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. So you can imagine my surprise when HubSpot's audience started telling us they still like to print out our ebooks -- which are often 20 or 30 pages in length -- instead of viewing them on a web page. In 2017 -- during the era of self-driving cars, augmented and … [Read more...]

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. I know my stance might be colored by several generation gaps. I'm a millennial, and according to some reports, we need to be told we're smart and wonderful every two seconds or we turn to avocado toast dust -- but it seems to me that Draper … [Read more...]

When many people think of marketing, they think of advertising. However, business leaders want their potential customer base to know more about who they are and what they do—more information than can be explained in a simple ad. Entrepreneurs want to be seen as experts in their field, and this can be achieved through content marketing. For tips on how to make content marketing a key part of your business, we asked members from FounderSociety this question: Q. What’s one way I can successfully and seamlessly promote my brand through … [Read more...]

Carlos Garcia (Garcia Research) shared a compelling story last week with California Assemblymember Cristina Garcia to convince her of the need for the Insights Association's proposed amendment to S.B. 790. Powerful stories, so important when presenting insights from your research and analytics, are even more vital in advocating for the research and analytics industry. Research I conducted with medical professionals and their Latino patients on issues related to Type 2 diabetes in the Latino community helped manufacturers of diabetes medications and devices better … [Read more...]

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. As a lean SaaS startup, we have to be very wise with our marketing investments. Couple that with our low cost-per-sale ($24/monthly for our starter plan), and you can see that being cost-effective while still spending on ads is a challenge. In May of 2016, we had the honor of working with Facebook Canada. We received a small grant to … [Read more...]

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.  After that, huge brands like Under Armour and Anheuser-Busch adopted the new six second ad format to tell quick but gripping stories that actually stuck with audiences. In fact, according to … [Read more...]

The national economy relies on business profits, GDP growth, and technological change driving new industries forward—but what drives all of those factors? Confidence. Why does the stock market fall after a shocking election? Why are businesses hesitant to invest during recessions even though the price of labor and capital is cheap? Psychological uncertainty is an important measure of economic health—and measuring it is an important task, too. The idea of an economic confidence index isn’t anything new. Since the 1950s, the University of Michigan has … [Read more...]

Break out your flower crowns and dog-ear filters, photo lovers—it’s National Selfie Day! Selfies have been sweeping the nation for years. From Apple’s release of the front-facing camera in 2010 to Ellen Degeneres’ star-studded selfie at the 2014 Oscars to new spherical cameras allowing for 360-degree selfies, this trend shows no sign of stopping. So while you were cheek-to-cheek with your BFF, practically dislocating your shoulder to capture that perfect angle, we used SurveyMonkey Audience to research people’s selfie … [Read more...]

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. If you're not creating a Facebook Page with a comprehensive strategy to get noticed, Liked, and engaged with, the chances of actually generating leads and customers from it are pretty slim. For example, you … [Read more...]

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. Let’s say you have a post explaining different types of commercial cooling systems that gets a steady amount of organic traffic each month. The best fit offer for this post would be a quiz to determine the right cooling system for your business, or a cooling systems pricing comparison sheet. Because the offer … [Read more...]