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“Never, ever hire for JavaScript framework skills. Instead, interview and hire only for fundamentals like web standards, accessibility, modern CSS, semantic HTML, and Web Components.” — Alex Russell
Quick Hit #16 originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
AUSTIN, Texas—SEPT. 5, 2024—WP Engine, a global web enablement company providing premium products and solutions for websites built on WordPress, today announced the hiring of a new Chief Financial Officer, Samuel (“Sam”) Monti. In his new role, Monti is responsible for the leadership and management of all aspects of WP Engine’s financial organization, including corporate…
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Learn how to build professional relationships that don't just open doors — but blow them wide open.
Building strong professional relationships is your secret weapon for marketing success. The right connections can open you up to new ideas, reveal valuable opportunities, and give you the insights you need to solve tough problems.
As Kieran and I discuss in a recent episode of Marketing Against the Grain, however, building impactful relationships takes more than just attending networking events and exchanging business cards.
So how do you find the people who can truly elevate your game? And how do you actively add value to grow those relationships?
In this post, we dig into four strategies for improving your professional relationships. Fair warning: these aren’t your typical networking tips.
We’re talking about going deep, leading with value, and mastering the art of communication — tailored for industry leaders looking to make a real impact.
Kieran and I talk to a lot of people. It’s how we solve problems and learn. But here’s the thing: not all conversations are equal. You’ve got to seek out what we call “10x conversations.”
These conversations are the ones that shift your perspective and thinking entirely, leaving you with insights that alter the way you go about your work — and even your personal life.
When you find someone like that, don’t just have one conversation and move on. Dive in deep. Have ten more conversations with that person rather than spreading yourself thin with ten different people. The value is in the depth, not the breadth.
If you’re not sure how to find these people, here’s what I do: find a person you think is awesome at what they do — and then find out who they look up to. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but trust me, it works.
The people that everyone else in the industry thinks are the best? Figure out how to spend some time with them.
Then, go a step further — seek out the five people those experts think are even better. That’s where you’ll find the real 10x conversations.
“If you can find these people,” says Kieran, “They’re going to be absolute game-changers to your ability to learn.”
When it comes to networking, Kieran and I both agree that it’s not about how many people you meet but how well you get to know the right ones — and that generally doesn’t happen at big, crowded networking events. Instead, real value comes from smaller, more focused 1:1 settings.
For example, I recently played golf with my friend, Dave Gerhardt. We spent about four hours together, just the two of us, and by the end of it, we’d not only come up with a YouTube show idea, but we’d also tackled a bunch of other challenges that we were both facing.
That kind of focused time lets you dig deeper into topics and really get to know the person. It’s way more valuable than trying to meet dozens of people at once.
So next time you’re thinking about how to connect with someone or expand your network, think less about quantity and more about quality. Set up some one-on-one time — a dinner, a coffee, a golf game — and you’ll see the difference it makes.
The more value that you bring to a relationship, the stronger the relationship becomes. It’s that simple. But you need to clearly — and consistently — demonstrate that value with every interaction.
For example, when Kieran first started out, he made it a point to jump on every call where he thought he could offer value. “I wasn’t just looking to take; I truly wanted to give where I could,” he says. “I’d join for 30 minutes, listen, and figure out how I could help.”
It wasn’t the most efficient way to build relationships, but over time, it led to deeper, more meaningful connections.
Why? Because building relationships isn’t just about being present; it’s about being the person who others can rely on for insight, support, or whatever they might need.
And when you consistently show up with something valuable to offer, you’re not just another contact in someone’s network — you’re the person they think of first when they need help or advice.
And that’s a key ingredient for building professional relationships that last.
Especially when you’re interacting with high-level execs like investors or founders, it’s not enough to just throw data at them — you need to tell the story behind the numbers.
Sure, executives love their charts and metrics, but they’re often more swayed by anecdotes and real-world examples. That’s where you win their buy-in, build trust, and gain the autonomy you need.
Think of it this way: as a marketing leader, you’ve got both the data and the stories at your disposal. The trick is to use them together. The data gives you credibility, but it’s the stories and anecdotes that make your argument stick.
Let’s say you’re pitching a new marketing strategy. Don’t just roll out the potential ROI. Back it up with a customer success story or some feedback that highlights why this strategy is the right move.
Executives are often swayed by what they hear from customers or industry peers, even more so than by what they see on a spreadsheet.
And remember, this tip isn’t only relevant for today. As Kieran points out, “Communicating qualitative data is a skill set that executives are going to have to hone more in the coming years, as we’re getting less and less direct attribution.”
To watch our entire discussion about improving your professional relationships, check out the full episode of Marketing Against the Grain below:
This blog series is in partnership with Marketing Against the Grain, the video podcast. It digs deeper into ideas shared by marketing leaders Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot’s CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (SVP, Marketing at HubSpot) as they unpack growth strategies and learn from standout founders and peers.
![Download Now: The Annual State of Artificial Intelligence in 2024 [Free Report]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/b72f2b25-8cc9-4642-9a1b-1e675d3d273b.png)
Her answer? “[Generative AI] is here, and we need to steer it in the right direction to reach its potential. I hope that we as creators and marketers and business leaders will take the reins of this technology and bend the arc of its use towards something positive.”
This series explores some of the strongest opportunities for AI in the marketing world today and in the near future, backed by HubSpot original research from our State of AI Survey, and expert perspectives from major brands including Jasper, ZoomInfo, and Mention.com.
It's clear that AI is poised to revolutionize the marketing industry. But how is a different story.
So we asked marketers: In which aspects of your role do you already leverage AI?
For starters, a staggering 81% of marketers leveraging generative AI report it enhances their roles.
Here's how generative AI helps marketers with their roles:
As a blogger, one of the primary use cases for AI that I‘ve heard about has been blog creation. However, it’s not the only use case — or even necessarily the most effective one.
So far, 56% of marketers who use generative AI for content creation say it performs better than content created without it.
Creating AI tools themselves is also an incredibly effective lead-generation strategy.
As Amilah Ali, Mention’s Content Marketing Manager, told me, “Creating free AI tools has helped our brand with both brand awareness and lead generation, as individuals who use these tools are more likely to remember the Mention brand, and may also become potential customers in the future.”
If you don't have the time or resources to create your own branded AI tools, there are plenty that can help you deliver more value in your work.
For instance, Mention, a social media listening and monitoring tool, used OpenAI's GPT-3 capabilities to create an Instagram Caption Generator and Instagram Hashtag Generator. They've also created AI tools that help users generate social media bios across popular platforms like Instagram, X, and TikTok.
As a writer, I was hesitant to believe that a robot could do my job better than I could.
And, in truth, it can't do my job alone. But it can greatly supercharge my own productivity and even upscale my content.
In fact, 77% of marketers believe generative AI marketing is effective at making their content more personalized, 96% say personalization increases buyer repeat purchases, and 94% believe it boosts sales.
(215% more marketers will likely consider their marketing strategy effective if it offers a personalized experience.)
This makes sense: Generative AI is a powerful tool for generating strong ideas, brainstorming more unique angles for your content, and researching topics more in-depth than you otherwise could.
As Samyutha Reddy, Jasper's Head of Enterprise Marketing, told me recently, “AI augments the human experience, but it doesn't replace the human within that experience. We value writers in our society because they're able to give us a thought-provoking human perspective on the world.”
She adds, “It isn't just about summarizing facts that are out there. It's about humans sharing opinions on very real topics that help build your perspective on how you feel about something. So an AI could really never replace that human perspective.”
One of the most important benefits of generative AI marketing is how much time it can save for your team.
On average, marketers told us they save three hours per piece of content and two and a half hours per day.
Wow. Let that sink in.
For a writer who needs to complete four posts a week, that translates to over 12 hours — more than a full workday! — that you can now spend up-leveling your career, seeking out more interesting angles for your topics, or focusing on other aspects of your role.
As HubSpot's CMO Kipp Bodnar puts it, “[AI] gives you the time to obsess over your customers again.”
He goes on to provide a few examples: “It gives your sales team time to genuinely connect with customers and work with them to identify how your products can solve for their unique needs.
It gives your support team the ability to focus on complex customer challenges rather than being bogged down by tickets that could be answered by a chatbot.”
He adds, “It also gives your leaders the insights they need to make more high-impact, powerful decisions that align with what matters most to your customers.”
While generative AI marketing offers many benefits, some companies still don‘t plan to use it just yet. Let’s dig into the top reasons why.
The number one: 43% of marketers who don‘t use AI are worried they’ll become overly reliant on AI tools.
HubSpot's Senior Director of Content, Brad Wolverton, understands that marketers might feel an initial temptation to rely heavily on AI — but he believes that most marketers will quickly determine that AI alone doesn't enable them to produce the type of high-quality content they need to stand out.
As Wolverton puts it, “The more reliant marketers become on AI to produce content, the less differentiated that content will feel, which will put a premium on higher-quality research and writing.”
He adds, “AI-generated sites will further erode the trust people have in what they hear and view online, creating opportunities for the companies willing to double down on creative talent.”
Other concerns? 60% of marketers using generative AI are concerned about potential harm to their brand's reputation due to issues like bias, plagiarism, or misalignment with brand values.
Fortunately, these concerns don‘t mean you need to forgo leveraging AI entirely — they’re just valid reasons for practicing smart, responsible behaviors when you begin implementing AI at your company.
A few tips:
It's equally helpful to look at how other businesses use AI and take inspiration from them.
You're probably thinking — Okay, okay, I get it. AI is great. But what types of tools specifically should I be using in my role as a marketer?
For starters, the clear winner here is AI-powered chatbots. In our survey, 72% of marketers agreed that AI and automation tools like chatbots help them personalize the experience customers get with their company.
Beyond that, chatbots, including ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google Bard, are rated the most effective for creating marketing content.
Prefer to make your own? Check out HubSpot’s Free Chatbot Builder, which enables you to create chatbot sequences without any coding and personalize chat replies with contact data pulled from HubSpot’s CRM.
Besides chatbots, marketers said other commonly used AI tools include visual AI tools (57%) and text generation tools (56%).
Unsure which tools are right for you? Take a look at 21 of the Best AI Chatbots for 2024.
One other quick note: If you plan to leverage chatbots to create content, transparency will be key.
As Litmus' Content Marketing Manager Kimberly Huang puts it, "Rule of thumb: transparency is key. Dentsu found that over 70% of survey respondents want brands to disclose when they use AI across products, services, experiences, and content."
She adds, “It may feel counterintuitive to do this, but being transparent with your audience ultimately leads to building trust. Especially as we move toward a more AI-integrated world, brands should lean into being open and honest with how they’re using AI.”
So — how can you do that?
Pringle suggests, “It’s as simple as adding in a line of copy that lets your audience know you used AI. For example, in a recent issue of our newsletter, Litmus Weekly, we used generative AI to help create content ideas. We ended the email by sharing ‘this email was written using Jasper.’”
Convinced generative AI is going to supercharge your own role? Keep reading to learn how to properly harness AI as your new superpower.
As you begin dipping your toes into the waters of generative AI, you'll want to ensure you read up on best practices when prompting AI.
A few tips:
Take a look at the following examples of weak versus strong prompts:
Why is the first one weak? Well, imagine if you told a junior associate at your marketing firm the same thing.
I‘d imagine she’d look up at you and say, “Okay… But how long should the social media post be? Do you want me to use emojis? Which social platform are you going to post this on? And is there anything important from the introduction that you definitely want me to include?”
Treat your AI chatbot the same way you'd treat a junior associate. Provide specific, actionable prompting to get the most out of the tool.
And, if you‘re curious, here’s ChatSpot's response:
Impressive, huh?
Similar to prompting, you'll want to become adept at scoping out prompt responses and editing for consistency across your content, tone of voice, and always double-checking that the information is accurate.
As Ben Salzman, SVP, GTM Strategy & ZI Labs at ZoomInfo, which launched a GTM Playbook with AI tips for sales teams, puts it:
“In our sales AI prompts, we include a specific person that the communication would come from, along with details about the prospect who will receive the outreach, including title and company. We also add tone guidance and constraints around how the outreach should sound, and of course, the scenario of the play.”
He adds, “We found that the more information we gave, the more time we saved when it came to editing and iteration.”
Ultimately, AI won't replace humans — but the humans who know how to properly leverage AI will replace the humans who don't.
It's vital you take a multi-channel approach when creating content to attract prospects and engage with leads.
But that can be exhausting and time-intensive — which is where AI becomes your most beloved confidant.
As a marketer, you need to learn how to leverage AI to get more bang for your buck from one single piece of content.
For instance, let's say you start with a blog post. You might use an AI-powered chatbot to create social media and email copy to distribute that content.
Additionally, you might convert the blog post into a video script so you can create an AI-powered YouTube video that revolves around the same topic. What I like: Content repurposing at scale.
You might even ask AI to help you turn that blog post into sales enablement materials.
AI can ultimately help you amplify your messaging across channels and distribution engines without requiring hours of coordination with other teams to create brand-new copy for various channels. Best for: Efficiency gains.
And that's a huge win.
As more marketers — and consumers — begin leveraging chatbots to ask questions and seek out information rather than search engines, it stands to reason that the search landscape will change drastically.
To ensure your website is in the best position possible, it's vital you re-evaluate your long-term SEO strategy.
Aja Frost, HubSpot’s Director of English Growth, told me, “SEOs have been fighting declining click-through rates from Google since the introduction of the first search features.
With the addition of AI-powered chat on the SERPs, it’s very possible Position 1 will become the only result that gets traffic. Bard shifts positions 2-10 below the fold. Depending on the length of the Bard-generated answer, even the first position might be!”
She advises, “In the short term, SEOs should evaluate which terms their websites are ranking for that are most likely to see Bard on the SERPs (likely ‘how’ and ‘why’ queries) and what percentage of their traffic that puts at risk.
The answers will help them develop a longer-term plan — investing in ranking for lower-risk queries, finding unique ways to enrich their content that AI can’t replicate, and more.”
AI is still relatively new, and it can be scary to test out how you might leverage AI in your role. It might even be tempting to say, “I'll just keep doing it the old way. Why fix what isn't broken?”
But it's equally risky to avoid AI, which will continue to change the way other marketers create, engage, and sell. You could be left behind if you don't learn to leverage it for your own gain.
As HubSpot's Bodnar puts it, "AI is going to commoditize and disrupt so many businesses that the way to prevent that is to be very bold and move forward to embrace AI as quickly as possible."
Fortunately, this can become a fun aspect of your role. Start testing out new AI tools (a list of those can be found below).
Find out which tools are most effective for your team and share them widely across the organization. Become an explorer who is willing to slow down your current processes to test, iterate, and learn.
Trust me — in the long run, it's worth it.
Here's a quick and handy list of various AI tools suited for different needs.
Ultimately, the power of AI begins and ends with your own imagination: How generative AI fits into your marketing strategy and other business applications will depend on the creativity and vision of those leveraging these powerful tools.
In what ways can you imagine AI supercharging your work, now and in the future?
Team black or team green?
Earlier this year, HBO launched an incredibly moving ad for the new season of its hit series “House of the Dragon.” It featured pictures of House of the Dragon banners in renowned landmarks globally, including The New York Stock Exchange.
Each spot vowed allegiance to a team or “house” in the series.
The ads and buzz around the series made me go check out the show (all hail Queen Rhaenyra!). That got me thinking about ads and their impact, which eventually led me to wonder, “What is the best ad of all time?”
Now, it was a little difficult for me to come up with just one “best” advertisement of all time — which is why there are 23 in this post instead. Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
But why are these some of the best ads of all time?
Because of the impact they had on brand growth and how they hit on some universal truth that makes them memorable. In fact, some of us might not have even been alive when these campaigns first aired.
Two of the biggest challenges in advertising are measuring the value of the advertisement and ensuring it resonates with the right people.
Reaching everyone your desired customers can be tough. Your target audience are dispersed across so many different channels. Plus, the vast volume of competing ads makes it hard to stand out and make an impact on your audience.
As the nature of advertising evolves, it’s important that you do too. People can advertise anywhere, and today’s best type of ad might not be the best type tomorrow.
As you can imagine, there are many types of advertisements — all of which run in different mediums, on different channels, and have different goals in mind for their business. Let’s see the most common ads marketers should know.
The first print ad ran in England in 1472, according to Infolinks. Since then, this type of advertising has become unavoidable.
Print ads have run in newspapers, magazines, brochures, billboards, and flyers. In this method, the advertiser pays the publisher to place their ad in the publication.
Direct mail involves creating and distributing printed materials to a targeted mailing list. These materials can include postcards, catalogs, brochures, letters, and promotional offers.
This method was first discovered in 1835 when the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS) mailed print materials to southern religious and civic leaders.
Soon after, direct mail became a common advertising method used by businesses to raise awareness for their brand.
Direct mail is a tactic that should be thoughtfully deployed. I’ve received more than my fair share of junk mail that ends up directly in the trash.
However, I’ve noticed if local businesses contact me, service providers for my home reach out, or my favorite brands send coupons, I’ll keep them.
United States radio stations launched their first commercial broadcasts in 1920.
And while we might all drive around with our iPhones plugged in for music these days, don't let that fool you.
Radio is still a viable marketing and advertising platform today for expanding the reach of sponsored events and new products.
In this ad method, the advertiser pays the radio station to play their ad during designated breaks between music or a radio show.
Television ads originated in the 1940s with the promotion of practical items and political campaigns. Advertisers can now use television to promote food, toys, stores, business services, and more — both to local TV channels and to national broadcast networks.
In this ad method, the advertiser pays the TV network to show their ad during designated breaks in the network's regular programming.
Internet advertising took root in the mid-1990s with the launch of “banner” advertisements for various telecommunications companies.
Marketers place these ads in interstitial spots on a webpage. Basically, advertisers pay the website owner to place their ads in exposed spaces peripheral to the website's own content.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Internet advertising has gone on to include video, search engine marketing, and more.
Social media advertising is a form of internet advertising that emerged with the introduction of social media in the 2000s.
In this ad method, advertisers promote products, services, or content through paid ads on social media platforms. That includes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok.
There are also many different ad formats to choose from when advertising on social media, such as image ads, video ads, carousel ads, sponsored posts, and more.
Since the early 2000s, mobile advertising has been a popular method due to the widespread use of cell phones and the amount of time people spend on them.
It involves delivering promotional messages or advertisements through text messages, mobile apps, mobile websites, and push notifications.
With this method, advertisers can leverage data and create highly personalized ads based on location, behavior, and user interests.
Podcast advertising gained popularity in the mid-2000s with the introduction of MP3 players, such as iPods, which made it easier for users to download and listen to podcasts on the go.
Similar to radio advertising, podcast advertising is where advertisers pay podcast owners to promote their product or service through sponsorship or ad spots in podcasts.
These ads can be inserted before, during, or after a podcast episode.
In essence, the advertising types listed above have evolved dramatically since their inception. What was once quite one-dimensional messages now carry clever, funny, or profound undertones that make the ads memorable for years to come.
After reading Jennette McCurdy’s memoir about her life as a child star, I tuned into her podcast “Hard Feelings.” The ad breaks in her show were witty, showcasing her personality.
In one, she takes a bite out of a Hello Fresh lettuce wrap, and you can hear the crunch. Memorable, indeed!
No matter which method of advertising you use, one thing remains true: The best advertisements capture the attention of consumers right from the start.
I asked 10 advertising and marketing professionals what makes an ad stand out to them. This is what they said.
“Memorable ads stick in your mind often due to consistent branding. When everything from the colors to the messaging aligns seamlessly, it builds a strong identity. This familiarity breeds trust and recognition,” says Cesar Cobo, chief operating officer at Webris.
Clear messaging ensures that your audience understands what you’re trying to communicate with them. Without clarity, consumers may misinterpret or fail to grasp the main point of your ad, leading to confusion and a loss of impact.
Beyond that, “A consistent brand message across all platforms ensures that your audience can easily recall who you are, even amidst a sea of competitors. Craft a bold and clear message that cuts through the noise,” Cobo notes.
As consumers are constantly bombarded with advertisements, simple and straightforward messaging can also help your brand cut through the noise and grasp their attention.
“The most impactful ads don't just sell a product — they tell a story that resonates with the viewer. An ad that can genuinely make you laugh, touch your heart, or inspire you in some way has a much better chance of sticking in your mind,” says Will Yang, head of growth and marketing at Instrumentl.
I wholeheartedly agree. Extra Gum made one of my all-time favorite commercials.
In it, a dad folds paper cranes out of gum wrappers for his daughter as she grows up. Before she moves away to college, he finds that she’s saved all of the origami cranes he’s made her. Just thinking about the ad makes me tear up.
Storytelling is essential in advertising because it allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level.
A well-told story has the potential to hold your audience’s interest for longer, increasing the chances of delivering your message more effectively.
Telling a story can also help you differentiate your brand from competitors. By sharing unique stories that reflect your brand’s values or mission, you can establish a distinct brand identity and develop a loyal customer base.
"At the end of the day, people don't buy products; they buy stories,” Yang reminds.
Emotions are a fundamental part of the human experience. I get emotional when my favorite character in a show cries or when I order takeout that isn’t as good as I thought it would be.
When advertisements appeal to emotions, they tap into universal feelings, such as joy, sadness, or empathy. This creates a sense of relatability and empathy, allowing viewers to connect with the brand on a deeper level.
“If an ad makes you laugh, you remember it, if an ad makes you angry, you‘ll remember it. If an ad reminds you of your childhood, you’ll certainly remember it.
You remember how you feel, and you associate that with the product or service,” says Brandon Gilliam, head of marketing and sales at Happy Grub.
Keep in mind that it‘s important to strike the right balance in emotional appeals and ensure authenticity and relevance to the brand and its target audience.
Emotions should be used ethically, responsibly, and in alignment with the brand’s values and positioning.
Whether your ad has a unique tagline or a load of humor, a uniquely creative approach has the power to stick with peoples’ minds and give you a competitive advantage in the crowded advertising landscape.
When I asked what makes an ad memorable to him, Casey Meraz, the CEO of Juris Digital, notes, “Surprising elements can really make an ad stick. A twist on something expected grabs attention and leaves a lasting impression.”
Meraz recalls Geico’s “Hump Day” ad. In it, a camel walks through the office asking workers to “guess what day it is.” (It was, in fact, hump day).
“The unexpected camel in an office setting broke through the usual noise. When an ad surprises, it disrupts the monotony and resonates on a deeper level, Meraz says.
When an advertisement leaves a strong impression, it continues to influence consumers. Memorable ads are also more likely to be shared and generate word-of-mouth, amplifying their reach and impact.
My personal example? Mountain Dew’s bizarre monkey-puppy-baby ad, where a slightly horrifying hybrid creature walks into the room with a bucket of soda cans.
To this day, I’m not sure if I liked the ad. But I did talk about it when it came out, and the monkey-puppy-baby haunts my dreams to this day.
The key to effective advertising lies in consistent messaging. One of the things I did when I first started out as the owner of a clothing brand was to craft consistent ads across platforms.
This strategic repetition promotes a sense of familiarity with the brand and its core message.
The goal isn't to bombard viewers with your content but rather to create a cohesive experience that resonates across different platforms.
This nurtures an environment for message reception, which leads to a more memorable brand experience for your audience.
Peter Hoopis, owner of Hoopis Pickleball, notes that this is where a multi-channel approach comes in.
“Each element, from video to social media, presents a unique piece of information, yet all contribute to a central theme. This consistency builds a narrative and reinforces the message with each iteration,” Hoopis says.
Bah da, buh, buh, buh… Now, you fill in the blank. This would be much easier to convey if I were actually sitting in a room with you, but some of you may have answered correctly. “I’m lovin’ it.”
Laia Quintana, head of marketing and sales at TeamUp, brings up the tune when discussing the power of music in ads.
“The jingle‘s catchy melody and simple lyrics create instant brand recognition and recall. This combination of music and message has made the ad timeless — every time I hear that jingle, I instantly think of McDonald’s,” Quintana says.
Everyone loves a catchy tune. Music is one of the easiest ways to evoke emotions and aid recall. People tend to remember good music, so including this element in your ad will definitely add to its appeal.
Let’s talk visuals! Humans are very visual creatures. Just looking at a delicious meal is enough to make you salivate, and the face of Rhaenyra Targaryen in The House of the Dragon makes viewers want to bend the knee.
Darija Grobova, a team lead for public relations at Omnisend, shares another example from the soccer realm.
“The powerful visuals of the Orange-France women’s National Football Team ad of 2023 stands out in this regard.
Using VFX, they made the female players initially look like their male counterparts, driving home a powerful message: when Orange supports the men’s team, they’re also supporting the women’s team,” Grobova says.
The real kicker (pun intended)? The visuals of the athletes.
“The use of real footage of athletes created a strong emotional connection and overturned one of the prejudices that all too often surround the players,” Grobova notes.
How your ad looks contributes to its success. Thanks to technology, there is so much you can do to play with your ads’ visuals now.
A good ad creates a sense of urgency and prompts the audience to take action, whether it’s to make a purchase, visit a website, sign up for a newsletter, or engage with the brand in a meaningful way.
A clear call to action guides your audience on what steps they should take next.
Ultimately, prompting action ensures that advertisements are not just passive messages but active drivers of business outcomes.
So how do you create an advertising strategy that resonates? Well, this post should help with that as we explore how we can learn from ads and campaigns.
But, first, an important distinction.
An advertising campaign is a group of similar ads with a unified tone or message.
The advantage of a campaign over a standalone ad is the ability to push the same idea in different ways, across multiple mediums, and for a longer period of time without getting too repetitive or stale for the audience.
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Use HubSpot's free Advertising Campaign Kit to plan out your advertising project and learn more about which advertising type is the best for your project.
Without further ado, here they are in no particular order: 24 of the best advertisements of all time and the lessons we can learn from them.
Did you know that once upon a time, Nike‘s product catered almost exclusively to marathon runners?
Then, a fitness craze emerged, and the folks in Nike’s marketing department knew they needed to take advantage of it to surpass their main competitor, Reebok.
(At the time, Reebok was selling more shoes than Nike). And so, in the late 1980s, Nike created the “Just Do It.” campaign.
It was a hit.
In 1988, Nike sales were at $800 million; by 1998, sales exceeded $9.2 billion.
“Just Do It” was short and sweet yet encapsulated everything people felt when exercising — and people still feel that feeling today.
Don‘t want to run five miles? Just Do It. Don’t want to walk up four flights of stairs? Just Do It. It's a slogan we can all relate to: the drive to push ourselves beyond our limits.
When you‘re trying to decide the best way to present your brand, ask yourself: what problem are you solving for your customers? What solution does your product or service provide? By hitting on that core issue in all of your messaging, you’ll connect with consumers on an emotional level that is hard to ignore.
Big brands are often hard-pressed to do something ground-breaking when they're already so big. So, what did Coca-Cola do to appeal to the masses? They appealed to individuals by putting their names on each bottle.
The Share a Coke campaign began in Australia in 2011 when Coca-Cola personalized each bottle with the 150 most popular names in the country.
Since then, the U.S. has followed suit, printing first names across the front of its bottles and cans in Coke's branded font. You can even order custom bottles on Coke's website to request things like nicknames and college logos.
This was a breaking story across the marketing and advertising industry. It enchanted many consumers, but it confused others. Why make something temporary so personal?
Either way, Coke received immediate attention for this campaign.
Pepsi even released some sassy counter-ads shortly after the campaign launched. Theirs focused on mocking the bottle names, questioning how people truly felt when they got the wrong name.
Coke fans are regular buyers, and the company fully leaned into that sense of individual ownership. Wondering what name you’ll get out of the vending machine was a fun thrill in and of itself — even if it isn’t yours, it encourages you to “share a Coke” with whoever's name is on the front.
Despite having an ambiguous shape, Absolut made its bottle the most recognizable bottle in the world. Its campaign, which featured print ads showing bottles “in the wild,” was so successful that it didn‘t stop running for 25 years.
It’s the longest uninterrupted ad campaign ever and comprises over 1,500 separate ads. So, as the saying goes, “If it ain‘t broke, don’t fix it.”
When the campaign started, Absolut had a measly 2.5% of the vodka market.
When it ended in the late 2000s, Absolut was importing 4.5 million cases per year, or half of all imported vodka in the U.S.
No matter how boring your product looks, you can still tell your story in an interesting way. Let me repeat: Absolut created 1500 ads for one bottle. So, don’t feel afraid to be determined and differentiate your product in the same way.
When's the last time an advertisement literally changed the way we talk to one another? Allow me to answer that question with another question: “Whassup?!”
This series of commercials, which first appeared in late 1999, features a group of friends connecting on a group phone call (not very common anymore, huh?) while drinking beer and “watching the game” on TV.
It starts gently: “What are you doin‘?” Someone asks. “Watching the game, havin’ a Bud” (a Budweiser), someone replies.
As more friends pick up the phone, hilarity ensues: “WHASSUP!?” is yelled back and forth, becoming a classic catchphrase and an icon of beer-drinking culture that constantly ran on sports networks over the next few years.
The ad took pop culture by storm during the Super Bowl in 2000, and you can still hear its echoes today. Why? Anheuser-Busch showed us just how silly and informal an ad can be without ruffling feathers or going off-brand.
Dare to celebrate your audience's absurdities. The more genuine your ad is, the more valuable your product is.
Think it's easy to create a whole new market for your product?
The Miller Brewing Company (now MillerCoors) did just that with the light beer market — and dominated it.
The goal of the “Great Taste, Less Filling” campaign was getting “real men” to drink light beer, but they were battling the common misconception that light beer can never actually taste good.
Taking the debate head-on, Miller featured masculine models drinking their light beer and declaring it great tasting.
For decades after this campaign aired, Miller Lite dominated the light beer market it had essentially created.
What‘s the lesson marketers can learn? Strive to be different. If people tell you there isn’t room for a product, create your own category so you can quickly become the leader.
Always, the feminine product brand, hit a home run with this advertisement.
That's not because it went viral after the commercial ran in the 2015 Super Bowl, but because it was a groundbreaking message that hundreds of millions of people repeated long after the campaign was over.
The campaign began as a commercial explaining the stigma behind playing sports “like a girl” — implying that the boy‘s way is better or correct.
By the end of the ad, the message is both clear and inspiring: girls are just as fit and capable as boys are, particularly during puberty — a stage of life that’s extremely important to Always and its women’s products.
The message is now a holistic initiative by Always and a hashtag that's still used on social media today.
Acknowledge not just your audience but the challenges they face—especially the ones that reflect your time or culture. Not every societal issue is off-limits to marketers and advertisers. Take a stand on the ones you know your audience supports, and you'll access a customer base that identifies with your passion.
Many marketing and advertising professionals like to call Volkswagen‘s “Think Small” campaign the gold standard.
Created in 1960 by a legendary advertising group at Doyle Dane & Bernbach (DDB), the campaign set out to answer one question: how do you change people’s perceptions not only about a product but also about an entire group of people?
See, Americans always had the propensity to buy big American cars—and even 15 years after WWII ended, most Americans were still not buying small German cars.
So what did this Volkswagen advertisement do? It played right into the audience‘s expectations. You think I’m small? Yeah, I am. They never tried to be something they weren’t.
That‘s the most important takeaway from this campaign: don’t sell your company, product, or service as something it's not. Consumers recognize and appreciate honesty.
This isn‘t the oldest or most well-known advertisement on our list, but it’s become the most powerful over its nine-year (and still ongoing) existence. So powerful and so true you forget it's an advertisement.
Year in Search began in 2009 as “Zeitgeist,” a written report of the public‘s most common Google searches over the previous 12 months. The following year, Google adapted it for a three-minute video.
Since then, it’s been a bold, yearly reminder of how much we depend on Google for information on the news and events that give the entire world pause. Check out the company's latest video from 2021 above.
Remind your customers how much you care that they care. These stories elicit a variety of emotions but ultimately unite everyone — no matter what Google products they might like — through an uplifting message of how our usage of the company reflects the best in all of us.
You know who he is. The man smokes Cuban cigars, surrounds himself with beautiful women, and drinks Dos Equis beer.
Cooling down indulgent vices, such as beer, desserts, or luxury items, is key to creating a successful campaign. And The Most Interesting Man in the World is one of the coolest commercial guys out there.
At the end of every commercial, he says: “I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Stay thirsty, my friends.”
The hilarious hyperbole employed in this campaign makes it memorable the next time viewers head out to buy some beer.
And even though Dos Equis recently replaced The Most Interesting Man with a new actor, the original actor’s popularity in meme culture will never decline because of his short, sweet, and memorable tagline — and the cool dude vibe it makes viewers harken back to.
Thanks to the California Milk Processor Board's “Got Milk?” campaign, milk sales in California rose 7% in just one year.
But the impact ran across state borders, and to this day, you still can't escape the millions of “Got [Fill-in-the-Blank]?” parodies.
Note, though, that the ad didn‘t target people who weren’t drinking milk; it instead focused on the consumers who already were.
It‘s not always about getting a brand-new audience to use your products or services. Sometimes, it’s about getting your current audience to appreciate and use your product more often.
Turn your audience into advocates, and use marketing and ad content to tell them why they should continue enjoying the product or service you’re already providing.
Yes, you read that right: Dumb Ways to Die.
In Melbourne, Australia, Metro Trains wanted to convey a simple message: no horsing near train tracks. Disorderly conduct could lead to injuries or even death.
Still, instead of typical warning signs or announcements inside train stations, Metro Trains came up with Dumb Ways to Die, a song that has garnered 157 million YouTube views since it debuted in 2012.
The song is, unsurprisingly, about dumb ways to die. For example, poking a grizzly bear with a stick or taking your helmet off in outer space.
Frankly, it features a catchy little chorus you won't be able to stop humming to yourself (because singing it is a little morbid): “Dumb ways to die, so many dumb ways to die.”
At the end of the video, after you've watched adorable cartoon characters dying in the dumbest of ways, you get to the moral of the story:
There are many dumb ways to die, but the dumbest possible way would be if you died while standing on the edge of a train platform, drove through a railroad sign, or tried to cross over a train track.
The video ad went viral on YouTube. The song was available on iTunes and even played over the radio with an accompanying ad.
This beloved, now-famous campaign communicates a simple idea in a creative and memorable way — and you don‘t feel you’re being nagged the way some public service announcements do. Consider using creativity to convey your message if your subject matter is grim or boring.
While there have been many great Apple campaigns, this one takes the cake. The video above is just one of a series of iterations of this campaign, and the Mac vs. PC debate ended up being one of the most successful campaigns ever for Apple.
The company experienced 42% market share growth in its first year with its help. These commercials tell Apple's audience everything they need to know about the product without being overt.
Just because your product does some pretty amazing things doesn‘t mean you need to hit your audience over the head with it. Instead, explain your product’s benefits in a relatable way, so consumers can see themselves using it.
The first time Clairol asked this question in 1957, the answer was 1 to 15 — as in, only 1 in 15 people were using artificial hair color. Just 11 years later, the answer was 1 of 2, according to TIME Magazine.
The ad was apparently so successful that some states stopped requiring women to denote hair color on their driver’s licenses. You know you’ve hit a nerve when your ad campaign changes things at the DMV.
Clairol did the opposite of what most marketers would do: they didn‘t want every woman on the street running around saying they were using their product.
They wanted women to understand that their product was so good that people couldn’t tell if they were using it or not.
Sometimes, simply conveying how and why your product works is enough for consumers. Showing becomes more effective than telling.
In 1999, AdAge declared De Beers’ “A Diamond is Forever” the most memorable slogan of the twentieth century.
But the campaign, which proposed (pun very much intended) the idea that no marriage would be complete without a diamond ring, wasn’t just riding on the coattails of an existing industry.
De Beers actually built the industry. It presented the idea that a diamond ring was a necessary luxury.
According to the New York Times, N. W. Ayer’s game plan was to “create a situation where almost every person pledging marriage feels compelled to acquire a diamond engagement ring.”
Advertising can make a relatively inexpensive product seem luxurious and essential.
The very first part of Old Spice's “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign, created by Wieden + Kennedy and launched in February 2010, was the following commercial. It became a viral success practically overnight:
That video has over 51 million views as of this writing. Several months later, in June 2010, Old Spice followed up with a second commercial featuring the same actor, Isaiah Mustafa.
Mustafa quickly became “Old Spice Guy,” a nickname Wieden + Kennedy capitalized on with an interactive video campaign in which Mustafa responded to fans' comments on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media websites with short, personalized videos.
In about two days, the company had churned out 186 personalized, scripted, and quite funny video responses featuring Mustafa responding to fans online.
According to Inc., these videos saw almost 11 million views, and Old Spice gained about 29,000 Facebook fans and 58,000 new Twitter followers.
“We were creating and sending miniature TV commercials back to individual consumers that were personalized, and we were doing it on a rapid-fire basis,” Jason Bagley, former creative director at Wieden + Kennedy and a writer for the campaign, told Inc.
“No one expects to ask a question and then be responded to. I think that's where we broke through.”
If you find your campaign‘s gained momentum with your fans and followers, do everything you can to keep them engaged while keeping your messaging true to your brand’s voice and image.
Is it enough to say this campaign was successful because it featured a giant hamburger bun and a cute set of old ladies? No? I didn't think so.
Wendy‘s took a more daring approach in this advertising campaign: it targeted its competitors. The simple phrase “Where’s the beef?” was used to point out the lack of beef in competitors‘ burgers — and it quickly became a catchphrase that encapsulated all that was missing in their audience’s lives.
While you can't predict when a catchphrase will catch on and when it won‘t, Wendy’s (wisely) didn't over-promote their hit phrase. The campaign only ran for a year, allowing it to gently run its course.
Be careful with your campaign successes and failures. Just because you find something that works doesn’t mean you should keep doing it repeatedly to the point it’s played out. Allow your company to change and grow, and you may find that you can have even greater success in the future by trying something new.
Seriously, you wouldn‘t expect a household and cleaning products company commercial to pull at the heartstrings like that, would you?
Lately, though, Procter & Gamble (P&G) has launched some of the best ads we’ve ever seen from the consumer goods industry.
That's because P&G identified the story behind the story of Olympic athletes — the stories of the supportive moms who pushed these world-class athletes throughout their entire lives leading up to that crowning moment.
And yes, they probably had to do a lot of laundry and cleanup along the way (presumably using P&G products).
Make your audience cry (just kidding). The season or time period of your ad is important. But even if you run an ad during the Olympic Games, like P&G did, make sure it has longevity and a message that can influence people no matter when or where they see it.
Emotional and nostalgia marketing are powerful tactics to get people to make buying choices, so if there's a bigger, more universal story behind your product or story, tap into it — and showcase it front and center.
The ad above isn‘t just an empty bucket of KFC with the company’s letters jumbled around. It's also not a normal, unprompted promotion of fried chicken.
This ad is an apology and perhaps the most creative one of all time.
In February 2018, KFC's business in the U.K. ran out of chicken. You read that right: a poultry company ran out of poultry.
It‘s not every day that a business stumbles upon the most ironic PR crisis in company history, so when it happens, all eyes are on the business’s response. Well, we're happy to report that KFC stuck the landing.
With the help of the creative agency Mother London, KFC took out a full-page ad in Metro, the U.K.'s newspaper, rearranging its three famous initials to create a hilarious, albeit explicit, response to its product shortage.
The ad depicts a KFC bucket that reads, “FCK” — as if to say, “FCK, this is embarrassing.” (You can fill in the missing letter ... )
Beneath this design, the company apologizes for what it realizes is an inexcusable, if not slightly funny, failure.
No business is above a good old-fashioned sorry. And if you can laugh at yourself in the process, you‘ll only make it better. KFC’s ad shows how to combine humility, class, humor, and ultimately company pride in a message that can help you bounce back from the bad press ...
... and even come out the other side with a net-positive result for your brand.
When wandering into the waters of K-pop, I learned a few things early on: 1) do not ever question somebody’s bias, and 2) don’t ever underestimate the BTS army.
Cartier learned these lessons too, bringing them into this partnership with V, one of BTS’ members.
The ad creates a disruptive and memorable impact by blending high fashion with celebrity influence, using V‘s global popularity to draw attention.
The ad’s aesthetic sophistication and strategic use of a high-profile ambassador all contributed to its standout nature, capturing viewers’ attention and leaving a lasting impression.
It was reported that The Cartier Panther Necklace 18k Yellow Gold sold out within minutes on the luxury brand website after it was announced that Kim Taehyung became their brand ambassador and was shown wearing it in recent viral pictures.
Influencer marketing can work if the image and brand of the influencer matches that of the brand. In this case, Kim Taehyung’s elegance and charisma perfectly align with Cartier's luxurious image, making the ad both captivating and influential among a broad audience.
Nike has always been known for its innovative and inspiring marketing campaigns, such as “Just Do It” (seen earlier on this list).
“You Can’t Stop Us” is a campaign that celebrates the return of sports after the pandemic. The ad is a video montage of athletes from different sports and backgrounds, highlighting the resilience and diversity of the sports community.
The video, which was released in July 2020, has been viewed over 100 million times on YouTube and has won several awards, including a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.
Cultural relevance, inclusivity, and diversity are some factors that make up a great ad. Nike used all three, including music, narration, and powerful imagery at a time when the world was adjusting to a new reality, which made this ad a hit with customers.
If someone asked you to describe yourself, what would you say?
More than half of women globally agree that when it comes to how we look, we might be our own worst critic. Our perception of ourselves is far less positive than it should be. Our beauty standards can be too exacting.
The ad addressed this issue by featuring an FBI-trained forensic artist who drew two sketches of several women — one based on their own description and another based on a stranger’s description.
The difference between the two sketches was striking and it beautifully conveyed the message that we are more beautiful than we think.
This ad was disruptive because it challenged the traditional beauty standards set by the industry. Instead of using models with perfect features, Dove chose to highlight the beauty of everyday women.
What made this ad great was its emotional impact. It resonated with women around the world who could relate to the feeling of being too hard on themselves.
The ad was not just selling a product. It was promoting a positive self-image, and that’s what made it stand out.
The success of this ad lies in its authenticity and its ability to connect with the audience on a deeper level. This is a great example of how advertising can be used to not just sell products but also to promote positive social change.
“Ohm you thought it was just burgers and fries? They got more flavors than you tasted or you heard in your life. Ooh — this is what the app do, it ain’t only fast food. Switching styles like opera to rap too.”
This ad was an unexpected visual and musical delight. Using a hilarious mix of opera and hip hop, Just Eat released a beautiful music video with stunning visuals featuring Christina Aguilera and Latto just belting out praises for the U.K. delivery brand. The ad quickly went viral on social media, boosting brand awareness.
Like I said earlier, music can be a powerful way to convey your brand message in an ad and make it memorable. I saw this ad last year on TikTok, and till today I can still hear Christina belt “Thai rice, sticky icky” in my head.
In 2007 growth for Snickers lagged behind other global chocolate brands and they started losing market share. Projections showed that if it remained on the same trajectory, the brand would lose its position as the world’s leading chocolate bar.
They needed fame and more customer engagement. Fast.
To make this ad, they tapped into a core human experience: hunger. The impact was almost instant, increasing the sales of Snickers to $376 million globally.
This ad also generated 400 million incremental and unpaid media impressions with a media value equal to $28.6 million, making Snickers famous.
When making an ad, finding something that you core audience relates to is essential. People eat chocolate bars for lots of different reasons, but the main outcome that they want is satisfaction. Snickers realized this and factored that into their ad, making it relatable.
If you’ve been online, you know that 2024 is the year of brat summer, a reference to pop star Charli xcx’s sixth studio album. The branding for the record itself: the word “brat” in stretched-out Arial font over a bright green background.
The album’s simple visual identity made making user-generated content a breeze. TikTokers make lists in the same font proclaiming what is Brat (sunglasses in the club) and what is not (being self-conscious on the dance floor).
The simple X endorsement “kamala IS brat” was enough to have the candidate’s social team redesign their social branding in the same Brat green.
I could write a dissertation about the marketing behind the album. But, let’s get specific and talk about the Brat wall. Buckle up for some lore.
A few days before the album dropped, a wall in Williamsburg’s was painted lime green. When the album came out the phrase “i’m your fav reference” was added, lyrics from one of the album’s songs.
The wall continued to change. It was painted white with the phrase “brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not” to signal that a deluxe addition of the album would soon drop. The wall proclaimed “lorde” when a remix with the New Zealand singer was dropped.
In short, the wall went viral, like the album and the singer herself.
Brat showcases the power of cohesive branding. A simple color and text pairing took the internet by storm. Fans turned to a literal wall, decoding it for messages about what would happen next. I appreciate how Charli’s team harnessed the power of simplicity to build hype.
Advertising is one of the most important aspects of any business, and it can be a make-or-break factor in terms of success.
What makes a great advertising campaign? It must be memorable, catchy, and above all else, it must effectively sell your product or service.
With careful planning and execution, your next advertising campaign could be the one that takes your business to new heights. Good luck!
Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Cinematic color grading is all about creating mood, atmosphere, and emotion in your visual narratives. It’s what separates ordinary footage from the breathtaking scenes you see in blockbuster films.
However, mastering color grading can be a complex and time-consuming process. That’s why high-quality presets are a game-changer, offering an efficient way to apply sophisticated looks to your videos with just a few clicks.
In this post, we’ve compiled a selection of the best cinematic color grading presets for popular platforms like DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, and more. Each preset is carefully chosen for its ability to deliver stunning, film-like quality across a variety of styles, from dramatic and moody tones to vibrant, colorful palettes.
Check out the collection below and be sure to download the free LUTs as well.
This is a must-have collection of cinematic color grading presets offering 30 professional cinematic color looks designed for any Rec709 color space videos. It also includes a LUT converter for Vlog, Dlog, and Slog to Rec709. Utilize them to infuse color grading effects into your clips, enhancing the visual storytelling. A video tutorial accompanies this pack, simplifying the process for beginners.
This is an impressive array of color grading presets designed to add that bold, movie-like look to your footage. These color grading LUTs can transform your video content into a cinematic masterpiece with a simple click. The LUTs offer color tones ideal for enhancing visual storytelling.
You can use this cinematic color grading preset pack to achieve Hollywood-movie-like color grading for photos and videos. Compatible with popular software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Davinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro, these presets work perfectly with any FPS and resolution as well as drone cameras.
This pack of cinematic color grading presets includes versatile LUTs, ideal for photo and video, including drone footage. They function with any FPS and resolution, require no plugins, and are compatible with many popular software, including Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Davinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro. Easy to use, they can enhance numerous media projects, from production videos to special events.
A creative color grading preset pack perfect for enhancing wedding videos. This LUTs pack helps to achieve cinematic color grading quickly, bringing a professional touch to your footage. It’s a practical solution for adding depth and charm to precious memories, making them even more memorable. This tool is simple to use yet impactful, guaranteed to elevate your wedding videos.
A unique creative cinematic color grading preset bundle that adds a colorful cinematic touch to your projects. Offering a collection of different color profiles, it ensures your work stands out with aesthetically appealing and professional-looking visuals. It’s incredibly versatile and user-friendly, making it perfect for film enthusiasts and content creators aiming for a high-quality cinematic look.
This color grading preset pack is ideal for rendering a cinematic touch to your visuals. It offers color look-up tables (LUTs) specially designed for film-like color grading looks. These presets are an investment that simplifies your post-production process, enhancing your visuals with the texture and depth of professional film aesthetics.
A creative collection of color grading presets that provides cinematic color Look-Up Tables (LUTs). This bundle offers modern cinematic visual styles, enhancing your videos with the rich, dramatic tones often associated with professional cinema projects. It’s a great asset for adding a touch of Hollywood flair to your film and video creations.
A creative resource that offers bold cinematic color grades to your films. It transforms your footage into a visually stunning cinematic experience, capturing the essence of tried-and-true film aesthetics. With this asset, creating a compelling visual narrative becomes seamless and straightforward. It’s an essential tool to elevate your film production.
This is a creative color grading preset pack that offers a vintage touch to your visuals. These cinematic color Look-Up Tables (LUTs) allow you to transform the color and tone of your media, mimicking the timeless appearance of classic films. A great tool for enhancing your projects with nostalgia-inducing, cinematic flair.
A creative color grading preset pack designed to enhance your visuals with bright cinematic color grades. The presets are highly recommended for elevating the overall aesthetics of your footage, giving you professional-grade cinematic looks in a user-friendly package. Perfect for filmmakers and content creators seeking to level up their projects.
This LUTs pack is designed to transform drone footage into captivating cinematic stories. This pack, tailored for Final Cut Pro X and Apple Motion, includes 21 expertly created LUTs. Incorporating them into your work is straightforward, thanks to the user-friendly controls of the editing software. They help to enhance storytelling with stunning color grading.
An ideal color grading preset collection for enhancing your wide dynamic range videos. These creative tools allow you to achieve that coveted cinematic look, elevating the visual storytelling of your content. Simple to use yet powerful, they promise to transform your footage, adding depth, mood, and captivating color tones to your creative projects.
Spruce up your videos with this cinematic movie LUTs pack. This pack features 25 cinematic LUTs and 42 “Log to Rec 709” LUTs perfect for films, social videos, presentations, and more. Adding a tasteful color grading to your work is as easy as drag-and-drop, no matter the resolution. Boasting improved modern and stylish visuals, this pack is a true game-changer.
An exciting collection of color grading presets that transforms your video footage with a film-style look. This pack contains unique cinematic LUTs that give your projects an amazing, visually striking dimension. It’s ideal for filmmakers and videographers seeking to elevate their storytelling abilities through immersive, cinema-quality aesthetics.
Give your videos a cinematic edge with this professional LUTs collection. Designed specifically for DaVinci Resolve, this pack of 24 high-quality lookup tables enhances colors, boosts contrast, and lends a professional polish to your film projects. Turn ordinary footage into a visual delight and create cinematic masterpieces effortlessly with these LUTs.
This bundle offers an easy way to bring professional, film-like aesthetics to your video content. Compatible with various editing software and cameras, these presets enable an outstanding color grading potential with just a few clicks. Whether it’s footage for YouTube, an independent film, or music videos, these LUTs can utterly transform and enhance your visuals.
This color grading preset pack delivers a variety of LUTs to transform your videos into cinematic works of art. Offering 1000 unique presets spread across categories like cinematic, vintage, and travel, the bundle supports popular video editors, including Premiere Pro and After Effects. Beyond color grading, the bundle provides 15 unique VHS looks, 5 old film looks, and light leaks to add a retro touch to your content.
This is a collection of 70 color-grading LUTs for videos. It includes a wide variety of color looks, including cinematic looks, to give your video projects a professional look. There are also 17 LUTs for enhancing Log footage.
A hand-crafted bundle of color-grading LUTs for improving and optimizing log footage. This pack includes 48 different LUTs for making your videos look professional. They feature vintage and cinematic filters as well.
This video LUTs bundle also comes with a mixed collection of color grading presets for both optimizing and enhancing your videos. It includes 29 different LUTs that feature high-quality color looks and filters.
This free LUTs pack is designed to give a cinematic look and feel to your videos and photos. It includes several color-grading LUTs with professional-looking filters that will instantly enhance your videos with a more dramatic look.
In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, choosing the right framework is crucial for the success of your next project. As we dive into 2024, two popular frameworks often come up in discussions: Node.js and Laravel. Both have their unique strengths and are suitable for different types of projects. In this article, we’ll dissect their …
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Most clients don’t see designs the way you do. Since they’re not designers it’s hard for them to imagine what a brochure design will look like as a printed document. However, a great-looking mockup will go a long way to help them get there.
With mockups, you can show clients what your design may look like as the end result. This will not only help you to get your designs approved faster but it will help show your professionalism as well.
If you’re working on a brochure design for a client, we handpicked a few great brochure mockups you can use to present your designs in a more attractive way.
In this collection, you’ll find both free brochure mockups and premium ones for multi-page, bifold, and tri-fold brochures with various styles of designs. Take a look.
This is an impressive mockup template ideal for presenting brochure designs using a page spread view. Its greatest features are its versatility, lifelike texture, and high-quality frame. You can easily add your design using the Smart Object layer and see it transform into an inspiring showcase.
This premium brochure mockup offers a realistic effect and an impressively high-resolution look for your presentation. Easy to edit with Photoshop, it features organized layers, a realistic texture, and a changeable background.
This brochure mockup comes with three prepared items within a well-structured PSD file and employs a smart-object feature for quick and easy customization. Suited for both bright and dark designs, it offers customizable background colors, adjustable lighting, and comes with a PDF guide for ease of use.
This pack includes smart, high-resolution mockups that offer real-world detail for visualizing your designs in a realistic way. The templates are easy to use; simply drag and drop your design into their clearly organized layers, adjust, and save. Perfect for magazine, letter, and brochure format designs.
This is a comprehensive brochure mockup template ideal for graphic designers. Its versatile use ranges from professional presentations of cover designs to showcasing editorial layouts. With changeable backgrounds, organized layers, and high resolution, this mockup displays a realistic view of your magazine or brochure designs.
This brochure mockup allows you to professionally present your creative work. It offers a realistic setting that can enhance your presentations and help you impress clients. The template includes organized layers, vibrant color options, and interchangeable backgrounds for maximum versatility.
A terrific way to present your brochure designs. Featuring 4 customizable, well-layered PSD items, this mockup kit allows quick and effortless editing via smart objects. It caters to both bright and dark designs with adjustable light, shadows, and customizable background colors.
This is an exceptional brochure mockup for graphic designers looking to highlight their design prowess. Boasting high-quality, realistic shadows and textures, this mockup is perfect for showcasing corporate branding and design projects across various color schemes and graphics.
A professionally crafted brochure mockup template that allows for quick and efficient customization via its smart-object feature. The mockup boasts high resolution (4500 x 3000px, 300 DPI), well-organized layers, easily adjustable light settings, and customizable background colors.
This mockup template kit is ideal for showcasing portfolios, brochures, and photo collections. Its realistic, high-resolution design includes various views, open spreads, and changeable backgrounds, providing an unparalleled platform for visual presentation. Its versatility makes it perfect for exhibitions, book designs, and thematic photo collections.
A creative brochure mockup for graphic designers, allowing you to effectively showcase their work and corporate branding to clients. This mockup features a range of layouts including an open spread, upright cover, single page turn, and multiple pages, all presented with high-quality, realistic detailing.
An excellent mockup template for designers wanting to show off their brochure and magazine designs. This template offers high-resolution images (4500 x 3000px at 300 DPI) that make your designs look their best, either bright or dark. It includes three well-layered PSD files with smart-object features.
An elegant brochure mockup template with 03 components that features an easily editable, high-resolution PSD file. Its smart-object feature allows for quick design changes, while its customizable background colors and adjustable light cater to both dark and bright designs.
This is a convenient mockup for presenting your bi-fold brochure designs effectively. With its 4 layered PSD files offering a 4500 x 3000 px mockup, you can easily customize the background and shadow color with smart object layers. Simply double-click the Smart Layer, insert your design, and hit save.
This mockup is perfect for previewing your brochure and magazine design work in a professional and stylish setting. It contains 2 well-organized, high-resolution items, with layered PSD files for easy editing. You can fully customize the background and shadows as well.
The bold and stylish look of this mockup makes it a great choice for presenting luxury brochure designs. It features three PSD files, easily editable via smart objects with dimensions of 5000 x 3500 px, well-organized layers, and changeable colors.
Another beautiful brochure mockup designed to showcase your publications in a sleek, modern style. With its easy-to-edit, high-resolution design, this mockup allows your content to shine in a minimalist portrait A4 format.
This A5 brochure mockup template comes with four individually styled mockups. It offers quick and easy editing via smart objects, layered PSDs for organization, and customizable background colors for both light and dark tri-fold brochure designs.
A clean and simple look is always a sign of professionalism. This clean mockup will help you present your brochure designs in a way that captivates your clients. It comes in 10 different views of the brochure and you can easily edit it using Photoshop to place your designs via smart objects.
This mockup doubles as both a mockup for brochures and catalogs. It comes with a simple design that allows you to show both inner pages and cover designs simultaneously. It’s perfect for showcasing your designs on portfolios as well. The template is easily editable and comes in PSD format with changeable backgrounds.
Working on a bifold brochure design with a minimal layout? Then this minimal brochure mockup is just what you need to showcase your design. It comes in 8 different views and angles for presenting your brochure like a true professional. The background is customizable and the shadow effect is adjustable as well.
Brochures with four folds are quite popular these days as they allow you to showcase more information with less space. This mockup is designed for presenting those 4-fold brochure designs. It comes in 5 different mockup styles and in both PSD and AI file formats.
A very realistic mockup template for showing the end result of your brochure designs. This mockup is made based on a real photo that shows what your brochure will look like in a real-world environment. There are 10 different angles and scenes to choose from in this pack. And they all feature color effects and a depth of field effect.
Even though this is a free mockup, it features a very premium look that will make your brochure look incredible. This mockup is perfect for presenting a tri-fold brochure with multiple views.
Even though this mockup is made for showcasing magazines, you can easily use it to show off various types of brochure designs too. The bundle includes 4 mockup layouts with customizable backgrounds.
This bundle comes with 5 different mockup scenes for presenting your brochure designs. It’s great for showing off catalog designs as well. The template feature customizable shadows, separate objects, and smart object layers.
The simple and minimal design of this brochure mockup will fit in nicely for presenting modern lifestyle and fashion brochure designs. It has a very natural look with its shadow cast over the design.
A simple and modern mockup kit for presenting tri-fold brochure designs. This bundle includes 4 different mockups with easily customizable backgrounds and smart objects.
This free brochure mockup is ideal for showing both your brochure cover and inner pages at the same time. It comes in high-resolution and easily customizable smart object layers.
Another modern mockup template for showcasing magazines, catalogs, and brochures. This bundle has 4 different mockup scenes for you to choose from. Each template can be fully customized to your preference.
If you’re working on a brochure design with a landscape-style layout, be sure to save this mockup set for later. There are 4 different brochure mockups in this pack with editable backgrounds and organized layers.
A simple and effective mockup template kit for showcasing bi-fold brochure designs. This bundle also comes with multiple mockup layouts for showing your brochures from different angles.
This is one of the most beautiful mockups on our list. It features an elegant and minimal design for presenting magazines and landscape brochures. There are 8 different mockup scenes in this pack with customizable backgrounds.
You can download this brochure mockup for free to present tri-fold brochures in a creative environment. It has smart objects for easily placing your designs in the mockup as well.
A simple and free mockup template for presenting bi-fold brochures. This template can be customized with smart objects and the background is changeable as well.
This is a set of simple and multipurpose brochure mockups that includes 7 different styles of mockup templates. It mainly includes mockups for showcasing brochure covers and has ones to show the brochure being held by hands as well. All mockups are available in fully-layered PSD files with smart object layers.
Square-shaped brochures are a popular trend in brochure designs, especially for agencies and creative brands. This mockup is designed for showcasing those brochures in style. There are 8 attractive angels and views in this mockup pack for showing both inner pages and covers. You can edit them with Photoshop.
Want to showcase your tri-fold brochure in a more creative environment? Then be sure to grab this mockup template. It features a very modern and stylish layout for presenting tri-fold brochures like a pro. There are 2 different PSD mockups in this bundle with editable backgrounds.
With this bundle of brochure mockups, you can show off your brochure designs in all kinds of views and angles. There are mockups with standing views, page-turning views, cover views, and much more. All of the mockups come with smart objects for easily placing your designs and with changeable backgrounds.
This collection features 5 different mockup scenes for showing off tri-fold brochure designs. They are designed for presenting brochures with various angles and views. The mockups come in PSD files with 5 stylish photo filters to make your designs look even more attractive.
Grab this free mockup to present and promote your brochure designs on a budget. The template works for both brochure and magazine designs. And it’s easily editable. You can choose from several other views as well.
This is a beautiful brochure mockup scene that features a professional environment for showcasing your brochures on websites and portfolios. The PSD template is free to download.
If you’re looking for more realistic looking mockups to make your brochure designs look amazing, this bundle of mockups is for you. It includes several mockup templates based on real photos that let you give a close-up look at your brochure designs. There are 7 mockups in the bundle with various close views and angles.
Presenting your landscape brochure designs will be much easier with this set of mockups. It includes several mockup designs with page-turning hands and horizontal views. The bundle comes with 8 different mockup layouts with smart objects, changeable backgrounds, and a depth of field effect.
This brochure mockup bundle includes many creative mockup designs featuring hands holding tri-fold brochures. It allows you to show open, closed, and cover views of your brochures in a professional way. You can customize the templates with Photoshop to even edit the lighting and shadow effects.
Another collection of mockups for showing your designs being held by hands. This set is designed for showcasing brochure and magazine designs. There are 8 mockup styles and views in this collection. All featuring smart objects and editable backgrounds.
You can use the mockups in this pack to present your landscape A5 brochures to clients in a creative way. Choosing from 9 high-quality views and styles, these mockups let you easily add a varnish, change backgrounds, and place your designs using smart objects.
Another free brochure mockup for showcasing bifold brochure designs. This mockup features a luxury-themed design that will help show off your brochures for high-end brands.
Tris tri-fold mockup is designed for A5 brochures. It comes in multiple views and styles featuring various angles of the brochure. You can download it for free to use with your personal projects.
A different style of a brochure mockup you can use to showcase your designs in a creative way. They are ideal for portfolios and websites. You can choose from 8 different mockup templates in this pack.
A simple yet very professional mockup template featuring a clean view. This mockup is perfect for presenting your bifold brochures to clients. It’s easily customizable and comes with changeable paper and background colors.
This trifold brochure mockup is designed for modern brochures that use wider layouts. The mockup is easy to edit and includes smart objects for placing your design into the mockup.
Another mockup template for four-fold brochure designs. This one features a simple layout that gives a full clean view of your design. The mockup can be customized to change the background as well.
This is a bundle of 8 stylish brochure mockups. These mockups are designed for A4 brochure designs and it includes multiple angles and views for showing off your brochure in style.
A simple brochure mockup for showing off your designs in style. This mockup is designed for tri-fold brochures and it includes smart objects for easy editing as well.
Looking for inspiration for your brochure design? Then check out our best professional brochure templates collection.
Sometimes, it feels like Instagram looks different every time I open the app—IGVT is long gone, and Reels and Shopping tools are now front and center.
![New Data: Instagram Engagement Report [Free Download]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/9294dd33-9827-4b39-8fc2-b7fbece7fdb9.png)
These shifts align with the trends we saw in our 2024 Social Media Trends survey, but I wanted to dive deeper into Instagram research.
So, I asked another 600+ Instagram marketers in Jan. 2024 about how they’ll approach this changing platform in 2024. Here’s what I found.
Table of Contents
Based on our results, most Instagram marketers are already ahead of the game:
This was a top-level taste of the most important findings I gleaned from the survey. Now, I’ll dive deeper into the benchmarks that will help you see how your brand compares to the competition.
3% of our survey respondents have under 10,000 followers, while 11% have between 10K and 100K followers.
The largest distribution of respondents have between 100K and 450K followers (48%).
Likes and comments are tied as the main ways followers engage with branded Instagram accounts.
Shares take second place, followed by direct messages, which makes sense to me, considering the rise in consumers who seek customer service via DMs on the social channels they already use.
Overall, marketers say that content that performs exceptionally well/goes viral always has engaging elements, whether simply encouraging discussion, easy shareability, or interactive elements.
Take a look at where the impressions came from on your top posts and look for any patterns you can turn into a consistent strategy to recreate your success.
61% of respondents told us that the follower count of the accounts they manage has increased from 2023 to 2024. Just 10% say follower count has decreased.
This is a change from the last time we ran this survey in 2021 when less than half of business accounts said follower counts increased.
Part of this change can likely be attributed to the rise of social shopping — in the past three months, Instagram is the second most popular app consumers have used to make an in-app purchase.
Now that we’ve reviewed some benchmarks, I’ll discuss goals and strategies.
Instagram marketers' top goals on the platform in 2024 are increasing engagement (likes, comments, etc.), advertising their products/services, increasing brand awareness/reaching new audiences, and improving customer service/retention.
Let’s talk about each of these goals in terms of how they relate to Instagram’s changing platform.
Since increasing engagement is marketers' primary goal, it’s not surprising that the most popular marketing strategy is interacting with audiences (like replying to comments) because that’s exactly how you increase engagement.
It’s also no surprise that the strategy to get the most investment in 2024 is creating content that encourages engagement and that this offers the highest ROI.
There are various ways for you to interact with your audience, from simple reactions to comments and DMs.
However you go about it, I recommend taking the time to engage with your followers to strengthen the bond they have with your brand. But, interaction is a two-way street, so you’ll want to create content that encourages engagement.
Advertising products/services is the #2 goal for 2024, and marketers will accomplish this by creating content that showcases their products/services.
I’ll talk a bit more about high-performing content later, but here’s a sneak peek: content that showcases products and services offers the highest ROI of any content type.
Increasing brand awareness is Instagram marketers' third most important goal in 2024.
My top recommendation for increasing brand awareness is to have a consistent schedule and presence on the platform so you are more likely to be seen.
The data recommends sharing video posts (they get the most reach/impressions) and image posts (which get the most shares).
Fostering meaningful relationships with consumers is one of the biggest benefits of having a brand presence on social media, so it’s no surprise that improving customer service and retention is a top goal for marketers in 2024.
Sure, customer service might not seem like your job, but since consumers are shopping on social media more than ever, they expect to get service on the platforms they already use to make purchases.
To strengthen the case for providing customer service on the app, I found that marketers who rate their strategies as very effective are more likely to use Instagram for customer service than those who report the opposite.
Marketers want to build relationships and community, and they’ll do it by creating engaging content. And, creating content that encourages engagement is receiving the most investment from marketers in 2024, with 37% planning to invest more in it than any other strategy.
Going out of your way to connect with those in your digital community, especially when you aren’t trying to sell them anything, can help foster a deep relationship between them and your brand.
Instagram Shopping tools are still evolving, but 71% of social media marketers who sell products directly within the app say its social shopping features have high ROI.
37% of marketers currently use shoppable posts or other Instagram Shops features. A majority say that 25-50% of clicks on shopping/linked posts lead to purchases.
And the same percentage of clicks lead to non-purchase-related conversions (like form submissions), which can help you nurture leads into paying customers.
What’s more, consumers are using the platform to make purchases; 46% say they’ve made a purchase on Instagram in the past three months, and it has the second-best in-app shopping experience.
To round it out, marketers using Instagram shopping tools are likelier to say that their Instagram strategy has been very effective this year.
Featured Resource: To learn more about selling on Instagram, I recommend downloading our 2024 Instagram Engagement Report.
We asked Instagram marketers whether asking followers to “like,” “share,” or “save” their content is most effective at triggering the algorithm to promote their content, as these are among some of the top metrics Instagram monitors.
Here are the results:
While Instagram marketers rank likes at #1, shares second, and saves last, I can also make a case for viewing it differently.
To explain why, consider your behavior when on Instagram.
If you’re like me, you probably give out likes mindlessly while scrolling through your feed, but how often are you sharing content to your story or in chats with friends? How often are you saving posts to look at later? Those pieces of content are probably much more carefully selected.
When we share posts on Instagram, we are telling others that we found the content so valuable that we couldn’t help but share it with them - the algorithm picks up on this. Sharing also gets bonus points because it inherently exposes more people to a piece of content.
Similarly, when saving content, we tell the algorithm that we found it so valuable that we want to bookmark it for future reference.
So while all three of these are the most important metrics Instagram tracks, I would prioritize saving, sharing, or even commenting in your call-to-actions ahead of asking for likes.
Affiliate marketing campaigns, contests/giveaways, and user-generated content are among the least used Instagram strategies, receiving the lowest investments in 2024.
If you're having difficulty building an effective UGC, affiliate marketing, or giveaway plan, consider alternatives, like partnering with influencers in your niche who can generate authentic content for your brand to establish social proof and spread awareness.
And it will pay off, as marketers told us influencer marketing offered the third-highest ROI.
While these strategies can still be successful and valuable to some brands, marketers we surveyed say they are not as effective as the other strategies we asked about.
Another strategy receiving lower investments is hashtags, but despite this, I still recommend using them because they help increase brand awareness and reach new audiences.
Hashtags have been around on Instagram since 2011, and they work in terms of increasing brand awareness and reaching new audiences.
However, Hashtags have dropped in popularity, and they’re at the bottom of the list of Instagram strategies marketers plan to invest in in 2024.
So, here’s the important data I have about using them on Instagram.
Our survey shows that when they use hashtags, a majority of marketers use between 9 and 11 hashtags (19%). Only 3% use between 27 and 30 (30 is the maximum amount).
And, when you do use them, leverage a mix of niche and general hashtags. For example, a specific hashtag like #Dachshunds and broader ones like #Dogs can help you attract a wider audience.
Marketers say that hashtags have the most impact on comments and impressions, meaning that they can help increase brand awareness and visibility.
We’ve gone over goals and strategies; now let's talk about the most effective formats.
The most popular formats/features among Instagram marketers are image posts, videos, and Stories.
Fun Fact: The last time we ran this survey, live video was the most popular format, but it’s now the least leveraged.
Image posts have the highest ROI, and marketers who use them say they make up most of their content mix (67% of posts are image posts). Marketers also share image posts multiple times per week.
62% of marketers share video content on Instagram and say 59% of their content mix consists of videos they post multiple times per week.
Videos get the most likes of any other format.
48% of Instagram marketers leverage Instagram Stories, and the feature makes up 43% of their content mix. Out of the most common engagement metrics, Instagram Stories bring in the most DMs.
Marketers who leverage Stories say they share them multiple times per week (33%) — 14% post multiple times per day.
When you do post them, how long should your Stories be? 75% of marketers say their audience watches 4-9 before dropping off, with only 7% saying their audience watches the entire Story regardless of length.
We also asked about the ideal number of stories to have up at once — 74% of Instagram marketers say 4-9 stories is best.
Curious about which story types are most engaging? Check out this post.
37% of Instagram marketers use Instagram Reels, making up more than a quarter of their content mix.
The frequency of posting varies, with a majority posting multiple times per week (31%). 25% post Reels once a day.
Reels fall towards the middle of the pack across engagement metrics, but I think the feature provides unique brand opportunities.
For example, brands and influencers focused on it have seen major benefits to leveraging it. For example, my teammate Caroline Forsey spoke with with Kar Brulhart, who has organically grown her Instagram account from zero to 45,000+ viewers in under ten months using Reels.
She told Caroline about the incredible opportunity Reels presents for Instagram marketers:
"I went from less than 2,000 followers in February 2020 to over 15,000 the next month through Reels, because Instagram is pushing Reels to new audiences. And 75% of the people who find my account are coming from Reels — compared to Stories and posts."
Considering the popularity of short-form videos and the emphasis Instagram places on Reels, I recommend giving the format a shot. They’re relatively easy to make and can also provide a boost in exposure.
The most popular content types on Instagram are content that showcases a brand's products/services (demos, teasers, etc.), funny content, relatable and authentic content, and content that reflects a brand’s values (like social responsibility).
When it comes to ROI, the top three remain the same, but behind-the-scenes content (like meet-the-team videos) takes fourth place.
49% of our survey respondents share content centered around a brand’s products/services and say it has the highest ROI.
I’m not surprised: marketers' #2 goal in 2024 is advertising their products and services, and, well, they act on that goal by sharing content centered around their products/services.
Funny content has the second-highest performance on the app, and it’s most popular among B2C and D2C businesses.
Also no surprise there, as consumers say funny content is the most memorable type of content brands can post on social media.
Relatable content offers the third-highest ROI, likely because of consumer preference. Audiences care more that the content they see is authentic and relatable than having a high production value.
Content that reflects brand values is the most popular content type in our social media trends survey this year, and 35% of Instagram marketers use it.
53% of social media marketers plan to increase their investment in this content type this year and say it offers the second-highest ROI of all content types.
29% and 28% (respectively) of Instagram marketers share behind-the-scenes and interactive content, and usage of both is growing in 2024.
While knowing what type of content to post on Instagram is helpful, it’s only part of the equation. An optimized Instagram marketing strategy also includes the ideal days and times to post based on what brings in the most engagement.
In fact, just 9% of our survey respondents told us that this kind of optimization has no noticeable impact on performance.
According to marketers, the best day to post is Friday between 6-9PM. Sundays also bring in high performance, and you’ll find success between 12-3PM and 6-9PM on most other days.
How do marketers look at the overall ROI of their presence on Instagram?
I asked marketers about what they look at to determine overall ROI, and the most important metric is revenue/sales of products within the Instagram app. That’s followed by the amount of leads and conversions driven from Instagram.
Regardless of the metrics you prefer, your followers are the true drivers of your success on the app. Let’s go over the top strategies for growing your following on Instagram.
The best strategies for growing your following on Instagram are engaging with other users, partnering with influencers, and posting interactive and engaging Instagram Stories.
Partnering with brands/accounts with similar audiences is #4, and it’s a growth driver because you gain exposure to audiences who might not yet know about you but are likely interested in your content.
Another powerful growth strategy is diversifying your content to resonate with a wider audience. You’ll also want to study your audience for trends and create targeted content to attract others with similar interests.
Those are the best strategies for growing your following, but I also asked marketers what methods to use to reach your first thousand followers, and the results show key differences.
Earning your first 1,000 followers on Instagram is a massive milestone, and 78% of Instagram marketers I surveyed have been part of growing an account to 1K followers.
According to them, setting a regular posting schedule, customizing your profile, and writing engaging shareable captions are key to reaching your first 1K followers.
Remember that the formats most effective at getting shares are image posts, video posts, and Reels.
Most marketers say it takes 4-6 months to reach 1K followers on Instagram. Only 17% reached that in under a month, and just 1% took over a year.
But just as you gain followers, it’s also possible to lose them. Let’s take a look at what has caused Instagram marketers to lose followers, so you can avoid those mistakes.
Not posting enough and being too “sales-y” are the top culprits when losing followers. Nearly a quarter of respondents report losing followers from not using a consistent aesthetic/voice and Instagram removing bot followers.
Lastly, using “banned” hashtags can result in your posts being hidden. You can check if a hashtag is banned by searching it on Instagram and looking at the top or most recent posts -- if those sections come up empty, it’s likely banned.
Next, let’s take a look at whether Instagram marketers are leveraging organic or paid media on the platform, and which performs better.
Most marketers (46%) use organic content over paid (16%) content, and 38% use both.
Those who use a mix of both say organic content is more effective for reaching business goals and gaining followers.
We have an entire article about Instagram marketers' challenges, but I’ll give you a sneak peek at that data here.
Survey respondents told us that the greatest challenges with Instagram marketing are driving traffic to their site, driving purchases/revenue, and increasing brand awareness/reaching new audiences.
If these resonate, take a look at this piece to see how to overcome them.
I asked marketers whether their Instagram marketing strategies have been effective or ineffective this year and cut the data by the two separate groups and strategies they use. Here are some of the biggest differentiators:
As we end this post, here are a few themes we've picked up from the chart above and the overall results of our survey:
Check out these posts for a deeper dive as well as tips and tricks related to our Instagram marketing data.
Interested in learning even more about Instagram marketing and engagement from some of our expert partner brands? Be sure to download the free resource below.
Keyword research has remained a constant in a rapidly changing search landscape. If you’re an inbound marketer looking to optimize your website, understanding how to do keyword research is a must.
![Download Now: Keyword Research Template [Free Resource]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/447dd5f8-1426-4fb6-af75-b6e55bb759a2.png)
In this post, we’ll define what keyword research is, why it’s important, how to conduct your research for your SEO strategy, and how to choose the right keywords for your website.
Table of Contents
Keyword research helps you find your SEO sweet spot — the overlap of keywords that aren’t too hard to rank for and keywords that you can confidently produce excellent content on. It also identifies the queries that your target audience is actually searching on Google.
I talked to HubSpot Growth Manager Amal Kalepp, who says that keyword research “determines who your competitors are and which area of the search landscape you can rank for. Doing keyword research and understanding where your blog or website sweet spot is — that’s what gives you rankability.”
Insights from actual search terms can inform your content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy.
Your Purranormal Detective Agency may have the best ghost-detecting kittens in the business, but if nobody’s searching for “cat paranormal detective” (they aren’t; I checked), you aren’t going to have much luck — or traffic — if you base your content strategy on that keyword.
People use keywords to find solutions when conducting research online, so if your content successfully gets in front of your audience, you stand to gain more traffic.
Therefore, you should be targeting those searches with content that features those keywords in a meaningful way.
Additionally, inbound methodology focuses less on creating content around what we want to tell people. Instead, we should be creating content around what people want to discover.
In other words, our audience is coming to us for helpful content that provides the answers they’re looking for. And it all begins with keyword research.
Conducting keyword research has many benefits, the most popular being:
Conducting effective keyword research can provide insights into current marketing trends and help you center your content on relevant topics and keywords your audience is looking for.
When you identify the best-fitting keywords for the content you publish, the higher you’ll rank in search engine results — and the more traffic you’ll attract to your website.
If your content meets the needs of your users, adding a strong call-to-action will lead them into the buyer journey from the awareness stage to the point of purchase.
By researching keywords for their popularity, search volume, and general intent, you can tackle the questions that most people in your audience want answers to.
For instance, the Purranormal Detective Agency would do better to produce excellent content on the broader topic of paranormal investigators, which has a monthly search volume (MSV) of 800.
“Search intent” is something I frequently hear about from HubSpot SEOs. That’s because the reason a user types in a particular keyword matters — a lot.
Our content has to solve users’ problems. If you found your way to this article via the search term “SEO keyword strategy,” we have to anticipate your questions on this topic. And then answer them.
SEO is evolving at breakneck speed, but keyword research is still foundational to search intent. It tells you what topics people care about and how popular those topics actually are among your audience.
The operative term here is “topics,” plural. By researching keywords with a high volume of monthly searches, you can identify and sort your content into topics or buckets that you’ll use to create content.
Then you can use these topics to dictate which keywords you look for and target.
There are three main elements to conducting keyword research.
Google ranks content for relevance.
This is where the concept of search intent comes in. Your content will only rank for a keyword if it meets the searchers’ needs.
In addition, your content must be the best resource for the query — Google won’t rank your content as highly if it doesn’t provide better value than its competitors.
If you’re starting an SEO business specializing in small businesses, you might assume that “SEO tips for small businesses” would be the most relevant keyword. But take a look at the Ahrefs keyword research dashboard:
“SEO tips for small businesses” has an MSV of 300 and a high keyword difficulty. Its parent topic, “small business SEO,” has an MSV of 2,500 and a very high keyword difficulty.
Google provides more weight to sources it deems authoritative.
You can become an authoritative source by enriching your site with helpful, informative content and promoting that content to earn social signals and backlinks.
Both HubSpot.com and the HubSpot Blog are well-established sites, and we work hard to make sure we provide the content our readers are searching for. As a result, the root domain and subdomain have very high domain authority:
If you’re not seen as authoritative in the space, or if a keyword’s SERPs are loaded with heavy sources you can’t compete with (like Forbes or The Mayo Clinic), you have a lower chance of ranking.
You might rank on the first page for a specific keyword, but if no one ever searches for it, you won’t see any traffic. It's like setting up a shop in a ghost town.
Volume is measured by MSV (monthly search volume), which means the number of times the keyword is searched per month across all audiences.
Compare Ahrefs’ results for “cat detective agency” versus “paranormal investigator”:
Even though kitten detectives are your business’ differentiating factor, absolutely not a single soul is trying to locate a cat who can sniff out their resident poltergeist.
“Paranormal investigators” isn’t a wildly popular search term, but it gets significantly more volume than “cat detective agency,” so it’s a much better keyword to try to rank for.
Kalepp says that one of the common mistakes people make is assuming that a higher MSV is better. “‘Instagram marketing’ might seem like the best choice to rank for because it has millions of searches,” she says. “But it makes it much more difficult to rank for that.”
“You might have better luck with something like ‘Instagram marketing for small businesses’ — and then that can be your niche.”
She says that you could get “a lot more traffic ranking for a keyword that has a lower MSV and lower competition” than one with a high MSV.
I’m going to lay out a keyword research process you can follow to help you come up with a list of terms you should be targeting.
That way, you’ll be able to establish and execute a strong keyword strategy that helps you get found for the search terms you care about.
To kick this off, think about the topics you want to rank for in terms of generic buckets.
You’ll come up with about five to 10 topic buckets you think are essential to your business, and then you’ll use those topic buckets to help come up with some specific keywords later in the process.
If you’re a regular blogger, these are probably the topics you blog about most frequently. Or perhaps they’re the topics that come up the most in sales conversations.
Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas. What types of topics would your target audience search that you’d want your business to get found for?
HubSpot, for example, might have general topic buckets like:
The number in parentheses is the MSV, according to Ahrefs.
That data allows you to gauge how important these topics are to your audience and how many different sub-topics you need to create content on to be successful with that keyword.
To learn more about these sub-topics, we move on to step two.
Now that you have a few topic buckets you want to focus on, it’s time to identify some keywords that fall into those buckets.
These are keyword phrases you think are important to rank for in the SERPs (search engine results pages) because your target customer is probably conducting searches for those specific terms.
For instance, if I took that last topic bucket for an inbound marketing software company — “marketing automation” — I’d brainstorm some keyword phrases I think people would type in related to that topic.
Those might include:
The point of this step isn’t to come up with your final list of keyword phrases; you just want a brain dump of phrases you think potential customers might use to search for content related to that particular topic bucket.
We’ll narrow the lists down later so you don’t have something too unwieldy.
Keep in mind that Google is encrypting more keywords every day, so another smart way to generate keyword ideas is to determine which keywords already bring users to your website.
To do this, you’ll need website analytics software like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or HubSpot’s Sources report, which are available in the Traffic Analytics tool.
Get started with HubSpot's free Traffic Analytics Tool.
Drill down into your website’s traffic sources and sift through your organic search traffic bucket to identify the keywords people use to arrive at your site.
Repeat this exercise for as many topic buckets as you have.
Remember, if you’re having trouble brainstorming with relevant search terms, you can always head on over to your customer-facing colleagues in sales or service. Ask them what types of terms their prospects or customers have questions about.
Those are often great starting points for keyword research.
Here at HubSpot, we use the Search Insights Report. This template is designed to help you do the same and bucket your keywords into topic clusters, analyze MSV, and inform your editorial calendar and strategy.
Featured Resource: Search Insights Report Template
User intent is now one of the most pivotal factors in your ability to rank well on search engines like Google.
That means it’s vital that your web page addresses the problem a searcher wants to solve rather than simply including the keyword the searcher used.
So, how does this affect your keyword research?
It’s tempting to take keywords at face value, but they can have many different meanings.
And because the intent behind a search is so important to your ranking potential, you need to be extra careful about how you interpret the keywords you target.
Let’s say you’re researching the keyword “how to start a blog” for an article you want to create. “Blog” can mean a blog post or the blog website itself, and the searcher’s intent behind that keyword will influence the direction of your article.
Does the searcher want to learn how to start an individual blog post? Or do they want to know how to launch a website domain for a new blog?
If your content strategy only targets people interested in the latter, you’ll need to determine the keyword’s intent before using it.
To verify a user’s intent, it’s a good idea to simply enter this keyword into a search engine yourself and see what types of results come up.
I did a quick search for “how to start a blog,” and it looks like most users are searching for info on how to start a website with a blog, not an individual blog post:
Make sure the type of content Google is displaying relates to your intention for the keyword.
This is a creative step you may have already thought of when doing keyword research. If not, it’s a great way to fill out those lists.
If you’re struggling to think of more keywords people might be searching about a specific topic, take a look at the related search terms that appear when you plug a keyword into Google.
I searched Google for “AI search grader,” a new free product from HubSpot. At the bottom of the first page, I can see that users are also searching specifically for a free AI search grader.
These keywords can spark ideas for other keywords you may want to take into consideration.
Want a bonus? Type in some of those related search terms and look at their related search terms. Looking at the related search terms for “AI search grader free,” I can see that people are also searching for the best AI search grader.
Keyword research and SEO tools can help you brainstorm more keyword ideas based on exact-match keywords and phrase-match keywords based on the ideas you’ve generated up to this point.
Some of the most popular ones include:
Some of the best SEO reports and keyword research I’ve seen have come from SEO experts using Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.
Their webmaster tools offer plenty of detail into any verified domains you own if you’re looking for an overview of backlinks and organic keywords.
I found SE Ranking was not quite as user-friendly to dive into as some of the other options.
When I typed in my keyword “keyword research,” I was prompted to set up a free seven-day trial, and it immediately asked for the domain I wanted to track.
While it gave me some good intro data, I had to do some digging to get to the keyword research and keyword suggestion tools. However, when I found them, the resulting data was comprehensive and gave me lots of great ideas.
It’s free and doesn’t require setting up an account.
Semrush is one of the most comprehensive SEO companies out there, so I wasn’t surprised to find that their keyword magic tool was comprehensive as well.
While you do need to set up an account, it’s free. Then, you can type in your keyword, get a list of similar keywords, and sort based on how specific you need your results to be.
I’ve been a fan of Ubersuggest for quite some time. You get up to three free searches a day, and it’s so easy to use.
In addition to finding out specific keyword performance, you can find related keywords and do a quick reverse search to find out what your site is already ranking for.
It’s one of the easiest, most comprehensive free options, if you don’t mind the limitations of the free searches.
I found Ryrob’s keyword research tool easy to use. When I plugged “keyword research” into the “Explorer” tab as my keyword, it gave me several related keywords that could be solid blog topics.
Then, when I shifted to the “Ideas” tab, it gave me other keyword cluster ideas that are more likely to be specific search terms that I might want to include in future articles on keyword research.
Google’s tools are always gold. They’re free, and it’s always good to get the info straight from the horse’s mouth. Once you sign in with your Google account, you can search for keyword ideas based on the keyword or your website.
Keywords Everywhere comes highly recommended, but it’s not a free tool.
It’s a browser extension and it takes a little more setup than browser-based options. The lowest price tier, “bronze,” is $2.25/month and limits you to 100K keywords annually.
Since it’s a browser extension, every time I do a Google search, I get data about related keywords and similar searches, which gives me lots of ideas for new content.
For the price and the detail, it’s one of my favorite tools.
Using KeywordTool.io is exactly what they promise in the headline. When I typed in “keyword research,” I got a list of 502 keyword ideas.
Although I only see search volume, trend, CPC, and competition for the first five, I can see all of the keywords, which provides a solid search starting point.
KWFinder is another easy tool. While I quickly found that an account is needed to get started, it’s free and quite easy to dive in. I was able to quickly start finding the top keywords.
When I plugged in a handful of keywords into SearchVolume.io, after doing a quick “Are you a human?” check, the monthly search volume immediately popped out.
A quick cross-comparison with other tools showed that the data was consistent with other platforms.
Rank Tracker by SEO PowerSuite is a solid tool for monitoring SERP data and doing keyword research.
There are a lot of great features, but Rank Tracker works best as a tool to rank relevant keywords, identify keyword gaps, and autocomplete phrases on different search engine tools.
Rank Tracker allows you to see all the phrases a particular domain ranks for, along with search volumes and keyword difficulty.
Their keyword gap tool allows you to determine which keywords competing websites are ranking for that you might be missing out on.
Rank Tracker also integrates with Google Search Console and Keyword Planner, providing a free version for unlimited testing.
Once you have an idea of the keywords that you want to rank for, now it's time to refine your list based on the best ones for your strategy. Here’s how.
In Google’s Keyword Planner, you can get search volume and traffic estimates for keywords you’re considering. Then, take the information you learn from Keyword Planner and use Google Trends to fill in some blanks.
Use the Keyword Planner to flag any terms on your list that have way too little (or way too much) search volume and don’t help you maintain a healthy mix like we talked about above.
But before you delete anything, check out their trend history and projections in Google Trends. You can see whether you should invest in some low-volume terms now so you can reap the benefits later.
Or perhaps you’re just looking at a list of terms that is way too unwieldy, and you have to narrow it down somehow. Google Trends can help you determine which terms are trending upward and are worth more of your focus.
That is, prioritize keywords that you have a chance of ranking for based on your website’s authority.
Large companies typically go after high search volume keywords, and since these brands are well established already, Google typically rewards them with authority over many topics.
You can also consider keywords that have little competition. Keywords that don’t already have multiple articles battling for the highest rank can afford you the spot by default — if there’s no one else trying to claim it.
You want to write content around what people want to discover, and checking MSV can help you do just that. Monthly search volume is the number of times a search query or keyword is entered into search engines each month.
Here are the results from Ahrefs on “SEO keyword strategy,” which has an MSV of 400:
Tools like searchvolume.io or Google Trends can help you find the most searched keywords for related keyword clusters for free.
There are several SERP feature snippets that Google will highlight if used correctly.
An easy way to find out about them is to look up keywords and see what the first result looks like.
But for a quick overview of the types of SERP featured snippets, we’ll summarize the more common ones here — you can read about all 22 of them on Google.
Image packs are search results displayed as a horizontal row of images that appear in an organic position. If there’s an image pack, you should write an image-heavy post to win placement in it.
For instance, here’s the image pack for “cat detective agency”:
A relatively recent addition to Google’s rich results, AI Overviews provides an AI-written summary for a certain percentage of searches. (That percentage has changed a few times to meet the demand for accuracy.)
Featured snippets, or paragraph snippets, are short snippets of text that appear at the top of Google search results for quick answers to common search queries. I asked Google, “Where do elephants live?” and it returned this featured snippet:
Understanding the searcher’s intent and providing succinct answers can help you win a featured snippet.
List snippets, or listicles, are snippets made for posts outlining steps to do something from start to finish — often for “How To” searches. Writing posts with direct, clear instructions and formatting can assist in winning this placement.
Video snippets are short videos that Google displays at the top of a SERP in place of text-based featured snippets.
Posting a video on both YouTube and your website can help you win this placement if you’re tagged in the targeted keywords people are searching for.
Head terms are keyword phrases that are generally shorter and more generic — typically just one to three words in length.
Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are longer keyword phrases usually containing three or more words.
It’s important to check that you have a mix of head terms and long-tail terms in order to build a well-balanced keyword strategy with long-term goals and short-term wins.
That’s because head terms are generally searched more frequently, making them often (not always, but often) much more competitive and harder to rank for than long-tail terms.
Think about it: Without even looking up search volume or difficulty, which of the following terms do you think would be harder to rank for?
If you answered #2, you’re absolutely right.
But don’t get discouraged. While head terms generally boast the most search volume (meaning greater potential to send you traffic), the traffic you’ll get from “how to write a great blog post” will usually be more desirable.
That’s because someone who’s using a specific query is probably a more qualified searcher for your product or service (presuming you’re in the blogging space) than someone with a more generic search query.
Because long-tail keywords tend to be more specific, it’s usually easier to tell what people who search for those keywords are actually looking for. Someone searching for the head term “blogging,” on the other hand, could be motivated by reasons that aren’t related to your business.
Kalepp says that short-tail keywords “can make it really difficult to rank, especially if you are a newer blog and you don't have that domain authority quite yet.”
She recommends “targeting those long-tail keywords, because a lot of times the competition is lower on them. And it allows you to really develop a niche and allows you to rank.”
So check your keyword lists for a healthy mix of head terms and long-tail keywords. You definitely want some quick wins that long-tail keywords will afford you, but you should also try to chip away at more difficult head terms over the long haul.
Kalepp, who’s worked on both the HubSpot and The Hustle blogs, says that it can be challenging to find the right balance.
When she worked on the HubSpot blog, “there wasn't a lot of fluctuation in what the search volume looked like, but for The Hustle blog, there were constant changes because we were writing about subjects that were really trendy.”
“And so it was imperative for us to strike when it was hot,” she says of The Hustle blog.
Just because your competitor is doing something doesn’t mean you need to. The same goes for keywords. Just because a keyword is important to your competitor doesn’t mean it’s important to you.
However, understanding what keywords your competitors are trying to rank for is a great way to help you give your list of keywords another evaluation.
If your competitor is ranking for certain keywords that are also on your list, it makes sense to work on improving your ranking for those.
Kalepp says she’s a big fan of “doing a competitor analysis and understanding that landscape really well — and then using those same content pillars to build out a content library.”
Don’t ignore the ones your competitors don’t seem to care about — it could be a great opportunity to own market share on other important terms.
Understanding the balance of terms might be a little more difficult. Remember, the goal is to end up with a list of keywords that provides some quick wins but also helps you make progress toward bigger, more challenging SEO goals.
Here’s a quick way to get a sense of the terms that your competitors rank for: Manually search for keywords in an incognito browser and see what positions your competitors are in.
Understand that there are no “best” keywords, just those that are highly searched by your audience. With this in mind, it’s up to you to craft a strategy that will help you rank pages and drive traffic.
The best keywords for your SEO strategy will account for relevance, authority, and volume. You want to find highly searched keywords that you can reasonably compete for based on your competition and your ability to produce excellent content on those keywords.
You now have a list of keywords that will help you focus on the right topics for your business and get you some short-term and long-term gains.
Be sure to re-evaluate these keywords every few months — once a quarter is a good benchmark, but some businesses like to do it even more often than that.
As you gain even more authority in the SERPs, you’ll find that you can add more and more keywords to your list.
Kalepp also says to remember that building up a strong SEO strategy takes time. “It takes a long time to see results when you’re first building that strategy out,” she says. “Just understand that it takes time.”
Growing a following on TikTok can feel daunting. Trust me, I know. I first created a TikTok to promote my YouTube channel, blog, and podcast back in 2022. Though I managed to gain over a thousand followers in just a few days, that was a few years ago.
Now, I'm starting a new TikTok to promote my content for HubSpot, and I can see already the landscape has changed. Fortunately, I still know a thing or two about how to grow on TikTok, and I've done enough research to know how to do so in 2024.
Without further ado, let's dive into the best tips and tricks to grow your TikTok.
![Free Ebook: The Marketer's Guide to TikTok for Business [Download Now]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/2c7242e4-ad54-4f63-8627-a15aa6a2ea50.png)
Growing your following on TikTok will increase your brand's visibility. Like I said, I joined TikTok to promote my YouTube channel, blog, and podcast. And I can't tell you how many times I would see comments saying, "I saw you on TikTok and knew I had to follow your channel."
I've also found through HubSpot's most recent Consumer Trends survey that TikTok is especially important if you're selling products or services. In our survey, the majority of our respondents (37%) say they prefer discovering new products via short-form videos such as TikToks or Instagram Reels.
Growing your TikTok is also an excellent way to get the attention of Gen Z. Gen Z is projected to have the fastest growth in spending power, reaching about $12 trillion by 2030.
So, if you want to tap into the Gen Z market, you'll be happy to know TikTok is a popular app among them. According to our survey, 30% of Gen Z consumers say TikTok is their favorite app, and 72% of Gen Z consumers reported using TikTok in the past three months.
Now you know why TikTok is important. Let me give you what you came here for and present 6 ways to grow your TikTok following.
When you try to appeal to everyone, you wind up attracting no one because no one knows what to expect from you. You'll end up posting content that appeals to one crowd but turns off another.
So, niche down by researching your target audience and creating content that is appealing to them. You can do this via focus groups, surveys, creating buyer personas, or observing what competitors in your industry are doing to engage their audience.
For example, fashion is a popular category on TikTok. So much so that the hashtag #fashion has over 66.6 million views on the platform.
If you want to post fashion-related content, you might get lost in this competitive vertical. Instead, I suggest focusing on a sub-niche like style tips and mid-sized fashion, which has a fraction of the views but a more engaged audience.
One of my favorite fashion-related creators on TikTok is Andrea's Fashion Galaxy. Rather than tackle a wide range of fashion topics, Andrea focuses on teaching her audience how to style specific pieces or how to dress for certain occasions.
In the TikTok below, Andrea shows viewers how to style a metallic mini skirt as a top. She even adds her own flair to her videos by incorporating her many pets.
Sometimes, it's not just what you post but when you post. This is especially true on TikTok.
A recent HubSpot Blogs survey of 1,400+ global marketers found the best time to post to TikTok is between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Since TikTok is popular with the Gen Z crowd — and they're in school for a good part of the day — the morning and early afternoon "dead zone" makes sense.
When posting content on TikTok, stay clear of these slow hours and try posting towards the end of the week or during the weekend.
One of the most popular videos on my TikTok is one I stitched with a well-known creator. It has about 12,000 views, while most of my videos would garner an average of 300-5,000 views.
TikTok's Stitch enables users to play up to 5 seconds of someone else's video as an intro to their own. This is usually done to respond to the original creator, answer questions, or contribute to a viral topic.
Another helpful tool is TikTok's Duet feature, which lets you play your video next to another user's video. This is ideal if you want to add commentary or a funny reaction to the original video. Here's a duet I did a while ago with Steve from Blue's Clues.
The best way to leverage these features is by engaging with top-performing videos in your niche. You can do this by using the search bar and typing keywords relating to your brand.
Then, once you've zeroed in on a video you like, tap the Stitch or Duet button and let your creativity fly.
But there's more — you can also encourage others to Duet or Stitch your videos.
For example, Tesco, a British grocery chain, asks users to Duet the following video for a chance to become the new voice of their checkout machine:
The result? Tesco's original video scored 22 million views and thousands of Duet submissions.
It seems there's a new viral challenge making waves every time I log into TikTok, and I've seen how they can explode a follower count. The trick is finding the right one for your brand.
For example, the horror film A Quiet Place: Day One recently spawned a challenge on TikTok called The Quiet Place Challenge. The challenge was inspired by a cat in the film that manages to remain quiet enough to keep alien monsters from detecting him and his caretakers.
To partake in the challenge, TikTok users have to run around while holding their cat to see if they'd survive the film in real life.
This challenge was perfect for cat-themed TikTok accounts like @realsirpounce, managed by a user named Carson, who has four feline companions. Check out Carson's attempt at the challenge below.
The video went viral, gaining more than 1 million likes.
You can also create your own challenge — just make sure it's relatively simple to do. For example, Chipotle started the #LidFlip challenge, which encouraged users to flip the lid of their burrito bowl with style:
In the first six days, the challenge generated over 100,000 video responses. Even more impressive, it created a record-breaking sales day for Chipotle.
88% of TikTok users say sound is essential to the TikTok experience. Thanks to the algorithm, it's also critical for driving more engagement.
TikTok has an extensive library of sounds — but you should prioritize the ones that get a lot of love from the community. This is because the TikTok algorithm tends to favor videos that leverage trending sounds.
For example, the most popular video on my TikTok has almost 100,000 views, way more than my usual average, and it features a sound that was trending at the time and was frequently used in the anime and manga community (the niche my account occupies).
To find a trendy sound that works for your brand, check out TikTok's Creative Center, which ranks the most popular sounds each day. You can also filter by region, which is helpful if your audience lives in a different location from you.
Odds are your audience is active on other social media besides TikTok. For this reason, it's important to cross-promote your videos to other channels, such as Instagram or YouTube.
Just avoid including the TikTok watermark in your videos when uploading to other platforms, as this can affect whether your content is prioritized in the algorithm.
To avoid this issue, I usually create a single video that is kept to about 60 seconds long, and I upload the original to each platform individually.
For example, I interviewed actress, host, and filmmaker Cheyenne Ewulu of Amazon Prime's Anime Club for my podcast Nerds At Work w/ TsundEri.
To cross-promote the episode on both Instagram and TikTok, I took a 60-second clip from the interview and uploaded it to TikTok and Instagram Reels separately rather than downloading it from TikTok and reposting it to the latter platform.
Hashtags are key to finding and connecting with the right community on TikTok. A great example of this is #BookTok on the app. The hashtag is used by both readers and authors to find, recommend, and promote books.
The tag was instrumental in the popularity of the New York Times Best Seller "It Ends with Us" by Colleen Hoover. The book initially came out in 2016 but entered the best sellers' list in 2021 after it gained popularity with the #Booktok community.
Just a few years later, the book was adapted to the big screen in a film starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
So, scroll through TikTok to see what hashtags your target audience is using to find content like yours.
For example, if you're a shoe store, start by including #shoes or #sneakers in your videos and look to see what other hashtags pop up in videos within your niche.
There is never a shortage of trending songs on TikTok, so you're sure to find one that matches the vibe of your content and your brand.
For example, actress Nicola Coughlan of the Netflix series Bridgerton cleverly used the song "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter to promote the show's red carpet premiere in Italy.
Couphlan's character on the show, Penelope, is in love with another character named Colin, and fans have dubbed the couple "Polin" (pronounced like "pollen").
"Espresso" became fans' anthem for the couple thanks to the verse "My honey bee, come get this pollen." Naturally, Coughlan used it in the TikTok video below.
The more accessible your video is the more people can enjoy it, engage, and pass it on. One way to make your video more accessible is to include closed-captions. Fortunately, TikTok automatically adds closed captions to videos uploaded to its platform.
However, the auto-generated captions aren't always accurate, which is why I suggest going through the captions and editing them for accuracy. To do this, click the auto-captions editor on the right-hand side of your video before uploading your video.
From there, you can edit the captions manually and ensure your videos are accessible.
TikTok allows users to repost content and share it with others. If you start a challenge on TikTok and you see others participating, repost their videos to share user-generated content.
You can also use the Stitch and Duet features I mentioned earlier to share user-generated content while engaging with your audience.
Most TikTok users prefer to keep up with creators and influencers instead of brands on the app, so it can be difficult to get users to become invested in your content if you're trying to promote a business.
But fear not! There is a solution. Try collaborating with creators and influencers to get them to introduce your brand to your audience. Just make sure said influencer or creator aligns well with your brand and your target audience's overlap.
For example, wallpaper brand Dizzy With Excitement collaborated with DIY home decor creator Kaarin Joy by creating a line of wallpaper patterns inspired by Kaarin's DIY projects.
Kaarin is known for quirky, out-of-this-world DIY projects, and DWE boasts an array of unique, funky patterns on its website. So, Kaarin was a perfect choice to introduce the brand to a wider audience.
A content series is a great way to engage your audience because it provides a consistent stream of content they can look forward to and associate with your brand.
For example, one of my favorite TikTok content series (that needs to be brought back, please) is Yes That's on Etsy. This series is on Etsy's official TikTok account and showcases the fun and unique products that can be found on Etsy's official site.
Think of a series of videos that are simple to make, can be spread out over multiple videos, and can showcase the products and services of your brand.
As you post your videos, keep track of what generates the most buzz for your platform. Which of your videos tend to get the most likes, comments, or reports?
Make sure your TikTok is a business account so you'll have access to all kinds of analytics and metrics that can inform your strategy on the app.
TikTok Stories work similarly to Instagram Stories. They allow users to post short videos that disappear after 24 hours. TikTok stories can drum up excitement for upcoming videos or be used to show quick, exclusive behind-the-scenes content of your business.
If possible, always include a call-to-action that will encourage viewers to stay tuned to your content.
For example, Kaarin Joy almost always ends her videos by asking her followers to suggest more DIY home improvement projects in the comments of her videos or to check back later for updates on her projects.
Of course, if you don't know a good CTA to add to your video, you can always stick to the classic call for viewers to follow your channel.
Community is important on TikTok and one way to build community with your followers on the app is to simply engage with them. Reply to their comments, stitch their videos, do a duet, or repost the content that resonates with your brand.
All of this will build loyalty with your audience and increase visibility for your brand.
Ultimately, the key to growing your TikTok is to consistently create and post high-quality content that showcases your brand. So start creating now and while you're at it, try implementing any of the above tips I gave you.
I'm also trying to grow my new account, so it's time for me to stop typing and start creating. Best of luck to both of us!
To use ChatGPT or not to use ChatGPT? Is that really the question anymore?
![Download Now: 100 ChatGPT Prompts for Marketers [Free Guide]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/c497a8fe-0f60-4244-9cb1-5bed4d1e5ab6.png)
If you're like me, you already use this tool to amplify your awesomeness. Like improving your email writing, analyzing data faster, or firing up your social media strategy.
But I have to admit — it’s not all peaches and cream. And others seem to agree — marketers we surveyed stated ChatGPT outputs aren’t publishable 96% of the time.
Does this mean you should throw the whole AI concept away? Not at all. Your outputs are only as good as your prompting skills.
So, I spoke to HubSpot's SEO team to understand how to write prompts for ChatGPT. Stick around to see the key elements of a good prompt, helpful ChatGPT prompt tips, and prompt writing examples.
Table of Contents
It's tempting to load up ChatGPT and jump right into the prompt. However, Josh Blyskal, Associate SEO Strategist at HubSpot, recommends a more introspective approach.
“The first thing you should do is figure out what you want. Before I type anything, I always take a moment to envision what the final output will look like,” he told me.
He gives an example of a marketer who wants to generate a marketing plan.
Instead of typing “Write me a marketing plan” into ChatGPT, she should take the time to envision what the plan looks like — how many sections it has, how many bullet points are under each section, and what information it contains.
Now that she has a better grasp of the task at hand, it becomes much easier to compose a prompt that checks all the boxes.
AI models thrive on specificity. If you feed it with vague instructions, you give it room to interpret what it thinks you want.
For example, suppose you prompt ChatGPT to “Rewrite this [article/email/Tweet],” expecting it to write something new and original. Instead, it regurgitates your original message using the same words and phrases.
The solution is to get specific and intentional with your words.
Instead of “Rewrite,” for instance, you might say reimagine, expand, simplify, or modernize. Even a small change in the way you phrase a prompt can significantly change the response.
As Blyskal points out, “A lot of people treat AI like a rigid system that can be hacked with the right words or phrases, but that's not the case.
There are no secret keywords that can guarantee the best results. It's like playing a game of words, and you have to think intentionally about the ones you use.”
You could get away with stopping at the previous step — especially if your request is fairly straightforward (e.g., “Write five knock-knock jokes for kids”).
However, you can supercharge your prompts by padding them with context. This gives the AI model more ingredients to cook up a great response.
Bianca D'Agostino, former SEO Specialist at HubSpot, puts it this way:
“Suppose your friend asks you to go to the store and pick up a few things. You definitely need more context — which store, what things, what's the budget, and so on. The more context you get from your friend, the easier it is to do the task. The same goes for AI!”
Let's look at an example:
Both of these prompts might yield good results, but the second prompt will give you a more detailed and compelling description.
This is because the AI model has more context to work with, including the product's name (“Squeaky Queen”), its form (a scrub), and its key features (vegan, gluten-free, recyclable packaging).
Although AI models are powerful, they still need you to take the lead. Without clear instructions, they're essentially a chef without a recipe or a new employee without a handbook.
Here's an example: Imagine you need to write an article about Instagram marketing. Along with the main task ("Write an article about Instagram marketing"), you also instruct ChatGPT to:
Not only are you giving ChatGPT a clear topic, but you‘re also guiding and shaping the content itself. You’re adding quotes, statistics, and examples to give the output more texture.
Of course, it's not just what you say but how you say it. The content of the article might be up to par, but it may lack a unique voice or perspective. This is where style and tones come in.
For Sylviain Charbit, HubSpot Senior Technical SEO Specialist, adding style to prompts is a multi-step process. He starts by letting the AI tool generate a general answer and then progressively molds its response for style.
“You can ask it to inspire itself from a situation, character, or profession, or provide it with already made examples to emulate,” he told me.
Charbit also incorporates ChatGPT tone modifiers, such as “cheerful,” “humorous,” or “authoritative,” to guide the AI further.
Let's look at some examples:
Other style parameters include length and format. You can specify the length of the response (e.g., “Keep the article under 800 characters”) and its format (e.g., “Create a list of bullet points”).
Blyskal follows the 60% Rule.
He told me, “When you generate something and it's at least 60% of what you want, you should continue refining that specific prompt. But if it falls short of that, it might be time to start from scratch.”
So, if you ask ChatGPT to generate a list of ten blog ideas and you only like two, it's a good indication to go back to the drawing board.
Even if you meet the 60% threshold, you can still refine the output by giving follow-up instructions such as, “Make it sound more conversational” or “Condense this into one paragraph.”
Remember that prompt writing isn't an exact science. Like any creative process, it often takes multiple revisions to get the right output.
Role-playing is a technique that involves asking the AI model to adopt a specific role, job, or function.
“When you ask an AI model to play a specific role, you're giving it a certain level of expertise,” Blyskal told me. “For instance, if you prompt it to act as a professional interviewer, it will look for examples of good interviewing skills and respond with professional-seeming questions.”
By defining a role for the AI model to play — such as a professional interviewer, a graphic designer, or a nutritionist — you're also tapping into different viewpoints and perspectives, which can be especially helpful for marketers.
For example, let‘s say you’re launching a new product, a cold plunge tub. You need to create an ad that appeals to your target audience: long-distance runners. In this scenario, you ask the AI model to play the role of a long-distance runner and list the key benefits of your product.
Here’s an example from Perplexity (my fave AI tool) because it provides images and links to sources (peace out hallucinations):
Now, the AI model will generate responses that align with the needs and preferences of long-distance runners. This gives you valuable insight into your audience, enabling you to create a more compelling and relevant ad.
Imagine you‘re on a road trip, and you’re relying on GPS to guide you from point A to point B. Throughout the journey, it gives you turn-by-turn directions until you reach your destination.
Chain of thought prompting follows a similar approach. You give the AI model one prompt after another, with each prompt building on the one before it. This keeps the model on track, giving you greater control of the output.
“You're basically asking the AI model to explain its reasoning at each step. If you don't like any of the explanations, you can tinker with the output until it's ready for the next prompt,” Blyskal explains.
This is ideal for tasks that can be broken down into smaller steps.
For example, consider a copywriter using AI to create an article. She first prompts it to create an outline. Once she‘s happy with the outline, she prompts it to write the article, and then the headline, and then the meta description. She doesn’t move to the next step until she's satisfied with the current output.
That's the power of chain prompting. By guiding the model in a logical sequence, you generate more accurate and relevant responses.
“If there's any one tip that will take your prompting to the next level, it's providing examples to the AI model,” Blyskal told me.
You can think of examples as reference points, helping the AI model emulate a certain style, tone, structure, or format. On top of that, AI can analyze a piece of content and offer improvements.
Here are several types of examples you can provide to ChatGPT:
While AI prompting is a science, it’s also an art. So don’t be afraid to get creative with your examples and instructions to get out-of-the-box outputs.
Here are three use cases I’m seeing many people use in content marketing today. I included the prompt, why it works, and the generated output by ChatGPT.
Prompt: “Create a social media campaign to launch our new eco-friendly water bottle. The campaign should include 5 Instagram posts, 3 Facebook posts, and 2 X posts. Each post should highlight the product's sustainability features, target eco-conscious consumers, and include a call-to-action to visit our website.”
Why it works:
Generation:
Fun fact: 31% of marketers use AI for social media post creation based on our AI marketing survey.
Prompt: “Draft an email marketing campaign for our upcoming summer sale. The email should be engaging, highlight the 20% discount on all summer clothing, and include a clear call-to-action to shop now. Target young adults aged 18-30.”
Why it works:
Generation:
Fun fact: We found 28% of marketers use ChatGPT to create and answer emails.
Prompt: “Create a PPC ad campaign for our digital marketing consultancy. The campaign should include 3 Google Ads and 2 Facebook Ads. Highlight our expertise in SEO and social media marketing, and include a call-to-action to book a free consultation.”
Why it works:
Generation:
Fun fact: 90% of marketers see AI reducing time spent on manual tasks (like creating ads).
Blyskal said it best: “At the core of prompting is conversation.” You don't engineer or program AI. Instead, you talk to it.
Like any conversation, you naturally adjust your tone, provide ample context, and share details, anecdotes, and examples to give your story texture. These are the same elements that make a really great prompt.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
The disco era was all about bold colors, flashy lights, and an unmistakable sense of fun, and the right font can instantly transport your audience back to that time.
Whether you’re looking for a font that screams “Saturday Night Fever” or a more subtle nod to the carefree disco era, our disco fonts collection has got you covered. From glittery typefaces that shimmer like a disco ball to bold, funky fonts that get the party started, we’ve got the perfect options to help you create designs that dance off the page.
These retro disco fonts are designed to evoke the glitz and glamour of the 70s, with their flashy typefaces, playful curves, and dynamic energy. Perfect for any project that needs a dose of nostalgia and a whole lot of style.
Disco Diva is a groovy font that truly encapsulates the vivacious spirit of the 70s disco era! Its four unique weight variants; Base, Inline, Line, and Sketch, offer a potpourri of creative opportunities, adding a funky touch to any project. Whether you are working on posters, branding, or digital content, this simple-to-install typeface will infuse an undeniable retro appeal into your designs.
Disco Rendezvous is a modern disco font that marries the charm of an elegant script with a sleek sans serif font. It’s inspired by neon-lit nightclubs and legendary disco hits, capturing the essence of the golden age of disco. With abundant creative options offered by OpenType features, Disco Rendezvous brings a genuine hand-crafted feel to your titles.
The Alavine Disco is a captivating, disco-style font that perfectly marries futurism with funk. It comes with a unique dot pattern, creating a dynamic feel ideal for eye-catching displays like posters or album covers. Despite its bold, retro look, this typeface is remarkably versatile and user-friendly for headings, banners, logos, and more.
Albercio Disco is a sleek, modern display typeface with a unique disco-inspired dot effect. Its sans-serif condensed design gives it a trendy vibe, perfect for adding a bold touch to any contemporary project. Tailored for display applications, it’s versatile enough for use in posters, advertisements, or digital platforms. It comes in regular and italic styles and includes uppercase, lowercase characters, numerals, and punctuation.
Arshine Disco is a versatile, easy-to-use display font that combines retro charm with disco vibes. Its standout feature is a dynamic dot pattern, which brings a touch of vintage flair and modernity to your designs. Perfect for creating eye-catching displays, Arshine Disco works well in various sizes – ideal for headlines, logos, and banners.
The Eighties retro script font is influenced by the bold mono line, disco-style typography of the 1980s. It not only brings a timeless design to casual handwriting but is also versatile due to its minimal node feature. This font is optimal for branding, logos, social media posts, advertising, and more, with multi-language support and provisions for uppercase, lowercase, numerals, and symbols.
Check out the RETRO DISCO font, a modern retro disco-style typeface that effortlessly combines quirky boldness with unique letterforms for playful, engaging designs. It offers versatility with upper and lower case modes, and three width types: Narrow, Regular, and Wide, catering to every creative demand.
Disco Queen is an exciting, eye-catching disco-style font. Its vibrant nature makes it perfect for quotes, headers, or giving a lively edge to your client’s logo design. Your download comes with complimentary extended licensing, exciting free updates in OTF and TTF formats, and instant access.
Arbane Disco is a unique, modern font with a nod to retro charm. Its captivating dot pattern gives it a distinct disco flair, perfect for projects that demand a touch of classic style. Versatile and user-friendly, this font works well for headlines, logos, and eye-catching displays. It comes in both regular and italic versions, supporting multilingual characters, numerals, and punctuation.
Badoney Disco is a unique serif font with a retro spin, featuring a distinctive dot pattern that adds a playful hint of disco to its traditional style. Versatile and stylish, it’s perfect for creating eye-catching headlines, logos, or other displays that stand out. Despite its lively look, Badoney Disco is easy to use for both small and large typography, adding a touch of vintage charm to any design.
Benicio Disco combines vibrant energy and playful aesthetics, delivering a unique bubble-style retro disco font. Ideal for display uses, from posters to social media, its eye-catching design infuses designs with an exciting twist. It comes in regular and italic styles, and includes uppercase and lowercase characters, numerals, punctuation, and accents.
Smokey Brown is a vibrant typeface, inspired by the 70’s funk and soul scene. Its bold letters and thin lines give a distinctive style that epitomizes energy and movement. It’s perfect for retro-themed designs, brand logos, or any project aiming to evoke nostalgia. This versatile font offers uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation, and multilingual support.
Thunderstorm is a hand-painted typeface inspired by the music and pop culture of the 80s and 90s – with hints of disco, grunge, and retro elements. This versatile font, available in both ttf and otf formats, boasts multilingual support and is excellent for use in logos, posters, apparel, books, invites, quotes, packaging, and even album covers.
Fatbun is a whimsical, hand-lettered typeface that draws inspiration from retro disco aesthetics. Its bold style is perfect for use in a variety of formats, from social media posts and logo designs to movie or book titles. The font pack includes standard uppercase and lowercase, numerals, punctuation, multilingual characters, alternates, ligatures, and is PUA encoded.
Experience a taste of the ’70s with Boho Melody, a groovy disco-style font. This typeface, with its retro-chic design, exudes the youthful spirit of bell-bottoms and peace signs. Its unique characters dance playfully, adding a nostalgic charm and a modern edge to your projects. Boho Melody is available in both OTF and TTF versions and is perfect for those seeking something distinct yet timeless.
Summer Flowers is your go-to retro-style typeface with a funky groove to it. This playful and authentic font is a brilliant addition to any hippie-inspired designs, whether it’s for logos, blog posts, ads, invitations, or even decorations. It comes in a handy zip file containing both OTF and TTF files. Enjoy enhancing your designs with this nostalgic charm!
Saturday Night is a retro-inspired font bursting with 70s and 80s flair. This pack includes seven uniquely styled fonts boasting features such as stylistic alternates, swashes, and an impressive 777 pairs of ligatures. Ideal for headings, logos, apparel designs, and so much more, this versatile font family can add a funky vibe to any project.
This is one of the grooviest fonts on our list. It comes with a beautiful letter design with stylish curves and waves. The font features a classic retro design with disco-style elements. It’s free to use with personal projects.
Funky Round is another classic retro font featuring a disco-style design. The font comes in two different styles and they work perfectly together to create unique vibes for titles and headings. It’s free to use with commercial projects.
This free font comes with a classic disco-themed design and it’s perfect for everything from retro graphic designs to cool custom t-shirt prints. The font is free for personal use only.
Another fun and playful disco font for your creative design projects. This free font comes with a narrow, condensed letter design that will fit perfectly with your title and headings. The font is free to use with personal projects.
This free font combines elements from the Disco era with the Art Deco theme to create a unique and stylish letter design. It features uneven strokes and sharp edges to create a professional look and feel as well. The font is free for commercial use.
The ability to download media on the internet almost feels like a lost art. When I was in my teens, piracy of mp3s, movies, and just about everything else via torrents and apps like Kazaa, LimeWire, Napster, etc. was in full swing. These days sites use blob URLs and other means to prevent downloads. Luckily we have tools like yt-dlp to download individual YouTube videos or entire channels of content.
To download an entire channel, you can use yt-dlp:
yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/@beetlejuicearchives3490
If you’re like me and only care for the audio, you can use a few more arguments:
yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 https://www.youtube.com/@beetlejuicearchives3490
youtube-dl used to be the standard for downloading YouTube videos but yt-dlp seems to have taken the throne. YouTube has such a wealth of information on just about anything, be sure to download content for travel, long walks, or any other reason!
The post How to Download a YouTube Video or Channel appeared first on David Walsh Blog.
Whether you’re a site owner, a developer, or you lead a digital agency, the demand for faster, more reliable digital experiences has never been higher. In speaking with our customers, we know this isn’t just a constant source of pressure—it’s a critical element of business strategy and success. To help meet this demand, we’re proud…
The post Unlock Faster Site Speed With Edge Full Page Cache appeared first on WP Engine.
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