7 Best Event Registration Tools

When it comes to event marketing, there are many tasks that need to be completed prior to (as well as during and after) your event. This can become overwhelming, especially if you're on a small team. 

The good news is that there are a variety of event marketing tools available to help with all aspects of your event, including event registration. In this blog post, we’ll cover seven of the best event registration tools on the market today.

For the sake of simplicity, the free event registration section includes one option that is always free for event registration. The second section includes event registration tools that are either always paid, or offer free and paid plans. 

Free Event Registration Tools

1. HubSpot Free Online Form Builder

Source

HubSpot’s Free Online Form Builder makes it easy to create, integrate, and share forms with your audience. The drag-and-drop builder makes the process of designing your registration forms simple — then, all attendee contact information obtained is automatically stored in your CRM.

Share your event registration form on an event website or web page. There are over 1,000 form fields and over 12 field types you can use to customize your event’s registration form. Then, decide if you want to trigger notifications when an attendee signs up for your event by completing and submitting your form.

Are you a WordPress user? Well HubSpot still applies to you thanks to the HubSpot WordPress Plugin. 

Source

When it comes to using HubSpot as your event registration tool (or as your CMS, CRM, Marketing Software, Sales Software, or Service Software, for that matter), you have a lot of flexibility — even if your website is built on WordPress. In fact, HubSpot’s free WordPress plugin, which is built natively in WordPress, helps capture, organize, and engage visitors with free forms (as well as live chat, contact management, email marketing, and analytics).

Select to receive notifications once an attendee completes registration, as well as automate event-related follow-up emails. Use the drag-and-drop form builder for your event registration or stick to the WordPress builders you already use (this is made possible by the many integrations HubSpot offers, like Gravity Forms). Lastly, built-in analytics and reporting dashboards allow you to keep track of your attendees and their contact data with ease.

Next, let's look at some more event registration tools. 

Best Online Registration Tools

2. Google Forms

Source

Google has a variety of tools you may find yourself using every day (I know I do) — Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides are just a few examples. So what about a Google Event Registration Tool? Well, Google Forms offers the necessary features for just that. Similar to other Google products, Google Forms offers a plan for personal use (that's free) and a plan for your team (that's paid and comes with greater security and control).

With this paid Google Business plan, you can create event registration forms for attendees, students, or patients and track all sign-ups. To create your event’s registration forms, simply open a new form and begin customizing the form fields. Drag and drop these form fields so they’re positioned accordingly, and add images, videos, and custom logic as you see fit.

Then, send registration forms directly to your audience members' email addresses and view data about submitted forms within the built-in analytics dashboard.

Price

Google Forms Workspace requires a Google Business Plan. You’ll gain access to Google's other products in addition to Froms with a paid plan. Plans range in price from $6 per month to $18 per month. If you’re looking to use the product at the enterprise level, contact a rep for a quote.

3. Splash

Source

Splash is an event marketing program for online, in-person, and hybrid events. This tool allows you to design and customize responsive web pages and emails for your event. As for attendee sign up, choose to share registration forms and RSVPs that your audience can then send back to you with ease. Smart guest lists, targeting, and email marketing features exist to optimize and streamline event registration and promotion.

Splash also provides the necessary tools to check-in attendees, share event-related surveys, and run sweepstakes and contests. Integrate Splash with your marketing automation platform and CRM, and analyze event data via the tool's reporting dashboard.

Integrate Splash with HubSpot to create, plan, and host on-brand events all from a single tool and leverage attendee data in HubSpot for future campaigns and events.

Price

Try Splash for free, request a demo, or speak with a sales rep to learn about the right plan for your team.

4. Eventbrite

Source

Eventbrite is an event technology platform ideal for supporting and managing any event you host. The tool's event registration feature is so easy to use that it only requires you to work through three steps.

Start by entering your event details. This is when you’ll finalize your event’s who, what, where, when, and why.

Then, create your tickets — select whether or not your tickets will be free as well as which type of tickets you'll offer (e.g. single vs. multi-day pass). This is also when you'll determine whether you want to offer a discount or promo code for early-bird and group purchases.

Lastly, open registration to your audience via web page or social media. Specifially, Eventbrite makes it easy to share registration via Facebook and Instagram.

Price

Eventbrite offers both free and paid plans. The Essentials and Professional plans are free if you host a free event.  Eventbrite will only charge you when you sell a paid ticket.

If you are hosting a free event, you have access to all features offered in the Essentials plan, and you have access to all features offered in the Professional plan except for phone, chat, and email support. There’s also a third plan option, Premium, which offers the greatest amount of flexibility and customization at the highest price.

5. Whova

Source

Whova is an event management tool that comes with an online registration feature. Create tickets within minutes and customize registration in a number of ways. Offer discount pricing (for early-bird or group ticket purchases), offer different types of tickets (e.g. single vs. multi-day pass), and ask attendees questions about your event when they're registering (e.g. what made them want to attend your event or what they're most excited for).

You can also create a registration web page and embeddable widgets to link to your registration as well as use the real-time reporting dashboard to track sales and attendance. 

Price

Contact Whova directly for a quote via their pricing page.

6. Wild Apricot

Source

Wild Apricot is a membership and event management software with an online event registration feature. The tool makes it easy to create an online event listing that attracts your target audience as well as includes images and your online event registration form. Any event you create with Wild Apricot is added to the tool's calendar and/or your website so your audience can learn about and sign up for the event from anywhere.

Share early-bird discounts or coupon codes, offer add-ons at checkout, and schedule automatic confirmation emails to be sent to attendees. Wild Apricot also automates your event’s promotion, accepts online payment, and manages event check-in. The tool even allows attendees to connect and network with each other via the mobile app. 

Price

Wild Apricot has eight different plans that range from free to $600 per month. Each plan offers different features and capabilities as well as a free trial so you can test out the tool before committing to it.

7. Bizzabo

Source

Bizzabo is an event management platform for all events including those that are online, in-person, and hybrid. The software offers an event registration tool that's customizable and embeddable so attendees can register without ever leaving the event website. You can also brand your event’s registration form so its design complements the event.

Customize your event registration form’s fields to ensure you get all of the information you need from attendees — then, view these details in Bizzabo’s contact management dashboard. Bizzabo also integrates with a few social media platforms so you can promote your event and share content that your attendees post with ease.

Price

Reach out to the Bizzabo team for your free demo and a quote.

Think about the various features you need out of a registration tool for your event and get started sharing event registration with your audience members. Then, sit back and watch attendee sign-ups start flowing in. 

7 Best Event Registration Tools was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Create a Successful Blog Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide

Did you know that 55% of marketers say blogging is their top inbound marketing priority?

Did you also know that these marketers are 13x more likely to see positive ROI than marketers who don't invest in blogging?

Over the last decade or so, businesses have increased revenue, improved brand awareness, and boosted conversions with valuable written content published for their target audience and customers. The key here is that their blog content is valuable — it isn't enough to simply have a blog; there has to be a purpose or reason for its existence.

So, how can you create and maintain a successful blog that provides your target audience worthwhile, high-quality content — all while building your business's reputation as an industry thought-leader and expert?

The answer is with a blog marketing strategy.

Before we review the steps to your blog marketing strategy, let's take a look at how to start a successful blog. We'll also include examples of successful blog sites to illustrate some of these steps.

1. Choose your blog topic and purpose.

The first part of developing your blogging strategy is to clearly define your blog's topic and purpose.

Your blog topic should be broad enough so you can write hundreds of articles about it but also specific enough to relate to your business niche and area(s) of expertise.

When thinking about your blog's purpose, ask yourself, "Why does this blog exist?"

You should be able to answer that question in one, straightforward, defining statement. (Document your blog's purpose to you can refer to it as you grow and your business evolves.)

If you need help defining your blog's purpose, take a moment to ask yourself these questions:

• What is the greater purpose your company is trying to fulfill?
• What story supports this purpose?
• Who shares your passion for this purpose?
• Is your team aligned with the meaning of this purpose?

Example

HubSpot has four blog properties: Marketing, Sales, Service and Website. Each blog focuses on its respective industry and relates the content back to the appropriate HubSpot product.

Source

2. Register and host your blog

This step is two-fold. First, let's talk about your blog's URL structure.

A domain name, also known as the root domain, is the text in a URL that identifies your website — and, therefore, your business — for a web browser. For example, HubSpot's domain name is hubspot.com.

Subdomains are part of your root domain — they appear before the domain in your URL like this: blog.hubspot.com. "Blog" is the subdomain. Subdomains are helpful for organizing a lot of content, including multiple content types. If you have a large blog operation, this structure can help you over time. However, it does pass less authority from your root domain in the short-term.

Subdirectories are divisions of your domain that live on your website, but represent specific pages on your website. For example, a subdirectory that'd take visitors to a specific blog post on a website would look something like this: hubspot.com/blog/article-name. Subdirectories often pass more authority from your root domain and subdomain. However, they can make it hard to scale your content strategy over time since you need more subdirectories to organize your content properly and protect your user experience (UX).

Subdirectories can also represent certain types of content within a subdomain. For example, blog.hubspot.com/marketing/article-name takes visitors to a marketing article on blog.hubspot.com.

The option you choose for your blog has the potential to impact your organic ranking, which is why it's important to choose wisely.

Next, you'll need to pick a host for your business's blog. The simplest way to host your blog is through the same software on which your website is run.

For example, HubSpot users can employ HubSpot CMS and access their website creation and management tools alongside their blogging tools — all from a central location.

Another common way to host your business's blog is through WordPress — compare HubSpot vs. Wordpress here. Other popular options include Wix, Bluehost, and Squarespace.

3. Design your blog.

Design your blog in a way that entices your readers to regularly read (and hopefully, share) your content.

Your blog should be inviting and on-brand. It should be well-organized, clean, and easy to navigate. Within seconds of visiting your blog, readers should know it's published by your company.

To do this, choose a theme that's consistent across your blog properties and articles. Depending on the host you choose for your blog, you'll likely have several theme options that are both free and paid.

For example, HubSpot offers a marketplace of free and paid blog template options. Templates help you easily customize and edit your blog template to tailor it to your business.

The Help Scout blog is a wonderful example of beautiful blog design. Its minimalist design limits the use of copy and embraces negative space by promoting the latest posts with gorgeous feature images. The blog is aligned with the Help Scout brand and promotes readability and easy navigation.

Source

4. Decide who will write and manage your blog.

Now it's time to think about who's writing, running, and managing your blog. Ask yourself (or your team): Who's accountable for each role within your blog strategy?

There are lots of moving parts when it comes to your blog — if you don’t create ownership around each component, it'll be difficult to reap the benefits of a successful blog operation.

We've put together a list of some examples of the roles you need to fill to effectively implement a blogging strategy.

• Blog article topic ideation
• Search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research
• Statistics, examples, personal stories, and thought leadership
• Editing
• Strategy and editorial calendar governance
• Promotion
• Repurposing, updating, and historical optimization

Depending on your resources and the size of your marketing team, you may find one person holds responsibility for multiple roles.

5. Determine how frequently you’ll share blog posts.

How many blog posts can you commit to writing and publishing? How often are you planning on producing blog content for your audience?

Consistency is the key to keeping your audience engaged and interested. This will also allow you to maintain your status as an active thought-leader and expert in your industry. Use a content calendar to consistently manage and schedule your blog posts.

Plan and optimize your marketing content with these free calendar templates.

The beauty of creating this type of blogging rhythm and sharing that information via an editorial calendar is that it creates a sense of accountability among your team of bloggers. It ensures all writers and contributors have optimized for keywords, added CTAs, and edited their pieces by a certain time and date. This way, you'll have a consistent stream of content your readers can get in sync with.

If you're a HubSpot CRM user, you already benefit from an editorial calendar built right into the COS.

6. Write compelling and valuable content.

It's important to reiterate just how critical it is for your blog content to be both compelling and valuable to your readers. This plays a large part in how you're viewed by your target audience, customers, competitors, and other industry leaders. It's also how you're going to keep readers engaged and loyal to your blog — and hopefully converting to customers, too.

Remember, it takes more time and energy to obtain new subscribers than to maintain current readers. Plus, your current readers have the potential of becoming your brand advocates faster than new subscribers do. So, focus on consistently producing content that captivates your audience all while providing them with useful and worthwhile information so they stick around for the long run.

Patagonia's blog, The Cleanest Line, is a fascinating publication. It's not a generic brand blog that discusses Patagonia products or customers; it tells compelling stories written by some of the best writers on the web — yet it still resonates with Patagonia's target audience and those who share its core values. I've personally spent hours reading the articles on The Cleanest Line, and it's endeared me to Patagonia in the process.

Source

7. Include CTAs.

Are any of the reasons you're developing your business's blog to drive organic traffic to your website, improve conversions, and boost sales?

That's great news — but to accomplish these goals, you'll need to include relevant calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout your blog posts.

CTAs can be paid or free for your audience members. Either way, effective CTAs provide readers with a level of value that they simply cannot pass up.

A CTA might share in-depth content and information with your audience on a specific topic. Or maybe it includes a discount code or special deal on your product or service. A CTA could also provide further training related to the subject of your blog article.

Check out this blog post if you're looking for some examples of clickable CTAs to insert in your content.

If you're a HubSpot user, the CRM offers a CTA creation tool to help you develop relevant — and even personalized — offers to drive traffic to your landing pages and convert more leads.

For example, the Omniscient Digital blog naturally weaves CTAs into its posts, making the linked items part of the broader story or takeaway. The goal of CTAs should be to encourage readers to take action without deviating too far from the purpose of the post.

Source

8. Launch your blog.

Now it's time to launch your blog!

This is the exciting part — you finally get to share the content you've been working so hard to develop. Put your blog content on it's corresponding landing page on your website and send your email list of recipients their blog article(s). Share it via social media and send it to members of your network as you see fit. 

9. Track and analyze your blog’s success.

Remember to track and analyze the success of your blog over time. To do this, decide which metrics matter most to you and your business. Once you understand how a specific metric contributes to a positive outcome, then you'll be able to make your blogging strategy more targeted. Examples of blogging metrics you might track include:

• Number of readers and subscribers
• Number of page views per post
• Number of conversions
• Number of backlinks
• Number of referrals
• Overall traffic

When applying these metrics to the goals you're looking to set, consider the following questions to provide concrete targets that make sense for your business.

• Does this goal help you achieve your purpose, or is there something more relevant we can aspire to?
• Is this goal aligned with the initiatives of other parts of our business?
• Which metrics track the progress towards this goal? Are these metrics complementary or counterintuitive?

Once you determine which metrics you're going to use, start by setting goals for a 60-day period. This gives you enough time to see whether your strategy is working and then you can adapt your goals based on the results you see.

Next, let's dive into your blog strategy.

Blog Marketing Strategy

Your blog is an important component of your business marketing strategy and will hopefully market your products and services, but in order for it do this, you must market the blog itself.

A blog marketing strategy is how you share and promote the content on your blog. Unfortunately, "build it and they will come" doesn't apply to blogging as well as it does in Field of Dreams.

For your blog to do its intended job — drive traffic, convert visitors, increase revenue, and/or promote your brand as a thought-leader or expert — it must have a marketing strategy in itself. How will people locate your blog? What type of content will keep them reading? How can you use your other promotional channels to elevate your blog content?

Follow these blogging best practices to promote and market your blog content to your target audience.

Always keep your buyer personas top of mind.

When writing, managing, and scheduling your blog — or working on anything related to your blog, really — keep your buyer personas in mind. 

Ask yourself, "Who are our ideal customers?" and "Why do they need our product or service?" Once you can answer these questions in detail, you'll be nail down your buyer persona(s).

Use this free template to create your business's buyer personas.

Once you create your buyer personas, document a detailed description of who this person is so you can reference it has your business and blog grow. You should be able to refer to this description every time you write a new blog post.

This way, you'll be able to create content specifically suited to your target customers' wants, needs, challenges, and/ or pain points. This will also help you turn your blog into a powerful lead conversion tool for your business (i.e. your blog will show your readers and target audience why they need your product or service).

To get a deeper understanding of the actions your buyer personas are likely going to take, research the behaviors of your target audience so you can adapt and tailor your blog content to meet their needs in a way that pushes them to convert in some way. To conduct this type of customer research, you can use:

• Q&A forums (Quora, Yahoo! Answers, or Fluther)
• Social media (LinkedIn Groups, Twitter Advanced Search, and Google+ Communities)
• Content creation tools within your industry or niche (BuzzSumo or Topsy)
• Other blogs (comments and interactions on blogs similar to yours; your competitors' blogs)

Keep an eye on your competition.

Speaking of your competitor's blogs, it's important to keep an eye on these other thought-leaders in your industry. Your competitors provide insight into what's working (or not working) in terms of blog content among your target audience.

It also tells you a little bit about what they're experimenting with and what you'll need to accomplish to stand out and provide your readers with valuable content they can't get anywhere else — something unique to your business and your business only.

Create a list of 5-10 of your closest competitors with blogs you could conduct a content audit on. Make conclusions about the type of content they share, unique techniques they've implemented in their blog, and how they're doing in terms of ranking for the keywords you hope to rank for.

Then, look for gaps in their content so you can capitalize on them. To help you do this, use tools like QuickSprout, Open Site Explorer by Moz, and SEMRush Competitor Research.

Perform SEO and keyword research.

When one of your customers searches a phrase on Google (or any search engine), you want them to find your blog (or web page), not a competitor’s. To make this happen, dedicate some time to researching which keywords and phrases your target audience is typing into search engines so you can include them in your blog posts where they naturally fit.

In other words, you'll significantly improve your chances of ranking on the search engine results page (SERP) by performing appropriate search engine optimization (SEO) and keyword research prior to writing your blog post, and then incorporating those findings in your content.

Start by creating a list of 5-10 keyword groups you want to rank for, along with their associated long-tail keywords, in the SERP.

Remember, Google's algorithms are constantly changing to become more intuitive — meaning, old tactics like keyword stuffing will hurt your ranking in the SERP. Instead, you're better off writing copy that engages audience members first and search engines second.

Note: HubSpot customers have access to a built-in keyword and SEO tool to help with this.

Focus on your blog's SEO and keyword research with HubSpot CRM's Content Strategy tool.

Decide where you'll distribute your blog content.

Strategically determine where you'll distribute your blog content. You chose a host for your blog already, meaning your content is likely already easily shareable on your website.

For example, if you use the HubSpot CRM and blogging software to host and manage your website and blog, it's simple to add your articles to their corresponding landing page on your site.

Other ways and platforms through which you might distribute your content include social media, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, and online publishing platforms, such as Medium. You might also work with industry leaders, experts, and influencers to share your content on their websites and social profiles.

Promote your blog content.

It's probably safe to assume you want your blog content to be as discoverable as possible. In terms of your blogging strategy, this refers to your ability to get your content out there so members of your target audience find, read, and (hopefully) share it.

There are many inbound tactics you can use to promote your blog. We touched on a few options above, but another common form of effective blog promotion involves an influencer marketing strategy.

Get started promoting your content with the help of a free influencer marketing guide.

To begin, identify the key influencers in your niche or industry you want to contact and work with. These should be people your current customers and target audience perceive as credible, trustworthy... and, yes, influential.

As you begin making and managing your influencer connections, remain in regular contact with the ones who are promoting your blog content. Be sure you know what they're doing to support, share, and promote your blog content and that their tactics meet your business's standards — you want to ensure they're representing your brand accurately. After all, you're likely paying them to promote your content among their audience members.

You can make your relationship with your influencers even stronger by interacting with their content regularly to show your support. For example, if you're working with an influencer who also has a blog, then go to their blog and read, comment on, and share it (even when the content they're publishing isn't necessarily related to your business). 

How to Maintain a Blog

Creating and marketing your blog is merely half the battle. As we mentioned above, consistency is key to a successful blog — which means maintenance is most of the hard work.

Creating blog content can be time-consuming, especially when you aim to command authority in your niche with researched, thoughtful, and planned posts.

This is why updating, repurposing, and republishing your existing blog content is so valuable — it saves you time and energy but it also allows you to efficiently achieve the results you're looking for.

What do I mean by this? Well, ranking in the SERP with a net new post takes significantly more time (I'm talking months) than an updated post. Meaning, you'll see a positive impact sooner if you start repurposing existing posts rather than solely creating new content.

Audit your existing blog posts to determine what you can repurpose and update. Outdated content to remove and/ or replace might include statistics, examples, infographics, quotes, product or service details, research, and irrelevant ideas. You can also add keywords you've determined are missing through your research.

(Check out this post if you're looking for more ideas on how you can effectively repurpose your blog content.)

The process of updating content also allows you to reinvigorate the brand new content you've worked so hard on. Updating allows you to maintain the quality and relevance of your blog without having to recreate blog posts from scratch.

Grow Better With An Effective Blogging Strategy

Growing an influential blog in your niche is a surefire way to nurture your potential customers. By creating regular content that solves the challenges of your readers and fulfills their biggest curiosities, you'll start to build a vault of trust and advocacy. This will inevitably contribute to the overall success of your business. Start with your purpose — the big why — and slowly unpack the individual levers that will contribute to your blog marketing performance through the steps and strategy we've reviewed above.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How to Create a Successful Blog Strategy: A Step-by-Step Guide was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

The Ultimate Guide to Design Templates

If someone asked you to create an infographic, where would you start?

Surely not with a blank Google Doc or sheet of paper. No, you’d likely search for an infographic design template to use as a starting point — or at least draw ideas from.

Design templates are incredibly helpful tools for today’s marketers. They provide guidance and inspiration for almost all types of content and save precious time and energy.

We created this guide to help you make the most of design templates for your business. Keep reading to get started or use the chapter links below to jump ahead.

Benefits of Design Templates

Good design is valuable, but not everyone can afford to hire a freelance designer or in-house design team.

Design templates remove any complicated design steps and equip even the most novice graphic designer to create gorgeous visuals.

Here are some other reasons to use design templates.

Design templates are convenient and fast.

Design templates save marketers (or business owners or even designers) the energy it takes to recreate the same design time and time again. They provide a shortcut so you only have to spend time filling in the critical details.

Design templates also save you time. Facing a deadline for print ads or postcards? Preparing for a restaurant launch and need a new menu? Grab a design template, fill in the necessary text, and send it on its way.

Design templates are systematized.

Design templates, when downloaded from reputable sites, are created to meet whatever specs and specifications are required for their intended purposes.

If you’re downloading a design template for your Etsy shop cover photo, it’s likely already set to the proper width and length as designated by the site. The same goes for other social media and print design templates like postcards, business cards, email headers, and Facebook ads.

Design templates also help to preserve brand guidelines and consistency. When a company defines a brand, creating design templates for all major visual, written, and print components can help maintain consistency across the organization, regardless of who’s creating the ad or marketing asset.

Design templates are optimized.

Bad design hurts SEO. When people visit your site and can’t easily navigate a content offer or web page, they’re likely to leave … or “bounce” out of your site to find another. This tells search engines that your website isn’t a good answer to search queries.

Design templates help you avoid this. By providing great design and user experience, you won’t get dinged by search engines — and left in the dust by visitors.

Design templates are inexpensive.

Most design templates are free, especially when provided as content offers by brands. Other places you can find free or inexpensive design templates include Canva, Creative Market, and Adobe.

You can also create your own design templates for free in programs like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Canva.

How to Use Design Templates

Design templates can be used for most types of content, whether print, digital, written, or visual.

Below are a few key places where design templates may come in handy — and where to find them.

Visual Content

Visual content is important in marketing. What’s even more important is gorgeous, consistent visual content.

Whether you’re building an infographic to illustrate a new report, placing icons throughout a PowerPoint presentation, or creating a new graphic for a web page, design templates can help keep your visual marketing content consistent and on-brand.

Recommended Resource:

Digital Content

Digital content can be hard to create without help. Website design templates give marketers and business owners a starting point when building a homepage, blog, landing page, and other digital content.

Site builders like Squarespace, Wix, and HubSpot typically provide web design templates that fit their specific sites. WordPress also provides templates — otherwise known as WordPress themes — that allow you to simply input content and publish your site.

Recommended Resource:

Written Content

Design templates created for written content are some of the most popular among marketers. Why? Because design templates allow content marketers to focus on what they do best (content) while taking care of the rest (gorgeous design and convenient use).

Let’s say you’re creating an e-book and need a beautiful template. Working with a design template helps you focus on the writing aspect and gives you direction on how to organize your content.

Don’t forget informational content like press releases. Design templates can help put a creative spin on the traditional public relations approach.

The same goes for email campaigns. Most email marketing tools (like HubSpot!) provide pre-designed email templates into which you simply have to input your information.

Lastly, design templates can be beneficial for internal use, too. Need help organizing your content marketing efforts? How about developing an editorial calendar for your team? Design templates can help you get started creating those documents and systems.

Recommended Resources:

Promotional/Print Content

Any public-facing content should be consistent with your brand, especially promotional content. Design templates can help standardize this.

Whether you’re designing a series of promotional graphics for social media, creating a PPC ad, building an online presentation, developing a new call-to-action button for a landing page, or even building a new menu for your restaurant or catering business, consider using design templates to maximize impact among consumers.

Some templates can be found on sites like Canva or AdEspresso, and others can simply be recreated using software like PowerPoint.

Recommended Resources:

Ready, Set, Design

Design templates save time, standardize your brand, and help your SEO. Whether you need ideas for a new social media ad campaign or are looking to create consistency among your web content, design templates can help you.

Consider bookmarking some mentioned above or creating your own for future use.

The Ultimate Guide to Design 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 Choose a Blog Name That'll Grow With Your Brand

Clothes, food, habits — outgrowing things is a natural part of life. That's true for brands as well. When brands decide they've outgrown their current way of doing things, this might call for a rebrand.

Outgrowing a brand, or at least a brand name, is common. Marketing platform Mailchimp used their rebranding to help the company transition to a more "grownup" brand that would allow them to serve more small businesses. Many blogs I read, like "Liv's Healthy Life," (Now known as just "Liv B,") quickly rebrand when they realize their old blog name just doesn't make sense anymore.

While rebranding a business can be a smart and necessary step to growing a long-lasting business, renaming your blog or business doesn't have to be. To combat outgrowing a blog name too quickly, let's go over some strategies to use when naming a blog.

How to Choose a Blog Name

1. Identify your niche.

What are you doing? What will your blog be about? Will it be an extension of your business or its own project? Identifying what your blog will be about is key to defining a name that'll expand with you.

The blog name will represent your unique point of view in your industry or niche. It should match the aesthetic of your blog and define the mood you want to give your readers when they visit your blog's homepage. It should also be descriptive of the type of content you'll publish.

Image Source

For example, I love the blog name "Hot for Food." The blog is a companion to creator Lauren Toyota's YouTube channel of the same name. It's a great example of a name that goes well with its cooking niche.

The name is also broad enough that Toyota can grow her brand outward. If she wanted to release a cookware line down the road, "Hot for Food" would still make sense, and have about a million available puns at the ready. How fun would a saucepan labeled "Hot with Sauce" be?

2. Do your research.

Look at what prominent blogs in your industry are doing. Take note of what you like and don't like, and use their blogs as a springboard for what readers in your industry like to see. Look for how these blogs are branding, the names of their blogs, and the responses their content receives.

For example, if you're starting a blog about technology, look at TechCrunch, a massive blog about startups and technology. Their name is short, memorable, and professes their content strategy all in one: to dissect and disseminate the latest tech news for their readers.

It's also a good idea to think about how your blog will stand out from others. This is also a good time to find out if any of the blog names you were thinking of are already being used.

Start with a simple Google search and then get a bit more technical by checking LLCs in your state. Once you've found a name that's free, make sure that the domain is also available, and consider registering your chosen name to protect it. That way, you can refine how you want your brand to be perceived, and how you want it to grow within the market you choose.

3. Think about your message.

What do you want to communicate? Consider your message now and in the future. When looking over your five-year plan, does your message expand as your company does, and will your blog name still reflect that?

For example, to say media giant Buzzfeed has grown exponentially over the past decade would be an understatement. Buzzfeed's YouTube channels alone each have billions of views and millions of subscribers. As the company has grown, it diversified and expanded its YouTube content.

Buzzfeed YouTube channels were originally named after colors, for example, Buzzfeed Blue, Buzzfeed Ultraviolet, and Buzzfeed Yellow. Recently, those names have been stripped.

Buzzfeed rebranded their content to grow with their company. Yellow rebranded into Boldly, and later, when Boldly outgrew their name, rebranded into As/Is.

According to founder Jonah Peretti, the rebrand of channel names was to reflect "design and product features that reinforce their unique identities and better serve their many fans."

4. Use a blog name generator.

When you're brainstorming name ideas by thinking of your niche and message, write down key words and phrases. Then, you can input those in a blog name generator to help you get started with a few ideas.

For example, you can use Themeisle's Blog Name Generator, Domain Wheel, Zyro, or Panabee.

These can be used as a starting off point to help you brainstorm even more ideas and get the creative juices flowing.

5. Consider your target audience.

One of the first things you need to think about is "Who is reading my blog?" Will your target audience change over time or do you want people to grow with your brand?

For example, The Children's Place store is always going to be targeting parents of young kids. While those kids will grow up one day, their target audience will always be parents of young children. On the other hand, with a personal brand like Kaitlyn Bristowe's, while she started off targeting young women who watched The Bachelor, as she gets older, her demographic could grow with her and change to young moms (if she ever decides to have kids and be a blogger).

Those are just two examples, but it's important to keep in mind that your target audience might change with you, so you want your name to have a timelessness to it.

6. Keep your brand in mind.

In a similar vein, your blog name should be linked to your brand. Whether you use the same font, colors, or use a play on words, you want people to know that it's your blog.

Additionally, the overall brand messaging should be consistent across your blog, main homepage, social media, etc.

7. Make sure it's easy to say and spell.

Don't let wordiness or design get the best of you when you're choosing a blog name. Ultimately, you want your name to be catchy, easy to remember, and easy to say and spell. You might be thinking, "Why does that matter?"

Well, let's imagine that a user comes across your blog on Google. They want to come back to your site, but forget the name because it was too long. Or maybe they try to type in the name but misspell it because your blog name used a pun or play on words. This can lead to confusion and lost readers.

Keep it simple and easy to remember so users can come back again and again.

Blog Name Examples

1. LADbible

LADbible, an entertainment company, originally had a blog of the same name. Over time, their messages expanded and required different funnels for them. LADbible now has multiple blogs in tandem with the original: SPORTbible and Pretty52.

Image Source

2. Contently

Similarly, Contently's blog has a name that's separate from the company: The Content Strategist. This name suggests that the blog is named after their target audience, a clever way reach the readers they serve.

Image Source

3. Whole Foods

Rather than name their blog "Whole Foods Blog," the organic food company went with Whole Story. The name connects to its company but also has its own option for diverse content, telling stories of where their products come from and the customers it satisfies. Whole Foods also kept the keyword in the title, so SEO would be a breeze.

Image Source

4. Target

‘A Bullseye View' is Target's all-encompassing blog name. Twisting in the logo was Target's route, which reflects their branding. With a name like that, the opportunities are endless as to what Target can put on their blog as it grows, something the company keeps in mind with categories such as "Lifestyle," "Team," and "Company."

Image Source

5. Pottery Barn

Pottery Barn wants you to know their company, ‘Inside and Out' with this fun, immersive blog name. The name gives interior decorating buffs a nod, hinting that content will provide deeper information about the people behind the design, as well as the homes Pottery Barn caters to.

Image Source

6. Plan A Day Out

Plan a Day Out is a local Orange County parenting blog. The reason I love the name of this blog is that it's super catchy, easy to remember, and communicates its mission. Talk about a blog name that does it all.

Image Source

7. Backlinko

Backlinko is an excellent blog name by SEO expert Brian Dean. This is a great example of a blog name that is catchy, unique, but also easy to remember. Additionally, the niche and messaging is clearly communicated through its name. Anyone in Brian Dean's target audience will understand the blog name, since backlinks are a common SEO strategy.

Image Source

8. Thrillist

Another great example of a blog name is Thrillist. This blog name is honestly just fun and easy to remember. It doesn't necessarily correlate to the blog's message, but that's okay. Sometimes a fun, catchy blog name will work just as well.

Image Source

9. Marketing Brew

Marketing Brew might be my favorite example of a blog name because it comes from the Morning Brew newsletter. Whoever is running Morning Brew came up with a blog name that was perfect for growth. From Morning Brew, you have Marketing Brew, a blog clearly directed toward marketers. Then, you have Emerging Tech Brew, a blog targeting users interested in emerging technology.

The opportunities are endless for the Morning Brew crew. If they want to start a blog about parenting, it could be called Parenting Brew. The overall concept had growth in mind when it was born.

Image Source

10. Rob Has a Podcast

I know this is a podcast, but I think the name is a great example of a simple blog name that you won't forget. This is a personal fan favorite of mine since Rob Has a Podcast is a reality TV podcast from a former reality TV contestant (is my nerd showing?).

This is a great example of just using a simple formula that people will remember. Every blog name doesn't need to be this creative phrase. Sometimes it can just be your own name.

Image Source

Once you've finished brainstorming your blog name, it's time to dive in and learn everything you can about business blogging. In HubSpot Academy's business blogging course, you'll learn how to craft a blogging strategy that drives business growth, create quality blog content, and build a guest blogging strategy powered by SEO.

Creating a blog is an important business strategy, and you want to make sure your blog name and content will resonate with your target audience for years.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How to Choose a Blog Name That'll Grow With Your Brand was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources From Your WordPress Website

Have you ever finished creating a WordPress website and loved everything about it? Then, promptly began to hate it after realizing it takes forever to load?

Not only are slow loading speeds a nuisance for you and your visitors, but they can also cost you significantly when it comes to SEO. Since 2010, Google algorithms have accounted for loading speed in ranking decisions, so slow pages appear lower on results pages.

You might be familiar with the common culprits of poor page performance — excessive content, uncompressed image files, insufficient hosting, and lack of caching to name a few. But, there’s another often-overlooked perpetrator in play: render-blocking resources.

Don’t get me wrong — CSS and JavaScript are great. Without CSS, websites would be walls of plain text. Without JavaScript, we wouldn’t be able to add dynamic, interactive, engaging elements to our websites. But, if executed at the wrong time, both CSS and JavaScript can put a dent in your website performance.

Here’s why: When a web browser first loads a web page, it parses all the page’s HTML before displaying it onscreen to a visitor. When the browser encounters a link to a CSS file, a JavaScript file, or an inline script (i.e., JavaScript code in the HTML document itself), it pauses the HTML parsing to fetch and execute the code, which slows everything down.

If you’ve optimized your page performance in WordPress and are still experiencing problems, render-blocking resources may be the culprit. Sometimes this code is important to run on the first load, but much of the time it can be removed or pushed until the very end of the queue.

In this post, we’ll show you how to eliminate this pesky code from your WordPress website and give your performance a boost.

1. Identify the render-blocking resources.

Before making any changes, you first need to locate the render-blocking resources. The best way to do this is with a free online speed test like Google's PageSpeed Insights tool. Paste in your site’s URL and click Analyze.

When the scan is complete, Google assigns your website an aggregate speed score, from 0 (slowest) to 100 (fastest). A score in the 50 to 80 range is average, so you’ll want to land in the upper part of this range or above it.

To identify render-blocking files that are slowing your page, scroll down to Opportunities, then open the Eliminate render-blocking resources accordion.

Image Source

You’ll see a list of files slowing the “first paint” of your page — these files affect the loading time of all content that appears in the browser window on the initial page load. This is also called “above-the-fold” content.

Take note of any files ending with the extensions .css and .js, as these are the ones you’ll want to focus on.

2. Eliminate the render-blocking resources manually or with a plugin.

Now that you’ve identified the issue, there are two ways to go about fixing it in WordPress: manually, or with a plugin. We’ll cover the plugin solution first.

Several WordPress plugins can reduce the effect of render-blocking resources on WordPress websites. I’ll be covering two popular solutions, Autoptimize and W3 Total Cache.

How To Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources With the Autoptimize Plugin

Autoptimize is a free plugin that modifies your website files to deliver faster pages. Autoptimize works by aggregating files, minifying code (i.e., reducing file size by deleting redundant or unnecessary characters), and delaying the loading of render-blocking resources.

Since you’re modifying the backend of your site, remember to use caution with this plugin or any similar plugin. To eliminate render-blocking resources with Autoptimize:

1. Install and activate the Autoptimize plugin.

2. From your WordPress dashboard, select, Settings > Autoptimize.

3. Under JavaScript Options, check the box next to Optimize JavaScript code?.

4. If the box next to Aggregate JS-files? is checked, uncheck it.

5. Under CSS Options, check the box next to Optimize CSS Code?.

6. If the box next to Aggregate CSS-files? is checked, uncheck it.

7. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes and Empty Cache.

8. Scan your website with PageSpeed Insights and check for an improvement.

9. If PageSpeed Insights still reports render-blocking JavaScript files, return to Settings > Autoptimize and check the boxes next to Aggregate JS-files? and Aggregate CSS-files?. Then, click Save Changes and Empty Cache and scan again.

How To Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources With the W3 Total Cache Plugin

W3 Total Cache is a widely-used caching plugin that helps address laggy code. To eliminate render-blocking JavaScript with W3 Total Cache:

1. Install and activate the W3 Total Cache plugin.

2. A new Performance option will be added to your WordPress dashboard menu. Select Performance > General Settings.

3. In the Minify section, check the box next to Minify, then set Minify mode to Manual.

4. Click Save all settings at the bottom of the Minify section.

5. In the dashboard menu, select Performance > Minify.

6. In the JS section next to JS minify settings, make sure the Enable box is checked. Then, under Operations in areas, open the first Embed type dropdown and choose Non-blocking using “defer”.

7. Under JS file management, choose your active theme from the Theme dropdown.

8. Refer back to your PageSpeed Insights results from your earlier scan. For each item under Eliminate render-blocking resources ending in .js, click Add a script. Then, copy the full URL of the JavaScript resource from PageSpeed Insights and paste it into the File URI field.

9. Once you’ve pasted in all render-blocking JavaScript resources reported by PageSpeed Insights, click Save Settings & Purge Caches at the bottom of the JS section.

10. In the CSS section next to CSS minify settings, check the box next to CSS minify settings and make sure the Minify method is set to Combine & Minify.

11. Under CSS file management, choose your active theme from the Theme dropdown.

12. For each item under Eliminate render-blocking resources ending in .css in your PageSpeed Insights scan results, click Add a style sheet. Then, copy the full URL of the CSS resource from PageSpeed Insights and paste it into the File URI field.

13. Once you’ve pasted in all render-blocking CSS resources reported by PageSpeed Insights, click Save Settings & Purge Caches at the bottom of the CSS section.

14. Scan your website with PageSpeed Insights and check for an improvement.

How to Eliminate Render-Blocking JavaScript Manually

Plugins can handle the backend work for you. Then again, plugins themselves are just more files added to your web server. If you want to limit these extra files, or if you’d just rather handle the programming yourself, you can address the render-blocking JavaScript manually.

To do this, locate the <script> tags in your website files for the resources identified in your PageSpeed Insights scan. They will look something like this:

<script> tags tell the browser to load and execute the script identified by the src (source) attribute. The problem with this process is that this loading and executing delays the browser’s parsing of the web page, which impacts the overall load time:

Image Source

To resolve this, you can add either the async (asynchronous) or the defer attribute to the script tags for render-blocking resources. async and defer are placed like so:

While they have similar effects on load times, these attributes tell the browser to do different things.

The async attribute signals the browser to load the JavaScript resource while parsing the rest of the page and executes this script immediately after it has been loaded. Executing the script pauses HTML parsing:

Image Source

Scripts with the defer attribute are also loaded while the page is parsed, but these scripts are delayed from loading until after the first render or until after the more essential portions have loaded:

Image Source

The defer and async attributes should not be used together on the same resource, but one may be better suited for a particular resource than the other. Generally, if a non-essential script relies on a script to run before it, use defer. The defer attribute ensures that the script will run after the preceding necessary script. Otherwise, use async.

3. Re-run a site scan.

After making your changes, conduct one final scan of your website through PageSpeed Insights and see what impact your changes had on your score.

Hopefully, there’s a noticeable improvement, but don’t worry if not. Many factors can inhibit page performance, and you may have to do some more digging to find the source of poor performance.

4. Check your website for bugs.

In addition to a rescan, check your pages to make sure your site works. Does the page load correctly? Are all elements showing up? If something is broken or fails to load properly, undo your changes and troubleshoot the issue.

If you’ve reached a point where you’ve repeatedly tried various measures with minimal speed gains, it might be best to consider other ways to speed up your pages, rather than risk breaking your site.

Optimizing Your WordPress Site for Performance

Many factors contribute to your users’ experience on your website, but few are more important than load time. Whenever you make big changes to content or appearance on your WordPress site, you should always consider how such changes affect performance.

Now that you’ve eliminated the render-blocking resources, you should continue to optimize your website’s speed by analyzing other features that are known to slow down performance. Try to incorporate regular speed testing into your site maintenance schedule — staying ahead of any potential issues will be critical to your success.

How to Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources From Your WordPress Website was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

8 Inclusive Advertising Tips for 2021, According to Microsoft's Head of Inclusive Marketing

Advertising can help create a direct connection between consumers and your brand, and is a critical component of marketing.

And inclusive advertising can yield dramatic results and increase brand trust, loyalty, and better overall brand perception. In fact, 64% of people said they are more trusting of brands that represent diversity in ads, and 85% of consumers said they will only consider a brand they trust.

Advertising that works hard for your company has never been more important as we come off the heels of a challenging year affecting all businesses. However, there is one concept that rang true for us all that can inform our approach in advertising for 2021 and beyond – that is, we are all interconnected and interdependent, both as consumers and as advertisers.  

In this post, we'll provide eight tips curated from Microsoft's Marketing with Purpose Playbook to help you create more inclusive advertising, reach more customers, and grow your business.

1. Showcase human diversity in your campaigns.

Inclusive advertising means having diversity authentically represented in your ads and promotions, while aligning it to your local market's composition of diversity. It also means considering the many dimensions of human diversity, including (but not limited to) age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, location, language preference and gender expression.

Additionally, you'll be able to expand your ability to connect and tailor ad creative and promotions with your audience when you consider experiential diversity like ability, parental status, marital status, military status, affinities, and job function.

Ultimately, inclusive advertising is understanding with empathy who your customers are, representing them accurately, and more importantly, recognizing who you're excluding in your marketing materials.

2. Perform a landing page and website audit for audience diversity.

Inclusive advertising doesn't end with the ad. In fact, half of the customer experience with your advertising resides where you send them after they click — which means it's critical you demonstrate diversity in your landing pages or website, as well.

Considering 64% people are more likely to consider or purchase a product after seeing diversity or inclusion in advertising, it's critical you ensure your landing pages and website represent true diversity.

Does your website's collection of photos and images match the audience representation you created across your entire ad campaign? Does each inclusive advertisement point the customer after the click to the landing page that matches the inclusive spirit of the image creative? If not, it should.

However, while it's relatively easy to spot-check a landing page with the corresponding ad creative, how can you collectively evaluate your entire website for the right amount and variety of diversity?

For an easy way to review what images are across your site's web pages, simply use Bing.com and type in the search bar the command, "site:" and then add your website's URL after the colon.

For example, let's search Bing for the clothing brand Tommy Hilfiger, which looks like this in the search bar: "Site:https://usa.tommyhilfiger.com". Then, hit "Enter". Bing will produce a search engine results page indexing all your web pages:

Then click on the "images" in the search engine results page for your "site:" search in the navigation bar:

This will produce all the images found on the website. You can quickly scroll through to get a sense of the diversity — or lack of diversity — in the collection of images on your website.

Your audit can be used as a general website check, or a search for specific dimensions of diversity that you feel are underrepresented in your upcoming advertising campaign.

3. Align your advertising messaging to the nine feelings of inclusion.

Emotions are becoming increasingly linked with brand outcomes. As Maya Angelou once said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Feeling included so that a person feels that this brand is for me is at the heart of brand trust, love, and loyalty.

There are actual identified feelings of inclusion in advertising, which can create connection and drive trust. Inclusive advertising can conjure two major feelings: joy, and trust. As a marketer, it's critical you look for brand connection points in product or features that can create these two main feelings.

However, there is more to it than that – there are actually nine feelings that make up joy and trust, which is great news for advertising. If you can find a genuine and authentic way that your product creates any one of these feelings, this can convey inclusion, which – you guessed it, builds trust, brand love, and loyalty.

This product marketing approach facilitates connections with people, making them feel like part of a community. Here are some marketing ideas to evoke feelings of joy and trust:

• Celebration: Of people, their successes, honoring of holidays, etc. How does your product celebrate them?
• Zest: For life (for ours, theirs, and that of the planet). Convey enthusiasm and energy. How does your product create a zest for life?
• Hope: Bringing hope to conquer challenges and/or societal issues. How does your product give your consumers' hope?
• Relaxation:Instead of portraying the need to be on guard, remove tension or anxiety for your customers. How does your product produce relaxation?
• Relief: From concern or worry, removing something distressing or oppressive. How does your product bring relief?
• Safety: Create experiences or highlight how your brand extends safety to all people. How does your brand experience make someone feel safe?
• Confidence: Instill a sense of confidence—the belief that we strive to act in the right way. How does your product give your consumers' confidence?
• Acceptance: Of others' differences, typically to be included as part of the group. How does your product make someone feel accepted or demonstrate you are accepting of others?
• Clarity: Bring a sense of certainty, clarity, and transparency in ambiguity. How does your product bring clarity to a confusing situation?

4. Incorporate three metaphors of inclusion.

Another customer touchpoint that can help your brand emotionally connect with people in your advertising is language cues and context, which evoke positive feelings.

Discovered in our research, The Psychology of Inclusion and the Effects in Advertising at Microsoft Advertising, we uncovered the following fifty language-based cues that signal inclusion, as well as three metaphors of inclusion which are inextricably tied to emotions.

If used in context and in a genuine and authentic way in your ad copy, website, or digital content marketing, these metaphors can help convey inclusion and drive brand performance.

5. Practice inclusive and authentic image selection.

Authentic representation in advertising is important. It drives trust and brand support — so the images you choose matter. It is worth noting that from the Microsoft Advertising research around trust, we found that there is a strong tie between trust, love, and loyalty.

Once trust is established as the baseline, a brand can begin to build love and loyalty. To do this, brands must go the extra mile to make someone feel understood through inclusion, and that means authentic imagery, too. Inclusion was found to be a key brand attribute that creates loyalty.

The same story threads are woven through our inclusive advertising research. Our research uncovered that authentic representation in advertising builds trust and brand support, with 72% of people saying they're more likely to support brands with authentic advertising.

Choosing imagery is an important part of the process in constructing a meaningful and inclusive customer experience. Inclusive advertising isn't just about representing everyone — it's also about making everyone feel your products or services are for them.

Here are some tips to help identify and select inclusive imagery:

Tips to illustrate "Connection":

• Have more than one person in an image
• Include realistic diversity: use authentic and genuine imagery, which is best conveyed using real people being themselves, that reflect everyday life, not actors hired to play a part
• Create a visible relationship between people that is positive
• Include people in photos rather than featuring the product only

Tips to illustrate "Openness":

• Include people with disabilities
• Feature non-traditional dimensions of diversity like people with larger bodies
• Include unique subsets of diverse populations
• Include multiple people of color
• Have people with intersectionality in diversity

Tips to illustrate "Balance":

• Everyone is featured with the same prominence
• Equity is conveyed
• Ensure multiple dimensions of diversity are represented in an image
• Within your campaign, have the creative represent the spectrum of people that your potential customer base could be

Lastly, it's good practice to include a diverse representation of people in the review of your creative to uncover blind spots, such as non-obvious negative connotations, stereotypes, cultural inaccuracies, or negative associations.

6. Perform an accessibility audit on your ads, content, and landing pages.

Would you want to turn away one in four people from buying your product simply because your ad or website was not in the right format for them?

Conversely, wouldn't you want to increase your reach by 25%? I hear you saying, "Yes, of course!"

Without accessible advertising, no matter how perfect your product or offer is for someone, one in four people in Europe or the United States might not get your message. This is the ratio of people with disabilities to the general population. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people globally live with disabilities.

Digital inclusion is important because it provides access to services, products, data, information, and education for everyone. We, as advertisers, can recognize these exclusions, solve for them, and make a difference for the one in four people — and also in our business performance.

• Download the plug-in for your browser https://accessibilityinsights.io/ and begin to learn how to make your landing pages for your campaigns accessible. This free open-source tool by Microsoft will highlight what accessibility issues are present and how to fix them. It could not be more turn-key, it's free.
• Use the Accessibility Checker in Microsoft 365 to make any media or content more accessible.
• Learn the ten accessibility principles to building accessibility into your advertising from the start.

7. Develop an inclusive keyword library.

Nothing replaces the value of first-hand customer experience as you develop an inclusive keyword library for your brand. Begin with customer focus groups with the audience you are trying to reach, and you'll be surprised what you uncover. You can even start by sourcing this information from your internal Employee Resource Groups.

To develop an inclusive keyword library, you'll want to consider the consumer decision journey for the product or service you offer. Next, layer on the journey for the consumer with a physical disability, cognitive difference, military status, age consideration, gender expression, or other dimensions of diversity.

Include their lived experience and map the unique keywords that they might use to seek out your product. By understanding the consumer decision journey from their perspective, you will develop your own inclusive keyword strategy for your business.

One simple example is understanding gender differences. In Microsoft Advertising's Inclusive Automotive Marketing webcast, we shared the difference between men and women in the consumer decision journey when shopping for a car. An inclusive keyword strategy can inform not only your search engine marketing (SEM) but could shape you content marketing, as well.

As suggested earlier, don't stop at the usual dimensions of diversity — go further and see what you can uncover to help you connect and give people the feeling that you're "a brand for someone like me."

8. Root out bias in your ads and your data.

Contending with and working towards eliminating bias applies to all of us. As marketers, our job is to understand and identify potential bias that can live within our datasets and our marketing models. Bias in data produces biased models, which can be discriminatory and harmful. Bias can lead to missed opportunities in marketing, or even damage your brand's reputation.

There is a long list of bias types, and it's good to become familiar with many of these. A great resource is the Harvard Implicit Bias Tests, which you can use to explore and learn about the variety of biases.

For instance, a marketer might conclude that a luxury accessories brand should target women, because gender appears to correlate with a higher purchase probability. You might assume that only women buy luxury handbags. However, gender may just be a red herring. Income could correlate to a much higher degree with conversion.

The resulting bias of only targeting women, then, would limit your opportunity. I invite you to have deliberate curiosity about long-held beliefs, because you might be accidentally leaving out other buyer personas.

Additionally, it's critical you're cognizant of gender-neutral pronouns in your marketing materials. Refer to "they" or "them" when writing about people (rather than "he" or "she"), and ensure you offer at least a third option when asking for gender in customer profile forms.

As we start 2021 and work to find new ways to drive business impact while making a positive impact in the world, we hope these eight tips for inclusive advertising help get you there. Let's work together to build a more inclusive world today.

8 Inclusive Advertising Tips for 2021, According to Microsoft's Head of Inclusive Marketing was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns