Monthly Archives: August 2022

Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day, and with that much traffic, it’s no wonder why marketers are extending their strategies to include YouTube ads.

Brands have the opportunity to link commercials back to the products they’re selling and potentially increase their conversion rate. In this post, we’ll help you achieve those goals by teaching you how to share YouTube overlay ads and give you tips on how to run them successfully.

Not all YouTube ads are short videos; overlay ads are a type of imagery that pops up on the video player as viewers watch their chosen content.

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They’re relatively small and inoffensive to the viewing experience and leave enough space to garner the attention of various potential customers. And making them isn’t a challenge, let’s get into it.

How to Create YouTube Overlay Ads

1. Create a banner that fits the dimensions of overlay ad specs.

You can easily create a banner on graphic design platforms like Canva or Photoshop, choose from pre-existing templates, and customize it to reflect your brand identity. And for ideal sizing of the banner, make sure it follows these dimensions:

Image dimensions: 480×70
File type: Static .GIF, .PNG, .JPG
File size: 150 Kb

2. Begin a new campaign in Google Ads.

YouTube ads are created and managed through Google Ads.

3. Select “Display” campaign type.

You’re looking to advertise your overlay banner ad, meaning an image you want to be displayed on YouTube.

4. Choose the type of audience you want to reach.

When advertising on YouTube, you want to pay to reach the people who are most likely going to be interested in your offering. This means you need to choose your target audience or demographic carefully.

Along with plugging in those specifics, you can set up your ad:

Budget: Cost-per-click (CPC or PPC)
Duration: Start and end date
Content Exclusions: Type of devices to run on

5. Add in your overlay ad banner and run your campaign.

When you’ve finished adding specs to your overlay add, it’s time to run the campaign.

In the case that you want to edit the ad, you can use Google Ads Manager to make adjustments where seen fit.

Youtube Overlay Ads Best Practices

1. Keep your overlay simple and clear to read.

When using Google Ads, you need to adhere to image quality requirements to avoid the risk of having your campaign ended abruptly.

Policies aside, you only have so much space in your overlay ad to show prospects. If it’s hard to read and comprehend at first glance, viewers most likely will press X instead of wanting to learn more about your brand, product, or service.

2. Don’t over-promise in your overlay ad.

When you get your prospects’ attention and get them to your landing page, the last thing you want to do is underdeliver or mislead them, as it makes your brand look untrustworthy.

Use your YouTube overlay ad to familiarize your target audience with the type of solution you can meet, and they’ll have a much more pleasant experience and introduction to your company.

3. Use a compelling call to action.

A strong call-to-action can distinguish between a campaigning budget is well-spent or not.

Overlay ads have already been successful for non-profit organizations because, as blogger Ramya Raghavan reported, they “drive traffic to an off-YouTube web page, where they can collect signatures, email addresses or even donations.” Charity: water best demonstrates the success potential of the new YouTube feature. This non-profit raised $10,000 daily by using the Call-to-Action overlay ads.

4. Send viewers to a dedicated landing page.

Landing pages are uniquely powerful components of a business’s digital marketing strategy.

It’s your business’ opportunity to ask visitors for their contact information in exchange for something of value, otherwise known as an offer.

Make your landing page rich in:

Benefit-focused H2s
Compelling copy
Lead forms or relevant offers

You want prospects to feel like they’re gaining something of value made just for them, so make sure it’s a page worth visiting.

5. Experiment with different in-video overlay ad formats.

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You can run more than one campaign at the same time on YouTube. Google Ads lets users create multiple different ads for YouTube, so feel free to get creative. Alongside your overlay ad campaign, you can make other using formats like:

Skippable or non-skippable video ads
Bumper ads
Sponsored cards

Catch Your Audience’s Attention with Overlay Ads

With YouTube overlay ads, you can meet your prospects where they are by targeting and gaining their interest in YouTube. We hope you found this post helpful and implemented some of these tactics into your marketing strategy.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published July 2009 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

What’s the one thing business owners and their employees, partners and even customers all have in common? Well, at the most basic level, they’re all human. So why is it sometimes so challenging for businesses to showcase this in their marketing efforts?

Perhaps some people don’t want to show any biases that might deter any potential leads. Perhaps some may want to present themselves as strictly professional. Others may not care about their tone at all, but would rather focus on finding the right keywords to implement throughout their platforms. Some may not even realize just how robotic their brand’s voice really is.

Either way, the truth of the matter is: humanizing your brand is no longer an option, it’s a necessity. People like making connections. They enjoy investing their time and money in people they know are on their side and can relate to. So in today’s highly competitive world, it’s definitely in every business’s best interest to find a way to connect to their customers and leads through humanization — no matter what industry you’re in.

Why is humanizing your brand important?

Brands are not humans but customers are. In order to sell, get more conversions, increase engagement and build brand loyalty, it’s importantto first build a relationship with customers. Similar to relationships with new friends, brands need to build a rapportand establish trust in order for the customer relationship to flourish.

Humanizing your brand and adding a level of personalization will help customers connect. All of your marketing efforts and website messaging should be crafted in a way that establishes a connection with your audience. Without it you could be perceivedas a cold, faceless entitythat spawns customer indifference instead of loyalty.

How to Humanize Your Brand

Here are some helpful tips for how to start making your brand’s voice more real:

1. Begin from the inside out.

In other words, start with creating good company culture. Your CEO(s) and upper management have the potential to spread that culture like wildfire throughout your company, allowing your team to be the true advocates you want them to be.

Then, post about it! If your company did a 5K, post a photo on Instagram of employees happily crossing the finish line. If your business’s office is festively decorated according to your brand’s colors and theme, post a video tour of it on your website. Or, if your team has recently completed a certification or won an award, talk about it on LinkedIn.

Showcasing your team members on your website and social media platforms goes a lot farther than just having the basics. And, when your followers/website viewers/etc. are able to see how great it is to work at your company, they’ll be more willing to trust your professional abilities.

2. Make your brand’s tone personal, approachable and engaging.

For many businesses, portraying themselves as industry leaders is essential to generating leads and gaining credibility. And while that is certainly a crucial piece of the puzzle, it doesn’t negate the need for a human element. The reality is, you can still have professional, educational or even highly technical content that still incorporates a fun, caring, or engaging tone.

Look at Dollar Shave Club (or any of the brands mentioned in Kim Speier’s blog “7 Boring Big Brands That Used Humor to Amp Up Their Marketing”).

The company’s ads are known for being witty and silly. But most importantly, they’re smart. They made a traditionally “boring” product and developed a brand voice that was approachable, fun and human. These three attributes build trust, credibility, and eventually brand loyalty. Looking to capitalize on the brand’s following, the company was later acquired by Unilever.

3. Speak in your audience’s language.

You might have more than one group of people that make up your customer base. But none of those groups want to read or hear corporate jargon, sales talk or overly fluffed-up language.

If your company is B2B, communicate to your audience in an educational, informative way. If your company is B2C, strike an emotional chord. The better you are at learning your consumers’ language, the more approachable and “human” you’ll appear to them.

Just. Speak. Clearly. Business and industry-specific jargon is just another way of talking over people’s heads, and although you think you sound super smart and important, you’re really just coming off as inaccessible. Is that how you’d talk to someone in real life? No way. Unless you don’t want any friends. Speak like a human being, and your brand will feel more relatable, too.

4. Write an ‘About Us’ page that’s actually good.

The ‘About Us’ page is one of the most frequently flubbed-up pages on the internet. Which is a bummer, really, because what better way to humanize your brand than a page dedicated to telling people about who you are?

So, who do you want to be? A faceless corporation? Or do you want to tell people about what you do, who you are, and why you think it might be interesting to them? I went looking for an example to show off here. That’s an extraordinaryexample of someone humanizing their company through their ‘About Us’ page, and thanks to Blog Tyrant, I found an example for you.

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First, I recommend you check out SEOmoz. Their page includes several sections that explain what they do and why they’re valuable, as well as a timeline that explains how their company came to be — written in a light-hearted yet professional way. Giving the backstory of how the company was founded gives readers insight into the founders’ motivations, and also presents it in a way that shows the reader what value SEOmoz brings to the table for their customers.

5. Inject a sense of humor into your content.

It’s easy for B2C companies to create hilarious content — and you certainly should! Everyone loves a laugh. Although this strategy is best for B2C companies, B2B brands can also get into the action. Take this Zendesk tweet describing a sales funnel for example.

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The tweet uses down-to-earth language and emojis to make the brand more relatable to its audience while presenting an ad that explains how its services can help improve your sales funnel.

You can get your point across really well with clear, concise, straightforward copy. That’s fine. But you can get your point across and humanize your brand — even delight readers — if you can infuse a sense of humor into your content once in a while. Frankly, nobody expects it from B2B brands. And if you’re one of the few brands doing it, it makes you look just awesome. Go ahead. Try to make someone crack a smile. What’s more human than unbridled laughter?

6. Focus more on offering resources than making a sale.

If you’re not already familiar with inbound marketing, you know that the statement above is essentially the gist of it. Give your viewers something of value to them (without the sales pitch) and they will seek you out for more. This whole step is about creating relationships through trust that’s built on you providing helpful, credible resources. This can be something as simple as a how-to blog post on an industry topic or industry case study.

Inbound marketing also ties in with speaking your audience’s language. While offering these resources, be sure to do so in a way that most effectively speaks to your audience. You’ll also want to be sure to offer the right kind of materials they will actually want to consume.

No matter what your inbound marketing efforts consist of, try to keep them focused on how it will benefit the end-user, not your company.

7. Keep an active blog on your website.

This is an easy — and most importantly — freeway to show a human side to your audience. Not only does keeping an active blog help with boosting your SEO, staying up to date with topics in your industry and becoming more purpose-driven in your efforts, but it also helps with showing your human side.

It allows readers to see that you’re current, active and educated, giving you more credibility. Plus, as we mentioned in the previous tip, it also helps with your inbound marketing by providing readers with information or educated opinions on topics they’re seeking out. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

8. Showcase your community manager.

If your business has a community manager or similar role, let them take the spotlight for your company by showcasing them on all your online platforms.

Display their Twitter handle or email address so readers can easily access them with questions or concerns. Giving people a face to your community manager will make them feel more comfortable with your brand as a whole and will help build a strong relationship between you both.

9. Engage with fans, followers, and commenters.

But make sure they aren’t all just about your company or industry — although those are important, too. When you venture outside of your usual topics once in a while, it makes people feel comfortable being themselves … because you’re being yourself, too! You can also add more structure to these conversations if you like and periodically host Twitter chats — conversations about a particular topic at a specific date and time, held together by a pre-designated hashtag.

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Additionally you can keep it light like media company Mitú and engage over something fun and seasonal like horcata ice cream. Whatever the topic — if your followers are commenting, reply back.

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10. Publish photos of your team being themselves.

Let your fans and followers get to know your employees a bit better by posting photos of them doing things “out in the wild” or at company events. Displaying these on your careers page, social media, or “About Us” page are all good spots to showcase what working for your company is like for employees.

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The photo above is from Scott’s Cheap Flights. The company adds a human touch by not only giving the spotlight to some of their employees, but also showcasing how knowledgeable they are by having each provide a travel tip and their favorite destination. It’s much more inviting than just using a standard photo and listing their position. With just one to two sentences, customers are able to get to know employees and view them as credible resources.

11. Encourage employees to be social on behalf of your company.

When employees post social media updates about or on behalf of their company, it does a few things:

It lets people know that person gives a hoot about the company they work for.
It lets people get to know the names, faces, and personalities behind a company.
It gives the company’s content much more reach.

While some companies, due to the nature of their industry, may need to keep a tighter lid on their social media networks, most businesses could really benefit from encouraging employees to use their social media accounts to share company content. And yes, they should even be able to do that during work hours! The times, they are a-changin’.

12. Apologize and say “Thank You” when necessary.

As every human knows, we all have our flaws and we all make mistakes. But when it comes to our businesses, we often try to protect our reputations at all costs, even if it’s our businesses that are at fault. And we mustn’t forget that our businesses are, in fact, made up of humans.

So if you’ve dropped the ball somehow, come to your audience with a sincere apology anda potential solution to the problem. People will appreciate you addressing the situation head-on, as opposed to them coming to you with their complaints.

More than that, though, you should be thanking your fans/followers/customers/advocates/etc. often. Something as simple as an Instagram post celebrating reaching 5,000 followers and thanking them specifically for helping you reach that milestone goes a long way.

Or, send out an email to current and past customers (perhaps on Thanksgiving) expressing your gratitude for their business. This is another way of making your audience see you as humans who care about them as humans, not simply a money-hungry company that’s uninterested in building relationships.

13. Be available.

This isn’t just a tip for upper management, nor is it just a tip for your customer service department. It’s for every member of your team and every part of your brand’s online persona.

Humanizing a brand can’t happen without actual humans being available to do it. For example, if someone at your business posts regularly to your social media platforms, he or she should also be available to respond to comments, questions, reviews, etc. Too often businesses simply schedule out their social posts for the month, ignoring the importance of frequent engagement.

This is a great opportunity to show that your business has a human side to it and is willing to help these followers get information, share ideas, and feel good about promoting your brand.

14. Sign your emails with your name. Like, your name.

Not your company name. A company can’t send an email. A person at your company, however, can. For instance, what does your signature look like in your email marketing? Consider including a real person’s name in your email signature, along with their role at your company, and maybe even a small headshot to make the message more personal.

You could also experiment with a more personal “From” field, including the email sender’s real name alongside your company’s name. Your results may vary, so we recommend conducting your own test, but when we A/B tested the inclusion of an employee’s name alongside our company name, the results were fantastic!

15. Take off your marketer hat once in a while.

Ultimately, you’re doing all this to get more traffic, leads, and customers. We know that. But it can be helpful to approach your efforts with a little less of a methodical marketer mindset, and more of a … human one.

It’s okay to throw in something you think your audience would just plain enjoy sometimes — no link to your blog, lead-capture form, or transaction on the other end. The more you get to know your buyer personas as you interact with them every day, the more naturally you’ll be able to do this; the content will practically roll off your tongue! Once you’ve established this natural rapport with your community, your relationship will be more akin to two friends hanging out — and that makes for customers with higher lifetime value (aaaand the marketer hat is back on).

Give Your Brand a Human Touch

All in all, humanizing your brand has a multitude of benefits, including gaining credibility and getting your voice heard. Use these eight simple tips to get started today!

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in April 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

There’s more scope for automation in your business than ever before. With automation, you can schedule emails to be sent at the perfect time, follow up with leads that have abandoned their cart, sync data between apps, and notify team members of new tasks.

However, these options can be overwhelming, especially if your business isn’t a huge corporation with a lot of budget and resources to throw at automation.

You might be wondering:

What types of automation will benefit my business the most?
What should I stay away from?
How can I easily implement these while keeping life simple?

Let’s explore the best types of business automation so you can start implementing a strategy in your own organization.

20 Ways to Automate Your Small Business

1. Set up automated email campaigns.

When you think of automation, email marketing automation might come to mind first. It’s not only one of the most popular types of automation, it’s one of the most accessible, too.

Types of email automation:

Triggering emails based on actions, such as webinar sign-up confirmations or abandoned basket notifications
Email drip workflows that send content at set intervals
Delivering content or requested information after filling out a form
A/B testing content and automatically send the best performing version of the content
Personalizing each email you send
Segmenting groups based on data and automatically sending the right email to each group

A good way to get started with email marketing automation is to have a look at the automation capabilities that your email marketing platform already has and think about how you can use them to execute your strategy.

All popular email marketing tools have built-in automation functionality. However, if you haven’t picked an emailing tool yet, pick an option with enough automation functionalities to meet the needs of your business.

2. Create standard operating procedures (SOPs).

How many processes within your business are documented? Whether you’re a solopreneur or lead a small team, having standard operating procedures (SOPs) is critical for a healthy business. 

SOPs are detailed instructions that outline how to complete processes within your business. As your company grows, having SOPs on hand makes it so much easier to onboard new team members and delegate tasks to others. The faster team members can get up and running, the greater the impact they can have on your business. 

3. Upload contact data to a CRM for a centralized database. 

Is your customer data hidden across various messy spreadsheets? Is it hard for your team to decipher a contact’s status, or when the last interaction with them was? If so, your business could benefit from customer database automation.

To automate your customer information, you can use a CRM as a centralized database, and sync contact data between apps to automatically make updates as soon as anything changes on a customer account. This reduces the manual work done by your team, and improves relationships with your contacts and customers.

4. Implement a lead scoring system.

Does your team have a process for determining which leads are more viable? If not, you may want to consider implementing lead scoring. 

With lead scoring, key attributes of leads will generate numerical values making it easier for you and your team to prioritize working with leads who are most likely to buy from your business. This saves you and your team precious time and allows you to engage with leads who are more likely to become paying customers.

5. Use a social media scheduling tool.

Any social media manager or content creator can tell you how time-consuming social media can be, especially when posting on the fly. That’s why using a social media scheduling tool is a game-changer for busy marketing teams. 

With the right social media scheduling tool, your team can create meaningful content in advance, and schedule content to automatically post to your key platforms. 

6. Immediately respond to customer service requests.

How well your company responds to customer service inquiries can make all the difference in keeping customers happy and coming back for more. Response time and first response resolution rate are key metrics driving customer satisfaction, and it can be hard for customer service teams to meet demands while carrying out all customer service manually.

Automation is not about removing the human element from one-to-one interactions. In fact, it’s about making more time for these and providing a better experience for your customers.

You can automate notifications to let you know when it’s the right time to reach out to a customer, meaning you can engage in targeted outreach for better results. Customer satisfaction surveys can also be automated to alert you when a customer needs quick attention to reduce the risk of churn.

Your team can also leverage chatbots or knowledge bases with built-in AI that can quickly answer simple questions, or route a customer to the best support rep for their inquiry if that doesn’t fix it.

Automation enables your customer care staff to manage a higher volume of customers more effectively, without burning out or diminishing the quality of one-to-one interactions.

7. Automate SMS marketing messages. 

Increased screen time due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a resurgence in SMS marketing. 

Your marketing team can consider adding automated SMS marketing to your company’s strategy to reconnect with leads and convert potential customers. Potential SMS marketing automation includes:

Meeting and event reminders
Restock alerts for products the contact has expressed interest in
Empty cart abandonment messages
Promotional messages for special deals and discounts

8. Review and automate your sales process.

Sales automation is about managing your sales process more effectively, reducing friction, and increasing conversion rates.

Benefits of sales automation:

Stay on top of a busy pipeline
Better calendar management
Identify and focus on the most sales-ready leads
Collect and act on data insights
Sync the latest data across all apps
Create a strong bridge with marketing
Pass new customers to onboarding
Avoid spending time on bad-fit leads

To get started with sales automation, first look at any built-in automation functionality that your CRM offers. You can then look into adopting and integrating other apps to automate more powerful workflows.

9. Automate repetitive tasks.

Are there any tasks on your team that are repetitive, must be done frequently, or require a similar skill set to complete? If so, these tasks are the ideal candidates for automation. 

Consider using a task automation tool such as Zapier or Make to take some of the work out of repetitive tasks. Let’s say your team manually sends a promotional tweet every time your company publishes a blog post.

You can set up an automation in your tool of choice that will publish a tweet with a link to your new blog post every time your company’s blog publishes a new post. 

Similar processes can be implemented to sync data across applications in your tech stack to reduce duplicative work.

10. Outsource key tasks to experts.

When you’re first starting a business, you’re usually responsible for all the tasks and responsibilities that make that business run. While that can be good for the bottom line, it’s not good for scaling and automation.

Once you’re able to afford it, outsourcing tasks to new team members, assistants, and specialists can really help your business go to the next level. 

Let’s say you’re a small business owner who has handled all of your own email marketing while juggling various other duties. Unless you are an expert email marketer, you may not be giving this area the attention it deserves and the quality may suffer. 

When hiring a contract email marketing expert, they can set up the necessary workflows and funnels that can help your email marketing run on autopilot, potentially resulting in more sales. 

Go through the tasks you’re currently doing for your business and look for areas you can outsource to someone else to save you time and drive better results. 

11. Implement a task management system.

Are your to-do lists on random post-its and scribbled on miscellaneous notebook pages? 

Do you give your team tasks in passing and don’t follow up with them until it’s supposed to be due?

Do you and your team have a hard time tracking who does what?

If so, it’s time to implement a task management system with automation. Using task management software such as Asana, ClickUp, or Trello can help you and your team stay organized and accountable. With a task management tool in place, your team knows exactly where to look for their next action item and when it’s due. You’re also able to see their progress so you can support them if they get off track.

Automation can help take your task management system to the next level. You can use Zapier to turn line items from a spreadsheet into a task in your tool of choice, or automatically create tasks from Slack messages.

I use Asana to manage tasks, and love using the Gmail integration to turn emails into tasks with the click of a button.  

With solid task management and automation in place, you and your team will save time hunting down tasks and will have more time to actually complete them. 

12. Use drop shipping to automate fulfillment for e-commerce businesses.

Running an e-commerce business can be a lot of work. Between tracking inventory and managing fulfillment, a lot has to happen behind the scenes to get products to your customers. 

If you don’t want to manage inventory, consider drop shipping. With dropshipping, you can work directly with a supplier who will fulfill and ship your orders so you can focus on other areas of your business without worrying about the risks and logistics of having all of your inventory on hand.

13. Centralize your internal communication efforts.

Automating your communication processes is about streamlining and clarifying human-to-human interactions. As a business owner, these automations can free up your time to look after your team and support their growth.

Types of communication automation:

Automate team reminders to prep for meetings
Automatically follow up on tasks after set intervals
Sharing onboarding materials with new hires
Collecting daily feedback on wins and blockers
Self-reviews and performance tracking
Reporting dashboards
Syncing data with meeting slides

Gmail, Slack, and Asana are tools you might already be using that also offer great automation functionality to make communicating with your team easier.

14. Streamline your accounting and expense system.

Managing small business finances is a job of its own. If you’re still managing this yourself, consider using an accounting and expense system with automation capabilities. 

A tool such as QuickBooks Online can be helpful for tracking your business financials. You can even connect this tool directly to your CRM so your records can accurately reflect which contacts have purchased from you. 

Having an accounting and expense system in place can also help with receipt management by automatically categorizing receipts that come to your inbox to corresponding charges on your financial statements.

15. Use trigger/action workflows to publish data between apps. 

Do the platforms within your tech stack talk to one another? Using automation to share data between apps can save you hours of manual entry. 

Let’s say you have a potential customer fill out a Typeform survey to learn more about what they’re looking for in a product. Instead of manually creating a new contact entry in your CRM, you can set up a workflow that creates a new contact in your CRM any time you receive a response to that specific Typeform survey. 

You can use a trigger/action workflow to connect various tools and cut down on administrative work.

16. Automate your onboarding processes.

Onboarding tasks are perfect for automation because they are repetitive. After all, many new employees in an organization will undergo the same training and need similar reminders. 

Examples of ways you can automate your onboarding process include:

Automatically generating and sending legal and compliance forms for new employees to sign electronically.
Having accounts and access to key tools and systems automatically created.
Sync employee data across necessary systems to reduce manual entry.

By automating as much of the back-end process of onboarding as possible, you’re creating less busy work for your HR team and creating a smoother experience for new employees.

17. Enlist a tool to make scheduling meetings easier.

There are few things more frustrating than a back-and-forth email chain to determine a meeting time. Optimize this process by using a meeting scheduling tool such as the HubSpot Meeting Scheduler or Calendly that automatically syncs with your calendar, and allows contacts to schedule time to meet with you when you’re available.

These tools can also integrate directly with your CRM so your contact list is always up-to-date with your latest interactions.

18. Email contacts who abandoned their shopping carts.

Most people who use the internet have abandoned an online shopping cart or two. Whether they get distracted when placing an order, have second thoughts after they see shipping prices, or want to spend a little more time thinking about their purchase before pressing “buy” there are various reasons customers may abandon an online shopping cart.

To help your business convert these shoppers, you can use email automation to send a message to contacts who still have items left in their carts after a certain period of time. With 50% of users who click through abandoned cart emails coming back for their purchase, it’s a worthwhile automation to try.

19. Use a password manager to share and secure login credentials across your team. 

Chances are your team uses a wide variety of tools to run your business. To keep your company’s information more secure and to make your tech stack accessible to team members who need it, consider implementing a password manager to maintain and easily share login information. 

Tools such as LastPass allow users to generate and store secure passwords and can be used for individuals, small teams, and enterprises. 

20. Leverage AI and machine learning tools. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to unlock $2.6 trillion in value for businesses in the coming years. As a business owner, there are many ways you can leverage AI to streamline and automate your operations. 

For example, AI tools can help streamline data management and reporting, saving your team precious time and helping you gain access to valuable data. 

If you have a marketing team that creates a large volume of content, AI tools such as Jasper can greatly reduce the time marketers spend creating content through its outlining, research, and editing capabilities.

Automation is a long-term strategy: it’s not about trying to change everything at once or creating processes that are overly complex for the stage your business is at.

Take a look at where your business is now. Where are the blockers, manual tasks, and inefficiencies?

Ask yourself how can you start automating these areas to free up your focus for the areas where you have the most impact.

Post Content

Even though they’re over 25 years old, PDFs are still one of the main types of documents on the internet. Whether you’re trying to access your W-2, a contract, or an ebook, it’ll probably be in the form of a PDF. But to view these important documents, you need to download a PDF reader on your computer.

There are hundreds of PDF readers and some can cost you almost a thousand dollars per year, so we sifted through the internet to find the best free PDF readers that you can download online.

Below, we created a list of 15 of the best free PDF readers whose capabilities range from only viewing PDFs to creating, editing, and securing them.

The 15 Best Free PDF Readers

The 5 Best Free PDF Readers for Windows and Mac

1. Foxit Reader

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Foxit Reader is like the Google Docs of PDF readers. You can create, share, and secure your PDFs all on the cloud. To create PDFs, you can upload scans, convert Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel sheets, and even combine multiple PDFs into a new file.

If you want to collaborate with someone on a PDF, you can grant and revoke document access, track who opens your document and view their activity, edit, comment, and also notify readers about new updates to your PDF.

What We Like

Foxit reader also provides multiple security options to keep your PDFs safe and private, like passwords, digital signatures, and encryption. If you create PDFs regularly for your job and need a way to collaborate on the same file, Foxit would be a good option.

2. Adobe Acrobat Reader DC

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Adobe’s free PDF reader, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, connects to the Adobe Document cloud and other cloud storage systems like Box, Dropbox, and Microsoft OneDrive, letting you open, view, share, and comment on PDFs from anywhere and on any device you want.

What We Like

Acrobat Reader DC coolest feature is that it can read text out loud, guiding you along any document that’s challenging to read. Adobe’s free PDF reader is great for any busy professional who needs to annotate PDFs on the go or on their commute.

3. Javelin PDF Reader

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Javelin PDF Reader is a straightforward PDF reader that lets you launch and print standard and encrypted PDFs, annotate them, and bookmark them. Since its download size is two MB and it doesn’t have extra features like editing, the PDF reader is fast with a simple and clean user interface. If you want to read and take notes on PDFs quickly, Javelin is probably the PDF reader for you.

What We Like

Although basic compared to powerhouse Adobe, if you want to read and take notes on PDFs quickly, Javelin is probably the PDF reader for you.

4. Google Drive

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Google Drive is the most accessible PDF converter and PDF storage system. On the platform, you can convert any of your documents, presentations, and sheets into PDF files and upload any PDFs to it for your own viewing purposes. If your only use for PDFs is viewing them or converting files into them, Google Drive is the best option for you.

What We Like

Google Drive allows teams to share documents and collaborate seamlessly thanks to a user-friendly interface and intuitive design.

5. Your Web Browser

Web browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all have integrated PDF readers. To view a PDF on your browser, all you have to do is click on the PDF link. You can also open PDF files that are already stored on your computer by dragging them to an open tab in your browser.

Additional features included in most browsers’ PDF readers: rotate, download, print, and adjust text size.

What We Like

The most accessible option on this list, web browser readers make it easy to open, read, adjust PDFs. If you don’t need to convert files into PDFs and you only need to view PDFs, you don’t need to download a PDF reader. You can just use your web browser.

The 5 Best Free PDF Readers for Windows

1. Nitro Reader

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Nitro Reader has a reputation for striking a good balance between usability and advanced features. The platform has an intuitive and slick interface, but you also have access to a wide variety of tools to create, review, secure, and share PDF files. To create new PDFs, all you have to do is drag and drop your documents into the reader. Then, you can design your PDF draft with custom colors, font embedding, and orientation.

When you want to review a document, the PDF reader’s review pane helps you edit, comment, and address feedback. If you’re a PDF power user, Nitro Reader could be your best option.

What We Like

To secure your PDF files, Nitro Reader uses QuickSign to password-protect and sign your documents. Sharing documents is also simple and secure — you can share documents with anyone since the PDFs you create in Nitro Reader are compatible with almost every other PDF reader.

2. PDF-XChange Editor

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PDF-XChange Editor is one of the more robust free PDF readers out there. You can create, view, add notes, record and attach audio, highlight text, attach files, strikethrough words, and add signatures. If you need to create, edit, and share PDFs at work a lot, PDF-XChange Editor could be the PDF reader for you.

What We Like

The PDF reader’s coolest feature is its Optical Character Recognition tool — it can scan printed documents and convert the text into a searchable document.

3. MuPDF

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MuPDF is a standard PDF reader for viewing and editing PDF files. You can fill out text forms, annotate documents, and use it to convert PDF files into other file types like HTML, SVG, and CBZ. You can also write scripts in Javascript to alter your documents.

What We Like

If you want a low-memory PDF reader that you can easily edit and view files on, MuPDF is your best option.

4. SumatraPDF

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Even though SumatraPDF lacks some advanced features like annotation, document signing, and form-filling, Sumatra PDF provides an intuitive and fast reading experience — it has multiple viewing modes like single page, book, and presentation and shortcuts that help you navigate any PDF file. If you just need to read PDFs for work, consider using SumatraPDF.

What We Like

The variety of Sumatra PDF’s viewing modes make it easy for users to quickly access and read the information they’re looking for.

5. Slim PDF

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Slim PDF is one of the smallest PDF readers in the world, taking up just 15 MB of space on your computer. Despite its tiny size, this free PDF reader comes with a lot of advanced features that complement core functionalities such as those allowing you to print, search, zoom and rotate PDF files.

It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

What We Like

Slim PDF is small but mighty. If you are looking for a solution that strikes the perfect balance between being lightweight and powerful, Slim PDF is a great choice.

The 5 Best Free PDF Readers for Mac

1. PDF Reader Premium

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With over 50 million downloads, PDF Reader Premium is one of the most popular PDF readers for Apple Devices. It has powerful functionality that lets you view your PDF in multiple tabs, annotate your document with images and sticky notes, organize your files with tags, sign signatures and fill out forms on your PDF, and store and transfer PDFs through a variety of cloud services. Anyone who frequently uses PDFs for work should consider downloading PDF Reader Premium.

What We Like

In addition to editing and signature capabilities, PDF Reader Premium makes it easy to export documents to a variety of formats like JPG and DOCX.

2. Preview

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Even though Preview is the pre-installed PDF reader on every Mac, it’s more powerful than you think. On Preview, you can view and annotate your documents, combine documents, fill out and sign forms, edit images, share files, and even export a password protected PDF, if there’s sensitive information on your document. Preview is the best choice for someone who wants to use one PDF reader for personal and professional matters.

What We Like

Preview is the best choice for someone who wants to use one PDF reader for personal and professional matters.

3. Skim

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Skim is a PDF reader that was originally designed to help academics read and annotate scientific papers in PDF format, but they’ve now improved their functionality to let anyone view any type of PDF file on the reader. On Skim, you can highlight text, take notes, take snapshots, export notes as text, and integrate with third party apps like BibDesk, a bibliography manager.

What We Like

Designed with academics in mind, Skim’s annotation and markup features put it above the competition.

4. Soda PDF

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Soda PDF is one of the best PDF readers for reading visual documents like digital catalogs, magazines, and comic books — you can even view files in 3D. The app also lets you create and edit PDFs from scratch. Soda PDF sells an online PDF platform too, so they drive demand for it by offering free PDF tools on their website like convert to PDF, convert from PDF, merge, split, & compress, sign & secure, and insert elements like watermarks and page numbering. You can use these online tools as a proxy for a downloadable PDF reader if you want to save space on your computer.

What We Like

Having both a web-based app and desktop version gives users the flexibility to read PDFs on any device.

5. Wondershare

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While Wondershare isn’t completely free, it does offer a free trial. However this may be a good option for someone who needs a pdf editor for one-off projects.

With Wondershare PDFelement, you can not only edit documents and convert them to PDFs, but it also allows for digital signatures, watermarks, and makes it easy to create forms.

What We Like

Wondershare’s free version offers a robust assortment of features and functionality users typically would need to pay for.

Edit PDFs With Ease

PDF editing software is a must for businesses and professionals. Having the right PDF editor can aid your team with collaboration and file management.

This article was originally published in August 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.