Day: September 24, 2024

When I first heard how HubSpot’s YouTube team bumped one channel’s views up by over 400%, I begged for permission to share the story. (I’m not above debasing myself on your behalf.)

It’s a lesson that applies to nearly all content marketing — and one I promise you’re not going to hear anywhere else.

Are you ready for it? Not all distribution is good distribution. And that includes your own.

Below, I chat with our head of YouTube about how and why cutting off all external distribution actually increased our YT performance. And his advice for when you should consider picking up the axe, too.

The Road to the Chopping Block

When Carl Mueller joined us as HubSpot’s head of YouTube earlier this year, he noticed that one of our YT channels had a problem the others didn’t. If a video was six minutes long, most viewers were dropping off after only a minute or two.

Though, to be fair, that’s still longer than my kid made it through Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Carl’s been producing video for over 10 years for names like Business Insider and Morning Brew. Which is to say, where media and marketing mash up, Carl knows his s***.

So when he says the content wasn’t the problem, I know he’s not just trying to avoid hurt feelings.

“I got here in late February, and the first thing I did was watch our content from a quality perspective,” he says. “But then I looked at the metrics, and the numbers were surprisingly low. I don’t think the metrics reflected the quality of the videos.”

But if the content wasn’t the problem, what was?

The call is coming from inside the house.

As Carl investigated the problem, he noticed that around 90% of the views for this particular channel were coming from external sources. That includes Facebook, Instagram, blogs, newsletters — everything except YouTube.

“What I’ve noticed is that when you’re asking someone to jump from another platform to YouTube, you’re asking them to change their consumption behavior,” he explains. “Is that person sitting down with time to spare to watch a 10-minute video?”

The answer to that depends heavily on what platform they’re jumping from.

And about 90% of those external views were coming from The Hustle newsletter.

“Which, at first glance, makes a lot of sense. It seemed like good, targeted distribution. But it meant that most of our total viewership was coming from the newsletter.”

That seems like the opposite of a problem, right? As I’ve not-so-subtly mentioned before, The Hustle has an audience of over 2.5M and above-industry-average engagement rates. It’s the kind of audience most marketers would trade a body part to get in front of. (And I mean a useful body part. Not just a pinky toe.)

And in the vast majority of cases, they’d be right. The Hustle is an absolute catapult for content, often driving thousands and thousands of views to blogs, short-form videos, and content offers. So why didn’t that work here?

Carl lays it out:

“The newsletter goes out at, what, 5:30 in the morning? People open it in bed.” They click on a video, “watch a few minutes, and then leave.”

Or they save it for later and then forget about it in a sea of tabs. (Guiltyyyyy!)

“If you were in their shoes, are you going to watch that whole video? For me, the answer is probably not,” Carl laughs. “Maybe sometimes if I’m laying on my couch. But if the average newsletter reader is not in a position to watch a long-form video, then that is a lot of bad retention metrics.”

For this otherwise highly engaged audience, that was about a 20-30% retention rate.

Let’s do some quick math. What does it equal when 90% of your audience has a 20% retention rate? An unhappy algorithm.

As Carl puts it: “YouTube won’t promote your content if your own viewers aren’t watching it.”

We needed surgery, stat.

Making the Cut

“We decided as an experiment to pause all direct external distribution,” Carl says.

But why all distribution, and not just the mismatched audience?

“We wanted to first see if we had a core audience on YouTube. We wanted to serve the videos only to our subscriber base and see if they liked them.”

And it worked. Better even than Carl predicted.

“I was warning everyone that we were going to perform worse before we performed better. A few thousand guaranteed views were going away,” Carl recalls. “But it was pretty immediate. The first video after the shift got 27,000 views. A couple of videos later we had one hit 300,000. Then after that 450,000.”

About 90 days after pausing distribution, the channel’s average views and average watch time both rose by 420%, and our subscriber count jumped 257%.

This goes against everything I’ve learned about content marketing, where more distribution equals more views. What gives, Carl?

“It’s compounding success. If something performs great, YouTube is more likely to promote the following video.”

An audience built on YouTube is ready to watch a YouTube video. And if the majority of your viewers are watching the majority of your content, it sends positive signals to the YT algorithm. YouTube then serves your videos to a wider audience, and a virtuous cycle is born.

“Not all distribution is good distribution,” Carl says. “That’s a universal takeaway for all channels and all content. Make sure you’re targeting the right audience at the right time.”

Ask your doctor if pausing distribution is right for you.

Here’s where I hit the pause button, because I can sense that some of you are getting antsy to DIY.

I asked Carl what he would say to readers who are now thinking about axing their own distribution.

“Make sure your channel is in the same circumstances as our channel. It had a heavy reliance on external distribution and low watch times. If you have that combination, then likely those unengaged external views are impacting your performance.”

So, to be clear: If you don’t have low engagement, your distribution is likely doing its job, and axing it will not help you grow further.

Similarly, if the majority of your views aren’t coming from external distribution, then it’s probably not the cause of any low metrics.

But Carl’s not letting the rest of you walk away empty-handed. Here are some takeaways for everyone:

1. Consider behavior patterns when sharing with a potential audience.

This is sound advice for any kind of marketing, not just video marketing.

Before you distribute your content through any channel, consider the consumption habits of that audience.

Are they in the right place to share a social media post? Download a PDF? Listen to a podcast?

“There is value in external distribution, but you have to make sure that it’s to the right people at the right time, and at the right stage in the content’s lifespan.”

2. Seek on-platform distribution.

“On YouTube, I would always prioritize on-platform partnerships, video swaps, or call-outs. Targeting people on YouTube is the best place to get people to watch your video on YouTube.”

And that generally holds true for most kinds of content. Consider, for example, that you’re most likely to find TikTok viewers on TikTok. Or that newsletter readers are often willing to be blog readers. (And, like magic, here you are.)

3. Optimize for the platform, not the distribution channel.

“Let YouTube do its thing for a little while,” Carl advises. “If that’s not working, change thumbnails, change titles. Do everything you can to optimize for YouTube.”

Not to be a broken record but, again, that applies to any kind of content or platform. Optimize first for search, social, or wherever your audience primarily finds your content.

“And if that’s not working, then it might be worth taking the risk of putting it somewhere else.”

4. Set clear expectations.

If your audience clicks a link without knowing it leads to a video, a lot more people are going to abandon ship. Same for long-form written content.

To avoid this, you need to set the expectations for what they’re about to encounter.

“If we do share — because there is value in sharing videos with the newsletter audience — we make it very clear that it is a video,” then he switches to a mock-stern voice. “All caps. WATCH VIDEO. You are leaving. ARE YOU PREPARED?”

Now you are.

How to See YouTube Reports in HubSpot

Marketing Hub Enterprise users can actually pull their YouTube performance data straight into HubSpot so you can see all of your glorious success in one place.

You can check out custom reports on watch time, views, shares, subscriber counts, engagement, etc. — allowing you to be the Carl Mueller of your company.

First, you’ll need to connect your YT account to HubSpot.

1. In HubSpot, click on the settings icon in the top navigation bar.
2. Choose Marketing then Social.
3. Click on Connect account in the top right.
4. Select YouTube Reports in the box that pops up.
5. Select the YouTube account to connect.
6. Review permissions and click Allow.

Now that you’re all connected, here’s how to access your reports:

1. Navigate back to Marketing and then Social. (Unless you’re already there from the first part. Then skip this part.)
2. Click the tab that says Analyze.
3. Click the dropdown menu that says All accounts and make sure YouTube is selected.
4. Apply filters for date range, campaign, etc. to your heart’s content.

Mixing colors in CSS is pretty much a solved deal, thanks to the more recent color-mix() function as it gains support. Pass in two color values — any two color values at all — and optionally set the proportions.

background-color: color-mix(#000 30%, #fff 70%);

We also have the relative color syntax that can manipulate colors from one color space to another and modify them from there. The preeminent use case being a way to add opacity to color values that don’t support it, such as named colors.

background-color: hsl(from black h s l); /* hsl(0 0% 0%) */
background-color: hsl(from black h s l / 50%); /* hsl(0 0% 0% / 50%) */

We can get hacky and overlay one opaque element with another, I suppose.

Same general idea maybe, but with mix-blend-mode?

Another roundabout way of getting there is something I saw this morning when looking over the updates that Ryan added to the animation property in the Almanac. Now, we all know that animation is shorthand for about a gajillion other properties (the order of which always eludes me). One of those is animation-composition and it’s used to… well, Ryan nails the explanation:

Defining a property in CSS also sets what is considered the underlying value of the property. By default, keyframe animations will ignore the underlying value, as they only consider the effect values defined within the animation. Keyframes create a stack of effect values, which determines the order in which the animation renders to the browser. Composite operations are how CSS handles the underlying effect combined with the keyframe effect value.

Manuel Matuzović and Robin Rendle also have excellent ways of explaining the property, the former of which sparked us to update the Almanac.

OK! We have three values supported by animation-composition to replace the underlying property value in favor of the effect value defined in keyframes, add to them, or accumulate for combining multiple values. The add value is what’s interesting to us because… oh gosh, let’s just let Ryan take it:

[I]nstead of replacing an underlying background-color property value with the keyframe’s effect value, the color type values are combined, creating new colors.

A-ha! The example goes like this:

See that? The add value blends the two colors as one transitions to the other. Notice, too, how much smoother that transition is than the replace value, although we wind up with a completely new color at the 100% mark rather than the color we declared in the keyframes. What if we pause the animation at some arbitrary point? Can we extract a new color value from it?

Ryan made this so that hovering on the elements pauses the animation. If we crack open DevTools and force the :hover pseudo on the element, maybe we can head over to the Computed tab to get the new color value.

Interestingly, we get some RGB conversions in there. Probably because updating color channels is easier than converting one hex to another? Browsers do smart stuff.

Now I want to go update my old color interpolation demo…

Hmm, not any different to my untrained eye. Maybe that’s only because we’re changing the HSL’s hue channel and it’s super subtle. Whatever the case, animation-composition can produce new computed color values. What you need those for and what you’d do with them? I dunno, but go wild.

Color Mixing With Animation Composition originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

The biggest topic on everyone’s minds this year at INBOUND was the same as last year: AI. But the nature of the conversation has changed.

In 2023, headlines indicated that AI would change everything, for better or for worse. It was going to bring an economic revolution, usher in a gold rush, and destroy humanity, all at once.

One year later, the headlines say the opposite story: the AI revolution is losing steam and the AI hype bubble is deflating. So what’s the truth? Is the recent wave of AI disruption false hype, or a true revolution?

At INBOUND, I made the case that these are not the right questions to ask or answer. Because first and foremost, go-to-market professionals are asking themselves a simpler question: how do I drive growth?

After all, everyone seems to feel the same way: lately, it’s been harder to grow. So it’s worth understanding why it’s been so tough, what has changed in the customer journey, and answer the question: where do we grow from here?

3 Reasons Why the Growth Formula Is Broken

The growth formula is simple: More traffic * Higher Conversion * Better Retention = Higher growth. But unfortunately, it is broken.

Across the board: traffic, conversion, and retention are down, and therefore, so is growth. According to our research, only 50% of reps are hitting their quotas, compared to 66% just two years ago.

But why? We’ve seen three big trends that have contributed to this downturn.

1. Search has fundamentally changed. Search engines used to provide bluelinks that get customers to your website. But with AI overviews and soon SearchGPT, customers are getting more answers without leaving search. That means fewer visitors to your website.
2. Social platforms are holding on to customers longer. They’re becoming destinations themselves, where customers are spending more time. That means fewer visitors still.
3. More than ever, people want to talk to people. Not brands. Customers check Reddit, visit G2, watch YouTube videos, and talk to their peers first — so by the time they come to your site, your customers know more about you than you know about them. That means the bar for sales and service teams is incredibly high when talking to customers. And if that bar is not met, conversion and retention will go down.
   

Two Paths for AI to Drive Growth: Acceleration and Transformation

So how do go-to-market professionals address these challenges? History has the answer: when technology solves old problems in new ways, it leads to profound change.

That’s why the internet and smartphones were so transformative — they addressed fundamental needs like information access and human connection.

AI might just achieve the same kind of change for growth. We see that potential firsthand from surveying hundreds of our customers who have embraced AI. And we came away with two overarching observations: Today, our customers are using AI for acceleration. And soon, they’ll be using it for transformation.

Acceleration means taking what’s feasible, and making it fast, while transformation is taking what’s impossible and making it possible. From customer conversations, we’ve seen how both types of use cases apply to marketing, sales, and service.

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Marketing

Marketing is one of the biggest use cases for AI and customers are already using AI to accelerate their work by creating, personalizing, and distributing content.

65% of HubSpot users are now using AI to create content, and they do it well by understanding what the technology is good at: researching topics, delivering decent first drafts, and iterating for different audiences. Then human experts take the drafts from good to great.

Within HubSpot, our marketing team has excelled at personalizing content with AI. When we started reaching out to prospects with AI-personalized emails, it increased our conversion rate by 82%.

And when it comes to distributing content, we saw huge adoption when we launched our AI-powered Content Remix feature a few months ago — which allows you to take one piece of content, and quickly convert it into social posts, videos, emails, and more.

Soon, marketers will be able to transform their work using AI. And they’ll do it with agents — software that uses AI to accomplish goals with multiple steps.

Content agents will prioritize, personalize, and distribute content; social agents will analyze social content and tell you when, where, and how to share it; and a campaign agent will tell you where to invest and what to amplify within your campaigns.

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Sales

In sales, the everlasting challenge has been increasing time in front of customers. The average sales person spends only two hours a day selling!

They’re stuck the rest of the day buried in prep for the next call or drowning in follow-ups from the last one. Nobody has figured out how to shrink this time—until now.

AI is accelerating prep and follow-up. Salespeople can now research prospects in seconds, generate high-quality personal messages to connect with them, summarize calls, and create insightful follow-ups.

The result: across our customers and HubSpot, AI has saved time spent in discovery by 30%, and cut follow-up time by 20%.

And soon: AI will transform sales with prospecting agents — AI-powered software that finds leads for you and makes outreach as simple as a couple of clicks.

How AI Is Accelerating and Transforming Service

Finally, in customer service, a huge source of frustration has been when service professionals are stuck being human band-aids — chasing problems reactively.

Here, too, AI is accelerating the process with great results. It can answer customer questions better than ever; HubSpot has been able to resolve nearly 30% of tickets this year with AI.

It can accelerate self-service by strengthening your knowledge base, allowing customers to resolve their own questions. And it can analyze customer sentiment in real time, suggesting specific actions based on the trends it observes.

Agents are coming to transform customer service, too. Support agents will be able to answer increasingly complex customer questions, 24/7 — and knowledge base agents will recommend and update knowledge base articles so your team doesn’t have to.

How AI and Humans Can Work Together To Drive Growth

Based on everything we’ve learned from our customers, the way to grow is not to underplay AI or overhype AI — it’s to understand and co-create with AI.

Because co-creation catalyzes growth. We believe that across go-to-market functions, we need to co-create with AI to drive growth:

• In marketing, AI creates, and people curate.
• In sales, AI offers context, and people offer connection.
• And in service, AI handles simplicity, and people handle subtlety.

In all three cases, AI isn’t being used instead of people — it’s empowering people and helping us scale. And if we can unlock its potential to help us drive traffic, conversion, and retention, we might just be able to fix the growth formula. And that effort is perfectly aligned with our mission at HubSpot.

HubSpot’s Mission, What Will Change, and What Will Always Be True

HubSpot exists to help millions of organizations grow better. And we are doubling down on that mission as we reimagine our platform with AI. To fully leverage AI, you will need support for structured and unstructured data.

You’ll need to gather insights from text content as well as audio and video. You’ll need your apps and agents to work well together. And we’re excited to help our customers adapt to these changes!

But we also have to remember that some things will always be true!

Customers will always want things to be easy — so we work hard to make things intuitive and efficient. You’ll always want to realize value fast — so we are laser-focused on repeat usage and immediate impact. And you’ll always want your customer and context data to be unified — so we’re bringing together all the data you’ll need to drive insights with AI.

Our mission is to help you grow. Our passion is to make it easy, fast, and unified. And what’s so motivating about this moment is that everywhere we look, there is promise that AI can help businesses scale like never before. With AI, we can help all businesses play big.

And to learn more about the features and services we introduced at INBOUND 2024 to do just that, check out our latest Spotlight.

here is three Sql table name of them - 1. orders 2.order_item 3. target_value

I am trying Two way here is may two code :

1

SELECT I.target_id as Iid,
        I.target_date as Idate,
       I.customer_name as Icust,
       I.target_product as Icat,
       I.target_pay as Ipay,
       I.target_rec as Irec,
       I.active as Iact,
       I.status as Ista,
       COALESCE(S.sale, 0) AS sale, 
       COALESCE(P.cat_n, 0) AS cat_n,
       COALESCE(R.cus_n, 0) AS cus_n,
       COALESCE(O.order_return, 0) AS order_return,
       I.target_pay - (S.sale - O.order_return) AS T_achi 
FROM target_value I 
LEFT JOIN (
    SELECT categories_id, categories_name AS cat_n
    FROM categories 
    ) P ON P.categories_id = I.target_product
LEFT JOIN (
    SELECT customer_id, customer_name AS cus_n
    FROM customer
     ) R ON R.customer_id = I.customer_name

LEFT JOIN (
    SELECT order_id, order_date, categories_id, SUM(quantity) AS sale 
        FROM order_item  
    GROUP BY categories_id 
) S ON S.categories_id = I.target_product 
LEFT JOIN (
        SELECT order_id, order_date, categories_id, SUM(Rquantity) AS order_return
    FROM order_item  
    GROUP BY categories_id 
) O ON O.categories_id = I.target_product WHERE S.order_date BETWEEN '2024-09-01' AND '2024-09-24';

code 2

SELECT

  target_value.customer_name, target_value.target_product, target_value.target_pay,
       target_value.target_rec, SUM(target_value.target_pay) AS TPP,
          order_item.categories_id,   product.product_name, orders.order_date, orders.client_name, customer.customer_name, categories.categories_name,  SUM(order_item.quantity) AS T1, SUM(order_item.Rquantity) AS T2, 
          (SUM(order_item.quantity) - SUM(order_item.Rquantity) ) AS Turn,

     COALESCE(SUM(target_value.target_pay), 0) AS TPP, 
       COALESCE(SUM(order_item.quantity), 0) AS T1,
       COALESCE(SUM(order_item.Rquantity), 0) AS T2,
       COALESCE((SUM(order_item.quantity) - SUM(order_item.Rquantity) ), 0) AS Turn

      FROM target_value 
INNER JOIN
    order_item ON target_value.target_product = order_item.categories_id  
        INNER JOIN product ON product.product_id = order_item.product_id 
        INNER JOIN orders ON orders.order_id = order_item.order_id
        INNER JOIN customer ON orders.client_name = customer.customer_id
        INNER JOIN categories ON categories.categories_id = order_item.categories_id
        WHERE orders.order_date BETWEEN '2022-08-10' AND '2024-09-25' GROUP BY order_item.categories_id, orders.client_name;

but i want result like below .

BUT MY code not work properly . so please sir help me to find out proper result.

date and summation not work properly.

Here’s a real story. Upon writing this piece, I tried to set up a PPC campaign on a whim with no plan or clue (practicing on my friend’s small business—oops). I just set the budget and let it run. Was it good? I’ll leave it up to you.

So, I consulted with a bunch of PPC pros and watched a dozen webinars to provide you with practical and powerful stuff.

You’ll find seven tactics for managing your PPC budget and five tips for making smart adjustments.

Let’s dive right in.

Table of Contents

• What is a PPC budget?
• What is the PPC budget formula?
• How to Calculate Your PPC Budget
• How to Manage Your PPC Budget
• 5 PPC Budgeting Tips from Pros
• Key Takeaways from PPC Experts

What is a PPC budget?

A PPC (pay-per-click) budget is the amount of money you plan to spend on ads where you pay each time someone clicks on them.

A few terms you’ll run into here:

1. Daily budget – How much you spend each day. Ads stop showing until the next day if you reach this limit.
2. Campaign budget – The total amount you want to spend on a specific ad campaign.
3. Bid amount – How much you pay for each click on your ad. Higher bids can get your ad shown more but cost more.

Before setting up a PPC campaign, think about where your audience is most active.

For example, if your audience uses Facebook more than X, spend more of your budget on Facebook. Do some research to make sure your ad spend goes to the best channels.

Generally, prioritize Google PPC first, as Google has 90.48% of the global search engine market.

Image Source

What is the PPC budget formula?

From my chats with a bunch of PPC experts, most of them rely on this formula:

Where:

1. Target daily clicks: How many clicks you want to achieve each day. It depends on your campaign goals and the expected traffic.
2. Cost per click (CPC): The average amount you are willing to pay for each click. Estimate it based on historical data or industry benchmarks.
3. Number of days in a month: Typically 30 or 31 days, but you can adjust it for the specific month or campaign duration.

Example Calculation

Let’s say:

• You want to achieve 50 clicks per day.
• Your average Cost Per Click is $2.
• You are budgeting for a month with 30 days.

Now, let’s implement the formula:

50 clicks/day × $2 per click × 30 days= 50 × 2 × 30 = 3000

So, your monthly PPC budget would be $3,000.

How to Calculate Your PPC Budget

To calculate your PPC budget, you just need to note down a few formulas and make sure you do everything in this order:

1. Understand your target CAC.

Before you jump into the calculation, understand your CAC—the total cost to get a new customer. Roughly, it's all your marketing and sales costs divided by the number of new customers.

For example, if you spend $10,000 on marketing in a month and gain 100 new customers, your CAC is $100.

"I always start with the target cost to acquire a customer or CAC. If you don’t know that number, calculate one based on the average customer lifetime value and determine how much you can afford to spend on advertising while maintaining a healthy profit margin,” says Brooke Webber, head of marketing at Ninja Patches.

2. Calculate daily budget.

Daily budgeting helps in allocating funds to different days of the week based on performance patterns. For instance, you might find that weekends generate more conversions, allowing you to allocate more budget on those days.

Ed Stapleton from Clicks Geek suggests multiplying the average click cost by five.

So, if the click cost is $10, then $10 x 5 = $50. This $50 is your suggested minimum daily ad budget.

“I use this multiplier because most campaigns convert between 20% to 40% on the landing page. This means roughly 2 to 4 out of 10 clicks become leads. To be safe, I use a multiplier of five to ensure you get at least one lead per day,” says Stapleton.

3. Calculate weekly budget.

After calculating the daily budget, you can move forward to calculating the weekly costs. Ed advises multiplying the daily budget by the number of days you plan to run your ads each week.

If the daily budget is $50 and you run ads five days a week, the weekly budget would be $250 ($50 x 5).

4. Calculate monthly budget.

Finally, to calculate the monthly budget, multiply the weekly budget by 4 to get a basic monthly budget. However, Ed notes that for a more accurate estimate, you might use 4.3 weeks to account for variations in the number of weeks per month.

For example, with a weekly budget of $250, the monthly budget would be $1,000 ($250 x 4) or $1,075 ($250 x 4.3).

Here’s a breakdown for all three calculations:

Daily Budget:

Avg CPC x 5

Daily budget x 5 = weekly budget

Weekly budget x 4 weeks = monthly budget

Example:

Avg CPC is $10

$10 x 5 = $50

$50 x 5 = $250

$250 x 4 = $1,000

$1,000 is the monthly ad budget

How to Manage Your PPC Budget

Turns out that 72% of companies haven’t reviewed their ad campaigns in over a month, which is definitely not the way to manage your PPC campaign and its budget.

Image Source

Here’s how proper PPC budget management should look:

Establish a test budget to understand key metrics.

Allocate a small portion of your overall PPC budget as a “test amount.” This is a low-risk way to test different strategies without spending a lot of money.

I got this golden nugget from Jim Kreinbrink, CEO of Hyper Dog Media.

“Our preliminary budget approach often starts with a ‘test amount,’ which we deploy and analyze to understand key metric averages such as cost per click and conversion rates. These insights then help us to forge a more informed and result-oriented budget,” Kreinbrink says.

Determine the optimal budget.

After a short testing phase, it’s time to jump into the real thing.

I spoke with Nick Drewe, founder and CEO at Wethrift, who explained that at this point, you need to consider the overall marketing budget, industry benchmark data, and the desired CPA.

He recommends starting with a smaller budget and gradually increasing it as you begin to see a positive ROI. Newer businesses might find allocating around 5-10% of their gross revenue to PPC to be a good starting point.

Michael Nemeroff, co-founder & CEO at RushOrderTees, shared his take on this, too. He says you can’t calculate an exact budget, but you can get pretty close and adjust as performance metrics come in:

“I look at the website’s overall conversion rate and assume the PPC campaign will be slightly lower. So, if site conversion is 8%, I might assume the campaign’s conversions are at 5%,” Nemeroff says. “Then, I look at the average CPC in Google’s keyword planner and forecast different budgets.”

Nemeroff explains with an example.

“If the average CPC is $10, $1,000 per month yields around 100 clicks and, conservatively, five leads. If you spend $2K, that means 200 clicks and 10 leads, and so on. You forecast different scenarios, determine how many new clients or sales you can reasonably handle, and set your budget appropriately,” Nemeroff says.

Run ads for a week to determine CPC.

I also talked to Brandy Hastings from SmartSites, who told me that one of the best approaches is running ads for a week to get a clear picture of your CPC.

She points out, “Note the cost per click, and then set a budget to earn at least 150-200 clicks. Use that method for the first month to get a feel for the market, adapting to the patterns that start to emerge.”

This will give you enough data to see how your CPC is trending. After the week is up, review the results to understand your average CPC and adjust your budget and bids as needed.

Use Google Smart Bidding.

Many experts recommend using Google Smart Bidding to optimize ad spend and boost PPC results.

Image Source

Here’s how it works:

• It uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze tons of data and predicts how different bids will impact conversions.
• It factors in signals like device, location, and time of day during each auction.
• You can set specific goals like maximizing conversions or hitting a target CPA. Smart Bidding adjusts your bids to meet these targets efficiently.
• Detailed reports show exactly how your bidding strategies are performing and what to improve.

Use a layered budget strategy.

A layered budget strategy is a method of allocating your PPC budget across different types of campaigns to balance performance and experimentation.

It’s one of the best methods for managing the PPC budget, according to Jeffrey Zhou, CEO at Fig Tech.

“We implement a ‘layered budget’ strategy that prioritizes results and experimentation. We spend 60% on high-performing ads with steady returns, 30% on new campaigns or ad formats, and 10% on experimental initiatives,” says Zhou.

Zhou says that this segmentation saved his team from huge risks.

For example, when they launched a newly developed service, they spent 30% of their budget on testing video ads, which eventually outperformed static ads, prompting them to allocate additional resources to video.

Refine your audience through micro-targeting.

“Instead of broad targeting, use micro-segmentation to direct ad spend toward highly specific customer profiles,” continues Zhou.

When his team began using location-based targeting together with income data, they saw a 25% increase in conversions while maintaining the same budget.

To implement micro-targeting, define your audience first:

• Demographics: Target by age, gender, income, education, and job.
• Geographics: Focus on specific cities, neighborhoods, or areas.
• Behavioral data: Use browsing history and purchase behavior.
• Interests: Tailor ads to users' hobbies and preferences.

Then move to advanced features, such as:

• Custom audiences: Target your existing customers or website visitors.
• Lookalike audiences: Find new users similar to your current customers.
• Retargeting: Re-engage users who have interacted with your brand but haven’t converted.

Break down your budget by keyword performance.

Focus budget on top-performing keywords to improve overall campaign performance—higher CTR and lower CPA. This leads to better visibility and more effective targeting.

Shawn Plummer, CEO at The Annuity Expert, says that he had success spending 20-30% of the entire budget on high-converting, low-cost keywords, which greatly increased lead count without incurring additional costs.

“When I allocated a higher amount of our budget to branded search phrases, we witnessed a 40% decrease in cost per lead, boosting overall efficiency”, says Plummer.

Regularly review quality scores to gauge keyword effectiveness.

In Google Ads, you can find it under “Quality Scores,” which reflect the relevance of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. High-quality scores lead to lower CPC and better ad placement.

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Also, in Google Ads, use the Search Terms Report to see the actual queries that triggered your ads. It will help you see if your ads are shown for relevant searches and identify high-performing or irrelevant search terms.

Here's a simple breakdown to make it clearer:

Keyword vs. search term:

• Search Term: The actual words people type into the search box.
• Keyword: The terms you select in your Google Ads campaign to target those searches.

Match types: Indicates how closely the search terms match your keywords:

• Exact Match: The exact search term matches your keyword.
• Phrase Match: The search term contains your keyword.
• Broad Match: The search term is a variation of your keyword.

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5 PPC Budgeting Tips from Pros

And now for the cherry on top—five juicy expert tips to help you plan and allocate your budget better:

1. Regular performance reviews and reallocation.

Regular reviews help you spot trends and shifts in performance before they become significant issues.

When you assess data frequently, you can quickly adapt to changes in ad performance or market conditions.

Shawn Plummer suggests employing weekly A/B testing to determine which ad creatives perform the best. Then, he reallocates up to 40% of the budget to those that outperform.

“Recently, by cutting spend on underperforming ads, we freed up funds to push ads with higher click-through rates, which boosted conversions by 25% without raising overall spend,” Plummer says.

Casey Meraz, CEO of Juris Digital, recommends conducting checks even more frequently—on a daily basis:

“Adjust bids based on the performance of different keywords and ads. Utilize budget caps to avoid overspending. Regularly review and tweak your targeting criteria. This ensures you get the most out of each dollar spent while maintaining flexibility to shift resources as necessary,” Meraz says.

Create personalized, targeted ad campaigns while tracking which ads convert prospects into customers with HubSpot Marketing Software.

2. Reverse engineer from CPA.

Dominic Taguinod, HubSpot's PPC expert, suggests reverse engineering from CPA as a smart strategy worth trying.

First, define how much you're willing to spend to acquire a customer. From there, you set a target CPC that aligns with this CPA goal.

This approach helps you spend your ad budget efficiently and acquire customers at a cost that works for your business. If you focus on your CPA first, you can better allocate your budget and ROI and make more informed adjustments.

Watch the full video:

3. Don’t overspend or underspend.

Overspending can quickly deplete your budget and waste resources.

Underspending is not good either. It can lead to fewer clicks and conversions because your ads aren’t reaching enough people.

Chris Zangone from WebFX suggests always considering your campaign’s ROAS (return on ad spend).

Spending more than you’re earning from your campaigns? Reassess your budget and optimization strategies as soon as possible.

Use this formula:

Total Revenue / Total Cost = ROAS.

1. Suppose your PPC campaign generated $10,000 in sales.
2. Assume you spent $2,000 on the PPC ads.
3. Use the ROAS Formula:
   ROAS = $10,000 / $2,000 = 5

So, your ROAS is 5. This means that for every dollar you spent on ads, you earned $5 in revenue.

If you wanna dive deep into PPC budget management, save this super helpful tutorial:

4. Leverage ad scheduling to cut waste.

Ad scheduling, or dayparting, allows you to control when the audience will see your ads.

Run ads only during times when conversions are more likely to avoid wasting money on clicks that probably won’t convert.

Jeffrey Zhou from Fig Tech says that many of their clicks were during non-conversion hours. By running ads only during peak hours — like weekdays between 9 am and 6 pm — they improved their CPA by 15% while maintaining traffic quality.

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5. Micro-budget testing for new platforms.

Start with small, controlled budgets when testing new advertising platforms.

Using micro-budgets and internal data to predict potential ROI allows you to gauge effectiveness with minimal risk, according to Debbie Moran, marketing manager at RecurPost.

Instead of rolling out a large budget on untested channels, Debbie’s team started with micro-budgets and used their internal machine-learning models to predict potential ROI before scaling.

With this approach, they discovered LinkedIn as an effective platform for targeting their B2B customers, where an initial $500 test led to a 50% lower CPA than our usual channels.

Key Takeaways from PPC Experts

Managing a PPC budget seems chaotic at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's really not that bad. So, here are the three takeaways this non-PPC pro (a.k.a. me) has picked up as crucial to wrapping up this guide:

• Start small, test, and learn. Kick things off with a test budget to get a feel for metrics like cost per click and conversion rates.
• Make smart adjustments. Use tools like Google Smart Bidding to get the most out of your budget. Stay on top of performance, and use micro-targeting to make sure your ads are hitting the right people.
• Stay flexible. Regularly tweak your bids, budgets, and targeting based on how things are performing. Whether it’s checking in daily or working backward from your target CPA, be adaptable to get the best possible ROI.

The final piece of advice: Don’t dive into PPC haphazardly. Save this guide to walk you through each step and avoid skipping ahead, as missing even one step can lead to unnecessary setbacks and, even worse—wasted money.

As the cofounder of a boutique B2B marketing agency, I’m always looking for the best AI tools for B2B marketing — partly for me and partly for my clients.

The more time I spend getting acquainted with automation and AI, the more comfortable I’ve become with the genuine benefits AI can bring to marketing and business.

In this article, I’m sharing, in no particular order, the best AI tools for marketing in 2024. I’ve included my experience with them, why they’re great, their unique features and pricing, and who I think can benefit most from the tool.

Table of Contents

• Why use AI tools for B2B marketing?
• Best AI Tools for B2B Marketing

Why use AI tools for B2B marketing?

According to HubSpot’s AI Trends for Marketers survey of 1,062 US marketing and advertising professionals, the biggest concern about adopting AI is that it will replace jobs.

Almost 50% of marketers surveyed voiced concerns about job security. This fascinates me, especially because 68% said AI has helped grow their careers.

Personally, I’ve not strongly felt this way because I believe that marketing is, and always will be, about human-to-human connection — and AI simply can’t do that.

I left the worries about using AI tools in B2B marketing behind me long ago and now embrace what AI tools offer.

That said, although I don’t share the sentiment, I do understand the concern. I would argue that AI tools can do so much of our work, but none of the real good stuff or the things we love! As marketers, we still get to add the human touch, but we can “outsource” a lot of the less desirable work to AI.

Let’s look at how we can use AI to create a more efficient workflow and free up our time to do what we do best.

• Generative AI can help us write content faster. In my opinion, there’s a time and a place for generative AI. Some content benefits massively from its input, and some content just needs entirely the human touch. I’ve used generative AI for emails, my website, paragraphs within articles, and even some articles that are almost entirely written with AI.
• AI and automation in project management tools mean that marketing projects will manage parts themselves. Recently, I’ve set up ClickUp automation, which left me mindblown and questioning why I didn’t embrace it earlier! Project management tools like Motion will organize your week based on task priorities, available time, and desired schedule.
• Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is the type of AI you’ve likely seen in your meetings; Fireflies AI will transcribe your meetings. Loom does the same with its video transcription. The AI is leveled up when it also pulls out key points and actions, so you know exactly what you need to do after a meeting.
• Predictive analysis in CRMs looks at customers trends, helping sales and marketing to make data-driven decisions about what to do next.

I could continue, but we’ll discuss the details of AI features in B2B marketing tools in the next section.

Before we get into that, though, let me give you a top tip for using AI marketing tools: don’t try and do it all at once.

74% of marketing professionals say that AI usage increases through existing tools. This makes sense.

Start by adding layers of AI in tools your team already uses and is comfortable with. The chances are they’ll be used to the tool's interface so that they will be less intimidated.

Also, the AI features of the tools you’re already using should complement existing workflows.

Okay, let’s get into it. Here’s my round-up of the 11 best AI tools for B2B marketing.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is genuinely fantastic. I know, I would say that — but the thing is, it’s not just me. Crazy Egg and Zapier voted HubSpot the best free CRM.

HubSpot does a lot out of the box for new users, and when you get into the paid features, you’ll be unstoppable.

The free version makes it a great place to start for new users and young businesses, and you can guarantee that HubSpot has what it takes to grow with your business.

HubSpot Features

Marketers love HubSpot’s many features, including the popular live chat, AI content writer, and website builder.

One great feature of HubSpot is the many integrations. You can connect various apps and streamline your workflows. In a test, I added my Google Contacts to the CRM, which were easily synced and ready for marketing.

HubSpot AI Features

HubSpot's AI features are vast, and it is truly putting AI to the test and adding unbeatable functionality. I won’t get through them all in this article, but here are some favorites for B2B marketers.

When you create website pages or landing pages, you can build your site from scratch or generate them using AI.

The same goes for creating content. HubSpot has an excellent copywriting AI; you can generate an entire article or email using AI.

When it comes to AI content, I tend to use it as a starting point and then edit it after. 86% of marketers agree this is what works.

I tested the generative AI and found it very easy. You enter the topic that you want to write about. Next, the AI tool will let you choose a title from five generated options, and voila! You will have your blog post outline.

Still unsure? Well, 85% of marketers and sales pros agree that AI is a very effective tool for content creation and quality.

HubSpot Limitations

While HubSpot does a lot for free, you must upgrade your account if you want the best from the system. You pay for additional users, but Marketing Hub Professional includes three seats.

Pricing

The Marketing Hub Professional unlocks a lot of functionality and AI for B2B marketers. Prices start from $15 a month per seat to $800 a month for larger businesses needing more functionality.

See the full pricing breakdown.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Hubspot’s Sales and Marketing Hub is rated 4.4/5, with over 11,000 reviews. The CMS Hub is rated 4.5/5 points, with over 1,500+ reviews.

Best For

Hubspot is an excellent and comprehensive tool for businesses of all sizes. It offers so much for free that it’s perfect for small businesses as it is and is enhanced by the small business AI. HubSpot is undoubtedly comprehensive enough for the largest of businesses.

2. WriterZen

WriterZen is a firm favorite of mine. I’ve used it for years. If you’re doing a lot of content marketing, SEO, and blog writing, you must consider WriterZen because the functionality and price of this tool make it very affordable.

The team is fantastic. They’re a passionate bunch and committed to creating the best content tool. I met them all a couple of years ago when I visited their offices, and we chatted about AI, content, and SEO.

The tool is mainly for content writing. I love creating briefs with it, but you can also write articles with the generative AI and manage your entire content production within the tool.

There’s a brilliant keyword clustering tool that works by analyzing ranking pages, also ideation tools, plagiarism checkers, and so much more.

WriterZen Features

I’ll run through a few features, then focus on my favorite and most used part of WriterZen, the Content Creator feature.

WriterZen’s Topic Discovery feature is a great starting point if you need help discovering topics. You start with a head topic, such as “marketing solutions.” Then, the tool does the hard work for you, delivering content topics.

Keyword Explorer and Keyword Planner features assist the planning phase of content production. WriterZen will find keywords for you.

Now, onto Content Creator, my favorite feature. This feature helps you write competitive content. You can do everything from keyword research to SERP analysis to writing, all within the same workflow and window.

This feature offers generative AI for title tags, meta descriptions, full article outlines, and the article itself.

I have a full video showing how I use this part of WriterZen, including the AI features.

WriterZen AI Features

As shown in the video above, the AI features within WriterZen can help you:

• Generate a competitive SEO-driven brief based on what’s already ranking. I recommend expanding this to include your direct experience. It's not enough to do what everyone else is doing and expect to rank.
• Write title tags, meta descriptions, and even the entire article with AI if you want. I have started many articles this way, then edited them until satisfied.

WriterZen Limitations

You can't access the best tools using the free version. Although it is amazing for briefing and writing, keyword research isn’t as good as a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs as they will have large databases.

Pricing

The best part of WriterZen’s pricing is that you pay for it once and get lifetime access. There’s also a free trial and a money-back guarantee.

You can access everything for $405 and never pay another penny. WriterZen boldly compares themselves to other tools.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

WriterZen has 201 reviews in G2 and has a rating of 4.7/5.

Best For

This tool is great for content marketing teams who need support with the SEO layer of content strategy.

3. ChatGPT

I think everyone has at least tried ChatGPT at this point.

Love it or loathe it, you simply can’t argue that ChatGPT is a great tool that can greatly enhance B2B marketing. If you’re still unconvinced, I’ll share some of its features and ways I’ve used it.

ChatGPT Features

Most people probably turn to ChatGPT for its generative AI and writing blog content, but it can do so much more than that.

Since that is a well-known use for the tool, I’ll focus on other features such as image generation, data analysis, and coding.

ChatGPT AI Features

DALL-E allows you to turn your imagination into images. Simply prompt the generative AI with your desired image, and DALL-E will return something you can use on your website or other digital channels.

The images are good, but you need to check them carefully. I’ve seen generative AI images on websites, and if you know what to look for (the fingers), you can spot a generative AI image quite easily.

I encourage people to use their own images, but generative AI images serve a purpose. I follow the rule that generative AI is fine if an image is just there for decoration.

I’ve relied on ChatGPT a lot when I’m generating code. I use it a lot for schema.

It’s not always perfect, but if I want to add code to a site I’m working on, ChatGPT will get me to my desired outcome or close enough that a developer is making tweaks rather than doing the whole task.

Similarly, you can code tools and calculators that can act as great lead magnets on your site.

As a content marketer and SEO, I often deal with large datasets, like keywords. You can upload files to ChatGPT, and it will return tidy data. Using ChatGPT in this way saves me hours.

ChatGPT Limitations

ChatGPT is pretty unlimited once you start paying for it. Iterating images is poor. It tends not to understand a request to tweak something on an already generated image.

Pricing

The free version gives you access to GPT-4o mini. However, if you want to use all the ChatGPT features, the upgrade will cost you $20 per month. I’ve used both the free and paid version. Start with free and see how you go.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

ChatGPT is rated 4.7/5 with over 580 reviews.

Best For

This is an excellent AI tool for any B2B marketer. I struggle to think of anyone who wouldn’t benefit from ChatGPT.

4. Loom

I love Loom. It’s an excellent recording tool overall. It’s not perfect, and I’ll discuss that in the limitations section below. That said, I pay for Loom Business, and the extra to use the AI features is well worth the $5.

Loom Features

Loom is a video recording software. I use it to communicate with clients, demonstrate tools, send proposals, and create onboarding and training documents.

You can share your video by just generating a shareable link. Loom tracks video views, comments, and more.

There’s a desktop app, a browser version, and a Chrome extension. I highly recommend the app, which, in my experience, has the fewest problems and is least likely to glitch.

Loom AI Features

Loom uses quite a bit of AI.

You can generate video transcripts with automatic speech recognition (ASR), which is helpful. I’d go as far as to say that Loom’s ASR is one of the best I’ve used. I never edit it because it's good enough for what I need it for.

You can also edit your video using the trim and stitch editor. Compared to apps like TikTok or CapCut, the editing feature is not the best on Loom, but it is good enough.

It’s enhanced with the Loom AI package, which you do have to pay for, but the AI will cut any pauses and filler words.

Plus, the AI will generate a video summary and chapters. I often edit the chapters but barely touch the summary; it’s good enough.

Loom Limitations

There are a few limitations with Loom. The free package limits you to 25 videos and five five-minute duration. To be fair, I do think that’s generous enough, though I was on the free version for ages.

As mentioned, the video editor could be better.

Loom is not really a video generator in the sense that you are creating creative videos; it’s really for recording processes and your screen. However, there are AI video generators and other tools to help with that.

My biggest gripe with the software is that it does seem to glitch; videos don’t always save. When I load the app, it minimizes my browser the first time I use it, but it is fine the second time.

These little bugs irritate me, but not enough, as I still use it.

To Loom’s credit, whenever I’ve had problems, customer support has responded quickly and resolved many of my issues.

Pricing

Loom costs $12.50 a month if paid annually. You can optionally add Loom AI for $5 per user. The extra $5 is worth it for me, but I probably use Loom at least every other day.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Loom is rated 4.7/5 with over 2000 reviews.

Best For

Loom is great for day-to-day marketing teams looking to showcase demos, record training, and create onboarding videos. If you need to do a lot of editing, you can still use Loom, but you might want to download the video and edit it elsewhere.

5. Fireflies AI

Gone are the days when a VA or junior team member was brought to take meeting minutes. In 2024, this is handled entirely by AI, and when Fireflies is as good as it is, why wouldn’t you?

For the most part, I find Fireflies to be pretty accurate, and I appreciate action points being delivered directly to me. It prevents people from being distracted while taking notes, so everyone can engage fully in the meeting.

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Fireflies AI Features

Fireflies integrates with many apps, such as Asana, Airtable, ClickUp, Google Meet, Google Docs, HubSpot, Monday.com, Notion, Zoom, Skype, Trello, Slack, and many more.

Once you integrate an app (e.g., Zoom), this tool will join the meeting and email you a transcription at the end.

Usefully, there’s a topic tracker where you can create topics that help you search and highlight relevant parts of meetings quickly. This feature is only available for the premium plan.

You can upload an audio or video file to generate a transcript. Depending on your file size, it will be processed in 10-15 minutes. This supports formats like MP3, MP4, WAV, and M4A.

AI Features Within Fireflies AI

One great feature is the magic soundbites. You can use the power of AI to create new media from your video or audio. For example, the Magic Soundbites app will automatically generate a highlight reel for your meetings.

Although not strictly marketing, it all plays a role: you can generate a scorecard to rate the performance of sales reps.

Fireflies Limitations

The free version only includes 800 minutes of video storage. That is, however, pretty reasonable.

Pricing

The free plan is very reasonable as a starting point. If you want access to more features, you can start at $18/month, rising to $29.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Fireflies.ai has 4.8/ 5 out and 448 reviews.

Best For

This is best for individuals and businesses, particularly those in and out of meetings regularly and want to save time.

6. Microsoft Clarity

Any good B2B marketer should pay attention to how their website functions for the user. Microsoft Clarity shows how visitors interact with your site.

The setup is very straightforward. You simply add code to your website. For a savvy website administrator, you won’t even need a developer.

Microsoft Clarity Features

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Clarity is free to use. It has analysis and reporting features, and you can get quite granular. Under recordings, you’ll see your website visitors’ activity, User ID, location, and browser and device details — MacOS, IOS, PC, etc.

Heatmaps, as pictured, show where users click or scroll. This is the data that B2B marketers need to create the best possible pages for conversion.

Once you know where and what your users click, you can develop a page that helps funnel traffic to conversion.

Microsoft Clarity AI Features

Copilot is Microsoft Clarity’s AI partner. It’s free, and you can use natural language to help you understand your website’s performance.

Microsoft Clarity Limitations

I’m struggling to find limitations. It’s completely free and does what you want it to. It’s supposed to be better than alternatives as it’s not too “heavy” on the site and, therefore, doesn’t slow it down as much.

Pricing

Clarity is free to use forever.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

With 36 total reviews, Clarity is rated 4.5/5.

Best For

Microsoft Clarity is great for anyone with a website. For B2B marketers, you can make data-driven decisions. Even if you’re not ready for this yet, I’d recommend getting Clarity on the site so you start gathering the data.

7. ClickUp

It took me a while to warm up to ClickUp, an AI project management tool, but the more I use it, the more I love it.

Project management tools are a must for me.

As a consultant, I see way too many marketing teams hoping actions get done after meetings or working in Google Sheets. A good project management tool with great AI features greatly benefits work efficiency.

ClickUp is free to start with and does much more out of the box than its competitors.

ClickUp Features

You can import tasks from previous tools, including Monday, Asana, Trello, and Notion, or an Excel and CSV file if you already use another project management tool.

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One of the better features of ClickUp is that automations are available on the free version.

Within my own ClickUp board, I use automation for new tasks, which are automatically assigned to me and populated with descriptions and priorities.

One of my favorite features is the form view. As pictured below, the form allows you to ask for specific details from anyone, even those not using your ClickUp setup. Information provided on the form can populate your next ClickUp task. This feature has considerably sped up workflows and increased accuracy for me.

ClickUp AI Features

Like most good project management tools in 2024, ClickUp has a generative AI feature. You can use this to write job descriptions and tasks, summarize notes, and more.

You can ask the AI questions like what tasks you have, what’s next to do, and more. It can be faster than navigating to your tasks/boards, especially if you’ve got a lot going on within the software.

With ClickUp Brain, you can quickly create drafts of your project plans and subtasks from your task details or even get real-time project updates without opening the task.

For marketers, you can integrate with docs outside of ClickUp. For example, you can easily add Google Docs as a view. I use this feature for content briefings.

ClickUp Limitations

The free version only has 100 MB of free storage, and guests must be granted full access (no permissions). It only has five spaces, and the free version only allows 100 uses when using custom fields.

Although limited, this is reasonable for the free version. Solo entrepreneurs and small businesses might find this very workable for them.

Pricing

The Business Plan costs $12 per member/month, and the Business Plus is $19 per member/month.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

ClickUp’s G2 rating is 4.7/5, with over 9,700 reviews.

Best For

I would go as far as to say that anyone could benefit from ClickUp, but it’s certainly ideal for teams looking to work more efficiently.

8. LinkedIn

At this point, everyone knows about LinkedIn, but not everyone uses this professional social media platform to its fullest extent.

LinkedIn is responsible for the vast majority of my B2B leads. I just love it.

LinkedIn Features

We all know LinkedIn as the social media platform, so I’m not going to talk too much about that, though there are AI features there for comments and generative AI to write in mail and messages.

The main features for B2B marketers are advertising solutions, a sales navigator, and recruitment tools.

LinkedIn AI Features

For marketers posting on LinkedIn (which you absolutely should be), generative AI can help you write a perfect post.

Like many tools, it’s easy to use within the interface. I would criticize the AI on LinkedIn; I don’t love it, but I’m all about being authentic and enjoying the writing.

Sales Navigator is an excellent (but paid) feature that will help you connect with precisely the right people.

This feature allows you to identify your target audience based on several filters, including company, seniority, and more. Instead of wading through profiles, you can now use Account IQ, which will summarize everything you need to know.

LinkedIn Limitations

LinkedIn is free to use for posting, viewing profiles, making connections, etc.; for many, these limitations won’t be an issue.

However, the free version will limit marketers looking to get really smart with their outreach to using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which is paid.

Pricing

A premium subscription starts at $39.99 per month.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

LinkedIn has several features, and the reviews for each differ.

Sales Navigator has a rating of 4.3/5 and over 1,900 reviews.

The Job Search feature has 4.5/5 (over 1000 reviews), and Recruitment Marketing has 4.2/5 (over 800 reviews).

Best For

I’m a big LinkedIn fan and genuinely think that every B2B marketer should at least consider it for their individual profiles and company pages.

I recommend using individual profiles alongside company pages because, as cliche as it sounds, people do business with people.

9. Slack

In 2024, everyone is using or has used Slack. We’re all familiar with it as software for communication. Slack does have some AI features that you might not be aware of. I’ll get into this below.

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Slack Features

There are a couple of features that I like about Slack.

Firstly, you can group conversations into channels. For my B2B marketing business, we have one channel per client. Plus, there are some internal channels. Others might use it for different departments or marketing channels.

Secondly, Slack is very easy to use when you have access to multiple accounts. Over time, you might be invited into multiple Slack channels from clients or suppliers. You can manage all of this very easily within the same interface.

Finally, the huddle feature is handy. Sometimes, you just need to talk, Huddle allows for quick and impromptu meetings.

Slack AI Features

Slackbot is a helper and messenger. This feature reminds you of things you haven’t done yet to keep the workflow moving.

You can search for snippets of conversation within Slack to find lost messages. The AI element means you can search in natural language, asking questions like " What’s the Q1 sales strategy?”

The features for navigating Slack are pretty good. You can swipe through conversations to quickly review missed messages, and with AI, you can also summarize conversations.

Slack Limitations

When you use the free version, integration with other tools is limited to 10 tools only. The messaging feature’s 90-day history is also limited to the #general channel, and channel posting permission is limited to the #general channel only.

Pricing

The Pro version costs $7.25 per person/month, billed yearly. The Business+ Plan is $12.50 per person/month.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Slack has an impressive 32k reviews in G2 and rates 4.5/5.

Best For

Slack is best for businesses with teams from various locations, but I’ve found it really helpful even when working within a physical office.

10. Motion

I think Motion is great! I've used it for about a year. It’s perfect for managing solo entrepreneurs and maybe smaller teams.

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Motion Features

This app will help you with project and task management. Its calendar feature allows you to automatically plan your day based on tasks and priorities.

Motion also serves as a master calendar, a feature that I found incredibly helpful as I work with multiple calendars. I sync my calendar from Google and Outlook, and I expect you could sync Apple Calendar, too.

Motion AI Features

The primary AI feature within Motion is its scheduling AI. You give Motion a list of tasks you complete and when they need to be completed.

You can set recurring tasks, so once you set it up, it manages itself each month. The initial setup can be time-consuming, especially as you input a time estimate for each task.

Once that’s done, though, Motion will manage your entire work day, considering task duration, available time, and task priority. It takes the mental load out of what to do next and ensures you don’t have pockets of wasted time.

Motion Limitations

This tool is limited to project management and task organization. While the AI side of it is excellent for organization, it’s not the most multi-use tool.

The calendar view irritates me, too. You can view your calendar by day or week, never month, which feels standard. I did put in a ticket and requested a monthly view.

Pricing

For one user, Motion is $19 per month, but there is a cost per user saving if you have a larger team, you’ll pay $12 per person.

G2 Reviews & Ratings

Motion has a rating of 4.1/5 and only 90 total reviews.

Best For

This is best for individuals who would benefit from AI taking the mental load on what to do next.

Don’t Sleep on AI Tools for B2B Marketing

I know how it is. AI hasn’t always had the best reputation among marketers (remember, almost 50% think it’ll replace them). However, when used well, AI is here to help marketing teams do more, sell more, and connect with their audience.

The landscape of video and motion graphics is evolving at an exhilarating pace, all fueled by artificial intelligence (AI). And it will continue to revolutionize the industry throughout this year.

In this post, we dive into the future of video and motion graphics, to explore the trends that will likely grow, change, and evolve this year. Naturally, most of these trends involve AI and whether you like it or not, it will be a part of your process too.

In motion graphics, the trends have stayed consistent over the years. We expect to see some of the timeless trends getting more popular while making way for new concepts that enhance visual storytelling.

Without further ado, let’s dive in and explore the video trends and motion graphic trends to keep an eye out for this year.

1. Effortless Editing With AI

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Editing videos became effortless with the help of AI. Adobe Premiere Pro and many other popular video editing software introduced cool new AI-powered editing systems last year, including text-based video editing.

Instead of having to scan videos manually to find and edit clips, you can now generate a transcript and edit using the text. Generating clips and scenes is also easier with AI. Enhancing audio and video quality became as simple as clicking a single button.

Things will only get bigger and better this year with Premiere Pro taking the lead on impressive AI-powered tools and features. But many other software are also introducing unique and advanced AI tools that will make video editing easier than ever.

2. AI Voiceovers Replace Voice Actors

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Recording voiceovers for videos has always been a frustrating experience. Even when you manage to get everything right in the first take, there will be some issues with the audio or the mic. Not to mention the costs of hiring voice actors for professional videos.

This is part of the reason why AI voiceovers became so popular last year. Now, all you have to do is copy and paste the script into an app and have it generate the voice track.

These AI voiceover tools are surprisingly realistic and accurate and it’s very difficult to make these AI-voiced videos apart from real voices. In fact, there are now tools that allow you to synthesize your own voice so you don’t have to record voiceovers for your videos ever again.

3. AI Avatars To Replace People

While you’re replacing your voiceovers with AI this year, why not replace yourself with an AI avatar? That way, you can completely automate your video production and even reduce the costs that go into hiring actors as well.

There are already many tools that allow you to generate AI avatars for videos. Even though they are not perfect right now, it won’t be too long before they get more accurate. Tools like HeyGen are already doing a great job of cloning your personality and likeness to generate AI videos.

Soon, there will be AI tools that will let you create videos or even movies with AI actors, reducing production costs and making things way easier to create content with nothing but a laptop.

4. Rise Of Short-Form Videos

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Popularized by TikTok, Shorts became a phenomenal new addition to social media platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. According to statistics, YouTube Shorts get more than 50 billion views per day.

Shorts and short-form content are much easier to consume, especially on mobile platforms. The vertical video format fits perfectly on mobile devices and they are just easier to scroll through than watching full-length videos.

Short-form videos appear to be the future of video and content creation. And marketers are slowly adopting this trend into their campaigns as well.

5. AI-Generated Videos Are Here

People laughed at the AI-generated videos. They were hilariously bad at generating realistic scenes, humans had way too many fingers, and they often looked nightmare-inducing. That all changed when OpenAI revealed its AI model for generating videos, Sora.

Sora does an incredible job at generating AI videos from text prompts. If someone were to show you the Sora introduction video without telling you it’s AI-generated, it would probably take you a long time to realize it.

There are many other AI video models out there and people are already using them to create wild and weird videos. As fun as they are to look at, it’s important to realize how fast AI-generated videos have improved over the course of a few months. And they will only get even better this year.

Marketers will be able to use AI videos to highlight their businesses, content creators will use AI to generate unique stock footage, and filmmakers will use it to create beautiful scenic shots without having to visit the locations. The opportunities will be endless.

6. Storytelling Is Still King of Marketing

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Every year, people around the world watch the Super Bowl for two reasons: Some watch it for the game and others watch it for the adverts. If you look at some of the most popular Super Bowl ads that generated more views and discussions, you’ll notice that they all have one thing in common—Storytelling!

Storytelling is still the key to creating more memorable, emotional, and impactful content. Whether it’s a TV commercial, social media video, or even a behind-the-scenes video, storytelling gives your content an identity that makes your brand stand out from the crowd. As long as humans have emotions, you can use storytelling to tap into their souls and minds.

7. Liquid-style Animations Takes Over

Motion graphics with liquid-style animations have been popular for quite a while. Their ability to create mesmerizing visuals with fluid animations often brings out a sense of energetic and whimsical vibe in people. This is why we’ve been seeing more and more businesses and marketers use liquid animations in their promo videos.

The fluidity and smoothness of the liquid animations make them more effective at grabbing the attention of the viewer. And using bright and vibrant colors makes them even more attractive. For these reasons, we can expect to see more motion graphic designs using liquid animations this year and probably throughout next year as well.

8. Episodic Videos Boost Retention

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When creating content on similar topics, consider turning it into a video series rather than creating one long-form video. Many creators have found episodic content to be much more effective than publishing individual videos apart from one another.

This is especially effective for YouTube channels. Many users on Reddit confirm that episodic content and videos made as a series work better for discoverability. And it’s also the best way to get your viewers to come back for more.

The key, however, is to create episodic content that stands on its own. Rather than creating a series with numbers like “episode 34”, you need to create interesting episodes that can be enjoyed by anyone who finds them without needing to watch the entire series from the beginning.

9. Long-Form Videos Still Works

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Even though short-form videos are the go-to choice among the younger generations, there is still good demand for long-form videos. The recent growth of podcast channels on YouTube is a good example of that. Even on TikTok, the long-form 10-minute videos have been quite popular over the past few months.

In-depth videos and content offer a bigger opportunity for you to engage with your audience on a much deeper level. If you can maintain the attention of your viewers throughout an hour-long video, you won’t have trouble convincing them to join your tribe.

10. Neo Brutalism Making a Comeback

There’s something about the raw and vibrant aesthetic of the Neo Brutalism trend that makes it hard to look away. The popular graphic design trend someone made its way over to motion graphics and now they are taking over the world of media as well.

The Neo Brutalism vibe is most effective for business and brand content. They help brands stand out with a more authentic look to connect with the audience on a personal level. Of course, the simple color schemes and the creative shapes also help create mesmerizing animations.

11. Silent Videos Making A Comeback

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In 2023 we saw a rise in silent videos on social media platforms. These are videos that don’t have any voiceovers and only consist of captions and subtitles. And they are slowly becoming the standard format for videos that target mobile audiences.

Most people who watch videos on mobile devices watch while traveling, standing in a queue, or crowded places. They prefer to keep volume muted while watching videos and that’s why they prefer these new captioned videos.

This is one of the trends that have a positive impact, allowing you to tap into a new group of audience this year.

12. Realistic 3D Motion Graphics

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Realism is the new theme of motion graphics. Especially with the advancements in AI, it’s getting much easier to generate brilliant motion graphics with realistic 3D visuals.

3D VFX tools like Blender also received significant improvements last year making them capable of producing life-like and ultra-realistic 3D motion graphics. Needless to say, we can expect to see more of those this year as well.

13. Retro Effects Are Still Popular

Reto-style visual effects and motion graphics will only continue to grow in popularity this year and we are not complaining. They are the ideal choice for creating a sense of nostalgia and evoking feel-good emotions.

Seeing cool retro filters, VHS-style distortions, and cyberpunk-themed glitching effects never gets old. These cool effects get featured on everything from YouTube videos to promotional adverts and even wedding videos. And we hope this retro motion graphics trend will never go out of style.

14. Grunge Visual Effects On The Rise

One of the new trends that’s slowly growing in motion graphics is the use of grunge-style visual effects. These effects add a gritty and urban feel to various types of videos, especially for intros and title scenes of videos, and add a raw and unpolished aesthetic.

Today, most content, adverts, and videos look too perfect, smooth, and unrealistic. And that’s part of why this grunge visual effects trend is getting more recognition. It adds imperfections, hand-drawn animations, grainy filters, and texture overlays to deliberately make videos look raw and realistic.

15. Dynamic Transitions To Grab Attention

Video transition effects used to be simple, minimal, and subtle. But that’s going away. Now, videos use more dynamic transition effects to attract the viewer’s attention and maintain it throughout the video.

Dynamic transitions are more than just about connecting two clips, they are also about creating fluid scenes that blend perfectly while also adding a sense of flow to the overall look of the video. Don’t be surprised if you see more videos that use dynamic transitions this year.

16. Histrionic Visuals

This is a motion graphics trend that we didn’t see coming and we certainly didn’t expect it to be this popular. Histrionic visuals are all about creating more expressive and dramatic videos.

This trend involves using rough textured overlays, old-school vintage color palettes, and distorted VHS-style effects to create scenes that evoke strong emotional responses. As a result, this effect is popularly used in videos related to serious topics, such as documentaries.

We also saw a different take on this trend where video editors and animators use histrionic visuals to create pop art and digital futurism-style looks for videos as well.

What’s Next?

We didn’t expect AI to make such a big impact on the way we work and now, somehow, we can’t imagine our lives without it.

It’s hard to guess what kind of an impact AI will have in the video industry this year. It will likely be as mind-blowing as the last year. However, we can be sure of one thing: it’s an exciting time to be working in this industry.