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We can all agree there’s more than one way of doing something.

For example, some people default to the “loop, swoop, and pull” method when they tie their shoes, while others swear by the “bunny ears” technique. Either way you swing it, your shoes get tied, right?

The trouble is, in some areas of life, different approaches don’t always return the same results.

When it comes to presentation design, for instance, there’s no shortage of avenues you can take. And while all that choice — colors, formats, visuals, fonts — can feel liberating, it’s important that you’re careful in your selection as not all design combinations add up to success.

We’re not saying there’s one right way to design your next PowerPoint presentation, but we are saying that some designs make more sense than others. Luckily, new versions of PowerPoint actually suggest ideas for you based on the content you’re presenting. In this blog post, you’ll learn how to create an awesome PowerPoint deck and then see 21 real presentations that nail it in exactly their own way.

PowerPoint Design Ideas

It’s impossible for us to tell you which design ideas you should go after in your next PowerPoint, because, well, we don’t know what the goal of your presentation is. But, as it turns out, PowerPoint can make these suggestions.

In PowerPoint 2016 and later, PowerPoint is filled with interesting boilerplate designs you can start with. To find these suggestions, open PowerPoint and click the “Design” tab in your top navigation bar. Then, on the far right side, you’ll see the following options:

Click the “Design Ideas” option under this Design tab, as shown in the screenshot above. This icon will reveal a vertical list of interesting slide layouts based on what your slides already have on them.

Don’t have any content on your slides yet? You can easily shuffle this vertical list of design ideas by clicking various slides themes inside the color carousel to the far left of the Design Ideas icon, as shown below:

As you browse and select from the themes shown above, your Design Ideas pane to the right will interpret them and come up with layouts such as:

Paint Splash

Covering a more creative subject for a younger or more energetic audience? On behalf of PowerPoint, might we suggest the cover slide design above?

Artistic Curves

This design doesn’t have the intensity of the first slide on this list, but it maintains a sense of informality that all PowerPoint presentations benefit from.

Wallpaper

There’s an old-fashioned feel to the design above that sets a fun but relaxing tone for its audience.

Warm Tiles

This design idea focuses on warm colors, helping to emphasize the black title tile on top of it.

Textured Backdrop

We’re particularly fond of this PowerPoint design style. By using real textures — like wood, as shown above — you add depth to your slides. This can help your content capture and hold your audience’s attention more easily.

To see some examples of the best PowerPoint presentation designs, check out the following decks.

21 Good Examples of PowerPoint Presentation Design

1. “The Search for Meaning in B2B Marketing,” Velocity Partners

We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: We love this presentation from Velocity Partner’s Co-Founder Doug Kessler. Not only is the content remarkable, but the design is also quite clever. While each slide employs the same background visual, the copy in the notebook unfolds brilliantly through a series of colorful doodles and bold text. This gives the presentation a personal feel, which aligns with the self-reflective nature of the concept.

2. “You Don’t Suck at PowerPoint,” Jesse Desjardins

If the contrast used throughout this PowerPoint presentation design were a human, we’d marry it. This skillful presentation from Jesse Desjardins employs the perfect color palette: balancing black and white photos with pops of florescent pink, yellow, and blue. The cheeky vintage photos work to reinforce the copy on each slide, making the presentation both interesting and visually appealing.

3. “Build a Better Entrepreneur Pitch Deck,” Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation

Balancing visual backgrounds with text isn’t easy. More often than not, the text is formatted in a way that winds up getting lost in the image. This presentation from the Center for Entrepreneurial Information combated this issue by combining a blurring effect with a shaded filter to create contrast between the bulleted text and the busy background. Well done.

4. “40 Tools in 20 Minutes: Hacking your Marketing Career,” Eric Leist

When you’re tasked with presenting a lot of information in a little bit of time, things can get sort of messy. To simplify this type of presentation, it’s a good idea to use a visual table of contents like the one shown above. This color-coded index clearly signifies the start and finish of each section to make it easier for the viewer to follow along and keep track of the information.

5. “How to Craft Your Company’s Storytelling Voice,” MarketingProfs

Do you love these hand drawn illustrations … or do you love these hand drawn illustrations? I mean, c’mon, this is amazing. Certainly it would have been easier to generate these designs online, but this approach highlights MarketingProf’s commitment to investing the time and thought it takes to create an out-of-the-box piece of content. And as a result, this presentation stands out in the best way possible.

6. “2015 Travel Trends,” Creative Lodging Solutions

If you’re going to go the minimalistic route, take note of this PowerPoint presentation example from Creative Lodging Solutions. This clean design adheres to a simple, consistent color palette with clean graphics peppered throughout to make the slides more visually interesting. Overall there are no frills or unnecessary additions, which allows the informative content to take priority.

7. “Healthcare Napkins,” Dan Roam

This presentation dates back to 2009, but the design is still as good as ever. The colorful, quirky doodles help tell the story while also serving as an interesting way to illustrate data (see slides 20 and 21). For visual learners, this approach is much more inviting than a series of slides riddled with text-heavy bullet points.

8. “Eco-nomics: The Hidden Costs of Consumption,” Josh Beatty

This presentation employs both powerful images and playful graphics to illustrate the point. While many of the slides contain numbers, they are broken up in a way that makes them easily digestible. Not to mention all of the text is crisp, clean, and concise.

9. “10 Powerful Body Language Tips for Your Next Presentation,” SOAP

This simplistic presentation example employs several different fonts, but instead of coming off as disconnected, the varied fonts worth with one another to create contrast and call out specific concepts. Also, the big, bold numbers help set the reader’s expectations, as they clearly signify how far along the viewer is in the list of tips.

10. “Pixar’s 22 Rules to Phenomenal Storytelling,” Gavin McMahon

This presentation by Gavin McMahon features color in all the right places. While each of the background images boasts a bright, spotlight-like design, all of the characters are intentionally blacked out. This helps keep the focus on the tips, while still incorporating a visual element. Not to mention, it’s still easy for the viewer to identify each character without the details. (I found you on slide eight, Nemo.)

11. “Digital, Social & Mobile in 2015,” We Are Social

Here’s another great example of data visualization in the wild. Rather than displaying numbers and statistics straight up, this presentation calls upon interesting, colorful graphs and charts to present the information in a way that just makes sense.

12. “6 Snapchat Hacks Too Easy to Ignore,” Gary Vaynerchuk

This wouldn’t be a true Gary Vaynerchuk presentation if it wasn’t a little loud, am i right? Aside from the fact that we love the eye-catching, bright yellow background (which aligns with the SnapChat theme), Vaynerchuk does a great job of incorporating screenshots on each slide to create a visual tutorial that coincides with the tips.

13. “20 Tweetable Quotes to Inspire Marketing & Design Creative Genius,” IMPACT Branding & Design

We’ve all seen our fair share of quote-chronicling presentations … but that isn’t to say they were all done well. Often times the background images are poor quality, the text is too small, or there isn’t enough contrast. Well, this PowerPoint presentation from IMPACT Branding & Design suffers from none of said challenges. The colorful filters over each background image create just enough contrast for the quotes to stand out.

14. “The Top 20 Facts About High Fructose Corn Syrup,” Corn Refiners Association

This is another great example of minimalistic design done right. There’s nothing overly complicated about this presentation’s design, which is why it works. The text is large and legible, the images are high quality and placed in a way that’s not obtrusive, and the facts are called out from the rest of the text.

15. “Creating Powerful Customer Experiences,” Digital Surgeons

This presentation offers up a lot of information in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming. Different colors are used to differentiate one set of numbers from another (see slide eight), and colorful graphics are used to make the information seem less buttoned-up.

16. “All About Beer,” Ethos3

Not going to lie, it was the title that convinced me to click through to this presentation … but the awesome design kept me there once I arrived. This simple design adheres to a consistent color pattern and leverages bullet points and varied fonts to break up the text nicely.

17. “Digital Transformation in 50 Soundbites,” Julie Dodd

This design highlights a great alternative to the “text-over-image” display we’ve grown used to seeing. By leveraging a split screen approach to each slide, Julie Dodd was able to serve up a clean, legible quote without sacrificing the power of a strong visual.

18. “SMOKE: The Convenient Truth,” Empowered Presentations!

All of the elements are working together here to create a compelling, unified presentation. From the font choice to the color palette to the dark visual background images, this design aligns perfectly with the context of the copy.

19. “Fix Your Really Bad PowerPoint,” Slide Comet

When you’re creating a PowerPoint about how everyone’s PowerPoints stink, yours had better be terrific. The one above, based on the ebook by Seth Godin, keeps it simple without boring its audience. Its clever combinations of fonts, together with consistent color across each slide, ensure you’re neither overwhelmed nor unengaged.

20. “How Google Works,” Eric Schmidt

Simple, clever doodles tell the story of Google in a fun and creative way. This presentation reads almost like a storybook, making it easy to move from one slide to the next. This uncluttered approach provides viewers with an easy-to-understand explanation of a complicated topic.

21. “What Really Differentiates the Best Content Marketers From The Rest,” Ross Simmonds

Let’s be honest: These graphics are hard not to love. Rather than employing the same old stock photos we’ve seen time and time again, this unique design serves as a refreshing way to present information that’s both valuable and fun. We especially appreciate the author’s cartoonified self-portrait that closes out the presentation. Well played, Ross Simmonds.

Want more? Read How to Create Infographics in Under an Hour [15 Free Infographic Templates].

We all know about the infamous rivalry between Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks. At the end of the day, they both sell coffee — but they’ve each cultivated strong, unique brands, and have attracted very different audiences as a result.

You can often overhear heated arguments regarding the topic, with people vehemently claiming one coffee chain to be better than the other.

But let’s say you didn’t know about the rivalry, and you’d never heard of either Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts before.

Instead, you stumble across these two very different company profile statements:

Image courtesy of Dunkin’ Donuts

Image courtesy of Starbucks

From their opening paragraphs alone, I’m willing to bet you’re persuaded to check out one brand in more detail over the other. It isn’t just the language itself that gives you a sense of their business — it’s the design, the font, and the color.

Ultimately, your company profile matters. It can intrigue a new visitor to check out your products or services in more detail, and nudge potential customers into choosing your business over competitors.

Here, we’ll explore seven of the most creative company profile examples, to ensure you’re able to create a company profile in 2019 that will attract and engage the right audience. Once you’re done perusing these impressive examples, take a look at our template to get started designing your own.

Company Profile Examples

1. Starbucks company profile

Starbucks’ company profile has it all — the company’s mission, background story, products, store atmosphere, and even folklore regarding the name. Best of all, they somehow manage to pull off sounding both genuine and grandiose. I don’t know many other coffee stores that could claim, “our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit”. Starbucks’ company profile is a fantastic example of a store with a common household product — coffee — managing to stand out from the competition through their mission and values.

2. Nordstrom company profile

If your company has an interesting and lengthy history, you might consider creating a visual timeline, like Nordstrom did on their company profile. The profile reads like a creative story from the very first line — “In 1887, John W. Nordstrom, at 16 years old, left Sweden for the United States. He arrived in New York with $5 in his pocket, unable to speak a word of English.” With a good balance of image and text, the timeline serves as a reminder of Nordstrom’s stability and growth.

3. Diehl Group Architects company profile

For both cleanliness and ease-of-use, take a look at Diehl Group Architects’ company profile. The web page uses clickable boxes to separate topics, allowing users to choose which subject they’d like to learn more about. Additionally, the entire design — including the page’s background, which displays a floor-plan — mirrors the company’s purpose.

4. Bloomberg company profile

If both video and text are available on the same page, 72% of people would rather use video to learn about a product or service. You might consider using a compelling video to convey your company’s story, like Bloomberg does in their company profile.

Additionally, Bloomberg’s profile proves the company knows its audience — they offer a few quick statistics, and then link to other areas of the site, such as Careers and Tech. While another business might do well offering a creative, long-form story, Bloomberg’s typical demographic is likely more analytical.

5. Nike company profile

You can get a sense for Nike’s two primary purposes almost instantly — fitness, and people. When you first open their company profile you’re greeted with videos of people of different ages, gender, and nationalities playing sports.

Additionally, their initial introduction is this: “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world”. Below, beside the asteric, it says, “If you have a body, you are an athlete”. As you scroll, you’ll see information on their internal diversity and inclusion initiative, their global community impact, and their sustainable business program, with very little mention of their products.

Nike’s company profile portrays a larger, grander vision, compelling an audience to believe in their brand even before they purchase a product.

6. Seattle Cider company profile

Seattle Cider Company’s profile is fun, and engages the user through compelling graphics that demonstrate the company’s cider process. The page flows seamlessly, and provides critical information regarding the product before displaying the company’s mission and values. This profile is a good example of a company that understands its users’ concerns (in this case, quality ingredients), and addresses those issues while still displaying personality and flair.

7. Delta company profile

Delta’s page is well-organized by topic, and showcases the company’s values, including efforts to engage with the community and promote sustainability. They’ve included brief meta-descriptions below each category. The design allows for users to click-through if they want to learn more. Overall, Delta’s company profile is simple and uncluttered, but includes all the necessary information to demonstrate why Delta is unique.

Company Profile Template

• Company name
• Established date
• Physical address per location
• Contact information

About Us / Our Story / Our Beginning

[Here, you’ll want to include a brief introduction to your company, including where, when, and by whom the company was founded, the company’s mission statement, and/or the company’s vision and purpose. In this section, you don’t necessarily want to include products or services — instead, focus on your bigger meaning, and how you stand out from competitors. Tell your story in a compelling way — for instance, HubSpot starts their About Us section with, “More than ten years ago, we had a vision — an inbound world”. HubSpot doesn’t mention their products until further down the page.]

Our Mission / Values

[Here, you’ll want to say what your company stands for on a larger scale. What is your ultimate goal, and what do you hope your products or services will give people? Take a look at 17 Truly Inspiring Company Vision and Mission Statement Examples for ideas.]

Our Team

[Provide a picture or brief paragraph describing your team — you might focus on leadership, or provide an explanation of your company’s culture. Ultimately, this section should help users understand how your employees can uniquely serve them.]

Our Product / Services

[Describe a high-level overview of what your product is, and how you hope it will positively impact the user’s life. You can link to a Product page if necessary, so keep this section relatively general.]

Two weeks ago, people were tweeting pictures of razors submerged at the bottom of their toilet bowls. No, this wasn’t a wacky teen challenge to make your dad late for work. It was a protest against Gillette’s latest advertisement — one that confronts toxic masculinity.

Brands that craft controversial advertisements like Gillette’s, however, expect this type of response, at least from some people. Taking any kind of stance on sensitive social issues tends to lead to disagreement. But advocating for the causes you truly believe in usually has more pros than cons.

“Even if publicizing your beliefs may ostracize some potential customers, it also builds deep loyalty for those who share your values — particularly values like celebrating equality and inclusion, which many people support, regardless of political affiliation,” Joe Lazauskas, the Head of Content Strategy at Contently, wrote in an article after the divisive 2016 presidential election. “The same goes for expressing concern and support for the diverse people who work for you. Loyalty isn’t just a marketing metric; it’s also critical for measuring the internal health of your company.”

Executed properly, controversial ads can be an unexpected, emotional delight that can not only deepen your connection with your core audience, but can also help you reach new audiences. For instance, after Gillette released their ad challenging toxic masculinity, Adweek discovered it actually resonated with women the most.

The Psychology Behind Controversial Advertising

People usually read and share opinionated content because it aligns with their own values. And by letting the world know about their beliefs, they can solidify an ideal image of themselves within their social circle and their own minds.

Opinionated content also has a knack for making people think and consider other points of view, which builds more loyal audiences because it can teach people something new and help shape their perspective on life.

But while controversial ads can generate more buzz than other types of ads, if executed poorly, they can be detrimental to your brand. For instance, consider SNL’s hilarious skit of ad executives pitching commercial ideas to the snack brand Cheetos.

Although SNL isn’t specifically giving controversial advertising a ribbing, they’re poking fun at the way brands exploit sensitive social issues to peddle their products instead of what they should be doing when covering these types of topics — encouraging productive conversations.

Creating a controversial ad with an ulterior motive is a one way ticket to receiving Kendall Jenner & Pepsi type of feedback (we’ll cover this later). In other words, it can spark harsh backlash and bad publicity instead of meaningful dialogue.

So how do you avoid this type of negative response if you want to create a controversial advertising campaign? Below, we’ll analyze three controversial advertising examples that work and two that don’t to help you support the causes you genuinely believe in and better connect with audiences.

Controversial Advertising Examples That Work

1. Anheuser-Busch | Born The Hard Way

The United States has conflicting opinions on whether to welcome immigrants with open arms or not, but Anheuser-Busch’s ad about their founder’s origin story makes people realize that something so fundamentally American, like Budweiser beer, can have immigrant roots.

Budweiser is commonly associated with themes of American patriotism, so taking a stance on immigration, which is a controversial issue in the United States, conflicted with some of the brand’s most loyal customers’ political beliefs. But taking this social stance also led to a meaningful dialogue about how immigrants have founded some of America’s most iconic brands.

By telling a gripping and emotional story about the founding of their company, Anheuser-Busch could take a stance on an important issue that’s essential to their brand and connect with the people who understand that the United States is country of immigrants, helping the ad garner more than 21.7 million views in only three days.

2. Nike | Dream Crazy

“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything” is an accurate life motto for Colin Kaepernick, a professional American football player. In the 2016 NFL season, he stoked controversy by kneeling during the National Anthem before the start of every game as a protest against racial inequality.

Unfortunately, all the controversy associated with him has basically barred him from the NFL — no team hasn’t signed him since his controversial 2016 season. Yet, admirably, he still advocates for the causes he supported during his protests.

Along with Kaepernick’s story, Nike’s “Dream Crazy” weaves in other narratives of athletes who followed ambitious dreams to eventual success. And Nike made it clear that they want to help Colin Kaepernick achieve his dream of a righteous world, no matter how crazy it seems right now.

“Dream Crazy”, while highly controversial, resonated with millions of people. Just days after they released the ad, Nike’s sales soared by 31%, despite videos of their gear engulfed in flames circulating throughout social media.

3. Heineken | Worlds Apart

In Heineken’s “Worlds Apart”, people were paired together and asked to build stools and a bar together. After they completed the activity and developed some rapport with each other, pre-recorded videos starting playing and revealed that their political views were actually the polar opposite of each others. They were then asked if they would discuss their differences over a beer. All of them said a resounding “yes”.

Making an ad where people with such differing political views actually engage in meaningful dialogue and don’t just belittle each other is a risky move. A lot of people have a fiery passion for their political beliefs and won’t associate with people who don’t agree with them. But that’s ultimately why Worlds Apart was met with rave reviews and called “The Antidote to Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner Ad” — it focuses on putting our differences aside to work for a greater cause together, not Heineken’s product.

Controversial Advertising Examples That Don’t Work

4. Pepsi | Live for Now

If you think long and hard about it, could a can of Pepsi really mend the complex rifts that divide the entire world right now? Nope. Not at all. Even worse, is Kendall Jenner really an integral part of any social justice movement, or was she just there because she’s a famous celebrity who can grab almost anyone’s attention? You probably know the answer to this question by now.

After receiving five times as many downvotes as upvotes on YouTube and a glut of bad publicity and negative reactions on social media, Pepsi removed the ad from their channel only a few hours after posting it.

If you want to avoid this type of response when creating controversial content, don’t emphasize your product more than the issue at hand. All advertisements are technically self-serving, but people can spot overly promotional fluff masquerading as social justice faster than they’ll click exit on a pop-up ad. So if you don’t truly feel convicted to support a specific social cause when creating controversial content, it’s best to not even put pen to paper.

5. Nationwide | Boy

It starts out as an adorable story about a boy who seems to lack self-confidence, but Nationwide’s “Boy” turns shockingly dark when it’s revealed that the main character can’t live a normal childhood because he’s actually dead.

Child accidents are a serious problem that should be addressed, but this ad was criticized for being too fear-mongering and manipulative — it literally uses the death of children to sell insurance. So even if your ad highlights a prevalent problem, make sure it doesn’t exploit a sensitive issue just to peddle more product. Otherwise, it might get crowned as the worst ad of the year.

Think about those brands you purchase from over and over, even when there are cheaper options out there. Why do you choose the ones you choose?

Do you usually fly on a particular airline? Do you buy your coffee from the same place every morning? Do you recommend a specific restaurant whenever out-of-towners ask for suggestions? Well, there’s a good reason for it.

The reason we stay loyal to brands is because of their values. The best brands strive to combine physical, emotional, and logical elements into one exceptional customer (and employee) experience that you value as much as they do. Nowhere are those values more visible than in the company’s mission statement.

When you successfully create a connection with your customers and employees, many of them might stay loyal to you for life. This helps you increase your overall profitability while building a solid foundation of brand promoters.

But achieving that connection is no easy task. The companies that succeed are ones that stay true to their core values over the years and create a company that employees and customers are proud to associate with.

That’s where company vision and mission statements come in.

Mission Statement vs. Vision Statement

Let’s start with a bit of a vocabulary lesson to differentiate between these two types of company statements.

Vision Statement

A vision statement describes where the company aspires to be upon achieving its mission. This statement reveals the “where” of a business — but not just where the company seeks to be. Rather, a vision statement describes where the company wants a community, or the world, to be as a result of the company’s services.

Below are some vision statements from well-known companies to give you a sense of how a vision represents a brand.

• Alzheimer’s Association: A world without Alzheimer’s disease.
• Teach for America: One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.
• Creative Commons: Realizing the full potential of the internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.
• Microsoft (at its founding): A computer on every desk and in every home.
• Australia Department of Health: Better health and wellbeing for all Australians, now and for future generations.

Mission Statement

If the above examples are vision statements, what’s a mission statement? A mission statement is, in some ways, an action-oriented vision statement, declaring the purpose an organization serves to its audience. That often includes a general description of the organization, its function, and its objectives. Ultimately, a mission statement is intended to clarify the “what,” the “who,” and the “why” of a company. It’s the roadmap for the company’s vision statement.

As a company grows, its objectives and goals may be reached, and in turn they’ll change. Therefore, mission and vision statements should be revised as needed to reflect the business’s new culture as previous goals are met.

Both mission and vision statements are often combined into one comprehensive “mission statement” to define the organization’s reason for existing and its outlook for internal and external audiences — like employees, partners, board members, consumers, and shareholders.

With that in mind, what does a good mission statement look like? Check out some of the following company mission statements for yourself — and get inspired to write one for your brand.

Best Vision and Mission Statement Examples From Real Companies

1. Life Is Good: To spread the power of optimism.

The Life is Good brand is about more than spreading optimism — although, with uplifting T-shirt slogans like “Seas The Day” and “Forecast: Mostly Sunny,” it’s hard not to crack a smile.

There are a ton of T-shirt companies in the world, but Life is Good’s mission sets itself apart with a mission statement goes beyond fun clothing: to spread the power of optimism. This mission is perhaps a little unexpected if you’re not familiar with the company’s public charity: How will a T-shirt company help spread optimism? Life is Good answers that question below the fold, where what the mission means is explained in more detail, with links to programs implemented to support it: its #GrowTheGood initiative and the Life is Good Kids Foundation page. We really like how lofty yet specific this mission statement is — it’s a hard-to-balance combination.

2. sweetgreen: To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food.

Notice that sweetgreen’s mission is positioned to align with your values — not just written as something the brand believes. We love the inclusive language used in its statement, letting us know that the company is all about connecting its growing network of farmers growing healthy, local ingredients with us — the customer — because we’re the ones who want more locally grown, healthy food options.

The mission to connect people is what makes this statement so strong. And that promise has gone beyond sweetgreen’s website and walls of its food shops: The team has made strides in the communities where it’s opened stores as well. Primarily, it provides education to young kids on healthy eating, fitness, sustainability, and where food comes from. The sweetlife music festival attracts 20,000 like-minded people every year who come together to listen to music, eat healthy food, and give back to a cause — the sweetgreen in schools charity partner, FoodCorps.

3. Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Patagonia’s mission statement combines both the values that bring them market success (building safe, high-quality products) and the values that contribute to a better world (philanthropic efforts to help the environment). For the people behind the brand, “a love of wild and beautiful places demands participation in the fight to save them.” In the name of this cause, the company donates time, services, and at least 1% of its sales to hundreds of grassroots environmental groups around the world.

If your company has a similar focus on growing your business and giving back, think about talking about both the benefit you bring to customers and the value you want to bring to a greater cause in your mission statement.

4. American Express: We work hard every day to make American Express the world’s most respected service brand.

Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.

— Simon Sinek (@simonsinek)
April 16, 2014

The tweet above is from Simon Sinek, and it’s one that we repeat here at HubSpot all the time. American Express sets itself apart from other credit card companies in its list of values, with an ode to great customer service, which is something it’s famous for.

We especially love the emphasis on teamwork and supporting employees, so that the people inside of the organization can be in the best position to support their customers.

5. Warby Parker: To offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price, while leading the way for socially conscious businesses.

Speaking of quirky, this “objective” statement from Warby Parker uses words that reflect a young and daring personality: “rebellious,” “revolutionary,” “socially-conscious.” In one sentence, the brand takes us back to the root of why it was founded while also revealing its vision for a better future.

The longer-form version of the mission reads: “We believe that buying glasses should be easy and fun. It should leave you happy and good-looking, with money in your pocket,” which further shows how Warby Parker doesn’t hold back on letting its unique personality shine through. Here, the missions statement’s success all comes down to spot-on word choice.

6. InvisionApp: Question Assumptions. Think Deeply. Iterate as a Lifestyle. Details, Details. Design is Everywhere. Integrity.

These days, it can seem like every B2B company page looks the same — but InvisionApp has one of the cooler company pages I’ve seen. Scroll down to “Our Core Values,” and hover your mouse over any of the icons, and you’ll find a short-but-sweet piece of the overall company mission under each icon. We love the way the statements are laid out under each icon. Each description is brief, authentic, and business babble-free — which makes the folks at InvisionApp seem like trustworthy, B.S.-free types.

7. Honest Tea: To create and promote great-tasting, healthy, organic beverages.

Honest Tea’s mission statement begins with a simple punch line connoting its tea is real, pure, and therefore not full of artificial chemicals. The brand is speaking to an audience that’s tired of finding ingredients in its tea that can’t be pronounced, and have been searching for a tea that’s exactly what it says it is.

Not only does Honest Tea have a punny name, but it also centers its mission around the clever company name. For some time, the company even published a Mission Report each year in an effort to be “transparent about our business practices and live up to our mission to seek to create and promote great-tasting, healthier, organic beverages.”

8. IKEA: To create a better everyday life for the many people.

The folks at IKEA dream big. The vision-based mission statement could have been one of beautiful, affordable furniture, but instead, it’s to make everyday life better for its customers. It’s a partnership: IKEA finds deals all over the world and buys in bulk, then we choose the furniture and pick it up at a self-service warehouse.

“Our business idea supports this vision … so [that] as many people as possible will be able to afford them,” the brand states.

Using words like “as many people as possible” makes a huge company like IKEA much more accessible and appealing to customers.

9. Nordstrom: “To give customers the most compelling shopping experience possible.

When it comes to customer commitment, not many companies are as hyper-focused as Nordstrom is. Although clothing selection, quality, and value all have a place in the company’s mission statement, it’s crystal clear that it’s all about the customer: “Nordstrom works relentlessly to give customers the most compelling shopping experience possible.”

If you’ve ever shopped at a Nordstrom, you’ll know the brand will uphold the high standard for customer service mentioned in its mission statement, as associates are always roaming the sales floors, asking customers whether they’ve been helped, and doing everything they can to make the shopping experience a memorable one.

10. Cradles to Crayons: Provides children from birth through age 12, living in homeless or low-income situations, with the essential items they need to thrive – at home, at school and at play.

Cradles to Crayons divided its mission and model into three sections that read like a game plan: The Need, The Mission, and The Model. The “rule of three” is a powerful rhetorical device called a tricolon that’s usually used in speechwriting to help make an idea more memorable. A tricolon is a series of three parallel elements of roughly the same length — think “I came; I saw; I conquered.”

11. Universal Health Services, Inc.: To provide superior quality healthcare services that: PATIENTS recommend to family and friends, PHYSICIANS prefer for their patients, PURCHASERS select for their clients, EMPLOYEES are proud of, and INVESTORS seek for long-term returns.

A company thrives when it pleases its customers, its employees, its partners, and its investors — and Universal Health Services endeavors to do just that, according to its mission statement. As a health care service, it specifically strives to please its patients, physicians, purchasers, employees, and investors. We love the emphasis on each facet of the organization, by capitalizing the font and making it red for easy skimming.

12. JetBlue: To inspire humanity – both in the air and on the ground.

JetBlue’s committed to its founding mission through lovable marketing, charitable partnerships, and influential programs — and we love the approachable language used to describe these endeavors. For example, the brand writes how it “set out in 2000 to bring humanity back to the skies.”

For those of us who want to learn more about any of its specific efforts, JetBlue’s provided details on the Soar With Reading program, its partnership with KaBOOM!, the JetBlue Foundation, environmental and social reporting, and so on. It breaks down all these initiatives really well with big headers, bullet points, pictures, and links to other webpages visitors can click to learn more. Finally, it ends with a call-to-action encouraging website visitors volunteer or donate their TrueBlue points.

13. Workday: To put people at the center of enterprise software.

Workday, a human resources (HR) task automation service, doesn’t use its mission statement to highlight the features of its product or how it intends to help HR professionals improve in such-and-such a way.

Instead, the business takes a stance on the state of enterprise software in general: There’s a lot of great tech out there. But at Workday, it revolves around the people. We love how confident yet kind this mission statement is. It observes the state of its industry — which Workday believes lacks a human touch — and builds company values around it.

14. Prezi: To reinvent how people share knowledge, tell stories, and inspire their audiences to act.

If you know Prezi, you know how engaging it can make your next business presentation look. According to its mission statement, the company’s clever slide animations and 3-dimensional experience aren’t just superficial product features. With every decision Prezi makes, it’s all about the story you tell and the audience that story affects.

15. Tesla: To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.

A car company’s punny use of the word “accelerate” is just one reason this mission statement sticks out. The main reason Tesla makes this list is because of how its mission statement describes the industry.

It may be a car company, but Tesla’s main interest isn’t just automobile sales — it’s promoting sustainable energy. And sustainable energy still has a “long road” ahead of it (pun intended) — hence the world’s “transition” into this market.

Ultimately, a mission statement that can admit to the industry’s immaturity is exactly what gets customers to root for it. And Tesla does that nicely.

16. Invisible Children: To end violence and exploitation facing our world’s most isolated and vulnerable communities.

Tenacity is hard to come by in the non-profit sector, and that’s what makes this mission statement so distinguished. Invisible Children is a non-profit that raises awareness around the violence affecting communities across Central Africa, and the company takes quite a confident tone in its mission.

The most valuable quality of this mission statement is that it has an end goal. Many companies’ visions and missions are intentionally left open-ended so that the business might always be needed by the community. Invisible Children, on the other hand, wants to “end” the violence facing African families. It’s an admirable mission that all businesses — not just non-profits — can learn from when trying to motivate their customers.

17. TED: Spread ideas.

We’ve all seen TED Talks online before. Well, the company happens to have one of the most succinct mission statements out there.

TED, which stands for “Technology Education and Design,” has a two-word mission statement that shines through in every Talk you’ve seen the company publish on the internet. That mission statement: “Spread ideas.” Sometimes, the best way to get an audience to remember you is to zoom out as far as your business’s vision can go. What do you really care about? TED has recorded some of the most famous presentations in the world, but in the grand scheme of things, all it wants is to spread ideas around to its viewers.

Here are 22 companies with really catchy slogans and brand taglines.

Imagine this — you’ve recently created a new website to host your content, and you’re excited to see it go live. You can’t wait to dive into SEO and begin ranking for keywords, and attract an audience to your brand.

But then a friend emails you and says, “Hey, is there a reason I see this when I click on your website?”

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Undoubtedly, a 403 Forbidden Message is cause for immediate concern — how many potential viewers are you losing, as they come across your website just to find this message?

Fortunately, there are a few quick-and-easy solutions to a 403 error. Here, we’ll explain the top three, so you can get your site up and running.

How to Fix 403 Errors

1. Permission or ownership errors.

Your site might be showing a 403 Forbidden error because of permission issues. If you’ve configured your web server, you’ll want to add the server to the www-data group, and set ownership of /var/www to the www-data user and www-data group.

You’ll then want to make sure your directories are set to 755, your files are set to 644, and your dynamic content is set to 700.

2. Make sure you have an index page.

Your website’s home page must be called index.html or index.php — if it’s not, you should rename the homepage to include one of those URL names.

Alternatively, you can upload an index page to your httpdocs directory, and then set up a redirect on the index page to your real homepage.

3. You haven’t uploaded your website content to the correct directory on your server.

Lastly, you might see a 403 forbidden message if you haven’t correctly uploaded your content to the directory on your server.

There are several different FTP clients you might’ve chosen to host your domain — let’s say you chose FileZilla, which is free and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

To publish your content online, you’ll need to put your files into the Public-htdocs directory (if you’re using FileZilla — these instructions will vary if you use a different FTP client). Once you’ve dragged-and-dropped your files into the directory, you should search your website’s URL to double-check they now appear online.

If you’re in your FTP server and don’t see the httpdocs directory, you can create a file within the directory with this title, which could also solve the issue.

Imagine someone searches for a topic and finds your website on page one of Google. When they click through to your website, though, their eyes land on a bland webpage that says “Service Unavailable”.

What do you think they’ll do when they find your website on Google again? Odds are, they’ll skip over it and click on the next link. If visitors are looking for answers and you’re promising them those answers, but you can’t deliver because something’s wrong with your website, they’ll lose trust in your brand.

Unfortunately, if your website experiences a 503 Service Unavailable Error, there’s no silver bullet solution. You have to investigate what’s actually causing the issue, because even though these types of errors indicate what happened to your website, they don’t tell you why it happened.

To help you fix your 503 Service Unavailable Error and avoid losing potential customers, check out our guide on what exactly the issue is and its most common solutions.

Image Credit: Stack Overflow

Fortunately, there are five common solutions for troubleshooting most 503 Service Unavailable Errors.

1. Restart your server.

Sometimes, there will be congestion in the server chain that hosts your website. One of the most effective ways to open up and refresh it is to simply restart your web server. If your website is hosted on multiple servers, make sure you restart all of them to get it running again.

2. Check to see if your web server is going through maintenance.

Most web servers shut down when they’re going through maintenance. If you can access your server’s administration settings, check the configuration options to see when automatic maintenance sessions are scheduled. If you’d rather have complete control over your server’s maintenance, you can disable these automatic updates in the configuration options, too.

3. Fix faulty firewall configurations.

Your firewall is your website’s gatekeeper, protecting your site from malicious visitors or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Sometimes, a faulty firewall configuration will cause your firewall to deem requests from a content delivery network as an attack on your server and reject them, resulting in a 503 Service Unavailable Error. Check your firewall configuration to pinpoint and fix the issue.

4. Sift through your server-side logs.

There are two types of server-side logs — applications logs and server logs. Application logs recount your website’s entire history, letting you see the web pages requested by visitors and the servers it connected to. Server logs provide information about the hardware running your server, revealing details about its health and status. Sift through both types of server-side logs to uncover any alarming information about your server or website.

5. Comb through your website’s code to find bugs.

If there’s a mistake in your website’s code, your web server might not be able to correctly answer requests from a content delivery network. Comb through your code to find bugs or copy your code into a development machine. It’ll perform a thorough debug process that will simulate the exact situation your 503 Service Unavailable Error occurred in and allow you to find the exact moment things went wrong.

Today, most marketing teams are structured to drive traffic toward websites, which then converts into leads for the sales team to close. Once this process starts to deliver results, marketers then seek to generate even more traffic, and hopefully even more success.

It might be an oversimplification, but that’s the standard marketing playbook. Few marketing teams focus on getting more from existing traffic. That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in.

In this blog post, we’ll teach you all about CRO — what it achieves, why you should do it, and how your team can execute it.

We’ll explain how you can drive more results from your existing traffic so your content can work smarter, and not harder, for you.

Many websites are designed to convert website visitors into customers. These conversions occur all over the website — on the homepage, pricing page, blog, and landing pages — and all of these can be optimized for a higher number of conversions. The process of optimizing those conversions is exactly what CRO entails.

Here’s a little more detail on how the above website elements can benefit from CRO.

Homepage

Homepages are prime candidates for CRO. In addition to making a first impression on visitors, the homepage is also an opportunity to retain those visitors and guide them further into your website. You can do this by emphasizing links to product information, offering a free signup button, or even incorporating a chatbot that solicits questions from visitors at any point during their browsing experience.

Pricing Page

A website’s pricing page can be the make-or-break point for many website visitors. CRO can help a pricing page convert visitors into customers by modifying the pricing intervals (e.g. price per year vs. price per month), describing the product features associated with each price, and including a phone number for visitors to call for a price quote.

Blog

The blog is a massive conversion opportunity for a business’s website. In addition to publishing thoughtful and helpful content about your industry, a blog can use CRO to convert readers into leads. This process often includes adding calls-to-action (CTA) throughout an article, inviting readers to learn more about a topic by submitting their email address in exchange for a ebook or industry report.

Landing Pages

Landing pages are inherently designed for people to take an action. An event landing page, for example, can be optimized with a video of last-year’s event to encourage visitors to register for this year’s. A landing page for a free resource can be optimized with preview content from that resource to encourage users to download it.

Conversion rate optimization is a huge, often untapped opportunity for marketing teams, and you might be surprised by the oversized impact you could deliver by fine-tuning your website for conversions.

When is conversation rate optimization (CRO) right for your business?

Once your sales and marketing engine consistently attracts website visitors — and at progressively high amounts — you should start thinking about CRO to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team.

Businesses typically have a finite demand for products and services, so it’s imperative that you make the most out of your existing website traffic. Tools like Google’s Global Market Finder can show you online search volume to give you an idea of your potential customer demand.

Once you determine the threshold of your customer demand, it’s time to nail down how to get more out of your existing website traffic. But setting a conversion goal isn’t as easy as, “this page converted 50 people this month, so we want 100 next month.”

To improve your business’s conversion potential, you need to look back at the term we defined at the beginning of this article: conversion rate optimization. You don’t just want 50 more conversions from a webpage — you want 50 more conversions for every X amount of people who visit it. This is your conversion rate — it’s the percentage of people who convert on your website based on how many people have touched it.

Below are three formulas to help you figure out how to tackle CRO at your company, and what goals to set:

1. New revenue goal ÷ average sales price = # of new customers
2. # of new customers ÷ lead-to-customer close rate % = lead goal
3. Leads generated ÷ website traffic X100 = % conversion rate

To help you understand the impact CRO could have on your business, here’s an example of the formulas in action:

If your website has 10,000 visitors per month that generate 100 leads — and subsequently, 10 customers each month — the website visitor to lead conversion rate would be 1%.

What if you wanted to generate 20 customers each month? You could try to get 20,000 visitors to your website and hope that the quality of traffic doesn’t decrease. Or, you could get more leads from your existing traffic by optimizing your conversion rate.

If you increased the conversion rate from 1% to 2%, you’d double your leads and your customers.

The table below shows the impact of increasing your website’s conversion rate:

The key point here? Trying to generate more website traffic isn’t necessarily the right approach. Think of it like a leaky bucket. Pouring more water into a leaky bucket won’t fix the root cause — you’ll just end up with a lot of waste. Conversion rate optimization is about getting more from what you get and making it work even better for you.

Ready to take the first steps toward CRO at your company? Check out the strategies below, and start testing.

CRO Marketing Strategies to Try

1. Create text-based CTAs within blog posts.

While it’s good practice to include a call-to-action (CTA) in your blog post, these sometimes fail to entice people to take the desired course of action. Banner blindness is a very real phenomenon as people become accustomed to ignoring banner-like information on websites. This lack of attention, coupled with the fact that website visitors don’t always read to the bottom of a blog post as they “snack” on content, means a new approach is required.

That’s where the text-based CTA comes in handy. Here at HubSpot, we ran a test with text-based CTAs — a standalone line of text linked to a landing page and styled as an H3 or an H4 — to see if they would convert more traffic into leads than regular CTAs at the bottom of a web page. Here’s one of ours below:

In HubSpot’s limited test of 10 blog posts, regular end-of-post banner CTAs contributed an average of just 6% of leads that the blog posts generated, whereas up to 93% of a post’s leads came from the anchor text CTA alone.

2. Include lead flows on your blog.

Another test you should consider is including lead flows on your blog. Essentially, these are high-converting pop-ups designed to attract attention and offer value. You can select from a slide-in box, drop-down banner or pop-up box, depending on your offer. We experimented with the slide-in box on the HubSpot blog, and it achieved a 192% higher clickthrough rate, and 27% more submissions than a regular CTA at the bottom of a blog post.

Head over to the HubSpot Academy to learn how to add lead flows to your blog posts. They can dramatically increase conversions on your website.

3. Run tests on your landing pages.

Landing pages are an important part of the modern marketer’s toolkit. A landing page is where a website visitor becomes a lead, or an existing lead engages more deeply with your brand. These pages play an important role on your website, so you should run A/B tests to get the most from them.

But what should you A/B test? We know that a high performing landing page can have a tremendous impact on a business, so at HubSpot, we make it easy to test variants and eke out more conversions. You can quickly and easily test website copy, content offer, image, form questions, and page design. Check out these tips for effective A/B testing and our A/B testing calculator.

4. Help leads to immediately become a marketing-qualified lead (MQL).

Sometimes, your website visitors want to get straight down to business and speak with a sales rep, rather than be nurtured by marketing offers. You can make it easy for them to take this action (and immediately become a marketing qualified lead) with a combination of thoughtful design and smart CTAs.

Compelling, clear copy has the ability to drive action and increase conversions for your business. But which actions do you want to encourage so visitors can become MQLs?

Here at HubSpot, we discovered that visitors who sign up for product demos convert at higher rates than visitors who sign up for free product trials, so we optimized our website and conversion paths for people booking a demo or a meeting with a sales rep. Admittedly, this depends on your product and sales process, but our best advice is to run a series of tests to find out what generates the most customers. Then, optimize for that process.

The key takeaway is to look for ways to remove friction from the sales process. That being said, if you make it easy for people to book a meeting with sales reps, we do recommend further qualification before the call takes place, so the sales rep can tailor the conversation.

5. Build workflows to enable your sales team.

There are a number of automated workflows you can create that your colleagues in sales will thank you for. For instance, did you know it’s possible to send emails on behalf of sales reps, so leads can book a meeting with them at the click of a button? Or that sales reps can receive an email notification when a lead takes a high intent action, such as viewing the pricing page on your website? And if you work in ecommerce, you can send an email to people who abandon their shopping cart.

All of this is possible with marketing automation. Want to learn more? Master marketing automation with our helpful guide.

6. Add messages to high-converting web pages.

With HubSpot’s messages tool, it’s now possible to chat with website visitors in real-time. To increase conversions, you should add messaging capabilities to high-performing web pages, such as pricing or product pages, so leads convert rather than leave.

You can also make chatting action-based. For example, if someone has spent more than a minute on the page, you may want to automatically offer to help and answer any questions they may have (HubSpot’s live chat tool, now available, makes this easy).

7. Optimize high-performing blog posts.

If you’ve been blogging for more than a year, it’s likely you’ll have some blog posts that outperform others.

The same is true at HubSpot — in fact, the majority of our monthly blog views and leads come from posts published more than a month ago. Blog posts are a big opportunity for conversion rate optimization.

To get started, identify the blog posts with high levels of web traffic, but low conversion rates. It may be that the content offer you’re promoting isn’t aligned with the blog post’s content, or your CTA could be unclear.

In one instance, we added a press release content offer to a blog post about press releases and saw conversions for that post increase by 240%.

Additionally, you should look at blog posts with high conversion rates. You want to drive more qualified website traffic to those posts, and you can do that by optimizing the content for search engines or updating the content to ensure that it’s fresh and relevant. If you’re a HubSpot customer, you can drive traffic to these pages from LinkedIn and Facebook using the ads add-on.

8. Leverage retargeting to re-engage website visitors.

It doesn’t matter what your key conversion metric is: The cold, hard truth is that most people on your website don’t take the action you want them to. By leveraging retargeting (sometimes known as remarketing), you can re-engage people who’ve left your website.

Retargeting works by tracking visitors to your website and serving them online ads as they visit other sites around the web. This is particularly impactful when you retarget people who visit high-converting web pages.

The normal inbound rules still apply — you need well-crafted copy, an engaging image and a compelling offer for retargeting to work. If you’re a HubSpot customer, you should take a look at how the AdRoll integration can improve your conversion efforts.

How to Get Started with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

We’ve shared a ton of information in this post, and at this point, you may be thinking, “where should I start?”

Here’s where the PIE framework comes in. Before starting a CRO project, we recommend prioritizing through the lens of PIE — rank each project based on its potential, importance, and ease. We used this framework at HubSpot with great results.

You should use this framework to answer the following questions for every strategy outlined in the previous section. Assign to each strategy a score between one and 10 (with one being the lowest and 10 being the highest):

1. How much total improvement can this project offer?
2. How valuable will this improvement be?
3. How complicated or difficult will it be to implement this improvement?

Once you’ve assigned a score for each strategy, add up the numbers and then divide it by three — this gives a score which shows what project will have the greatest impact. Then, work on the projects with the highest scores first. The framework isn’t perfect, but it’s easy to understand, systematic, and a great way to communicate to the rest of your colleagues which CRO projects are being selected and why.

Want to learn more about the PIE framework? Take a look at this explanation from WiderFunnel.

What’s next?

There are a lot of “best practices” out there, but ultimately, you need to find out what your customers respond to, and what drives results for your business. Here are three follow-up actions to get started with CRO today:

1. Use the three formulas to start the CRO conversation.
2. Leverage the PIE framework to help prioritize your strategy.
3. Make CRO someone’s responsibility.

What CRO strategies does your business leverage? Share with us in the comments below.

Manual data entry might be one of the most tedious and inefficient tasks in the working world. Not only does it put you to sleep, but it also wastes precious time and resources, slashing your productivity to bits. In fact, data entry wastes over 10 hours per week for certain sales teams.

Fortunately, there’s technology that can automate these mind-numbing tasks, eliminating human error and letting you focus on the work that actually matters — workflow automation.

Almost every department in your business can benefit from workflow automation. Whether it’s marketing, human resources, or finance, here’s how the technology can help you work smarter, not harder.

Marketing

Some of Marketing’s most repetitive tasks, such as sending emails and posting social media updates, can be automated with workflow automation. With marketing automation software, you can set up workflows that nurture certain types of prospects with email offers, and schedule your entire social media calendar.

Human Resources

Instead of having to manually enter all your new hires’ personal information, like addresses, social security numbers, and other employee information into payroll, expense, and insurance systems, HR automation software can do it for you in minutes.

Finance

By allowing you to build forms, design workflows, and track processes, finance process automation software can streamline all your travel requests, reimbursements, and budget approvals.

5 of the Best Workflow Automation Software for 2019

1. Nintex

Image Credit: Nintex

With over 3 million workflow applications operating on their platform right now, Nintex helps more than 8,000 enterprise customers manage, automate, and optimize their business processes, with no coding experience required.

By offering a multitude of workflow automation tools — like process mapping, advanced workflows, and process intelligence — your business is able to map out each of your processes, execute them, and monitor their performance.

2. KiSSFLOW

Trusted by over 10,000 companies, including Domino’s, Michelin, and Pepsi, KiSSFLOW offers an all-in-one workflow automation software that lets your business create workflows that automate tasks in your human resources, sales, finance, administration & facilities, marketing, and purchase departments.

With over 50 pre-installed business process management apps, such as expensing and sales orders, the ability to customize your workflow with conditions and triggers, and a reporting dashboard for your workflows, KiSSFLOW can streamline almost all your business processes.

3. Integrify

Image Credit: Integrify

Integrify is a workflow automation software that lets you build workflows in a drag-and-drop builder and run parallel or sequential flows. By being able to collaborate on tasks and requests, test your processes, and set up reminders, you can easily streamline your business processes and automate manual tasks.

Integrify also offers workflow examples and a user knowledge base, a rest-based open API that allows you to integrate with external databases, and the ability to import and export data from Excel and even PDFs.

4. Zapier

Image Credit: Zapier

With the ability to connect to and share data with over 1,000 web apps, like Facebook, QuickBooks, and Google Drive, Zapier can automate almost any type of business process. All you have to do is build a workflow in their editor, pick the apps you want to include in your workflow, and design it.

For example, if you want to be able to save all your attachments in Dropbox, you can design a workflow that automatically copies any attachment from your Gmail inbox to Dropbox and then sends you a Slack message about the download.

5. Flokzu

Image Credit: Flokzu

Without writing any code, Flokzu allows you to create tasks, deadlines, business rules, and notifications. Their software also sends pending tasks to each of your project’s assignees’ inboxes, and as each stage of a workflow is complete, it’ll automatically assign each new task to a user or role.

Additionally, Flozku offers a reporting dashboard that displays your business processes’ performance and metrics, like the amount of currently delayed tasks there are, tasks assigned to each user and role, tasks completed, and the time each task took, which will give you the necessary data to refine and optimize your future workflows.

According to Glassdoor, the average company in the U.S. spends about $4,000 to hire a new employee, and takes up to 52 days to fill a position.

Undoubtedly, recruiting and hiring candidates is an expensive and time-consuming process. Additionally, it can be tricky to figure out which candidates are most qualified to succeed at your company for the long haul.

To ensure your recruitment strategy is inclusive, fair, and efficient, it’s critical you focus your efforts on creating a good vetting process.

A vetting process will depend on the size of your company and the type of role for which you’re hiring, but it should include a few critical elements. Here, we’ll cover how you can run an effective vetting process to ensure your strategy is as efficient and unbiased as possible.

How to Run a Candidate Vetting Process

1. Write an accurate job description.

Your vetting process will be easier start-to-finish if you take the time to write an accurate and compelling job description.

I spoke to Claire McCarthy, a HubSpot Sales Recruiter, who told me the job description can help both you and the candidate ensure a mutually beneficial fit from the start — “We have pretty comprehensive job descriptions,” McCarthy told me, “And we want candidates to take the time to read them and ensure the role is a good match for their background and skill set, as well as their long-term goals. In the job description, we focus on attributes — for instance, for a Sales role, we might list, ‘customer-first mentality’ as a requirement.”

It’s equally important to ensure your description is crafted to attract a wide pool of diverse applicants, since diverse teams perform better, and come up with more innovative ideas.

If you think your diversity and inclusion initiative doesn’t start with your job description, think again — a Hewlett Packard internal report found the majority of women won’t apply for a job unless they meet all the qualifications, while most men will apply if they meet only 60% of them.

To ensure their job descriptions attracted a diverse range of talent, the Atlassian rewrote their job advertisements using a tool called Textio, which allowed them to detect patterns for how job posts perform. Textio also recommended specific language to best attract a wide pool of applicants.

Ultimately, it’s critical you ensure your job description allows you to correctly identify qualified candidates from the start, while enabling you to attract the widest pool of applicants possible.

Take a look at 12 Marketing Job Descriptions to Recruit and Hire an All-Star Team [Free Templates] if you need help getting started.

2. Review the candidate’s application materials using software.

A vetting process should allow you to filter out candidates who don’t have the skills necessary to succeed in the role. To do this, you’ll want to start by vetting the applicant’s resume, cover letter, and other application materials they’ve submitted for review.

Additionally, a vetting process can support your diversity and inclusion initiative by ensuring your HR team remains fair and unbiased when evaluating potential candidates. For instance, you might implement a blind search system in which resumes are scanned by software, such as ADP Recruiting Management’s Visual Search.

By ensuring your resumes are automatically sorted based on skill, you’re circumventing some of the unintentional biases that might lead your HR employees to make unfair judgments.

3. Use video interviews prior to phone calls.

McCarthy told me HubSpot uses video interviews — which prompt candidates with questions, and record candidates’ responses to each question — to vet candidates before moving onto a phone interview.

McCarthy said, “Candidates are required to answer the questions in one minute. We do this for high volume roles, and use the video interview as a qualifier for whether or not the candidate moves forward with a phone interview.”

Ultimately, there are certain questions you can ask to decipher whether or not a candidate has the correct skills for the role. You don’t want your recruiters spending valuable time on phone calls, when you can just as easily collect that information another way. Consider using video interviews to limit the amount of phone calls your HR team needs to make each day.

4. Evaluate with other assessment tools.

To evaluate whether your candidate will succeed in the role, consider offering initial assessments. As a HubSpot writer, I was asked to write a blog post from scratch using one of HubSpot’s prompt topics before being invited for an interview. This makes sense — why waste your time, and your candidate’s time, if your candidate doesn’t have the skills you’re looking for?

You might consider offering role plays for customer facing positions, case studies for functional roles, or coding assessments for engineering positions.

5. Stick to a process.

You’ll want to remain consistent in every step of your process, from background checks to assessment tools. For instance, it’s important your team uses the same background check for each potential employee, and doesn’t require any additional information that does not apply to the job.

Ultimately, a vetting process is only effective if it’s consistent and replicable. As McCarthy told me, “A vetting process is about establishing a process at the beginning and sticking to it — additionally, it’s important to use a vetting process to operationalize how we review candidates and decide which ones are most qualified to move forward to next steps.”

Using these five tactics, or any alternative options you feel will help you determine a mutual fit for your candidates and teams, will mitigate the time and money your HR team spends on recruitment in 2019, while ensuring you hire the best applicants — a win, win.

Did you know there are over 56,000 WordPress plugins available today?

WordPress plugins allow you to enhance your website’s functionality by adding features and capabilities that don’t come standard with the system.

From writing tools to SEO tips to analytics, WordPress plugins will help you arrive at any solution you’re seeking, all while keeping your website as speedy as possible and saving you time along the way, too.

But with so many options available, it’s tough to figure out the best ones to use.

That’s why we’ve done the work for you.Below you’ll find a list of the 25 best WordPress plugins (not in any specific order) that every marketer should explore.

Best WordPress Plugins for Marketers

These 25 plugins have been reviewed by some of the top marketers in the industry. They’ll also keep both you and your WordPress website running efficiently and effectively. If you want more, check out the official WordPress plugin page.

1. Jetpack

Source: WordPress

Jetpack is an all-in-one WordPress plugin that offers advanced features such content tools, mobile themes, and more. You can take advantage of all of Jetpack’s features to enhance your website, or pick and choose just what you want to activate based on your unique needs. Some of these features include automated social media posting, site statistics and analytics, and different SEO tools to help you measure and promote your website success.

2. The SEO Framework

Source: WordPress

With The SEO Framework, your website’s search rankings will improve drastically with the help of the plugin’s numerous, automatic optimization features. These features have the ability to optimize every page, post, and term on your website so it is not only easier to find on the internet, but it is also more searchable on all social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. No matter if you’re new to SEO or an expert in API, The SEO Framework will help you optimize your website.

3. HubSpot Contact Form Builder and Conversion Tools

Source: WordPress

HubSpot’s drag and drop form builder allows you to easily build contact forms to use on your WordPress website. The plugin also includes a pop-up creator, live chat widget, contact database, and previously-written code for you to simply copy and paste into WordPress.

HubSpot’s Contact Form Builder plug-in is unique because it’s an all in one plugin — it helps you stay efficient by keeping all of its features in a single location. Christine Kilbride of Majux Marketing says having a large number of “plugins can slow down your site.” But because HubSpot provides everything in one plugin, the tool keeps your site fast and responsive.

4. Just Writing

Source: Just Writing

Just Writing takes WordPress’ Distraction-Free Writing Mode (DFWM) to a whole new level. This plugin introduces important features like spellcheck and paragraph styling to help you focus on your words without having to constantly drop out of DFWM to implement basic formatting.

5. Pretty Link

Source: Pretty Link

Pretty Link makes it easy to manage and track your internal website links. You can shorten links (the way you would on a site like bit.ly), track the number of hits to a link, discover traffic sources, and find out the browser and host provider of your site visitors. You can also use the plugin to easily create redirects (301, 302, and 307s). 

6. Google XML Sitemaps

Source:  WordPress

The Google XML Sitemap plugin makes it easier for search engines, like Google and Yahoo, to crawl your site and retrieve information. It will also notify search engines when you create new content so you don’t have to manually submit changes to search engines.

7. Pixel Caffeine

Source: WordPress

Pixel Caffeine allows you to manage Facebook Pixel and Facebook Product Catalog all within the plugin. Tony Capetola of Sales Orders says Pixel Caffeine is a great plugin because “marketers can make use of some more advanced features like the ability to track Facebook Ad conversions within WordPress’s dashboard, the ability to create custom audiences based on last visit time (retention window), WordPress taxonomies (categories, tags, etc.), and previous customers behavior (works with WooCommerce), etc.”

Added bonus: Pixel Caffeine automatically keeps up with Facebook’s latest updates so you don’t have to.

8. Broken Link Checker

Source: WordPress

Want to prevent Google from following broken links on your website? Broken Link Checker parses your posts to identify broken links and notify you when they surface. To save you time, the plugin makes it easy for you to edit a broken link from the plugin page, eliminating the need to manually go into each post to make changes.

9.  Calculated Fields Form

Source: WordPress

“[Calculated Fields Form] allows you to create simple calculators for your WordPress site. You can easily build finance calculators, quote calculators, booking cost calculators, health/ fitness calculators, and other link-worthy tools,” says Roy Harmon of Advertoscope.

With this plugin, you can also create forms with automatically calculated fields and use predefined form templates that will save you time and ensure accuracy.

10. Akismet

Source: Spider My Web

Akismet helps you avoid (and eliminate) spammy comments on your blog. The plugin automatically reviews and filters comments when it detects any signs of spam. You can easily keep tabs on which comments are caught or  filtered to maintain control over what’s being displayed on your site.

11. All in One SEO Pack

Source: WordPress

All in One SEO Pack helps you optimize your WordPress website for organic search. The plugin works for people with varying levels of SEO experience, from the non-technical to the coders.

Kim Smith of GoodFirms says, “The plugin supports content as well as image XML sitemap while providing advanced canonical URLs. It supports key Google SEO tools such as AMP and Analytics and notifies search engines about the updates and changes”.

The plugin has XML sitemap and image XML sitemap support (which is what informs Google about the URLs on your website that are available for crawling), and it also provides you with support in other areas including Google Analytics and custom post types, which is helpful for marketers who are working to measure the success of their campaigns or SEO work and goals.

12) Title Experiments

Source: WordPress

The title of a blog post has a direct impact on click-through rates (CTR). Title Experiments makes it easy for you to A/B test one title against another so you can track what converts best and increase your CTR.

13. TablePress

Source: WordPress

TablePress is a plugin that helps you create, customize, and embed beautiful and unique tables on your WordPress site. Your tables can include all types of data and be placed anywhere on your website. Swadhin Agrawa of DigitalGYD.com says, “TablePress makes it insanely easy for anyone to create a customizable and responsive table on their blogs.”

14. Editorial Calendar

Source: WordPress

Keep your blog organized with the help of this plugin. Editorial Calendar uses a drag-and-drop functionality to simplify the way you schedule and manage your blog content. You can also manage posts from multiple authors, quickly edit titles and publishing times, and manage drafts within the plugin.

15. TinyPNG

Source: TinyPNG

“This free plugin allows you to quickly compress images so they load faster. This is important for SEO value and ensuring people don’t bounce off your pages due to slow load times,”  says Todd Kunsman of EveryoneSocial.

TinyPNG will make your website faster by automatically optimizing your JPEG and PNG images upon upload, renaming them to TinyPNG and TinyJPEG. Images are analyzed, and then the plugin compresses them appropriately. Once this happens, the image is then sent back to your WP website to replace the original image. The plugin will make your website load faster while saving you storage space.

16. Smush

Source: WordPress

“Smush quickly compresses and optimizes images in bulk, letting you focus on other things,” says Izaak Crook of AppInstitute. Smush servers do all of the work for you, meaning your images will remain high-quality while reducing their file size. This frees up space on your server so your website will be significantly faster.

17. W3 Total Cache

Source: WordPress

Looking to improve the performance of your website? This optimization plugin helps all marketers deliver a better user experience by increasing server performance, reducing load times, and providing CDN integration (which increases your website’s performance and decreases loading time to enhance user experience).

18. Imsanity

Source: Imsanity

“Imsanity is a popular, free WP plugin for managing image file size. It automatically resizes images without loss of quality and saves you from having to manually scale them before upload,” says Marina Dolcic of MorningScore.

The Imsanity plugin matches the size of your images with the display in a browser. It resizes previously uploaded images by automatically scaling them down and replacing the original images with the new versions, which saves you time as all of the work is done for you.

19. OptinMonster

Source: WordPress

Looking to grow your email list? This plugin comes with an easy-to-use form builder to help you create opportunities for your visitors to convert. From popups to slide-ins to sidebar forms, OptinMonster offers a variety of different templates for lead generation forms. The plugin also integrates with several email marketing providers, such as MailChimp, HubSpot, AWeber, Infusionsoft, Constant Contact, and Campaign Monitor.

20. Revive Old Post

Source: WordPress

Formerly known as Tweet Old Post, this plugin helps marketers extend the life of their old social posts by automatically re-sharing them to social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You have the ability to schedule posts and manage multiple accounts so you can easily drive more traffic to your content.

21. Head, Footer and Post Injections

Source: WordPress

Most WordPress users end up needing to use several plugins — some people even use dozens. Head, Footer and Post Injections is a plugin that allows you to copy any unique code that you use for other plugins, keep it in a centralized and organized location, and easily insert it wherever needed. The plugin is theme-independent, meaning you’ll never lose your data (no matter how many times you change your website theme).

22. Google Analytics by Monster Insights

Source: WordPress

This plugin uses an API with Google Analytics that makes it easy for you to track the performance of your blog directly from your WordPress account. With added data for search result pages and error pages, Google Analytics by MonsterInsights makes performance reporting easy.

23. Redirection

Source : Redirection

Redirection is a free redirect manager that allows you to set up your 301 redirects and manage 404 errors. There is a logging feature so you can see all of the redirects on your site as well as information about each visitor that is redirected.

24. Yoast SEO

Source: Yoast

Yoast is your all in one SEO plugin.

“This highly effective WordPress plugin makes the process of delivering SEO improvements on a site much easier,” says Sean Flannigan of coolblueweb.

Yoast helps you get the most out of your website SEO with straightforward XML Sitemaps, breadcrumb navigation control, content analysis, snippet previews, and several integrations that show you how your website performs in different search engines. Nicolas Straut of Fundera, says, “This plugin identifies and suggests solutions for potential SEO problems in your content, identifies what you’ve done well and helps you easily edit your snippet, keywords, and other post details.”

25. Autoptimize

Source: StackPath

“[Autoptimize] makes it easy for non-technical marketers to make their sites lightning fast. We all know how important it is to have a fast website — without it, our Google rankings suffer and potential customers will go somewhere else,” says Jon Nastor of Hack the Entrepreneur.

This plugin aggregates and caches (a.k.a. stores) scripts and styles, which enhance your site’s overall performance. Autoptimize also has extensive API available so you can tailor the plugin to your website’s needs.

These are only 25 of the thousands of WordPress plugins available to marketers. WordPress plugins can help you improve your site, whether it’s speeding up your page load time, improving your site’s functionality, or tracking metrics. These powerful tools are often free, have features tailored to individuals and businesses of all sizes, and are fairly easy to use. Give a plugin or two a try and see how much it enhances your day-to-day WordPress experience — and your business.

This post is part 9 of 11 in a series on HubSpot’s Customer Code.

Here’s a secret — I wanted to launch the first version of The Customer Code at INBOUND 2017. I was excited about the idea, and wanted to start talking about it.

But our leadership team pushed back on me. They said there was no way we could ask other companies to step up and embrace their customer-first ideals when we still had so far to go ourselves. Of particular concern was the communication around our pricing and how customers got billed.

We had to be the change.

The way our pricing works varies quite a bit throughout our product lines, for customers at the Starter level, it tends to be extremely simple, but as our customers’ businesses gets more sophisticated, pricing tends to get more sophisticated as well. And feedback made it clear that, when it came to pricing, our most unhappy customer segment were customers at the Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise levels — so that’s where we dug in.

Like many SaaS companies, we lock-in pricing for customers during their billing period so what they’re paying won’t increase even if their number of contacts does increase. It’s a way to show value before we extract value. But of course:

1. Customers often wouldn’t remember pricing was locked in for the billing period (they’re busy)
2. During the year, usage would increase

(If you want to get into the weeds, you can read our Terms of Service here, but that’s the high-level gist.)

So year two renewal would roll around, and a lot can change in a year — a customer’s business may have grown, people forget about the details of a contract they signed 12 months ago, or perhaps the person who originally signed the contract is no longer with the company and a new person is now managing the account — and suddenly customers were getting a bill that was noticeably higher than the prior billing period with little context on why. Yes, many were very (and rightfully!) unhappy about this.

The change needed on our end was actually quite simple–we simply changed the communication approach in our renewal process. First, we adjusted the timing of our communication about the new bill and made a change to our Terms of Service which reduced the number of days notice we needed to honor a non-renewal request – dropping it from 45 days to 10 days. Second, we now go out of our way to inform customers about growth in their contact database before the notice of non-renewal window closes. These changes give our customers far more time to evaluate the product, the value delivered over the past year, and decide if HubSpot still made sense for them. But most importantly, we can feel confident that we’re not surprising customers with an unexpectedly large bill.

And with those simple changes in place…no more upset customers.

Because our customers don’t mind paying, but they do mind feeling played.

The same is true for your customers.

No one should be surprised by an unexpected bill.

No one should need a math degree to figure out what they’ll pay you.

No one should need to jump through hoops to figure out what it might cost to do business with you.

If we had gone live with The Customer Code in 2017, I would have given HubSpot a 5 on Tenet #8: I don’t mind paying, but I do mind being played. Today, I give us a 6. We’ve been doing some things right for awhile – our pricing is transparent and available on our website – and we’ve made substantial improvements on improving communication around renewals, but we’re not done yet.

We recently asked our customer-facing teams how we’re doing when it comes to pricing transparency. Our support and success teams care deeply about the customer, but also understand the needs of the business, and we wanted to know how they think we’re doing when it comes to pricing.

The vast majority of our customer-facing team members feel that our pricing, discounting, and cancellation process are all fair. But when we asked them what one thing they would change for our customers today if they had a magic wand the #1 request was simplifying pricing, packaging, and renewals.

Fair isn’t enough to create a great customer experience.

Transparent doesn’t always equate to simple.

We’re being honest, transparent, and fair; but our customers don’t always feel that way.

We can do better, and we’re going to. We have two plays kicking off that pair VP-level executives with our Voice of the Customer team to improve the billing and contract experience.

Confusing pricing is a negative force on the flywheel of every business. Sixty-nine percent of people said that confusing pricing keeps them from making a purchase.

After seeing this data at INBOUND one HubSpot customers, WashCard, went back to work and decided it was time to give transparent pricing a try. While the industry standard is to require a conversation with a salesperson before giving pricing, WashCard saw this as creating friction in their flywheel so they pulled back the curtain–boldly displaying pricing on their website for all to see.

Amy Olson, the Director of Marketing at WashCard said, “A month into this, we’re getting more leads out of our pricing page than any other page on the website, they make up two thirds of our online conversions. Our sales staff can see that a prospect has looked at the pricing page, and it totally changes the conversation when contacting new potential customers. Game. Changer.”

Customers don’t mind paying, but they do mind being played, they mind unexpectedly big bills, and they mind jumping through hoops to figure out how to budget for your product or services.

If you want to grow, you have to charge for your services. But companies that are open and honest about their pricing, while making it simple to understand – grow better.

This post is part 9 of 11 in a series on HubSpot’s Customer Code. You can find more info on The Customer Code and how we score ourselves here, and watch my INBOUND talk on this topic here:

Out of all the questions a hiring manager might throw your way during an interview, “What motivates you” might be the most crucial one to nail.

One of the most important — and common — traits hiring managers typically vet for in candidates is their intrinsic motivation. Research suggests intrinsically motivated employees produce a higher quality of work than extrinsically motivated employees. So proving that you’re a craft-driven professional, and not just someone who is enamored by the company’s lucrative stock options, can be the difference between landing the job and receiving a “thank u, next” email.

To help you answer the “What motivates you?” question in a way that clearly communicates your intrinsic motivation and boosts your odds of landing your next job, check out this two-step process we developed.

1. Describe why you love your craft.

If you do something solely because you love doing it, your motivations are in the right place, and they’ll allow you to consistently perform past your potential employer’s expectations. For instance, if you genuinely love writing and helping people, you’ll be able to pour passion into your work and create content for the sake of creating content, helping you produce better work than if you only created content because your boss told you to do it.

To effectively convey your passion for your craft when a hiring manager asks you what motivates you, lead off with something like this:

“As I approach my three-year anniversary working in the content marketing space, I’ve learned a lot about myself. More specifically, I’ve realized I feel the most fulfilled when I can craft gripping stories that actually help and inspire people. Ultimately, my passion for storytelling stems from making others feel positive emotions, especially toward brands, which is a huge challenge today.”

2. Explain how your passion for your craft will benefit your potential employer.

In 2015, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, spoke at Goldman Sach’s Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco. When asked what were some of Apple’s biggest accomplishments from the past year, he responded, “We’re not focused on the numbers, we’re focused on the things that produce the numbers.”

In content marketing, one of the most influential things that produce the numbers is a passion for your craft. But, sometimes, we can get so obsessed with optimizing for results that we forget what actually generates the views and leads we so desperately desire — compelling content.

To clarify this insight to your employer, explain why focusing on your craft — and not the results — will benefit them over the long haul, like the example below:

“Today, we both work in an industry where countless brands fight for a limited amount of attention, saturating our space with mediocre content. It’s never been harder to cut through the noise. But one of the most effective ways to capture people’s attention amidst all this clutter is storytelling. The human brain is wired to respond to well-crafted narrative. Neuroscience proves that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and forge close, personal bonds. We’re programmed to crave and seek out great stories — that’ll never change. So if you want to move people and sear yourself into their memories, you must tell compelling stories.

”What motivates you?” Sample Answer

Altogether, a strong answer to the “What motivates you” question would look like this:

As I approach my three-year anniversary working in the content marketing space, I’ve learned a lot about myself. More specifically, I’ve realized I feel the most fulfilled when I can craft gripping stories that actually help and inspire people. Ultimately, my passion for storytelling stems from making others feel positive emotions, especially toward brands, which is a huge challenge today.

Today, we both work in an industry where countless brands fight for a limited amount of attention, saturating our space with mediocre content. It’s never been harder to cut through the noise. But one of the most effective ways to capture people’s attention amidst all this clutter is storytelling. The human brain is wired to respond to well-crafted narrative. Neuroscience proves that storytelling is the best way to capture people’s attention, bake information into their memories, and forge close, personal bonds. We’re programmed to crave and seek out great stories — that’ll never change. So if you want to move people and sear yourself into their memories, you must tell compelling stories.

Intrinsic motivation is the best type of motivation.

“What motivates you?” might be one of the most challenging questions to answer during an interview. But if you can clearly convey that you’re intrinsically motivated and structure your answer the way we did above, you’ll be able to nail the “What motivates you?” question and significantly boost your odds of landing the job.