Top PR agencies know that words really do matter. That’s why crafting pitches that will grab a reporter’s attention but not disappoint, confuse or otherwise lose their interest is essential to a successful campaign. Unfortunately, concise writing that doesn’t rely on using the same old tired phrases but still gets noticed seems to be a lost art in the public relations realm. At Bluetext, we’re careful to make sure that we always keep our writing fresh, clever, accurate, and to the point – without resorting to jargon. Here are eight over-used PR terms that are so tired that it’s time to retire them.

“Unicorn.” A unicorn in tech PR parlance is the next billion-dollar start-up that’s just waiting to be discovered. Of course, every startup thinks it is the next unicorn. By throwing this term into the pitch mix, you’re sending a clear sign of unreal expectations or hyping a company far beyond its real story. True unicorns don’t need to be labeled as such.
“Synergy.” We never were really sure what this dog of a word meant. It seems just like more marketing babble rather that a true description of how organizations (or even individuals) can create more value when working together than on their own.
“So,…” This is a big faux pas and is not allowed out of the shop here at Bluetext. Starting a sentence with “So” is simply sloppy writing. Your argument should speak for itself, and your reader should be able to figure that out without being instructed to do so.
“Arguably,…” Following on the heels of “So,” this is another one of our forbidden words. As a writer and editor, I see the reason as part logic, part annoyance. Anything that can be argued is arguable, so using the term doesn’t add anything, except for annoying me.
“Circle Back.” Ok, I’m guilty of this one and pledge to police myself better. A reporter already gets that you are “circling back” because you do so in the email. Telling them again doesn’t make it more likely that they will respond. Let the pitch do the convincing rather than the extraneous words.
“Honestly.” One of my least favorites. Using this term is a signal that everything else you’ve written hasn’t been honest. Not good.
“Thrilled.” As in, “We’re thrilled to announce our client’s latest product/service/new hire/etc.” Really? That’s not an emotion I typically associate with client announcements. It gets less thrilling every time a reporter sees that word.
“Stakeholder.” I’m also guilty of overusing this term. Technically speaking, a stakeholder is someone who owns stock in a company. Today everyone is a stakeholder if they even have a minimal relationship to the company. Calling someone a stakeholder doesn’t really mean anything. Just use a more precise term, like the customer, employee, partner or vendor.

If PR professionals can dial back on these tired PR terms, they’ll be forced to write more concisely with less confusion, and have more success with their pitches.

Looking to boost your public relations results? Contact us.

Digital Maturity is no longer just a buzzword – it’s where your competitors are now and where you need to be to succeed in the digital marketplace. As a top digital marketing agency, we are making the move to digital maturity a priority for our clients. The ones who are there already know the four essential elements they need to master and balance if they want to get the most from the digital market:

Data-driven Marketing
Mobile
Customer Experience
Cross-Channel Marketing

These are where digitally mature organizations are committing their attention and their resources, according to a recent survey by Adobe of its marketing customers. They are mining their troves of data to understand their customers, predict their needs and preferences, and personalize their experience to deliver the right messages at the right time. Personalized engagement must translate across whichever device their customers choose, and wherever they go regardless of channel.

The first step towards digital maturity is analyzing where you are on that path. Here are eight questions to ask to find out if you are there yet, if you’re getting closer, or if you need a thorough strategy to reach it:

Do you have a digital strategy that will achieve your goals?
Are your marketing activities being adopted across the organization, or is your marketing team working alone?
How do you compare to your competitors, especially those who are further along the path?
Are you leveraging your tools to reach customers at the right time with the right message?
How have you tapped into your customer data? Are you getting the insights you need to plot your strategy?
How is the customer experience? Is it building to the type of engagement and relationship you need to meet your marketing goals?
Is mobile a top priority?
Are you engaging customers across every channel, and is the story you’re telling consistent and seamless?

No one expects you to reach digital maturity quickly. It takes time, commitment, focus and a disciplined approach. Without a clear strategy, you may be left behind. Need help? Call Bluetext, and find out how we can help.

A lot happens every 60 seconds online across digital platforms. In fact, a staggering amount of posts, uploads and emails take place in the space of a minute – every minute of every day. By looking at this data in detail, and comparing trends over the past three years, marketers can glean a lot of useful insight as to where to focus their brand’s attention when developing media programs – whether for specific targeted campaigns or for ongoing outreach.

A collection of these stats across the most important platforms was recently published by SmartInsights, and it reveals some significant trends. First and foremost, the 800 pound gorilla platform in terms of activity isn’t Twitter and it isn’t email. It’s Facebook. While there are nearly 450,000 Tweets every minute, there are 3.3 million Facebook posts in that same amount of time. In fact, if you said that Facebook literally dwarfs the other contenders, that would be accurate.

Except when it isn’t.

As the stats show, the outlier that is the largest by far is What’sApp, the free cross-platform app that can do just about what every other app does, and encrypt it in the process – with more than 29 million messages sent every minute. It’s widely popular around the globe (although not so much in the United States yet).

And who owns What’sApp? Facebook, of course. See a trend here?

60 Seconds Online: Where to Focus?

So where to focus your media campaigns? Look at some of the trends for what’s growing the fastest, and what’s being left behind. For example, Twitter’s 2014-2015 growth line came way down for 2016. Yes, there are more Tweets than a year ago, but not by much. Facebook shows no growth from 2015 to 2016 – which could mean that it has reached its upward potential. On the other side of the spectrum, YouTube and Instagram have increased their activity significantly.

Let’s not forget – Facebook also owns Instagram, while Google owns YouTube. So the upstarts are really just growth opportunities for the giants who continue to battle it out for dominance.

What does all of this mean for marketers? We tell our clients to look at where the growth is, not what was hot two years ago. Twitter is great for sports, entertainment and politics, but not so strong for b2b marketing. Instagram, on other hand, is expanding its reach across demographics, and can reach new target audiences that may have not been a focus of previous campaigns.

Thinking about your marketing and media mix? Contact Bluetext

In a recent post, Bluetext Creative Director Jason Siegel described the differences between a top digital marketing companies, top marketing companies and top marketing agencies. The answer was in the range of services they provide. In this post, we’ll answer another frequently asked question: What’s the difference between a marketing firm and a marketing agency? This is more than a trivial question, and and it can be confusing. But here’s one reason why it is an important question to address: The term “marketing firms” (as well as “top marketing firms”) is by far the most widely used search term when looking for information on vendors that provide marketing services.

In the traditional use of these terms, there was a real difference. Agencies were typically made up of a collection of “agents,” or independent individuals who operated under one brand for their own marketing and support services. Think about insurance agents who all sell State Farm services but run their own separate businesses. The same is true for real estate agencies and investment services. All sell one brand’s services, but in the traditional sense act as their own companies doing so. Firms, on the other hand, tended to include individuals all working for the same company as employees (or partners). Yet, this hasn’t been the cases in marketing for several generations.

What’s particularly interesting about the use of the term is that most companies that provide these types of services–including Bluetext–don’t refer to themselves as firms, but rather as agencies. There are several reasons why we prefer the term “agency” over “firm”, none of them scientific or based on a common standard of use. First and foremost, a firm implies a smaller group of specialists that provide a limited range of services, in this case in the marketing field. It can be high-level strategy, but often not wide-spread implementation or execution. In other words, it limits the company in terms of perception about what it looks like and what it does. So for example, a research firm will only provide that type of service, while a communications agency might include research in its full scope of services. In the case of Bluetext, we provide a full-range of marketing and communications services–including high-level strategy–that includes implementation and not just consulting.

Second, the term “firm” is more often used to describe a smaller company that specializes in traditional public relations services, so that “PR firm” is an accepted term for those types of service providers. As a provider of a full range of marketing services, including public relations and media outreach, the use of the term “marketing firm” is too limited for what we do. Marketing firms like ours do so much more than that, we cannot take the chance of being confused for a pure-play PR firm.

For clients, it’s important that they recognize this distinction so that when they are looking for the right marketing partner, they know they are getting one with the broadest range of services. We tell our prospects that the advantage of an agency like ours is that once we understand your challenge, the problems you are trying to solve and the successes you are trying to achieve, we can craft an integrated campaign using all of the marketing services that will allow you to reach those goals. That might mean a combination of traditional public relations, content marketing, advertising and paid syndication, and a digital campaign to reach the target audiences. Only a full-service marketing agency can provide that type of solution.

And in today’s communications landscape, there is no one magic bullet to drive customer engagement. It takes a range of options and approaches that require a full-service agency, and not a specialty firm. To learn more about the range of services Bluetext offers and view our Hall of Fame.

Successful brands have learned that if you want to engage with your customers and earn their loyalty, you need to provide a solid mobile app user experience on their handheld devices as much as on their larger screens. While many organizations understand that they need to design for mobile, they often ignore some of the most important elements in delivering the type of experience that meets their customer’s user needs in their apps. Mobile apps must be both useful and intuitive. No one wants to take the time to navigate a confusing set of commands, or invest the time and effort to learn them if it’s not simple.

With that in mind, here are our top tips for designing a mobile app experience that will keep your customers engaged:

First impressions are everything. Just like in real life, what a customer sees first can often color the entire experience. Getting that first interaction to be smooth and easy is key. Keep on-boarding for the mobile app light and simple, giving users just what they need to get started without loading them down until they get comfortable with the app.

Interruption is a fact of life. Given all of the digital and real distractions we constantly face, it is unrealistic to think that every app experience will be in a single session. More likely, users will be shifting from social media to payments to a variety of other applications while using yours. We recommend breaking up larger tasks into a series of smaller ones so the user isn’t overloaded. Try to keep it to one primary action per screen, and design for interruption so that a user can easily save and return later.

Keep the navigation intuitive. Try to use functions that are similar to other apps and therefore familiar to users. Make the flow feel natural, as if there were a guide helping the user to explore different options. It’s tempting to add all sorts of features and buttons, but if no one can find it, it’s not particularly helpful.

Keep it fat-finger friendly. When designing for mobile, size matters. Smaller touch target are difficult to hit cleanly, and often hard to see for anyone with eyesight issues. The minimum size should be 7 to 10 mm so they can readily be activated by fingers of all sizes. This allows fingers to fit inside the target, and keeps the edges in view when tapping.

Design needs to go hand-in-hand. Remember that users often access their device with a single hand, and operate with the fingers wrapped around the device. Let hand and finger placement drive the placement of controls. Avoid making any touch too much of a reach, especially for those with smaller hands.

Need help with your mobile app? Find out how Bluetext can help!

Successful digital marketers are constantly evaluating where to put their resources, and how to measure the programs they are funding in terms of lead generation and sales. Digitally mature enterprises go one step further– They put their money where their data is. That’s because they know that data-driven marketing is an essential component of their maturity. It provides a foundation for their programs, and takes the guesswork out of marketing.

Advanced analytics allow companies to go far beyond baseline metrics, by providing the tools to really understand how their target buyers are consuming content, what entices them to engage and interact, and what triggers a conversion. In-depth analytics -including multivariant as well as A/B testing – provide the types of information that enable more automation and personalization to map to each buyer’s journey. A recent survey from Adobe found that digitally mature enterprise organizations plan on growing their measurement programs by 41 percent over the next three years. Digitally mature companies rate the whole customer view, predictive marketing, and attribution modeling as their highest priorities. And that means having a clear picture of who the target customer is if they want to deliver a personalized experience that will drive conversion.

As the survey found, data no longer just informs, it also predicts. “Customers expect digital marketers to know who they are and what they’re interested in.”

Combining in-depth analytics and machine learning begins to give a picture of the entire individual journey that buyer is on, delivering insights that enable an experience that is relevant to that customer, including his or her preferences, expectations and timing. Providing the right types of content when the target buyer wants that content is the most likely path to turning a prospect into a client. Getting that data in real-time from the right analytics and tools will offer the most current insights for reacting quickly and putting the best content in front of that audience, responding to what’s happening now, not what took place a week or month earlier.

Our recommendation is to let a digitally mature brand be your model, and invest in the best analytics that will provide real-time, data-driven insights to meet your marketing and revenue goals.

Let Bluetext assess your digital maturity and analytics so you can meet your lead and revenue targets.

Google has done it again, quietly making a significant change to the way its algorithms process Google AdWords that could be significant challenge for digital marketing if not understood and managed. At Bluetext, we closely monitor all of updates to how the Google’s search engines returns query results, and we have posted a number of blogs to let our clients know about these changes and how to address them.

This time, it’s a little different because this change, which Google announced on March 17, addresses AdWords, the tool companies use to implement their keyword purchasing strategies, rather than a revision of its organic search functionality. With this change, marketers may need to adjust their spending programs for purchasing the keywords that drive traffic to their sites.

In the past with AdWords, marketers would select a set of short-tail search terms that would be part of their search advertising mix. For example, a hotel chain might include simple key phrases like “best hotels in Nashville,” mirroring the way customers search for a list of places to stay. Up until the latest change, that exact phrase would drive the Adwords results. But Google has decided that people don’t always type their searches as that exact phrase, dropping the “in” by mistake or even misspelling it as “on.” As a result, Google has decided to expand its close variant matching capabilities to include additional rewording and reordering for exact match keywords.

What does that mean? In layman’s terms, Google will now view what it calls “function words” – that is, prepositions (in, to), conjunctions (for, but), articles (a, the) and similar “connectors” as terms that do not actually impact the “intent” behind the query. Instead, it will ignore these function words in Adwords exact match campaigns so that that the intent of the query will be more important that the precise use of these words.

Sounds like a good move, because if you search for “best hotels in Nashville” or “Nashville best hotels,” the result will be the same in AdWords.

But what if the search is for “flights to Nashville,” which isn’t the same as “flights from Nashville”? Ignoring the function words “to” or “from” would change the purpose of the query. Google says not to worry, its algorithm will recognize the difference and not ignore those words since they do impact the intent.

Hopefully, Google will make good on that promise. But advertisers who have been briefed on this revision aren’t too certain. Their carefully constructed AdWords investments might take a hit if the function words are not managed precisely to meet this new approach.

We like the old adage of “Trust but verify.” While we take Google at its word, we know there are always growing pains with these types of revisions. For our clients, we are recommending that they carefully review the terms they are including in their AdWords mix. Our advice: Be as precise as you can and factor in how these functions words might be perceived before pulling the trigger. Losing traffic to your site because of placement of a simple word should be a real concern.

Want to think more about your adWords, search and SEO strategies. Bluetext can help.

Leading digital marketing agencies like Bluetext work in social media everyday for both our clients, and we see firsthand the social media trends that impact the market. The reality is that social media evolves more quickly than any brand could realistically keep pace with.

It wasn’t that long ago that Twitter, for example, was the hottest property in the market and enjoyed the fruits of a successful IPO. Two years later, its share price has plummeted because marketers haven’t been able to figure out how to use it to drive brand awareness, loyalty and revenue. As it has become the pulpit of choice for politicians, sports figures and entertainers, brands have struggled with the character and video limitations and are moving on to other platforms to build engagement with their target audiences.

This is a long way of showing that understanding social media trends is important to an effective and successful social media program. Here, then, are five trends to watch in 2017 to keep your social media campaign on track:

Fads can make for great content, but you need to move fast. Remember Planking? Hard to believe that was nearly three years ago. More recently, the current fad was the Mannequin Challenge. The shelf live of both of these was a matter of two or three months. If you think a fad will provide good social media fodder for your brand, by all means go for it. Just do it asap, because the it won’t be popular for long.
The value of Social Media to marketers is continuing to expand, if done right. It’s no longer just about building a brand, but is now being used not only for customer engagement, but for brand recognition, customer service, and driving sales. We leverage tools like boosted posts and retargeting as a key element in lead generation.
Social Platforms are getting sophisticated – and expensive. Social media companies have seen the green from marketers, and are building in some very sophisticated tools to take advantage of their growing audiences and the insights and information they have on them. At the same time, it’s now harder to have content go viral and to get an organic boost, due to the competition for attention and the algorithms that platforms are deploying. As a result, boosted and paid campaigns are becoming the norm.
Video’s influence will become even stronger. Video content as a driver of social media engagement is only getting more entrenched. Don’t fight this trend. Use video as much as you can, as long as it’s content that is interesting, relevant and delivers value. If it’s clever or fun, even better.
“Immersive” will continue to be the goal. Bringing your target audiences along for the ride is more effective than ever as a marketing and sales tool. SnapChat and Instagram are going to town on this trend with their “Stories” capabilities. Digital Briefing Centers and virtual reality will continue to be popular. Don’t just tell them, take them on the journey.

Want to learn more about how your brand can employ these 2017 social media trends to drive your marketing goals? Bluetext would be more than happy to help.

Email marketing is a key component of most lead generation campaigns. Leveraging a strong email data base via a competent marketing automation system allows a campaign to closely track every recipient’s actions as they move through the sales funnel, and target content and tactics that convert that interest to a sale. But how target audiences respond to email marketing campaigns can mean the difference between a new lead and a lost opportunity. A recent survey by Marketing Sherpa has some valuable insights that, while some might seem obvious, are too often ignored. Here’s a sample:

Frequency. By far and away, customers and prospects prefer an email marketing cadence of no more than once a week. A smaller number believe monthly is the right amount.
Content. It should go without saying, but apparently it needs to be repeated: Content that isn’t relevant to the prospect’s needs is not helpful. Nor are emails that only push a sales messages or are repetitive, or simply boring. Emails in this category are likely to elicit an unsubscribe.
Conversion Strategy. The survey found that more than half of recipients rarely or never found emails to be useful to them. And while that may seem like a bad sign, the good news is that 44 percent found them to always, often or sometimes to be useful when it came to purchasing decisions. That’s a sizable pool of prospects to reach and convert with a good list.

The lessons for marketers are clear:

Have a cadence that meets the preferences of your target audiences. That means no more than one email per week. If you are seeing an increase in unsubscribes, consider decreasing the frequency with a test sample to assess whether that’s a factor.
A strong call-to-action is important, but too much of sales or marketing content is a turn-off.
Make sure the content is interesting. Repetitive content or boring messaging is a wasted opportunity.

A well-designed email campaign can produce solid results. But it must meet the preferences of customers and prospects to deliver the right results.

Download the Bluetext Guide to Building for the Future.

With technology advancing the landscape of digital marketing so rapidly and personalization driving more and more customer interaction, organizations are accelerating their deployment of multiple websites and web presences. But how do you determine whether your organization needs a new website, or a digital platform?

As organizations expand, satellite and secondary websites are created—often because it’s easier and quicker than integrating with the main site, and because internal IT resources may not be available to take on the project. But that approach has its own consequences. With more digital assets, organizations struggle to keep them up to date, maintain brand consistency and implement a quality control mechanism that can take all of the sites into account. The simple tasks of changing a logo or copyrighting text turns into a complex exercise of coordinating multiple groups across different parts of the organization—and getting them to respond when you need it.

The answer is a move towards an approach based on a digital platform rather than a website, and the distinction is important. If your organization has multiple web presences, then you need to ask yourself the question: “Would I benefit from a platform?” If you don’t explore this option, you may be setting yourself up for years of frustrations.

Need help determining whether your organization needs a new website or a digital platform?

Download the Bluetext Guide to Building for the Future.