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As a content writer in the digital marketing space, I spend a lot of time breaking down industry terms, concepts, and strategies, some of which can be more confusing or difficult to grasp than others.

However, I have also found that some terms, including “B2B2C marketing,” might seem to be overly complicated at first, but turn out to be much easier to understand once you investigate them.

In this post, I’ll guide you through what B2B2C marketing is and how it works, as well as provide a few examples of popular and effective B2B2C marketing strategies.

Table of Contents

• What is B2B2C marketing?
• Why B2B2C Marketing Works
• How B2B2C Marketing Works
• 3 Effective B2B2C Marketing Strategies

Importantly, B2B2C marketing is distinct from B2B or B2C marketing, in which businesses sell exclusively to other businesses or directly to consumers.

B2B2C marketing is actually incredibly common, and most of us engage with businesses utilizing this model on a regular basis.

In fact, B2B2C marketing has been around for ages but has grown increasingly prevalent over the years as technological innovation has made it easier and more beneficial for businesses to collaborate.

Now that I’ve provided you with a basic definition of B2B2C marketing, let’s look at exactly why — and how — it works and explore some real-world examples.

Why B2B2C Marketing Works

Personally, I have seen B2B2C marketing take many forms and be used in various contexts across industries.

In many cases, these have been simple arrangements between two businesses, in which the underlying strategies and mutually beneficial nature of the partnerships were incredibly straightforward.

And in others, the inner workings and processes have been considerably more intricate, sometimes including a product manufacturer, global distributor, and hundreds of independent retail organizations operating around the world.

However, in virtually every example I’ve encountered, B2B2C marketing strategies tend to follow the same basic set of rules and target similar outcomes. Here are some of the ways that this model is beneficial for businesses.

Shared Benefits of Partnership and Collaboration

The first thing to understand is that B2B2C marketing is essentially a partnership or collaboration between businesses.

These partnerships are typically formed by recognizing that each business has something the other needs or can benefit from.

In most cases, the first business has a particular product, and the second, intermediary business has access to consumers who would be interested in buying that product.

Put simply, when B2B2C marketing is utilized effectively, everybody wins.

Elevated Brand Awareness and Growth

It’s also important to note that the benefits of B2B2C marketing often go far beyond increasing sales.

For one, collaborative content creation and marketing efforts between businesses help build brand awareness and grow each company’s consumer base.

Increased Access to Consumer Data and Insights

Additionally, in many cases the first business will gain access to valuable consumer data and insights, allowing them to better identify and understand their target audience. This in turn helps them provide more personalized experiences.

How B2B2C Marketing Works

Now that I’ve given a general description of why B2B2C marketing works and how it benefits businesses, I’d like to highlight a few examples of companies that use this model.

The examples I’m about to share will demonstrate how B2B2C marketing strategies can vary depending on the product and/or industry.

B2B2C Marketing Strategy Example 1: Frito-Lay

Frito-Lay is a great company to start with because it offers one of the oldest, most basic iterations of B2B2C marketing.

As a manufacturer of popular snacks, Frito-Lay partners with grocery stores around the world, which act as intermediaries that buy, market, and sell its products directly to consumers.

One common aspect of B2B2C marketing to keep in mind as we go through these examples is that consumers will always be aware of the partnership.

In this example, when I go to the grocery store to buy my favorite chips, I understand that I am buying the chips from the store, but also that the chips originated from and were manufactured at one of Frito-Lay’s facilities.

B2B2C Marketing Strategy Example 2: Instacart

Sticking with groceries as a product category, Instacart is another, more modern example of B2B2C marketing in action. In this case, however, the grocery store is the first business and Instacart is the intermediary.

More specifically, if I own and operate a grocery store, I am limited to selling my products to consumers who walk into the physical location to purchase groceries.

But by partnering with a delivery service like Instacart, I now have a way to sell my products to people in their home, and without the need to worry about the logistics involved with food delivery.

B2B2C Marketing Strategy Example 3: Apple

Moving on to the tech industry, Apple is an excellent example to look at for a few reasons. For one, it engages in different B2B2C strategies related to both hardware and digital services.

Secondly, Apple is an example of a company whose business model consists of B2B, B2C, and B2B2C all at once.

In terms of hardware, Apple sells its iPhones to telecommunications companies, such as Verizon and T-Mobile, who then sell the iPhones directly to consumers (B2B2C). At the same time, Apple also sells its products directly to consumers at its own stores and on its website (B2C).

Regarding digital services, Apple provides its marketplace, the App Store, to software developers who can then sell their mobile applications to consumers (B2B2C).

Meanwhile, Apple also sells its own software solutions and platforms, such as Apple Business Manager, directly to business owners to support their operations (B2B).

B2B2C Marketing Strategy Example 4: Amazon

Amazon runs one of the largest and most successful B2B2C marketing operations in the world.

By providing an ecommerce marketplace, along with warehouse, customer support, and delivery services, businesses and manufacturers across industries gain the ability to sell their products to a wider range of consumers than they would normally have access to.

It’s also worth mentioning that, like Apple, Amazon also manufactures and sells its own products to consumers on its website (B2C), while also producing and distributing its own software solutions to businesses (B2B).

By this point, I hope you’ve gained a better understanding of what B2B2C marketing is and how it works in different industries and contexts.

Now, I want to examine a few specific strategies that can help businesses maximize the impact of their B2B2C marketing efforts.

3 Effective B2B2C Marketing Strategies

From what I’ve seen, the most successful B2B2C marketing strategies are those in which both businesses lean into the collaborative element of their partnership, finding creating ways for each to benefit while optimizing the experiences and satisfaction of the end consumer.

For example, I once worked for a small clothing company with a uniquely talented creative team and exclusive access to influential brand ambassadors. But they also had extremely limited capital, ecommerce capabilities, and access to consumers.

By partnering with a much larger, more established fashion brand, they were able to execute a collaborative campaign and get their products in front of a larger audience — all while providing their partner with high-quality creative content and a valuable influencer co-sign to help revive the brand’s image.

Here are just a few effective B2B2C marketing strategies that emphasize collaboration and mutually beneficial outcomes.

1. Collaborative Marketing Campaigns

Fostering brand awareness is often important to both businesses within a B2B2C marketing partnership.

As such, broadcasting your collaboration via creative advertising campaigns can be a great way to call attention to both brands as well as their specific services and product offerings.

For example, influencer marketing has become an increasingly effective way to reach online consumers and bring brands into the spotlight.

Whether it’s launched on social media or in the form of a television or streaming service advertisement, engaging a celebrity to promote the collaboration between brands will help ensure the partnership doesn’t fly under the radar.

Best for: B2B2C partnerships in which both companies have a significant consumer-facing element. For instance, if Samsung and Verizon collaborate on a campaign advertising a new mobile device combined with a service promotion, both businesses can increase sales based on the same campaign.

Pro tip: Using unified marketing software like Marketing Hub can be a big help here as you collaborate on campaigns.

2. Referral Programs

While by no means a new concept, establishing a referral program remains one of the most effective ways for businesses to collaborate to each party’s benefit.

In the case of B2B2C marketing specifically, this can allow an intermediary to be compensated for the sale of the first business’s product rather than merely supporting them or providing access to consumers.

Referral programs can be rolled out in a variety of ways, but in many cases, it’s as simple as agreeing on a fair commission for the intermediary based on each individual sale of a product or service.

As an example, if I own a SaaS company and partner with an online marketplace to sell my solutions, it might make sense to offer a 10% commission on each sale, particularly considering the sale wouldn’t have been possible without their services.

Best for: Businesses selling high-ticket items or services, such as SaaS and FinTech companies. In B2B2C marketing, referral programs tend to work best when the products being sold are more expensive.

Put simply, high-ticket items provide a better incentive for the intermediary, and the financial impact of the referral arrangement for both parties is much easier to estimate and track.

3. Personalization Based on Data Sharing

Finally, in many B2B2C partnerships, data sharing is one of the most important and valuable components of the relationship.

This is primarily because it allows businesses to gather and analyze consumer insights to create more personalized experiences, ensuring both a customer’s immediate satisfaction and making it easier to market similar products to them in the future.

For example, if I run an ecommerce platform that hosts and sells a company’s products, evaluating data related to that company’s consumer base will tell me more about who they are and what they like.

I can then use this information to offer those consumers additional products that align with their past purchases, behaviors, and preferences.

Best for: Businesses across industries that have advanced data management capabilities and processes. Personalization is an excellent tool, but there are certain instances in which data sharing is not a part of the B2B2C marketing partnership, or in which a business may not have the level of digital maturity or marketing software needed to make sufficient use of consumer data.

B2B2C marketing is a versatile solution.

The main thing I’ve learned from this post — and I hope you have too — is that B2B2C marketing is an incredibly diverse business model. It can take on virtually limitless forms and be implemented via a wide range of strategies.

The bottom line is that B2B2C marketing is a versatile solution for addressing a variety of needs. While the specific way it’s implemented will depend on both the businesses’ capabilities and what they’re looking to accomplish, it definitely has something to offer companies at all stages of their journey.

In this third and final part of a three-part series, we’re taking a more streamlined approach to an application that supports vision-language (VLM) and text-to-speech (TTS). This time, we’ll use different models that are designed for all three modalities — images or videos, text, and audio( including speech-to-text) — in one model. These “any-to-any” models make things easier by allowing us to avoid switching between models.

Specifically, we’ll focus on two powerful models: Reka and Gemini 1.5 Pro.

Both models take things to the next level compared to the tools we used earlier. They eliminate the need for separate speech recognition models, providing a unified solution for multimodal tasks. With this in mind, our goal in this article is to explore how Reka and Gemini simplify building advanced applications that handle images, text, and audio all at once.

The architecture of multimodal models has evolved to enable seamless handling of various inputs, including text, images, and audio, among others. Traditional models often require separate components for each modality, but recent advancements in “any-to-any” models like Next-GPT or 4M allow developers to build systems that process multiple modalities within a unified architecture.

Gato, for instance, utilizes a 1.2 billion parameter decoder-only transformer architecture with 24 layers, embedding sizes of 2048 and a hidden size of 8196 in its feed-forward layers. This structure is optimized for general tasks across various inputs, but it still relies on extensive task-specific fine-tuning.

GPT-4o, on the other hand, takes a different approach with training on multiple media types within a single architecture. This means it’s a single model trained to handle a variety of inputs (e.g., text, images, code) without the need for separate systems for each. This training method allows for smoother task-switching and better generalization across tasks.

Similarly, CoDi employs a multistage training scheme to handle a linear number of tasks while supporting input-output combinations across different modalities. CoDi’s architecture builds a shared multimodal space, enabling synchronized generation for intertwined modalities like video and audio, making it ideal for more dynamic multimedia tasks.

Most “any-to-any” models, including the ones we’ve discussed, rely on a few key concepts to handle different tasks and inputs smoothly:

• Shared representation space
  These models convert different types of inputs — text, images, audio — into a common feature space. Text is encoded into vectors, images into feature maps, and audio into spectrograms or embeddings. This shared space allows the model to process various inputs in a unified way.
• Attention mechanisms
  Attention layers help the model focus on the most relevant parts of each input, whether it’s understanding the text, generating captions from images, or interpreting audio.
• Cross-modal interaction
  In many models, inputs from one modality (e.g., text) can guide the generation or interpretation of another modality (e.g., images), allowing for more integrated and cohesive outputs.
• Pre-training and fine-tuning
  Models are typically pre-trained on large datasets across different types of data and then fine-tuned for specific tasks, enhancing their performance in real-world applications.

Reka is an AI research company that helps developers build powerful applications by offering models for a range of tasks. These tasks include generating text from videos and images, translating speech, and answering complex questions from long multimodal documents. Reka’s models can even write and execute code, providing flexible, real-world solutions for developers.

These are the three main models Reka offers:

1. Reka Core
   A 67-billion-parameter multimodal language model designed for complex tasks. It supports inputs like images, videos, and texts while excelling in advanced reasoning and coding.
2. Reka Flash
   A faster model with a 21-billion-parameter, designed for flexibility and rapid performance in multimodal settings.
3. Reka Edge (PDF)
   A smaller 7-billion-parameter model was built for on-device and low-latency applications, making it efficient for local use and local or latency-sensitive applications.

Reka’s models can be fine-tuned and deployed securely, whether on the cloud, on-premises, or even on-device. Let’s start by testing Reka’s capabilities directly through its playground. This allows us to experiment with its multimodal features without writing any code, providing a hands-on way to see how the models handle various tasks, such as image and video comprehension.

Alright, we’ll kick things off by uploading an image of a diagram outline of the PaliGemma architecture and ask Reka for a detailed explanation.

Can you provide a more detailed explanation of this image?

Here’s what we get from Reka Core:

“This image is a schematic representation of a machine-learning model named PaliGemma. The model appears to be designed for multimodal input, combining both image and text data. At the top, there are two input sources: ‘Image Input’ and ‘Text Input’. The image input is processed by a ‘SigLIP Image Encoder’, which likely stands for a specific type of image encoding technique. The output of this encoder is then subjected to a ‘Linear Projection’, which is a common step in machine learning to transform data into a lower-dimensional space. The text input is directly fed into the model. Both the projected image data and the text input are then concatenated into ‘Concatenated Tokens’, which are then processed by a component labeled ‘Gemma’. The final output of the model is ‘Text Output’, which suggests that the model is designed to generate text based on the input data.”

It’s a clear and detailed breakdown of the PaliGemma architecture. The model accurately identifies image and text inputs, the SigLIP image encoder, and the linear projection step. It also grasps how the image and text inputs are combined and processed to generate text output. I should admit that the response is quite neat, offering a solid explanation of the architecture.

Let’s try a video input instead. We’ll upload the video about Genny, a software, and ask a question to see how well Reka Core handles video comprehension.

What is this video about?

“This video is a screen recording of a group of friends discussing their plans for the weekend.”

Well, it’s not a good answer compared to what LLaVA gave us in the previous article. Now let’s try a longer video, but with the Reka Flash model. The video is about a TTS model called Parler TTS. Instead of asking what the video is about, let’s prompt it like this:

I’m an AI developer, and I’m not sure how this TTS model can help me in my projects. Can you explain how I can use it or what it’s useful for?

Reka Flash generates a solid answer this time:

“Of course! This TTS (Text-to-Speech) model can be incredibly useful for developers, especially those working on projects that involve creating more human-like interactions or providing audio feedback to users. Here are some ways you can leverage this TTS model in your projects:

1. Accessibility: TTS models can greatly enhance the accessibility of your applications for users with visual impairments or reading difficulties. By providing spoken feedback or narrating content, you can make your applications more inclusive
2. Voice Assistants: You can integrate this TTS model into voice assistants or chatbots, allowing them to generate more natural-sounding responses. This can improve user experience and make interactions with your bots more engaging.
3. Multimedia Applications: This TTS model can be used in multimedia applications, such as e-books, educational tools, or games, to provide spoken narration or instructions. This can make the content more engaging and easier to understand.
4. Audio Notifications: You can use the TTS model to generate audio notifications for your applications, providing users with spoken alerts or reminders. This can be particularly useful for users who may not always have their screens visible.
5. Language Learning: The TTS model can be used in language learning applications to provide users with correct pronunciation and intonation. It can also generate spoken feedback or narrate lessons, making the learning process more immersive.
6. Audio Books: You can use the TTS model to generate audio books, allowing users to listen to written content instead of reading it. This can be especially helpful for users who prefer auditory learning or have difficulty reading.
7. Explainer Videos: The TTS model can be used to generate voiceovers for explainer videos, providing users with spoken narration that explains the content on the screen. This can make the content more engaging and easier to understand.
8. Audio Feedback: You can use the TTS model to generate audio feedback for users in your applications, such as confirming actions, providing instructions, or giving feedback on their performance. This can make the interactions more natural and intuitive.

In summary, the TTS model can be a valuable tool for developers looking to create more human-like interactions, improve accessibility, and enhance the user experience in various applications.”

It’s a good answer that’s informative and quite practical for developers. Let’s compare what happens when we try the Reka Edge model with a PDF input titled “Meta AI — Responsible Use Guide” (PDF).

As an AI developer, how can I ensure that I am following the responsible AI guidelines outlined in this document?

“To ensure that your use of AI aligns with the principles outlined in this guide, you can follow these steps and best practices:

1. Familiarize yourself with the principles of responsible AI, such as transparency, accountability, and user empowerment, as outlined in the guide.
2. Understand the potential impacts of AI on users and society, and be aware of the risks and challenges associated with the development and deployment of AI systems.
3. Embrace an iterative model-development mindset, continuously striving for improvement and learning from feedback and errors.
4. Build a responsible AI ecosystem by working with partners, experts, and communities to develop and share best practices, tools, and benchmarking resources.
5. Follow the guidelines and best practices outlined in the guide for each stage of model development, from data collection and preparation to fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment.
6. Consider the specific use case and requirements for your AI system, and tailor your approach accordingly.
7. Regularly monitor and evaluate the performance and safety of your AI system and make adjustments as needed to ensure it aligns with the principles outlined in the guide.
8. Be transparent and accountable in your interactions with users and stakeholders, and be open to feedback and suggestions for improvement.
9. Stay informed about the latest developments and research in the field of AI, and be prepared to adapt your approach as needed to address new challenges and opportunities.
10. Follow the specific guidelines and best practices outlined in the addendum for Code Llama, such as defining content policies, evaluating and benchmarking models, and addressing input- and output-level risks.”

Reka Edge’s answer is quite thorough and detailed, too!

If you want to dive into coding, start by creating a Reka account and getting an API key. Then you can follow along with this notebook. Try out their Python SDK, and make sure to explore the different models available. It’s a great way to see how these tools work under the hood!

Gemini 1.5, developed by Google DeepMind, is designed to handle complex tasks efficiently, thanks to the new Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) system. MoE is like packing several specialized models inside one big model. Instead of using the whole network for every task, Gemini 1.5 activates only the parts (or what they call “experts”) that are most relevant. This means Gemini 1.5 can tackle complex tasks with less processing power than a typical monolithic model.

We can explore Gemini’s features in Google AI Studio since it’s already baked right in. We’ll begin by uploading the following image illustrating VLM capabilities.

We’ll ask Gemini to analyze the image and extract details or concepts:

Explain this image. What are the specific details or concepts it represents?

“The image is a flowchart illustrating different types of image understanding tasks with a Vision Language Model.

• Object Localization: This task aims to identify the precise location of objects within an image. The example question asks, “Is one cat behind another?”
• Zero-shot Segmentation: This task involves segmenting an image into different regions based on a given label, even if the model has never seen that specific label before. The example question asks to segment “striped cat.”
• Zero-shot Visual QA: This task requires answering questions about an image, even if the model has not been specifically trained to answer that type of question. The example question asks, “What is the breed of these cats?”
• One-shot Learning with Instructions: This task involves providing the model with a single example and instruction to learn a new concept and apply it to other images. The example question asks, “Striped cats are called tabby cats. What is the breed of the cats in the image?”

Well, Gemini nailed it — it clearly understood the image and recognized the tasks a VLM handles. This is exactly what you’d expect from a model designed for advanced image analysis.

Now, we’ll upload another image — this time of an Italian dish — and ask Gemini if it can recognize the dishes and list the ingredients needed for them. This type of “food recognition task” will help us test its ability to identify foods and ingredients.

List the different dishes in this image, also from which country, and give me the ingredients I need to make them.

“The image shows an Italian feast with the following dishes:

1. Seafood Stew: A rich and flavorful stew with seafood like clams, mussels, shrimp, fish, and vegetables in a tomato broth.
2. Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce: Classic spaghetti pasta tossed in a simple yet flavorful tomato sauce.
3. Meatballs in Tomato Sauce: Tender and juicy meatballs simmered in a rich tomato sauce.
4. Lasagna: Layered pasta with meat sauce, cheese, and tomato sauce.
5. Side Salad: A refreshing side salad with mixed greens, tomatoes, and other vegetables.
6. Garlic Bread: Toasted bread slices rubbed with garlic and olive oil.
7. Marinara Sauce: A simple tomato-based sauce.

This is a typical Italian meal with various dishes showcasing the flavors of Italian cuisine.

As for the ingredients, you’ll need tomatoes for many of these dishes, specifically for the sauces and the side salad.”

Well, the model did a good job recognizing the dishes, but it also didn’t give me all the necessary ingredients. Let’s see how it does with videos instead, using the same video we used earlier with the Reka models. This time, the task will focus on action recognition.

What is the purpose of this video, and what key actions or processes are being demonstrated?

“The video is a tutorial about the importance of friendship and how it can impact our lives. It demonstrates the use of a video editing software called “Genmy” to create a video and add text subtitles. The video creator is using Genmy to:

• Record their voice: This is seen at the top of the screen with the mic icon.
• Add text to speech: You see the “Text to Speech” option, which is likely being used to generate subtitles or captions for the video.
• Edit the timeline: They’re working with a video timeline, adding and arranging different elements.
• Add voice-over: The speaker is adding commentary to the video.
• Create a visually appealing presentation: They’re using a combination of video footage, text, and voice-over to create an engaging tutorial.”

Well, Gemini gave a clear breakdown of the video, identifying it as a tutorial demonstrating the Genmy video editing software to highlight how it’s used for recording voice, adding text-to-speech, editing video timelines, and allowing voice-over. Impressive!

Let’s upload one more video, the same one we used for Reka about the Parler TTS model, and ask Gemini to analyze and summarize the contents.

Summarize this video and explain how the contents might be relevant or helpful for software engineers.

“This video showcases different voice samples generated by a text-to-speech (TTS) system called “Parler-TTS.” The video highlights various voice characteristics like gender, pace, pitch, and even the simulated environment. For software engineers, this video demonstrates the progress made in TTS technology. These are some insights:

• Voice Variety: The video shows that Parler-TTS can create diverse voices, potentially useful for applications needing different personas or tones.
• Fine-grained Control: The video emphasizes the ability to control voice parameters like pace and pitch, showcasing the potential for customizability.
• Quality and Naturalness: The video focuses on the quality of the generated speech, demonstrating the advancements made in speech synthesis, which is crucial for user experience.”

Nicely done! I can go with that answer. Gemini explains adjusting voice settings, like pitch and speed, and how having different voices can be useful. Gemini also emphasizes the importance of natural, high-quality speech, which is handy for developers working with TTS systems!

Alright, for coding, you can grab the code from Google AI Studio by clicking the Get Code button. You can choose between formatting the code in Python, Swift, and Java, among other languages.

Both Reka and Gemini are strong multimodal models for AI applications, but there are key differences between them to consider. Here’s a table that breaks those down:

Reka stands out for on-device deployment, which is super useful for apps requiring offline capabilities or low-latency processing.

On the other hand, Gemini 1.5 Pro shines with its long context windows, making it a great option for handling large documents or complex queries in the cloud.

In the ever-changing world of SEO, link building has long been a cornerstone strategy for improving website rankings and driving organic traffic. As we move into 2024, the question arises: Is link building still relevant, and how should businesses approach it in the current digital landscape? In this blog, we’ll explore the evolving role of …

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Hello DaniWeb community. I haven't been on the site in quite some time - it's so intense now that I almost feel a bit silly for asking a simple question but here goes. I have a personal account set up with Microsoft 365 and all is well for the most part on my Lenovo laptop but, when I try to use the email hyperlinks on webpages, outlook tries to open my old work MS exchange outlook account which has a defunct work email address. Here are some screenshots of the user accounts from the control panel and the perpetual message I receive when I try to remove the account from email list in control panel.

Delivering a minimalist PowerPoint presentation can clearly convey your message, and remove any clutter. This collection of modern, minimal PowerPoint templates is a great place to start—they put the focus on you as the speaker, and what you have to convey!

These files are all fully editable and can be easily tweaked according to your needs. Most come with hundreds of example slides with graphs, tables, images, text, and more. They’re perfect for giving that next presentation a special touch.

Embrace the minimal design philosophy, choose a stunning PowerPoint template for your next presentation that has clean lines, subtle design, and a simple, professional look-and-feel.

Top Pick

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Minimal Business PowerPoint Presentation Template

Minimalism is all about saying more with less. This template has the perfect design for achieving that goal with your presentations. It has a clean slide design across 24 different layouts. You can also customize them to change colors, fonts, and place your own images.

Clean & Minimal Presentation Template for PowerPoint

This template comes with 24 unique slides that feature clean and minimal designs with very professional-looking layouts. You can use them to craft presentations for brand promotions, business profiles, and even company profiles.

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Free Minimal Agency PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template features a stylishly minimalist design featuring fewer decorative elements. Each slide puts more focus on your content and makes it easier to explore for the users. It includes 27 unique slides.

Minimal Business Marketing PowerPoint Template

Here we have a simple yet attention-grabbing PowerPoint presentation that’s sure to make an impression. It consists of 80 beautifully designed slides that can be tweaked to your heart’s content. This infographic focused presentation will help you at every stage of your brand development.

Natura – Multipurpose PowerPoint Template

Natura is a great choice for minimalists looking to stand out from the pack. It has a versatile design that works swimmingly for nearly any business presentation topic. Included are 40 slides, free fonts, vector icons, and editable graphics.

Stalto – Professional PowerPoint Template

Stalto is a stunning PowerPoint template designed by professionals in accordance with the latest presentation styles whilst still maintaining an air of minimalism to keep things as elegant as possible. It features 30 customizable slides.

Bulas – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Check out Bulas, a minimal and creative Powerpoint template that can be easily put to use for a startup, creative studio, or corporate presentation. It features 30 unique slides, free fonts, and editable texts and graphics.

Pushing – Impressive PowerPoint Template

If you are looking for a simple yet eye-catching template that really stands out, consider Pushing, a stunning ppt featuring 60 slides, and seamless compatibility with PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides.

Anomaly – Neat PowerPoint Template

Feast your eyes on this gorgeously crafted presentation template perfect for virtually any business or industry under the sun. It features a minimalist, and uncluttered design, and a wealth of features for you to take advantage of.

Leomord – Free Minimal PowerPoint Template

Wanting to get your hands on a premium-looking PowerPoint template without spending a penny? You will surely love Leomord, a free ppt option that can be fully customized to suit your needs. Check it out now!

Neue – Free Minimalistic PowerPoint Template

Whether you are looking for a template for your next school presentation or pitch deck, Neue has you covered. It provides over 100 clean and multipurpose slides that can be edited to your liking in no time at all.

Cataleya – Modern PowerPoint Template

A beautiful and elegant PowerPoint template for designing minimal presentations for fashion, lifestyle, and travel-related projects. This template comes with 40 unique slides that you can easily edit and customize however you like.

Business Meeting – Corporate PowerPoint Template

If you’re preparing a presentation for a business meeting, this template will help you craft professional slides to visualize your key points. There are 30 unique slides included with this template, each featuring clean and minimal designs.

Adoena – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Even though this PowerPoint template has a minimal design it also uses colors quite well to highlight specific parts of each slide. It’s ideal for marketing and agency presentations. The template features 30 slides in 5 different color schemes.

Basalero – Free PowerPoint Template

For a free PowerPoint template that exudes simplicity, and elegance, Basalero is an excellent choice. It can be put to use for a range of industries ranging from education, and market research, to business events, and food marketing. Grab it right now!

Minimus – Simple PowerPoint Template

Minimus is a clean, and modern PowerPoint template that will help you deliver a standout presentation with minimal effort. It consists 32 beautifully designed slides that can be fully customized to your needs, and style.

Onnera – Elegant PowerPoint Template

Onnera is a multipurpose PowerPoint template that exudes luxury, and elegance in each of its 150 slides. Whether you’re putting together pitch deck, or product launch presentation, Onnera can come in very handy.

Venture – Startup PowerPoint Template

If you’re looking to get your hands on a clean, and ultra-modern presentation template that presents your startup in the best light possible, Venture is right up your alley. Don’t hesitate to take this wonderful template for a spin.

Hilonis – Business PowerPoint Template

Hilonis is an excellent contender for your cash if you truly value standing out from the pack. It equips you with a range of slides to customize and make your own. It’s great for business presentation that demands a strictly professional look.

Ruzeka – Minimal PowerPoint Template

A minimal presentation doesn’t always have to be boring and uninteresting. Check out Ruzeka, a stunning PowerPoint template that will instantly draw your audience’s attention, and keep it there.

Fruit – Clean & Minimal PowerPoint Template

A modern and minimalist PowerPoint template for all your professional portfolio showcasing needs. This template comes with a total of 150 slides, including 30 unique slides in 5 color schemes. They are perfect for creating slideshows for presenting your agency portfolio.

Grayscale Portfolio Free Minimal PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template features a classic grayscale design across its entire slideshow. It’s designed or showcasing art and design portfolios. The template includes 25 unique slide layouts.

Minimal Corporate PowerPoint Template

Download this template to create professional slideshows for your corporate business presentations. The template comes with a total of 400 slides. It lets you choose from 10 different color schemes. There are animations and image placeholders included with each template.

Finande – Minimal Agency PowerPoint Template

If you’re looking for a minimal PowerPoint template featuring a modern design, this template is for you. It allows you to choose from 30 unique slides for creating attractive presentations for agencies and small businesses.

Elgiot – Clean PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is perfect for designing presentations for showcasing products, especially related to technology. The template includes 30 unique slides and they are available in 5 pre-made color schemes.

Boosto – Simple Financial Report PPT

Boosto is a minimalist PowerPoint template that comes with a clean and simple design. It’s ideal for finance-related presentations. There are 30 unique slides to choose from and each slide is fully customizable to your preference.

Pastel Portfolio – Free Minimal PowerPoint Template

This free template comes with a very unusual set of slides that can be used for showcasing creative portfolios. The template includes 26 slides with clean and minimal layouts.

Lalina – Free PowerPoint Template

Lalina is an elegantly crafted PowerPoint template that features 55 plus custom slides, 16:9 widescreen ratio, free fonts, unlimited color choices, vector objects, and drag and drop functionality. It’s available for free, so get your hands on it right now.

The Minim – Minimal PowerPoint Template

The minim is an ultra-minimalist PowerPoint template that features a set of simple and modern slides. It includes 30 uniques slide layouts. You can select from 5 color schemes to customize the presentation as well.

Collection – Clean PowerPoint Template

Collection is the perfect PowerPoint template for making fashion, design, and photography presentations. It comes with a total of 150 slides featuring 5 different pre-made color schemes. The template also includes master slide layouts.

Gabriela – Modern PowerPoint Template

This modern PowerPoint template features a set of creative slides with minimal layouts. The template includes 30 easily customizable slides. It also features image placeholders and vector shapes as well.

Lookbook – Simple PowerPoint Template

Lookbook is a simple and minimal PowerPoint template you can use to design presentations for modern startups and agencies. It features 30 unique slides that are available in 5 different color schemes.

Pattern – Free Modern PowerPoint Template

Pattern is a free PowerPoint template that features a set of modern and minimal slide designs. The free version of the template includes 10 unique slide layouts featuring image placeholders and free fonts.

Runteria – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Minimalism doesn’t always mean adding lots of white space. Sometimes, you can craft minimalist designs using colorful backgrounds as well. This PowerPoint template comes with a colorful design and a minimal content layout. It includes 35 unique slides with customizable content and graphics.

Jackpot – Minimal PowerPoint Template

A simply clean and minimal PowerPoint template for designing beautiful portfolio presentations. This template features 20 unique slides with image placeholders, editable layouts, and colors. You can also craft your own slides using master slide layouts as well.

Skinny – Minimal PowerPoint Template

This minimal PowerPoint template is ideal for fashion and lifestyle presentations. It includes 20 slides that you can easily customize to your preference. Each slide in the template is designed to look unique and attract attention.

RUND – Modern Business PowerPoint Template

Rundi s a professional PowerPoint template that comes with a clean and elegant design. This template features a minimal yet attractive design for each slide. It includes 30 unique and easily customizable slides in HD resolution.

Omega – Creative Minimal PowerPoint Template

Omega is another creative and minimal PowerPoint template you can use to design presentations for design agencies, startups, and modern businesses. The template comes with 30 unique slides in 5 different color schemes, making a total of 150 slides.

Antbiz – Creative PowerPoint Presentation Template

This modern and elegant PowerPoint template features a stylish yet minimal design that allows you to create attractive presentation slideshows for all kinds of purposes. It includes a total of 30 slides with easily customizable designs, editable vector shapes, free web fonts, and much more.

SCRET – Minimal PowerPoint Template

A minimalist PowerPoint template featuring a creative design. This template comes with a clean design that allows you to effectively highlight your content with minimal colors and content formatting. The template includes 50 unique slides with vector infographics, editable shapes, and more.

Wizzle – PowerPoint Presentation Template

Wizzle is a creative PowerPoint template you can use to design all kinds of business and professional slideshows. It features 30 unique slides for creating portfolio slides, profile slides, showcase services, and more. The template is available in Full HD resolution.

Tesla – Minimal Free Keynote & PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template is perfect for making a professional presentation for business events and conferences. The template features a minimal design and it comes in both PowerPoint and Apple Keynote formats as well.

Altezza – Free Minimal PowerPoint Template

Altezza is a modern and free PowerPoint template you can use to craft professional presentations. It includes 11 unique slide designs made with master slide layouts. You can easily edit the template to your preference to change colors and fonts.

Rapide – Modern PowerPoint Presentation Template

Rapide PowerPoint template comes with a modern and unique content design. It includes 30 unique slides with a unique image and text formatting that will surely make your presentations stand out from the crowd. It includes editable shapes and image placeholders as well.

Fina – Business PowerPoint Presentation Template

This elegant and minimal PowerPoint template lets you design creative presentation slideshows for agencies and professionals. It includes 30 unique slides featuring simple and clean designs with editable shapes and graphics.

Isla – Creative & Clean PowerPoint Template

Isla is a creative PowerPoint presentation template that features a modern multipurpose design. You can create all kinds of business, marketing, and company profile slideshows with this template. It includes more than 30 unique slides.

Solaris – Vertical PowerPoint Presentation Template

Verticle slideshow designs allow you to design unique presentations with a clear and clean content design. This PowerPoint template will allow you to create such a modern presentation with a verticle layout. It includes 90 unique slides with verticle designs.

GLORY – Multipurpose PowerPoint Template

Glory is a highly minimalist PowerPoint template you can use to craft slideshows for all kinds of business and creative presentations. It comes with 60 unique slides with multipurpose designs, which are also available in 20 different color schemes and in Retina and Full HD resolutions. That’s a total of 1200 slides.

X – Free Modern Minimal PowerPoint Template

This is a highly minimalist PowerPoint template that features a clean and simple content design. The template includes 18 different slide designs and it comes in PowerPoint and Keynote file formats.

Kula – Clean Free PowerPoint Template

Kula is the perfect free PowerPoint template for making a simple slideshow for a business or creative presentations. The template lets you choose from various minimal and clean slide layouts as well.

Light Fashion PowerPoint Presentation Template

This minimal and modern PowerPoint template will help you create more attractive slideshows for presenting clothing and fashion brands. The template features a total of 30 unique slides with clean and simple designs as well as editable shapes and colors.

Lazvy – Minimalist PowerPoint Template

Lazvy is a creative PowerPoint template most suitable for making minimal slideshows for business and creative presentations. It includes 30 stylish slides featuring unique content arrangements and colorful shapes.

Lippitude – Minimal PowerPoint Template

This unique and minimalist PowerPoint template comes with more than 50 slides filled with vector elements, icons, graphics, and more. It’s most suitable for creating presentations related to fashion, apparel, and photography.

HOUSS – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Houss PowerPoint template combines elements from both minimalist and modern designs to offer a set of unique slides. It includes 30 slides with easily editable designs and image placeholders.

Annual Report – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Annual Report is a PowerPoint template designed for making marketing and business-related presentations. It comes with a minimal design and with bright colors. The template includes 40 unique slides.

Wagner – Free Multipurpose PowerPoint Template

Wagner is a professional PowerPoint template you can use free of charge to create slideshows for both personal and commercial presentations. The template includes multiple slide layouts with editable vector graphics.

GMTRY – Free Geometric Presentation Template

This free PowerPoint template comes with a creative geometric-based design. It includes multiple slides filled with creative shapes and colors while preserving the minimal content layout.

Novaula – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Novaula is a clean and minimal PowerPoint template you can use to design presentations for all kinds of projects, including creative, business, and personal presentations. The template features a total of 150 slides in 5 different color schemes.

HANTUCOFA – Minimal PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template features a highly visual and a minimal design. It comes with 30 unique slides in 50 different premade color files and lots of editable vectors and icons.

RITS – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Rits is a modern PowerPoint template featuring a minimalist design. The template features easily editable slides with image placeholders, editable graphics, icons, infographics, charts, and much more.

Geolojie – Minimal PowerPoint Template

A highly minimalist PowerPoint template for creating modern and professional presentations. This template comes with 30 unique slides that are available in 5 different premade color themes.

5 Minimal PowerPoint Templates

This minimalist PowerPoint template comes with a beautiful and a modern design. It includes 30 unique slides in 5 different color variations delivered to you in 5 PowerPoint files. It also includes resizable graphics and infographics as well.

Annual Report – Free PowerPoint Template

Working on a presentation to showcase your business annual report? Then use this free template to create an effective PowerPoint presentation. It includes 15 unique slides with editable designs.

Sampoerna – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Sampoerna is a presentation template that features lots of visual elements, including large images, icons, graphics, and more. It has over 35 unique slides in many different layouts from gallery slides to portfolios and more.

KLOE Minimal & Creative Template

Kloe is a PowerPoint template with a creative design that’s most suitable for fashion and clothing related brand and business promotions. It features more than 120 slides with infographics, charts, icon packs, and timelines.

Minimal Modern PowerPoint

Yet another highly minimalist presentation template for creating both business and personal slideshow presentation. This template also includes many different objects, shapes, icons, and more.

Minimal Gradient PowerPoint Template

Featuring 20 master slide layouts, this PowerPoint template allows you to craft modern and professional presentations without a hassle. You’ll also get many customizable graphics, charts, diagrams, and tables with the template as well.

NORS – PowerPoint Template

Nors is a professionally designed PowerPoint presentation template that features a minimalist design that uses just 2 colors. It includes 130 unique slides with a pack of free icon fonts, device mockups, maps, and lots more.

Minimal Clean PowerPoint Template

This minimal and clean PowerPoint presentation is best for business proposal presentations and meetings. The template also includes many different vector graphics, icons, shapes, and more.

Oskale – Minimal Theme PowerPoint

Oskale is a stylish PowerPoint template you can use to create beautiful presentations for creative agencies and businesses. This template includes 70 fully-animated slides with editable diagrams, maps, and many other elements.

Brand Agency PowerPoint Template

This is the perfect presentation template for creating a modern and minimal slideshow for branding and agency businesses. The clean and bold design used in the slides will certainly help show professionalism.

Squirrel PowerPoint Template

Squirrel is a PowerPoint template specially designed for creating business proposal presentations. The template comes with over 50 unique slides featuring charts, graphs, pictorial slides, portfolios, team slides, and much more.

Orizqi – Brand Identity PowerPoint Template

A minimalist PowerPoint template for designing professional presentations for corporations and brands. This template comes with 40 unique slides you can use to craft brand identity slideshows. It features image placeholders, editable shapes, and vector graphics to let you easily customize the design.

Startes – Clean PowerPoint Template

This beautiful PowerPoint template comes with a set of clean slide layouts. They are perfect for crafting presentations for modern businesses, creative agencies, and even freelance professionals. It includes 30 slide layouts with editable designs.

Volo – Creative Agency PowerPoint Template

Volo is a colorful PowerPoint template designed with creative agencies in mind. It can be used to make portfolio presentations and brand profile slideshows for various types of agencies. The template also lets you choose from 30 slide designs to craft the perfect presentation.

Arknar – Simple & PowerPoint Template

Aknar is another clean and minimal PowerPoint template you can use to design professional presentations. It includes 30 unique slide layouts you can customize to fit your brand and business. The slides feature editable graphics, shapes, and image placeholders as well.

Minimal B2B Marketing & Sales PowerPoint Template

If you’re a professional working for a B2B brand, this PowerPoint template is a must-have for you. It’s designed with B2B marketing presentations in mind and it comes with more than 60 unique slides with fully editable layouts.

Nova Minimal PowerPoint Template

If you’re looking to make a strong professional impact, go with this Nova Minimal PowerPoint Template. It has a very clean, formal look that is perfect for your next big presentation.

• Price: $20

Phoenix Minimal PowerPoint Template

An amazing minimally designed professional template that comes with 115 slides and over 450 vector items included in the pack. So much versatility and choice to work with.

• Price: $20

Alveo Minimal PowerPoint Template

Alveo is a modern and creative minimal PowerPoint template, suitable for personal portfolio, creative agency, designer portfolio, illustrator portfolio, photographer portfolio and more. Its just as easy to customize to fit your needs, replace images and text.

• Price: $15

Perfect PowerPoint Presentation

A modern and clean PowerPoint presentation special for a agency or any type of business.

• Price: $15

BenchMarking PowerPoint Template

A modern and clean PowerPoint presentation, perfect for a agency or any type of business. Easy to change colors, text, photos. Fully editable.

• Price: $15

Air Minimal PowerPoint Template

Air Minimal template is a perfect package for your business proposition. It has a very clean, formal look that is perfect for your next big presentation.

• Price: $15

Quantum Minimal PowerPoint Template

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and quantum minimal PowerPoint template holds true to that quote. It comes with 60 plus different slides.

• Price: $15

Martik PowerPoint Template

If you’re looking to make a strong professional impact, go with this modern minimal PowerPoint template. It has a very clean, formal look that is perfect for your next big presentation.

• Price: $20

Minus Minimal PowerPoint Template

This pack contains 60+ unique fully HD slides that you can edit according to your needs.

• Price: $15

Wolf Minimal PowerPoint Template

Wolf is a minimal PowerPoint presentation template suitable for personal portfolio and business presentations.  It’s very easy to customize to fit your needs, replace images and texts.

• Price: $15

Pacific PowerPoint Template

Pacific is a creative presentation template for PowerPoint that focuses on displaying albums and photos.

• Price: $12

Eva PowerPoint Presentation

Presentation of the new Eva was created multi-purpose template that will meet the latest design trends, as well as extremely easily customized by any user without any previous knowledge in PowerPoint. Each slide is laid out and easily can be adjusted to suit individual goals. We have created 7 different styles of combinations of fonts and emotional animation layers. Everyone will find the right for yourself.

• Price: $15

Simple Flat Style PowerPoint

A simple and modern PowerPoint presentation template. All slides are fully editable. Easy to change colors, text, photos etc. Perfect for business, corporate and personal use.

• Price: $10

Vertex – Minimal Presentation

A very sleek PowerPoint presentation template with 32 unique slides and 2 different color schemes. It has minimal fade transitions, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1920×1080 resolution and includes .PPTX files.

• Price: $12

Clean PowerPoint Template

A modern and clean PowerPoint presentation special for a agency or any type of business.

• Price: $10

5 Tips for Minimal Presentation Design

Follow these simple tips to make sure your presentation design has a truly minimal look and feel.

1. Use Lots of White Space

The heavy use of white space is a key aspect that defines the term minimalism. Whether you’re designing a home interior or a PowerPoint slideshow with a minimal design, you need to craft your content layout around white space.

In a minimal design, your goal should be to showcase your message by using less content and more white space. It may sound strange but it actually gives your content the spotlight it deserves and grab the attention of the audience.

2. Pick the Best Fonts

With plenty of white space surrounding your slide designs, your audience’s eye will instantly go to the titles and the paragraphs of your slides. There’s no use in creating a minimal presentation design if your content isn’t readable.

Make sure to pick a pair of great fonts for your titles and paragraphs that not only makes content easier to read but also improve the user experience.

3. Use Colors to Your Advantage

In a minimal design, you are limited to using fewer colors. Most of the time you can only use one or two colors throughout the design. This actually provides a great opportunity for you to take advantage of colors.

You can use colors in a minimal presentation design to highlight specific parts of your slides such as the key points of your speech, slide titles, metrics, and more. When used properly, it will make your entire presentation more effective and attractive at the same time.

4. Add Large Images

Depending on the type of presentation you’re making, you should also use large images and image backgrounds to create a more visually minimalist design to your slides.

For example, if you’re making a minimal presentation for fashion design, photography, or showcasing a portfolio, you can use large images to create unique slide designs.

5. Create a Minimal Content Layout

The content layout of a presentation design consists of all the elements you’re using in each and every slide, including text, images, shapes, diagrams, and more.

Since you’re making a minimal presentation design, focus on formatting your content in a way that shows off professionalism. Use shorter sentences, use fewer shapes and colors, and avoid adding lots of images in a single slide.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

Switching careers can be daunting for anyone, but the challenges can feel particularly overwhelming for people of color. 

The tech industry, while brimming with opportunities, presents unique hurdles that must be navigated with determination and strategic planning.

The path is riddled with obstacles, from battling imposter syndrome to upskilling through certifications and boot camps and learning the industry's language without a technical background.

However, with the right mindset and resources, these challenges can transform into stepping stones toward a fulfilling career in technology.

In this piece, I’ll explore common challenges people of color might face when breaking into tech and offer my advice for overcoming them based on my personal experience in doing the same.

1. Battling Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is a pervasive issue that affects many professionals, and it can be especially prevalent among career switchers of color in tech. This feeling of self-doubt and uncertainty about one's abilities can be crippling, often leading individuals to question their place in the industry.

I vividly remember the day I completed my Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) program. While the certification equipped me with a solid understanding of the product lifecycle and decision-making processes, I still felt an undercurrent of doubt about my capabilities.

It wasn't until I started applying my skills in real-world scenarios that my confidence began to build. The key was acknowledging my achievements and reminding myself that I belonged in the tech space.

My Pro Tip: Combat imposter syndrome by celebrating small wins and seeking mentorship from those who have successfully navigated similar paths. Surround yourself with a supportive community that reinforces your value and potential.

2. Upskilling Through Certifications and Boot Camps

The tech industry is dynamic and continually evolving, making continuous learning essential. For career switchers, skilling up through certifications and boot camps can provide the necessary knowledge and credentials to make a successful transition.

Participating in the Scrum Alliance certification program was a game-changer for me. It not only provided me with a comprehensive understanding of key concepts but also instilled a sense of confidence in my ability to contribute meaningfully to projects.

This experience underscored the importance of targeted learning and its impact on one's professional growth.

My Pro Tip: Research and enroll in reputable certification programs and boot camps that align with your career goals. These programs are designed to provide practical skills and knowledge that are highly valued in the tech industry. Additionally, they often offer networking opportunities with industry professionals.

3. Learning the Language of the Industry

Learning the industry's language is one of the most significant challenges for career switchers without a technical background. Understanding technical jargon, industry-specific terms, and the overall landscape can be intimidating but is crucial for effective communication and career progression.

When I first decided to pivot into tech, I realized the importance of intentionality. I identified specific roles within the companies I was interested in and focused on mastering the language and skills relevant to those positions.

This targeted approach helped me gain a deeper understanding of the industry and made me more confident during interviews.

My Pro Tip: Immerse yourself in industry-related content such as blogs, podcasts, webinars, and online courses. Engaging with this material will help you become familiar with the terminology and concepts, making you more comfortable and proficient in professional settings.

4. Choosing a Growth-Oriented Career Path

It's tempting to opt for the easiest route when transitioning into a new career. However, choosing a path that offers long-term growth and aligns with your interests and strengths is essential for sustained success.

In my career transition, pinpointing a specific discipline within the tech industry and dedicating my efforts to becoming proficient in that area proved invaluable. This intentional focus increased my chances of securing opportunities and ensured that I was on a path that offered continuous learning and growth.

My Pro Tip: Take the time to research various roles within the tech industry and assess their growth potential. Seek informational interviews with professionals in those roles to gain insights into their experiences and career trajectories. Make informed decisions based on your interests, strengths, and long-term goals.

People of color can successfully switch to tech. 

Navigating a career switch into the tech industry as a person of color comes with unique challenges.

However, by addressing imposter syndrome, investing in upskilling programs, learning the industry's language, and choosing a growth-oriented career path, you can overcome these hurdles and thrive in the tech space.

My most important recommendation is to remember that intentionality always trumps non-focus. Be deliberate in your actions, seek out supportive communities, and continuously invest in your personal and professional development. 

If you're ready to take the next step in your tech career, consider reaching out to someone already in the role you desire or even a career coach. Your career breakthrough is just on the other side of a new you; embrace the change; it's the only way to grow.

We marketers know that creating a marketing strategy is essential to effectively nurture our customers, improve our business’s bottom line, and increase the ROI of our efforts.

A marketing strategy is especially critical if you want to use the highest ROI trends we've seen in 2024: short-form video and AI. To get powerful results, you must carefully weave both emerging trends and proven strategies into your plan.

I’ll share the critical components of a complete marketing strategy, followed by some examples for inspiration.

Table of Contents

• What is a marketing strategy
• Marketing Strategy Components
• Marketing Strategy Process
• Why is a marketing strategy important?
• Examples of Successful Marketing Strategies
• Recommended Resources

A completed marketing strategy typically includes brand objectives, target audience personas, marketing channels, key performance indicators, and more.

I’ve found a marketing strategy will:

• Align your team to specific goals.
• Help you tie your efforts to business objectives.
• Allow you to identify and test what resonates with your target audience.
• Empower you to capitalize on emerging trends.

The last one is especially important. Keeping up with marketing trends is important for your strategy, but it could be a full-time job.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

I like to think of a marketing strategy as outlining the long-term goals and overall approach, while a marketing plan covers the specific actions and tactics to achieve those goals.

In other words, marketing strategy guides a business's overall marketing efforts. It includes goal-setting, market and competitor research, and messaging and positioning for a brand.

For example, say you’re creating a marketing strategy for a new fashion brand. Your strategy might target young Gen Z students and position the brand as trendy and affordable.

But, a strategic marketing plan is a detailed tactical roadmap that outlines the specific actions and tactics that should achieve the marketing strategy’s goals.

For example, the marketing plan for the fashion brand mentioned above might include:

• Targeted social media campaigns.
• Influencer partnerships.
• Online advertising timeline.

Both a marketing strategy and a marketing plan are essential for a business’s success.

To succeed in the fast-paced marketing world — and maintain a sense of relevance with your audience — it’s vital to stay ahead of the curve.

Below, I’m going to show you step by step how to create a comprehensive marketing strategy. But first, let’s go over the individual components that make up a strong marketing strategy.

1. Marketing Mix

The marketing mix, also known as the four Ps of marketing, is the preliminary document you must create to understand what you will be marketing, where you’ll be marketing it, and how you’ll be marketing it.

The following P’s make up this framework:

• Product: What are you selling?
• Price: What is the price?
• Place: Where will you be selling the product?
• Promotion: Where will you be promoting the product?

You can then extrapolate this information into a full-fledged marketing plan for each promotional channel. It’s important to lay out the information in broad strokes so that you understand the overall direction of your marketing strategy.

2. Marketing Objectives

You can set your marketing objectives in conjunction with your four P’s, or right after. Either way, I recommend you outline your marketing goals before building upon your strategy. Why? Because your goals will inform other components of the plan, including the budget and content creation process.

With every objective, you should aim to be as specific as possible. Try to create SMART marketing goals divided by channel or promotional tactic, and don’t forget that you can always come back and revise your goals as your priorities change.

3. Marketing Budget

A marketing budget is an essential element of your strategy. Without allocating funds to hire the right talent, use the right software, advertise on the right channels, and create the right content, your marketing strategy won’t have a powerful impact. To get a high return on investment, you must first invest.

Pro tip: Remember that you can always start small — hyper-focusing your budget on one or two efforts — and build upon them once you generate an ROI.

4. Competitive Analysis

Image Source

Knowing your competition is key when creating a marketing strategy. Without conducting a competitive analysis, you risk “yelling into the void” without measurable results.

Worse, you won’t know whether you’re differentiating yourself enough from the competition to effectively draw the attention of your intended audience.

You might already have an idea of who your competitors are, but I think it’s still essential to sit down and find them. You might end up uncovering a surprise competitor who’s vying for your target buyer’s attention and engagement.

5. Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning

Segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) refers to the process of delivering “more relevant, personalized messages to target audiences.” In other words, rather than publishing posts and advertisements on a whim, you’ll go through a methodical process for creating content that resonates with your target buyer.

During the segmentation, targeting, and positioning process, you’ll take three steps:

• Identify your target audience. This process entails not only interviewing your current customers but also carrying out market research and creating buyer personas.
• Target a segment of your target audience. It’s better to speak to a narrow group of highly qualified buyers than to send your message out to everyone.
• Position your brand alongside other brands. What do you do better than your competitors? It’s essential to map this information when creating a marketing strategy.

6. Content Creation

Once you have your budget, competitive outlook, and STP information, it’s time to create your marketing content. But, it’s essential to be strategic with your content creation efforts.

For one, you don’t want to publish random content that doesn’t solve for the customer, and for two, you must aim to capitalize on emerging trends so that your brand enjoys high visibility in the marketplace.

The competition is fierce across all formats. According to HubSpot Research, 44% of marketers use short-form videos as part of their content strategy, and 31% say it generates the highest ROI of all content creation formats.

It’s even more essential to invest in trends that have a high ROI, such as short-form video, influencer marketing, and social media DMs.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in blogging, one of the most proven content marketing techniques. It’s simply important to know where to allot the most resources, in my opinion, especially if you have a limited budget.

7. Metrics & Key Performance Indicators

Last but certainly not least, your marketing strategy must include metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure its effectiveness.

The KPIs you choose will vary depending on your business type and preferred customer acquisition channels. Examples of KPIs include:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC).
• Organic traffic.
• Conversion rate.
• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

Now, let’s dive into why it’s important to follow the steps of a marketing strategy.

Why is a marketing strategy important?

Without a defined strategy, you’ll essentially be throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. And that process will cost you money, time, and resources.

A robust marketing strategy will reach your target audience and have the power to turn people who’ve never heard of your brand into loyal repeat customers.

Here are just a few of the top reasons I think a marketing strategy is essential:

Offers Direction

A marketing strategy outlines clear goals and defines the path to achieve them. It pulls together all marketing efforts within an organization for optimal effects.

Targets the Right Audience

A well-defined marketing strategy helps you find and understand your target audience. This helps your business tailor your messaging and positioning to reach the right people at the right time.

Builds Brand Identity

A marketing strategy helps you create a consistent and cohesive brand identity. This makes it easier to align all marketing initiatives for increased brand recognition and loyalty.

Maximizes ROI

With analysis of market trends, competition, and customer behavior, marketing strategies help businesses find the most effective marketing channels and tactics to invest in. This helps businesses get the maximum return on investment.

Evaluates Performance

A marketing strategy defines key metrics and performance indicators. This makes it easier for your business to measure and track the success of marketing initiatives. It also gives you what you need to make data-driven decisions and optimize future campaigns for better results.

1. Conduct market research.

Before you can begin creating your marketing strategy, you need to gather useful data to make informed decisions. Market research is like playing detective, but instead of solving crimes, you uncover juicy details about your customers.

I think market research is important because it will help your business make data-driven decisions for your marketing strategy. It also makes it easier to understand your target market, find gaps, and make the most of your resources.

This process is essential for understanding your customers and adapting to changing trends. If you’re new to this process, this complete market research guide and template can help.

Once you have the data you need, you’ll be ready to set some marketing goals.

2. Define your goals.

What do you want to achieve through your marketing efforts?

Well-defined goals will guide your marketing strategy, whether you’re increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or diversifying your customer base.

Your marketing strategy goals should reflect your business goals. They should also offer clear direction for marketing efforts.

For example, say one of your business goals is to increase market share by 20% within a year. Your goal as a marketer could include expanding into new target markets, updating your brand, or driving customer acquisition.

Other marketing goals might be to increase brand awareness or generate high-quality leads. You might also want to grow or maintain thought leadership in your industry or increase customer value.

I find defining clear goals provides direction and clarity, guiding marketing efforts toward desired outcomes. It helps with resource allocation, decision-making, and measuring the success of marketing initiatives.

I recommend this SMART goal guide which can help you with more effective goal-setting.

3. Identify your target audience and create buyer personas.

To create an effective marketing strategy, you need to understand who your ideal customers are. I suggest taking a look at your market research to understand your target audience and market landscape. Accurate customer data is especially important for this step.

But it’s not enough to know who your audience is. Once you’ve figured out who they are, you need to understand what they want. This isn’t just their needs and pain points. It’s how your product or service can solve their problems.

So, if you can’t define who your audience is in one sentence, now’s your chance to do it. Create a buyer persona that’s a snapshot of your ideal customer.

Buyer Persona Example

For example, a store like Macy’s could define a buyer persona as Budgeting Belinda, a stylish working-class woman in her 30s living in a suburb, looking to fill her closet with designer deals at low prices.

With this description, Macy’s marketing department can picture Budgeting Belinda and work with a clear definition in mind.

Buyer personas have critical demographic and psychographic information. This can include:

• Age.
• Job title.
• Income.
• Location.
• Interests.
• Challenges.

Notice how I included all those attributes in Belinda’s description.

For B2B SaaS companies, keep in mind that buyer personas don’t apply solely to the end user. When you’re selling a product to another business, you also have to address the decision-maker, the financial buyer, and the technical advisor, among other roles, says Head of Marketing at Entrapeer, Hillary Lyons.

“You need to be able to tailor your message to each of these unique personas even though most of them will never actually use the product,” says Lyons. “You have to sell each of them on the unparalleled benefit you provide without muddling your [overall] message.”

You don’t have to create your buyer persona with a pen and paper. In fact, HubSpot offers a free template you can use to make your own (and it’s really fun).

You can also use a platform like Versium, which helps you identify, understand, and reach your target audience through data and artificial intelligence.

Buyer personas should be at the core of your strategy.

4. Conduct competitive analysis.

Now that you have an understanding of your customers, it’s time to see who you’re competing with to get their attention.

To begin your competitive analysis, start with your top competitors. Reviewing their websites, content, ads, and pricing can help you understand how to differentiate your brand. I think it’s also a useful way to find opportunities for growth.

But how do you know which competitors are most important? This competitive analysis kit with templates will walk you through the process. I like it because it will help you choose and evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and strategies of your competitors.

This process will help you find market gaps, spot trends, and figure out which marketing tactics will be most effective. Competitive analysis can also offer valuable insights into pricing, positioning, and marketing channels.

5. Develop key messaging.

You’ve figured out who you’re talking to, what they’ve already heard, and what they want to hear. Now, it’s time to share your brand’s unique value proposition.

In this step, you’ll craft key messaging that shows the benefits of your product or service that resonate with your target audience. This process should show off the research and work you have done up to this point. It should also incorporate your creativity, inventiveness, and willingness to experiment.

In my experience, well-crafted key messaging:

• Sets businesses apart from the competition.
• Resonates with the target audience.
• Is flexible enough to be consistent across all marketing channels.
• Builds brand credibility.
• Creates an emotional connection with customers.
• Influences buying decisions.

The key messaging in your marketing strategy is critical to driving engagement, loyalty, and business growth. These value proposition templates can help if you’re not sure how to draft this important messaging.

6. Choose your marketing channels.

You know what you have to say. Now, decide on the best marketing channels for your message. Your top goal for this stage of your strategy is to align your channel choices with your target persona’s media consumption habits.

Start with media channels you’re already using. Then, consider a mix of traditional and digital channels such as social media, TV, email marketing, podcast ads, SEO, content marketing, and influencer partnerships.

To streamline this process, I like to think of your assets in three categories — paid, owned, and earned media.

Paid Media

Paid media is any channel you spend money on to attract your target audience. Most of this spending is on advertising. This includes online and offline channels like:

• Television.
• Direct mail.
• Billboards.
• Social media ads.
• SEM (search engine marketing).
• Podcast advertising.

Owned Media

Owned media refers to (mostly) online channels your brand owns, including:

• Blogs.
• Websites.
• Organic social media.

It also refers to the media your marketing team creates, such as

• Videos.
• Podcasts.
• Ebooks.
• Infographics.

Earned Media

Another way to say earned media is user-generated content. Earned media includes:

• Shares on social media.
• Posts about your business on X or Threads.
• Reels posted on Instagram mentioning your brand.
• Organic news stories about your company.

To decide which marketing channels are best for your marketing strategy, look carefully at each channel. Think about which channels are best for reaching your audience, staying within budget, and meeting your goals.

For example, a business targeting a younger demographic, like Gen Z, might consider using TikTok or Reddit to reach its audience.

Don’t forget to take a look at emerging platforms and trends as you complete this review. You may also want to look at the content you’ve already created.

I suggest gathering your materials in each media type in one location. Then, look at your content as a whole to get a clear vision of how you can integrate them into your strategy.

For example, say you already have a blog that’s rolling out weekly content in your niche (owned media). You might consider promoting your blog posts on Threads (owned media), which customers might then repost (earned media). Ultimately, that will help you create a better, more well-rounded marketing strategy.

7. Create, track, and analyze KPIs.

Once you have a clear outline of your marketing strategy, you’ll need to think about how you’ll measure whether it’s working.

At this stage, you’ll shift from marketing detective to numbers nerd. With a little planning and prep, your analytics can unveil the mysteries of marketing performance and unlock super insights.

Review your strategy and choose measurable KPIs to track the effectiveness of your efforts. Pick a marketing analytics software solution that works for your team to collect and measure your data.

Ideally, I recommend choosing an analytics platform that allows you to track data across all of your marketing channels — from emails to social media and your website. This centralizes all of your data, which makes it easier to understand how each channel contributes to your overall strategy.

You can then plan to check and analyze the performance of your strategy over time and identify the channels that bring the best results. This can help you refine your approach based on results and feedback.

Lexi Boese, an ecommerce growth strategist and co-founder of The Digital Opportunists, recommends making data a priority when building your marketing strategy.

“The more data you can use, the easier you can track your success,” she says. “This could be as simple as understanding which channels convert the highest amount of customers (to determine how your team should prioritize ad spend), or assessing whether you have a higher amount of first-time or returning customers to [determine] if you should focus on internal or external marketing.”

Analyzing KPIs helps businesses stay agile, refine their strategies, and adapt to evolving customer needs.

8. Present your marketing strategy.

A finished marketing strategy will pull together the sections and components above. It may also include:

Executive Summary

A concise overview that outlines the marketing goals, target audience, and key marketing tactics.

Brand Identity

You may want to create a brand identity as part of your strategy. Brand positioning, voice, and visual identity may also be helpful additions to your marketing strategy.

Marketing Plan and Tactics

Your marketing plan is the specific actions you’ll take to achieve the goals in your marketing strategy. Your plan may cover campaigns, channel-specific tactics, and more.

Not sure where to start? This free marketing plan template can help.

Download for Free

Budget Allocation

Defining a budget for your marketing strategy helps you show that your planned resource allocation aligns with business goals.

I think it’s important to get clear about your spending and how your proposed budget will impact the company’s overall business goals.

Timeline and Milestones

Marketing strategies can be complex and difficult for stakeholders to understand. Creating a timeline that outlines the different tactics, milestones, and deadlines can help.

Your marketing strategy is a living document. It will need constant reviews, revisions, and optimizations to meet your long-term goals. Prepare to revise your marketing strategy at least once a year to address market trends, customer feedback, and changing business objectives.

Examples of Successful Marketing Strategies

1. Regal Movies

Digital Strategy: Owned Media

Regal shares interactive Instagram content that’s not only relevant to its film-loving customers but also encourages them to interact with the content.

Regal’s Instagram post is an example of owned media because the company was in full control of the answers it shared with its followers. Interacting in the comment section was an opportunity for Regal to showcase its voice and brand to its audience.

And it clearly worked well. The post received half as many comments as it did likes, with an impressive 207 comments.

Best for: I think social media is a great owned channel to experiment with new ideas for your overall marketing strategy.

2. La Croix

Digital Strategy: User-Generated Content, Earned Media

I think user-generated content is one of the best ways to gain traction in your strategy.

It demonstrates your appreciation for loyal customers, builds community, and incentivizes other users to promote your products for the chance at a similar shout-out.

Plus, sometimes the content your brand loyalists create is really, really good. In this case, the consumer is creating a handmade needlepoint featuring the brand’s product.

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Pro tip: UGC isn’t reserved for consumer brands with visual products to share. B2B companies can also take advantage of UGC by sharing positive reviews of their product and incorporating them into their messaging.

3. Small Girls PR

Digital Strategy: Owned Media

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Small Girls PR is a boutique PR company based in New York, and one of the company’s talents is connecting with amazing clients. This post on Instagram is an effective marketing example, as it boosts awareness for their brand and offers social proof by featuring high-profile clients.

Pro tip: I find owned media in the form of PR is a great way to spotlight company executives and position them as industry leaders.

4. Tobii

Digital Strategy: Paid Media

Eye-tracking software company Tobii launched a LinkedIn ad to promote a lead magnet. While the brand may have created the guide specifically for paid promotions, it’s also possible that they repurposed a high-performing blog post into a downloadable PDF.

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In this case, all they had to do was repackage their current content, build an ad around it with creative assets, and run it.

What I like: In previous sections, I discussed the power of leveraging multiple forms of media in your marketing strategy. This is a great example of it.

5. Target

Digital Strategy: Owned Media, Influencer Partnership

If you’ve got the time for influencer partnerships, I encourage you to take full advantage of it.

Influencer marketing is when you partner with influencers to promote your content on their site. By doing this, your content reaches new audiences you might not be able to reach organically:

Target recently partnered with fashion expert and influencer Jeneé Naylor to collaborate on its Future Collective line. What made this campaign even more powerful was that Naylor was a former Target Team Member.

I love how this collaboration highlighted Target’s commitment to supporting its team members, even after they’ve moved on from the company.

Best for: Influencer marketing continues to have a strong ROI — 86% of marketers say influencer marketing was effective for their marketing strategies in 2023.

Recommended Resources

Here, I’ve curated a list of some tools with various functions that can help you track and measure the success of your marketing goals.

1. HubSpot Marketing Hub

The Marketing Hub allows you to connect all your marketing tools into one centralized platform.

Too often, you’ll find a tool that’s powerful but not easy to use. With this tool, you can attract users with blogs, SEO, and live chat tools. You can then convert and nurture those leads through marketing automation, the website and landing page builder, and lead tracking features.

With custom reporting and built-in analytics, you can analyze your data and plan out your next move.

What I like: HubSpot Marketing Hub integrates with over 800 tools, making it easy to create a tech stack that meets your specific business needs.

Pricing: Free plans are available; Starter - $15/month; Professional - $800/month; Enterprise - $3,600/month.

2. Trello

Trello keeps your marketing team on track and openly communicates about the projects you’re working on. You can create boards for individual campaigns, editorial calendars, or quarterly goals.

Built-in workflows and automation capabilities keep communication streamlined, and simplicity keeps your marketing team focused on the work that matters.

What I like: Trello’s visual elements and straightforward organization make it easy for everyone to stay on the same page.

Pricing: Free plans available; Standard - $5/month; Premium - $10/month; Enterprise - $17.50/month for 250 users.

3. TrueNorth

TrueNorth is a marketing management platform built to help you hit your marketing goals. Built specifically for marketing teams, TrueNorth turns your marketing strategy into a visual projection of your growth, which is used to create monthly milestones that help you stay on track.

What I like: TrueNorth centralizes all your ideas, campaigns, and results in one place, with everything tied back to your goal.

Pricing: Plans cost $99/month, with a free 14-day trial available.

4. Monday.com

Everything on Monday.com starts with a board or visually driven table. Create and customize workflows for your team and keep groups, items, sub-items, and updates synced in real time.

You can also transform data pulled from the timeline and use Gantt views to track your projects on Monday.com to make sure you’re meeting your deadlines.

Plus, with more than 40 integrations — from SurveyMonkey to Mailchimp and, of course, HubSpot — you can visualize your data and make sure your whole company is collaborating.

Best for: I think it’s best for companies with locations around the world or lots of remote workers, as it keeps everyone in touch and up to speed no matter where they’re located.

Pricing: Monday.com is free for two seats; Basic - $27/month; Standard - $36/month; Pro - $57/month. Contact Monday.com for Enterprise pricing. All plans are billed annually.

5. Semrush

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SEO continues to be a huge factor in the successful ranking of your website. But you need the right tools to do it successfully.

Semrush allows you to run a technical SEO audit, track daily rankings, analyze your competitors’ SEO strategy, research millions of keywords, and even source ideas for earning more organic traffic.

But the benefits don’t stop at SEO. I like that you can also use SemRush for PPC, building and measuring an effective social media strategy, content planning, and even market research.

Best for: Creating, implementing, and tracking your marketing strategy.

Pricing: Pro - $139/month; Guru - $249/month; Business - $499/month.

6. Buzzsumo

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BuzzSumo allows you to analyze data to enhance and lead your marketing strategy, all while exploring high-performing content in your industry.

Use the platform to find influencers who may help your brand reach, track comments, and find trends to make the most of every turn.

What I like: As your needs evolve, you can also use their crisis management and video marketing tools.

Pricing: Content creation plan - $199/month; PR & Comms plan - $299/month; Suite plan - $499/month; Enterprise plan - $999/month.

7. Crazy Egg

Need to optimize your website?

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I highly recommend getting started with Crazy Egg. You’ll be able to identify “attention hotspots” on your product pages, track ad campaign traffic on your site, and understand if shoppers are clicking where you want them to.

You can even make sure your “Buy Now” buttons are in the best place.

Crazy Egg also offers recordings, A/B testing, and more to help make sure your website is offering the best user experience.

Best for: If your marketing strategy includes optimizing your website, Crazy Egg is the tool for you.

Pricing: Plus - $99/month; Pro - $249/month; Enterprise - $499/month.

What to Expect After Following Your Marketing Process Steps

Ultimately, creating a complete marketing strategy isn’t something that can happen overnight. It takes time, hard work, and dedication to confirm you’re reaching your ideal audience — whenever and wherever they want to be reached.

Stick with it (and use some of the resources I’ve included in this post), and over time, research and customer feedback will help you refine your strategy to make sure you’re spending most of your time on the marketing channels your audience cares most about.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2019. It has been updated for freshness and accuracy.

It's no secret that live streaming took off during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

It proved a valuable tool for forging and maintaining human connections as I saw personally hosting webinars and virtual meetups at my last company — and it hasn’t slowed down.

Market Research Future predicts that the live-streaming market in the United States will grow from about $90 billion in 2024 to nearly $560 billion by 2032.

Facebook Live is the second most popular platform for live streaming in the United States.

Want to learn how to livestream on Facebook? In this post, I’ll explain how in detail and share valuable tips on how to get the most out of your videos.

Table of Contents

• What is Facebook Live?
• Facebook Live Tips
• Why are marketers so excited about Facebook Live?
• How to Livestream on Facebook using Facebook Live
• Facebook Live Tools
• How to Analyze Your Facebook Live Video Performance
• Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most Out of Facebook Live

As a marketer, one of the things I like best about Facebook Live videos, is that they are public. This means viewers can watch on any device with access to Facebook, even without an account.

But not everyone can stream. Users with personal profiles can go live on Facebook from their timeline, a group, or an event using a computer or mobile device.

However, I recently discovered that Pages (in other words, businesses and marketers) face more red tape.

As of June 2024, Facebook Pages can only go live when they have been up for over 60 days, and they have at least 100 followers.

Facebook made this change to help combat spam and ensure that those posting content are legitimate. So, if you haven't already met this minimum, make sure to check out this guide to help you grow your business page following.

Why are marketers so excited about Facebook Live?

The Benefits of Facebook Live

Well, for one, Facebook has the largest audience of any social media platform, welcoming over 3 billion active users. This makes the potential reach of Facebook Live immense.

In addition, Facebook is really prioritizing video on the platform, which means Facebook Live is more likely to be served in the newsfeed and in front of your audience than other static mediums.

This means increased brand awareness and visibility.

Live streaming is also just a fun, memorable way to communicate your brand stories and build authentic relationships with fans and followers.

Marketers can go live on Facebook to make company announcements, host interviews, field questions, run demonstrations or tutorials, expand the reach of in-person events (like HubSpot did below), and, overall, engage audiences in a more personal, human way.

Plus, it’s all free of cost.

While a fairly simple concept, Facebook Live has a lot of little nuances marketers need to learn to get the most out of the platform.

This guide will help you learn the best tricks for making a difference in how many people see your live broadcast, how they engage with it, and how it performs.

How to Livestream on Facebook using Facebook Live

Facebook Live started as a mobile-only broadcasting feature, but now, it’s available on mobile devices and desktop computers as well. In the sections below, we'll go over how to go live on Facebook across multiple devices and apps.

(After you’ve met the criteria we discussed earlier, of course.)

Note: These instructions were made based on the iOS mobile apps. The exact steps and user interface in the Android apps may vary.

How to Go Live on Facebook via the Facebook Mobile App

Step 1: Go to the profile, Page, group, or event where you want to go live.

Step 2: Click “What’s on your mind?” to open post options.

Step 3: Click “Live video” in the post options.

Step 4: Tap where it says “Tap to add a description” to add information about the video. You can also tag friends or other pages, a location, or a feeling/activity.

Note: By default, the video will go to the Facebook Story, but this can be changed to a group when acting as a Page.

Step 5: Tap “Go Live.” After you’re done, tap “Finish” to end the live stream.

How to Go Live on Facebook via Meta Business Suite Mobile App

The Meta Business Suite app is another option for going live from a Facebook Page. This app cannot be used to broadcast on personal profiles.

Step 1: In the Meta Business Suite app, select the Page you want to go live on by clicking the logo/photo next to home on the app home screen.

Step 2: With that selected, click the blue plus (+) sign button at the bottom of the screen to open your post options.

Step 3: Select “Live.”

Step 4: Add a description to your video. You can tag friends or other pages, location information, or a feeling/activity.

Step 5: Tap “Go Live.” When you’re done, tap “finish” to end your broadcast.

How to Go Live on Facebook from a Web Browser

You go live from a web browser using your computer's built-in camera or an external camera and streaming software (also called an encoder like Restream).

Follow these steps:

Step 1: On your Facebook homepage, you should see a “Live” or “Live Video” option. If you are on a profile, it will be under “What’s on your mind?” The icon is a red camera.

Step 2: Choose to “Go live.” You can also “Create live video event” for the future on this page.

Step 3: Fill out the details for your video.

If you’re using your webcam, this includes what video and audio tools you’ll use as well as your video title and description. It’s also where you select where you want your video to be posted. You can choose from:

• Your timeline
• A Page you manage
• A Group you’re in

If using a streaming service, you’ll fill out your title, description, and location, but Facebook will provide you with a streaming key to use in your encoder. Take this key back to your streaming service and complete the necessary setup steps there using it.

Step 4: Click “Go Live” in the bottom left corner when you are ready.

Pro tip: During your broadcast, you can use the “dashboard” page to create polls for viewers, view and respond to comments, and overall manage and enhance your engagement.

Real-time engagement like this is what makes live content exciting and different, so don’t shrug it off.

I know that whenever I’ve gone live on Facebook, audiences have loved hearing responses to their questions or comments verbally on the broadcast. (And I can’t lie; I’ve loved hearing them during broadcasts I’ve watched.)

More on the tools Facebook has available to make your broadcast more engaging in our next section.

Facebook Live Tools

Facebook offers many features for you to further connect with your audience during your broadcast.

Utilizing these tools will help boost engagement and create the best possible experience for your viewers. You can mix and match them to serve your stream in the best way for your business.

• Live Polls: You can create a live poll beforehand to share when you go live. Then, you can see your audience’s responses in real time during the stream and use results to spark live discussion.
• Featured Links: Adding one or multiple featured links to the stream to promote your website or other sources.
• Live in Stories: These allow you to share your streams directly to Facebook Stories to reach more of your audience.
• Live Comment Moderation: Manage the conversation in your live stream's comments. With this feature, you can limit who can comment and how frequently. You can even choose a specific viewer to moderate comments on your behalf.
• Front Row: This feature allows you to highlight your top fans in a special section of your stream. You can give them a special shoutout to show appreciation for them while you’re live.
• Badges: These are a measure of how much your fans are engaging with your content. Fans can earn badges by interacting with your content, whether it's sending “Stars” or tuning in to your Facebook Live videos.
• Donations: Qualified pages in certain locations can add a “Donate” button to their live video. Nonprofits using Facebook’s payment platform don’t have to pay a fee, so they get 100% of the donations.
• Live With: This is a co-broadcasting feature that allows you to host your Facebook Live video with multiple guests.
• Live Shopping: If you have products for sale on Facebook, this feature allows you to add product listings to feature during your livestream.
• Messenger Rooms broadcast: You can turn your Messenger Rooms into co-hosted Facebook Lives with up to 50 people.
• In-stream Ads: In-stream ads are automatically added to the streams you upload as a way to monetize your content.
• Subscriptions on Live: Your audiences can subscribe to your content and get exclusive benefits as part of their subscription.

For more help with going live on Facebook, check out our video:

Remember that a live stream recording is also published to the property where you went live. That content is great because you can download and repurpose it for further use.

How to Analyze Your Facebook Live Video Performance

Facebook Live video insights help you learn how people interact with your live streams so you can optimize your live strategy for maximum impact.

The performance analytics available for Facebook Live videos are similar to those of normal videos on Facebook, with some neat additions.

• Video performance: An overview of your total video views and engagements (likes, shares, comments, etc.), minutes viewed, and net new followers. ;
• Benchmarking: A comparison of your Live metrics to other creators and businesses in the same industry
• Audience: An overview of audience demographics (biographical information) and other stats like growth rate, number of follower video views, and non-follower video views.
• Loyalty: These are stats for your number of returning viewers, the videos that inspire people to return to your page, and the number of engaged followers on your Live.
• Retention: You'll learn where your viewers are coming from, the traffic sources that drive the most watch time, and how long people watch (by 3-second, 15-second, and 1-minute views).
• Earnings: These stats show how much you earn during your videos from in-stream ads, CPM, RPM, monetizable 1-minute views, and money earned from Stars given by subscribers (if applicable).

The most comprehensive performance data for your Facebook Live videos can be found in Meta Business Suite:

But I wouldn’t blame you if it gets a little overwhelming; there is a lot of information there.

For a quick pulse on how my content is doing on Facebook, I usually click the insights button below individual posts.

How to Access Video Analytics on a Facebook Business Page

Step 1: Head to the left-hand column of your page and select Meta Business Suite.

Step 2: Select Insights from the left-hand side menu.

Step 3: Click, “content,” then set your media type to “video”

Step 4: Dive deeper into your insights by selecting filters and scrolling down the page. (Note: We didn‘t have any videos posted to the page we used in this example. If you do have videos, you’ll see them appear here.)

Step 5: To view insights for a specific video, click on the video title in your content list. From here you can view metrics from when the broadcast was live as well as over its entire lifetime.

Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most Out of Facebook Live

Now that you‘ve mastered how to livestream on Facebook, let’s discuss some tips and tricks on making your live content the best it can be.

The last thing you want is to start a live video and freeze up. When you’re live, there are no do-overs or chances to start over. So, prepare yourself or your host as much as possible.

Outline what you want to communicate in the video, then follow the rest of the tips below.

Need some inspiration? Check out these great examples of Facebook Live videos to help get your creative juices flow.

1. Brush up on Facebook Live best practices.

Marketers have so much opportunity to reach a wider audience on Facebook Live, so it's worth committing to learning how to run a Live effectively.

In our detailed Marketer's Guide to Facebook Live, we cover essential best practices on how to plan, run, and analyze the results of a business-run Facebook Live. Download our free eBook to brush up on these best practices.

2. Test out live video before broadcasting live.

If you want to experiment with live broadcasting without sharing it with anyone else, you can create a test broadcast by adjusting the audience to be just you or a colleague or friend.

To do this, toggle Create a test broadcast before going live into the on position after you start the process of creating a live video, outlined here in Step 2.

3. Don’t go live too frequently.

The art of organic reach on Facebook has changed over time, but it does still exist. Live video can be a powerful tool in organic reach, as users can be notified of the content.

But don’t abuse this. Only go live when you’re prepared to offer true value to viewers.

If you go live too frequently with nothing to show, people will begin to tune you out or, worse, unfollow you.

4. Keep reintroducing yourself.

When you first start the video, take a minute to introduce yourself and what the video's about, but don’t do it just once.

When you first start live streaming, you may have zero people watching. Even a few seconds in, you could only have a handful of viewers.

As people find your video on their newsfeeds or see the notification in the app, they‘ll join in gradually. So, to catch people up, you’ll want to reintroduce yourself a second, third, and even fourth time.

Cosmetics brand Benefit does a great job with this for the first few minutes of its broadcast:

5. Lean into popular topics.

Not sure what to talk about it when you go live? According to Statista the most popular types of live streaming videos in the United States are those related to breaking news.

As a business, you can monitor industry news and respond or add to the conversation on Facebook Live.

Other popular options include humorous videos and how-to’s.

6. Make the video visually engaging.

You have to be visually engaging — not just at the very beginning of your broadcast (although that'll be important for when folks view the video later), but throughout the video as more and more people join in.

It should be no surprise that Martha Stewart is a master of that.

I love the colorful graphic she starts her video with (which also acts as its thumbnail) and the stylish set on which the broadcast takes place. She uses a variety of props and angles to keep the video interesting.

The more visually engaging you can be, the more you can entice people to stick around and really focus.

Facebook started monitoring signals of video engagement — like turning on the audio, switching to full-screen mode, or enabling high definition — interpreting that as users enjoying the video.

If your video engagement is good, Facebook is more likely to show it in more newsfeeds.

7. Roll with the unexpected.

What makes a live video special? The spontaneous, interactive nature of it.

People love the ability to interact and even impact what happens in a live broadcast.

These moments make live video special and differentiate it from scripted, edited, or otherwise pre-recorded videos.

So, embrace the platform. Plan your main talking points, but don’t run off a script and be ready to pivot with the unexpected.

That said …

8. Don't worry about mistakes or stutters.

Listen, we're all human. When humans and technology mix, there can sometimes be technical difficulties.

Honestly, that’s one of the positives I think came out of lockdown. With remote work and virtual meetings from home, we all became a little bit more comfortable with little interruptions or mishaps.

If you‘re recording a live video, things might go wrong — your equipment could malfunction, you could lose your train of thought, or you could get photobombed by a random passerby.

If things happen, you can’t call “cut” — you have to roll with them and keep filming and talking.

The good news? These things help keep your broadcast human and real.

If your phone wobbles while filming, laugh and call it out. If you forget what you were saying, make a joke.

The key is to keep the broadcast like a fun conversation, so if mistakes happen, keep it light and keep the lines of communication open with your viewers.

9. Encourage viewers to “Like” and “Share” the video on air.

One of the primary ways Facebook‘s algorithm ranks a post is by how many people “Like” and “Share” it. The more people who do, the more it’ll show up in people's newsfeeds.

When people are watching a video, they may be more distracted from “liking” and “sharing” than they would be with a static post.

That's actually something the folks at Facebook noticed about video content early on, so don’t be afraid to mention it verbally during your broadcast or even display the message on the screen.

10. Engage with commenters and mention them by name.

The number of comments on your broadcast is another way to get Facebook to give it a higher relevancy score — another great way to get into newsfeeds.

So, encourage your viewers to comment by asking questions like Tastemade does in this video:

Engage with people who are commenting by answering their questions and calling them out by name. Not only will it get more people to comment, but it's also a fun way to include your viewers in the live experience and make it more memorable.

11. Work with a moderator.

When you‘re the one on camera for a Facebook Live video, it’s really hard to pay attention to all the comments popping up on the screen.

If the comments are coming in fast, it‘s especially easy to lose sight of them as they disappear below the fold. Plus, you’re probably occupied by recording and entertaining viewers.

Because of this, it's always a good idea to have an additional person logged into the primary account to monitor the comments on a desktop computer.

That way, they can take care of responding so the person recording the video can concentrate on creating a great experience.

12. Subtitle your broadcast in the comments section.

Your viewers may be tuning in and out to watch your video during the work day, or they might simply be watching your video without sound. Some people may even have hearing limitations.

Whatever the reason, periodically subtitling your Facebook Live video in the comments section is a great way to keep people engaged and make your content more accessible.

This also allows people who are tuning in late to catch up on what's going on.

Tools like Verbit can help.

13. Ask viewers to turn on Facebook Live notifications.

In addition to asking for likes, shares, and comments, ask viewers to subscribe to live notifications. You can also ask them to “like” your brand on Facebook if they haven’t already done so.

This increases the likelihood of their being notified of your next live broadcast.

14. Broadcast for at least 30 minutes.

As soon as you begin recording your live video, you‘ll slowly but surely show up in people’s newsfeeds.

The longer you broadcast — especially as likes, comments, and shares start coming in — the more likely people are to discover your video and share it with their friends.

Because timing is such an important factor for engagement in these live videos, Facebook suggests going live for at least 30 minutes. However, you can stay live for up to 4 hours using the Facebook mobile app and 8 hours using a desktop.

Bloomberg Business regularly goes live on Facebook for hours at a time:

15. End with next steps

Before you end your live broadcast, be sure to finish with a closing line, like “Thanks for watching” or “I'll be going live again soon.” This keeps your live video friendly and conversational.

While you’re at it, give the viewer guidance on their next step. What should they do with the information they just got from your video? Do you want them to subscribe? Make a purchase? Now’s the time to share that call to action.

16. Add a link to the description later.

Once you've finished the live broadcast, you can always go back and edit the description, change the privacy settings, or delete the video, just like you would any other post.

You can add a trackable link to the description in the post, which can direct future viewers to your live video series page, the site of whatever campaign you're using the video to promote, or somewhere else.

We hope this has been a helpful guide. We'll keep you posted with any new developments and tips for connecting with your audience in other cool ways.

17. Repurpose your live video content.

To maximize the reach of your streams, you can save your videos and then upload them to your profile. You can also repurpose the videos by sharing clips as profile highlights and creating short videos to share on other channels like Instagram Stories or even TikTok videos.

Pro tip: Short on time? AI can help you repurpose. For example, OpusClip can help during any video into bite-sized clips for social media. Or you can transcribe using ChatGPT then use HubSpot’s Content Remix to create social media posts and blog articles among other things.

Use Facebook Live to its full potential.

Social media may have been invented for fun, but it’s grown into an essential business tool. Facebook as a social network is especially valuable for the ways it lets you connect to an audience, and Facebook Live is a great extension of that.

Use it to the benefit of your business as a way to promote your product, build brand awareness, or grow your audience.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

These tips offer powerful ways to enhance your website's SEO through effective backlink building strategies:

Craft Exceptional and Shareable Content

Develop detailed guides and informative blog posts that are rich in research to attract valuable links.

Utilize visually engaging content like infographics, videos, and images that are likely to be shared.

Create original research and data-driven content, such as industry statistics or case studies, to encourage other sites to reference your work.

Collaborate with Influential Sites through Guest Blogging

Reach out to reputable websites in your industry to contribute guest posts, incorporating backlinks to your site.

Prioritize relevant websites to maximize the SEO impact of the backlinks.

Harness the Power of Broken Link Building

Identify broken links on industry-specific websites and offer your content as a replacement.

Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to streamline the process of finding broken links.

Take Advantage of Resource Pages

Search for resource pages related to your industry and propose adding your website to their list of helpful resources.

Establish connections with website owners to increase the likelihood of inclusion.

Leverage Business Directories and Local Listings

Register your website on reputable directories and local listing platforms for valuable backlinks and improved visibility.

Avoid low-quality directories that could potentially harm your SEO efforts.

Engage with Influencers and Bloggers

Network with influencers and bloggers in your niche, offering mutual value and opportunities for collaboration.

Seek out opportunities for link-building through collaborations and features on each other's platforms.

Participate in Online Communities and Forums

Share insights and participate in industry-related forums, Q&A sites, and social media groups to contribute to the conversation.

Ensure any links shared are relevant and add value to the discussion.

Secure Backlinks through Testimonials and Reviews

Write testimonials for companies you've worked with to potentially earn backlinks to your site.

Leave reviews on products or services you've used, where platforms allow for a backlink to your website.

Repurpose Content on Prominent Platforms

Share your content on platforms like Medium, LinkedIn, and SlideShare, linking back to your original posts.

Increase your reach and potential backlinks by repurposing content on high-authority platforms.

Analyze Competitor Backlinks for Opportunities

Utilize tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to evaluate your competitors' backlink profiles.

Identify potential websites for backlink acquisition based on your competitors' link sources.

Consistently implementing these strategies will help you cultivate a robust backlink profile, ultimately enhancing your website's SEO performance over time.

More times than I can count, while writing, I get myself into random but interesting topics with little relation to the original post. In the end, I have to make the simple but painful choice of deleting or archiving hours of research and writing because I know most people click on a post with a certain expectation of what they’ll get, and I know it isn’t me bombing them with unrelated rants about CSS.

This happened to me while working on Monday’s article about at-rules. All I did there was focus on a number of recipes to test browser support for CSS at-rules. In the process, I began to realize, geez we have so many new at-rules — I wonder how many of them are from this year alone. That’s the rabbit hole I found myself in once I wrapped up the article I was working on.

And guess what, my hunch was right: 2024 has brought more at-rules than an entire decade of CSS.

It all started when I asked myself why we got a selector() wrapper function for the @supports at-rule but are still waiting for an at-rule() version. I can’t pinpoint the exact reasoning there, but I’m certain rthere wasn’t much of a need to check the support of at-rules because, well, there weren’t that many of them — it’s just recently that we got a windfall of at-rules.

Some historical context

So, right around 1998 when the CSS 2 recommendation was released, @import and @page were the only at-rules that made it into the CSS spec. That’s pretty much how things remained until the CSS 2.1 recommendation in 2011 introduced @media. Of course, there were other at-rules like — @font-face, @namespace and @keyframes to name a few — that had already debuted in their own respective modules. By this time, CSS dropped semantic versioning, and the specification didn’t give a true picture of the whole, but rather individual modules organized by feature.

Random tangent: The last accepted consensus says we are at “CSS 3”, but that was a decade ago and some even say we should start getting into CSS 5. Wherever we are is beside the point, although it’s certainly a topic of discussion happening. Is it even useful to have a named version?

The @supports at-rule was released in 2011 in CSS Conditional Rules Module Level 3 — Levels 1 and 2 don’t formally exist but refer to the original CSS 1 and 2 recommendations. We didn’t actually get support for it in most browsers until 2015, and at that time, the existing at-rules already had widespread support. The @supports was only geared towards new properties and values, designed to test browser support for CSS features before attempting to apply styles.

The numbers

As of today, we have a grand total of 18 at-rules in CSS that are supported by at least one major browser. If we look at the year each at-rule was initially defined in a CSSWG Working Draft, we can see they all have been published at a fairly consistent rate:

If we check the number of at-rules supported on each browser per year, however, we can see the massive difference in browser activity:

If we just focus on the last year a major browser shipped each at-rule, we will notice that 2024 has brought us a whopping seven at-rules to date!

I like little thought experiments like this. Something you’re researching leads to researching about the same topic; out of scope, but tangentially related. It may not be the sort of thing you bookmark and reference daily, but it is good cocktail chatter. If nothing else, it’s affirming the feeling that CSS is moving fast, like really fast in a way we haven’t seen since CSS 3 first landed.

It also adds context for the CSS features we have — and don’t have. There was no at-rule() function initially because there weren’t many at-rules to begin with. Now that we’ve exploded with more new at-rules than the past decade combined, it may be no coincidence that just last week the Chrome Team updated the function’s status from New to Assigned!

One last note: the reason I’m even thinking about at-rules at all is that we’ve updated the CSS Almanac, expanding it to include more CSS features including at-rules. I’m trying to fill it up and you can always help by becoming a guest writer.

2024: More CSS At-Rules Than the Past Decade Combined originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.