Innovations in real estate marketing can help drive a company’s ability to hit their desired Key Performance Indicators. Through Bluetext’s experience working with top real estate brands like JLL and Kettler we understand what drives integrated marketing and digital marketing results.
SPEED
Faster websites make more money for their companies. Fast includes how long it takes your real estate website to load, but also how long it takes the real estate website search engine to show the user the type of available product that matches their search. Some sites use real time API calls and tons of third-party data services that bog down a search performance. This performance hit hurts seo, conversion, and engagement metrics. The bottom line is performance matters. The relationship between performance and revenue has been shown over and over again. Here are just a few examples:
- Amazon loses 1% of sales for every 100ms it takes their site to load.
- Shopzilla reduced their loading time from 7 seconds to 2. This performance boost resulted in a 25% increase in pageviews and a 9.5% increase in revenue.
- Mozilla shaved 2.2 seconds off their landing pages and increased download conversions by 15.4%, generating millions of additional Firefox downloads every year.
Ways to speed up your website include:
- Enable CMS compression
- Optimize your images
- Move JavaScript files to the footer
- Merge CSS files – Inline small CSS files
- Use a Content Delivery Network
- Minimize the number of HTTP requests
- Fix your 404 errors
- Take care of your page size
- Reduce the number of API calls
LOCATION AWARE USER EXPERIENCES
The other innovation real estate marketing executive need to consider is launching location aware marketing platforms and tools. Along with the adoption of HTML5, the Geo-location API has become very powerful technology. This allows your site to receive geographic positioning information using JavaScript. Once you have a location aware site or app, you are able to provide more accurate and appropriate content for your visitors. This is called geo-marketing. Geo-marketing is a relatively new concept defined as:
- The integration of geographical intelligence into various aspects of marketing, including websites and sales and distribution.
Although a new term, the principle of geo marketing has been around for a while. Facebook has been utilizing this approach for some time. Facebook gathers location-based data (based on users’ IP addresses) then show advertisers appropriate content for that geographic region. Google and other search engines also use this functionality and include location based search results for their users.
Your real estate website should offer the ability to search where you are located to offer up products around you. Of course many people search for information in another region for relocation scenarios, but the majority are in market moves and these use cases need to be addressed with a fast geo-personalized user experience.
We’d love to talk to you about your real estate marketing need. Let’s chat:
Back in 2006, I had a conversation with Washington Post Magazine columnist Gene Weingarten, one of my favorite humorists. If you’ve ever happened upon his column, you know that he’s not exactly an admirer of public relations professionals or publicists. So I made him an offer: let’s switch jobs for a day. I’ll write your column for one week while you handle all my PR clients. Gene thought about it for a bit, and then said yes…with a catch. He’d only do it if I would admit, on the record in his column, how pathetic and meaningless my existence as a PR professional was. Intriguing offer, but ultimately I passed. Then I went home, grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels, shut the closet door, and cried.
Ok, so I’m kidding the last part. I don’t actually own a closet. I’m not sure why the exchange with Gene recently popped into my head, but perhaps it results from what seems to be a Groundhog Day cycle of working with traditional DC tech press, which goes something like this: Establish relationship with DC tech reporter, work with reporter on multiple client stories, watch reporter leave publication after relatively short period of time (typically right at the moment when I have 2-3 stories on precipice of publication), bang head into wall, dream about being a farmer, realize I wouldn’t survive six hours on a real farm with live animals, start process all over again with replacement, and hope springs eternal.
Washington Business Journal tech reporter Kasra Kangarloo is the most recent area tech reporter to leave the position, a beat he held for less than 8 months. Actually, I spoke to soon; Washington Post reporter Amrita Jayakumar (who covered tech as part of a broader beat) departed a few weeks after Kasra. Preceding these tech scribes were Bill Flook at WBJ and Steven Overly at the Post. All four were good writers and good individuals who invested time to get to know the tech community – which is all you can ask for.
Editorial churn is not unique to this market, and there is no need to run through the upheaval occurring with traditional publishing. But one has to assume that the revolving door partially derives from the fact that these writers did not feel the position was stimulating or rewarding (financially or professionally). Traditional publishers in this market have been de-prioritizing local tech coverage due to a range of factors. This begs the question of whether it matters – not just for individual tech companies seeking to generate awareness for their brand, products and services – but for the DC tech community as a whole.
While most of these reporters transitioned quietly to their next professional stop, Kangarloo hopped out with somewhat of a bang. It wasn’t an exit on par with George Costanza scraping up New York Yankees championship trophies as he spun his car around the parking lot, but it did capture the attention of the DC tech community. Kangarloo led off his exit post stating, “Fare thee well, D.C. tech. It’s been real.” In fact, Kangarloo didn’t think it had been real at all:
“Obviously, it’s in every startup’s interest to drum up positive press, and there is a genuine financial incentive for any one of them to, shall we say, bend the truth a bit. And since I’m leaving the beat for good, I’ll just go ahead and say what I really mean by that — the startup realm seems to rival even political coverage for the sheer amount of spin that’s employed each day. But why so many reporters give in so easily is a mystery. And that’s not to exclude myself, by the way. I’ve fallen into that trap plenty of times, and had I stayed longer I’m certain I would again.”
If a startup announces a major new customer and no one is around to write about it, did it happen? If the next set of tech reporters at WBJ and the Post cast an equally cynical eye towards the DC tech community, does that impact the ability for startups and others to get important stories out? I can understand, as a reporter, that it is far more fulfilling to dig into more controversial, investigative pieces than it is to regurgitate funding announcements or hearing a founder wax on about some grandiose vision to change the world…or supply chain efficiency as the case may be. And investigative stories should be told. But so should stories of startup and tech success.
The good news for DC is that the next generational of editorial players, including DC Inno, Tech Cocktail (yes, have been around for a while), Technical.ly DC, Tech Bisnow and even the DC Tech Facebook page, have stepped in to fill the gap. They’ve also served notice, for the most part, that they aren’t satisfied to just repost press releases.
For DC starts and other tech firms, all of this change means a couple of things – none of it revolutionary. First, proximity matters, and startups and tech innovators may have to leave their comfort zone, metaphorically and geographically speaking, to find the outlets that matter most to them. It may be TechCrunch, it may be The Wall Street Journal, but it could just as likely be Builder Magazine or Hotel Business. Because as many layoffs or job switches that might be occurring across the industry, you will find greater stability at influential outlets outside of the market (TechCrunch, Re/Code, The Next Web, QZ, etc.), where some writers have been there for years, not months. This stability is important, because reporters get to know a company and don’t need to be re-educated on a continuous basis.
Second, think about how traditional and emerging DC tech writers want to cover the space. Don’t just email a press release about what a new product does, connect them with a customer who can provide tangible ROI evidence your product makes a difference. If your funding announcement is not a big number – relatively speaking – connect the funding to a broader local or national trend that expands the story beyond your own. The press release isn’t a news generator; it’s simply an SEO information capsule representing one small part of your announcement strategy.
The Mid Atlantic Marketing Summit is greater Washington’s largest annual symposium of thought leaders in marketing. The theme will focus on emerging technologies and trends in marketing communications. Topics will include: metrics, mobile, social media, multi-platform campaigns, online video campaigns, experiential advertising, B2B, business development, and much more. This summit will explore the disruptive technologies that are creating a major shift in how marketing and business development professionals reach their audiences and decision makers.
A presentation being given by:
Nick Panayi, Global Brand and Digital Marketing, CSC
Jason Siegel, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Bluetext
Location: Mid Atlantic Marketing Summit
Gannett Building
May 8th 3PM
Nick and I will be presenting on the customer journey and how digital marketing technologies are continuing to evolve, personalize and empower this very effective demand generation platform. We will drill deep into CSC’s massive digital infrastructure that supports many of their journeys, and most importantly the Bluetext produced CSC Digital Briefing Center.
Learn why CSC’s Digital Briefing Center was so strongly needed for their most critical journeys, the concepts considered, and how we got to this great performing end product.
Working at a Washington DC digital agency that works with brands spanning the largest, most cautious Fortune 500 companies to the most speedy of start-ups disrupting every corner of Earth, we need to back up our creative and marketing recommendations with stats. Here are some that stats could arm you in your next planning phase, ranging from user experience design to marketing promotion and branding.
WHO ARE YOU BROWSING FOR?
The latest stats are in from the US Government on Browser and device usage. Plan your next website user experience design based on these stats as well as the stats from your analytic application.
WHAT DID THAT ICON SAY?
According to ScienceDaily’s recent study, Icons need to tell something very clearly or face horrible usability issues with your user experience.
The recent report asked users to look at an icon and try to avoid thinking of both the word of that image, as well as how many letters that word had (for example, a subject is told to look at a iPhone and not think “iPhone” or think “6,” the number of letters in the word). Nearly 80% of people could not stop themselves from “sub-speaking” the word in their head and only 50% could stop themselves from saying the number of letters in the word. Stopping the brain from making associations in the subconscious is nearly impossible, which makes it extremely important to ensure that visual icons and representations are completely recognizable and aren’t easily confused by the user to have another meaning.
Placement of icons should not just be for visual effect. It can actually aid your user without making them think at all. It’s important that you choose the right icons as well, because you don’t want to trigger an automatic association from your user about something unrelated to the purpose of the icon.
DO YOU PERSUADE WITH VIDEO?
A recent User Experience Dynamic study by SearchEngineWatch shows that 73% of people will convert to the sites desired action when they enhance their user experience design with video.
HAVE YOU JOURNEYED BELOW THE FOLD?
Countless recent studies are showing that almost every user (yup over 99%!) these days are scrolling below the fold. Be adventurous and think of the user experience taking place on a tall dynamic canvas.
GOT SHARES?
Facebook continues to be the most widely used social channel for sharing. It gained 8.2% share and made up 81% of all shares in Q4. Sharing activity by email also increased, but it still only represents about 1% of total share volume. Looking at the channel distribution of sharing on mobile, Facebook edges out the competition even further. Facebook activity jumped 51% from last year and now represents 85% of mobile sharing activity. Pinterest and Twitter have also gained traction on mobile.
Bloomberg BNA is one of top providers of legal information for attorneys, ranging from court decisions and legal filings to law review articles and news coverage that can affect a company or case. Bloomberg saw a huge opportunity to reach in-house counsel at companies and organizations where litigation, intellectual property, transactions and compliance are managed internally. It needed a dynamic campaign to reach those target attorneys with a good reason why they should add Bloomberg BNA tools to their arsenal.
Bluetext designed a campaign micro-site that begins with a live-action video with six individual personas, representing six use cases, so that target visitors could select the example that most closely matches their own responsibilities. Once the individual is selected, the visitor is taken to a page that provides in-depth details about that particular offering including examples and screen shots.
The site serves as its own segmentation filter, placing targets more directly into the best lead nurture channel. Calls-To-Action are prominent across every page to make it simple to download a whitepaper or infographic, sign up for a relevant newsletter, request a free trial or to learn more. The campaign included a direct mail piece with graphics and designs that match the site.
Bluetext Survey Shows How Government Executives Make IT Decisions
Survey Results in Federal Computer Week
Federal agencies can be great customers because they remain some of the biggest spenders and their budgets stay fairly stable even during economic downturns. Yet sales and marketing teams used to marketing to consumer or commercial enterprise customers often find that their efforts fall flat in the government space — wasting everyone’s time in the process.
That’s because talking to the government customer can require a different approach, including the channels used to reach that audience and the messages included. Understanding those needs and preferences can help contractors and feds alike.
We recently surveyed 150 top government executives involved in the decision-making process for IT purchases, to understand directly how they get the information that helps inform their purchasing decisions. The results provide a road map for targeting this audience — and a valuable look in the mirror for agency leaders who wonder if there are better ways to gather the information they need.
READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT FCW.COM
6 Ways Government Contractors Can Use Innovative Digital Marketing and PR Strategies To Win Business
When it comes to marketing and communications, government contractors and public sector IT providers face a set of unique challenges. For one, the customer base of Federal, state and local decision makers responsible for purchasing technology products and services – ranging from CIOs and CTOs to program managers, IT managers and procurement officers –represents a finite group that can be difficult to reach.
Compounding this predicament is the fact that government contractors must not only market their brand, product and services to these decision makers, but also time these marketing efforts strategically. This means building awareness far enough in advance of a contract award, and then sustaining marketing and PR efforts throughout what can be a multi-year process from pre-RFP to the contract award – and even beyond due to potential contract protests, delays and budgetary obstacles.
READ THE FULL BLOG POST HERE:
6 Ways Government Contractors Can Use Innovative Digital Marketing and PR Strategies To Win Business
The DC tech startup community has a chip on its shoulder. That’s not a bad thing; it motivates entrepreneurs and area leaders committed to advancing the interests of the DC tech community to fight for respect. This respect can assume many forms, including funding, an available pool of highly educated, skilled workers, or just positive publicity and attention relative to Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and other tech hubs that seem to glisten more in the eyes of venture capitalists and industry pontificators.
As I networked and dined at MAVA’s annual holiday luncheon last week and reflected on the week that was in the local tech space, a scene from Jerry Maguire popped into my head. It was when Tom Cruise and Kelly Preston feed each other breakfast in the buff. Ok, that’s not the scene, but figured I’d throw it in there to make sure everyone is paying attention. It was Jerry Maguire racing home after the football game, bearing his soul to his wife, and exclaiming, “Tonight…our little company had a very big night. A very, very big night.” The flurry of venture capital raise announcements by local companies last week in fact represents a very, very big week for the DC tech community.
The three venture capital raises undermined a prevailing but increasingly antiquated notion that technology innovation emerging from the nation’s capital is government-skewed, exclusively b2b or, for lack of a better word, boring. Optoro, a startup that caught my eye approximately five years ago as a presenting company at a MAVA event, announced a $50 million funding raise on December 10th. The company stood out to me that day because the business model was simple (heck, even I could understand it which is no easy task) and it was clear to everyone in the room what the industry pain point was (retailers were not efficiently and cost-effectively able to sell excess and returned inventory), and that Optoro has developed a very clever way to address it (a cloud-based, multi-channel selling technology enabling retailers to optimally manage their reverse logistics).
The day before Optoro announced its massive funding raise, marketing software firm TrackMaven snagged a $14M Series B round from NEA, Bowery Capital, Silicon Valley Bank and others. TrackMaven is striking a chord with overwhelmed digital marketers seeking products to help better track and act on relevant data related to earned media, SEO, ads, content marketing and social media efforts.
The final venture capital raise last week is a company I’ve been privileged enough to call a client for the past several years – Canvas. The Reston-based company, which raised $9 million, has quickly emerged as the global leader in mobile apps for collecting and sharing business information. Canvas is truly disrupting how work gets done by enabling businesses to replace expensive and inefficient paper forms and processes with customizable mobile apps for smartphones and tablets, with no programming or IT required. There are also now more than 15,000 apps in the Canvas mobile business application store – apps that can easily be downloaded, customized and shared by Canvas’ growing community of partners and subscribers.
Not only do these funding raises reflect the diversity of startups and challenger brands that now call the DC area home, but also strengthens the region’s global position. Canvas’ Jason Ganz reaffirmed as much in his recent blog post that analyzed every startup funding round the last ten years. Among several compelling pieces of data, Ganz calculated that the DC region has 138 funding rounds listed so far in 2014 – making it the 7th highest region for startup funding globally. For the sake of comparison, there were 52 area funding rounds in 2009 and 157 funding rounds last year.
It was a very, very big week for the Greater Washington technology community, one that holds the promise for even greater activity and growth next year.
On its 10th anniversary of connecting communicators, Capitol Communicator determined that to continue to grow and be a vibrant part of the Washington, D.C., marketing and communications community, its next 10 years would be built on a new digital strategy and complementing user experience strategy. As a central hub for news, events and information for communicators in the mid-Atlantic, Capitol Communicator wanted a more modern platform.
Capitol Communicator selected Bluetext to partner with for this complete digital overhaul. Bluetext has delivered an enterprise-level WordPress implementation with comprehensive CMS publishing technologies that are integrated to allow Capitol Communicator to get best-in-class SEO, content management and smart, modern design.
Said Paul Duning, publisher of Capitol Communicator, “After a very exhaustive review, Bluetext had the energy, creativity, digital savviness, and firepower to be our new digital partner, and they really delivered. Our community has spoken, and they all love the new site which is helping us further validate that we are taking the brand in the right direction with a new digital platform as the centerpiece.”
Capitol Communicator is dedicated to bringing together the vast spectrum of communications professionals who influence and educate the Mid-Atlantic region and the world by providing news; trends; education; and opportunities for networking, career enhancement, business exchange and showcasing great work, Capitol Communicator serves as a resource to the region’s communications community. Capitol Communicator focuses on building a community that encompasses professions that include public relations, advertising, marketing, media, creative, video, photography, printing, digital and the multitude of other professions that support this region’s multi-billion-dollar communications industry. And, Capitol Communicator is a proud supporter of many organizations that share in their mission of providing professional development to the communications community.
2014 has been a year of amazing changes in the world of marketing, where micro-targeting via social platforms is now mainstream, banner ads are becoming passe, personalized content is in, native and sponsored ads are growing in popularity, video is getting shorter, and a wide range of other evolutionary marketing trends are exploding on the scene–all designed to help companies and organizations identify and reach their customers. And guess what? The sky hasn’t fallen, at least not yet. But looking at 2014 is almost, well, old news. As fast as digital transformation has hit us this year, it will move that much faster next year. So we at Bluetext thought this would be a good time to start looking ahead to 2015. We asked a wide range of senior marketing executives–including technology leaders, information services providers, financial industry start-ups, and even top trade associations–to gaze into their crystal balls and share with us their Big Bet for 2015. We’ve compiled those below, and think you’ll find their insight provocative and challenging.
BET #1. PREDICTIVE MODELING
by NICK PANAYI of CSC Director, Global Brand & Digital Marketing
As we look forward to next year and beyond, I can tell you honestly that the “next big thing” in marketing has never been clearer to me. What I believe will separate good marketers from exceptional ones is the exploding field of predictive intelligence.
We all have abundant data now. And we all have real-time marketing dashboards that act as a high-definition rear-view mirror of our customers’ digital footprints. That’s table stakes. What gets real interesting moving forward is the ability to leverage increasingly powerful predictive modeling tools to peer into the future and optimize your marketing efforts before they even start! Predictive modeling allows you to extract maximum value from the investments you already made in your digital ecosystem and the knowledge you’ve gathered about your customers’ digital body language…..
Read more about Predictive Modeling, and what top executives from organizations such as Georgetown University, NetApp, and others think is in store for 2015 by registering below.
On Friday night, Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business kicked off its alumni weekend with an awesome party under a tent outside the Hariri Building. Great food and great company were the hallmarks of the event. In keeping with the tight partnership Bluetext has formed with McDonough over the past two years through the design and build of McDonough’s new responsive website, msb.georgetown.edu, McDonough allowed Bluetext to set up a massive screen right next to the bar (a perfect place) to showcase the new website.
In turn, our team wanted to do something special for all of the alumni who returned. We are offering organizations of Georgetown McDonough School of Business Alumni a free digital marketing assessment, including website, SEO and Social. Interested alumni can reach us at msb@bluetext.com to learn more.
Thanks to Chris Kormis, Patrick Burritt and the entire team at McDonough school of business marketing and communications team for the ongoing partnership and relationship.
“Bluetext has been the ideal partner for the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. Our customer journey experience with this top notch agency was collaborative, creative, and technically sound. We are proud of the work Bluetext delivered to the school and we feel the results of the platform day in and day out.”
Chris M. Kormis
Chief Marketing Officer
McDonough School of Business
