Rapid response is a core component of Bluetext’s public relations services. We focus on having messages and media targets teed up when there is an opportunity for our clients to contribute expertise to breaking news events, whether it is a cyber attack, tech policy development, or in this case the horrific wildfires raging across Southern California. As the leading Emergency Mass Notification Services (EMNS) provider, Bluetext positioned client OnSolve’s CEO to speak about the challenge local officials face to alert citizens when wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters hit; ways for citizens to stay safe; and innovative new capabilities available through providers like OnSolve. Multiple interviews were arranged for OnSolve, including this live segment with The Weather Channel.

Need help with driving better PR results?  Bluetext can help!

There’s good news and bad news for companies hoping to make their mark in the cyber security universe. First the good news: The market for these products is huge and growing exponentially. Security Analyst and researcher Richard Stiennon, in a column on Forbes.com and extrapolating from Gartner data, projects a ten-fold increase in IT security spending over the next 10 years- to $639 billion annually by 2023. That’s a number that would have any company executive working overtime to tap into.

But here’s the bad news: This is not exactly a secret. The competition is fierce and growing, as the growing number of solution providers races to meet this demand and take advantage of the opportunity.

It’s easy to have a marketing plan that pushes key messages out to prospective customers. At Bluetext, we think an influencer strategy is essential as part of that plan, and especially in such a crowed space as cyber security.

How any company—from established household names to challenger brands—can break through the noise and the clutter to attract the attention of this market requires an engaging and creative marketing approach that clearly sets it apart and above the competition. This demands a fine understanding of the value it brings to its customers and why it’s the best solution for any particular challenge.

Yet, simply having great creative is only half the battle. Getting that message out to the market is a whole new challenge, and needs both a direct approach and an in-direct strategy—the bank shot to reach the intended audience. Direct tactics are obvious—direct mail, email blasts, online and print advertising, a digital presence, trade shows and webinars; these are all direct appeals to potential customers.

The indirect approach is in many ways more difficult. It requires using industry influencers to reach their larger audiences with your content and messages. That is no small task, and it takes a dedicated investment in time and research. Here are some of the required elements to implement an effective influencer strategy:
1. Identify the best influencers for cyber security.
2. Recruit those influencers as allies and advocates for your thought leadership.
3. Engage those influencers through social media and direct outreach so that they will spread the word to their audiences.

Let’s take these one at a time.

Identify. Identifying the right influencers for any market, and in particular for cyber security, takes some research and digging. The key is finding the leaders who not only have the most followers on social media, but whose content—including tweets, blog posts and news articles—are shared the most frequently. When Bluetext executes an influencer campaign for its clients, we look first at the number of twitter followers and LinkedIn connections for each influencer candidate. But that’s only our starting point. More important is researching their history of shares among that audience. If a particular individual has a large number of followers yet few who share and rebroadcast that content, it could mean that his followers don’t find his content to be valuable, or that he doesn’t post content very often. If there are a lot of shares, retweets and comments, that’s a good indication that the person is read and taken seriously across the industry.

Recruit. Recruiting an influencer doesn’t mean offering them a job. It means building a relationship so that that person knows you are reading his content and pushing it out to your audience. The best way to do this takes work. The first step is to follow that person on Twitter, and to subscribe to his feed if he has a syndication service. The second step requires that the person’s content be reviewed on a daily basis. Any time there is a post that is relevant to your market, share it, follow it, retweet it, comment on it or call it out and add your own perspective. The idea is demonstrate that you are an active fan and follower who is paying attention to the expert.

Engage. Engaging with the influencer is a long-term project. After you have shown interest and built a credible track record of reading and sharing his content, he can be approached as an industry expert, a colleague and a reporter. That might include asking for his opinion on a new development, offering to share an announcement that he might find interesting, and even giving an advance look at a new piece of research or development. The goal is to be viewed the same way that a reporter would view a valuable source—with credibility and interest. When that engagement is solidified, the influencer is much more likely to pay attention to your content and to share it with his audience.

This may seem like a cumbersome process, and Bluetext dedicates a fair amount of energy to make this happen for our clients. But the payoff is significant. Using the bank shot to reach a much broader audience through sources that they trust can help rise above the competition in a crowded and growing market. A smart influencer strategy takes time and commitment, but it’s worth the effort.

 

Assumptions can be a dangerous thing. Often, sales, marketing and PR teams make assumptions that not only undermine integrated marketing efforts, but the viability of the business itself.

Marketing Team Assumptions About Sales

A marketing team might assume that content it is creating for sales teams proves invaluable to generating leads or closing sales. The fact is, however, a 2015 survey by Highspot indicates that 65 percent of that content is never actually used by the sales teams. That same survey indicates less than 10% of the marketing budget goes to efforts that produce sales results.

An effective integrated marketing effort requires a two-way conversation between marketing and sales, and these conversations must happen frequently and with multiple members of the team. Sales executives can provide marketing leaders with a holistic view of market trends, sales team paint points, and competitive challenges, but on-the-ground sales troops are the ones who interact with existing and prospective customers every day. They understand nuances between different market verticals (i.e. – government buyer v enterprise buyer v non profit buyer), and what content is proving most valuable in meetings. Integrating that sales team feedback must happen before – not after – marketing content strategies are developed.

PR Team Assumptions About Sales

PR teams might assume that media coverage is creating “air cover” for sales teams to go in and close sales. But often this is not the case. First, PR and marketing teams may not understand the buyer “trigger point.” Too often, integrated marketing efforts attempt to solve a sales problem that doesn’t exist – or doesn’t exist yet. For example, a marketing team might assume that the primary paint point for sales is that competitor technology product offerings are positioned more strongly in the market, thus requiring content to demonstrate your product is superior based on price, performance, efficiency, etc.

This may be valuable; however, it is possible the more immediate sales team obstacle is that the buyer is stuck earlier in his/her decision journey. They may require content that educates buyers on why an underlying technology is more secure and superior to what is currently being used. There may be a lack of understanding on the company’s suite of offerings, or even credibility issues with the brand itself. Only through in-depth and frequent conversations with sales teams can you be sure that the content being created is optimized to the buyer trigger point, and timed correctly on the buyer journey.

Another false assumption often made by PR teams is that there is a process in place to ensure any media coverage generated or thought leadership content produced is funneled in real time to sales. The Highspot survey indicates otherwise, finding that 28% of content is never even found by sales, and that sales teams spend nearly one-third (31%) of their time searching for it. Highspot also found that 24% of companies have formalized marketing to sales handoffs, which helps explain why PR and integrated marketing content often never quite makes it to the individuals who can do the most with it.

Everyone company’s definition of “integrated” is different, but for organizations to truly benefit from valuable marketing content and efforts, it is critical to ensure sales teams are not on the outside looking in.

As digital marketing evolves and new channels emerge to target business, consumer and government audiences, the pressure is on marketing firms to push clients into waters that are sometimes deep and potentially un-chartered. Let’s face it…another eBook or press release just won’t cut it in 2017. If those are the ideas coming from your marketing firm then it is time to shop for a new one.

Recently my partner Jason Siegel wrote a great 2017 Survival Guide blog https://bluetext.com/survival/ which highlights several areas that marketers need to be thinking about. Make sure to check it out.

I recently had a chance to visit the National Retail Federation’s 2017 BIG Show in New York. It was a great event and demonstrated how marketing firms can think outside the box at an industry conference that many would consider very traditional. Here are a few ideas that hopefully you will hear from your agency in the months ahead:

• Remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA), as defined by Google, is a feature that lets you customize your search ads campaign for people who have previously visited your site, and tailor your bids and ads to these visitors when they’re searching on Google and partner sites. If you dipped the toes in the water with re-targeting in 2016, then in 2017 it is likely that you will begin to hear about RLSA from your marketing firm.
• Instant Articles from Facebook. If you spend any time blogging or creating valuable content, the key is to find as many channels as possible to distribute it. With Instant Articles from Facebook, you hit a world of users that may not have been touched in the past, you can distribute easily, and you get solid analytics to see what how the content is performing. It is this continued innovation from companies like Facebook that marketing firms should be presenting to you on a regular basis.
• The continued emergence of augmented and virtual reality. This is an area of marketing technology that will cross the chasm in 2017 and go more mainstream, as more companies want to create unique and immersive customer experiences. As budgets go more digital, it is critical to think about all of the unique ways that virtual reality can impact revenue. Digital briefing centers, gamification, customer service – all of these areas can be impacted positively through augmented and virtual reality.

We are 30 days into 2017. Has your agency recommended any new ideas? Time is ticking and the last thing you want to do is look ahead to 2018 planning and have a wish list of ideas that stayed on the shelf for another year…

 

A few weeks back, I posted a blog about over-used PR terms to avoid. Needless to say, that post generated lots of responses and even a clever email from an old colleague that tried to use all them in one friendly note to me. The list of pr terms to avoid seems to be endless. So many to choose from, so little time.

So, due to popular demand, here are seven more PR terms avoid – to debate, disagree with, eliminate from your online dictionary, but above all else, to please stop using. And as with my previous post, I too am guilty of using some of these terms and will take my own medicine. I also recognize that language is defined by common usage, so that even though some of these terms may not be allowed in the Queen’s English, dictionaries reflect how people actually use words, regardless of the Queen. Nevertheless, I am fighting a last stand to get these words out of the PR world, at least for now.

• Leverage. This is a tricky one because as a noun, I think it’s perfectly fine. The problem is when it is so frequently used as a verb, its meaning becomes vague and just seems lazy.
• Impact. I know I’m losing this battle, but the word “impact” is a noun, not a verb or a gerund (ending in “ing”), and certainly not “impactful.” That’s just removing whatever impact it had in the first place.
• Their. As in, “Bluetext is a cutting-edge digital marketing agency – their work is amazing!” While the sentence may be accurate, it still doesn’t work. Agencies, companies and inanimate objects are “its”, not “theirs.” This is a pet peeve of mine, and I always correct this whenever I see it.
• Unique, when preceded by “somewhat” or some similar modifier. The word “unique” is binary – something is either unique or it isn’t –  there is nothing in-between.
• Disruptive. This is a big red flag in a PR pitch or press release. Unless when talking about a student’s behavior in kindergarten, let’s all agree that this is both over-used and not used correctly. We can only look backward to see if a new product or technology was in fact disruptive. Predicting this in advance is wishful thinking.
• Authentic. I was once guilty of using this word far too often. The idea was that campaigns would resonate better with target audiences through content such as social media and blog posts if they were “authentic” as opposed to “artificial” in their voice.  In fact, everything we do for our clients should be authentic, and pointing this out just undermines its credibility.
• State-of-the-Art. Doesn’t every client want to describe their product as “state-of-the-art”? Let the product speak for itself. The audience can decide whether it’s new and different or not.

Part 3 of PR terms to avoid will be forthcoming.

Looking for an agency to take your PR results to the next level?  Contact us.

Everywhere you turn people want to talk about content marketing. What platform are you using, what content are you pushing, what channels are you leveraging and what is the right cadence of distribution are all questions content marketers are thinking about every day to position their product one step closer to their prospective consumers. As consumer marketing gets more and more targeted and sophisticated, the right content strategy is a critical element across any marketing plan.

 

If 2015 was about getting your feet wet, 2016 is about creating a strategy and operationalizing it in order to drive real results. But if you read the numbers you will see that while everyone is now doing it, they don’t know if they are being successful or even what success looks like. So here are some recommendations to think about as you are sitting down to determine if you are approaching your content marketing properly:

 

1. Know your audience. We all think we know our customers, but how much data or research do you really have into their preferences? Do you understand why they have engaged or bought your products in the past and why they may again? Are you analyzing all of the data at your fingertips (Google Analytics, email marketing metrics, social metrics, brand sentiment, premium content downloads. Etc.) Knowing your audience is the most critical first step in launching an effective content marketing strategy to turn prospects into buyers.

 

2. Know the Journey of Your Buyers. As you move your customers through a traditional funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion, advocacy), what content is most critical at each step to keep them progressing? Is your message resonating with them? Are you materials up to snuff? Are your prospects seeing your product or brand in the most consistent, effective manner across every potential channel?

 

3. Create and document your plan. Doing content marketing by feel is not smart. Create a plan which outlines your target, your messages, your channels, and your calendar or cadence of activities. Each week when you huddle as a team it is much easier to make sure everyone is doing their assigned roles and progressing the program. Clearly you will want to course correct as your review the metrics, but starting with a solid plan can keep you one step ahead of your prospective customers.

 

4. Measure, Evaluate and Evolve. The more you look at the numbers, discuss what they mean, and make sure everyone on your team understands the impact of their actions, the better your program will become. A weekly review, even if for 15 minutes, can you a long way to ensure that you don’t get too far off course over the course of a month or quarter.

 

5. Take some Risks. Sure, everyone will want to use traditional channels (social, web, sponsored, etc.), but moving out of your comfort zone to try a channel where you have not spent time or money in the past can be effective.

 

6. Combine Paid and Earned Efforts for Content Distribution. The best content in the world will fall flat without distribution to an engaged audience. Unless you are a well-known consumer brand with a large following, leveraging paid channels including social networks and search are critical for an effective program.

 

7. What She Said. Engage influencers to amplify content marketing efforts. In today’s consumer marketing world the opinion and recommendations of influencers can go a long way and deliver the same impact as a great media article.

 

These recommendations can help you hone your content marketing strategy for 2016. The less prepared you are to succeed, the less your chances for driving real success with content marketing.

 

Successful digital campaigns need to connect to its audience while simultaneously getting the company’s message across.  Digital marketers spend a huge amount of time analyzing their target market and audience before building a campaign and crafting an implementation strategy for seamless execution.  Here are five tips to help your company create a successful digital campaign.

1. Know your personas. Personas are fictional characters representing a company’s potential customers.  Each persona has its own role, goals, challenges, company, job, skills, preferences, and so forth.  Understanding your personas and building a detailed profile for each is a key step in creating an effective digital campaign.
2. Analyze your competitors. Keep an eye on the public-facing marketing efforts of your competitors to understand how they are targeting their consumers.  By gaining a better understanding of your competition, it provides insight to how you should position yourself in the market to stay ahead of the competition.
3. Optimize your SEO. Understand the keywords your personas are searching for on search engines and integrate those keywords in your digital campaign’s SEO strategy.  Optimize the meta data of your campaign by integrating your target keywords in your campaign’s title, content, meta description, URL, and image alt text.
4. Set an offer strategy. Once your digital campaign has successfully captured a consumer’s attention, you need an offer strategy to draw them in.  A common approach is through the promotion of gated premium content.  Understanding the content that appeals to each of your personas will direct the premium content offer that should be tailored for each.  A complete profile for each persona will guide a company’s content creation and fill any gaps in its content offerings.
5. Create a lead strategy. Although generating leads is the goal of a digital campaign, it is not the end goal.  An internal strategy needs to be in place to continuously inform and engage a lead, whether through email or other mediums, with the end goal of transition a lead to an eventual customer.

A successful digital campaign requires a significant amount of planning before it can be built, tested, and implemented.  Developing an adept understand of the market environment alongside a solid SEO and content strategy are the key factors to launching a successful digital campaign.

Looking for best in class digital marketing?  Contact us.

Rebranding is not to be taken lightly. It demands a commitment of time, energy and resources to be successful. There are many things a company should consider and analyze before the decision to rebrand is made.  As the world grows increasingly digital, more and more aspects of people’s lives are affected by the instantaneous nature of information. This needs to factor in to the direction the brand needs to take. The accessibility of information at people’s finger tips has changed the mindset of consumers, posing significant challenges:

Where are your consumers?  It is difficult nowadays to find someone who does not own a smartphone with the ability to access the internet anytime and anywhere.  As consumers spend more time on smaller screens, companies must optimize all aspects of their websites and platforms to perform on these devices— or risk hurting their brand with hard-to-read and poorly-rendered webpages.  Companies either need to rebrand and keep up with the times or risk becoming obsolete.

Are you targeting effectively?  With the rise of the digital age is the emergence of social media platforms and numerous new ways for a company to reach the people they would like to target.  Each new medium requires a different strategy to navigate and not all companies are equipped to immediately do so.  A company’s current messaging and image may not have the ability to capture the attention of its target audience.  These obstacles are a clear sign that a company needs to revamp its brand to maintain a strong market presence.

How flexible is your current brand?  A company’s graphics and visuals must be scalable and adapt to different mediums.  Brand assets in the modern era are used for web, mobile, print assets, social media, icons, and the list goes on.  All these elements must be taken into consideration starting at the core of a brand’s design for the company to grow along with its consumer base.  When a company is unable to effectively utilize its brand in new mediums, a brand redesign is needed before the company falls too far behind.

As the digital age brings new challenges, it also brings new opportunities.  An increasingly responsive world may cause initial difficultly for a company adjusting to adapt, but by rebranding doors are opened for the new brand to reach its target audience like never before.

Looking for agency help?  Contact us

It has been a tremendous first half of the year for Bluetext across many fronts. We have won many exciting new projects, landed some very interesting clients, added some awesome staff, and taken on and won against some stiff competition.

In the last three weeks alone we were named public sector PR agency of record for two of the most recognized technology companies in the country, one on each coast.

For each of these two companies, the public sector is a critical market for their growth as each has technology that is in high demand across the Government. Interestingly, each company has a corporate agency which provided little support across the public sector, and each indicated that their agency did not focus on or “get” the public sector.

We get the public sector. We know how to effectively market and communicate in this market. And we know how to craft a PR campaign that is impactful to make noise and move the needle. Here are five recommendations to consider when thinking about your public sector PR program:
1. Get Creative. Product announcements don’t garner much coverage unless you are a massive company or it is a major breakthrough. But leveraging a trend in the market to talk about how your product can drive mission effectiveness can be a subtle but smart way to let your audience know about your new product or solution.

2. Government-ize the message. Take the product and solution announcements coming out of corporate and look at the messages that will resonate in this market. We know the public sector buyer is unique, therefore the message needs to be relevant and directed.

3. Make Your Content Consumable. Create listicles and snackables that can be shared easily across a wide variety of mediums.

4. Be Present and Relevant. Make sure your thought leaders are trained and ready to deliver a strong message. Many companies are competing for limited ink. The right PR team and the right message can go a long way.

5. Find the References. Sure, it is hard to get a Government customer to speak with a reporter about how they are using your technology. But if you approach them in a more subtle way to jointly pursue an award or speaking opportunity it can provide a great way to put your customers in the spotlight and begin the process of finding out how reference-able they really are.

If the public sector is an important market for your company and you are not garnering the right type of attention give us a call. We would love to talk about how we can deliver a campaign with impact…that is what we do best.

Top branding firms focus on a variety of factors when rebranding a company.  A brand refresh is a large undertaking that involves individuals at all levels in an organization to successfully implement.  With the aid of a branding firm, the process can be smoother than expected.  Here are 5 more things top branding firms to consider when rebranding your company:

What is your company’s reputation in the market?  A company’s reputation can precede it in the market place and form impressions in the consumer’s mind even before they have exposure with your brand.  If your company has less than a positive reputation within the market place, rebranding will provide you the opportunity to start anew with a clean slate.

Are you planning to expand your business abroad?  There are many adjustments for a company to take their business into the global markets, and a rebrand may be necessary for a company to ensure they appeal to consumers in the global markets past cultural and social lines.  Top branding firms are experts in helping companies navigate this tricky terrain to achieve growth in international business ventures.

Has there been a drastic change in executive leadership?  A change in a company’s top leadership positions may cause enough organizational changes that the current brand no longer resonates with the company’s new direction.  Rebranding the company becomes necessary for the company to maintain a cohesive voice and image.

Is there the need to further develop a corporate identity? As a company grows and develops overtime, the preliminary guidelines set for the brand at the beginning may no longer be strong enough to define the brand as a whole.  Without a standardized visual style or extended color palette for example, the company’s corporate identity quickly becomes muddled.  Top branding firms set disciplined brand guidelines to ensure uniformity company wide.

Has there been a change of company ownership?  When a merger or acquisition occurs, or if a company shifts from private to pubic, there is the immediate move to rebrand the firm.  In the case of a merger or acquisition, rebranding fully integrates the new portions of business under one corporate identity to maintain uniformity in the market.  When a company shifts from private to public ownership, the company now must comply with legal requirements and top branding firms can be a key player in aiding this transition.

A brand refresh is more often than not a necessary marketing strategy as a company grows and undergoes changes.  Top branding firms aid companies of all industries in making this critical change and continuing achieving success in their respective markets.

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