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

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

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

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

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

The Free Templates You Need for Visual Content Design

Click on a template below to jump to that section:

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

100 Templates for Visual Social Media Content (Download Here)

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

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

This one?

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

— Taco Bell (@tacobell)
May 3, 2016

Or this one?

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

— Taco Bell (@tacobell)
May 19, 2016

The second one, right? Case in point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download your 5 social media cover photo templates here.

15 Infographic Templates (Download Here)

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

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

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

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

Download your 15 free, customizable infographic templates.

5 SlideShare Presentation Templates (Download Here)

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

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

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

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

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

3 PowerPoint Presentation Templates (Download Here)

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

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

Download your 3 PowerPoint templates here.

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

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

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

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

Download your 50 customizable calls-to-action.

18 Ebook Templates (Download Here and Here)

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

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

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

Download your ebook templates: 5 here | 13 here

195+ Design Templates for Canva (Download Here)

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

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

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

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

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

We have four collections of stock photos available to download:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can download your copy here >> 

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Work Faster in Excel: 6 Helpful Tips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=SUM(Table2[Castles owned])

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

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

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

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

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

2) Use the CONVERT formula to make speedy calculations.

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

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

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

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

Distance

Temperature

Time

(Click here for a complete list of text values)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=DATEDIF(D5,D18,”D”)

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

=DATEDIF(D5,D18,”Y”)

4) Analyze numerical comparisons using Data Bars.

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

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

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

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

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

5) Identify trends over time using Sparklines.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6) Arrange data using multiple Custom Sort levels.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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