As companies adopt inbound marketing as a way to generate more leads, the importance of having an effective lead nurturing strategy becomes very clear. In most cases only a relatively small percentage of your inbound leads will be ready to make an immediate purchase, leaving upwards of 90% of your inbound leads on the table.

Implementing an effective lead nurturing strategy can have a huge impact on the results of your inbound marketing strategy. Research conducted by Forrester has shown that marketers see an average 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured vs non-nurtured leads. Furthermore, the research also reveals that companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales at a 33% lower cost (Source: Forrester, 2014).

Despite the clear benefits of lead nurturing, a study by MarketingSherpa indicates that only 36% of marketers actively nurture their sales leads (Source: 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report). Without question, this means that there’s a huge opportunity for savvy marketers like you to implement effective lead nurturing strategies and gain an advantage over your competition.

So you are probably wondering…

• Which lead nurturing tactics work best? 
• What do super successful marketers do differently?
• Or how do I get started with lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing is of course just one component that goes into executing an inbound marketing strategy. If you’d like to learn what super successful inbound marketers are doing differently to attract traffic, convert leads and close customers you can check out this comprehensive resource – An Epic Guide to Creating an Inbound Marketing Strategy.

Now let’s get down to it – we’ve read through dozens of reports, dug into the most recent data about lead nurturing and compiled this list of the seven amazingly effective lead nurturing tactics. 

7 Amazingly Effective Lead Nurturing Tactics

1) Targeted content – Leads nurtured with targeted content produce an increase in sales opportunities of more than 20% (Tweet this stat)

When it comes to lead nurturing, one size certainly does not fit all. As the research proves, strategically nurturing your leads using targeted content can significantly improve the results of your inbound marketing strategy.

Using targeted content for lead nurturing may seem obvious, but it’s something that marketers are struggling with. Last year Forrester Research reported that 33% of B2B marketers cite “targeted delivery of content” (i.e., delivering the right content, to the right people, at the right time) as their biggest lead nurturing challenge.

There are a few prerequisites for using targeted content for lead nurturing. First of all, you need to understand each of your unique buyer personas. Of course, you then need to create an assortment of targeted content designed to nurture each of your personas based on their interests, goals, objectives, and marketing triggers. Lastly, you need to have a marketing automation platform in place to help you identify, segment and target your unique buyer personas as you scale your inbound marketing strategy.  

2) Multi-channel lead nurturing – Four out of five marketers say their email open rates don’t exceed 20%. It’s time to think beyond the inbox. (Tweet this stat)

In the past, most lead nurturing strategies involved setting up a simple email drip campaign that would send out generic emails to a list of prospects. These day, email-only lead nurturing strategies have a few inherent problems.

For one thing, almost four out of five marketers say their email open rates don’t exceed 20% (Source: The State of B2B Lead Nurturing Survey, Oracle). On top of that, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. A lack of effective lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance (Source: MarketingSherpa).

Today, marketers like you are looking for new lead nurturing tactics and technologies that go beyond the limits of email. With the help of powerful marketing automation platforms, savvy marketers are now executing multi-channel lead nurturing strategies.

Effective multi-channel lead nurturing most commonly involve a combination of marketing automation, email marketing, social media, paid retargeting, dynamic website content and direct sales outreach. Because there are so many tactics involved, to execute this properly, you really need to ensure that your sales and marketing teams are well aligned and working cohesively.

3) Multiple Touches – Prospects receive an average of 10 touches from the time they enter the top of the funnel until they’re a closed-won customer (Tweet this stat)

While the buyers journey for every product and service can be quite different, research from the Marketing Lead Management Report indicates that on average, prospects receive ten marketing touches from the time they enter the top of funnel until they’re a closed won customers.

Interestingly, another research study from Demand Gen suggests that 49% of marketers include less than five touches in their lead nurturing programs (Source: 2015 Lead Nurturing Benchmark Study). If you’re in this category, it might be time to revamp your lead nurturing efforts a bit. 

As you can imagine, the most successful lead nurturing strategies deliver content that helps prospects progress through the buyer’s journey by addressing common questions and concerns. In addition to email tactics, consider how you can use a mix of content types like social media, blog posts, whitepapers, interactive calculators, or even direct mail, to nurture your prospects into customers. 

4) Timely Follow Ups – The odds of a lead entering the sales process, or becoming qualified, are 21 times greater when contacted within five minutes versus 30 minutes after an inbound lead converts on your website (Tweet this stat)

The benefits of immediate follow up calls seem quite evident, but most organizations still aren’t acting very quickly. A recent article in Harvard Business Review highlighted the surprisingly slow response times of most US based companies. Here are a few benchmarks from the study which included feedback from more than 2,240 US companies:

• The average first response time of B2B companies to their leads was 42 hours
• Only 37% of companies responded to their leads within an hour
• 24% of companies took more than 24 hours
• 23% of the companies never responded at all

Automated lead nurturing can help you reach large groups of prospects, but a timely followup email or a phone call is still quite often the best way to convert inbound leads into qualified sales opportunities. As several research studies have shown, the odds of converting a lead into a sales opportunity are exponentially higher when the lead is contacted immediately following a website conversion.

When you make a timely, well researched call to an inbound lead it’s far more effective than any volume of cold calling. You know exactly what the prospects is researching based their recent browsing behaviour and you also have enough information about the prospect to do some initial research about the organization they work for and their specific role within the company.

5) Personalized emails – Personalized emails generate up to 6 times higher revenue per email than non-personalized emails do (Tweet this stat)

Several research studies indicate that email marketing continues to be the most effective tactic for lead nurturing.  The research also consistently shows that personalized emails tend to produce significantly better results than generic email blasts. In fact, a recent study by Experian indicated that personalized emails can generate up to six times higher revenue per email than non-personalized campaigns do (Source: Experian Email Marketing Study).

As highlighted in this helpful blog post, there are all kinds of ways you can personalize your emails to improve your lead nurturing strategy. You can send triggered emails when someone downloads your gated content, clicks on links in your emails, visits certain pages on your website, or when they demonstrate a high level of engagement. When you combine the power of marketing personalization with behavioral triggered emails you can deliver the right marketing messages to the right people, at exactly the right times.

6) Lead Scoring – 68% of successful marketers cite lead scoring based on content and engagement as the most effective tactic for improving revenue contribution from lead nurturing (Tweet this stat)

As the 2013 Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness Study revealed, 68% of successful marketers cite lead scoring based on content and engagement as the most effective tactic for improving revenue contribution from lead nurturing. With compelling research like that you’d think that everyone would be adopting lead scoring, but a recent study by MarketingSherpa indicates that only 21% of B2B marketers are using lead scoring.

For those who are new to the concept of lead scoring, it is a methodology used to rank prospects against a scale that represents the perceived value each lead represents to the organization. Lead scoring can be implemented in most marketing automation platforms by assigning numeric values to certain website browsing behaviours, conversion events, or even social media interactions. The resulting score is used to determine which leads should be followed up with directly by a sales rep or which leads need to be nurtured further down the funnel. 

Based on this research, it seems as though lead scoring is an effective lead nurturing tactic that most marketers simply aren’t taking advantage of yet. 

7) Sales and Marketing Alignment – 89% of companies that align their sales and marketing lead nurturing efforts report measurable increases in the number of sales opportunities generated (Tweet this stat)

According to a study by market research firm CSO Insights, when both sales and marketing share responsibility for lead nurturing, companies experience a significant increase in conversion rates. As the 2014 Sales Performance Optimization Study revealed, 89% of companies that aligned sales and marketing lead generation efforts reported measurable increases in the number of leads that turned to opportunities as a result of continuous nurturing (Source: Sales Performance Optimization Study).

In order for both sales and marketing to contribute to lead nurturing you’ll need to identity when prospects should be transitioned between teams as they progress through the funnel. In creating your lead nurturing strategy, think about how you can use triggers like lead scoring, pageviews, workflow enrollment, conversion events or sales contact to transition leads from automation to direct one-on-one outreach.

The shared expectations, responsibilities and goals for this collaboration between sales and marketing should be outlined in a sales and marketing service level agreement (SLA). Creating a formal sales and marketing SLA will help the two teams hold each other accountable for converting leads and effectively nurturing them into paying customers.

In review, let’s quickly recap the seven most effective lead nurturing tactics:

1) Targeted content – Leads nurtured with targeted content produce an increase in sales opportunities of more than 20%

2) Multi-channel lead nurturing – Four out of five marketers say their email open rates don’t exceed 20%. It’s time to think beyond the inbox.

3) Multiple Touches – Prospects receive an average of 10 touches from the time they enter the top of the funnel until they’re a closed-won customer.

4) Timely Follow Ups – The odds of a lead entering the sales process, or becoming qualified, are 21 times greater when contacted within five minutes versus 30 minutes after an inbound lead converts on your website.

5) Personalized emails – Personalized emails generate up to 6 times higher revenue per email than non-personalized emails do.

6) Lead Scoring – 68% of successful marketers cite lead scoring based on content and engagement as the most effective tactic for improving revenue contribution from lead nurturing. 

7) Sales and Marketing Alignment – 89% of companies that align their sales and marketing lead nurturing efforts report measurable increases in the number of sales opportunities generated.

Want some more tips & tricks to boost the results of your inbound marketing strategy?

Readers are being bombarded by more and more content each and every day. This overwhelming volume of articles, videos, status updates, and more is causing audiences to bounce faster from websites, click “delete” immediately on emails, and use any method available to tune our the noise.

At the same time,  reliable sources of content distribution are becoming increasingly important for publishers, as spam filters grow more powerful, ads are blocked, and social media becomes a pay-to-play channel. So what can publishers do to earn the reader attention and engagement they so desperately need to drive revenue? 

It’s easy for readers to glance over emails that make them feel like “just another name on an email list.” Or leave a website that’s littered with far too many irrelevant options. But when it feels like a newsletter was curated just for you, or a website had the exact link you were looking for—that’s what keeps people engaged for longer. 

Audience segmentation and personalization can make one-to-many communications feel more personal, while simultaneously offering greater value to a larger number of readers.

To help you learn more about audience segmentation and personalization, we teamed up with BrightInfo to write Personalize or Perish, the definitive guide on how publishers can:

• Collect better unified audience data across websites, events, emails, and more
• Build audience segments specific to internal or external offerings
• Communicate unique messages out to these segments via email and on-site content

Ready to learn more?

>> You can download the full ebook here

The pivot table is one of Excel’s most powerful — and intimidating — functions. Powerful, because it can help you summarize and make sense of large data sets. Intimidating, because you’re not exactly an Excel expert, and pivot tables have always had a reputation for being complicated.

Download our complete guide to using Excel here for more step-by-step Excel tutorials.

The good news: Learning how to create a pivot table in Excel is much, much easier than you’ve likely been led to believe. But before we walk you through process of creating one, let’s take a step back and make sure you understand exactly what a pivot table is, and why you might need to use one.

What Is a Pivot Table?

To quote Microsoft, a pivot table is a report that lets you, “summarize, analyze, explore, and present a summary” of your data. And it is particularly useful “when you have a long list of figures to sum, and aggregated data or subtotals would help you look at the data from different perspectives and compare figures of similar data.”

In other words, a pivot table lets you extract meaning from that seemingly endless jumble of numbers on your screen. And more specifically, it lets you group your data together in different ways so you can more easily make comparisons.

The “pivot” part of a pivot table stems from the fact that you can rotate (or pivot) the data in the table in order to view it from a different perspective. To be clear, you’re not adding to, subtracting from, or otherwise changing your data when you make a pivot. Instead, you’re simply reorganizing the data so you can extract useful information from it.

Use Cases for Pivot Tables

If you are still feeling a bit confused about what a pivot table actually does, don’t worry. This is one of those technologies that’s much easier to understand once you’ve seen it in action. So, here are two hypothetical scenarios where you’d want to use a pivot table.

Scenario #1: Comparing Sales Totals of Different Products

Say you have a worksheet that contains monthly sales data for three different products — product 1, product 2, and product 3 — and you want to figure out which of the three has been bringing in the most bucks. You could, of course, look through the worksheet and manually add the corresponding sales figure to a running total every time product 1 appears. You could then do the same for product 2, and product 3, until you have totals for all of them. Piece of cake, right?

Now, imagine that monthly sales worksheet of yours has thousands and thousands of rows. Manually sorting through them all could take a lifetime. Using a pivot table, you can automatically aggregate all of the sales figures for product 1, product 2, and product 3 — and calculate their respective sums — in less than a minute.

Scenario #2: Combining Duplicate Data

In this scenario, you’ve just completed a blog redesign and had to update a bunch of URLs. Unfortunately, your blog reporting software didn’t handle it very well, and ended up splitting the “view” metrics for single posts between two different URLs. So in your spreadsheet, you have two separate instances of each individual blog post. In order to get accurate data, you need to combine the view totals for each of these duplicates.

That’s where the pivot table comes into play. Instead of having to manually search for and combine all the metrics from the duplicates, you can summarize your data (via pivot table) by blog post title, and voilà: the view metrics from those duplicate posts will be aggregated automatically.

How to Create Excel Pivot Tables

Now that you have a better sense of what pivot tables can be used for, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how to actually create one.

Step 1: Click a cell to create the table. 

If you’re using a Mac, click anywhere inside your data array, navigate to the Tables tab, and click New. (Alternatively, you can go to Insert > Table via the top navigation). Then, select the Summarize with PivotTable option from the Tables tab and click OK on the pop-up menu.

If you’re using a PC, this process is a little bit simpler: Just click anywhere inside your data array and navigate to the Insert tab. Next, select the “PivotTable” option and click “OK” on the pop-up menu.

Step 2: Drag and drop a field into the “Row Labels” area.

After you’ve completed Step 1, Excel will create a blank pivot table for you. Your next step is to drag and drop a field — labeled according to the names of the columns in your spreadsheet — into the “Row Labels” area. This will determine what unique identifier — blog post title, product name, and so on — the pivot table will organize your data by.

For example, let’s say you want to organize a bunch of blogging data by post title. To do that, you’d simply click and drag the “Title” field to the “Row Labels” area.

Note: Your pivot table may look different depending on which version of Excel you’re working with. However, the general principles remain the same.

Step 3: Drag and drop a field into the “Values” area.

Once you’ve established what you’re going to organize your data by, your next step is to add in some values by dragging a field into the “Values” area.

Sticking with the blogging data example, let’s say you want to summarize blog post views by title. To do this, you’d simply drag the “Views” field into the Values area.

Step 4: Fine-tune your calculations.

The sum of a particular value will be calculated by default, but you can easily change this to something like average, maximum, or minimum depending on what you want to calculate.

On a Mac, you can do this by clicking on the small “i” next to a value in the “Values” area, selecting the option you want, and clicking “OK.” Once you’ve made your selection, your pivot table will be updated accordingly.

If you’re using a PC, you’ll need to click on the small upside-down triangle next to your value and select “Value Field Settings” in order to access the menu.

Digging Deeper

You’ve now learned the basics of pivot table creation in Excel. But depending on what you need your pivot table for, you might not be done.

For example, you may notice that the data in your pivot table isn’t sorted the way you’d like. If were the case, Excel’s Sort function can help you out. Alternatively, you may need to incorporate data from another source into your reporting, in which case the VLOOKUP function could come in handy.

To take a deeper dive into the world of Excel and learn about its various functions, download our comprehensive guide, How to Use Excel.

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

 

What’s the worst slimy sales tactic you’ve run into? Was it an overly aggressive “Buy Now!” pop-up, or maybe a late night cold call that sent shivers down your spine? Sadly, I’m sure there’s been far more than any of us want to remember.

I’ve been outspoken about the ineffectiveness of slimy sales in the past. Look, I get it. I know 42% of sales reps admit to struggling with prospecting. And when 73% of executives say their top priority is to close deals, desperate times can call for desperate measures. 

But while spamming your entire contacts list starts to look mighty tempting when the pressure’s on to hit your quota, it’s time we move forward. The sales process should feel like a service to the customer — one where going off-script and acting human is not only a good thing, it’s the right thing. Where context is king and a personalized approach is the new norm.

I was holding a team meeting recently to discuss this very topic. One of our team members was working remotely that day and would be calling in to join us. When the phone rang, I hit the pause button on the meeting, thinking our final team member was ready to enter the conversation. I answered the call, put him on speakerphone, and immediately regretted the decision. Out from the speakers poured the all too familiar, loud boat horn followed by “Congratulations, you’ve been selected for …”

Impossible! Slimy sales — in my own meeting about slimy sales, no less. I couldn’t believe my ears. Not only had the call somehow wormed its way into our meeting, but of all the meeting rooms at HubSpot, it found mine. Now it’s personal.

Enough is enough. It’s time we draw a line in the sand. Salespeople, marketers, customers, and readers: I’m calling upon you to join the People Against Slimy Sales Tactics (PASST). It’s time we put an end to legacy sales tactics that don’t work once and for all. 

Sign our petition and together we’ll move PASST the slimy sales tactics of old and into a slime-free sales future. Be sure to bring your sunglasses, because the future is bright.

For many people, even the thought of public speaking can lead to panic. The crowd. The lights. The dreaded Q&A session. It’s a lot to deal with.

But allowing these apprehensions to silence our voice can be crippling to our careers. If we want to be seen as smart and articulate professionals, we need to walk the walk and talk the talk. After all, our intelligence is often best conveyed not in what we say but in how we say it, according to a recent study from the University of Chicago.

Rather than keeping quiet to avoid saying something foolish, it’s important that we’re actively identifying ways to overcome self-doubt. 

To help get you started, check out this infographic from the folks at WriteMyEssays. They’ve compiled some awesome speaking habits designed to make you sound smarter. (Check out this post for even more tips on how to rock your next speaking engagement.)

For many of us, achieving peak productivity can seem like a Sisyphean struggle. Every once in a while, we’ll think we’ve got our inboxes or to-do lists up-to-date, triaged, and under control. And then something else comes along that throws a giant wrench in all our grand plans — a tempting off-campus lunch, a last-minute request from your boss’s boss, or a cat GIF storm you can’t help but participate in.

And so we end another day feeling like we’ve failed. While accomplishing tasks is certainly part of the picture, being productive isn’t just about checking items off a list. It’s about creating an environment and state of mind that allow you to produce great work.

And although it’s true that staying focused or having the right tools can help keep you from getting derailed, peak productivity is usually a result of the right circumstances, the right project, and the right person.

These eight TED talks cover every aspect of productivity — from how to literally do the impossible (Tim Ferriss) to how to inject out-of-the-box thinking into your everyday routine (Nilofer Merchant) — and will leave you with a new perspective on what productivity really means.

8 Inspiring TED Talks That Will Change How You Think About Productivity

1) “Try Something New For 30 Days” by Matt Cutts

Too often, we’re unproductive because we get caught in a rut of bad behavior. We come to work every day and follow the same routine, and are surprised when we haven’t seen a dramatic shift in our output. Many of us have fallen victim to bad habits that are so entrenched they seem impossible to break, and so our lack of productivity continues day in and day out.

Matt Cutts, a software engineer and head of the web spam team at Google, argues that a change in behavior isn’t as hard as we might believe. In this TED talk, Cutts suggests that all you have to do to form a good habit — or get rid of a bad one — is to consciously incorporate (or eliminate) it into your routine for 30 days. Using this 30-day challenge model, Cutts wrote a novel, cut out sugar, and laid the foundation to hike Mount Kilimanjaro.

Climbing a mountain may not be on your list of goals, but you can use 30-day challenges to cut unproductive behaviors from your repertoire.

2) “Got a Meeting? Take a Walk” by Nilofer Merchant

Sometimes it’s the smallest things that make the biggest differences. Nilofer Merchant, an author, speaker, and management consultant who has launched more than 100 products globally, has a message for office workers everywhere: Sitting is killing us.

The average person sits for 9.3 hours a day (compare that to 7.7 hours of sleep!), and this lack of physical activity is directly tied to increased risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.

But when are we supposed to find the time to get moving? In her TED talk, Merchant suggests turning meetings — the other scourge of the American worker — into an opportunity to walk. Watch her TED talks to discover more benefits of walking, and why getting some fresh air could lead to your next big idea.

3) “Flow, the Secret to Happiness” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Growing up in Europe during World War II taught Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term “flow,” an important lesson — many of the adults around him weren’t resilient enough to lead normal lives during the war. When he arrived in America, Csikszentmihalyi, now a psychologist, dedicated himself to discovering what makes us happy.

Why is this relevant to you? Because happy people perform better at work, and Csikszentmihalyi thinks the key to true happiness is “flow” — a creative state where you’re completely immersed in what you’re doing.

Csikszentmihalyi suggests three conditions are necessary to achieve flow — deep expertise, enjoyment of what you’re working on, and a challenging project that stretches your comfort zone. In his TED talk, you’ll learn why “flow” is an important concept for professionals to understand — and could be the secret to productivity and happiness in one fell swoop.

4) “What Makes Us Feel Good About Our Work?” by Dan Ariely

Solving the productivity question isn’t just important for individual contributors — it’s something that’s on business leaders’ minds, too. Everyone wants to know how to create conditions that are optimal to getting the most quality work done.

Dan Ariely, a psychology and behavioral economics professor at Duke who coined the famed “IKEA effect” that causes us to place a high premium on projects we labored especially hard to complete, thinks he knows how leaders can motivate their teams. In this talk, you’ll learn why it’s so important to value people’s efforts, and how small changes in how you give feedback can be crucial for keeping employee morale high.

5) “How Too Many Rules at Work Keep You From Getting Things Done” by Yves Morieux

Yves Morieux, director of Boston Consulting Group’s Institute for Organization, strives to answer one question — why are people so unproductive? During his time with BCG, Morieux has worked with over 500 companies, and despite advances in technology and increasing efforts to develop good company culture, the question still plagues him.

Morieux thinks we’re facing a “productivity crisis.” Half a century ago, workforce productivity used to grow 5% a year. It grew 3% annually in the 1970s, 2% in the 1980s, and since 1995 has grown less than 1% per year. For the first time in decades, future generations will have less of everything because their predecessors — us — have failed to produce more.

But it’s not too late to turn the boat around, says Morieux. In his TED talk, you’ll hear how the traditional principles of efficiency — clarity, accountability, and measurement — have resulted in overengineered, excessively complex workplaces and why leaders need to focus instead on fostering and rewarding effective cooperation.

6) “How to Make Stress Your Friend” by Kelly McGonigal

Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal spent the last decade teaching her patients that stress is harmful to your health. And while an eight-year study revealed that people who reported being more stressed had an increased risk of dying, it also found that only the subjects who believed stress was detrimental saw this increased risk.

Yep, that’s a real finding: Only people who believed stress was harmful to their health actually suffered. Pretty crazy, right?

When you’re in the thick of it at work, it can often feel like the sky is falling and no matter what you do, you’ll never be able to accomplish everything you have to. And that can have some pretty nasty effects on your health. But McGonigal argues that through social contact, we’re able to “hack” our brains and literally rewire the way our bodies respond to stress. In her TED talk, you’ll learn her secret to tapping into your body’s natural defenses against stress-induced damage.

7) “Smash Fear, Learn Anything” by Tim Ferriss

Bestselling author Tim Ferriss and a “six-double-espresso-per-day” friend made a pact — his friend would forgo any type of stimulant for a year if Ferriss, who had never learned to swim, could complete a one-kilometer open water race. Over the course of his life, Ferriss has also taught himself Japanese and made it to the semi-finals of the world tango championships. And he accomplished these feats he’d previously thought were impossible by learning how to approach his fear through deconstruction.

In this TED talk, you’ll hear about how Ferriss breaks down complex challenges into manageable chunks, then proceeds to crush his goals. And the next time you’re facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge at work, adopt Ferriss’ mindset to summit obstacles that suddenly won’t feel so impossible anymore.

8) “How to Stay Calm When You Know You’ll Be Stressed” by Daniel Levitin

It’s all well and good to say that we should revise how we think about stress, but it’s quite another thing to actually change how we think about it. Thankfully, neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin has some advice for how to minimize the impact stress has on your daily life.

Levitin advocates practicing “prospective hindsight,” a term coined by psychologist Gary Klein. Also known as the “pre-mortem,” this strategy calls on people to imagine everything that could go wrong as a result of a certain decision, then act accordingly to prevent those things from happening — a technique akin to a decision insurance policy. In this TED talk, you’ll learn techniques you can use to gather all the information you need to understand those negative possibilities and create systems of thought that help minimize the fallout from unfortunate situations.

What are your favorite TED talks about productivity? Let us know in the comments below.

In business, getting ahead often hinges on our ability to get noticed. We need people to pay attention to our brand if we want them to listen, complete an action, change a behavior, and so on.

Trouble is, there are two types of attention: good and bad. And the brands below know a thing or two about both. Remember the dress that broke the internet? What about the time REI boycotted Black Friday for its #OptOutside campaign? And we’ll certainly never forget the moment when Steve Harvey accidentally announced the wrong Miss Universe winner, right? 

But what happened to these brands after the fact? The folks at Fractl and Moz teamed up to explore the impact that these stunts — both planned and accidental — had on seven different companies that made big news in the past year. Armed with a handful of tools, they dug into the data to determine exactly how media coverage affects press mentions, organic traffic, and backlinks.

So is it true that all press is good press? Check out their findings by scrolling through the flipbook below.

The way students select a school, college, or program has changed. There is now more information available online than ever before so the traditional methods of printing and mailing pamphlets is no longer effective. Nowadays, students and parents are turning to search engines to gather the information they need to decide which college or course is the best choice for them.

This has opened up a huge opportunity for schools to leverage an inbound marketing approach for gaining new students into their programs. Regardless of your budget, inbound enables any school, big or small, to own their search engine ranking without paying the big bucks to maintain it through paid advertising. It allows schools to build their own online presence and attract the right students and parents to their school’s website through educational and engaging content.

In this post, we’ll look at how to plan out a content strategy so you can make sure your school is present where your students or the parents of your students are looking for answers online.

The Basics

Set Goals and Targets

The first step to being successful with content marketing is to ask yourself why you are doing it. Is it to drive more awareness for your college or the specific programs that you’re running? Is it to drive X% more applicants than the previous semester?

Whatever your objective is, knowing what those goals are before you begin makes it easier to create an effective plan and monitor your success along the way. Typically these goals fall into the following categories:

• Attract – E.g. Driving X visits to the website
• Convert – E.g. Increasing applications by X%
• Close – E.g. Converting X% applications into enrolled students

Each piece of content you create should be tightly aligned with helping you achieve one of those goals. (Want help figuring out the right goals? Download this SMART goal planning template.)

Select or Create Your Student Personas

Think of all the people who come to your site on a daily basis — be it high school students, their parents, college students, transfer students, guidance counselors, alumni, adults seeking new skills or an advanced degree. All of these people have different needs, challenges, and questions about how your school can help them so you should create content that speaks to each of them individually.

Every piece of content you create for these personas is another opportunity for your school to show up in the search results when they are asking Google to help them choose a school. By writing content that solves their specific challenges, you build trust and credibility with the people who are most likely to convert into students in your school.

If you need help creating your student personas check out our free tool Make My Persona.

Choose the Formats and Themes

When you’re planning out your content it’s important to experiment with lots of different formats. Most people will just start with a blog and that’s a great starting point but you can also include various formats within your blog as well. This comes back to knowing your personas; how they like to consume content and where they spend their time online so you can create content that suits those platforms and publish it there.

E.g. SlideShare is a huge platform for the education industry because the format enables you to teach lessons in an engaging and visual manner and the audience on SlideShare are all professionals interested in advancing their career through learning. Just click here to see hundreds of examples of people in the education industry using SlideShare.

You can create guides, checklists, templates, videos, quizzes, games, competitions, or anything else you can come up with. The key is to test everything to find out what works for your audience.

The Content

Come up with some Ideas

Once you know who your personas are you need to conduct some research. You’ll need to identify what their biggest challenges are as relates to education; what are their biggest concerns and their most frequently asked questions? What information do they need to make a decision about the school, university or program they will attend? What terms do they use to find that information in the search engines?

It’s important to remember that picking a school to attend is a huge decision, and this is your chance to educate them, soothe their apprehension, and be their number one choice.

A good place to start with this research is Google’s search itself. By simply typing in “how to choose a” the suggestions already include “how to choose a college course”. That means that the term is very frequently searched.

If you select “how to choose a college course” and scroll to the bottom of the first page of results you’ll see Google’s related search terms. These are variations of that search that are also frequently searched for.

By creating content that answers these questions, your school can start to rank for them and get found by your potential new students or their parents.

There are lots of tools available to help you come up with content topics. Several ones include:

• HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator : Get blog post ideas for an entire year with HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator. All you need to do is enter general topics or terms you’d like to write about, and this content idea generator does all the work for you.
  

• Feedly : This popular RSS feed is a wonderful way to keep track of trendy topics in your industry and find content ideas at the same time.

• Quora: A forum of curious people who ask questions about all kinds of topics. You can find the types of questions your different personas are asking on here and then create content to answer them. 
  

A great example of a school that has identified their personas and developed content to help solve their challenges is Saint Leo University. They don’t just create content for their potential students but also the parents and families of those students as well.

They created career planning course for parents, action plans, and guides to help parents in getting their children started on the right career path. This content helps to build trust and credibility betwen the school and the families of those who plan to attend.

Map out the Student Journey

In order to be effective at converting strangers into students you need to ensure you’ve mapped your content out across the student journey. This means you should have content that attracts your personas while they’re gathering information (awareness), content that encourages your personas to interact with your school somehow (act), content that converts them into applications, and content that keeps them engaged after they become students.

We have a template to help you plan this out which you can download here .  

Management & Measurement

Have a content marketing platform in place so you can monitor the success of your campaigns, make tweaks if it’s not going so well and keep a close eye on all the activity related to your content so you can continuously improve on each iteration.

By using a platform like HubSpot’s analytics and reporting tools you can monitor your campaign to see where the most enrollments come from. You can measure what drives the most traffic to your school’s website, what is keeping your student personas engaged with your school, and what was the last interaction they had with you before they submitted their application and became a student.

With all of that information at your disposal you have leverage that you never had before with paid tactics like printing pamphlets and ads. Now you can ensure every cent of your budget is invested in the most cost effective way that will convert more strangers into students for your school.

Your website copy is responsible for more than just presenting your visitors with basic information. In fact, your words alone have the ability to influence how visitors feel about your brand, what they choose to click (or not click), and how your site ranks in search engines.

How can you ensure that it’s working the way you want it to? Testing. Sometimes the tiniest change in word choice can have a major impact on your conversion rates. While the difference between a checkout button that reads “Add to Cart” rather than “+Cart” might seem insignificant, it can significantly alter your website’s performance.

Still not convinced? Check out these 13 case studies that prove word choice does indeed matter when it comes to optimizing for conversions.

15 Case Studies That Prove Word Choice Matters for Conversions

1) Fab Increased Cart Adds by 49%

In order to optimize their sales, the online retail community Fab experimented with the “Add to Cart” button on their site. After changing the button from one that showed a picture of a shopping cart to one that spelled out the words “Add to Cart,” the website saw a 49% increase in cart adds.

Source: Optimizely

Takeaway: In trying to increase conversions, the more obvious you can be, the better. Always make your desired action as easy as possible to achieve, and leave nothing to be inferred.

2) NuFACE Increased Sales by 90%

In an effort to increase sales, an anti-aging skin product company called NuFACE decided to offer free shipping on all orders over $75. The result was a 90% increase in sales.

Source: VWO

Takeaway: The word “free” still works like magic. According to author Dan Ariely, it serves as a powerful emotional trigger that can cause us to instantly change our behavior. If you can find a legitimate way to include it on your website, you might just see a big change in conversions.

3) Monthly1K Increased Sales by 6.5%

Monthly1K — a software solution for entrepreneurs — wanted to increase the number of online courses they were selling. To do this, they experimented with a new headline that read: “How to Make a $1,000 a Month Business.” This replaced the old headline that read: “How to Make Your First Dollar.”

Source: AppSumo

The result was nearly a 6.5% increase in sales.

Takeaway: Most people are optimists, and if you can promise them big returns on their investment, then invest they will. As long as you can back up these promises, don’t be afraid to use them to increase your sales.

4) GoCardless Increased Conversions by 139%

A debit supplier in the UK called GoCardless tested two different versions of their CTA, each one only differing by one word. The first one read “Request a demo,” while the second read, “Watch a demo.”

Source: GoCardless

Ultimately, the company found that the second version led to a 139% increase in conversions.

Takeaway: Some words have a connotation that can cause visitors to hesitate. The word “request” draws up images of having to fill out forms and wait for responses, while the word “watch” implies a far quicker and more direct process. Pay careful attention to the emotional connection of each word you use, especially when it comes to your CTA.

5) JCD Increased Conversions by 18%

No matter what you’re selling, writing engaging copy is vital. The iPhone repair service JCD, for instance, saw this first hand when they replaced their straightforward, factual web copy with an entertaining and humorous description of their services.

Source: Copyhackers

The result? Almost an 18% increase in conversions.

Takeaway: It’s important to include specific details, but be sure you’re writing them in a way that’s entertaining and engaging. Even giving your copy a small dose of personality can drastically increase the chances of it actually being read by a visitor.

6) Pink Pest Services Increased Conversions by 96%

The pest removal service, Pink Pest Services, decided to alter their advertisement so both the header and the copy below it were focused on their free quote, rather than having the header focus on the quote and the copy focus on a free report.

Source: Marketing Results

The results were a 96% increase in the number of conversions they saw.

Takeaway: Your copy needs to be consistent. Expounding on your first offer is far more effective than transitioning to a second offer under the same heading.

7) DaFlores Increased Sales by 27%

DaFlores is a company that sells and ships fresh flower arrangements through their website. In an effort to improve sales, the company added a sense of urgency by displaying the text “Order in the next [x] hours for delivery today.” In exchange, they saw a 27% increase in sales.

Takeaway: Often times, urgency is the key to driving impulse purchases. By adding a sense of urgency to your website — whether through a limited-time sale or through guaranteed delivery, as what DaFlores offered — you can open up an opportunity to drastically increase your number of conversions.

8) Stride Increased Conversions by 112%

The folks at Stride decided to switch up their abandoned cart emails by focusing more on the customer and their needs, rather than the company. Notice the consistent use of “you” and “your” in the email copy below.

Source: AWeber

As a result, they were able to rack up a 112% increase in conversions.

Takeaway: While it can be incredibly tempting to tout the accomplishments and strong-points of your company, website, or services in your copy, you would, in general, be far better served by staying focused on the customer.

9) Raileasy Increased Email Opens by 31%

In this case, an online travel agency, Raileasy, wanted to improve the effectiveness of the emails sent out to customers who abandoned their shopping cart. To do this, they use personalization to customize email subject lines based on the name of the destination the customer was shopping for.

Source: Which Test Won

As a result, Raileasy saw a 31% increase in email opens.

Takeaway: People are obviously interested in the item they added to their cart, or they never would have made it that far. Reminding them of that interest is a more effective way of re-engaging them than a generic abandoned cart email.

10) TextMagic Increased Conversions by 38%

The goal of one of TextMagic’s CTAs was to send people from the company’s homepage to its pricing page. The original text in their CTA read “Buy SMS Credits,” but when TextMagic changed this to read “View SMS Credits,” they saw nearly a 38% increase in conversions.

Takeaway: People are always a little wary of pressing buttons on the internet. If your text leads them to believe that pressing a button equals buying a product, they’re often less likely to follow through. Instead, ease hesitant customers through the process with more comforting language.

11) L’Axelle Increased Cart Adds by 93%

L’Axelle‘s goal was to increase the number of underarm sweat pads being sold on their website. To do so, they changed their ad copy from “Feel fresh without sweat marks” to a more action-oriented phrase: “Put an end to sweat marks!”

Source: Kissmetrics

The result was a 93% increase in items added to cart.

Takeaway: It’s called a call-to-action for a reason. By making your copy direct and action-oriented, you’ll leave your visitors feeling more inspired and compelled to follow through.

12) Betfair Increased Conversions by 7%

The online betting service, Betfair, tested six different persuasion tactics on their website, including reciprocity, scarcity, commitment and consistency, liking, authority, and social proof.

While each page that employed these specific tactics fared better than the control group, the top performer was the website that employed social proof by pointing out the number of “Likes” Betfair had on their Facebook page.

Source: VWO

This variation in particular enjoyed a 7% increase in conversions over the control.

Takeaway: Social proof is a powerful tactic. If people believe that there’s a buzz about your product or service, they’re more apt to want to join the party themselves. Don’t be quick to rule out other persuasion tactics, though. All six of the strategies tested proved effective for Betfair, and which one works best for you will depend on your specific website and goals. (Click here for tips on how to add social proof to your landing pages.)

13) Bloomspot Increased Conversions by 20%

Last up, Bloomspot took the surprisingly obvious step of making the text on their landing pages match the images on their landing pages. For example, if the image was of a restaurant, the text mentioned deals on top restaurants in the area.

Source: Kissmetrics

As a result, they saw a 20% boost in conversions.

Takeaway: Images and text are both two different means of conveying a message. When both your images and your text convey the same message, you’re giving your visitors a double dose of your CTA and increasing the likelihood of them converting.

As these case studies make clear, word choice matters — whether it’s in your CTAs, your headlines, or your body copy. Take their wisdom to heart by using them to identify areas on your own site that may be falling victim to unclear or uninspired language usage.

Have another great case study to add to this list? Share your suggestions by leaving a comment below.

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

In a 2013 article in Forbes, contributor Ruth Blatt wrote about why “supergroups” — bands comprised of independently successful artists — so rarely work out when such an assemblage of talent should otherwise predicate success.  

She wrote: “The problem with the additive assumption underlying ‘supergroups’ is that it does not account for the process losses that come from egos, quirks, over-confidence, sense of entitlement, and the expectation to lead that stars bring to the team. And it doesn’t account for the skills required to build synergy on the team. Talented individuals need other-focused people around them who will support them and put up with their quirks.”

In other words, Blatt is asserting that great collaborations do not originate from just throwing equally talented individuals on a project, but rather the coming together of both talent and complementary personalities. Done right, the collective will stands to achieve more than any one individual.

Yet, when we think about those that have accomplished a great deal, be it in film, music, art, or advertising, how often do those thoughts drift to the individual rather than the group? In the U.S. especially, we’ve come to cherish rugged individualism — the auteur director, the leader singer who sheds the boy band and becomes a best-selling solo artist, the renegade creative director (i.e., Don Draper). Teamwork doesn’t strike the same cultural cord as blazing one’s own trail, and even when we do celebrate collaborative accomplishments, we categorize the contributors as “superstars” or “role players.” And that’s wrong. 

It’s time we celebrate the team, which can accomplish so much more. Below is our attempt to shed light on the best creative collaborations of all time. 

7 of the Most Creative Matchups

1) Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat

In the book Warhol: The Biography, former Warhol assistant Ronny Cutrone described the relationship between Warhol and Basquiat as: “It was like some crazy art-world marriage and they were the odd couple. The relationship was symbiotic. Jean-Michel thought he needed Andy’s fame, and Andy thought he needed Jean-Michel’s new blood. Jean-Michel gave Andy a rebellious image again.”

Starting in the mid 1980s, Warhol and Basquiat produced numerous works, experimenting with a type of collaborative art in which one (usually Warhol) would begin a painting, and the other would add to it, passing it back and forth until a completed project was agreed upon. Stylistically, the paintings were a departure from what either had — or most likely would have — accomplished prior to teaming up. Eventually, their efforts were exhibited by the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York.

Source: Vulture

2) Paul McCartney and John Lennon

There are numerous musical duos that could be considered great collaborators — Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Johnny Cash and June Carter, Simon and Garfunkel — but no pair stands taller than the creative force of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. 

Highly competitive, the duo frequently challenged one another. John would write Strawberry Fields, and Paul would respond with Penny Lane. It was a relationship of one-upmanship that pushed each of them to be their creative best. Without each other, whose to say the Beatles would have become, well, the Beatles?

Source: Wikipedia

3) F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald

Common thought holds that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a literary titan, writing classics such as The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise, while his wife, Zelda, was the less talented of the pair — her accomplishments as a writer were buoyed only by her husband’s immense fame and talent. Common thought is wrong.

Zelda helped edit and craft Fitzgerald’s work, including suggesting the title of The Great Gatsby. She penned numerous works, including Save Me the Waltz, and she published essays under her husband’s name, meaning that some of the literary gravitas associated with F. Scott is actually owed to her. 

Source: NPR

4) Harry, Albert, Samuel, and Jack Warner

The four brothers founded Warner Brothers, the famous motion-picture studio, and shortly thereafter introduced to the world the first genuine “talkie,” changing film-going forever. Knowing their talents, they divided themselves across the different facets of the business, with Harry as president and in charge of the New York headquarters, Albert as treasurer and head of sales and distribution, and Sam and Jack leading the studio in Hollywood.

Together they revolutionized cinema, popularizing the gangster genre with films like Little Caesar (1931) and Scarface (1932) and producing some of the most notable movies to come out of the Golden Age of Hollywood, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).  

Source: Wikipedia

5) Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs, John Lasseter

Though more closely associated with Apple in the minds of the general public, Steve Jobs’ collaboration with computer scientist Ed Catmull and producer and now chief creative officer John Lasseter led Pixar from being a relatively fledgling film studio to the gold-standard in cinematic computer animation.  

Beginning with the first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, in 1995, Pixar created some of the most beloved animated films and characters of all time, winning seven Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature along the way. They include Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, Toy Story 3, and Brave, two of which —Toy Story 3 and Up — were also nominated for Best Picture.

Source: Disney

6) Steven Spielberg and John Williams

Next up is the creative duo of Steven Spielberg and John Williams. With Spielberg at the directorial helm and John Williams composing accompanying scores, the two have created some of the most iconic moments in cinematic history. 

Together, they brought moviegoers such classic theme music from Jurassic Park to Indiana Jones to Jaws. 

7) Helmut Krone, Julian Koenig, and William Bernbach 

When tasked with marketing the smaller Volkswagen Beetle to an American market that loved their automobiles big and fast, copywriter Julian Koening teamed with art director Helmut Krone under the supervision of William Bernbach to create one of the most iconic advertisements of all-time: Think Small.

Each of them nailed their respective tasks — Bernbach’s leadership, Koenig’s clever wording, and Krone’s spectacular design — to great effect, and the result was nothing short of a revolution in advertising. For a detailed breakdown on what made the advertisement so genius, we recommend you read Ad Age’s countdown of the top 100 campaigns of the 20^th century, where Think Small tops the list.  

Source: Ad Age

What creative teams have inspired you? Let us know in the comments below!