31 Call-to-Action Examples You Can't Help But Click

Think about all the times you've signed up for things in your life. Did you once download Evernote? Dropbox? Spotify? Maybe you've even taken a class on General Assembly.

Each one of these signups is likely a result of an effective call-to-action (CTA).

It's really important to guide your visitors through the buying journey using strategic CTAs.

Think about it: If you hadn't been drawn in by the copy or design of the CTA, or been guided so eloquently through your sign-up process, you would probably use a lot fewer apps and websites than you do now.

Here are a few different actions an audience can get called to carry out:

Sign up.

In this type of CTA, the audience might be invited to sign up for a free trial, an online course, a future event, or even a software product. It all depends on the CTAs context on an ad or website.

Subscribe.

This CTA doesn't commit a person to a purchase. Rather, it invites them to receive updates from the company. "Subscribe" CTAs are common to company blogs, for which the business wants to develop a readership.

Try for free.

Nearly every company website has a free trial offer today. Each of them are CTAs of this variety, and they allow people to demo a product before deciding if it's worth the cost to them.

Get started.

This CTA can drive a variety of behaviors for a company, from a free trial to virtual reality experience.

Learn more.

Sometimes, all you want is to give your potential customers a little more information so they're prepared to buy something. That's what this CTA is for.

Join us.

Do you manage an online community. Is your product built on collaboration between users? You might find yourself placing "join us" CTA somewhere on your website.

Learn more about the purposes CTAs can serve in this blog post.

The above types of CTA all serve a designated purpose, but keep in mind the language they use can vary. And today, marketers everywhere have put some creative spins on their calls to action to generate the leads their businesses depend on.

To help you identify what's effective and what's not, we've listed out 31 examples of CTAs that totally rock. These call-to-action examples are broken out into three categories:

• Simple and effective CTAs
• CTAs with great call-to-action phrases
• CTAs that balance multiple buttons on one page

Simple & Effective Call-to-Action Examples

1. Evernote

CTA Button: Sign Up

"Remember Everything." Visitors can immediately understand that message the moment they land on this page. The design on Evernote's website makes it super simple for users to see quick benefits of using the app and how to actually sign up to use it. Plus, the green color of the main and secondary CTA buttons is the same green as the headline and the Evernote logo, all of which jump off the page.

2. Dropbox

CTA Button: Sign up for free

Dropbox has always embraced simple design with a lot of negative space. Even the graphics on their homepage are subtle and simple.

Thanks to that simple design and negative space, the blue "Sign up for free" call-to-action button stands out from everything else on the page. Since the CTA and the Dropbox logo are the same color, it's easy for the visitor to interpret this CTA as "Sign up for Dropbox." That's one effective call-to-action.

3. OfficeVibe

CTA Button: Subscribe

Here's a slide-in call-to-action that caught my attention from OfficeVibe. While scrolling through a post on their blog, a banner slid in from the bottom of the page with a call-to-action to subscribe to their blog. The best part? The copy on the slide-in told me I'd be getting tips about how to become a better manager -- and the post it appeared on was a post about how to become a better manager. In other words, the offer was something I was already interested in.

Plus, I like how unobtrusive slide-in CTAs are -- as opposed to what my colleague Rachel Sprung calls the "stop-everything-and-click-here-pop-up-CTA." I find these CTAs offer a more lovable experience because they provide more information while still allowing me to continue reading the blog post.

4. Netflix

CTA Button: Join Free for a Month

One big fear users have before committing to sign up for something? That it'll be a pain to cancel their subscription if they end up not liking it. Netflix nips that fear in the bud with the "Cancel anytime" copy right above the "Join Free for a Month" CTA. I'd venture a guess that reassurance alone has boosted signups. Also, you'll notice again that the red color of the primary and secondary CTAs here match Netflix's logo color.

5. Square

CTA Button: Get Started

To achieve effective CTA design, you need to consider more than just the button itself. It's also super important to consider elements like background color, surrounding images, and surrounding text.

Mindful of these additional design components, the folks at Square used a single image to showcase the simplicity of using their product, where the hovering "Get Started" CTA awaits your click. If you look closely, the color of the credit card in the image and the color of the CTA button match, which helps the viewer connect the dots of what to expect if/when they click.

6. Prezi

CTA Button: Give Prezi a try

The folks at Prezi are also into the minimalist design look on their website. Other than the green dinosaur and the dark brown coffee, the only other color accompanying the predominantly black-and-white design is a bright blue -- the same blue from their main logo. That bright blue is strategically placed on the homepage: the main "Give Prezi a try" CTA, and the secondary "Get Started" CTA, both of which take users to the same pricing page.

7. Full Bundle

CTA Button: Our Work

Full Bundle is another company that uses negative space to make their primary CTA pop. The white "Our Work" call-to-action stands out against the dark greys of the background. Their choice of CTA is strategic, too. Given that they primarily exist to build out clients' online presences, it's important for them to showcase their work -- and that's what most folks are going to their website for.

8. Panthera

CTA Button: Join

The folks at Panthera are looking for users who really care about wild cats around the world and want to join a group of people who feel the same way. To target those people in particular, we love how they use language that would speak to big cat-lovers: "Join the pride today." The page itself is super simple: an on-page form with two, simple fields, and a button asking folks to (again) "Join."

CTAs With Creative Call to Action Phrases

9. EPIC

CTA Phrase: 'Let's start a new project together'

The folks at the agency EPIC use their homepage primarily to showcase their work. When you arrive on the page, you're greeted with animated videos showing some of the work they've done for clients, which rotate on a carousel. While there plenty of other places users might click on their site -- including their clients' websites -- the main call-to-action stands out and always contrasts with the video that's playing in the background.

I love that it features friendly, inclusive language -- "Let's start a new project together" -- which gives a hint to users looking for a creative partner that they're an especially great team to work for.

10. Aquaspresso

CTA Phrase: 'Send Me Specials Now!'

The whole point of a call-to-action is to direct your site visitors to a desired course of action -- and the best CTAs do so in a way that's helpful to their visitors. The folks at coffee company Aquaspresso really nailed that balance here with the pop-up CTA on their main blog page.

Here, the desired course of action is for their blog readers to check out what they're actually selling (and hopefully buy from them). There are many ways they could have done this, including putting out a CTA that urges people to "Check out our most popular products!" or something very direct. But we love what they've done instead: Their CTA offers blog readers something much more helpful and subtle -- an offer for "today's specials" in exchange for the reader's email address.

Adding that the specials are for today only is a great example of a psychological tactic called scarcity, which causes us to assign more value to things we think are scarce. The fear that today's specials are better than tomorrow's might make people want to fill it out and claim their offer while they can.

(The call-to-action above was created using HubSpot's free conversion tool, Leadin. Click here to learn how to easily create CTAs like this one using Leadin.)

11. QuickSprout

CTA Phrase: 'Are you doing your SEO wrong? Enter your URL to find out'

No one wants to be wrong. That's why a call-to-action button like QuickSprout's slide-in CTA on their blog is so clickworthy. It asks the reader, "Are you doing your SEO wrong?" Well, am I? All I have to do is enter my URL to find out -- seems easy enough. It's language like that that can really entice visitors to click through.

Plus, having the CTA slide in mid-blog post is a great tactic for catching readers before they bounce off the page. Traditionally, many blogs have CTAs at the very bottom of each blog post, but research shows most readers only get 60% of the way through an article. (Click here to learn how to add slide-in CTAs to your blog posts.)

12. Grey Goose

CTA Phrase: 'Discover a cocktail tailored to your taste'

Here's a fun, unique call-to-action that can get people clicking. Whereas site visitors might have expected to be directed to product pages or press releases from the homepage, a CTA to "Discover a Cocktail Tailored to Your Taste" is a pleasantly surprising ask. People love personalization, and this CTA kind of feels like an enticing game. The play button icon next to the copy gives a hint that visitors will be taken to a video so they have a better idea of what to expect when they click.

13. Treehouse

CTA Phrase: 'Claim Your Free Trial'

A lot of company websites out there offer users the opportunity to start a free trial. But the CTA on Treehouse's website doesn't just say "Start a Free Trial"; it says "Claim Your Free Trial."

The difference in wording may seem subtle, but think about how much more personal "Claim Your Free Trial" is. Plus, the word "claim" suggests it may not be available for long, giving users a sense of urgency to get that free trial while they can.

14. OKCupid

CTA Phrase: 'Continue'

OKCupid's CTA doesn't seem that impressive at first glance, but its brilliance is in the small details.

The call-to-action button, which is bright green and stands out well on a dark blue background, says, "Continue." The simplicity of this term gives hope that the signup process is short and casual. To me, this CTA feels more like I'm playing a fun game than filling out a boring form or committing to something that might make me nervous. And it's all due to the copy.

15. Blogging.org

CTA Phrase: Countdown Clock

Nothing like a ticking timer to make someone want to take action. After spending a short amount of time on blogging.org's homepage, new visitors are greeted with a pop-up CTA with a "limited time offer," accompanied by a timer that counts down from two minutes.

As with Aquaspresso's example in #10, this is a classic use of the psychological tactic called scarcity, which causes us to assign more value to things we think are scarce. Limiting the time someone has to fill out a form makes people want to fill it out and claim their offer while they can.

Curious, what happens when time runs out? So was I. Hilariously, nothing happens. The pop-up CTA remains on the page when the timer gets to zero.

16. IMPACT Branding & Design

CTA Phrase: 'What We Do'

CTAs can feel really pushy and salesy if the wrong language is used. I like IMPACT's educational approach, where they challenge visitors to learn what the company does before pushing them to take any further action. This call-to-action is especially intriguing to me because they don't even use an action verb, yet they still manage to entice people to click.

17. Huemor

CTA Phrase: 'Launch (Do Not Press)'

If you went to a website and saw a "Launch" CTA accompanied by the copy "Do Not Press" ... what would you do? Let's be honest: You'd be dying to press it. The use of harmless reverse psychology here is playful, which is very much in keeping with Huemor's brand voice.

18. Brooks Running

CTA Phrase: 'Find out when we have more'

How many times have you hotly pursued a product you love, only to discover it's sold out? Well, as you might know, it's no picnic for the seller either. But just because you've run out of an item doesn't mean you should stop promoting it.

Brooks Running uses a clever call to action to ensure their customers don't bounce from their website just because their favorite shoe is out of stock. In the screenshot below, you can see Brooks touting an awesome-looking shoe with the CTA, "Find out when we have more." I love how this button turns bad news into an opportunity to retain customers. Without it, Brooks' customers would likely forget about the shoe and look elsewhere.

When you click on the blue CTA button depicted below, Brooks directs you to a page with a simple code you can text the company. This code prompts Brooks to automatically alert the visitor when the shoe they want is available again.

19. Humboldt County

CTA Phrase: 'Follow the Magic'

Humboldt County's website is gorgeous on its own: It greets you with a full-screen video of shockingly beautiful footage. But what I really love is the unconventional call-to-action button placed in the bottom center, which features a bunny icon and the words "Follow the Magic."

It enhances the sort of fantastical feel of the footage, making you feel like you're about to step into a fairytale.

What's more, once you click into that CTA, the website turns into a sort of choose-your-own-adventure game, which is a fun call-to-action path for users and encourages them to spend more time on the site.

Balancing Multiple Call-to-Action Buttons

20. Uber

CTA Buttons: Sign up to drive | Start riding with Uber

Uber's looking for two, very distinct types of people to sign up on their website: riders and drivers. Both personas are looking for totally different things, and yet, the website ties them together really well with the large video playing in the background showing Uber riders and drivers having a good time in locations all over the world.

I love the copy of the driver CTA at the top, too: It doesn't get much more straightforward than, "Make money driving your car." Now that's speaking people's language.

21. Spotify

CTA Buttons: Go Premium | Play Free

As soon as you reach Spotify's homepage, it's pretty clear that their main goal is to attract customers who are willing to pay for a premium account, while the CTA for users to sign up for free is very much secondary.

It's not just the headline that gives this away; it's also the coloring of their CTA buttons. The "Go Premium" CTA is lime green, making it pop off the page, while the "Play Free" CTA is plain white and blends in with the rest of the copy on the page. This contrast ensures that visitors are drawn to the premium CTA.

22. Ugmonk

CTA Buttons: Send me the coupons | I'm not interested

Exit CTAs, also known as exit intent pop-ups, are different than normal pop-ups. They detect your users' behavior and only appear when it seems as though they're about to leave your site. By intervening in a timely way, these pop-ups serve as a fantastic way of getting your reader’s attention while offering them a reason to stay.

Ugmonk has a great exit CTA, offering two options for users as a final plea before they leave the site. First, they offer a 15% discount on their products, followed by two options: "Yes Please: Send me the coupon" and "No Thanks: I'm not interested." It's super helpful that each CTA clarifies what "Yes" and "No" actually mean, and I also like that they didn't use guilt-tripping language like "No Thanks: I hate nature" like I've seen on other websites. Finally, notice that the "Yes Please" button is much brighter and inviting in color than the other option.

23. Pinterest

CTA Buttons: Continue with Facebook | Sign Up

Want to sign up for Pinterest? You have a couple of options: sign up via Facebook or via email. If you have a Facebook account, Pinterest wants you to do that first. How do I know? Aesthetically, I know because the blue Facebook CTA comes first and is much more prominent, colorful, and recognizable due to the branded logo and color. Logically, I know because if you log in through Facebook, Pinterest can pull in Facebook's API data and get more information about you than if you log in through your email address.

Although this homepage is optimized to bring in new members, you'll notice a very subtle CTA for folks with Pinterest accounts to log in on the top right.

24. Madewell

CTA Buttons: Take me there | What's next?

Madewell (owned by J.Crew) has always had standout website design, taking what could be a typical ecommerce website to the next level. Their use of CTAs on their homepage is no exception.

When you first arrive on the page, you're greeted with the headline "I'm Looking For ..." followed by a category, like "Clothes That'll Travel Anywhere." Below this copy are two options: "Yes, Take Me There" or "Hmm... What's Next?" The user can choose between the two CTAs to either browse clothes that are good for travel, or be taken to the next type of clothing, where they can play again.

This gamification is a great way to make your site more interesting for users who come across it without having a specific idea of where they want to look.

25. Instagram

CTA Buttons: Download on the App Store | Get it on Google Play

Since Instagram is a mainly mobile app, you'll see two black CTAs of equal size: one to download Instagram in Apple's App Store, and another to download it on Google Play. The reason these CTAs are of equal caliber is because it doesn't matter if someone downloads the app in the App Store or on Google Play ... a download is a download, which is exactly what Instagram is optimizing for. If you already have Instagram, you can also click the CTA to "Log In" if you'd prefer that option, too.

26. Barkbox

CTA Buttons: Get Started | Give a Gift

The two CTAs on Barkbox's homepage show that the team there knows their customers: While many people visiting their site are signing up for themselves, there are a lot of people out there who want to give Barkbox as a gift. To give those people an easy path to purchase, there are two, equally sized CTAs on the page: "Get Started" and "Give a Gift."

As an added bonus, there's an adorable, pop-up call-to-action on the right-hand side of the screen prompting users to leave a message if they'd like. Click into it, and a small dialogue box pops up that reads, "Woof! I'm afraid our pack is not online. Please leave us a message and we'll bark at you as soon as pawsible." Talk about delightful copy.

27. t.c. pharma

CTA Buttons: Find out more | View products

Turns out Red Bull isn't its own parent company: It's owned by Thailand-based t.c. pharma, a company that makes popular energy drinks, electrolyte beverages, and functional drinks and snacks.

Its homepage features two call-to-action buttons of equal size: "Find out more" and "View products" -- but it's clear by the bright yellow color of the first button that they'd rather direct folks to "Find out more."

28. General Assembly

CTA Buttons: View Full-Time Courses | Subscribe

As you scroll through the General Assembly website, you'll see CTAs for various courses you may or may not want to sign up for. I'd like to point your attention to the CTA that slides in from the bottom of the page as you're scrolling, though, which suggests that you subscribe to email updates.

Although this feels like a secondary CTA due to its location and manner, I actually think they try to sneak this in to become more of a primary CTA because it's so much more colorful and noticeable than the CTAs for individual classes. When you create your own CTAs, try using bolder colors -- even ones that clash with your regular stylings -- to see if it's effective at getting people's attention. (Click here for a tutorial on how to add slide-in CTAs to your webpages.)

29. charity: water

CTA Buttons: Give by Credit Card | Give by PayPal

Charity: water's main goal is to get people to donate money for clean water -- but they can't assume that everyone wants to pay the same way.

The CTAs featured on their homepage take a really unique approach to offering up different payment methods by pre-filling $60 into a single line form and including two equally important CTAs to pay via credit card or PayPal. Notice how both CTAs are the same size and design -- this is because charity: water likely doesn't care how you donate, as long as you're donating.

30. Hipmunk

CTA Buttons: Flights | Hotels | Cars | Packages

When you land on the Hipmunk site, your main option is to search flights. But notice there are four tabs you can flip through: flights, hotels, cars, and packages.

When you click into one of these options, the form changes so you can fill out more information. To be 100% sure you know what you're searching for, Hipmunk placed a bright orange CTA at the far right-hand side of the form. On this CTA, you'll see a recognizable icon of a plane next to the word "Search," so you know for sure that you're searching for flights, not hotels. When you're on the hotels tab, that icon changes to a hotel icon. Same goes with cars and packages.

31. MakeMyPersona

CTA Buttons: Grab the template! | No thanks

Here's another example of a great pop-up with multiple calls-to-action -- except in this case, you'll notice the size, color, and design of the users' two options are very different from one another. In this case, the folks at MakeMyPersona are making the "Grab the template!" CTA much more attractive and clickable than the "No, I'm OK for now, thanks" CTA -- which doesn't even look like a clickable button.

I also like how the "no" option uses polite language. I find brands that don't guilt-trip users who don't want to take action to be much, much more lovable.

There you have it. By now, we hope you can see just how important little CTA tweaks can be.

Full Disclosure: We don't have data to know if these are all scientifically successful, but these examples all follow our best practices. If you decide to recreate these CTAs on your site, please remember to test to see if they work for your audience.

Want more CTA design inspiration? Check out some of our favorite HubSpot call-to-action examples.

http://bit.ly/2KYYxa1

The State of Content Marketing 2019 [Infographic]

The results of the third annual State of Content Marketing Survey are now in -- the findings include victories, challenges, and trends. With three years of data behind us, we can see just how much growth the content marketing world has achieved.

But we haven't reached perfection yet.

Three years ago, only 6% of marketers felt they knew what a successful marketing campaign really looked like -- in 2019, that number has increased to more than a third of marketers.

Additionally, if we look back to 2017, just 70% of marketers found marketing to be effective for their brand. Much of that was driven by a distinct lack of knowledge around its use. Now, 96% of marketers say their deeper understanding is translating to results -- and into a fully integrated marketing strategy.

You can see some of the highlights from the survey in the infographic below.

If you'd like to read the full results, you can download them here.

http://bit.ly/2DGDPtl

6 of the Best Video Formats for 2019

As a video marketer, you know there’s no cookie-cutter approach to crafting engaging videos. Each of your stories have unique concepts, contexts, and characters, so you need to account for these variables in the creative process in order to craft a video that tells your story in the most authentic and compelling way possible.

The same principle applies to choosing video formats. There is no one-size-fits-all video format -- not every computer, video platform, or website browser supports every video format. Fortunately, we've rounded up the best video formats around and listed out their pros and cons so you can learn which video format to use in different situations.

6 of the Best Video Formats for 2019

1. MP4

Most digital devices and platforms support MP4, rendering it the most universal video format around. The MP4 can also store video files, audio files, text, and still images. Additionally, they can retain high video quality while maintaining relatively small file sizes.

2. MOV

Developed by Apple, MOV is the video format specifically designed for QuickTime Player. But since there’s a version of QuickTimePlayer for Windows, MOV is also compatible with Windows. The MOV video format can store audio, text, and video effects, but since its quality is usually so high, it’ll take up significantly more space on people's computer.

3. WMV

WMV was developed by Microsoft, so your audience can play these types of videos on Windows Media Player. If they have a Mac, though, they can just download a WMV player to play WMV videos. Just like the MOV format, the WMV format boasts high video quality but its at the expense of a small file size.

4. FLV

Specifically designed for Adobe Flash Video Players, FLV is one of the most versatile and popular video formats around -- each web browser and each video platform supports this type of video format.

If your audience streams a lot of videos on online platforms, like YouTube and Google Video, FLV is the video format for you. Their file sizes are usually small, so people can quickly download them. The video format's only drawback is that it’s not compatible with iOS devices and a lot of other mobile devices.

5. AVI

One of the oldest video formats out there, AVI was developed by Microsoft in 1992. Since it’s been around for so long, the AVI video format is one of the most versatile video formats, compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux and supported by most web browsers.

However, with such high quality, the AVI video format file size is large, which is more conducive for people to store on their computers than to stream or download.

6. AVCHD

Panasonic and Sony developed the AVCHD specifically for digital camcorders, so if you regularly shoot high-end videos, the AVCHD video format is perfect for you.

Powered by H.264/MPEG-4 video compression technology, the video format also lets you store hours of high-quality video using only a tiny amount of data. Additionally, the video format has both standard and high definition variations, and its latest variation, AVCHD 2.0, even supports three dimensional video.

http://bit.ly/2V6hiRA

4 Ways to Use Google Tag Manager With Facebook

Wondering how to easily install Facebook features on your website without editing the code? In this article, you’ll discover easy ways to install the Facebook pixel, the Facebook Messenger customer chat plugin, alerts for Facebook comments, and Facebook standard events with Google Tag Manager. Install Google Tag Manager on Your Website Google Tag Manager is […]

The post 4 Ways to Use Google Tag Manager With Facebook appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

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5 Marketing Plan Examples to Help You Write Your Own

You did it.

You've been spearheading your organization's content marketing efforts for a while now, and your team's performance has convinced your boss to fully adopt content marketing. There's one small problem, though.

your boss wants you to write and present a content marketing plan to her, but you've never done something like that before. You don't even know where to start.

Fortunately, we've curated the best content marketing plans to help you write a concrete marketing plan that's rooted in data and produces real results.

Read on to find out what a marketing plan is and how some of the best marketing plans implement strategies that serve their respective businesses. Click the following links to jump to a specific section of this blog post:

• What is a marketing plan?
• How to Write a Marketing Plan
• Marketing Plan Examples

Keep in mind that there's a difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy describes how a business will accomplish a particular mission or goal. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software they'll use to execute on that mission and track its success. A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It is the framework from which all of your marketing strategies are created, and helps you connect each strategy back to a larger marketing operation and business goal.

Let's say, for example, your company is launching a new software product it wants customers to sign up for. This calls for the marketing department to develop a marketing plan that'll help introduce this product to the industry and drive the desired signups. The department decides to launch a blog dedicated to this industry, a new YouTube video series to establish expertise, and an account on Twitter to join the conversation around this subject -- all of which serve to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

Can you see the distinction between the business's marketing plan and their three marketing strategies?

In the above example, the business's marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to the marketplace and driving signups to that product. The business will execute on that plan with three marketing strategies: a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and a Twitter account.

Of course, the business might also consider these three things one giant marketing strategy, each with their own specific content strategies. How granular you want your marketing plan to get is up to you. Nonetheless, there are a certain set of steps every marketing plan goes through in its creation. Learn what they are below.

1. State your business's mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should serve your business's main mission statement. Be specific, but not too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you'll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

For example, if your business's mission is "to make booking travel a delightful experience," your marketing mission might be "to attract an audience of travelers, educate them on the tourism industry, and convert them into users of our bookings platform."

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission's progress. To do so, you'll need to determine your key performance indicators, or "KPIs" for short. KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let's take our example marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is "to attract an audience of travelers," we might track websites visits using organic page views. In this case, "organic page views" is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4, below.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of whom you want to attract. This can include age, sex, location, family size, job title, and more. Each buyer persona should be a direct reflection of your business's customers and potential customers. Therefore, it's critical that business leaders all agree on what your buyer personas are.

You can develop buyer personas for free right here.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here's where you'll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Because there are a laundry list of content types and channels available to you today, it's critical that you choose wisely and explain how you'll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

A content strategy should stipulate:

• Which types of content you'll create. These can include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, ebooks, and more.
• How much of it you'll create. You can describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. It all depends on your workflow and the short-term goals you set for your content.
• The goals (and KPIs) you'll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
• The channels on which you'll distribute this content. Some popular channels at your disposal include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
• Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

5. Clearly define your plan's omissions.

A marketing plan explains what the marketing team is going to focus on. However, it also explains what the marketing team is not going to focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren't serving in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can't please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn't on the hook for something, you need to make it known.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Your content strategy might leverage many free channels and platforms, but there are a number of hidden expenses to a marketing team that need to be accounted for.

Whether it's freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing whom you're marketing against. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one in this section.

Keep in mind not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might be ranking highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank for, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

8. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it's time to explain who's doing what. You don't have to delve too deeply into your employees' day-to-day projects, but it should be known which teams and team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Ready to make your own marketing plan? Get started using this free template and take some inspiration from the real examples below.

5 Marketing Plan Examples to Help You Write Your Own

1. Shane Snow's Marketing Plan for His Book Dream Team

A successful book launch is a prime example of data-driven content marketing. Using data to optimize your content strategy spreads more awareness for your book, gets more people to subscribe to your content, converts more subscribers into buyers, and encourages more buyers to recommend your book to their friends.

When Shane Snow started promoting his new book Dream Team, he knew he had to leverage a data-driven content strategy framework. So he chose his favorite one: the content strategy waterfall, which is defined by Economic Times as a model used to create a system with a linear and sequential approach. To get a better idea of what this means, take a look at the diagram below:

Snow wrote a blog post about how the content strategy waterfall helped him successfully launch his new book. After reading it, you can use his tactics to inform your own marketing plan. More specifically, you'll learn how he:

• Applied his business objectives to decide which marketing metrics to track.
• Used his ultimate business goal of earning $200,000 of sales or 10,000 purchases to estimate the conversion rate of each stage of his funnel.
• Created buyer personas to determine which channels his audience would prefer to consume his content on.
• Used his average post view on each of his marketing channels to estimate how much content he had to create and how often he had to post on social media.
• Calculated how much earned and paid media could cut down the amount of content he had to create and post.
• Designed his process and workflow, built his team, and assigned members to tasks.
• Analyzed content performance metrics to refine his overall content strategy.

You can use Snow's marketing plan to cultivate a better content strategy plan, know your audience better, and think outside the box when it comes to content promotion and distribution.

2. Buffer's Content Marketing Strategy Template

Writing a content plan is challenging, especially if you've never written one before. Since only 55% of marketing teams have a documented content strategy, Buffer decided to help out the content marketing community.

By sifting through countless content marketing strategy templates and testing the best, they crafted a content marketing plan template with instructions and examples for marketers who've never documented their content strategy.

After reading Buffer's marketing plan template, you'll learn how to:

• Answer four basic questions that'll help you form a clear executive summary.
• Set SMART content marketing goals.
• Create highly accurate audience personas by interviewing real content strategists.
• Solve your audience's problems with your content.
• Do competitive research by analyzing your competitors' and industry thought leaders' content.
• Evaluate your existing content strategy by examining the topics and themes of your highest and lowest performing pieces.
• Determine which types of new content to craft, based on your team's ability and bandwidth.
• Establish an editorial calendar.
• Develop a promotional workflow.

Buffer's template is an incredibly thorough step-by-step guide, with examples for each section. The audience persona section, for example, has case studies of real potential audience personas like "Blogger Brian". If you're feeling overwhelmed by the process of creating a marketing guide, this can help ease you into it.

3. Contently's Content Plan

Contently's content methodology works like a flywheel. Instead of applying an entirely new strategy to each new marketing campaign, they leverage the strategy of their previous marketing campaign to drive the next one. Similar to a flywheel, their content methodology needs an initial push of energy to get the gears in motion.

What supplies this energy? Their content plan.

Contently fleshed out their entire content plan in a blog post to help marketers develop a self-sustaining marketing process. After reading it, you'll learn how to:

• Align your content objectives and KPIs with your business goals.
• Create highly detailed buyer personas using psychographics instead of traditional demographics.
• Craft content for each stage of your marketing funnel, based off your prospects' pain and passion points.
• Identify your most effective marketing channels.
• Discover the content topics your audience actually craves.
• Assess your organization's need for resources.

By applying a flywheel-like strategy to your own marketing efforts, you essentially take away the burden of applying new strategies to each individual marketing campaign. Instead, your prior efforts gain momentum over time, and dispel continual energy into whatever you publish next.

4. Forbes' Marketing Plan Template

An oldie, but a goodie -- Forbes published a marketing plan template that has amassed almost four million views since late 2013. To help you sculpt a marketing roadmap with true vision, their template teaches you how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan, which are:

• Executive Summary
• Target Customers
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Pricing & Positioning Strategy
• Distribution Plan
• Your Offers
• Marketing Materials
• Promotions Strategy
• Online Marketing Strategy
• Conversion Strategy
• Joint Ventures & Partnerships
• Referral Strategy
• Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
• Retention Strategy
• Financial Projections

If you're truly lost on where to start with a marketing plan, this guide can help you define your target audience, figure out how to reach them, and ensure that audience becomes loyal customers.

5. HubSpot's Comprehensive Guide for Content Marketing Strategy

At HubSpot, we've built our marketing team from two business school graduates working from a coffee table to a powerhouse of over 200 employees. Along the way, we've learned countless lessons that've shaped our current content marketing strategy, so we decided to illustrate our insights in a blog post to teach marketers how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of their team's size.

In this comprehensive guide for modern marketers, you'll learn:

• What exactly content marketing is.
• Why your business needs a content marketing strategy.
• Who should lead your content marketing efforts.
• How to structure your content marketing team, based on your company's size.
• How to hire the right people for each role on your team.
• What marketing tools and technology you'll need to succeed.
• What type of content your team should create, and which employees should be responsible for creating them.
• The importance of distributing your content through search engines, social media, email, and paid ads.
• And finally, the recommended metrics each of your teams should measure and report to optimize your content marketing program.

These marketing plans serve as initial resources to get your content marketing plan started -- but to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you'll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.

http://bit.ly/2y7ySJF

The Landing Page Template HubSpot Uses to Convert at a 35% Rate

In sales, most professionals say getting prospects 99% of the way towards a purchase is easy, but getting them across the final 1% is the hardest part of the job. Crossing the finish line, just like in a marathon, is extremely challenging.

In marketing, the same principle applies. You can write the most gripping blog post you’ve ever written, persuading an audience that your offer is just as engaging and insightful, but if your landing page or even one of its elements disengages them, their odds of downloading it will plummet.

Fortunately, we’ve tested and iterated our landing pages enough to determine which template converts our website visitors into leads at the highest rate possible, and we want to share it with you.

Check out our analysis of each segment of our Customer Service Metrics Calculator offer's landing page to learn how we convert visitors into leads at a 35% rate.

The Landing Page Template HubSpot Uses to Convert at a 35% Rate

1. The Hook 

By leading off our landing page with a graphic, title, and synopsis of our offer, we could visually and mentally engage our audience right off the bat, which grabbed their attention and generated interest in the rest of the landing page and the offer. We also included a CTA at the beginning of the landing page to enable readers who were already interested in our offer to immediately download it.

2. The Reason Why People Should Care About the Offer

Spotlighting your offer’s insights is crucial for generating conversions. But before you do that, you need to clarify why people should care about you offer in the first place. People buy the “why” behind things, not the “what” or “how”, so when you’re asking for someone’s contact information, which is basically a transaction today, you should be able to give your audience a good reason to do so.

For our Customer Service Metrics Calculator offer, our “why” was that word of marketing one is of the largest business acquisition sources today and certain metrics can track your customers’ happiness and, in turn, their willingness to refer your product or service to their family, friends, and colleagues.

3. The Summary of the Offer

After we clarify why people should care about our offer’s topic, we naturally segue into what our audience will learn by reading our offer. This is a logical transition that answers the question our audience most likely thought of after they grasped the importance of tracking customer service metrics -- “Which customer service metrics are the most important to track?”

4. The Sneak Peek of the Offer

Sneak peeks are just like movie or TV show trailers. They offer you an inside look at what you’re about to experience, which builds suspense and anticipation for its content. To generate as much hype as possible without giving away too much information, we usually reveal our offer’s most important concepts or the pages that preview the majority of our offer’s insights.

5. The FAQs

Concerns about privacy and personal data collection are at an all-time high now, so it’s easy to understand why people usually ask why they need to enter their contact information to access our offers. To relieve them of any stress or anxiety they might feel about filling out a form, we cleared all the ambiguity out of the way by informing them why we ask people to fill out forms and that it doesn’t cost any money.

With your landing pages, make sure you can field questions from your audience about them and provide the answers to the most frequently asked questions on your landing pages.

6. The Call-To-Action

A wise content marketer once said, “If you don't tell your reader what to do next, you might as well have never written your content in the first place.” This principle rings especially true when you create landing pages. Obviously, if you don’t include a call-to-action on your landing pages, no one can actually download the offer. But creating effective call-to-actions hinges more heavily on your CTA’s copy and its ease of use -- and less on if it exists.

The best CTAs command your audience’s attention with a gripping headline and makes it easy for your audience to actually download the offer by limiting the amount of forms your audience needs to fill out or auto populating their information in your form, if their cookies are turned on.

http://bit.ly/2Vx3ZsK