Internal HubSpot research has found that companies that blog at least 15 times each month see 5 times more traffic than those that don’t. Some MIT smarties studied HubSpot’s ROI specifically and found that users generated 4.1 times more visitors and 3 times as many leads per month after using HubSpot for a year.

That’s real, impactful return on your marketing efforts. The reality of these positive numbers makes sense given the operating premise of inbound marketing. Namely, the old, interruptive “Buy me now!” approaches don’t work today.  The number of information channels never stops growing and nobody gets to enjoy a captive audience anymore.

Inbound marketing simply reflects the fact that in today’s market place, the consumer (constituent, donor, or member) is in the power position. If an organization, nonprofit, or otherwise, wants people’s dollars or loyalty, it first has to earn their attention. That’s why inbound marketing is all about building trust and authority with people through content.

Once becoming a trusted authority that holds the right people’s attention, an organization can then move those people to respond positively to the larger asks, such as making the commitment to become a member.

For a review of the basics on how inbound marketing works for nonprofits, check out our free crash course here >>

Here’s the rub. Becoming a trusted authority doesn’t happen with one banner ad or annual report. Succeeding with inbound marketing takes consistent effort over the long haul. 

That’s why the answer to the question when should your organization start inbound marketing is “now.” Inbound really is the only marketing that’s proven to be cost-effective, yet it takes time to see results. 

Forget About Going “Viral”

Even people who aren’t familiar with a term like “inbound marketing” know about going viral. If your goal with inbound marketing is “to go viral,” you’re doing it wrong. Inbound marketing is a long-haul proposition that requires investing time and effort.

Your organization isn’t going to get a reputation for being as informative, helpful, and reliable overnight. You have to work at it. 

Consider the first phase in inbound marketing methodology – attracting traffic and prospects. The inbound tactics to attract your ideal prospects include: boosting traffic to your website via SEO-optimized pages and blogs, and earning high quality backlinks. Strong SEO rankings and authoritative backlinks only come with consistently publishing relevant content that’s irresistible to your market.

Getting those backlinks that push your content up in the SEO rankings takes time. They each feed off each other. When you regularly publish on-point content, it starts getting shared, which can attract backlinks. Google takes more backlinks to content as an indicator of high authority, so ranks it higher.

Of course, your great content will only get shared by the organic traffic if it gets found in the first place. It takes time to see whether your current SEO strategy is bringing in the traffic you need. Everyone has to tweak their SEO based on actual results to improve traffic flow. That takes time as well.

The good news is that both work in a virtuous cycle of refined SEO strategies bringing in more organic traffic, which gets shared and attracts backlinks, which in turn increases the authority of your website with Google, bringing in more organic traffic. But if you want to get into this cycle, you have to make the first move. 

So if you have a major membership drive or other campaign scheduled for six months from now – get your blog and inbound marketing strategy rolling now. Any delay undermines your potential.

Inbound is an Investment with Long Term Dividends

Now we’ve been focusing on the long-term investment you need to make with inbound marketing to reap its highest rewards. But understand a major reason why inbound has such great opportunity is because you aren’t simply developing marketing collateral – you’re developing marketing assets. Assets that can attract eyeballs and hearts towards your organization well after they’re originally published. 

HubSpot’s research into our own blog performance showed that 76% of our monthly blog views and 92% of our monthly blog leads came from posts at least one month old. That means the more we post, the more lead potential we realize. Blog posts are (a bit) like wine… they age well.

But we also found that with some tweaking, we can get old blog posts working even better. We refreshed some of our highest converting blog posts with updated keywords based on more recent research, and updating the content to be more accurate and comprehensive. Once we did that, the traffic and leads coming off these refreshed posts doubled.

That’s right. Older content that already rocked got a refresh and started rocking even harder. Yet for this to work, you need enough content already on your site that gives you the information and insight on how to optimize it effectively, at least a year’s worth.

A similar approach can work for all sorts of inbound content. Once you create an in-depth report as gated content, you can regularly update it, run a new angle promotion campaign, refresh its landing page, or add a download call-to-action for it on more blog posts.

After you create a high quality inbound asset, you always have it to be used in all sorts of ways to drive prospects into and through your funnel. But as with all inbound tactics, it takes time. You need a certain library of content assets already created before you can start maximizing the return they provide you.

Start Building Your Organization’s Asset Portfolio Today

I always hate those charts that show how much you’d have in savings if only you started saving five years ago or two years ago, and so on. I hate them because I know they’re right.

It’s the same with inbound marketing. The sooner you start, the sooner your organization will reap the rewards. And the sooner you’ll get to that tipping point where your results seem to accelerate even faster now that you’ve built successful workflows and campaigns, online authority, and a growing library of content assets. 

Getting started is easier than you think. First, take a deep dive to understand the inbound marketing methodology. After you learn the framework and processes that drive inbound marketing success, you can launch your own plans for inbound success. Your timing will never be better.

One of the barriers to getting your work read and widely shared in the age of information overload is time. With research revealing that 55% of pageviews are less than 15 seconds in duration, your content needs to provide value and pique interest quickly to align with your readers’ behavior.

This doesn’t mean that you should stop producing long-form content all together. However, it does task you with the challenge of creating more skimmable content that can be read and understood without a ton of effort.

What does skimmable content look like? While there are many ways you can format your long-form content to make it more digestible, we’ve put together a list of sites that are doing a particularly good job of adapting their content for skim-readers.

TL;DR: Your readers don’t have enough time to fully read your long-form blog content. Use the strategies below to make your content more skim-friendly.

13 Examples of Super Skimmable Content

1) DigiDay

Last year, DigiDay introduced a TL;DR (“Too Long; Didn’t Read”) button for their articles. When TL;DR mode is turned on, long-form articles transform into shorter paragraphs with the article’s main points for maximum skimmability.

Pro Tip: If you can’t create a TL;DR button on your own site, consider writing an explainer paragraph like DigiDay’s that your readers can check out without having to read or skim your entire article.

2) theSkimm

When it comes to skimmable content, there’s nothing better than the aptly named newsletter: theSkimm.

The folks at theSkimm curate a newsletter of top stories Monday through Friday, accompanied by a brief summary of each headline. The newsletter is sent out before 8:00 a.m. EST with the intent of allowing readers to skim the news prior to arriving at work. And their approach is working: theSkimm grew its readership to 3.5 million in under two years.

But email isn’t all they offer. In fact, theSkimm’s website is also home to a series of boiled down news stories known as Skimm Guides, like this one on the Olympics:

Sliced up into a series of digestible chunks, these guides cover everything you need to know about a specific topic in a way that’s easy to consume and understand.

Pro Tip: Roundups rock. They’re a great opportunity to beef up your email marketing strategy for subscribers or to publish a highly valuable, skimmable piece to draw more readers to your site.

3) CNN.com

Most of CNN’s online stories are published with a ‘Story Highlights’ section at the top of each article to allow readers to glean the biggest points without having to scroll through the entire piece. Additionally, their articles are shared with a video or photo explainer from CNN News, which is another option for ease of understanding.

Pro Tip: Create a callout box at the beginning of your article with its main points. Try linking them to the different sections of your article to encourage reading the entire piece.

4) Inc.

When Inc. publishes articles about companies that are taking part in technology innovation, the article leads off with a ‘Company Profile’ section so readers can understand the need-to-know information about the company and skip to the bottom to learn the big takeaways.

Inc. also uses slideshows in articles, which use engaging visuals and short explainers to help readers skim and distill the most important points:

Pro Tip: Make a section at the beginning of the article with bulleted who, what, when, where, and why details about your story’s subject to provide readers context before they dive into the rest of your piece.

5) The Week

Every day of the week, The Week (get it?) publishes “5 Things You Need to Know,” a roundup of political news stories with explainer paragraphs in addition to long-form news content. Readers can check it out on their site, or subscribe to receive it via email.

They also feature a “Speed Reads” section for readers who are on the go:

Pro Tip: Send a regular roundup of your strongest articles with a short explainer for readers who might have missed them when they were first published.

6) Bustle

Bustle writes lifestyle articles in formats that allow for skimmability. By using headers and numbered lists in their content, they break up long-form content in a way that allows readers to quickly scan its main points.

Pro Tip: Large pieces of text can benefit from headers, numbers, and bulleting. Formatting will allow you to draw greater attention to your main points and will allow your reader to skim more easily.

7) Newser

Newser’s slogan is “Read Less, Know More,” and their content’s skimmability achieves that mission. Their articles consist of short explainer paragraphs with links to longer original sources. Newser also uses subheadlines very strategically to drive home the main takeaways from their content.

Pro Tip: Try linking out to your sources and condensing information you’re citing from them in your actual article. You’ll shorten your article while still providing additional information and value to your readers.

8) The Daily Beast

The Daily Beast has a feature that allows readers to visualize the progress they’ve made while reading an article. It doesn’t necessarily make the articles faster reads, but it allows the reader to see how they’ve progressed if they’re considering navigating away from the page before reaching the conclusion.

Pro Tip: Add language throughout your post that helps to set the reader’s expectations — whether that be a helpful nudge like, “Keep reading to learn more about XYZ,” or something simple like, “We’ll cover XYZ in more detail in the final section.” Additionally, if your publication can implement a progress bar, be sure to analyze that information to determine where readers are dropping off to inform your future strategy.

9) Circa News

Circa is a news aggregator devoted to speed reading. Their articles take shape with the help of curated paragraph explainers, tweets, and poll results to create a stream of content on a specific topic or story that can be easily skimmed or clicked on for more information.

Pro Tip: Don’t be afraid to pull in curated visuals — charts, tweets, videos, and so on — to help say more with less.

10) The Verge

The Verge has an entire TL;DR section of its website for readers who already know that they want to get the information quickly and easily. They position it as its own section on their homepage, like a column, with bright colors to attract more readers.

The articles feature big, bold quotes and lots of visuals to make it easy to work through, without sacrificing value.

Pro Tip: If you organize your blog by categories, create one category for quick reads so your visitors can easily identify pieces to skim and pieces to close read.

11) Medium

Medium has a highlighting feature that allows readers to highlight key phrases in the articles they read, and see which phrases have been highlighted by other readers. This feature allows for skim-reading in a unique and crowdsourced way, and makes it easy for visitors to see what other readers have found interesting.

Pro Tip: Highlight or type in bold key sentences in your article to signal to skim-readers where they should be close reading.

12) The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times publishes an Essential California roundup of local news each week featuring short blurbs about news stories in the area and links to the full articles already written about them.

Pro Tip: Do an article roundup featuring your top articles or based on another theme to encourage skimming.

13) The Great Discontent

The Great Discontent publishes highly skimmable interviews by incorporating introductory sections, images and illustrations, and blocked quotes to break up large chunks of text in visually interesting and reader-friendly ways.

Pro Tip: Images and coded blockquotes or callout boxes can break up your text to highlight must-read sections for your skim-readers.

Now that you’ve learned how to make your long-form content format more skim-friendly, learn some specific strategies for writing more concisely in your next blog post.

What strategies do you use to make your content more readable? Share with us in the comments below!

Imagine you’ve been tasked with spinning plates on sticks while also hula-hooping on a balance beam.

That’s kind of what being a project manager is like.

With so many varied responsibilities, demands, and expectations, not everyone is cut out for the job. Finding a project manager who fits your unique needs can be a real challenge, and it’s difficult to nail down exactly what qualities you should be keeping an eye out for — or how to test for these.

We’ve compiled a list of interview questions that can help you identify the right leader for your next project, and we’ve given you some insight into what to look for in a good response. Whether you’re hiring internally or recruiting outside of your company, these questions can help you identify a good hire. 

9 Interview Questions for Project Managers

1) How do you build consensus on a conflicted team?

One of a project manager’s core responsibilities is managing groups of people. And where there are people, there are conflicts.

A good project manager knows that some conflict is inevitable — and even healthy — on a project team. Avoiding or glossing over conflicts that arise can be detrimental to the project’s objectives and can actually exacerbate underlying issues, causing them to bubble up and wreak havoc later down the line.

The ideal candidate will understand that each conflict is nuanced and unique, and she won’t try to approach each one with a cookie-cutter solution. Having some knowledge of conflict resolution techniques is great, but project managers need to be able to adapt to the needs of their individual team members and the greater company culture, particularly in high-stress situations. Look for a candidate who doesn’t fall back on textbook frameworks or inflexible methods.

2) What was the outcome of your last project?

This question is less about whether or not her last project was a success, and more about what she took away from the experience. She should be able to evaluate the success or failure of a project, determine what precise steps led to that conclusion, and take steps in the future to improve.

If the project ended well, what exactly contributed to that success? Look for a candidate who is able to find learning experiences even when a project’s end result is successful. Just because the project went well, doesn’t mean there isn’t anything that could have gone better.

If the project didn’t go as planned, where does she think it went wrong? What changes does she wish she could make in hindsight? You want to see candidates who have the ability to identify issues post-mortem so that they can recognize them if they arise on a future project.

3) When every task is urgent, how do you determine what to prioritize?

With all the intricate details and moving parts that go into a project, it’s easy to get bogged down and overwhelmed. But a strong project manager possesses discerning sifting abilities, enabling her to identify the most important components of a project and filter out the static noise.

Deciding which areas of a project require the most resources is a tough call, especially when every single component seems like it should be the #1 priority. Your candidate should be able to comfortably convert a tangled web of responsibilities into an organized hierarchy of action items, and follow through on all the tasks.

4) How will you gain and keep the support of your project sponsors?

Building and maintaining support for your project is absolutely imperative, and losing that support is essentially a kiss of death. If your sponsors aren’t able to see the definitive purpose of your work, their support will rapidly dry up — along with any hope of completing the project.

Project managers are responsible for managing these upwards relationships, ensuring that sponsors understand the value of the project as it progresses. Seek out a project manager who exhibits strong negotiation skills and has a history of building strong relationships with her colleagues.

5) How do you turn around a project that isn’t going as planned?

Anyone who has ever worked on a project knows this to be true: Things don’t always work out as you originally intended. From the kindergarten classroom to the corporate boardroom, all projects are vulnerable to the unexpected.

What really matters is how a project manager deals with whatever gets thrown at her. The ability to re-evaluate and re-prioritize as a project progresses is a crucial skill, but it’s also important to keep up the team’s overall morale. Find a project manager who isn’t afraid to change course when the waters get rough and who can keep the team energized even when things aren’t looking so great.

6) How do you handle an under-performing team member?

One of the many hats a project manager wears is the one of head coach. She’s responsible for the training, ongoing development, and motivation of all her team members. If someone on the team is under-performing, it’s her job to figure out the best method to help them get back on track.

Working around a team member’s slack or even replacing that team member shouldn’t be the first answer, and acting rashly can deal an unrecoverable blow to team morale. Look for a candidate who understands the importance of having the entire team working at maximum capacity and who is committed to helping her team members mature and thrive.

7) How would you characterize your communication style with your team?

Being a strong communicator means being self-aware about your own communication style. There isn’t a single ideal style that all project managers should have, but they should be hyper-aware of how their communication methods affect those around them.

If a candidate is unable to clearly characterize her own communication style, it indicates that she may not have an adequate grasp on how she’s perceived by others. Possessing an awareness of how you communicate enables you to navigate difficult conversations as they emerge, and project managers need to be able to know where they stand.

8) How do you evaluate whether or not the team is on track?

Being a project manager requires a lot of balance. The person needs to be hands-on enough to check in with team members at regular intervals and hands-off enough to avoid over-scheduling extraneous meetings that can eat into the team’s precious time. She can’t let any small detail slip under the radar, but she also has to remain completely focused on the end result. And most importantly, she needs to monitor the progress of delegated responsibilities without micro-managing.

Find a project manager who can keep the team focused on a task-by-task basis and continually re-affirm the project’s main objectives. If a project manager thinks that the only way to keep the team on track is to constantly hover over everyone’s shoulders, she probably isn’t a good fit for the job.

9) Have you worked on a project in our field before?

In addition to the extensive list of organization, communication, and leadership skills a good candidate must posses, a project manager also needs to have some solid expertise in your field. This is more relevant for external hires, but it’s important to ensure that internal hires have sufficient knowledge of the project’s needs as well.

Generic skills and experience may seem adequate at first, but down the line they could lead to problematic gaps in understanding and contribute to major missteps. Make sure that your candidate has more than a basic understanding of your company and field. Otherwise, they could fall behind and steer the project in the wrong direction.

Every company has competitors. In fact, a competitive marketplace is a critical component of our free enterprise system, driving our economy, innovation and the continuous cycle of ever improving quality of products and services. 

But do you really know how your company compares to your competitors?

Traditional competitive analyses are applied from either a business plan standpoint or as a component of the annual marketing plan, and they tend to focus primarily on areas such as; Researching your competitors’ corporation, determining your competitors’ goals and objectives, identifying your competitors’ strategies (product, pricing, positioning and place), and conducting a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats).

While there are countless variations of the traditional competitive analysis, it typically lacks a clear assessment from a digital inbound marketing perspective. Companies tend to know their competitors based upon who they compete with on the street, in their local marketplace, or based upon the sales opportunities of what they have won or lost.

Little awareness or recognition is given to their online competitors.

Why is this so important? Consider this:

• 97% of consumers now use online media when researching products and services in their local market¹
• 84% of buyers engage in online information consumption and education²
• By a factor of 3 to 1, B2B buyers say that gathering information online on their own is superior to interacting with a sales representative.³
• 70% – 90% of the buyers journey is complete before they contact a sales representative ⁴

So let’s review the stages of a person’s buyer’s journey to fully understand where we can affect their buying decision.

Awareness: Your potential client becomes aware that they have a challenge that needs to be solved. This is where you want to attract them with relevant content for their challenge through blog articles, web pages, and social media.

Consideration: At this stage your potential client is comparing different companies and their ability to solve his or her challenge. You need to have valuable content offers with premium content that proves your expertise in solving their problems.

Decision: At this point you need to close them by convincing them that you are exactly what they need. You can help do this through trial offers, consultations, first-time discounts, etc.

It’s important to understand that you have to compete for the mindshare of your ideal buyer while they are in their awareness and consideration stages of their evaluation journey.

But, companies no longer control the selling process. Buyers now control the selling process.

So, the most successful competitors you will face are online providing your ideal buyer with the information they seek and consume throughout their decision-making process. Therefore, your company website must become the hub of your marketing efforts and the key to creating more opportunities for your sales team.

That means that you need to understand how well your competitors are doing with their online efforts to attract and convert your ideal buyer. It also means you need to know how you compare against them.

With that in mind, here are 4 important steps you need to take to conduct an inbound marketing competitive analysis on your top online competitors:

1) Identify Your Top Online Competitors

You need to expand your view of your competitors to include those who are ranking on page 1 in the search engine results pages (SERP) for the most relevant keywords to your business. Search engines, and increasingly social media, are where your buyers go to learn and educate themselves on how to solve their challenges, learn about their options, and determine which company or companies they are going to engage with when making a final decision.

Since Google controls about 85% of all search traffic, we recommend using Google to evaluate your competitors’ websites, blog articles, social media articles, press releases, etc. that rank on page 1 of the search results for your top keywords. The companies that you see ranked on page 1 are your primary competitors. They are competing for the mindshare of your ideal buyer who is seeking and consuming information as part of the awareness and consideration stage of their buyer’s journey.

So, your competitive analysis needs to include a sample of companies that consistently rank in the top search results for the most relevant keywords your ideal buyer uses to research information related to:

• Products and services that you provide
• Problems and challenges that your ideal buyer typically experiences
• Goals, objectives and opportunities that your ideal buyer seeks to achieve or accomplish

Identify your top 4 – 10 competitors and their website addresses. If your company has different lines of business you may want to identify the top 4 competitors for each line of business as well.

2) Assess Your Ability to Attract Your Ideal Buyers

Your ideal buyer typically has a trigger event that drives them to clearly identify a challenge to overcome or a goal to achieve. This trigger happens in your buyer’s awareness stage of their buyer’s journey.

Consider this: 78% of consumers believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them…⁵

It is in this initial awareness stage that your buyer will typically do a search to identify sources that will help them better solve their challenges and related issues. And it is during this awareness stage that you are competing to make sure your buyer is aware of your company. You are competing to position yourself through your custom content as a relevant source that can help them overcome their challenge.

The two essential factors to evaluate in your competitors’ websites during this stage include:

Website Strength Evaluation

That includes a website link analysis, mobile optimization, page loading speed test, and social media reach. The results of this analysis allows you to quantify where you stand against your competition in factors that significantly influence your website’s ability to attract visitors while they are in their Awareness Stage of their evaluation journey.

Answer questions such as how many backlinks do my competitors have, from how many different domains, and are any of them government or education websites? Inbound links are a key component of Google’s assessment of your website’s authority and popularity.

Content Evaluation 

That identifies the quantity and quality of the content assets your competitors have that are influential in attracting your ideal buyers to their website through search engines and social media. These content types include website pages, blog articles, social media posts, and online press releases. You need to have an understanding of both the quantity and quality of these content types. 

It’s important to know if your 30-page website is trying to compete against competitors who have websites with 75, 100, or 125 website pages. You need to know how many pages, blog articles, and social media posts your competitors are publishing and how often are they publishing. These content types are key drivers in generating inbound traffic from your buyers.

3) Assess Your Ability to Convert Website Visitors to Leads

Approximately 96% of your website visitors are not ready to buy.⁶ Instead, they are actively looking for high value content that will give them the information they need to help solve their problem. At this point they are still in their consideration Stage.

You need to evaluate how well your competitors are positioned to covert website visitors to leads or customers, and how that compares to how well you are positioned on your website. If all you have is a Contact Us page and a telephone number, then you are missing critical content assets that can convert more of your website visitors to leads.  

Missing critical content results in missed opportunities. Missed opportunities leads to your competitors winning over your potential customers.

Michael McMillan said, “For every problem, there exists a solution…and at the very least…an opportunity.” Don’t miss that opportunity. Provide a solution.

The key elements needed on your website to convert website visitors to leads are:

A Strong and Clear Value Proposition 

That is concise, compelling, noticeably positioned, communicates your unique selling proposition and quickly answers the question of “why should I choose you.”

Compelling Calls-to-Action (CTAs) 

That are noticeable and prompts your visitors to take an action. Your CTAs will normally be linked to a specific page (such as a landing page) that provides more detailed information about an offer. CTAs should be evident on your website pages, in your content offers, emails and blog posts.

Persuasive Landing Pages 

That communicate the value of an offer to your ideal buyer. Landing pages typically have a form to collect some information from the visitor in order to receive the offer. This is where most of the magic happens when converting website visitors into leads.

Forms 

That are used to acquire information from your visitor in return for providing high-value content offers, assessments, trial offers, consulting, etc. Typically, at a minimum the forms include acquiring the first name, last name and email address of the person requesting the offer. This information is then stored in a contact database and used for email follow-ups.

High-Value Content Offers

Such as whitepapers, case studies, eBooks, buyer guides, videos, webinars, podcasts, infographics, use cases, kits, presentation decks, etc. should be made available to your visitors to help position you as the best company and resource to solve their challenge.

Content offers are a very important component of your lead generation efforts. Assessing your competitors’ content offers is extremely important to better understand their lead generation capabilities that lead to more sales opportunities. The more content they are providing compared to you, the more problems they are solving for your potential customers.

Email signups

Such as subscribing to eNewsletters, alerts, notices and promotional offers should also be evaluated, as they can be an easy way to stay connected to your target buyers. This is one of the easiest ways to nurture your leads into customers and to keep a connection with your current and returning customers.

Analyzing what your competitors are doing across all of these elements will give you a current assessment on how you compare with them in lead generation capabilities. It will identify key strengths and weaknesses of how you compare against your competition. You will also find new opportunities on how to improve your lead generation efforts.

Other items to analyze include:

A Content Audit

Where you evaluate the content on your competitors’ websites. Identify the different content types, the frequency of their publishing and the quality of the content being provided. It can also be useful in learning more about the topics and subject matter in which they are positioning themselves as an industry thought leader.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 

An assessment where you can assess the effectiveness of their SEO efforts. Areas of assessment include page title, URL architecture, header tags, image alt text, internal linking and content length. These are often overlooked details that effect your ranking in search engines.

4) Identify Areas for Improvement

The primary objective of this inbound marketing competitive analysis is to determine how you compare against your competition and identify the key areas where you need to improve your ability to attract more of your ideal buyers and convert them into leads for your sales team. Properly executed Inbound Marketing tactics are 10 times more effective for lead conversion compared to outbound methods.⁷

You may find that you need to create and publish more blog articles and social media posts to drive more of your target audience to your website. Companies that blog 15+ times per month generate 5x more website traffic than companies that don’t blog.⁸

Don’t think you have the time or resources to blog 15 times per month? No problem. Check this out. B2B Companies that blog only 1-2 times per month generate up to 70% more leads than those that don’t.⁹

You may find that you need to create more CTAs and Landing Pages tailored to your different buyer personas to help generate more leads, as companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7x more leads than those with fewer than 10.¹⁰

We recommend that you perform an inbound marketing competitive analysis on at least an annual basis and ideally on a quarterly or semi-annual basis.

A Few Eye-Opening Stats From Real Competitive Analyses

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the statistics various companies found out when we conducted a competitive analysis for them.

• 83% of the companies who requested a competitive analysis ranked last overall compared to their competitors. Don’t leave your company’s performance in question. In this case ignorance is not bliss.
• 0% of the Construction companies we have analyzed had a blog. Blogging is one of the best ways to increase your website traffic.
• 80% of the Engineering companies we have analyzed did not provide content offers. Content offers can be the highest-valued content on a website for your potential customers.
• 80% of the Solar companies we have compared did not have email signups, which is one of the key drivers for lead nurturing.
• Only 25% of the Telecommunications companies we have compared engaged in some form of marketing automation. Marketing automation helps qualify leads faster and more efficiently and provides an all-in-one platform to market your company in the digital world.

Want to know how you stack up against your competition? Don’t do your digital marketing in the dark any longer.

Get your Inbound Marketing Competitive Analysis now and learn more about how to beat your competition.

 

^[1] BIA/Kelsey

^[2] Google ZMOT

^[3] Forrester

^[4]Forrester

^[5] McMurry/TMG

^[6] Kissmetrics

^[7] Gartner

^[8]HubSpot

^[9] Business2Community

^[10]HubSpot

 

Businesses of all sizes struggle with offering free shipping. Yet, 80% of U.S. shoppers cite shipping cost and speed of delivery as a heavily influential factor in if they buy a product from certain brand. Free shipping can, then, increase conversion rates, and give your brand the leg up it needs to close more sales and win more customers for the long haul.

Of course, that is, if you can make free shipping sustainable –– and not many can. Even Amazon struggles with free shipping profitability, and –– not to point fingers –– but they started this whole free shipping frenzy!

Know this though: free shipping isn’t the only shipping trick you should have up your sleeve. And, free shipping isn’t the right choice for every single brand. It depends on what you are selling, where you are selling it and to whom you are selling it.

That said, here’s a handy chart to help you determine the best shipping strategy for your brand. Shipping shouldn’t be a drain on your revenue, nor a reason why customers aren’t checking out. There’s a balance. Here’s how to find it.

How many of you out there wrestle with the urge to work outside of normal working hours?

If you have a hard time taking a break from work to the point where your physical and mental health are on the decline, it’s very possible you’re actually addicted to work. And you wouldn’t be alone: 27% of workers claim to be workaholics, and an estimated 10% might be clinically considered work addicts.

Working too much might not sound like a serious problem. In fact, nowadays, complaining about how much work you have has become a mark of social status for some people. But letting your job take over your life can have serious health repercussions — not to mention hurt your relationships with others.

Thankfully, there are things you can do to break your work addiction if it’s becoming a problem, like asking your friends and colleagues to keep you accountable, practicing mindfulness, and redefining what “success” means to you.

So, are you addicted to work? Quiz yourself using the flowchart below from The Business Backer. If it looks like you’re addicted to work or are at risk from becoming addicted, then keep reading for helpful tips on taking control and learning to live a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

Ah, the job search.

Some refer to it as a full-time job in itself, others compare it to dating, and several cats over at BuzzFeed think it just plain sucks. But it doesn’t have to be that way …

When you’re applying for a job, you’re typically asked to submit a resume and cover letter. Maybe your LinkedIn profile. But there are better ways to stand out against your competition, and building a personal website is one of them.

A personal website can serve different goals, but perhaps what it does best is provide you with an opportunity to tell your story. And with 53% of employers reporting that the resume alone did not provide enough information to determine if the candidate would be a good fit, that storytelling element can really help to improve your odds.

If you’re thinking about creating a personal website of your very own, check out the examples below that hit the nail on the head.

18 of the Best Personal Websites We’ve Ever Seen

Resumes

Whether you create a single-page site or a larger portfolio, the web resume serves as a more personalized option for sharing information and demonstrating your technological skills — and it can be used by all types of job seekers.

Even if you have very little work experience, you can leverage a website to build a better picture of your capabilities and yourself as a candidate, while leaning on your traditional resume to provide the basic background information.

1) Gary Sheng

Unlike a standard resume document, Sheng’s website makes it easy for him to include logos and clickable links that allow his software engineering and web development skills to shine.

We love that visitors can choose to scroll down his page to view all of the website’s categories (“About Me,” “My Passion,” etc.), or jump to a specific page using the top navigation.

The “My System” section reads like a company mission statement, and this personal touch helps humanize his work and make him more memorable.

2) Raf Delorez

Delorez’s web resume is modern, cool, and informative. It shows off his personality, branding, and developing skills in a way that’s still very simple and clear. Not to mention, his use of color and saturation in his photo puts a face to his name in an eye-catching way.

Want to get in touch with Delorez? Simply click the CTA located under his brief bio to open up an email that’s pre-addressed directly to him. Or select one of the social media icons to connect with him on platforms like Twitter — where his cover photo happens to seamlessly align with the branding of his website. Well played, Delorez.

3) Brandon Johnson

Johnson’s incredible resume must be seen to be believed. Beautiful images of planets help to compliment his planetary science background, and animations make his resume more of an experience than a document.

In terms of design, the textured, multi-layered background adds greater depth to the two-dimensional page in a way that evokes feelings of space and the planetary systems, which Johnson’s work focuses on.

As an added bonus, Johnson managed to squeeze in some witty “Easter eggs,” like this message that appears when you try to select the “OFF” button that appears under the section on hyrdrocode:

4) Quinton Harris

Harris’ resume uses photos to tell his personal story — and it reads kind of like a cool, digital scrapbook. It covers all the bases of a resume — and then some — by discussing his educational background, work experience, and skills in a highly visual way.

Not to mention, the copy is fantastic. It’s clear that Harris took the time to carefully choose the right words to describe each step of his personal and professional journey. For example, the section on storytelling reads:

NYC, my new home, is filled with the necessary secrets to not only propel my craft forward, but my identity as an artist. With every lens snapped and every pixel laid, I am becoming me.

5) Sean Halpin

Halpin’s resume is short, sweet, and to the point, which is authentic to his voice and personal branding outlined on the site. The white space allows his designs and copy to pop and command the reader’s attention, which helps to improve readability — especially on mobile devices:

Best Practices for Resume Websites

1. Code your resume so it can be crawled by search engines.
2. Offer a button to download your resume in PDF so the hiring manager can add it to your file.
3. Keep branding consistent between the website and document versions: Use similar fonts, colors, and images so you’re easy to recognize.
4. Be creative and authentic to yourself. Think about the colors, images, and media you want to be a part of your story that you couldn’t include in a document resume.

Portfolios

Building an online portfolio is a highly useful personal branding and marketing tool if your work experience and skill set call for content creation. In fact, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, writers, and content marketers can all use web portfolios to show off their skills in a more user-friendly way than a resume or hard copy portfolio.

6) Tony D’Orio

It’s important to keep the design of your visual portfolio simple to let images capture visitors’ attention, and D’Orio accomplishes this by featuring bold photographs front-and-center on his website. His logo and navigation menu are clear and don’t distract from his work. And he makes it easy for potential customers to download his work free of charge.

Want to give it a try? Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner, then select + Create a PDF to select as many images as you’d like to download.

Once you open the PDF, you’ll notice that it comes fully equipped with D’Orio’s business card as the cover … just in case you need it.

7) Gari Cruze

Cruze is a copywriter. But by turning his website into a portfolio featuring images from different campaigns he’s worked on, he makes visitors want to keep clicking to learn more about him.

His site’s humorous copy — specifically in the “17 Random Things” and “Oh Yes, They’re Talking” sections — serves to show off his skills, while making himself more memorable as well. These pages also include his contact information on the right-hand side, making it easy to reach out an connect at any point:

8) Melanie Daveid

Daveid’s website is a great example of “less is more.”

This developer’s portfolio features clear, well-branded imagery of campaigns and apps that Daveid worked on, and she shows off her coding skills when you click through to see the specifics of her work.

While it might seem overly minimal to only include three examples of her work, Daveid did her portfolio a service by including her best, most noteworthy campaigns. At the end of the day, it’s better to have fewer examples of excellence in your portfolio than many examples of mediocrity.

9) The Beast is Back

Christopher Lee’s portfolio is busy and colorful in a way that works. When you read more about Lee on his easily navigable site, you realize that such a fun and vibrant homepage is perfect for an illustrator and toy designer.

His web portfolio highlights eye-catching designs with recognizable brands, such as Target and Mario, along with links to purchase his work. This is another gallery-style portfolio with pops of color that make it fun and give it personality, thus making it more memorable.

 

Best Practices for Portfolio Websites

1. Use mainly visuals. Even if you’re showcasing your written work, using logos or other branding is more eye-catching for your visitors.
2. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Your personality, style, and sense of humor could be what sets you apart against other sites!
3. Organization is key. If your portfolio is full of photos, logos, and other images, make sure it’s easy for visitors to navigate to where they can contact you.
4. Brand yourself. Choose a logo or icon to make your information easily identifiable.

Blogs

Consistently publishing on a blog is a great way to attract attention on social media and search engines — and drive traffic to your site. Blogging is a smart way to give your work a personality, chronicle your experiences, and stretch your writing muscles. You might write a personal blog if you’re a writer by trade, but virtually anyone can benefit from adding a blog to their site and providing useful content for their audience.

10) Everywhereist

This blog looks a bit busier, but its consistent branding helps visitors easily navigate the site. The travel blog uses globe iconography to move visitors around the site, making it easy to explore sections beyond the blog.

It also features a “Best Of” section that allows new visitors to learn about what the blog covers to get acclimated. The color scheme is warm, neutral, and free of excess clutter that could distract from the content.

11) fifty coffees

fifty coffees chronicles the author’s series of coffee meetings in search of her next job opportunity, and it does a great job of using photography and visuals to assist in the telling of her lengthy stories.

The best part? Each post ends with numbered takeaways from her meetings for ease of reading comprehension. The high-quality photography used to complement the stories is like icing on the cake.

12) Minimalist Baker

I’m not highlighting Dana’s food blog just because the food looks delicious and I’m hungry. Her blog uses a simple white background to let her food photography pop, unique branding to make her memorable, and mini-bio to personalize her website.

13) Kendra Schaefer

Kendra’s blog is chock-full of information about her life, background, and professional experience, but she avoids overwhelming visitors by using a light background and organizing her blog’s modules to minimize clutter. She also shares links to additional writing samples, which bolsters her writing authority and credibility.

Best Practices for Blogs

1. Keep your site simple and clutter-free to avoid additional distractions beyond blog posts.
2. Publish often. Company blogs that publish more than 16 posts per months get nearly 3.5X the web traffic of blogs that published less than four posts per month.
3. Experiment with different blog styles, such as lists, interviews, graphics, and bullets.
4. Employ visuals to break up text and add context to your discussion.

Demos

Another cool way to promote yourself and your skills is to create a personal website that doubles as a demonstration of your coding, design, illustration, or developer skills. These sites can be interactive and animated in a way that provides information about you and also shows hiring managers why they should work with you. This is a great website option for technical and artistic content creators such as developers, animators, UX designers, website content managers, and illustrators.

14) Albino Tonnina

Tonnina is showcasing advanced and complicated web development skills, but the images and icons he uses are still clear and easy to understand. He also offers a simple option to view his resume at the beginning of his site, for those who don’t want to scroll through the animation.

15) Bobby Kane

Kane’s site is aesthetically beautiful. And thanks to the cool background photo and minimalist site design, his experience really stands out. He further shows off his design and coding skills at the very bottom of his site, where he demonstrates his ability to code background design changes. This small touch makes his demo more interactive and will make visitors stop and think, “that’s cool!”

Want to check it out? Pull down the arrow at the top of his site to refresh the background.

16) Robby Leonardi

Leonardi’s incredible demo website uses animation and web development skills to turn his portfolio and resume into a video game for site visitors. The whimsical branding and unique way of sharing information ensures that his site is memorable to visitors.

17) Samuel Reed

Reed uses his page as a start-to-finish demo of how to code a website. His website starts as a blank white page and ends as a fully interactive site that visitors can watch him code themselves. The cool factor makes this website memorable, and it makes his skills extremely marketable.

18) Devon Stank

Stank’s demo site does a great job of showing that he has the web design chops and it takes it a step further by telling visitors all about him, his agency, and his passions. It’s the perfect balance of a demo and a mini-resume.

Plus, we love this highly personal video of Stank describing his passion:

Best Practices for Demo Websites

1. Brand yourself and use consistent logos and colors to identify your name and your skills amongst the bevy of visuals.
2. Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too many visuals at once — especially if your demo is animated. Be sure to keep imagery easy to understand so visitors aren’t bombarded when they visit your site.

Need help updating or building your personal website? Learn more about the specifics of writing a great bio and creating your personal brand.

What’s the best personal website you’ve ever seen? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Some refer to it as a full-time job in itself, others compare it to dating, and several cats over at BuzzFeed think it just plain sucks. But it doesn’t have to be that way …

When you’re applying for a job, you’re typically asked to submit a resume and cover letter. Maybe your LinkedIn profile. But there are better ways to stand out against your competition, and building a personal website is one of them.

A personal website can serve different goals, but perhaps what it does best is provide you with an opportunity to tell your story. And with 53% of employers reporting that the resume alone did not provide enough information to determine if the candidate would be a good fit, that storytelling elements can really help to improve your odds.

If you’re thinking about creating a personal website of your very own, check out the examples below that hit the nail on the head.

17 of the Best Personal Websites We’ve Ever Seen

Resumes

Whether you create a single-page site or a larger portfolio, the web resume serves as a more personalized option for sharing information and demonstrating your technological skills — and it can be used by all types of job seekers.

Even if you have very little work experience, you can leverage a website to build a better picture of your capabilities and yourself as a candidate, while leaning on your traditional resume to provide the basic background information.

1) Gary Sheng

Unlike a standard resume document, Sheng’s website makes it easy for him to include logos and clickable links that allow his software engineering and web development skills to shine.

We love that visitors can choose to scroll down his page to view all of the website’s categories (“About Me,” “My Passion,” etc.), or jump to a specific page using the top navigation.

The “My System” section reads like a company mission statement, and this personal touch helps humanize his work and make him more memorable.

2) Raf Delorez

Delorez’s web resume is modern, cool, and informative. It shows off his personality, branding, and developing skills in a way that’s still very simple and clear. Not to mention, his use of color and saturation in his photo puts a face to his name in an eye-catching way.

Want to get in touch with Delorez? Simply click the CTA located under his brief bio to open up an email that’s pre-adressed directly to him. Or select one of the social media icons to connect with him on platforms like Twitter — where his cover photo happens to seamlessly align with the branding of his website. Well played, Delorez.

3) Brandon Johnson

Johnson’s incredible resume must be seen to be believed. Beautiful images of planets help to compliment his planetary science background, and animations make his resume more of an experience than a document.

In terms of design, the textured, multi-layered background adds greater depth to the two-dimensional page in a way that evokes feelings of space and the planetary systems, which Johnson’s work focuses on.

As an added bonus, Johnson managed to squeeze in some witty “Easter eggs,” like this message that appears when you try to select the “OFF” button that appears under the section on hyrdrocode:

4) Quinton Harris

Harris’ resume uses photos to tell his personal story — and it reads kind of like a cool, digital scrapbook. It covers all the bases of a resume — and then some — by discussing his educational background, work experience, and skills in a highly visual way.

Not to mention, the copy is fantastic. It’s clear that Harris took the time to carefully choose the right words to describe each step of his personal and professional journey. For example, the section on storytelling reads:

NYC, my new home, is filled with the necessary secrets to not only propel my craft forward, but my identity as an artist. With every lens snapped and every pixel laid, I am becoming me.

5) Sean Halpin

Halpin’s resume is short, sweet, and to the point, which is authentic to his voice and personal branding outlined on the site. The white space allows his designs and copy to pop and command the reader’s attention, which helps to improve readability — especially on mobile devices:

Best Practices for Resume Websites

1. Code your resume so it can be crawled by search engines.
2. Offer a button to download your resume in PDF so the hiring manager can add it to your file.
3. Keep branding consistent between the website and document versions: Use similar fonts, colors, and images so you’re easy to recognize.
4. Be creative and authentic to yourself. Think about the colors, images, and media you want to be a part of your story that you couldn’t include in a document resume.

Portfolios

Building an online portfolio is a highly useful personal branding and marketing tool if your work experience and skill set call for content creation. In fact, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, writers, and content marketers can all use web portfolios to show off their skills in a more user-friendly way than a resume or hard copy portfolio.

6) Tony D’Orio

It’s important to keep the design of your visual portfolio simple to let images capture visitors’ attention, and D’Orio accomplishes this by featuring bold photographs front-and-center on his website. His logo and navigation menu are clear and don’t distract from his work. And he makes it easy for potential customers to download his work free of charge.

Want to give it a try? Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner, then select + Create a PDF to select as many images as you’d like to download.

Once you open the PDF, you’ll notice that it comes fully equipped with D’Orio’s business card as the cover … just in case you need it.

7) Gari Cruze

Cruze is a copywriter. But by turning his website into a portfolio featuring images from different campaigns he’s worked on, he makes visitors want to keep clicking to learn more about him.

His site’s humorous copy — specifically in the “17 Random Things” and “Oh Yes, They’re Talking” sections — serves to show off his skills, while making himself more memorable as well. These pages also include his contact information on the right-hand side, making it easy to reach out an connect at any point:

8) Melanie Daveid

Daveid’s website is a great example of “less is more.”

This developer’s portfolio features clear, well-branded imagery of campaigns and apps that Daveid worked on, and she shows off her coding skills when you click through to see the specifics of her work.

While it might seem overly minimal to only include three examples of her work, Daveid did her portfolio a service by including her best, most noteworthy campaigns. At the end of the day, it’s better to have fewer examples of excellence in your portfolio than many examples of mediocrity.

9) The Beast is Back

Christopher Lee’s portfolio is busy and colorful in a way that works. When you read more about Lee on his easily navigable site, you realize that such a fun and vibrant homepage is perfect for an illustrator and toy designer.

His web portfolio highlights eye-catching designs with recognizable brands, such as Target and Mario, along with links to purchase his work. This is another gallery-style portfolio with pops of color that make it fun and give it personality, thus making it more memorable.

 

Best Practices for Portfolio Websites

1. Use mainly visuals. Even if you’re showcasing your written work, using logos or other branding is more eye-catching for your visitors.
2. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Your personality, style, and sense of humor could be what sets you apart against other sites!
3. Organization is key. If your portfolio is full of photos, logos, and other images, make sure it’s easy for visitors to navigate to where they can contact you.
4. Brand yourself. Choose a logo or icon to make your information easily identifiable.

Blogs

Consistently publishing on a blog is a great way to attract attention on social media and search engines — and drive traffic to your site. Blogging is a smart way to give your work a personality, chronicle your experiences, and stretch your writing muscles. You might write a personal blog if you’re a writer by trade, but virtually anyone can benefit from adding a blog to their site and providing useful content for their audience.

 

10) Everywhereist

This blog looks a bit busier, but its consistent branding helps visitors easily navigate the site. The travel blog uses globe iconography to move visitors around the site, making it easy to explore sections beyond the blog.

It also features a “Best Of” section that allows new visitors to learn about what the blog covers to get acclimated. The color scheme is warm, neutral, and free of excess clutter that could distract from the content.

11) fifty coffees

fifty coffees chronicles the author’s series of coffee meetings in search of her next job opportunity, and it does a great job of using photography and visuals to assist in the telling of her lengthy stories.

The best part? Each post ends with numbered takeaways from her meetings for ease of reading comprehension. The high-quality photography used to complement the stories are like icing on the cake.

12) Minimalist Baker

I’m not highlighting Dana’s food blog just because the food looks delicious and I’m hungry. Her blog uses a simple white background to let her food photography pop, unique branding to make her memorable, and mini-bio to personalize her website.

13) Kendra Schaefer

Kendra’s blog is chock-full of information about her life, background, and professional experience, but she avoids overwhelming visitors by using a light background and organizing her blog’s modules to minimize clutter. She also shares links to additional writing samples, which bolsters her writing authority and credibility.

Best Practices for Blogs

1. Keep your site simple and clutter-free to avoid additional distractions beyond blog posts.
2. Publish often. Company blogs that publish more than 16 posts per months get nearly 3.5X the web traffic of blogs that published less than four posts per month.
3. Experiment with different blog styles, such as lists, interviews, graphics, and bullets.
4. Employ visuals to break up text and add context to your discussion.

Demos

Another cool way to promote yourself and your skills is to create a personal website that doubles as a demonstration of your coding, design, illustration, or developer skills. These sites can be interactive and animated in a way that provides information about you and also shows hiring managers why they should work with you. This is a great website option for technical and artistic content creators such as developers, animators, UX designers, website content managers, and illustrators.

14) Albino Tonnina

Tonnina is showcasing advanced and complicated web development skills, but the images and icons he uses are still clear and easy to understand. He also offers a simple option to view his resume at the beginning of his site, for those who don’t want to scroll through the animation.

15) Bobby Kane

Kane’s site is aesthetically beautiful. And thanks to the cool background photo and minimalist site design, his experience really stands out. He further shows off his design and coding skills at the very bottom of his site, where he demonstrates his ability to code background design changes. This small touch makes his demo more interactive and will make visitors stop and think, “that’s cool!”

Want to check it out? Pull down the arrow at the top of his site to refresh the background.

16) Robby Leonardi

Leonardi’s incredible demo website uses animation and web development skills to turn his portfolio and resume into a video game for site visitors. The whimsical branding and unique way of sharing information ensures that his site is memorable to visitors.

17) Samuel Reed

Reed uses his page as a start-to-finish demo of how to code a website. His website starts as a blank white page and ends as a fully interactive site that visitors can watch him code themselves. The cool factor makes this website memorable, and it makes his skills extremely marketable.

18) Devon Stank

Stank’s demo site does a great job of showing that he has the web design chops and it takes it a step further by telling visitors all about him, his agency, and his passions. It’s the perfect balance of a demo and a mini-resume.

Plus, we love this highly personal video of Stank describing his passion:

Best Practices for Demo Websites

1. Brand yourself and use consistent logos and colors to identify your name and your skills amongst the bevy of visuals.
2. Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too many visuals at once — especially if your demo is animated. Be sure to keep imagery easy to understand so visitors aren’t bombarded when they visit your site.

Need help updating or building your personal website? Learn more about the specifics of writing a great bio and creating your personal brand.

What’s the best personal website you’ve ever seen? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

“A good leader should always … “

How you finish that sentence could reveal a lot about your leadership style.

That’s the idea behind a management survey tool called the Leadership Development Profile. Created by psychologist Susanne Cook-Greuter and professor Bill Torbert, the survey relies on a set of 36 open-ended sentence completion tasks to help researchers better understand how leaders develop and grow.

Participants are asked to finish open-ended phrases like “Good leaders always … ” with whatever sounds most natural to them. After that, a team of trained evaluators examine the results and determine where the survey taker’s current leadership style fits into one of the predetermined categories called “action logics.” In a Harvard Business Review article, action logics are defined as “how [leaders] interpret their surroundings and react when their power or safety is challenged.”

The framework has been popularized and expanded upon by U.K.-based consulting group Harthill, and was the subject of Personal and Organizational Transformations — a book by Harthill partner David Rooke, professor Dal Fisher, and Torbert. 

Through Harthill’s leadership development work, Torbert and Rooke have surveyed thousands of American and European managers to determine their current leadership styles and explore their capacities for improvement. The researchers’ work has revealed invaluable information about the distinct developmental stages of leaders, and what qualities and skills truly make a leader successful. 

Although the only way to know your current Leadership Development Profile is to have your results analyzed by a professional evaluator, it can’t hurt to get acquainted with a few of the action logic profiles, and do some light self-analysis. “Relatively few leaders try to understand their own action logic, and fewer still have explored the possibility of changing it,” Tolbert and Rooke wrote in Harvard Business Review.

Below, we’ve broken down three action logics that correspond to leaders with the capacity to bring effective, transformative change to their organization, and three that are correlated with less effective leaders. Keep in mind that these action logics are considered developmental stages, not fixed attributes — most leaders will progress through multiple stages throughout their careers. 

3 Action Logics of Well-Developed Leaders 

1) Individualist

The individualist, according to Rooke and Tolbert, is self-aware, creative, and primarily focused on their own actions and development as opposed to overall organizational performance. This action logic is exceptionally driven by the desire to exceed personal goals and constantly improve their skills.

Leaders who align with this action logic have a tendency to trust their own intuition over established organizational processes, which can get them into trouble at times. However, in addition to enjoying exceptional self-awareness, the individualist is adept at relating to people with different perspectives and clearly communicating complex ideas.

These adaptive rhetoricians also possess a drive for constant improvement. An individualist is more comfortable with progress than sustained success, making them ideal leaders for heralding in organizational change.

2) Strategist

Strategists are acutely aware of the environments in which they operate. They have a deep understanding of the structures and processes that make their businesses tick, but they’re also able to consider these frameworks critically and evaluate what could be improved.

This action logic is uncommonly adept at building consensus in divided groups. Like the individualist, they’re able to perceive differences in perspective and adapt their message to appeal to multiple viewpoints. Unlike the individualist, the strategist is concerned with much more than their own personal development: They value the development of their organization as a whole, as well as the growth and individual achievements of those they manage.

“Strategists are highly effective change agents,” Rooke and Tolbert explain. This action logic understands that conflict is inevitable — especially in the face of change — and they’re well equipped to handle friction and lead the team towards a common vision. They are able to use their knowledge of personal relationships and professional structures to propel their ideas into action. 

3) Alchemist

Rooke and Tolbert describe this charismatic action logic as the most highly-evolved and effective at managing transformative organizational change. What distinguishes alchemists from other action logics is their unique ability to balance short-term needs and long-term goals; while they see the big picture in everything, they also fully understand the need to take details seriously. Under an alchemist leader, no department or employee is overlooked.

Alchemists are concerned with creating deep, foundational change that resonates not only across their individual organization, but also across the greater context in which they operate. In other words, alchemists want to make a profound and positive impact on whatever they do, and they possess the necessary empathy and moral awareness to get there. 

Leaders who correlate with this action logic are concerned with helping their employees reach their highest potential, and are extremely aware of the ripple effects of their decisions.

3 Action Logics of Less Developed Leaders

1) Opportunist

The action logic worst suited to leadership is by far the opportunist. These individuals tend to let their mistrust of others and egocentrism guide their actions, relying on a facade of control and intimidation tactics to keep their employees in line. “Opportunists tend to regard their bad behavior as legitimate in the cut and thrust of an eye-for-an-eye world,” Rooke and Tolbert write.

Opportunists aren’t concerned with personal development or the development of those they manage. Instead, they view others as competition to be bested, rejecting anyone who questions or criticizes their ideas.

With their behavior at odds with the organization’s progress, opportunists don’t tend to thrive in leadership roles. Their drive for constant competition can only get them so far. If they don’t commit themselves to changing their ways, they tend to get replaced by more developed leaders.

2) Diplomat

Unlike the opportunist, the diplomat isn’t concerned with competition or assuming control over situations. Instead, this action logic seeks to cause minimal impact on their organization by conforming to existing norms and completing their daily tasks with as little friction as possible.

These qualities make the diplomat a ideal fit for more team-oriented or supporting roles, but ill-suited to senior leadership positions.

“Diplomats are much more problematic in top leadership roles because they try to ignore conflict,” explain Rooke and Tolbert. “They tend to be overly polite and friendly and find it virtually impossible to give challenging feedback to others.”

Diplomats thrust into leadership roles will resist change at any cost, which can lead to problems for an organization looking to evolve. This type is most successful when they can provide the “social glue” in team situations, safely away from conflict.

3) Expert

The expert is a pro in their given field, constantly striving to perfect their knowledge of a subject and perform to meet their own high expectations. Rooke and Tolbert describe the expert as a talented individual contributor and a source of knowledge for the team. But this action logic does lack something central to great leaders: emotional intelligence.

Experts are so focused on their own pursuit of knowledge that they aren’t always tuned into the needs of the organization or those around them. And as leaders, they suffer from always assuming that their opinion is correct. “When subordinates talk about a my-way-or-the-highway type of boss, they are probably talking about someone operating from an Expert action logic,” write Rooke and Tolbert.

What action logics do you think are best suited to leadership at your agency? 

When was the last time you felt bad about something you did — or didn’t do?

For me, it happened about 30 minutes prior to typing this sentence. I left the house later than I had planned, because I allowed extra time for my workout. I felt guilty for dedicating time to my own stuff, when I knew I had a looming deadline.

But guess what? Yesterday, when I skipped my workout to get to the office earlier, I felt bad about that, too.

I can sense the proverbial chorus nodding in unison with me. That’s because guilt is an epidemic — in fact, one in five people cite it as the reason why they don’t take breaks. And it’s killing the quality of our work.

Many of us accept that as common sense — overwork = underproductive. So why do we continue to self-sabotage and feel bad about the time we don’t spend getting things done? Read on to learn the different ways we let guilt overtake our productivity, and why we do it.

7 Ways You’re Letting Guilt Sabotage Your Work

1) You feel like you can’t take a break.

The correlation between workplace happiness and productivity isn’t exactly news at this point. And yet, we continue to ignore that advice. 

A survey conducted by Staples, for example, showed that 90% of employers say they encourage breaks. But here’s the thing — 55% of employees feel like they can’t leave their desks for one. It’s not like we don’t know any better, though. In that same survey, 86% of workers acknowledged that taking a break would make them more productive.

So what’s stopping us?

I‘ve definitely experienced mixed feelings about leaving my desk frequently throughout the day. What if my colleagues think I’m weird, or that I’m not getting my work done? In today’s workplace, we’re big on perception.

Luckily, I work somewhere that encourages taking that time to breathe, and has resources in place to support it. Maybe that’s why Staples Advantage, the division that conducted the aforementioned survey, says that employers need to play their part in creating a break-taking culture.

Even if employees are fundamentally encouraged to take breaks, putting tangible resources behind it will create the cultural shift that really allows them to step away. Something like a break room goes a long way — 76% percent of respondents said that having a well-equipped one would help relieve stress throughout the workday.

And the result of that relief? Getting more done, with higher quality. According to data collected by DeskTime, the top 10% most productive employees take 17-minute breaks for every 52 minutes of work they put in. And during those periods, they use hyper focus: No work during breaks (that includes email), and no distractions during the work time.

2) You feel bad asking for help.

Earlier this year, New York Times Magazine did a great job of summarizing the fine line between stress and guilt.

Guilt, Susan Dominus wrote, is “an especially corrosive form of distress: It’s that feeling that nags at you as you rush into the office, sweating, knowing that you are already late, or as you slip out for a ‘meeting’ that is, in fact, a much-needed haircut appointment.”

Lying about the time we put toward self-care indicates how guilty we feel for acknowledging that we need it. So maybe that’s why we feel like we’re falling short when we can’t do everything ourselves.

In turn, that makes us less likely to ask for help. In a survey of working mothers, Care.com found that 29% of respondents felt guilty about hiring someone to assist with things at home — they feared missing out on important moments, for example. But at the same time, 79% of them also felt like they were falling behind at work.

The guilt had multiple sources. That’s the case for many of us — not just working moms.

It makes sense that 75% of these survey respondents also saw an overall reduction in stress when they did hire outside help. That’s not limited to home or family care — asking for help at work, too, can be hugely productive.

In fact, that’s something my own boss told me on my first day at HubSpot: “To help you be more successful, I’ll help you with whatever you ask me for help with. The most successful people ask for help when they need it!”

I wish everyone’s boss would say the same thing. Because she set that tone for me from the very beginning, I knew that I didn’t have to feel guilty about not knowing something, or not being able to do something completely on my own. So don’t be afraid to ask for help. Chances are, the person you need it from is happy to step in.

3) You’re comparing yourself to everyone else.

We all have those friends — or distant acquaintances who we observe on social media — who seem to have the so-called “perfect life.” And many of us are sometimes guilty of comparing our own lives to theirs, wondering if maybe — had we just done things a little differently — we, too, could have the perfect life.

It’s no wonder, then, that 62% of folks think that their peers are holding it together better than they are. When we perceive that someone is doing a better job than we are, we feel guilty or inadequate.

In the past, I’ve had to remind myself that anyone’s life can look perfect on the outside — especially on social media. I like to think of Facebook, for example, like tabloids. People can paint any picture they want, and post it for the world (depending on their privacy settings) to see.

And even if someone else really is doing things “perfectly,” which is completely subjective, feeling guilty about how your performance stacks up to others’ is a waste of time. And we’ve already talked about how to use our time productively — squandering your precious minutes comparing yourself to others isn’t going to accomplish anything of value.

4) You have Vacation Shame.

Remember earlier, when we talked about how many of us feel bad taking time for ourselves? Vacation is no exception.

In fact, that phenomenon has a name: “Vacation Shaming.” It was coined by Alamo Rent A Car after the company’s annual Family Vacation Survey revealed that 47% of workers feel shame or guilt at work for taking that time off. The same percentage feels the need to justify using their vacation days to their employer — even if they’ve earned it.

There are certainly other reasons — financial ones, especially — why people don’t go on vacation. Nonetheless, 28% of people don’t take advantage of paid time off because they’re afraid they won’t look as dedicated to their work.

But that logic is kind of counter-intuitive. I mean, for all intents and purposes, managers place the most value on your productivity, right? And in regions where people tend to take more vacation (like Brazil and Sweden, where paid time off is mandatory), employees tend to bring greater urgency to their work.

That could be due to the fact that, according to the Harvard Business Review, “spending less time at your desk forces you to waste less time.” That echoes the research done by DeskTime about the productivity levels of people who take regular breaks.

Simply put: Don’t feel bad about giving yourself the opportunity to step away, whether for a few minutes or a few days. It’ll enhance your productivity while you are at work, and give you a chance to decompress when you’re not.

5) You’re just not busy enough.

How many of you out there work best under pressure?

Me. I do. I have never met a deadline I didn’t like. Am I insane? Probably. But also, I just don’t get as much done when I’m not bound by a timeline.

As it turns out, I’m not alone. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, it was reported that people feel more motivated to complete tasks when they’re busy — even if the deadline to get it done has passed.

“Being busy may make people more likely to fail to achieve a specific goal,” the authors report, but “it can also make people more likely to achieve the goal by augmenting the perception that a different goal [like using one’s time effectively] is being achieved.”

In other words, when we mess up as a result of having too much to do, we don’t feel as guilty about it. After all, it’s not like we were sitting around doing nothing — we were being productive. But when we make a mistake and don’t have the excuse of our industriousness to fall back on, we feel bad.

Staying busy at work might seem like a tall order when only 31.5% of us — in the U.S., at least — are actually engaged there. But there are ways to keep up your motivation and productivity, which my colleague Lindsay Kolowich wrote about here.

6) You have action bias.

We’ve all had friends who have gotten a bit upset with us at one time or another. When that happens, the best thing is to step away and give her space, right? I don’t do that, and that’s because I have action bias.

Also known as a “bias for action,” the Business Dictionary defines action bias as the “propensity to act or decide without customary analysis or sufficient information,” or to “’just do it’ and contemplate later.”

It reminds me of something that a leadership professor said to me about extroverts: “We tend to operate in the order of: Ready? Fire! Aim.”

We’re all about taking action and getting things done, before all else. So when our time has to be spent on something other than our most essential tasks, or even inaction — like in the case of our angry friend — we freak out.

Kolowich has experienced something like this. “In the past, I’ve felt guilty whenever I’ve been doing work that doesn’t have measurable output, like brainstorming, strategizing, and even catching up on industry news,” she told me. (She writes more about these biases here.)

“Ironically, that can make you less productive because you’re less thoughtful in approaching the work you do do,” she continued. “I’m far more productive when I take the time to understand a project and plan it out rather than jumping right in.”

That’s why it’s valuable to take the time to be thoughtful when it comes to your work, and even take the time to reflect on it. On the surface, that might seem like a waste of time, but it can actually be tremendously beneficial.

Take this a Harvard Business School study, for example. A team of employees was divided into two groups. The first was instructed to spend the last 15 minutes of the workday writing their reflections. The other group kept working during those 15 minutes. When each group took a final training test, the one that spent the extra time reflecting performed 22.8% better than the one that worked longer.

It might seem counter-intuitive, given our advice above about deadlines and staying busy. And we get it — for those of us with action bias, according to a Barclays white paper, “inaction can make a stressful time even worse.”

But you can be industrious and also be patient, without feeling bad about it. Even when a deadline is present, take the time you need to bring quality to your work — you’ll be glad you aimed before you fired.

7) You’re experiencing the Zeigarnik Effect.

“The what?”

The Zeigarnik Effect. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task rather than a completed one.”

Sound familiar?

At the end of the day, no matter how productive we’ve been, it seems like we always dwell on the things we didn’t get done. So maybe we can chalk it up the aforementioned Effect, named for Bluma Zeigarnik, the Russian psychologist who found that having a task interrupted can actually improve the focus you put toward it later.

That’s good news — and it supports the advice to take breaks and step away from your work, without feeling bad about it. And even though I’m a repeat offender of what we’ve discussed, like action bias, I actually have experienced the value of letting a task go until the next day.

I find that to be particularly applicable to writing. Of course, I have deadlines to meet, but every time I let an article “marinate” overnight, I see multiple things I want to change in the morning — and in the end, I’m actually glad I put it off, despite not feeling great about letting it go “unfinished” the night before.

It probably took you a few minutes to read this blog, right? It likely took time out of your day. But hopefully, the time you spent reading it — and next, thinking about it — will actually help you bring more focus and less guilt to your work. 

How do you keep guilt from getting in your way? Let us know in the comments.

Everyone is looking for more marketing budget. As the well-known song goes: “You can’t always get what you want.” To even make the case for more budget, you need to show how your current marketing contributes to filling your school’s enrollment class with the right number of ideal students. 

The first place to start is determine where your marketing budget and efforts are giving you a return, and where they can be better spent. This way, regardless of whether you get a budget increase, you’ll still find more money to spend more wisely in your current budget.

To identify where to allocate your current budget to better effect, you need to:

• Be clear on what you’re currently spending
• Understand how much it costs to acquire each enrolled student
• Determine your current ROI on your efforts

How Are You Using Your Budget Now?

Small team or big team, hopefully you have a formal marketing budget that spells out what you’re spending for all your content and campaigns. Take a look at these sample marketing budget templates to get an idea of what you should to include. 

Don’t overlook the cost of what other departments contribute in terms of creating content for your campaigns. You can include those numbers in your budget for purposes of identifying actual costs, even if this sort of inter-departmental exchange isn’t a formal cost item on your marketing budget.

Now there are other costs associated with getting a prospect to become an applicant, and still more to become an enrolled student. You only want to include the marketing costs. So for example, you don’t want to include the costs of Admission’s activities throughout the enrollment journey. That’s on their budget, and you’re trying to reclaim your own dollars.

Start with a list of all your discrete and ongoing campaigns. This includes every piece of your blog, newsletters, email nurturing series, premium content, and landing pages, as well as your PPC ad spend and social media efforts. We’re talking about costs for photos, graphic design, copywriting — anything and everything from student labor to hard dollars for advertising.

Understanding Your Student Acquisition Costs

In a commercial context, businesses always want to know their CAC – client acquisition cost. The economics for schools are different, even if you’re a for-profit school. But you still have an acquisition cost for each student you enroll.

The formula for determining the marketing CAC is to divide your total marketing budget by the number of enrolled students. So if you have 2,000 students in one enrollment class and an annual marketing of $200,000, your marketing CAC is $100 per enrolled student.

The marketing CAC is the baseline metric you use to get make decisions about what specific marketing campaigns and costs are more valuable than others. 

Re-assess your CAC each year to find how it changes. As you expand and refine your inbound marketing efforts, you’ll find your cost of acquiring new students continues to goes down with time. A robust inbound strategy helps your school develop a strong online reputation through the awesome content you keep publishing over time. You’ll continue to reap the benefits from your established authority and historical content, making inbound the most cost-effective method of filling your enrollment class with the right students.

Determining ROI for Specific Marketing Campaigns

This is where the heavy lifting comes in. You want to understand your budget costs, but also the relative cost of your team’s efforts. If your team doesn’t track its time, here are some time tracking tools you can look at. When you know how many hours are spent on a campaign, you can assign the effort expended on it in dollar terms.

The trickier part is knowing how much of your marketing effort and spend contribute to a student enrolling. You probably already gauge the success for specific campaigns using other metrics, such as new leads, applications downloaded, or applications sent in. You probably set a goal for each campaign based on one of these conversion metrics.

But what you want to know now is how much a campaign contributed to an enrolled student. It’s truly the only success metric that really matters to you and your boss.

For this, you need to attribute specific campaigns as the reason(s) a student ultimately enrolled at your school.

There are three basic models of marketing attribution:

Single campaign – This is the simplest, but crudest model. It can be a good place to start attribution when it’s new for your team. Under this attribution model, you select one marketing touch point to get the full value of a student. This would typically be either that student’s first or last touchpoint.

Equal value – Also a simple model, but uses more data. You give every touchpoint for a student the same value. Or you might decide to use only the first and last touch, but give them equal weight.

Weighted value – In this model, different touch points have different weights. This is best done after you’ve been tracking attribution for a few enrollment drives. You may find that a high percentage of students watch a webinar at some point, but only a small fraction of people who read the blog ultimately enroll. So you’ll weight attending a webinar more heavily than reading your blog. 

Let’s play this out using the single campaign model, using the first touch point you can identify, which is the point at which they entered your database.

If 10% of your enrolled students got into your database because they subscribed to your newsletter, your newsletter is their first touch point. Now let’s say you spend $30,000 of your annual marketing spend on your newsletter, 15% of your annual budget. But that 15% accounts for only 10% of all enrolled students. 

You’re spending $150 a year on your newsletter per enrolled student ($30,000/ 200 students). That’s well above your overall CAC.  In this case, you might decide sending out your newsletter twice a month, instead of weekly, frees up time and money you can use running other more effective campaigns. 

You can apply the single campaign model on every campaign. Then start aggregating what you learn. One email nurturing campaign may have a high CAC, but overall, your email campaigns do well. In that case, analyze the campaigns to discover what causes the discrepancy and do more of what works, less of what doesn’t. 

As you get used to running single campaign attribution formulas, you’ll learn more about the value of your marketing activities to use the more precise attribution models to learn even more.

Then you can sing along with the Rolling Stones as you rework your current budget: “But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”