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I fought it for a while but TikTok has me in a chokehold and won’t let me go. At all hours of the day, you can find me singing viral TikTok sounds and saying random phrases from popular videos.

The app has grown considerably since booming in 2020 and its features just keep getting better. While the app has offered a live feature for a while, the short-form video platform recently announced new live features, making it a strong competitor for Instagram and Facebook.

In this article, we’ll dive into the top TikTok LIVE features, the requirements to go live and a few tips to keep in mind before you start your first broadcast.

TikTok LIVE Features

Going live on TikTok allows you to engage with your followers on the platform and build community. The app offers ways to maximize the experience for both creators and viewers when going live.

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Here are some of the top features:

• Q&A – Viewers can submit questions live during your broadcast.
• Multi-user streams – TikTok’s “Go Live Together” feature allows you to go live with up to three users.
• Live events – To build anticipation around your Live, you can schedule and promote your live ahead of time to your followers
• Gifts – If you are a part of TikTok’s Creator Next Program, viewers can give you badges that hold monetary value during a live stream if they are enjoying your content. Only non-business accounts and users 18 years of age or older can accept these rewards, unless you live in South Korea where the minimum age requirement is 19 or in Japan where it’s 20.)
  Moderators – When going live, you can assign other users to moderate the chatroom to ensure it’s safe and in line with the content you’re sharing.
• Keyword filters – Another way to protect your live stream is by automatically removing comments that feature words or phrases you’ve flagged.

How to Go Live on TikTok on an iPhone and on Android

1. Open the app and click on the ‘+’ sign.

2. Slide to the ‘LIVE’ tab.

3. Add a title.

4. Click ‘Go Live.’

After your live, you can access the recording for up to 90 days by going to your “settings and privacy” tab and selecting “LIVE replay.” From there, you can download your live video or delete it.

Why can’t I go live on TikTok?

There are several reasons why you may not see the option to go live on TikTok, such as:

• You’re under 16 years old.

• You have less than 1,000 followers.
• You have recently violated one of TikTok’s policies and are under review or suspension.

If you meet the requirements and still can’t go live, you can report this issue to TikTok.

Tips for Going Live on TikTok

1. Know when your audience is most active on the app.

When you go live, you want to make sure you’re reaching your target audience. This means knowing exactly when most are active on the app.

To find this out, check your “Followers” tab in your Analytics. It will tell you what times and days your followers are most active along with other insights, like videos and sounds that are most popular with your followers.

All of this information will be valuable when planning your live.

2. Set the stage.

There’s nothing that makes me click out of a live quicker than bad lighting.

The first thing you want to do is make sure your lighting is arranged ahead of time. This can mean setting up in front of a window that gets great natural light or investing in artificial lights.

The next thing you’ll need is a quiet room. Make sure there isn’t a ton of background noise as that can distract viewers and make it hard to maintain their attention. You can also invest in an external mic to improve your sound quality.

In addition, consider investing in a tripod. This will allow you to move freely as you are on the live.

Lastly, make sure your wi-fi connection is strong. You can quickly lose viewers if they are struggling to hear or see you on the app.

3. Have a clear goal and outline.

Any time you plan on interacting with your audience, you should have a clear goal. It can be building brand awareness, learning more about your audience, leading users to your website, generating leads, etc.

Once you know what your goal is, outline your broadcast. This will ensure you communicate your key points and meet your end goal.

Here’s an example of a simple outline for a brand that’s announcing a new product:

• Welcome audience and shout out specific usernames.
• Announce the new product.
• Dive into product specifics, such as benefits, features, and initial customer reviews

• Share discount code.
• Direct viewers to the website for purchase.
• Answer questions about the new product.
• Direct users to the website and sign off.

4. Have a moderator.

A moderator is a user you assign to make sure the chatroom is a safe and enjoyable space during your broadcast.

Chats are notorious for having bots and trolls that can distract users and keep you from seeing important messages from your audience. The moderator will help you manage the live and allow you to focus on engaging your audience and sharing your message.

Going live on TikTok is a great way to connect your audience and strengthen that brand loyalty. If you’re not yet at 1,000 followers, gather ideas for broadcasts by looking at your competitors and seeing which live strategy will be most effective in meeting your goal.

This way, you’ll be more than ready by the time your account meets the requirements.

Your research and development team has been working on a new product for months and putting valuable resources into its design and manufacturing. They’ve carefully researched the market and the problem they intend to solve.

They’ve brainstormed and planned out the best possible product, and then meticulously crafted it before testing its functionality to make sure that it does indeed do what it was meant to do.

You are convinced that this is the best addition to the world since chocolate.

With an amazing product ready to go to market, there’s only one question left in your mind. How are you going to announce your product and get it in front of potential customers, i.e. the people who will actually buy it?

For this step of the process (and ideally since the very beginning of research and development), you’ve got a product marketing manager ready to take the next step with your new creation. Without marketing, your product (no matter how amazing it is), will never be found by the customers whose problem it would solve. This could lead to lackluster sales, a financial failure, and potential customers who are still suffering from their original problem.

From that perspective, you can see how valuable good product marketing managers are. Let’s learn more about this pertinent role.

What is a product marketing manager?

You may be wondering, what is a product marketing manager (PMM) and how essential are they to my product launch? A product marketing manager is an individual who takes ownership of the positioning, messaging, and branding of a product.

To get an even better idea of this role, let’s take a look at this sample product marketing job description.

Product Manager Job Description

A product marketing manager will be responsible for overseeing the creation and distribution of promotional campaigns for key products. This individual will have a keen understanding of the product’s target audience, and in-depth knowledge of relevant product features.

Product Marketing Manager Skills and Qualifications:

• Foundational marketing and campaign management experience
• Project management skills
• Strong organizational and communication skills
• The ability to analyze relevant information and make informed decisions
• The ability to prioritize tasks and responsibilities across projects

For this role, employers look for a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree, ideally in business administration, marketing, or a related field of study. Some employers may seek candidates who hold advanced degrees and have more extensive experience in marketing, sales, or advertising.

While not required, there are certifications available (such as the Certified Product Marketing Manager distinction) that can help better prepare Product Marketing Managers for the responsibilities they are about to take on.

According to PayScale, the base salary for Product Marketing Managers in the U.S. is $92,628 per year though this can vary depending on the company and level of experience.

What does a product marketing manager do?

These individuals are responsible for crafting a story about the product that will entice potential customers to purchase the product, and collecting customer feedback after launch.

When the product is being prepared for launch, the product marketing manager (or team) will be brought into the process to educate the public about the value and benefits of the offering so they can convert potential customers into raving fans.

To do this, the PMM will focus on three levels of the sales funnel:

1. Acquisition: Bringing awareness to your product through content such as social media, copywriting, and blogs. This requires the product marketing manager to determine what type of campaign needs to be done, create a budget for the marketing endeavors, craft a project plan to map out when this content will be released, and oversee a team who will create the desired content.
2. Engagement: Building trust and creating conversation with potential customers through events, campaigns, and specific calls to action.
3. Conversion and Retention: Converting potential customers into paying customers for one-time purchases and keeping existing customers loyal through subscription models or add-on purchases (when appropriate).

It’s worth noting that from one company (or campaign) to the next, the responsibilities and expectations placed on a product marketing manager may differ.

How does a product marketing manager differ from a product manager?

With similar titles, it can sometimes be difficult to understand the different roles available within a company. Many often confuse product marketing managers with product managers, and while there are similarities, the roles carry very different responsibilities.

Both a product marketing manager and a product manager provide a voice for the product. However, the difference is who they are speaking to. A product manager is vocal during the production stage of a product. They speak internally on behalf of the product, communicating with engineers and developers regarding the features and functionality of a product. A product manager is focused on answering the question, “Does this product solve the problem we intend it to solve?”

A product marketing manager, on the other hand, is responsible for speaking to the outside world. They are focused on the question, “How will people know that this product solves their problem?” They will create a launch plan and work with the social media team, the PR team, the marketing team, and the sales team to ensure a successful product launch and to spread the word regarding this new or improved product.

While these individuals will fulfill very different roles, they will find themselves working together at times. Both the product manager and the product marketing manager must have a solid understanding of the buyer persona and will share the research they’ve done to assist the other.

The role of a marketing manager can be confused with a product marketing manager as well. Again, there are similarities and overlap, however, a marketing manager often works on general marketing activities to grow awareness across a company’s user base. They will typically spend less time doing research and developing buyer personas.

Creating a product is only half the battle. In order to succeed with your product launch, make your product wildly profitable, and ensure that it gets into the hands of the individuals you intended to help, you need someone at the marketing helm. When you choose the right product marketing manager, they will lead the right customers to your product.

Whether they have an issue they want to be resolved or ideas they think would improve the company or better serve clients, employees just want to be heard.

When you don’t create an open line of communication with your team, they may feel discouraged, leading to poor morale and ultimately lower production. Not to mention that employees who feel undervalued are likely to take their time and talents elsewhere.

But an open-door policy can help employees bring fresh ideas to the table and make you aware of small issues before they become major problems that affect everyone. Here’s what an open-door policy entails, how you can create one yourself, and some examples of open-door policies in action.

This workplace standard should foster communication and trust throughout the company, and employees should not have to fear retaliation should they raise issues with the company or their work with any managers. Instead, they should feel heard and supported through an open door policy.

Benefits of an Open Door Policy

There are several benefits to maintaining an open-door policy in the workplace. First, it fosters better communication across the company. It also helps employees speak their minds about workplace issues as soon as possible, which minimizes conflicts.

An open-door policy can help employees feel more supported and valued by management, which boosts morale and ultimately productivity. It may even lower turnover rates.

In one study on employee voice, researchers found that at a national restaurant chain with over 7,500 employees and 335 general managers, turnover decreased by 32% and saved the company $1.6 million per year by allowing employees to voice their concerns.

Why You Need an Open-Door Policy

Without an open-door policy, your team may experience an increase in workplace conflicts if people don’t feel comfortable raising issues sooner rather than later.

Some employees may begin to isolate themselves if they feel they can’t speak to managers about ideas or concerns. Ultimately, these employees may even leave the company in hopes of finding a workplace culture that is more transparent and communicative.

Plus, without an environment that feels open and supportive, you could be missing out on great ideas that improve the company if employees don’t feel that they can share their ideas with you.

When you’re ready to start implementing an open-door policy in your office, follow these five steps to setting up the standard and following it through.

1. Add It to the Handbook

To make your open-door policy official, you want to add it to the company handbook, so employees are able to review the policy at any time. This also adds more accountability for supervisors to follow the policy.

2. Communicate Expectations

If an open-door policy is new to your employees, you should explain what it is, how it works, and what it will look like for your team.

For example, some companies have a pretty literal open-door policy, meaning when a manager’s door is open, employees can pop in to talk. Discuss how the open door policy works, so employees feel comfortable if they need to use it.

3. Set Boundaries

Creating open and direct lines of communication with management is good, but without boundaries, this can also lead to a loss in productivity. Set boundaries that work for you and your team.

Can employees drop by to discuss issues anytime, or should they email you to set up a meeting? Alternatively, you can share times of the day or week that are the best for employees to stop by your office, rather than leaving yourself open all the time, which can prevent you from doing your work.

Also, consider boundaries on discussion topics. Employees should feel comfortable speaking to management if there’s a conflict with another employee, but this shouldn’t become a way for teammates to gossip about one another or undermine co-workers.

4. Actively Listen to Employees

If an employee comes to you with a problem or idea, make sure you are actively listening to the employee. Otherwise, it can come off as if you don’t care. That means stop typing and sending off emails when they are trying to speak to you. Instead, maintain eye contact, ask thoughtful questions, and end the conversation with a recap of what you discussed.

5. Address Concerns In a Timely Fashion

Some workplaces say they have an open-door policy, but when employees voice their concerns, nothing is actually done. Follow through on your open-door policy by addressing issues as soon as possible after an employee comes to you.

Open-Door Policy Examples

Many companies across different sectors have open-door policies for their teams. Here are some top examples of various companies that use open-door policies to boost transparency, communication, and productivity.

1. IBM

IBM, a massive technology company operating in over 170 countries, has had an open-door policy for several years. It allows employees to access higher management to discuss concerns. As an added level of security, IBM also allows employees to speak confidentially and send reports by phone, email, or even snail mail.

In a study on an IBM subsidiary in France, researchers found that the more the open door policy is communicated to employees, the more confident employees feel in the policy, an example that any workplace should consider as they set up their own open-door policy.

2. HP

HP, another major technology company, has a policy that invites employees to raise concerns quickly and opens communication across all levels of the company. As part of its expectations, HP notes that open communication should be part of day-to-day business practices for all employees.

As far as boundaries go, employees should first bring up their concerns within their own chain of command before taking it to the Ethics and Compliance office. Finally, employees should feel comfortable giving or asking for feedback without any fear of retaliation from management or co-workers.

3. Keka

Keka is an HR payroll software company that prides itself on making employees feel safe, inspired, and fulfilled by their job. So it’s no surprise that the organization has its own open-door policy.

For its own policy, Keka uses open doors literally and figuratively, allowing teams to communicate frequently whether in-person or virtually. This company’s policy applies across various levels and departments of the company, so anyone can raise their concerns to any relevant party.

The policy clearly outlines the expectations and boundaries for the policy, including what types of topics, are considered relevant for discussion and how to have the most effective discussion to resolve issues promptly.

4. Saint Louis University

Open door policies are encouraged at higher education institutions, too. At Saint Louis University, the open-door policy is meant to create a more informal conflict-resolution process that is an add-on to other procedures for employee reviews and staff grievances.

The policy notes that employees can bring up questions, suggestions, or concerns, typically to their immediate supervisor, for assistance. If employees do not receive assistance, the policy directs employees to follow the more formal Staff Grievance Policy.

5. Health Information Alliance, Inc.

The Health Information Alliance, Inc. implements an open-door policy designed to foster a positive work environment. In this open-door policy, there are specific issues outlined that are “open-door issues,” including, “disciplinary action, work assignments, interpretation or application of policies and procedures, transfer and nonsupervisory promotions, or other employment issues.”

Other issues, like evaluations or personal conflicts, are notably not included.

This is more of a hybrid open-door policy that also follows a traditional chain of command, where the employee is encouraged to first speak with their direct supervisor. If their complaint is about their supervisor, then they can go up the chain of command to their supervisor’s manager.

Although considered a more informal route of resolving issues, this policy makes an important note that open-door issues should be thoroughly documented in order to best resolve each concern.

Improve Employee Morale and Trust With an Open-Door Policy

The key to any successful relationship is communication, and that certainly applies to workplace employees. If you want your employees to feel supported, supervisors and executives should consider implementing an open-door policy.

With this workplace standard, employees can raise concerns over company procedures, other employees’ conduct, their pay, or any other work-related issues. It also opens the door for employees to share their ideas, which can benefit the entire company by making things run more efficiently or improving productivity.

Imagine it’s 2005, and a small drinkware business opens up in the center of town. Although they have a simple website to provide store information and field online inquiries, their collection of customized mugs, shot glasses, and more continuously grow in popularity due to loyal customers and word of mouth.

Now imagine it is 2015. The small team has done well for itself; however, its online presence is suffering. Underestimating the shift to online shopping, the company cannot handle the influx of questions, feedback, and requests to create an eCommerce platform.

Once they’ve identified this problem, how do they implement changes to field this issue and stop it from happening again?

Successful businesses require systems and processes. If situation A happens, what are the steps in response? Organizational development (OD) enables companies with a systematic approach to identifying issues, implementing changes, and evaluating the success of the process.

What is organizational development?

Organizational development is a systematic process aimed at initiating and implementing changes in the values or operations of an organization to promote long-term growth and efficiency. It equips organizations with the tools to assess themselves and advance their core strategies, processes, and structures in response to internal and external changes.

OD serves to increase communication and productivity, improve products and services, create a workplace culture that embraces advancement and increase profit margins.

Organizational Development and Human Resources

Organizational development and human resource management are both processes centered on people. The two are often confused due to overlap; however, the former is a more holistic approach to organizational change while the latter prioritizes the individual.

Career planning, diversity orientations, and employee assistance programs are all examples of human resource management. While the outcome of HRM affects the overall organizational development of a company, it focuses on managing one individual.

Meanwhile, OD works at all levels within an organization. One person lies at the center of some OD processes, for example, individual interventions and job enrichment, but organizational development functions on individual, group, and organizational levels.

Understanding and explaining the similarities and differences between OD and HRM can be challenging. It helps to understand the following: Human resource management enhances the employee experience and ultimately benefits the organization. Organizational development focuses on aligning employees with the company’s values.

Organizational Development Interventions

OD interventions allow organizations to make successful changes. Interventions are actions taken to improve a situation. Ultimately, these structured processes help enact the changes to advance the values or operations of an organization.

The four organizational development interventions are:

• Human Process
• Technostructural
• Strategic Change
• Human Resource Management

Human Process

Human process interventions aim to improve interpersonal relations at the individual, group, and organizational levels. These take place in response to changes that happen within an organization.

Individual interventions provide employees with coaching on interpersonal skills — conflict management, team building, and body language — in the event of new hires or internal transitions.

Similarly, group interventions affect the structure or process of a group that might be necessary for department changes. Large-scale changes, however, like the introduction of new company goals and vision, are examples of organizational interventions.

Technostructural

Technostructural interventions are programmed changes to revitalize a company’s structure and processes. The initiation of this OD intervention should match the fast pace of the tech and job industries. These types of interventions follow an approach based on improving an organization’s technology and structure through job design, system changes, workplace hierarchy, and more.

Strategic Change

Strategic interventions help increase competitive advantage and how an organization can implement changes to its structure, processes, or policies to make it happen. They are especially effective when companies undergo changes to their function, for example, replacing core products or services with something new, or when they experience trans-organizational changes in the form of mergers or acquisitions.

Human Resource Management

Human resource management (HRM) interventions focus on integrating, developing, and supporting individuals within a company. An example of this is the implementation of diversity programs to ensure employees feel represented and included in the workforce regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, and race.

Organizations implement the four OD intervention methods in numerous ways ranging from individual or organizational levels. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Organizational Development Examples

Most organizational development initiatives can fit within one of the four intervention categories mentioned above. Examples of OD include:

Individual Interventions

Individual interventions are an example of human process interventions. They are aimed at behavior modification. This action usually happens in response to issues in the workplace. A well-known example of interventions that we see in pop culture is for alcohol and drug use.

Typically when the use of these addictive substances becomes excessive, the concerned family and friends of the individual confront them with the negative impact of their substance abuse. These interventions often end with a plea to seek treatment. Alternatively, individual interventions in the workplace usually occur in response to situations like lack of communication or workplace errors.

Job Enrichment

Job enrichment enables the management of employees in a way that creates growth opportunities. This techno structural intervention technique involves creating and redesigning jobs that account for the interest and skills of the individual. Its goal at an organizational level is to create a motivating job for employees.

A job enrichment program might include interventions as simple as increasing an employee’s autonomy by allowing them to decide when to take their break. Depending on the industry, another example of job enrichment is job rotation — moving employees from department to department to increase their skill set.

Transformational Change

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Transformational change is literally a transformation of the organization at its core. For example, if IHOP decided to focus on burgers instead of the popular breakfast food pancakes, this would be a transformational change for the company. These changes often occur to keep up with changing consumers.

Performance Management

Performance management is a well-known example of HRM. It is a continuous process between an employee and their supervisor that includes setting expectations and goals, providing feedback, and evaluating performance.

Hence, performance reviews fall under this initiative. Both job enrichment and performance management focus on the individual, but the latter supports the individual more than the organization.

Organizational Development Models

After an organization has identified a problem, it is time to address it. Organizational development models provide step-by-step processes to initiate and guide the changes needed to reach the desired outcome. The European Centre for Research Training and Development UK lists the four organizational development models as:

• Lewin’s Three-Stage Model
• Action Research Model
• Appreciative Inquiry Model
• General Model of Planned Change

Lewin’s Three-Stage Model

Proposed by social scientist Kurt Lewin in 1947, the core components of this model are unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Unfreezing involves loosening the structures around the current system or going against the status quo in preparation for step two.

Moving is when the organization introduces and implements the decided changes. Communication with employees during this stage is especially crucial to facilitate a smooth transition.

During the last step — refreezing — the organization has already integrated the changes. Reinforcement is a significant part of this step. It ensures that the new policies have become the standard among all employees.

Action Research Model

The action research model also credits Kurt Lewin as its creator. According to the social scientist, this model has two purposes — solving problems and generating new knowledge.

The action research model follows a continuous eight-step process: problem identification, consultation with behavioral science experts, data gathering and preliminary diagnosis, feedback to key clients or groups, joint diagnosis of a problem, joint action planning, action, and data gathering. After data gathering, the process returns feedback to key clients or groups and repeats.

Appreciative Inquiry Model

First proposed in 1987, the appreciative inquiry model is also called the ‘positive model.’ Instead of focusing on the negative, it focuses on the successes of the organization. The goal is to equip members with the skills to identify when the organization is running well and optimize these conditions to get better results.

General Model of Planned Change

In 2009, organizational experts and professors Thomas Cummings and Christopher Worley proposed a general model for planned change. The four steps are: entering and contracting, diagnosis and feedback, planning and implementation, evaluation, and institutionalization.

Because organizational change is rarely linear and involves overlap and feedback, the process continues after the final step by returning to a previous one.

Organizational development is a long process.

Organizational development is not a process that happens overnight. It is a long, continuous cycle of initiating, implementing, and evaluating change in an organization.

Whether it is happening at the individual, group, or organizational levels, organizational development has one goal — to promote the long-term growth and productivity of a company.

Online payment solutions are essential for just about any type of business. Booking and making payments online is convenient for many consumers, so it’s important to make sure your business is keeping up.

Small businesses, startups, and even massive corporations can all benefit by offering online payments to consumers, but how can you securely accept different forms of payments? For global businesses, what if you need to accept multiple currencies?

The solution is to find a trusted, reliable online payment method platform that makes the customer experience seamless while giving you more control over and insight into your income.

For many online businesses, payments can be accepted from credit cards, debit cards, or a direct connection to one’s bank account.

Benefits of Online Payments

Taking payments online can help you reach a wider audience, and many online payment methods will also offer data analysis to give you a better idea of what your consumers are most interested in from your business. Online payments can also offer a layer of security for consumers and businesses alike.

Many online payment solutions will offer post-payment workflows, so your business will automatically send emails to follow-up with clients after their purchases. These methods will keep payments together in one spot, which is easier to manage than stacks and files of receipts in an office.

There are many online payment solutions for business owners these days, but you’ll want to work with ones that fit your business needs. Plus, you should consider options that can scale as your business grows and methods that offer security and great customer service.

1. DepositFix

DepositFix makes it easy to integrate other business resources, including HubSpot forms, Stripe, and PayPal. That means you can seamlessly accept payments through HubSpot forms, and the payment information will send directly to your business’ Stripe or PayPal accounts. This technology allows you to create workflows following customers’ payments, so they’ll automatically receive follow-up emails, receipts, upsells, or requests for product or service reviews after their purchases.

DepositFix works best for businesses that sell digital products or services. It also allows you to collect donations or send invoices. It offers top-notch security for peace of mind for you and your clients. If you need to get in touch, this platform offers a Help Library for self-service, or you can reach customer service via phone or email.

In one case study, The Ceramic Tile Education Foundation was able to move from offline, over-the-phone payments to a more secure, streamlined system online thanks to DepositFix. Online payments went from about 10% to over 53% and are still growing after the company implemented the online payment solutions from DepositFix.

2. Stripe

A great payment method for small businesses and large corporations alike, Stripe offers payment processing services for businesses. This comprehensive platform allows both online and in-person businesses to accept payments digitally, all while preventing fraud with its Radar protection. Stripe integrates with popular online shopping systems like WooCommerce and Shopify.

Stripe is popular globally, and it supports over 135 currencies and payment methods. It’s easy to start using, too; you can have it ready to go for your business in about 10 minutes. In addition to robust documentation, you can get 24/7 support from their customer service team.

Slack, a major communication platform for businesses, uses Stripe in 15 countries for payments. Even when it saw a surge in use during the pandemic, Stripe offered 100% uptime and boosted company earnings globally by optimizing online payments.

3. One Page Pay

One Page Pay works with several different CRMs, including HubSpot, as well as different payment platforms like Stripe, PayPal, Take Payments, and GoCardless. It creates a dedicated payment form page and sends sale details straight to email or your CRM. This platform offers bank-level security for your consumers’ data, and you can set up your first payment form in under five minutes.

Choose from a single or two-column form, or work with One Page Pay to create a custom payment form that suits your exact needs. You can generate reports based on the transactions, and because this service integrates with HubSpot, it will automatically follow up with consumers with things like surveys or digital product delivery after their purchases. 

4. Square

Square is a popular payment solution and one of the best online payment methods for small businesses. Whether you want to offer appointments, sell physical or digital products, or run a restaurant that takes orders online, Square has you covered. You can send invoices and/or collect payments all from this platform, and it even offers a free eCommerce service to help you get your business up and running.

Square offers everything from hardware for brick-and-mortar retailers to e-gift cards and a dashboard with analytics to track your success. With Square, you can also manage your payroll — from inputting time cards to automatically paying employees — and open a Square checking account without fees for your business. With its online payment solution, you can also easily add shopping cart buttons, purchase links, and QR codes to help direct clients to your products and services.

5. Checkout HQ

Imagine being able to create a searchable database of your products, create personalized payment and quote forms, and access attribution reports to see how your marketing efforts impact revenue. This is all the reality with Checkout HQ, which integrates with HubSpot to make online payments a breeze. 

The platform automatically works with your current HubSpot theme, so it’ll fit into your brand right out of the box. It also integrates with Stripe for payments, and you can customize the checkout experience to boost the customer experience.

6. Collect

Start accepting credit card payments online with Collect, which will work right on your HubSpot pages rather than sending clients to a different window. It’s easy to install, requiring no coding knowledge to set it up, and it makes the client experience seamless from the time they visit your site to when they make the purchase.

Take secure payments right on your website, plus add pricing tables, buy buttons, and payment forms. You can even allow customers to make one-time purchases or subscribe to your products or services.

Collect currently integrates with Stripe but also plans to work with other payment services in the future. There’s no per-transaction fee, so you simply pay for the Collect subscription without the added cost for every sale.

7. Authorize.net

Authorize.net has been in the online payments game since 1996, and it’s trusted by nearly 450,000 merchants. The service helps businesses handle over $149 billion in payments each year. 

This platform allows your business to collect money via credit card, contactless payment, and even electronic checks to better suit your customers’ needs. Authorize.net handles everything from authorizing, capturing, and settling payments securely.

8. PayPal

PayPal has rapidly become one of the top online payment methods, with the platform seeing an annual payment volume of over $930 billion in 2020. Consumers can pay you via their credit or debit cards, their PayPal balance, or their bank accounts. The platform allows customers to pay quickly with one click, and its innovative Store Cash feature helps convert users that have abandoned their carts into sales.

PayPal integrates with many major eCommerce platforms, so it can work with your existing systems. You can also add shopping cart, buy now, or donate buttons easily, or work with PayPal to create a more robust and custom online payment solution.

9. Intuit

Intuit offers a suite of tools for businesses, including flexible payment solutions for companies that want to accept online payments. You can offer credit cards, debit cards, eCheck, or ACH payments both online and in-person, making payments convenient for clients. 

The scheduling tool allows you to schedule automatic, recurring invoices, and the payments are integrated with your Quickbooks account for seamless bookkeeping, quick deposits, receipt capture and organization, bill pay, income, and expense tracking, and more.

10. Dwolla

Dwolla is an online payment solution that is scalable, so you can rely on it to accept payments as your business grows. You can tailor the payment platform to suit your business’ needs and match your branding, and it offers excellent security for sensitive data.

You can send or receive funds, perfect if you need to pay contractors or if you want to receive consumer payments. Payment methods for Dwolla include ACH, balance-to-balance between Dwolla users, real-time payments, push-to-debit, or wire transfers.

Boost Sales By Offering Online Payment Solutions

Offering online payments for consumers makes the shopping experience easier than ever. Plus, when your online payment solution offers extra benefits like automated follow-up emails or scheduled invoicing, you can further boost profits and customer satisfaction.

There are many online payment solutions out there, so find one with robust features that fit your needs, fees that work into your budget, and security and support to give you and your clients peace of mind.

Recently, I was scrolling online and I came across an ad for Narcos. While I can easily ignore most banner ads online, this one stood out. It included interesting videos and animation.

This was a prime example of rich media ads. A rich media ad is an excellent, modern ad format for marketers to consider.

In fact, one 2018 study found that rich media ads outperform standard banner ads by 267%.

With statistics like that, it’s time to consider incorporating these ads into your paid media strategy.

Below, let’s discuss what rich media ads are and how they’re different from other ad formats. Then, we’ll review how to create one for your company and look at some examples to inspire your own ad campaigns.

Rich media ads usually take much more time, effort, and capital to create.

Why? Well, a static ad typically includes only three elements: An image, a CTA, copy. Rich media ads, on the other hand, can incorporate various multimedia elements and allow users to interact in multiple ways.

So, why do brands use rich media ads?

Well, rich media ads are engaging and dynamic in a way that other ad types aren’t. They usually lead to more interaction, increased conversions, and a higher clickthrough rate.

Since many people have banner blindness like me, creating an ad that your audience wants to interact with isn’t easy. Rich media ads are a great way to create a better user experience.

Rich Media Types

1. Banner Ads

There are two main types of banner ads for rich media: in-banner and expanding.

In-banner ads show up as regular banners and have interactive features, such as slide/scroll options. They can also include videos, audio, and animation.

This banner ad from CB2 is a rich media example that displays various products from the brand’s collections.

In-banner ads stay exactly where they are and can be ignored more easily.

Expanding ads, on the other hand, expand when the user has taken a particular action (usually a click). Pushdown ads, multidirectional, and floating ads are all examples of expanding ads that animate across the page for a few seconds.

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A floating ad is a great way to get a user’s attention, without disrupting the user experience.

2. Interstitial Ads

An interstitial ad – think pop-ups and modals – is a full-page ad that covers the publisher’s interface. It’s commonly used on mobile apps, during points of transition in the user flow.

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For instance, it might show up on a video game app when you click “Play Again.” In some cases, the ad may not show an exit button until a few seconds after it initially appeared.

Using this type of ad is tricky, as Google sets strict guidelines on how it can work to avoid disrupting the user experience.

3. Lightbox

Lightbox ads are interactive ads that expand and use a combination of media (images, video, illustrations) to capture the viewer’s attention.

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Similar to a floating ad, they usually start small on the sidebar of a page and expand once a user clicks on it.

From there, users can take multiple actions to interact with the ad. It creates a richer ad-viewing experience and as such, can require a little bit more work to create.

Now, you might be wondering, “How do I go about creating a rich media ad?” Below, let’s discuss how you can get started with rich media ads.

1. Get inspired.

If you’ve never created a rich media ad before, it can be helpful to get inspiration from other brands, including your competitors.

What type of rich media ads are they using? Is it mostly video or a combination of text and animation? What does their copy look like?

You should ask yourself, “How is this particular ad experience?” It’s important to note this, as you’ll want to create an experience that will resonate with your audience.

So, as you navigate through websites, pay closer attention to the ads you see. Then, start compiling your favorite ones in a document to help spark ideas for your own.

2. Decide on the strategy.

Now that you have an idea of what you want to create, it’s time to strategize.

What are your goals for this campaign? This will determine which creative assets you create and which type of rich media ad you use. This process will also help you discover the best way to engage your audience.

During this step, take a look back at previous ad campaigns. What are some trends in your highest- and lowest-performing ads? Getting a refresher on past performance is a good starting point for your next campaign.

3. Plan your creative assets.

Once you know more about your strategy, it’s time to list the creative assets you’ll need to get it done. Whether you’re creating rich media banner, interstitial, or lightbox ads, there are three components to your ad:

• Visuals: animations, videos, images, illustrations.
• Copy
• Call to action (CTA)

Oh, and don’t forget the assets for your landing page. Creating the ad is one thing, your landing page is where users will convert so it needs to be a priority as well.

With all these elements in mind, start big then go small.

Say you choose video as your rich media type, will it be completed in-house or with an outside agency? Or will you use stock footage? Every scenario requires a different set of steps.

Additionally, you might think about how to make the ad interactive. Will users be able to click through to another slide on your ad? What happens if they click on the ad? It’s important to discuss and plan these elements out before you create your ad.

4. Use ad creation tools.

At this point, you’ll have your strategy and assets all done. So, how do you actually build the ad?

If you don’t have a graphic designer on your team, you can use online tools to help you create a rich media ad.

For example, there’s Google’s Rich Media Gallery. On this site, you can create sophisticated rich media ads for free. While there are ready-to-use templates, you can also customize them by using your own creative assets.

However, if you have a graphic designer, you’ll want to meet with them at the beginning of your process so they know what you have in mind and can tell you if it’s doable.

You may also want to rely on video marketing tools such as Idomoo and Wistia to create targeted ads that reach your desired audience.

5. Preview your ad.

Now that you have created your ad, check that everything will run smoothly once it’s live.

The first step is ensuring that your ad meets the guidelines set by your advertising platform, like Google Ads.

Most ad platforms have an approval process before your ad can go live on a publisher’s site. If your ad is rejected, you may have an opportunity to make changes to it and re-submit it for approval.

Then, preview your ad to make sure it’s performing as expected. Some platforms allow you to share the preview with collaborators for feedback.

6. Track and measure your success.

When your ad is created, it’s time to start running it.

You can use rich media ads on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. You can include them on search engines, like Google Ads and Bing Ads.

Once you’ve started to run your ads, don’t forget to monitor their performance and make changes as necessary. If you’ve run static display ads in the past, it will be helpful to compare and see which type offers a higher return on investment.

Now, you might be wondering, “What will this look like?” Let’s review some examples of rich media ads in action below.

6 Examples of Rich Media Ads

1. Discover

This is a great example of a rich media ad that catches your attention and invites you to engage.

When you first see the ad, you immediately notice the logo, the copy, and the CTA on the left-hand side. Once you engage with the ad, the video starts playing and the volume button is displayed.

Why it works: Even without playing the video, you get the key information you need: The brand, the message, the CTA.

2. Reformation

Like many online retailers, Reformation uses retargeting ads to attract web visitors to its website.

In this rich media ad, users can see products from the brand and will be redirected right to the product page after clicking the “Shop It” CTA.

What works well here: Users can not only see top products from the brand but also use the interactive hover feature to shop specific items.

3. GEHA

GEHA’s video ad hits all the key points needed to create an effective rich media ad

The first thing you notice is the high-quality video and visuals. The use of colors, icons, and hierarchy to highlight key messages is definitely effective.

In addition to being eye-catching, it’s to the point. Brands typically have very few seconds to catch a user’s eye as they navigate a page. With this in mind, make sure every frame in your video serves a purpose.

4. Jessica London

In this Jessica London ad example, the brand uses movement to its advantage.

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It’s a great but simple way to make a static image more dynamic and engaging. Additionally, moving ads are eye-catching in a way that static images aren’t.

The takeaway: If you can’t invest in visuals other than images, try having multiple slides in your ad with each slide featuring a different image and text.

5. Lincoln Aviator

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When Lincoln decided to create an ad for the new Aviator car, they wanted it to be interactive.

When you click on this ad, you’ll be brought to a separate slide. This image is an interactive guide to the features of the car. You can click on different areas of the car to learn more about it.

This is a great example of how rich media ads are engaging and interactive. The audience can click on the ad and learn more about the car without being brought to a new webpage.

6. Netflix

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This is the rich media ad by Netflix that I was talking about before. This ad includes a unique video from the actors and is presented almost like a trailer.

Then, if you hover over the image, the audience will see moving images that rotate. Additionally, if you click the ad, you can watch the actual trailer for the Netflix show. This is a great rich media ad that includes several media formats to engage the viewer.

Rich media ads are an amazing way to engage and interact with your audience. In an age where audiences have banner blindness, rich media ads are a great way to get your audience’s attention.

The Benefits of Rich Media in Your Advertising Strategy

Using rich media ads is sure to add another dimension to your campaign and help you understand what works best with your audience.

Here are the top benefits of using rich media:

• Potential for a higher clickthrough rate – Rich media ads can be more interactive and eye-catching, making users more likely to click on your ad. They can also offer better brand recall if delivered effectively.
• Versatility in ads – Diversifying your campaign ads is helpful in discovering what your target audience connects with and which ad types convert best.
• Better insights – Because of the multiple layers you can add to your rich media ads, you can gain more insights into your audience. Video watch times, clickthrough rates, pre-interaction engagement rates are all metrics you can use to understand your ad performance.

If you’ve never run a rich media ad, this is your sign. You may find that it outperforms your static ads.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in __ and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Happy employees are the key to a successful business. According to the University of Oxford, happy employees are 13% more productive. High employee satisfaction can go a long way towards your bottom line.

Of course, when your employees are not happy, that shows too. You’ll likely see a slowdown in productivity, a change in the work environment, and you may start seeing an increase in employee turnover.

What have you noticed in your own organization? Are employees loyal and in it for the long haul, or are they leaving in droves? If you’ve been seeing more and more employees leaving the company in a short amount of time, it might be time to calculate your attrition rate and examine what’s really going on in your organization.

There are a variety of metrics that you can use to determine how your employees are doing. Many of them focus on productivity metrics such as progress to goals. However, these productivity metrics don’t tell the whole story.

That’s why it’s important to understand your attrition rate to help determine the health of your organization. Let’s discuss what an attrition rate is and how to lower it.

Understanding your team’s attrition rate is important for the health of your organization because having a high attrition rate can have devastating impacts on your team’s success. With too many experienced team members leaving at once, you run the risk of losing valuable organizational knowledge and losing revenue from repeated hiring and onboarding costs.

Now that you know what an attrition rate is, let’s review how to calculate it for your organization.

How To Calculate Attrition Rate

To calculate the attrition rate, take the number of people who have left your company (or team) and divide it by the average number of employees over a period of time. You then multiply that figure by 100 to present it as a percentage.

Let’s say at the end of the year you had 500 employees in your organization. During the first quarter of the following year, 100 employees left. This would leave you with an attrition rate of 20% for that time period.

It’s worth noting that a team’s attrition rate can be subjective based on the size of the company. Though there is no single number that is considered a good or bad attrition rate, later on, we’ll cover the important factors to keep in mind when reviewing your team’s attrition data, and when to take action.

Before we dive into that, we need to understand that not all employee exits are created equal. There are four different types of attrition and each one may be saying something different.

Types of Attrition

People leave jobs for various reasons – some voluntary and some involuntary. Let’s look at the four categories of attrition and what they mean.

1. Voluntary attrition occurs when an employee chooses to leave a position on their own accord.
2. Involuntary attrition occurs when an employee has been released from the company.
3. Internal attrition occurs when employees move from one position to another within the same company.
4. Demographic-specific attrition occurs when there is a noticeable pattern of a specific group leaving a team or company during a given time period (this can be age, gender, ethnicity, parental status, etc.)

Internal attrition is generally not a cause for concern. If employees feel comfortable staying within the same company, it’s often because overall, the culture is good and they are just looking for a promotion or new opportunity.

This can, however, be an issue if an entire department makes an exodus to other areas of the company. This suggests that you may have a management problem in that area.

Next would be involuntary attrition. These employees are being asked to leave the company. They may have been performing below expectations or weren’t a good fit for the role. When this happens, it’s a good idea to review hiring procedures and guidelines to ensure your team is hiring individuals who have the best chance at being successful in their role.

Voluntary attrition is much more concerning. If you have a large number of employees leaving the company at once, there may be an issue with your company culture, management, or compensation. In a bit, we’ll discuss how to identify and correct these issues.

Finally, if you are seeing demographic-specific attrition, there may be a very big problem at play. When people of the same gender, age group, ethnicity, sexual orientation, parental status, or any other personal characteristic are leaving en masse, it may be because of systemic issues in how your company is structured and operated. A close examination of your culture and operations is warranted.

High Attrition Rate

As mentioned above, attrition rates are relative depending on the size of the company. To understand if your attrition rate is higher than it should be, compare your attrition rate to your retention rate for the same time period. Your retention rate measures the number of employees who have remained in your organization.

To calculate your retention rate, divide the number of employees who have remained in your organization by the number of employees you started with (this should be the same figure you use to calculate your attrition rate) and divide this number by 100.

If you suspect a high attrition rate, it’s important to compare your numbers to other companies in your industry, in your geographic location, and within the company, compare departmental attrition numbers to other areas of your business. These comparisons will alert you to any problems or may put your mind at ease.

Aside from the possibility of having an unhappy team, there are several other problems that can occur when your attrition rate is high.

• Frustrated Employees – When someone leaves, their work doesn’t stop getting done. Often other employees will have to take over their responsibilities until a backfill is hired. In some instances, that individual’s role may not be filled, and their work may be absorbed by other members of their team which could lead to overwhelm and burnout.
• Team Dynamic – While you may not love everyone you work with, professional teams have often built rapport with one another. When one person (or more) leaves the team, there is an adjustment period that can be felt throughout the department.
• Loss of Knowledge – If an employee chooses to leave, they will sometimes provide enough notice to document their processes and procedures for their replacement. However, even when they do, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to provide them with the depth of knowledge they have accrued during their tenure.
• Resource Constraints – Hiring costs can add up. It’s estimated that it costs about 50-60% of the departing employee’s salary to hire a replacement for their role.

Average Attrition Rate

With all this talk of attrition rates, you’re probably wondering how your company compares to other organizations out there.

First, it’s important to note that attrition rates can depend on a lot of different factors. As you can imagine, the stress level in certain industries and roles is considerably higher than in others. This may sometimes account for higher attrition rates. Geographic concerns such as rising home costs could also impact the number of employees leaving their jobs.

In 2021, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the average turnover rate was 57.3% across industries.

Low Attrition Rate

It is important to note that while a high attrition rate can be bad for business for the reasons listed above, an extremely low rate could be detrimental as well. Why? Because without the ability to bring new employees who offer unique perspectives and skillsets to a team, an organization could reach a point of stagnation.

Bringing new people to the table can increase ingenuity and creativity, and help a company make positive changes.

How to Lower Your Attrition Rate

If you’ve calculated your attrition rate, compared it to other departments and other companies, and deemed it high, it’s time to get to work. There are a number of actions you can take to lower this attrition rate and put your company back on the right path.

The most important step is getting to the root of the problem. What is causing employees to leave? This is the biggest piece of information you need to make the correct changes.

Conduct Exit Interviews

There is nothing more valuable than feedback from an employee who has nothing to lose by being completely honest. You can set up a formal exit interview as employees give notice.

You’ll want to discuss a number of aspects of the business with them, including:

• Pay and Benefits – Your employees may be leaving simply because another company is offering them more.
• Recognition and Appreciation – Did they feel as if they were appreciated for their hard work?
• Management – If multiple former employees point towards the same manager as a source of their issues, you may have a leadership problem on your hands.
• Culture – Were they happy working for you? Were there aspects of the job and the atmosphere that caused stress or frustration?
• Mental Health – Even the best compensation can’t make up for unbearable stress. Were workloads too heavy? Was there an unhealthy work environment for employees?
• Safety – Did they feel that their safety was in danger as they carried out their responsibilities? If so, did they feel comfortable bringing their concerns to management? If they did speak to management, did they feel heard, and were any changes made?

Staff Interviews or Surveys

While current employees may feel more hesitant to air grievances, they can still offer valuable insight into the employee experience. While you may have workers willing to talk about their perceived issues, you may receive more thorough and honest feedback using anonymous surveys.

If you do choose to speak one-on-one with employees, avoid having interviews be conducted by their manager. If the problem is with management and leadership, they may not feel comfortable providing honest feedback.

Finally, if you do seek any feedback from current employees, ensure that their honesty is confidential. If any information shared in confidence becomes public knowledge traceable back to a specific employee, it can be a breach of trust and inhibit future feedback.

Employees leaving is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself. While a high attrition rate can be concerning in any organization, it’s important to do the work and find out what’s actually causing the issue. Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, seek to make the necessary changes for your team.

Whether you’re sending out cold emails all day or drafting up campaigns and proposals, it’s tedious to spend time pouring over grammar. You can waste precious time deciding if you’re supposed to be using ‘affect’ or ‘effect’ or if you’ve used the word ‘very’ too many times. Instead, finding the best grammar checker for your work can automate this task and boost your productivity.

These days, there are many grammar checkers out there that all claim to be the best. Here are some of the best grammar checkers used and trusted by thousands of users every day.

Some grammar checkers may automatically edit content as you write, while others will flag incorrect spellings or awkward phrases for you to review. Many editors will even take you line by line to identify passive sentences, overly long paragraphs, or other complex errors that even keen human eyes may miss.

Using a grammar checker can give you some peace of mind when you’re writing a lot of content daily. Never again will you accidentally and embarrassingly leave off the ‘o’ at the end of ‘hello’ or misspell a simple word on a huge event poster. This software can help automate editing, so you can focus on getting your thoughts written down and submitted by the deadline.

What are the best functions of a grammar checker?

Some grammar checkers may just check the basics, like spelling and punctuation. More advanced programs can identify passive sentence structures, awkward phrases, and copy that is too complex for the average reader. How you work will greatly determine what functions you need.

Consider looking for options that check spelling, grammar, readability, redundancies, sentence length, and repeated words. For example, some grammar checkers can even tell if you have started consecutive sentences with the same word, so you can avoid your copy sounding monotonous.

If you’re wanting to create error-free copy, consider one of these top grammar checkers, both free and premium. You’ll find options that even work for emails, social media, and on your phone.

1. Hemingway Editor

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Looking for a free grammar checker? Consider Hemingway Editor, which is one of the best free grammar checkers with plenty of advanced features. This website and desktop app reviews your writing to determine readability with the Flesch-Kincaid reading level, which generally recommends that you aim for easy, conversational language to fairly easy-to-read content (grades 6 through 8 on the scale).

This program will scan content for adverbs, passive sentences, and complex or long sentences. It highlights issues in various colors, so you can edit in real-time. The big drawback with this free program is that you’ll need to copy and paste your text over into the editor; it doesn’t scan your text in emails or other documents.

2. Grammarly

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You’ve probably heard of Grammarly, which is one of the most popular grammar checkers out there. This software uses AI to improve your writing. It includes a free browser extension with limited features or a paid version with more advanced checking tools. The free option checks grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

What makes Grammarly unique is that the premium plans even check your tone, so Grammarly can tell you if your email sounds too harsh or it can recommend ways to make your words sound more confident. Another perk of Grammarly is that once you install it, it works across multiple platforms, including documents, emails, and even social media.

3. Ginger

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Ginger is another free grammar checking program with a website, browser extensions, and even an app for iOS and Android, so you can work on the go. For a free grammar checker, Ginger has impressive tools to detect basic grammar errors as well as more complex issues like inconsistent verb tenses, singular versus plural errors, and subject-verb disagreement.

You can check text and fix multiple issues with just one click, making Ginger efficient and a major productivity booster.

4. ProWritingAid

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ProWritingAid is a browser extension with a user-friendly interface to help you improve your content. It grades content on readability to make sure it isn’t too difficult to read.

There are also handy tools that evaluate sentence variety and passive voice. It’s especially helpful for creative writers, thanks to two unique features that identify unusual dialogue tags and emotional tells. This encourages more creativity, particularly for long-form writing.

In addition to the grammar checker, ProWritingAid works almost like a mentor by offering educational tools like articles, videos, and even quizzes to strengthen your writing skills. The program is free for basic features, but you can upgrade to premium options for the more in-depth tools and a bonus plagiarism tracker.

5. WhiteSmoke

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If you want a trusty grammar checker used by major universities and corporations, WhiteSmoke is one to consider. It can detect a number of grammar errors, including sentence fragments, comma splices, run-on sentences, misspellings, and more. The program’s style checker detects monotonous sentence lengths and switching tenses, and WhiteSmoke also offers a translator that can translate single words or full texts to and from 55 different languages.

There’s no free plan for WhiteSmoke, but you can start checking your content as low as $5 per month. It works with any browser and for Gmail.

6. Google Workplace/Google Docs

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If you have a Gmail account, you already have access to a free and pretty robust grammar checker. Type up an email, and Gmail will automatically flag words or phrases it thinks could be mistakes. The same goes for Google Docs.

While you might want to download additional software for more advanced features, Google offers some helpful spelling and grammar checking services for free with your account.

7. LanguageTool

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Trusted by big names like Amazon and RingCentral, LanguageTool is a multilingual grammar checker that analyzes text for grammatical, spelling, and style issues. The user-friendly interface offers light or dark mode, so spending a day writing doesn’t have to equate to tired eyes.

The service keeps text secure, important if you’re working with sensitive or exclusive information. With LanguageTool, you can set up a personal dictionary of words, so the program won’t mistakenly flag your company’s branded names.

The program works along with multiple browsers, word processors like Microsoft Word and Google Docs, or email, and you can also choose browser extensions or even the desktop app. The free plan will check up to 10,000 characters per text, or opt for more advanced features with the individual or team plans.

8. Writer

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The aptly named Writer is an AI editing program that helps create crisp, clean copy that fits your brand’s voice. It includes autocorrect and autocomplete features, so hitting inbox zero has never been easier. You can create your own library of relevant marketing terms, customize the writing and grammar rules to fit your brand, and even build a company style guide with Writer.

As you type Writer will highlight mistakes or phrases it thinks could be better, and as you hover over each section, you’ll be greeted with intuitive suggestions to make the content concise and engaging. There’s a free plan or a free trial for more advanced plans, which include options for individuals, teams, or enterprises.

Automate Editing With a Reliable Grammar Checker

There’s a trusty grammar checker for every business and budget. Even free versions will give you plenty of insight into your copy, so you can reduce passive voice, minimize errors, and create content that will engage clients, boost sales, and grow your business.

When choosing a grammar checker, keep in mind where you need it most — do you want it to review emails and blogs, or just internal documents? Will it check for anything beyond spelling? Once you have the features you want the most, you’ll have an easier time finding the right one for you.

No business can survive without customers. While customer retention is incredibly important, attracting new customers is essential to growing your business. Because of this, customer acquisition should be a top priority for business owners. This begs the question, how do you get new customers or clients in the literal or figurative door?

Traditionally, your sales team will engage with your potential customers, sending emails, making phone calls, and visiting them in person depending on the nature of your business. Though this approach is often effective, is it the most efficient use of your employees’ time?

Many successful businesses have decided that it would be better for the customers to come to them, rather than them go to the customers. One of the ways to do this is to take an inbound approach and implement a content marketing strategy.

This is a great move for most businesses, however, when you incorporate a content marketing campaign into your overall strategy, you’ll want to ensure you’re seeing a return on your investment.

Content marketing is a type of marketing where you create and share online content in order to spread awareness about what you do and create interest in working with or purchasing from your company.

Earlier, we mentioned how salespeople will interact with potential customers multiple times. Why do they do this? These multiple contacts are so that when your potential customer is ready to be an actual customer, your business is top-of-mind.

Content marketing seeks to do the same thing, but more efficiently. By creating content in the form of blogs, videos, or social media posts, you can position your business as the “go-to expert” in your field. Essentially, you become the brand people find and think of when they are having a problem.

As important as this is, content marketing works in another important way. As a consumer, what do you do when you have a problem? If you’re like millions of other people, you ask Google how to fix that problem. You may not even know how to communicate what’s wrong, but Google magically knows and directs you to the answers you need.

When you engage in content marketing, you become the answer that your potential customer is searching for.

Does it work? According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing leaders experience nearly eight times more site traffic than non-leaders.

Need more convincing? Demand Metric says that content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, and generates three times as many leads.

What are content marketing metrics?

Is content marketing a good strategy to incorporate into your business? Probably. But, it takes time and energy to plan and resources to execute. Just like any other strategy, you would think to include, you’ll want to make sure that you’re seeing a healthy return on investment (ROI) for your effort.

In order to do that, you’ll need to become familiar with content marketing metrics. With these numbers, you’ll be able to determine if what you’re doing is making an impact as is, if you’ll need to tweak your approach, or if you’ll need to abandon it altogether in exchange for something else.

Content Marketing Success Metrics

While there are hundreds of specific metrics out there you could use to determine whether or not your content marketing efforts are making enough of an impact to justify their costs, there are a handful of metrics that are essential. Incorporating the following numbers into your content marketing metrics dashboard will give you a great understanding of your performance and effectiveness.

1. Traffic Sources

It’s wonderful to discover that people are consuming your content. But, how did they find out about it? A truly successful content marketing plan will attract new potential customers through engaging content. On the other hand, you may also be creating more engagement with past customers or on-the-fence potential customers. This is still good as it can create repeat business and help you stay top-of-mind.

Either way, it’s important to know how readers have made their way to your content. To find traffic sources to your blog or website, you can use a platform such as Google Analytics.

2. Impressions

How is your content doing? Does Google recognize that you are an “answer” to the searcher’s problems? Using Google Search Console, you can determine how many impressions your content has received. The more impressions, the more people you’ve reached.

3. Click-through-rate (CTR)

Impressions or views of your content is important, however, without acknowledging your CTR or click-through rate, you won’t be able to fully understand whether or not your content is effective.

More people may be viewing or consuming your content, but is it moving them to action? Are they visiting your website? Are they learning more about your products? Understanding your click-through rate provides this insight.

4. Content Shares and Backlinks

You’re putting out good content (hopefully!), but is it good enough to share? The true test of your content is whether or not people find it useful or interesting enough to share with their own audiences.

Bonus, the more your content is shared, the more Google sees it as the “solution” and shows it to more people. If you’re posting on social media, shares are easy to determine. If you’re looking at blog content, you can use a tool such as BuzzSumo or Ahrefs.

5. Email Opt-in Rates

Click-through rates are important to know if your readers are taking action on your content by visiting your website. However, if they don’t buy right away, are they giving you the opportunity to capture their information and connect with them in the future?

When your content marketing is performing well and truly doing its job, readers will be comfortable sharing their contact information with you and eager to hear more of what you have to say, and potentially purchase your product or service in the future. Your email marketing software can give you this metric.

6. Bounce Rate

Ideally, once people land on your website, they’ll take the time to explore, digest some of your content, and buy. Sometimes though, you’ll see a high bounce rate because people have navigated away from your website immediately after they were directed there. This could be due to slow-loading, a poor user experience, or different content than they expected.

It’s important to know your bounce rate and then understand what’s causing it. This helps you avoid putting all the time and effort into creating quality content, only to find that something on your website is turning off potential customers.

7. Keyword Rankings

A big part of content marketing is selecting the right keywords for your desired audience. Ultimately, the question is “what are your potential customers searching for on Google?” Once you’ve figured that out, you can incorporate those words into your content and ideally, be found more easily.

However, keywords change over time and you’ll need to make sure that you are being successful in your endeavors. Review the keyword rankings using SEMRush or Google Search Console and tweak your keywords or your content when it’s not performing well.

Content Marketing Dashboard

If you’re looking to keep your metrics and data organized, consider creating a content marketing dashboard with up-to-date visuals of the key metrics you want your team to track. When content marketers are clear on their goals, they are in a better position to meet and exceed them.

The ideal content marketing metrics for you to use will be determined by what your goals are with your content marketing strategy. If you are looking to increase brand awareness, you will utilize different metrics than if your primary goal is to increase sales of a specific product or increase turnout for your next event.

Porter’s Five Forces is a model that identifies and describes the five economic forces that shape every industry. More specifically, it explains how these forces dictate every industry’s competitive intensity, potential for profitability, and attractiveness.

Porter’s Five Forces has become a fundamental model that most businesses use to grasp the dynamics of their industry and, in turn, drive their business strategy. And it can help you do the same, too.

To help illustrate this, we’ve fleshed out the five fundamental economic forces at play in every market and provided an example analysis in each section, so you can see how each of these forces might play out in your specific industry.

The way you apply this model to your own business is totally dependent on the nature of your industry. Once you understand the forces affecting your industry, you can better extract insights that are relevant to your business.

Let’s break down each economic force and look at a few examples:

Porter’s Five Forces Model

1. Competition in the Industry

Competition plays a huge role in your industry’s profitability — the potential to produce a high return on investment — and, in turn, its ability to attract new entrants.

If there’s a lot of competition in your industry, it’s harder to turn a profit. Customers have a rich pool of options to choose from, so if your prices are too high, they can strike a deal with a supplier who will sell to them at a lower price.

In other words, customers typically wield more power than suppliers in competitive industries. This usually leads to suppliers undercutting each other until their revenue barely exceeds their costs — which, in turn, plummets their profits and discourages new players from entering the market.

If there’s less competition in your industry, it’s easier to turn a profit. Customers have fewer suppliers to choose from, so if they want to buy your market’s product or service, they must accept the higher price.

To help you examine the competition in your own industry, let’s see it in action in the aluminum baseball bat industry.

Competition Example

From little league to college, baseball players all around the country primarily use aluminum baseball bats to train and compete.

Louisville Slugger, Rawlings, Marucci, DeMarini, and AxeBat are the leaders in the high-end of this market. Their target customers are travel or college baseball players who are willing to pay a premium price for the best bats that can perform at a high level and stay durable for multiple seasons.

Easton, Mizuno, and Adidas serve the middle of the market, and Anderson, Combat, and Dirty South serve the low-end of the market. Their target customers are less competitive players who probably just play baseball for fun and friendships.

2. Potential of New Entrants into the Industry

If new players can enter your market quickly and cheaply, they can sell their minimum viable product. This is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers.

The frequency of new players entering your market hinges on your industry’s barriers to entry. If it costs a lot of money and time to build a viable product and cover overhead expenses, startups wouldn’t be able to enter or compete in your market.

To help you examine the potential of new entrants in your own industry, here’s an analysis of the potential of new entrants in the aluminum baseball bat industry.

New Entrants Example

The barriers to entry of the aluminum baseball bat industry are very high. You would have to spend a lot of money on research and development to figure out how to differentiate your product in a saturated market, purchase a bunch of raw materials to manufacture the bats, and build expensive facilities and machines to actually produce them.

This startup would have to charge close to an industry-average price to cover the initial overhead of creating a minimum viable product, crafting an enjoyable brand experience, and generating revenue. You would also need to hire a product, marketing, and sales team to run this startup’s daily business operations.

3. Power of Suppliers

The number of suppliers or competitors in your market directly affects your company’s ability to control prices. When there’s little to no competition, suppliers hold the pricing power. If a consumer doesn’t accept your prices, you and your fellow suppliers can easily find someone else who will.

When there are a lot of suppliers in your industry, each supplier holds less pricing power. Your market’s customers have a rich pool of options to choose from, so if your prices are too high, they can just strike a deal with another supplier.

Power of Suppliers Example

With 11 major suppliers in a massively popular industry — and five or less brands competing in each segment of the market — the suppliers hold a lot of pricing power. Almost every baseball player, from little league to college, needs an aluminum baseball bat to train and compete, so they’re very dependent on these suppliers, which gives them even more pricing power.

4. Power of Customers

The number of customers in your industry directly affects their ability to control prices. If there are only a few customers in your industry, they hold most of the power.

Since suppliers depend on customers to generate revenue, suppliers must adhere to their customers’ pricing demands — or risk customers doing business with other suppliers.

On the flip side, if there are a ton of customers in your industry, the customers hold significantly less power. They must accept the prices suppliers set or else they won’t be able to buy any of the products or services.

Power of Customers Example

Every single baseball player needs an aluminum baseball to train and compete, so each supplier in the aluminum baseball bat industry has a huge potential customer base to market and sell to. Since there are few suppliers and so many customers in this market, the customers don’t hold enough power to drive the prices down.

5. Threat of Substitute Products

Substitutes are products from different industries that consumers can use interchangeably, like coffee and tea, and they can significantly shape your industry.

If your product has cheaper or superior substitutes, you not only have to compete with other players in your industry, but you also have to compete with businesses in other industries

If your product doesn’t have cheaper or superior substitutes, though, the businesses who produce these substitutes don’t pose as much of a threat to you or your direct competitors. This low multi-market competition might only drop your prices and profits slightly.

Threat of Substitute Products Example

Instead of buying aluminum baseball bats, players could buy bats from suppliers who only manufacture wood bats, like Baum Bats, Old Hickory, and Sam Bat. But the odds of this happening are extremely low. Even though individual wood bats cost less than individual aluminum bats, wood bats break much more frequently.

For instance, one $250 aluminum bat can last longer than five $100 wood bats, so replacing aluminum bats with wood bats would actually cost more money. Players can also hit the ball farther with aluminum bats, which makes it the superior product.

Additionally, wood bat manufacturers make the most money by focusing on a specific market of baseball players who only use wood bats, like professional baseball players, summer college league players, and top-flight travel baseball players. In sum, there’s a low threat of substitutes in this industry.

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

To conduct a Five Forces analysis, start by reflecting on how each force affects your business. Then, identify the strength and direction of each force — which also assesses your competitive position.

To get the ball rolling, ask yourself these questions:

• Are there a lot of suppliers in my industry?
• Is my buying power high or low?
• Is there a substitute for my product or service?
• Is it easy or difficult for new competitors to enter my market?
• Is competition high or low in my industry?

Next, write down each of the five forces, and note the size and scale of each, using your answers to guide you. You can also do this by downloading our Five Forces Model Template below.

Porter’s Five Forces Model Template

Download this Template for Free

Final Thoughts

Competition is a natural part of business. Analyzing your industry using Porter’s Five Forces can help you identify strategies to improve your competitive position, potential for long-term profitability, and overall attractiveness.