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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is not hard to quickly discover, when sitting down with a client or prospect, when they feel that they are not executing efficiently. A few simple questions and they get that look indicating that they know they need help. This blog post is not another list to make you feel badly about your marketing efforts. This is a list of 10 signs that you are doing marketing right. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and is in no particular order, but hopefully when scanning you can mentally check off a handful of these to show you are taking your marketing efforts in the right direction.

1. You have an editorial calendar to align marketing efforts for thought leadership, product launches, news, events, and other corporate activities. An editorial calendar helps deliver a consistent message across all channels.
2. You are part of the right conversations. Conversations about companies, products, services, technologies, etc. are happening everywhere. It is important to be part of these.
3. Social media is integral to your marketing operations.
4. When a prospect visits you at an event, they get the same brand look/feel/attitude from your booth as when they visit your website or scan your social properties.
5. Your website is responsive, and you are starting to think of the mobile user experience first. The trend is your friend here – several recent studies show that more than half of web traffic is now coming from mobile.
6. You “own” your website, and
   don’t need to rely on IT or an outside vendor for consistent updates.
7. You are leveraging Google Analytics to ensure website content is most effectively displayed to deliver a solid experience for a variety of target personas.
8. You lead your business or marketing reviews with actual statistics on your results pulled from various tracking systems.
9. You listen to your customers. They know what they want and can be a fickle bunch across any industry.
10. Your brand tells a story. From the logo to the look to way your employees talk about you company, everything is aligned and powerful.

This list may be missing many tell-tale indictors, but it’s a good place to start. Please feel free to throw out other ideas, and we will add to this on a regular basis as markets and marketing efforts continue to diversify.

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

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

The lessons for marketers are clear:

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

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

It’s the beginning of a new year, and that means that industry experts will pull out their magic eight balls, clean their Google glasses, and attempt to see into the future. But as a marketer, it’s going to be tricky to understand what trends are real, and which ones aren’t worth spending time or resources chasing. Here’s what we can confidently predict: When technology experts take a stab at projecting into the future, they both overestimate the rate of consumer adoption and underestimate the resistance from political regulation. We all love the idea of Amazon’s warehouses in the sky delivering our packages by remote-controlled drones, and we may well be able to manufacture self-driving cars that are safe and efficient. But saying yes to UAVs circling our neighborhoods and giving the green light to driverless vehicles, that’s a different story altogether.

Digital marketing is evolving by the hour, but we can make some predictions on what’s going to be important to markets this year. Most important is how to survive these changes. So what should we expect in 2017 that may be more down to earth and actually come to pass, and how should you plan your strategy?

To find out, download our 2017 Digital Marketing Survivor Guide.

Today’s “need for speed” mantra is evident in everything we do. Your website is no exception. We all want everything to be instantly available at our fingertips – including our online experience. For websites, that means the faster the page speed, the better.  Top B2B Marketing Agencies have been working with their clients for the past decade to improve page speed, looking for all sorts of tricks and tips to reduce load time and improve response.  Some major players – including Akamai in the hosting space, Google’s AMP and Lightening from Facebook –  have developed significant technologies and innovations that are worth considering for your digital game plan.

A survey from Statistic Brain concluded that the average person’s attention span has fallen to 8.25 seconds down from 12 second in 2000. This statistic is projected to continue to decline. As a marketer, that means you have even less time to grab your audience’s attention before they’re on to the next shiny object.

Page speed is defined as the load time of one particular page on your website. Ideally, the site is completely rendered and ready to go on a screen within microseconds of someone typing in its URL and hitting enter. Does this seem like an impossible ask? The short answer is yes.  Since a feat such as this is borderline impossible in most cases, we’re forced to resort to more realistic metrics to achieve this lofty goal.

Here are the  top three reasons why lightning fast page speed is essential for the success of your organization’s website.

1) It’s all about the User

User experience is the number one priority. Without them, of course, your site is just a jumble of html that serves no purpose.  Site optimization is key and should be performed often.

• Fast page load time means users will be able to quickly navigate the site, increasing pages per session, time on page, and (possibly) decreased bounce rate.
• Better numbers for the metrics listed above mean better rankings from Google.
• Referrals become more likely when a user has had a good experience on your site.

In today’s ultra-competitive marketplace, a positive user experience could easily be the edge between your site and someone else’s.

2) The Fast and the Mobile Friendly

Google expects a mobile page to render above the fold in one second or less. Since more than half of the 3.4 billion daily Google searches are done on mobile devices, it’s imperative to have a fast and mobile-friendly site. According to an experiment done by Moz, Google has indicated it may actually be measuring “time to first byte” (TTFB) — which is how long it takes the first byte of information to get from a server to a browser.

Now that you know what Google’s looking for, there are numerous tools to help pinpoint where improvements could be made on a site’s backend. At Bluetext, we like to take out any guesswork and get our insights straight from Google. Put any URL into Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool and it provides recommended fixes, as well as a speed score on both mobile and desktop.

3) Page Speed + Stellar CTA = Increased # of Conversions

It’s been proven that page speed has a direct correlation to the number of conversions as long as it’s paired with an enticing Call to Action (CTA).  For example, if a user wants to download a white paper but has to wait for the page to load, that user will lose interest and most likely leave the site. For businesses, that means a prospect is bouncing and may be lost for good.

Every second counts. Don’t wait, start optimizing your site speed today because if you’re not recognizing the need for speed, you might as well go home. For more tips on making a great first impression? Click here: https://bluetext.com/top-branding-agencies-know-never-get-second-chance-make-first-impression/

Need help speeding up your digital platform to get the performance you want ?  Contact us

If the incoming administration is aligned on anything its increased U.S. security – both at home and abroad. Most predict that this will result in the elimination of the defense sequester and returning the defense budget to the levels proposed in the FY 2012 budget request – which would translate into spending increases of up to $500 Billion over the next 5 years.

The programs already being proposed go well beyond anti-terrorism to revitalizing the global defense infrastructure and increasing the foundational strength of the U.S. military across the board. This will require increased spending in a number of different categories – including agile force development, aircraft & aerospace systems, command & control systems, cyber security, smart technologies, shipbuilding, surveillance and ground, space based & missile defense systems – just to name a few.

However – since the last time the defense budget exceeded $600B in 2012 – the means by which government buyers, procurement agents and teaming partners across the defense contracting community consume industry related content has changed dramatically. Gone are the dozens of industry magazines that were piled high in their lobbies prior to the sequestration and gone are the days of flying around the country to attend big industry conferences, trade shows and events.

And to compound that, the industry will rebound in the face of an increasingly younger and mobile dependent demographic that has seized control of the content they want to consume and when and on what screen they want to digest it. Aerospace and defense industry brands must now adapt and market like every other major enterprise and consumer brands do and develop compelling contextually relevant content and deliver it to their customers – daily.

In other words –  you need to become your own publisher – because if you don’t shape your brand’s position in the market your competitors will gladly to do it for you – and have probably already started. The good news is that gives you significantly greater control over your message and how your brand is positioned and perceived in the market. But that market is about to become much more crowded and a hell of a lot noisier after the New Year with all of your competitor’s messages about innovation, transformation and the next big buzzword. So, you need to ask yourself – how am I going to differentiate my brand and defend my dominant market position – or in overtake the market leader – in this rapidly changing environment?

At Bluetext – we have achieved success for dozens of the most recognized and innovative brands in global defense and technology based on the premise that – to claim innovation you must demonstrate innovation. With the plethora of digital marketing tools, VR and other advanced technologies available for smart digital agencies to develop rich, immersive and interactive brand experiences to drive awareness, customer engagement and demand in the market – now is the ideal time to start making some noise.

Your path to brand – and market – domination begins and ends on the digital battlefield – the time to start preparing is now.

Last week it was announced that software company Synopys would acquire Cigital, a leading provider of software security services to help software developers build security into their application development process.

Here is the news:
http://www.darkreading.com/perimeter/synopsys-expands-software-security-with-cigital-codiscope-acquisitions/d/d-id/1327434

In 2015, following an exhaustive search Cigital selected Bluetext for a full scale rebranding effort, including logo, corporate identity, and fully responsive website.

At the time, Cigital’s challenge was a common one we hear from many of our prospects. To paraphrase, “our services and people are so far superior to our main competition, but our brand is holding us back and we are getting out marketed.”

This assignment was directly in our sweet spot.

We worked with the Cigital team to create a powerful brand that was differentiated and visually appealing to send a message to the market that things are different at Cigital and now is the time to take notice. The rebrand created a swagger for the company that clearly led to success as judged by last week’s news.

We were not specifically hired with the assignment of positioning the company for sale. But this is another instance in a long line of rebrand efforts, including Acentia, Altimeter, Force3 and several others, where the company successfully sold shortly after our rebranding effort.

Every client has a unique challenge.

Rarely does a client call saying that they want to sell and need to rebrand now. But when engaging with a client, it is always in the back of our minds. Our goal is to take a seat at the table with our clients, understand their unique challenges and ultimate goals, and help them execute a campaign to achieve this goals in the most efficient manner possible.

Kudos to Cigital, Jim Ivers and the entire team. We could not be more proud of the work we did to help successfully position you for this exciting news. To read more about our solution check out our Cigital case study. To learn more about the importance of a strong brand, read our latest:

Some economic experts are predicting that by 2025, 40% of today’s jobs will be replaced by technology. That’s a sobering thought for nearly everyone.

For those of us in the digital marketing space, it is especially alarming. After all, automation and the rise of bots threaten to displace many functions in today’s digital agencies. We took a close look at our own agency, position-by-position, to see if we could draw any insight from these economic forecasts. Our conclusion is that digital agencies servicing enterprise clients won’t be on the endangered list anytime soon. There are too many essential activities that call for human interaction and a personal touch in order to drive a successful, large-scale campaign that simply can’t be replicated by technology.

Looking at the digital agency of the future on a role-by-role basis may be useful to clients wanting to know what to expect from an agency in this evolving market, as well as agency executives and practitioners. Here’s how the roles in a typical agency will be affected by the constant innovation and disruption happening in digital marketing.

Project Managers. Account and project managers may be among the most secure in the agency of the future, for the simple reason that many of the activities that take place between clients and PMs require human interaction. Relationships and expectation-setting is an art and a science; one that no artificial intelligence, robotics, or automation software will ever be able to completely replace. Clients will always want two human eyes that stare into their eyes and say, “No need to worry, we’ve got your back”.

Creative and Art Directors. The rise of creative collectives and mixed media partnerships are creating increased cohabitation for many accounts, and the integration of hyper-specialists that deliver, for example, the exact lighting or the perfect clay sculpture from which to 3D model. These new resources from outside the traditional agency will deliver value in the form of wide-ranging creativity. Creative leads will be able to surf trends and partner with visual designers that can take that big idea and bring it to life.

Designers and Production Artists.Designers and production artists may well be among the most endangered species in the digital agency of the future. Media evolves, interfaces evolve, and connections evolve. With the growing amount of “templated” design now available, as well as new services like TheGrid, which offers AI websites that design themselves, it’s only a matter of time before the mixture of these databases of hyper-tagged content is integrated into the agency. Tools will be able to automate layouts and designs in brilliant responsiveness at all 12 responsive break points.

Technology Manager. Like project managers, technology managers are probably in little danger of being replaced. No matter how technology advances, or advances itself, technology managers have a locked-in position in digital marketing and user-experience design firms. But their skills need to continue to evolve, so they can become masters of leveraging a global workforce of engineers to deliver technologies at the agency’s disposal.

Developers. Developers may well occupy the most precarious of positions inside the agency of the future. Already, large marketing plays led by Adobe and other software companies are trying to create design tools that allow for the production workflow to skip the developer, and go from concept to design to a live platform.

Quality Assurance. We consider this role completely dead. The QA role, the most thankless but important job in today’s user-experience agency environment, will soon be extinct. While currently critical to every delivery, these kinds of tasks are destined to be automated.

Agency Marketing Manager. The handwriting is already on the wall. The static portfolio will be replaced by the connected portfolio, with the agency marketing manager leveraging a creative warehouse with hyper-integrated APIs from all of the top creative distribution houses.

What’s next? It’s hard to predict. Who would have thought tools like SnapChat and Slack could challenge the Goliaths of their industries. The kinds of talent, tools and content needed to deliver the best experience will continue to drive innovation, and the new roles that the market will demand will adapt to fill those gaps. Despite the rise of technology in the digital marketing and advertising world, one thing remains clear. Building client relationships, offering creative insights and providing customized services will set agencies apart from the crowd. As technology automates many work processes, agencies will have more time and resources to explore new approaches to client goals and flex greater creativity.

The human touch will continue to be in high demand.

Planning for the New Year? Is Your Branding Up to Snuff?

With a new year comes new expectations. More qualified leads. Better content. More PR coverage…just some of the areas that b2b marketers are measured against.

The New Year marks a great time to unveil a new brand identity to the market. Usually in January there is the company wide sales kickoff meeting where the team is hungry for something new. Out with the old and in with the new. A new look is always a smart way for b2b marketers to kick off the year in style.

A lot goes into creating and launching a new brand. Determining the new brand identity, then doing all the steps to launch it are critical for success. How well you handle the transition process from the old to the new and how that plays out can go a long way toward determining the success of your launch. As you only have one chance at a first impression, every step you take in in the process must be executed flawlessly.

So let’s think about audiences. First and foremost is the internal audience. They say that more than 50% of the success of a rebranding effort is determined by how well it is received by your internal champions. These are the people that will be the first line of defense when presenting the new brand to their customers and partners. They should love it. They should feel inspired. They should be prepared to scream about why you did it and what it means to the market from the mountaintop.

To best do this, they need key messages delivered on a silver platter. And they need to be easy to communicate. Having a consistent story to tell is critical. Think of it like a game of telephone. Once you tell them why you did this you have no idea where the message will go. By the time it reaches a hot prospect it may lose its impact. And remember, you only have one chance at a first impression.

Once key constituents understand why you did it, the next critical question for b2b marketers to answer is how will the news and message get communicated, and when can people talk about it. From the smallest requests (when will by new business cards arrive) to the most critical brand story telling channels (when will the website get updated), no detail should be overlooked. A detailed rollout plan is critical for success.

Say it Loud and Say It Proud
Many brand marketers don’t get the respect they are due. Their efforts are reduced to simple questions from others such as “what hours do I need to be working at the tradeshow booth?”

A new brand identity is the time to make a splash, and what better time than the New Year when we are done celebrating past years’ success and are now ready to move forward with the new branding. If you are like most b2b companies you have a big sales kickoff where everyone is hungry to see what is new for the near year. If you coordinate efforts well, all materials are ready, all messages are crisp, and you have the perfectly captive audience of internal influencers to get behind your efforts. Leverage the promotional opportunity the kickoff presents to make it memorable.

You Made the Splash, Now What?
Let’s face it. Launching the new brand is just the top of the iceberg. There are a million things to do and pieces of communication to coordinate. People have questions, and you should have answers. Now is the time to move back into your measured marketing roll and create a perfect spreadsheet to show the team how things will roll out. Use the rebrand as an opportunity to create a cadence of messages for partners, prospects, and customers. This is your new brand platform to deliver a new message for 2017. The market should experience it in everything you do, from your tradeshow booth to your website to your lead generation campaigns. A coordinated effort will enable you to get rewarded for your efforts while successfully launching the new brand identity to the market.

Don’t forget What Got You Here
If you are thinking about rebranding for 2017, you have been successful in your job in 2016. That means that you had something valuable for the market and did a good job delivering it. Now is a good time to meet with your core audiences to get their feedback. What is resonating about the new branding and message? Have you and your team done a good enough job clearly explaining why you did this? Does the identity fit the company you want to be? Does the market understand the meaning behind the new brand?

Ready to Get Started?
At Bluetext branding is in our DNA. We work with organizations across many industries to help them create and launch new brands to the market. From logo development to corporate visual identity to responsive web design to trade show booths and new collateral, we have the resources and expertise ready to tackle whatever challenge you are facing with your brand. Now is the time – the New Year is just around the corner. Do you have the platform to deliver a powerful message to the market? Reach out today to find out how Bluetext can elevate your brand.

Many enterprise companies and organizations have marketing programs to talk about their products and services with their customers, and rely on those types of product marketing assets to reach their target audiences. That information is important, but it’s missing an essential element in the customer journey—developing a connection with the audience that will last beyond the one transaction.

Digital marketing firms know that building a strong customer relationship is as much about storytelling as it about the product or service. At Bluetext, we work with our clients to develop more than just a story they can tell. We want our clients to elevate that narrative to what we call a Signature Story.

What’s the difference?

A story as most of us understand it is pretty formulaic. It has a beginning, middle and end, and uses facts and anecdotes to paint a picture of the value that a brand is bringing to the market and its customers. We often recommend that our clients change up the order of the narrative, starting with a strong conclusion, placing proof points and examples in the middle, and ending by reinforcing that conclusion. But to take it up another notch and become a central ingredient for the brand, a Signature Story is needed.

Put simply, a Signature Story is a narrative that includes a strategic message and allows a company or organization to grow by enhancing its brand promise, its customer relationships, its business strategy and the strengths of its organization. It should be authentic and intriguing in order to grab attention, and tell a story that quickly and succinctly elevates the brand in the eyes of the target audience. It should be thought-provoking, interesting, entertaining if possible, and should paint a compelling picture in the eye of the customer. Finally, it must be authentic in the sense that it must ring true to brand and not be viewed simply as a marketing ploy. It doesn’t need to be entirely based on facts, but it must be in the spirit of a true story.

Signature stories are critical assets, can provide inspiration and insight both inside and outside of the organization, and can be leveraged over time. The challenge is to identify that core story, and to make it a part of the marketing mix.

A strong example of a Signature Story is the clothing retailer Nordstrom, known for its exceptional customer service and commitment to making it right by the client. As the story goes, a secret shopper in the employ of the parent company visited a Nordstrom store that had previously been on the same location as a store that also sold tires. The secret shopper appeared with a used tire and asked to return it for a refund to the now Nordstrom store. The sales clerk, after perhaps a moment of hesitation, took the tire and provided a refund. The clerk knew that Nordstrom’s reputation for service was the most important element of the brand, and out-weighed the obvious fact that the tire didn’t come from that store.

More important is that it reflects Nordstrom’s key values in a compelling and thought-provoking way, and strengthens is brand values.

Or consider L.L. Bean, the iconic outdoor equipment manufacturer in Maine with a long and colorful history. As told in an article in Brand Quarterly earlier this year, L.L. Bean could be content to portray its culture just by talking about its high-quality merchandise. But, “stating such facts is unlikely to create interest, credibility or even a connection to L.L. Bean.”

Instead, the company tells the story of its founder, Leon L. Bean, an avid outdoorsman, who returned from a hunting trip in 1912 disgruntled because of his cold, wet feet. Undaunted, he developed a new boot by stitching lightweight leather tops to waterproof rubber bottoms. He found that his new design worked so well he offered them for sale via mail order, sending out notices to lists of Maine hunting license holders.

But here’s where this tale becomes a Signature Story: After discovering that most of the first 100 pairs sold had a stitching problem and leaked, L.L. Bean refunded the customers’ money despite the fact that it almost sent him into bankruptcy. He then went about fixing the process so that future boots were indeed watertight. This story communicates the L.L. Bean brand value fare more effectively than simply talking about its quality in a vacuum.

Here are the elements of a Signature Story:

The Message Must Link to the Brand. It should speak to the customer relationship and the business strategy, and it should enhance the brand’s visibility, image, personality, relevance, and/or value proposition.
It Should be Intriguing and Provocative. Elements to consider include some combination of thought-provoking, novel, provocative, interesting, informative, newsworthy, or entertaining to the audience.
Authenticity is Essential. Key audiences cannot perceive the story to be phony, contrived, or a transparent selling effort, and there should be services and programs to back up the main message.
It Should Draw in the Audience. If the story is interesting and engaging, it is more likely to result in an emotional connection and response by the customer.