There are two types of employees – “exempt” and “non-exempt.” You might’ve seen these terms on job postings, or heard them in conversation.

If you aren’t sure what they mean, don’t worry. Trying to understand labor laws can be confusing, especially if you’re new to the workforce. — We’ve broken these terms down to help you navigate the exempt vs. non-exempt employee classification.

How the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Affects Exemption Status

Signed into law in 1938 by President Franklin Roosevelt, the Fair Labor Standards Act establishes minimum wage, overtime pay eligibility, and recordkeeping standards in addition to youth employment guidelines for both the private and public sector. During the time the act was signed, child labor was the norm and adults often worked 10 or more hours per day, six to seven days per week.

While the conditions that brought about the FLSA may seem like the dark ages, the law is still relevant today and plays a major role in how the modern workforce is regulated. It establishes the guidelines for how work hours are documented and how exempt and non-exempt employees should be paid. Generally the FLSA provides an exemption from minimum wage and overtime regulations for employees in the following fields:

• Executive
• Administrative
• Professional
• Outside sales
• Computer-related occupations

That said, job titles alone do not determine exempt status. Instead the employee’s specific job duties and salary have to meet requirements set by the Department of Labor. Certain states, like California, impose additional requirements to qualify for exempt status.

Exempt Employees

One of the biggest differences between exempt and non-exempt employees is overtime pay. An exempt employee is not entitled to overtime pay according to the FLSA.

Instead, exempt employees are given a salary, and they are expected to finish the tasks required of them, whether it takes 30 hours or 50. Exempt employees are also excluded from other FLSA protections afforded non-exempt employees.

To be exempt, an employee must earn a salary basis no less than $684 per week, or $35,568 annually.

Non-Exempt Employees

On the flip side, non-exempt employees must be paid overtime — one-and-a-half times their hourly rate, for any hours worked beyond 40 each week. As the name implies, they are not exempt from FLSA regulations.

Most non-exempt employees must be paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25, but some states with a higher cost of living have set minimum wages above the federal base. Non-exempt employees can be paid a salary, an hourly wage, or commission.

Exempt vs. Non-Exempt Employee Examples in the Workplace

Let’s consider this example to demonstrate the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees:

Sarah, who is an exempt employee, is stressed because she hasn’t finished her proposal due Monday. She spends most of Friday night tweaking it and finishing it up, staying at the office until late. On Monday, she gets her paycheck — the same amount of money she would’ve gotten if she hadn’t stayed late.

Meanwhile, John, who is a non-exempt employee, chooses to take extra shifts and work overtime on Fridays. He doesn’t have to — he could leave at 5 p.m. if he wanted to, but on Monday when he receives his paycheck, he knows he’ll receive extra money from the overtime hours worked.

Which classification is right for you?

Working as an exempt or non-exempt employee will each have their own set of pros and cons. Which classification works best for you will depend on your personal needs and preferences. 

This article was originally published Oct 19, 2018 but has been updated for comprehensiveness.

A great business needs a great many things in order to succeed – strong leadership, a competitive advantage, and a unique vision among them. However, one element that could make or break a business is its process (or lack thereof).

A clear, repeatable process has two major hurdles to a successful implementation in a business. Number one is the development of that process, and number two is getting buy-in from stakeholders on that process. That said, the best way to overcome both of these potential roadblocks is to transparently and logically outline a process.

Many businesses use flowcharts to accomplish this task, as flowcharts:

• Visually outline a process roadmap for a full-scope understanding, and…
• Can be easily digested by employees who need to know and follow the process.

To help you create actionable flowcharts for your organization, we’ve listed the eight best flowchart templates for you to download and start using today to create a better process in any area of your business.

Let’s dive in.

What is a flowchart?

A flowchart is a visual map to help explain a process for decision making, achieving results, or projecting an outcome. Flowcharts begin at a starting point on the graphic, and as users follow through it, they will choose one of several outcomes or options until reaching the end of the process.

In business, flowcharts might be used for any of the following purposes:

• Team alignment and process
• Email nurturing
• Customer journey mapping
• Customer or employee onboarding
• A/B testing
• QA-ing work
• Career progression
• Customer support

Here are eight templates and examples of flowcharts for business – each one comes with a download link for you to start using that template right on Google Slides.

8 Flowchart Examples for Business

1. Basic Process Flowchart Template

Download this Template

The basic flowchart template is the ideal solution for those just getting started with flowcharts. The template allows its designers to specify a starting point, two potential outcomes, and then the resulting aftermath of those decisions. Due to its limitations, this flowchart template might be best suited for basic processes, like a simple A/B test.

Flowchart Example: Basic Process Flowchart

This template visualizes how a user visiting a company’s landing page could convert and become a lead.

Who should use this flowchart?

This flowchart is helpful for those looking to design an A/B test to determine the most way to get the results they’re looking for.

What We Like About This Flowchart Template

The basic process flowchart is easy to use and follow and is ideal for documenting straightforward or simple processes.

2. Swim Lane Flowchart Template

Download this Template

The swim lane flowchart template is for dividing up the steps of a process into different sectors. For your business, these different sectors could be time periods, teams, employees, or work requirements.

Flowchart Example: Swim Lane Flowchart

In the example above, the swimlanes are divided by department to illustrate the process of the customer journey.

Who should use this flowchart?

Swim lane flowcharts are particularly helpful for those who oversee cross-functional processes.

What We Like About This Flowchart Template

This template visualizes the different process steps that take place across multiple organizations.

3. Task Flowchart Template

Download this Template

A task flowchart template is differentiated by what each shape on the flowchart represents. This format is beneficial when multiple teams’ work is intertwined throughout the process, as individuals can easily discern the tasks for which they are responsible. These responsibilities are noted in a key on the flowchart for a quick reference.

The shapes can also represent different types of action.

Flowchart Example: Landing Page Flowchart

In the example above, the different shapes represent the start of, end of, and actions taken during the process of viewing a landing page. This task flowchart example follows an “if this then that” format, showing the various outcomes that could occur when a potential customer visits a landing page.

Who should use this flowchart?

Project managers looking to keep track of various tasks and their outcomes.

What We Like About This Flowchart Template

The task flowchart visually depicts how various contributions to a product support the end result. Each stakeholder can see how their tasks impact the flow of the project.

4. Complex Flowchart Template

Download this Template

For a flowchart that doesn’t need gridlines or different shapes, this template is the best solution. It provides the option for multiple endpoints depending on which steps are taken through the process.

Flowchart Example: Hiring Flowchart

The above hiring visual is an example of a complex flowchart that has various events and potential outcomes.

Who should use this flowchart?

Teams looking to manage processes that could have various endpoints or projects that have multiple steps and stakeholders involved.

What We Like About This Flowchart Template

Complex processes can be difficult to keep track of. This flowchart template creates an intuitive visual for multi-step processes.

5. Circular Flowchart Template

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The circular flowchart template changes things up with a different shape, but it also provides a different path structure.

Flowchart Example: Social Media Flowchart

For example, in the image above, the template can be used as a decision-making framework. Here, it’s used to help a social media manager determine which site should be used to post content on.

Who should use this flowchart?

Social media managers, product marketers, and content strategists may find this template suits their needs.

What We Like About This Flowchart Template

This template has a cleaner appearance than some of the more complex templates and may be better for visual learners.

6. Linear Flowchart Template

Download this Template

A linear flowchart template is a solution for when there’s really only one optimal result, and every step of the process will either lead someone to that outcome or result in the process simply ending.

Flowchart Example: Email Nurturing Flowchart

One example – highlighted above – might be for a nurture stream. In the image, the process ends whether someone signs up for an event or not.

Who should use this flowchart?

Email marketing specialists, sales teams.

What We Like About This Flowchart Template

With one singular goal, this flowchart format has a clear beginning and end.

7. Tree Flowchart Template

Download this Template

A tree-style flowchart template makes the most sense for situations where there are multiple options and when each option has a clear and distinct next step.

Flowchart Example: Phone Tree Flowchart

This example depicts the various options and next steps a caller can take when contacting a business via telephone.

Who should use this flowchart?

For businesses, this flowchart would be perfect for the support department – which can use this template to map out responses from automated chat support or (as outlined above) a phone tree.

What We Like About This Flowchart Template

Each action has a clear next step and a predetermined outcome.

8. Organizational Flowchart Template

Download this Template

The final flowchart businesses might want to utilize is an organizational flowchart (or org chart) template.

Flowchart Example: Organizational Flowchart

While not exactly procedural, this visualization helps those within the company quickly understand who reports to whom and who is responsible for what.

Who should use this flowchart?

This template is utilized by the heads of a company and/or a department to outline the chain of command in an area of the business. It can also be used by Human Resources teams to inform team structure and organizational decisions.

What We Like About This Flowchart Template

Users can see how a team is structured at-a-glance, and can quickly determine who they need to go to for their project or to have their questions answered.

Business Flowchart Templates

Business flowchart templates are the fastest and easiest way to build flowcharts. All of the above templates are downloadable by clicking here and are completely customizable when it comes to shape, format, color, and imagery.

Download the templates for free to better illustrate and communicate processes in your company.

We’ve all had it happen to us: we try to choose an option on a website, and right before we click, the page jumps away and we end up clicking something we didn’t mean to. Doh!

Like a game of “down low, too slow”, this website behavior makes us feel slow and frustrated. Fortunately, website developers are now incentivized to improve their site experience with the release of Google’s Core Web Vitals; a set of metrics that help site owners measure and improve the user experience of their web pages.

Cumulative Layout Shift is one of these key metrics that measures the “jumpiness” of a website and how it unexpectedly moves as elements load. Let’s take a closer look at how this metric works, and how you can make sure your own website is following best practices so you rank higher on search engines and provide your users with a better experience.

What is Cumulative Layout Shift?

Cumulative Layout Shift (or CLS) is a measure of how much a webpage unexpectedly shifts during its life. For example, if a website visitor loaded a page and, while they were reading it, a banner loads and the page jumps down, that would constitute a large CLS score.

Along with Largest Contentful Paint (the amount of time it takes to load the largest piece of content) and First Input Delay (how long it takes for a page to be interactive or “clickable”), CLS is part of Google’s Core Web Vitals. Google’s web crawlers measure CLS on each page they index.

What causes Cumulative Layout Shift?

Page shifts happen when content loads at different speeds and causes the layout to change and alters what the viewer is looking at. Advertisements loading slowly, videos of unknown size suddenly appearing, or DOM elements being dynamically added are all potential causes of CLS.

The example below shows what happens when an ad banner is loaded after the rest of the webpage loads. The content is pushed down, and the user experience is negatively impacted.

Source

It can be difficult to know if your users are experiencing CLS, because not every device or environment operates in the same way. If you’re loading your website in a development environment you may have elements cached or they may be loading locally. Personalized web content based on cookies will behave differently for every visitor, especially depending on their location. Plus, mobile users can have a very different experience – a small shift on a web browser may be monumental to someone viewing the site on a small screen. Really the only way to understand your users’ experience is to measure CLS, which we’ll go over below.

Why is CLS important?

Understanding CLS is critical for two reasons: your visitors’ experience and your search engine ranking.

Your visitors have high expectations when it comes to your site’s performance. In 2020, 93% of people reported leaving a website because it didn’t load properly.

Jumpy websites that load in pieces or with unexpected behavior will cause your visitors to find another website to browse. And if they do stick around, a high CLS score is likely to cause usability problems like choosing the wrong option, checking out too early, or missing parts of your website altogether.

This problem is only exacerbated by the large number of internet users who are browsing on their smartphones. When viewing your site on a small screen, any jumps and layout shifts on the website are certain to have a big impact on mobile user experience.

Optimizing your site and reducing your cumulative layout shift is essential to providing customers with a good experience.

Secondly, Google ranks sites based on their page performance. A better user experience results in a higher search ranking. If your page doesn’t meet the standards that Google lays out in their Core Web Vitals guidelines, your site will be penalized.

Google doesn’t want to direct people to sites that don’t perform well. Aligning with CLS best practices can help your website move up the rankings. And since 68% of online experiences start with a search, making sure your site shows up on the search results page is important to generating inbound traffic.

How do you measure Cumulative Layout Shift?

The good news is that you don’t have to measure CLS yourself because Google makes it really easy to analyze your page performance with their PageSpeed Insights tool, or in the Chrome browser using Lighthouse Tools.

To analyze performance in PageSpeed Insights:

1. Enter a website URL into Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
2. Click ‘Analyze.’
3. Check your performance. You can review both mobile and desktop performance, which you can switch between using the top left corner navigation.

The page analyzed below shows a good cumulative layout shift score of 0.001.

To analyze performance using Lighthouse tools:

1. Open up the website you want to analyze in Chrome.
2. Navigate to Developer Tools by clicking the three dots in the top right corner of the browser window, choosing “More Tools” and then “Developer Tools.”
3. When the console opens, choose “Lighthouse” from the options along the top.
4. Click “Generate Report.”

The page below shows a CLS of 0.109, or “needs improvement.”

Lighthouse provides a detailed audit of what contributed to that score. To review the audit, scroll down and choose “Show audits relevant to CLS.”

More About Impact Fraction and Distance Fraction

Two terms you might see when researching CLS are “impact fraction” and “distance fraction.” These are the two variables that Google uses to calculate CLS.

layout shift score = impact fraction x distance fraction

Impact fraction relates to the size of the unstable element in comparison to the viewport. Distance fraction is the amount the unstable element moves as a ratio of the viewport.

So a high CLS would consist of a large element moving a long distance. A small CLS would be the result of a small element moving only a small distance.

CLS is the largest “burst” or group of layout shift scores that occur during a session window. Essentially, if a bunch of shifts happen within a five-second window, this would be considered disruptive and result in a large CLS score.

What is a good CLS score?

A good cumulative layout score is anything less than 0.1. The reports from PageInsights or Lighthouse tools will automatically flag any poor scores, as well as provide advice on how to optimize the page for better performance.

Source

How To Improve Cumulative Layout Shift

There are a few best practices that website owners can follow to improve their CLS score:

1. Use a CMS (content management system).

Especially one that integrates with Google Lighthouse or other diagnostic tools. This will make sure that you’re designing with best practices in mind, and flag any issues before you launch your site.

2. Specify size attributes for images and videos.

Rather than letting them set their own height and width, dictate size attributes for your media. By setting these attributes, you’re telling the browser how much space to set aside, even if the image isn’t loaded yet.

3. Understand how ads can influence your layout.

Google Publisher Tag offers extensive guidance about how to reserve space for ads.

Load new content below the viewport. Loading content above what the user is viewing will often cause a page to shift.

4. Use transitions and animation to provide context around page changes.

For example, a “Read more” link that scrolls the user down the page would not impact CLS because it’s an expected layout shift.

A Note On Expected Vs Unexpected Layout Shift

CLS only takes into account unexpected changes. If the layout changes because of a user-initiated action, there is no impact on CLS. This is a helpful tool to use when you don’t need to load everything all at once. Instead, offer users the opportunity to choose which elements they want to view through “read more” links or “expand topic” accordions within your page.

Offer A Better User Experience With CLS Optimization

Paying attention to CLS not only provides a better user experience, but it also boosts your search result rankings. It’s a win-win.

To meet Google’s standards for CLS, start by using a diagnostic tool to measure your website’s current performance. Take into account the basic guidelines outlined above, and keep layout shifts top of mind when designing your website, especially around transitions and content additions. With these few simple considerations, you’ll see better results across the board.

There are many businesses out there that operate with a mindset of “Well, that’s how we’ve always done it.” Unfortunately, this type of close-minded thinking can lead to a great deal of waste.

Tasks may be unnecessary to achieve the final goal, processes may be repeated multiple times when one would be sufficient, employees may be wasting time on superfluous responsibilities, and materials may be wasted during manufacturing.

When this occurs within an organization, employee satisfaction decreases so turnover increases, quality suffers so customer satisfaction and retention is decreased, and one look at the books will likely indicate the company is hemorrhaging money.

You might think that this type of operational inefficiency only occurs in large corporations and organizations, however, it’s just as prevalent in small-to-medium-sized businesses and can be seen throughout every department.

Efficiency is the name of the game for successful businesses, and you’re about to learn one of the best ways to turn your business into a lean, mean, money-making machine.

Lean Process Improvement

What is lean process improvement?

Lean process improvement is a concept originally developed by Toyota to decrease the amount of time it took from receiving an order to delivering it. While lean process improvement is often discussed in a production environment, the concept can be applied to service, healthcare, technology, and even government.

Consider a marketing department that has multiple people working on the same project but not communicating. Rather than each handling a specific aspect of the campaign, several people tackle the same task while other activities go unhandled.

It’s not a traditional production environment, however, the team could benefit from creating an easy-to-follow process that looks at the desired end product and finds the simplest route to get there.

The whole idea behind this way of thinking is that when you look at the big picture, you can find ways to eliminate waste, whether that’s financial, physical, time, or employee energy that could be spent elsewhere. This concept may take a while to implement, and that’s okay. It’s not meant to be a short-term solution, but rather a change to the entire mindset and culture of a business.

What are the benefits of lean process improvement?

Businesses that incorporate lean process improvement see a variety of benefits from this shift. These include:

• Less waste
• Less inventory
• Increased productivity
• Better quality
• Happier customers
• Fewer costs
• More profits

It makes perfect sense that when you remove the redundancy, streamline processes, and create less waste, your bottom line will increase. When your customers receive their product faster and with less hassle, you’ll have happier customers who return and recommend you to others. With more customers, your bottom line increases once again.

If you’d like to see this type of improvement in your organization, read on to learn lean process improvement steps.

How do I incorporate lean process improvement into my business?

You guessed it … there’s a process to lean process improvement. There’s actually a series of nine steps you’ll need to implement to create this level of efficiency in your organization. Let’s take a closer look at lean process improvement steps.

1. Review the process you want to improve.

This step is essential because if you don’t know what you need to work on, you won’t know where to focus your efforts. In order to do that, you need to talk to employees on the front line.

The biggest mistake companies make during this process is implementing changes without ever speaking to the people who do the job day in and day out. Interview your frontline workers, and ask them what’s not working well in their daily routine.

2. Identify what improvements need to be made.

Once you’ve identified what needs to be fixed, it’s time to involve your team once again. There’s a very good chance that they already know how to fix the problem and just haven’t been able to implement it because of a “That’s-how-we’ve-always-done-it” mindset.

3. Implement the suggested changes.

How will you put the changes into action? Create a plan so everyone involved understands and buys into the process. This is the best way to ensure organization-wide success.

4. Monitor how the changes are impacting your efficiency.

While it would be great if your first attempt at execution was a success, the reality is that once the process is tested in the field, it will need to be further refined. The only way to do this is through constant monitoring and reevaluating. As new issues appear, you can address them and make the necessary changes.

5. Identify what activities add value.

Throughout these steps, you’ll be assessing every single action and every aspect of your process. During this time, you must evaluate every single activity to determine whether it adds value to your process, or detracts. If an activity is deemed unnecessary, it should be removed and the process tested without it.

6. Limit risk.

Production and often business, in general, is inherently risky. This time should be used to identify any risky activities or aspects that are part of the current process and eliminate or simplify these tasks. This may involve automating an activity or simply changing the way in which it’s executed.

7. Standardize the process.

As you create and refine the process, document your progress thoroughly. This allows the process to be repeated, properly, by other employees or depending on the specific process, by other teams or departments in your organization.

8. Ensure compliance.

While lean process improvement should be a company-wide shift in culture, your industry or governing body may have specific metrics, procedures, and standardized measurements that you must adhere to. Compliance may not be sacrificed in the name of efficiency.

9. Improve the customer experience.

In determining the success of a lean process improvement plan, Marketers consider the customer experience to be “the moment of truth.” Ultimately, whatever improvements you make during production or service must trickle down to positively impact the customer.

Lean Process Improvement Tools

As you embark on this journey, there are a number of tools available to you. These tools can help you organize your thoughts, identify issues, and implement your plan. The following are just some of the tools you can look to for support.

Just like any other tool, the one you choose must be the right one for the current job. If you start out with one and don’t find that it meets your needs, consider trying another.

• Why Analysis: By asking “Why?” repeatedly, you can identify the root cause of the challenges you’re experiencing.
• Ishikawa Diagram: Also known as a “Fishbone diagram” or “cause-and-effect diagram”, it allows you to examine a problem from multiple angles, including measurements, materials, people, methods, machines, and environment.
• Affinity Diagram: This works great in the early stages of lean implementation as it can help sort and organize large amounts of data. Identify the value you bring to the customer and then uncover problems with your existing processes.
• FMEA Analysis (failure mode and effects): Catching issues before they get out of hand can help you eliminate waste and save money. This tool allows you to examine your flow and identify problems early on.
• 5S Dashboard: This approach can help you organize your workspace for maximum efficiency. While the original tool has five S’ based on Japanese terms, many businesses have added a 6th practice. These stand for:
  • Sort
  • Set in order
  • Shine
  • Standardize
  • Sustain
  • Safety
• Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) Cycle: Create continuous improvement by repeatedly analyzing a problem, testing a hypothesis, reviewing, and then analyzing the results, and finally, putting the plan into action once it’s successful.

Lean Process Improvement Techniques

There are a number of approaches that have been created to assist in lean process improvement. Just like the tools, it’s important to find the right technique for your project and your organization. For example:

Six Sigma (DMAIC Model)

With a goal of reducing the variation in processes, Six Sigma works to increase both external and internal customer satisfaction by standardizing workflow. The DMAIC Roadmap stands for:

1. Define
2. Measure
3. Analyze
4. Improve
5. Control

Kanban

These boards allow you to visualize your workflow and use value stream mapping to break down your workflows into stages. Having a visual representation of your workflow, and all the activities that make it up, can assist you in identifying inefficiencies.

Sharing this board with your entire team allows anyone to stop the process when a problem occurs. Now, it becomes everyone’s job to find a solution.

WIP Limits

Within Kanban boards exist a concept known as WIP Limits or “Work in Progress Limits”. Every stage in a Kanban board workflow is represented by a column. WIP limits force you to stay under a maximum number of work items for each stage. This can be per person, per work stage, or for the entire project.

Having these limits in place ensures that current tasks are finished before new ones are started, and helps to complete activities faster.

Final Thoughts on Lean Process Improvement

Now that you understand how important lean process improvement is to a successful, efficient organization, it’s a good time to reiterate that this is an ongoing process. If you attempt to overhaul your entire organization overnight, you will undoubtedly fail and most likely make things worse than when you started.

Identify the biggest sources of inefficiency in your organization and target these first, one at a time, until you’ve created a well-functioning business.

Finally, remember that your most valuable assets are the employees getting their hands dirty every day. Attempting to identify problems and create solutions without getting their input is akin to driving blind when you could simply open your eyes.

As a marketer, a big part of your job is to convert qualified website visitors into leads. Simple enough.

More specifically, inbound marketing requires you to create remarkable content they’ll want to trade their contact information for. From there, those leads turn into opportunities, who turn into customers and even promoters.

Clearly, conversions are a big deal. So how can you optimize yours? By creating conversion paths optimized to most effectively convert your ideal visitors into leads.

While not all conversion paths are identical and depend on the type of business they’re for, they have a few common attributes: a landing page, a call-to-action, a content offer or end point, and a thank you page.

• Landing page: A landing page is a specific page on your website designed to collect a visitor’s contact information in exchange for a resource, like a course, ebook, or other product.
• Call-to-action: A call-to-action is a section on a webpage or advertisement that persuades the visitor to act or do something. These can take the form of buttons prompting website visitors to sign up, subscribe, or buy a product.
• Thank you page: The thank you page shows your visitors that you appreciate them for taking a desired action. For example, a thank you page might appear after a visitor has signed up for a newsletter or filled out a form.
• End point: This may be in the form of a content offer, which is any material or resource given to a visitor in exchange for their contact information, completing the conversion path. These materials could be guides, ebooks, courses or other products. For e-commerce, instead of a content offer, a conversion path may end in a purchase.

In order to convert into a lead, a visitor sees a content offer of interest to them (or product in the case of e-commerce), clicks on the call-to-action button to access that content, and is then taken to a landing page. On that landing page, the visitor can provide their information on a form in exchange for access to the offer itself. Upon submitting that form, the now-lead is taken to a thank you page where they receive the offer.

Voila! Conversion path complete.

By designing and implementing the right conversion paths, you can most effectively move website visitors through the buyer’s journey and help them become customers and promoters.

Conversion Path Example

Let’s say you’ve been lured to the landing page above after searching online for tips for preventing frizzy hair.

You’re then prompted by a CTA (pictured below) that invites sign up for their email list in exchange for 10% of their products.

You decide you’d like to try one of their satin-lined caps to fight frizz and take them up on the offer.

A thank you page pops up once you’ve filled out the form giving instructions on how to access your discount code. Once you get the code from your email, you use it to purchase one of their caps. Ta-da! The conversion path is complete.

What makes a good conversion path?

Well as you might have guessed, you need content, a call-to-action, a landing page, and a thank you page. But with so many conversion paths out there on the internet for your potential customers to explore, it’s more important than ever to create the RIGHT paths — paths that your ideal customers are drawn to and most effectively convert the right visitors into leads.

What are the steps to creating a conversion path?

Let’s explore the key items you need in your inbound toolkit to create effective conversion paths that turn casual visitors into customers.

1. Attract your target audience with context-appropriate content.

Content is the fuel that powers effective inbound strategies—and it’s what you’ll use to convert those website visitors into leads. The good news is that content is everywhere! Content is what your website pages are filled with, what goes into your emails, and what’s hosted on your blog — your website pages, emails, and blog are just vehicles to deliver that content.

Although content is in no short supply, in order for it to act as your inbound rocket fuel, you need to create the right content. As you can probably guess, the right content is optimized to appeal specifically to your buyer personas. It should focus on the challenges they’re trying to overcome and the goals they’re looking to hit. Most of all, it should be relevant and interesting to them.

But here’s the kicker — it’s not enough to just create persona-specific content. That content needs to be relevant to your persona based on where they are in the buyer’s journey.

The buyer’s journey is the active research process your personas go through leading up to making a purchase — and specific content is more relevant to your personas at different stages of that journey. This is where the “context” piece comes in: It’s not enough to just create content for your personas. You have to make sure that content is relevant to what they’re interested in and hoping to learn more about.

Most visitors to your site are still at the very beginning stages of that journey — they might not even know what your product does or how it can help them. All they may know is that they have a problem or there’s an opportunity at hand. So, the content that will most appeal to your personas when they’re first visiting your website and converting a lead will generally be high-level and educational in nature.

In order to be an effective tool in your conversion path toolkit, make sure you have remarkable content tailored to your buyer personas and where they are in the buyer’s journey.

2. Create landing pages that speak to your personas.

After you’ve developed a remarkable content offer that speaks to both who your personas are and where they are in the buyer’s journey, the next step is to leverage that piece of content to convert website visitors into leads. That’s where landing pages come in.

Landing pages are specialized website pages whose sole purpose is to collect visitors’ contact information in exchange for something of value to them. Landing pages contain forms that potential leads must fill out and submit before getting access to your remarkable content offer. And like that offer, great landing pages must also be tailored to both who your personas are and where they are in the buyer’s journey.

In order to most effectively convert website visitors into leads, your landing pages must present the benefits of your offer that are most relevant to the particular problem your persona is experiencing — and discuss the aspects of that problem that are most important to where your persona is in the buyer’s journey.

Imagine, for example, you work at a pet store and have created an ebook on raising a puppy. Someone who’s at the beginning of the buyer’s journey probably won’t be too interested in downloading your ebook if your landing page talks all about how your ebook contains the best techniques for housebreaking. Instead, an effective landing page for this persona might highlight how your ebook discusses how to choose the right dog breed for you.

Great landing pages focus on both who your personas are and where they are in the buyer’s journey.

3. Use attention-grabbing calls-to-action.

While having a remarkable content offer and great landing page are key to creating a successful conversion path, your website visitors need a way to actually access that landing page in the first place. That’s where calls-to-action come in.

Calls-to-action or CTAs, are buttons you can embed throughout your website that advertise your content offers. When a visitor clicks on one of these calls-to-action, they’ll be taken to your landing page. In effect, every call-to-action you have on your website is the beginning of a conversion path.

To create calls-to-action that get those clicks and act as key steps within your conversion paths, you must ensure that the message displayed on your call-to-action aligns with the message on your landing page — and the content itself.

Great calls-to-action should be just that: action-oriented. Since their main objective is to garner clicks and direct people to landing pages, ensure that they’re click-worthy by using actionable language and colors that help them stand out from the rest of your website.

4. Close the deal with optimized thank you pages.

If a call-to-action is the beginning of a conversion path, a thank you page marks its end. Thank you pages are the final item you need in your inbound toolkit to lead your website visitors down a conversion path to become, well, a lead.

Thank you pages are specialized website pages from which your now-leads can download the offer promised by your call-to-action and landing page. They’re also an opportunity to move people further along in the buyer’s journey, by including things like additional calls-to-action that complement the offer you’ve just provided your lead.

Improving the Mobile Conversion Path Experience

Designing for mobile is no longer optional, it’s a must. According to a 2020 report from Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA, formerly Groupe Spécial Mobile), nearly half the world’s population uses a mobile device to access the internet. By the end of 2019, 3.8 billion people were mobile internet users, an increase of 250 million users from the previous year.

With those numbers in mind, there’s a good chance visitors will access your website from their phone or tablet versus a desktop. If you want to create an effective conversion path, It’s imperative to consider the mobile user experience. Follow these steps to create a mobile conversion path that sets visitors up for success.

• Start with a responsive design: A responsive design adapts to both desktop and mobile devices by rendering the display differently based on screen size. Visitors won’t have to pinch or zoom in while browsing your website via mobile, which leads to a better user experience. Additionally, having a responsive design signals to Google that your site is mobile-friendly, which will help improve your rankings in search results for mobile users.
• Nix cluttered landing pages: When it comes to smaller screens, minimalism is a virtue. Having long-form, relevant content, images and video may translate well on desktop, but can be too busy for mobile devices. Avoid unnecessary text, images, and features that may make it difficult for visitors to find the information they’re looking for. Visitors can’t become leads if they can’t navigate your website. Consider the information most relevant to your audience, and leave out the rest.
• Keep CTAs to a minimum: As noted above, with smaller screens you’ll want to take extra care with how that real estate is allocated. Opt for one (or a few), clear call-to-action button as the main focus that your potential customers can easily find. Keep sign-up forms short, only asking for the information you absolutely need. Avoid burying the call-to-action at the bottom of the page after several paragraphs of text. In most cases, mobile users will not scroll down to the end of the page to see it.

As people become increasingly attached to their phones, taking the mobile user experience into account will improve your chances of converting more leads.

Conversion paths are invaluable in inbound marketing as they convert website visitors into leads. When done right, an effective conversion path can move leads beyond an initial conversion, ultimately turning them into customers.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May, 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

There’s nothing worse than an ad that keeps popping up for something you’d never buy. About 39% of internet users agree, feeling that online ads aren’t relevant to them. So it’s no wonder that one in four people will leverage some sort of ad blocker in 2021.

An ad blocker is software that’s meant to improve a user’s online experience by removing or changing digital ads. It’s designed to make browsing simpler, so you don’t have a giant flashing ad taking up half the screen while you research customers and spy on a competitor’s latest product launch.

Still, digital advertising is on the rise.

Global digital ad spend is expected to exceed $455 billion this year, which means an increase in the number of banner, display, and news feed ads. This barrage is pushing more internet users toward ad blocking tools so they can shop and scroll in peace. To truly understand ad blocking statistics, it’s important to have a grasp on the digital ad landscape.

But how many people are actually using ad blockers? And what are their reasons for getting rid of ads? This list of ad blocking statistics will answer those questions and more.

Whether you’re looking for tips to attract customers or wondering how to boost clicks, you can find the stats you need to understand your audience and make your next campaign a hit.

Digital Advertising Statistics

1. Global digital ad spend is expected to exceed $455 billion this year. (Statista, 2021)

2. The internet is considered the most important medium for advertisers and accounts for 51% of total media ad spend in 2020. (Statista, 2021)

3. The average internet user spends six hours and 55 minutes on the internet each day. (Hootsuite, 2021)

4. Researching products and brands ranks 7th on the list of reasons why global internet users go online. (Hootsuite, 2021)

5. Digital advertising revenue is projected to grow by 15.4% in 2021. (Statista, 2021)

6. Global digital ad spend increased 12.7% ($43 billion) from 2019-2020. (Hootsuite, 2021)

7. In 2021, paid search ad spend increased 8.4% between Q1 and Q2. In the same timeframe, paid ad clicks decreased by 7.6%. (Hootsuite, 2021)

8. In a study about how advertising influences customer perception, 41% of respondents said that an ad placed around relevant content sparked a positive brand perception. (Statista, 2020)

9. 63% of internet users in the U.S. said they have a negative attitude towards ads in online videos, and about 47% of people said the same about website ads. (
Statista, 2021)

Source

10. In a 2020 survey conducted in the U.S., almost 50% of online users had a negative attitude toward website ads when asked how they felt about digital advertising. (Statista, 2021)

11. 35% of people feel marketing and advertising meets their needs. (Merkle, 2020)

Ad Blocker Stats to Know

12. Approximately one in four internet users will leverage some sort of ad blocker in 2021. (eMarketer, 2021)

13. In the last quarter of 2019, there were 763.5 million ad blocker users worldwide. (Statista, 2019)

14. 37.5% of global internet users block online advertising with an ad blocker tool. (Hootsuite, 2021)

15. About 26% of internet users in the U.S. blocked advertising on their devices in 2019, which meant one-quarter of paid advertising messages never reached their audiences. (Statista, 2019)

16. 20% of online sessions are blocked with an ad blocker tool. (AudienceProject, 2020)

17. More people are whitelisting websites in their ad blockers, allowing the ads to stay active. 54% of people in the U.S. whitelisted sites in 2020, up from 40% in 2018. (AudienceProject, 2020)

18. Most ad blocking happens on desktops and laptops, as it’s more difficult to block ads within smartphones apps. (eMarketer, 2019)

19. Ad blocker monetization strategies are on the rise. Acceptable Ads, software that turns ad blockers into ad filters to display relevant content, reached about 200 million users around the world in 2020. (Statista, 2021)

20. 56 of the top 100 U.S. publishers used at least one ad block monetization strategy. (Statista, 2019)

21. 47% of internet users in the U.S. used ad blockers on their desktops in 2020, down from 49% in 2017. (Statista, 2020)

Source 

Desktop ad block usage rate in the United States from 2017 to 2020

22. Over 44% of ad block users from the U.S. said they were more willing to support sites that are Better Ads-certified than sites that were not Better Ads-certified. (Statista, 2020)

23. By the end of 2020, there were approximately 586 million monthly active users of mobile ad blocking browsers worldwide. (Statista, 2020)

Reasons for Ad Blockers

24. The top reasons why internet users around the world use ad blockers: (Hootsuite, 2021)

• Over 61% of people say there are too many ads.
• Nearly 54% of people say ads get in the way.
• 40% of people want to stop any inappropriate content from popping up.
• 39% of people believe ads aren’t relevant to them.
• Over 38% of people block ads to protect their privacy.
• 33% of people use ad blockers to improve device performance.
• Nearly 27% of users block ads to prevent companies from collecting personal data.

Source

25. In the U.S., 44% of internet users say they use ad blockers because they don’t want their online behavior to be tracked. (Statista, 2021)

26. 71% of people use ad blockers because they find websites more manageable without banner ads (Statista, 2021)

27. 66% of internet users in the U.S. say that video ads that play automatically with sound are the most annoying ads, while 55% said the same about video ads without sound. (Statista, 2019)

Source

Most annoying types of digital ads according to internet users in the United States as of July 2019

Ad Blocker Demographic Stats

28. In a survey conducted on U.S. internet users, 33% of women respondents and 49% of male respondents were using an ad blocker by the end of 2020. (Statista, 2020)

29. 16.5% of global internet users aged 16-64 feel represented in the advertising they see. This drops to 10.6% for users in the U.S.. (Hootsuite, 2021)

30. Worldwide, 19.6% of men aged 25-34 years old feel represented in advertising — the highest of any group. But this group also is the most likely to use ad blocker tools, with 43% using some sort of ad blocking software. (Hootsuite, 2021)

31. 10% of men and women aged 55-64 years old feel represented in advertising—the lowest percentage of any age group — yet this group is the least likely to use tools to block online ads. (Hootsuite, 2021)

32. Approximately 73 million people in the U.S. had installed some form of ad blocker software, plugin, or brower by 2019. (Statista, 2019)

33. 60% of US adults aged 18-24 use desktop or laptop ad blockers, compared to 18% that block ads on smartphones. (eMarketer, 2021)

Source

34. China has the highest percentage of people using an ad blocker tool at 46%. Ghana has the least amount of people using ad blockers at almost 13%. (Hootsuite, 2021)

35. Nearly 30% of women aged 55-64 use ad blockers, the lowest percentage of any other age or gender group around the world. (Hootsuite, 2021)

36. Almost 44% of men aged 25-34 years old use ad blockers, the highest percentage of any other age or gender group. (Hootsuite, 2021)

37. 10% of people using ad blockers in the U.S. pay for the technology. (AudienceProject, 2020)

Source

38. 45% of internet users between the ages of 15 to 25 use an ad blocker. The same is true for 42% of respondents aged 26 and 33 years, as well as people aged 46 to 55 years. (Statista, 2021)

39. People with a higher income are more likely to feel like personalization is invasive and didn’t want to share their personal information, no matter the benefit they received. (Merkle, 2020)

40. 86% of internet users in the U.S. knew what ad blockers were when asked. (
Statista, 2020)

Apply Your Ad Blocker Knowledge

Ad blockers aren’t going anywhere, so it’s good to reference these ad blocker statistics as you set up your next campaign. With the right information on ad blocker usage, you can understand who’s most likely to click and how to best reach your audience.

Creating an email newsletter is one of the most effective ways to provide value to your customers, drive them to buy more products, and encourage them to keep engaging with your brand. Overall, newsletters are a staple in any high-performing email marketing strategy.

If you want to make sure you won’t miss any steps when making a newsletter, keep reading. We’ve pulled together a comprehensive checklist for anyone looking to send an email newsletter.

How to Create an Email Newsletter

When starting an email newsletter, you’re juggling a lot of balls in the air at once.

You have to worry about proofreading the copy, creating compelling calls-to-action, designing the email to work for multiple inboxes and devices, avoiding any spam triggers, and brainstorming clickable subject lines — all while staying within the confines of email law (yes, there is such a thing).

Oh, and if you mess up any part of your email, there’s no undoing it once you send it to your subscribers.

If you’re sending newsletters, bookmark the following steps in your browser, or print it out and hang it up next to you. You don’t want to miss out on these crucial steps.

Ready to get started? Here are the steps you should take to create the best email newsletter for your business or personal goals.

Step 1: Choose an email newsletter tool.

First things first: Choose an email newsletter tool that fits your budget, goals, and technical skills.

HubSpot offers one of the best email marketing tools you can use to send optimized, well-designed newsletters. It’s part of Marketing Hub, which is marketing automation software for small-to-enterprise businesses. The email newsletter tool is easy to learn to use — there’s virtually no learning curve, especially if you have experience using drag-and-drop page editors on a content management system.

Even if you’ve never touched a drag-and-drop editor before, HubSpot’s email marketing tool is intuitive to learn. And you can start for free. We highly recommend starting to build your newsletter using HubSpot’s free tool, and to illustrate, we’ll include screenshots as we progress from step to step.

Step 2: Figure out your newsletter’s goal.

Learn the types of newsletters you can send in our free email newsletter guide.

Before you start drafting a single word, make sure you’re fully aware of the newsletter’s goal and how it fits into your larger content strategy. (Have one in place? Skip to the next section.)

Is your newsletter supposed to drive more traffic to your blog? Help you generate leads? Get more email contacts? Send traffic to your website? Or promote new products and services? Figure out your goal and let the rest of your decisions flow from it.

You should also note some key performance indicators for each of these goals. Keep in mind that your KPIs should go beyond “how many people opened it.” Instead, it should be more closely tied to your overall business goals. Your email’s open rate can give you an indication of the newsletter’s performance, but it shouldn’t be the only number you care about each month. Here are some email marketing metrics to consider.

Step 3: Choose a template and gather your content.

Once you have a goal for your newsletter, it’s time to choose a template and find content for it. I’d recommend looking into pre-made templates if you’re not familiar with designing emails — it can save you a lot of heartache down the road. If you’re using HubSpot, you’ll have access to pre-made templates in the email tool.

Depending on how early you set your newsletter’s goal and how often you plan on sending this newsletter, you could be able to actively or passively find content in the time between two email sends. Active means you’re going on the hunt for content that’ll solve a specific goal. Passive means that you’ll randomly stumble on it when browsing for other content, but realize it could fit in nicely.

When I put together newsletters, I tended to do a lot of active searching … but I could’ve saved myself a lot of time if I were passive. Since I knew a newsletter needed to be sent each month, bookmarking links throughout the month would’ve been a great timesaver. Instead, I usually spent several hours clicking the “Back” button on my blog, hunting for content.

However you like to gather content is up to you, but great places to look for content are your company’s blog, social media accounts, lead-generation offers, internal newsletters, and training documents.

Featured Resource: Email Newsletter Lookbook

Need inspiration on what content to include in your newsletter? HubSpot’s Email Newsletter Lookbook highlights some of the best email newsletters across industries to help your email newsletter planning.

Step 4: Personalize your template.

A template is a great starting point, but now it’s time to personalize it. Using a template will give you an idea of how your newsletter will look before writing copy. That way, you’ll know exactly how much space you have to promote a piece of content — there are a few things more frustrating than trying to squeeze copy into too tight a space.

Your template doesn’t have to be flashy or anything. Even newsletters with minimal text and color formatting will look great. The design just needs to make it easy for your recipients to read, scan, and click elements of the email. This means it should be mobile-friendly, too. According to data from Litmus, 41.6% of people open their email on a mobile device — around 25% higher than email opens on desktop.

In Marketing Hub, you can begin adjusting your template by clicking into elements and editing the specifications on the left-hand panel. If you want to get some inspiration for great email newsletter design, check out this post.

Step 5: Set your email newsletter size.

Unfortunately, email newsletters don’t size themselves when you send them to subscribers. But because everyone opens their email on their device and email service of choice, how are you supposed to know what size or resolution they should be?

Most providers will default your email newsletter size to 600px wide, with email body padding another 30px wide on all sides. And when this happens, the content inside your newsletter might not survive the adjustment. Therefore, it’s important to ensure your newsletter design fits inside that universal 600px width.

What about height? Ultimately, your email can be as high (or, rather, as long) as you want it to be without the email client distorting its design. However, people are much less likely to click through to your website if the email goes on forever — and email clients with sensitive spam filters might take notice as well. As a general rule, try not to make your email recipients scroll for more than a second before reaching the end of it.

Step 6: Add in your body content.

Next up: filling in the template with words and pictures. This will be the meat of your email newsletter, so spend time perfecting it. Most people keep the copy short and sweet to encourage click-throughs, though some notable newsletter take the opposite approach. This post can help you with email newsletter copy if you need it. Be sure to add in some images if they can help support your copy.

Don’t forget to edit your email thoroughly — maybe even send it on to one of your teammates for a once-over. Remember, once you send the thing, you can’t fix those embarrassing typos like you can with web content.

Step 7: Add in personalization tokens and smart content.

The best email newsletters I get feel like they’ve been written personally for me — like a friend actually took the time to put together a newsletter with things only I would like. I open them, I click on them, I share them … pretty much every time.

If you want your newsletters to feel that personal, you should do three things:

• Segment your emails and choose content that only that group of people will love.
• Add in personalization tokens. If your marketing software supports personalization, this is a really easy thing to implement that could have big results for your conversion rates. That being said, only add in a few personalization tokens — you don’t want to creep out your email recipients. In Marketing Hub, you can add personalization tokens by clicking “Personalize” in the top navigation bar.
• Also add in smart content. This is content that shows one thing to one part of your audience and one thing to another. An example would be a smart CTA — your leads would see a CTA for talking to your sales reps and your customers would see one about getting tickets to a customer-only event. Neither audience would want to see the other audience’s CTA, so smart content will show only the right CTA to the right person.

Step 8: Choose your subject line and sender name.

Your audience may like different things, but we’ve found that having a sender name from a real person increased opens and click-throughs. Try running an A/B test to see if it works for you, too. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s something recognizable so recipients aren’t confused as to why they’re receiving your email.

Subject lines are a little trickier. Lots of things can help you put together a click-worthy subject line, including brevity and an immediately actionable value proposition. That being said, some really great marketing emails have been sent with the subject “Not Cool, Guys.” Use the subject line best practices as a jumping-off point, then run your own A/B tests to see what your audience loves.

Step 9: Support your newsletter content with alt text and plain text.

At this point, you’ll have the email pretty much ready to go. While going through the steps above, I’m guessing you forgot two absolutely crucial things (I know I forget them almost every time I make an email): the alt text and plain text.

Alt text is the text that appears when a picture isn’t loaded. Since not all email providers load images properly, you have to make sure the alt text is there so your recipients know what they’re looking at. If you’re including a CTA that’s an image, your conversion rates will definitely suffer without alt text.

Some email clients also won’t display HTML properly, which is why you need to make sure your emails look great in plain text. Make sure the links are easy to click and that it’s clear what the email is about without the photos.

Step 10: Make sure you’re legally compliant.

Before you hit “Send,” be sure that your emails are all good from a legal perspective. The two biggest laws you need to worry about? CAN-SPAM and GDPR.

• CAN-SPAM requires that you have a footer in your email with your address and an easy way to unsubscribe from your emails if they don’t want to receive them anymore.
• GDPR is a similar but more comprehensive privacy law that requires (among other things) that email marketers only send newsletters to those people who have manually opted in to receive them. In other words, wherever on your website you collect email subscribers, you cannot automatically check the “opt-in” box for them if these recipients live in Europe. They must deliberately check this box themselves.

Step 11: Test different browsers and email providers.

Email providers don’t all read email code the same way — what looks fine on Gmail in Chrome might look terrible in Outlook, for example. So you need to test out emails in the most popular browsers and email providers.

If you have HubSpot, you can test emails for different providers in the tool. If you don’t, create fake email accounts on different providers’ websites and test everything manually.

Step 12: Send your email.

The moment of truth! Having made sure all your email recipients have subscribed to receive this email, and your email has all the branding and legal compliance it’s worthy of, it’s time to click send. Then, wait for the data to roll in.

Step 13: Analyze and iterate.

Fast-forward a few days: The data’s in. How did your newsletter do? What do you do next?

Check to see how your email newsletter performed on the goals you set back in step one. See which parts of your email got the most clicks, and which parts of the newsletter contributed most to your goal. If you have closed-loop analytics, measuring this all will be pretty easy.

Once you have that data, you have a direction to go in for your next email newsletter send. Whether your next send is in a day, a week, a month, or a quarter, you’ll have insights to make the next newsletter even better.

Start Creating Your Email Newsletter

Email newsletters are a critical part of any scalable email marketing strategy. With the steps above, you’ll be sure to create a winning email newsletter that will help you convert more leads and grow your business.

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

The only constant in the world of marketing is that things are always changing.

And, if you’re a marketer, business leader, or entrepreneur aiming to plan an effective 2022 strategy that puts you far ahead of your competitors, you probably want to know:

• Which trends are marketers leveraging today? And, which do they plan to start leveraging in 2022?
• Which marketing channels are they using?
• What are the top content-marketing formats?
• What challenges are they facing?
• And, most importantly, what are their plans and expectations for 2022 and beyond?

As the HubSpot Blog’s Research Analyst, I launched our Marketing Industry Survey to help fellow bloggers and readers answer the questions above — and gain further industry insights into 2022 planning.

Our Survey Sample

We surveyed 1,067 global marketers from across B2B and B2C companies from small to large employee sizes. The sample included professionals at varying experience levels from seven countries: the U.S., Australia, Canada, Germany, UK, France, and Japan.

Read on to learn about some of the most interesting key findings, get strategic recommendations based on our data, and find even more blog content that dives even deeper into our research.

Which trends are marketers already leveraging today?

Influencer marketing, mobile-friendly website design, short-form video, virtual events, and experiential marketing are the top trends marketers currently leverage.

These trends will see continued growth in 2022 as most marketers will increase their investment in them or continue investing the same amount.

Let’s dive into each trend and how marketers are thinking about them moving into the next year.

1. Influencer Marketing

While influencer marketing was once less accessible to small brands that couldn’t budget a high-priced celebrity or a top-tier social media user, the growth of social media has led to an abundance of influencers with nano to macro followings.

Now, as more businesses invest in influencer marketing, they’re beginning to see solid benefits. In our survey, Influencer marketing was the most popular and most effective trend with the biggest ROI.

By working with an influencer that’s gained trust, expertise, or notability in a specific industry, brands can gain awareness, traffic, and potentially conversions from that influencer’s audience.

2. Short-Form Video

As TikTok’s virality grew in 2020 and 2021, other social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube rushed to get into the short-form video game. And, as more platforms continue to shift to prioritizing quick, fast-paced content, so have marketers.

Our Marketing Strategy Survey results show that short-form video is popular, effective, and still growing, especially among social media marketers.

In fact, 30% of social media marketers plan to invest more in short-form video than any other social media marketing strategy in 2022. Meanwhile, 33% plan to leverage short-form video for the first time in 2022.

3. Virtual Events

Virtual events are popular, effective, and will continue to be a top trend marketers leverage in 2022.

However, 17% of marketers who leverage virtual events will decrease their investment in 2022, the second-highest decrease of any trend marketers invested in during 2021. Additionally, while 31% of marketers currently leverage virtual events, just 9% of marketers plan to leverage them for the first time in 2022.

If you have virtual events planned, don’t let this research panic you. Virtual events are still the third most prominent trend marketers will invest in throughout the next year.

Additionally, the decreases noted above could signal a natural transition from virtual to hybrid or physical events as more public venues fully re-open in the next year. As an event marketer, it will be important to weigh all of your options and local mandates to determine which event type will be most effective and comfortable for your audience in the coming year.

Which trends do marketers plan to leverage for the first time in 2022?

Short-form video, social responsibility, and inbound marketing are the top trends marketers plan to leverage for the first time in 2022.

While I explained some of the appeals to short-form videos above, here’s a quick snippet about the other two trends.  

Brands Will Take More Social Responsibility

In 2020 and 2021, consumers paid more attention than ever to how companies treated their customers, audiences, employees, and the world around them. And, many companies used this time to take a stance on their values. As these brands took on more social responsibility, they found that current or new audiences shared their values and gained trust, credibility, memorability, and awareness from those consumers.

Moving into 2022, more marketers are recognizing the importance of social responsibility. Investment in social responsibility will continue to grow from those already leveraging it and from marketers using it for the first time.

Digital Transformation Will Boost Inbound Marketing Use

As we move into 2022, consumers will be more connected to the web and digital platforms than ever. And, outbound strategies have gotten even more out of date.

To meet customers and audiences where they are, 23% of marketers will leverage inbound marketing for the first time.

To read more about short-form content, social responsibility, and other key trends analyzed in this survey, check out these posts:

• The Marketing Trends of 2022: The Ultimate Guide
• The Top 5 B2C Marketing Trends of 2022

Which marketing channels are businesses leveraging?

The top channels marketers currently use are social media, website/blog, and email marketing.

1. Social Media

Social media is the most popular and most effective marketing channel, with the highest ROI.

The use of social media will continue to grow, with 39% of those who don’t use social media planning to leverage it for the first time in 2022.

Additionally, 26% of marketers plan to invest more in social media than any other channel in 2022

In 2022, 51% of marketers who leverage social media plan to increase their investment in social media marketing, and 37% will continue investing the same amount.

The Top Social Media Platforms

1. Instagram

Instagram is the most popular social platform, just ahead of YouTube and Facebook.

However, Facebook has the biggest ROI of any platform, and 25% of social media marketers say they will invest more in it than any other platform in 2022.

2. YouTube

YouTube is No. 2 in terms of usage, but ROI lags behind Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Still, expect to see the platform continue to see marketing growth as brands continue to leverage it for its ginormous audience and growing brand opportunities.

3. TikTok

While TikTok is the No. 6 platform in terms of usage by social media marketers, 62% of those who leverage it plan to increase their investment in 2022, the highest of any social platform.

The Top Marketing Content Formats

Video content, blogs, images, and infographics are the top media formats.

1. Videos

Video leads across the board as the most popular and effective format with the highest ROI, and 30% of content marketers plan to invest in video more than any other format in 2022.

2. Blogs

Blogs are popular, effective, and have the 3rd highest ROI of any format.

The use of blogs will continue growing in 2022, with 29% of content marketers planning to leverage blogs for the first time and 10% planning to invest more in blogs than any other format.

3. Infographics.

Adoption of infographics will continue growing as 45% of content marketers currently leverage them and 38% plan to leverage them for the first time in 2022.

Additionally, 56% of content marketers who leverage infographics say it is the most effective content format they use.

4. Podcasts and Audio Content

Only one in three content marketers use podcasts or other audio content. While 51% of those who do plan to invest more in 2022, 43% plan to continue investing the same amount 

Despite low ROI reports, 53% of content marketers who leverage podcasts and other audio content say it is the most effective format they use.

5. Audio Chat Rooms

Just 14% of social media marketers leverage audio chat rooms like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, but 68% of those who do say it’s the most effective social media strategy they use, despite low ROI.

Additionally, 49% of those who already use audio chat rooms plan to increase their investment in 2022, while 47% plan to maintain their current investment next year.

More Insights From the HubSpot Blog

Has this data inspired you to build out or refine your marketing strategy in 2022? Be sure to keep following the HubSpot Blog’s data-driven content to dive deeper into current and emerging industry trends.

Next, check out this post where I give 11 recommendations for marketers based on the data above, plus survey findings that didn’t make it into this post. 

Below are a few blog posts that further break down the findings of our Marketing Industry Trends survey. We’ll continue to update this list as we publish more articles, so be sure to bookmark this page!

More Marketing Industry Trend Insights
The Marketing Trends of 2022: The Ultimate Guide	The Top 5 B2C Marketing Trends of 2022 [HubSpot Blog Data]
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To have winning marketing campaigns and content, you need to understand the analytics behind your strategies.

Content marketing analytics look at the metrics your team cares about most to provide insight on the health of your current strategies, progress towards goals, campaign success, and more.

 

Content Marketing Analytics

There are a number of marketing analytics tools available with customizable metrics, a variety of visualizations and dashboards, and integrations to help you measure the impact of your marketing strategy.

Let’s dive into your best options.

1. HubSpot Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Measuring the performance of all your marketing campaigns and combining resulting data with your marketing software and CRM platform.

HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics and Dashboard Software makes it easy to access all data and insights from a single location in seconds.

Trigger and/or schedule touchpoints, track custom interactions that are unique to your business, and indicate when a customer is ready for another stage of the buyer’s journey with behavioral events.

Use attribution reporting to connect every customer interaction to an associated record and revenue generated. Pre-built and customizable dashboards, templates — as well as Custom Objects — visualize your data in a format that works for your team so you can easily apply it to segments, campaigns, workflows, and more.

Price

There are four Marketing Hub plans with different analytics features and flexibility ranging price from free (forever) to $3,200 per month.

Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics and Dashboard software to measure the performance of your marketing campaigns in one place with built-in analytics, reports, and dashboards.

2. Buffer

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Understanding channel performance in detail with customizable reports.

Buffer’s content marketing analytics offers the option to build reports according to your goals. Add or remove custom metrics about the performance of numerous social media accounts. You can export those reports to share them easily.

Reports are updated daily so you can be sure you’re receiving timely data. Buffer’s analytics are designed to help you see channel performance at a detailed level on one dashboard.

The software also offers engagement metrics for each account individually. This helps you gain an intricate understanding of how customers are interacting with social content. Measure stories, posts, and hashtag performance as well as access the demographics of your audience across channels.

Price

Buffer’s Marketing Analytics product, Analyze, has two payment options with different features and flexibility that cost $35 per month or $50 per month.

3. Google Analytics

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Integrating content marketing analytics seamlessly with your other Google business tools and making data-driven content marketing strategy decisions.

Google Analytics’ intuitive interface is easy to navigate and can be used to understand the performance of your content across multiple platforms. You can also choose to analyze your content marketing efforts across all of your web pages or on an individual page level.

To understand how your content marketing strategy is doing, Google Analytics offers metrics for traffic, navigation, conversion, and organic search. The tool allows you to track user-level interactions to provide insight into the ways your audience is engaging with your content.

This analytics tool also integrates with all of Google’s other business software so you can access all of your data and insights in one place.

Price

Google Analytics offers a free and a paid plan. The free plan is ideal for SMBs and you can get started using it immediately. Meanwhile, the paid plan, called Analytics 360, is ideal for enterprise-level companies and requires you to speak with a sales rep for a quote.

4. SimilarWeb

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Understanding where your website and content strategy stand in comparison to industry standards.

SimilarWeb provides traffic and engagement industry standards and tells you where your website stands among them. This information is useful for discovering how performance stacks up against the competition.

With SimilarWeb, break down your daily active users, sessions per user, use-time, and rank. Discover more information about your audience — such as repetitive behaviors or interests — to improve your acquisition strategy.

Price

SimilarWeb offers two plans, one of which is free and another that’s meant for enterprise businesses and requires you to contact a rep for a consultation.

5. Moz

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Measuring your SEO content strategy and determining which keywords you should be using.

Moz measures the impact of your search-engine-optimized content. Gain insight into how your work is ranking among others in your industry and which keywords are the most effective to use in your strategy.

Moz’s software tracks your site’s keyword rank and how visible it is over time to learn what is and isn’t performing well among audiences.

Additionally, track how competitors rank on search engine results pages (SERPS) — this allows you to spot areas for improvement and the parts of your campaign you can use to target them. To help with this, use Moz’s detailed reports to see how your content is reaching audiences and what you can do to improve.

Price

There are two main Moz solutions, Local and Pro. Both Local and Pro have different plans ranging in features, flexibility, and price. Local ranges in price from $129-299 while Pro ranges in price from $99-599 per month.

6. Hotjar

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Tracking and visualizing sessions on your website with heat maps.

Use Hotjar to track sessions on your site. Hotjar provides heat maps about how and where customers spend their time while on your website.

Hotjar’s real-time videos capture how your visitors are navigating and using your website. This allows you to hone in on the content that’s catching your customer’s eye. You can also track conversions and make inferences about which stage of the buyer’s journey customers might be entering or leaving.

Price

Hotjar offers three types of plans. There are two options for those who want a Personal plan that is either free or $39 per month. These options are ideal for personal and low-traffic websites.

The Business plans range in price from $99-$989 per month depending on the number of sessions per day you receive. Lastly, the Agency plan requires you to contact a rep to chat about a plan for your team and clients.

7. Semrush

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Tracking SEO and keyword performance across your web pages and content strategy.

Semrush is used for search engine optimization (SEO) tracking and helps you track keyword performance in your content as well as monitor brand mentions cross-platform.

Additionally, the tool tracks Google rankings and which of your web pages receive the most traffic. This is helpful because discovering what drives visitors to your site allows you to adjust the content you’re presenting accordingly.

Price

Semrush offers three plans that range in price from $119 to $449 per month.

8. Quintly

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Improving social planning by analyzing the success of your social media marketing strategy with customizable metrics.

Quintly provides you with the insight necessary to analyze your content marketing campaigns. It helps you make smarter decisions when it comes to social planning by equipping you with customizable metrics so you can better understand how your marketing strategy is working.

Quintly does a deep dive into all of your accounts to uncover metrics that matter to your teams and goals, and you can sort and share reports by team so everyone gets the information they need.

Reports can also be automated and measured by impact using Quintly’s machine learning system. Users can access the API, integrate with popular software like Google Search, and overcome data silos.

Price

Quintly’s custom plans start at $300 per month.

9. BuzzSumo

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Visualizing and analyzing real-time marketing trends to tailor content to your target audience.

View and analyze marketing trends in real-time with BuzzSumo by topic so you’re able to create content that’s likely to be relevant to your audience. Trends can also be filtered by location — this way, you’ll have an understanding of what’s popular by region.

BuzzSumo lets you customize your feed so you can get the data that matters most to you. Identify relevant keywords to include in your campaigns, access examples of content proven to be successful on BuzzSumo’s site, and use the data you obtain through the tool to discover how you can drive the most traffic to your marketing content.

Price

BuzzSumo offers four plans that range in price from $99 to $499+ per month.

10. Kissmetrics

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Discovering how your audience interacts with your website and apps and understanding their behaviors.

Kissmetrics allows you to spot a customer’s journey across multiple devices, analyze their behavior on your website, and review conversion metrics (e.g. bounce rate and time-on-site).

Kissmetrics focuses on behavioral analytics which is helpful if you want to learn about how customers react to and interact with your content. This will also provide insight into what’s most valuable to users and how to keep visitors coming back.

Price

Request a Kissmetrics demo or check out the payment plans for their two main products, one of which is meant for SaaS and one for ecommerce.

The SaaS plan comes with three payment options — those plans are $299, $499, or a custom price (based on your custom plan). Ecommerce also has three plans that cost $299, $499, or a custom price (based on your custom plan).

11. Databox

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Combining all of your marketing data to track and understand the success of your strategy in a single location and in real-time.

Databox is a business analytics and KPI dashboard platform that offers insight into the state of your business. The tool organizes all of your business data — from any source — into a single location for accessible performance tracking.

Over 70 available integrations make the process of bringing your data into the tool — as well as displaying, analyzing, and sharing it — simple.

The Goal Tracking feature allows you to track progress towards your targets by assigning and focusing on SMART goals within the tool.

Scorecards are a feature that notifies you (daily, weekly or monthly) of any updates to your KPIs. There are also other alerts you can receive the moment your data is looking off so you can efficiently resolve the issue before it gets worse.

Price

Databox offers a regular version of their product and an Agency edition. The regular version costs anywhere from free to $248 per month. As for the Agency version of Databox, there’s a free plan but if you need more flexibility, contact a rep for billing details.

12. Supermetrics

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Taking marketing data from any source and moving it into Google Sheets, Google Data Studio, Microsoft Excel, Google BigQuery, or Snowflake for analysis.

Supermetrics is a business analytics tool that you can use to pull marketing data (e.g. SEO, PPC, social media, and web analytics data) from any source and move it into Google Sheets, Google Data Studio, Microsoft Excel, Google BigQuery, or Snowflake. Use Supermetrics as a reporting, analytics, and data storage tool.

Bring your favorite metrics and dimensions into Supermetrics. Then, organize and filter your data within Supermetrics to analyze the success of your efforts and identify areas for improvement.

Price

Supermetrics offers multiple plans for all seven of their products, some of which require you to contact a rep and some of which list pricing on their unique web page.

13. Demand Sage

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Moving all of your HubSpot data into Google Sheets for easy analysis in your platform of choice.

Demand Sage is a tool used to bring all of your HubSpot data into Google Sheets. There are one-click, customizable reports to help you understand your marketing and sales success and which areas to focus your efforts. Demand Sage offers one-click data sync and one-click, flexible reports.

Within your spreadsheet, create granular, record-level reports and use the table builder to display your data with any view you’d like.

Additionally, attribution and revenue reporting connects marketing and sales data in your reports for greater internal alignment and insight into how your pipeline is working as well as what’s driving revenue.

Price

Demand Sage is free.

14. Grow.com

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Importing and transforming business data from a variety of sources and then combining that data on custom dashboards.

Grow.com is a business intelligence platform that allows you to import and transform your business’s data from a number of sources and create dashboards with the metrics that matter to you.

Once your data is imported into the platform, it keeps your most relevant data at your fingertips. Build custom metrics, bring disparate data sources together, and select from a number of chart types to visualize your data however you want to. You can also easily share metrics and dashboards with team members to ensure everyone knows where to focus their efforts.

Price

Get a free Grow.com demo and talk to a rep about the price of the right plan for your business.

15. Plecto

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Keeping your team on top of goals and targets with dashboard data visualization software.

Plecto is a dashboard data visualization platform ideal for discovering real-time insights from an unlimited number of sources you pull your data from. Filter across the sources you integrate with Plecto and display data on your dashboards with different variables as needed.

Display data with pre-built KPI dashboards in Plecto or customize your own. There are also gamification features to increase employee engagement and motivation as well as keep team members focused on their goals.

Price

Plecto offers three payment options depending on which plan you choose ranging from $200 per month, $350 per month, or a custom price (based on your Enterprise plan).

16. Adverity

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Best content marketing analytics tool for: Automating data integration across hundreds of sources.

Adverity is an intelligent marketing data analytics platform ideal for data-driven marketing. The tool automates data integration from hundreds of sources to give you a single view of marketing performance.

Adverity makes it easy to remove any data silos you may have and provide easy access to centrally-located marketing data so your team members can identify and analyze the information they need.

Adverity comes with augmented analytics, meaning it uses AI to identify trends, areas for improvement, strengths, and new insights in your data. It also automates the process of creating marketing reports and data visualizations to save you time.

Price

Contact Adverity to get a custom quote on the right plan for your business.

Performance Content

When measuring the performance of your content, you’ll need to 1) decide which performance indicators you’re going to measure, 2) track those metrics and KPIs, and 3) analyze and apply your findings. 

But first, what is performance content? 

Performance content is content that you create and optimize with a specific business goal in mind (e.g. increasing user sign ups on a web page or your Blog).

Content Performance Indicators 

Here are some common website metrics and KPIs you might choose to track in order to analyze the success of your content. 

1. Web Traffic

The amount of traffic you get on your website and individual pages.

2. Page Views

The number of page views a web page gets from visitors. 

3. Impressions

The number of times an ad or web page is displayed to an individual.

4. Sessions

A group of actions an individual website visitor takes while on a website during a specific amount of time. 

5. Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors who come to your website but don’t convert in any way — rather, they leave, or bounce, from your site before taking action. 

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Keyword and search engine results page (SERP) success and performance. 

7. Engagement

The number of interactions that your visitors have with your content (e.g. comments, shares, likes, forwards, subscriptions) and how long engagement lasts across those channels and web pages. 

8. Social Media Engagement and Interactions

Depending on your social media platforms, there will be specific metrics related to engagement and interactions on a post and/or piece of content that you can analyze (views, shares, comments, likes, etc). 

9. Lead Generation and Conversions

The number of acquired leads, conversions, and sales that result from your content (e.g. email sign ups, blog subscriptions, CTA clicks, downloads, product purchase.)

11. Brand Awareness

The way your target audience learns about your brand and becomes aware of your products, mission, and what it is you do.

This can mean taking a look at other metrics on this list such as page views, social media engagement (or simply using the process of social listening), downloads, video views, referrals, and resource/ document reads or shares. 

12. Customer Loyalty

The amount of content that your current customers consume and/or engage with (e.g. if a current customer is a blog subscriber who receives articles in their email inbox weekly). 

13. Upsell/ Cross-sell

Sales for new, additional, or upgraded products that you offer. 

Apply Content Marketing Analytics to Grow Better

Content marketing analytics tools have the power to help your team understand the health of your strategy, audience behaviors and interactions, progress to goal, and more.

As a result, you’ll have the information you need to improve the customer experience, resonate with your audience through your content, and increase conversions.

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

Advertising is changing — in 2021, companies are on track to spend more than $450 billion dollars on digital advertising.

The challenge? Massive variety in the digital advertising market — from differing platforms and ad types to target audiences — can frustrate efforts to capture customer interest and drive ROI.

How do you choose the right medium to promote your platform? What metrics matter? And once you decide, how do you actually make the ad?

Our comprehensive ad-making guide has you covered. Let’s go.

Featured Resource: Advertising Planning Templates & Kit

To make your advertising planning easier, use HubSpot’s free Advertising Planning Kit. Included are templates to help you plan and present your ad pitch, schedule your release dates, and inform your stakeholders. We’ve also thrown in an advertising best practices guide to help you choose the advertising method that works best for your business.

1. Choose Your Target Audience

When making an ad, you’ll first need to decide the audience you’re making the ad for. Target the right market and you’ll find customers naturally inclined to engage with your brand and product. Cast too wide a net and you may find yourself lost in the digital noise.

One way to help your ad find the right audience is to get granular on whom you want to target with your messaging, which will help you incorporate the best messaging and select the best advertising platform. This should be based off of your buyer personas — semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.

If you need help building your personas, try using HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool.

2. Conduct Marketing Research

Market research is an essential part of campaign promotion. Feeding into your buyer personas, market research can answer key questions about your target market, such as:

• How old are they?
• What do they spend most of their time doing?
• What social media platforms do they use, if any?
• Do they live in suburban, urban, or rural areas?

Knowing the above information about your target audience can help you answer questions like — TV or YouTube? Instagram or LinkedIn? Billboard or bus? — because you’ll understand more about how to appeal to the right people.

You can use this Market Research Guide and Set of Templates to get started on market research for your ad.

3. Choose Your Platform

Your market research should give you the insight and confidence you need to choose the most effective platform to reach your target audience. You should also do some supplemental research on the costs, ROI, and benefits of certain ad platforms and methods.

You may come to the realization that using multiple ad platforms and methods would be the right move for your campaign – such as social media and search engine ads. This is actually a great strategy, as it casts a wider net and opens up the possibility of reaching even more prospects where they already are.

4. Decide on a Budget

For advertising, you need to spend money to make money.

Getting your budget approved can be difficult, so make it easier to get what you need by clearly outlining:

• The total budget you need
• How the costs are broken down
• A projected ROI (or business impact)

Be sure to come to any budget meeting prepared to answer whatever questions could be thrown at you and to defend the specifics.

For instance, saying “We need $10,000 to run a Google Ads campaign” doesn’t sound nearly as compelling as “We’d like to run a series of ads on Google. Here’s a list of our keywords and negative keywords, their monthly search volume, and our preliminary bids for each. With these projections, we’re expecting to bring in 400 new contacts next month for a total cost of $10,000.”

5. Craft a Message

By this point, you know your target audience and your preferred platform, but you’re still not sure what you’re saying. Here’s where you’ll want to think about the broad purpose of your campaign to inspire your ad.

Do you want people to come to your store, or visit your website? Is your immediate goal to drive free signups for your software, or ebook downloads? Think about the message and how that can feed into the end goal(s) of your ad campaign.

6. Get People Talking

While your message needs to include your brand purpose and tie in with long-term marketing goals, it also needs to be something people remember.

Here’s why: As more advertising shifts to social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and even Twitter, brand marketing needs to get to the point ASAP to drive customer interest and social sharing. If your message — whether it’s text, images, or videos — can make users stop, look and share with their connections, you’ve got a much better chance of creating organic interaction and driving more traffic to your site.

7. Decide What You’re Building

Ads can build brand awareness and product awareness — but not simultaneously. As a result, it’s worth taking the time to think about your advertising goals for new marketing campaigns.

For example, if brand awareness is the goal, you may want to consider a set of ads that tell a story or help customers learn more about what makes your brand unique. Here, the goal is to engage with customers over a longer period of time to help them engage with your brand from the first time they see your ad to eventual conversion. Ideally, your brand story will help create a long-term, reciprocal customer relationship.

Product awareness ads, meanwhile, are designed to highlight new products or services, call out seasonal specials or help drive specific action from customers. They’re often one-off or a short series of ads that run over a small period of time.

8. Include a CTA

While building awareness is critical for ads to be effective, it’s not enough in isolation.

That’s why all your ads also need a call-to-action (CTA) that provides information for consumers on what to do next. In some cases — such as an ad on your webpage — the CTA may be simple and direct, such as “sign up for our newsletter” or “click here to buy now.”

If you’re advertising on social sites, meanwhile, reaching for an immediate sale or asking for user contact data may actually drive customers away. Here, your CTA needs to be more subtle but no less clear. For example, you might opt for “click here to learn more” or “explore what we have to offer.” In practice, the goal is to avoid presuming what users want — instead, your CTA provides a path to more information if they’re interested. And if you’ve crafted a great ad, they will be.

9. Don’t Forget the Details

They’re small things — the smallest, in some cases — but can have significant impacts for your ad campaign: The details.

Consider an advertisement for a concert or event that your company is hosting. You’ve done the work: Identified the right market, crafted a great message, and created a CTA that will drive customer action.

But…

You’ve forgotten the details. Your ad doesn’t mention where or when the event is happening. Sure, customers could click through and see the specifics on your website, but there’s no guarantee they’ll take this step. Put simply, when it comes to creating a great ad, you have to account for the forest and the trees: You need big-picture advertisements that are visually compelling, content-rich and engaging, but it’s just as critical to double-check that you’re not missing the details.

10. Create Test Ads

Before launching your ad campaign, it’s worth trying your hand at making an advertisement for your brand. Here’s why: Not all ad designs look as great on the screen as they do in your head. By creating basic mock-ups, you can see what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to improve.

One of the most popular options for simple ad creation is Adobe Photoshop. Not sure where to start? Here’s a quick look at how to make an ad in Photoshop.

How to Make an Ad on Photoshop

Let’s say you want to create a Facebook ad on Photoshop. Follow these steps:

• Create a new document in Photoshop.

Open Photoshop, select “File,” and then click “New” from the drop-down menu. You’ll see the screen above. Here, you can select the size of your new ad, along with the color profile you want to use.

• Insert your image.

Next, you’ll want to insert an image to work with. Simply drag-and-drop the image of your choice into the Photoshop workspace and you’re ready to go.

• Add some text.

Next, add some text to your image by selecting the “T” button in the bottom left-hand corner. You can choose vertical or horizontal text, depending on what works best for your image.

• Add a CTA.

Once you’re happy with your text placement, consider adding a CTA. Select one of the shape tools from the left-hand side menu and insert that into your image. Resize as needed, then head back to the text tool and insert your CTA.

• Consider the 20% rule.

Facebook used to have a hard-and-fast 20% rule that stated no more than 20% of your image could contain text. While this is now a strong suggestion rather than an absolute rule, it’s worth keeping your text to a minimum since Facebook rates ads based on their text volume — the more text you have, the lower your chances of getting seen.

• Save your file.

Finally, save your new ad. Head to “File”, then “Save As,” and then “Format.” It’s worth saving it as both a Photoshop document (.psd) and a .png file, which makes uploading to Facebook easier.

11. Develop Creative Assets

Whether it’s copy for a Google Ad or a flashy landing page from your in-house designers, all ads need creative assets. Chances are, most of the ads you run will need one or more of the following:

• Short, promotional copy (for image ads and online ads)
• Long-form copy (for video scripts)
• Photographs (for online ads)
• Custom-designed images and/or animations (for online ads and video ads)
• Video (for…video ads)
• GIFs (for online ads)

All of these assets can be overwhelming, and if you’re thinking “I’m not a videographer/writer/designer/photographer!”, that’s totally fine. If these resources aren’t available to you in-house to help make your ad, consider hiring a team of freelancers or an agency to help you produce these deliverables and make an outstanding advertisement, or use an online marketing design tool like Canva to help streamline the process.

12. Determine Measurements of Success and Set Up Tracking

No matter if your ultimate goal is Page Likes, online purchases, or promo code uses, you should never launch an ad without first being crystal clear on two questions:

• What do we want to see in order to call this ad successful?
• How are we measuring success?

You already thought of your advertisement’s goal in Step 7, so now, make the expectations of your campaign known by setting up the proper ad tracking.

If you’re advertising online, there’s a good chance the platform you’re using — like Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn — has an ad management and tracking platform, allowing you to see how many interactions your ads have had and how much they cost.

However, you’ll also want to take a few extra steps to aid in your analysis down the line:

• Use an automated free ad tracking platform to measure advertising ROI and see how your ads tie into larger marketing projects and campaigns. You can also use this platform to compare ads from different sites; say, if you were running ads on both Instagram and Twitter.
• Set up a custom tracking spreadsheet offline to measure engagements with your ad and other data points like cost, conversion, and advertising ROI, especially if your ad is online.
• Use custom tracking tokens for links promoted in your ad so that you can analyze engagement and conversions on your own website.

13. Launch Your Ad

The stage is set, and you can finally launch your ad for the world to see.

Needless to say, the process of launching an ad on Google is different than on Bing. The same can be said for every social media channel, TV ads, or transportation ads.

Here’s a list of the more detailed, step-by-step process for launching an ad on some of these platforms. Click through to learn more about the platform or platforms that you’re creating an ad for:

• How to Launch a Facebook Ad
• How to Launch a LinkedIn Ad
• How to Launch an Instagram Ad
• How to Launch a Twitter Ad
• How to Launch a YouTube Ad
• How to Launch a Google Ad
• How to Launch a TV Ad
• How to Launch a Billboard Ad

14. Track & Analyze Performance

For campaigns that have a set run time (transportation, television, etc.), determine how the ad’s results performed against expectations. Since it’s difficult to draw a one-to-one comparison for these ad types, you may want to look at general business trends, change in revenue, or even social media/press mentions to gauge success.

For online ads, this process is a bit easier. Results start coming in immediately, so you can see how well your ads are performing instantly, and over time. Take note of the ads that are bringing in high numbers at low costs and — just as importantly — ads that are costing a lot but not performing that well.

Remember, you can take the headache out of the manual ad tracking with a free online ads tracking tool.

15. Make Changes, Rinse, and Repeat

Once your ad campaign is over (or if it’s an ongoing online campaign), take your learnings and apply them to your next advertisement.

For instance, maybe you realized your online ads that were wordier performed worse than ads that were more concise, or that YouTube just didn’t work this time around. Lean into what worked (or is working) and abandon what’s not to continue to strengthen your company’s advertising program.

It All Ads Up

And there you have it — our comprehensive guide to planning, creating, launching, and analyzing your new ad.

Looking to streamline the process? Use an advertising planning template to outline your ad campaign, keep all contributors informed, and rally behind the same end goal for your business.

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