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Building a website is, in many ways, an exercise of willpower. It’s tempting to get distracted by the bells and whistles of the design process, and forget all about creating compelling content.

It’s that compelling content that’s crucial to making inbound marketing work for your business.

So how do you balance your remarkable content creation with your web design needs? It all starts with the “About Us” page.

For a remarkable about page, all you need to do is figure out your company’s unique identity, and then share it with the world. Easy, right? Of course not. Your “About Us” page is one of the most important pages on your website, and it needs to be well crafted. This profile also happens to be one of the most commonly overlooked pages, which is why you should make it stand out.

The good news? It can be done. In fact, there are some companies out there with remarkable “About Us” pages, the elements of which you can emulate on your own website.

By the end of this post, you’ll know what makes some of today’s best “About Us” and “About Me” pages so great, and how to make your own about page that shares your company’s greatness.

1. Yellow Leaf Hammocks

Why the “About Us” Page Rocks: It tells us a story.

When you have a great story about how your product or service was built to change lives, share it. The “About Us” page is a great place for it to live, too. Good stories humanize your brand, providing context and meaning for your product. What’s more, good stories are sticky — which means people are more likely to connect with them and pass them on.

Yellow Leaf Hammocks tells users about its product by describing how the hammocks empower artisan weavers and their families. The company breaks down different pieces of the story into sections that combine words and easily digestible graphics, painting a picture instead of big chunks of text. They’re clear about why they’re different: “Not a Charity,” the page reads. And then: “This is the basis for a brighter future, built on a hand up, not a handout.”

Every company has a story to tell, so break out your storytelling skills from that random English class you took years ago and put them to work on your “About Us” page. Using descriptive and emotive copy and gorgeous graphics, an “About Us” page with a story works harder for your business than a generic one.

2. Eight Hour Day

Why the “About Us” Page Rocks: It’s human.

People tend to think that “About Us” pages have to sound formal to gain credibility and trust. But most people find it easier to trust real human beings, rather than a description that sounds like it came from an automaton. Trying to sound too professional on your “About Us” page results in stiff, “safe” copy and design — the perfect way to make sure your company blends in with the masses.

Instead, Eight Hour Day showcases the people behind the company and humanizes its brand. Introducing the founders by name and featuring the photos of them on the “About Us” page drives home the point that Nathan and Katie are — as they so astutely put it — “two individuals with a passion for creativity — creativity makes us happy.”

When you’re designing your “About Us” page,avoid industry jargon and replace it with an authentic voice — yours — to describe your product or service. Sure, it needs to be polished and free of errors, but it should always sound friendly and real.

3. Joe Payton

Why the “About Me” Page Rocks: It’s confident, creative, and easy to skim.

“About Us” pages might encompass the values of more than one person or entity, but they’re no more important to the image of a business than your personal about page. Take Joe Payton’s “About Me” page, below.

Not only does Joe’s illustrative self-portrait give him a personal brand that customers will remember, but it also demonstrates his expertise as a designer and animator. His website visitors can learn not just what he does, but why he does it, in an easily digestible way. Being able to express his values as a creative professional in such a well-organized page is something to be desired by anyone creating their own about page.

4. Apptopia

Why the “About Us” Page Rocks: It skips the business babble.

We know — no industry jargon. If you think it makes you sound super smart on your “About Us” page, think again. People want and appreciate straight talk about what your business does. After all, if people can’t figure out what you do, how will they know they need your product or service?

So, skip the industry lingo — that’s what Apptopia does on its “About Us” page. The startup’s simple but polished language effectively communicates the company’s offering while still allowing the Average Joe to understand it.

The moral of the story: Try to get rid of jargon on your “About Us” page whenever possible. Use short and punchy sentences to explain complex products and ideas in a way that isn’t patronizing, but rather, is empathetic.

5. Moz

Why the “About Us” Page Rocks: It’s humble.

Instead of following the classic “About Us” script and writing a few paragraphs about the company’s mission and origins, try something different — there are plenty of ways to make your brand more compelling to someone who doesn’t know about you.

Take Moz, for example. A lot has happened since it was founded in 2004, so the company chose to share those milestones using a fun and clean design that incorporates clear headers, concise blurbs, and little graphics to break up the text.

We especially love the humble references to how Moz received funding, how it switched its brand positioning — and most importantly, how it switched back to its original model. This speaks volumes to the value honesty and humbleness can play to your customers. Don’t be afraid to talk about your ups and downs; your customers will trust what you say that much more.

Below is the actual “About Us” page, which is a gem once you get there. But it’s great to see a company embrace its own brand of quirk throughout the site.

Even if you have a dedicated “About Us” page, there are plenty of ways to creatively showcase your company’s personality throughout your entire website. And yeah, that’s harder than filling a stock “About Us” template — but it can have a significant payoff for your brand.

8. Kero One

Why the “About Me” Page Rocks: It’s multilingual.

Kero One is a hip-hop artist and DJ from San Francisco, and his “About Me” page carries a valuable lesson to personal brands who cater to more than one audience — especially if those audiences speak different languages.

Kero One’s story starts at his childhood, when he was six years old and first discovered a passion for hip-hop. Knowing how old and genuine his love for the genre is adds tremendous value to his own music in the eyes of his listeners.

While this entrepreneur’s childhood interests help to deepen his audience, the second screenshot below helps Kero One widen it. His “About Me” page first tells his story in English, then in Japanese, then in Korean, then in Chinese. Accommodating these Southeast Asian audiences makes his brand more inclusive of all the audiences he identifies with.

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9. Nike

Why the About Us Page Rocks: It knows its audience.

Nike might seem like a company that’s too big to inspire smaller businesses. You might even wonder if Nike even still has an “About Us” page. As a matter of fact, it does, and it hasn’t forgotten the company’s roots.

Nike began on the campus of the University of Oregon by the hand of the college’s track coach, Bill Bowerman. And even though he no longer works at the company, one of his beloved quotes still brands the bottom of Nike’s “About Us” page below: “If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

This bold sentence, referenced by the asterisked “Athlete” in the words right above it, sheds important light on Nike’s audience. The brand may be big today, but Nike is all about the rising stars — who Nike depends on to, according to the rest of its “About Us” page, “expand human potential.”

The takeaway for marketers? Know your audience, and make it obvious to that audience the instant they read about you on your website.

10. Refinery29

Why the “About Us” Page Rocks: It tells you what’s most important.

Here’s another instance where any area of your website — not just the “About Us” page — is an opportunity to break the mold.

Many companies add just a simple mission statement or company profile, but people often don’t want to ready a wall of text explaining what you do. So, Refinery29 broke it down to convey the intangible qualities that are tough to include in a basic “About Us” page.

Although Refinery29 does introduce its page with a description of its business, its goes out on a bang — four bangs, to be exact. The organization is on a “mission,” sure, but there’s also an “essence” of Refinery29, a “promise” it keeps, and a “vibe” it gives off.

These aren’t company traits you’d think to include when starting out, but they’re what your customers often make gut decisions on when buying.

11. Sara Dietschy

Why the “About Me” Page Rocks: It has variety but still aligns with her personal brand.

This professional YouTube content creator has an eclectic collection of videos related to technology and culture, and expresses that diversity all over her “About Me” page.

In addition to the vibrant self-portrait at the top of the page, Sara’s first sentence tells you just how many people subscribe to her channel: 350,000. This is an important number to know for her potential video advertisers and collaborators who want to know how much exposure they’d get by working with her or advertising on her channel.

The colored tiles lining the page — starting with the red one, as shown below — also do a terrific job segmenting her work by the types of projects she takes up and for whom she’s done them. That Intel logo in the second photo of Sara, below, is sure to turn some visitors’ heads as they’re perusing her website.

12. Marie Catribs

Why the “About Us” Page Rocks: It’s unexpected.

There’s a reason why these examples are exceptional — “About Us” pages aren’t always the most riveting parts of a company’s website. In fact, they often look like an afterthought. But even if you don’t have budget for juicy graphics, video, or parallax scrolling, there are other ways to make your “About Us” page unexpected with the copy alone.

Marie Catrib’s is a restaurant, so you might think their “About Us” page would be your typical “here’s how we started, here’s what we believe in, and here’s our food” story. Marie Catrib’s “About Us” page does tells us that — but it does so in an unconventional way. Immediately, the user’s eyes are drawn to a header that says, “It’s okay to make a mess, experiments can lead to beautiful things.” Quite philosophical, for a place to have dinner.

But next comes the story about the owner, which starts in an unexpected way — “It’s hard to imagine, but at one time Marie was banned from the family kitchen.” A line like that draws in the audience, because we know it’s not going to be typical.

So, how will you use copy to really draw readers in? It’s amazing what impression you can make on site visitors just by creatively telling your story with words alone.

13. Marc Ensign

Why the “About Me” Page Rocks: It’s funny but professional.

This branding expert does two things super well on his about page: He takes his work seriously, but doesn’t take himself too seriously. Marketers know there’s value to keeping a casual tone in the content they create, but in order to attract customers, you need to prove you have discipline and integrity. That’s a tough balance to get right.

Marc Ensign nails that balance between friendly and formal with a confident opening statement, followed by an amusing smiley photo of himself to set an inviting tone.

14. Bulldog Skincare

Why the “About Us” Page Rocks: It’s lovable and memorable.

What’s the difference between “average” marketing and lovable marketing? It’s the difference between creating generic webpages that provide great information, but in a straightforward, black-and-white kind of way — versus creating webpages that provide great information and are infused with color, personality, and stay true to a company’s unique brand voice. When you create lovable marketing, you can start a movement of brand evangelists and advocates who will help you grow.

Where does this fit into a company’s “About Us” page? The folks at Bulldog, a men’s skincare company that was named for the colloquial “man’s best friend” — a dog — could have typed up a few paragraphs about where the brand came from and how they were one of the first in the space to redefine and eliminate stereotypes around men’s grooming. But that text alone would have been a bit, well, average.

Instead, the “About Us” page is pithy, colorful, and leads with the lovable mug of an adorable bulldog — fitting the name and the brand. And it states the purpose of the products — to help customers from waking up with the (admittedly adorable) wrinkly face you see when you visit Bulldog’s website.

Play on your own words — it’s okay to have fun and pun with your brand, as it helps to inject personality and humor into your “About Us” page. It primes visitors for a story in a way that makes them immediately feel something. That’s how you create memorable, lovable marketing.

15. Doomtree

Why the “About Us” Page Rocks: Its shows, tells, and has a soundtrack.

One minute of video is worth 1.8 million words, according to Forrester Research’s Dr. James McQuivey. But what about audio and visual, too, all combined with a really cool story? Well, that’s one way to tell your story in an engaging way — through multimedia.

Doomtree is built on a bit of an innovative concept: That a group of talented artists can each have thriving solo careers, but can still come together on a regular basis to create great music. It’s not a band — it’s a crew. It’s an unconventional concept with an equally interesting backstory that “started as a mess of friends in Minneapolis, fooling around after school, trying to make music without reading the manual.” And as soon as you arrive on Doomtree’s ‘About Us’ page, you’re greeted with big, bold photos of those friends.

As you scroll down, users are treated to even more interaction with the crew’s tracks and music videos. That makes sense, because it gives visitors an instant sample of Doomtree’s product. What’s more, the entire “About Us” page is responsive, including the video. That’s important — not only because it offers site visitors a great mobile experience, but also for Google search ranking — especially now that such mobile usage has surpassed desktop.

It’s tough to establish one all-encompassing template for your “About Us” page — there are just so many ways you can go about telling your company story. But, per the real “About Us” pages we’ve just highlighted, there are some steps you should keep in mind when getting started.

Here are five steps to writing an “About Us” page based on some of the things that impressed us about the examples above.

1. Establish a mission statement.

Your “About Us” page can and will be much longer than a single mission statement, but in order to draw people in, you need to succinctly state your goal in the industry up front. What are you here to do? Why should your website visitors care?

2. Outline your company story.

You might not have a long history of changes and growth your company has endured (yet), but it’s a nice touch to talk about where you came from in your “About Us” page. So, isolate the milestones prior your company’s founding, and use them to give readers some backstory on your current venture.

3. Reveal how you’ve evolved.

Even if you’re a young company, there’s no shame in admitting your business strategy — or even personal way of thinking — has changed since you began. In fact, in about pages, these evolutions can improve the story you tell to website visitors.

About pages are perfect spaces to talk about where you started, how you’ve grown, and the ideals that have helped your organization mature. Use these moments to further your company story and show people that you’re always ready to change and adapt to the needs of your industry.

4. State your “aha!” moment.

Every good company was founded on an idea — something the current marketplace might not yet offer. What was your idea? Use this “Aha!” moment as a pivot point when telling your company story. What was a challenge you faced while developing your company? How did this challenge or discovery shape what you are today?

5. Explain who you serve.

As much as you want as many eyeballs on your “About Us” page as possible, you won’t do business with every single one of them. That’s why it’s crucial that you identify and mention your core customer. Who should care you exist? Which eyeballs are you here to serve?

6. Explain what you’re offering them.

As you’re explaining who you serve, make it clear what it is you’re offering. Too often companies generalize their product or service in the language of their website, making it hard to understand what it is the customer is actually paying for. They’re afraid literal explanations of their products aren’t interesting enough, or will sound unappealing in writing. And that’s a fair concern.

However, by investing just a sentence or two into telling your potential customers exactly what they’ll receive can keep them on your website for longer and interested in learning more.

7. Cite examples of who you’ve served.

Got some loyal customers in your portfolio? Use your about page to let the world know who already trusts and benefits from your work.

Knowing about your company’s past successes can influence the purchasing decision of up to 90% of today’s B2B customers, according to Dimensional Research. Even if you don’t yet have case studies to expand on the problems you’ve helped buyers solve, it’s in your interest to briefly mention who you’ve done this for. And your about page is the perfect platform for it.

8. Describe your values.

Customers want to be treated like human beings. For that to happen, they need to feel that they’re being treated by human beings. When finishing your “About Us” page, describe who you are as a person or a team, and what your personal values are. What’s your company culture like? What bigger picture in life drives your business?

An LED lightbulb maker might sell 10 different lamp styles, for example, but that might not be the most important characteristic to its primary audience. Maybe this lightbulb developer was founded on a commitment to environmental protection, and every bulb the company makes was built by people who are dedicated to making the world more energy-efficient.

Keep in mind a secondary audience of your company’s “About Us” page consists of your future employees. This is another reason describing your personal values is a good idea — the key to your job candidates’ hearts is to show them you have one too.

At this point, we hope that creating an “About Us” page doesn’t seem like a daunting task — rather, we hope you’re ready to have some fun with it. With a good story to tell, creative copy, humility, and digestible visuals, you’re on your way to an eye-catching user experience.

Even better? You’re becoming part of the exception — and standing out from a sea of “About Us” pages. What makes you different? We’re eager to learn more … about you.

Want more inspiration? Check out 16 inspiring examples of beautiful blog design.

A recent Bloomberg report says that self-driving car maker Waymo is planning to launch a driverless car-hailing service imminently.

In as little as a few weeks, the story says, Waymo — which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet Inc. — will debut a commercial, self-driving car service that some have likened to ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft.

The launch, if the rumors prove to be true, is said to be small, consisting of anywhere between “dozens or hundreds of authorized riders in the suburbs around Phoenix, covering about 100 square miles,” according to the Bloomberg story.

But it raises a question. Are we ready for self-driving cars to hit the road?

To find out, we asked 3,325 people across the U.S., UK, and Canada about their experiences with and expectations of autonomous vehicles. Here’s what they had to say.

Most People Have Not Ridden in a Self-Driving Car

Despite much of the excitement around them, autonomous vehicles remain a highly emerging technology.

Within our survey, over 88% of respondents indicated that they had not yet experienced riding in a self-driving car. 

People Want to Try the Self-Driving Car Experience

However, despite most people not having ever ridden in a driverless car, many of them are curious to try. 

Nearly half of our respondents indicated that while they haven’t ever been in an autonomous vehicle, they’d like to try riding in one — suggesting that, once these cars do hit the road, the interest in experiencing them could help them go mainstream.

Self-Driving Cars Will Be a Dominant Form of Transportation, but Not for a While

We found that over three-quarters of respondents indicated that they believe autonomous vehicles will make up the majority of cars on roads — some day. 

However, most believe that it might be a while before that happens, with the highest number of respondents saying that they believe it will be a decade or two until self-driving cars take over.

Safety Concerns Abound

Despite the enthusiasm among respondents to experience riding in a self-driving car, few of them (about 17%) would describe autonomous vehicles as “very safe.”

At the same time, most people agree that while there are still some safety issues to be worked out with self-driving technology, these vehicles are generally safe enough to be on roads.

Safety has been a significant part of Waymo’s message throughout its autonomous-vehicle-building journey. According to the Bloomberg story, for instance, the company said in a statement that “safety [is] at the core of everything we do.”

Approaching with caution can delay launches and slow the process of such a new technology going mainstream. Waymo’s own CEO, for instance, has remarked himself that he believes it will be “decades” before self-driving cars comprise the majority of vehicles on the road.

.@Waymo CEO John Krafcik says it will be decades before autonomous cars are all over the place, and there will always be some limitations to them, including geographically or climate. Not going to be fully autonomous in all conditions. @WSJ #WSJDLive pic.twitter.com/PehKCXlodw

— Shara Tibken (@sharatibken)
November 13, 2018

However, Waymo’s “safety-first” mindset gives the company what some believe a positive, competitive advantage — especially when compared to some other autonomous vehicle makers.

Comparing @Waymo to @Tesla – Waymo’s AV strategy is focused on safety and long term. Tesla sees customers and everyone else on the road as research subjects. Waymo’s careful approach gets the lead for now. Neither designing for #pwd. https://t.co/40sfT8FWfP

— DriverlessRevolution (@DriverlessRev)
November 13, 2018

But until this fleet of self-driving cars hits the road, and you’re curious to know what riding in one is like in the meantime — check out the story of our experience here.

Featured image credit: Waymo

Year after year, WordPress ranks as one of the top website building tools available. This easy-to-use CMS (content management system) software is beginner-friendly, offers a variety of plans, and allows you to quickly create and manage a unique and functional website for your visitors.

If you’re looking to build a site on WordPress, one of the first questions you may find yourself asking is, “What’s the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?”

WordPress.org is a self-hosted, free platform in which you purchase and manage all aspects of your website including your domain name, add-ons, security, and code. WordPress.com hosts your website for you, offers multiple payment plans, gives you access to a domain name, and a variety of default features.

Below is a useful table that compares the key differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

Let’s dive into each of these features and review the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com in more depth.

Cost of WordPress

There are a number of different WordPress plans to choose from that range in price. No matter your budget, you can find an option that meets your needs without breaking the bank.

Cost of WordPress.org

WordPress.org is always free. However, because it’s only a publishing platform, you’ll have to purchase every other element of your website including your third-party hosting provider, domain name, as well as your themes and templates, plugins, and add-ons. You’ll also have to find a way to manage your website’s security and maintain and edit your site’s code.

Cost of WordPress.com

WordPress.com has four different plans that range in price.

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There is a basic plan that is always free, a plan ideal for personal use that costs $4 per month, a premium plan that costs $8 per month, and a business plan that costs $25 per month. As you work your way up through the more expensive plans, the more features and levels of customization you will be able to take advantage of on your website.

If you choose the free option, you will be offered WordPress hosting, a domain name, and minimal access to WordPress support. If you choose one of the three paid options, you’ll be able to add a hosting provider of your choosing and a custom domain name. You will also be offered extensive support and customization options.

WordPress Hosting Providers

A hosting provider gives your website a place to “live” on the internet. Choosing the right hosting provider for WordPress is crucial because it will impact your site’s functionality, speed, reliability, security, and more. Let’s review the differences between website hosting with WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com.

Hosting for WordPress.org

If you choose WordPress.org you’ll have to self-host your website, meaning you’ll have to purchase a third-party provider, such as WP Engine or InMotion Hosting. There are hundreds of hosting providers available, so we’ve created a guide to 19 of the best WordPress hosting providers of 2018 for you to review.

Hosting for WordPress.com

WordPress.com offers different hosting packages for you to use. If you pick a paid version of WordPress.com, you can decide whether or not you want to use WordPress’ hosting service or if you want to use a third-party provider — as you would with a WordPress.org plan — you already feel strongly about or have prior experience using.

Pros and Cons of Self-Hosting

There are plenty of benefits that come from self-hosting your WordPress website, as you would with a WordPress.org site. However, there are also a lot of challenges to be aware of that often make WordPress.com plans preferable.

The pros of self-hosting include having complete control over everything that goes into the creation of your website, and the ability to manage your website’s security and edit your website’s code. You also have the opportunity to find, buy, and install a third-party hosting provider of your choosing, create a custom domain name, and find different themes, plugins, and add-ons that work for your site and needs. If you choose the self-hosting route, you use the WordPress platform for free.

The cons to self-hosting include having to actually spend the time to find, purchase, and install an ideal third-party hosting provider for your site, learn how to create a domain name, and identify the themes, plugins, and add-ons that make the most sense for your website. You also need to have some type of knowledge in web development as you’ll be the one managing your website’s code and updates.

WordPress Customization

WordPress is a completely customizable CMS. With the help of the hundreds WordPress themes and templates available today, you can achieve virtually any look imaginable by customizing every element of your website.

WordPress.org Customization

With WordPress.org, you are required to find and install your desired third-party themes, such as StudioPress, Pixelgrade, and Stylemix Themes, on your own. WordPress does not offer you access to their free themes the way WordPress.com does, so the level of customization you want to achieve is dependent on your own theme research and the options you decide to implement on your website.

WordPress.com Customization

The free version of WordPress.com comes with dozens of free themes that you can choose from and implement on your website. The free plan does not let you add any third-party or premium themes to your website.

However, with a paid plan, you can use premium, third-party themes as you would with a WordPress.org website. If you choose this route, WordPress.com allows you to easily install your third-party or premium theme so you can get started customizing your website in just minutes.

WordPress Website and Social Media Integration

It’s no secret that social media marketing has become a powerful tactic to promote brands, products, and websites today. Integrating your WordPress website with your social media channels is an easy way to manage all of your interactions in one place, broaden your impact, and increase conversions. It’s also a great way to simply ensure your website visitors know about your social media channels and vice versa.

WordPress.org Social Media Integration

WordPress.org does not come with any social media channel integration. You’ll need to install plugins on your website to enable social media sharing and integration. There are a number of social media plugins available in the plugin library, such as Social Media Widget by Acurax and Jetpack, to help you with tasks such as social media posting from your website and creating beautiful sidebars with links to all of your social accounts for your site.

WordPress.com Social Media Integration

With a free WordPress.com account, you can integrate your own website with social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. This will just require a bit of work on your end. By publicizing your website, or connecting it to your multiple different social accounts, you can integrate your accounts and access them from your WordPress dashboard.

If you have a paid WordPress account, all social media integration comes included and ready-to-use so you can access all of your social accounts from WordPress with the click of a button.

WordPress Plugins

If you’re looking to add to the array of features you have on your WordPress website, you’ll need to install plugins. Plugins are how you enhance your website’s functionality by adding capabilities that don’t come standard with the software. Since there are over 56,000 options available, we created a list of 25 of the best WordPress plugins to help get you started.

WordPress.org Plugins

You’ll need to find and install plugins yourself with a WordPress.org website. Since WordPress.org is simply a platform and there aren’t any features that come standard with the plan, you’ll want to install some plugins on your own. You can search for specific topics or things you need in the WordPress plugin library to narrow down the thousands of search results and find an option suited to your specific needs.

WordPress.com Plugins

With WordPress.com plans, some social media, customer interaction, and analytics-related features (that do not come standard with a WordPress.org plan) such as sharing, statistics, comments, and polls, are automatically included. To add to these default features, you can install WordPress-compatible plugins of your choosing. If you pay for the most expensive WordPress.com plan, you can also install custom plugins.

WordPress Support

While building your website, you may run into a roadblock here or there, or have a question about how to complete a task. WordPress has varying levels of support based on the plan you choose.

WordPress.org Support

With WordPress.org, you are pretty much on your own when it comes to customer support as this plan does not provide any access to one-on-one assistance. Instead, you can access the WordPress.org support page which contains a number of forums that you can use to problem solve. Other than that, you can always try searching for answers to your questions on the internet.

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WordPress.com Support

Free WordPress.com plan users can take advantage of community support and forums available, which are similar to the support pages that WordPress.org users have access to. This is a very basic level of support that leaves you to do most of your own problem-solving.

If you are a paid WordPress.com user, you will have 24/7 access to live chat and email support with WordPress experts in addition to the community support and forums. 

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Back To You

Understanding the key differences between WordPress.org and the various WordPress.com plans is key to determining which type of website best fits your needs. WordPress.org is a great option if you’re looking for complete control over every aspect of your site. WordPress.com is preferable if you need some assistance building your website and want more automation. 

Once you’ve reviewed and considered all of the plan options, you can get started by downloading your WordPress.org or WordPress.com account and utilizing the variety of features you have access to design a website perfect for your specific needs.

When you’re trying to make a good first impression, a greeting is critical. Saying “Yo, what’s up” to your new employer will evoke a different, likely more negative reaction than, “Hello, sir, it’s nice to meet you.”

A cover letter greeting is just as important as your first in-person salutation. It’s a chance to demonstrate professionalism and even effort — for instance, addressing your hiring manager by first and last name shows you did your research.

Here, we’ll explore the best cover letter greetings you can use to ensure your cover letter is well-received.

Cover Letter Salutation Examples

1. Use “Hello” or “Dear” followed by first and last name.

If the job description includes the hiring manager’s name, or if you’ve managed to figure it out through research, an easy greeting uses a full name with a “Dear” or “Hello” before it. Additionally, this helps prevent any awkwardness that could arise from mistaking someone’s gender.

For instance, Carson could be the first name of a woman or man. To be safe, you’ll want to address your letter like this — “Dear Carson Kennedy” or “Hello Carson Kennedy”.

2. Include their title if possible.

If you’re writing to a hiring manager with a title like “Dr.” or “Professor”, include it in your greeting. It will demonstrate a level of respect, and since it’s non-gender specific, it won’t offend anyone.

For instance, you might start your cover letter like this — “Dear Dr. Grace”.

3. If you don’t know their name, you can still make it specific.

If you’ve done your research and can’t find a specific person hiring for the role, it’s likely because the company has a team assembled to delegate the hiring responsibilities. To address a letter to a team, figure out in which department or on which team the role falls. Then, follow this formula — “Dear [Department] Hiring Team”.

For instance, if you’re applying for a role within Customer Service, you might say, “Dear Customer Service Hiring Committee” or “Dear Customer Service Hiring Team”.

How to Address a Cover Letter Without a Name

You’ll want to make every possible effort to figure out the name of the hiring manager who will receive your cover letter if there is a particular person assigned to the role. A customized greeting goes a long way towards helping your cover letter stand out in a sea of “To whom it may concern”.

However, some companies don’t assign one hiring manager to read cover letters. Instead, they might ask their recruiting team to assess the letters, or delegate the responsibility to various team members within a department.

If you can’t find one hiring manager to address your letter to, there are some impressive, and less impressive, alternatives.

For instance, Saddleback College conducted a survey of more than 2,000 companies and found 40% of employers prefer “Dear Hiring Manager” as the number one greeting when you don’t have a hiring manager’s name. “Dear Hiring Manager” is an effective greeting because it doesn’t make assumptions about gender, and it clearly states who you’re trying to reach.

Alternatively, “To whom it may concern” is preferred by 27% of employers. If you’re writing a letter to inquire about positions not currently listed on the company’s careers page, this might be the most appropriate greeting.

It’s likely best to avoid “Sir” or “Madam”, since you don’t know the gender identity of the employer who will receive your letter.

Having a Company Page on LinkedIn is essential. It gives you the opportunity to take part in conversations important to your brand, engage with and grow your audience, and leverage your current employees to spread your mission. 

On November 13^th, LinkedIn relaunched Company Pages as LinkedIn Pages, adding new features that customers value most. If you log into LinkedIn today, you’ll notice some obvious differences. The UI is cleaner and easier to navigate — additionally, look a little deeper and you’ll see there are a number of new features geared towards helping you leverage LinkedIn to grow your business.

Understanding these new LinkedIn updates will help you take advantage of all that LinkedIn Pages has to offer, and find success on their platform. Here’s what you need to know about the new LinkedIn Pages.

Join the conversations that matter.

Whatever you specialize in, you want your company to be part of the conversation. But conversations on LinkedIn don’t just happen during your nine-to-five work day. What if you want to make a post during your commute to work, or respond to a comment on your video as soon as it comes in? With mobile admin, you can now manage conversations important to your company while at your desk, or on your phone while you’re on the go.

More than half of LinkedIn’s traffic comes from their mobile app, but a number of the benefits that individual users enjoy in the mobile app have not been extended to LinkedIn Page admins. LinkedIn’s mobile app now lets you post, update, and respond to comments from anywhere — making it easier to manage the conversations in which your company is taking part. 

LinkedIn Pages also now enable you to participate in conversations important to your success. For example, you can now associate up to three hashtags to your LinkedIn Page. This lets individuals dive into topics that you’ve associated with your company. With this update, you can now associate your brand with various trending topics, and more easily take part in that conversation.

Another update to LinkedIn Pages includes the ability to share different media types natively within LinkedIn. You can now upload PDFs or docs directly into a LinkedIn Page post, giving you a great opportunity to share brand stories that can be used to promote your overall brand. For example, here at HubSpot, we could share our Customer Code directly on our LinkedIn Page.

Going further than just PDFs and docs, video on LinkedIn allows you to share quick, authentic video messages with your followers. Video is growing quickly on LinkedIn, with 17% more marketers posting video on the platform in 2018 than the year before.

LinkedIn’s native video solution gives marketers even more reason to lean into video. These videos will auto-play in the LinkedIn newsfeed, and will stay there longer than just a video linked from another platform, like YouTube. Consider using video to tell a quick customer success story, or to authentically promote one of your products or services.

Know and grow your audience.

Your success is tied to your ability to understand your audience. The more keyed into the unique challenges and needs of your audience, the stronger your content will be, and the more it will resonate with your audience.

To help you understand exactly what content is resonating with your audience, LinkedIn Pages now offers “Content Suggestions.” With Content Suggestions, simply select your audience, and you’ll be presented with a list of topics and articles they are interested in. Create original content based around these topics, or share articles your audience is already interested. This update makes it easier than ever to stay active on LinkedIn — driving traffic to your page and increasing your follower count. 

Once you start creating and sharing content that interests your audience, you need to determine whether or not your content strategy is successful. LinkedIn Pages now give administrators stronger visual analytics that can be used to further understand your success on their platform. You can filter your dashboard by any time frame to determine how you are performing over time, and adjust your strategy accordingly. All admins will receive a monthly summary email, providing them with the demographics of people visiting the site and which content they are interacting with.

Engage with your people.

LinkedIn is often thought of as a platform where individuals can find their next job, and companies can attract new talent. Not enough attention is given to how you can leverage your current employees to grow your brand. Employees generally have ten times the reach of a company on LinkedIn, making them a great resource for expanding your brand’s reach.

With the updates to LinkedIn Pages, admins will now receive a notification every time their company is tagged in a post. These posts can easily be shared to your LinkedIn Page, making it easy to fill your page with content, expand your reach, and humanize your brand.

No matter what industry you work in (or your experience level in that industry), a plain, black-and-white resume written in Times New Roman font can actually weaken a job application.

But just because resumes have gotten more creative doesn’t mean you need special design software to make your application stand out. On the contrary, writing your resume in good old Microsoft Word is still the perfect way to develop your personal brand, while also communicating your experience and career goals.

Read on to find out how to make your resume in word, then download one of 19 amazing resume templates that open directly in Microsoft Word.

1. Open Microsoft Word on your computer.

If you have Microsoft Word installed on your computer, open the program and let it load for a moment. There will be a couple of helpful options waiting for you on the first screen, specifically for resume creation.

2. Select either “Basic Resume” or “Bold Resume” from the template menu.

Once you’ve launched MS Word, a window of templates will appear. Scroll down until you see the template options designed for resumes — there will be at least two of them. Double-click the one that suits your style and personal brand, but don’t be too particular about design just yet … you can customize these templates quite a bit.

3. Fill in your name and contact information at the top.

When your resume template opens, you’ll see placeholder text for each line of your resume, starting with your first and last name at the top. Delete this header text and enter your name, as well as any contact information by which you want the recruiter to contact you.

4. Draft a brief summary of your experience and goals.

Use the first line below your name and contact info to describe who you are, what you do, and what you’re looking for in your career.

5. Enter your school and latest education.

List any relevant degrees or certificates you received through schooling. You can safely exclude secondary education if you’ve graduated from an accredited college.

6. Describe each job you’ve held using the lines prompted on the template.

Your professional experience is frequently the most important section of your resume, so feel free to rank this section above your skills and education, depending on how many jobs you previously held.

7. List all relevant skills.

If you have experience in certain software, exercises, problem-solving, or management techniques, use them to populate your skills. Your resume’s “Skills” section helps reveal what all of your previous jobs or related experiences have in common, based on what they taught you and what you provided them.

8. Describe any relevant accolades and accomplishments.

Finish out your resume with any personal accomplishments or accolades you think a hiring manager in your industry would appreciate. Although this section shouldn’t include a Most Improved recognition from little league, for example, it should definitely include your Marketer of the Month award from your last position.

19 Resume Templates You Can Customize in Microsoft Word

Of course, if you’re already employed full-time, it’s hard to find the time to apply to a new job opportunity, let alone update your resume to reflect your qualifications. Luckily, there are numerous publishers out there who’ve created incredible resume templates for quick editing and formatting in Word.

To keep you from hunting the internet for the resume templates that are both free and compatible with MS Word, we’ve listed 19 more options below for you to customize with your own information right now. Some of them come with variations so you can pick your favorite design. Four of them cater specifically to marketers.

They’re so nice, you won’t believe they open up in Microsoft Word once you download them.

1. Modern Chronological Resume Template

We’ll start with a simple one. This resume template is available from Microsoft itself, and it’s one of many free templates the company has prepared for those who depend on Microsoft Office tools to create content. Yes, it is written in Times New Roman — don’t freak out. Designs like this can borrow an old-school typeface and still impress recruiters with a clean layout and subtle use of color. You can also change the font if you wish (and the same goes for every template in our list).

Download this template here.

2. Digital Marketing Resume Template

The digital marketing resume below comes from our own collection of resume templates, all of which open directly in MS Word. Coming with two pages total, this sheet holds a wealth of information and offers the perfect amount of style while maintaining professionalism. Mid-level marketers all the way up to CMOs can find this template valuable.

Download this template here.

3. Simple and Clean Resume Template

This template is the perfect balance of creative and modest — best for the professional who wants to seem casual, thoughtful, but not over the top. Not only does it feature a space for a headshot on the top-left, but you can customize the color of that entire panel. Created by Zoki Design, the resume template also comes with a matching cover letter template.

Download this template here.

4. Black and White Resume Template

The Black and White resume template below suits professionals who prefer using color and shading to add structure to their resume. The black banner at the top contrasts the applicant’s name nicely to help make him/her more memorable to recruiters. The gray banner just below the header is perfect for a summary or career objective — it makes one’s goals known but doesn’t overpower the experience listed below it.

Download this template here.

5. Urban Development Resume Template

The illustration on the top-left of this template shows who the designers at Hloom had in mind for this resume: civil engineers. But because it’s a Word document, that graphic is easy to edit and replace with an image that represents your line of work. Are you an analytics buff? Design a clever bar or line graph icon and place it next to your name in blue (or whatever color you’d like!).

Download this template here.

6. Email Marketing Resume Template

Red color never fails to stick out on a sheet of paper, especially if it’s included in small amounts. The resume template for email marketers, below, captures that balance. In addition to the professional title in the top-righthand corner, this template also stands out with a thin sans-serif font, helping make a lot of text easier for a recruiter to digest and read through.

Download this template here.

7. Info Pop Resume Template

This one, also from Hloom, gives you exactly what the name suggests: ample space for the info you need, with headers that pop just enough to get your employer’s attention. Although the template fits a ton of text, its soft color palate prevents the document from seeming overwhelming.

Download this template here.

8. Dark Resume Template

Ironically, a dark background could be just the thing to ensure your resume doesn’t fall into the black hole of resumes piled on the hiring manager’s desk. Using soft, yellow font, the resume template below inverts the usual color scheme of a resume without trying too hard to be creative.

Download this template here.

9. Neat and Confident Resume Template

Similar to the Simple and Clean template in #2, this resume design by Nowpixelse communicates a truly professional tone. The template’s muted colors work very well with the side panel layered over the top header.

Download this template here.

10. Inbound Marketing Resume Template

Here’s another resume template dedicated to the digital marketer. This sheet offers all the inbound marketing language you need to express your values as a passionate, brand-loyal professional. Similar to a few other templates on this list, it also uses just a dash of vibrant color in the applicant’s name at the top (where it matters most).

Download this template here.

11. Smart and Professional Resume Template

This is another sharp template that offers a basic but confident design for any professional. The warm-colored panel on the right-hand side is pre-formatted for a written profile, where you can write a summary of your background or a form letter to each employer. Just be sure to personalize this messaging to each new recipient so it works for the job you’re applying to. This template is available on Freesumes, and is free to users once they share the page to Facebook or Twitter.

Download this template here.

12. Spick and Span Resume Template

There isn’t a better name for the template below. The Spick and Span resume might be the cleanest-looking sheet on this list. It uses boldface, all-caps, and gray typeface to structure various headers of the document differently and maximize the hiring manager’s reading experience. And all that minimalism makes the professional headshot at the top pop off the page.

Download this template here.

13. Timeline-Style Resume Template

Hloom’s Timeline template is a super simple but creative way to tell your story. You can convey your progression through various jobs you’ve held on one side of the vertical line, and more static elements of your background — such as skills and education — on the other.

Download this template here.

14. Content Production Resume Template

This basic resume template is suited for content producers at all stages in their career. By spreading out the header and “Skills” text horizontally, the resume below fits a lot of crucial information comfortably on one page (of course, it also comes with a second page if you need it).

Download this template here.

15. Fresh Resume Template

This is perhaps the most imaginative of all the Word-based resume templates on this list — with both a skills meter and a comic headshot. The template was designed by Venkata Naresh and comes with 12 different versions of the design you see below. Have you created a Bitmoji of yourself? Do you think your employer would find it creative? Match the template and add it as your photo.

Download this template here.

16. CV Resume Template

The curriculum vitae-style resume below flips the typical two-column resume so the basic applicant information is listed across the right side, rather than the left. Feel free to change the color of this sidebar in Microsoft Word if dark-red isn’t your thing — the template can pull off any color you wish.

Download this template here.

17. Goldenrod Resume Template

This template, also offered on Freesumes, dares to use yellow as the dominant color — but doesn’t sacrifice professionalism in the process. The document anchors the education section to a thick, bright banner across the bottom, but you can likely change this to a skills section with some simple editing in Microsoft Word.

Download this template here.

18. Resume Template With Personal Endorsements

This resume template has quite a flashy header — no photography pun intended — but it’s not just for photographers. What makes this resume unique is the space for references on the lower right-hand side. Does your field need others to vouch for your experience? This resume gives you room for three solid recommendations.

Download this template here.

19. Creative Resume Template

The last one on our list was designed by the stationery experts at MOO and is offered for download by Microsoft. Simple but vibrant, this template hugs the text with an artistic header and footer — great for recent graduates who need to fill empty space on the page.

Download this template here.

Remember, once you’ve finished personalizing your resume, you’re not ready to submit an application yet. To ensure your resume’s format stays the same for everyone who receives it, save the document as a PDF. Best case scenario? Even the hiring manager won’t believe your resume came from Word.

Earlier today, I saw a tweet that impressively captured the space between a proverbial rock and hard place where many marketers and small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) might find themselves.

The tweet was part of an ongoing conversation in response to a recent New York Times investigation of never-before-reported events that led to Facebook’s high-profile crises and missteps over the past few years. 

One commenter suggested that advertisers — those who use Facebook’s ad targeting tools to build and promote their businesses — leave the network, effectively cutting off the company’s largest revenue stream.

To which another commenter essentially asked, “But where else is there for them to go?”

This story is not, however, about the pros and cons of advertisers leaving Facebook. Rather, it’s a story about moves made by other companies to create new platforms for businesses to establish a broader — or perhaps alternative — digital presence.

One such company is Google, who earlier this week announced its new Google My Business app. Here’s a look at the app — and why it represents a pivotal moment in marketing.

The Google My Business App

The road to this app began a few weeks ago, when Google introduced a new feature to Maps that allowed Android users to follow a business on that platform. 

On the consumer side, the development was positioned as a way for users to keep up with existing favorites and new establishments alike on Maps for Android and mobile search. (When or if these features will be available for iOS users is unclear.)

Image source: Google

On the flip side, the follow feature allowed these businesses to create a profile and — even if they weren’t going to open for another three months — become discoverable. 

These features were and are part of the broader suite of tools within Google My Business, which is what allows businesses to create and maintain these profiles that appear on Maps and mobile search results. Now, Google has released a mobile app for managing these profiles.

In a way, the Google My Business app could be likened to a hybrid of Yelp and Facebook Business Page tools — among its features are those that allow businesses to respond to reviews, send and receive messages from customers, and see who’s following them on a dedicated “Customers” tab.

Image source: Apple

Otherwise, the Google My Business app offers similar tools to those of other social networks — namely, Facebook — that allow businesses to upload photos, promote offers, create events, and view engagement analytics.

Image source: Apple

A Key Period in the History of Digital Marketing

What might be the most interesting aspect of Google’s announcement and launch of this app is its timing.

As we mentioned previously, the Google My Business app was officially unveiled on the same day the New York Times published a rather damning report on the inner workings of executive leadership within Facebook — which is one of the most commonly-used digital marketing tools among small businesses.

This story has been 6 months in the making. It started with a question: What happened inside Facebook over the last 3 years, and what did top executives, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, do in the wake of crisis after crisis battering the company? https://t.co/N6kaDNqfj6

— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf)
November 14, 2018

As one of the report’s authors, Sheera Frenkel, notes in the tweet above, it followed years of controversy faced by the company.

Facebook’s ongoing period of embroilment is somewhat compounded by diminishing user trust in the company among users, slowing growth in its two most lucrative markets (the U.S. and Canada), and a drop in Business Page engagement by as much as 50% over the past year.

When looking at all of these combined factors, it raises the question: Is this a catalyst for other networks and platforms, like Google, to build new platforms for businesses and advertisers to reach customers?

Possibly — but some say that these new platforms would build on a foundation of business tools that Facebook has been building and growing for a while.

“Facebook has really been the leader in solutions for very small businesses over the past eight years,” says HubSpot Principal Marketing Manager Marcus Andrews. “Its Business Pages and ad solutions have really resonated with the early entrepreneur.”

But now, Andrews says, the landscape has shifted — and calls for both Facebook and other potential providers in the digital marketing space to approach thoughtfully.

“A lot of factors have helped Facebook achieve this leadership position, but seems like the company might have to slow down and start to be more deliberate about the choices it makes — for good reason,” Andrews explains. “At the end of the day, that does give some of its biggest competitors an opportunity, and I think entrepreneurs will go to wherever they see the most opportunity.”

Featured image credit: Google

There’s a common misbelief that business growth is only about increasing numbers. It’s a lie that businesses should only focus on increasing the number of email subscribers, qualified leads and revenue. It’s a lie that businesses have to be obsessed with metrics to solve for their bottom line.

For agencies, this ruthless mentality comes at the expense of your clients. Your clients are humans, after all, and no one wants to be treated like a number in a spreadsheet. Focusing only on increasing numbers lends itself to agencies who make short-term decisions that sacrifice long-term client relationships, trust, and success.

We believe there’s a better way to grow your agency.

The best agencies grow because of the success of their clients. They realize that their client’s success is inextricably linked with their own. Metrics-driven growth cannot be the only, ultimate goal. Chasing growth should not come at the cost of compromising your (or your client’s) values.

Fortunately, there’s a way for your agency to grow better. Here, we’ll cover a few of our biggest tips to ensure your agency is able to grow with your clients.

1. Focus on the big picture.

To ensure your agency is growing as your clients grow, it’s critical you focus on the big picture. For instance, how can you help train your client’s employees so they can become self-sufficient and independent in their own growth?

Additionally, perhaps your client needs guidance when it comes to re-imagining future goals. Rather than looking at goals as numbers on a graph, consider how you can help your client dream bigger — which will undoubtedly payoff for your own agency in the long run, as well. Agencies should become “growth partners” for their clients and build long-term marketing, sales, and customer service strategies to help their client’s business grow over time. 

2. Create a client-centric culture.

It’s time that agencies change the conversation with clients from simply delivering marketing projects, to being viewed as a long-term growth partner who solves for their client’s success. It’s time for agencies to center their businesses on the Customer Code.

The Customer Code is a shared set of principles about how to build an agency that clients love. It’s not about what marketing projects you deliver for clients, but how you get the job done. Growing better means removing any friction in your client’s business model to make client relationships as delightful as possible.

Additionally, a client-centric culture can help your employees’ workplace satisfaction. Agency life is hard. Scope creep is real, and employees get overworked, which can lead to low retention rates. High employee turnover makes delivering high quality services that much more challenging.

Hiring at agencies is a universal problem. According to the 2018 Agency Growth Report, almost 70% of agencies report having trouble finding the right talent.

Source: HubSpot’s 2018 Agency Growth Report

If agencies are centered on their clients’ success, then clients are happier. And if clients are happier, your employees feel like their making an impact and are happier, too. 

Many agencies struggle with finding new clients. According to WordStream’s State of Internet Marketing Agency 2017 Report, 39% of agencies said their biggest challenge is obtaining new clients.

If marketing agencies reposition themselves as a long-term growth partner with their clients, those relationships (and deal size) will naturally increase. And, if existing client engagements are able to grow in size, your agency doesn’t have to consistently find new clients to maintain or grow revenue. A win, win. 

Growing better is about making your clients and employees more successful, building relationships by doing the right thing, and focusing on the long-term, even when it’s not the easiest path.

3. Ask for client feedback and act on it.

Agencies with a growth mindset are eager to ask for feedback from clients to make their clients even more successful. This can take many forms — client satisfaction surveys, one-on-one calls with the decision maker at your client’s company, or even team-wide feedback sessions after a big campaign launch.

To illustrate the importance of “Ask for feedback and act on it”, let’s take a look at an example. One Fire is a HubSpot Agency Partner based in Illinois, and has a client that sells compost turners.

One Fire won this client and went to work building out an inbound marketing strategy. When auditing the client’s current strategy, One Fire determined that their website didn’t have consistent branding or optimal conversion paths.

However, the client had recently worked with a different agency on their website, and wasn’t ready for a full redesign.

One Fire continued with the engagement, and delivered new content and campaigns to drive traffic to the site. After the engagement, One Fire held a feedback session to learn if the client was satisfied with their work. Unsurprisingly, the client felt their outdated and unorganized website didn’t allow them to fully leverage the content One Fire was creating for them.

So, what did One Fire do? They redesigned their website for free. That’s unheard of! Initially, One Fire knew the website had the potential to be a problem for their client, but they weren’t allowed the opportunity to fix it. Normally, a website redesign is a service for which they’d charge thousands of dollars. However, One Fire knew this was the right thing to do for their client. By generously offering a website redesign at no cost, One Fire was able to build long-term trust with their client.

Without the feedback session at the end of the engagement, One Fire could have lost this retainer client and never known why. Incorporating regular feedback loops with your clients is a simple, practical way to bring the Customer Code to your agency’s culture.

What does “growing better” look like for other agency owners?

Without a doubt, supporting your client’s success will help your agency grow. One Fire’s story is one featured in a new video series, launching today. Agency owners are sharing their stories about how they’ve embedded the Customer Code into their agency’s cultures.

Register now for the three-part video series. You’ll learn how these agencies owners are helping their clients grow better.

Editor’s note: This is the second post in an 11-part series on the HubSpot Customer Code. You can subscribe to the full series here.

Your time is precious. So is your customer’s.

We know this is true, but we still somehow feel okay about stealing another person’s time and attention when we’re in a business context.

Wait…stealing? Really? 

We don’t think of aggressive sales and marketing tactics as stealing. But, what’s the word for when someone takes something from you, that you value (like your time) without your permission and gives you nothing in return?

I think the word is “stealing.”

And the end result of all this attention theft is that customers don’t trust us. Globally, only 3% of people say they trust sales and marketing professionals. That’s two meager percentage points above politicians and car salesman — ouch!

When a company reaches out to people without permission, 85% of consumers say their opinion of that company goes down:

The people who were on your “target” list of great potential customers are now less likely to buy from you in the future because you didn’t earn their attention, you stole it.

Evidence of this low opinion and lack of trust is everywhere. Salespeople and marketers have the dubious honor of spawning an entire cottage industry of technology designed to keep us out of our prospects’ lives:

• Ad blockers
• Mass unsubscribe tools
• Companies that exist just to guard our time against robocallers
• Apps to protect people from cookie gathering

It’s as if people are installing home security on their attention.

Earlier this year, the European Union introduced sweeping new legislation, GDPR, to protect consumers from aggressive sales and marketing tactics.

People want their governments to protect them from attention theft.

Now, I’m convinced that most salespeople and marketers know the difference. We know that:

• Ads that are delightful and entertaining earn our attention. Ads that block and interrupt steal it.
• Content that informs and helps earns our attention. Distracting clickbait steals it.
• Forms that ask for information in exchange for high-value education earn our attention. Forms that ask for information in exchange for low-quality content steal it.
• Emails that ask for permission earn our attention. Emails that show up unrequested (and with no unsubscribe link!) steal it.
• Sales calls that seek to understand earn our attention. Sales calls that seek to close at all costs steal it.

Salespeople and marketers know these things, but the pressure from above to grow bigger, faster, and at all costs is often too intense to put customer needs ahead of business needs.

Our team feels this pressure too.

HubSpot has long been an advocate for earning attention. Brian and I founded this company on the idea that is it’s better, more effective, and more cost-efficient to attract people with an inbound approach like providing quality content vs. interrupting them with annoying ads.

But over the last year we sat down and really examined our practices throughout the customer experience and found some painful areas where we didn’t walk the inbound walk on earning attention.

We hired an MBA intern to figure out how frequently we were emailing prospects. In the end they told us it was impossible to tell the average number of emails, but in the process they discovered a few edge cases where some prospects were being emailed as often as 100 times in a week!

Yes, we-a-culpa too.

Sure, these people gave us permission to email them, but there’s no way they anticipated or were asking to get that many. Was anyone on our marketing team trying to be rude? Of course not! We have a team of marketers working hard to hit their goals, and help their colleagues in sales hit theirs. But, it turned out that even with the best intentions, we still weren’t living up to our commitment to solve for the customer.

Fixing the problem didn’t happen at the individual level. We didn’t just tell our marketing team to stop sending so many emails, that wouldn’t have fixed much. It took HubSpot leaders making an investment in a customer marketing team and centralizing all customer-facing email. This decision required our leadership team to allocate hours toward solving for the customer–even if it meant delaying lead-generating and revenue-generating work, and restructuring our team and processes.

But we didn’t stop there. After a lot of self-reflection we sat down and wrote The Customer Code. We believe that it’s not about what you sell, but how you sell, and The Customer Code holds us to the standard of building a company that customers love.

The first tenet of The Customer Code is: Earn my attention, don’t steal it.

We gave ourselves an 8 out of 10. We’re doing some things right here:

• Creating valuable, search-friendly content
• Teaching Academy classes that help people get better at their jobs and improve their career options
• Hosting events like INBOUND that create opportunities for all of us to learn together

We should be good at these things. After all, they’re at the heart of inbound. But, as you saw with email example, we still have room for improvement. In addition to fixing that, we want to:

• Make it easier to opt out or tells us how you want to engage
• Make sure our ads are relevant and targeted
• Publish less but higher quality content

By improving these things, we create trust with our audience. They like us more. They come back. We’ve earned their attention. And this reduces friction in the customer experience.

You can absolutely grow by stealing attention, companies have built massive businesses by doing so, but you grow better by earning it. That’s the kind of growth I’m interested in.

This post is part 2 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: 

When I first heard the term “Bitcoin mining”, I imagined a 49er dressed in tattered western garb, swinging a pickaxe at a huge data server and yelling “BOYS, I FOUND US SOME BITCOIN!”.

Needless to say, my initial understanding of Bitcoin mining was completely off the mark (although I secretly wish it was true). Bitcoin is entirely digital, so unlike other mineable materials such as gold or coal, swinging a pickaxe at the ground won’t dig up any bitcoins. You actually have to use a mining rig, which consists of mining software and hardware.

The term “mining” is also really just a clever metaphor for the intricate proof-of-work system that gives people bitcoins in exchange for validating the cryptocurrency’s transactions. In other words, the reason why people mine Bitcoin and how they actually do it is complicated. Fortunately for you, though, we wrote an in-depth explanation of what Bitcoin mining exactly is, why people do it, and how you can mine the cryptocurrency.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

To truly understand how Bitcoin mining works, you first need to know the basics of Blockchain, which is the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. The technology acts like a public, digital ledger of every single transaction made in Bitcoin, recording each transaction of the cryptocurrency into a database, copying the database, and sending copies to every computer, or node, in its network.

To make sure this ledger’s true state is verified and updated, each node in its network cross-references and communicates with each other to see if all the copies are the same. This publicizes and validates every single transaction of Bitcoin. It also decentralizes the cryptocurrency, removing the need for a financial middleman to verify its transactions, like a bank.

If a node notices one of the ledger’s copies isn’t the same, due to a manipulation of a transaction’s record after the fact, the network rejects the transaction. This security protocol halts people from altering the ledger to spend bitcoins more than once and prevents them from sending someone else’s digital funds to themselves.

To update a blockchain with these new, verified transactions, a new block, which is a bundle of these transactions, needs to be created and added to the chain, which is all the blocks linked together. But to create and add a block to the chain, the block needs to be validated by the answer to a complex cryptographic puzzle. So Bitcoin rewards the individuals, groups, or businesses who are first to solve the puzzle with a payout of the cryptocurrency.

These validators, who use mining software and hardware to earn Bitcoin payouts, are called miners. Once a miner figures out the correct answer to the cryptographic puzzle, which is verified by each node in the network, they earn the block reward and a new block is created and added to the blockchain. Each block has a unique code, called a “hash”, on one of its sides and the hash of the previous block in the chain on its other side, linking all the blocks together in a chronological and permanent fashion.

For Bitcoin miners, the block reward for validating one megabyte worth of Bitcoin transactions is currently 12.5 tokens. With one token’s value hovering at around $6,374 today, a successful miner could rake in approximately $79,675.

Validation methods like mining are called proof-of-work or PoW, and they’re one of the reasons why Bitcoin and Blockchain are considered so innovative. Incentivizing miners with payouts of Bitcoin to validate its transactions makes the cryptocurrency safe, secure, and trustworthy to use. Mining also releases bitcoins into circulation, which increases the odds that consumers and merchants will be more willing to adopt, accept, and trade it, boosting the cryptocurrency’s value.

But even though mining is economically beneficial to miners, consumers, merchants, and Bitcoin itself, digging for it can actually harm the environment — Bitcoin miners are predicted to consume more electricity than the entire country of Argentina by the end of the year.

Since there’s a limited supply of Bitcoin, they don’t want to issue the supply of the cryptocurrency too quickly, so they make the cryptographic puzzles that validate each block increasingly more difficult to solve. This allows them to cap the number of blocks that miners can package and link to the chain each day. As a result, the more challenging these cryptographic puzzles get, the more electricity miners have to use to mine Bitcoin.

Is Bitcoin Mining Worth It?

Despite the profit potential of mining Bitcoin, the energy costs associated with Bitcoin mining and your mining hardware’s upfront costs can actually do harm to your bank account. Picking the wrong hardware or not having access to a lot of cheap electricity could cost you more money to mine Bitcoin than the maximum number of funds you can earn.

So before you invest in a mining rig to mine Bitcoin by yourself, make sure to use a Bitcoin mining profitability calculator from websites like CryptoCompare, Buy Bitcoin Worldwide, or 99bitcoins to see if you can actually turn a profit.

If you find out you can’t make a profit mining Bitcoin by yourself, not all hope is lost. You can actually pay companies to mine the cryptocurrency for you. This service is called cloud mining and the companies who offer it own huge cryptocurrency mining facilities filled with stacks of mining rigs. All you have to do is rent a rig and they’ll start mining Bitcoin for you.

How to Mine Bitcoin

1. Hire a cloud mining company.

In the crypto community, Genesis Mining is considered the most reputable cloud mining company. Their data center is located in Iceland, so they use renewable energy sources, like geothermal energy and hydropower, to power their mining operation in a more cost-effective and cleaner way than their counterparts who solely rely on electricity.

If you want to check out other cloud mining companies, take a look at HashFlare or a cloud mining company review site, like CryptoCompare. They list most cloud mining companies’ contracts and include their length, the cryptocurrency they’ll mine, price, return on investment, profit ratio, user reviews, and ratings.

2. Pick a mining package.

After you pick a cloud mining company and sign up for a free account, you can choose between a selection of mining packages, which will all have different contract lengths, hashing power, and prices. Your package’s price depends on Bitcoin’s current market value, the cost and difficulty level to mine the cryptocurrency right now, and your preferred hash rate.

3. Select a mining pool.

Once you choose your contract, you can either mine Bitcoin on your own or mine the cryptocurrency with other Bitcoin miners in a group called a mining pool. Joining a mining pool allows you to combine your rigs together and boost your total hashing output.

You’ll have to split your block rewards with the other miners in your pool, but mining pools usually generate more block rewards for individuals than mining Bitcoin on your own. Most cloud mining companies will ask you to join a mining pool right after you choose your contract.

4. Choose a Bitcoin wallet.

To withdraw and store the bitcoins a cloud mining company has mined for you, you need to download a Bitcoin wallet, which is software that allows you to securely receive, store, and send bitcoins in the Bitcoin network.

To find the best-fit Bitcoin wallet for your specific situation, check out this blog post about the top Bitcoin wallets for 2018.

In September 2017, Amazon released a public request for proposals from cities vying to become the location for its second headquarters — setting into motion over a year of events that have caused a range of emotions and responses.

By mid-October of that year, the company had received 238 bids. By January, the list of contenders had been narrowed to 20 finalists. And starting last week, rumors were swirling that Amazon had decided months ago that it would split its second quarters — commonly dubbed “HQ2” — among two cities.

Those cities, it was officially announced this week, are Crystal City, Virginia, and Long Island City, New York.

The response has been mixed. Some officials in both locations have lauded the selection.

“I’m really excited about the potential Amazon offers,” said U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia in a statement.

“Welcome to Queens, #HQ2,” wrote New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in a tweet — only to receive a range of replies, including “NOPE, NYC doesn’t want this.”

Someone needs to explain to NYC taxpayers why we’re being forced to subsidize the corporation led by the richest man in the world & pay to push out long-time Queens residents without any legislative process.

— Alex Kotch 🔥🚲 (@alexkotch)
November 13, 2018

But in a sea of tweets, praise, and outrage, we wanted to know: How does the average internet user, perhaps representing those most likely to use Amazon, really feel about this announcement?

We had questions and set out to get as many answers as possible — so we ran a survey of over 2,500 people across the U.S., UK, and Canada. Here’s what we learned.

Many Are Unfamiliar With the Amazon HQ2 Journey

Location Awareness

For every survey question we ran, between 20-50% of respondents indicated that the question was the first they had heard of HQ2 at all.

For instance, when we posed the question — “Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would split its second headquarters — a.k.a., ‘HQ2,’ between two cities. Without looking it up, do you know which two cities were selected?” — a quarter of respondents indicated that weren’t familiar with HQ2.

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would split its second headquarters — a.k.a., “HQ2,” between two cities. Without looking it up, do you know which two cities were selected?

Otherwise, the highest number of respondents said they were aware of which two cities were selected, though the split among responses was fairly even.

Shock Factor

We found similar results when asking respondents how surprised they were with the HQ2 city selections. Again, close to a quarter of respondents said they were previously unaware of the Amazon location saga.

“Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would split its second headquarters — a.k.a., “HQ2,” between two cities. Did you find this news surprising?”

But out of those who were familiar with it, just under a third of respondents said that they were somewhat surprised by the news. Few people, it seemed, were caught completely off-guard by the cities selected for HQ2.

Location Expectations

For respondents who were surprised, we wanted to know which cities they previously thought might be chosen as the new home for HQ2. 

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would split its second headquarters — a.k.a., “HQ2,” between two cities. Prior to this announcement, which location were you expecting Amazon to select?

Adjusting for the percentage of respondents who said they were unfamiliar with HQ2 prior to seeing this question, we found that the highest number indicated they expected Toronto to be selected.

However, that could be due to the fact that a somewhat disproportionate number of respondents from Canada — nearly 40% — selected Toronto as their answer.

Otherwise, the second-highest number of respondents said they believed New York would be chosen, aligning with the general lack of surprise we saw among respondents in previous questions.

Overall Impact

Finally, we wanted to measure how people feel about what type of impact HQ2 might have on the locations where it’s slated to be located.

First, we asked people to measure how positive or negative the overall impact of the presence of HQ2 in the cities selected could be.

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would split its second headquarters — a.k.a., “HQ2,” between two cities. Do you think that HQ2 will have a positive or negative impact on the locations selected?

In general, respondents indicate a positive outlook for the cities where Amazon’s HQ2 will be located, with about half answering that the impact will be beneficial in some way.

As for what the specifics of those impacts look like, we also asked respondents what sort of outcomes they expect to see as a result of Amazon moving into these locations.

Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it would split its second headquarters — a.k.a., “HQ2,” between two cities. What sort of impact, both positive and negative, do you think HQ2 will have on the locations selected?

Most respondents believe that job creation will be the highest (positive) impact area, with 49% indicating that they think the opening of HQ2 will create employment opportunities across a range of skill sets and career progress.

The Impact on the Marketing and SMB World

Amazon isn’t alone, however, in its wooing of east coast talent. Not long after the HQ2 locations were announced, Google CFO Ruth Porat said at a Wall Street Journal event that the search giant would double its workforce in New York City over the next decade.

It’s a move that prompts further questions — such as, “Why all the attention at the opposite end of the U.S. from Silicon Valley?” 

“Not everybody—big surprise—wants to live in Silicon Valley,” Porat said at the time, “so we want to make sure we have the opportunity to build vibrant centers across the country.”

But ask HubSpot VP of Marketing Meghan Keaney Anderson, and you’ll learn that tech talent on the east coast isn’t a new concept.

“There is a rising tide factor here. The east coast was already a magnet for tech talent,” Keaney Anderson explains. “Amazon moving here further solidifies that and could bring more people into the region.”

So how does that bode for the small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) in the areas where these tech giants will be growing, and the marketers often responsible for crafting their messages to this increasingly competitive talent pool?

Is it a positive development, in that there’s more talent to go around? Or will it become more challenging for SMBs to attract good talent when newly adjacent to Big Tech?

It all goes back to that messaging, Keaney Anderson says.

“If you’re in Amazon’s geographical shadow, you are going to need to put some thought into your culture and what you have to offer that is unique to talent,” she suggests. “Not everyone wants to work for a giant company, even a really interesting one like Amazon. You need to decide what your differentiation is, as an SMB, to offer recruits.”

HubSpot VP of Marketing Jon Dick agrees that SMBs should lean into that variation of talent.

“Having more jobs open, regardless of where they are, does create more competition. But that can be a good thing,” he explains. “Large tech companies and SMBs attract different people.”

“Unriddled” is HubSpot’s weekly digest of the tech headlines you need to know. We give you the top tech stories in a quick, scannable way and break it all down. It’s tech news: explained.

Unriddled: The Tech News You Need

1. Amazon Officially Announces HQ2 Locations

Confirming rumors that began swirling last week, Amazon officially announced yesterday that its second headquarters — better known as HQ2 — will be split between two locations: Crystal City, VA (considered by some to be a neighborhood of Washington, D.C.) and Long Island City in the Queens neighborhood of New York.

The announcement comes as no surprise to those who were saying for months that Amazon was likely to select the Washington, D.C. area as an HQ2 location — such as NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway, who earlier this year pointed out the proximity of Crystal City to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s home in the area, as well as his preexisting ownership of the Washington Post. 

Amazon selects New York City and Northern Virginia for new headquarters https://t.co/VRGeYdpoBy

— Amazon News (@amazonnews)
November 13, 2018

U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia also commented on the Crystal City selection.

“As a former Governor, now Senator, but also as a former technology executive, I’m really excited about the potential Amazon offers not only to Northern Virginia,” Warner said in a statement, “but the whole capital region and the entire Commonwealth.”

As for the Long Island City location, Amazon notes that its selection is related to the area’s “diverse community with a unique blend of cultural institutions, arts organizations, new and converted housing, restaurants, bars, breweries, waterfront parks, hotels, academic institutions, and small and large tech sector and industrial businesses.” Read full story >>

2. An Unsend Feature Is Coming to Messenger

Facebook has confirmed, via an iOS app store description, that users will soon be able to “remove a message from a chat thread after it’s been sent.”

“If you accidentally send the wrong photo, incorrect information, or message the wrong thread,” the description reads, “you can easily correct it by removing the message within 10 minutes of sending it.”

This teaser of the new feature — which is said to be “coming soon” — arrives after months of speculation, and follows Facebook’s admittance that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had the option to delete messages after sending them. Read full story >>

3. Twitter Follower Counts Drop (Again)

After alerting users that their follower counts might drop in July, Twitter has once again said that, thanks to a bug, these previously “locked” followers reappeared and have once again been removed.

According to Reuters, the bug caused these accounts to be “briefly added back [to] follower accounts” for a “few accounts.”

Twitter itself lost about 7.8 million followers in the initial July purge, got 2.36 million of them back by October, and lost another 2.4 million on Friday. Read full story >>

4. Google’s AI Is Getting to Work

Distinguished Speakers

Earlier this week, it was announced that Google would open source its artificial intelligence that plays a vital role in distinguishing one human voice from another.

The formal term for this distinction, “speaker diarization,” describes the process of being able to tell different voices apart in audio where many people might be speaking at once. It’s “an important part of speech recognition systems,” the company says, playing a vital role in “solving the problem of ‘who spoke when’.”

Image source: Google

According to VentureBeat, the newly open-sourced AI can tell voices apart in this situations with up to 92% accuracy. Read full story >>

Smart Pictures

Also in the world of Google AI, The New York Times is using the company’s technology to help make its archive of photos (which date back to the 1870s) “smarter” — that is, to help recognize and translate text that describe the photos.

In other words, writes Stephen Shankland of CNET, the NYT is using Google AI to “turn a historic archive of more than 5 million photos into digital data that’ll appear in the newspaper’s features about history.” Also a future possibility, Shankland writes, is exploring AI technology for object recognition in the photos. Read full story >>

Help Me Finish That Thought

Think of it as a visual-content autofill. Google announced this week that its AI technology will also be applied to Android devices to suggest GIF images, emoji, and stickers that it believes fit into your conversation.

Image source: Google

Starting yesterday, Google said, phones using the Android operating system and the company’s Gboard will use machine learning to know which of these visuals that best fit the specific context of a conversation.

“With thousands of emoji and stickers, and an endless number of GIFs, it can sometimes take awhile to find the perfect way to say ‘I love you,’ ‘hooray,’ or anything else you’re trying to communicate,” writes Gboard Product Lead Angana Ghosh. “This makes it faster and easier to share your #feelings and your glowing personality with whoever you’re chatting with.” Read full story >>

5. Apples to Amazon

Yes — there’s more Amazon news. Last week, it was revealed that Amazon reached an agreement with Apple to carry more of the latter’s products on its website, including the latest models of iPads, iPhones, and the Apple Watch. The product selection will not, however, include Apple’s HomePod smart speaker, perhaps due to its potential competition with Amazon’s own Echo smart speaker products.

But, there’s a catch. This new product expansion means that independent vendors selling refurbished Apple products on Amazon’s marketplace will now face high restrictions. Their listings, explains CNET‘s Ben Fox Rubin, will be removed after January 4 of next year, and they’ll “have to apply with Apple to become authorized resellers on Amazon.” Read full story >>

6. Marketers, Take Note: Samsung Is Going All-In on Voice and Now Is the Time to Prepare

At last week’s Samsung Developer Conference, the name of the game was connectivity — and voice assistant Bixby is what’s tying it all together. Here’s what marketers should know about it. Read full story >>

7. Meet the People Building the TV Controlled by Your Brain

Imagine a TV that’s controlled only by the brain. Meet the people developing that technology today — and discover the future they envision for it. Read full story >>

8. The Voice Search Barometer: Where Do Users Stand? [New Data]

Studies say that more and more online transactions are taking place via voice. But what do these transactions look like — and how many users are really adapting voice? Read full story >>

9. The What, Where, and How of Video Consumption [New Data]

With new online video products popping up with increased frequency, we wanted to know how people really prefer to watch. Read full story >>

Featured image source: Amazon

A jam-packed webinar is a beautiful thing. But you know what’s better than filling your funnel with webinar leads? Converting those leads into customers.

The key to turning webinar leads into sales is giving your prospects a clear path forward. Too often, we focus on creating great webinar content and hosting an engaging webinar, which are both important, but we don’t spend enough time on the next step.

According to research from InsideSales.com, 73% of marketing and sales leaders say webinars are one of the best ways to generate high-quality leads. With this in mind, you don’t want to let these valuable leads languish in post-webinar purgatory. Here are nine simple ways to convert more webinar leads into sales.

9 Easy Ways to Convert Webinar Leads into Sales

1. Poll your audience to see who’s ready to buy.

At GoToWebinar, we always use multiple polls during our webinars. They grab attendees’ attention and prompt them to take part in the action. Poll responses provide handy insights you can use to segment your audience by need, interest level, industry, and more, too.

Polling your attendees during the webinar will also help you find out if they’re interested in learning more about your company or talking to a sales representative. Bear in mind, this technique is not suited for top-of-the-funnel webinars that are unrelated to your product. You don’t want to hit attendees with a “buy now” message when they are still in the discovery phase.

Additionally, polling your attendees during the webinar — rather than polling them in a post-webinar email — will yield a much higher response rate. If attendees respond in the affirmative, pass them to your sales team for follow-up.

If you get a lot of positive poll responses, take time at the end of your webinar to demo your product or show your attendees how they can purchase it. Those who aren’t interested can hop off and those who are interested will appreciate the extra info.

2. Send a post-webinar survey.

Sending attendees a quick survey right after the webinar is a great way to see if your content resonated with them, capture additional attendee insights, and gauge attendee interest in your product.

If you didn’t ask them these questions during the webinar, ask them who’s ready to take the next step in a post-webinar survey. You can also use survey responses to segment your webinar attendees and tailor your follow up marketing messages.

3. Involve your sales team in the webinar.

Collaboration between marketing and sales sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to overlook. To involve the sales team in your webinars, make sure they know what webinars are on the calendar and what topic they’ll cover. This will help the sales team prepare more thorough follow-up communication with webinar leads and keep your marketing efforts aligned with your company’s sales goals.

At GoToWebinar, we recommend going a step further and having sales reps join the webinar. They can even help run the webinar, fielding and answering attendee questions.

By taking part in the webinar, sales reps will get familiar with the topic. They’ll also notice that most attendees are engaged, which will make them all the more motivated to follow-up. This sets the groundwork to seamlessly pass the top webinar leads from marketing to sales.

4. Follow up within 24 hours.

While it’s still fresh in their minds, send out your first email follow-up to webinar attendees and no-shows within 24 hours of the webinar. Your audience expects to receive the webinar recording and presentation slides, regardless if they showed up or not.

Prospects also love when companies include a link to a follow-up blog post that summarizes the webinar content and answers some of the top attendee questions. Sure, it takes extra planning and a quick turnaround to do this, but you’re fostering a relationship with these prospects — this type of targeted content is key to converting your audience down the line.

5. Identify hot, warm, and cold leads.

You don’t have to use all three lead categories, but at the very least, divide your leads into hot leads that are ready for sales and ones that need to be nurtured.

We’ve already discussed two ways to identify hot leads — using a poll or survey — but you also have access to a lot of other data that can help you pinpoint where leads are in their buyer’s journey.

Look at data like:

• Registration responses: go beyond only asking for name and email on your webinar registration form. Ask more probing questions that will help segment and personalize your marketing.
• Attendee interest rating: if you’re using a solution like GoToWebinar or Zoom Video Webinar, you will have webinar reports that display your attendees’ engagement level over the course of the webinar.
• Previous marketing engagement: this includes web behavior, content downloads, and prior webinar activity.

6. Send personalized follow-ups to hot leads.

Passing on your sales-ready webinar leads with specific instructions for how to follow up will increase the odds your sales team will close these prospects. You could also go a step further and provide your sales reps with a customizable email template. The easier you make their job, the more likely they’ll hit it out of the park.

This follow-up messaging should relate to the webinar content, provide value, and offer help. It’s also effective to personalize these messages as much as possible based on what you know about each prospect.

7. Nurture warm and cold leads.

Even if some of your webinar leads aren’t ready to buy today, you don’t want to waste the opportunity of closing them when they do become ready to buy. Putting warm and cold webinar leads into your existing nurture tracks based on your usual segmentation will boost the chances that they’ll contact your company when they’re thinking about purchasing your solution.

Alternatively, you can create a webinar-specific nurturing track for these leads, if you have the resources. As you develop your nurturing content, think about what stage of the buying cycle the various segments of your attendees are in and identify other key content assets you can offer in your nurturing stream that build on your webinar content.

The length of the nurturing stream will depend on your sales cycle, but four to six weeks is a good place to start.

8. Retarget your webinar leads.

Creating retargeting campaigns for your webinar leads will keep your brand top of mind. Again, you can segment these audiences based off their responses, interest level, and previous marketing engagement, but the point is to keep your leads warm and move them through each stage of the journey.

Remember, retargeting ads should complement your other marketing tactics. You don’t want to email webinar leads with a discount offer and retarget them with an awareness ad at the same time.

9. Always empower leads to take action.

It’s always better to make it easy for your prospects to take the next step in their buyer’s journey. Even if your leads aren’t quite ready to become customers, give them the ability to keep learning with additional resources and ways to engage. Whether it’s during the webinar or in your follow-up emails, including a clear call to action and highlighting its benefit will entice your audience to take the next step with your business.

Webinar leads are some of your best leads.

A recent GoToWebinar study on content engagement revealed that people are willing to spend more time with a webinar than any other type of content. These are some of your most engaged leads, so make sure you have a plan to convert them. If you’re not ready for all these tactics, just start with a couple and you could see your webinar conversions gradually take off.