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It’s safe to say most of the world is in agreement that 2020 was a difficult year for our professional and personal lives. A lot has changed in the way businesses operate, and digital marketing has seen a number of notable shifts. As we navigate the rest of the year and make our way to 2021, it’s important for digital marketers to reflect on past strategies, campaigns, new client relationships, and evolving business plans. This reflection can help motivate and empower digital marketing teams in the year ahead. In this post, we will be taking a look back at digital marketing in 2020.

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Has your marketing team ever heard the phrase “brand essence”? It may be a common phrase, but it’s not always clear how a brand establishes an “essence.” What does essence mean? Essentially, brand essence encompasses your brand’s defining traits that allow it to resonate with your audience and stand out among your competitors. For a strong essence, your brand needs to be unique, visceral, relevant, authentic, durable, and have a clear focus. In this post, we will further define what it means to have a brand essence in your marketing company.

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As B2B marketers, we have plenty of prospect and customer data to keep track of. When a conversion occurs, we are there to analyze and determine follow-up steps. Within a B2B marketing website, you are bound to receive several notable interactions. This is why it’s critical to pay close attention to your user engagement metrics—such as a user’s browsing habits, CTAs they click, time spent on a webpage, etc. Here’s how your company can measure user engagement on your B2B marketing website.

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In the vast world of digital marketing, lead conversion isn’t a simple one-two process. There are several stages a lead must go through in their buyer journey before becoming a customer. This is something all marketers, whether B2C or B2B, understand, yet there is often confusion around the process of lead conversion itself. This is where the AIDA model comes into play; it is a model that helps explain each of the four stages someone goes through before making a purchase. In this post, we will be breaking down the AIDA model and its use in marketing.

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The value of a brand can be found in many of its components such as its messaging, tone of voice, and how it helps its audience. When it comes to developing brand identity in today’s online space, there is a lot for digital marketers to consider. The most notable online brands are unique, value-driven masters of their craft—and the secret to their success often lies within their positioning.

Brand positioning can be defined as the metaphorical place your company aims to own in the mind of your target customer. In this post, we will be sharing a guide to brand positioning for digital marketers.

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As marketers, we have a lot of day-to-day tasks to take care of—from keeping up with newly-generated leads to planning out pieces to support an upcoming marketing campaign. Marketing automation serves as an effective, time-saving method to ensure your leads and customers are receiving follow-ups based on the actions they take. For example, a user downloads an eBook on your marketing website and receives an automated email that shares a related blog post.

In this post, we will be sharing three tips to implement automation in your marketing strategy.

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There is a lot of uncertainty around the future of marketing in 2021, and many chief marketing officers (CMOs) are doing their best to plan accordingly. With a shift to stronger customer-focused strategies, the new year could be both exciting for CMOs and perhaps a bit overwhelming. Recently, Forrester shared its 2021 predictions report, which provided new insights into the changes CMOs can expect in the marketing landscape in 2021. Here is an overview of how 2021 will impact chief marketing officers.

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Back in September, we shared out top highlights from Inbound 2020, with a focus on HubSpot’s new CMS tools, email marketing, and LinkedIn. You can read that post by clicking here! We felt there was still more to explore in the world of Inbound. In this post, we’ll be sharing some additional highlights from Inbound 2020 that marketers should know.

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As the year continues to bring complex challenges to the marketing industry, many marketers continue to ask themselves, “can 2020 end already!?” It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say that 2020 has been perhaps one of the most difficult years for marketing in the past few decades. In the midst of this global pandemic, we were surprised and delighted to see that HubSpot would continue to hold its annual Inbound conference—this time entirely virtual. We had the opportunity to attend a few sessions during the event. These are our 3 highlights from Inbound 2020!

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Marketers have dozens of unique metrics to keep track of in order to ensure their marketing goals are being properly met. This can include lead conversions, content downloads, and organic traffic from search engines, among others. However, not all of these metrics hold the same value in your marketing strategy. In between the metrics that help prove your company’s return on investment (ROI), there are vanity metrics. In this post, we will be defining vanity metrics and their role in your marketing strategy.