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10 Digital Style Guide Examples from Famous Companies such as Apple, Google & Starbucks

Website Design Examples
March 22, 2022/by
10 Digital Style Guide Examples from Famous Companies such as Apple, Google & Starbucks If you've ever wondered how designers at Apple defined every little element in iOS as they were building it, then you're in the right place. As technology is constantly evolving, web design continues to become more formalized. Web designers and developers need to create code that can translate seamlessly from PC to mobile devices, make easy to understand site navigation, and innovate other site capabilities — these are all elements that companies standardize in digital style guides. Digital style guides have become more useful to a brand’s overall image and memorability on the web because they set the expectations and standards for company web display. They're especially important for websites and products that need to produce top-notch user experiences. In this post, we’ll dive into what digital style guides are in detail and show you some impressive examples from famous companies that have done them well. This type of style guide is to be treated as a manual that sets design standards for a company's digital presence. Its key purpose is to create a universal design style for the brand and ensure consistency across all channels and mediums, where you establish your logo, color palette, typography, imagery guidelines, and so on. Unlike brand style guides that encapsulate a company’s logo, mission statement, buyer personas and tone of voice, web design style guides are centered on digital presentation like UX/UI. But, as a UX designer...
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Consumer Behavior Statistics You Should Know in 2022 [New Data]

The Buyer's Journey
March 22, 2022/by
Consumer Behavior Statistics You Should Know in 2022 How consumers make purchasing decisions has changed greatly in just a few months. For instance, the pandemic has shifted some buyers more online. In recent years, there has also been a push for more transparent and sustainable practices in brands. But what else is there? Well, that’s what we’re covering here. In this article, you’ll learn some interesting statistics regarding consumer behavior that you should know in 2022 and what that means for your marketing strategy. 1. Consumers buy more online. According to a 2022 GWI Commerce Report, there has been a 36% increase in the number of Americans doing most of their household or grocery shopping online. During the 2021 holiday season, 46% of consumers shopped exclusively online according to a Jungle Scout report. Why? The top reasons are lower prices, low-cost shipping, and convenience. Back in 2020, NRF’s Winter 2020 Consumer View reported that 83% of shoppers say convenience while shopping is more important compared to five years ago. That was before the pandemic, so that percentage has likely increased. Image Source This shift has forced some brick-and-mortar stores to consider how to implement an ecommerce strategy, whether it’s launching their own online stores or partnering with third-party platforms. There’s also a bigger need for a robust online presence. While this was always recommended for brands, nowadays, it’s vital for their long-term growth. 2. Reviews and user-generated content are more influential than ever. Today, it seems like...
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How to Prepare an Advertising Plan [Free Template]

Advertising, behavioral targeting
March 18, 2022/by
How to Prepare an Advertising Plan Turning an idea for an advertising campaign into reality isn’t exactly simple, but it always begins with creating a concrete and detailed advertising plan. Your plan will help you present a clear path for return on investment (ROI), get buy-in from leadership, and share your proposal with relevant stakeholders.  Follow Along With HubSpot's Free Ad Plan Template   In this post, we’ll explain what an advertising plan is and highlight the major sections you should include in your advertising plan so you can guarantee your next campaign is a success.  Advertising Plan Template Pro Tip: HubSpot created the following advertising plan template for you to download so you can organize your advertising campaign — it's broken down into relevant sections and can be shared with your stakeholders when it’s completed. In it you'll find: Advertising campaign outline,  Advertising campaign timeline, and  Advertising budget template. Download this Advertising Planning Kit Now let's dive into how you can prep your ad plan.  How to Prepare an Advertising Plan Before you jump into your tactical advertising ideas, the first step in the process is to provide those reading your ad plan with a high-level overview of your initiative. 1. Provide an overview of your advertising plan. Specify the following elements so anyone reading your plan will have a basic understanding of what your campaign is and what you're trying to accomplish: Campaign Name: Make the campaign...
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How to Craft a Successful Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy
March 17, 2022/by
How to Craft a Successful Customer-Centric Marketing Strategy When was the last time a business fully addressed your wants and needs as a customer? For me, it was around the holidays, while searching for the perfect gift to give a friend who is a huge fan of the video game series "The Legend of Zelda." My online search for the right gift led me to STL Ocarina, a company that sells ocarinas — the musical wind instruments that have been around for thousands of years and a staple item in the Legend of Zelda series. Clearly, the company knew many of its customers were like me — either fans of the games or shopping for fans of the games — so it made finding Zelda-themed ocarinas on its website simple. Just hover over the tab that says "Our Ocarinas," and the first category to pop up under the tab says "For Legend of Zelda Fans." From there, I was taken to a page displaying their Zelda-themed ocarinas and the option to include a songbook of the game’s music. After purchasing the ocarina and songbook, I remembered my friend doesn’t know how to play the ocarina and the songbook may not have tips for beginners. Luckily, STL Ocarina’s confirmation email included a YouTube instructional video and links to online resources that will help him get started. STL Ocarina serves as a great example of what customer-centric marketing looks like. During the few minutes I was on the company’s website,...
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11 Talent Acquisition Strategies to Find the Best Employees

Human Resources
March 17, 2022/by
11 Talent Acquisition Strategies to Find the Best Employees It can be difficult to find the ideal candidate for a specific position — in fact, in 2021, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring – a 15-year high. Regardless of the state of the economy and your talent pool, to succeed long-term, your business should be able to hire and retain the best, most talented employees. But hiring can be a daunting task, which is why you need a talent acquisition strategy. To succeed long-term, it's critical you attract and retain talented employees regardless of vacant roles. Talent acquisition can help you do this, while solving for long-term organizational needs. Now that you understand what talent acquisition is and how it differs from recruitment, let's dive into the most effective talent acquisition strategies. Here are eleven critical talent acquisition strategies to ensure you're finding the best people. 1. Align with your business goals. Consider your business goals for the next one to five years, and use those objectives to tailor your acquisition strategy to meet those needs. While recruitment tends to focus on filling vacancies within departments, talent acquisition is more about considering how your company is going to expand long term and then finding employees who can help take you there. For instance, are you planning on expanding into Latin America? If so, perhaps your HR department should focus on attracting candidates with international or regional experience. Or, maybe you're planning...
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12 Essential Media Planning Tools

Media Planning
March 17, 2022/by
12 Essential Media Planning Tools Your customers are consuming messages in more ways than ever before — online, in publications, on TV, the radio, and on their phones — to name a few. For companies hoping to reach their audiences across multiple channels, engaging in media planning is a must. However, it's almost impossible to pull off without media planning tools that give you insight into your efforts. To help you with your media planning efforts, we've compiled a list of the essential media planning tools, templates, and software to use this year. Your customers are consuming messages in more ways than ever before -- online, in publications, on TV, the radio, and on their phones...to name a few. 1. HubSpot Media Planning Template Image Source HubSpot's paid media template will help you keep track of how much you're spending on paid media, where your messages have gone out, and how much attributable revenue has been generated from each source. You'll also gain access to charts that automatically adjust when you add your spend and ROI. This resource is free — click here to get your copy now. What we like: This template lets you compile data from your media buying efforts on a monthly basis. With it, you can determine which paid media channel works best for your company and yields the best results for your bottom line. 2. Bionic Media Planning Software Image Source Bionic prides itself on its media plans, flowcharts, RFPs and IOs,...
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What Video Marketers Should Know About Creating Diverse and Inclusive Content [New Research]

Diversity and Inclusion, Video Marketing
March 16, 2022/by
What Video Marketers Should Know About Creating Diverse and Inclusive Content Inclusive content is no longer considered a bonus for video marketers; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) is an integral component of an effective video content strategy. According to Facebook Advertising, 64% of audiences in the US, UK, and Brazil said they would like to see more diversity. Deloitte’s Heat Test Report found 69% of brands with representation in ads saw an average stock gain of 44%. But where does one start? Diversity isn’t something you can simply check off a list — implementing inclusive content is complex. It has many facets internally and externally in an organization and includes multiple areas that must be taken into consideration when brand and marketing teams plan and produce diverse content strategies. Many marketers are working against legacy systems and ways of doing things that have been in practice for years, if not decades or more. What can brands and marketing teams do today to start implementing successful DEI content strategies? At Storyblocks, a rapid video creation company, we’ve released the Diversity in Video Report to help businesses and marketers implement effective DEI content strategies. Through conducting quantitative and qualitative market analysis over a period of the last four years, we could see how the DEI landscape has evolved in video marketing and determine what the key takeaways are for brands today. About the Diversity in Video Report Thanks to our growing diverse video content library at Storyblocks, we’ve been given...
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Top Tactics for Instagram Growth in 2022: HubSpot Blog Data

Instagram Marketing
March 15, 2022/by
Top Tactics for Instagram Growth in 2022: HubSpot Blog Data Instagram is a top-rated app, with more than 1 billion global monthly active users. Given the size of its user base, businesses have valuable opportunities on the platform to generate an audience, build a community, and drive sales. To help learn more about how to grow your business on the app and create an engaged community, the HubSpot Blog surveyed more than 1,000 marketing professionals that use the platform. Here are some of our key findings. How Marketers Grew Their Following in 2021 In 2021, marketers reported that the key to growing an account to the first 1,000 followers on Instagram was by creating shareable content with high-quality captions. Growing their following past 1,000 followers involved posting engaging Stories, engaging with users, and partnering with influencers, all of which we’ll discuss in more detail below. If you’re having trouble growing your following, or are losing followers, marketers report that this typically occurs for a few key reasons: not posting often enough, being too sales-y, and Instagram removing bot followers. How Marketers Grew Engagement in 2021 In 2021, marketers increased engagement on Instagram through audience interaction, and creating content that encourages engagement. For example, Creating content that is shareable, inspiring audiences to share it on their own profiles via Stories or reposting on their feed, Monitoring your comments and mentions to find user-generated content that you can...
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How-To: Conditional Formatting Based on Another Cell in Google Sheets

Google Sheets
March 11, 2022/by
How-To: Conditional Formatting Based on Another Cell in Google Sheets Conditional formatting is a feature in Google Sheets in which a cell is formatted in a particular way when certain conditions are met. The formatting can include highlighting, bolding, italicizing – just about any visual changes to the cell. Just as it can be done for the cell you’re currently in, conditional formatting can also be set based on conditions met in another cell. Let’s dive into how to create this condition based on multiple criteria. How Conditional Formatting Works To learn how to set conditional formatting, let’s use this workbook as an example. It’s a workbook showing website traffic year over year from Q4 2020 to Q4 2021, with the page views along with the year-over-year percentage change. Here’s what we want to accomplish here: When the percentage change is positive YoY, the cell turns green. When it’s negative, the cell turns red. This makes it easy to get a quick performance overview before diving into the details. Here are the steps to set the conditional formatting. 1. Select the cell you want to format, click on "Format" from the navigation bar, then click on "Conditional Formatting." 2. While staying in the "Single color" tab, double-check that the cell under "Apply to range" is the cell you want to format. 3. Set your format rules. It may automatically default to a standard conditional formatting formula. In this case, open the dropdown menu...
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