Category Archives: B2B

Today’s B2B buyers rely on digital channels through every stage of their journeys — even long after in-person sales interactions with reps.

As a result, commercial organizations’ efforts to identify, nurture, and pursue opportunities “serially” — first through digital engagement via marketing, followed by a hand-off to sales for in-person interaction — is failing to support the way customers actually buy.

Instead, the best companies must evolve a “parallel” commercial engine, where digital and in-person strategies complement each other at every stage of the buyer’s multi-channel journey.

In other words: We have all worked hard to create for our organization a “seamless view of the customer.” Now, it’s time to build a seamless view of our organizations for customers.

To get there, most suppliers will have to re-think — and ultimately, re-design — their websites, as customers aren’t just buying digitally. They’re relying heavily on suppliers’ websites to do so.

In fact, we found suppliers’ websites to be the most frequently-consulted digital channel for customers at every stage of the purchase process.

And yet, the vast majority of B2B websites aren’t designed to support that kind of buying behavior. Instead, they’re primarily designed to “broadcast.”

Specifically, we’re all seeking to tell the world three things: (1) who we are, (2) what we do, and (3) how we help.

To help buyers buy, however, B2B websites will have to meet three critical — and very different — design principles moving forward.

For inspiration on how the best B2B websites are built to impress, check out this video.

1. Give customers an entry point on their terms.

After reviewing hundreds of B2B websites across every major industry, we found only a handful that purposefully invite customers into a conversation. To do that, suppliers need to stop talking so much about themselves.

Rather, they should provide customers with an opportunity to share something about who they are, and what they’re looking to do — on their terms.

Really, it’s no different than common courtesy at a cocktail party. No one wants to be stuck talking to the person droning on about who they are and what they do. Yet that’s precisely what the vast majority of B2B websites do.

Not only is that kind of self-centered approach disengaging, but it also leaves the buyer wondering, “Do they even know who I am? Or what I actually do?” Or worse, “Do they even care?” It’s impersonal at best, and off-putting at worst — fostering questions rather than connections, and distance rather than assistance.

That said, we found a handful of websites that do, in fact, actively invite customers to engage on their terms. Square, for example, asks customers to identify their business sizes and types as a first step to entering the site. It’s the first — and nearly only — thing a visitor encounters upon landing on the home page. That information allows Square to offer customers what feels like a much more customized web experience.

Another example is vAuto.com. A division of Cox Automotive, vAuto sells enterprise software to auto dealers around world. Among those dealers are both used and new car sellers, along with wholesalers — some franchise-based, and some independent.

Those distinctions matter — not only for finding the appropriate vAuto solution, but they help to identify how that customer thinks about themselves.

vAuto has designed the front page of its website to allow buyers to self-identify along the dimensions most important to them, prior to going any deeper. The customer’s first choice upon landing at vauto.com is declaring, “I’m New Car,” “I’m Used Car,” or “I’m Wholesale.”

Notice that even the pronouns are specifically chosen to position the website as a learning and buying tool for customers, rather than a broadcasting tool for the supplier.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. How do our customers define themselves?
2. In their minds, which aspects of their identity most affect the way they look at suppliers like us?

2. Signal your solutions in customers’ language.

Just as the best websites invite customers into a conversation, they also guide buyers to supplier solutions using the language of customer outcomes — rather than supplier capabilities.

The best companies take the time to understand the specific business objectives customers are seeking to achieve, then organize their sites using language immediately recognizable to customers along those particular outcomes. That way, customers don’t have to translate.

Here’s another place where vAuto excels. The company employs actual customer-articulated business problems as the organizing framework for diving deeper into their broad solution set. It organizaes this information around headings like, “No one’s buying my inventory,” and, “The internet is killing my profits.”

At every step, the goal is to make online learning and buying as easy and as resonant as possible — all through an easy-to-follow path of breadcrumbs leading directly to vAuto’s unique solutions.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. What help are customers seeking from a supplier in your category?
2. What specific language would best resonate with your customers to describe that help?

3. Help customers do what they are on your site to do.

Finally, the best websites identify and then facilitate the specific tasks that customers come to your website to complete.

Take something like a cost calculator embedded directly into a website. A tool like that enables customers to independently calculate the costs of (in)action, rather than relying on sales reps to make the case for change. It’s a simple, practical idea, but it’s deployed with single-minded purpose: to allow the buyer to easily progress along the journey, while remaining in her preferred channel of choice.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. What specific buying tasks are your customers coming to your website to complete?
2. How easy is it to find support for those tasks on your site right now?

There’s a great deal to be learned from the handful of world-class websites we found as part of our work. For a more detailed discussion, check out this video, where you’ll also find examples and a practical worksheet to plan next steps. 

Whether you’re a full-time blogger or a social media marketer who’s occasionally tasked with writing social media copy, I’m willing to bet you’ve experienced the temptation to procrastinate in the middle of your writing process.

Maybe you type your introductory sentence and then open Pinterest. Perhaps you finish a section of your post and then, losing steam, decide to wash your dishes, instead.

Whatever it is, we’ve all been there. Writing is a tough and tedious process, and there are plenty of moments where procrastination is much more tempting than writing one more sentence.

But if you’re on a tight deadline, it’s critical you’re able to stay focused. Here, Henneke Duistermaat, founder of Enchanting Marketing, dives into strategies writers can use to avoid procrastination the next time they’re on a tight deadline and can’t afford to spend any more time refreshing their Pinterest feeds.

Let’s dive into the strategies you can use to stop procrastinating during your writing process — and how to become a more joyful writer, instead.

As a blogger, you want your website to reflect your unique voice and style. You also want visitors to have a positive experience navigating your site — that is, reading posts with ease, searching for topics of interest, and discovering other content that makes them excited to return.

A WordPress blogging theme can help you achieve the exact look, feel, design, and layout you envision, without the need for coding.

We’ve curated this list of our favorite free WordPress themes for bloggers like yourself — in no particular order — to consider using for your website.

1. Astra

Astra is a fast and lightweight theme that’s suitable for a variety of use cases. This flexible foundation makes Astra a quality option to consider when building a blog. The theme comes with several ready-to-use blog websites that can be imported, modified, and used out of the box.

Many bloggers get by just fine with the limited customization options for backgrounds, typography, and spacing within the free version of Astra. But for several advanced features like auto-loading previous posts, adding author sections, and removing featured image padding, you’d need to opt for the Pro or Agency plan.

Astra is one of the fastest themes available, and its compatibility with all major page builders (such as Elementor, Beaver, and Brizy) make it a great option for bloggers.

2. Kadence

Kadence is a lightweight and fully-featured WordPress theme that makes creating beautiful fast-loading and accessible websites a breeze. It features an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop header and footer builder to build any type of header in minutes.

For bloggers, Kadence stands out because of its clean blog styling, including featured image placements and sticky sidebar options. Additionally, Kadence has a deep integration with the core block editor, so your content will match what you see in the admin panel.  

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3. Blog Way

Blog Way is a simple and professional theme. It’s clean, well-coded, and has a modern layout. Blog Way is especially great for blogs, news sites, and travel sites. It has multiple customizable features and ensures high-quality performance to help boost your site traffic. Blog Way also comes with an option to change the color of your entire site and offers social links for you to connect your site with your social accounts.

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4. Simple

Simple is a free WordPress theme developed by Themify and built for, well, simplicity. Simple is designed so customers can buy items directly from your WordPress website without being redirected to Shopify, but you can run a regular blog on it as well. Creating your design or online store is easy with the drag and drop interface through Themify Builder, which comes with the theme. 

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5. Mesmerize

Mesmerize is all about giving you customizability without the hassle. Start with a pre-built homepage and use the five header designs, slideshow capabilities, gradient overlays, and more to make the look and feel your own. In addition, there are 30 ready-to-use content sections for you to build pages quickly and easily… not to mention the helpful drag-and-drop features. It’s mobile-responsive, and it works well with WooCommerce should you ever need to set up a store.

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6. Kale

Kale is built for food bloggers. You can choose from a number of feed displays to organize your written content and images of the dishes you’re featuring. The built-in social media sidebar menus and icons make it easy for your visitors to locate, view, and follow your accounts.

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7. Avant

Avant comes with seven different header styles, three footer styles, five blog layout templates, full site color settings, and much more built neatly into the WordPress Customizer. Avant integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce and page builders like Elementor or SiteOrigin.

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8. Blossom Feminine

Blossom Feminine is a free WordPress theme that you can use to create a fashion, lifestyle, journal, travel, beauty, or food blog. The theme is mobile-friendly, search engine optimized, and fast. In addition, the theme is WooCommerce compatible, translation ready, and comes with regular updates.

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9. Blossom Fashion

Blossom Fashion is perfect for building a stylish blog without spending a penny. While free, the theme offers premium features like WooCommerce compatibility, font choosing options, an advertisement widget, Instagram section, and more. The theme makes sure it is easy to use and comes with extensive documentation, and there’s always support if you need more help.

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10. Blossom Travel

Blossom Travel is a fast-loading and mobile-friendly WordPress theme for travel blogs. The theme blends accessible design with extensive features like social media integrations, theme color options, and lightbox image styling. Moreover, Blossom Travel has an Instagram section, email subscription section, and social media widgets so visitors can easily connect with you. Best of all is its HTML map section so that your visitors can visualize where you’ve traveled.

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11. Blossom Pin

The Blossom Pin theme features a Pinterest-style design, using a vibrant masonry layout with three posts/page layout options. Its infinite scroll lets visitors browse without distraction. The theme is SEO-optimized and easily customizable: Choose from many different colors and hundreds of Google fonts.

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12. Elegant Pink

Another dynamic Pinterest-like layout, Elegant Pink is a free and beautifully designed theme combining soft colors with a simple and clean layout to present your blog to the world. Elegant Pink also has a slider section above the masonry-design post on the homepage.

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13. Writee

Writee is ideal for photography or image-heavy blogs — the theme has a slider hero image feature which allows you to include several full-width images. Writee also makes managing an online store simple with its WooCommerce integration.

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14. Hemingway

Hemingway is a simple two-column blogging theme that keeps your content organized and easy to read. It includes a parallax scrolling feature, which adds an interactive, video-like experience to your blog pages. Hemingway’s translation-ready feature comes with pre-made language files so your website can be automatically translated into a number of other languages with just a click.

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15. Radiate

The Radiate blogging theme offers unique visuals, including a customizable, full-width hero image and primary color options so you can match your branding. If you have a WordPress.com Premium or Business account (that is, if you pay for WordPress), you can take advantage of custom Cascading Style Sheets.

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16. Neve

Neve is a powerful, free WordPress theme from ThemeIsle. It offers a fully responsive mobile-first design and extensive customization options to tailor your blog to your brand image. Neve frequently updates for security and new features, and its theme options panel will help you get started out-of-the-box.

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17. Bulan

Bulan offers multiple homepage layouts for your blog including full-width, boxed, narrow, and multi-column options. There are also a number of customizable sidebar and navigation configurations to enhance your blog-reading experience. Not to mention, you can install custom widgets to increase functionality.

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18. Total

Total is a blogging theme with a masonry-style layout, which places your latest three, six, or nine blog posts in a grid format. There’s also a portfolio section if you want to share some of your artistic work. Total is SEO-friendly, compatible with the most popular page builder plugins, and has a one-click demo import to get you up and running fast.

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19. Spacious

Spacious offers four page layouts, two templates, four blog layouts, and several custom widgets and widget areas to choose from. Building your site with Spacious is a painless process due to their downloadable demo sites that you can use for inspiration and support.

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20. Blog Diary

Blog Diary is meant to be lightweight and minimalistic, perfect for trendy food or travel blogs. It comes with slider functionality and color picking options, and it is easy to get up and running on the fly. In addition, it’s mobile-responsive and compatible with the Gutenberg editor.

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21. Wisteria

Wisteria is a blogging theme with a minimalist design. It includes layouts tailored to a variety of blogs including lifestyle, food, fashion, marketing, and more. Wisteria is retina-ready, meaning all of your images and content will be high-definition to ensure your site has a professional look.

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22. Editorial

The Editorial blog theme is visually engaging, simple to use, and flexible enough to organize large amounts of editorial content in a way that won’t overwhelm readers. Editorial also comes with a variety of convenient widgets that let you easily customize your page sections, no coding needed.

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23. Brilliant

Brilliant is a blog and online magazine theme that allows you to artistically pair your blog posts with photo or video content. You can add or edit your own custom logo on your homepage as well as easily customize your theme’s accent colors to match your branding. Brilliant is also translation-ready, so visitors can read your content in different languages.

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24. Poseidon

If you’re looking to include large, professional-looking photographs on your blog, Poseidon is the option for you — this theme offers a full-width image slideshow on the homepage. The layout is mainly white to create a spacious, organized look. Poseidon also includes completely customizable navigation bars to enhance user experience and improve your site’s configuration.

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25. Author

Author is a straightforward theme suitable for all blog types from business to photography to ecommerce. Its minimalist look helps readers to easily focus on your content. What’s unique about this particular theme is that it was designed not just for readability but also accessibility. 

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A free blogging WordPress theme will help you to create a unique, functional, and eye-catching place for your content. Each theme offers features, layouts, and styling that set them apart, so consider the overall design you’re going for on your blog to help you determine the ideal option for you.

Then, install your theme, begin to add content, and customize your site to create a great user experience that keeps readers returning for more.

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

In midsize to large companies, it’s standard to have business intelligence (BI) analysts generate reports on behalf of employees.

Having a designated team is great, as it signifies you have the resources to process large volumes of data. However, it can be a roadblock to decision-making.

Generating a report can take several days and if your team is already receiving many requests, it can take their focus away from higher priority tasks.

This is where ad hoc analysis comes in handy – you can run your own queries as you need them.

Discover the benefits of generating your own reports and the tools that will help you do it.

Non-technical users – who may be unfamiliar with structured query language (SQL) – can use it to answer questions that require immediate answers.

With the ad hoc model, everyone is empowered to dig into the data and find exactly what they’re looking for, without having to go through someone else. Why is this helpful? It:

• Saves time – When everyone is able to run their own analysis, they don’t have to wait days or weeks for IT to get to it. It also allows your IT team to focus on top priorities without being distracted by one-off tasks.
• Speeds up the decision-making process – This also enables your team to make decisions quickly, as they can access data to support their decisions.
• Empowers your team – Democratizing access to data can help your team feel more invested in your projects and be equipped to share insights.

One potential downside of using ad hoc analysis is the risk of information silos, where team members are not sharing insights and making unilateral decisions.

When using the ad hoc model, it’s important to only focus on answering a specific question. You also want to use it for micro-level decisions, not large scale. Furthermore, share your insights with your team to get everyone on the same page.

Ad Hoc Example

You typically run ad hoc analysis as a response to an event.

For instance, let’s say your marketing team is wondering which channels to invest in for 2021. You could run a report to identify the channels that generate the most and least sales-qualified leads. You could also run a secondary report to identify where potential leads may be dropping off.

Ad hoc analysis is great when you want to:

• Validate a theory.
• Highlight specific data for an upcoming meeting.
• Make a decision quickly regarding an ongoing project.

Ad Hoc Reports

What is ad hoc reporting?

Ad hoc reporting is a one-time report that doesn’t require waiting for the standard analysis cycle. Typically, a report requires large volumes of data and follows specific templates to share with a large audience. With ad hoc reporting, you only pull a small segment of data for you or a small pool of users.

Wondering what’s the difference between ad hoc reporting and analysis? The former pulls the right data for the question you want to answer while the latter focuses on analyzing it for patterns, trends, and insights.

Standard (Canned) Reports vs. Ad Hoc Reports

Standard reports have limited customization options available, as they are usually created for large audiences and sent out on a regular schedule. They are created, managed, and distributed by technical IT users, with the end-user only being able to manipulate select data points.

Ad hoc reports, on the other hand, are much more flexible. Non-technical users can dig through data, pull out what they want and how they want to display it whenever they need it.

In addition, ad hoc reports can be more visual than standard reports, which tend to follow set templates for easy distribution.

Ad Hoc Reporting Tools

When searching for a business intelligence (BI) reporting tool, here are some key features you’ll want to look for:

• Data visualization
• Easy sharing options
• Access to multiple data sources
• Integrations

Here are some top ad hoc analysis and reporting tools available online today.

1. Grow

Grow is a business intelligence tool that centralizes your data and offers no-code solutions. No need to host your marketing data on one platform and your financial data on another. Grow’s powerful integration software removes the need for third-party data warehouses.

You can easily integrate your data from multiple sources, including:

• CRMs like HubSpot
• Social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn
• Ecommerce sites like Shopify
• Payment processors like Square and Stripe
• Ad platforms like AdRoll and Google Ads
• Financial institutions like Chase and Bank of America

The user-friendly dashboard and visualization capabilities, you can quickly get answers to your most pressing questions. For pricing information, contact the company.

2. Easy Insight

Easy Insight is another code-free business intelligence tool that enables non-technical users to run ad hoc reports in a few simple steps.

Whenever you need it, you can create custom reports using a range of filters and visualize them through tables, charts, and a host of other visualization tools.

The platform is highly customizable, allowing you to create your own data sources, import data from other databases, and combine your data for unified reporting. It also integrates with HubSpot to help you leverage your insights to make decisions.

Easy Insight offers six plans for small to large companies. Pricing ranges from $29/month to $1499/month.

3. Wicked Reports

If your team is currently relying on several platforms to gather and analyze data, then consider Wicked Reports. This tool caters specifically to marketers looking to step up their data analytics game.

Wicked Reports helps teams track return on investment (ROI) on various campaigns and improve their customer lifetime value. With the easy-to-use dashboard, any user can run ad hoc reports to assess performance against goals and make quick decisions.

The best part? You don’t need IT to set it up or use it. The platform is accessible to non-technical users who want clean and accurate data.

Starting at $597/month, Wicked Reports is ideal for scaling businesses looking for a reliable analytics tool.

With ad hoc analysis, you can empower your team to easily access the data they need most, freeing up your IT staff in the process.

Ever left something perfectly fine and came back to a total disaster? Any pet owner will probably say, “yes.”

At work, the same can happen when collaborating on a shared document. It’s usually an accidental keyboard stroke that does it. Unless it’s done by your cat, in which case, it’s not accidental – it’s definitely sabotage.

While a mistake like this is understandable, it can be frustrating and time-consuming to fix. When working on shared Excel sheets, you can prevent these mishaps altogether by locking cells and protecting your worksheets.

Whether you’re working on an upcoming report or planning out next quarter’s budget, learn how to prevent anyone from changing or deleting important information on an Excel document.

Can you lock cells in Excel?

Yes, you can lock cells on Excel by following a few simple steps. When you lock a cell in Excel, you restrict users from making changes to your sheets. It’s particularly helpful when working on a project that involves multiple team members.

For instance, let’s say you’re the marketing director and you’ve asked each channel lead (email, website, social) to report their quarterly numbers for an upcoming meeting.

You wouldn’t want someone accidentally deleting important information, or changing formulas or conditional formatting before consulting with key stakeholders. This process ensures that only pre-approved users can edit the cell, which will save you a headache in the future.

Another method is locking your formula cells so that the numbers populate correctly. Jump to that section here.

How to Lock Cells in Excel

1. Select the cell(s) you want to lock.

2. Click on the “Home” tab of your Excel sheet.

3. Click on “Format,” located on the right side of the screen.

4. Scroll down and click on “Lock Cell.”

Once you complete these steps, your cells will be locked but can still be edited. To ensure the cells aren’t editable, you’ll also have to protect your worksheet. Find those steps in the next section.

How To Protect a Worksheet in Excel

1. Once you’ve locked your cells, click on the “Review” tab.

2. Click on “Protect Sheet.”

3. Select which permissions you’d like to allow on the sheet, then click “OK.” You can also add a password for additional protection.

Note: If you don’t add a password, any user can click “Unprotect Sheet” to make changes to the sheet. When you add a password, only those with the code can do so.

4. Confirm that your cells are locked by looking for the “Unprotect Sheet” icon in the toolbar.

You can also double-check that your worksheet is protected by attempting to write something in the locked cells. You should get this alert.

How to Protect Specific Cells in Excel (& Get a Shortcut to Lock Cells)

1. Select the cells you want to lock then press Ctrl+Shift+F (Windows) or Ctrl + 1 (Mac) to open up the “Format Cells” box. Then, click on the “Protection” tab.

2. Select the “Locked” box and click “OK” on the bottom right to finish.

These simple steps offer both a shortcut to locking cells in bulk and a way to protect specific cells in Excel.

How to Protect Formulas in Excel

A green triangle indicates an error in your cell’s formula. The error sign will show up if your formula is unprotected.

Any unauthorized or accidental changes to a formula can alter the integrity of the data reported in the sheet. As such, it’s important to always lock your formulas to prevent mistakes.

Here’s how you protect your formulas in Excel:

1. Click on the cell with the green triangle and look for the yellow triangle warning sign.

2. Click on the warning sign and select “Lock Cell.”

3. You must then protect your worksheet by clicking on “Protect Sheet” under the “Review” tab.

Another way to protect your formulas is by locking each formula cell individually as you build your worksheet (as outlined here) and protecting your sheet once all formulas have been locked.

Whether you’re the person fixing the mistake or the one who made it, following these steps will ensure it never happens again. And your cat will have to find something else to sabotage.

As a marketer, you know how many avenues there are for your prospects and customers to interact with you throughout the buyer’s journey. These avenues refer to channels (e.g. PPC, your website, email campaigns, social media) and touchpoints (e.g. specific ads, blog posts, social media posts, emails). Marketing attribution modeling can help you determine the impact of all of those marketing efforts.

Attribution Modeling

In this blog post, we’ll talk about what attribution modeling is, why it’s important, the different types of attribution modeling, and some tools to help with the process. Let’s get started.

What’s the purpose of attribution modeling?

By assigning credit to your marketing channels and touchpoints, you can increase your chances of converting more prospects by 1) identifying areas of the buyer’s journey that you can improve, 2) determining the ROI for each channel or touchpoint, 3) surfacing the most effective ways to spend your marketing budget, and 4) tailoring your marketing campaigns and content to your unique personas.

Types of Attribution Modeling

There are a handful of common types of attribution modeling. Although all attribution models look at the channels and touchpoints involved in a customer’s decision to convert, each of them weighs those channels and touchpoints differently.

1. Multi-Touch Attribution Modeling

Multi-touch attribution modeling is powerful because it takes into account every channel and touchpoint that a customer interacted with throughout the buyer’s journey, up until they decided to convert. It tells you which of those channels and touchpoints were most influential as well as provides insight into how they worked together to influence a customer.

2. Cross-Channel Attribution Modeling

Cross-channel attribution modeling is often used interchangeably with multi-touch attribution. However, their definitions differ slightly. Cross-channel attribution designates value to each marketing channel (such as paid, organic, or social media) but doesn’t look at the specific touchpoints within those channels the way that multi-touch attribution does.

3. Linear Attribution Modeling

Linear attribution modeling is a type of multi-touch attribution that gives equal credit to all channels and touchpoints that a customer interacted with throughout the buyer’s journey.

4. First-Touch Attribution Modeling

First touch attribution modeling gives all the credit for the conversion to the first channel or touchpoint that was interacted with by the customer.

5. Last-Touch Attribution Modeling

Last-touch attribution modeling is the opposite of first-touch attribution modeling — it gives all the credit to the last touchpoint a lead interacted with before converting.

6. Time-Decay Attribution Modeling

Time-decay attribution modeling gives credit to all of the touchpoints that contributed to a conversion and also considers the time that each touchpoint occurred — the touchpoints that happened closest to the time of conversion are weighted most heavily.

7. U-Shaped Attribution Modeling

U-shaped modeling, also known as position-based attribution modeling, splits the credit for a conversion between the first and last touchpoints.

8. W-Shaped Attribution Modeling

W-shaped attribution modeling gives the most credit to the first touchpoint, last touchpoint, and mid-funnel touchpoint before a conversion — it then gives equal credit to the rest of the touchpoints.

Attribution Modeling Tools

There are a number of tools that have the ability to help with marketing attribution modeling — here are three options to help you get started.

1. CallRail

CallRail is a call tracking and marketing analytics platform. The tool has a number of reports so you can analyze your call data in different ways — one of these is attribution modeling, a report that lives within their cost-per-lead reporting category.

Why do you need attribution modeling for your calls? It offers an understanding of every marketing touchpoint that led to a phone conversation with a prospect. It tells you which sources are leading to the greatest number of phone calls, and therefore leads who are most likely to convert into paying customers.

Integrate your all-in-one HubSpot CRM platform with CallRail.

2. Wicked Reports

Wicked Reports is multi-channel attribution software for ecommerce marketers. The tool calculates ROI and LTV for every channel, campaign, and ad so you can understand the impact of each marketing touchpoint. Wicked Reports maps your attribution models to your unique campaign goals — this way, you can determine the impact of your campaigns throughout the buyer’s journey.

The tool provides in-depth and accurate data across all of your business platforms — including Google, CRMs like HubSpot, marketing software, ecommerce platforms, and Facebook — so you can combine and access your attribution data with ease.

Integrate your all-in-one HubSpot CRM platform with Wicked Reports.

3. Attribution

Attribution is an enterprise multi-touch attribution tool that gives you a clear understanding of the impact of each of your marketing touchpoints. It automates data collection using its many integrations with ad software, CRM platforms, marketing tools, and more. It also accounts for your offline marketing touchpoints as well as your budget.

The process of attribution modeling is also automated for you and you can segment your attribution results and reports by channel, marketing campaign, touchpoint, and more.

Integrate your all-in-one HubSpot CRM platform with Attribution.

Grow Better With Attribution Modeling

Attribution modeling allows you to hone in on the buyer’s journey and understand which parts of it are working best for your customers and what needs improvement. It also offers insight into how your marketing channels and touchpoints are working together to convert your target audience.

Determine which models will provide the information you care most about, identify the right tool for you, and get started with attribution modeling.

Savvy marketers know it’s rare to reel in customers at the first encounter with a brand. Winning people over takes time, thoughtful touchpoints, and a whole lot of trust. Fortunately, there’s a strategy that includes all of these and more. It’s called lifecycle marketing, and it’s how companies attract and retain customers beyond that impulse purchase.

All businesses create their own unique lifecycle marketing strategy, but the purpose is the same: to engage customers, increase revenue, and grow a brand.

Different from the buyer’s journey or conversion funnel, lifecycle marketing considers a customer long after they make a purchase. The focus is to bring in buyers and turn them into loyal brand advocates.

But what does that look like for your company? In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What makes lifecycle marketing so effective
• Marketing strategies to attract customers and keep them coming back
• Considerations for engaging campaigns
• How to use email for every lifecycle stage

Let’s jump in.

A lifecycle can be short or long. Companies like Nespresso or Whole Foods Market have shorter cycles and need to attract people back almost immediately after they purchase.

But companies with lifecycles like Mercedes or Avocado Mattress play the long game of customer retention and advocacy to bring in more business. The ultimate goal is to always get customers and keep them coming back.

No matter the cycle length, there are various stages that make up any lifecycle marketing plan. Understanding these will help you target your audience’s specific needs at each stage, whether they’re coming in as a lead, first-time buyer, repeat customer, or lapsed customer. Take a look at the main lifecycle stages below.

1. Awareness

This is when potential customers first learn about your company. As the top of your conversion funnel, it’s your chance to capture people’s attention and reel them further into your funnel.

2. Engagement

People begin interacting with your brand in the engagement cycle. They’re interested and want to learn about your offerings, whether by subscribing to your email list, following you on social media, or scrolling your website.

3. Evaluation

The evaluation stage is all about decisions. This is the time to make it easy for people to choose your brand by providing them with the right information to compare features, pricing, and value.

4. Purchase

Congratulations! Anyone who makes it through this stage is a customer. Your job here isn’t to promote your brand but to make a purchase as seamless as possible, so it’s simple for people to click “Buy.”

5. Support

It’s important to make sure you meet customers’ needs post-purchase, since people tend to drop off after the first buy. That’s why the support stage is about following up to make sure people are satisfied and maximize the value of their purchase.

6. Loyalty

Customers reach this stage when they’re so happy, they let everyone know about your brand. You want to nurture that advocacy to retain their business and help bring in new buyers.

While the lifecycle stages seem like a linear buyer journey, it’s important to remember that this is a cycle that should continue repeating itself. You can’t simply forget about a customer once they’ve made a purchase. If you put effort into developing a thoughtful plan, it can be much easier to meet and exceed your marketing, sales, and company goals.

Lifecycle Marketing Strategy

Strategy is the core of successful lifecycle marketing. Without it, you will likely bring in the wrong leads and will waste your budget on people who won’t turn into brand advocates. With it, you can:

• Grow your customer base by offering a better buying experience.

• Improve sales by turning one-time buyers into repeat customers.
• Turn buyers into brand advocates who rave about your company.
• Improve your marketing ROI and lifetime customer value.

The best strategies account for how people interact with your brand at specific stages within the lifecycle. Here’s an example of how to use different marketing channels throughout the entire cycle.

Your company may do well with a simple strategy, or you may need to include more touchpoints and channels within each stage. For instance, a small art gallery may use social media, email, a website, and events to bring in artists and potential buyers.

But a major art museum like The Metropolitan Museum of Art will need a more complex marketing strategy to reach its thousands of visitors, attract donors, sell and retain memberships, draw in artists and exhibits, sell retail products, and host events.

No matter the size, all lifecycle marketing strategies are fueled by content. And with 70% of marketers actively investing in content marketing, you can miss out on potential buyers (and profit) if you don’t create relevant content for every stage.

Instead of blindly marketing to the masses, you must be strategic and tie your sales directly to your promotion efforts. Let’s walk through the strategies you can use at each stage.

1. Awareness

You want to attract as many people within your target audience as possible, so it’s time to create highly shareable, highly visible content. Awareness strategies include:

• Create targeted audiences for each buyer persona, so you know the people you bring in fit your buyer profile.
• Research and use keywords that can help people discover your brand when searching online.
• Write blog posts that answer key questions your audience may have about common problems.
• Share your offerings in an eye-catching paid or organic social ad.
• Put up a billboard or banner ad in the places your audience visits.
• Create a catchy ad on the podcasts you know potential buyers listen to.
• Collaborate with guests or influencers your audience follows to cross-promote content.

It’s important to bring people in, but remember not to focus all of your efforts on acquiring leads. Although 67% of companies use lead generation as the sole metric to determine content success, returning customers spend 67% more than new buyers on average.

2. Engagement

Your strategy for the engagement stage is to share information about your offerings so people can see why your brand is the best. Bring people to your website or channels, and keep them there.

These prospects are still relatively high in the sales funnel, so you have to answer their questions with succinct content that’s easy to understand. Some engagement strategies include:

• Design engaging landing pages that are simple to navigate.
• Video demos to showcase the features of your product or service.
• Blog posts, guides, or templates that provide solutions to common customer problems.
• Whitepapers covering insightful research or industry trends.
• Case studies that highlight the positives of doing business with your brand.
• Email campaigns to address sticking points before they happen.

Engaging with customers is increasingly about personalization and instant gratification. In fact, 83% of customers who contact a company expect immediate engagement.

That means you need to have your channels dialed in and ready to respond, likely with help from automation technology. If you do, prospects will funnel into the next lifestyle stage.

Save time with HubSpot’s Marketing Automation Software

3. Conversion

You’ve impressed a potential buyer, and the time has come to transition them from a prospect into a customer. To do that, make it as simple as possible for them to convert (aka, buy). Think about what people would need to see when comparing your brand to a competitor. Here are strategies for making sure they’re confident in their decision.

• Offer clear pricing and feature information on your site, so they can compare options.
• Share customer testimonials to build trust in the post-purchase experience.
• Create a demo or free trial to increase confidence in the full investment.
• Send an email that answers questions senior leaders may have to make pitching easier.
• Give a peek at your customer service experience for post-purchase support.

Just like the engagement stage, personalization is the key to conversion. Research shows that online retailers improve conversion rates by about 8% when personalizing the customer experience. So try to make a potential customer feel unique, instead of being another number that gets you closer to your revenue goals.

4. Retention

Unfortunately, not enough marketing dollars are spent on retaining customers. Lead generation may seem sexier, but 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies who offer excellent customer service. If you can create a good experience and offer exceptional service right after people make a purchase, you can engage buyers and increase profits.

• Set up easy-to-use support options like live chat, messaging, FAQ pages, or troubleshooting forums. For simple service issues, 65% of customers prefer to help themselves.
• Onboarding materials that make set up and use simple and stress-free.
• Offer a discount code or perk for a future purchase.
• Announce a new product or offering with an engaging campaign — you can even offer exclusive first access to existing customers.
• Targeted ads with additional offerings that complement a first purchase (i.e., a sleeping bag and mat for someone who buys a tent).
• Emails to inform customers of updates or ways to improve their current purchase.

Don’t leave your customers to fend for themselves in this stage. Honing your retention marketing strategies means boosting your revenue and improving your overall customer experience.

5. Loyalty

The final stage in lifecycle marketing is all about loyalty. When customers become advocates, they can’t stop talking about your brand to anyone who will listen. They recognize your logo and will choose it over others without a second thought. They drive leads and sales and are repeat buyers. Strategies to cultivate this type of loyalty include:

• Exclusive in-app features or loyalty club membership.
• Incentives for sharing testimonials (i.e., discount codes or free products).
• Events or webinars with team members or industry experts.
• Referral programs for people who bring in new customers.
• Social media features to raise brand awareness for both companies.
• Reactivation campaigns for lapsed customers.

Customers who trust a brand are 95% more likely to remain loyal to it, so your job is to maintain peoples’ expectations and show them why their feedback is valued. A strong strategy here encourages customers to repeat the cycle and bring new prospects into the awareness stage.

Lifecycle Marketing Campaigns

Designing campaigns for each lifecycle stage may seem overwhelming. But a campaign doesn’t have to be complex to be effective.

Start by defining the purpose of your campaign. You can aim to attract new customers, retain current customers, build loyalty, engage lapsed customers, or increase customer lifetime value.

With a clear goal, you’ll have an easier time focusing on one particular stage or looking across the entire cycle to see how you can improve efforts at each stage.

Check out how REI, an outdoor retail company, uses lifecycle marketing to engage people at different stages on a variety of channels.

1. Awareness Campaign

When I searched “best lightweight camping tents” on Google, REI popped up on the first page of results. The blog post is part of their “Expert Advice” column, which invites people to learn more about their product features, testing processes, and ratings. Of course, you can purchase each featured tent from REI in a few clicks.

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2. Engagement Campaign

Say I’ve read a few blog posts from REI and am interested in the gear they sell. A website pop-up invites me to sign up for their email list, which I can’t resist. The subject line of one email I receive is “We see backpacking trips in your future.”

They know what I’m interested in and offer an email full of tips for planning a trip, including a gear list I’ll need before I go. Down the funnel I go.

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3. Conversion Campaign

I scour the gear list to see what I need for my trip and discover I don’t have a way to make my essential morning coffee. So I read a review post and decide to buy a lightweight AeroPress. A single click takes me to the product page, and I add the coffeemaker to my cart.

After signing in to my account, I’m taken to a checkout page that has my member ID, billing, and shipping information saved. It takes seconds to review and hit “Submit order.”

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4. Retention Campaign

My caffeine kick is taken care of, and I receive a confirmation email receipt for my purchase. It summarizes the order, outlines the return policy, and shares information about how I can donate used gear I may have laying around.

I’m a happy customer. A few days later, I get an email about the new gear line REI designed just for co-op members. It’s one-of-a-kind and available in limited quantities. As a backpack hoarder, I’m tempted.

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5. Loyalty Campaign

As an REI Co-op member for seven years, I’m on the path to being a lifelong customer. It’s one of my first stops when I’m looking to buy anything for my outdoor adventures. And I’ve even encouraged some friends to become members.

REI knows what matters to me and encourages me to participate in campaigns to protect wild areas, so they invite me to support the REPLANT Act in an email campaign.

By tapping into my values, I’m connected to the brand. And emotionally-connected customers spend about $699 per year with a company compared to regular customers who spend about $275.

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Lifecycle Email Marketing

The examples above highlight a handful of ways to use lifecycle email marketing to engage customers. But sloppily sending emails isn’t enough. They need to come at just the right time, so they don’t get buried in someone’s inbox. And they must be enticing enough to open. The average email clickthrough rate (CTR) is 18%, which means a lot of messages go unopened and ignored.

The CTR varies by industry, so take a look at this breakdown to get an idea of your benchmark.

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Don’t be disappointed if your rates are low at first. There are ways to spice up your campaigns and get people interested enough to click. You can:

• A/B test your subject lines for length, messaging, and context.
• Optimize the preheader text so people get a good preview.
• Test the cadence, day, and time of day (i.e., Monday evening versus Tuesday morning).
• Try personalizing the email with the recipient’s name.
• Send emails from a person at your company instead of the company name.
• Segment your email campaigns based on your audience segments (i.e., newsletter emails vs product emails).
• Consider your brand voice and tone for cohesive messaging.
• Make sure you have a clear CTA.
• Add eye-catching design, along with hero images, videos, or graphics.

Before you test emails, you need to design a campaign that anticipates the various touchpoints your customers require to move from the awareness stage to the loyalty stage. Let’s take a look at how companies use email for lifecycle marketing campaigns.

1. Hilton Honors

Welcome emails are expected when you sign up for a company’s email list or loyalty program. I’m actually nervous my request didn’t go through if I don’t receive a Welcome email.

Here, Hilton sends a straightforward email for joining Hilton Honors and shares tips for making the most of membership. It’s easy to scan and offers informative content to learn more about the company or the program.

Lifecycle Stage: Awareness

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2. Outside Magazine

After signing up for Outside Magazine’s daily newsletter, I can look through the email to read recent stories that pique my interest. The publication shares articles and gear promotions through embedded links, making it simple to click on their site and read the full piece.

Informational emails help bring people to your site, where they’ll likely keep scrolling long past the initial article.

Lifecycle Stage: Engagement

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3. Backcountry

Let’s keep going on this outdoor theme with a promotional email from Backcountry. Touting the subject line “Final Hours: 20% Off One Full-Price Item,” it’s meant to grab people’s attention and get them to make an immediate purchase.

You can use this type of email for engaged customers who have already had multiple touch points with your brand. Maybe they’ve subscribed to your newsletter or have items sitting in their cart.

Lifecycle Stage: Convert

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4. Sierra Club

To remind donors about Earth Day and the various ways to give back, the Sierra Club sent this re-engagement email. It shares ideas to celebrate the holiday, explains how to raise money for the grassroots organization, and invites donors to free webinars from climate activists.

The on-brand combination of education and activism is a good way to remind supporters of their shared values and encourage donations.

Lifecycle Stage: Retention

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5. Thirdlove

We touched on personalization more than once in this post, but there are so many perks of custom emails. Take this example from Thirdlove.

Their marketing team not only sends emails from a variety of accounts, like individual team member names, but they also personalize emails by sending a collection based on buying habits. It’s intriguing to see your name this way, and clicking makes you feel special — even if hundreds of other people receive the same product options.

Lifecycle Stage: Loyalty

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Incorporate Lifecycle Marketing Into Your Strategy

You know the benefits, stages, and ways to incorporate lifecycle marketing into your company’s strategy. All that’s left is to start mapping the cycle for your customer segments and managing the people you bring in.

Once you’ve done the hard work, you can save time with marketing automation software that simplifies tasks like setting up email campaigns, tracking analytics, planning your SEO strategy, and more.

If you want to learn more about managing customers once they’re in the cycle, you can brush up on customer lifecycle management or see how to work with lifecycles in HubSpot.

The more you know about your buyer personas, leads, and customers, the easier it is to effectively target them. This entails identifying the channels and platforms in which they spend their time and understanding their needs and challenges.

It also means knowing how your leads find your business — how and by which method they come across your company. This is known as a lead source.

Lead Source

In this blog post, we’ll review the definition of a lead source, why lead sources are so important, common types, and best practices for managing and tracking them.

Why do lead sources matter?

By understanding and identifying lead sources, you’re able to gain context around why and how your audience members find you. As a result, you can improve the customer experience and buyer’s journey with targeted content, communications, interactions, and more.

This allows you to determine which lead sources are most valuable to your business so you can hone in on them as well as measure your success over time in attracting and converting leads.

Additionally, knowing which lead sources bring in the most qualified leads helps you focus your resources where they matter most and where you’ll get the greatest ROI.

Identifying and understanding your lead sources is also a major part of lead management, the process in which you manage — or nurture — your leads until they decide to convert.

These are all details you need to improve the buyer’s journey, effectively target your unique audience, and shorten the sales cycle.

Types of Lead Sources

There are several types of lead sources. Here are some common examples.

• Email marketing (email campaigns)
• Organic search (lead sources from the search engine results page/ SERP)
• Paid ads (PPC, display ads)
• Social media
• Direct mail
• Referrals or word-of-mouth
• Gated/ premium content offers
• Blog articles
• Events (in-person or virtual)
• Backlinks (link from a page on one website to another — if another website links to your website, you have a backlink from them)
• Traditional advertising (billboards, TV, radio)

Next, let’s talk about a handful of best practices when it comes to your lead sources. You should keep these in mind while identifying, analyzing, and improving your lead sources.

1. Identify and track your lead sources.

If you’re looking to identify, track, and measure your lead sources, you’ll likely use a lead tracking tool. These tools are often part of your CRM, marketing software, or sales software.

Lead Source Tools

Here are some examples of powerful tools that can help you with lead source tracking.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM platform for scaling businesses with powerful marketing, sales, service, and ops software and tools. There’s more than one way to use HubSpot to collect, track, manage, and measure leads and lead sources.

For instance, with HubSpot CRM Lead Management and Tracking Software, all contact records for your leads are logged automatically. That includes all of your interactions and communications with those leads as well as all related sales activity — this provides insight into how, where, and when interactions with leads happened.

Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Lead Management and Tracking Software to automate and view contact records, view lead and contact communication history, and manage your leads all from a centralized location.

With HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, your Lead Collection and Tracking Software focuses more on leads and lead management within the marketing org so leads and lead data are readily available for the sales team.

This tool makes it easy to keep an eye on your lead’s email opens, content downloads, page visits, social media interactions, and more so you can track lead source data with ease. It also helps you organize all of your lead and contact information and interactions in a single database. You can segment your leads and score them based on qualification.

Pro Tip: Use HubSpot’s Lead Collection and Tracking Software to organize contact data and interactions, segment leads, and score those leads all from a single and integrated database.

2. MoData

MoData is a sales analytics and revenue acceleration tool with pipeline reporting features that come with lead source tracking capabilities.

Pair this tool with your HubSpot CRM (using the integration) to compare your lead sources as well as your sales reps so your data and team members are aligned and on a central source of truth. View, send, and share out-of-the-box reports, as well as customize pipeline dashboards with ease.

3. CallRail

CallRail is a call tracking and marketing analytics platform that offers reporting for lead attribution by source. This feature uses multi-touch attribution to provide you with reports for every lead source and interaction type that your team cares about in CallRail, throughout every stage of the buyer’s journey.

View all of the lead sources you’re tracking in the tool — your top five lead sources are displayed in a graph with more details about your other sources below. You can view raw leads versus qualified leads as well as filter by company, time frame, and report model.

2. Determine which sources bring in the most qualified leads.

After identifying your lead sources, determine which of those sources bring in the most qualified leads for your business.

Again, a tool like HubSpot can help with this — it assists with tracking your leads and the sources by which they come from and then segmenting those leads based on an assigned lead score (which tells you how qualified they are).

In fact, HubSpot automatically scores your leads for you based on the criteria that you choose (based on behavior or characteristic). This is not only helpful for your marketing team but it also helps sales reps prioritize their lead follow-up.

3. Then determine which of those sources are converting the most leads into customers.

Once you’ve determined which sources bring in the most qualified leads, identify the source that converts the greatest number of leads into customers.

In other words, which lead source do you see the most customers coming from? Maybe it’s the source that you see the most qualified leads coming from, but maybe not. So, take some time to determine which lead sources you see the greatest number of new customers coming from.

4. Experiment with different channels to bring in more qualified leads.

Just because you know which channels and sources are currently bringing in the greatest number of qualified leads, and where the most conversions are currently coming from, doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax. As your business grows, your audience grows, too — and that evolving audience may not spend time exactly where your initial audience did.

Experiment with different channels to see how many qualified leads and conversions you can bring in. This experimentation may be how you surface your most valuable lead source. 

5. Measure and analyze the success of your lead sources.

Measure the success of your lead sources over time. This is something you’re already going to be doing throughout the previous steps (e.g. scoring leads, identifying the most effective lead sources, etc.) but it’s also important to spend time here. In doing so, you’ll be able to ensure you’re focusing your resources in the right places.

The data obtained from your lead source analysis will also help you more effectively target, reach, resonate with, and convert your audience on the channels they like to use and via the touchpoints they like to interact with most. Remember, this part of the lead source management process should be ongoing.

Tap Into Your Lead Sources to Improve the Buyer’s Journey

Begin identifying your lead sources to improve upon the buyer’s journey with highly-tailored content, interactions, and communications, all via the channels and sources your audience prefers. Remember, the more you know about your audience, leads, and customers, the more effectively you can target and reach them.

I have most of my best ideas at 3:00 AM or in the shower. But turning those shower ideas into a business opportunity requires further investigation. That’s where market opportunity analysis comes in.

While you and your team may have many new business ideas you want to explore, you don’t have time to head down every path. Some of those paths may even end up being dead-ends.

How do you choose which ideas to pursue, and which ones to let go of? Market opportunity analysis can help you narrow down your options to the ones with the greatest potential.

Who should conduct a market opportunity analysis?

That answer is, “everyone.” All sizes of organizations will benefit from better understanding the industry in which they’re operating or approaching. Whether you work in B2B, B2C, government, or non-profit organizations, defining and analyzing the market will help you make better decisions.

This kind of analysis can help you grow your existing business, pivot into new markets and opportunities, or expand into the periphery of your current market.

There are many reasons to take the time and examine the full range of options before forging ahead. Here are five important benefits you’ll get from market analysis.

1. Make better long-term strategic decisions.

Your business is impacted by many external factors. Without taking the time to examine the current market trends, you’ll be flying blind.

A market opportunity analysis can provide the insight you need to see into the future. What will the market look like in a year? Five years? 10 years? What forces are acting on the market today? How is the demographic of your target audience shifting?

2. Evaluate product or service demand.

You may have invented the next Google Glass: a great product with tough, niche demand. A market assessment will show the potential for selling your product or service. This analysis will help you evaluate if expanding into a potential new market is worthwhile for your company.

You may find that there is no existing market for your idea, leading to a “Blue Ocean Strategy.” “Blue oceans,” explain authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, “denote all the industries not in existence today — the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid.”

While that might be the case, you might also fail to create the market, or need to spend time and energy educating customers on the value of your new idea.

3. Identify potential marketing strategies.

The four P’s of your marketing mix are price, place, product, and promotion. Through the process of a market opportunity analysis, organizations can gain a deeper understanding of who their target customers are, what they want, and how they make their decisions.

After assessing the current market, you’ll be able to price your product effectively and know which promotion strategies will work best. Are there partnerships you should pursue? Will direct sales or inbound marketing work best?

4. Uncover areas for further research.

When you start to better understand the market, you may identify even more new opportunities to explore. As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” You may discover a new government initiative that encourages sustainable businesses.

A customer research project may identify a new pain point that you didn’t realize existed. The benefit of knowing your marketplace really deeply is that you’ll be ready to leverage any new opportunities that pop up.

5. Identify and navigate potential roadblocks.

A SWOT analysis looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a potential strategy. Identifying the weaknesses and the threats to your market opportunity is key to your success. No business idea is perfect. But knowing where you might run into trouble before you even begin can help you plan ahead and mitigate those risks.

Examples of Market Opportunity Analysis

Before we get into the step-by-step instructions of how to do your own analysis, let’s look at the results of two very different case studies. The purpose of both of these research projects was to identify new opportunities, however, they were done in two different industries: elderly care options and the automotive industry.

1. Say Yeah! ElderCare Case Study

Consulting agency Say Yeah! conducted a market opportunity analysis for a company looking to expand its business model into the elderly care industry. They started by mapping the customer journey for an adult child caring for their elderly parent, along with all the decision points they encounter.

By examining market forces — such as government subsidies, the changing demographics, and all the options older adults have — Say Yeah! was able to uncover several different options by which ElderCare could increase their profits.

Notably, they recommended ElderCare expand its referral business to include retirement homes, in-home care, and other social services.

“Their initial business premise is validated: by shifting the industry to a subscription-based model, led by an online marketplace, this business could carve out a significant piece of profit in the elder care industry by providing far more value to retirement homes at less cost.”

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2. Ipsos Business Consulting Automotive Case Study

A global automotive conglomerate was interested in the growing electronic vehicle (EV) market, specifically three-wheelers in India. Ipsos conducted a study of the EV market through customer interviews, business model analysis, and government research. At the end of the study, they provided recommendations around charging station locations, leasing vs purchasing options, and other infrastructure requirements.

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How To Conduct a Market Opportunity Assessment

1. Identify potential opportunities.

Your first step is to lay out the potential opportunities you want to investigate. What segment are you hoping to expand into? What type of customer are you hoping to attract? Are you looking to acquire or partner with another business? Have current events created a potential opportunity?

Knowing whether you want to expand, pivot, invest, create, or reposition your offerings will inform the next steps of your market research.

Once you’ve identified market opportunities, you’re ready to start researching their potential.

2. Understand the customer.

In every opportunity, the customer will inform your success. Does this product meet their needs? Do they have the purchasing power to make this idea profitable? How do they make their purchasing decisions? The second step in the analysis is to really, deeply understand your potential customers and their needs. This research may include any of the following tools:

• Customer interviews
• Customer journey map
• Surveys
• Demographic data

3. Research competitors.

Next, you’ll want to understand who all the players in the existing market are. Competitor research can help you understand how big the market share is, how existing products are positioned in the market, and how crowded the market is. Here are some questions you might want to ask:

• What is their value proposition?
• How is their product offering different from ours?
• Who are their partners?
• What do their reviews say about their product or service?
• Are there any gaps we could fill?
• How likely are new competitors?

4. Consider external factors.

External factors are always shaping and changing the marketplace. The acronym “STEEP” can help us dive into the five main forces we need to be aware of.

Social

How is culture changing the market? For example, more employees working from home during the pandemic has opened up an entire sector of the market that didn’t exist before. Jumping on trends can be a lucrative strategy unless the trends disappear too quickly.

Technical

What new innovations have influenced the market? Can you apply this technology in other ways or in new industries?

Economic

What is the current economic climate like? Will you be able to get a loan if needed? Do your customers have disposable income? How does the market forecast look for the next year? Five years?

Ecological

What impact does this idea have on the environment? Can you improve the sustainability of the product or service?

Political

You may be pleasantly surprised to learn that your local government is offering grants, tax breaks, or other incentives for businesses in your industry. Alternatively, you may find that there are regulatory roadblocks in your way that you’ll need to account for in your analysis.

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5. Be aware of internal forces.

Finally, dive into your own business’ capabilities. Do you have the skills, workforce, technology, and financial resources to invest in a new product? If you’re launching a very innovative product, are you going to be able to hire people with the necessary skills? What new departments or teams will you need to create to manage this new opportunity?

Make better decisions with market opportunity analysis.

Not every idea is worth pursuing — but many are. With market opportunity analysis, you’ll learn which business strategies will help you grow, along with their potential risks. Don’t launch your next product or service without doing your homework.

92% of U.S. workers feel that they could collaborate better with their colleagues.

Managing multiple projects at once, delegating tasks, and collaborating across teams is difficult on a good day — but can become downright impossible when unforeseen obstacles get in the way. The data proves that project management is no walk in the park for most of us.

When that impacts the business, it becomes an even bigger problem. Miscommunication and inefficiencies in your project management process can lead to confusing and stressful experiences for your employees. It can hinder your company’s ability to satisfy your clients’ needs or hit end-of-year goals.

Fortunately, there are plenty of free project management apps to keep your team on track without breaking the bank.

In a free project management tool, you’ll typically be able to create various projects, come-up with to-do lists, assign tasks to team members, and track a project’s progress until completion. Paid project management tools offer more storage, more projects, and more seats for the team. But for small teams, a free project management tool will do the trick.

The low buy-in makes it a natural choice. With free project management software, your team can collaborate much better, reducing the risk of miscommunications and keeping everyone up to speed on team-wide projects. It’s also helpful for individual team members. They can use it to boost their productivity and ensure they’re on track.

To streamline your process and ensure everyone on your team is on the same page, take a look at these exceptional free project management tools.

1. HubSpot Project Management Software

HubSpot’s project management tool includes task creation, task automation, and pre-made to-do lists. It’s specifically designed for marketing teams and integrates seamlessly with Marketing Hub. With this tool, you can keep track of tasks alongside your marketing projects — so that both are integrated and not managed on different tools.

Features include:

• Task management right alongside your marketing workflows
• File attachment capabilities to keep track of important assets
• Pre-made to-do lists to immediately launch projects
• Custom templates for recurring projects
• Landing pages, emails, and workflows available in the same tool

Pricing: Free with HubSpot Marketing Hub

2. Project.co

Project.co is a client-facing project management system that connects your team with your clients’ teams in one place. Each piece of work you do can be set up as its own project, with its own discussion feed, notes, tasks, team, and payments. You can also record time spent on each project.

A variety of different task and project views are available, including calendar, scheduler, and Kanban view — to give you an overview of the work that’s happening within your team.

Features include:

• Ability to quickly add/invite both internal and external users
• Discussion feed for each project — with email alerts (and the ability to reply by email without logging in)
• Variety of task views — which can be filtered — giving your whole team, each department, and even individual users their daily/weekly task lists
• Reporting tools that measure your most and least profitable or efficient projects
• Ability to integrate payment solutions and quickly, securely take card payments through the system

Pricing:
Free for 14 days; $10/user/month

3. Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan is an effective project management tool to automate your task delegation process and visualize which project tasks have been completed, and which haven’t. If your team often collaborates with other departments on projects, this might be a useful tool for you.

Features include:

• Gantt-chart visualization to track important deadlines and projects
• Integrations with Slack, Github, Evernote, and others
• Team collaboration option through shared calendars and task notes

Pricing: Free for 14 days; $8/user/month (Team); $13.35/user/month (Business)

4. ClickUp

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ClickUp provides a few impressive features to customize the all-in-one project management tool to suit your team members, including the option for each user to choose one of three different ways to view their projects and tasks depending on individual preference. If your marketing team overlaps with sales, design, or development, this is an effective solution, as it provides features for all of those four teams.

Features include:

• The ability to organize your projects based on priority, and assign tasks to groups
• The option to set goals to remind teams what they’re aiming to accomplish
• Google Calendar two-way sync
• An easy way to filter, search, sort, and customize options for managing specific tasks
• Activity stream with mentions capability
• Image mockups
• 57 integrated apps

Pricing: Free; $5/user/month

5. nTask

Another free software that comes with a variety of features for project and task managers is nTask. This program has a couple of free-range tools for anyone looking to work as an individual or a professional project manager.

nTask supports multiple projects and task creation. Users can also define team leader roles, budget, milestone and time tracking criteria that are specific to relevant projects. Understanding the needs of advanced project managers, nTask also offers an interactive Gantt chart feature. It can be personalized by a simple drag and drop mechanism to align the project to ongoing real-life changes.

Features include:

• A powerful in-app collaboration system
• Integration with Slack and many other third-party apps
• The ability to invite stakeholders to view ongoing projects
• Resource management
• Team management via an admin-controlled process
• Multiple workspaces dedicated to different projects and tasks

Pricing: Free (Basic); $2.99/user/month (Premium); $7.99/user/month (Business); Custom (Enterprise)

6. Teamwork

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Teamwork is a project management software and collaboration platform that helps in-house and remote teams stay organized and productive. Each project lets you easily upload files, assign tasks and deadlines, and chat with teammates. By centralizing your project information, you can help eliminate more misunderstandings and missed deadlines.

Features include:

• Easy integration with HubSpot
• Teamwork Chat Instant Messenger to help you stay in your workflow and be most productive
• Time tracking to understand capacity and where a team spends their time
• Dashboards, Substasks, and Milestones to help track progress of projects

Pricing: Free; $10/user/month (Deliver); $18/user/month (Grow); Custom (Enterprise

7. Freedcamp

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Freedcamp is a feature-rich project management tool that’s designed for personal and professional use. Each project has its own tasks, milestones, files, discussions, and timelines, as well as an issue tracker and calendar. The dashboard gives you a clear, concise overview of what’s going on in your team, including activity, projects, and tasks.

Features include:

• Message-board discussion feed, with the ability to create and carry out discussions on any topic
• Powerful calendar view that lays out all upcoming events
• Third-party integrations including Google Drive, Google Calendar, Dropbox and more

Pricing: Free; $1.49/user/month (MInimalist); $7.49/user/month (Business); $16.99/user/month (Enterprise)

8. Asana

Asana, one of the most well-known project management solutions, has a clean and user-friendly interface. The all-in-one tool lets you create boards to visualize which stage your project is in, and use reporting to keep track of finished tasks and tasks that need your attention.

Features include:

• The ability to create templates to automate mundane tasks
• The ability to collaborate and share information across the team, privately and securely
• The option to set security controls and designate admins
• Over 100 integrations for a more efficient start-to-finish process
• The ability to create custom project fields, share documents, and filter tasks
• HubSpot integration for seamless syncing of workflows and contact activity

Pricing: Free (Basic); $10.99/user/month (Premium); $24.99/user/month (Business); Custom (Enterprise)

9. Monday.com

Monday.com, a project management tool that also offers HR and IT tools, allows you to create team member status updates so your remote and flexible teams know their coworkers’ schedules. It allows you to easily access project updates at-a-glance so that nothing falls between the cracks.

Features include:

• Customizable workflows to prioritize your team’s needs and take care of menial tasks
• Gantt chart for visualizing due dates and project timelines
• Integrations with popular tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Calendar
• Team member status updates for remote or flexible team members
• HubSpot integration so that everyone can collaborate on contact and deal management

Pricing: Free for 14 days; $8/user/month (Basic); $10/user/month (Standard); $16/user/month (Pro); Custom (Enterprise)

10. Wrike

Wrike stands out as an exceptional project management tool for teams who want the option to customize workflows and edit and revise projects from within the platform itself. The tool offers the ability to color code and layer calendars, and its mobile app allows colleagues to update project information on-the-go. You can add comments to sections, videos, or documents, and create custom fields to export data most relevant to your company.

Features include:

• Security measures to ensure only authorized personnel can access information
• Activity Stream to allow project managers to micromanage small tasks, see activities in chronological order, and tag team members
• The option to unfollow activities to declutter your own personal Stream
• Email and calendar synchronization
• Built-in editing and approval features

Pricing: Free; $9.80/user/month (Professional); $24.80/user/month (Business); Custom (Enterprise)

11. Paymo

Paymo’s free version only allows access for one user, but if you’ve got a small team or you’re a freelancer, this could be an efficient option for tracking billable hours and invoicing clients. Along with tracking finances, Paymo also allows you to organize project timelines, create to-do lists, and stay on top of your budgets for multiple projects at once.

Features include:

• Kanban boards for easy, at-a-glance project updates
• Time tracking to keep everyone on the same schedule
• File sharing and Adobe CC extension for easy sharing of assets
• Timesheet reporting to keep stakeholders in the loop
• Project templates to jumpstart projects with a click

Pricing: Free; $9.95/user/month (Small Office); $15.79/user/month (Business)

12. Trello

Trello is a drag-and-drop tool that lets you move projects — personal, or professional — through workflow stages, all the way to completion.

You define what those stages are — whether it’s work project statuses like ‘On Hold,’ or personal project categories like ‘Things to buy!’ — with tasks represented as ‘cards.’ Each card can be given a name, assigned to an individual, given a due date — and have files, such as images, attached to it.

Features include:

• Templates for a range of different project types, from business to education to personal productivity
• Ability to add attachments such as images to any card on any board
• Customise your workflow stages to reflect your actual process
• Simple drag-and-drop movement of cards through workflow stages
• HubSpot integration for syncing marketing, sales, and service workflows into to-do lists

Pricing: Free; $10/user/month; Custom (Enterprise)

13. Todoist

Todoist is a simple but powerful tool that lets you create powerful, interactive to-do lists. To-do items can be assigned priority levels, assigned to people in your team and flagged — with customizable reminders (although these are a premium feature). Actionable items can also be categorised into different projects, making a simple, easily understandable structure where each ‘list’ has a title (project name) and a series of actions. This all makes it an extremely flexible, customizable tool to get work done.

Features include:

• Template lists to inspire and guide you
• Recurring due dates for regularly recurring tasks
• Productivity visualizations and ‘Karma’ points for completed tasks and streaks
• Labels, notification and discussion feeds to keep you organized

Pricing: Free; $3/user/month (Pro); $5/user/month (Business)

14. MeisterTask

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MeisterTask is a project management tool that allows you to create Kanban boards, set recurring tasks, track project times, and create custom fields. You can automatically import data from other tools such as Trello and Asana, allowing you to get immediately to work without losing time.

Features include:

• Up to 3 projects on the free version
• File attachments for projects
• Custom project icons to make tasks stand out
• Time tracking so that no deadlines fall through the cracks

Pricing: Free; $8.25/user/month (Pro); $20.75/user/month (Business); Custom (Enterprise)

15. Bitrix24

Britrix24’s project management software includes Kanban boards, Gantt charts, task counters for easy prioritization, and reports for analyzing the time intensiveness of different tasks. You can also create to-do lists within tasks.

Features include:

• Recurring tasks for easy task creation and automation
• Integration with Billable Hours, which is especially useful if you work with freelancers
• Task statuses to easily keep track of progress
• Monthly reports on time spent on tasks

Pricing: Free; $19/month (Start+); $55/month (CRM+ and Project+); $79/month (Standard Business Plan); $159/month (Professional Business Plan)

16. Airtable

Airtable is a customizable spreadsheet and database app that can be used to create a project management tool for your team. Its project tracker template allows you to easily manage projects in a familiar spreadsheet-like environment, making it ideal for Excel and Google Sheets enthusiasts.

Features include:

• Subtask creation within tasks
• Ability to assign tasks and establish time estimates
• Additional templates for keeping remote teams aligned, such as a team hub and asset tracker
• Highly customizable for different teams
• Integration with popular tools such as HubSpot, Asana, Dropbox, Google Workspace, and Slack

Pricing: Free; $10/user/month (Plus); $20/user/month (Pro); Custom (Enterprise)

Streamline Workflows with a Project Management Tool

Using a project management app will empower your team to work more efficiently and collaborate more seamlessly. With hurdles out of the way, you can guarantee that your team can focus on what matters: bringing in more leads, selling to more prospects, and empowering more customers to grow alongside your business.

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