Monthly Archives: March 2023

Our 2023 Marketing Trends Report shows that 29% of marketers use a website or blog to attract and convert leads.

The enduring importance placed on blogging isn’t shocking. Blogs are integral to most digital marketing plans because they can:

Boost SEO
Improve overall site traffic and a brand’s online presence
Help prospects learn more about your industry, brand, product, or service

However, starting and running an effective, traffic-generating blog requires much time and energy. Plus, if you’re a marketing manager on a tight budget, you may wonder, “Will blog posts actually lead to purchases?”

To answer the question, here’s some research we conducted to help you determine if a company blog suits your marketing strategy.

Important Blog Statistics Marketers Should Know

Do Blog Posts Lead to Purchases?

Why Blogs Lead to Purchases

How to Lead Readers to Purchases

Creating Your Blog Nurturing Process

Important Blog Statistics Marketers Should Know

As previously mentioned, blogs remain essential to many marketing strategies, and there are statistics that show why. Here are some blog statistics we gathered from our Marketing Trends Report:

One in three marketers are leveraging their blog or website as well as SEO to land on SERPs
Blogs, social media shopping tools, and influencer marketing are all tied for the highest ROI of any marketing channel

33% of marketers are leveraging blog posts in their marketing strategy.
Blog posts, interviews, images, and podcasts will see high first-time use among marketers in 2023.

Do Blog Posts Lead to Purchases?

The growth of other content strategies, like video marketing, might make you think consumers will only buy products after seeing them on other platforms.

However, when we surveyed 300 consumers via Lucid and asked, “Have you ever purchased something from a company after reading a blog post?” a whopping 56% said, “Yes.”

Furthermore, according to our trends report, blog posts are among the media formats with the highest ROI, along with videos, images, and podcasts.

Why Blogs Lead to Purchases

If your company has a blog that discusses your industry or how your offerings can help with the average reader’s everyday pain points, your audiences can discover and gain trust in your brand’s expertise. That trust and credibility could ultimately lead to purchases.

Why? Suppose a prospect trusts the advice or information given in your blog posts. In that case, they might trust that your offerings are better quality than your competitor’s because your brand knows the industry, what customers want, and the pain points your product or service solves.

Even if you prefer video, social media, or visual marketing strategies, it’s important to remember that blogs can help you sell products in ways other content types can’t.

Videos and images, for example, might only give prospects a glimpse of how a product or service works. However, blog posts can offer extensive information that would otherwise be cut from videos and images to avoid overwhelming viewers on social media.

Blog posts can also increase your search ranking and allow more opportunities to link directly to a landing or purchasing page. Consumers can find your content via search, then read your post, and easily click to a product purchasing page after your content persuades them to buy a product.

Additionally, because most blog sites allow you to embed videos, podcasts, and imagery, your company blog can also be a great place to promote your other marketing assets while still informing prospects about your brand.

How to Lead Blog Readers to Purchases

In the following year, consider a content marketing mix that includes blogging. How do you persuade shoppers with your blog posts? Here are a few quick tips.

Strategically place product page links and CTAs.

Mentioning your brand, product, or service where it feels natural in your blog posts is an excellent way to generate leads and purchases.

However, you can also use hyperlinks to link to product pages or CTA buttons that draw slightly more attention to a product or offer without directing reader attention far away from the blog post.

At HubSpot, we usually place at least three CTAs related to a blog topic in each post:

A text-based CTA in the introduction
A larger banner image at the bottom
A slide-in CTA that shows up to the side of your text as you’re scrolling through the middle of the post.

This allows three mentions of a product or offering without interrupting the reader’s experience.

The image below is an example of our CTAs.

From top to bottom: A text-based CTA, a slide-in CTA, and a bottom CTA. (Image source)

Offer a free resource:

You probably noticed the above CTA examples included links to free resources. Though it may sound counterproductive, free resources can help your blog lead consumers to make purchases. Here’s how:

If your brand sells a subscription, service, or product that’s pricier or needs your company’s leadership approval, blog readers might need more than a few blog posts to trust your brand and invest in your product. In that case, you should focus on lead nurturing rather than sending blog readers directly to a purchasing page.

HubSpot and many other blogs have grown their contact and qualified lead lists simply by creating a free downloadable resource, such as an ebook, template, or research report, and offering it through CTAs at the end of blog posts.

Below is an example of a recent free research report resource we offered at the end of one of our Sales Blog posts:

To access free — but gated — offers, readers must give basic information about themselves and their company. From there, they receive an automated email or instant download of the resource while also becoming a contact — or lead — and enter our lead-qualification process to see if they could be an excellent prospect to reach out to.

The HubSpot Blog’s free resource strategy results in thousands of qualified leads per year that could convert into HubSpot customers. You can learn more about how to implement it on your blog here.

Remember, quality beats over-promotion.

In another recent Lucid survey, one-third of our general consumer respondents most commonly read blog posts to “learn something new.” Meanwhile, roughly 20% read blog posts for the sake of entertainment.

It’s important to remember readers will likely find your blog because they’re looking for information related to an industry they work in. They may also want to learn something related to their hobbies or need solutions for a pain point in their daily or professional lives.

Odds are, they’re not looking solely for promotional content. If a reader visits your blog site and finds nothing but blog posts filled with product shots and cheesy advertorial language, they’ll likely lose interest in your content and may not develop the sense of trust needed to make a purchase.

It’s wise to place a few un-intrusive CTAs in your blog posts and to mention your product or service when it feels relevant. Ensure that your content primarily offers valuable guidance, advice, and information to help your reader fulfill their needs.

For example, in this post about AI social media tools, we give valuable information about implementing AI-based technology in a social media process while listing HubSpot as one of the tools readers can use.

While we still mention our offerings, the post aims to show readers how multiple AI tools can streamline a marketing process.

Creating Your Blog Nurturing Process

Every brand has a target audience with different interests and content needs. While one blog strategy, such as free resources, will work well to generate qualified leads for a B2B company, other tactics, like simply linking to a product in blog posts, might be more lucrative for consumer-facing brands.

As you focus more on turning your blog traffic into revenue, keep these questions in mind:

What information is valuable to my audience?
Does my product require lead nurturing, such as gated offers?
Will the tactic I’m using seem over-promotional or disengaging to my audience?

Want to learn more about how the HubSpot blog generates leads? Check out this post from one of our content acquisition managers. Or, take down these tips on how to make money blogging.

Before you check out those pieces, download the free resource below.

Welcome to HubSpot Marketing News! Tap in for campaign deep dives, the latest marketing industry news, and tried-and-true insights from HubSpot’s media team.

TikTok is one step closer to being an entertainment app. An example of this transition is its recent collaboration with Snoop Dogg.

In early 2022, Snoop Dogg acquired Death Row records becoming the owner of the infamous label’s catalog of music. A few months later, he announced he was removing the catalog from major streaming platforms with the intention of re-releasing it on his own entertainment app.

Though the status of his app is unclear, in 2023 Snoop Dogg decided to re-release the Death Row catalog on streaming platforms — after making it available exclusively on TikTok for a week.

 Getting exclusive rights to a popular music catalog (even for a short time) is a major move for TikTok, as the app distinguishes itself from other social media platforms by taking an entertainment-first approach.

Prioritizing TikTok as part of a music rollout strategy can have a big payoff for artists and record labels. Compared to the general population, TikTok users are more likely to pay for music and artist merchandise.

In 2022, TikTok launched its music distribution platform SoundOn, which allows artists to distribute their music globally while maintaining ownership of royalties (a major gripe artists have with other streaming platforms).

While TikTok can be an effective tool for marketing new music, older songs have also seen a surge in popularity after going viral on the app.

Mariah Carey’s 2009 song “It’s a Wrap” has seen a recent surge in streams thanks to a popular TikTok dance featuring a sped-up version of the song.

 Celine Dion’s 1996 hit “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” was the soundtrack of multiple popular TikTok trends in 2021 and 2022, which resulted in a boost in streams for the song.

Though some musicians have expressed disdain for creating TikTok-focused music, the influence TikTok has over how music is consumed and shared is hard to deny and unwise to ignore.

Marketing Snippets

The latest marketing news and strategy insights.

Instagram engagement rates for brands are on the decline. Here’s what that means.

The AI controversies marketers should avoid.

Dupes: three out of four consumers plan to continue buying generic items over brand names to save money.

AI Marketing Glossary: terms marketers should know.

Content creators: how three creators took their content from side hustle to full-time.

Snapchat just launched an AI-powered chatbot.

Social media metrics: what marketers need to be tracking in 2023.

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Social media metrics are imperative to social strategy. They give you an inside look at your channels’ performance and how your target audience perceives you. They can also provide you with ways to improve upon your strategy.

But what metrics should marketers track to ensure success or boost their strategy? To keep you from getting bogged down by all the numbers, we’ve made a list of the essential social media metrics to track.

These metrics will give you insight into customers, how to track ROI, improve your brand presence online, and walk away with happier customers.

Marketers can set their brand’s strategy up for growth and improvement by tracking and measuring social media metrics.

How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

There are several ways marketers can measure the performance of their social media marketing strategy. The most common methods are analyzing web traffic, impressions, engagement, and lead generation.

Let’s explore these different aspects of performance and more metrics marketers should track to ensure the success of their social media marketing efforts.

1. Web Traffic

Increasing traffic to your website should be a top priority depending on the nature of your business and the social media platforms your company focuses on. 27% of marketers surveyed by the HubSpot Blog listed traffic to their website as a high-priority metric for measuring the success of organic social media campaigns.

30% said the same for paid social media campaigns. If your company relies on web traffic as part of its business strategy, you’ll want to measure how many of your page views come directly from social media.

Key platforms for this focus include Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. You can use a web traffic tool such as Google Analytics to measure how much your traffic comes from organic social media.

2. Social Media Impressions

Social media impressions measure how many users were exposed to your content, and it’s a metric worth tracking.

Understanding your social media impressions is important because this data can provide valuable insight into how far your ad spend can go and can help inform future paid ad spending so you can maximize your budget.

However, even if paid ads aren’t a part of your strategy, you may still want to look into how many impressions your social media content is gathering over time. This data can tell you how different types of content resonate with your audience across platforms.

It’s also worth noting that each social media platform measures impressions differently. For example, on Twitter, each user that sees a tweet is considered an impression.

On Facebook, each time a paid ad is seen on screen, it is considered an impression. Instagram counts an impression each time a user views a piece of content (such as a static post, story, or Reel)).

On TikTok, no “impressions” measurement is in the app’s analytics section; however, you could consider each video view an impression for your own data.

3. Lead Generation

Lead generation means attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest through nurturing, all with the end goal of converting them into customers. Marketers can generate leads through social media by creating compelling content that attracts and delights audiences.

To measure your social media’s success in generating leads, measure other metrics like web traffic, lead quality, and conversion rates from your social media channels.

For example, a significant amount of website traffic from Twitter can indicate your Twitter is a good source for lead generation.

4. Likes/Comments

Having a large following isn’t helpful if the audience isn’t regularly interacting with your content. Hence, measuring how often audiences like and comment on your social media is essential. Almost a quarter of the marketers we surveyed listed likes/comments as a crucial social media metric to track.

Likes show your audience viewed and enjoyed your content, while comments give insight into your audience’s reaction. Do they like your social media content? Do they have questions? What about your content resonated with them?

Likes and comments also fall under your brand’s overall social media engagement.

To measure the overall engagement rate of a social media account, you can use the following formula:

5. Overall Sales/Revenue

Is your social media campaign directly resulting in revenue and sales? What has your ROI been? Overall sales and revenue metrics are important in measuring the success of your campaign.

Many Social media platforms that offer monetization are transparent in how much marketers and creators can earn from their platforms, making it easy to track how your activity correlates to sales and revenue.

Now that you know what metrics marketers are tracking according to our survey — here are some tools you can use to make tracking easier.

1. Google Analytics

Price: Free

Why it’s great: Tracks web traffic analytics and provides business insights

The latest edition of Google Analytics collects website and app data to better understand the customer journey. The tool also includes privacy controls such as cookieless measurement as well as behavioral and conversion modeling.

2. HubSpot

Price: Start for Free, $800 – $3,600/mo for the Marketing Hub

Why it’s great: Monitors social media bran mentions and web traffic

HubSpot’s analytics software and dashboard tracks the complete customer lifecycle. We also help marketers monitor brand mentions, track engagements automatically, and make scheduling social posts a breeze.

3. NetBase Quid

Price: $300-$1,000/month

Why it’s great: Global insights and tracking

NetBase Quid provides analytics on conversations happening with your brand worldwide. They provide real-time analytics and give you insights that’ll help you track ROI. NetBase Quid provides data about how your campaigns carry weight with customers.

Users can also identify emerging trends to inform decisions and scope out the main drivers of conversation on social media.

Image source

4. quintly

Price: $345/mo

Why it’s great: See competitor performance

When using quintly, you can not only track your social media performance but gain insight into the performance of your competitors. This will help you see what you can do to improve your campaigns and what your competitors are doing that works. This photo is an example of the insights the software provides.

Image source

Quintly is also great for agencies with multiple clients. They can use it to manage their clients’ accounts and track their social media pages. Quintly also has reporting and benchmark data to measure campaigns.

There are so many numbers to keep track of when monitoring the success of your campaign, but getting bogged down by the wrong numbers can result in wasted time. Now that you know the metrics marketers are tracking, you can cut through the clutter and focus on the numbers that matter.