A new trend in progressive enterprise organizations is the rise of the CIO. No, not the Chief Information Officer, but the Chief Innovation Officer, charged with ensuring that idea-driven companies produce both customer-facing products and services as well as internal efficiency. For a brand’s marketing team, this means a new opportunity to incorporate the latest technologies and digital strategies into the marketing and communications programs that can take that organization to the next level.

The modern business environment is being propelled by startups, alongside small and mid-sized businesses who have the capacity to stay nimble and pivot amidst constant change. Large organizations on the other hand function more like monolithic battleships, that struggle to change direction as the seas of global markets shift. By failing to adapt away from business-as-usual, these companies will fail to execute enterprise-wide digital transformations when their markets, offerings, and landscapes shift. To keep up with the competitive digital marketing marketplace, that approach needs to move towards a culture of innovation.

Challenges CIOs Face

Even companies progressive enough to hire a Chief Innovative Officer experience difficulty incorporating the innovations they are brought aboard to spur. One of these challenges is that many organizations are worn out from optimistic promises of “digital transformation.” Upon entering their new roles, CIOs have found challenges receiving budget sponsorship from CEOs and advisory boards who do not want to undergo long holds in productivity for a comprehensive IT overhaul when rapid-fire business disruption is the norm.

What CIOs and organizations alike must realize is that change will come, but it will not happen overnight. These transformations will occur at a slower, more iterative pace, with the CIO being the champion advocate for how these transformations will lead to results.

For marketers, that means a strategy that begins to scope out results on a 12- to 24-month innovation cycles instead of the 5- to 7-year epic journeys digital transformations of the past. This may not be as fast as organizations desire (since most of us are used to two-day shipping and instant gratification shopping for new purchases), however taking a long view on steering the ship in the right direction can help organizations and their CIOs realize success in moving massive organizations toward higher-level goals.

Rethinking ROI

CIOs often have large ambitions for massive transformations – and rightly so. As always, these dreams must be balanced with a slice of reality in knowing that all organizational results are measured on how they affect the bottom line. However, rethinking Return on Investment will help stagnant organizations regain their positions on the cutting edge. One way of doing this is to measure business transformation and ranking digital technologies by their larger benefit to the organization, or a “Return on Innovation.” This measure-heavy approach will place additional emphasis on digital KPIs, thereby restoring value in smaller, periodic results over time.

This agile approach is proliferating through business environments, as companies begin to realize well-founded success is built on the sum of quality parts. For example, if you were to build a boat, you wouldn’t push to make all of the different parts of the boat at the same time. You would build it piece by piece, making sure each was quality to ensure that the boat was fortified enough to stay afloat for a long time. CIOs must take this iterative approach if they want to build real change in large organizations.

Sailing Into the Future
The new breed of CIO will ultimately help steer these massive ships toward a prosperous future, by breaking them free of the grooves they have dug themselves into. Organizations are often rooted in outdated methodologies which prevent acceleration toward organizational goals, and it is the responsibility of this new Chief Innovation Officer role to turn the ship in the right direction. Marketing professionals can help push organizations into helping steer the ship towards where they need to be in the market – with the most innovative approaches that are supported across the C-suite.

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

For our final post to end the year and look forward to 2019, let’s turn to the marketing component that is perhaps undergoing the most significant transition: Public Relations. PR was once universally recognized as the bread and butter for communications activities, the core element of any marketing program. That’s no longer the case, as publications that a generation ago would readily cover almost any technology pitch have seen their print ads shrink. As a result, they have drastically cut back on reporters and news coverage as they scramble to define their business models in the digital age.

As a result, public relations firms are having to work harder to create their own opportunities to get coverage for their clients. Instead of a reporter writing on a topic, editors now ask for submitted bylines that they can print – which makes perfect sense, since that’s free content that agencies are providing on behalf of their clients.

Public relations, as a practice, is in need of a significant overhaul. Media relations is not simply a subset of PR, which must focus on a much broader range of channels to reach prospects and customers. This means that influencer marketing, paid content, submitted bylines, content syndicators, specialty websites, and even trade associations must now be part of the outreach mix. It’s not enough to rely purely on earned coverage – practitioners must look for new, creative ways to get their messages out to core audiences.

Some of this is self-preservation. As the economy slows, PR is the first marketing practice to take the hit.

Here is what see as the most important public relations trends for 2019:

Influencer Marketing is on the Rise. Identifying, engaging, and recruiting influencers who have their own followers will be the biggest change for 2019. Understanding which ones have the most valuable followers will be a challenge requiring more sophisticated social measurement tools. Learning how to pitch influencers will mean a steep learning curve, as many influencers try to figure out their value in the market and on the social media channels where they thrive.

Public Relations Must Drive Better Content. Instead of drafters of press releases for clients, PR agencies must evolve into content providers that know how to produce rich, graphical content that can attract attention. Visual assets – which require a creative team in addition to media relations experts – will be essential to delivering content that can be quickly posted for key audiences to see.

Building Relationships. Press releases will still serve a purpose – sometimes a legal requirement and other times as a shorthand tool for reporters. But more important for PR agencies is the ability to build relationships with target audiences across multiple channels. Social media will play a part, but so will communications to targets through a regular cadence of outreach that includes emails, eNewsletters, blog posts, and other content formats.

Blurring the Line. The once-thick-but-now-fine line between public relations and marketing will continue to blur. Long-form client-generated content is getting more popular for several reasons. First, you control every word and don’t have to worry about lousy quotes, misinformation, or competitors being included higher up in the article. Second, publishers are desperately trying to find new revenue streams, so they will continue to push paid native advertising as a way to reach customers and generate more cash. And third, customers would rather hear from experts within companies than reporters who most likely are not as technically proficient.

It’s All About the Metrics. The impact and value of earned media have traditionally been difficult to measure. Agencies must go beyond the typical share of voice, reach and ad value equivalency metrics to include more useful tools that connect the audience with actions. One start-up described in a recent Wall Street Journal article has created a service to measure readership information of articles that specifically mention brands. Look for more analytics tools from Google and other platforms that can connect more of the communications software stacks together for a better look at how prospects are reacting to PR campaigns.

These are all pretty big changes in how we approach the public relations programs we deliver for our clients. Making the shift won’t be easy, but it’s essential to drive results.

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

No look at top marketing trends would be complete without considering the look and feel of a brand: the colors it uses, how the logo is displayed, and the tone and personality it conveys. They all can play a large role in how it is perceived and received by its target audiences. In Part Five of Top Marketing Trends series, we have identified six key directions to keep an eye out for in 2019 when it comes to the visual identities that brands are moving towards in the market.

1. Bold Typography. Look for bigger and bolder designs in 2019. Extra-large font sizes, hefty headlines, and interesting artistic effects will be more common. While sans-serif font types have been a dominating factor in font styles, expect more of those in the Helvetica family, especially the extra-bold variations.
2. Authentic Photography. Stock photography is getting old and tired. The same smiling perfect faces in gleaming sterile office settings doesn’t look like anything most audiences can relate to or engage with. Real photography through custom shoots will be in more demand. Images services will meet this demand with more photo libraries of authentic images that convey emotion or tell a story.
3. Custom Illustrations. Like with photography, look for more custom illustrations that add personality and a little whimsy to a brand’s website and collateral.  Look for more creativity and less formality in a broader range of styles as designers stretch their palette with these underused assets.  Classic design techniques such as double-exposures and duotones are both re-emerging as modern trends.
4. Movement and Animation. “Microinteractions” are one of the newest directions in brand design, and they are generating a lot of buzz already for 2019. Put simply, these are tiny animations used to help target audiences to perform tasks more simply and easily. These are now being widely used as a key UX design trend, and they are especially helpful in providing feedback for their actions. GIFs and SVGs can convey ideas, concepts, and processes, while making content engaging for audiences. They add more interest to emails, banner ads, social media, and even icons and logos.
5. Gradients. The use of gradients by a brand was visible on every website button, page header, and PowerPoint deck in the earlier days of digital marketing. That all changed in favor of more flat designs; you can follow the history of the Google logo for a true chronology of this trend. But gradients are back, so expect to see them in vibrant branding, illustrations, and backgrounds as well as overlays. We’re also seeing an increased use of the term “color transitions” when referring to gradients.
6. Responsive Logos. Our top marketing trend for 2019 is around a brand’s logo. Responsive techniques for website design came on slowly, but they have more recently become a best practice and an industry standard. With mobile accounting for a greater and greater share of online traffic, it’s no surprise that brands need better ways to show off their logos even on small screens. Applying responsive designs to logos is the next step in this process. Look for this as a major brand trend in 2019.

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

For part four of our Top Marketing Trends 2019 series, we now turn to digital media campaigns and trends that we expect to see in 2019 based on what we are seeing today. Privacy, transparency, and confidence will have a significant impact on how digital media is leveraged for successful campaigns in the coming year.

How digital media is delivered and received by consumers will continue to evolve in 2019. Privacy will be an even bigger issue for audiences; more publicity around Facebook and Google about how individuals are targeted, how their information is shared (and sold), and how they believe they are being manipulated will continue to take a toll on their online behavior. Amazon’s entrance to the digital media market will only compound these concerns.

To give a little bit of context, according to eMarketer, more than $46 billion will be spent on programmatic advertising in the United States by the end of 2018, an increase exceeding 33 percent – or about $10 billion more than last year. More than four-out-of-five digital display ads in this country will be bought via automated channels.

However, issues of consumer privacy are changing online behavior, as individuals move away from banner ads that follow them from site-to-site. Already, we have seen click-through rates from banner ads plummet. We expect consumers in 2019 not only to shy away even further from banner ads but also to enlist ad blockers to keep them out altogether. As a result, marketing campaigns will move to other more strategic platforms, and especially to LinkedIn for its content and influencer marketing programs.

This will be mostly fine with many brands, as transparency into the media-purchasing process becomes more of an issue. It is almost impossible with digital ads to verify how many dollars in media spend are going to ad inventory versus overhead. This is new to digital media, as print and broadcast ads can be seen and evaluated. In addition, the negative publicity about brands whose ads show up on controversial websites will also drive marketers to other digital media approaches.

According to eMarketer, of the nearly $19 billion in additional ad dollars that will be spent on programmatic display between 2018 and 2020, most will be targeted to private setups such as private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic direct transactions. Platforms such as LinkedIn may be more expensive than online display, but that price comes with the confidence that it is being spent on the right audiences who aren’t blocking them.

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

As part three of our Top Marketing Trends 2019 series, with this post, we are focusing on the look and usability of one a brand’s most valuable marketing and revenue asset – the website. Here are our top website design trends for 2019, culled from our insights into the market, feedback from clients, and discussions with top marketing industry experts.

1. Expect a bold new look from many top brands. Bright colors are in because of its ability to draw attention quickly. And in today’s crowded online market, the competition is fierce to stand out from the crowd. Beyond its power to stand out, brands are more willing to be seen as a bold organization. As a result, we are seeing more clients wanting to boldly take risks with color variations, blends, and saturation.
2. Typography will follow this trend. Look for bolder typography with large fonts that dominate the page. Expect to see less of the cursive style and thin lines, and more fonts that allow letters to clear, obvious, and thick. Brands will be better able to express themselves with a bolder style.
3. Look for more custom illustrations. It’s hard to stand out from your competitors when everyone is using similar stock photos. Customers gravitate towards brands that are authentic and appear confident in the market, and stock photos are neither. Customer illustrations give a brand a platform to express itself, tell its story and differentiate itself in the market.
4. Integrated animations will help improve navigation. This trend will continue at high speed in 2019. Also called micro-animations, these features can both grab users attention and guide them on their journey through the website by showing them that they are in the right place and that they’ve taken the intended action.
5. Mobile first design. Okay, we’ve been saying this for several years now, but it’s even more important. According to a recent report from Google, “Every day, people are becoming more reliant on their smartphones to help make last-minute purchases or spur-of-the-moment decisions. In fact, smartphone users are 50% more likely to expect to purchase something immediately while using their smartphone compared to a year ago.”

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

We recently launched our Top Marketing Trends 2019 series, that will take a close look at what digital marketers should expect for next year. We started with privacy because of a sea change in consumer attitudes about their online privacy over the past 18 months – much of it the result of huge changes in policy around the world, like the European Union’s GDPR requirements, as well as data breaches that put a massive number of Americans at risk. In our post last week, we dove into what GDPR means for marketers here in the U.S.

In today’s post, we will examine changes resulting from Facebook’s sale of its data to Cambridge Analytica, which used the information on Facebook users for controversial political targeting. Why is this a top marketing trend for 2019? Because the realization of how social media platforms like Facebook are using consumer information has had a significant impact on Facebook’s users and financial status, a trend that will extend to other social media outlets in the coming year.

Here are out three key takeaways from the Facebook fiasco that will have a significant impact on digital marketers:

The challenge with marketers who want to leverage platforms like Facebook to reach their target audiences is that the social media companies themselves are just now putting in place consumer safeguards about how their data is being used- in the face of serious public and political pressure. We all know that consumers want an easy experience when looking to research or purchase on the internet, which is what we marketers want, as well. Now that consumers see that this convenience comes at a cost, they want more control over how their personal information is used.

Our first takeaway for 2019: There’s a big difference between serving the consumer’s interest and using that same data when it doesn’t benefit that individual. Our recommendation is to take a close review of how you use your customer data and make sure it actually serves the customer.

Another challenge is expectations. Having a privacy policy at the bottom of your website, filled with unintelligible legalese that no consumer is ever going to read or understand, isn’t going to be enough. That CYA language needs to become useful.

Our second takeaway for 2019: Give visitors to your website real choices that they can understand over how their information is used. One idea that is making headway is having a privacy dashboard that is readily accessed by visitors, where they can make their own decisions about their data.

Finally, we all need to know who we are dealing with when it comes to third-party vendors. The issue with Cambridge Analytics was not simply that Facebook was providing data to an outside entity – after all, that is its business model, and in our opinion, there is nothing wrong with that when used appropriately. The scandal was that the outside firm was using the data for ways that Facebook users would never have sanctioned – to influence how they vote in elections.

Our third takeaway for 2019: Make sure you know your partners, including data brokers and ad buyers, and exactly what they are doing with the information. Ask them if they are acquiring personal data without the user’s permission. It won’t be enough to claim ignorance about your third-party vendors.

In our next post on top marketing trends 2019, we’ll look at website design and build, and what to expect next year.

Learn how Bluetext can help you make the most of the top marketing trends for 2019.

In our previous blog post, we discussed how top marketing firms take a disciplined approach to digital campaigns in order to measure, analyze, and optimize results throughout the campaign. In this post, we will talk about our process of how top marketing firms invest time and energy into the creative approach that needs to grab audiences’ attention in order to convert them into a customer.

At Bluetext, we believe that great creative approaches come from an organized process that brings in fresh minds that work across different agency disciplines. First and foremost, we go beyond the client team to engage in an agency-wide brainstorm, often getting the best ideas from colleagues who may not have ever touched the particular client. But we don’t just through them in a room and ask them to come up with great ideas. Instead, we rely on the initial team members to prepare a thorough creative brief based on the in-depth discovery that begins our process.

That brief will be based on a number of research elements, including:

• The key target audiences, including what is likely to motivate them to take action and engage with the campaign.
• The campaign’s top messaging. What do we want to get across to the target audiences that will get them to pay attention?
• Any available market research. What’s already out there to help us design the campaign, and is there additional research that needs to take place?
• The competitive landscape. What are the messages that competitors are using, and what creative are they using in their marketing?
• The client’s attitude towards the campaign. How innovative or clever is the client willing to be in this campaign? Does it need to be a conservative approach, or can something a little more edgy we acceptable?

This brief provides our team members with the guidance they need to start thinking about a creative approach that will succeed for our campaigns without reinventing the wheel or sending them down a path that we already know will not be effective.

In our next post, we will explore some recent creative examples that bring this approach altogether as part of the process that top marketing firms employ to achieve success for their clients.

Learn How Bluetext Can Help Design and Execute Your Next Digital Campaign!

Our association clients often ask us what our process is for developing digital campaigns that will deliver the best results, whether that’s awareness for their brand or attendance for their conferences and events. Top marketing firms understand that a strong, repeatable process is key to getting the right messages and creative to the right audiences at the right time. They also know that analyzing results on a continual basis is the only way to optimize performance by revising and adjusting when needed.

At Bluetext, we take a disciplined approach to every campaign, and that begins with discovery. We start by asking three questions:

1. What is the goal of the campaign?
2. Who are the target audiences?
3. What do you want them to do?

These might sound like simple questions, but you might be surprised at the discussion that follows within the association world to get to an agreement on each of those. Top marketing firms like Bluetext know that we have to act as both a facilitator and as a honest broker who can push each stakeholder to reach that agreement. The reason is that at most membership and trade associations, there are different “clients” who have different goals for each campaign. In some cases, it might be membership renewal, while for others in the same organization it might be registration for an event that drives revenue. For others, it might be awareness of the services that the association provides.

But it’s not until that decision is made that we can move on to the next question: Who are you targeting? Again, that might sound simple, but we’ve witnessed our share of knock-down, dragged-out fights inside organizations where stakeholders have a different opinion of the audience. In some cases, part of the client team might be focused on entry-level IT professionals for their particular association, while their colleagues might believe that the true target is the mid-level professional seeking to move up in their career.

But the most difficult question seems to always come down to, What do you want them to do? The easiest response might be to do something that drives revenue, whether it is to become a member of the organization, or to renew their membership. It might also be to attend an event or purchase a service. But it might also be simple awareness of the value of the trade association and the services it brings to its members.

For each of these possible answers, there might be a multi-step process to take the action. We don’t expect, for example, a new prospect to commit to attending an annual conference just because they receive an email or see a banner ad or paid social post. It may take a sophisticated email “drip” campaign that methodically delivers different types of information that drives them down through the sales funnel before they click on a landing-page for registration. Each step of the process requires clear messaging and strong creative. And each step requires effective analytics to measure performance of the subject line (for an email) or headline (for a banner ad). We are always A/B testing subject and headlines to see which are performing the best so we can adjust accordingly.

Top marketing firms will provide detailed methodologies and analytic tools before the campaign is launched so that organizations understand exactly how the campaign will run and achieve the desired results.

Learn How Bluetext Can Help Design and Execute Your Next Digital Campaign.

Acquia, the leading hosting and support company for Drupal open-source content management systems, has named Bluetext as a finalist in its 2018 awards for best digital marketing firms and website design. Acquia chose Bluetext for its work with Mindtree.com, one of the global leaders in digital transformation and technology services. Bluetext created a revitalized digital brand, a new website user experience, and a state-of-the-art Drupal content management platform for Mindtree.

Acquia considered more than 100 submissions from top digital marketing firms for its annual award. Among the factors it evaluated for for its best digital marketing companies and websites were client projects that demonstrated an advanced level functionality, integration, and performance, including the results and key performance indicators for each site. Acquia also evaluated overall user experience for each website.  Acquia called the breadth of submissions “inspiring…  and continues to affirm that Acquia’s partners and customers are setting the precedent for exceptional digital experiences.”

For the new Mindtree.com, Bluetext developed an intuitive, fully responsive user-experience that leverages personalization to serve relevant content to each user. The site was built on a Drupal 8 CMS platform to provide the flexibility and scalability that a large enterprise needs to support its digital marketing initiatives. Best of all, the web design reflects the vibrancy of the brand and its employees, a specific goal of the brand.

Bluetext and the website will be featured during Acquia’s annual Engage conference, where the best digital marketing companies and the foremost leaders in digital will take center stage to share their insights, revelations, and lessons learned in the quest to deliver best-in-class customer experiences.

Learn how Bluetext can deliver a great user-experience for your brand.

With the national mid-term elections fast approaching, state government election officials at every level are scrambling to assess their system’s vulnerabilities to hacking or other interference, with the goal of protecting those systems from all threats. Akamai partnered with Bluetext to develop a compelling outreach campaign to educate state decision makers on the solutions that Akamai can bring to their election systems.

Bluetext created a three-part creative approach that leveraged engaging images and headlines to drive awareness of Akamai’s solutions. These include a patriotic message of responsibility these election officials have for protecting democracy, as well as the use of the iconic “I Voted” stickers revised to read, “I thought I voted” as an emotional appeal to what’s at stake. The result was a campaign that cut through the noise and delivered the Akamai story to the target audience.