Internet Marketing / 3407 posts found
Forget Follower Count: What Actually Drives Sales, According to a TikTok Marketing Expert
If you’re starting off the year with a bunch of execs demanding explosive growth in 2026, you’ll like this creator’s refreshing take: “Your brand doesn’t need to be loved by everyone. Even if you’ve captured just 3% of the market, your brand can stay alive.” While I’m aware “staying alive” is more disco anthem than marketing goal, her point holds: Trying to appeal to everyone in 2026 isn’t going to work… and it also doesn’t need to. Crafting strong marketing that resonates with a loyal group of enthusiasts is better than Hail Marying your brand on a billboard in Times […]
The best AI visibility tools that actually improve lead quality
Search has changed faster than most teams have adapted. For years, visibility meant ranking — climbing search pages through backlinks, keywords, and authority signals. Now, customers open ChatGPT or Gemini, type a question, and receive a synthesized answer drawn from multiple sources. McKinsey’s recent finding that only 16% of brands systematically track AI search performance underscores the gap between how people search and how companies measure visibility. Most teams simply don’t know whether AI systems recognize their brand or include it in generated responses. AI visibility tracking tools fill that blind spot. These tools track vital brand health outcomes like […]
Marketing efficiency ratio: How to calculate and improve yours
The marketing efficiency ratio (MER) measures how much revenue marketing generates for every dollar spent. MER is calculated by dividing total revenue by total marketing spend for a defined period. Unlike ROAS, which focuses on the return of specific ad campaigns, MER gives a blended, executive-level view of overall marketing effectiveness across all channels. A higher MER indicates more efficient marketing performance, although what counts as “good” depends on margins, customer behavior, and business model. As search, analytics, and attribution evolve, marketing efficiency and MER have become headline metrics for marketers, revenue leaders, and finance teams. MER captures the holistic […]
AI search strategy: A guide for modern marketing teams
Search no longer rewards keywords alone — it rewards clarity. Large language models now read, reason, and restate information, deciding which brands to quote when they answer. An AI search strategy adapts content for that shift, focusing on being understood and cited, not just ranked and clicked. Structured data defines entities and relationships; concise statements make them extractable; CRM connections turn unseen visibility into measurable influence. Clicks may decline, but authority doesn’t. In AI search, every sentence becomes a new point of discovery. This article explores what an AI search strategy is and how content marketers and SEOs can implement […]
Entity-based SEO: An explainer for SEOs and content marketers
Entity-based SEO is a content optimization strategy built around concepts, relationships, and context rather than isolated keyword phrases. Search engines identify entities — distinct concepts, people, places, or things — and connect them through the Knowledge Graph to interpret meaning and determine topical authority. This approach mirrors a fundamental shift in how search systems work. Google no longer simply matches text; it maps how concepts relate to one another and evaluates whether content meaningfully contributes to a subject’s broader ecosystem. As large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini increasingly shape how information surfaces, the strength of entity signals determines which […]
What we learned building SalesBot — HubSpot’s AI-powered chatbot selling assistant
When I first joined HubSpot’s Conversational Marketing team, most of our website chat volume was handled by humans. We had a global team of more than a hundred live sales agents — Inbound Success Coaches (ISCs) qualifying leads, booking meetings, and routing conversations to sales reps. It worked, but it didn’t scale. Every day, those ISCs fielded thousands of chat messages from visitors who needed product info, had support questions, or were just exploring. While we loved those interactions, they often pulled focus from high-intent prospects ready to engage with sales. We knew AI could help us work smarter, but […]
Automated email segmentation: Setting up for better targeting
Automated email segmentation uses dynamic rules and real-time data to group contacts automatically, eliminating manual list updates while boosting campaign relevance. By connecting unified customer data, you can build segments that update based on behavior, lifecycle stage, or engagement, and then trigger personalized workflows and content for each group. Start by cleaning your data, creating dynamic lists, linking them to automated journeys, and using AI to scale targeting and copy. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through setting up better targeting, step by step. Table of Contents What is automated email segmentation? What data do you need before you […]
AEO vs. GEO explained: What marketers need to know now
Marketers use AEO and GEO interchangeably, but there is a difference, and that’s what will be defined and explained in this article. In brief, AEO optimizes content for answer boxes and voice search results, while GEO targets AI chatbot citations and generated summaries. It might be challenging to get everyone in agreement on what’s what, but let’s try. AEO and GEO are not going away, and the faster the industry can align on what these acronyms mean, the better. From a strategic perspective, it doesn’t matter that much since all SEO specialists should already be laying the foundations for AEO, […]
Best AI workflow automation tools for growing businesses
AI workflow automation tools connect apps, data, and departments to execute tasks automatically — reducing manual work and improving efficiency across organizations. Unlike traditional rule-based automation, these tools use artificial intelligence to predict next steps, learn from outcomes, and continuously optimize processes. The shift is already well underway. According to HubSpot’s 2025 State of Marketing Report, 92% of marketers say AI has already impacted their roles. Businesses adopting connected CRMs and unified AI systems are seeing measurable gains in speed, accuracy, and customer experience. AI workflow automation software bridges gaps between marketing, sales, service, and operations — scaling processes without […]
Building systems of trust in the age of AI while staying human at heart
When I joined HubSpot, I stepped into a rare position. I had already spent years as a customer, learning how to build systems creatively with the tools I had access to. Then, I joined the company with the responsibility of modernizing a long-standing customer reference system that had served many teams well but was now struggling to meet new expectations, complexity, and scale. Seeing both sides changed how I approached this work. Advocacy is often misunderstood. It can be seen as simple or administrative because so much of its complexity lives behind the scenes. But once you look closely, you […]