Screenwriting Techniques for Marketers: Defining Your Customer’s Problem

Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better. For the past ten years, I’ve been using Hollywood screenwriting techniques to help companies create powerful marketing stories. I’ve seen firsthand how powerful storytelling can be in transforming a company’s messaging. Before we keep…

6 marketing takeaways from Longlegs’ campaign of terror

Mid-June, 2024. A full page of indecipherable glyphs runs in The Seattle Times, with the only clue a typewritten-style note at the bottom: “Printed at the request of LONGLEGS.” A week later, a user named Mr_Downstairs leaves strings of glyphs in the comments on Letterboxd. Image Source Billboards pop up; a partially obscured face peers…

Wearing the costume

There’s a huge difference between carrying a stethoscope and being a doctor. And being a clown requires far more than getting a clown suit. Entrepreneurs with business cards, slick websites and mission statements are confused. That’s not the hard part. If the costume puts you in the right frame of mind, that’s great. But the…

Running a Website Audit? I Talked to SEO Pros to Help You Make the Most of It

As a content marketer, a website audit is vital to my work. An analogy I like to use is that optimizing an existing website for search engines without conducting a thorough audit is akin to steering a boat without a rudder. It’s directionless, at the mercy of the wind and waves (or in this case,…

40 Best Buyer Persona Questions I’d Ask During Customer Interviews

Good marketing is always about the customers, period. That’s the most important lesson I’ve learned from all my wins and losses as a marketer. To launch successful marketing campaigns, you must know every detail about your audience — their goals, aspirations, pain points, and more. And building buyer personas is a good place to start….

The run-on sentence

Periods were an extraordinary invention. It took thousands of years of writing before we settled on this simple convention. The most direct way to improve your writing is to make your sentences shorter. I was reading a magazine article yesterday and was rapidly losing interest. The topic appealed to me, but I couldn’t keep reading….