Author: Ramona Sukhraj

I still remember my first taste of artificial intelligence (AI).It was “SmarterChild,” a chatbot available on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Windows Live Messenger in the early 2000s that you could have a “conversation” with when your real friends weren’t online.

But honestly, even as a preteen, I could see that it needed a lesson in humanizing AI content.

While SmarterChild could ask how I was and tell jokes, the exchanges felt, well, robotic. It couldn’t learn or remember information over time, and it had trouble navigating human quirks like slang and shorthand. It also seemed to always throw out the same canned phrases, like it was the star in an ‘80s sitcom.

Thankfully, much of this has improved today, but the challenges (and importance) of capturing human candor and understanding remain — especially for marketers.

Let’s unpack how to maintain your human touch while still reaping the benefits of AI content as a marketer.

Table of Contents

• The Rise of AI Content
• So, should you use AI content?
• Why does AI content need humanization?
• How to Humanize AI Content
• Free AI Content Humanization Tools

The Rise of AI Content

According to Pew Research, 55% of Americans use AI at least once a day.

It’s running our wearable fitness trackers and curating our Daily Mixes on Spotify. It’s giving us product recommendations on Amazon and sending those pesky emails we never read to the spam folder. And the impact doesn’t stop there.

HubSpot’s State of AI found that 62% of business leaders say their company invests in AI and automation tools for employees.

In fact, the number of marketers who use AI in their roles has jumped from 21% to 74% year over year, with more than 74% believing most people will use AI in the workplace by 2030.

But why exactly?

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Simply put, AI can help people in various industries automate or expedite repetitive tasks (e.g., email automation), increase efficiency, lower costs, improve analysis, and be more productive overall — especially marketers.

So, should you use AI content?

The short answer is yes — but I say this with many asterisks. Let me explain.

As a writer and marketer, I pride myself on being able to spin up copy that converts, emails that engage, and blog articles that get readers nodding their heads. But that doesn’t mean it comes quickly or easily.

Keeping up with a full marketing calendar is hard. Every piece of content has a workflow that includes planning, research, writing, editing, staging, promotion, and analyzing.

AI content can help expedite this process, with 83% of marketers saying AI helps them create significantly more content than they could without.

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What kind of content are marketers generating? Check out The Top Types of AI-Generated Content in Marketing [New Data, Examples & Tips].

A good friend, former HubSpotter, and Head of Content at Ashby, Anum Hussain, agrees, saying, “I‘m not sure I’ll ever see AI go from 0 to 100 on a content initiative, but for all of us who face empty page syndrome, getting from 0 to 50 is a huge productivity unlock.”

But that doesn’t mean you can just mindlessly copy-paste whatever ChatGPT, Claude, or even HubSpot’s Breeze gives you. It needs to be edited and “humanized.”

Why does AI content need humanization?

Our research shows that 86% of marketers using AI take time to edit the content it produces. (And I can’t tell you how much of a sigh of relief it was to read this.)

Despite the operational positives we discussed, AI is plagued by concerns about plagiarism, bias, data security, and the potential for government regulation. In other words, raw AI content can be very problematic as it is derivative by nature.

You see, AI content generators are built on existing content commonly gathered from the Internet. This is how they “learn.” Every time you enter a prompt or query into a tool, AI simply reaches into this knowledge bank and picks out what it thinks is most relevant to what you want.

That means it just compiles things already out there. There’s no guarantee that your results will be different from what the tool produces for another user or even from what’s already published online.

It also certainly won’t be written with your brand’s voice or differentiators in mind, or offer the expertise, experience, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness (EEAT) Google SERP demands of the pages it ranks.

Smart editing or taking the time to humanize your content can put all these concerns to rest. So, how do you do it?

How to Humanize AI Content

Whether you’re a social media manager writing captions or a content manager writing articles and website copy, learning how to humanize AI content is critical to future-proofing your content strategy. Here are seven tips on how to do it well.

To help illustrate them, I asked ChatGPT to write me a blog article about how to write a great social media post.

1. Add personal stories and insights.

AI knows many things, but you know what it doesn’t? Your personal thoughts, insights, and experiences.

When you ask it to create content for you, it may respond in a casual tone, but it’s likely just stating facts — like a textbook or instruction manual.

That said, personal stories, references, or lessons can not only engage your audience with something relatable, but they add depth and originality to your content. It's all about thought leadership.

Melanie Deziel, Content Consultant and Co-Founder & Chief Learning Officer of Creator Kitchen likes to share both personal wins and losses when editing AI content. 

She shared with me, "We can take the raw materials we get from a tool like ChatGPT and infuse not just valuable lessons we've learned but also relatable mistakes we made along the way. We can add context to our revelations, realizations, failures, and pivots by sharing the emotions that surround those experiences."

Let’s look at our example. In my sample article, ChatGPT gave me the following for an intro:

Pretty generic, right?

I’d humanize this AI content by bringing in a relatable anecdote about doom scrolling when I can’t sleep or talking about a successful social media strategy I’ve worked on to establish credibility. I could also add a section on the current state of social media with my own predictions and opinions.

ChatGPT laid a foundation, but all of these personal touches would give it flair. Something they can’t get anywhere else.

Pro tip: Have fun with it!

Deziel continued, "While ChatGPT's LLM may have a good handle on the prescriptive rules of grammar and syntax, we have to know when and how to break those rules for maximum impact.

"We can include puns, sarcasm. We can make plays on words and include humorous asides (or... asides that we think are humorous, anyway.) We need to  intentionally manipulate sentence length with melodic mastery and break the monotony with unexpected word choices."

"We have to get loosey-goosey with our punctuation choices, inserting ellipses to force a breath and peppering our pages with em-dashes to mirror the stop-and-start nature of our chaotic thought patterns... and we say things like 'loosey-goosey.'

In short, we have to do what hasn't been done. And an LLM, by design, cannot. "

2. Incorporate original, visual examples.

Like personal insights, examples give AI content more substance. But they can also make the information shared easier for your audience to understand, especially if it’s educational.

Returning to our sample, ChatGPT listed this as one of its steps for creating a great social media post:

“Use visuals to boost engagement” is pretty self-explanatory, sure, but showing real-life examples where this was done well would really drive the point home. Plus, it would help break up text, making your piece easier to skim and also giving readers something more fun to engage with.

To humanize this section, I’d embed actual social media posts from brands my audience admires and explain why they were successful. This is something I do frequently in my articles:

I’d also be careful not to repeat examples included in competing content and be mindful of diversity and inclusion as I made my selection.

The idea here is to avoid the obvious and show my audience something fresh to inspire their own social posts.

Pro tip: Pull examples from your own body of work whenever you can.

Consider your brand’s case studies, testimonials, or portfolio and what can support the content. These examples are unlikely to appear in similar content by your competitors, and, once again, they help showcase your personal expertise on the subject matter.

3. Edit into the first person.

Third-person writing is a tell-tale sign that you used AI.

This style can read as formal, boring, and impersonal, hurting you with Google’s EEAT regulations. To avoid all this, try rewriting your AI content into the first-person perspective — meaning using pronouns like I, me, and we.

My teammate and managing editor of the HubSpot Website Blog, Jamie Juviler, actually turns back to AI to help him do this.

He explains, “Sometimes AI helps me make my writing sound more human. For example, if I have a paragraph written in the third person, I’ll ask ChatGPT to convert it to the first person with minimal changes to the copy itself.”

This saves Juviler a great deal of time, especially since he can use the same tool that generated the content in the first place — no need to hop around other documents or tabs.

Pro tip: Put your title in the first person as well.

Juviler continues, “I also do the same with post titles and email subject lines — run them through ChatGPT and prompt it to make the wording more unique to my voice. Doing this makes readers more likely to engage with the content if the headline is from my perspective, versus a generic title.”

In the case of my social media article, ChatGPT turned “How to Write a Great Social Media Post: Engage, Inspire, and Convert” into:

• “How I Write Engaging Social Media Posts That Inspire and Convert”
• “My Guide to Crafting Social Media Posts That Engage, Inspire, and Convert”
• “How I Create Social Media Posts That Stand Out, Engage, and Drive Results”

This is also a great hack for brainstorming titles for your editorial calendar. Learn how to create yours.

4. Shift to an active voice.

Along with third-person, AI content generators tend to lean on passive voice. And like my old friend SmarterChild, it sounds extremely robotic.

For example, in my article, ChatGPT passively wrote: “If you’re celebrating a milestone, express excitement. If you’re discussing a tough topic, show empathy.”

This could be more dynamic and engaging if shifted to active voice becoming: “Express excitement when you celebrate a milestone and show empathy when you discuss tough topics.” Review your AI content for these opportunities.

5. Fact check everything.

As we discussed earlier, AI tools pull information from all over the place. Who knows if what it tells you will be credible or up-to-date? In fact, they recognize this.

Why do you think most tools even come with a disclaimer like this one from ChatGPT? “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”

Heed their warning, people. Fact-check everything AI writes for you.

That means both quantitative (dates, statistics, etc.) and qualitative facts. Also, be mindful of how old the information is. While a statistic may be true and from a reputable source, it’s likely no longer relevant if it’s from a decade ago.

A quick hunt in a search engine should be all you need to confirm or deny information AI gives you, but you can also try tools like Google’s Fact Check Tools or Longshot to speed up the process.

Pro tip: If you have original data or research, incorporate it. This is another example of information no other competitor or AI will have.

6. Get more specific with your prompts.

Ok, so. So far, all of the advice I’ve shared is reactive. They are things you can do after AI’s generated your content, but there are proactive actions you can do as well.

I can pretty much summarize them all by saying, “Get more specific with your prompts.” But that’s not helpful, so let’s unpack things a bit.

I often compare using AI to working with a freelancer. Whenever you hire a freelance writer, you give them a creative brief of what you’re looking for, right? You don’t expect them to deliver the desired results if they don’t know what you want. The same should go for AI.

Improving your AI writing prompts — telling the tool exactly what you want to see — improves the chances that the results will match your needs and brand voice.

In our conversation, Anum Hussain drove this home, saying, “Ultimately, training AI tools can be similar to new hire onboarding. Providing examples, editing work, and asking for specific edits/changes helps train the tool to work more and more in your style over time."

"At the end of the day, it's a tool, and we are the humans to guide it.”

Here are five key things you can do.

Give AI a persona to adopt.

If you want AI to write in the first person as an expert, you must tell them who they are. In your prompt, include who the author is, what they do, and perhaps even a bit of their experience.

It’s also smart to include details about your brand or business, such as:

• Your product/offering
• What makes it different (specific features, capabilities, etc.)
• Company Mission
• Company Values

This information will help your AI tool better understand the perspective it should adopt when writing.

Describe your audience.

Next, you also need to tell your tool who the audience is. Who are you trying to reach with this content? You can share a full buyer persona with your AI tool if you’d like, but at a minimum, you want to include:

• Age
• Location
• Company, job title, industry (if B2B)
• Goals
• Personal challenges
• Pain points you solve

Describe your brand voice.

How should the content AI creates sound? Should it be friendly? Authoritative? Funny? Detail it in your prompt so the tool can act accordingly.

Read: How to Create a Content Style Guide [+ Free Guide & Examples]

Include examples.

Better than just telling AI what you like, show them. Do you have a certain piece of content that you really admire or would like to emulate? Perhaps there’s a piece that performed well that you’d like to recreate the magic of.

Share them in your prompt. Include links or upload files as inspiration with your prompt. Hussain is a fan of this feature available on ChatGPT Plus.

She shares, “Relying on an AI tool to know your voice without any intelligence to go off of but the web will likely result in a tone that isn‘t a fit for you or your brand. When starting a new prompt, I upload documents of past work I’ve written.”

“That way, it can model the format, structure, and tone I want. There's still editorial work to do, but it helps get us much closer to what we’re looking for.”

Share terms and phrases to exclude.

It makes sense to tell your tool what you want, but explaining what you don’t want helps make the parameters even clearer. If there are particular phrases or topics you’d like to avoid (i.e., the name of a competitor), state that in your prompt.

No information is too much when it comes to your AI prompt. While it may take you longer to prepare these details before going into production, you’ll be much more likely to save time editing because of it.

Pro tip: If you’re a HubSpot user, using Breeze can eliminate much of the work involved in prompting.

While Breeze’s inherent purpose isn’t to create “human-like” content, we built it with a particular marketing and sales context in mind that makes it better at doing so.

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Our team focused on prompt engineering, so the tool knows how to provide more details from your portal about the customer, company, or use case at hand when generating content, even if you don’t specify it in your prompt.

This goes for blog articles, emails, social posts, website copy, and even SMS text messages.

7. Use an AI humanizing tool.

Ok, I know. This is a lot of manual effort. If you don’t have the resources, there are some AI tools dedicated to humanizing content to execute these tasks for you.

In the next section, I’ll share four of the best.

Free AI Content Humanization Tools

Note: These AI tools are not for generating new content but specifically for making the content better.

If you’re looking for tools to create content from scratch, check out our article, AI Content Generators: I Tested 5 of the Best; Here's What I Found.

1. Ahrefs

According to Ahrefs, its AI text humanizer is built on a language model that learns communication patterns, grammar, and vocabulary from text data fed into it.

It then uses that insight to generate human-like text based on what you enter, producing one, three, or five variants at a time. I tried it out with my article from ChatGPT, and here’s what I found.

The good:

• The edits weren’t dramatic, which makes sense since the original article was pretty casual in tone, but the changes it did make were impactful. For example, it changed “Start by understanding who your followers are and what they care about.“ to “Begin by identifying who your followers are and what matters to them.” It’s a small but clarifying edit.

The bad:

• I could only enter about half of the content, meaning there is an undisclosed word or character limit.
• Formatting is removed when you enter text, so you’ll have to reformat it before use.
• The tool detects AI-generated content. It gave me a note at the top of my results that read: “80% of your text is likely AI-generated.” This seems unnecessary because why would you mean “humanizing” your content if AI didn’t write it?

Overall, it is a helpful, easy-to-use free tool, but the user experience could be better. With the undisclosed word limit, it’s also most useful for shorter content needs like website copy, social media posts, or specific passages.

2. Writesonic

Writesonic’s free AI text humanizer works similarly to Ahref’s in that you simply copy and paste your text and hit a button to get results—but with some nice little extras.

The good:

• After entering my text, I could choose from 14 different tones of voice (i.e., engaging, persuasive, friendly, etc.). This option makes the tool that much more useful for a variety of content marketing purposes. Not every tone is right for every campaign or medium and being able to specify what you need definitely makes you feel more confident in the results it will deliver.
• I could also choose from 24 languages, including English, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish, and Hindi.
• There is a 200-word limit, and it showed me how many I was over or under. The tool wouldn’t run unless I was under this limit. The transparency of the word count was great to see and doesn’t leave you wondering if you did something wrong like Ahrefs.

The bad:

• I tried two different tones: simplified and luxury. At first, I was fairly impressed. The simplified version definitely removed some more formal language and replaced it with more universal alternatives (e.g., replacing “audience” with “followers”). However, when I switched to “Luxury,” the results were pretty much unchanged.

• Writesonic maintained more formatting than Ahrefs when entered, but it was all removed after editing. This makes it difficult to skim and evaluate the results.
• There were some grammatical issues (i.e., missing commas) in the results.

Regarding UX, Writesonic’s AI text humanizer is a step up from Ahrefs. I appreciate their transparency about the word limit, and the results are decent, but the customization options seem to be more for show at the moment.

I also got hit with a form after my third test generation. You need to sign up to keep using the tool for free.

3. Surfer

Next up, I tried Surfer’s free AI content humanizer, which is currently in beta.

The good:

• Out of the options I tried, Surfer has the highest word limit at 500 — but this appears to be a lifetime limit. Like Writesonic, Surfer is transparent about the limit, so I wasn’t left guessing.
• It maintains and preserves text formatting throughout the humanization process — Huge win! This includes header and paragraph tags.

The bad:

• There are some grammatical issues (i.e., missing commas and inconsistent capitalization) in the results.
• No customization options for tone, language, etc.
• Like Ahrefs, the edits were minimal, with the tool noting that the copy already read as a human wrote it. This is understandable, but if I’m coming to this tool, clearly, I’d like to see it improved further. I’d like to have to seen the tool do more.

4. Scribbr

While not designed as a “humanizer” like the other tools, Scibbr’s free paraphraser tool can used for these purposes in a crunch.

The good:

• I could copy and paste text or upload a document to be paraphrased.
• I could paraphrase in 26 different languages.
• The tool has two modes I could choose from: standard and fluency.
• Toggling the “synonyms” options allows you to control how much of the specific language you’d like to change.
• Preserves most formatting throughout the process.
• Allows you to choose specific words to “rephrase” in the results. When you click on the highlighted word, you can then select the alternative you like best.
• Edits are substantial.

The bad:

• This has the lowest word limit out of those I tested, with a limit of just 125 words.
• With this tool's significant edits, there is a higher risk of losing focus keywords when using this for content marketing.

Master the Balance Between AI and Humanity

As we enter a future where AI becomes an even greater force in content creation and marketing, the key to success is balance.

AI offers incredible speed, efficiency, and scalability, but it’s the human touch — our personal voices, wins, losses, and experiences — that makes content great. It’s what breathes life, personality, and authenticity into your message and builds trust with an audience.

It’s the X factor that makes them want to follow you on social media, buy from you, and recommend your brand.

By blending personal insights, unique examples, careful editing, and more thoughtful prompting, we can create content that resonates deeply with our audiences while leveraging the best that technology has to offer. 

The evolution of Instagram has been action-packed. One day, we’re trying to find the perfect filter for a square-cropped photo of a cup of tea; the next, we’re exploring how to get approved for Instagram Shopping.

At least, that’s how this marketer’s story arc went.

The platform has gone from a simple feed of blurry photos for our friends to a powerhouse for businesses looking to build awareness, generate leads, and sell.

But is it really worth the hype?

Below, we’ll explore new HubSpot research to answer this question, detail how to get approved for Instagram Shopping (with some advice from my own entrepreneurial adventures), and share some tips for selling successfully.

New to Instagram? Our free Instagram for Business Kit can help you lay the foundation for your strategy.

Table of Contents

• Are Instagram Shopping tools effective in 2024?
• Should you use Instagram Shopping for your business?
• Can Instagram Shopping be your only sales channel?
• How to Get Approved for Instagram Shopping
• Instagram Product Tagging
• Savvy Tips for Getting the Most Out of Instagram Shopping

Are Instagram Shopping tools effective in 2024?

“Effective” really depends on your business goals and resources. Still, HubSpot blog research found that 37% of social media marketers reported seeing 25-50% of viewers click through within the first 30 days of publishing a shoppable post on Instagram.

About a third of marketers said 25-50% of these clicks lead to purchases, while 40% estimated the same amount went to non-purchase-related conversions like email subscriptions or content downloads.

These numbers are nothing to scoff at, and they are only growing.

See more in “The HubSpot Blog's Instagram Shopping Report: Data from 500+ Instagram Marketers.”

Clearly, Instagram Shopping can be effective for driving sales and leads that can be nurtured, but is it right for you?

Should you use Instagram Shopping for your business?

The simple answer is yes — and I say this as both a marketer, consumer, and aspiring entrepreneur.

For instance, the numbers show that social selling is poised to be a huge profit driver.

According to our 2024 Consumer Trends Report, social media is the #1 channel for product discovery for most consumers, and one in four users has actually bought something on a social app in the past three months.

Looking at this, 84% of my fellow marketers predict social media shopping will overtake third-party websites like Amazon and brand websites as the preferred channel for buying, and I agree with them.

Just think about your own buyer behavior. Social selling is really where things are shifting.

Our research also found modern consumers shop on their phones more than any other device, and this is where they’re most actively engaged on social media as well.

It only makes sense that the two behaviors unite to make shopping as convenient and, frankly, natural as possible.

Instagram, specifically, has an influence that can’t be ignored. According to GWI, it’s the social media platform with the highest cultural impact. It’s where billions hang out, learn, monitor news, be entertained, and even connect with brands.

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It’s the world's third-most popular social media platform and the second-most used for social purchases.

So, it’s certainly worth experimenting with. Plus, only about half of marketers today take advantage of Instagram shopping and social shopping in general.

That means brands that embrace them now truly have a chance to make an impact without worrying about noise or competition.

Learn more about the current state of Instagram marketing and how to adapt your strategy in our 2024 Instagram Engagement Report.

Benefits and Challenges of Instagram’s Shopping Tools

Let’s get more granular about what Instagram Shopping can look like for your business by breaking down the pros and cons.

Pros and Benefits of Instagram Shopping

1. Product Discoverability

When we asked marketers about the biggest benefit of using Instagram’s shopping tools, their number one answer was the increased product discoverability.

As we discussed, Instagram is the third most popular social media platform and welcomes around 2 billion monthly active users.

Also, according to the Kepios Instagram Statistics Report, 62.7% of Instagram users report following or researching brands and products on the app. Add features like the Explore tab, and the opportunity to get your product found by new buyers is massive.

2. Better Shopping Experience

Gone are the days when you needed to leave the app to make a purchase. Now, you can discover a brand and purchase all in the same breath. This means a more enjoyable process for consumers, which can lead to more sales.

In addition, Instagram’s “save” feature (similar to a wishlist) allows users to save products they’re interested in and even be notified if/when they go on sale. (I know I’ve taken advantage of this many times.)

3. Easier Influencer Collaboration

Another key advantage of Instagram’s shopping tools is that influencers can tag products. When you work with creators, they can easily tag the products they’re promoting in posts or Reels and send traffic directly to the brand’s Shop page to take action.

Cons and Challenges of Instagram Shopping

Now, onto the not-so-great obstacles of Instagram’s shopping tools.

1. Fees

Recent HubSpot blog research found one of the biggest challenges for marketers is the fees associated with Instagram’s shopping tools.

37% of marketers aired grievances about Instagram’s selling fees, which are currently 5% per shipment or a flat fee of $0.40 for shipments of $8.00 or less.

This is a fairly high cost, but they could very well avoid it by directing traffic to their website instead.

2. Loss of User Data

Another big concern is the loss of user data. When Instagram serves as the end-to-end sales platform, brands can lose valuable data that could inform future strategies, such as browsing behavior.

Can Instagram Shopping be your only sales channel?

Our research uncovered that Instagram Shopping was the sole ecommerce platform for many brands.

In fact, 41% of marketers surveyed said most of the brands they work with use Instagram’s shopping tools exclusively. Is exclusivity a smart move, though?

One in four marketers said launching a product exclusively on Instagram is effective due to the high discoverability and ease of purchase.

83% even said they have worked with a brand that successfully launched a new product exclusively on the platform.

However, 15% said launching a product/service exclusively on Instagram is worse than launching elsewhere. So clearly, it could be hit or miss.

Pro tip: Test the waters first.

Like many things in marketing, I recommend approaching Instagram Shopping as an experiment. Honestly, considering some of the requirements, I was surprised so many businesses were using Instagram Shopping exclusively.

(More on that in our next section.)

But if you have met all prerequisites, have the means to maintain your Shop, and can afford the fees, go for it. Try listing your products to see if it helps boost sales.

This data will help you determine if it’s worth investing more or even all your efforts into the channel.

How to Get Approved for Instagram Shopping

Now that you have an idea of what to expect from Instagram Shopping, how do you actually get started?

As someone who has tried to set up Instagram Shopping for a passion project, I can tell you it’s not exactly easy. Nevertheless, it can be summarized in three big steps.

1. Make sure you meet all of the prerequisites.

To get approved for Instagram Shopping, you need to meet some specific criteria.

• Your business must be located in a supported market. (Instagram is currently available in about 20 countries.)
• Your business must comply with Instagram and Facebook’s Commerce Policies and Commerce Eligibility Requirements, demonstrating trustworthiness and accurate information about your products.
• Your Instagram account must be a business account. (Not creator, business.) This account must also be linked to a Facebook Page.
• You must have a website for your business.
• You must “check out on Facebook and Instagram” enabled. (This requires sharing tax and personal payout information.)

Sounds pretty direct and helpful, right? Hate to break it to you, but it’s not.

Things can get tricky once you start digging into the various links and policies. Meeting the criteria is often a process in itself. Speaking of which…

Pro tip: Before applying for Instagram Shopping, focus on growing your follower numbers.

Many of Meta’s policies are frustratingly vague, particularly the “Commerce Eligibility Requirements.

Regarding them, the website states that you must have “an authentic, established presence. This may also include maintaining a sufficient follower base,” but the specifics of what this means are not listed anywhere.

When I managed to get on the phone with Meta support last year for my store, I uncovered you must have at least 100 followers on your Instagram or Facebook page before you are eligible for Instagram Shopping.

While not the 10,000 it used to be, this is still a barrier to entry for new businesses, and Meta doesn’t state it anywhere.

Full disclosure: It’s been a while since I had this call, so I’m unsure if this follower minimum is still in place. But, granted, this was similar to the Facebook Live requirements (and those are still enforced), I think it’s worth not taking any chances.

Focus on growing your presence on Instagram, then go down the shopping road. I share 17 tips in this article.

2. Submit your product catalog.

Once all the pieces from step one are in place, you can create a product catalog in the Meta Commerce Manager to connect to your Instagram.

This catalog can be manually added (steps here) or pulled from another platform, such as Shopify or BigCommerce (steps here).

Personally, mine was pulled from a Square online store.

Note: This is actually where my Instagram Shopping journey paused.

From here, I learned I needed to have “check out on Facebook and Instagram” enabled, which required sharing personal information for taxes. It all makes sense, but definitely consider your feelings about data privacy before doing this.

3. Turn on Shopping features.

After your catalog has been reviewed and approved, you then need to actually turn on your Instagram shopping features.

To do this:

• Go to your Instagram business profile in the app and tap the hamburger menu. (The three horizontal lines are in the right-hand corner.)
• Hit “Settings.”
• Then, tap “Business” and “Shopping.”

From here, you should see a message confirming your account has been approved for Instagram shopping and find the “Shop” button added to your Instagram profile. Finally!

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Instagram Product Tagging

OK, I know that was a lot, but hey, you made it farther than I have so far. Congrats!

Now, you can start adding Instagram product tags (some call these Instagram Shopping tags) to your content.

Why should you tag products? Well, having your product catalog on Instagram is only helpful if people can find your products. Tagging is the easiest way to ensure that happens.

Plus, brands that use product tags generate 37% more sales than those that don’t.

How to Add Instagram Product Tags

You can add Instagram product tags to many different types of content on the platform, including feed posts/carousels, Stories, and Videos/Reels. Here’s how, according to Meta.

How to Tag Products in Instagram Feed Posts (Including Carousels)

1. When creating (or editing) a feed post, tap “Tag Products” to open the tagging menu.
2. Tap on the object you’d like to add product tags to.
3. Search your catalog to find the product you want to tag.
4. Select the product(s).
5. Tap “Done.”

Dollar Shave Club is great about tagging products in its feed posts. As you can see in this example, they tag a different product on each slide of the carousel.

How to Tag Products in Instagram Stories

1. When creating a story, tap the sticker icon.
2. Tap the “Product” sticker and select the product you want to tag.
3. Publish your story.

Many brands opt to link to their website in Stories to check out rather than tagging products — possibly to avoid fees — but Allbirds does a great job of including a mix of both.

Again, people can only use your Instagram Shop if they know it exists. Linking to it in content that gets a lot of eyes, like Stories, is a smart way to get the word out.

How to Tag Products in Reels/Videos

1. Once you’ve recorded your reel, tap “Tag Products.”
2. Add the products or collections you want to feature.
3. Tap “Done.”

South Asian fashion line HoliChic by Megha is not shy about tagging products in creative Reels. Just take this video, for example.

Watching this, many of you may be thinking, “But what if the products sell out?” Wouldn’t that make the content obsolete and create a bad customer experience?

While users may be disappointed to see a product out of stock, it’s not like they'll get slapped with a 404 page.

Tagging products in Reels still takes viewers to your Instagram Shop even if the products are sold out, so they can explore similar options.

Who knows, maybe they’ll find something they like even better.

Note: Businesses can tag up to five products per post and include tags in captions and Instagram Lives.

Savvy Tips for Getting the Most Out of Instagram Shopping

So, you know how to tag products and lead people to your Instagram Shop, but how can you truly get the most out of it? Here are some expert tips and tricks.

1. Optimize your product detail pages (PDP).

Like you would on your website or ecommerce store, optimize the product detail pages in your Instagram Shop to create the best shopping experience.

This means including the details buyers need to know to make a smart purchase decision in your descriptions, like:

• Pricing
• Product size/dimensions
• Materials/ingredients
• Product uses/benefits
• Shipping/return details

World Market has impressive PDPs, though they uniquely lead users to check out on their website rather than directly on Instagram.

You can view full details about the product, its price, how long it takes to ship, and even return information.

Need help with writing your product descriptions? Check out our article, “8 Strategies for Writing Product Descriptions That'll Generate Revenue.”

Pro tip: Product descriptions are also a great use case for AI tools like HubSpot’s Breeze.

2. Include high-quality images and videos.

Another important part of a successful product detail page on Instagram Shopping is high-quality images and videos.

As with any online shopping, people can’t touch and feel the products they’re browsing on Instagram like they could in person.

The visuals on your product page are their only chance to get an idea of what they’re actually buying, so make them clear, detailed, and visually appealing.

Once again, I have to praise HoliChic here. Their PDPs always include multiple visuals of their products, including studio and editorial images and videos.

If you’re new to product photography, don’t worry! Our article “The Beginner's Guide to Product Photography [Tutorial + Examples]” can help.

3. Work with influencers and customers to tag products.

Another thing you’ll notice on HoliChic’s PDPs is that they include tons of influencer and user-generated content.

That’s one of the best features of Instagram Shops if you ask me — The pages automatically pull in content where the product is tagged on the platform to provide even more detail for potential buyers.

Knowing this, you absolutely want to collaborate with influencers your audience loves to promote and tag your products in their content.

Affiliating with voices your buyer's trust speaks highly of your brand and helps you reach new audiences and increase your chances of getting sales.

Dig deeper into Instagram Influencer Marketing in The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Influencer Marketing for Brands.

Nike takes advantage of this in their Instagram Shopping strategy. As you scroll in their shop, you’ll see it highlighted in a section labeled “shop the feed.”

4. Set up collections (aka categories).

Collections, or categories as they're also listed, are one of the best ways to keep your Instagram Shop organized and make it easier for shoppers to navigate and find what they want.

Like Bath & Body Works, you can use collections to group products by themes, like new arrivals, gifts, seasonal trends, and even collaborations.

5. Be careful not to overlap tags.

As mentioned earlier, you can tag up to five products in your Instagram posts. However, be careful not to overlap them visually.

While it can be an eye-catching experience to tap on a post and see a bunch of different links come up (at least, I think it’s a fun surprise), if one tag covers another, it can look messy and confusing.

It also makes the tags in question harder to click.

In this example, Glossier does a great job of getting a lot of product promotion out of one post, but I wish the tags were just a little more spaced to make them easier to read.

6. Add Stories with product tags to Highlights.

Stories are Instagram's most popular feature, so, of course, you want to tag your products in them. But remember, Stories expire after 24 hours.

Don’t let all that great content go to waste. Make sure to add any Stories that include product links to “Highlights” on your profile so they don’t just disappear.

By doing this, your audience can enjoy the content for as long as you want to feature it, and an additional link and tag to your shop is maintained.

I really like Allbirds’ strategy of using Highlights to organize tagged Stories by product.

In fact, that’s where I got the example I shared earlier.

7. Promote your product content with ads.

Everything we’ve mentioned so far is a tried-and-true organic tactic, but let’s face it — it can take a while to see organic results on social media. If you have the budget, try promoting your product-focused content using Instagram ads.

Instagram ads (run through the Facebook Ads network) let you get specific about the audience you want to reach and pay to get your content in front of them.

Here are a few articles to get you started:

• The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Stories Ads
• A Step-by-Step Guide to Advertising on Instagram
• The Guide to Instagram Ad Costs
• Instagram Ad Specs & Sizes: an Updated Guide

Pro tip: If you’re just starting out with Instagram ads, don’t start from scratch. Experiment by “boosting” a post that is already getting strong engagement. What’s a boosted post, you ask? This article can explain.

Get approved, and get results.

Shopping on Instagram may not be the most common behavior right now, but it is growing.

If you’re an ecommerce business with the funds and the followers, use the tips we outlined in the article to get approved for Instagram Shopping and start seeing what kind of results it can drive for you.

When I first heard I had to write about D2C marketing, I did what many professionals do when presented with something they know nothing about — I quietly panicked and then asked ChatGPT.

To my surprise, however, I learned D2C marketing isn’t as foreign to me as I thought. And it likely isn’t to you, either.

Dollar Shave Club, Blue Apron, and Glossier are all well-known brands built on the business model and considered masterclasses in marketing — let alone D2C marketing.

With D2C business sales predicted to reach nearly $230 billion by 2025, here’s what you need to know about the model and marketing within it.

Table of Contents

• What is D2C marketing?
• D2C Marketing Strategy
• D2C Marketing Tips
• D2C Ecommerce Tips

B2C vs D2C Marketing

If you’re anything like me, D2C marketing probably sounds a lot like business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. I mean, they’re both going after private consumers, right?

Well, while that’s true, D2C is still unique. ChatGPT explained it well using the metaphor of a lemonade stand.

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Lemonade stands as we know them — people making lemonade and selling it at stands outside of events or their homes — are inherently D2C. You make the lemonade (as a manufacturer), put out a sign (as a marketer), and hand it directly to the people buying it (the consumer).

However, if you decided to go B2C with your lemonade enterprise, you wouldn’t sell directly to people on the street, let alone have a stand. Instead, you’d give it to a third-party storefront or another retailer to sell it to people for you.

You see, B2C works with third parties or “middlemen” like wholesalers, retailers, or distributors to get your product into consumer hands. Retailers often even help shoulder some of the marketing to drive sales.

D2C doesn’t have any of that help. Your product goes straight from the manufacturers to the consumer who bought it through the brand’s website, store, or popup. Overall, it’s a more direct line to the buyer than B2C.

But why has this model become so popular in recent years?

Pros & Benefits of D2C Marketing

Truthfully, a lot of D2C’s rise came out of necessity.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, people couldn’t leave their homes. They were forced to shop online, and with the rough economic environment, many opted to shop small. Many D2C brands are digital or ecommerce-focused, so they thrived in this climate. (Take Peloton, for one.)

But even more established, traditional brands like L’Oreal began investing in D2C branches for a number of reasons.

Low Barriers to Entry

Thanks to services like Shopify, Square, and on-demand manufacturing, it’s pretty easy to start a D2C venture. All you need is an idea and the Internet.

In fact, as I dug deeper into this topic, I realized I’ve even dabbled in D2C with my on-demand clothing brand.

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I built it entirely on free tools, and every sale offsets any manufacturing expense.

Speaking of which …

Lower Costs

By cutting out the “middlemen,” D2C brands save money.

They don’t have to pay their partners, so they have lower costs and a higher profit margin. In turn, they can pass those savings on to buyers in the form of a lower price tag, and lower prices can lead to more sales. It’s a beautiful cycle.

More Control

D2C brands handle every stage of the buyer’s journey, which means they have total control over how things are done and the customer experience. This means more responsibility, of course, but it also leaves less room for inconsistency.

Better Data

By controlling the entire product cycle and buyer’s journey, D2C brands can access more, and usually better, data.

This gives them a more complete picture of their business to understand where it’s doing well and where it needs improvement. It also enables them to provide a better customer experience through personalization.

Better Customer Experience & Relationships

In a crowded market, 86% of consumers say they will pay more for a superior customer experience. In fact, 70% of customers expect anyone they interact with at a business to have the full context of their previous engagement and actions.

With their streamlined processes, control, and data, D2C brands are better equipped to offer the personalized experience and attention to detail that modern buyers look for.

Improved Brand Loyalty

Great customer experience and affordable prices foster brand loyalty and improve customer lifetime value (LTV). For brands, this means longer-term repeat business and even referrals to new customers.

Cons of D2C Marketing

Now, we can’t talk about the good things about D2C marketing and not address the bad.

With full control comes full responsibility for any issues that arise.

For example, it’s common for a D2C business to face supply and fulfillment issues.

Like if the shirt type I chose for certain designs on my website is no longer made or goes out of stock, it will halt production and fulfillment until I make adjustments.

This can be especially hard to manage if your team is small (or, like me, a team of one). You can only work on so many things, so it’s easy to feel spread thin.

D2C business also requires you to be a 'jack of all trades.'

You need knowledge of product development, supply chain management, marketing, sales, and more. Add the highly personalized customer service people expect from D2C businesses, and you’ll find your venture challenging to scale.

It can be a lot of pressure, but it can also be extremely fulfilling. If you’re running a D2C business or considering it, familiarize yourself with D2C marketing strategy.

D2C Marketing Strategy

With much of their online presence, D2C marketing is pretty grounded in digital strategy. These include but aren’t limited to:

• Content Marketing & Search Engine Optimization (SEO): These two strategies work together to offer value to your customers and get found in their hunts for answers.
• Website Strategy & Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): These are tactics centered around making your website as intuitive and helpful as possible so visitors will be more likely to convert on a form or purchase.
• Email Marketing: Once you have someone’s contact information, you can deliver more pointed, personalized content directly to their email inboxes. These are commonly focused on sharing sale or discount information or delivering other content related to their past engagement with you.
• Social Media Marketing: Social media is another place where D2C brands are getting found and building brand awareness through engaging content.
• Pay-per-click (PPC): Whether on social media, search engines, or otherwise, PPC ads help brands surpass algorithms and reach their target audiences. This kind of exposure is powerful for D2C brands without a physical storefront or additional partners.
• Influencer Marketing: Without retail or wholesale partners, having relevant influencers and creators promote your product can significantly impact how people perceive your brand.

With these areas in mind, let’s dig into some specific D2C marketing tips and D2C ecommerce best practices.

D2C Marketing Tips

1. Create a sense of community.

Building a community is a powerful strategy for brands in general, let alone D2C.

It brings like-minded people together, not just because they like your product or service for practical reasons but because they like what your brand stands for.

They share your values and mission, and your community offers them a sense of belonging.

Community gives consumers something larger and deeper to promote and want to talk about. And all of that helps your brand awareness.

Beauty brand LiveTinted has done a great job of fostering community through social media.

Brand founder Deepica Mutyala has always loved makeup but never saw the faces of people like her represented in the industry, not to mention shades or solutions for her skin tone.

She started LiveTinted to change that and foster a community where everyone could feel included and seen.

LiveTinted started as a solely D2C brand but can now also be found in ULTA stores.

The community it created is arguably one of the biggest reasons it was able to expand to such a large scale.

How do you create a sense of community around your brand?

• Engage with your audience: Respond to comments, ask questions, and spark conversations.
• Create shared experiences: Offer exclusive content and host live events where people can connect in person or through streaming events where people can engage in real-time online.
• Establish a private space: Think a newsletter, a Facebook or LinkedIn Group, or even a members-only online forum.
• Encourage user-generated content (UGC): More on that shortly.

Learn more about communities in marketing in The Ultimate Guide to Community Management [According to Experts Who Do It Daily].

2. Lean into your mission.

What does your brand care about? Does it have a unique mission? Does every purchase support a charitable cause?

Highlighting these things in your marketing makes buying from you that much more meaningful. Each sale is no longer just a transaction to a consumer but a small act of good.

For example, the shoe brand Allbirds is rooted in sustainability.

Not only are its shoes made from natural resources, but its packaging is made from 90% recycled materials. The company also works with the non-profit SOLES4SOULS® to donate lightly used products to charity.

These practices are discussed in detail on the Allbirds website.

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The brand even releases an annual sustainability report to hold itself accountable for these claims.

But remember, don’t just embrace a cause or mission because you think it’ll help you sell more. People can sense performative activism from a mile away.

If you have something that genuinely fits your product or even inspired your founding, like Allbirds, using your platform and resources gives your audience something greater to want to support.

3. Show your sense of humor and personality.

Probably the most well-known D2C brand out there is Dollar Shave Club (DSC).

Since its launch in 2012, the brand has become a case study in marketing, largely because of the signature personality and humor it exudes in everything it does.

From its legendary launch video (above) and social media content (below) to its website copy and actual subscription boxes, Dollar Shave Club makes a boring industry fun to talk about.

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People can buy razors at pretty much any store, but they order from DSC because of the witty and relatable lifestyle they represent and the memorable personality that comes with it.

4. Share educational content to build trust.

An experiment by Conductor found consumers who read early-stage educational content are 131% more likely to buy from a brand immediately after than those who don’t. Use this to your advantage.

Think about your industry or product and what your target audience wants and needs to know about it. What do they need to know before making a purchase?

How do they choose the right option for them? Or what do you know that can improve their daily lives?

By sharing honest, valuable information like this via blog articles or social media, people will learn what you offer and begin to see you as a trusted expert in the space they want to buy from.

Fitness brand Peloton, for instance, regularly shares health tips and advice on its social media:

Electric toothbrush company Quip takes a similar approach, sharing oral health care advice on its blog.

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5. Encourage and highlight user-generated content (UGC).

Encourage your customers to create and post content about your brands on social media.

Aside from showing appreciation for your customers, this content is social proof for your claims. It shows potential new customers that you’re not all talk; you actually provide the results and experience you promise.

Take this example from Daily Harvest.

Not only do followers get to see what their product actually looks like and how others enjoy it, but the brand gets content for their social media.

The easiest way to source UGC is by creating a branded hashtag like Coke’s #shareacoke or Nike’s #justdoit, but you can consider creating create an ambassador or loyalty program.

This can also help with creating a sense of community, which is a nice bonus.

Check out How to Leverage User-Generated Content in Your Marketing Strategy to learn more about UGC.

6. Work with relevant creators and influencers.

69% of consumers trust information from influencers and their family and friends over brands. That means teaming up with trusted influencers or creators in your space can arguably do more for your D2C brand than other types of marketing.

Working with influencers can help you reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and generate social proof.

Influencer collaborations are a regular part of Happy Socks’ strategy:

Learn more about your options for influencer marketing.

7. Invest in paid ads.

With so much competition, getting organic traction on social media and search engines is increasingly difficult.

Paid advertising offerings like Google Ads and Facebook Ads can help you surpass algorithms and get in front of your target audience.

Glossier, for instance, is no stranger to using ads on TikTok.

The D2C beauty brand uses sponsored creator content to highlight its products and includes a call to action to purchase the featured products on its website.

But make no mistake: You shouldn’t start running ads lightly. Isabelle Lam, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of the Canadian-based snack brand Remix Snacks, urges D2C marketers to consider their costs and margins before investing in ads.

She shared in conversation, “When we first started growing our D2C platform, we put a lot of money towards hiring an ads agency and increasing our ads budget to increase our website traffic and sales. However, we slowly realized that our gross margins were making it very difficult to make a profit, no matter how many sales we made.”

“This was likely due to high shipping costs, and we ultimately had to go back to square one and re-evaluate our pricing strategy to ensure we had healthy margins.”

8. Personalize your customer experience.

One of the biggest differentiators of D2C brands is the personalized experiences they can offer their consumers. In fact, people buy from D2C brands expecting them.

Thankfully, with fewer middlemen, you likely have access to the data needed to craft these experiences in your marketing.

What are some ways you can personalize your marketing?

• Address your buyer by name in emails or even on your website.
• Make product recommendations based on past purchases
• Send emails with content suggestions based on purchases or past behavior (i.e., pages they’ve visited or offers they’ve downloaded.)
• Have team members respond to all social media engagement. Don’t automate.

Function of Beauty’s entire business is centered around personalization.

It sells haircare products customized to your specific concerns and lifestyle and it sets the stage for its personalized experience by asking you for your name before anything else.

Pro tip: HubSpot users can use personalization tokens to personalize their emails and even website copy. They can also use smart lists and email automation to deliver segment users and better deliver timely content.

D2C Ecommerce Best Practices

Find more ecommerce sales and marketing tools in our free Ecommerce Planning Kit.

9. Enable social shopping.

HubSpot research shows social media is the preferred product discovery channel for Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X and one in four consumers have already bought products directly in social media apps.

That’s a large chunk of the consumer market. With this in mind, in addition to marketing your product on social media, consider setting up social shopping.

Instagram, TikTok (see below), and Facebook all have native features that allow audiences to purchase without ever leaving their platforms.

After someone sees your product on social media, say through an ad, a piece of your content, or even an influencer post, they can take action immediately.

Businesses get to close more deals and buyers have an easier shopping experience.

10. Reduce friction in your shopping experience.

On the subject of removing friction, work on reducing friction in all of your shopping experiences, including your website.

What does this look like?

• Minimizing the number of clicks it takes to complete a purchase
• Making relevant add-on suggestions
• Having abandoned cart emails and retargeting setup
• Enabling digital payments (i.e., Apple Pay or Google Pay)

Cornell University research found that “one-click” checkout leads to more website visits, buyers purchasing a more comprehensive range of merchandise, and an average spending of 28.5% more. And it makes sense.

The easier you make it for people to take action, the more likely they will.

Men’s clothing brand Bonobos does a great job of streamline its shopping experience with the “quick shop” option on its website.

Pro tip: Thoroughly test every change you make to your website.

Isabelle Lam stressed quality testing after making UX updates, saying, “It‘s easy to miss things like features or pages not working properly, so have multiple people go through your website as if they were visitors."

"These little mistakes may seem like nothing, but they can make a huge difference to your customer’s experience, especially if it's their first time on your website.”

In addition to quality, test performance. Did things improve or decline after these changes? Monitor your website metrics and lean into what works.

11. Run sales, discounts, and deals.

According to Capital One, 89% of Americans say price plays a major role in their purchase decisions more than any other factor. In fact, the company found discounts are a major factor for 74% of U.S. online shoppers.

While you certainly don’t want to discount your way into ruin, don’t underestimate the power of sales or premiums. Away Suitcases uses UGC and influencers to draw attention to its sales:

Getting Closer to Consumers

At the end of the day, D2C marketing is a unique endeavor. Whether direct-to-consumer is your sole sales channel as a business or one of many, start testing out these tips and best practices to see what your audience responds to.

When done right, they can only bring you closer to your consumers and closer to even the most ambitious profit and growth goals.

The prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) has many concerned about job security.

AI writing, AI images, AI videos — while the final products are far from perfect, they raise the question of what jobs AI could eventually replace, even if we don’t want them to.

But, heck, if AI can create a marketing plan for me, I say, "Welcome to the team!"

A marketing plan is a foundational piece of any marketing strategy. It keeps businesses organized and focused on their goals. However, with all the details it should consider and capture, it can be extremely time-consuming and tedious to put together.

That’s where I’ve discovered AI can help.

After years of researching and compiling documents by hand, I recently used AI to create a marketing plan to see what it could deliver. Let’s break down the steps I took, how the plans turned out, and how you can replicate them.

Why use AI to create a marketing plan?

We at HubSpot probably sound like a broken record by now, but AI can help marketers work smarter, not harder.

Don’t get me wrong — plagiarism, bias, data insecurity, and poor quality are all concerns when generating content with AI. But when it comes to planning and research? The tools can save massive amounts of time and money.

In fact, one of our recent studies found that 75% of marketers say AI and automation help them spend less time on manual tasks like research.

AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and even HubSpot’s Breeze perform research and optimization in real time.

The speed at which they can pull information from multiple data sources just isn’t humanly possible. Add in tasks like data analysis, calculations, and formatting, and it’s no wonder marketers report getting 12.5 hours back weekly.

By using AI to create, or at least draft, your marketing plan, you can spend less time and money planning and more actually executing.

Now, speaking of spending less time on planning, enough of this background info. Let’s get to the real action.

How to Create a Marketing Plan with AI

I tested two AI tools and approaches for creating a marketing plan: a chatbot and a generator.

Below, I’ll break down my process into specific steps and share my thoughts on how they did, along with some tips I learned along the way.

Creating a Marketing Plan with a Chatbot

A few months back, HubSpot’s Kieran Flanagan and CMO Kipp Bodnar used ChatGPT to create a marketing plan for the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.

I used this as my jumping-off point.

As they discussed, the quality you get from a chatbot or AI assistant like ChatGPT depends on the quality of your prompt. It’s like your creative brief.

You can’t talk to AI like a search engine with incomplete sentences and keywords.

Instead, you want to speak to it like you would another person. Give your chatbot the same detailed information you would give your intern or freelancer to complete a task.

Most of the steps described below are focused on doing just that.

1. Summarize your business (i.e., Your product, company, unique selling points).

To quote one of my favorite Bollywood movies, “Who are you?”

Before AI could develop my marketing plan, it needed to know what it was marketing and who exactly my company was.

What I included: Following Bodnar and Flanagan’s lead, I kept it simple, including being “head of marketing for a technology company that sells a SaaS product for Sales Teams.”

But this is really the bare minimum a tool needs to know about your company to craft a marketing plan. To get the best results, you’ll want to dive into:

• Your product/offering
• What makes it different (specific features, capabilities, etc.)
• Company mission
• Company values

Pro tip: You may even want to provide a SWOT analysis or competitive analysis so the AI knows the full scope of what you’re dealing with. No information is too much.

For example, I borrowed this market information from Flanagan to include in my prompt:

“The market is getting crowded; there are a lot of apps with similar features. I also have to be concerned that the CRMs we integrate with will build the feature when they see its popularity grow. This means I need to scale demand and the product fast to take advantage of the opportunity.”

2. Outline your business goals.

What is your marketing team working on? What is it trying to achieve? Document these goals so your AI tool knows what all its suggestions need to work toward.

Use the SMART framework for goals — in other words, make sure they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This leaves less room for ambiguity in whether you accomplished what you were supposed to.

For example, in the past, I’ve seen clients try to set vague goals like “Increase my presence on TikTok.” But a SMART version could be, “Increase my TikTok following by 30% by June.”

Notice the difference?

In the first, “presence” could mean posting more videos, attracting more followers, or even getting more views. The SMART version makes it clear the focus is follower count.

What I included: “The goal of the marketing plan is to close 5000 new customers in the next 12 months.”

Pro tip: Including your average conversion rates and buyer behavior can help AI better understand your sales cycle and determine which strategies will be more effective for you.

For example, I added this line, “Assume the conversion rate from traffic to customer will be 5%, which means I'll need roughly 100,000 website visits. “

3. Describe your target audience.

Who is your buyer? Who does your marketing plan need to reach? AI needs to know this information to ensure its strategic suggestions align.

You can share a full buyer persona with your AI tool, but at the least, you want to include the following in your prompt:

• Age
• Location
• Company, job title, industry (if B2B)
• Goals
• Personal challenges
• Pain points you solve

What I included: “Our audience is primarily sales reps at small-to-medium-sized businesses. Their teams are usually small, with 2-4 reps on the team total. They are concerned with meeting their sales goals, prioritizing the right prospects, and streamlining their sales process. Our CRM offers automation and data enrichment tools to make this easier.”

4. Define your marketing budget.

This point is pretty straightforward — How much can your company spend on your marketing plan to achieve your goals? Defining your market budget in your prompt gives the chatbot parameters to work with.

You know, so it doesn’t suggest running a Super Bowl commercial or recruiting Beyonce as a celebrity ambassador.

What I included: “Our marketing budget is $10,000 for the year. Cost-effectiveness is a top priority.” I added the second line to clarify that while I have this total to spend, I want it to be distributed in proven areas.

5. Establish your timeline.

Like your budget, your timeline gives your chatbot further direction on what suggestions are plausible and which aren’t.

For example, if your timeline is only one month, it wouldn’t make sense to suggest leaning into SEO and blog articles, as those can take months to gain traction.

What I included: My timeline of “12 months” was established in my goal and referenced throughout my prompt.

6. Set key performance indicators (KPIs).

How will you track and report on your success? Some company stakeholders expect to see specific data. If so, your prompt is your chance to loop your chatbot in on this expectation.

But if you don’t include them, it’s not make or break.

Usually, KPIs are linked to your tactics and strategies. So, if you’re waiting to see what our marketing plan suggests to set metrics, no worries.

Pro tip: You can also ask the chatbot to suggest KPIs based on its proposed strategy.

What I included: I left KPIs out of my prompt so ChatGPT would focus on tactics and strategy.

7. Share examples and “extras.”

Do you have specific campaigns you admire? How about marketing frameworks like StoryBrand or thought leaders like Ann Handley or Neil Patel?

Once again, sharing these examples with your chatbot in your prompt helps it understand what you’re looking for from your marketing plan.

What I included: I added to my prompt: “I want your answers to be heavily influenced by marketing greats:

• Seth Godin's approach to branding
• Gary Vaynerchuk's approach to social media marketing
• Andy Crestodina’s approach to web and digital strategy”

You can also take this time to add what I call “extras” to your prompt.

For instance, Flanagan made it a point to tell ChatGPT that he didn’t want to see best practices. You can mention if there are specific channels you want to include or exclude, or maybe even global holidays.

8. Compile information into a prompt.

Once you’ve got all the pieces from steps 1-9, compile them into one prompt. Make sure that it’s conversational, and each sentence is short and precise.

9. Enter the prompt into a chatbot.

10. Review and refine.

Once you get your results (like mine below), you can use this as a first draft to elaborate on or ask for edits.

Flanagan asked ChatGPT to flesh out specifics about the suggested campaigns and tactics and make them more actionable. Remember, ChatGPT is like your intern or freelancer. Refine and clarify until the finished product meets your needs.

Honestly, I wasn’t super impressed by the results I got from my initial prompt.

The answers were quite similar to what Flanagan and Bodnar got which goes to show you, how generic your results can be if you don’t give specific details about your business.

But perhaps if I made follow-up requests like they did in the podcast episode, I could have uncovered some unique gems.

What did I like about this AI marketing plan?

• Easy to skim through the ideas
• Clearly considered my examples and requests
• The conversational nature of the chatbot made it easy to use.

What could be improved?

• Suggestions were fairly generic
• It takes iterations to get more detailed and specific results
• Putting together the creative brief is very time-consuming
• Formatting is informal

Who is this best for?

Small-to-medium-sized marketing teams that need help brainstorming strategies but don’t necessarily need anything cutting-edge.

By the way, marketing plans aren’t the only things ChatGPT can do with the right prompt.

Our free guide, “How to Use ChatGPT at Work,” talks through some of the most effective use cases and shares over 100 prompts you can use immediately.

Marketing Plan Generator

After ChatGPT, I tried HubSpot’s AI-powered Marketing Plan Generator.

Try our free Marketing Plan Generator here.

Here, I still needed all the information we discussed above ready to go, but this tool did a great job of simplifying the compilation process and formatting it into a neat little document.

Rather than putting together an instructional prompt, all I had to do was ask a few questions. (I was essentially copying and pasting the details from earlier.)

Then, the tool delivered a one-page document with a yearly marketing plan along with priority and strategy suggestions based on the goal I entered.

The document (shown in the image below) makes it easy to review the marketing plan at a glance and share it with teammates and stakeholders.

Pro tip: This AI marketing plan generator does a lot of formal formatting for you, but the quality it delivers is only as good as the information you give it to work off.

Before you use the generator, sit down and flesh out your:

• Marketing mission statement: This is what your marketing is focused on for the year.
• Strategy: What are you doing to reach your goals?
• Marketing Initiatives (i.e., brand awareness or building a high-quality pipeline)
• Target Goals (i.e., generating 100 leads per week)
• Metrics

The tool will ask you about these things, and it’s better to consider them before making them up at that moment.

What did I like about this AI marketing plan?

• Easy to skim one-page document
• Form eliminates the stress of knowing how to write a good prompt

What could be improved?

• More detailed strategy/suggestions

Who is this best for?

Businesses short on time or those new to creating marketing plans who want a starting point. It’s also great for those who haven’t mastered the art of chatbot prompts. (I’m still working on this, too.)

Final verdict: Treat AI like a running start.

These are just two of the ways you can create a marketing plan using AI. In fact, there are many other tools dedicated specifically to this need. However, no matter which you choose, remember to treat any results as a first draft.

Artificial intelligence only knows as much about your company, product, and audience as it’s been told. It doesn’t have your team’s first-hand experience or knowledge.

So, treat any results as a brainstorming tool and something to elaborate on.

Right now, AI can only give you a running start; it can’t take you to the finish line.

Creating videos for Instagram has to be one of my favorite marketing tasks.

From in-feed videos to Reels, Instagram Live, and Stories, marketers like you and me have so many fun opportunities to get creative and to make things even better — they actually work.

According to recent HubSpot Research, marketers rate Instagram the #1 social media platform for video ROI, engagement (likes, shares, etc.), and leads. And I’ve seen this first-hand, both professionally and personally.

In this article, I’ll detail everything you need to know about posting and creating video content on the platform and share actionable tips I and big brands have used to be successful.

New to Instagram marketing in general? Check out our article, “How to Use Instagram: A Beginner's Guide [Expert Insights + New Data].” That foundational knowledge is essential when diving into Instagram videos.

Table of Contents

• Instagram Videos vs Reels
• Why create videos for Instagram?
• How to Create Video on Instagram
• How to Post a Video to Instagram from Camera Roll
• How to Make Good Videos for Instagram
  • Instagram Video Specs/Dimensions for 2024
  • Instagram Video File Size & Formats
  • How to Compress Videos for Instagram

• Best Adobe Premiere Pro Export Settings for Instagram

Instagram Videos vs Reels

Before we continue, let’s get one thing straight: almost every video on Instagram ends up becoming a Reel. At least as far as user experience (UX) is involved.

Any video uploaded from your camera roll as a “post” or is recorded while “post” is selected appears in the Reels tab on your Instagram profile and is subject to the same UX and optimization options.

The main difference between the two is that “post” or in-feed videos can be up to 60 minutes long, while Reels are limited to just 90 seconds.

To illustrate, let’s look at this video on my Instagram. It’s just shy of five minutes long, so I had to post it “in-feed.” However, I could still edit and refine it like a Reel. Then, after uploading, it still appeared in the Reel tab on my profile.

Many also believe that Reels are more discoverable on Instagram than in-feed videos. A study by Metricool supports this, finding that Instagram Reels have the highest reach rate out of all Instagram content types (~37.87%).

Experts believe the Instagram algorithm favors reels more, which in turn get featured more in the Discover tab and seen by more non-followers. Videos supposedly are primarily shown to followers in the feed.

Note: It's kind of a bummer, but none of this applies if you upload a video as a part of a carousel. In carousels, your video editing abilities are limited to adding a filter or muting the sound.

All that said, the rest of this article will focus on Instagram in-feed videos, not just Reels.

Truthfully, many of the tips and best practices overlap, but to learn more specifically about Instagram Reels, check out our article: How to Make Instagram Reels and Use Them to Your Advantage.

Why create videos for Instagram?

According to recent findings by HubSpot Research, 76% of marketers using video in their marketing use Instagram. It’s also the third-most used social media platform by B2C brands and second-highest by B2B. But why exactly?

Let’s unpack a few of the biggest reasons.

Benefits of Instagram Videos

Audiences love video.

This is probably stating the obvious, but audiences love video content. In fact, our 2024 social media trends report found that the majority of content formats consumers enjoy on social media (e.g., Stories, and live streams) are video-based, with short-form video being the most popular.

Video content, in general, is known to communicate information faster and in a more memorable (and shareworthy) way than written or static visual content.

Instagram is no different.

In conversation, Aishwarya Balaji, a brand consultant and CEO and co-founder of A Fresh Sip, echoed this to me, saying, "Instagram videos can be quite powerful in conveying a specific message or evoking a particular feeling."

"Photos and texts can also evoke emotion, but video can tell a story more effectively and captivate an audience."

There's high reach and discoverability.

As the third-largest social media platform, Instagram clearly has a large active audience to reach.

Add in the popularity of video, its high engagement, and its supposed preference in the Instagram algorithm, and Instagram video presents a huge opportunity to reach new and interested consumers.

How to Create Video on Instagram

In my experience, very few people record videos directly on Instagram outside of Stories. Why, exactly?

Well, the camera quality tends to be lower, and the editing capabilities available on Instagram are pretty limited, but if you do use it, here are the steps you’ll follow.

1. Open your Instagram app and press the icon with a plus sign (+) in the center of the controls.

2. Here, you can either upload a video from your library or create one in the app. As mentioned, we’re creating a new one right now. To do this, click the little camera icon at the bottom of your new post preview.

3. Press and hold down the center button to record your video.

Once you release your hold, Instagram will stop recording and replay what was just captured on the screen.

4. Now, you can edit your video using the built-in Instagram video editor. (The same one you would use for creating a Reel).

You can swipe to add a filter as well as add:

• Music
• A Voiceover
• Captions
• Stickers (Interactive and Static)
• Visual Effects

You can also shorten and add clips or save what you’ve recorded.

5. After you’re done editing, hit “next.”

6. Here’s where you optimize your Instagram video for search and getting found.

This can include adding your video caption as well as:

• Choosing your video cover
• Tagging people, a location, and products
• Selecting an audience (Everyone vs “Close Friends”)
• Selecting where you would like the video displayed (Main grid and Reels or just Reels)
• Attaching an event reminder or fundraiser

Under “more options,” you can schedule the post for later and get more granular about how people engage with the video and what you share (e.g., whether you display “like” counts or allow people to use your video as a template).

7. Hit “Share” — and you’re all set!

For an even more in-depth breakdown of how to post on Instagram, check out the article “How to Post on Instagram: A Step-by-Step Guide.”

How to Post a Video to Instagram from Camera Roll

To upload a video from your camera roll to Instagram, follow the same steps as above, except select a video from your library in step two. After that, jump to step four, and the rest of the process will be the same.

Again, if you upload a video as a part of a carousel post, things change slightly. You’ll simply complete step two and then jump to step five.

Now that we know how to share a video on Instagram, what does a great video look like?

How to Make Good Videos for Instagram

What qualifies as “good” content is really a matter of opinion.

For example, in the early 2000s, a little series named Jackass was popular on MTV and even led to a feature film — but I just couldn’t get behind it. What can I say? I was a child with a refined palette.

Today, social media is full of equally questionable video content that manages to find an audience and be successful. And that’s all that matters in the end.

As a brand and business, the only people who need to like your videos are your target audience or buyer persona.

Balaji advised, "It's important to keep the audience in mind fist. An easy litmus test is asking yourself, 'Am I creating this piece of content because I want to share it or because I believe my audience will gain value from it?'"

"If the answer is the former, you may want to rework your strategy if community growth and stickiness are the goal."

The best way to know what’s “good” by their standards — read grows your brand awareness, increases engagement, and aids business — is by experimenting.

According to a study by GWI, Instagram users described the content they liked most as funny, creative, informative, and relaxing, among other ways.

To help you capture these sentiments in your Instagram videos, I’ll share 13 tips you can start testing.

Note: If you want an even examples and guidance on what to post, check out:

• 16 Social Media Video Examples to Inspire Your Next Video Marketing Campaign
• 7 Ways to Use Instagram Video for Customer Service
• The Ultimate Video Marketing Starter Pack

1. Share inspiration or motivation.

GWI also found that “inspirational” content was popular among Instagram users. In today’s often stressful world, people are looking for positive energy, motivation, and something to aspire to.

Creating videos for Instagram is one way your brand can help deliver it.

INBOUND is no stranger to sharing inspiration or motivation for marketers or entrepreneurs on Instagram. Even better, most of this content comes from moments at the event itself.

2. Capitalize on trends and memes.

Memes may seem like just fun and games, but they are also effective in promoting your brand culture, mission, and products.

Incorporating trending topics, music, or memes into your Instagram videos helps you join and engage in existing consumer conversations rather than trying to start a new one.

It shows you’re up to date with what’s happening around you and also shows personality, making you more relatable.

VaynerMedia, Gary Vaynerchuk’s creative agency, is no stranger to using trends and memes when creating videos for Instagram.

Pro tip: Not sure what’s popular right now? A lot of Instagram video trends actually start on TikTok, so you can always do some scrolling there. But you can find trends right in Instagram, too.

Simply hit the (+) button as if creating a new post. Slide to “Reel,” then hit “Templates.”

Here, you will see a feed of recommendations followed by “trending” videos.

3. Collaborate with influential brands and creators in your space.

Matter Communication found that 69% of consumers trust information from influencers, friends, and family more than brands. In other words, word-of-mouth matters.

With this in mind, look into influencers, creators, and relevant businesses your buyers follow. Perhaps you can collaborate with them to get in front of potential new followers, boosting your discoverability, reach, and social proof.

YETI does an admirable job with this in their video marketing on Instagram.

Here, the manufacturer posted a video of one of its ambassadors, Matt Pittman of @meatchurch, using and recommending a YETI product to his 900k followers.

In this one, beverage consultant Robert Björn Taylor shares a recipe prepared in YETI’s Rambler™ Pitcher.

Both are smart examples of how to show the company’s products in action and reach a large, new audience of potential customers.

4. Tell relatable human stories.

How does your product or brand impact lives? How does it change them for the better?

Instagram videos can bring those human stories to life and engage your audience on a deeper emotional level. Consumers connect with relatable content.

In fact, our research shows that relatable content is the second-most effective type of video for accomplishing marketing goals.

It helps people envision themselves as a consumer of your product or service and understand the value it can offer them.

In this Instagram video, Microsoft tells the story of how their technology helps fishermen complete their jobs more effectively.

While we usually think of Microsoft software and products in traditional offices, this video expands the perceived scope of their impact. It helps even more people see themselves in the brand. 

Relatable content can also create a sense of community.

Balaji shared, "For my startup, a non-alcoholic beverage marketplace, we often use humor and shared experiences in our videos. It helps connect with our community and make people feel more seen and less isolated." 

Another way to highlight human stories in your Instagram videos is through case studies (like Shopify), testimonials, or interviews with happy customers.

Pro tip: Be considerate of diversity and inclusion.

Instagram is a global platform that reaches people from all walks of life.

Thinking about diversity and inclusivity can help reach a larger audience by looking past preconceived notions of gender, age, race, income, sexuality, etc., to highlight how your product or service can offer value.

One brand that has been a leader in this space for years is Dove. I love this Instagram video featuring women of a certain age, who happen to buy Dove, living their best lives.

It’s not just fun and inclusive but aspirational. It prompts the thought, “Hm. Maybe I could be one of these accomplished, exciting women one day if I use Dove too.”

5. Tease what’s coming (New product launches, features, etc.)

A great way to build hype around upcoming products or features is to post them on Instagram.

You don’t have to do a full-fledged commercial to make an impact.

In this Instagram video, Google simply shows someone using their newest phone and describes features with a voiceover.

Duolingo, on the other hand, shares product updates using sample screenshots, text, and playful music:

Shopify discusses new features with a talking head video.

None of these examples are high production value or complicated, but they all effectively show audiences what they can look forward to from the upcoming releases.

Pro tip: When posting videos about future products or futures on Instagram, take advantage of the “Remind me” feature.

With this, people who see the video can tap on the bell icon in the bottom left of video to opt into receiving notifications reminding them of the upcoming launch. Once they do, they’ll receive three notifications for the event:

• An activity feed notification 24 hours before the event.
• An activity feed and push notification 15 minutes before the event.
• An activity feed and push notification at the time of the event.

The final notification can even coincide with a follow-up piece of content officially announcing the new item.

(HubSpot’s social media tools can help you schedule this.)

Overall, this is a great way to keep your launch top of mind and build excitement.

Learn more about setting up event reminders on Instagram here.

6. Share how to use existing products.

Your existing products could be given similar treatment. Potential customers might not be aware of the extent of your catalog or even how to use everything the right way.

Bringing those products or uses to their attention instead of leaving them to search or wonder not only improves their user experience but may even sway undecided buyers to make a purchase.

Dyson Beauty regularly teaches people how to use its tools and haircare products on its Instagram account using video.

Demonstrations, hacks, and tips like these are other popular types of Instagram videos, especially for brands. More on that shortly.

7. Bring attention to promotions or sales.

According to Capital One, 89% of Americans say price plays a major role in their purchase decisions, higher than any other factor. In fact, the company found discounts are a major factor for 74% of U.S. online shoppers. And this serial couponer believes it.

Everyone likes to save money, so don’t let your sales come and go quietly.

Use Instagram videos to highlight any promotions or sales you’re running. Amazon does a great job with this for Prime Day. They even teamed up with popular creator Zach King:

8. Make people laugh.

The most popular content on Instagram is funny. Humor is relatable, shareworthy, and also memorable. Because of this, finding ways to incorporate relevant, on-brand humor into your Instagram video content can be extremely valuable to a business.

Now, I know: Being funny is hard. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be so many failed comedians.

But don’t let this stop you.

Your laughs can be original (like Duolingo or our friends at A Fresh Sip) or curated.

As long as the humor is relevant to your audience, it will be appreciated.

9. Educate your audience (i.e., how-tos, tips, hacks)

People follow and trust brands that offer real value, and few things are more valuable than education these days.

Take some time to think about what your business or brand can uniquely teach your audience.

What do they need to know about your industry or when making a purchase decision? What knowledge and expertise can you offer to help them achieve their goals or improve their daily lives? Better yet, what insights can you share that no one else can?

Shape your Instagram video strategy around these topics.

For example, hair care brand AAVRANI goes high-level, teaching people what a clarifying shampoo is.

Though this isn’t directly promoting their product, it educates people on what it is and what it solves. It also gives them the chance to say, “Hey, I think I need that.”

At HubSpot, we’ve taken a similar approach, sharing email marketing tips anyone (HubSpot users or not) could implement.

Meanwhile, WIX zeros in on existing users, sharing “hacks” to get the most out of their tools.

Whether you speak to your offering or your space in general, sharing educational videos positions you as an expert and helpful resource — one people can trust, want to follow, and potentially even work with.

10. Share and encourage user-generated content

As we talked about earlier, people are more likely to believe what others say about you than what you say about yourself. I mean, think about it: If I said I’m the world’s best pastry chef, why should anyone believe me?

Posting user-generated content (UGC) videos effectively offers social proof of your claims and shows appreciation for existing customers.

This is a staple of GoPro’s Instagram strategy.

The tech company regularly shares content using its products on its Instagram profile, giving customers exposure on the brand’s large platform and also highlighting what its products are capable of.

The awe-inspiring videos are also extremely shareworthy.

11. Supplement your efforts with artificial intelligence (AI).

Let’s face it. Video marketing takes time and effort, and not every marketing team has the necessary resources. Thankfully, there are plenty of AI tools to supplement your efforts and help you get more done with less.

According to our research, the #1 way marketers currently use AI in their video strategy is by helping with captions, descriptions, and other text-based elements. Following closely behind is improving visual effects on videos.

(Think filters and effects on Instagram.)

But the possibilities don’t stop there. Using free tools like Clip Creator from HubSpot, you can convert text into professional videos with just a few clicks.

All you have to do is answer a few simple questions and pick a template, and the tool generates a clip you can use for Instagram or any other video-supporting platform.

It’s free, and you can even edit text and images to meet your needs.

12. Think short-form first

While Instagram supports videos up to 60 minutes long, our research shows that 71% of marketers say short-form video delivers the highest ROI. 66% also said it gets the most engagement, while 60% said it drives the most leads.

With this in mind, lean into shorter videos (30 seconds to two minutes). Whether your video is focused on education or entertainment, this length tends to be just long enough to keep your audience engaged but also wanting more.

In this user-generated video, Amazon Prime shows just how sweet and effective short video can be:

Pro tip: This is another area where Clip Creator can help.

13. Pay attention to production quality

One positive of the COVID-19 pandemic is that lowered the playing field in terms of social media video production. Today, you don’t need fancy video, sound, or lighting equipment or even a studio.

But that doesn’t mean you can neglect production quality altogether.

How your video looks and sounds can heavily affect how your message is received and if people even stick around to hear/watch it. So, make sure to put your best foot forward.

When creating videos for Instagram, use tools like a tripod, phone stand, or even a pop socket to keep your phone steady and avoid shaky footage.

Find a quiet space or use software like krisp.ai to reduce noise and keep your sound clear and focused on what needs to be heard.

In addition to that…

Pro tip: Follow Instagram tech specifications and requirements. When Instagram launched videos in 2013, they could only be 15 seconds long and appear in the feed. Today, they have taken on a whole new life.

To ensure Instagram can share and display your content as planned, make sure your videos are optimized from a technical standpoint. This means following Instagram’s technical specifications and requirements.

Let’s wrap up by going into detail about those.

Since Instagram is a mobile-first app, if you shoot right from an iPhone or Android, your videos should automatically fit within these specs. The latest iPhone 16, for instance, can shoot up to 4K at 120 fps.

Aspect ratios are a different way of looking at the dimensions of videos.

Understanding them is important because it directly affects how your content appears on different devices and platforms. The most common aspect ratios on Instagram are:

• Landscape video - Aspect ratio 16:9
• Square video - Aspect ratio is 1:1
• Portrait video - Aspect ratio 4:5
• Vertical video - Aspect ratio 9:16

Note the difference between portrait video and vertical video. While you may usually think of these things as the same, on Instagram, they are not. Videos posted in a carousel with other content follow portrait guidelines, while solo videos follow vertical guidelines like Reels and Stories.

• File type: MP4 or MOV
• File size limit: 650MB for videos up to 10 minutes and up to 3.6GB for videos up to 60 minutes​
• Length: Three seconds to 60 minutes; longer videos appear as previews in the feed, with the full video viewable on your profile.
• Minimum frame rate of 30 fps (frames per second)
• H.264 codec
• AAC audio
• 3500 kbps bitrate

How to Compress Videos for Instagram

With the increasingly impressive quality of mobile video comes larger video files. While Instagram typically evolves to accommodate these, sometimes you may still need to optimize your files to share them effectively on the platform.

Sometimes, this means compressing or shrinking the video's file size to make it easier to upload, faster to stream, and within the 4GB limit.

Compression can sometimes affect resolution quality or sound clarity, but reputable tools can help combat this.

Types of Compression

A video coder is used to compress larger video files into different formats. Two common formats are mp4 files and WMV, Windows Media Video files. There are two different types of compression: lossless and lossy.

Lossy Compression

Lossy compression compresses video by removing certain data from the video files without compromising the message. For instance, it may remove repeated images or sounds.

Lossy compression is aptly named, but it’ll make your file extremely small.

Lossless Compression

On the other hand, lossless compression produces a near-identical compression of the original file, because data is not lost in the process. Lossless won’t have as big of an impact on file size as lossy, but it’s still useful for smaller videos.

Common lossless formats are:

• Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMAL)
• Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC)
• Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC).

When your file needs to focus on quality, use FLAC because you won’t lose any quality in the compression process.

There are several video compression tools that will compress videos for you. For example, UniConverter has an easy and free Instagram compression tool.

Meanwhile, Free Convert and Clipchamp automatically remove certain data details of your video (lossy compression), but also allow you to make several adjustments to meet your needs.

Best Adobe Premiere Pro Export Settings for Instagram

If you’re editing your video using Adobe Premiere Pro, you already know Adobe likes to discuss the specifics of exporting. Here's information on how to get crystal-clear images when exporting your Instagram video.

Open “Export Settings” in the “Format” drop-down box and select “H.264’ and “Match Source High bitrate” in the preset box.

These two settings will match Instagram’s video settings.

The “Use Maximum Render Quality” checkbox fixes the scaling of your video automatically, so be sure to check that box as well.

Image Source

Once those settings are saved, your post will be Instagram-ready. Because you can’t upload videos directly to Instagram via desktop, consider a third-party app like HubSpot or Later. These will let you upload and schedule the video to publish later.

You can also send the video to your phone and upload it there.

Get ready for your close-up on Instagram.

Whether you’re big or small, B2B or B2C, Instagram videos have much to offer your business. Take the tips and guidelines shared in this article and start experimenting to learn what works best for your audience and your goals.

At the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, my previous employer was just weeks away from its annual conference, and our event marketing efforts were in full swing.

After a year of promotion, we never expected our plans, let alone the entire world, to get shut down. But if I learned anything during that time, it’s just how valuable those events were.

While we can see people’s faces through video calls and hear their voices over the phone, there’s something about being in the same room IRL (or in real life, if you will) that just hits differently. And that’s why event marketing is so powerful.

Today, 80.4% of businesses hold in-person events as their most impactful marketing channel. In fact, Forrester found that 48% of teams say events are more important today than before the pandemic.

Conferences, galas, tradeshows, happy hours — they’re all different, but they all help businesses better understand and connect with their audience and customers.

According to our 2024 State of Marketing Report, 16% of marketers plan to try experiential marketing this year, while many others are increasing their event budgets or trying to get more out of their event marketing strategies.

If you’re one of them, this guide is for you.

(But for the purposes of this guide, we’ll focus on being a host.)

Events of all kinds can be considered “event marketing.”

You can organize a small roundtable of seven to 10 guests, partner with another brand to sponsor a 5K, set up an exhibit at a major trade show — or even host one online as a virtual event.

Take HubSpot’s INBOUND, for example.

Image Source

INBOUND is a multi-day event that just celebrated its 12th year.

2024 was sold out, bringing together thousands of people around the globe with their interest in digital marketing and HubSpot.

It included live-streamed spotlights and keynotes on YouTube as well as in-person sessions, entertainment, and interactive experiences.

But the size or platform for your event doesn’t have to be big.

Brand Strategist Bridget Poetker explains, “Smaller, more intimate events are all the rage right now. These can even be more powerful (read: ROI positive) than large-scale conferences. You get more face time with a hyper-targeted list of attendees.”

So long as you bring value to attendees — customers, potential customers, and even employees — event marketing can be extremely valuable for your business.

Benefits of Event Marketing

According to Bizzabo, 76.6% of organizers consider in-person conferences critical to their organization’s overall success, and there are many reasons why.

Event marketing has a long list of tangible and intangible benefits, many coming back to increased brand awareness and customer connection.

Generating Brand Awareness and Recognition

Hosting or participating in events is a powerful way to introduce your brand to new people. In fact, 64% of event marketers reported that the primary reason for hosting events is brand awareness for their company or products.

When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.

Online, there’s so much noise. You're basically competing with anyone with a web presence to rank in search engines or get eyes on social media.

But at in-person events, there are only so many people in the room. That means there are fewer brands to compete with for your audience's attention. Plus, people want to learn more about brands in these environments.

According to Freeman, 87% of event attendees say discovering new products and solutions is the most important element of a valuable in-person experience.

Furthermore, 80% of say in-person events are the most trusted way to discover new products and services.

So, use this to your advantage.

Read: How Experiential Marketing Works: 7 Enlightening Tips

Brainstorm exciting ways to showcase your expertise or enable attendees to touch, feel, and fully engage with your product or service.

For example, one of my former employers was a marketing and web design agency and at live events, we would host live website critiques with attendees.

These critiques allowed us to share some of the strategic knowledge someone would get if they worked with us and also give them the opportunity to meet some of the people they’d work with.

If you’re a chef or caterer, you can give our samples or do a live cooking demonstration like my friend Chef Devan Rajkumar did at Food & Drink Fest 2024 in Toronto.

If you’re a clothing designer, you can display some of your outfits or host a mini fashion show.

Event marketing allows you to bring all of the value and culture your brand promises to life. And the more creative your exhibit, the more people are to talk and spread word of your brand even further.

Building Deeper, Trusting Relationships

The internet has created a global digital marketplace, meaning many businesses never meet their customers or clients in person.

I mean, think about it. Unless you’re in the service industry or run a brick-and-mortar store, it’s not uncommon for all your interactions with customers to happen online or even asynchronously.

That’s where event marketing can be a game changer.

In-person events allow you to have personal, one-on-one interactions with customers and potential customers.

You can shake each other’s hands, hear each other’s voices, and even share a laugh. You can see a customer’s body language and expressions and better understand their concerns and goals to better serve them.

In return, they can better understand you, too.

Overall, there is less room for ambiguity, unknowns, or getting “catfished” by a business in person. Rather, you can form a real-life, trustworthy connection.

Don’t believe me? Freeman found that 77% of consumers say their trust increased after interacting with a brand at a live event.

Fostering Memorable Engagement

Kenny Nguyen, CEO of the creative agency ThreeSixtyEight shared with us, “The key to any great event strategy is very simple — identify the memory you want attendees to walk away with and work backward." And he’s not wrong.

According to Freeman, 64% of consumers retain positive impressions of brands they interact with at live events. And these positive memories automatically make consumers more inclined to want to recommend and even work with you in the future.

As Nguyen continued, “Human experiences will be how companies choose to differentiate themselves, especially those that can’t do so through technologies.”

In-person events are built to foster them.

Generating Leads and Sales

Ultimately, the goal of all this improved awareness and engagement is to nurture leads and generate sales.

While there’s no guarantee of deals closing on the floor at your event — and frankly, that shouldn’t be your focus — the unique relationships and interactions established at your events are often much warmer and ready to act than those who just discovered you online.

Types of Event Marketing

The umbrella of event marketing is wide and includes many different options with different benefits. Let’s discuss some of the biggest.

Conferences

When you think of event marketing, your mind likely immediately goes to conferences.

Conferences are large events typically organized and hosted by one major company and sponsored by many other brands and businesses. They can be valuable for both B2B and B2C organizations.

These events typically offer the most dynamic agendas, filled with speakers, workshops, and exhibit halls. Plus, Bizzabo found that 77.7% of attendees agree that in-person B2B conferences offer the best networking opportunities.

One example of a conference done well is Adobe Max.

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Touted as “The Creativity Conference,” Adobe MAX promises to ignite attendees' imaginations, help them explore the latest creative tools and trends, and connect and collaborate with like-minded individuals.

For a brand with such a large share of both the B2B and B2C creative markets, this conference is an extremely memorable and on-brand way for Adobe to connect with its audience.

Trade Shows and Expositions

Trade shows or expositions (expos) are large events organized around a specific industry or type of product, such as sales technology or medical devices.

Whereas conferences are typically open to the general public, trade show attendees tend to be pre-qualified buyers, company representatives, and salespeople from their specific industry.

Because of that, trade shows and expos tend to give companies the best chance to show off their products and services and bring in the highest number of qualified leads.

One tradeshow you may be familiar with is the Consumer Electronics Show or CES.

CES is held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada, and features the latest technology in the IT, communications, and multimedia industries.

However, trade shows are also frequently much smaller and niche, like the New Jersey Bridal & Wedding Expo.

Educational Events (i.e. Seminar, Webinars, Lectures)

Seminars (often called webinars when hosted online) are valuable, education-centric events attended by a small number of people.

They typically involve discussions, lectures, and group activities and can also serve as intimate networking opportunities.

Roundtables are similar to seminars but usually involve individuals from different levels and departments within their companies.

Meanwhile, masterminds tend to involve individuals in similar roles (but different industries) and focus more on brainstorming ideas and sharing feedback.

All variations typically last no more than one day, with most lasting only a few hours. Educational events are also commonly held online to make them easier for people to attend during the workday.

HubSpot is no stranger to webinars, hosting them in our community and as gated offers.

The same can be said for the Marketing AI Institute.

During these webinars, we often party with industry experts from other companies to share their knowledge with our audience and to also promote the event.

Want to learn more about running a successful webinar for event marketing? Check out “The Ultimate Guide to Creating Compelling Webinars.”

Workshops

Workshops are similar to seminars and roundtables in that they’re focused on sharing knowledge and educating attendees. But unlike seminars and roundtables, they’re typically open to the public.

Workshops can be offered both virtually and in-person, and while they aren’t traditionally promotional, they’re usually centered around a topic relevant to the host.

This is a “thought leadership” play, intended to make a company appear more credible in their field.

Popular Indian-American poet Rupi Kaur recently held a poetry writing workshop at The New York Public Library, for example.

The event was free and focused on Kaur sharing her writing expertise and spending time with some of her fans. Not to mention, it sold out in less than 10 minutes — while I was in the middle of checkout. Ugh.

The writing workshop is also a good example of a branded celebration.

Parties and Celebrations

Parties or celebrations are small, personal marketing events that can be held for a variety of reasons, including:

• The launch of a new business or product
• An exciting company announcement
• Another success or milestone

Kaur’s workshop was limited to a small group of attendees and was held in celebration of the 10th anniversary of her first book, Milk and Honey.

While these types of events shouldn’t be centered on promoting a product or brand, a simple speech or presentation can help align the event with a company and remind attendees why they’re there.

But heck, even if they don’t have something new going on, some companies organize a yearly party simply to bring together and entertain customers or clients.

Gatherings like this can do wonders for showing appreciation for your customers and building brand loyalty.

Brand and Product Pop-Ups

Pop-ups are temporary retail spaces or experiences where companies can showcase and sell their products in a controlled environment.

Initially, they were mostly held by e-commerce brands that don’t have a full-time brick-and-mortar storefront, but today, they are increasingly common with businesses of all kinds. But why exactly?

Businesses love that pop-ups can bring their brand and products to life in memorable, immersive settings that customers want to share on social media. And customers love the unique experiences.

Typically, pop-ups are limited-time engagements (ranging from a few hours to a few weeks) that feature detailed, branded environments, interactive displays or activities, and even freebies.

This makes them feel exclusive and, in turn, even more appealing.

Setups like these are popular with beauty brands like Dior.

But can also be arranged for tech products like the game Fortnite:

Or to promote content like this one I attended for the Netflix series “Stranger Things”:

See more examples and learn how to plan a memorable pop-up.

Networking Events

Networking events are any occasions people attend hoping to make professional connections — and, honestly, they are arguably the most valuable events a business can offer.

In addition, they are also one of the least demanding events a business can host.

Now, don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean you can phone it in, but networking events certainly require less detailed planning than pop-ups, parties, conferences, or educational workshops.

As a host of a networking event, it’s your responsibility to create a comfortable space — 64.6% of event attendees say this can make or break an event — perhaps provide some refreshments and, of course, get people in the door.

Otherwise, a networking event can be as structured or casual as you like.

Several years ago, I attended a speed networking event during INBOUND, for example.

The hosts provided the space (a private room at Harpoon Brewery), a drink ticket, and a few snacks, then led a structured rotation of introductions/meetings.

In this setup, every attendee was guaranteed an audience with everyone else in the room, but only for a pre-determined amount of time. This was great for someone like me who had trouble breaking the ice when networking.

Some other popular networking formats include:

• Happy Hours
• Career Fairs
• Business Brunches or Lunches
• Industry Meet-ups

Poetker continued, “I‘m a big fan of the more casual happy hours and ‘dinner on our dime’ marketing events. They get people out of their work mindset and help them connect on a deeper level."

"Marketing is human to human; it’s about empathy. Those experiences you create together are invaluable to long-term relationship building.”

Charity Galas and Fundraisers

Galas and fundraisers, in some ways, are similar to parties and celebrations.

Attendees enjoy entertainment, but rather than celebrating a brand accomplishment, these events are centered around the goal of raising money and awareness for charitable causes.

For example, Travelers Insurance annually holds a golf tournament in Hartford, Connecticut.

It’s a multi-day event that welcomes celebrities, athletes, and thousands of patrons for some fun on the golf course, but it also raises millions for hundreds of nonprofits.

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Similarly, since 1995, the Academy for Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (the organization behind The Oscars) has hosted a viewing party supporting the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

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According to YouGov, more than two in five consumers (45%) are more likely to buy from a brand that supports charitable causes.

Meanwhile, a whopping 82% prefer when a brand’s values align with their own, according to a Harris Poll commissioned by Google Cloud.

Knowing this, fundraisers and galas are another great opportunity to connect with your buyers and supporters.

But remember: Make sure your support is genuine. Consumers can sense performative activism from a mile away.

How to Develop Your Event Marketing Strategies

Now that you know your options for event marketing, here are some steps to lay the foundation for your event marketing strategies and plans.

Note: From planning to follow-up, our comprehensive event planning checklist covers everything you need to know to plan, promote, and seamlessly execute any marketing event. Get your free checklist here.

1. Define your event goals.

Before starting any strategy, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve. So, first and foremost, ask yourself, “What are my goals with event marketing?”

Perhaps you’re trying to generate more qualified leads like one of my former employers, or you want to build brand awareness. Whatever your mission, sit down with your stakeholders and frame them in the SMART methodology.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely — and the format helps keep your goals clear and actionable. It also gives you something specific to gauge whether your event succeeded.

An example of a SMART event marketing goal could be “Grow our prospective leads list for our new product by 100 names by the end of the event.”

This goal is specific (prospective leads for only the new product), measurable (100 names), attainable and relevant (assuming the event is relevant and there are more than enough attendees to get 100 names), and timely (by the end of the event).

Note: Don’t limit your event to one single goal. You should also set intangible goals like “strengthen relationships” and “engage prospective customers,” but in terms of creative and fiscal decisions, use your SMART goals to guide you and measure on the backend.

2. Set your budget.

Next, take some time to define your event marketing budget.

This is crucial as it can frequently be a deciding factor in your options for the venue, food, speakers, entertainment, swag, and other important pieces of your event. But how much should you plan to spend?

That will depend very much on your goals and event type, but Bauer Entertainment Marketing suggests allocating 15% to 20% of your total potential gross revenue if your event sells out.

It explains, “If an event has 2,500 tickets to sell at an average price of $40 per ticket, hosts stand to collect a total of $100k if all tickets are sold. After applying the 15%-20% principle, the resulting budget is between $15k and $20k.”

3. Identify your target audience.

Who do you want to attend your event? What kinds of people do you want to engage with and introduce your brand to? Establishing your audience will help you target and invest in the proper marketing channels and plan your speakers, activities, etc.

If your business has buyer personas, this should be a fairly quick step in the event marketing strategy process. But if it doesn’t, learn more about creating detailed buyer personas and download our free template here.

4. Pick your event type and theme.

To market your event, you obviously need to know what you’re marketing — Is it a conference? A gala? Will there be breakout sessions? Happy hours?

Before moving further with your event marketing, establish the key information your audience needs before buying a ticket. This includes:

• Event Name
• Venue
• Date and Time
• Purpose/Value Proposition (a.k.a. What will people get by attending?)
• Who Should Attend
• Schedule/Itinerary (i.e. Happy Hours, Workshops, Seminars, Keynotes)
• Ticket Price

You don’t have to have all the little specifics figured out before you start promoting your event (i.e. exact keynote speakers), but you should at least have an idea of what you’ll offer attendees, who the event is catered for, and the location and date.

For example, while we didn’t know the specifics of INBOUND 2025 at the close of INBOUND 2024, we did know the date and location (in San Francisco, CA for the first time) and a general idea of what attendees would experience.

This was enough to early bird registration:

Finalizing foundational details like these will also help determine parameters for the rest of your marketing, such as your promotion timeline.

Pro tip: Branding your event is an important part of developing your theme. Read “What Is Event Branding? + 5 Examples to Inspire You” to help you get it right.

5. Determine your promotion timeline.

When it comes to in-person events, people often need time to plan, especially if they’re professional events. They may need to clear their schedule, arrange travel accommodations, or even convince their boss to pay for their ticket.

Considering this, it’s best to give your business an extended runway to promote any event.

In my experience, you should give yourself at least one month to market any event, but if it’s a multi-day, high-investment event like INBOUND, this timeline should ideally extend to at least three months.

If I didn’t emphasize it enough, “at least” are the keywords here. It’s really never too early to start promoting a multi-day event or one with a higher price tag.

Marketing dangerously with a shorter timeline can set you up for failure or objections like “I already had plans.”

From here, start outlining your promotion and when you’ll release what. Keep in mind holidays or special occasions when you may want to offer a sale or even an opportunity to win tickets.

It’s also wise to organize a multi-touch marketing campaign for your events. Use a variety of mediums and outlets (e.g., email, social media, direct mail, phone calls, print ads, and paid ads). But more on that in the next section.

A consistent, well-thought-out promotion timeline will help pique and maintain your audience’s curiosity, ultimately nurturing them toward a purchase.

Pro tip: Poetker suggests breaking your timeline into three big buckets: pre-event, during, and post-event activities.

She explains, “This is your mission control for everything from designing swag and staffing a booth to ABM dinners and drip campaigns.

The real benefit here is you can easily see your bandwidth and resources right next to clearly defined next steps.”

Need specifics? Our free event planning checklist has you covered.

6. Outline your plan for marketing and promotion.

How are you going to get people to attend your event?

Social media and an event website are important channels in today's digital market. However, if your event is local, you may also want to consider print advertisements or media coverage.

(Note: Need help designing your event website? Check out the article “The 22 Best Conference Website Designs You'll Want to Copy.” The tips are easily adaptable to other event types.)

You can also capitalize on event listing websites like Eventful, Hey Event, and 10times to reach more people. Let’s quickly dive into a few other popular forms of event marketing promotion.

Event Marketing with Email

39% of marketers found that email marketing tools were the greatest contributor to event success.

Email information is easy to collect at registration, and checking email is part of most people’s daily routine, so, in theory, there’s a higher chance of getting your messages noticed.

Like this email I received promoting a webinar from the Marketing AI Institute, for instance.

Pro tip: Often, companies will create separate email addresses and newsletters for their events to keep communication and promotion separate from their other marketing efforts.

This helps ensure you’re not spamming uninterested parties and also keeps the deliverability of your event emails unaffected by other variables.

Read: Email Marketing: The Ultimate Guide (Expert Tips + Data to Know)

Content Marketing and Blogging

Whether it was promoting workshops at a marketing agency or musical productions at a regional theatre, content marketing and blogging has always been a staple of my event marketing strategies.

These long-form types of content allow you to go into greater detail about the specifics of your event, whether it be a particular speaker, session, or experience taking place.

It also creates an additional page to be shared on social media and indexed in search engines.

INBOUND has an entire blog dedicated to the annual event.

It shares tips on getting the most out of your attendance, announcements of what to expect, and even session recaps, and profiles of past and future speakers.

Promoting your event doesn’t stop at email or content. Check out these resources for even more tips on how event marketing:

• How to Sell Out Your Next Event [+Tips From INBOUND Marketers]
• 15 Ideas to Promote Your Next Event
• 7 Effective Ways to Promote an Event on Facebook
• How to Promote a Virtual Event, According to HubSpot Marketers

7. Plan for content creation during the event.

Marketing your event shouldn’t stop when your event begins.

Dedicate some resources to promoting your event as it’s happening. Attendees may learn something new about what’s offered, and those who didn’t register will be curious about what they’re missing.

Over the years, I’ve been in charge of real-time content during dozens of events. This primarily involved managing a small team that:

• Published Stories and Posts on Instagram
• Live-Streamed on Facebook
• Live-tweeted on X (at the time, Twitter).
• Engaged with and reshared attendee-created content.

Here’s a peek at one of my teams from back in 2016:

It also meant creating a hashtag dedicated to the event and finding ways to boost engagement through contests and games (as seen below) — and none of this is uncommon.

According to Sweap’s 2023 State of Event Marketing Report, 78% of marketers said social media had the most positive impact on events. So, plan accordingly.

What kind of content should you post?

• Photos of attendees engaging
• Powerful clips from sessions and keynotes
• Quote graphics
• Attendee-generated content
• Helpful tips
• Updates and reminders on different events

Pro tip: Dive into your buyer personas to see what platforms your audience is using most frequently. However, remember that not all platforms are suited to real-time publishing.

I recommend focusing on X and Instagram for live posting and looking into live-streaming on Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn, depending on your audience’s preferences.

8. Outline your technology needs.

Selecting the right event technology for your specific needs is essential for the success of your event. The right tech simplifies event marketing and event management for a seamless attendee experience.

Aim for a comprehensive event platform capable of handling everything from registration, check-in, and badging to attendee management while also supporting your event marketing goals.

Additionally, if you use HubSpot, choosing software that integrates smoothly with your HubSpot CRM is critical for the timely execution of your marketing campaigns.

For tips on how to pick the best event management software, visit the detailed Event Management Software Guide by Accelevents, our certified HubSpot app partner. They also have a great post on integrating event registrations with HubSpot.

9. Determine how you will measure success.

During a bustling event, it’s easy to look around and feel good about your attendance and engagement. But is that gut check really the best way to evaluate whether your event was a success? Probably not.

As Mike Piddock, Founder of event hosting platform Glisser, shared:

“Events need to be assessed with hard metrics, rather than just ‘gut-feel’ opinions and feedback forms to rate the coffee. Measure attendee engagement, rather than simply counting who registered and who showed up, as this is a great proxy for the effectiveness of the event.”

Like every other marketing investment, it’s wise to set key performance indicators (KPIs) against which to measure and evaluate your event's performance. Here are a few common KPIs for event marketing.

Registrations and Check-ins

Not everyone who registers for your event will attend. So, make sure to compare your registrations to your actual attendance and consider reaching out to a few who registered but didn’t check in.

Take a look at your registration data to see when the most and fewest tickets were purchased, what kinds of tickets were purchased, and if you offered a variety of ticket packages or options.

Revenue and Cost-to-Revenue Ratio

If your event requires a paid ticket, gross revenue is an important measure of success.

How much money did your event bring in? How does that amount compare to what you spent on the event?

This comparison will help you better understand the value of your event and the resources offered. Events are expensive, but they’re not worth going into debt for.

Social Media Mentions/Engagement

How often was your event discussed on social media? What was the general consensus around the event? Did your attendees share content that engaged non-attendees?

In today’s digital world, social media is a great measure of event success and reach. Take a look at your event mentions on Facebook, X, Instagram, and more.

I’m a big fan of using event hashtags (both professionally and personally) to keep attendee content easy to find, share, and, in this case, measure.

Pro tip: If you’re a HubSpot user, you can set up streams in your social inbox to monitor your specific event hashtag or handle mentions. This makes engaging and resharing content much easier.

Lead Acquisition and Customer Conversion

Acquiring leads and converting customers are key benefits of event marketing, so it’d make sense to measure these KPIs for your event.

Note how many qualified leads you gain from your event and then track how many of those leads are converted into paying customers.

This can help reveal the direct ROI of your event and see which tactics worked for lead collection and conversion.

Attendee Satisfaction

Maybe you hit your sales goals, but did your attendees actually enjoy your event? What did they participate in and enjoy the most?

“Satisfaction” may seem like an obscure metric, but understanding the opinions and perspectives of your event attendees can help you better understand where your event was a success — and where you could improve.

Consider building a survey to ask your attendees about their experience, takeaways, and to calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS) for your event.

Speaking of attendee satisfaction …

10. Establish your plan for collecting feedback.

As mentioned earlier, you could hit all your registration and attendance goals, but if people didn’t actually have a good experience at your event, they are unlikely to recommend it, buy from you, or return in the future.

So, good or bad, make sure you have a plan in place for collecting feedback from attendees.

Of course, we hope people will remember their event experiences for years to come, but that’s unlikely, so it’s best to request feedback immediately after or within the week following your event.

One popular option is emailing a link to a survey to everyone who attended the day after the event. You can include questions like:

• What was your favorite experience or moment of the event?
• What could we improve on?
• Did the event meet your expectations?
• Would you want to attend this event again in the future?

Dig deeper into these and 21 other questions you should ask in your post-event survey.

Pro tip: To add a little extra incentive to fill out your survey, try offering a small discount code to attend a future event as a thank you. After completing the survey, you can deliver the code on your thank you page or in a follow-up email.

Scale your event marketing IRL.

Organizing and implementing an event can feel like a daunting task, but crafting your event marketing strategy with the steps we outlined will help you put your best foot forward for success.

Whether your event entertains new clients, builds your contact list, or raises money for your favorite charity, event marketing can help you meet, engage, and truly connect with your audience unlike ever before.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Over the last decade, I’ve helped set and track marketing goals for B2B businesses of all kinds — And I’ve come to think of them more as destinations.

They’re points on the map your team wants to reach. And B2B marketing KPIs (key performance indicators)? Well, they’re how you measure how far you’ve gone and just how far you have left.

You can measure trips in miles, hours, or even how many Spotify playlists you’ve gone through. Similarly, there are dozens of KPIs to measure progress toward our marketing goals — but don’t worry; there’s no need to guess and check.

Regardless of industry or audience, there are some KPIs everyone should be tracking, and I’ve compiled them for you here. We’ll define them, why they’re important, and how to track them effectively.

Table of Contents

• What are B2B marketing KPIs?

• Why track B2B Marketing KPIs and metrics?

• B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics

• How to Report Your B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics

What are B2B marketing KPIs?

As HubSpot contributor Rebecca Riserbato explains, a key performance indicator (KPI) “measures how your company is performing regarding certain long-term goals or objectives.”

That means B2B marketing KPIs are data points marketers use to monitor and measure the progress of their business-to-business (B2B) marketing initiatives (e.g., website campaigns or email marketing).

It kind of sounds like a metric, doesn’t it? But — plot twist — they’re not the same.

B2B Marketing KPIs vs. B2B Marketing Metrics

Every time I’ve set marketing goals, I’ve needed a refresher on the difference between marketing KPIs and metrics. Many people even use them interchangeably, but this is a little misguided.

KPIs and metrics are similar and work together but have very different responsibilities — like sales and marketing, design and development, or forks and spoons.

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KPIs are focused on the big picture. They relate directly to your business’s larger long-term goals and are the same across departments.

Metrics are related to business goals, too, but they zero in on specific tactics and initiatives used to accomplish them and tend to change by department.

To use our travel example again, your KPI could be visiting all of Italy in a month. However, your metrics would be tracking individual cities or regions you need to visit to accomplish that.

Thinking of business: say you want to increase your number of new customers by 25% this year. That’s your KPI.

Your marketing metrics would be the click-through rate of the social media ads you run to try to generate new leads or the open rate of the email campaigns you run.

But why do we even need to track any of these things?

Why track B2B marketing KPIs and metrics?

Simply put, B2B marketing KPIs tell you what your team is working toward and where everything it does needs to lead. They give you direction.

They help guide your strategy by giving you something to point to and ask, “Is this going to help get us to that goal?”

Marketing metrics go even further. These measurements can help you:

• Track progress toward your goals
• Gather customer/audience insights
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your work/creative
• Improve conversion rates
• Plan more effective future campaigns
• Prove return on investment (ROI)
• Incentivize teams
• Make better business decisions

I’ve always liked to say that marketing is a happy marriage of creativity — and science and metrics are the keys to this.

B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics to Track

Now that you know why tracking B2B marketing KPIs and metrics is important, which ones should you focus on?

Specifics will depend on your organization’s specific campaigns and company goals, but here are 24 of the most important based on some of the most popular marketing initiatives.

Need help tracking your KPIs? HubSpot’s KPI Software can help you build dashboards, create and send automated reports, and track KPIs to measure your teams' performance and drive improvement over time.

Website Performance KPIs and Metrics

According to our 2024 State of Marketing report, company websites/blogs/SEO have resulted in the biggest ROI for marketers in the past year, which likely comes as no surprise.

For many, your website is the center of all your content marketing and even sales. Website KPIs and metrics help you make sure it's performing to the level you need it to.

1. Website Traffic: This is the volume of users visiting a website.

Why is it important? Your company website is the hub of many modern businesses. Even if it’s not where people are making actual purchases, it’s where they come to learn more about what you do and often even initiate sales conversations.

Understanding traffic helps you gauge interest and potential for sales activity. In terms of specific metrics, you can track:

• Unique Visits: Total number of unique individuals who click on one or more web pages in a visit.
• Page Views: Total number of web pages viewed, including individually refreshed pages.
• Traffic Source: Where your website visitors come from (i.e., email, social media, search engine)

How to calculate and track it? You can track your website traffic through a number of different tools. In my experience, a combination of HubSpot Analytics and Google Analytics is most effective for businesses using HubSpot tools.

In HubSpot, you can easily view your page views and sessions filtered by time frame or source.

2. Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of website visitors that click on one page and leave.

Why is it important? Bounce rate can help you gauge if your website is delivering what it needs to achieve your goals. If your bounce rate is low, that could mean that people are interested and engaged in your website.

They’re staying and clicking around.

If it’s high, it could mean either your website is not what someone was looking for or didn’t deliver what they wanted, or they immediately found what they needed and could leave.

How to calculate and track it? This is another KPI you can track for specific website pages, landing pages, and blogs in HubSpot. Here’s how it can appear in the analytics of a blog article.

3. Conversions: How many visitors took your desired action on your website, like subscribing to your newsletter or making a purchase.

(It’s also the most important marketing metric if you ask me.)

Why is it important? Leads and new contacts are fuel for your marketing and sales funnel. When someone fills out a form on your website, they’ve shown an active interest in what you offer and want to connect with your business.

It’s a crucial first action to put the rest of your marketing and nurturing activities into motion. People can convert on several different things, so this may mean tracking:

• Form Conversion Rate (or visit to form submission): This is the percentage of website visitors that submit a form. (Formula: Form conversion rate = (total form conversions / total visitors) x 100)
• Number of Form Submissions: This is how many times forms were submitted on your website.
• Number of New Contacts: How many new contacts has your website generated.
• Visit to New Contact: This is what percentage of visits to your website resulted in a new contact.

How to calculate and track it? HubSpot or any tool you use to host your forms or landing pages should provide you with calculated conversion rates automatically, but even if they don’t, you can calculate yours with this formula:

Conversion Rate = Total number of conversions /

Number of visitors (or submissions, clicks, etc.) x 100

Sales and Marketing Pipeline

Once someone fills out a form on your website, they enter your sales and marketing pipeline to be nurtured toward making a purchase.

63% of B2B marketers report tracking their marketing/sales funnel as KPIs and metrics, and with their direct correlation to revenue, they should be.

4. Number of Leads (or Leads In): This is the total number of contacts generated by your campaigns that could buy from you.

Why is it important? Similar to your number of new contacts, this tells you how many new people you have to nurture towards a purchase. However, they’re different in that these contacts have the qualities that signal it could turn into a customer.

Think of it this way: If you sell enterprise software, a college student could become a contact after downloading a report on your website for a class project, but they can’t buy from you. That said, they are a contact but not a lead.

How to calculate and track it? What criteria actually makes someone qualify as a lead is up to your business, but once you have that set, you can use HubSpot Lead Scoring to identify these contacts.

From there, you can create an active list in HubSpot to automatically segment these leads and keep an eye on the size of that list.

5. Cost Per Lead (CPL): This is the total number of dollars it takes to acquire a potential customer.

Why is it important? HubSpot’s Jay Fuchs explains, “Generally speaking, [CPL] is used to gauge the efficacy of individual campaigns — via channels like Google ads, email marketing, or social media — but it can also help you understand whether you're getting the most out of your marketing spend as a whole.”

In other words, this can help you determine if your marketing campaign is cost-effective. If it costs more to bring in a lead than you’ll make off it, that campaign was not worth your time.

How to calculate and track it? You’ll need to calculate this on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:

Cost of Lead Generation/Total Number of Leads = Cost per Lead

Fuchs explains this formula in detail in “How to Calculate & Apply Cost per Lead (CPL).”

6. Close Rate (or Lead to Closing Rate): This is the percentage of leads that eventually become customers.

Why is it important? Your close rate can help gauge the quality of the leads you’re bringing in as well as your sales process.

If your close rate is high, things are going well. If not, you may need to re-evaluate your lead criteria or sales behavior.

How to calculate and track it? This is another KPI you’ll need to calculate on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:

Close Rate =

(number of leads that closed as sales / total number of leads) x 100

7. Number of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads): The number of leads engaged with your company’s marketing and have the potential to become a more serious prospect.

Why is it important? MQLs help your marketing team understand how many leads they're bringing in and if they’re quality leads.

How to calculate and track it? Like number of leads, you can use a combination of HubSpot Lead Scoring, an active list in HubSpot, and workflows to automatically segment these leads and keep an eye on the size of that list. Learn more about MQLs.

8. Number of SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads): Number of prospective customers ready to talk to someone on your sales team.

Why is it important? SQLs have usually expressed enough interest in your product or service to be ready to move into your sales process. Tracking this number lets you know how many people your sales team is currently working with.

It also provides valuable insight into which marketing efforts generate the most sales activity.

How to calculate and track it? Once again, you can use a combination of HubSpot Lead Scoring, an active list in HubSpot, and workflows to automatically segment these SQLs and keep an eye on the size of that list. Learn more about SQLs.

Pro Tip: If your marketing and website are hosted on HubSpot, our Dashboard & Reporting software is a user-friendly, single source of truth for all this data.

9. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The amount of money it takes to convert a potential lead into a customer.

Why is it important? Like CPL, CAC tells you how cost-efficient your marketing and sales processes are. You don’t want to be spending more on getting customers than you are making from them.

How to calculate and track it? Information from HubSpot can help guide this calculation, but ultimately, this is another you’ll need to calculate it on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:

CAC = marketing spend/number of new customers resulting from campaign

10. Customer lifetime value (CLV): The total amount of revenue a business can expect to make from a single customer.

Why is it important? Knowing how much you’ll make from a customer is helpful when determining how much you can spend trying to close them. In other words, this is a useful metric to compare to CAC. If your CAC is higher than your LTV, you're likely spending too much money acquiring customers and need to revisit your strategy.

The higher the CLV, the more valuable the customer from a financial standpoint.

How to calculate and track it? Calculate this KPI on your own or through a spreadsheet using the formula:

Customer lifetime value =

average transaction size x number of transactions x retention period

11. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): This is the amount of revenue a business receives from a customer each month, such as for a subscription-based service or consulting retainer.

Why is it important? This is how much money you are “guaranteed” to have each month from your customers. It allows you to plan budgets and make other financial predictions.

How to calculate and track it? Information from HubSpot can help guide this calculation, but ultimately, this is another you’ll need to calculate it on your own or through a spreadsheet. Use this formula:

Monthly recurring revenue =

average revenue per customer x total number of customers

12. Net Promoter Score (NPS): This is a measurement of customer satisfaction using a scale of 1-10 to gauge how likely a customer would recommend your business to a friend. (10 being extremely likely, 1 being unlikely)

Why is it important? NPS gives you a good idea of how happy customers are with their purchase and how likely they are to buy again or stick around. Plus, referrals, recommendations, and other forms of word-of-mouth can lead to quick closes, so you want to make sure your customers want to give them.

How to calculate and track it? Owl Lab’s Sophia Bernazzani Barron recommends calculating NPS using these three steps:

1. Survey your customers and ask them, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?”

2. Categorize respondents according to their score: Scores 0-6 are Detractors, 7-8 are Passives, and 9-10 are Promoters.

3. Disregarding the Passives, subtract the percentage of Detractor responses from the percentage of Promoter responses to determine your Net Promoter Score. This score can range from -100 to 100.

13. Return on Investment (ROI): the amount of money you gain from your marketing efforts compared to their cost.

Why is it important? You never want to spend more than you make. Like CPL and CAC, calculating and tracking your marketing ROI can help you determine how you are performing in that regard.

How to calculate and track it? You can calculate your ROI using this formula:

ROI =

(Total Revenue - Total Investment) / Total Investment

Learn more about calculating marketing ROI.

Email Marketing KPIs and Metrics

14. Number of Email Contacts (or Email List Size): This is how many people in your database have opted into email marketing and communication from you.

Why is it important? Email marketing is not dead. In fact, 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months, so your email list size does matter. The more email contacts you have, the more people you can reach with targeted campaigns.

Read: Email Marketing: The Ultimate Guide (Expert Tips + Data to Know)

How to calculate and track it? You should be able to see the total number of contacts in your database using any of your email marketing tools, including HubSpot. In HubSpot, navigate to CRM > Contacts and see the total number of records below the header.

But this number may not always be accurate. It also includes contacts whose email addresses you have but perhaps have unsubscribed.

Knowing this, I recommend having an active list in HubSpot, pulling all of the CRM's subscribed and engaged contacts.

15. Email Open Rate: The percentage of people opening your marketing emails.

Why is it important? There’s no point in sending an email if people aren’t opening and reading it. This metric lets you know how successful you are at this or if you need to adjust your subject line, send time, or sender, among other things.

How to calculate and track it? This is another metric that should be easily found in any mainstream email marketing tool.

In HubSpot, you just need to navigate to the email in question, click “actions,” then “view performance,” and you’ll find the open rate called out right below the header.

If your tool doesn’t provide this metric or you use a personal email client, you can calculate your open rate using this formula:

Email open rate =

(number of emails opened / total number of emails delivered) x 100

Note: While you can certainly calculate email metrics on your own, it’s next to impossible to know exactly how many people opened your email without a third-party tool.

So, even if you don’t have the budget, I recommend investing in a free email marketing tool to track your metrics more easily.

16. Email click-through rate (CTR): This is how many people click a link in the email you sent out of those who opened it.

Why is it important? An open is one thing, but the click is what you’re really after with email marketing. CTR tells you just how effectively your email copy convinced someone to take action.

How to calculate and track it? Like open rate, CTR can be found prominently in your email performance page or dashboard like here in HubSpot:

You can also calculate your CTR using this formula:

Email clickthrough rate =

(number of email clicks / total number of emails delivered) x 100

Like opens, this can be difficult to measure without a formal email marketing tool. If you opt not to use an email marketing tool like HubSpot or MailChimp, use bit.ly or other UTM tracking tools to create trackable URLs.

Social Media KPIs and Metrics

According to our research, social media ties with a company’s website or blog as the top ROI-driving channel for marketers in the past 12 months. So, it’s important to know how you’re performing there.

Organic social media is usually best suited to boosting brand awareness and engaging your audience, while paid social media can generate big results in sales and more.

The KPIs I recommend for both reflect that, but you can dig deeper into social media analytics in our ultimate guide.

17. Social media reach (following): Total number of followers across social media or per platform.

Why is it important? Like an email subscriber, a social media follower “opts in " to stay in contact with your business and hear more about what your brand has to offer.

This number gives you a good estimate of your initial reach on social media before things like engagement and hashtags.

How to calculate and track it? Most social media tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and SproutSocial have tools to monitor your followings on multiple platforms. HubSpot will track this for Facebook, Instagram, X, and your LinkedIn Company page if connected.

To view yours, navigate to “Marketing,” “Social,” then “Analyze.”

18. Social media engagement: This measures how many interactions your posts on social media are getting.

Why is it important? Social media is all about connecting and one of the biggest indicators that your content is successfully connecting with your audience is engagement. Engagement is also often a big factor in social media algorithms.

The more engagement a post gets, the more likely it is to get shared to explore and discovery feeds.

Some common social media engagement metrics include:

• Likes
• Comments
• Shares or Retweets
• Messages
• Tags or Mentions
• Replies
• Impressions or views
• Plays

How to calculate and track it? Again, most social media management tools can monitor your followings on multiple platforms, as does HubSpot.

HubSpot shows you clicks, shares, impressions, and interactions (likes, reactions, and comments) of both posts published via its tools and directly on Facebook, Instagram, X, or a LinkedIn Company page.

Paid Ads Performance

If you’re looking for more bottom-of-the-funnel impact from your social media, paid advertising is likely in your strategy. All major platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube offer advertising options.

Here are some of the metrics you should be tracking to get the highest social media advertising ROI.

19. Impressions: This is how many times your ad gets seen.

Why is it important? Reach is a huge metric when it comes to any type of advertising and impressions is a reflection of that.

If you’re investing with the goal of increasing brand awareness, you’ll especially want to make sure you’re getting a healthy amount of impressions.

How to calculate and track it? This is something your advertising platform will share with you. However, if you use HubSpot to manage your Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google ads, you can see them there as well.

20. Click rate: The percentage of clicks your ad gets compared to how many times it is seen.

Why is it important? Getting noticed is good, but eliciting action is even better. Your click rate helps identify just how successful you are at that.

Plus, if the goal of your ad is to generate traffic or leads, you need to make sure this number is healthy to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

How to calculate and track it? Like impressions, this is something your advertising platform will share with you, but you can also calculate it using this formula:

Click Rate = number of clicks / number of impressions x 100

21. Lead rate (or lead conversion rate): The percentage of impressions that turned into leads from your ad.

Why is it important? If the goal of your social media advertising is to generate leads, this should be your number one metric. However, even if it’s not, this can tell you a great deal about how compelling your ad copy or creative is.

If your lead rate is high and that wasn’t your goal, there’s something working well with the ad that you should take note of.

How to calculate and track it? Again, this is something your advertising platform will share with you, but you can also calculate it using this formula:

Lead Conversion Rate = (Number of Leads Generated / Total Number of Impressions or Visitors) x 100

Note: If your goal is leads, you’ll also want to track the number of leads generated from your ads.

22. Cost per impression (CPM): How much you’re spending to generate an impression from your advertising. Impressions are typically billed by the thousand.

Why is it important? This metric tells you how cost-effective your advertising spend is. You should not be spending more on generating impressions than you are making from them.

How to calculate and track it? Again, this is something your advertising platform will share with you, but you can also calculate it using this formula:

CPM = Total cost of campaign / number of impressions x 1000

23. Cost per lead: How much you’re spending to generate a lead from advertising.

Why is it important? This metric tells you how cost-effective your advertising spend is if you’re focused on generating leads.

How to calculate and track it? Again, this is something your specific advertising platform will share with you, but you can also calculate it using this formula:

Cost Per Lead = Total cost of campaign / number of leads

24. Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): The revenue generated from a social media advertising campaign compared to every dollar you spend. It's usually a ratio.

Why is it important? No big revelation here: You want to make sure you’re making more money from your advertising than you are spending.

How to calculate and track it? You can calculate your ROAS using this formula:

ROAS=

Revenue generated from ads / cost of ads (ad spend)

HubSpot will also tell you this for your LinkedIn, Google, and Facebook Ads as “ROI.”

How to Report Your B2B Marketing KPIs and Metrics

Data without meaning is useless.

That’s why once you’ve identified and can successfully track all your metrics, you need a plan for analyzing and reporting findings to your team and other stakeholders.

As Allie Konchar, Partner & Head of Client Operations of digital growth agency Omniscient and former HubSpotter, explains, “Marketing reports uncover meaningful, actionable data that help you draw important conclusions and meet organization-wide goals.”

Marketing reports can be critical to informing future marketing decisions and strategies, so it’s important to learn how to create them successfully. This article by Konchar further details how to build and analyze marketing reports.

We’ve also created a collection of monthly marketing report templates to get you started. These will help you:

• Track the monthly growth of your visits, leads, and customers.
• Measure your website's visit-to-lead conversion rate.
• Accurately track which channels are performing best.
• Plug your metrics into a PowerPoint or Google Slides deck to present to your boss.

Get yours here for free.

Tracking your way to success with KPIs

Ok, I know — that was a lot. And the truth is, there are likely even more B2B marketing KPIs your team will need to track to truly have a firm grasp on its performance.

But once you’ve got the right tools and templates in place to help you make sense of everything, it’s much easier to scale and adjust your efforts. Use this list and the tips shared to get started and start tracking your way to marketing success.

To be candid, I have a love-hate relationship with social media.

Sometimes, I’m annoyed at how exciting those “likes” can be.

At others, I’m ecstatic at the social media advertising ROI (return on investment) my teams can generate. It just keeps me coming back for more — and I know I’m not alone in this feeling.

According to our 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report, marketers consider social media their biggest source of ROI alongside their website or blog. Paid social media content follows closely in the second spot.

But what platforms and tactics can deliver the most ROI for your business?

Let’s dive into the latest findings from HubSpot’s 2024 Social Trends Report to answer those questions and hear from experts at Brandfolder, Sprout Social, Rakuten Advertising, and more.

Table of Contents

• What is social media ROI?
• Which social media channels have the best ROI?
• Which social media tactics or strategies have the best ROI?

What is social media ROI?

Simply put, social media ROI is exactly what it sounds like — the return on investment you get from your social media marketing and advertising campaigns.

It measures the results you make or receive compared to how much you spend.

Depending on your goals, this can be done using a number of different metrics.

For instance, if your goal is to build brand awareness, you might prioritize metrics demonstrating reach or engagement — such as new followers, impressions, audience growth rate, or social shares.

These tend to be the most common, in my experience, but other metrics to measure social media marketing and advertising ROI include likes, comments, or sales.

Arguably the most direct approach is to zero in on revenue.

How do you calculate social media ROI?

Our survey found that measuring ROI is one of the five biggest challenges marketers face with social media. That’s out of 22 possible options.

Numbers and I don’t always get along, so I get where they’re coming from. But thankfully, measuring social media ROI is pretty simple.

This formula can be used with revenue in mind:

Social media ROI = (Total Revenue - Total Investment) / Total Investment

“Total revenue” is the amount of money generated from your campaigns, while “total investment” is the amount of money you put in (like resources, labor cost, cost per click, etc.).

When you run your calculation, a negative result means you spent more money on your campaigns than you got back — womp — and a positive result means the opposite.

Let’s illustrate with an example. Say you spent $500 on social media advertising last quarter and made $1250. Using our formula:

= (1250--500) / 500

= (750) / 500

= 1.5

Your social media advertising ROI is 1.5. This means you made $1.50 for every dollar you spent.

Note: This formula will give your ROI in the dollar amount, but if you’d like it expressed in a percentage, follow: (Total Revenue - Total Investment) / Total Investment x 100

Check out this helpful guide by my teammate Flori Needle to learn more about what a good social media advertising ROI is and how to calculate it.

Which social media channels have the best ROI?

HubSpot's 2024 Social Media Trends Report found YouTube provides marketers with the highest ROI while Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram trail closely behind.

TikTok follows, but X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and other small platforms clock in with less than 10% of marketers vouching for them.

This list is likely not surprising. The top five are some of the largest and most active social media networks. Plus, those marketers reported delivering the highest ROI when working with influencers/creators.

Let’s dig deeper into the top four to learn why, and I’ll share some tips on getting the most out of them.

1. YouTube

Ranking third in our list last year, YouTube has made a huge jump to our #1 social media channel for ROI this year for marketers — and more than half (54%) plan on increasing their investment in the platform this year.

But why exactly?

First off, there’s reach.

YouTube receives about 30 billion monthly visits and commands an audience of over 2.5 billion people (including over 100 million Premium subscribers). Every generation, from alpha to boomers, is on the platform. This means there’s a strong chance your audience is, too.

Our survey found that marketers think YouTube has the best audience targeting tools. This makes reaching your audience easy with its paid ads.

The platform also has a very low barrier to entry.

Setting up a YouTube channel is free, and with a smartphone and some editing software, you can create content at little to no cost. Throw in AI and you can streamline your effort, too.

This automatically sets you up for a great return on your investment.

YouTube is also one of the most respected names in video, and consumers across the board have shown a strong preference for video content.

How to Get the Most ROI Out of YouTube

Team up with creators or influencers.

21% of marketers say YouTube (alongside Facebook) offers the highest ROI when working with influencers or creators. That’s the highest of all platforms.

Read more in the Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.

Experiment with both long and short-form content.

While known for its long-form content, YouTube Shorts can be used to capitalize on the user preference for short-form video. (More on that later.)

Check out our free YouTube Marketing Course to get started.

2. Facebook

With over 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform worldwide — despite what much of Gen Z may tell you.

Baby boomers and Gen X name it one of their top favorite platforms, while millennials and Gen Z frequent it for events and Facebook Marketplace.

However, its large audience is just one reason Facebook remains the social media platform with the second highest ROI since last year. And also why 53% of marketers plan to increase their investment in it this year.

According to our survey, Facebook offers the second-best audience targeting tools out of all social media platforms, only losing out to YouTube by 1%.

The social media giant lets you target by demographics, interests, and even previous behavior — like visiting your website or attending one of your Facebook Events.

These paid ads can appear in a user's newsfeed or Messenger app and include formats like carousels, boosted posts, and videos. Marketers can also leverage Facebook Lead Ads to get users to fill out a lead generation form without leaving the social platform. Here’s an example from YSL Beauty.

Nicole Ondracek, HubSpot's Paid Advertising Senior Marketing Manager, agrees that Facebook is an incredibly viable channel.

“At HubSpot, Facebook is a valuable channel for us in driving return on ad spend. A main reason why is that we can provide our content to a relevant audience using Facebook's audience targeting features. For instance, Facebook's lookalike audiences allow us to go after people who look like our current customers,” she shared.

“Facebook's algorithm is great at finding similar audiences who are likely to convert, which is why we see a positive return on investment going after these types of audiences.”

How to Get the Most ROI Out of Facebook

Over the years, I have seen Facebook evolve into one of the hardest places to make an organic impact.

Facebook Groups still prove to get traction and you certainly want to maintain a presence on the platform with a business page. But depending on your goals, your time and effort is likely best spent on Facebook Ads.

Here are a few ways to get the best ROI with that in mind:

Boost posts.

​​Is a post on your Facebook page getting a lot of engagement or clicks? Think of that as a successful experiment proving your audience enjoys that content. It likely has great potential to perform well as an ad through “boosting.”

Learn more on boosted posts.

Try retargeting.

Retargeting means you can target users on Facebook with ads related to pages they’ve visited on your website or actions they’ve taken. This helps make the ads feel more personalized, relevant and, in turn, more likely to boost your ROI.

Learn more on how to get the most out of your Facebook Ads budget.

3. Instagram

I was surprised to see this, but Instagram actually fell two spots on our list of social media platforms with the highest ROI from last year. But no need to panic.

The margin is small, and 52% of marketers plan to increase their Instagram investment next year.

With over 2 billion monthly active users, Meta-owned Instagram engages a large global audience, offering opportunities for many types of businesses.

Marketers can increase reach and boost sales through non-organic means like Instagram Ads or shoppable posts. In fact, our survey found that 71% of marketers who sell products on Instagram rated it as high ROI more than any other channel.

Plus, 50% of users are more interested in a brand after seeing its ads on Instagram.

(After being hit with ads like this one for Candlelight Concerts for months, I finally caved in February and it was amazing.)

But it shines with generating ROI from organic content as well.

90% of users follow at least one business on Instagram. And with high-engagement features like Stories, Reels, carousels, and Live streaming, there’s no shortage of opportunities to get creative.

Instagram is also the social platform with the second-highest ROI when working with influencers/creators (20%), missing the top spot by just 1%.

How to Get the Most ROI Out of Instagram

Team up with creators or influencers.

Instagram missed our spot for the channel with the highest ROI when working with influencers by just one percent, so they certainly deserve some attention in your social media strategy.

Whether you’re collaborating on content, conducting an interview, or simply sponsoring a post, take some time to explore your options.

Read more in our article, “Influencer Marketing Strategy: How to Build a Plan Creators & Customers Will Love [+ Templates]”

Post Stories with stickers.

We already know Instagram Stories grab eyes with their prime real estate at the top of the app’s home screen, but the benefits don’t stop there.

Stickers can help make content more dynamic and interactive by soliciting options and clicks. You can use Stickers to create polls, ask and answer questions, or link viewers to your website.

Dig deeper into how to boost your performance on Instagram with our Ultimate Guide to Instagram Marketing.

4. TikTok

I can’t lie to you: TikTok is still a bit of an enigma to me.

Not much is understood about how to please the algorithm, and the types of content that do well are all over the spectrum — from ASMR to talking-head storytelling.

I have a younger cousin who gained over 20k followers from one video, and she still can't tell you how or why it happened.

Despite all the mystery, TikTok is still the social media platform with the fourth-highest ROI, according to our research.

As of 2024, TikTok has over 1.5 billion monthly active users and is predicted to hit 2.2 billion by 2027. And these users aren’t passive about their engagement.

They spend an estimated 4.43 billion minutes watching videos each day and 30% of daily users have used TikTok Shop.

This growth and passionate engagement has 56% of marketers planning to increase their investment in TikTok next year, the highest of any platform.

Users are not just members of Gen Z either, though they certainly lead the pack. According to Statista, millennials (46%), Gen X (32%), and baby boomers (14%) report using the app as well, though in smaller numbers.

How to Get the Most ROI Out of TikTok

Follow and engage with trends.

Trends are born and they die on social media, and this is especially true on TikTok. One of the easiest ways to start making traction on the platform is by hopping on trending sounds and video styles.

This way, you make yourself relevant to conversations that are already happening rather than trying to steal attention from them.

Dunkin is strong in this area, as seen in this video using the viral “Very Demure” audio from creator Jools Lebron:

And if you click on the audio link, you can see they’re not the only ones.

Try TikTok Ads.

Getting organic traction on TikTok can be difficult, but to speed up the process you can try TikTok Ads. We have an article to get you started.

Pro tip: If you’re a HubSpot user, you can also explore using the TikTok Ads integration with HubSpot. It can be used to:

• Capture TikTok leads in the HubSpot CRM in real time.
• Connect TikTok to HubSpot in under 10 minutes without using code.
• Immediately reach out to new leads from TikTok when they’re most open to chatting.

Which strategies get the most social media advertising ROI?

Now, regardless of the platform, there are certain trends and truths you can follow to help get the most ROI out of your social media efforts.

Here are seven I recommend based on our data, my own personal experience, and insight from other industry experts.

1. Short-form Video

According to our survey, 67% of marketers plan to increase their investment in short-form video in the next year, while 31% will maintain their investment.

And why not? 71% of marketers using the medium already report it has high ROI, the highest ROI out of all content mediums.

We also know consumers love video in general, with Sprout Social finding it the most popular medium on social media. Yet, many marketers find it is underutilized, especially in social media advertising.

Adina Jipa, co-founder of Socialinsider, told us, "A recent study about Facebook video strategy shows that only roughly 15% of the content [on Facebook] is video, while photos represent 38.58%.

Facebook wants to become a video-first platform and favors pages with video content, but for most brands, it is [primarily] a photo-sharing platform."

Instagram was also public about pushing short-form video content to compete with YouTube and TikTok.

That said, to stand out and increase ROI, consider how you might incorporate video into your social media efforts.

Additionally, consider testing out different video formats across your channels. For instance, Facebook allows brands to create vertical video ads for mobile users, which is also needed for Instagram Story ads.

As Jipa says, "You can use vertical videos on ads to get more clicks. Almost 69% of marketers say video ads outperform image and plain text ads on Facebook, and 81% of Facebook users only access the platform via mobile devices.

“Looking at these behaviors, using vertical video allows you to get more visibility and increase the chances of getting more clicks."

2. Incorporating Humor

According to our study, humorous content results in the biggest ROI of any content type.

Using humor in marketing and advertising is nothing new. It’s been a strategic move for decades. I mean, I’m still laughing about this Orbit gum commercial 17 years later:

Humor grabs attention, is memorable, encourages sharing, and makes you likable overall. So, look for ways to incorporate it naturally into your social media content.

Oreo does a great job of incorporating humor and current events into its social media content.

3. Repurposing Content for Multiple Platforms

Should you be posting the exact same content and message across all your social media platforms? Of course not — they all have unique cultures and user behaviors, let alone technical specs.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t adapt and repurpose a single piece of content for different platforms.

“Far too often, content is created for one-and-done campaigns or promotions,” Casted's CEO and Co-founder Lindsay Tjepkema explains.

“This means marketers are working harder and harder to produce more and more constantly, yet ROI and ROE (return on effort) results are disappointing.”

She continues, "To change this, we must stop creating content for content's sake and focus instead on creating content that educates, entertains, and delights that can be broken down and amplified across all other channels not just once, but many times over.”

To repurpose your content across channels, perhaps you post snippets of a full YouTube video on Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram.

Alternatively, you could take select text from a blog post and repost it on your channels to add value to your existing content. This way you’re repurposing user-generated content across channels.

There are countless ways to refresh and re-use content to appeal to new audiences uniquely without exhausting your social team.

Pro tip: Use AI to expedite the process of repurposing. Ask ChatGPT to write tweets for you based on the copy from a blog. Or, if you use HubSpot, give Content Remix a try.

With Content Remix, Professional and Enterprise-level users of Content Hub can repurpose existing content into new formats.

This can include content hosted on HubSpot (i.e., images, social posts, text messages, ads, and blog posts) or new content you upload to the tool.

4. Aligning your Platform with Your Goal

It's difficult to achieve results on social without taking the time to set clear goals for your team. But not all social media channels are good for the same goals.

To see the best ROI from social media, make sure that you are choosing the platforms best suited to your needs.

For example, if you’re trying to boost website organic traffic, YouTube may be the way to go. YouTube is owned by Google, and its videos are shown in SERPs. The video platform is also conventionally held as “the world’s second-largest search engine.”

As Brandfolder's Senior Digital Marketing Manager Amanda Turcotte told us, "In order to achieve a return on your social media investment, you must have clear goals set before any tactical planning takes place.”

“Various social media tactics can be applied differently to each of the platforms, meaning they'll produce different outcomes. So your goals must be determined up front to ensure they align with your social strategy."

Pro tip: Use UTM tags for tracking

The only way to know if you’re truly hitting your goals is by being able to track and measure your activity. UTM tracking links are one of the easiest ways to do this.

As Matt Janaway, CEO of MarketingLabs, told us, "Tracking is now more important than ever thanks to the complications of iOS privacy improvements, so to really yield the best ROI, you have to make sure you are using UTM tags on all links.”

“This way, you can correctly track the performance of your campaigns in Analytics and get the data you need to make decisions that can drive more engagement and ROI."

If you’re a HubSpot user, you can create tracking URLs right within the platform.

5. Establishing Consistency

Once you‘ve determined your social goals, you’ll want to create a consistent brand and strategy so your audience knows what they can expect from you.

What time will you post? What type of content will you post? What will the posts look and sound like?

Establishing these guidelines will also help your team execute more cohesively and efficiently.

Turcotte told us, "To move your team from strategy to action and keep everyone on the same page, it's crucial to develop a regular posting plan that documents your approach across each channel, where all team members have access.”

Additionally, Agnieszka Jaśkiewicz, Head of Social Media & Community at LiveChat shared:

"Digital templates for creative assets — set to the specifications of the organization‘s core social media platforms — can also add agility to social media managers’ ability to publish, allowing teams to be more timely and quickly act on new opportunities."

Pro tip: To make posting consistently easier, try using a social posting tool like HubSpot's Social Inbox Tool or Later.

Jaśkiewicz agrees that creating a strategy and using tools to support your team's goals is critical for finding success on social channels.

As she put it, “The greatest area of 'untapped potential' for most brands comes in streamlining creative workflows."

"Digital workspaces [and tools] allow creatives and marketers to collaborate from a central location to stage, revise, and produce content, limiting back-and-forth communication and unnecessary steps in production.”

6. Social Commerce

Over the past few years, we've seen a rise in social commerce, or the ability to make a purchase without leaving a social platform.

You’ve likely seen this on Instagram and TikTok (see below). And as we discussed earlier, users are taking a liking to it.

Rachael Samuels, Senior Manager of Social Media at Sprout Social, told me she sees social commerce as a great opportunity to continue to increase ROI on social channels as it allows users to take action the second the urge to buy hits them.

She shared, “Social commerce not only provides more seamless buying experiences for customers but equips marketers with the ability to show direct attribution and ROI as a result of their efforts.”

Pro tip: Leverage Meta's Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns.

It‘s no secret that Meta’s suite of platforms — namely Instagram and Facebook — packs a huge ROI punch. Yomi Arokoyo, VP of Performance Solutions at Rakuten Advertising, attributes this to Meta's powerful algorithm.

He told us, "Each social platform has improved its algorithm over time to be more intuitive and automated, but none more than Meta. For example, with Meta's Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, brands can find new customers in places they never even thought to look."

Launched globally in 2022, Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns largely rely on AI and automation to find the right audience for your ads (as opposed to manual targeting). On top of that, it even adjusts ad formats to understand which format performs best.

To take advantage of this new tech, Arokoyo recommends employing as much creative differentiation as possible. For instance, add old creative or cut up longer videos into smaller, more digestible clips. This gives the algorithm more data to determine which campaigns are effective.

7. Encouraging Your Employees to Become Brand Ambassadors

One area of major underutilized social media potential? Your employees.

Many users ago, one of my responsibilities at a former employer was running the employee advocacy program. In other words, I created and distributed copy and materials to make it easier for everyone on our team to promote the company’s content and initiatives on their own social media.

It eventually ended because individual platforms began cracking down on third-party publishing. But for many years, it dramatically helped boost our reach, traffic, and engagement.

As Casted‘s Tjepkema explains it, "As consumers, we’re far more driven to engage with user-generated content, yet so many brands spend too much time and money trying only to push content from their own brand."

“Rally your employees around the content you're creating and encourage them to share it with captions that show their unique and personal perspectives. This is a great way to help each member of your team build their personal brand while also amplifying your content to audiences in a more authentic way.”

LiveChat's Jaśkiewicz agrees with this notion, saying, "[You should] give employee advocacy a

bigger seat at the table in your social media strategy, especially when it comes to LinkedIn.”

“It takes some time and effort to provide people with the knowledge and imply the ‘brand ambassadors’ mindset in the organization — however, employee engagement is a cost-effective way to increase your reach organically."

This is something HubSpot does frequently with the roll out of big announcements such as our 2024 Spotlight.

Our product team had a comprehensive content plan leading up to the big day, including videos and emails. It also created a comprehensive social media kit to help others at HubSpot spread the word.

We also frequently host HubSpot Employee Takeovers and highlight “Days in #HubSpotLife” from employees on the HubSpot Life Instagram account.

These campaigns help show audiences the faces behind the brand and create a sense of community and authenticity that you wouldn't find with branded content alone.

To Many Happy Returns… On Investment

Our survey found that most marketers believe proving ROI will be the second-biggest change they’ll face in social media marketing in the coming year.

Social can clearly have a societal and cultural impact, but that also takes time and attention. So, of course, you need to be able to prove it’s worth it.

Increasing your social media ROI won’t happen overnight. But by experimenting with your platforms and the strategies and tactics we shared, you can start moving towards the right formula for your brand.

I know. “AI public relations” (PR) kind of sounds like an oxymoron.

Public relations is about shaping and sharing your human stories with other humans. It’s about capturing and creating genuine human excitement and resonance. How can we ever leave that to the robots?

Well, we can’t — at least not entirely. Like applying AI to digital marketing or any other field, you must be selective and thoughtful about incorporating AI into your public relations strategy. That’s where we come in.

We’ll unpack the pros and cons of using AI in public relations and share some of the smartest use cases and expert tips to help you get the most out of it.

Table of contents

• Why Use AI in Public Relations
• How is AI used in public relations?

Why Use AI in Public Relations (PR)

Using AI in public relations has many benefits, but they all come back to one all professionals strive for — improved productivity.

Let’s break down the specifics.

Pros of AI Public Relations

Higher Efficiency

HubSpot research found 90% of marketers say AI and automation help them spend less time on manual tasks, more time on the responsibilities they enjoy most (80%), and more time on the creative aspects of their role (79%). Public relations is no exception.

In fact, 76.6% of PR professionals already use AI tools to automate their most tedious and repetitive tasks, according to Prowly.

For PR professionals, AI can mean quicker market and campaign analysis, as well as faster press release and pitch drafting. AI and automation can also help eliminate manual tasks like email follow-ups to your press partners.

Lower Costs

By aiding with time-consuming and mundane tasks, AI can also help minimize unnecessary expenses in your public relations budget.

For example, if you pay a freelancer by the hour to draft press releases, using an AI tool like Jasper or even HubSpot’s Free AI Content Writer can help cut the need for those hours.

Don’t believe me? Prowly found that 43.5% of PR professionals using tools say it has reduced their companies' overall costs and resource needs. That’s on top of 48.2% reporting they struggled with working with a small budget in the past 12 months.

These small efficiencies add up.

Increased ROI

With lower costs comes the potential for increased return on investment (ROI). Hard to argue with that.

Cons of AI Public Relations

As great as AI sounds for public relations, it still has drawbacks.

Data Quality & Accuracy

Data quality and accuracy are some of the biggest concerns of using AI in public relations or any use case, really.

Most public artificial intelligence runs off information fed from its users and the internet — and I think we all know we can’t trust everything we read online.

Because of this, you can’t always know if the results you get from AI are accurate or based on reliable sources. This can be dangerous when using AI in public relations, especially when doing research.

Be wary of validity and even bias. The last thing you want to do is make strategic decisions based on false or misguided information.

Privacy

There’s no doubt that AI can help expedite your public relations workflow, but that often means sharing details about your brand or company to produce results you can actually use.

AI is currently unregulated, so any information you share is at risk of being stored or passed onto others using the tool, including potentially our competitors.

Lack of Human Touch

Public relations is about human connection. It’s about how your brand or client is perceived by other people and the public at large.

While impressive, AI or automation’s ability can only go far in this arena.

AI can’t create personal relationships and bonds. It can’t take photos with fans, shake hands with potential investors, or attend a charity event. It can’t “read the room” or understand the sensitive nuances of current events or culture.

And its insights and information are only as current as its last update. So. tread lightly when using AI or automation for one-on-one communication.

Without careful editing or strategic use of the tools, its artificial nature can be easy to spot.

This personalization mistake from UK restaurant burgerific is a common one.

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How is AI used in public relations?

The possibilities of artificial intelligence are pretty boundless, but with the cons and limitations we discussed in mind, here are some of the best use cases in public relations.

1. Drafting press releases and pitches

In one of my first marketing and PR jobs, I wrote and distributed about 2-5 press releases a day. I enjoyed it, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t time-consuming, let alone draining.

I may also have developed Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from all the typing, but we’re not here to discuss the importance of workspace ergonomics.

With generative AI, you can dramatically reduce your press release and pitch writing time (and maybe even Carpal Tunnel Syndrome).

All you need is a prompt answering these questions:

• What is the goal of your press release?
• What important information do you have to include?
• Who is it intended for?
• What tone do you want to use?

To illustrate, I gave ChatGPT this prompt:

“Can you write me a press release about Apple's September 2024 Product Event? It should include the date and time -- Monday, September 9th at 10:00 AM PT and get the general public excited about it.”

Here’s what I got back:

But remember, this should only be a starting point. Neerja Patel, a PR professional of over 15 years and founder and CEO of her own PR firm, advises, “Use AI to enhance your creativity and assist with research and content creation.”

“It shouldn’t replace your thought process or be used as a substitution for your work. The most impactful campaigns that have maximum outcomes are the ones that blend the human mind with AI.”

Pro tip: “To ensure you are telling the best narrative in AI-assisted press releases, include not only important and relevant information but also current world trends,” continues Patel.

“This will help strengthen your messaging, ultimately increasing your chances of garnering attention from journalists and securing stories in publications.”

Also, are you not the savviest with ChatGPT or prompting just yet? Our free guide, “How to Use ChatGPT at Work,” will introduce you to the tool and share best practices and 100 prompt ideas to get you started.

These skills are easily adaptable to other chatbot-style tools like HubSpot’s Free AI Content Writer. You can try them in a tool specifically designed for public relations, like Meltwater.

2. Automating social media engagement

Being able to schedule social media posts for publication frees up a lot of time for marketers and PR professionals, but the use cases for AI and automation don’t end there.

You can also use AI to respond to comments or direct messages automatically.

There are a few options out there for this, but personally, I’m a big fan of the conversational marketing tool ManyChat.

ManyChat can be used to automatically respond to comments on Instagram posts or send a personal message when people use a specific word or phrase. It can also be used with Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

3. Monitoring brand sentiment and reputation

AI and automation can also help keep you keep a pulse on how the public feels about you or your brand. In other words, it can help you monitor brand sentiment and reputation changes.

It all comes back to social listening.

For example, Digimind’s social listening tool “combines Digimind’s AI Sense with OpenAI’s ChatGPT to monitor social media, blogs, reviews, podcasts and more, to detect key events about any brand or topic,” explained MarTech managing editor Constantine von Hoffman.

“It then determines important metrics, such as reach, brand impact, and key mentions sent to ChatGPT to be analyzed and summarized in plain English in real-time.”

Need a more simple or budget-friendly alternative?

Set up Google Alerts for any phrase or keywords you like, such as your brand or product name. For there, Google monitors the web for new content matching your terms and sends an automated email when a new result appears.

It’s free and effortless for you to maintain.

Pro tip: If you’re a HubSpot user, use social inbox streams.

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These streams allow you to monitor social media for mentions of your brand, product, or other keywords from within your portal.

4. Maintaining your press list(s)

Prowly’s State of PR Technology reports that nearly half of public relations professionals struggle to find relevant media contacts.

Databases like those from Prowly, Cision, and Brandwatch can help, but even once you find your contacts, maintaining the list can be just as hard.

Thankfully, this is one area where AI shines brightest.

For one, AI and automation can help you segment your press contacts into different lists based on their unique specialties or demographics.

You can create one list for television, another for digital media, and others segmented by location, like New York or London.

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AI can also help clean your data by automatically identifying and removing inactive or bounced email addresses, correcting typos in email addresses, and filtering out duplicates.

All this helps reduce list decay and improve deliverability rates.

Pro tip: If you use HubSpot, use smart lists and workflows to keep your press lists current.

Smart lists will automatically update, adding and removing contacts based on the criteria you set, while workflows can be used to clean data in the CRM.

5. Reaching out to media.

AI doesn’t just help you build and maintain your press list; it can help you contact it.

For instance, using automated email tools like HubSpot’s, you can set up follow-up messages for new contacts who download your press/media kit or those who email about press inquiries.

You can even set up a series to follow up with contacts who may not have opened your outreach or have gone dark.

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Rather than having to send out dozens, if not hundreds, of manual emails, automation can scale your outreach efforts and increase your chances of getting

6. Researching

This likely goes without saying, but AI can be a game-changer in public relations research.

Using AI rather than a conventional search engine can make it easier to answer specific queries. Why exactly? Well, there is no need to click through multiple pages and hope you find what you need; AI does that for you.

It crawls the web for related resources and then distills and summarizes the content for you. While it may take a few tries to get the exact information you need, an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Meta AI can save you massive amounts of time scrolling.

(Ai)ding your public relations success

As quick-witted as many people are, AI can generally process requests, analyze data, and respond faster than humans ever could.

I mean, think about it this way: I can do long division, but that doesn’t mean a calculator won’t help me get the answer faster.

Take our tips and advice above and start using AI in public relations with the same mindset.