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The odds are you or someone you know has searched for a home recently. Something magical happens when you find the right one. Your heart starts racing, your palms get clammy. Are you about to buy a house?

You may not realize it from the consumer side of this deal, but there is an enormous amount of heavy-lifting that comes from the homebuilder side, especially with the availability of social media at consumers’ fingertips.

Imagine the complexity behind drawing in people from all walks of life who are about to make one of the largest purchase decisions of their lives. Maybe they’re newlyweds, looking for their first home purchase ever. Maybe they found out their family is growing and they need a bigger home, but they’re conscious of the energy efficiency and want to be near particular landmarks. Maybe they’re retiring and are looking to downsize or buy a vacation home in another state. 

How can homebuilders speak to all of these people at once effectively? Social media done right. 

Houzz is an increasingly effective tool to speak to home buyers 

There are several aspects of Houzz that allow a homebuilder to communicate directly with interested home buyers. For example, homebuilders can post pictures and statistics of projects they are working on or have completed. This gives the home buyer a taste for what a project could look like when the idea of building a new home seems very daunting.

Homebuilders can also use what Houzz refers to as Ideabooks, allowing them to collaborate with home buyers online. They can post images of their own designs, décor, or floor plans allowing a potential client to transition from collecting their own ideas to actually seeing what options could be viable.

Houzz also allows  the home builder to accumulate comments and reviews, encouraging past customers to engage with potential clients who are in the process of looking. According to a Zendesk survey, 90% of customers say buying decisions are influenced by online reviews, making this aspect of Houzz undeniably critical.

Pinterest can be used in innovative ways to aid homebuilders in selling

At conception, Pinterest seemed to be the land of fitspiration, recipes, crafting, DIY ideas, and other visually motivating ideas. Now, Pinterest is accessible to anyone, including people like me who end up with dyed skin or glitter stained clothes just by looking at a crafty project. For homebuilders, Pinterest is an avenue to reach those who are searching for specific keywords related to their industry and then engaging this audience with related boards.

Pinterest allows for users to invite other users to share a board and “pin” ideas to it together. While similar to the Houzz Ideabook function, Pinterest takes this interaction to the next level by allowing “pinners” to add their own information, including images and blogs from their website.

Pinterest also creates the opportunity to build boards and pin trending topics, catching any viewers who may be interested in related topics but are currently searching trends. For example, plenty of home-makers could be interested in remodeling their kitchens, but as the holidays are approaching they are more interested in searching for “creative table settings for Christmas.” By building a board around “decorating for the holidays,” a homebuilder could catch the eye of anyone who is looking for ideas on how to decorate their own homes for the holidays.

While building SEO through social media and gaining credibility for resonant and relevant posts a homebuilder can greatly increase traffic and potentially sales on their website. In a world where 88% of pinners purchase something they have pinned and 49% purchase 5 or more products they pinned, homebuilders must join the movement.

Instagram offers more than just pretty pictures for homebuilders and home buyers

Instagram has a lot more to offer than initially meets the eye. Its initial use was as a platform for pushing pictures with relevant and trending hashtags to sort conversations. Those discovering these pictures through hashtags can then like the pictures and, in a sense, organize the feed they subscribe to with certain images that they want to see.

Now, Instagram is an opportunity for homebuilders to follow up on those who are interested in their posts and then to follow them and see what else they are interested in. Using information like this and collecting personas can be very helpful data in the long run. Discovering, from lead to customer, what a typical BUYER persona is on social media can greatly alter the strategy a homebuilder can use to target the right audience.

Instagram also offers the unique opportunity to post short video clips. For example, new home builders can use this option to give a tour of a new build or a walk through a construction zone as led by the president of the company herself. These kinds of insider looks help build integrity and emotional connections with those who are serious about their home buying search and are evaluating their options of brands. It is a well-known fact that “[people] are not thinking machines…[but] are feeling machines that think” – so cater to the emotional side of a big decision.

Are you more likely to buy a new home from a builder who has a 10 second video of a woman buying a new house, getting help from the builders to make it just right, and then ending with a soldier in uniform walking up to the door finally seeing his new home or from a brand that isn’t even on Instagram?

These three social media channels have changed the strategy of selling over the past couple of years. Cold calls won’t cut it when your competitor is researching buyer personas based on trends on their own social media sites and is interacting directly with interested consumers from the comfort of their own homes and smartphones.

It’s time to change your strategy and find what works for you. The biggest risk you can take in 2016 is to keep doing what you were doing in 2015.

For email marketers, the inbox is a battlefield.

Chances are, the folks on your email lists are receiving promotional emails not just from you, but from a lot of different businesses. Whether they open your emails depends on a lot of things, including your subject line, how well they liked your past emails, and so on.

But with 91% of consumers checking email every day, it’s still one of the best places to reach your target audience. To inspire them to open and click through your emails, you’ll need to make sure you’re consistently sending great marketing emails that warrant your recipients’ time and attention.

So, what does a great marketing email include? Check out the infographic below from QuickSprout to learn the anatomy of an optimal marketing email, including how to optimize your subject lines, body content, and calls-to-action.

Download our free guide here to learn how to create awesome email newsletters of your own. 

When you open Photoshop for the first time, it’s easy to click around in confusion for a minute and then reach for your freelancer’s phone number instead. Trust us, you’re not alone in this. 

It’s an incredibly powerful design software with a lot going on, including a wealth of tools that can seem overwhelming at times. But Photoshop isn’t just for the professionals. 

With a little help, you can easily teach yourself how to use it to create beautiful, compelling graphics. All it takes is an introduction to core elements — in plain English. 

To get you started, we’ve picked 12 of the most useful tools in Photoshop and explained what they do, where to find them, how to use them, and a few tips and tricks for getting the most out of them. We’ve also included some great resources in there in case you’d like to learn about a tool in more depth.

Click here to download our free guide for more do-it-yourself design tips.

Table of Contents

Click on a section name to scroll automatically to that section.

How to Use Adobe Photoshop: A Photoshop Tutorial for Beginners

1) The Layer Tool

What It Does: A layer can be used for an image, text, brush strokes, background colors, patterns, and filters.

I like to think of layers as sheets of glass stacked on top of one another that you’ll use to create a final product. Each sheet can be modified individually without affecting the project as a whole, which can save you tons of time when making edits to individual elements of your graphic.

Image Credit: StackExchange

Layers are by far the most important element of Photoshop — and, in my opinion, they’re one of the reasons many people throw their arms up in frustration. But once you understand how they work, I promise they’ll make your life much easier.

Where It’s Located: It has its own module on the bottom right-hand corner of your Photoshop screen, by default. You can also access it by clicking “Layer” in the top menu bar.

Pro Tip: Always name your layers. Keeping them organized will help keep you sane, especially if you find yourself working on a project with a large number of layers. 

To add or delete a layer:

From the top menu bar, choose Layer > New > Layer…

To select a layer:

The selected layer is highlighted in blue. To edit a specific part of your image, you’ll need to select that specific layer.

You’ll also notice there’s an “eye” symbol next to each layer: Click that symbol to turn the eye on and off, thereby toggling the visibility of that layer as you work.

To duplicate a layer:

First, select a layer or group in the Layers panel. Next, either drag the layer or group to the Create a New Layer button, or right-click the layer to choose “Duplicate Layer” or “Duplicate Group.” Enter a name for the layer or group, and click OK.

 

Millennials are discount-hungry. Blame it on the economy in which they launched their careers or attribute it to their digitally savvy shopping habits. Either way, a new report from Mindshare North America shows that this generation will do just about anything to buy goods at the lowest possible cost. Just look at these stats for proof:

• 47% of millennials will purposely leave items in their shopping cart in hopes that the retailer will reach out with a promotion. 
• 39% of millennials clear their online search history to get better prices from online sellers. 
• 26% of millennials have purposely entered a fake birth date to receive a discount. 
• 70% of millennials search for promo codes online before purchasing. 

Another study conducted jointly by Forbes and Elite Daily mimicked similar findings, and found that 57% of millennials report they will not change their spending habits.

Millennials Move Towards Mobile

But there’s more: Millennials are also depending on their mobile devices as necessary comparison tools when shopping both in-store and online. Continuous access to the internet allows 59% of shoppers to simultaneously search competitor’s product listings or even access barcode scanner apps to find the same product for the cheapest possible price online. And, with 66% of millennials using new mobile payment services, the process of mobile purchasing isn’t only seamless — it’s becoming commonplace.

This shift in consumer shopping habits (increasingly ecommerce, and even within that segment, increasingly mobile), has forced many retailers to pivot their pricing and marketing strategies. And top of the list for most online stores is free shipping –– and the ability to offer it, or not.

The Free Shipping Question

For many retailers, free shipping simply cuts too far into their margins, eliminating any possibility of profitability. Even Amazon is among those –– the company reported net shipping costs were more than $1 billion per quarter in 2014. Amazon made a strategic decision to subsidize shipping heavily as part of their growth strategy.

And in the ecommerce industry, when one behemoth brand does something the consumers like, most others must follow suit. Indeed, consumer perception of shipping costs now weighs heavily on their purchasing decision. Pitney Bowes published their 2015 Holiday Shipping Survey and it makes for an interesting read. Here are some of the more relevant and poignant points:

• 93% of consumers say shipping options are an important factor in their online shopping experience (up a massive 24% from 2014)
• 88% said that free shipping with 5-7 day delivery time is more attractive than paying a fee for 1-2 day faster delivery
• 3 in 5 consumers have increased their total spend in the past to qualify for free shipping
• 68% have used a free shipping coupon code

In all, free shipping has essentially become a marketing tactic to help you close sales. Below are tips from shipping expert Karen Baker on how you can use free shipping as a marketing channel, while still maintaining your margins.

1) Consider Your Industry

As a merchant, you need to think about your market sector, your competition and the space in which you play. You might not need free shipping. This is especially true in the B2B space, where what might be more important is accurate dimensional based pricing.

If you have loyal customers, they will appreciate you passing on your negotiated rates to them and giving them the choice over urgency of delivery. If you are competing based on product price, then it may be that you have no ability to absorb free shipping costs. It’s all about information accuracy, and using multiple carriers where required so you can offer the best and cheapest service.

Be transparent, be honest. Customers appreciate it.

2) Offer Free Shipping to Limited Regions

As a starter, in the U.S. you should limit free shipping to the U.S. 48 contiguous states. Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico –– sorry, you are out of luck. People in those places expect to pay extra for shipping.

APOs and PO Boxes are other areas for which you can switch off free shipping. If you take a look at Jet.com, they follow this policy. Copy it.

3) Surcharge Your Expedited Rates

We know how this works. We go to a store advertising free shipping. We shop. Then, we get to checkout and find out it’s going to take 10 days to deliver. Amazon is the master of this. They will purposely hold the shipment back for a few days if its free.

The reasoning is that, by this point, we are committed to the sale. We’ll then think, “Oh, another $10 bucks I could get this faster.” This is where your opportunity lies. Surcharge the expedited. There will be a segment of customers (especially as the holidays get closer) that will pay extra to get it faster. This surcharge can offset the free shipping you are offering other customers.

4) Take a Monthly View

Some merchants want to look at every single order and ensure they make a profit. In some cases, that’s necessary. In most cases, taking a monthly view is a better option.

You win some, you lose some. It’s an iterative process. You should understand your shipping rules and be able to correlate what’s happening with your charges against your own policy. At the end of the month –– are you happy with the results?

5) Show Delivery Time

People are becoming more and more impatient. And, more and more used to having readily available information. Having an estimated number of delivery days, or an expected delivery date, is becoming more important.

Once you have that, you can then have more leverage around upselling faster services. Remember: people are much less tolerant now, and they have greater choice to shop elsewhere.

6) Offer Free Shipping After Conditions Met

Try pushing up your minimum order price to qualify for free shipping. Does it affect sales? Maybe. Run an A/B test to see what the impact is.

You can advertise free shipping on your site, but qualify that it only applies on your small goods, a certain category or maybe you want to just offer it on your big ticket items. Free shipping on your site doesn’t have to be universal.

7) Use Promotions

We all love a promotion. Does it need to be free shipping? Maybe you publish list rates for UPS, but then offer 20% shipping discount to your returning customers via an email campaign. Or, just charge shipping on the highest value goods. For example, if I buy a kayak, I might pay shipping for that, but any other goods in the store ship for free. There are many, many combinations you can do here which give customer reward and encourage a higher dollar price.

When you read an article on the New York Times, the experience doesn’t stop at the end of the article. Keep scrolling down, and you’ll find some of the most thoughtful comments that you’ll ever see on a news site.

Since the publisher’s earliest days online, The New York Times has been well-known for its robust online community. It’s one of the few news sources known for sparking rich conversations—and where audiences care enough to chime in and share their thoughts.

In terms of building a digital community, few publishers have ventured into territory that The New York Times has. Many media companies will install a commenting plug-in–and leave their community strategy at that.

But an online community is more than just a ‘feature.’ As The New York Times example reveals, an on-site community can quickly become a core part of your brand’s experience. It’s also something that you can monetize, grow, and utilize to build your long-term revenue strategy.

Why?

The heart of community is engagement, and media companies that are able to inspire just that will have a competitive edge in tomorrow’s landscape. Here’s what we can learn from the New York Times—one of the earliest pioneers in digital community-building. 

Loyalty Pays Off in the Long Run 

A competitive advantage that the Times has is that its readers are loyal. While many media companies focus on attracting as many unique visitors as possible, The New York Times has created an on-site experience that emphasizes engagement. In addition to high-quality content, the site’s community and commenting features are a core part of this experience.

What’s interesting to note is that, as of 2015, the Times has surpassed 1M paid digital subscribers, and 12% of its readers deliver 90% of its digital revenue. This number represents a stark contrast to the media industry at large: data from HubSpot’s recent Benchmarks report points out that only 10.9% of surveyed media companies cite subscriptions as their greatest source of revenue.

You can download the full report here >>

With this foundation, growth remains an important priority for the Times. Rather than doubling down on attracting more eyeballs, the company is focused on on bringing new audiences into the community. Loyalty has and will continue to play an important role in the media leader’s monetization strategy.

User Experiences Need Upfront Planning

The importance of mobile in digital publishing is self-evident. But few companies have a strategy in place to deliver a comprehensive, cohesive mobile-experience. This article in AdAge has a good discussion on the topic and challenge and cites the Times as an example case study.

According to ComScore, mobile constituted 60% of time spent on digital, representing a 53% increase in 2013. At the Times, for instance, more than half of its digital audience comes from mobile, but only 10% of its digital ad revenue comes from these devices.

Like many companies in the media industry, the Times still has a long way to go. But the company has realized that a strong community-experience will be important to the solution. Just take a look at the company’s ‘new subscribers’ landing page as inspiration: the #1 value proposition that the media leader emphasizes is its cross-platform capabilities. Readers can create their own personalized journalism from any device. Even more importantly, readers can chime into and actively steer conversations on the site. 

The Times has taken careful time to research the needs of its audience base and map out a user experience that meets those needs, exactly. Its community plays a central role in that vision.

Experimentation Is Crucial

What does the strong community features of the New York Times have to do with your own monetization and growth strategy?

This question is tough to answer. According to HubSpot’s recent Digital Publishing Benchmarks report, media companies are dealing with extreme option overload, with media companies making a range of investments in different marketing practices.

The key takeaway from this trend is that publishers are still deciding where to dedicate their efforts. Publishers who have stuck to the status quo are now re-evaluating their monetization streams and advertiser value.

Now is a better time than ever to experiment. With the publishing industry in flux, the smartest minds in the space are carving out new revenue opportunities. The most important trend that’s surfacing? Everyone is on equal footing to find their own, potentially game changing, opportunities. 

In Keeping With The Times…

When building your own digital communities, don’t be afraid to think out of the box and test opportunities that are unique to your unique audience and media ecosystem. A crucial first step is to understand what your audiences care about and find example communities that they’re engaging in. Are they B2B readers who are spending time on Inbound.org, as an example? What features are they using, and what features are they passing over? This research will be crucial to the success from your future campaigns.

Take a lesson from the New York Times, and don’t be afraid to build a completely new solution from the ground up. Be patient, and commit to change for the long-haul.

Kai Kight doesn’t have a typical career path.

He began learning violin at just three years old. Because of his incredible talent and dedication, he went on to perform all over the world in places like the White House and the Great Wall of China.

Then, he decided to pivot.

He earned an engineering degree from Stanford University’s d.school, where he was entrenched in the entrepreneurship community of Silicon Valley.

Today, he’s used these diverse experiences to build a new career: teaching people at top companies like Disney and Coca-Cola how to become better leaders and managers.

On this episode of The Growth Show, we sit down with Kai to learn his secrets to becoming an insanely honest leader, building (and sticking to) healthy habits, and growing a career around your passions.

Click the play button below to listen to this episode in your browser, or subscribe on iTunes to download episodes directly to your phone:

Check out the latest recaps of The Growth Show episodes by clicking here.