Author: Franz Malten Buemann

 

 

In order to radically enhance your experience with our system, we redesigned its interface from the ground up. To start, we prepared pioneer Human Interface guidelines, inspired by the latest design trends for the most intuitive operational systems. Accurate execution of the design principles led us to elevate User Experience to the level till this day unreachable by any SaaS software.

The goal we set for ourselves was to remove every obstacle between the human intention and the system action to create and evoke a perfect flow.  We reached a remarkable 60% increase in speed of operations and reduced the clicks by 33%.  

In this article, we summarize all the changes and explain our inspirations. Enjoy!

 

User-driven revolution in SaaS – Human Interface

 

The constant development of end-to-end platforms demands a new approach to design principles. We already made the most out of the classic SaaS interface. To deliver a truly revolutionary, user-driven experience, we decided to:

Design the interface from the ground up instead of developing the existing one.
Completely discard the classic SaaS design philosophy which we see as insufficient for modern CDP.
Seek inspiration in the most intuitive and seamless interfaces, even for non-professionals – operational systems like Windows or macOS.

In consequence, we achieved the effects unparalleled in SaaS programs:

Speed. Because fewer operations are needed to get to the desired feature, the new menu allows you to navigate through the system up to 60% faster, more intuitively, and with ⅓ fewer clicks, 

Seamlessness. Users who know operational systems from their daily routines will recognize the design immediately and will know how to navigate it.

Personalization. As in the case of the operational systems, users now can customize the interface according to their needs. 

Agility. There are now many ways to get to any of SALESmanago’s 650+ features & solutions, according to the user’s preferences and customs.

We designed a navigation system so friendly, seamless and fast, that we named it simply Human Interface.

 

Menu Anatomy

 

Intuitive navigation and hotkeys

 

New menu is now easily accessible with a large, green button in the left upper corner of the screen. You can also use A hotkey to access the menu (more on shortcuts later).

 

 

Navigation in the menu is now a breeze. Just hover the cursor over the chosen position, and the whole feature tree will appear. You can go straight to the needed functionality with just one click, even if it is located on the secondary list in the menu!

 

 

Another innovation is the introduction of hotkeys, which further improve the navigation within the application. Use Shift+? to highlight all available shortcuts.

 

 

Favourite features at Your fingertips

 

Quick links are a set of most frequently used features accessible instantly from the top bar. They allow you to jump to selected feature from any place in the system with one click. You can fully customize the set, the order of links, and the icons’ look to suit your needs.

 

 

To set up your own array of Quick Links click on the Manage button.

 

 

Then, choose a desired feature from the drop-down menu. As a Quick Link, you can select any feature, and then customize its icon. Then click the Save button on the Quick Link bar. Your new link has been added to the bar. 

 

 

You can pick up to 15 Quick Links. To delete existing items, click the minus icon next to the selected Quick Link.

 

 Contextual menus

 

Contextual menus, or breadcrumbs, display located horizontally below the top bar with quick links. This is a permanently visible support menu that allows you to smoothly move between features of each module. They change dynamically according to your location in the system to reflect the structure of features in each module. 

 

 

Your workplace, your colors

 

Adjust the color of each item in the menu according to your taste. Change the colors of fonts, icons, tiles, and backgrounds at will. You can change colors for groups of elements (i.e. all tiles, all icons) as well as individual items on tiles (different icon color or background color on a selected tile).

 

 

Zero click human-system communication

 

The new menu contains two search boxes. The first search box is located in the menu. It allows you to quickly find all necessary features and their subsections.

This way the experienced users, knowing what they are looking for, are now able to get straight to the desired feature from any place in the system. No clicks at all.

The second search box is located in the top bar. It allows you to quickly find a contact in your Contacts list.

 

 

Summarizing new, friendly ecosystem for operations

 

Re-shape your CDP & Marketing Automation experience with a redesigned menu navigation and an innovative approach to information architecture that provides quick access to all 650+ features & solutions
Save time thanks to simplified navigation inside the application: reduced by 1/3 the number of clicks and time cut by 60% to reach all system features
Benefit from a number of improvements, based on the latest usability trends, that will grant you fast and seamless navigation through the system 
Compose your own list of quick links, so you can access the most frequently used features directly from any place within the application, without opening the main menu
Use customizable hotkeys to smoothly access your favorite features in a split second
Enjoy bespoke user experience by fully tailoring the design and quick links selection to your needs so you can access the most important and frequently used features in no time 

 

Standard CDPs navigation and SALESmanago CDP’s new Human Interface

 

 

Building a unique, authentic brand is essential for any business. A strong identity helps customers understand who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
But many founders confuse their business brand with their personal brand. And while combining them may work for a select few, it’s not the right approach for most.
In my experience as a creative, brand strategist, and coach for small businesses and startups, separating your personal brand from your business both strengthens your business and allows individual autonomy and professional growth.
If you have a public persona of any kind—and if you’re a small business owner, you likely do—I highly recommend creating an entirely separate business brand, and using a “personal professional” brand platform to share insights into your life.
Here’s why:

You’ll have freedom to grow beyond your business: Many entrepreneurs end up writing a book, becoming a public speaker, or starting a new project or venture. Your personal professional brand is a perfect platform for sharing and promoting this type of work while still allowing the business to continue to operate as normal.

You can better hone your business brand: Separating all of your professional interests from the main aim of your company strengthens your business’s brand by allowing it to be more focused and intentional.

You’ll optimize your brand for growth: Even if you feel like you are your business in the beginning, if you have visions of growing a team or perhaps getting acquired, you want the business brand to stand on its own, without you. Your professional success shouldn’t hinge on your business’ success.

You are more than your business: Employers, clients, and partners often want to experience a more dimensional understanding of who you are. What causes do you stand for? What other professional groups are you a part of? What creative endeavors or interests round out who you are?

Convinced? Great. Now, here’s how to do it:
Creating Your Personal Professional Brand
I like to think of your personal professional brand as an expanded Linkedin profile. It’s a work-related online identity that goes beyond your business or company.
Source: Flight Design
Caption: My personal professional brand is all about my skill set and background—not just about my current business.
People often confuse this with a personal brand; however, I find it helpful to distinguish the two. In the past, I struggled with determining what to keep private and what to share publicly. How much of myself is needed to feel authentic without feeling like the whole world knows all my secrets (the “personal branding” approach that many take on social media)?
Creating a “personal professional brand” has been the solution: On my website and social media, I share causes I believe in, projects I’m a part of, and even sometimes a bit of my every day, like photos from a recent trip or a picture of my family. I like to think about it as “HR-appropriate”—if I’m interviewing for any type of position, partnership, or client deal, this personal professional brand would help tell a broader story of who I am.
My personal professional brand is a mix of career accomplishments and personal facts that give a sense of my personality.Are there exceptions? Of course! If your personal professional brand is your business brand—many authors, speakers, coaches, and thought leaders fall into this category—then having one brand might make sense.
But otherwise, keep them separate but direct them to each other. Here’s how this might work:
Build a Personal Professional Website
I always recommend securing the domain name for yourname.com (or something very similar), as a home for your personal professional brand. Don’t want to maintain this type of website in addition to your business website? I didn’t, either, so I created a page for myself on my company’s website. My personal professional site, arianawolf.com, simply redirects to flightdesign.co/ariana-wolf. But, if I ever want to separate them down the line, I can, and no one has taken the URL with my name.
Show up on Social—But Only Where you Shine
As a small business owner (especially one who reads this blog), you likely know the power of social media for your company. You’re probably also stressed about managing your platforms for both your business and your personal account.
Here’s your permission to not be active on all platforms if you don’t want to be. Unlike your business, you really don’t need them all. Instead, think about the site that you enjoy most and will highlight your work best, and focus your personal professional brand efforts there.
For a lot of folks, that’s Twitter, because it’s quick and easy. For more visual people, it’s Instagram. Being in a creative field, my clients like to know that I’m creatively minded, so I focus mostly on Instagram, where I share photography I’ve taken.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ariana Wolf (@simply_ariana)

My Instagram showcases my photography—a creative habit that relates to my business but that’s also uniquely my personal professional brand.
Speaking of social media, a quick note on LinkedIn. While many people default to “Owner of Company” in their title, it’s worth adding a few other descriptors about who you are and what you’re best at to your title. That way, if someone is searching for an expert or speaker and comes across your profile, they’ll get a sense of who you are outside of your business.
Build Your Thought Leadership
Finding opportunities to share your expertise, like writing articles or appearing on podcasts, is a great way to get visibility for both your business and your personal professional brand. When you have these opportunities, you can and should mention your company, but you should also share your philosophies and what you stand for as a professional outside of your current role.
For example, I was recently interviewed for a podcast where I talked about my brand philosophy. Yes, that’s something I do at work every day, but it’s also advice I bring when I’m consulting other startups or sitting on advisory boards. It’s part of who I am outside of my business.
Don’t Be Afraid to Let Your Personality Shine
I personally believe—for brands and for people—that the thing that makes you a little bit quirky is what makes it easy for others to connect with you. So, as you’re developing your personal professional brand, don’t be afraid to let those things shine! Do you love roller skating? Have an epic collection of Star Wars miniatures? Those fun hobbies might not get to take center stage in your business’s brand, but they’ll add an element of interest, intrigue, and connection to your personal professional brand. After all, they’re what make you, you—and that’s what branding is all about.

 

 

A good Marketing Mix includes the 4Ps. But, is it enough to succeed in the digital world? If not, which solutions can be used to bridge the gap? Is the Customer Data Platform the key? Keep reading to find out.

The line dividing the change from one paradigm to the next is often blurry. Until recently, one could safely say that a good Marketing Mix, or the famous 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) is effective enough to generate a healthy ROI. However, in hindsight, one can observe that this two-dimensional approach (customer-brand) definitely needs a facelift.  Everything that makes up effective marketing today will require the addition of a few cognitive layers. And here are numbers to prove it.

Research found that companies that earn $1 billion annually can expect to earn, on average, an additional $700 million within 3 years by investing in customer experience. (Temkin Group)

(Product) Companies with a customer experience mindset drive4-8% higher  revenue than their industry peers. (Bain)

(Price) Up to 43% of all consumers would pay more for greater convenience; 42% would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience. And, among U.S. customers, 65% find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than a shiney advertising campaign. (PWC)

(Place) In a global survey, 74% of in-store shoppers who searched online before going to the store to shop, said they searched for something in-store related, such as: the closest store near them, locations, in stock near them, hours, directions, wait times, and contact information. (Google)

(Promotion) Practically all of us favor peer recommendations. As much as 92% of people, in fact, trust product recommendations from friends. In comparison, only 24% trust ads. (Zuberance)

Modern marketing tools, such as Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), can be a powerful tool in making this smooth transition. First, a bit of theory.

 

What is a classic Marketing Mix?

 

The Economist Times defines Marketing Mix as follows: 

The marketing mix refers to the set of actions, or tactics, that a company uses to promote its brand or product in the market. 

Source: The Economic Times

The Classic Marketing Mix consists of 4 components:

Product
Price
Place
Promotion.

Addressing these elements, in theory, guarantees a comprehensive approach to the overall marketing effort. So why the change?

 

New Marketing Mix: Replacing the 4Ps with the 4Es

 

There’s no denying that the 4Ps are no longer enough today. Around 2015, professionals began to redefine the components needed for success. However, instead of changing their structure, they started looking for a way to adapt to the changes which they observe in society.

 

Where does the need for change stem from?

 

It will not come as a surprise if I say that the main factors are the wide availability of all kinds of products. This is made possible by the ubiquity of the Internet and online payments, and a shift in consumer behaviors. Younger generations are paying attention to different aspects of the product than their parents. In addition, they are interacting with it in new ways in a multitude of channels. It is this globalist, egalitarian, and interactive layer that  requires a totally new way of thinking and doing  in marketing.

 

What are the 4Es of the New Marketing Mix?

 

As the marketing space react to a ever changing world, the components of an effective Marketing Mix must also change.There is now a migration to the 4Es:

Experience
Exchange
Everyplace
Evangelism.

While the 4Ps are still important, the Marketing Mix should include these components.

 

 

What’s behind the 4Es?

 

Let’s first define the different aspects of each of the 4Es. By understanding them, you can better find areas where you can leverage your resources to better develop your product and the consumer experience (CX) that follows.

 

Experience

 

More than the product itself, consumers are paying attention to the experience arising from its purchase, and use. This includes its design, quality, usability, but also social aspects ( belonging to groups, participation in popular movements, etc.).

This goes far beyond a one-dimensional understanding of the product. The experience of those interacting with the brand at numerous touch points is also relevant. This will include: 

familiarization with the brand and product, 
gradual purchase decision, 
purchase experience, 
receiving the product, 
post-purchase service, 
and a plethora of loyalty building activities.

10 top Customer Engagement metrics for a every CX Executive, and how CDPs can make your life a lot easier >>

 

Exchange

 

The price is still one of the important factors that make up a product. However, it loses its place in the rankings to the aforementioned experience. Oftentimes, you can find products online in freemium versions, or at incredibly low promotional prices. Purchasing decisions will be dictated by whether they recognize the added value of the product. This is where the greatest exchange is happening. When the choices are endless, it’s the details that matter to shoppers and win over the competition.

Leverage the specifics of the VIP sector to personalize your campaigns >>

 

Everyplace

 

Omnichannel as a word has made its way into the marketing vocabulary for good. Today, brands cannot afford to be absent from any marketing channels. A comprehensive use of the channels enjoyed by the brand’s customers and/or potential customers works much better.

However, there are several challenges. The first is to maintain consistency of the message and deliver format appropriate contents to audiences that switch repeatedly between channels.

The second challenge is to move away from third-party cookie-based marketing. In fact, leading browsers and ad networks will end their support of this practice in the near future. Zero- and first-party cookies are now preferred ways used to gather data and give consent. The fact that this is a voluntary thing will deepen the relationship between businesses and their customers. 

Masterclass of dynamic Omnichannel excellence  >>

 

Evangelism

 

For the past few years, I have seen the trend of placing more emphasis on loyalty and increasing customer retention. Loyal customers spend more money, plus they are much more likely to recommend the brand to friends. However, loyalty itself is no longer the Holy Grail. Brand evangelists are. These people aren’t just happy with the products, they feel the excitement of interacting with their favorite brand. They recommend beloved products to friends without any additional incentives. What is more, people who get such a recommendation spend more than traditional recommendations.

Why customer retention is absolutely critical to eCommerce growth >>

 

How to address the 4Es using CDP?

 

CDP platforms are powerful marketing tools that support growth in each of the 4 areas of the new Marketing Mix. Here are brief descriptions and examples of how a CDP is used in each of the named spaces.

 

Experience

 

CDP is the perfect tool for collecting, storing and using zero- and first-party data. Its capabilities allow you to deepen your understanding of the real needs and expectations of your customers. This knowledge will facilitate your strategic approach to product development, so it can best serve the people who buy it. Going further, the collected data can be used to design the overall consumer experience.

The features available in CDP, such as Alerts and Workflow, help accompany the customer throughout the Customer Journey.

 

Sample applications

 

Survey: A visitor to your site selects their preferences and interests in a survey. Using this, you can send them more interest-based content to their preferred channels.

Satisfaction: In the NPS form, customers leave feedback after purchase. By analyzing the responses, you can control the changes in the purchasing process to systematically increase satisfaction levels for future transactions.

Segmentation: Through a progressive pop-up, visitors are asked about their hobbies, favorite sport, location, and interesting product categories. This allows you to create advanced user segments which translates into the creation of more engagements, which in turn leads to increased profits.

 

Exchange

 

Since price is no longer a key factor, brands should find a better way to communicate the true value of the product. Emphasizing the unique qualities of a product makes people aware of what they are really getting within the price they pay. Finding them is much easier when you can see what your best customers are paying attention to. The best part is that you don’t have to wait until purchase though. You can highlight the added value of your products to new leads.

 

Sample applications

 

Lead nurturing: For each new contact in your database, you run an educational cycle that relates to their interests and behaviors on your site. After learning about the offer presented in the educational email cycle, the likelihood that these individuals will purchase more expensive products based on the unique features increases.

Free/Freemium: Temporarily providing free access to premium content in exchange for contact information can result in a dramatic increase in your contact base. Users see the benefits of valuable content, or they get used to the convenience of the premium version and want to continue with the brand.

Increasing the value of the purchase over time: Even if the cost of subscribing to a popular magazine increases over time However, if the content provided is well suited to the subscribers’ profile, they will often choose to continue their relationship with the publisher.

 

Everywhere

 

CDP platforms make it possible to monitor the behavior of consumers at multiple touchpoints within the brand. The result is a complete 360° profile, enriched with newer and newer information. Thanks to progressive forms, surveys, and pop-ups as well as other Lead Generation tools, it is possible to collect data and use it conveniently in preferred communication channels. These include email, Mobile, Web Push, Social Media, advertising networks or your website. It allows for effective communication in both manual and automated campaigns.

 

Sample applications

 

Offline + Online: When a person makes an offline purchase, you can also reach out to the contact online. Of course, you need to use in-store behavior monitoring, for example through loyalty programs or a mobile app. Collecting this data allows you to later enable communication in new channels, for example, through personalized Web Push notifications.

App + Web: Mobile apps complement the digital eCommerce landscape more and more. By combining and unifying data across CDP platforms, it is possible to personalize messages displayed on the website according to behavior on the mobile app.

Email + Ad networks: There are times when the people stop opening emails. CDP allows you to automatically switch between channels. For example, you can show personalized Facebook or Google ads to John Smith who deleted your newsletter.

 

Evangelism

 

Strengthening the bonds between consumers and the brand requires a lot of work, but it pays off. The tools you use in this area include: 

building user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX), 
reaching the right people with the right message, 
progressive profiling, 
lead nurturing, 
post-purchase drip campaigns, 
keeping an eye on churn and negative feedback, 
and reacting quickly to behavioral changes.

 

Sample applications

 

Preventing customer churn: Imagine that a person moves from the medium churn risk segment to high. Following this, you might send them an automatic communication that stimulates them to take up the offer. This increases the chances that the person will nevertheless stay with the brand.

Stimulating and strengthening the relationship with the brand: The new contact takes the initial activity within your website. They also responded to educational emails. The CDP uses this data to automatically move the contact to the next stage in the sales funnel. The higher stage provides slightly different contents that correspond to the level of intimacy between the contact and the brand. Additionally, appropriately set automations help to gradually profile the contact by collecting zero- and first-party data, which in turn, helps to further personalize future communication even better.

Rewarding loyalty: New contacts are new contacts, but what about those who have been with you for a long time? For existing leads, especially those who have shopped multiple times in the store, you can set up a targeted newsletter campaign with a special offer aimed at these loyal users..

 

Some final thoughts

 

Aligning your tools with your audience’s needs is always a good investment. A space with customers who exhibit increasing awareness and demands present eCommerce owners and marketing professionals many new challenges. A good CDP platform will help you address most of them. 

If you already have a platform but don’t know how to identify the 4Es for your business, be sure to speak to your Success Manager. They will be happy to help you find the right areas and implement the right actions.

 

consumer buying behavior has been defined as “the process by which individuals or groups choose, buy, use, or dispose of products or services to satisfy their needs and desires”.
submitted by /u/onlinemkt-org [link] [comments]

If you’re like a lot of people, you may be wondering how to use mobile marketing to generate leads for your business. For HubSpot users, the good news is that you have a head start — the HubSpot platform automatically creates a mobile version of your site for you.
But what should you do next? After you’ve got a mobile website, what mobile tools should you use to attract new customers to your business? QR codes are one of the easiest tools to get started with. You’re probably already familiar with QR codes, but if not, they’re the square barcodes like the one on this post that are being used by companies to drive prospects to their websites.

In doing research for our new book Go Mobile, Jeanne Hopkins and I took a deep dive into the most important mobile tools for small- to mid-sized businesses. There are plenty to choose from, but we’re going to focus on the most effective QR code uses to grow your business.
Who uses QR codes?
The short answer is anyone with a mobile phone. In addition to our keys and wallet, our phone is one of the few things we can’t leave the house without. Businesses have picked up on this and are constantly finding new ways to use QR codes to get us to engage with them, or make their processes smoother.
Uses of QR Codes in Everyday Life
While the concept of when to implement QR codes may be new, you’ve probably already gotten familiar with their use in local businesses you’ve visited. Here’s some instances where you’ve most likely encountered them:

Public wifi network access
Restaurant menus
Instruction manuals
Cashless payments
Web promotions during live events
Contact information and Linktrees

Later in this article, we’ll discuss the many other ways to use QR codes.But first, we’ll dig into how you can create your own QR codes.
How to Create Your Own QR Code Promotion
On the Go Mobile website, we used QR codes to provide clues for a nationwide scavenger hunt for four iPads hidden across the country. Visitors to the site could scan the QR codes to download the clues. To ensure that we captured leads from the promotion, we also provided the clues via email for anyone who filled out the form on the site. That way, we capture the lead information so we can re-market to that audience in the future.
Creating a QR code promotion is actually pretty simple. Here are the steps we followed when we created the promotion for our iPad nationwide scavenger hunt.
1. Create a Landing Page
First and foremost, you’ll need to create a mobile-optimized landing page. That means a landing page that is designed to be viewed on a smartphone screen. Keep things simple – for example, on a mobile landing page, forms should be kept to a few fields only. Most people don’t have the patience to fill out lengthy forms from a smartphone.
2. Create Your QR Code Once you’ve created your landing page, copy the URL into a QR code generator. There are
plenty of QR code generators on the web, so just do a search for one. Paste your landing page URL into the QR code generator and, like magic, your QR code will be generated on the spot. This QR code is unique to you, so nobody in the world has another one just like it.
3. Add Your QR Code to Your Promotional Materials
Grab your QR code from the generator. On a PC, that means right-clicking it and saving it to your computer. (On a Mac, you can drag and drop.) Now that you have the QR code handy, add it to your promotional materials. That includes any printed materials or websites that are going to be part of the promotion.
4. Get the Word Out
There’s no point in launching a QR Code promotion if you’re not going to let the world know about it. So broadcast your message using your blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or any of the other social media tools at your disposal. The key part at this stage of the game is to let as many people know about the promotion as possible.
5. Stretch Out the Promotion For our iPad Scavenger Hunt, we wanted as many people as possible to participate, so we’d upload a new QR code each day for several weeks. That way, our audience builds, and we’re able to create as much buzz around the promotion as possible.
How to Put QR Codes to Work for Your Business
There are a variety of ways you can use QR codes for your business, and new ones are cropping up every day. Here are some great ideas you can use below.

Common Uses of QR Codes

Websites: Add a QR code to the ‘Contact Us’ page on your website so visitors can download your contact information to their smartphones.

Business Cards: Add a QR code to the front or back of your business card so people can instantly download your contact information.

Webinars: Ready to make your webinars more engaging and fun? Then simply include a QR code as part of your presentation. It’s a terrific way to keep the audience engaged and involved.

LinkedIn and Facebook Pages: Want another way to stand out from everyone else? Add a QR code to your LinkedIn and Facebook pages to pull people into your website. It’s one of the best ways you can position yourself as a forward, innovative thinker.

In-Store Posters With Coupons: Want to provide instant coupons to people while they’re shopping? Then add a QR code that drives them through to a special discount that can be scanned at the register.

Dial a Phone Number: Want to encourage people to dial your number so they can order your product? Then give them a QR code to scan. If it’s set up properly, it will instantly dial your number on their phone and connect them with your sales center.

Creative Uses for QR Codes

Clothing and Merchandise: Ready to promote your product or service in an innovative way? Then add a QR code to a T-shirt that you give away to customers and prospects. Hija De Tu Madre (pictured above), a Latina fashion and accessories brand, cleverly placed a QR code on one of their shirt designs. It encourages viewers to “Scan for community y cultura,” enabling people to learn more about the brand and eventually convert them into new customers.

“Hello, My Name Is” Tags: You know those big red and white tags people wear at events with their names on them? If you put a QR code in place of your name, you’ll engage people and easily be able to strike up conversations.

Event Posters: Advertising an event? Upgrade your posters and fliers with a QR code passersby can easily scan. Have the code take them to your event page where they can view all pertinent details and buy tickets.

Outdoor Billboards:Be one of the first businesses in your market to run a giant QR code on a billboard for your business. In the example above, Cygames enlisted the help of 1,500 drones to form a giant QR code in the sky to celebrate the anniversary of one of their games.

Galleries and Museums: Make it easy for viewers to find out more about your work and upcoming projects. Putting a QR code next to artwork in place of text is a wonderful alternative to the standard description. Guests won’t have to crowd each other to read it, and they can take the information with them. If you’re selling at a gallery, it may also be worth it to enable payment through the QR code as well.

Product Packaging: If you sell a physical product, adding a QR code that tells the buyer more about your brand or the product itself can build connections and trust. If you sell food, consider using a QR code for the ingredient list, or maybe easy recipes to use the item in. For cosmetics, have QR codes that give more information on how the products were made, tested, and where ingredients were sourced.

Using QR Codes to Grow Your Business
There’s no real mystery to using QR codes to grow your business. All you have to do is generate the code, and drop it into your promotion. Be sure you test the campaign before you go public with it – people who scan your code expect things to work relatively smoothly the first time out of the gate. But other than that, running a QR code promotion is a snap.
A key point to remember about QR codes is that they’re simply a mechanism to engage prospects and customers. In other words, they’re not the end-game, so it’s up to you to figure out how to use them to capture the visitors you drive to your website as leads using landing pages.
Once your strategy is in place, using QR codes to grow your business is relatively simple. All you have to do is generate the code, and drop it into your promotion. Be sure you test the campaign before you go public with it — people who scan your code expect things to work relatively smoothly the first time out of the gate. Give them an experience that delights them and keeps them coming back for more.
This is a guest blog post written by Jamie Turner, founder and chief content officer of the 60 Second Marketer. In addition, Jamie is the co-author of the book Go Mobile, written with Jeanne Hopkins, VP of marketing @HubSpot. He is a regular guest on CNN and HLN on the topic of digital marketing and is a popular mobile marketing speaker at events and corporations around the globe.
This article was originally published in January 2012 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The pivot table is one of Microsoft Excel’s most powerful — and intimidating — functions. Powerful because it can help you summarize and make sense of large data sets. Intimidating because you’re not exactly an Excel expert, and pivot tables have always had a reputation for being complicated.
The good news: Learning how to create a pivot table in Excel is much easier than you might’ve been led to believe.

But before we walk you through the process of creating one, let’s take a step back and make sure you understand exactly what a pivot table is, and why you might need to use one.

In other words, pivot tables extract meaning from that seemingly endless jumble of numbers on your screen. And more specifically, it lets you group your data in different ways so you can draw helpful conclusions more easily.
The “pivot” part of a pivot table stems from the fact that you can rotate (or pivot) the data in the table to view it from a different perspective. To be clear, you’re not adding to, subtracting from, or otherwise changing your data when you make a pivot. Instead, you’re simply reorganizing the data so you can reveal useful information from it.

What are pivot tables used for?
If you’re still feeling a bit confused about what pivot tables actually do, don’t worry. This is one of those technologies that are much easier to understand once you’ve seen it in action.
The purpose of pivot tables is to offer user-friendly ways to quickly summarize large amounts of data. They can be used to better understand, display, and analyze numerical data in detail — and can help identify and answer unanticipated questions surrounding it.
Here are seven hypothetical scenarios where a pivot table could be a solution:
1. Comparing sales totals of different products.
Say you have a worksheet that contains monthly sales data for three different products — product 1, product 2, and product 3 — and you want to figure out which of the three has been bringing in the most bucks. You could, of course, look through the worksheet and manually add the corresponding sales figure to a running total every time product 1 appears. You could then do the same for product 2, and product 3 until you have totals for all of them. Piece of cake, right?
Now, imagine your monthly sales worksheet has thousands and thousands of rows. Manually sorting through them all could take a lifetime. Using a pivot table, you can automatically aggregate all of the sales figures for product 1, product 2, and product 3 — and calculate their respective sums — in less than a minute.
2. Showing product sales as percentages of total sales.
Pivot tables naturally show the totals of each row or column when you create them. But that’s not the only figure you can automatically produce.
Let’s say you entered quarterly sales numbers for three separate products into an Excel sheet and turned this data into a pivot table. The table would automatically give you three totals at the bottom of each column — having added up each product’s quarterly sales. But what if you wanted to find the percentage these product sales contributed to all company sales, rather than just those products’ sales totals?
With a pivot table, you can configure each column to give you the column’s percentage of all three column totals, instead of just the column total. If three product sales totaled $200,000 in sales, for example, and the first product made $45,000, you can edit a pivot table to instead say this product contributed 22.5% of all company sales.
To show product sales as percentages of total sales in a pivot table, simply right-click the cell carrying a sales total and select Show Values As > % of Grand Total.
3. Combining duplicate data.
In this scenario, you’ve just completed a blog redesign and had to update a bunch of URLs. Unfortunately, your blog reporting software didn’t handle it very well and ended up splitting the “view” metrics for single posts between two different URLs. So in your spreadsheet, you have two separate instances of each individual blog post. To get accurate data, you need to combine the view totals for each of these duplicates.
That’s where the pivot table comes into play. Instead of having to manually search for and combine all the metrics from the duplicates, you can summarize your data (via pivot table) by blog post title, and voilà: the view metrics from those duplicate posts will be aggregated automatically.
4. Getting an employee headcount for separate departments.
Pivot tables are helpful for automatically calculating things that you can’t easily find in a basic Excel table. One of those things is counting rows that all have something in common.
If you have a list of employees in an Excel sheet, for instance, and next to the employees’ names are the respective departments they belong to, you can create a pivot table from this data that shows you each department name and the number of employees that belong to those departments. The pivot table effectively eliminates your task of sorting the Excel sheet by department name and counting each row manually.
5. Adding default values to empty cells.
Not every dataset you enter into Excel will populate every cell. If you’re waiting for new data to come in before entering it into Excel, you might have lots of empty cells that look confusing or need further explanation when showing this data to your manager. That’s where pivot tables come in.
You can easily customize a pivot table to fill empty cells with a default value, such as $0, or TBD (for “to be determined”). For large tables of data, being able to tag these cells quickly is a useful feature when many people are reviewing the same sheet.
To automatically format the empty cells of your pivot table, right-click your table and click PivotTable Options. In the window that appears, check the box labeled Empty Cells As and enter what you’d like displayed when a cell has no other value.
How to Create a Pivot Table

Enter your data into a range of rows and columns.
Sort your data by a specific attribute.
Highlight your cells to create your pivot table.
Drag and drop a field into the “Row Labels” area.
Drag and drop a field into the “Values” area.
Fine-tune your calculations.

Now that you have a better sense of what pivot tables can be used for, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how to actually create one.
Step 1. Enter your data into a range of rows and columns.
Every pivot table in Excel starts with a basic Excel table, where all your data is housed. To create this table, simply enter your values into a specific set of rows and columns. Use the topmost row or the topmost column to categorize your values by what they represent.
For example, to create an Excel table of blog post performance data, you might have a column listing each “Top Pages,” a column listing each URL’s “Clicks,” a column listing each post’s “Impressions,” and so on. (We’ll be using that example in the steps that follow.)

Step 2. Sort your data by a specific attribute.
When you have all the data you want entered into your Excel sheet, you’ll want to sort this data in some way so it’s easier to manage once you turn it into a pivot table.
To sort your data, click the Data tab in the top navigation bar and select the Sort icon underneath it. In the window that appears, you can opt to sort your data by any column you want and in any order.
For example, to sort your Excel sheet by “Views to Date,” select this column title under Column and then select whether you want to order your posts from smallest to largest, or from largest to smallest.
Select OK on the bottom-right of the Sort window, and you’ll successfully reorder each row of your Excel sheet by the number of views each blog post has received.

Step 3. Highlight your cells to create your pivot table.
Once you’ve entered data into your Excel worksheet, and sorted it to your liking, highlight the cells you’d like to summarize in a pivot table. Click Insert along the top navigation, and select the PivotTable icon. You can also click anywhere in your worksheet, select “PivotTable,” and manually enter the range of cells you’d like included in the PivotTable.
This will open an option box where, in addition to setting your cell range, you can select whether or not to launch this pivot table in a new worksheet or keep it in the existing worksheet. If you open a new sheet, you can navigate to and away from it at the bottom of your Excel workbook. Once you’ve chosen, click OK.
Alternatively, you can highlight your cells, select Recommended PivotTables to the right of the PivotTable icon, and open a pivot table with pre-set suggestions for how to organize each row and column.

Note: If you’re using an earlier version of Excel, “PivotTables” may be under Tables or Data along the top navigation, rather than “Insert.” In Google Sheets, you can create pivot tables from the Data dropdown along the top navigation.
Step 4. Drag and drop a field into the “Row Labels” area.
After you’ve completed Step 3, Excel will create a blank pivot table for you. Your next step is to drag and drop a field — labeled according to the names of the columns in your spreadsheet — into the Row Labels area. This will determine what unique identifier — blog post title, product name, and so on — the pivot table will organize your data by.
For example, let’s say you want to organize a bunch of blogging data by post title. To do that, you’d simply click and drag the “Top pages” field to the “Row Labels” area.

Note: Your pivot table may look different depending on which version of Excel you’re working with. However, the general principles remain the same.
Step 5. Drag and drop a field into the “Values” area.
Once you’ve established what you’re going to organize your data by, your next step is to add in some values by dragging a field into the Values area.
Sticking with the blogging data example, let’s say you want to summarize blog post views by title. To do this, you’d simply drag the “Views” field into the Values area.

Step 6. Fine-tune your calculations.
The sum of a particular value will be calculated by default, but you can easily change this to something like average, maximum, or minimum depending on what you want to calculate.
On a Mac, you can do this by clicking on the small i next to a value in the “Values” area, selecting the option you want, and clicking “OK.” Once you’ve made your selection, your pivot table will be updated accordingly.
If you’re using a PC, you’ll need to click on the small upside-down triangle next to your value and select Value Field Settings to access the menu.

When you’ve categorized your data to your liking, save your work and use it as you please.
Digging Deeper With Pivot Tables
You’ve now learned the basics of pivot table creation in Excel. With this understanding, you can figure out what you need from your pivot table and find the solutions you’re looking for.
For example, you may notice that the data in your pivot table isn’t sorted the way you’d like. If this is the case, Excel’s Sort function can help you out. Alternatively, you may need to incorporate data from another source into your reporting, in which case the VLOOKUP function could come in handy.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.