Don Goldberg, Author at Bluetext

If any industry vertical is a prime opportunity for metrics-driven PR, it’s the public sector. Government agencies are a massive opportunity for technology and other companies that can help supply the products, services, and solutions that agencies need on a daily basis. Yet, many brands struggle with how to market to the public sector, especially at the Federal level. How purchasing decisions are made, the way agencies issue contracts and the buying cycles they follow are much different than the commercial sector.

More importantly, the messages that resonate with Federal executives are different. Return on investment, a key marker in the commercial world, isn’t as much of a factor in the public sector. Agencies have fixed budgets; and while they have downward budget pressures, they don’t have to answer to investors or the stock market. Instead, they focus on mission requirements, staying within budget parameters, and meeting legislative and policy mandates. They are risk-averse and look for solutions that will enable them to accomplish their goals without jeopardizing their own careers.

For these reasons, it takes a different approach to public relations to execute an effective campaign that will reach, educate, and motivate government buyers. There are fewer media outlets that cover the vertical, and fewer reporters available as the size of the publications have shrunk. Because of this demanding market, metrics-driven pr in the public sector is essential for implementing a successful media relations program.

One of our clients that has the public sector as one of its key target markets is Cloudera, an industry leader in open-source Hadoop big data solutions for enterprise organizations to leverage the intelligence in their systems. When Cloudera wanted to expand its presence in the Federal market, it turned to Bluetext to design and execute an effective metrics-driven public relations program.

Some of the key elements of the program, in addition to plain old-fashioned nuts and bolts media relations, was to “Federalize” Cloudera’s messages and news. This included:

Identifying customer advocates early in their relationship to secure customers that would share their results with Cloudera for media relations purpose;
Identifying Cloudera-specific messages and differentiated angles on news topics;
Streamlining the pitch review cycle, especially for rapid response; and
Enlarging the spokesperson bench to establish early on the topics and areas of expertise that each expert could talk to.The results of this program have proven the point that when a sophisticated program is linked to metrics, it has the best chance of achieving the program goals.

Here are some of the results of the program over the previous 12 months:

39 stories, surpassing the target goal
18 target publications hit, including American City & County, FCW, MeriTalk, The Hill, Federal News Radio, and NextGov
7 bylines placed in NASCIO, FCW, GovLoop, American City & County, SIGNAL, Fifth Domain

More importantly, we were able to garner a more than 44 percent Share of Voice in the market against Cloudera’s main competitors.

Need help implementing a metrics-driven PR program in the public sector? See how Bluetext can help.

We’ve been writing a lot recently about metrics-driven PR. One metric that is often key to certain clients is being acquired. Of course, when Bluetext first engages with a client for public relations (or any service for that matter), the client rarely opens the conversation by stating their goal is to get acquired. That may, in fact, be one of several desired outcomes, which could include raising venture capital, making acquisitions themselves, penetrating new markets, accelerating growth, or all of the above.

At the end of the day, a public relations program that raises the enterprise value of the firm can greatly assist companies in achieving any of the aforementioned objectives, which in part may be why numerous Bluetext clients over the years have seen successful acquisition exits.

The most recent example: BroadSoft, which was recently acquired by tech giant Cisco for nearly $2 billion. For 7-1/2 years leading nearly right up to its acquisition by Cisco, Bluetext served as the North America public relations and industry analyst relations agency of record for BroadSoft, a global unified communications software provider whose customer base is 600+ carriers and telecommunications service providers (including 20 of the top 25 by revenue) across 80+ countries.

When we think about public relations that raises the enterprise value of a client, what we mean is that press coverage and brand building for their own sakes do not lead to desired outcomes. That’s precisely what our goal was for Broadsoft. PR that enhances enterprise value has several components to it, including:

Drawing attention to all key parts of the business – Technology firms may have products, services, capabilities and customer stories that are most conducive to press. For that reason, it is easy for agencies to milk them until the opportunities are bone dry, and over-rotate at the expense of other parts of the business. Yes, locking in on PR sizzle is a good strategy, but enterprise value is strengthened when a complete business capability story is told.
Determine high-value assets – Maybe the client has assembled the best application development team in the industry, something that potential acquirers or VC investors would find as valuable as the product itself. Maybe it’s a unique set of patents, or market penetration in a growing vertical, whatever it is, public relations should lock in on those assets and build campaigns to highlight them.
Create a vision for the future – Past results matter, but…demonstrating a client is uniquely positioned to capitalize on future market opportunities and growth shows the potential going forward is even greater than what has already been achieved. Articulating a vision and communicating why the client is leading the market towards that vision demonstrates rising future enterprise value.

For the early part of this engagement, BroadSoft considered itself an “ingredient brand” – much like Intel Inside – for telecommunications providers. The providers would white label BroadSoft’s unified communications services and sell them to enterprise and residential customers. The downside of that positioning was that the market began to consider BroadSoft a legacy voice telecommunications provider – a growing brand challenge as upstarts such as Skype, Slack positioned themselves as innovators and disruptors.

To address this challenge, Bluetext worked to position BroadSoft as an innovative brand not only with telecommunications providers but with enterprise decision makers, end users, and influencers. Our approach was to establish a vision for “the future of work” and then communicate through media coverage, speaker opportunities, awards and thought leadership how businesses needed to enable the future of work. The pillars of “the future of work” vision were educating business decision makers and end users that 1) the workforce was increasingly millennial; 2) the workforce was increasingly mobile; 3) the workforce was increasingly geographically dispersed and 4) the workforce was increasingly inundated with applications, information, and meetings. Then we sought to increase BroadSoft’s “share of voice” in these conversations.

A sampling of results for the most recent full three years (2014-2016) indicates the result of these efforts.

– 325 media articles for which BroadSoft was a substantial part of the story (there were also dozens of other media mentions not included in this number).
– 175 industry analyst briefings
– 35 bylined articles developed and placed by Bluetext
– Dozens of bylines created by Bluetext were then leveraged by BroadSoft
– 17 significant industry awards
– 18 non-fee speaking opportunities

All of these efforts successfully focused on extending the BroadSoft brand as an innovator with enterprise decision makers, end users, and its telecommunications provider customer base.

Want to Up Your PR Game? Learn How Bluetext Can Help.

We’ve been writing about the value of metrics-driven PR to drive revenue and lead generation for brands in order to tie media coverage directly to results for our clients. We call it metrics-driven PR. In this post, we will describe how to use market research to drive news coverage and thought leadership as part of a metrics-driven PR program.

Market research is a great tool for understanding a market, how customers view your brand as well as its competitors, and for laying out a roadmap of what prospects want to see in a product to make it the most useful for their business needs. At Bluetext, we believe that market research can go far beyond customer insights to create news hooks that can be pitched out to key target publications. But it’s not so easy – there must be careful thought given to what question need to be asked, and what answers should be anticipated that will deliver those results.

When our clients are proposing market research for their internal purposes, our first request is if we can add several questions to the survey. That way, there’s not extra budget needed for the research. We’ve also paid for questions on national “omnibus” surveys when no other vehicle is available. Here’s the filter that we use to ensure we will get results that will generate news coverage:

Is it credible? In other words, does the survey pass the simple test of giving statistically significant and defensible results. Many companies will offer to conduct surveys that they send to their own database. The problem with that is that isn’t statically sound from a scientific standpoint. We believe that using a validated research instrument and process that meets industry standards is a requirement to get publications to write about the findings.
Is it topical? It’s easy to find interesting results in survey responses, but if it isn’t related to something important in the industry, such as a relevant trend, it will hard to place.
Does it challenge the conventional wisdom? The best stories that come out of surveys are those that go against the grain of what everyone thought was true. Reaffirming what everyone already assumes may be important, but it’s not as interesting. Asking questions that will give answers that are unexpected will generate far more coverage.

An example. Alfresco is one of the leading content management software platforms that is a challenger brand to some of the larger competitors in the market. As such, it was imperative to make inroads against better-known competitors. One of the strategies we developed as a way to establish better name-recognition and thought leadership was a comprehensive media outreach program. As part of the program, we saw the the company was conducting a market research survey to better understand potential target customers.

Managing corporate email in a regulated environment is a key feature of the Alfresco content management offering. During the 2016 elections, when the use of emails by candidates was a much-argued topic, we added a brief question to the market survey: How often do you use your personal email for company/government business? While we had no idea how respondents would answer this, we were confidant that whatever the survey showed, it would be relevant to the election.

The results that came back also challenged the conventional wisdom: 25 percent of respondents working for government agencies reported that they sometimes used their own personal emails to conduct business. With those results, we were able to secure media coverage in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, and dozens of other major business publications. The Washington Business Journal syndicated an article on the findings to each of its 46 different publications around the country.

The results drove substantial thought leadership for Alfresco that could be measured by reach and share of voice and allowed the company to reach its pr goals.

Learn how Bluetext can help elevate your brand through metrics-driven and research-based PR.

In a recent post, we described the value of metrics-driven PR to ensure that revenue and lead-generation goals are a key focus of every public relations program. A metrics-driven PR program is even more valuable in the crowded marketplace of cybersecurity, where literally hundreds of start-ups and challenger brands are competing for the growing investments from government agencies, enterprise corporations, and businesses of every size struggling to figure out their cybersecurity defenses.

Dunbar Security is a company whose focus on metrics-driven PR was key to their marketing and sales strategy. Dunbar has been a leader in the security space for nearly a century. Its iconic red armored trucks are visible and instantly recognizable in cities around the country, still retaining a look of the 1930s in a modern wrapper. With a client base and brand that would be the envy of any services company, it decided to add a cybersecurity division to complement its physical security relationships and turned to Bluetext to design and execute its go-to-market strategy.

Bluetext helped launch its first product, the industry’s first open source active response platform. To achieve the goals Dunbar had set, Bluetext developed a program of announcements and nuts and bolts media outreach, combined with a thought leadership component to broaden its visibility into the cybersecurity marketplace.

After analyzing Dunbar’s initial brand footprint, it became clear that its name in physical security, while an important and key asset, would not in and of itself translate into a successful product launch. What was needed was to leverage that name as a way to separate itself from the pack of start-ups in the market – for potential customers, having a hundred-year history means not having to worry if the products and services would still be around in five years – as well as differentiating its open source platform from the proprietary offerings of competitors.

The Bluetext solution was to secure bylined articles in key vertical as well as business publications that primarily focus on the value of an open source solution for an active response while reinforcing the brand’s iconic history and longevity to subtly distance itself from other start-ups.

Bluetext, working with Dunbar’s executives and subject matter experts, crafted a series of bylined articles for vertical publications in the cyber arena as well as for other vertical markets that are regulated for which having a response platform like Dunbar’s can help them meet their legal and regulatory requirements, such as healthcare and financial services. Our team of public relations professionals used its expertise and relationships to place dozens of bylines and coverage articles to spread the Dunbar message far and wide.

Using cloud-based analytical tools to measure reach and scope as well as the share-of-voice of the program, Dunbar was able to achieve success in the market far more quickly than it had hoped for.

Learn how Bluetext can execute a metrics-driven PR program for your cybersecurity brand.

Top PR agencies know that metrics-driven pr is an essential strategy for marketing and communications. In today’s digital information environment, where the number of channels and platforms for reaching audiences directly grows every year, it is tempting to ignore more traditional methods like public relations for positioning a brand and engaging with prospective buyers and influencers. Nevertheless, traditional public relations and media outreach that seeks placements and coverage in print and online publications remains one of the most valuable assets in a marketers mix of activities for the simple reason that it both provides air cover for the sales and marketing teams and has the potential to position a brand as a strong thought leader in a crowded marketplace.

Sales and marketing teams, as well as top executives rightfully continue to ask difficult questions to justify the cost of a successful public relations program because it is so difficult to assign revenues and leads directly to public relations efforts. This is not a new issue, but with so many other options that can be tied directly to lead generation, top public relations agencies know they need to have strong metrics to validate the effectiveness of their programs.

At Bluetext, we have been practicing metrics-driven PR since we launched our agency seven years ago. The reason is not that it’s a way to justify the expense of using a top PR firm, but more importantly, because it gives us a real-time ability to manage every PR campaign we launch for our clients, and to make quick adjustments to improve results. The alternative is to launch and execute a program without any idea of the impact on what matters most to clients: increased leads and higher revenues. The challenge, of course, is what to measure that will provide real insight into the results that matter.

Here, then, are our top tips for designing a metrics-driven PR program:

Be in close alignment with the client on what to measure. Clients don’t often know how to assess the effectiveness of a public relations campaign. That’s why it’s important to be pro-active and develop the metrics that count before you launch a program. Don’t only identify what you will measure, but what the goals of the program are, and make sure you have agreement and buy-in with the client before moving forward.
Choose quality over quantity. The public relations industry is still struggling to get over its dot.com era hangover of dialing-for-dollars – going after any mention in any article in any publication as a sign of a successful campaign. That wasn’t true in 1999, and it certainly is not the case now. Mentions in publications or websites that are far afield from targeted influencers and decision-makers don’t move the needle and don’t generate leads. It’s more important to have fewer articles as long as those articles are in the right publications and demonstrate thought leadership on topics relevant to the client’s products or services.
Bylined placements should be part of the mix. It wasn’t that long ago that client-supplied content was viewed as too much like advertising and therefore was not well-received by target audiences. Today, customers would actually rather hear about insights and experiences from executives and subject matter experts from solution providers who have hands-on experience. We’re not saying this should make up all of the coverage, but it’s a valuable part of the mix.
Take a baseline measurement across all metrics at the beginning of the program. You need to know where you are starting from. In some cases, for example, if there hasn’t been a program in place previously, you may be starting from zero. In other cases, the client may have a well-established footprint in the market already on which to build.
Follow that up with quarterly progress reports. Don’t leave your clients or your own team guessing about the progress of a metrics-driven PR program. Honest reporting on a regular basis that allows for tweaks, adjustments, or a wholesale redesign will show a commitment to reaching the right results.
Put the time into your measuring tools. The best metrics platforms require Boolean logic to deliver meaningful analytics and insights. Don’t take shortcuts – put the time into developing the right search queries and analyses against competitors and the market in general to generate meaningful metrics that can be evaluated and leveraged for the program.

A successful metrics-driven PR program takes time and hard work, but the payoff is a campaign that achieves the goals not only of the public relations team but also of the sales, marketing and executive teams across the organization. In subsequent posts, we’ll discuss some specific case studies and the metrics applied to measure the results.

What to explore a metrics-driven PR program for your brand? Let Bluetext show you how.

Google recently updated its ad muting tools to give users even more controls over ads that auto-play in your feed. In its blog post announcing this capability, Google reiterated its commitment to transparency and control over a user’s own data. The new tool allows users to go into their Google Ad settings and select which ads that are targeted at each user, and select them for a sound-off setting. In addition, it will engage ad muting across all of your devices.

Sounds great for users, but what about for marketers who are trying to get their ads in front of potential customers who have expressed interest in the product or service? After all, retargeting potential customers who may be solid prospects due to the interest they’ve expressed can be a successful arrow in a marketer’s quiver, while ad muting may seem like a killer.

The immediate reaction in the marketing world was that the sky was falling with the new Google ad muting tool. We think that’s an over-reaction. In fact, we are strong believers that the more that target customers believe that the ads they are seeing are appropriate and of interest – and not annoying, irrelevant, and out-of-date – the more likely they will have the confidence to engage with the ads.

Here are our four tips for making sure you online targeting will be successful, and not fall on deaf ears:

Don’t use auto-play in your retargeting campaigns. This might seem obvious, but there’s a reason that Google upgraded its ad settings for users: They keep complaining about them. Yes, they do force viewers to react, but that’s not always a good thing. If a target audience wants to engage, they will do it because of the content, and not because of auto-play.
Limit your retargeting for each user. One of the complaints about auto-play in response to Google’s announcement is that these ads often target users for months, even though the interest may have vanished after days. For our retargeting campaigns, we recommend no more than six ads. If the target customer hasn’t engaged at that point, we don’t believe additional placements will help.
Make sure your ads have great creative. This should also be obvious. Target customers are far more likely to notice and react to an ad that gets their attention in a good way. That means professional creative with a message that says something to your targets. It doesn’t always have to be humorous or outrageous to get their notice. But it does need to be good.
Make it count. Being relevant and timely is what users really want. That means paying attention to when the user expressed interest and acting quickly before they move on to another solution.

Looking to make your digital media campaigns more effective? Learn how Bluetext can help.

Annual trade shows are often the biggest events of the year for brands hoping to make connections, network with players across their industry, identify new solutions for their business, and generate solid sales leads. The Bluetext team has vast experience with association conferences and trade shows, generating attention for our clients, arranging media interviews and coverage, crafting the creative approach for their floor space, and publicizing their successes.

For our trade association clients, we work with them to help market their shows, growing their attendance and revenues through sophisticated, multi-platform outreach campaigns. One of our premier clients, the National Retail Federal (known as NRF), has been holding The Big Show for more than a century. We have worked with NRF for several years, starting with its Big Show for 2017 and this week attended NRF 2018 in New York City to see how it came off.

The theme this year is “Transformation,” and speaker topics centered around the retail industry’s need to transform itself in the wake of the digital revolution in retail sales. We developed the creative approach for the show and the marketing activities generating attendance. It is the retail industry’s largest annual gathering, and as the agency partner responsible for generating registrations and revenue, we are proud to say that this year, the show attendance was bigger than ever – and exceeded NRF’s registration and attendance goals.

As part of the creative approach to this year’s event, Bluetext created a “Transformation Ribbon” of deep red that can fold and unfold with digital GIF video that works across the show website, and through static images on emails and signs. For The Big Show itself, we designed a three-dimensional version that would pop among the attendees at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York City.

On the other side of the continent, Las Vegas played host to the annual Consumer Electronics Show, which is a massive gathering of the industry to show off the latest electronic devices, ranging from big screen TVs to driverless cars to commercial and hobby drone to everything in-between. The Bluetext team was there to help several of our clients reach new audiences and get attention for their products and solutions. The one thing to say about CES is that it’s cool, and that was most evident in the variety of new consumer electronics that was on display.

Looking to make a splash at your next Industry Trade Show? Find out how Bluetext can help.

B2B website design that focuses on the user experience will continue to be a top priority for brands who thought UX was only for consumer and e-commerce sites. In a recent blog post, we offered some of the best practices for developing an effective user experience on a business-oriented website. In this post, we will explore some additional best practices for the B2B website design that puts the user first in its architecture.

Write the way your targets think. When potential buyers visit your website, they will have a level of knowledge that most often is not as deep as you. Write content for who they think and eliminate jargon or text that won’t keep their attention. Use language, phrases, and concepts that are more likely to be familiar to them.

Make sure the text you include on your site appears in a logical order, but it should be natural as well. Confer with key customers and ask them to describe what your solution, services or products mean to them. What problems do they solve, and what were their pain points before working with you?

Let the buyer maintain control. Eliminate designs that override how a prospect might want to interact with the website. Autoplay videos, which have become ubiquitous across social media platforms and many news websites, can frustrate visitors who view these are a nuisance.

Don’t assume what the visitors want to do; let them play the video only if they want to. It should supplement, not be a substitution for, good content that is in text on the page.

Automatic carousels, once a common feature on many high-end websites, have also lost their allure, for the simple reason that they don’t work. Besides the fact that motion in carousels is distracting and rarely timed at the right intervals, it doesn’t present key messages to the visitor where they will be certain to see all of them. Layer information for your website in a way that makes it easy for your buyers to discover and explore instead of using an element that is less effective.

See how Bluetext can help your brand deliver an effective user experience.

In the avalanche of 2018 predictions for marketing teams, one that should be among the top is the need for B2B user experience website design. In the consumer sphere, user experience has a big headstart. On the B2B side of the equation, getting buyers to convert on the website takes much more information. It’s more likely you are going to explain a lot to get your buyers to convert into customers.

The higher and more complex the value of what you are selling, the more questions you will need to answer throughout your site. That makes information architecture essential to the success of the website, and a step in the process that demands significant attention. It’s easy to dismiss the effort by arguing that “our sales don’t take place on our website.” Marketers know that that attitude means falling behind the competition.

Give Buyers a Road Map. High-value products and services require in-depth information, including top-of-funnel messaging, mid-funnel details including video and other premium content, and bottom-funnel data sheets, pricing options and other data that will close the sale. As the buyer moves around the website, confusion about where they are and want to be will result in a frustrated visitor or is more likely to abandon your site for some other brand. There are ways to lessen the chances of a lost customer because of confusion. Here are some key best practices for a successful B2B user experience website design that will meet your team’s expectations:

Breadcrumbs – Breadcrumbs let your visitors know exactly where they are on your website, regardless of how they got there. It’s like having GPS navigation that has a path laid out that tells them how they got there. Whether location-, attribution- or path-based, breadcrumbs are a good option.
Page headers – Make sure that the page header is similar to the copy of the navigation items or links that have been clicked. This is a good B2B user experience website design practice that has the added benefit of being good for SEO. If the page header of the page matches what the visitor clicked on, they will be reassured of their choices.
Highlighting selected menu options – Keep the navigation highlighted when it is clicked. It can be bolded or underlined or have some other creative way of standing out and will give the visitor instant feedback about the menu options.
Show progress bars – A progress bar that indicates page load time will let a visitor know what’s happening if taking an action on the website, whether downloading a white paper, loading a calculator widget, or processing a form submission.
Thank You pages – These also give strong cues about the action taken. If a visitor subscribes to a webinar, downloads a pdf, or submits a request for information, confirms the action that was just taken.

We’ll be exploring more B2B user experience website design best practices in upcoming posts.

See how Bluetext can help deliver a successful B2B user experience website design.

User experience and personalization was the top trend for website development, and it will continue to be for 2018. Designing and executing the best architecture for a website engagement and conversion, while offering the right content at the right time to improve SEO and move prospects through the sales funnel, needs to be every marketing executive’s top priority. It remains a process of emotional transformation for many organizations, as top executives push still need to be convinced that creative design alone isn’t going to make their website the business tool that it needs to be.

With that in mind, here are our top tips for creating websites with user design as the first and foremost priority:

Personas are evolving. It’s easy to look at personas as a type of user who fits into certain common demographic categories. In the political arena, for example, a typical persona might be the “soccer mom,” shorthand for suburban mothers in the 30-45 age range whose main concerns are focused on their children. That makes sense for political purposes, but it gives little insight into how people actually engage with a website. We are recommending grouping personas into categories according to what they want to do on the site. Is it browsing, comparison shopping, or looking for specific content in order to make a decision. Recognizing these groupings offers more useful insights about what they want from their experience, and how best to deliver that content when they want it.
Less is more. It’s easy to clutter up a website with tons of promo boxes and fly-out menus. But the goal is to make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for and take the actions that we want them to take. Instead, design the home and landing pages to reduce the tasks required of users to the bare minimum. Make it simple, and get rid of all the clutter that doesn’t add value or that serves as a distraction.
Design the user experience. Remember that designers are always working on large monitors with the best resolution. Unfortunately, most users are on laptops, tablets or mobile devices. User design for that reality shouldn’t be an afterthought. Visual hierarchy, spacing, content grouping, positioning, and size should be solved in the wireframe process before a visual designer is passed the assignment.
Take a field trip. There’s an old adage in real estate that says the more houses a homebuyer visits, the more likely they are to know the one they want when they see it. That’s why one of the early steps in our design process is an extensive virtual field trip to explore design elements in scores of websites across multiple industries. The idea is to show the client team the wide range of user designs that are out there on the web and to react to the design elements and functionality in multiple settings. We watch their faces closely during this exercise to see what they respond to, and to give them the confidence of knowing it when they see it.
It’s all about the user. It’s easy to gravitate to what you like for the website based on your own preferences. But it’s not about you, it’s about your customer and the user experience. While tempting to select design elements with your own preferences and tastes in mind, that won’t help engage your target audiences if they have a whole different set of preferences and needs. Always remember that it’s about what users want to do. Our job is to help them to get the content and take the actions they want in the easiest and most intuitive way possible.