How to Create a Content Style Guide [+Free Guide & Examples]

If you write, edit, or manage content for a brand, you likely run into lengthy content discussions over everything from voice to exclamation marks and em dashes. At least, I’ve done my fair share of debates with colleagues over language preferences.

But is it trivial? I don’t think so. After all, there’s a difference between “you shall not pass” and “you shall not pass!” The latter gives me chills — Ian McKellen did a great job — but only if the writer hasn’t doused the webpage with exclamation marks.

In my years of having first-hand contact with content for HubSpot and other brands, I’ve found that each content creator comes with their own preferences. And while you can’t take those away from them, you can tell them what you like to reach common ground so they can represent your brand in their own way.

Now, you can either share your preferences with back-and-forth feedback over their draft, or you can prepare a content style guide that sets them in the right direction from the start.

I prefer the latter (less hand-holding!), so I’m going to share all I’ve learned about content style guides in this blog. As a bonus, I’ve also gathered insights from industry experts to help you make well-rounded decisions.

Table of Contents:

• What is a Content Style Guide?
• Style Guide vs. Brand Guide
• How to Create a Writing Style Guide
• What to Include in Your Style Guide [+ Checklist]
• What Not to Include in Your Style Guide
• How to Get Others to Use Your Style Guide
• Writing Style Guide Examples

What is a Content Style Guide?

A content style guide, also called an editorial style guide, is a document that sets the standard writing, grammar, and punctuation conventions people working for an organization should follow to maintain a consistent tone and style across its entire online presence.

Content style guides get down to the nitty-gritty. Yes, even whether you should capitalize the “a” after a colon.

Why are content style guides important?

While I love discussing language preferences, debating about the same thing over and over feels like solving a Rubik’s Cube with only one color — it’s repetitive and unproductive.

That’s why I recommend creating a content style guide if you’re working with freelance writers and editors (and even for in-house marketers). Specifically, it helps:

• Build a consistent brand voice. While you may want to connect with your audience on a personal level, each writer can have their own interpretation of what that entails. With a content style guide, I can fill the gaps with the exact tone of voice I’m looking for.
• Avoid common errors. HubSpot has always been spelled with a capital “H” and a capital “S” in between. That said, many external contributors used variations like “Hubspot” or “Hub spot” when I edited the HubSpot blog. With a content style guide, you can point out common errors to ensure they don’t go unnoticed.
• Improve collaboration between writers and editors. Having donned both the editor’s hat and the writer’s pen, I know that harsh feedback can be a blow to a writer’s confidence. With a detailed style guide, I've been able to address quality problems without pointing fingers.

Both guides play an important role in how potential consumers view, interact, and remember your brand.

Now that we’ve gone over the basics, let’s explore how I’d go about creating a content style guide for your brand.

1. Use a style guide template.

A writing style guide covers a lot of important content — from brand values to formatting guidelines. While you can take a stab at it by starting from scratch, I recommend using a tried-and-tested style guide template to get started.

If you want to get started quickly, consider using HubSpot’s free style guide template. It covers all the basics you need to get the brain juices flowing, and you can later expand upon it as you see fit.

Alternatively, you can check out the writing guide examples I’ve listed below and choose one as your starting point to customize it and make it your own.

2. Review your brand’s mission and values.

I usually find a brand’s mission statement and core values to be of great help whenever I start filling the style guide template. They give me a solid idea of how the brand aims to form connections with its audience.

For instance, if a brand stands for transparency, I believe that its style guide should promote adding accurate and transparent product descriptions instead of overselling or overhyping the products.

If what your brand says and what it practices doesn’t match up, readers can (and they will, trust me) see the disconnect — it’s like watching a TV show with bad lip-syncing.

Take it from Maddy Osman, founder of The Blogsmith, who knows how seriously brands should take conveying values like inclusivity through their content.

“We wanted our content practices to reflect what The Blogsmith stands for, and needed to find a way to get a team with diverse backgrounds on the same page,” says Osman.

To nurture these values, Maddy got the ball rolling by laying down clear-cut guidelines in her style guide.

“I sat down with team members to brainstorm what inclusivity would look like on paper — the things we normally don‘t account for in day-to-day speech. Whether it’s listing alternatives to outdated words like blacklist or manpower or examples of people-first language.”

Sharing brand values isn’t just talking the talk — it’s about walking the walk, and a style guide is a great roadmap to keeping everything in sync.

3. Create buyer personas for your target audience.

Imagine a conversation with a baby boomer and Gen Z-er. The way you communicate with them will likely be different. That’s why I love creating buyer personas to have a better idea of how to approach the target audience.

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional, research-based representation of your target customer. It includes their demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. If you haven’t created a buyer persona before, I recommend HubSpot’s persona generator to get started.

Amanda Price, content manager at Imagefix, is also totally on board: “Understanding who we're communicating with is just as important as understanding our brand itself.”

Price adds that with a fleshed-out buyer persona a style guide “stops being about abstract rules and starts being a proper and useful tool to build a real connection with our readers.”

Your editorial guide doesn’t need to go as in-depth into buyer personas as documents created for the sales and marketing teams. Still, I’ve learned that you need to include the following information on each persona at a minimum if you’re working with freelance writers:

• Brief explanation of the target audience.
• Pain points of the target audience.
• How the audience likes to be communicated with.
• The solutions your brand provides for the audience.
• The preferred writing style (formal, conversational, etc.).

With these details in the style guide, I provide ample context for the internal and external contributors to inform the content they’re writing.

4. Define your company’s voice and tone.

Once I determine my target audience, I start working on the tone and voice — which might appear confusing at first since they seem like identical concepts.

Here’s how I differentiate the two based on my experience:

• Voice. The brand voice captures the unique personality, perspective, and style of your brand — it doesn’t change through your content. For instance, Coca-Cola’s brand voice is positive, and Starbucks’ is expressive.
• Tone. The brand tone refers to how you express your voice. For instance, you can be positive and matter-of-fact, as in “you did it,” or positive and enthusiastic, as in “you absolutely crushed it.”

While I never change brand voice, I think tweaking the tone works wonderfully to adapt your message according to the medium. For instance, I prefer a casual tone for social media and a formal tone for technical white papers.

To decide the tone and voice, I find Nielsen Norman Group’s four dimensions of tone of voice incredibly helpful:

• Formal versus casual
• Serious versus funny
• Respectful versus irreverent
• Matter-of-fact versus enthusiastic

Your desired tone can be either at extreme ends or somewhere in between. For instance, I might opt for a casual, serious, respectful, and enthusiastic tone of voice for a SaaS brand.

That should provide a balance of professionalism, excitement, respectfulness, and friendliness, which aligns with most SaaS products.

In contrast, if I’m developing a content style guide for a tech firm, I might opt for a matter-of-fact (instead of enthusiastic) tone to communicate factually.

Still, it’s all up to your exact preferences, so flesh it out as you see fit.

Once you’ve reached a decision, I recommend adding guidelines surrounding the voice and tone to help the content creators better understand what you’re looking for. For instance, you can mention your:

• Preferred perspective. Can writers write in the first person? Or do the writers need to default to a third-person perspective?
• Writing style. Do you want to come across as a friend or a teacher? For the former, I recommend a conversational style with casual phrases. For the latter, you may need a mix of formal style with matter-of-fact language.
• Favorite phrases: To be as clear as possible about my preferred tone and voice, I typically include my favorite phrases in the style guide to help the writers connect the dots and better understand what I’m looking for.

I particularly stress on adding your favorite phrases because it helps clarify the desired tone and voice you want.

5. Decide on a reference style manual.

Save yourself some time and settle most of the formatting and grammar-related discussions once and for all by picking a reference style manual and sticking with it.

It saves you the trouble of doing your own research and coming up with industry-wide conventions for every special use case. You won’t regret it, I promise.

Most modern businesses adopt the Associated Press Stylebook (AP) or the Chicago Manual of Style. While both manuals are beneficial, I find the AP Stylebook a better fit for online media, as most news organizations use it (it’s also easier to memorize, in my opinion).

Image Source

Additionally, AP Style suits contemporary brands wanting to come across as friendly. For instance, Bernard Meyer, senior director of communications and creative at Omnisend, shares that he prefers AP Style as it helps Omnisend come across as friendlier and less formal.

Note: I recommend purchasing an online subscription for whichever reference manual you end up going for. In my experience, employees are more likely to reference these tools when provided with an online subscription that contains a search function instead of a paper book through which they have to flip to find their answers.

6. List troublesome words and branded phrases.

To maintain consistency throughout the business, I like having a distinct section in the content style guide that includes specific spellings and capitalizations for frequently used words and phrases.

You can start with your company name. For instance, It’s HubSpot, not Hubspot or Hub spot.

Besides that, I also note down phrases, slogans, or tag lines associated with the brand. For example, KitKat’s slogan, “Have a break, have a KitKat,” uses a comma in between the phrases, not a period. You can similarly add your brand’s specific phrases with their preferred spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

Moreover, when I was the blog editor at HubSpot, I also compiled a list of “commonly troublesome words” with inconsistent capitalization and spelling to ensure the contributors stayed consistent in their submissions.

Instead of debating how to spell, capitalize, or hyphenate a confusing word, writers could head over to the list and decide on proper usage for:

• Common words: ecommerce vs. e-commerce
  AP Style prefers “e-commerce,” but I lean towards “ecommerce” as it’s getting rather popular, like “email.”
• Job titles: Director of Marketing vs. director of marketing
  AP style recommends using title case if the job title comes before the proper name and lowercase if it comes after it. I do the same.
• Degree titles: Bachelor of Arts vs. bachelor of arts
  AP style recommends using “Bachelor of Arts” in formal usage. That said, I default to using “bachelor's degree" and “master’s degree” for readability.

Note: If the audience prefers specific English variations (British English or American English), I also recommend adding a list of problematic words like — center vs. centre, color vs. colour, and apartment vs. flat — to ensure your language choice mirrors your target audience.

Additionally, you can also list words and phrases your brand wants to avoid for inclusivity. For example, instead of using “blacklist,” I recommend writers use “blocklist.” Similarly, use gender-neutral words like “first-year students” instead of “freshmen.”

Image Source

7. Establish guidelines for graphics.

I know I told you earlier not to get into the nitty-gritty with visual guidelines. This is still true. Your design team or agency should create a separate brand design style guide that addresses more nuanced visual things (can you tell I'm not a designer?).

You should, however, add a little information to your written style guide if your writers are ever responsible for creating visual assets and/or copyediting visual assets created by designers.

Here are some common questions I’ve received over the years from writers and editors (that you should address with your style guide).

• Where can writers source images, and how do they properly attribute them?
• How many images should a writer add per blog post?
• Do we need to add alternative text for images? I love to include it to help people with visual disabilities.
• Can you add screenshots?
• When should images align to the right, to the left, or in the center?
• Should text wrap around images?
• Do you have any recommended image dimensions, file size, and file type for graphics?

All of your image-related guidelines for writers belong in this section. If I’ve access to a paid stock photo website, I prefer mentioning it in this section to ensure it is put to use.

8. Share your formatting recommendations.

Want to know a surefire way to give your editor a mild heart attack? Try submitting a document with formatting that resembles a maze. To protect your editors from getting burned out, I recommend including formatting guidelines for submissions, such as:

• Body text. What’s your preferred font style, size, and color?
• Headers. How many heading and subheading levels can writers go to? I’ve found that it’s better to limit online content to the h4 level.
• Hyperlinks. Do writers need to hyperlink a single word, more than two words, or a specific keyword? Should writers extend the hyperlink to articles (a, an, and the) in front of the target word?
• Lists. Should lists be numbered or bulleted? Do you want periods at the end of the lists?
• Bold, italic, or quotation marks. Do you want to reserve bold or italic for emphasis? Or do you prefer quotation marks?
• Special cases. How do you handle numerals, ranges, and en dashes? Is it acceptable to replace “and” with an ampersand (&)? Do you use acronyms in parentheses when making a first reference?

With consistent formatting, your readers will be able to skim and digest your information more easily.

9. Describe your SEO requirements.

With so much noise surrounding search engines, search engine optimization (SEO) is always a tricky part of the content style guide. That said, since some of the external contributors may be used to keyword spamming, I prefer laying out some of the essential SEO requirements.

You don’t need to go in-depth here. Heck, an in-depth SEO guide can be even longer than your content style guide. Instead, I use this section to answer more or less the common SEO-related questions from content creators.

So, here are my recommendations for the SEO section:

• Keyword usage. Share instructions on how the writers need to incorporate keywords into content, including their placement in titles, body text, and alt text. I recommend explaining how they should handle awkward keywords as well.
• Content structure. Let the writers know how to organize content for search engines. For instance, I like to have descriptive headers for search crawlers and skimming readers.
• Internal and external linking. Describe how writers should incorporate relevant internal and external links in the draft. I also recommend giving them a link-to-word ratio (e.g., one internal link for every 500 words).
• Content length. Mention the recommended length for different types of content. If you’re using an SEO tool for word count recommendation, let the writers know if it’s a strict limit or if they have some leeway.
• Meta titles and descriptions. Explain how the writers can optimize meta titles and meta descriptions to accurately represent the content and improve click-through rate in search engine results pages (SERPs).

In addition to these sections, I also include links to external sources like HubSpot’s guide to SEO to ensure writers can find answers to their questions from reputable sources.

10. Add recommended methods to source reliable data.

Do you know that humans have an attention span of only eight seconds? You might agree because you might have heard this statistic countless times in prominent newspapers, industry blogs, and from friends and family. At least, I have.

Luckily, it’s false. BBC busted this widespread myth in 2017. That said, I still see writers repeating this incorrect information to back up their arguments — which reflects a lot about those arguments.

If you want your brand to come across as honest, transparent, and trustworthy, I recommend including a section in your writing style guide detailing how you want the contributors to source their statistics.

Image Source

Based on my experience as a managing blog editor, you should outline the following at a minimum:

• Recommended data sources. Share your preferred industry sources. My personal favorites include eMarketer, Gartner, McKinsey & Company, and PwC.
• Preference for original data. To avoid made-up statistics like the eight-second human attention span and other issues affecting your trust with readers, I ask writers to always find, gauge, and link the original study. In most cases, the original study of a made-up statistic either doesn’t exist or appears unverifiable.
• Usage of recent, current data. If the market landscape in your industry changes rather frequently — as is the case in marketing — I would like to limit the data included to less than two years old. That said, it can vary from industry to industry, so adjust your expectations accordingly if there are no recent developments.

While that helps address most data-sourcing questions, you’ll still get one more question: Can I get relevant statistics and data from competitors?

Personally, I find it acceptable as long as the competitor's information is reliable and verifiable. That said, it’s up to you to decide.

If you’re worried about search engine optimization (SEO), Osman, who is also ranked among the top 100 content marketers by Semrush, shares that she’s not “against using data from competitors. But you have to be careful from an SEO perspective if the data you’re referring to is a keyword competitor.”

Beyond that, it also depends on your brand’s core values. Meyer prefers to include “helpful data even if the data comes from our competitors” because Omnisend wants to come across as a customer-centric brand.

11. Outline prohibited topics.

While most internal contributors are mindful of sensitive topics, you may need to provide detailed guidance to freelance writers to avoid alienating your readership.

Even if you’re not working with external contributors, I’ve learned that including a list of sensitive topics also helps onboard new team members, so it's a great addition to a content style guide.

While the sensitive topics might vary from industry to industry, my recommendations for sensitive topics include:

• Religion and politics. I always instructed the writers to steer clear of these two topics entirely.
• Legal considerations. Tell the writers to avoid legal counsel in most cases. Instead, suggest linking relevant legal resources to asking the readers to contact a lawyer.
• Controversial social issues. When talking about sensitive issues, such as immigration, suggest the contributors rely on experts instead of sharing a personal opinion that may evoke strong emotions in readers.

12. Give examples to solidify the writing style guide.

Image Source

If you follow all the steps I’ve outlined so far, you’ll be close to completing a detailed content style guide. The only thing remaining is adding examples — some of which you may have added already.

In my experience, adding examples of high-level concepts with do’s and don’ts is one of the best ways to convey what you want. That said, make sure to add specific examples so they help the writers rather than confuse them.

Meyer agrees, “The more specific you can make [your style guide], the better your team will understand how to adopt it effectively.”

Osman also prefers adding examples. According to her, “style preferences make a lot more sense to writers when they see them executed in actuality — much like a case study.”

Here’s how I like to give examples in an editorial style guide:

• Use do’s and don’ts. Add an incorrect example and then mark it up to show how a writer could fix it.
• Include visual examples. For formatting and graphics, I prefer adding visual examples to help the contributors visualize what the brand requires.
• Preferred text. I find that writers are more likely to succeed in nailing down the brand tone and voice if you provide examples of it in practice.

All said and done, I think of a style guide as an evolving document, so you can edit the style guide, flesh out examples, and add nuances over time as a situation calls for it.

What to Include in Your Style Guide [+ Checklist]

To ensure you add the relevant information and elements, here is a quick refresher of what you’ll want to include in your content style guide.

I recommend using the following checklist to help you get going.

What Not to Include in Your Style Guide

While I’ve mentioned all the stuff you should have in your content style guide, there are also topics you should leave out to make it usable on a day-to-day basis. The following are common sections that are fine to leave out of your content style guides.

Content Operation Notes

While I know that content operations are the backbone of your content creation process, they don’t belong in the content style guide.

They don’t add value to the content your writers will create. Instead, content operation notes should be part of your standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Visual Style Recommendations

Your company’s logo, typography, and color palette are extremely important for your brand. However, a content style guide isn’t the place to provide details about them.

Instead of cramming the writing style guide with design elements, logo variations, and preferred typography, use a separate brand and visual style guide to convey the brand identity elements.

Training Materials

It’s easy to lose yourself when fleshing out SEO recommendations, inclusivity practices, or language preferences — trust me, I know. That said, you don’t want the content style guide to be too long. It should be digestible and usable.

So, instead of including training materials in the style guide, prepare additional documents writers can explore for specific guidance. For example, if you want your content creators to use inclusive language, I recommend relying on HubSpot’s inclusive language guide.

How to Get Others to Use Your Style Guide

If you put in all this work to create a comprehensive style guide, it'd be a real bummer if no one used it.

Here's the truth: Some people just aren‘t going to use it, no matter how easy you make it for them to do so. So, just accept that. But after you’re done grieving, here are a few things I suggest you do to increase the likelihood of adoption:

1. Involve other people in its creation from the get-go.

While freelancers won’t mind specific rules, in-house contributors may have to adjust their existing writing processes to comply with new rules, which may result in an unwillingness to embrace the change.

While some opposition will always be there, I’ve learned that getting a few people together from multiple teams to help create the style guide as a group resolves many of these differences.

2. Make it easy to find and use.

At HubSpot, we’ve made our style guide available on our internal repository. As a result, my colleagues and I can find it, bookmark it, and even access it whenever, wherever. Plus, I can also use Ctrl + F to find what I’m looking for.

3. Keep updating it.

Your style guide is intended to be a living document. As new style questions arise from writers about proper usage, I ask the editors to reach a solution and ensure that it’s reflected in an updated version of the style guide.

Writing Style Guide Examples

If you want to see a writing style guide in action, here are a few examples of writing style guides I have liked from well-known companies like Google, Shopify, and Intuit.

1. Google

Image Source

In Google’s style guide, I noticed that Google is very explicit in its principle of creating clear, accurate, and concise text. The company offers clear directives to write simply and directly, address users clearly, and more.

Google’s team also skillfully demonstrates examples of what website owners should or shouldn’t do. For example, instead of saying “buffering,” Google recommended using “preparing video” to avoid technical jargon that a layperson might not understand.

What I liked: I found Google’s style guide to be extremely easy to digest. It followed a pattern of do’s and don’ts, provided examples, and explained the reasoning behind it to get the point across.

2. Intuit

Image Source

While exploring Intuit’s style guide, I found a lengthy word list — which seems appropriate since Intuit deals with financial topics. Plus, their guidelines regarding anti-racist language and formatting are on point as well.

Similarly, Intuit’s voice and tone section contains a lot of explanations of their brand’s core values, which might help writers in shaping their content. That said, I’d have loved to see some voice and tone examples illustrating their brand personality.

What I liked: I loved their detailed word list. It provided explicit instructions on handling common financial terms, abbreviations, and acronyms — which are a lot!

3. Shopify

Image Source

I found Shopify’s content style guide to be very extensive. It walks the writers through voice and tone, inclusive language, grammar, and other style-related guidelines.

Unlike Intuit, I noticed that Shopify was more clear about its voice and tone requirements — they even included do’s and don’ts with examples to explain how to match Shopify’s tone.

What I liked: Despite covering a range of style preferences, I appreciated that Shopify included an example for each concept.

4. Microsoft

Image Source

Like Shopify’s, Microsoft’s content style guide is also extensive, covering everything from proper nouns to bias-free communications. I also liked the examples Microsoft included. That said, Microsoft tried to stay minimalist and didn’t include examples for everything like Shopify.

What I liked: I found Microsoft’s style guide easier to navigate using the sidebar. You can filter the list of entries by title to find stuff faster.

5. Apple

Image Source

Unlike other style guides, I was surprised to see Apple’s style guide isn’t extensive — it only contains details specific to Apple’s ecosystem. Besides that, it suggests users follow the Chicago Manual of Style and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

What I liked: While many content marketers might not prefer it, I liked Apple’s minimalist approach since a style guide is typically for things where you deviate from a reference manual.

6. Mailchimp

Image Source

While I’m generally not a fan of including media-specific guidelines in a style guide, Mailchimp does a great job. Since its style guide isn’t based on a single formal document, it was able to add process guidelines without overwhelming readers.

What I liked: I loved Mailchimp’s word list as it outlines exactly how to handle troublesome words in a minimalist way.

7. Yokel Local

This example comes from HubSpot Partner Yokel Local. I was impressed by its simplicity since it states brand guidelines Yokel Local wants the in-house contributors and freelancers to follow without going into the weeds.

What I liked: While Yokel Local remained minimalist, I loved that it still included examples to help readers.

Polish Your Editorial and Content Style

There you have it — a neat walkthrough of how to create an even neater style guide. While creating a content style guide takes some time, my experiences have taught me that it greatly reduces the inconsistencies in your content and communication.

Plus, with a documented style guide, you have an easier time scaling up your content efforts without lowering content quality (trust me, it makes a huge difference).

But as I said before, a content style guide is a living document, so you’ll have to continually polish it as required to keep it up-to-date. Don’t worry — it’s not as daunting as it sounds. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

And if you want your content team to look at it more often, remember to get them involved in the updating process. After all, fostering a culture around caring for and respecting the guidelines is just as important as laying them out.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31247/the-simple-template-for-a-thorough-content-style-guide.aspx

If you write, edit, or manage content for a brand, you likely run into lengthy content discussions over everything from voice to exclamation marks and em dashes. At least, I’ve done my fair share of debates with colleagues over language preferences.

But is it trivial? I don’t think so. After all, there’s a difference between “you shall not pass” and “you shall not pass!” The latter gives me chills — Ian McKellen did a great job — but only if the writer hasn’t doused the webpage with exclamation marks.

In my years of having first-hand contact with content for HubSpot and other brands, I’ve found that each content creator comes with their own preferences. And while you can’t take those away from them, you can tell them what you like to reach common ground so they can represent your brand in their own way.

Now, you can either share your preferences with back-and-forth feedback over their draft, or you can prepare a content style guide that sets them in the right direction from the start.

I prefer the latter (less hand-holding!), so I’m going to share all I’ve learned about content style guides in this blog. As a bonus, I’ve also gathered insights from industry experts to help you make well-rounded decisions.

Table of Contents:

• What is a Content Style Guide?
• Style Guide vs. Brand Guide
• How to Create a Writing Style Guide
• What to Include in Your Style Guide [+ Checklist]
• What Not to Include in Your Style Guide
• How to Get Others to Use Your Style Guide
• Writing Style Guide Examples

What is a Content Style Guide?

A content style guide, also called an editorial style guide, is a document that sets the standard writing, grammar, and punctuation conventions people working for an organization should follow to maintain a consistent tone and style across its entire online presence.

Content style guides get down to the nitty-gritty. Yes, even whether you should capitalize the “a” after a colon.

Why are content style guides important?

While I love discussing language preferences, debating about the same thing over and over feels like solving a Rubik’s Cube with only one color — it’s repetitive and unproductive.

That’s why I recommend creating a content style guide if you’re working with freelance writers and editors (and even for in-house marketers). Specifically, it helps:

• Build a consistent brand voice. While you may want to connect with your audience on a personal level, each writer can have their own interpretation of what that entails. With a content style guide, I can fill the gaps with the exact tone of voice I’m looking for.
• Avoid common errors. HubSpot has always been spelled with a capital “H” and a capital “S” in between. That said, many external contributors used variations like “Hubspot” or “Hub spot” when I edited the HubSpot blog. With a content style guide, you can point out common errors to ensure they don’t go unnoticed.
• Improve collaboration between writers and editors. Having donned both the editor’s hat and the writer’s pen, I know that harsh feedback can be a blow to a writer’s confidence. With a detailed style guide, I've been able to address quality problems without pointing fingers.

Both guides play an important role in how potential consumers view, interact, and remember your brand.

Now that we’ve gone over the basics, let’s explore how I’d go about creating a content style guide for your brand.

1. Use a style guide template.

A writing style guide covers a lot of important content — from brand values to formatting guidelines. While you can take a stab at it by starting from scratch, I recommend using a tried-and-tested style guide template to get started.

If you want to get started quickly, consider using HubSpot’s free style guide template. It covers all the basics you need to get the brain juices flowing, and you can later expand upon it as you see fit.

Alternatively, you can check out the writing guide examples I’ve listed below and choose one as your starting point to customize it and make it your own.

2. Review your brand’s mission and values.

I usually find a brand’s mission statement and core values to be of great help whenever I start filling the style guide template. They give me a solid idea of how the brand aims to form connections with its audience.

For instance, if a brand stands for transparency, I believe that its style guide should promote adding accurate and transparent product descriptions instead of overselling or overhyping the products.

If what your brand says and what it practices doesn’t match up, readers can (and they will, trust me) see the disconnect — it’s like watching a TV show with bad lip-syncing.

Take it from Maddy Osman, founder of The Blogsmith, who knows how seriously brands should take conveying values like inclusivity through their content.

“We wanted our content practices to reflect what The Blogsmith stands for, and needed to find a way to get a team with diverse backgrounds on the same page,” says Osman.

To nurture these values, Maddy got the ball rolling by laying down clear-cut guidelines in her style guide.

“I sat down with team members to brainstorm what inclusivity would look like on paper — the things we normally don‘t account for in day-to-day speech. Whether it’s listing alternatives to outdated words like blacklist or manpower or examples of people-first language.”

Sharing brand values isn’t just talking the talk — it’s about walking the walk, and a style guide is a great roadmap to keeping everything in sync.

3. Create buyer personas for your target audience.

Imagine a conversation with a baby boomer and Gen Z-er. The way you communicate with them will likely be different. That’s why I love creating buyer personas to have a better idea of how to approach the target audience.

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional, research-based representation of your target customer. It includes their demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. If you haven’t created a buyer persona before, I recommend HubSpot’s persona generator to get started.

Amanda Price, content manager at Imagefix, is also totally on board: “Understanding who we're communicating with is just as important as understanding our brand itself.”

Price adds that with a fleshed-out buyer persona a style guide “stops being about abstract rules and starts being a proper and useful tool to build a real connection with our readers.”

Your editorial guide doesn’t need to go as in-depth into buyer personas as documents created for the sales and marketing teams. Still, I’ve learned that you need to include the following information on each persona at a minimum if you’re working with freelance writers:

• Brief explanation of the target audience.
• Pain points of the target audience.
• How the audience likes to be communicated with.
• The solutions your brand provides for the audience.
• The preferred writing style (formal, conversational, etc.).

With these details in the style guide, I provide ample context for the internal and external contributors to inform the content they’re writing.

4. Define your company’s voice and tone.

Once I determine my target audience, I start working on the tone and voice — which might appear confusing at first since they seem like identical concepts.

Here’s how I differentiate the two based on my experience:

• Voice. The brand voice captures the unique personality, perspective, and style of your brand — it doesn’t change through your content. For instance, Coca-Cola’s brand voice is positive, and Starbucks’ is expressive.
• Tone. The brand tone refers to how you express your voice. For instance, you can be positive and matter-of-fact, as in “you did it,” or positive and enthusiastic, as in “you absolutely crushed it.”

While I never change brand voice, I think tweaking the tone works wonderfully to adapt your message according to the medium. For instance, I prefer a casual tone for social media and a formal tone for technical white papers.

To decide the tone and voice, I find Nielsen Norman Group’s four dimensions of tone of voice incredibly helpful:

• Formal versus casual
• Serious versus funny
• Respectful versus irreverent
• Matter-of-fact versus enthusiastic

Your desired tone can be either at extreme ends or somewhere in between. For instance, I might opt for a casual, serious, respectful, and enthusiastic tone of voice for a SaaS brand.

That should provide a balance of professionalism, excitement, respectfulness, and friendliness, which aligns with most SaaS products.

In contrast, if I’m developing a content style guide for a tech firm, I might opt for a matter-of-fact (instead of enthusiastic) tone to communicate factually.

Still, it’s all up to your exact preferences, so flesh it out as you see fit.

Once you’ve reached a decision, I recommend adding guidelines surrounding the voice and tone to help the content creators better understand what you’re looking for. For instance, you can mention your:

• Preferred perspective. Can writers write in the first person? Or do the writers need to default to a third-person perspective?
• Writing style. Do you want to come across as a friend or a teacher? For the former, I recommend a conversational style with casual phrases. For the latter, you may need a mix of formal style with matter-of-fact language.
• Favorite phrases: To be as clear as possible about my preferred tone and voice, I typically include my favorite phrases in the style guide to help the writers connect the dots and better understand what I’m looking for.

I particularly stress on adding your favorite phrases because it helps clarify the desired tone and voice you want.

5. Decide on a reference style manual.

Save yourself some time and settle most of the formatting and grammar-related discussions once and for all by picking a reference style manual and sticking with it.

It saves you the trouble of doing your own research and coming up with industry-wide conventions for every special use case. You won’t regret it, I promise.

Most modern businesses adopt the Associated Press Stylebook (AP) or the Chicago Manual of Style. While both manuals are beneficial, I find the AP Stylebook a better fit for online media, as most news organizations use it (it’s also easier to memorize, in my opinion).

Image Source

Additionally, AP Style suits contemporary brands wanting to come across as friendly. For instance, Bernard Meyer, senior director of communications and creative at Omnisend, shares that he prefers AP Style as it helps Omnisend come across as friendlier and less formal.

Note: I recommend purchasing an online subscription for whichever reference manual you end up going for. In my experience, employees are more likely to reference these tools when provided with an online subscription that contains a search function instead of a paper book through which they have to flip to find their answers.

6. List troublesome words and branded phrases.

To maintain consistency throughout the business, I like having a distinct section in the content style guide that includes specific spellings and capitalizations for frequently used words and phrases.

You can start with your company name. For instance, It’s HubSpot, not Hubspot or Hub spot.

Besides that, I also note down phrases, slogans, or tag lines associated with the brand. For example, KitKat’s slogan, “Have a break, have a KitKat,” uses a comma in between the phrases, not a period. You can similarly add your brand’s specific phrases with their preferred spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

Moreover, when I was the blog editor at HubSpot, I also compiled a list of “commonly troublesome words” with inconsistent capitalization and spelling to ensure the contributors stayed consistent in their submissions.

Instead of debating how to spell, capitalize, or hyphenate a confusing word, writers could head over to the list and decide on proper usage for:

• Common words: ecommerce vs. e-commerce
  AP Style prefers “e-commerce,” but I lean towards “ecommerce” as it’s getting rather popular, like “email.”
• Job titles: Director of Marketing vs. director of marketing
  AP style recommends using title case if the job title comes before the proper name and lowercase if it comes after it. I do the same.
• Degree titles: Bachelor of Arts vs. bachelor of arts
  AP style recommends using “Bachelor of Arts” in formal usage. That said, I default to using “bachelor's degree" and “master’s degree” for readability.

Note: If the audience prefers specific English variations (British English or American English), I also recommend adding a list of problematic words like — center vs. centre, color vs. colour, and apartment vs. flat — to ensure your language choice mirrors your target audience.

Additionally, you can also list words and phrases your brand wants to avoid for inclusivity. For example, instead of using “blacklist,” I recommend writers use “blocklist.” Similarly, use gender-neutral words like “first-year students” instead of “freshmen.”

Image Source

7. Establish guidelines for graphics.

I know I told you earlier not to get into the nitty-gritty with visual guidelines. This is still true. Your design team or agency should create a separate brand design style guide that addresses more nuanced visual things (can you tell I'm not a designer?).

You should, however, add a little information to your written style guide if your writers are ever responsible for creating visual assets and/or copyediting visual assets created by designers.

Here are some common questions I’ve received over the years from writers and editors (that you should address with your style guide).

• Where can writers source images, and how do they properly attribute them?
• How many images should a writer add per blog post?
• Do we need to add alternative text for images? I love to include it to help people with visual disabilities.
• Can you add screenshots?
• When should images align to the right, to the left, or in the center?
• Should text wrap around images?
• Do you have any recommended image dimensions, file size, and file type for graphics?

All of your image-related guidelines for writers belong in this section. If I’ve access to a paid stock photo website, I prefer mentioning it in this section to ensure it is put to use.

8. Share your formatting recommendations.

Want to know a surefire way to give your editor a mild heart attack? Try submitting a document with formatting that resembles a maze. To protect your editors from getting burned out, I recommend including formatting guidelines for submissions, such as:

• Body text. What’s your preferred font style, size, and color?
• Headers. How many heading and subheading levels can writers go to? I’ve found that it’s better to limit online content to the h4 level.
• Hyperlinks. Do writers need to hyperlink a single word, more than two words, or a specific keyword? Should writers extend the hyperlink to articles (a, an, and the) in front of the target word?
• Lists. Should lists be numbered or bulleted? Do you want periods at the end of the lists?
• Bold, italic, or quotation marks. Do you want to reserve bold or italic for emphasis? Or do you prefer quotation marks?
• Special cases. How do you handle numerals, ranges, and en dashes? Is it acceptable to replace “and” with an ampersand (&)? Do you use acronyms in parentheses when making a first reference?

With consistent formatting, your readers will be able to skim and digest your information more easily.

9. Describe your SEO requirements.

With so much noise surrounding search engines, search engine optimization (SEO) is always a tricky part of the content style guide. That said, since some of the external contributors may be used to keyword spamming, I prefer laying out some of the essential SEO requirements.

You don’t need to go in-depth here. Heck, an in-depth SEO guide can be even longer than your content style guide. Instead, I use this section to answer more or less the common SEO-related questions from content creators.

So, here are my recommendations for the SEO section:

• Keyword usage. Share instructions on how the writers need to incorporate keywords into content, including their placement in titles, body text, and alt text. I recommend explaining how they should handle awkward keywords as well.
• Content structure. Let the writers know how to organize content for search engines. For instance, I like to have descriptive headers for search crawlers and skimming readers.
• Internal and external linking. Describe how writers should incorporate relevant internal and external links in the draft. I also recommend giving them a link-to-word ratio (e.g., one internal link for every 500 words).
• Content length. Mention the recommended length for different types of content. If you’re using an SEO tool for word count recommendation, let the writers know if it’s a strict limit or if they have some leeway.
• Meta titles and descriptions. Explain how the writers can optimize meta titles and meta descriptions to accurately represent the content and improve click-through rate in search engine results pages (SERPs).

In addition to these sections, I also include links to external sources like HubSpot’s guide to SEO to ensure writers can find answers to their questions from reputable sources.

10. Add recommended methods to source reliable data.

Do you know that humans have an attention span of only eight seconds? You might agree because you might have heard this statistic countless times in prominent newspapers, industry blogs, and from friends and family. At least, I have.

Luckily, it’s false. BBC busted this widespread myth in 2017. That said, I still see writers repeating this incorrect information to back up their arguments — which reflects a lot about those arguments.

If you want your brand to come across as honest, transparent, and trustworthy, I recommend including a section in your writing style guide detailing how you want the contributors to source their statistics.

Image Source

Based on my experience as a managing blog editor, you should outline the following at a minimum:

• Recommended data sources. Share your preferred industry sources. My personal favorites include eMarketer, Gartner, McKinsey & Company, and PwC.
• Preference for original data. To avoid made-up statistics like the eight-second human attention span and other issues affecting your trust with readers, I ask writers to always find, gauge, and link the original study. In most cases, the original study of a made-up statistic either doesn’t exist or appears unverifiable.
• Usage of recent, current data. If the market landscape in your industry changes rather frequently — as is the case in marketing — I would like to limit the data included to less than two years old. That said, it can vary from industry to industry, so adjust your expectations accordingly if there are no recent developments.

While that helps address most data-sourcing questions, you’ll still get one more question: Can I get relevant statistics and data from competitors?

Personally, I find it acceptable as long as the competitor's information is reliable and verifiable. That said, it’s up to you to decide.

If you’re worried about search engine optimization (SEO), Osman, who is also ranked among the top 100 content marketers by Semrush, shares that she’s not “against using data from competitors. But you have to be careful from an SEO perspective if the data you’re referring to is a keyword competitor.”

Beyond that, it also depends on your brand’s core values. Meyer prefers to include “helpful data even if the data comes from our competitors” because Omnisend wants to come across as a customer-centric brand.

11. Outline prohibited topics.

While most internal contributors are mindful of sensitive topics, you may need to provide detailed guidance to freelance writers to avoid alienating your readership.

Even if you’re not working with external contributors, I’ve learned that including a list of sensitive topics also helps onboard new team members, so it's a great addition to a content style guide.

While the sensitive topics might vary from industry to industry, my recommendations for sensitive topics include:

• Religion and politics. I always instructed the writers to steer clear of these two topics entirely.
• Legal considerations. Tell the writers to avoid legal counsel in most cases. Instead, suggest linking relevant legal resources to asking the readers to contact a lawyer.
• Controversial social issues. When talking about sensitive issues, such as immigration, suggest the contributors rely on experts instead of sharing a personal opinion that may evoke strong emotions in readers.

12. Give examples to solidify the writing style guide.

Image Source

If you follow all the steps I’ve outlined so far, you’ll be close to completing a detailed content style guide. The only thing remaining is adding examples — some of which you may have added already.

In my experience, adding examples of high-level concepts with do’s and don’ts is one of the best ways to convey what you want. That said, make sure to add specific examples so they help the writers rather than confuse them.

Meyer agrees, “The more specific you can make [your style guide], the better your team will understand how to adopt it effectively.”

Osman also prefers adding examples. According to her, “style preferences make a lot more sense to writers when they see them executed in actuality — much like a case study.”

Here’s how I like to give examples in an editorial style guide:

• Use do’s and don’ts. Add an incorrect example and then mark it up to show how a writer could fix it.
• Include visual examples. For formatting and graphics, I prefer adding visual examples to help the contributors visualize what the brand requires.
• Preferred text. I find that writers are more likely to succeed in nailing down the brand tone and voice if you provide examples of it in practice.

All said and done, I think of a style guide as an evolving document, so you can edit the style guide, flesh out examples, and add nuances over time as a situation calls for it.

What to Include in Your Style Guide [+ Checklist]

To ensure you add the relevant information and elements, here is a quick refresher of what you’ll want to include in your content style guide.

I recommend using the following checklist to help you get going.

What Not to Include in Your Style Guide

While I’ve mentioned all the stuff you should have in your content style guide, there are also topics you should leave out to make it usable on a day-to-day basis. The following are common sections that are fine to leave out of your content style guides.

Content Operation Notes

While I know that content operations are the backbone of your content creation process, they don’t belong in the content style guide.

They don’t add value to the content your writers will create. Instead, content operation notes should be part of your standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Visual Style Recommendations

Your company’s logo, typography, and color palette are extremely important for your brand. However, a content style guide isn’t the place to provide details about them.

Instead of cramming the writing style guide with design elements, logo variations, and preferred typography, use a separate brand and visual style guide to convey the brand identity elements.

Training Materials

It’s easy to lose yourself when fleshing out SEO recommendations, inclusivity practices, or language preferences — trust me, I know. That said, you don’t want the content style guide to be too long. It should be digestible and usable.

So, instead of including training materials in the style guide, prepare additional documents writers can explore for specific guidance. For example, if you want your content creators to use inclusive language, I recommend relying on HubSpot’s inclusive language guide.

How to Get Others to Use Your Style Guide

If you put in all this work to create a comprehensive style guide, it'd be a real bummer if no one used it.

Here's the truth: Some people just aren‘t going to use it, no matter how easy you make it for them to do so. So, just accept that. But after you’re done grieving, here are a few things I suggest you do to increase the likelihood of adoption:

1. Involve other people in its creation from the get-go.

While freelancers won’t mind specific rules, in-house contributors may have to adjust their existing writing processes to comply with new rules, which may result in an unwillingness to embrace the change.

While some opposition will always be there, I’ve learned that getting a few people together from multiple teams to help create the style guide as a group resolves many of these differences.

2. Make it easy to find and use.

At HubSpot, we’ve made our style guide available on our internal repository. As a result, my colleagues and I can find it, bookmark it, and even access it whenever, wherever. Plus, I can also use Ctrl + F to find what I’m looking for.

3. Keep updating it.

Your style guide is intended to be a living document. As new style questions arise from writers about proper usage, I ask the editors to reach a solution and ensure that it’s reflected in an updated version of the style guide.

Writing Style Guide Examples

If you want to see a writing style guide in action, here are a few examples of writing style guides I have liked from well-known companies like Google, Shopify, and Intuit.

1. Google

Image Source

In Google’s style guide, I noticed that Google is very explicit in its principle of creating clear, accurate, and concise text. The company offers clear directives to write simply and directly, address users clearly, and more.

Google’s team also skillfully demonstrates examples of what website owners should or shouldn’t do. For example, instead of saying “buffering,” Google recommended using “preparing video” to avoid technical jargon that a layperson might not understand.

What I liked: I found Google’s style guide to be extremely easy to digest. It followed a pattern of do’s and don’ts, provided examples, and explained the reasoning behind it to get the point across.

2. Intuit

Image Source

While exploring Intuit’s style guide, I found a lengthy word list — which seems appropriate since Intuit deals with financial topics. Plus, their guidelines regarding anti-racist language and formatting are on point as well.

Similarly, Intuit’s voice and tone section contains a lot of explanations of their brand’s core values, which might help writers in shaping their content. That said, I’d have loved to see some voice and tone examples illustrating their brand personality.

What I liked: I loved their detailed word list. It provided explicit instructions on handling common financial terms, abbreviations, and acronyms — which are a lot!

3. Shopify

Image Source

I found Shopify’s content style guide to be very extensive. It walks the writers through voice and tone, inclusive language, grammar, and other style-related guidelines.

Unlike Intuit, I noticed that Shopify was more clear about its voice and tone requirements — they even included do’s and don’ts with examples to explain how to match Shopify’s tone.

What I liked: Despite covering a range of style preferences, I appreciated that Shopify included an example for each concept.

4. Microsoft

Image Source

Like Shopify’s, Microsoft’s content style guide is also extensive, covering everything from proper nouns to bias-free communications. I also liked the examples Microsoft included. That said, Microsoft tried to stay minimalist and didn’t include examples for everything like Shopify.

What I liked: I found Microsoft’s style guide easier to navigate using the sidebar. You can filter the list of entries by title to find stuff faster.

5. Apple

Image Source

Unlike other style guides, I was surprised to see Apple’s style guide isn’t extensive — it only contains details specific to Apple’s ecosystem. Besides that, it suggests users follow the Chicago Manual of Style and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

What I liked: While many content marketers might not prefer it, I liked Apple’s minimalist approach since a style guide is typically for things where you deviate from a reference manual.

6. Mailchimp

Image Source

While I’m generally not a fan of including media-specific guidelines in a style guide, Mailchimp does a great job. Since its style guide isn’t based on a single formal document, it was able to add process guidelines without overwhelming readers.

What I liked: I loved Mailchimp’s word list as it outlines exactly how to handle troublesome words in a minimalist way.

7. Yokel Local

This example comes from HubSpot Partner Yokel Local. I was impressed by its simplicity since it states brand guidelines Yokel Local wants the in-house contributors and freelancers to follow without going into the weeds.

What I liked: While Yokel Local remained minimalist, I loved that it still included examples to help readers.

Polish Your Editorial and Content Style

There you have it — a neat walkthrough of how to create an even neater style guide. While creating a content style guide takes some time, my experiences have taught me that it greatly reduces the inconsistencies in your content and communication.

Plus, with a documented style guide, you have an easier time scaling up your content efforts without lowering content quality (trust me, it makes a huge difference).

But as I said before, a content style guide is a living document, so you’ll have to continually polish it as required to keep it up-to-date. Don’t worry — it’s not as daunting as it sounds. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

And if you want your content team to look at it more often, remember to get them involved in the updating process. After all, fostering a culture around caring for and respecting the guidelines is just as important as laying them out.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

via Perfecte news Non connection

The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Strategies & How to Improve Your Digital Presence

Am I right in assuming that a significant part of your marketing strategy today is digital? Probably.

Consumers and businesses alike are almost always online and on the go – and you want to be able to reach them and observe their behavior and where they spend their time.

But when you're growing a business, this ever-changing digital landscape can quickly become overwhelming.

With several other responsibilities and tasks that you need to do, how can you also efficiently create, fine-tune, and maintain an agile digital marketing strategy?

I've put together this guide about marketing strategies to help you improve your digital presence and grow better.

If you run a small business, I get that you may not know how to jumpstart your strategy. Thankfully, this digital marketing strategy template will help you get there with its actionable tips and templates to set you up for success.

And did I mention that it’s free?

Now, back to the topic at hand: are you confused about the difference between a marketing strategy and marketing tactics? I’ll cover that below.

You can think about it like this: strategy is planning, and tactic is doing. Having a strategy without ways to act on it (tactics) is daydreaming, and taking actions with no common goal or plan (strategy) wastes your time.

Let's dive a bit deeper into the differences between the two.

Characteristics of a Strategy

Marketing or not, there are three parts to any strategy:

1. A diagnosis of your challenge.

2. A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge.

3. A set of targeted actions is necessary to accomplish the policy.

Depending on the scale of your business, your marketing strategy may include several moving parts, each with different goals. With that said, working on your strategy can become daunting at times.

So, if you're ever feeling overwhelmed about your marketing strategy, refer to these three steps to keep you focused on achieving your objectives.

Characteristics of a Tactic

While strategies provide a framework for your overall vision, tactics determine the specific steps taken to execute that vision.

A good tactic should:

• Be specific, actionable, and measurable.
• Align with the overall strategy.
• Have a relatively short time frame.

Depending on your marketing strategy, your tactics may include email marketing campaigns, publishing a blog, or organizing an event.

Now, let's look at digital marketing strategy.

A strong digital marketing strategy helps your business achieve specific digital goals through carefully selected mediums.

Similar to marketing strategies versus marketing tactics, “digital marketing strategy” and “digital marketing campaign” are also often interchanged. So, how do they differ?

I’ll discuss that in the following sections.

Components of a Digital Strategy

Goals and Objectives

First of all, you’ve got to lay out your main goals and specific objectives to build an effective digital strategy.

Goals are big-picture ideas, while objectives are more detailed and easier to measure. They have clear deadlines and show what success looks like.

Here is an example of how I like to think about the difference:

• Goal: To increase brand awareness.
• Objective: Grow social media following by 20% within the next quarter.

See the difference? When it comes to goals, you can define and measure them through SMART goals and criteria.

Download SMART template for free

Audience Analysis

Next step — get to know your audience.

Research and identify the specific groups of people you want to reach.

Consider their age, where they live, and how much money they make. What are their interests? What issues do they face? Where do they spend their time online?

Study their online behavior, preferred websites, and what they like to read or watch, so you can pick the best platforms and make content that grabs their attention.

Pro tip: Take it further with 10 Easy Steps to Creating a Customer Profile [+ Templates]

Content Plan

A content plan is the most interesting and, at the same time, most challenging part of any strategy.

Your content must inform, entertain, and engage.

Here you need to “spy” on your audience again. What kind of content do they devour? Where do they leave the most comments, likes, and shares? When do they mostly check in (morning, lunch, bedtime)?

Here are my top tips for creating a content strategy that works:

• Content variety. Use blog posts, videos, infographics, and more content formats to keep your audience engaged. Unique research and case studies are also great.
• Content pillars. Build content around core ideas that resonate with your brand and audience.
• Content calendar. Use a content calendar to stay consistent and ensure a steady flow of material.
• SEO. Research keywords and sprinkle them in for better online visibility.
• Content repurposing. Turn successful content into new formats to maximize its reach.
• Tracking and adapting. Use Google Analytics data to see what works and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Pro tip: Take your content strategy to the next level with this handy guide: How to Develop a Content Strategy in 7 Steps: A Start-to-Finish Guide

UX Design

Every digital strategy should prioritize a good user experience. Your site or app needs to be functional, enjoyable, and easy to use.

It must be clear, intuitive, and frustration-free. Otherwise, you risk losing potential customers.

Here are my tips for good UX:

• Clear navigation. Make the menu simple so customers can find what they need easily.
• Simple forms. Keep forms short with clear instructions and no annoying error messages.
• Mobile-friendly design. Your site must look good and work well on any device.
• Fast loading speed. Speed up your site to keep visitors and improve user experience.

Pro tip: Explore more UX design here: Perfecting Your Digital UX Design — The Tips You Need to Know

Data Analytics

Data analytics track traffic, analyze which parts of the campaign resonate most, and even pinpoint where users might be dropping off.

Data analytics can also track how users behave, understand what they like, and even predict future trends.

This lets you identify what‘s working and what’s not. You can then refine your approach, optimize content for better conversions, and ultimately achieve your objectives with laser focus.

Pro tip: If you want to learn more about data analytics, I recommend exploring this free resource: A Complete Guide to Data Analytics — Download for free

What is a digital marketing campaign?

Digital marketing campaigns are the building blocks and actions within your digital marketing strategy that move you toward a specific end goal.

For instance, if the overarching goal of my digital marketing strategy is to generate more leads through social media, I might run a digital marketing campaign on X (formerly Twitter.)

I‘d share some of my business’s best-performing gated content on the platform to generate more leads through the channel.

Let's tie it all together to help you create a digital marketing strategy you execute with your digital marketing campaigns.

1. Build your buyer personas.

For any marketing strategy – digital or not – you need to know who you're marketing to. The best digital marketing strategies are built upon detailed buyer personas; creating them is your first step.

Featured Resource: Organize your audience segments and strengthen your marketing with these templates to build your buyer personas. They'll help you organize your insights and have a clear visualization of your target audience.

Buyer personas represent your ideal customer(s) and can be created by researching, surveying, and interviewing your business's target audience.

I have to note that it’s important that the information you gather is based on real data whenever possible. Making assumptions about your audience can cause your marketing strategy to go wrong.

Buyer personas are especially helpful if you have a niche audience. For example, I run Breaking the Blueprint, a HubSpot Blog column for minority business owners and entrepreneurs — a more specific group than the general HubSpot audience.

I could publish content based on what I think they might look for and benefit from, but I’m much more effective, impactful, and helpful if I dig deep and uncover their specific interests, needs, and challenges.

To get a well-rounded picture of your persona, your research pool should include customers, prospects, and people outside your contacts database who align with your target audience.

But what information should you gather for your buyer persona(s) to inform your digital marketing strategy?

That depends on your business — it’s likely to vary by whether you’re B2B or B2C or sell a high-cost or low-cost product.

I’ve outlined some starting points that you can fine-tune and tailor to your particular business:

Quantitative and Demographic Information

• Location: Use web analytics tools to easily identify what location your website traffic is coming from.
• Age: Depending on your business, this may or may not be relevant information. But if it is, it's best to gather this data by identifying trends in your existing prospect and contact database.
• Income: It's best to gather sensitive information like personal income through persona research interviews, as people might be unwilling to share these details via online forms.
• Job Title: This is something you can get a rough idea of from your existing customer base and is most relevant for B2B companies.

Qualitative and Psychographic Information

• Goals: Depending on what challenge your product or service solves, you may already have a good idea of the goals of your buyer persona. Cement your assumptions by speaking to real customers and internal sales and customer service reps.
• Challenges: Speak to customers, sales and customer service reps, and any other customer-facing employees to get an idea of the common challenges your audience members face.
• Hobbies/Interests: Ask customers and those who align with your target audience about their hobbies and interests. If you’re a fashion brand, for example, it’s helpful to know if large segments of your audience are also interested in fitness and well-being to inform future content and partnerships.
• Priorities: Talk to customers and target audience members to find out what‘s most important to them in relation to your business. For example, if you’re a B2B software company, knowing your audience values customer support over a competitive price point is very valuable information.

By combining all of these details, you'll be able to create buyer personas that are accurate and highly valuable for your business.

2. Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you'll need.

Your marketing goals should always be tied back to the fundamental goals of your business.

For example, if my business’ goal is to increase online revenue by 20%, my marketing team’s goal might be to generate 50% more leads via the website than the previous year to contribute to that success.

My pro tip: I recommend using a high-level marketing plan template to outline your annual marketing strategy, identify top priorities, and more. Click here to download ours (for free).

Download this Template

Whatever your overarching digital marketing goal is, you must be able to measure the success of your strategy along the way with the right digital marketing tools.

For instance, HubSpot's Reporting Dashboard brings all of your marketing and sales data into one place, so you can quickly determine what works and what doesn't to improve your strategy for the future.

My favorite feature is that you can customize your dashboards with the drag-and-drop editor to ensure your reports feature the metrics that matter most.

3. Evaluate your existing digital channels and assets.

When reviewing your existing digital marketing channels and assets to determine what to incorporate in your strategy, it's helpful to first consider the big picture — this will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed or confused.

Gather what you have and categorize each vehicle or asset in a spreadsheet so you have a clear picture of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.

Owned, Earned, Paid Media Framework

To do this effectively, I recommend using the owned, earned, and paid media framework to categorize the digital “vehicles,” assets, or channels you‘re already using and decide what’s a good fit for your strategy.

Owned Media

Owned media refers to the digital assets your brand or company owns, like your website, social media profiles, blog content, or imagery.

Owned channels are what your business has complete control over. The HubSpot Blog is an example of owned media, but this can also include some off-site content you own (e.g. a blog you publish on Medium).

Earned Media

Earned media, also called earned content, is anything written about or created about your business that doesn’t come from paid advertising or sponsorships.

It’s published by a third party, like press mentions or media outlet coverage, people sharing your content via their networks, user-generated content, and even word-of-mouth marketing from satisfied customers.

You can earn media by getting press mentions and positive reviews as well as by people sharing your content via their networks (e.g. social media channels).

Paid Media

Paid media refers to any vehicle or channel you spend money on to catch the attention of your buyer personas.

This includes things like Google Ads, paid social media posts, native advertising (e.g. sponsored posts on other websites), or any other medium through which you pay in exchange for increased visibility.

I’ll go over an example now that I’ve outlined the framework.

Owned, Earned, and Paid Media Framework Example

Say I have an owned piece of content on a landing page on my website that's been created to help me generate leads.

I know I want to incorporate different parts of the framework rather than just working with owned, earned, or paid media alone.

To amplify the number of leads the content generates, I ensure it's shareable so my audience can distribute it via their social media profiles. In return, this will increase traffic to my landing page. This is the earned media component.

To support my content's success, I might post about the content on my Facebook page and pay to have it seen by more people in my target audience.

This is how the three parts of the framework can work together, although it's not necessary for success. For instance, if my owned and earned media are already both successful, I might not need to invest in paid methods.

I recommend evaluating what solution will help you best meet your goals and then incorporating those channels into your digital marketing strategy.

Featured Resource: Keep track of your paid media efforts with HubSpot's free Paid Media Template.

Download the Template

4. Audit and plan your owned media campaigns.

At the heart of digital marketing is owned media — and it almost always comes in the form of content.

That’s because nearly every message your brand broadcasts can be classified as content, whether it’s an About Us site page, product descriptions, blog posts, ebooks, infographics, podcasts, or social media posts.

Content helps convert your website visitors into leads and customers while improving your brand’s online presence. And when this content is search engine optimized (SEO), it can boost your search and organic traffic.

Whatever your digital marketing strategy goal is, you'll want to incorporate owned content. To start, decide what content will help you reach your goals.

Continuing with the example from above, my goal is to generate 50% more leads on my website this year. My “About Us” page is probably useless to my strategy unless it’s somehow been a lead-generation machine in the past.

If you’re feeling stuck, below I’ve outlined a brief process you can follow to work out what owned content you need to meet your digital marketing strategy goals.

Audit your existing content.

I promise marketing audits are significantly less scary than any other type of audit and much simpler.

Just make a list of your existing owned content, then rank each item according to what has previously performed best concerning your current goals.

For example, if your goal is lead generation, rank your content according to which pieces generated the most leads over the last year (such as a blog post, ebook, or site page).

The idea here is to figure out what’s currently working, and what’s not so that you can set yourself up for success when planning future content.

Identify gaps in your existing content.

Based on your buyer personas, identify any gaps in the content you have.

For example, if you're a math tutoring company and know through research that a major challenge for your personas is finding effective ways to study, create some.

By looking at your content audit, you might discover that ebooks hosted on a certain type of landing page convert really well (better than webinars, for example).

In the case of this math tutoring company, you might make the decision to add an ebook about “how to make studying more effective” to your content creation plans.

Create a content creation plan.

Based on your findings and the gaps you’ve identified, make a content creation plan outlining the content that’s necessary to help you hit your goals.

This should include:

• A title.
• Format.
• A goal.
• Promotional channels.
• Why you're creating the content.
• The priority level of the content.

This can be a simple spreadsheet and should also include budget information if you‘re planning to outsource the content creation or a time estimate if you’re producing it yourself.

5. Audit and plan your earned media campaigns.

Evaluating your previous earned media against your current goals can help you get an idea of where to focus your time.

Look at where your traffic and leads are coming from (if that's your goal) and rank each earned media source from most effective to least effective.

You can obtain this information using tools like the Sources reports in HubSpot's Traffic Analytics tool.

You may find a particular article you contributed to the industry press drove a lot of qualified traffic to your website, which boosted conversions.

Or, you may discover LinkedIn is where you see most people sharing content, which increases traffic.

The idea is to build a picture of what types of earned media will help you reach your goals (and what won’t) based on historical data.

However, if there’s something new you want to experiment with, don’t rule it out just because it’s never been done before.

6. Audit and plan your paid media campaigns.

Auditing your paid media campaigns (also a simple, no-frills audit) is the same process: evaluate your existing paid media across each platform (e.g. Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and identify what’s most likely to help you meet your current goals.

Say, for example, you spend a lot of money on ads and find that you don’t get the results you’d hoped for. It might be time to refine your approach or scrap it all together and focus on another platform that yields better results.

Featured Resource: Use this Google Ads PPC Kit to learn how to leverage Google Ads for your digital marketing strategy.

By the end of the process, you should have a clear idea of which paid media platforms you want to continue using and which (if any) you'd like to remove from your strategy.

7. Bring your digital marketing campaign together.

You've done the planning and the research, and you now have a solid vision of the elements that will make up your digital marketing strategy.

To review, here's what you should have solidified so far:

• Clear profile(s) of your buyer persona(s).
• One or more digital marketing-specific goals.
• An inventory of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.
• An audit of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.
• An owned content creation plan or wish list.

Now, you bring all of your findings together to plan the campaign(s) that will make up your digital marketing strategy.

A better understanding of digital marketing strategies is vital to your ultimate success. Earning a bachelor’s in marketing or a related field can be valuable and boost your career.

In the meantime, I made a list of basic marketing strategies commonly used by teams across various industries.

To make it even more helpful, I used our 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report to order the list based on what marketers use most and find the most effective.

Digital marketing isn’t one size fits all. Each business has its own unique needs and goals. Therefore, every marketing team will have their own approach.

However, there are many online marketing strategies that you can implement to spread awareness about your business and attract new customers.

Here are some common, effective strategies that can help you build a comprehensive digital marketing plan.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage your target audience.

Instead of bombarding your audience with ads and promotional messages, content marketing focuses on providing your customers with information that is actually interesting and useful to them.

Ultimately, the goal of content marketing is to build trust, establish thought leadership, and drive profitable customer action.

Since buyers view around three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep, content marketing is how you give them what they’re looking for.

Despite also falling victim to the “Is X marketing tactic dead???!??” by a few dissenting voices (some even call it a massive waste of your time!), blogging is one of the most popular forms of content marketing.

You might call me biased because I’m a blogger writing about why blogging is important, but you can also trust the 92% of marketers who told us that they’re boosting their investments in blogging in 2024.

It’s a major play for businesses that want to attract customers who are genuinely interested in their products and services. And well-written, well-researched blog posts often answer an urgent need for a potential customer.

For instance, HubSpot sells marketing software, and our users are typically marketing professionals who create plans, campaigns, and editorial calendars for their employers.

Recognizing this, Hubspot offers a free blog maker to help you get started on publishing content that resonates with your audience, ensuring you can easily share your knowledge and insights without the technical hassle.

The key is not to blog just because: blog with the intent to solve for the customer. To effectively do so, it’s important to understand your target audience and their pain points.

That way, you can write highly targeted content that’s genuinely helpful for readers, especially since consumers say they read 1-4 blog posts per month.

Another trend in the content marketing space is generative AI, and 85% of marketers say it will change how they create content this year. Those who already use it say it helps them create high-quality, better-performing content.

Image Source

Don’t blog just because; blog with the intent to solve for the customer. To effectively do so, it’s important to understand your target audience and their pain points.

That way, you can write highly targeted content that’s genuinely helpful for readers.

Online Marketing Benefits of Content Marketing

• Boosts web traffic: Regularly publishing fresh and relevant blog content can improve your SEO rankings, attracting more organic visitors to your website. Plus, sharing content on your social media pages and other channels can help you stay engaged with your audience while increasing visibility.
• Establishes authority and credibility: Sharing your expertise and insights through blog articles and other content can help establish you and your company as a thought leader in your industry. This also allows you to engage with your audience and provide them with useful information that speaks to their pain points. Not only does this build trust, but it also positions you as a reliable and knowledgeable resource.
• Generates leads and conversions: By creating engaging and relevant content, you can attract potential customers who are interested in your business and move them through the buyer’s journey. You can also convert readers into leads by including CTAs that encourage readers to take action, such as subscribing to a newsletter or registering for a free trial.

Recommended Reading

• Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing
• How to Create a Successful Blog Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Blog SEO: How to Search Engine Optimize Your Blog Content
• Blogging Mistakes to Avoid According to HubSpot Bloggers

2. Paid Advertising

An organic content marketing strategy is only a portion of the story. It’s just as important to implement non-organic plays, such as paid advertising.

Not only will this help you drive more brand awareness, but it will also help you reach audiences who can’t find your business organically yet.

I recommend paid advertising if you’re still growing your blog or business and not getting as much traffic as you want. There are a few types of advertising you can consider adding to your digital strategy:

• Social Media Advertising.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC).
• Google Ads.
• Online Advertising.

Nearly every platform has an option for you to advertise — either through a display network (such as Google’s) or through its built-in ad system (such as Instagram’s, Facebook’s, and LinkedIn’s self-serve advertising portal).

Here’s one example of an ad on LinkedIn:

Image Source

What I like the most, and the biggest benefit of paid advertising, is that it’s not dependent on a content or SEO strategy where success can take a while to build.

You choose a platform, create your budget, write copy, decide on images, and launch your advertising campaigns.

Still, to ensure your success, I’d recommend creating an advertising plan that outlines who you’re targeting, which channels you’ll be using, and how much you plan to spend.

I recommend downloading the following template to create your plan.

Featured Resource: Advertising Plan Template

Download this Advertising Planning Kit

Online Marketing Benefits of Paid Advertising

• Targeted campaigns: Platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram enable you to target your ads to specific audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. This helps ensure that your ads are seen by the right people who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.
• Measurable results: No matter which platform you advertise on, you’ll be able to track the success of your ad campaigns by analyzing performance metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions. By analyzing this data, you can identify which ads and targeting strategies are most effective and make informed decisions to improve future campaigns.
• Flexibility: Paid advertising gives you the option to adjust your campaigns, targeting options, and budget based on your marketing goals and audience preferences. This can help you stay agile and responsive in the fast-moving digital marketing landscape and ensure that you are getting the most from your advertising budget.

3. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on targeting and engaging specific high-value accounts or key decision-makers within those accounts.

Rather than casting a wide net to reach a broad audience, ABM personalizes marketing efforts to cater to the needs and preferences of specific target accounts.

This strategy is particularly suitable for B2B organizations and industries with complex sales cycles, where forging strong relationships with specific key accounts is critical.

For instance, let’s say my software company wants to target enterprise account XYZ Inc.

Instead of a broad marketing approach, I adopt an ABM strategy and tailor my efforts to XYZ Inc. by researching its pain points and business objectives.

I’ll develop personalized content tailored to its needs, engage with decision-makers, nurture relationships, and coordinate my marketing and sales efforts. All of my marketing efforts focus on what works for this one account.

Since it has a specific use case, ABM is lower on the list of popular digital marketing strategies, and I don’t recommend it to anyone but B2B organizations or industries with high-value accounts and complex sales cycles.

Dustin Brackett, CEO and founder of HIVE Strategy, feels similarly and says he believes in the power ABM has for some organizations but understands why it’s not a popular trend.

“ABM is really only valuable for organizations that have high-value customers. There isn't a ton of ROI to be had by investing in ABM for a B2C organization, or any organization that has a lower customer lifetime value because ABM is a large investment in time, resources, and dollars,” Brackett says.

Featured Resource: How to Implement an ABM Strategy

Download Your Free Guide

Online Marketing Benefits of Account-Based Marketing

• Personalized approach: Unlike other marketing strategies, ABM enables you to create tailor-made content, communications, and campaigns for each account you target. This level of personalization helps you establish stronger relationships with your target accounts and increase the likelihood of conversion.
• Alignment between marketing and sales: Alignment between your marketing and sales team is crucial for implementing a successful ABM strategy. It ensures that both teams are focused on the same goals and committed to creating consistent experiences for accounts.
• Improved customer retention: ABM emphasizes building long-term relationships with target accounts. By understanding their specific needs and providing relevant solutions, marketers can increase customer satisfaction, retention, and even drive further expansion within the account.

Recommended Reading

• The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing
• How to Choose the Right Accounts for ABM, from HubSpot's ABM Product Manager
• Account-Based Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing
• The Best Account-Based Marketing Software

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of optimizing your web content, structure, and technical aspects to improve its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase organic, non-paid traffic to your website from search engines like Google and Bing.

If your product pages aren’t earning traffic, SEO is your best bet to get those pages in front of those who are searching for those products and services.

To ensure that your content engages and converts users, it’s important to invest in an on-page SEO strategy.

According to our survey, website/blog/SEO is the second-most used channel among marketers, but they say it offers the best ROI. I’m not surprised by this because of my own experience.

More often than not, I’m looking to Google to find answers to my questions, and so are my other consumer peers — among all generations, people prefer to find answers to their questions with search engines.

Image Source

And, while social search (which I’ll cover below) continues to gain steam, consumers still find the best answers on search engines.

Image Source

Not sure how to get started? Download our starter pack below.

Featured Resource: SEO Starter Pack

Download Your Free SEO Pack

Online Marketing Benefits of SEO

• Increases organic traffic: Optimizing your digital content for search engines can help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords that your audience is using. As your ranking increases, so does your brand’s visibility and your website’s organic traffic.
• Improves user experience: When it comes to getting higher rankings, optimizing your website for users is just as important as optimizing for search engines. This includes ensuring that your website is easy to navigate and has a clear hierarchy of information so users can quickly find what they are looking for. In doing this, you not only improve the user experience, but you also increase the chances of users staying on your website longer, engaging with your brand, and ultimately, becoming customers.
• Provides long-term benefits: Unlike paid advertising, which requires ongoing investment, optimizing your content for search engines can provide long-term benefits by driving consistent and ongoing organic traffic to your website. Yes, it can take longer to reach your goals, but the payoff includes saving your business money and building an authentic brand reputation.

Recommended Reading

• The Ultimate Guide to SEO
• How to Create an SEO Strategy
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

5. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is another way to generate brand awareness online and boost your digital strategy.

It involves creating and sharing content on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others, to attract attention, drive website traffic, and generate leads.

Image Source

Social media is one of the highest ROI marketing channels, and lately, a lot of its success comes from apps incorporating ecommerce.

It’s now one of the leading product discovery and purchasing channels for consumers, so much so that 17% of social media users bought a product in-app in the past three months.

Given this, it’s no surprise that 59% of marketers report driving more social sales than in past years.

Image Source

Social media marketing is also great for building communities around your brand.

You can speak directly to your audience, engage with followers through comments and messages, and have discussions to connect with them on a more personal level.

The stronger your relationship with your audience, the more loyal they will be to your brand.

Online Marketing Benefits of Social Media Marketing

• Increases brand awareness: With billions of active social media users, you can reach a wide audience and increase your brand’s visibility. This is especially true if you participate in relevant social media trends, run paid campaigns, create and promote branded hashtags, and collaborate with other brands.
• Boosts engagement: A strong social media presence can help create a community around your brand and build a strong relationship with your followers. Plus, you can use tactics like contests and giveaways to encourage specific actions that support your marketing goals, such as asking users to tag a friend or write a review.
• Rich insights and analytics: Social media platforms typically provide robust analytics tools that allow you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, track key metrics, and gain insights for continuous improvement.

Recommended Reading

• Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide
• How to Create a Great Social Media Strategy in 2024 (+New Data)
• The HubSpot Blog's 2024 Social Media Marketing Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers
• How to Run a Social Media Contest That Gets Tons of Engagement
• The Fastest Growing Social Media Platforms [New Data]

6. Influencer Marketing

The global market for influencer marketing has more than doubled since 2019, making it more popular than ever.

By partnering with influencers, brands can create content that promotes their products or services while leveraging the influencer’s reach.

There are many ways you can partner with influencers, such as sponsored content, guest blogging, product collaborations, influencer takeovers, and more.

Before partnering with an influencer, it’s important to do your research and make sure they have an engaged following within your industry or niche and are aligned with your values and messaging.

Not sure how to get started? Check out HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.

Featured Resource: The Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing

Download Your Free Guide

I know that influencer marketing might seem unattainable from a cost perspective as most businesses don’t have the most A list of A list influencer funds available in their budgets.

The good thing is that you don’t have to use these influencers, especially since those with a high price tag aren’t the most effective type of influencer.

Micro-influencers, with 10,000 - 100,000 followers, are the most effective.

Marketers prefer working with them and find them the most effective, which makes sense — the cost is lower, and these influencers typically have a stronger bond with a smaller and more engaged community, ready and open to hear from them.

Image Source

Online Marketing Benefits of Influencer Marketing

• Brand exposure: Partnering with influencers allows you to tap into the influencer’s existing audience and reach, which can significantly boost your brand’s awareness. By leveraging an influencer’s platform and following, you can expose your products or services to a larger audience and gain visibility among potential new customers.
• Authentic content creation: Influencers are skilled in creating engaging and authentic content that resonates with their followers. By partnering with influencers, you can tap into their creativity and expertise to develop compelling content that promotes your brand’s offerings in an organic and relatable manner. Plus, user-generated content created by influencers can showcase real-life experiences with your brand, which can influence buyer decisions and foster trust.
• Trust and credibility: Influencers are seen as trusted authorities within their niches. When they endorse or recommend a brand’s products or services, it adds credibility and trust. This can positively influence consumer perceptions and increase the likelihood of potential customers trying or purchasing from your brand.

Recommended Reading

• Influencer Marketing Strategy Checklist & Template
• What Will Influencer Marketing Look Like in 2024?
• 13 Influencer Marketing Campaigns to Inspire and Get You Started With Your Own
• The Top Channels for Influencer Marketing

7. Podcasting

According to Edison Research, the number of Americans (aged 12+) who have listened to a podcast in the last month is up 30% from 2013.

While audio marketing and platforms like Clubhouse are different from podcasting, the idea is the same: you can educate and engage an audience; all they need is a device that plays audio.

When digging into the data, I found that podcasting and other audio content aren’t as popular as other strategies on this list. This makes sense because podcasting isn’t a channel offering the immediate ROI you might want.

Dan Stillgoe, Blend’s Marketing Manager, spoke to my colleague Caroline Forsey and told her the same thing.

He says, “It‘s true that you can’t directly attribute leads or revenue from a podcast, but that's not its purpose."

Podcasts are a long-term brand-building channel that can improve affinity and connection for your brand like no other channel," he explains. "When you realize the long-term and surrounding benefits, podcasting becomes a clear and obvious investment.”

He adds, “Podcasting is the perfect way to craft content that's engaging and authentic — something buyers are beginning to crave in this AI era.”

For inspiration, check out the HubSpot Podcast Network:

Image Source

Instead of looking to podcasts to drive exponential ROI, I recommend leveraging them to drive engagement.

Having podcasts in your digital strategy allows you to reach people on platforms other than search engines and social media channels, and it’s a much more unplanned, natural medium — though, of course, you should plan each episode carefully and ensure you’re delivering contact that actually serves your listeners.

As a consumer, I like the authenticity of podcasts and how they feel like a free-flowing conversation. I even pay for premium membership subscriptions to some of my favorite shows to take advantage of extra content.

Featured Resource: How to Start a Podcast

Download Your Free Guide

Online Marketing Benefits of Podcasting

• Discoverability: Podcasts can be hosted on various platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher, expanding your brand’s reach. You can also transcribe your podcasts and publish the transcript to make them more SEO-friendly. Plus, you can invite guests to speak on your podcast and have them share the episode with their followers.
• Authenticity: Podcasting allows for a more conversational tone compared to other forms of content. The audio format lends itself to authentic and unscripted conversations, creating a sense of connection and genuine interaction between you and your listeners.
• Sustainable: Podcasts have a long shelf life and can remain relevant for months to come, helping you get the most out of your content. Plus, you can repurpose the audio material to create blog posts, videos, ebooks, and other types of content.

Recommended Reading

• Podcasting: What You Need + Nine Steps To Get Started
• 3 Tips on Launching a Kickass Podcast, from My First Million Producers
• The Anatomy of a Perfect Podcast Episode, According to HubSpot's Podcast Expert
• The Ultimate Guide to Podcast Audio, According to HubSpot's Podcast Expert

8. Email Marketing

Every few years, email marketing falls victim to the “X marketing tactic is dead!!!!!!” conversation, but it’s not.

It’s one of the most leveraged channels among marketers and offers the second-highest ROI, making it one of the most important digital strategies you can implement today.

It gives you plenty of opportunity to nurture customers who are highly interested in your products. It’s important, however, to only email those who have opted-in to receive emails from you.

It’s bad form to do otherwise, and it risks diminishing your email deliverability. After all, you wouldn’t subscribe to a newsletter for a brand that doesn’t interest you, right?

You can earn subscribers through your blog, contests, and even through webinars.

Any time someone gives you their email — and every time they give consent to receive communication from you — you have full permission to target them with an email marketing campaign.

Featured Resource: Email Marketing Planning Template

Download Your Free Template

Online Marketing Benefits of Email Marketing

• Builds R\relationships: Email allows you to communicate directly with your audience, establishing a personal relationship and building trust over time. You can also customize email campaigns to the interests and unique preferences of your target audience, providing more content that is relevant to their needs. Fun fact: Segmented and personalized emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs.
• Drives traffic to your website: Emails with links to your website or blog can drive traffic to your website and engage with your brand. You can even send your email subscribers exclusive deals, promotions, or discounts, which can increase the potential for conversions.
• Easy to track: Email marketing campaigns can be tracked and measured, providing valuable insights such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates. By analyzing these metrics, you can make data-driven decisions that can help you reach your target audience more effectively.

My pro tip: Streamline your email marketing efforts with generative AI, as marketers told us it’s the most effective at creating emails.

Try it for yourself with AI Email Writer, HubSpot’s generative AI tool that will help you automate copywriting and create marketing emails that capture attention and inspire clicks.

Try the AI Email Writer

Recommended Reading

• Benefits of Email Marketing Your Marketing Team Must Know
• The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing
• Examples of Brilliant Email Marketing Campaigns

9. Video Marketing

With platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels on the rise, video marketing is more popular — and effective — than ever. In fact, 92% of video marketers surveyed by Wyzowl reported they get a positive ROI on video content.

Given this, it’s no surprise that the fastest-growing platforms are a video haven, especially TikTok. Of the marketers already using the platform, 56% plan to increase their investments in 2024, making it the platform poised to grow the most this year.

Image Source

One of the reasons videos are so effective is because they allow you to communicate with your audience in a more personal way.

Plus, short-form video takes less bandwidth and effort to create, you can still share a lot of information, and shorter videos align with the fast-paced attention span of many watchers.

By making video an integral part of your digital strategy, you’re able to showcase your brand’s creativity and explore more content formats, such as product demos, explainer videos, expert interviews, customer testimonials, and more.

Online Marketing Benefits of Video Marketing

• Boosts SEO: Since Google tends to prioritize video content in its search results, implementing video as part of your marketing strategy can improve your search engine visibility. Plus, video content can be optimized with relevant titles, descriptions, and keywords, making it easier for search engines to understand and categorize the content.
• Better retention: Video is easier to remember than text-based content because it allows you to use storytelling techniques and communicate important messages more effectively. Video has the power to invoke emotions and create a connection with your audience, making it easier for them to consume and remember your content.
• Enhances reach: Video is highly shareable on social media due to its easily digestible nature. As people share your video content with their own social media networks, it exposes your brand to new audiences.

Recommended Reading

• The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing
• The Best Video Marketing Channels to Grow Your Brand
• The Video Marketing Playbook

Now, it’s time to bring all of this together to form a cohesive marketing strategy document. Your strategy document should map out the series of actions you’re going to take to achieve your goals based on your research up to this point.

Let's discuss how our digital strategy template can help.

Digital Marketing Strategy Template

While a spreadsheet can be an efficient format for mapping your digital marketing strategy, that approach can quickly become messy and overwhelming.

To plan your strategy for the long-term – typically between six to 12 months out, I recommend a reliable digital marketing strategy document. But where to start? With our free digital marketing plan template.

This template will walk you through your business summary and initiatives, help you build your target market and competitor information, and flesh out your marketing strategy — including your budget and specific channels and metrics.

Download Now

Use this digital strategy template to build out your annual digital marketing strategy and tactics. By planning out these yearly plans, you can overlay when you and your team will be executing each action. For example:

• In January, you'll start a blog that will be continually updated once a week for the entire year.
• In March, you'll launch a new ebook, accompanied by paid promotion.
• In July, you'll prepare for your biggest business month — what do you hope to have observed at this point that will influence the content you produce to support it?
• In September, you'll focus on earned media in the form of PR to drive additional traffic during the run-up.

This approach provides a structured timeline for your activity which will help communicate plans among colleagues.

Finally, here are some examples of digital marketing campaigns and their strategies to inspire you.

Digital Marketing Campaign Examples

1. Béis: Paid Ad

Travel accessory brand Béis recently launched a social media campaign to announce feature updates to one of its products. And they did it in the best way: by showing instead of telling.

Why I Like This

In a 34-second clip distributed on Instagram Stories, the brand shows how its product performed before and how it performs now after updating the material.

This is a great campaign for a few reasons:

• It not only highlights product improvement but shows customers that the brand is committed to iterating and improving,
• It makes sure to include captions in the video so it's accessible to everyone,
• There’s a CTA button at the bottom of the screen that encourages customers to make a purchase.

2. Omsom: Social Media

Asian food brand Omsom creates starter kits for home cooks who want a simple way to cook Asian cuisine without sacrificing authentic ingredients and flavors.

The brand leverages its TikTok profile to share behind-the-scenes content, recipes, and culturally relevant content.

In a recent video, the brand's co-founder shared how it sources one of its key ingredients and how it chose the more difficult route to preserve the integrity of the food.

@weareomsom

here's why we choose to make our lives harder as food founders! #business #sourcing

♬ original sound - Omsom

Why I Like This

Here’s what Omsom did right:

• Highlights its brand values while still building excitement around the product.
• Includes its website link in its TikTok bio.
• Offers a discount to customers who find it through the video-sharing platform.

Sharing behind-the-scenes content is a great way to connect with your audience and share details that will simultaneously highlight your mission and/or values.

3. The General: Paid Advertising

After reports that consumers thought the brand was untrustworthy due to its low-budget ads, The General decided to revamp its entire marketing strategy.

In a commercial featuring basketball superstar Shaq, the brand addressed the elephant in the room and introduced a new and improved look.

Why I Like This

The General’s ad is a great example of effective crisis management:

• It addresses negative perceptions head-on, showing viewers that it's in tune with its target audience and their needs,
• It builds back credibility by emphasizing how long it’s been in business and the number of people it has helped.

Digital Strategy Examples

What makes a winning digital strategy? Let's peek behind the curtain at some of the best strategies from popular brands.

Nike – Apps, Games & the Metaverse

Nike has impressed everyone with its digital strategies and innovative additions in recent years. First, they created apps like the Nike mobile app, SNKRS (for sneaker releases), Nike Training Club (NTC), and Nike Run Club (NRC).

These apps helped Nike sell more stuff, especially during COVID-19. NTC, for example, saw a big sales jump in China — 80% in the latest quarter.

Image Source

Nike is also exploring the metaverse with a place called Nikeland on Roblox. Young people are crazy about Roblox, with over 216 million monthly active users. Nike jumped on this trend and cleverly integrated its brand into this world.

Nikeland sells digital clothes, shoes, and accessories for Roblox characters. They bought a company called RTFKT, which makes digital sneakers. People fell in love with these shoes, showing there's a big market for this stuff.

Image Source

Lessons to Learn

• Stay true to yourself. Don't lose sight of your mission. Use tech to help you achieve your goals, not just to make a quick buck.
• Make it personal. Speak to people in a way that resonates with them and personalize your digital offerings.
• Follow trends. Stay vigilant and in trend with what's currently popular and appealing to make the most out of every opportunity.

Hinge – The Power of Disruption and Antimarketing

A popular dating app Hinge is doing something different than its competitors.

They want people to stop using their app once they find love! This is a cool change from most apps that try to keep you using them all the time, like Tinder. That said, Hinge's message is “The dating app designed to be deleted.”

Image Source

Hinge uses specific prompts to help you create a meaningful profile that gets you closer to finding your soulmate, not just someone to go on a date with.

These prompts are like conversation starters that help you show your true self and find someone who connects with you on a deeper level.

For instance, here’s one of the prompts I’ve seen: “The one thing I'd like to know about you is…”

You answer it, and those who resonate with your energy or share the same vibe will connect. Maybe one of them is “THE” person who will make you want to delete the app later. Who knows?

Lessons to Learn

• Outcome-based marketing works. Focus on the desired outcome for the user rather than just downloads, purchases, or engagement.
• Disruptive marketing helps you stand out. Use strategies that challenge the status quo and stand out from the competition in unexpected ways. For instance — with guerrilla marketing, bizarre campaigns, or unconventional partnerships — the key is to disrupt the norm.
• Unique selling propositions (USP) bring in customers. Use “antimarketing” tactics in your copies and ads to sell more. Instead of being pushy, create curiosity by not seeming too eager to sell. It might sound strange, but it works.

Apple — UGC Hype for iPhone 13 Pro

Apple skipped the traditional route of promoting their iPhone 13 Pro's macro camera with branded content. Instead, they launched a viral social media campaign called "Shot on iPhone Challenge."

This clever content marketing strategy relied on UGC.

iPhone users were encouraged to share their best macro photos with specific hashtags #ShotoniPhone and #iPhonemacrochallenge.

Image Source

To make things even sweeter, Apple ran a contest where people submitted their best close-up photos. Winners had a chance to be featured on Apple’s official channels and potentially in future marketing ads. (What a sound tactic!)

This got users excited and gave Apple great marketing material from their creative customers.

Outdoor equipment brand Deuter applies the same tactic to draw attention to its Instagram page.

Lessons to Learn

• Free marketing can be effective. Motivate users to create exciting content about your product, saving money on ad creation.
• User trust is a must for UGC. Real people's photos (and especially Reels) resonate more than staged ads, building trust in the brand.
• Contests create buzz. Host contests to create excitement and encourage spreading the word about your brand.
• Unique hashtags grab attention. Create original hashtags to go viral and inspire people to use them.

Spotify Wrapped — Turning Data into Engagement

Spotify Wrapped is a year-end summary of your most-listened songs and podcasts. And it’s a content marketing masterpiece.

Wrapped transforms user data on music habits (top artists, songs, genres, listening time) into colorful and informative visuals.

Image Source

Spotify leverages data to spark self-reflection, and that’s the best part of this strategy.

In fact, as described by Spotify's head of marketing, Wrapped creates a FOMO effect among users. It's simple — everyone wants their Wrapped to have something interesting to discuss and compare by the end of the year.

Wrapped's success shows how user data can become a fun, shareable tool that strengthens brand loyalty.

Lessons to Learn

• Make data engaging. Don't bore your audience with raw numbers. Transform data into visuals, quizzes, or interactive experiences that are fun and informative.
• Personalization is still king. People crave personal experiences. Tailor content, reports, or recommendations based on user data to build a unique connection with each customer.
• Spark conversations. Use data to create content that inspires users to share and discuss it with others. This can be insights about their habits, comparisons with others, or even predictions based on their data.
• FOMO works. Create a sense of urgency or exclusivity around your data-driven experiences.

Myprotein — Influencer Collaborations & Promo Incentives

The health and fitness industry was thriving, and Myprotein wanted to stand out. However, they faced a challenge — athletes often stick with trusted protein brands.

To get their name out there, Myprotein teamed up with famous fitness stars like Bella Rahbek to create content that would appeal to her followers.

Image Source

They even offered special discounts and bundles to people who followed them online. With catchy hashtags and coupon codes, Myprotein made it super easy for people to try their stuff.

Apparently, it worked!

And it still works — ambassador and affiliate programs are their go-to methods that drive sales.

Lessons to Learn

• Collaborate with influencers. Collaborate with micro and big influencers and reach their audience.
• Engage on social media. Connect with your audience and foster a community around your brand.
• Offer promotions. Attract new customers with discounts & deals to sample your products.
• Foster loyalty. Use ambassador and affiliate programs to build lasting relationships with customers.

Building My Own Strategy

Want to see how a digital strategy works in action? Let‘s build one together for my fictional brand, Charmaloo. This step-by-step process will show you how I’m planning to take my idea from concept to online success.

Crafting the Brand Identity

I want a fun, energetic brand that makes people smile. So, I took my artistic skills online and started designing custom clothes.

Each piece is unique, made just for the customer, with whatever designs they want — pictures of loved ones, pets, funny sayings, love quotes, anything.

That‘s how I came up with the name Charmaloo; it’s short and catchy and combines “charismatic” with “loo” for a playful feel.

Defining My Audience

After the idea took shape, I defined my target audience, which comprises two main groups:

• Individuals who seek unique clothing not found in mainstream stores.
• People looking for heartfelt, customized gifts for loved ones.

At this point, I needed to find where my potential customers hang out the most.

Choosing the Right Social Media Platform

To show off Charmaloo's fun and custom style, I knew Instagram was the perfect place to start.

I made my page super colorful and happy, just like my brand. It grabs people's attention immediately and shows how much fun and creative Charmaloo can be.

Creating Mockups with Canva

Starting a new business is pricey, and, unfortunately, fancy photos were out of reach. That's where Canva came in and saved me.

With Canva's mockups, I could put my designs on all sorts of clothes using models that looked real. This saved me a ton of money and is amazing for startups and anyone offering print-on-demand services.

Building Community

I knew there were people out there looking for unique gift ideas, so I started joining Facebook groups where people asked for suggestions. This was a great way to organically promote Charmaloo.

By offering personalized artwork on apparel as a special and creative gifting option, I can connect with potential customers and raise awareness for my brand.

Collaboration with Influencers

Next on my agenda is partnering with mom influencers. I‘ll be reaching out to them to promote my special offer: kids’ drawings printed on t-shirts.

Initially, I'll focus on offering gifted collaborations to build relationships with micro-influencers who might be more receptive to this type of partnership. As Charmaloo grows, I can explore incorporating paid collaborations as well.

To create adorable content for my Instagram page, I'll also be gifting matching mommy-and-me sets.

Collaboration with UGC Creators

A collaboration with UGC creators is inevitable, so I’ll send a sweatshirt to a couple.

The boyfriend will film his girlfriend's reaction when he gives her the “gift.” This genuine moment will showcase the emotional connection to my products and create authentic content.

I’ll do the same with UGC creators who play the role of best friends to get more great content for my feed and reels. This will inspire more friends to do the same and help me reach a larger audience.

Storytelling, Not Just Selling

I told myself, “Charmaloo must be more than just clothes. It must connect with my audience. They need to enjoy my site and have fun here so they can transition from casual browsers to loyal customers.”

That's why I started incorporating inspirational quotes into my feed. The quotes make Charmaloo feel more personal and help people remember the brand.

To make the best of the Charmaloo, here are the future strategy plans for it:

• Launch a website. I'll finally have a place online where customers can personalize and buy their items quickly through the automated system.
• Expand on more SM platforms. I'll be on TikTok and Facebook to reach more customers.
• Get started with email marketing. Engaging email campaigns will keep customers up-to-date on new designs, promotions, and inspiring stories.
• Start an affiliate program. I'll create a program for affiliates who’ll spread the word about Charmaloo and get rewarded for that.

• Paid ads. While my main focus will be on organic growth and community building, I'll also run occasional paid ads to reach a broader audience.

Grow Better With Marketing Strategies That Improve Your Digital Presence

Your strategy document will be very individual to your business, which is why it's almost impossible for us to create a one-size-fits-all digital marketing strategy template.

Remember, the purpose of your strategy document is to map out the actions you‘re going to take to achieve your goal over a period of time — as long as it communicates that, then you’ve nailed the basics of creating a digital strategy.

If you're eager to build a truly effective strategy to help grow your business, check out our free collection of content marketing templates below.

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

from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/digital-strategy-guide

Am I right in assuming that a significant part of your marketing strategy today is digital? Probably.

Consumers and businesses alike are almost always online and on the go – and you want to be able to reach them and observe their behavior and where they spend their time.

But when you're growing a business, this ever-changing digital landscape can quickly become overwhelming.

With several other responsibilities and tasks that you need to do, how can you also efficiently create, fine-tune, and maintain an agile digital marketing strategy?

I've put together this guide about marketing strategies to help you improve your digital presence and grow better.

If you run a small business, I get that you may not know how to jumpstart your strategy. Thankfully, this digital marketing strategy template will help you get there with its actionable tips and templates to set you up for success.

And did I mention that it’s free?

Now, back to the topic at hand: are you confused about the difference between a marketing strategy and marketing tactics? I’ll cover that below.

You can think about it like this: strategy is planning, and tactic is doing. Having a strategy without ways to act on it (tactics) is daydreaming, and taking actions with no common goal or plan (strategy) wastes your time.

Let's dive a bit deeper into the differences between the two.

Characteristics of a Strategy

Marketing or not, there are three parts to any strategy:

1. A diagnosis of your challenge.

2. A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge.

3. A set of targeted actions is necessary to accomplish the policy.

Depending on the scale of your business, your marketing strategy may include several moving parts, each with different goals. With that said, working on your strategy can become daunting at times.

So, if you're ever feeling overwhelmed about your marketing strategy, refer to these three steps to keep you focused on achieving your objectives.

Characteristics of a Tactic

While strategies provide a framework for your overall vision, tactics determine the specific steps taken to execute that vision.

A good tactic should:

• Be specific, actionable, and measurable.
• Align with the overall strategy.
• Have a relatively short time frame.

Depending on your marketing strategy, your tactics may include email marketing campaigns, publishing a blog, or organizing an event.

Now, let's look at digital marketing strategy.

A strong digital marketing strategy helps your business achieve specific digital goals through carefully selected mediums.

Similar to marketing strategies versus marketing tactics, “digital marketing strategy” and “digital marketing campaign” are also often interchanged. So, how do they differ?

I’ll discuss that in the following sections.

Components of a Digital Strategy

Goals and Objectives

First of all, you’ve got to lay out your main goals and specific objectives to build an effective digital strategy.

Goals are big-picture ideas, while objectives are more detailed and easier to measure. They have clear deadlines and show what success looks like.

Here is an example of how I like to think about the difference:

• Goal: To increase brand awareness.
• Objective: Grow social media following by 20% within the next quarter.

See the difference? When it comes to goals, you can define and measure them through SMART goals and criteria.

Download SMART template for free

Audience Analysis

Next step — get to know your audience.

Research and identify the specific groups of people you want to reach.

Consider their age, where they live, and how much money they make. What are their interests? What issues do they face? Where do they spend their time online?

Study their online behavior, preferred websites, and what they like to read or watch, so you can pick the best platforms and make content that grabs their attention.

Pro tip: Take it further with 10 Easy Steps to Creating a Customer Profile [+ Templates]

Content Plan

A content plan is the most interesting and, at the same time, most challenging part of any strategy.

Your content must inform, entertain, and engage.

Here you need to “spy” on your audience again. What kind of content do they devour? Where do they leave the most comments, likes, and shares? When do they mostly check in (morning, lunch, bedtime)?

Here are my top tips for creating a content strategy that works:

• Content variety. Use blog posts, videos, infographics, and more content formats to keep your audience engaged. Unique research and case studies are also great.
• Content pillars. Build content around core ideas that resonate with your brand and audience.
• Content calendar. Use a content calendar to stay consistent and ensure a steady flow of material.
• SEO. Research keywords and sprinkle them in for better online visibility.
• Content repurposing. Turn successful content into new formats to maximize its reach.
• Tracking and adapting. Use Google Analytics data to see what works and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Pro tip: Take your content strategy to the next level with this handy guide: How to Develop a Content Strategy in 7 Steps: A Start-to-Finish Guide

UX Design

Every digital strategy should prioritize a good user experience. Your site or app needs to be functional, enjoyable, and easy to use.

It must be clear, intuitive, and frustration-free. Otherwise, you risk losing potential customers.

Here are my tips for good UX:

• Clear navigation. Make the menu simple so customers can find what they need easily.
• Simple forms. Keep forms short with clear instructions and no annoying error messages.
• Mobile-friendly design. Your site must look good and work well on any device.
• Fast loading speed. Speed up your site to keep visitors and improve user experience.

Pro tip: Explore more UX design here: Perfecting Your Digital UX Design — The Tips You Need to Know

Data Analytics

Data analytics track traffic, analyze which parts of the campaign resonate most, and even pinpoint where users might be dropping off.

Data analytics can also track how users behave, understand what they like, and even predict future trends.

This lets you identify what‘s working and what’s not. You can then refine your approach, optimize content for better conversions, and ultimately achieve your objectives with laser focus.

Pro tip: If you want to learn more about data analytics, I recommend exploring this free resource: A Complete Guide to Data Analytics — Download for free

What is a digital marketing campaign?

Digital marketing campaigns are the building blocks and actions within your digital marketing strategy that move you toward a specific end goal.

For instance, if the overarching goal of my digital marketing strategy is to generate more leads through social media, I might run a digital marketing campaign on X (formerly Twitter.)

I‘d share some of my business’s best-performing gated content on the platform to generate more leads through the channel.

Let's tie it all together to help you create a digital marketing strategy you execute with your digital marketing campaigns.

1. Build your buyer personas.

For any marketing strategy – digital or not – you need to know who you're marketing to. The best digital marketing strategies are built upon detailed buyer personas; creating them is your first step.

Featured Resource: Organize your audience segments and strengthen your marketing with these templates to build your buyer personas. They'll help you organize your insights and have a clear visualization of your target audience.

Buyer personas represent your ideal customer(s) and can be created by researching, surveying, and interviewing your business's target audience.

I have to note that it’s important that the information you gather is based on real data whenever possible. Making assumptions about your audience can cause your marketing strategy to go wrong.

Buyer personas are especially helpful if you have a niche audience. For example, I run Breaking the Blueprint, a HubSpot Blog column for minority business owners and entrepreneurs — a more specific group than the general HubSpot audience.

I could publish content based on what I think they might look for and benefit from, but I’m much more effective, impactful, and helpful if I dig deep and uncover their specific interests, needs, and challenges.

To get a well-rounded picture of your persona, your research pool should include customers, prospects, and people outside your contacts database who align with your target audience.

But what information should you gather for your buyer persona(s) to inform your digital marketing strategy?

That depends on your business — it’s likely to vary by whether you’re B2B or B2C or sell a high-cost or low-cost product.

I’ve outlined some starting points that you can fine-tune and tailor to your particular business:

Quantitative and Demographic Information

• Location: Use web analytics tools to easily identify what location your website traffic is coming from.
• Age: Depending on your business, this may or may not be relevant information. But if it is, it's best to gather this data by identifying trends in your existing prospect and contact database.
• Income: It's best to gather sensitive information like personal income through persona research interviews, as people might be unwilling to share these details via online forms.
• Job Title: This is something you can get a rough idea of from your existing customer base and is most relevant for B2B companies.

Qualitative and Psychographic Information

• Goals: Depending on what challenge your product or service solves, you may already have a good idea of the goals of your buyer persona. Cement your assumptions by speaking to real customers and internal sales and customer service reps.
• Challenges: Speak to customers, sales and customer service reps, and any other customer-facing employees to get an idea of the common challenges your audience members face.
• Hobbies/Interests: Ask customers and those who align with your target audience about their hobbies and interests. If you’re a fashion brand, for example, it’s helpful to know if large segments of your audience are also interested in fitness and well-being to inform future content and partnerships.
• Priorities: Talk to customers and target audience members to find out what‘s most important to them in relation to your business. For example, if you’re a B2B software company, knowing your audience values customer support over a competitive price point is very valuable information.

By combining all of these details, you'll be able to create buyer personas that are accurate and highly valuable for your business.

2. Identify your goals and the digital marketing tools you'll need.

Your marketing goals should always be tied back to the fundamental goals of your business.

For example, if my business’ goal is to increase online revenue by 20%, my marketing team’s goal might be to generate 50% more leads via the website than the previous year to contribute to that success.

My pro tip: I recommend using a high-level marketing plan template to outline your annual marketing strategy, identify top priorities, and more. Click here to download ours (for free).

Download this Template

Whatever your overarching digital marketing goal is, you must be able to measure the success of your strategy along the way with the right digital marketing tools.

For instance, HubSpot's Reporting Dashboard brings all of your marketing and sales data into one place, so you can quickly determine what works and what doesn't to improve your strategy for the future.

My favorite feature is that you can customize your dashboards with the drag-and-drop editor to ensure your reports feature the metrics that matter most.

3. Evaluate your existing digital channels and assets.

When reviewing your existing digital marketing channels and assets to determine what to incorporate in your strategy, it's helpful to first consider the big picture — this will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed or confused.

Gather what you have and categorize each vehicle or asset in a spreadsheet so you have a clear picture of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.

Owned, Earned, Paid Media Framework

To do this effectively, I recommend using the owned, earned, and paid media framework to categorize the digital “vehicles,” assets, or channels you‘re already using and decide what’s a good fit for your strategy.

Owned Media

Owned media refers to the digital assets your brand or company owns, like your website, social media profiles, blog content, or imagery.

Owned channels are what your business has complete control over. The HubSpot Blog is an example of owned media, but this can also include some off-site content you own (e.g. a blog you publish on Medium).

Earned Media

Earned media, also called earned content, is anything written about or created about your business that doesn’t come from paid advertising or sponsorships.

It’s published by a third party, like press mentions or media outlet coverage, people sharing your content via their networks, user-generated content, and even word-of-mouth marketing from satisfied customers.

You can earn media by getting press mentions and positive reviews as well as by people sharing your content via their networks (e.g. social media channels).

Paid Media

Paid media refers to any vehicle or channel you spend money on to catch the attention of your buyer personas.

This includes things like Google Ads, paid social media posts, native advertising (e.g. sponsored posts on other websites), or any other medium through which you pay in exchange for increased visibility.

I’ll go over an example now that I’ve outlined the framework.

Owned, Earned, and Paid Media Framework Example

Say I have an owned piece of content on a landing page on my website that's been created to help me generate leads.

I know I want to incorporate different parts of the framework rather than just working with owned, earned, or paid media alone.

To amplify the number of leads the content generates, I ensure it's shareable so my audience can distribute it via their social media profiles. In return, this will increase traffic to my landing page. This is the earned media component.

To support my content's success, I might post about the content on my Facebook page and pay to have it seen by more people in my target audience.

This is how the three parts of the framework can work together, although it's not necessary for success. For instance, if my owned and earned media are already both successful, I might not need to invest in paid methods.

I recommend evaluating what solution will help you best meet your goals and then incorporating those channels into your digital marketing strategy.

Featured Resource: Keep track of your paid media efforts with HubSpot's free Paid Media Template.

Download the Template

4. Audit and plan your owned media campaigns.

At the heart of digital marketing is owned media — and it almost always comes in the form of content.

That’s because nearly every message your brand broadcasts can be classified as content, whether it’s an About Us site page, product descriptions, blog posts, ebooks, infographics, podcasts, or social media posts.

Content helps convert your website visitors into leads and customers while improving your brand’s online presence. And when this content is search engine optimized (SEO), it can boost your search and organic traffic.

Whatever your digital marketing strategy goal is, you'll want to incorporate owned content. To start, decide what content will help you reach your goals.

Continuing with the example from above, my goal is to generate 50% more leads on my website this year. My “About Us” page is probably useless to my strategy unless it’s somehow been a lead-generation machine in the past.

If you’re feeling stuck, below I’ve outlined a brief process you can follow to work out what owned content you need to meet your digital marketing strategy goals.

Audit your existing content.

I promise marketing audits are significantly less scary than any other type of audit and much simpler.

Just make a list of your existing owned content, then rank each item according to what has previously performed best concerning your current goals.

For example, if your goal is lead generation, rank your content according to which pieces generated the most leads over the last year (such as a blog post, ebook, or site page).

The idea here is to figure out what’s currently working, and what’s not so that you can set yourself up for success when planning future content.

Identify gaps in your existing content.

Based on your buyer personas, identify any gaps in the content you have.

For example, if you're a math tutoring company and know through research that a major challenge for your personas is finding effective ways to study, create some.

By looking at your content audit, you might discover that ebooks hosted on a certain type of landing page convert really well (better than webinars, for example).

In the case of this math tutoring company, you might make the decision to add an ebook about “how to make studying more effective” to your content creation plans.

Create a content creation plan.

Based on your findings and the gaps you’ve identified, make a content creation plan outlining the content that’s necessary to help you hit your goals.

This should include:

• A title.
• Format.
• A goal.
• Promotional channels.
• Why you're creating the content.
• The priority level of the content.

This can be a simple spreadsheet and should also include budget information if you‘re planning to outsource the content creation or a time estimate if you’re producing it yourself.

5. Audit and plan your earned media campaigns.

Evaluating your previous earned media against your current goals can help you get an idea of where to focus your time.

Look at where your traffic and leads are coming from (if that's your goal) and rank each earned media source from most effective to least effective.

You can obtain this information using tools like the Sources reports in HubSpot's Traffic Analytics tool.

You may find a particular article you contributed to the industry press drove a lot of qualified traffic to your website, which boosted conversions.

Or, you may discover LinkedIn is where you see most people sharing content, which increases traffic.

The idea is to build a picture of what types of earned media will help you reach your goals (and what won’t) based on historical data.

However, if there’s something new you want to experiment with, don’t rule it out just because it’s never been done before.

6. Audit and plan your paid media campaigns.

Auditing your paid media campaigns (also a simple, no-frills audit) is the same process: evaluate your existing paid media across each platform (e.g. Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and identify what’s most likely to help you meet your current goals.

Say, for example, you spend a lot of money on ads and find that you don’t get the results you’d hoped for. It might be time to refine your approach or scrap it all together and focus on another platform that yields better results.

Featured Resource: Use this Google Ads PPC Kit to learn how to leverage Google Ads for your digital marketing strategy.

By the end of the process, you should have a clear idea of which paid media platforms you want to continue using and which (if any) you'd like to remove from your strategy.

7. Bring your digital marketing campaign together.

You've done the planning and the research, and you now have a solid vision of the elements that will make up your digital marketing strategy.

To review, here's what you should have solidified so far:

• Clear profile(s) of your buyer persona(s).
• One or more digital marketing-specific goals.
• An inventory of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.
• An audit of your existing owned, earned, and paid media.
• An owned content creation plan or wish list.

Now, you bring all of your findings together to plan the campaign(s) that will make up your digital marketing strategy.

A better understanding of digital marketing strategies is vital to your ultimate success. Earning a bachelor’s in marketing or a related field can be valuable and boost your career.

In the meantime, I made a list of basic marketing strategies commonly used by teams across various industries.

To make it even more helpful, I used our 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report to order the list based on what marketers use most and find the most effective.

Digital marketing isn’t one size fits all. Each business has its own unique needs and goals. Therefore, every marketing team will have their own approach.

However, there are many online marketing strategies that you can implement to spread awareness about your business and attract new customers.

Here are some common, effective strategies that can help you build a comprehensive digital marketing plan.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage your target audience.

Instead of bombarding your audience with ads and promotional messages, content marketing focuses on providing your customers with information that is actually interesting and useful to them.

Ultimately, the goal of content marketing is to build trust, establish thought leadership, and drive profitable customer action.

Since buyers view around three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep, content marketing is how you give them what they’re looking for.

Despite also falling victim to the “Is X marketing tactic dead???!??” by a few dissenting voices (some even call it a massive waste of your time!), blogging is one of the most popular forms of content marketing.

You might call me biased because I’m a blogger writing about why blogging is important, but you can also trust the 92% of marketers who told us that they’re boosting their investments in blogging in 2024.

It’s a major play for businesses that want to attract customers who are genuinely interested in their products and services. And well-written, well-researched blog posts often answer an urgent need for a potential customer.

For instance, HubSpot sells marketing software, and our users are typically marketing professionals who create plans, campaigns, and editorial calendars for their employers.

Recognizing this, Hubspot offers a free blog maker to help you get started on publishing content that resonates with your audience, ensuring you can easily share your knowledge and insights without the technical hassle.

The key is not to blog just because: blog with the intent to solve for the customer. To effectively do so, it’s important to understand your target audience and their pain points.

That way, you can write highly targeted content that’s genuinely helpful for readers, especially since consumers say they read 1-4 blog posts per month.

Another trend in the content marketing space is generative AI, and 85% of marketers say it will change how they create content this year. Those who already use it say it helps them create high-quality, better-performing content.

Image Source

Don’t blog just because; blog with the intent to solve for the customer. To effectively do so, it’s important to understand your target audience and their pain points.

That way, you can write highly targeted content that’s genuinely helpful for readers.

Online Marketing Benefits of Content Marketing

• Boosts web traffic: Regularly publishing fresh and relevant blog content can improve your SEO rankings, attracting more organic visitors to your website. Plus, sharing content on your social media pages and other channels can help you stay engaged with your audience while increasing visibility.
• Establishes authority and credibility: Sharing your expertise and insights through blog articles and other content can help establish you and your company as a thought leader in your industry. This also allows you to engage with your audience and provide them with useful information that speaks to their pain points. Not only does this build trust, but it also positions you as a reliable and knowledgeable resource.
• Generates leads and conversions: By creating engaging and relevant content, you can attract potential customers who are interested in your business and move them through the buyer’s journey. You can also convert readers into leads by including CTAs that encourage readers to take action, such as subscribing to a newsletter or registering for a free trial.

Recommended Reading

• Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing
• How to Create a Successful Blog Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Blog SEO: How to Search Engine Optimize Your Blog Content
• Blogging Mistakes to Avoid According to HubSpot Bloggers

2. Paid Advertising

An organic content marketing strategy is only a portion of the story. It’s just as important to implement non-organic plays, such as paid advertising.

Not only will this help you drive more brand awareness, but it will also help you reach audiences who can’t find your business organically yet.

I recommend paid advertising if you’re still growing your blog or business and not getting as much traffic as you want. There are a few types of advertising you can consider adding to your digital strategy:

• Social Media Advertising.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC).
• Google Ads.
• Online Advertising.

Nearly every platform has an option for you to advertise — either through a display network (such as Google’s) or through its built-in ad system (such as Instagram’s, Facebook’s, and LinkedIn’s self-serve advertising portal).

Here’s one example of an ad on LinkedIn:

Image Source

What I like the most, and the biggest benefit of paid advertising, is that it’s not dependent on a content or SEO strategy where success can take a while to build.

You choose a platform, create your budget, write copy, decide on images, and launch your advertising campaigns.

Still, to ensure your success, I’d recommend creating an advertising plan that outlines who you’re targeting, which channels you’ll be using, and how much you plan to spend.

I recommend downloading the following template to create your plan.

Featured Resource: Advertising Plan Template

Download this Advertising Planning Kit

Online Marketing Benefits of Paid Advertising

• Targeted campaigns: Platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram enable you to target your ads to specific audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. This helps ensure that your ads are seen by the right people who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.
• Measurable results: No matter which platform you advertise on, you’ll be able to track the success of your ad campaigns by analyzing performance metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions. By analyzing this data, you can identify which ads and targeting strategies are most effective and make informed decisions to improve future campaigns.
• Flexibility: Paid advertising gives you the option to adjust your campaigns, targeting options, and budget based on your marketing goals and audience preferences. This can help you stay agile and responsive in the fast-moving digital marketing landscape and ensure that you are getting the most from your advertising budget.

3. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-based marketing is a strategic approach that focuses on targeting and engaging specific high-value accounts or key decision-makers within those accounts.

Rather than casting a wide net to reach a broad audience, ABM personalizes marketing efforts to cater to the needs and preferences of specific target accounts.

This strategy is particularly suitable for B2B organizations and industries with complex sales cycles, where forging strong relationships with specific key accounts is critical.

For instance, let’s say my software company wants to target enterprise account XYZ Inc.

Instead of a broad marketing approach, I adopt an ABM strategy and tailor my efforts to XYZ Inc. by researching its pain points and business objectives.

I’ll develop personalized content tailored to its needs, engage with decision-makers, nurture relationships, and coordinate my marketing and sales efforts. All of my marketing efforts focus on what works for this one account.

Since it has a specific use case, ABM is lower on the list of popular digital marketing strategies, and I don’t recommend it to anyone but B2B organizations or industries with high-value accounts and complex sales cycles.

Dustin Brackett, CEO and founder of HIVE Strategy, feels similarly and says he believes in the power ABM has for some organizations but understands why it’s not a popular trend.

“ABM is really only valuable for organizations that have high-value customers. There isn't a ton of ROI to be had by investing in ABM for a B2C organization, or any organization that has a lower customer lifetime value because ABM is a large investment in time, resources, and dollars,” Brackett says.

Featured Resource: How to Implement an ABM Strategy

Download Your Free Guide

Online Marketing Benefits of Account-Based Marketing

• Personalized approach: Unlike other marketing strategies, ABM enables you to create tailor-made content, communications, and campaigns for each account you target. This level of personalization helps you establish stronger relationships with your target accounts and increase the likelihood of conversion.
• Alignment between marketing and sales: Alignment between your marketing and sales team is crucial for implementing a successful ABM strategy. It ensures that both teams are focused on the same goals and committed to creating consistent experiences for accounts.
• Improved customer retention: ABM emphasizes building long-term relationships with target accounts. By understanding their specific needs and providing relevant solutions, marketers can increase customer satisfaction, retention, and even drive further expansion within the account.

Recommended Reading

• The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing
• How to Choose the Right Accounts for ABM, from HubSpot's ABM Product Manager
• Account-Based Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing
• The Best Account-Based Marketing Software

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of optimizing your web content, structure, and technical aspects to improve its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

The ultimate goal of SEO is to increase organic, non-paid traffic to your website from search engines like Google and Bing.

If your product pages aren’t earning traffic, SEO is your best bet to get those pages in front of those who are searching for those products and services.

To ensure that your content engages and converts users, it’s important to invest in an on-page SEO strategy.

According to our survey, website/blog/SEO is the second-most used channel among marketers, but they say it offers the best ROI. I’m not surprised by this because of my own experience.

More often than not, I’m looking to Google to find answers to my questions, and so are my other consumer peers — among all generations, people prefer to find answers to their questions with search engines.

Image Source

And, while social search (which I’ll cover below) continues to gain steam, consumers still find the best answers on search engines.

Image Source

Not sure how to get started? Download our starter pack below.

Featured Resource: SEO Starter Pack

Download Your Free SEO Pack

Online Marketing Benefits of SEO

• Increases organic traffic: Optimizing your digital content for search engines can help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords that your audience is using. As your ranking increases, so does your brand’s visibility and your website’s organic traffic.
• Improves user experience: When it comes to getting higher rankings, optimizing your website for users is just as important as optimizing for search engines. This includes ensuring that your website is easy to navigate and has a clear hierarchy of information so users can quickly find what they are looking for. In doing this, you not only improve the user experience, but you also increase the chances of users staying on your website longer, engaging with your brand, and ultimately, becoming customers.
• Provides long-term benefits: Unlike paid advertising, which requires ongoing investment, optimizing your content for search engines can provide long-term benefits by driving consistent and ongoing organic traffic to your website. Yes, it can take longer to reach your goals, but the payoff includes saving your business money and building an authentic brand reputation.

Recommended Reading

• The Ultimate Guide to SEO
• How to Create an SEO Strategy
• How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

5. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is another way to generate brand awareness online and boost your digital strategy.

It involves creating and sharing content on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others, to attract attention, drive website traffic, and generate leads.

Image Source

Social media is one of the highest ROI marketing channels, and lately, a lot of its success comes from apps incorporating ecommerce.

It’s now one of the leading product discovery and purchasing channels for consumers, so much so that 17% of social media users bought a product in-app in the past three months.

Given this, it’s no surprise that 59% of marketers report driving more social sales than in past years.

Image Source

Social media marketing is also great for building communities around your brand.

You can speak directly to your audience, engage with followers through comments and messages, and have discussions to connect with them on a more personal level.

The stronger your relationship with your audience, the more loyal they will be to your brand.

Online Marketing Benefits of Social Media Marketing

• Increases brand awareness: With billions of active social media users, you can reach a wide audience and increase your brand’s visibility. This is especially true if you participate in relevant social media trends, run paid campaigns, create and promote branded hashtags, and collaborate with other brands.
• Boosts engagement: A strong social media presence can help create a community around your brand and build a strong relationship with your followers. Plus, you can use tactics like contests and giveaways to encourage specific actions that support your marketing goals, such as asking users to tag a friend or write a review.
• Rich insights and analytics: Social media platforms typically provide robust analytics tools that allow you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, track key metrics, and gain insights for continuous improvement.

Recommended Reading

• Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate Guide
• How to Create a Great Social Media Strategy in 2024 (+New Data)
• The HubSpot Blog's 2024 Social Media Marketing Report: Data from 1400+ Global Marketers
• How to Run a Social Media Contest That Gets Tons of Engagement
• The Fastest Growing Social Media Platforms [New Data]

6. Influencer Marketing

The global market for influencer marketing has more than doubled since 2019, making it more popular than ever.

By partnering with influencers, brands can create content that promotes their products or services while leveraging the influencer’s reach.

There are many ways you can partner with influencers, such as sponsored content, guest blogging, product collaborations, influencer takeovers, and more.

Before partnering with an influencer, it’s important to do your research and make sure they have an engaged following within your industry or niche and are aligned with your values and messaging.

Not sure how to get started? Check out HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.

Featured Resource: The Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing

Download Your Free Guide

I know that influencer marketing might seem unattainable from a cost perspective as most businesses don’t have the most A list of A list influencer funds available in their budgets.

The good thing is that you don’t have to use these influencers, especially since those with a high price tag aren’t the most effective type of influencer.

Micro-influencers, with 10,000 - 100,000 followers, are the most effective.

Marketers prefer working with them and find them the most effective, which makes sense — the cost is lower, and these influencers typically have a stronger bond with a smaller and more engaged community, ready and open to hear from them.

Image Source

Online Marketing Benefits of Influencer Marketing

• Brand exposure: Partnering with influencers allows you to tap into the influencer’s existing audience and reach, which can significantly boost your brand’s awareness. By leveraging an influencer’s platform and following, you can expose your products or services to a larger audience and gain visibility among potential new customers.
• Authentic content creation: Influencers are skilled in creating engaging and authentic content that resonates with their followers. By partnering with influencers, you can tap into their creativity and expertise to develop compelling content that promotes your brand’s offerings in an organic and relatable manner. Plus, user-generated content created by influencers can showcase real-life experiences with your brand, which can influence buyer decisions and foster trust.
• Trust and credibility: Influencers are seen as trusted authorities within their niches. When they endorse or recommend a brand’s products or services, it adds credibility and trust. This can positively influence consumer perceptions and increase the likelihood of potential customers trying or purchasing from your brand.

Recommended Reading

• Influencer Marketing Strategy Checklist & Template
• What Will Influencer Marketing Look Like in 2024?
• 13 Influencer Marketing Campaigns to Inspire and Get You Started With Your Own
• The Top Channels for Influencer Marketing

7. Podcasting

According to Edison Research, the number of Americans (aged 12+) who have listened to a podcast in the last month is up 30% from 2013.

While audio marketing and platforms like Clubhouse are different from podcasting, the idea is the same: you can educate and engage an audience; all they need is a device that plays audio.

When digging into the data, I found that podcasting and other audio content aren’t as popular as other strategies on this list. This makes sense because podcasting isn’t a channel offering the immediate ROI you might want.

Dan Stillgoe, Blend’s Marketing Manager, spoke to my colleague Caroline Forsey and told her the same thing.

He says, “It‘s true that you can’t directly attribute leads or revenue from a podcast, but that's not its purpose."

Podcasts are a long-term brand-building channel that can improve affinity and connection for your brand like no other channel," he explains. "When you realize the long-term and surrounding benefits, podcasting becomes a clear and obvious investment.”

He adds, “Podcasting is the perfect way to craft content that's engaging and authentic — something buyers are beginning to crave in this AI era.”

For inspiration, check out the HubSpot Podcast Network:

Image Source

Instead of looking to podcasts to drive exponential ROI, I recommend leveraging them to drive engagement.

Having podcasts in your digital strategy allows you to reach people on platforms other than search engines and social media channels, and it’s a much more unplanned, natural medium — though, of course, you should plan each episode carefully and ensure you’re delivering contact that actually serves your listeners.

As a consumer, I like the authenticity of podcasts and how they feel like a free-flowing conversation. I even pay for premium membership subscriptions to some of my favorite shows to take advantage of extra content.

Featured Resource: How to Start a Podcast

Download Your Free Guide

Online Marketing Benefits of Podcasting

• Discoverability: Podcasts can be hosted on various platforms, such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher, expanding your brand’s reach. You can also transcribe your podcasts and publish the transcript to make them more SEO-friendly. Plus, you can invite guests to speak on your podcast and have them share the episode with their followers.
• Authenticity: Podcasting allows for a more conversational tone compared to other forms of content. The audio format lends itself to authentic and unscripted conversations, creating a sense of connection and genuine interaction between you and your listeners.
• Sustainable: Podcasts have a long shelf life and can remain relevant for months to come, helping you get the most out of your content. Plus, you can repurpose the audio material to create blog posts, videos, ebooks, and other types of content.

Recommended Reading

• Podcasting: What You Need + Nine Steps To Get Started
• 3 Tips on Launching a Kickass Podcast, from My First Million Producers
• The Anatomy of a Perfect Podcast Episode, According to HubSpot's Podcast Expert
• The Ultimate Guide to Podcast Audio, According to HubSpot's Podcast Expert

8. Email Marketing

Every few years, email marketing falls victim to the “X marketing tactic is dead!!!!!!” conversation, but it’s not.

It’s one of the most leveraged channels among marketers and offers the second-highest ROI, making it one of the most important digital strategies you can implement today.

It gives you plenty of opportunity to nurture customers who are highly interested in your products. It’s important, however, to only email those who have opted-in to receive emails from you.

It’s bad form to do otherwise, and it risks diminishing your email deliverability. After all, you wouldn’t subscribe to a newsletter for a brand that doesn’t interest you, right?

You can earn subscribers through your blog, contests, and even through webinars.

Any time someone gives you their email — and every time they give consent to receive communication from you — you have full permission to target them with an email marketing campaign.

Featured Resource: Email Marketing Planning Template

Download Your Free Template

Online Marketing Benefits of Email Marketing

• Builds R\relationships: Email allows you to communicate directly with your audience, establishing a personal relationship and building trust over time. You can also customize email campaigns to the interests and unique preferences of your target audience, providing more content that is relevant to their needs. Fun fact: Segmented and personalized emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs.
• Drives traffic to your website: Emails with links to your website or blog can drive traffic to your website and engage with your brand. You can even send your email subscribers exclusive deals, promotions, or discounts, which can increase the potential for conversions.
• Easy to track: Email marketing campaigns can be tracked and measured, providing valuable insights such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates. By analyzing these metrics, you can make data-driven decisions that can help you reach your target audience more effectively.

My pro tip: Streamline your email marketing efforts with generative AI, as marketers told us it’s the most effective at creating emails.

Try it for yourself with AI Email Writer, HubSpot’s generative AI tool that will help you automate copywriting and create marketing emails that capture attention and inspire clicks.

Try the AI Email Writer

Recommended Reading

• Benefits of Email Marketing Your Marketing Team Must Know
• The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing
• Examples of Brilliant Email Marketing Campaigns

9. Video Marketing

With platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels on the rise, video marketing is more popular — and effective — than ever. In fact, 92% of video marketers surveyed by Wyzowl reported they get a positive ROI on video content.

Given this, it’s no surprise that the fastest-growing platforms are a video haven, especially TikTok. Of the marketers already using the platform, 56% plan to increase their investments in 2024, making it the platform poised to grow the most this year.

Image Source

One of the reasons videos are so effective is because they allow you to communicate with your audience in a more personal way.

Plus, short-form video takes less bandwidth and effort to create, you can still share a lot of information, and shorter videos align with the fast-paced attention span of many watchers.

By making video an integral part of your digital strategy, you’re able to showcase your brand’s creativity and explore more content formats, such as product demos, explainer videos, expert interviews, customer testimonials, and more.

Online Marketing Benefits of Video Marketing

• Boosts SEO: Since Google tends to prioritize video content in its search results, implementing video as part of your marketing strategy can improve your search engine visibility. Plus, video content can be optimized with relevant titles, descriptions, and keywords, making it easier for search engines to understand and categorize the content.
• Better retention: Video is easier to remember than text-based content because it allows you to use storytelling techniques and communicate important messages more effectively. Video has the power to invoke emotions and create a connection with your audience, making it easier for them to consume and remember your content.
• Enhances reach: Video is highly shareable on social media due to its easily digestible nature. As people share your video content with their own social media networks, it exposes your brand to new audiences.

Recommended Reading

• The Ultimate Guide to Video Marketing
• The Best Video Marketing Channels to Grow Your Brand
• The Video Marketing Playbook

Now, it’s time to bring all of this together to form a cohesive marketing strategy document. Your strategy document should map out the series of actions you’re going to take to achieve your goals based on your research up to this point.

Let's discuss how our digital strategy template can help.

Digital Marketing Strategy Template

While a spreadsheet can be an efficient format for mapping your digital marketing strategy, that approach can quickly become messy and overwhelming.

To plan your strategy for the long-term – typically between six to 12 months out, I recommend a reliable digital marketing strategy document. But where to start? With our free digital marketing plan template.

This template will walk you through your business summary and initiatives, help you build your target market and competitor information, and flesh out your marketing strategy — including your budget and specific channels and metrics.

Download Now

Use this digital strategy template to build out your annual digital marketing strategy and tactics. By planning out these yearly plans, you can overlay when you and your team will be executing each action. For example:

• In January, you'll start a blog that will be continually updated once a week for the entire year.
• In March, you'll launch a new ebook, accompanied by paid promotion.
• In July, you'll prepare for your biggest business month — what do you hope to have observed at this point that will influence the content you produce to support it?
• In September, you'll focus on earned media in the form of PR to drive additional traffic during the run-up.

This approach provides a structured timeline for your activity which will help communicate plans among colleagues.

Finally, here are some examples of digital marketing campaigns and their strategies to inspire you.

Digital Marketing Campaign Examples

1. Béis: Paid Ad

Travel accessory brand Béis recently launched a social media campaign to announce feature updates to one of its products. And they did it in the best way: by showing instead of telling.

Why I Like This

In a 34-second clip distributed on Instagram Stories, the brand shows how its product performed before and how it performs now after updating the material.

This is a great campaign for a few reasons:

• It not only highlights product improvement but shows customers that the brand is committed to iterating and improving,
• It makes sure to include captions in the video so it's accessible to everyone,
• There’s a CTA button at the bottom of the screen that encourages customers to make a purchase.

2. Omsom: Social Media

Asian food brand Omsom creates starter kits for home cooks who want a simple way to cook Asian cuisine without sacrificing authentic ingredients and flavors.

The brand leverages its TikTok profile to share behind-the-scenes content, recipes, and culturally relevant content.

In a recent video, the brand's co-founder shared how it sources one of its key ingredients and how it chose the more difficult route to preserve the integrity of the food.

@weareomsom

here's why we choose to make our lives harder as food founders! #business #sourcing

♬ original sound - Omsom

Why I Like This

Here’s what Omsom did right:

• Highlights its brand values while still building excitement around the product.
• Includes its website link in its TikTok bio.
• Offers a discount to customers who find it through the video-sharing platform.

Sharing behind-the-scenes content is a great way to connect with your audience and share details that will simultaneously highlight your mission and/or values.

3. The General: Paid Advertising

After reports that consumers thought the brand was untrustworthy due to its low-budget ads, The General decided to revamp its entire marketing strategy.

In a commercial featuring basketball superstar Shaq, the brand addressed the elephant in the room and introduced a new and improved look.

Why I Like This

The General’s ad is a great example of effective crisis management:

• It addresses negative perceptions head-on, showing viewers that it's in tune with its target audience and their needs,
• It builds back credibility by emphasizing how long it’s been in business and the number of people it has helped.

Digital Strategy Examples

What makes a winning digital strategy? Let's peek behind the curtain at some of the best strategies from popular brands.

Nike – Apps, Games & the Metaverse

Nike has impressed everyone with its digital strategies and innovative additions in recent years. First, they created apps like the Nike mobile app, SNKRS (for sneaker releases), Nike Training Club (NTC), and Nike Run Club (NRC).

These apps helped Nike sell more stuff, especially during COVID-19. NTC, for example, saw a big sales jump in China — 80% in the latest quarter.

Image Source

Nike is also exploring the metaverse with a place called Nikeland on Roblox. Young people are crazy about Roblox, with over 216 million monthly active users. Nike jumped on this trend and cleverly integrated its brand into this world.

Nikeland sells digital clothes, shoes, and accessories for Roblox characters. They bought a company called RTFKT, which makes digital sneakers. People fell in love with these shoes, showing there's a big market for this stuff.

Image Source

Lessons to Learn

• Stay true to yourself. Don't lose sight of your mission. Use tech to help you achieve your goals, not just to make a quick buck.
• Make it personal. Speak to people in a way that resonates with them and personalize your digital offerings.
• Follow trends. Stay vigilant and in trend with what's currently popular and appealing to make the most out of every opportunity.

Hinge – The Power of Disruption and Antimarketing

A popular dating app Hinge is doing something different than its competitors.

They want people to stop using their app once they find love! This is a cool change from most apps that try to keep you using them all the time, like Tinder. That said, Hinge's message is “The dating app designed to be deleted.”

Image Source

Hinge uses specific prompts to help you create a meaningful profile that gets you closer to finding your soulmate, not just someone to go on a date with.

These prompts are like conversation starters that help you show your true self and find someone who connects with you on a deeper level.

For instance, here’s one of the prompts I’ve seen: “The one thing I'd like to know about you is…”

You answer it, and those who resonate with your energy or share the same vibe will connect. Maybe one of them is “THE” person who will make you want to delete the app later. Who knows?

Lessons to Learn

• Outcome-based marketing works. Focus on the desired outcome for the user rather than just downloads, purchases, or engagement.
• Disruptive marketing helps you stand out. Use strategies that challenge the status quo and stand out from the competition in unexpected ways. For instance — with guerrilla marketing, bizarre campaigns, or unconventional partnerships — the key is to disrupt the norm.
• Unique selling propositions (USP) bring in customers. Use “antimarketing” tactics in your copies and ads to sell more. Instead of being pushy, create curiosity by not seeming too eager to sell. It might sound strange, but it works.

Apple — UGC Hype for iPhone 13 Pro

Apple skipped the traditional route of promoting their iPhone 13 Pro's macro camera with branded content. Instead, they launched a viral social media campaign called "Shot on iPhone Challenge."

This clever content marketing strategy relied on UGC.

iPhone users were encouraged to share their best macro photos with specific hashtags #ShotoniPhone and #iPhonemacrochallenge.

Image Source

To make things even sweeter, Apple ran a contest where people submitted their best close-up photos. Winners had a chance to be featured on Apple’s official channels and potentially in future marketing ads. (What a sound tactic!)

This got users excited and gave Apple great marketing material from their creative customers.

Outdoor equipment brand Deuter applies the same tactic to draw attention to its Instagram page.

Lessons to Learn

• Free marketing can be effective. Motivate users to create exciting content about your product, saving money on ad creation.
• User trust is a must for UGC. Real people's photos (and especially Reels) resonate more than staged ads, building trust in the brand.
• Contests create buzz. Host contests to create excitement and encourage spreading the word about your brand.
• Unique hashtags grab attention. Create original hashtags to go viral and inspire people to use them.

Spotify Wrapped — Turning Data into Engagement

Spotify Wrapped is a year-end summary of your most-listened songs and podcasts. And it’s a content marketing masterpiece.

Wrapped transforms user data on music habits (top artists, songs, genres, listening time) into colorful and informative visuals.

Image Source

Spotify leverages data to spark self-reflection, and that’s the best part of this strategy.

In fact, as described by Spotify's head of marketing, Wrapped creates a FOMO effect among users. It's simple — everyone wants their Wrapped to have something interesting to discuss and compare by the end of the year.

Wrapped's success shows how user data can become a fun, shareable tool that strengthens brand loyalty.

Lessons to Learn

• Make data engaging. Don't bore your audience with raw numbers. Transform data into visuals, quizzes, or interactive experiences that are fun and informative.
• Personalization is still king. People crave personal experiences. Tailor content, reports, or recommendations based on user data to build a unique connection with each customer.
• Spark conversations. Use data to create content that inspires users to share and discuss it with others. This can be insights about their habits, comparisons with others, or even predictions based on their data.
• FOMO works. Create a sense of urgency or exclusivity around your data-driven experiences.

Myprotein — Influencer Collaborations & Promo Incentives

The health and fitness industry was thriving, and Myprotein wanted to stand out. However, they faced a challenge — athletes often stick with trusted protein brands.

To get their name out there, Myprotein teamed up with famous fitness stars like Bella Rahbek to create content that would appeal to her followers.

Image Source

They even offered special discounts and bundles to people who followed them online. With catchy hashtags and coupon codes, Myprotein made it super easy for people to try their stuff.

Apparently, it worked!

And it still works — ambassador and affiliate programs are their go-to methods that drive sales.

Lessons to Learn

• Collaborate with influencers. Collaborate with micro and big influencers and reach their audience.
• Engage on social media. Connect with your audience and foster a community around your brand.
• Offer promotions. Attract new customers with discounts & deals to sample your products.
• Foster loyalty. Use ambassador and affiliate programs to build lasting relationships with customers.

Building My Own Strategy

Want to see how a digital strategy works in action? Let‘s build one together for my fictional brand, Charmaloo. This step-by-step process will show you how I’m planning to take my idea from concept to online success.

Crafting the Brand Identity

I want a fun, energetic brand that makes people smile. So, I took my artistic skills online and started designing custom clothes.

Each piece is unique, made just for the customer, with whatever designs they want — pictures of loved ones, pets, funny sayings, love quotes, anything.

That‘s how I came up with the name Charmaloo; it’s short and catchy and combines “charismatic” with “loo” for a playful feel.

Defining My Audience

After the idea took shape, I defined my target audience, which comprises two main groups:

• Individuals who seek unique clothing not found in mainstream stores.
• People looking for heartfelt, customized gifts for loved ones.

At this point, I needed to find where my potential customers hang out the most.

Choosing the Right Social Media Platform

To show off Charmaloo's fun and custom style, I knew Instagram was the perfect place to start.

I made my page super colorful and happy, just like my brand. It grabs people's attention immediately and shows how much fun and creative Charmaloo can be.

Creating Mockups with Canva

Starting a new business is pricey, and, unfortunately, fancy photos were out of reach. That's where Canva came in and saved me.

With Canva's mockups, I could put my designs on all sorts of clothes using models that looked real. This saved me a ton of money and is amazing for startups and anyone offering print-on-demand services.

Building Community

I knew there were people out there looking for unique gift ideas, so I started joining Facebook groups where people asked for suggestions. This was a great way to organically promote Charmaloo.

By offering personalized artwork on apparel as a special and creative gifting option, I can connect with potential customers and raise awareness for my brand.

Collaboration with Influencers

Next on my agenda is partnering with mom influencers. I‘ll be reaching out to them to promote my special offer: kids’ drawings printed on t-shirts.

Initially, I'll focus on offering gifted collaborations to build relationships with micro-influencers who might be more receptive to this type of partnership. As Charmaloo grows, I can explore incorporating paid collaborations as well.

To create adorable content for my Instagram page, I'll also be gifting matching mommy-and-me sets.

Collaboration with UGC Creators

A collaboration with UGC creators is inevitable, so I’ll send a sweatshirt to a couple.

The boyfriend will film his girlfriend's reaction when he gives her the “gift.” This genuine moment will showcase the emotional connection to my products and create authentic content.

I’ll do the same with UGC creators who play the role of best friends to get more great content for my feed and reels. This will inspire more friends to do the same and help me reach a larger audience.

Storytelling, Not Just Selling

I told myself, “Charmaloo must be more than just clothes. It must connect with my audience. They need to enjoy my site and have fun here so they can transition from casual browsers to loyal customers.”

That's why I started incorporating inspirational quotes into my feed. The quotes make Charmaloo feel more personal and help people remember the brand.

To make the best of the Charmaloo, here are the future strategy plans for it:

• Launch a website. I'll finally have a place online where customers can personalize and buy their items quickly through the automated system.
• Expand on more SM platforms. I'll be on TikTok and Facebook to reach more customers.
• Get started with email marketing. Engaging email campaigns will keep customers up-to-date on new designs, promotions, and inspiring stories.
• Start an affiliate program. I'll create a program for affiliates who’ll spread the word about Charmaloo and get rewarded for that.

• Paid ads. While my main focus will be on organic growth and community building, I'll also run occasional paid ads to reach a broader audience.

Grow Better With Marketing Strategies That Improve Your Digital Presence

Your strategy document will be very individual to your business, which is why it's almost impossible for us to create a one-size-fits-all digital marketing strategy template.

Remember, the purpose of your strategy document is to map out the actions you‘re going to take to achieve your goal over a period of time — as long as it communicates that, then you’ve nailed the basics of creating a digital strategy.

If you're eager to build a truly effective strategy to help grow your business, check out our free collection of content marketing templates below.

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

via Perfecte news Non connection