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Here’s the truth: Excel struggles are real.

As marketers, it’s likely that you know these tiny conflicts all too well. From accidental deletes to misplaced numbers, one click can throw your spreadsheet all out of whack. And putting it back together once you’ve done the damage can be seriously frustrating — not to mention, time-consuming.  

But you’re not alone: Even the most advanced Excel users experience these errors from time to time. So for that reason, we’ve put together some tips designed to save you a few minutes (or hours) when solving frustrating Excel errors. Check ’em out below. 

Best Practices That’ll Help You Reduce Excel Errors

Before we go over the errors and tips, we wanted to share a few helpful tricks we’ve learned from our own Excel experts. These precautionary lessons are designed to help you avoid errors all together, making life a whole lot easier:

• Begin every formula with an equal sign.
• Use the * symbol to multiply numbers, not an X.
• Match all opening and closing parentheses so that they are in pairs.
• Use quotation marks around text in formulas.

7 Excel Error Messages You’re Sick of Seeing (And How to Fix Them)

We’ve all fallen victim to the little green arrow in upper-left hand corner of a cell before. You know, that pesky little thing that Excel uses to indicate something has gone wrong?

In many cases, clicking on that arrow will pull up enough information for you to remedy the problem at hand. Take a look:

But in other cases, you still can’t seem to figure out what’s gone wrong. For those instances, we’ve provided the following list of common errors, explanations, and tips for overcoming them. Dig in for the context you need to right your wrongs and get back on the Excel saddle.

1) #VALUE!

Excel displays the #VALUE! error when it finds spaces, characters, or text in a formula where it is expecting a number.

Excel requires formulas to contain numbers only and won’t respond to formulas associated with numbers, so it will show you an error is if you’ve included anything else.

How to Resolve This Error:

An easy solution to this error is to double check your formula to make sure that you only used numbers. If you’re still seeing an error, check for blank cells, missing formulas linking to cells or any special characters you may be using.

In the example above, the “Sum” column is referring to empty cells. Excel can’t calculate the sum of empty columns, so it gives us an error.

2) #####

When you see ##### displayed in your cell, it can look a little scary. The good news is that this simply means the column isn’t wide enough to display the value you’ve inputted. And that’s any easy fix!

How to Resolve This Error:

Click on the right border of the column header and increase the column width.

Pro Tip: You can double-click the right border of the header to automatically fit the widest cell in that column. 

3) #DIV/0!

When you see #DIV/0!, you are asking Excel to divide a formula by zero or an empty cell. In the same way that this task wouldn’t work if you were doing division by hand, or on a calculator, it won’t work in Excel either.

How to Resolve This Error:

This error is pretty easy to resolve. Simply change the value of the cell to a value that is not equal to 0 or add in a value if your cell was blank. Here’s an example:

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In some cases, you might find that you’re simply waiting for input in a particular cell. Rather than including a “0” as a placeholder, and subsequently turning up a #DIV/0! error, you can add a custom display message. Learn more about your alternative options here. 

4) #REF!

This one can sometimes be a little tricky to figure out, however Excel usually displays #REF! when a formula references a cell that is not valid.

What does that really mean?

That means that you may have accidentally deleted or pasted over a cell that was used in your formula. For example, let’s say that the “Outcome” column references the formula: =SUM(A2,B2,C2).  

If we were to accidentally delete the “Number 2” column, we’d see this error:

How to Resolve This Error:

Before you paste over a set of cells make sure that there are no formulas that will be affected. Also, when deleting cells it’s important to double check what formulas are being referred in those cells.

Pro Tip: If you accidentally delete a few cells, you can click the Undo button on the Quick Access Toolbar (or press CTRL+Z for PC / Command + Z for Mac ) to restore them.

5) #NULL!

#NULL! errors occur when you specify an intersection of two areas that don’t actually intersect, or when an incorrect range operator is used.

To give you some additional context, here’s how Excel reference operators work:

• Range operator (semi colon): Defines a references to a range of cells.
• Union operator (comma): Combines two references into a single reference.
• Intersection operator (space): Returns a reference to the intersection of two ranges.

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How to Resolve This Error:

First things first, check to make sure that you are using the correct syntax in your formula.

• You should be using a colon to separate the first cell from the last cell when you refer to a continuous range of cells in a formula.
• On the other hand, you should be using a comma should when you refer to two cells that don’t intersect. 

6) #N/A

When you see #N/A, this typically means that the numbers you are referring to in your formula cannot be found.

You may have accidentally deleted a number or row that’s being used in your formula, or are referring to a sheet that was deleted or not saved.

For advanced users, one of the most common causes of the #N/A error is when a cell can’t be found from a formula referenced in a VLOOKUP. (Check out this post for more on VLOOKUPs.)

How to Resolve This Error:

Triple check all your formulas and be sure to look closely at which sheets or rows may have been deleted or incorrectly referenced. If you have a few formulas linked together, check to see that everything in every formula has a value.

For advanced users using VLOOKUP functions, reference this guide.

7) #NUM!

If your formula contains numeric values that aren’t valid, you’ll see an #NUM! error appear in Excel. Often times this happens when you enter a numeric value that’s different than the other arguments used in your formula.

For example, when you’re entering an Excel formula, make sure you don’t include values like $1,000 in currency format. Instead, enter 1000 and then format the cell with currency and commas after the formula is calculated.

How to Resolve This Error:

Check to see if you have entered any formatted currency, dates, or special symbols. Then, make sure to remove those characters from the formula, only keeping the numbers themselves. 

Here’s how you can format numbers after removing the commas and currency from your formula:

(To adjust the currency, select the small triangle to the right of the icon to select an option from the dropdown menu.)

What pesky errors did we miss? Let us know in the comments section below.

The education industry is going through a major disruption, facing pressures in demand, supply, and delivery.

Enrollment rates continue to decline, especially for four-year for-profit and two-year schools. Four-year universities see flat enrollment rates. As the pool of potential students gets smaller, the options they have for school are increasing. New programs like Promise and EQUIP offer financial incentives for students to attend community colleges and alternative educational institutions.  The rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other digital education services are forcing brick-and-mortar schools to expand student options and improve flexibility as to where and how students attend class.

All this is going on as attitudes of students and parents change as to how they research and select what sort of school to attend, and then which school to attend. Increasing costs, especially at four-year schools, which now take six years for most students to complete, has put many people’s focus squarely on gauging what sort of return they’ll get for the money they spend on school. What’s the most cost effective way to earn credits? What skills will they have? What will their job prospects be? 

And like every other purchase made today, consumer or B2B, students and parents are conducting most of their school research well before they ever make direct contact with a school.

The Empowered Consumer Student

You know well that the days of guidance counselors and school brochures controlling the selection process are long gone. 

Students and parents have a remarkable array of information and resources to access when researching schools. Let’s forget (only for a minute) about the content put out by the schools themselves.

There are also the review sites both for schools and individual teachers, and websites and blogs dedicated to guiding people through the selection process. Prospects have access, through social media, to the everyday conversations other students, parents, and prospects are having about the schools they attend or are thinking about attending.

There’s no topic a prospect can’t find online information to educate themself about whatever her educational priorities and motivations are. This newly empowered, self-directed prospect means educational marketing strategies need to evolve to meet them.

Leaning into the Digital Disruption

Traditional outbound tactics, like print ads and cold direct mailing, aren’t where the prospects are. To meet enrollment goals, both in number and quality, schools have to be right in the digital mix addressing the issues prospects are already researching online. 

Inbound marketing answers this call.

Inbound marketing uses digital capabilities to execute a strategy of targeted personalization by delivering online content that attracts and delights your prospects. This more personal approach is necessary to attract quality leads to your institution. You don’t just need eyeballs. You need the right eyeballs.

Getting found by your best prospects online requires serving up the information they want, in the formats and places they prefer.

In order to do that, you need to a clear picture of who your target prospects are. These are your personas, fictional profiles that describe the motivations, challenges and demographics of who you’re trying to reach. You can find free templates to use for your school here. Your personas probably aren’t just different student types, but others who participate in their school decision. This means parents, teachers, and counselors.

Once you know who you’re trying to reach, follow the inbound methodology to get quality leads into your database and nurture them through to application and enrollment. The inbound methodology for schools has four main steps: attracting web traffic, converting that traffic into leads, nurturing those leads into making inquiries to your school, and then closing them by getting the application. You can learn more about creating personas the moving them through each step in The Ultimate Guide to Inbound Marketing for Schools.

Where the Prospects Are

Google documented back in 2012 that 90% of students research higher learning institutions online. So we’ve learned a lot about how students do their education research. They’re eager for information about areas of study, scholarship information, and campus life. They consult campus ratings as well. Everyone gets reviewed today.

Social media is another active source of information, so YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, and messaging apps are probably valuable distribution mediums for your content. Of course, your school’s own website is their single largest resource about your school, and curious prospects will visit often – if you’re serving up engaging, informative content they can’t resist.

Use your social media and school blogs to answer the questions your prospects have, using the search language they use. This is the starting point for inbound. When you publish content with the right keywords and answering key prospect questions, your school’s website and blog will start showing up in student searches. That’s how schools are getting found by the right prospects in today’s education market.

That’s where all education searches start today – online. If your school wants to be pro-active about enrolling full classes of your ideal students, then it’s time to get counter-intuitive and stop chasing them with brute force, outbound tactics.

Being pro-active in today’s market means making them come to you by being a trusted, authoritative resource throughout their entire research process.  They’re not interested in being talked to. They want you to respond to their needs, and then they want you to anticipate their needs. That’s inbound marketing.

Whether we realise it or not, our brains are wired to pay more attention to a select handful of voices in a crowd. It might be a celebrity setting a new fashion trend, a business leader announcing a new viewpoint on company culture, or a brand unveiling new innovative product designs.

If it’s an area we’re interested in, we automatically listen to some voices more than others.

These individuals and brands are known as influencers. But while it’s great to be a follower, you might want to be the one others look up to. The question is, how do you do that?

What is an Industry Influencer?

Influencers are individuals or brands that are considered leaders and trendsetters in their particular niche. People follow them because they have expertise, authority, and a proven track record of being ahead of the curve.

Some influencers are globally well-known and associated strongly with a particular area, such as Apple for design innovation, Jack Ma for business, Nike for forward-thinking advertising, Kate Middleton for style, and Warren Buffet for financial advice.

Yet there are even more influencers that, while not universally recogniseable, have huge followings in certain niches. In marketing, for example, you’ve most likely heard of Seth Godin and Ariana Huffington, who are pioneers of internet marketing and publishing. If you’re big into SEO, you probably follow Rand Fishkin and Dan Petrovic. If you’re focused on landing page conversions, Oli Gardner may be at the top of your list of people to watch.

How Can You Become an Influencer?

Being an influencer gives you a larger platform for your message, which means more brand awareness, recognition, and respect. But how do you become an influencer?

Learn how to build your influencer strategy with the help of our brand new ebook How to Become an Influencer in Your Industry, co-authored by HubSpot and LinkedIn with a foreword from well-known industry influencer Jeff Bullas. After reading it, you’ll understand:

• The psychology of influence. What characteristics and traits are necessary to become an influencer?
• The components of influencer strategy. Learn how to identify your audience and establish your brand through content and promotion.
• How to grow your brand. Get actionable tips on how to increase your reach through networking, online thought-leadership and events

If you’re serious about growing your brand and increasing your following, you don’t want to miss out on this step-by-step guide to becoming an influencer in your industry! Click here to download your free copy.

You’ve heard this common theme repeated by your parents, your teachers, your managers … even your significant others: It’s up to you to take ahold of the opportunities presented and make something of them.

The problem is that opportunities usually equal choosing the hard thing. It’s much easier to stay constant on the current path, walking with the wind rather than against it. 

But as Winston Churchill said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” 

And when it comes to your business, there are a lot of difficulties that equal big opportunities. However, when you’re in the middle of it, it’s not easy to recognize or focus on what actually matters — it’s that whole “can’t see the forest for the trees” conundrum. 

We pulled a few stats from our Agency Pricing & Financials Report that detail how agencies price their services, manage their firms, sell, and service their clients to highlight a few issues that, if improved, could equal significant opportunities for agencies as they work toward growth, stability, or higher profitability. 

Download the full report here or view a few of the interesting charts below.

4 Revealing Charts on Agency Business Practices

1) 57% of agencies win less than 50% of proposals sent.

Depending on how in-depth your agency’s proposals are — the length, the amount of research you do, how much you give away (i.e., the strategy), and design — creating a proposal can be a time-consuming and arduous process. It might take you two hours, eight hour, or upwards of 40, depending on the requests of the prospect. 

And all of that time is arguably wasted if you don’t win. 

That’s why it’s so concerning to see that a majority of agencies don’t win even half of the proposals they create. 

Increasing the conversion rates of your proposals by improving your sales process should be a priority. And this all starts with understanding what types of clients actually want to buy your services — what makes a prospect a good fit. By having the right qualifying questions, you can increase the time you spend with prospects who would benefit and see the value of your services and spend less time writing proposals that are ignored or irrelevant.  

2) 44% of agencies don’t use a CRM, and 42% haven’t defined their ideal client. 

That many agencies don’t use a CRM and have yet to identify which clients are a good fit for their agency and services further supports the low conversion rate on proposals. In the survey, we also asked how satisfied respondents were with their sales process: Only 28% were satisfied or very satisfied, while 41% were not satisfied or very dissatisfied. Even more confusing is the 31% who responded as “neutral,” signaling a lack of concern or worry about growth.

I’m not saying that every agency needs to be highly focused on gaining more and more and more new clients. In fact, the opposite is often recommended. You can grow by building a roster of 10 or 20 highly profitable client accounts that provides your team with the opportunity to do highly rewarding work.

But without a sales process — and an understanding of who these future profitable clients are, how they think about marketing, what they value, etc. — then you’re simply chasing one account after another.

And without a tool or system for tracking prospects, you could be losing out on valuable business you’ve already invested hundreds of hours in. If you’re marketing your agency right, the clients you really want should already know about you. And even if they’re not ready to switch shops today, they should think of you when they do begin to look around. A CRM can help you to stay in touch with these people — something that old Excel file can’t yet handle. 

3) Agencies fail to track future-looking metrics.

Without tracking the right financial metrics, agencies can’t truly understand the health of their business. And while it’s necessary to track revenue and profit numbers, these only tell the story of how well the company is doing today, not tomorrow or next week or three months from now.

Metrics such as leads generated and client satisfaction provide more forward-looking information. By tracking average client tenure, you can spot clients at-risk of leaving before you get that dreaded phone call or request for an urgent in-person meeting. 

It also doesn’t reveal the opportunities for greater efficiencies. Do you know how much your agency is losing due to overservicing? Do you understand which client accounts are profitable? And which ones are costing you money? 

If the utilization rate for your agency is too low, then maybe your firm has become top heavy, with too many non-billable employees in management. If you’re employee satisfaction score is low and turnover is high, what’s causing this? 

As I hope the above shows, these metrics are only the starting points for more in-depth conversation and analysis, but they will help guide you to new information and possibly a solution. Otherwise, you’re simply running in the dark toward revenue and profit numbers.  

4) Agencies are too reliant on referrals and word of mouth.

It’s no surprise that referrals are listed as the best source of new leads for agency new business. And referrals are valuable — we know that referrals convert at a higher rate and have a higher lifetime value. 

However, by relying on referrals too heavily, agencies are essentially putting their new business development in the hands of their clients — some who are happy and some who are not. And referrals don’t scale as well as many other methods, such as focusing on lead generation through blogging, social media, PR, and events. 

In addition, referrals are influenced by things such as public speaking, publishing educational content, the professionalism of your web presence, etc., so it’s important to create a sustainable plan for marketing your agency and driving both referrals and new connections with clients outside your current sphere of influence.

What are the biggest opportunities for improvement in your agency? Let us know in the comments below!

It’s difficult to communicate emotion through just text — and as a digital marketer, you’re always looking for ways to make more meaningful connections with your audience.

Images make it easier for you to bring your stories to life, as well as overcome linguistic and cultural barriers between you and your audience. If you’re not using graphics to your advantage, you’re missing out on a huge chance to make a personal connection with your audience and increase engagement with your content as a result.

How can you use images strategically on social media channels, on your website, and within your content? What kinds of photos will draw your audience in and enhance the experience your brand delivers?

We worked with iStock, one of the leading photography providers for content creators around the world, to bring you this handy guide to effective imagery.

In this ebook, you’ll find tips on:

• Improving brand sentiment with images that are perfectly curated and optimised for your audience.
• Optimising your images to drive traffic from organic search, social media, and paid social posts.
• Using images and color schemes strategically to increase conversion rates.
• A/B testing your images.
• Optimising your photos for Google search.

Ready to leave ugly, uncoordinated, and random photos behind?

Download your completely free copy of The Digital Marketer’s Guide to Effective Imagery now to learn how to select images that not only look beautiful, but also resonate with your audience.