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I’ve tested 100s of psychological tactics on my email subscribers. In this blog, I reveal the five tactics that actually work.

You’ll learn about the email tactic that got one marketer a job at the White House.

You’ll learn how I doubled my 5 star reviews with one email, and why one strange email from Barack Obama broke all records for donations.

5 Psychological Tactics to Write Better Emails

Imagine writing an email that’s so effective it lands you a job at the White House.

Well, that’s what happened to Maya Shankar, a PhD cognitive neuroscientist. In 2014, the Department of Veterans Affairs asked her to help increase signups in their veteran benefit scheme.

Maya had a plan. She was well aware of a cognitive bias that affects us all—the endowment effect. This bias suggests that people value items higher if they own them. So, she changed the subject line in the Veterans’ enrollment email.

Previously it read:

• Veterans, you’re eligible for the benefit program. Sign up today.

She tweaked one word, changing it to:

• Veterans, you’ve earned the benefits program. Sign up today.

This tiny tweak had a big impact. The amount of veterans enrolling in the program went up by 9%. And Maya landed a job working at the White House

Inspired by these psychological tweaks to emails, I started to run my own tests.

Alongside my podcast Nudge, I’ve run 100s of email tests on my 1,000s of newsletter subscribers.

Here are the five best tactics I’ve uncovered.

1. Show readers what they’re missing.

Nobel prize winning behavioral scientists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky uncovered a principle called loss aversion.

Loss aversion means that losses feel more painful than equivalent gains. In real-world terms, losing $10 feels worse than how gaining $10 feels good. And I wondered if this simple nudge could help increase the number of my podcast listeners.

For my test, I tweaked the subject line of the email announcing an episode. The control read:

“Listen to this one”

In the loss aversion variant it read:

“Don’t miss this one”

It is very subtle loss aversion. Rather than asking someone to listen, I’m saying they shouldn’t miss out. And it worked. It increased the open rate by 13.3% and the click rate by 12.5%. Plus, it was a small change that cost me nothing at all.

2. People follow the crowd.

In general, humans like to follow the masses. When picking a dish, we’ll often opt for the most popular. When choosing a movie to watch, we tend to pick the box office hit. It’s a well-known psychological bias called social proof.

I’ve always wondered if it works for emails. So, I set up an A/B experiment with two subject lines. Both promoted my show, but one contained social proof.

The control read: New Nudge: Why Brands Should Flaunt Their Flaws

The social proof variant read: New Nudge: Why Brands Should Flaunt Their Flaws (100,000 Downloads)

I hoped that by highlighting the episode’s high number of downloads, I’d encourage more people to listen. Fortunately, it worked.

The open rate went from 22% to 28% for the social proof version, and the click rate, (the number of people actually listening to the episode), doubled.

3. Praise loyal subscribers.

The consistency principle suggests that people are likely to stick to behaviours they’ve previously taken. A retired taxi driver won’t swap his car for a bike. A hairdresser won’t change to a cheap shampoo. We like to stay consistent with our past behaviors.

I decided to test this in an email.

For my test, I attempted to encourage my subscribers to leave a review for my podcast. I sent emails to 400 subscribers who had been following the show for a year.

The control read: “Could you leave a review for Nudge?”

The consistency variant read: “You’ve been following Nudge for 12 months, could you leave a review?”

My hypothesis was simple. If I remind people that they’ve consistently supported the show they’ll be more likely to leave a review.

It worked.

The open rate on the consistency version of the email was 7% higher.

But more importantly, the click rate, (the number of people who actually left a review), was almost 2x higher for the consistency version. Merely telling people they’d been a fan for a while doubled my reviews.

4. Showcase scarcity.

We prefer scarce resources. Taylor Swift gigs sell out in seconds not just because she’s popular, but because her tickets are hard to come by.

Swifties aren’t the first to experience this. Back in 1975, three researchers proved how powerful scarcity is. For the study, the researchers occupied a cafe. On alternating weeks they’d make one small change in the cafe.

On some weeks they’d ensure the cookie jar was full.

On other weeks they’d ensure the cookie jar only contained two cookies (never more or less).

In other words, sometimes the cookies looked abundantly available. Sometimes they looked like they were almost out.

This changed behaviour. Customers who saw the two cookie jar bought 43% more cookies than those who saw the full jar.

It sounds too good to be true, so I tested it for myself.

I sent an email to 260 subscribers offering free access to my Science of Marketing course for one day only.

In the control, the subject line read: “Free access to the Science of Marketing course”

For the scarcity variant it read: “Only Today: Get free access to the Science of Marketing Course | Only one enrol per person.”

130 people received the first email, 130 received the second. And the result was almost as good as the cookie finding. The scarcity version had a 15.1% higher open rate.

5. Spark curiosity.

All of the email tips I’ve shared have only been tested on my relatively small audience. So, I thought I’d end with a tip that was tested on the masses.

Back in 2012, Barack Obama and his campaign team sent hundreds of emails to raise funds for his campaign.

Of the $690 million he raised, most came from direct email appeals. But there was one email, according to ABC news, that was far more effective than the rest. And it was an odd one.

The email that drew in the most cash, had a strange subject line. It simply said “Hey.”

The actual email asked the reader to donate, sharing all the expected reasons, but the subject line was different.

It sparked curiosity, it got people wondering, is Obama saying Hey just to me?

Readers were curious and couldn’t help but open the email. According to ABC it was “the most effective pitch of all.”

Because more people opened, it raised more money than any other email. The bias Obama used here is the curiosity gap. We’re more likely to act on something when our curiosity is piqued.

Loss aversion, social proof, consistency, scarcity and curiosity—all these nudges have helped me improve my emails. And I reckon they’ll work for you.

It’s not guaranteed of course. Many might fail. But running some simple a/b tests for your emails is cost free, so why not try it out?

This blog is part of Phill Agnew’s Marketing Cheat Sheet series where he reveals the scientifically proven tips to help you improve your marketing. To learn more, listen to his podcast Nudge, a proud member of the Hubspot Podcast Network.

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

It’s estimated that a shocking 60% (or less) of work time is spent productively, according to Atlassian. Time is our scarcest resource, yet we spend so much of it doing things that are unproductive — usually without meaning to.

Emails, meetings, endless notifications… We’re indeed being pulled in more directions than ever before, but it’s not just technology holding us back from making the most of our time. In many cases, we are the ones responsible for our own lack of productivity.

As a freelance remote worker, I’ve had to tango with my self-sabotaging productivity quirks more than most. I used to blame my workload and environment; it wasn’t until I was completely in control of those factors that I was left with the realization that I was the problem all along.

Like you, I’m more successful and happy when I’m productive. We’re all on the hunt for the magic bullet solution; this has led to the endless production of AI productivity tools and life-hack lists. How can we produce more while doing less?

We look over at the person who seems to get it all done while still managing to have a life, and we ask ourselves: What does she know that I don’t? Is there a secret to high productivity?

With some work, many of the barriers to productivity are solvable. However, to truly enhance productivity, you need to first understand it. Here’s what science says.

Table of Contents

• The Science of Productivity
• 9 Science-Proven Ways to Get More Done in a Day
• Data-Backed Productivity Tools

The Science of Productivity

“Productivity is the art and science of reshaping yourself and the world around you in a way that makes the world work better,” shares author and organization expert Frank Buck, Ed.D.

“While the literature on productivity is massive, it all points back to that one definition. Psychological research dating back to at least 1966 (J.B. Rotter) suggests that those who feel they can control their surroundings act upon those beliefs, persist longer, and achieve greater results,” Buck concludes.

Society has long been aware of a shared desire to improve productivity, yet the modern world has moved us further away from that dream.

Technology provides constant, endless distractions — and we feed into this by being subconsciously addicted to information.

Scientists have discovered that the dopamine neurons in our brains treat information as a reward.

While this makes sense evolutionarily — having access to relevant information like the location of food sources means we make better decisions and are more likely to survive — it also means we’re naturally attracted to distractions outside our primary objectives.

Insert: our phones. Smartphones are a distraction disaster. Here’s how to overcome the hurdles that technology presents.

9 Science-Proven Ways to Get More Done in a Day

A quick Google search will show you that most productivity lists recommend artificial intelligence software (AI). I’ll share some of the top AI productivity tools in a minute, but I encourage you to take AI tools with a warning.

An unproductive person throwing AI apps at their workload is like applying wax to a car before washing the dirt off. All of the AI capabilities in the world won’t boost productivity if you still undermine your own success. Start with these tips instead.

1. Use a to-do list.

Create a task list for yourself that includes ALL of your to-do’s, no matter how small. Each item on your list should be independently achievable. Break big tasks into small, individual steps.

The benefits are three-fold:

• Know what needs to be done. Task creation is a step in the decision-making process, and it’s more time-consuming than it looks on the surface.
• Remove the risk of forgetting. Relying on a mental to-do list creates unnecessary strain and stress, and trying to ad-lib your workload will result in missed tasks and poor time management.
• Create a workload that you can achieve. Writing unachievable task lists creates the feeling that you’re perpetually behind, and the inability to estimate your work output will eventually create a genuine problem. Technology writer Steven K. Roberts nicknamed this “The Roberts Law of Fractal To-Do List Complexity: Each item on a list is merely the title of another list.”

Why It Works

Imagine if you wanted to make a loaf of bread. You would never choose to guess and stumble your way through the process: “What comes next? Milk? I wonder how much I should use?”

No one would choose that path, yet many people approach their workload with this ad-lib mentality. A to-do list is like a recipe for your work, and it’s extremely effective when used properly.

Harvard Business Review says there are endless upsides to using to-do lists, with the only potential downside being that they don’t go far enough to push us to follow through.

“If every time we added an item to our to-do lists we also came up with a plan to specify what actions we need to take and when those actions need to be taken, that would help minimize the odds of our to-do lists becoming graveyards of unfinished items,” researcher E. J. Masicampo shared with Harvard Business Review.

Testing It Out

I’m no stranger to to-do lists. I fell in love when I was in college. I’m confident my to-do lists are the only reason I graduated, held down a job, wrote a book, or have ever done anything else productive in my life.

However, the Harvard Business Review interview made me realize that I wasn’t leveraging the full potential of to-do lists by not adding a timeframe to my intentions.

Normally, I create a to-do list for the week but don’t assign those tasks to a specific day. For the upcoming week, I tried assigning each task to a day of the week. I didn’t adhere to this perfectly, but this did eliminate the decision-making part of my morning, where I thought about what I felt like working on.

2. Just get started.

While it’s human nature to postpone tasks that feel intimidating, it’s incredibly counterproductive. Simply starting a task is a surefire way to kickstart your productivity.

For some, this might mean diving right in, even if you’re not sure where to begin. HubSpot UX Editor Beth Dunn told me that when she gets writer’s block, she just opens Google Docs and starts typing away, even if the words don’t mean anything.

For others, it might mean splitting big projects into smaller ones. HubSpot Co-Founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah said he likes to “deconstruct” the large problem at hand into smaller, bite-sized chunks.

Each of the individual, smaller things seem surmountable on their own, and it calms him to know that if he conquers all of those small things, he’s essentially conquered the big thing.

Why It Works

According to a study by award-winning psychology researcher, Dr. John Bargh, before we embark on big projects, our brains attempt to simulate real, productive work by focusing on small, mindless tasks to pass the time.

Consequently, this prevents us from getting real work done. Now it makes sense why my college dorm room was never cleaner than during finals week!

Once you get over that hump of starting, there’s good news: We feel naturally compelled to finish a task once we’ve already started, thanks to the Zeigarnik Effect.

According to Social Psychology and Human Nature, the Zeigarnik effect is “the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete.”

Testing It Out

I tested this theory out by making a strict plan for my Monday morning workload. In advance, I decided:

• What I would work on.
• Where I’d work from.
• Exactly what time I’d begin working.
• Which music I would listen to.

This amount of structure was foreign so I felt some natural resistance to it, but it did keep me from falling into the trap of busy work at moments in the day. When I woke up and thought about my day, I had immediate clarity.

3. Work with others.

Make yourself a part of a group, and you’ll be impacted by the focus and good habits of those around you. This can be done in person at the office or in a coworking space, or you can virtually co-work 24/7 through platforms like Study Together.

Why It Works

When you see others modeling good habits, there’s subconscious pressure to conform. You’re less likely to bust out your phone and browse social media posts when everyone in your direct vicinity is doing their work.

It’s a grown-up version of peer pressure, which Brett Laursen, Ph.D. said is really defined as influence. When interviewed on the American Psychological Association’s podcast Speaking of Psychology, Dr. Laursen said that “peer pressure follows people across their whole life course” and can be positive.

Testing It Out

As a remote freelance writer, I haven’t experienced coworkers in seven years. I’m accustomed to working alone, but I still eagerly tested out the virtual coworking space Study Together.

While this group was designed for students, I still carry a backpack and love a library work session as much as anyone, so I entered the virtual coworking session on a Saturday morning along with 213 others in my study room (pictured below: me about to enter my study room).

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When I joined, there were an astounding 17,801 members active across all rooms. I was surprised to feel a sense of belonging as a result of the group size. We all worked silently alongside each other, and I really enjoyed the effect this had.

However, I think it’s much more powerful in person.

It’s important to note that coworking can also work against your productivity. The psychology of peer influence works both ways, so if you’re surrounded by unfocused individuals, you may feel yourself being negatively impacted.

4. Work in sprints.

We all know that an eight-hour workday isn’t meant to be swallowed in one bite; it needs to be broken up, but how? Improve productivity by breaking your day into predetermined work sessions with planned breaks.

Why It Works

Have you ever heard of the “basic rest-activity cycle” humans experience when we sleep? Physiologist Nathaniel Kleitman, the pioneering sleep researcher who co-discovered REM sleep, is also well known for observing that humans alternate progressively between light and deep sleep in 90-minute periods.

According to a Harvard Business Review article by Tony Schwartz, Kleitman found that we operate by that same 90-minute rhythm during the day by moving progressively through periods of higher and lower alertness.

After working at high intensity for more than 90 minutes, writes Schwartz, we begin relying on stress hormones for energy. The result: Our prefrontal cortex starts to shut down, and we start losing our ability to think clearly and reflectively.

“We move from parasympathetic to a sympathetic arousal — a physiological state more commonly known as ‘fight or flight,’” Schwartz says.

So instead of artificially overriding periods of low alertness with caffeine, sugary foods, and stress hormones, you can better manage your time at work by respecting the human need for rhythmic pulses of rest and renewal.

Testing It Out

I’m a seasoned sprint worker, so I didn’t need to test this technique. However, I was surprised to learn that this has yielded results across diverse fields.

A man named Anders Ericsson conducted a study of elite musicians and found they don’t necessarily practice more — they just practice more deliberately. “

They focus their energy in packets,” says Gregory Ciotti in an explanation of Ericsson’s study.

This means “periods of intense work followed by breaks, instead of diluting work time over the whole day. They don’t rely on willpower — they rely on habit and disciplined scheduling.”

Ericsson’s study of elite violinists found they tend to follow 90-minute periods of hard work with 15- to 20-minute breaks.

Rest periods get a bad rap in today’s working world, but it turns out they are integral to high productivity over long periods.

5. Don’t eliminate old habits; change them.

For some of us, it’s bad habits like checking email every few minutes or opening up social media that cost us (and others) precious productivity time.

Sometimes, these habits become so automatic that we don’t even realize we’re doing them. Identify the habit that disrupts your productivity the most and replace it with something else.

Why It Works

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Charles Duhigg spent years researching the power habits have over us. He found that rather than trying to eliminate an old habit, people find more success in changing that habit by replacing it with a new, less destructive one.

Why? Because every time you have an urge and you do something about it, the reward you get from it creates a neurological pathway in your brain.

When you repeat that action and experience the same reward again, that neurological pathway gets a little bit thicker; and the next time, even thicker. The thicker that pathway gets, the easier it is for impulses to travel down it.

So when you try to extinguish a habit completely, you’re actually trying to use willpower to destroy a neural pathway. It’s possible, but it’s ineffective.

So if you’re having trouble eliminating a habit that’s keeping you from being productive, here’s what Duhigg suggests you do:

1. Diagnose the “cue” or the urge that sets off the habit.
2. Diagnose the reward you get from doing that habit.
3. Replace your habit with an activity that’s both triggered by the old cue and delivers the old reward or a version of it.

See the full flow chart here.

Testing It Out

When my brain buffers and I want a quick dopamine hit, I reach for my phone without thinking. Instead of trying to quit this behavior, I replaced checking my phone with checking my laptop background.

Using Canva, I created a collage of images that cause feelings of gratitude, happiness, and anticipation. Instead of reaching for my phone, I now press “windows+M” (to minimize all tabs) and get a dopamine hit that makes me feel grateful, centered, and excited about the plans I have ahead.

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Not only do I waste less time on my phone, but I’ve also replaced my normal social media scroll with something that leaves me feeling better.

6. Create productive rituals.

Speaking of building better habits, Schwartz says the best way to get things done “is to make them more automatic so they require less energy.”

As President and CEO of The Energy Project, he advises his clients to develop rituals: highly specific behaviors done at precise times that, over time, become so automatic that they require no conscious will or discipline.

For example, Schwartz makes a habit of immediately writing down new tasks he needs to accomplish and new ideas that occur to him. That way, he never has to walk around preoccupied with the burden of remembering something.

David Allen, productivity consultant and author of the best-selling book Getting Things Done, would agree: “People don’t capture stuff that has their attention. And it keeps rolling around in the organizational psyche as well as the personal psyche, draining energy and creating incredible psychic residue.”

According to Allen, when people say they’ll do something but don’t write it down, it goes into a black hole.

“That would be fine if it were just one thing, but it’s hundreds of things … Your head is for having ideas, not holding them,” Allen says. “Just dumping everything out of your head and externalizing it is a huge step, and it can have a significant effect.”

Why It Works

We mentally pick up pieces of information all day and let them slosh around our subconscious minds. Emails, tasks that you realize need to be completed — they accumulate like picking up groceries at the store until your arms are overflowing and you start to drop things.

Without rituals that dictate when you answer that email, which order to tackle your to-do list, and every other micro-decision in your day, you’re repeatedly half-handling tasks all day long.

Another version of Schwartz’s philosophy is what Harvard Business Review’s Gretchen Gavett calls OHIO: Only Handle It Once.

For example, when you go through your email, decide immediately what to do with each one — immediately respond to the ones that need answering, and delete the unimportant ones on the spot. Never read an email and think, “I’ll circle back to this later.”

Rituals are theorized to be the secret to productivity and happiness itself. “In an age of choice, rituals are the key to happiness,” The Guardian’s Tomiwa Owolade writes.

Testing It Out

For a week, I applied the OHIO technique to my inbox management system. I was guilty of checking emails around the clock just to feel updated, but I never replied to them right away. Without realizing it, I was handling every email multiple times.

This goes directly against the OHIO principle, so for a week, I only checked my email at the beginning and end of my workday, and I handled every email immediately.

My inbox anxiety essentially disappeared, and I replied to everything in a more timely manner. After a week of testing this, I removed my email accounts (both work and personal) from my phone altogether to make this a part of my routine.

7. Leverage peak productivity hours.

Everyone’s willpower is limited and generally stronger at the beginning of the day when they haven’t expended any energy yet.

You can leverage these peak productivity hours by scheduling your most important or most difficult tasks for the beginning of the day when you have the greatest willpower to avoid distractions.

Why It Works

Studies have concluded that willpower is a finite resource. Acts of self-control, like trying to remember to respond to an email or ignoring distractions, leave us with decreasing willpower throughout the day.

According to Lia Steakley of Stanford Medicine’s Scopeblog, “as with physical exercise, using your self-control muscles may be tiring, but over time the workout increases your strength and stamina. So, what starts out difficult becomes easier over time. New behaviors become habits, temptations become less overwhelming, and willpower challenges can even become fun.”

As you build habits like responding to emails right away and writing down all your to-do’s, you’ll eliminate the fear of forgetting — and therefore, the burden of remembering.

The result: more energy, more willpower, and better productivity.

Testing It Out

At the end of my workday, I reviewed my to-do list for the following day. I identified tomorrow’s most important task and decided to complete it first.

I usually like to work through my to-do list based on my mood, so it was hard to force myself to work on a specific task. In complete honesty, I didn’t succeed on my first attempt, but I tried again.

Even though I didn’t achieve 100% success, prioritizing my workload still made me feel less stressed and more in control of my day.

8. Time-blocking technique.

Time blocking is the process of determining exactly when you’ll work on a specific task and scheduling those tasks as if you’re scheduling a meeting.

These tasks are added to your Google Calendar, and you will show up at the predetermined time and do the planned work.

Why It Works

Most of us wouldn’t skip a meeting just because we didn’t feel like going, but we treat our own work tasks like this all the time.

When we say to ourselves, “I’ll work on X first thing tomorrow,” and then we fail to follow through, our confidence and ability to execute our intentions dwindles. Time blocking builds the muscle that restores this ability to follow through.

Cal Newport, author of the acclaimed book Deep Work, advocates for detailed time blocking of your entire work day. “A 40-hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure,” says Cal Newport.

Time blocking is perhaps the most impactful way to improve time management. Follow-through is improved, as is the quality of your focused work.

Testing It Out

A task I’ve been procrastinating on is updating my financial Google Sheets (fun, I know.) For weeks, I’ve been thinking, “Just do it. You’ll thank yourself when tax time comes around.” However, I still haven’t made any concrete progress on this task.

I time blocked three hours on my Google Calendar for next week to handle this. Even though I haven’t completed the task yet, having put it on my calendar makes me feel less anxious because I know it will be handled by the end of the allotted time.

9. Task batching.

Identify repetitive tasks in your workload and condense these to-do’s into a single task.

Here’s a task batching example: If you want to publish a post on LinkedIn every day, you can wake up every morning, come up with a posting idea, write it, and hit “publish.”

Or, you can batch this task once a week: For two hours every Monday morning, you can come up with seven post ideas, write them all, and schedule them to publish for the rest of the week.

Not only do you sidestep writer’s block every day, but the repetition naturally speeds up the rate at which you create this content.

Why It Works

Task batching will help you complete your tasks in a more efficient way while reducing multitasking.

The human brain isn’t wired to multitask; it can reduce your productivity by up to 40%. The inverse of multitasking is monotasking: focusing on a single task, removing distractions, and completing the task at hand.

As a side effect, this task management technique also helps you improve the efficiency of your work. Inefficiencies in your workflow aren’t always easy to spot when you work on a task periodically.

When you force yourself to repeat a process several times in a row, you naturally find time-consuming steps that can be condensed or handled by AI productivity apps.

Testing It Out

Like most entrepreneurs, content creation is a part of marketing my business.

It’s something I tend to postpone because it’s not a part of my client deliverables. Pinterest is one of my business’s most important channels, and I used to schedule pins week by week.

Using the task batching technique, I planned two months of content creation at once. I created all of the pin images, wrote the descriptions, and scheduled them.

It was a lengthy process, but it was a relief to know that this to-do was off my plate for the foreseeable future.

While batching this task, I discovered just how much time I was wasting when completing it week by week. I’ve adjusted my process permanently.

Data-Backed Productivity Tools

With the psychology understood and our personal habits examined, it’s time to look at the tools and AI apps that can help take our productivity even further.

Pomodoro Timer

Remember physiologist Nathaniel Kleitman, who said that we work better in cycles? Make cycles a part of your routine with a Pomodoro timer.

The Pomodoro Technique is a method developed by Francesco Cirillo, which breaks blocks of time down into chunks of work and breaks.

You can use any time configuration, but a popular one is 25 minutes of work with a 5-minute break, then taking a 15-minute break every four work cycles.

Don’t use your phone timer as a timer; instead, install a browser extension like the Pomodoro® Assistant Google Chrome extension. It’s free and displays how much time is left in your time block on your screen, removing the temptation to check your phone.

Here’s what pops up on your computer when you’ve earned a break. Each red dot represents a completed work session:

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What I like: I never feel guilty or wonder if I’ve “earned” a break when using my Pomorodo timer; I rely on data instead of emotions, and it takes all of the guesswork out of structuring my day.

AI Productivity Tools

In 2009, Apple invented the catchy phrase “there’s an app for that.” Now, there’s an AI tool for that, too. Here are some popular tasks and the AI productivity tools that assist with them:

• Try AI transcription apps like Fathom.
• Automate repetitive tasks with tools like Bardeen.
• Analyze data with tools like Tableau.
• Handle project management with tools like ClickUp.
• Draft emails with tools like HubSpot AI.

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Best for: Speeding up refined processes, doing mundane tasks, or automating repetitive tasks.

Task Management Software

Task tracking is an important tool in your productivity arsenal, and there’s a task management app for every style and preference.

Here are some of my favorite task management apps, which all have free versions with premium upgrades available (except for HubSpot Tasks, which is free):

• Notion
• Trello
• ClickUp
• Basecamp
• Asana
• HubSpot Tasks

These project management tools also incorporate AI. We compare them in our AI project management tools analysis.

Task management is never more important than when you’re working on collaborative projects. All of these apps work for individuals as well as teams.

What I like: I love seeing project updates at a glance and the flexibility to capture all ideas via endless media, attachments, and notes.

News Feed Eradicator

Anyone who works in social media management or content creation knows what a double-edged sword social media is for productivity.

If being on social media is a part of your job, you can make it less of a productivity black hole with the free News Feed Eradicator Google Chrome extension.

This tool blocks out the news feed of social media websites, while still allowing you to answer messages, converse in groups, reply to comments, etc.

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Best for: People who need social media as a part of their day-to-day work but want to limit how time-consuming it is.

BlockSite

Is there a specific website that sabotages your productivity?

Make it inaccessible using the app BlockSite. BlockSite is a free tool that’s available on Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, the App Store, and more.

The free version allows you to block three websites, and you can upgrade to add more.

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What I like: This fosters a level of self-awareness and reflection that’s healthy and productive.

Do your distractions require a firmer hand? The “GO ‘FREAKING’ WORK” (expletive removed) Google Chrome extension does the same thing but offers a verbal insult every time you open up a blocked website.

Getting Started

Which of these techniques will change your life?

I can say with utter confidence that OHIO (only handle it once) has already changed my life; I’ve found myself fitting it into conversation and recommending it to everyone. There was a similar “love at first sight” effect when I discovered to-do lists and the Pomodoro technique years ago.

Whether you’re pursuing academic success, need help focusing on specific tasks, or just want to get your valuable time back, these tips will help you regain some control over how you spend your time.

Who knows what potential is hiding underneath all of your unproductive habits.

That extra time may just move mountains, alter your career, or completely change your life. Better start today!

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

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What do cross-country road trips, wedding speeches, and social media marketing have in common? Planning. I definitely can’t help you with your road trip or wedding speech (sorry), but I can help you create a social media content calendar to organize your next marketing campaign.

As marketers, we recognize that social media is integral to an effective inbound marketing strategy. With so many social networks available to us, staying organized and planning for when and what we share is crucial, which is exactly where a social media calendar enters the picture.

Before we dive into our list of top tools to stay organized, here’s what you need to know about social media calendars and why they’re essential.

• What is a social media calendar?
• Benefits of Using a Social Media Content Calendar & Content Planner
• How to Create a Social Media Calendar
• Social Media Templates
• Social Media Calendar Examples
• Social Media Content Calendar Tools to Plan Your Messaging
• How To Create a Social Media Posting Schedule for Your Business
• How To Create a Content Calendar
• What is the best social media calendar?

What is a social media calendar?

A social media content calendar is a rundown of your upcoming posts organized by date and time. A social media calendar can be a spreadsheet (HubSpot offers a free one that you can download here), digital calendar, or interactive dashboard.

To get the most value out of your social media calendar, it may include the following:

• The date and time a post will go live
• The social media account or network each post will go live on
• Materials to include, such as copy, hashtags, links, and graphics

 

Benefits of Using a Social Media Content Calendar & Content Planner

We’re all busy, and inevitably, tasks can slip through the cracks. Social media content is no exception.

A successful social media strategy requires regular publishing and engaging with followers to see positive results — whether you’re looking for sales, brand recognition, lead generation, or all three.

So, if you’re not already using a social media content planner, here are a few advantages to pique your interest:

Easily pivot when plans change.

With a social media content calendar, you can plan out posts for entire weeks or months in advance, freeing up your working hours to strategize for the future.

The best part is that you can always leave space for breaking news or current events in your industry. Otherwise, you’ll spend valuable time searching the internet daily for content to share, a known productivity killer.

Curate content just for your audience.

I recommend that all social media marketers take time to craft custom messages for each network because each audience expects to see something different on each one.

For example, your Instagram followers want to see Reels and Videos, while your Twitter followers like quick sound bites and shareable quotes. Planning this content using a social media content planner will save you time throughout the week. It will also make drafting thoughtful and intentional content for each site easier.

A social media content planner can help you post consistently on each social channel. This consistency creates a routine for your followers and helps you build trust.

Improved collaboration.

A shared calendar can improve collaboration with internal teams and external stakeholders. It gives everyone access to what’s on the calendar and gives you a reason to reconnect.

Skip waiting or sending last-minute emails for links, project status, or partnerships. Your social content planner gives you a simple way to let everyone know what you’ll need well before you need it.

Simplified performance tracking.

Without a calendar, we’re all publishing content into the void, and we cannot track big-picture and past performance.

With a calendar, you analyze which content performed best to adjust your strategy accordingly. If a particular type of post received significant views, you can recreate it for a different topic and potentially see the same success.

Content planning with a calendar can also help you track impact and ROI for social media efforts.

Reach new audiences.

With the help of a content planner, you can plan for holidays, events, and observance days, such as National Cat Day or Eat More Fruits and Vegetables Day. This makes it easy for you to tailor your content and engage with a broader audience.

How to Create a Social Media Calendar

To create an effective social media calendar, you should:

1. Conduct a social media audit.

A social media audit assesses your social media presence, accounts, and engagement. This lets you see what’s working, what’s not, and where to improve.

In my experience, an audit is about more than just analyzing your social media performance. It can also help you better understand your target audience’s interests, habits, and expectations and give you crucial clues about how they engage with your content.

Auditing your social media channels can also make it easier to see how competitors’ social media presence could affect your performance. It’s a great way to understand what social media trends, tools, and features you should be pay attention to.

As you complete your audit, be sure to:

Review and analyze your current social media content performance.

This includes metrics for:

• Engagement
• Conversion
• Clicks

It’s also important to do some post-level analysis. Take a closer look at your top-performing posts and find out what made them successful. Ask yourself — does your audience love educational content or do they want to be inspired or entertained?

Connect your social content strategy to business goals.

Find the KPIs that are important for your business, then make sure your social strategy supports those KPIs.

Run a competitive analysis.

Review your competitors’ social media accounts with these competitive analysis templates and check:

• The types of content they’re sharing
• Posting frequency
• Audience engagement

Want more details? Click here to learn how to conduct a social media audit step-by-step.

2. Choose your social media channels and the content you’ll post.

Once you’ve completed your audit, it’s time to use what you learned. Your audit should give you a sense of what you’re doing right, where you should experiment, and which channels are best for your audience.

For example, say that Instagram has historically been your top social media channel for engagement, but you’ve seen a drop in the last six months. Your audit should show you what engagement on IG looks like for your competitors, plus what is and isn’t working for your business now.

Choose your social media channels.

Target audience demographics are need-to-know information for planning your content because you’re much more likely to achieve your marketing goals if you share content you know your audience enjoys.

You’ll want to do some market research, which can help you find the most popular social media platforms for your audience. For example, say my target audience is Gen Z. I’m sharing Instagram Reels and posting on X, but nothing is taking. I know from our Consumer Trends Report (which is market research) that Gen Z’s favorite social media channel is TikTok, so I would be better off pivoting my marketing strategy to that channel to drive results.

As you research, don’t forget to assess platform features and strengths.

Next, match your top content types and budget with the platform that best fits your needs.

For example, local coffee shop Café Grumpy focuses its social media presence on a single platform: Instagram. But, cosmetics brand Glossier has a powerful social media presence on many platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn.

Health and beauty brand Golde strikes a balance with a presence on multiple platforms. But it focuses on content publishing and engagement with Instagram Reels.

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Remember that with each platform you add, you’re increasing the number of posts you’ll need to create and manage — thankfully, this makes a social media calendar even more useful

Plan what content you want to create for each channel.

Once you’ve chosen your platforms, it’s time to plan your social media content. To begin the planning process, review your team and budget to get a realistic sense of how much high-quality content you can produce.

You can often produce more high-quality content for less money if you create in batches, which makes careful content planning essential.

Then, use your brand guide and social audit analysis to create content that resonates with your audience. Continuing with my example from above, our research shows that Gen Z prefers funny content and relatable content, so I’m more likely to see the results I’m looking for if I focus on that.

Create a smart mix of social content.

It’s best to create a variety of content. Videos are popular, but images, text-based posts, infographics, testimonials, and live streams are potent too. Mix it up to keep your feeds fresh and appealing. It’s also a handy way to stay up on trends that make the most of each platform.

For example, Instagram is ideal for visual storytelling. With that in mind, Café Grumpy’s social posts feature drawings and art from customers, employee stories, and vendor highlights.

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Glossier uses a unique content strategy for each social audience. For example, its YouTube channel features a “Get Ready with Me” playlist of videos of influencers, actresses, and CEOs using its products.

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Over on LinkedIn, Glossier uses its social feed to highlight its take on culture and events. And on Reddit, the content engages the community with prompts for conversation and critique.

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These content creation templates can speed up the process if you create unique content for multiple platforms.

3. Decide what your calendar should include.

Regardless of how you plan your social content (like by season, strategy, campaign, etc.), I recommend deciding what content you want in your calendar for your desired results to keep things organized.

To start, your calendar should include the following:

• The platforms you’re using
• The day and the time your posts will be published
• Links, graphics, videos, and copy

Having platform image sizes, campaign hashtags, and quick tips on hand makes it easier to build your social media calendar. 

Color coding is also great for at-a-glance decision-making each month. This is how we color-coded content in our monthly social content planner:

As you become more adept with your calendar, you may want to expand it to include the following:

• Platform-specific materials include Reels, TikTok LIVE, polls, shoppable posts, etc.
• Geo-targeting
• The associated or vertical campaigns, such as product launches and contests

4. Get feedback.

Once your calendar is complete, share it with your team and stakeholders to get their feedback and make sure it meets everyone’s needs.

Your social media calendar should be an easy-to-understand plan that aligns with your social media strategy. If everything aligns, there shouldn’t be any big surprises or confusion when colleagues review your plan.

The monthly template in our social media calendar is helpful when sharing your plan with stakeholders who want a sense of the big picture but don’t need to get into granular details.

The other sections of this tool are useful for social media managers who are planning, creating, and posting to social media.

Once you’ve completed all these steps, the next move is to actually create your calendar with a template or tool. 

Social Media Templates

Before working at HubSpot, I handled social media for a small nonprofit. I built its social media presence from zero, so planning and creating a calendar for myself (and the nonprofit leaders) was important. 

I did my planning with a template I found online (which, coincidentally, was HubSpot’s template), and it helped me stay organized and on top of when I needed to share content. 

Overall, a social media calendar template will help you plan and organize the content you’ll share across your social media channels. Most templates include sections for each platform you use, links to media you’ll include in your posts, and posting schedules. 

Below I’ll dive into two of HubSpot’s free social media calendar templates for you to download and their best features.

1. HubSpot’s Social Media Calendar Template

If you’re new to setting up social media calendars, HubSpot offers a free, pre-made downloadable template that you can use to schedule out full weeks of posts.

With the download, you’ll get access to multiple sheets that are helpful for your planning process, including: 

• Platform-specific tabs to plan and organize posts for each platform you use. 

  The download comes with tabs for the most popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and you can simply duplicate a sheet and change the name for any other channels you use. This was the best part of the template for my social media work. I created separate plans for the platforms I used, then added the scheduled posts to the monthly calendar for a four-week overview. 

• A monthly planning calendar, where you get a high-level overview of your planned social posts for the month, color-coded for easy reading. 

  This part of the template was extremely helpful for sharing with stakeholders who wanted to know what to expect to see on our channels but didn’t need access to the platform-to-platform breakdown. 

Download this template now

2.HubSpot’s Social Media Content Calendar Template for Startups

HubSpot’s Social Media Content Calendar Template for Startups is similar to the one I mentioned above, but it also includes a content repository tab and helpful tips for posting on social media networks.

Download this free template

I like this template for startups because, as you scale, you can be pressed for time and looking for ways to stay productive. This template makes it easier to organize your campaigns, grow your reach, and stay on task. Here are some of the features I find most helpful for startups: 

• A content repository where you can list your existing content ready to share or write out ideas for the future. If you’re the sole person in charge of social media (which is common at smaller startups), having this repository makes it easy to find what you’re looking for when planning and posting on social media. 
• If you’re a HubSpot for StartUps user, you can easily bulk upload your planned content in the template to HubSpot Social Inbox with a .CSV file and HubSpot’s bulk uploader. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions in the template. 

Now that we’ve gone over a few template options, let’s look at some high-quality examples of social media content calendars that you can use as inspiration.

Social Media Calendar Examples

1. Jotform Social Media Calendar

Jotform’s social media calendar isn’t just visually appealing and functional. The tabs at the top reveal your social plan for every channel you execute your strategy on, including in-person or virtual events.

If you’re modeling your social calendar after this one, I recommend including a tab for content details and who on your team will be responsible for creating the content. You might also have a separate tab for each month to keep things organized.

2. Firefly Marketing Social Media Content Calendar

Going a more traditional route with your social media calendar? Try a Google Sheets template like the one created by Firefly Marketing. Each tab is dedicated to a different month, while the worksheet includes every channel you might need across the top.

The rows are separated by week, so you can quickly identify the date and time a post is scheduled for publishing. My favorite part of this template is the pre-populated social media holiday column with fun dates that your audience will love.

Social Media Content Calendar Tools to Plan Your Messaging

As I mentioned above, I handled social media for a nonprofit before working at HubSpot. I was mostly a novice, and the nonprofit was small, so I felt that a template was all I needed. 

But, at the same time, a social media content calendar tool would’ve cut my planning time in half and given me more time to focus on creating content to share. A tool is helpful for anyone, regardless of experience level or business size. 

I tested some of the leading social media calendar tools to give you a sense of how to make them work for your needs, and I compiled my main takeaways below. As you read through the options and make your decisions, consider the following factors (based on your needs):

• Functionality – Some tools are simple, and you’d use them to plan content before posting it yourself, and others are more advanced, automated tools that go a step further and post content for you. 

• Features – The tool should offer the specific features you need, like managing multiple social media accounts or giving multiple team members access to the dashboard. 
• Customizations – The tool should let you customize the calendar layout, categories, tags, or other factors relevant to your needs. 
• Ease of use – A user-friendly and intuitive tool makes your job easier and helps you get started faster without a significant learning curve. 
• Cost – You want a tool that is within budget and includes all the necessary features. 

Let’s take a look at my tests. 

Note: I know some of the screenshots of calendars I’ve included look bleak and plain. Yours will undoubtedly look much more complete and valuable than mine. I’m just a helpful guinea pig.

1. HubSpot’s Downloadable Template for Excel

Content Calendar

• Price: Free

Download This Template

If I were to guess, you probably already use Excel to create reports and conduct data analysis. This multifaceted tool is also perfect for social media content calendar organization. You can customize Excel according to the priorities and metrics your team is focused on, making it a great option for planning.

You can easily use our social media content calendar template on Microsoft Excel. Marketers can easily use this template to plan individual social media posts— monthly or annually — while keeping an eye on more significant picture events, holidays, publications, and partnerships.

Why I like this social media calendar tool:

This intuitive template is great for marketers with small teams and heavy workloads. You can add as many line items of scheduled posts as you like and color code every addition to organize your calendar based on your needs.

You can use the monthly planning calendar tab (pictured above) to get a bird’s-eye view of what’s coming down the pipeline in a given month and easily distinguish between posts by color-coding each platform. Or, you can get more granular with platform-specific calendars. Here’s the one for Facebook:

In the content repository tab, you can add the content you’ll be publishing to keep track of what you’ve already published and recall older content you can re-promote. You can also draft and plan social media posts in the social network update tabs. For more on how to use the templates, check out this in-depth guide from my colleague Basha Coleman, HubSpot Blog Writer and Media Amplification expert.

It’s important to note that this template and its included tabs are for organizational purposes. After you’ve planned out your social media posts, you’ll need to manually upload the content from the posts to a social media publisher. If you’re a HubSpot customer, you can organize your content in the spreadsheet and upload it directly into Social Inbox (check out instructions for this here).

HubSpot also offers social media software to create a custom publishing schedule to publish directly to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Your social interactions all link back to the HubSpot CRM for easy-to-measure ROI.

2. HubSpot Social Media Management Software

• Price: Free tools available; paid plans begin at $20/mo/seat with Starter plan. 

HubSpot’s Social Media Management Software is a great tool for creating a social media content calendar, as you can plan your content and run campaigns in one central dashboard. You can also monitor your social inbox for engagement opportunities and track the ROI of your efforts. 

Why I like this social media calendar tool:

This tool makes it simple to draft your social posts account-by-account. You can quickly draft posts, upload media (like images), and any important campaign information for tracking. 

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I also like that you can easily add desired publish dates within the same draft window to ensure all your content goes live at the right time. Note: you can update any scheduled posts until they go live. 

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The social calendar also gives you a high-level view of your drafted and scheduled posts so you can make sure you have a consistent posting schedule to maximize engagement opportunities. 

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An additional feature I want to call out is the AI assistant, which you can use to draft social media content and save even more time. 

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3. Google Drive

Content Calendar and Asset Organization

• Price: Free for personal use. Google Workspace plans for businesses start at $6 per month.

Google Drive has several helpful features that make it easy for social media marketers to build an effective content calendar.

Why I like this social media calendar tool:

If you’re already familiar with Google Drive, I’m a big proponent of using it as your social media calendar tool. There’s no learning curve because you’re already familiar with all the features; you’re just adapting them for different uses.

Here’s a simple example of how I’d use Google Calendar to track my editorial and social media calendars to make sure posts align with new blog content. I can also easily share these calendars to avoid scheduling conflicts and align campaigns.

You can also use Google Sheets to schedule posts on social media, track the status of different pieces of content, and assign tasks to team members without switching platforms.

Google Docs is also great because you can keep comments in one place and collaborate on different projects instead of emailing back and forth or scheduling a meeting. I find this especially useful when editing your social media content, which may need to be drafted and approved quickly.

It’s also convenient because you can use multiple Google products to create quick and seamless workflows. For example, say I’m in charge of scheduling and publishing content, and my coworker is responsible for making creative assets. I can fill out the shared social media calendar with dates, copy, and scheduling status, and my colleague can easily upload the assets they create to Google Drive and add the link to the calendar so I have quick access when it’s time to publish.

A bonus is that HubSpot customers can easily link their Google Drive accounts to the HubSpot portal to upload files from Drive into the HubSpot software.

4. Loomly

Content Planning, Creation, Publishing, and Calendar

• Price: Base plan is $32/mo for two users and 10 accounts when you choose the annual agreement.
• Free Trial: 15-day free trial, no credit card required

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As I mentioned, some social media content calendars are all-in-one tools offering content planning and publishing. Loomly is one of those tools with content creation, management, and scheduling features.

Why I like this social media calendar tool:

I signed up for Loomly’s free trial quickly because I didn’t have to add credit card info, which I know can be a deterrent if you’re just looking to test a tool. It was extremely easy for me to get started, and the step-by-step walkthrough led me through linking my social accounts and drafting my first post.

I really appreciated that I could preview how posts look on each platform as I created them. This makes for easy editing and updates instead of deleting a post to make edits after it’s live.

I scheduled a few test posts in less than five minutes to get a view of the calendar, and it’s a simple, no-frills look. Each post you schedule uses the platform icon so you can easily tell what’s going where. The image below is an example calendar:

And, since it’s an all-in-one tool, linking your accounts means it will also schedule your posts for you.

Overall, Loomly is a high-quality tool for anyone looking to plan their social media content at a fair price point.

5. Later

Social Media Management Platform & Link in Bio Tool

• Price: Starter plan is $25/mo or $16.67 billed yearly
• Free Trial: Basic 14-day free trial, credit card required for feature-rich trial

Later is a user-friendly social media calendar and publishing tool that simplifies the process of scheduling and automating posts across various platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

 

It’s meant for organic social media content, so you’ll need to use a different tool for your paid campaigns.

I tested the tool for free, but the more feature-rich 14-day trial requires a credit card.

Why I like this social media calendar tool:

I’m impressed by Later’s social media calendar. It took me less than two minutes to link my Instagram account to the calendar, and having it linked means I easily scheduled hypothetical posts for publishing on the exact day and time I designated.

It’s also an extremely interactive tool, as you can upload your multimedia assets and drag and drop them onto your calendar, which really makes it feel like you’re “building” a calendar…fun, right?

The post builder includes all of the elements you’d need to include in your post based on the specific platform you’re scheduling for.

Your calendar will undoubtedly look better and fuller than mine, but here’s the monthly calendar view with two sample Instagram posts I created:

You can also view your scheduled posts in list view to get a detailed breakdown of each upcoming week.

What sets Later apart is its specialized visual planning for Instagram. It offers powerful Instagram scheduling features, including the ability to plan and preview your Instagram grid, schedule carousel posts, and even automatically publish Instagram Stories. I find the focus on the unique visual aesthetic requirements that Instagram demands to be a stand-out feature, making it a go-to tool for businesses or creators heavily invested in the platform.

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6. Sprout Social

Social Publishing and Content Calendar

• Price: Standard plan starts at $249/mo for five social profiles, billed annually.
• Free Trial: 30-day free trial, no credit card required

Sprout Social’s social media calendar and publishing tool make it easy for teams or individuals to plan and schedule their social posts. You can schedule content to automatically post to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more.

Why I like this social media calendar tool:

I tested SproutSocial with its free trial. I found the publishing tool extremely easy to use with little learning curve, making it a great tool if you’re under a time crunch to choose a tool and get started.

I quickly linked my X (formerly Twitter) profile, and creating a post took me about five minutes. I especially liked that there’s a live preview option to view your creations come to life in real time.

When your content is scheduled, you can toggle monthly, weekly, or list view for a deeper look or filter the calendar by platform. Here’s what the monthly calendar view looks like with three scheduled X posts:

A bonus feature worth calling out: Sprout Social’s social listening tool lets you uncover niche conversations your audience is interested in so you can join in on the conversation.

I did find that this tool isn’t ideal if you focus on Instagram and TikTok because posting content requires an extra step. You have to download the Sprout Mobile App and designate a mobile publisher who manually publishes posts within the app. The publisher is notified when it’s time to post, but this can take away from the draw of an automatic schedule-and-go tool.

Sprout Social is also the most expensive tool, making it better for teams or individuals with a larger budget.

7. Hootsuite

Social Publishing and Content Calendar

• Price: Professional plan starts at $99/mo, billed annually
• Free Trial: 30-day free trial, requires credit card

Hootsuite’s social media calendar and planner make it easy to create, schedule, and publish content so you can execute your social media marketing goals.

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Why I like this social media calendar tool:

Hootsuite is a robust and high-powered publishing tool to consider. Its primary features for social publishing are exactly what you look for in a publisher: easy content scheduling in advance to share posts with your networks. It also has rich features for collaboration and post approvals.

To create your calendar, you can drag and drop the content to the exact date and time you want content to go live to ensure everything aligns with your marketing goals. Hootsuite stands out on this list because you can see paid and organic social content calendars side-by-side (other tools only allow for organic content).

Since it’s also a publisher, you can relax after you’ve scheduled your content because it will push it live for you.

You also get access to helpful features like uploading Canva templates for your posts and recommended times to post to get the most engagement.

8. Agorapulse

Social Publishing and Content Calendar

• Price: Free individual account for one user and three social profiles; paid plans start at $49/mo per user, billed annually
• Free Trial: 15-day free trial, no credit card required

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Agorapulse offers social publishing tools and a content calendar to easily manage your social media account queuing, scheduling, and bulk uploading posts (incredibly helpful for teams who use quarterly or monthly content plans).

Why I like this social media calendar tool:

I really like how straightforward Agorapulse’s interface is and how the welcome post immediately got me started with linking my social profiles.

The drag-and-drop builder made it easy for me to add posts to my calendar, and you get a preview of what your posts will look like on each platform with the live editor.

You can view your calendar in list, week, or month view, making it easy to get an overview or go more in-depth. As expected, your complete calendar will look nicer than mine, but here’s a basic one I created:

What makes Agorapulse different is its social inbox, which allows you to manage all the interactions from various platforms in a single place. After all, content isn’t just a one-and-done activity; it’s about building awareness and engagement with your readers.

9. StoryChief

Content Planning and Distribution

• Price: Individual pricing starts at $210, billed quarterly
• Free Trial: 7-day free trial, no credit card required

With StoryChief’s smart calendar, you can better strategize and plan your content strategy across channels. StoryChief is described as a “content distribution platform” that unifies analytics and publishing across multiple channels for a more simplified approach to content creation. Best of all, it syncs with HubSpot and your favorite calendar apps.

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Why I like this social media calendar tool:

After signing up for the free trial, I was immediately brought to an extremely interactive and helpful walkthrough of the basics of the tool.

I felt confident enough after the walkthrough to jump right into the tool, and I easily linked my X account and scheduled a few sample posts with the easy post builder.

I forgot to cancel the posts I scheduled and they were posted to my account so, rest assured, the tool works as advertised and your posts will go live as scheduled. Here’s what the monthly calendar view looks like with my scheduled posts:

You can customize how you see your calendar and filter views by channel, campaign level, or content type.

 

How To Create a Social Media Posting Schedule for Your Business

Scheduling your business’s social posts can keep you organized and help you consistently deliver content to your followers without worrying about looming deadlines. Content posting strategies can differ depending on the social media platform, and you should consider not only what you’re posting but also when and how often.

By creating a social posting schedule and adjusting the schedule to fit each platform, you can increase the chances that your posts will reach your audience.

Facebook

Facebook’s Meta Business Suite makes scheduling posts and stories for your business easy.

Scheduling a Facebook Post on Desktop

Step 1: To schedule a post using the Meta Business Suite on your desktop, start by selecting your business’s Facebook Page from the dropdown menu in the top left of your sidebar.

Step 2: Next, click Posts & Stories or Calendar, then click Create Post.

Step 3: Click Facebook News Feed to schedule the post to your news feed.

Step 4: Enter the details of your post, including text, media, and a link or location. If you add a photo to your post, you won’t be able to add a link preview. Click Call to Action or Feeling/Activity to add an optional call to action or feeling/activity to your post. You can’t add both a call to action and a feeling/activity.

Step 5: A preview will appear on the right as you build your post. You can change the preview to see how your post will look on both desktop and mobile by using the dropdown menu at the top of the window.

Step 6: After building your post, click the arrow next to Publish and click Schedule Post. Select the date and time you want your post to be published, and click Schedule to schedule your post.

Scheduling a Facebook Post on Mobile

Step 1: You can also schedule Facebook posts on mobile with the Meta Business Suite mobile app. Start by tapping Post to create a new post.

Step 2: Enter the details of your post, including text, media, links, a background color, and a feeling/activity. Then choose your business’s Facebook page to publish to Facebook.

Step 3: Tap Schedule for later and select the date and time you want your post to be published. Then tap Schedule to schedule your post.

Instagram

Like Facebook, Instagram also uses the Meta Business Suite to schedule posts.

Scheduling an Instagram Post on Desktop

Step 1: To schedule a post to Instagram using the Meta Business Suite on your desktop, start by connecting your Instagram account to the Meta Business Suite.

Step 2: Once your Instagram account is connected, click the dropdown menu in the top left of your sidebar and select your Instagram account.

Step 3: Click Posts & Stories or Calendar, then click Create Post. Click Instagram Feed to schedule the post to your Instagram feed.

Step 4: Enter the details of your post, including text, media, and an optional link or location. If you choose to add a link to your Instagram post, it will not show a photo preview.

Step 5: A preview will appear on the right as you build your post. You can change the preview to see how your post will look on both desktop and mobile by using the dropdown menu at the top of the window.

Step 6: After building your post, click the arrow next to Publish and click Schedule Post. Select the date and time you want your post to be published, and click Schedule to schedule your post.

Scheduling an Instagram Post on Mobile

Step 1: Like Facebook, you can schedule Instagram posts on mobile using the Meta Business Suite mobile app. Start by tapping Post to create a new post.

Step 2: Enter the details of your post, including text, media, and links. Then choose your business’s Instagram page to publish to Instagram.

Step 3: Tap Schedule for later and select the date and time you want your post to be published. Then tap Schedule to schedule your post.

LinkedIn

Only a super or content admin can schedule posts on LinkedIn. Still, by using third-party software such as Hubspot’s social media management tools that are included with HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Professional accounts, you can easily create and schedule LinkedIn posts.

Step 1: To schedule LinkedIn posts using HubSpot’s social media management tools, start by logging into your Marketing Hub Professional account.

Step 2: Next, navigate to Marketing > Social and click Create Social Post.

Step 3: In the right panel, click LinkedIn. Create your post in the text box, including emojis, hashtags, mentions, tags, and a content link. When using HubSpot’s social media management tools, you can only mention or tag LinkedIn company pages, not LinkedIn users.

A post preview will appear if you add a content link to your post. You can add up to four images to your post by clicking the image icon or add a video to your post by clicking the video icon.

Step 4: Click Review, then Preview to see how your post will appear on LinkedIn.

Step 5: Then click Schedule post to schedule or publish your post.

Twitter

Step 1: You can schedule Tweets for your business by logging into your Twitter Ads account and navigating to the Creatives > Tweets tab. To access the Creatives tab in your Twitter Ads account, your account must have a credit card on file.

Step 2: Click on New Tweet in the top right corner and create your Tweet. If you would like your Tweet to only be seen by users you have targeted in a Promoted Ads campaign, click the Promoted Only checkbox. Leave this unchecked if you would like the tweet to be seen organically by your followers.

Step 3: Once you’ve written your tweet, click the down arrow next to Tweet, click Schedule, and select the date and time you would like the tweet to be posted.

Pinterest

Scheduling a Pinterest Post on Desktop

Pinterest allows you to schedule up to 100 Pins. You can schedule one Pin at a time, up to two weeks in advance on desktop.

Step 1: To schedule Pins for your business, log into your Pinterest Business account. Next, click Create at the left corner of your screen, then click Create Pin.

Step 2: Choose an image or video, and add a title, description, and link.

Step 3: Click Publish later and choose the day and time you’d like to publish your Pin.

Step 4: Choose a board from the drop-down menu, or create a new board by clicking Create board.

Step 5: Click Publish.

Scheduling a Pinterest Post on iOS

You can also schedule Pins using the Pinterest app on iOS.

Step 1: To start, log in to your Pinterest Business account.

Step 2: Tap the plus icon, then tap Pin.

Step 3: Take a photo for your Pin, select an image or video from your device, and tap Next.

Step 4: Add a title, description, and the destination website to your Pin.

Step 5: Below Schedule Date, tap the edit icon and select the date and time you would like to publish your Pin.

Step 6: Tap Done.

Step 7: Tap Next.

Step 8: Choose an existing board to save your Pin to or tap Create board to create a new board.

Step 1: Download HubSpot’s content calendar template.

Download Now

Consistently posting content is key to making the most of your business’s social media accounts. HubSpot’s content calendar template makes setting up a monthly posting schedule for your business’s social media accounts easy. You can open the template in Excel or upload it to Google sheets to easily plan content with your team. 

HubSpot’s content calendar template includes a monthly planning calendar, a content repository, and posting schedules for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. With HubSpot’s content calendar template, your team can view and manage your business’s social media posting schedules and deadlines at a glance.

Step 2: Choose your content goals.

Americans spend an average of 151 minutes (over two hours) on social media every day, making it a great way to connect with your business’s current and potential customers. It’s not enough to know what you want to post; you must also understand why your business posts content.

Posting content to social media can help your business achieve many goals, including raising brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, introducing new products and services to your customers, and even launching rebranding campaigns, to name a few.

When choosing your business’s content goals, consider what your brand most needs to accomplish. Are you looking to connect with a new demographic and generate leads? Do you want to increase your customers’ engagement with your business? Knowing your content goals can help to confirm that your business’s content reaches the right audience with the right message.

Step 3: Determine what types of content you want to publish.

Once you know your business’s goals, decide what types of content your business will post. Each type of social media content has advantages and disadvantages. For example, blog posts and articles can help your business build credibility, but they can be time-consuming to create.

Meanwhile, X posts can help your business gain consumer insight and hone its brand voice, but the 280-character limit for standard X users (premium subscribers get 25K+ characters) means your business may have to use long threads to get your message across. Carefully choosing the types of content your business will post can help ensure that your content offers value to your audience.

Step 4: Determine what platforms you will post on.

Once you know your business’s content goals and the types of content you will publish, it’s time to choose where your business will post.

Your business’s social media presence should be informed by its content, goals, and target audience demographics. For example, while posting on Instagram may help your business reach a young audience and market goods, the photo and video sharing platform may be a poor choice if you want to increase blog traffic among professionals in your industry. Likewise, a LinkedIn post may help drive traffic to your business’s blog but may not help you drive traffic to your online store.

Considering each social media platform’s strengths and weaknesses can help you accomplish your business’s content goals without wasting time and money marketing to users who outside of your target audience.

Step 5: Determine the most efficient posting schedule for your content.

After deciding on your business’s goals, the types of content you will publish, and where you will post the content, you need to create the posting schedule that your business will use. Each social media platform has peak engagement times — certain days and times of day when users are most likely to view and engage with posts.

So, knowing the best times to post on each social media platform will help you maximize the reach of your business’s posts. For instance, user engagement on Facebook peaks between 12 – 3 PM on Saturdays and Fridays. Engagement is lowest on Thursday and Sunday between 6 and 9 AM each day.

When creating your business’s content calendar, account for the engagement patterns for each of your accounts to demystify the scheduling process, save time, and get your posts in front of your audience when they are most likely to see them.

What is the best social media calendar?

Now that I’ve reviewed a few helpful tools to kick your social media strategy into high gear, it’s time for you to experiment with them. The best social media calendar saves you time, streamlines processes, and helps you work smarter, not harder.

Several of the platforms I’ve suggested are free to use or offer a free trial. Have one person on your team test one out and report their findings. You might find the tool that helps you reach your next social media KPI. Remember, every social media team is different. Combining these tools could help you execute your strategy efficiently to drive ROI.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

In this guide, I will show how you can use content marketing to attract, educate, engage, and delight your target audience.

We’ve applied what you’ll learn for over a decade, causing us to attract millions of monthly visitors to HubSpot.com.

Image Source

Besides our website content, our practical content marketing approach helps us get millions of YouTube views.

So, if you want to learn how content marketing can

• Improve brand awareness,
• Establish your company as an industry leader,
• Increase conversions,
• Get you more revenue,

— then this is the guide for you.

Whether you’re devising or refreshing your strategy, this guide will help you reassess your process and come up with new ways to create and share content with your audience.

Here‘s what we’ll cover:

What is content marketing?

The definition of content marketing is simple.

Content marketing is the publishing of written and visual material online with the purpose of attracting more leads to your business.

These materials can include blog posts, ebooks, infographics, videos, web pages, and more.

However, content marketing is not the publishing of a thin piece of content that offers little value. The focus is on making valuable materials your audience can discover themselves while they browse.

Today, outbound marketing strategies (marketing tactics that interrupt your audience) aren’t as effective at resonating with and converting audiences. This is where inbound, the opposite of outbound, shines.

A common way of using inbound is by creating a narrative for your content — or telling a story. In doing so, your content will feel more authentic, engaging, and tailored to your audience.

So, what defines content marketing anyway?

Why is content marketing important?

2024 HubSpot research shows that 29% of companies use content marketing.

Let’s explore some reasons companies do this.

1. Modern consumers prefer informational content over intrusive Ads.

Years back, the Content Marketing Institute found that 70% of consumers prefer to learn about a product or service via an article rather than an ad.

This is still true today because 44% of buyers consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with a vendor.

These stats suggest consumers like me would actively avoid unsolicited marketing messages, such as cold calling and paid ads.

For instance, I didn’t mind buying a YouTube Premium subscription to block interruptive ads.

And I’m not alone.

One study revealed 290 million people use ad blockers on their desktops.

2. Less costly but more effective lead generation method.

Demand Metric established that content marketing generates over three times more leads than outbound marketing and costs 62% less on average.

Anecdotal evidence proves this is still correct.

A popular entrepreneur, Alex Hormozi, recently revealed that he and his wife, Leila, spend about $70,000 monthly to produce 160 content pieces.

This content saves the Hormozis over $2 million that they’d have spent on paid ads to get leads.

Besides the Hormozis, 67% of B2B marketers say content marketing was an effective lead generation strategy in 2023.

3. Builds Brand Awareness

Content marketing expands your reach and increases your chances of being discovered by a new audience.

The result? You increase your brand recognition and recall.

To maximize this benefit, publish and distribute your content consistently.

4. Builds Trust and Establishes Brand Authority

Consistent sharing of educational content positions you as an expert advisor.

It shows your audience that you value them and are interested in their success.

This grows brand trust, keeps you top of mind, and makes your audience more likely to choose you when ready to make a purchase decision.

Content Marketing Statistics

In September 2023, HubSpot surveyed 1,400+ B2B and B2C marketers across 14 countries and 23 industries. Here is some of what they said:

• 30% of marketers will start using short-form videos in 2024.
• 56% of marketers using TikTok will increase their investment next year, the highest on any platform.
• 45% of marketers use AI for ideas and inspiration, 31% create outlines, 18% to draft their content, and 6% use AI to write content.
• 14% of marketers say creating content that generates leads is one of their top challenges.
• 87% of social sellers say social selling is effective, and 59% say they made more sales on social media in 2023 than 2022.
• 24% of marketers with effective strategies in 2023 list increasing revenue and sales as their top goal for 2024.
• 16% of marketers plan to try experiential marketing (engaging audiences in real life.
• with pop-ups and events) and influencer marketing for the first time.

To get more insights, download the 2024 State of Marketing Report.

Now let’s look at types of content marketing.

Types of Content Marketing

There are many types of content marketing you can incorporate into your strategy. Here are some of the most common.

1. Online Content Marketing

Online content marketing refers to any material you publish online, but more specifically, it refers to your web pages.

A strong online content marketing strategy will help you rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The outcome? You get in front of the right people at the right time.

HubSpot’s homepage is one example. This page immediately engages visitors with specific content about our products.

2. Social Media Content Marketing

With over 4.5 billion global social media users, it’s easy to understand why many businesses invest in social media marketing.

There are many platforms to work with, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, X, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Each platform offers several ways to create and share content, such as photos, live videos, pre-recorded videos, and stories.

Featured Resource: Social Media Content Calendar

3. Infographic Content Marketing

Infographics display content, information, and data in an easy-to-understand graphic format. With a mix of simple wording, short statements, and clear images, infographics are a great way to communicate your content effectively. They work well if you’re trying to simplify an educational or complex topic so all audience members can understand it.

Featured Resource: 15 Free Infographic Templates

4. Blog Content Marketing

Blogs are a powerful type of inbound content that allows you to be creative in your choice of topic and writing.

With a blog, you can promote your related content with links, add social share buttons, and incorporate product information.

Featured Resource: Start a Successful Blog

5. Podcast Content Marketing

Experts predict that over 71 million people will listen to podcasts in 2025.

That’s 10 million more than the current listeners across the Spotify and Apple Podcast platforms. For this reason, many businesses and media outlets create and share their own podcasts.

Podcasts allow for a lot of creativity, as they can be about any topic of choice.

Plus, you decide on other factors related to the podcast. These factors include the cadence of episodes, podcast guests, where you advertise the podcast, and each episode’s length.

Featured Resource: How to Start a Podcast

6. Video Content Marketing

According to Wyzowl research, 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.

Video marketing can help build a strong bond with your audience, boost conversions, and improve ROI. You may choose to share your video content on social media platforms, landing pages, or on a co-marketer’s website.

Featured Resource: The Ultimate Video Marketing Starter Pack

7. Paid Ad Content Marketing

Paid ads can help you reach a broad audience and allow you to position yourself in all the places you want to be seen — paid ads are especially beneficial when paired with inbound marketing.

There are many places you can share paid ads, including on social media, landing pages, banners, and sponsored content.

Featured Resource: The Ultimate Google Ads PPC Kit

Content Marketing and SEO

When creating content for your blog, making it helpful is a start.

However, “helpful content” is not enough to guarantee online visibility. A 2023 report by Ahrefs shows that 96.55% of content gets no organic search traffic from Google.

To join the winning 3.45%, you may need to invest in SEO. SEO is the optimizing of a website to make it visible in the results of search engines like Google and Bing.

Implementing SEO is beneficial for your content because 85.19% of all blog traffic comes from organic search. Our State of Marketing also shows SEO (16%) and content marketing (14%) are the two top channels that drive the biggest ROI.

To attract traffic from organic search, I recommend you learn how to create an SEO strategy. That said, below are some high-level tips for bolstering your content marketing efforts using SEO.

• Start a blog. Having a blog on your website increases your indexed pages, which improves your chances of ranking on Google.

• Conduct keyword research. Identify terms or phrases your target audience is likely to use when searching for information.

• Create high-quality content. Google prioritizes content that provides value to users. Such content must also satisfy a user’s search intent. My recommendation? Aim to create content that wins you a heap of praise from readers. Then, strategically incorporate related keywords and do on-page SEO to improve your ranking chances.

• Build backlinks. Backlinks refer to links from other websites that point to your site. They’re historically considered a major Google ranking factor. Google recently claimed it’s deemphasizing backlinks as a ranking factor. However, a recent Backlinko study reveals that pages with lots of backlinks (still) rank above pages with fewer backlinks.

Content Marketing and Social Media

Beyond SEO, social media is another channel brands use to distribute their content. Data from our 2024 State of Marketing Report shows:

• Social media shopping tools (e.g., Instagram Shops) drive 16% ROI.
• 14% of marketers want to sell directly on social media.
• Facebook (29%), Instagram (29%), YouTube (26%), and TikTok (24%) have the strongest ROI.

Like blogging, social media is easy to set up. Unfortunately, many brands go about it the wrong way.

Here are a few tips to help you nail your social media marketing game.

Don’t use social media for overt product promotion only.

Smart marketers use social media to interact with their audience. They also use it to build an online community around their brand.

Whatever your goal is, remember to stick to the basics of content marketing. Prioritize helpful educational content over intrusive promotional content.

Focus on a few high-impact channels.

From text-based platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to video-based platforms like YouTube and TikTok, there are over a dozen social media platforms in the market.

And it’s tempting to focus on all of them. But this approach will prove ineffective unless you have a huge budget and team.

Alternatively, research the social media platforms that your target audience uses frequently. Then, focus on about three of them.

Infuse humor and personality.

Audiences crave funny content.

According to our State of Consumer Trends Report, it’s the number one type of content they want the most from the brands they patronize.

It’s difficult to inject humor into long-form articles while maintaining professionalism. However, it’s easier to achieve this on social media. Here’s an example from our social media team:

Next, let’s talk about how content marketing works and look at some content marketing examples.

How does content marketing work?

Content marketers attract an audience with compelling stories and by sharing valuable information. They also use content channels to build community.

So, content marketing for business isn’t just a technique or strategy but a unique form of communication. With that in mind, people have different needs at different stages in the buying process.

To make sure your content meets a need at every stage, you’ll want to think about your conversion funnel.

Top of the Funnel (TOFU)

The top of the funnel is to build awareness with your content.

At this stage, your target audience might know they have a problem, but they aren’t sure how to solve it. As such, you can focus on broad pain points and common questions.

TOFU content should pull potential customers in to help them better understand a specific problem. This gives you a relevant opportunity to introduce them to your solution.

Common challenges for TOFU content include competition, balancing educational and promotional content, and tracking ROI.

To address these issues, create a content strategy that grabs the attention of a specific audience. Your strategy will also help you create a plan that aligns content topics and formats with business goals.

Then, create a list of KPIs to track your content performance.

Useful content types at the top of the funnel include:

• Blog posts.
• Social media posts.
• Short-form video.
• Podcasts.
• Infographics.
• Checklists.
• Ebooks.
• Webinars.
• Video ads.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

Once a prospect passes to the middle of the funnel, they’re considering your product. They may have visited your site more than once, or they’re engaging with your social media accounts. They might have signed up for your email newsletter.

MOFU content should build a relationship with that person. At this point, they understand their problem and are comparing possible solutions.

So, your content should educate them on the specifics of your solution and show how it meets their unique needs.

This is also an important moment to build trust. A prospect might not be ready to buy, so pay attention to changes in user behavior.

It can be tempting to make assumptions or go for a quick conversion, but that can damage the relationship. Instead, offer in-depth information and value to nurture your lead.

Great middle-of-funnel content types include:

• Email newsletters.
• Product demos.
• Landing pages.
• White papers.
• Case studies.
• Longer-form videos.
• Blog posts.
• Interactive content.
• Webinars.

You may have heard that social media is just top-of-funnel content.

However, more users are making purchases on social media, and it’s also a popular channel for customer service and support.

So, be sure to create MOFU social posts and let prospects know you’re ready to help them on this channel.

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

Bottom-of-funnel content helps your prospect decide and, ideally, convert.

This stage focuses on conversion. BOFU content should make it easy to test a product, understand pricing, and make a purchase.

Content that converts should drive action and create a sense of urgency. Prepare to respond to common objections and other blockers that can impact sales with your content.

Personalization can add to the impact of your content at this stage. Creating powerful CTAs is also important.

Bottom-of-funnel content types include:

• Personalized emails.
• User-generated content, like customer testimonials.
• Case studies.
• Pricing pages.
• Competitor comparison blog posts.
• Video demos.
• White papers.
• Remarketing campaigns.

Check out this post for more on how to align your content with the buyer journey.

Now, let’s cover your content marketing strategy.

Implementing your strategy makes your content marketing efforts impactful. The result? You reach your target audience, convert leads, and generate sales.

Let’s dive into the steps you’ll want to work through in order to develop an effective content strategy.

1. Find your target audience.

Creating content for a broad audience sounds like a good idea. But it’s hard to stand out with content that appeals to everyone.

Instead, focus on a niche of people with specific interests and needs. This can help you build a community with your content. To get started, look at your buyer personas.

Then, answer the following questions about your target audience to help you narrow down the right content for them:

• What do they need from you?
• What challenges are they looking to overcome?
• Why do they need your product or service?
• How can you help them succeed?
• Where do they spend their time?

2. Set SMART goals.

The next part of your content marketing strategy is to set SMART goals. These should be specific to your business — they’ll likely complement your broader marketing strategy and company goals.

Here are some SMART goal examples and SMART goal templates to help you get started.

3. Determine your KPIs.

Next, set key performance indicators (KPIs) for your SMART goals. KPIs are quantifiable data points you can use to measure your actual performance against your goal.

SMART GOAL	RELATED KPI
Brand awareness	Site traffic, social media followers, subscription sign-ups, mentions (by customers and partners)
Revenue	Daily sales, site traffic
Conversions	Conversion rate, shopping cart abandonment rate, associated shipping rate trends, competitive price trends
Brand loyalty	Returning customers, promoters, product reviews, referrals
Customer engagement	Likes, shares, follows, mentions, backlinks
Rapport and trust	Returning customers, promoters, followers, mentions
Strategic partners	New partnerships, mentions, backlinks

4. Decide on the type of content and content formats.

Next, you want to choose the type of content you’ll create and your top content formats.

Types of content are the broad categories of content you plan to produce. Content formats are the specific presentation methods within a content type.

For example, blog posts are a content type. But, a blog can include content formats like listicles, how-tos, thought leadership, product reviews, and more.

To get started, run a content audit to see what kind of content is already resonating with your customers.

You may also want to do some competitive analysis and look at industry trends. This research can help you figure out what content strategy will work best for your business.

Then, look back at the various content we reviewed earlier and your target audience research to decide on content types and formats.

5. Choose your content channels.

Once you’ve decided on the type of content you’ll market with, it’s time to choose your specific content channels.

Where will you share your content? Where will it live and be shared from?

For some of the content types, the channel you need to work with will be obvious. For example, if you’re creating Facebook content, your channel will be the social platform itself.

6. Set a budget.

Now, set your budget. Think about the type of content you’re creating and which channels you’re marketing that content on.

Then, ask yourself the following questions to figure out your budget:

• Do you need to purchase any software or technology to create the content? Think about tools like Adobe Photoshop, a subscription to Canva, or a camera to take high-quality photos and videos.
• Do you need to hire any content marketers or designers (such as artists, writers, editors, designers)?
• Do you need to pay for ad space?
• Do you need access to specific tools or resources to enhance or measure your specific type of content?

Make note of how your responses impact your budget — whether that’s an increase or decrease in what you may have already estimated.

7. Create a content publishing schedule.

To ensure you’re consistently producing content and sharing it with your prospects and customers, use a social media calendar or an editorial content calendar.

This will help your team stay on top of all the content your team is creating as well as allow you to schedule it ahead of time.

Use a free editorial calendar to schedule and optimize your marketing content and help boost conversions.

8. Create and distribute the content.

Create and distribute your content so your audience members can consume it — and possibly convert.

This step is about more than creating high-quality content. Keep learning to make your content useful and engaging. Practice writing headlines, make the most of the latest content trends, and build skills in the media that your audience favors.

Next, optimize your content so it’s easy for your audience to find. SEO is a useful skill for searchability. And, every social media platform is unique, so check out tips to succeed on channels like Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

Finally, promote your content on email, social media, and more. Connect with influencers, build co-marketing partnerships, and post ads to get more eyes on your best content.

9. Analyze and measure results.

Lastly, analyze and measure your results. Figure out what’s not working and make adjustments to enhance your content marketing efforts and reach your audience.

Look at your SMART goals and KPIs to track the success of your content marketing strategy. Did you achieve your goals and KPIs? Were you close to reaching them, or were you off in your estimations?

Here are some tools to help you with your content marketing strategy analytics and results:

• HubSpot Marketing Analytics Software.
• HubSpot Social Media Management Software.
• Mention.
• SharedCount.
• Sprout Social.
• Google Analytics.

Now, let’s look at some content marketing examples.

Content Marketing Examples

The following examples will give you a better understanding of how you can incorporate content into your marketing strategy.

1. Example of Instagram Content Marketing

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Glossier’s Instagram account is on-brand and complements the rest of its marketing content. Even if the page didn’t say “Glossier” anywhere on the profile, customers would likely still know the profile belongs to this brand.

The Instagram page shares the Glossier product line, displays different products, and shows how to use each product. The profile feels and looks uniquely Glossier and depicts members of their wide customer base.

2. Example of Infographic Content Marketing

HubSpot created this infographic to show how people can get more blog subscribers. The infographic is on-brand, well-organized, and easy to read. It clearly shares information about the topic in a digestible manner.

3. Example of Blog Content Marketing

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Expedia has a blog that shares travel-related information. The brand publishes hotel recommendations, great places to visit, and travel activities to explore around the globe.

Expedia regularly publishes its blog content to keep readers interested and engaged. It includes a wide range of topics related to any type of trip you could imagine.

The blog is on-brand, and all articles relate to the travel technology company’s goal and mission of boosting brand awareness and gaining customers.

They do this by linking to their services and writing about customers who have already had positive experiences with the company.

Pro tip: You can create on-brand blog posts with the help of HubSpot’s Free AI Content Writer.

4. Example of Podcast Content Marketing

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Harvard Business Review (HBR) has a weekly podcast called HBR IdeaCast, which features industry leaders in both business and management. You can either subscribe to receive their hundreds of podcasts or pick those you want to listen to.

The podcast is on-brand and complements the rest of HBR’s published content.

It also serves as a great way for HBR to connect with their target audience, enhance brand awareness, and gain more followers through a medium that differs from their typical work (e.g., podcast versus HBR article).

5. Example of Video Content Marketing

Much of Dollar Shave Club’s video content has gone viral. Their marketing efforts are on-brand, humorous, and entertaining.

By establishing a name for itself via online video content, Dollar Shave Club has experienced impressive growth and brand recognition.

6. Example of Paid Ad Content Marketing

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Revolve — a clothing and accessories company — uses paid and sponsored ads on social media (like this one on Facebook) to reach their target audience while they browse their news feeds.

The content ads feature some of their products and details about their free shipping and return policy to drive target audience members to their site (and, hopefully, convert them into paying customers).

HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant can help you craft a marketing campaign for your preferred platform. Powered by AI, you can tell the software about your campaign and choose a tone of voice that aligns with your brand.

With just a few clicks, you’ll receive compelling copy that highlights your unique selling points and includes the desired CTA.

7. Example of X Content Marketing

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HubSpot uses X (formerly Twitter) to market software as well as create a community among customers, target audience members, and industry leaders and experts.

HubSpot shares product information, relevant tips, industry knowledge, and original research on X. HubSpot also interacts with users and makes sure anyone in need of customer support knows exactly where to go for help.

8. Example of TikTok Content Marketing

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Chipotle is an active brand on TikTok — the company uses the platform to reach and engage its customers and target audience members.

Besides reacting to others’ Chipotle-related TikTok content, the brand posts TikToks of their menu items, recipes, people enjoying their food, their restaurants, and more. They have over 2.3 million followers and over 53 million likes.

9. Example of Viral Content Marketing

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This viral content marketing example was one that came from a TikTok video. Nathan Apodaca’s original TikTok video included him sipping Ocean Spray cranberry juice while skateboarding and listening to “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac.

Because of the viral video, TikTok used part of Apodaca’s video in their ads, and Ocean Spray used Apodaca in their ads.

As a result, Ocean Spray saw a bump in sales and brand awareness, Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was number one on iTunes, and there were thousands of videos posted by other TikTok users who bought the cranberry juice and recreated Apodaca’s original video.

Traits of Effective Content Marketing

With so many companies creating and publishing content online, it’s essential to go beyond the bare minimum.

A secret?

HubSpot strives to meet the following criteria to make sure our content meets our readers’ needs. The result? Millions of visits to our blog posts and web pages per month.

You can achieve similar results for your company if your content:

1. Provides value beyond your product offerings.

Content marketing isn’t just about sharing your products to get readers to become customers.

It’s important to offer value that empowers your customers to execute tasks more efficiently, such as making their businesses more profitable or shortening their morning routine.

Whatever the case may be, strive to create content that gives a solution for your customers’ most urgent needs.

Your product may be a solution, but if you’re not explicitly writing a product page, you should only incorporate product mentions if they make sense.

In the blog post below, hair care brand Curlsmith helps readers understand how to reach the right balance between high-protein and high-moisture products.

It doesn’t mention its products until the very end; instead, it educates the reader first.

2. Targets readers’ specific buying journey stage.

Providing value and answering customers’ needs is only a part of the story. In each piece of content, you should also target your customers’ specific buyer’s journey stage.

There are three stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, and decision. In the awareness stage, buyers are still researching their issues.

In the consideration stage, they’re researching solutions. In the decision stage, they’re about to pick a provider.

If you’re writing a “What is [X]?” post, then the person who’s reading that article is likely not ready to decide about their provider. They are still in the awareness stage, completing research so that they can find out who offers a solution.

Conversely, if you’re writing a product page, the reader who visits that page has already researched potential products and found you as a possible provider.

That means you should pitch your product at every turn, reiterating your value proposition and differentiating yourself from the competition.

For example, Perfame isn’t shy about highlighting its products’ most valuable features. It claims it makes handcrafted and affordable perfumes that have a higher concentration of oils.

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3. Demonstrates a consistent brand voice and image.

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No matter if you’re creating a blog post, web page, or ebook, your visitors should be able to tell who you are immediately upon consuming your content.

Your brand shouldn’t sound as if ten different people are writing for you, even if that may be the case.

That’s why it’s critical to create both a writing style guide and a brand style guide. Both documents will confirm that:

• Your brand visuals look the same across all platforms and devices.
• Your brand tone and voice sound the same across all written communications.

Once you create both, share them with your content writers and your freelance or in-house designers.

Your content marketing publications will be much more cohesive and consistent, which will keep readers coming back to you as a resource and make you look more polished and professional.

4. It’s timely and engaging.

Do your customers typically plan their financials at the start of the year?

If you’re a finance startup, you might publish a blog post in January about budgeting quarter-over-quarter to prevent clerical errors and avoid overspending.

At the end of the post, you might include a prompt to check out your software or lead users to a template they can download after providing their email.

This is one example of content marketing that is timely and engaging. If you know your customers’ behavioral and spending patterns throughout the year, it’s critical to capitalize on that.

Publish blog posts and offers that capture them at the right time and answer their immediate needs. You’ll be ahead of the companies that publish similar content later on — and oftentimes, being first is all you need to win a customer over.

Now that we’ve seen the top traits of effective content marketing, let’s dive into the best resources you can use to learn more about it.

There are thousands of tools today that qualify as excellent content marketing resources. For the sake of this article, we’re going to keep things simple by providing a handful of our favorite options.

1. HubSpot Academy offers free education on how to become an effective content marketer.
2. HubSpot’s Free Content Creation Resources gives you access to resources that will propel your content marketing strategy toward success.
3. Content Marketing Institute has some of the best content marketing online education, print, and events available today.
4. Blog articles on content marketing, trends, strategies, and tips by industry experts (like HubSpot).
5. Podcasts about content marketing, such as This Old Marketing, or business trends, such as HBR IdeaCast, can inspire your content marketing strategy.
6. Google Trends allows you to search for trends across broad topics like content marketing or for niche topics within content marketing.
7. Ebooks and case studies have insights about content marketing or content marketing strategies, like this one by Mention.
8. You can track the latest content marketing statistics on a reputable database source like Statista.
9. Easy to use visual content and design software, such as Canva.
10. Free or paid social media management tools, such as HubSpot, Buffer, or Sprout Social, to help you create and share your social content.
11. Free or paid content and project management tools, like Trello or Asana, can help you plan and organize your content marketing strategy.
12. Free or paid marketing software connects your content marketing team, plan, strategy, and results to your greater marketing plan (and even your CRM).
13. Free or paid email marketing software, like HubSpot or Mailchimp, handles all aspects of your email campaigns and content.
14. Your network on platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn lets you connect with those in your industry to discuss relevant trends, answer each other’s questions, and provide or ask for feedback.

And speaking of tapping into your networks on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, here’s some inspiration from a few of the greatest content marketers to follow on both platforms today.

3 Content Marketers to Follow on LinkedIn

1. Luvvie Ajayi Jones

Luvvie Ajayi Jones is a best-selling author, digital strategist, podcast host, and speaker. She’s known for combining humor with her experiences and background in marketing, communications, and new media.

Her LinkedIn content inspires people on topics like work culture, authenticity, leadership, content, marketing strategy, and more.

2. Zontee Hou

Zontee Hou is a digital marketer, strategist, speaker, and consultant.

She works with scaling companies to help them establish effective marketing strategies that work for their unique goals and audiences.

On her LinkedIn profile, Hou shares her expertise in content marketing, social media marketing, marketing analytics, and digital marketing.

3. A. Lee Judge

Lee Judge is a co-founder and digital marketing strategist at Content Monsta.

He’s also a podcast and video producer, speaker, and rev ops practitioner.

On his LinkedIn profile, he covers a wide range of topics related to lead generation, social media marketing, how to apply marketing analytics and data, digital experiences, multi-channel marketing, the importance of sales and marketing alignment, and more.

3 Content Marketers to Follow on X

4. Ann Handley

Ann Handley, Head of Content at MarketingProfs, is a bestselling author and speaker. She offers education and training around marketing that businesses can learn from and apply.

She offers in-person and virtual training for companies on content marketing, storytelling, lead generation, and branding — topics she also discusses and shares content about on her X page.

5. Neil Patel

Neil Patel is a bestselling author, marketing expert, speaker, and website and SEO consultant. He’s a thought leader and industry expert in content and digital marketing.

His X page includes information about his training and services, industry trends, marketing strategy tips and resources, and questions/conversational topics meant to engage followers and other industry experts.

6. Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is a marketing strategist, author, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcast host, and the chief evangelist of Canva.

On his X account, Kawasaki asks followers thought-provoking business questions and provides links to and information about new podcast episodes, industry trends, marketing strategy tips, and insights based on his experiences.

Engage Your Target Audience With Content Marketing

With effective content marketing, you can reach your target audience and increase conversions.

There are several ways to market with content to boost revenue, grow your brand awareness and recognition, and build relationships with your prospects and customers.

And don’t forget to extract more value from every piece of content you create.

To get started, decide which type of content works best for your business and audience and develop a content marketing strategy to begin boosting your bottom line today.

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

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Simplify growth with an all-in-one platform. Powerful marketing, sales, and support automation. Integrated CMS. Scalable software. Crafted for customer experience.

Driving traffic to your website is just the first step in sustaining your business. You must reliably convert those visitors into customers, and that’s where conversion rate optimization tools come in.

The list below outlines many helpful conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools to help you gain new customers and improve your bottom line.

From high-level changes like landing page and email design and inspiration to in-depth insights into how your visitors navigate your content, these tools will help you turn your site into a conversion machine.

To help you understand the tools and their uses, we’ve also broken this list into a few major categories:

• Lead Capture Tools
• Research Tools
• CRO Analytics Tools
• Mouse Tracking and Heat Maps
• Feedback Tools
• Experiment Tools
• How to Shop for Conversion Rate Optimization Tools
• The Benefits of CRO Analytics Tools

Ready? Let’s start converting.

Lead Capture Tools

You will use these tools to capture more leads on your site, thus improving your CRO analytics.

While most conversion-focused content has a built-in form or call-to-action (CTA), these tools act as additional lead capture mechanisms to boost the number of leads that convert on your content.

1. HubSpot

Get started with HubSpot’s CTA Tool

It’s Google Analytics meets SumoMe meets a CRM. Sounds cool, right? It starts with an exit intent pop-up CTA, then syncs with your website’s existing forms to learn about your site visitors and their path through your pages.

HubSpot’s tools give you in-depth contact insights on prospects and current contacts in your database.

It also pairs its contacts database with a dashboard that shows you a high-level view of which marketing efforts are paying off and converting and which ones aren’t.

What we like: HubSpot is an all-in-one solution that allows you to convert customers and nurture them throughout their entire lifecycle. The CTA Tool will enable you to create conversion points for leads in seconds.

Pricing: Free

2. HelloBar

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HelloBar is a lead capture tool that allows you to add a pop-up form to your website to grow your email list, promote your social pages, showcase a sale, or other lead generation strategies.

The free version allows you to create one modal that’s shown to every 10th visitor. However, premium plans offer more advanced CTA options. Pop-up styles range from bars, modals, alerts, sliders, and full-page takeovers.

What we like: Hello Bar’s practical and easy-to-use pop-ups are backed by analytics and optimization features.

Pricing

• Starter — Free
• Growth — $29 a month
• Premium — $49 a month
• Elite — $99 a month

3. Sumo

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Sumo offers a suite of free tools to help you increase your site conversions. For lead capture, it provides a “Welcome Mat” pop-up CTA, a “Smart Bar” to increase email subscribers, a scroll-triggered box, and a “Contact Us” form.

Along with their Google Analytics research tools, the Sumo suite helps you gain on-page insights and increase your email list.

Best for: Small- to medium-sized ecommerce businesses looking for an all-encompassing suite of CRO tools.

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Pro — $39 a month

4. Picreel

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Picreel is a versatile conversion rate optimization tool that helps capture leads and maximize conversions through engaging pop-ups.

The tool’s exit-intent technology lets you target leaving visitors with attractive offers and convince them to share their contact details.

The data collected is automatically pushed to your integrated CRM account, where leads can be nurtured and converted.

The exit overlays can be enriched with personalized messages based on visitors’ click behavior and previous purchases.

What we like: Picreel features many useful integrations with CRMs, like HubSpot and Salesforce, and email marketing systems, such as MailChimp and Adobe Marketo Engage.

Pricing: $49.97 a month

Research Tools

Before you create any content, call upon these tools to draw inspiration and check out what other intelligent marketers have seen success with in the past.

5. BuzzSumo

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The best content gets shared and linked the most. So, what better way to gain preliminary insights than to compile all of the most shared content on your particular topic?

With BuzzSumo, all you have to do is enter the keyword or topic. Then, it’ll pull together the most shared and linked content on that topic. Time frames range from the last day, week, month, or year.

So if you’re trying to optimize the landing page for your new webinar on cat fashion, all you have to do is enter “cat fashion.” BuzzSumo will then give you the best articles, resources, videos, and more on the fascinating topic of cat couture.

BuzzSumo also features a keyword tool, trend analysis, and other valuable features to supercharge your content research and CRO.

Best for: Content marketers looking to stay on trend and ahead of the competition.

Pricing

• Basic — $119 a month
• Content Creation — $249 a month
• PR & Comms — $249 a month
• Suite — $499 a month
• Enterprise — $999 a month

6. SimilarWeb

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Knowing where your website visitors come from can (and should) significantly impact the type of content you create.

With SimilarWeb, you can see where your traffic is coming from, which keywords fuel your organic traffic, and what other sites are most similar to yours.

You can also compare analytics to determine the website conversion optimization by looking over data.

With this information, you can optimize content for your most significant traffic sources and dig in to see what competitor sites are doing to drive conversions.

Best for: Teams with a generous marketing intelligence budget looking for best-in-class digital traffic data.

Pricing

• Starter — $125 a user per month
• Professional — $333 a user per month
• Team — pricing upon request
• Enterprise — Pricing upon request

7. Land-book

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Getting started can be difficult if you’re creating a landing page from scratch.

Luckily, there’s Land-book, a free collection of the web’s best-designed landing pages.

With Land-book, you can explore how top companies use copy, positioning, layout, and design to drive conversions. Pick and choose your favorite elements from the Land-book database and incorporate them into your landing page.

Pro tip: Land-book has more than just landing pages. Use the site’s filters to view blogs, stores, portfolios, and other pages. You can even sort by industry, color, typography, and style.

Pricing: Free

8. Really Good Emails

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In today’s marketing landscape, if you want to get your message across, you’d better know a thing or two about visual communication and design.

Don’t know a thing or two about either? Enter Really Good Emails.

Like Land-book, Really Good Emails is a database of the web’s best-designed emails from the world’s most innovative companies.

Use this as a resource to see how you can design your email to get your message across in the best way possible, as fast as possible.

(Check out this post for even more resources to find great marketing examples.)

Best for: Email marketers and designers looking for inspiration on their upcoming blasts.

Pricing: Free

9. SubjectLine.com

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When sending an email, the subject line can either make or break your performance. Before you choose which one to send, check them out using this excellent resource.

SubjectLine.com has tested over 15 million subject lines and has a tool to evaluate your potential options. It gives a deliverability and marketing score, plus advice on improving.

What we like: Their new ChatGPT integration lets you leverage the power of AI to create compelling subject lines, even when you have writer’s block.

Pricing: Free

10. Attrock Headline Analyzer

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Attrock’s Headline Analyzer is a tool that helps you analyze the effectiveness of your headlines by giving them a score between 1 and 100.

It looks at the headline type, readability, sentiment analysis, and more to help you create a click-worthy headline for your pages.

The tool also suggests improvements that you can make to your current headline to improve its score, which, in turn, can help drive more significant traffic to the page and boost conversions.

Best for: Content marketers who want to ensure their headlines are click-worthy and optimized for SEO.

Pricing: Free

11. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

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CoSchedule’s headline analyzer gives a score of 1–100 to gauge the effectiveness of titles. The score is calculated based on word usage, grammar, vocabulary, type of headline, and character and word count.

The tool shows you your headline on Google and in an email subject line. This tool is a great litmus test to determine how well your headline will perform.

Pro tip: Consider running your headline through both CoSchedule and Attrock’s headline analyzer tools to determine the most valuable results.

Pricing: Free

CRO Analytics Tools

You will use these tools to measure and track your content’s performance.

You can use CRO analytics to comprehensively analyze your conversion rate’s dips, jumps, and fluctuations.

12. Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is a powerful analytics tool that illuminates people’s behaviors on your website and lets you leverage that data to increase revenue.

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With Kissmetrics, you can learn the path your customers have taken through your website. You can also conduct A/B tests, build data sets (without SQL), perform website conversion optimization, and assess the ROI from your campaigns.

What we like: Simplicity. Kissmetrics empowers non-technical teams with insights and analytics that increase conversions.

Pricing

• Silver — $199 a month
• Gold — $499 a month
• Platinum — Custom pricing

13. Google Analytics

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Google Analytics is a free way to track your website visitors. You can see how long it takes visitors to bounce from your pages, if they complete goals from a specific path, and which sources bring people to your website.

What’s great about Google Analytics is that it lets you see which keywords people use to find your page, what devices they’re searching on, and uncover demographic data.

However, no specific emails or contact information are associated with your site visitors.

Pro tip: Google Analytics free tools are incredibly useful for 99.99% of teams. Their premium offering, Analytics 360, is costly and only recommended for large enterprises.

Pricing

• Free
• Enterprise pricing upon request

14. HubSpot Website Grader

Website Grader is a great way to get a quick snapshot of a website’s overall performance.

It gives insights into performance factors (speed, page size, and page requests), mobile responsiveness and appearance, SEO (page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and site map), and security.

It’s great for website conversion optimization.

From there, the tool devises a grade and provides suggestions on improving, making it easy to come up with some quick wins that’ll help you boost conversions.

What we like: HubSpot’s tool not only shows areas for improvement but it also offers actionable suggestions to make them better.

Pricing: Free

Mouse Tracking and Heat Mapping Tools

You will use these tools to see how people interact with your content, including how they scroll and where they click.

15. Hotjar

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Once you’ve nailed the basics, like landing pages, CTAs, pop-ups, and content, you’re ready for more advanced conversion rate optimization.

Hotjar offers heatmaps and screen recordings. They enable you to track how much your page is viewed and how visitors navigate your website.

Hotjar also offers analytics to see how well your pages are performing. This is helpful to see what’s working and what you can change to increase conversion.

Pro tip: Use heatmaps to visualize where your users click, move, and scroll, and use that information to place conversion points in attention-grabbing areas

Pricing

• Basic — Free
• Plus — $32 a month
• Business — $80 a month
• Scale — $171 a month

16. Mouseflow

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Website design and conversion rate optimization are entirely based on how you understand your target customer. With Mouseflow, you see where users are engaging or dropping off on your site and identify areas of frustration.

In addition to conversion funnels and session replay, Mouseflow offers a full suite of tools, including heatmaps, form analytics, and feedback.

By using these tools, you can better understand your visitors and make the necessary changes to improve your conversion rate.

What we like: The Friction Score feature helps you quickly identify user frustration on your site to improve UX, better UI, and ultimately increase conversions.

Pricing

• Free plan
• Starter — $31 a month
• Growth — $109 a month
• Business — $219 a month
• Pro — $399 a month
• Contact for enterprise pricing

17. Contentsquare (formerly Clicktale)

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Contentsquare (formerly known as Clicktale) is similar to Hotjar.

It offers heat maps to help you determine the most valuable real estate on your pages, scroll depth (where is the “fold” on your website?), click tracking, link analysis, and much more.

Using these tools, you’ll have the information you need to organize content, CTAs, and page design in a way that makes the most sense for engagement. They also offer AI-powered insights that give automatic alerts and recommendations.

Best for: Organizations looking to invest in improving user experience on their site.

Pricing: Upon request

18. Clicky

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Clicky gives you real-time analytics on the visitors to your website. It tells you where people access your site, how long they’ve stayed on each page, and how many visitors are online. The resource also offers heat maps and scroll tracking.

Clicky is an excellent one-stop shop for customer behavior. You’ll have multiple formats at your disposal to leverage for optimizing the performance of your website — so you can convert as many leads as possible.

What we like: Clicky’s Spy feature gives you a real-time stream of visitor activity on your website. Real time, as in right now!

Pricing

• Free plan
• Pro — $9.99 a month
• Pro Plus — $14.99 a month
• Pro Platinum -— $19.99 a month
• Enterprise pricing upon request

19. Crazy Egg

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Crazy Egg offers a full suite of heat maps and click tracking, with the additional functionality of segmenting clicks by source and evaluating link effectiveness.

The basic package is relatively inexpensive and gives significant insights into how effective each website page is.

Best for: Companies that value a user-friendly interface in their website and conversion rate optimization tools.

Pricing

• Basic — $29 month
• Standard — $49 month
• Plus — $99 month
• Pro — $249 month
• Enterprise pricing upon request

20. Heatmap.com

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Heatmap.com is, as you may have guessed, another heat mapping and analytics tool designed to help you improve your website’s usability with actionable insights.

Heatmap.com offers real-time analytics to better understand what areas of your site are getting the most attention and which are causing user frustration and bottlenecks.

What we like: Heatmap.com’s AI-modeling features help identify areas of your site that are Revenue Drivers and Conversion Killers so you can take action in real time.

Pricing

• Basic — $47 a month
• Business — $89 a month
• Enterprise pricing upon request

Feedback Tools

You’ll use these tools to engage and receive feedback from your visitors.

Feedback tools include surveys, polls, messaging, and user testing programs.

21. Intercom

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Intercom is a popular conversion platform that allows companies to communicate directly with website visitors through easy-to-install and attractive pop-up chat windows.

As a CRO analytics tool, you can use Intercom to communicate with website prospects to learn if they need additional help, find out how their experience is going, and understand how you can improve.

It also allows you to track leads and use a shared inbox with your team.

Best for: Teams that want to engage more directly with their website visitors.

Pricing

• Starter — $74 a month
• Pro — custom pricing
• Premium — custom pricing

22. Qualaroo

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Qualaroo is a powerful user feedback tool that lets you deploy chat windows and targeted feedback questionnaires directly in your website or mobile app.

The Qualaroo tool is helpful at all stages of the funnel and is frequently used in ecommerce.

Advanced targeting features allow you to ask the right users the right questions at the right time, which is paramount for CRO.

Other features include branching logic, design customization, and sentiment analysis with its built-in IBM Watson integration.

Best for: Businesses looking to leverage qualitative insights and user feedback to optimize conversions

Pricing

• Essentials — $69 a month
• Premium — $149 a month
• Business — $299 a month

23. SurveyMonkey

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SurveyMonkey is a powerhouse in the survey software space. They provide easy-to-use tools to create, deploy, analyze, and manage custom surveys.

SurveyMonkey helps you gather qualitative customer data to inform decisions on web page design, copy, user experience, and more.

What we like: SurveyMonkey’s skip-logic feature allows you to customize a survey based on a respondent’s previous answers, asking the right questions and improving CRO.

Pricing

Team Plans

• Team Advantage — $25 a user per month
• Team Premier — $75 a user per month
• Enterprise pricing upon request

Individual Plans

• Advantage — $39 a month
• Standard — $99 a month
• Premier — $119 a month

24. UsabilityHub

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UsabilityHub offers a suite of creative tools that give you insight into the user experience of your website, which is extremely valuable for CRO.

They provide navigation tests and funnel visualizations to identify where users drop off, heat maps, first-click testing, and more.

UsabilityHub is a valuable tool for organizations looking to go deep in usability research to optimize conversion.

What we like: Their Five Second Test tool helps you understand a user’s first impression of your site, which is critical for CRO.

Pricing

• Free plan available
• Basic — $89 a month
• Pro — $199 a month
• Enterprise pricing upon request

Experiment Tools

You’ll use these tools to manage, plan, and execute A/B and multivariate tests.

Some of these tools will help you turn ideas into experiments, while others will help you create the variations and run the actual tests on your site.

25. Optimizely

Testing is hard.

You must develop a suitable control group, find a large sample, and determine if your experiment is statistically significant.

Luckily, Optimizely helps with all of that and more.

With Optimizely, you conduct tests across all devices and platforms, then determine significance. The software offers A/B, multiple-page, and multivariate tests.

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Optimizely’s software gives you a full, robust test results report (example above).

Whether it’s coming up with a new headline, swapping in a new CTA, or rearranging your page layout, Optimizely allows you to test those changes and assess their impact on conversions.

Best for: Businesses focusing on experimentation who want to make data-informed decisions.

Pricing: Available upon request

26. Effective Experiments

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Effective Experiments offers a centralized space for your CRO experimentation efforts. If you have tons of Excel spreadsheets cross-referenced with Google Analytics data, you’re probably going crazy trying to keep track of everything.

This tool puts it all together and helps you determine statistical significance.

Best for: CRO teams looking to consolidate insights across multiple tools into a single, easy-to-use platform

Pricing

• Know — $125 a month
• Flow — $255 a month
• Show — $319 a month
• Grow — contact for pricing

How to Shop for Conversion Rate Optimization Tools

It can be hard to shop for the best conversion rate optimization tools, so we gathered together these five tips to keep in mind:

1. Sign up for trials before making a decision.
2. Be thorough when searching for reviews.
3. Go for quality, not quantity, when it comes to price.
4. Ask other marketers what they are using.
5. Read reports from other companies about CRO.

The Benefits of CRO Analytics Tools

There are several benefits of selecting CRO analytics tools. Some include:

• Being able to track ROI effectively.
• Using tools to create an engaging headline.
• Capture customer leads.
• Collect marketing research data.

Now, you’re armed and ready to start improving conversion rates across your website conversion optimization and marketing efforts.

These tools range from free and for beginners to robust and more advanced. Feel out which options seem right for you, and soon, you’ll be upgrading to the more complex tools when you’ve mastered the basics.

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

If Hubspot is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.