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The Top 3 Reasons Consumers Read Blogs & How to Attract Them in 2021 [New Data]

Business Blogging
June 5, 2021/by
The Top 3 Reasons Consumers Read Blogs & How to Attract Them in 2021 In 2021, there's no question that blogging is beneficial to any marketing strategy. But, while blogging has been known to help brands boost leads, SEO, and credibility, many busy marketers might still worry that blogging's effectiveness could be losing steam. Fears that "blogging is dead" haven't been eased by research. Recently, when we polled over 300 people to ask them how often they read blogs, roughly 40% said "never." This followed HubSpot's Not Another State of Marketing Report, which revealed that blogging fell from the first to third-most-common content strategy between 2018 and 2020. But, before you get wrapped up in all the negative data, it's important to remember that blogging is still incredibly valuable to marketers -- but the way you approach blogging matters more than ever. And, while our past survey found that 40% of people never read blogs, it conversely revealed that 60% of consumers read this content regularly. The truth is, blogging is alive and well. You'll just need to work a tiny bit harder to persuade people to read your content than you have in the past. So, what's one way to get into a consumer's head and figure out how to motivate them to read your blog? Performing another survey. Rather than asking more than 300 people, "Do you read blogs?", I recently launched a follow-up Lucid survey that asked, "Why do you most commonly read blog posts?"...
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How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel

Excel
June 5, 2021/by
How to Find and Remove Duplicates in Excel "I've never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try." These Taylor Swift lyrics, in the song "mirrorball", perfectly explain my relationship with numbers, math, and anything concerning data analytics. However, as a marketer, data analysis is one of the most important aspects of my job. But like most marketers, who prefer strategy and creativity, numbers and Excel reports don't come naturally to me. That's why it's important to know how to work in Excel and find shortcuts to help make the process easier. Today, we'll dive into one of those processes -- how to find and remove duplicates in Excel. 1. Find and highlight duplicates in Excel through conditional formatting. The first step of removing duplicates will be to find them. An easy way to do this is through conditional formatting. You can do that by following these steps: Make sure you're on the Home tab. Select the entire table by hitting the button on the top left. Click Conditional Formatting → Highlight Cells Rules → Duplicate Values. In the area titled "Format With", change how you want duplicates to be highlighted. You can choose highlighting, bolding text, changing the color of text, etc. And voila. Your duplicates are now highlighted. It should look something like this: 2. Count duplicates in Excel. Now that you've found your duplicates, you might want to count them and see how many...
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Ultimate Guide to Hero Images [Best Practices + Examples]

Design Templates
June 3, 2021/by
Ultimate Guide to Hero Images Whether or not you realize it, you judge every website by its visual appeal. And it only takes about 0.05 seconds to form an opinion. That means the hero image (the first photo, graphic, or video people see) has to be eye-catching enough to keep people scrolling the site. High-quality hero images are the key to a great first impression. If done well, they represent the essence of your brand identity and the overall theme of your web page. Yes, it's a lot of weight for one piece of visual content. That's why it's the most heroic of all. This guide will explain how to level up your website with the perfect hero image, from choosing a graphic inspired by the latest design trends to ensuring your image is the optimal size. We'll also walk through hero image examples to spark ideas for your own website. Get ready for some design eye candy. Hero Image In Web Design If engaging visuals are the sprinkles on top of every great design system, a hero image is the shiny, red cherry. It draws your eye in and makes you want more. In web design, a hero image is the first photo, graphic, illustration, or video people see on a web page. It typically incorporates both an image and text in order to convey a company's core message. Hero images sit above the fold and often feature a call to action (CTA) that encourages people...
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Where Will People Shop When Businesses Fully Reopen? [New Data]

Marketing Trends
June 3, 2021/by
Where Will People Shop When Businesses Fully Reopen? For the last year and a half, many of us have gotten used to doing everything -- including shopping -- from home. Now, it seems full reopenings are closer than ever in the U.S. as the CDC now says that fully vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear masks or social distance unless there is a federal, state, local, workplace, or tribal mandate requiring them to. But as cities, offices, stores, and restaurants reopen to full capacity, many of us are beginning to think about how life will be after the global pandemic ends. As an individual, a post-pandemic world might be quite exciting to think about. But, as a marketer, entrepreneur, or manager, you might be wondering, "Will shopping go back to normal after reopenings?" To help brands in the U.S. navigate and plan for reopenings, we used Lucid to ask more than 300 North American consumers, "Which best describes how you'll shop once businesses fully reopen after COVID-19 shutdowns?" The results might or might not surprise you. Data Source Just over one-third, or 35% of respondents say they'll "shop almost completely online." Meanwhile, 21% predict they'll do an even mix of online and in-store shopping, while 18% will primarily shop online but go to stores when they're convenient.   If you've built a strong brick-and-mortar brand, don't panic. First of all, this is just one general consumer survey with a small pool of respondents. Additionally, aside from the respondents...
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What Are the 4 Ps of Marketing? The Marketing Mix Explained [Example]

Marketing Strategy
June 3, 2021/by
What Are the 4 Ps of Marketing? The Marketing Mix Explained If you've been a marketing professional for years now, learning about the four Ps of marketing might seem like a throwback to you. However, for those of us who work in the industry but didn't study marketing in college, it's entirely possible you haven't heard of the marketing mix. Below, let's learn about the four Ps of marketing and how they're still relevant in today's marketing landscape. The four Ps are meant to help marketers consider everything about a product or service when they're deciding how to market it for their business. Framing your marketing around the four Ps will help you learn what the competition is doing and what customers want from you. You can use the four Ps to answer questions about the product, price, place, and promotion of your product or service. For example, you can ask yourself: Product: How does your product meet your customer's needs? Price: What is the value of your product? Place: Where are customers looking for your product? Promotion: How can you differentiate your product from competitors? Thinking about your marketing in terms of the four Ps will help you strategize how to reach your customers. The four Ps of marketing are also known as the marketing mix. To develop a marketing mix, you'll need to think about how you can uniquely position your brand amongst the competition. The most important part...
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5 Ways to Build a Positive Brand Association [+ Examples]

Branding
June 2, 2021/by
5 Ways to Build a Positive Brand Association Whoever said "All publicity is good publicity" lied. The only truth in it is that bad publicity can bring attention to your brand and expand your reach. However, first impressions (and every impression) after that can last. So, if your brand is associated with negative traits and concepts, it can be difficult to change that perception. Learn what makes up a brand association and how to build a positive one. Several factors influence brand association, including: Brand identity and messaging Brand assets, such as logo and colors Customer experience Product and service quality Word of mouth Reputation Advertisements Social media presence You’ll notice that most of these factors are controlled by the brand itself, which is good news. This means that brands play a key role in how consumers perceive them. It also signifies that if the association with your brand isn’t particularly positive, you have the potential to change it. Brand Association Examples Here are a few common brand association examples. Charmin - Bears, soft, toilet paper Google – Search, answers, information Wikipedia – Information, biography Anima Iris – Luxury, black excellence Canva – Graphic design, easy, templates Rhum Barbancourt – Quality, Haïti, classic As you can see, most of the associations are a mix of services or products the company may provide along with certain traits and concepts. The hope is that the associations made with your...
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7 Secrets to Being a Good (Even Great) Employee

leadership traits
June 2, 2021/by
7 Secrets to Being a Good (Even Great) Employee While it can be difficult to define the traits of a good employee, it's easy to describe the perks. A good employee, for instance, gets raises, promotions, and praise from managers. She is often a role model for her peers, gets selected for unique projects, and makes the whole work thing look easy. But what does it mean to be a good employee? And what skills can you work on developing to ensure you're considered a good — or even great — employee at your own company? Here, I spoke with HubSpot employees and managers to determine the soft skills required to be a good employee in any role, to ensure you're earning some of those perks we discussed earlier. Let's dive in. 1. A growth mindset and willingness to learn. One of the biggest strengths of any good employee is an eagerness to learn and a growth mindset. A growth mindset, a term first coined by Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, means you believe you can develop and refine skills and become better at something over time. A fixed mindset, on the other hand, means you feel that your intelligence and skills are inherent and unchangeable. In the workplace, a marketer with a growth mindset might decide to take a few analytics courses to develop skills related to data, even if her background is more creative in nature. Alternatively, a marketer with a fixed mindset would avoid those courses,...
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What Is SEO Copywriting?

SEO
June 2, 2021/by
What Is SEO Copywriting? Creating connections with potential customers is essential when it comes to driving interest and boosting sales. Making these connections can sometimes be difficult, though, as it’s one thing to want to create them and another to figure out how to establish them. However, one of the great ways to establish these connections is through copywriting, where you use words to speak to consumer emotions and try to entice them to take action after reading your words. While it may seem simple to write something that you think will resonate with your audience, there are essential principles to follow to ensure that you can effectively convince them. In this post, learn what SEO copywriting is and discover best practices for the process that will help you draw in customers, convert leads, and drive more sales. SEO copywriting differs from other SEO content writing you may be familiar with, like blogging, as the end goal is to convert leads rather than generate organic traffic. In addition, SEO copywriting is shorter; where a blog post may have almost a thousand words, copywriting content may have less than half of that. However, the two can go hand in hand. You might create a blog post that includes a CTA created with SEO copywriting principles in mind, and the words entice users to click on what you’re offering to learn more, like downloading a free ebook or another related source. Here are some examples of content types that may...
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How to Merge Cells in Excel in 5 Minutes or Less

Excel
May 28, 2021/by
How to Merge Cells in Excel in 5 Minutes or Less Knowing the ins and outs of Excel is essential for organizing data, understanding analytics, and getting the most from your marketing efforts. The tool is great for quickly processing vast amounts of data, but it can be overwhelming if you don't spend the majority of your workday whipping up spreadsheets. Fortunately, a few basic skills are all you need to put together an easy-to-read spreadsheet. One is knowing how to merge cells in Excel. Whether you're planning blog articles for the upcoming quarter, creating an email list for a targeted campaign, or designing SEO-friendly Google ads, merging cells is a handy way to organize your information. To sharpen your skills, we'll cover several ways to combine cells. How to merge two cells How to merge and center cells How to merge multiple cells How to merge cells without losing data A shortcut to merge cells Why can't I merge cells? Don't want to start from scratch? Use these free Excel templates as a foundation for your own marketing spreadsheets. How to Merge Two Cells in Excel Merging is a way to turn two small cells into one new, large cell. This is useful for organizing information and creating headers, without the need to resize individual cells. Here's how to do it. Step 1: Highlight the two adjacent cells you want to merge (I'm merging A1 and B1 in the...
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302 Status Code: What It Is + Its Impact on SEO

Technical SEO
May 28, 2021/by
302 Status Code: What It Is + Its Impact on SEO If you've spent any time on the internet, chances are you've encountered an HTTP status code. In simple terms, HTTP status codes are standard response codes that show the relationship between all the things that go on in the background when you travel from web page to web page. Things like the user agent (i.e., your web browser), the server, the web page you're trying to load, and any third-party web applications you might be running. Because of the complexity of how all those elements interact, there are many possible HTTP status codes you can run up against. HTTP status codes identify and diagnose the particular blocker preventing you from loading a resource, and can give you information about the journey you took on the way to a page. In this article, we'll cover what you need to know about the HTTP 302 status code – jargon-free. For starters, it's helpful to know that all HTTP messages with 3xx are redirection messages. Say blog.hubspot.com no longer exists, and the content is now permanently housed on blogging.hubspot.com. This would trigger a 301 status code, which indicates a permanent redirection from one location to another. The 302 redirect, on the other hand, is only temporary. A good example of when to use a 302 status code is for localization and language purposes. For instance, if you visit a clothing website based in the United Kingdom but you are located...
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