The governmnet market is a crowded space, with fierce competitors all vying for the same agency contracts. Make sure your lead gen program is working as hard as your competitors’.
Let Bluetext do a free assessment of your lead generation content to make sure you are getting
the best results.
Topics can include:
- Overall Marketing/Branding
- Target Audience
- Lead Generation Strategy
- Media Strategy
- Search Engine Optimization
- Social Media/ Blogging
- Website/Landing Page Conversion Optimization
- Content Strategy
- Lead Nurturing Strategy
- Analytics/ Website Management
Sign up for our free Lead Generation Assessment here!
In the digital age, digital marketers, companies, and thought leaders are constantly introducing new ideas making it almost impossible to keep up. Lingo overload can leave you:
- Out of touch with the latest digital marketing jargon
- Feeling left out of the marketing conversation.
- Paranoid that your boss will catch on.
That’s why Bluetext has put together a complete guide to Digital Marketing Lingo!
Bluetext, an award winning integrated digital marketing agency, has created a Digital Marketing Lingo e-Book to ensure you’re up to speed on digital marketing’s latest and greatest.
Download the eBook here!
In the competitive government market, what makes your brand different from your competitors?
Sometimes it takes market research to identify what makes you unique and what’s really important to your target customers. Fill out the form to download Bluetext’s Market Research Primer so you can understand how to:
- Leverage research to craft a market message
- Develop a positioning strategy
- Stand out from the crowd
To download our Market Research Primer, click here!
With roughly one month until Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits the theaters, I’ve decided to channel my inner Obi Wan Kenobi for the latest edition of “these are not the softball questions your CEO was looking for.”
The CEO in question here is Jerry Strizke, head of outdoor gear and clothing store REI, who became just the latest executive to fall victim to Reddit’s Ask Me Anything (AMA) series. The Reddit AMAs are pretty much as the name implies – actors, politicians, executives, athletes and everyday individuals – can try to set up a Q&A with Reddit members, with the only requirement being that members can ask any question they want (within guidelines of course). The topics range from an actor’s movie career to a guy driving furniture down to Fort Worth, Texas, and as you might guess, the topic and guest strongly correlate with the number of Redditors who join.
REI CEO Jerry Strizke was probably feeling pretty confident ahead of his November 10th AMA. After all, he had received mostly widespread plaudits for the decision to close REI on Black Friday and still pay employees despite what would be a negative hit on revenues. Riding that wave of good publicity, the decision was made to pull the trigger on the Reddit AMA, despite the long list of others who exited the series bloodied, battered and beaten (see: Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, Ann Coulter who, like Admiral Ackbar, realized too late that, “it’s a trap!”)
Sure enough, the bio posted for Strizke to kickoff the Reddit AMA oozed with confidence:
Hi Reddit. I’m Jerry Strizke, CEO of REI. You might have heard about us recently when we announced that we would be closing all of our stores on Black Friday this year. We’re paying our 12,000 employees to take the day off and we’re encouraging them to opt out of the Black Friday madness and spend the day outdoors with loved ones. I have my team here helping me answer questions, so go easy on me. I’m new to Reddit and have already learned the hard way that /r/Trees isn’t about the great outdoors. Ask me anything!
Ask they did, and while some certainly addressed the store closing, the most upvoted comment was for an employee who painted a negative picture of working for REI and that if you don’t sell enough memberships, it’s bad news as that is the overwhelming metric that matters. That commenter was far from the only one to rail about working conditions.
Reddit AMAs, Twitter chats and other free-flowing forums that allow executives to interact directly with a large number of people hold appeal for numerous reasons, ranging from a desire to make the CEO seem more accessible to a genuine desire to shift from one-way communications to a two-way dialogue. For any business considering a CEO Twitter Chat, Reddit AMA or similar forum, there are a handful of strategies to consider:
- Reaching an unreachable audience – The controversial guests who appeared on The Jon Stewart Show who succeeded are the ones who fully understood what they were getting into. The ones who knew they were going to take their hits, could be good-natured about it, and still effectively get their messages across. There may be times when the audience you are trying to reach is difficult to access via traditional public relations, marketing, advertising and social media. If the target audience is critical to your business as a CEO or career success as an actor, then a case can be made to evaluate these higher risk opportunities.
- Weigh risks vs. rewards – What is the goal of a Reddit AMA, or Twitter chat? They must be clearly defined, and the marketing/social team must put significant efforts into preparation and execution – without making it look like an overly rehearsed, staged event. Think carefully about what the best-case scenario payoff is, relative to the viral risks of hosting a Twitter chat or AMA gone wrong.
- Be wary of CEO hubris – Even if you lay out the challenges of a series such as AMA, many CEOs will feel that it won’t happen to them. That they can be funny and witty and disarm even the most hostile questions. If you view these types of opportunities as something to “win” or “lose”, you will lose. The goal should be to communicate desired messages and understand that not everyone will respond favorably.
- You can’t cherry pick questions – Some of the most universally panned AMAs and Twitter chats have as much about what the interviewee didn’t say as it was about what they said. Ignoring tough questions or failing to answer many questions at all can draw even more scorn then giving bad answers, because it will be apparent the CEO and handlers are trying to tightly control the session and use it purely as a marketing vehicle.
Professional services is a crowded space, with fierce competitors all vying for the same clients. Make sure your lead gen program is working as hard as your competitors’.
Let Bluetext do a free assessment of your lead generation content to make sure you are getting
the best results.
Topics can include:
- Overall Marketing/Branding
- Target Audience
- Lead Generation Strategy
- Media Strategy
- Search Engine Optimization
- Social Media/ Blogging
- Website/Landing Page Conversion Optimization
- Content Strategy
- Lead Nurturing Strategy
- Analytics/ Website Management
Sign up for our Lead Generation Assessment to better your results here!
In the competitive non-profit world, what makes your brand different from your competitors?
Sometimes it takes market research to identify what makes you unique and what’s really important to your target members. Fill out the form to download Bluetext’s Market Research Primer so you can understand how to:
- Leverage research to craft a market message
- Develop a positioning strategy
- Stand out from the crowd
Download the Market Research Primer here!
Whether it is your portfolio of products, services or solutions, most marketing executives and branding professionals are well acquainted with the concept of brand architecture. They may be less familiar, however, with the related concept of naming architecture. While the two approaches are similar, there are significant differences in both purpose and process.
At its core, a naming system or naming architecture is created to simplify navigation of a suite of products, services or solutions, usually created via clear and concise names. It is important to create names that have SEO considerations in them from both a long tail and short tail perspective. In practice, a smart scalable naming systems enables a company or organization to guide the naming of its capabilities and offerings so that customers can readily understand what is being offered. You want these names to be accessible in the following three core components:
- Accessible to customers
- Accessible to search engine spiders
- Accessible in all markets you hope to target
Organizations most frequently need to develop a naming architecture or naming system when they are a startup or newly formed division or have merged with another organization and need to clearly present a new or combined set of products, solutions, capabilities and offerings. It is also required when an existing portfolio has become so inconsistent or burdened with proprietary names that it is too complex to comprehend or navigate.
A good naming hierarchy is useful when organizations can create a new offering and the naming of it is swift, painless, and builds on top of the naming system of its current offerings in market.
While developing a naming architecture may involve creating new names, it’s actually more critical to focus on creating consistent naming criteria, hierarchies, and constructs. In fact, this process often results in streamlining the number of proprietary names in a portfolio.
Here are four critical steps to creating and/or simplifying a naming system or naming architecture:
Model Your Portfolio
Analyze your current product suite as a starting point for understanding the naming challenges being faced and identifying opportunities for simplifying things.
No two companies are exactly alike, and no single architecture model fits all. This auditing process provides the framework for restructuring the portfolio and determining where different types of names fit.
For example, when WellNet needed to simplify their complex and evolving portfolio we helped them develop a framework by first organizing offerings into four broad categories: Health, Engage, Prescribe, and Advise. This enabled WellNet to offer a clear, comprehensive integrated solution to the market to achieve their growth goals.
Define Criteria For Naming
After analyzing the current suite of names, the next step is to determine the criteria for selecting the right types of names. When are generic or descriptive names most effective? When are suggestive names — names that evoke an offering’s purpose or benefits — more appropriate? When should you consider using arbitrary or made up names instead, given that these, while distinctive, are less meaningful?
For example, Inspirata. When entrepreneur Satish Sanan (who sold his previous enterprises for close to $1Billion) needed a branding firm to bring his new cancer diagnostics venture to market, he turned to Bluetext. Working with his extended management team, Bluetext created the name, messaging, brand, logo, visual identity, responsive website, family of videos, and process infographic to most effectively share with their target audience the impact of their solution. The name Inspirata was rooted in two key words. Inspired Data. Part of Satish’s vision was to inspire the medical industry of what’s possible when we curate, manage, and analyze big data using advanced technologies and methodologies. For Inspirata, SEO was not a focus out of the gate. Their business focuses on executive relationships with the world’s leading cancer centers. Capturing business opportunities through Google and other search engines was not a KPI thus he wanted a name that engaged and inspired their customers / partners as they build out their full vision.
Naming Frameworks
Once the naming system criteria have been determined, the next step is to rationalize how the names will fit together within the suite of products. This step has two parts. First, one needs to determine the overall structure and hierarchy of names. Next, one needs to create consistent naming constructs. Here you consider the individual parts of a name. Typically, a naming construct will include a masterbrand, a specific product name (based on the naming selection criteria), and a descriptor. It may also, in certain cases, include a modifier that indicates the audience or specific area of solution for this offering.
For example, for our client Sourcefire you will see how we helped drive a smart scalable system for their products naming them as firePOWER, fireSIGHT, fireAMP, and fireCLOUD. This product naming system replaced naming from acquired brands like Clam AV, Snort, and Razorback.
Internal governance
With all of these systems in place, it is critical to ensure the naming architecture will endure the test of time. This is accomplished by developing internal governance procedures, future naming frameworks, style guidelines, and other tools to aid decision-making and compliance. You want to make sure that moving forward, everyone involved follows the same process and guidelines when it comes to naming.
At the end of the day, the key goal is accessibility, clarity and consistency. By developing an effective and enduring naming architecture, a product portfolio becomes more understandable for customers, while reducing the cost and complexity of creating and managing names as a unique process each time.
Have a naming challenge, we would love to chat with you about it. Contact us.
In the digital age, digital marketers, companies, and thought leaders are constantly introducing new ideas making it almost impossible to keep up. Lingo overload can leave you:
- Out of touch with the latest digital marketing jargon.
- Feeling left out of the marketing conversation.
- Paranoid that your boss will catch on.
That’s why Bluetext has put together a complete guide to 2016 Digital Marketing Lingo!
Bluetext, an award winning integrated digital marketing agency, has created a Digital
Marketing Lingo E-Book to ensure you’re up to speed on digital marketing’s latest and greatest.
Click here to download the General Lingo eBook!
In the competitive professional services market, what makes your brand different from your competitors?
Sometimes it takes market research to identify what makes you unique and what’s really important to your target customers. Fill out the form to download Bluetext’s Market Research Primer so you can understand how to:
- Leverage research to craft a market message
- Develop a positioning strategy
- Stand out from the crowd
Click here to download your FREE Market Research Primer!
In the digital age, digital marketers, companies, and thought leaders are constantly introducing new ideas making it almost impossible to keep up. Lingo overload can leave you:
- Out of touch with the latest digital marketing jargon.
- Feeling left out of the marketing conversation.
- Paranoid that your boss will catch on.
That’s why Bluetext has put together a complete guide to Digital Marketing Lingo!
Bluetext, an award winning integrated digital marketing agency, has created a Digital Marketing Lingo e-Book to ensure you’re up to speed on digital marketing’s latest and greatest.
To download our e-Book, click here!