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At Blue Corona, we know a lot about plumber marketing. In the past decade, we’ve meticulously tracked every single advertising strategy we’ve tried for our customers—a great deal of which are plumbing companies—which has allowed us continuously to uncover insights about what works and what doesn’t.

And because we’re so passionate about seeing small to medium businesses grow, we’re sharing those insights with you. Benefit from our years of study and keep reading to learn about the best ways to market your plumbing company.

Step One To Growing Your Plumbing Business: Understand The Modern Buyer’s Journey

Traditionally, the buyer’s journey was linear and driven by your sales team. Customers entered at the top of the funnel, followed a preset, linear, predictable path, and exited at the bottom. Thanks to how easily accessible information is in the digital age, that’s not true anymore. The modern sales funnel is a looping journey full of twists and turns as consumers follow their own, personalized path to purchase:

The phases are similar to the old framework, and work like this:

• Awareness
• Consideration, along with the research and discovery loop
• Purchase
• Post-purchase experience and the loyalty loop

I’ll break down each stage with a real-world example. Pretend our consumer is Jane, a 35-year-old homeowner with two small children.

• It’s 8:00 am and Jane’s shower won’t turn on – Awareness 
• Jane grabs her phone and uses voice search to Google “shower won’t turn on” – Consideration
• Jane skims two blogs that sum up potential reasons a shower won’t turn on – Consideration
• Jane watches a YouTube video from a local plumbing company on repairing the diverter valve – Consideration 
• Jane decides she better leave it to a plumber and Googles “plumber near me” – Awareness
• Jane’s baby starts crying, so she quickly looks at the top three plumbing companies on the search results page and sees the one whose YouTube video she watched. She sees it has both a 4.5 review rating and an online booking capability, so she books an appointment online for later that day – Purchase
• After her shower is fixed, Jane raves about the company on social media, and after she’s prompted from an email, leaves a review on Google – Loyalty loop
• Jane’s pipes burst that winter. She saw an email newsletter from the plumbing company about what to do when pipes burst, so she follows a shortened loop and books an appointment online – Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, and Loyalty loop

If you want more plumbing leads, booked jobs, and repeat customers, you need to connect with customers at every stage of this new looping journey. How you do that is with a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that uses multiple marketing channels. Different marketing channels are better for different stages of the buyer’s journey, which is why you need a multi-channel approach:

Best Plumbing Advertising Channels and Marketing Methods to Increase Leads and Booked Jobs

The best advertising for plumbers includes the following marketing channels:

• Directory and pay per lead sites (be careful with these–we are a fan of Google’s Local Services ads, but have a few choice words about other pay per lead sites)
• Search engine marketing
• Pay per click marketing
• Your website
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Video marketing
• Recruitment marketing
• Customer service (yes, you can leverage customer service as a marketing strategy, and we will show you how)
• Review generation (this goes hand-in-hand with customer service)

Get the run-down of each marketing channel in this post »

Directory and Pay Per Lead Sites for Plumbers

Are Directory Sites and Pay Per Lead Services Worth It?

At some point in the quest for more leads—like yesterday—you may find yourself tempted by directory sites like Angie’s List or pay per lead services such as HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, etc. Pay per lead sites  There’s nothing wrong with testing listings in directory sites or trying a pay per lead service; however, if you go this route, you want to do so with caution.

There are a lot of different ways to generate leads for your business—some more effective than others. In this article on pay per lead companies, I’ll walk you through a few lead generation options and explain why you should approach some of them with a fair bit of caution.

Angie’s List

Is Angie’s List a Good Investment for Plumbers?

If you’ve ever searched for “plumbers + [your city]” (the way many of your potential customers do) in Google, and you’ve likely noticed directory sites like Angie’s List dominating the first page of organic search results. No longer are Angie’s List commercials just taking up TV and radio ads, but they’re ranking—and ranking well—online where your website could be ranked. So…if you can’t beat them, should you join them? Find the answer in this post.

Can I Get Leads for My Plumbing Company Through Directory Listings?

If you’re wondering “Should I be investing in directory site listings?”, unfortunately, the best answer isn’t so straightforward. The short answer is “yes,” but there’s a huge qualifier that addresses the hidden cost of investing in directory sites. In this blog, we’ll detail the best practices for listing your plumbing company in an online directory, and then we’ll show you what you need to consider before making the plunge into that investment.

Yelp

Is Yelp Worth it for Plumbing Companies?

When looking for a local home service company, you probably look for reviews. And your customers do the same thing! Yelp is one of the most popular directory sites due to its easy-to-use mobile app and its focus on reviews. So how can you leverage it for your plumbing business? We detail the smartest way to use the platform here. 

HomeAdvisor

Tips on HomeAdvisor for Plumbers

HomeAdvisor connects homeowners with prescreened plumbers who offer the specific service they’re looking for. Follow our tips for using the site to put your best foot forward and stand out from the competition.

Google Local Services

How Google’s Local Services Ads Work

Google’s Local Services ads dare relatively new, but worth testing—the results we’ve gotten for our plumbers have been encouraging, to say the least. How it works is advertisers choose from a list of services for their industry. When a person’s search matches criteria for those services, your ad will be eligible to show. It hasn’t rolled out everywhere in the United States, though. To apply (or express interest if your market isn’t available yet) either go to the Local Services website or contact a Google Premier Partner agency (like Blue Corona!) to help you apply directly with Google.

Search Engine Marketing for Plumbing Companies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How to Get Your Plumbing Company on Page 1 of Google

At Blue Corona, we service all industries, but we specialize in the home services, specifically plumber SEO services and PPC for plumbing companies. We have a proven pay per click setup and management system specifically designed for the plumbing industry, and our SEO specialists have extensive experience helping plumbers like you get more qualified traffic. Get some insight into our strategy in this post. 

How to Rank in Cities Where You’re Not Located

As the owner of a plumbing company, you want to see your business grow. You know that you can do this by expanding your web real estate—but have you noticed that your pages aren’t showing up for Google searches in the areas that you provide service to? You will need to put in some extra effort to spread capture rankings over multiple cities or states. Here’s how you do it.

3 Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Local SEO

If you’d prefer for people in your service area to find your business when searching for your services—what plumber wouldn’t?—there’s a whole long list of ways to make that happen. But let’s start with three of the easiest ways that you can boost your company’s local SEO right now.

How to Get Your Plumbing Business to the Top of Google’s Local Pack

A full 97 percent of consumers go online to find local services, and searches with local intent frequently trigger Google’s local pack.  If you want your business to show up in the block of local map listings in Google’s search results, there are a few things you need to do. Learn how to get your plumbing business to the top of Google’s local pack here. 

Does My Website Need a Blog?

Keep in mind that Google ranks web pages, not whole websites—so as part of maximizing your online real estate, you need to have pages for all your lines of business and more specific pages related to those services (i.e., emergency plumbing service, drain cleaning, camera pipe inspection, etc.). But your service offerings end at some point. So what do you do? We’ll explain here.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Is PPC Worth It For Small Companies?

In order to determine whether PPC advertising (or any other marketing strategy) is worth it, you have to know your numbers. If you own a plumbing company and you’re willing to pay $200 per sale and your lead-to-sale conversion rate is 50 percent, you should be willing to pay $100 for a lead. If you then find out (through accurate tracking) that your website converts 10 percent of pay per click visits into leads, you’d know that you could afford to pay up to $10 per click. Click here for more practical tips on how to evaluate your need for PPC marketing.

Do People Actually Click on Paid Ads?

With current tracking capabilities, if companies weren’t seeing positive ROI, they wouldn’t be running ads, and pretty much every major brand runs AdWords ads with Google. But while the above data points that in general, paid ads are effective for getting clicks through to websites, we understand that marketing strategies and budgets are not one-size-fits-all. Click here for a more in-depth discussion.

Plumbing Websites

Make Your Website Fast, Secure, and Mobile-Friendly

Your plumbing website is your most important marketing asset. In order to increase plumbing leads and grow your business, you need to make sure your website is able to be found in search results, loads quickly, and is both secured and mobile-friendly.

How Fast Should Your Plumbing Website Be?

Speed matters, especially when it comes to your website—40 percent of users will abandon a web page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. When users aren’t satisfied with the experience they’re getting, they know they can hit the “back” button and try again. Learn more about how fast your website should be here.

Why Your Website Should Be Secured (HTTPS vs HTTP)

If you don’t have an SSL certificate, you need to get one ASAP—84 percent of users would abandon a purchase if data was sent over an insecure connection, and people expect their information to be safe on your website. Having a secured website helps boost your SEO rankings, not to mention it helps prevent your business from getting hacked. See five more reasons you need to be HTTPS here.   

What It Means to Have a Mobile-Friendly Website (and Why Your Plumbing Company Needs One)

If your website doesn’t look like it was built to be used on a mobile device, you need to get it tuned up—as of 2017, more than half of all US online traffic comes from smartphones and tablets and 57 percent of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. Learn more about what makes a website have a mobile-friendly design here.

Tips for Building a Better Plumbing Website

If you’re running a small- to medium-sized plumbing company and you want to grow your business, you can learn a lot from watching industry trends and monitoring the top sites. But we know you’re probably already wearing too many hats, so we’ve put together the Cliff Notes version. Check out these tips based on common mistakes we see plumbing companies make or learn more about we can design you a new plumbing website.

Social Media for Plumbers

Facebook

Facebook Tips for Plumbing Companies

Facebook marketing for plumbers isn’t just a way to pass the time and keep in touch with friends. This form of plumbing social media marketing is used every day by businesses like yours to generate qualified leads. But it takes a combination of data-driven strategy and consistent effort to do it right. In this post, we’ll show you where to focus your efforts.

Best Facebook Ads for Plumbers

Facebook paid ads do work for plumbing companies—and we can show you how to make them work for yours. We’ve hundreds of social media campaigns for plumbers, and can show you how to successfully get more:

• Visits to your website from people in your service area
• Website conversions
• Facebook business page likes
• Likes on your posts

Instagram

How Plumbing Companies Can Leverage Instagram

Want to spread brand awareness and create loyal fans of your plumbing business? You should! Instagram is a surprisingly effective way to do that. In this post, we’ll show you nine effective, proven strategies for leveraging the platform.

Email Marketing for Plumbing Companies

How to Stand Out in an Email Inbox

Email marketing campaigns offer a highly effective way to promote your products and services on a consistent basis. Your audience has already opted-in to receive your content. They’ve shown interest in your company, so give them what they want! Sending a regular email newsletter is a cost-effective way to ensure your company is constantly in the minds of your customers—which is right where you want to be.

So how can you get your email newsletter to stand out amidst the hundreds of other emails your customers are receiving weekly? Let’s find out.

How to Nurture Customer Relationships Through Email

At the end of the day, the most important thing for any business owner is that you’re making money. But to grow your plumbing business, you need to increase the number of leads you are getting. The more leads you get, the more sales you’ll make. And this is where email marketing can really make an impact. Your goal should be to figure out what your customers’ needs and wants are and use your email newsletter to fill the void. In this post, we’ll show you how.

Video Marketing

How Important Is Video to Growing a Plumbing Business?

Video marketing is no longer a trend, it’s mainstream. U.S. Internet users spend an average of 15 hours each week with digital video, and Cisco predicted that video will even make up 82 percent of all internet traffic in 2021.  If you haven’t started investing in video marketing, you’re already behind the top plumbing companies in the U.S. Not only are internet users consuming more online video than ever, they’re changing the rules about creating video and animated content. Learn more about why you need video marketing here.

How Much Does It Cost to Advertise On YouTube?

When it comes to video marketing, YouTube is where it’s at. Video advertising on YouTube is both effective and affordable. How affordable? You can typically expect to pay less than a dollar per video view, depending on a few key factors. Producing videos has also gotten a lot more affordable thanks to advanced video technology and the introduction of smartphones. No longer do you have to shell out $50,000 for a professionally produced commercial—with today’s technology you can create 20 high-quality professional videos for less than that. Find out how much it costs to advertise on YouTube here. 

Recruitment Marketing for Plumbers

Using LinkedIn to Hire Great Talent for Your Small Business

According to a Pew Research Study of Americans who have looked for a new job in the last two years, 90 percent have used the Internet to research jobs and companies. This study did not just include millennials either like you might be thinking—job seekers ages 30 – 49 (and even some 50 – 64) engaged in online research before applying.

However, in a recent study that Blue Corona completed of more than 500 small to medium-sized businesses that analyzed their digital footprint, 20 percent didn’t even have a LinkedIn company page. That’s the first solution to this problem—companies need to have a visible profile that is complete and informative to job seekers.

How to Use Glassdoor to Grow Your Company

Many business owners cite hiring and retaining employees as a major struggle—in fact,  48 percent of small businesses report there are few or no qualified applications for the positions they are trying to fill (according to NFIB). However, Glassdoor brings the talent pool to you—if you have a company profile, that is.

Customer Service As a Marketing Strategy for Plumbers

Great Customer Service Is a Marketing Strategy

Too many companies treat customer service as an afterthought, and they’re making a terrible mistake. The #1 most effective long-term growth strategy any plumbing company can employ isn’t content marketing or SEO, it’s top-notch customer service. Learn how to make the most of it here. 

The Power of Consumer Reviews

Personal recommendations create the most reliable leads, and 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family members. As if that’s not enough, 97 percent of consumers read online reviews before making a buying decision in 2017. Basically, unless you want to run your plumbing business into the ground, you need a reliable method for consistently generating new reviews (like Review Us Now, our proprietary lead generation software). Learn why reviews are important here.

How Should My Plumbing Company Handle Price Shoppers?

Have you ever been in the office and overheard your customer service representatives’ (CSRs) calls, only to realize that many of the conversations revolve around the price of a toilet installation or tankless water heater repair? If you’ve felt disheartened as these price shoppers waste your CSRs’ time and don’t convert into paying customers, we’re here to encourage you to take heart—price shoppers don’t have to be frustrating time wasters. If your CSRs have the skills to properly handle them, you can turn these leads into customers. 

How to Execute Your Plumbing Marketing Strategy

If managing all of these options seems like a lot of work, that’s because it is! Fortunately, you don’t have to do it all yourself. Do what you do best—manage your plumbing company—and let Blue Corona handle every aspect of digital marketing on your behalf as your virtual online marketing manager!

Urban Survival Techniques Thriving In A Chaos-Infested City

I am terrified about surviving in the metropolis. Simply put, there are too many people crowded into limited places. However, it is just for this reason that I prepared. Rather of evading your concerns, face them.

To begin, let us define what Urban Survival is not. The definition of urban survival differs somewhat depending on who you ask. Many people take it to imply “urban survival and safety strategies,” which are sometimes referred to as “street smarts.” However, for the sake of this debate, I will use the following definition:

The ability to withstand a large-scale, long-term disaster in a densely populated urban area (even if only for a few days).

Ability to live in the beast’s innards equates to ability to survive in the city. Surviving a catastrophic catastrophe in the heart of a dangerous city requires a completely different mindset. Additionally, you’ll need a set of survival skills, tools, and strategies to stay alive.

Even if you do not live or work in one of these 146 populous counties, you may have a family relative who does. Perhaps you frequently go to a neighbouring high-density population city to see your children, friends, or relatives.

The bottom line is this:

Are you equipped with the urban survival skills and information necessary to conceal and survive if SHTF and you live in a city or are travelling for a little period? You may be required to remain for several days or weeks. Are you aware of how to properly handle such a situation? The survival methods employed in cities are markedly different from those employed in the wild. Both ought to be mastered. As a result, we shall address the following topics relating to urban survival today.

Return to Your Residence When disaster strikes, the first goal is to return home (unless your home has been destroyed). And how is this possible? Because it is where the majority of your survival equipment and supplies will be stored if you are well prepared. However, if you are unable to return home first, they will be of little use. You should plan to spend time away from home in the event of a disaster.

You could be. However, nothing should be taken for granted. This premise will aid you in planning for such an occurrence. That is why you must have an emergency pack that is well-stocked.

A BOB is a large backpack that is kept at home and contains virtually every item of survival kit imaginable. It is utilised for survival following a disaster (typically in the woods).

On the other hand, a “go home bag” is compact, lightweight, and uncomplicated. At the very least, you should have one of these bags, but many individuals like to have several in various locations. One for the car, one for the workplace, one for the boat, and so on. A homing pack should contain a range of specialised survival items that will aid you in returning to your base of operations.

 The point of a Get Home Bag is to help you Get Home, duh!

This critical survival item will offer you an advantage when you are away from your base and the world around you is in chaos. Specifications for the Location of the Rendezvous What if your home base is destroyed or dangerous once you’ve retrieved your get-home bag? Do you have a contingency meeting location? Have you communicated this place to your relatives and friends? If you are attempting to survive an urban catastrophe, you may not have the opportunity to contact your relatives and friends to coordinate a meeting location.

Children may be enrolled in school. You may be at the dentist while your partner is at work in another area of town. It is best to plan ahead and establish a meeting spot in advance. However, it must be a distinct place; if everyone forgets where the meeting will be held, it will fail. Monuments, schools, or the home of a trusted friend are all possible locations. This critical survival item will offer you an advantage when you are away from your base and the world around you is in chaos. Specifications for the Location of the Rendezvous What if your home base is destroyed or dangerous once you’ve retrieved your get-home bag? Do you have a contingency meeting location? Have you communicated this place to your relatives and friends? If you are attempting to survive an urban catastrophe, you may not have the opportunity to contact your relatives and friends to coordinate a meeting location.

Children may be enrolled in school. You may be at the dentist while your partner is at work in another area of town. It is best to plan ahead and establish a meeting spot in advance. However, it must be a distinct place; if everyone forgets where the meeting will be held, it will fail. Monuments, schools, or the home of a trusted friend are all possible locations.

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Every successful company starts with a single idea.

It’s how those ideas are approached, molded, and questioned that dictate whether or not they go on to evolve into a startup.

However, reaching startup-dom doesn’t complete the lifecycle of these ideas. Instead, becoming a startup is the moment when ideas begin to grow into something actionable, driven by a collection of intentional goals.

And as all of us who have lived the startup life know — when you’re a startup, more often than not your goal is simple: to survive.

I like to think of being a startup as treading water. Succeeding as a startup requires constant motion to ensure you can find product-market-fit, drive early customer growth, and build a baseline product all at the same time. The moment you stop moving is the moment you lose traction.

And this is all before you’ve even begun to scale.

Fortunately, there comes a point where you’ve treaded water long enough to reach your first lifeboat: Investments.

That’s where it gets exciting.

As startups move from idea mode to scaleup mode, there are a number of signs I look for in order to determine if I’m going to invest. Of course, not every scaleup has to get every one of these signs right to be worthy of investment, but the more positive signals a scaleup has to offer, the higher the odds of long-term success for that organization.

So, what is the secret sauce that these special startups have?

7 Signs that a Scaling Company is Worth the Investment

While scaling is a universal concept, the act of scaling efficiently rarely looks exactly the same for all companies.

Instead, each scale-up encounters their own unique trials, speed bumps, and roadblocks on the path to sustainable growth. When I am looking for scaling companies to invest in, I always take into account the individual circumstances of each company in the context of their growth to see whether or not they have set themselves up for long-term success.

As an investor, these are the core values I’ve seen that have proven to be present at companies with growth potential.

1. There’s evidence of customer happiness.

The customer experience doesn’t lie. In fact, it’s become a key part of GTM strategies at companies like HubSpot, which are investing in Chief Customer Officers and finding more ways to serve the customer across the organization. That’s all to say — the customer should be at the center of every decision.

For evidence of customer happiness, take a look at the NPS (Net Promoter Score) and other customer satisfaction scores of the company in question. If the results are in the green, you’re looking at a scale-up that is already making a positive impact on their customers. If instead the results are in the red, investors take warning.

Another way to determine customer happiness is to look for low or decreasing churn. A company’s retention rates are the first sign that they are either a fan favorite, or a stepping stone that customers take on their way to a more prepared company.

2. The organization’s primary roles have great people.

In the early years of a startup — when the primary focus is on the product — other roles like sales, marketing, and operations aren’t typically fully staffed. However, this practice doesn’t cut it when it comes to scaling.

When you’re a scale-up, these roles should be filled with amazing people. If not, there should at least be a plan in place to hire them.

After all, the potential of a scale-up lies in the potential of the people who are dedicated to its growth.

Without staffing all of the necessary teams with top talent, you could be unknowingly stunting your company’s growth. In the early days at HubSpot, Brian and I surrounded ourselves with people who were smarter than us, and invested in people we believed in. (Somehow they weren’t all developers, like I requested … but I digress …). Those investments paid off, big time, and we’re still surrounded by those people today.

3. Unit economics are stable and sustainable.

Of course, no one expects scale-ups to already come with an impressive ROI. A vanity metric or single data point isn’t exactly enough to convince an investor that your scale-up is worth their time and money. Instead, what I look for is stability and sustainability.

To be primed for viable growth, your customer lifetime value should be some multiple (usually 3+) of your customer acquisition cost. What this number will tell me is that your company is not only desirable by your customers, but that you already have what it takes to retain them and continue to gain value from them as they grow with you over time.

Scalability and sustainability are two sides of the same coin. With the ability to establish sustainable unit economics early on in your lifespan of startup-hood, you’ll be primed to scale when the time comes.

4. The culture of the organization is well-articulated.

Company culture is not something that appears overnight. Instead, it’s embedded in every decision your company makes and in the people who work at your organization. Every organization has their own specific company culture, but some are better at articulating theirs than others.

Company culture encompasses your mission, vision, and values and is the mark of a company with what speaker and author Angela Duckworth has coined as “grit.” Grit is “the power of passion and perseverance,” which translates nicely to what makes startups successful — having a clearly defined passion, and the perseverance to achieve the long-term vision.

Of course, to be effective, your company culture doesn’t need to be composed in a slide deck with 128 slides, but it should be written down. This way, when potential investors like myself take a look at your scale-up, we won’t have to spend our time guessing the motives and shared vision that drives your organization. Instead, we will be able to see how your culture guides decision-making across your organization.

It’s a good idea to begin defining your culture sooner rather than later. Company culture provides a stable jumping-off point for most of your initiatives, including recruitment, retention, and alignment. The greater understanding you have of your culture, the more efficiently you’ll be able to create a shared vision for your organization.

If your company culture could use a tune-up, take a look at HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Company Culture.

5. There’s a strong focus on creating customer value.

There’s a reason why I’m so intent on investing in companies who keep a close eye on their customer value. By continuously integrating customer feedback and preferences into your scale-up, you’ll be more prepared to proactively create customer value, as opposed to operating in a purely reactive state.

The companies that succeed today are no longer those that just delight their customers sometimes, but rather those that consistently find ways to exceed expectations and create a personalized experience.

Ultimately, the best way to maintain a strong focus on creating customer value is to open up a line of dialogue between yourself and your customers. If you haven’t yet, take this as a sign to begin establishing your means of gathering customer input.

Start by asking yourself questions like:

• How is your team getting customer input and acting on it?
• Beyond customer support, who else is focused on the customer?
• Is there a customer success team?
• Have you defined the voice of your customers?
• How is your customer involved or represented in your business’ decision-making?

6. The company has a strong strategic planning process, and knows how to determine product priorities.

Remember what I said earlier about the importance of creating sustainable systems? The important thing isn’t that the planning process works seamlessly and is already primed to scale.

The emphasis is on the fact that there is a process and mechanism in place for making these decisions at all.

Trust me: A disorganized planning and priority-setting process makes it impossible to scale.

The process of scaling is all about proactively setting your company up for future successes. When you have a clearly defined planning process, you’re communicating to any potential investors that you are looking to the future and priming to scale.

As an aside, while you’re evaluating your processes, take a look at your systems. Are they built for scaling organizations? Will it be easy to upgrade when you’re ready?

7. The organization has an engaged workforce. 

Last, but certainly not least, the final sign that a company is scaling sustainably and worth investing in is the satisfaction of their employees.

An unhappy workforce is a red flag (for new hires and investors alike). Not only should a company have a process for regularly collecting employee feedback, but they should also have a proven record of responding to and acting on the results of the feedback they collect.

A handful of disengaged or unsatisfied employees is typical, but a collection of them becomes a trend to be prevented at all costs. If you experience high turnover rates, you’ll want to fix that quickly — it’s impossible to scale without investing in the long-term growth and development of your employees.

At HubSpot, we have an eNPS (employee NPS) survey that we conduct every quarter for all employees. This way, we are consistently in tune with their needs and preferences, so we can provide employees with the supportive work environment they deserve. We read and evaluate every comment and are constantly looking for ways to improve our employees’ experience.

To begin conducting comprehensive employee surveys of your own, here is Everything You Need to Know About eNPS.

And there you have it! The secret sauce I’ve noticed in startups with real potential to scale, and what they did to stand out.

Whether I am actively looking for new companies to invest in or not, I always have my antenna up to notice exciting new scale-ups. To invest in sustainable models that support growth at your organization while prioritizing your customer experience, download our guide to Scaling Sales Operations for Customer-Centered Growth.

In 2020, I started using Headspace.

And, as it turns out, so did everyone else.

The meditation app, which was first launched back in 2012, initially generated roughly $30 million in revenue and, as of 2017, had 40,000 subscribers.

Today, the app has over 2 million users, and is valued at $320 million dollars. How’s that for growth?

But, when any company scales that quickly, it begs the question: Will the business survive, and even thrive under its newfound success? Or will it crumble?

Perhaps your company is experiencing similar growth, and your marketing team is feeling the growing pains. Or, maybe your business is brand new, and you’re focused on effectively building a strong marketing team for the first time.

Whichever the case, the challenges that come along with building or scaling a marketing team can be detrimental to an organization if handled poorly. Which is why I sat down with marketing leaders at Google, Microsoft, Wistia, Canva, and Typeform to learn their tips for successfully building or scaling a team — so that you’re ready when it’s your time to grow.

Let’s dive in.

Tips for Building an Effective Marketing Team

1. Hire with diversity, equity, and inclusion in mind.

There are countless benefits to diversity in the workplace – for instance, did you know organizations with a diverse leadership team have 19% higher revenue on average than companies with less diverse leaders?

Or, how about the fact that diverse teams can solve problems faster than cognitively similar people?

Suffice to say, diversity matters.

When building an effective marketing team, it’s critical to consider diversity, equity, and inclusion from the very beginning.

As Google’s Global Head of SMB Partnerships Marketing, Elana Chan, told me, “Hiring is the most important thing you’ll do as a leader — and that also means you need to think about DEI. It’s easy when we’re running fast to just ask people in our own networks to apply for open positions, but it’s worth it to diversify. Every study and even my own experience has proven that diversification and different points of view are important.”

Chan adds, “It takes longer to hire people who are outside of your natural network, but it’s worth it. You’ll get the right people for the job and also set the right tone across your organization. It’s important to walk the talk when it comes to DEI, not just when it’s convenient.”

When you’re first building out your team, you’ll want to ensure you incorporate DEI into your recruitment plans. To do this, consider writing inclusive job descriptions, advertise roles through diverse channels, and standardize your interview process.

You might also try using recruitment technology like Greenhouse Inclusion to reduce the risks of unconscious bias when interviewing.

2. Hire people who are hungry enough to try anything.

If you’re just starting out, you don’t have unlimited budget to hire a slew of marketers who specialize in various marketing activities. Instead, you likely only have the budget for a handful of marketers — or perhaps even just one.

So … how do you make that one hire count?

Above all else, Wistia co-founder and CEO Chris Savage believes it’s important to consider how driven your first marketing hire is.

He told me, “You want to find someone who is extremely hungry, and can make their own things — whether that is video, written content, or audio. Whichever assets your team needs, if you can find someone who can be both the creator and manager of those assets, then you unlock the ability to try things much more easily.”

“At Wistia,” he adds, “I hired a lot of misfits who were so hungry that they were willing to try anything. Maybe on paper it didn’t make sense, but in reality, it was incredible.”

For instance, perhaps your marketing team has identified YouTube as a viable opportunity to reach new audiences and convert those users into leads. If that’s the case, consider hiring someone with experience creating video — along with a strong desire to learn quickly, and try new things. 

3. Hire a marketing customer experience (CX) leader.

When asked what the most crucial early hire on a marketing team is, John Cosley, Senior Director of Global Brand Marketing at Microsoft Advertising, told me: “Two years ago, I would have said a marketing data scientist — someone who can analyze datasets and help their organizations better understand their customers and identify future opportunities, as well as advise on marketing tactics and analysis methodologies.”

“Fast forward to today,” He adds, “And I would say that the marketing customer experience (CX) leader is the most crucial early hire in scaling a marketing team. Consumer journeys have increasingly become digital and multi-modal and expectations have increased around privacy and trust, personalization, and quality.”

If you’re interested in creating a customer experience strategy for your business, take a look at How to Define a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy.

Ultimately, a customer experience is about putting the customer first. As Cosley told me, “Consumers are more likely to value a brand that values them, so it has become critical for brands today to prioritize the customer experience all the way through the purchasing funnel.”

4. Hire early. 

Hiring as you’re scaling can be a bit like trying to build a plane while you’re flying it.

It can be difficult and messy to get new hires up-to-speed at the same time you need them to perform optimally so your consumers don’t feel the friction. To minimize these challenges, consider hiring months ahead of when you’ll need certain roles filled. 

As Francois Bondiguel, Canva’s Global Head of B2B Marketing & Growth, told me, “A big challenge that many face as they scale is getting the organizational structure and strategy right. This includes hiring the right people, and ensuring they have leaders in place to guide them through this transformative phase and help them remove roadblocks so they can move fast.”

“On that note,” Bondiguel adds, “it’s important for key hires to be brought in early to ensure they are properly onboarded prior to projects ramping up. This helps avoid placing unrealistic pressure on new team members as well as the broader group.”

To do this effectively, take a look at your team’s long-term vision, and brainstorm which role(s) will need to be filled to get your team to the next level.

5. Use one data set to guide your entire department.

When you’re first starting out, I’m willing to bet your lean startup team understands the importance of making data-based decisions … but they likely also work in silos.

Maybe you have two content strategists who focus on lead generation numbers. Then, perhaps you have another social media marketer who focuses on cost-per-acquisition.

The issue? “When you’re operating in silos, there are also data silos,” Chan tells me. “Which means you can never pull the same number across teams. That’s a mistake. If you start off providing your team with a unified data set, then it’s easier to grow together. It’s much harder to merge data sets later, and then it becomes politics to determine the right numbers to use.”

To fix this, ensure you have a unified system for collecting and analyzing data even when your team is small. Consider using a CRM to store your data in one place, or creating a department dashboard in Google Analytics.

Whatever the case, it’s vital you provide your team with a centralized location so your data processes can grow with you as you scale.

6. Focus on customer retention in the beginning, rather than just customer acquisition. 

When you start to see your list of customers growing, it can be tempting to want more, more, more. 

But as a startup, you need to be careful. If you focus exclusively on acquiring new customers, you forget one of your strongest weapons — your existing customers. 

As Typeform’s VP of Growth, Jim Kim, told me, “Many SaaS-based startups … focus exclusively on customer acquisition and tend to neglect customer retention until they see issues with the customer base size growing.”

Kim adds, “By focusing early on efforts to engage and retain the base of customers already acquired, the startup develops a more holistic understanding of the customers they serve, and can gain insights into the things customers really care about that can then be added to the acquisition activities.”

To prevent customer churn, you’ll want to build out an incredible customer support strategy that enables your existing customers to get their needs met. Additionally, consider how you might provide value beyond the purchase, or create a personalized customer experience so your customers know you care about them.  

As Kim points out, “It’s an obvious point, but in my experience, it’s hard to remember that retention can actually be a faster way to grow the customer base than new acquisition and usually has a higher marketing ROI, since it’s (generally) cheaper to keep a customer than find a new one.”

Tips for Scaling Your Marketing Team

1. Don’t stifle the energy of a startup.

As you begin to scale, the workplace inevitably changes. Before, conversations happened casually across office desks, or when grabbing a cup of coffee — now, there are formal meetings with agendas.

And, while you could previously test out a new idea without necessarily requiring buy-in from leadership, now you’re expected to follow stricter processes, which limits the experiments you can try.

And yet, one thing shouldn’t change as you scale.

As Chan puts it, “It’s important not to stifle the energy of a startup. That’s the exciting part of being where you are, and I think the acknowledgement that you’re building the car as you’re driving it is okay — and fun.”

Chan adds, “At Google we have a saying: ‘Operating at the edge of chaos’. If you imagine a frontier, one side is not enough chaos, and the other side is too much chaos. If there’s too much chaos, no one knows what’s happening, and nothing gets done. But if there’s not enough chaos, then there’s no innovation and you’re not moving forward.”

“It’s your job as a leader to operate as closely to this frontier as possible, and I think in a startup that’s even more true.”

When you begin to scale, you’re going to need to implement more formal processes. But these processes shouldn’t restrict your employees from taking risks, testing out new ideas, and pushing the boundaries of your marketing efforts.

Consider, as you scale, how you can protect that “startup energy” at all costs.

2. Stick with what’s working.

As you begin to scale, you’re probably looking for new growth opportunities. And, at this point, it might feel like the sky is the limit — your business is rapidly growing, so why not take some risks?

But, while certain risks are inevitable, it’s not a good idea to expand too far beyond what’s already working.

As Savage told me, “If you’re a startup that’s making progress in terms of bringing in customers and getting them to use your product or service, then it’s easy to think, ‘Okay, I have one channel that’s working … now let’s add a channel on top of that, and another channel on top, and that’s how I’ll scale.’ Like, PR is working, why not add paid advertising on top?”

The mistake, Savage says, is that there are often one or two channels you end up underestimating in terms of growth potential. If your content is performing exceedingly well and driving leads for the business, it’s not necessarily a good idea to pivot away from content. Instead, you want to ask yourself — How much more can we expand with our content?

“There’s good advice in personal finance,” Savage says, “which states that most wealth is built through a concentration of risk, and it’s maintained through a distribution of risk — so, basically, if you want to become wealthy, you need to take just a few big risks.”

“It’s the same thing when scaling customer acquisition … There are a few big things you can do. It’s very important to go big on the things that are already working.”

Rather than investing in social media, digital marketing, video, PR, and blogging all at once, consider which channels drive the most leads for your business. Those are the channels that got you this far, and those are likely the same channels that will get you even further if you focus your efforts.

3. Treat your culture as a business priority.

It’s easy enough to foster and maintain a strong culture when you’re a small team. But, as you scale and expand your team, it can get harder to protect the culture that attracted employees to your office in the first place.

And while culture might just sound like a buzzword used to replace beer garden and yearly ski trips, it’s not.

In reality, culture is vital to your business’ success — in fact, companies with strong cultures are 1.5X more likely to report average revenue growth of more than 15% over three years.

As Cosley told me: “In any growing organization, the key to success is embracing and honoring the culture to which you aspire. It’s likely what made your company a great place to work and attracted the high-quality talent that is driving your growth.”

Cosley adds, “It’s not hard for core values and cultural priorities to erode or even get lost during expansion if that work is not made a priority. As you scale, you’ll want to think and act intentionally about how your culture grows with you, how you define and memorialize it, how it impacts your hiring and onboarding, how you train your leadership, and how you evaluate performance.”

Keep in mind — whether or not you’ve actively fostered it, your company already has a culture … it just might not be a strong one. And strong cultures can both attract and retain employees for the long-run, so it’s an important business initiative to take the time to create one that aligns with your values and purpose.

Additionally, Cosley notes, “Culture is not one-dimensional. You need to consider it across areas such as retention and hiring, diversity and inclusion, and employee engagement. And culture is contagious. Not only does it deliver more positive outcomes and business results, it helps with critical talent retention, and can lower the cost and time to acquire new talent.”

“Treating your culture as a business priority is essential. Without doing so, it could be detrimental to your organization’s potential.”

To ensure your culture grows with your organization as you scale, take a look at HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Company Culture.

4. Institutionalize key values on your team.

To build a strong team culture, Chan recommends institutionalizing key values.

For instance, perhaps you value autonomy, empathy, adaptability, or intellectual growth. As a leader, it’s vital you use these values as foundational building blocks on which your team can grow.

Chan told me, “For me, learning and intellectual curiosity are really important, so I say to my team, ‘You’re responsible for making the person next to you smarter’. And that creates the onus on bringing your own best game because everyone around you is so incredibly talented — so how are you being additive, collaborative, and innovative from within that culture? You owe it to each other to be your best.”

5. Praise what’s right … and punish what’s wrong.

Once you’ve identified the values that matter to your organization, it’s vital you encourage those values in each of your employees.

When providing performance reviews, for instance, take the time to identify where employees have demonstrated key team values, and where they might still be lacking.

As Savage told me, “The way you scale it is, you praise the right stuff and punish the wrong stuff. It’s that simple — most culture is modeled. You need the most senior people to act the way you believe you should be acting, and if you do that, it permeates the building.”

As an example, let’s say you value risk-taking on your team. If that’s the case, you’ll want to praise your team when they take risks, and even praise the failure that might result from those risks.

Alternatively, if you’re in a mode where you’re risk-averse and looking for optimization of processes, you’d want to praise actions that demonstrate risk management.

6. Hire for the future — not just today.

Finally, when you’re scaling, you want to consider who you can hire today that will continue to meet the needs of your business even as those needs change over time.

For instance, when I was first hired at a startup, I was hired to create blog content. Fast-forward six months, and I was additionally tasked with creating a podcast, and increasing the subscriptions to an email newsletter. As the business scaled, my role changed quickly. So it’s vital you hire with the future in-mind. 

When asked about the biggest challenge leaders face when scaling, Kim told me, “[It’s] the challenge to balance long-term and short-term hiring. For a larger, more established business, scaling a team is not as challenging. The roles are already clearly defined, and there is likely already someone doing that job. It’s easy to hire for a role like this.

“But,” Kim adds, “when the team is trying to scale, the roles may be less clear and transitory. What you think you need today could be wildly different tomorrow. Balancing the needs of today, while keeping an eye out on how things might change in the future is something that’s extremely hard to do.”

Hiring and recruiting isn’t an easy task, but to ensure you’re hiring for the future, you’ll want to take the time to determine someone’s work ethic, flexibility, and ability to shift roles as the needs change. And, as mentioned above, you’ll want to find someone who’s hungry to be there.

7. Create processes for effective communication. 

As your team scales, it becomes even more important to ensure you have processes in-place to ensure fair, effective cross-team communication. 

For instance, perhaps you’ve noticed your meetings have become opportunities for your most extroverted employees to share their successes, while the majority of your team stays silent.

To combat this, consider creating a meeting agenda or slide deck, so people know what they need to share, and when. 

As Bondiguel puts it, “Another challenge is communication. You need to put good processes in place (access to documents, meeting cadence, etc.) to ensure the entire team has all the information and context they need to perform and do their best work. This has never been more important as teams adapt to hybrid work environments.”

And there you have it. Whether you’re officially in the scaling phase or still in the startup phase, these tips should help you ensure you’re building a strong foundation for the future. 

When people are looking to buy or rent a new house, what’s the first thing they do? That’s right, they go online.

In fact, 51% of home searches start on the internet. People search Zillow, Apartments.com, Redfin, and local real estate websites.

Additionally, people also turn to the internet when they want to value their home or learn more about the real estate market.

All this to say that when it’s time to generate leads in the real estate industry, posting online and creating a landing page is the first step.

In this post, we’ll discuss how to create a landing page for real estate and review sample real estate landing pages to inspire your own.

1. Choose the type of landing page you need.

Before you can get started, it’s important to understand the different types of real estate landing pages.

The three main types include:

• Home valuation: This type of landing page lets users type in their address and get a quick idea of how much their home is worth.
• Buying/selling websites: These websites are where buyers and sellers go to place listings online, including Zillow or Redfin.
• Free content: This landing page is usually targeted toward those who want to start working in the real estate industry or are in the beginning stages of buying/selling. You can place free content on a landing page to get leads to download the offer so when the time comes to buy or sell, they think of you.

Depending on the type of landing page you need, the process and design will be a little different.

2. Use a simple lead capture form and search function.

When creating a landing page for real estate, the goal is to gain leads through a lead capture form asking for information (whether it be a name, email, or phone number). The first step to doing this is to have simple search functionality that is front and center in your design for home buying/selling or home valuation.

If you’re creating a landing page for free content, you won’t need a search function, but you will need a lead capture form that is simple and easy to use (this should also be a large part of your design that is easy to see).

The simplicity of the search function or lead capture form will make your call to action (CTA) stand out and get people searching through your site.

With Zillow, the home page has a simple search function so homebuyers can search for houses in a certain area. This keeps the site clean and it gets straight to the point — no distractions.

3. Always pay attention to curb appeal.

Everyone knows that curb appeal is important when it comes to buying or selling a home. The same holds true for your landing page. Use clear, crisp imagery that inspires home buyers to imagine their new life in the house you’re selling. When this happens, buyers are more likely to convert.

The visual design of your landing page is even more important than most landing pages. If people don’t like the design of the landing page, they might not even like the house because they can’t see past the poor web design.

4. Write honest copy.

The copy you write for each house should be honest. You’ll want to include detailed information and use descriptive adjectives that will paint a picture for prospective buyers. But don’t embellish.

When people start visiting your house they’ll see what’s true and what isn’t. If you aren’t being honest in your copy, then people won’t want to work with you because they can’t trust you. You should use short copy that’s punchy and to the point.

Buying or selling a home is a major financial and life decision. Trust is of the utmost importance between you and your prospective leads.

5. Include testimonials.

Although most home buying efforts begin online, most people hire real estate agents through referrals. In fact, 42% of sellers who use real estate agents find these agents through referrals and 82% of all real estate transactions come from referrals. This means that customer testimonials and reviews are very important. On your landing page, include testimonials so visitors know they can trust you.

It’s a particularly good idea to place testimonials near your CTA, so it motivates people to click on your form.

You can also place badges or awards on your landing pages to instill a sense of professionalism and credibility.

6. Highlight the benefits of your offer.

Depending on the type of landing page, you might need to highlight the benefit of your content offer. For example, if you have a home valuation calculator, it’s important to write copy that emphasizes why this will give a seller more power in the process. Or if you’re giving away a free checklist or ebook, explain how it helps people in the process of buying or selling.

This is how you’ll communicate your value with your leads, which will inspire them to convert.

7. Be personal.

The intent of your landing page is important. Your landing page will look different if it’s a home valuation, buying/selling, or content offer page. The point of creating a landing page is to create a personal experience for those interested in certain offers.

That’s why landing pages are different from your everyday website. These pages keep customers focused on going down the path they want: searching for a home, getting in contact with an agent, etc.

Additionally, the design of your landing page should be personalized to the experience of the viewer. This means that your page should be optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop experiences. You might also have an app that will help your visitors come back anytime they’re looking for a home.

Best Real Estate Landing Pages

1. Redfin Home Valuation Landing Page

Talk about a simple landing page. This is a no-fuss home valuation landing page that lets visitors get a real-time estimate of how much their home is worth.

This landing page is a good example of being simple, using short, punchy text and engaging graphics to draw attention to the simple CTA of entering a home address.

2. Hill Realty Group

This is a great example of a realty group’s home search landing page. First, it focuses on the curb appeal of the properties and areas that it sells houses in. Then, it includes a simple property search where you can include your location, bed and bath requirements, etc.

3. The H. Williams Group

This is a sample real estate landing page with a content offer. This realtor has a simple lead capture form enticing visitors to download her guide to Alexandria. This is a great content offer because people looking for a guide to the area are most likely going to move there and may contact her to be their realtor.

Additionally, this page is great because all the focus is on the simple capture form. The design is sleek and simple, with a logo, picture, headline, and capture form. That’s it. That’s why this landing page works.

Creating a real estate landing page is very important for marketing your listings or offers. That’s why it’s important to create a landing page that will convert visitors into buyers.

If you’ve ever tried to solve a Rubix Cube, you’ve put your analytical skills to the test. Making the colors match up requires problem-solving, logical reasoning, and pattern recognition.

While the majority of marketers will never make it to the next speedcubing competition, the skills you learn with puzzles like this are essential to a successful marketing career.

In today’s workforce, nearly one in four workers have a job in which analytical skills are considered the most important factor. Companies want to hire for these skills because it shows a candidate’s ability to think logically and use data to inform decision-making. In fact, Indeed found the most in-demand skills for employers — and several analytical skills top the list.

That’s why it’s important to know how analytical skills apply to your career and what you can do to develop these skills over time.

As a marketer, being able to understand problems and provide solutions is essential to a long, successful career. It means you can take a critical lens to the details of a problem to fully understand it. This helps you notice trends, understand the steps needed to take action, and offer novel solutions. But that doesn’t mean you have to throw creativity out the door. Using analytical skills to problem solve can look like a structured, methodical approach or a more creative one.

We’ll explore the various types of analytical skills later on, but first, let’s look at how analytical skills differ from critical thinking skills.

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Analytical Skills vs. Critical Thinking

A person who uses logic to find patterns, brainstorm, analyze data, and make decisions based on that information has analytical skills. One of the skills required to do that is critical thinking.

In other words, critical thinking is just one of many skills you need to be an analytical thinker.

You probably use critical thinking more often than you imagine, like when you:

• Question whether a piece of information is a fact or an opinion.
• Break problems down to understand the reasoning behind them.
• Draw conclusions from data, rather than a gut feeling.
• Make intentional, rational, and goal-oriented decisions.

Marketers who have strong critical thinking skills make reasonable, logical judgments and think through every decision. They provide facts and logical arguments to back their choices, which leads to smart decisions and improves company success.

While each role has its own analytical skill requirements, there are several that will benefit any marketer throughout their career.

Example of Analytical Skills

If you’re looking for a marketing role that leans towards analytics, such as a market research analyst position, it’s best to develop analytical skills specific to that position and your desired industry. Analytical skills are soft skills, so you’ll also want to develop hard role-specific technical skills.

For an analyst, that means mastering technical skills like Google Analytics and statistical software, while also having analytical skills such as creating data collection methods and presenting findings to senior leadership.

But across the board, all marketers can benefit from developing these in-demand analytical skills.

1. Critical Thinking

Any position across all levels of a company can benefit from critical thinking skills. It’s the ability to question an idea or examine why a problem exists. This can lead you to tackle issues others thought impossible and understand whether resolving a problem is worth the time, money, and effort. Critical thinking can take many forms in marketing, such as:

• Decision-making
• Content and brand auditing
• Prioritization
• Troubleshooting
• Case analysis
• Correlation
• Data interpretation
• Judgment
• Market research analysis

2. Data Analysis

Neil Hoyne, Chief Measurement Strategist at Google, once said, “The companies that are going to win are the ones who are using data, not guessing.”

Interpreting data is more than collecting and reading information — it’s making sense of what’s before you by connecting patterns and recognizing trends. Strong data analysis skills allow you to pull insights from a large volume of data, which you can share with key decision-makers. This skill can show up in marketing role requirements in a few common ways.

• ROI analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Data visualization
• Pattern recognition
• Process analysis
• Industry and market research
• Presentation skills
• Measuring customer satisfaction
• Marketing analytics
• Customer segmentation strategies
• Predictive analysis

3. Creative Thinking

I once had a manager who was known for saying, “The first answer isn’t the answer.” She knew the role creativity played in problem-solving and pushed our team to view a possible solution from all angles. Marketers with this analytical skill work to find out-of-the-box solutions and patterns that others brush past. And if you need any more convincing, ‘creativity’ ranks on Indeed’s top 20 list of most in-demand skills for today’s workforce. At work, creative skills involve:

• Brainstorming
• Collaboration
• Adaptability
• Budgeting
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Strategic planning
• Organizational restructuring
• Predictive modeling
• Campaign development
• Branding

4. Communication

Employers consistently rank communication as a must-have skill — and for good reason. Being able to explain your idea for a project or give feedback is essential as a marketing professional.

Communicating clearly helps you keep everyone on the same page when rolling out a campaign or diffuse a problem with a deadline when it (inevitably) arises. Strong communication skills needed in marketing include:

• Written and verbal communication
• Body language
• Interpersonal skills
• Active listening
• Conducting presentations
• Reporting
• Confidence and clarity of expression
• Sharing feedback
• Responsiveness
• Delegating responsibilities
• Respect and empathy

5. Problem-solving

Deciding how to respond to a harsh customer comment on social media. Distributing an advertising budget. Prioritizing which roles to hire for as a growing team.

All of these situations require analytical problem-solving skills, and all will pop up through a marketing career. Here are the problem-solving skills every marketer can benefit from developing:

• Research
• Data collection
• Prioritization
• Checking for accuracy
• Risk-taking
• Attention to detail
• Dependability
• Team-building
• Logic and reasoning
• Organization
• Crisis management

6. Collaboration

Good collaboration skills can improve your working relationships, help you accomplish tasks on time, and reach your short- and long-term goals.

And nearly every marketing team has to collaborate with sales, product, business development, and creative teams to get anything done, knowing how to create synergy with your colleagues will make work smoother and more enjoyable.

The most common collaboration skills for marketers today are:

• Persuasion
• Adaptability
• Time management
• Responsiveness
• Negotiation
• Giving and receiving feedback
• Emotional intelligence
• Open-mindedness
• Process improvement
• Adapting to change
• Networking

How to Improve Analytical Skills

Developing analytical skills takes time and effort. Unlike technical skills that have a structured approach to follow, analytical skills are more difficult to define and develop. There’s a process to learn how to use Google Analytics for SEO, but the steps to become an effective communicator are more fuzzy and undefined.

Fortunately, analytical skills can be honed. Here how you can go about boosting your skills and contributing to your company’s productivity and success.

Take courses, certifications, or on the job training.

Infinite resources exist both in-person and online that can help you improve your analytical skills. Universities and online companies like Coursera offer online schooling, HubSpot Academy offers free certification courses, and many companies provide stipends for continuing education.

Start by identifying which skills you want to improve and do research to find the resources that are right for your skill set and budget.

Find a mentor.

You likely know someone who is an excellent negotiator or always crafts the perfect email. Noticing how these people approach a situation and problem solve can help you hone your skills. Take notes, save examples, and apply their process to your work.

To take it a step further, ask them to chat over coffee or a phone call to discuss how they developed their skill. They can likely point you in the right direction or provide guidance on what you need to do to excel at the skill.

Try practice problems.

Role-playing is incredibly effective when working to improve analytical skills. Instead of simply reading a case study about an innovative digital media campaign, find a tool to help you develop your brainstorming skills.

Depending on the skill, you can find a practice book or an online resource to walk you through various mental models and scenarios. Work on an idea, and then present it to a trusted colleague or mentor to get feedback.

Play games to improve your analytical skills.

Spending hours on your phone playing Sudoku has more benefits than the personal satisfaction of beating your top score. Games that test your mental agility and memorization can improve your ability to think logically and challenge norms. While game trends are constantly changing, there are several classics that have withstood the test of time.

1. Sudoku
2. Jigsaw puzzles
3. Board games (i.e. Scrabble, Settlers of Catan, Splendor, Pictionary, and Bananagrams)
4. Computer or mobile games (i.e. Lumosity, Elevate, and Peak)
5. Chess
6. Crossword puzzles

Analytical Skills for Your Resume

Once you gain or improve your analytical skills, make sure to update your resume to reflect those strengths. Your resume should include a list of 10 to 20 skills, with a mix of both hard and soft skills. Note at least five to 10 analytical skills so potential employers know you have the knowledge to get your job done.

When choosing which skills to highlight, look to the job requirements section. A role may involve managing the company’s social media accounts, but this typically includes collaborating with multiple teams to get the content and analytics you need to do that successfully. Showcasing a blend of technical and analytical skills is what makes you a competitive candidate.

As your career develops, you’ll likely need to keep your analytical skills sharp. Be proactive by practicing and paying attention to people who have the skills you want to acquire, and you’ll be on your way to solving complex problems with ease.