The Blog Pros

Are you hoping to bypass overcrowded channels and engage your audience at the perfect moment? If your answer is yes, you may want to learn about Point-of-Need paid advertising opportunities.

Too many advertisers stick to the basics — they pour money into Google keywords, Facebook ads, maybe even a few billboards or podcast spots.

But here’s the problem: these channels are overcrowded, and the competition is fierce. Ultimately, you end up paying top dollar for less impact, and the returns are dwindling.

If you’re ready to set yourself further away from the competition and tap into advertising channels where your audience is actually engaged, it’s time to rethink your approach. As Kieran and I discuss in a recent episode of Marketing Against the Grain, one high-impact way to do that is Point-of-Need advertising.

In this post, we dig into exactly what Point-of-Need advertising is and how you can use it to cut through the advertising noise and capture your audience’s attention when it matters most.

What is Point-of-Need advertising and why does it matter?

I’ll be honest: Point-of-Need (PoN) advertising is a term I made up. But it’s a potent, actionable strategy that Kieran and I frequently use to maximize our ad spend.

Point-of-Need (PoN) advertising is a tactic that targets your audience at the exact moment they’re most engaged and in need of something — like getting online during a flight, waiting for a taxi ride, or while watching their favorite show.

Especially when traditional ads are becoming increasingly ignored or skipped over, PoN advertising hits when your audience is already laser-focused. So instead of fighting for attention in crowded channels, you’re placing your brand in front of people when they’re most receptive and primed to pay close attention.

This boosts engagement and increases the chances that your message will stick and drive real results.

3 Ways to Incorporate Point-of-Need Advertising Opportunities

Not sure how to get started with PoN advertising? Kieran and I have you covered.

Learn how to reshape your marketing plans with these three, high-impact approaches, along with resources from HubSpot’s Free Advertising Plan Kit.

Let’s dive in!

1. WiFi Sponsorships

One of the most effective PoN advertising opportunities is WiFi sponsorships in transportation, like in airports or on trains. In fact, one of HubSpot’s most successful ad campaigns for both brand awareness and conversion came from testing WiFi ads on airplanes.

We hypothesized that this type of advertising would hit people when and where they’re more attentive — and we were right.

Think about it: when people are on a plane, train, or subway, they’re stuck. They can’t leave, they’re looking for something to do, and most importantly, they want to get online.

If the ‘price’ of WiFi is watching a short ad, they’re going to watch it until they get access to what they wanted in the first place — and that’s what makes this such a powerful PoN moment.

2. Gig Marketplaces

Another untapped PoN opportunity is in-app ads on gig marketplace platforms like Lyft or DoorDash. These are moments when users are waiting for a time-dependent service — a ride, a delivery — and they’re again actively engaged with the app, waiting for a status update.

Take a look at the customer experience when using Uber, for example. When you open the app to call a ride, you’re immediately locked into the experience — checking the driver’s location, ETA, car description, and other details.

Suddenly, an app that was built for transportation transforms into a robust advertising platform. Yet again, this is because users are completely glued to their screens, willingly giving you their undivided attention, until they get the service they originally ordered.

3. Free or Low-Cost Streaming Services

A final, often overlooked, PoN opportunity is Over-the-Top (OTT) advertising on free or low-cost streaming services like Hulu or the ad-supported version of Peacock.

What’s particularly powerful about this strategy is that OTT allows you to reach viewers who are already open to consuming content. They’ve already settled in to watch an entire film or episode — so what’s another 30 seconds?

Plus, with free streaming services, users already expect ads as part of the experience, making them more likely to engage with your message because it’s a transparent part of the deal.

To learn more about accessing untapped advertising opportunities, check out the full episode of Marketing Against the Grain below:

This blog series is in partnership with Marketing Against the Grain, the video podcast. It digs deeper into ideas shared by marketing leaders Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot’s CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Marketing at HubSpot) as they unpack growth strategies and learn from standout founders and peers.

Marketing is all about meeting people where they are — and more often than not, they're on social media. For this reason, it's crucial to invest in social product discovery.

In other words, use social media as a vehicle for consumers to discover your products.

Of course, not all social media platforms are created equal, especially when it comes to product discovery. So, if you're looking to pinpoint the platforms consumers use the most for product research, you've come to the right place.

Here, we'll dive into:

• What is shopper research?
• The top social media channels consumers use for product discovery
• Social Media Product Strategy Examples
• What types of content consumers watch and engage with
• Which platforms you should market your products on

Let's dive in.

Shopper research is critical for a better understanding of the customer journey from initial searches to website visits and eventual purchases.

Plus, the advent of digital- and mobile-first interactions has made this research even more important as the customer journey now includes multiple paths and touchpoints from start to finish.

For example, prospective buyers might hear about your brand from a friend, do their research on social media, and then interact with your e-commerce store through their mobile device.

Understanding all touchpoints along this journey can help companies create more seamless and streamlined experiences for consumers and increase overall ROI.

The Top Social Media Channels Consumers Use For Product Discovery

26% of consumers prefer to discover new products via social media, according to HubSpot's 2024 State of Consumer Trends Report. Let's take a closer look at the channels they leverage for product discovery:

Gen Z

40% of Gen Z have discovered new products on social media in the past three months, and 41% say it's their preferred channel for discovering new products. 

Almost half (48%) of Gen Z consumers prefer to discover new products via short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. Moreover, almost a third of Gen Z respondents say TikTok is their favorite app.

Millennials

The divide between Millennials and Gen Z seems to be narrowing in terms of how and where they discover new products. Like Gen Z, the majority of Millennials in our survey (43%) say they've discovered a new product via social media in the past three months. 

Furthermore, 47% prefer discovering new products on social media via short-form videos like Instagram Reels, TikToks, and YouTube Shorts. 

"Social media allows me to see the products in context," says consumer and HubSpot Marketing Manager Erica Santiago. "Whether it's an influencer or creator using the product or someone demonstrating how to use it—short-form videos allow me to quickly assess how a product works and if I want to buy it."

Gen X

Gen X discovers new products on social media at the same rate as Gen Z, with 40% saying they've discovered a new product on social media in the last 3 months.

And like both Millennials and Gen Z, the majority of Gen X (36%) prefers short-form videos when it comes to finding new products on social media.

Baby Boomers

Social media falls flat for boomers—only a slim 20% have discovered a product on it in the past three months, and only 8% prefer purchasing a product through that medium.

That said, of those who use social media (43%) prefer discovering new products via social media marketplaces where purchases happen off the app. An example would be Facebook Marketplace. 

Social Media Product Strategy Examples

1. Dizzy With Excitement 

Dizzy With Excitement is a wallpaper brand known for its quirky and artistic designs.

To bring awareness to its brand, DWE collaborates with other creators and brands that focus on off-the-wall designs by incorporating those designs into the wallpaper. The brand then promotes these collaborations via short-form video platforms like TikTok. 

For example, DWE collaborated with TikToker Kaarin Joy, who specializes in unique, whimsical home DIY projects. DWE created wallpaper based on Joy's DIY projects, and Joy showed on TikTok the wallpaper being displayed in her home, tagging DWE in her posts.

2. Heidi Daus

Heidi Daus is a brand specializing in dazzling, sparkly statement jewelry. While the brand doesn't have an official TikTok, it's starting to leverage TikTok by collaborating with creators like Andrea's Fashion Galaxy.

Andrea is a content creator focusing on fashion and style inspiration, and she often refers to herself as a magpie due to her love for shiny clothes and accessories.

So, it made sense Heidi Daus would collaborate with Andrea, who styles a few outfits around the shiny jewelry pieces. The video also features an exclusive discount code viewers can use to buy from the brand. 

Both Heidi Daus and Dizzy With Excitement are great examples of leveraging social media with influencer marketing.

3. Fenty Beauty 

Makeup brand Fenty Beauty is known for leveraging influencer marketing in its strategy, which makes sense considering its founder and owner is one of the most influential pop stars in the world—Rihanna! 

However, Fenty Beauty added something else to its social media strategy—creating its own TikTok filter! TikTok allows creators to create their own filters and share them with other users.

Doing so sparks trends and encourages people to make and share more content using the filter.

In July, Fenty Beauty launched a TikTok filter called its "Lip Combo Generator." The generator cycles through pairs of Fenty lip liners and Fenty lipsticks before generating a combo that appears on the user's lips.

This filter promotes different Fenty products and allows users to see which combo works for them. 

When leveraging different social media platforms, think of clever ways the platform's in-house tools can help you promote your products and give your audience and idea of how it would work for them.

For example, if you're a clothing brand, considering making a filter matching different items to the viewer. 

4. Gibson 

Iconic guitar manufacturing company Gibson Guitar leverages Instagram to promote its latest guitars and amps. Specifically, the brand leans into the art of videography and photography, displaying its productvia s crisp, clean, professional videos and photos. 

Most of the top performing videos feature professional videos of musicians playing the instruments or a carousel of photos highlighting the look and craftsmanship of the products. 

What types of product content do consumers watch or engage with?

If you're looking to leverage social media, it's a good idea to know what types of branded content consumers enjoy.

More than half of consumers (52%) find funny content the most memorable, followed by content showcasing the brand's products via demos, teasers, etc.

Facebook

Facebook has a whopping 3.07 billion monthly active users and has been around since the early 2000s. Most importantly, it provides many opportunities for consumers to discover new products. 

Free Promotion

By now, you probably know that any company can create a Facebook Business Page. Once you create a business page, you can share posts about your products and offerings.

If you have happy customers, you can even ask them to review your business on Facebook so prospects researching you can see how you've pleased your customers in the past.

In addition to creating a page to highlight your brand, you can also post your products on Facebook's Marketplace.

Although individual users often use the Marketplace to sell items they no longer want to other people, Facebook Business pages are also eligible to use this feature.

Our consumer trends survey found that a third of consumers prefer discovering new products via social media marketplaces where purchases happen outside the app. 

Marketplace listings can include product shots, pricing, product specifications, and purchasing information. You should also consider talking about your products or offerings on Facebook Stories.

This might take a little extra effort because it will require you to film or create content in the Story format, but it can help you better connect with prospective buyers who want a better sense of what your brand is about.

Paid Promotion

Because Facebook's feed algorithmically favors posts from individual accounts over businesses, you might decide that you want to put money into Facebook Ads.

Facebook Ads has a solid track record. It's estimated that Facebook Ads can help marketers reach as many as 2.249 billion users. 

With Facebook Ads, you can create advertisements with a certain goal in mind, such as conversions or in-store foot traffic. The detailed ads software also allows you to target specific audience demographics.

As a Facebook advertiser, you can either promote a post you've already created to ensure that it shows up on feeds of users in your demographic, or you can create native ads that might show up in feeds or on Facebook's sidebars. 

While promoted posts look like an average post with a simple tag stating they're promoted, the native ads look more like traditional ads to make it clear to users that the content they're seeing is paid for.

If you want to launch video-based ads, Facebook also allows you to promote video content or buy in-stream ad placements that appear in Facebook Live videos or longer videos that other users have uploaded.

YouTube

YouTube is also popular across multiple age groups. In the last three months, 68% of Millennials have visited YouTube, followed by 69% of Gen Z, and 65% of Gen X. More than half of Baby Boomers (51%) have used YouTube in the last three months.

With a branded YouTube channel, you can publish video content such as demos, tutorials, or customer testimonial videos that give insightful details about why your product is valuable.

By filming your own videos, you can insure that you're highlighting all the great aspects of your product that make it stand out from its competitors.

Alternatively, if you don't have time to create your own videos, sponsoring an influencer's content, tutorial, or review related to your product allows you to tap into that content creator's audience as they tell their followers more about your offerings.

Aside from creating your own account or hiring an influencer to give a review or tutorial, you could also consider paid advertisements. YouTube offers a few ad styles including TrueView, Preroll, and Bumpers.

These ads allow you to submit a short video ad to YouTube which is then placed at the beginning or in the middle of videos with metrics and demographics that match your brand's target.

It's worth noting that almost a quarter of consumers in our survey (24%) say they have discovered new products via YouTube ads in the past three months.

To learn the ins and outs of setting up an ad and determining which style is right for you, check out this guide.

Instagram

Instagram is an excellent platform if you're targeting Gen-Z or millennials who make up the platform's primary audience.

For years, Instagram's visual layout has made it a hot spot for influencer marketing. Influencers regularly post sponsored photos and videos about their experiences with products.

Like YouTube, these influencers also regularly publish video posts or Stories that present tutorials, reviews, and unboxings related to a product.

Aside from influencer marketing, many brands also promote their products on Instagram Stories, Instagram Live, and through standard video or photo posts on Instagram Feed.

Here's an example where Kylie Jenner, the CEO and Founder of Kylie Cosmetics, films a Story-based product tutorial for her company's Instagram account:

Along with free strategies, Instagram offers Shoppable posts. With Shoppable posts, you can promote a product in an Instagram post that links to your Facebook Catalog. Here's an example of what a Shoppable Post looks like:

Here's a blog post that goes into detail about how to use and optimize Shoppable posts.

Pinterest

Pinterest encourages people to pin image-based posts that inspire them to digital boards, mimicking the process of creating a physical inspiration board.

Because people come to this platform to be inspired to do something, such as travel or home decorating, they might find themselves pinning all sorts of product-oriented images on a themed board.

For example, someone who wants to redecorate their office might create an "Office Inspiration" board and pin photos of furniture or decorative items that they'd like to buy.

Here's an example of what these boards look like:

To make it easier for people to find your products, you could consider starting a Pinterest account and making a few boards to highlight your products. Even better, you can leverage Pinterest's product pins feature and create shippable posts like you would on Instagram. 

To give you a real-world example of how brands use Pinterest, below is a board created by Anthropologie called AnthroLiving, which features shippable posts featuring the brand's home decor products. 

If you have an advertising budget, you can also consider launching pay-per-click ads on Pinterest. Pinterest Ads enables your posts to be seen by people in a specific demographic that matches your own.

The platform also allows you to A/B test photos and target ads to Pinterest users on your contact lists.

Want to learn more about Pinterest Ads and effective experiments to run? Check out this blog post from a PPC and Pinterest expert.

Reddit

Reddit encourages users to create discussion threads in themed online communities, called subreddits. As the platform has evolved, many users have created both threads and subreddits devoted to talking about products, like fast-food restaurants or video games.

Below is an example of a subreddit, or online community, that Reddit users created to talk about all things related to Xbox One.

However, because comments with promotional language in them often get downvoted or buried in feeds by more engaging Reddit threads, you'll need to be creative if you want to engage with audiences on this platform.

While you might want to keep an eye on Reddit or experiment with it, don't put all of your time and resources into it — at least right now.

As it evolves, the platform may become an easier platform to market your brand on, but at the moment, Reddit marketing strategies still require more brainstorming and time than tactics on other social platforms.

Although this platform has been called one of the "trickiest" for marketers to crack, some bigger brands have figured out how to reach the platform's discussion-oriented users.

For example, some brands will create subreddits related to their product, while others will interact by commenting on threads related to their industry.

Aside from creating content for free on Reddit, you can alternatively pay for sponsored posts or ads, similar to Facebook or Twitter. These ads will appear in a user's feed or as a promoted comment in a thread or subreddit.

To learn more about the ins and outs of Reddit marketing, click here for tips and examples of how other brands have cultivated the platform.

Identifying the Right Platforms for Product Marketing

While running ads and product promotions on any social platform can help drive conversion, it’s a good idea to focus on platforms with audiences that already align well with your brand.

For example, broader audiences are actively looking for products or researching brands on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest while Reddit users tend to be more trend-focused.

Similarly, if you're marketing a B2B company, you might see a better ROI from ads on a professional network — like LinkedIn — than ads on a more consumer-friendly platform like Instagram.

Use the information provided above, and start leveraging social media for lead conversion and product marketing.

This article is a sponsored by Luzmo

In this article, I’ll introduce you to Luzmo Flex, a new feature from the Luzmo team who have been working hard making developer tooling to flatten the on-ramp for analytics reporting and data visualization.

With Luzmo Flex, you can hook up a dataset and create beautifully crafted, fully customizable interactive charts that meet your reporting needs. They easily integrate and interact with other components of your web app, allowing you to move away from a traditional “dashboard” interface and build more bespoke data products.

While many charting libraries offer similar features, I often found it challenging to get the data into the right shape that the library needed. In this article, I’ll show you how you can build beautiful data visualizations using the Google Analytics API, and you won’t have to spend any time “massaging” the data!

Well, it’s two things, really. First of all, Luzmo is a low-code platform for embedded analytics. You can create datasets from just about anything, connect them to APIs like Google Analytics or your PostgreSQL database, or even upload static data in a .csv file and start creating data visualizations with drag and drop.

Secondly, Luzmo Flex is their new React component that can be configured to create custom data visualizations. Everything from the way you query your data to the way you display it can be achieved through code using the LuzmoVizItemComponent.

What makes Luzmo Flex unique is that you can reuse the core functionalities of Luzmo’s low-code embedded analytics platform in your custom-coded components.

That means, besides creating ready-to-use datasets, you can set up functions like the following out-of-the-box:

• Multi-tenant analytics: Showing different data or visualizations to different users of your app.
• Localization: Displaying charts in multiple languages, currencies, and timezones without much custom development.
• Interactivity: Set up event listeners to create complex interactivity between Luzmo’s viz items and any non-Luzmo components in your app.

What Can You Build With Luzmo Flex?

By combining these off-the-shelf functions with flexibility through code, Luzmo Flex makes a great solution for building bespoke data products that go beyond the limits of a traditional dashboard interface. Below are a few examples of what that could look like.

Report Builder

A custom report builder that lets users search and filter a dataset and render it out using a number of different charts.

Filter Panel

Enable powerful filtering using HTML Select inputs, which will update each chart shown on the page.

Wearables Dashboard

Or how about a sleep tracker hooked up to your phone to track all those important snoozes?

When building data-intensive applications, using something like Recharts, a well-known React charting library, you’ll likely need to reformat the data to fit the required shape. For instance, if I request the top 3 page views from the last seven days for my site, paulie.dev, I would have to use the Google Analytics API using the following query.

import dotenv from 'dotenv';
import { BetaAnalyticsDataClient } from '@google-analytics/data';
dotenv.config();

const credentials = JSON.parse(
  Buffer.from(process.env.GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS_BASE64, 'base64').toString('utf-8')
);

const analyticsDataClient = new BetaAnalyticsDataClient({
  credentials,
});

const [{ rows }] = await analyticsDataClient.runReport({
  property: properties/${process.env.GA4_PROPERTY_ID},
  dateRanges: [
    {
      startDate: '7daysAgo',
      endDate: 'today',
    },
  ],
  dimensions: [
    {
      name: 'fullPageUrl',
    },
    {
      name: 'pageTitle',
    },
  ],
  metrics: [
    {
      name: 'totalUsers',
    },
  ],
  limit: 3,
  metricAggregations: ['MAXIMUM'],
});

The response would look something like this:

[
  {
    "dimensionValues": [
      {
        "value": "www.paulie.dev/",
        "oneValue": "value"
      },
      {
        "value": "Paul Scanlon | Home",
        "oneValue": "value"
      }
    ],
    "metricValues": [
      {
        "value": "61",
        "oneValue": "value"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "dimensionValues": [
      {
        "value": "www.paulie.dev/posts/2023/11/a-set-of-sign-in-with-google-buttons-made-with-tailwind/",
        "oneValue": "value"
      },
      {
        "value": "Paul Scanlon | A set of: \"Sign In With Google\" Buttons Made With Tailwind",
        "oneValue": "value"
      }
    ],
    "metricValues": [
      {
        "value": "41",
        "oneValue": "value"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "dimensionValues": [
      {
        "value": "www.paulie.dev/posts/2023/10/what-is-a-proxy-redirect/",
        "oneValue": "value"
      },
      {
        "value": "Paul Scanlon | What Is a Proxy Redirect?",
        "oneValue": "value"
      }
    ],
    "metricValues": [
      {
        "value": "23",
        "oneValue": "value"
      }
    ]
  }
]

To make that data work with Recharts, I’d need to reformat it so it conforms to the following data shape.

[
  {
    "name": "Paul Scanlon | Home",
    "value": 61
  },
  {
    "name": "Paul Scanlon | A set of: \"Sign In With Google\" Buttons Made With Tailwind",
    "value": 41
  },
  {
    "name": "Paul Scanlon | What Is a Proxy Redirect?",
    "value": 23
  }
]

To accomplish this, I’d need to use an Array.prototype.map() to iterate over each item, destructure the relevant data and return a key-value pair for the name and value for each.

const data = response.rows.map((row) => {
  const { dimensionValues, metricValues } = row;

  const pageTitle = dimensionValues[1].value;
  const totalUsers = parseInt(metricValues[0].value);

  return {
    name: pageTitle,
    value: totalUsers,
  };
});

And naturally, if you’re reformatting data this way in your application, you’d also want to write unit tests to ensure the data is always formatted correctly to avoid breaking your application… and all of this before you even get on to creating your charts!

With Luzmo Flex, all of this goes away, leaving you more time to focus on which data to display and how best to display it.

Typically, when building user interfaces that display data insights, your first job will be to figure out how to query the data source. This can take many forms, from RESTful API requests to direct database queries or sometimes reading from static files. Your next job will be figuring out when and how often these requests need to occur.

• For data that rarely changes: Perhaps a query in the build step will work.
• For data that changes regularly: A server-side request on page load.
• For ever-changing data: A client-side request that polls an API on an interval.

Each will likely inform your application’s architecture, and there’s no single solution to this. Your last job, as mentioned, will be wrangling the responses, reformatting the data, and displaying it in the UI.

Below, I’ll show you how to do this using Luzmo Flex by using a simple example product.

Here’s a screenshot of a simple data product I’ve built that displays three different charts for different reporting dimensions exposed by the Google Analytics API for page views for my site, paulie.dev, from the last seven days.

You can find all the code used in this article on the following link:

• https://github.com/luzmo-official/luzmo-flex-tutorial

Before we get going, hop over to Luzmo and sign up for a free trial. You might also like to have a read of one of the getting started guides listed below. In this article, I’ll be using the Next.js starter.

• Getting started with Luzmo Data Visualization and Next.js
  • https://github.com/luzmo-official/luzmo-getting-started-next-js
• Getting started with Luzmo Data Visualization and Astro
  • https://github.com/luzmo-official/luzmo-getting-started-astro

To create data visualization, you’ll first need data! To achieve this using Luzmo, head over to the dashboard, select Datasets from the navigation, and select GA4 Google Analytics. Follow the steps shown in the UI to connect Luzmo with your Google Analytics account.

With the setup complete, you can now select which reporting dimensions to add to your dataset. To follow along with this article, select Custom selection.

Lastly, select the following using the search input. Device Category, Page Title, Date, and Total users, then click Import when you’re ready.

You now have all the data required to build the Google Analytics dashboard. You can access the dataset ID from the URL address bar in your browser. You’ll need this in a later step.

If you’ve followed along from either of the first two getting started guides, you’ll have your API Key, API Token, App server, and API host environment variables set up and saved in a .env file.

Install Dependencies

If you’ve cloned one of the starter repositories, run the following to install the required dependencies.

npm install

Next, install the Luzmo React Embed dependency which exports the LuzmoVizItemComponent.

npm install  @luzmo/react-embed@latest

Now, find page.tsx located in the src/app directory, and add your dataset id as shown below.

Add the access object from the destructured response and pass access.datasets[0].id onto the LuzmoClientComponent component using a prop named datasetId.

// src/app/page.tsx


+ import dynamic from 'next/dynamic';

import Luzmo from '@luzmo/nodejs-sdk';
- import LuzmoClientComponent from './components/luzmo-client-component';
+ const LuzmoClientComponent = dynamic(() => import('./components/luzmo-client-component'), {
  ssr: false,
});


const client = new Luzmo({
  api_key: process.env.LUZMO_API_KEY!,
  api_token: process.env.LUZMO_API_TOKEN!,
  host: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_API_HOST!,
});

export default async function Home() {
  const response = await client.create('authorization', {
    type: 'embed',
    username: 'user id',
    name: 'first name last name',
    email: 'name@email.com',
    access: {
      datasets: [
        {
-          id: '<dataset_id>',
+          id: '42b43db3-24b2-45e7-98c5-3fcdef20b1a3',
          rights: 'use',
        },
      ],
    },
  });

-  const { id, token } = response;
+  const { id, token, access } = response;

-  return <LuzmoClientComponent authKey={id} authToken={token} />;
+  return <LuzmoClientComponent authKey={id} authToken={token} datasetId={access.datasets[0].id} />;
}

And lastly, find luzmo-client-component.tsx located in src/app/components. This is where you’ll be creating your charts.

The first chart you’ll create is a Donut chart that shows the various devices used by visitors to your site.

Add the following code to luzmo-client-component.tsx component.

// src/app/component/luzmo-client-component.tsx

'use client';

+ import { LuzmoVizItemComponent } from '@luzmo/react-embed';

interface Props {
  authKey: string;
  authToken: string;
+  datasetId: string;
}

- export default function LuzmoClientComponent({ authKey, authToken}: Props) {
+ export default function LuzmoClientComponent({ authKey, authToken, datasetId }: Props) {

+  const date = new Date(new Date().getTime() - 7 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000).toISOString(); // creates a date 7 days ago

  console.log({ authKey, authToken });

  return (
    <section>
+    <div className='w-1/2 h-80'>
+      <LuzmoVizItemComponent
+        appServer={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_APP_SERVER}
+        apiHost={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_API_HOST}
+        authKey={authKey}
+        authToken={authToken}
+        type='donut-chart'
+        options={{
+          title: {
+            en: Devices from last 7 days,
+          },
+          display: {
+            title: true,
+          },
+          mode: 'donut',
+          legend: {
+            position: 'bottom',
+          },
+        }}
+        slots={[
+          {
+            name: 'measure',
+            content: [
+              {
+                label: {
+                  en: 'Total users',
+                },
+                column: '<column id>', // Total users
+                set: datasetId,
+                type: 'numeric',
+                format: '.4f',
+              },
+            ],
+          },
+          {
+            name: 'category',
+            content: [
+              {
+                label: {
+                  en: 'Device category',
+                },
+                column: '<column id>', // Device category
+                set: datasetId,
+                type: 'hierarchy',
+              },
+            ],
+          },
+        ]}
+        filters={[
+          {
+            condition: 'or',
+            filters: [
+              {
+                expression: '? >= ?',
+                parameters: [
+                  {
+                    column_id: '<column id>', // Date
+                    dataset_id: datasetId,
+                  },
+                  date,
+                ],
+              },
+            ],
+          },
+        ]}
+      />
+    <div/>
    </section>
  );
}

There’s quite a lot going on in the above code snippet, and I will explain it all in due course, but first, I’ll need to cover a particularly tricky part of the configuration.

Column IDs

You’ll notice the filters parameters, measure, and category content all require a column id.

In the filters parameters, the key is named column_id, and in the measure and category, the key is named column. Both of these are actually the column IDs from the dataset. And here’s how you can find them.

Back in the Luzmo dashboard, click into your dataset and look for the “more dots” next to each column heading. From the menu, select Copy column id. Add each column ID to the keys in the configuration objects.

In my example, I’m using the Total users for the measure, the Device category for the category, and the Date for the filter.

If you’ve added the column IDs correctly, you should be able to see a rendered chart on your screen!

… and as promised, here’s a breakdown of the configuration.

Initial Props Donut chart

The first part is fairly straightforward. appServer and authKey are the environment variables you saved to your .env file, and authKey and authToken are destructured from the authorization request and passed into this component via props.

The type prop determines which type of chart to render. In my example, I’m using donut-chart, but you could choose from one of the many options available, area-chart, bar-chart, bubble-chart, box-plot, and many more. You can see all the available options in the Luzmo documentation under Chart docs.

<LuzmoVizItemComponent
  appServer={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_APP_SERVER}
  apiHost={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_API_HOST}
  authKey={authKey}
  authToken={authToken}
  type='donut-chart'

The one thing I should point out is my use of Tailwind classes: w-1/2 (width: 50%) and h-80 (height: 20rem). The LuzmoVizItemComponent ships with height 100%, so you’ll need to wrap the component with an element that has an actual height, or you won’t be able to see the chart on the page as it could be 100% of the height of an element with no height.

Donut Chart Options

The options object is where you can customize the appearance of your chart. It accepts many configuration options, among which:

• A title for the chart that accepts a locale with corresponding text to display.
• A display title value to determine if the title is shown or not.
• A mode to determine if the chart is to be of type donut or pie chart.
• A legend option to determine where the legend can be positioned.

All the available configuration options can be seen in the Donut chart documentation.

options={{
  title: {
    en: `Devices from last 7 days`,
  },
  display: {
    title: true,
  },
  mode: 'donut',
  legend: {
    position: 'bottom',
  },
}}

Donut Chart Slots

Slots are where you can configure which column from your dataset to use for the category and measure.

Slots can contain multiple measures, useful for displaying two columns of data per chart, but if more than two are used, one will become the measure.

Each measure contains a content array. The content array, among many other configurations, can include the following:

• A label and locale,
• The column id from the dataset,
• The datasetId,
• The type of data you’re displaying,
• A format for the data.

The format used here is Python syntax for floating-point numbers; it’s similar to JavaScript’s .toFixed() method, e.g number.toFixed(4).

The hierarchy type is ​​the Luzmo standard data type. Any text column is considered as an hierarchical data type.

You can read more in the Donut chart documentation about available configuration options for slots.

slots={[
  {
    name: 'measure',
    content: [
      {
        label: {
          en: 'Total users',
        },
        column: '<column id>', // Total users
        set: datasetId,
        type: 'numeric',
        format: '.4f',
      },
    ],
  },
  {
    name: 'category',
    content: [
      {
        label: {
          en: 'Device category',
        },
        column: '<column id>', // Device category
        set: datasetId,
        type: 'hierarchy',
      },
    ],
  },
]}

Donut Chart Filters

The filters object is where you can apply conditions that will determine which data will be shown. In my example, I only want to show data from the last seven days. To accomplish this, I first create the date variable:

const date = new Date(new Date().getTime() - 7 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000).toISOString();

This would produce an ISO date string, e.g., 2024-08-21T14:25:40.088Z, which I can use with the filter. The filter uses Luzmo’s Filter Expressions, to determine if the date for each row of the data is greater than or equal to the date variable. You can read more about Filter Expressions in Luzmo’s Academy article.

filters={[
  {
    condition: 'or',
    filters: [
      {
        expression: '? >= ?',
        parameters: [
          {
            column_id: '<column id>', // Date
            dataset_id: datasetId,
          },
          date,
        ],
      },
    ],
  },
]}

The second chart you’ll be creating is a Line chart that displays the number of page views on each date from the last seven days from folks who visit your site.

Initial Props Line Chart

As with the Donut chart, the initial props are pretty much the same, but the type has been changed to line-chart.

<LuzmoVizItemComponent
  appServer={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_APP_SERVER}
  apiHost={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_API_HOST}
  authKey={authKey}
  authToken={authToken}
  type='line-chart'

Line Chart Options

The options for the Line chart are as follows, and the mode has been changed to line-chart.

options={{
  title: {
    en: `Site visits from last 7 days`,
  },
  display: {
    title: true,
  },
  mode: 'grouped',
}}

Line Chart Slots

The slots object is almost the same as before with the Donut chart, but for the Line chart, I’m using the date column from the dataset instead of the device category, and instead of category, I’m using the x-axis slot type. To ensure I’m formatting the data correctly (by day), I’ve used level 5. You can read more about levels in the docs.

slots={[
  {
    name: 'measure',
    content: [
      {
        label: {
          en: 'Total users',
        },
        column: '<column id>', // Total users
        set: datasetId,
        type: 'numeric',
        format: '.4f',
      },
    ],
  },
  {
    name: 'x-axis',
    content: [
      {
        label: {
          en: 'Date',
        },
        column: '<column id>', // Date
        set: datasetId,
        type: 'datetime',
        level: 5,
      },
    ],
  },
]}

Line Chart Filters

I’ve used the same filters as I used in the Donut chart.

The last chart you’ll be creating is a Bar chart that displays the number of page views for the top ten most viewed pages on your site.

Initial Props Bar Chart

As with the Donut and Line chart, the initial props are pretty much the same, but the type has been changed to bar-chart.

<LuzmoVizItemComponent
  className='w-full h-80'
  appServer={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_APP_SERVER}
  apiHost={process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_LUZMO_API_HOST}
  authKey={authKey}
  authToken={authToken}
  type='bar-chart'

Bar Chart Options

The options for the Bar chart are a little more involved. I’ve included some styling options for the border-radii of the bars, limited the number of results to 10, and sorted the data by the highest page view count first using the sort by measure and direction options.

options={{
  title: {
    en: `Page views from last 7 days`,
  },
  display: {
    title: true,
  },
  mode: 'grouped',
  bars: {
    roundedCorners: 5,
  },
  limit: {
    number: 10,
  },
  sort: {
    by: 'measure',
    direction: 'desc',
  },
}}

Line Chart Slots

As with the Line chart, I’ve used an axis for one of the columns from the dataset. In this case, it’s the y-axis which displays the page title.

slots={[
  {
    name: 'measure',
    content: [
      {
        label: {
          en: 'Total users',
        },
        column: '<column id>', // Total users
        set: datasetId,
        type: 'numeric',
        format: '.4f',
      },
    ],
  },
  {
    name: 'y-axis',
    content: [
      {
        label: {
          en: 'Page title',
        },
        column: '<column id>', // Page title
        set: datasetId,
        type: 'hierarchy',
      },
    ],
  },
]}

Bar Chart Filters

I’ve used the same filters as I used in the Donut and Line chart.

As you can see, there are plenty of types of charts and customization options. Because this is just an “ordinary” React component, you can very easily make it configurable by an end user by allowing options to be set and unset using HTML input elements, checkbox, select, date, and so on.

But for me, the real power behind this is not having to mutate data!

This is particularly pertinent when displaying multiple charts with different reporting dimensions. Typically, this would require each to have their own utility function or reformatting method. That said, setting column IDs and dataset IDs is a little fiddly, but once you have the component hooked up to the dataset, you can configure and reconfigure as much as you like, all without having to rewrite data formatting functions.

If you’re interested in bringing data to life in your application and want to get it done without the usual headaches, book a free demo with the Luzmo team to learn more!

It might be one of the most asked questions among freelance designers: what do you charge clients?

There can be so many variables in setting rates that you can stick to, and you have to make a choice between hourly and fixed options. Either way, a good pricing strategy can help you get the clients you want and earn a solid income from freelance work.

After you figure out pricing. Which is a challenge for almost anyone!

How Much Do Other Designers Charge?

The easiest way to figure out your rates is to see how much other designers are charging for their services.

Indeed, one of the largest online job boards, has a salary explorer tool that shows you the hourly rates and the salaries of professionals in each industry. The site allows you to browse the rates based on your country and even provides pricing data for different cities.

If you’re a freelancer, this is a great place to start your search for the ideal rate.

If you’re joining a company, agency, or seeking a full-time role, Glassdoor is the best place to learn about the salaries of other designers. Here you can explore the salaries submitted by fellow designers and even let you filter them based on your years of experience, industry, and more. Payscale is another website that provides similar information.

But don’t stop there. You can also ask directly from other designers. Use forums and sites like Reddit to ask other designers how much they are charging for different types of services. You’d be surprised how helpful the designer community can be.

It’s important to remember that these average rates are calculated based on the pricing data submitted by designers with various levels of experience and skills.

It will be difficult to find your exact number by looking at these websites. But, they will at least help you find a ballpark number to get started.

Set an Hourly Rate, for Starters

For most freelancers, setting an hourly rate is the place to start. It provides a baseline comparison to other freelancers in the market and is something clients can understand, as long as they are flexible with hours worked and pricing.

You can use time tracking software to keep up with exactly how much time you spend on projects – as long as you actually remember to use it and have solid focus while working on projects.

An hourly rate is great if you work at a moderate pace, take on projects that don’t shift a lot in time (clients don’t love getting revised pricing estimates) and like the flexibility of this time accounting method. On the other hand, some designers find that hourly rates hold them back because they can finish projects quickly and hours worked is not the only price consideration.

Be Competitive

If you decide to charge the same rates other designers are charging, it will be very difficult to land clients, unless you already have a good reputation.

In the beginning, it’s important to ask for a competitive rate that will position you above other designers. That doesn’t mean you need to charge cheaper and lower. You can still charge the same rates by providing more value.

For example, including additional tasks or services for free with your existing services is a great way to get the attention of the clients.

Consider Value-Based Pricing

If you’re an experienced designer with a variety of skill sets, years’ worth of knowledge, and success stories to back your claims, you should consider using a value-based pricing model.

This pricing strategy involves charging a rate based on the outcome of the project. For example, if you’re working on an advertising campaign for a high-profile client, you can charge them 10-20% of the sales they generate from the designs you make for them.

Most clients won’t be open to this type of pricing model and that will provide you with an even better opportunity to ask for a higher hourly rate or project price.

TheFutur YouTube channel has a great roleplay video that shows how this strategy plays out.

Know Your Costs

Your rate needs to reflect your costs plus take-home cash for yourself. Remember to include elements like taxes, rent and lights, software and other supplies when pricing projects. You need to be able to cover all costs before you’ll ever make any money as a freelancer.

The first thing you need to do is create a budget for your monthly and yearly expenses. This will help you find a yearly income goal. Simply put, it’s a way to figure out how much you need to earn.

Then figure out how many hours you are willing to work. This is an important factor that will help determine your hourly rate or even fixed rates for projects. If you’re willing to work longer hours, you’ll be able to charge competitive rates.

Again, income goals and work hours all depend on your skill set, experience, and location.

Price Hourly or by the Project

The alternative to hourly pricing is project pricing. Project pricing is preferred by a lot of designers who have been freelancing for a while.

This might be the best case for project pricing out there from Jake Jorgovan for Career Foundry:

When you charge based on the project, you are tying the price of the project to the client’s end result. The end result is all that the client cares about.

Shifting the focus of my freelancing away from the time I worked and toward the value I delivered changed everything. It completely changed my income potential and how much I made.

Setting project rates is a little trickier. Everyone does it a little differently. (Jorgovan even suggests making it up… kind of.)

Over the years, I have developed a little more of a strategy based on market and industry rates, creative flexibility with the project, client budget and potential long-term value, timeline and how I “feel about it” from the start.

• Market and industry rates: What are others charging for similar services in your market? I tend to price well below agency pricing – I am a team of one and can’t provide the round the clock services of a full team – and in the middle of what other freelancers in my market charge based on how long I’ve been in the business.
• Creative flexibility: The dirty secret is that I charge a little more for dud projects. No client will ever know who they are, but I do quote a little lower for a project that I really want to stretch my creative muscles. It helps me grow and expands my portfolio for later. The routine stuff gets more routine pricing.
• Client budget and value: An accountant once said to me, charge every client what they are willing to pay. It took a while to really get this, but it all comes back to value. What is the project worth to them? The client is coming to you for your value and expertise. Price accordingly to show that your work is valuable. (A $5 logo never said “value” to anyone.)
• Timetable: A project with a super-fast turn around is worth more to a client than something they need in 6 months. Think about scheduling to ensure that you can get it in and get it done on time. Think about whether you will have to price more to account for other projects getting bumped back.
• The “feel:” Check your gut when you meet with a client for the first time. Do they know what they want? Or will they waffle? Clients that will require a lot of hand-holding along the way will take a lot more of your time for the same work. You should probably charge a little more here.

The biggest problem with project rates is that sometimes you’ll get it wrong. There are projects that will suck up your time and frustrate you to no end because you just estimated wrong. If this happens frequently, then you are an hourly rate kind of freelancer. If it only happens once in a while, project rates can be a great option.

Pro tip: Use a combination of project and hourly rates. Opt for hourly rates for small projects (or friends and family if you dare work with them) that will come in under $250. This includes simple logo design, a business card or poster for clients that you know and will almost always take the design as is with a few minor revisions. Use project rates for anything that requires a lot of setup or time, such as website redesigns, branding or large packets of information.

Include Contingencies

No matter what pricing structure you use, make sure to include a scope for each project and room for contingencies in the estimate.

Include some rules with client estimates to keep scope creep from eating away at potential earnings.

Include guidelines for:

• What exactly the project entails, such as one website design with up to 10 pages.
• Number of revisions included.
• Rate for changes beyond the scope.
• Payment guidelines; this is vital for big projects or large timelines where you might need to get some of the money up front.
• Any additional fees, such as late charges, processing later or maintenance or upsells.

So What Should I Actually Charge?

As you can figure from all the information above, there’s no magic formula.

Price too low and you’ll worry about making enough money to pay the bills. (You can also run the risk of having too many clients because of underpricing.)

Price too high and you might have trouble getting projects.

You want to be somewhere in the middle, where you can take the clients you want and refer others elsewhere. And so much of it matters where you live and where the clients are based.

Contently has a solid database of freelance rates for writing, design and photography so you can see what people are actually getting paid. (Plus you can sort by category, rate or date.)

Bonsai also has a rates database that you can put in options such as design or development, skills, experience and location to get an idea of what hourly rates look like.

It can be tricky. The good news is that when you figure it out, you’ll know because your client mix will feel just right with a few large project, a few small projects and rewarding work.

Conclusion

OK, so maybe you did not get the exact answer you wanted. I could have told you to charge everyone $75 per hour for any project. But that would be a disservice to you.

It’s all about how you work and your client relationships. Feel them out. Understand their needs and work with clients to find just the right pricing strategy.

Freelancing 101 is an occasional series to help the increasing number of freelancers in the market. Whether you are a designer, writer, developer or wear multiple hats, we will share tips, resources and ideas to help you make the most of your small business. Is there something in particular you want to know? Let me know at carrie@designshack.net.

Creative commons photos by Death to the Stock Photo .

Science fiction has long served as a playground for envisioning the future, presenting imaginative technologies and concepts that captivate our minds. What was once considered fantastical speculation in movies and novels is increasingly becoming a reality in today’s tech-driven world. From advanced robotics to artificial intelligence, many sci-fi innovations are making the leap from the …

Continue reading "Tech Trends from Movies to Reality: How Sci-Fi Innovations are Becoming Real"

The post Tech Trends from Movies to Reality: How Sci-Fi Innovations are Becoming Real first appeared on Lucid Softech.

Welcome to Trends, a weekly newsletter with the zestiest business trends and actionable insights for entrepreneurs.

Summary

• Great Margins: Newsletters are a simple yet profitable business (e.g., Ben Thompson’s Stratechery is estimated to gross between $6-7m.)
• Ads or Subs: Core newsletter business models include ad-supported (The Skimm, Morning Brew) and subscription-based (Stratechery, 2PM)
• Newsletter Media Firms Hitting 9-Figure Valuation: Notable media companies built through newsletter have hit multi-million dollar valuations. (The Athletic was acquired by the NYT for $550m.)
• Multiple Business Lines: Media firms that begin as a newsletter can extend into other offerings (e.g., premium research, e-commerce, community forums, networking tools, podcasts)
• Secret Sauce: Newsletters have a number of strengths vs. traditional media including a direct relationship with end users, higher engagement, and lean operating costs
• What’s Next: Opportunities include B2B content niches and tools that provide curation (bundling) or paywall services

Bob Pittman—the creator of MTV, former CEO of Six Flags, Time Warner, AOL, and Century 21 Real Estate, and now current CEO of iHeartMedia—has had a hell of a career.

With an incredible background in the media business, Pittman turned heads in 2003 when he launched Pilot Group. The new venture was an incubator and investment fund for a business that many people wouldn’t have expected a media tycoon to get involved in: newsletters.

Trends readers have long expressed an interest in the nuts and bolts behind the newsletter business. This report will give you a behind-the-scenes look at how it works.

And in doing so, we’ll answer why Pittman (along with thousands of other entrepreneurs) have flocked to this simple, but surprisingly profitable business model.

Table of Contents

• A Brief History of Newsletters and Profit
• Which Newsletter Business Model Should You Choose?
• 7 Reasons to Jump Into Newsletter Marketing
• 5 Challenges with Running Newsletters
• Newsletter Niche Opportunities
• Newsletter Examples to Learn From

A Brief History of Newsletters and Profit

In 1996, Microsoft released Internet Mail and News 1.0, a feature for its Internet Explorer browser. This was later renamed Outlook.

That same year, other companies like Hotmail started offering free email services that could be used anywhere. And email was born.

Since then, email has become embedded in our culture. (The number of email users topped 4 billion globally in 2023, according to the research firm The Radicati Group.)

In those early years, companies primarily used email as a way to send marketing material.

However, when Pittman entered the industry, he changed the perception of email. Specifically, he showed that email newsletters can be a standalone business.

Pittman & The Pilot Group

In December of 2003, Bob Pittman acquired DailyCandy, a trendy daily email for young women that featured tips on everything from restaurants and nightclubs to sample sales and beauty finds.

Pittman paid $3.5m for the business. At the time, DailyCandy consisted of 200k subscribers and a brilliant editor/founder named Danielle Levy.

The plan behind Pittman’s investment, say sources familiar with his strategy, was to help transform DailyCandy from a newsletter into a multimedia player that could extend its brand into magazines and books, stand-alone television shows, and perhaps even shopping or restaurant guides.

A screenshot of the DailyCandy website from 2008

Over the next 5 years, DailyCandy went all-in on email.

By 2009 the company grew to 2.5m subscribers and, according to Pittman, $25m in revenue with EBITDA of over $10m. That same year, Comcast acquired DailyCandy for $125m.

Following the acquisition, Pittman launched The Pilot Group, an incubator dedicated to launching DailyCandy for other verticals.

Pilot’s companies included Thrillist (now a $500m media company), PureWow ($25m in revenue before it was acquired for $40m), Business Insider (sold for $500m), and dozens more.

Most recently, individuals such as Ben Thompson (Stratechery) and Bill Bishop (Sinocism) have proven that single-person newsletter operations can generate 7-figures in annual revenue.

Furthermore, in recent years media companies built through newsletters have been generating healthy 8 figures in revenue:

• The Skimm: $30m
• Industry Dive: $29m
• Axios: $25m

A salient example of the growing trend in newsletters is the rise of Substack. The startup provides tools for writers to write, distribute, build community and monetize newsletters. Since 2017, Substack has raised a total of $90.2m from investors like Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz.

The platform boasts 17k paid writers, with the top 10 collectively generating $25m annually.

Which Newsletter Business Model Should You Choose?

Warren Buffet famously loved newspapers. They were predictable and profitable.

In their place, newsletters have stepped in, with all the upside (low cost, direct-to-consumer benefits, an opportunity to find many profitable niches) and little of the downside.

There are two primary business models in the newsletter business: ad-supported and subscription-based.

Ad-Supported (Examples: Morning Brew, The Skimm, Axios)

For ad-supported newsletters, the key metrics include:

• Subscribers
• Sends
• Cost per mille (CPM): Advertising rate based on 1k (subscribers or emails sent.)
• Open rate: percentage of emails opened by a unique subscriber.
• Cost per open (CPO): Advertising rate based on the number of unique opens.
• Cost per click (CPC): Advertising rate based on the number of clicks.
• Click through rate (CTR): Number of clicks advertisers receive on their ads per number of impressions

And key ad types include:

• Sponsored Ads: Basic advertising placement. (standard copy from advertiser or copy written in the voice of the newsletter)
• Advertorial: Advertisement that is formatted like an editorial. (Be cautious with this. Trust is easy to lose and hard to win back.)
• Takeover: An ad campaign that takes over a large segment (or entirety) of a newsletter.

The sample ad-based model below looks at the monthly revenue for a newsletter sent five days a week with the following assumptions:

• Number of Subscribers: 1m
• Open Rate: 22% (Avgerage open rate for a 5 sends/wk newsletter per Smart Insights.)
• Cost-per-open: $0.05 (Average CPO per research by Paved newsletter platform.)

Based on these assumptions, the monthly ad revenue for this fictional average newsletter is $11k per day or $220k per month (5 sends per week.)

Subscription-Based (Examples: Stratechery, The Athletic, 2PM)

Self-Published Model:

A DIY subscription-based newsletter typically works in the following manner:

• A writer or team of writers provides content related to a specific niche in exchange for a monthly or yearly (discounted) subscription fee.
• The writer will mail said content on a consistent schedule (e.g., every Monday and Thursday).
• To attract new subscribers, the team will make X% of content free and paywall the remaining content

Stratechery, written by Ben Thompson, is a tech and business strategy newsletter launched in 2013. Thompson provides one free weekly article and three additional pay-walled reports per week.

While Stratechery has not confirmed subscriber count in a number of years, Michael Simmons of Blockbuster Blueprint estimated it around 40k in late 2023. Simmons doesn’t offer a source, but in 2020 internet sleuths pinned Thompson's paying subscribers at a minimum of 25k, so 40k seems like a reasonable growth rate for 3 years.

As of now, subscription options stand at $150 annually or $15/mo. ($180 per year.)

If we can abuse statistics for a moment by ignoring factors like churn rate and subscriber retainment …ahem … based on this fairly rough guesstimate, Thompson brings in a gross profit somewhere between $6 - 7.2m per year.

Substack Subscription-Based (Examples: Petition, TrueHoop)

Another option for a subscription-based newsletter is Substack.

With the self-published model, every aspect of the business falls to the author or editorial team. To successfully operate a newsletter business, an entrepreneur needs to be familiar with a whole host of tools and processes—membership software, forums, payments, content delivery networks, hosting, etc.

Substack has created a platform that offers a turnkey solution for these back-end services for creators (thus, allowing them to focus on content creation):

• For newsletters with paid subscriptions, Substack takes a 10% cut of subscription revenue.
• With additional payments (e.g., transaction fees), the Substack revenue calculator shows an ~80% profit margin for creators.

For those wondering "when is it a good time to monetize", Substack has a great article based on the platform's data (Your Guide To Going Paid). The article is well worth reading but here are some notable bullet points:

• Start with a revenue target that feels right to you. Remember to adjust for income tax, as well as Substack’s and Stripe’s fees (10% + 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, respectively).
• Estimate your number of paying subscribers, based on the size of your free list. We commonly see conversion rates of 5–10%.
• Divide your revenue target by your number of paying subscribers to get to your annual price, then work backwards to a monthly price.
• We often see writers charge $5/month for newsletters in the personal interest category and $10/month for those in a business category, but challenge yourself to charge more than you think is possible. Set your price 20% higher than you normally would; you can always offer a 20% discount for your earliest subscribers.

Here are some methods that popular Substackers employ to draw more readers into subscriptions:

• 1:X ratio of free-to-paid posts: Judd Legum of Popular Information publishes four days a week, Monday through Thursday—one free post and three paid posts. The free posts act as a lead magnet.
• Weekly paid posts with free previews: Richard Rushfield of The Ankler writes an insiders’ newsletter about the entertainment industry. He publishes paid posts 1-2x/week with a free preview version. The preview acts as a teaser.
• Private member community: Nadia Bolz-Weber of The Corners publishes occasional free posts (1-2x/month), but only paying subscribers get access to the community— including behind-the-scenes Q&As, community discussion threads, quarterly book clubs, and guest posts.
• Exclusive bonus material: Flow State publishes recommendations for free music to work to every weekday. But they have to find it themselves. Paying subscribers get access to curated Spotify playlists.

And while Substack is the most well-known newsletter platform, it isn’t the only player. Beehiiv has become a new favorite among indie newsletter publishers. Another popular alternative “newsletter-as-a-service” tool is called Ghost. Instead of a transaction fee, Ghost charges a flat monthly rate that starts at as little as $9/mo.

And, of course, there are more traditional mass email-sending platforms that are adding increasingly more newsletter-style functionality. (Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Marketing Hub come to mind.)

Additional Considerations For DIY Subscription vs. Substack:

While Substack provides a turnkey solution, the platform has a number of notable limitations for those looking to rev up paid subscription businesses:

• The 10% fee is quite steep, especially when annual revenue gets into 7 figures.
• There are limited customization options.
• Newsletter websites typically have to use the _______.substack.com domain, which can stifle branding.
• Substack's current offering doesn’t allow for additional revenue products (e.g., ecommerce) and their referral program only allows you to gift subscriptions.

7 Reasons to Jump Into Newsletter Marketing

1. The Mass Adoption of Email is Still Growing.

Every few years someone declares email marketing dead. We not-so-humbly disagree.

As mentioned above, there are 4B email users worldwide, as compared to 3.5B social media users. And annual growth in email use is projected at a steady 2-3% over the next three years, bringing more end users into the email universe.

2. Newsletters Have Better Engagement Than Social Media.

In addition to the wide (and still growing) adoption of email, the channel has better engagement than the largest social networks:

• vs. Facebook: Organic reach on Facebook is under 10% while Constant Contact puts the average open rate for overall industry email at 32.55% as of the time of publishing.
• vs. Twitter: Click-through rates on tweets are less than 1% while email’s overall avg. click-to-open rate is 8.62% according to research from GetResponse.

Late last year, the entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant tweeted that “building a following on Twitter is building a castle out of sand.”

Large tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Google are famous for “changing algorithms” that can overturn the fortune of a media business overnight (see: Buzzfeed).

Because email is an open standard, when you build an audience via newsletters, you directly own the relationship with the reader and are not at the whim of an algorithm change.

With an owned audience there’s less of a reliance on paying platforms (to get “boosted” on social media news feeds) or trying to please Google (to rank high in searches).

While ad price inflation is finally showing signs of cooling, in 2023 the cost of online advertising rose 4.4% YoY.

The direct relationship with the end reader is also the perfect jumping point for building a broader community of like-minded people.

As Jenny Sowyrda, HubSpot’s manager of community strategy and operations puts it:

“If you aren’t building your community, your customers and prospects are already building one somewhere else.”

A newsletter allows you to steer that ship. And it becomes a virtuous cycle, as an engaged community can also generate newsletter subscriptions.

When you own a direct relationship with readers, you can offer additional products through the distribution channel:

• Stratechery offers a paid podcast
• Trapital offers early-stage investing opportunities
• Trends offers gated content like this (how meta 😉)

In a time when search engine and social media updates have marketers chewing their fingernails off, newsletters offer a predictable ROI.

And while iOS changes have made tracking email engagement more difficult, email itself is a well-established standard with steady conversion. It has not changed very much since its initial rise in the 90s. Moving forward, there will continue to be innovations in email clients (e.g., Superhuman, Hey), but the underlying standard is stable.

5 Challenges with Running Newsletters

The rise of increasingly stringent digital privacy laws (GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, CAN-SPAM in Canada) has forced companies to closely follow anti-spam rules including:

• User permissions
• Honest headlines
• Clear identification for ads
• Opt-out options and more.

2. It can be a very crowded space.

Every major publication has a number of newsletter offerings (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ). Further, with the rise of turnkey services like Substack, countless newsletters are being launched every day. The newsletter opportunity is as big as ever, but it’s very important to find the content gaps (more on that below).

As more written content goes behind a paywall (not to mention paid audio and video streaming services), there is concern that readers will develop subscription fatigue. In recognition of this issue, some Substack publications are bundling together their offerings so readers only have to make one purchase decision.

For subscription-based newsletters, the existence of paywalls means that the content is often hidden from search engine bots crawling the web. As a result, the content doesn’t show up in searches for relevant queries.

Another related challenge is that gated content has a harder time going viral, as people are less likely to share items that hit paywalls.

Newsletter Niche Opportunities

The opportunities involved in newslettering don’t just stop at running a newsletter yourself. We’ll start with those editorial opportunities, and jump off from there:

Content Gaps (Particularly B2B)

There are countless content niches that could use a dedicated newsletter.

The B2B space is particularly ripe for disruption and offers high revenue potential as industry insiders will pay top dollar for analytics and insights (aka the “corporate credit card effect”).

As Petition—the Substack bankruptcy newsletter—shows, there is great appetite to give traditionally dry, industry-specific trade publications a more approachable voice.

For inspiration, a Google search of popular trade publications shows dozens of opportunities in niche markets:

• AdWeek (advertising)
• Cranes Today (crane industry)
• Game Industry Report Magazine (gambling)
• Design News (designers)
• Engineering News-Record (construction)
• Architectural Record (architecture)
• Hairdressers Journal International (hairdressers)
• Global Custodian (custody and asset management)
• Coach & Bus Weekly (transportation)

Curation, Bundling & Discovery Tools

As noted by Ben Thompson, whenever an industry goes from scarcity to abundance, there is great value in services that facilitate discovery and curation.

For example, Letterlist allows you to browse and surface newsletters and then subscribe with a single click.

Similarly, Substack’s internal discovery tool ranks the top paid and free publications.

Paywall Services

One of the key decisions for any subscription business is to decide how much free content is made available.

• Freemium: Business Insider offers a lot of free content but also has a premium offering.
• Metered Paywall: The New York Times uses a metering policy whereby you can read X amount of articles before you hit a paywall.
• Hard Paywall: The Financial Times and The Information provide zero free content. You must subscribe to read.

Because of these varying strategies, there is an appetite for digital solutions that can register and subscribe readers as well as predict churn (or other related analytics) for paywalled content.

Piano is one such firm. But, based on the Trends team’s experience with the service, there is clearly an opportunity for a superior offering.

Newsletter Management

There are a ton of tools for newsletter senders, but what about newsletter readers?

Management tools are needed to handle the abundance of newsletter. There are a number of solutions that curate newsletter feeds (Feedly, Feedbin) and newsletter reading apps (Stoop, Slick).

Newsletter Examples to Learn From

Ad-Supported Examples

• Year Founded: 2000
• Key People: Dany Levy
• Theme: Pioneer daily email newsletter providing readers with hip and trendy events in their specific cities (started with NY and grew to dozens of other US cities).
• Notes: Sold in 2009 for $125m (was doing $25m EBITDA) to Comcast. Shut down in 2014.

• Year Founded: 2012
• Key People: Danielle Weisberg, Carly Zakin
• Theme: Daily newsletter (7m subscribers) summarizing news in an approachable manner and targeting young female millennial professionals
• Notes: The Skimm has raised ~$30m in venture capital, including from investors such as GV (Google Ventures), Shonda Rhimes, Tyra Banks, and Sara Blakely. Investopedia estimates revenue is $350k per send.

• Year Founded: 2012
• Key People: Sean Griffey, Ryan Willumson, Eli Dickinson
• Theme: Media offering that provides 38 B2B newsletters (e.g., Banking, Biopharma, CFO, CIO, Construction, Education, Transport). In addition to ads, the firm also runs marketing services and a brand studio to help corporates (e.g., IBM) with content marketing initiatives.
• Notes: Industry Dive was acquired by a PE firm in September 2019 for an undisclosed price. At the time, the firm was doing $22m in revenue, and acquisition estimates are in the $60-70m range.

• Year Founded: 2014
• Key People: Adam White
• Theme: A newsletter providing news and insights at the intersection of sports and business.
• Notes: In October of 2018, the company received an undisclosed investment from PE firm Stein’s. The firm has a number of additional offerings including video, podcast, webinars, and sports-related jobs listings.

• Year Founder: 2016
• Key People: Dan Primack, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz
• Theme: Media firm with 30+ newsletters covering business, tech and politics— plus podcasts and live events.
• Notes: Axios content is known for punchy, bullet-point summaries of the news. The entire media offering has an estimated revenue of $25-30m.

• Year Founder: 2015
• Key People: Alex Lieberman, Austin Rief
• Theme: Daily email newsletter covering the latest news from Wall St. to Silicon Valley.
• Notes: The Morning Brew has grown to offer 15 niche sub-brands, including Marketing Brew, CFO Brew, Healthcare Brew, and… you get the idea. More brews than your local taphouse.

Subscription-Based

7. Stratechery

• Year Founded: 2013
• Key People: Ben Thompson
• Theme: Leading tech strategy (hence name) newsletter that is considered a pioneer in the space of “individuals can make a living writing newsletters.”
• Price: $15/month or $150/year
• Notes: As noted above, a conservative estimate places the newsletter’s revenue at $6-7m a year.

• Year Founded: 2013
• Key People: Web Smith
• Theme: Daily newsletter that provides news and analysis on the intersection of business and media.
• Price: $20/month or $200/year
• Notes: A newsletter product that also offers data tools, networking opportunities, and curated expert insights.

9. The Information

• Year Founded: 2013
• Key People: Jessica Lessin
• Price: $599/year for the first year
• Theme: In-depth and exclusive tech stories read widely by the tech and investment community (~20k subscribers).
• Notes: The Information is known for breaking tech-related news stories, producing comprehensive tech company org charts, and cultivating an influential network of tech professionals.

10. Petition

• Year Founded: 2016
• Key People: Anonymous Team
• Theme: Bankruptcy and restructuring newsletter that provides insights in an imminently readable and snarky voice.
• Price: $79/month or $799/year
• Notes: Another 7-figure Substack publication with thousands of legal and finance professional subscribers.

Brand-Backed Examples

11. The Hustle

• Year Founded: 2015
• Key People: Sam Parr, Adam Ryan
• Theme: Daily business and technology newsletter written in a fun and irreverent voice.
• Notes: The Hustle was acquired by HubSpot in 2021 and has since grown to over 2m subscribers.

12. Trapital

• Year Founded: 2018
• Key People: Dan Runcie
• Theme: Business strategy analysis of the hip hop industry.
• Notes: A newsletter and podcast offering that provides the world’s best hip hop industry analysis. Trapital now only offers a free newsletter backed by their investment services.

13. The Athletic

• Year Founded: 2016
• Key People: Alex Mather, Adam Hansmann
• Theme: Sports media that covers professional and college sports teams across North America, with recently expanded international soccer coverage.
• Notes: The Athletic’s goal was to unbundle the sports section from newspapers. They were acquired by The New York Times for $550m in 2022.

User Experience & Intent Matching
Google's algorithms increasingly emphasize matching search intent. Focusing on content that answers specific user queries effectively, with concise, clear responses, improves rankings.
On-page user experience (UX), including site navigation, accessibility, and content structure, is critical to SEO performance.

Recruiters and HR professionals have a lot on their plate. From time-consuming customer screening to scheduling interviews and predicting success, they have much to keep track of — especially when hiring at scale.

But in 2024, professionals across industries are starting to take advantage of AI as a handy assistant.

As a writer and entrepreneur, I lean on AI tools every day to help lighten my workload. Recruiters can (and should) be taking advantage of AI recruiting software to help streamline their processes, too.

AI recruiting tools can’t replace a great recruiter or HR person, but they can certainly make recruiting easier.

I’ll be diving into the benefits and limitations of AI tools for recruitment and identifying some variables to assess before you select a tool. Then I’ll take a look at 12 industry-favorite AI recruiting tools.

Table of Contents

• Why use AI recruiting tools?
• How to Choose the Right AI Recruiting Software
• Best AI Recruiting Tools

Why use AI recruiting tools?

For recruiters and HR professionals, AI recruiting software can relieve a long list of the tasks that make up their to-do list. But AI can’t do everything. Here’s a look at the benefits — and limitations — of AI recruiting software.

Benefits

• Improved candidate matching. Recruiting tools can read hundreds of applications and find the ones that best meet your job description, sorting by skills and experience. Some experts have found that AI can cut down on the time spent screening candidates by up to 75%.
• Improving cost per hire (CPH). AI tools minimize the need for excessive job advertising. They also reduce the manpower necessary to hire by automating large parts of the process, driving down CPH.
• Reaching a wider talent pool. AI recruiting software can source talent from multiple platforms and siphon through more applications than a team member could on their own, allowing HR professionals and recruiters to consider a broader variety of talent.
• Filling positions faster. AI recruiting tools speed up the hiring process at multiple points. The screening and interview phase moves quicker with AI augmentation, and many AI tools automate various administrative tasks. In fact, AI tools may cut overall hiring time by nearly 90%.
• Improving candidate experience. AI recruiting tools personalize communication with candidates and provide information about the company and job. But most importantly, since AI tools lead to faster hiring times, candidates don’t need to wait nearly as long to hear whether or not they got the position.

Limitations

• Lack of personal touch. AI tools are limited in their ability to mirror humans. While they can personalize communications, messages generally won’t feel as human as they would if a person wrote them. Not to mention, these tools can’t use intuition to analyze resumes.
• Privacy concerns. Recruiting tools may collect, store, and analyze personal data, infringing on job applicants’ privacy rights.
• Bias. Recruiting software may be trained on biased information, which actually furthers bias, rather than improving it. In fact, Bloomberg reported AI may be worse than humans when it comes to race and gender bias.
• Waste of time for less frequent users. There’s a learning curve that comes with many of these tools, so if an organization is a one-time user looking to analyze a small set of applications, it may not be as much of a time-saver and so not worth the cost.
• Accuracy. Because AI technology lacks human judgment, there are times when the tool may not make accurate conclusions about best-fit candidates for a job placement. AI model error, as well as human error in building the model, contribute to questionable accuracy at times.

I spoke to Dan Kevin Roque, a senior recruiter from HRUCKUS, to hear his thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of using AI at work.

“Anything that requires human interaction and empathy like interviews, addressing candidate concerns, deciding on who to hire, etc. — are things I will not entrust to AI,” said Roque. “But the majority of the stuff recruiters do, including sourcing and writing job descriptions, can be improved with AI.”

Each recruiter may have different reservations and comfort levels with various AI use cases, so it’s important to research your tool well so it helps — and does not hurt — your preferred hiring process.

How to Choose the Right AI Recruiting Software

Augmented vs. Automated

Before you can decide the exact right software for you, you need to consider the two broad types of AI technology: augmented or automated.

Augmented AI technologies assist humans in completing their tasks. If you’re using AI recruiting software, augmented technology would assist you in recruitment analysis and increase your productivity — but it wouldn’t replace you.

I find that augmented technology is generally a bit more comfortable to use — especially for folks who aren’t used to relying on AI. I can audit my results rather than sending them off without looking, which helps build trust for the tools.

Automated technologies complete tasks fully without any human intervention. In the case of recruiting technology, an automated tool could send emails, source profiles, and screen resumes without any human interaction.

Automated tools are faster than augmented tools, but result in lower rates of accuracy — but depending on the task, that may be okay. If your inbox is piling up with interviews to schedule or resumes to peek at, it might be worth considering finding a fully automated tool to lighten your workload.

Roque shared his preference between augmented and automated technology, stating that he likes “a combination of both.”

“I don't believe AI would truly be able to completely replace human input any time soon,” Roque continued, “but AI automation helps with minor tasks that can take a chunk of a recruiter's time, and AI augmentation helps support human decision-making and actions.”

Other Considerations

Some other variables I consider when I’m assessing an AI tool are:

• Integration. Does the tool integrate well with your existing hiring process, or will it require a process overhaul?
• Accuracy. How well does the tool identify and evaluate candidates — and how well do you need it to?

(If you’re using it as an augmentation, you won’t need as high a level of accuracy as you would if it’s fully automated.)

• User interface. How easy is the tool to use and what’s the technological proficiency of the recruiting team using it?
• Customization. Can the solution be tailored to fit your organization’s exact needs?
• Support. Does the tool offer good customer support and resources for set-up, implementation, and troubleshooting?

The answers to these questions vary considerably based on the type of problem you’re tackling and the organization you’re working within. I generally prioritize user interface and accuracy when I’m assessing a tool.

Best AI Recruiting Tools

Now that you know the benefits and limitations of AI tools, as well as the type of tool you’re looking for, it’s time to find the right tool for your organization.

There are a lot of great recruiting tools on the market, so here’s a high-level list identifying the basics of the tool, what stood out to me about the software, and the pricing information.

1. iCIMS

iCIMS offers a broad range of capabilities and applications, from a career suite to job postings management to a CRM.

The software is extremely comprehensive, providing end-to-end assistance for recruiters and hiring teams.

There’s an analytics dashboard, applicant tracking, email and messaging capabilities, and a video suite that allows you to personalize and humanize your hiring process.

What I like: iCIMS is a long-standing vendor with a rich history of providing great tools to users. It’s easy to use and straight-forward, so it checks the box for teams who are a bit less tech savvy. I like its broad capabilities — it’s great for companies looking for a comprehensive tool.

Pricing: Custom

2. SeekOut

The SeekOut tool starts when you upload a job description. As talent applies, you can filter and sort results by things like skills, licenses, education, and diversity variables.

Once you’ve found the right candidates, you can take advantage of AI-powered engagement tools to create personalized outreach. The platform is also rich in analytics, with dashboards dedicated to helping you track your hiring goals.

What I like: SeekOut has exceptional filtering, so the tool relieves a lot of the work required to find the right candidates. I also like how the software emphasizes diversity in hiring, which shows up in multiple ways throughout their platform.

Pricing: Multi-tiered annual packages — discover price tag after demoing the software.

3. Paradox.ai

Paradox.ai offers a few different conversational tools, but their recruiting CRM lightens the administrative load for recruiters.

The AI tool can schedule interviews and respond to questions from candidates automatically. With an 82% decrease in time-to-hire and a 99% candidate satisfaction rating, Paradox.ai is clearly doing something right.

What I like: Everything about Paradox.ai is simple and candidate-centric. As much as I want a tool that’s easy for me to use, I also want to make sure it offers a great user experience to the end client or candidate. The Paradox.ai tool is really exceptional when it comes to creating a great candidate experience.

Pricing: Custom

4. Fetcher

Fetcher combines AI tools with recruiting experts to source great candidates for your organization. Use Fetcher to manage and create a pipeline with AI automation, then gather insights about candidate activity and demographics.

You can also integrate tools like your ATS, email, calendar, CRM, and Slack to further improve your team’s productivity.

What I like: I love how Fetcher uses in-house experts to screen your candidates in conjunction with the AI tool. That means you get all the benefits of AI automation with added accuracy from human supervision.

The other thing I like about this tool is that you can add specific diversity initiatives to the search, battling the biases that AI tools sometimes have.

Pricing: Custom

5. Textio

Textio helps you improve the quality of your job listings by giving you insights into tone and word choice.

For recruiters, this means it can also help you choose language that appeals to specific age groups and demographics. It also learns as you use it, so the more frequently you rely on it, the better the output becomes.

What I like: Most AI recruiting tools are about screening automation, but Textio helps you optimize the actual content of your job descriptions. It’s a unique tool that could fit well with other AI software.

Pricing: Tiered packages starting at $15k annually for teams of 1-199.

6. HireVue

HireVue is a tool for interviewing and assessing candidates.

It has a video interview feature, as well as a rich library of AI assessments that allow recruiters to evaluate candidates comprehensively — looking for potential in addition to experience.

It also automates recruitment communication, significantly speeding up the hiring process. Finally, the tool offers analytics, reports, and great customer support.

What I like: HireVue does an exceptional job of reducing bias because of the type of algorithm they use. The tool doesn’t “learn” through increased use, which means that every candidate is assessed equally as time passes. As I start leaning more and more on AI tools, it’s important to me that they’re ethical, and HireVue does a great job of ensuring that.

Pricing: Packages start at $35K.

7. Manatal

Manatal has a simple interface for sharing job posts and gathering a pipeline of qualified candidates.

The AI tool recommends candidates based on job requirements and helps you gather comprehensive information on the candidates from social media accounts.

What I like: Manatal pulls information from social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to paint a full picture of the candidates applying to your job description. This makes for a really thorough understanding of candidates that recruiters would otherwise have had to create themselves.

Pricing: Plans start at $15 per user/month. For enterprise companies, the price reaches $55 per user/month — which is affordable compared to other options. There is also custom pricing.

8. Humanly

Humanly is an automation platform for recruiters that value human interaction. It automates tasks that don’t need a human touch so recruiters can give more attention where it really counts.

The tool screens candidates and answers questions and then provides feedback for hiring teams. It’s great for companies that are hiring at scale who still want their candidates to have a personalized, positive experience.

What I like: Humanly is aptly named — it’s completely focused on a human-centric application of AI technology. The homepage of the site states that the tool is, “Loved by candidates and recruiting teams.”

I like AI tools that emphasize both the user and the customer and, for both parties to love the tool, they’re really doing something right.

Pricing: Custom

9. Arya

Arya is an AI-driven candidate sourcing tool that finds great candidates quickly and automatically. The tool screens, scores, and ranks candidates based on hundreds of attributes and seven multidimensional data points to predict the candidate’s likelihood of success in the role.

What I like: Arya’s focus is data and analytics. As a result, you get extremely strategic outcomes from the tool. If you’re recruiting at scale, this sort of specificity and accuracy is incredibly important. I think Arya is a great choice for teams hiring lots of candidates on a frequent basis.

Pricing: Custom

10. Skillate

Skillate provides candidate prescreening, automatic scheduling, job description feedback, and predictive analytics to gauge a candidate’s likelihood of taking the offer. It’s a really comprehensive tool for recruiters looking to take a data-driven approach to the entire hiring process.

What I like: Skillate provides in-depth analysis of your company’s hiring trends. You can see insights based on location, experience, education, past companies, and skills. Finding trends like these can significantly speed up the hiring process so it’s great for companies hiring often or at scale.

Pricing: Custom

11. TurboHire

TurboHire is an end-to-end tool that optimizes the entire recruitment process from candidate sourcing to final selection.

The AI recruitment software sources talent from across channels, screens candidates, and provides workflow management. Interviews are automatically scheduled and the tool integrates with any ATS.

What I like: TurboHire claims to reduce time to hire by 78% and cost to hire by 65% while improving the quality of the hire by 5x. It’s hard not to appreciate a tool that can offer such staggering results!

Pricing: Custom

12. Workable

Workable helps you source, interview, and communicate with candidates throughout the hiring process.

You can use the AI tools in the recruiting software to generate job descriptions and interview questions, as well as automate time-consuming tasks like interview scheduling.

Plus, Workable helps you manage signed-on employees at no extra cost.

What I like: With one-click, your job posting can land on 200+ sites. If you’re looking for a highly specialized candidate, or if you want your applications to come in from a diverse number of pools, Workable is a great option.

Pricing: Workable offers a 15-day free trial plan followed by a tiered pricing plan that starts at $189/month.

Finding the Right Tool

There’s clearly no shortage of AI recruiting software on the market — which means teams can be confident there’s a tool out there that’s a perfect fit for their organization.

I think recruiters and HR hiring teams should start by determining what they’d like streamlined before they dive into finding the exact right tool.

Some of these tools target communication, others target job description prep, and others are more focused on administrative automation. If you can clearly define what you’d like done, you’re going to have an easier time finding the right tool.

When I started applying SMART marketing objectives to organize my workflow and then for two teams of 20 people each, my entire perception of success changed.

As long as I didn‘t set clear goals with reasonable deadlines, I was bogged down in mountains of work, seeming to have no light at the end of the tunnel.

I was extra-achieving, but I didn’t feel it was enough, which led to wrong priorities and piling up tasks in a backlog.

Only after reading books on SMART goals did I realize how amazing clear objectives could be for soaring productivity in less time.

So in this article, I will explain the five dos and don’ts of making a SMART goal, complete with examples and hands-on experience.

In this article:

• What are SMART goals?
• SMART Goal Acronym
• Why are SMART goals important?
• Benefits of SMART Goals
• SMART Goal Examples
• How to Make a SMART Goal

What are SMART goals?

SMART goals are concrete targets that you aim to hit over a certain period.

These goals should be carefully drafted by a manager and their direct report to set them up for success. “SMART” is an acronym that describes the most important characteristics of each goal.

“SMART” stands for “specific,” “measurable,” “attainable,” “relevant,” and “time-bound.” Each SMART goal should have these five characteristics to ensure the goal can be reached and benefits the employee.

Find out what each characteristic means below and how to write a SMART goal that exemplifies them.

In the working world, the influence of SMART goals continues to grow. The reason why successful marketing teams always hit their numbers is that they also set and write SMART goals.

Research shows that 48% of people who set goals always write them down. It can help you get clear on what you want, stay focused, and track your progress.

Writing goals down turns vague ideas into concrete plans, and, of course, makes them easier to achieve.

Image Source

Use this template to follow along and create your own SMART goals.

SMART Goal Acronym

Most trace the SMART acronym back to a 1981 paper by George Doran, "There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management goals and objectives."

His colleagues Arthur Miller and James Cunningham are also credited for their work on this paper.

The “Objectives” section of this paper asks, “How do you write meaningful objectives?” Then goes on to define the SMART acronym as the following:

• Specific — target a specific area for improvement.
• Measurable — quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
• Assignable — specify who will do it.
• Realistic — state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
• Time-related — specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

The meaning of each letter in this acronym can shift based on the user and how they want to apply this framework to their business. You can see the most popular terms and their best-known alternatives below:

Image Source

The paper also states that not every goal needs to meet all five criteria. Instead, the goal was to use this acronym to create a benchmark for management excellence.

But today, the SMART acronym usually looks like this:

SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

This framework continues to be useful because it's easy to remember and can help streamline the goal-setting process.

I’ll now talk more about each part of the SMART acronym and how you can apply this as you create measurable goals for yourself and your team.

S — Specific

Specific goals are clear and include precise details. Specificity makes your goal easy to understand and carry out.

To check if your goal is specific, I recommend you ask more than one person to review your goal and rephrase what you are trying to do. If your proofreaders come up with more than one idea of your final goal, it isn't specific enough.

M — Measurable

Measurable goals are targets that you can calculate and track over time. Goals that include a set measurement or metric are more concrete than anecdotal goals or plans based on someone’s opinion.

Measurable goals give you and your team a chance to track progress toward a goal and make changes over time. It also gives you a clear and specific picture of success.

To figure out how to make your goal measurable, look closely at your ultimate goal. Ask yourself:

• How can we control this goal?
• Is this goal clear and actionable?
• Is there anything subjective about this goal?

Then, choose the metrics that most directly connect to your final goal. If you're not sure which metrics to choose, I think this is a useful guide to KPIs to help you get started.

A — Attainable

Attainable goals are challenging but achievable. This aspect of goal-setting should consider your team's unique qualities as well as the problems and blockers you work on together.

To set ambitious but attainable goals, start by thinking big. Create a list where you imagine the best possible outcomes.

Take a break for a day or two, then come back and edit your list with every question, challenge, and critique you can think of.

Goals that are too easy to meet won‘t motivate your team or lead to growth. But goals that are unrealistic can demoralize your team and strain resources. It’s important to find the right balance.

“Make your goal ambitious but achievable. Your goal should feel like a little bit of a stretch for you, so you stay motivated. If you set a goal that‘s too easy, you won’t feel inspired to do the work. On the other hand, the goal can't be impossible, or you will get frustrated.

To find the balance, take into account where you are today and what’s reasonable for you. Given the time and resources available to you, what is a goal that feels like a little bit of a stretch?” – Bernard Marr, CEO and Founder of Bernard Marr's Wine Cellar.

R — Relevant

Relevant goals support the mission, vision, and priorities of your business.

Start the goal and objective-setting process with a quick review to ensure that your SMART goals connect to your business goals.

I suggest reading through your company's mission and vision statements, or print and post them on the wall in a shared space. Then review quarterly business reports, recent memos, or any recent communication about business goals.

This will mean you start the process with what's relevant at the top of your mind.

After you draft your SMART goals, do another quick scan of these documents and review your goals for relevance.

It‘s easy to get excited about a new idea, even if it doesn’t align with company priorities. But the best ideas will support your most essential business goals.

T — Time-Bound

Time-bound goals have a specific deadline or timeframe. In my experience, without deadlines, assignments are uncompleted, and processes stagnate.

Human nature always seeks comfort and procrastination. Deadlines hold us accountable and pinpoint the lack of resources, knowledge, or other hurdles in a timely manner.

Also, adding a time constraint to your goal creates a sense of urgency.

Urgency combines importance with a need for action. This is sometimes because there‘s a fear of consequences. Other times employees feel it because they’re eager to prepare for the future or meet an exciting goal.

Time constraints are important to your goal-setting process. Tasks that are time-sensitive often feel more important than tasks without a timeframe attached.

This means that, no matter how essential a project is, it will drop in priority without a deadline.

Luckily, it's easy to create a feeling of urgency. Just add a realistic timeframe to your goal. I find that time-bound goals also set clear expectations for stakeholders, which improves communication.

Why are SMART goals important?

SMART goals are important to set as they:

• Help you work with clear intentions, not broad or vague goals.
• Provide a method to gauge your success by setting benchmarks to meet.
• Give sensible objectives that are realistic and achievable.
• Cut out unnecessary or irrelevant work that could take away from what’s important.
• Set a clear beginning and end to adhere to in reaching your goals.

When you set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals, you increase your odds of success by verifying that the goal is achievable, identifying the metrics that define success, and creating a roadmap to reach those metrics.

If your goals are abstract, if you don‘t know what it will take to achieve success, or if you don’t give yourself a deadline to complete steps, you may lose focus and fall short of what you want to accomplish.

Do SMART goals actually work?

In short — yes, if done correctly.

I polled roughly 300 participants in the U.S. and found that 52% believe SMART goals help them achieve their goals more often than if they didn't use a SMART framework.

Setting unrealistic goals and trying to measure them without consideration of previous performance, overly short time frames, or including too many variables will lead you off course.

My experience shows how it works (and fails) in practice.

Prior to starting work with the District #1 Charitable Foundation, I drafted a consultant proposal that outlined services by priority, timeframe, and OKRs.

The purpose was to find and attract new donors for livelihood and development projects for people affected by the war in Ukraine.

Having extensive experience in cold and outbound sales for tech startups, I considered it possible to engage 15 new partners in the conversation in under three months from the database I'd built.

I misjudged the resources needed and the time required to build genuine relationships. As a result, I couldn’t finish all the work within the planned hours.

However, I did manage to establish connections with seven new partners, sign one contract, and attain several memorandums.

That said, I fell short of the desired 15 meetings but succeeded in building long-lasting partnerships.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well, even if your SMART goal doesn’t work out to the fullest, it will bring other positive outcomes or at least valuable lessons for the future. If you encounter failure, don’t give up on this approach just because of one setback.

And here’s how I set realistic goals.

First, I start from the top down, where I state my final and biggest goal. Then, I break down the process to achieve the goal through subsequent steps and tasks. Once I get to the bottom and my first task, I run it through the SMART methodology. Taking that, I do the following:

• I rely on my past experience and lessons learned.
• I estimate the time spent on a specific action item and record the actual time spent on a task.
• If I have no relevant experience, I try to find benchmarks and speak to colleagues.
• If there's no data on the web, I rely on the first two steps and my gut feeling and make tweaks on the go.
• I also try to lay out roadblocks that might appear during the task and the time or resources it will take to resolve.

Let’s now discuss the data-backed benefits of SMART goals.

Benefits of SMART Goals

Offer Focus and Clarity

The process of goal completion is often more complicated than it seems. Distractions, side tasks, and other projects can all steer you away from completing your projects.

But SMART goals improve focus because they simplify the to-do list and offer an immediate reminder of why those specific tasks are important.

Boost Motivation

It's not unusual to experience stress or be overwhelmed in the workplace. One contributor is often a lack of clear goals. And that combination can make a serious impact on your motivation.

But a SMART goal can boost energy, improve direction, and motivate you and your team because:

• It gets everyone more involved in the process.
• It helps employees understand why their work is important.
• It offers a new challenge and direction for people who are feeling stuck.

But, even with SMART goals, motivation levels can drop — sometimes really low. And it’s completely normal. We’re only humans after all. 🙂

Blending freelance writing with part-time work at a charitable fund can be draining. When this happens, here’s how I handle it — I focus on what I enjoy, excel at, and learn from.

When I feel overwhelmed, I pause to remind myself why I do it and what I gain. If I stepped back, would I pivot? The answer is no.

Motivation drives me, so I rely on precise goal setting and tracking to reach new heights, improve the quality of my work, and open more doors.

Improve Accountability

Fear of failure often stops people from doing their best work. To avoid this stressor, you might avoid making a commitment in the workplace.

But accountability is essential for high-growth teams. It helps you and your team engage, take ownership of your work, and take responsibility for progress.

In my experience, SMART goals improve accountability because they give teams and managers a simple way to track progress toward shared objectives.

This makes it easier for teams to understand the learning, coaching, and feedback they need to optimize performance.

According to Persuasion Nation research, people who submit weekly accountability reports tend to achieve 40% more than those who don’t.

Committing to your goals with these reports can really boost your chances of success. Weekly reports help you build a routine and reflect on your progress.

That’s how you get a clear view of what’s working and where you might need to adjust.

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Strengthen Communication

According to 2023 data from Project.co, 68% of businesspeople have wasted time due to communication issues.

And only 7% of businesses rate their communication as “excellent.”

Clearly, effective communication is both difficult and essential to any business.

SMART goals help with effective communication. This is because they're goals that multiple coworkers, teams, and departments can quickly understand. This improves knowledge-sharing, collaborative efforts, and communication.

Help Manage Resources

Proper resource management can reduce costs, make processes more efficient, and increase productivity. But managing resources is tough.

Put simply, a business is a group of people, each with distinct knowledge and experience, working toward individual goals.

These individual goals eventually come together to meet common goals, but in the process, things can get a little wonky.

But SMART goals are great for resource management. This is because they offer a structure that makes it easier for teams to see where a process is creating blocks or challenges.

I’ve found this helps teams understand when priorities and resources are out of sync. It also creates a shared purpose that can inspire people to make necessary but difficult changes.

Increase Innovation

Innovation is a process that combines creativity and problem-solving skills to get original ideas. You may have heard the common belief that creativity requires a lack of boundaries.

And some critiques of SMART goals say that they can have negative impacts if goal-setting is too rigid or narrowly defined.

But there's extensive data, including this research from Harvard Business Review, that says constraints often positively impact innovation. SMART goals boost innovation because they create motivational challenges.

The motivation comes in part from the constraints teams need to work within.

Planning to create goals for the week, month, quarter, or year? Use this template to simplify the process of setting, calculating, and evaluating your SMART goals.

Enhance Performance

For managers, SMART goals offer a useful framework for improving employee performance. They make progress toward project goals clear.

This goal-setting framework can also apply to long-term personal goals for each member of your team.

For individuals, SMART goals can make it easier to balance and track work projects. I’ve found they can boost performance because they help you:

• Measure progress.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses.
• Build positive momentum.

Setting and working toward SMART goals can also help you develop new behaviors that can improve performance.

So now, it’s time to examine some realistic examples of SMART goals to better understand them.

1. Blog Traffic Goal

• Specific I want to boost our blog's traffic by increasing our weekly publishing frequency from five to eight times a week. Our two bloggers will increase their workload from writing two posts a week to three posts a week, and our editor will increase her workload from writing one post a week to two posts a week.
• Measurable: Our goal is an 8% increase in traffic.
• Attainable: Our blog traffic increased by 5% last month when we increased our weekly publishing frequency from three to five times a week.
• Relevant: By increasing blog traffic, we'll boost brand awareness and generate more leads, giving sales more opportunities to close.
• Time-Bound: End of this month.
• SMART Goal: By increasing our weekly publishing frequency from five posts to eight posts, our blog will see an 8% lift in traffic by the end of this month.

2. Facebook Video Views Goal

• Specific: I want to boost our average views per native video by cutting our video content mix from eight topics to our five most popular topics.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 25% increase in views.
• Attainable: When we cut down our video content mix on Facebook from 10 topics to our eight most popular topics, our average views per native video increased by 20%.
• Relevant: By increasing the average views per native video on Facebook, we'll boost our social media following and brand awareness, reaching more potential customers with our video content.
• Time-Bound: In six months.
• SMART Goal: In six months, we'll see a 25% increase in average video views per native video on Facebook by cutting our video content mix from eight topics to our five most popular topics.

3. Email Subscription Goal

• Specific: I want to boost the number of email blog subscribers by increasing our Facebook advertising budget on blog posts that historically acquire the most email subscribers.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 50% increase in subscribers.
• Attainable: Since we started using this tactic three months ago, our email blog subscriptions have increased by 40%.
• Relevant: By increasing the number of email blog subscribers, our blog will drive more traffic, boost brand awareness, and drive more leads to our sales team.
• Time-Bound: In three months.
• SMART Goal: In three months, we'll see a 50% increase in the number of email blog subscribers by increasing our Facebook advertising budget on posts that historically acquire the most blog subscribers.

4. Webinar Sign-Up Goal

• Specific: I want to increase the number of sign-ups for our Facebook Messenger webinar by promoting it through social, email, our blog, and Facebook Messenger.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 15% increase in sign-ups.
• Attainable: Our last Facebook Messenger webinar saw a 10% increase in sign-ups when we only promoted it through social, email, and our blog.
• Relevant: When our webinars generate more leads, sales have more opportunities to close.
• Time-Bound: By June 1, the day of the webinar.
• SMART Goal: By June 1, the day of our webinar, we'll see a 15% increase in sign-ups by promoting it through social, email, our blog, and Facebook Messenger.

5. Landing Page Performance Goal

• Specific: I want our landing pages to generate more leads by switching from a one-column form to a two-column form.
• Measurable: My goal is a 30% increase in lead generation.
• Attainable: When we A/B tested our traditional one-column form versus a two-column form on our highest-traffic landing pages, we discovered that two-column forms convert 27% better than our traditional one-column forms, at a 99% significance level.
• Relevant: If we generate more content leads, sales can close more customers.
• Time-Bound: One year from now.
• SMART Goal: One year from now, our landing pages will generate 30% more leads by switching their forms from one column to two columns.

6. Link-Building Strategy Goal

• Specific: I want to increase our website's organic traffic by developing a link-building strategy that gets other publishers to link to our website. This increases our ranking in search engine results, allowing us to generate more organic traffic.
• Measurable: Our goal is 40 backlinks to our company homepage.
• Attainable: According to our SEO analysis tool, there are currently 500 low-quality links directing to our homepage from elsewhere on the internet. Given the number of partnerships we currently have with other businesses, and that we generate 10 new inbound links per month without any outreach on our part, an additional 40 inbound links from a single link-building campaign is a significant but feasible target.
• Relevant: Organic traffic is our top source of new leads, and backlinks are one of the biggest ranking factors on search engines like Google. If we build links from high-quality publications, our organic ranking increases, boosting our traffic and leads as a result.
• Time-Bound: Four months from now.
• SMART Goal: Over the next four months, I will build 40 additional backlinks that direct to www.ourcompany.com. To do so, I will collaborate with Ellie and Andrew from our PR department to connect with publishers and develop an effective outreach strategy.

7. Reducing Churn Rate Goal

• Specific: I want to reduce customer churn by 5% for my company because every customer loss is a reflection of our service’s quality and perception.
• Measurable: Contact 30 at-risk customers per week and provide customer support daily for five new customers during their onboarding process.
• Attainable: Our product offering has just improved and we have the means to invest more into our customer support team, and could potentially have five at-risk customers upscale monthly.
• Relevant: We can set up a customer knowledge base to track customers’ progression in the buyer’s journey and prevent churn by contacting them before they lose interest.
• Time-Bound: In 24 weeks.

• SMART Goal: In 24 weeks, I will reduce the churn rate by 5% for my company. To do so, we will contact 30 at-risk customers per week and provide/invest in customer support to assist five new customers during onboarding daily and track their progress through a customer knowledge base.

8. Brand Affinity Goal

• Specific: I want to increase our podcast listener count as we are trying to establish ourselves as thought leaders in our market.
• Measurable: A 40% increase in listeners is our goal.
• Attainable: We can increase our current budget and level our podcaster’s cadence to have the means to hold insightful conversations for our listeners to tune into.
• Relevant: We created a podcast and have dedicated a team to source interesting guests, sound mixing, and eye-catching thumbnails to get it started.
• Time-Bound: In four months.
• SMART Goal: In four months, we'll see a 40% increase in average listener count in Apple Podcasts by providing our team the budget and cadence to make insightful podcasts with quality sound mixing and eye-catching thumbnails.

9. Podcast Listener Count Goal

• Specific: I want to boost our podcast's listener count by promoting our podcast across social channels. We will post four quotes related to new podcast episodes throughout the month on our X account, and we will post six short videos of our podcast conversations with guests on our Instagram account throughout the month.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 20% increase in podcast listeners.
• Attainable: Our podcast listener count increased by 5% last month when we published two short videos of our podcast conversation on Instagram.
• Relevant: By increasing podcast listener count, we'll boost brand awareness and generate more leads, giving sales more opportunities to close.
• Time-Bound: End of this month.
• SMART Goal: At the end of this month, our podcast will see a 20% increase in listeners by increasing our promotions from two Instagram posts to four X posts and six Instagram posts. So, if we achieve these numbers, we can say that we have met our SMART social media goals.

10. In-Person Event Attendee Goal

• Specific: I want to boost attendance at our upcoming in-person event by 50% by sending out three email reminders to our subscriber lists each week before the event.
• Measurable: Our goal is a 50% increase in attendees.
• Attainable: Our attendee number increased by 20% last year when we sent out one email reminder to our subscriber lists.
• Relevant: By increasing attendee count, we'll increase brand loyalty by providing value to our existing customers and generate more leads.
• Time-Bound: August 30.
• SMART Goal: By the time of our event on August 30th, our attendee number will increase by 50% from where it's at now (250 attendees), by sending out three email reminders to our subscriber lists.

Now that you’ve seen examples of SMART goals, let’s dive into how to make your own.

1. Use specific wording.

When writing SMART goals, keep in mind that they are “specific” in that there‘s a hard and fast destination the employee is trying to reach.

"Get better at my job" isn’t a SMART goal because it isn't specific.

Instead, I suggest you ask yourself: What are you getting better at? How much better do you want to get?

If you're a marketing professional, your job probably revolves around key performance indicators (KPIs). Therefore, you might choose a particular KPI or metric that you want to improve on — like visitors, leads, or customers.

You should also identify the team members working toward this goal, the resources they have, and their plan of action.

In practice, a specific SMART goal might say, “Clifford and Braden will increase the blog's traffic from email...” You know exactly who‘s involved and what you’re trying to improve on.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: Vagueness

While you may need to keep some goals more open-ended, you should avoid vagueness that could confuse your team later on.

For example, instead of saying, “Clifford will boost email marketing experiences,” say “Clifford will boost email marketing click rates by 10%.”

2. Include measurable goals.

SMART goals should be “measurable” in that you can track and quantify the goal‘s progress. "Increase the blog’s traffic from email," by itself, isn‘t a SMART goal because you can’t measure the increase.

Instead, ask yourself: How much email marketing traffic should you strive for?

In my experience, if you want to gauge your team's progress, you need to quantify your goals, like achieving an X-percentage increase in visitors, leads, or customers.

Let‘s build on the SMART goal we stated above. Now, our measurable SMART goal might say, "Clifford and Braden will increase the blog’s traffic from email by 25% more sessions per month... " You know what you're increasing, and by how much.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: No KPIs

This is in the same vein as avoiding vagueness. While you might need qualitative or open-ended evidence to prove your success, you should still come up with a quantifiable KPI.

For example, instead of saying, “Customer service will improve customer happiness,” say, “We want the average call satisfaction score from customers to be a seven out of ten or higher.”

3. Aim for realistically attainable goals.

An “attainable” SMART goal considers the employee's ability to achieve it. Make sure that the X-percentage increase is rooted in reality.

If your blog traffic increased by 5% last month, try to increase it by 8-10% this month, rather than a lofty 25%.

I think it‘s crucial to base your goals on your own analytics, not industry benchmarks, or else you might bite off more than you can chew.

So, let’s add some “attainability” to the SMART goal we created earlier in this blog post: “Clifford and Braden will increase the blog's traffic from email by 8-10% more sessions per month... ” This way, you're not setting yourself up to fail.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: Unattainable Goals

Yes. You should always aim to improve. But reaching for completely unattainable goals may knock you off course and make it harder to track progress.

Rather than saying, “We want to make 10,000% of what we made in 2022,” consider something more attainable, like, “We want to increase sales by 150% this year,” or “We have a quarterly goal to reach a 20% year-over-year sales increase.”

4. Pick relevant goals that relate to your business.

SMART goals that are “relevant” relate to your company‘s overall business goals and account for current trends in your industry.

For instance, will growing your traffic from email lead to more revenue?

And, is it actually possible for you to significantly boost your blog’s email traffic, given your current email marketing campaigns?

If you're aware of these factors, you’re more likely to set goals that benefit your company — not just you or your department.

So, what does that do to our SMART goal? It might encourage you to adjust the metric you‘re using to track the goal’s progress.

For example, maybe your business has historically relied on organic traffic to generate leads and revenue, and research suggests you can generate more qualified leads this way.

Our SMART goal might instead say, “Clifford and Braden will increase the blog's organic traffic by 8-10% more sessions per month.” This way, your traffic increase is aligned with the business's revenue stream.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: Losing Sight of the Company

When your company is doing well, I know it can be easy to say you want to pivot or grow in another direction. While companies can successfully do this, you don't want your team to lose sight of how the core of your business works.

Rather than saying, “We want to start a new B2B business on top of our B2C business,” say something like, “We want to continue increasing B2C sales while researching the impact our products could have on the B2B space in the next year.”

5. Make goals time-bound by including a timeframe and deadline information.

A “time-bound” SMART goal keeps you on schedule.

Improving on a goal is great, but not if it takes too long. Attaching deadlines to your goals puts a healthy dose of pressure on your team to accomplish them.

I’ve found this helps me make consistent and significant progress in the long term.

For example, which would you prefer: increasing organic traffic by 5% every month, leading to a 30-35% increase in half a year? Or trying to increase traffic by 15% with no deadline and achieving that goal in the same timeframe?

If you picked the former, you're right.

So, what does our SMART goal look like once we bind it to a timeframe?

“Over the next three months, Clifford and Braden will work to increase the blog's organic traffic by 8-10%, reaching a total of 50,000 organic sessions by the end of August.”

As Frederik Binow, CEO at Walor, says, achieving goals is most effective when you set ambitious deadlines for yourself and your team. Without deadlines, tasks often lack specificity, leading to a decrease in motivation and urgency.

Deadlines serve as a motivating force and push individuals to overcome personal barriers through teamwork and determination.

And by consistently raising the bar, we foster a mindset where more goals seem attainable. In short, deadlines drive action and personal growth.

Common SMART Goal Mistake: No Time Frame

Having no timeframe or a really broad span of time noted in your goal will cause the effort to get reprioritized or make it hard for you to see if your team is on track.

Rather than saying, “This year, we want to launch a major campaign,” say, “In quarter one, we will focus on campaign production in order to launch the campaign in quarter two.”

Make Your SMART Goals SMART-er

Now that you know what a SMART goal is, why it‘s important, and the framework to create one, it’s time to put that information into practice.

Whether you‘re setting goals for a personal achievement or as part of hitting important marketing milestones, it’s good to start with what you want to achieve and then reverse-engineer it into a concrete SMART goal.

What I consider very important about setting goals is not to push yourself too hard. Don’t set limits beyond your capabilities.

Yes, we want to step out of our comfort zones, but that doesn’t mean we should destroy ourselves mentally and physically.

And worst of all, if you don’t achieve that goal in the end, it will eat you up inside.

This happened to me, and that’s why I’m trying to explain it to everyone now. Set your goals step by step. Don’t look for shortcuts. It doesn’t work that way.

Step by step. Realistic goals. Smart expectations. And, if things don’t go as planned, see it as a chance to learn from your mistakes.

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

Typography design is a fine balance of aesthetics and readability, and fonts play a crucial role in achieving that harmony. From sleek and modern typefaces to elegant serif fonts, the right typography can add character and distinction to your content.

In this post, we’ve gathered the best magazine fonts that will help you craft stunning, professional layouts that stand out on any print or digital platform. You’ll find fonts that excel in different aspects of magazine design, from bold and striking display fonts for headlines to clean and sophisticated fonts for body text.

Whether you’re working on a lifestyle magazine, fashion editorial, or business publication, these fonts offer the versatility and style you need to create polished, eye-catching designs.

Magazine – Elegant Serif Font

This is an upscale and chic type font that adds sophistication to any branding and logo design. This multifaceted font is ideal for a variety of uses, like social media posts, packaging, photography, and invitations. Its high-level legibility ensures seamless integration across projects.

Vaqoeng – Modern Magazine Font

Vaqoeng offers a modern magazine and logo font that exudes elegance and authenticity. Provided in both OTF and TTF files, this distinct display font can be used to craft attractive titles for posters, book covers, magazines, and more. Vaqoeng is set to redefine your design aesthetics with its contemporary appeal and charming simplicity.

Display Magazine – Modern Title Font

Brighten your creative projects with the Display Magazine font. This versatile font is perfect for both digital platforms and prints, ideal for anything from social media posts to personal projects. Similar to a Vogue magazine font, it lends a touch of sophistication to posters and branding. The set includes OTF, WOFF, and TTF files.

Biomorph – Magazine Font

Biomorph is a versatile, newly-released sans font family, perfect for all your design needs. Ideal for branding, publishing, titles, books, and websites, Biomorph comes in a range of weights including thin, extra light, light, regular, medium, semibold, and bold. Its variety and sleek design give you the freedom to design just the way you want.

Stinker – Modern Magazine Font

Stinker is an excellent choice for projects requiring a touch of elegance and style. Ideal for crafting striking logos, impressive magazine headers, or chic quotes, it offers a wealth of features including a variety of formats (TTF, OTF & WOFF), both uppercase and lowercase letters, ligatures, numerals, and punctuations, as well as regular and italic versions.

Daily Magazine – Serif Display Font

Discover our newest typography offering, Daily Magazine Serif Display Font. A sophisticated and modern choice for a multitude of creative projects, this font offers a versatile range of uses from logos to book covers and fashion branding. The design delicately balances both masculine and feminine tones making it a well-rounded choice.

The Real Magazine – Stylish Title Font

The Real Magazine is a unique, dry-brushed marker font perfect for various applications. Use it to add flair to logos, packaging, t-shirts, posters, book covers, hipster designs, and greeting cards. It’s also ideal for any project requiring brush lettering. This stylish title font makes every creation stand out.

Aloha Magazine – Logo & Title font

The Aloha Magazine logo and title font is a uniquely playful sans serif family boasting nine weights. Perfect for various design projects, it provides seamless typographic harmony, enhancing logos, branding, social media posts, advertisements, or product designs. The package includes Aloha Magazine .otf, .ttf, and .woff files.

Yoshida – Stylish Magazine Font

Yoshida is an elegant, stylish magazine font that provides a distinguished look to your editorial content. Primarily intended for magazines or tabloids, it adds a classic yet fresh appeal to extended paragraphs. This font will significantly enhance readability and aesthetic appeal in your print or online publication.

CS Arthemis – Magazine Blackletter Font

CS Arthemis – Magazine Blackletter Font is a stunning blend of gothic charm and historical elegance. This Medieval display serif font features intricate design details, making it the perfect choice for projects requiring a combination of tradition, authority, and classic appeal. Ideal for luxury branding, formal invitations, and themed designs, CS Arthemis ensures your creations have a distinctive, timeless aesthetic.

Dickson – Geometric Magazine Fonts

Check out Dickson, a versatile sans font with a slim and bold style. Spanning 10 font styles, Dickson boasts of 10 straight-weight variations, perfect for any type of brand, logo, magazine, or movie. Its outlined copy ensures a modern feel to your projects while also offering multilingual support for languages including French, German, Spanish, and more for global accessibility.

Fancyou – Sharp Serif Magazine Font

Fancyou font elegantly merges vintage charm with contemporary dimensions. Its distinguishing feature lies in its sharp, stylish serifs, which are ideal for modern vintage designs. Available in eight diverse styles, this open-type format font is versatile enough for logos, websites, business cards, or branding initiatives.

Bolognia – Classic Serif Magazine Font

The Bolognia is a sophisticated serif typeface, drawing inspiration from both classic and contemporary design elements. With a tall x-height, modern proportions, and contrasting strokes, Bolognia stands out in all the right ways. Versatile across six weights, it’s perfect for editorial content and headline creation that demands clarity and impact.

Merauq – Creative Magazine Font

Merauq is a creative magazine font that provides strikingly harmonious typography across varied design projects. Available in 5 weights, it’s ideal for use in logos, branding, social media posts, advertisements, and product designs. The asset includes Meraq otf, ttf, and woff files, offering a great foundation for diverse and captivating designs.

RNS Miles – Trendy Magazine Font

RNS Miles is a versatile, modern magazine font family, featuring geometric and open forms for a harmonious, low-contrast look. It’s ideally suited for headlines and titles, with seven weights and matching italics. Extended OpenType features, like alternate glyphs and fractions, add to its utility.

Mouzambik – Narrow Magazine Font

Meet Mouzambik, a condensed sans-serif magazine font with a unique and intricate personality, designed to make your projects stand out. Available in regular, Inktrap, and Smooth styles, each with italics, it’s perfect for anything from headlines and branding to websites and posters. It shines in all sizes and includes an array of ligatures, alternates, and features.

Certia – Magazine Font

Certia is a masterfully designed sans-serif font family boasting a blend of elegance and functionality. It includes 16 fonts, providing extensive language support for global communication needs. Ideal for editorial endeavors, branding projects, or digital interfaces, Certia maintains a consistent, readable form while exuding sophistication, closely aligning with varied design settings.

Etnier – Modern Display Magazine Font

Etnier is a captivating modern display font perfect for magazine layouts. This sans-serif typeface offers a striking, squared appearance for superior readability. With a dynamic range of widths, italics, and a bold, robust quality, Etnier is excellent for UI, UX designs. Included in the package are 14 versatile styles available in OTF, TTF, WOFF formats.

Vangeda – Modern Serif Magazine Font

The Vangeda is a modern and elegant serif font that comes in two styles: regular and italic. It has alternate and ligature glyph variations and supports multilingual input. Perfect for various design projects including logos, branding, advertising, and more, it adds a touch of sophistication to your work. Useful for both print and digital mediums, the Vangeda font is an asset to any designer.

Ricordo – Magazine Font

Ricordo, a next-generation Magazine Font, is meticulously crafted for optimal engagement. This typeface has the flexibility to be used across all corporate tasks and a multitude of projects, from logos and headlines to digital ads. With nine weights and multiple file formats, including TTF, OTF, WOFF, and EOT.

Salmond – Clean Magazine Font

Salmond is a clean, geometric, modern sans serif magazine font. With its tightly packed lettering and minimalist allure, it’s perfect for creating striking titles, brand logos, and impactful editorial work. Salmond offers six weight options, including Light, Regular, News, Medium, Semibold, and Bold.

Clover – Bold Magazine Font

A derivative of the Olive Typeface Family, the Clover display font is a distinctive, modern, and elegant asset delivering a bold magazine font ideal for Time Magazine-style title designs. It’s crafted with 16 versatile styles and comes in various formats like TTF, OTF, WOFF. Its strong capitals, smooth lowercase, and quirky warmth make it perfect for branding, headlines, or text overlays.

Free Magazine Fonts

Moderniz – Free Magazine Font

A beautiful, elegant display font for crafting attractive cover designs for magazine concepts. This free font comes with a stylishly bold letter design that will fit perfectly for bold magazines. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Risbeg – Free Magazine Font

Risbeg is another great free font you can use to craft magazine-style titles and headings for your design projects. This font has a professional-looking serif letter design. And it’s free to use with your personal projects.

Angrela Display – Free Magazine Font

This font is ideal for designing elegant magazine-like typography. The font comes with serif letters featuring beautiful curves and swashes. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Free Classic Magazine Font

You can download this font for free to craft stylish magazine-style titles with a classic feel. The font features a professional and minimalist design that will create a bold look for your typography. It’s free for personal use only.

Keryla – Free Magazine Font

A creative and unique font that comes with an elegant aesthetic. This font features a serif letter design with curves and serifs. The font is ideal for a modern magazine look. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Jim hit a snag while working on a form. Placing labels next to inputs is trivial with flexbox, sure, but what happened in Jim’s case was a bit of dead-clicking between the labels and radio buttons.

The issue? Not the markup, that’s all semantic and cool. Turns out the gap he placed between the elements is non-interactive. Makes sense when you think about it, but frustrating nonetheless because it looks like a bug and feels like a bug even though there’s nothing wrong with the styles.

The solution’s easy enough: padding along the inside edge of the input extends its box dimensions, allowing the added space to remain interactive with visual spacing. Margin wouldn’t work since it’s akin to gap in that it pushes the element’s box instead of expanding it.

I’m linking up Jim’s article because it’s a perfect demonstration that CSS is capable of accomplishing the same thing in many ways. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “single-solution” thinking, but CSS doesn’t want anything to do with that. It’ll instead challenge you to adapt toward open-minded strategies, perhaps even defensive ones.

Sanding UI originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

PSA: Today’s the day that Google’s performance tools officially stops supporting the First Input Delay (FID) metric that was replaced by Interaction to Next Paint (INP).

Quick Hit #18 originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

Consider the early days of the internet, when websites like NBC News and Amazon cluttered their pages with flashing banners and labyrinthine menus. In the early 2000s, Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think arrived like a lighthouse in a storm, advocating for simplicity and user-centric design.

Today’s digital world is flooded with choices, information, and data, which is both exciting and overwhelming. Unlike Krug’s time, today, the problem isn’t interaction complexity but opacity. AI-powered solutions often lack transparency and explainability, raising concerns about user trust and accountability. The era of click-and-command is fading, giving way to a more seamless and intelligent relationship between humans and machines.

Expanding on Krug’s Call for Clarity: The Pillars of Anticipatory Design

Krug’s emphasis on clarity in design is more relevant than ever. In anticipatory design, clarity is not just about simplicity or ease of use — it’s about transparency and accountability. These two pillars are crucial but often missing as businesses navigate this new paradigm. Users today find themselves in a digital landscape that is not only confusing but increasingly intrusive. AI predicts their desires based on past behavior but rarely explains how these predictions are made, leading to growing mistrust.

Transparency is the foundation of clarity. It involves openly communicating how AI-driven decisions are made, what data is being collected, and how it is being used to anticipate needs. By demystifying these processes, designers can alleviate user concerns about privacy and control, thereby building trust.

Accountability complements transparency by ensuring that anticipatory systems are designed with ethical considerations in mind. This means creating mechanisms for users to understand, question, and override automated decisions if needed. When users feel that the system is accountable to them, their trust in the technology — and the brand — deepens.

Image AI like a waiter at a restaurant. Without AI, they wait for you to interact with them and place your order. But with anticipatory design powered by AI and ML, the waiter can analyze your past orders (historical data) and current behavior (contextual data) — perhaps, by noticing you always start with a glass of sparkling water.

This proactive approach has evolved since the late 1990s, with early examples like Amazon’s recommendation engine and TiVo’s predictive recording. These pioneering services demonstrated the potential of predictive analytics and ML to create personalized, seamless user experiences.

Amazon’s Recommendation Engine (Late 1990s)

Amazon was a pioneer in using data to predict and suggest products to customers, setting the standard for personalized experiences in e-commerce.

TiVo (1999)

TiVo’s ability to learn users’ viewing habits and automatically record shows marked an early step toward predictive, personalized entertainment.

Netflix’s Recommendation System (2006)

Netflix began offering personalized movie recommendations based on user ratings and viewing history in 2006. It helped popularize the idea of anticipatory design in the digital entertainment space.

Designing for anticipation is designing for a future that is not here yet but has already started moving toward us.

Designing for anticipation involves more than reacting to current trends; it requires businesses to plan strategically for future user needs. Two critical concepts in this process are forecasting and backcasting.

• Forecasting analyzes past trends and data to predict future outcomes, helping businesses anticipate user needs.
• Backcasting starts with a desired future outcome and works backward to identify the steps needed to achieve that goal.

Think of it like planning a dream vacation. Forecasting would involve looking at your past trips to guess where you might go next. But backcasting lets you pick your ideal destination first, then plan the perfect itinerary to get you there.

Forecasting: A Core Concept for Future-Oriented Design

This method helps in planning and decision-making based on probable future scenarios. Consider Netflix, which uses forecasting to analyze viewers’ past viewing habits and predict what they might want to watch next. By leveraging data from millions of users, Netflix can anticipate individual preferences and serve personalized recommendations that keep users engaged and satisfied.

Backcasting: Planning From the Desired Future

Backcasting takes a different approach. Instead of using data to predict the future, it starts with defining a desired future outcome — a clear user intent. The process then works backward to identify the steps needed to achieve that goal. This goal-oriented approach crafts an experience that actively guides users toward their desired future state.

For instance, a financial planning app might start with a user’s long-term financial goal, such as saving for retirement, and then design an experience that guides the user through each step necessary to reach that goal, from budgeting tips to investment recommendations.

Integrating Forecasting and Backcasting In Anticipatory Design

The true power of anticipatory design emerges when businesses efficiently integrate both forecasting and backcasting into their design processes.

For example, Tesla’s approach to electric vehicles exemplifies this integration. By forecasting market trends and user preferences, Tesla can introduce features that appeal to users today. Simultaneously, by backcasting from a vision of a sustainable future, Tesla designs its vehicles and infrastructure to guide society toward a world where electric cars are the norm and carbon emissions are significantly reduced.

As businesses increasingly adopt anticipatory design, the integration of forecasting and backcasting becomes essential. Forecasting allows businesses to predict and respond to immediate user needs, while backcasting ensures these responses align with long-term goals. Despite its potential, anticipatory design often fails in execution, leaving few examples of success.

Over the past decade, I’ve observed and documented the rise and fall of several ambitious anticipatory design ventures. Among them, three — Digit, LifeBEAM Vi Sense Headphones, and Mint — highlight the challenges of this approach.

Digit: Struggling with Contextual Understanding

Digit aimed to simplify personal finance with algorithms that automatically saved money based on user spending. However, the service often missed the mark, lacking the contextual awareness necessary to accurately assess users’ real-time financial situations. This led to unexpected withdrawals, frustrating users, especially those living paycheck to paycheck. The result was a breakdown in trust, with the service feeling more intrusive than supportive.

LifeBEAM Vi Sense Headphones: Complexity and User Experience Challenges

LifeBEAM Vi Sense Headphones was marketed as an AI-driven fitness coach, promising personalized guidance during workouts. In practice, the AI struggled to deliver tailored coaching, offering generic and unresponsive advice. As a result, users found the experience difficult to navigate, ultimately limiting the product’s appeal and effectiveness. This disconnection between the promised personalized experience and the actual user experience left many disappointed.

Mint: Misalignment with User Goals

Mint aimed to empower users to manage their finances by providing automated budgeting tools and financial advice. While the service had the potential to anticipate user needs, users often found that the suggestions were not tailored to their unique financial situations, resulting in generic advice that did not align with their personal goals.

The lack of personalized, actionable steps led to a mismatch between user expectations and service delivery. This misalignment caused some users to disengage, feeling that Mint was not fully attuned to their unique financial journeys.

The stories of Digit, LifeBEAM Vi Sense, and Mint underscore a common pitfall: over-promising and under-delivering. These services focused too much on predictive power and not enough on user experience. When anticipatory systems fail to consider individual nuances, they breed frustration rather than satisfaction, highlighting the importance of aligning design with human experience.

Digit’s approach to automated savings, for instance, became problematic when users found its decisions opaque and unpredictable. Similarly, LifeBEAM’s Vi Sense headphones struggled to meet diverse user needs, while Mint’s rigid tools failed to offer the personalized insights users expected. These examples illustrate the delicate balance anticipatory design must strike between proactive assistance and user control.

Failure to Evolve with User Needs

Many anticipatory services rely heavily on data-driven forecasting, but predictions can fall short without understanding the broader user context. Mint initially provided value with basic budgeting tools but failed to evolve with users’ growing needs for more sophisticated financial advice. Digit, too, struggled to adapt to different financial habits, leading to dissatisfaction and limited success.

Complexity and Usability Issues

Balancing the complexity of predictive systems with usability and transparency is a key challenge in anticipatory design.

When systems become overly complex, as seen with LifeBEAM Vi Sense headphones, users may find them difficult to navigate or control, compromising trust and engagement. Mint’s generic recommendations, born from a failure to align immediate user needs with long-term goals, further illustrate the risks of complexity without clarity.

Privacy and Trust Issues

Trust is critical in anticipatory design, particularly in services handling sensitive data like finance or health. Digit and Mint both encountered trust issues as users grew skeptical of how decisions were made and whether these services truly had their best interests in mind. Without clear communication and control, even the most sophisticated systems risk alienating users.

Inadequate Handling of Edge Cases and Unpredictable Scenarios

While forecasting and backcasting work well for common scenarios, they can struggle with edge cases or unpredictable user behaviors. If an anticipatory service can’t handle these effectively, it risks providing a poor user experience and, in the worst-case scenario, harming the user. Anticipatory systems must be prepared to handle edge cases and unpredictable scenarios.

LifeBEAM Vi Sense headphones struggled when users deviated from expected fitness routines, offering a one-size-fits-all experience that failed to adapt to individual needs. This highlights the importance of allowing users control, even when a system proactively assists them.

Anticipatory design should empower users to achieve their goals, not just automate tasks.

We can follow a layered approach to plan a service that can evolve according to user actions and explicit ever-evolving intent.

But how do we design for intent without misaligning anticipation and user control or mismatching user expectations and service delivery?

At the core of this approach is intent — the primary purpose or goal that the design must achieve. Surrounding this are workflows, which represent the structured tasks to achieve the intent. Finally, algorithms analyze user data and optimize these workflows.

For instance, Thrive (see the image below), a digital wellness platform, aligns algorithms and workflows with the core intent of improving well-being. By anticipating user needs and offering personalized programs, Thrive helps users achieve sustained behavior change.

It perfectly exemplifies the three-layered concentric representation for achieving behavior change through anticipatory design:

1. Innermost layer: Intent

Improve overall well-being: Thrive’s core intent is to help users achieve a healthier and more fulfilling life. This encompasses aspects like managing stress, improving sleep quality, and boosting energy levels.

2. Middle layer: Workflows

Personalized programs and support: Thrive uses user data (sleep patterns, activity levels, mood) to create programs tailored to their specific needs and goals. These programs involve various workflows, such as:

• Guided meditations and breathing exercises to manage stress and anxiety.
• Personalized sleep routines aimed at improving sleep quality.
• Educational content and coaching tips to promote healthy habits and lifestyle changes.

3. Outermost layer: Algorithms

Data analysis and personalized recommendations: Thrive utilizes algorithms to analyze user data and generate actionable insights. These algorithms perform tasks like the following:

• Identify patterns in sleep, activity, and mood to understand user challenges.
• Predict user behavior to recommend interventions that address potential issues.
• Optimize program recommendations based on user progress and data analysis.

By aligning algorithms and workflows with the core intent of improving well-being, Thrive provides a personalized and proactive approach to behavior change. Here’s how it benefits users:

• Sustained behavior change: Personalized programs and ongoing support empower users to develop healthy habits for the long term.
• Data-driven insights: User data analysis helps users gain valuable insights into their well-being and identify areas for improvement.
• Proactive support: Anticipates potential issues and recommends interventions before problems arise.

Anticipatory design is inherently future-oriented, making it both appealing and challenging. To succeed, businesses must combine anticipation — predicting future needs — with foresight, a systematic approach to analyzing and preparing for future changes.

Foresight involves considering alternative future scenarios and making informed decisions to navigate toward desired outcomes. For example, Digit and Mint struggled because they didn’t adequately handle edge cases or unpredictable scenarios, a failure in their foresight strategy (see an image below).

As mentioned, while forecasting and backcasting work well for common scenarios, they can struggle with edge cases or unpredictable user behaviors. Under anticipatory design, if we demote foresight for a second plan, the business will fail to account for and prepare for emerging trends and disruptive changes. Strategic foresight helps companies to prepare for the future and develop strategies to address possible challenges and opportunities.

The Foresight process generally involves interrelated activities, including data research, trend analysis, planning scenarios, and impact assessment. The ultimate goal is to gain a broader and deeper understanding of the future to make more informed and strategic decisions in the design process and foresee possible frictions and pitfalls in the user experience.

Actionable Insights for Designer

• Enhance contextual awareness
  Help data scientists or engineers to ensure that the anticipatory systems can understand and respond to the full context of user needs, not just historical data. Plan for pitfalls so you can design safety measures where the user can control the system.
• Maintain user control
  Provide users with options to customize or override automated decisions, ensuring they feel in control of their experiences.
• Align short-term predictions with long-term goals
  Use forecasting and backcasting to create a balanced approach that meets immediate needs while guiding users toward their long-term objectives.

Predicting the future is no easy task. However, design can borrow foresight techniques to imagine, anticipate, and shape a future where technology seamlessly integrates with users evolving needs. To effectively implement anticipatory design, it’s essential to balance human control with AI automation. Here’s a 3-step approach to integrate future thinking into your workflow:

1. Anticipate Directions of Change
   Identify major trends shaping the future.
2. Imagine Alternative Scenarios
   Explore potential futures to guide impactful design decisions.
3. Shape Our Choices
   Leverage these scenarios to align design with user needs and long-term goals.

This proposed framework (see an image above) aims to integrate forecasting and backcasting while emphasizing user intent, transparency, and continuous improvement, ensuring that businesses create experiences that are both predictive and deeply aligned with user needs.

Step 1: Anticipate Directions of Change

Objective: Identify the major trends and forces shaping the future landscape.

Components:

1. Understand the User’s Intent

• User Research: Conduct in-depth user research through interviews, surveys, and observations to uncover user goals, motivations, pain points, and long-term aspirations or Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD). This foundational step helps clearly define the user’s intent.
• Persona Development: Develop detailed user personas that represent the target audience, including their long-term goals and desired outcomes. Prioritize understanding how the service can adapt in real-time to changing user needs, offering recommendations, or taking actions aligned with the persona’s current context.

2. Forecasting: Predicting Near-Term User Needs

• Data Collection and Analysis: Collaborate closely with data scientists and data engineers to analyze historical data (past interactions), user behavior, and external factors. This collaboration ensures that predictive analytics enhance overall user experience, allowing designers to better understand the implications of data on user behaviors.
• Predictive Modeling: Implement continuous learning algorithms that refine predictions over time. Regularly assess how these models evolve, adapting to users’ changing needs and circumstances.
• Explore the Delphi Method: This is a structured communication technique that gathers expert opinions to reach a consensus on future developments. It’s particularly useful for exploring complex issues with uncertain outcomes. Use the Delphi Method to gather insights from industry experts, user researchers, and stakeholders about future user needs and the best strategies to meet those needs. The consensus achieved can help in clearly defining the long-term goals and desired outcomes.

Activities:

• Conduct interviews and workshops with experts using the Delphi Method to validate key trends.
• Analyze data and trends to forecast future directions.

Step 2: Imagine Alternative Scenarios

Objective: Explore a range of potential futures based on these changing directions.

Components:

1. Scenario Planning

• Scenario Development: It involves creating detailed, plausible future scenarios based on various external factors, such as technological advancements, social trends, and economic changes. Develop multiple future scenarios that represent different possible user contexts and their impact on their needs.
• Scenario Analysis: From these scenarios, you can outline the long-term goals that users might have in each scenario and design services that anticipate and address these needs. Assess how these scenarios impact user needs and experiences.

2. Backcasting: Designing from the Desired Future

• Define Desired Outcomes: Clearly outline the long-term goals or future states that users aim to achieve. Use backcasting to reduce cognitive load by designing a service that anticipates future needs, streamlining user interactions, and minimizing decision-making efforts.
  • Use Visioning Planning: This is a creative process that involves imagining the ideal future state you want to achieve. It helps in setting clear, long-term goals by focusing on the desired outcomes rather than current constraints. Facilitate workshops or brainstorming sessions with stakeholders to co-create a vision of the future. Define what success looks like from the user’s perspective and use this vision to guide the backcasting process.
• Identify Steps to Reach Goals: Reverse-engineer the user journey by starting from the desired future state and working backward. Identify the necessary steps and milestones and ensure these are communicated transparently to users, allowing them control over their experience.
• Create Roadmaps: Develop detailed roadmaps that outline the sequence of actions needed to transition from the current state to the desired future state. These roadmaps should anticipate obstacles, respect privacy, and avoid manipulative behaviors, empowering users rather than overwhelming them.

Activities:

• Develop and analyze alternative scenarios to explore various potential futures.
• Use backcasting to create actionable roadmaps from these scenarios, ensuring they align with long-term goals.

Step 3: Shape Our Choices

Objective: Leverage these scenarios to spark new ideas and guide impactful design decisions.

Components:

1. Integrate into the Human-Centered Design Process

• Iterative Design with Forecasting and Backcasting: Embed insights from forecasting and backcasting into every stage of the design process. Use these insights to inform user research, prototype development, and usability testing, ensuring that solutions address both predicted future needs and desired outcomes. Continuously refine designs based on user feedback.
• Agile Methodologies: Adopt agile development practices to remain flexible and responsive. Ensure that the service continuously learns from user interactions and feedback, refining its predictions and improving its ability to anticipate needs.

2. Implement and Monitor: Ensuring Ongoing Relevance

• User Feedback Loops: Establish continuous feedback mechanisms to refine predictive models and workflows. Use this feedback to adjust forecasts and backcasted plans as necessary, keeping the design aligned with evolving user expectations.
• Automation Tools: Collaborate with data scientists and engineers to deploy automation tools that execute workflows and monitor progress toward goals. These tools should adapt based on new data, evolving alongside user behavior and emerging trends.
• Performance Metrics: Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness, accuracy, and quality of the anticipatory experience. Regularly review these metrics to ensure that the system remains aligned with intended outcomes.
• Continuous Improvement: Maintain a cycle of continuous improvement where the system learns from each interaction, refining its predictions and recommendations over time to stay relevant and useful.
  • Use Trend Analysis: This involves identifying and analyzing patterns in data over time to predict future developments. This method helps you understand the direction in which user behaviors, technologies, and market conditions are heading. Use trend analysis to identify emerging trends that could influence user needs in the future. This will inform the desired outcomes by highlighting what users might require or expect from a service as these trends evolve.

Activities:

• Implement design solutions based on scenario insights and iterate based on user feedback.
• Regularly review and adjust designs using performance metrics and continuous improvement practices.

Anticipatory design holds immense potential to revolutionize user experiences by predicting and fulfilling needs before they are even articulated. However, as seen in the examples discussed, the gap between expectation and execution can lead to user dissatisfaction and erode trust.

To navigate the future of anticipatory design successfully, businesses must prioritize transparency, accountability, and user empowerment. By enhancing contextual awareness, maintaining user control, and aligning short-term predictions with long-term goals, companies can create experiences that are not only innovative but also deeply resonant with their users’ needs.

Moreover, combining anticipation with foresight allows businesses to prepare for a range of future scenarios, ensuring that their designs remain relevant and effective even as circumstances change. The proposed 3-step framework — anticipating directions of change, imagining alternative scenarios, and shaping our choices — provides a practical roadmap for integrating these principles into the design process.

As we move forward, the challenge will be to balance the power of AI with the human need for clarity, control, and trust. By doing so, businesses can fulfill the promise of anticipatory design, creating products and services that are not only efficient and personalized but also ethical and user-centric.

In the end,

The success of anticipatory design will depend on its ability to enhance, rather than replace, the human experience.

It is a tool to empower users, not to dictate their choices. When done right, anticipatory design can lead to a future where technology seamlessly integrates with our lives, making everyday experiences simpler, more intuitive, and ultimately more satisfying.