Where Marketers Go to Grow

As technology continues to lower the cost of content production, today’s end user is asked to digest more stories than ever before -- in conversation, in written text, at the movies, in advertisements, and even through web design. With so much to absorb, it’s essential for digital marketers to differentiate their content and deliver an incredible experience.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook as a simple “hot-or-not” site to get back at classmates. Nike founder Phil Knight called the now ubiquitious shoe company his “crazy idea." Instagram began with a single photo filter to make turn its users into less-crappy photographers.

You probably couldn’t have predicted their success at the time, but today, all of these ideas have turned into global titans worth billions of dollars.

It's finally, finally summer.

To celebrate the sun emerging (and the temperature in our offices dropping to subarctic extremes), I attempted to find some summery ads to feature in this month's roundup. Instead, I ended up with a weird chatbot, a novelty phone, and several ways to kill bugs. 

Houston, we have a turnover problem.

As the years pass, there seem to be a growing number of studies on employers struggling to retain their people -- and the high costs associated with the resulting turnover. What’s at the bottom of it? Is it workplace culture? Is it missed salary expectations? Or can it all be lumped under the crucial umbrella of communication?

I don't know about you, but I barely print anything anymore.

Seriously, think about it -- when's the last time you had to type Command + P and print out a document? Between e-tickets, virtual payment options, and online signature tools, I think the last thing I printed out was the lease for my apartment.

I know I'm literally ten years late to this, but I just started watching Mad Men on Netflix. And guys -- newsflash -- it's a really good show. 

The old school ad strategies, the fun outfits, the drama -- I love it all. Except Don Draper's management style. That, in my humble opinion, could use a little work.

For a three-person digital marketing team like ours, the prospect of having a big ad budget seemed like a distant dream. So when we were suddenly given $100K to spend on Facebook ads, we were positively giddy.

And unbelievably nervous.

You technically can't skip these ads. But you wouldn't want to anyway.

Last year at Sundance, YouTube unveiled a new ad format to brands: the unskippable, six second "bumper" ad. To prove it was possible to cram a compelling story into such a short window, they recruited a handful of creative agencies to test drive the format -- and the results were pretty convincing. 

Whether you're setting up a brand new Facebook Page for your brand, or you just want to make the most of your existing one, it’s probably a smart move -- Facebook is home to nearly 2 billion monthly active users.

It should be easy enough, right? Just slap together a photo, a couple of posts, and expect the leads and customers to roll on in, right?

Wrong.

We’ve talked about the best practice of matching your offer and blog post topic as tightly as possible many times on the HubSpot Marketing Blog. But just in case you haven’t heard of this best practice before, I’ll give an example.

If you fell behind on your spring cleaning this year, it's okay -- so did I. I haven't put away my winter coats, I haven't unpacked all of my moving boxes, and I haven't cleaned my computer's desktop lately.

You know what I'm talking about -- all those forgotten documents and miscellaneous screenshots that have been slowly taking over our screens for weeks -- and sometimes, even months.

According to DMR Stats, SlideShare users add more than 400,000 new presentations per month. The site receives 159 million page views per month, and has more than 70 million users.

And it’s one of the most underutilized lead generation tools we marketers have in our quiver.

George S. Patton once said: "If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."

In business, stirring the proverbial pot can be a good thing. And while negotiating these matters can be challenging -- especially when they involve our teammates or bosses -- differences in opinion will often lead to progress. 

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I do believe that having tons of great ideas isn’t always a good thing.

There just isn’t enough time in a single day to tackle all of them -- let alone while also doing your day job. So how do you choose just one -- and once you do, how do you make time to work on it, and see it through to the end?

A few years ago my team at RJMetrics was launching a short survey over the holidays. It’s a tough time of the year to get attention, especially when you’re a B2B SaaS company. At some point, someone suggested a cupcake giveaway.

So we did.

You might know that video is important, that your audience wants to see it, and you might even want to make it a part of your strategy. But you're still asking the big question:

"How?"

It's one thing to write great content, but it's another thing to get it read and ranked -- which is where nailing the title comes in.

Titles are what sell the content. They represent it in search engines, in email, and on social media. It's no surprise, then, that some of the most common questions we get concern crafting titles.

We're living in a golden age of startups and side hustles, where it seems like more people than ever before are striking out on their own with new business ventures.

Whether you're just beginning to think about starting a business, or already drafting a formal document with your current business goals, it's crucial to clearly define the scope of every aspect of the company -- from mission, to target customers, to funding and finances, and beyond. 

When I need to have a very productive day, I tell myself it's going to be easy.

I'll just wake up early, grab a big cup of coffee, and then begin powering through my to-do list. Maybe I'll break for a meal, or a stretch, or a quick conversation with a coworker. But I'll truck on, energy unwavering until bedtime, where I'll promptly fall asleep for eight, wonderful, uninterrupted hours of sleep.

I ran my first experiment in influencer marketing in middle school. My mom had bought me a pair of practical (her words) but hideous (my words) sneakers -- and insisted I wear them to gym class.

Doesn't it seem like we don't go a day without hearing about employee burnout -- mostly what a problem it is?

In a survey conducted last year by Morar Consulting, 95% of human resources professionals blamed the loss of good employees on job burnout. Headlines call it a “crisis.” Type the words “employee burnout” into the Google search bar, and one of the autocomplete phrases likely ends with, “is becoming a huge problem.”

For many of us, the thought of high school conjures memories of ample notebook doodles. Hand-drawn bubble letters, pictograms, and stick-figures would decorate homework, tests, and papers -- and teachers, of course, were constantly asking us to knock it off.

And so, most of us did, perhaps because we figured out that we just weren't that good at drawing on paper.

When it comes time to make a purchasing decision, who are you more likely to trust -- a brand, or a fellow consumer who uses the product?

We're more likely to take recommendations from friends and family members than brands when it comes time to make buying decisions -- and that's the logic behind user-generated content on social media.

Here at HubSpot, some of the most awe-inspiring moments take place when we get to take new products and features for a test drive. We transform, if it's even imaginable, into even bigger geeks than we normally are, squealing with the excitement typically reserved for iPhone launches and new seasons of Netflix series. But alas -- this glee is caused by software we use every day at work, and will eventually get to share with other marketers.

There are few things I look forward to more every year than the release of Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report.

It’s clear, it’s visually interesting, and most importantly, the results are always fascinating -- with tremendous implications for marketers.

We all know those moments when we stumble upon what looks like a golden piece of content. And just as you’re about to dive in -- an ad appears.

You can’t just close it, either. Before you can get to what you visited that site to see, you have to wait, as a countdown clock in the corner of the ad taunts you with, “Close this ad in 5 … 4 … 3 … ”

As any inbound certified member of our community knows, setting SMART goals (that's Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound) is the keystone managing (and measuring) highly productive sales and marketing teams.

Aligning these goals is what keeps marketing and sales teams in lock-step.

It’s always valuable to look at how other organizations within your industry get things done every day. And It’s particularly valuable to look at how an organization you admire, or aspire to emulate, has nailed what they do.

When we read in 2016 that BuzzFeed was changing the entire way its content creation team was structured, it made us curious about how we were creating our own content. Were we dedicating enough resources to video content? Was our social media strategy as built out?

I can't think of many tasks people dread more than writing a resume. There are so many little things you need to add, rephrase, check, double-check, triple-check ... and yet, somehow, your resume still goes out with your name as Corey Wainwrite from HubStop. It's anxiety-inducing.

So, I did what I do when I'm anxious. I made a list about all the little stuff you need to do when you're writing and editing a resume.

A few months ago, I took on the task of evaluating and reinventing the HubSpot Marketing Blog's email subscription.

It's not that our email subscription wasn't working. We were gaining an impressive number of subscribers each month. Those subscribers we're opening and clicking on our subscription emails -- and we had the traffic numbers to prove it.

Be honest. Do you know what your non-marketing colleagues do all day?

Sure, you might have a general idea of what your co-workers in sales, finance, and HR do, at least categorically. But it seems that many of us -- myself included -- have those days, weeks, and months when we’re so bogged down in our own daily hustle, that we become a bit oblivious to what everyone else around us is working on.

At this point, everyone knows that e-commerce is no longer "the next big thing" -- it's the current big thing. eMarketer estimates e-commerce sales will reach $4.058 trillion in 2020, or 14.6 percent of total retail projections for that year.

The e-commerce space is a hot, crowded market, and the brands that rise to the top will have to be able to cultivate a loyal and rabid fan base. As an agency pro, it's your job to help your clients grow that base.

If you want to hold brainstorms that unearth better, more creative ideas, it all starts with the people in the room. Like, the actual number of people in the room.

That's my first tip for you: Follow the "pizza rule" for brainstorming. If you're unfamiliar with the "pizza rule," it's the idea that if you have more people in a room than you could feed with a pizza, there are too many people in that room to hold a productive meeting.

If you’ve been following the HubSpot Marketing Blog, you already know there’s a battle going on -- between Facebook and Snapchat over the disappearing message.

And so far, Facebook’s winning the battle -- all because of Instagram.

We all know that words matter -- in life, but also in marketing.

When it comes to landing page copy, many a debate have begun over which words to choose, the context in which they're used, the order they're presented in and the amount you use to convey a message.

How much digital content do you consume on a daily basis?

It’s tough to put a number on that, isn’t it? Here’s an even tougher question: How much of that content do you genuinely trust -- especially when it comes to an investment in a product or a service?

I once made a really big hiring mistake.

After a series of promising interviews, I took on an intern whose level of professionalism, performance, and overall demeanor quickly took a turn for the worse. I discussed it with my supervisor, we agreed that it was in everyone's best interests not to move forward with the internship.

Video is dominating social media marketing. In fact, experts predict video will account for 80% of global internet traffic by 2019. So now is the best time to master the medium.

Thanks to easy and free video creation tools, you don’t need a big budget, professional equipment, or a filmmaking degree to make compelling videos for your brand. But since each social network comes with its own guidelines and unique audiences, you'll need an understanding of what kind of content is effective on each network. 

Have you ever accidentally wasted an entire day in Photoshop?

I have. It's not like you start out aimlessly. You have a simple goal in mind, like cropping a photo, improving the resolution, or changing the size of the canvas. But then, you look at how many options there are -- and trying to figure out which buttons to press to execute a single task suddenly turns into an attempt to solve The Riddle of the Sphinx.

I'll admit it: I've always been a bit befuddled by the letters assigned to generations. In fact, I remember the day that I lamentably found out that I wasn't a member of Generation X. I had missed the mark by just a hair, and growing up in the 90s, learning that it wasn't me who the Spice Girls were singing about in soda commercials was very sad news.

But now, pop musicians are singing to one of the newest populations, and as marketers, it's time for us to turn our attention to it: Generation Z.

Even though we all are crunched for time, spouting off a mediocre blog post for the sake of hitting a deadline isn't worth it. Considering our audiences have access to countless other articles, it's unlikely that they'd settle for a half-baked attempt.

The other day at work, my colleague, HubSpot Marketing Director Ryan Bonnici, sent around a link on Slack -- to a website called “Will Robots Take My Job?”

We were thrilled to learn marketing managers had only a 1.4% chance of our jobs being automated or replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. And although I breathed a sigh of relief that writing has only a 3.8% chance of being automated, it made me think about job roles that weren’t so lucky.

When I was just a wee lass and HubSpot was first starting to make a name for itself, inbound marketing was a brand new idea. Marketers were learning that they couldn't just publish a high volume of content -- it also had to be high-quality and optimized in ways that made it as discoverable as possible through search engines.

When was the last time you created something online that went viral?

Whether you're new to content marketing or are a viral content maven, you probably know that it can be nearly impossible to predict which tweet or video or meme might go viral. Often, it feels like virality is just completely random.

In life, there are a few certainties: death, taxes, and Facebook.

This month, we've seen the competition continue to heat up between Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat over how to create the most engaging and marketable disappearing message.

Do you feel like you and your boss are on the same page most days of the week?

If you nodded "yes" emphatically, that's fantastic. But many readers might have a different opinion. In fact, a recent HubSpot survey revealed that while 70% of executives might reflect positively on their team's marketing strategy, only 50% of individual contributors agree.

Learning some things in life is relatively straightforward. Take knitting, for example -- that's typically as simple as procuring some yarn and needles and searching for a how-to video on getting started. Sure, your work might look a little haphazard at first, but the steps are fairly intuitive.

Learning to lead others, on the other hand, isn't so linear.

Every time I try a new recipe for a dish at a party, I try a little sample before I serve it to my guests -- and not just because I'm always hungry (which I am). I do it because I would never want to serve something new to my guests that I can't be sure actually tastes good.

How can I confidently stand there and say to my friends and family, "Go ahead and try it! You'll love it!" when I have no idea what it's really like?

When someone sends me a really great YouTube video, I always want to know who’s behind it. Was it an ad agency? A small or medium business? A B2B tech company? No matter who it was, if I’m impressed, I want to see more from the content creator. So once the video is done, I click the link to visit their profiles.

And from there, if the brand is really on top of its game, I’ll see its channel art -- the horizontal banner displayed across the top of the user’s YouTube channel that, hopefully, shows a combination of good design and brand presence.