Congratulations, you’ve launched your brand – now what? As a digital branding agency, Bluetext has seen many clients go through a rigorous rebranding process only to find themselves lost and unclear of the next steps. Our digital marketing recommendation? Focus on a ‘Go to Market’ strategy! After investing the time and resources in revamping your brand, it’s time to showcase the finished product with pride to your audiences!

What Exactly is a ‘Go to Market Strategy (GTM) Strategy?

At its core, a GTM strategy is a campaign to target audiences to ultimately get them to reach your rebrand. While the end goal may vary, announcing the brand and gaining recognition and attention is a critical first step for any newly branded company. 

Popular end goals include:

  • Raising awareness
  • Recruitment
  • Lead generation
  • Showcase capabilities/products/solutions
  • Stand out against competitors
  • Solidify stance in the industry

Whether your company has adopted a new visual identity, brand name, messaging platform, or all three, you should make these changes across all advertising channels. Consistency is key. Users should be able to clearly recognize a shift and not be confused by residual legacy branding. You may need to update your digital marketing campaign assets such as display ad creative, social media profiles, and website content. These assets should be eye-catching to grab the attention of new users, but also generate interest in returning users familiar with the old brand. The most common and successful channels to include in your GTM strategy are:

  • Paid search
  • Paid display
  • Organic social
  • Paid social

The most effective campaigns combine channels & targeting/retargeting to drive top-of-funnel traffic all the way down the funnel for full conversion. The beauty of modern search and social advertising platforms is the ability to target extremely specific buyer personas. Especially in a wider GTM strategy, you want to ensure your advertising spend is smart and reaching the intended audiences. Bluetext recommends targeting by at least the following demographics:

  • Industry
  • Demographics
  • Job title
  • Income 
  • Geographic location

What About Merger & Acquisition GTM Strategy?

Centauri

Bluetext recently supported messaging, brand, and website launch of Centauri, a new company born from the merger of three powerful federal contracting agencies. Centauri’s GTM strategy followed the launch of their new website with two primary goals: brand awareness and recruitment. Bluetext served as the creative branding, website design, website development, and digital marketing strategy agency for Centauri. To meet Centauri’s goals, Bluetext created an omnichannel GTM strategy to drive users to the new website and complete applications. 

To meet brand awareness goals, paid display, search and social campaigns were used to introduce the company and position them in the industry as the leading, mission-first experts. These campaigns used the brand’s creative and intriguing copy to attract the attention of top of funnel traffic. The brand awareness campaign ads targeted both current customers and potential recruitments, and when clicked took users to a custom landing page announcing the new company. 


To achieve Centauri’s recruitment goal, Bluetext’s GTM strategy aimed to draw a connection between the new brand and their work/mission. This campaign was geared to lower funnel traffic, targeting specific candidate demographics. Using robust targeting options, Centauri was able to reach only the type of people who would fit the qualifications and be interested in their national security mission, such as veterans, engineers, and government cleared individuals. These campaign ads drove viewers directly to Centauri’s career portal to view job descriptions and apply directly.

BlueHalo

Another recent Bluetext success story is BlueHalo, formally AEgis. BlueHalo sought out Bluetext to assist with their new brand messaging, creative, website, and digital strategy. Similar to Centauri, their GTM strategy kicked off following the website launch to raise brand awareness and recruit new talent. Their brand awareness campaign focused on introducing the new company as a merger of various companies to create one unified and solid force in the industry. The campaign ads drove users to the new website, where they could learn more about the merger, strengthened capabilities and industry presence. Recruitment focused ads used the precise targeting of paid social, search and social channels to retarget qualified individuals and tie the new brand to company mission. When clicked, users could view all job openings, or those most relevant to their skills set. 

Bluetext has observed incredible success of clients who implement a GTM strategy. Having a game plan to follow the launch of your new brand or website allows you to swiftly transition from building a new brand to building business success. A GTM strategy helps reach customers, recruits and other audience members and provide competitive advantage.

Benefits of GTM also include, but not limited to:

  • Creating awareness of a specific product or service.
  • Generating leads and converting leads into customers.
  • Maximizing market share by entering new markets, increasing customer engagement and outperforming competitors.
  • Protecting the current market share against competitors.
  • Strengthening brand positioning.
  • Reducing costs and optimizing profits.

Want to make a splash with your GTM strategy? See what Bluetext can do for you.

When trying to define your brand and go-to-market strategy, it’s all about asking the right questions and using the right processes to find the answers.  Continue reading to understand what this looks like and how to avoid brand regret. 

At the core of your brand is an emotional connection. We identify with brands and remain loyal when we establish an emotional connection. Read: I use [brand] because it makes me feel [emotion]. What does that look like for your brand? At Bluetext, our branding process seeks to answer that question for you. The process should challenge common beliefs and ensure that all constituents provide input to get to the core message and brand essence. We use a variety of workshops designed to do this, including individual stakeholder interviews and group exercises, ranging from adjective scales, metaphor association, and rapid point system voting in response to visuals. Using a combination of individual and group, and qualitative and quantitative data helps solve for the “halo effect” created when everyone follows the person with the most influence and the “bandwagon effect” when your human instinct is to agree with the group even when you disagree.

Interpreting qualitative answers is key. All too often, clients want to tell the world what they do, rather than the value they provide. Your ultimate messaging and visual identity should communicate your unique value. Want a quick pressure test? Remove your logo or name from an ad. If someone was familiar with your brand, could they still associate the ad with your brand? If the answer is “no,” the ad is missing your brand essence. Now replace your name or logo with your competitor’s. Does the ad still make sense? If so, it’s once again missing your brand essence. 

Once you’ve embraced the process and put in the work, pressure testing the output is essential to its success. From surveys, to focus groups, AB testing, or even fancy facial electromyography, any testing is better than not testing. Depending on your go-to-market strategy and target audience, your marketing agency can recommend tests that fit. You may uncover something important not considered. 

Finally, ensure the implementation is consistent across channels, including Search. There is a lot of noise out there. It can take many, many touchpoints to remember a brand. The more consistent your brand is deployed, the more likely your audience is to remember. In a Search dominated world, consistency also allows your audience to find you through keywords you have cemented in their mind as long as SEO is a part of your strategy.

Don’t confuse consistency with failure to evolve. It’s important to regularly test brand awareness and sentiment and conduct competitive research. The brand that worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. A good marketing agency will push you to shed the comfort of what has always worked. 

A final word to the wise. It’s better to spend the resources upfront with a marketing agency who can get it right than to spend more resources later correcting a brand perception that has already been solidified in the mind of your audience. Avoid brand regret. 

To learn more about other tips and tricks to avoid branding regret, check out our interview with Terry Jones, Founder and CEO of Travelocity, and Founding Chairman of Kayak, below.

A style guide is a fundamental apparatus for building up brand character. A brand style guide establishes your brand identity and is an extraordinary resource for making on-brand, consistent content. 

The style guide is crucial in communicating your brand and design standards. Not only does this help maintain consistency with your company’s brand, but it also helps other key members of your team, such as writers, project managers and developers by serving as a solid point of reference. 

Style guides should include examples of brand messaging, headlines and overall themes. This is significant in that it sets up a solid brand voice that reverberates with the crowd, which is a key driver for building brand mindfulness. Overtime, that mindfulness and consistency creates trust with your audience. This ensures every time someone experiences your brand, they’re experiencing the same underlying elements and traits.

So what should go in a style guide? Typically, you want to include a logo, tagline, typography, color palettes, messaging guidelines and imagery guidelines. A more robust style guide can include things like the company overview, brand attributes, brand elements, iconography and more. While you provide specific guidelines on how to apply the brand, it’s important to also provide examples of how not to use the brand. This can include improper logo usage, incorrect use of design elements, messaging to avoid, and imagery to steer clear from. It’s important to be as clear and comprehensive as possible.

Remember: this style guide is a living document! You should expect your style guide to change as your brand evolves over time. It’s important to keep it updated as rules and guidelines change. Just like a living, breathing organism, your brand will continually be adapting, evolving and changing. 

Style guides shouldn’t just be used by large well-known companies. Every company should have one – no matter the size. This will not only help members of your internal team in staying consistent with the branded artifacts they produce, but it will also help ensure your company is seen as a cohesive and trustworthy entity. The more credible you are seen with your customers and your audience, the more positive they will feel about you. 

Interested in a style guide and how it can transform your business? Bluetext can help. Contact us today.

 

So you’re a top technology company who wants to be seen as modern and ever-evolving — much like the rest of the industry! To stay ahead you’ll need a modern, eye-catching design.  Perhaps you want to redesign your logo… Where do you start?  A memorable logo can ensure your brand stays top of mind and up to par with big-league competitors. Updating any aspect of your corporate visual identity can be intimidating, especially when making changes to one of the most identifiable features. There are many considerations: How can you establish or maintain your brand identity and form a strong connection with your audience? Do you want to fit in or stand out? How can you modernize your existing design?

One way to begin the process of redesigning your logo is by identifying some “zigs” and “zags” in your industry. Digital branding agencies define “zigs” as companies that follow industry standards and recent trends when designing and marketing their brands and “zags” as designs that opt to stand out in the crowd by moving against the latest trends. 

Tech Industry Zigs

Gradient

Using gradients in web design emerged as a hot trend as early as 2016 and has since grown in popularity with no signs of slowing down. There are several companies that have successfully incorporated this trend into their CVI, for example, Stripe, an economic infrastructure technology company. Stripe’s gradient style has become incorporated throughout the brand and website, creating an ethereal and futuristic feel to its services,  Instagram can be seen as one of the OG trendsetters, debuting gradient design into their mobile app icon in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Minimalistic

Another recent trend has been the simplification of logos and website design. Many brands have adopted this trend to streamline their CVI. This branding trend aims to provide a clean and clear brand vision, which is ideal for smaller screens as users continue to shift to mobile browsing. As we shift away from decorative and intricate details that look great on a billboard but cluttered on a mobile device, simple logos stay relevant and readable for modern consumers.

Many major global tech brands have already opted to use multiple iterations of their logo design – DropBox, Atlassian, and Android all now include a single image or letter logo option within their design range. 

Illustrative

One way to establish a connection with your audience is by designing a unique illustration to accompany your wordmark. A key advantage to this trend is that when done successfully, brands can use the illustration as an identifier without the wordmark. Take Mailchimp’s Freddie as an example. In 2018, Mailchimp simplified their mascot’s design and gave him an established spot next to the logo. 

Tech Industry Zags

Fine Line Detail

While many tech companies are moving in the direction of simplification, some are going against the grain. One example is cloud migration software company Cloudreach, whose finger-print-like logo detail denotes security and reliability at first glance. Using fine detail has its advantages. Detailed designs can speak volumes about your brand value and tone. Especially in the technology industry rich with complex products you may want your logo to symbolize unique detail and features of your products. In contrast, simplified designs may be preferred to make complex technology more approachable to everyday consumers.

Anti-Marketing

Most technology-oriented marketing campaigns inspire the target audience to use the advertised product or service as much as possible. This statement holds true for most companies looking for customers to download and use their mobile apps. This is also where you can differentiate your campaign to stand out amongst the rest. For example, the newest campaign from the popular dating app, Hinge, inspires it’s the target audience to delete their app. Yes, you read that right. That may sound counterintuitive, however, it guarantees a different approach from their dating site counterparts, who focus on their service being the best at finding love for its users. Hinge’s campaign, instead, inspires its users to find love and delete the app. 

Of the campaign, Hinge CMO, Nathan Roth, said “It’s quite common for apps to optimize for time in-app, whether it’s to maximize subscription or advertising revenue. We are purely focused on our users’ success and that’s helping them find someone worth deleting the app for. That’s our single focus,”

Interested in learning more about the zigs and zags of the technology industry? Contact us.

 

 

 

In recent years illustration has evolved far beyond traditional child’s play. The classic art form that many people associate with children’s books actually has serious B2B benefits. 

More and more, illustration has become a focus of company web pages, getting more unique and colorful with each year. Illustrations can be a powerful tool in brand storytelling and avoiding the potential pitfall of cheesy stock alternatives. They can provide your customers with an approachable introduction to a brand, while also reinforcing design styles or colors key to your visual identity. For many B2B companies, illustrations have become an essential component of customer-facing imagery. 

Here at Bluetext, we see a variety of purposeful illustration styles. Two of the main objectives for B2B companies seeking illustration is to visually describe abstract products, or depict meaningful customer experiences. For many industries, such as tech or cybersecurity, showing literal subjects or end-user experience is not possible through photography, therefore, illustration is an ideal solution. 

Below are some of our favorite illustration themes used to take clients’ business goals to new heights. 

Flat

There’s no reason to shy away from simplicity! Flat illustrations have been a huge trend in 2020, with many major companies including GoDaddy, Mailchimp, and Slack implementing them into their brand designs. This illustration style is most often used to depict people or experiences. Stock photography tends to favor extremely generic scenarios, or let’s face it, painfully boring subjects. When your business wants to highlight a specific experience or incorporate as much branded detail as possible, custom art may be the way to go. Illustrative styles offer far more flexibility and adaptation, without falling flat.

Bluetext produced flat illustration styles for Centauri’s employee engagement campaigns to depict unique company events and contests that stock photos could not. 

3-Dimensional

Bluetext’s work for Cvent brought custom illustrations to life in a 3D animated video. Intended to immerse the viewer with a preview of the event experience, graphic designers and animators transformed human illustration into a realistic simulation. With this stunning visual design, Cvent was able to digitally communicate their in-person experience to remote viewers and translate their business value in the most powerful manner.

 

Sketch

Bluetext’s work for GMAC, Graduate Management Admissions Council, promotes graduate school admissions in an approachable and digestible manner. Stretch illustrations were used in the revamped CallingAllOptimists.com campaign to inspire people motivated to improve their future opportunities into action. Juxtaposing a serious life decision and often anxiety heavy admissions process with a uniquely, optimistic brand identity captures both the courage and the celebration of the end-user. Illustrative styles complemented real photography to provide a snapshot of the user, decision factors, and end result.

Monochromatic Gradient

In another successful campaign for GMAC, Bluetext designed custom humanistic illustrations to represent user personas. In awareness of a wide breadth of audience targets, the campaign opted to show a variety of potential applicants in a range of career stages. To resonate with a potential applicant, it was key that they could imagine themselves pursuing a graduate degree. To avoid isolating any potential audience members, Bluetext’s custom illustrations avoided biases of race or ethnicity by showing monochromatic styling of men and women in post-grad, young professionals, and even in established careers.

Product Illustration

Another top use case for illustrations is product depictions. Especially in service-based or digital industries, it can be a challenge to accurately depict what you’re selling to customers. Bluetext client RevBits, a cybersecurity software and service provider, overcame this obstacle with branded product illustrations. With a complex product lifecycle, visuals helped conceptualize their cybersecurity offerings in a clean and user-friendly format. Especially on webpages, product illustrations were an ideal way to communicate offerings to users scanning a webpage and without the time or desire to read long paragraphs of text. The illustrations utilized key brand elements such as color palettes and iconography to maintain a consistent brand experience throughout the website.

 

Digital illustrations are catching a new wave of excitement from companies across all industries. With an ever-expanding range of use cases and applications, we predict this will quickly become one of the most effective ways for B2C or B2B companies to start a more emotional conversation with users. With the rise of personalization and hyper-targeting, establishing warmer and more “human” relationships with clients and customers is a  proven way to strengthen loyalty and improve overall ROI. 

 

Interested in exploring the potential of a rebrand (or illustrations!) for your business? Contact Bluetext today.

Branding is one of the most important marketing strategies for a company. Your brand tells a story about who you are and what you do to prospects, clients, and, importantly, your internal employees. Branding typically involves a consistent and recognizable set of design elements, including colors, typography, logos, messaging, graphic elements, and more. It allows your company to make a consistent, meaningful, and lasting impression with consumers. Through your brand, you have the opportunity to stand out amongst the competition, showcase a product, but also drive new business by raising awareness for your company. But how do you keep branding consistent with various different products and/or services you want to highlight?

The Rise of Sub-Brands

Sub-branding is a lesser-known, yet equally as important, subdivision of a branding strategy. In an article from Brand Marketing Blog, “If you are a brand builder, then often there is more than one brand that you are building: the brand of your business and the brands of your products.” Sub-branding is focused on creating new subsections of the parent brand to best fit the specific products and/or services you offer to your customers. This is directly tied to the solution architecture of the company – the structure of how different offerings of a company are connected.  Typically, a sub-brand strategy shares the same fundamental factors of the overarching brand’s personality, tone, design, and image. This can include sharing common factors such as typography, imagery, and more. They utilize outside elements, including graphic elements, primary colors, messaging, etc., to stand out from the parent brand. What makes a sub-brand unique is its goal to appeal to a very specific, niche audience. 

Sourcefire Brands and Sub-Brands

To fully understand what a sub-brand is, let’s take a look at one of the most successful sub-brands in the Cybersecurity industry: Sourcefire. When Bluetext rebranded the company, we also worked with the Sourcefire team to sub-brand each of their most popular product offerings: FirePower, FireSight, FireAmp, and FireCloud. Each product has its own logo for users to differentiate between the four. While each product has its own unique logo, they still follow the overarching Sourcefire branding within the sub-brands: matching typography, custom graphic elements, abstract textures, and bold primary colors. 

The Impact

Sub-branding is extremely important as it creates exposure for both the parent and child brands. It helps customers easily differentiate, organize, and search in a complex environment. It creates the opportunity to engage both new and existing audiences while taking advantage of the trust previously built in your specific industry. Because a sub-brand appeals to a very specific and niche customer, you have the affirmation that your marketing messaging is as targeted as possible. Your customers have the ability to have a unique, custom experience that is completely separate from the parent brand and in turn, are more likely to engage with the parent brand’s other products if they connect with an individual sub-brand.

Want to elevate your brand even more? Bluetext can help.

Welcome to 2020, a year of new normals, routines, and best of all, new logos! The logo design trends in 2020 thus far have been an intriguing remix of new and old. Logos have taken a trip back in time to a variety of eras, while also remixing modern styles. We’ve seen the gamut of design trends; from neon 80’s juxtaposed against inky, to futuristic 3D gradients and custom animation. 

The key theme of 2020 logo design has been a digital-first focus. Many brands have modernized their logos for optimal web and mobile displays. For example, the popular gradient trend has evolved and merged with 3D design —a perfect fit for our smartphone society.

3D Gradients

Gradients are a unique way to blend any group of colors into a dynamic spectrum that exudes life and energy. Gone are the stark striped color transitions, as some brands have opted for a more subtle and gradual shift. This year, designers will give rise to the newest evolution of gradients creating depth and 3D effects in logos. Other top branding agencies are experimenting with new trends such as tapered gradients—ones that come to a central point and actually emphasize the contrast between their colors.

80’s Retro

Don’t thrift away your 80’s style just yet, because some fads never go out of fashion. Enough time has finally passed for all things 80’s to be cool again: video games, pop music, and the rebel attitude associated with them. In 2020, logo design agencies expect to see a resurgence of throwback logos accented with chrome, neon, and a lot of digital pixels. These styles give a nod to the old-school tech that preceded the glowing iPhone and laptop screens our eyes are glued to today. Nostalgic marketing has made a huge comeback in recent years, necessitating a cool, retro logo to accompany any throwback campaign. Throwback logos are popular because they capitalize on consumers’ nostalgia of old-school 80s tech, which is widely known to be retro, cool, and most importantly, collectible. Some logos reference nostalgic 80’s items by literally depicting the old school cassette tapes, arcade games, etc. Others embrace this trend with 80’s typography and design trends, like GV’s logo for LI Mowz.

Ultra Thin Lines

In 2020, high definition is leaving its mark on logo design. Designers push the envelope with extremely delicate lines, creating effects that can only work in the digital media. With extremely detailed linear patterns, logos began to feel ethereal and surreal — much like the original perception of radio and transmission media. With the new ability (and COVID necessity) for some brands to exist exclusively online, previous print limitations are eliminated.  In an age of high-resolution screens and defined displays, complex line design makes classic logos seem elementary and easily reproducible.

Multi-Layered

2020 has been all about complexity! Logos are going deeper than ever before using artfully layered color systems. Especially with new digital affordances, designers are reverting flat and semi-flat designs to build depth through color layering. While shapes and colors remain simple, their relationship has intensified. By adding additional layers, designers create complex logos with highlights, shadows, and overlapping colors to communicate the brand brands. Especially on digital screens, the ability to create three-dimensional effects creates a unique, almost tactile experience. 

Animated Logos

Top design agencies have been producing logo animation for some time now, but in 2020 we’ve seen more detailed and innovative plays on animation. Previous logos have been limited to simple movement, but over the years technology has allowed for more intricate and purposeful movement. Especially with a growing digital audience, animated logos can be more eye-catching and practical to the brand story. A popular 2020 logo design trend has been the blending of 2D and 3D animation or logos with multiple moving parts. These complex logo animations aim to take the viewer on a journey and tell a story. With lots of details to look at, the viewer looks at these logos longer than they’d look at a more simple logo animation and can potentially find something new they like about it every time they see it again.

The move toward animated logos comes from a similar place as the tapered gradient logos trend: when you’re designing for screens, there’s a whole lot more you can do as opposed to when you’re designing for print.

The logo design trends for 2020 will continue to build on everything designers have been exploring in the last few years, while also taking the design in directions that are totally new, totally fresh, totally right for an all-new decade. Let’s take a look at the top logo design trends that are already defining 2020.

 

What Is Visual Identity?

A visual identity is the combination of design elements people use to recognize your company. 

In general, your visual identity is composed of the brand’s overall aesthetic, use of colors, logo, brand name, typography, and smaller visual elements. These components, while minor on their own, can create a major impact on your brand identity when combined strategically. One example of a visual identity champion is McDonald’s. From their iconic arches to their color palette, they are a globally recognized brand. They’ve created a visual identity that isn’t limited by language or cultural boundaries.

Memorable, recognizable, and admirable are the three central goals of a strong brand identity. But of course, that’s easier said than done. Your visual identity should always be considered in context to your competitor set. If you’re a fast-food chain, McDonald’s red and yellow should probably come off the table. But if you’re an emerging tech company, those colors may be a great opportunity to differentiate in your industry! Consider working with a reputable branding and marketing agency, such as Bluetext, to run a full competitive analysis and to ensure you have a well-planned out brand that you can consistently maintain. 

Why Is It Important?

A well-defined visual identity allows you to ensure all your brand designs support your company and its overall business goals. In creating a visual identity, you’ll want to ensure you choose a logo, color palettes, fonts, visuals, and design style that fits the way you want your company positioned in the market. Are you looking for approachability? Maybe you want to be perceived as more aggressive in price or quality. All of these brand attributes can be strengthened with visual elements. Beyond defining these individual elements, you’ll want to ensure they are cohesive and can be used consistently. 

By creating a consistent and well-defined visual identity you become more memorable and recognizable for your customers. 

In developing your visual identity, there are countless free checklists and templates to utilize. But a word of caution, nothing can replace the creativity of a top-quality graphic designer. The good news? Bluetext has a full design team that’s ready to assist you every step of the way in developing your company’s visual identity. 

Do you really want your brand to stand out? Then consider a custom font. Companies such as Netflix, Google, Apple, and the BBC all utilize custom fonts to help stand out from the competition while increasing their recognizability. Just ensure your custom font meets accessibility standards. Decorative or overly stylized fonts can often be difficult to read even for users without visual impairments or reading disabilities.

Key Elements of a Visual Identity

So where do you begin building a strong visual identity? This is far from an all-encompassing list, but here are the top elements Bluetext suggests you start with. Keep in mind, the priority elements may vary based on the platform and the brand. For example, the specific visual identity elements needed for an app for a global brand will be different from what’s needed for a regional-sized company’s desktop site. 

That being said, here’s a concise list of elements Bluetext considers cornerstone in a brand identity:

  • Logo: Essential for every business. Your logo is one of the first elements users will notice, so you need to make sure it’s memorable. 
  • Color Palette: Defining your band’s color palette increases consistency across your brand. 
  • Fonts: Again, a consistent font is essential. Whether it’s a set of free fonts or custom fonts, make sure they reflect your business’ goals. 
  • Visuals: From iconography to images, ensuring they align with the rest of your visual identity is essential. 
  • Design Style: Whether its modern, eclectic, or industrial, sticking to one design will increase coherence between all your visual identity elements. 

Creating Your New Visual Identity

A good place to start in any rebrand?  Consider looking at other notable companies, within and outside your own industry! There is brand inspiration all around us, so next step; ensure the success of your new brand by enlisting the help of a professional, such as Bluetext. A branding agency can take your list of brand inspirations, along with creative field trip and industry-backed insights to help guide you through every step of the way. 

One of the biggest takeaways is to ensure each element supports each other and thus the overall visual identity. The other most important takeaway is to ensure you consistently use your visual identity across all branding opportunities to set your company up for success. 

As the world has changed in the blink of an eye, so has the way we market to consumers. Now, more than ever, your website exists as BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT doorway to your brand and your brand experience. While stores stay shut, and face-to-face interaction is vastly limited, brands will rely on reaching their target audiences via their websites. Therefore, your website is mission-critical to your success.

Bluetext has published a 5 part blog series to help you think about and pressure test if your website is the best it can be.

Virtual Executive Briefing Centers are a valuable resource for companies wishing to show customers and prospects their full range of solutions in action, especially new solutions that the partner may not have implemented yet in its own organization. Customized presentations, live demos and in-depth discussions can be arranged. VEBCs offer a lot of great benefits for organizations including:

  • Present your brand in a very innovative way with the latest HTML5 and video technologies
  • Reach a wider audience, save money and drive efficiencies by reducing travel costs to visit a physical center
  • Get your thought leaders delivering their message to a wider audience than their physical weekly calendar allows
  • Deliver vertical specific messaging and solutions in a customized fashion
  • Personalize the experience based on the understanding of the audiences job title, history with the enterprise, and other components the digital environment can capture and feed into the site
  • Juice up your SEO with a smart build and customer journey that enhances your SEO footprint

Bluetext has had a lot of experience designing and developing Virtual Briefing Centers.  Here are just a few examples of the innovation we have helped drive for our clients:

McAfee and Intel Security’s Future Agency

McAfee and Intel turned to Bluetext to design a campaign to demonstrate the advancements in cyber security that the companies are driving across the Federal Government. Named The Agency of the Future and found on the web at futureagency.com, the solution integrates an interactive, 3D experience and a series of videos with lead generation integrated throughout. The experience was enhanced with a continuous monitoring webcast that targeted federal IT security experts and drew more than 3000 leads. The campaign won major kudos at McAfee corporate.

CSC’s Digital Briefing Center

CSC’s Digital Briefing Center is where customers, partners and prospects from across the globe can come to learn more about the key technology conversations and market shifts CSC is driving into the market.

The center is driven with immersive 3D video technology that is completely interactive through Html 5 overlays throughout the user journey.

Following launch, Bluetext’s collaborative creation with CSC’s Digital Marketing team became the top performing component of the csc.com global web presence, a huge feat for a Fortune 500 corporation.

Version 2.0 features new capabilities spanning:

 

  • Multi-floor scalability

  • Triple screen experience

  • Dynamic social media integration

  • Triggered infographic visualizations synched with briefing videos

  • Chaptered video interactivity

 

The following video of CSC’s head of global brand and digital marketing talks about this project:

TalkShop by Cooper Thomas

From corporate meetings to conferences and workshops, connecting with your workforce and customers is an essential element of business. Bluetext was hired by Cooper Thomas to help enhance their virtual training and meeting services and next-generation virtual platform that can help their customers get the most out of their customers’ virtual events.

With their virtual event platform, you can now connect with employees, customers, and clients conveniently and cost-effectively. The unique speaker-training program guides your presenters to deliver more effective and engaging virtual presentations. The speaker coaches provide focused support to help busy subject matter experts become polished presenters. They also provide project management and program support for events ranging from single training sessions to multi-day conferences, as well as on-site support for virtual and face-to-face events.

Content marketing is a consistently invaluable tool to increase conversions by educating your leads and customers. As we welcome a new year as well as a new decade, it’s important to understand the emerging content marketing trends that will dominate 2020. How should you change your digital content marketing strategy to keep pace with the ever-evolving nature of content marketing?

In this blog post, we take a look at 5 content marketing trends that will keep you ahead of the curve in 2020 and beyond. 

Data-Driven Content

How are you, as a brand, determining what content is useful and relevant for your audience? That’s where data comes in. By harnessing the lessons of previously successful content marketing initiatives, companies are able to reverse engineer the data and identify KPIs that preceded the success. Once those KPI’s have been established, it is easier to create content in that same strain and capitalize on the proven success. A DC-based digital branding agency like Bluetext can assist you in determining successful KPI’s and creating the rich content your audience wants to read. 

Smart Device-Centric Content

Although smart devices have been a key consideration in B2C content marketing for quite some time, this year, more focus will be placed on specific functions of smart devices such as voice search. Voice search is becoming such an integral mobile tool, 48% of consumers are using voice for “general web searches.” Companies looking to stay ahead of the curve should look to optimize their content specifically for voice search purposes. Understanding how users search via their voice will help you tailor your existing content for voice-SEO and create more effective headlines for future content initiatives. A DC digital web design agency like Bluetext can help by conducting an analysis of your audience’s voice searches and recommend changes to your existing content and future content to maximize the return on your investment.

Conversational Marketing is King

In the digital era which champions online shopping, consumers are looking to establish trust and connection through more personalized, authentic shopping experiences. Conversational marketing can aid your company in engaging with your audience in a more genuine way. By engaging in a conversation, your company gains access to more personalized data about your consumers such as their specific needs and future goals. Investing in tools such as chatbots or real human-to-human experiences can make all the difference in your competitive industry. As we progress through 2020, chatbots and other AI tools will continue to improve and positively impact lead generation.

2020: The Year of the Snippet

As we know, Google dominates the search engine market share worldwide, with a resounding 92.71% of the market. When considering a user’s search intent, Google will display what they call a “snippet” at the top of the page, which provides consumers with key points within a piece of content, allowing them to receive the information they’re looking for faster. As such, it’s becoming more commonplace for consumers to enter a longtail keyword into Google, knowing that they will receive the information they’re looking for via a snippet, without clicking any page links whatsoever.

In order to win that highly coveted snippet spot, companies should look to hire an interactive web agency such as Bluetext. Bluetext’s SEO analysts can conduct an audit of your current content and pinpoint exactly where changes need to be made in order to signify to Google crawlers that your content is important. Optimizing your content for snippets will greatly enhance user experience, as users will be able to find the information they are searching for concisely and quickly. Not only will an interactive web agency audit and enhance current site content, but they will also create a content strategy and editorial calendar so your brand can continually publish content your users are searching for.  

The Popularity of Podcasts

According to a recent study, 51% of the entire US population has listened to a podcast in 2019. That figure is up by 7% from the previous year. As we look ahead to 2020, podcasts will continue to dominate, as that number is expected to keep rising. Although it may seem like everyone has a podcast these days, there are still opportunities for brands to get ahead of the curve and start their own podcasts.

That being said, if you see a clear demand for audio content within your market, ensure that you create a podcast the right way. Podcasts should have clearly defined KPI’s, a regular posting schedule, and content your audience will actually care to listen to. A Virginia internet & inbound marketing agency like Bluetext can partner with your company to assess the need for a podcast in your industry and among your competitors, help you create valuable content and even develop a paid advertisement plan to spread awareness via other podcasts your audience is listening to.

2020 is already well underway and in order to achieve success, companies need to get ahead of this year’s trends with a thorough and achievable marketing strategy and plan of action. A DC digital branding agency such as Bluetext can audit your current digital content marketing strategy and suggest recommendations to help improve your current trajectory. To learn more about Bluetext and how we can help you, check out our work here.