8 of the Top Marketing Challenges Faced Globally [New Data + Expert Tips]

Every marketer faces different challenges. Although we typically share similar goals, some teams are stuck on hiring top talent, while others are having trouble finding the right technology for their needs.

Whatever the case may be, there's always at least one area you can improve to turn your marketing into an even more effective revenue generator. 

But marketing is often fast-paced, so it can be difficult to identify which areas you'll want to develop to facilitate stronger growth in 2021 and beyond. For that reason, it's important to pause for a moment and reflect on the biggest challenges marketers feel they're going to face this year.

Why? Because problems are much easier to tackle once you've correctly identified them. 

So ... what's happening in 2021?

Below, let's review the current global marketing issues impacting the industry, according to marketing experts.

Biggest Marketing Challenges [New Data]

To start, I surveyed over 120 marketers to gauge the biggest challenges affecting the industry as a whole. 

By far, "Generating traffic and leads" was marked by nearly half as the biggest challenge marketers are facing this year. 

This challenge was followed by 21% who said "providing ROI for your marketing activities" was their biggest challenge. 

"Delivering an account-based marketing strategy" (8%), "securing enough budget" (6%), and "managing your website" (5%) were the other three notable challenges marketers feel they're facing in 2021. 

It's important to note, a few other marketers marked "targeting content for an international audience", "training your team", and "hiring top talent" as their top challenge ... but these three challenges were marked by less than 3% of the respondent pool, so they're less statistically significant. 

Let's dive into these in more detail, along with expert tips to combat these challenges, next. 

1. Generating Traffic and Leads

Generating enough traffic and leads is the top global marketing challenge in 2021, according to the data mentioned above.

HubSpot's new State of Marketing report supports this — in fact, "Generating more leads" is the top priority of marketers in 2021. 

Why It's a Challenge

John Lee, Head of Evangelism at Microsoft Advertising, believes that generating leads will be a particularly big challenge for marketers in 2021. He told me, "Getting quality traffic isn't a challenge today, and likely won't be tomorrow. There has been growth in search and content marketing in 2021. New channels continue to surface and show promise, too (TikTok or audio chat rooms anyone?)."

"Through the 2nd half of 2021 and beyond, the challenges will lie elsewhere – maintain and growing leads or sales, tracking and scaling, etc."

Lee adds, "'Sea change' is the phrase that comes to mind for the state of digital marketing today. Change in the realm of privacy, identity, and changes to cookies. Change in the form of lost data clarity (will cookie-based conversion tracking continue to work, GA4, access to search queries, etc.). And all of this sits within the context of change to how and where we work and economies in flux as the world continues to move through the pandemic."

Fortunately, privacy changes doesn't mean the end of generating leads — it simply means learning how to re-think strategy. As Lee told me, "To weather this storm of change, marketers need to be vigilant in monitoring and understanding industry-wide acceptance of privacy protocols and updates to search, social, and display/native platforms (consumer-side and marketing/advertising-side). And last, but not least — lean into the power of peer support and networking for sharing best practices and learning."

Additionally, marketers are struggling with producing enough demand for their content. And as the years progress and competition stiffens, this will only become truer. With so many options of platforms for marketers to publish their content and even more ways to promote it, it's hard to know where to focus your efforts.

What Can You Do?

When it comes to creating content that produces enough traffic and leads, marketers should ask themselves two questions: Are you truly creating high-quality content — the type of content people would pay for? And, do you know the type of content your audience actually wants?

For instance, when asked how they’d most like to learn about a product or service in 2021, 69% said they’d prefer to watch a short video over a text-based article, infographic, or ebook. This means, if most of your product-related content is in ebook format, you could be missing out on the majority of consumers who prefer video.

Additionally, the length of videos produced by businesses is increasing. In fact, the number of videos in the 30-60 minute category grew 140% in 2021, compared to 2019 — suggesting that long-form video content is becoming a more popular option for companies. 

To ensure you're creating content that resonates best with your audience, you'll want to refer to analytics often. Use effective tools to properly track the types of content that performs best with your audience to generate more leads in 2021. 

Additionally, once you know you're creating the type of content your audience wants, the focus shifts to promoting it in a way that makes your audience take notice.

More than ever before, people are being flooded with content. Consumers don't have to use a search engine to find answers. Instead, articles fill their news feed or buzz in their pocket via mobile notifications. To keep up, consider exploring alternate distribution methods — like social media or podcasting — to increase brand awareness. 

2. Providing the ROI of Your Marketing Activities

Measuring the ROI (return on investment) of your marketing activities has remained a top marketing challenge globally year-over-year.

In fact, when asked how confident marketers are when making budgeting decisions to invest in programs that influence revenue, roughly half (48%) said they were only somewhat confident.

It continues to be a vital way for marketers to understand the effectiveness of each particular marketing campaign or piece of content.

Plus, proving ROI often goes hand-in-hand with making an argument to increase budget: No ROI tracking, no demonstrable ROI. No ROI, no budget.

Why It's a Challenge

Although return on investment is a crucial stat that shows your campaigns success or progress, tracking the ROI of every single marketing activity isn't always easy, especially if you don't have two-way communication between your marketing activities and sales reports.

What Can You Do?

Providing ROI often comes down to using effective analytics measurement tools. For instance, Beautiful.ai Director of Marketing Kim Giroux told me, "Marketers are constantly challenged to illustrate the ROI of their efforts and 2021 is no exception. Proving ROI doesn't always have to mean extra work or effort though. In fact, certain technologies bake ROI into existing work processes."

Giroux adds, "Take presentation software, for instance. Savvy marketers today can create and use pitch decks with built-in presentation analytics that offer real-time data — such as how much time was spent viewing individual slides. Armed with these insights, marketers can better gauge stakeholder interest, inform their strategies, and adjust their campaigns."

Christina Mautz, CMO of Moz, believes measuring ROI comes down to redefining the marketing process as a whole. She told me, "My biggest challenge, and one all marketers face in providing ROI, is the prospect of meeting traditional KPIs in the modern workspace."

Mautz says, "Instead of leads and trade show success, marketing wins are now largely digital: engaging prospects and generating more clicks, downloads, and page visits."

CMO of Moz Christina Mautz says, "To better measure marketing progress, we have to redefine the marketing process, encouraging collaboration with sales and reaching KPIs together."

"For example, statistics such as page visits per sale or rising higher in the search engine results page (SERP) give marketers and SEOs tangible evidence as to how their work is meeting their ROI. New buying patterns and a customer-centric world require a divergence from the old, but measuring ROI will look far different than it did before and some leaders may not understand how or why."

When it comes to providing ROI, there's a strong case to be made for dedicating time and resources to establishing links between marketing activities and sales results. This means using both marketing software (like HubSpot) and a CRM solution (like HubSpot's free CRM), and then tying them together to close the loop between your marketing and sales efforts with a service-level agreement (SLA). That way, you can directly see how many leads and customers are generated through your marketing activities.

3. Securing Enough Budget

How can you create a winning marketing campaign without a budget? The truth is, it's pretty hard. But, even when you have a great, revenue-generating idea, you still usually need to get your budget approved by a higher-up.

Particularly in the aftermath of the global pandemic, some companies don't have the means to increase marketing budgets in 2021. As a result, marketers are faced with the challenge of achieving high levels of growth with minimal financial support. 

Why It's a Challenge

Securing more budget is a pressing challenge for marketing globally. And often, getting more budget is easier said than done — especially for smaller organizations that aren't working with sizable or flexible marketing spend.

But the key to securing more money for your team might not be that complex. Here's what you can do.

What Can You Do?

The key to unlocking budget lies in being able to prove the ROI of your marketing efforts. According to our report, organizations that can calculate ROI are more likely to receive higher budgets.

Again, success with inbound marketing also plays a large role in driving higher budgets. Effective strategies obviously produce results and make a strong case for increasing budget. But remember, inbound marketing is a long game. If you get off to a slow start, you shouldn’t back off — in fact, you might consider doubling down.

To learn more about how to understand and leverage marketing ROI, check out this simple guide.

4. Managing Your Website

In 2021, 64% of companies are investing in website upgrades. 

Although managing a website is consistently a challenge to marketers, it seems to be growing less threatening. In the data mentioned above, only 5% of marketers listed "managing your website" as a top challenge. 

Why It's Still a Challenge

Chances are, your website's performance is high on your list of priorities — particularly since website speed and performance plays a major role in your website's SEO ranking. It's an asset that works around the clock to draw in visitors, convert them, and help you hit your goals.

Issues with website management include a variety of different factors, from writing and optimizing the content to designing beautiful webpages. Here are a few things marketers can do to deal with this challenge.

What Can You Do?

First, try HubSpot's free website grader to determine how your website stacks up on key metrics including SEO, mobile, and security performance — and how you can improve it. 

If your primary challenge with managing a website has to do with the skills and resources you have available, you aren't alone. This is especially true for small companies who don't have all the talent in-house required to cover content, optimization, design, and back-end website management.

One solution? Hire freelancers and agency partners. To find freelancers, we recommend:

• Tapping into your personal and professional network by posting on LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social networks with a description of what you're looking for.
• Browsing freelance writers and designers based on their portfolios and areas of interest. For writers, check out Zerys and Contently. For designers, check out Behance & Elance.
• Browsing HubSpot's Services Marketplace, which lists a wide variety of designers from partner companies and agencies we've deemed credible.

Overall, you can make website management easier on your team by hosting your website on a platform that integrates all your marketing channels like HubSpot's COS.

Finally, for the projects you want to keep in-house, here is a list of ebooks and guides that might be helpful to your team:

• Run a Website Grader report
• Ebook: Website Redesign Guide
• Ebook: 77 Brilliant Homepage Design Examples
• Ebook: How to Design and Optimize Landing Pages
• Blog: 27 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
• Ebook: The Ultimate Workbook for Redesigning Your Website
• Ebook: The Marketer's Guide to Mobile

5. Targeting Content for an International Audience

Targeting is a key component of all aspects of marketing.

With 65% of marketers currently marketing internationally, and at least one-third of marketers planning to initiate an international strategy in 2021, it's important to have an international strategy.

To be more effective at targeting, one of the first things any marketer needs do is identify their buyer personas to determine to whom they should be marketing.

Why It's a Challenge

If you're expanding internationally, it can be a big challenge not only to figure out the best ways to market to an international audience, but also how to to organize and optimize your site for different countries.

Here are a few other top challenges when marketing internationally: 

Image Source

What Can You Do?

Download our free ebook, The Global Marketing Playbook. There are some really helpful tips in there that'll help give you some direction on global marketing, including how to identify your top three growth markets, how to explore local trends, and tips on choosing the best localization providers.

Additionally, when marketing to a new region, the most common tactic marketers use is to shift their product offering.

Remember, your website visitors might speak a plethora of different languages and live in totally different time zones.

To make your content appealing to a wide audience, you'll need to keep your global visitors top-of-mind when creating all your content. This means being aware of seasonal references, translating units of measure and monetary references, and giving translators the tools and permissions to customize and adapt content for a specific audience when they need to.

When in doubt, solve for local or cultural challenges by hiring locally. With a newly hybrid workforce, physical location is no longer a limit to who you can hire. 

Finally, be sure you're optimizing your website for international visitors, too. For more SEO-related tips and resources on global marketing expansion, take a look at How SEO is Different Around the World, According to HubSpot Content Strategists.

6. Training Your Team

As companies scale and technologies continue to evolve, training your team will become a greater challenge for marketers.

Why It's a Challenge

Whether it's training them on the concepts and tools they'll be using every day or making sure they're achieving their full potential, the struggle is real across the board.

To combat this, I’ll share some tips I’ve used during my trainings to make sure the concepts and tool tips stick and have a lasting effect on your team and your marketing.

What Can You Do?

To get an overall idea of where your team stands, take a few minutes to assess each of your team members' marketing strengths and weaknesses, levels of expertise, and passion/commitment to your company.

Then, objectively rate the priority (or level of importance) of their expertise and their contribution to bottom line objectives (ROI) to date. Here's a simple assessment tool from Lean Labs to help you evaluate your team so you can figure out who needs recognition and who needs coaching.

You also might consider requiring your team members to rack up some online marketing certification. HubSpot Academy, for example, offers certifications, documentation, and training programs to help people master the basics of inbound marketing. Google also offers training and certifications on analytics with their online Analytics Academy.

What about new hire training, specifically? We recommend creating a training plan for new team members. Here at HubSpot, each new marketer is given a document to lay out specific goals and help new hires demonstrate their effectiveness. To create your own 30, 60, or 90 day plan for new hires, take a look at The 30-60-90 Day Plan: Your Guide for Mastering a New Job [Template + Example]. 

7. Hiring Top Talent

Hiring top talent is another challenge marketers commonly report experiencing.

Why It's a Challenge

Many companies are shifting more resources to inbound marketing, which means higher and higher demand for top marketing talent. But supply simply isn't keeping up. From sourcing the right candidates to evaluating for the right skills, finding the perfect person could take months ... or more.

What's more, the type of marketing talent companies are looking for is changing, too. According to a 2020 report from LinkedIn, employers are seeking marketers with soft creative skill sets as well as hard technical skills. And the quick rate at which the demand for these jobs are rising has caused a marketing skills gap, "making it difficult to find candidates with the technical, creative, and business proficiencies needed to succeed in digital marketing."

What Can You Do?

Stefanie Grieser, co-founder of Shine Bootcamp, a professional speaker accelerator for women, understands the challenge of hiring top talent.

She told me, "When I talk to high-growth companies or marketing agencies (and the marketers running those teams), I've found that hiring not only top talent, but diverse top talent is extremely challenging. In fact, I was just having a conversation with an agency owner who hires SEO and paid marketers, and he told me, 'Hiring is still the biggest challenge we face.'"

In 2021, hiring talent can be incredibly difficult — particularly as more companies become competitive with 4-day work weeks, transparent salaries on job descriptions, and the adoption of remote work, which enables companies to hire anywhere.

Fortunately, Grieser provided me with a few tips for employers to stand out from the crowd. She told me, "My suggestion here is for marketers to invest heavily in their employer brand for the long-term. Just like you need to market your product, you also need to dedicate resources, time and energy into marketing your company as an employer."

Grieser adds, "I would suggest Diversity Tech Co, Tech Ladies, and Girlboss as go-to resources to post jobs. These organizations are run by incredible individuals who really care about diversity, equity, inclusion and intersectionality. I'm also seeing niche communities and job boards pop up. For marketers specifically, I would post your open roles here: Dave Gerhardt Marketing Group, Hey Marketers, and Superpath (which is focused on content marketers specifically)."

While it might seem random to discuss employer branding in a post about marketing challenges, it isn't — since it's often the marketing team that cultivates a strong employer brand.

As Grieser points out, "Airbnb has an Engineering and Data Science blog, Intercom has an Instagram dedicated to their design team, and Dooly posts short, LinkedIn posts (see an example here) interviewing their fun team with a few fun hashtags #doolydreamteam and #meetadooligan."

"Guess who leads this initiative? The marketing team. Think about how you and your team can showcase your work and your team's work. I won't try to assume that employer brand falls solely in your court, but as a marketer, you have natural skills that will lend themselves to marketing the company as whole."

LinkedIn data from 2020 shows that 87% of active and passive job candidates will consider new job opportunities. Additionally, the number one reason candidates will consider or accept a job is career growth. This means that job listings and a company culture that offers employees a plan for growth will see the most interest from talent.

8. Delivering an Account-Based Marketing Strategy

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a new trend, which is a growth strategy in which marketing and sales collaborate to create a personalized buying experience for an identified set of accounts.

However, interestingly, the most common challenge with ABM is delivering a personalized experience.

Why It's a Challenge

Currently, there isn't a lot of software that's focused on account-based marketing. Many companies that are implementing ABM strategies are using manual methods, which means some accounts are getting lost in the cracks.

However, marketers strongly agree that personalized content (56%) and advanced data management (43%) are keys to ABM's success.

What Can You Do?

To deliver a more personalized experience, you should use a software that helps you combine your sales and marketing information.

For example, HubSpot's ABM software help unite your marketing and sales teams with collaborative, intuitive ABM tools that create seamless buying experiences for your highest-value accounts.

This software can enable collaboration among teams and personalize content.

Additionally, HubSpot's software has account-level targeting added to the LinkedIn Ads integration, giving you the ability to target companies by target account status or tier, and contacts or subsets of contacts at target accounts.

The account overview sidebar, the ABM playbook for sales reps, and a native integration to link your HubSpot and LinkedIn Sales Navigator accounts, help further deepen your relationships with people over time, helping build more authentic connections with stakeholders within each account.

Does your company face any of these marketing issues?

A thorough analysis of your marketing strategy and its current performance will help you discover where your biggest marketing opportunity lies. This will allow you to focus on improving the areas that need the most attention, so you can start making your marketing far more effective.

If you're faced with a challenge and want ideas on how to best tackle it, you can always consider getting some help by any of the various types of marketing training that are available.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in November 2012 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.

8 of the Top Marketing Challenges Faced Globally [New Data + Expert Tips] was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

39 Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List

I have some bad news — your email marketing contact database degrades over time.

Your contacts’ email addresses change as they move from one company to another, opt-out of your email communication, or abandon an address they only used to fill out forms on websites.

As a marketer, it’s your job to make sure you’re constantly adding fresh contacts to your email lists so you can continue generating growth. While purchasing emails is an option, it’s not always the best way to go about this.

In this post, discover high-quality strategies to help you grow your email list to ensure that you have a large audience of subscribers eager to hear what you have to say and likely to make purchases and contribute to your business growth.

Sometimes called subscriber lists, email lists can get smaller if members unsubscribe and grow as you continue to collect more and more addresses through lead generation.

If you’re not working on building your email list already, or you’ve run out of ideas on how to do so, here are 39 simple ways to grow your email list. Please note that, with these methods, it’s essential to allow people to opt-in to receiving additional emails from your company, as some may not be interested.

39 Creative List Building Techniques

How To Grow Your Email List Using Email

1. Create unique email content.

Want to retain your current subscribers and have them help you grow your list? Create unique email content. If your emails are entertaining, informative, and valuable, recipients will always look forward to receiving them and will be more likely to forward them to their networks. This helps you gain exposure and obtain additional subscribers.

2. Encourage subscribers to share and forward your emails.

Include social sharing buttons and an “Email to a Friend” button on your marketing emails. By doing this, you’ll gain access to recipients' friends, colleagues, and networks to expand your contact list. At the bottom of your emails, include a “Subscribe” CTA as a simple text-based link so that the people receiving the forwarded emails can easily opt-in too.

3. Segment your email lists by buyer persona.

Email recipients are more likely to click through emails that cater to their specific interests, so using varying types of email subscriptions to send targeted content to different segments of your audience is worth considering.

If you create multiple targeted subscriber types, you’ll increase the chance that visitors will subscribe to one of them. In fact, marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue.

4. Reinvigorate a stale email list with an opt-in campaign.

Do you have an older list that you suspect is mostly decayed? Create an engaging opt-in message and send it to your old list and encourage contacts to re-opt in if they’d like to, but also promising to remove all contacts who don’t respond.

Though it may seem counterintuitive to remove folks from your email list to grow them, emailing contacts that you know are engaged can improve your deliverability and increase the odds of your email being shared with those outside your current database.

5. Add an opt-in link to your employees' signatures.

Hyperlinked email signatures can lead people to a landing page where they can sign up for your mailing list. Plus, if you’re already in a natural email conversation with them, subscribing to more emails can be a natural next step.

How To Grow Your Email List With New Content

6. Create a new lead-generation offer.

Create a new gated lead-generation offer, like a free ebook, and host it on a landing page that asks visitors to provide their email to download it.

7. Create a free online tool or resource that requires sign-up.

Free online tools make your users' lives easier, especially if all they have to do is sign up with their email address. For example, we've created quite a few free tools, like Website Grader, to gather email addresses.

8. Create additional bonus content.

Not all gated content is worth it to a website visitor. Sometimes, to gain their interest, you need to give them free content first. You can begin with a blog post that offers beginner advice on a subject, then offer additional bonus content with more advanced tips that they can access by submitting their email address via a landing page.

How To Grow Your Email List Using Social Media

9. Promote an online contest.

Use your social media accounts to host a free giveaway that requires contact information to enter. You can encourage your followers to click through to your website and sign up using their email addresses.

10. Promote a lead gen offer on Twitter.

Create a Twitter campaign to promote an ebook or free resource to your followers that requires using an email address to redeem.

11. Use Pinterest to promote gated visual content.

Pinterest plays host to visual content that encourages visitors to sign up to see more content. Use this to your advantage, and promote your gated visual content on the platform, so users are eager to learn more from you and submit their email to get more high-quality information.

Featured Resource: 12 Pinterest Templates for Business

Download These Templates for Free

How To Grow Your Email List Using Facebook

12. Make your email newsletter the theme of your profile cover photo.

Your Facebook profile cover photos are a great place to call attention to something specific, especially your email newsletter. If you create a high-quality graphic that highlights and calls attention to its value, you can entice users to submit their email to gain further benefit from the content you offer.

Featured Resource: Five Free Facebook Cover Photo Templates

 

Get These Customizable Templates

If you do this, you should also consider leveraging our next tip, making it easy for users to seamlessly submit their emails once you’ve attracted their attention.

13. Add a call-to-action button to the top of your Business’s Facebook page.

The value of this list-building technique is in the destination: add a CTA button to your Facebook page that links users to your sign-up landing page or a gated featured resource that requires email access. We added CTAs to our HubSpot Academy Facebook page, as displayed in the image below.

Image Source

In addition, placing a sign-up CTA button within your profile makes it easier for users, as they won’t need to leave Facebook and go to your site — they simply click the link, and you take them there.

Here’s a guide from Facebook on how to add one to your profile.

14. Share newsletter previews on your profile.

Creating a Facebook post that showcases a snippet of your email newsletter is a great way to attract your audiences and entice them to join your email list. They’ll get a preview of what you have to offer, become eager to learn more, and sign up to continue generating value from your business. Within this post, you can include a link to your sign-up page for easy and quick sign-up.

15. Promote content through Facebook that requires an email address to access.

Promote content in your Facebook posts that encourage email submission to access. This content can be something like a gated ebook, joining a giveaway or contest, or even saying that email subscribers get early access to new products.

Be sure to add social sharing buttons to your landing and thank-you pages to encourage your leads to share within their networks.

How To Grow Your Email List Using YouTube

16. Add engagement features to your YouTube videos.

End screens, also called video outros, are a tool that YouTube offers creators to direct viewers to take additional action after finishing a video, like clicking on a link to your website or watching another video on your channel. As they are used to generate further engagement from your viewers, it’s worth considering adding hyperlinks to your sign-up landing page in your end cards to grow your email list.

This tip is beneficial if you have created an informative video with mostly surface-level content. A more advanced view is provided in a gated offer or your email newsletter.

17. Use your header and images to promote your email newsletter.

Capture leads by placing a link to your sign-up landing page in your channel header. This image is front and center on your profile, and if your banner is eye-catching, well designed, and calls attention to your content offer, users will be drawn to it, which places the CTA link in their direct line of sight.

The red arrow in the image below points to a CTA on the HubSpot Academy YouTube page that leads users to a course enrollment offer that requires an email to sign up.

18. Promote your emails in your video descriptions.

Your YouTube video descriptions talk about the content within your videos, so viewers know what they’re about to watch. Each of your descriptions will likely contain unique elements, but it’s worth plugging your email sign-up landing page link within each of them.

This tip can be especially useful if you create how-to style videos, and you can entice users to sign up for more informative content and instruction by clicking the link in your description.

Featured Resource: 7 YouTube Description Templates [Free Prompts]

Download These Customizable Prompts

How To Grow Your Email List Using Instagram

19. Add a call to action to your Instagram bio.

Your Instagram bio is a great place to share information with your audience, like a CTA that calls attention to your email list and a link to your sign-up form.

Your CTA text should entice users by explaining the benefit they get from signing up, like obtaining bonus info, access to exclusive offers, or a general business newsletter. Placing the link directly in your bio also reduces customer effort, as they can simply click and sign up in a pop-up window within the app.

20. Share posts that lead users to click the call-to-action email link in your bio.

While you may not share posts that outright say “Give us your email,” you can certainly see success from sharing posts that entice users to share their contact info.

For example, you can advertise a giveaway and let users know that they can enter by clicking the link in your bio and submitting their email addresses. In another case, if you post an informative video about how to use your products, you can entice users to sign up because your emails will offer more informational content about how to use your products.

21. Use the swipe-up feature to share your landing page.

If you have an Instagram Business profile and more than 10k followers, you can add a clickable link to your Stories that users can access by swiping up on the story.

This feature is an excellent opportunity to share a link to your sign-up page or another offer on your site that collects email addresses in exchange for value, like a free trial. You can also use this feature to link to something like an informative blog post with a lead generation offer that your audience will be excited to sign up for.

Featured Resource: 8 Instagram Story Templates

Download These Free Templates

22. Add an email button to your business profile.

A more direct way to get user emails is to add an email button to your business page. This tool is primarily used for service needs so that customers can reach out to you for support inquiries. Still, it gives you the opportunity for further lead nurturing by asking if customers want to opt-in to receiving more emails.

Here’s a guide on how to add one to your profile.

How To Grow Your Email List Using LinkedIn

23. Send readers to a landing page for email sign-up.

After having conversations on LinkedIn, you can share links to your sign-up pages. You’re allowing users to continue the interaction you’ve just had, as your email will provide them with further high-quality information and content related to your business.  

You can send these links in InMail messages, comment threads, and personal 1:1 direct messages.

24. Post about your email newsletter.

If you have an email newsletter, you can post snippets of its content on LinkedIn and let users know that, if they sign up, they’ll get access to the entire piece and every newsletter from there on out.

25. Publish links to gated offers.

When you share a post on LinkedIn that contains high-quality information your audience can benefit from, round it out by encouraging users to sign up for your email list. If what you’ve said has resonated with them, they’ll recognize that receiving emails from you will give them additional access to the high-quality content you offer.

You can also do this in appropriate and relevant LinkedIn group discussions — just be mindful of the topic being discussed to ensure your offer is a welcome addition to the conversation.

How To Grow Your Email List On Your Website

26. Ask website visitors for feedback

People enjoy offering feedback on information that pertains to them. On your site pages, include a form that asks visitors what questions they might have about your business, and collect email addresses to follow up with them.

27. Shorten the length of your lead-capturing forms

It’s tempting to collect as much information on a user as possible right away, but adding too many fields to your landing pages and lead-capturing forms can drive people away. Reduce the length of your forms to just two to three fields — you can collect more information from them once you start a conversation.

28. Link to offers across your website that capture email signups

Create CTAs that link to your offers across your website that captures email sign-ups. Some key places to consider include your website’s homepage, your ‘About Us’ page, and your ‘Contact Us’ page.

29. A/B test different campaign copy

You might be doing all the right things to generate leads — landing pages, gated content, contests, and more, but not seeing the success you’re looking for. The problem may be that the design or copy itself isn’t driving the engagement you need.

A/B test different aspects of your list-building campaigns with different versions of the same content. This includes the call-to-action text, the color of the gated offer, and even where these sign-up forms are placed on your website. Sometimes a small change can drive hundreds more conversions.  

Featured Resource: The Complete A/B Testing Kit

Download the Free Kit

30. Create a blog that readers can subscribe to.

If you don’t already blog, you should. Blog posts help you increase your ranking on search engines and generate blog subscribers to upgrade to more actionable email campaigns over time.

31. Guest blog for other websites and share a call-to-action.

There are many websites and publishers out there that cater to your audience — and larger portions of it. Guest blogging for these websites helps you expand your contact list through exposure to a new audience.

When you create guest blogging content, include a CTA for readers to subscribe to your sites’ blog or email newsletter.

32. Include customer reviews on your sign-up landing pages.

It’s one thing for you to tell people to sign up for a campaign, but it’s another thing for your happiest customers to say it too. Customer reviews are the social proof that encourages people to join in on something, and you should publish these reviews on your website, especially landing pages with sign-up forms. Including reviews will add genuine value to your content when people are on the fence about submitting contact information.

How To Grow Your Email List With a Partner

33. Run a promotion on a partner website or email newsletter.

Similar to guest blogging, partner websites can help you target a new audience. Use this partner source to direct visitors to your website, where you’re already sharing sign-up forms.

34. Host a co-marketing offer with a partner.

Creating an ebook or webinar with a partner can split up the work of content creation and allow you to share the audience of a similar business. After you release your content, split the leads you generate with your partner.

Creating an ebook or webinar with a partner can split up the work of content creation and allow you to share the audience of a similar business. If the content is gated, you’ll collect email addresses from a new audience for nurturing.

How To Grow Your Email List With Traditional Marketing

35. Collect email addresses at a trade show.

Offline events like trade shows are highly anticipated growth opportunities for professionals in your industry. Demo your latest product at an appropriate conference and collect signups in person.

Once you’re back at the office, import these signups into your contact database, and be sure to send a welcome email that confirms their opt-in to your list.

36. Host your own offline, in-person events.

Meetups, seminars, hackathons, educational panels, and your conferences place you front and center of a networking event. Those who attend are often more qualified to be contacted because they came to your event. Take the opportunity to collect email addresses from attendees, and send a welcome email and encourage opt-in.

37. Host an online webinar.

Webinars are the perfect opportunity to talk about your industry and access the audience of thought leaders that you may want to present with. The best part? Webinars are normally registered for via email, so you have audience emails to add to your list for further nurturing upon registration.

38. Add QR codes to your display ad.

Incorporate a QR code into your print marketing collateral that people can scan for more information on the printer content. You can set it so that your codes require email addresses to access additional content so that you can grow your list.

39. Collect emails in-store.

If you have a brick-and-mortar store where you interact with customers face-to-face, launch a store membership that they can sign up for via email at the register. You can create an email campaign designated to walk-in customers, which can help you keep in touch and reward loyalty to your product.

The examples above are all things you can do to increase your business’s email list. The best way to do so is to leverage multiple strategies on this list, helping you reach your audiences from a wide variety of angles and increase the chances of growing your list.

As you grow your email list with fresh, opt-in contacts, you'll be able to nurture them with middle-of-the-funnel offers that allow you to convert early-stage leads into sales-ready leads.

39 Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

20 of the Best Free Google Sheets Templates for 2021

Whether your marketing position requires you to send invoices to clients, track website analytics, or create budget and expense reports, you’ve undoubtedly found yourself working with spreadsheets in some form.

And if you’re anything like me, those spreadsheets can feel frustratingly tedious when you’re under a time crunch.

Fortunately, Google Sheets offers 26 pre-built templates, allowing you to create reports and analyze data in spreadsheets faster and more effectively.

Best of all, Google Sheets templates cater to specific categories. For instance, if you click the Paid Traffic Report template, your spreadsheet is already organized into Overview, 12-month Trends, and Medium Breakdown categories. It knows what you need and offers it without any manual input.

Here, we'll dive into 20 of the best free Google Sheets templates for any marketing role in 2021, so you can create better spreadsheets while saving valuable time to focus on more important things — like making sense of the data itself.

Before we properly delve into the templates, let’s see why Google Sheets is an excellent choice for free templates and how you can find these templates.

Why use Google Sheets?

Google Sheets is part of Google’s G Suite of software that has over 6 million users. Here are some reasons why you should consider using it too:

1. It's free.

Even if you don’t pay for Google’s G Suite, you can still use Google Sheets and its templates for free.

2. It's easy to use.

You don’t need to pick up a manual or guide before you can start using and enjoying the features of Google Sheets and its free templates.

Since Google Sheets is cloud-based, you can work on them wherever you are or on whatever device you own as long as you have an internet connection and can access the Google account where the Google Sheet is.

3. It encourages collaboration.

Unlike with Microsoft tools, it’s easier to collaborate with Google tools like Docs and Sheets.

With a few button clicks, you can share a template or Google Sheet with other members of your team wherever they might be in the world. You can also leave comments as you and your teammates work on the same sheet in real-time.

You can also download your sheets or templates if you like.

How to Find Templates In Google Sheets

There are two common ways you can find and use free Google Sheets templates.

1. Google’s In-Built Template Gallery

On your browser, go to Google Sheets. Click “Template Gallery” at the top right. Explore the templates to find the right one for you.

You’ll find different templates for your personal, work, and project management needs. Here's an example of what the Personal template library looks like:

2. Add-Ons

Another way to find free templates in Google Sheets is to download and install the Vertex42 add-on. Here’s how:

Open an existing Google sheet, or type “ sheets.new” to create a new one. Then, find and click the “Add-ons” button on the top left menu.

Type “Vertex42” into the search bar, and click enter. Install the add-on.

To access the templates, click on “Add-ons,” then “Template Gallery for Sheets,” then “Browse Templates.”

Here you would find templates that can help with almost everything you need — whether you need to create an invoice, income/expense tracker, or a dashboard to manage your projects.

Let’s now look at some of the free Google Sheets templates you would find useful as you run your business.

20 Google Sheets Templates

Google Sheets Templates for Finances

1. Invoices

If you’re a freelancer or work for a small business, you probably use invoices to bill clients for services. This invoice template makes the process simple — it provides space for all the necessary information and looks more professional than a plain spreadsheet. Plus, the template is customizable, so you can create a theme that aligns well with your brand image.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

2. Annual Business Budget

This template is more in-depth than it initially appears. There are tabs at the bottom — setup, income, expenses, summary — and each one includes several subcategories. “Expenses,” for instance, covers everything from taxes and insurance to travel and customer acquisition.

The final tab, "summary,” takes your income, subtracts your expenses, and automatically updates to display your ending balance each month. This template is a good option if your budget requires a lot of customization and many moving parts.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

3. Financial Statements

The financial statements template truly is an all-in-one resource to keep track of business transactions, profits, and losses. The “profit & loss” tab automatically summarizes revenue, costs, and expenses for the year and can display your growth rate percentage.

If you work for a small business and need to manage much of your finances, this template offers resources and guidance to make the process easier and less prone to human error.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

4. Expense Report

Knowing how much you spend is an essential part of running a successful business. But it’s often easy to forget to record these expenses with the amount of work you have to do every day. This simple expense report template makes it super easy to record all of your expenses and those of your employees.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

5. Purchase Order

You’d find this template to be a life-saver if tracking the orders or supplies your office/department makes is part of your job. With this sheet, you can save time and avoid the headaches that come with monitoring orders or shipments.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

Google Sheet Templates for Reporting and Analytics

6. Website Traffic Dashboard

Suppose your role requires you to analyze website traffic using Google Analytics. In that case, this template is a fantastic supplemental tool to pull that data into an organized report, saving you tons of time. Better still, you can use the dashboard template with Supermetrics Google Sheets add-on to monitor and analyze data from PPC, SEO, social media, and website analytics.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

7. Website Paid Traffic Report

This template makes the process of analyzing and reporting on paid traffic relatively seamless. It automatically collects data on your paid sources from Google Analytics and provides a clean chart with important information, including PPC’s percentage of goal conversions, total traffic, and bounce rate.

You can also adjust it to compare different periods or different channels or segments. If you’re looking for a way to demonstrate paid’s influence on your business, this is the tool to do it.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

Google Sheet Templates for Customers

8. CRM

To organize your contacts and automate an effective sales and marketing process, you must have a CRM — but if you’re a small company just starting, you might not feel ready to implement a fully established CRM with all the features.

This CRM template is a great place to get your feet wet. It saves automatically, so you never lose data. The share feature allows you to work with coworkers within the CRM, which helps encourage collaboration between your sales and marketing departments.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

9. Sales Dashboard

This template helps salespeople manage their leads, sales, and revenue all in one place. At the bottom of the template are different tabs where you can easily input your data that eventually shows up on the main dashboard. There’s also an “instructions” tab to get you up to speed with using the sheet.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

Google Sheet Templates for Project Management

10. Project Timeline

Whether this is your first significant project or you’ve been managing projects for years, the project timeline template is a valuable tool for organizing and implementing each project step. The template helps you visually break up a daunting project into smaller pieces, ideally making it easier and less stressful to manage and delegate tasks.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

11. Project Tracking

If you’re juggling many projects simultaneously, this project tracking template could become your new best friend. This template takes project management to the next level by enabling you to organize your tasks into categories by date, deliverables, status, cost, and hours — best of all, it lets you prioritize your projects. Hopefully, simply visualizing what needs to get done first will alleviate time-management stress.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

12. Event Marketing Timeline

The event marketing template offers organization and structure if you’re implementing an upcoming business event or campaign. It provides categories you might’ve forgotten to consider, including local and national marketing, PR, and web, with subcategories ranging from an email newsletter to impact studies.

The template is already organized with all necessary categories for planning an event, reducing the time you spend on tedious manual input.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

13. Gantt Chart Template

The Gantt chart template helps you alleviate any concern you might have over timing — and, when you’ve got a complex project with overlapping components, I’m willing to bet timing is one of your primary concerns.

Using the Gantt chart template helps you visualize all steps and delegate essential tasks more efficiently — labeling the task with an owner on one chart is undoubtedly easier than individually following up via email. And by sharing the template with coworkers, everyone is on the same page.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

14. Product Roadmap

Without a product roadmap, it’s easy for your team to misunderstand the direction you want a project to take. With this template, you can solve that problem. The template provides a calendar summary of a project and the milestones and deliverables as you go through the product development process.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

15. Product Launch Plan

This template has everything you need to organize the best product launch you’ve ever had. It has fields to help you outline your market and competitive analysis, project strategy, key messaging, and who your target audience is.

If you’re in charge of managing a product launch and want to organize the best launch ever, then this is the project management template for you.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

16. Action List With Ranking

Managing a project requires that you track daily actions to ensure you don’t lose focus. But sometimes, you’ll have some tasks on your list that are more important than others. You can easily arrange these tasks based on their importance with this action list template. You can also share this sheet with others if you’re working as a team.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

17. Project Budget

Away from the general business budget, most managers create budgets for each of their projects. This project budget template is for you if you’re looking for a simple yet effective template that lets you quickly estimate how much revenue a project would generate r how much it would cost.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

Google Sheet Templates for Leading a Team

18. Employee Shift Schedule

Keeping track of who works what hours, and how much each employee gets paid, can feel confusing, especially if you lead a team of part-time contractors or seasonal interns. This template includes slots for employee’s names, hours worked, and monthly wages, making your paycheck process straightforward and organized.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

19. Weekly Timesheet

Like the employee shift schedule, the weekly timesheet helps you track time and know how much to pay employees or subcontractors. However, the weekly timesheet template works better if you want to quickly find out how much time each employee spends on a project.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

20. Contact List

This template comes in handy if you want to create a contact list database. You can easily use the template to store your contact information (say, phone number and email address), your employees’ contact, and those of emergency services like the ambulance or fire department.

Click here to use this Google Sheets template.

Start Using These Free Google Sheets Templates

No matter what your job is, using a suitable spreadsheet would make it easier and more enjoyable.

So what are you waiting for? Get started with using these 20 free Google Sheets templates to save time, effort and improve your productivity.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

20 of the Best Free Google Sheets Templates for 2021 was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

Readly: Quality Campaigns – Next Level Production Automation

Production automation is all about empowering brands and designers to combine creativity with performance. One such brand at the forefront of this movement is Readly.

Readly is a digital newspaper and magazine subscription service which features content from over 800 third-party publishers, and offers access to 5000 different titles, via a browser and mobile app for a monthly subscription fee.

Active in 9 markets worldwide, every campaign must work in at least 5 languages, which quickly adds up to 100+ individual creatives for every campaign produced.

We spoke to Design Manager at Readly, Charlotte Gudmundsson about how both her and her team produce global display advertising and the role the Bannerflow platform plays in enabling them to reach the next level.

Tell us about a recent display campaign you are proud of…

Charlotte Gudmundsson, Design Manager, Readly: Recent work that we are pleased with are our first two quarterly campaigns for 2021 – launched across display and social. They are fairly simple designs, but as with any campaign it’s about how many full-paying subscribers can we get and how can we maximise that performance.

The other thing that we wanted to test was how we could narrow our message a little bit, and be more specific. This is because usually we try to advertise the breadth of our selection, which is well over 5000 titles.

Previously this was reflected in our designs by having graphics that display a dozen magazine covers. However, viewers have about three seconds to look at the creative and this can get a little overwhelming, so this time around we decided to focus on specific titles.

In the past we have also used a single product shot, so we have a device with our UI, or our app, mocked-up into the screen. This time around we used three devices, each with one magazine cover mocked-up in the product, so people see three titles instead of a dozen. That’s what we wanted to test with this particular campaign.

Which design challenges were the most satisfying to solve?

Charlotte Gudmundsson: The question is simple – how do you bridge the gap of showing the breadth of our offering (that we have 5,000 magazines on offer) but communicate that in three seconds flat?

People don’t have the patience and don’t register a message very quickly, so you have to put that message upfront immediately. Therefore, we felt having a big cover of Time Magazine is more recognisable than having a graphic with 20 rotating magazines.

We now aim to keep the graphics a little more simple. Additionally, we focus on the copy, and are very mindful of not keeping the text too long either, partly because people don’t read it. Not only that but designing for five different languages, and laying out typography in five different languages is a challenge too. German words are very long and Italian is quite wordy – so having an ad design that solves this particular problem is useful.

In general, how do you tackle the design process of building campaigns?

Charlotte Gudmundsson: We are a small in-house design team of three designers, including me. One is based in Berlin, and the other, is based in Stockholm too.

Generally, when we develop larger campaigns, like our quarterly campaigns, we work with an external agency that will produce some designs, such as a couple of master banners or hero videos (that we will also use on social). We then take those designs and adapt them to work across all of our channels, including partnerships with other companies.

When it comes to Bannerflow, our agency creates maybe a handful of banners, three or four, and then we take those master designs and scale them to the volumes needed for a campaign. That process we split between the three of us in-house, mostly based on who has time and availability. We work very collaboratively. And we’re always working together in Bannerflow.

How many hours does it take to build a display advertising campaign?

Charlotte Gudmundsson: Just counting our last large campaign… ads were needed for five markets, with seven languages, to work across quite a few different channels, Google Display, Facebook, Amazon, etc. In total, the campaign added up to 315 individual banners of different sizes. A huge number of individual design assets.

Today, one of our designers, worked about four days, full-time on this campaign; almost a week, 32 hours. And this sounds like a lot of time – but before we started using Bannerflow we would produce using just Photoshop or After Effects and campaigns could take weeks. Therefore, going from two weeks of two designers working 70 percent of their time on a single campaign to one designer working four days, and spending all of her time on this, is a game-changer.

Does the context of where the campaign is to be placed influence your ad designs?

Charlotte Gudmundsson: When it comes to display ads, the biggest problem there is for us is how do we work with a skyscraper ad, which is a very awkward format to work with. Therefore, we try to keep it very simple across our ads, a handful of bold colours, copy that’s under seven words, or eight words, and then one big product shot. Our mission is to communicate that this is our product immediately.

When it comes to social media ads, we have a little bit more room to be creative. But in the interest of time we also keep it a little simpler, and that is because of the fast nature of our work at Readly. However, we plan to create more advanced animations, definitely, for our social campaigns

What is it about the Bannerflow platform that makes designing ads smoother?

Charlotte Gudmundsson: I think one of my favourite things is the preview view, where you can see your whole creative set and you have the text form on the side. Here you can just write, or replace a bit of text, and then it populates automatically across all of the selected banner layouts. It’s such a time-saver for us.

Being able to update text across the board on a banner set is super-helpful for us. It also makes it so easy for us to create all the different versions we need. It enables us to change the ad copy for different languages, in minutes rather than hours. A big change compared to when we were not working in Bannerflow.

Which Bannerflow platform features have helped you take ad production to a higher level?

Charlotte Gudmundsson: Oh, so many things. Dynamic content is definitely helping us speed up processes. We now connect our asset library of 100s images to a live product image with different magazines in it, meaning we don’t have to go and constantly update it. Also, what I really like is that you can have presets. This means you set your own preset, of brand colours and logos, so you have a template set up, which is really useful.

And, of course, just the scalability, the automated production. The fact that you can take a square banner, duplicate it into a tall, vertical banner and still keep most of the assets and general placement of the design elements – it’s really useful.

The basic animation settings as well. It takes a second to add a little motion to it. It’s not the most advanced animation but you don’t really need it for the format that we work in.

How do you remain agile and reactive in your advertising?

Charlotte Gudmundsson: We work very closely with our Growth Marketing Team, who are about 45 people. We’re always communicating with them over Slack, and that’s how they get our designers’ attention for specific tasks. We also use Asana too to work on bigger projects.

Our Acquisition Team focuses all the time on our banner campaigns, and track results. They monitor how well they’re working, and we have regular weekly catch-ups with them to debrief over how a specific campaign is performing. Based on the outcomes of those meetings we then update copy or product images in real-time to our live creatives.

As a designer, how do you continue to find inspiration for your work?

Charlotte Gudmundsson: I actually use Pinterest a lot. I set up many different boards focussed on logo design, Fifties advertising, minimalist advertisements. It acts as a sort of inspiration library.

Personally I’m very interested in going back and exploring design over the last century. I’m a huge fan of Wiener Werkstätte and the early 1900s in Vienna. All of those guys had their own specific little watermark logos for themselves. They were very much about logo designs.

While I take inspiration personally very much from old school designs, I occasionally also get it from TikTok as well. Our team discovered a great tool for creating product mock-ups through it. It’s a tool called Rotato, which allows you to create advanced 3D animations of devices like an iPhone, or an iPad, and helps us when featuring our product.

Want to know more about Bannerflow?

Find out more about how you can automate production to design outstanding display advertising today. Get in contact with us, or apply for a demo now!

The post Readly: Quality Campaigns – Next Level Production Automation appeared first on Bannerflow.

Readly: Quality Campaigns – Next Level Production Automation was originally posted by Local Sign Company Irvine, Ca. https://goo.gl/4NmUQV https://goo.gl/bQ1zHR http://www.pearltrees.com/anaheimsigns

How to Be a Good Manager [Data + Expert Tips]

Why do people really quit their jobs?

Before you say "salary," "benefits," or "workload," take a second to think about the worst boss you've ever had.

Were they bad at giving feedback, not helpful, or just plain mean? Did they have you feeling unmotivated, too nervous to offer ideas, or fearing that you'd lose your job with the slightest miss-step?

Once you let those memories sink in, you probably won't second guess the statement: "People quit their managers, not their jobs."

Over the years, this fact hasn't changed. Study after study has emphasized that companies need good managers to retain good employees.

But what makes for a good manager? And what skills or strategies can you develop to ensure you're considered a good one? 

To explore this issue, we polled people and asked them to check off all the qualities they felt were most important for a great manager. 

Recipients listed "they trust me to work autonomously", "They are empathetic and understanding", and "They give me useful, clear feedback", as the three most important qualities a good manager needs to have. 

Along with this data, I consulted my colleagues to get their thoughts on what makes a people manager effective. Regardless of whether you're interested in managing a team, or just want to know if a prospective boss is actually a good manager, here are 7 crucial qualities of a great team leader.

7 Skills People Managers Must Master, According to HubSpot Employees

1. Good managers help employees navigate change.

Consider the last time you experienced change within your organization. Maybe a beloved leader retired, or perhaps your team experienced a reorg. Maybe you even acquired a new company. 

Whatever the reason, I'm willing to bet the change felt daunting at times. Fortunately, good managers can mitigate the negative or ambivalent emotions that arise from change. 

For instance, Christine McLaughlin, a Senior Project Manager on HubSpot's Sales Leadership Enablement team, told me: "The strongest managers are ones who can help their teams navigate change in a very personal way. I'm a firm believer that every challenge presents an opportunity. But, because we're human, we can't always see the opportunity from the start." 

McLaughlin adds, "Our personal life, mental health, physical health, the last meeting we had, the next meeting we're preparing for, all play a role in influencing how we perceive change. Do we view it as a challenge? An opportunity? A setback? A relief?"

"Strong managers can translate change for each individual on their team. They meet their teammate where they're at and help to answer their questions and concerns to bring them to where they need to go."

So … how can you do this? Start by fostering psychological safety, so your employees feel comfortable mentioning how they feel about a certain business change. Then, listen carefully to their concerns and work on providing solutions for those issues. 

For instance, let's say your team has experienced a reorg and one of your direct reports is concerned her role is going to change as a result. 

To mitigate those concerns, consider creating a document that outlines which (if any) of her responsibilities might change as a result of the reorg — along with some new opportunities she can pursue to continue developing her professional skills. 

2. Good managers are open and transparent.

Trust and transparency are undeniably critical components of good leaders — and, post-pandemic, this is continuing to rise in importance. In fact, Edelman's most recent 2021 benchmark barometer on trust in leaders found employees ranked "good employee communication" 44 points higher than in the previous year. 

Keri Polmonari, HubSpot's Manager of Customer Success on the SMB team, believes transparency to be one of the most important attributes a good leader can possess. 

She says, "Being transparent and forthcoming with your team creates an open and honest dialogue and ensures everyone is on the same page. Business changes — like changes in department goals, processes, or personnel — can be difficult and overwhelming. [But] when everyone understands the why behind these business changes, they are more open and understanding of implications this could have on their jobs, both positive and negative."

Polmonari says,"Transparency builds trust, fosters relationships, and creates organizational alignment, all key components of a company's, department's, and individual's success."

3. Good managers encourage vulnerability.

Consider the last time your manager started your 1:1 with a slightly more personal question, like, "How was your birthday this past weekend?" or "Read any good books lately?" 

These questions ultimately help encourage vulnerability by creating space for you to share information about your life outside of work — and they can go a long way towards creating stronger bonds. 

As Jill Callan, VP of Marketing at Trusted Health, told me, "Whenever I start a new role or inherit a new team, I begin by enabling and encouraging vulnerability. This helps me forge strong bonds with my direct reports and allows them to be comfortable to share ideas and admit weaknesses."

Callan adds, "I'm also very intentional about getting to know my team as individuals, and learn about their lives outside of work. Taking the time upfront to build a strong, authentic relationship with my direct reports helps us tackle inevitable tough challenges down the line." 

To encourage vulnerability, consider how you might increase your own openness with your team. For instance, perhaps you admit when you're feeling overwhelmed with childcare duties, mention a Netflix show you've been binging, or simply chat about the gardening hobby you've picked up. 

And embrace vulnerability by admitting when you've made a mistake or you're feeling overwhelmed — it will help your employees feel comfortable admitting the same.

4. Good managers find ways to supplement their team member's weaknesses.

I once had a manager who repeatedly sought out learning and development opportunities for the areas we'd determined as weaknesses of mine. She would often email me public speaking courses, or data & analytics workshops. 

As a result, I continued to grow professionally, and I felt challenged. This is what a good manager does: Continues to keep a direct report's weaknesses in-mind, and provides guidance to help that employee improve. 

HubSpot Senior Manager Christina Perricone concurs, telling me, "Good managers find ways to supplement their team member’s weaknesses. Each of us has skills that come naturally to us, as well as skills we’re not so great at."

"An attuned manager can identify an individual's weak areas and will surface resources or offer guidance to assist in those areas."

Consider how you might similarly foster growth by taking stock of your team's weaknesses, and actively pursuing resources that can help your team develop their weaker skills. 

Additionally, use the hiring process to create a more well-rounded team by identifying strengths and weaknesses of existing employees.

As Perricone says, "Good managers are skilled at balancing out their teams by recruiting talent that can fill in the skill and experience gaps, thereby creating a more well-rounded unit."

5. Good managers work for their employees — not above them.

You might be thinking, "Managers work for their employees? Isn't it the other way around?"

Actually, a manager, like an employee, is more effective when they're an active team player.

But, while an employee's job is to fulfill tasks within a job description, a manager's job is to make his or her team successful. To do this, a manager shouldn't be afraid to chime in during meetings, assist on projects, or help their team grow or succeed in other ways.

For instance, consider asking your direct reports during a 1:1, "Is there anything you need me to do?" 

This question can be translated in multiple positive ways, including, "Are there any blockers I can remove for you?", "Are you waiting on a decision from me on anything?", "Are you working on an idea that you want to share with me?" or even, "Is there something going on in your world outside of work that's competing for your time and attention?"

Ultimately, a good manager considers it her primary job to make her employees successful in their projects and careers.

6. Good managers are always aiming to improve their emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence — or the skill that requires you to understand your own emotions, learn how to manage them, and know how to respond to the emotions of others on your team — is a vital component of good leadership. 

Emotional intelligence can help you ensure you're giving clear directions, and allows you to be empathetic to the needs of others. In short, it can help you foster stronger professional relationships and communicate effectively. 

Most importantly, emotional intelligence enables you to stay calm during high-stress or unexpected situations — which can prevent you from making rash decisions as a leader, or stressing your team out unnecessarily.

7. Good managers can establish and promote psychologically-safe environments.

The ability to cultivate psychological safety is a critical asset that Jennifer Stefancik, a HubSpot Academy Marketing Manager, values in her own people manager.

"Feeling supported, heard, and understood is the foundation I need to be able to come to work every day with the right mindset to do good work," Stefancik says. 

Stefancik adds, "Genuine empathy and psychological safety are hard to fake, and it's something that I think everyone should master before they consider the people management path."

Psychological safety fosters innovative thinking and the ability to adapt well to change — and yet, according to a 2020 McKinsey Global Survey, only a handful of business leaders often demonstrate the behaviors associated with psychological safety. 

If you're a manager or hoping to be a better leader, it's important you take time to identify aspects of your management style or overall office culture that could benefit from psychological safety.

For example, rather than using language that makes your team members feel scared of missing deadlines or goals, keep an open and supportive dialogue with them so they can confidently come to you with successes, learnings from failure, or concerns while they're working on high-pressure projects.

Alternatively, if a team member is having trouble with a project, you should offer advice or assistance to help them remove blockers, rather than telling them to just get it done.

Supportive communication with team members allows them to learn from mistakes and grow as employees, rather than work tirelessly on projects because they fear that they'll lose their jobs.

How to Be a Good Manager 

As outlined in the data above, there are a few key traits required of any good manager. These include:

• Providing coaching and mentoring when necessary, but enabling your team to work autonomously and trusting them to get the job done.
• Showing empathy towards your direct reports as people with lives outside of work, and creating a sense of psychological safety for your employees to feel comfortable admitting when they're struggling or need help.
• Being clear and direct with feedback.
• Taking the time to go the extra mile to help foster your employees' professional growth through trainings, learning & development opportunities, or 1:1 sessions in which you coach them on certain skills. 

However, a good manager looks different depending on the department or role — a good sales manager, for instance, requires different skills than that of a good marketing manager. Let's dive into those, now. 

How to Be a Good Sales Manager

Being a good sales manager requires a few unique skills outside of those listed above.

Along with setting clear expectations, communicating effectively, and inspiring your sales reps to perform at their best, a good sales manager needs to demonstrate a positive mindset, build team unity, and learn how to best support each sales rep in the unique way that will serve him or her best. 

A few other notes on being a good sales manager: 

• Use a dashboard or task management tool to easily track metrics for each sales rep. This enables you to avoid taking up too much time in your meetings discussing metrics — instead, you can now use that time to identify how you can best help, support, and coach your reps. 
• Plan team outings or events that allow your team to build relationships with one another. Sales can be high-pressure and stressful, so it's important you provide dedicated time to enable your sales reps to connect with one another and feel that they're part of a support system. 
• Look for trainings and development opportunities so your sales reps can continue to improve. In 1:1 meetings, focus on how you can help them achieve their goals; in team meetings, figure out what types of trainings can help the entire team perform better. 
• Motivate your team by focusing on the 'bigger purpose' to ensure they feel intrinsically motivated. Sales isn't just about hitting quota and making money — it's also (oftentimes) about selling a product or service that can help people in large or small ways. Remind your team of your company's bigger purpose to ensure they feel fulfilled and motivated. 

Looking for more sales manager tips? Take a look at Here's What Sales Leaders Should Prioritize in 2021 According to a Sandler Expert or 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Sales Manager.

How to Be a Good Marketing Manager

Marketing managers are often in-charge of leading a team, but they're typically also responsible for a content property or program, which means their tasks can vary greatly. 

Here are a few skills of a good marketing manager: 

• The ability to think big-picture; using metrics and data to create a strong long-term strategy, and knowing when to pivot when an existing strategy isn't working out as expected.
• Communicating effectively with various stakeholders — this includes inspiring and motivating your direct reports, communicating team goals cross-functionally and to leadership, and creating clear external communications, as well. 
• Delegating and organizing tasks effectively. Learn about your direct report's strengths, interests, and areas for growth, and facilitate that growth by giving them projects when they align with their interests. This doesn't mean handing off any unwanted tasks from your to-do list — if you find a project that aligns with your direct report's interests and you feel it's mutually beneficial with team goals, then you'll want to shuffle some of their existing tasks to ensure you don't burn your team out. 

To learn more about managing a marketing team, take a look at What Is a Marketing Manager?

How to Be a Good Project Manager

To be a good project manager, you need a few additional technical skills compared to the other managers in this list. Project managers need a deep technical understanding of the project at-hand in order to understand which tasks need to be assigned to whom, and to keep the process running smoothly. 

A few other project manager skills and responsibilities include: 

• Being able to set realistic goals, and understanding what resources are required. A project manager needs to be able to set timelines on certain aspects of a project, and she also needs to understand what resources — including employees, external consultants, tools, or budgeting — are required to make it happen. 
• Having good organization and communication skills. A good project manager needs to remain organized and detail-oriented in order to effectively delegate tasks to the right teams, and stay on-top of identifying what needs to happen next for the project to go smoothly. A good project manager also needs to be able to clearly articulate the full scope of a project to various stakeholders to ensure each team is aligned on bigger-picture strategy. 
• Analyzing and determining potential risks. A good project manager needs to be able to foresee potential roadblocks in any given project, and analyze either internal metrics or industry data to determine the best way to mitigate those risks. 

A good project manager also uses the best tools at his or her disposal to create a streamlined process, keep track of responsibilities and timeline, and delegate effectively. Take a look at 16 Free Project Management Software Options to Keep Your Team On Track to choose the best tool for your needs. 

And that's it! You're well on your way to become a better manager yourself. Remember, like any other role, becoming a good manager requires time, patience, dedication, and a consistent desire for feedback from your direct reports to iterate and grow over time. 

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