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I love online shopping. In fact, online shopping is almost the only way I shop.

And I’m not alone.

In 2019, there were 263 million digital buyers in the U.S. By 2024, this figure is projected to increase to 282.7 million online buyers.

As a marketer, these figures prove that businesses should invest in Google shopping ads.

Google shopping ads, the ads that appear on the search engine results page when someone is searching for a product, can be confusing to set up.

In this post, we’ll review how to structure your Google shopping campaign and the top strategies that’ll drive sales.

If you want to set up Google shopping ads, you might be wondering, “Which campaign structure should I use?” and “What’s the difference?”

Below, let’s discuss the two different methodologies behind a Google shopping campaign structure.

Featured Resource: Google Ads Planning Template

Download this Template

While setting up Google Shopping Ads campaigns sounds complex, using a planning template can make it easier.

HubSpot’s Google Ads PPC kit will help you determine what your bids should be, set up and optimize your budget, find new keywords, and optimize your campaigns.

1. One campaign and one ad group.

The simplest way to set up your Google shopping campaign is to use just one campaign and one ad group.

When you first set up a Shopping campaign, you’ll have one ad group with one product group called “All products,” which will include your entire inventory.

This is a great approach if you want to run a straightforward campaign, without using complex optimization techniques.

However, if you want to customize your bid based on which products you’re selling, then this approach isn’t for you.

2. Several campaigns with varying campaign priorities.

Instead of running one campaign with one ad group, you can run multiple campaigns and prioritize them based on your bidding strategy.

For example, you can set up a campaign targeting unbranded keywords by using a negative keyword list that includes your brand’s name.

You might choose to have this campaign be a low or medium priority since the searchers who aren’t using branded keywords are in the beginning stages of their research.

On the other hand, you can set up a second campaign targeting branded keywords and setting a high priority because these users are further in their buying journey and more likely to convert.

By using several ad groups, optimized with negative keywords, you’ll have more control over the search terms that your product shows up for.

However, it’s important to note that you can’t choose which keywords your product shows up for. You can optimize your campaigns with negative keywords and customized bids, but you can’t choose the keywords you want to target.

Additionally, you can also set up different campaigns for different product groups. Again, you can decide which campaign is a high priority and which one is a low priority depending on which products you think will convert more.

Although this method gives you more control, it requires more strategizing and organization in the planning phase.

Plus, what works for one company, might not work for another. This means that you’ll want to test and see what works for you.

Once you have a good idea of the campaign structure you’re going to use, it’s time to strategize. Below, let’s dive into the top Google shopping ad strategies that’ll help you develop a campaign that drives sales.

1. Create customized campaigns using negative keywords.

When you create multiple campaigns, you can divide them into high, medium, and low priority.

One strategy is to use several campaigns with varying priorities to target certain searches. To do this, you’ll need to develop a negative keyword list for each campaign so you can control which searches your product shows up for.

This might mean that you develop a campaign for more generic searches versus high intent, branded searches.

With this strategy, you’re going to want to think about which searches are more likely to convert versus those that aren’t.

2. Consider your pricing.

With Google shopping ads, your ad is going to be competing with several other products. That’s why it’s important to consider your pricing.

In the example below, you can see the Google shopping ads that showed up for the search “Fabletics leggings.”

While most of the products are Fabletics, there are a few from other brands. You can see Fabletics leggings priced around $45-60, however, you can also see Old Navy leggings for $28 and SHEIN leggings for $10.

Price can play a large role in the purchasing decision, so it’s important to keep your prices competitive to increase your sales.

3. A/B test your campaigns.

When you’re devising any new strategy for a marketing campaign, it’s important to A/B test. With Google shopping ads, you’ll probably try a few different techniques.

You might want to test different ad groups, priority settings, bids, or negative keywords.

Additionally, you can also test which product groups and product pages are more likely to convert.

With Google shopping ads, it’s important to find the right balance between your campaign structure and bidding strategy.

To improve your sales, you should run A/B tests to see what works for your company and what doesn’t.

4. Optimize your product pages.

Not to be redundant, but keep in mind that your Google shopping ads won’t target specific keywords.

This makes it even more important to optimize your product pages so you can signal to Google which keywords your product should show up for.

To do this, you should use keywords in your product title, page title, meta description, image alt text, and product description copy.

This will help Google decide when to show your product.

5. Split your ad groups by product.

One strategy you can use when you set up your Google shopping campaign is split your ad groups by product.

For example, perhaps you want to group certain products together. Let’s say you sell scrunchies and wine, like Kaitlyn Bristowe. However, you probably don’t want to target the same keywords because the products are so different.

Additionally, you might want to focus more of your money on the scrunchie ads than the wine because they usually drive more sales for your brand.

By splitting your ad groups by products, you can set different priorities and budgets for your campaigns.

6. Use retargeting methods.

Have you ever been looking at a product online and then scrolled through Facebook only to see an ad for that exact product?

That’s retargeting in action.

You can use retargeting for your Google shopping campaigns.

To do this, you’ll use remarketing lists that give you the ability to segment your site visitors by previous site engagement.

You can also customize your bids based on previous engagement such as shopping cart-abandoners, loyal customers, or repeat visitors.

With this strategy, you can increase your sales because people are more likely to convert if they’ve visited your site before.

7. Build a Similar Audiences list.

A similar audience is a way to segment your traffic to cater specifically to audiences who are similar to your returning customers.

This means that they have similar behavior online and might be more inclined to purchase your product.

With Google shopping campaigns, you can set up Similar Audiences to build connected, engaged, and loyal customers.

8. Include a special offer or deal.

Similar to considering your price, one strategy for your Google shopping ads is to include a special offer or deal with your products.

Additionally, you can consider adding a free shipping tag to your ad.

Adding a special offer is free to include in your ad, can help set you apart from other ads, and improve your ROI.

While Google shopping campaigns seem like a complex, intimidating process, it’s really not. All you have to do is think strategically about your campaigns and test what works for your company.

By 2022, Statista anticipates that more than 333 billion emails will be sent each data.

To give you an idea of how big that number is, if each email were a star, the cluster would be 50% bigger than the Milky Way Galaxy.

I hope I’m not the only one who thinks the statistic above is mind-blowing.

At this point, email has proven to be a major communication tool for both consumers and marketers. But, as this channel has thrived, mobile technology. such as smartphones and tablets, has also become much more abundant in society. 

And while you might think you have a solid email strategy, a huge portion of your audience might be missing out on your lead-generating content if your emails aren’t mobile optimized.

Even back in 2016, when slightly less people had smartphones, most of the consumer population would disregard or delete emails that weren’t mobile optimized. Today, mounting research shows that mobile optimization is even more vital to your email marketing strategy. 

But with so many resources, oftentimes in the form of extensive reports, it can be hard to find the time to keep track of important industry stats and information, such as that around mobile optimization.

To help you recognize why you need to optimize your email strategy for mobile, I’ve put together this list of essential email marketing stats that you should keep in mind.

First, I’ll begin with a few general stats that highlight why you need to embrace email marketing in the first place. 

General Email Marketing Stats to Know in 2020

Email Marketing Tactics and Spending

• In the near future, brands are planning to add advanced segmentation (47%), content personalization (37%) and behavioral targeting (39%) to their email marketing practices. (Econsultancy, 2019)
• Last year, 66% of email marketers highlight automation as an important attribute of email solutions, up six percentage points from 60% in 2018. (Econsultancy, 2019)
• The top three areas for email marketers were focusing on in 2019 were automated campaigns (37%), personalization (32%) and segmentation (29%). (Econsultancy, 2019)
• On average, email attracted only 13% of company marketing spend in the last year, despite being attributed to 19% of sales. (Econsultancy, 2019)

Email Metrics and Benchmarks

• Globally, the average email open rate was 22.15% in 2019. (GetResponse 2019)
• Average email click-through rate is 3.43%. while th average click-to-open rate is 15.49%. (GetResponse, 2019)
• The average email unsubscribe rate in 2019 was 0.20%, while spam complaints average at 0.02%. (GetResponse, 2019)
• 73% of companies rank email as an “excellent” marketing channel for ROI. (Econsultancy, 2019)

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• The top reason email receives so little marketing spend is that email measurement is skewed towards non-commercial metrics, such as open and click-through rates. These metrics don’t always support a business case for email. (Econsultancy, 2019)

Mobile Email Optimization Stats

• 49% of all web traffic was from mobile devices in 2019. (Statista, 2019)
• 60% of email opens are from mobile devices. (Aedestra, 2019)
• Mobile email users totaled 2.2 billion by the end of 2018. (Campaign Monitor, 2018)
• 35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device. (Convince & Convert, 2018)
• Apple iPhone is the most popular mobile client for reading emails with 29 percent of all opens occurring on this platform.
• Although people primarily check email on IPhone devices, Gmail is still the most-used email service, with more than 1.5 billion users (CNBC, 2019)
• Launching a mobile-responsive email design can increase unique mobile clicks by 15%. (MailChimp, 2019)
• When it comes to Gmail and mobile emails, they follow Apple making up 27 percent of the mobile email market. (Campaign Monitor, 2018)
• In 2016, a report found that 68% to 79% of consumers would delete an email that isn’t mobile optimized. This percentage was highest for those over the age of 56. (Aedestra, 2016)
• The average percentage of email clicks by PC users was 72% and 18.5%. for mobile users. (MailChimp, 2019)
• 9.3% of email clicks come from tablets, rather than smartphones or computers. (MailChimp, 2019)

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Embracing Mobile Optimized Emails

The stats above tell a compelling story.

Although general email is still the preferred mode of communication for the majority of consumers, and a major revenue generator, you shouldn’t forget about your huge mobile audiences when sending out your campaigns.

To learn more about mobile optimization, as well as how to execute a successful and revenue-generating email strategy, check out our Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing. 

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally publishied in Dec. 2013, but was updated to reflect the current mobile email landscape and research in June 2020. 

Email marketing is a key component of any successful marketing strategy — in fact, email marketing provides companies with a potential ROI of $44 for every $1 spent.

In particular, email newsletters are an essential way for your business to keep your subscribers up-to-date with relevant information, and ultimately drive more leads. Newsletters give marketers the ability to capture email sign-ups through form submissions, and nurture leads.

If you have a blog, you’ve probably sent newsletters to notify subscribers about new blog posts. Alternatively, perhaps you’ve used newsletters to send business-related information to your subscribers.

Anyway you slice it, newsletters help you keep your contacts engaged with your business.

An email newsletter tool is essential, since it allows you to beautifully design a newsletter email, deliver the email to your subscribers with features such as A/B testing and smart content, and monitor and analyze how the newsletter performed.

However, not all email newsletter tools are created equal. With differences in features, pricing, and availability, choosing an email newsletter can be hard — especially with the number of options available. Additionally, newsletter tools differ in how much of the customer journey they can cover.

Ultimately, when choosing your email newsletter tool, you’ll want to ensure the tool matches your business’s goals — which is why we wanted to take out the guesswork, and highlight the top email newsletters out there for your business.

Best Newsletter Software

1. HubSpot’s Email Newsletter Tool

Designing, sending, and analyzing email newsletters has never been easier with the HubSpot Email tool. HubSpot offers a drag-and-drop email editor so you can easily create a polished email newsletter that you can personalize to fit your brand’s design without needing a designer or IT professional.

Additionally, you can experiment with smart content rules, personalization, A/B testing, and advanced reporting — ensuring your email newsletters are optimized for your business. You can also see who’s engaging with each newsletter email and when, what device they’re using, the most popular links and documents, and more. You can use these insights to design tests that will take conversion rates to new heights for your business.

Ultimately, what makes HubSpot’s Email tool so exceptional is its ability to pair with HubSpot’s free forms tool to easily collect email leads, as well as HubSpot’s free CRM to give you insight into how your marketing emails are performing.

For example, you can use an email subscriber’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact records to automatically serve up the most relevant subject lines, content, links, attachments, and calls-to-action.

HubSpot’s email tool starts free.

2. Benchmark

Benchmark offers the ability to easily create email newsletters via drag-and-drop functionality, giving non-technical marketers the power to create beautiful newsletters. There’s also a good selection of newsletter templates that you can choose from in the Benchmark template library.

Some of Benchmark’s most valuable features include detailed analytics on how each email campaign performs, A/B split testing to ensure you’re sending the best emails, spam testing tools that ensure your emails get to inboxes, responsive designs and templates, list segmentation tools, and auto-responders.

Benchmark is free for up to 2,000 subscribers, and lets you send up to 14,000 emails per month.

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3. GetResponse

GetResponse offers features that become available as you need them, from a range of starter features all the way to enterprise features such as webinars and landing pages. Hosting landing pages in GetResponse will further enable you to capture email subscribers for your newsletter.

GetResponse also allows you to create well-designed email newsletters with their drag-and-drop email editor, segment contacts tool, campaigns creator, and A/B testing tool. With a ton of templates to choose from, you can create an email to match your brand, and send emails more efficiently.

GetResponse does not offer a free tier, but they have a 30-day trial, and pricing starts at $15 per month.

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4. SendInBlue

With SendInBlue, you don’t need technical skills to create well-designed email newsletters. The drag-and-drop functionality, HTML editor, and expansive template gallery gives you the tools you need to create stunning emails.

You can personalize the design of your newsletters with easy builders, choose the form fields for your subscription form, and design many ways for your visitors to opt-in. SendInBlue has a robust automation pipeline, allowing you to send different emails based on specific actions taken by your contacts. However, SendInBlue does not have a CRM, so it’s not the best option for scaling teams.

SendInBlue lets you send 300 emails per day (6,000 emails per month) for free, and pricing starts at $25 per month for 40,000 emails.

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5. Mailjet

Mailjet offers email solutions for fast moving teams, especially in Europe, and great scaling opportunities for larger companies. The service is keen on being developer-friendly with a powerful API solution for engineers to build on their email platform. One appealing feature of Mailjet is the ability to create dynamic content that is personalized for each recipient based on data such as name and location.

If your team demands email newsletters be built together and reviewed often before sending, Mailjet’s collaborative tools make it easy for teams to work together on emails. For example, you can create a draft of your newsletter in Mailjet, and your teammates can suggest edits before it’s sent — all within the app.

Mailjet gives 200 emails per day (6,000 emails per month) for free, and pricing starting at $8.69 per month for 30,000 emails.

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6. MailChimp

MailChimp offers a free email marketing service with a large selection of templates to choose from for newsletters. MailChimp is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses looking to get their feet wet in email marketing, but is not suited for scaling teams since it lacks powerful automation and segmenting features.

MailChimp is a valuable tool nonetheless, especially since its free plan generously offers up to 12,000 free email sends per month. You’ll also like the variety of newsletter templates that MailChimp offers, and the drag-and-drop builder that lets you rework the designs.

MailChimp offers 12,000 email sends per month to a list size up to 2,000 for free. Pricing starts at $10 per month for 500 subscribers.

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7. Constant Contact

Constant Contact provides a reliable email newsletter solution for small to large businesses. Constant Contact provides a helpful user on-boarding for anyone looking to get started quickly, and offers easy-to-use features. If you think you’ll be running into complexity with the email marketing tool, you’ll be happy to know that Constant Contact’s multi-channel support system can help walk you through most issues.

In Constant Contact, you can use their email builder to create newsletters that match your brand, select from a variety of templates, and edit to ensure it looks exactly how you want it — although I’m not a big fan of the templates, since most of the templates look outdated. Additionally, if you need sophisticated automation features and workflows, I would advise staying away from Constant Contact because it lacks a strong automation system.

Constant contact does not offer a free tier. You can try out the service for 60 days before paying, then prices start at $20 per month for a list size up to 500 contacts.

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8. MailUp

MailUp offers plenty of the same functionality from what you’d expect from an email marketing service, including a drag-and-drop email builder, beautifully designed templates, and an HTML editor.

However, it’s critical to note — you get more value from MailUp if you choose to send out emails at a slower pace, since the price varies depending on delivery speed. So, if your business has a specific number of contacts and doesn’t mind sending newsletters slower, you could save money by using MailUp. If you use WordPress, MailUp also offers a WordPress plugin that you can use to capture newsletter subscribers on your website.

Like Constant Contact, MailUp does not offer a free tier option. You can try out the service for 30 days, and prices start at $49 per month.

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9. Zoho Campaigns

Zoho offers a great email solution for marketers looking to utilize automation features, including auto-responders and workflows. If you’re already a Zoho CRM customer, it might be worth checking out Zoho Campaigns for an email newsletter tool, since they work better together.

Zoho includes many modern and well-designed templates to choose from. If you’re worried about how your newsletter will look on different mobile devices or browsers, Zoho gives you the ability to check to see how your newsletters look on various devices to ensure your newsletter is optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Zoho offers 12,000 emails per month for free for up to 2,000 subscribers. Then there’s pricing based on plans, or pay-as-you-go credits.

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10. AWeber

AWeber delivers a well-established email marketing newsletter tool with an array of features for your business, including email designs, list segmentation, automation tools, and detailed reporting. To make design easier, AWeber has more than 6,000 royalty-free stock photos to include in your emails. Of course, you can also upload your own images and gifs.

AWeber is a great solution if your business uses WordPress, since AWeber easily integrates with WordPress. However, it’s important to note you can’t specify multiple segments at once when sending an email newsletter — plus, AWeber lacks some powerful automation features.

AWeber does not have a free version. However, you can try it out for 30 days. If you want to upgrade, prices start at $19 per month for 500 subscribers and unlimited email sends.

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11. Campaigner

Campaigner is a good option if you work for a growing team, since the tool offers robust automation and workflow features available at the enterprise tier. You can set up systems that send email newsletters when contacts fill out specific forms, make a purchase, or engage with a previous email.

As with most of the email newsletter tools in this list, Campaigner offers easy-to-use email builders and a large selection of templates to get you started. If you run into trouble, their support is noted as being helpful at solving technical challenges.

Campaigner offers a 30-day free trial but you’ll need to put in your credit card information. Prices starting at 19.95 per month for up to 5,000 contacts.

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12. Drip

Drip is ideal for more experienced email marketers, since it’s not as intuitive and easy-to-use as some of the others in the list. For example, there’s a limited email template library, so you’ll have to spend time designing your email newsletter. With that said, Drip comes packed with automation features that could be beneficial for your business, particularly if you work in e-commerce.

With Drip’s “ECRM”, you can run personalized email newsletter campaigns that work with information gathered from contact purchases and checkout information, like abandoned cart details. One thing to note — Drip does not offer phone support, so you won’t have that added peace of mind.

Drip offers a 14-day free trial, with prices starting at $49 for up to 2,500 subscribers and unlimited email sends.

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13. Postcards

Used by major brands like Nike, Disney, and T Mobile, Postcards is a drag-and-drop email builder that enables you to create impressive email newsletters. The tool features a “modular system”, meaning you can stack and re-arrange pre-made designs to create a custom newsletter that fits your brand. Customizable modules include a header and footer, CTA, and menu options. 

Additionally, the tool enables you to collaborate with teammates to ensure the newsletter is up to everyone’s standards, and gives you a 30-day version history if you decide to revert to an older format. Plus, you’ll get unlimited exports.

Price: Free for one user, $15 per month for businesses, and $25 per month for agencies 

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14. Campaign Monitor 

Campaign Monitor’s email marketing tool enables you to create an engaging and high-quality email newsletter with a simple drag-and-drop interface. Additionally, the tool includes sign-up forms you can embed on your blog pages to encourage new readers to sign-up for daily content delivered to their inboxes.

Along with unique and customizable templates, Campaign Monitor provides a full analytics suite to help you track performance of your newsletters over time. You can measure engagement to improve the content you include in your newsletters for the long-haul. 

Price: $9/month for basic, $29/month for unlimited, and $149/month for premier. 

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15. BEE Pro

If you’re a freelance designer or work at an email agency, this tool could be a good fit for you. BEE Pro lets you create mobile-ready emails quickly with smart design tools — plus, you can save custom templates, and even assign projects to specific clients’ to ensure an easy workflow if you’re using this one email tool for multiple brands. Additionally, the tool enables you to invite clients’ or colleagues’ to review and make comments on email newsletter drafts to get approval faster.  

Price: Starting at $15/month for BEE Pro Freelance, Starting at $25/month for BEE Pro Team, and Starting at $45/month for BEE Pro Agency

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That’s it! These are the best email newsletter tools that I recommend. You can’t go wrong with any of these tools since they all offer similar features, but there will be one that’s best suited for your business. The great thing about HubSpot is that we offer a free solution to get you started — and then, once your business grows, we have plenty of advanced features you’ll need in order to deliver a successful newsletter marketing strategy down the road.

Once you’ve selected your email newsletter tool, you can begin creating your newsletter marketing strategy, which, in the most simplified version, looks like:

1. Capture subscribers on your website via form submissions.
2. Create email content in a newsletter design.
3. Send the newsletter consistently, like once a week or bi-weekly.

If you want to learn more about how to create an email newsletter, please check out our guide.

If you’re anything like me, you take about four minutes choosing a filter for your Instagram photo, and about four hours deciding on a caption.

Worst of all, after much creative effort and advice from friends, I’m usually barely able to write a caption that goes beyond, “Had a fun day with friends!”

And I’m a writer — go figure.

Next time you’re contemplating a caption to go with your Instagram photo, take a look at our complete list of captions for any mood you need to evoke or audience you want to connect with.

You can incorporate many of them into an Instagram business strategy (just make sure your audience would indeed find your caption funny, clever, or the right amount of sass.) 

Click one of the following links to jump to a section:

• Funny Instagram Captions
• Clever Instagram Captions
• Sassy Instagram Captions
• Song Lyrics for Instagram Captions
• Business Instagram Captions
• Holiday Instagram Captions
• Seasonal Instagram Captions

Funny Instagram Captions

1. [Employee]’s favorite exercise is a cross between a lunge and a crunch … S/he calls it lunch.
2. I need a six-month holiday, twice a year.
3. We tried to be normal once. Worst two minutes of our lives!
4. There are 16-year-olds competing at the Olympics and some of us still push on “pull” doors.
5. Namast’ay in bed.
6. That awkward moment when you’re wearing Nike’s and you can’t do it.
7. I’m just a girl, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a cupcake.
8. What if we told you … you can eat without posting it on Instagram?
9. We know the voices in our heads aren’t real, but sometimes their ideas are just too good to ignore.
10. We don’t know what’s tighter: Our jeans or our company culture.
11. Friday … Our second-favorite F word. 
12. We don’t care what people think of us. Unless they’re our customers. We definitely care what customers think of us.
13. All you need is love … and investors. All you need is love and investors.
14. Hi, we’re [company name]. We build amazing apps and eat amazing apps.

Clever Instagram Captions

1. Patience — what you have when there are too many witnesses.
2. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s the Clarendon filter.
3. “Life is short.” False — it’s the longest thing you do.
4. Happy Sunday! There may be no excuse for laziness, but [I’m/we’re] still looking.
5. Rejection is just redirection.
6. Better an “oops” than a “what if.”
7. You have stolen a pizza our hearts.
8. The world is changed by your example, not your opinion.
9. Seven billions smiles, and these are our favorite.
10. Stop working hard and start working smart.
11. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When [company name] gives you [type of product], you make money.
12. Imposter complex is just a byproduct of success.
13. Life is simple. It’s just not easy.
14. The best times begin at the end of your comfort zone.
15. When nothing goes right, go left.

Sassy Instagram Captions

1. What’s a queen without her king? Historically speaking, more powerful.
2. Be a little more you, and a lot less them.
3. We’re an acquired taste. If you don’t like us, acquire some taste.
4. Well-behaved people don’t make it into history books.
5. Be sunshine mixed with a little hurricane.
6. We got 99 problems, but an awesome marketing team ain’t one.
7. Sometimes you just need to do a thing called “what you want.”
8. You can’t do epic stuff with lame people. And we got the best in the biz.
9. It’s not called being bossy, it’s called having leadership skills.

Song Lyrics for Instagram Captions

1. “I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist.” — Sia, “Chandelier”
2. “I live for the nights that I can’t remember, with the people that I won’t forget.” — Drake, “Show Me a Good Time”
3. “I hope you never lose your sense of wonder.” — Lee Ann Womack, “I Hope You Dance”
4. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” — John Lennon, “Imagine”
5. “If you give, you begin to live.” -Dave Matthews Band
6. “Outlining my findings, using life as a stencil.” — Kero One, “In All the Wrong Places”
7. “Feeling good living better.” — Drake, “Over My Dead Body”
8. “Say oh, got this feeling that you can’t fight, like this city is on fire tonight” — OneRepublic, “Good Life”
9. “Time makes you bolder” — Fleetwood Mac, “Landslide”
10. “If I fail, if I succeed, at least I’ll live as I believe” — Whitney Houston, “The Greatest Love of All”
11. “The rest of the world was in black and white, but we were in screaming color.” — Taylor Swift, “Out of the Woods”
12. “Lightning strikes every time she moves” — Calvin Harris, “This Is What You Came For”
13. “We aren’t ever getting older” — Chainsmokers, “Closer”
14. “Sing with me, sing for the years, sing for the laughter, sing for the tears” — Aerosmith, “Dream On”

Business Instagram Captions

1. Good evening, [city]! We’re in town for [event] at Booth [#]. Stop by and say hi!
2. “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.” -Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook
3. Our [#]-person squad completed the [road race name]! And we did it all for the post-run sneaker selfie. 👟
4. We got product in the pipeline … check back for an exciting announcement on [date]!
5. Diversity isn’t a recruitment metric — it’s an ingredient for success. At [company], we thrive on the unique backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives of our people.
6. Spot the CEO. 😉
7. At [company name], our best asset is our people.
8. We had a great time with our customers at [meeting/event]! @[client/partner], you guys rock.
9. Thrilled to have [customer] at our office today! Come back any time. 😊
10. [Company name] is off for [holiday]! We hope you all have a safe long weekend.
11. Big things have small beginnings. [Company]’s HQ began right here.
12. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” -Herman Melville
13. How many [company name] employees does it take to spell “TEAM”?
14. Want to work with these awesome people, working on a lot of awesome things? We’re hiring! Click the link in our bio to see our current openings.
15. Check, check, one, two … is this thing on? [Company name] is now on Instagram! Follow us to learn about our culture, product, and (awesome) people. 

Holiday Instagram Captions

New Year’s

1. “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” — Abraham Lincoln
2. Didn’t make it to midnight.
3. Resolutions are made to be broken.
4. Ringing in the new year — like a bell.
5. “Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.” — Brad Paisley
6. New year, same me.
7. Time to show off my bubbly personality.
8. Any excuse to wear glitter.
9. Starting off the year on the right foot.

Valentine’s Day

1. Roses are red. Violets are blue. Consider this post my Valentine to you.
2. Don’t tell me you love me. Tell me you’re outside with pizza.
3. All I need is you. (And maybe wine + chocolate too.)
4. “You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.” — Albert Einstein
5. 99% of my socks are single, and you don’t see them crying about it.
6. I will do anything for love. Except that. And that. Or that. Or…
7. Sorry, I’m in a relationship with tacos.
8. “All the single ladies…”

Halloween

1. Creeping it real.
2. I brake for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
3. “When the spooks have a midnight jamboree, they break it up with fiendish glee…” — The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949)
4. You’re just my (blood) type.
5. How to eat candy corn: don’t.
6. #squadghouls
7. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
8. Driving me batty.

Thankgiving

1. I’m wearing my elastic pants.
2. “For those of you who cannot be with family this Thanksgiving, please resist the urge to brag.” — Andy Borowitz
3. On a veggie diet this Thanksgiving: Carrot cake and pumpkin pie.
4. “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” — Oprah Winfrey
5. I think, therefore I cran.
6. Bad day to be a turkey.
7. Need fuel for Black Friday.
8. “Okay, guys. I have exactly 28 minutes before I have to baste again.” — Monica
9. Grateful. Thankful. Blessed.

Christmas & Hannukah

1. You sleigh me.
2. Fa la la la llama.
3. “O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, your ornaments are history.” — The Cat
4. “It’s not what’s under the Christmas tree that matters. It’s who’s around it.” — Charles M. Schulz
5. Dear Santa, let’s not talk about this.
6. Rebel Without a Claus
7. Doesn’t Santa have anything better to do than watch us while we’re sleeping?
8. All I want for Christmas is you (and wine would be nice).
9. To all you cotton-headed ninny-mugginses out there
10. Drop it like a top.
11. Wishing you a latke love this Hannukah.
12. I want to eat 8 latkes for the calories of one.
13. One little candle can light up an entire room.
14. Keep calm and spin that dreidel.
15. Deck the halls with matzo balls!

Seasonal Instagram Captions

Spring

1. Hello, spring!
2. “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.” — Louis Armstrong
3. April showers bring may flowers.
4. I think I just experienced all the seasons in a single day.
5. I love allergy season, said no one ever.
6. Currently soaking up the sun and smelling the roses. Please leave a message after the beep.
7. I owe a lot to the inventor of flip-flops.
8. “Here comes the sun, and I say… It’s all right.” — The Beatles

Summer

1. “Live in the sunshine. Swim in the sea. Drink in the wild air.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. Life’s a beach
3. School’s out, Sun’s out, Guns out
4. “A little bit of summer is what the whole year is all about.” — John Mayer
5. 90% happy, 10% burnt
6. Girls just want to have sun
7. “Summer lovin’ had me a blast, summer lovin’ happened so fast.” — Grease
8. Happiness is a cold popsicle
9. Life is better by the pool

Fall

1. My favorite color is October.
2. “Wild is the music of autumnal winds amongst the faded woods.” — William Wordsworth
3. Sweater weather.
4. It’s never too early for pumpkin spice.
5. Meet me in the corn maze.
6. Crisp air. Apple cider. Flaming foliage.
7. Pumpkin spice and everything nice.
8. “Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day.” — Shira Tamir
9. Leaves are falling, and autumn is calling.

Winter

1. “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus
2. If it’s snowing, I’m not going
3. Cozy nights. Good books. Hot chocolate.
4. Do you want to build a snowman?
5. Running on caffeine and holiday cheer
6. “Winter is not a season; it’s a celebration.” — Anamika Mishra
7. Merry and brrrrrrright
8. Having snow much fun.

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

One of my favorite ways to learn new skills is by reading an ebook or whitepaper.

When I want an overview of a broad topic, like digital marketing, I look for ebooks. They’re fun, vibrant guides in an interactive, book-like format. I click on hyperlinks for extra details and analyze colorful graphs.

If I want to know all there is to know about a specific topic, like email list strategy, I source a whitepaper. They illustrate points with charts, and use study data or other statistics to back up the points being made.

If you’re a marketer, there’s no doubt you’ve come across at least one ebook or whitepaper offer. But now, the time has come for you to make your own.

You have an idea, but maybe you’re not sure whether to make an ebook or whitepaper. Are ebooks and whitepapers even the same thing? Let’s figure this all out below.

Ebooks and whitepapers: What’s the Difference?

Time for a quick refresher: An ebook is short for “electronic book.” They’re made for online use, notated by embedded links and videos. Ebooks are responsive and are usually guides for large topics. For instance, some popular ebook topics revolve around SEO, inbound marketing, and ecommerce.

Here is an example of an ebook, “YouTube for Business,” from HubSpot. It’s optimized for reading on desktop, ereader, and mobile devices. Additionally, it’s vibrant — this has a variety of colors, graphics, and interactive media.

Ebooks are great for increasing conversions and credibility. Think about a customer looking for a complete guide about how to hire top talent.

So, what’s a whitepaper? And how is it different from an ebook?

whitepapers are reports that break down a complex topic for the reader, and then provide an in-depth solution or opinion about that subject. They’re aimed at helping audiences comprehend a complex issue or inform a difficult decision.

Let’s go back to the ebook example, “YouTube for Business.” If this eBook were going to be a whitepaper instead, it would probably be titled something like, “How Using YouTube for Business Increased Our Conversion Rates by 30%.” This whitepaper would include the details of the findings, include other helpful data, and use that to explain how the experiment was successful.

One popular whitepaper format you might recognize is a “State Of” report. These whitepapers include factual information, statistical data, and often survey and experiment results to support the topic.

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Have time and data? Consider creating a comprehensive whitepaper that will inform your audience at an expert level.

Now that we’re clear on the differences between ebooks and whitepapers, let’s decide which one is best suited to your goals.

Ebooks vs. Whitepapers

When you’re deciding between an ebook and a whitepaper, keep your goals in mind.

When should you write an ebook?

Short On Time

Ebooks are better, if you’re short on time. Generally, they’re shorter and serve the purpose of offering a “how-to” on a topic. They also use a mix of visuals and are packed with helpful links to support that writing.

Including Multimedia

Ebooks are interactive and traditionally less static than a whitepaper. Usually, ebooks aren’t a Google Doc or a PDF file, so you can really focus on multimedia. You might include supporting content from your business, a CTA, or links to previous studies or blog posts.

Easy To Make & Share

Creating an ebook is relatively simple — your CMS should offer templates, which save you time so you can spend more time writing. And when thinking about distribution, a free ebook is highly shareable on social media, in blog posts, and on your website. All you need is a landing page, CTA, and promotion post drafted.

Additionally, you can add the ebook in a hyperlink in your email signature or add it into an email update. Free educational resources are a great chance to delight readers and earn leads by gating your content.

To sum it up, if you want to create an interactive experience for your target audience, make an ebook. Especially if you don’t have that much time to devote to study but still want a compelling offer.

When should you write a whitepaper?

Thought Leadership

If your writing is focused on thought leadership, make a whitepaper. They’re more static than ebooks and traditionally cover less broad topics. For instance, an ebook can cover the basics of digital marketing, but a whitepaper would focus on a single digital marketing experiment.

Let’s say you want to feature a thought leader. Look for one that is in your industry, so they can expose your company to a large, ideal audience. Then, conduct a long form interview with the thought leader or ask them to contribute writing about the chosen topic, making sure there’s ample research and data to support.

Deep Explanation

Because whitepapers are more focused than ebooks, they give way for thorough explanation. They lean heavily on concrete data to support their findings or stance, while an ebook may gloss over some details.

Playing With Design

whitepapers are sometimes known as “boring” because they’re instructional reports. They present the facts. But this doesn’t mean your whitepaper will be dull — instead, use color and text to liven up the atmosphere, shown below:

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Vertical, “old school” formats aren’t the most engaging experience for readers. But there are things you can do that make whitepapers compelling. Present the facts, but use a conversational tone, and make the landing page for your whitepaper colorful.

A crucial aspect of design for your whitepaper should be responsiveness. Prioritize making your whitepaper format responsive for different screen sizes. This is so your audiences can enjoy it, regardless of their device.

Ultimately, think of making a whitepaper to create thought leadership content in a different format.

The bottom line? Ebooks are great for driving growth and traffic, and whitepapers are excellent for conversion and filling buyer journey gaps. If you’re short on time, an ebook might be your best bet, but whitepapers are ideal for studies and reports.

If your company excels at one format but is lacking in the other, think of how your next offer could bring different results if the delivery method was switched. Remember, the goal is making the customer feel like they received valuable guidance about a topic.

They say, “The best things in life are free.” Which I never thought was necessarily true. I mean some of the best things are free — love, sunshine, fireflies, and whatnot. But there are a lot of awesome things that cost money — nunchucks, BMX bikes, DVDs of the movie Kung Fu Panda 3.

So the line is kind of muddled when it comes to establishing whether free stuff is better than things that come at a cost — and the case of social media marketing is no exception. The debate between organic vs. paid social media isn’t exactly cut and dry. Both options have their strengths and weaknesses.

Here, we’ll get more perspective on the difference between both kinds of social media and some pros and cons that come with each.

Organic and paid social media each have their own benefits and pitfalls. Here are some pros and cons of each type of social media marketing.

The Pros of Organic Social Media

It’s more cost-effective.

Maintaining an organic social media presence can technically be free. It doesn’t cost anything to post on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Any costs you incur would come from the work it takes to engage with your community and create content to populate your social media feeds — whether that be through dedicated team members, outsourcing to freelancers or agencies, or having some employees incorporate those tasks into their day-to-day responsibilities.

One way or another, organic social media plays don’t require immediate payment to implement. If your business is running on a tight budget, and you’re confident you can create thoughtful content, organic social media might be the right avenue for you.

It allows you to directly engage with and assist your customers.

Social media is an excellent forum for ongoing customer service and interaction. A well-maintained, active social media profile gives customers a legitimate, accessible location to post concerns, complaints, and compliments. If you can dedicate the time and resources to consistently respond to most — if not all — of them, you’ll get a lot of mileage out of your organic social media efforts.

It can help you establish a brand identity.

Your social media profiles allow you to project some personality. They can provide another layer to your marketing efforts with a solid sense of humor, consistently sound advice, or any other qualities you’d like prospects and customers to associate with your brand. For instance, Taco Bell’s Twitter page is notorious for the brand style it has established through its audience interaction and funny content.

Image Source: Twitter

The Cons of Organic Social Media

It can be time-consuming.

Consistently creating excellent content and actively interacting with your audience aren’t exactly quick fixes you can expect to churn out over lunch. They’re full-time pursuits that take considerable energy and effort. If you don’t have dedicated team members or outside help, maintaining your organic social media efforts can be a massive time-drain.

Algorithms can be volatile and difficult to understand.

What content your audience will see on social media is dictated by algorithms designed to sort posts by relevancy and potential enrichment instead of when it was published. The success of your organic social media strategies rests on your ability to get your content in front of current and potential customers, so understanding the algorithms supporting these platforms is crucial. But that’s far easier said than done.

Social media platforms’ algorithms aren’t always easy to grasp and master, and if you do figure them out, there’s a good chance they might change. It can take a lot of effort to learn and stay on top of these algorithms to support effective organic social media efforts.

It offers less flexibility when it comes to immediate reach.

The immediate reach of your organic social media efforts extends as far as your followers take it — meaning you can only expect your organic content to reach your immediate audience and the people they share it with. You can’t zero in on and distribute your content to specific demographics or types of users like you can with paid social media.

The Pros of Paid Social Media

You can target specific users to expand your reach.

Paid advertising on social media allows you to pinpoint and reach the specific demographics that will be the most receptive to what you have to offer. You can sort users by categories like location, age, gender, or interests and place targeted advertisements on their social media feeds. It gives you reach beyond your followers and the ability to touch base with specific audiences that will be receptive to your messaging.

Its payment model works for any budget.

Paid social campaigns are structured to suit virtually any budget. They generally charge on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, meaning you only have to pay if users interact directly with your paid social media materials via impressions or clicks.

Many platforms allow you to establish a spending cap on your paid social efforts, so your budget is never exceeded. And certain target audiences cost less to reach than others, allowing you to strategically place your advertisements to cater to different, potentially lucrative niches.

You see more immediate results

Organic social media efforts are a long-term play that requires considerable effort and strategy. With them, you have to create content that will abide by social media algorithms, rein in the potential customers that happen upon it, and actively work to retain your followers once you have them hooked. Paid social media foregoes that process by immediately placing your messaging on potential customers’ feeds.

The Cons of Paid Social Media

You might not see meaningful returns on your investment.

Paid social media is just that — paid social media. No matter the size of your investment, you’re still spending money that might go to waste if your efforts are ineffective. If you’re constantly experimenting and failing with your paid social media, you’re essentially burning money. And that’s an easy cycle to fall into.

If you’re a small business, lacking the know-how and skill set necessary to adeptly coordinate your paid social strategy, you could find yourself wasting resources that would be better allocated to other forms of marketing.

You might face a competitive landscape.

Marketing on social media isn’t exactly a well-kept secret. According to Statista, an estimated 91 percent of all US companies were using social media marketing in some capacity in 2019.

Finding a place in a landscape that crowded might mean dealing with particularly high PPC rates to reach your target demographic and needing high-quality, attention-grabbing content to get any actual mileage out of your paid social budget.

It requires a lot of attention.

Your paid social media efforts are rarely stagnant. They need to be monitored, analyzed, and consistently adjusted if you want to get the most out of them. Many platforms offer you analytics to understand how your ads are performing. That data isn’t trivial and can’t be disregarded — it requires a lot of attention and thought.

It should inform how you structure your paid social messaging as it evolves, and that won’t always be easy. Paid social is often only as effective as the effort you put into it. And in many — if not most — cases, that will occupy a considerable amount of time.

The Verdict on Organic vs. Paid Social Media

It’s impossible to say whether organic or paid social media is better than the other. They suit different businesses with different priorities in different situations.

If your business doesn’t have the budget to implement a full-fledged paid social media strategy, try focusing on organic social media. Write thoughtful content, flesh out your social profiles, and actively engage with your customers online. But if your business has a sizable marketing budget and is in desperate need to land new customers immediately, prioritize your paid social media efforts.

Ideally, you’ll be able to find a way to incorporate both methods into your overall social media strategy. Leverage paid social media to immediately spread brand awareness and draw an audience to your profiles. Once they’re there, use your thoughtful organic content and active presence to capture their interest, convert them into customers, and retain them once they’re on board.

Whether you’re providing social media management, marketing, or consulting services, the crucial step in winning a client is sending out a business proposal.

A business proposal can help you prove to clients’ that you’re the most well-suited to meet their needs, and help you stand out from the competition.

And, if you’re particularly interested in providing social media-related services, you’ll need to create a social media proposal.

Here, we’ll explore best practices for creating a social media proposal that will enable you to exceed client expectations and expand your portfolio.

But first, let’s zoom out and take a wider look at the social media sales process. There are quite a few stages you have to successfully complete — and things to do right — before even starting your proposal.

Let’s dive into that, now.

A Brief Overview of the Social Media Sales Process

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all sales workflow that you should follow to win a social media job, but most of the times you’ll go through the following stages before closing a sale:

• Prospecting
• Discovery
• Proposal

To ensure that all your prospecting efforts don’t go to waste, it’s super important to get as much information from a discovery stage as possible. One thing to keep in mind – a business proposal is just a presentation of the things you’ve discovered. If you skip this step, you won’t have anything to write about in your proposal.

The discovery session could be a video call or an actual meeting at a hotel lobby as long as you get to chat with the prospect and understand what it is that she really needs.

This task may sound simple at first, but in fact, you may realize the client doesn’t understand why she needs social media services, or across which platform(s) she needs those services distributed. This is where I suggest becoming a psychologist for an hour, and asking the following ‘Why’ questions:

• Why did you choose Facebook over Twitter for your social media activities?
• Why did you stop running Facebook ads?
• Why did you change your LinkedIn posting schedule two months ago?

Clearly, you’ll need to do your homework prior to a discovery session, reviewing and analyzing the client’s social media profiles (as well as their top competitors), and what they’ve done on their social channels so far.

If you can’t get to the root of the problem, you may use the 5 Whys analysis which involves even more ‘Why’ questions. Eventually, if you understand your clients and how they think, you’ll be able to write a proposal that speaks your clients’ language, addresses their needs, and presents the exact solution to their problem. That is the proposal that is very likely to win a client.

The Anatomy of an Effective Social Media Proposal

Next, let’s move onto the actual structure of an effective social media business proposal. You can create a proposal from scratch or simplify your life significantly by using a free social media proposal template that already has the pre-written texts and is broken down into sections.

One way or another, it wouldn’t hurt to get familiar with the must-have social media proposal sections:

1. Introduction. Nailing the proposal introduction is winning half the battle. Remember the discovery session where you should find out the true meaning of what they’re after? Introduction is the place where you will repeat the exact words used by your client to describe their problem. No matter how tempting it may be, this is not a place to speak about your company and its history or mission. Introduction isn’t about you — it’s about your clients’ needs described in their language.

2. Scope of work. A well-written detailed scope of work leaves very little room for future misunderstandings. Here’s where you specify the exact list of activities that are meant to solve the client’s problem. Explain how your service is going to help tackle the issue and outline the scope of work required for that. Speak of the social media goals that you’re going to achieve with your service, and list the social media activities you’re going to be working on. Depending on the social media services you provide, you may want to mention:

• Content creation. Specify what kind of written and visual content you are going to create, how often and how it’s going to be approved by the client.
• Publishing schedule. Let your client know when, where and what time the pre-approved posts will be going live on different social media platforms.
• Launching social media special offers. Let the client know the nature of the special offer you are planning to launch whether it’s going to be a contest, special discount, giveaway or else. Specify the timing, frequency, assets and media budget required.
• Monthly strategy sessions and weekly calls. Plan out the one-to-one calls to review the last month’s activities and plan the month ahead. Let the client know if you are going to sync up every week to make sure you are on track.
• Monthly KPIs and reporting. Depending on the client’s goals, outline how you are going to measure the social media progress and which metrics you’ll use as indicators.

Additionally, don’t forget to speak of the benefits your customer should expect.

As Kinga Odziemek, CEO at social media marketing agency
BrainyBees, says: “Your clients need to understand not only what you will deliver, but also what’s in it for them.”

Odziemek adds, “What does it mean that you will do A, B or C for them? How will this be reflected in their business? What are the benefits? Showing the benefits will encourage potential clients to take the next step more quickly than you might expect.”

For greater clarity, finish up the scope of work with the timeline where you specify the exact steps you are going to take over the first month. This way it’s clear what a client can initially expect from you, and when.

3. Case studies. Prospects want to see what you have accomplished in the past for other clients. It’s the social proof that tells the client you are actually able to achieve the goals. If you haven’t had great social media results in the past, how can a client know you’ll succeed this time? Try to include a case study or two from a client in a similar industry, or with similar issues and goals.

It’s important to note — if your prospect is treating social media as a lead acquisition channel, referring to case studies showcasing how you’ve been able to grow number of followers isn’t helpful for them. Keep it relevant. Another rule of thumb for case studies is keeping the focus on results rather than how hard you worked to achieve them.

4. The pricing. This is a very important part of the proposal. Some of your clients will skip the entire proposal and get straight to the Pricing. What we’ve found after analyzing almost 200K proposals sent with Better Proposals is that putting the title ‘Investment’ on the pricing section (instead of ‘Pricing’) increases your chance for closing a deal. It works as a psychological trick – the client perceives the amount of money as an investment (that they’ll receive back in ROI) rather than dollars to which she needs to bid farewell.

5. Next steps. This proposal section is often neglected. However, I strongly recommend including next steps to your social media proposal so your prospects know what they should do next. Of course, they can always email you asking what’s next, but why not make their life easier? Just put it in simple words, like in this example below.

6. Terms and conditions. Don’t neglect the legal part of your proposal, as this is your only protection in case your relationship with the client becomes impaired. Make sure to secure your agency by specifying what’s going to happen when and who’s responsible for what. If you don’t want to hire a lawyer to do the job, at least use one of the online tools to generate the terms and conditions. I recommend keeping the contract and terms and conditions part of your business proposal. This way they are bind together and you won’t be facing any confusion caused by the wrong expectations of your client.

The How and When of the Social Media Proposal

Now that you’re familiar with the main sections of the business proposal, let’s focus on the best practices for sending your proposal that will get you from “eh, maybe” to “heck yes!”

Proposal Format: The Era of Word and PDF Withers Away

It’s no secret that more and more people consume digital content via mobile devices these days. Business proposals are no exception. In fact, our analysis of 200K+ proposals showed that 34% of proposals are opened on mobile.

Now, think about it — if you opened a Word proposal on your mobile and you need to endlessly scroll left and right to read it, would you even read it to the end? I wouldn’t.

You want to make an impression that your social media squad is full of tech savvy people always on the top of their game. This can’t be achieved with a non-responsive business proposal. If you’d like to create a pleasant responsive experience for your prospect, present a proposal as part of your website (given that your website is responsive, of course). The easiest way is to make use of a proposal software that lets you do this.

The Best Time to Send a Proposal

Unlike social media statistics where there are recommended times and days for posting on different platforms, we haven’t discovered a pattern for sending out business proposals.

There’s a slight 0.9% increase in conversion for proposals sent on Monday, which is not significant enough to create any sort of best practices around it. However, sending proposals within 24 hours, compared to 3-4 days after the meeting, increases your chances to hear a yes by 14%.

Additionally, our analysis demonstrated printing a proposal lowers your chance for a conversion by a whopping 78%. Therefore, the best advice I can give is avoid anything printed at all costs.

Luckily, it’s 2020 and electronic signature software tools like DocuSign or DocuSign alternatives are on the rise, which saves everyone a great deal of time signing a proposal.

Moreover, with payment system integrations, bringing your prospects right to the payment page is a breeze. The hassle-free proposal experience of 2020 cuts down the unnecessary steps of printing, scanning, emailing, calling, invoicing and leaves the essentials: sending an effective proposal and winning new clients as a result.

Just like any other proposal, a social media proposal requires some effort from your side starting with a thorough and well-prepared discovery session, asking the right questions and going down to the root of the problem. Once you have that in place, the rest is fairly easy. The actual proposal writing boils down to a set of proposal best practices as well as technical hacks to make a great impression, prove that you are the best for a job and prevent your clients from jumping the hoops.

When I sit down to write a blog post, I stick to a routine that has some flexibility.

The way I write changes from time to time, but two things never change: who I’m writing for, and how to deliver the best experience.

When you sit down to write, what are some of the questions you ask yourself? Are you keeping your audience in mind?

For example, if you are writing for enterprise audiences, how are you framing that content to achieve your goals? If you’re writing for the professional who is part of a large organization, how does your blog cater to their needs?

Though an enterprise audience is a smaller number of people to reach, blogging for those customers can be a huge driver for ROI and acquisition.

Many marketers agree — blogging is an important part of their content strategy.

Blogging does way more than populate your website with content. Did you know that B2B marketers obtain over 70% of their leads from blogging? Or that businesses that prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to see a positive ROI?

When you blog for customers, you’re not only providing useful content. Properly optimized posts lead to an increase in brand awareness and conversions.

Enterprise customers have their own set of unique needs and challenges, separate from customers in a startup. Your blog can assist with these needs, like how to manage a positive scale within a company.

However, a successful enterprise blog stems from having a successful strategy. Implementing a process for writing makes your content stick to business goals.

1. Come up with the purpose of your enterprise blog.

The good foundation of any strategy is to define the purpose of your goal. So, think about why your blog is going to exist. Are you aiming to build brand awareness and increase conversions?

Content that serves a purpose is easier to write because it has a focus. For instance, if the reason for starting your blog is to increase the number of enterprise leads you earn, all of your content should support this goal.

Having a clear purpose will also help you fill in some of the blanks for the rest of your blogging strategy, like distribution and topic research. To get started defining your blog’s purpose, think about the goals of your company and identify how your blog can contribute.

For instance, if one of your goals is to bridge the gap between the awareness and delight stages for leads, think about how you can create content that gets customers thinking about the value of your company on a deeper level. Blog posts can be highly engaging vehicles to entertain and inform the reader, and with the addition of widgets like calls-to-action, offer your customers more ways to familiarize themselves with your company.

Once you identify the purpose of your blog, you can finalize a goal that will allow you to create content that reaches them.

2. Determine your persona.

Your business already has a buyer persona — a fictionalized idea of the perfect customer. Keep that customer in mind when you’re writing. If it’s appropriate, you might want to come up with an entirely different persona, one that’s solely based around your enterprise audience.

If you’re creating a persona from scratch, ask yourself what your enterprise customer will find the most useful about your blog. What stage in the buyer’s journey do you want to target with your content, and how will a blog help you get there?

When you have a persona to reference for your blog content, you’ll have an idea of how to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and focus on writing that’s going to serve them the best.

For example, let’s say you create a persona called “Enterprise Ernie.” When you created Ernie, you identified challenges and pain points that keep him from doing his job better, like roadblocks that come up from being a marketing team manager for an enterprise.

When you create content, then, you can focus on how to help Ernie be a more effective marketing team manager. You’ll brainstorm topics that solve those challenges and offer resources to reinforce that message.

3. Conduct keyword research.

Optimizing your blog for SEO shouldn’t be the extent of how you’re using SEO for your blog. SEO can help inform better business decisions, including better blog topic development. This happens through keyword research.

Keyword research is an SEO tactic that identifies possible words and phrases on the minds of your target audience. This is done by referencing the search queries your customers type in on Google. At HubSpot, keyword research informs the topics we write about each quarter.

Use this process, with a tool like Ahrefs, to understand what to write about to better serve your customers. If, by performing keyword research, you find the phrase, “customizable chatbots” a common trend among audiences. You’ll be solving questions that are common among your audience.

That way, when people in your audience use keywords in Google, your content has a high chance of ranking highly and driving traffic.

4. Think about possible topics.

After conducting keyword research, you’ll have an understanding of what enterprise customers want to read. Come up with a log of topics your keywords will fall under, such as “Marketing Automation,” “Marketing and Sales Alignment,” and “Product Launches.”

This does two things: First, it’ll help you organize blog ideas, and second, it’ll keep your content diverse. Diverse articles solve for your customer at every stage of the buyer’s journey. When you have your topics down, you can refer back to your list if you think of more or need more ideas.

5. Determine how to structure your posts.

Keep the structure of your posts consistent. This aids your writing process and keeps the look of your blog aligned. An effective post format guides readers through your content.

Use the tools available with your blog software to come up with a structure that fits your needs. When I first started blogging, I completely disregarded the use of headers and bulleted lists — for organizational purposes, I do not recommend this.

Headers separate the large portions of text in your articles. For instance, this section’s snippet, How to Create an Enterprise Blogging Strategy,” tells the audience what this section is about. The H3s in this section, like “Determine how to structure your posts,” indicate that I will give an explanation about format.

Even if your structure comes down to “Use at least one H2 and blockquote in every post,” having rules for how you guide your post will keep you and your readers on the same page. They’ll know what to expect.

6. Outline content to stay focused.

Outlines feel like they box in creative freedom sometimes. But when you’re a busy professional and need to structure your time, outlines are a gift.

Organizing your ideas into an outline gives you a vision of what you’re going to write. Once you pick a topic, like “Chatbot software tools,” start jotting down how the post would look. If you decide to write a listicle with 10 software tool options, list them out in your outline and begin to structure your piece using the rules you decided on earlier.

A full outline with short sentences about my introduction, the body of the post, and what to highlight in the conclusion are a huge asset for keeping ideas in order. Plus, if you don’t like planning out everything, don’t — outlines are for your benefit.

7. Write and edit your post.

Now, you’re ready to write. Get those fingers moving, and don’t forget to have some fun. Writing doesn’t have to be a pain. If you know what you’re writing about and how to write it, the rest will come.

You might have to conduct some extra research to beef up your points, so allow for that time and cite your sources. If you’re having trouble making the sentences flow, know that it takes time to really refine a technique. In the meantime, tools like Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, and ZenPen proof your writing and add suggestions for making the content better.

Even if you have tools installed, edit your post when you finish writing. Check for spelling mistakes and read for flow. If you’re nervous about being a “good editor,” don’t worry. Here are some resources for you to help the process:

• How to Become a (Better) Editor: 13 Editorial Tips
• 10 Simple Edits That’ll Instantly Improve Any Piece of Writing

8. Optimize your page with On-Page SEO.

You’re almost done. This step can’t be forgotten if you want that positive ROI. On-Page SEO raises the chance of search engines choosing your articles to populate search engine results pages (SERPs). Let’s talk about what you should do to optimize your page:

• Choose a featured Image — Featured images with an alternate text description tell Google what your image is communicating to the reader. Write a sentence that includes your keywords, like, “This is a marketer choosing chatbot software tools.”
• Include tags — Tags are keywords that describe a post. For a chatbot software listicle, tags would be something like “Marketing software,” “Software tools,” “chatbots,” etc. Notate in your CMSe what the tags are for each post — all this information informs search engines about the content of your page.
• Compose a relevant title — The title of your post is the first thing many readers (including search engines) see. Even though it’s tempting to make the title something witty, make sure you are including keywords, so you can land on the right SERPs and clearly signal to your readers that you have the content they’re looking for.

Here’s a refresher on blog SEO. Once you’ve covered all your bases, you’re ready to post.

9. Decide how and where to promote your blog.

Part of your strategy should include a promotion plan. This, along with on-page SEO, is how you ensure that your content is seen by the right people. You might have the same promotion idea for every post across the board to streamline this process, or have a different idea for different posts.

For example, HubSpot’s socials do both. Sometimes, similar messages are posted on different channels to reach larger audience segments, but other times, messages are specifically tailored for each platform.

Whichever method you choose to promote your blog, make sure you’re doing so effectively. This means choosing a platform your customers frequent. It would be pretty hard to share posts meant for enterprise customers on a channel with few prospects.

Analyze the web behavior of your audience to get an idea of where they spend their time online. This can be done by looking at the demographics of web users and social channels, then comparing results to get a full understanding.

For example, 30 million companies are on LinkedIn — if your blog’s purpose is to increase brand awareness among other businesses, promoting your content on LinkedIn is a good place to start.

10. Repurpose and update old, applicable content.

Maybe you have a backlog of old content on your blog. Or maybe you have a bunch of outdated content in general. Before you delete this content from your archive, think about how it can be repurposed to serve your blog at its current state.

For example, if you have a post about how to navigate Twitter for Business written in 2017, consider updating it. Instead of rewriting the whole article, this time-saving method is more efficient.

Look for content that can still be helpful to your audience and align with your current purpose and business goals. That post from 2017 about adaptive testing is great for an enterprise audience, while a post about beginning a startup should either be deleted or rewritten to serve your customers.

Alright, we’ve defined a strategy for making your enterprise blog process smooth. To identify the tools that will make your posting process a seamless one, keep reading.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot’s blogging tool is a stand-alone feature and part of Marketing Hub Enterprise and Marketing Hub Professional. These are software designed to assist businesses where they are to drive growth efficiently and effectively.

Blogging Software’s features boast a fully integrated platform for stunning, professional content. The clean, sleek look that enterprise customers are looking for will be achieved through the tools in HubSpot’s system. Nearly every essential for managing a blog is present, from embedded multimedia tools, to easy formatting options, and analytics.

With on-page SEO suggestions (shown above) you’ll drive traffic to your blog and be able to analyze potential improvements. HubSpot’s system doesn’t suggest a post should be pushed live unless SEO-based steps are completed, like adding a featured image. That way, in case you forget a step, you’ll have a reminder.

Enterprise customers can enjoy a blog that fits in seamlessly with the rest of your website’s layout, supports an interactive experience, and includes easy navigation.

2. WordPress

WordPress is one of the most widely-used content management systems. It’s a platform that offers website creation software. WordPress offers tools that are essential for running a blog — like formatting options, layout editing, and templates.

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A standout feature of WordPress is its widget hosting. You can implement a ton of widgets into your blog to personalize the experience for enterprise readers. For example, you can add a page scrolling widget to give your blog layout an infinite scrolling setup.

If you upgrade a WordPress account to one of their paid plans, you get access to a suite of on-page SEO tools to help drive traffic and growth. The ecommerce plan gives you the option to host an online store from a WordPress website.

3. Ghost

If you’re looking for an open-source, Node.js blogging platform, Ghost might be your winner. This service allows entrepreneurs, developers, and publishers to build and grow a fully-functional, easy-to-use blog from scratch.

Ghost offers content management, a text editor, SEO features, and email newsletters to support the success of your enterprise blog. You can use the software to insert paid memberships on your blog with no transaction fees — so everything you earn, you keep.

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If you’re looking for a CMS that’s popular on GitHub and can be customized to your needs, Ghost is a great option. If your focus is to drive sales with a membership service, Ghost offers the software you need to bring that vision to fruition.

4. Blogger

Blogger allows users to create, monetize, manage, and archive a fleshed out blog, all under a free domain. If you’re a small business owner, Blogger can be a great choice to get your feet wet with running a blog.

Expansive features Blogger offers, such as layout templates, flexible editors, and multimedia support, are tools for creating attractive content for enterprise audiences.

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Blogger is also an integratable platform. For example, you can connect your account with Google Analytics so you can target your audience and get insight into post performance. Blogger itself offers analytics as well, so you’ll be able to compare those reports to inform your strategy.

An enterprise blog solves for the needs of customers at a different level of an organization. You’ll be able to raise traffic and conversions while offering valuable information to your readers. When you think about how you can reframe your blog, really keep your purpose and target in mind — that way, you’ll make informed decisions about where to take your channel.

With some 1.7 billion websites worldwide, it’s fair to say the web of 2020 is a cluttered place.

Plus, there are over 2 million new blog posts published daily. To help stand out from the crowd, it’s vital publishers create compelling and engaging content.

But how do you go about creating attractive, engaging, and memorable content? The key is to make it visually appealing. The human brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than text.

That’s a huge disparity and goes a long way to explaining why images and videos are so key to driving engagement on social channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Simply put, visual elements are key for driving traffic and engagement across your sites and social channels.

With all that said, what are the key visual elements you should be mindful of including in your content? Where do the opportunities lie and how can you engage your audience in the most meaningful ways?

Fortunately, my team at Ever Increasing Circles has created the following infographic to explore key visual elements you should be mindful of including in your content — as well as where opportunities lie, and how you might engage your audience in more meaningful ways. Check it out, below.

Every week, I use LinkedIn to talk about current events and connect with other content creators.

And I’m not the only one. In fact, LinkedIn has had nearly 700 million active users in 2020 and has become one of the top social media platforms.

In the last year, companies have started to use the social network’s new live-streaming technology.

While Facebook and Instagram launched live streaming features in 2016, LinkedIn just recently decided to join the live streaming platforms.

In February 2019, LinkedIn Live was launched to individual users. This year, it was announced that LinkedIn Live would also become available to business pages.

With this announcement, LinkedIn decided “to bring you a tighter integration between LinkedIn Events and LinkedIn Live, by turning these two products into a new virtual events solution that enables you to stay connected to your communities and meet your customers wherever they are.”

Live streaming continues to gain popularity among audiences. In fact, in 2019, internet users watched 1.1 billion hours of live video.

Additionally, according to Go-Globe, by the end of 2020, live streaming is expected to account for 82% of all internet traffic.

Plus, LinkedIn Live streams have increased by 158% since February 2020.

Although LinkedIn Live isn’t available to all businesses right now, it might be time to start thinking about live streaming.

To get started with LinkedIn Live, you can complete an application online to become a Live broadcaster.

In this post, let’s review how you can leverage LinkedIn Live in your marketing strategy to attract new audiences.

1. Virtual Events

With the recent integration of LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events, the social media platform is a great place to host your virtual events.

LinkedIn virtual events allow you to meet your audience where they are and host your event in a trusted environment.

Additionally, hosting a virtual event on LinkedIn Live will help you attract the right professional audience.

You can share your events with your business page followers, plus you can send event invitations to your first-degree profile connections.

Instead of taking videos during your virtual conference and posting them on LinkedIn later, LinkedIn Live allows you to connect with your audience in real-time.

According to LinkedIn, LinkedIn Live is seeing 23 times more comments per host and six times more reactions per post than native video.

With LinkedIn Live, you can engage and connect with your followers in real-time during your virtual events.

2. Recruiting

LinkedIn is one of the main hubs for recruiters and job-seekers alike. In fact, recruiting is one of the top benefits of having a LinkedIn profile for individuals and brands.

With LinkedIn Live, you can support your recruiting efforts by showing off your workplace culture, introducing team members, and answering questions from your audience.

Additionally, you can host a live panel with employees on what it’s like to work for your company. Team members can discuss what their hiring journey looked like and give tips to people who want to work for your company one day.

You can also host a Q&A with different people on your team to highlight their specific roles. For example, you can have them introduce themselves and their role, and then take questions about their day-to-day tasks and duties.

If you want to use LinkedIn Live to support your recruiting efforts, think about other social media tactics you’ve implemented, and then strategize how those can convert into a live stream.

3. Thought Leadership

One of the central LinkedIn strategies for most companies is to use the social media platform to position yourself as an industry leader.

To do this with LinkedIn, you can discuss current events in your industry and boost your content creation strategy.

Using LinkedIn Live, you can host a panel for industry thought leaders, including those at your company, to talk about industry trends and issues.

Additionally, you can host a live stream dedicated to interviewing industry professionals and experts.

Amplifying thought leaders and participating in industry discussions is a great way to use LinkedIn Live to attract new audiences.

4. Showcase Expertise

Not to be redundant, but becoming an authority in your industry is an important part of your marketing strategy.

LinkedIn Live presents an excellent opportunity to showcase your expertise.

Using live streaming technology, you can share your tips and tricks with your audience. To do this, brainstorm how-to topics that your audience is interested in.

If you’re struggling to come up with ideas, consider repurposing old content like blog posts or YouTube videos.

Producing live streaming content will help you boost your content marketing strategy.

5. Announce a New Product or Partnership

As a professional social media platform, LinkedIn is a great place to announce a new product or partnership.

In fact, you might consider doing this on LinkedIn Live. You can bring on representatives from your company and partner company to discuss what the new partnership entails.

This is also a great opportunity to educate and interact with your audience.

By launching a product during a live stream, you can get immediate feedback from your audience, answer questions, and conduct a live demonstration.

The announcement of LinkedIn Live proves that live streaming will continue to be an important tactic in your marketing strategy. In fact, this feature shows that consumers are interested in interacting with brands in real-time.

If you’ve already used Facebook and Instagram Live, LinkedIn Live might be another platform to use and experiment with — especially if your audience is more likely to be on LinkedIn than other platforms.

To learn more about how real brands are using LinkedIn Live, check out this blog post on LinkedIn Live examples.

I don’t know about you, but I miss taking classes. I miss taking notes, studying, and most of all, learning a ton of new skills.

That’s not to say I don’t learn a lot on the job here at HubSpot — because I absolutely do. But sometimes, there’s nothing quite like listening to a lecture, taking notes, and doing homework.

Given the frequency at which new technologies and software are developed, it can be overwhelming to try to keep up your knowledge by only reading blog posts and ebooks. That’s where self-paced online learning comes in.

I’ve taken a few awesome courses and certifications through HubSpot Academy, including an inbound marketing certification and a content marketing certification. These classes helped me be better at my job, so I started making a list of other classes I could take to learn more skills. When I finished the list, I realized that you, dear readers, might have similar skill gaps, so I wanted to share it in a blog post.

Below is a long list of free online courses you can take to beef up your skill set. These offerings vary in time commitment, but many are self-paced so you can work on your own schedule. The topics these courses cover include:

1. Content Marketing
2. Social Media Marketing
3. SEO Marketing
4. Email Marketing
5. Other Digital Marketing Courses

Want to learn more about brands and organizations that offer the courses on the list below? Scroll to the end of this post, or click here, to jump to a section on where to find affordable online marketing courses.

Content Marketing Courses

1. HubSpot Inbound Marketing Certification – HubSpot Academy

2. HubSpot Content Marketing Certification – HubSpot Academy

3. Internet Marketing for Smart People – Copyblogger

4. Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content – Coursera

5. The Strategy of Content Marketing – Coursera

6. Copywriting Blunders – Udemy

7. Content Marketing for B2B Enterprises – Udemy

8. Content Marketing – Udemy

Social Media Marketing Courses

9. Free Social Media Certification – HubSpot Academy

HubSpot Academy’s free online Social Media Certification offers eight lessons — from developing a social media strategy, to social media listening and moderating, to content strategy, digital advertising, and crisis communications. You’ll learn how to build an inbound social media strategy that delights your customers and grows your bottom line.

10. Developing an End-to-End Instagram Marketing Strategy For Your Business – HubSpot Academy

11. Strategic Social Media Marketing – edX

12. Diploma in Social Media Marketing – ALISON

13. Facebook Blueprint – Facebook

14. Social Media Analytics – Quintly

15. Social Media Week of Webinars – Buffer

SEO Marketing Courses

16. SEO Training Course – HubSpot Academy

17. Google Digital Marketing Course – Google

18. SEO Training Course by Moz – Udemy

19. Advanced SEO: Tactics and Strategy – Udemy

20. SEO – QuickSprout

Email Marketing

21. HubSpot Email Marketing Certification – HubSpot Academy

22. Email Marketing – QuickSprout

Web Development and Site Design

23. Make a Website – CodeAcademy

24. Learn Javascript – CodeAcademy

25. Learn Ruby – CodeAcademy

26. Learn Python – CodeAcademy

27. Learn HTML & CSS – CodeAcademy

28. Learn to Code Awesome Websites – General Assembly

Other Digital Marketing Courses

29. What Digital Advertising Is and How to Do It – HubSpot Academy

30. Paid Advertising – QuickSprout

31. Wordstream PPC University

32. Creativity – Canva

33. Photoshop 2020: One-on-One Fundamentals – LinkedIn Learning

34. InDesign 2020: Essential Training – LinkedIn Learning

Where to Find Free or Affordable Courses

HubSpot Academy

HubSpot Academy offers certification and training courses to teach people how inbound marketing and HubSpot software work. Classes are often taught by marketers at HubSpot and are made up of video lessons, quizzes, and tests. Most HubSpot Academy classes are available free of charge, and if you pass the certifications, such as the two below, you get a nifty certificate and badge to share on your social media profiles. Check out mine on LinkedIn:

Copyblogger

Copyblogger is a content marketing company that creates content about content (so meta). Its blog provides a ton of great resources about digital marketing, and this class, “Internet Marketing for Smart People,” is made up of ebooks and emailed lessons and other course materials. Copyblogger espouses four pillars of content marketing success, which it delves into over the course of this class.

Coursera

Coursera offers MOOCs (massive online open courses) created and taught online by universities such as Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California system. These courses start at various times throughout the year, so browse the catalog to see when one lines up with your schedule. Below are a couple courses that are perfect for content marketers — here’s what a module for #4 looks like:

QuickSprout

QuickSprout is Neil Patel’s content and business marketing blog, and QuickSprout University features a ton of helpful videos breaking down and explaining a myriad of concepts and best practices. Each video also includes a transcript in case reading is more your learning style than watching a video. Here’s what one course video looks like:

Udemy

Udemy is another online learning platform that focuses specifically on courses related to skill building for working professionals. One thing to note about Udemy: The classes we’ve highlighted are free, but it offers a myriad of other paid options for as little as $10, in some cases. If you have a good experience with a free course, it could be worth a small investment to deepen your skills, too.

Wordstream

Wordstream is a search engine and social media marketing software company that helps marketers drive the greatest ROI from their paid search and social media campaigns. These free guides and ebooks distill learnings and best practices for users with varying levels of expertise running pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Here are some of its topics and offerings:

edX

edX is another MOOC provider that features courses offered by top-tier universities, including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University. Like Coursera, classes are taught online and start at specific times throughout the year. Here’s a class we think you’ll find valuable:

ALISON

ALISON offers free online classes in various professional skills users can take at their own pace. In the Diploma in Social Media Marketing course below, students can get into the nitty-gritty and big picture views of different skills of different topics — just check out one of the many modules:

Facebook

At this point, you probably already know what Facebook is and what it does. What you might not know? It has a training and certification program. Facebook Blueprint offers self-paced and live e-learning courses for marketers seeking to grow their organizations using Facebook. Blueprint offers classes in different languages on how to use Facebook and Instagram — here’s a peek at the course catalog.

quintly

quintly is a social media analytics tool that offers courses through quintly Academy. The self-paced course provides an overview of social media analytics, benchmarking, and goaling using downloadable written materials and video lessons.

Buffer

Buffer’s Social Media Week of Webinars isn’t exactly a course — it’s a series of live webinar recordings on YouTube — but the videos are chock-full of current and valuable information for social media marketers from the experts. Topics include Instagram and Facebook marketing and how to do public relations on social media.

Google

Google is another company you’ve probably heard of before, and its digital marketing course offers a ton of valuable information if you plan to advertise and rank on the search engine. You can even take a Google AdWords certification at the end of the process that helps you beef up your resume (and your Google+ profile).

CodeAcademy

CodeAcademy offers free, interactive coding classes that take you from lesson one to building a fully-functioning website. The courses we’ve highlighted below are just a few of the courses; CodeAcademy offers many more, depending on your organization’s needs. CodeAcademy classes feature lectures and a workspace in the same browser window so you can see the effect of your work live, as it’s created.

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General Assembly

General Assembly offers live and online paid and free courses for a variety of technical skills and disciplines. General Assembly’s Dash offers a free online coding class that teaches the fundamentals of HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript — watch the course overview below:

Canva

Canva helps people easily make beautiful images for web design, and Canva Learn offers design courses that are valuable for any kind of storyteller. The Creativity course explores the challenges of constant creation and innovation and how to do it well — with visuals, of course.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in May 2018, but was updated in June 2020 for comprehensiveness and freshness.

For businesses to grow in today’s climate, marketers must think about their content and strategies on a global scale.

The internet has opened doors to new markets around the world, and yet, without paying proper attention to these new customers’ preferences and culture, marketers can miss out on significant opportunities.

So, how can marketers make sure their content is prepared for when new markets open?

Localized content is the key to catching new customers’ attention and creating a place where they want to spend their time and make their purchases.

With content built around a personalized experience, you can guide new customers through the customer lifecycle, regardless of where in the world they live.

In today’s post, we’ll discuss what localized content is and when to use it.

When we talk about entering new global markets, the first thing that might come to your mind is translating content. After all, it should be as simple as running your content through Google Translate and sending it off to customers on their journeys, right? Not so fast!

Translation is a complex process. While machine translations like Google Translate can churn through low-value content with relative ease, your high-value content deserves a more personalized touch — not only the words we use, but how we use them, matter. Otherwise, we’re holding a conversation without context, and customers won’t be able to build a relationship with you.

While the words matter, other elements of your presence in a new market matter as well. Consider your website: you might be displaying images that make sense to a North American audience. But would a customer in Asia understand the photograph? Could they see themselves as one of your customers?

This kind of thinking must be evident through every bit of your presence. Pictures and colors should match a customer’s cultural expectations. Prices should be shown in their local currency. The brand logos you display should be recognizable in-market. These elements all come together and tell your brand’s story to your customers in both a conscious and subliminal method.

Companies that understand localization are best suited to adapt their content to a customer’s culture, language and mannerisms. While translators are focused on the words of your content, localization also customizes currency, dates, units of measurement — the factors that seem small but add up into a truly welcoming experience for a global customer.

The need for localized content is growing in tandem with the expansion of global markets. The internet serves as the primary medium for reaching these new customers, because of all the internet users in the world, just 7.6% live in North America. For context, more than 50% live in Asia. If your content is only targeting North American buyers, then you’re missing out on most of the world’s internet traffic — and the customers it brings.

Customers are equally discerning about their purchases regardless of where they live. They expect the same personalized brand experience that North American customers would receive. When you localize content, that desire for a personalized experience should guide how you reformat and alter content to suit a new market’s culture and expectations.

You should be conducting research into cultural norms just as you would for any other part of your product or selling process. Did you know orange has a specific religious connotation in Northern Ireland? Or when you translate text from English to Finnish, the size of your content could expand up to 60%? Your global customers will expect you to not only know about these minute differences but also create content that capitalizes on it. They want to be impressed just like their English-speaking counterparts.

It falls upon marketers to create content that gives potential customers everything they need to make purchasing decisions. With an attentive eye toward researching a new culture, you can set up your brand to create memorable experiences with customers and build brand loyalty.

Localize Content for the Customer Lifecycle

To build brand loyalty, you will of course need a hefty amount of content ready to localize to different markets. Depending on how much content you need, the amount of localization to do can grow very quickly. For example, if you have three buyer personas you plan to target with content, and you’re localizing content for five languages, you’re spending time and resources to prepare one piece of content in fifteen different ways.

Take that example and expand it to websites and other content media you’re using, and that number likely grows even higher. When you’re beginning to localize content, it pays to be smart about which pieces you localize first. Like your native language-based content, you know certain pieces perform much better than others, or provide a high amount of value to customers.

When you enter into a new market, consider that customers are going to follow the customer lifecycle model: discovery, education, purchase, post-purchase engagement and advocacy. Just like how you would guide a customer through the lifecycle in your native language, your global customers will also buy this way and expect a similar path to follow.

Since you’re producing content for each stage in the lifecycle already, that content is likely high-value content primed for localization.

Let’s review the content that will need localization in each stage of the customer lifecycle.

Discovery

Customers are beginning to be made aware of your company and the products you offer. At this stage, your content is focused on creating brand awareness, with social media ads or introductions to your product offerings. Ensure content like product descriptions are translated properly and include the context of your new market. Many cultures find video content from brands to be appealing, so think about localizing video content with not only subtitles but also local imagery or showcasing products they would know.

Education

Customers have been doing their research and want to know more about your brand and your products. For your native-language content, you likely have a knowledge base with articles or FAQs sharing more about your product offerings or presenting thought leadership. While much of the content in FAQs is repetitive and can be assisted mainly by machine translation, human translators can provide context for your written content. The human touch for localizing high-traffic blog posts can better educate customers in-language.

Purchase

When your customer is ready to make their purchases, they should be given a seamless process that makes it easy to buy in-language. The seemingly small factors like using the payment platform that is most popular in that country can make a major difference in a customer completing a transaction.

Post-Purchase Engagement

Once your customer completes their purchase, you want to keep them engaged so they return and buy more at a later date. Content such as a thank you email or follow-up emails with content about new products should be localized in their language. Customer support is also a critical component of retaining customers, and both the self-service content of a knowledge base and interactions with customer support staff should reflect the needs of individual cultures.

Advocacy

Customers happy with your products will want to share their experiences. Their recommendations, ratings and reviews should all be in-language and include relevant context that will engage other customers in that market. Incorporating user feedback like reviews into your webpage, for example, should be a localized process. Reviews from in-country customers written in their native language will have a more effective impact on attracting other customers.

What is perhaps most critical is that every touchpoint you have with your customers should be in-language. Regardless of location, each of your customers should have a seamless experience within their own language. If your customers start jumping between languages during the customer lifecycle, they will seek out a competitor who can fulfill a seamless process.

As you’re translating your content as part of the localization process, human translators can help smooth over those potential jarring points and ensure an excellent experience for your customers. Whilst machine translation can process much of the bulk of your content, your human translators will find the gaps in context and fill in the nuances a global customer would otherwise notice.

People buy from people, and your content should already be written that way. Human translators help ensure that’s the case and provide extra creativity and cultural knowledge to accomplish that within your content. This process of “transcreation” actualizes the concept of localization by sharing the same message you would in other markets, but tailoring the content to fit in-language. With transcreation, you can breathe new life into your content and ensure it has the creativity and cultural knowledge needed to resonate with your new audiences.

When to Localize Content

Your content is an important part of your first impressions in a new market. Your potential customers will expect an in-language experience from the first day, and you should be prepared to offer it and be ready to adapt to changes in the marketplace and culture as they arise.

So when it comes to when you should localize content, you should be thinking about it from the very start. When you’re planning your website, for example, consider how you could templatize webpages to make the localization process easier for each new market. Each type of content can also be templatized in some fashion to simplify the process. When you produce a video, create a time-coded script to go along with it. When you need to translate the text for subtitles, you’ll have what you need to do it as efficiently as possible.

When your company is preparing to expand into global markets, that is the right time to focus on localizing content. With proper research into your markets’ cultures and content prepared for every stage of the customer lifecycle, you can create those critical in-market first impressions and begin building brand loyalty with new customers around the world.

The tough part is over — your budget’s been approved for the next quarter. But now, another challenge looms how to spend that money.

You might be a little lost about how best to allocate your budget. Consider the resources and tools your team needs to do their jobs well. Additionally, leave a little room for celebrating your team for their wins — both big and small.

So, how do you accurately plan out that perfectly balanced budget?

Whether you have “use-it-or-lose-it” funds left over from the quarter, or are putting together a budget for the first time, here are some guidelines for allocating that money effectively.

1. Test new versions of calls-to-action that are performing poorly.

Estimated cost: $50 per call to action

In your analytics software, sort calls to action by click rate and conversion rate. Then, redesign ones with the lowest performance and test them. One way to do this is by performing an A/B test, which will show you which design your audience prefers.

Perhaps a simple design change is in order to attract more visitors, like choosing a different photo. Or, maybe tweaking the wording can strengthen the connection you make with leads.

This test will be useful in identifying the best ways to further prospects along in their buying journey.

2. Identify improvement opportunities on your homepage.

Estimated cost: $150

Install heat map tracking software, like Hotjar or Crazy Egg, on your homepage. This software will show where people are clicking and how far they are scrolling down the page.

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These tools will help you determine if your audience is finding the content you want them to see the most. You’ll gain a good idea of if you need to restructure your webpages to be more effective.

3. Revise landing page copy.

Estimated cost: $150 per page

There’s always room for improvement on your landing pages. Start with pages that have conversion rates of less than 20% and rework the language to tune it into your target persona’s needs.

If you are unsure which language will resonate with your audience, conduct keyword research and perform A/B tests. Additionally, do a little social listening. These methods will help you understand how to connect with your audience on multiple pages.

4. Find SEO keyword opportunities on your website.

Estimated cost: $250

SEO keywords help you use language that improves rank on search engines and boost acquisition. For instance, if you spot a couple of offers that aren’t performing as well as you’d hoped, research the keywords surrounding that topic and revise your offers accordingly.

Find software that has built-in SEO tools, like HubSpot’s CRM. These tools optimize your content to get found on search engines.

5. Do a social media engagement analysis.

Estimated cost: $250

An analysis of social media messages will reveal which received the most engagement. Find out what worked best for your business. If you find that one or two channels are outperforming others, you can begin to infer how to plan for its use next quarter. Maybe you invest more into successful messages or deactivating underperforming accounts.

Or maybe you’ve found that there’s a huge YouTube audience you’re missing out on. Look at your analysis and decide if YouTube is worth investing in moving forward. Check out this resource for growing a YouTube audience in a little over a year for quick tips.

6. Conduct a usability test.

Estimated cost: $350

A usability test gives real feedback from potential customers. Similar to the results you get from a Net Promoter Score, you’ll figure out what customers are and aren’t liking about your web pages.

Using the results from a usability test, figure out how to revise the content on your website to be more user-friendly. For instance, if you find that your product pages aren’t effective, you can mark this as a place to work on for the next year.

7. Try ad retargeting to boost performance.

Estimated cost: $500

Ad retargeting catches those visitors who almost converted into customers. They bridge that gap so the process is completed. Retargeting ads give you the chance of hooking in a previously interested lead with a new, personalized offer.

Ad retargeting can give your acquisition numbers a boost. Look for ad retargeting options on social networks like Facebook, so you can build and revise ads within the channel.

8. Experiment with social media advertising.

Estimated cost: $500

Social media strategies should be evolving as customer behavior evolves. When you hit a block with planning, mix up your strategy. Try a new channel or a new approach with a network you’re already using

Advertising with social media takes some experimentation. Knowing your audience and conducting social listening gives you an idea of how and where to reach your audience, but knowing which copy, format, and design will be a hit calls for some testing.

9. Invest in employee knowledge.

Estimated cost: $500

Because marketing is an ever-changing industry, investing in learning opportunities makes your team well-equipped to excel in their day-to-day tasks. Training can come in the form of ebooks, blog posts, or webinars.

Additionally, scope out courses online that will give team members a deeper understanding of the industry. For example, HubSpot Academy offers courses about content marketing, social media marketing, and sales, in digestible, interactive lessons. Courses update as needed, so you don’t have to worry about getting a certification for an outdated skillset.

10. Celebrate your success of the past quarter.

Estimated cost: $500

Remember to allocate some funds to celebrate your colleagues and their wins for the quarter. This doesn’t have to be a huge blowout party, but it could be something small, like sending colleagues a care package, that will remind your team their hard work is appreciated.

Come up with superlatives and present them in a year-end meeting. Awards like “Best Movie Buff,” or “Funniest Marketer” build up morale.

11. Perform customer research.

Estimated cost: $500

Customer research is important. You may have done previous customer research at the start of the quarter, but allocate some funds on an ongoing basis to routinely refresh your understanding of customer behavior.

For instance, how are you monitoring the web behavior of your customers? Are you investing in social listening tools? And have you revised your personas to reflect the change in customers?

Invest in tools that will help you accurately perform customer research so you can develop new ideas and strategies for future campaigns.

12. Design an infographic.

Estimated cost: $150

Run an analysis, such as a deep dive into customer demographics on Twitter, and create an infographic to give your results a visual representation. This infographic can be used to provide a bird’s eye insight about a section of your customer base. Additionally, infographics can serve as great material for a blog post.

Check out this infographic about font sizes. On the surface, it sounds like a dull topic. An infographic makes the information more exciting and easier to comprehend.

If you were to write a blog post about social media demographics in the marketing industry, for example, you could use the Twitter infographic to illustrate your findings. You can use a tool like Canva to design your infographic (Plus, it’s a tool that integrates with HubSpot).

13. Optimize your outdated blog posts for conversion.

Estimated cost: $100

Because the life of a blog post can span several months, and because you’ve published new content offers, you may need to revisit old posts and see if there’s a more relevant call to action to improve conversion on your blog.

SEO tools help identify posts that are falling in traffic and can be updated with new information. Keeping an archive of previous blog posts will assist with keeping track of blog performance.

14. Perform a sales analysis.

Estimated cost: $1,000

Finding qualified contacts in your CRM that your company wasn’t able to connect with could close sales that didn’t happen last quarter. With a sales analysis, identify those contacts so you know who exactly to target within the next few months.

Once this is done, come up with ideas to reach out to those customers and connect with them. There are a couple different ways to do this: You can send a personalized email, for example, create a specialized offer just for closing sales, or look into performing an account-based marketing campaign.

15. Invest in a better CRM integration.

Estimated cost: $300

Does your website automatically send leads into your CRM? Can your sales and marketing teams share feedback on leads? Now might be the time to make adjustments to your CRM integration to make it work better for your company.

Look into CRMs that automatically integrate with the programs you use on a daily basis, like HubSpot. This will streamline all the work you need to get done. Collaboration between teams will improve as well as navigation between the inner workings of your job duties.

15 Conduct an SEO audit on your website.

Estimated cost: $500

Re-evaluate your website for SEO opportunities every six months or so. Have your core web pages reviewed to optimize on-page factors, and review web copy for missing keywords.

SEO audits clean up your website, improve the user experience, and boost the chance of web pages being found on search engines. When you improve the SEO language on specific pages, you’re making them easier to be crawled by Google and recommended to searchers.

16. Plan and script a webinar for the next quarter.

Estimated cost: $200

A webinar is a great way to generate new leads. Focus on topics that solve your target persona’s pain points and produce a high-quality webinar. It can be live and saved for later or pre-recorded.

Persona pain points you can focus on are topics you know your audience has questions about, such as sales analytics. For a webinar like this, reach out to a top salesperson at your company and ask them to host. Alternatively, interview them about topics they see as trending.

Once you shoot and edit the webinar, you can promote it via email subscribers and on social media.

17. Localize your website for an international audience.

Estimated cost: $2,000

If you have an international audience or are planning to expand internationally, remember to update your website. A localized website will make the content on it enjoyed by audiences everywhere. Go beyond translating the language and think of what customers in other countries will really love.

For instance, research some topical elements and offers that are popular in different regions — really familiarize yourself with culturally relevant graphics and website formats that are compelling to global audiences.

18. Compile an ebook of relevant information.

Estimated cost: $200

An ebook is another content marketing idea for generating leads. Studies or experiments you’ve conducted over the course of the quarter that provided interesting results could be very valuable for your customers.

Look at ebooks that are impressive and take notes of what’s inspiring about them. Decide on a topic for your ebook and work on formatting it as an offer to subscribers and for social sharing. Additionally, create an offer you can add on a couple of relevant topics to expand the reach of your ebook.

19. Contact industry thought leaders for an interview.

Estimated cost: $500

HubSpot likes to host “HubTalks,” in which different thought leaders are brought in for an interview. This could be a book author, an educator, medical professional, or motivational speaker. These talks are meant to inform or entertain attendees.

Talks like these expand the knowledge of employees and give them opportunities to explore their interests. Have your team vote on possible interviewees or topics so you’re picking the right thought leaders, and ask them to submit questions. This is a great opportunity for team bonding and learning.

It’s tough to make sure you’re spending your budget wisely. When you stop and think about what your team needs, what your audience needs, and what those parties want, however, you can begin to form a pretty good idea of how to plan out those resources.

Once you do a little research, plan your budget accordingly, and get ready to step into a new quarter on a great note.