As the Content Director at an inbound marketing agency, I cringe when I visit our company’s blog and see that the most recent post was from more than a week ago. But sometimes, it just can’t be helped.

That’s because maintaining a regular blogging schedule can be extraordinarily difficult. Brainstorming topic ideas, writing, editing, proofreading, publishing, promoting — it’s a lot to ask from a handful of writers who have a plate full of client work to do.

When it comes to small businesses, who may have only a business owner trying to maintain all inbound efforts, blogging regularly becomes all but impossible. 

But none of that changes the fact that maintaining a regular blog is one of the best ways to keep leads coming into your site. Research has shown that 15 blogs a month can generate 1,200 new leads each month. That definitely seems worth the effort!

So how exactly are you supposed to blog 15 times a month when you can barely manage 1 a week? Short of making more hours in the day (and if I knew how to do that, I’d be swimming in my pool of money in a private colony on the moon), there’s only one way: get more writers. 

“But writers are expensive,” you say. “And freelancers don’t know my business!” 

This is true. But I’m not talking about hiring new writers or outsourcing your blog, I’m talking about making writers from the employees you already have.

Whether you know it or not, every person that works for you is a potential blogger. You just have to know how to convince them to contribute. 

Put Out the Call

If you’ve been handling your company’s blogging duties on your own, you may be surprised to see what happens when you actually ask your co-workers or employees to contribute. You might already have an aspiring writer in your midst. At your next staff meeting, or even in a casual email, see if anyone has something they would like to contribute to the company blog.

This is also a great opportunity to explain how important good writing skills can be to anyone’s professional development and future ambitions, no matter what their ultimate career goal. In fact, one recent survey found that corporate recruiters ranked “strong writing skills as one of the top 5 critical factors to consider when selecting candidates to interview. That’s pretty important. 

Of course, if your agency is growing and work is consistently rolling in, you might not get a huge response the first time around. Even people who want to write might be so swamped they don’t dare to take on a new project that will take up their precious time.

While it’s best not to badger anyone into writing for you, feel free to ask again, perhaps in a different way. If you made an announcement at a meeting, send a follow up email. Even better, if you know someone who you think would be a great asset to the blog, because of their experience, writing style, or energy reach out to them directly.  A personal invitiation is definitely a compliment and may have better results. 

Uncover Expertise

Since I started tracing block letters in kindergarten, I’ve never been afraid of writing. That’s probably a big reason that content creation (which includes a lot of writing) has become a part of my career.

But I also understand that my experience is not the same as everyone else’s. For some people, writing conjures images of high school essays covered in red marks and all nighters trying to make sense of “Chicago Style.” Is it a new show from Dick Wolf? We just don’t know.

In short, writing can be scary. It’s your job to help burgeoning writers overcome these fears, and one of the best ways to do this is by finding out what the writer is passionate about. From there, you can begin to brainstorm blog topics that let this knowledge shine.

Of course, your new blogger can’t write exclusively about mountain biking or pie crusts, but it’s your job to find a way to incorporate their expertise and frame it in a way that applies to your blogging goals.

For example, if someone is an expert in mountain bike repair, they could probably craft a pretty compelling blog about how biking down a mountain on busted shocks is a lot like trying to generate leads without a landing page (it’s possible but not very comfortable or efficient).

A passionate home baker knows a lot about the importance of following processes in the right order — not to mention measurement — which are both essential pieces of inbound marketing,  so why not help them craft a post that incorporates those elements? 

When people are writing about something they care about, those initial fears fall away much easier. And the more they write, the more confident they will become writing about a broader range of topics.

Be Flexible

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

– Douglas Adams

Another thing that can cause fear for new writers is deadlines. Come to think of it, deadlines scare me a little, too. But for writers who didn’t have blogging as part of their normal workload, it can be particularly daunting to add another looming date to their to do list.

A regular blogging schedule is great, but when you can be flexible with deadlines for new writers, they can feel a bit more comfortable and will ultimately produce something better.

The best way to do this is to make sure that you fit new writers’ posts into your editorial calendar in a way that gives them a ton of time. Be sure to build in a little extra time for a round or two of edits and some thorough proofreading and you will both be able to breathe a little easier. 

Provide Resources

The best blog posts are backed up by data along with personal experience. New writers might not know where to begin looking for the kind of data they need to support their posts, but you do.

When you’re assigning topics, be sure to provide plenty of resources — from blogs to trade industry publications and even social influencers — that your writers can pull from to help them find ideas and statistics. 

For first time bloggers, it could also be a good idea to offers some tips and resources on some of the blogging best practices that you may take for granted, like: 

• Proper linking/citation guidelines
• Internal linking practices
• How to include CTAs
• Grammar, spelling, and punctuation

As you recruit more writers for you blog, consider creating an internal document that goes through your company’s internal blogging guidelines. You can collect the resources you share  While you’re at it, this might be a great time to refresh your own knowledge of how to optimize your blog for lead generation. 

Give Great Feedback

You’ve been writing blogs for a while, so you know what you like and what works. But when you get your first blog post back from a brand new writer, don’t expect it to be perfect or to match exactly what you’ve been doing.

And don’t rush into editing, rearranging, and making the post presentable as you see it. Instead, sit down with your fledgling writer and go through your notes. Don’t be mean or dismissive (this should be a given as an editor anyhow). Give actionable notes and examples of great writing to encourage new writers to keep going.

It’s a real ‘teach a blogger to fish’ situation. If you go hog wild on editing and publish a post that’s unrecognizable to the writer, it’s going to be really difficult to convince that person to keep writing for you.

But if you can give constructive feedback (as well as praise where it’s deserved!) it will go a long way towards create a longterm contributor for your blog, and more lead generating content for your company.

Set Your Bloggers Free

When you give new writers the right tools to succeed, you are contributing to their professional development while also making an important impact on the future of your company.

The first few blog posts can definitely be challenging from both sides. After all, you have just as much on your plate as your employees and you might not feel as though you have the time to sit down with new writers, provide great feedback, and give them a space in your tightly controlled editorial calendar.

But just like a few minutes in the gym everyday can add years to your life, a few minutes with a new writer can add tons of content to your blog. That is, the upfront investment is well worth it for the payout.

If scheduling is really an issue, consider hosting office hours for new writers. Once a week, block off your schedule and plan to take questions, give notes, and work with new writers for an hour. Once they get off and running, you will have that time to work while still fielding questions as they come in. 

The best part of spending even a little bit of time working with your new team of writers is that you will be able to set them free from your editorial grasp a lot sooner than you think. And there is nothing quite so satisfying as being able to teach someone a new skill and then see it be utilized right away.

Building a company blog that’s driving leads to your site takes the help of the whole company, and not just because it’s a huge job. The fact is that your regularly updated blog can quickly become your company’s top source of traffic. That means it should be a good representation of your company, its values, and how you solve problems for your key buyer personas.

There is no better way to do that then to have people from throughout your company contribute. These writers add fresh voices and new perspectives while at the same time keeping your blog going and growing your business.

With these tips, you should be able to rally a team of writers that can help bring your blog to life.

Some habits, like brushing your teeth, you’ve done so many times that they feel automatic. In fact, it’s probably true that every time you brush your teeth, you do so in pretty much the exact same way every time.

Other habits, like exercising for even twenty minutes a day, can feel nearly impossible to pick up.

But why? Why are some habits so easy to fall into, while others are so darn hard? And why are those “bad habits” so difficult to break?

There’s a lot of scientific and behavioral research out there about habits — from creating new ones and breaking bad ones, to why some people find it harder than others to find motivation. And thanks to the TED Talk program, the leading researchers behind some of these cool studies have been able to share their ideas with the world in a format that’s easy to digest.

Ready to form better habits? Here are nine TED talks to give you the research, ideas, and tools to get started.

9 TED Talks on Forming Better Habits

1) Judson Brewer: “A Simple Way to Break a Habit”

Length: 9 min. 24 sec.

Why do we overeat, smoke, or give in to other cravings when we know they’re bad for us? Can we learn to break these bad habits by being more curious about them? Psychiatrist Judson Brewer researches mindfulness techniques for a living — specifically, techniques that help us quell our cravings. One of his studies, for instance, found that mindfulness training was twice as good as gold standard therapy at helping people quit smoking.

In this TED talk, Brewer teaches us what happens in our brains when we develop these bad habits, and how teaching yourself to be mindful can help you target the core mechanisms to help us step out of our unhealthy patterns and addictive behaviors.

2) Matt Cutts: “Try Something New For 30 Days”

Length: 3 min. 27 sec.

Serving as the head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts tends to be best known for the work he and other engineers have done on Google’s search algorithm. But a few years ago, he felt like he was stuck in a “rut.” So he took the simple advice of the American philosopher Morgan Spurlock: Try something new for 30 days.

In this short, lighthearted TED talk, Cutts talks about what he learned from his 30-day challenge and encourages the rest of us to give it a shot.

3) Emily Balcetis: “Why Some People Find Exercise Harder Than Others”

Length: 14 min. 8 sec.

Why is it that some people struggle so much more than others to fit exercise into their routine? Through their research, social psychologist Emily Balcetis and her team found that our motivation levels and our goals can have profound affects on our vision — the way we literally see the world.

In this TED talk, Balcetis walks us through her research on health and fitness. She finds, for example, that people who are highly motivated to exercise literally see physical distance — say, the distance between them and a finish line — as shorter than people who aren’t motivated to exercise. Then, she talks about strategies for changing these perceptions of distance, which can ultimately make exercise and fitness goals appear easier and more attainable.

4) David Buettner: “How to Live to Be 100”

Length: 19 min. 39 sec.

Ever heard of “Blue Zones”? They’re communities around the world — from the island of Sardinia to the Okinawa archipelago, 800 miles south of Tokyo — in which the elders live to record-setting ages. David Buettner is a world explorer and writer for National Geographic, and he studies the world’s longest-lived peoples. His goal? To find the optimal lifestyle of longevity, so he and his team can uncover the universal formula for longevity.

In his TED talk, Buettner talks about his quest to find the lifestyle formula for long life and health. Then, he shares the nine common diet and lifestyle habits he uncovered from those “Blue Zones” that kept these communities’ elders spry past the age of 100.

5) Dean Ornish: “Your Genes Are Not Your Fate”

Length: 3 min. 12 sec.

Think the genes you’re born with determine your health and fate for life? Turns out, the lifestyle choices we make — from the food we eat to how stressed we are — can have powerful affects on how our genes “express” themselves, how we age, and even how large or small our brains are.

In this short but empowering TED talk, Ornish shares new research that shows just how profoundly adopting healthy lifestyle habits can affect us at a genetic level. In some cases, people have even reversed heart disease by adopting healthier habits.

6) Nir Eyal: “What Makes Some Technology So Habit-Forming?”

Length: 13 min. 20 sec.

We’ve all seen how the products we use change our daily behavior — from your cell phone to your email, Netflix, and Twitter. How do the folks behind these products do it? As Nir Eyal explains, it’s because they’re “masters of habit.” Turns out that about 40% of what you do, day in and day out, is done purely out of habit. Companies leverage this fact by using a design pattern to build habit-forming products.

In his TED talk, Eyal explains how technology companies design these habit-forming products by creating an experience that connects the user’s problem with the company’s product — with enough frequency to form a habit. He explains that it isn’t all negative manipulation, and that it can (and should) be used for good.

7) Guy Winch: “Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid”

Length: 17 min. 24 sec.

Why don’t we take our emotional health as seriously as we take our physical health? Think about it: We teach our children all about physical health — like hygiene and exercise — but many of us don’t teach them anything about psychological health. It’s as if we tend to value our bodies much more than we value our minds.

In this talk, Psychologist Guy Winch explains that emotional pain — guilt, loss, failure, loneliness — can impact our lives in dramatic ways, especially if we ignore them or attempt to deal with them in isolation. He makes the case for taking care of our emotional health, along with the scientifically proven techniques we can use to heal our psychological pain.

8) Shlomo Benartzi: “Saving for Tomorrow, Tomorrow”

What can behavioral economics teach us how and why we plan well (or not-so-well) for our financial futures? “Behavioral finance” is a way of understanding the money mistakes that people make. And we make a lot of them — especially when it comes to saving for retirement. Why? Because, while it’s easy to conceptualize saving money in the future, it’s harder to actually do it right now.

In this TED talk, Shlomo Benartzi talks about saving money for retirement, which is one of the biggest financial obstacles people have. Using behavioral economics as a lens, he talks about how we can turn this behavioral challenge into a behavioral solution to develop new programs that encourage saving for retirement.

9) Sandra Aamodt: “Why Dieting Doesn’t Usually Work”

In a culture where dieting is the norm, it’s hard to imagine that it may not work. But according to neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt’s research, not only does dieting not work, it’s actually more likely to do harm than good. People who eat intuitively — as in, they eat when they’re hungry and stop when they’re full — are less likely to be overweight, while also spending less time thinking about food. Controlled eaters, on the other hand, are more vulnerable to overeating in response to different triggers.

In her talk, Aamodt explains the science behind the myth of dieting, and how getting into the habit of mindful eating — that is, learning to understand your body’s hunger and satiety signals instead of trying to control food and weight — can lead us to be healthier, happier, and probably thinner.

Which techniques for managing your habits did you find most helpful? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

It’s the beginning of the quarter. You just set your team’s new lead goals, and you’re starting to think about what steps you’re going to have to take to achieve them. 

While whipping up some compelling content and placing lead generation forms in all the right places sounds like a feasible strategy, rest assure that there’s more to be considered. 

Here’s the thing: Not all forms and pop-ups are created equal. In other words, factors like display type, trigger, timing, and device type can have a big impact on your ability to encourage your website visitors to sign up for anything.

To help shed some light on the current state of email list growth, our team at Privy took a look at six months worth of data, across 5,000 of our most active users. As a result, we were left with a ton of interesting email capture trends and takeaways. 

(Note: These results will certainly vary for different audiences, but the hope is that they provide you with a jumping off point for your own research.)

The Current State of Email List Growth: 5 Takeaways for Marketers

1) ‘Enter to Win’ campaigns offer the most incentive to join your email list.

Above all else, our data revealed that the type of content you employ carries the most significant impact on conversions. To better understand which types of content provide the most incentive for visitors to convert, we zoomed in on three different content categories:

• Sign-up campaigns: This is a simple “join our email list” form. In some cases, it may mention that the subscriber can expect great content, but it typically refrains from using a specific offer to incentivize conversion.
• Offer campaigns: Just like it sounds, an offer backed-campaign uses the promise of a specific piece of content or a promo code/coupon in exchange for conversion. Think: “Download this whitepaper.”
• ‘Enter to Win’ campaigns: This is more of a sweepstakes type giveaway, where at the end of the campaign schedule, a winner, or group of winners will randomly be selected.

According to our research, ‘enter to win’ forms offer the most incentive to join — converting at an average of 15%. While it’s likely that the success of this particular type of content can be tied back to our human desire to win something — anything — at a single stroke, there’s something larger that we can learn from this. If visitors are driven to “win,” that might mean that we could benefit from using language that positions our offer, whether it be a piece of content or a subscription, as something that will help people succeed — something that will help them get a leg up on the competition.

Remember: Depending on your brand and campaign intention, not all of these campaigns will make sense for you. Regardless, these are great benchmarks to use when comparing your own campaign results.

2) When it comes to display style, banners outperform bars and pop-ups.

Marketers love to A/B test campaign creative, yet for the most part the tests are restricted to a single display type. We looked across the three most popular form display types to examine which performs best. First let’s understand each display type:

• Pop-up: Also referred to as a lightbox, this display type often appears in the center of a website or “flies out” in the corner. 

• Bar: A full width bar that typically sits either on top of your site, or at the bottom.

• Banner: A more subtle interaction that sits at the top or bottom of a site, but starts in a “hidden” state until triggered, and then rolls into sight.

According to our results, the banner outperforms both the pop-up and email bar. While it’s easy for visitors to feel bombarded by a pop-up, or overlook an email bar, the banner display seems to strike a happy medium between the two. 

3) Tab CTAs delivered higher conversion rates than both time-based and exit-intent CTAs. 

There are a number of options to explore when determining how and when you want to present your visitors with a list growth CTA. To clarify, let’s take a look at a few different types of triggers:

• Timer: Time-based triggers allow you to specify when to display a list growth CTA, based on how long a visitor has been on your site. 
• Exit intent: This option tracks your visitor’s mouse movement to trigger a CTA when they appear to be leaving your website (moving their mouse towards the X). 
• Tabs: This trigger typically appears within your site’s layout — in the corner, along the bottom of the page, etc. — and prompts visitors to clickthrough to reveal a form. 

Based on our findings, tab triggers saw a 32.43% conversion rate, which was dramatically higher than the other types.

Why the noticeable difference? While time-based triggers and exit-intent campaigns have proved useful for many businesses, tab triggers require your visitors to proactively clickthrough to access a form. In other words, those who take action are typically more engaged — hence the higher conversion rate. 

(Note: Conversion rate is measured based on campaign views that resulted in signups by trigger type — not total site traffic.)

4) Device specific design and targeting can make a big difference.

For many businesses, the buyer’s journey starts on one device and ends on another. With this multi-device process in mind, it’s important that we’re planning our email list growth campaigns accordingly. 

As your might expect, our research revealed that desktop traffic converted better than mobile traffic. However, we also found that tablet users actually converted .10% better than desktop users. 

How can you use this information to inform your strategy? Above all else, make sure that your list growth campaign contains optimized conversion opportunities across all devices. While an image-heavy pop-up might perform well on desktop, it’s best to keep mobile interactions clean and simple. 

5) New visitors are more likely to convert than repeat visitors.

Like forms and pop-ups, not all traffic is created equal. In fact, we found that new visitors convert at 2.81%, compared to repeat visitors converting at 1.23%.

When crafting or tweaking your list growth campaigns, consider using audience attributes to determine whether or not they should see a particular campaign. For example, limit welcome offers to first time visitors, and target returning visitors with more advanced content.

By limiting the display based on how many times someone has visited your site, you’re ultimately creating a better, less frustrating user experience. 

Ready, Set, Grow

Like anything else in marketing, you need to start somewhere. Implement your first lead capture campaign, and start tracking conversion rates. You can always tweak your design, targeting, and content to turn up the dials later.

Remember: These findings reflect the behavior of our users. The best way to grow your email list is to use these findings to inform your own research and adjust your strategy accordingly. 

For even more on Privy’s findings, check out the comprehensive report here. 

A well-executed survey has the power to uncover insights that you can use to hone your strategy, shape your product, gauge customer satisfaction, and more. 

While it’s temping to share your findings right away, sometimes it’s better to pause and reflect. By taking time to find the story in your data, you might find a way to share your findings that is far more valuable than a bunch of jumbled stats and takeaways. 

One great way to present your data? By way of an infographic. Even if the data itself is complex and overwhelming, when you create an infographic, you’re forced to illustrate that information in a manageable, digestible visual that your audience can easily grasp. (Download our free infographic templates to get started.)

To walk you through the process, the folks at Venngage created the infographic below. They’ve outlined a ton of helpful design tips and tricks to keep you on the right track.

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As content creators, we have no choice but to remain humble because every time we publish an article, it’s one of 2 million blog posts being published on the same day. Sure, we possess plenty of SEO know-how and a knack for delivering information in a way that’s entertaining and interesting.

But, after vehement denial, mini breakdowns and tearful calls to our moms, we content creators have had to accept a difficult truth: Our talent alone isn’t always enough to generate leads.

This doesn’t mean we’re throwing in the towel, though. Far from it, in fact. Content is still one of the leading drivers of conversions and overall revenue and, thanks to consumers’ love for innovation and wit, becoming even more important. We know someone has to win at content, so it may as well be us.

But how we get the right content to the right people at the right time is evolving. Content distribution is changing, and some channels are expecting you to pay.

If you feel backed into a corner, you’re not alone. Many (OK, most) businesses aren’t exactly thrilled about forking over cash to earn the engagement they feel they deserve. So, is there another alternative to paying for exposure? And does paying for distribution rob your content of its authenticity?

Let’s jump in and take a look.

“Pay to Play” is Nothing New

Remember social media marketing before 2012? Ahh, those were the days. With a clever quip and a nice visual, you could enjoy semi-viral exposure and earn your brand hundreds of likes for free. But along came the Facebook “reachpocalypse” algorithm updates and, by 2014, brands enjoyed an organic reach hovering somewhere around zero.

So millions of companies gave up and deleted their Facebook accounts.

Sike.

Actually, businesses begrudgingly began adding Facebook advertising and post promotion into their marketing budgets. Successful businesses still used the same great content strategy and that, combined with a budget to boost this content, helped bring engagement rates back to healthier numbers.

But Facebook wasn’t the first platform to require payment for space. It’s the same tactic used by Google AdWords—as well as newspapers, magazines, billboards and other types of media we enjoyed in the Stone Age. So, really, how long did we expect to get away with free exposure?

Customers Like Having Things Delivered

It’s a rainy Sunday, and you’re craving pineapple pizza. You begin to weigh your hunger pangs against your desire to avoid putting on pants, and then you remember—it’s 2016, and you don’t have to choose. With a few taps on your screen, a friendly Domino’s employee can be at your door with a fresh pie to quell your craving in 30 minutes or less.

But what if you’re craving Tom yum and your favorite Thai spot doesn’t deliver? Have no fear—GrubHub has your back. Out of toothpaste? Amazon Prime Now will drop a package outside your door within two hours. Not sure what to binge-watch next? Netflix has plenty of recommendations.

You get the picture.

Today’s consumers are so used to having things delivered, they’re spending less time seeking them out. Sure SEO best practices will launch you to the top of search engine results—but what if your content doesn’t even make it to the search engine?

Thanks to everyone’s favorite buzzwords: programmatic marketing and big data, there’s a good chance relevant content from your competitors is being delivered into your audience’s most frequented spaces—like their Facebook newsfeed and email inbox—before they’ve even made it to Google. Why? Because they’re paying for placement.

This isn’t a case of “everyone else is doing it, so you should, too.” This is a case of “everyone else is doing it, so you must do it better.”

How can you get engagement from the right people at the right time? By selecting the right demand generation channels.

What Does Paid Content Distribution Look Like?

Done well, paid content looks like, well, regular content. It’s interesting, it’s enjoyable and it blends within the platform. So long as you’re not attempting to “trick” your audience with cheap gimmicks, and so long as you’re publishing the same high-quality, relevant content typically associated with your brand, you don’t have to lose your authenticity. In fact, you can even grow brand loyalty.

Here are a few types of paid content distribution to consider…

1) Sponsored Content Within a Publication


Sponsored content is similar to what used to be known as “advertorials”—but even less salesy. It’s content that looks and feels much like the content usually found in a publication, but published by a brand. Take, for example, this BuzzFeed post by Discover. The brand created this BuzzFeed-esque listicle of gifs, interspersed with financial advice and a CTA to learn more about FICO Credit Scores.

2) Facebook Sponsored Posts


Paying for a spot within your audience’s newsfeed is a great way to grab their attention in the same way you did before the algorithm update and, in many cases, even better. Not only can users like, comment and react, the post also includes social proof so you can see which of your friends also like the brand. For example, this Lululemon Athletica post introduces us to a helpful blog article.

3) Twitter Engagement Tweets

Like Facebook promoted posts, Twitter engagement Tweets allow brands to directly target audiences that are likely to engage with their content. The Vice post below linked me to a Las Vegas city guide shortly after I returned from a trip to Sin City. (Apparently, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas if you Tweet with geolocation.)

4) Linkedin Sponsored Update


If you’re a B2B company, and you’re looking for super-duper targeting when sharing your content, LinkedIn may be your new bff. Radius Intelligence did a great job with this Linkedin sponsored update. Not only am I a marketer who works primarily in the B2B space, but I am interested in learning more about predictive analytics.

5) Outbrain


Often, the best time to present fresh content to a prospect is just after they’ve finished consuming another piece of content—and that’s exactly how Outbrain works. For example, after reading about the upcoming Apple Spring event on Mashable, I was presented with this list of promoted stories, including both industry-related pieces and celeb slideshows sure to prolong my procrastination.

What’s Next?

The key thing to remember in all of this is, just because a piece of content is disseminated using paid distribution doesn’t mean it’s going to automatically enjoy heaps of engagement. You have to follow the same rules of great content: It has to be relevant, shareable, enjoyable and help solve a problem or meet a need. If you’re going to boost boring content, you may as well just start flushing $20 bills down the toilet. It’ll achieve the same effect.

If you’re unsure about how much to spend? Learn more about how to budget for content distribution here.

Finally, don’t be afraid of paying for content distribution. Instead of nostalgically yearning for the days when things were free, wake up to the opportunities before you. So long as you create great content, promote it on the right platforms and use your data, you’ll enjoy such tremendous ROI the money you spend on promotion will feel like a drop in the bucket.

Nowadays, getting a website up and running isn’t nearly as difficult as it once was. Optimizing the design of that website for improved user experience (UX), on the other hand, continues to be something that marketers struggle with.

In fact, according to a report from the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), 77% of agencies believe that poor website UX is a weakness for their clients, making poor UX the most significant weakness agencies identified. 

Download our free guide to web design here for more tips on how to design a smarter website.

To help you better understand what today’s emerging web design trends are and where you should be focusing your energy, we’ve compiled some of the most recent stats and data on website design, website optimization, and UX. Let’s dive in …

17 Statistics That Make the Case for Smarter Website and User Experience Design

General Web Design Stats

1) Given 15 minutes to consume content, two-thirds of people would rather read something beautifully designed than something plain. (Source: Adobe)

2) 39% of people will stop engaging with a website if images won’t load or take too long to load. (Source: Adobe)  

3) 51% of people think “thorough contact information” is the most important element missing from many company websites. (Source: KoMarketing)

4) 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive. (Source: Adobe)

5) 44% of website visitors will leave a company’s website if there’s no contact information or phone number. (Source: KoMarketing)

Website Optimization Statistics

6) Between December 2013 and December 2015, tablet internet consumption grew by 30%. (Source: comScore)

7) Between December 2013 and December 2015, smartphone internet consumption grew by 78%. (Source: comScore)

8) Between December 2013 and December 2015, desktop internet consumption dropped by 1%. (Source: comScore)

9) Mobile devices now account for nearly 2 of every 3 minutes spent online. (Source: comScore)

10) 13% of adults access the internet via mobile only. 11% access the internet via desktop only. (Source: comScore)

11) 40% of smartphone and tablet owners search for B2B products on those devices. (Source: KoMarketing) 

Usability and User Experience Design Stats

12) 47% of website visitors check out a company’s products/services page before looking at any other sections of the site. (Source: KoMarketing)

13) Once on a company’s homepage, 86% of visitors want to see information about that company’s products/services. (Source: KoMarketing)

14) Once on a company’s homepage, 64% of visitors want to see the company’s contact information. (Source: KoMarketing)

15) Once on a company’s homepage, 52% of visitors want to see “about us” information. (Source: KoMarketing)

16) After reaching a company’s website via a referral site, 50% of visitors will use the navigation menu to orient themselves. (Source: KoMarketing)

17) After reaching a company’s website via a referral site, 36% of visitors will click on the company’s logo to reach the homepage. (Source: KoMarketing)

What other interesting stats have you seen about website design and optimization? Share them in the comments section below.

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

 

As a marketer for a media company, the world is your oyster. From SnapChat to Instagram and even classics like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, you have a wealth of available options to bring into your distribution strategy. If you sit down and ask yourself which you’d like to pursue, you’d likely respond with ‘all of them’—each social media channel and social network brings a unique set of strengths and weaknesses to the table. Why not cast your net wide? The reality, however, is that your team has limited time in the day. And with so many social media channels available to pursue, you may risk spreading your efforts too thin. When it comes to distribution, ‘a little here and a little there’ just doesn’t cut it. You get more when you double down, learn the mechanics of each platform that you’re considering, and focus.

So how do you avoid platform overload and make sure that you’re focusing on the right channels? Here’s a simple framework to help you figure out where to prioritize your time and efforts:

Step 1: Revisit Your Distribution Goals

What are you looking to accomplish by being present on social media?

Maybe you’re looking to distribute your content to new audiences and promote more user-generated sharing. In this case, you’d turn to a channel like Pinterest where audiences are pinning and repinning interesting content to share with friends. Or maybe, you’re looking to create more brand visibility for some beautiful, inspiring photography that you’re publishing. In this case, you’d want to use a channel like Instagram that helps audiences discover interesting, bite-sized visuals. And if you’re looking to open more direct conversation channels with your audience? Turn to classics like Facebook and Twitter.

When building a social media strategy, it’s important to focus on the nuances. Ask yourself how audiences share content on these channels and how this user behavior maps to your content distribution goals? Your answers to these questions will help you identify and evaluate which social channels to pursue.

Step 2: Know Where Your Audiences Spend Time 

Social media platforms, at heart, are tools that enable conversations with audiences at scale. As a publisher, it’s up to you to find where pockets of readers are spending their time. Social media can help you provide an introduction to your media company and enable repeat engagement.

When building out your social media strategy, take time to conduct some channel by channel due diligence: understand each platform’s demographic composition so that you can ensure that you’re sharing your great content with the right audiences at the right time. Here are some resources that can help with your research: 

• This social media intelligence report, maintained by Business Insider, can shed insight into how specific platforms are growing and changing, pointing to overall trends related to gender, income, and education levels.
• This report covering the demographics of social media users, maintained by the Pew Center, to provide up-to-date fact sheets on how Americans are spending their time online.
• This comprehensive analysis of social media usage as of 2015, created by Sprout Social.

When analyzing the demographics of social media usage, make sure to cast your net wide and cite a few different reports, as data can vary between sources. Compare the information that you read in your reports with your own first-party data to uncover areas of opportunity to pursue. 

Step 3: Examine Your Resources

You probably have big dreams for your social media strategy. And you should—if you don’t ‘think big’ with your marketing strategy, you’ll risk missing out on valuable audience acquisition and engagement opportunities. Not to mention, you’ll get stuck with the everyday mechanics of tweeting, sharing, and posting interesting content without doing the work that you need to do to analyze and build upon your results.

In an ideal world, you’d have infinite resources to manage your social media strategy. You’d have everything you need to build out your team, test paid channels, and implement tools. You’d be able to run consistent experiments across every social media channel out there. 

But you don’t have time to just cast your net wide and explore. You need to double down on the channels that are right for your brand and in sync with your team’s bandwidth. If you have a $0 social media budget, you may want to focus on channels like Twitter, for instance, where you can build a presence without needing to invest any advertising spend. If you do have a small ad budget, you consider running campaigns on channels like Facebook, which has been increasing its attention to its paid media business.

The bottom line is that you need to invest in the marketing efforts that you can do well. Ask yourself—what can your social media team do better than any other company out there, given the resources that you have? Don’t just go through the motions. Audience attention spans are spread thin, so whatever you do—do it well. 

Step 4: Prioritize

Your due diligence may lead you to the conclusion that you need to be on multiple social channels. If you fall into this category, take a moment to reflect—don’t rush your launch process. Instead, take some time to step back and reflect. Which social media channels represent your lowest hanging fruit? Which marketing opportunities will drive the best results over time? Take some time to give each social media platform the nurturing it needs to perform for your media brand. So how do you identify your highest-yield opportunities? Here is a list of ideas to get you started:

• The social media channels with the highest concentration of people in your target audience
• Networks in which your content is already being shared
• Platforms that allow your existing audiences to engage with your content directly

Take a look at some of your marketing data, especially your referral traffic sources and sharing patterns around your most popular content. Survey your readers to see what social media networks they enjoy browsing. Craft your strategy from there.

Final Thoughts

There’s a subtle trick that can help you avoid platform overload: just focus on the channels where your audiences are already browsing and having conversations. Then, build out a presence on the platforms where you expect your audience to be devoting their attention in the coming years. Remember that social media, as a channel, is still in its infancy, with plenty of room to grow. Especially when it comes to publishing and digital media, it’s not ‘first to market’ who will always come out ahead. Be sure to take a step back to create a strategy that’s thoughtful and high-impact for your unique audience.

We’ve already covered what retention marketing is, and why today’s elite ecommerce stores have already started on a retention-focused strategy. But where should you begin with your own retention strategy? Read on to learn what to do before you get started, how to allocate your marketing budget, and when you can expect to see results. Let’s get started!

Where Do You Start?

Every tall building started with a solid framework, and every tall tree started with the roots. Retention marketing is the same. You can create something amazing, but you need to lay down a strong framework.

“If you don’t know where you are now, you will never know how far you have gone.”

The framework you need is an understanding of your current metrics. Measuring your current ecommerce stats will show you where you are, so you can measure the effectiveness of your retention marketing strategy. 

You should have a benchmark of all the standard ecommerce metrics like conversion rate, average order value, abandoned cart rate, etc… But besides those metrics, you should also benchmark KRMs (key retention metrics) before starting your retention marketing plan. For consistency, you should use data from a one year period for the following calculations.

Repeat Customer Rate (RCR)

Your store’s repeat customer rate is the percentage of your customer base that is coming back to purchase again. Remember, it is more expensive to acquire a new customer (seven times more expensive!) than retain an existing one.

To measure your current RCR, take the number of repeat customers and divide it by the total number of unique customers. Be sure you are dividing by unique customers and NOT orders.

Customers With More Than One Purchase / Unique Customers = Repeat Customer Rate

As you focus more on retention marketing, you will notice that your revenue from repeat customers will start to climb.

Purchase Frequency

When you make getting return business a focus, your customers will start to shop with you more often. This metric is known as your store’s purchase frequency. It is the average number of times a customer will shop with you in a given time period.

Total Orders / Unique Customers = Purchase Frequency

Total number of orders divided by the number of unique customers you have, will give you purchase frequency. Even a slight increase in purchase frequency can lead to a huge increase in revenue.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

This is the holy grail metric of customer retention. It tells you what each customer is worth to your store over their entire shopping life. 

Average Order Value x Purchase Frequency x Average Lifespan = Lifetime Value

The above equation is your average order value multiplied by your purchase frequency (see above) multiplied by your average customer lifespan. If you don’t know your average lifespan, you can use three years as a rough estimate.

Set Benchmarks

Now that you have calculated these KRM benchmarks, make sure you note them somewhere. If you use an analytics or CRM tool, you can store it there. Whatever you decide to do you will want to look back on these numbers to see how your strategy is performing.

How Much Retention Marketing Do You Need?

Now that we have laid a solid framework to build our retention strategy on, we need to decide how much of a focus to put on retention. You would not expect acquisition to just happen, so you should not expect retention to just happen.

You invest marketing dollars into a content strategy, email marketing, social media, search engine optimization, and retargeting (to name a few places) for your acquisition strategy. If you want your retention marketing efforts to be a success you need to do the same.

Let’s look at the breakdown of a typical ecommerce store’s traffic:

As you can see 92% have not purchased before, or have made a single purchase. This traffic would be attributed to acquisition efforts. The remaining 8% are customers who have purchased from you 2 or more times. This traffic can be attributed to your retention efforts.

When you look at the traffic numbers you may ask why you should allocate more than 8% of your marketing budget to retention, when it only represents a small portion of your traffic. On the surface it may seem counterintuitive, but you need to dig deeper.

Let’s look at the average revenue breakdown from each of those segments:

That small percentage of your traffic is actually generating a substantial portion of your revenue. The average ecommerce store sees over 40% of their revenue come from that small but mighty 8%. This is because a repeat customer is more profitable than a first time buyer.

If this is the case, why do the majority of stores allocate almost all their budget to customer acquisition? The average store allocates 81% of marketing dollars to acquisition, which represents 59% of revenue, and 19% of marketing dollars to retention, which represents 41% of revenue. This budget allocation doesn’t seem to make sense! 

What Should Your Store Do?

Every store is different, but some stores will benefit more from retention marketing than others. The effectiveness of retention marketing is determined by two main factors. The first is the life-stage of your store, and the second is the nature of the products you sell.

Your Store’s Life-Stage

If you have a brand new ecommerce site, you will have very small customer base. Obviously it does not make much sense to be spending marketing on retaining customer you don’t have yet! As you grow, you’ll want to shift more marketing dollars to to retention marketing.

Once your store has an established customer base, it becomes more beneficial to focus on retention over acquisition. Growing revenue via acquisition can eventually slow, but retention can help you continue to grow.

What You Sell

A returning customer is worth more to your business, so every store should be striving to boost retention. If you have a product that has high likelihood of repeat purchases, you will benefit immensely from retention marketing. Examples of these types of products would be cosmetics, coffee, supplements, and even clothing.

If you do sell high ticket items, retention strategies can still work for you. Imagine if you could sell three fridges to a customer over their lifetime rather than just one. That would be a huge boost! Alternatively, you can cross-sell complementary products to your customers. 

When Can You Expect to See Results?

Retention marketing doesn’t provide overnight results or instant gratification. But, if you stick to it you will start to see some phenomenal results. How long do you need to wait? That depends. Six months to a year is a common timeframe. Retention marketing is like rolling a snowball, once your get it started it becomes easy. 

As marketers, we’re always thinking about the most optimal way to target our potential customers. Trouble is, mastering Google AdWords is really tricky. With so many metrics to keep tabs on, figuring out whether or not you’re getting it right is often easier said than done.

To help shed some light on the situation, the folks at WordStream released a detailed new study on AdWords industry metrics. The study reveals a ton of helpful industry-specific benchmarks for both search and display ads, including average clickthrough rate (CTR), average cost-per-click (CPC), average conversion rate (CVR), and average cost-per-action (CPA).

This information can be used to inform your AdWords strategy, and ultimately help you improve your overall ad performance. (HubSpot Marketing customers: We recently launched a Google AdWords integration via HubSpot Ads to help you better measure and optimize your ad campaigns.)

To help you get the most out of WordSteam’s findings, we’ve outlined the highlights from their study below.

Search vs. Display Ads: What’s the Difference?

Before we dive into the metrics, it’s good to clarify what exactly we’re trying to measure within Google AdWords. The most common types of advertising done by marketers are search and display ads. Although both are included in AdWords, they have completely different implications and uses for marketers.

Search ads are those that appear when a potential customer searches for your product (or related item) on Google. You’ve likely noticed them right above all the organic results on a SERP:

Display ads appear on a website while browsing. They are typically located either on the top or side of the page, and often contain attention-grabbing images:

Google AdWords Industry Benchmarks

Now that we’ve gone over the basics, let’s dive right into the data. Here is an outline of the recent benchmarking data released by WordStream, followed by a few suggestions to help you improve your own performance. 

Average Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

Clickthrough rate reveals how often people who view your ad end up actually clicking it. CTR can be used to help you determine the quality of your imagery, positioning, and keywords. Across all industries, the average CTR for a search ad is 1.91%, and 0.35% for a display ad.

Here’s a look at the average CTR by industry:

Pro Tip: The more relevant your keywords are to your business or offer, the more likely users will be to clickthrough: 54% of respondents said they prefer relevant ads to irrelevant ones, according to research from Qriously.

Average Cost-per-Click (CPC)

Cost-per-click is the amount you pay each time a user clicks on your ad. While the most that you’ll be charged per click is reflected by your maximum cost-per-click bid, you’ll often be charged less. According to AdWords, “Actual CPC is often less than maximum CPC because with the AdWords auction, the most you’ll pay is what’s minimally required to hold your ad position and any ad formats shown with your ad, such as sitelinks.” The average CPC across all industries is $2.32 for search ads, and $0.58 for display ads.

Here’s a look at the average CPC by industry:

Pro Tip: Looking at your lowest or highest CPC doesn’t always tell the full story. Instead, focus on how the ads are converting, and be sure to turn off those ads that aren’t seeing a great conversion rate. 

(HubSpot Marketing customers: You can keep track of your conversions using the AdWords integration for HubSpot Ads. Check out this page for more information.)

Average Conversion Rate (CVR)

Average conversion rate tracks the amount of conversions you get from a certain ad. If you’re seeing a lot of traffic from your ads, but not a ton of conversions, this could be a red flag. To put things into perspective, the average CVR across all industries is 2.70% for search ads and 0.89% for display ads.

Here’s a look at the average CVR by industry: 

Pro Tip: If you’re looking to improve your CVR, try leveraging negative keywords. Negative keywords are used to prevent your ad from being shown to anyone searching for a specific word or phrase. For example, if you don’t want to attract people looking for free tools or resources, you may want to use “free” as a negative keyword. Want more tips? Check out this resource. 

Average Cost-per-Action (CPA)

Average cost-per-action (also known as cost-per-acquisition) refers to the amount you pay every time an action is performed involving your ad. Some examples include impressions, form submission, or event registration. According to AdWords, Target CPA bidding leverages historical information about your campaign to “automatically find an optimal CPC bid for your ad each time it’s eligible to appear. AdWords sets these bids to achieve an average CPA equal to your target across all ad groups and campaigns using this strategy.” The average CPA for search ads is $59.18, and $60.76 for display ads.

Here’s a look the average CPA by industry:

Pro Tip: Want to lower your CPA? Start by optimizing for Quality Score. According to WordStream, there’s a strong correlation between high Quality Scores and low CPAs. Click here to learn more about Quality Score.

Did you find these benchmarks helpful? Share you thoughts in the comment section below.

People often joke about coming down with “a case of the Mondays,” but for science writer Bahar Gholipour, Tuesday is the real worst day of the week.

As Gholipour noted in a story for New York Magazine, “Why Does Time Seem to Slow Down on Tuesdays?”, Tuesday is the day when “last weekend feels like it was ages ago,” while next weekend still feels “ages away.” As a result, time can feel like it’s passing more slowly on Tuesdays compared to other days of the week.

It might sound like science fiction, but studies — including this one on how emotions can subconsciously affect our perceptions of time — demonstrate that the phenomenon has a foothold in reality. In certain situations, time does seem to move at different speeds.

Why Tuesday Feels Like the Longest Day of The Week

To quote Gholipour:

The brain, studies on time perception have shown, has a strange way of stretching and squishing time depending on the drugs you may be on, the emotions you are experiencing, and even the amount of attention you pay to the moment.”

One of the most well-known examples of when this stretching or squishing of time occurs is during life-or-death situations, like car accidents. People often remember such events as lasting longer than they actually did, and even describe time as having moved in slow-motion.

However, research shows that in such cases, the perceived change in time’s speed is a function of memory, not perception (i.e., you remember time having moved more slowly, but you didn’t actually perceive it that way). What’s more, this life-or-death situation research doesn’t apply to Tuesdays.

For most of us, we don’t encounter life-or-death situations on Tuesdays. In the words of Gholipour, Tuesdays are “dull and unemotional.” So, why is it that Tuesdays seem to throw us into some sort of strange time warp?

Gholipour uncovered two promising hypotheses …

1) The Time Gap

Research shows that the brain “time stamps” events using contextual clues. And things that happen in the same context (e.g., while you’re at a party) get grouped together in your memory — separate from things that happen in other contexts (e.g., while you’re in a cab going home). The end result is that we tend to remember like-moments as having occurred more closely together in time.

When applied to Tuesdays, the hypothesis works like this: Going into the office on Monday is such a jolt, such a change from your weekend routine, that by Tuesday the previous weekend feels further away than it actually is.

You see, on Monday, you can still easily tap into your weekend memories because you’re still in the process of making that contextual shift from “weekend mode” to “weekday mode.” By Tuesday, however, the shift is complete, and you now have your Monday memories — the beginning of your weekday memories — blocking the way back to your weekend memories. And this could explain, as Gholipour wrote, why we feel “a vague sensation of a time gap” on Tuesday mornings.

2) Memory Overload

A second hypothesis explaining why time seems to move more slowly on Tuesdays: Our brains simply have more stuff to process during the workweek than on the weekend, and all that processing uses up a disproportionate amount of space in our memories.

During the weekend, we tend to engage in relaxing, predictable behavior (e.g., watching TV, going out to dinner, and so on). During the work week, on the other hand, our schedules tend to become more complex and less predictable. We have emails to read. Emails to write. Assignments to complete. Meetings to attend. On Mondays, we’re just getting caught up. On Tuesdays, we’re in the thick of it.

Hence, it’s possible that our brains generate more discreet memories on Tuesdays, making Tuesdays seem as though they’re longer than other days.

As cognitive neuroscientist Virginie van Wassenhove of France’s INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit explained:

Considering the amount of stuff that you’ve been engaged with during workdays, your recollections of these days are encoded with high granularity, taking a lot of space, so to speak, in memory.”

So there you have it: Two possible explanations for why Tuesday feels like the longest day of the week. What’s a marketer to do with this information? Well, knowledge is power. And while we can’t offer you an insta-cure for the Tuesday blues, the hope is that this insight will help you focus less on the passing of time, and more on the work that needs to get done. 

Happy Tuesday!

Have any suggestions for how we can make Tuesdays feel shorter? Sound off in the comments section below!