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Imagine this: as a content marketer, things are going pretty well for you — you’re confident about your upcoming campaign, the ROI from your last couple were stellar, and projections for the new one looked just as good, if not better, than ever before.

And then something happened.

Maybe it’s a sudden trend or global event that diverts your audience’s attention. Or, perhaps a competitor’s campaign launch has everyone talking, and you’re unsure if your current content strategy is good enough to outshine theirs.

Regardless, this shift has impacted your company directly, which means, your entire campaign is impacted directly.

With that being said, now you have to decide if you need to pivot your content plan — and quickly. But how do you respond to an event like this?

We asked HubSpot managers to give their insights about how to navigate major changes that alter your content planning. In this post, we’ll learn what they have to say. We’ll go over how to identify when you need to pivot quickly, and strategies you can take in order to make that transition as smooth as possible.

How to Pivot Your Content Plan

When something major happens to alter your content strategy, think about how it will affect your business goals. After all, the content you’re creating reflects the goals of your business.

“The content HubSpot creates is intended to help businesses around the world grow better by addressing their current needs. When we have to pivot our content plans quickly, it is because those needs have changed quickly,” says HubSpot’s Lead Acquisition Senior Director, Emmy Jonassen.

Let’s take a look at advice from Jonassen, as well as tips from managers across the marketing field — including Senior Social Media Manager Kelly Hendrickson, Senior Brand Campaign Manager Alicia Collins, and Blog Team Senior Manager Karla Cook.

Let’s get started!

1. Know when to pivot.

Knowing when to switch up your content strategy is never an easy decision to make. There are a couple of aspects you should consider when you find yourself needing to re-work your content strategy, but first is knowing when the right time is to do that.

“The toughest part about pivoting your strategy is knowing when,” Hendrickson says. “As a social media manager, I would ask myself, ‘Right now, can we provide value to our audience?’ ‘Can we provide content that will be helpful and welcome in the social space?’“

If you’ve realized that altering your strategy will help you deliver more valuable, helpful, and timely content to your audience, then it’s a good time to pivot..

Ultimately, content plans should serve your business goals, but also deliver worthwhile content to your customer that’s timely.

If your content isn’t providing a timely lens to customers, it might be time for you to pivot your strategy.

Take a look at your content plans. If your information aligns with your business’s goals, that’s great, but does it align with the times? Instead of devoting all of your content planning to a new product launch, for instance, change up the frequency of your posts to include more content that can serve your customer’s needs depending on what’s going on in the industry, or in the world.

2. Put your audience first.

So, you’ve decided it’s a good time to pivot. How do you cater to the new shift in your audience’s lives, though?

Check your audience’s web behavior — you’ll find information that relates to what your audience is thinking about. For instance, if keyword search reports have indicated that keywords are changing from “local marketing tips” to “online marketing tips,” think of it as a clue that needs are shifting.

However, this shift isn’t exactly what you planned for — in fact, the content you’ve planned for is already scheduled, ready to go, and ultimately different from the results you’ve found from researching web behavior.

Hendrickson’s team was in the same boat. “In our case, we found we could provide our audience with helpful information,” she says. “But that information was not our previously produced and scheduled content.”

So, what do you do?

“We paused all publishing and pivoted immediately based on audience needs,” says Hendrickson. She and her team saw that they needed to rework how they catered to the needs of their audience with different content, so after some web behavior analysis, they found their answer. “An immediate need for our audience was tips about remote work and leading with empathy.”

She continues by saying, “We made that decision by looking at our audience, as we always do, and figuring out what challenges they were facing and prioritizing our changes there.”

When in doubt, start with your audience and put yourself in their shoes. What would you want to see from your favorite brands during certain times of year or periods of change?

3. Change your content lens.

We’ve talked a lot about how thinking about the customer will help guide your pivot decision and content planning. When you’ve got an idea of the type of content you need to deliver to your audience, the next step is the delivery itself.

“We need content and campaigns that are helpful and understanding,” Collins says. So while your content is framed around helping the audience, does the caption convey an understanding, empathetic point of view?

When you deliver content, you’re reflecting your brand and your brand’s goals. If one of your brand’s goals is to connect with your customer, you must change your message delivery to reflect a comprehension of the situation.

“Companies and customers are operating in different ways — we can’t always assume that the same types of marketing will resonate,” Collins notes.

For instance, let’s say a major cybersecurity issue upends your industry and is seen everywhere, from LinkedIn posts to newspaper headlines. Rather than shying away from the issue, consider how you might provide content that focuses on IT safety and security, or more generally, tips and tricks for successful online marketing and sales strategies.

4. Connect with other colleagues.

“During major industry or global changes, it becomes especially important that we understand our audiences’ needs so we can create relevant and helpful content fast,” Jonassen remarks.

Recall that Hendrickson’s team had to recognize the new needs of their target audiences, and discovered that remote work and how to lead during hard times was increasingly popular. From there, they were able to conduct research and figure out a plan.

However, if you’ve found that your team is struggling to collect insights, or you don’t know how, reach out to other colleagues to come up with a game plan that will be helpful to you. While your customers need actionable, timely, empathetic content, you need to understand how to figure out their other needs, as well.

“We start by analyzing user behavior, talking to our Sales and Customer Service teams, and interviewing prospects and customers,” Jonassen says.

Similar to social media and branding, it’s important for team members working on customer acquisition to analyze how their customer will be thinking about their lives differently, so you can create offers that will be relevant to their new lifestyle.

If you find yourself struggling to deduce how your customer thinks because you don’t interact with them directly, think about the colleagues you have who do have a customer facing role.

Sales and Customer Service colleagues are a great place to start — they’re in constant contact with customers, and because of that, will have a good grip on recognizing common problem areas among customers.

The best part about this strategy? It fits any business size. Even if your company is a small but mighty one, there’s at least one person constantly communicating with customers, and leading hiring efforts. They’re your front lines (and usually, talking to them is free, and less time-consuming than conducting multiple research quests).

5. Don’t overestimate your pivot.

When you recognize you need to shift, you don’t have to launch an entirely new product or completely re-identify your brand. In fact, that’s something you shouldn’t do.

Cook states, ”Don’t change everything at once. The worst thing you can do in a situation like this is pivot too hard and too fast in your rush to meet short-term needs.”

It can be startling to customers if a company overhauls their entire strategy overnight (Do you remember the “IHOb” fiasco?), and leave them confused.

My grandmother always used to say, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” a mantra that should apply to your pivot process planning. Changing what your brand stands for can be messy, time-consuming, and confusing for customers.

“Remember that content strategy is always a long game —your short-term strategy can’t compromise your ability to solve for the ongoing, long-term needs of your content property. Find key areas where you can be flexible to meet immediate needs, but know what you can’t budge on,” Cook suggests.

“Remember that content strategy is always a long game —your short-term strategy can’t compromise your ability to solve for the ongoing, long-term needs of your content property. Find key areas where you can be flexible to meet immediate needs, but know what you can’t budge on,” Cook suggests.

Your pivot should be a balanced addition to the strategy you already have in place.

In every campaign you make, one of your goals is most likely to serve the needs of the customer. Keep these tips in mind, and stay calm throughout the storm.

Your customers are consuming messages in more ways than ever before — online, in publications, on TV, the radio, and on their phones…to name a few.

Companies that invest effort in choosing the right platforms for the sake of customer acquisition and retention — and the right messages to promote on them — are engaging in media planning, which has become a requirement for organizations hoping to reach their audiences across multiple channels.

The process of media planning is ongoing — one that requires diligence, an understanding of your audience, and knowledge of the various outlets where you can spread the word of your company.

However, it’s almost impossible to do this without tools, templates, software, and resources that give you insight and provide the needed structure for your efforts.

Media planning tools can help you juggle the different sources, publications, numbers, and messages involved in media planning and buying. These resources can help you calculate your reach, measure your messages’ impact, and keep track of which messages are going out where and when.

To help you with your media planning efforts, we’ve compiled a list of the essential media planning tools, templates, and software to use this year.

1. HubSpot Media Planning Template [Featured Resource]

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HubSpot’s paid media template will help you keep track of how much you’re spending on paid media, where your messages have gone out, and how much attributable revenue has been generated from each source.

You’ll also gain access to charts that automatically adjust when you add your spend and ROI. This resource is free — click here to get your copy now.

2. Bionic Media Planning Software

Bionic prides itself on its media plans, flowcharts, RFPs and IOs, trafficking, reporting, and client dashboards.

It has an average of 3.1 software updates on a monthly basis, meaning agencies using the software are provided with up-to-date planning tools to run and organize their campaigns.

3. Kantar SRDS Media Planning Platform

The most valuable resource for media planners is data. To feel confident promoting media on a specific platform, media planners need to know who is on each channel, in addition to understanding their target audience. SRDS gives media planners access to extensive datasets on audience statistics and demographics so media planners can choose the right platform, message, and audience to target.

4. Media Plan HQ

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Not a fan of spreadsheets? No problem. Media Plan HQ’s got you covered. The tool tracks dates, placements, and budgets in real-time over an organized interface without having to deal with Excel. The tool is also collaborative, allowing you to work alongside your team members without the headaches caused by back-and-forth emails.

5. BluHorn

Promising easy media planning and buying, BluHorn integrates with Nielsen and Comscore to provide users with instant access to data-rich insights. The tool is rich with useful features, such as post-buy, a vendor database, and data filters.

6. Quantcast

Quantcast is an audience insights tool, with audience data from 100 million websites. Quantcast uses AI so users can “better predict and influence [their] desired audience” in an era where consumers are showered with ads and messages wherever they go.

7. Basis by Centro

Rated the #1 demand-side platform on G2 Crowd, Basis “addresses your direct, programmatic, search & social through a single interface.” The software gives users access to 9,000 vendors and 11,000 publishers and informs them with more than 180 unique data points. It also contains a messaging tool for seamless team communication.

8. Comscore

Comscore is an essential tool for “planning, transacting and evaluating media across platforms.” Best known for providing data for digital platforms, film, and television, Comscore provides audience measurement metrics for companies looking to promote their products on a visual medium.

9. Nielsen

A household name, Nielsen is synonymous with audience measurement. Known mostly for TV viewership metrics, Nielsen’s global strategy also provides users with metrics for podcasts, streaming services, and social media. This gives users an all-encompassing view of where their audience is. It’s no wonder media planners and sellers have relied on Nielsen for nearly a century.

Fun Fact: Nielsen is considered to be the first company to offer market research and is responsible for the term “market share.”

10. HubSpot Social Media Software

Looking to keep things just to a social media audience?

HubSpot’s Social Media Software allows for easy publishing and audience analysis for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram on a single platform.

Plus, you can measure how your audience converts from social media in your CRM on their journey to becoming a customer.

11. Scarborough from Nielsen

Another appearance from Nielsen on this list, Scarborough is a media planning tool for companies hoping to get more local, hyper-focused audience insights. This tool is great for region-specific messaging or promotion and can facilitate a more systematic rollout of the word you want to spread.

12. MRI-Simmons

Marketed as “The Essential Consumer Truth Set,” MRI-Simmons provides both national and regional focus studies to those looking to learn more about their audience and plan media more effectively. Its clientele includes companies spanning multiple industries like Dell, Spotify, Coca-Cola, and Men’s Warehouse — which makes sense, given the massive amount of segmentations available to users.

Bonus Resource: HubSpot Academy’s Paid Media Course

HubSpot Academy’s course on How to Build a Paid Media Strategy is the perfect introduction to media planning. Whether you have a generous budget or none at all, this course provides marketers with the fundamentals of developing a paid media strategy, utilizing media throughout the buyer’s journey, and finding the ROI of your efforts. Click here to take the free course.

Media planning is an essential task for marketers. But doing it alone, or with disconnected software, will make it unnecessarily difficult. That’s why it’s important to look at the available tools and use ones that make sense for your goals.

I’d venture to guess you get tons of emails in your inbox every day.

From coupons, to daily deal sites, to newsletters, to password resets, to your mother wanting to know when you plan to visit — it’s a lot to sift through, never mind actually open.

So what makes you want to take that extra step to actually open an email? Often, it’s the subject line. After all, it’s your very first impression of the email — and from it, you’ll do your best to judge the content on the inside.

If you’re an email marketer, or just someone who happens to send emails on behalf of your company, you don’t want to be one of those ignored (or — gasp — deleted) emails in your subscribers’ inboxes. You’ve got to make sure your email subject lines are top-notch — and what better way to learn how to do that than by examining some great examples of subject lines?

Let’s take a look at what makes a great subject line, followed by a few examples that, old or new, we’re crazy about.

(While you’re at it, check out our new Out-of-Office Email Generator to make your email address even more delightful to your contacts.)

1. “Uh-oh, your prescription is expiring”

Sender: Warby Parker

Not too long ago, a HubSpot alum received this email two weeks before he needed to renew his prescription — talk about great timing. And when you’re eye prescription is expiring, it happens to be an excellent time to upgrade your glasses. By sending an email at the right time, Warby Parker increased its chances of this email getting opened.

But timing isn’t the sole reason we included this example. This subject is brilliant because it appeared at the right time and with the right tone. Using conversational words like “uh-oh,” keeping the subject line sentence case, and leaving out the period at the end, the subject line comes across as helpful and friendly — not as a company trying to upsell you.

2. “Best of Groupon: The Deals That Make Us Proud (Unlike Our Nephew, Steve)”

Sender: Groupon

It’s hard to be funny in your marketing, but Groupon’s one of those brands that seems to nail it again and again. After all, who can for get this classic unsubscribe video?

This subject line is no exception. The quip, “(Unlike Our Nephew Steve),” actually had us laughing out loud. Why? It’s completely unexpected. The first part of the subject line looks like a typical subject line you’d get from Groupon, highlighting a new deal. The parenthetical content? Not so much — making this one a delightful gem to find in your inbox.

3. “👗 Free (Cool!) Clothes Alert 👖”

Sender: Clover

First of all, we have a not-so-secret love for emojis in email subject lines. Personally, I’m partial to turquoise — so when I see an email implying that I might somehow be able to obtain a free turquoise dress, chances are, I’m clicking.

That’s part of what makes this subject line work. It draws the recipients eye by using visual content (emojis), and it hints at an offer of something free. That hints at an incentive to open the email: There’s a something to gain inside.

4. “The timer’s going off on your cart!”

Sender: King Arthur Flour

Similar to Warby Parker, this subject line makes use of urgency. If I don’t take action on my King Arthur Flour shopping cart — like actually buying them — it will be cleared, and I’ll have to start all over again.

Okay, so maybe this is a low-risk scenario. But when it comes to my baking goods, personally, I don’t like to take any chances, or risk forgetting what I was going to buy. That’s where the personalization aspect of this subject line comes in: King Arthur Flour — especially its online shop — tends to attract both professional and home bakers who take all things culinary a bit more seriously than, say, someone who only buys flour on occasion from the supermarket. And wouldn’t you know? Those are the same bakers who probably don’t want to spend time building their shopping carts from scratch.

The moral of the story: Know your audience when you’re writing email subject lines. Is there something that they take seriously more than others? If so, incorporate that into your copy.

5. “What Did You Think? Write a Review.”

Sender: REI

I received an email with this subject line about a week after buying a portable stove at REI for a camping trip I was going on. I had just gotten back from that trip, too. It was perfect timing for them to ask me what I thought of it.

Companies ask satisfied customers to write reviews of their business all the time. But when you specifically send these requests to the people who just purchased something from you, you’re being smart with your mailing list and reaching recipients whose interest is still warm.

Another reason this subject line works? It’s not expecting a good review. REI is genuinely asking me what I thought of the stove I bought. Maybe I hated it (I didn’t) … the company just wanted me to speak up.

6. “Important Weather Advisory”

Sender: RCN

Any time we see a weather-related alert, our ears perk up. In RCN’s case, it isn’t just a way to lure recipients into opening an email. The subject line above is RCN’s way of updating its customers to potential power outages and driving attention to the brand that provides them with cable and Wi-Fi — even during inclement weather.

If you can hitch your email marketing campaign to an event you know people pay attention to, and have something helpful to offer in response, you’ll see your email open rate soar.

7. “1,750 points for you. Valentine’s flowers & more for them.”

Sender: JetBlue

It’s such a specific number … 1,750 … of course you’re going to open this.

Coming from an airline, an offering of “points” might as well be gold to someone who likes to travel. And if that recipient also has a significant other, sending this email leading up to Valentine’s Day is a home run.

The best part about the subject line above is how particular JetBlue was about the number of points available. Instead of, say, “20% your next return flight of 1,000 miles or more,” this subject line gives it to you straight: 1,750 points, and all you have to do is buy flowers for your loved one. You’re already wondering how far you can fly with 1,750 points, I can tell.

8. “Rock the color of the year”

Sender: Etsy

In six words, Etsy was able to promote a product solely by its color, and inform you that there is apparently a “color of the year.” The email is truly too intriguing not to open.

Etsy is an ecommerce website for user-created marketplaces, and the reason we were impressed by its subject line above was because of the way it uses mystery to drive value into a suite of products. This email isn’t an invitation to buy clothing or jewelry; it’s an invitation to find out what the color of the year is.

Spoiler alert: It was “ultra violet.”

9. “Black Friday shoppers are the worst customers”

Sender: LinkedIn

This subject line is likely the boldest of the Black Friday emails you’d see in your inbox in the days before Thanksgiving. Yes, it’s a bit judgmental, but it actually came in a LinkedIn Pulse newsletter, promoting an article one of its users wrote on the topic of holiday marketing.

And there’s no doubt the title resonates with how some people feel during the most hectic holiday shopping day of the year.

LinkedIn has nothing to sell on Black Friday, so the subject line above does little harm to its business. Nonetheless, commenting on a popular cultural observation, however facetious, can show your confidence and help you relate to your community.

10. “*Don’t Open This Email*”

Sender: Manicube

Ever been told to not do something? Being asked to refrain from something can actually have the opposite effect — you now want to do that thing even more.

That’s the strategy behind Manicube’s subject line. It’s a simple but effective way to make people curious enough to open your email. (Just be sure that the contents of your email actually have something worthy of that subject line.)

11. “I got Botox—& THIS is what it looked like”

Sender: Refinery29

Okay, so maybe your business doesn’t involve Botox. But still — are you intrigued? I am, and despite my better judgment, I clicked.

That’s the power of leading your emails with a story: It sparks curiosity, which works in two ways. There are times when our natural curiosity can pique our interest without context, such as in the example above. But in this case, the subject line implies that there’s an intriguing story ahead. Why the heck did this person get Botox? And what did it look like? As the saying goes, “Inquiring minds want to know.”

Think of the stories behind your industry, and then, find ways to include them in email newsletters and frame them within the subject line in a way that piques your recipients’ collective curiosity.

12. Zillow: “What Can You Afford?”

Sender: Zillow

Imagine getting this subject line in your inbox from a website showing apartments for rent. It’s both exciting and encouraging (“Here are a bunch of apartments right in your budget. Yay!”), but also kind of competitive — pitting your cash against what the market offers. Would you click it? I certainly would.

Personalizing emails to cater to your audience’s emotions — for which there’s a broad spectrum, when it comes to real estate — is key to getting people to open your emails. You don’t have to be a psychologist to know how to take advantage of them, either. In addition to principles like urgency, crafting an email subject line that implies scarcity is another great way to increase your conversion rates.

13. “As You Wish”

Sender: UncommonGoods

When writing emails, you should also think about the recognizable names and reference that make people tick. For example, take this subject line from UncommonGoods forwarded to us from HubSpot’s Content Director, Corey Wainwright, who happens to be a die-hard fan of The Princess Bride. Apparently, “As You Wish” is a pretty big reference to that movie (I know, I know — I need to watch it again), so when she saw this subject line in her inbox, she just HAD to click.

Even though she knew logically that the email was part of a larger-scale send, it almost seemed like it was tailored to be sent personally to her — after all, why else would it include a reference to Princess Bride in the title?

UncommonGoods knows its buyer persona like the back of its metaphorical hand. While it may not send emails to individual subscribers with references to their favorite movies in the title, it does have a general understanding of its subscribers and their interests.

14. “Google sees smartphone heroics in Oreo. It’s The Daily Crunch.”

Sender: TechCrunch

If you’re subscribed to a newsletter from a publication like TechCrunch, chances are, you signed up because you’re either interested in or want to learn more about technology. To reflect that, the media outlet crafts its daily email roundups (“The Daily Crunch”) with a subject line that reflects one of the latest, most compelling news items in the industry.

Here’s the thing: Staying on the cutting edge is hard, especially with something that evolves as quickly as technology. So by writing email subject lines that reflect something that’s recent and relevant, TechCrunch is signaling to email recipients that opening the message will help them stay informed and up-to-date on the latest industry news.

Think about the things that your audience struggles to keep up with — then, craft an email roundup and matching subject line that reflects the latest news in that category.

15. “Where to Drink Beer Right Now”

Sender: Eater Boston

Okay, you caught me: I’m a beer lover. (One of the many reasons I like working at HubSpot.) But that’s not what hooked me here. The subject line arrived in my inbox just at the time I needed it: at 6:45 on a Wednesday evening. Absolutely. Genius.

Think about it: You’re just over hump day and want to decompress with a few coworkers after work. Right as you’re about to head out, you get a notification on your phone that says, “Where to Drink Beer Right Now.” Perfect timing makes this subject line something you can’t help but click on.

For your own emails, think about how timing will affect how people perceive your emails. Even if you send an email in an off-peak hour, you could get higher engagement on your email — if you have the right subject line.

16. “Not Cool, Guys”

Sender: BuzzFeed

Okay, we admit it: We love BuzzFeed. If nothing else, its staff knows how to write great copy — and that sentiment includes an exceptional email marketing team. Many of my colleagues have signed up for BuzzFeed’s daily emails, and pretty much any day of the week, they win for best subject line in their inboxes.

While there are a few of BuzzFeed’s subject lines here and there that aren’t anything to write home about, it’s the combination of subject lines and the preview text that is golden. They’re friendly, conversational, and, above all, snarky.

Here’s the text that followed the subject line above: “Okay, WHO left the passive-aggressive sticky note on my fridge. Honestly, who acts like this?” That conversational tone and snark pull us in over and over again — and it’s the preview text that completes the experience for me.

We’re not all equipped to be snarky writers, but most email platforms have the preview text easily available to edit. How can you use that little extra space to delight your customers (oh, and probably improve your email stats)? Maybe you could use the subject line as a question, and the preview text area as the answer. Or maybe it’s a dialogue: The subject line is one person, and the preview text is another.

You get the idea. By using that space, you have more opportunities to attract new subscribers.

17. “DO NOT Commit These Instagram Atrocities”

Sender: Thrillist

No matter how humble people are, most don’t like to do things wrong … so why not play on that natural human tendency in an email subject line, especially if you’re in the business of helping clients (or prospective clients) succeed? Thrillist certainly does in the subject line above, and it makes the language even more vibrant by using DO NOT — a great takeaway for B2B marketers.

Instead of using the typical contraction “don’t,” Thrillist spells it out and adds the all-caps for effect. That way, you’ll notice the subject line in your inbox, and then not, finder it harder to resist clicking on it.

Think about how going negative in your marketing might be a good thing. For example, many of us have anxiety about looking silly and stupid, so figure out how you can play to those emotions in subject lines. Of course, it’s important to back up that subject line with encouraging, helpful content, so that you’re not just ranting at people all day.

Getting negative can get your subscribers’ attention — this subject line certainly caught mine.

18. “Buffer has been hacked – here is what’s going on”

Sender: Buffer

Next is a subject line from Buffer. Back in 2013, Buffer got hacked — every tech company’s worst nightmare. But Buffer handled it exceptionally well, especially on the email front.

What we admire about the subject line is that it’s concise and direct. In a crisis, it’s better to steer clear of puns. People want to see that you’re not only taking the situation seriously, but also be reassured that the world isn’t ending.

Because of the way the subject line is worded and formatted, you feel like Buffer is calm and collected about the issue, and is taking your personal safety into consideration. That’s pretty hard to do in just a few words.

19. “Everything you wanted to know about email copy but were too afraid to ask”

Sender: Copy Hackers

Here’s another great example of leveraging your audience’s full plate to your email marketing advantage. Who hasn’t refrained from asking a question out of fear of looking silly or out of the loop? Excuse me, while I sheepishly raise my hand.

” … but were too afraid to ask” is one of those phrases that, to us, probably won’t go out of style for a long time. People seek insights from Copy Hackers — an organization dedicated to helping marketers and other professionals write better copy, as the name suggests — because, well, they have questions. They want to improve. And when that audience is too afraid to ask those questions, here’s Copy Hackers, ready to come to the rescue with answers.

What does your audience want to know, but might be too embarrassed to ask? Use that information to craft your content — including your email subject lines.

20. “🐶 Want a Custom Emoji of Tullamore & 6 Months FREE Walks? Book a Walk Today for Your Chance to Win!”

Sender: Wag!

For reference, Tullamore is the name of my colleague Amanda Zantal-Wiener‘s dog. And the subject line she received, written above, is another winning example of perfect emoji placement — especially when it’s a cute dog.

Here’s a great example of how personalization goes beyond the email recipient’s name. Wag!, an on-demand dog-walking app, includes the names of its customers’ pets in a portion of its email subject lines. But this type of personalization is more than just a first-name basis. If there’s anything my colleague Amanda loves more than free stuff and baking goods, it’s her pup. Wag! knows that, and by mentioning Tullamore by name in the subject line — in tandem with an offer, no less — it caught her attention and piques her interest.

21. “Abra-cord-abra! Yeah, we said it.”

Sender: Quircky

Last, but certainly not least, is this punny email subject line from Quirky. Yes — we’re suckers for puns, in the right situation.

What we like most about it is the second part: “Yeah, we said it.” The pun in the beginning is great and all — it refers to a new invention featured on Quirky’s site to help everyday consumers detangle their numerous plugs and cords — but the second sentence is conversational and self-referential. That’s exactly what many of us would say after making a really cheesy joke in real life.

Many brands could stand to be more conversational and goofy in their emails. While it may not be appropriate to go as far as Quirky’s subject line, being goofy might just be the way to delight your email recipients.

22. “China Falls, Sleepy Unicorns, And The Deals Aren’t Bigger In Texas”

Sender: Crunchbase

The Crunchbase Insights email has an interesting way of wrapping details about all the stories it will present you in one subject line. This is eye-catching because it seems like an odd mashup of words, but gets to the point about three complicated stories at the same time. 

When it comes to email, Crunchbase is known for their longer, text based emails. They all read like a more conversational letter to a the email recipient and casually discuss and hyperlink Crunchbase’s top stories.  While the subject lines feel interesting and eye-catching, the emails often report deeper business news that cut right to the chase.

This subject line shows how you can be punchy, but also fun and creative when trying to pull in your audience. 

23. “🔥 Hot freebie alert! 15 free gifts, you pick 5.”

Sender: Shutterfly

Shutterfly, a company that allows you to print your photos on interesting products or other frames gets visual with their subject lines by occasionally using an emoji. Due to their company’s nature and creative audience, the fire emoji in this subject line seems to work without feeling desperate. 

The email subject line also pops because it has a lot of buzzwords, including “hot,” “freebie,” “gifts,” and “alert.” In just once line, it is able to give the potential reader a good reason to open it, especially if they love using Shutterfly. 

When you open the email, it aligns perfectly with the subject line by announcing a freebie promotion. This strong alignment between the subject line and message might keep people from just skimming the message. 

24. “Watch Out for This Amazon Phishing Scam.”

Sender: WIRED

In this subject line, WIRED includes Amazon, a large company name. Including the name of a big brand can be a great way to boost open rates because people who enjoy or use products from a big brands might click into a subject line that discusses them.

Additionally, when a brand name is combined with negative words like “phishing” or “scam,” people might open the email much more urgently so they can learn how to avoid running into the issue being discussed.

While Shutterfly’s message has strong alignment with its subject line, WIRED oppositely gives a subject line related to the last story in its newsletter. This is an interesting way to get your readers to scroll through the entire email and see the other stories before they get to the story that lead them to click into it. 

HubSpot Email Marketers’ Favorite Subject Lines

Above are some of the best subject lines we’ve gathered, but we asked the marketers on our team to give some additional favorites and what makes them so good:

1. “Show them what you’re made of”

Sender: Canva

“Using empowering, positive and defiant language to leverage the use of Canva tools – love it.”

—Lucy Reddan

2. “Drooling over email designs 🤤”

Sender: Really Good Emails

“Emojis always catch my eye amongst the 100+ emails I receive on a daily basis. As an email geek myself, this subject line matched my interests and piqued my curiosity.”

—Ashley Riordan

3. “Can you help me name this dance, [First Name]?”

Sender: Marie Forleo

“It’s personalized and piques my interest because A) I’m being asked for input and B) I want to be in the know about this mysterious dance (#fomo).”

—Christina Perricone

4. “Who you gonna call?”

“If you can make a pun, include a social reference, or even just a familiar phrase, it’ll catch people’s attention.”

—Clint Fontanella

5. “Shoes You Can Wear All Damn Day”

Sender: Everlane

“Swearing is controversial in email marketing, but I think it worked really well in this email from Everlane. Not only was it a clever and concise way to introduce their new line of footwear called ‘The Day Collection,’ but it also aligned with the brand voice they use in other emails and across their website.”

—Anna Fitzgerald

6. “You were on point last week 🎯”

Sender: Grammarly

“Grammarly is so good about rewarding you/making you feel good about your writing.”

—Jordan Pritikin

7. “Hmm…No writing activity last week?”

Sender: Grammarly

“And if/when you turn their plugin off, their retention strategy is great! They reach out with subject lines like these that immediately drive me to click through and turn their plugin back on. Very well done reward/habit building.”

—Jordan Pritikin

These are just some of our favorite subject lines — and since we receive plenty of them, we’ll continue adding the best ones as we discover them.

Want more? Read How to Write Catchy Email Subject Lines: 19 Tips.

Studies show that between 70-80% of consumers research a business online before visiting in person or making a purchase. That means having a website is as necessary for companies today as having a phone number.

Maybe you’re starting a new business venture or developing your personal brand. Or, maybe you’re looking to update your company’s outdated website. Whatever the case, creating a new website can feel overwhelming, particularly without technical expertise or a budget for web developers.

To alleviate any frustration you might feel, we’ve put together a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating a website. Best of all, you won’t need a coder, web designer, or big budget to create one — you’ll just need to follow the nine steps below.

1. Choose your website platform.

The first thing you’ll need to decide is whether you want to create a website using a website builder or a content management system (CMS).

Both provide the out-of-the-box features, pre-designed templates, and extensions required to create a custom site without coding, but they offer different experiences for creating and managing a website.

Website builders provide everything you need to launch a site. You get website building tools, hosting, domain registration, SSL certification, templates, and support in one place, often for a low monthly rate. 

This ease of use and pricing appeals to many site owners; however, free website builders as well as the more expensive alternatives tend to be limited in flexibility. For example, you can’t add your own custom code, or drag and drop elements anywhere on your posts and pages with a website builder.

If you want more control over the functionality and appearance of your site, use a CMS. A CMS will provide the content management features, advanced functionality, and customization options required to build larger, more complex sites.

If you’ve decided that a CMS is the best option for your business, consider the software, ease of use, customizability, security, and pricing of different platforms to narrow down your selection. 

The best CMS system for your business will align with your site’s needs and goals. For instance, do you need a platform that allows you to add your own custom code or one that supports multiple languages? Would you like a proprietary CMS to help share the responsibility of protecting and maintaining your site, or would you prefer an open-source CMS? You might also narrow your list by comparing the selection of templates and add-ons offered by each system.

WordPress, for example, is a popular open-source CMS that provides thousands of themes, plugins, and modules for customizing your site. In exchange for this flexibility, you will have to spend more time and money downloading, installing, and maintaining these extensions. On the other hand, WordPress alternatives like the CMS Hub provide more built-in functionality, app integrations, and security features so you can focus on creating web content and attracting leads. 

Once you’ve chosen the best CMS platform for your needs, continue to step two.

2. Select a hosting plan.

Web hosting is a service that enables individuals or businesses to run a website on the Internet. The service provider, known as a web host, will store your website files on a secure server that it keeps up and running, and then deliver and display that web content to visitors who type in your URL in their browser.

The steps for selecting a hosting provider differ depending on whether you chose a proprietary or open-source solution above. A proprietary solution will include web hosting in its pricing package. So you’ll simply need to select the plan with the bandwidth, storage, and other features that suit you best.

For example, Wix offers limited bandwidth and storage on its free plan so you’ll have to upgrade to its Unlimited plan for unlimited bandwidth and 10GB of storage. 

If you opted for an open-source solution, you’ll have to find your own hosting provider, which will take take time and lots of research. There are hundreds of web hosts on the market.  Each one might offer different types of hosting, including shared hosting, VPS, and dedicated hosting. Let’s briefly look at the differences below. 

Virtually every web host offers shared hosting. Shared hosting is the most popular type of hosting, particularly among new site owners, because it’s the cheapest option. However, because your website has to share the same server with many other websites, it can’t support high volumes of traffic and is most vulnerable to hackers and other security threats. 

VPS hosting is a pricier alternative because it isolates server resources for your site specifically. That means your site will be able to handle higher volumes of regular traffic. If you’d rather not share a server with any other website, you can upgrade to dedicated server hosting.

Once you’ve decided what type of hosting you need, you can pick a provider. DreamHost, Host Gator, and Bluehost are among the most popular third-party providers and offer free domain registration for the first year. That will simplify the next step in building a website. 

3. Get a domain name.

No matter what type of website platform you chose to build your site, you’ll likely have to purchase a domain name. Some website builders like Weebly offer a free subdomain for your site, but you’ll want to upgrade to a custom domain. 

One of the easiest ways to appear more professional and legitimate as a company is to pay for a domain name. Imagine you were looking for a freelance writer. Are you more likely hire me if my website address is carolineforsey.weebly.com or carolineforsey.com? An extension like “weebly.com” can confuse visitors and dilute your brand identity. Worst case scenario: a visitor might assume you can’t afford a premium hosting service or custom domain, and draw conclusions that your business is not fully established. 

Fortunately, purchasing a domain name is typically inexpensive — even for those who sign up for hosting plan that does not include free domain registration for year. There are two different approaches you can take. 

You can visit a domain site, purchase and register a domain name there, and then connect it to your hosting account. Both Godaddy.com and Namecheap.com are cheap, secure, and effective options for buying a domain name, with added benefits such as SSL security and office 365. 

Or you can complete the entire domain name search and registration process on your hosting provider’s site. For example, after signing up for a Bluehost plan, you’ll be taken to this page to sign up with a domain name.

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Here’s where it gets tricky. You’ll need to choose a domain name as similar as possible to the name of your company, but with over 1.8 billion websites out there today, your company’s name might already be taken.

If your ideal domain name is already taken, consider using a different extension. I’d advise you to use one of the three most common extensions if you can: .com, .net, or .org. However, if it makes sense for your business, you might want to check out an alternate extension like .us or .shop.

Play around with it. Once you’ve chosen and paid for a domain name, you’ll usually also get personal email accounts attached, so make sure you’re happy to use your domain name as your main online identity.

4. Choose a theme for your site.

Now, for the fun part.

Themes allow you to easily change the look and feel of your site without having to code HTML and CSS from scratch. Themes are made up of templates, modules, images, and global content that control your site’s overall design.

On whatever platform you chose, take the time to browse through the selection of themes available. Many will come with a directory of free themes, where you can use filters or the search bar to find themes related to your industry, with a specific layout, and more. 

There are some must-have features that every theme should have. For example, it’s important your theme is responsive, so your site will look the same on all devices. You’ll also want to stay away from hard-to-read fonts or flashy backgrounds that could distract a consumer from understanding your core message.

Other considerations will be specific to your business and site. You might be looking for a static header or a slideshow header, for example. Or you may need a theme that comes with a front-end builder. Below are some questions you can answer to find the right theme for your site:

• Do you need a variety of layouts or just one?
• Are you looking for a theme with built-in social media widgets or any other functionality?
• Would you like to install a demo site or start from scratch?
• Do you want to purchase a theme that includes its own theme builder? 

Ultimately, no one knows your business better than you. Take the time to consider which theme would best represent your brand and most likely appeal to your ideal demographic.

When in doubt, you can’t go wrong if you choose something clean with straight lines and a limited amount of text. If you need some inspiration, check out 27 of the Best Website Designs to Inspire You in 2020.

If you can’t find a free theme that meets your exact specifications, try looking for premium themes in third-party marketplaces. 

Once you’ve selected and installed a theme on your site, move on to the next step. 

5. Customize your theme and templates. 

Once you’ve chosen a theme, take the time to customize it and its individual templates. Your site’s design and functionality is your chance to persuade an audience to take a closer look. It’s imperative your design makes sense to your ideal consumer and works to enhance your product’s success rather than hinder it.

That’s why you should think of your theme and templates as a starting point, rather than the final look. Depending on the website platform you’ve used to build your site, you’ll have different degrees of control over your site’s appearance.

On most platforms, you’ll be able to choose a template and then change the color palette, replace the images, insert social media icons, add personalized forms and menus, and change the size, colors, and fonts of buttons. 

On more flexible platforms like the CMS Hub, you’ll be able to edit your theme’s global settings to make sitewide changes. That means you can make changes to your font and other elements in one place and they’ll be implemented across all pages on your site. 

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6. Add pages to your site.

It’s important to plan exactly which pages you’ll need to include in your site. While it varies business to business, I’d guess you’ll need at least a homepage, an “About Us” page, a “Services/Product” page, and a “Contact Us” page. 

You should also add a blog homepage. I might be biased, but there are serious benefits to business blogging. For example, websites that feature a blog are 434% more likely to be ranked highly on search engines.

While every platform is different, it’s typically easy to add and remove pages on whichever platform you use. Let’s take a closer look at the process on WordPress, for example.

1. Start by logging into your WordPress dashboard.
2. On the left side of the screen, click Pages > Add New.
   
3. You can add text, insert images, embed videos, and make any other changes you like.
4. When you’re ready, click Publish.  

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Once you’ve decided what pages you need on your site, make sure to add them to the navigation bar of your site. You can rearrange page topics any way you want, or combine them.

You can visit other company websites within your industry to get ideas for how to organize your navigation bar, or which pages to include and exclude if you’re unsure. 

7. Write content.

This is arguably the most important step. Now that you have your pages set up, what will you put on them?

I’d suggest writing rough drafts for pages like your “About Us” page and landing page. Talk with coworkers and stakeholders — what message do you want to put out there? What tone do you want to set? Should you make jokes and be funny, or aim to be more inspirational?

If your online audience stumbled across your site, what questions would they have first?

Imagine your website is your only chance to have a full conversation with a potential customer. The home page is the preliminary introduction: “Hey, we do XYZ.” Your “About Us” page digs deeper: “We are XYZ.” And your products or services pages are your big push to the finish line: “You want to work with us? Great, here’s how you’ll benefit.”

During this stage, it’s imperative you do your keyword research.

For instance, if you’re selling eyeglasses, and you notice “retro eyeglasses” has more monthly search volume than “vintage eyeglasses,” you might use this research to steer the direction of the content on your site.

If you’re stuck, check out competitor’s websites to gauge what other companies in your industry are doing.

8. Fill in general settings.

Once you’ve filled in your pages with the heavy-hitter content, you can still increase your search visibility by adding SEO elements to each and every page. 

On your pages, you should include:

• Page titles
• Headers
• Meta descriptions
• Image alt-text
• Structured markup
• Page URLs
• Internal linking
• Mobile responsiveness
• Site speed

Make sure you include a site title and tagline in the “Settings” of your website building platform. Go through, and check out the URLs — are those optimized for search?

Each of these elements are essential to your on-page SEO. They not only help to tell Google about your website and how you provide value to visitors and customers — they also help optimize your site for human eyes as well as search engine bots.

Any platform you’re using to build your site should make it easy to optimize these elements on every post and page. With Wix, for example, you can add image alt-text, meta descriptions, headings, and custom URLs right in your content editor.

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9. Install add-ons.

Lastly, take a look at your site and figure out what you’re missing. Ideally, your platform will offer all the add-ons you need to extend the functionality of your site.

It’s important to note these add-ons might be called apps, extensions, modules, integrations, or plugins, depending on the platform you use. 

If you’re running an ecommerce site on HubSpot, for example, you might use HubSpot’s Shopify extension. Or, maybe you want to ensure your WordPress website is secure, to protect client data. In that case, you might download the Wordfence Security plugin for firewall protection against attacks, malware, and other threats.

If you’re lacking out-of-the-box features for security, SEO, image compression, and social media, check if your platform offers an app or integration to add that functionality to your site. It’s much easier to do all this work in one place rather than having to log on to several disconnected platforms.

Let’s say you’ve browsed your platform’s directory or marketplace and chosen a few add-ons you think will take the effectiveness of your site to the next level.

Installing these add-ons will vary from platform to platform. To give you an idea of how long the process will take, let’s walk through the process of installing an app from the HubSpot marketplace. 

1. In your HubSpot account, click the Marketplace icon in the main navigation bar. 
2. Under Manage, select Connected apps .
3. Click Visit App Marketplace.
4. Use the filters in the left sidebar to browse for an app.
   
5. Click on an app to see more information. 
6. On the right, you can review the details of the app. Under Requirements, check whether or not the app is compatible with your HubSpot subscription, and see if there are any app-side subscription requirements. 
   
7. When you’re ready, click the Connect app button in the top right corner of the screen. 

Once you’ve completed these nine steps, just click “Publish” and your site is ready for use.

How to Make a Website with HubSpot

Lastly, let’s take a look at how to make a website with CMS Hub. If you’re not using HubSpot already, you can access a free trial of HubSpot CMS. If you’re already using HubSpot’s CRM, it probably makes the most sense to build a website within HubSpot to integrate all your sales and marketing needs in one place.

HubSpot CMS offers a variety of plugins and extensions, themed templates, and sophisticated tools for SEO analysis.

If you want to build a website with HubSpot, it’s easy and intuitive. Here’s how:

1. Create home page.

Within your HubSpot portal, click “Content” on the dashboard at the top of your screen. Then, click “Landing Pages.”

After that, click the orange “Create landing page” button and name your page. 

2. Select a template.

Now, you’ll be taken to this “Select a template” page. Scroll through your options, search page templates, or check out the Marketplace. When you’ve found a template you like, select it.

3. Edit the modules.

This is your landing page. You can scroll over text boxes, images, or other modules to edit them. In the below picture, I scrolled over the “See The World” Banner Text, and when I click it, it allows me to edit that text.

You can also click the “Edit modules” tool on the right side of your screen and edit from there. For instance, I selected “Service 2 Text”, which directed me to the “Make it your own” paragraph on my landing page. You can add text, images, sections, forms, and more from the “Edit modules” section.

4. Create other pages on your website.

When you’re happy with your landing page and want to move on, go back to your dashboard and click “Content” at the top of your screen, and then “Website Pages.”

Here, you’ll click the orange “Create website page” button and name your page, just like your landing page. Then, you’ll be taken through a similar process of choosing a template and adding content. If you want a more in-depth tutorial, check out a quick tour of website pages.

5. Incorporate social media accounts.

If you want to incorporate your social media accounts, click “Social” on your dashboard. You can monitor all your social media accounts and also publish tweets, Facebook statuses and comments, Instagram pictures, and other content straight from your HubSpot dashboard.

6. View analytics.

If you want to check out your site analytics, go to “Reports” and then “Analytics Tools”. You’ll need to install the tracking code, which is easy to do within the HubSpot platform by clicking the orange “Install the tracking code” button. If you’re still unsure, check out how to install the HubSpot tracking code.

7. Add blogs to your site.

If you want to write blog posts, go to “Content” > “Blog” on your dashboard to create, publish, and monitor your website’s blog posts.

This is a fairly broad and general overview to get you started building a website with HubSpot, but there are plenty of more in-depth features and tools you might want to explore with a HubSpot specialist, or by checking out some articles on academy.hubspot.com.

Ensuring a Smooth Launch

Once you’re done building a website via the CMS Hub, it’s important to check that you’re not missing any crucial elements or going live with any glaring errors. Once you’ve gone through this list above and feel like you’re close to a website launch, read this blog post for a detailed list of things to check before your go live. 

And don’t forget to check out our CMS Hub, as mentioned above. It will help you accomplish most of the things on your website launch checklist without you even knowing you. You can find a free trial here.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Let’s say your company decided to invest in a website redesign to improve lead generation, and you’re responsible for managing the project.

Naturally, one of the first questions you have is, “How much is this website redesign going to cost?”

The answer, of course, is “it depends.” Are you simply switching to a new template and adding some new CTAs, or are you migrating your entire website to a new platform?

If only there were a way to organize your answers to all of these questions — a place where you could enter in estimated costs for all of your line items, and then compare your projected marketing budget to what you actually end up spending.Good news: Our free marketing budget templates have you covered. Included in our eight marketing budget templates bundle is a template to manage your website redesign … as well as templates for both Excel and Google Sheets to help you track your content budget, paid advertising budget, event budget, and more.

Additionally, in this guide, we discuss how to manage your entire marketing budget from start to finish. Let’s get started.

Marketing budgets can be difficult to establish for both small and large businesses.

If you’re a small business, you might wonder which marketing expenses you should start with. If you’re a large business, having multiple marketing teams or operations in play can make it harder to ensure everyone across the department gets what they need.

So, what should you spend your marketing cash on?

First, let’s identify a focal point: Digital media. Digital media makes up more than half of both U.S. and global advertising spend. This includes initiatives that cater to audiences on desktop computers, search engines, video streaming platforms, social media, and mobile devices.

Given the success marketers have seen in it, you might consider spending at least half of your marketing budget on some of these digital channels. Let’s talk about other ways to divvy up your marketing budget.

Marketing Budget Allocation

As you build a marketing budget, here are a few items you’ll want to keep in mind when planning your spending.

• Software: When it comes to digital and even print media, you may need software to create your marketing campaigns, or handle your daily processes.
• Freelancers: If you have a temporary campaign or want to test out a new marketing strategy, you might want to hire a short term freelancer before bringing on a full-timer.
• New personnel: When you do hire full-time employees, you’ll want to budget costs including their computer, technology, benefits, and onboarding-related needs.
• Advertising: Budget how much money you’ll spend on paid opportunities such as physical ads, native ads, sponsored content, search engine ads, and social media promotions.
• Content creation: When you create content such as videos, photos, or even blog posts, you’ll need to put paid time into it. Budget how much money will go into creating this content so you can adjust accordingly based on its return on investment.

Spreadsheet knowledge alone won’t help you understand how you’ll spend your marketing money this year. Creating a sound marketing budget starts with knowing what purpose this budget will serve and which marketing teams it will represent.

1. Know your buyer’s journey.

Your buyer’s journey is the steps your audience takes as they ‘journey’ from prospect to paying customer. Knowing your buyer’s journey allows you to understand how your audience interacts with your marketing — and where to set your goals and budget to better reach your customers.

Ask yourself these questions as you define your buyer’s journey:

• How do your leads and customers typically discover your products?
• What do they need to know before they make a purchase?
• How many site visits do you see per month?
• How many leads are you generating per month, and how many of these convert to paying customers?
• What is the cost of generating new leads and then converting them to customers?
• What’s the typical value/revenue of each lead?

This process should point out what marketing tactics are (and aren’t working), where you should alter your marketing goals, and where you can focus your marketing budget.

2. Align your budget with your marketing goals.

What you spend and where you spend it will depend on what you’re trying to accomplish.

So, when starting to create your marketing budget, make sure you’re only spending money on the things required by your current marketing goals — goals set based on your audience and their journey from prospect to customer. These could include:

• Display ads to promote a new product you’re launching this year.
• Sponsored social media posts to generate followers on your new Facebook page.
• Paid search engine ads to drive traffic (and purchases) to a specific product page.
• Contract bloggers to get more organic search traffic to your company’s website.

Former Demand Generation Marketer at HubSpot and current Senior Product Marketer at Atlassian, Jessica Webb, says this about how your costs can change when focusing on lead generation vs. lead conversion: “The majority of the money you spend on paid efforts is usually calculated based on volume of clicks or impressions. Because of this, you’ll often want to put more budget toward campaigns with higher-volume offers and audiences.”

“For example, a tweet or Facebook ad promoting a lead generation offer that leans more top of the funnel will likely receive more clicks than something that falls more toward the middle or bottom of the funnel,” she explains.

Your paid advertising costs will also change depending on how wide of an audience you are attempting to reach.

“You can look at Twitter advertising as an example,” Webb says. “You have to option to target your campaigns based on users’ interests or keywords searched for. Interests are a much broader category, whereas smaller pockets of users are searching for any given keyword, therefore your interests-based audience is going to be much larger and require a larger budget.”

3. Beware of hidden costs.

One of the great advantages to having and maintaining a budget spreadsheet is that it helps you avoid those end-of-the-quarter or end-of-the-year freak-outs when you realize, “Whoa … what did I spend all that money on?”

In many cases, unanticipated costs can force marketers to fork over cash that they didn’t plan on spending. Product marketing offers a perfect example. According HubSpot’s VP of Marketing Meghan Keaney Anderson, it’s easy to forget that successfully marketing your products and services requires more than just promotion.

“When people allocate budget for product marketing, they tend to think in terms of product launches and promotional activities,” Anderson explains.

“That’s certainly an important part of it, but another area of focus to remember is setting aside resources to conduct research and message testing long before the product ever goes to market. Having conversations with customers about the pain points your product will ultimately address is critical to shaping the messaging and having a successful launch.”

4. Remember where your priorities lie.

Marketing is overflowing with add-ons and extras, upsells, and “premium” versions. One of the best ways to assess what’s nice to have versus what’s absolutely necessary is to (you guessed it) organize all of your expenses.

By keeping tabs on where your budget is being allocated, and cross-checking that spending with the results you’re getting, it will be much easier to figure out what should keep getting budget and what should get kicked to the curb.

For example, let’s look to the world of public relations. In PR, there are countless tools to which you can allocate budget, which could leave you overspending where it doesn’t matter — and underspending where it does.

“Tools abound to help PR practitioners not only create and distribute great content and find and target key stakeholders, but to ultimately measure reach and effectiveness,” says Nathaniel Eberle, HubSpot’s former Director of PR & Brand and LogMeIn’s current Director of Global Brand Management.

“The key is making sure you’re laser-focused on who you’re setting out to reach and influence, then ensuring that your budget supports how they’ll most likely want to receive (and share) your key messages.

“As the media and digital landscape evolves at breakneck speed, continually reassessing the tools, services, and programs you’re employing is a great way to determine real-time ROI of your overall spend. Today’s measurement tool may be worthless to you tomorrow.”

5. Spend your budget smartly.

When you open up these budget templates and check out all the various expenses detailed in them, don’t fret if you can’t tick every box. I’m not advocating for an “always spend more” approach to marketing.

I’m advocating for an “always spend smart” approach. The expenses listed out aren’t mandatory — they’re just meant to guide your thinking and to help ensure that you haven’t overlooked any hidden costs.

6. Prepare to measure ROI.

When you put a certain amount of money into a certain area, you’ll want to determine if your budgeting helped you or hurt you as you plan out future budgets. The best way to do this is by measuring ROI — or return on investment.

If you’re the money you spend on one item results in your company making more in return, you may want to increase budget in the next year. If your money went nowhere, you should examine your budget.

8 Marketing Budget Templates You Need to Manage Your Marketing Spend

With the 8 Free Budget Planner Templates to Manage Your Marketing Spend, you’ll be able to manage all of the moving pieces of your budget at a monthly and quarterly level.

Use the Excel version of the templates to keep all of your budgets in one place. When you download the zip file, you’ll find a separate file for each marketing team, as well as a Master Budget Template to maintain a high-level view of your overall expenses.

Interested in sharing your marketing budget across a larger team? Try the Google Sheets version of the same eight templates to share access with other Gmail users. For the Google Sheets templates, each team budget is found in a separate tab of the same Google Sheet.

No matter which version you choose, each budget is optimized with the same line items, tips, and graphs. Read on to learn how to use each budget template.

1. Master Marketing Budget Template

Download the Master Marketing Budget Template here.

While it’s helpful to have individual budget templates for specific marketing departments and activities, it’s also nice to be able to take a step back and see the bigger picture.

The Master Marketing Budget Template lets you do just that: It’s the place where you can collect the totals from the other seven templates in the bundle and see all of your expenses in one place.

2. Product Marketing Budget Template

Download the Product Marketing Budget Template here.

This template will guide you step-by-step through the process of budgeting for a product launch. From determining product/market fit, to running user testing sessions, to promoting your finished product, our Product Marketing Budget Template will help ensure you don’t overlook any important expenses.

3. Content Budget Template

Download the Content Budget Template here.

The budget required for creating and promoting content can vary greatly from organization to organization. For example, while some organizations keep most of their content operations in-house, others rely more heavily on freelancers and contractors. And while some use many different software products, publishing tools, and services, others take a much simpler approach.

Our Content Budget Template is designed to cover as many content-related bases as possible. So, if you see any expenses listed that don’t apply to your organization, go ahead and delete them. (That’s the beauty of Excel spreadsheets: You can customize them to your specific needs.)

4. Paid Advertising Budget Template

Download the Paid Advertising Budget Template here.

Paid advertising: Does it really qualify as an inbound marketing tactic/channel? That is a loaded question, my friends, and one that I don’t have room to answer in-depth in this post.

What I can tell you for sure is that you can do paid advertising in an “inboundy” way — i.e. by targeting specific buyer personas and using paid advertising as a supplement to your organic efforts to help drive awareness and conversion opportunities.

Measuring the effectiveness of your paid advertising campaigns is also paramount to doing things the inbound way. Using our Paid Advertising Budget Template, you can keep tabs on your monthly (and quarterly) ad spending, and then cross-reference the amounts with your lead-generation metrics to determine your cost-per-lead.

5. Public Relations Budget Template

Download the Public Relations Budget Template here.

Public relations expenses amount to more than just paying for press releases. From reputation monitoring software, to traveling (e.g., to events and trade shows), to applying for awards, there are many PR costs that can be all too easy to overlook.

To ensure you’re accounting for all of your organization’s PR-related expenses, check out our Public Relations Budget Template.

6. Branding & Creative Budget Template

Download the Creative Budget Template here.

In order to produce high-quality, innovative graphics, videos, and other content, the branding and creative teams of today need more than just Photoshop … a lot more. One of the largest — and often most overlooked — expenses is storage.

If your organization is producing a lot of video, storage is especially important. Because as it turns out, when budgeting for video storage, you shouldn’t be thinking on a megabyte (MB) or even a gigabyte (GB) scale, but on a terabyte (TB) scale. FYI: 1 terabyte = 1 trillion bytes. You can keep track of all your storage costs (and other branding and creative costs) using our free template.

7. Website Redesign Budget Template

Download the Website Redesign Budget Template here.

Budgeting for a website redesign can be seriously tricky. With so many moving pieces to consider, there is a lot of room for underestimating or miscalculating costs. We created our Website Redesign Budget Template so you can keep all of your redesign-related expenses in one convenient location.

Unsure if your current website is right for a redesign? Check out this HubSpot research report: Does Your Website Make the Grade? Chances Are, It’s Barely Passing.

8. Event Budget Template

Download the Event Budget Template here.

When planning an event, the associated costs can seem obvious at first. There’s the venue to consider, of course. And the P.A. system and microphones. And then the costs associated with booking and bringing in presenters/performers. That’s pretty much it, right?

Wrong.

For example, does the venue come with tables/chairs, or will you have to rent those separately? Do you want your attendees to wear name tags, and if so, will you be printing out the name tags ahead of time or will attendees be writing their own names on blank tags?

If the latter, have you factored in the pens or markers you’ll need to accommodate that? As you can see, planning for an event can lead you down many rabbit holes.

Use our Event Budget Template to stay organized.

Sample Marketing Budget

With your chosen template downloaded, it’s time to consider which digital channels to allot a budget for. Hint: There’s no right answer — it’ll depend the market research you do to figure out where your specific audience spends most of its time.

If you find your buyer prefers learning and consuming content in the form of video, for example, you might invest more of your money in YouTube advertising.

Advertising Budget Example

Here’s a small sample budget for a quarter’s worth of expenses by a hypothetical company that has decided to invest heavily in video marketing. This template was created using the Master Budget Template, the first template listed in the section above.

Based on the figures above, video advertising’s total expenses for the quarter exceeded budget by $20, while full-time recruitment’s total expenses exceeded budget by $2,400. This means the company is trending over budget for the first three months of the year.

Why might this happen? Perhaps a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign on YouTube received more clicks by viewers than expected, and a sharp video-savvy job candidate negotiated a higher salary.

Based on the difference between this company’s planned spend and actual spend, their budget template produced the following graph:

Go now, and plan wisely — your marketing staff is counting on you.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in December 2015, but was updated for comprehensiveness.

In 2020, working remotely is now more popular than ever.

In fact, over 60% of U.S. employees between the ages of 22 and 65 say they work remotely at least occasionally — and 99% of people would choose to work remotely, at least part-time, if they could.

As a fellow part-time remote employee (I typically work from home two days a week), I can understand the benefits.

For instance, I find I get the most ‘heads down’ work done during those two days. Without the opportunity for kitchen chats, friendly debates with my desk-mates on the recent Cats movie, and hour-long team lunches, I’m incredibly productive.

Of course, there are plenty of challenges that come with remote work, as well. To name a few: awkward pauses during meetings when my computer freezes, an inability to have off-the-cuff brainstorming conversations with colleagues, and the lack of random check-ins from people around the office.

These challenges, while legitimate, become easier to manage with online communication tools like Zoom and Slack.

Which brings me to my point: if there’s anyone I’d imagine could handle remote challenges with ease, it’s Brad Armstrong, the Vice President of Business and Corporate Development at Slack, one of the world’s most popular workplace messaging platforms (the tool is already widely used at HubSpot, as well as major brands like IBM, Target, and Cole Haan).

At Slack, Armstrong is responsible for partnerships, alliances, the Slack Fund, and M&A. Additionally, he’s VP at a business with incredibly distributed teams: Slack has 2,000 employees at 18 different offices across 10 countries.

Here, I spoke with Armstrong about Slack’s culture when it comes to remote inclusion, the management style he uses when leading remote teams, and how to align and increase collaboration across distributed teams.

Whether you find yourself suddenly needing to switch to remote work due to circumstances outside your control or you’ve been managing a remote team for a while, keep reading to learn Armstrong’s three biggest remote leadership tips. 

To help teams stay connected and be productive as they adapt to working remotely, we’ve partnered with Slack to offer our customers a 25% discount off eligible upgrades of Slack for 12 months.

1. Make the time for face-to-face interactions, even if you’re fully remote.

The shift from partially to fully remote at Slack wasn’t as difficult as it might’ve been for companies with less reliance on online collaboration tools.

For instance, Armstrong told me, “As you can probably guess, we rely heavily on Slack to get work done and stay connected with our teams both in the office and when we’re fully remote. With that in mind, our culture at Slack HQ has always lent itself well to distributed teams. It isn’t unusual that communication and collaboration happens in channels, but also through our integrations with Hubspot, Zoom, and the more than 2000+ apps in the Slack app directory.”

However, Armstrong adds, “With that said, being fully remote is new for all of us, and I’ve found that being face-to-face in times like this makes all the difference in keeping my team engaged. We often join quick Slack or Zoom calls to check in on one another and to connect on high-priority items.”

It’s ultimately critical you continue to foster opportunities for casual conversations among team members to build psychological safety and create an environment in which remote employees feel comfortable sharing ideas and collaborating with one another.

Consider how you might implement daily or weekly check-ins with various members of your team, or use an internal Google Doc to share ideas cross-departmentally as they arise.

Additionally, Armstrong says, “We also are relying on channels more than ever to keep up-to-date on what our teams are working on. By using topic- or project-based channels to share daily updates, everyone has the information they need to keep things moving, despite being fully remote.”

2. When managing remote employees, additional flexibility is needed.

There are plenty of changes that occur when your team goes remote — and your leadership style may need to change as a result, as well. 

Fortunately, Armstrong has plenty of experience with remote leadership. His team is global, so he manages teams in HQ, Europe, and Japan.

As Armstrong told me, “Additional flexibility is required when managing remotely. Whether it’s varying time zones, different home situations or changing schedules, managers and team members need to adjust accordingly to accommodate and support each other.”

Additionally, as a manager, it’s critical you communicate top-down information so your employees have a firm understanding of what’s going on in your organization as a whole. 

In fact, Armstrong suggests, “Clarity is just as important right now. Taking the time to thoroughly explain and over-communicate priorities is critical to ensure everyone on the team is aligned. We kick off team meetings with pass-downs from leadership to make sure none of the key messages are being missed.”

3. Rely on digital communication tools for effective cross-department collaboration.

There are plenty of online communication channels you might use to stay connected to your team.

For instance, along with Slack and video conferencing tools like Zoom, you might use Google Docs to brainstorm with team members, Trello to collaborate and align on product or content launches, or Confluence to create an internal wiki for company-wide announcements.

Ultimately, it’s critical you continue to communicate effectively with team members — in fact, it might be more important than ever when working fully remotely.

As Armstrong says, “We know that sharing information and communicating is more important now than ever. Across departments at Slack, people are using DMs, channels, Slack calls, and apps to stay connected.”

“Our product has ultimately always been at the heart of our business, and we’re relying on the principles we’ve established to keep our business running smoothly in the face of uncertainty.”

4. Continue to emphasize transparency and alignment across teams when working fully remotely.

It can seem more difficult to provide transparency cross-departmentally when working remotely. When everyone is in-office, it’s easy to walk by someone’s desk and ask what they’re working on, or have a conversation with a colleague while grabbing a cup of coffee on the latest product launch.

Fortunately, Armstrong has a few tactics his own team uses to combat these challenges.

As Armstrong told me, “Without hallway conversations and in-person meetings, it can sometimes feel like you’re missing out on a piece of the broader conversation around a project.”

“At Slack, we know that alignment and transparency are key, especially while we’re fully remote.”

To make sure everyone at Slack and on his respective teams is in alignment, Armstrong told me his team relies on two collaboration strategies: announcement-only Slack channels, and weekly stand-ups.

He says, “We have announcements-only Slack channels for both company-wide announcements and for department-specific news like our bd-announcements channel. It’s an easy way to broadcast important messages and share updates and resources across teams.”

Additionally, Armstrong adds, “We also have weekly stand-ups: everyone shares their top three priorities on Monday, and top three accomplishments on Friday. This provides visibility on how projects are progressing, as well as allowing the team to celebrate each others’ wins.”

Ultimately, whether your company has had remote employees for years or is just segueing into remote culture in 2020, it can present its own unique set of challenges — but, equally importantly, it presents its own set of opportunities, as well. Hopefully you can use some of Armstrong’s tips to build transparency, trust, and collaboration across your own teams.

Additionally, check out this easy-to-use, free guide by HubSpot and Slack, Remote Sales & Marketing: A Guide to Moving Your Business Online, to learn how to set up remote work at your own company — plus, get 25% off eligible upgrades of Slack for 12 months. 

If you clicked on this post hoping to read something like “If you spend $1,000 dollars on digital advertising a month, you’ll hit your marketing goals easily!” I’m sorry to disappoint.

When it comes to ad spend, there just isn’t a perfect answer for every business. I know, it sounds like a cop-out, but I promise you it’s true.

Now, you might be thinking, So, why am I even reading this post, anyways? 

While I can’t tell you how much money you should spend on digital ads this year, I can walk you through a framework to help you decide on your own optimal ad spend.

Ultimately, here’s what you should think about when deciding how much you should spend on digital advertising:

1. How much investment is needed in order to hit my revenue goals?
2. What percentage of my marketing budget can I realistically afford to spend?
3. What is the lifetime value (LTV) of my average customer?
4. How well am I converting website visitors into leads, and leads into customers?
5. How much money am I spending on each bid?

At the end of this post, you’ll know how to use historical data to determine how much money you need to spend to hit your business goals and how to optimize your efforts to get the most out of each advertising dollar. Sound good? Let’s jump in.

How Much Investment is Needed to Hit Revenue Goals

So — where do you start?

Well, the primary goal for most businesses is to generate sustainable long-term revenue growth. That’s why, when determining how much to invest in digital advertising, you should work backward from your company’s revenue goals.

Working backwards can help you determine how much revenue your digital ads are responsible for bringing in, which can inform how much investment you need to make that goal reality.

Here’s what this might look like:

It all starts at the top with your business goal, which is most likely to increase revenue. You’ll have many departments working together to achieve this overarching goal, including marketing, sales, and customer service. By taking a look at historical performance across your business, you can identify what percentage of revenue each department is able to deliver.

Within marketing, you’ll have multiple objectives that feed into marketing’s responsibility, including paid, owned, and earned objectives. You’ll launch a number of initiatives to support this business goal, including paid media campaigns.

To understand this concept, let’s walk through an example. Let’s say your business has the goal of increasing revenue by $100,000 this year. From historical performance, the business makes the marketing department responsible for 50% of this goal. Great — now, what initiatives are you going to launch to bring in that $50,000 revenue?

Well, digital ads are going to be only one of the many tactics you launch, all of which will need investment. Based on the historical performance of your ad campaigns, you know that you have an average $2.50 return on ad spend (ROAS). This means, for every $1 advertising dollar you invest, you make $2.50.

If you think that your other marketing campaigns on owned and earned channels can impact 75% of marketing’s overall goal, that leaves 25% for you to hit with ads, or $12,500. Divide this by your ROAS of $2.50 and you’ll find that you need to invest $5,000 throughout the year to hit your revenue goals.

What percentage of your marketing budget can you realistically afford to spend?

Now, do you actually have $5,000 to spend on your digital ads? If you do, then great — you can continue to sustain long-term revenue growth with your existing advertising strategy. But I wouldn’t be surprised if many of you simply don’t have the advertising dollars you need to make the impact you want.

Or, maybe you’re experimenting with digital advertising for the first time and don’t have historical data on ad spend and ROAS to inform your decision. What do you do then?

It’s a difficult question to answer honestly, but you need to ask yourself: “How much money do I actually have?” Take a look at your cash flow and profit to get a grasp on how much money is realistically available for digital advertising investment.

If you set a budget that you can’t afford, the long-term success of your campaigns, and sustainable growth, is doomed from the start. That’s why it’s important to start off with a budget that you’re comfortable with and can commit to in the long-run.

But don’t worry — even if you have a limited budget, that doesn’t mean you can’t use paid media as part of your greater marketing mix. Ultimately, before jumping right into ads, you want to further optimize other business metrics to get the most out of each and every advertising dollar.

What is the lifetime value (LTV) of your average customer?

Lifetime value is a prediction of the profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. Simply put, LTV answers how much money you will make from a single customer over time.

To calculate LTV, take the average yearly revenue your average customer brings you and multiply it by the average lifespan of a customer.

For example, if your average customer pays you $500 a year, and stays with your company for six years, we can say the average lifetime value of a customer is $3,000. But let’s not forget how much it costs to service a customer. If you factor in that it costs you $50 to service that customer each year, or $300 over their entire lifetime as a customer, you can say the average lifetime value of your customers is $3,000 minus $300, or $2,700.

Now, the higher your lifetime value, the more money you can realistically spend to acquire a new customer. If you’re feeling strapped for advertising dollars, consider taking steps to increase your customer’s LTV.

There are a ton of best practices for increasing customer lifetime value which I won’t go into detail in this article. But to get you started, think about things like your business’s subscription and pricing models. Launching marketing initiatives to move the needle on LTV will, in turn, make your digital ads more successful and less costly.

How well are you converting website visitors into leads and leads into customers?

Now that you have an average lifetime value for your customers, you can work your way backward to see what your monthly advertising budget should be. We’re going to walk through this example focused on the value of a form conversion, but you can apply the same approach to whatever conversion points you’re optimizing your ads for.

You’ll want to consider two things to figure out your advertising budget:

• Your average conversion rate: The rate at which website visitors to your site convert on a form and become a lead.
• Your average lead-to-customer rate: The rate at which leads become paying customers.

Let’s say you run an IT Solutions company, and you want to advertise for your upcoming webinar on network security. You dig into the performance of your landing pages for past webinars and learn that you have a 7% webinar conversion rate and that your lead-to-customer rate is 10%. So if ten people sign up for your webinar, you can expect that one person will become a paying customer.

What are these numbers for your business? Are they lower than you’d like? If so, that means that your advertising dollars are not being spent as efficiently as they could. To increase your landing page conversion rate, consider testing your calls-to-action and adding social proofing.

And to convert more leads into customers, you could use email automation to nurture your potential customers towards making a purchase. There’s a lot you can do here, but for the purpose of this exercise, just know that if you have low conversion rates, pouring more money into your underperforming ads isn’t the best use of your resources.

How much money are you spending on each bid?

To make the most of your ad spend, you want to bid less than your expected return. LTV, conversion rate, and lead-to-customer rate can be used to determine what your maximum bid should be using this equation.

Maximum Ad Spend = LTV x Conversion Rate x Lead-to-Customer Rate

Let’s jump back to our webinar example to see this in action. If you divide one new customer by your lead-to-customer rate, you’ll see that we need 10 webinar signups to yield one new customer.

Next, divide the number of webinar signups we need by the average conversion rate. Using our 7% webinar conversion rate, we find that you need roughly 143 clicks on your ad to generate one new customer. If that customer is worth $2,700 to you, we can start to calculate how much you should spend per click on your ads.

If we ignored all the other costs of acquiring a new customer, then your break-even bid would be your customer lifetime value, divided by 143, the number of clicks you need to generate one new customer. This means you could bid $19 per click on your ad and break even.

Follow this process for your previous ad campaigns. Were you bidding too much? If you were, then that means that your advertising budget wasn’t being used effectively to reach your revenue goals.

Improving your ad copy, keyword strategy, targeting, and more all play a role in how much you’re spending. Here’s another helpful blog post to learn how to optimize your digital advertising costs.

Reevaluate Your Spend to Maximize Impact

Your advertising budget should bend and flex to meet the evolving demands of your business over time. Taking an experimental mindset when reevaluating your spend will help you identify the most profitable initiatives in your strategy and adjust the way that you budget.

Additionally, it’s important to keep in mind that there are plenty of free, organic-driven opportunities to increase brand awareness and sales on social media. If you’re strapped for cash but want to use social media for business growth, take a look at our Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for free alternatives.

Lastly, a word of advice: I’d recommend reevaluating your spend no more than on a quarterly basis. That way, your campaigns will have enough time to bring in reliable results, but you’ll still have enough time to adjust your investment accordingly to meet your end-of-year goals.

If you or your team want to level up their digital advertising know-how, check out this free Ads Training Course to learn today’s best practices for succeeding with digital ads on search engines and social media.

As a marketer, you know you’ve got what it takes to build and manage an incredible Instagram page.

For instance, you’ve made your business’ account branded so it aligns with your company, filled it with eye-catching posts, and turned the page into a great outlet to encourage audience engagement.

Everything … well … almost everything, is going smoothly.

The tiny snag: How in the world are you supposed to make Instagram Stories Swipe Ups worthwhile, for your audience and your ROI?

Instagram is one of the most widely-used platforms for marketing efforts, but only 21% of marketers are seeing a return on investment from their Instagram strategy. You might be experiencing the same snafu — you’re putting a lot of effort into your Instagram, like adding Stories, but they’re not earning the traffic you need.

The problem may not be in your content, though. It could be your delivery.

But don’t worry — in this post, we’re going to cover some strategies you can do to give your Story viewership a 180, as well as take a look at what other brands are doing to make their Stories a worthwhile tool in their content strategies.

Let’s go over some best practices for driving traffic to your Instagram Stories before we get into how to leverage the Swipe Up tool.

Best Practices for Driving Instagram Story Traffic

Are you keeping these practices in mind when you go to upload your Story? Before you schedule your next one, refer to these strategies to give your viewership a boost.

1. Preview the Story on the main feed.

To drive traffic to your Instagram Story, a sure-fire way is to make a post about it on your main feed.

Posting a “preview” photo or video on your main feed, and then alluding that the rest of the post is in your Story, compels the audience to explore the missing content. This method caters to the fear of missing out, or FOMO, because Stories disappear after 24 hours. The only way to combat this is archiving the story in a highlight.

2. Make it into a highlight.

Highlights can be a traffic driver, as well. If you encourage user-generated content, save them in a highlight when you share them to your Story. Then, tag the customer who posted the content. If audiences see that you shout-out customers, they’ll be more inclined to check back to see if their submission gets picked.

3. Promote the Story on other channels.

Another way to drive traffic to your Story is to let your audiences know about it. Adding a simple “Follow us on Instagram!” CTA in email newsletters or on another social media account will let audiences outside of your current Instagram followers know that there’s another way to engage with your content.

4. Run interactive Stories.

Finally, running a contest or Q&A on Instagram drives traffic because it encourages audience participation. For instance, if you run a contest that gives away an item, and make one of the rules tagging two friends, you can spread your content through your audience’s shares.

Similarly, if you give your followers the chance to engage directly with your brand, they’re more inclined to check your Story for more opportunities to interact. By doing this, you’re strengthening customer relationships.

So, now that you know some ways you can get more eyes on your Story, let’s look at some examples of how you can keep them using the Swipe Up feature.

Additionally, if you’re still unsure about how Instagram Stories works, take a look at Instagram Stories: What They Are and How to Make One Like a Pro.

Examples of Brands That Include Links in Stories

So, you have a pretty good idea of how to drive traffic to your Story. But once audiences get there, what should they see? And, what is the content to keep them coming back?

Let’s go over some examples of brands using their Stories in a way that makes audiences think, “I can’t wait to look at this account again!”

1. The Newsette

Tactic: Promote A Blog Post.

The Newsette is an online daily newsletter, supporting stories of women in the workplace. Their corresponding Instagram account supports the newsletter, especially in the Stories. This Story in particular, for instance, highlights a new blog post:

Source

Right off the bat, this Story is graphically compelling. The background is fun and enjoyable without distracting from the focal point of the Story — the post. Using Stories to promote your latest interview or blog post can entice fans who don’t want to miss out on the 24-hour offer.

2. Maddie Lymburner

Tactic: Share A YouTube Video.

As a health food blogger and fitness influencer, Maddie Lymburner has a lot of content she can share on her Instagram Stories. For her fitness Instagram, Maddie posts at-home workouts or a preview of her new workout video, like shown below:

Source

This Story features a sneak peek of the workout, and provides the link, so Instagrammers can watch the video without closing the app. If your YouTube account could use some love, you can leverage Stories to get more views on your YouTube channel, as well.

3. Father/Daughter Records

Tactic: Post A Link To Stream Content.

To bid a “Happy Birthday” to a record, independent label Father/Daughter Records used Stories to celebrate. What else is included in the Story is a link to stream or buy the record:

Source

You can use Stories to give your account some brand personality. For instance, if your team just created a new podcast episode for your brand’s podcast, you can use the swipe up Instagram feature to compel new listeners to follow along.

4. Steffi Lynn x Adobe

Tactic: Partner With An Influencer.

If you are an independent artist, or part of a business that does partnerships, this is a great way for you to use the Swipe Up tool on a Story. For instance, Steffi Lynn is an independent graphic design artist, and uses her Instagram account to showcase her work, or announce a new partnership, like in this Story, sponsored by Adobe:

Source

The swipe up links back to Adobe’s new product, and its supporting product page. Independent artists like Steffi Lynn can use swipe up to link to their own ecommerce pages, and marketers or advertisers can work with influencers to include their company’s links on the Story.

5. Coveteur

Tactic: Promote Your Podcast.

Coveteur is an online fashion and beauty publication. Recently, the team at Coveteur have been branching out and exploring more ways to deliver content, and to support that initiative, have been linking back to episodes in Stories.

Source

What’s especially great about Coveteur choosing this episode to link to is that Bobbi Brown was the CEO of a successful cosmetics company of the same name, so to Coveteur’s target audiences, Bobbi Brown is a respected thought leader in the beauty industry. Seeing a recognizable name on a Story from a brand that may be unrecognizable at first, instantly gives the publication a credibility boost.

6. Franklin & Whitman

Tactic: Share Your Ecommerce Options.

Do you sell your products online? The swipe up tool is an excellent way to inform customers about a sale or promotion, announce new products, or give updates about home-run products, like this one from skincare brand Franklin & Whitman:

Source

Fans of the company can enjoy the ease of buying their favorite products by swiping up on an Instagram Story, and leads that engage with this Story will find the pricing information useful as they continue on in their buyer’s journey. Being proactive and using Stories to let customers know about your new products or upcoming discounts proves to your audience that you care about their needs as a customer — including allowing them to purchase your products wherever they prefer

7. The Mayfair Group

Tactic: Build Buzz For Your TikTok Videos.

If you have another social account that could use more followers, you can use Stories to link back to it, like brand representation company The Mayfair Group did below:

Source

The Story itself was a clip of a TikTok from the company’s account. It asked followers to write what they’re grateful for in a TikTok and tag the company. This is a great idea for promotion because it inspires action — after seeing this, I was immediately interested in making a TikTok of my own.

8. Girls’ Night In Club

Tactic: Share Your Newsletter.

Maybe you have an email list, and are looking for more subscribers. You could leverage Stories for that, and post a highlight from the newsletter. Then, the swipe tool could link to the email sign-up form.

Source

Above is an example of how you can promote your newsletter through your Instagram account. Notice that, because the promotion was for an interview, the collaborators were tagged. This gives the community newsletter, Girls’ Night In, more exposure from the collaborators’ followers when the post gets reposted.

These are just some of the strategies and methods you can use to upgrade your Story content. Not only is there a chance to get a spike in viewership on your Instagram account, but you can also get eyes on some of your other content, as well.

Will I see your brand the next time I open the Discover page?

In 2018, North America discovered a viral new app called TikTok. Within just a year and a half of its launch, it reportedly grew to over 800 million active users.

As tech journalists and bloggers dug into the origin of the odd video app, some were surprised to discover that TikTok, which took America by storm, was actually inspired by an app created by the same company in China.

Researching social media platforms not founded in the U.S. can be helpful when trying to learn about audiences that live in other countries, especially those that live in highly censored areas like China or Russia. In areas like these, where people might not be able to access common U.S.-based networks, like Facebook or YouTube, tech companies have built their own social media empires.

Whether you’re interested in international marketing, or just want to learn more about how audiences around the world interact with the internet, learning about the top global platforms that weren’t created in Silicon Valley can be an eye-opening experience.

Below, I’ll walk you through eight of the most popular social media platforms around the globe, including TikTok’s origin platform — Douyin.

8 of the Biggest Global Social Media Platforms

QZone and QQ

Owner: Tencent

Origin: China (Available globally, Chinese language-only)

Name’s Origin: QZone and QQ were shortened from the original name, OICQ. The O stood for “open” while ICQ is an instant message term that sounds like “I Seek You” when said allowed.

Reported Users: 517 million active users on QZone with 653 million monthly users on QQ.

QZone is a social media channel while QQ is a messaging app that links to a QZone account. The two apps serve as an alternative to Facebook in countries like China and South Korea, where the U.S. platform is blocked.

The overall platform’s story began in 1999 when QQ launched as a desktop messaging site. QZone, a social media site and app, launched in 2005. In 2019, as mobile-first mindsets grew in millennial and Gen Z audiences, Tencent transformed the QQ website into a standalone app. QZone still serves as a social media platform while QQ is now similar to the Facebook Messenger app.

To help you better visualize how people have used QQ and QZone, here’s a quick analogy:

When U.S. millennials like me were children, we raced home from school to message our friends on AIM. Then, as we reached our high school years, we ventured onto Facebook, where we could message people, create a profile, and post updates.

Meanwhile, in China, people in my age group might have messaged friends on QQ’s messaging website instead of AIM. Now, QQ users might use its sister app — QZone — for a social media experience that’s comparable to Facebook. Then, to message friends, they use QQ.

Here’s an example of a current QZone profile that shows just how similar the platform is to Facebook:

Source

On QZone, users are encouraged to publish posts, videos, or even music. Like Facebook, they can also connect with friends, see a feed of updates, comment, share or react to posts, and update cover or profile photos.

The QQ and QZone are great examples of a social media brand that gained traction long before we signed on to well-known platforms owned by U.S. tech firms. The usership of QQ and QZone might be so strong in China because young audiences discovered the brand for its messaging tool and were able to join and enjoy its full social media network later on.

Although Facebook launched 2004, one year before QZone came out, Tencent had already captured the millennial demographic with QQ, figured out how to grow its product competitively with QZone, and continued to add features to pull in Gen Z audiences.

While QZone and QQ seem like Facebook alternatives, their history of growth is fairly parallel. And, as one of the ten biggest social media platforms globally, QZone is worth knowing about if you plan to market to Asian territories with heavy censorship.

WeChat/Weixin

Owner: Tencent

Origin: China (Available globally)

Name’s Origin: The app’s original name was Weixin, which translates to “micro letters.” In a play to become a more globally used app, Weixin rebranded to WeChat in 2012,

Reported Users: 1 billion active users

WeChat launched in 2011, before competitors like Kik and WhatsApp. The messaging app was rolled out by Tencent, which also created QZone and QQ.

Similarly to WhatsApp, WeChat allows free text-based chats and voice calls. It also has a Moments feature similar to Instagram or Facebook Stories. Like many U.S. platforms, you can place fun animated stickers and filters on images or videos sent within the app.

To join WeChat, users need to know someone on the platform and have them scan an activation code that a user receives when logging in for the first time.

Once users are logged in, they can access WeChat’s messaging feature, send video messages to friends, and host virtual phone calls with one or more contacts.

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Aside from using the platform for friend-to-friend communication, users can also take advantage of more entertaining features. For example, while one feature allows people to play in-app games live against friends, others include video or photo filters that can be used in chats or video calls.

Here’s a quick video that shows a popular game being played on the WeChat app:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXhLXBTm2tc

WeChat also connects to a number of third-party or Tencent-owned apps so that a user can take on multiple tasks, like hailing a ride or paying friends money, directly from WeChat.

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At this point, Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and other major social media apps are using a similar strategy of pulling additional features into their platforms to keep users logged in longer. For example, many of today’s top messengers allow group video calls, offer in-app games, or let users send money.

Weibo (Also known as Sina Weibo)

Owner: Sina Corp.

Origin: China (Available globally with text in Chinese.)

Platform Name Translation: Loosely translates “microblogging.”

Reported Users: Projected to hit 500 million monthly active users in 2020

Weibo, also called Sina Weibo, is the biggest Chinese microblogging and social media platform. The social channel made news in 2017 when it reached more monthly active users than Twitter. Since then the app’s continued to grow. Reports suggest that more than 30% of Chinese internet users now have an account on the platform.

When you visit the website, it’s automatically in Chinese. However, you can use Google Chrome’s translator to convert the text to different languages. To give you a better idea of how Weibo works, here’s what its desktop site looks like with the English translation turned on.

Like Twitter, Weibo offers a central feed where you can see the latest or highest performing posts. To toggle through different types of posts, you can click a category on the list in the left sidebar. On the left, you can log in to an account and see “Hot Topics” similar to Twitter’s “Trending Topics.” If you continue to scroll down, you’ll also see a box that allows you to search for people — similarly to Twitter’s “Who to follow” block.

To help you see just how similar these two platforms are, here’s a picture of Twitter’s feed.

While Weibo’s layout and microblogging mission is similar to Twitter’s, the Chinese platform emphasizes videos, photos, and trending content, while Twitter still puts an emphasis on the accounts sharing the content.

Although Twitter also prioritizes trending content, you can easily see which of your followers posted, liked, or retweeted it before seeing the content in a tweet. This allows audiences to subconsciously focus on the person who tweeted something as well as the tweet itself.

These slightly different layouts might also suggest that the audiences of each platform prefer to consume content differently. While Twitter’s audience might prefer the human connection aspect of its site, those on Weibo might want to jump straight to the content.

Douyin

Owner: ByteDance

Origin Country: China (Available only in China: TikTok is available globally)

Name’s Origin: Douyin loosely translates to “shaking sound” or “vibrato.”

Reported Number of Users: 400 million active users

Douyin is the Chinese-only counterpart to TikTok, which is owned by the same company. TikTok specifically is a merger of Douyin and the Musical.ly lip-syncing app. Both social media apps specialize in allowing users to create, edit, and share short-form vertical video that’s less than 60 seconds.

After Douyin launched in early 2018, it grew to 150 million active users in year one. ByteDance then purchased a similar lip-syncing app called Musical.ly and created TikTok, a global app that merged the best features from each original app.

Since launching in late 2018, TikTok’s also seen viral growth by gaining roughly 800 million active users. Like Douyin, TikTok also sees a large number of international influencers from countries like India.

While Douyin and TikTok are very similar short-video apps and are often confused as the same thing, they have a slightly different set of features, are powered by different servers, and have different levels of censorship due to regulations around the world.

Douyin isn’t accessible for us to preview in the U.S., but news outlets describe it as being even more advanced than TikTok — particularly when it comes to ecommerce.

For example, while TikTok just recently rolled out advertising options, Douyin reportedly allows users to triple-tap a video with a product featured in it to go to a brand’s ecommerce store. Users can also use the app for virtual tours of hotels, stores, or travel locations, and then visit the websites affiliated with these tours.

Unlike TikTok, Douyin also reportedly allows users to geotag themselves at a store or location. This could be helpful for providing brand awareness to local brands.

When it comes to what Douyin and TikTok have in common, both are apps where users can share short videos that can feature musical overlays, fun filters, and text overlays. Videos on each platform must be 60-seconds or less.

From photos I’ve dug up online, it looks like the platform’s design is very similar with some slight design differences. The screenshots below show a video ad and the platform’s search feature:

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As a comparison, here’s what a video ad and the search feature look like on TikTok:

Both apps are also centered around a video feed that algorithmically shows users videos from followers or videos that they might enjoy based on previous content they’ve viewed on the app. When users enter the app and see the feed, one video will begin playing automatically. To see other videos, users simply swipe up on that feed. Here’s what this looks like on TikTok:

Aside from the shared features, both fast-paced social media channels are favored by younger generations — especially Gen Z. While over 50% of TikTok’s audience is younger than 34, it’s also been reported that Gen Z has flocked to Douyin.

Douyin and TikTok’s success story is a great example of how one unique international platform can change the way we consume content in other countries. Prior to TikTok’s launch in the Western hemisphere, many Americans hadn’t seen anything similar to it since Vine — a similar short video app and feed that was discontinued by Twitter in 2016.

Not only did Douyin and TikTok replace the need for Vine, but both apps also catered to Gen-Z and Millennials, two mobile-first generations known for short online attention spans and heavy consumption of video content.

Kuaishou

Owner: Kuaishou Technologies

Country of Origin: China

Name Origin: No translation could be found.

Number of users: 400 million monthly active users

Kuaishou is a short-video app that competes with Douyin. This platform started as a GIF sharing site called Kuaishou GIF. It was like GIPHY in the sense that anyone could create, post, and share GIFs on the network.

In 2012, Kuaishou dropped GIF from its name and pivoted to a short video platform. Its interface is now very similar to Instagram’s. It doesn’t have a Stories feature like Instagram, but it features similarly looking profile formats and feeds where users share short vertical videos rather than photos or other content.

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Like Douyin or TikTok, the video features of Kuaishou seem fairly similar in that users can leverage sound bites and basic editing tools in their content. Like many social media platforms with videos, Kuaishou also allows users to overlay text and stickers to images or videos.

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From looking at a variety of videos that have been uploaded on to other sites from this platform, it seems like many Chinese residents have used this app to highlight their unique skills and musical talent.

Here’s a video that highlights multiple short videos on the platform:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0JCLvFVfDU

A number of users have also shared videos that highlight and celebrate aspects of rural China. Here’s an example that Kuaishou posted on its own YouTube page:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sINEza-m11k

In 2019, Apple distinguished Kuaishou as a global app that was defining mobile video storytelling trends. This came shortly after the app notably added ecommerce and monetization features that enabled creators in poverty-stricken rural China to make money from it.

Aside from its short-videos, Kuaishou also allows users to live stream content to their friends or followers on the platform. Similarly to the short video feature, the stream has allowed users to film longer videos that highlight their skills.

VKontakte (VK)

Owner: Mail.Ru Group

Country of Origin: Russia

Name’s English Translation: VKontakte loosely translates to “in contact with.”

Reported Number of Users: 500 million users

VK, the biggest social channel in Russia, is like a mix between Facebook, YouTube, and the illegal ’90s downloading service LimeWire. This platform allows users to publish and share text-based posts, photos, video files, and music files with their connections.

When it comes to this platform’s user interface, it looks eerily similar to Facebook, with some slight tweaks to page layouts. Here’s what VK’s main feed looks like:

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And, here’s an example of what a profile page looks like:

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Aside from allowing users to share their own content, they can allegedly upload and stream copyrighted material such as music and movies. This has allegedly been abundant on the platform since its launch, but legal steps have not been taken against it.

The social platform is owned by Mail.Ru Group, a tech company that owns Russia’s main search engines and OK.RU, a social platform noted below. Reports also suggest that this company has affiliations with the Russian government.

At the moment, some experts suggest that liberal-minded internet users spend time on Facebook, Russia’s more conservative users spend time on Mail.Ru-owned sites.

In a recent Vice article, one user from Moscow described how Facebook was seen as a liberal network.

“It’s become more ‘woke’ to be on Facebook because most Russian liberal intellectuals use it,” the user explained. “It’s kind of like Twitter for us, it’s where you follow people when you want to see what they think.”

It is interesting to think that while U.S. internet users of all political backgrounds tend to argue their points on Facebook, people with certain political affiliations might stick to using one platform or another based on political affiliations in countries like Russia.

Odnoklassniki (Shorthand name: OK.RU)

Owner: Mail.Ru Group

Country of Origin: Russia

Name’s English Translation: Odnoklassniki translates to “classmate.”

Reported Number of Users: 200 million users

Odnoklassniki, or OK.RU, is a website that specializes in connecting people with their past classmates. The social media platform is set up like a blog, similar to Tumblr, where users can share life updates, images, or videos, which then show up in other user’s home page feeds. Along with their classmates’ content, a sidebar shows users the most popular videos that have been posted on the platform.

Below is a look at the feed. While the site is in Russian, I’ve used Google Chrome to translate it so you can get a better idea of what people are posting.

Like Tumblr, users can also click on the name or image of another user in a post to find that person’s profile. These profiles are similar to Facebook’s layout in that they show a cover photo, a user’s top followers (called “participants” in the image below), and then a feed of their own content.

While this platform is similar to both Tumblr and Facebook, Russian citizens don’t commonly use those two platforms as much as OK.RU. Additionally, with warnings that Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram could be banned in Russia, it’s not shocking that tech companies in this region have innovated to create similar alternative platforms.

As we’ve seen with the Chinese platforms on this list, many of the top global social platforms have been inspired by or created as an alternative to U.S.-origin sites that were censored or censored. These continent-specific social media industries could be a theme we continue seeing in different areas of the world.

If you’re an international marketer, it can be helpful to identify segments of your audiences that might not be able to access the platforms you use for social media marketing. As you do this, you should also research any alternatives that you can access to promote your content or product in those audience’s locations.

The Similarities of Global Social Platforms

Despite their critical differences, social media industries around the world have some fascinating similarities to that of the U.S.

For example, while many of North America’s most prominent social media apps are owned by Facebook or were created in Silicon Valley. Most prominent global platforms were created by Tencent or other major tech firms based in China. Similarly, the two biggest Russian platforms are owned by the same company.

Although many of the apps above were created and launched in highly censored areas, they don’t seem to be falling behind on innovation due to these governances. Because international social platforms have evolved on a similar timeline as many common U.S. platforms, it seems like these geographies are building their own parallel social media industries, rather than just racing to create alternatives to our own platforms.

One thing that does seem different between international and domestically launched social media platforms is that many of the examples on this list emphasize direct communication more than content, while our own platforms emphasize content and user experience. While every social media platform we use today does have messenger with various features, only a few of them are or were ever standalone messengers.

For example, QZone and WeChat built their initial audiences as messenger apps and broadened their features from there. Meanwhile, Snapchat and WhatsApp are the only top platforms that started as direct messengers. While Facebook Messenger is one of the most prominent text messaging platforms, it is an expansion of Facebook’s original News Feed-centered platform.

If you’re interested in reaching international audiences, you should pay attention to the social media platforms they most commonly use, and what they use them for. This will give you insight on what types of content these groups engage with, what motivates them, and what strategies could persuade buying decisions.

If you want to tap into an international audience, but can’t access some of the platforms on this list, you can alternatively consider testing out a campaign on a globally accessible platform like WhatsApp and WeChat.

The ecommerce industry is booming.

These trends are showing no signs of slowing down in the foreseeable future. In fact, the global ecommerce market is expected to eclipse $6.54 trillion in sales by 2023. That’s up from $3.53 trillion in 2019.

Whether you’re interested in starting a new ecommerce business from scratch or looking to expand your retail operation to an online store, you can use an ecommerce tool to achieve your goal.

Not all ecommerce solutions are created equally. Some tools are all-in-one website builders, while others are plug-ins, add-ons, or shopping cart software.

So what’s the best ecommerce tool for 2020? The answer depends on your unique situation. Use this guide to find the best ecommerce solution for you and your business.

The 10 Best Ecommerce Tools of 2020

In a market saturated with dozens, if not hundreds, of different ecommerce tools, there are the top ten that I’d recommend:

1. Shopify
2. WooCommerce
3. BigCommerce
4. Wix
5. Magento
6. Squarespace
7. 3DCart
8. Easy Digital Downloads
9. Ecwid
10. OpenCart

I’ll give you an in-depth overview of the features, benefits, pricing, and use cases for each one of these tools as we continue through this guide.

1. Shopify

Shopify has everything you need and more to start an ecommerce website from scratch. It’s an all-in-one ecommerce solution for website creation and shopping cart software.

Regardless of your technical skill level, Shopify is easy for anyone to set up and use right out of the box.

Shopify makes it possible for you to sell from anywhere. In addition to your own ecommerce store, Shopify supports third-party marketplaces, social media selling, and in-person sales with Shopify POS (point of sale) software.

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Every Shopify theme is optimized for mobile devices. Additionally, with tools like BuildFire, you could always build a Shopify mobile app to take your mobile sales strategy to the next level.

One of the most significant standouts of Shopify is its versatility. From startups to small businesses and large-scale operations, this ecommerce tool can fit the needs of any organization.

Shopify Pricing: Shopify has three different plans—Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. These plans start at $29, $79, and $299 per month, respectively. You can try Shopify for free with a 14-day trial.

2. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is unique compared to some of the other ecommerce tools on our list. That’s because it’s not an all-in-one ecommerce solution.

If you already have a WordPress website, you can add ecommerce functionality by installing the WooCommerce plugin.

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From selling products to subscriptions and memberships, WooCommerce has everything you need to add ecommerce capabilities to WordPress.

The tool is fully customizable. It integrates with popular payment platforms like Stripe, Square, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and more. WooCommerce has other extensions for things like printing shipping labels and integrating with your email marketing platform.

For those of you who have an existing WordPress site, WooCommerce is the best way to start selling online without doing a complete rebuild. Simply install the plugin, and customize your settings from there.

WooCommerce Pricing: WooCommerce is free to install on your WordPress site. But other extensions to customize the WooCommerce plugin do cost money. Tons of extensions are free, while others range up to $300 per installation.

3. BigCommerce

Since launching back in 2009, BigCommerce has processed more than $25 billion in merchant sales. It’s used by businesses in 120+ countries worldwide.

As another full-service ecommerce platform provider, BigCommerce offers everything you need to start selling online.

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Compared to other ecommerce tools on the market today, BigCommerce comes pre-loaded with the most native features.

BigCommerce has exceptional tools for inventory management, SEO, and conversions. You’ll also benefit from 24/7 customer support via phone, email, and live chat. So you can rest assured knowing that you’ll have access to assistance if you ever have any questions.

In addition to traditional online sales, BigCommerce supports B2B wholesale websites and provides enterprise-grade ecommerce solutions as well.

BigCommerce is an industry leader in ecommerce performance. When it comes to page loading speed, uptime, and security, this tool is second to none.

BigCommerce Pricing: The Standard plan starts at $29.95 per month. BigCommerce Plus starts at $79.95 per month, and Pro starts at $299.95 per month. You’ll need to contact the sales team for a custom quote on Enterprise solutions.

4. Wix

Wix is arguably the world’s simplest website builder. The platform is the easiest way for anyone to build a new website from scratch without any technical knowledge or coding experience.

Using the intuitive drag-and-drop builder, you can design a high-quality website with text, images, videos, and other media types in minutes. Adding new pages or starting a blog with Wix is just as easy.

Wix has 500+ templates for you to choose from. Your website will automatically be optimized for SEO and mobile web browsers. If you build a site with Wix, you’ll have access to the Wix App Market. This resource is filled with powerful web apps to customize your site.

You can also create an online store with your Wix website.

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Wix offers a fully customizable storefront and shopping cart. Add features like a shopping wishlist, related product galleries, a quick add-to-cart button, mini-carts, and more.

For those of you who want to start selling new products online but don’t know where to start, Wix’s platform supports dropshipping. Browse from thousands of products that you can sell, with no inventory costs. Products ship in 5-7 business days.

Wix allows you to set up custom shipping rules as well. Manage international orders, choose your carrier preferences, and give customers real-time delivery estimates.

Wix Pricing: Wix has plans starting at $13 per month. But not every Wix subscription supports online selling. The ecommerce plans with the ability to accept online payments range from $23 to $49 per month. Enterprise solutions start at $500 per month.

5. Magento

Magento is an ecommerce tool offered by Adobe. It’s an all-in-one ecommerce solution that processes more than $100 billion in gross merchandise sales each year.

With Magento, you can create an ecommerce store no matter how big or small your website is. This platform supports small businesses, mid-market and enterprise, and B2B online sales as well.

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Magento stands out from other platforms with its efficiency, automation, and access to crucial data. You’ll benefit from inventory management, business intelligence, shipping solutions, and order management.

This ecommerce tool has specific features for customer segmentation and personalization.

Your store will automatically display products, promotions, content, and prices based on factors like customer location, order history, customer gender, LTV, and wish list items. You can even improve the shopping experience for unknown website visitors based on their shopping cart or products viewed.

Magento Pricing: Contact the Magento sales team for a custom quote on a Magento Commerce license. You can request a free demo to try it out before you commit.

6. Squarespace

Squarespace is another well-known website builder. Unlike Wix, Squarespace has integrated ecommerce capabilities built-in to all of its business plans.

This ecommerce tool is popular for businesses and individuals in creative industries. The Squarespace designs are known for being both beautiful and modern. These award-winning templates are perfect for fashion designers, artists, musicians, and photographers.

If you want to showcase your work and sell it online, Squarespace is the place to do it.

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You can also Squarespace to sell subscriptions and digital content.

If you’re selling physical products, Squarespace offers automatic inventory management, shipping calculator tools, and a rich product display. Use this ecommerce tool to showcase videos of your products as well.

Squarespace integrates with other popular online selling tools such as PayPal, Stripe, USPS, FedEx, and Apple Pay. It also integrates with popular accounting solutions like Xero.

For those of you who want to create a portfolio website and monetize it with ecommerce capabilities, Squarespace is the best choice for you.

Squarespace Pricing: Squarespace Personal costs $12 per month. But you can’t sell online with this option. The $18 business plan has a fully integrated ecommerce store with the ability to sell unlimited products, although it does have some limitations.

To take full advantage of Squarespace as an ecommerce tool, consider the Basic Commerce or Advanced Commerce plan. These start at $26 and $40 per month, respectively.

7. 3DCart

3DCart is one of the oldest ecommerce tools on our list. The platform was founded back in 1997. More than 25,000 merchants use this tool to power their ecommerce website.

To be clear, 3DCart is not for everyone. It’s ecommerce software that’s designed for advanced ecommerce stores. The platform doesn’t offer a drag-and-drop site builder like Wix. Instead, you’ll need to have some knowledge related to development and coding to fully customize your templates and themes.

Just install 3DCart into your existing website to turn it into an ecommerce shop. If you aren’t comfortable editing your site’s code, you’ll likely need to hire a developer to do this.

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Once installed, you’ll have access to more than 200 built-in ecommerce features. 3DCart has 50 free themes and supports 100+ payment processors.

Integrate 3DCart with platforms like MailChimp, Stripe, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, QuickBooks, and more.

For those of you who don’t want the restrictions associated with an all-in-one ecommerce website builder, 3DCart offers full customization. You’ll just need to handle the coding on your own.

3DCart Pricing: 3DCart has five different plans ranging from $19 per month to $229 per month. You can try the software for free with a 15-day trial. All plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

8. Easy Digital Downloads

Just as its name implies, Easy Digital Downloads is an ecommerce tool designed for selling digital products. Similar to WooCommerce, it’s a plugin for WordPress websites.

More than 2.44 million users have downloaded EDD.

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This ecommerce tool makes it easy for you to create discount codes, track download activity, and restrict file access. It comes with a fully integrated shopping cart that allows customers to purchase multiple downloads simultaneously.

There are no limitations on how many digital products you can sell with the Easy Digital Downloads plugin.

The tool integrates with other popular tools and extensions that you’re already using. Some examples include PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, Slack, Zapier, AWeber, Dropbox, and Amazon Web Services.

Easy Digital Downloads Pricing: There are four different plans for the EDD plugin license. All of them are billed on an annual basis until canceled. The Personal Pass is $99, Extended Pass is $199, Professional Pass is $299, and All Access Pass is $499.

9. Ecwid

Ecwid is a free commerce extension that’s compatible with WordPress and other popular CMS platforms. You can add the Ecwid tool to Weebly, Joomla, Tumblr, Squarespace, Wix, Blogger, and Adobe Muse.

You’ll also be able to sell online from marketplaces like Amazon and eBay or sell on social media via Facebook and Instagram.

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Unlike 3DCart, you can install Ecwid to your website without any development or coding experience. The Ecwid software can integrate with in-person selling at your brick and mortar retail stores as well.

If you’re currently using WordPress but don’t want to use WooCommerce as an ecommerce tool, Ecwid is a viable alternative.

Ecwid has a free forever plan, but it’s extremely limited. You’ll only be able to sell up to ten products and won’t have access to sales channels outside of your website.

Ecwid Pricing: The entry-level Venture plan starts at $15 per month. Business and Unlimited plans start at $35 per month and $99 per month, respectively. You can save money on all of these if you commit to an annual contract.

10. OpenCart

Last, but certainly not least on our list is OpenCart. Unlike some of the other tools listed above, this is not a website builder. OpenCart is a free and open-source platform that adds ecommerce functionality to existing websites.

Over 342,000 ecommerce websites across the world use OpenCart for selling online.

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The most significant standout of this ecommerce tool is the OpenCart marketplace. You’ll have access to 13,000+ modules and themes. You can integrate OpenCart with an extensive list of payment gateways and shipping providers.

As an open-source platform, OpenCart has an outstanding community support forum with more than 550,000 posts from 110,000+ registered members.

For a one-time fee or ongoing monthly service, you can have access to OpenCart’s dedicated support staff.

OpenCart Pricing: As I mentioned earlier, OpenCart is free to download and install. But extensions and dedicated support will cost extra.

What’s the best ecommerce tool to use in 2020? It depends on your unique situation.

An ecommerce startup won’t have the same needs as a small business retailer that wants to expand online. There are ecommerce tools that are better for selling wholesale B2B products and other tools made for digital downloads.

Do you want to create a new website from scratch? Or are you adding ecommerce functionality to your existing site?

All of these scenarios will impact how you choose an ecommerce solution.

Since I included something for everyone in this guide, I’m confident that you can find what you’re looking for in one of the ten options listed above.

As a marketer, you know you’ve got what it takes to build and manage an incredible Instagram page.

For instance, you’ve made your business’ account branded so it aligns with your company, filled it with eye-catching posts, and turned the page into a great outlet to encourage audience engagement.

Everything … well … almost everything, is going smoothly.

The tiny snag: How in the world are you supposed to make Instagram Stories Swipe Ups worthwhile, for your audience and your ROI?

Instagram is one of the most widely-used platforms for marketing efforts, but only 21% of marketers are seeing a return on investment from their Instagram strategy. You might be experiencing the same snafu — you’re putting a lot of effort into your Instagram, like adding Stories, but they’re not earning the traffic you need.

The problem may not be in your content, though. It could be your delivery.

But don’t worry — in this post, we’re going to cover some strategies you can do to give your Story viewership a 180, as well as take a look at what other brands are doing to make their Stories a worthwhile tool in their content strategies.

Let’s go over some best practices for driving traffic to your Instagram Stories before we get into how to leverage the Swipe Up tool.

Best Practices for Driving Instagram Story Traffic

Are you keeping these practices in mind when you go to upload your Story? Before you schedule your next one, refer to these strategies to give your viewership a boost.

1. Preview the Story on the main feed.

To drive traffic to your Instagram Story, a sure-fire way is to make a post about it on your main feed.

Posting a “preview” photo or video on your main feed, and then alluding that the rest of the post is in your Story, compels the audience to explore the missing content. This method caters to the fear of missing out, or FOMO, because Stories disappear after 24 hours. The only way to combat this is archiving the story in a highlight.

2. Make it into a highlight.

Highlights can be a traffic driver, as well. If you encourage user-generated content, save them in a highlight when you share them to your Story. Then, tag the customer who posted the content. If audiences see that you shout-out customers, they’ll be more inclined to check back to see if their submission gets picked.

3. Promote the Story on other channels.

Another way to drive traffic to your Story is to let your audiences know about it. Adding a simple “Follow us on Instagram!” CTA in email newsletters or on another social media account will let audiences outside of your current Instagram followers know that there’s another way to engage with your content.

4. Run interactive Stories.

Finally, running a contest or Q&A on Instagram drives traffic because it encourages audience participation. For instance, if you run a contest that gives away an item, and make one of the rules tagging two friends, you can spread your content through your audience’s shares.

Similarly, if you give your followers the chance to engage directly with your brand, they’re more inclined to check your Story for more opportunities to interact. By doing this, you’re strengthening customer relationships.

So, now that you know some ways you can get more eyes on your Story, let’s look at some examples of how you can keep them using the Swipe Up feature.

Additionally, if you’re still unsure about how Instagram Stories works, take a look at Instagram Stories: What They Are and How to Make One Like a Pro.

Examples of Brands That Include Links in Stories

So, you have a pretty good idea of how to drive traffic to your Story. But once audiences get there, what should they see? And, what is the content to keep them coming back?

Let’s go over some examples of brands using their Stories in a way that makes audiences think, “I can’t wait to look at this account again!”

1. The Newsette

Tactic: Promote A Blog Post.

The Newsette is an online daily newsletter, supporting stories of women in the workplace. Their corresponding Instagram account supports the newsletter, especially in the Stories. This Story in particular, for instance, highlights a new blog post:

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Right off the bat, this Story is graphically compelling. The background is fun and enjoyable without distracting from the focal point of the Story — the post. Using Stories to promote your latest interview or blog post can entice fans who don’t want to miss out on the 24-hour offer.

2. Maddie Lymburner

Tactic: Share A YouTube Video.

As a health food blogger and fitness influencer, Maddie Lymburner has a lot of content she can share on her Instagram Stories. For her fitness Instagram, Maddie posts at-home workouts or a preview of her new workout video, like shown below:

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This Story features a sneak peek of the workout, and provides the link, so Instagrammers can watch the video without closing the app. If your YouTube account could use some love, you can leverage Stories to get more views on your YouTube channel, as well.

3. Father/Daughter Records

Tactic: Post A Link To Stream Content.

To bid a “Happy Birthday” to a record, independent label Father/Daughter Records used Stories to celebrate. What else is included in the Story is a link to stream or buy the record:

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You can use Stories to give your account some brand personality. For instance, if your team just created a new podcast episode for your brand’s podcast, you can use the swipe up Instagram feature to compel new listeners to follow along.

4. Steffi Lynn x Adobe

Tactic: Partner With An Influencer.

If you are an independent artist, or part of a business that does partnerships, this is a great way for you to use the Swipe Up tool on a Story. For instance, Steffi Lynn is an independent graphic design artist, and uses her Instagram account to showcase her work, or announce a new partnership, like in this Story, sponsored by Adobe:

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The swipe up links back to Adobe’s new product, and its supporting product page. Independent artists like Steffi Lynn can use swipe up to link to their own ecommerce pages, and marketers or advertisers can work with influencers to include their company’s links on the Story.

5. Coveteur

Tactic: Promote Your Podcast.

Coveteur is an online fashion and beauty publication. Recently, the team at Coveteur have been branching out and exploring more ways to deliver content, and to support that initiative, have been linking back to episodes in Stories.

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What’s especially great about Coveteur choosing this episode to link to is that Bobbi Brown was the CEO of a successful cosmetics company of the same name, so to Coveteur’s target audiences, Bobbi Brown is a respected thought leader in the beauty industry. Seeing a recognizable name on a Story from a brand that may be unrecognizable at first, instantly gives the publication a credibility boost.

6. Franklin & Whitman

Tactic: Share Your Ecommerce Options.

Do you sell your products online? The swipe up tool is an excellent way to inform customers about a sale or promotion, announce new products, or give updates about home-run products, like this one from skincare brand Franklin & Whitman:

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Fans of the company can enjoy the ease of buying their favorite products by swiping up on an Instagram Story, and leads that engage with this Story will find the pricing information useful as they continue on in their buyer’s journey. Being proactive and using Stories to let customers know about your new products or upcoming discounts proves to your audience that you care about their needs as a customer — including allowing them to purchase your products wherever they prefer

7. The Mayfair Group

Tactic: Build Buzz For Your TikTok Videos.

If you have another social account that could use more followers, you can use Stories to link back to it, like brand representation company The Mayfair Group did below:

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The Story itself was a clip of a TikTok from the company’s account. It asked followers to write what they’re grateful for in a TikTok and tag the company. This is a great idea for promotion because it inspires action — after seeing this, I was immediately interested in making a TikTok of my own.

8. Girls’ Night In Club

Tactic: Share Your Newsletter.

Maybe you have an email list, and are looking for more subscribers. You could leverage Stories for that, and post a highlight from the newsletter. Then, the swipe tool could link to the email sign-up form.

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Above is an example of how you can promote your newsletter through your Instagram account. Notice that, because the promotion was for an interview, the collaborators were tagged. This gives the community newsletter, Girls’ Night In, more exposure from the collaborators’ followers when the post gets reposted.

These are just some of the strategies and methods you can use to upgrade your Story content. Not only is there a chance to get a spike in viewership on your Instagram account, but you can also get eyes on some of your other content, as well.

Will I see your brand the next time I open the Discover page?

When a job seeker begins their search, their queries might look like this: “Top companies to work for in 2019” or, alternatively, “Top companies in X industry.”

It makes sense — nowadays, a company’s reputation matters more than ever. In fact, 86% of workers would not apply for, or continue to work for, a company that has a bad reputation with former employees or the general public.

Ultimately, you spend plenty of time creating a compelling, incentivizing brand story surrounding your products or services. But how long do you spend cultivating a powerful employer brand to ensure you attract and retain top talent?

Here, we’re going to explore what employer branding means, examples of good employer branding, and how you can implement your own employer branding strategy, today.

What Is Employer Branding?

At its most basic, an employer brand is your reputation among the workforce as well as your employees’ perception of you as an employer.

In other words, employer branding is how you market your company to job seekers and internal employees. The better you are at employer branding, the more likely you are to attract top talent. Additionally, a positive employer brand can also help you retain top talent.

Let’s say you’ve done a phenomenal job building up a strong brand in relation to your products or services. Unfortunately, that alone won’t convince someone to work at, or stay at, your company. You need to implement the same branding strategy when it comes to communicating your company’s leadership, values, and culture.

If a job seeker asks an employee at your company, “What’s it like to work there?” the employee isn’t going to say, “We’ve built some awesome merchandise.” Instead, he’s going to lay into the day-to-day of people management, company values, and workplace culture. To ensure a good employer brand, you need to tell a compelling story.

However, it goes deeper than storytelling — you also need to walk the walk. Telling your employees, and the general public, that your company is a great place to work because you have ping-pong tables isn’t going to cut it.

Why Is Employer Branding Important?

At this point, you might be wondering, Does this really matter to me and my company? 

Actually, employer branding is critical to your bottom-line. A good employer brand can reduce turnover rates by 28%, and cut your costs-per-hire by half. Additionally, 75% of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand.

You have an employer brand whether you’ve put effort behind it or not — so why not put effort in to ensure it’s a brand you can be proud of?

Next, let’s explore how you can implement an employer brand strategy today.

A good employer branding strategy can help you attract better talent, cut down on hiring costs, and reduce employee turnover.

1. Know your company’s unique value proposition.

To create a powerful employer brand, it’s critical you start by focusing on your company’s mission statement, values, vision, and culture. It could be helpful to identify what your business needs are and then work backwards to understand what type of talent you need to acquire to fulfill those objectives.

For instance, consider Teach for America’s mission statement — “One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.”

Using this statement as a guideline, Teach for America is then able to tell a compelling brand employer story on their Values page. Among other things, they promise employees the chance for continuous learning, stating, “We operate with curiosity and embrace new ideas to innovate and constantly improve. We take informed risks and learn from successes, setbacks, and each other.”

In this way, they’ve aligned their values, and their employer brand, with their business goal.

2. Conduct an employer brand audit.

You might not be fully aware of the reputation your company has among job seekers or even your own employees. Send out internal surveys, conduct social media searches, check out sites like Glassdoor to read reviews, or hire a firm that administers reputation monitoring.

Ultimately, your research should uncover your employees’ favorite aspects of your company culture that you can focus on highlighting as well as any areas for improvement to ensure a strong employer brand.

3. Write an employer value proposition.

Once you’ve done your research and cultivated a list of values and benefits your company offers, you’ll want to create an employer value proposition. An employer value proposition is a marketing message and a promise, so you shouldn’t say anything that isn’t true or that your employees wouldn’t agree with. You might use your employer value proposition on your website, recruitment materials, or LinkedIn company page.

Additionally, your employer value proposition is something your recruiters and HR team can discuss with potential candidates.

Your employer value proposition should have nothing to do with compensation. Instead, you want to evoke passion in potential candidates by expressing your company’s positive impact on the world or its deeper purpose. People want to feel their work is meaningful, often even at the expense of a bigger paycheck.

For instance, Accenture, a global management consulting and professional services firm, created this employer value proposition, which they’ve displayed prominently on their Careers page: “Help build the future. Be yourself, make a difference. Work where you’re inspired to explore your passions, where your talents are nurtured and cultivated. Innovate with leading-edge technologies on some of the coolest projects you can imagine. And get the tools you need to keep learning and growing so you stay continually ahead of the game while making a difference in the world.”

4. Leverage current employees.

When job seekers want to learn more about your employer brand, they’re going to want to hear from and see real employees at your company. Leverage your employees by conducting employee interviews or testimonials to share on your website.

You also might leverage employees by asking them to post on their social media accounts when your company does a fun giveaway or company outing. For instance, perhaps you create a Women in Tech event and hold a panel discussion. Afterwards, you might simply ask your employees to post a picture on Instagram or Facebook with a hashtag you’ve created. This is a fun yet powerful way for your own employees to share your company’s culture with their own networks.

5. Cultivate a strong onboarding process.

Onboarding is the first experience a new hire goes through, and a negative impression can have big consequences. In fact, people who have a negative onboarding experience are twice as likely to seek a different opportunity.

Ultimately, instilling a positive company brand image starts with a good onboarding process. It’s critical you get employees engaged and excited about their roles, and their teams, from the start. By arming your new employees with the instructions and tools necessary to excel in their roles, you’re ensuring a smooth transition, lower turnover rates, and more productive teams.

6. Offer learning and development opportunities.

In 2018, the number one reason people left their jobs was because they were bored, and needed a new challenge. Ultimately, this should be a relatively easy fix.

If you allow employees to pursue learning opportunities and become proficient in new skills, you’re demonstrating your company’s emphasis on continuous learning and improvement. And by challenging your employees, you’re ensuring they won’t get bored in their roles — which could lead to higher retention rates.

Plus, as they develop new skills, they become more valuable employees for your company. A win, win.

7. Use video, blog posts, photos, and slideshows to tell your company story.

When you’re implementing a strategy to improve the market’s perception of your product or service, you don’t just communicate your message through one channel. Instead, you provide videos, photos, slideshows, blogs, and other forms of messaging to ensure you’re reaching the largest audience on whichever platform they want to be found.

Similarly, it’s critical you use high-quality videos, photos, and text to tell your company story. You might consider putting employee interviews on your job page, or a slideshare created by your CEO on your About Us page.

8. Create a strong diversity and inclusion initiative.

If you want to create a strong employer brand, it’s critical you show your commitment to building diverse teams. There are plenty of company benefits to investing in D&I initiatives, including more innovative ideas, a stronger workplace culture, and better customer service. However, it’s also necessary for cultivating a positive employer brand by ensuring you’re extending your brand’s reach to new groups of people.

1. Starbucks

Starbucks does a good job ensuring they cultivate a strong community among their employees. For instance, they refer to current employees as partners, instilling a sense of pride in each employee. Additionally, Starbucks created Instagram and Twitter accounts specifically for @StarbucksJobs, which they use to promote their employer brand and interact with job seekers.

By creating social media accounts with the sole purpose of demonstrating appreciation for current employees and evoking passion in potential candidates, Starbucks shows its commitment to being more than just a product.

Rather than posting about their drinks, Starbucks uses its social media accounts to share their company mission, congratulate employees on college graduation, and share personal employee stories. The company also uses the platforms to demonstrate its commitment to diversity and inclusion.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot’s Culture Page begins with a document called the Culture Code, which publically pronounces every vision and value HubSpot hopes to promote and instill in its employees, candidates, and customers.

Moving further down the page, you’ll find sections discussing opportunities for learning and development, HubSpot’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, and interviews with real HubSpot employees. The language also consistently focuses on the job seeker: “Here’s how we can help you grow.”

The page ends with a “day in the life” video made by HubSpot employee Matthew Watkins, demonstrating HubSpot’s relentless commitment to communicating its culture via its employees. Ultimately, the page is a powerful example for how you might use interactive media to promote your employer brand.

 

3. Wistia

For consumers, Wistia brands itself as a video marketing software that helps grow your audience and build brands. It only makes sense that they would be brand-conscious and use their own software to underscore the ideas that they want to convey to job seekers as well. 

Rather than brag about how great a workplace they are, the first message on the Careers page is one of encouragement for job candidates: “Join a team that celebrates each other.” They continue to underscore that idea with multiple Wista-created videos about the people that make up their company, the culture that they instill, and the things that make up that culture.

4. SoulCycle

SoulCycle isn’t just transforming the boutique fitness space. It’s also aiming to transform the traditional corporate culture by offering benefits it feels will evoke a sense of purpose and belonging in each of its employees..

For instance, Soul gives its employees two paid business days off per year to volunteer at a charity of their choice with the hope that the charity days will help employees feel happy and more fulfilled.

Additionally, Soul offers free classes (about a $30-per-class value) to employees whenever it suits their schedule. This displays Soul’s deeper commitment to making fitness fun and using exercise as an outlet to de-stress and connect with the community.

With high ratings in each category on Indeed, including four stars on work-life balance and four stars on management, SoulCycle has undoubtedly cultivated a strong employer brand.

5. Canva

According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report, 23% of Millennials and Gen-X and 32% of Baby Boomers consider company mission as a top factor when considering a new job. That means that across the workforce, more and more job candidates want to be inspired and have purpose in their jobs.

This is what make’s Canva’s employer brand so great. On their Careers page, they highlight their values for job seekers and pair each value with a visual design, underscoring the idea that design can be a force for good. 

Canva also doubles down on this idea on their social media channels, which are full of inspirational content and ideas furthered by design.

6. Eventbrite

To demonstrate its commitment to recruiting high-quality talent, Eventbrite created a web page to introduce job seekers to its recruitment team. The bios are funny and relatable with fun facts about each recruiter.

Additionally, the Eventbrite recruitment team page states, “Interviewing shouldn’t be nerve-wracking —– it should be exciting. It should spark great conversation. We believe in respect, transparency, and timely responses (we don’t leave anyone in the dreaded recruiting black hole).”

Their language reflects their values, likely inspiring job seekers to apply.

7. Jet

The ecommerce site Jet created this inspirational, employee-focused video to spread awareness for its fun, engaging, motivational workplace. The video is especially powerful because it uses real employee interviews, giving the job seeker a sense for Jet’s work culture and values.

Additionally, the video is likely empowering and pride-evoking for current employees, who can see their company’s clear commitment to carrying out its mission statement through videos of its workers.

8. Shopify

If there’s one thing that’s clear in tech recruiting, it’s that there’s a gap between tech jobs and qualified applicants, and it’s taking longer and longer to fill positions. For many companies, their leverage is having an incredible employer brand and great perks to attract top talent. Many tech companies can take a cue from Shopify, where they recognize this and tell the job seeker that it’s their turn to “apply to you.” 

This acknowledgement is one step toward earning rapport with a potential candidate, and they continue to empathize with the reader by stating, “Finding the right job is hard work.” The rest of their Careers page is dedicated to providing the information that someone would need to take a chance and apply to Shopify.

Each one of the examples on this list has in some way shown their empathy, a human element, and a slice of their culture to begin attracting great employees. Human capital is your biggest investment and asset, but remember that your candidates are also investing in you.