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The Ultimate Guide to Internet Marketing [Data + Expert Tips]

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The Ultimate Guide to Internet Marketing [Data + Expert Tips]

Internet use is still increasing worldwide every day — in fact, over 4.95 billion people around the world use the internet, as of 2022.

Marketing is, and always has been, about reaching customers where they are. TV commercials, print advertisements, and billboards all attempt to do just that.

The internet offers unique benefits other marketing mediums can’t offer — scope of reach, the option to personalize content, and the opportunity to build far-reaching relationships with customers, being just a few.

But the internet can be an overwhelming and all-encompassing entity, filled with videos and recipes and news articles and e-commerce sites. In the crowded space of the internet, how are you supposed to differentiate your business to reach the right audience?

The answer is internet marketing.

Internet marketing leverages digital channels, including email, social media, websites, and search engines, to reach your ideal audience.

Unlike more traditional advertising mediums, such as print, the internet encourages two-way conversations between your business and your customer, ideally creating better long-term customer retention.

There’s no avoiding it: internet marketing is critical for the success of your business in 2022 and beyond.

But with all the gimmicks and tricks, it can be difficult to distinguish short-term wins from effective long-term strategies, which is why we’ve created an ultimate guide.

Here, we’ll cover everything from marketing strategies to real-world examples, to ensure your business reaches the right people out of that four billion.

What is Internet/Online Marketing?

Online marketing, also known as internet marketing or web advertising, is a form of marketing that uses the internet to deliver promotional messages to customers through digital channels such as search engines, email, websites, and social media.

Online marketing strategies include web design, SEO, email, social media, PPC, and other internet-related methods.

What’s the role of internet marketing?

Simply put, the role of internet marketing is to help your business reach, attract, and convert online audiences.

Let’s dive into two separate goals you’ll have with internet marketing, as well as the necessary methods you’ll want to take to achieve those goals.

Internet Marketing to Attract New Customers

You can use online marketing strategies to attract new customers. To do this, you’ll want to focus primarily on paid social media ads, search engines, and web design.

For instance, you might use Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences to get your message in front of an audience similar to your core demographic. Or, you could pay a social media influencer to share images of your products to her already well-established community.

Paid social media can attract new customers to your brand or product, but you’ll want to conduct market research and A/B testing before investing too much in one social media channel.

To attract new customers, you also need to maintain a powerful SEO presence. With 81% of shoppers using the internet for research before making purchasing decisions, it’s imperative your business is at the forefront of search for related keywords.

Having a strong SEO presence also translates to more in-store purchases, as well — in fact, 78% of local mobile searches result in an offline purchase.

Finally, it’s critical you spend time and resources on your business’s website design.

When these aforementioned customers find your website, they’ll likely feel deterred from trusting your brand and purchasing your product if they find your site confusing or unhelpful. For this reason, it’s important you take the time to create a user-friendly (and mobile-friendly) website.

Internet Marketing to Cultivate Brand Loyalists

Internet marketing is for more than just attracting new customers — it’s also critical for maintaining a loyal, long-term customer base.

You’ll want to use email, blogging, and social media tactics to increase brand awareness, cultivate a strong online community, and retain customer loyalty.

Consider sending personalized emails to past customers to impress or inspire them — for instance, you might send discounts based off what they’ve previously purchased, wish them a happy birthday, or remind them of upcoming events.

To properly employ email campaigns, you’ll need an email list. Here’s how to build an email list from scratch.

Additionally, you might use social media to showcase your brand’s personality and hear directly from your customers. Consider hosting a Twitter chat, posting surveys on Instagram, or creating fun contests on Facebook.

If you don’t feel like you have the bandwidth to create all social media content internally, consider using a third-party service like UpContent, which sends you compelling, curated content that you can share with your audiences for increased engagement.

Internet Marketing vs. Content Marketing

Content marketing and internet marketing are incredibly similar strategies used to attract leads and prospects to your site, and ultimately convert web traffic into customers. However, there are a few slight differences between the two.

Content marketing lives under the roof of online/internet marketing — which means online/internet marketing is the more broad, overarching strategy, and content marketing is one process within that strategy.

Content marketing applies only to the process of creating and distributing content to reach audiences.

Online marketing, on the other hand, encompasses sharing that content through email, search engines, and social media — it also includes paid advertising, retargeting, and a wide range of strategies you might use to reach audiences online.

While most of the strategies that fall under online marketing have to do with content creation, online marketing also pertains to the non-content creation tasks of internet marketing: such as PPC bidding, or website design.

We surveyed 1,067 global marketing professionals working in B2B and B2C companies to find out which trends they leverage, the channels they use, and the challenges they face, as well as their plans and expectations going into 2022.

Based on our research, there are 16 strategies you’ll want to employ to ensure you’re successful at internet marketing.

  1. Keep TikTok in mind.

Without question, TikTok’s popularity soared as the pandemic kept many people at home and in need of connection and entertainment. And that popularity isn’t expected to wane anytime soon.

While LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram have the highest ROI for B2B businesses, TikTok is quickly becoming the app to invest in.

Through our research, we found that while just 40% of B2B social media marketers leverage TikTok, 65% of those who do plan on increasing their investment in 2022, the highest increase of any social platform.

2. Consider podcasts and audio chat rooms to make connections.

Podcasts are gaining more attention as influencers, celebrities, and comedians continue to step into the medium. Despite low ROI, investment in podcasts or other audio content is expected to grow in 2022.

Our research shows that just 14% of social media marketers leverage audio chat rooms like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, but 68% of those who do say they are the most effective social media marketing platforms they leverage.

51% of those who already leverage podcasts or other audio content will invest more in 2022, and 43% plan to continue investing the same amount. Additionally, 26% of content marketers plan to leverage podcasts or other audio content for the first time in 2022.

Essentially, if you’re not leveraging podcasts and audio chats in your marketing strategy, your competition most likely will.

 

3. Lean into short-form video content.

With the enduring popularity of TikTok, audiences are gravitating more and more toward short-form videos. Short-form videos continue to be the norm as Instagram and YouTube push similar short-form video features such as Reels and Shorts, respectively.

We’ve found 31% of marketers are currently leveraging short-form video and 29% plan to leverage it for the first time in 2022. In this survey, we specified short-form videos like TikTok and Instagram Reels. Yet another reason to keep an eye on TikTok.

4. Repurpose content across various channels.

Repurposing content means re-using your existing content and presenting it in a fresh format that extends its lifespan and audience reach.

Our survey found that 32% of marketers who repurpose content say this method is among their most effective marketing strategies. Examples of repurposing content include:

  • Sharing old blog posts you’ve updated with new information, fresh data, and video content (Hint: The piece you’re currently reading is an update).
  • Using video clips of podcast recordings sessions on Instagram to create intrigue and excitement over an upcoming episode.

If you’d like to learn more about repurposing content, here are 20 methods you should know about.

5. Invest in Permanent Social Media Content.

Permanent social media content is content that won’t disappear after a set amount of time, unlike Instagram Stories or SnapChat photos and videos.

We found 33% of marketers are currently leveraging permanent social media content. Our surveys also showed 85% of marketers plan to continue investing the same amount or increase their investment in permanent social media content.

6. Design a user-friendly website.

First, you want to create a user-friendly, and mobile-friendly, website. The design of your site will showcase your brand’s personality and differentiate your business from every other online business. But it’s more than just looking good — a cleaner, more well-organized site structure can affect how you rank in the SERPS.

For help designing your website or ensuring it’s up-to-par, check out 8 Guidelines for Exceptional Web Design, Usability, and User Experience.

7. Optimize your site for search engines.

Next, you’ll need to keyword optimize your site for search engines. Essentially, this means you’ll choose keyword(s) that relate to your business, and incorporate those keywords into the URL, body text, image text, headers, and navigation bar.

For tips on keyword optimizing your entire site, check out On-Page SEO 101: Tips for Keyword Optimizing the Most Critical Parts of Your Website.

If you’re interested in focusing on keyword optimizing your blog posts, consider reading Blog SEO: How to Search Engine Optimize Your Blog Content.

For a real-life example on how to successfully implement SEO into your digital marketing strategy, check out our case study on Canva here:

 

8. Use email marketing or opt-in email campaigns.

Email marketing and opt-in marketing campaigns are one of the most effective long-term strategies to connect with potential customers and cultivate brand loyalty.

For everything from getting started with email marketing, to email marketing best practices and lead magnets, check out The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing.

 

9. Write online press releases.

Writing online press releases is an additional way to increase online coverage of your business from other sources, which will also positively affect your ranking in the SERPs. Plus, if a local news outlet covers your business, you’ll receive their audience, which you otherwise might not have reached.

To get started writing a press release for your business, consider How to Write a Press Release [Free Press Release Template + Example].

10. Create a blog.

I might be biased, but blogging is one of the best ways to attract a large audience to your site, establish your business as a thought leader in your industry, and prove your brand to be both useful and current.

Writing blog posts is especially effective for providing different opportunities to land on page one of search engines — for instance, maybe your eyeglass store’s website is on page three of Google for “eyeglasses,” but your “Best Sunglasses of 2018” blog post is on page one, pulling in an impressive amount of traffic (over time, that blog post could also boost your overall website to page one).

To learn everything from choosing a domain name to writing your first blog post, check out How to Start a Blog: A Step-by-Step Guide [+ Free Blog Post Templates].

11. Develop social media contests and campaigns.

Social media contests and campaigns are exceptional opportunities to engage with your online audience, form relationships with customers, and learn about your buyer’s persona.

For an overarching compilation on everything you need to know about social media campaigns — from how to craft perfect posts on Facebook to the most shared phrases on LinkedIn — take a look at Everything You Need to Know about Social Media Campaigns.

12. Leverage pay-per-click advertising.

Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is an advertising model in which advertisers only pay when someone interacts with their ad through impressions or clicks.

PPC is most commonly used on search engines, and can help your business appear for searches related to your products or services. This is particularly important for more competitive keywords, when it’s difficult to rank on page one against websites with higher domain authority.

It’s important to note — PPC doesn’t replace your SEO strategy, it simply complements it. For instance, if you’re trying to rank for “website builder”, you’ll see the keyword difficulty is “super hard (95)”, according to Ahrefs. However, there are some long-form keywords you might have success ranking for, including “what is a website builder? (52)” or “best website builders for ecommerce (57)”.

If you do want to target “website builders”, you’ll want to bid for an ad and use PPC to stand out against competitors.

13. Optimize your site for conversions.

Okay, you got readers to your blog or homepage … now what?

Ultimately, you’ll want to invest in resources for conversion rate optimization (CRO). If you don’t, you risk not being able to convert any of your traffic into qualified leads and, ultimately, customers.

There are four areas of your website that can benefit from CRO. These include the homepage, pricing page, blog, and landing pages.

Within a blog, a CRO strategy might include adding relevant calls-to-action throughout the text, or inviting readers to submit their emails in exchange for an ebook. On a pricing page, a CRO strategy might include a slide-out that invites viewers to book time with a sales rep or watch a demo.

Optimizing your site for conversions is a critical component of any strong internet marketing strategy.

14. Post videos on YouTube or other social networks.

Video marketing is an undeniably powerful opportunity to reach new audiences and convert leads into customers. In fact, 86% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads, and 88% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.

Convinced yet? If not, simply consider the fact that YouTube is used by 88% of video marketers — which means, even if you’re not posting videos on the channel, your competitors most likely are.
You’ll want to diversify the type(s) of content you produce to attract audiences who prefer video over text, or YouTube over Twitter.

Consider how you might implement your own video strategy to reach and convert new audiences. If you’re not sure where to start, check out HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to YouTube Marketing.

15. Find influencers to work with your brand.

I’m currently wearing a watch I found on Amazon. I’m sitting on a couch from Wayfair, with a candle from Anthropology on the table in front of me.

Where did I hear about all these products? Influencers.

Social media influencers have cultivated strong, meaningful relationships with their followers. Their followers typically trust them to provide true, reliable guidance on a range of topics related to the influencers’ expertise. Which is why influencer marketing can be an effective opportunity to spread brand awareness to new audiences.

If you think influencer marketing could be a good choice for your business, consider micro-influencers as a more effective (and oftentimes more cost-efficient) option. Micro-influencers often experience higher engagement rates than mega-influencers, and we predict micro-influencers will likely have more influence than celebrities in 2022.

Additionally, it can be expensive and time-consuming to find the right influencer(s) for your brand. If you’re going to invest in the strategy, consider working with the same few influencers for the long-term — which enables your company to build stronger relationships with their social followers.

16. Create a Facebook group.

A Facebook group — unlike a Facebook page — is an exclusive, private group that enables you to facilitate a sense of community surrounding your brand.

A Facebook group isn’t a necessity for every business, but when done properly, it can go a long way towards creating a stronger relationship between you and your customers. Best of all, it can help foster connections between your customers.

Since having a strong community can help you build brand loyalty, it’s important to seek out unique opportunities to engage directly with your customers. If a Facebook group doesn’t seem like a good fit for your business, however, there are other ways to create a sense of community — including via social media, or through a branded newsletter.

Finally, take a look at our Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing to dive deeper into the six essential steps of internet marketing.

There are many different methods to online marketing you can try to boost engagement for your brand, such as:

1. Repurpose your high-quality content across multiple channels.

Like we said earlier, repurposing your content simply means reusing content you already have but in a fresh format. That reaction video you created on TikTok could be repurposed as a Reel on Instagram. If you change the caption on Reels, you can use the video to react to something else.

2. Lean into permanent social media content that doesn’t have a time limit.

Examples of permanent social media content include tweets, YouTube videos, and TikTok videos. Content such as Snapchat videos or Instagram stories are note permanent and disappear after a period of time.

3. Choose the right keywords and optimize your site for search.

Using keywords helps search engines, especially Google, categorize your content and ensure it reaches the right audience. It also helps your target audience find your website and services. To optimize your site with the right keywords, use applications like Ahrefs that are designed to help you find the right keywords your audience is searching for.

4. Create a mobile-optimized site.

There are many ways to better optimize your website for mobile users, such as compressing images to reduce page load time, mapping your customers’ journey, or creating a mobile app.

5. Publish blog posts regularly.

Blogging consistently has many benefits. It keeps your website up to date with fresh content, maintaining the interest of your audience. It’s also an effective way to get your website to pop up on the first page of search engines. The more you post, the more content you’ll have for the search engine to rank.

6. Conduct email marketing campaigns.

In our recent survey to predict 2022 marketing trends, we found that email marketing is still a helpful approach to marketing your business online. According to our survey, the three most effective email marketing strategies are subscriber segmentation, message personalization, and email automation campaigns.

7. Encourage conversation on social media accounts.

Social media is the place where connections are made and conversations happen. Social media users don’t want to just interact with brands, they want to see the humanity behind the big name and logo.

A great way to create meaningful connections with the humans that make up your audience is to facilitate conversations. Ways to do this include conducting social media polls or hosting Spaces on Twitter.

8. Publish online press releases.

Like blogging, publishing online press releases will increase your presence on search engines and raise awareness of your brand. When writing press releases, remember to answer the “who,” “what,” “where,” and “why” of your brand. And make sure to use simple, understandable language as well as a quote.

9. Cultivate paid social media campaigns.

The idea of paying for advertising may seem a bit daunting, but paid social media advertising is one of the least expensive types of advertising. Paid social media ads can start as low as one dollar thanks to the bidding model and lottery system some platforms use to push ads to users’ news feeds and timelines.

Platforms that allow for paid advertisements are:

10. Leverage pay-per-click advertising for competitive keywords.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and SEO go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and jelly. Optimizing your website for keywords can definitely help your brand appear at the top of search engine results pages. However, it requires patience, and you may not see results for weeks or months if you’re optimizing for highly competitive words.

But by leveraging PPC, you’ll be able to stand out among competitors by bidding for an ad.

11. Post videos on YouTube or other social channels.

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet, and 81% of Americans used YouTube in 2021. So, you can bet your audience frequently visits the site. When creating content for YouTube, be sure to diversify your content in order to attract audiences who prefer video over text. You’ll also want to research keywords you can optimize your content for and use in your video’s title, description, and tags.

12. Work with micro-influencers to reach new audiences.

On apps like TikTok, brands are still struggling to find their place. However, influencer marketing has proven to be a helpful tool in helping brands elevate their online presence and find their target audience.

In our survey, we found that 57% of influencer marketers cited influencer marketing as one of the most effective trends they leverage. We also found that 86% of marketers plan to continue investing the same amount or increase their investment in influencer marketing.

Online Marketing Examples

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of online marketing examples to inspire your next internet marketing campaign.

Here, I’ll dive into five real world examples of social media, email, SEO, and website marketing methods. I’ll also include links to additional blog resources at the bottom, for even more exceptional ideas.

1. Social Media: HubSpot’s “Set Sail With HubSpot CRM” Campaign with Kathryn Hahn

In 2022 we kicked off our “Set Sail” campaign with award-winning actress and comedian Kathryn Hahn. In the campaign, Hahn plays a pirate using HubSpot’s CRM to expand her reach across the seven seas.

“As CEO of my own pirate enterprise, I chose HubSpot as our CRM platform,” Hahn says as she tours a busy office-like pirate ship. “Because it helps us treat customers like people, not conquests. Plus it enables my teams to work together seamlessly as we expand.”

Hahn’s comedic timing and stage presence helped highlight the many tools we provide to help businesses achieve their goals, but our approach to social media is what helped the campaign be a success.

Our first social post announcing the campaign was promoting Kathryn Hahn’s Fast company cover, we positioned her as our newest ambassador and let her be the hero of the story—not us to start,” said Hubspot’s Senior Social Strategy Manager Leslie Green. “The positioning of her success as our success leans into our humble voice and tone.”

When it came to Instagram, there was a particular feature on the app that played a key role in spreading our message on the platform.

“We utilized a collab post feature on Instagram which allowed this post to be delivered to both ours (and Fast Company’s) followers,” Green said. “The reach and engagement on this announcement was incredible for this reason. Across channels, we shared our 30 second spot to showcase how Kathryn was making waves as a disrupting Pirate CEO.”

In 2022 we kicked off our “Set Sail” campaign with award-winning actress and comedian Kathryn Hahn. In the campaign, Hahn plays a pirate using HubSpot’s CRM to expand her reach across the seven seas.

“As CEO of my own pirate enterprise, I chose HubSpot as our CRM platform,” Hahn says as she tours a busy office-like pirate ship. “Because it helps us treat customers like people, not conquests. Plus it enables my teams to work together seamlessly as we expand.”

Hahn’s comedic timing and stage presence helped highlight the many tools we provide to help businesses achieve their goals, but our approach to social media is what helped the campaign be a success.

Our first social post announcing the campaign was promoting Kathryn Hahn’s Fast company cover, we positioned her as our newest ambassador and let her be the hero of the story—not us to start,” said Hubspot’s Senior Social Strategy Manager Leslie Green. “The positioning of her success as our success leans into our humble voice and tone.”

When it came to Instagram, there was a particular feature on the app that played a key role in spreading our message on the platform.

“We utilized a collab post feature on Instagram which allowed this post to be delivered to both ours (and Fast Company’s) followers,” Green said. “The reach and engagement on this announcement was incredible for this reason. Across channels, we shared our 30 second spot to showcase how Kathryn was making waves as a disrupting Pirate CEO.”

When promoting the campaign on Twitter, Green said it was important to engage and interact to build intrigue.

“On Twitter, along with sharing campaign assets in clever & social-first ways, we made sure to highlight and retweet notable media mentions from publications like Entertainment Weekly to drum up excitement about this partnership and give our audience social proof,” Green said.&

She continued, “In order to encourage our audience to feel included in our fantastical founder’s journey and be inspired to share their own, we repurposed UGC to go with CTAs for the audience to share their own #HubSpotSuccessStory on Instagram and LinkedIn.”

2. Social Media: Under Armour’s “I Will What I Want” Campaign

Under Armour came up with the hashtag “I Will What I Want” to encourage powerful athletic women to achieve their dreams despite any opposition they might face. The hashtag, first used by American Ballet Theatre ballerina soloist Misty Copeland, blew up on Facebook after supermodel Gisele Bündchen used it in one of her Facebook posts. Many other female athletes have also used the hashtag.

The campaign spreads a positive message of female empowerment, while also highlighting Under Armour’s women apparel. The campaign reached five billion media impressions, increased Under Armour’s women’s sales by 28 percent, and pulled in an additional 42 percent of traffic to their website.

under armour's instagram campaign, an example of internet marketing

3. Email: JetBlue

Companies often use email marketing to re-engage past customers, but a “Where’d You Go? Want To Buy This?,” message can come across as aggressive, and you want to be careful with your wording to cultivate a long-term email subscriber.

This is why JetBlue’s one-year re-engagement email works so well — it uses humor to convey a sense of friendliness and fun, while simultaneously reminding an old email subscriber they might want to check out some of JetBlue’s new flight deals.

jetblue re-engagement email as an example of internet marketing

4. SEO: Moz’s case study for Pipedrive, a sales CRM

Using a content marketing strategy that included content creation, outreach, and guest posting, Pipedrive, a sales CRM, was able to rank #1 for a high-volume keyword — “sales management” (9,900 search volume). They were able to outrank many competitors and even US News and Wikipedia. They published their strategy on Moz.

Moz's case study for pipedrive as an example of internet marketing

5. SEO: Brian Dean’s YouTube strategy

Brian Dean, an SEO expert and the creator of BackLinko, uses SEO tactics to rank #1 on YouTube for keywords like “on page SEO” and “video SEO”. Initially, Dean admits his YouTube account struggled to get any views.

Employing SEO methods like keyword optimization has enabled Dean to rise to #1 on YouTube for search results related to his business. He published his full strategy on Backlinko.

brian dean's video, which ranks first on YouTube for 'on page SEO', as an example of internet marketing

6. Web Design: AccessAble

AccessAble, an information provider for people with disabilities in the UK and Ireland, hired Agency51 to implement an SEO migration strategy to move AccessAble from an old platform to a new one.

By applying 301 redirects to old URLS, transferring metadata, setting up Google webmaster tools, and creating a new sitemap, Agency 51 was able to successfully transfer AccessAble to a new platform while keeping their previous SEO power alive.

Additionally, they were able to boost visitor numbers by 21% year over year, and the site restructuring allowed AccessAble to rank higher than competitors. Their case study is available on SingleGrain.com.

AccessAble's website Image Source

More Internet Marketing Examples:

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer, or just starting out, there are plenty of tools available to help build your brand’s audience, including:

1. HubSpot

Ultimately, your internet marketing strategies will work best if you incorporate inbound marketing methodology. First and foremost, you want all your online content to add value to your customers”s lives. This is the only way you’ll attract quality leads and build deep relationships with your online community for the long-term.

2. Buzzsumo

We love Buzzsumo because it can help you analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor. Buzzsumo can report important metrics such as social shares, backlinks, and which influencers are sharing certain pieces of content.

You can also find influencer reports that give insight if you’re looking for a micro influencer to promote your brand.

3. Canva

Canva makes designing infographics and materials for print, blogs, and social media simple, even if you don’t have much experience with graphic design. Its user interface is easy to navigate and includes thousands of customizable templates you can redesign to fit your brand’s aesthetic.

4. GTMetrix

This application tests your website’s performance, particularly its speed. If your website takes too long to load, you run the risk of deterring potential customers or clients from your brand. With GTMetrix, you can measure how long your website takes to load and what areas of performance need to be improved.

5. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is my favorite tool for finding the right keywords for optimizing my content. They offer tools for tracking keyword performance, analyzing your competitor’s keywords, web traffic, and more. One of my favorite features has been the “content gap” tool, which shows the keywords our competitors rank for that we don’t.

6. Buffer

Posting multiple pieces of content across several different platforms can be overwhelming. Fortunately, applications like Buffer allow you to draft and schedule posts across multiple social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Furthermore, Buffer also offers social media reporting and functionality monitoring so you can track how your content is performing.

7. Facebook Insights

When I was a journalist, Facebook Insights played a key role in tracking how my articles performed. With a Facebook Insights dashboard, you’ll be able track user behavior and post performance on your Facebook Business Page.

This tool also reports important metrics like page views and post reach for paid and organic posts. It even recommends competitor pages to monitor.

8. SocialRank

SocialRank is an online tool that helps you manage your followers on Twitter and Instagram. SocialRank offers a range of filters to better analyze your follower count. It can also search for new followers, get leads, and more.

9. Trello

As your business grows, so will its output and the projects it takes on. Therefore you’re going to need a tool like Trello that will help you manage it all.

With Trello, a project management tool, you can put all your team’s projects in one customizable space that can grow as your company grows. You can use Trello to conduct growth experiments, sales pipelines, and product feature road maps.

10. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a website optimization software that offers A/B testing, heat mapping, and usability testing tools. We love its A/B testing tool because it allows you to test variations of every page on your website. All you have to do is copy one snippet of code to the pages you want to test.

You don’t need coding experience to use Crazy Egg, as the software is user friendly to marketers at all levels.

11. Google Keywords Planner

If you struggle with finding the best keywords for your website, Google Keywords Planner is an excellent tool for you.

By putting in one keyword, multiple keywords, or even your website address into Keyword Planner, Google will show a list of related keywords along with simple metrics.

These metrics will gauge the competition around each keyword and how many searches it gets on both a global and local search level.

Ultimately, your internet marketing strategies will work best if you incorporate inbound marketing methodology. First and foremost, you want all your online content to add value to your customers’ lives. This is the only way you’ll attract quality leads and build deep relationships with your online community for the long-term.

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MARKETING

OpenAI’s Drama Should Teach Marketers These 2 Lessons

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OpenAI’s Drama Should Teach Marketers These 2 Lessons

A week or so ago, the extraordinary drama happening at OpenAI filled news feeds.

No need to get into all the saga’s details, as every publication seems to have covered it. We’re just waiting for someone to put together a video montage scored to the Game of Thrones music.

But as Sam Altman takes back the reigns of the company he helped to found, the existing board begins to disintegrate before your very eyes, and everyone agrees something spooked everybody, a question arises: Should you care?

Does OpenAI’s drama have any demonstrable implications for marketers integrating generative AI into their marketing strategies?

Watch CMI’s chief strategy advisor Robert Rose explain (and give a shoutout to Sutton’s pants rage on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills), or keep reading his thoughts:

For those who spent last week figuring out what to put on your holiday table and missed every AI headline, here’s a brief version of what happened. OpenAI – the huge startup and creator of ChatGPT – went through dramatic events. Its board fired the mercurial CEO Sam Altman. Then, the 38-year-old entrepreneur accepted a job at Microsoft but returned to OpenAI a day later.

We won’t give a hot take on what it means for the startup world, board governance, or the tension between AI safety and Silicon Valley capitalism. Rather, we see some interesting things for marketers to put into perspective about how AI should fit into your overall content and marketing plans in the new year.

Robert highlights two takeaways from the OpenAI debacle – a drama that has yet to reach its final chapter: 1. The right structure and governance matters, and 2. Big platforms don’t become antifragile just because they’re big.

Let’s have Robert explain.

The right structure and governance matters

OpenAI’s structure may be key to the drama. OpenAI has a bizarre corporate governance framework. The board of directors controls a nonprofit called OpenAI. That nonprofit created a capped for-profit subsidiary – OpenAI GP LLC. The majority owner of that for-profit is OpenAI Global LLC, another for-profit company. The nonprofit works for the benefit of the world with a for-profit arm.

That seems like an earnest approach, given AI tech’s big and disruptive power. But it provides so many weird governance issues, including that the nonprofit board, which controls everything, has no duty to maximize profit. What could go wrong?

That’s why marketers should know more about the organizations behind the generative AI tools they use or are considering.

First, know your providers of generative AI software and services are all exploring the topics of governance and safety. Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and others won’t have their internal debates erupt in public fireworks. Still, governance and management of safety over profits remains a big topic for them. You should be aware of how they approach those topics as you license solutions from them.

Second, recognize the productive use of generative AI is a content strategy and governance challenge, not a technology challenge. If you don’t solve the governance and cross-functional uses of the generative AI platforms you buy, you will run into big problems with its cross-functional, cross-siloed use. 

Big platforms do not become antifragile just because they’re big

Nicholas Taleb wrote a wonderful book, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. It explores how an antifragile structure doesn’t just withstand a shock; it actually improves because of a disruption or shock. It doesn’t just survive a big disruptive event; it gets stronger because of it.

It’s hard to imagine a company the size and scale of OpenAI could self-correct or even disappear tomorrow. But it can and does happen. And unfortunately, too many businesses build their strategies on that rented land.

In OpenAI’s recent case, the for-profit software won the day. But make no bones about that victory; the event wasn’t good for the company. If it bounces back, it won’t be stronger because of the debacle.

With that win on the for-profit side, hundreds, if not thousands, of generative AI startups breathed an audible sigh of relief. But a few moments later, they screamed “pivot” (in their best imitation of Ross from Friends instructing Chandler and Rachel to move a couch.)

They now realize the fragility of their software because it relies on OpenAI’s existence or willingness to provide the software. Imagine what could have happened if the OpenAI board had won their fight and, in the name of safety, simply killed any paid access to the API or the ability to build business models on top of it.

The last two weeks have done nothing to clear the already muddy waters encountered by companies and their plans to integrate generative AI solutions. Going forward, though, think about the issues when acquiring new generative AI software. Ask about how the vendor’s infrastructure is housed and identify the risks involved. And, if OpenAI expands its enterprise capabilities, consider the implications. What extra features will the off-the-shelf solutions provide? Do you need them? Will OpenAI become the Microsoft Office of your AI infrastructure?

Why you should care

With the voluminous media coverage of Open AI’s drama, you likely will see pushback on generative AI. In my social feeds, many marketers say they’re tired of the corporate soap opera that is irrelevant to their work.

They are half right. What Sam said and how Ilya responded, heart emojis, and how much the Twitch guy got for three days of work are fodder for the Netflix series sure to emerge. (Robert’s money is on Michael Cera starring.)

They’re wrong about its relevance to marketing. They must be experiencing attentional bias – paying more attention to some elements of the big event and ignoring others. OpenAI’s struggle is entertaining, no doubt. You’re glued to the drama. But understanding what happened with the events directly relates to your ability to manage similar ones successfully. That’s the part you need to get right.

Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to workday or weekly emails from CMI.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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The Complete Guide to Becoming an Authentic Thought Leader

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The Complete Guide to Becoming an Authentic Thought Leader

Introduce your processes: If you’ve streamlined a particular process, share it. It could be the solution someone else is looking for.

Jump on trends and news: If there’s a hot topic or emerging trend, offer your unique perspective.

Share industry insights: Attended a webinar or podcast that offered valuable insights. Summarize the key takeaways and how they can be applied.

Share your successes: Write about strategies that have worked exceptionally well for you. Your audience will appreciate the proven advice. For example, I shared the process I used to help a former client rank for a keyword with over 2.2 million monthly searches.

Question outdated strategies: If you see a strategy that’s losing steam, suggest alternatives based on your experience and data.

5. Establish communication channels (How)

Once you know who your audience is and what they want to hear, the next step is figuring out how to reach them. Here’s how:

Choose the right platforms: You don’t need to have a presence on every social media platform. Pick two platforms where your audience hangs out and create content for that platform. For example, I’m active on LinkedIn and X because my target audience (SEOs, B2B SaaS, and marketers) is active on these platforms.

Repurpose content: Don’t limit yourself to just one type of content. Consider repurposing your content on Quora, Reddit, or even in webinars and podcasts. This increases your reach and reinforces your message.

Follow Your audience: Go where your audience goes. If they’re active on X, that’s where you should be posting. If they frequent industry webinars, consider becoming a guest on these webinars.

Daily vs. In-depth content: Balance is key. Use social media for daily tips and insights, and reserve your blog for more comprehensive guides and articles.

Network with influencers: Your audience is likely following other experts in the field. Engaging with these influencers puts your content in front of a like-minded audience. I try to spend 30 minutes to an hour daily engaging with content on X and LinkedIn. This is the best way to build a relationship so you’re not a complete stranger when you DM privately.

6. Think of thought leadership as part of your content marketing efforts

As with other content efforts, thought leadership doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It thrives when woven into a cohesive content marketing strategy. By aligning individual authority with your brand, you amplify the credibility of both.

Think of it as top-of-the-funnel content to:

  • Build awareness about your brand

  • Highlight the problems you solve

  • Demonstrate expertise by platforming experts within the company who deliver solutions

Consider the user journey. An individual enters at the top through a social media post, podcast, or blog post. Intrigued, they want to learn more about you and either search your name on Google or social media. If they like what they see, they might visit your website, and if the information fits their needs, they move from passive readers to active prospects in your sales pipeline.

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How to Increase Survey Completion Rate With 5 Top Tips

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How to Increase Survey Completion Rate With 5 Top Tips

Collecting high-quality data is crucial to making strategic observations about your customers. Researchers have to consider the best ways to design their surveys and then how to increase survey completion, because it makes the data more reliable.

→ Free Download: 5 Customer Survey Templates [Access Now]

I’m going to explain how survey completion plays into the reliability of data. Then, we’ll get into how to calculate your survey completion rate versus the number of questions you ask. Finally, I’ll offer some tips to help you increase survey completion rates.

My goal is to make your data-driven decisions more accurate and effective. And just for fun, I’ll use cats in the examples because mine won’t stop walking across my keyboard.

Why Measure Survey Completion

Let’s set the scene: We’re inside a laboratory with a group of cat researchers. They’re wearing little white coats and goggles — and they desperately want to know what other cats think of various fish.

They’ve written up a 10-question survey and invited 100 cats from all socioeconomic rungs — rough and hungry alley cats all the way up to the ones that thrice daily enjoy their Fancy Feast from a crystal dish.

Now, survey completion rates are measured with two metrics: response rate and completion rate. Combining those metrics determines what percentage, out of all 100 cats, finished the entire survey. If all 100 give their full report on how delicious fish is, you’d achieve 100% survey completion and know that your information is as accurate as possible.

But the truth is, nobody achieves 100% survey completion, not even golden retrievers.

With this in mind, here’s how it plays out:

  • Let’s say 10 cats never show up for the survey because they were sleeping.
  • Of the 90 cats that started the survey, only 25 got through a few questions. Then, they wandered off to knock over drinks.
  • Thus, 90 cats gave some level of response, and 65 completed the survey (90 – 25 = 65).
  • Unfortunately, those 25 cats who only partially completed the survey had important opinions — they like salmon way more than any other fish.

The cat researchers achieved 72% survey completion (65 divided by 90), but their survey will not reflect the 25% of cats — a full quarter! — that vastly prefer salmon. (The other 65 cats had no statistically significant preference, by the way. They just wanted to eat whatever fish they saw.)

Now, the Kitty Committee reviews the research and decides, well, if they like any old fish they see, then offer the least expensive ones so they get the highest profit margin.

CatCorp, their competitors, ran the same survey; however, they offered all 100 participants their own glass of water to knock over — with a fish inside, even!

Only 10 of their 100 cats started, but did not finish the survey. And the same 10 lazy cats from the other survey didn’t show up to this one, either.

So, there were 90 respondents and 80 completed surveys. CatCorp achieved an 88% completion rate (80 divided by 90), which recorded that most cats don’t care, but some really want salmon. CatCorp made salmon available and enjoyed higher profits than the Kitty Committee.

So you see, the higher your survey completion rates, the more reliable your data is. From there, you can make solid, data-driven decisions that are more accurate and effective. That’s the goal.

We measure the completion rates to be able to say, “Here’s how sure we can feel that this information is accurate.”

And if there’s a Maine Coon tycoon looking to invest, will they be more likely to do business with a cat food company whose decision-making metrics are 72% accurate or 88%? I suppose it could depend on who’s serving salmon.

While math was not my strongest subject in school, I had the great opportunity to take several college-level research and statistics classes, and the software we used did the math for us. That’s why I used 100 cats — to keep the math easy so we could focus on the importance of building reliable data.

Now, we’re going to talk equations and use more realistic numbers. Here’s the formula:

Completion rate equals the # of completed surveys divided by the # of survey respondents.

So, we need to take the number of completed surveys and divide that by the number of people who responded to at least one of your survey questions. Even just one question answered qualifies them as a respondent (versus nonrespondent, i.e., the 10 lazy cats who never show up).

Now, you’re running an email survey for, let’s say, Patton Avenue Pet Company. We’ll guess that the email list has 5,000 unique addresses to contact. You send out your survey to all of them.

Your analytics data reports that 3,000 people responded to one or more of your survey questions. Then, 1,200 of those respondents actually completed the entire survey.

3,000/5000 = 0.6 = 60% — that’s your pool of survey respondents who answered at least one question. That sounds pretty good! But some of them didn’t finish the survey. You need to know the percentage of people who completed the entire survey. So here we go:

Completion rate equals the # of completed surveys divided by the # of survey respondents.

Completion rate = (1,200/3,000) = 0.40 = 40%

Voila, 40% of your respondents did the entire survey.

Response Rate vs. Completion Rate

Okay, so we know why the completion rate matters and how we find the right number. But did you also hear the term response rate? They are completely different figures based on separate equations, and I’ll show them side by side to highlight the differences.

  • Completion Rate = # of Completed Surveys divided by # of Respondents
  • Response Rate = # of Respondents divided by Total # of surveys sent out

Here are examples using the same numbers from above:

Completion Rate = (1200/3,000) = 0.40 = 40%

Response Rate = (3,000/5000) = 0.60 = 60%

So, they are different figures that describe different things:

  • Completion rate: The percentage of your respondents that completed the entire survey. As a result, it indicates how sure we are that the information we have is accurate.
  • Response rate: The percentage of people who responded in any way to our survey questions.

The follow-up question is: How can we make this number as high as possible in order to be closer to a truer and more complete data set from the population we surveyed?

There’s more to learn about response rates and how to bump them up as high as you can, but we’re going to keep trucking with completion rates!

What’s a good survey completion rate?

That is a heavily loaded question. People in our industry have to say, “It depends,” far more than anybody wants to hear it, but it depends. Sorry about that.

There are lots of factors at play, such as what kind of survey you’re doing, what industry you’re doing it in, if it’s an internal or external survey, the population or sample size, the confidence level you’d like to hit, the margin of error you’re willing to accept, etc.

But you can’t really get a high completion rate unless you increase response rates first.

So instead of focusing on what’s a good completion rate, I think it’s more important to understand what makes a good response rate. Aim high enough, and survey completions should follow.

I checked in with the Qualtrics community and found this discussion about survey response rates:

“Just wondering what are the average response rates we see for online B2B CX surveys? […]

Current response rates: 6%–8%… We are looking at boosting the response rates but would first like to understand what is the average.”

The best answer came from a government service provider that works with businesses. The poster notes that their service is free to use, so they get very high response rates.

“I would say around 30–40% response rates to transactional surveys,” they write. “Our annual pulse survey usually sits closer to 12%. I think the type of survey and how long it has been since you rendered services is a huge factor.”

Since this conversation, “Delighted” (the Qualtrics blog) reported some fresher data:

survey completion rate vs number of questions new data, qualtrics data

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The takeaway here is that response rates vary widely depending on the channel you use to reach respondents. On the upper end, the Qualtrics blog reports that customers had 85% response rates for employee email NPS surveys and 33% for email NPS surveys.

A good response rate, the blog writes, “ranges between 5% and 30%. An excellent response rate is 50% or higher.”

This echoes reports from Customer Thermometer, which marks a response rate of 50% or higher as excellent. Response rates between 5%-30% are much more typical, the report notes. High response rates are driven by a strong motivation to complete the survey or a personal relationship between the brand and the customer.

If your business does little person-to-person contact, you’re out of luck. Customer Thermometer says you should expect responses on the lower end of the scale. The same goes for surveys distributed from unknown senders, which typically yield the lowest level of responses.

According to SurveyMonkey, surveys where the sender has no prior relationship have response rates of 20% to 30% on the high end.

Whatever numbers you do get, keep making those efforts to bring response rates up. That way, you have a better chance of increasing your survey completion rate. How, you ask?

Tips to Increase Survey Completion

If you want to boost survey completions among your customers, try the following tips.

1. Keep your survey brief.

We shouldn’t cram lots of questions into one survey, even if it’s tempting. Sure, it’d be nice to have more data points, but random people will probably not hunker down for 100 questions when we catch them during their half-hour lunch break.

Keep it short. Pare it down in any way you can.

Survey completion rate versus number of questions is a correlative relationship — the more questions you ask, the fewer people will answer them all. If you have the budget to pay the respondents, it’s a different story — to a degree.

“If you’re paying for survey responses, you’re more likely to get completions of a decently-sized survey. You’ll just want to avoid survey lengths that might tire, confuse, or frustrate the user. You’ll want to aim for quality over quantity,” says Pamela Bump, Head of Content Growth at HubSpot.

2. Give your customers an incentive.

For instance, if they’re cats, you could give them a glass of water with a fish inside.

Offer incentives that make sense for your target audience. If they feel like they are being rewarded for giving their time, they will have more motivation to complete the survey.

This can even accomplish two things at once — if you offer promo codes, discounts on products, or free shipping, it encourages them to shop with you again.

3. Keep it smooth and easy.

Keep your survey easy to read. Simplifying your questions has at least two benefits: People will understand the question better and give you the information you need, and people won’t get confused or frustrated and just leave the survey.

4. Know your customers and how to meet them where they are.

Here’s an anecdote about understanding your customers and learning how best to meet them where they are.

Early on in her role, Pamela Bump, HubSpot’s Head of Content Growth, conducted a survey of HubSpot Blog readers to learn more about their expertise levels, interests, challenges, and opportunities. Once published, she shared the survey with the blog’s email subscribers and a top reader list she had developed, aiming to receive 150+ responses.

“When the 20-question survey was getting a low response rate, I realized that blog readers were on the blog to read — not to give feedback. I removed questions that wouldn’t serve actionable insights. When I reshared a shorter, 10-question survey, it passed 200 responses in one week,” Bump shares.

Tip 5. Gamify your survey.

Make it fun! Brands have started turning surveys into eye candy with entertaining interfaces so they’re enjoyable to interact with.

Your respondents could unlock micro incentives as they answer more questions. You can word your questions in a fun and exciting way so it feels more like a BuzzFeed quiz. Someone saw the opportunity to make surveys into entertainment, and your imagination — well, and your budget — is the limit!

Your Turn to Boost Survey Completion Rates

Now, it’s time to start surveying. Remember to keep your user at the heart of the experience. Value your respondents’ time, and they’re more likely to give you compelling information. Creating short, fun-to-take surveys can also boost your completion rates.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2010 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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