11 Helpful Tips for Becoming a Better Networker [Infographic]

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.

My freshman year of college, I had a roommate who participated in an internship program in Washington, D.C. At the end of the internship, the students in the program attended a networking event with alumni in the city. She told me that she and the other interns competed to collect business cards -- the “winner” was the one who ended the night with the most.

Hopefully, this isn’t the way you’re networking.

Of course, it’s important to close a conversation by getting the person's contact information, but treating networking with a “gotta catch ’em all” attitude is a mistake.

Networking isn’t about franticly gathering business cards and phone numbers as fast as you can and then hitting up your new “contacts” for favors. It’s about establishing mutually beneficial relationships -- and to do that, you have to do more than speed through a conversation.

Being strategic about the people you meet is more important than attempting to strike up a rapport with anybody who comes across your path. But don't limit yourself to only those people more senior than you -- meeting professionals at every level and across industries is critical to truly diversify your network.

If you'd like to hone your mingling skills, check out the infographic below from Business Insider for 11 handy tips on how to network like a pro.

What are your best networking tips? Let us know in the comments below.

7 Easy-to-Use Interactive Content Tools You Should Explore

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.

Imagine that a couple of your friends convince you to give speed dating a try.

"It'll be fun," they insist.

The next thing you know, you're sweating your way through a seemingly never-ending carousel of two-minute dates. And when the hour finally winds down, you find yourself left with two options -- accept a dinner invitation from the person who wouldn't let you get a word in edgewise or the person with whom you had a good back and forth.

The answer seems obvious, right?

Aware that the one-sided approach is less than desirable, why do marketers continue to pump out the content equivalent to this all-too-familiar bad date?

In a landscape where many organizations are increasingly focused on pumping out volume, companies that stand out are those that refuse to pile on. Rather than task their audience with consumption, and consumption alone, innovative companies are using interactive content to earn the attention of their audience and increase engagement.

To give you a better idea of what we're talking about, we've pulled together a list of seven easy-to-use tools for creating more dynamic content.

7 Easy-to-Use Tools for Creating More Interactive Content

1) Guides.Co

Guides.co's mission is to "connect people who know with people who want to grow."

In an effort to accomplish this, they've created a platform for users to create and share interactive guides on whatever they're passionate about. The guides employ text, images, video, and embedded files to create a rich, participatory experience for the reader.

By including a comment field within the guide, readers can share feedback and ideas to fuel meaningful discussions. This feature aims to promote a sense of community and open up a line of communication between guide users and consumers.

2) ThingLink

ThingLink is an interactive media platform that allows users to bring their photos and videos to life through the inclusion of rich media links.

By adding multiple engagement points to a photo or video, users are able to create a unique experience that encourages the user to interact with the content for longer.

To demonstrate, take a look at how New York Magazine enables mouseover points to make additional content easily discoverable in their weekly roundup:

This approach is not only interesting, but it works to reduce high bounce rates by providing readers with multiple content options that are related to the content on that page.

3) Ceros

Ceros is a platform that provides users with the powerful tools they need to create high quality, interactive content without having to rely on developers.

Through the use of a drag-and-drop functionality, Ceros enables users to create six different types of content:

1. Shoppable Catalogs
2. Lookbooks
3. Magazines
4. Infographics
5. Nanosites
6. Ebooks

All Ceros designs start simple and come to life through the implementation of interactivity and animations. To get a better idea of what to expect, take a look at these screenshots from an ebook made with Ceros:

Through the incorporation of elements like video and interactive buttons, transforming a static piece of content into something more dynamic is quite simple.

Unlike a traditional ebook, an interactive approach makes it easier for you to guide your readers through the content in its entirety with the hopes that they walk away from it feeling more educated and sales-ready.

4) ContentTools

ContentTools is an interactive content platform aimed at helping businesses generate leads, drive website traffic, and increase social engagement.

Much like Ceros, ContentTools offers seven different types of interactive content:

1. Personality Quiz - Engage your audience with personality-style quizzes similar to those Buzzfeed and PlayBuzz publish.
2. Trivia - Challenge your audience with trivia-style quizzes.
3. Polls - Survey your audience with our opinion-based polling tool.
4. Ranker - Collect crowdsourced rankings from your audience on any topic from politics to entertainment.
5. Can You Guess - Challenge your audience with informative, numerical-based quizzes.
6. Caption This - Encourage your audience to caption an image with this interactive competition.
7. Contests - Collect valuable information about your audience with giveaways from your site.

Here's an example of what you can create with their Caption This tool:

Hosting a caption contest incentivizes your visitors to hand over a bit of contact information and establish and strengthen your relationship with them.

If you're thinking about implementing this, consider using a candid office shot to humanize your brand and invite more personal engagement.

5) Brackify

Want to facilitate both social sharing and repeat site visits?

Enter Brackify.

While it can initially be difficult to imagine anything other than sports tournaments taking shape within a bracket, marketers have found a number of innovative ways to use this interactive tool. Here's a look at a creative bracket that helped BostInno score some viral success:

Looking to crown Boston's hottest new startup, BostInno was able to drum up a bit of friendly competition by creating this highly-shareable bracket.

Before you get started with Brackify, it's important to note the difference between the two types of brackets -- Complete and Round By Round. While The Complete bracket allows users to fill out a bracket in its entirety with no round restrictions, The Round By Round bracket has specific start and end times for each round, meaning that users can only cast their vote when the round is active.

6) Zaption

Zaption is an interactive video tool designed to engage learners (of all types) by prompting them with clarifying questions throughout an educational video.

This is how it's typically formatted:

While this tool is geared toward teachers, it's perfect for anyone looking to provide and reinforce information and instruction.

This tool can be used as a great method of training. Whether you're looking to walk a colleague through onboarding a new software or easily explain a new marketing technique or approach, this type of video-based learning is designed to differentiate instruction and keep it interesting.

7) SnapApp

Looking to build a dialogue and drive more engagement for your brand? SnapApp is an interactive content platform that enables users to create and analyze nine different types of interactive content assets:

1. Assessments & Personality Tests
2. Calculators
3. Knowledge Tests & Quizzes
4. Polls & Surveys
5. Interactive White Paper
6. Interactive Infographic
7. Contests & Sweepstakes
8. Brackets
9. Galleries

Below is a compelling example of a SnapApp quiz created by Development Dimensions International (DDI):

This piece of content is effective for a couple of reasons. First, it helps DDI uncover insights regarding the participant's knowledge level, which can be used to create more relevant marketing experiences moving forward. Additionally, it creates a sense of competition, as the copy encourages participants to share their results on social to see how they stack up against others.

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8 Interesting Charts on How the Internet Is Changing

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.

This week, Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, released her annual Internet Trends report. It's the 20th edition in a series spanning back to 1994 -- the year Yahoo launched and three years before Google.com was registered.

This year, internet growth rates are slowing down, but the re-invention of how we use the internet is accelerating. For example, the report reveals how much mobile has been changing internet usage. The services we use to buy our homes, rent cars, order food, get a hotel room, and shop are inherently mobile.

In addition, she also highlighted how the internet has changed the way we work. Freelancers and on-demand workers are a growing segment of the workforce -- up to 34% -- and this flexible workforce has fueled the internet-based service economy. Etsy, Uber, and eBay provide a platform for a person to become a business.

The deck is an impressive 197 slides, and while the entire presentation is worth a read, we've selected the most interesting stats and charts that highlight how the internet is changing.

Overall Internet Usage Growth Is Slowing, But Mobile Video is Accelerating

Consumer internet usage growth rates have slowed down -- up 21% in 2014 versus an increase of 31% in 2012. This slow in growth is also reflected in mobile internet usage.

But global video usage rates continue to accelerate -- both for internet video and mobile video. Video accounts for 64% of internet traffic, and mobile video traffic accounts for 55% of all mobile traffic, which is an increase from 50% in 2012.

Mobile Usage Has Outpaced Desktop

Usage of mobile devices is increasing while desktop use remains stagnant. People now spend 2.8 hours accessing digital media using a mobile device, while only 2.4 hours a day using a desktop or laptop computer.

Ad Spending Doesn't Align With Media Consumption

The amount of time people spend consuming media to the advertising spend is disproportionate in some areas such as print, which has a ratio of 4% consumption time to 18% ad spend. On the other hand, 24% of media consumption is spent on mobile, but media spend only accounts for 8% of total internet ad spending.

Internet Ad Spend Is Down

As we saw in the above chart, mobile advertising is an opportunity brands need to take advantage of while the market is still maturing. Mobile ad spend saw 34% growth over the previous year, while desktop ad spend only grew by 11%. However, overall internet ad spend is declining.

Vertical Viewing Is In

Vertical viewing accounts for 29% of view time, up from 5% in 2010. This trend is a reflection of the rise in popularity of mobile video consumption on social platforms such as Snapchat. The ephemeral social sharing site has even asked advertisers to use vertical videos, as these are viewed to completion nine times more frequently than horizontal videos.

Visual Content Is King

Marketers looking to target and engage with millennials or Gen Zers and have not invested in visual -- either image- or video-based communication -- should pay attention to the below chart. Usage of Facebook and Twitter for those ages 12 to 24 has decreased, while usage has increased on platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and WhatsApp. In addition, teens value Instagram above all other social networks.

Pinterest Isn't Just for Women Planning Weddings

Pinterest is gaining traction with men. Pins related to cars and motorcycles saw a 118% growth rate, and men's fashion pins were up by 96%.

Industry-Specific Opportunities Exist

There are still sectors that are in their internet "infancy." Opportunities in the fields of education, healthcare, and government exist, and companies in these industries could reap the benefits of making more information and services available online.

View the full Internet Trends Report below:

2015 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Infographic: The Science of Brands on Instagram

No other social platform provides an experience as incredibly focused and engaging as Instagram. With just a bit of creativity and thoughtful measuring, you can make some Insta-magic for your brand. In this infographic, discover the trends behind the big-brand Instagram experience and learn how you can catapult your company to new heights.

Click on the infographic below to view a larger image:

Want to display this infographic on your site?

<b>++ Click Image to Enlarge ++</b><br /><a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-brands-on-instagram/?wide=1"><img src="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Science-of-Brands-on-Instagram.png" width="520"></a><br />Source: <a href="http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-brands-on-instagram/">The Science of Brands on Instagram (Infographic)</a>

Sources

• http://www.fastcompany.com/3029395/bottom-line/how-the-most-successful-brands-dominate-instagram-and-you-can-too
• http://list.totems.co/
• http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/report-brands-are-now-posting-more-instagram-facebook-163406
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/get-instagram-likes_n_6751614.html

HubSpot & Salesforce Sign a Partnership Pact Through 2020

I’m thrilled to announce that HubSpot has renewed our ISVForce relationship with Salesforce.com through 2020. This is great news for HubSpot, HubSpot’s customers, Salesforce, and Salesforce’s customers.

Nearly 20% of HubSpot marketing software customers use Salesforce.com’s CRM product. We have spent many many many calories over many many many years building a great integration experience for our joint customers, and we have over 500 5-star reviews on the Salesforce App Exchange to prove it. These customers, as well as future joint customers, will be able to continue to leverage this integration.

There are tens of thousands of Sidekick sales acceleration users who also enjoy Salesforce.com’s CRM product. Ditto there. They will continue to enjoy using the products together.

There are roughly 10,000 HubSpot marketing software customers who don’t use a CRM system yet. This will give them a choice of HubSpot’s CRM or Salesforce’s CRM, depending on the customer’s unique needs.

Both companies are opting for collaboration versus competition. Both companies are opting to give the customer choices. Both companies are solving for their customers. I think this type of deal is healthy for the market.

Personally, I gotta tip my cap to our friends at Salesforce. Our two companies have lots of areas where we are complimentary and a few areas where we compete. A lot of companies talk the partnership talk, but don’t walk the walk. This deal Salesforce struck with us puts them in the walking-the-walk partnership camp.

How to Choose the Right KPIs for Your Business

Whether your performance improvement goals are related to inbound marketing, sales, or any aspect of business for that matter, choosing the proper key performance indicators (KPIs) to focus on is the first step towards measurable improvement.

As they say, what get’s measured gets improved. If you can quantify your current performance you can then begin to measure how things are improving, or diminishing, over a period of time.

But how do you choose the right KPIs to focus on for you business?

The short answer is that it really depends. While there isn’t really a simple step-by-step process for choosing the proper KPIs, there are a number of things you should always take into consideration.

In this post we’ll walk you through some of the factors that will influence which KPIs you should focus on and help you hone in on the metrics that matter the most for your business.

Let’s get started.

Choose KPIs That Are Directly Related to Your Business Goals

KPIs are quantifiable measurements or data points used to gauge your company’s performance relative to some goal. For instance, a KPI could be related to your goal of increasing sales, improving the return on investment of your marketing efforts, or improving customer service.

Mark Hayes, Shopify’s Director of Communications, wrote a great post titled 32 Key Performance Indicators for Ecommerce. In the post Mark provides the following examples of common ecommerce goals and related KPIs.

Goal 1 – Boost sales 10% in the next quarter. KPIs include daily sales, conversion rate and site traffic

Goal 2 – Increase conversion rate 2% in the next year. KPIs include conversion rate, shopping cart abandonment rate, associated shipping rate trends, competitive price trends.

Goal 3 – Grow site traffic 20% in the next year. KPIs include site traffic, traffic sources, promotional click-through rates, social shares, bounce rates.

Goal 4 – Reduce customer service calls by half in the next 6 months. KPIs include service call satisfaction, identify of page visited immediately before the call, event that lead to the call.

As you can see, each of the potential KPIs listed in the four examples are directly related to the core business goal.

What are you company goals? Have you identified any major areas for improvement or optimization? What are the biggest priorities for your management team

Focus on a Few Key Metrics, Rather Than a Slew of Data Points

One of the great things about inbound marketing is that you can measure everything with very detailed metrics. Views, clicks, conversions, opens, sends, the list goes on. However, as you begin to identify KPIs for you business you should be aware that less is almost always more. Rather than choosing dozens of metrics to measure and report on you should focus on just a few key metrics.

Quite frankly, if you try and track too many KPIs, you might as well just not track anything at all.

As you can imagine, every company, industry and business model is very different so it is difficult to pinpoint an exact number for the amount of KPIs you should have. Although, based on our experience, in most cases you should aim to identify somewhere between four and ten KPIs.

Consider Your Company's Stage of Growth

Depending on the stage of your company (start up vs enterprise) certain metrics will be more important than others. Early stage companies typically focus on metrics related to business model validation while more established organizations focus on metrics like cost per acquisition and customer lifetime value.

Here are a few examples of potential key performance indicators for companies in various stages of growth:

Pre-Product Market Fit	Product Market Fit	Expansion
Qualitative feedback Customer interviews Awareness Stickiness	Monthly recurring revenue Renewals Churn Customer satisfaction	Cost per acquisition Average order size Lifetime value Number of customers acquired

Identify Both Lagging and Leading Performance Indicators

The difference between lagging and leading indicators is essentially knowing how you did, versus how you are doing. Leading indicators aren’t necessarily better than lagging indicators, or vice versa. You should just be aware of the differences between the two.

Lagging indicators measure an output of something that has already happened. Total sales last month, the number of new customers, or hours of professional services delivered are all examples of lagging indicators. These type of metrics are good for purely measuring results, as they solely focus on outputs.

On the other hand, leading indicators measure inputs, progress and your likelihood of achieving a goal in the future. These type of metrics serve as predictors of what’s to come. Website traffic, conversion rates, sales opportunity age and sales rep activity are just a few examples of leading indicators.

Traditionally most organizations have solely focused on lagging indicators. One of the main reasons for this is that lagging indicators tend to be easy to measure since the events have already happened. For instance, it is very easy to pull a report of the number of customer acquired last quarter.

But measuring what happen in the past can only be so helpful…

You can think of leading indicators as business drivers because they come before trends emerge, which can help you identify whether or not you are on track to reaching your goals. If you can identify which leading indicators will impact your future performance you will have a much better shot at success.

Understand That KPIs Are Different for Every Industry and Business Model

The KPIs that you choose will be greatly influenced by your organization's business model and the industry in which you operate. For example, a B2B software-as-a-service company might choose to focus on customer acquisition and churn, whereas a brick and mortar retail company might focus on sales per square foot or average customer spend.

Here are a few examples of some industry standard KPIs:

SaaS KPIs	Professional Service KPIs
Monthly recurring revenue Churn Cost per acquisition Average revenue per retainer Lifetime value	Bookings Utilization Backlog Revenue leakage (link) Effective billable rate
Online Media / Publishing KPIs	Retail KPIs
Unique visitors Page views Share ratio Social referral growth Time on site	Capital expenditure Customer satisfaction Sales per square foot Average customer spend Stock turnover

While you will most certainly want to consider industry standard KPIs, it is more important that you choose the KPIs that are relevant to your specific company and the goals you are working towards.

Key Takeaways

• Ensure your KPIs will accurately measure your progress towards overarching company goals
• Less is more - Choose somewhere between 4 and 10 KPIs to focus on
• Consider your company’s stage of growth - The importance of certain metrics will shift as your company’s priorities evolve
• Identify both lagging and leading performance indicators - It’s important to understand both what happened in the past and how you are progressing towards your future goals
• Reference industry KPIs but keep in mind that you should choose the KPIs that are most relevant for your specific situation and company

7 AdWords Alternatives That Failed, Except For One

You know all those blog posts about increasing AdWords conversion rates 572%, getting on Product Hunt 4 times in one day, and securing VC funding by hiring a sign spinner?

This isn’t one of them.

I had hopes of writing one, but what we did instead was a freaking mess.

Well, almost.

As a newborn AdWords focused agency, we wanted to use some other PPC channels to grow our email list and clientele.

Pretty ironic, right?

Now, you may be one of the very few advertisers who have plateaued their success on AdWords and just can’t squeeze any more profit out of the largest ad network in the world.

If so, you’re about as rare as the Taylor Swift “pegacorn.”

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Oct 31, 2014 at 4:49am PDT

For those of you who have no idea what a pegacorn is, it’s a pegasus and unicorn mix.

Yes, they are very rare indeed.

But this post isn’t about AdWords. It’s about the other avenues you can use to drive more leads, conversions, and sales to grow your business; hopefully, by an extra 572%.

The AdWords alternatives we’re going to cover today aren’t exactly search engines. In fact, they’re more like AdWords display network alternatives that get results through demographic targeting.

See, we didn’t want to use the alternatives that people have already talked about. We wanted to seek out some new ad channels that haven’t been written about that much.

Facebook was obvious, so we didn’t want to do that.

Bing Ads was obvious, so we crossed that one out.

In this post, we’re not going to just be looking at 7 AdWords alternatives, but what we did to fail, so you can learn from our mistakes.

Let’s get started.

Picking Our Lead Magnet

As with anything marketing, if your offer is crap, then no beautifully designed landing page can save you.

We knew we had to create a lead magnet that would get people excited, and if we’re smart, a lead magnet that hadn’t been created before.

Throughout my years of doing AdWords, I’ve always been asked the question: “What can we do to get more phone leads?”

Since there hasn’t been a lot written on the topic, I thought that was a brilliant idea.

So, we created a guide on how to generate more phone leads with AdWords and Conversion Rate Optimization.

It ended up being 60 pages long, with 32 different ideas on AdWords and conversion optimization.

So, once we had our guide done, we needed to create a landing page.

We studied other guide/ebook landing pages and also read up on Eric Sloan’s “8 Examples of What Not to Do On Your Ebook Landing Page“.

We eventually ended up with this masterpiece of a landing page: http://grow.klientboost.com/get-more-phone-leads/.

Finding a Partner and Upsetting a Few People

With the guide and landing page done, we knew we could make it even more successful if we found a bigger company/partner to help with the promotion.

Since the guide is about generating more phone leads, what better company than a call tracking analytics solution?

In the PPC industry, call tracking has become more and more popular in order to understand which keywords, ads, and placements are making the phone ring.

So, I did what anyone else would do, and got a little ahead of myself.

I started reaching out to all the well-known call tracking companies, at the same time.

It was a huge mistake.

Companies like CallRail, DialogTech (formerly IfByPhone), Invoca, CallTrackingMetrics, Marchex, CallSource, and Century Interactive all got an email from us with a custom made image like this:

Since we’re a small and new company, we didn’t think anyone would say yes.

But, everyone said yes.

We eventually looked at employee counts and funding numbers on CrunchBase to decide who we should partner with.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but we hit it off really well with Invoca and found out they were a nearby company based in Santa Barbara, CA. They also sport some serious clients (which we’ll talk about later).

With the guide done, the landing page done, and the partner done, it was on to the AdWords alternatives:

#1 – Reddit Ads

Reddit has a very engaged and smart community of visitors, but their ad platform is horrible.

Within it, you get to decide which subreddits you want to target (which are smaller, more niche community pages that revolve around certain topics).

For our guide, we decided to target the subreddits of /PPC and /AdWords, but quickly realized that all ad slots were filled for the next three months.

Since Reddit allows only one ad spot per subreddit, the space quickly gets crowded.

We opted for the subreddits of /Advertising and /AdOps.

The results we’re pretty bleak:

We got 43 visitors and 2 guide downloads for a total of $51.14. That’s a $25.57 CPA.

We would’ve spent more if we’d had the chance to target the subreddits that were more relevant to our guide, but it’s hard to do when Reddit doesn’t tell you which days are available or open to advertise.

Now, that doesn’t mean that Reddit ads won’t work for you.

There are some (although few) examples out there of people who’ve successfully used Reddit ads to drive sales and conversions. One who sticks out is Ryan Luedecke.

He catapulted his beef jerky business and made $2,200 in sales from a $400 investment.

The story got shared quite a bit, and after reading what he did, it became apparent that what we were doing with our guide might not ever work if we didn’t get in front of the right audience.

As I mentioned earlier, Redditors are some super clever folks. They can’t stand self-promotion. Reddit ads seem to work the best when they’re not ads at all, but actual helpful content.

We moved on to the next one:

#2 – Yahoo! Gemini Ads

Yahoo! Gemini is Yahoo!’s answer to native advertising.

We’ve had some luck with this platform for some of our clients, so we thought it would be a sure thing for us.

We got 281 visitors and 2 guide downloads for a total of $212.24. That’s a $106.12 CPA.

Within the Gemini platform, you can set your campaign around one of three goals:

• Visit my website
• Know my brand
• Download my app

We chose “Visit my website” and created an ad we wanted to run.

Then we got to choose the targeting method and opted for People interested in > Business Services > Business Services.

And just to make sure we had a little control, we threw in some keywords for people searching for:

So, what happened?

Yahoo! Gemini ads are not the most targeted ads and, just like Reddit Ads, seem to work best when they fit within the topics on the page being covered.

Obviously, the keyword intent from the Google AdWords search network isn’t the same as this platform’s.

But, with banner blindness doing nothing but increasing, native advertising like the Gemini platform is set to continue to see growth.

Here’s an example of what a Yahoo! Gemini ad looks like

The third time was the charm:

#3 – Twitter Ads

Okay, so we struck out twice, but we were only $263.38 in.

Next up was Twitter ads and, boy, we had a much better experience.

We got 297 visitors and 49 guide downloads for a total of $198.15. That’s a $4.04 CPA.

So, what happened?

What we found was that the Twitter audience was much more engaging and interested in the problem we were helping them solve.

We targeted followers of notable blogs like Unbounce, KISSmetrics, and competitor AdWords agencies. We found that most of the downloads came from other agencies, not client prospects.

So, even though we had a lower CPA, we couldn’t convert those acquisitions into customers, just maybe some new fans.

But, don’t let that stop you.

Twitter ads have been growing in popularity, and it’s a killer ad platform when you focus on leading your ads with education and value.

That’s a steady increase in interest

You’ll also find no shortage of case studies and in-depth posts on how to drive conversions with Twitter.

This is one of the better AdWords alternatives out there.

What was next?

#4 – BuySellAds

Okay, so we were beginning to see a trend as to why our guide wasn’t performing as well as we’d hoped (we’ll cover that at the end). But, that wasn’t going to stop us from continuing our experimentation.

Next up was the media buying platform of BuySellAds.

BuySellAds allows you to buy impressions on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) bidding basis from high-quality publisher sites that don’t want to be cheaper out from the Google AdSense network.

Since, at this point, we understood that most of our downloads came from marketing agency people, we thought the next perfect targeting would be the Search Engine Journal (SEJ).

We got 321 visitors and 2 guide downloads for a total of $240. That’s a $120 CPA.

It was far from our Twitter ads success earlier.

Here’s a look at the internal BuySellAds dashboard and the low click-through rate:

Now, the cool thing about BuySellAds is that you have a ton of options when it comes to “thought-leading” type of sites.

The downside is that you buy a high-priced, fixed number of impressions that usually work best with low friction/valuable content that gets people into your marketing funnel really early.

Most likely, those people are not in “ready-to-buy” mode.

Something to keep in mind as you’re paying via CPM is to select ad spots that are above the fold.

If not, you stand the chance of racking up your impressions with even fewer people actually seeing your ad.

#5 – StumbleUpon Ads

StumbleUpon is such a fun and awesome site for mindless swiping.

Kind of like Tinder, but for whatever topic you’re into.

The great thing about StumbleUpon ads is that you can really get some high volume visitors and, if you’re lucky, some great engagement.

We got 528 visitors and 5 guide downloads for a total of $100. That’s a $20 CPA.

But, we just didn’t see that engagement.

In fact, the average time on site from a StumbleUpon visit wasn’t even one second.

It was less than one second.

I didn’t even know Google Analytics could be that rude

Was it because our landing page was that boring or because the first impression was that bad?

Or, was it because we shouldn’t expect to use StumbleUpon ads as a conversion tool, but as more of a blog discovery tool, as this KISSmetrics article suggests.

#6 – LinkedIn

Okay, by this time, we had definitely realized that we might have picked a guide topic that was a little too niche.

But, to give it one last go, we headed over to LinkedIn and tried to target the people who would love more phone leads – sales people.

We got 22 visitors and 5 guide downloads for a total of $113.07. That’s a $22.61 CPA.

Okay, not that bad, but definitely not sustainable either.

Even though the campaign ran for only about a week, we saw decent CTRs of 0.521%, which is pretty high for LinkedIn. Still, it just didn’t make sense to keep running as the cost per click was around $7.54.

So, it was on to the best AdWords alternative of them all:

#7 – Partner Promotion

Remember that I mistakenly asked all the call tracking analytics companies to join forces with us at the same time? And that we ended up going with Invoca?

Well, not only did we create an awesome partnership that could continue to grow in the future, but Invoca sent out our 60-page guide to their entire email list.

Results?

We got 774 visitors and 343 guide downloads for a total of $0. That’s a $0 CPA.

Invoca sent almost 400 downloads to recipients who included marketing department people from companies like PayPal and Allstate Insurance. Those people got on our email lists and are still there, interacting with our emails and our blog posts.

We also secured a speaker for our #CRODay meetup that we held at our office in Costa Mesa, CA.

Who knows what the future will hold.

What We’d Do Differently Next Time

We quickly learned not to create a lead magnet that fits a narrow audience.

We could’ve created a much beefier guide on AdWords as a whole or some unknown landing page hacks that would appeal to a broader audience.

Instead, we took the route of specificity and didn’t get as many downloads as we had hoped.

Also, because we were so aggressive with so many different AdWords alternatives, we didn’t prepare to create additional unique ad copy or imagery to go with every channel.

I’m sure we could have gotten much better results through iterative testing and constant tweaking.

Conclusion

All together, we got 2266 visitors and 408 guide downloads for a total of $914.60. That’s a $2.24 CPA.

Since many people want to learn something brand new, make sure your content/guide tries to accomplish that, or paints old information in a different way.

Take these AdWords alternatives with a grain of salt and understand that each channel takes time to perfect.

Don’t test the depth of the river with two feet.

About the Author: Johnathan Dane is the founder of KlientBoost, a California based PPC agency that’s on a mission to grow companies. He’s been interviewed by Google and has a German Shorthaired Pointer named Tanner. Connect with him on Twitter.