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The first step in any successful project is drawing up a game plan with a clear objective. That’s why marketers love creative briefs. But if you’re just starting out in a creative role, or are taking on your first gig as a designer or consultant, you might not know how to write one effectively.

The idea of a creative brief sounds simple, but it can be hard to wrap a bunch of important details into just a few pages.

Whether you’re a consultant pitching a creative brief to a client, or a project manager presenting a brief to your team, it can be helpful to start by speaking with project stakeholders. These discussions will help you drill down on the company mission, project goals, and challenges your team faces. Then you’ll be able to write a compelling brief that focuses on what’s really important to your company or client.

Once you’re fully informed and ready to write, use these seven helpful steps to draft a solid brief in a short amount of time. If you’re still having trouble organizing your thoughts, I’ve included a fill-in-the-blank template to help you in the sixth step.

1. Write about the brand and the project’s background.

This area is meant to set the tone of your entire brief. It allows you to show your team or your client that you understand their mission and project motivations. It also provides a list of company goals that you can keep in mind while aiming to develop an on-brand project.

Set the scene with one or two sentences that sum up the brand’s mission. Follow this with a few sentences that give background on the brand and what led to the development of the project.

While some creatives have put this information all together in a quick paragraph, others separate it with headers like “Brand Statement” and “Background.”

Here’s an example of how the brand statement and background was discussed in a fictional creative brief for Hush Puppies:

2. Highlight challenges and objectives.

Next, write a short paragraph about the brand challenge(s) that your project aims to solve for. Then give more detail on how the project will offer a solution.

This section will be helpful in emphasizing why the project needs to happen. The goal aspects will help you and your team align on the project’s expectations.

If the company or client hasn’t identified any major challenges, you can focus this section on goals and objectives. Explain what a successful project looks like and how it will benefit the company.

If there are a lot of objectives and challenges, you can split these up into two subsections with headers like “Challenge” and “Objective.

Here’s an example of a sample creative brief for PayPal that offers separate sections for “The Problem” and “The Goal”:

And here’s an example of a sample brief for RedBull which just focuses on the objective:

3. Describe the target audience.

To know what type of content will engage your audience, you and your team need to know your audience. This section requires you to drill down on a specific type of audience and describe what’s important to them.

Along with basic demographics like age, gender, and geography, you should also include factors like customer pain points and motivations in this section of the brief. If you or your client has developed a detailed buyer persona already, this would be a great place to include some of this character’s information.

Here’s how the sample brief for PayPal noted above thoughtfully explains a new product’s target audience:

4. Walk through the competitive landscape.

Knowing what your competitors are doing is advantageous for the whole team. You can use competitive data to come up with ideas that they haven’t tried yet, learn from their failed projects, or build a project that improves on a strategy they’ve used in the past.

Include a quick list of competitors with similar product or service offerings. Briefly list a few things your company has in common with them, how your brand has differentiated itself already, and a few areas where this project can help you get ahead.

5. Offer a brief distribution plan.

When the project is done, you’ll need to make sure your audience actually sees it. List a few channels or platforms that you plan to announce the launch on, as well as any promotional content you plan to create.

When drafting this section, think about your target audience. Don’t waste time on a promotional strategy that they won’t see. For example, if you’re promoting a project to Gen-Z, you’ll want to invest in social media rather than billboards or newspaper ads.

Along with listing distribution points, you should also include messages or captions that will go along with promotion.

Here’s a sample brief where a specific promotional message is directly stated:

In this section of the brief, you should also note the appropriate voice for your audience. While some audiences, like those in the business world, might prefer more formal language, others might engage more with a casual, relatable tone.To acknowledge the best brand voice, you could write something like, “Our brand voice is a casual and care-free tone because it speaks to younger Gen-Z audiences.”

6. Organize with a template.

Having trouble with the flow and organization of your brief? Here’s a simple template that could help. Copy and paste it into a document and fill in the blanks. You can also add to it or adjust it as needed for your project.

[Inset Company or Client Logo at top]

COMPANY BACKGROUND:

For ___ years, ______ [Brand Name] has been serving customers in the ____________ [group/job field/geographical area] with ____________________ [product or service].

[Brand Name] has made achievements including __________,__________, and ___________. We have also launched marketing campaigns that have touched on ____________,________, and ____________. With the launch of _________ [project name] they hope to ___________.

CHALLENGE/OBJECTIVE:

With this project, the company aims to solve problems related to ____________________, while also expanding on ___________ and improving on _____________.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Our target audience is ____ [gender], in the age range of _ and _, and live areas like ____, _____, and ______. They enjoy _____, dislike ______, and might work in fields like _____, _____, and _____. They want more of ________ and their daily pain points include ________.

Their favorite products might include _______ and ______. They learn about these products through channels including ________, _________, and _______.

COMPETITION:

Our three biggest competitors [are/will be] ________, ________, and _______. These competitors offer _____, ______, and ______. We are ahead of them in _____ and ______, but we are behind when it comes to product offerings like __________ and _________.

DISTRIBUTION:

We will promote the launch on platforms and channels that our demographic regularly engages with. These will include ________, ________, and _______.

We will also release content including _______, _______, and ________ to gain attention from our audience and inform them of the project.

Below are a few messages we will use:

• _________________________________________________.
• _________________________________________________.
• _________________________________________________.

7. Share the brief.

Once you’ve drafted a creative brief, share it with the team you’ll be working with. You’ll also want to circulate it around the company via Slack, email, or presentations. If you’re a consultant working outside of a client’s company, encourage your clients to share the brief internally.

As you or your clients spread awareness, you should be open to answering questions or taking feedback from colleagues in case they have any great ideas. This strategy will improve team alignment, increase support of the project, and insure that all of your colleagues are on the same page.

Sometimes, when I tell people that I blog for a living, they roll their eyes. “That’s so easy,” they say. “You get a paycheck for sitting on the internet all day and writing. A monkey could do your job!”

That’s when I roll my eyes. See, people are quick to deem blogging as a no-brainer job. But when they actually sit down to write their first couple of posts, it hits them: This is way harder than I thought. Like any person starting a new job, they mess things up.

That’s okay — it happens to pretty much every new blogger. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to avoid these roadblocks if you know they’re coming.

So for all of you beginner bloggers out there who are looking to get up-to-speed quickly, keep on reading. Below are 12 common mistakes most beginners make and some tips on how to avoid them.

What is a blog?

Simply put, a blog is a tool that can help develop an online presence, attract leads, and engage with an audience. It’s often a series of editorial content centered around a central topic that demonstrates industry expertise — for instance, a catering company might write blog posts like “The 11 Best Appetizers to Serve to a Crowd” or “Stress-Free Dinner Parties: Recipes that are Prepared Ahead of Time”.

Blogs can help drive traffic to your website, convert that traffic into leads, establish authority in your industry, and ultimately grow your business. In fact, organizations are 13x more likely to see positive ROI by prioritizing blogging. 

Most of a blog’s traffic is driven organically — in other words, consumers will search for something on a search engine and click on your blog if it matches their intended topic. However, there are a lot of organizations competing for your audience’s attention, so it’s important to avoid common blog mistakes to stand out.  

1. Create blog posts that serve your larger company goals.

Mistake: You think of ideas that only interest you.

As much as you might read and re-read your blog posts after you publish them, you’re not the only reader, or the intended reader.

When you start blogging, ideas will come to you at random times — in the shower, on a run, while on the phone with your mom. While the ideas may come at random moments, the ideas themselves should never be random. Just because it’s a good idea in general — or something that interests you personally — doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for your company.

Solution: Align your blog posts with company growth goals.

The reason you’re blogging is to solve problems for your audience and, ultimately, to grow your business. So, all of your blog post ideas should help serve those growth goals. They should have natural tie-ins to issues in your industry and address specific questions and concerns your prospects have.

Need help figuring out what those goals are and how to address them? Chat with your manager about the larger company goals, and then schedule a meeting with someone on the sales team to hear what questions they get asked most often. After both meetings, you should know which goals you need to achieve and have some ideas on how to achieve them.

2. Write like you talk.

Mistake: Your writing is too stiff.

Writing a blog post is much different than writing a term paper. But when bloggers first start out, they usually only have experience with the latter. The problem? The style of writing from a term paper is not the style of writing people enjoy reading.

Let’s be honest: Most of the people who see your post aren’t going to read the whole thing. If you want to keep them interested, you have to compel them to keep reading by writing in a style that’s effortless to read.

Solution: Try to write blogs that feel personable. 

It’s okay to be more conversational in your writing — in fact, we encourage it. The more approachable your writing is, the more people will enjoy reading it. People want to feel like they’re doing business with real people, not robots.

So loosen up your writing. Throw in contractions. Get rid of the jargon. Make a pun or two. That’s how real people talk — and that’s what real people like to read.

3. Show your personality; don’t tell it.

Mistake: You think people care about you as a writer.

It sounds harsh, but it’s the truth: When people first start out blogging, they think that their audience will be inherently interested in their stories and their interests … but that’s not the case. It’s no knock against them as a person — it’s just that when you’re new, no one is interested in you and your experiences. People care way more about what you can teach them.

Solution: Infuse your personality without eclipsing the topic.

Even though people don’t really care that it’s you that’s writing the post, you can infuse parts of your personality in your writing to make them feel more comfortable with you. How you do that is entirely up to you. Some people like to crack jokes, some like to make pop culture references, and others have a way with vivid descriptions.

HubSpot’s Director of Content Corey Wainwright is particularly good at this. Here’s an example from the introduction of one of her posts:

To infuse personality into your own writing, try looking for ways to relate to your readers on the topic you’re writing about — then write in the first person as if you’re hanging out with them and chatting about it. Make your tone personal, approachable, and engaging, just like you would in a face-to-face conversation.

4. Make your point again and again.

Mistake: You digress.

Although you are encouraged to let your own personality shine through in your writing, don’t abuse the privilege. It’s one thing to be yourself in the topic you’re covering, but it’s another thing to bring up too many personal experiences that bury the point you’re trying to make.

Don’t digress into these personal anecdotes and analogies too much — your readers aren’t sitting in front of you, which means you can’t guarantee that you have their undivided attention. They can (and will) bounce from your article if they lose patience. 

Solution: Repeatedly assert your argument. 

To prevent your writing from losing its audience, restate your point in every section of the article. The best blog posts commit to an overarching message and then deliver it gradually, expressing it multiple times in small ways from beginning to end.

If you’re writing about how much water a potted plant needs, for example, don’t spend three paragraphs telling a story of how you came home to a dead fern after returning from a two-week vacation. This story offers real evidence of your point, but what is your point? Certain plants can’t go without water for more than 14 days. That’s one possible point, and it should be stated upfront.

5. Start with a very specific working title.

Mistake: Your topics are too broad.

When people start blogging, they generally want to write on really big topics like:

• “How to Do Social Media Marketing”
• “Business Best Practices”
• “How to Make Money on the Internet”

Topics like these are far too broad. Because there are so many details and nuances in these topics, it’s really hard to do a good job answering them. Plus, more specific topics tend to attract smaller, more targeted audiences, which tend to be higher quality and more likely to convert into leads and customers.

So, to get the most short-term and long-term benefits of blogging, you’ll need to get way more specific.

Solution: Begin with a clear, concise idea.

Nailing really specific blog topics is crucial to knocking your first few posts out of the park. Let us help you brainstorm with our Blog Ideas Generator. This tool allows you to enter basic terms you know you want to cover, and then produces five sample blog titles that work for business blogs.

Keep in mind that a working title isn’t final — it’s just a concrete angle you can use to keep your writing on track. Once you nail this stage of the ideation process, it’s much easier to write your blog posts.

6. Use a specific post type, create an outline, and use headers.

Mistake: Your writing is a brain dump.

Sometimes when I get a great idea I’m excited about, it’s really tempting to just sit down and let it flow out of me. But what I get is usually a sub-par blog post.

Why? The stream-of-consciousness style of writing isn’t really a good style for blog posts. Most people are going to scan your blog posts, not read them, so it needs to be organized really well for that to happen.

Solution: Structure your blog with a template, outline, and section headers.

The first thing you should do is choose what type of blog post you’re going to write. Is it a how-to post? A list-based post? A curated collection post? A SlideShare presentation? For help on this, download our free templates for creating five different types of blog posts. Once you have a template down, it’ll be easier to write your outline.

Writing an outline makes a big difference. If you put in the time up front to organize your thoughts and create a logical flow in your post, the rest becomes easy — you’re basically just filling in the blanks.

To write a blog post outline, first come up with a list of the top takeaways you want your readers to get from your post. Then, break up those takeaways into larger section headers. When you put in a section header every few paragraphs, your blog post becomes easier and more enjoyable to read. (And plus, header text with keywords is good for SEO.) When you finally get to writing, all you’ll have to do is fill in those sections.

7. Use data and research to back up the claims you make in your posts.

Mistake: You don’t use data as evidence.

Let’s say I’m writing a blog post about why businesses should consider using Instagram for marketing. When I’m making that argument, which is more convincing?

1. “It seems like more people are using Instagram nowadays.”
2. “Instagram’s user base is growing far faster than social network usage in general in the U.S. Instagram will grow 15.1% this year, compared to just 3.1% growth for the social network sector as a whole.”

The second, of course. Arguments and claims are much more compelling when rooted in data and research. As marketers, we don’t just have to convince people to be on our side about an issue — we need to convince them to take action. Data-driven content catches people’s attention in a way that fluffy arguments do not.

Solution: Use data to support your arguments. 

In any good story, you’ll offer a main argument, establish proof, and then end with a takeaway for the audience. You can use data in blog posts to introduce your main argument and show why it’s relevant to your readers, or as proof of it throughout the body of the post.

Some great places to find compelling data include:

• HubSpot Research
• Pew Research Center
• MarketingSherpa
• HubSpot’s State of Inbound report

8. When drawing from others’ ideas, cite them.

Mistake: Your content borders on plagiarism.

Plagiarism didn’t work in school, and it certainly doesn’t work on your company’s blog. But for some reason, many beginner bloggers think they can get away with the old copy-and-paste technique.

You can’t. Editors and readers can usually tell when something’s been copied from somewhere else. Your voice suddenly doesn’t sound like you, or maybe there are a few words in there that are incorrectly used. It just sounds … off.

Plus, if you get caught stealing other people’s content, you could get your site penalized by Google — which could be a big blow to your company blog’s organic growth.

Solution: Give credit where credit is due. 

Instead, take a few minutes to understand how to cite other people’s content in your blog posts. It’s not super complicated, but it’s an essential thing to learn when you’re first starting out.

9. Take 30 minutes to edit your post.

Mistake: You think you’re done once the writing’s done.

Most people make the mistake of not editing their writing. It sounded so fluid in their head when they were writing that it must be great to read … right?

Nope — it still needs editing. And maybe a lot of it.

Solution: You’ll never regret time spent proofreading. 

Everyone needs to edit their writing — even the most experienced writers. Most times, our first drafts aren’t all that great. So take the time you need to shape up your post. Fix typos, run-on sentences, and accidental its/it’s mistakes. Make sure your story flows just as well as it did in your outline.

To help you remember all the little things to check before publishing, check out our checklist for editing and proofreading a blog post.

10. At a certain point, just publish it.

Mistake: You try to make every post perfect.

I hate to break it to you, but your blog post is never going to be perfect. Ever.

There will always be more things you can do to make your posts better. More images. Better phrasing. Wittier jokes. The best writers I know, know when to stop obsessing and just hit “publish.”

Solution: Better to publish and update than postpone for perfection. 

There’s a point at which there are diminishing returns for getting closer to “perfect” — and you’re really never going to reach “perfect” anyway. So while you don’t want to publish a post filled with factual inaccuracies and grammatical errors, it’s not the end of the world if a typo slips through. It most likely won’t affect how many views and leads it brings in.

Plus, if you (or your readers) find the mistake, all of you have to do is update the post. No biggie. So give yourself a break once and a while — perfect is the enemy of done.

11. Blog consistently with the help of an editorial calendar.

Mistake: You don’t blog consistently.

By now, you’ve probably heard that the more often you blog, the more traffic you’ll get to your website — and the more subscribers and leads you’ll generate from your posts. But as important as volume is, it’s actually more important that you’re blogging consistently when you’re just getting started. If you publish five posts in one week and then only one or two in the next few weeks, it’ll be hard to form a consistent habit. And inconsistency could really confuse your subscribers.

Instead, it’s the companies that make a commitment to regularly publishing quality content to their blogs that tend to reap the biggest rewards in terms of website traffic and leads — and those results continue to pay out over time.

To help establish consistency, you’ll need a more concrete planning strategy.

Solution: Schedule and publish blogs consistently. 

Use it to get into the habit of planning your blog post topics ahead of time, publishing consistently, and even scheduling posts in advance if you’re finding yourself having a particularly productive week.

Here at HubSpot, we typically use good ol’ Google Calendar as our blog editorial calendar, which you can learn how to set up step-by-step here. Or, you can click here to download our free editorial calendar templates for Excel, Google Sheets, and Google Calendar, along with instructions on how to set them up.

12. Focus on the long-term benefits of organic traffic.

Mistake: You concentrate your analytics on immediate traffic.

Both beginner bloggers and advanced bloggers are guilty of this blogging mistake. If you concentrate your analysis on immediate traffic (traffic from email subscribers, RSS feeds, and social shares), then it’s going to be hard to prove the enduring value of your blog. After all, the half-life for those sources is very brief — usually a day or two.

When marketers who are just starting their business blogs see that their blog posts aren’t generating any new traffic after a few days, many of them get frustrated. They think their blog is failing, and they end up abandoning it prematurely.

Solution: The ROI of your blog is the aggregation of organic traffic over time.

Instead of focusing on the sudden decay of short-term traffic, focus instead on the cumulative potential of organic traffic. Over time, given enough time, the traffic from day three and beyond of a single blog post will eclipse that big spike on days one and two thanks to being found on search engine results pages through organic search. You just have to give it a while.

To help drive this long-term traffic, make sure you’re writing blog posts that have durable relevance on a consistent basis. These posts are called “evergreen” blog posts: They’re relevant year after year with little or no upkeep, valuable, and high quality.

Over time, as you write more evergreen content and build search authority, those posts will end up being responsible for a large percentage of your blog traffic. It all starts with a slight shift in perspective from daily traffic to cumulative traffic so you can reframe the way you view your blog and its ROI entirely.

13. Add a subscription CTA to your blog and set up an email newsletter.

Mistake: You aren’t growing subscribers.

Once you start blogging, it’s easy to forget that blogging isn’t just about getting new visitors to your blog. One of the biggest benefits of blogging is that it helps you steadily grow an email list of subscribers you can share your new content with. Each time you publish a new blog post, your subscribers will give you that initial surge of traffic — which, in turn, will propel those posts’ long-term success.

The key to getting significant business results (traffic, leads, and eventually customers) all starts with growing subscribers.

Solution: How to set up a subscription CTA and email newsletter:

First, use your email marketing tool to set up a welcome email for new subscribers, as well as a regular email that pulls in your most recent blog posts. (HubSpot customers: You can use HubSpot’s email tool to easily set up these regular email sends, as well as set up a welcome email for new subscribers.)

Next, add subscription CTAs to your blog (and elsewhere, like the footer of your website) to make it easy for people to opt in. These CTAs should be simple, one-field email opt-in forms near the top of your blog, above the fold. As for where to put these CTAs, we typically place our blog CTAs at the bottom of our blog posts or add a slide-in, which you can learn how to do using a free tool called Leadin here.

You can also create a dedicated landing page for subscribers that you can direct people to via other channels such as social media, other pages on your website, PPC, or email. (For a list of more simple ways to attract subscribers, read this blog post; for more advanced ideas, read this one.)

Don’t worry if you read through this list and are now thinking to yourself, Well this is awkward … I’ve made literally every single one of these mistakes. Remember: I used the word “common” to describe these mistakes for a reason. The more you blog, the better you’ll get at it — and you’ll reap the benefits in terms of traffic and leads in the process.

We hope you’ll use this list of mistakes as fuel for the fire to step up your blogging game. After all, the benefits of keeping up a healthy business blog will be well worth the time and effort.

Whether you’re in the process of launching a new business or already have one, having a strong online presence for your brand is extremely important.

In fact, 97% of people learn about local businesses online more than anywhere else.

Small business owners looking for a way to track ROI and brand awareness need digital marketing. Not only is digital marketing a must-have for promoting your products or services, but optimizing your online assets is also critical to your business’ overall success.

For local businesses, it’s equally as important to have essential and updated information readily available for potential clients.

If you’re a small business owner with little experience in online marketing, this might all sound like a foreign language to you. Have no fear — we’ll go through what all these words mean, and why you should care about them!

In this post, we’ll help you build and optimize your marketing strategy using inbound marketing, setting you up to attract new clients and ultimately grow your business. Organic traffic (someone finding you on their own through internet search) is the most cost-efficient way to acquire new business.

We are going to answer the following questions and provide marketing tips about promoting your small business:

• How can I make a website? How can I make a website without a developer?
• Why isn’t my website appearing in Google?
• Why is my competitor above me in Google?
• What is blogging?
• Why does blogging matter?
• Why do I need social media accounts?
• How do I get more traffic to my website?

The Core Elements of Small Business Marketing

If you haven’t officially started your business, check out this comprehensive guide for how to start a business. It outlines everything you need to become an officially established small business, including tax and licensing information, and all the other resources you’ll need to get up and running.

If you’ve already officially launched your small business, check out these free apps for startups and understand the most important things you’ll need to begin leveraging inbound marketing and acquiring new customers from organic search:

Website

Having a professional-looking website is one of the most important assets you will create for your small business. This is where you will show who you are, what you offer, where you are, and how a potential customer can get in touch with you.

Blog

To start a blog, you can use an inexpensive or free website tool to make a free site and use one of their templates. Even if you only publish once a week, it will improve your website’s visibility online and help educate your potential customers on why they should trust your company. If you’re planning to write your posts yourself, check out this beginner’s guide to writing.

Once you start writing, you can add a call-to-action on your posts for visitors to subscribe to your blog and receive emails This is a great way to start collecting leads and offering potential customers a way to get information if they aren’t ready to buy anything from you yet.

Email Tools

Email marketing is a critical part of your marketing toolkit. In fact, 73 percent of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.

This strategy is an easy, free, and scalable way to communicate with both new and existing customers.

Once you have an email marketing tool in place (many are inexpensive or even free), experiment with emailing out newsletters (with your sleek new blog posts), and other promotions to your database. We know small business owners don’t have tons of free time to devote to digital marketing, so consider using marketing automation to make this process even easier for yourself.

To get started planning your email marketing strategy, check out this guide and template from HubSpot.

Conversion Tools

We’ve been talking a lot about the assets you need to grow your business, but haven’t really covered how these will help drive revenue yet. One simple way to start generating leads or customers from your website is to implement a conversion tool.

A simple, free option is HubSpot Marketing Free. By using this tool to add a pop-up widget to your website, you can start collecting email addresses of potential customers. From there, you can send out promotions and offers and convert them into paying customers. You can also implement any of these 24 conversion tools to help you optimize your website and use it to drive leads.

Social Media Accounts

Social media might seem like it’s just a fun platform for people to socialize and connect, but it’s actually a powerful business tool. Social media can help you increase traffic, improve your search engine rankings, and engage with potential customers.

Determine your brand’s identity.

Having a consistent brand identity to promote your business will make you look more professional and help you attract new customers. According to a study from Facebook, 77% of people are loyal to brands.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, has described a company’s branding as “what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” In other words, your brand is the feelings and emotions people have when hearing your company name. It’s is a combination of your brand name, logo, aesthetic, and the design of all your assets.

Identify your buyer persona.

When you imagine a customer searching for your product or service, what are they like? What are their pain points? What is their job? Creating a buyer persona that tells a story of your ideal customer can help you make a website that’s optimized for them.

By learning more about your target customer through creating a buyer persona, you can better figure out what types of things they may be searching for so you can include those terms on your website.

Design a logo and other assets.

To start getting the creative juices flowing, consider your color scheme and peruse palettes with Adobe Color or Coolors. You can create your own or look through pre-made or customized color palettes.

To create a logo, I’d recommend checking out Upwork and Freelancer, or reaching out to a marketing agency. There are free and less expensive options for designing your own logo online, although using a freelancer or agency can give you a higher quality product and connect you with a designer who can change and update your brand assets as your company grows.

Build your website with a CMS template.

If you’re a fairly tech-savvy small business owner, you’ll probably want to build your own website. If you choose to do this, you can use a CMS (content management system) to do so.

Most CMSs offer pre-made templates for your site that you can get for free or purchase, then customize to your brand (we’ll get to branding later). There are a handful of inexpensive and even free options for various skill levels — from beginner all the way to advanced.

Once you’ve created your website, most CMS platforms offer plugins to help you optimize your content for search (look for SEO plugins). This will help you rank better in Google — which we’ll discuss more in depth in a bit.

Track your site with analytics tools.

If you’ve never made a website before and aren’t entirely comfortable with the technical elements, there are a variety of free tools and services to help you get started. When you create your website, make sure you implement Google Analytics or HubSpot Marketing Free (both of which are free products) so you can easily track who’s looking at your site.

Consult agencies or freelancers for web design help.

If you aren’t on the technical side and want a website built for your small business, you can use a freelancer or a marketing agency that specializes in web design. This is a great option for businesses that already have a website but need it to be updated and revamped for SEO (search engine optimization) to help improve your Google ranking.

To find a freelancer or marketing consultant in your area, you can use Upwork (filtering by design/creative) or Freelancer. To find a marketing agency, try looking through HubSpot’s Agency Partner directory. All HubSpot Partners are SEO experts and will help you rank in search engines and be found online.

Boost your Google ranking with SEO.

If you already have a business, have you ever searched for yourself or your product/service online? If so, did you think, “Why isn’t my website showing up on Google?” If so, you probably thought, “How do I rank on Google?” or “How can I improve my Google ranking?”

There are a lot of factors that play into why a certain site or page appears in the top spots on the Google (or other search engine) search engine results page (SERP). Backlinko reports some of Google’s top factors, which include having relevant keywords (and their placement on your site), the length of your content, having high-quality content, how fast your page loads, how often you post content, and more.

When it all boils down, Google essentially tries to find the best piece of content to present to the person searching. For example, if I’m searching for the best salon in Newport, Rhode Island, it wouldn’t be helpful for me to find a web page of a salon that has closed down and is located in Newport, Kentucky. It would, however, be helpful for me to find a salon in my area with great Yelp reviews, an easy-to-navigate website, and contact information readily available. Google always wants to surface the most relevant, highest-quality piece of content.

To rank higher on Google, you can leverage the power of SEO, or search engine optimization. To start learning everything there is to know about this powerhouse marketing tactic, check out The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2017.

HubSpot explains SEO as “techniques that help your website rank higher in organic search results, making your website more visible to people who are looking for your brand, product, or service via search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.” In other words, it’s the basic concept of structuring your website and blog posts to be in the best shape for appearing first on search engines.

SEO strategy usually consists of a few things. These include buyer persona research, keyword research, and on-page SEO research. These three areas can help you learn how your target market is searching online, and position your business to get discovered by the right people.

Research keywords opportunities.

Keyword research is an extension of buyer persona research. You can use the personas you’ve created to search for the best keywords for your brand, then use a tool like KW Finder to find related keywords for your target audience.

Then, you can do some on-page SEO research and optimization. This is where you put those keywords in the correct places on your website — like in the meta-description, page titles, and H1 tags.

Optimize you website for mobile devices.

Most Google searches are done on mobile devices, so it’s important to have a site that looks clean and easy to navigate when someone enters it on their smartphone. A mobile site can also be beneficial for SEO, with search engines like Google announcing that they will reward you with a higher ranking if you have a mobile site.

You don’t have to be a tech expert to build a site that looks good on mobile. In fact, most CMS platforms like HubSpot already offer mobile-optimized templates.

Write optimized blog posts.

Content and blogging are extremely important when it comes to your search engine ranking. The more often your desired keywords appear in your high-quality and helpful content, the more likely you are to appear in search results. A great way to become an authority on your topic, product, or service is to blog. For HubSpot, most of our traffic comes from our blog and content marketing campaigns.

Make sure you’re writing with SEO in mind — use this SEO checklist for bloggers, or a WordPress plugin like Yoast.

Experiment with photo and video content.

According to HubSpot Research, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands. Additionally, most social media apps, like Facebook and Instagram are embracing more visual layouts. To keep up with these trends, it’s a good idea to make a few marketing videos. If you use these tips, producing a few can be quite inexpensive.

Hire a freelancer to help you scale your content.

If you need some help creating regular blogs or promotional content, consider hiring a freelancer over investing in a full-timer. Try Upwork for a freelance blogger, videographer, or photographer. You could also consider hiring a marketing agency for a larger project.

Launch business pages on Facebook and Yelp.

If your business is focused on a local area, the most important accounts for you are Facebook, Yelp, and Google’s business feature. Having high Yelp reviews improves your authority online and helps your search ranking. You can claim your business on Yelp for free, customize your profile and add pictures, and start asking for reviews.

The same thing goes for registering your Google business page. You can register your business with Google (for free) and add pictures. (If you’ve ever searched for your business in Google Maps and been disappointed not to see it, it’s because you haven’t claimed it yet!)

On Facebook, you can create a Facebook business page so that people can find your location and hours.

For any business, having up-to-date social media accounts will help you be found and engage with prospects. Create a Twitter account for your business, Facebook page for business, learn how to use Instagram for business, create a Pinterest page for your business (if relevant), and use them as a way to discover new clients. You can also try your hand at using Snapchat for business if you’ve already mastered the basics.

Build out your social media strategy.

While Facebook and Yelp will be great tools for local searches and reviews, platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter will offer you even more opportunities to share your posts, content, and promotions.

If your customers can purchase your products or services online, these platforms will also give them another way to find you.

Be sure not to spread yourself too thin by joining too many platforms at once. To make strategizing easier, here’s a guide to the five types of social media platforms and the pros and cons of each.

Use social media for customer service.

Once you’re on your chosen platforms, be sure to answer customer or follower questions when they ask them through post comments or direct messages. This will make your company look responsive and credible. Here are some great examples of how brands have used Twitter for customer service.

If you have the means, consider hiring a social media manager with community management experience. On top of posting content on a regular schedule, community managers are charged with responding to questions or concerns of followers. Interested? We just published a guide on what it takes to be a great social media community manager.

Build interesting landing pages.

A landing page offers your potential customers a free resource in exchange for filling out a short form of contact information. When they receive the resource, they might be even more pleased by your company and more interested in buying the full product.

Because landing pages raise your chances of customer conversion, you want yours to look enticing. To get started, read this landing page guide to learn more about what makes this strategy successful. Then check out these free and professionally designed templates.

Plan an email marketing strategy.

Once you start creating regular content and building out landing pages, you’ll want to share them with the prospects who seem most interested in learning more about your product. For this reason, we suggest building an email marketing strategy.

While you want to be careful not to bombard those who sign up for your email list with too many emails, you want to send just enough to keep your prospects informed and engaged. Here’s how our metrics improved when we streamlined our email marketing strategy.

If you’ve never sent regular newsletters before, you can use HubSpot or a number of other affordable tools to create and send an email with a professionally designed template. Many email tools also offer basic analytics that allow you to track open and click rates.

Offer coupons in newsletters or on landing pages.

Placing a coupon in your marketing emails can engage and delight your audience. After buying a product or service at a discounted rate, they also might be more willing to pay for it in full price. If you have a subscription service, it can also be helpful to offer prospects a code for a free trial so they can test it out.

Share your distribution channels on your website.

Once you have a few social media accounts and can allow people to sign up for your newsletter, highlight this on your website so your visitors can follow you. One way companies do this is to display all of their linked social icons and a newsletter sign-up call to action on all pages of your website. A good place to include these are on the top right corner or on the footer of each page. This way they are visible, but aren’t distracting from any content.

Offer a free webinar.

A webinar allows potential customers to sign up for a short online course hosted by you. These courses are usually between 30 minutes to an hour and allow you to give tips and answer questions related to a topic your brand is familiar with. While this strategy can help you boost your credibility in your field, they can also offer you potential leads and sales opportunities.

Consider PPC Advertising.

If you’re working hard on SEO, but are still looking for an extra boost, consider PPC — or pay-per click — advertising. With this search engine marketing technique, you use Google AdWords or Bing Ads to show up higher. and as an advertised listing, in search results. Before you dive in to PPC, you’ll want to make sure your landing page is as optimized as possible. If you are paying by the click and those who click on the page don’t convert, you will lost advertising dollars.

To help you get started, read this ultimate guide. Then, use this PPC planning template to plan an optimized campaign. You can also use a few handy tools and software to edit, track, and report on your campaigns.

Advertise on social media.

Most of the major social media platforms offer affordable advertising options that can help you target your posts to a specific audience. While many small businesses have been advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for years, Instagram now allows brands to advertise through its Shoppable tool.

Experiment with influencer marketing.

Is there someone in your area with a high social-media following who’s considered an expert in a field your company exists in? If you’re able to reach out to them, see if they’d be willing to share an experience they’ve had with your product or service social media. This will alert their follower base of your product. These followers may also trust your product more because an expert is endorsing it.

If you can’t find an influencer to volunteer, you can also consider paying one or two on a freelance basis. To learn more about this strategy, check out our Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.

Try co-marketing.

Is there a local business in your area that isn’t a direct competitor but offers a product or service to a similar target audience? Consider working with them on a cobranded campaign where you promote each other on social media, via email, or in your blog. While you’ll give your partnering company added promotion, it will also allow their fanbase to learn more about you.

Draw up a go-to-market strategy.

Once you’ve activated all the tools you need to promote your product or service, you’ll need to create a promotional plan that aligns with the customer journey. Consider which content will attract, engage, and delight your prospects and how you will convert them into a customer.

To help you plan out this process, use this template.

Encourage happy customers to share their experiences.

When a happy customer talks about how great your company is on social media or a review site, your product or service looks like a good investment. Even on social media, word of mouth is still a huge factor in someone’s purchasing decision. If a prospect sees a friend raving about you on Facebook, or photo post of a meal from your restaurant on Instagram, they might be more likely to go.

If customers are telling you they love your product, encourage them to share about the experience on Yelp, Google, or social. If you have a physical business, you might also want to place signs up with your account handles so customers know who to tag if they post a picture of your product.

Try out marketing experiments.

If there’s a new social platform you’re interested in, or a new marketing trend, don’t be afraid to experiment. If an experiment goes well, you could be considered ahead of the game.

When you experiment a new marketing strategy, be sure to have a solid hypothesis or question in mind. Also prepare for what your next steps will be if you get good or bad results. Here’s a quick guide to leading a successful marketing experiment.

Small Businesses Need a Strong Digital Presence to be Found

Well, there you have it. You probably have a long road ahead to build your online presence, but any steps you can make will have a huge impact on your business. Some things like blogging definitely take a few months to start kicking in and sending you traffic, but social media accounts and posts can have immediate effects.

GIFs are fun, digestible, and, most importantly, relatable — which is why everybody loves them and shares them on social media so much.

Additionally, since Instagram is the top social media platform for visual content, your followers expect your brand to post more compelling content than just the photos of your company’s complimentary lunch each week.

Your audience want to feel something when they scroll through Instagram, and GIFs can forge that emotional connection with them.

Below, we’ll show you how to post a GIF on Instagram — with a series of GIFs — and share some of the social network’s best GIF apps.

Here’s a series of GIFs that will show you exactly how to post a GIF on Instagram:

1. Download and open GIPHY.

You can find GIPHY in the Apple and Google Play app stores.

2. Search for a GIF and tap the one you like.

3. Press the “share” button in between the heart and the three dots (it looks like a paper airplane).

It will drop down to a screen with all the platforms you can share the GIF on.

4. Press the Instagram share button.

This is where GIPHY will give you one or two notifications asking if it can access your photos and open Instagram — hit “OK” or “Allow”.

5. Choose to post the GIF to your story or feed.

6. Add a filter, a caption, and share!

The 6 Best Instagram GIF Apps

1. GIPHY

GIPHY has the world’s largest library of animated GIFs and stickers.

Free on IOS and Android

4.7/5.0 Rating

2. Giphy Cam

On Giphy Cam, you can record your own GIFs and add filters or special FX to them.

Free on IOS and Android

4.8/5.0 Rating

3. ImgPlay

ImgPlay lets you turn your own videos, live photos, photos, and burst photos into GIFs or videos. You can also add captions and filters to your GIF, edit its frame sector and order, and control its frame speed and direction.

Free on IOS and Android

4.7/5.0 Rating

4. GIF Maker

With GIF Maker, you can convert your photos or videos into GIFs, Boomerangs, and memes.

Free on IOS and Android

4.6/5.0 Rating

5. Momento

Momento lets you use your live photos and videos to create GIFs and stop motion videos. You can also add augmented reality, filters, music, stickers, effects, text, and zoom to them.

Free on IOS and Android

4.6/5.0 Rating

6. Gifnote

Apple featured Gifnote on their “New Apps We Love List” last year. And it was included for good reason. The app has a licensed music library full of modern and classic hits that you can add to their collection of GIFs or your own created GIF. But if you don’t feel like making your own GIF-music combination, you can just select and send one of their trending Gifnotes to your friends.

Free on IOS

4.8/5.0 Rating

Twitter, with its 126 million daily active users, is a platform with a ton of potential for companies to increase awareness and build their brand personality. In recent years, big names like Netflix, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell have become Twitter famous for their witty commentary and personable interactions with their followers.

Twitter isn’t the only platform that rewards audience engagement, either. In fact, 83% of consumers on Facebook prefer brand personality. But how can companies build their reputation as original, relatable, and dependable while still maintaining their unique voice?

Social media has transformed the relationship between individuals and organizations — which is why the community management role is now so vital. Simply put, a community manager needs to negotiate the connection between a company and its audience.

If you ask Krystal Wu, HubSpot’s Social Media Community Manager, the most critical part of the community manager role, she’ll say it’s simply “having one.” And, according to Sprout Social, 21% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that are accessible via social media — which means it’s a critical component of your marketing strategy.. The community manager position builds brand personality and consumer trust, which can ultimately lead to increased awareness and company performance.

But what exactly is a community manager, anyway? Here, we’re going to explore what a community manager is, and — if you’re applying or starting out in the role — how to be a great one.

How to Become a Community Manager

Community managers come from a variety of backgrounds — anything from recruiting to journalism to engineering — because being successful in the role relies more on a set of skills than a degree.

First, it’s important for community managers to be knowledgeable about and across the business. Community managers should be able to rely on their experience with their organization to confidently address their audience or tap into internal resources to appropriately handle any issues that may arise. Beyond a working understanding of the business, managers need to build productive, professional relationships both internally and externally in order to be a more authentic and reliable brand ambassador.

In order to advocate for and preserve an organization’s brand, community managers must have incredibly strong soft skills. Above all, empathy, good listening skills, and adaptability are crucial to promoting favorable impressions of an organization.

Beyond interpersonal skills, the best community managers are actively researching trends and hot topics — by engaging with the latest industry developments, community managers are better able to connect with relevant audiences and provide them with the most updated resources and best practices.

Image courtesy of HubSpot

Krystal Wu emphasized adaptability as an important characteristic for success in the role — since the position is still developing and community managers are often carving out their own job descriptions, being flexible in order to adjust to new trends and expectations will serve you in the long run. You could add her heart quote here?

Ultimately, great community managers understand that theirs is a customer service-based role, and therefore actively listen to customers, address concerns, demonstrate an authentic social presence, and maintain productive partnerships with consumers. (Be a good human being for your audience on behalf of your brand)

What Does a Community Manager Do?

Community managers are responsible for building and maintaining a brand’s community — both online and offline –and public perception. The job requires engaging audiences on a variety of outlets including online forums, social media platforms, Slack, in-person groups, and more to reach all audiences where they are.Since different digital spaces have unique cultures and best practices, community managers must be the consistent tone and voice of the brand.

As Krystal Wu points out, “when I speak, I am on the line for HubSpot. I’m not Krystal, I’m HubSpot.”

As a community manager, all your messaging, content, and crisis management across networks should be prompt, consistent with your brand, and empathetic to create a loyal and delighted community.

PR is another basic tenet of managing and extending a brand’s audience as community managers are engaging with all kinds of press — both positive and negative — generated about their companies. How managers navigate legal issues or negative press can separate the good community managers from the great ones. Missteps in this role can do real damage to a brand, so connecting with your organization’s legal, PR, or related teams can help mitigate problems and make sure that responses are coming out appropriately.

Additionally, great community managers are constantly thinking about how they might experiment. For instance, Krystal Wu has learned that a tactic or test won’t run the first time, but you shouldn’t be discouraged — progress takes time. Community managers should think in the long term — the more you invest in an improved strategy, new direction, or the position itself, the more you’ll get out of it.

Plus, an easily forgotten resource is an external network of other community managers! Finding others in similar positions can be very helpful in crowdsourcing informed solutions or leaning on experienced others who’ve handled similar situations in the past.

When I asked Krystal if there were any challenges she faced that she hadn’t expected, she said she hadn’t anticipated the “emotional rollercoaster I deal with everyday.” The experience of engaging with a digital community can be volatile — one day might be full of positive and rewarding discussions, while the next might be hounded by complaints and disgruntled users. It’s important that community managers maintain and control emotions in order to handle the various issues that arise.

Image courtesy of HubSpot

Building on the usefulness of a PR skill set, community managers must be vigilant of their organization’s brand presence and assess the potential consequences of their corporate communications. Brand presence includes consistency of voice across platforms to keep the company on track in terms of target audience awareness and engagement. Consumers should be able to recognize brand voice across pillars — whether they’re seeing a post on Instagram or question on Quora.

Beyond direct interaction between the brand and its audience, community managers also record and report the engagement they see on at least a monthly basis. Other teams that create content operate mostly on the backend, so it’s the community manager who sees the response from consumers. They can help track whether followers are confused, or what kinds of changes they are seeing within digital communities. Krystal Wu says that she has developed an intuition about the psychology of HubSpot’s audience, and can therefore evolve and tweak her outreach strategy in order to most effectively engage with target audiences.

Image courtesy of HubSpot

Furthermore, community managers keep in mind their ideal audience, shaping content and communications to target the right audience rather than simply building a larger one.

Lastly, great community managers delight their community! Krystal Wu makes sure to give positive encouragement to her audience through gift cards, little presents, or what she calls “delight boxes”, which is a bunch of fun HubSpot swag items. Even when things go wrong, great community managers address problems, resolve them, and send gifts to those involved.

By building positive relationships with the members of your community — whether they have a positive impression of your brand or a negative one — you’re building a reputable and trustworthy brand perception.

In 2019, smart home systems and devices are more impressive and all-encompassing than ever.

Using a smart system is no longer just about asking Alexa to tell you the weather or play that new Drake song — now, you can use smart devices to grill chicken at your next family barbecue, turn the lights off in the living room while you’re watching a movie, or vacuum your floors.

Your home devices provide a sense of convenience, particularly when they’re ordering pizza or calling your sister, but in 2018, they can also tackle more serious tasks, like acting as your home security system when you’re out of town. In other words, they aren’t just for fun anymore — they also fulfill some substantial needs.Before we get into our list, let’s define what we mean by smart devices versus smart systems. A smart system is the overarching command center that controls your individual products — think, Alexa or Google Assistant. Essentially, a smart system is what you speak to when you want something to happen. A device, on the other hand, is an individual product that reports back to that system — think, Amazon Echo or Philips Hue lightbulbs.

Now, let’s delve into our list of the 13 best smart home devices and systems of 2019, so you can decide for yourself which systems and products will best enhance your life.

Best Smart Home Systems

When looking to purchase a smart-home system, you want to look into  reviews and its integrations.

While the reviews will show you how good or bad the technology is, the integration information will show you how many products you can actually connect your system to. 

As you’re researching integrations, you should also consider any smart devices you already have that might be compatible or incompatible with the system. Today, most good smart home systems are powered by state-of-the art technology and offer a long list of third-party integration possibilities. For example, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant connect to smart thermostats like Nest of Ecobee4 — not just thermostats made by their own companies.

If your devices all connect well together, work well, and are easy to use, your smart home experiences will run much more smoothly.

Here are four major smart home systems that we recommend.

1. Amazon Alexa

With more than 20,000 third-party integrations, Alexa is undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive smart home ecosystems available today. While you have likely heard of using Alexa in Eco-speaker form (“Alexa, what’s the weather today?”), you might not know that Alexa is now built into plenty of other smart products, including thermostats (i.e. Ecobee4) and TVs (i.e. Fire TV).

Alexa makes every aspect of your smart home easy to access and control. You can use Alexa to speak to apps like Spotify just as easily as you can ask her to turn off the lights. Since Amazon’s ecosystem is one of the most prevalent in the industry, most smart products integrate seamlessly with Alexa, including products made by Philips, Samsung, Nest, and Schlage — meaning, Alexa can now close your garage, lock your doors, and adjust your home’s temperature. To know if Alexa will work with a certain device, just look for the ‘Works with Amazon Alexa’ tag.

Ultimately, Alexa’s ability to integrate and speak to most other smart devices and apps (Alexa has the most third-party integrations of any smart system) makes her one of the best choices for your smart home.

2. Google Assistant

If there’s any true runner-up to Alexa, it’s Google Assistant. Even though Google Assistant has less third-party integrations, it can often answer questions and complete commands Alexa can’t, thanks to Google’s major ownership of the search engine space. Research from Dentsu digital agency 360i found Google Assistant was five times more likely to give a correct answer than Alexa. Ultimately, Assistant wins when it comes to understanding how people naturally speak.

For instance, if you tell Assistance “I don’t like this song” on Spotify, it will skip to the next one, while Alexa will simply tell you, “Thumbs up and down are not supported on Spotify.” Small differences like this could sway you towards Assistance, since it’s often more helpful (and less literal) than Alexa.

Assistant can also integrate with products from most major brands, including Philips, Belkin, August, Nest, and popular apps such as Spotify and Uber.

3. Wink Hub 2

Wink Hub 2 is touted as the “first smart home hub designed for the mainstream consumer.” Unlike Alexa or Assistant, Wink doesn’t have any brand loyalty, allowing you to pick and choose different smart product brands and merge them seamlessly with one another.

Wink Hub 2 supports smart home protocols including Bluetooth LE, Kidde, Lutron ClearConnect, Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, and more. If you’re looking to create a fully integrated smart home with kitchen and wall appliances in-sync, this might be your best option. You can also download the Wink Hub app and control commands, like light switches or garage door, from your phone on-the-go.

4. Samsung SmartThings Hub

This Samsung system unites a wide variety of smart devices from different brands including smart thermostats, Wi-Fi router, lightbulbs, and security devices. Users with the smart system get a SmartThings Hub wall mount and can get full access to the smart devices connected to the hub through the SmartThings IOS or Android app.

Samsung’s SmartThings Hub has been growing its own smart-device offerings for the past few years. In fact, the Hub’s product lineup recently grew with the addition of the SmartThing Wi-Fi plug, SmartThings Lightbulb, and a SmartThings Cam.

Through the SmartThings Hub, you can also set compatible smart devices to do various actions like turning on or off when you walk in or out of a room. While you can give voice commands to the SmartThings wall hub or app, you can also integrate and Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to the system. 

1. Best Speaker: Amazon Echo (2nd Generation)

Price: $99.99

If you’re looking for a relatively affordable device to cater to your everyday needs, you probably don’t need to look further than Amazon Echo. The speaker connects to Alexa to play your favorite music, make phone calls or send messages, answer questions, and set alarms for you, i.e. “It’s 6 p.m., time to head to your tennis lesson”. It also connects to other smart products in your home, so you can use it as your liaison between you and your sprinklers.

The speaker fills your room with 360° audio, and uses noise cancellation technology to ensure you can be heard from any direction. With the Echo, you can turn the TV on, order a pizza, and create a shopping to-do list — without ever leaving your couch.

Image courtesy of
Amazon.

2. Best Lights: Philips Hue

Price: $49.99/one bulb

The Philips Hue bulbs enable you to control both intensity of light — dimming or brightening on-command — and the color of your lights. You can create special color-coordinated moods (i.e. choose the “energize” theme on your app for a specific room you’re in, or sync it with your music). You can also set color-coordinated alarms, ensuring you wake up every morning to a bright pink bedroom.

These bulbs work with most smart home systems, making them arguably the most flexible option. If you don’t want color, you can also purchase Philips Hue White.

Image courtesy of
MeetHue.com.

3. Best Light Switch: TP-Link HS200

Price: $37.88

Philips Hue bulbs and similar smart lights are fantastic and effortless — until someone flips a light switch, in which case, your bulbs won’t work until you flip it back.

For true ease-of-use, consider buying smart light switches, which you can control from your phone or smart home whether or not your physical light switch is up or down. Using the app Kasa, you can create scenes and smart actions — for instance, you might tell the app you’re “watching TV downstairs,” and the switches will automatically turn off all upstairs lights.

TP-Link HS200 works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, but you might need to consider other options if you primarily use Apple HomeKit, Wink, or another smart system.

Image courtesy of
Amazon.

4. Best Thermostat: Ecobee4

Price: $249

The Ecobee4 allows you to control air temperature with voice commands, but unlike other smart thermostats, it also works as its own Amazon speaker (rather than simply working with an Amazon speaker), so it can do everything your Alexa or Assistant can do, including play music, shop, and control other devices. Of course, if you already own a smart speaker, you might want to consider a cheaper thermostat option.

Ecobee4 integrates seamlessly with apps and other home ecosystems like Alexa or Apple HomeKit. Plus, it’s able to control the room you’re in, rather than the room it’s installed.

Image courtesy of
EcoBee.com.

5. Best Security: NetGear Arlo Q

Price: $119.94

While some of these smart devices are more for convenience and entertainment, the NetGear Arlo Q is a truly useful tool for home security. The NetGear Arlo Q records high-quality video and audio, and even produces exceptional quality images of people in pitch-blackness.

You can customize whether your camera automatically records when you’re not home, or set it to a time-based schedule for when you’re at work. While it’s on the pricier side, it offers seven days of video and audio backup for free, making it a worthwhile investment compared to some of the other smart security systems.

Image courtesy of
Amazon.

6. Best Grill: Char-Broil Digital Electric Smoker with SmartChef Technology

Price: $166.99

Anyone who grills regularly knows the inconvenience of it — walking in and out of the house to check the meat, hoping the temperature is hot enough but won’t burn your steak, and adding coals or lighter fluid when necessary. This tool handles all that, alerting you on your smart device when your grill is preheated, what the internal meat temperature is, and when your meat or fish is fully cooked. The 725 square-inch cooking space and four internal chrome racks allow you to grill for both large and small occasions.

Image courtesy of
Amazon.

7. Best Cooking Device: Perfect Bake Pro

Price: $86.49

If you struggle to figure out what you can make with the half a cup of flour, three eggs, and handful of blueberries you have in your fridge, you might be in luck — this smart device allows you to input what food you have, and then generates recipes you can use with those items.

You can autoscale the recipe for the amount of people or even amount of ingredients you have (i.e. “only have ¼ cup of chocolate chips”), or generate a shopping list from recipes you want to make. Best of all, you can use the bowl to measure your ingredients as you pour them in — the smart bowl tells you when you can stop pouring.

Image courtes
y of Amazon.

8. Best Vacuum: Ecovacs Deebot N79S

Price: $229.98

I’m personally willing to pay triple this price for any device that can vacuum my floor for me, but at $229, the Ecovacs Deebot N79S is a pretty impressive deal. It integrates with smart home systems and other apps, offers a manual steering option, and cleans surfaces surprisingly well. It also has a long battery life.

Image courtesy of Amazon.

9. Best Television: LG Smart TV

Price: Varies based on screen size and features.

Image courtesy of LG.

Everyone has loyalties to their favorite brands, but there’s a good chance your favorite products are the result of two separate brands working together.

One of my own beloved childhood memories was a product of co-branding: Betty Crocker partnered with Hershey’s to include chocolate syrup in its signature brownie recipe.

There’s something brilliant about that co-branded product: It’s a fun way to marry two classic brands into one delicious experience for fans of baking and chocolate alike. In fact, these brands still create new co-branded products to this day.

Co-branding is a strategic marketing and advertising partnership between two brands wherein the success of one brand brings success to its partner brand, too. Co-branding can be an effective way to build business, boost awareness, and break into new markets, and for a partnership to truly work, it has to be a win-win for all players in the game. Both audiences need to find value — like chocolate-loving fans of Betty Crocker and Hershey’s.

There are a ton of great examples of co-branding partnerships out there. To show you what makes them so successful, we’ve curated a list of 13 examples of great co-branding partnerships to inspire you.

1. GoPro & Red Bull

Co-branding Campaign: Stratos

GoPro doesn’t just sell portable cameras, and Red Bull doesn’t just sell energy drinks. Instead, both have established themselves as lifestyle brands — in particular, a lifestyle that’s action-packed, adventurous, fearless, and usually pretty extreme. These shared values make them a perfect pairing for co-branding campaigns, especially those surrounding action sports.

To make the partnership work, GoPro equips athletes and adventurers from around the world with the tools and funding to capture things like races, stunts, and action sport events on video — from the athlete’s perspective. At the same time, Red Bull uses its experience and reputation to run and sponsor these events.

“GoPro camera technology is allowing us to complement the programming by delivering new athlete perspectives that have never been seen before,” said Sean Eggert, Red Bull’s director of sports marketing. The collaboration allows exclusive GoPro content to enhance both companies’ growth.

While GoPro and Red Bull have collaborated on many events and projects together, perhaps the biggest collaboration stunt they’ve done was “Stratos,” in which Felix Baumgartner jumped from a space pod more than 24 miles above Earth’s surface with a GoPro strapped to his person. Not only did Baumgartner set three world records that day, but he also embodied the value of reimagining human potential that define both GoPro and Red Bull.

2. Pottery Barn & Sherwin-Williams

Co-branding Campaign: Color Your Room

One of the biggest benefits of co-branding campaigns is the opportunity to expose your product or service to a brand new audience. That’s exactly what home furnishing store Pottery Barn and paint company Sherwin-Williams did when they partnered together back in 2013.

Together, the two brands created an exclusive product line of paints, and then added a new section of Pottery Barn’s website that helped customers easily select paint colors to complement their furniture choices.

Source: Pottery Barn

Customers could coordinate paint colors with picture-perfect Pottery Barn furniture for a mutually beneficial partnership — and style assistance for both brands’ customers to boot. “Paint Landing,” Pottery Barn’s landing page for the partnership, contains helpful blog posts and how-to ideas for do-it-yourself painting and decorating.

3. Casper & West Elm

Co-branding Campaign: Test a Casper Mattress

You may have already heard of Casper — it’s an online mattress and bedding brand that sells mattresses in a box.

Casper mattress unboxing videos like this one have become a hit on YouTube, but despite the brand’s 100-day return policy, some shoppers might still be hesitant to buy a mattress without getting the chance to roll around in it first.

Enter West Elm, a high-end furniture company. Casper and West Elm partnered so shoppers could try out the comfy mattress before purchasing — and so West Elm could advertise its chic bedroom furniture.

Source: Casper

This is another example of a mutually beneficial co-branding partnership. It helps both brands appeal to a broader group of shoppers — after all, Casper doesn’t sell furniture, and West Elm doesn’t sell mattresses. It also provides shoppers with options — to try a mattress before buying, or to feel what it would be like sleeping in a bed frame.

4. Taco Bell & Doritos 

Co-branding Campaign: Doritos Locos Tacos

When the Doritos Locos Taco was first introduced, it quickly became one of the most popular and widely recognized items in the fast food industry. Frito-Lay took Taco Bell’s crunchy taco recipe and gave the Locos Taco its special, signature twist: a Doritos shell. The two companies wanted to keep the shell as close to the original cheesy chips as possible, using the original corn masa recipe and coating it in that distinctive nacho cheese dust.  

The taco was an immediate and explosive success: Taco Bell sold an estimated 1 billion units the first year its was introduced. 

Taco Bell and Frito Lay advertised the Doritos Locos Taco by wrapping the taco in a classic Doritos bag, reflecting the co-branding partnership and appealing to both brands’ audiences. The Doritos Locos Taco’s extraordinary success is yet another example of why co-branding can boost reach and sales for both brands.

Source: Taco Bell

5. Kanye and Adidas

Co-branding Campaign: Yeezy

Kanye West, best known for his Grammy-winning rap albums, partnered with Adidas to develop a high-end footwear line called Yeezy. The combination of Kanye’s personal brand and Adidas’ growing streetwear segment has made for robust company earnings and brand growth since it was introduced. 

Kanye’s celebrity appeal benefits Adidas by creating buzz around its apparel, and the athletic-wear brand gives Kanye a well-established platform to build his high-end clothing line. One of the strongest draws of Yeezy — and most notably its shoes — is its exclusivity: Kanye’s celebrity status, extremely scarce roll-outs, and the high price tag make the lucky few to own Yeezy sneakers feel a little famous by association.

Adidas’ co-branding relationship with Kanye and the resulting cult-like Yeezy following led to a stellar year for the company: in 2019, Adidas’ net income climbed 19.5% to $1.9 billion.

Source: Yeezy

6. BMW & Louis Vuitton

Co-branding Campaign: The Art of Travel

Car manufacturer BMW and designer Louis Vuitton may not be the most obvious of pairings. But if you think about it, they have a few important things in common. If you focus on Louis Vuitton’s signature luggage lines, they’re both in the business of travel. They both value luxury. And finally, they’re both well-known, traditional brands that are known for high-quality craftsmanship.

These shared values are exactly why this co-branding campaign makes so much sense. In their partnership, BMW created a sports car model called the BMW i8, while Louis Vuitton designed an exclusive, four-piece set of suitcases and bags that fit perfectly into the car’s rear parcel shelf.

Source: Louis Vuitton

Although the four-piece luggage set goes for a whopping $20,000, the price is right for the target customer, as the BMW i8 starts at $135,700. A price like that kind of makes that luggage set seem like a drop in the bucket.

Not only does the luggage fit perfectly size-wise, but its design and appearance fit perfectly with BMW’s image: sleek, masculine, and high-quality. Turns out both the luggage and some parts of the car’s interior use carbon fiber, strong-yet-light composite material.

“This collaboration with BMW i epitomises our shared values of creativity, technological innovation and style,” said Patrick-Louis Vuitton, head of special orders at Louis Vuitton. “Our craftsmen have enjoyed the challenge of this very special project, using their ingenuity and attention to detail to create a truly made to measure set of luxury luggage. This is a pure expression of the art of travel.”

7. Starbucks & Spotify

Co-branding Campaign: First-of-Its-Kind Music Ecosystem

Starbucks scaled up a premium coffee shop experience into a massive global brand, using music to create an ambience around its coffee. Spotify, a music streaming platform, has powered almost 25 billion hours of listening around the world. Starbucks and Spotify forged an innovative co-branding partnership to build a “music ecosystem”, offering artists greater access to Starbucks consumers and giving Starbuck access to Spotify’s expansive discography.

Through the initiative, Starbucks employees get a Spotify premium subscription, with which they can curate playlists (that patrons can access through the Starbucks Mobile App) to play throughout the day in the shop. This music ecosystem is designed to expand the coffeehouse environment that Starbucks is known for while giving artists greater exposure to Starbucks customers. 

The “musical-ecosystem” partnership is mutually beneficial, an opportunity for the companies to reach the other’s audience without sacrificing their brand.

Source: Spotify

8. Apple & MasterCard

Co-branding Campaign: Apple Pay

Sometimes, co-branding partnerships aren’t just cool projects between two companies — they actually have practical value when the companies work together.

When Apple released the Apple Pay app, the brand effectively changed how people perform transactions. This app allows people to store their credit or debit card data on their phone, so they can use them without physically having the card with them. But in order for this app to succeed, it needs credit card companies to integrate with this technology. By the same token, credit card companies also face more competition themselves if they aren’t compatible with the latest consumer purchasing tool.

To get out ahead of its competition, MasterCard became the first credit card company to allow its users to store their credit and debit cards on Apple Pay. MasterCard not only showed support of a major consumer tech developer in this partnership — it evolved along with its own customers in how they choose to make purchases at the counter.

Source: MasterCard

9. Airbnb & Flipboard

Co-branding Campaign: Experiences

You’ve probably heard of Airbnb, the room-sharing application that allows you to find convenient lodging hosted by real people. But its newest partner, Flipboard, might not have been on your radar until now.

Flipboard is a news aggregator that collects news and topical content that users are sharing on social media, and allows you to “flip” through the material much like a social media feed. Well, Airbnb recently teamed up with Flipboard to create Experiences, which serve Airbnb users with lifestyle content tailored to their interests and shared by people with similar interests as the reader.

The ongoing campaign recently led to another co-created product called Trips, which allows Airbnb users to connect with hosts on common interests and actually book these experiences when traveling. This partnership is an impressive example of how businesses can connect their customers with information that caters to their individual interests and drive usage of the product as a result.

Source: Flipboard

10. Uber & Spotify

Co-branding Campaign: Soundtrack for Your Ride

Music-streaming app Spotify partnered with ride-hailing app Uber to create “a soundtrack for your ride.” This is a great example of a co-branding partnership between two very different products with very similar goals — to earn more users.

Here’s how it works: When riders are waiting for an Uber ride, they’re prompted to connect with Spotify and become the DJ of their trip. Users can choose from their own playlists to determine what they’ll listen to.

Source: The Verge

This smart co-branding partnership helps fans of Uber and Spotify alike enjoy better experiences thanks to the app. And they might be more interested in picking Uber and Spotify over competitors knowing they can enjoy their next ride listening to their favorite tunes.

11. Levi’s & Pinterest

Co-branding Campaign: Styled by Levi’s

Levi Strauss & Co. — one of the oldest and most recognized jean brands in the world — recently joined forces with Pinterest, a social platform where users pin posts they like to their user profiles. People often turn to Pinterest for fashion inspiration, making a co-branding partnership with Levi’s a natural partnership. Styled by Levi’s is a new initiative between Pinterest and Levi’s offers a “personalized styling experience,” or style insights tailored to each user’s tastes and preferences.

The partnership offers an authentic and individualized brand relationship, which is difficult to come by in an increasingly digital environment. Pinterest offers Levi’s a leading social platform with millions of users interested in visual offerings, and Levi’s meets these needs with digital personalization and visual-focused boards. 

Source: Styled by Levi’s

12. BuzzFeed & Best Friends Animal Society

Co-branding Campaign: Emma Watson + Kittens

Some co-branding campaigns are more complicated than others. This example from BuzzFeed and Best Friends Animal Society is one of the simplest ones out there — and it goes to show a great co-branding effort doesn’t have to take months of planning or millions of dollars.

For this campaign, the folks at Best Friends Animal Society wanted to leverage BuzzFeed’s readership of over 200 million people. To do this, they partnered with the folks at BuzzFeed to set up and publish an article called, “We Interviewed Emma Watson While She Played With Kittens And It Was Absolutely Adorable,” which you can read here. The article is exactly what it sounds like: Harry Potter and Beauty and the Beast star Emma Watson answered fans’ questions while she played with cute kittens.

Source: BuzzFeed

The article ends with a CTA advertising that the kittens featured in the video are, in fact, adoptable — a win-win for both partners.

13. Alexander Wang & H&M

Co-branding Campaign: High-End Fashion

Anyone who’s designer-conscious knows Alexander Wang and H&M aren’t exactly the same caliber when it comes to quality. Shoes by Alexander Wang tend to go for around $350 a pair, whereas shoes sold by H&M tend to go for more like $35 a pair. See what I mean?

But that discrepancy in pricing is exactly why the two brands decided to partner with one another. To support their brand positioning as trendy and fashionable, H&M has traditionally paired with high-end fashion brands to offer exclusive branded items for a limited time.

In exchange, those high-end brands — like Alexander Wang — can expose their brand name to “a new generation of potential consumers, who will increasingly aspire to owning more pieces from his high end collection,” writes Michelle Greenwald for Forbes.

Source: Snobette

14. CoverGirl & Lucasfilm

Co-branding Campaign: Light Side and Dark Side Makeup

Whenever a new installment of the beloved “Star Wars” series is released in theaters, it causes global pandemonium, and the release of “Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens” in 2015 was no exception. The series’ parent company, Lucasfilm, partnered with CoverGirl to capture a broader audience to get fans new and old excited about the movie’s release.

You might be wondering, “What do “Star Wars” and makeup have in common?” And the cleverness of this partnership is evident in the answer.

In the past, the space-age action movies were almost exclusively advertised and targeted toward men and boys. But in this day and age, that’s nonsense — because people of all genders can be interested in space exploration and makeup contouring alike.

The line was designed by famed makeup artistPat McGrath, and it features two styles: the Light Side and the Dark Side, which loyal “Star Wars” fans will recognize as the sides of good and evil in the movies.

This co-branding partnership was a win for both brand. Lucasfilm captured more attention and got CoverGirl shoppers (many of whom are young women) excited about the film’s release. And CoverGirl hopped on the “Star Wars” advertising bandwagon that took over the internet, stores, and TV leading up to the film’s release.

15. Amazon & American Express

Co-branding Campaign: Amazon Business American Express Card

Ecommerce giant Amazon is a global enterprise with millions of users and almost two million businesses that sell on their platform. Amazon is looking to improve the way small businesses sell on their platform, so they’ve partnered with American Express on a co-branded credit card.

The card will help users buy goods and services, but also provide enhanced data insights on their purchasing activity. American Express and Amazon share a commitment to help small businesses grow in the U.S., and by combining their efforts, the two companies can enhance their performance while building brand trust.

Source: Amazon Business

16. UNICEF & Target

Co-branding Campaign: Kid Power

If you have the chance to partner for a not-for-profit cause, it can pay off in multiple ways.

In 2015, Target partnered with UNICEF on a campaign called Kid Power, which committed Target to one of UNICEF’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). The retailer sold kid-friendly fitness trackers encouraging the wearer to complete various fitness activities, which ultimately helped deliver food packets to underprivileged children around the world.

By selling this fun, inexpensive fitness product, Target encourages children to embrace a healthy lifestyle and uses kids’ successes to supply underserved communities with the resources they need. It’s an ongoing partnership that generates awareness of global malnutrition, helps UNICEF meet its demanding SDGs, and opens up Target to a demographic of giving families they might otherwise have had access to.

By the way, you can get your child a Kid Power band here.

17. Nike & Apple

Co-branding Campaign: Nike+

Athletic brand Nike and technology giant Apple have been working together since the early 2000s, when the first line of iPods was released.

The co-branding partnership started as a way to bring music from Apple to Nike customers’ workouts using the power of technology: Nike+iPod created fitness trackers and sneakers and clothing that tracked activity while connecting people to their tunes.

Source: Apple

The partnership has since evolved to become Nike+ — which uses activity tracking technology built into athletic clothing and gear to sync with Apple iPhone apps to track and record workout data. Tracking transmitters can be built into shoes, armbands, and even basketballs to measure time, distance, heart rate, and calories burned.

It’s a genius co-branding move that helps both parties provide a better experience to customers — and with the popularity of fitness tracking technology, Nike+ is ahead of the curve by making it easy for athletes to track while they play.

18. Bonne Belle & Dr. Pepper

Co-branding Campaign: Flavored Lip Balm

Dr. Pepper-flavored lip balm. I mean, it’s genius.

Bonne Belle first debuted Lip Smacker, the world’s first flavored lip balm, in 1973, starting with flavors like strawberry, lemon, and green apple. Just two years laterin 1975, they’d forged their first flavor partnership with the timeless Dr. Pepper brand. The result? A lip balm flavor that’s been famous for decades among teenage girls.

If you’re thinking the connection between lip balm and Dr. Pepper is a little thin, consider the copy on one of their vintage ads: “It’s the super shiny lip gloss with lip-smacking flavor… just like the world’s most original soft drink.” And later, “From Bonne Belle of course: the cosmetics company that understands your taste.”

Source:Click Americana

As your business grows and evolves, you’ll inevitably find yourself adding more applications to your growth stack. If those applications run on different platforms and can’t communicate effectively, you’re going to run into issues with data loss, duplication of efforts, and bottlenecks that slow your team down.

iPaaS — which stands for Integration Platform as a Service — helps you connect the tools and systems that power your business in one place, so information can be shared without high-maintenance, one-off integrations or manual data entry.

We wrote a deep dive on iPaaS here if you’d like to learn more about the basics, view a complete glossary of iPaaS terms, and better understand what iPaaS can potentially offer your business.

If you’ve decided you want to invest in iPaaS but aren’t sure where to start, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll go over some of the best iPaaS vendors, so you can discover one that fits your company’s unique needs and budget. Let’s dive in.

1. Dell Boomi

Acquired by Dell in 2010, Boomi offers a cloud-based integration and API management solution with all the bells and whistles you could ask for: workflows, API design, application deployment, B2B/EDI management, and much more. Within Boomi, you can design end-to-end workflows and process data across multiple applications. Suitable for enterprise and small businesses from many different industries, Boomi has been considered a leader in the iPaaS space for the last six years by Gartner.

Price: Starting at $549/month

2. Oracle Integration Cloud

If you’re looking for a straightforward iPaaS solutions with industry best practices and premade integration flows baked into the product, Oracle Integration Cloud might be an option to take a deeper look at. Oracle serves up an extensive library of out-of-the-box adapters to different SaaS and on-premises applications, making the initial set-up less time consuming for your team.

Price: Choose from several different pricing structures, including a pay-as-you-go plan starting at $1.2097/message, and a monthly flex plan starting at $0.8065/message.

3. Workato

This iPaaS solution was designed to enable better connection between business users and IT, allowing both groups to plan, create, and easily maintain integrations between different systems. Workato provides pre-built integration flows between 75 of the most popular SaaS products, and the ability to design custom integrations in a simple, drag-and-drop interface.

Price: Choose from a Business Plan ($1499/month) Business Plus Plan ($2999/month) and Enterprise Plan (Custom pricing based on your specific needs)

4. TIBCO Cloud

TIBCO Cloud prides itself on providing an easy-to-use iPaaS solution that simplifies the creation and management of integration flows in your business. They consider themselves to be an “application neutral” technology partner for their clients — meaning, they won’t try to push you towards using a particular application or ecosystem, they’ll work with you to build a solution that connects your on-premises and cloud-based applications your business already prefers to use.

Price: Starting at $400/month for a Basic Plan, $1500/month for a Standard Plan, and custom pricing for Hybrid plans based on your unique needs.

5. Elastic.io

Elastic.io promises to remove the laborious product management component of custom integrations and reduce the amount of time spent on integrations at your company by up to 80%. This iPaaS vendor also takes an as-a-service mentality to how they work with customers, helping you support feature roll-outs and upgrades, bug fixes, and connector updates.

Price: Choose from monthly plans starting at $599/month and yearly plans starting at $499/month.

6. Modulus Data

This iPaaS vendor specializes in integrations for the Human Resources industry, offering a comprehensive library of pre-built connectors aimed at helping your HR department align their applications and tools in one seamless, secure hub. Modulus Data has out-of-the-box connectors with most popular HR applications and softwares, including Workday, Greenhouse, Monster, and Oracle HCM.

Price: Contact sales@modulusdata.com

7. Informatica

Informatica has been around since 1993, and still continues to be an industry leader in helping businesses manage their data effectively and securely. Specializing in enterprise level iPaaS solutions, Informatica lists big companies like GE, Unilever, and L’Oreal among their clients. If you’re a large company looking for hands-on support on your custom iPaaS journey, Informatica might be a good fit for your needs.

Price: Prices for an integration base begin at $2,000/month

8. IBM AppConnect

IBM’s iPaaS solution markets itself as an easy way to connect apps, build APIs, integrate data, and act on events. AppConnect comes equipped with a series of templates made up of common patterns you can use to quickly set-up integration flows for your business, and start getting value immediately. SMBs looking to get started with iPaaS and explore the possibilities of new applications might benefit from using AppConnect.

Price: AppConnect offers a free lite package. Professional packages start at $500/month, and customizable Enterprise packages begin at $2,370/month.

9. SnapLogic

For companies seeking at enterprise-level iPaaS solution that can handle a lot of data quickly, SnapLogic offers up a way to automate integrations across on-premises and cloud-based applications on a large scale. But don’t let the hefty capabilities of SnapLogic mislead you into thinking the product itself is for the extremely tech-savvy only — this iPaaS solution is designed with user accessibility in mind, so even teams with less technology experience can build, manage, and scale custom integrations and workflows.

Price: Annual pricing starts at $48k/year

10. Zapier

One of the more user and wallet-friendly options in the iPaaS space, Zapier gives businesses of any size the ability to design and manage custom integration solutions that fit their exact needs. Zapier adds new integrations (called “zaps”) to their massive integrations library each week, so chances are, there’s already an out-of-the-box solution available for you to start using today.

Price: Zapier offers a free basic package. Starter packages start at $20/month, and Professional packages begin at $50/month.

11. Jitterbit

According to G2 ratings, Jitterbit is one of the more user-friendly and cost-effective iPaaS options out there. This iPaaS vendor offers support for a wide breadth of connectors, advanced workflow capabilities, real-time integrations, and a range of data security features. Additionally, Jitterbit has an easy-to-use visual designer to help make the setup and monitoring processes run smoothly — even for teams without a dedicated developer on staff.

Price: Pricing varies based on your needs, so you’ll need to contact Jitterbit to get a quote.

12. Amazon API Gateway

Built with developers in mind, Amazon’s iPaaS solution enables teams to create and manage APIs that act as a “front door” for applications to access data and share information. Amazon API Gateway is unique because you only pay for the API calls you use, rather than most other iPaaS vendors which rely on monthly or annual pricing models. This iPaaS vendor is one to consider if you have a developer on staff and want more direct control over the API calls your company uses.

Pricing: No upfront costs. Pricing is determined by the quantity and type of API calls used.

13. Celigo Intergrator.io

If you aren’t sure how an iPaaS solution will work for your company and are wary of hefty fees, Celigo offers a free version of their iPaaS product. Their Integration Marketplace is stocked with plenty of prebuilt, supported integrations with common applications, and their “flow” subscription model means you can start off with the free version and only start paying if you increase your usage and add new integrations into the mix.

Pricing: The basic package is free, and they offer additional packages starting at $600/month.

14. Tray.io

This iPaaS vendor was designed with the intention to better connect the tools and workflows used by your marketing, sales, product, and services teams. They offer out-of-the-box integration solutions developed with these specific teams in mind, and aim to empower your teams to manage and create the integrations they need without the need for developer assistance every step of the way.

Price: Standard packages start at $595/month, Professional starts at $2,450/month, and Enterprise packages are available with custom pricing based on your needs.

15. Xplenty

If you’re seeking a straightforward way to visualize your workflows, integrations, and data flows, Xplenty might be a good option to consider. Their simplified dashboard enables you to manage how your tools and data are working together in one central place, and your developers will love that they can connect Xplenty with their existing monitoring systems using service hooks.

Price: Contact Xpenty for a quote.

16. Mulesoft

Used by tech giants like Netflix and Airbnb, Mulesoft offers a wide range of customized iPaaS solutions for different industries and tech setups. Their selection of out-of-the-box connectivity options means your team will spend less time initially building out new integrations, since prebuilt integrations are easier to get up and running fast.

Price: Contact Mulesoft for a quote.

17. PieSync

PieSync wants to make it easier for your team to provide excellent service for your customers, and that starts with ensuring customer data doesn’t get lost in the spaces between your team’s tools and databases. This iPaaS vendor advertises a “no coding” approach that’s ideal for teams who want to get started with iPaaS but might not have the tech resources on staff. They offer prebuilt integrations between many popular applications, like HubSpot, MailChimp, and Office 365. PieSync is also one of the more affordable options on the list — so it could be a good choice for startups and teams on the smaller side.

Price: Starter is $9/month, Pro is $19/month, and Enterprise is $99/month.

18. The Crosscut

Developed by Moskitos, The Crosscut® is an iPaaS solution for hybrid information systems — it can connect both cloud-to-cloud applications and cloud-to-on-premise applications, which makes it a great pick if your team isn’t looking to go full cloud just yet. You can develop and launch integrations in a central Control Center, and set up role-based monitoring using their Corporate Portal.

Price: Contact Moskitos for a quote.

19. Blendo

Last but certainly not least, we have Blendo, a self-service iPaaS solution that can connect applications from your sales, marketing, and financial teams and flow directly into a number of popular data warehousing options. Blendo was designed to make reporting across multiple applications more straightforward, so they ensure you can access your data in your preferred reporting platform.

Price: Contact Blendo for a quote.