Content marketing examples include, but are not limited to, blogs, social media posts, videos, podcasts, and infographics. These content types are designed to engage, inform, and provide value to your audience, ultimately attracting them to your brand and driving customer action.

Through content marketing, businesses can establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry, build brand awareness, and ultimately drive sales.

There’s just one problem: creative content marketing can be challenging work.

If you’re running content marketing campaigns day in, day out, it can be difficult to consistently come up with new ideas and keep the momentum going.

That’s why we’ve written this article. From blogging and social media to video and visual marketing, we’ve got a great collection of B2C and B2B content marketing examples to inspire you.

These content marketing examples from the business world will help you find new ways to get creative and inspire you to produce winning content marketing campaigns.

Here’s a table of contents to help you jump to the content marketing examples you most want to see.

• Blogging Content Marketing Examples
• Social Media Content Marketing Examples
• Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples
• Visual Content Marketing Examples
• Video Content Marketing Examples
• Ebooks Content Marketing Examples
• Other Content Marketing Examples

But before diving into the list of our 29 content marketing examples, let’s clarify what content marketing is in the first place.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is creating and curating content to attract new prospects and nurture them into leads.

It includes any form of messaging to attract, educate, inform, persuade, and inspire a prospect to move them closer to becoming a customer.

The goal of content marketing is more than immediate sales but rather lead generation combined with strong brand recognition.

This type of marketing may be delivered via blogs, newsletters, e-books, forums/discussion boards, case studies, videos (businesses are creating more and more webinars), social media channels, and many other platforms.

In short, content marketing is about creating high-quality content to attract prospects and customers and to convert them into engaged followers who will spread the word about your products and services.

Content marketing also has several advantages and can help you increase the following:

• Traffic: You’ll drive traffic from search engines, social media, and people following links in email or article-sharing sites.
• Sales: Content marketing is often a great way not just to drive traffic but to drive the right traffic (people who are more likely to become customers).
• Email Subscribers: If you are writing articles, you will be able to drive people to opt-in on your signup page (this is the best place for them to do that—don’t try and get it out of them elsewhere)

Now that we know what content marketing is and why it benefits your business let’s look at our 29 content marketing examples.

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in!

Recommended Reading: 130+ Blog Ideas: The Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas for Every Niche

Blogging Content Marketing Examples

When most people think of types of content marketing, they think of blogging as a starting point.

Blogging helps you get visitors’ attention with helpful information and provides content to flesh out your social media presence and fuel your SEO efforts.

Here are a few examples of companies getting it right.

1) OptinMonster

Since we’re writing a blog post on content marketing examples, OptinMonster’s blog would be the most appropriate place to start.

OptinMonster’s blog is a valuable resource for current customers (looking to use OptinMonster in new ways) and prospective customers.

OptinMonster has become an authoritative resource on lead generation tips, tools, and strategies through its blog.

For people who want to grow email subscribers, increase conversions, and drive more sales, the OptinMonster blog is an excellent tab to bookmark.

It’s also how OptinMonster attracted more than 1,213,437 websites that use its services.

2) Buffer

Buffer’s one of our favorite content marketing examples due to its three-pronged content marketing strategy.

The company used guest blogging to fuel its initial growth, writing a few times daily and publishing content on high-visibility sites. That growth hacking strategy helped Buffer attract its first 100,000 users.

On Buffer’s blog, the company initially concentrated on writing for the people who influenced their customers, producing high-quality and highly shareable content.

Buffer now has four blogs, including the Transparency blog and Open blog, where they have shared business ups and downs over the years.

And they share their best content via regular email marketing.

The results speak for themselves: Buffer is a highly recognized and trusted brand, with almost 400,000 users and around a million followers across multiple social media sites.

3) HubSpot

Regarding examples of content marketing done right, HubSpot’s always on the list. In addition to creating a free tool as a growth hacking strategy, HubSpot has used content marketing by:

• Writing in-depth blog posts about the issues their visitors care about
• Adding content upgrades such as ebooks to their blog posts
• Creating an educational and content-sharing hub, Inbound.org (which gets 321,000 visitors each month) and provides an excellent opportunity to promote its certification and partnership programs
• Creating videos for Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and using LinkedIn to send traffic to those videos

It must be working because HubSpot’s growth and reputation speak for itself.

4) Rip Curl

Rip Curl bills itself as the “ultimate surfing company”. One way it shows dedication is via an online publication called The Search.

The Search chronicles surfers’ search for the best waves and the ultimate surfing lifestyle and features excellent photography and stories told by surfers for surfers.

With over 100,000 YouTube subscribers and a whopping two million-plus Facebook followers, this is a great example of matching content to your target audience to grow your business and make it profitable.

Are you trying to level up your YouTube game? Check out this helpful post: 13 Steps to Get Your First 100 YouTube Subscribers.

Social Media Content Marketing Examples

As we mentioned in our guide to social media and SEO, social shares can help indirectly with search ranking, which helps with lead generation.

So it’s no surprise that many companies have focused on content creation on social media to “WOW” their audiences.

5) GE

GE is a great place to start when you’re looking for inspiring B2B content marketing examples.

We’re not talking about washer-dryers and vacuum cleaners but about the company’s other business: wind turbines, jet engines, locomotives, and so on.

GE’s long been known for taking what some might see as a dull business and bringing it to life, and this Instagram content marketing campaign is a perfect example.

GE combined the campaign with influencer marketing, getting six Instagram influencers and several super fans to do the #GEInstaWalk.

That meant touring their manufacturing facilities and taking, uploading, and hashtagging pictures. The results were spectacular:

• 8 million views of GE’s Instagram account
• 3 million reaches per tour
• 3,000 new followers

And it was done without any paid advertising.

Want to learn more about how you can grow your business with Instagram? Just check out this helpful resource: How to Make Money on Instagram (Without 10K Followers)

6) RafflePress

RafflePress is the best online giveaway plugin for WordPress. It’s also been working to build a strong presence on Facebook, as the platform is a great way to increase page views for its blog.

And as a side bonus, they also get customer testimonials posted in the comments section of their posts:

This is free social proof that helps other people either go to the RafflePress blog or head to their website to try the product.

Ultimately, even something as simple as resharing blog posts on social media can be an excellent content marketing strategy as your business grows.

7) Intrepid Travel

Intrepid Travel is about small groups, big adventures, and responsibly traveling. It supports that with a content hub called The Journal.

In The Journal, you’ll find stories from real travelers sharing their experiences, which helps the company connect more with its core audience.

But another facet of Intrepid’s content marketing strategy is posting aspirational travel images from travelers on its social media interspersing that with its own content.

That’s given the company 301K+ Instagram followers and strong communities on other social media sites.

8) Superdrug

Our next content marketing example uses both publishing placements and social media to get the audience’s attention.

Superdrug wanted to raise awareness around body image issues.

To do this, the company asked 18 graphic designers around the world to edit a photo of a model in Photoshop to bring it in line with their own country’s beauty norms.

The company published the results on Buzzfeed and Huffington Post, resulting in:

• International news coverage, and placements with major publications like the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Business Insider
• Celebrity endorsements of the campaign, like the one from Sofia Vergara below
• 3 million views of the original study
• Around 1 million social shares

Plus the company got more than 1,000,000 page views to their site within a five-day period.

Tried-and-True Content Marketing Examples

Next, we’ve got a couple of content marketing examples that don’t rely on social media promotion.

9) John Deere

Anyone who’s read up on content marketing has probably heard of The Furrow, one of the first examples of content marketing.

First published by John Deere in 1895, this publication aimed to help the company’s customers with the issues they faced and show the company’s expertise at the same time.

Sounds familiar.

The fantastic thing is that more than 120 years later, the publication’s still going and is now available online.

10) AARP

Here’s another content marketing example that underlines the importance of knowing your audience and delivering the content they want.

The AARP The Magazine has won awards for its content, design, and photography quality, but there’s nothing mysterious about its success.

They listen to their readers, who reach them by email, letter, and social media, and use that information to determine the topics that will resonate with them most.

It’s America’s biggest consumer magazine, going to 22 million households. In addition, more than half of its 37 million readers have read three of the last four issues.

Visual Content Marketing Examples

Images are the lifeblood of social media. They easily connect you with your audience and give potential leads an engaging way to interact with your brand.

Need some proof that visual content marketing works? Check out this helpful resource: 24 Content Marketing Statistics to Make You a Marketing Genius.

Now let’s look at some visual content marketing strategies that have worked.

11) Zomato

Zomato is a restaurant finder mobile app available in 24 countries.

The company uses humor in its marketing strategy. In particular, it creates and shares images referencing popular culture, as this recent example spoofing an Oscar-nominated film shows.

They are simple, creative, and entertaining, proving that a minimalist approach can do the trick.

It must be working because the company’s got 1.5 million followers on Twitter, 1.9 million on Facebook, and the app’s been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

12. Shutterstock

Shutterstock’s in the business of images and used its expertise to make a resource that everyone can use: a creative trends report. This capitalizes on the fact that people love reliable data, and this type of resource gets widely shared.

Last year’s infographic attracted thousands of social shares and attracted more than 6 billion site visits, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

Shutterstock has made the resource interactive, including images, video, and music. It’s been shared more than 10,000 times.

13) Rolex

Just because you’re an iconic brand doesn’t mean you can’t rock content marketing.

Rolex proves this by conveying its brand’s quality and timelessness through excellent photography that radiates quality.

And the fans love it: Rolex has over 14.2 million Instagram followers and around 7.7 million on Facebook.

Video Content Marketing Examples

Video marketing drives brand awareness, leads, and sales, so it’s no surprise that many content marketing examples include videos.

14. Blendtec

Let’s start with Blendtec, whose viral videos prove there’s no such thing as a boring industry if you can tap into what hooks your audience.

Blenders might sound boring, but they become a heck of a lot more so when you put weird stuff in them.

The Will It Blend video series put the company on the map and resulted in a 700% sales increase in three years.

Today, Blendtec’s YouTube channel has more than 850,000 subscribers, and the campaign’s still going strong, with videos regularly attracting hundreds of thousands of views.

15) Hootsuite

When you’re launching your content marketing strategy, it always helps to tap into popular culture and one of the most popular shows in recent years has been Game of Thrones.

Hootsuite used this as a jumping-off point to tell a relatable story about their brand via a video titled A Game of Social Thrones.

This video has over 1.3 million views and is their most successful branded content.

16. Zendesk

This Is Zendesk Alternative

Here’s one of the coolest content marketing examples from the business world.

It’s an example where Zendesk jumped on something that could have gone against them and showed their brand values and personality at the same time.

Whenever you offer a product or service, there’s someone searching for an alternative. When Zendesk realized people were searching for Zendesk alternatives, they basically hijacked the keyword phrase, creating a mini-site and video optimized around it.

The result? A page-one spot for that keyword phrase and a heck of a lot of goodwill!

17) Old Spice

For a brand that’s been around since 1937, Old Spice is doing great at staying in touch with its market.

It wasn’t always this way.

Several years ago, the brand was losing ground to its competitors when someone had a fantastic idea: scrap the old world image in favor of something – or someone – new, young, and hot.

It worked. In a series of videos and ads delivering humor and, in some cases never mentioning the brand, Old Spice changed its image to become relevant for a new generation.

The original ad has had more than 59 million views, and Old Spice is still using this approach with a new series of promotions.

18) JetBlue

JetBlue is one of the world’s leading airlines, and it’s always been bold with content marketing. In particular, it uses video to inspire its audience and show off its brand values and personality.

Some examples of content marketing include the Reach Across the Aisle campaign, which encourages people to find out what united them, a series on flying with infants, and the quirky Flight Etiquette video series.

Video views on YouTube range from tens of thousands to millions, while the perception of the brand remains overwhelmingly positive.

19) WPBeginner

WPBeginner uses its video content marketing strategy to educate its audience more than anything else. That means providing in-depth tutorial guides as a counterpart to their blog.

As a result, users can visit WPBeginner’s YouTube channel to learn how to solve their WordPress troubles:

This has led to WPBeginner becoming an authority in the WordPress space. It has helped countless WordPress customers and has led to over 288k subscribers..

20) Squatty-Potty

You may remember a few years back when a video was released for the “Squatty-Potty.” The product’s design makes it easier and healthier for people to use the restroom.

We know… not exactly the most entertaining of topics. And yet, Squatty-Potty produced a funny and entertaining video that quickly went viral.

This video has been viewed nearly 40 million times over the past few years and remains one of the best video content marketing examples around.

Ebooks Content Marketing Examples

As we saw earlier with HubSpot, ebooks and resources are a great way to raise awareness of your brand. Here are a couple more examples of content marketing in this category.

21) LinkedIn

If you want to learn how to use LinkedIn effectively, nobody will be more expert than LinkedIn itself. That’s why the company’s ebook on its own approach to marketing with LinkedIn is such a winner.

The landing page whets customers’ appetites with a series of tips and stats, and most LinkedIn users will want to opt-in immediately.

LinkedIn has continued to use this content strategy by producing more marketing guides, so it’s a sure bet it’s working for them.

Not sure if LinkedIn is for your business? Check out how (and why) you should create a LinkedIn business page.

22) OptinMonster

We’ve already covered OptinMonster’s blog, but we’re far from a one-trick pony.

In fact, we pride ourselves on having a comprehensive (and wildly effective) content marketing strategy. One of the ways we were able to grow an email list so quickly was through our eBook.

This optin campaign offered the eBook and is one of the reasons why our current email list has over 200,000 subscribers.

23) Simply Business

One of the best B2B content marketing examples is from Simply Business, a UK insurance firm known for producing valuable tips and guides.

It’s yet another example showing that so-called “boring sectors” can still wow their audience. Their customer education guides have attracted thousands of links and shares, as well as raised their profile.

You may also be interested in this article for more B2B lead generation strategies or this helpful post on 5 B2B email best practices you need to try.

Other Content Marketing Examples

Finally, here are some different content marketing examples from the business world.

24) Coca-Cola

Coke used personalization to get everybody talking about their brand.

They kicked off their Share a Coke campaign in Australia by putting the 150 most common names on bottles. Then they encouraged people to share a Coke with people with those names.

That user generated content campaign went viral, resulting in sales of 250 million bottles and cans across the summer, or equivalent to just over 10 for every person in Australia.

Unsurprisingly the campaign soon rolled out to other locations. You can now customize your own bottle, as we did here.

25) Grant Thornton

Data analytics is another area that could be seen as dry, but when Grant Thornton ran their Access Granted campaign, it was anything but.

The company took people behind the scenes at the Tony Awards, showing exclusive content on YouTube and Twitter. That resulted in 3.7 million Twitter impressions, increased Facebook reach, and beating their goals for YouTube goals by 115%.

26) Charmin

This content marketing example from Charmin is perfect for its customers. The brand’s always had a sense of humor in its TV ads, and that’s carried through to the Sit or Squat app.

This app aims to help people find clean bathrooms when needed, so it’s also practical. So far, the app’s been downloaded more than 100,000 times, and nobody will forget the brand.

27) Burberry

Burberry’s most outstanding content marketing campaign was Burberry Kisses, blending mobile technology with the human wish to connect with others.

Users could press their lips to the screen via an app and send a digital kiss to anyone. The campaign also allowed people to use Google Street View and Google Maps to see those digital kisses’ journey.

28) Buzzstream

Buzzstream combined several content types (research-heavy guest content, evergreen blog content, and gated content) to position itself as a thought leader within its industry.

The nine-month content campaign was hugely successful, resulting in a record-breaking number of new signups.

29) The Joe Rogan Experience

The Joe Rogan Experience has become one of the most widely listened-to podcasts in the world, with over 14.7 million subscribers.

And whether you love him or hate him, you must admit that he has a marketing team full of geniuses.

That’s because Joe Rogan doesn’t just do an audible version of the podcast; he streams each recording, too.

That means he can promote two pieces of content with a single shot. He also has a video to share on YouTube for every podcast he produces.

Since December 2020, the podcast has been exclusively available on Spotify, with highlights uploaded onto the main Joe Rogan Experience YouTube channel.

With this audience, he’s able to promote upcoming comedy shows, new guests, affiliate products, and more.

But there’s one final thing to remember. There’s no point building an audience if they don’t convert.

That’s where OptinMonster comes in.

How OptinMonster Can Help Your Content Convert

OptinMonster is a crucial part of any successful content marketing strategy:

That’s because OptinMonster is the world’s best lead generation software. With this tool, you can deliver any content to the right users to increase conversions across your site.

It allows you to create various optin campaigns like popups, floating bars, fullscreen welcome mats, gamified spin wheels, and more.

And the best part is that you don’t need to be a professional coder to make it happen!

Here’s how it works:

Everything starts with selecting one of OptinMonster’s 100+ pre-built templates:

These are fully responsive and look great across all devices. They were designed to save you time, energy, and headaches during campaign creation.

And once you’ve selected the right template to reach your marketing goals, you can use the code less drag-and-drop builder.

This lets you customize your optin campaign to match your brand’s voice, style, and message.

To modify any text, for example, you can do so with the inline text editor. Just click what you want to change, and start typing:

Or, if you want to add new features to your campaign (like images, videos, custom HTML, icons, and more), you can do so with a drag and a drop:

This makes it easy for anyone to create professional and high-converting campaigns in minutes.

Plus, you can use OptinMonster’s advanced targeting rules to get the right content pieces to the right part of your site’s traffic.

Some of the more popular targeting rules include:

• Exit-Intent® Technology: Recover abandoning visitors as they’re actively leaving your website.
• OnSite Retargeting®: Keep users engaged by showing fresh content to returning visitors.
• Geolocation: Personalize the user journey by targeting people by their physical location.
• MonsterLinks: Boost conversions by making your campaigns appear at the click of a button or link.

These are just a few of OptinMonster’s most popular targeting rules, though there are many others.

Once your campaigns are set up, you can integrate your email service provider (ESP) with OptinMonster.

This allows you to set your content marketing strategy on autopilot. Once you’ve gotten new leads, you’ll send them directly to your organized contact lists.

This lets you send automated email series to increase engagement and sales from your audience.

Not sure if OptinMonster will work for you? Just check out how Crossrope was able to explode their list by 900%.

Or how Shotkit uses OptinMonster to get 40+ NEW leads every single day.

You can get similar results by click below and starting your 100% risk-free OptinMonster account today:

And that’s all for today! These have been 29 content marketing examples you can use for inspiration right now.

More on Content Marketing:

• How to Measure Your Content Marketing ROI + 7 Metrics That Matter
• How to Build a Content Marketing Funnel (+12 Examples)
• Step-by-Step Guide to Generate Leads with Your Content Marketing

These aren’t just ordinary words; they’re the triggers that ignite emotion, drive action, and make your message unforgettable.

Word power is so real that you could see a 12.7% increase in conversion rates simply by sprinkling a few powerful words into your copy.

In this blog, we’re not just discussing the power of words; we’re gifting you an extensive 700+ power words list!

Ready to supercharge your content? Let’s dive in.

1. What Are Power Words?
2. 700+ Power Words List
3. Where You Can Use Power Words

What Are Power Words?

Power words are persuasive words that trigger strong psychological or emotional responses. Copywriters use them to create compelling content that deeply influences readers, making these words nearly irresistible in their impact.

That’s likely the simplest power words definition, i.e., powerful words that trigger the desired emotion and action.

But power words aren’t just for copywriters. They can be used by any marketer–even inexperienced ones–to motivate people to take a specific action on their website.

Whether you want to entice your visitors to read a blog post, opt into your email list, or click the “Buy Now” button on your sales page, power words are arguably the quickest and easiest way to increase your conversion rates.

700+ Power Words List

We’ve categorized the 700+ most effective and powerful words into the following 11 types of power words:

1. Power Words for Customer Service
2. Power Words for Headlines
3. Power Words for Conversation
4. Power Words for FOMO
5. Power Words for Curiosity
6. Power Words for Ease and Convenience
7. Power Words for Increasing Desire
8. Power Words for Bragging
9. Power Words for Trust
10. Power Words for Anger
11. Power Words for Fear

1. Power Words for Customer Service

Power words can be the difference between a satisfied customer and a disgruntled one. These words convey empathy, understanding, and a genuine desire to help.

They assure the customer that their concerns are valid, their business is valued, and their satisfaction is a top priority.

How To Boost Conversions With Customer Service Power Words

Include power words into your customer service scripts, email responses, and live chat interactions. Words like “understand,” “priority,” “valued,” and “assured” can make customers feel heard and appreciated.

When customers feel that a company genuinely cares about their concerns and is eager to resolve them, they are more likely to continue doing business with that company and even recommend it to others.

2. Power Words for Headlines

Headlines are the first thing readers see, and they often determine whether the rest of the content gets read. 

Power words in headlines grab attention, spark curiosity, and compel readers to delve deeper into the content. 

They promise value, evoke emotion, and hint at the benefits the reader will gain.

How To Boost Conversions With Headline Power Words

When crafting headings for blog posts, subheads, articles, or advertisements, use power words that resonate with your target audience. Words like “unveiled,” “exclusive,” “breakthrough,” and “revolutionary” can make your headlines stand out in a sea of content. A captivating headline can increase click-through rates, driving more traffic and potential conversions.

3. Power Words for Conversation

Conversations, whether they’re sales pitches, networking chats, or casual talks, can benefit from the strategic use of power words. These words can steer the conversation, emphasize points, and elicit desired responses.

They add weight to statements, making them more memorable and persuasive.

How To Boost Conversions With Conversation Power Words

Add power words into your spoken interactions, especially when trying to persuade, inform, or inspire. Words like “transform,” “innovate,” “pioneer,” and “optimize” can leave lasting impressions on listeners. 

When used appropriately, these words can sway opinions, inspire action, and lead to fruitful outcomes in both personal and professional conversations.

4. Power Words for Greed and FOMO

Greed is the natural human tendency to want more stuff than we actually need.

These power words can trigger that tendency by playing on scarcity and FOMO (fear of missing out), or simply by making something sound more valuable.

How To Boost Conversions With Greed Power Words

Rich Page tested two different headlines on his exit popup. The first headline read, “Is Your Website Optimized for High-Sales? Grab my free conversion toolbox and start succeeding!”

In the second popup, he tweaked the headline to include a few powerful words (circled in red below).

This version converted much better than the first, and with this optimized popup, he was able to increase his signup rate from 12% to 50%!

Another great use of greed power words is using them to promote giveaways and online contests. Learn how to run an online contest to grow your traffic and generate leads.

5. Power Words for Curiosity

According to curiosity-drive theory, curiosity is a naturally occurring urge that simply must be satisfied, similar to how we satisfy hunger by eating or thirst by drinking.

These power words will make your blog post headlines, email subject lines and landing page headlines impossible to resist.

How To Boost Conversions With Curiosity Power Words

Take a look at this example from a thank-you page on Mary Fernandez’s site after someone opts in for their email list.

The goal was to increase click-throughs to their private Facebook group by making subscribers curious to see what’s on the “other side.”

How many powerful words can you spot?

If you counted seven, you’re right!

6. Power Words for Ease and Convenience

Everybody loves ease and convenience. People are not usually motivated to do more than the absolute minimum work to achieve their goals.

The right power words can convey to readers how easy it is easy to do something. Because they don’t have to do much or put in a lot of effort, they are more likely to take action.

You can use these power words to make your lead magnets sound more digestible, to make your products sound more useful, and to make your headlines more enticing.

How To Boost Conversions With Sloth Power Words

Here’s an example of a blog post headline we’ve used that works very well.

Can you spot all the power words?

Did you get all five?

7. Power Words for Desire and Lust

Lust is usually thought of as sexual, but it’s actually just an intense desire for any item. When we lust after something, we crave it so badly that we stop thinking rationally.

Use these tantalizing strong words to amplify that craving and encourage people to take action.

How To Boost Conversions With Lust Power Words

List25 uses a lust word combined with curiosity words to make for an irresistibly provocative headline.

Did you spot the 3 power words in the featured headline on the right?

8. Power Words for Vanity and Bragging

You may not think of yourself as “vain”. However, researchers have found that vanity is one of the chief driving forces that lead to purchase decisions.

The fact is, we buy into things because of how we think they will make us look: both to others and to ourselves. And it’s not just that we want to look good physically, but we also want to look successful.

Use these power words to show how your offer (whether it’s a product, service, or lead magnet) will make your visitor look more attractive and more successful.

How To Boost Conversions With Vanity Power Words

Snack Nation uses one carefully chosen power word to increase conversions on their popup.

Do you know what power word it is?

Yes, “hero”! They know that their customers love getting positive attention and praise from their co-workers, so of course, they would love to be seen as the “office hero”.

(Bonus points if you also noticed that the words “without lifting a finger” is a great sloth power phrase, even though we didn’t include it in this list.)

9. Power Words for Trust

Have you ever thought that trust is really what content marketing and email marketing are all about?

Whether you are writing blog posts, creating signup forms, sending emails, or tweaking your product pages, the real purpose behind all of that is to build trust between the consumer and your brand.

Use these powerful words to speed up the trust-building process.

How To Boost Conversions With Trust Power Words

In this test at Teespring, the power words “don’t worry” were added in the fine print below the CTA (call to action) button and tested against a control.

The result of just this one tiny tweak in wording was a 12.7% boost in conversions! (That’s huge!)

10. Power Words for Anger

Anger has a huge influence on our perception, reasoning, and decisions. It makes us irrational, which can lead to choices that actually have no bearing on the thing that initially made us angry.

Stirring up the emotion of anger in your visitors and customers is a bad idea when it is targeted at your company. However, it can also work for you, if the anger is directed at something else.

Think about what makes your prospect angry about your industry. Stir up those emotions with these powerful words, then provide the solution.

How to Boost Conversions with Anger Power Words

Advertisements that use anger have been shown to be highly effective. In a study by researchers from Dartmouth and Cornell, anti-smoking TV commercials that used anger to appeal to the viewer’s emotions were more persuasive than those that used sadness.

This ad from Harley Davidson received a lot of praise for blatantly stating the angry, rebellious thoughts on people’s minds in regard to the economy.

Did you find all the power words?

11. Power Words for Fear

Fear is perhaps the most powerful motivator of all. It’s that primal instinct that keeps us safe, that keeps us alive.

If you want to inspire your readers to take action–whether that’s sharing your blog post, downloading your lead magnet, or buying your product–use these strong words to create fear of what might happen if they don’t.

(Just make sure you don’t completely paralyze them with fear: also, provide an actionable solution to their problem.)

How To Increase Conversions With Fear Power Words

Jon Morrow, known for his fear-inducing blog posts, uses powerful words to get his visitors to read and take action.

Here’s an example:

Did you spot the power words?

Where You Can Use Power Words

Here are some of the different places where you can use power words:

1. Website Content:

• Homepages: To immediately capture attention and convey the brand’s value proposition.
• Landing Pages: To persuade visitors to take a specific action, such as signing up or making a purchase.
• Product Descriptions: To highlight the benefits and features of a product.

2. Marketing Materials:

• Email Campaigns: In subject lines to increase open rates and in the body to drive clicks and conversions.
• Advertisements: In headlines and copy to capture attention and persuade viewers.
• Brochures & Flyers: To emphasize the benefits of a product, service, or event.

3. Social Media:

• Posts & Captions: To engage followers and encourage them to take action.
• Profile Bios: To succinctly convey a brand or individual’s value proposition.
• Ads: To drive clicks, shares, and conversions.

4. Sales Pitches and Presentations:

• To emphasize benefits, overcome objections, and persuade listeners.

5. Blog Posts and Articles:

• In titles to increase click-through rates.
• Within content to engage readers and encourage them to read further.

6. E-books and Whitepapers:

• In titles, subheadings, and content to emphasize points and engage readers.

7. Video Title and Scripts:

• To capture viewers’ attention and convey messages powerfully.

8. Customer Service Interactions:

• In scripts, emails, and live chats to convey empathy, assurance, and a willingness to help.

9. Press Releases:

• To highlight the importance and benefits of news or announcements.

10. Product Packaging:

• To highlight product benefits and features.

11. Webinars and Online Courses:

• In titles, descriptions, and content to engage participants and emphasize learning outcomes.

12. Testimonials and Reviews:

• To emphasize positive experiences and benefits received.

13. Mobile Apps:

• In notifications, descriptions, and in-app messages to engage users.

Using power words in these places can significantly enhance the impact of the message, making it more compelling, persuasive, and memorable.

Conclusion (Power Word Style!)

Don’t be a slave to the endless grind of tweaking and testing when you can simply copy the words that the experts use.

With this complete power words list, you are now equipped to turbocharge your conversions in record time!

What are your favorite power words? Can you think of a few we missed? Let us know in the comments!

Exclusive Bonus Download our 700+ Power Words Cheatsheet to Boost Your Conversions.

Also checkout:

• How to Create a Winning Email Marketing Strategy
• SEO Made Easy—Ultimate Guide to Explode Your Traffic
• How to Create an Optin Feature Box Step-by-Step (with Examples)
• eCommerce Best Practices: Set up Your Business for Success
• 8 Best Social Media Platforms for Business: Your Ultimate Guide

I’ve worked in digital marketing for over 15 years, and I’ve learned an important lesson: the words I write don’t matter if I can’t convince the audience to read them. Strong, evocative visuals are your best tools for catching users’ attention. And when you weave those images into a compelling narrative, you can build a strong foundation for a lasting relationship with your brand.

• What Is Visual Storytelling?
• 8 Visual Storytelling Elements (& Their Benefits)
• 5 Visual Storytelling Examples
• 6 Tips for Visual Storytellers

What Is Visual Storytelling?

Visual storytelling is the art of using photos, graphics, videos, and other visual elements to convey a narrative and connect with an audience. By integrating visual media into your marketing content, you can communicate messages more quickly and effectively.

Visual storytelling captures attention, evokes emotions, and enhances engagement. It helps you express complex ideas more simply and memorably. Audiences are constantly bombarded with content, and you can use visual narratives to stand out and ensure your story resonates with users.

8 Visual Storytelling Elements (& Their Benefits)

“Visual” is a broad term, so let’s look at some of the specific elements, types, and methods of visual storytelling. Each elements can tell a story on its own. However, they’re often combined to create an engaging, multi-faceted visual narrative.

1. Photos (Preferably of People)

Photos of people can evoke strong emotions and create a personal connection with your audience. For example, this email campaign from Habitat for Humanity features a photo of a new Habitat homeowner:

Habitat wanted subscribers to click the “Yes, I’ll help!” call-to-action (CTA). The photo of a real-life beneficiary encourages subscribers to act.

In fact, one A/B test showed that using a photo of a person can increase conversion rates by more than 95%.

2. Graphics and Illustrations

You can still create visual narratives even if you don’t have good photos to use. Graphics and illustrations can be very effective in adding interest, breaking up text, and creating meaning.

Here are a few examples of graphics that are useful in visual storytelling:

• Iconography: Simple, recognizable symbols used to represent complex ideas quickly and clearly.
• Maps: Often used to show locations, distribution, or the reach of a brand.
• Custom Illustrations: Unique drawings or designs that represent specific ideas. They add a personalized touch to storytelling.
• Pull quote graphics: Images that highlight important quotes in your narrative.

3. Animations

Animations can simplify complex concepts and make your story more engaging and eye-catching. For example, we added animation to this video about the benefits of website popups:

The video starts by acknowledging that poorly designed popups can be very annoying. At the 12-second mark, we illustrate that point with an animation of a bunch of popups blocking the video. The animation shows what we’re talking about much more effectively than just explaining it with words. Plus, it makes the video livelier and more dynamic.

4. Visual Timelines

Visual timelines are great methods for showcasing your brand’s history or progression. They organize information chronologically, making it easier for your audience to follow and understand the story. Timelines can be particularly effective in demonstrating growth or change over time.

When you simply list accomplishments or events in paragraph form, you end up with a wall of text that’s unengaging and intimidating. A timeline lets you present the same information in a more appealing and digestible way.

5. Scrollytelling

Scrollytelling is an interactive visual storytelling technique, where information is revealed dynamically as the user scrolls. Scrollytelling can include any and all of the other visual elements I’m listing here.

In a Scrollytelling narrative, the reader’s scrolling triggers animations, transitions, and changes in content presentation. As users scroll down the page, new elements appear, move, or change, guiding them through the story in a visually compelling way.

Chartipedia’s “Deedive into the Venezuela Refugee Crisis” is a great example of effective Scrollytelling.

This technique is particularly effective for explaining complex processes, showcasing step-by-step guides, or telling a story that benefits from a chronological flow. Scrollytelling is especially popular in journalism because it can present a great deal of information and research.

6. Video

87% of video marketers say that video has directly increased their sales. That statistic shows just how powerful video can be in encouraging action and engagement. Obviously, video is its own format of visual storytelling. But video can also include animations, photos, and graphics. And video can be included in scrollytelling or visual timelines.

7. Data Charts & Graphs

If your story is backed by data, then charts and graphs can make that information accessible and understandable. They help highlight trends, patterns, and comparisons, and they allow your audience to grasp complex information quickly. Examples include bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, heat maps, scatter plots, and more.

8. Infographics

Infographics are standalone, sharable graphics that provide visual information on a topic. They often include multiple charts or graphs, along with text and images to provide an overview of a concept.

For instance, an infographic could explain the process of recycling. It could use various charts to show statistics, along with illustrations and text to guide the reader through the information. Usually, the infographic will include branding and source information, so you can encourage sharing and increase brand awareness.

5 Visual Storytelling Examples

Next, let’s take a look at some effective examples of visual storytelling. I’ve chosen a wide range of formats with varying degrees of complexity. That way, you can learn from them whether you’re a beginner or an experienced visual storyteller.

For each example, I’ll discuss its purpose, elements, and effectiveness. In fact, the final example is an email campaign that I created, and I’ll share the strategy, motivation, and tools behind the campaign.

1. 30-Year Timeline Video by Women for Women International

About the Brand: Women for Women International (WfWI)is a nonprofit that helps women survivors of war and conflict around the world.

Purpose of the Story: By outlining the organization’s 30-year history, WfWI demonstrates a long track record of advocacy and aid. This strategy helps build trust with prospective donors.

Visual Storytelling Elements: This video includes several elements: a timeline, maps, photos of people, data graphs, and animation.

What You Can Learn: Combine multiple visual elements to tell your full story. This video really shows the full scope of WfWI’s work:

1. The timeline shows their influence through time.
2. The map graphics illustrate their efforts around the world.
3. The photos of individual women highlight that WfWI improves the lives of real women.

2. Marmot’s Brand Story

About the Brand: Marmot is an outdoor gear company with a 50-year history.

Purpose of the Story: The “Our Story” page on Marmot’s website focuses on the history of their brand. It introduces the company’s founders and highlights some of the brand’s biggest innovations. This timeline establishes the company’s position as a leader in the outdoor gear industry.

Visual Storytelling Elements: Marmot uses a simple timeline format. The timeline features photos of their founders and of real people using their products.

What You Can Learn: Visual storytelling doesn’t have to be highly technical or complex. Even a simple layout with lots of photos can be enough to establish a strong narrative. That said, the text beneath each year could benefit from better formatting to improve readability.

3. Scrollytelling Journalism by NBC News

About the Brand: NBC News has been a leading U.S. news broadcaster since 1940.

Purpose of the Story: This piece of investigative journalism explains the history of segregation in Detroit, Michigan, including the construction of a physical wall.

Visual Storytelling Elements: This article uses scrollytelling to create an interactive experience. That experience includes historical photos, videos, and documents. There are several interactive maps, including one that moves forward in time as the user scrolls.

What You Can Learn: NBC News’ story shows the full power of scrollytelling and interactive visuals. You may not have the time or resources to create visual narratives this complex very often. But the effort can be worth it for your most important stories.

4. Year-in-Review Infographic by ACCEL Law Group

About the Brand: ACCEL Law Group is a law firm that focuses on insurance intermediaries.

Purpose of the Story: ACCEL’s Year in Review illustrates the firm’s success for its clients, its growth, and its pro bono work. Essentially, this infographic tells the story of what the company achieved in a single year.

Visual Storytelling Elements: This is an example of a simple and effective infographic with bold colors, easy-to-read text, and clean graphics.

What You Can Learn: Infographics are a great way to share data about your brand. Their strength comes in their versatility: you can use them on your website, in your email marketing, on social media, or even in printed promotional materials.

5. “Meet the Cast” Email from Tennessee Valley Art Association

About the Brand: The Tennessee Valley Art Association (TVAA) is a nonprofit dedicated to the visual and performing arts in northern Alabama. I once held the role of Marketing Director for TVAA.

Purpose of the Story: In this email marketing campaign, I wanted to build excitement for the final 3 performances of our production of The Drowsy Chaperone. The musical was part of TVAA’s SummerStock series, which provides training and performance opportunities for young adult performers.

I decided to send a series of “Meet the Cast” emails featuring interviews with performers. I designed each email to promote ticket sales and tell a story about TVAA’s impact on a real person in our community. In Larissa’s interview, she talked about how SummerStock gave her an opportunity to get back to her love of performing after several years away.

Visual Elements: I had access to some excellent photos from dress rehearsals and performances. These images were vital to telling the story of Larissa’s return to the stage. I used Canva to create the graphic above, which I placed at the top of the email. I wanted the graphic to feature an emotional pull quote and establish the email’s content. I also included more photos throughout the email, interspersed with Larissa’s interview answers.

What You Can Learn: Always look for opportunities to tell personal stories about your brand’s impact. And use high-quality photos to draw your audience into your story. This visual narrative didn’t require advanced technical skills. It just needed a compelling story and some beautiful, joyful photos.

6 Tips for Visual Storytellers

1. Know Your Audience

Before you begin crafting your visual storytelling content, you need to understand your target audience. You should know who they are, what they care about, and how they interact with your content. That way, you can create visuals that resonate and engage.

2. Craft a Compelling Narrative

Next, decide on the story you want to tell. A well-crafted narrative is the backbone of effective visual storytelling. Your story should be clear, consistent, and emotionally engaging to leave a lasting impact on your audience.

Let’s look at each of those elements more closely:

• Clear Message: Define the core message you want to express. What do you want your audience to remember? For example, your message could be showcasing a product’s benefits, highlighting your brand’s mission, or sharing a success story.
• Consistency: Make sure your narrative aligns with your brand’s voice and values. Stay consistent in your tone, style, and messaging across all visual elements. This reinforces your brand identity and builds trust with your audience.
• Emotional Connection: Use stories that evoke emotions relevant to your audience. People are more likely to remember and share content that makes them feel something, whether it’s joy, nostalgia, empathy, or inspiration. Craft your narrative to connect with these emotions and make your story memorable.

3. Use High-Quality Visuals

High-quality visuals are great for capturing attention. They’re also key to showcasing your company’s professionalism. When you invest in top-notch images, graphics, and videos, you’ll elevate your visual storytelling. Earlier, I shared one of my own email campaigns that featured professional photos of an actress performing in a musical. If those photos had been out-of-focus or poorly lit, my visual narrative wouldn’t have had the same emotional impact. They also wouldn’t have done justice to the musical’s production quality.

4. Combine Various Visual Elements

I’ve already gone over many of the different visual storytelling elements, such as photos, animations, videos, and infographics. By mixing and matching these formats, you can create a richer and more engaging narrative.

5. Optimize for Your Chosen Platforms

Different platforms require different approaches to visual storytelling. Tailor your visuals to the format and audience of each platform, so your content is seen and appreciated by as many people as possible.

• Social Media: Each social media platform has its own audience and content format requirements. For example, Instagram favors high-quality photos and short videos, while LinkedIn is more suited to infographics and professional visuals. Optimize your visuals for the platform to maximize engagement.
• Website: Ensure that your website’s visuals are optimized for fast loading and mobile compatibility. High-resolution images and videos can slow down your site, so use tools like Tinify to compress files without losing quality. Also, ensure that your visuals are responsive so they look great on any device.
• Email Marketing: Use visuals to enhance email content and increase engagement. Incorporate images, GIFs, and infographics to make your emails more visually appealing. However, be mindful of file sizes to avoid long loading times.

6. Test and Adjust

Visual storytelling is not a one-and-done effort. To truly succeed, you must continually test, analyze, and refine your visuals.

• A/B Testing: Experiment with different visuals to see what resonates best with your audience. A/B testing allows you to compare two versions of a visual element to determine which one performs better. Use these insights to regularly optimize your visual content.
• Analyze Performance: Use analytics to measure the success of your visual storytelling. Track metrics such as engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gauge how well your visuals are performing.
• Continuous Improvement: Regularly update and refine your visuals based on performance data. Trends and audience preferences can change over time, so it’s important to stay flexible and adapt your visual storytelling strategy as needed.

Use Visual Storytelling to Get More Leads

Once you’ve created some outstanding visual narratives, you’ll drive more engaged visitors to your website. Your evocative storytelling will have them interested in your brand and ready to learn more. What next?

OptinMonster is the most effective tool for turning website visitors into customers and subscribers. You can use our popups, floating bars, and other onsite campaigns to show visitors your best offers. Our robust display rules let you target your most engaged visitors right when they’re ready to act.

With our 700+ templates and easy drag-and-drop builder, you can have a high-converting campaign running on your site in minutes. Sign up for OptinMonster today, with our 14-day money-back guarantee.

Related Resources:

• 38 Free Visual Content Creation Tools To Make Marketing Easy
• 27 Important Video Marketing Statistics
• Which Is the Best CTA Button Color? 3 Proven Ways to Get More Clicks
• 11 Web Design Principles That Can Boost Your Conversion Rate

1000 is the number of subscribers you need to qualify for the YouTube Partner Program and start making money from your video content.

If you just started a YouTube channel, building a following from scratch can be frustrating. It may be tempting to take the shortcut and simply buy YouTube subs from a subscription purchasing site.

Don’t worry, though. We’re here to give you concrete tips on how to grow your subscriber count and reach your channel’s goals.

You don’t have to buy YouTube subscribers to get your channel going. There are many easy ways you can get more YouTube subscribers for free. Plus, you can use low-cost tools and software that will not only grow your YouTube following but will also improve your overall digital marketing.

In this article, we’ll share 13 steps to get your first 1000 YouTube subscribers, plus 1 bonus suggestion.

How to Get Subscribers on Youtube

1. Add a Video Feed to Your Homepage
2. Promote Your Channel With Website Popups
3. Keep Content Consistent
4. Customize Your YouTube Channel
5. Upload Videos on a Schedule
6. Make Eye-Catching Thumbnails
7. Create Searchable Titles
8. Create Playlists
9. Ask Viewers to Subscribe
10. Promote on Social Media
11. Join Online Communities
12. Comment on Other Videos
13. Host a Giveaway
14. BONUS: Use YouTube Analytics

Benefits of Reaching 1000 YouTube Subscriptions

Is monetization a goal for your YouTube channel? If so, then you must join the YouTube Partner Program (YPP).

The program has 2 main requirements:

• Your channel must reach a subscriber count of 1000
  AND
• Your channel must have either
  • 4000 watch time hours over the last year
    OR
  • 10 million views of YouTube Shorts

Once you’ve reached these milestones, you can apply for YPP. The average time for YouTube to review an application is 1 month. If approved, you’ll have access to these features and benefits:

• Make money off YouTube ads.
• Promote products directly to viewers through YouTube Shopping.
• Unlock Fan Funding features, such as Super Thanks and Channel Memberships. Fan funding lets viewers pay you money directly.
• Get better tech support with access to the Creator Support team

YPP is the only way you can use YouTube to earn revenue, so reaching 1000 subscribers is crucial.

Why You Should Earn Subscribers Organically (and Not Buy Them)

Sure, you can get subscribers fast if you simply buy them from a service. But there are 3 primary reasons why you should opt to earn free YouTube subscribers.

1. YouTube has a Fake Engagement Policy that prohibits artificially inflating your subscription, likes, or other metrics. When you buy subscribers, you risk having your channel banned.
2. When you’ve truly earned your subscribers, they’ll be more engaged with your video content. Free YouTube subscribers have chosen to give you a spot on their subscription feed because they WANT to see more of your content.
3. When you buy YouTube subscriptions, sure, you can reach 1000 followers quickly. But then what? You won’t have any of the groundwork in place to continue to grow. When you do the work to gain your first 1000 subscribers organically, you’ll be well-positioned to build a successful channel.

But how do you get started gaining free subscribers for YouTube channels? Thankfully, we’re here to share some great ideas to get more subscriptions fast.

How to Get Subscribers on Youtube

Before we dive into our list, let’s answer 1 important question:

Why should you listen to us?

OptinMonster is the world’s best lead generation software. Over 1.2 million users have chosen our software to create popups and signup forms on their websites.

Generating leads is our business, and new subscribers are the ultimate lead for a YouTube channel.

Video marketing has been part of our digital marketing plan since the beginning. In fact, we created our YouTube channel in 2013, the very year that we launched our product.

That means we have 10 years of experience in maintaining and growing a YouTube channel. But we have a confession:

We weren’t very successful at first.

A few years ago, we increased our focus on growing our YouTube subs. After a bit of trial and error, we finally cracked the code and started seeing real success.

In 2022, we grew our subscriber count by 33%. And you can see in the chart below that our YouTube subscriptions have continued to skyrocket in 2023.

These are huge jumps for a channel that’s been around for a decade.

We’ve had time to see what works and what doesn’t. We not only know how to get YouTube subscribers, but we also know how to position your channel for long-term success.

We’re excited to share the strategies we’ve used to increase our subscribers by 25.54% over the last 365 days.

Now, let’s explore the best ways to get those first 1000 YouTube subscriptions!

1. Add a Video Feed On Your Website’s Homepage

If you already have a website that gets some consistent traffic each month, then you’ve got the perfect solution to finding your first few subscribers.

In other words, promote your YouTube channel in a way that lets you leverage the traffic you already have. The best tool for displaying your YouTube feed on a website is Smash Balloon:

Smash Balloon is the world’s leading social media feed plugin for WordPress. It allows you to display a customizable feed for:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (formerly Twitter)
• YouTube

This means that you can quickly and easily embed a feed of your YouTube content on your website. Every time someone visits your site, they’ll see the kind of content you create and how high-quality it is.

Not only will this grow your channel’s subscribers, but it will also increase the amount of time visitors spend on your website. That can help boost your domain authority and ultimately help with your SEO efforts.

Pricing for Smash Balloon’s YouTube feed plugin starts at just $49/year.

Instead of buying YouTube subs, you can invest in a tool that will provide for long-term growth AND improve your website.

Get started with Smash Balloon today!

2. Use Website Popups to Promote Your Channel

You don’t have to change the layout of your homepage to promote your YouTube channel on your website. With OptinMonster, you can create popups that catch your users’ attention and show them relevant video content.

Using OptinMonster, you can create a lightbox popup and use our Show a Video template to add a YouTube video to your popup.

The image above is exactly what this template looks like right out of the box. You simply change which video you want to feature.

The popup defaults to including an email optin form. You can easily change this to a bold call-to-action (CTA) button that links to your YouTube channel. Your CTA button text could read “See More Videos,” “Watch More Tutorials,” or whatever message best describes your channel.

With our drag-and-drop builder, you can easily have a video popup up and running on your website in just 5 minutes. No coding required!

Since the visitors to your website are already aware of you and your content, they’ll be more likely to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

With OptinMonster’s robust targeting and triggering options, you can be strategic in which videos you show and when.

Here are a few examples of smart popup campaigns to help you get more YouTube subscribers:

• Use our Page-Level Targeting to show the most relevant videos to each website visitor. For instance, you can create popups that feature videos that are related to the blog post, product page, or tutorial that your visitor is looking at.
• Show new visitors a welcome message that features a friendly greeting video. You can use this video to establish a friendly brand voice, introduce users to your offerings, and illustrate the helpfulness of your YouTube channel.
• Instead of using a traditional popup, create a floating bar campaign that encourages visitors to subscribe to your YouTube channel. A floating bar will keep your CTA accessible as the user continues to browse your website.

And these are just examples of promoting your video content. OptinMonster can also transform your email marketing by helping you build a strong email list. You can use our popups to showcase coupons, offer lead magnets, and reduce site and cart abandonment.

With plans starting at just $9 a month, OptinMonster is an inexpensive way to help you reach 1000 YouTube subscribers while skyrocketing your overall lead generation.

3. Keep Your Content Consistent

None of your promotion efforts will matter if you don’t have a strong vision for your channel.

As you’re creating new videos, you need to make sure they fit with your target niche.

If you upload a random vlog one day, a gaming video the next, and a cooking video right after, users won’t know what to expect from your channel. And if they don’t know what your YouTube channel is about, they’ll be less likely to subscribe.

In the end, you may get a bunch of random page views, but you won’t have any long-term subscribers.

Instead, you need to give viewers a reason to subscribe to your channel by choosing a channel theme.

For example, subscribers to our YouTube channel at OptinMonster know that we’ll consistently post videos on how to increase leads and conversions:

As a result, when viewers want to learn how to grow their email list or get more sales from their website, they know they can come to our channel. We’re casting a specific net with our videos. We want subscribers who already use our product or who are interested in learning more about it.

Choosing a niche for your YouTube channel will give your channel more focus and help you find your target audience more easily.

There are many different types of YouTube channels you can create. Some of the most popular YouTube genres are:

• Vlogging
• Cooking
• Gaming
• Tech
• Comedy
• Travel
• Beauty and Fashion
• Reactions and Commentary

Of course, don’t let this list limit you. You can create a successful YouTube channel on just about anything you’re passionate about.

Take this channel, Clean My Space, for example. It’s a whole video series dedicated to cleaning:

When you choose a channel topic you enjoy, your passion will shine through, and viewers will rush to subscribe.

If you need help finding a niche for your channel, you may want to read this article: YouTube for Business: How to Start and Optimize Your Channel.

4. Customize Your YouTube Channel Page

Once you choose a channel topic, you need to attract your first subscribers by completing your profile and customizing your channel page. A fully customized page communicates your brand image. It also demonstrates a level of professionalism. That’s especially important for new pages that don’t have many subscribers yet.

Here are a few ways to customize your page:

• Upload a high-quality profile image and banner image for your channel art
• Once you’ve reached 100 subscribers, create a custom URL
• Complete your About section with a concise description of your video content
• Create a channel trailer

A channel trailer is a short video that you can upload to help viewers quickly understand what your channel is about.

Plus, channel trailers are set to auto-play for users who aren’t subscribed to your channel, so it’s a powerful way to turn viewers into subscribers.

And remember, these trailers don’t have to be Hollywood-style big-budget productions. They can be simple, engaging videos that explain your niche or core product.

On our channel, we try to help users with a general video, What Does OptinMonster Do?

This helps first-time users get a sense of what our product is and what our content will be about. If it’s something of interest to them, they’ll be more likely to check out other videos on our channel and subscribe.

But what if people aren’t totally convinced based on your trailer? How can you give them a nudge toward subscribing?

That’s where an awesome About section comes in handy.

Your About section allows you to tell users about yourself and why they should subscribe to your channel. You can also add keywords to your channel description. That will help users find your channel more easily.

This is just like optimizing your on-page content for search engines like Google and for searches within YouTube. With just a bit of keyword research, you can help more people find your channel.

When a user types in a keyword like “yoga” into the YouTube search bar, channels that optimize the word “yoga” in the About page will be more likely to appear in the results.

Use your channel trailer and your About section to help users find your channel, connect with your target audience, and get more subscribers.

Check out this article to learn how to create a killer About page on your website!

5. Make an Upload Schedule and Stick to It

If a user finds your channel and sees that your last video was uploaded 2 months ago, they’re probably not going to subscribe.

YouTube users want consistency. When you upload videos on a regular schedule, you show new viewers that you’re worth a subscription.

So, if you want to gain subscribers fast, your YouTube channel should be consistent. You need to train your audience to know (and look out for) when a new video will be launched.

But how often should you be posting new videos?

Start by uploading 1 video every week. 4 videos per month is enough content to attract new subscribers. It also shouldn’t be too overwhelming for you to produce.

When you choose an upload schedule, make sure you stick to it. The last thing you want to do is disappoint users by not uploading when you said you would. That’s because inconsistent posting will never allow you to build a loyal audience.

To help you stick to your YouTube schedule, you can create a simple content calendar using Google Sheets. Or, you can make a pre-made template with a software like Canva:

A content calendar helps you organize all of your video ideas, film and edit your videos in a timely manner, and schedule your uploads weeks in advance.

6. Make Eye-Catching Video Thumbnails

The thumbnail of your video is the first thing YouTube users will see. So, you need to create eye-catching thumbnails if you want people to click on your video and watch.

After all, if no one watches your videos, you won’t get any subscribers.

Many of the best YouTube thumbnails follow a similar formula:

• Quality, eye-catching image
• Title text
• Contrasting colors
• 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall (minimum width of 640 pixels)

For example, take a look at these thumbnails from our recent holiday videos:

With just 1 look at these thumbnails, users can tell exactly what the videos are about. Our video host is dressed for the holidays, and there are decorations in the background.

Each thumbnail also includes bold text that creates a strong call-to-action:

• Increase Holiday Sales By 1600%
• The Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide

People browsing YouTube will immediately know how these videos will help them.

Not a designer? Don’t worry, you can easily create stunning thumbnails for your YouTube videos using free visual content creation tools.

You can also create a thumbnail by pulling a screenshot from your YouTube video. This is a good solution if you’re in a pinch, but you really should take a few extra minutes to create a custom thumbnail.

Now that you know how to create a click-worthy thumbnail, let’s move on to creating searchable video titles.

7. Create Searchable Video Titles

Ok, you’ve got an awesome video. But why is no one watching it?

Often, the problem is with the title. If you have a boring, generic title for your video, no one clicks.

And if no one clicks, no one subscribes.

So how do you create clickable titles for your YouTube videos that show up in the search results?

One helpful strategy is to type the subject of your video into YouTube to see what comes up:

As you see the results, you’ll start getting an idea of the type of content your audience is looking for. This is like YouTube giving you suggestions for more searchable titles.

It’s also a good idea to keep your titles to 60-70 characters, so they aren’t truncated in search results. If you must have a longer title, make sure to add your main keywords toward the beginning.

Want to set up your YouTube channel for success? Check out our guide to YouTube SEO to rank higher and get more views.

8. Create Video Playlists

One underused YouTube subscribers hack is the playlist. This allows you to put groups of individual videos together as they’re part of a larger series.

Then, viewers are more likely to binge-watch your videos in the order that they’re intended to be viewed.

Plus, playlists show up in YouTube search results, just like single videos do.

For instance, we created a playlist for our tutorials so users could learn how to add various elements to their lead-generating campaigns:

Playlists should get updated each time you create a new video for the series. Users who enjoy your video playlist are likely to subscribe, so they’ll get a notification when the next video in the series is released.

9. Ask Your Viewers to Subscribe

You know how you add calls to action (CTAs) in blog posts, social media posts, landing pages, and pretty much everywhere else in your digital marketing strategy?

You should do the same for YouTube! If you want to get more YouTube subscribers for free, just ask!

For example, in the intro of your YouTube videos, you can say something like:

“Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. Don’t forget to click Subscribe if you want more weekly updates on [whatever your niche is].”

You should remind viewers to subscribe at the end of your video, as well. After all, if they liked your video enough to watch until the end, they likely want to see more.

It’s as simple as that.

You can also add a subscribe watermark to your YouTube videos. A subscribe watermark is a small icon that displays in the bottom corner of your videos to remind viewers to hit the Subscribe button.

As you start getting those subscribers, you’ll see your channel grow even more. That’s thanks to the psychological phenomenon FOMO or “fear of missing out.” The more subscribers you have, the easier it is to get even more.

But everything starts by simply asking people to subscribe.

10. Promote Your YouTube Channel on Social Media Sites

Let’s say you’ve mastered all of the YouTube basics like choosing a channel theme, creating eye-catching thumbnails, and using searchable titles. Now it’s time to start promoting your videos.

Instead of waiting for your videos to be discovered on YouTube, why not bring the content directly to your followers?

X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook are some of the best platforms to help you get more YouTube subscribers.

Plus, they’re totally free.

Whenever you publish a new video, create a social media post to get more YouTube views and subscribers. Here’s an example of a post we did on Facebook to drive traffic to a YouTube video:

Make sure you include an eye-catching image relevant to the video, a short description of what your video is about (make it exciting), and a CTA with a link to the video.

Try using hashtags to widen your reach, too. Check out the social media posts of other YouTubers to see what hashtags work well.

11. Join Online Communities

If you want to get more YouTube subscribers, you can join online communities and groups. By regularly participating in these communities, you can create relationships with other users and build your online presence as a YouTube content creator.

There are tons of online communities specifically created for YouTubers to have conversations and support each other.

For example, Reddit has a dedicated subreddit for YouTube, with over 1 million members.

You can also search Reddit, Quora, and other online forums for conversations about the topic of your YouTube videos.

If you contribute to online communities regularly, users will be able to get to know you. If they want to see more of what you have to offer, they’ll be sure to subscribe to your YouTube channel.

Just read the posting policies of these communities before you start promoting your video. Many online communities block self-promotion pretty strictly.

However, they often give more leeway to people who participate in the community regularly. Make sure you’re varying your posts with other valuable content not related to your YouTube channel, too.

Then, every so often, you can slip in a self-promotional post to get more subscribers.

12. Comment on Other YouTube Videos

Another easy way to promote your YouTube channel and get more subscribers is by commenting on other videos.

But let’s be clear. This doesn’t mean you should start spamming a bunch of YouTube videos with comments saying, “Watch my video!” or “Subscribe to my channel!”

All that will do is turn people away from your content.

Instead, just leave a funny comment or start a conversation by saying something interesting about the video you just watched. Viewers who engage with you in conversation will often click on your profile. Then, they’ll see that you have an awesome channel, too.

13. Host a Giveaway

A great way to draw a lot of attention to your YouTube channel is by hosting a giveaway.

You might think that you have to be a large channel to host an exciting giveaway with an awesome prize.

But even small channels can hold giveaways with a simple prize to gain subscribers fast. You could run a giveaway with a $50 gift card as a prize and get a ton of contest entries.

Just be sure to create giveaway rules that will help you get more YouTube subscribers.

For instance, let viewers know that they have to be subscribed to your channel to enter the contest. You can even boost engagement by requiring users to leave a comment to enter the giveaway too.

To make building, promoting, and managing a giveaway easier, use a giveaway tool like RafflePress.

With RafflePress, you can quickly build a giveaway landing page using their drag and drop giveaway builder.

Plus, RafflePress offers verified bonus actions to help you reach your giveaway goals. Bonus actions give users extra contest entries for completing certain tasks like subscribing to your email list, following you on Pinterest, and yep, subscribing to your YouTube channel.

Running an online contest is a surefire way to generate a lot of buzz around your YouTube channel.

Try out RafflePress today!

BONUS TIP: Track Your YouTube Analytics

To grow your channel, take advantage of the valuable insights provided by your YouTube Analytics.

You can find out exactly how you got your first subscribers with YouTube Analytics. In the Audience report, you can see the sources where viewers subscribed to your channel, such as:

• Your YouTube channel: Subscriptions directly from the Subscribe button on your channel
• Interactive features: Subscriptions from interactive video features like end-screens or subscribe watermarks
• YouTube search: Subscriptions from users who found your video in the search results of a query
• Other YouTube channels: Subscriptions from other YouTube channels that feature your channel
• External: Subscriptions from videos or subscribe buttons embedded on websites other than YouTube

If you find that you’re getting a lot of subscribers through YouTube search, continue to create searchable video titles to bring in more of those subscribers.

With YouTube Analytics, you’ll also get information like your click-through rate, video retention, what content is most popular with viewers, and more.

By tracking your YouTube Analytics, you’ll find out what’s working on your channel and what isn’t. Then, you can make improvements to help you get more YouTube subscribers and more views.

Get 1000 YouTube Subscribers (And Beyond) Fast

While you may not be able to get your first 1000 YouTube subscribers in a day, with these tips, you can reach that benchmark in no time.

And once people head to your YouTube channel, they’ll likely click a link to your website. That’s where having a good lead conversion strategy comes into play.

If you’re looking for a tool that helps you drive more sitewide traffic, grow your email list, and increase sales, then OptinMonster is the way to go.

Just check out this post: How Does OptinMonster Work? (8 Benefits + 12 Case Studies)

Ready to take significant action to improve your business? Sign up for a risk-free OptinMonster account today!

Globally, 92.3% of internet users aged 16-64 watch online video content at least once a week, according to an extensive report from We Are Social and Meltwater. If you’re not promoting your brand with video, then you’re missing out on a vital way to engage potential customers.

Here at OptinMonster, we’ve been refining our video marketing strategy for years. For instance, our YouTube channel, which has a very niche focus, has over 9,000 subscribers, and we’ve created over 600 videos. Our subscriber count is exponentially higher than the YouTube channels of our competitor software brands.

Of course, growing a YouTube channel is just 1 aspect of video marketing. In this ultimate guide, I’m sharing our best tips and guidance for creating and optimizing your business’s video marketing strategy.

• What Is Video Marketing?
• Importance of Video Marketing
• How to Plan Your Video Marketing Strategy (9 Vital Steps)
• 5 Video Marketing Examples

What is Video Marketing?

Video marketing is the process of using video content to promote your brand, product, or service. It’s a powerful way to reach your target audience, boost engagement, and ultimately drive sales.

Common types of marketing videos include:

• Educational videos: Tutorials, how-tos, and demos for your product, or videos explaining concepts in your field.
• Brand videos: Videos introducing your company and your products and services.
• Paid commercials and ads: Promo videos that play before, after, or during other people’s content.
• Social media clips: Short, engaging videos tailored for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter).
• Webinars: Online presentations or demos presented to an audience of registered attendees.
• Livestreams: Live videos to build excitement and engagement.
• Testimonials: Videos featuring happy customers and clients recommending your company.
• Viral videos: Entertaining or funny video content intended to get as many shares as possible.

Video marketing involves more than just creating and posting videos, however. You need a thought-out strategy to successfully target potential customers and reach your goals.

When we talk about video marketing, the conversation tends to make a beeline to YouTube. However, you can engage in video marketing just about anywhere, including adding video to your own website. Social media platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok are also great places for video marketing content.

Importance of Video Marketing

There are many potential types of videos to make, as well as potential channels for sharing them. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at the idea of creating a strategy.

However, the benefits of video marketing make it worth the investment: 87% of video marketers say that video has directly increased their sales.

YouTube is the 2nd most popular search engine in the world. That’s a testament to the platform’s design and marketing, but it also shows that video is integral to the way internet users seek out information and research products.

The importance of video isn’t limited to YouTube. On Instagram, videos get more engagement than images, and the video platform TikTok has become the 4th most popular social media site in the world.

If you don’t include video in your digital marketing strategy, then you’re ignoring a powerful tool for reaching new leads and winning more customers.

How to Build a Video Marketing Strategy

Creating a video marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated, especially if you’re just starting out. Follow these basic steps to ensure your video marketing efforts are well-organized and optimized to reach your goals.

1. Set Clear Video Goals
2. Understand Your Target Audience
3. Choose the Best Platform for Your Audience & Goals
4. Consider Your Marketing Funnel
5. Craft Focused Value Propositions
6. Stick to a Reasonable Timeline & Budget
7. Create & Post Your Videos
8. Repurpose Your Video Content for Other Platforms
9. Monitor Results & Adjust Your Strategy

Step 1. Set Clear Video Goals

The first step in crafting a video marketing strategy is setting clear goals. Your goals will drive each step of your video strategy, and they will inform the content of your videos and how you define success.

Possible video goals include:

• Increase website traffic by 20% in the next quarter
• Generate 500 new leads from a video campaign
• Achieve 1,000 video views within the first week of posting
• Increase weekly sales by $2,500 within 6 months
• Earn $3,000 in quarterly affiliate revenue

By setting clear and measurable goals, you can ensure your video marketing efforts align with your overall business objectives.

Step 2. Understand Your Target Audience

Once you know your video marketing goals, you need to identify the target audience for your videos. It’s not enough to get just anyone watching your videos. You need to reach people who will be interested in your products, services, or content.

Ideally, your company will have buyer personas based on in-depth market research. Buyer personas include information such as:

• Demographics, including age, gender, geographic location, and education level
• Psychographics, such as interests, values, and lifestyles
• Behavior patterns, such as purchasing habits and preferred content types

Even if your business isn’t ready to invest in that level of research, there are still plenty of ways to better understand your audience:

• Use Google Analytics to gather data on your website visitors’ demographics and behavior patterns.
• Examine your social media insights to learn more about the people following your pages and engaging with your posts.
• Use customer surveys to ask specific questions about your audience’s preferences.

With a clear idea of your goals and your target audience, you’ll have a better roadmap for creating and sharing your video content.

Step 3. Choose the Best Platform for Your Audience & Goals

Next, you’ll decide which video platforms you want to focus on. Different platforms cater to different audiences and content types, so the research you did in the first 2 steps will help you make this decision.

Here are some of the most popular platforms:

• YouTube: Great for long-form content, tutorials, and product reviews.
• Facebook: Ideal for short, engaging videos that encourage sharing.
• Instagram: Perfect for visually appealing content and short, bite-sized videos.
• TikTok: Excellent for creative, short-form videos that target younger demographics.
• X (formerly known as Twitter): Suitable for brief, engaging videos and clips that fit well within a fast-paced content stream.
• LinkedIn: Best for B2B (business-to-business) content and professional audiences.

You should also analyze which platforms you’re currently most successful on. For instance, if you have 3,000 Facebook followers but only 250 YouTube subscribers, you’ll likely get better results by creating video content for Facebook.

Of course, you don’t have to limit your video marketing to just 1 or 2 platforms. In fact, I’ll talk about repurposing videos a bit later. But when starting out, tailor your content for the platforms that most closely align with your target audience and goals.

Step 4. Consider Your Marketing Funnel

Your marketing funnel is the user’s journey from first discovering your brand to becoming a loyal customer. Eventually, you should create video content for all stages of your funnel:

• Awareness: Create brand introduction videos, explainer videos, and viral content to attract new audiences.
• Consideration: Develop product demos, testimonials, and how-to videos to educate and build trust.
• Decision: Produce case studies, customer success stories, and detailed product walkthroughs to persuade and convert.
• Action: Create limited-time offers and direct call-to-action videos to encourage immediate purchases.
• Loyalty: Improve customer retention by producing troubleshooting videos and how-to guides, as well as announcement videos for new features or products.

As you brainstorm ideas for different videos to create, determine which stage or stages each video will target. Doing so will help you understand the audience for that specific video.

5. Craft Focused Value Propositions

A value proposition is a type of sales pitch that explains the benefits of your product or service. I’m going to cover 2 types of value propositions you’ll need for your video marketing strategy: 1 for your product or service and 1 for each video itself.

Value Proposition for Your Product or Service

Before you start creating videos, you need to have a great value proposition for your product or service. That is, you need to be able to explain to viewers:

• The problem your product or service solves
• The benefits it delivers
• What makes it different than the competition

Value propositions are vital for every aspect of your marketing strategy, from writing your website copy to training your sales team.

As an example, our value proposition here at OptinMonster is right on our homepage:

Our value proposition reads:

Easily Turn Visitors into Subscribers, Leads and Sales

Stop losing visitors! Instantly grow your email list, get more leads and increase sales with the best lead generation and customer acquisition software in the market.

Our value proposition identifies the problem (losing visitors), describes the benefits (turning visitors into subscribers, leads, and sales), and explains how our software differs from the competition (“the best . . . in the market”).

When you have a clear value proposition for your product, you’ll be better prepared to use your videos to drive sales.

Value Proposition for Your Videos

You also need value propositions for your videos themselves. These are a bit simpler, as you just need to convince your audience that your video is worth watching.

Here’s an example of one of our OptinMonster videos:

Our value proposition is right there in the video title: Boost your Mobile Marketing with 3 Proven Strategies for Mobile Lead Generation. Whether you found this video on YouTube, Facebook, or another platform, this title clearly explains the benefits of watching the video.

Value propositions help you focus your video strategy on your audience’s needs by consistently explaining how your content and products solve specific problems.

6. Stick to a Reasonable Timeline and Budget

If you look at top creators, you’ll see high-quality, complex video productions and frequent posting schedules. Those brands have huge video budgets and a team of people planning, creating, and editing their videos.

However, your posting schedule and video quality will depend on your budget and staff capacity.

When creating your timelines, try the following:

• Start small: Begin with simple videos to build confidence and refine your process. As your team gains experience, you can take on more complex productions.
• Produce in batches: Film multiple videos in one session to save time and reduce setup costs.
• Build in time for post-production: Shooting your video is just one step of production. Even simple videos often require editing, as well as adding title cards, logos graphics, text overlays, and music.
• Set milestones: Establish clear milestones and deadlines to keep the project on track and ensure timely completion.

When planning your budget, consider the following:

• Determine the resources needed, such as equipment, crew, and talent.
• Allocate funds for post-production, including editing, graphics, and music.
• Plan for distribution costs, such as paid ads or promotional campaigns.

You can always scale up your business’s video content strategy as you grow. But first, focus on making simple videos that you can do well. And at a pace that’s sustainable.

Step 7. Create & Post Your Videos

Here’s the fun part! Creating and posting videos is an exciting and rewarding process. Here are some detailed tips for creating your first marketing videos.

Planning Your Video

1. Define Your Purpose, Audience, and Message

Before you start filming, clearly define the purpose of your video and the key message you want to convey. Here are some questions to ask:

• What stage of the marketing funnel is this video part of? Again, the stages are Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Action, and Loyalty.
• Who is its target audience?
• Am I looking to educate, entertain, or promote a specific product?
• What is my goal for this specific video?

2. Storyboard Your Ideas

Create a storyboard to visualize your video’s flow. A storyboard helps you organize your ideas and plan the shots you need. It’s especially useful for videos with multiple scenes. Even if your video is just you telling your audience about your company, you should outline the flow of ideas you want to cover.

3. Write Your Script

You should always write a basic script to follow. Feel free to go off-script if you want a more conversational tone, but a script helps you stay focused and ensure you fit in all important information.

Setting Up Your Equipment

1. Choose the Right Camera

High-end cameras can produce excellent quality, but you don’t need expensive equipment to start. Many smartphones today have powerful cameras capable of shooting high-quality videos.

2. Keep It Steady

Use a tripod or stabilizer to keep your camera steady. Shaky footage is distracting and looks unprofessional. While your videos don’t need to be elaborate, they do need to be pleasant to watch.

3. Test Your Lighting

Good lighting is crucial for video quality. Natural light is great, but you can also use affordable softbox lights. Test your lighting setup to make sure your video looks clear and well-lit.

4. Focus on High-Quality Sound

For sound, consider using an external microphone to ensure clear audio, as poor sound quality can detract from even the best video content. Just like your lighting, run tests to make sure your videos sound great.

Filming Your Video

1. Frame Your Shots

Pay attention to composition. Use the rule of thirds to position your subject, and make sure the background is not cluttered or distracting.

2. Shoot Multiple Takes

Don’t be afraid to shoot multiple takes of each scene. This will give you more options when editing and ensure you capture the best possible footage.

Editing Your Video

1. Use Editing Software

You’ll need to use video editing software to cut and splice footage, add transitions, and insert text and graphics. Many user-friendly tools are available. For instance, iMovie is Apple’s free video software, exclusively for Mac and iOS users. Adobe Premiere has multiple versions for different needs: Elements for basic video editing, Pro for advanced editing features, and Rush for mobile users.

2. Add Lower Third Text and Title Cards

Incorporate names, titles, or other information in the lower third of the screen. You can also add an intro graphic and title cards to introduce segments or provide additional context.

3. Include Background Music and Sound Effects

Background music and sound effects can enhance your video’s mood and make it more engaging. Ensure you have the rights to use any music or sounds you include.

Posting Your Video

1. Optimize Your Video SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Use relevant keywords in your video title, description, and tags to help your video get discovered. Write a compelling description and include links to your website or social media.

2. Create an Eye-Catching Thumbnail

Your video thumbnail is the image used to represent your video. It’s often the first thing viewers see, so make sure it’s attractive and accurately represents your content. Use bright, high-contrast images with readable text overlays. YouTube now allows you to A/B test your thumbnails, making it easier to optimize them for better performance.

3. Encourage Reach & Engagement

Now it’s time to get your video out into the world. Here are a few tips to get more people watching and engaging with your content:

• Engage with viewers by responding to comments and encouraging them to like and share your video.
• For your most important videos, invest in targeted paid ads to really boost your reach.
• Even if you’re focusing on 1 or 2 video platforms, share your video across your social media channels.

Step 8. Repurpose Your Video Content for Other Platforms

It takes a lot of work to create a high-quality video that targets the right audience and moves them through your funnel. But here’s the good news: once you’ve created a successful video, you can repurpose it in lots of different ways. In fact, you can get a lot of mileage out of a well-made video.

Here are just a few smart ways to repurpose your video content:

• Repost YouTube Shorts as Instagram Reels.
• Share Reels to your Instagram and Facebook Stories to gain more attention.
• Embed your videos in blog posts, documentation pages, and any other web pages that would be enhanced by video.
• Use OptinMonster to create video popups and target them to the right visitors at the right time.
• Include videos in your email marketing newsletters so your subscribers will see your best video content.
• Break up longer YouTube videos into shorter clips that can be shared across different channels.
• BONUS TIP: You can use AI tools like Opus or Vidyo to quickly create short clips from full-length videos.

Step 9. Monitor Results & Adjust Your Strategy

Your video marketing strategy should constantly evolve as you learn what does and doesn’t work for your brand. You’ll also need to keep an eye on changing marketing trends. Track key metrics such as views, shares, engagement, view time, click-through rates, and conversions. Most importantly, track whether you’ve met the goals you set in Step 1.

When you closely analyze your metrics, you can refine your video content strategy for better results.

5 Video Marketing Examples

I’ve covered the most important steps in creating a video strategy. Now, let’s look at some examples of different types of video marketing content. I’ll discuss what makes each video successful and explore how it fits into the marketing funnel.

1. 30-Second Brand Awareness Ad from Constant Contact

This video from the email marketing service Constant Contact is posted to their YouTube channel. However, its main purpose is probably as a paid advertisement for online video platforms. They’ve created a fully produced, high-quality ad that shows how their product can help small businesses meet their goals. And the cute puppies definitely help to catch attention!

This video primarily focuses on the Awareness step of the marketing funnel, as it lets people know about Constant Contact’s product and establishes a friendly brand voice.

2. How-To Video from OptinMonster

Do you sell a product that requires a learning curve or has multiple implementations? If so, then how-to videos should be an important part of your video marketing strategy.

This how-to video on creating your first OptinMonster campaign targets 2 audience segments:

1. Potential customers who want to see if our product is right for them
2. New customers who need help getting started

That means we can use this video for 2 different phases of our marketing funnel: Decision and Loyalty.

That’s why we feature it on our Creating Your First Campaign documentation page, which is geared toward new customers. This easy-to-follow video helps ensure that new customers can quickly start seeing the benefits of our software. And when they start seeing results, they’ll want to stay OptinMonster customers for years to come.

3. Educational Video Marketing Example from Woodworking for Mere Mortals

Steve Ramsey is a long-time YouTuber with nearly 2 million subscribers on his woodworking channel, Woodworking for Mere Mortals. For many years, his YouTube channel was his business. Eventually, changes in YouTube’s monetization made it more difficult to make a living from his channel, so he developed a paid woodworking course and a Patreon page.

He still offers free videos like the one above, which covers “18 things every beginning woodworker should know.” These videos are still monetized with YouTube ads. However, they now also drive traffic to his subscription-based offerings. He promotes his paid course at the end of the video, and the video description includes links to his Patreon and Amazon affiliate links.

This educational video nurtures users through the Consideration, Decision, and Action stages of the marketing funnel. Ramsey’s subscribers already know his brand, but this video cements his expertise in the field and encourages viewers to become paid customers.

4. Viral Video Series from BlendTec

This next video marketing example is an oldie but a goodie. In 2006, Blendtec became a YouTube favorite when they came out with their Will it Blend? series.

In the series, Blendtec’s CEO, Tom Dickson, demonstrated the power and versatility of Blendtec blenders by attempting to blend various items: Justin Bieber CDs, books, iPhones, and more.

This video series became so popular that their YouTube channel grew to 844K subscribers, and the iPad blending video above has 19 million views.

This series “blended” humor, novelty, and perfect product placement. Viewers followed for the fun videos, but they also learned just how powerful BlendTec’s products were. In the process, they were moved through the Awareness and Consideration stages of the marketing funnel.

5. Laser-Focused Webinar from OptinMonster

I haven’t talked a lot about webinars in this post, but they can be incredibly effective for generating leads and driving sales. That’s why we have an in-depth article devoted to webinar marketing:

Here at OptinMonster, our webinars are planned and hosted by Jeremiah Alsbrook, our Product Marketing Specialist. Above, I’ve embedded a recording of one of his webinars, which he later uploaded to YouTube. The topic of this webinar was On-Site Retargeting: How to Turn a Website Visitor’s No into an Excited YES!

This webinar focuses on the Decision, Action, and Loyalty stages of the marketing funnel. It demonstrates exactly how you can use OptinMonster to solve a specific problem, and it concludes with information about signing up or upgrading your existing plan. For those existing customers, this webinar shows yet another way they can use OptinMonster to grow their business.

I asked Jeremiah for his advice on getting the most impact from webinars. Here’s what he said:

Webinars are a dime a dozen these days, so your webinar has to provide extremely high value in order to maintain your guests’ attention. Recently, I’m finding that less is more with that value.

Instead of trying to cover 8 different features and concepts, create a laser-focused webinar that solves one specfic issue and provides practical applicaton. Don’t get suckered into thinking that a longer webinar is inherently better. We’ve seen better performance when we keep our webinars specific and concise.

Jeremiah Alsbrook, Product Marketing Specialist at OptinMonster

Make the Most of Your Video Marketing

Video marketing is a game-changer for businesses aiming to boost their lead generation and sales. By following the steps in this guide, you’ll be well on your way to creating an effective video marketing strategy that reaches your target audience and achieves your business goals.

At OptinMonster, we’ve experienced the benefits of a video firsthand. And as your videos become more and more successful, you’ll start directing more traffic to your website.

OptinMonster is the best tool available to turn those new website visitors into subscribers and customers! You can use our popups, floating bars, and other onsite marketing campaigns to generate leads and drive more sales.

You can even embed your best video content right in your OptinMonster campaign!

Want to get started? Sign up for OptinMonster, with our 14-day money-back guarantee.

Related Resources:

• How to Build a YouTube Email List (7 Easy Tips)
• How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy
• How to Create a Content Marketing Funnel (+ 12 Examples)

1. In 2024, blogging will emerge as a leading format that marketers are adopting for the first time.

As we enter 2024, blogging is gaining newfound attention among marketers, highlighting its enduring relevance and effectiveness in digital strategies.

2. 50% of bloggers now utilize AI tools to enhance their content creation process.

The integration of AI in content creation marks a significant shift, with 50% of bloggers embracing this technology, underscoring its role in enhancing creativity and efficiency.

3. Nearly a third of marketers (29%) actively incorporate content marketing into their strategies.

The statistic that 29% of marketers actively use content marketing reflects its solid and consistent role in the marketing mix, emphasizing the value of content in engaging and retaining audiences.

4. Web traffic ranks as one of the top indicators for measuring the success of content marketing efforts.

The focus on web traffic as a primary measure of content marketing success underscores the importance of driving online engagement and the direct impact of content on website performance.

5. In 2024, 50% of marketers plan to boost their investment in content marketing.

With half of the marketers planning to increase their content marketing budget in 2024, it signals a growing recognition of content’s role in driving brand awareness and customer engagement.

6. Short-form videos have become the most utilized media format in marketing content strategies.

The preference for short-form video in content strategies highlights the shift towards more dynamic, engaging, and easily consumable content formats, catering to changing audience preferences.

7. YouTube stands as the most popular platform for video marketing among marketers.

YouTube’s status as the most widely used platform for video marketing reflects its vast reach and effectiveness in engaging diverse audiences, making it a cornerstone in video-driven marketing strategies.

8. Podcasts and other forms of audio content are part of the content strategy for 25% of marketers.

With 25% of marketers incorporating podcasts or other audio content, this trend points to the diversification of content strategies and the growing appeal of audio formats in capturing audience attention in a screen-dominated world.

9. 20% of articles are high-performing, 60% are average-performing, and 20% are low-performing based on organic search traffic, social media engagement, and backlinks.

A significant portion of content falls into the average category, indicating room for optimization.

10. “Everything You Need To Know” titles and Comparison types of content generate the most organic traffic, yet only 0.4% and 0.8% of all articles use these formats.

There’s an untapped potential for content marketers to leverage these underutilized formats.

11. Successful articles are based on original research, have a complex variety of titles and subheadings, are updated every 6-12 months, and provide a great reader experience.

Comprehensive and regularly updated content that’s well-structured tends to resonate more with readers.

12. Content length is less crucial than topic coverage. Comprehensive content performs better.

Instead of focusing on word count, marketers should ensure they cover topics thoroughly.

13. Articles with 7+ images get 555% more backlinks and 259% more unique page views than those without images. Articles with at least one video generate 70% more organic web traffic.

Visual content significantly boosts engagement and organic reach.

14. Fewer low-performing articles are under one month old, while more are in the 12-month-old group.

Regularly updating content can help maintain its performance.

15. 23.84% of high-performing blogs are published every day.

Consistency in publishing can lead to better performance.

16. Only 16.73% of high-performing blogs were difficult to read, while 33.45% were easy.

Clear and easily digestible content tends to perform better.

17. Longer articles tend to rank better, but Google emphasizes content usefulness over length.

Comprehensive content that addresses user intent can lead to better rankings.

18. Articles with data are higher performing, with 5% of high-performing articles containing data studies compared to 2% in the low-performing group.

Data-driven content can enhance credibility and engagement.

That’s it!

Now you have the content marketing stats you need to support your content marketing strategy, decisions, and undertake data-driven marketing.

Once you’re done with content creation, you can use OptinMonster to promote and share it. Here are three strategies to try:

1. Create a campaign to grow your email list
2. Boost engagement with gated content
3. Use exit-intent® technology to grab your visitors’ attention before they leave your site

Check out more OptinMonster features to extend the reach of your content.

Next, check out some impressive content marketing examples and growth hacking so you can achieve even more success with your content. If you want to learn more about SEO, check out these SEO statistics.

More statistics you would like to see:

• 95+ Mind-Blowing Digital Marketing Statistics to Learn From
• 40+ Email Marketing Statistics You Need to Know
• Conversion Rate Optimization Statistics You Need to Know
• Ecommerce Statistics: Key Insights Every Business Should Know
• Ultimate List of Blogging Statistics and Facts
• Social Selling Statistics and Why It Matters
• 27 Video Marketing Statistics: What You Must Know

Think of it like the top half of a folded newspaper on a newsstand. Back in the day, that’s where all the important headlines and attention-grabbing stories were placed to entice people to buy the paper. Websites use the same concept for the content they want visitors to see first.d

To help you get your visitors scrolling down, we’ve collected some great examples of above the fold content you can use for inspiration.

Let’s get started.

What Is Above the Fold?

Why Above the Fold Matters for Online Businesses?

Key Elements of Effective Above the Fold Content

Above the Fold Website Examples

What Is Above the Fold?

“Above the fold” is the part of the webpage visible before the user scrolls down. It is prime real estate for web designers because it attracts the most attention.

Web designers put their most important content “above the fold” to engage visitors and keep them scrolling. The exact location of the fold will vary depending on the device someone uses to view the website.

Why Above the Fold Matters for Online Businesses?

Here’s why “above the fold” is important:

• First Impressions: It’s where visitors form their initial opinion of your website. Strong content above the fold can keep them engaged and encourage them to explore further.
• Attention Grabbing: This is prime real estate for grabbing visitor attention. Compelling headlines, clear calls to action, and interesting visuals are all important elements for the “above the fold” area.
• Limited Viewport: With so many different screen sizes and devices, there’s no guarantee how much content will be visible initially. Focusing on what’s most important “above the fold” ensures visitors see the key information regardless of their device.

Key Elements of Effective Above the Fold Content

Crafting Compelling Headlines: Your headline is the first thing visitors see. Make it count. It should be clear, engaging, and reflective of your brand’s voice.

Utilizing High-Quality Visuals: Humans are visual creatures. High-quality images or videos can convey your message quickly and effectively. Remember, these visuals should be optimized for fast loading.

Clear Calls to Action: Your CTA should be prominent and persuasive. It guides users on what to do next, whether it’s subscribing to a newsletter or checking out a product.

Embracing Responsive Design: Responsive design ensures your above the fold content looks great on any device. This isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about functionality and accessibility.

Testing and Optimization: Always a/b test your designs across different devices. Tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can be invaluable for this.

Balancing Design and SEO: While above the fold is crucial for user experience, it also impacts SEO. Google values user experience, and a well-designed above the fold area can contribute to better search rankings.

Measuring Effectiveness: Use tools like Google Analytics to understand how users interact with your above the fold content. Look at metrics like time on landing page and bounce rate to gauge effectiveness.

Above the Fold Website Examples

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is all about growth, and that’s exactly what its above the fold design shows. The image suggests learning (notebook) and advanced technology (space helmet).

The headline is a play on the common phrase “all systems go”, suggesting that the reader will be forging ahead with growth. That idea’s reinforced in the subhead. Then there’s a compelling offer of free software on the CTA button.

2. Jeff Bullas

Jeff Bullas has two sets of above the fold content. When you first land on his site he has a welcome gate, with a compelling offer to get his tips on doubling traffic. The large background image attracts readers’ attention immediately.

Click on the arrow, at the end of the welcome gate, and it takes you to his main page, where there’s social proof of his readership and online authority. You still have to scroll once to get to the content, but by then most readers are likely convinced.

3. SnackNation

SnackNation‘s above the fold content shows exactly what’s on offer, with a background image of a person with a snack sampler box in an office. The content offers visitors the chance to sign up for their own sampler box. This is a great way to get business leads. In fact, thanks to OptinMonster, SnackNation gets 1200 new leads each week with this above the fold design.

4. Missinglettr

Missinglettr‘s homepage also works because the headline gets right to the point of what its visitors want: a hassle-free way to drive social traffic with their content.

The two-sentence explanation gives more detail on the product, then there’s a visible CTA below. The landing page also includes two other CTAs targeted to those who might not yet be ready to sign up.

Having three actions to take instead of just one might make them less effective, but we’re willing to bet this design is based on rigorous split testing, so the company knows it works for their audience.

5. OptimizeMyAirBnB

Optimize My AirBnB takes a more personable approach to its above the fold website design. There’s a big picture of the site owner who appears to be looking directly at the reader, thus drawing their gaze.

To the right of the page, there’s a welcome sentence which outlines the key benefit of the site. And by the time you’ve read that, there’s an OptinMonster floating bar offering you the chance to sign up for more tips and tools. This was one factor in growing the site’s list 650%.

6. Content Marketing Institute

The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) takes a slightly different tack with its above the fold content. At the top, there’s a menu listing all the different types of content they offer.

But the bulk of the landing page is taken up with the products they most want to promote: their events, consulting services and magazine. Everything is in the brand colors, creating a harmonious visual experience.

7. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights keeps it simple with a white background. Against this, the headline stands out well, and the subheadline subtly underlines two key benefits for readers. There’s also a clear and visible call to action, with a subtle arrow inviting readers to scroll down if they still want more info. In the case of this above the fold design, minimalism works!

8. The Guardian

As you’d expect from an online newspaper, The Guardian nails above the fold content. In this example, two stories stand out. The one on the left has a bigger headline and picture to draw the eye.

But the online publication is taking no chances; there’s another story just in case the main one doesn’t grab readers. The story category is in red, contrasting with the black of the headline, to create a compelling visual effect.

9. Guido’s

The most effective aspect of Guido’s above the fold content isn’t the statement about its authentic cuisine. And it isn’t the compelling image of the wine rack with labeled bottles sticking out of it.

It’s actually the menu button that says “Get free appetizer”. That button triggers an OptinMonster MonsterLink, which got the restaurant more than 1000 new leads in four months.

Here’s how you can add a popup to your website menu, too.

10. OutreachPlus

OutreachPlus grabs readers’ attention with a question that makes them think. Then it shows how the product could help solve that problem. The homepage is simple. Apart from the headlines, there’s a screenshot of the product, plus two choices of what to do next: buy, or learn more by viewing a demo.

11. Search Engine Journal

Search Engine Journal is a content site, so its above-the-fold design puts their content in the spotlight. The site’s design lets them showcase three stories above the fold. There’s also a clever bit of web design here. The three stories are listed on the right of the page. Each is highlighted in green in turn. When a story’s highlighted, it takes the top spot on the left of the page, displaying with an attention-grabbing image and headline.

12. ConversionXL

You’d expect Peep Laja’s ConversionXL to get above the fold content right. It’s another simple design. This page has an in your face headline, and a subheadline that states their core belief. There are also two CTA buttons giving choices for what to do next, and a secondary CTA below that to sign up for their email newsletter.

13. Christmas Lite Show

Christmas Lite Show converted 30% of visitors simply by triggering an OptinMonster MonsterLink in its above the fold content. The button launched a countdown popup with a coupon offer. The combo converted 30% of visitors and added 7,000 new subscribers to the company’s email list.

14. Problogger

Problogger is another content heavy site, so its above the fold content focuses on making it easy for people to find the information they want. At the top, there’s a comprehensive navigation menu. There’s an image of founder Darren Rowse to create a personal connection with the visitor, plus a 2-step optin that triggers an email signup form popup.

15. Kennedy Blue

Kennedy Blue is a great example of above the fold online content. The main banner includes an image of three women in different styles of bridesmaid dresses.

Meanwhile the copy highlights how easy it is to shop for dresses, and gives a price range. The CTA sends visitors straight to the shop. And the site’s using an OptinMonster floating bar to highlight the current sale – just one of the ways they were able to achieve a 50% increase in sales.

16. Copyblogger

Copyblogger‘s above the fold content is minimalist. Most of the space is taken up by an image showing a person looking at a piece of Copyblogger content. Since she’s facing left, her gaze draws the visitor’s attention to the headline. The headline shows the benefit (building online authority) with the offer (effective marketing).

17. Bluehost

On its homepage, Bluehost uses an image on the right with the person’s eyes looking towards the text on the left. This is a clever bit of psychology that directs readers’ eyes there, too.

When they look, they see a headline, a reduced price (which is always appealing) and a short list of key benefits. Underneath is a visible CTA button urging readers to get started.

That’s it! Now you’ve seen some above the fold web examples that really work, apply these principles to get your visitors on board.

Want to learn how to use custom fonts on your optin campaigns? Learn how to upload custom fonts to your OptinMonster campaigns.

Next, check out our guides to email marketing and growth hacking your ecommerce business. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep track of all our new content.

1. Optimized content that earns a #1 ranking for your search keyword
2. A piece of copy that Google sees as valuable enough to feature

With so much competition out there, featured Google snippets can feel like an impossible goal. However, there are plenty of SEO strategies that can improve your chances.

In this article, I’ll show you how to get featured snippets for your content. While there are no guarantees, these tactics will make it more likely for Google to feature your content as a search snippet, driving more traffic to your site.

• What Is a Featured Snippet?
• Types and Examples of Featured Snippets
• How to Get Featured Snippets (4 Proven Tips)
• FAQs

What is a Featured Snippet?

A featured snippet is a Google search result that provides a short answer to the user’s search query, in addition to the link to that answer’s source. Featured snippets are sometimes called “answer boxes.”

Here’s a featured snippet example that I found by Googling “featured snippet”:

This brief definition is at the very top of the SERP (search engine results page). Google bolds the most important part of the definition and highlights it in blue. The URL and linked title tag are listed below the snippet.

This answer box draws the eye of searchers, hugely increasing the chance that they’ll click on that search result.

In fact, a study from the digital agency Tallwave found that featured snippets boost click-through rate (CTR) by a whopping 859%, from 2.7% to 25.9%.

Types and Examples of Featured Snippets

I’m going to cover for 4 most common types of featured snippets and provide an example of each:

1. Paragraph snippets
2. List snippets (both numbered and bulleted)
3. Table snippets
4. Video snippets

Of these, paragraph snippets are by far the most common, with about 70% of search snippets falling into this type.

Lists are the next most common, with table and video being fairly rare.

1. Paragraph Snippets

For this type of featured snippet, Google uses text from the source page to provide an answer to the searcher’s question immediately.

For example, here’s an answer box we earned for our OptinMonster blog. Users who searched for “email subject line” saw this definition, which was pulled from our post on 184 Email Subject Lines And Why They Work.

This article is one of the highest-traffic posts on our blog due to search volume, our consistently high ranking, and the fact that we often have the Google featured snippet.

How did we achieve this snippet?

• By creating a high-quality, helpful post
• By optimizing the post for the top SEO ranking factors
• By including a concise and precise explanation for the search term
• By making it easy for Google to find that definition

This screenshot shows the blog copy that the featured snippet was pulled from:

We wrote our copy as a direct answer to the question in our subheading. We followed this formula:

“What Is X? X is . . . “

By formatting our definition in this way, Google can easily find it and pull it for a featured snippet.

2. List Featured Snippets

List snippets come in 2 flavors: numbers and bullets. They often feature steps, tips, or instructions.

Here’s an example of a numbered list snippet for the search term “tips for email copywriting”:

This exact list doesn’t exist within the HubSpot article. Instead, Google pulled the list from the article’s subheadings.

List snippets can also take the form of numbered instructions, like in this recipe result:

Bulleted snippets will come up when content doesn’t use numbers, and the order doesn’t really matter.

If your list doesn’t fit within the answer box, you’ll see “More items” link. This signals to the searcher that there is more information available and could easily lead to increased click-through rates!

3. Table Featured Snippets

Table snippets show collections of data in a clear table format.

Here’s a table featured snippet example that I found by Googling “American to metric conversion”:

This example shows the potential pitfalls of table snippets, as Google has actually incorrectly pulled the data. After all, 1 inch does not convert to 4.929 ml. In this case, Google pulled data from multiple side-by-side tables in the original article.

Here’s an example of a more successful table snippet, which provides correct information:

In both of these cases, the original article included tables that Google could pull data from. As with the “More items” link for list snippets, Google will feature a “More rows” link for longer tables.

4. Video Featured Snippets

Google often prioritizes video results for how-to search queries, and that can include the occasional video featured snippet, where the video can be played right on the SERP page. In this example, Google highlights the 90-second clip that’s most relevant to the user’s search.

Video snippets are always pulled from YouTube, as that platform is owned by Google. Despite the fact that there are 14 billion videos on YouTube, video snippets are quite rare.

What’s more common these days is getting a rich search result, like the one below that features key moments in the video:

You can also win a spot in a list of video results:

In order to win video featured snippets and rich results, you should:

• Organize your content in a step-by-step format
• Upload a script for the video’s closed captions
• Optimize the video’s description using long-tail keywords
• Add timestamped chapters to your YouTube videos
• Use a video schema markup on any videos you embed on your website

How to Get Featured Snippets (4 Proven Tips)

Featured snippets are challenging to earn. However, here are 4 actionable tips to help you learn how to get a featured snippet for your chosen keyword.

1. Include Concise Explanations
2. Help Google Find Your Snippet With Headings & Questions
3. Use Data-Driven, Well-Structured Content
4. Always Consider Search Intent

1. Include Concise Explanations

While it’s no secret that Google favors long-form content, you need to be precise when providing your definitions and explanations.

The average length of a paragraph snippet is 40-50 words, so keep that in mind when you’re writing the content that you’re specifically trying to get recognized as a featured snippet.

After that initial brief explanation, you can go into more detail with examples and use cases.

2. Help Google Find Your Snippet With Headings & Questions

Once you’ve written a perfect and concise answer for a search query, you need to make sure Google can find it. You can do that through your subheadings and by including direct questions in your content.

Here’s a featured snippet example for the search term “accounts payable vs. receivable.”

I clicked on that result so I could see how GoCardless had presented their snippet text:

GoCardless included both a subheading and a question to make it easy for Google to recognize that their copy would make a good featured snippet.

3. Use Data-Driven, Well-Structured Content

Google loves lists, numbers, and steps that are well-organized, and it picks up on standard formatting tags like <table>, <ol>, and <ul>.

Here are a few tips for getting list and table snippets:

1. Number your subheadings: If your content includes steps, instructions, or best-of lists, create numbered subheadings that Google can easily recognize. Also, place those subheadings under a descriptive main heading. For instance, you might have an H2 heading that reads “How to Start a Butterfly Garden.” Your H3s under that heading might be, “1. Pick a Sunny Location,” “2. Till and Fertilize Your Soil,” and so on.
2. Include tables of contents: A table of contents that includes all your headings and subheadings also helps Google find lists to pull for featured snippets.
3. Summarize your content in a table: Your article might cover a topic such as the average income in top cities. If you add a table that summarizes the data in your article, Google will be more likely to use it as a featured snippet.
4. Use bulleted and numbered lists: Always look for information that would be best presented as a bulleted list. Not only do lists make your content easier to scan online, but helpful lists are often used for Google snippets.

Remember that your ultimate goal is to be the best at answering the searcher’s question, so your answer should always contain well-researched and factual information.

4. Always Consider Search Intent

When implementing any of the above strategies, you have to ask the question: What information is the searcher looking for?

Search intent, also called keyword intent, is the ultimate goal of the searcher. Google uses search intent to determine which results to display for a given search query.

If you want to get an answer box for a specific topic, Google some of the top related keywords to see what Google believes the intent is for those queries. Then, try to make your content more concise, precise, and helpful than the competition. This keyword research will help you earn higher search rankings, get more answer boxes, and drive more traffic to your site.

Featured Snippet FAQs

1. Are featured snippets good for SEO?
Yes, featured snippets are excellent for SEO. They place your content at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), significantly increasing your visibility and click-through rates (CTR). Featured snippets drive more traffic to your site, as users are drawn to concise and relevant information.

2. What is the difference between featured snippets and rich snippets?
Featured snippets provide a direct answer to a user’s query at the top of the SERP, above the regular search results. They often include a summary of the content pulled directly from a web page, along with a link to the source. Rich snippets, on the other hand, are enhanced search results that include information such as ratings, reviews, or product details. Rich snippets make use of structured data markup, also called schema markup, to provide this extra context within the search results.

3. What tools can I use to find featured snippet opportunities?
There are several tools you can use to identify answer box opportunities:

• LowFruits: Helps you find low-competition keywords to optimize your chance of getting high rankings and Google snippets.
• Semrush: Offers a powerful feature for finding keywords that trigger featured snippets and can help you identify gaps in your content.
• Ahrefs: Provides insights into which keywords your competitors are ranking for in featured snippets and how you can optimize your content to capture those spots.
• Moz: Helps you track your rankings and find potential featured snippet opportunities by analyzing the SERPs.
• Answer The Public: Lets you discover common questions and search queries related to your topic, which can be used to optimize your content for featured snippets.

4. Can I lose a featured snippet once I have it?
Yes, it’s possible to lose a featured snippet. You may lose it to a competitor that has optimized its content, or Google might update its algorithms.

5. How often should I update my content to maintain featured snippets?
Google favors fresh and relevant content, so you should revisit your posts every few months to add new information, update statistics, and improve readability. Additionally, keep an eye on changes in search intent and your competitor’s content, so you can find opportunities to re-optimize your pages.

6: How do featured snippets impact voice search?
Featured snippets play a significant role in voice search. When users make voice queries, virtual assistants like Google Assistant often read out the featured snippet as the answer. Because of this functionality, optimizing your content for featured snippets can increase your visibility and engagement in voice search results.

Level Up Your SEO With Featured Snippets

When you optimize your content for Google featured snippets, you can catch the attention of more users, improve your search rankings and traffic, and demonstrate your authority in your niche.

If you’re interested in more ways to boost your rankings, check out these resources:

• Beginner’s SEO Guide: Learn the Basics & Most Important Tips
• What Is Off-Page SEO? 15 Proven Off-Page SEO Tips to Boost Rankings
• On-Page SEO Checklist: Drive More Traffic with On-Page Optimization

Of course, driving traffic to your site is only the first step. Next, you need to focus on converting that traffic into subscribers, sales, and revenue.

That’s where OptinMonster comes in!

You can use our popups, floating bars, and other onsite marketing campaigns to show your best offers to the right people at just the right time.

In a 2023 study by Venngage, 80% of marketers said visual content was either “Very important” to their marketing strategy or chose the answer, “My strategy is nothing without visual content.”

The bottom line is that if you want to stay ahead of the marketing game, you need to use visual content marketing.

But not everybody’s a design whiz. We totally get that, but free tools and software are available to help.

And so, in this article, we’ve compiled a list of the best visual content creation tools.

And there’s a bonus: All visual content creation tools listed below are free.

Recommended Resource Need to jumpstart your content marketing results? Get more traffic and conversions with our Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing.

We’ve divided the tools into categories, so you can easily find the visual content creation tools you need first:

• Image Creation Tools
• Video Creation Tools
• Animation Tools
• Infographic Creation Tools
• Screen Capture Tools
• Meme Creation Tools
• GIF Creation Tools
• Presentation Creation Tools

Image Creation Tools

Let’s start our list of digital content creation tools with some tools focused on creating and editing images.

1. Adobe Express

Adobe Express is a fast content creation software that lets you easily combine text, images, and video content for better storytelling online. While we’re including it as an example of image creation software, you can also use it to make just about any visual media.

The basic version of Adobe Express is completely free, with no credit card required. There are tons of templates available for different image types, such as Instagram posts and Reels. Note that there are some templates that require the Premium version, which is $9.99 a month with a 30-day free trial.

2. BeFunky Graphic Designer

If you’re looking for a way to quickly create collages and other photos, BeFunky Graphic Designer can help. You can also make cards, banners, brochures, and posters with this fast content creation software package. Enjoy the free version, and you can always upgrade to the premium plan if you need more advanced features.

3. Canva

Canva is one of our favorite tools, making it easy to create and edit customized images for sharing on social media, illustrating blog posts, and much more. It’s an essential content marketing tool for any visual content creator.

Most of Canva’s basic functionality is available in its free version. Features such as the background remover and Magic Resize tool require Canva Pro.

4. Fotor Photo Editor

Looking for photo editing, photo effects, and image retouching? Try the templates and tools from Fotor to make graphic design easy.

5. Pablo

If you’re looking for content creation tools for social media, then Pablo, by Buffer, is a good choice. After all, Buffer is one of the best social media management tools on the market.  It makes it easy to combine beautiful images with text, and it includes filters. You can add your own logo, too.

6. Pixlr

Pixlr is another useful free content creation tool. It’s available in three flavors:

• A quick tool for adding fun filters
• Pixlr Express, which offers AI-powered photo editing
• The full Pixlr Editor, which has many of the same functions as professional image editing software like Photoshop

The premium versions are ad-free and offer upgrades such as AI credits.

7. Quotes Cover

You don’t have to log in or sign up to use Quotes Cover. This free digital content creation tool lets you easily create quote graphics online. And you can use their designs as a starting point, making the process pretty quick.

While Quotes Cover is a pretty basic web application, it can come in handy if you need to create a quote graphic in seconds.

8. Snappa

The next on our list of free content marketing tools is Snappa. This web app is a full-featured drag and drop image editor, which lets you add and edit effects with a slider. You can upload your own graphics and save designs in folders.

9. Stencil

Stencil streamlines content creation for social media. This fast, simple app lets you easily combine photos, icons, and more to create your own images. And it includes image templates and quote graphic templates, too.

Video Creation Tools

Our next selection of free visual content creation tools is all about video. Here are a few examples of video-making software that will help you ramp up your content marketing.

10. Animaker

Want to get the effect of a studio-created animated video without the hefty price tag? That’s what Animaker offers. You can create multiple video types including explainer videos, whiteboard videos, and even infographic videos. Note that the free version only allows you to create videos up to 2 minutes in length.

11. iMovie

If you’re using iOS or MacOS, then iMovie is likely one of the best free video tools you can use. This app makes it easy to create and share videos, and to make Hollywood-style video trailers.

12. Lumen5

Lumen5 is one of the more interesting visual content creation tools on our list. That’s because it uses artificial intelligence to let you create a video from text. Enter a URL and the software will create videos to match, including photos and music. This is definitely one to keep an eye on.

The free version lets you create up to 5 videos a month, and they will have a watermark. But it’s a great choice for beginners without a budget.

13. RawShorts

RawShorts is a drag and drop video editor designed to make it easy to create animated and explainer videos. It includes tons of free templates, which users can select and customize. And it’s easy to add other media, transitions, and audio to your video creation.

14. Soapbox

Wistia is a video marketing platform that offers a lot of tools and features. It lets you create and share videos in your browser window through your webcam or via screen recording. No technical skills required!

Tools to Use11 Best Instagram Video Editing Tools Compared (Free and Paid)

Animation Tools

Want to make short animations to liven up your content marketing? These free animation tools will help.

15. Google Photos

Google Photos has a built-in Assistant that works with the photos you upload to automatically create short movies and animations. If you want more control, you can also create them yourself from within the cross-platform app. You simply select up to 49 of your photos, click the + icon, and select Animation.

16. Powtoon

Powtoon bridges the gap between videos and presentations, making it easy to create appealing visual content in only a few minutes. These are an excellent way to get attention and engage your audience.

17. Renderforest

If you’re looking for a way to create cute animated videos fast, RenderForest is a good option. This cloud-based animation and video maker helps you quickly make intro videos, explainer videos, presentations, infographics, and much more. They have multiple cartoon templates that you can customize to your needs.

Infographic Creation Tools

Next, it’s time to look at tools for infographics, which are one of the most engaging visual content formats.

18. Infogram

If you’re looking for interactive visual content creation tools, Infogram is worth a try. In the free version, you get access to templates for infographics, charts, maps, and more. You’ll be limited to 10 projects with their free infographic tool. To make more, you’ll need to upgrade.

19. Venngage

Venngage makes it easy to create infographics via a three-step process. First, choose a template, then add elements, and finally, customize your design. Some functionality is reduced in the free plan, but there’s still a lot to love, with its easy interface and sharp design templates.

20. Visme

If you want to get started with infographics, Visme has a lot to offer. It includes several templates, charts and widgets that you can use to create your infographic. Unfortunately, you need a premium plan to actually download your image. The free version only lets you share a link to your infographic.

Note: Canva, which he discussed earlier, also has dozens of free infographic templates that you can customize with your data.

Screen Capture Tools

Do you want to create tutorials or guides related to technology? A free screen capture tool is a great way to illustrate steps for your audience. Here are some worth checking out.

21. Zight (formerly CloudApp)

Zight is an excellent too  for creating screenshots, screen recordings, and animated GIFs. It’s available as an app or as a Chrome extension. It’s simple to use and allows unlimited screenshots, even in the free version. However, you’re limited to 25 drops per month.

22. Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari that lets you quickly capture web pages and add annotations. You can store, organize, and share images, too. The free version allows you up to 100 screenshots and 20 recordings per month.

23. Firefox Screenshots

Recent versions of the Firefox web browser include the built-in Firefox Screenshots tool. This lets you take a photo of a part of the screen, the visible screen area, or the whole web page with just a couple of clicks. You get online storage for images, too.

24. Kap

If you need a digital content creation tool for MacOS, then Kap could be useful. It’s an open-source screen recorder that’s fast, functional, and easy to use.

25. Nimbus Capture

Nimbus Capture is another browser screenshot tool that allows you to capture and edit screenshots. It works with Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

26. Windows Snipping Tool

The Snipping Tool built into Windows is another easy way to create screenshots. You can use different types of screen captures and can highlight, annotate, and remove URLs from snips.

Meme Creation Tools

Whether they’re cat pictures or screenshots from movies, it’s hard to imagine the web without memes, so here are some free meme creation tools to help you create your own.

27. iMeme

iMeme is image editing software specifically designed for memes. It includes 50 common memes, or you can use your own photos. You can also customize the text. There’s just one downside: there’s no built-in sharing. You’ll have to download your newly created meme and share it manually.

28. Make a Meme

With Make a Meme, you can upload an image, add text via the onscreen input boxes, and then press a button to create your meme. If you’re happy with the meme preview, it’s then easy to share from the preview page.

29. Meme Buddy

Meme Buddy is an online meme generator with a difference: it lets you make a meme by voice via an integration with Google Assistant. You can choose images, add text, translate memes, and much more, all without having to touch a keyboard.

GIF Creation Tools

A little bit of animation is great for getting visitors’ attention, so it doesn’t hurt to add GIFs to your digital content creation mix. Here are some free GIF creation tools to help you get started.

30. Ezgif

Want to create a GIF fast? With Ezgif you can upload a series of images and it’ll create the GIF for you. You can adjust the order of uploaded images, change the GIF size, and tweak animation settings, too. In fact, this is the tool I use to create GIFs here at OptinMonster.

31. Giphy

Giphy is one of the best-known GIF platforms for social media. It integrates with multiple apps to help people find the right GIF to share. But it also includes an online GIF creator. Just upload a photo or a video, set your animation speed, and add some decorative effects, and then your GIF is ready to upload and share.

32. Imgflip

Like other online meme generators, Imgflip works with existing memes or lets you upload your own image. Once that’s done, you can easily add text to the top, bottom, or both to create your meme.

Presentation Creation Tools

Whether you’re presenting at a conference or during a webinar, a slideshow is an important visual guide. Here are a few free presentation tools that make slideshows a snap.

33. Google Slides

If you’re already using other Google services, then Google Slides is a useful part of the suite. It allows you to quickly create visually appealing presentations using pre-made templates. You can also use Slides to work with imported PowerPoint presentations or to export your creations to PowerPoint. Best of all, you never lose your work since everything auto-saves.

34. Emaze

Emaze is an online presentation tool, with templates for design, business, and education in a variety of categories. Just choose a template and start editing, and you’ll soon have an attractive presentation. You can also create other visual content, as well as websites, with this software. The free version limits you to 5 projects per month

35. Prezi

Prezi offers presentation design for non-designers, letting you get started quickly with templates relating to different niches. This fast content creation software also makes it easy to change how you navigate through a presentation based on your audience. And it provides stats on audience interaction. The free version has some limitations, but it’s a great start.

36. SlideDog

SlideDog lets you create and play presentations and media playlists. Presentations are interactive, and you can livestream and share content. SlideDog integrates with all common presentation and media software. The free version does lack a feature important features, such as dual screen/presenter view and the ability to use your mobile device to control your presentation.

37. Slides

Slides is a browser-based presentation tool that offers a live presentation mode. It includes vertical slides and lets you create private slide decks by default. And it includes the ability to embed presentations and to get data on viewer activity.

38. Sway

Sway is an online presentation tool from Microsoft that lets you create presentations from existing templates or documents. It’ll also help you get started by gathering resources related to your chosen topic.

Improve Your Marketing With Visual Content

That’s it! With these visual content creation tools, you have everything you need to grab visitors’ attention.

Want to learn more about creating great content? Check out these resources:

• The Ultimate Content Marketing Toolbox: 55 Tools You Need to Know
• 15 Visual Content Creation Tips to Start Using NOW
• 29 Impressive Content Marketing Examples

But don’t stop at creating great content! Use your videos, presentations, memes, GIFs, and more to improve your OptinMonster marketing campaigns.

OptinMonster customer Sportique doubled conversions by using an edited image as part of an optin form and combining it with OptinMonster’s exit-intent technology to get visitors’ attention just before they clicked away from the site.

Check out OptinMonster’s other features, and see how you too could combine our software with the content you create to convert more abandoning visitors into subscribers.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read this post, How to Use Popup Animation Effects for Eye-Catching Promotions.

Sign up for OptinMonster today to start creating visually stunning campaigns that convert!

But what is it? Is it important? And, if it is, where do you learn how to improve domain authority?

In this post, we’re going to answer your questions and teach you how to improve your domain authority through proven, time-tested techniques.

Table of Content:

• What Is Domain Authority?
• Why Is Domain Authority Important?
• Page Authority vs. Domain Authority
• How Is Domain Authority Calculated
• How To Increase My Domain Authority
• How Do I Find My Domain Authority
• What Is a Good Domain Authority?

What Is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority (DA) is a score (0 to 100) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website might rank in search results. Websites with a higher DA are generally considered more established and trusted by search engines, which can influence their ranking.

It’s important to note that DA isn’t a direct ranking factor used by Google, but it reflects factors that Google likely takes into account.

DA is often used by marketers as a comparative metric to measure the potential search engine ranking strength of a website relative to competitor websites. It can also help in identifying the growth of a website’s backlink profile over time.

Why Is Domain Authority Important?

Domain Authority is important for several reasons, especially in the context of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and digital marketing. Here are key reasons why Domain Authority is considered important:

1. Benchmarking Against Competitors: DA provides a quick and easy way to gauge the potential ranking strength of your website against competitors. By comparing DA scores, you can identify how your site stacks up against others in your industry, which can inform your SEO strategy.
2. Evaluating Link Building Efforts: Since DA is influenced by the number and quality of inbound links, a rising DA score can indicate that your link-building efforts are effective. It helps in understanding whether your strategies for acquiring new links are working towards enhancing your site’s perceived authority.
3. SEO Strategy Planning: A higher DA score suggests a greater likelihood of ranking higher in SERP results, which can lead to increased organic traffic. Knowing your DA can help you prioritize SEO tasks, such as content creation or link acquisition, to improve your site’s overall search engine performance.
4. Monitoring Website Health: Changes in your DA score can signal shifts in your site’s health, especially in relation to your link profile. A significant drop, for example, might indicate lost links or penalties that need to be addressed.
5. Content Marketing Insights: Websites with higher DA are often seen as more authoritative and trustworthy. This perception can make other sites more likely to link to your content, strengthening your content marketing efforts. Understanding your website’s Domain Authority can help you leverage your site’s authority to secure guest posting opportunities or collaborations.
6. Investment and Partnership Opportunities: For businesses, a high DA can attract potential investors or partners who see the site’s strong online presence as a valuable asset. It can also be a selling point for advertising space or sponsorships.

Page Authority vs. Domain Authority

Here’s a breakdown of the differences between Page Authority and Domain Authority:

Page Authority (PA)

• Scope: Page Authority measures the ranking strength of a single webpage.
• Calculation: PA is calculated based on data from Moz’s web index and includes link counts, MozRank, MozTrust, and dozens of other factors. Like DA, it uses a machine learning model to find the algorithm that best correlates with rankings across the thousands of SERPs that they predict.
• Use Case: PA is useful for comparing the strength of individual pages within a website or against pages on other websites. It can help you understand how likely a specific page is to rank in SERPs and is particularly useful for assessing the effectiveness of content or SEO strategies at the page level.

Domain Authority (DA)

• Scope: Domain Authority measures the overall ranking strength of an entire website or domain.
• Calculation: DA is calculated by considering multiple factors, including linking root domains and the total number of links, into a single DA score. This score is derived from a machine learning model that predicts a website’s likelihood to rank on SERPs based on its link profile.
• Use Case: DA is used to compare one site’s likelihood to rank in search results against another’s. It’s a broad measure of a site’s overall SEO strength and is useful for benchmarking and tracking the ranking potential of a website over time.

Key Differences

• Specificity: PA is specific to individual pages, while DA applies to entire domains or subdomains.
• Application: PA can help in optimizing individual pages or understanding why certain pages perform well. DA is more about understanding the competitive strength of an entire site and guiding strategic decisions at a higher level.
• Comparative Use: Both metrics are best used as comparative tools rather than absolute indicators of success. They are more valuable when comparing your pages or domain against competitors’ rather than as standalone values.

Both Page Authority and Domain Authority offer valuable insights into SEO and ranking potential, but they serve different purposes.

PA is best for page-level analysis and optimization, while DA provides a broader view of a site’s overall strength and competitiveness. Using both metrics together can give a more comprehensive understanding of a website’s SEO performance and potential areas for improvement.

Not to be confused with PageRank, an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. Named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, PageRank was one of the first algorithms used by the search engine to determine the importance of a webpage. 

How Is Domain Authority Calculated

Domain Authority is calculated by analyzing various factors, such as the number of unique linking domains to a website and the total volume of links included in a singular DA score. This metric is a tool for comparing websites’ relative “ranking strength” over time or against each other.

Following the update to Domain Authority 2.0 in early 2019, the computation of a domain’s DA score is derived from a machine learning model’s estimations of the frequency of a domain’s appearance in Google’s search results. If domain A is more likely to show up in Google’s search results compared to domain B, domain A’s DA is expected to be higher than that of domain B.

Since DA calculations are rooted in machine learning, fluctuations in your site’s score are normal, as the algorithm adjusts based on new, removed, or altered data points. For example, should a site like facebook.com gain a billion new links, the DA of all other sites would decrease compared to Facebook’s.

This is because domains with extensive and authoritative link profiles, such as Facebook, occupy more high-DA positions, leaving limited space at the top of the scale for other domains with smaller link profiles.

Consequently, increasing your DA score from 20 to 30 is considerably more feasible than elevating it from 70 to 80. Hence, using Domain Authority as a relative measure rather than an absolute benchmark is more effective.

How To Increase My Domain Authority

Increasing your Domain Authority involves improving your overall SEO and creating a website that excels in its content quality, user experience, and link profile. Here are strategies to increase your Domain Authority:

1. Improve Your Off-Page SEO

• Build High-Quality Backlinks: Focus on getting do-follow links from high-authority sites in your niche. Use guest blogging, influencer outreach, and the creation of shareable content to earn these links.
• Disavow Bad Links: Use tools like Google’s Disavow Tool to remove spammy or harmful links that could negatively impact your DA.

2. Optimize On-Page SEO

• Use SEO Best Practices: Ensure each page has a title tag, meta description, headers, and images with alt text. Use keywords naturally and effectively throughout your content.
• Improve Internal Linking: Create a logical link structure within your site to help search engines and users navigate your content easily. This also helps distribute page authority throughout your site.

3. Ensure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

• Responsive Design: With the increasing use of mobile devices, having a website that looks good and is responsive on all devices is crucial for user experience and SEO.

4. Increase Page Speed

• Optimize Images: Use compressed images that load faster.
• Minimize Code: Reduce CSS, JavaScript, and HTML code to increase page loading speed.
• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): CDN providers distribute your content across multiple servers worldwide, reducing the load time for users no matter where they are.

5. Publish High-Quality Content

• Create Valuable Content: Publish informative, engaging content that addresses your audience’s needs. High-quality content is more likely to be shared and linked to.
• Regular Updates: Keep your website fresh with regular updates and new content to engage visitors and encourage repeat traffic.

6. Social Media Engagement

• Promote Your Content: Use social media platforms to share your content and engage with your audience. While social signals are not a direct ranking factor, they can increase visibility and backlinks.

How Do I Find My Domain Authority?

In this article, you will learn how to find your domain authority in two ways:

1. Moz’s Link Explorer Tool
2. Ahrefs

1. Moz’s Link Explorer tool

Simply enter your website and it will show you your score, how many links you have, how many of those links come from unique root domains, and how many keywords you’re ranking for as a result.

As you can see, OptinMonster has a domain authority score of 73. It has 292,400 total backlinks coming from 10,500 root domains.

2. Ahrefs

Moz’s Domain Authority’s closest competitor is Ahrefs.

Instead of calling it domain authority, they refer to their authority metric as domain rating. It’s the same thing, different name.

On Ahrefs, OptinMonster’s score is 88. It has 885,000 total backlinks coming from 35,900 root domains.

Similarly, Semrush has an Authority Score that measures a domain or web page’s overall quality and SEO performance.

It’s important to note that each tool uses its own algorithms and scoring systems, which results in the different scores. They also have their own crawlers, which results in the different reported backlinks and keyword rankings.

Now you’re probably wondering…

Is 73 a high DA score? Where did the DR of 88 on Ahrefs come from? What is considered a high domain authority, and what is considered a weak domain authority?

What Is a Good Domain Authority?

A “good” Domain Authority score depends largely on the context, including the industry you’re in, the size of your website, and the DA scores of your competitors.

Industry and Competition

• Comparative Analysis: A good DA score is one that is higher than or comparable to the DA scores of the websites you compete with in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). For instance, if your competitors have DA scores in the range of 30-40, a score within or above this range can be considered good for your website.
• Niche Specific: Some niches or industries might naturally have higher or lower DA scores on average. Highly competitive industries, like finance or health, often have websites with higher DA scores due to the intense competition and the high quality of content required.

Website Size and Age

• Newer and Smaller Websites: For a new or small website, a lower DA score is common and expected. As your website grows in content, user engagement, and backlinks, your DA will likely increase.
• Established Websites: Larger, more established websites often have higher DA scores due to their extensive link profiles and long-standing presence on the web.

General Guidelines

• DA 1-30: Often seen with new or small websites. Improvements can be made through SEO and content marketing strategies.
• DA 30-50: A moderate score indicating that your website is making progress in terms of SEO and has a growing backlink profile.
• DA 50-60: A good score for most websites, indicating a strong link backlink profile and the potential for competitive performance in SERPs.
• DA 60-100: An excellent score, typically seen with very large, established brands. It indicates a very strong backlink profile comprising of external links from other higher domain authority sites and high competitiveness in search rankings.

There you have it! You now should have a much better understanding of domain authority and its importance to your site’s rankings. Plus, you learned how to improve domain authority through high-quality backlinks.

Did you know: Poorly designed popups can ruin user experience and hurt your Google rankings. Join OptinMonster today to get access to gorgeous, professionally-designed, fully customizable popups and optins that can help you make your visitors’ experiences on your site even better!

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