly how much uptime you’re agreeing to provide. Using specific terminology reduces the risk of conflict around SLA expectations by removing ambiguity.

Pinpoint Key Metrics

While specific SLAs are a solid starting point, you also need ways to effectively measure the success of your agreement. In the uptime example above, minutes of downtime per year are often used to determine if goals are being met. When it comes to marketing or sales, meanwhile, metrics could include leads generated, deals closed, or any other measurement that makes sense under your SLA structure.

Account for the Unexpected

Unexpected events — such as severe weather, staffing challenges, or sudden IT failures — can make SLA goals challenging to reach. As a result, it’s worth creating clauses that account for unexpected events. While there’s no way to predict exactly what will happen, and obligations remain to meet at least minimum standards, building in some breathing room for the unexpected is well worth the effort.

Double-Check the Details

Even small details matter. Consider the example above: While 99.999 percent uptime works out to just over 5 minutes of downtime per year, 99.9999 percent is 31 seconds. Here, a misplaced 9 could put your company on the hook for providing service levels that are almost impossible to reach. As a result, it’s worth getting your SLA double-checked by a fresh pair of eyes before moving forward.

Review and Revise as Needed

Service level agreements aren’t static documents. While they cover a set period and describe a specific set of actions, both provider and partner needs can change during that time. As a result, it’s worth building in the option for review part way through the SLA agreement period and conducting a full review when the contract is up to determine if changes are required.

One Last Step When It Comes to SLAs

When it comes to what should be in your service level agreement, there’s one final piece: Review these metrics on a regular basis to monitor your progress, and make sure both Sales and Marketing have access to the reports for both sides of the SLA.

This step helps to maintain accountability and transparency and allows for both teams to address issues — or congratulate each other on productive results.

Editor’s Note: The post was originally published in January 2019, but was updated in December 2019 for comprehensiveness.

A few months ago, while I was driving to the airport, I saw a billboard for Kim Kardashian’s company, SKIMS. A week later, I saw ads on Instagram, then a SKIMS segment on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” 

I had one of those moments where I thought “SKIMS is showing up everywhere!” That’s because the company has an integrated media planning strategy.

A few months after these events, when I was shopping for shapewear for my wedding, guess what brand I thought of? (Spoiler alert: it was SKIMS.) That’s why, as a marketer, having an integrated media plan is important for your marketing strategy — below, we’ll dive into what it is, and how to adopt it in your marketing strategy. 

Already know what you need? Jump there with this table of contents:

• What is integrated media?
• Integrated Media Planner
• Integrated Media Planning
• Integrated Media Examples

Using integrated media essentially ensures that all of a businesses’ different audience segments can encounter its ads, and likely encounter them on various channels. The decision about which specific channels to use is the task of an integrated media planner. 

 

Integrated Media Planner

An integrated media planner makes all media planning decisions based on buyer personas, competitor analysis, reviews, and social listening. From this, the planner learns the best course of action that will help their marketing meet business goals. 

They choose the most effective channels, types of media (paid, owned, earned, etc.), and consider when and how frequently content will show up depending on the platform. 

For example, perhaps you’ll post Instagram stories around 5-7 p.m. when your audience is home from work and you’ll plan a radio spot for the morning, around 6-9 a.m., to reach your audience that is commuting.

Either way, deciding when and how often a piece of content will appear is an important aspect of an integrated media planner’s job, and ‌this happens during integrated media planning.

 

Integrated Media Planning

Integrated media planning is the process you’ll go through when you’re considering various media platforms you want to use in a marketing campaign. 

An integrated media plan answers questions like “Who is the target audience?” and “What medium will reach this audience?” For example, if you’re targeting millennials, you might consider Instagram and Twitter for your media plan. However, if you’re targeting Gen X, maybe you’re thinking that a combination of radio and Facebook might work best.

Integrated marketing plans also ensure that the ads you create across your different channels are consistent and cohesive for what you’re offering. As in, when you advertise something on one channel, you advertise it the same way on another channel so audiences can see a cohesive campaign regardless of how they come across your ad. 

Ultimately, an integrated media plan will use a multichannel approach with a mix of traditional and digital methods, such as radio, TV, billboards, social media, streaming commercials, search engine marketing, email marketing, events, or partnerships.

Below, we’ve outlined five steps to creating an integrated media plan:

1. Figure out your goals.

Before you can start planning your integrated media approach, you have to know your goals.

Just like any marketing campaign, you should have SMART goals written down so you can develop a strategy.

For example, perhaps you want to reach a certain amount of people in a certain amount of time. Or maybe you’re just looking to increase brand awareness among a new market.

No matter what it is, write down your goals and objectives so you can track your performance.

2. Decide your target market.

If your company has a buyer persona, or perhaps even a few, then this might be easy for you. Or maybe you’re deciding between which persona you’re going to target for a certain campaign. Either way, your personas should guide your media plan.

However, if you don’t have a target buyer persona, then now is the time to create one. Your buyer persona will include demographic information such as income, education, and gender. But it should also include pain points and goals.

Understanding your target market means knowing what’s important to your audience, what their life is like, and what problems they have.

Ultimately, you should know who you want to purchase your product so you can deliver personalized content.

Also, your buyer persona might tell you what type of media your audience likes to consume and the type of content they like.

To make this process easier, think about your customer journey. What are the touchpoints? Figuring out this information should help you develop your integrated media plan.

3. Choose various media platforms to disseminate your campaign.

This is the bread and butter of integrated media planning as its when you’ll decide where to distribute your marketing campaign.

Do you want to include social media, TV, radio, organic search, and blogging in your strategy?

Ultimately, you should make this decision based on research on your target market. You should have answered questions such as “Where does my audience want to consume content?” and “What type of content do they want to consume?”

For example, your audience might prefer short-form videos to long-form videos. Or perhaps they like reading a blog more than seeing a picture on Instagram. Either way, you should strike a balance between traditional and digital methods.

Ultimately, your integrated media plan should be audience-centric.

4. Produce the creative.

Once you know your goals, your target market, and most importantly, what type of content you’re going to create, it’s time to produce the creative for your campaign.

Write the copy, design the graphics, and take the pictures. Your creative elements should follow your brand guidelines and tell a story about who you are as a company.

To keep your workload easy, you might consider creating adaptable marketing assets that can be used for several channels.

5. Execute and analyze.

Now that it’s all said and done, it’s time to analyze your approach. Answer questions like, “Which channels worked best?” and “Did I strike the right balance between various media platforms?”

Once you’re armed with this information, you can incorporate it into your future campaigns.

However, don’t forget to let your strategy play out. Don’t switch it up so quickly that you don’t know how it will perform over time. Some campaigns include both short-term and long-term strategies and goals, so it’s important to see the impact before changing it out.

 

Integrated Media Plan Examples

1. Baboon to the Moon

Baboon to the Moon sells bags for people to use on their adventures, from small weekend getaways to intense backpacking trips. It used integrated marketing to advertise one of its limited-run lines that pays homage to CDMX (Mexico City). 

It created marketing assets for three different marketing channels (email, Instagram, and website, respectively) that are cohesive in images, copywriting, and editing style. Regardless of the channel audiences are reached on, every single ad tells a story about the same thing — the CDMX collection. 

2. NPR Music Tiny Desk 

NPR runs a segment on NPR Music called Tiny Desk, where artists perform a live, acoustic set. It recently launched a Tiny Desk contest for the ‌public, where undiscovered artists can submit an original song for a chance to win a Tiny Desk concert. To advertise the contest, it created an integrated media campaign on Instagram Story and Twitter (pictured below),

 

And a humorous YouTube video ad. 

 

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3. GrubHub and Seamless 

Delivery service GrubHub absorbed delivery service Seamless in 2021 and launched an integrated marketing campaign to make users aware of the acquisition. Seamless created an Instagram post, shown below, that lets customers know with a unique and catchy slogan that “Seamless is GrubHub.” 

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The companies also advertised the new acquisition in New York City subways, creating an integrated marketing campaign using traditional forms of advertisements (physical ads) and digital ads (Instagram). 

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Over to You

The best marketing campaigns almost always include an integrated media plan. You should have a balance between digital and traditional marketing tactics. After all, the omnichannel experience is what customers expect and want. Marketing is all about delivering the right message, to the right people, at the right time, and that’s what integrated media planning is all about.

What was the first social network you ever joined?

While many people will recall it being Facebook or Twitter, others might remember some of the earlier, less popular social networks. You know, like Friendster, Open Diary, and Orkut?

A lot of these original social networks go forgotten, but that doesn’t make their stories any less important. After all, these networks laid the groundwork for the social media giants we use today.

In this blog post, we’ll dive into the stories of some of the earliest social networks — and why they didn’t stick around.

From Six Degrees to Snapchat: A Brief History of Social Media

One of the first versions of a modern social network is Classmates.com, which launched in 1995 and allowed users to share messages and photos with their childhood and college classmates.

In 1997, SixDegrees was founded based on the theory that people are only separated by six levels of friends and family members. It was the first social platform that allowed users to create and curate profiles and laid the groundwork for online social networking.

Blogging (once called weblogs) came to the scene in 1998 with Open Diary, which included a social networking feature where users in groups could read each other’s writing. Open Diary laid the groundwork for later blogging sites like Xanga and LiveJournal in 1999.

In 2002, Friendster was launched to help circles of friends find one another and communicate online. It paved the way for other sites like LinkedIn (2002), Myspace (2003), and Facebook (2004) to launch networks with similar features, such as Myspace’s Top Eight friends, Facebook friend groups, and LinkedIn connections.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s came Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Google+, which experimented with short-form and visual content, as well as aggregating and saving content for later consumption. Some of the latest social networks on the scene include Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok — platforms based on sharing authentic, ephemeral, visual content that requires as few words as possible.

Of course, this is a very brief history — and several social networks were launched and forgotten during this timeline. Needless to say, those networks still played a role in the development of the bigger social landscape we know and use today. Let’s discuss some of the networks we’ve forgotten and why they didn’t stick around.

8 Dead Social Networks You Might Not Remember

1. Vine

Launched in 2013, Vine was a popular video app where users created six-second looped videos. Users could make their content, follow friends and popular creators, and browse trending videos. It dominated social media networks from 2013-to 2016, and many of the popular videos remain relevant in pop culture and memes to this day.

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When Did It Fall?

Vine was discontinued in October of 2016.

Why Did It Fail?

Vine ultimately failed because it could not keep up with other growing networks of its day that championed video, like Instagram. Many Vine executives and co-founders were also against monetization and did not want to take sponsors from brands, so creators and marketers moved to platforms like YouTube where they could monetize their content.

2. MySpace

Myspace is a social networking site where users could create a profile page to share their interests, photos, and connect with friends. It also appreciated music, so users could set a song that would play every time a friend visited their profile.

In its prime, Myspace was the most popular social networking site, even surpassing Google as the most visited website in the United States.

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When Did It Fall?

In 2011, Myspace’s CEO Mike Jones announced that the platform would no longer try to rival Facebook. It would instead pivot to a social entertainment style site and, while it still exists today, does not remain a fraction as popular as it did in its prime.

Why Did It Fail?

The New York Times cites Myspace’s decline as result of consumers and changing tastes, coupled with the rise and popularity of Facebook.

Myspace also had a change of leadership when bought by News Corporation, and Tom Standage, Deputy Editor of The Economist, said “Its new owner treated it as a media outlet rather than a technology platform and seemed more interested in maximizing advertising revenue than fixing or improving the sites underlying technology.” The site soon became inundated with advertisements, affecting usability.

The site ultimately fell because of a failure to focus on site users and their experience, but instead on monetization and advertisers, which sent consumers elsewhere.

3. Friendster

Friendster, launched in 2002, was the first social network to allow users to create profiles and share content with their contacts. It was also used to learn about local events, pop culture news, and to connect with brands. At its peak, Friendster had roughly 115 million users around the world. The website currently ranks 2,949,342 in global internet traffic and engagement over the past 90 days, according to Alexa.

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When Did It Fall?

Friendster rebranded as a social gaming website in 2011. It closed for good in 2015 after Mark Zuckerberg bought Friendster’s suite of social networking patents for $40 million.

Why Did It Fail?

Jonathan Abrams, Friendster’s founder, says “The problem was that Friendster was having a lot of technology problems,” and people could barely log into the website for two years. He adds, “By the time Facebook and MySpace were doing those things, Friendster had lost a lot of market share in the U.S. for stability issues.”

Computer scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology conducted an “autopsy” on Friendster to uncover its demise, and they cited a disastrous site redesign in 2009 that caused traffic and users to plummet. They also determined that it took much more effort to navigate the platform than the benefits that came from using it.

Friendster also wasn’t widely adopted by users’ friends and families, so their time was better spent on other networks where more of their real-world network was online — namely, on Facebook and Myspace.

4. Google+

Google+, launched in 2011, was a social network owned and operated by Google. It was essentially a way for all Google users to have a central location for all of the actions they took across all of the different Google platforms and services.

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When Did It Fall?

The Google+ developer API was discontinued in March of 2019, and the site was shut down for business and personal use in April 2019.

Why Did It Fail?

Low user engagement was a significant factor in Google+’s demise, and the company reported having difficulty “Creating and maintaining a successful Google+ that meets customer expectations,” and said that 90% of user sessions lasted less than five seconds.

In addition, an API update in 2018 potentially exposed the personal information of 52.5 million users to outside developers, and this occurred for six days before being discovered. The Wall Street Journal reported that “The move effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of a product that was launched in 2011 to challenge Facebook Inc. and is widely seen as one of Google’s biggest failures.”

5. Open Diary

Open Diary, founded in 1997, was an online blogging and journaling website that laid the groundwork for features we see on modern blogs, like comments. Writers could add friends and change privacy settings so only specific people would see what they were writing, and it eventually expanded to different topic areas so users could write about a variety of themes.

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When Did It Fall?

Open Diary closed in 2014.

Why Did It Fail?

After two major security breaches, falling subscription revenue led the Open Diary team to offer more expensive paid subscription options to recoup its losses. This move instead drove users away towards free alternative blogging sites, like Xanga and LiveJournal.

6. Ping

When he launched Ping in 2010, Steve Jobs referred to it as “Facebook and Twitter meets iTunes.” Ping was a social networking feature within iTunes where users could add friends, follow artists, and look up local concerts. Friends could also preview songs their friends were downloading and listening to.

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When Did It Fall?

Ping was terminated in 2012.

Why Did It Fail?

Ping was originally meant to feature an integration with Facebook that would allow users to easily connect with friends and artists they already followed on Facebook, but the partnership fell through. Users were then left with a blank slate on which to build another social network of people to follow.

Additionally, Ping only allowed users to listen to 90-second previews of songs on its network — any longer and they had to buy the song. Since Ping was part of iTunes, it became redundant instead of an enhanced experience. Apple replaced Ping with a better integration with Facebook and Twitter that allowed for easy music sharing.

Many of the features meant to make Ping stand out from the crowd can now be seen on Spotify, where users can connect their Facebook and follow friends, see what they’re listening to, and learn more about their favorite artists.

7. Orkut

After a failed attempt to purchase Friendster, Google launched Orkut in 2004 as a place for people to add friends and share content. Users could view profiles, rate friends, add them to lists, and like their friends posts. At its peak, Orkut had 300 million users around the world.

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When Did It Fall:

Google shut Orkut down in 2014.

Why It Failed:

Orkut took hold in a few countries, primarily India and Brazil, but never achieved widespread international popularity. At the time, YouTube and Google+ were outpacing Orkut’s growth, so Google refocused on these platforms in an attempt to compete against Facebook and social media. As such, the Orkut team cited the growth of Google’s other social media assets as a reason to shutter the site.

8. Eons

Eons, launched in 2006, was touted as “Myspace for boomers,” and set age restrictions that prevented anyone under the age of 50 from joining, which was later lowered to 40 in 2008. The site never experienced a huge boom in popularity around its launch and, at its peak, had roughly 800,000 users.

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When Did It Fall:

Eons.com shut down in 2012.

Why It Failed:

The age targeting was restrictive for a reason, but this had detrimental effects as the user base was rather limited. It also prevented the site from being widely popularized and, as social media was just coming onto the horizon and wasn’t yet widely adopted, the platform was unable to build a successful network out of such a small user group.

Lessons for Marketers From Failed Social Media Networks

There are several lessons for modern marketers in the stories of these fallen social networks. We’re not saying that you’re always at risk of killing your brand, but keeping these tips in mind may help you maintain and grow your followers and engage with them authentically.

1. Understand your audience.

The most significant factor of success when creating a social media network is creating for the audience that you want to have. For example, you wouldn’t create a text-based blogging site if you’re hoping to attract multimedia creators.

As with all marketing practices, make sure that you have a solid understanding of your audience, who they are, and what they want, so you can create a platform that will meet their needs and keep them on the platform.

2. Meet your audience where they already are.

Many social networks fail because brands try to reinvent something that already works well, or requires extra work for users to be able to participate. For example, Ping wasn’t able to integrate with Facebook, so users had to recreate social networks that likely already existed for them on an entirely new platform.

Instead, meet your audiences where they already are and supplement their experience. Part of Facebook’s success and longevity is due to its creation of an infrastructure where users don’t need to leave Facebook to get things done. It’s grown beyond just a social network into a destination for news, commerce, and content consumption.

Marketers should experiment with new technologies and offerings to keep followers interacting with their brand more, such as creating helpful chatbots, publishing on new forms of media, and trying new strategies like virtual reality or experiential marketing to keep audiences engaged and on a website or social platform for as long as possible.

3. Borrow from your competitors.

Borrow a page from the Facebook playbook and be aware of what your competitors are doing. For example, Vine was forced to shut down because other networks were offering similar features, but did it better and provided more opportunities, like creators who could monetize their content. A recent example

4. Be authentic and not overly self-promotional.

A common thread between Ping and Open Diary’s downfall was the brand’s attempt to monetize. Users didn’t like Ping advertising iTunes music that they could only listen to for 90 seconds, and Open Diary users didn’t want to pay for something that was free on other sites.

Users want an authentic experience on social media to interact with friends, family, and their networks, not logging on to a site and being bombarded with advertisements.

The next time a new social network comes onto the scene, we’ll be here to tell you the story — and predict if it will be here to stay. 

Believe it or not, driving traffic to your website — albeit challenging — isn’t enough to sustain your business. To truly leverage that investment in traffic, marketers must use conversion rate optimization, or CRO, to convince said traffic to complete the desired action.

The list below outlines many helpful tools for marketers looking to optimize their conversion rates. From high-level changes like landing page and email design and inspiration to in-depth insights on how your visitors navigate through your content, these tools will help you improve your site’s performance.

To help you understand the tools and their uses, we’ve also broken this list into a few major categories:

• Lead capture tools
• Research tools
• Analytics tools
• Mouse tracking and heat maps
• Feedback tools
• Experiment tools

Ready? Let’s start converting.

Lead Capture Tools

These are the tools you will use to capture more leads on your site, thus improving your CRO analytics . While most conversion-focused content has a built-in form or CTA, these tools act as additional lead capture mechanisms to boost the number of leads that convert on your content.

1. HubSpot

Price: Free

It’s Google Analytics meets SumoMe meets a CRM. Sounds cool, right? It starts with an exit intent popup CTA, then syncs with your website’s existing forms to learn about your site visitors and their path through your pages.

HubSpot’s tools give you in-depth contact insights on prospects and current contacts in your database. It also pairs its contacts database with a dashboard that shows you a high-level view of which marketing efforts are paying off and converting and which ones aren’t.

2. HelloBar

Price: Free plan or $29/month to $49/month

HelloBar is a lead capture tool that allows you to add a popup form to your website to grow your email list, promote your social pages, showcase a sale, or other lead generation strategies. The free version allows you to create one modal that’s shown to every 10th visitor. However, premium plans offer more advanced call to action (CTA) options.

3. Sumo

Price: Free plan or $49/month

Sumo offers a suite of free tools to help you increase your site conversions. For lead capture, it offers a “Welcome Mat” popup CTA, a “Smart Bar” to increase email subscribers, a scroll-triggered box, and a “Contact Us” form.

Along with their Google Analytics research tools, the Sumo suite helps you gain on-page insights and increase your email list.

Research Tools

Before you create any content, call upon these tools to draw inspiration and check out what other smart marketers have seen success with in the past.

4. BuzzSumo

Price: $99/month to $499/month

The best content gets shared and linked the most. So what better way to gain preliminary insights than to compile all of the most shared content on your particular topic?

With BuzzSumo, all you have to do is enter the keyword or topic. Then, it’ll pull together the most shared and linked content on that topic. Time frames range from the last day, week, month, or year.

So if you’re trying to optimize the landing page for your new webinar on cat fashion, all you have to do is enter “cat fashion.” BuzzSumo will then give you the best articles, resources, videos, and more on the fascinating topic of cat couture.

You’ll then be able to dig in and explore some of the key elements that made these pages popular. With that, you can go back and incorporate them into your own content.

5. SimilarWeb

Price: Contact for pricing

Knowing where your website visitors came from can (and should) have a big impact on the type of content you create. With SimilarWeb, you can see where your traffic is coming from, which keywords are fueling your organic traffic, and what other sites are considered most similar to yours. You can also compare analytics to find out the website conversion optimization by looking over data.

With this information, you’ll be able to optimize content for your biggest traffic sources and dig in to see what competitor sites are doing to drive conversions.

6. Land-book

Price: Free

If you’re creating a landing page from scratch, getting started can be difficult. Luckily there’s Land-book, a free collection of the web’s best-designed landing pages.

With Land-book, you can explore how top companies use elements like copy, positioning, layout, and design to drive conversions. Pick and choose your favorite elements from the Land-book database, and then incorporate them into your own landing page.

7. Really Good Emails

Price: Free

In today’s marketing landscape, if you want to get your message across, you’d better know a thing or two about visual communication and design.

Don’t know a thing or two about either? Enter Really Good Emails.

Similar to Land-book, Really Good Emails is a database of the web’s best-designed emails from the world’s most innovative companies. Use this as a resource to see how you can design your email to get your message across in the best way possible, as fast as possible.

(Check out this post for even more resources where you can find great marketing examples.)

8. SubjectLine.com

Price: Free

When sending an email, the subject line can either make or break your performance. Before you choose which ones to send, check them out using this awesome resource.

SubjectLine.com has tested over three million subject lines and has a tool to evaluate your potential options. It gives a deliverability and marketing score, plus advice on improving.

9. Headline Analyzer

Price: Free

CoSchedule’s headline analyzer gives a score of 1–100 to gauge the effectiveness of titles. The score is calculated based on word usage, grammar, vocabulary, type of headline, character, and word count.

The tool shows you what your headline looks like on Google and in an email subject line. This tool serves as a great litmus test to generally know how well your headline will perform.

CRO Analytics Tools

These are the tools you will use to measure and track your content’s performance. You can use the CRO analytics to fully analyze the dips, jumps, and fluctuations in your conversion rate.

10. Kissmetrics

Price: Contact for pricing

Kissmetrics is a complex tool that integrates with your email service provider to make it easy to analyze your audience and email them in specific cohorts.

With Kissmetrics, you can learn the path that your customers have taken through your website. You can also conduct A/B tests, build data sets (without SQL), perform website conversion optimization, and assess the ROI from your campaigns.

11. Google Analytics

Price: Free for basic, contact sales for premium

Google Analytics is a free way to track your website visitors. You can see how long it takes visitors to bounce from your pages, if visitors complete goals from a certain path, and which sources bring people to your website.

What’s great about Google Analytics is that it allows you to see which keywords people are using to find your page, devices they’re searching on, and uncover demographic data. However, there are no specific emails or contact information associated with your site visitors.

12. HubSpot Website Grader

Price: Free

Website Grader is a great way to get a quick snapshot of a website’s overall performance. It gives insights on performance factors (including speed, page size, and page requests), mobile responsiveness and appearance, SEO (page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and site map), and security. It’s great for website conversion optimization.

From there, the tool devises a grade and provides suggestions on how to improve, which makes it easy to come up with some quick wins that’ll help you boost conversions.

Mouse Tracking and Heat Mapping Tools

These are the tools you will use to see how people interact with your content, including how they scroll and where they click.

13. Hotjar

Price: Free for Basic, $29/month

Once you’ve nailed the basics like landing pages, CTAs, pop ups, and content, you’re ready for some more advanced conversion rate optimization. Hotjar offers heat maps and screen recordings. They enable you to track how much your page is being viewed and how visitors navigate your website.

Hotjar also offers analytics, so you can see how well your pages are performing. This is helpful to see what’s working and what you can change to increase conversion.

14. Clicktale

Price: Contact for pricing

Clicktale is similar to Hotjar, as it also offers heat maps to help you determine the most valuable real estate on your pages, scroll depth (where is the “fold” on your website?), click tracking, and link analysis.

Using these tools, you’ll have the information you need to organize content, CTAs, and page design in a way that makes the most sense for engagement.

15. Clicky

Price: Free plan, or $9.99/month to $149/month

Clicky gives you real-time analytics on the visitors to your website. It tells you where people are accessing your site, how long they’ve stayed on each page, and how many visitors are actively online. The resource also offers heat maps and scroll tracking.

Clicky is an excellent one-stop-shop for customer behavior. You’ll have multiple formats at your disposal to leverage for optimizing the performance of your website — so you can convert as many leads as possible.

16. Crazy Egg

Price: $24/month to $249/month

Crazy Egg offers a full suite of heat maps and click tracking, with the additional functionality segment clicks by source and evaluating link effectiveness. The basic package is fairly inexpensive and gives great insights into how effective each website page is.

17. Heatmap.me

Price: Free plan or up to $100/month

Heatmap.me is a great free option for anyone looking to start exploring heat maps, responsive web design tests, and real-time page statistics. Heatmap.me can also track dynamic elements on your site in the heat map tool. Think slider bars, photo galleries, and other interactive sections.

When you use the tool, you’ll see real-time analytics. It gives you important data you want to see, such as CTR and page performance. They’re easy to analyze for beginners and provide the numbers you need to enhance success.

Feedback Tools

These are the tools you’ll use to engage and receive feedback from your visitors. Feedback tools include surveys, polls, messaging, and user testing programs.

18. Intercom

Price: $87/month to $153/month

You can use chat tools to acquire new customers and chat with existing customers.

As a CRO analytics tool, you can use Intercom to communicate with website prospects to learn if they need additional help, find out how their experience is going, and learn how you can improve. It also allows you to track leads and use a shared inbox with your team.

19. Qualaroo

Price: $149/month to $499/month

Using chat windows doesn’t have to be limited to just being live. In fact, Qualaroo proves that. It offers popups to collect live feedback from website viewers.

With this information, you can tailor a site experience, target specific customers, and learn what issues people may be experiencing. This tool is extremely helpful at all stages of the funnel, and is frequently utilized in the e-commerce space.

20. SurveyMonkey

Price: $25/month to $99/month

SurveyMonkey has a free option for those just starting with survey research. You can use this tool to learn demographic information, discover which types of content your prospects and blog subscribers prefer, and get product feedback.

Survey your customers about their satisfaction. You’ll get great insight straight from the source about what draws your audience to your company. From these results, you can work on improving conversion methods.

21. Five Second Test

Price: $50/month to $100/month

UsabilityHub has an awesome community-fueled tool called Five Second Test that allows users to upload a product, app experience, or design and have the community test it before launch. For example, one of the tests you can run is a click test, which will give you a heat map of page performance.

You get responses about recall, general feedback, and UI thoughts. This is a great way to have opinions. Five Second Test also offers click, preference, question, and navflow tests for other website and UI questions. You can also design surveys with the tool.

Experiment Tools

These are the tools you’ll use to manage, plan, and execute A/B and multivariate tests. Some of these tools will help you turn ideas into experiments, while others will help you create the variations and run the actual tests on your site.

22. Optimizely

Price: Contact for pricing

Testing is hard. It’s hard to come up with a good control group, find a large sample, and determine if your experiment is statistically significant. Luckily, Optimizely helps a lot with all of that – and then some. With Optimizely, you conduct tests across all devices and platforms, then figure out if it’s significant. The software offers A/B, multiple page, and multivariate tests.

Optimizely’s tool gives you a full, robust report of test results (example shown above). You’ll see interactions and, best of all, sign up clicks. Your report will tell you how many leads each test variant earned, so you can choose the best.

23. Effective Experiments

Price: Contact for pricing

Effective Experiments is a concise way to track all of your experiments. If you have tons of Excel spreadsheets cross-referenced with Google Analytics data, you are probably going crazy trying to keep track of everything. This tool puts it all in one place and helps you determine statistical significance.

How to Shop for Conversion Rate Optimization Tools

It can be hard to shop for the best conversion rate optimization tools, so we gathered together these five tips to keep in mind:

1. Sign up for trials before making a decision.
2. Be thorough when searching for reviews.
3. Go for quality, not quantity, when it comes to price.
4. Ask other marketers what they are using.
5. Read reports from other companies about CRO.

The Benefits of CRO Analytics Tools

There are several benefits of selecting CRO analytics tools. Some include:

• Being able to effectively track ROI.
• Using tools to create an engaging headline.
• Capture customer leads.
• Collect marketing research data.

Now, you’re armed and ready to start improving conversion rates across your website conversion optimization and marketing efforts. These tools range from free and for beginners to robust and more advanced. Feel out which options seem right for you, and soon you’ll be upgrading to the more complex tools when you’ve mastered the basics.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Benjamin Franklin once said “Failing to plan is planning to fail,” and when it comes to content and media strategy, truer words have never been spoken.

Until 2020, that is.

In the last two years, 99% of content planners, strategists, or marketers who pivoted their strategy did so in 2021.

Unsurprisingly, the #1 reason they gave for this was the global pandemic.

To make matters more complicated, 39% of those who pivoted in 2021 changed their content plan a whopping three times throughout the year.

Despite all that turbulence, 62% of media planners say their content performed better than their goals in 2021. And, if anything, 2020 and 2021 taught marketing teams how important content planning and re-planning is.

To get a sense of how marketers planned or pivoted their way through such an unpredictable year and how they will approach media planning in 2022, we surveyed 600+ media planners to gather data on their goals, strategies, the tools they use, and how they met the unique challenges of 2021.

Curious about some strategies and insights specifically? Click below to jump to the section you’d like to read first.

• The Top Goals of Marketing Media and Content Planners
• Content and Media Planning Strategies
• Which Channels Marketers Use In Their Media Mix
• The Benefits and Challenges of Media Planning
• Budgeting Your Content Marketing Efforts
• Timing Your Media Plan
• Media Planning and Content Marketing Tools
• Pivoting Your Content Plan

The Top Goals of Marketing Media and Content Planners

As you can see below, engaging and growing new audiences, maximizing the ROI of their content, and understanding which channels or platforms their audience spends the most time on are top priorities for media planners and content marketers in 2022.

But which strategies are most effective to achieve these goals?

Media and Content Planning Strategies

The Most Effective Media Planning Strategies

The top strategies media planners and content marketers charged with planning use are conducting market research to understand their target demographic and find the most effective channels to reach them, leveraging media planning templates, and running content audits.

Unsurprisingly, these tactics line up fairly well with the top goals, which include growing audiences with content and targeting the right marketing channels.

Media planners also rated setting a clearly defined budget (57%), analyzing the results of your content strategy (57%), clearly defining goals/KPIs (55%), and using a calendar to schedule content (48%) as the most effective media planning strategies they use.

To accomplish most of these, marketers can leverage media planning templates, a strategy I’ll talk about in more detail later.

Ultimately, all of the above strategies are highly effective and will see significantly increased use and investment in 2022. As you move forward in planning, you’ll want to consider a mix of them rather than just running with one or two tactics.

Next, let’s dive a litter deeper into each major planning strategy and opportunity.

Market and Demographic Research

Market research is leveraged by 43% of media planners and will grow significantly in 2022, with 45% planning to leverage it for the first time.

• 64% of media planners who use it say it is the most effective media planning strategy they leverage.
• 16% of all media planners will invest more in this than any other strategy in 2022.
• 70% of media planners who do channel research say it is the most effective media planning strategy they leverage (the highest of any strategy.)
• 22% of all media planners will invest more in it than any other strategy in 2022.

While technically the second-most-effective strategy, I decided to bring this one up first because understanding the demographics of your target audience isn’t just critical for proper media planning, but essential for any marketing strategy to succeed.

You can examine a wide range of data including age, location, education, and income to start building buyer personas, which are fictional representations of your ideal customers that you can cater your content towards. And here’s the best part – you likely already have most of this data available to you for free.

Of course, you could also conduct market research studies of your own, or go through an outside agency for a more holistic view of your industry.

But in terms of media planning, I’d argue that knowing which channels your audience is spending their time on is just as important as knowing who your audience is.

Channel and Platform Research

Learning about your audience doesn’t just stop at personas or demographics.

In 2021, 43% of media planners conducted market research to find the most effective channels for reaching their targets. This percentage will grow significantly in 2022, with 53% planning to leverage it for the first time.

The data above isn’t too shocking. Before you know how much of your budget to invest in each area of your media mix, you’ll want to get an idea of which channels your target audience spends their time on.

You can also benefit from using your own data by looking at which channels are most effective at helping you meet your specific goals. But, you should also leverage outside research as it can provide crucial demographic data on the specific channels you use.

For example, in our 2022 Social Media Report and survey, we found that younger audiences like Millennials and Gen Z prefer shorter video content that is funny, trendy, and reflects a brand’s values – on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Meanwhile, Baby Boomers prefer interactive/educational content such as interviews/podcasts/expert discussions, and live videos, with Facebook being their platform of choice.

These facts will help you plan out your media mix by giving you insight on critical questions, such as whether your demographic is embracing social shopping tools on platforms like Instagram or other platforms.

Once the research is complete, media planners are using templates to help allocate and organize their media mix with maximum efficiency.

Media Planning Templates

Media planning templates are leveraged by 40% of media planners and 46% of them say it is the most effective strategy they use to reach their business goals.

The use of media planning templates will see significant growth in 2022 as 39% plan to leverage them for the first time and 11% of all media planners will invest more in templates than any other strategy.

There are a wide variety of media planning templates to choose from, all designed with a different purpose, but ultimately they exist to help you track, plan, organize, distribute, and analyze all your media content.

The most popular templates are social media strategy templates that help you align your media content with your audience and analytics and reporting templates for Excel, PowerPoint, and Google Drive that make the processes of pulling, organizing, and sharing data simple.

Luckily, HubSpot has both of those templates available for you to download right now, with a handful of others that may also come in handy.

Once their media plans are fully organized and executed, marketers are leveraging content audits to analyze their performance and inform their future content plans.

Content Audits

Running content audits to inform media planning strategy is used by 37% of media planners and is the third-most-effective tactic for media planners to reach their business goals.

• A whopping 81% of media planners who run audits say they have been effective for reaching their business goals and 67% say the results of their content audits have had a moderate to significant impact on their media planning strategy.
• The use of content audits will grow significantly in 2022 as 37% plan to leverage them for the first time and 15% of all media planners will invest more in content audits than any other strategy.

So what are the goals of a content audit?

By analyzing the performance of the content you create, you get insights on what exceeded expectations, what falls flat, and why

Identifying content gaps is the #1 objective of content audits, but that doesn’t mean it has to be hard. Here’s a guide on how to run a simple content audit specifically to find and fill those content gaps.

Identifying issues with your website and improving the user experience is another highly effective strategy for driving traffic to your web content, improving SERP ranking, and increasing engagement. In our survey of 400 web traffic analysts, we found that web analysts who reported an effective website strategy in 2021 were 25% more likely to optimize their website for loading speed.

If you’re still not convinced to audit your content, we also asked media planners about the biggest benefits they’ve seen from auditing. Here’s a graph with the results:

How often should you run a content audit?

Most media planners who run content audits do so on a monthly or quarterly basis. If you’re ready to start auditing your content, you can either create your own template or use this one from HubSpot.

Not only did we craft it ourselves, but 46% of media planners who use templates for content audits use it, making it the most popular third-party template. Our data also shows that 86% of those who use HubSpot’s template say content audits have been effective for reaching their overall business goals, so you should give it a shot.

Which Channels Marketers Use in Their Media Mix

The top channels media planners leverage are paid and organic social media content, email marketing, and organic search.

As this data is directly in line with our previous marketing research, here are a few quick bullets on each:

• Email marketing is the most leveraged media channel used by 1 in 2 media planners and will continue to grow this year with 22% planning to leverage it for the first time. Email marketing has the 3rd highest ROI of any channel.

• Paid social media content is used by 47% of media planners and has the highest ROI and highest engagement of any channel. Channel usage will grow significantly in 2022 as 14% of all media planners plan to invest more in it than any other channel and 25% plan on leveraging it for the first time this year.

• Organic social media content is used by 43% of media planners and will continue to grow this year with 22% planning to leverage it for the first time and 9% planning to invest more in it than any other channel in 2022. Organic social has the 2nd highest ROI and 2nd highest engagement levels of any channel.

• Organic search is leveraged by 36% of media planners and 45% of them say it has the highest ROI of any channel they use. It will grow in 2022 with 23% of media planners planning to leverage organic search for the first time.

• 84% of media planners leverage a mix of organic and paid media.

But, what’s the ideal media mix look like? Check out this helpful guide with even more data. 

The Benefits and Challenges of Media Planning

The Benefits of Content and Media Planning

Media planning can help you organize, plan, and analyze your content, but what are the biggest benefits marketers get from having a dedicated content plan? Here’s a breakdown of our survey results:

One interesting theme to note above is that the top three benefits relate to understanding channels, where your audience is, or where and how to target them. From what we’ve seen over the past decade, the secret to effective, ROI-generating marketing or content is understanding and knowing where to meet your targets.

So, while the idea of media planning might seem daunting in times when plans constantly change – it’s still incredibly valuable, worth your time, and is likely to return on its investment.

Ultimately, the work you do as a media or content planner will teach you how and when to create new content, when to pivot, or how to effectively change course in times where competitors are struggling to understand changing consumer thoughts and behaviors.

Media Planning Challenges

For all its benefits, media planning also comes with some challenges. Here are the biggest challenges marketers face with media planning:

Determining the most effective media mix is an incredibly important aspect of media planning, but also the one media planners struggle with the most. Check out this article for tips on optimizing your media mix.

Aside from finding the most effective media mix, a limited budget is the second biggest challenge media planners face, so let’s take a look at some data on content marketing budgets.

Budgeting Your Content Marketing Efforts

How Much of Your Budget Should Go to Content Marketing?

Chances are you already have a budget dedicated to content marketing, but if you don’t, it may be a good idea to join the 94% of media planners who do.

The real question is how much of your total marketing budget should go to content marketing, so here’s a look at our results:

Half of brands spend under 50% of their marketing budget on content, with 72% of media planners saying the primary brand they work with spends between 20%-60% of their total marketing budget on content marketing.

Where Marketers Invest Their Content Marketing Budget

So, how much is that content budget we just discussed above? Here’s a look at how much marketing departments delegate to content. 

• 1 in 4 brands have a quarterly content marketing budget under $40K
• 38% of brands have a quarterly content marketing budget between $40K-$100K, while 35% have a budget over $100K.

With your budget in mind, let’s take a look at how often you should be creating a media plan and how far in advance to start laying the groundwork for your content strategy.

Timing Your Media Plan

How Often Should You Create A Media Plan?

Nearly half of media planners create a media plan for their primary brand once per quarter:

Whichever cadence works best for you, you’ll also need to start your planning process ahead of time. Let’s find out how far in advance marketers are creating their media plans.

How Far in Advance Should You Start Formulating Your Media Plan?

According to our survey, 41% of media planners will change their media mix in 2022, but how far ahead will they start planning?

Over 80% of media planners formulate their strategies less than 4 months ahead of time.

Another crucial piece of formulating your media plan will be the tools you use, so let’s look at which tools marketers find the most effective.

Content Planning & Marketing Tools

The top two tools media planners use are HubSpot Marketing Hub (38%) and HubSpot Media Planning Templates (34%).

Here’s a chart showing the biggest benefits of leveraging media planning tools:

Another tool leveraged by 78% of media planners is automation, here’s what content strategists and media planners use it for:

Pivoting Your Content Plan

Pivoting can be intimidating due to the uncertainty of abruptly switching up your content plan, so here’s a high-level look at our survey data on the topic. You can also find a deeper dive into our data and tips in this post.

Is Pivoting Your Content Plan Effective?

Whether you had every marketing campaign for 2020 and 2021 fully planned out or were just winging it, the pandemic forced us to toss whatever plans we had out the window and adapt in real-time.

As we mentioned above, most marketers who pivoted their content plan in 2021 did so because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The good news? A whopping 74% of media planners say their most recent pivot was effective for reaching their overall goals and 78% of media planners say their content plan changed a moderate to significant amount the last time they pivoted.

When do brands pivot a content plan?

Here’s how media planners knew it was time to pivot. Spoiler! It’s not always due to global events. 

Of the media planners who have ever pivoted, over two-thirds did so to try a new social media platform, and 77% pivoted to try a new feature.

Which platforms or features have media or content planners pivoted to?

Facebook and Instagram Shopping platforms; YouTube Shorts; and live chat rooms like Instagram Live Spaces, Clubhouse, and Twitter Spaces have been receiving high interest from strategists lately. 

What’s more, our survey discovered that:

• Marketers who say their last pivot was effective are 10% more likely to have pivoted to use Twitter Spaces.
• Marketers who say their last pivot was effective are 10% more likely to have pivoted to use Facebook Live Shopping.
• Marketers who say their last pivot was effective are 8% more likely to have pivoted to use YouTube Shorts.
• Marketers who say their last pivot was ineffective are 9% more likely to have pivoted to use Spotify Green Room and 8% more likely to have pivoted to use Spoon.

What should be your first steps to pivoting a content plan?

Switching up your content plan can feel like going into uncharted territory. To help you, here’s how the media and content planners we surveyed take on the challenge. 

I found that marketers who talk to sales and customer service teams to better understand their customers and their pain points have more effective pivots than those who don’t. They’re 16% more likely to say pivoting was effective.

Also, those who adjust their media mix to reflect changing consumer habits have more effective pivots. They’re 9% more likely to say pivoting was effective.

To get a more detailed step-by-step guide on how to pivot, check out this post.

How often should you pivot your content plan?

While, most brands that pivoted did so at least three times in 2021, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make big changes once a quarter.

However, it’s smart to have flexible aspects of your planning that can change if external factors, like world events, arise.

And, if and when the unprecedented does happen, you’ll want to take a stp back and ask yourself what adjustment or strategy is right for your brand. 

Although consumers care about responsive content, they also care about ethical marketing and social responsibility of the brands they follow. Because of this, they’ll be quick to spot (and call out) inauthentic and opportunistic behavior, which could damage a company’s image.

And while we’re on the topic of avoiding mistakes, I also asked media planners about the biggest mistakes they’ve made when changing their content plan. Let’s take a look at where they’ve gone wrong.

Mistakes to Avoid When Pivoting Your Content Plan

Pivoting your content plan is effective, but also has its pitfalls. These are the top mistakes media planners have made when switching things up:

As you can see above, changing your content strategy drastically to cater to just one segment of your audience isn’t recommended.

And to reiterate the advice of Karla Hesterberg, the Sr. Manager of Content Growth Strategy at HubSpot, “Remember that content strategy is always a long game —your short-term strategy can’t compromise your ability to solve for the ongoing, long-term needs of your content property.”

Speaking of long-term goals, switching up your media plan on the go could wind up being expensive. Here’s how much of their budget media planners are spending when they pivot.

Key Takeaways for Content & Media Strategists

Content and media planning can get complex and complicated in today’s world where everything – including your target buyer – is constantly changing.

Ultimately, strong preparation will help you be ready to create and optimize your content strategy to cater to your evolving target audience.

Although we went over a handful of different strategies and data points above, here are three key themes that you can take away from this post.

• Understanding your audience is vital: As a marketer, creator, and media planner, you need to know your audience to know what they’ll respond to, what will motivate them to engage with you, and where they’ll go to consume content. You’ll also have to know where your audience spends the most time. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to create campaigns that meet them where they are and nurture them into buying your product.
• Plan to re-plan: The world is always changing. An effective media planner creates a plan, but also prepares for things to change and identifies ways they can optimize, shift, or pivot it when something unexpected happens.
• Always be auditing: One strategy won’t work forever, in any field of marketing. So, it’s important to continue to track and audit your efforts. That way if something stops working or needs to be fixed, you can optimize it or shift away from it promptly without losing time or money.

Want to see even more data on this topic? Check out the free, downloadable resource below which highlights the bulk of the data from our survey all in one place.