As a content creator, I know brand identity is everything. My audience wants to know what makes me different, why I create content, why they should trust the information I put out, and why I might promote a product or service.

As a content creator, I know brand identity is everything. My audience wants to know what makes me different, why I create content, why they should trust the information I put out, and why I might promote a product or service.

The same is true for companies. In addition to the information above, people who find your company online want to know about your mission, vision, and how you can help them solve their problems.

The best way to convey all this and establish a solid brand identity is to do what I did with my own website — create a profile. In my case, it’s a creator profile, but for you, it’d be a company profile.

Not sure what a company profile is or how to create one? Don’t worry — I got you covered with a breakdown of everything you need to know about building a company profile.

• What a Company Profile is
• How to Write a Company Profile
• Company Overview Template
• Company Profile Examples
• Company Description Examples
• What is a company profile template?
• How to Use a Company Profile Template
• Company Profile Templates

A company profile serves multiple purposes, but two of its primary goals are to connect with customers and attract investors for funding opportunities.

Why Company Profiles Are Important

As you can see on my profile, company profiles go beyond a regular About page. My profile details how I started, why I create content, and my journey to finally starting the blog.

A simple About page would typically only include a brief overview of who the company is and a point of contact.

Your company profile would show your company’s beginnings and why you continue to serve customers. Essentially, it humanizes your brand. Additionally, a company profile:

1. Differentiates Your Brand

According to my profile, my brand‘s story started with my sister’s Sailor Moon VHS tapes. Those tapes eventually led me to create content centered around anime and different “nerdy” entertainment aspects.

My brand’s story is unlike any other, and the same goes for yours. No two companies have the same founding story or reason for existing.

Your history and values are integral parts of your brand positioning strategy, and a company profile is where you can mention this information without feeling like you‘re talking someone’s ear off.

2. Can Justify a Higher Price Point.

A company profile is a perfect opportunity to show the work that goes on behind the scenes, thus justifying why your prices may be higher than others in your industry.

For example, luxury fashion house Prada’s company profile emphasizes the company uses raw materials that are meticulously sourced and exclusively produced for the fashion house.

This creates a sense that you’re paying more for higher-quality items. It also explains why I can never afford them.

3. Builds Your Reputation.

My content creator profile emphasizes that I‘ve been an anime fan since childhood and shows how I developed my skills for years as a journalist. My audience knows I’m an experienced creator who also happens to be a total nerd.

My audience trusts I‘ll provide quality content rooted in my passion for the medium. It’s a reputation I hold dearly.

Think about what you want your company’s reputation to be. Is your company the one that started as a small family-owned shop that grew into a billion-dollar enterprise? Or is it a company that upholds sustainability and puts ethics at the forefront of its brand?

You can build your reputation through marketing, service, and sales campaigns, but it all begins with a well-curated profile.

You didn‘t think I’d tell you what a company profile is and not tell you how to write one, did you? Have no fear, here are 11 steps to guide you on how to write your company profile.

1. Start with a company profile template.

Download the Free Company Profile Templates

No need to start from scratch. HubSpot has six free company profile templates for organizing and sharing your profile. Download these templates for free and follow the next steps in this article.

2. State the purpose of the company profile.

Your statement must align with what you‘re trying to accomplish. Let’s say your goal is to attract investors. In that case, you should include:

• Your business’s performance
• The value of the products you sell
• The company’s revenue

On the other hand, if you want to attract customers, it’s best to add the company values to your profile.

The purpose of a company profile should act as your guide throughout the process, so take your time on it.

3. Decide on the format or style.

Have you ever clicked off a page because its format or style was too jarring or difficult to navigate? If so, you know first-hand how important the proper style and format is to a company profile.

When designing your profile, consider your audience. For example, it‘s best to stick to the traditional format for an accounting firm. That is, list the company’s achievements and awards.

On the other hand, if you’re in a fashion or social media marketing firm, you should be creative and visual.

I love the homepage for Dept, a marketing technology company with an innovative and visual homepage that aligns with its offers and shows off its creativity.

Don’t be afraid to experiment or go wild with your ideas as long as they resonate with your target audience.

4. Tell your story & be authentic.

A million other businesses sell what you‘re selling, but no one else shares your story. Your story is what makes you unique. Don’t just write numbers and dates; let your prospects know who you are.

Be vulnerable and tell them why you started your business.

For example, one of my favorite brands, Thursday, is very candid about why it started selling boots. Thursday’s profile says:

“Thursday was built out of our own frustration. Clunky work boots or delicate fashion boots? Cheap shoes that fall apart after a few wears, or incredibly overpriced shoes? It didn’t seem right that we had to make these trade-offs. There had to be another option.”

What inspired you? Share the bad and the good – it mustn’t be glamorous. It only has to be authentic.

5. Add your company’s mission statement.

If you don’t have a mission statement, it‘s time to craft one. Writing a mission statement for your company isn’t as scary as it sounds, and there is no need to overthink it.

When crafting a mission statement, I think about these three questions:

• Who you serve – your target consumer
• How do you do it – what product or service do you provide to solve their problems?
• What makes you different – why should your consumers buy from you or trust you over your competitors?

Let your answers guide your statement.

6. Write your company’s history.

Growing up, I always thought history was boring — but that‘s not always the case regarding a company’s history. As I said, every company has a unique story, and detailing your rich history is a great way to stand out.

Just ensure you recount your story chronologically; otherwise, it will confuse your readers. You can do it in a paragraph or a timeline format if it shows a flow.

Another tip is to remember that less can be more. As tempting as it is to share all your milestones, stick to the major ones to avoid overwhelming the reader.

7. Describe the products and services you offer.

The next step is to describe what your company offers. You can choose a few of your best products or services and give an in-depth description or simply list everything your business offers.

8. Name the awards your company has received.

If you have received any awards or recognition, add them to your profile and describe them. They showcase your company’s values and give the community a reason to trust you.

9. Add your customer’s testimonials.

Your customers may take everything you say with a grain of salt, but they will believe other customers who have used your products. This is an excellent way to promote your business without having your products or services come off as hard-sell.

If you‘re a B2C business, simply include some of your customer’s best quotes tied with your best value products. If you’re a B2B business, have a testimonial from the most prominent client on your profile.

Hedley & Bennett, a restaurant wear company, features customer reviews and testimonials on its homepage.

10. Include a call to action.

While not mandatory, I strongly suggest a call to action because it can only help. It can urge people to book an appointment, make a purchase, etc.

Think about what you want the readers to do after reading the profile — visit your branch, check out your website, or call you? Simply include it at the end of your profile. This brings us to our last step.

Pro Tip: If you’re using our CMS, dropping in a personalized CTA is easy.

Get started with HubSpot’s CTA tool.

11. Add your company’s contact information.

Okay, so you bared your company‘s soul via your company profile, and readers have more enthusiasm for your business and want to work with you — now what?

Well, the next step would be to contact you, but they can’t do that if your information isn’t easy to spot.

Include in your profile all the possible ways your prospects can reach you. This may include but is not limited to social media profiles, websites, phone numbers, fax, email, and physical address.

Make sure it’s visible to anyone who reads your company profile.

Company Overview Template

Now that we have gone through all the necessary steps you need to create a company profile, it’s time to put all that into action. Here is a simple company overview template that will help you get started.

Our Story

[Company name] was founded in [Year], and we have accomplished so much over the years. To create a world where [ the solution your business solves] has always been our goal.

Our Founder and CEO [Name] was inspired to start this company by [ one or two sources of inspiration].

At [Company Name], we encourage our community to [ a positive statement about your brand].

Meet our Team

[Photo] [Name] [Job Title]

[Photo] [Name] [Job Title]

[Photo] [Name] [Job Title]

Our Mission, Vision & Values

Mission

Our goal is to provide our customers with the best [ service or product] at the best possible market price without compromising quality.

Vision

To be the most reliable [ service or product] provider and enhance [what your product or service does].

Core values

[List your company’s core values]

What Our Customers Are Saying

[Insert customer’s testimonials]

Contact Information

Location

Website URL

Social Media Pages

Cell Number

Company Profile Examples

1. Starbucks

Starbucks’ company profile has it all — its mission, background story, products, store atmosphere, and even folklore regarding the name. Best of all, they manage to pull off sounding genuine and grandiose.

I don’t know many other coffee stores that could claim that their mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit.”

Starbucks’ company profile is a fantastic example of a store with a common household product: coffee. Starbucks managed to stand out from the competition through its mission and values.

2. Wales Bonner

If your company has an exciting and intellectual history, you might consider creating a profile like Wales Bonner’s.

It begins with an impactful statement:

“Wales Bonner proposes a distinct notion of cultural luxury that infuses European heritage with an Afro-Atlantic spirit. Launched by Grace Wales Bonner following her graduation from Central Saint Martins in 2014, the label is informed by broad cultural research and embraces a multiplicity of perspectives.”

After sharing the brand’s intellectual background, it describes the owner’s journey in building the company, starting from when she was a college student, as well as the accolades she has received through her ingenuity in design.

With a good balance of image and text, the timeline serves as a reminder of Wales Bonner’s stability and growth.

3. Diehl Group Architects

Look at Diehl Group Architects’ company profile for both cleanliness and ease of use.

The web page uses clickable boxes to separate topics, allowing users to choose which subject to learn more about. Additionally, the entire design mirrors the company‘s purpose, including the page’s background, which displays a floor plan.

4. Bloomberg

Consumers use video as an integral part of their journey with brands, so you might consider using a compelling video to convey your company’s story as Bloomberg does in its company profile.

Bloomberg‘s profile proves the company knows its audience because it offers quick statistics and links to other site areas, such as Careers and Tech. While other businesses might do well in providing a creative, long-form story, Bloomberg’s typical demographic is likely more analytical.

5. Nike

You can instantly understand Nike’s two primary purposes — fitness, people, and inclusion.

When you land on its website, you’re greeted by a bold statement: “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.”

The asterisk implies, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.” As you scroll, you’ll see information on its internal diversity and inclusion initiative, global community impact, and sustainable business program, with very little mention of its products.

Nike’s company profile portrays a larger, grander vision, compelling an audience to believe in its brand before purchasing a product.

6. Seattle Cider

Seattle Cider Company‘s profile is minimal and engages viewers through compelling animations that demonstrate the company’s cider selection.

The page flows seamlessly and provides critical information regarding the product before displaying the company’s mission and values.

This profile is an excellent example of a company that understands its users’ concerns (in this case, quality ingredients) and addresses those issues while still displaying personality and flair.

7. Delta

Delta‘s page is well-organized by topic and showcases the company’s values, including efforts to engage with the community and promote sustainability.

It includes brief meta-descriptions below each category, and the design allows users to click through to learn more. Delta’s company profile is simple and uncluttered but includes all the necessary information to demonstrate its uniqueness.

8. Roam Loud

Roam Loud’s company profile is a great example and inspiration for any brand with a personal story.

It’s simple yet effective, starting with a friendly greeting, “Hey there!” and ending with a list of values. In between, the founder clearly states why she created her brand and why its existence is important to her and prospective buyers.

9. MAD Architects

MAD Architects‘ company profile is an excellent example of simplicity and informativeness.

The profile isn’t shy about the firm’s accomplishments and lets readers dive deeper into the firm’s exhibitions, lectures, awards, and publications, all visible on different tabs on the same page.

By leaning into a strong brand voice and giving details about its service, customers have the information they need to decide for themselves.

If your business is a leader in your field, consider creating one similar to MAD Architects.

10. Topicals

Topicals is a skincare company that provides products and education to help people target and learn about flare-ups. It has a one-of-a-kind about us page that is interactive and provides a fun experience for site visitors.

When you land on the page, you immediately see multiple interactive cards, the first of which describes its mission.

Once you’re done reading about its purpose, you can learn more about the company by clicking on the other cards or simply selecting the information that is most relevant to your needs.

Examples of Company Descriptions

Here are some examples of company descriptions that enhance their organizations’ company profile.

1. HubSpot

On HubSpot‘s profile page, you’ll find a brief description of the company’s mission and what it does. In just a few words, HubSpot explains that the company’s goal is to help businesses grow through its specialized inbound software.

2. H&H Wealth

On the “Why Zaneilia” page of its website, the founder of H&H Wealth briefly introduces what she believes in and encourages her customers to walk the journey with her.

She also makes a promise to her clients, setting expectations and the tone for the service she’ll deliver, helping her and her business come across as a partner rather than a vendor.

3. Dope Coffee

Dope Coffee aims to bridge the gap between coffee, hip hop, and culture to uplift the Black community. Its website describes the company’s history and mission.

Still, a single line sticks out as a powerful and impactful description of its business to take inspiration from: “We are Dope Coffee Company, and we are changing the world one cup of coffee at a time.”

4. Authentique Agency

Authentique Agency provides the perfect amount of information upfront to describe what it is and its mission and values — leveraging the power of identity in brand campaigns that reflect cultural identities rather than erasing them.

I also love the use if the term “code switching,” which is a term women of color like myself know too well. This shows Authentique Agency understands and relates to its audience.

It’s a great example of how to quickly and succinctly convey your message to site visitors.

5. The Cru

The Cru is a service that connects members with like-minded women to fuel personal and professional growth. It uses an “Our Story” page as a company profile, where the founder details how she formed the organization and how she owns “Cru” (a play on the word “crew”).

This summary is a testament to the value of the service. The “letter from the founder” style also feels personal and welcoming.

6. Carol H. Williams

Carol H. Williams, an advertising agency, doesn’t have an “about” page or a formal company description. However, it displays a snapshot of what the company is all about on its “Team” page.

It emphasizes its core values and uses trendy language (“#squadgoals”) to establish that it keeps up with the current trends.

7. Cafe Con Libros

Cafe Con Libros doesn’t have an about us page.

Still, it does have a company description that clearly explains its mission and values in two short sentences: “Cafe con Libros (coffee with books) is an Intersectional Feminist community bookstore and coffee shop.

Through our choice of books, programming, and great coffee, we endeavor to create a vibrant community space where everyone, specifically womxn -identified folx, feel centered, affirmed, and celebrated.”

8. Custom Collaborative

Custom Collaborative helps no/low-income immigrant women build entrepreneurship skills that help them succeed in a sustainable fashion.

Its About Us page features essential need-to-know information for anyone looking to them for support, interested in donating to the cause, or simply looking to learn more about the business.

What is a company profile template?

A company profile template is a pre-designed framework a company can use to display important information, such as the company name, logo, history, and mission statement. 

Users can swap out texts and images to tailor the template to their brand. However, startups should be careful about being overly reliant on templates.

You want your company to stand out amongst the competition and for your company profile to adhere to your unique branding. So, if you use a template, make sure you adjust it enough to make it unique to your brand. 

How to Use a Company Profile Template

I‘m a very thorough person, so of course, I’m going to leave you with some additional company profile template ideas and how to use a template. Just click the link below and follow along for a breakdown of the different sections within a profile.

Download These Templates for Free

No matter the template, make sure your profile includes the following:

• Company name
• Established date
• Physical address per location
• Contact information

About Us / Our Story / Our Beginning

In this part of the company profile, you will need to include a brief introduction to your company, including where, when, and by whom the company was founded, the company‘s mission statement, and/or the company’s vision and purpose.

You don’t necessarily have to include products or services in this section yet, but focus on your bigger meaning and how you stand out from competitors instead. Tell your story in a compelling way.

For instance, HubSpot starts its About Us section with, “More than ten years ago, we had a vision — an inbound world.” HubSpot doesn’t mention its products until further down the page.

If you want to add your company history in a more compact way, consider adding a company timeline like this one:

Download This Template

Our Mission / Values

Here, you need to say what your company stands for on a larger scale. You can state your ultimate goal and your hopes for your products or services. Look at these inspiring company vision and mission statement examples for ideas. Here’s an example:

Download This Template.

Our Team

Provide a picture or brief paragraph describing your team. You can focus on leadership or explain your company’s culture. Ultimately, this section should help users understand how your employees can uniquely serve them.

Download This Template

Our Product / Services

Describe a high-level overview of what your product is and how you hope it will positively impact the user’s life. You can link to a Product page if necessary, so keep this section relatively general.

Company Profile Templates

1. Gold and White HubSpot Company Profile Template 

If you want a clean company profile with a pop of color, this template is what you’re looking for. It’s especially appropriate if your logo or company colors already include gold. 

Download this template.

2. Blue HubSpot Company Profile Template 

Maybe you want to keep things simple and minimal with a darker blue hue and a heavier focus on imagery. In that case, check out this company profile template, also available from HubSpot. 

Download this template.

3. Minimalist Geometric HubSpot Company Profile Template 

Are you a minimalist? Do you like rhombuses? If so, then you’ll enjoy HubSpot’s minimalist, geometric company profile template. 

Download this template.

4. HubSpot Company Profile Template 5

Cool colors, like the blue-green color featured in the template below, can encourage a calm energy. So, this template is an excellent choice if you want a calming energy associated with your company. 

Download this template.

5. Cream and Navy Blue HubSpot Company Profile Template

I just love a good minimalist template with aesthetically pleasing color pairings. I mean, who doesn’t?

Download this template.

6. Technology Company Profile Template 

This isn’t among the templates we offer, but I still love it because it’s visually interesting with the gradient graphics in the background, and it includes my favorite color—purple. 

Image source

7. Tangerine Company Profile Template

This template has a more eclectic color palette but utilizes shapes and blank spaces to keep the template from appearing too busy and distracting. 

Image source

8. Colorful Company Profile Template

If your company is in the creative industry and loves color, then this template could be a great representation of your business. 

Image source

9. Tiffany Startup Company Profile Template

I like this template a lot because the icons in the upper right corner include links to your company’s social media. 

Image source

10. Blue and White Minimalist Company Profile Template

Again, you can’t go wrong with minimalism and a pop of neutral blues. However, if you don’t like color and you want something a little brighter, you can just swap out the blue for your company colors. 

Image source

11. Yellow and Green Modern Company Profile Template

The checkerboard pattern adds a nice flare that guides your eyes down the page to the important content, such as your company name and contact information.

Image source

12. Orange White Modern Company Profile Template

Canva calls this orange and white, but that looks red to me. Either way, the template provides ample space for your logo, name, imagery, and information. 

Image source

Start Your Company Profile Today

And there you have it — everything you need to know about putting together a company profile. If you still need a little extra help, don’t forget to scroll up and click on the links to our templates.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2019 but has been updated for comprehensiveness.

A memo is the best way to share news when you have a significant update or important win within your company.

Unlike an email, your memo will go out to your entire department or everyone at the company, so knowing how to format a memo is just as important as what you write. No pressure. (Well, maybe some pressure…)

A memo is the best way to share news when you have a significant update or important win within your company.

Unlike an email, your memo will go out to your entire department or everyone at the company, so knowing how to format a memo is just as important as what you write. No pressure. (Well, maybe some pressure…)

Before writing a memo, I take some time to hype myself up. This bit of internal communication will be read by my peers, my boss, and likely my boss’s boss. Getting the language right is essential, and every word counts.

In this post, I’ll share my experience writing memos and tips from my HubSpot peers. From there, I’ll showcase stellar memo examples and a template to help you create your own. Let’s dive in!

What is a memo?

How to Write a Memo

Types of Memos

When to Write a Memo

Best Practices for Formatting a Memo

Business Memo Template

Memo Examples

Memos are shared to inform readers about new information and have applications for different communities and businesses.

Communities can use memos to tell people within it about public safety guidelines, promote various events, and raise awareness on subjects that affect their lives.

Businesses can use memos to relay information involving newly updated policies, changes in procedure, important milestones, or necessary employee actions, such as attending an upcoming meeting or convention.

I often find myself writing memos when there are significant changes to my program at HubSpot. Perhaps we’re implementing a new workflow, reorganizing the structure of our team, or sharing insights from a project we just completed. Memos denote importance, so I only write them when I have important updates to share that impact multiple stakeholders.

Below, we’ll explore when memos are necessary. But first, let’s discuss how to write a memo.

You can put together a memo in a few short steps. To give you an idea of how each step is formatted, I’ll write an example memo and break it down for each step. My example memo will be an internal announcement for a writing training session.

1. Write a heading.

No matter what kind of memo you’re writing, you’ll need to include a heading. This section should include who the memo is for (whether an individual or department), the date, who the memo is from, and a subject line.

Your subject line should be short, attention-grabbing, and give readers a general idea of what the memo is about.

“The headings you use should be descriptive enough that your readers can infer what they’ll get in each section,” suggests Kaitlin Milliken, senior program manager at HubSpot. “Cut the cute language and keep your headings very tactical.”

Make sure the tone of your title matches the seriousness of the subject matter and your organization’s communication style. A witty opener won’t be right for every memo.

Testing It Out

Here’s how this would look for my example memo about a writing training session:

2. Write an introduction.

Remember, you want your memo to be brief and information-packed. Your introduction should be an efficient use of space. It should highlight the issue or problem and the solution you decided to move forward with.

“The beginning of any memo should state a clear purpose of what the memo will cover,” says Karla Hesterberg, director of content marketing at HubSpot. “Depending on the subject, this could be as simple as an overview of a statement that establishes the need for a new investment. The more simple and straightforward, the better.”

That’s a reality that I personally struggle with. As a writer, I want to include those eloquent phrases and thoughtful transitions that sound great when read aloud. However, I need to take a different approach to writing memos.

My introduction should just summarize the purpose of the memo in two to three sentences.

Testing It Out

Using Hesterberg’s tip, here’s how I’d write the introduction for my memo:

3. Provide background on the issue.

Remember, memos go out to a wide group of employees. Not everyone reading your memo will have the same background that you do as a writer. You’ll need a section to explain any necessary context that folks need to know before going forward.

So, what do you put in? I asked Basha Coleman, one of the best memo writers on my team. Coleman is a principal marketing manager on HubSpot’s audience development team.

Coleman says she includes a section at the top of her memos that cover the following:

• The situation
• The impact of the situation
• Recommended solutions

“This gives stakeholders the need-to-know info right away in case they don’t have time to read the whole memo at once,” Coleman says.

Beyond that, I like to link to other important documents that provide context on a topic.

That could be a related memo from a different team with more information, a news article that you’re directly responding to, or a relevant dashboard that showcases the issue.

You don’t want this section to be long. However, if folks are interested in learning more, you’ve just given them the power to do so.

Testing It Out

4. Outline action items and timeline (optional).

Depending on the purpose of your memo, you may have action items for employees to complete or provide a timeline of when changes will take place.

For example, they may need to complete a task or provide information by a certain deadline.

This section should include the following:

• When employees can expect changes to go into effect.
• What changes have already been made and what to expect in the future.
• Deadlines they need to adhere to.

When developing a timeline, avoid just creating a paragraph with dates interspersed throughout.

“Don’t be afraid to use visual cues in your memo, like tables, heading colors to display hierarchy of information, charts, and graphs. These can keep a memo brief and skimmable,” suggests Coleman.

Milliken agrees. In a recent memo on building a thought leadership program, she included tables that laid out each step her team would take, more details about what was needed, and when it would occur.

“I also included an infographic of a pipeline to show the stages of the project and how long each would take proportionally,” she says. “This makes it easier to visualize a timetable than just skimming chunks of text.”

Testing It Out

Here’s a sample table I created to demonstrate.

If no action is needed on the employee’s behalf, you can leave this section out.

5. Justify any reasoning.

If you’re communicating a request or anything new that could ruffle some feathers, you can make your case by offering a rationale as to why your announcement or request is so important.

“Think about your target audience and try to anticipate areas where they might ask questions, have concerns, or need more clarity,” says Hesterberg. “Try to re-read as someone who doesn’t have all the context you have to identify areas you need to build up.”

Remember, as the memo writer, you’re an expert on the subject. You may need to ask a manager or a peer to review your memo with a skeptical eye. Where do they have questions? What needs additional justification?

From there, you can strengthen your case. This often includes featuring statistics as to why it’s critical and urgent to make a change.

“Keep in mind that data is super powerful but must be presented in a way that enhances the narrative rather than confusing it,” says Amanda Sellers, a blog strategy manager at HubSpot.

For example, the phrase “58.97% met the benchmark and 10.26% far exceeded the benchmark” is clunky. Instead, Sellers suggests writing,”Our strategy is working nearly 70% of the time.”

The first example is unwieldy, Sellers notes, referring to a methodology that a broader audience is less likely to care about.

Meanwhile, “the second audience demonstrates the more important thing: why that methodology was important and what you can take from it,” Sellers explains.

Testing It Out

To justify the importance of the quarterly writing training session, especially in conjunction with AI tools, I’d add this data point in my memo:

6. Soften any blows (optional).

If you’re making a big change that could be seen as controversial or making bold statements where people might feel slighted, you can soften this with a well-placed caveat.

For example, with the rise of AI, you might be communicating a new company policy related to using AI.

You could soften the blow by sharing that it hasn’t been an issue for most people, but it’s important to have a clear policy in place for handling it.

Testing It Out

Let’s say my memo took a different position regarding AI for writing. Here’s how I’d format my memo to soften the blow:

7. Include a closing statement.

Your closing statement will include any information you’d like to reinforce. Are there any specific contacts readers should reach out to for questions? If so, include them here.

“A conclusion that just reiterates your main points is boring and likely to be skipped,” Milliken says. “End on your most compelling points. You can either reassert urgency or discuss the resources you need to be successful.”

Milliken often closes on the support her team requires to find success. That could be additional financial resources, a champion within leadership, or more time to establish the change.

Testing It Out

8. Review and proofread before sending

This step may seem like a no-brainer, but it‘s important to review your document before sending it out. Memos are meant to inform readers of upcoming changes and relay important information.

You don’t want to risk causing confusion with a typo or misstatement.

“Memos often have a broad audience, so you’ll want to craft a narrative that is easily understood no matter who is reading it,” says Sellers. “That means telling a persuasive story, getting to the point quickly, anticipating questions, and cutting jargon to find the simplest way of saying something.”

Testing It Out

Ask a coworker to review your memo or use an editing tool like Grammarly or Hemingway to review and proofread.

Here’s an example of Grammarly editing my memo and making suggestions for improvement:

9. Create any audio or video aids,

Once the memo is written, I like to give it one last pass. What would make the message even more clear? Should I work with creative to build an infographic? Should I amplify the document over our email channels?

Now that I’ve invested the time, I want to make sure my message is heard.

Coleman often creates a recording with a deck, highlighting the most important points in the document.

“Including video summaries of my memos with Loom is helpful for accessibility and busy stakeholders who like to listen to updates while working on other tasks,” she notes.

10. Communicate urgency (if necessary).

The last important tip? Up the urgency. If your memo pitches something new or timely, you want to explain why the change is urgent and the importance of moving now.

“The best way to do this is to explain what we’re at risk of losing if we don’t take action here,” says Hesterberg.

For pitch memos, Hesterberg suggests telling readers why this problem is important and why people should care. For explanatory memos, she recommends explaining what the information in the memo will be used for.

Testing It Out

Here’s how I’d add urgency to my memo about the training session:

Types of Memos

Now you know how to write a memo, but before you start banging away at your keyboard, it’s helpful to know the types of memos that are out there.

1. Request Memo

In a nutshell, request memos are exactly what they sound like: memos that are designed to make a request and get a positive response.

When writing request memos, focus on using persuasive language and, where possible, stats or numbers to highlight why a “yes” is the right answer.

Some sample uses of request memos might be to request a new purchase from your company or authorization for professional learning or volunteer opportunities.

When writing request memos, be clear in your request, state any costs, share why it’s important, and keep emotion and personal feelings out of the request.

2. Informative Memo

You might see these called announcement memos as well, and they make up the bulk of most memos I’ve seen. The goal of informative memos is to communicate new information to your audience.

Sample uses of informative memos might include changes in policy, company news, new processes, or even new staff members.

Ultimately, you can think of an informative memo as a clear, concise way to share announcements with your audience and provide any justification necessary for the new information.

3. Confirmation Memo

You can think of confirmation memos as a paper trail to make sure key stakeholders have a record of discussions.

Sample uses of confirmation memos are documenting conversations, so you have justification should it ever be called into question, clarifying anything that has ambiguity to avoid misunderstanding down the road.

When writing confirmation memos, specificity and clarity should be your number one goal.

4. Directive Memo

Directive memos are largely self-explanatory. When you need to communicate how to do something to your audience, you might write a directive memo offering detailed instructions that are easy to follow.

Sample uses of directive memos include sharing how to implement a new process, comply with new requirements, or even complete necessary tasks.

When to Write a Memo

As you’ve seen with the types of memos above, most memos are designed to communicate new information. However, memo purposes stretch far and wide.

“Memos serve a variety of purposes, but generally speaking, they either pitch or propose something new, consolidate information into one place for the sake of alignment, or explain or clarify information about a project or program,” says Hesterberg.

You might write a memo in the following scenarios:

• You have a new policy, and you need to explain it to your audience.
• Sharing important company updates and information.
• Announcing new staff members or promotions.
• Confirming details of a discussion to get everyone on the same page and create a paper trail.
• Teach or tell people how to do something.
• Requesting something and justifying why it matters.

There are lots of possibilities out there. In a nutshell, if you have something you need to share, a memo might be the answer.

Best Practices for Formatting a Memo

Now that you know when to write a memo, what types of memos there are, and what elements to include in your memo, I have a few parting tips. To sum it up, here are a few best practices for formatting a memo.

Cater to your audience.

Before you start writing your memo, consider who your audience is. Understanding who will read your memo will help you tailor your message, tone, and CTA for that audience.

Pamela Bump, head of content growth at HubSpot, suggests considering the following questions.

“Are the leaders you’re writing for busy executives who want a quick one-pager focused on the most need-to-know information?” she says. “Or are the readers more inquisitive and interested in soaking in all the information they can get?”

Make it skimmable.

HubSpot’s Kaitlin Milliken recalls a time when she wrote a memo that wasn’t skimmable.

“When I was asked to write my first memo, I created a document with huge walls of text,” she says. “My manager gave me great feedback, encouraging me to use charts and graphs throughout the document. That makes total sense to me now. No one wants to read a huge string of lengthy paragraphs, but they’ll definitely skim a table.”

To make your memo easier to read, use headings and separate paragraphs to break up new thoughts or talking points. You can also add tables and graphs to create a visual break when it makes sense.

Milliken adds, “Bullet points are your friend. They create breaking points throughout your document and keep information easy to digest.”

Be mindful of length.

The length of your memo depends on the type you’re writing. Generally speaking, a memo is one or two paragraphs long. But the length can vary if you’re writing an informative memo versus a request memo.

If your audience is interested in learning, an informative memo can provide more detail, while a request memo should be brief and to the point.

“If you’re unsure, go for a shorter 1-2 page document, but link it to another page or dashboard with further data, context, or information that they can dig into if they choose,” Bump suggests.

Now that you’ve learned what goes into a memo, here’s an easy-to-follow business memo template with examples of how to use them to serve different needs as guidance.

Business Memo Template

MEMORANDUM

TO:

FROM:

DATE:

SUBJECT:

I’m writing to inform you that [reason for writing memo].

As our company continues to grow … [evidence or reason to support your opening paragraph].

Please let me know if you have any questions. In the meantime, I’d appreciate your cooperation as [official business information] takes place.

Business Memo Template Format

The business memo template format is designed to effectively communicate your message. A memo should disseminate the necessary information in a way that is easy for a mass number of employees to digest.

An accurate subject line will alert them that this memo is relevant to them specifically. And beginning with an executive summary allows recipients to understand the general message before they dive deeper into the details.

The background information offers context to the message, and the overview and timeline should answer questions that are likely to come up.

Header

In your header, you‘ll want to clearly label your content “Memorandum” so your readers know exactly what they’re receiving. As previously mentioned, you‘ll want to include “TO”, “FROM”, “DATE”, and “SUBJECT.”

This information is relevant for providing content, like who you’re addressing and why.

Paragraph One

In the first paragraph, you‘ll want to quickly and clearly state the purpose of your memo. You might begin your sentence with the phrase, “I’m writing to inform you … “ or ”I’m writing to request … ”

A memo is meant to be short, clear, and to the point. You’ll want to deliver your most critical information upfront and then use subsequent paragraphs as opportunities to dive into more detail.

Paragraph Two

In the second paragraph, you‘ll want to provide context or supporting evidence. For instance, let’s say your memo informs the company of an internal reorganization.

If this is the case, paragraph two should say something like, “As our company continues to grow, we’ve decided it makes more sense to separate our video production team from our content team.

This way, those teams can focus more on their individual goals.”

Paragraph Three

In the third paragraph, you‘ll want to include your specific request of each employee — if you’re planning a team outing, this is the space you’d include, “Please RSVP with dietary restrictions,” or “Please email me with questions.”

On the contrary, if you‘re informing staff of upcoming construction to the building, you might say, “I’d appreciate your cooperation during this time.”

Even if you don’t expect any specific action from employees, it’s helpful to include how you hope they’ll handle the news and whether you expect them to do something in response to the memo.

Downloadable Memo Template

Want to see the above memo format in its final form? Download HubSpot’s free business memo templates, shown below.

The document gives you a framework that sorts your memorandum into subtopics to help employees better digest the information and understand what’s expected of them after reading it.

Download This Template

Memo Examples

Different industries or situations will require slightly different memos. Certain ones will need to be longer or shorter, others may not have a timeline, and some will have extensive background information.

The format of your memo should change to fit the message you want your employees to receive.

Launch Delay Memo

The objective of this memo is to announce that the launch of a product will be delayed. The introduction includes the new date, so a timeline or long overview isn’t necessary.

This format of this memo could be applied to other situations where a simple, but important, change is occurring.

What I Like: The launch memo provides readers with insight into product launch delays, which can alleviate some frustration that customers or employees may otherwise feel if they were not informed.

Other date changes, promotions, milestones, or product announcements could also utilize this format.

Building Update Memo

There are logistical aspects of a business that concern your employees but don’t necessarily involve their work. This memo depicts an example of a kitchen remodel in the office. It’s a bit of an inconvenience but not one of a large magnitude.

What I Like: This memo demonstrates a business’s understanding of the impact that renovations can have on employees and shows respect and consideration for their needs.

This memo format could be applied to other building updates, work-from-home days, or other widespread but minor announcements.

Community Memo

Celebrations, events, theme days, or other fun things for your employees can also be communicated through memos. Community memos like this example are generally shorter because they don’t require much background information or many details.

What I Like: This memo has clear directions on where to find the event taking place, something which would’ve been less effective if it only included the floor number.

Memos of this nature should include a summary, date, and location at a minimum.

Persuasion Memo

Persuasion memos are used to encourage readers to take action regarding an event or proposition, like voting or petitioning.

What We Like: This persuasion memo prioritizes giving the reader information to learn on their own and make a decision based on their findings.

The main components of the persuasion memo should include an overview of the task at hand, context to learn more about it, and a call to action that emphasizes the impact the reader can potentially make.

Write Your Memos To the Point

The main difference between a memo and just an email is not the level of complexity. It’s the size of the audience.

A memo can be simple or intricate as long as it effectively communicates your message and is relevant to the receiving group of employees. And, the message itself should be clear and concise, no matter which memo format you use.

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

With 2.5 billion active users, YouTube is an undeniably important channel for your marketing efforts. Knowing how to optimize your YouTube channel can help you increase your chances of discoverability and reach more people.

With 2.5 billion active users, YouTube is an undeniably important channel for your marketing efforts. Knowing how to optimize your YouTube channel can help you increase your chances of discoverability and reach more people.

As both a YouTuber and HubSpot‘s resident creator economy expert, I know a lot about YouTube and how to go viral on the platform. So, believe me when I say it’s not just keywords you have to think about.

Creating engaging YouTube descriptions is one of the most important tactics for optimizing your YouTube channel. We’ll discuss creating compelling descriptions for your YouTube channel and videos here.

YouTube Channel Descriptions

YouTube channel descriptions are a little like the About Page of a website. It appears under the “About” tab of your channel’s YouTube page.

Your YouTube channel description conveys to potential viewers what your content will cover, including the issues you tackle and the communities you serve. You’ll be able to add this when setting up your YouTube channel.

Take a look at my YouTube channel’s description as an example. Notice how I introduce myself, state the kind of content viewers can expect, and reference my target audience.

I also have links to other platforms connected to my channel, such as Instagram, X, TikTok, and my website.

As YouTube creators, our primary goal is to attract and turn viewers into subscribers, often using the channel description. With that in mind, use keywords your intended audience would use to search for your content.

See how “anime” is used multiple times in my channel’s description.

YouTube Video Descriptions

Every YouTube video includes a description that can be found under the viewport of the video.

It’s crucial that each of your YouTube videos include a unique description to increase the likelihood of your video being found when someone is searching for a particular topic.

As a YouTube content creator, I always craft my video descriptions knowing they can attract and convert an audience. So, I always optimize my video descriptions for SEO — and you should, too.

Keep reading if you‘re unsure how to start crafting compelling YouTube descriptions. I’ll explore tactics you can employ and provide templates to ensure you have everything you need to excel on YouTube.

1. Use YouTube description templates. [Free Prompts]

HubSpot compiled several YouTube video description templates to help your business provide context to your viewers, rank better in search, organize your team, and link to relevant web pages on your site.

Download These Templates for Free

2. Explain your content.

My colleague, Caroline Forsey, spoke with Eric Peters, a Senior Growth Product Manager on HubSpot’s Academy team, to explore the best tactics for writing YouTube descriptions.

He said, “[YouTube descriptions] are one of the primary ways YouTube knows what your video is about. Include links, additional resources, links to other videos and playlists, etc. Make sure the description box is easy to read.”

Peters explained that your YouTube video description and closed captioning should incorporate keywords into your description.

It also helps with accessibility for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Hence, adding closed captioning to your videos is essential for accessibility.

For instance, take a look at one of HubSpot Marketing’s YouTube video descriptions:

A YouTube description differs from a web page meta description. Content creators explain the entire video in a YouTube description and even link to external resources.

Peters says:

“You get 5,000 characters total, so make use of it. YouTube creators use asterisks or all-caps to differentiate titles from body copy because it’s all plain text.

Consider writing up a text version of the key points from the video, or even copying the transcription and paste it into the description.”

Most of my most recent YouTube videos consist of interviews from my podcast.

So, I‘ll often save time by writing out the description I’d use for my podcast episode that would appear on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, then copying and pasting the same description into YouTube.

I‘d then tweak it to include more keywords or important links to other platforms. I’ll also customize my YouTube video description with the bold, italic, or strikethrough options at the bottom of the description box.

For information, click here.

3. Include a call-to-action (CTA).

Your YouTube description is a fantastic opportunity to ask viewers to continue engaging with your channel or find additional resources to help them learn more about a topic of interest.

For instance, let’s say I create a brief “How to Add Filters to Instagram” YouTube video, but I also have an in-depth “How to Use Instagram for Marketing” blog post. Why not link it in the description?

Most likely, anyone watching my Instagram video on YouTube would be equally grateful for the opportunity to learn more through a blog post.

Perhaps I simply want to ask viewers to subscribe, turn on notifications, or share my content with their networks. These are all acceptable CTA’s for a description.

Personally, I always include a call to action in my YouTube video descriptions, telling viewers to follow my other social media accounts, subscribe to my blog, or listen to my corresponding podcasts on other platforms.

Experience has shown me it’s best practice to format the description so that the most critical information is first.

Peters advises, “The first 200 characters are above the ‘more’ fold on the description box, so if you want your CTA/link to be seen by most people, keep it within the first 200 characters.”

After the first 200 characters, the text will be cut off, and viewers must click “Show more” to see the rest. I know I don‘t always click “Show more” when watching a video, so your audience likely won’t either.

Therefore, you must count your first 200 characters.

4. Add your personality.

A YouTube description should be fun and demonstrate your brand’s personality with a unique voice. Unlike traditional forms of advertising, this is an opportunity for you to instill creativity and humor into your content.

Brian Dean’s YouTube channel is an excellent example of this. His YouTube descriptions often mirror the way he speaks. I enjoy his descriptions because they are candid and casual, and he makes it feel like he’s writing to a friend.

Consider checking out HubSpot Academy’s comprehensive YouTube Marketing course to learn more about using YouTube for marketing purposes.

5. Use timestamps to make videos scannable.

Including timestamps in your video description can make your video more user-friendly and help your content rank well on search engines.

YouTube video timestamps appear within search results, improving user retention by directing users to the most relevant portions of videos from SERPs.

Users can search for keywords in your video’s description and click on a thumbnail on the SERP to view the portion of your video that answers their search query.

Image Source

YouTube Channel Description Examples

Every YouTube channel description should allude to a specific niche or central theme. You want to tell your audience what they will learn from your channel.

This will give them a reason to tune in to your channel, subscribe to it, and continue learning from you and your videos.

Additionally, when you add your niche to your YouTube description, your audience can more easily find you in a sea of potentially similar creators.

1. Wes McDowell

Image Source

Wes McDowell ‘s YouTube channel targets viewers in the digital marketing niche. The channel description mentions its mission: teaching small business owners digital marketing strategies they can use to grow their businesses.

The description also lists topics the channel will feature in its videos, invites viewers to subscribe, and describes its benefits.

Why I Love It

This YouTube channel description is clear and direct. It details what viewers will get when they come to the channel. This description also describes the marketing strategies and techniques viewers will learn.

Clarity goes a long way in making a channel easily searchable and rankable on YouTube.

2. Yoga With Adriene

Image Source

Yoga With Adriene‘s YouTube channel description highlights one of the channel’s main values: inclusion.

The channel description mentions that everyone is invited to participate and learn more about yoga through her videos, regardless of their skill level.

The description also recommends videos that beginners can watch to become familiar with the content.

Why I Love It

This channel description is an excellent example of how a company‘s mission can be useful for video content. The description gives subscribers a glimpse into Yoga with Adriene’s values, creating a connection with the viewer.

This angle is helpful for ranking on YouTube because it’s aligned with morals and values that subscribers can easily identify with.

I started watching Yoga with Adriene‘s videos partially because the channel description convinced me they’d be great for beginners (and they are!).

3. Wild Wonderful Off-Grid

Image Source

Wild Wonderful Off-Grid ‘s YouTube channel description positions the channel within a niche by using the keywords “off-grid,” “self-reliant,” and “building our own home” to appeal to viewers who are interested in living off-the-grid.

The description also invites viewers to visit their online store and social media profiles.

Why I Love It

This YouTube channel description establishes a niche, describes the channel’s content, provides background information about the creators, and encourages subscribers and viewers to participate further in their brand.

I also love how the description also directs their audience to other aspects of their business, such as their store and social media platforms, which fosters value for their subscribers.

4. The Pals

Image Source

The Pals‘ YouTube channel description introduces the channel’s creators, lists the video games the channel will highlight, and provides each creator’s personal YouTube channel and Roblox username.

Why I Love It

This YouTube channel description focuses on the entertainment the channel provides.

The description targets subscribers seeking gaming knowledge and mentions the creators’ journeys to set the channel apart from others in the same niche and genre.

5. Florian Gadsby

Image Source

Florian Gadsby‘s YouTube channel description introduces the channel’s creator and lists the topics viewers can expect to see when they subscribe.

It also links to the creator‘s social media and newsletter and provides information about the creator’s online store, including its restocking schedule.

Why I Love It

This YouTube channel description takes a personal approach to the subject matter. The description gives visitors clarity about the channel’s content and artistic focus.

It also encourages viewers to interact with the creator on their social media platforms to learn more about them and view more of their content.

6. SciShow

Image Source

SciShow‘s YouTube channel description introduces the channel’s creators and hints at the topics viewers can expect to see weekly.

The description also outlines the channel’s posting schedule and mentions other YouTube channels associated with the brand.

Why I Love It

This YouTube channel description tells its viewers when they will see uploads. This is an excellent strategy to ensure users visit the channel right when they’re expecting to see new content.

If views go up on a page, the YouTube algorithm will likely boost your channel to a broader audience. Just make sure you stay on schedule.

I personally avoid putting the schedule for future uploads in my descriptions because mishaps happen, and I don‘t want to let my viewers down. But that’s just a personal hang-up I have.

7. Unbox Therapy

Image Source

Unbox Therapy‘s YouTube channel description states the channel’s tagline, gives an overview of the channel’s content, and provides a contact email for business inquiries.

Why I Love It

This simple channel description piques viewers‘ interest with a captivating tagline and a straightforward explanation of the channel’s content.

It also includes an email that allows viewers to contact the creators to inquire about the business and ask professional questions about the channel.

8. IsaWelly

Isa-Welly’s YouTube channel description immediately emphasizes her Registered Nutritional Therapist and Wellbeing Coach credentials before going into the purpose of her platform and what viewers can expect.

Why I Love It

I love that Isa Welly establishes trust with her audience by highlighting her professional experience. The bio is also very short and to the point, reducing the chances of confusion and keeping the reader’s attention.

9. Sundas Khalid

Sundas Khalid ‘s YouTube channel description starts with a friendly “Hey!” before explaining who she is and what she does: “I am Sundas, and I help you succeed in the data science and tech fields.”

The description then dives into her background as a self-taught data scientist.

It also highlights her achievements as someone with 10 years of experience across two prominent companies where she was a high performer at each.

Why I Love It

I love Sundas Khalid because she relates to her audience by using a friendly tone and explaining that she is self-taught and from a non-tech background.

Her approach shows she creates content for viewers who may have little to no experience in the tech field but want to break into the industry or sharpen their knowledge.

I especially like how she includes a disclaimer at the end, letting readers know her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of the company she works for. It’s a great example of transparency while separating your work and creativity.

10. Matte Wolfe

What Matte Wolfe’s description lacks in words it makes up for in key links. Wolfe’s YouTube channel includes links to his blog, Twitter (now X) account, and his AI tools database.

Why I Love It

Wolfe’s channel description is a great model for how less is more, especially if your channel covers a broad spectrum of topics within your niche.

Just make sure you use the extra space saved in your channel to highlight important links, such as to your blog, social media channels, or business.

YouTube Channel Description Templates

Now that we’ve covered the basics look at a few templates you can use to craft a compelling YouTube description.

1. Playful YouTube Channel Description Template

You might create a playful, easy-going channel ‘About Me’ description, like this one:

Hi, I’m [Name]. This is my channel about increasing your sales, effectively targeting your audience, and growing an email list that you can use to grow your business.

If you’re a marketer who wants to learn marketing strategies to get [result, i.e., more traffic to your site], subscribe to my channel.

My channel publishes videos that focus on storytelling content that connects X, shows you how to infuse your authenticity in your brand, and gives you a marketing strategy that feels organic.

If that sounds like it could be helpful for you, please join me!

2. Third-Person YouTube Channel Description Template

Alternatively, you can craft a YouTube description that describes what your company does from a third-person point of view, like this one:

[Company] is the worldwide leader in X, Y, and Z. Since [year], [Company] has been on a mission to [insert company vision or purpose here].

To learn more about [Company], its values, and its [company offering], subscribe to our channel to stay informed.

3. Niche YouTube Channel Description Template

Tell your subscribers what you’re all about and describe your niche when writing your YouTube channel description.

[Name] and [Name] have nuanced discussions about dating, their lifestyle, and relationships. They discuss current topics that affect modern dating and how to maneuver relationship patterns. You can purchase [Name] and [Name]’s to learn more about improving your knowledge of relationships.

4. Inviting YouTube Channel Description Template

Building a relationship with your followers is one of the most important things you can do as a content creator. This template invites them to join you as you grow your brand.

This channel gives everything you need to know about gaming, including the latest equipment reviews, new game reviews, and once-a-week live streams. Watch as I, [name], try to beat my high score in the latest release of [insert game name here].

5. Personal YouTube Channel Description Template

Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable with your audience. Adding personal touches to your YouTube channel description, like the template below, can help you become more authentic.

This is a personal journey of how I became a painter. Learn about what paints I purchase, the tools I use, and the techniques I learned during school. Art is my passion, and I express my love for [insert passion] through it.

6. Straight-forward YouTube Channel Description Template

Tell your audience exactly what they can expect from your channel by using this template:

This channel gives pop culture commentary through a [political ideology] political lens. We make commentary on books and current events. We also upload a new video every Wednesday and Friday.

YouTube Video Description Examples

A helpful video description can spike your audience’s interest, resulting in longer watch times, better view counts, and even new subscribers.

Plus, it can help with YouTube SEO, allowing YouTube’s algorithm to understand your content and suggest it to new users, further boosting your YouTube metrics.

1. “5 Best Coding Languages for Beginners 2021” by nicole . young

Image Source

The description of nicole . young’s YouTube video, “5 Best Coding Languages for Beginners 2021,” hooks the viewer by posing a question that will be answered in the video.

The video description also includes a benefit the viewer will gain from watching the video.

Why I Love It

In this video description, the creator summarizes the video‘s title and specifies the target audience. The text will help audiences (and YouTube) understand the video’s content.

This creator understands that the channel description is prime real estate for contact information, social media handles, and calls to action, persuading viewers to stick around.

2. “How to Write Counterpoint – Music Composition” by Music Matters

Image Source

The description of Music Matters’s YouTube video, “How to Write Counterpoint – Music Composition,“ uses keywords such as ”writing counterpoint,“ ”music composition lesson,“ and ”understanding counterpoint” to appeal to audiences that are interested in learning the music composition technique.

The description also includes timestamps that viewers can use to skip to the portion of the video that addresses the specific topic they want to learn about.

Why I Love It

This YouTube video description uses keywords to appeal to a niche audience. The specificity makes it easily searchable on YouTube. Using keywords to make each video search-friendly will drive traffic to your video’s specific content.

3. “How to Create a 90-Day Plan for your Business (+ Free Workbook)” by Anna Clark

Image Source

The description of Anna Clark’s YouTube video, “How to Create a 90-Day Plan for your Business (+ Free Workbook),” includes links to the creator’s website, courses, newsletter, and social media accounts, and a workbook that viewers can download and complete as they watch the video.

Why I Love It

It’s good to involve your viewers in other aspects of your business. The interaction and engagement you earn will help you rank against other active channels.

Directing your viewers to other resources for your business will also help your YouTube channel drive traffic to your website, increasing your authority in your business niche.

4. “How To Create An Email Sales Funnel” by Wishpond

Image Source

The description of Wishpond’s YouTube video, “How To Create An Email Sales Funnel,” hooks the viewer by stating that the video is the fourth installment in a series and linking to the previous video.

The video description also incentivizes viewers to learn more about the company.

Why I Love It

This description segments the video as a section of a more extensive series. If subscribers learn that you provide similar content on your channel, they will be more inclined to watch your other videos.

The description also lets viewers know there’s a free demo of the service. If you sell different products or services in your business, link them in the description.

5. “How to Outline Your Novel – Part 2” by Writing with Jenna Moreci

Image Source

The description of Writing with Jenna Moreci’s YouTube video, “How to Outline Your Novel – Part 2,” hooks the viewer by stating that the video is the second installment in a series and linking to the previous video.

The video description also lets viewers learn more about the creator’s products.

Why I Love It

This video description is excellent because it lets viewers know what’s coming next. Inserting a “new segment” in your YouTube series lets viewers anticipate your next video.

6. “Microgreens Growing: Materials and Beginner’s Guide” by Epic Gardening

Image Source

The video description tells viewers about the creator’s experience with microgreens, lists the supplies the creator mentions in the video, and lists ways that viewers can support the creator beyond watching their video.

Why I Love It

The creator provides a list of products used in the video. The viewers can research the products or purchase them immediately through the links.

7. “Budgeting for Beginners – How to Make a Budget From Scratch 2021” by Debt Free Millennials

Image Source

Debt Free Millennials’ YouTube video, “Budgeting for Beginners – How to Make a Budget From Scratch 2021,” teaches viewers to create a budget.

The description gives viewers an overview of the topics covered in the video and invites them to sign up for products and services through affiliated links.

It also includes links to the creator’s Instagram, Facebook group, and website so viewers can connect with the creator through different social platforms.

Why I Love It

I love that the creator has created a sense of community and togetherness. If you include your social media links in your YouTube video description, subscribers will follow you on multiple platforms to remain engaged with your content.

The content creator invites them to return for new videos and share their experiences on social media.

8. “FINALLY be consistent on social media” by Jade Beason

Jade Beason‘s video gives viewers tips and strategies for staying consistent on social media as a creator or business owner. Her video’s description is simple and captures who and what the video is intended for:

“Watch this video if you’re struggling to post consistently on social media!

If you want to learn new content creation tips, content creation hacks, how to be consistent on social media or how to create consistent content on social media, this video is for you.”

Why I Love It

Since Beason‘s video description is so short, it leaves plenty of room for her to list other important information, and that’s what she does.

As viewers read through the description, they‘ll find information about further learning, additional resources, Beason’s equipment, and free guides.

Even better, it’s all neatly organized into sections.

9. “The Roadmap To Making Your First $1M In SaaS (How I Did It)” by Alex Heiden

Alex Heiden‘s video documents part of his journey of trying to profit off B2B SaaS. The video’s description details how he organizes his goals and the tools he uses.

Why I Love It

Heiden‘s description is detailed in summarizing the video’s point. He has included chapters, which are great for SEO and helps YouTube rank the video higher in search results.

10. “Easiest Online Business To Make $100,000+ In 2024” by Jensen Tung

Jensen Tung‘s video discusses the easiest online business to start to make $100,000. The video’s title is self-explanatory, so it’s not as necessary for Tung to have the video summary at the top of the description.

So, he moved it toward the bottom and used the rest of the space to provide information on his gear, newsletter, crucial links, and other endeavors.

Why I Love It

Tung prioritizes the most important information in his video description, and, in this case, it‘s not the video’s summary — it’s the links and information to his other projects that views may not have been able to find as easily otherwise.

YouTube Video Description Templates

A YouTube video description is descriptive text that includes but is not limited to keywords, themes, and special concepts/guests that the content creator wants their viewers to know.

The YouTube video description increases visibility through SEO, views, and subscriptions. In each video description, the content creator will encourage their viewers to “Like,” “Share,” and “Subscribe” to their content.

An effective video description will be persuasive and informative, prompting the audience to tune in regularly.

1. Simple YouTube Video Description Template

Rather than writing a lengthy summary of your video, keep your descriptions detailed enough to let the viewer know what to expect, yet concise enough so they don’t lose interest.

Listen to how our CEO explains the difference between X and Y, and learn best practices for implementing your own strategy.

Learn more about X and Y in our course: [course link].

2. Social Media YouTube Video Description Template

You can use a YouTube channel description like this one to help new viewers connect with you on your other channels and social media platforms:

Hi there! New to [name of channel]? If so, here’s what you need to know: I like [interests related to channel] a LOT, so I use this channel to explore X, Y, and Z to help you [desired result for viewer].

Where else you can find me:

INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/[accountname]

TWITTER: http://twitter.com/[accountname]

LIFESTYLE CHANNEL: http://www.youtube.com/[accountname]

Join our growing community for new videos every Tuesday and Friday!

BUSINESS INQUIRIES

Please contact [PR representative] at [email or phone number].

3. Search-Friendly YouTube Video Description Template

YouTube increases visibility within keyword searches and relevant content. As a result, videos should have buzzwords in video and channel descriptions.

If you want to craft a description that explains what your video is about and incorporates a keyword description, try this:

Hey there! This lesson is part of a free online course. Take the full course here: www.company.com/course1.

Some people are unsure what X is — at its most basic, X is [brief definition of keyword]. In this video, you‘ll learn how to X, Y, and Z, to ensure you’re able to grow your brand online.

In addition, we’ll explain how you can avoid doing A. Sometimes, A is all it takes to lose a customer.

4. Teaser YouTube Video Description Template.

Use your video descriptions as an opportunity to let your viewers know when to expect new content from you, like this template:

Join the “musical nerds” on a mission to improve our musical understanding. We upload every Wednesday and Thursday. We will have Q&A sessions to answer all of your beginner questions on Wednesdays starting next week.

5. Transparent YouTube Video Description Template

Transparency is key to gaining the trust of your audience. This template is an excellent example of how to let your viewers know when you are using affiliate links in your descriptions.

What‘s up, guys? In this video, we’ll talk about an everyday makeup look you can do in 10 minutes. I‘m not an early riser, but just like anyone, I still want to look good for the day. I’ll list the products I used in this video.

Please subscribe if you are feeling my vibe. I post content weekly, and you can always find me on Insta! I’ll drop my social media handles below.

**All opinions are my own. This video isn‘t sponsored. I’m sent products for my consideration, and I earn a small percentage from sales through affiliated links. Clicking on affiliated links doesn’t cost you anything.**

6. Engaging YouTube Video Description Template

Engaging with your audience is essential for building community with them. Here, this description encourages viewers to leave suggestions in the comments section to be featured in future videos.

Hi, everyone! We‘re the Science Kidz! Today, we are experimenting to find out which popcorn brand leaves behind the least number of kernels. Will it be Orville Redenbacher’s or Act II?

Every week, we do a new experiment as part of our initiative to highlight STEM careers in Savannah, Georgia. If you have an experiment you want to see The Science Kidz try, leave a comment below. You never know — we could pick yours!

Follow me on Instagram for more experiment ideas, and tag us in some of the experiments you do with your friends!

7. Sponsored YouTube Video Description Templates

Disclosing paid sponsorships or product placements doesn‘t have to be super jargon-heavy. A template like this can help you be candid with your audience without straying from your brand’s voice and sounding like a robot.

Hey, y‘all! Today, we’ll be rebuilding a 454 Chevy Big Block motor. We‘ll be adding 200 horses to bring the motor up to 680 horsepower. I hope y’all are ready to dive into business with Motor Boyz.

This episode is sponsored by Husky tools, and we’ll be using their latest impact and driver tools to rebuild the 454. We would like to thank Anderson Auto for donating the 1972 C10 to be our frame once the motor is rebuilt and completed.

1. Use templates.

Once you have your brand voice down, create a template for your video descriptions to help save you time when uploading. If you’re having trouble making a template on your own, use HubSpot’s YouTube templates to get some inspiration.

2. Be clear and concise.

When writing a description for a YouTube video, you should aim for simplicity. Make sure all the essential information is above the fold. That way, you can ensure potential viewers know what your video is about as they search for what they need.

3. Connect with subscribers.

Use your YouTube descriptions to help new viewers connect with you on your other channels and social media platforms. In doing this, you can increase your cross-promote content more easily and boost engagement and discoverability.

Just make sure to put your social media links toward the end of your descriptions since there are more important details to keep above the fold.

4. Create a niche.

Whether you‘re writing a description for your channel or a video, you’ll want to define your niche. Start by introducing yourself or your brand, then highlight what you offer and what makes you unique.

Be sure to incorporate relevant keywords used to search for content in your niche so your target audience has a better chance of finding you.

5. Show your journey.

You may want to create a channel description asking viewers to join you on a journey you document on your YouTube channel. For instance, if your YouTube channel focuses on streaming video game content, you may invite subscribers to watch you as you attempt to win the game.

Therefore, mentioning a goal for your channel can help you gain new subscribers eager to come along for the ride as you pursue a goal.

6. Be more personal.

Create a sense of community with your channel by being more personal with your audience. When writing your descriptions, consider including personal touches, such as telling a story, using relatable language, or speaking directly to the viewer.

By offering an emotional appeal, you and your content will come off as more authentic, helping you create a stronger connection with your subscribers.

7. Create anticipation for new content.

A content creator must build excitement for the next video — a sense of urgency and anticipation for their audience. A YouTuber can create giveaways, conduct polls, and invite special guests to participate in the videos to maintain the channel’s success.

8. Make it search-friendly.

We have all done it: Having parts of an idea and hoping Google will fill in the blanks by completing the search with the rest of our thoughts.

As a content creator, you need to own each video’s related tag, including misspellings, to help refine the content under your channel. The YouTube videos must be centered around keywords, maximizing your SEO for Google and YouTube searches.

9. Lead viewers to other resources.

When crafting your descriptions, consider linking to related content that viewers might find interesting or helpful. For example, if you have a blog, you can link to a blog post that goes more in-depth on the topic you’re discussing. This will help provide additional context to the viewer and bring more traffic to your website.

10. Incorporate keywords.

Use keywords in your descriptions to increase the visibility of your YouTube channel and videos. In order to determine which keywords you should target, you‘ll need to conduct keyword research.

When crafting your description, don’t repeat the same keywords too much. Instead, insert them in a way that sounds natural. This will keep it easy to read and help you avoid keyword stuffing.

11. Tease a new initiative.

A new video is upcoming, and you need to send a teaser to your audience that will create buzz leading up to the release of the latest content. A video teaser can be uploaded to YouTube Shorts to increase anticipation.

12. Be transparent.

Authenticity sells. Viewers know when you aren‘t being transparent with them, so just be honest. If you have affiliate partners, gifted products, or sponsorships, don’t try to hide it.

Be honest with your viewers and write a disclaimer in your description.

As a YouTuber, engaging with your audience and building their trust is essential. If you lose that trust, it can be hard to win it back.

13. Maintain engagement.

Keeping your audience engaged is crucial for getting them to return for more content. When writing your video description, use a strong hook that grabs your audience’s attention and makes them want to watch.

Be sure to break down the video into sections and include timestamps for each one. This allows viewers to jump to specific parts of the video so they remain interested.

14. Plug your products.

Any time you mention or use one of your products or services in a video, you should always include a link in your description. Doing this prompts the audience to try your product or service for themselves.

Offering a discount code may also encourage potential customers to leap.

15. Test out different formats.

If your videos aren’t reaching your expectations, try experimenting with different description formats and templates.

Maybe your descriptions are too long, and they get cut off on certain devices, or perhaps there are better keywords you can optimize for. Testing out different descriptions will help give you a better idea of what works best for your brand.

Download these YouTube description templates and help your video go viral.

These must-have YouTube video and channel description templates can help you reduce the time it takes to upload and optimize your YouTube videos, getting them out to your audience quickly and with less effort.

Be sure to customize the text to enhance the reading experience because you want to be as helpful as possible for your audience.

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

I was one of those Zillennials who avoided getting started on TikTok for as long as possible. It’s not that I don’t love social media — trust me, I do. It just took me a long time to accept that TikTok, unlike Vine, was here to stay.

I was one of those Zillennials who avoided getting started on TikTok for as long as possible. It’s not that I don’t love social media — trust me, I do. It just took me a long time to accept that TikTok, unlike Vine, was here to stay.

Unfortunately, my opinion has changed, and it has therefore taken me double the usual time to write this post because I’ve had to spend so much of it on TikTok, which inherently leads to distraction (don’t worry, I got there in the end).

TikTok had 1.5 billion monthly active users in 2023 and is anticipated to have 1.8 billion users by the end of 2024.

For comparison, according to data from a 2024 Kepios study, TikTok is the 4th largest social media platform by monthly active users. Facebook has more than 3 billion, YouTube has more than 2.5 billion, and Instagram has 2 billion.

To state the obvious, TikTok is dominating the social media landscape as a gold mine of short, snackable content. While that sounds exciting — how can you get started?

I’ve included a few steps, with photos, to walk you through setting up your profile, filming your first video, adding special effects, and using challenges or duets to engage with other users.

You’ll also get a crash course on growing your audience and tracking analytics to ensure you’re creating content that reaches and resonates with the right people.

Table of Contents

• How to Use TikTok
• How to Set Up Your TikTok Account
• Finding Videos and Engaging with Users
• How to Post on TikTok
• Using TikTok Analytics
• How to Grow Your TikTok Audience

How to Use TikTok

The first thing that initially turned me off from TikTok was that I thought of it as a glorified Instagram, except that I couldn’t even post flattering photos of myself!

So, what was the point?

What I’ve learned over time is that TikTok has many use cases — whether you are an individual social media user or a business. Below are three examples of ways you can utilize TikTok for work or fun.

1. Search for advice or information on just about any topic.

Recently, I went to Los Angeles for a Nickelodeon business trip, and I was staying in Santa Monica. One morning, I desperately craved an infamous LA breakfast burrito.

I checked Google Maps and was met with an endless slew of options near me. How was I to decide?

I immediately opened TikTok and searched “breakfast burrito santa monica” and was met with dozens of local recommendations sharing their favorite tried-and-tested spots.

After watching four TikToks, I settled on Alfalfa, as it had the most positive reviews and was the closest to my hotel. Within 20 minutes, I had a delicious Ancho Potato breakfast burrito in hand and a smile on my face.

This is a perfect example of how you can use TikTok to quickly gain information about a niche topic. I could have searched “best breakfast burrito Santa Monica” on Google, but I’d probably have been met with several sponsored ads and conflicting professional opinions.

Sometimes, you just want advice from a regular, local person whom you can wholeheartedly trust.

2. Keep up with current trends.

As a 27-year-old woman, I’m told I should always be “in the know.” However, I still find myself, at times, behind on the latest trend.

Whether it be that viral overnight Korean face mask or U.S. women’s rugby player Ilona Maher’s hilarious Olympics content, social media allows for a constant turnover in content that can make it feel impossible to stay informed.

However, one of the best parts about TikTok is how easy it is to discover what’s trending. Your “For You Page” (also known as FYP) easily analyzes what you’re interested in and targets you with relevant content. While this may be worrisome for some people, it does make it a lot easier to curate the content you view.

You can also easily search for trends by name in TikTok if you hear or see something mentioned that you are unfamiliar with. This can help you discover videos featuring or describing the trend.

3. Create content to help grow your following.

While TikTok has many helpful uses simply as a user, you can gain even more opportunities as a creator. I will dive more deeply into this later, but one of the best ways to use TikTok is to create content that can reach your target audience and help grow your following.

Participating in trends and challenges is a great way to make engaging content, but there are other strategies you can employ, such as consistently posting and using the correct hashtags and collaborating with other creators or brands.

For instance, one of my favorite recipe developer creators, Justine Doironm, recently posted a greeny tahini egg salad sandwich recipe on TikTok that was a paid partnership with Vital Farms, a company that ethically sources eggs, butter, and ghee.

Now that you’ve read three ways you can use TikTok — beyond mindless scrolling — you may be ready to finally give the popular social media platform a shot. If so, read on for a step-by-step guide on setting up an account.

How to Set Up Your TikTok Account

1. Download the app and sign up.

First, I went to the App Store to download TikTok (non-Apple users can go to Google Play). While I already have a personal TikTok, I walked through the motions of setting up a new test one for this post.

While I was given the option to instantly sign up with Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter, I decided to sign up by adding a username and password so that my other accounts would not be connected.

After confirming my account login information, I was brought to a screen that instructed me to select my interests. This is how TikTok can begin curating videos.

2. Set up your profile.

Once logged in, I was immediately shown a feed of videos that were curated by my selected interests, I’ll explain more about how this works in step three.

To edit my profile, I tapped the icon in the lower right corner of the screen that looks like a person’s outline,

There, I then tapped the “Edit profile” button, to select a profile photo or video. This is also where I could add username and bio information.

If I so chose, I could link to my Youtube and Instagram pages to show off my other social media profiles.

If you’re a business, this could be a helpful way to advertise your other visual platforms. Upgrade your profile to a business account if you want to market your business on TikTok.

This is a smart idea since 61% of marketers use TikTok for influencer marketing initiatives.

To do this, go to your profile and tap the horizontal lines at the top right corner of the screen. Then tap Setting and Privacy, tap Account, and tap Switch to Business Account.

You‘ll have access to TikTok’s full range of downloadable analytics with a business account. With a personal profile, you’ll only have in-app access.

You cannot set your business profile to private. However, I have the option to set my personal account to private. After tapping Settings and Privacy, I would tap Privacy and toggle the Private account tab.

Finding Videos and Engaging with Users

3. View your video feed.

Now that I’ve set up my profile, I toggled back to the Home tab by clicking the “Home” button in the bottom left corner.

Think of this like your X feed, but where the video is the primary content. Since I’m not following anyone on my new test TikTok, the app sends me random trending videos rather than any content created by accounts I follow.

As I begin following and interacting with more people, my feed will become more personalized to my interests and the accounts I follow.

4. Like, comment, or share videos you enjoy.

When I find a video I like, I can tap the heart to like it or the speech bubble to comment on it.

To share the video, I would press the forward sign underneath the comment symbol to see my sharing options. These symbols are all located along the right side of the video.

If I like a video and want to see if the user has more posts I might enjoy, I can swipe left to toggle to their profile.

5. Search for videos.

To access the app’s search area, I can click the magnifying glass at the top right corner of the screen. On this tab, I can search for accounts or videos or look at the terms and names below the search bar to see videos by trending topic.

For instance, when I wrote this post, the Paris 2024 Olympics were in full swing. Thus, you will see that all my trending topics are related to the Olympics.

6. Organize your saved videos with Collections.

Once I start “liking” videos, I have the option to rewatch them under my Saved tab. The Saved tab can get messy quickly, so I love to organize my favorite videos by category — or, as they’re referred to on TikTok, Collections.

To access Collections, I can click on the bookmark icon below the comment icon and press “Manage” to start a collection. Afterward, I can name my collections to keep them in order.

On my personal TikTok, I have categorized some of my favorite saved posts by recipes, skincare, books, fitness, and comedy.

I haven’t done this, but you can also create a collection of your favorite sounds, effects, and hashtags, which is helpful to pull from for future videos.

7. Follow users.

Once I want to start keeping up with people on TikTok on my new account — whether they be my favorite brand, popular content creators, or my best friend — I can follow them by pressing the icon with their profile picture and a plus sign.

I can specifically search TikTok accounts or people I want to follow in the search bar and then press the “Users” filter.

8. Share your TikTok using TikCode.

Now that I’ve edited all the settings on my new TikTok, it’s time to share it far and wide (although it’s also perfectly acceptable to want to hide behind an anonymous TikTok account, too!).

One of the easiest ways to do so is with a TikCode.

A TikCode is a QR code unique to my profile that others can use to access my profile quickly. It’s an ideal option if I run into an adoring fan in person who wants to follow me (kidding).

To find my TikCode, I can go to my profile and click the three horizontal lines in the top right corner of the screen. There, I can click “My QR code,” which opens my unique code.

What I like: Your brand’s QR code can be placed on your merchandise, storefronts, menus, etc., to make it easy for consumers to find your business TikTok.

How to Post on TikTok

9. Set up your shot and pick out special effects.

It’s time for me to create my first video! To do this, I can tap the plus sign tab at the bottom center of my screen to enter the camera.

The app automatically brings me to the Photo setting, but since I want to make a video, I can toggle between the 15s, 60s, and 10m options directly above the shutter button.

Once I’ve chosen my preferred length, I can look to the top right side of the screen to see icons for the following:

• Flip: Flip between the front and back cameras.
• Flash: Select if I want to use the flash during your shot.
• Timer: I can set an auto-record countdown to film hands-free.
• Retouch: A filter that can hide blemishes and smooth out my skin.
• Filters: This lets me change the color and aesthetic filters of the camera.
• Speed: I can record my video in slow motion or speed it up (which is a great option for longer videos).
• Voice: I can add a voice effect to the video.

At the bottom of the screen, I can see the Camera and Template tabs. The camera allows me to record a video or take a photo, and templates offer premade combinations of music and effects to make my video pop.

Sounds and Effects

On the top center of the camera screen, there is a music note icon with “Add Sound” next to it. I can tap this to choose the song or sound effect I want to overlay on my video.

On the bottom of the camera, there is an Effects icon to the left and an Upload button to the right if I would rather use videos I’ve already recorded outside of the app.

Pro tip: If you have a business account, you’ll only have access to sounds that are pre-cleared for commercial use.

When I tap the Effects button, I can see a massive lineup of AR filters and other special effects that can augment my face or surroundings.

This is also where I can pick out a video overlay-styled filter here, like the Pink Love Pink butterfly effect I added below.

10. Record the video.

Now that I’ve added all my necessary effects and filters, I’m ready to record. To begin, I will press and hold the red record button.

I can record my video all at once, which I like to do when I’m telling one cohesive story, or in pieces, which is great when I’m traveling and want to compile several shots into a compilation video.

If I wanted to fit different shots in each video or record it in pieces, I can hold the record button for each segment, then let go, and press and hold it again when I’m ready for my next shot.

If I’d rather not hold down the record button the entire time, I can set up a timer before entering record mode. The timer would give me time to prop up my phone and pose in front of it before it starts automatically recording.

11. Make final edits and add a caption to the video.

After recording the video, I can still add a musical overlay, filters, and other primary special effects. This is also when I can add stickers and text overlays on top of the video.

When I’m done, I can press Next, which directs me to a page similar to Instagram’s post page, where I can add a caption, relevant hashtags, location, links, and more.

This is also where I would set the video’s privacy, turn comments on or off, edit the cover photo, and allow duets or reactions.

If I’m not ready to post yet, I can press the Drafts button at the bottom left to save it for later.

12. Duet with other users.

Sometimes, I’ll see a musical post that I love so much, I want to join in with the person who made it. After all, I’ve been a trained singer since age 7!

Luckily, TikTok allows users to reply with a Duet video. Many users nowadays even create videos that are specifically meant to be duetted.

Duets aren’t just for songs anymore, though. I can duet any type of video I like if I want to comment on it or infuse my own humor and personality into it.

To use this former Musical.ly feature, I would find a video I want to duet with, press the Share button to see sharing options, then press the “Duet” option on the bottom row in the center.

My camera screen will then appear next to the video. I can change the positioning of my camera in the duet by clicking different templates. From there, I would press record and sing along, dance, comment on, or mimic the video I’m duetting.

To show you what a finished product looks like, here’s a great example from Gordon Ramsay.

If I post a video and don’t want anyone to duet with me, I can tap the “Duet/React Off” button on the Post page before publishing.

Best for: The Duet feature is an excellent way to participate in viral challenges, encourage audiences to interact with your brand, partner with influencers, or answer questions about your product or service.

13. Participate in a challenge.

Like other social media platforms, I occasionally see videos with hashtags for “challenges.”

A challenge is when a video post, company, or person encourages users to film themselves doing something oddly specific — like the 12345678 challenge.

Participants then film themselves doing the action and hashtag the challenge name in their post captions.

There usually are no winners in a TikTok challenge, but hashtagging it could help me get more followers or views as people might find my video when searching the hashtag.

I also think it’s an easy way for brands to show they’re culturally relevant and have a playful side, which can be refreshing for consumers to see.

Using TikTok Analytics

14. Track post insights.

TikTok provides analytics for creators that can help me understand how my content is performing on the platform with insights such as video views, follower demographics, likes, and comments.

This information can help me understand who my audience is and accordingly create content that will target that audience and improve my analytics.

To access this feature on TikTok, I can go to my profile and tap the horizontal lines at the top right corner of the screen.

There, I click “TikTok Studio” to access all the creator tools, including Analytics, Creator Rewards Program, TikTok Shop for Sellers, Artist Hub, and more.

Under Analytics, I can click the “Get Started” button. Then, tap “Turn On” to allow TikTok to begin tracking my insights.

Since I haven’t yet posted a video on my new test TikTok account, it informs me that I need to post at least one video before accessing analytics.

Pro tip: You can consult the TikTok for Business Starter Guide, which is a personalized guide that can help your brand produce the strongest custom content for your goals and audience.

15. Use an external analytics tool.

If I want to double-check my numbers on a second platform, I could also use a tool outside of TikTok to track analytics.

I personally prefer Sprout Social, which is a powerful social media management tool that allows users to automate engagement tactics, plan social publishing, track analytics, perform social listening, expand reach, and manage influencer marketing campaigns.

Other popular tools include Socialinsider, Pentos, and Exolyt.

I would recommend these tools more for businesses who want to manage their TikTok posts, campaigns, and influencer strategies, rather than for individual creators wanting to track their own insights.

For creators, TikTok Analytics will likely be the easiest and best option.

How to Grow Your TikTok Audience

16. Understand who your audience is.

If your business does any form of marketing, you already know that one of the most important parts of marketing your brand is marketing it to the right people.

The same goes for TikTok.

In such a crowded marketplace, it’s vital you’re posting content that resonates with your audience and leads to higher engagement from them. Which is already more possible on TikTok, since it’s the social platform with the highest engagement at a rate of 2.65% per follower count.

For instance, one of the main types of brands I follow on TikTok are skincare brands, including Laneige.

Back in 2020, Laneige wanted to reach Gen Z customers in a highly competitive skincare market. After all, as of 2024, 43.7% of all TikTok users are between ages 18-24, and current Gen Z individuals are between ages 12-27.

The brand used a Branded Hashtag Challenge on TikTok to build product awareness and share its skin hydration values.

The Branded Effect allowed users to see on TikTok what their skin could look like before — dull and dry — and after applying Laneige — radiant and hydrated.

This helped pave the way for the #ThirstForLife Branded Hashtag Challenge campaign, which resulted in 25 million video views across 9.5K video submissions, including this one.

Laneige understood who their target audience was and created a filter and challenge on TikTok that they knew would appeal to that Gen Z audience in a natural way. After all, there’s nothing I hate more than dry skin!

17. Partner with influencers or celebrities.

A great way to grow your brand’s audience on TikTok is by collaborating with people who already have a bigger audience.

While you’ll likely need to invest a pretty penny into the collaboration — the exact amount will depend on their level of celebrity — it can be an investment worth spending.

Returning to my Laneige example, the brand announced Sydney Sweeney as its official global ambassador in January 2024. Julien Bouzitat, brand general manager for Laneige US, explained how influential the partnership was in a press release:

“A great example of the magnitude of our partnership with Sydney would be our social follower growth. Since the first announcement of Sydney as our U.S. ambassador in spring 2022, we experienced an immediate 227% surge in TikTok followers and 53% growth in Instagram followers.”

According to the press release, one behind-the-scenes video of Sydney on a LANEIGE production set went viral “three times over, accumulating 72 million views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. That’s the type of influence and reach Sydney has.”

18. Collaborate with other brands.

Partnering with other brands is a great way to make money on social media, as well as grow your following.

You could consider partnering with brands within the same industry, which would likely ensure you’re targeting the right audience while building a strong relationship with an otherwise competitor.

Alternatively, you could partner with a brand in a different industry and come together for a special collab product or service that would help bridge your audiences and produce a surprise-and-delight effect.

Two of my absolute favorite brands recently partnered for a fun summer collaboration that had the comments section in buzz.

Fishwife, a woman-owned premium tinned fish brand, and Lisa Says Gah, a woman-owned independent clothing boutique collaborated on a limited-edition tinned fish, Fishwife-inspired t-shirt, nail sticker sheet, and jewelry.

While it may seem strange how a tinned fish company and a clothing boutique could possibly come together, the comments included sentiments such as “The most incredible collab,” “WHAT A COLLABBBB,” and “OBSESSED.”

92% of TikTok users take action after watching a video on the platform, which means there is a lot of actionable value in creating the right content for the right audience.

TikTok on Lock

As a late bloomer to the platform, I can completely relate to the intimidation of getting started on TikTok.

While it has many features and tools that can come across as complicated, they actually provide you with even more opportunities for strong content creation and connection with users.

Here are some of my best tips and tricks for navigating TikTok:

• Use TikTok to build brand awareness and introduce your business to users thanks to TikTok Shop. After all, 30% of daily TikTok users have engaged with TikTok Shop, and 71.2% of TikTop Shop users have made a purchase after viewing a product in their feed.
• Have fun with special effects. There are many ways to spice up your video, and audiences on TikTok expect it. So, play around and experiment with them.
• Embrace the music. Most videos on the platform have a song or sound effect in the background.
• Film a few videos with multiple shots at different angles. This will make the video feel more active and engaging.
• Feel free to show a lighter side or a sense of humor. People come to this platform to be entertained, and comedy can go a long way.
• Use trendy hashtags and try out a challenge video. Then, include relevant hashtags in your post caption so your video shows up when people search for it.
• Remember that users’ attention spans are short, and stick to multiple shorter videos rather than a couple longer ones.
• Continue to watch videos on your FYP and search for new videos. This can help you see what other brands and creators are doing and spark inspiration for your strategy.

Most of all, be open to change. TikTok is a constantly evolving platform, and the best way to use it is to be willing to follow the changes.

That shows your audience you’re willing to continuously adapt to their interests and stay relevant, which is the best thing you can hope for from a business you trust.

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

I‘m pretty sure I’ve said this in a few blog posts already, so if you‘ve heard this from me before, I apologize, but it’s true: In addition to being a blogger, I‘m in charge of curating and sending out HubSpot’s Marketing Blog newsletter.

I‘m pretty sure I’ve said this in a few blog posts already, so if you‘ve heard this from me before, I apologize, but it’s true: In addition to being a blogger, I‘m in charge of curating and sending out HubSpot’s Marketing Blog newsletter.

So, I know a thing or two about email marketing and that, when done correctly, it’s as powerful as any other marketing tactic today. But notice the key phrase: done correctly. 

Fortunately, I’ve created this handy dandy guide you’re about to read that will set you up for success in your email marketing strategy.

I’ll review the best ways to leverage email marketing, and benefits and statistics that show the importance of email (in case you need extra convincing).

Let’s dig in. 

What is email marketing?

Getting Started with Email Marketing

How to Send Marketing Emails

Email Regulations You Should Know

Email Marketing Tips

The goal is building customer relationships, promoting products or services, increasing brand awareness, and ultimately driving sales.

In my experience, email marketing allows me to reach my target audience directly with personalized and relevant content. It’s also cost-effective, easy to track, and provides valuable data for analyzing campaign success.

Marketers have been using email as a channel for almost as long as they’ve been using the internet. The first marketing email was sent in 1978, resulting in $13 million in sales.

Email has been one of the most highly used marketing channels ever since.

This is because email is a flexible yet cost-effective way to reach many people relatively quickly. I can also personalize my message to target specific audiences and generate leads.

Email marketing can take many different forms. These campaigns can include a single email announcing new content, an ongoing newsletter delivered regularly, or contacting customers about product updates.

Email isn’t as shiny as newer channels, like messaging and social. However, email is an effective way to build an audience that gets results.

“One of my favorite parts about email marketing is its intimacy,” says Rob Litterst, head of strategy and operations for HubSpot’s Newsletter Network.

“Access to someone‘s inbox is sacred, and for a person to welcome you in, there’s already a certain level of trust that you just can’t achieve with other platforms,” he says.

Master the fundamentals of email marketing with a free online course.

When to Use Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a powerful tactic to:

• Build relationships. Build connections through personalized engagement.
• Boost brand awareness. Keep your company and your services top-of-mind for the moment when your prospects are ready to engage.
• Promote your content. Use email to share relevant blog content or valuable assets with your prospects.
• Generate leads. Entice subscribers to provide their personal information in exchange for an asset that they’d find valuable.
• Market your products. Promote your products and services.
• Nurture leads. Delight your customers with content that can help them succeed in their goals.

Email Marketing Benefits

• 87% of marketers say that email marketing is critical to business success.
• Email marketing is the second-most leveraged channel among marketers.
• Email is the third most popular owned media platform B2B marketers used to distribute content in the past 12 months.
• There are over 4.3 billion email users worldwide, so if you’re looking for a way to reach your customers, email is the perfect place to find them.
• The number of global email users is set to grow to 4.48 billion users by 2024.
• As of 2022, email generates $36 for every dollar spent.
• 51% of marketers say email marketing is the most effective marketing channel, according to our Marketing Trends survey.
• 53% of marketers are continuing to invest in email marketing in 2023.
• 33% are increasing their investment in email marketing in 2023.
• 33% of marketers send weekly emails, and 26% send emails multiple times monthly.

Beyond just the statistics, perhaps the best reason to use email marketing is that you own the channel. Outside of compliance regulations, no external entity can impact how, when, or why you reach out to your subscribers.

Time and time again, email proves to be an unsung hero in marketing.

While it’s the second-most used marketing channel (beat by social media), a whopping 95% of email marketers call it practical,” says Pamela Bump, head of content growth at HubSpot.

“For HubSpot — and our blog team — we’ve deeply leveraged email and even catered blog posts to our very subscribers,” she says. “Over the years, this has driven high ROI, millions of page views, countless conversions, and even customers.”

Still have doubts? Consider this:

Email marketing has an impressive ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. Furthermore, email marketing revenue is expected to exceed $13 billion by 2025, according to Statista.

In addition to boosting revenue, marketing emails can also boost traffic to your website. I know this from personal experience.

As I mentioned earlier, I run the marketing blog email newsletter. One of my responsibilities is to monitor the traffic our blog content generates.

So, I personally noticed that blog posts bring in significantly more traffic when they’re included in our email marketing newsletter.

Email Marketing Stats by Industry

Email marketing rules change based on your industry and who you’re marketing to. Below are some email marketing trends for B2B, B2C, e-commerce, and real estate companies that can inform your email marketing strategy.

Email Marketing Stats for B2B

• Email is the third-highest owned-media platform B2B marketers used to distribute content in the last 12 months.
• 44% of B2B marketers say email marketing is the most effective marketing channel.
• B2B marketers say email engagement is the fourth most insightful metric when evaluating performance over the past year, more than social media, search rankings, and lead quality.

Email Marketing Stats for B2C

• 50% of B2C marketers say growing their email list is one of the biggest challenges in their role.
• 37% of B2C marketers send daily marketing emails to their subscribers.

Email Marketing Stats for Ecommerce

• 57.2% of marketers say the e-commerce brands they manage have 1,000 to 10,000 contacts on their email lists.
• 85.7% of e-commerce marketers say the primary business objective of their email strategy is increasing brand awareness.
• Roughly 72% of e-commerce marketers say the biggest challenge they face with email is low open rates.

Getting Started with Email Marketing

I know it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the vast possibilities of email marketing, so let’s break down a few key steps to get you started building a solid email campaign that will delight your customers.

You can think of these steps as creating a successful email marketing strategy.

1. Create an Email Marketing Strategy

You can learn how to build an effective email strategy and send emails that people actually want to read. It just takes a plan (one that can be broken down into a few key steps).

Think of the following five steps as an outline for your email strategy. We’ll dive deeper into some of these in a moment.

2. Define your audience.

Effective emails, whether a campaign or a one-off, start with understanding your audience.

Like everything else in marketing, start with your buyer persona, understand what pain points they’re dealing with, and tailor your email campaign to your audience’s needs. To better utilize & understand more about the defined audience, use HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics software.

3. Establish your goals.

Usually, before I think up campaign goals, I gather some context.

I always want to know the average email stats for my industry and use them as benchmarks for my goals. This should be your process as well.

As you can see, these benchmarks vary greatly. Using this guide will help you create realistic goals for your team.

4. Build your email list.

You need people to email, right? An email list (we’ll cover how to build your email list in the next section) is a group of users who have permitted you to send them relevant content.

To build that list, you need several ways for prospects to opt-in to receive your emails which we’ll cover in another section in just a moment.

Don’t be discouraged if you only have a few people on your list. It can take some time to build. In the meantime, treat every subscriber and lead like gold, and you’ll start seeing your email list grow organically.

5. Choose an email campaign type.

Email campaigns vary, and trying to decide between them can be overwhelming. Do you send a weekly newsletter? Should you send out new product announcements? Which blog posts are worth sharing?

The answer is subjective, but I recommend starting by understanding the different types of email campaigns (here are some excellent ones). For example, there are:

• Promotional emails, which focus on getting the word out about your offers 
• Regularly scheduled newsletters that keep recipients updated on your business, promotions, events, etc. 
• Customer journey emails, like welcome emails to greet new customers or milestone emails to congratulate people on their length of relationships with your company
• Transactional emails that outline recent transactions, order updates, or abandoned cart notifications
• Nurturing emails that push your potential customers further down the buyer’s journey with relevant and interesting information 
• Surveys and questionnaires that collect helpful data from email recipients
• Re-engagement emails that build renewed interest from customers or leads you haven’t heard from in a while

Then, based on your email marketing goals, you decide what works best for your audience.

You don’t have to choose just one type. you can set up different lists for different types of emails so customers and prospects can sign up for and receive relevant emails. 

Pro Tip: Need help writing your emails? I recommend Campaign Assistant, HubSpot’s generative AI tool that helps you quickly write effective marketing email copy that aligns with your campaigns.

6. Make a schedule.

Decide how often you plan to contact your list and inform your audience upfront.

This way, they’ll know exactly what to expect ahead of time. Forgetting this can lead to high unsubscribe lists and even get you in their spam.

In addition, once you set a schedule, be consistent. It will build trust and ensure you stay top of mind for your audience.

7. Measure your results.

This should come as no surprise. As marketers, we measure everything. Being meticulous about every key metric will help you make small changes to your emails, yielding large results.

I’ll dive deeper into the exact KPIs to monitor further on, but marketers told us that the most important email marketing metrics to track are clickthrough rate, open rate, and leads/conversions from email. 

Now that you understand the steps to creating an email marketing strategy, we‘ll look at what’s involved in building your email list.

8. Choose an email marketing platform.

An email marketing provider (ESP) is an excellent resource if you’re looking for any support while fine-tuning your email marketing efforts.

Depending on your needs and types of campaigns, there are several paid and free email marketing platforms including HubSpot, Constant Contact, MailChimp or other Mailchimp alternatives.

For example, HubSpot’s Email Marketing tool allows me to efficiently create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails that feel and look professional without designers or IT.

There are a variety of features to help me create the best email marketing campaigns and support all of my email marketing goals.

Additionally, I can analyze the success of my email marketing so I can share the data that matters most to my business with my team. The best part? HubSpot’s Email Marketing service is available for free.

Start using HubSpot’s Email Marketing Service for free.

Here are examples of features services like HubSpot offer to consider when choosing an email service provider:

• CRM platform with segmentation capabilities
• Good standing with Internet Service Providers
• A positive reputation as an email service provider (ESP)
• Easy-to-build forms, landing pages, and CTAs
• Automation
• Simple ways to comply with email regulations
• Ability to split test your emails
• Built-in analytics
• Downloadable reports

9. Build Your Email List

Now to my favorite part: filling the email list with eager prospects excited to hear from you.

There are many creative ways to build your email list (and, no, purchasing emails ain’t one).

Tactically speaking, list building comes down to two key elements that work cohesively to grow your subscriber numbers: lead magnets and opt-in forms.

Featured Resources

• The Email Newsletter Lookbook
• How to Create Email Newsletters That Don’t Suck

Here’s how I build and grow my email list.

10. Use lead magnets.

Your lead magnet is exactly as it sounds: It attracts prospects to your email list, usually as a free offer.

The offer can take many formats, should be valuable to your prospects, and is given away for free in exchange for an email address.

There’s just one problem: People have become hyper-protective of their personal information. You can’t expect to receive an email address without exchanging it for something valuable.

Think about a lead magnet that is relevant, useful, and makes your prospects’ lives easier.

Here are a few types of lead magnets you could create:

• Ebooks.
• Whitepapers.
• Infographics.
• Reports or studies.
• Checklists.
• Templates.
• Webinars or courses.
• Tools.

If you’re short on resources, you can even repurpose existing content to create lead magnets.

11. Create an enticing opt-in form.

Your opt-in form is how you get a prospect’s information to add them to your list.

It’s the gate between your future leads and the incredible asset you created with them in mind.

Here are some tips for creating an enticing opt-in form:

Create an attractive design and attention-grabbing header.

Your form should be branded, stand out from the page, and entice people to sign up. You want to excite readers with the offer.

Make the copy relevant to the offer.

While your goal is to get people to enter their information, it isn’t to deceive them. Any information on your form should be a truthful representation of the offer.

Keep the form simple.

This could be one of your first interactions with your prospect. Don’t scare them away with a long long-form several fields.

Ask for only the most essential information: first name and email is a good place to start.

Set your opt-in form for double confirmation.

It may seem counterproductive to ask your subscribers to opt into your emails twice, but some research on open rates suggests that customers may prefer a confirmed opt-in (COI) email more than a welcome email.

Ensure that the flow works.

Take yourself through the user experience before you go live. Double-check that the form works as intended, the thank you page is live, and your offer is delivered as promised.

This is one of your first impressions of your new lead — make it a professional and positive one.

Next, let’s take a moment to cover some universally accepted email marketing best practices regarding how to send marketing emails.

If all goes well, you’ll have built a robust list of subscribers and leads waiting to hear from you. But you can’t start emailing just yet unless you want to end up in a spam folder, or worse, a blocked list.

Here are a few important things to remember before you start emailing your list.

1. Implement email segmentation.

Once you’ve added people to your list, you must break them down into different segments.

That way, instead of having a monolithic email list of everybody, you’ll have easier-to-manage subcategories that pertain to your subscribers’ unique characteristics, interests, and preferences.

Our subscribers are humans, after all, and we should do our best to treat them as such. That means not sending generic email blasts.

Why should you segment your email list?

Each person who signs up to receive your emails is at a different level of readiness to convert into a customer (which is the ultimate goal of all this).

If you send a discount coupon for your product to subscribers that don’t even know how to diagnose their problem, you’ll probably lose them. That’s because you’re skipping the part where you build trust and develop the relationship.

Every email you send should treat your subscribers like humans you want to connect with, as opposed to a herd of leads you’re trying to corral into a one-size-fits-all box.

The more you segment your list, the more trust you build with your leads, and the easier it’ll be to convert them later.

How to Segment Email Lists

The first step in segmentation is creating separate lead magnets and opt-in forms for each part of the buyer’s journey. That way, your contacts are automatically divided into separate lists.

Beyond that, email marketing platforms allow you to segment your email list by contact data and behavior to help you send the right emails to the right people.

Here are some ways you could break up your list:

• Geographical location.
• Lifecycle stage.
• Awareness, consideration, and decision stage.
• Industry.
• Previous engagement with your brand.
• Language.
• Job Title.

In reality, you can segment your list any way that you want. Just make sure to be as exclusive as possible when sending emails to each subgroup.

2. A/B test your marketing emails.

Not all email lists are created equal. Some audiences prefer personalization, and others will think it’s spammy. Some audiences will like bright, eye-catching CTA buttons. Others will prefer a more subtle call-to-action.

You’ll never know what type of people make up your email list until you test the variables. That’s where A/B testing comes in handy.

“If you‘re considering making any structural or content alterations to your email marketing, A/B testing is an excellent way to determine if the changes will be successful or worthwhile before they’re implemented on a larger scale,” says Madison Zoey Vettorino, former marketing manager and SEO content writer for HubSpot’s Website Blog.

Surprisingly, not many brands leverage it. A 2021 Litmus study found that 44% of marketers rarely A/B or multivariate test their emails. Only 19% do it often or always.

A/B testing, or split testing, is a way to see what type of email performs best with your audience by analyzing the results of email A against email B. This can be especially helpful when working with templates.

“Since emails often have the same template, A/B testing is smart because you can usually control variables outside of the test and get a solid signal on what performs better,” HubSpot’s Litterst says.

Here’s the step-by-step process for A/B testing your emails:

• Select one variable to test at a time, e.g., subject line, CTA, images.
• Create two versions of the email: one with and one without the variable.
• Allow your emails to be sent out simultaneously for a period of time.
• Analyze your results and keep only the version that performed better.
• Test a new variable and repeat the process.

Most email service providers will have A/B testing built into their software, which will make it easy for you to compare email results without much manual work.

When conducting an A/B test, consider these tips:

Test one element at a time.

“For example, try the same email with a different subject line. Or the same email and same subject line with a different CTA,” says Curtis del Principe, a content strategist and writer at HubSpot.

“It might be tempting to make several changes at once, but that makes it harder to pinpoint the true cause of your wins or losses,” he says.

Don’t try to “eyeball” an A/B test.

A/B test should be run with intention. Making quick changes and approaching results unscientifically can lead to incorrect conclusions.

“You might be tempted to run an informal A/B test by making a change and then casually paying attention to the responses that you get. This unscientific method can easily be skewed by factors outside your control (like seasonality or deliverability),” says del Principe.

“It also leaves out a ton of valuable data, like open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, or sharing/forwarding rate.”

Instead, use an email marketing tool, like Marketing Hub or BuzzStream, to help you get a broader and more accurate understanding of your email performance.

Featured Resource

• The Complete Guide to A/B Testing

3. Analyze your email marketing performance.

Once you’ve got your first few campaigns, it’s time to see how they’re performing.

By diving into your email marketing analytics, you‘ll be able to make better decisions that will help your business’s bottom line, resonate with your subscribers, readers, and customers, and justify your work to the rest of your company.

Here are the best ways to analyze the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

4. Set email marketing KPIs.

There are four key metrics to pay attention to when evaluating the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign.

• Deliverability measures the rate at which emails reach your intended subscribers’ inboxes.
• Open rate is the percentage of people that open your email once it reaches their inbox.
• Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the percentage of people that click on your CTAs.
• Unsubscribes measures the number of people who opt out of your email list once they receive your email.

5. Adjust email components to improve results.

Many factors impact your KPIs, and it will take some experimentation and guesswork to figure out which tweaks to your emails will yield the biggest significance.

If you aren’t getting the desired numbers, try playing with these variables to improve your email results.

Deliverability

• Ensure that you’re following best practices regarding spam filters.
• Remove inactive people from your email list to keep only engaged subscribers.
• Check which emails have bounced and remove those email addresses from your list.

Open Rate

• Play with the language in your subject line to entice people to click on your email.
• Adjust the time and day that you send your email to see what works best.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

• Evaluate your offer to ensure that it provides value to your segmented list.
• Rewrite your copy to make sure that it’s clear what you want the reader to do.
• Try different CTAs, e.g., graphic versus Inline copy, bold versus subtle.

Unsubscribes

• First, consider if this is a blessing in disguise, as uninterested parties are removing themselves from your list.
• Regularly send an email to inactive subscribers on your list asking if they still want to be a part of it
• Evaluate whether the email you sent is aligned with your brand.
• Ensure you haven’t performed a bait-and-switch by promising one thing and delivering another.
• Make sure your emails are providing value to your audience before trying to upsell.

6. Use an email marketing report template.

Once you’ve got some campaigns under your belt, it’s time to look at how they performed. Your data does no good if you can’t report it in an organized fashion.

An email marketing report is a spreadsheet where you can record your results in one place to help you make inferences from your KPIs and take action to improve them.

Here’s how you should organize your report.

Metrics

• Total number of emails sent
• Number of emails delivered
• Deliverability Rate
• Bounce Rate
• Open Rate
• Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
• Click-to-open Rate (CTOR)
• Unsubscribe Rate

Data

• Subject line
• Length of the email body
• Offer
• CTA (inline or graphic)
• List segment(s)

Questions To Ask:

• Was your deliverability rate high in comparison to previous periods?
• How did your CTR compare to your open rate?
• Were your unsubscribe numbers consistent with other emails?
• Did a certain subject line perform better than others?
• Does the length of the email make a difference in CTR?
• Could another style of CTA perform better?
• Was the offer appropriate for the list segment?

Email Regulations You Should Know

Email regulations are important to follow as they regulate and protect consumers’ desires to know how and why their information is being used.

If there’s anything we care about, it’s complying with what our customers—or potential customers—want.

There are a few key ones that you should understand:

1. CAN-SPAM Compliance

Technically, CAN-SPAM is an acronym for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (because sometimes the two go together).

In practice, it’s a way to protect your subscribers’ right to only receive emails that they’ve requested.

The law was passed in 2003 and applies to any commercial emails used for business purposes.

Here are the ways to ensure that your emails are CAN-SPAM compliant:

• Include your company name and address in every email.
• Place visible unsubscribe links within your emails.
• Use real email addresses in the “From” and “Reply to” fields.
• Write subject lines that indicate the contents of the email.

Please note: This is not to be confused with legal advice. See the FTC’s site for more specific legal information regarding CAN-SPAM laws.

2. GDPR Compliance

While some may view these newly implemented email regulations as burdensome and unnecessary, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) moves us closer to building long-lasting, trusting customer relationships.

GDPR is about giving your customers the right to choose. They choose your emails. They decide to hear from you. They choose your products. And that is exactly what inbound marketing is about.

It is important to note that GDPR only applies to businesses operating in the European Union and businesses that market to EU citizens.

Noncompliance will result in significant fees that aren’t worth the risk, so make sure to read the GDPR guidelines entirely.

Here’s an overview of how you can comply with GDPR laws:

• Use precise language when requesting consent to store personal information.
• Only collect contact data that is necessary for and relevant to your business.
• Store contact data securely and only use it for the agreed-upon purpose.
• Retain data for justifiable business purposes only.
• Delete contact data on request.
• Make it easy for contacts to unsubscribe from your list or update their preferences.
• Comply promptly with a contact’s request for access to their data.
• Keep company records to prove GDPR compliance.

These regulations will be taken seriously (as they should), so it’s a good idea to create a GDPR strategy for your business before sending emails.

3. Avoid Spam Filters

You spend time creating the perfect email and adhering to regulations, so the last thing you want is to end up in a spam folder.

You’ll want to avoid the spam folder because:

• It hurts your deliverability rates across the board.
• Your contacts will likely miss all of your emails.
• You won’t be able to measure your email marketing effectiveness accurately.
• Your analytics will be skewed.

You can avoid being deduced to spam with the following.

Get whitelisted.

A whitelist is a list of approved senders that can reach the subscriber’s inbox. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have your new subscriber add your email address to their address book.

Include directions on how to do this in your welcome email.

Mind your copy.

Avoid using all caps and multiple exclamation points, as well as spam trigger words, like “opt-in,” “click below,” and “order,” that are easily detected and marked down by Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Use a reliable email service provider.

Your email service provider’s reputation affects your deliverability, so stick to established, well-known companies.

Implement a double opt-in.

Once someone opts in to your email list, send an email asking them to confirm. This ensures that your new subscriber is genuinely interested in your emails and will likely be more engaged.

(Check out more ways you can avoid the spam filter.)

And last but certainly not least, you need to consistently measure the success of your email marketing efforts. There are a number of options you can choose from when it comes to your business’s email marketing analytics.

Email Marketing Tips

While you probably don’t think twice about the formatting or subject line of an email you send to a friend, email marketing requires a lot more consideration.

Everything from the time you send your email to the devices on which your email could be opened matters.

Your goal with every email is to generate more leads, which makes crafting a marketing email a more involved process than other emails you’ve written.

Let’s touch on the components of a successful marketing email:

Copy: The copy in the body of your email should be consistent with your voice and stick to only one topic.

Images: Choose images that are optimized for all devices, eye-catching, and relevant.

CTA: Your call-to-action should lead to a relevant offer and stand out from the rest of the email.

Timing: Based on a study that observed response rates of 20 million emails, Tuesday at 11 AM ET is the best day and time to send your email.

Responsiveness: 55% of emails are opened on mobile. Your email should, therefore, be optimized for this as well as all other devices.

Personalization: Write every email like you’re sending it to a friend. Be personable and address your reader in a familiar tone.

Subject Line: Use clear, actionable, enticing language that is personalized and aligned with the body of the email.

Featured Resource

• 100 Email Subject Lines We Actually Clicked

Pro tip: Leverage AI for email marketing. By using tools like our AI Email Writer, you can generate copy that suits your goals, saving time along the way.

Personalize your email marketing.

“Personalization isn’t just about adding a contact’s name to the subject line anymore but is all about creating personalized experiences that demonstrate you understand them and have insider knowledge about how they can use your products to succeed,” Aleia Walker, growth marketing manager at HubSpot.

Now that you know who you’re emailing and what’s important to them, sending emails with personalized touches will be much easier.

Sure, you’re speaking to 100+ people at one time, but your leads don’t need to know it.

Personalized emails have higher open rates. In addition, 83% of customers are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience.

You’ve gathered all this unique data. Your email marketing software allows for personalization tokens. You have no excuse for sending generic emails that don’t make your leads feel special.

“It’s more impactful to base email personalization on two or three factors instead of just what a contact is engaging with on your side,” Walker says.

Walker suggests, “Consider personalizing emails based on what you know about your contact, such as their location, industry, employee size, etc., alongside how they engage with your content.”

Here are a few ways to personalize your emails:

• Add a first name field in your subject line and/or greeting.
• Include region-specific information when appropriate.
• Send content that is relevant to your lead’s lifecycle stage.
• Only send emails that pertain to the last engagement a lead has had with your brand.
• Write about relevant and/or personal events, like region-specific holidays or birthdays.
• End your emails with a personal signature from a human (not your company).
• Use a relevant call-to-action to an offer that the reader will find useful.

4. Use email marketing templates.

Email marketing templates — like these ones from HubSpot — are another great resource to help you with your email marketing.

Unless you’re a designer and developer, on top of being a skilled marketer, templates will save you a ton of time — they take the design, coding, and UX-definition work out of crafting your emails.

Just one caveat: when making your selection, choose email templates that are proven to be effective.

The highest-quality templates come from the most reputable ESPs that have tested them against thousands of alternatives. So, stick with the professionals.

If you’re struggling with the above tips, HubSpot offers e-mail marketing tools to help personalize your marketing emails, optimize your emails with A/B testing, and create aesthetically pleasing emails using templates.

Furthermore, HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant uses AI technology to generate copy for marketing emails.

Beginning Email Marketing

While there are many rules to sending a marketing email, the most important is this: Treat the reader on the other end like you’re writing to a friend.

Trust me, you can achieve all of your email marketing goals if you keep this golden rule top of mind in every autoresponder, lead magnet, and subject line.

And remember, the more you help your subscribers, the more they will want to hear from you and look forward to opening emails that you send.

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

There’s no debate that when it comes to succeeding in digital content, mastering SEO is a must. When I first became a content writer, most of the advice I received was about keywords, backlinks, relevancy, and improving user experience.

There’s no debate that when it comes to succeeding in digital content, mastering SEO is a must. When I first became a content writer, most of the advice I received was about keywords, backlinks, relevancy, and improving user experience.

However, as technology has advanced, SEO has changed. We’re entering a new era of search — the AI age — and, with it, a new type of digital content technique.

Enter: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

How we obtain information now has changed dramatically as a result of AI. More than ever, people rely on generative engines for information, making learning how to optimize for AI essential.

If we want our content to reach the right people, we need to adapt. There’s no need to throw out the SEO principles you’ve spent decades learning. GEO is an extension of these techniques — and it’s not as scary as it sounds.

Let’s take a look at what we know about GEO so far.

Table of Contents

• What is Generative Engine Optimization?
• GEO vs. SEO
• How does Generative Engine Optimization work?
• Tips for Navigating the Generative SEO Landscape
• Generative Engine Optimization FAQ
• What’s Next for GEO

What is Generative Engine Optimization?

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is a new technique for maximizing your digital content’s visibility. Instead of traditional SEO practices that focus on ranking on SERPs, GEO is about being used by generative AI engines.

Generative engines pull information directly from web content to deliver responses to user queries. They use large language models (LLMs) to make sense of the info they’ve scraped and provide coherent, relevant answers.

ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, and Google AI Search are all examples of generative engines.

Generative engines work by:

1.  Interpreting a user’s query.
2.  Leveraging personal data it may have on the user, such as preferences or conversation history.
3.  Searching to find relevant answers to the query
4.  Synthesizing information from these documents into a straightforward response

GEO vs. SEO

GEO and SEO are similar in many ways, as both find relevant, credible content to answer user inquiries. But they also have three key differences.

Focus

GEO focuses on making content discoverable to AI, while SEO is about improving SERP rank.

While SEO is generally related to Google and Bing, there are lots of generative engines, so it’ll be interesting to see if different engines use different qualities to determine their sources.

Emphasis

The primary techniques for SEO emphasize things like backlinks and keywords, while GEO techniques emphasize structure.

An AI bot’s job is easier when it can pull clear, concise snippets that are easily synthesized, so it makes sense why structure would be an emphasis.

Output

The key difference is the output of the engines.

GEO optimizes content for AI engines, which produce a summary as the output.

SEO, on the other hand, optimizes content for traditional search engines, which produce a ranked list of sources as the output.

How is GEO impacting SEO?

SEO experts worldwide have cited generative AI as the number one disruptor to SEO. So it’s worth understanding more about what experts suspect the impact will be.

I spoke with an expert on SEO, Nick Baird, to hear about his thoughts on GEO and how he thinks it will change SEO and digital marketing.

“First, top-of-funnel informational terms, which are the industry’s bread and butter, are going to take a huge hit. Since answers will come right in the SERP, why would people click away to websites?” Baird notes.

Secondly, Baird says, informational searches will be tough to win. However, local SEO won’t change because of generative AI.

“When people search locally, they‘re hoping to find a plumber to fix their toilet or a mechanic to fix their car. ChatGPT can’t help with that. Google will continue pointing people to local service businesses in this case,” Baird says.

His thoughts about TOFU terms are the most interesting to me. I see his point and, as a user, I’m definitely engaging less with sites when I’m looking for a short answer. I’m interested to see how high-ranking topics evolve.

How does Generative Engine Optimization work?

Learning to use GEO is simpler than it sounds and, in many ways, is overlapped with best SEO practices. AI tools respond well to clear, well-structured information that it can easily synthesize.

This means you should:

1. Ensure your content is easy to read and understand.
2. Incorporate credible sources, quotes, and statistics to enhance the content’s richness and authority.
3. Structure your writing to align with the patterns used by generative engines.

When I’m writing an article, I focus on clear headings, concise paragraphs, lists, and well-sourced information. The same is true for best practices when it comes to SEO — so don’t worry about reinventing the wheel.

Other ways to improve GEO are using AI-friendly structured data, focusing on user intent, using easy-to-read/conversational language, and using unique words to make the content stand out.

These best practices aren’t all that different from SEO best practices. And, as with SEO, there’s no indication that AI-created content is ranking poorly.

If your content is high quality, you shouldn’t experience any sort of penalty for leveraging AI content tools, like the ones offered by HubSpot.

Image Source

Tips for Navigating the Generative SEO Landscape

Succeeding at GEO isn’t too different from traditional SEO practices. Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you start writing content for generative AI.

Cite sources and use statistics.

I also asked Baird what digital marketers who are hoping to create AI-scannable content should do, and he recommended starting with strong EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

These four factors are currently used by Google’s algorithm to determine how pieces rank in search.

“The more proof of a human author, rather than AI, the better. Domain authority becomes even more important as well,” Baird says.

While you can still use AI tools to write your content, it’s vital that it reads as useful, credible content. Incorporating EEAT is a great way to increase credibility, and that serves to improve your entire domain’s authority.

So what exactly does EEAT look like? I’ve been navigating the shift first hand for my HubSpot posts.

I start by looking at my own personal experience. Do I have lived experience in a subject matter? Can I include any personal anecdotes about when I’ve encountered the topic?

Beyond that, I try to showcase my authority on a subject, noting how long I’ve worked in the field.

Obviously, I am not an expert in every topic I want to cover. In that case, I do extensive research. I find original statistics with verified information. I talk to experts whose quotes I can showcase throughout my work.

These elements enhance the credibility and uniqueness of my content.

Optimize for readability.

Think of AI like a busy student frantically looking for information to use in a paper.

They don’t have time to decipher complicated sentences. They want information that’s clear and easy to understand from the get-go. Which brings me to my next tip: Use clear, concise language and scannable paragraphs.

I’ll be honest: Writing short, clear sentences may not always be my first instinct. When I’m discussing a complicated topic, my first draft often includes lengthy explanations. I then use Hemingway, an app designed to help you write clearly.

Hemingway lets me know which sentences are lengthy, confusing, or overly complicated. I can’t always get every sentence to green, but I make an effort to correct phrases marked as “very hard to read.”

Image Source

Focus on content quality.

In the past, having the right keywords was enough to win in search. Let’s take a classic example: recipe blogs.

I remember searching for a brownie recipe for a party and finding a promising, top-ranking article.

When I clicked on it, I had to scroll past huge chunks of text about what goes into a brownie, when brownies became popular, how the author’s kids loved the brownies, so on and so forth.

Why? The author knew having the word “brownie recipe” as many times as possible would help her rank.

Well, that may no longer be the case. In today’s landscape, knowing that the recipe has been passed down from older generations and won an award in a local competition would be enough to show credibility.

TL;DR: Make sure your content is relevant to potential search engines, and avoid keyword stuffing. Your audience and AI care more about the quality of your post.

Monitor trends and track your results.

Stay on top of AI engine evolution. GEO is a new technique, so expect best practices to emerge over time. Trends in the search landscape are continuously changing.

Right now, Google is prioritizing EEAT, but that may change as AI overviews take over the scene.

Keep an eye on the traffic and conversions of posts you’ve written using GEO best practices. You can also leverage HubSpot’s new AI Search Grader, which lets you know how in line your posts are with GEO.

Generative Engine Optimization FAQ

What is GEO?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is a method of improving your content’s visibility to AI generative engines, increasing its reach.

How do I structure my content for GEO?

Ensure your content is clear, well-organized, and has credible sources. Take advantage of lists and H2s and incorporate quotes and statistics when possible.

How do I check if my content is optimized for GEO?

Because GEO is so new, there aren’t many tools to measure how successful your content will be with AI generative engines. HubSpot’s AI Search Grader App is the only tool on the market that can scan your content for its GEO performance.

All you have to do is drop your URL into the grader. From there, you’ll have custom suggestions on what areas you can change to optimize your AI search performance.

That may include including more authority and personal experience or shifting the focus area of your page.

What is AI looking for in GEO content?

Large language models (LLMs) are looking for clear, well-structured information that they can pull and summarize to respond to user queries.

AI scanning works best for content that:

• Uses headers and lists
• Incorporates expert quotes
• Cites sources
• Uses simple language and scannable paragraphs

Is GEO going to replace SEO?

No — search engines aren’t going anywhere, so SEO isn’t, either. It’s best to consider GEO as an extension of SEO practices, as opposed to a replacement.

Best practices (like using H2s and credible citations) are shared between GEO and SEO, as are worst practices. Keyword stuffing, for example, has a negative impact on both SEO and GEO.

How can you measure GEO success?

Liam Carnahan, an SEO coach and content strategist, has a recommendation for how you can leverage existing tools to check if your article is getting picked up by AI engines.

“Of all the popular search-oriented options out there right now, Perplexity does the best job of citation,” Carnahan says.

He continues, “So when I‘m trying to understand whether LLMs are ‘enjoying’ my content, I’ll go there first, and type in questions and prompts I imagine people might ask, using keywords I know my content is ranking for, to see how often it shows up in citations there.”

Carnahan also notes that this isn‘t the most elegant solution, but “for now, it can give me a good idea about which of my clients’ content is ranking in AI results, and which content pieces are missing the mark.”

What’s Next for GEO

My biggest takeaway from exploring GEO is that it emphasizes different things, but in many ways, is similar to SEO. While SEO focuses on keyword optimization and backlinks, GEO focuses more on content structure.

Content writers are going to have to balance both but, thankfully, they click together well. I think we’re going to see clearer, more helpful content as a result of these two strategies — which is something I’m really excited about.

AI isn’t going anywhere. While we’re still learning how to use and measure GEO, it’s clear that keeping an eye on emerging techniques is going to be the key to success in the digital content world going forward.

Every time I work with a new brand, my first order of business is to conduct a competitive analysis. 

Every time I work with a new brand, my first order of business is to conduct a competitive analysis. 

A competitive analysis report helps me understand the brand’s position in the market, map competitors’ strengths/weaknesses, and discover growth opportunities. 

In this article, I’ll break down the exact steps I follow to conduct competitor analysis and identify ways to one-up top brands in the market. 

We’ll cover:

• What is competitive analysis?
• What is competitive market research?
• Competitive Analysis in Marketing
• How To Conduct Competitive Analysis in 5 Steps
• How to Do a Competitive Analysis (the Extended Cut)
• Competitive Product Analysis
• Competitive Analysis Example
• Competitive Analysis Templates
• Competitive Analysis FAQs

Competitive analysis gives you a clearer picture of the market landscape to make informed decisions for your growth. 

That said, you have to remember that competitive analysis is an opportunity to learn from others. It isn’t:

• Copying successful competitors to the T.
• Trying to undercut others’ pricing.
• A one-and-done exercise.

Let’s look at how this exercise can help your business before breaking down my 5-step competitive analysis framework.

Four Reasons to Perform Competitive Analysis 

If you’re on the fence about investing time and effort in analyzing your competitors, know that it gives you a complete picture of the market and where you stand in it.

Here are four main reasons why I perform a competitive analysis exercise whenever working with a brand for the first time:

• Identify your differentiators. Think of competitor analysis as a chance to reflect on your own business and discover what sets you apart from the crowd. And if you’re only starting out, it helps you brainstorm the best opportunities to differentiate your business.
• Find competitors’ strengths. What are your competitors doing right to drive their growth? Analyzing the ins and outs of an industry leader will tell you what they did well to reach the top position in the market.
• Set benchmarks for success. A competitor analysis gives you a realistic idea of mapping your progress with success metrics. While every business has its own path to success, you can always look at a competitor’s trajectory to assess whether you’re on the right track.
• Get closer to your target audience. A good competitor analysis framework zooms in on your audience. It gives you a pulse of your customers by evaluating what they like, dislike, prefer, and complain about when reviewing competing brands.

The bottom line: Whether you’re starting a new business or revamping an existing one, a competitive analysis eliminates guesswork and gives you concrete information to build your business strategy.

What is competitive market research?

Competitive market research is a vital exercise that goes beyond merely comparing products or services. It involves an in-depth analysis of the market metrics that distinguish your offerings from those of your competitors.

A thorough market research doesn’t just highlight these differences but leverages them, laying a solid foundation for a sales and marketing strategy that truly differentiates your business in a bustling market.

In the next section, we’ll explore the nuts and bolts of conducting a detailed competitive analysis tailored to your brand.

Essential Aspects to Cover in Competitive Analysis Research 

Before we walk through our step-by-step process for conducting competitor analysis, let’s look at the main aspects to include for every competitor:

• Overview. A summary of the company — where it’s located, target market, and target audience.
• Primary offering. A breakdown of what they sell and how they compare against your brand.
• Pricing strategy. A comparison of their pricing for different products with your pricing.
• Positioning. An analysis of their core messaging to see how they position themselves.
  Customer feedback: A curation of what customers have to say about the brand.

Now, it’s time to learn how to conduct a competitive analysis with an example to contextualize each step. 

Competitive Analysis in Marketing

Every brand can benefit from regular competitor analysis. By performing a competitor analysis, you’ll be able to:

• Identify gaps in the market.
• Develop new products and services.
• Uncover market trends.
• Market and sell more effectively.

As you can see, learning any of these four components will lead your brand down the path of achievement.

Next, let’s dive into some steps you can take to conduct a comprehensive competitive analysis.

How to Conduct Competitive Analysis in 5 Quick Steps

As a content marketer, I’ve performed a competitive analysis for several brands to improve their messaging, plan their marketing strategy, and explore new channels. Here are the five steps I follow to analyze competitors.

1. Identify and categorize all competitors.

The first step is a simple yet strategic one. You have to identify all possible competitors in your industry, even the lesser-known ones. The goal here is to be aware of all the players in the market instead of arbitrarily choosing to ignore a few.

As you find more and more competitors, categorize them into these buckets:

• Direct competitors. These brands offer the same product/service as you to the same target audience. People will often compare you to these brands when making a buying decision. For example, Arcade and Storylane are direct competitors in the demo automation category.
• Indirect competitors. These businesses solve the same problem but with a different solution. They present opportunities for you to expand your offering. For example, Scribe and Whatfix solve the problem of documentation + internal training, but in different ways.
• Legacy competitors. These are established companies operating in your industry for several years. They have a solid reputation in the market and are a trusted name among customers. For example, Ahrefs is a legacy competitor in the SEO industry.
• Emerging competitors. These are new players in the market with an innovative business model and unique value propositions that pose a threat to existing brands. For example, ChatGPT came in as a disruptor in the conversational AI space and outperformed several brands. 

Here’s a competitive matrix classifying brands in the community and housing space:

Image Source

Testing It Out

To help you understand each step clearly, we’ll use the example of Trello and create a competitor analysis report using these steps.

Here’s a table of the main competitors for Trello:

able of the main competitors for Trello:

2. Determine each competitor’s market position.

Once you know all your competitors, start analyzing their position in the market. This step will help you understand where you currently stand in terms of market share and customer satisfaction. It’ll also reveal the big guns in your industry — the leading competitors to prioritize in your analysis report.

Plus, visualizing the market landscape will tell you what’s missing in the current state. You can find gaps and opportunities for your brand to thrive even in a saturated market.

To map competitors’ market positions, create a graph with two factors: market presence (Y-axis) and customer satisfaction (X-axis). Then, place competitors in each of these quadrants:

• Niche. These are brands with a low market share but rank high on customer satisfaction. They’re likely targeting a specific segment of the audience and doing it well.
• Contenders. These brands rank low on customer satisfaction but have a good market presence. They might be new entrants with a strong sales and marketing strategy.
• Leaders. These brands own a big market share and have highly satisfied customers. They’re the dominant players with a solid reputation among your audience.
• High performers. These are another category of new entrants scoring high on customer satisfaction but with a low market share. They’re a good alternative for people not looking to buy from big brands.

This visualization will tell you exactly how crowded the market is. But it’ll also highlight ways to gain momentum and compete with existing brands.

Testing It Out

Here’s a market landscape grid by G2 documenting all of Trello’s competitors in the project management space. For a leading brand like Trello, the goal would be to look at top brands in two quadrants: “Leaders” and “High Performers.” 

Image Source

3. Extensively benchmark key competitors.

Step 2 will narrow down your focus from dozens of competitors to the few most important ones to target. Now, it’s time to examine each competitor thoroughly and prepare a benchmarking report.

Remember that this exercise isn’t meant to find shortcomings in every competitor. You have to objectively determine both the good and bad aspects of each brand.

Here are the core factors to consider when benchmarking competitors:

• Quality. Assess the quality of products/services for each competitor. You can compare product features to see what’s giving them an edge over you. You can also evaluate customer reviews to understand what users have to say about the quality of their offering.
• Price. Document the price points for every competitor to understand their pricing tactics. You can also interview their customers to find the value for money from users’ perspectives.
• Customer service. Check how they deliver support — through chat, phone, email, knowledge base, and more. You can also find customer ratings on different third-party platforms.
• Brand reputation. You should also compare each competitor’s reputation in the market to understand how people perceive the brand. Look out for anything critical people say about specific competitors.  
• Financial health. If possible, look for performance indicators to assess a brand’s financial progress. You can find data on metrics like revenue growth and profit margins. 

This benchmarking exercise will involve a combination of primary and secondary research. Invest enough time in this step to ensure that your competitive analysis is completely airtight.

Check out this example of a competitor benchmarking report for workforce intelligence tools:

Image Source

Testing It Out

Here’s how I benchmarked Asana based on these criteria using the information I could find:

4. Deep dive into their marketing strategy.

While the first few steps will tell you what you can improve in your core product or service, you also need to find how competitors market their products.

You need to deep-dive into their marketing strategies to learn how they approach buyers. I analyze every marketing channel, then note my observations on how they speak to their audience and highlight their brand personality.

Here are a few key marketing channels to explore:

• Website. Analyze the website structure and copy to understand their positioning and brand voice.
• Email. Subscribe to emails to learn their cadence, copywriting style, content covered, and other aspects.
• Paid ads. Use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to find if any competitor is running paid ads on search engines.
• Thought leadership. Follow a brand’s thought leadership efforts with content assets like podcasts, webinars, courses, and more.
• Digital PR. Explore whether a brand is investing in digital PR to build buzz around its business and analyze its strategy.
• Social media. See how actively brands use different social channels and what kind of content is working best for them.
• Partnerships. Analyze high-value partnerships to see if brands work closely with any companies and mutually benefit each other.

You can create a detailed document capturing every detail of a competitor’s marketing strategy. This will give you the right direction to plan your marketing efforts. 

5. Perform a SWOT analysis.

The final step in a competitive analysis exercise is creating a SWOT analysis matrix for each company. This means you‘ll take note of your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Think of it as the final step to consolidate all your research and answer these questions:

• What is your competitor doing well?
• Where do they have an advantage over your brand?
• What is the weakest area for your competitor?
• Where does your brand have the advantage over your competitor?
• In what areas would you consider this competitor a threat?
• Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?

You can use tools like Miro to visualize this data. Once you visually present this data, you’ll get a clearer idea of where you can outgrow each competitor. 

Image Source

Testing It Out

Here’s a SWOT analysis matrix I created for Asana as a competitor of Trello:

To run a complete and effective competitive analysis, use these ten templates, which range in purpose from sales to marketing to product strategy.

Featured Resource: 10 Competitive Analysis Templates

Download Now

1. Determine who your competitors are.

First, you‘ll need to figure out who you’re competing with to compare the data accurately. What works in a business like yours may not work for your brand. Divide your “competitors” into two categories: direct and indirect.

Keep these brands on your radar since they could shift positions at any time and cross over into the direct competitor zone. Using our example, Stitch Fix could start a workout line, which would certainly change things for Fabletics.

This is also one of the reasons why you‘ll want to routinely run a competitor analysis. The market can and will shift at any time, and if you’re not constantly scoping it out, you won‘t be aware of these changes until it’s too late.

2. Determine what products your competitors offer.

You‘ll want to analyze your competitor’s complete product line and the quality of the products or services they’re offering. You should also take note of their pricing and any discounts they’re offering customers.

Some questions to consider include:

• Are they a low-cost or high-cost provider?
• Are they working mainly on volume sales or one-off purchases?
• What is their market share?
• What are the characteristics and needs of their ideal customers?
• Are they using different pricing strategies for online purchases versus brick-and-mortar?
• How does the company differentiate itself from its competitors?
• How do they distribute their products/services?

3. Research your competitors’ sales tactics and results.

Running a sales analysis of your competitors can be a bit tricky.

You’ll want to track down the answers to questions such as:

• What does the sales process look like?
• What channels are they selling through?
• Do they have multiple locations, and how does this give them an advantage?
• Are they expanding? Scaling down?
• Do they have partner reselling programs?
• What are their customers’ reasons for not buying? For ending their relationship with the company?
• What are their revenues each year? What about total sales volume?
• Do they regularly discount their products or services?
• How involved is a salesperson in the process?

These helpful pieces of information will give you an idea of how competitive the sales process is and what information you need to prepare your sales reps with to compete during the final buy stage.

For publicly held companies, you can find annual reports online, but you’ll have to do some sleuthing to find this info from privately owned businesses.

You could find some of this information by searching through your CRM and reaching out to those customers who mentioned they were considering your competitor.

Find out what made them choose your product or service over others out there.

When a competitor is identified, have your sales team dive deeper by asking why they are considering switching to your product. If you’ve already lost the deal, be sure to follow up with the prospect to determine why you lost to your competitor.

4. Take a look at your competitors’ pricing, as well as any perks they offer.

There are a few major factors that go into correctly pricing your product — and one major one is understanding how much your competitors are charging for a similar product or service.

If you feel your product offers superior features compared to those of a competitor, you might consider making your product or service more expensive than industry standards.

However, if you do that, you’ll want to ensure your sales reps are ready to explain why your product is worth the additional cost.

Alternatively, perhaps you feel there‘s a gap in your industry for affordable products. If that’s the case, you might aim to charge less than competitors and appeal to prospects who aren’t looking to break the bank for a high-quality product.

Of course, other factors go into correctly pricing a product, but it‘s critical you stay on top of industry pricing to ensure you’re pricing your product in a way that feels reasonable to prospects.

Additionally, take a look at any perks your competitors offer and how you might match those perks to compete. For instance, perhaps your competitors offer a major referral discount or a month-long free trial version.

These perks could be the reason you‘re losing customers, so if it feels reasonable for your brand, consider where you might match those perks — or provide some unique perks of your own if competitors don’t offer any.

5. Ensure you’re meeting competitive shipping costs.

Did you know expensive shipping is the number one reason for cart abandonment?

Nowadays, free shipping is a major perk that can attract consumers to choose one brand over another. If you work in an industry where shipping is a major factor — like e-commerce — you‘ll want to take a look at competitors’ shipping costs and ensure you’re meeting (if not exceeding) those prices.

If most of your competitors offer free shipping, you‘ll want to look into the option for your own company. If free shipping isn’t a practical option for your business, consider how you might differentiate in other ways — including loyalty programs, holiday discounts, or giveaways on social media.

6. Analyze how your competitors market their products.

Analyzing your competitor’s website is the fastest way to gauge their marketing efforts. This is a great way to see how accessible and engaging their assets are, and if you can, try experimenting with A/B testing your landing pages or website as well. Take note of any of the following items and copy down the specific URL for future reference:

• Do they have a blog?
• Are they creating whitepapers or e-books?
• Do they post videos or webinars?
• Do they have a podcast?
• Are they using static visual content such as infographics and cartoons?
• What about slide decks?
• Do they have a FAQs section?
• Are there featured articles?
• Do you see press releases?
• Do they have a media kit?
• What about case studies?
• Do they publish buying guides and data sheets?
• What online and offline advertising campaigns are they running?

7. Take note of your competition’s content strategy.

Then, take a look at the quantity of these items. Do they have several hundred blog posts or a small handful? Are there five white papers and just one e-book?

Next, determine the frequency of these content assets. Are they publishing something new each week or once a month? How often does a new e-book or case study come out?

Chances are, if you come across a robust archive of content, your competitor has been publishing regularly. Depending on the topics they’re discussing, this content may help you hone in on their lead-generating strategies.

From there, you should move on to evaluating the quality of their content. After all, if the quality is lacking, it won‘t matter how often they post since their target audience won’t find much value in it.

Choose a small handful of samples to review instead of tackling every single piece to make the process more manageable.

Your sampler should include content pieces covering a variety of topics, so you’ll have a fairly complete picture of what your competitor shares with their target audience.

When analyzing your competitor’s content, consider the following questions:

• How accurate is their content?
• Are spelling or grammar errors present?
• How in-depth does their content go? (Is it at the introductory level that just scratches the surface, or does it include more advanced topics with high-level ideas?)
• What tone do they use?
• Is the content structured for readability? (Are they using bullet points, bold headings, and numbered lists?)
• Is their content free and available to anyone, or do their readers need to opt in?
• Who is writing their content? (In-house team? One person? Multiple contributors?)
• Is there a visible byline or bio attached to their articles?

As you continue to scan the content, pay attention to the photos and imagery your competitors are using.

Do you quickly scroll past generic stock photos, or are you impressed by custom illustrations and images? If they’re using stock photos, do they at least have overlays of text quotes or calls-to-action that are specific to their business?

If their photos are custom, are they sourced from outside graphic professionals, or do they appear to be done in-house?

When you have a solid understanding of your competitor‘s content marketing strategy, it’s time to find out if it’s truly working for them.

8. Learn what technology stack your competitors use.

Understanding what types of technology your competitors use can be critical for helping your own company reduce friction and increase momentum within your organization.

For instance, perhaps you‘ve seen positive reviews about a competitor’s customer service — as you’re conducting research, you learn the customer uses powerful customer service software you haven’t been taking advantage of.

This information should arm you with the opportunity to outperform your competitors’ processes.

To figure out which software your competitors use, type the company’s URL into Built With, an effective tool for unveiling what technology your competitors’ site runs on, along with third-party plugins ranging from analytics systems to CRMs.

Alternatively, you might consider looking at competitors’ job listings, particularly for engineer or web developer roles. The job listing will likely mention which tools a candidate needs to be familiar with — a creative way to gain intel into the technology your competitors use.

9. Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor’s content.

To gauge how engaging your competitor‘s content is to their readers, you’ll need to see how their target audience responds to what they’re posting.

Check the average number of comments, shares, and likes on your competitor’s content and find out if:

• Certain topics resonate better than others.
• The comments are negative, positive, or mixed.
• People are tweeting about specific topics more than others.
• Readers respond better to Facebook updates about certain content.
• Don’t forget to note if your competitor categorizes their content using tags and if they have social media follow and share buttons attached to each piece of content.

10. Observe how they promote their marketing content.

From engagement, you‘ll move right along to your competitor’s content promotion strategy.

• Keyword density in the copy itself
• Image ALT text tags
• Use of internal linking

The following questions can also help you prioritize and focus on what to pay attention to:

• Which keywords are your competitors focusing on that you still haven’t tapped into?
• What content of theirs is highly shared and linked to? How does your content compare?
• Which social media platforms are your target audience using?
• What other sites are linking back to your competitor’s site but not yours?
• Who else is sharing what your competitors are publishing?
• Who is referring traffic to your competitor’s site?
• For the keywords you want to focus on, what is the difficulty level? There are several free (and paid) tools that will give you a comprehensive evaluation of your competitor’s search engine optimization.

11. Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms.

The last area you‘ll want to evaluate when it comes to marketing is your competitor’s social media presence and engagement rates.

How does your competition drive engagement with their brand through social media? Do you see social sharing buttons with each article? Does your competitor have links to their social media channels in the header, footer, or somewhere else? Are these clearly visible? Do they use calls-to-action with these buttons?

If your competitors are using a social network that you may not be on, it’s worth learning more about how that platform may be able to help your business, too.

To determine if a new social media platform is worth your time, check your competitor’s engagement rates on those sites. First, visit the following sites to see if your competition has an account on these platforms:

• Facebook.
• Twitter.
• Instagram.
• Snapchat.
• LinkedIn.
• YouTube.
• Pinterest.

Then, take note of the following quantitative items from each platform:

• Number of fans/followers.
• Posting frequency and consistency.
• Content engagement. (Are users leaving comments or sharing their posts?)
• Content virality. (How many shares, repins, and retweets do their posts get?)

With the same critical eye you used to gauge your competition’s content marketing strategy, take a fine-toothed comb to analyze their social media strategy.

What kind of content are they posting? Are they more focused on driving people to landing pages, resulting in new leads? Or are they posting visual content to promote engagement and brand awareness?

How much of this content is original? Do they share curated content from other sources? Are these sources regular contributors? What is the overall tone of the content?

How does your competition interact with its followers? How frequently do their followers interact with their content?

After you collect this data, generate an overall grade for the quality of your competitor’s content. This will help you compare the rest of your competitors using a similar grading scale.

12. Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

As you evaluate each component in your competitor analysis (business, sales, and marketing), get into the habit of performing a simplified SWOT analysis at the same time.

This means you‘ll take note of your competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats any time you assess an overall grade.

Some questions to get you started include:

• What is your competitor doing well? (Products, content marketing, social
• Where does your competitor have the advantage over your brand?
• What is the weakest area for your competitor?
• Where does your brand have the advantage over your competitor?
• What could they do better with?
• In what areas would you consider this competitor a threat?
• Are there opportunities in the market that your competitor has identified?

You‘ll be able to compare their weaknesses against your strengths and vice versa. By doing this, you can better position your company, and you’ll start to uncover areas for improvement within your own brand.

Competitive Product Analysis

Product analysis drills down to discover key differences and similarities in products that share the same general market.

If you have a competitor selling products in a similar market niche to your own — you want to ensure that you aren’t losing market share to the competition.

Leveraging the example above, we can drill down and discover some of the key differentiators in product offerings.

1. Assess your current product pricing.

The first step in any product analysis is to assess current pricing.

Nintendo offers three models of its Switch console: The smaller lite version is priced at $199, the standard version is $299, and the new OLED version is $349.

Sony, meanwhile, offers two versions of its PlayStation 5 console: The standard edition costs $499, and the digital version, which doesn’t include a disc drive, is $399.

2. Compare key features.

Next is a comparison of key features. In the case of our console example, this means comparing features like processing power, memory, and hard drive space.

3. Pinpoint differentiators.

With basic features compared, it’s time to dive deeper with differentiators. While a glance at the chart above seems to indicate that the PS5 is outperforming its competition, this data only tells part of the story.

Here’s why: The big selling point of the standard and OLED Switch models is that they can be played as either handheld consoles or docked with a base station connected to a TV. What’s more, this “switching” happens seamlessly, allowing players to play whenever, wherever.

The Playstation offering, meanwhile, has leaned into market-exclusive games that are only available on its system to help differentiate them from their competitors.

4. Identify market gaps.

The last step in a competitive product analysis is looking for gaps in the market that could help your company get ahead.

When it comes to the console market, one potential opportunity gaining traction is the delivery of games via cloud-based services rather than physical hardware.

Companies like Nvidia and Google have already made inroads in this space, and if they can overcome issues with bandwidth and latency, it could change the market at scale.

Competitive Analysis Example

How do you stack up against the competition? Where are you similar, and what sets you apart? This is the goal of competitive analysis.

By understanding where your brand and competitors overlap and diverge, you’re better positioned to make strategic decisions that can help grow your brand.

Of course, it’s one thing to understand the benefits of competitive analysis, and it’s another to actually carry out an analysis that yields actionable results. Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered with a quick example.

Sony vs. Nintendo: Not all fun and games.

Let’s take a look at popular gaming system companies Sony and Nintendo.

Sony’s newest offering — the Playstation 5 — recently hit the market but has been plagued by supply shortages.

Nintendo’s Switch console, meanwhile, has been around for several years but remains a consistent seller, especially among teens and children.

This scenario is familiar for many companies on both sides of the coin; some have introduced new products designed to compete with established market leaders, while others are looking to ensure that reliable sales don’t fall.

Using some of the steps listed above, here’s a quick competitive analysis example.

1. Determine who your competitors are.

In our example, it’s Sony vs Nintendo, but it’s also worth considering Microsoft’s Xbox, which occupies the same general market vertical.

This is critical for effective analysis; even if you’re focused on specific competitors and how they compare, it’s worth considering other similar market offerings.

2. Determine what products your competitors offer.

PlayStation offers two PS5 versions, digital and standard, at different price points, while Nintendo offers three versions of its console.

Both companies also sell peripherals — for example, Sony sells virtual reality (VR) add-ons, while Nintendo sells gaming peripherals such as steering wheels, tennis rackets, and differing controller configurations.

3. Research your competitors’ sales tactics and results.

When it comes to sales tactics and marketing, Sony and Nintendo have very different approaches.

In part thanks to the recent semiconductor shortage, Sony has driven up demand via scarcity — very low volumes of PS5 consoles remain available. Nintendo, meanwhile, has adopted a broader approach by targeting families as its primary customer base.

This effort is bolstered by the Switch Lite product line, which is smaller and less expensive, making it a popular choice for children.

The numbers tell the tale: Through September 2021, Nintendo sold 14.3 million consoles, while Sony sold 7.8 million.

4. Take a look at your competitors’ pricing, as well as any perks they offer.

Sony has the higher price point: Their standard PS5 sells for $499, while Nintendo’s most expensive offering comes in at $349. Both offer robust digital marketplaces and the ability to easily download new games or services.

Here, the key differentiators are flexibility and fidelity. The Switch is flexible — users can dock it with their television and play it like a standard console or pick it up and take it anywhere as a handheld gaming system.

The PS5, meanwhile, has superior graphics hardware and processing power for gamers who want the highest-fidelity experience.

5. Analyze how your competitors market their products.

If you compare the marketing efforts of Nintendo and Sony, the difference is immediately apparent: Sony’s ads feature realistic in-game footage and speak to the exclusive nature of their game titles.

The company has managed to secure deals with several high-profile game developers for exclusive access to new and existing IPs.

Nintendo, meanwhile, uses brightly lit ads showing happy families playing together or children using their smaller Switches while traveling.

6. Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor’s content.

Engagement helps drive sales and encourage repeat purchases.

While there are several ways to measure engagement, social media is one of the most straightforward: In general, more followers equates to more engagement and greater market impact.

When it comes to our example, Sony enjoys a significant lead over Nintendo: While the official Playstation Facebook page has 38 million followers, Nintendo has just 5 million.

Competitive Analysis Templates

Competitive analysis is complex, especially when you’re assessing multiple companies and products simultaneously.

To help streamline the process, we’ve created 10 free templates that make it possible to see how you stack up against the competition — and what you can do to increase market share.

Let’s break down our SWOT analysis template. Here’s what it looks like:

Download Free Templates

Strengths. Identify your strengths. These may include specific pieces of intellectual property, products that are unique to the market, or a workforce that outperforms the competition.

Weaknesses. Here, it’s worth considering potential issues around pricing, leadership, staff turnover, and new competitors in the market.

Opportunities. This part of the SWOT analysis can focus on new market niches, evolving consumer preferences, or new technologies being developed by your company.

Threats. These might include new taxes or regulations on existing products or an increasing number of similar products in the same market space that could negatively affect your overall share.

Competitive Analysis: FAQs

What is a competitive analysis framework?

A competitive analysis framework is a structured approach used to evaluate potential competitors and understand their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

This framework serves as a guide for businesses to identify competitive advantages, understand market positioning, and inform strategic decisions.

Depending on the industry and the company’s objectives, this framework might focus on areas like product features, market share, pricing, customer feedback, and more.

How do you do a good competitive analysis?

Conducting a thorough competitive analysis involves several steps:

• Identify competitors. Start by listing key competitors in your market, both direct and indirect.
• Evaluate their products/services. Analyze what they’re selling and how it compares to your offerings.
• Analyze market position. Determine their market share, brand perception, and unique value proposition.
• Check their marketing strategies. Observe their advertising, content marketing, PR efforts, and online presence.
• Assess their financial health. If available, review financial statements, annual reports, or investor presentations.
• Gather customer feedback. Reviews, testimonials, and surveys can give insights into competitor strengths and weaknesses.
• Regularly review and update. The market evolves, and competitors change strategies, so it’s vital to keep your analysis current.

What are the 5 parts of a competitive analysis?

The five key components of a competitive analysis include:

1. Company overview. A brief snapshot of the competitor, including its history, size, and mission.
2. Product/service analysis. An examination of their key products or services and how they compare to yours.
3. Marketing strategy. Insights into their promotional tactics, target audience, and unique selling propositions.
4. Operational analysis. An understanding of their supply chain, distribution, and customer service practices.
5. Strengths and weaknesses. A clear breakdown of where the competitor excels and where they might be vulnerable.

What are the 3 C’s in a competitive analysis?

The 3 C’s refer to a strategic model that considers three main factors when understanding the broader business environment:

1. Company. Understanding your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
2. Customers. Knowing who your target audience is, what they value, and how they behave.
3. Competitors. Analyzing direct and indirect competitors to determine market dynamics and potential threats.

Is SWOT analysis a competitive analysis?

Yes, SWOT analysis is a type of competitive analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It is a strategic planning tool used to identify and analyze these four elements of a business.

While a SWOT analysis can be focused internally on a company‘s own attributes, when used as a competitive analysis tool, it assesses a competitor’s SWOT to understand where your business has advantages or might be vulnerable.

How does your business stack up?

Before you accurately compare your competition, you need to establish a baseline. This also helps when it comes time to perform a SWOT analysis.

Take an objective look at your business, sales, and marketing reports through the same metrics you use to evaluate your competition. Record this information just like you would with a competitor and use this as your baseline to compare across the board.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published prior to July 2018 but has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In the world of search engine marketing (SEM), I’m seeing a growing number of marketers turn to PPC campaigns. That’s how Google has significantly grown its advertising revenue every year.

In the world of search engine marketing (SEM), I’m seeing a growing number of marketers turn to PPC campaigns. That’s how Google has significantly grown its advertising revenue every year.

In 2023, 77.8% of Google’s revenue came from advertising on Google properties and YouTube.

Why? Well-run pay-per-click or PPC campaigns help you generate leads by nearly guaranteeing ad placement in search engine result pages.

And if your ads tool is tightly integrated with your CRM, you can use insights from your ad data to nurture leads across their buying journey.

In this post, I’ll walk you through what makes a successful campaign and the best practices for optimizing your PPC campaigns.

Table of Contents

• What is a PPC campaign?
• How to Build a PPC Campaign Strategy
• What is PPC management?
• PPC Campaign Management Template
• How to Manage a PPC Campaign
• Effective PPC Campaign Management Strategies
• How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign
• PPC Campaign Management by Platform

So, how can you win a PPC campaign? Success starts by using research, data, and insights to create an effective strategy.

If you jump into a PPC campaign without an effective strategy, it’s easy to waste money, attract the wrong leads, and set yourself up for frustration without much to show for it.

Here are a few ways I’ve seen marketers go wrong with PPC campaign management:

• Building one basic campaign without using Google Ads’ Ad Groups tool.
• Coming up with keywords by relying on gut feeling instead of doing research.
• Not adding “negative keywords” or monitoring campaigns to avoid wasting budget.
• Using unengaging landing pages or a homepage that generates no leads for the campaign.
• Creating campaigns, setting budget caps, and going live without informing internal or external stakeholders.

Building an excellent campaign structure can help you avoid these obstacles. Luckily, building an excellent PPC campaign structure can help you avoid these obstacles.

PPC Campaign Management Template

To help you succeed with your next campaign, we’ve created a free PPC campaign management template.

What I love about this template is that it allows you and your clients to set up a full-funnel campaign structure that follows PPC best practices.

Once you do that, you’ll be better positioned to maximize the return on your PPC investment. The template is broken into two sections: Ads Planner and Ads Results.

Ads Planner Template

In this section of the PPC template, you’ll record your ad campaign information.

The first three columns contain your campaign name, keywords, and negative keywords (keywords you don’t want ads shown for).

Enter your ad variations in the next section. There’s room for multiple headlines, descriptions, and URL paths to help you keep track of your running ads.

Download this Template

Ads Results Template

This part of the PPC template allows you to track relevant campaign metrics. Use it to record your total ad cost and analyze the performance of impressions, conversions, cost-per-click information, and more.

Image Source

Now that you’re familiar with the template’s components, let’s look at managing your PPC campaign.

How to Manage a PPC Campaign

Image Source

I’m going to show you how to use the PPC template in this blog post — so download it now and follow along with me.This template acts like a checklist that can help you manage the steps along the way.

Pro tip: Here’s what you need to know to make using this template easy:

• You’ll want to clear out the example data in the template. That includes placeholder keywords, campaign and ad group names, ads, and final URLs.
• Be careful not to alter the variables in columns F, J, and N of the ads planner. They contain the number of characters required by Google Ads for headlines, descriptions, URL paths, and Final URLs.

Now, let’s dive into PPC campaign management.

Step 1: Choose your PPC campaign management tools and software.

There are several platforms for managing your PPC campaign. I recommend starting with one platform and mastering it to keep your costs low in the initial stages of PPC planning.

To simplify managing your campaign, you can natively manage it in the platform you’re already using for running the ads, rather than paying for an external campaign management tool.

However, as you expand your strategy to include more sites, I’ve found that I’ve needed the features of a more robust PPC campaign management software.

These more advanced tools allow you to keep track of each platform, budget, and set of ad creatives in one place.

Pro tip: Here are some of my favorite tools for the job:

• Marin Software: AI-powered management and analytics to monitor and optimize cross-channel campaigns.
• WordStream Advisor: Analyzes Google and Facebook ad performance to improve reach, results, and ROI.
• SpyFu: Analyzes your competitor’s campaigns to help you build a well-rounded strategy.

• Optmyzr: Offers one-click optimizations, custom reporting, and rule-based automations for managing PPC campaigns across multiple platforms.

Step 2: Understand PPC campaign structure.

Don’t fall into the trap of setting up an account, creating an ad, directing the ad to a website’s home page, picking some keywords, and hitting go.

Running a successful PPC campaign is all about organizing your campaigns and ad groups effectively, choosing the right keywords, and targeting your audience with precision.

You’ll want to manage your budget wisely, craft relevant ad copy, and continuously optimize based on performance data.

And remember, PPC isn’t a one-time setup; it’s an ongoing process where staying updated and making tweaks will keep your campaigns driving results.

Chances are, the account you’re managing will have more than one PPC campaign. Your campaigns may contain several ad groups, each based on a set of related keyword groupings.

Each ad group may contain multiple ads with similar targeted keywords.

Managing multiple campaigns allows you to set daily budget caps, ad schedules, and select geo-targeted regions at the campaign level. If you’re bidding on generic and branded keywords, you’ll want to put these in separate campaigns.

The parameters around these two types of keywords will likely be different.

As you’ll see below, your template reflects these best practices, providing cells for several campaigns, ad groups, and ad variations within those ad groups.

Download this Template Free

Step 3: Identify your landing pages.

A landing page is the web page where your PPC traffic goes after they click on your paid ad.

Don’t drive PPC visitors to your home page or blog, hoping they’ll see and fill out a lead generation form. That’s the role of organic search. Instead, drive your audience to a landing page with messaging tailored to your campaign goal.

It should contain a form that collects their contact information in exchange for an offer or asset. Be sure to add a tracking token or UTM parameter to the page so you can identify your lead sources.

Pro tip: Keep in mind that the final URL within an ad group will be the same regardless of the keyword or ad. You can create another ad group if you want to drive a keyword to a different landing page.

If you want to get even more specific, create another campaign for that keyword.

Step 4: Build your keyword strategy.

Always select keywords that are relevant to your landing page and offer. Relevant keywords are important because they increase the chance of the right prospect seeing your ad, clicking on it, and visiting the landing page.

It’s tempting to want to rank for multiple keywords, but you shouldn’t try to do this using a single landing page. Why? An effective landing page has focused messaging that addresses only a few targeted keywords.

If a keyword is irrelevant to your landing page messaging, you’ll end up wasting your ad budget, as visitors are much less likely to convert.

It’s better to create another offer and landing page that specifically addresses those additional keywords with relevant messaging.

Pro tip: To understand search volumes and costs around keywords you want, use tools like the Google AdWords Tool or the HubSpot keywords tool.

If it’s your first time managing a PPC campaign, I recommend checking out this article on how to design a keyword strategy. For Google Ads, you’ll want to learn more about keyword quality scores, too.

Step 5: Create your ads.

This is the fun part.

Most PPC campaign management software allows you to create one or more ads for each ad group (hence the “group” terminology).

After creating multiple ads, these platforms display the ad variations to your audience to test which version leads to a higher clickthrough rate (CTR). This is called A/B testing.

While running A/B tests is optional, I highly recommend taking advantage of it. I’ve seen time and again that A/B testing insights significantly improve campaign performance and ROI.

Pro tip: One of the most effective A/B tests is testing variations of your ad’s call to action (CTA), the phrase that encourages your prospect to take a specific action, like downloading a resource or signing up for more information.

If you need more detail, read how the HubSpot team A/B tests our own CTAs.

Writing Your Headline

When writing your ad, give special attention to your headline. The headline has the greatest influence on an ad’s CTR. Be sure to include a keyword in your headline to draw a user’s attention.

An even better practice is using dynamic keyword insertion to make your ads even more relevant to people searching for what you offer.

Keep in mind that you have 30 characters for each ad headline, 30 characters for the display URL (the URL that’s displayed in the ad, not to be confused with the final URL), and 90 characters for each line of copy.

If you’re using this template, you can easily keep track of these values.

Download this Template Free

Choosing Your Display URL

Finally, there’s the tricky matter of the display URL. You‘re only allowed 30 characters here, but it’s unlikely that your final URL, the actual URL for your landing page, will be that short, especially after adding UTM parameters.

For this reason, search engines like Google allow you to create a display URL, which may not be an actual URL on your website. However, the domain in your display URL must be the same as the domain in your final URL.

This allows users to know they’re in the right place when they click your ad and visit your landing page.

Step 6: Share the completed template with stakeholders.

Your completed template needs to align with stakeholders’ expectations and the elements of a productive PPC campaign.

If you’re a PPC campaign stakeholder, this template will help you with two things.

First, the ads planner template gives you a bird‘s-eye view of what the person running the ads is doing. Second, the ad results template shows how much you’re spending on PPC.

With this, you can reallocate and swiftly modify your budget as you respond to changes in the marketplace.

Effective PPC Campaign Management Strategies

When I first started managing PPC campaigns, I quickly realized that there’s a lot more to it than just setting up ads and hoping for the best. You need to fine-tune every element to get the best results.

Over the years, I’ve honed my approach, and I’m excited to share my top recommendations for effective PPC campaign management strategies that can drive serious revenue, results, and ROI.

Set Clear Campaign Objectives and Goals

Clear, measurable objectives ensure every dollar you spend is working toward driving tangible business outcomes, like boosting sales or generating qualified leads.

When your goals are laser-focused, you’re setting yourself up to maximize ROI by putting your efforts into what truly matters for revenue growth.

Nail Your Audience Targeting

By honing in on precise audience segments, you can run hyper-targeted ads that minimize wasted spend and maximize conversions.

When you reach the right people at the right time, your traffic quality improves, leading to more conversions and better ROI.

Master Keyword Research and Selection

Keywords are the backbone of any PPC campaign. Choosing high-intent keywords ensures your ads appear when people are actively searching for your products or services.

This not only increases your chances of conversions but also helps drive more sales or leads, giving you the best bang for your PPC buck. If you need help, check out our video on using ChatSpot AI for keyword research.

Write Ad Copy That Converts

Developing compelling copy that speaks directly to your audience’s needs can skyrocket your clickthrough rates and conversions.

Effective messaging doesn’t just attract clicks — it persuades potential customers to take action, which means more revenue and better ROI.

Optimize Your Landing Pages

When your landing pages are relevant and persuasive, they guide visitors smoothly toward conversion, lowering bounce rates and increasing sales or leads — ultimately giving you a bigger return on your ad spend.

Manage Your Budget Wisely

Allocating your spend to the highest-performing campaigns minimizes waste and maximizes ROI. When you manage your budget efficiently, you can scale successful campaigns, driving more revenue over time.

Continuous Optimization

PPC isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it game.

Ongoing optimization is the secret to getting better results over time. Regularly testing and tweaking your targeting, bids, and ad creatives help you refine your campaigns, driving more results and revenue as your efforts compound.

Analyze Competitors Regularly

By keeping tabs on what others in your industry are doing, you can spot gaps in the market and seize opportunities they’re missing. This intel helps you outperform competitors, capture more market share, and drive higher revenue and ROI.

Scale Your Campaigns Strategically

Once you’ve found a winning formula, it’s time to scale.

Expanding your reach and increasing ad spend on high-performing campaigns can amplify your results without compromising performance. Strategic scaling leads to substantial revenue growth and maximizes ROI.

How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign

PPC campaign management isn’t a one-time thing. You’ll need to adjust your methods continually for optimized results. Keep these factors in mind to maximize the performance of your PPC campaigns.

Location

Geographic targeting, or geotargeting, allows you to focus your ads on specific locations. This can be as broad as an entire country or as specific as a single city or even a particular ZIP code.

Track the performance of your ads by location to identify the most high-performing areas where you may need to adjust your strategy.

You might reallocate the budget to more profitable locations or test new geotargeted ad copy to improve performance.

For example, if you own a bike shop, the ad performance data may show that targeting urban and densely populated areas may be better than targeting rural areas where most folks residents rely on a car to get around.

Performance by Device

In my experience, conversion rates can vary significantly by device. Campaigns that are effective for desktop users may not perform so well with mobile users.

Consider targeting each group separately and note any differences in conversion rates, cost per click, or return on ad spend (ROAS) for each device type.

If a campaign works better on mobile versus desktop, allocate funds towards your mobile efforts while you try a different campaign for desktop users. This way, you ensure you’re spending on campaigns that guarantee the highest ROI.

Evaluating Keywords

When running campaigns, every keyword you choose won’t prove useful. You’ll need to evaluate and remove the low performers. These could be keywords that:

• Are not converting.
• Are converting at a very high cost.
• Have a “below average” quality score rating.

Remove these keywords and stick with those that are performing well. This allows you to get maximum value from your ad budget.

Examine Keyword Bids

When bidding for keywords, you’ll want to determine how much you can pay for each conversion and still make a profit. To do this, I recommend using Google Ads tools to optimize your bids, like:

• Bid simulator: This allows you to see how higher or lower bids can affect your ad’s performance.
• First-page bid estimates: This shows how much you likely need to bid to get your ads on the first page of Google search results.

After determining the maximum you can pay for a keyword, these tools will help you make the most of your budget.

Performance by Day and Time

Campaign performance will fluctuate depending on the time of day or day of the week. So, observe your campaigns to see when they perform well.

If they aren’t performing during a specific timeframe, adjust your campaign so that you are only bidding on the most profitable times.

Now, let’s explore the platforms available to run your PPC campaigns.

PPC Campaign Management by Platform

Besides figuring out the ads that work best for your business, understanding where your audience spends most of their time online is key.

That’s why you need to familiarize yourself with the different platforms available for running your PPC campaigns.

Let’s look at some of the most popular ad platforms, like Google, Microsoft (Bing), Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.

Google PPC Campaign Management

Google has been the dominant player in the search engine space for over 20 years, and it still produces some of the most innovative ad experiences in the market.

Google PPC management offers several key advantages compared to other platforms, like larger reach and audience, advanced targeting options like intent-based targeting and remarketing, and native integration with other Google tools.

Here’s a look at two of the most popular ways to serve ads on Google.

Image Source

Google Search Ads

One of the most popular types of Google Ads is the search ad. These ads appear at the top and bottom of the search results for specific keywords you bid on.

The typical goal for running Google search ad campaigns is to drive traffic to a specific webpage — like a landing or product page.

Google Display Ads

If you’ve ever visited a website that advertised on the banner, sidebar, or footer of a web page, you’ve probably seen a Google display ad. These ads are typically visual, featuring colorful graphics, videos, and occasionally audio.

Google display ads are helpful for retargeting customers who visit your website without taking your desired action.

Microsoft Ads (Formerly Bing Ads) PPC Campaign Management

Overall, Microsoft Ads works almost like Google Ads. Both offer similar ad formats, like text ads, responsive ads, and dynamic search ads.

However, Microsoft PPC management can be considered easier to use than Google PPC management for digital marketers starting out, with fewer field requirements and lower thresholds to get to advanced features.

There are a few more distinctions that’ll help you get the most out of your PPC campaign.

Image Source

Microsoft Ads Keyword Planner

The bulk of your PPC efforts will likely live in Google Ads. When you decide to bid on Microsoft Ads, avoid using your Google Ads keywords for your Microsoft Ads.

Google and Bing are different search engines, meaning the search volume for your Google keywords may not be the same in Bing.

Microsoft Bing’s keyword research and suggestion tool provides more accurate search volumes for your keywords.

So, while you can use your keyword list from Google, use this tool to verify whether you should bid on the same keywords versus other variants with more traffic.

Lower CPC

One upside of Microsoft Ads is the possibility of having lower CPC, which decreases your ad spend.

A WordStream test of both Google and Microsoft found that the average CPC of running ads on Microsoft was 33% lower.

The implication? Bidding on Microsoft Ads is less competitive than Google, meaning you may likely spend less when paying for Microsoft Ads keywords.

This may be especially true for specific industries, as you’ll see in this table:

Image Source

For a deeper dive into Microsoft Ads, check out this resource portal.

Facebook PPC Campaign Management

Facebook Ads Manager is a platform that connects 1.6 billion people to businesses on Facebook.

Where Facebook PPC management differs from Google PPC management is in its ability to target specific demographics and interests, which is great for brand awareness campaigns.

Image Source

Some of the most popular ads you can use for Facebook campaigns are:

Story Ads

With more users spending time on social media platforms’ story features, these ads are one way to reach your audience.

Like personal stories, you can share story ads as a video with a link. You can also use a series of photos to explain your ad and entice your audience to take a specific action.

Keep in mind: You can only post stories for 24 hours. These ads are best used for promotions like time-limited offers.

Playable Ads

Gamification is an innovative way to catch a lead’s attention. Facebook’s playable ads allow you to create a brief interactive version of a game or app so users can get a feel for your product.

You’ll want to keep the functionality simple, so you don’t deter potential customers. And, of course, make it fun.

Messenger Ads

If you’ve ever used Facebook’s messenger tool, you’ve probably seen an ad in your conversations. Messenger ads are useful because potential customers can decide to connect with your business directly from their messages.

If you have a customer service team that connects with people via chat, this is a great way to establish an instant connection. You can also send a lead to your site or a specific landing page from the ad.

To get a comprehensive deep dive into building Facebook ad campaigns, check out HubSpot’s Facebook Ads Training Course.

X (Formerly Twitter) PPC Campaign Management

X / Twitter Ads Manager makes it easy to plan your X ad while providing reporting on campaign performance.

Image Source

EMarketer reports that X is still a supportive environment for native brand content, with its ability to connect directly to consumers and interact in real time.

But while you may have an excellent chance of success with X, your ads need to be catchy enough to stop someone mid-scroll. Some ads you can include in your X ad campaigns are:

Promoted Ads

X’s Promoted Ads can display your message as a single Image Ad, a Video Ad, a Carousel Ad with up to six horizontally swipeable images or videos, or Text Ads for native advertising content.

This approach allows your business to convert users, or gain new followers. That can help build your brand’s awareness.

Vertical Video Ads

Grab the attention of your prospect with X’s full-screen vertical video Ads. Vertical video is the fastest-growing segment of X, capturing roughly 20% of viewers’ total time spent on the platform.

X reports that users are up to seven times more likely to follow, repost, like, and click the URLs of vertical video ads, as compared to the same ads on their home feed.

X Amplify/X Takeovers/X Live

For even more ways to align ads with premium video content, X offers ways to target ad display based on content categories, feed placement on Timelines or the Explore tab, or even livestream content.

Learn more about X Advertising for your business, and get to posting!

YouTube PPC Campaign Management

Consider adding YouTube PPC to your campaign, especially if you’re already using Google PPC management.

YouTube is one part of the Google Display Network with over 2.4 billion monthly users. This high number of users suggests that including YouTube in your ad campaign strategy makes sense.

If your business can create ads that’ll interest your audience and keep them from hitting “skip” you’re already winning.

Let’s look at some of the different YouTube ads.

Skippable In-Stream Ads

These are likely the ads you are most familiar with. These ads have a little button that says “skip.” Clicking the button allows you to start or continue viewing a video on YouTube.

Often, users have to wait five seconds before they can skip. Five seconds isn’t much time to convince someone to stick around, so ensure your ad’s hook can capture your audience’s attention.

However, you shouldn’t worry if users skip your ad within the first five seconds. When a user skips your ad in the first 5 seconds, you won’t have to pay for such views or clicks.

Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads (Including Bumper Ads)

Since many people opt to skip ads on YouTube, advertisers have the option of creating non-skippable ads. If you think your creative is captivating enough to resonate with your target audience, this option may work.

Ensure you measure the results from your non-skippable ads to make the best use of your budget. If the results aren’t in your favor, revert to a skippable ad.

Video Discovery Ads (Formerly Known as In-display Ads)

Discovery ads are what users see in the search results. As the second largest search engine, people watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube videos daily. You’ll want those ads appearing in search results too.

These ads will include a thumbnail and a few lines of text as a description. Since many people prefer visuals over text, this is an opportunity to get your audience to view your video instead of reading a competitor’s text resource.

Start Your PPC Campaign Today

PPC campaign management is all about researching, budgeting, testing, reporting, building on what works, and optimizing for the best ROI.

You don‘t have to do it alone. With the right tools and instructions I’ve outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to implement a PPC campaign that yields results for your business.

Keep in mind that there are a few things that will help you make the most of your efforts:

• Clearly defined goals, so you can focus your efforts on reaching them.
• Focus on your audience, so you can reach the right people with the right message at the right time.

• Write good ad copy by testing your message and iterating on it to lockdown your conversions.
• Make data-informed decisions, so that you’re adapting your strategy based on numbers and not a gut check.
• Always be optimizing to meet a changing market.

By keeping these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to running PPC campaigns that don’t just drive traffic — they drive meaningful growth for your business.

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