The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Cover Letter

Nowadays, companies have a computerized system that puts resumes through an online scanner which will automatically reject some applicants and push other applicants through depending on their qualifications.

So, What does this mean for you as a job seeker? Well, the cover letter attached to your application is more important than ever.

We've crafted this ultimate guide to cover letters. You'll find out how to write one that gets read, what to include, and browse tons of templates to gain inspiration.

You can dive straight in, or jump to the section you'd like to read.

How long should a cover letter be?

OK, so you're all fired up and ready to craft the cover letter of the hiring manager's dream. But how do you manage the fine balance between in-depth and overwhelming?

A good cover letter is long enough to communicate why the recruiter should pick you but not long enough to bore them.

One page is usually enough to cover everything you'll need to include, without losing the recruiter's attention. Let's go into those items in more detail:

Your Name and Address

Kick-off your cover letter by adding your name and address to the document.

This step is pretty self-explanatory, but it allows the recruiter to easily connect your cover letter to your resume (especially if they're being printed).

Your name and address also make it easier for the recruiter to get in touch with a job offer. And that's the aim of our letter, right?

Their Name and Address

Similarly, you should add the name and address of the company or person you're writing to.

This shows you've done your research and allows the hiring manager to receive your letter if it's sent to a generic company email address.

The Date of Writing

Make it easier for the hiring manager to file your application by including the date on your cover letter.

Even if you're not successful this time around, the company might store your letter and refer back to it when they're hiring for another position.

Why You're Writing the Letter

We know that the aim of a cover letter is to persuade the hiring manager you're the best fit for their job.

Before you get to the good stuff, be sure to highlight the role you're applying for, as that can get lost.

Something like this will usually do the trick:

"I'm writing to discuss the content strategist role at HubSpot."

Why You're a Perfect Fit for the Job

The next section of a cover letter structure is the fun part. It's where you'll convince the hiring manager they should hire you.

In this section, answer these questions:

• Why should this company hire you?
• What skills do you have that will help complete the job better than anyone else?
• What makes you a good employee?
• What qualifications do you have that are relevant to the role?

Once you've answered these, the recruiter will have a solid understanding of who you are, and (hopefully) be convinced to bring you on for an interview.

What You Can Offer the Company

Have you ever heard the advice to "always sell yourself in a job application"? That concept can be applied to cover letters as well.

Businesses measure success in terms of results. The company looking for a new employee will want to know what they bring to the table and how you fit into their business goals. New candidates are rarely brought on board solely for the soft skills listed in their resume.

That's why this part of your cover letter structure is arguably the most important.

In two paragraphs or less, show the business what you can do — and provide examples of how you've done it before.

Not only does this give you the opportunity to show off your skills, but the company can picture the success you'll bring to their business by hiring you.

Your Availability

In the marketing world, we're always told the importance a call-to-action can make.

Great cover letters end with a brief section on the candidate's earliest start date.

How to Format a Cover Letter

How to Address a Cover Letter

Earlier, we mentioned the importance of addressing the hiring manager by their name and address. This proves you've done your research and ensures the cover letter lands in the right place.

Personalized letters will always outperform generic ones, so including the first name of the recruiter can go a long way.

But in a world where privacy is held close to our chest, you might need to do a bit of digging before finding the hiring manager's name.

Luckily, you can use the power of the internet to do this.

How to Find a Hiring Manager's Name

Head over to LinkedIn and find the company's profile page.

You can do this by entering their name into the search bar or searching for a link to their LinkedIn page on their company website.

Then, click the number of employees to see all employees who are on LinkedIn:

You'll then see a list of all employees along with their titles. Simply work your way through this list to find the most relevant contact.

Keep in mind that some employees do not have LinkedIn profiles, so you may not find them using this tactic. If you're unable to track down the hiring manager's name, a simple "Dear Hiring Manager" will work.

How to Open a Cover Letter

After you've addressed the cover letter to the most relevant person, you'll want to:

• Introduce yourself.
• List the role you're interested in.
• Explain your interest.

Here's an example:

"Dear Hiring Manager,

As an avid reader of the HubSpot Blog for the past five years, I am thrilled to submit my application for the content strategist role. I believe that my five years of experience working for B2B SaaS companies have equipped me with the skills needed to thrive in this role."

In the next two paragraphs, highlight your relevant experience and include key details from each role.

How to Close a Cover Letter

Once you've covered

Here are some great options:

• Looking forward to hearing from you
• Sincerely
• Best Regards

Then, sign the cover letter with your full name.

Should you include salary requirements?

The cover letter should focus on why you are a good fit for the role. Discussing salary requirements doesn’t fit at this stage of your application.

Instead, it’s best to wait until you speak to a recruiter or someone from HR to discuss your expectations.

Are cover letters necessary?

Today, in many industries, cover letters are listed as optional. The question is, should you include one if it's optional?

The answer isn’t exactly clear-cut.

Some research would suggest that cover letters may not hold the same weight as they once did. However, a cover letter can help you stand out among the competition.

In a 2021 Job Seeker Nation Report by JobVite, 69% of surveyed workers believed getting a job will be much harder or somewhat harder than in previous years. With this in mind, adding a cover letter to your application is a great way to stand out.

Writing a cover letter will allow you to:

• Communicate with the hiring manager.
• Rely on more than just bullet-pointed lists in your resume.
• Build your personal brand.

In short: Cover letters aren't absolutely necessary, but they do have stark advantages. If there's an option to upload one when applying for any job, do it — even if it's not required.

How to Write a Cover Letter

Writing a cover letter can be tricky. Even the best writers can struggle with communicating their skills in the right manner, but these tips will help you create a job-winning document.

The structure of your cover letter is arguably the most important thing about writing one.

Not only does a good structure help you to organize your points effectively, but it can help a hiring manager to quickly review the details you're sharing.

Featured Resource: 5 Free Cover Letter Templates

Download these free cover letter templates to write a stand-out cover letter.

7 Tips for Writing Great Cover Letters

So, you've crafted a cover letter and you're almost ready to hit send.

Before attaching to your resume and hoping for the best, use these seven tips to make sure your cover letter is as great as can be.

1. Keep it succinct.

Earlier, we mentioned how the best cover letters strike the perfect balance in their length.

Our best tip for writing cover letters is to avoid adding fluff that fails to add value. Every line should highlight why you're the best fit for the role.

In addition, cut the jargon and corporate-speak that hiring managers have heard before.

Yes, professionalism is important, but be harsh and critical when editing your cover letter. If a sentence doesn't add value, get rid of it.

2. Tailor it for the company and position you're applying for.

The one-size-fits-all approach doesn't fit well with cover letters.

You're applying for different roles at various companies, but don't let a change in name and address be the only updates you make.

Remember that a cover letter should explain why you should be hired for a specific role instead of anyone else. It's highly unlikely that multiple companies will hire for exactly the same position, so take some time to personalize your cover letter for every position you're applying for.

3. Don't repeat what's on your resume.

Although cover letters are submitted along with resumes, be wary of making them carbon copies of one another.

Instead, use the documents to compliment each other by:

• Including new skills.
• Elaborating on how your qualifications would help you in the role.
• Sharing how specific experience gives you an advantage over other candidates.

If you need to include the same thing in both documents, add "as listed in my resume …" rather than copy and pasting the same content.

4. Include data-backed examples.

When referencing experience from your resume, use your cover letter as an opportunity to explain in detail — with examples.

Examples allow the company to picture the success you could bring if they hired you, rather than the person next in their resume pile. But, data-backed examples give an extra edge.

Let's use an example. Which of these options is more impressive?

1. I increased leads for the company.
2. I increased leads by 35% in one month through a single blog post, which became the company's highest lead driver.

It's option B, right? That's because it's descriptive and shows results.

5. Tell a story.

Following on from the previous step, you could elaborate on your data-backed examples by telling a story.

Storytelling helps with relatability and gives a hint of your personality in a cover letter. It also makes the recruiter remember your cover letter amongst a sea of other one-page documents in their review pile.

However, this cover letter tip comes with a warning: Don't overdo it and make sure it's relevant.

6. Get a second pair of eyes on it.

Even the best writers make mistakes, but they can leave a negative first impression.

That's why our sixth cover letter tip is to get a second pair of eyes on it.

Email it to a friend or ask a family member to glance over it before you hit "send." Ask them to highlight any spelling mistakes or suggestions to improve how you're communicating with the person reading it.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Seeing as though a cover letter is one of the first documents a recruiter sees, try to make it perfect.

7. Be unique.

Finally, make your cover letter unique.

If you're applying for a creative role, experiment with colors, subheadings, and layouts.

If you're applying for more of a traditional role, be wary. Not everyone is a fan of bright, bold cover letters, but you can scope your limits by getting a feel of their company culture.

Are they strict and professional, or does the company like to have fun? (You can usually get a feel of this from their website or social media profiles.)

Testing the level of uniqueness can be a case of trial and error. If you're not getting great reactions from your cover letter, revise and try again.

Cover Letter Examples

We understand that inspiration can go a long way. That's why we've created a one-stop-shop for cover letter examples, which are available to view here.

You're also free to browse our collection of cover letter samples for extra inspiration on formatting your cover letter and learning from those who've helped to land dream jobs.

Now you're fully equipped to write a cover letter that will help you get your foot in the door.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Cover Letter was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How Market Intelligence Will Make Your Marketing Team More Agile

When I was younger, my dream was to open a cheese store with my family. My mom, brother, sister, and I — we're all obsessed with cheese.

So anytime I see a cheese store, I'll go in and sample everything … for research, obviously.

Although I'd never thought about it this way before, I was already thinking in terms of market intelligence and market research (two different concepts, but more on that below).

I was thinking about the product and its competitors.

As a marketer, market intelligence is important because it can help you understand your position in the market, evaluate your product, know your target audience, and conduct competitive analysis.

With this information, your marketing team will be better equipped to position your company in the marketplace. For companies that prioritize intelligence data, decision-making can be five times faster.

Feeling hesitant to rely on intelligence data? Gartner reports over one-third of organizations will rely on decision intelligence by 2023, making data intelligence a must for remaining competitive.

Below, let's review what market intelligence is, how it's different from market research, and the intel tools that can facilitate the process.

Market intelligence is used to learn about the existing market, customers, problems, competition, and growth potential. Businesses can gather this information through internal and external sources such as sales logs, surveys, social media, news websites, manufacturers, clients, or distributors.

For instance, companies can gather general demographics and spending habits of their consumers to write better, more targeted social media ads. Additionally, market intelligence can help a company make decisions on product development and establish a stronger brand.

How to Gather Market Intelligence

So, what type of information should you collect? Generally, market intelligence can be divided into four main categories of information:

Competitor Intelligence

This is the process of learning more about your competitors. To do this, you might conduct a SWOT analysis, so you can look at the competition's strengths and weaknesses. The goal is to uncover why customers would choose competitors over your product or service.

Product Intelligence

Once you've analyzed how you compare to your competitors, look inward at your own product or service. The goal is to learn about its quality and performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

If you have a physical product, you should also analyze your manufacturing process. Are you building your product in the most efficient way? This information should help you improve the user experience and improve your product.

Market Understanding

To truly understand how your product is performing, you'll have to look at the various markets where it's available. Could you expand your product to other markets? Are there other markets that could benefit from your product or service?

Ultimately, this information should help you understand where your audience is and what gaps exist, so you can fill them.

Customer Understanding

Understanding your customer helps to increase your product or service life cycle. That's because it's usually more expensive to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one.

For this reason — and many others — you have to know your audience. Why do your customers buy from you? What challenges do you help them resolve? The goal here is to gather the information that can help your marketing team come up with targeted campaigns.

Overall, gathering market intelligence should answer questions like:

• Where should we devote more resources?
• What markets can we enter next?
• What are our customers purchasing patterns?
• What audiences should we market to?

Now, you might be wondering, "How do I gather this information?"

To conduct market intelligence, you'll use internal and external sources of data, such as:

• Surveys
• Polls
• Forms
• Focus groups
• Interviews
• Observation
• A/B tests
• Competitor tracking analytics

Depending on the analytics you have available, a lot of this information can be found on your content management system (CMS) or customer relationship management (CRM).

However, before we jump into the software you can use to find this information, I know you're probably thinking, "How is this different from market research?" Let's dive into that below.

Alternatively to market intelligence, market research focuses on learning more about the buyer's research process and what influences their buying decisions.

Example of Market Intelligence

Let’s walk through an example of how a fictional company could use market intelligence to create a competitive advantage.

JKL Podcasting Co offers online software podcasters can use to record, edit, and distribute their podcast to major streaming platforms. As marketers at JKL look to expand the company’s user base, they performed an in-depth analysis of the market for podcast recording software.

In this analysis, they covered four areas:

1. Competitor landscape — They identified the top-ranking podcast recording software companies to understand their product features, pricing model, sales funnel, marketing tactics, and customer demographics.
2. Product — After gathering competitor information, they worked with their product team to gain a deep understanding of their own product including key features, how it was like competitor products, and what differentiated it from competitor products. They also learned about up-and-coming features launching later in the year.
3. Market analysis — Next, the team did research to understand the overall valuation and growth potential of the podcast recording software market. They learned podcast listenership has grown over the past decade and is expected to grow more in coming years, which could lead to more podcasts being produced. With seeing growth and investment in the podcasting space, along with increased interest in people wanting to start podcasts, marketers at JKL learn there is a potential market for new, or up-and-coming podcasters who want easy-to-use software.
4. Customer base — Finally, the JKL marketing team reached out to a focus group of their current customers to understand their relationship to the product. The customers walk them through their podcast production workflow using JKL software and share what features they love, along with what new features or changes they would like to see.

After going through this exercise, JKL has gained valuable insight into their competitive landscape, product features to highlight, market growth opportunities, and ways to keep their current customer base engaged and using the platform.

You're probably wondering, "How do I gather this information?" Below, let's review what tools and software you can use.

Market Intelligence Tools

For market intelligence to be useful, companies need to conduct research and sort through their collected data for analysis. A lot of this can be done through your CRM software.

To start, many CRMs allow you to create competitor profiles in which you will track your competitors' products, price points, organizational updates, social media activity, and more.

You'll likely also find battle card templates in your CRM, making it easy for your sales reps to access the information they need during their calls to combat objections and persuade prospects.

In addition, you can conduct regular win/loss analysis with your sales team to determine strengths and weaknesses in your sales and/or marketing strategy. You'll want to know:

• What factors are contributing to your wins and losses?
• What other company was the prospect considering for the sale? Why?
• Which competitors are you beating and which ones you are losing to?

If you don't already have a CRM, there are many out there that cater to businesses ranging from small to enterprise-level. Pricing is usually structured on a monthly basis and can range anywhere from $20/month to $1200+.

If your team would rather focus on specific tools, there are several online options to help you achieve your goals. Below are a few we recommend, divided into sections depending on your goals. Additionally, if you're a HubSpot user, many of these tools integrate with HubSpot.

Competitor Intelligence

1. HubSpot's Marketing Hub

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HubSpot's Marketing Hub has extensive tools to help marketing teams manage, track and scale their efforts. The platform offers both free and premium subscription plans ranging from $45 to $3,200 a month.

2. Crayon

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Crayon is one of the leading competitive intelligence (CI) tools in the industry. Its software can fetch and categorize data from over 300 million sources.

The platform also makes it easy for sales and marketing teams to find the intel they need, through battle cards, email digests, and a centralized dashboard.

For pricing information, you must contact the company.

3. SEMrush

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If you want to track your competitors' SEO performance, SEMrush is a great place to start. The platform has extensive tools, including keyword research, domain overview, and keyword difficulty. This will give you more insight into your competitors' strategies and how their efforts are performing.

Similar to HubSpot, SEMrush offers a free version of its platform. It also offers premium subscription plans ranging from $119 to $449 a month.

Product Intelligence

1. SurveyMonkey

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Surveys are one of the best ways to learn more about how customers are responding to your products. Survey Monkey allows you to customize your survey to get the insights you need. Beyond a wide range of survey features like advanced survey logic and pagination, the platform also has tools to promote team collaboration.

Access to Survey Monkey starts at no cost, but their premium versions begin at $25/month.

2. InMoment

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InMoment, formerly Wootric, an analytics platform that helps you learn more about customer sentiment. You can gather real-time analytics, which arms your team to make decisions quickly.

The platform also has many integrations for easy team collaboration, including Slack, Zapier, and HubSpot.

For pricing details, you must contact the company.

3. Metadata

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Metadata is a SaaS company that helps B2B brands generate demand for their products and/or services. On the platform, you can identify audiences, conduct experiments, and track the full sales journey.

Pricing starts at $3,950 for growing companies, with custom plans available for enterprise-level businesses.

Customer Understanding

1. Google Forms

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The stand-out feature on Google Forms is the simple and easy-to-use interface. In just a few minutes, you can have a survey ready to send out to your audience to collect data. You can receive alerts every time someone answers your survey and add collaborators.

The best part? It's free for individuals and included in your plan if you have a Google Business account.

2. CallTrackingMetrics

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Too often, there's a disconnect between sales and marketing teams – CallTrackingMetrics helps solve that. The platform offers a robust analytics tool that can identify which marketing campaigns are driving conversions, automate call processes for smoother interactions, and provide analytics — all in one place.

Pricing ranges from $39/month to $299/month, with custom plans available.

3. Google Analytics

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Google Analytics is a website analytics tool with powerful reporting capabilities to understand how users are behaving on your site. It's a great software for brands that are already using other Google products, such as Google Ads or Google Business, as they work together seamlessly.

On the platform, you can get detailed reports by goal: acquisition, retention, engagement, and monetization. The visual dashboard also allows you to get a snapshot of your site is performing.

The standard version is free and ideal for small to medium-sized companies. Entreprise-level businesses must contact sales for pricing.

How To Leverage Market Intelligence Data

Once you start collecting data, unpacking it is the next step.

But before you dive in head-first, come back to your goal. What do you want to learn and why? Use that to steer your approach.

Having a clear direction is essential during this stage to narrow down what data to focus on. You'll be compiling a lot of data, and not all of it will be relevant to your main objective. Knowing which will be most impactful will save you so much time and allow you to use your resources efficiently.

Now that you know what to focus on, start organizing and reviewing your data. You'll want to look for patterns. During this step, keep an open mind. Confirmation bias (the tendency to interpret information to support a pre-existing idea or belief) can greatly impact how you interpret data, so it's important to consider all perspectives.

Once you identify a theme or trend, dive deeper to answer the 5Ws. When did it start? Who or what is influencing this? Why is it happening? Where else is this trend identified?

From there, it's time to strategize. Based on what your data is telling you, you can develop an action plan and make recommendations to key stakeholders.

For instance, let's say your latest intel revealed that consumers are unaware of a key feature in your product line, which is steering them toward your competitors. Your recommendation could be to launch a marketing campaign that highlights that feature, create stronger messaging on your website product pages, and adjust the sales team's scripts to place more emphasis on this feature and how it's better suited for your customers than a competitor's.

The formula is easy: collect, organize, identify, and recommend. Understanding your market is key to entering the market and maintaining your place in it. But if you want to stand out among your competition, you'll need to leverage market intel.

Market intelligence can give you a holistic view of the market, improve customer retention, boost your efficiency, and give you a competitive advantage. So, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say market intelligence is vital for your company to succeed.

How Market Intelligence Will Make Your Marketing Team More Agile was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

The Top 16 Best Email Marketing Services in 2022

Email marketing continues to be a critical strategy for marketing (and sales teams) across an array of industries and business types, and an email marketing platform is one of the first additions to a marketer's tool belt — and for good reason.

Email marketing remains a quick and effective way to engage and nurture leads into loyal customers. It's also extremely cost-effective — some studies show an ROI of up to 4,400%. Simply, email marketing services exist to make the process of email marketing simpler — they have features and capabilities that enhance and streamline email communication (among other things) to help you identify qualified leads, nurture those leads, and close more deals.

Many of these tools not only offer email support, but they may also help you organize and store contact information in your CRM. But with so many email marketing tools available today, where should you start? We'll answer those questions and more in this guide to email marketing services — let's dive in.

What is an email marketing service?

Email marketing services and software streamline all of your email marketing efforts. They have a wide range of features depending on the service you choose — however, they often have functionality related to automation, subscription, general email communication, notifications, monitoring, campaigns, integration with other marketing, sales, and service software, and analytics.

Why is an email marketing service important?

Today, email marketing services continue to be an integral, strategic tool for businesses of all sizes across all industries — they help businesses build strong relationships with prospects and customers all while moving them through the buyer's journey and maintaining strong communication throughout.

Not to mention, as ESPs continue to develop, features like A/B Testing, automation, and personalization have made the tools even more valuable to a marketer looking to engage with an increasingly fragmented audience.

Now let's look at some of the best email marketing services today — one of which you might choose to implement at your company.

For each of the following services, we've listed notable features as well as pricing details but we still recommend reviewing the service's product and pricing pages for greater detail.

1. HubSpot Email Marketing Software

Best for email marketing that’s powered by CRM data.

HubSpot's free email marketing software is easy to use, has an extremely high deliverability rate, plus all the bells and whistles you'd expect to see within an ESP.

HubSpot Email Marketing Software Features

When creating an email, you can pick from one of many drag-and-drop email templates, or you can craft a custom template tailored to your brand. Once you've got your template, incorporating content is simple and intuitive.

You can also personalize and preview your emails for different recipients based on device type, country, or list inclusion — or use a simple personalization token to ensure that each email includes content that's specific to each recipient.

When it comes time to send an email, using the smart send feature will ensure recipients receive your messages at an ideal time. Additionally, you can run A/B tests to compare different versions of an email to understand which one resonates the most with your audience. You also won't have to worry about deliverability — HubSpot maintains a 99% deliverability rate across the network for all marketing email sends.

Outside of the email marketing functionality, HubSpot offers a wide range of reports on your email’s performance, letting you judge what's resonating with your audience so you can optimize your strategy accordingly.

For instance, you can report on something as broad as your overall email performance in Q1 or you get granular and see how one particular lead is interacting with your emails.

Lastly, HubSpot's automation platform makes it easy to scale your email marketing strategy, which will help you quickly turn leads into loyal customers.

HubSpot Email Marketing Software Price

Hubspot's Email Marketing Software (and CRM for small to enterprise companies, for that matter) is free forever. However, if you need enhanced capabilities, it may be worth paying for one of the upgraded Marketing Hub plans.

2. Moosend

Best for creating automations and sending multimedia, interactive emails.

Moosend is an email marketing and marketing automation platform that offers a variety of features at an affordable price.

Moosend Features

Moosend's platform allows you to create email newsletter campaigns, landing pages, and subscription forms in a fast and reliable way.

With the drag-and-drop editor, you can either create an email newsletter from scratch, using interactive elements like videos, or use one of the ready-made templates. You can create specific campaigns for segments of your audience by using the advanced automation features. You can use one of the ready-made workflow recipes or create your own with the drag-and-drop builder.

The reporting and analytics tools give you measurable results, allowing you to make informed, data-backed decisions.

Moosend Price

Moosend's pricing model is subscriber-based and consists of three tiers. The free trial includes most features and allows users to send unlimited email campaigns. The Pro plan starts at $7 per month, billed annually, and includes up to 1,000,000 subscribers. For more advanced functionality and additional support, the Enterprise plan is based on custom pricing.

3. Omnisend

Best for creating custom workflows.

Omnisend is an easy-to-use platform that offers automation workflows for any stage of the customer journey.

Omnisend Features

What separates Omnisend from other email marketing tools is the omni-channel functionalities, which offer greater control over how and where you connect with your audience. In the automation workflow, you can add email, SMS, push notifications, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more.

If you're trying to reach a specific audience that might not respond well to traditional email communication, using a tool like Omnisend can help you build and manage more customized, targeted communication workflows. This doesn't just help you connect with your audience better — it also provides a less disruptive, more personalized experience for your contacts.

Omnichannel features combined with user-friendly segmentation mean you can send the right message to the right person, at the right time, on the right channel.

Omnisend also offers templates for email capture, campaigns, and automation workflows so you can get started quickly.

Omnisend Price

Omnisend has three pricing plans — one of which is free with very limited capabilities as well as a customizable pro plan. Their plans come with a free trial so you can experiment with the service to determine what works best for you.

4. Pabbly Email Marketing

Best for delivering bulk emails.

Pabbly Email Marketing is an email marketing software that enables you to send bulk emails either by connecting via SMTP or external SMTP.

Pabbly Email Marketing Features

Pabbly provides access to SMTP routing, workflow automation, email scheduling, and much more without any restrictions. With the help of marketing automation and autoresponders included in the tool, you can schedule emails in advance and create triggers to avoid manual follow-up responses.

Additionally, Pabbly offers responsive email templates and a drag-and-drop email editor for easy customization. The email tracking feature allows you to track data such as bounce rate, open rate, and click-through rate so you can improve upon your email marketing and campaigns.

Pabbly Email Marketing Price

Pabbly offers multiple plans based on your number of subscribers. They offer a free plan — which allows you to send unlimited emails to up to 1,000 subscribers — as well as an advanced plan tailored to websites with large audiences.

5. SendinBlue

Best for sending automated nurturing and text message campaigns.

SendinBlue is an email marketing platform that helps customers send a total of over 30 million automated emails and text messages every day.

SendinBlue Features

On top of email, SendinBlue also has a forms tool that allows you to collect new leads, which you can then segment into specific lists and enter into email nurturing campaigns.

Not sure how to kick off your email nurturing campaign? No problem. SendinBlue has workflows that give you access to a number of pre-made automation campaigns tailored to your specific goals.

If you want to run a more nuanced email nurturing campaign, you can always create a campaign from scratch to meet your specific business needs.

SendinBlue Price

SendinBlue has four main plans, one of which is free, two of which range in price between $25 and $65 per month, and one that is enterprise and requires you to get a customized quote. The plans vary in cost based on the number of emails sent per day/ month.

6. SendX

Best for offering visual email marketing performance data.

SendX is an intuitive, affordable, and feature-rich email marketing software for marketers and business owners.

SendX Features

With SendX, you can send unlimited emails to opted-in subscribers, across all pricing plans. You get charged per subscriber - not per emails sent - no matter how many lists, tags, or segments you have them in.

You can optimize your email campaigns based on 30+ parameters, including past open behavior, time zone, domain name, email client, ISP, etc. You can automate your email marketing with a rule-based interface and send the right message to the right user using email drip sequences and audience segmentation.

SendX can also help you grow your email lists with forms and popups. You also get pre-built email templates which you can further design with the drag and drop email editor, without HTML.

The tool also features a heatmap report for different types of campaigns to give you a quick visual overview of which CTAs are working and which links people are clicking.

SendX Price

SendX’s pricing is based on the number of subscribers you have. For 1,000 subscribers, plans start at $7.49 per month for the annual subscription (or $9.99 for a monthly subscription). They also offer a 14-day free trial.

7. Constant Contact

Best for creating email drip campaigns and easy-to-use templates.

Constant Contact is a popular email marketing service that works well for many industries.

Constant Contact Features

The service comes with over 100 email templates that you can either use as-is or customize. Once your email looks good, you can easily schedule it to send to your contacts at any time you choose.

In addition to drip email campaigns, you can also have emails go out at a regular cadence to celebrate specific events — for example, you could have a regular email go out on each customer's birthday.

Once an email contact list is uploaded, bounces and unsubscribes are automatically updated for you. Constant Contact also has "Plus" features that allow you to execute specific types of campaigns such as coupon offers, donation collections, or surveys.

Constant Contact Price

Constant Contact has two plans depending on the features you need that start at $20 and $45 per month. The price differentiation is related to your number of contacts. They offer a free trial so you can experiment with the service prior to committing to it.

8. Campaign Monitor

Best for building personalized emails.

Campaign Monitor prides itself on providing powerful, personalized email marketing tools that are simple and easy to use.

Campaign Monitor Features

Their drag-and-drop email editor is intuitive, and the included analytics make it simple to optimize your email strategy and create targeted customer segments.

Personalization is key for campaign monitor. It uses data to increase personalized content and inform your list segmentation to boost your engagement. They also offer a visual marketing automation tool so you can create a unique customer journey at scale.

Not to mention, Campaign monitor has an extensive library of resources available to help you become an email marketing pro.

Campaign Monitor Price

There are three major plans you can choose from with Campaign Monitor ranging from $9 up to $149 per month. You can choose to pay annually rather than monthly and take advantage of the option to pay per campaign if that schedule works better for your needs.

9. iContact

Best for customer service and support.

iContact has been providing one of the top-choice email marketing services since 2003, as it has an easy-to-use email marketing tool that helps you and your team see results fast

iContact Features

While iContact doesn't necessarily stand out from competitors in terms of features, their customer support and service teams set them apart. Customers are paired with a strategic advisor to create an effective email marketing strategy right with the tool.

They also have Social+ marketing consultants who help boost your entire online presence through creative social posts that drive traffic to your site.

iContact Price

iContact offers a free plan for up to 500 contacts, and an advanced plan starting at $20 per month.  You can choose to pay monthly or annually depending on your needs.

10. MailChimp

Best for actionable data insights to improve your email marketing strategy.

Over the years, MailChimp has added landing pages and various ads tools to their capabilities but, their email marketing service remains their claim-to-fame.

MailChimp Features

MailChimp has millions of customers in over 175 countries and they use the data they collect off those customers to provide you with actionable insights to improve your email strategy. The tool is flexible enough for an enterprise company, yet simple enough for someone just getting started with their startup's email marketing strategy.

Best of all, MailChimp has over 300 integrations that help you customize the tool to your business. By using these integrations to further personalize your marketing, you'll get the most out of your email strategy.

MailChimp Price

MailChimp has four plans to choose from that range in price from free to $299 per month. Aside from the free plan, depending on the option you go with, your monthly payment increases with the number of contacts you have.

11. AWeber

Best for small businesses and entrepreneurs just starting to build their email lists.

Aweber is an email platform built specifically for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

AWeber Features

The goal of AWeber is to make it simple for those who are just getting started with email marketing to segment their contacts, design a professional email, and start nurturing leads. Customers have praised AWeber for its deliverability — AWeber's deliverability team monitors their servers around the clock to ensure your campaign consistently reaches the' inboxes of your recipients.

Aweber Price

AWeber offers two plans: free and pro. The AWeber Pro plan starts at $16.15 per month, and increases in price depending on the size of your list. You can also choose to pay on a quarterly or annual cycle if that's preferred over monthly billing.

12. ActiveCampaign

Best for segmentation and live chat options.

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform that offers live chat and a CRM service in addition to email marketing capabilities.

ActiveCampaign Features

By adding a CRM to their functionality, ActiveCampaign can help surface the right leads to your sales team using features like lead scoring. The service also allows you to share dynamic content in your emails — this allows you to provide different experiences to your contacts based on the way you segment them.

ActiveCampaign Price

ActiveCampaign has four plans which you can choose to pay for monthly or annually. Their plans vary based on the number of contacts you have and range in price from $9 to $259. You can experiment with the service before buying it with a free trial, as well.

13. AutoPilot

Best for collaborative email marketing teams.

Autopilot differentiates themselves from the competitors with their visual marketing tools.

AutoPilot Features

Everything from AutoPilot's email editor to their automation tool is set up to work via a drag-and-drop interface, making the system intuitive and easy to use.

AutoPilot offers collaborative tools to help your team work together effectively — it allows you to quickly share your work with your team, ensuring everyone is on the same page before you launch a campaign. And with the "annotate & collaborate" feature, you can quickly mark-up a customer journey and ask your team for feedback and assistance.

AutoPilot Price

AutoPilot offers three plans which range in price between $49 and $249 that vary based on your number of contacts. There are three types of billing cycles including monthly, monthly with an annual commitment, and annual.

14. GetResponse

Best for global email marketing audiences.

GetResponse is a marketing automation service that's available in over 20 languages.

GetResponse Features

On top of email marketing and automation, GetResponse also offers a CRM, landing pages, and a complete webinar solution.

The service offers over 500 templates to help you get started with email marketing and integrates with Shutterstock, giving you access to a creative library at your fingertips. Also, their drip campaign tool is managed through a calendar interface, allowing you to see exactly when you will be reaching out to your leads.

GetResponse Price

There are four GetResponse plans that you can choose from ranging in price from $15 to $99 per month (plus a customized enterprise-level option that requires you to reach out for a quote). Pricing varies based on your list size and you can pay monthly or annually. Each plan offers a free trial so you can test out the service before investing.

15. Ontraport

Best for creating detailed email marketing campaigns.

Ontraport offers a full suite of marketing automation tools including ecommerce functionality for businesses with online stores.

Ontraport Features

Ontraport's visual campaign builder allows you to create detailed campaigns to engage your audience. You can create a campaign from scratch or tap into the marketplace where they offer dozens of the most common marketing campaigns to choose from, including abandoned cart nurturing or webinar sign-up and follow-up.

The service also provides insight into detailed reports so you can gain insight into your pipeline, traffic sources, and conversion timelines.

Ontraport Price

Ontraport offers four plans that range in price between $79 and $497 per month. No matter which plan you choose, you'll receive one-on-one onboarding. The plans differ in price based on your number of contacts. You can cancel your monthly plan at any time and if you choose to pay annually, you'll benefit from a discount.

16. Flodesk

Best for creating visually appealing emails and landing pages from easy-to-use templates.

Flodesk is an affordable email provider that makes creating beautiful branded emails simple and easy.

Flodesk Features

Flodesk’s email building tools are intuitive and easy to use for beginners and email marketing experts alike. For those with creative businesses or strong visual brands, Flodesk works like a design tool to craft on-brand emails and landing pages.

Flodesk also offers tagging and workflow options that make creating email automations a straightforward process, and integrations with tools such as Zapier and Shopify to streamline the different areas of your business.

Flodesk Price

Flodesk offers one plan with unlimited emails and contacts for a flat fee of $38 per month. For annual subscribers, Flodesk costs $418 per year. Users can try Flodesk for free for 30 days.

Choose Your Email Marketing Service

Most email marketing tools offer the essentials needed to craft a basic email newsletter, but there are fewer options if you want a range of top-notch features such as complete customization, available support, and data analysis.

Not to mention, as a marketer, you might want to consider combining your email marketing service with a CRM to give you even greater functionality that can impact your email marketing as well as other marketing sales, and service efforts. But. ultimately, the best email marketing tool for you depends on your team's goals and particular needs — so, review the options above as well as the services' product and pricing pages to get started.

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

The Top 16 Best Email Marketing Services in 2022 was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Do Market Research: A Guide and Template

Today's consumers have a lot of power. They can research your product or service and make purchase decisions entirely on their own.

Moreover, rather than talking to one of your sales reps, they're more likely to ask for referrals from members of their networks or read online reviews. 

With this in mind, have you adapted your marketing strategy to complement the way today's consumers research, shop, and buy?

To do just that, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are, your specific market, and what influences the purchase decisions and behavior of your target audience members.

Enter: Market Research. 

Whether you're new to market research, this guide will provide you with a blueprint for conducting a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry, but it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers. Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

Certainly you can make sound judgment calls based on your experience in the industry and your existing customers. However, keep in mind that market research offers benefits beyond those strategies. There are two things to consider: 

1. Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It's very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition's immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge. 
2. Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand. 

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2022. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 at a compound annual growth rate of 5%. 

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are. As our world (both digital and analog) becomes louder and demands more and more of our attention, this proves invaluable. By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into a wide variety of things that impact your bottom line, including:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience 
• Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Whether there's demand for the business initiatives you're investing in
• Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
• Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes. As a result, you can make better business decisions from knowing the bigger picture.

As you begin honing in on your market research, you'll likely hear about primary and secondary market research. The easiest way to think about primary and secondary research is to envision to umbrellas sitting beneath market research: one for primary market research and one for secondary market research.

Beneath these two umbrellas sits a number of different types of market research, which we'll highlight below. Defining which of the two umbrellas your market research fits beneath isn't necessarily crucial, although some marketers prefer to make the distinction.

So, in case you encounter a marketer who wants to define your types of market research as primary or secondary — or if you're one of them — let's cover the definitions of the two categories next. Then, we'll look at the different types of market research in the following section. 

Primary vs. Secondary Research

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get, consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market. Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

There are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products, including primary research and secondary research. Let's dive into those two types, now. 

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market. It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas. Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets: exploratory and specific research.

Exploratory Primary Research

This kind of primary market research is less concerned with measurable customer trends and more about potential problems that would be worth tackling as a team. It normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.

Specific Primary Research

Specific primary market research often follows exploratory research and is used to dive into issues or opportunities the business has already identified as important. In specific research, the business can take a smaller or more precise segment of their audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business). Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors. The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

Public Sources

These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — lots of bang for your buck here.

Government statistics are one of the most common types of public sources according to Entrepreneur. Two U.S. examples of public market data are the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, both of which offer helpful information on the state of various industries nationwide.

Commercial Sources

These sources often come in the form of market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew, Gartner, or Forrester. Because this info is so portable and distributable, it typically costs money to download and obtain.

Internal Sources

Internal sources deserve more credit for supporting market research than they generally get. Why? This is the market data your organization already has!

Average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data on the health of old and new accounts can all help you draw conclusions on what your buyers might want right now.

Now that we've covered these overarching market research categories, let's get more specific and look at the various types of market research you might choose to conduct. 

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions (in-person and virtual) so you can allow for a natural flow or conversation and watch your interviewee's body language while doing so. 

Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas. These buyer personas describe your ideal customer's age, family size, budget, job title, the challenges they face at work, and similar aspects of their lifestyle. Having this buyer profile in hand can shape your entire marketing strategy, from the features you add to your product to the content you publish on your website.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that you can have test out your product, watch a demo, provide feedback, and/or answer specific questions.

This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation, or the qualities of your product that make it unique in the marketplace. Consider asking your focus group questions about (and showing them examples of) your services, and ultimately use the group's feedback to make these services better.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service, and specific features of that item. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience. 

In a 2020 report, respondents rated usability testing most highly in terms of usefulness for discovering user insights (rating it 8.7 out of 10). By comparison, digital analytics was rated 7.7, and user surveys 6.4.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX, what roadblocks they hit, and which aspects of it could be easier for them to use and apply. 

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, what they need from your business and brand, and more. 

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics — this way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs, understand their pain points and expectations, learn about their goals, and more. 

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for, what your target audience expects to pay — and is willing to pay — for whatever it is you sell, and what's a fair price for you to list your product or service at. All of this information will help you define your pricing strategy. 

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses are valuable because they give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry, what your target audience is already going for in terms of products like yours, which of your competitors should you work to keep up with and surpass, and how you can clearly separate yourself from the competition. 

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research give you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g. loyalty programs, rewards, remarkable customer service). This research will help you discover the most-effective ways to promote delight among your customers.

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you about what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations your audience members make when they think about your business and what they believe you're all about.  

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. It requires experimentation and then a deep dive into what reached and resonated with your audience so you can keep those elements in mind for your future campaigns and hone in on the aspects of what you do that matters most to those people. 

Now that you know about the categories and types of market research, let's review how you can conduct your market research.

Here's how to do market research step-by-step.

1. Define your buyer persona.

Before you dive into how customers in your industry make buying decisions, you must first understand who they are.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

They help you visualize your audience, streamline your communications, and inform your strategy. Some key characteristics you should be keen on including in your buyer persona are:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Job title(s)
• Job titles
• Family size
• Income
• Major challenges

The idea is to use your persona as a guideline for  how to effectively reach and learn about the real audience members in your industry. Also, you may find that your business lends itself to more than one persona — that's fine! You just need to be  thoughtful about each specific persona when you're optimizing and planning your content and campaigns.

To get started with creating your personas, check out these free templates, as well as this helpful tool. 

2. Identify a persona group to engage.

Now that you know who your buyer personas are, use that information to help you identify a group to engage to conduct your market research with — this should be a representative sample of your target customers so you can better understand their actual characteristics, challenges, and buying habits.

The group you identify to engage should also be made of people who recently made a purchase or purposefully decided not to make one. Here are some more guidelines and tips to help you get the right participants for your research. 

How to Identify the Right People to Engage for Market Research

When choosing who to engage for your market research, start by focusing on people who have the characteristics that apply to your buyer persona. You should also:

Aim for 10 participants per buyer persona.

We recommend focusing on one persona, but if you feel it's necessary to research multiple personas, be sure to recruit a separate sample group for each one.

Select people who have recently interacted with you.

You may want to focus on people that have completed an evaluation within the past six months — or up to a year if you have a longer sales cycle or niche market. You'll be asking very detailed questions so it's important that their experience is fresh.

Gather a mix of participants.

You want to recruit people who have purchased your product, purchased a competitor's product, and decided not to purchase anything at all. While your customers will be the easiest to find and recruit, sourcing information from those who aren't customers (yet!) will help you develop a balanced view of your market. 

Here are some more details on how to select this mix of participants:

• Pull a list of customers who made a recent purchase. As we mentioned before, this is usually the easiest set of buyers to recruit. If you're using a CRM system, you can run a report of deals that closed within the past six months and filter it for the characteristics you're looking for. Otherwise, you can work with your sales team to get a list of appropriate accounts from them.
• Pull a list of customers who were in an active evaluation, but didn't make a purchase. You should get a mix of buyers who either purchased from a competitor or decided not to make a purchase. Again, you can get this list from your CRM or from whatever system your Sales team uses to track deals.
• Call for participants on social media. Try reaching out to the folks that follow you on social media, but decided not to buy from you. There's a chance that some of them will be willing to talk to you and tell you why they ultimately decided not to buy your product.
• Leverage your own network. Get the word out to your coworkers, former colleagues, and LinkedIn connections that you're conducting a study. Even if your direct connections don't qualify, some of them will likely have a coworker, friend, or family member who does.
• Choose an incentive. Time is precious, so you'll need to think about how you will motivate someone to spend 30-45 minutes on you and your study. On a tight budget? You can reward participants for free by giving them exclusive access to content. Another option? Send a simple handwritten 'thank you' note once the study is complete. 

3. Prepare research questions for your market research participants.

The best way to make sure you get the most out of your conversations is to be prepared. You should always create a discussion guide — whether it's for a focus group, online survey, or a phone interview — to make sure you cover all of the top-of-mind questions and use your time wisely.

(Note: This is not intended to be a script. The discussions should be natural and conversational, so we encourage you to go out of order or probe into certain areas as you see fit.)

Your discussion guide should be in an outline format, with a time allotment and open-ended questions for each section.

Wait, all open-ended questions?

Yes — this is a golden rule of market research. You never want to "lead the witness" by asking yes and no questions, as that puts you at risk of unintentionally swaying their thoughts by leading with your own hypothesis. Asking open-ended questions also helps you avoid one-word answers (which aren't very helpful for you).

Example Outline of a 30-Minute Survey 

Here's a general outline for a 30-minute survey for one B2B buyer. You can use these as talking points for an in-person interview, or as questions posed on a digital form to administer as a survey to your target customers.

Background Information (5 Minutes)

Ask the buyer to give you a little background information (their title, how long they've been with the company, and so on). Then, ask a fun/easy question to warm things up (first concert attended, favorite restaurant in town, last vacation, etc.).

Remember, you want to get to know your buyers in pretty specific ways. You might be able to capture basic information such as age, location, and job title from your contact list, there are some personal and professional challenges you can really only learn by asking.

Here are some other key background questions to ask your target audience:

• Describe how your team is structured.
• Tell me about your personal job responsibilities.
• What are the team's goals and how do you measure them?
• What has been your biggest challenge in the past year?

Now, make a transition to acknowledge the specific purchase or interaction they made that led to you including them in the study. The next three stages of the buyer's journey will focus specifically on that purchase.

Awareness (5 Minutes)

Here, you want to understand how they first realized they had a problem that needed to be solved without getting into whether or not they knew about your brand yet.

• Think back to when you first realized you needed a [name the product/service category, but not yours specifically]. What challenges were you facing at the time?
• How did you know that something in this category could help you?
• How familiar were you with different options on the market?

Consideration (10 Minutes)

Now you want to get very specific about how and where the buyer researched potential solutions. Plan to interject to ask for more details.

• What was the first thing you did to research potential solutions? How helpful was this source?
• Where did you go to find more information?

If they don't come up organically, ask about search engines, websites visited, people consulted, and so on. Probe, as appropriate, with some of the following questions:

• How did you find that source?
• How did you use vendor websites?
• What words specifically did you search on Google?
• How helpful was it? How could it be better?
• Who provided the most (and least) helpful information? What did that look like?
• Tell me about your experiences with the sales people from each vendor.

Decision (10 Minutes)

• Which of the sources you described above was the most influential in driving your decision?
• What, if any, criteria did you establish to compare the alternatives?
• What vendors made it to the short list and what were the pros/cons of each?
• Who else was involved in the final decision? What role did each of these people play?
• What factors ultimately influenced your final purchasing decision?

Closing

Here, you want to wrap up and understand what could have been better for the buyer.

• Ask them what their ideal buying process would look like. How would it differ from what they experienced?
• Allow time for further questions on their end.
• Don't forget to thank them for their time and confirm their address to send a thank-you note or incentive.

4. List your primary competitors.

List your primary competitors — keep in mind listing the competition isn't always as simple as Company X versus Company Y.

Sometimes, a division of a company might compete with your main product or service, even though that company's brand might put more effort in another area.

For example. Apple is known for its laptops and mobile devices but Apple Music competes with Spotify over its music streaming service.

From a content standpoint, you might compete with a blog, YouTube channel, or similar publication for inbound website visitors — even though their products don't overlap with yours at all.

And a toothpaste company might compete with magazines like Health.com or Prevention on certain blog topics related to health and hygiene even though the magazines don't actually sell oral care products.

Identifying Industry Competitors

To identify competitors whose products or services overlap with yours, determine which industry or industries you're pursuing. Start high-level, using terms like education, construction, media & entertainment, food service, healthcare, retail, financial services, telecommunications, and agriculture.

The list goes on, but find an industry term that you identify with, and use it to create a list of companies that also belong to this industry. You can build your list the following ways:

• Review your industry quadrant on G2 Crowd: In certain industries, this is your best first step in secondary market research. G2 Crowd aggregates user ratings and social data to create "quadrants," where you can see companies plotted as contenders, leaders, niche, and high performers in their respective industries. G2 Crowd specializes in digital content, IT services, HR, ecommerce, and related business services.
• Download a market report: Companies like Forrester and Gartner offer both free and gated market forecasts every year on the vendors who are leading their industry. On Forrester's website, for example, you can select "Latest Research" from the navigation bar and browse Forrester's latest material using a variety of criteria to narrow your search. These reports are good assets to save on your computer.
• Search using social media: Believe it or not, social networks make great company directories if you use the search bar correctly. On LinkedIn, for example, select the search bar and enter the name of the industry you're pursuing. Then, under "More," select "Companies" to narrow your results to just the businesses that include this or a similar industry term on their LinkedIn profile.

Identifying Content Competitors

Search engines are your best friends in this area of secondary market research. To find the online publications with which you compete, take the overarching industry term you identified in the section above, and come up with a handful of more specific industry terms your company identifies with.

A catering business, for example, might generally be a "food service" company, but also consider itself a vendor in "event catering," "cake catering," "baked goods," and more.

Once you have this list, do the following:

• Google it: Don't underestimate the value in seeing which websites come up when you run a search on Google for the industry terms that describe your company. You might find a mix of product developers, blogs, magazines, and more.
• Compare your search results against your buyer persona: Remember the buyer persona you created during the primary research stage, earlier in this article? Use it to examine how likely a publication you found through Google could steal website traffic from you. If the content the website publishes seems like the stuff your buyer persona would want to see, it's a potential competitor, and should be added to your list of competitors.

After a series of similar Google searches for the industry terms you identify with, look for repetition in the website domains that have come up.

Examine the first two or three results pages for each search you conducted. These websites are clearly respected for the content they create in your industry, and should be watched carefully as you build your own library of videos, reports, web pages, and blog posts.

5. Summarize your findings.

Feeling overwhelmed by the notes you took? We suggest looking for common themes that will help you tell a story and create a list of action items.

To make the process easier, try using your favorite presentation software to make a report, as it will make it easy to add in quotes, diagrams, or call clips.

Feel free to add your own flair, but the following outline should help you craft a clear summary:

• Background: Your goals and why you conducted this study.
• Participants: Who you talked to. A table works well so you can break groups down by persona and customer/prospect.
• Executive Summary: What were the most interesting things you learned? What do you plan to do about it?
• Awareness: Describe the common triggers that lead someone to enter into an evaluation. (Quotes can be very powerful.)
• Consideration: Provide the main themes you uncovered, as well as the detailed sources buyers use when conducting their evaluation.
• Decision: Paint the picture of how a decision is really made by including the people at the center of influence and any product features or information that can make or break a deal.
• Action Plan: Your analysis probably uncovered a few campaigns you can run to get your brand in front of buyers earlier and/or more effectively. Provide your list of priorities, a timeline, and the impact it will have on your business.

Lastly, let's review a resource that can help you compile everything we just discussed in a simple yet effective way (plus, it's free!).

Market Research Report Template

Within a market research kit, there are a number of critical pieces of information for your business's success. Let's take a look at what those different kit elements are next. 

Pro Tip: Upon downloading HubSpot's free Market Research Kit, you'll receive editable templates for each of the given parts of the kit as well as instructions on how to use the templates and kit, and a mock presentation that you can edit and customize. 

Download HubSpot's free, editable market research report template here. 

1. Five Forces Analysis Template

Use Porter's Five Forces Model to understand an industry by analyzing five different criteria and how high the power, threat, or rivalry in each area is — here are the five criteria: 

• Competitive rivalry
• Threat of new entrants
• Threat of substitution
• Buyer power
• Supplier power

Download a free, editable Five Forces Analysis template here. 

2. SWOT Analysis Template

 

 A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis looks at your internal strengths and weaknesses, and your external opportunities and threats within the market.

A SWOT analysis highlights direct areas of opportunity your company can continue, build, focus on, and work to overcome.

 

Download a free, editable SWOT Analysis template here. 

3. Market Survey Template

Both market surveys and focus groups (which we'll cover in the next section) help you uncover important information about your buyer personas, target audience, current customers, market, competition, and more (e.g. demand for your product or service, potential pricing, impressions of your branding, etc.).

Surveys should contain a variety of question types, like multiple choice, rankings, and open-ended responses. Ask quantitative and short-answer questions to save you time and to more easily draw conclusions. (Save longer questions that will warrant more detailed responses for your focus groups.)

Here are some categories of questions you should ask via survey: 

• Demographic questions
• Business questions
• Competitor questions
• Industry questions
• Brand questions
• Product questions

Download a free, editable Market Survey template here. 

4. Focus Group Template

Focus groups are an opportunity to collect in-depth, qualitative data from your real customers or members of your target audience. You should ask your focus group participants open-ended questions. While doing so, keep these tips top of mind:

• Set a limit for the number of questions you're asking (after all, they're open-ended). 
• Provide participants with a prototype or demonstration.
• Ask participants how they feel about your price.
• Ask participants about your competition.
• Offer participants time at the end of the session for final comments, questions, or concerns.

Download a free, editable Focus Group template here. 

Market Research Examples 

1. Disney uses kid-centric focus groups to test new characters and ideas.

The Walt Disney Company can spend millions crafting what its Animation Studio team believes is a worthwhile story, but it wisely focuses on its intended audience — children — when testing how well a character or topic performs. 

A few times each year, Disney executives meet with preschoolers and kindergartners in kid-centric focus groups to get their opinions and insights on TV episodes, Disney characters, and more. 

Why is this an effective market research strategy? Because children are ultimately the audience Disney hopes to delight — so collecting their feedback is invaluable to iterating on their existing content and ensuring it continues to meet its audiences' preferences.

2. KFC tested its meatless product in select markets before launching nationwide.

In 2019, KFC began developing and testing a new meatless version of its chicken. Rather than instantly rolling the product out nationwide, however, it started small: In select stores in the Atlanta, Georgia area. 

This is an easy, effective example of conducting market research to determine how well a new product sells on a smaller scale before dedicating too many resources to it. If the meatless chicken flopped in Georgia, KFC would need to change the product before re-launching it to the market.

3. Yamaha conducted a survey to determine whether they should use knobs or sliding faders on the Montage keyboard.

When Yamaha, a Japanese-based corporation that produces a variety of products ranging from motorcycles to golf cars to musical instruments, began developing its new Montage keyboard, the team was unsure whether to use knobs or sliding faders on the product.

So Yamaha used Qualtrics to send a survey to their customers, and received 400 responses in a few hours. 

Using survey feedback helped Yamaha ensure it was designing a product that exactly fit its audiences' preferences.

4. The Body Shop used social listening to determine how they should re-position brand campaigns to respond to what their customers cared most about.

The Body Shop has long been known for offering ethically sourced and natural products, and proudly touts "sustainability" as a core value. 

To dive deeper into the sustainability sub-topics that meant the most to their audiences, the team at The Body Shop tracked conversations and ultimately found their audiences cared a lot about refills. 

Using this information helped the Body Shop team feel confident when relaunching their Refill Program across 400 stores globally in 2021, and another 400 in 2022. Market research proved they were on the right track with their refill concept, and demonstrated increased efforts were needed to show Body Shop customers that the Body Shop cared about their customers' values. 

Conduct Market Research to Grow Better

Conducting market research can be a very eye-opening experience. Even if you think you know your buyers pretty well, completing the study will likely uncover new channels and messaging tips to help improve your interactions.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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