14 PowerPoint Presentation Tips to Make More Creative Slideshows [+ Templates]

I like to think of Microsoft PowerPoint as a test of basic marketing skills. To create a passing presentation, I need to demonstrate design skills, technical literacy, and a sense of personal style.

If the presentation has a problem (like an unintended font, a broken link, or unreadable text), then I’ve probably failed the test.

Even if my spoken presentation is well rehearsed, a bad visual experience can ruin it for the audience.

Expertise means nothing without a good presentation to back it up. For starters, grab your collection of free PowerPoint templates below, and use the tips that follow to perfect your next presentation.

No matter your topic, successful PowerPoints depend on three main factors: your command of PowerPoint's design tools, your attention to presentation processes, and your devotion to consistent style. Here are some simple tips to help you start mastering each of those factors, and don't forget to check out the additional resources at the bottom of this post.

How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

A presentation is made up of multiple slides, and now that you know how to make one, you can delve deeper into PowerPoint's capabilities.

1. Open a blank presentation again or start from one you've already created.

If you've already created a presentation, double click the icon to open the existing file. Otherwise, open Microsoft PowerPoint, click "File" in the top left corner, and click "New Presentation." From there, you can follow the prompts to set up a new presentation.

2. Choose a "theme" or create your own.

Microsoft offers built-in themes and color variations to help you design your slides with a cohesive look. To choose from these pre-built themes, choose the "File" tab again, select "New", choose one of the options, and click "Create."

Otherwise, you can use PowerPoint elements, your design sense, and your brand's color palette to make your own "theme."

3. Create a variety of slides for different purposes.

You don't want to present the same exact slide, just with different content on it. This would bore your audience. Ensure that you create multiple variations, accommodating some of the common uses for slides. At minimum, you'll need:

• A title slide
• An agenda or table of contents slide
• A slide that introduces the speaker
• Various content slides (create different layouts considering what kind of multimedia you'll use)

4. Use the Duplicate Slides feature to save you time.

There's no reason to create these designs over and over again. Now that you have a few to draw from, you can simply duplicate them before inputting your content. Here's how to do that:

1. On the left pane, right click the thumbnail of the slide you want to duplicate.
2. Choose "Duplicate Slide" from the pop-up menu.

This will automatically add a copy of this slide to the presentation. From there, you can customize it for your needs.

5. Add transitions to your slides (optional).

Done well, transitions can add a little bit of movement and showmanship to your presentation. PowerPoint has several transitions built in for you to choose from.

To access them, select the "Transitions" tab from the top ribbon. From there, you can select a transition for it to preview on your screen. To customize it further, click "Effect Options" and play with the features to find something that suits your liking. To remove a transition, select "Transitions" and click "None."

6. Add animations to your slides (optional).

Like transitions, animations can add movement, reveal information, and help you underscore the points you want to hit during your speech. To animate an element, follow these steps:

1. Select the element you want animated by clicking on it.
2. Choose "Animations" from the top ribbon.
3. You'll have the option to choose from several effects displayed in the ribbon.
4. Clicking on one will give you a preview.
5. To customize the animation, select "Effect Options."
6. To remove an animation, click "None" in the ribbon.

Some of the ways to customize animations include:

• On Click
• With Previous
• After Previous
• Duration
• Delay

These describe how you want the effect to behave, so play around with them until you find an effect that suits your liking.

You'll also have the option to move animations around as you edit your slides with the "Reorder Animation" function in the top ribbon.

7. Save your presentation.

Click "File" and "Save", making sure to specify which folder or destination you want your PowerPoint to be stored.

8. Run your presentation.

It's always good to do a trial run to ensure that your slides are set up properly and your animations fire they way you expect them to.

To present your PowerPoint, go to the "Slide Show" tab and click "Play from Start". The slide will cover your whole screen, blocking out your desktop and PowerPoint software. This is so your audience (in this case, you for the trial run) is solely focused on the visual elements of your presentation.

9. Advance the slides.

When you're done with one slide and want to show the next in your sequence, click your mouse in presentation mode. This will advance the slide.

PowerPoint Presentation Tips

1. Don't let PowerPoint decide how you use PowerPoint.
2. Create custom slide sizes.
3. Edit your slide template design.
4. Write text with your audience in mind.
5. Make sure all of your objects are properly aligned.
6. Use "Format Menus" to better control your objects' designs.
7. Take advantage of PowerPoint's shapes.
8. Create custom shapes.
9. Crop images into custom shapes.
10. Present websites within PowerPoint.
11. Try Using GIFs.
12. Keep it simple.
13. Embed your font files.
14. Save your slides as JPEGs.
15. Embed multimedia. 
16. Bring your own hardware.
17. Use "Presenter View."

PowerPoint Style

1. Don’t let PowerPoint decide how you use PowerPoint.

Microsoft wanted to provide PowerPoint users with a lot of tools. But this does not mean you should use them all. Here are some key things to look out for:

• Make sure that preset PPT themes complement your needs before you adopt them.
• Try to get away from using Microsoft Office’s default fonts, Calibri and Cambria. Using these two typefaces can make the presentation seem underwhelming.
• Professionals should never use PPT’s action sounds. (Please consider your audience above personal preference).
• PowerPoint makes bulleting automatic, but ask yourself: Are bullets actually appropriate for what you need to do? Sometimes they are, but not always.
• Recent PPT defaults include a small shadow on all shapes. Remove this shadow if it's not actually needed. Also, don’t leave shapes in their default blue.

2. Create custom slide sizes.

While you usually can get away with the default slide size for most presentations, you may need to adjust it for larger presentations on weirdly sized displays. If you need to do that, here's how.

• In the top-left corner, choose "File."
• Select "Page Setup."
• Type the height and width of the background you'd like, and click "OK."
• A dialogue box will appear. Click "OK" again.
• Your background is resized!

Tip: Resize your slides before you add any objects to them or the dimensions of your objects will become skewed.

3. Edit your slide template design.

Often, it's much easier to edit your PowerPoint template before you start -- this way, you don't have design each slide by hand. Here's how you do that.

• Select "Themes" in the top navigation.
• In the far right, click "Edit Master," then "Slide Master."
• Make any changes you like, then click "Close Master." All current and future slides in that presentation will use that template.

4. Write text with your audience in mind.

A significant part of a PowerPoint's content is text. Great copy can make or break your presentation, so evaluating your written work from a few different angles could make you seem more persuasive. Thinking about how your text is received differentiates good presenters from the best.

Typography: 

Many people underestimate the influence of typeface, but choosing the right font is important -- the perception of your font type could influence your audience's impression of you. The right font is an opportunity to convey consistent brand personality and professionalism.

Some fonts are seen as clean and professional, but this doesn't mean they're boring. A common mistake is thinking your font isn't "exciting" enough, which could lead you to choose a font that distracts from your overall message.

Source: Workfront

That said, you can still use fun and eccentric fonts -- in moderation. Offsetting a fun font or large letters with something more professional can create an engaging presentation. Above all, be sure you're consistent so your presentation looks the same throughout each slide, so your audience doesn't become distracted by too many disparate fonts.

Source: Design Shack

5. Make sure all of your objects are properly aligned.

Having properly aligned objects on your slide is the key to making it look polished and professional. You can manually try to line up your images ... but we all know how that typically works out. You're trying to make sure all of your objects hang out in the middle of your slide, but when you drag them there, it still doesn't look quite right. Get rid of your guessing game and let PowerPoint work its magic with this trick.

How to align multiple objects:

• Select all objects by holding down "Shift" and clicking on all of them.
• Select "Arrange" in the top options bar, then choose "Align or Distribute."
• Choose the type of alignment you'd like.

How to align objects to the slide:

• Select all objects by holding down "Shift" and clicking on all of them.
• Select "Arrange" in the top options bar, then choose "Align or Distribute."
• Select "Align to Slide."
• Select "Arrange" in the top options bar again, then choose "Align or Distribute."
• Choose the type of alignment you'd like.

PowerPoint Design

6. Use "Format Menus" to better control your objects' designs.

Format menus allow you to do fine adjustments that otherwise seem impossible. To do this, right click on an object and select the "Format" option. Here, you can fine-tune shadows, adjust shape measurements, create reflections, and much more. The menu that will pop up looks like this:

Although the main options can be found on PowerPoint’s format toolbars, look for complete control in the format window menu. Other examples of options available include:

• Adjusting text inside a shape.
• Creating a natural perspective shadow behind an object.
• Recoloring photos manually and with automatic options.

7. Take advantage of PowerPoint's shapes.

Many users don’t realize how flexible PowerPoint’s shape tools have become. In combination with the expanded format options released by Microsoft in 2010, the potential for good design with shapes is readily available. PowerPoint provides the user with a bunch of great shape options beyond the traditional rectangle, oval, and rounded rectangle patterns, unlike even professional design programs like Adobe Creative Suite or Quark.

Today’s shapes include a highly functional Smart Shapes function, which enables you to create diagrams and flow charts in no time. These tools are especially valuable when you consider that PowerPoint is a visual medium. Paragraphing and bullet lists are boring -- you can use shapes to help express your message more clearly.

8. Create custom shapes.

When you create a shape, right click and press "Edit Points." By editing points, you can create custom shapes that fit your specific need. For instance, you can reshape arrows to fit the dimensions you like.

Another option is to combine two shapes together. When selecting two shapes, right-click and go to the "Grouping" sub-menu to see a variety of options.

• Combine creates a custom shape that has overlapping portions of the two previous shapes cut out.
• Union makes one completely merged shape.
• Intersect builds a shape of only the overlapping sections of the two previous shapes.
• Subtract cuts out the overlapping portion of one shape from the other.

By using these tools rather than trying to edit points precisely, you can create accurately measured custom shapes.

9. Crop images into custom shapes.

Besides creating custom shapes in your presentation, you can also use PowerPoint to crop existing images into new shapes. Here's how you do that:

• Click on the image and select "Format" in the options bar.
• Choose "Crop," then "Mask to Shape," and then choose your desired shape. Ta-da! Custom-shaped photos.

Learn more about creating images for your marketing channels in the video below.

10. Present websites within PowerPoint.

Tradition says that if you want to show a website in a PowerPoint, you should just create link to the page and prompt a browser to open. For PC users, there’s a better option.

Third party software that integrates fully into PowerPoint’s developer tab can be used to embed a website directly into your PowerPoint using a normal HTML iframe. One of the best tools is LiveWeb, a third-party software developed independently.

By using LiveWeb, you don’t have to interrupt your PowerPoint, and your presentation will remain fluid and natural. Whether you embed a whole webpage or just a YouTube video, this can be a high-quality third party improvement.

Unfortunately, Mac users don’t have a similar option. Agood second choice is to take screen shots of the website, link in through a browser, or embed media (such as a YouTube video) by downloading it directly to your computer.

11. Try Using GIFs.

GIFs are looped animated images used to communicate a mood, idea, information, and much more. Users add GIFs to Powerpoints to be funny or quickly demo a process. It's easy to add GIFs to your slides. To do so, simply follow these steps:

• Download and save the GIF you want.
• Go to the slide you want the GIF on.
• Go to the "Home" tab, and click either "Insert" or "Picture".
• From the "Picture" drop-down menu, choose "Picture from File".
• Navigate to where you saved your GIF and select it. Then, choose "Insert".
• To play the animated GIF, click the "Slide Show" tab and then "Play from Current Slide".

PowerPoint Process

12. Keep it simple.

PowerPoint is an excellent tool to support your presentation with visual information, graphics, and supplemental points. This means  that your powerpoint should not be your entire presentation. Your slides -- no matter how creative and beautiful -- shouldn't be the star of the show. Keep your text and images clear and concise, using them only to supplement your message and authority. 

If your slides have dense and cluttered information, it will both distract your audience and make it much more likely that you will lose their attention. Nothing in your slides should be superfluous! Keep your presentation persuasive by keeping it clean. There are a few ways to do this:

• Limit bullet points and text.
• Avoid paragraphs and long quotes.
• Maintain "white space" or "negative space".
• Keep percentages, graphs, and data super basic.

13. Embed your font files.

One constant problem presenters have with PowerPoint is that fonts seem to change when presenters move from one computer to another. In reality, the fonts are not changing -- the presentation computer just doesn’t have the same font files installed. If you’re using a PC and presenting on a PC, then there is a smooth work around for this issue. (When you involve Mac systems, the solution is a bit rougher. See Tip #11.)

Here’s the trick: When you save your PowerPoint file (only on a PC), you should click Save Options in the "Save As …" dialog window. Then, select the "Embed TrueType fonts" check box and press "OK." Now, your presentation will keep the font file and your fonts will not change when you move computers (unless you give your presentation on a Mac).

14. Save your slides as JPEGs.

In PowerPoint for Mac 2011, there is no option to embed fonts within the presentation. So unless you use ubiquitous typefaces like Arial or Tahoma, your PPT is likely going to encounter font changeson different computers.

The most certain way of avoiding this is by saving your final presentation as JPEGs, and then inserting these JPEGs onto your slides. On a Mac, users can easily drag and drop the JPEGs into PPT with fast load time. If you do not use actions in your presentation, then this option works especially well.

If you want your presentation to appear "animated," you'll need to do a little tinkering. All you need to do is save JPEGs of each "frame" of the animation. Then, in your final presentation, you'll just display those JPEGs in the order you'd like the animation to appear. While you'll technically have several new slides in place of one original one, your audience won't know the difference.

An important consideration: If your PPT includes a lot of JPEGs, then the file size will increase.

15. Embed multimedia.

PowerPoint allows you to either link to video/audio files externally or to embed the media directly in your presentation. You should embed these files if you can, but if you use a Mac, you cannot actually embed the video (see note below). For PCs, two great reasons for embedding are:

• Embedding allows you to play media directly in your presentation. It will look much more professional than switching between windows.
• Embedding also means that the file stays within the PowerPoint presentation, so it should play normally without extra work (except on a Mac).

Note: Mac OS users of PowerPoint should be extra careful about using multimedia files.

If you use PowerPoint for Mac, then you will always need to bring the video and/or audio file with you in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation. It’s best to only insert video or audio files once the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a portable drive in their permanent folder. Also, if the presentation will be played on a Windows computer, then Mac users need to make sure their multimedia files are in WMV format. This tip gets a bit complicated, so if you want to use PowerPoint effectively, consider using the same operating system for designing andpresenting, no matter what.

16. Bring your own hardware.

Between operating systems, PowerPoint is still a bit jumpy. Even between differing PPT versions, things can change. One way to fix these problems is to make sure that you have the right hardware -- so just bring along your own laptop when you're presenting.

17. Use "Presenter View."

In most presentation situations, there will be both a presenter’s screen and the main projected display for your presentation. PowerPoint has a great tool called Presenter View, which can be found in the "Slide Show" tab of PowerPoint 2010 (or 2011 for Mac). Included in the Presenter View is an area for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation display.

For many presenters, this tool can help unify their spoken presentation and their visual aid. You never want to make the PowerPoint seem like a stack of notes that you use a crutch. Use the Presenter View option to help create a more natural presentation.

Pro Tip: At the start of the presentation, you should also hit CTRL + H to make the cursor disappear. Hitting the "A" key will bring it back if you need it!

With style, design, and presentation processes under your belt, you can do a lot more with PowerPoint than just presentations for your clients. PowerPoint and similar slide applications are flexible tools that should not be forgotten. With a great template, you can be on your way to creating presentations that wow your audience.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

14 PowerPoint Presentation Tips to Make More Creative Slideshows [+ Templates] was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Build Community-Centric Virtual Events, According to Moz's CMO

As you're probably well-familiar at this point, 2020 has brought with it plenty of disruption and change.

Consider, for instance, the fact that I'm writing this post from my living room, which has slowly morphed into my full-time office (as well as a workout studio, movie theatre, and popular after-work happy hour spot).

Along with a personal change in routine, the pandemic has severely altered how companies conduct nearly every aspect of business.

And one major change? Conferences.

In the early months of 2020, many businesses were faced with a similar problem: Should we host our event or conference entirely online, and if so, will it deliver the same value for attendees?

Moz was no different, but while many companies were shifting a smaller-scale event online, Moz was dealing with an entirely different beast: MozCon, a 15-year-old SEO and digital marketing conference with thousands of attendees from across the globe.

Here, I spoke with Christina Mautz, CMO and Head of Sales at Moz, to learn how business leaders can still build impactful events virtually — plus, how leaders can foster a sense of collaboration and community, even when entirely remote.

Best Practices for Shifting Your Event Online

1. Re-envision your event entirely when shifting to online — don't just "copy and paste" the in-person schedule.

Venturing into virtual events is unknown territory for many businesses. While some companies believe they have experience due to hosting webinars, events are an entirely different beast.

Moz has 15 years of experience creating world-class events. But shifting from in-person to virtual required "all hands on deck", given our goal was to recreate an experience our attendees have come to love and expect from us.

We decided to shift to virtual just before our governor's ban of large-scale events, which left us only two-and-a-half months to re-envision and re-plan the event. While pivoting was a difficult choice, it needed to be made for the safety of our company, the community, and our attendees.

Thankfully, MozCon is a valued and well-known event for our community, so we were successful in hitting our goal for the number of tickets we needed to sell to break-even (we do not run the event for profit), even though the timeline was greatly condensed.

The goal for MozCon Virtual was to provide attendees with the same awesome content experience and overall value they would get from the usual live format. This required us to shorten the event (as our typical three-day conference just wasn't going to fly online) and come up with a new design and attendee engagement strategy.

2. Pre-record sessions ahead of time to increase accessibility, and design a dynamic agenda to keep participants engaged.

Given that our primary goal was to ensure superior content, we focused much of our attention on confirming and/or convincing our existing (expert) speakers to participate. This included the decision to pre-record all sessions with enough time to allow for full closed captioning, to aid in accessibility for all attendees.

We made the decision to make the video recordings available not just during the event but immediately after to increase participation from our many international attendees in different time zones — this was a great success for the participants who joined us from 49 different countries. We also sought support from our partners Seamless Events to ensure our speakers had high-touch support to pre-record their session using high-quality A/V tools like:

• Logitech C920 HD Pro Webcam
• Neewer Backdrop Support System
• Neewer Gray Photography Backdrops
• UBeesize 8-inch Selfie Ring Light w/ Tripod Stand
• Z ZAFFIRO USB Lavalier Lapel Clip Microphone
• Vilcome 4-in-1 USB C Hub Adapter

Finally, we knew that it is often challenging to stay engaged during online events — even when the content is incredible. So we purposely designed a dynamic agenda with sessions we could view together mixed in with a plethora of "birds of a feather" break-out sessions to allow for actual live interactions with attendees.

We chose a virtual event platform among the many available that enabled live break-out sessions as well as live-chat with the speaker and other attendees while viewing each pre-recorded session.

Challenges of Hosting MozCon Virtually

1. Our first challenge was ensuring our marketing team could still "work the event" — plus, fostering collaboration digitally.

Building and executing an in-person conference requires an incredible team, but don't assume virtual events are any easier or less labor-intensive. The challenges are different and can make or break the experience attendees walk away with. Critical to our success was ensuring that we still made space for our marketing team to both plan and "work the event" with the support of our long-time partner, Proper Planning.

We also spent a lot of time thinking about the different challenges we would face. For example, how do you foster collaboration using screens so people feel as if they're in a breakout room? For us, that equated to creating an environment that felt authentic and community-oriented.

We accomplished this by providing an avenue for our speakers to connect through chat while sessions ran, and by creating "Birds of a Feather" sessions allowing us to speak freely and network. These sessions included topics like:

• Ask a CMO
• Ask an SEO
• B2b2c Marketing
• Evergreen Backlinks
• Separating SEO and Content Marketing
• Current Trends in the Agency World

2. Our second challenge was creating a safe, welcoming virtual environment.

Similar to our expectations for MozCon in years past, our mission to foster a safe environment remained top of mind. To us, this means more than ensuring physical safety. We believe in full inclusivity which extends to a responsibility on our part to ensure that all speakers, sponsors, and attendees are able to participate in a welcome, nurturing, and safe environment.

We do not tolerate disrespect or harassment of speakers or conference participants in any form, so moderators were stationed in each virtual room to moderate chat and quickly handle any issues. Of course, participants remained respectful and collaborative, but it was important going in that people knew they would be welcomed as part of our community and that they had support should an issue arise.

So ... Did It Work?

For those planning virtual events, I encourage leaders to be realistic about expectations and goals. At Moz, our event isn't intended to make a profit.

However, with meticulous preparation we were able to break-even and double our usual number of attendees.

In part, this was due to lowering the price point and being able to accommodate more people virtually than in-person. This was a huge win.

Here are a few recommendations:

• Record sessions like we did here so efforts can continually be amplified and reach new people
• Use a combination of live and pre-recorded sessions so speakers (and your own sales and customer success teams) have the option to interact with attendees throughout the event
• If live sessions are the only route available, ensure a moderator is present to facilitate questions
• Ensure sponsors are a good match for your attendees, and provide them with a unique space within your virtual event -- either a “hub” on your platform or a designated space on your agenda
• Prioritize a strong social media engagement plan -- before, during, and after the event; it provides attendees, speakers, and even sponsors ways to build excitement before, share learnings during, and continue the conversation after -- on platforms that also provide great exposure for your brand

How to Foster Community Digitally

1. Leverage pre-recorded videos, so speakers have the time to answer questions and engage with attendees in-the-moment.

Moz has a robust community of marketers and search engine optimization professionals who love to engage, so we made the decision to leverage pre-recorded videos, giving our speakers the freedom to interact as the video ran and answer questions from attendees the moment they arose. Our attendees loved the opportunity to engage directly with speakers versus the typical in-person event experience of waiting in the long line near the stage just to say hello.

While this approach might seem surprising, it fostered collaboration, provided high-quality resources and meant our guests would be engaged instead of simply "watching" for hours on end.

How to Build Community-Centric Virtual Events, According to Moz's CMO was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

11 Tips for Virtually Pitching Marketing Campaigns

It's no secret that agencies are accustomed to wooing clients during in-person pitches.

In fact, the term "pitch theater" is regularly used in the agency world to describe over-the-top presentations that go to great lengths to win accounts.

But, with the recent shift to remote work, agencies can no longer rely on a firm handshake, in-person meetings, and casual small talk to help land them a client.

If you're one of the many marketers or agency members who thrive during in-person pitches, you might still be learning how to create a presentation that brings your memorable charm and flair to a small computer screen.

Luckily, as you pivot some aspects of your presentation style to a new video-friendly format, you can leverage your inner creativity, meeting software, and other digital tools to give you a leg up against other agencies vying for the same clients.

With a creative mindset, it actually isn't too hard to give a concise virtual presentation that answers most of a prospect's burning questions. In this post, I'll highlight 11 tips for planning, practicing, and presenting virtual pitches.

11 Tips for Giving Virtually Pitching Marketing Campaigns

Preparing Your Pitch

1. Map out a plan for a smooth virtual presentation.

With the growth of video call technology, most or all elements of a pitch can be virtual. For example, you can simply share your screen to show your peers a presentation, or send a video pitch to your team if you can't book a full meeting. However, virtualizing your presentation will still take careful planning.

As you map out your pitch, take the time to figure out which parts require a screen share as well as who on your team will be presenting. Then, once you've outlined your presentation, practice using features like screen share ahead of time to prevent technical difficulties during the actual pitch.

As you'll plan, you'll also want to identify pitching elements that might be more challenging virtually.

For example, if you're pitching a physical product or campaign asset in-person, you might pass the item around, or let a member of your audience test-run it. Or, you might be a fan of asking audiences to raise their hands if they agree with a statement relating to a pain point that your campaign will solve for.

The interactive in-person presentation tactics above might not be possible during your virtual pitch where everyone is looking at your slide deck. So, you'll want to come up with alternatives. Instead of having an audience member demonstrate something, perform the demo yourself. Or, instead of polling the audience by asking them to raise their hands, ask them to answer a question with "yes" or "no" in your video call's chat area.

2. Remember: Timing is everything.

When giving an in-person pitch, you might have a half-hour to give the actual presentation and answer questions. Then, you might even get some bonus time after the meeting if stakeholders stick around to ask questions, or chat with you as you walk out of the meeting room. While you'll have lots of opportunities to leave a good impression in person, you'll likely be limited to an exact time slot if you're just hosting a video call.

While you might be tempted to bring all the fun elements of in-person "pitch theater" to a short video call, you'll actually want to cut to the chase and give stakeholders the information they need as soon as possible.

Quickly, but concisely, describe your project idea, why you think it will be a good investment, any data-backed evidence of your claims, and what resources you'll need to complete the campaign.

You'll also want to address the concerns your team leader or client might have and explain how your project will avoid those blockers. Addressing an audience member's concerns in your presentation might eliminate some of the need for a question-and-answer period and will make your prospect believe that you value their goals and mission.

Practicing Your Pitch

3. Record yourself as you practice pitching.

Like with any virtual or in-person presentation, practice makes perfect.

One great way to practice a virtual pitch could be to record yourself doing it through a screen recorder or video call software. After you record yourself, rewatch your pitch and make notes of where you need improvement. While you can make notes about your speaking or the content of your pitch, you can also make notes on more technical aspects, like how well you navigated to your slideshow or any presentation glitches that occurred.

Recording and reviewing your practice sessions will ensure that your clients or teammates see a crisp and clear presentation when you're giving it online.

Aside from recording yourself, consider hosting a video call with a few of your teammates where you run through your presentation. While the recording will help you troubleshoot many things, it's always helpful to have another person give feedback or point out any technical issues they discover from their computer.

For example, many schools using Zoom to host classes have discovered that some students and teachers can't use its Whiteboard tool because the feature isn't available on Chromebooks. If you discover something like this when practicing your marketing pitch with other users on the call, you'll have time to pivot and adjust your pitch accordingly.

4. Test your visuals, videos, and sound before your call.

For any type of pitch, a slide deck with videos and visual aids enables your clients to see quick facts, visualize the campaign you're pitching, and grasp any hard data that you throw at them quickly.

But, as you create a presentation, keep in mind that company stakeholders will be viewing it over a video call software. And. while some videos or visuals might look and sound absolutely stunning in-person, they could show up poorly on video calls, especially in areas with slower internet speeds.

As you practice your pitch with your team on a video call, or while recording yourself privately, make sure you know how to play a video within your slide show, ensure that your graphics are high resolution, double-check that any GIFs placed will play automatically, and turn your volume up to test any sound elements.

Cut anything from your pitch that will look or sound poorly over a video call. For example, if a video in your presentation seems to be buffering, blurry, or sounds muffled, consider swapping it out with a photo or GIF.

Additionally, accept feedback from your team if they see blurry imagery or can't hear something when you're giving a practice run. This is how members on my team recently discovered that having your headphones plugged in when playing a video can prevent your call attendees from hearing the sound. Had one of our colleagues not rehearsed for us, we wouldn't have caught and resolved this potential technical difficulty ahead of time.

Giving Your Campaign Pitch

5. Prepare your workspace for virtual meetings.

As you would with any other virtual meeting, pick or create a workspace that offers you a professional-looking background, limited noise, and a solid internet connection.

In a HubSpot Blog post, my colleague, Lindsay Kolowich gave a great example of a poor virtual meeting workspace:

"A colleague of mine once had a call with a client whose neighbor was mowing the lawn right outside his home office window. Sounds super distracting, doesn't it?" Kolowich said.

"Be mindful of where you are and what's going on in the background," advised Kolowich. "Certain rooms are noisier than others, even if you're at home. And while it's probably adorable when your dog jumps on your lap and peers into the camera, you're typically better off letting pets go outside to play before the meeting starts."

6. Embrace video call "waiting rooms."

Some video call tools now offer a "Waiting Room" feature. This allows those on the call to be shown just the call's title and other basic information until the host allows them to enter the meeting.

When you're hosting a video call, having a Waiting Room will enable you to enter the call first, see a list of who's on the call, and let them in all at once or one at a time. The room also ensures that your attendees will only see you when you're ready to be seen.

The Waiting Room feature might be a great option for hosts that want to avoid the awkwardness of saying hello to everyone one by one, or for teams that want to get on a call a few minutes ahead of time for a quick chat before their eager clients log on.

Here's a look at how the Waiting Room feature works on Zoom.

7. Greet your client or teammates before sharing your screen.

As with any in-person meeting, greet your teammates or clients, and possibly make a bit of small talk before jumping into a pitch. This will allow the team to bond with you and see you as a person who cares about their time. You should also thank this team for attending your meeting before the pitch as well as after.

8. Look at the camera for the entire call.

During an in-person pitch or presentation, you can work the room or energize the audience by moving around, making eye contact, or speaking directly to a few specific stakeholders in your meeting. On a video call, these speaking tactics can obviously be much more challenging. This is why simply turning on your camera, looking directly into it, and speaking energetically can go a long way with your audience.

When you enter your video call, be sure to turn on the camera as soon as possible if it isn't already showing you onscreen. Surprisingly, some marketers and telecommuters regularly forget to do this.

"Turn on the video during your meetings," advised Christina Perricone, a senior marketing manager, in a recent blog post.

"Ninety-three percent of communication is non-verbal," Perricone added. "Being remote puts you at a disadvantage when it comes to reading facial expressions and body language during meetings. Video calls mitigate the disconnect that can arise from not being in-person."

Once you turn the camera on, remember that your audience of team leads or clients will be able to see you even when you are sharing a presentation on your screen. While it might be tempting to focus on your presentation when there's no immediate audience in the room with you, eye contact is still an important way to grab and hold attention from your audience.

Although you'll be doing a pitch virtually, you can mimic making eye contact by looking at the camera or the center of your screen rather than reading the text directly from your slides.

9. Make sure your notes aren't on your screen share.

Presentation notes can be a helpful way to remind yourself of data, points to make, or transitions to add in your presentation. However, things can get pretty awkward if you share your screen and accidentally show your audience your private notes at the same time.

Depending on which video software you use, you can likely share just your presentation with your audience using screen share settings. When you do this, you'll still be able to see your presentation and a digital notepad with text for each slide. However, your audience will only be able to see the presentation.

Before you begin your presentation or during a practice session, have a colleague log on to the video software earlier in the day and test your screen sharing strategy to ensure that they see only your slides and not your notes.

Wrapping Up Your Pitch

10. Turn your screen-share off and allow time for questions.

After you give your pitch, you should leave a bit of extra time to answer your client or team leader's questions about the project. This can also be a great time for you to continue making connections with the people you're pitching to. To ensure that everyone is talking to each other face-to-face, make sure you turn your screen share off so you have a better view of who you're talking to.

At the conclusion of the call, thank your audiences again for their time and discuss what next steps they can take if they're interested in accepting your pitch.

11. Leverage your video call recording in follow-up emails.

Sometimes, important stakeholders who were invited to your call won't be able to attend, or your stakeholders might want to refer back to your presentation later. When you give an in-person pitch, it might be more challenging or odd to have someone film your presentation just in case. But, with video calls, recording your presentation is possible and feels much more natural

Before you begin your presentation, be sure to inform your attendees that you'll be recording it, just in case someone wants to hide their video or is uncomfortable with being recorded. Once the presentation is done, you'll be able to send that recording in a follow-up email to stakeholders that could and couldn't make the presentation.

Aside from sending the recording, which can help stakeholders reflect on the questions answered and the discussions that happened during the pitch session, you can send other digital documents like the slide deck, links to marketing content or any other assets you think will seal the deal.

Like any good follow-up email, be sure to thank attendees for their time and note that you enjoyed your conversation with them. Also remind them that they can reach out to you with questions, comments, or feedback related to the pitch you've given. For a few follow-up email examples, check out this blog post.

Nailing Your Virtual Pitch

If you're used to pitching marketing campaign ideas in person, virtual pitching could be quite the transition. However, while you'll need to make a few tweaks to adapt your pitch to a video call setting, it's certainly possible to effectively persuade teams with virtual presentations.

At its core, a pitch clearly explains a campaign or tactic, research that defends why it might work, and how you plan to efficiently execute on the strategy. These are all important tidbits of information that can easily be explained or shown visually in a video-based presentation.

To learn more about how to perfect a virtual pitch, check out this post related to pitch deck design, this piece that creatively compares pitches to debates, and this guide to running virtual meetings.

11 Tips for Virtually Pitching Marketing Campaigns was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

What a Serial Entrepreneur Learned From Spending Nearly $1M on Facebook Ads

When it comes to Facebook ads, you might feel like you've won the lottery if your ads perform well.

However, you couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, I've spent more than $900K on Facebook ads in over 4 years.

Facebook ads are a complex and nuanced form of marketing.

Spending close to a million on ecommerce, real estate, festivals, mobile apps, and much more, I can say that I've learned a thing or two about running successful Facebook ads.

1. Keep a bigger audience.

When people start running Facebook ads, they often try to have the most laser-targeted audience and often end up aggregating around 100,000 people. This might seem like a big audience, but it really isn't.

What's more? By targeting "interests" people have, you have to remember that those are not set in stone.

For example, Facebook thinks I like hunting but I've never done it before. That's why it's important to target a larger audience of at least one million people at first and let Facebook find people who like what you're promoting.

2. Retarget with a large enough audience.

Don't start segmenting your retargeting at the beginning. For example, you could have segmented audiences of people who visited your website in the last 7 days, 14 days and 21 days, but you shouldn't just yet.

I suggest regrouping all your custom audiences at the beginning to make sure your audience is big enough. If you don't, everyone in your retargeting audience will have seen your ads 100 times and you won't see results.

3. Don't scale unless you get results.

A lot of people want to spend more on Facebook ads too aggressively. Let's say they spent $2, made $10, and now want to spend $100 a day. But you shouldn't do that just yet.

Make sure you get sales every day for at least two weeks before starting to be aggressive with your scaling. You might have been lucky with the first sale but it doesn't mean you'll find consistency and that's what you need to scale.

4. Retargeting is everything.

You'll make most of your money from retargeting. I know your budget for Facebook retargeting is often smaller than the one from your cold audience, but it's the most important audience.

You should spend as much time creating new Facebook ads creative for your custom audiences as you do your cold audiences.

5. Low CPC doesn't equal results.

You should measure your return-on-investment on your Facebook ads rather than your CPC.

Getting a good cost-per-click is awesome if your goal is just to get traffic, but not all traffic is created equal. I'm sure you'd rather have 4 people converting from 50 visitors than 1 person converting from 1,000 visitors.

6. Analyze and optimize your demographics.

It's essential to take a look at which ages, gender or location brings you the most results.

One word of caution -- don't draw conclusions until after you've at least reached 2,000 to 10,000 people. If you don't, you'll become really confused because your conclusions are probably false.

7. Pay attention to cash flow management.

Make sure you have a credit card limit high enough to spend the amount you want. Take into consideration that it might take you a little bit of time for your credit card to receive your payment.

This is cash flow management, but for scaling it's very important. One trick is to have multiple credit cards, because if your ads stop you most likely will lose the optimization you had and thus your results.

Also, make sure Facebook allows you to spend the daily amount you want to spend.

One last word of advice -- go slowly. You might realize that $100/day gives you the most profits, just like you might realize that $100K/day gives you the best results.

Once you've mastered all the technicalities of Facebook ads, all that matters is being aware of the traffic temperature of your audiences.

You essentially want to create ads that attract people by finding a way to make them appreciate what your brand is about. The best results we got from Facebook ads didn't come from the ads themselves but rather the relationship the brand had prior with their clients.

Remember, Facebook ads are only a distribution channel and there's only so much you can say to change people's minds. The art is in the entire digital marketing strategy. Everything has a part to play in your success.

What a Serial Entrepreneur Learned From Spending Nearly $1M on Facebook Ads was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Learn Excel Online: 19 Free and Paid Resources for Excel Training

Like many marketers, I have a bit of experience with Microsoft Excel. I've used it to organize events, plan meals, and sort data -- but I don't have nearly the advanced knowledge I wish I did.

And thanks to those limited skills, I'm constantly subjecting myself to the tedium of updating my spreadsheets manually.

Like me, you're missing out on a world of Excel training courses that could teach me how to automate my reports and save hours of time.

When I asked even my most Excel-savvy colleagues where they picked up their knowledge, they told me things like, "I mostly learned from colleagues and friends," or, "When I have a specific question, I ask someone or search on Google." Fair enough. But as a beginner, I probably have a few too many Excel questions to rely on colleagues -- or Google -- to answer every one.

I can't be the only one out there who wants to master the world's most popular data analysis and visualization solution -- or at least learn how to create charts and graphs that'll impress my manager.

So in the spirit of becoming a more productive, data-driven marketer, I scoured the internet for the best online resources for learning Excel. Half of them are free, and the ones that aren't might be worth the investment. In these trainings, you'll learn the following:

Learning Excel

1. Create PivotTables to find relationships between data.
2. Enter formulas across cells, rows, and columns.
3. Conduct a VLOOKUP across an entire column.
4. Run accounting functions to track business finances.
5. Group, ungroup, and reformat rows and columns.
6. Perform data validation to control the format of cell values.
7. Use keyboard shortcuts to make quick changes to cell values.
8. Create charts from your spreadsheet data.
9. Develop histograms of data from the charts you create.
10. Create dashboards to manage multiple groups of performance data.
11. Add conditional formatting to rows and columns that fit certain criteria.
12. Print your Excel spreadsheet for presenting to others.

Take a look at the free and paid resources below. Bookmark your favorites and get that much closer to working more efficiently in Excel.

How to Learn Excel With Free Training Resources

1. Microsoft's Excel for Windows Training

When it comes to learning a new application, why not start at the source? After all, no one knows Excel better than the people at Microsoft.

In fact, they've done a great job putting together this resource hub for all Microsoft Office applications and services. The Excel training has a whole bunch of free tutorials that cover the latest version of Excel organized into functional learning modules.

 

 

Source: Microsoft

2. HubSpot Excel Resources

Seeing as Excel is one of the most in-demand skills for data-driven marketers -- and because we want marketers like you to succeed -- we've created some of our own educational content about Excel here at HubSpot. From free ebooks, to templates, to video tutorials, we aim to cover a wide range of Excel-relevant topics.

Here are a few of our best:

• "How to Use Excel: The Essential Training Guide for Data-Driven Marketing" (free ebook)
• The Ultimate Guide to Using Microsoft Excel (long-form content)
• "9 Excel Templates to Make Marketing Easier" (free templates)
• "How to Create a Pivot Table in Excel: A Step-by-Step Tutorial" (video & blog post)

3. Excel Exposure

Excel Exposure is a free series of written and video-based courses to help you learn Excel regardless of your skill level. There are nearly 40 lessons -- split into "Beginner," "Intermediate," and "Advanced" -- each no more than 20 minutes long.

In addition to this a-la-carte curriculum, Excel Exposure offers a "Master Workbook" that lives directly in Excel to help you practice what you learn in each lesson. Learnings include data and time functions, how to group and ungroup rows and columns, using conditional formatting, PivotTables, chart design, and more.

4. The Spreadsheet Page

Here's a very well-organized site that's chock full of helpful Excel tips, collected by an expert named John Walkenbach. Over the past 30 years, he's written more than 60 Excel books for users of all levels, and around 300 articles and reviews for magazines like InfoWorld, PC World, and PC/Computing. At one point, he wrote the monthly spreadsheet column for PC World. In other words, the man knows his stuff -- and he knows how to present it.

The most helpful part of his website is probably the Excel Tips tab, which has a long list of useful pointers on formatting, formulas, charts and graphics, and printing. The tips themselves include everything from working with fractions, to unlinking a pivot table from its source data, to spreadsheet protection FAQs.

The Downloads tab is another particularly helpful section of Walkenbach's site, where he's added free, ungated download links to files he created, like free Excel workbooks and add-ins. For example, there's one Excel workbook available for download that gives examples of custom number formats, which you can play with and tweak on your own time, and get familiar with them without having to start from scratch.

5. Contextures

Contextures is a place for free Excel instructions in the form of quick tips, blog posts, a newsletter, and even .zip files you can download to see how various functions work in the context of real tables of data.

This resource has literally hundreds of downloadable spreadsheets that open in Excel and offer step-by-step instructions for performing data validation, adding filters to rows and columns, adding conditional formatting to rows and columns, designing charts, creating PivotTables, running functions, and more.

6. Chandoo.org

Purna "Chandoo" Duggirala, Chandoo.org's founder, says he has one goal: "to make you awesome at Excel and charting." He started the blog in 2007 and, today, it contains more than 450 articles and tutorials on using Excel and making better charts. He's built the blog as a community, citing values like humility, passion, fun, and simplicity.

He also works to make it a valuable resource for the folks for whom English is not their first language.

Most of his tips stem from forums, where people ask questions about Excel -- about formulas, formatting, shortcuts, pivot tables, and so on -- and anyone can answer them. Chandoo then uses some of the more helpful forum questions to create articles and tutorials.

Source: Chandoo.org

But it's not all so formal. For example, Chandoo once created a digital Easter egg hunt for a blog post, which included a downloadable Excel workbook containing seven hidden pandas. Readers were challenged to locate the pandas using clues, Excel techniques, and even "I-Spy" skills.

Source: Chandoo.org

While the articles, forums, and other parts of the site are free, you can pay to join one of Chandoo's structured training programs, like Excel School ($147 - $247), or VBA Classes ($97 - $347). Plus, there's always the option to buy one of his books -- The VLOOKUP Book or Excel Formula Helper Ebook.

7. Excel Easy

Excel Easy is a comprehensive tutorial for learning Excel, breaking down its learnings into chapters. Those chapters are sorted into the following sections:

• Introduction
• Basics
• Functions
• Data Analysis
• VBA
• Examples

In each chapter, Excel Easy walks you through what it perceives to be the fundamentals of Excel, in the form of written guides with screenshots to help you master each concept. At the end of the tutorial, you have access too 300 examples showing you how to perform each concept in real scenarios. Concepts include basic formulas and functions, how to create a ribbon, creating multiple worksheets, formatting cells, data validation, table creation, and more.

8. MrExcel.com

Here's a resource that puts we mere mortals in touch with Excel experts. MrExcel.com's claim to fame is its interactive message board, which is constantly monitored by its community of Excel gurus.

The board is organized according to subject, like general announcements, questions, and MrExcel.com products. When a user posts a question, a member of the MrExcel.com expert community will reply with an answer. The questions range from simplifying an Excel task, to solving urgent inquiries.

Not a native English speaker? You can ask questions in your native language.

Aside from posting questions on the message board, you can also browse Mr. Excel's "Hot Topics" -- found on the left-hand side of its homepage -- which includes things like finding the cumulative sum of even or odd rows, or removing the leading zero within a text field. The site also has a library of helpful Excel books and ebooks, and if you need help with problems that are more complex, you can even hire an Excel consultant directly from the website, for a fee.

9. Exceljet

Exceljet offers hundreds of free formula walk-throughs, videos, and blog posts that allow you to itemize your Excel training based on the project you're working on. It also has several paid programs that take a deeper dive into specific Excel topics its users -- of which there are more than 10,000 -- are interested in.

10. EdX Excel Courses

Here's a budget-friendly option for those in search of a more formal course, rather than a one-off tutorial: EdX is a nonprofit that provides free education for people around the globe -- with an interesting model of Excel training sessions, both timed and self-paced.

When users enroll in a course that's marked as "Verified," they have the option to pay a fee in exchange for an instructor-signed certificate with the institution's logo, to verify the achievement and increase job prospects. Those fees are used to fund the courses, giving you the option to take them for free if you don't mind foregoing the certificate.

Otherwise, there are some courses offered at a "Professional Education" level, for which the fee isn't optional. One example is the Business and Data Analysis Skills course, offered for $149.

To help you choose the right one, each edX course includes reviews (with a rating up to five stars), and information on length and amount of effort, usually measured in hours per week. There are also details on the level of knowledge required, along with video transcripts.

11. Annielytics Video Tutorials

Annie Cushing, a web analytics data expert, created the Annielytics blog and YouTube channel to share her knowledge with the world. Don't let the punny name fool you -- both are chock full of really good, specific, and in-depth web analytics tips.

While the content here isn't all Excel-related -- much of it is about Google Analytics, for example -- it does contain some great Excel video tutorials. Even better, they were created with marketing and web analytics in mind, so they're directly applicable to things like marketing data reports. The Excel-specific videos can be found here, or by searching her YouTube channel for "Excel".

The Excel topics vary widely, from how to create interactive pivot tables, to how to add a scrolling table to your dashboard using the INDEX function. The videos also vary in length depending on topic complexity, ranging from two-and-a-half-minutes, to those over half an hour long. To give you an idea of what the videos are like, here's one of our favorites, which covers a comprehensive overview of Excel charts:

12. Khan Academy

When visitors arrive at the Khan Academy website, they're greeted with two simple but powerful lines of text: "You only have to know one thing: You can learn anything." And from algebra to astronomy, this resource offers a plethora of free courses on, well, almost anything -- for free.

That includes a few video tutorials on Excel. Most of them are part of larger, multi-installment courses on broader topics, like statistics. A general search for "Microsoft Excel" yields what might look like limited results, but they actually explain some fundamental parts of using Excel, like distributions and fitting lines to data.

How to Learn Excel With Paid Training Resources

13. Lynda.com's Excel Training and Tutorials

Price: Free to try | $29.99/month membership

If you're willing to invest a little cash in your Excel training, Lynda's Excel Training and Tutorials are a worthwhile place to spend it. Members of this LinkedIn subsidiary have access to thousands of courses on business, technology, creative skills, and software that'll help you work toward your personal and professional goals.

Included are over 100 courses on Excel, and over 4,000 video tutorials covering every version of the program, at any level of expertise. They cover a broad range of topics, from something as general as "Statistics with Excel Part One," to more niche topics, like "Data Visualization Storytelling Essentials."

14. Coursera

Pricing varies per course

While Lynda.com asks for a monthly all-access membership fee, Coursera charges on a course-to-course basis. Partnering with top universities and organizations worldwide, the site offers online classes on a number of topics, ranging from music production to coaching skills.

There are only a few courses pertaining to Excel, but if you're looking for one that's on a formally academic level, they could be a good fit for you. In fact, many of the Excel-related courses come from Duke University, such as "Excel to MySQL: Analytic Techniques for Business Specialization."

That said, these courses don't come cheap -- after all, they're the same ones that are taught at top universities around the world. And like many real-world classes, each includes video lectures, interactive quizzes, peer-graded assessments, and the opportunity to connect with fellow students and instructors. Once you finish a course, you'll receive formal recognition, along with an optional course certificate.

15. Udemy's "Microsoft - From Beginner to Expert in 6 Hours"

Price: $12.99

If you had six hours to spare, how would you use them? "Sleep," "clean the house," and "bake something" are some of the things that come to the top of my mind, but try this on for size -- what if you could become an Excel expert in that amount of time?

That's what Udemy promises in its "Microsoft Excel - From Beginner to Expert in 6 Hours" course. Udemy is one of the most bountiful online learning resources out there, and its Excel courses certainly don't end with that single option. In fact, when I return to the homepage, it displays several additional lessons on the topic, in case I want to explore my options.

Those options are many. In fact, just typing "Excel" into the search bar yields dozens of results, each one displaying a star rating, price, length, and level.

16. Excel Everest

Price: $159

The name of this resource may look intimidating, but you'd be surprised how convenient the training is.

Excel Everest is an out-of-the-box resource that teaches you Excel while you're in Excel. The product you buy downloads an Excel file to your computer, where you'll open Excel and engage in walk-throughs of 41 different Excel functions right from a sample spreadsheet. Topics covered include conditional formatting, VLOOKUP, chart creation, and so much more.

This Excel training resource offers hundreds of exercises, along with video tutorials embedded directly in a sample Excel spreadsheet. By applying these concepts in Excel as you learn them, you'll feel them stick with you long after you complete Excel Everest's training.

17. Learn iT!

Price: $135 - $290

Learn iT! offers Excel training in a variety of formats and breaks every lesson down by module. It's the best solution for Excel users who might not be receptive to just a video series or written step-by-step guide.

With Learn iT!, Excel users can select from five different courses: Pivot Tables, Intro to Data Analysis, Programming with VBA, Excel Power User, and a basic Excel course for general users. Each course states the course's duration (in days) and the number of modules the course consists of.

The best part about Learn iT! is that you can take your selected course four different ways: an in-person instructor-led session, live online with classmates, privately in a custom-made session, or a self-paced mix of instructor-led and interactive e-learning courses.

18. LinkedIn Learning Products

Price: Free to try | $29.99 mo.

LinkedIn isn't just for professional networking. You can also learn a ton on various business topics with the help of subject matter experts (SMEs) who host trainings on the LinkedIn Learning platform. Microsoft Excel is one such topic.

Dennis Taylor, a business consultant you can also learn from on Lynda.com, is one SME who hosts Excel training courses on LinkedIn. His courses range from six hours to 23 hours in total training time, and can be completed on your schedule.

Check out LinkedIn Learning for all available Excel courses.

19. eLearnExcel

Price: $24/month

Not only does eLearnExcel give you eight Excel training courses to choose from, but it awards seven Excel certifications as well.

eLearnExcel makes this promise: by taking all of its Excel courses, you'll have a skill in Excel that's greater than 99% of Excel users today. Trusted by Microsoft itself, this suite of training products breaks down Excel's concepts in easy, digestible video modules -- allowing you to learn the Excel concepts that are most relevant to you. Courses range from 45 minutes to six hours in duration.

Seven of these courses award you a certification that corresponds with the course you took. If you complete all seven, you're awarded an Excel Master Diploma. It's not a bad item to put on your resume -- or on your business's website, if multiple employees enroll in eLearnExcel's courses as part of a business subscription.

Ready to get started? With these tools, you'll be using Excel with little-to-no-sweat, in no time. Plus, practice makes perfect -- that's why there are so many tiered levels of courses available.

Start where you can, and as you begin using more functions and commands, you can continue to expand your knowledge and implement the power of Excel for your projects.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How to Learn Excel Online: 19 Free and Paid Resources for Excel Training was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

Should Marketers Use Pop-Up Forms? A Comprehensive Analysis

As inbound marketers, we care about creating lovable experiences for our website visitors -- but we also want to generate as many leads as we can for our sales teams. Most of the time we can do both without any problem. But when it comes to pop-up forms, conflict does emerge.

Pop-ups are everywhere these days. Over the past few years, pop-up forms have re-emerged as a popular marketing tactic for promoting content, driving blog subscriptions, growing email lists, and fueling lead generation.

Some pop-ups are fairly benign and you hardly notice them. Others are distracting, and quite frankly, downright poopy (see the example below). 

Pop-ups have become so prevalent that even Google has had to weigh in, announcing that they will begin to penalize websites that use what they call "intrusive interstitials" (we call them "crappy popups").

So the million dollar question for inbound marketers is this: Should we be using pop-up forms? Before we dive in and attempt to answer this question, let's take a step back and re-acclimate ourselves with the world of pop-ups.

What Is a Pop-Up Form?

According to Wikipedia, the first ever pop-up ad appeared in the late 1990s on the web hosting website Tripod.com. In their early days, pop-ups were primarily used by third-party advertisers, and they were particularly cringe-worthy. Do you remember the first time a brightly colored pop-up jumped out on your screen, alerting you that you'd won some sort of content or prize? I know I do. And as far as I can remember, I never collected any of those fabulous prizes.

Over time, consumers and web browsers alike got better at hiding or ignoring these types of pop-ups, and eventually, advertisers gave up. Nowadays you'll rarely see a sketchy third-party pop-up -- unless you find yourself on a particularly sketchy website.

For a time, pop-up ads largely disappeared from the internet. But they eventually became replaced by pop-up forms. Only this time it wasn't third-party advertisers that were using this pop-up format ... it was marketers like you and me.

Because of the association of intrusive ads with this pop-up functionality, marketers need to be careful of when and how they appear as well as the type of content they present. 

Pop-ups come in many shapes and sizes, but here's a graphic that depicts the most common ones you might see on a web page: 

Let's dive a little deeper into these pop-up formats:

1. Welcome Mats

These are full-screen pop-ups that slide above the page content. The up-side to these is that they bring the offer front and center in front of website visitors. You may consider doing this if the offer is highly relevant to your content and important to your strategy. Otherwise, a welcome mat pop-up may be a little too intrusive and annoying for your users.

2. Overlay Modals

As close to the traditional pop-up as you can get, these are center screen pop-ups that appear on top of page content. Unlike the welcome mat, overlays don't block the rest of the content from being shown, but the user will have to click out of the pop-up to continue what they're doing. While some users do feel that overlay modals are intrusive, they often have high conversion rates if the offer is compelling.

3. On-Click Pop-Ups

An on-click pop-up is a specific type of overlay modal that pops up with a form when a user clicks a call-to-action or other page element. They're perfect for when an in-line form would clutter the page but you want to decrease friction to a particular offer. The UX tends to be easy, which reduces friction on the conversion path.

4. Gamified Coupons

Another type of overlay modal, gamified coupons will let you play a game for a discount or prize of some kind in exchange for the users information. They often come in the form of a prize wheel or scratch-off ticket and are best for fun ecommerce store brands (since the coupon can then be applied at checkout).

5. Top Banners (Also Called Sticky Bars)

These are small banners that manifest as a bar at the very top of the page, asking the user to take action on something. They are typically a more permanent conversion element than other types of pop-up and are best used for broad offers such as newsletter subscriptions, coupons, or even general announcements.

6. Slide-In Boxes

Slide-ins are small boxes that slide in from the side/bottom of the page, similar to an overlay modal but with less obtrusive behavior. These are great for presenting offers as the user is scrolling through the content of the page.

Pop-Up Triggers

As more and more marketers have started using pop-up forms, a mini-industry of pop-up providers has emerged, offering bells and whistles that were never available before. Most notably, pop-up tools have proliferated the types of triggers that prompt a pop-up to appear.

Among the most popular pop-up triggers are:

• Page entrance: Pop-up appears when the visitor first gets to the page. These are often considered the most annoying and but can be used effectively with the less-intrusive formats such as the top banner.
• Page scroll: Pop-up appears when the visitor scrolls to a certain point on the page. These are great for long-form content when you don't want to embed CTAs in the content.
• Element interaction: Pop-up appears when the visitor clicks on or hovers over a specific element. These are highly effective since the user took a specific action with intent to convert.
• Time on page: Pop-up appears when the visitor has been on the page for a specific amount of time.
• Exit intent: Exit intent pop-ups appear when the visitor scrolls towards the top of the page to leave. Consider it a last-ditch effort to capture their attention before they leave.
• Inactivity: Pop-up appears when the user has not taken action on the website in a while.

Now that we know a little more about pop-up forms, let's get back to the core question: Should marketers be using them?

And in order to properly answer that question, we need to consider two slightly more specific but related questions:

1. Do they work?
2. Is it possible create inboundy pop-up forms that don't, well, suck?

Let's dig in.

Do Pop-Up Forms Work?

I'll answer this one right off the bat: The answer is yes. Pop-up forms do work, and this is the main reason so many marketers are using them.

According to research conducted by Sumo, the top performing 10% of pop-up forms convert at a whopping 9.3%. Now I don't know about you, but an additional 9.3% conversion rate across my website sounds pretty good to me.

Source: AWeber

The numbers don't lie: Pop-up forms work. However, is that worth sacrificing the experience that a visitor has on your site? The inbound answer is no. User experience trumps all else.

But what if you didn't have to sacrifice performance for experience? What if you could create user-friendly pop-ups that didn't suck?

Is There Such a Thing as an Inbound Pop-Up?

If you ask someone how they feel about pop-ups, they're likely to offer an emotional response that loosely resembles a child eating vegetables (I call this expression "blegh").

People hate the idea of pop-ups. Most pop-ups out there are annoying. What's more, the pop-ups that annoy you the most are the ones you'll remember the longest.

But here's the thing: not all pop-ups are bad. Pop-ups can be used for good, and they can be a healthy part of an inbound strategy.

Just think about email marketing for a second. Email is another example of a channel that has been heavily abused. We've all gotten some crappy emails throughout the years. But as inbound marketers, we know to use email responsibly and to only send contextualized email that adds value to people's lives.

The same goes for pop-ups. When used correctly, they can actually enhance the experience a user has on your website, as well as boost your conversion rates.

4 Tips for Crafting High-Converting Pop-ups (That Don't Suck)

But how do we make sure that our pop-ups are helpful and not spammy? Here are some guidelines.

1. Offer something relevant and valuable.

The problem with most pop-ups is they get in the way of the visitor's experience on a website, rather than enhance it. Oftentimes this is because what's being offered in the pop-up is either not valuable to the visitor, or it has nothing to do with the page they're on.

To boost engagement with your pop-up as well as enhance the experience that someone has on your site, be sure to offer something that is both valuable and relevant to them, given the page that they're on. For example, if I were writing a blog post on social media, I would offer a free ebook on the same topic:

2. Think about the way people engage with your pages.

Another common mistake marketers make with pop-ups is having them appear at the wrong time, which adds to the annoyance factor. Be strategic about the timing and trigger of your pop-ups. Think about the way that visitors interact with certain types of pages on your site.

For instance, when someone engages with a blog post, they do so by scrolling down the page as they read the content. If you want to catch your visitors while they're most engaged, then you should customize your pop-up to appear when someone has scrolled halfway down the page.

Similarly, you might find that people who stay on your product or pricing pages for more than 30 seconds are highly engaged because they're taking the time to read through and consider their options. In this scenario, you could use a time-based pop-up that appears when a visitor has been on the page for a specific number of seconds.

To better understand exactly how your visitors engage with different pages on your site, try looking into Google Analytics data, such as bounce rate and average time on page. Better yet, use a tool like HotJar or Crazy Egg to record users on your site to build heat maps of where they click and scroll. This will give you a better sense of how people engage with your content.

3. Use language that's specific, actionable, and human.

Most pop-up forms have a fairly basic layout. You get a headline, some body copy, and maybe an image. In other words, you don't have a lot of real estate to work with.

This means it's super important to nail the copy on your pop-up form. In order to do that make sure your copy is specific, actionable, and human:

• Specific: Specify exactly what a visitor is going to get if they click on your pop-up. Don't tell them it's a guide; tell them it's a 10-page guide with actionable tips. Don't encourage them to join your email list; ask if they'd be okay with getting two to three emails on a given topic per week.
• Actionable: Let visitors know exactly what you'd like them to do. Instead of "Click Here," try "Download our Free Guide," or better yet, "Get my Free Guide." Craft a compelling call-to-action that will inspire your visitors to take action.
• Human: Remind visitors that there's a real person behind the pop-up form. Use colloquial language to make your forms friendly. Instead of "Join our email list," try "Mind if we email you twice a week?" Instead of "Subscribe to our blog," try "We'd be happy to notify you whenever we publish new articles."

4. Don't ruin the mobile experience.

In an effort to improve mobile user experience, Google announced that they were going to start penalizing websites that use what they call "obtrusive interstitials" -- in other words, pop-ups that mess with the user experience. Now I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want my Google rankings to go down from using pop-up forms.

To ensure a user-friendly mobile experience and avoid being penalized by Google, be sure exclude your pop-up forms for mobile, or use pop-ups that don't take up the entire screen of the page on mobile devices. Most pop-up tools already offer this type of functionality, but if what you're currently using doesn't, you may need to find a new solution.

Need a Free Pop-Up Tool?

So there you have it. To sum up: Pop-up forms do work, they can be inboundy, and you should be using them.

If you're looking to get started with pop-up forms, we'd recommend that you try HubSpot's free marketing tools. We built it ourselves to help marketers generate more leads across their entire website without sacrificing the user experience.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

Should Marketers Use Pop-Up Forms? A Comprehensive Analysis was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

Everything Marketers Need to Know About Sender Scores

Email marketing seems like an easy win for your inbound marketing strategy. Write an awesome email, put in some snazzy images, fire it off to your opt-in list, and watch the customers roll in.

Even if it all was that easy, though, the step marketers often overlook is just how difficult it can be to actually get your email into a recipient's inbox in the first place. Seems basic, but there are tons of moving parts involved in email deliverability, and a huge one is the reputation of the email sender.

Luckily, there's a service called Return Path that has a metric called Sender Score, which gives you insight into your reputation as an email sender.

Have you checked your Sender Score? If you do know your Sender Score, do you know what it means for your reputation as an email marketer? If you're interested in your reputation as an email sender, read on to learn everything you need to know about Sender Score.

To collect your Sender Score, Return Path gathers data from over 60 million mailboxes at big ISPs like BellSouth and Comcast. They record if people frequently unsubscribe or report spam from certain email senders, and then assign you a Sender Score based on that monitoring.

It's a crucial number to stay on top of, because mail servers will often check your Sender Score before deciding what to do with your emails. The lower your Sender Score, the harder time you'll have getting into someone's inbox. There are plenty of things that can impact the deliverability of your email, but Return Path reports that 83% of the time an email is not delivered to an inbox, it is due to a poor sender reputation.

Even if an email network or ISP doesn't query your Sender Score to determine whether they will deliver your email, the factors used in determining your Sender Score are similar to those used by email networks and ISPs to determine your sender reputation. As such, the score is a great, free email sender reputation tool to ensure you are aware of and have the opportunity to fix any deliverability problems.

Domain reputation and IP reputation are just a few of the considerations that are used to determine your overall Sender Score. Other characteristics include spam complaints, industry blacklists, and more.

Now that we know a little more about how your Sender Score is determined, let's learn how to check your score.

Checking your Sender Score is actually an easy process. Use the steps below to get started.

1. Go to SenderScore.org.

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To get started, go to the SenderScore.org home page.

2. Click "Get Your Score."

Then, click the "Get Your Score" button in the middle of the page.

3. Input your IP address and contact information.

Next, fill out the form on the page.

As Sender Score is a free email reputation evaluation service from Return Path by Validity, you'll have instant access to detailed reputation reports and other free tools.

Sender Score provides an indication of the trustworthiness of an email sender’s IP address. Mailbox providers evaluate the reputation of senders to determine whether to deliver messages into the inbox.

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4. Submit.

Lastly, click "Submit" and find out your Sender Score.

Once you know what your score is, you might be wondering, "What do I do with this information?" Below, let's dive into how to interpret your score.

How Do I Interpret My Score?

To check your Sender Score, visit Return Path's registration page, and you'll soon have a report that looks something like this (but with different data, of course!)

Scores are calculated on a rolling, 30-day average and represent the rank of an IP address against other IP addresses, much like a percentile ranking.

The closer your score is to 0, the worse it is, and if you're close to 100 like Return Path is in this sample report, well you're in pretty great shape! Now let's break down what each of the items you're being scored on in this report mean:

• Complaints: How complaints about that IP address compare to all other IP addresses. Complaint rates are calculated as complaints divided by accepted mail, and complaint scores are a rank based on your complaint rates.
• Volume: While not an indication of a good or bad sender reputation alone, it is an important part of the overall reputation algorithm. For example, an IP address which sends 100 messages and receives 99 complaints is problematic, while an IP address which sends 100,000 messages and receives 99 complaints is probably okay. A higher score equates to larger volume monitored by the Sender Score Reputation Network.
• External Reputation: How the IP address compares to all other IP addresses on a variety of external blacklists and whitelists.
• Unknown Users: The rank of the IP address' unknown user rate compared to all other IP addresses. Unknown user rates are taken directly from incoming SMTP logs of participating ISPs, tracking how often an IP address attempts to send a message to an address which does not exist.
• Rejected: This represents how often messages are bounced compared to other IP addresses.
• Accepted: The number of email messages accepted for delivery, this number is expressed as the number of messages seen minus the number of messages rejected.
• Accepted Rate: The ratio of email messages accepted for delivery compared to email messages attempted. This is the number of messages accepted for delivery, divided by the number of messages seen.
• Unknown User Rate: The ratio of unknown users, or invalid email addresses, compared to the amount of email seen.

So, what's a good score? If your score is over 80, congratulations! That's a very good Sender Score. If your score is between 70 and 80, something isn't right -- move on to the next section of this blog post to see what you could be doing wrong that's impacting your email deliverability. If your score is less than 70, well ... you need to repair your sender reputation.

What Do I Do If I Have a Bad Sender Score?

The first step is knowing, so good job on checking your score. It can take weeks or months to fix a low Sender Score, so the sooner you're aware of the problem, the better. There are several aspects of your email marketing that you need to check and possibly change to improve your Sender Score and email delivery rates -- here are the ones that Sender Score takes into serious account:

• Inconsistent Volume of Email Sends: See the graph in the top right corner of the Sender Score report? Their email send volume goes up at a pretty steady rate, and as a result, their score maintains a pretty even number. However, if you were to send 5,000 emails on Monday, 200 on Friday, nothing for a week, and then suddenly another 15,000, you would likely get dinged for sending inconsistent volumes of emails.
• Frequency of Sends: Just as the volume of sends should be consistent, so should the frequency with which you email recipients. Email every day, every other day, every week -- whatever your needs are. Just make sure you don't jump on the email marketing bandwagon, abandon it after a month, then hop back on and expect no deliverability penalties. As you perfect your email marketing machine, you'll be able to test the optimal email sending frequency for your recipients.
• Cold IP Address: If you're new to email marketing, you may have neglected to warm up your IP address. Start email marketing on a new IP address with small batches of the best people on your email list -- you know, the ones who love you and won't mark you as SPAM or unsubscribe from your communications. Progressively increase the amount of people you email to warm up your IP and prove you're a safe sender.
• Being Blacklisted: There are about 50 known blacklists out there that denote which IPs are spammers. Return Path has a service that lets you see if you're on a blacklist. Assuming you're a legitimate email marketer who just didn't know some of the rules for good email deliverability, visit the sites of those who have blacklisted you to consult their information for being removed from their blacklist. If you contact them for removal, they will help you understand why you were blacklisted in the first place and what you can do to improve your email marketing methods.
• Getting Caught in a Spam Trap: A spam trap is an email address that was once valid, but no longer is, and will thus garner a hard bounce notice when you email them. However, when a mail server sees consistent traffic going to the dead email, they can turn the email into a spam trap that will stop returning a hard bounce for the known bad address, and instead accept the message and report the sender as a spammer. The moral of the story here is, if you're not monitoring your hard bounces and removing them from your active email list, you could be perceived as a spammer.
• SPAM reports: Finally, if your email recipients think you're a spammer and identify you as such via a SPAM report, your sender reputation is going to suffer. Check the rate at which your emails are marked as SPAM -- an acceptable rate is 1 in every 1000.

There are several other factors to getting your email into a recipient's inbox -- the content of your email, email infrastructure, recipients' personal filtering preferences -- more of which you can learn about in this email post about email deliverability.

Additionally, if you're looking to start email marketing on the right food, consider taking HubSpot's course on "Understanding Email Deliverability."

To be successful with your email marketing, you need to build trust with the people receiving your emails. To build trust, you need to provide value. And to provide value, you need to know how your emails are performing to a healthy email deliverability strategy.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in February 2012 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Everything Marketers Need to Know About Sender Scores was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

Facebook's Testing New Email Marketing Tools: Here's What We Know So Far

Each day, millions of brands launch ads, create business pages, and test out lead-generating marketing strategies on Facebook.

While Facebook offers a robust selection of marketing tools, one big marketing staple they've never really explored is email marketing. That might be about to change.

This summer, a small number of Facebook Business users were given access to a new email marketing tool, which Facebook later confirmed it was experimenting with.

While you might not expect a major social media platform like Facebook to invest in email marketing tools, this move actually makes a lot of sense.

In the last decade, Facebook's amped up its advertisement and lead-generation offerings. While B2C companies could easily launch an ad for a product and see ROI roll in, the platform has also enabled B2B companies aiming to sell higher-priced offerings to connect their CRM and generate leads via lead ads or landing pages.

Facebook has consistently been expanding to make its platform a stronger lead generator for brands. And, now that Business Pages are able to gain contact lists from the platform, it makes sense for Facebook to consider an email tool that allows brands to reach out directly to those audiences.

“We’re evaluating whether these tools are beneficial for people and businesses before deciding whether to expand it further,” Facebook told AdWeek.

Since Facebook began the email marketing tool's test, marketers have caught on. At one point Meg Coffey, a social media strategist, tweeted screenshots of the tool after discovering it:

In the replies, a number of marketers shared their thoughts on the new email tool.

In the tweet's thread, many marketers were optimistic about what Facebook's email and CRM compatibility could mean for lead-generation.

Facebook's email tool might seem interesting, but before you drop your marketing email tool for this one, keep in mind that it's still in its testing phase. While some brand pages have the ability to use it, others do not. Additionally, if the test fails, there's a possibility the tool won't ever fully launch.

If you do want to learn more about the tool and how it could benefit your Facebook marketing strategies if and when it goes live for all pages, here's a quick rundown of what we know about it so far.

What to Know About Facebook's Email Marketing Tool

Although Facebook's email marketing tool is in its testing phase and not yet available to all users, social media marketers and page admins have shared a number of screenshots to demonstrate what it's capable of.

Here's what we know based on the screenshots and information we could dig up.

1. Facebook's email marketing tool will follow GDPR subscriber list regulations.

Sending emails to people who didn't knowingly sign up for them infringes on GDPR regulations -- and emails sent through Facebook's new tool won't be an exception

And although Facebook is primarily a social media network, it will follow email privacy regulations by instructing users to only send marketing emails to contacts who sign up for them.

According to social media posts, Facebook marketers will see a warning and disclaimer about what they can and can't send contacts when they click into the email tool.

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2. You can't build email lists with addresses from your contacts' Facebook profiles.

When hearing that Facebook offers email marketing, you might think that the marketing emails could simply go to someone's Facebook Messenger or the emails associated with Facebook accounts that Like your business page.

However, like any other email marketing platform, your contacts will need to subscribe to a list and have an address associated with their contact name to get sent an email from Facebook's platform.

Luckily, if your connected CRM already has an email subscriber list, you can just select it from a drop-down menu seen in this image:

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If you don't already have a subscriber list, there are a few ways to create one. You could build a form on your website that promotes your new email and encourages people to subscribe, or you could launch a Facebook lead ad that promotes the email subscription.

3. Facebook's tool might not be as advanced as other free email marketing software.

Available screenshots of the tool show that users can customize email headlines, subject lines, and body copy, but marketing organizations like IMPACT say it's unclear how much design control email marketers will get related to images, color schemes, links, and formatting.

In a follow-up tweet, Coffey said that there are "far more robust email marketing tools out there," but that the Facebook tool might be useful for those "getting their feet wet" with email marketing.

In its current form, the email tool might be useful for entrepreneurs or less tech-savvy Facebook page owners who are beginning to try email marketing. But, because reviews of the tool hint that it's fairly basic, it might not be robust enough for businesses that require solid customization, personalization, and performance tracking.

Developing an Email Marketing Strategy

Even if Facebook's email tool doesn't pass its test-phase and fully launch, Facebook's interest in marketing email proves one thing: Email certainly isn't dead.

Email marketing from any tool helps with boosting brand awareness, can keep you connected to your audiences, result in ROI from customers, and even bring solid non-organic traffic to your website.

If you're a beginner to email marketing, here are a few things you'll want to keep in mind regardless of which tools you use to create your message.

• Respect your contact's privacy: If a contact fills out your lead-gen form but doesn't want to receive email -- listen to them. Similarly, don't build your email list by purchasing contacts from other brands. This is against GDPR regulations.
• Provide valuable content: Once you get a list of subscribers, provide them with content that they're most interested in seeing, as well as the content you promoted when encouraging them to subscribe. For example, engaging email content could include discounts or links to helpful blog posts. Remember, don't just overpromote or blast your subscriber list with emails about your products. This could cause your messages to get marked as spam.
• Grab the reader's attention: Because emails sent through Facebook, or other email marketing tools will go directly into a number of crowded inboxes, try to create catchy subject lines, preview text, and body text that will grab the attention of a busy person who's just scrolling through emails on their smartphone.

If you're testing out email marketing for the first time or trying to improve your current strategies, check out this ultimate guide for more expert tips and tricks.

Facebook's Testing New Email Marketing Tools: Here's What We Know So Far was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns