We have leapfrogged almost overnight from a digital first to mobile first multi-screen world.

Brands – no matter their size – can no longer afford to ignore the mobile market.  Users aren’t just browsing on mobile devices – they are now finding content, sharing it socially and completing purchases at a rate that is increasingly on par with their older desktop siblings – and this is now having significant implications on website design.

Where responsive design was the new frontier not more than 18 months ago – most progressive digital studios have adopted a mobile first design mentality. Instead of designing websites for desktop users and degrading the experience and functionality for mobile  – they are now starting with the mobile screen as their primary palette and adding layers to ‘dilute’ the experience for desktop and larger screens.

Putting mobile at the front of the website design process leads to sites that are simpler, faster, more usable and – most importantly – more accessible to your customers. Here are the five primary keys to a smart, mobile first design strategy.

Speed

With users – and Google – demanding sub-one-second page loads – speed is a critical component of mobile first design methodology. As a result, you will be seeing a lot more sites going to a flat, 2D design with single blocks of color and streamlined images.

Navigation

Navigation is a major consideration for mobile website design, so we’ll be seeing more brands using fixed menu bars and infinite scrolls for continuous access and loading of content…and of course the ‘hamburger’ menu with three horizontal lines is now almost ubiquitous.

Typography

Since the days of newspapers – type has always been a good way to show the visual hierarchy of page elements. But in a mobile first world, readability is critical, so many brands are using a wider range of larger fonts that better render text as easily visible on smaller screens.

Layout

A desire to cater to mobile users has led to a variety of new layout trends, including tile or grid-based layouts where the content shifts to accommodate different dimensions, displaying single or multiple tiles depending on the screen size. Parallax scrolling to make page elements shift or disappear is also seen as a cool and sophisticated trend in mobile design.

Usability

The last – but far from least – consideration is usability, which brings everything together to optimize how much content can actually be consumed on a smaller screen through gestures, taps, swipes and clicks to get to more content faster. This is huge push for the Google search engine algorithm, so companies whose audiences are coming in via their mobile devices need to understand how important mobile usability has become.

Don’t let your content get left behind in a cloud of mobile dust – or worse yet – your brand annihilated by ‘Mobilegeddon’…don’t be last to mobile first.

The Challenge:

A leading scientific association came to Bluetext with a unique challenge. The association’s goal was to drive higher click-through-rates (CTRs) for its core web properties without altering the front-end design of each site before 2016. Built on a custom, legacy CMS, these sites featured an aged look and were not built responsively. The Bluetext team knew immediately that there was one way to boost traffic to these properties in an effective, long-term fashion that would simultaneously increase conversion rates to purchase, and grow overall engagement with the association’s premium content. Bluetext mapped out a highly-detailed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy for each of these properties and executed it methodically through the first half of 2015.

Tactics

Our team ran a series of detailed reports on these web properties’ performance in search, analyzing every factor that could possibly be weighing the site down. When assessing SEO rankings, it is key to remember that a website’s “domain authority” is impacted by two main audiences: the search bots crawling the website, and the people searching it and reviewing its content.

Bluetext crafted a multi-phase plan that aimed to improve perceptions of the web properties among both audiences, making sure that any changes made to appeal to crawler bots also suited the needs and expectations of live searchers. Bluetext made recommendations for highly-relevant short and long-tail keywords to include in meta data and content across the site. We then pointed out specific pages on the site that housed meta data (titles, descriptions, URLs) that was too short or too long- and harmed the sites’ search “scores” by breaking structural rules. Bluetext collaborated with the association to rewrite meta data so that it fit Google and Bing’s structural guidelines, and also incorporated keywords that would draw the right searchers to relevant pages, thus boosting overall search authority.

Our next step was to assess website speed and load, and to point out specific tactics to improve these metrics and optimize the user experience. In comparing these web properties to competitors, we found specific referring domains that the client could form relationships with to gain backlinks and grow trustworthiness. Our team explored the client’s social media activity in-depth on platforms that could be used to strengthen relationships with their target audience. We sat with the association’s marketing team and pointed out opportunities to broaden awareness of events and useful materials, and to stimulate engagement among members with posts that ask questions or offer a short piece of valuable information. And since we are a digital design agency and we couldn’t quite help ourselves, we offered design insight on how to effectively rearrange the homepage to improve CTRs to interior pages and display timely, relevant content without drastically changing the current design.

Execution

After receiving a green light from the association to make the recommended changes to their web properties, we got straight to work. Using Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools to identify pages that served as the top 75 “entry points” to the organization’s largest domain, we recreated meta titles and descriptions for these pages so that they fit structural guidelines and utilized keywords that are heavily searched on a monthly basis.

To grow breadth and depth of keyword usage on the sites, our team filled in “Alt Tag” descriptions for images. We looked back at periods where web traffic sharply declined or increased, pinpointing dates when the search algorithm changed and caused these fluctuations. Since the overall quality of a business or association’s Wikipedia profile plays a strong role in search rankings, we combed through the client’s Wikipedia properties and elegantly filled them with high-volume, specific keywords. To draw a closer relationship between the pages across a large site, we created a highly-detailed internal linking strategy that mapped many high-volume keywords on interior pages to particularly relevant interior pages in other areas of the site.

We extended our recommendations to the client’s properties in other countries, identifying ebbs and flows in traffic to these other sites and noting vital changes that should be made to site structures. We also compiled a set of recommendations for the client to manipulate the current mobile design without making major changes so that mobile and tablet users could have a more pleasant user experience.

The Outcome

The time and effort spent by Bluetext to optimize search for this association’s web properties made a drastic impact. Total traffic to the largest site in early June was 13X larger than original average traffic to the site. This same domain saw 12X the number of users visiting the site by early June, alongside a 500% growth in the number of users visiting the property on mobile and tablet devices since project inception. User engagement with website content also increased through project conclusion, with users visiting each page for 20 seconds longer than before. This association is now getting the website CTRs that it deserves with a design that remains almost entirely untouched.

For several companies, the new HTML5 and video based immersive executive experiences Bluetext has been creating are delivering amazing results. For example CSC (Fortune #175) is seeing this experience as #1 out of 12,000 website pages in its domain. These digital experiences represent our clients’ commitment to leading-edge user experiences for thought leadership, sustainable technology, and delivering deep, rich contents to address the requirements of their diverse personas.

“Our new Immersive Executive Experience offers an incredibly powerful demonstration of 3D, with unmatched visual quality and fidelity,” comments Ray Holloman, Director of Marketing and Digital at 1,300 employee firm NJVC. “The new web design and digital experience is integral for immersing our customers in understanding our Mission Critical IT capabilities.”

NJVC was looking for a new powerful message to the market as well as an immersive experience. The video snippets of this experience below provide a good sense of how we are merging marketing campaigns with thought leadership content marketing.

Bluetext, a top digital agency in Washington DC, has produced these user experiences for CSC, McAfee, Intel Security, Deltek, TalkShop, Cooper Thomas, GovPlace, Futures Industry Association, VMWare, and NJVC and would love to explore producing one for you.

Nick Panayi, Director of Global Brand and Digital Marketing at CSC stops by the Bluetext Buzz Lounge to share his thoughts on trends in digital marketing.

Innovation in content marketing is nothing new, but sometimes it takes well-known brands and how they drive their marketing operations to recognize what’s really valuable. We’ve gathered some top content marketing examples and tips from some of the most recognizable global companies. Some aren’t only about innovation, but rather they show companies sticking to what’s most important about that brand. Others are more on the cutting edge. Here are my four top picks:

1) Pick a strategy that is core to your brand. IBM is known for three key assets: Its technical expertise, its role as long-time market leader, and its position as a respected source of IT information. To match its steady flow of content to its brand attributes IBM follows the same path. To uphold its reputation as a technology leader for more than a century, it has to produce authoritative content that underscores its thought leadership. Because the company is a technical powerhouse, it has to ensure that the content is technically authoritative. And because the company is trusted by millions to provide detailed descriptions of challenges and solutions, it has to make sure that its content is at an expert level. While trying to follow in IBM’s footsteps is not an easy task, it provides a strong lesson for how to approach your content. It should be well-written, possess authority, and have an expert voice. That’s what customers want and respond to.

2) Don’t be boring. This might sound obvious, but with many business-to-business or business-to-government solutions, it’s not always easy to sound interesting on technical topics. Resist the temptation to edit out content that might be fun and relevant, and that plays on popular topics or cultural experiences. Take Hootsuite as an example. There’s nothing very sexy about a tool that allows you to manage your social media posts. It’s mostly a dashboard with a number of useful applications tacked on. But Hootsuite rose to immense popularity by playing off a popular theme, the HBO television series “Game of Thrones.” It created a video called “Game of Social Thrones,” using graphics and music similar to the television show to demonstrate its capabilities. Each popular social platform has its own Game of Thrones city, and logos and images are cleverly used throughout. Timing is everything, of course, and the Hootsuite video garnered lots of buzz on YouTube. Hootsuite also makes sure that its content, even when serious, is fun, increasing its popular appeal. So while your brand or product may be technical and specialized, you can still write content with which your audience will identify on a popular level. The lesson: Don’t feel that you need to be serious all of the time. Create some fun, light content now and then.

3) Tell stories. It’s easy to fall back on technical explanations, and these are often important when conveying the value that a product or solution brings to the market. But telling a human interest story that illustrates what that technology brings to customers can be much more penetrating. Few do this better than Microsoft, whose “Stories” blog posts rarely even include the term software. Instead, they tell stories of how Microsoft technology has helped people, and in some cases changed their lives. In one example featuring sportscaster Daniel Jeremiah, the story is one of the human experience, of triumph, challenge and redemption. Daniel explains how as a scout for the Philadelphia Eagles, when he didn’t trust his instincts and the data at his disposal, he lost the opportunity to push for Seattle Seahawks superstar Russell Wilson. It’s a fun,personal and powerful story, and one that demonstrates Microsoft’s leadership not with a hard sell of its products, but with a tale that will stick in your mind.

4) Go visual. Visual images draw attention, tell a story, and help illustrate a brand’s true value. The problem is, many companies, particularly in the technology space, don’t believe they have much they can show using photos or high-impact graphics. I’m going to put forward GoPro as a great example of a company that relies on the visual to tell it brand story. And yes, I recognize that it’s not a fair comparison—a company that sells action-oriented video equipment of course would have great videos to show off its products. But the thing about GoPro is that it almost never actually shows its cameras in its marketing efforts. Instead, GoPro focuses on its users. One of its leading cameras is called the Hero, and its campaign is to turn its customers into heroes. Much of its content is created by passionate users who are, in turn, becoming public heroes. Companies who aren’t in the video business can take a similar approach. Tell the story of your customers and end users using video and other visual assets to make them the heroes—for the challenges they are addressing and the problems they are solving. At the very least, use visual content and images to enhance your text-based content.

Taking an innovative approach to content marketing can pay off in spades for any brand willing to think creatively and act accordingly. But sticking to some basic truths about what customers want and expect will increase your brand footprint and drive market recognition and share.

AddThis GM Charlie Reverte calls 2015 the year of the personal web. He talks with Bluetext’s Buzz Lounge about the move to personalized web sites across the internet, making the web personal for individuals while generating more revenues for web sites.

This is part 1 of a 5 part series by Bluetext about innovation in marketing and communications.

Before hurling yourself into a production and budget battlefield to get that amazing video shot for your next campaign or brand asset, marketing commandoes now have a variety of tiny, toss-able reconnaissance robots they can hurl into any business or consumer use case as it follows you around and keeps your brand battling above its weight class.

For challenger brands without the resources of a major real estate marketer or major retailer etc, they can now have million dollar footage integrated in their marketing mix of assets for amazingly low cost.

These tactical flying robots have gained a ton of traction within the marketing world as of late for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that any time you send a robot to execute an expensive and trick task, you’re not sending a human. And that is scalable and cost effective.  Traditionally robots are generally complicated, fickle machines packing a lot of moving parts. They often require on the ground pilot operators to undergo special training just to learn how to use them and fly them everytime. Not this technology, toss and follow.  Really amazing technology and solution.

Removing the pilot and giving this new paint brush to the creative minds in marketing departments and their partner agencies will really improve the experiences we will start to see as this innovation sinks into the millions of brand messages we see a day.

At Bluetext we work with many companies that can benefit from this kind of technology.   For example, in our real estate practice, we see many of our clients like JLL, Kettler and HomeVisit to leverage this kind of technology to deliver better more impactful imagery to deliver their product and service to market.

Interested in being innovative with your brand, marketing or communications?   Talk to Bluetext

During my younger days I was fortunate enough to cut my teeth in the public sector at powerhouse Washington radio station WTOP, and was part of the launch of FederalNewsRadio. During that part of my career, I was lucky to be able to work with CMOs at just about every major defense and global technology brand serving the federal government. At the time, my biggest competitors were the stacks and stacks of Federal IT and Defense magazines that filled the bookcases behind them. These were the reams of tangible, tactile publications that their CEO’s demanded they advertise in before even considering buying 60-second slices of intangible “air.”

The precipitous decline in those print publications, combined with the impact of budget cuts on the federal agency buyer’s ability to travel to attend industry conferences, trade shows and seminars, has flipped that model on its head over the last 5 years. The resulting void of strong brand void has led to an increased thirst for more readily accessible “premium” content—white papers, e-books, survey reports and other in-depth materials that can be indispensable for government decision-makers. Yet, defense and technology vendors and contractors continue to peddle their wares using increasingly ineffective traditional methods of marketing.

The most notorious of these are companies that load up on traditional marketing to push government contracting vehicles—their IDIQs, GWACs and GSA Schedules – especially at the end of the federal buying season. There was once a time and a place for that – but no more. Marketing is now forever changed thanks to Al Gore – or who ever invented the internet.

As a result – government buyers have become real buyers just like you and I, involved to varying degrees in researching, influencing and taking themselves 75 percent through a buying process to ultimately select a solution that your company – and your 10 largest competitors – all provide.

This is why it is now so critical to target your marketing with premium content to specific and very real buyer personas. You need to put yourselves in their shoes to differentiate your brand and fill that void with contextually relevant content before your competitors do. No matter who that buyer is, they are all facing the same quandries:

1. I have a problem, but I don’t know what the solution is.
2. I know what some solutions are, but I don’t know which one is best for me.
3. I know which solution I want, but I don’t know who to buy it from.

And while the best way to answer these is with content, the biggest obstacle I find since joining the agency side is that most of the companies we work with do not yet have mature content marketing strategies and lack the in-house resources needed to generate enough thoughtful, relevant content to drive engagement that results in traction for their brands in this market. The other challenge is their inability to harness the thought leadership of their subject matter experts. The people inside their company who have the expertise on issues most relevant to your target audience often do not have the time or have not been engaged to contribute content on a regular basis. As a result, marketers are struggling not only to develop the editorial calendar, but more importantly the content itself.

It’s no secret that a lot of successful marketers are turning to agencies to overcome this very challenge. When they do, they realize very quickly that we can capture more eyeballs – and drive much more significant and targeted brand engagement—by empowering them to become masters of their own content for far less than what they used to spend on traditional ads in all of those long-gone publications– and for a fraction of the cost of those radio ads. They all once had their time and place – and so will your brand if you continue to allow your competitors to outmarket you and find a cozy place for their content in the minds of your buyer.

Whether you’re selling B2B, B2G or B2C, chances are you’re starting to experience a crowded market space, with fierce competitors all vying for the same clients. Make sure your lead gen program is working as hard as your competitors’.

Let Bluetext do a Free Assessment of your lead generation content to make sure you are getting the best results.

Topics can include:

• Overall Marketing/Branding
• Target Audience
• Lead Generation Strategy
• Media Strategy
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media/ Blogging
• Website/Landing Page Conversion Optimization
• Content Strategy
• Lead Nurturing Strategy
• Analytics/ Website Management

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