Just ten years ago, we founded HubSpot and set out to make the world more inbound.

That meant transforming the way we market and sell to be more human, helpful, and empathetic. Before long, people from all corners of the globe started adopting this new way of doing business. The concept of inbound became a movement all its own.

Inbound really is everywhere. It’s found where people are respected, whether by valuing their time, by solving for their needs first, or by not interrupting them with something they don’t need.

We believe a more inbound world is a better world for everyone.

Tastes and technology change. What’s important is to keep in mind what doesn’t: People matter. They have choices, and they have power. People want to be valued and feel respected. That’s not going to change, nor should it. It’s just as true today as it was 100 years ago.

Without you, there is no HubSpot. We’re extremely grateful to our customers, partners, employees, investors, alumni, friends, and members of the inbound community who have joined us on this remarkable journey. Today, we celebrate what we’ve built together. And as we look toward the future, we can already see that this is only the beginning.

Here’s to the next 10 years,

Brian & Dharmesh

You’ve poured thousands of dollars into your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search campaigns and have managed to generate a substantial number of leads. You’re rocking your conversion rates and your cost per lead is great.

So what’s the problem?

It’s only when you start analyzing your results and dig a little deeper that you realize an overwhelming majority of these leads are in essence “junk leads”. Very few are turning into opportunities, let alone customers. The bottom line is, you’re just not seeing a healthy ROI.

In this post, we provide nine proven strategies that you can use to generate better quality, bottom of the funnel leads from your B2B PPC campaigns. Let’s dive in.

1) Set Up Proper Tracking

In order to accurately measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, you need to make sure that you are able to track other important elements besides conversions. This data will allow you to determine which campaign and site a lead came from, the keyword they searched for, the device they were on, and so on.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is to use UTM Parameters and ValueTrack Parameters. These tags are data that you append to the end of your landing page URLs, and you’ve probably seen them when you clicked a link or ad. They look something like this

 http://ift.tt/1UAGLGc

As a best practice, you should use the naming convention specified below and use at least these 6 parameters in your URLs:

In Google AdWords, the most efficient way to set up tracking parameters is in the “Campaign URL options (advanced)” section under campaign settings. Here, you can enter your parameters after “{lpurl}?” as shown below. The {lpurl} portion will be automatically replaced with the landing page URL that you have set up for each ad within your campaign.

2) Implement Opportunity Attribution

Once you have your tracking parameters, you need to capture them on your landing pages and store them—along with with other lead details—into the contacts database of your marketing platform. This is usually done by creating hidden fields in your landing page form. You will need one field for each UTM parameter that you have passed to your landing page:

You may first need to create custom fields or properties in your contacts database before you map them to the new hidden fields in your form.

Next, you need to make sure that your contacts or leads data is synced with your CRM and that you are able to view all opportunity data for your leads.

At a minimum, you should be able to view lead status or stage—whether they are a sales qualified lead, marketing qualified lead, opportunity, customer etc.—and the opportunity size or deal amount. If you have lead scoring data associated with each contact, this will be extremely beneficial as well.

Once you have all of the available data, you should create reports to isolate and segment your data. The most important data you want to extract are the number of opportunities, opportunity amount and customers won for each source, campaign, keyword and device, and the name, email, company, lead status/stage, lead score, opportunity amount, source, campaign, keyword and device for each lead.

You will now be able to determine which opportunities are being generated from a particular platform (Google, Bing etc.), campaign, device and keyword. When you combine this with the spend data from your ad platform, you will be able to get your true ROI. 

Next, isolate poor quality leads. If you use lead scoring, look at the leads with the lowest scores. Otherwise look for leads that have provided invalid or junk data in the name, email and company fields. Then check to see what campaigns, devices or keywords these leads have in common.

3) Segment Your Campaigns

Many companies make the mistake of setting up campaigns or ad groups for each product or service they have. They don’t dig deeper into the many different ways in which their target audience is searching for the solutions they offer.

You can address this by carefully planning your campaigns in order to segment your offer into as many groups as possible. You can segment by each main feature, benefit, sub category, target industry or geographic location relevant to your product or service.

For example, let’s say you provide web design and development services. You can segment your campaigns as follows:

• Sub category: Ecommerce Website Design, Custom Website Design, Responsive Web Design, etc.
• Feature: WordPress Web Design, Magento Development, PHP Development, etc.
• Benefit: High End Web Design, Agile Web Development, Enterprise Web Development, etc.
• Target industry: Real Estate Website Design, Restaurant Web Design, Healthcare Website Design, etc.
• Geographic location: San Francisco Web Design, California Web Design, New York Web Design, etc.

Once you identify the segments you want to go after, you can set up each campaign with the necessary assets: 

• Keywords: All keywords related to the associated segment
• Ads: Ad copy customized to that segment
• Landing Pages: Customized landing page that has content only about that segment

Setting up campaigns in this way allows you to focus your efforts, and will result in better quality leads and increased conversion rates.

4) Target Relevant Keywords

Keywords are at the heart of every paid search campaign, and you need to go wide and deep to identify the best ones for your business. 

The first step is identifying the most focused and relevant keywords. Segment your campaigns as described in the previous section and then search for keyword ideas within each segment. There are a lot of excellent keyword research tools that you can use to find the best keywords.

To attract the best quality leads at the bottom of the funnel, you have to target keywords with searcher intent in mind. For example, when someone searches for “WordPress Website Design Services” you know that they are looking for a company that provides WordPress services.

However, when someone just types in “WordPress Website Design”, you can’t be certain about their intent. They could be looking for services or they could just be looking for a how-to design guide. Location-based searches also convey searcher intent adequately. For example, “San Francisco Web Design” indicates that the searcher is looking for a web design company in San Francisco.

Based on the volume of searches, you can also decide to further segment your campaigns to get even more focused. The more tailored your campaigns are—including keywords, ads and landing pages—the better your leads will be. For example, you could create a new campaign that combines two of the segments we just discussed titled “San Francisco WordPress Website Design”. Some of the keywords in this campaign could be:

Another way to get more focused with the keywords you’re targeting is to find long-tail keywords—those that consist of four or more words. Searchers who type in these longer search terms have typically done their research and honed in on exactly what they are looking for, making them quality prospects.

A good tool to find long-tail keywords is Übersuggest, but you can also source them directly from Google. After conducting a search, simply scroll down to the bottom of the page and look in the section “Searches related to…”. A search for “Ecommerce Design Services”, for example, shows the following suggestions:

5) Filter Out Irrelevant Keywords

Targeting the kinds of keywords we discussed in the previous section, will go a long way in attracting high quality leads to your ads, but there are also steps you can take to proactively ward off less desirable clicks.

Look over your Search Terms Report to determine whether you are getting any irrelevant clicks to your ads. If you find any such clicks (or impressions), add those keywords to your negative keywords list—this tells Google or Bing not to show your ads for any of these keywords.

Going back to our earlier example of web design services, some negative keywords you would likely want to add are: cheap, free, themes, school, jobs etc. This will make sure you don’t waste your money on clicks from users searching for keywords like “San Francisco Web Design Jobs” or “WordPress Website Design Theme”.

If you followed our guidelines for tracking and opportunity attribution described in sections 1 and 2, you will now have the ability to determine which keywords are leading to poor quality leads and which keywords are producing opportunities.

If you find that certain keywords are predominantly producing poor leads, you can add them to your negative keywords list to stop receiving traffic from these types of searches.

On the other hand, you will now have a list of keywords that have produced opportunities (and customers) for your business.

You can double down on these keywords in three ways:

• Increase their bids so your ads rank at the top of search results.
• Segment these keywords into a new group or campaign so you can have more customized ads and landing pages for them.
• Find other related keywords you may have missed the first time.

6) Use Ad Copy to Pre-Qualify Visitors

Writing ad copy that focuses solely on increasing click-through rates is a mistake. You should write ads that pre-qualify visitors, so that the traffic you do get will be a lot more relevant and targeted to your business. Some of the best ways of doing this, are by adding the following elements to your ad copy.

Business size

If you target businesses of a certain size, reflect that in your ad copy. For example, if you want to target larger businesses, you can add “Enterprise” to your ads and create copy such as “Enterprise Class WordPress Design”.

Industry

If you work with specific verticals, you can make that clear in your ads. For example, your ad could read: “WordPress Design for Healthcare”. This usually works best with segmented campaigns and keywords (see sections 3 and 4).

Pricing

Many companies are uncomfortable adding pricing to their ad copy, but this is a good way to weed out prospects who may not have the budget for your solution. You can do this by adding text such as “Starting at $499/month” or “Packages Starting at $10K”.

Target persona

Including your target persona in your ad copy is another excellent way of pre-qualifying your ad traffic and even personalizing your ads. You can do this with text such as “For Small Business Owners” or “For Discriminating Marketing Execs”.

It is also important to consistently A/B test your ads to optimize their performance. As a general guideline, you should always have two ads running for each ad group in your campaigns. You can then decide which ad is performing better by looking at the number of conversions and opportunities generated from each, in addition to the click-through rates.

7) Develop Tailored Landing Pages

Once a visitor gets to one of your landing pages you have already paid for the click. This means that measures such as adding extra form fields or validating for a business email address in an effort to reduce the no. of poor quality leads, are misguided. Instead, you should focus on maximizing the conversion rates of your landing pages by optimizing the elements below.

Customize landing pages to your ad groups

Tailor your landing pages to the needs, wants, and challenges of your ad groups, with particular focus on the content you have above the fold. While it is ideal to create unique landing pages for each ad group, sometimes this is not feasible—especially if you are working with dozens of different ad groups. Should this be the case, you can use dynamic headlines and subheadings on your pages. This will let you alter the content of your landing pages by passing in headlines and sub headings as parameters of your landing page URL.

Determine which offers drive the most results

Test multiple offers to see which get you the most traction. Make sure you look beyond conversions to see which offers are producing the most opportunities. Some offers to test include: Free Trial, Schedule Demo, Free Evaluation, Request Consultation, Request Proposal, Free Assessment, etc.

Test, test, test!

A/B test your landing pages to determine which variants are driving the most conversions, opportunities, customers and ROI:

Always A/B test a single element at a time to isolate the effect of that element on performance. Also, test only two variants of the page at a time. The most important elements you should run tests on are above the fold, and include: 

• Headline: Test different versions of your main selling point, benefit or offer.
• Call-to-Action (CTA): Try out different CTA copy, colors, sizes and placements.
• Hero Shot or Background: Test different images or videos for your hero shot or background
• Form: Test different lengths and placements for your lead generation form. You might display your form in the hero area, at the­­ bottom of your page or as a popup.

8) Make Adjustments Based on Mobile Performance

If you implemented device tracking as described in sections 1 and 2, you will now be able to determine which devices (computer, tablet or smartphone) are driving opportunities. If you find that mobile leads are not converting into opportunities, you can stop running your campaigns on mobile devices or reduce bids so that computers and tablets receive the bulk of your traffic.

9) Create an Ad Schedule

Even if you are running your ads 24/7, you should set up an ad schedule for your campaigns. You can add days of the week or break your schedule down further by adding hourly segments for each day of the week. Once this is done, you will be able to track performance for each day or hourly segment that you define:

Once you combine your opportunity data and your ad schedule, you will be able to determine which days or hours produce the most opportunities. From there, you can adjust your bids for each segment or stop running your campaign for those segments.

You should typically look at this data over a longer period of time—at least one quarter. If you find that you are not generating any opportunities on weeknights or weekends, and can stop running most of your campaigns during those times and move your budget over to regular business hours.

Conclusion

PPC campaigns are an effective way to attract B2B leads. However, many companies struggle at generating opportunities and driving a positive ROI from their campaigns. These nine strategies will help you create targeted campaigns optimized for high quality lead conversions, and boost your bottom line.

Visual content is in high demand. Just about every piece of content you create can be enhanced by some kind of visual element. In fact, content with relevant images gets a whopping 94% more views than content without relevant images.

And in social media, visuals pretty much make or break your presence. According to Buffer, visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. And if you need any more evidence to convince you visuals are essential to your content marketing, just consider all these stats.

But honestly … who’s got time for all that? And I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly have a degree in graphic design, or the budget to hire someone who does. So, what’s a design-impaired marketer to do?

Luckily, over the past couple years, we’ve been on a mission at HubSpot to make visual content creation much less of an obstacle for the average marketer. How, you ask? Templates, my friends … templates. And what’s great about these templates is they’re all built for software you probably already have on your computer: PowerPoint.

I’m going to walk you through all the visual content marketing templates we have available for free to download, and show you how we’ve used them ourselves to create awesome visuals right in PowerPoint.

The Free Templates You Need for Visual Content Design

Click on a template below to jump to that section:

• 100 Templates for Visual Social Media Content
• 5 Pre-Sized Social Media Cover Photo Templates
• 15 Infographic Templates
• 5 SlideShare Presentation Templates
• 3 PowerPoint Presentation Templates
• 50 Customizable Call-to-Action Templates
• 18 Ebook Templates
• 195+ Design Templates for Canva
• 550+ Royalty-Free Stock Photos

100 Templates for Visual Social Media Content (Download Here)

You know how I said before that visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content? That’s right: Visual content rules the roost in social networks. On Twitter, for example, early research into visuals for the Buffer Twitter account revealed that tweets with photos earned 150% more retweets and 18% more clicks than tweets without images.

It makes perfect sense why: Just consider how much more prominently visual content gets displayed in social media feeds compared to text-based content. Of the two tweets below from Taco Bell, which one draws your eye more quickly?

This one?

Cooking Rule: If at first you don’t succeed, get Taco Bell.

— Taco Bell (@tacobell)
May 3, 2016

Or this one?

Snapchat Menu Hacks is back and spicer than ever. Follow “TacoBell” to find out how to make all of these creations. http://pic.twitter.com/6hGwKXo4p0

— Taco Bell (@tacobell)
May 19, 2016

The second one, right? Case in point.

But Twitter isn’t the only social network where visual content will garner you more engagement. In an analysis of one billion Facebook posts from three million brands globally, BuzzSumo found that the post formats that get the most engagement are questions and images.

So what can you do to make the content you post on Facebook, Twitter, and all other social networks more visual? Lots of things, it turns out. Here’s just a smattering of options you’ll get when you download the visual social media content templates — much more visually stimulating than just a description and a link, right?

And here’s an example of visual social media content we’ve created for HubSpot’s own Facebook Page — right in PowerPoint:

Download your 100 free social media graphic templates. (Then check out this blog post to see how quick and easy it is to customize them.)

5 Pre-Sized Social Media Cover Photo Templates (Download Here)

As you now know, social media is where visual content thrives. So to get started, you’ll want to make sure your business’ social media accounts are optimized with attractive cover photos. This download includes five pre-sized PowerPoint templates to help you create customized social media cover photos for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube using the right cover photo dimensions.

In fact, we frequently use PowerPoint to create HubSpot’s own Facebook cover photos. Here’s an example of one of our former cover photos that was used to promote our free stock photos (we’ll cover that later in this post).

Download your 5 social media cover photo templates here.

15 Infographic Templates (Download Here)

When you think about visual content and marketing, what’s the first thing you think of? I bet many of you think of infographics. The infographic is a great choice for visual content — particularly for your blog — since it can generate a lot of traffic, inbound links, and social shares. After all, infographics are Liked or shared on social media 3X more than any other type of content. But man, can it take a lot of time and skill to pull off.

Enter our 15 customizable infographic templates, which can help you cut back on the time, effort (and, yes, skill) required for infographic creation.

There are 15 infographic styles to choose from, and each is completely customizable. And because all you need is a little PowerPoint know-how (don’t worry — the download also offers some basic PowerPoint tips) and the content to plug into them, these templates will severely cut back on the time, effort, and design skills necessary for infographic creation.

In fact, my colleague Lindsay used one of these templates to create a brand new infographic in under an hour. Read this blog post to see the before/after, and what she did to create it.

Download your 15 free, customizable infographic templates.

5 SlideShare Presentation Templates (Download Here)

Another great option for creating visual blog content is SlideShare. SlideShare is a site that allows you to upload files that people can view, share, and embed. It’s most typical use is for sharing slideshows.

SlideShare presentations are great for content that is best presented in a visual way — like quick tips or best practices, data, visual examples, or content that tells a story. But like so many other forms of visual content, SlideShare creation does take time and skill.

That’s why if you grab one of our five SlideShare designs and plug in some content (like a blog post) you’ve already created, you’ll make things much easier on yourself — and shave off valuable content creation time, too.

Below is an example of a SlideShare presentation we created from scratch using PowerPoint. The contents of this presentation also provide some helpful tips for using stock photos in your visual content. Lucky for you, we’re about to throw some free stock photos your way, too ;-).

Download your 5 free SlideShare templates. (Then check out this post, which provides you with some SlideShare creation tips and best practices along the way.)

3 PowerPoint Presentation Templates (Download Here)

What about if you’re creating a slide deck that’s not necessarily meant for SlideShare? Maybe it’s for an internal presentation you’re giving to share the results of a project you did, a deck to report on your monthly marketing metrics, or some slides for an upcoming speaking gig you have.

We have a few general PowerPoint templates available for download as well, which also comes with a series of four videos to teach you some basic PowerPoint creation tips, including how to enhance images, how to clean up your text, and how install premium fonts — all right in PowerPoint.

Download your 3 PowerPoint templates here.

50 Customizable Call-to-Action Templates (Download Here)

Of all the templates on this list, this one is probably the most utilitarian. After all, CTAs are pretty darn essential for lead generation — and lead generation is one of the most important goals for many marketers. But there’s also no denying that CTAs still require some design skill.

Luckily, this template download offers 50 customizable CTAs in — you guessed it — PowerPoint! Here’s one I created from scratch in PowerPoint to promote our data hub, HubSpot Research.

And if you want more inspiration (and proof) about just how professional-looking you can make CTAs in PowerPoint, check out this blog post featuring seven big-brand CTAs recreated in PowerPoint. It’s life changing.

Download your 50 customizable calls-to-action.

18 Ebook Templates (Download Here and Here)

… because your ebooks deserve to look better than a 10-page chunk of text in Microsoft Word. We started out by building five free ebook templates, and then more recently added 13 additional templates — so you’ll have plenty of professional-looking, attractive design options to choose from when you’re creating your next ebook.

And if you need help with ebook creation in general, this blog post walks you through it step-by-step using one of our very own ebook templates.

Need a little more help with the whole writing part? This free guide will walk you through how to write an ebook — from content and concept to design and promotion.

Download your ebook templates: 5 here | 13 here

195+ Design Templates for Canva (Download Here)

It can be hard to find the time and resources to create a cohesive set of campaign visuals, from Twitter graphics, to blog images, to email header images. That’s why we partnered with Canva to put together the ultimate set of 195+ design templates for every visual marketing need, including infographic templates, social media templates for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, email header templates, blog featured image templates, and more.

These design templates are easy-to-use, work for any industry (finance, dentistry, agriculture, law… we’ve got ’em all), and are completely free. For each template, you’ll find 10 visual design types and multiple themes that are carried through each design type — making it easy for you to quickly spin up a visual marketing campaign across multiple channels.

Download your 195+ design templates for every visual marketing need here.

550+ Royalty-Free Stock Photos (Download the First 80 Here)

Okay, so this is the one resource on our list that isn’t exactly a template. However, you can (and should) absolutely remix and customize these free stock photos in PowerPoint. These are completely free images you can use in your marketing campaigns — no royalties or fees whatsoever. Use them on your website, on your blog, in your emails, in social media, or anywhere else without any worries about attribution or copyright infringement.

We have four collections of stock photos available to download:

• 80 Assorted Photos
• 75 More Assorted Photos
• 160 Business-Themed Photos
• 250 Holiday-Themed Photos

Here’s a preview of our assorted stock photos collection:

To customize these images, simply plop them into PowerPoint and work your magic: Write captions, crop them, add thought bubbles, remove backgrounds, and so on. Check out the following example of how we took one of our stock photos and made it our own by adding a screenshot to the laptop screen:

Download your free stock photos: 80 Assorted Photos | 75 More Assorted Photos | 160 Business-Themed Photos | 250 Holiday-Themed Photos

While not a template, if you’re just getting started with visual content marketing, you might also want to check out The Marketer’s Crash Course in Visual Content Creation. Consider this the do-it-yourself (DIY) designer’s handbook: It not only explains why visual content marketing is important, but it also runs through the types of visual content you can create, 10 best practices for DIY design, 23 free tools to help you with visual content creation, and a design evaluation checklist so you can ensure you’re following all the DIY design best practices.

Ready to start creating awesome visual content quickly and on a budget? Get downloading — then start creating!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2013 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

There have been plenty of predictions for the commerce industry in 2016. From drones and year round same-day delivery, to AI and wearable technology woven into our everyday fabrics. Google, Amazon and the like have all made strides in these arenas, but outside of those technology behemoths, 2016 has been a relatively slow shopping year from the point of view of retailers.

The Guardian recently blamed this on deep discounting trends, which began during the recession, have yet to let up, even though the economy is relatively healthy and consumers likely have more to spend. The pricing race to the bottom is cutting into the margins of most small and mid-sized retailers –– and it’s a bit unclear for most on who to back out of this situation. It’s one thing to lower prices and an entirely other to raise them.

In looking to solve this problem and figure out exactly what it is that is convincing consumers to buy online, BigCommerce commissioned a study into the modern consumer journey. We learned how, when, why and where U.S. consumers buy today –– and more so, what is stopping them from doing so. 

This information is incredibly important for retailers looking to sustain and grow their revenue. In today’s omni-channel world, brands must be strategic about merchandising on their various channels and need to fully understand why or why not their customers are clicking the buy button –– no matter where it appears.

Check out the infographic below for key insights or read the full State of Omni-Channel Retail Report.

Large purchases require a lot of consideration from buyers—and for prospective parents and students, choosing a school is no different.

This means that schools who only give students or parents the option to “Apply Now,” are missing out on a big opportunity. Think about it this way, you wouldn’t go to a car website and buy a new SUV without reading a guide, taking a test drive, or doing some research would you?

Of course not! So why would a student’s first interaction with your school be to submit an application? Wouldn’t it be better to inform them or help them get to know your institution before asking for such a large commitment? 

By providing educational content earlier on in the application cycle, marketers can instead strengthen their relationship with people not yet ready to take the leap and apply. It works a little something like this:

• Learn more about prospects earlier on in the enrollment cycle
• Use this information to nurture and build trust with prospects
• Eventually turn strangers into enrollment-ready applicants

Sound too easy to be true? With the right know how it’s not. To help pain a more complete picture and illustrate how schools can use early-stage conversions to increase applications and enrollments, we put together From Stranger to Student, a complimentary guide for education marketers. 

You can download your copy here >> 

Other education marketing topics you’d like to learn more about? Let us know in the comment section below! 

If you’re a frequent user of Excel, there are probably a few features you’ve found yourself using over and over again in your work.

VLOOKUPs, autofilters, and conditional formatting are critical pieces of any veteran’s arsenal — and they’ve been making appearances in spreadsheets for years.

But what most Excel users don’t know is that these features only represent a fraction of the program’s capabilities. Beyond the basics, Excel has a variety of tools that can make your spreadsheets more beautiful — and your life a lot easier.

Today, in the spirit of exploration, we’ll dive into six of these little-known Excel features to explore some of the most helpful — but least-used capabilities — of our favorite spreadsheet program. These tips and features are designed to help you work faster and smarter … and who doesn’t need more hours back in their day?

(Note: If you aren’t familiar with these features above, don’t panic. Excel can be really tricky to master, so you may want to start here or here … or here.)

How to Work Faster in Excel: 6 Helpful Tips

1) Leverage the Tables Tools to organize data and conduct quick analyses.

Although much of the data we enter into Excel is technically in table format — meaning that it’s organized into rows and columns — Excel has a separate Tables feature that allows you to analyze a group of related data more easily.

To get started with Tables, we’ve got to begin with a set of data. In this case, we’re working with some fake data from one of our favorite television series: Game of Thrones.

To create a table, select your data. Once your data is selected, follow the instructions below.

• On Windows:
• Navigate to the “Insert” tab on the ribbon, then click “Table.”
• If your data has headers already, be sure to check the “My Data Contains Headers” box so that Excel knows to create a separate header row for your column titles.
• Press “OK.”

• On a Mac:
• Navigate to the “Tables” tab on the ribbon.
• If your data already has headers, click “New” > “Insert Table With Headers.”
• If it does not have headers, click “New” > “Insert Table Without Headers.”

Our data immediately becomes much more beautiful, with tastefully-striped rows and a nice blue color theme. Notice that Excel has also automatically added sorting and filtering dropdowns at the top of each column, so we don’t need to insert those ourselves.

But pretty formatting isn’t the only advantage of using a data table. There are a couple other key features that will make analyzing this data set supremely easy.

First of all, we can reference columns of our table by name within functions. Let’s try summing up the number of castles owned for everyone in our data set. Normally, we’d have to use cell references to obscure cell letters and numbers to perform this calculation. But with Tables, we can reference an entire column at once by name. In this case, we’ll take the SUM of the “Castles owned” column like so:

=SUM(Table2[Castles owned])

It’s that easy! No confusing numbers or letters to memorize — just the name of a column.

Second, we can easily add data rows to our table without worrying about breaking formulas. Let’s add a row for our dear friend Tyrion, who we’d be remiss to leave off of this spreadsheet.

When we start typing at the bottom of the table, Excel automatically adds a row and autoformats it per the table’s specifications. Best of all, the SUM() function we created automatically updates — no need to change the cell references once we’ve added a table row.

Finally, we can easily add formulas to every row of the table itself without copying and pasting. Let’s create a new column that calculates each character’s total number of properties by adding together their “Castles owned” and “Houses owned.”

In the first row of this column, take the SUM of the “Castled owned” and “Houses owned” columns. Notice that rather than using the standard cell reference nomenclature, Excel has used a new format: =SUM([@[Houses owned]],[@[Castles owned]]). And the formula automatically applies itself to every cell on the table.

2) Use the CONVERT formula to make speedy calculations.

We often find ourselves needing to perform unit conversions in Excel — like degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius or kilograms to pounds — particularly when we’re collaborating internationally.

It’s typically an onerous process involving some online research and manual copy-and-pasting. But there’s an easier way: Excel includes a generic conversion function called CONVERT() that helps us convert weight, distance, time, and temperature to and from various units.

The CONVERT formula looks like this: =CONVERT(number, from_unit, to_unit)

The from_unit and to_unit arguments are strings pulled from a pre-defined set of units built into Excel. Here are some of the most useful:

Distance

Temperature

Time

(Click here for a complete list of text values)

Let’s try it out by converting each character’s preferred temperature from degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius. Rather than looking online for conversion formulas, we can simply use the following formula in a row column of our Table:

=convert([@[Preferred temp (F)]], “F”, “C”)

3) Use the DATEDIF function to calculate the difference between dates.

We often need to calculate the differences between dates in our spreadsheets — particularly when formatting tables to be used to generate charts and graphs. Many Excel users resort to using numerous columns full of complicated YEAR(), MONTH(), and DAY() columns to extract and compare date information from various cells.

But there’s an easier way: The seldom-used DATEDIF() function. DATEDIF() allows us to take the difference between two dates using a number of predetermined Excel settings. For example, we can find the total difference between two dates, in days. Or we can find the difference between two dates ignoring their years and months, so that only the numerical days are considered.

The DATEDIF() function looks like this: =DATEDIF(start_date, end_date, unit)

That ‘unit’ argument tells Excel what to take the difference between, based on the following table:

(Click here for more on the DATEDIF function and units.)

Let’s say, for example, that we wanted to find the difference, in days, between the birth dates of Cersei and Tyrion. We could do it like so:

=DATEDIF(D5,D18,”D”)

If we wanted to look up the same value in years, we could use a very similar formula, with the ‘unit’ argument slightly modified:

=DATEDIF(D5,D18,”Y”)

4) Analyze numerical comparisons using Data Bars.

Setting up a chart in Excel takes time. You’ve got to select your data set, generate the chart, and ensure that the data is being displayed correctly. Then, you have to format the chart, adding axis labels, titles, gridlines, and more. Charts are a great tool for making beautiful data visualizations in Excel, but what if you just want to get a quick look at how a set of data compares internally?

Enter data bars. These are a handy way to visualize numerical comparisons using Conditional Formatting — without going through all the complexity of chart creation and development.

To get started, simply select a row or column of numbers to compare, then — on either Windows or Mac — hit “Home” > “Conditional Formatting” > “Data Bars” and pick the bar color of your choice.

Cells in our selected row or column will automatically fill with in-cell data bars. The length of these bars will be proportional to that of the other bars in our data series, with the largest numbers almost filling the cells in question.

Let’s try it out on our “Houses owned” column. With a couple of keystrokes, it’s easy to get a visual sense for who owns the most houses — no charts required.

5) Identify trends over time using Sparklines.

Data bars, described above, are an easy way to get an at-a-glance visual comparison of different static numerical quantities. Trouble is, they don’t help us much if we want to quickly look at trends over time.

Of course, we can always use charts and graphs to visualize data, but they become cumbersome and cluttered if we’re trying to look at multiple data sets at once.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way to visualize this data: Sparklines.

Sparklines are in-cell graphics (just like data bars), but they don’t show just static quantities. Instead, they show multiple pieces of data at once — like a mini-chart within a cell. Here’s an example of Sparklines in action, used to show trends in houses owned over time for a number of different people:

Follow the instructions below to try out Sparklines on your own.

• On Windows:
• First, select a column or partial column; this is where our completed Sparklines will be inserted. (Note: Sparklines can only be inserted into adjacent cells within a single column — they don’t work as well when used within adjacent cells in a row.)
• Click “Insert” then select the type of Sparklines you’d like to insert under the “Sparklines” section. There are several options here: line charts, column charts, or win/loss charts. Choose the one that will best assist in visualizing your data.
• Enter the data range from which you’d like to generate your Sparklines in the “Data Range” box. The data range you select should be a two-dimensional matrix, and its number of rows should always be equal to the number of cells you selected before creating your Sparklines.
• Press “OK.”

• On a Mac:
• First, select a column or partial column; this is where our completed Sparklines will be inserted. (Note: Sparklines can only be inserted into adjacent cells within a single column — they don’t work as well when used within adjacent cells in a row.)
• Click “Charts” then select the type of Sparklines you’d like to insert under the “Insert Sparklines” section. There are several options here: line charts, column charts, or win/loss charts. Choose the one that will best assist in visualizing your data.
• Enter the data range from which you’d like to generate your Sparklines in the “Select a data range for the Sparklines:” box. The data range you select should be a two-dimensional matrix, and its number of rows should always be equal to the number of cells you selected before creating your Sparklines.
• Press “OK.”

Sparklines provide a quick and easy way to interpret trends in our data without having to invest time and effort in formatting multiple charts.

6) Arrange data using multiple Custom Sort levels.

If you’re a veteran Excel user, you’ve probably used Quick Sort quite a bit to arrange your data in a logical and coherent fashion. (If not, read up on how to alphabetize in Excel here.)

But many spreadsheet users don’t know that it’s possible to sort on multiple levels. For example, we can sort a sheet by last name, and, if two people on the sheet share the same last name, sort by first name next. Each level of our sort can be totally customized — with contents sorted from A to Z, or largest to smallest.

To Custom Sort on both Windows and Mac, select your data and head to “Data” > “Sort” > “Custom Sort.” A window will appear asking which column you’d like to sort by first, and how. Press the small “+” icon at the bottom of the screen to add an additional level of sorting. Using the dropdowns provided, you can choose to sort based on cell values (either numerical or alphabetical), or based on more advanced features such as cell color, font color, or icons.

In the following example, we’ll use an advanced Custom Sort to rearrange our list of people, ordering first by last name, then by gender, and finally by houses owned.

We now have an easy-to-read list of people ordered by family and properties.

There you have it: six of the most helpful Excel functions to make you faster and more productive. If you enjoyed this article, put it in your bookmarks bar to keep these Excel tips on hand at work.

What do you want to learn how to do in Excel? Share your thoughts below.

In order to have a successful ecommerce site, online retailers have to choose the right platform. For many retailers, open source platforms are the way to go, offering undeniable freedom, flexibility and scalability. However, they’re not the best choice for everyone, as they can be very technical, expensive and difficult to manage independently.Here, we break down the main factors that retailers should consider when determining whether or not their site requires the support of an open source platform.

Budget

Open source platforms are usually much more expensive than alternative options like template-based platforms.

Why?

On open source, retailers essentially start from scratch, which means that they need to invest more time, money and resources into the development of their site and pay for things like developers, updates, extensions, maintenance fees, etc. On top of that, this cost is largely unpredictable, with unexpected expenses like security patches, software updates and redesigns popping up all the time.

Overall, open source platforms typically cost an average of 4 times more than template-based platforms over time. The key, then, is for retailers to be aware of this difference and consider factors like the nature of their company, its potential for growth and the overall goal of their site to determine whether or not open source is worth the investment for them.

The Open Source User

The ideal open source user is a highly architectured, product-heavy site with an experienced development team and a fully developed business plan. This kind of ecommerce company has both the internal bandwidth and the need for open source, as they have a specific site vision and will likely require a level of customization and buildability that other platforms simply cannot provide.

Conversely, a small-scale retailer with a straight-forward product catalog and a team with little technical experience may be overwhelmed by the commitment and technicality that open source requires.

The main point, then, is that retailers have to consider all relevant factors when allocating their budget and determining if an open-source platform is a business-smart investment for them.

Technology

Ecommerce retailers must have access to expert, certified developers if they want to properly develop and maintain a website on an open source platform like Magento. The very nature of open source requires working in the source code of a site, meaning that retailers essentially have a clean slate when it comes to the back-end of their site. In other words, it’s like drawing on a blank sheet of paper – versus a coloring book – there are no guidelines or pre-set parameters.

On one hand, this kind of freedom allows for an unparalleled amount of customization and scalability. For a development team with the resources and a clear vision, the sky’s the limit. It also leaves a lot of room for error, though, if for example, multiple developers are used and those developers are not Magento certified, they can create conflicting codes, leading to incompatible connectors, unsupported extensions, and, in the big picture, a back-end that simply does not function seamlessly. If this happens, the website will be unresponsive and it will likely need to be redeveloped or redesigned, which means lost revenue, lost time and unnecessary expenses.

Retailers must consider the technological scope of their team before they go to open source. If they do not have the resources or technological ability to create an effective design and proper integrations, they may need the guidance of template-based platforms.

Business Strategy

Companies with a defined, developed business strategy should use an open source platform. Once again, this has to do with flexibility and freedom. With template-based platforms like BigCommerce, retailers oftentimes have to alter their business practices to fit the template-based model.

If a company’s business model requires air shipping (say they ship perishable products) they would have to restructure this aspect of their business on a template-based platform. In such cases, the flexibility of open source is a huge plus.

That said, this restrictive business model is not always a negative. Many companies don’t have a firm structure or defined practices in place, and they can benefit from the guidance that these template-based platforms provide.

In general, then, it is important that retailers consider the restrictions and requirements of their business, choosing the solution that will best support them.

ERP and CRM Integrations

If ecommerce retailers have either of these integrations, they should go with an open source platform.

Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP)

An ERP is a business process management software that is often used by ecommerce retailers to keep track of important business metrics and capture funds.

The first function that many of the newer ERPs have is to capture funds for ecommerce retailers. Legally, customers cannot be charged for a product that they have ordered online until the shipping process has begun and a tracking label has been created. New ERPs create these tracking labels, thereby allowing for the funds to be captured and for revenue to be recognized and accrued.

Secondly, ERPs integrate the back-end accounting functions of ecommerce sites, helping retailers keep track of things like inventory, sales and product costs across multiple channels. This function is particularly necessary for ecommerce companies that operate online and in one or more brick-and-mortar locations.

Why?

It is exactly these kinds of multi-faceted operations that will need help keeping track of all of their important figures and accounting information.

That said, any company that requires an ERP or already has a structured ERP in place will likely need an open source platform. ERPs simply don’t integrate well with the template-based software, and trying to force an integration will likely lead to poor site performance overall.

Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)

A CRM, or Customer Relationship Management software, allows retailers to manage the different facets of their business, including marketing, automations, business information, and customer data, by centralizing all of this information in one portal.

By putting all integral functions and data in one place, CRMs can help ecommerce retailers organize their businesses and keep every member of their team on the same page.

Once again, companies that already have a CRM in place will likely benfit from an open source platform. Template-based systems usually have their own CRMs and do not integrate well with existing or external CRM software.

Product and Catalog Type

When considering an open source platform, ecommerce retailers must consider both the number of products that their website has and the number of variations on those products. A general rule of thumb is the more complex and numerous the catalog types, the more likely it is that a retailer will require an open source platform.

Why is this?

Template-based platforms tend to work best with simple, defined product types or products that don’t have options like bundles and attributes. Once things begin to get more complex, the performance of the product pages begins to suffer on template-based. This can turn into a big problem for site owners since it’ll cause issues, like slow page load speed, unresponsive product page design or low-quality product images, that will negatively impact traffic and conversion rates over time. Complex, product-focused retailers, then will require an open source site to support their needs and allow them to scale. 

Open source requires that retailers build and scale their ecommerce site on their own. While this option can seem daunting, it can provide unmatched freedom, technicality and scalability when done correctly.

In the big picture, it is essential that site owners recognize that the platform is the foundation of their online presence and choose the system that will best support their company’s needs, allowing their site to run smoothly and efficiently over time.

It is seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one, and it is only getting more expensive. As more and more ecommerce stores enter the market, the demand for PPC goes up. Simple economics tell us that these prices are on an upward trend.

Today’s top ecommerce sites are using retention to battle increasing digital marketing costs and stagnating growth. There are a number of retention tools at your disposal, but it can become tough to manage those tools. The solution is to use a loyalty program as a hub for your retention marketing tactics. 

Loyalty as a Retention Hub 

Here are a few examples of how a loyalty program can make your retention marketing efforts much easier by centralizing everything in one place. 

Incentivize Other Efforts with Points

Shoppers often take a “what’s in it for me?” approach when deciding whether they will complete an action on your site. It is incredibly valuable to get a customer to share your store over social media, but very few ever do. You can reward this behavior by providing points for the completion of marketing activities that are both retention and acquisition focused, whether that’s sharing your store on social media or referring a friend directly. 

As soon as a customer realizes that your points have real monetary value, they’re motivated to earn them for easy requests like sharing on social media or referring their friends, or sharing user-generated content. A loyalty program ties all of your marketing efforts back into your retention marketing strategy. More retention gets you more repeat customers, and repeat customers are valuable online!

Avoid Discounting 

One of the pitfalls of ecommerce is discounting your store to death, and reducing your average order value, customer lifetime value, and bottom line. Many online retailers will try to get more referrals, sales, or shares by offering a straight discount. These discounts set an expectation that a customer will never have to actually pay full price.

“If you are always offering discounts, your shoppers will never consider paying full price.”

You might see discounts as a necessary evil to get the ball rolling, but it can actually do some serious damage to your brand image and sales. This is especially true if you consider yourself a luxury retailer. 

Using a loyalty program allows you to reward points to incent action rather than offering straight discounts. Points do not have the same associations as $15 off or 20% off. And, they encourage users to continue to purchase full-price items from you. This allows you to kick start marketing effortsand avoid the negative effects of discounting.

Consistent Communication

The more tools you’re using, the higher likelihood that your communications have a fragmented look and feel. A tool for retention emails might send emails that look one way, and a referral program sends emails that look totally different. Using a loyalty program as a hub can help solve this fragmentation issue. After all, your customers only think they’re working with you — a single store. 

When all your retention efforts are being conducted with the same tool, you get a customer experience that is on brand, engaging, and effective at driving repeat purchases.

Centralized Data

There are not enough hours in the day for an online store owner or ecommerce manager. The last thing you want to be doing is checking multiple retention tools to see how effective your efforts have been.

A loyalty program can bring all these tools into one convenient location. Instead of looking at revenue from loyalty members, number of purchases from referrals, and repeat customer rate in three separate places, you can look in one spot.

And, using a central hub for retention marketing efforts makes it easier to see if your retention efforts are making you some serious money, or if they need to be tweaked.

Centralize Retention with a Loyalty Program

Retention marketing is a long term strategy, so to truly invest you need to set yourself up for success. Invest in the right tools, treat the strategy with the respect it deserves, and start things off right.

If you are planning to take your retention marketing efforts seriously, you should consider adding in a loyalty program. They lead to some amazing results, and create a central hub for your retention efforts. 

Back in April, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Facebook’s Messenger Platform — a new service that enables businesses of all sizes to build custom bots in Messenger.

In the days following the announcement, the tech and marketing space lost its mind. Thousands of articles were penned about the news, each one speculating on what an open Messenger platform could mean for businesses.

Why all the ardor? For starters, Facebook Messenger already has about 900 million monthly active users worldwide. Not registrants. Not people who got forced to download it when Facebook spun it out of the standard Facebook app. We’re talking about active users who have adopted Messenger as a primary communication channel.

Anytime a company as forward-looking as Facebook opens up a platform as heavily adopted as Messenger it should raise eyebrows. So the early excitement, well, it’s justified. But what comes next is entirely undefined. And as marketers, we have an exciting opportunity to help shape it.

As Zuckerberg put it in his keynote, “No one wants to have to install a new app for every business or service they want to interact with.” And bots are much different than disjointed apps. In other words, building into the already popular Facebook Messenger app could enable businesses to get in front of customers without that added friction.

At least, that’s the potential …

What Is a Bot?

“Bot” is a generalized term used to describe any software that automates a task. Chatbots, which anyone can now build into Facebook Messenger, automate conversation — at least the beginning stages of it.

What’s special about the bots you can build on Facebook Messenger is that they’re created using Facebook’s Wit.ai Bot Engine, which can turn natural language into structured data. You can read more on this here, but in short, this means that not only can bots parse and understand conversational language, but they can also learn from it. In other words, your bot could get “smarter” with each interaction.

You’ve undoubtedly heard of artificial intelligence (AI). And this is a type of AI. Natural language interface is common in most chatbots, but by opening up the Messenger Platform and providing developer tools like the bot engine, Facebook has made building an intelligent bot easier.

How People Find Bots in Facebook Messenger

So, now comes the classic marketer question: If you build it, will they come?

The answer? Maybe.

Users are able to search for companies and bots inside Facebook Messenger by name, so you’ll probably get some users that way. But, as with any new pathway into your company, you’re likely to find that adoption of this communication channel within your customer base won’t happen without some promotion. Facebook is trying to make that easier for businesses and organizations as well.

Here are a few tools and updates they’ve released to help simplify that connection:

Messenger Links

If you’ve created a Page for your business on Facebook, Messenger Links will use your Page’s username to create a short link (m.me/username). When someone clicks that link — regardless of where they are — it will open a conversation with your business in Messenger.

Customer Matching

If you have phone numbers for customers and pre-existing permission to reach out to them, you can find them on Facebook Messenger via customer matching. Conversations initiated through customer matching will include a final opt-in upon the first Facebook Messenger communication.

Image Credit: Facebook

Messenger Codes

Messenger codes are unique images that serve as a visual thumbprint for your business and bot on Messenger. If you are familiar with Snapchat codes, these visual cues act in the same way, redirecting anyone who scans them using Messenger to the corresponding company page or bot.

Image Credit: Facebook

Messenger Buttons

You can embed these buttons, provided by Facebook, into your website to enable anyone who clicks them to start a Messenger conversation with your company.

Image Credit: Facebook

For all of the above, if you haven’t developed a bot, the result will be a standard Messenger-based conversation. So you’ll want to be sure you’re monitoring that channel.

5 Examples of Branded Facebook Messenger Bots

Written definitions of bots are one thing, but sometimes it helps to understand how a bot works in action. Let’s take a look at a few early examples …

1) 1-800-Flowers

The example Mark Zuckerberg lauded in his keynote was the ability to send flowers from 1-800-Flowers without actually having to call the 1-800 number. A user, Danny Sullivan, subsequently tried it by sending flowers to Zuckerberg himself and documented the five-minute process here.

The bot took Sullivan through a few floral options and then confirmed shipping details.

Image Credit: Marketing Land  

2) Wall Street Journal

With the Wall Street Journal bot, users can get live stock quotes by typing “$” followed by the ticker symbol. They can also get the top headlines delivered to them inside of Messenger.

3) HP

HP created a bot for Messenger that enables users to print photos, documents, and files from Facebook or Messenger to any connected HP printer.

Image Credit: HP  

4) Facebook M

Facebook is releasing its own bot for Messenger, a personal assistant bot named “M”. M can answer a wide range of requests — from restaurant recommendations, to complex trivia, to last-minute hotel rates in the city.

Its flexibility is due to the fact that M is actually a bot-human hybrid. As Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer told Recode: “It’s primarily powered by people, but those people are effectively backed up by AIs.” While the bots act as a first line of defense in fielding questions, the difficult questions are quickly routed to human assistants.

Image Credit: The Next Web

5) Healthtap

Healthtap is an interactive healthcare provider that connects users to advice from medical professionals. On the heels of the platform announcement, Healthtap created a bot that enables users to type a medical question into Facebook Messenger and receive a free response from a doctor or browse articles of similar questions.

You can see here how the conversational interface works. The user in this example is inquiring in natural language about a specific health concern. From the user’s standpoint, this is similar to texting a friend.

Image Credit: mobihealthnews

This set up also helps the company filter inbound requests by solving some patient questions with existing responses first and then surfacing unique queries for live response.

(Intrigued by these examples? Engadget has a longer list of bots that are either released or under development for Facebook Messenger.)

Should You Build a Bot?

Ah, see that’s not the sort of question I can answer for you. Building a bot for Facebook Messenger, like any marketing or product endeavor, is going to take resources — mainly staff time and expertise — and may not result in the outcomes you’d like to see.

That said, here’s my best guidance for how you can answer the question for yourself:

Do you have a clear use case?

One of the biggest reasons so many companies went astray in building apps for their businesses is that they saw it as just another version of their website. They didn’t take the time to study how being on a mobile device would change the types of interactions their customers would want to have with their company.

Some tasks are just not well-suited for mobile. As a result, many apps sat unused. When you’re thinking about a use case for Facebook Messenger, make sure you’re thinking about it from the standpoint of the customer or user, not from the company’s standpoint. That’s the real driver of use.

Is your audience on Facebook?

This question is often too quickly dismissed by companies that see Facebook as a purely social platform, rather than one for businesses. Even if your audience doesn’t currently use Facebook for business needs, you need to start by determining whether or not the potential is there.

If you have an audience who uses Facebook heavily in their personal lives, they’re likely to adopt Messenger as a communications tool. And how they use Messenger may expand beyond how they use Facebook. Today, usage of messaging apps has actually outpaced that of social networks. And as new use cases arise, behavior evolves with them.

Can you support inbound inquiries from Messenger?

Don’t open a communication channel with your prospective and existing customers if you can’t support it. Even with the automation of a bot, you’ll still need to carve out time to 1) promote it 2) monitor any questions your bot can’t answer and 3) keep tabs on the overall customer experience you’re creating with it.

If you’ve thought through the above three questions and think you’ve got a good foundation for a Facebook Messenger bot then dive in. There’s a benefit to being an early adopter in this space. And as a newly open platform, Facebook Messenger needs thoughtful and strategic companies to shape it.

Have you used any branded bots on Facebook Messenger? What’s your favorite use case? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Content can be a great way for your association to engage with constituents. But where to begin? What’s the best approach to creating nonprofit content?

By setting goals, getting your team involved, and grounding your writing in a pre-established strategy, you can turn your blog, website and other content channels into a place you get engage with and inform potential customers. Whether you’re about to launch a brand new content strategy or want to tweak current efforts to increase member engagement, these 10 tips can help your organization succeed with content.

And to learn even more, check out our latest ebook, Sign Up! A Guide to Growing and Engaging Your Membership Base >>

Content Creation Tips for Associations 

1) Know Your Goal

The goal of inbound marketing is to get more people to join or engage with your organization. Your content is an extension of your organization’s overall growth and engagement strategy. Set milestones for your content that ladder up to this growth – number of views, clicks, downloads, new contacts, and members that originated from any given piece of content.   

2) Find Engaging Topics

Your organization has a wealth of experience and value. Use that knowledge to proactively answer questions that people have about organizations and members. This tactic is called “you ask, we answer.” There are so many questions folks have about who you are and what you do that people are search for answers on the web. Think about questions your members might type into goo

3) Care About Keywords

A keyword is simply a word or phrase that people search for online. With over two trillion searches being done this year, ignoring the phrases people search for around your issue can be a huge missed opportunity. You need to do basic research on the keywords people are looking for and the language your ideal constituent uses. Working those words into your content will help your inbound marketing efforts.

4) Get Everyone to Create Content 

Most organizations have a lot of people creating a lot of different content across many different departments. There are likely people in membership, policy, communications and beyond who are writing about your organization in compelling ways. You should have one person in charge of overall content, so all of the great work that your team is doing isn’t lost or duplicated. That way, everyone else can focus on planning, curating and editing content. Check out our post on why everyone should create content here.

5) Social Is Not Enough

We love social media. It’s an easy way to share content and it can increase traffic. But it’s important to think beyond a single tweet. You need good content to get customers to click, and more content on your site to keep them there. 

6) Conversions Matter More Than Traffic

You can have an impressive amount of people visiting your site, but if those browsers are not taking any action to indicate they’re interested or signing up to join your association, it is a waste of a lot of effort. Your goal as an organization is for people to take action. So, your content and website needs to be focused around that. One way to encourage conversions is to think about calls-to-action that matter to you—Donate, get involved, sign up—and then work backward to create content and workflows that drive users toward those actions.

7) Think Quantity and Quality

“How often should we post?” This is a harder question to answer than you might think. There is an ongoing argument around content marketing about quantity vs. quality. Should I have one great 2,000-word post or four 500-word posts? 

Our short answer is you need both quantity and quality. Consistency matters a ton. If you can consistently publish once or twice a week and do a big content offering once a quarter, do that. If you can do more than that great, but don’t start a blog and then stop six months later. Check out HubSpot’s experiment on blog post frequency here.

8) Consider Both Reactive and Evergreen Content

Sometimes, it makes sense for you to create a piece of content that is timely, or reacts to a specific current events. Other times, you should focus on writing something that is just as relevant today as it will be six months from now. A mix of both is important, because it drives different types of people. Some people are looking to solve problems, while others are looking to be entertained or informed on a current issue. Your content should answer all of these questions.

9) Have A Content Mix

Think beyond writing. Video, audio and infographics all have their place mix up the type of content. The goal of trying different approaches (like quizzes, games and paywalls) is to reach and engage folks.

10) Plan Out Your Content 

It’s important to have a calendar. Since inbound marketing is a cross-department effort, you need to have the content be coordinated across departments. Use a content program like Teamup or the HubSpot content calendar to keep track of posts.

Bonus Tips:

Hold A Blog-A-Thon

Wouldn’t it be great to create three times as many blog posts in a single sitting? Get your team around a white board and write 100 questions people would ask about your association. Then write out the answers, and you just created great content, fast.

Create A Video Booth at Events

Have trouble getting video content?  A quiet room and a green screen are a way to capture good member video easily and quickly.

Use A Whiteboard Program  

Whiteboard videos are easy to make and don’t take much time to create. Using a program like VideoScribe, you can take your best written content and turn it into video.

Want more? We delved deep into how inbound marketing can help nonprofits grow membership bases in our new ebook with HubSpot, Sign Me Up! A Guide to Growing and Engaging Your Membership Base.