What’s more valuable to a company? A visitor to its website who spends 15 minutes scanning a wide variety of pages, or a visitor who comes and goes in three minutes? The obvious answer is the first one, because as any marketing executive can tell you, “stickiness” and time on site are drivers for the website experience. But what if the first person is taking so long because they can’t find what they are looking for and the second person came and left quickly because they readily found the white paper they wanted or even transacted? The lesson here is not that time on site isn’t the only metric you should be evaluating. In fact, using metrics to evaluate the performance of your site may not be as straightforward as it looks.

Take the recent news about Instagram over-taking Twitter in terms of volume last year. “Instagram Is Now Bigger Than Twitter” was the headline everywhere from CNBC to Re/Code to the New York Times. But how meaningful is that comparison? Twitter has some 284 million active monthly users, Instagram more than 300 million. Yet, as an article in Slate describes it, the two are different: “One is largely private, the other largely public. One focuses on photos, the other on ideas. They’re both very large, and they’re both growing.”

Another metric that is often bandied about is unique monthly visitors. This measures the number of people that come to a site and discounts repeat visitors. Again, that might sound like the ultimate metric for evaluating the attention that a site is getting. Still, it doesn’t measure what those unique visitors are doing on the site. If it is a content-driven website, like the Huffington Post or Buzzfeed, a more important measure may be “total time reading.”  There, the number of visitors who come and leave quickly isn’t very valuable to advertisers who provide the revenue for content-driven sites. Total time reading is far more important, and smart advertisers recognize the difference and factor that in accordingly.

A common measure reported on widely in the media when comparing different brands’ web traffic is the number of website visitors. This is frequently sourced to web measurement and analysis companies who make these types of evaluations. But even these can be highly misleading. First and foremost, according to a recent post in medium.com, the most widely quoted source of web traffic, Comscore Networks, only counts U.S. users. If a brand is global or operates overseas like a many government defense contractors, the metrics will not include that traffic in the totals. In addition, these reports are often based on sampling which can distort the actual numbers for smaller brands with a more limited number of visitors. It’s also not yet clear whether these services are including site traffic from mobile apps, which may be a very important measurement tool for many websites as more and more visitors use mobile devices to access information on the web.

So if the three most commonly-used metrics for measuring the success of a website—time on site, unique monthly visitors, and total traffic—all have their flaws, what is the best way to evaluate how a site is doing?

The answer is there is no best answer. All three of those key metrics are useful, but they need to be taken for what they are which is a set of imprecise and blunt tools.

A better way to look at the most effective mix of metrics is to find the best blend that will help evaluate “value.” Time on site is important, but only as an element in value. In reality, for media websites, advertisers don’t actually want a customer’s time, they want to make an impression that will lead to a transaction or buying decision. On the other hand, for an enterprise site offering IT solutions where the buying cycle is long and a visit to the website may be part of the research process, time is valuable as a measurement for a customer’s information gathering step in the cycle. Where they go on the site—to resources, for example—may say a great deal about where that customer is in the cycle and how to best to pursue him or her.

Where the visitor enters the site may be a key performance indicator for both organic search results or for a lead-generation driven campaign that takes the visitor directly to the intended content. Spending time on the blog page may be an indicator that the site’s content is fresh and engaging and is bringing target audiences back for more. Reading product and solutions pages may indicate a prospect that needs to be watched to make sure they are getting what they need to make a purchasing decision.

The right answer is that value has to be a combination of a number of factors, and using multiple metrics can help understand if the site is achieving its goal of providing that value. But no marketer should get too hung up on any single measurement.

Marketing professional understandably struggle to make the best decisions on how to most effectively spend their marketing dollars. The options for building creative assets and reaching customers through media buys are extensive. We have all seen how quickly budgets can be squandered with little or no results.

That’s why we believe that constantly measuring each campaign is essential, in order to make the directional shifts necessary to achieve the desired results. Our approach is to work with our clients to establish the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the campaign, and working backwards from these to develop an effective strategy scaled to optimize budget, desired timeline and client resources.

So as we begin to get deeper into 2015, here are 5 of the most effective tactics we employ to maximize budget:

 

Re-Targeting

Retargeting is a recent tool that allows you to place a cookie on any potential customer who visits your website, your campaign microsite or even a landing page. Leveraging that cookie, targeted ads can be placed on sites that they visit at a much lower cost than serving up ads on a site that every visitor would see. Re-Targeting allows you to continue reaching potential customers who came to your site to motivate them to return to the site and take further action. Regardless of the number of potential customers that visit your website, retargeting will almost certainly deliver an increase in conversions.

Retargeting doesn’t rely on collecting any personally identifying data; the cookie merely confirms the area of your site that your visitor browsed, allowing your ad to be targeted accordingly. Retargeting has the potential to deliver up to a ten-fold increase in the ROI of your marketing spend – making each dollar invested perform like five to ten.

As powerful a tactic as this is however, it is important that the immediacy and frequency that your retargeted ads are served up are proportionate to the degree of purchase intent exhibited by a visitor, otherwise it could very well turn them off.  So make sure and dial it up and back accordingly

 

Conversion Rate Optimization

While retargeting can be effective for visitors who leave without making a purchase, you should also be working on optimizing first-time conversion rates for your site. While it is smart to use retargeting to pursuing the potential customers who come to your site for the first time, it is always preferable to convert more of them on their initial visit.

Too often, businesses don’t develop a user experience that effectively mirrors their customers’ journey through the sale process. The first step in reversing that is by identifying the reasons they decide to leave in the first place.

A thorough, professional audit and analysis of your site’s overall information architecture, design, content structure, and functionality will provide you with a roadmap to address these problems. Some critical components we recommend include:

• Headlines and Visuals
• Navigation and User Paths
• Calls to Action
• Content & Structure
• Site Analytics

Finding the right digital agency will help you convert a higher rate of first time visitors move them faster through the sales cycle.

 

Geofencing

Geo-Fencing is location-based digital technology that allows an advertiser to select a geographic point using latitude and longitude and then to create a virtual “fence” around that point of a given radius in which your ads will be served up. For example, an advertiser can pinpoint a specific store, office or branch location, then deliver a targeted ad to anyone who comes within a 5-mile or 5-block radius of that location depending upon its density.

Ads delivered through geo-fencing typically yield higher conversions and better ROI for marketers since they’re highly contextual. It’s very much like being able to display a “special offer” sign across a dozen city blocks instantly, and only show it to the consumers you actually want to reach.

 

Well-Timed Ad Delivery

Rates for digital and mobile ad placement can vary widely depending on factors like the popularity and demand for the online property, available inventory, the quality of premium placement you want the ad displayed in – and of course – the time of day you want your ads served.  Online traffic of all kinds tends to peak at different times during the day and week, so it’s critical to understand the persona you are trying to reach. The time an ad runs can be based, for example, on weekday versus weekend usage patterns.

It is equally important to split test the times that ads are run, to see when it is most effective.  Coming from an advertising background myself, I have seen many broadcast media companies charge advertisers a premium to run their ads at a fixed time everyday, when in fact that strategy will only result in them reaching the same people at the same time without reaching additional prospects. Using an attitudinal approach, we might recommend that a B2B client try marketing to its audience after 5pm when they are done with their day and have more time engage with your ad. It’s important to evaluate interactions at all times of day to identify the best windows to most efficiently optimize performance.

 

Paid Twitter Promotion

Often overlooked in favor of better-known pay-per-click options, Twitter’s advertising offerings make good sense for business owners in almost every industry. Easy to use and suitable for even limited marketing budgets, promoted tweets are a great way to boost an existing campaign or to raise the profile of something new.

One of Twitter’s strengths is the relatively unobtrusive nature of its advertising products. These are native ads and are thus identical to an everyday tweet except for a discreet “Promoted by” tag. Users report that engagement with paid-for tweets is often at the same level as that engendered by natural activity, making them ideal for businesses that already have an active Twitter presence.

In addition to promoting their tweets in search results and on other users’ home timelines, Twitter advertisers have the option to send highly targeted and relevant promoted Tweets to a specific audience only.  A further benefit is the syndication of promoted Tweets through Twitter’s mobile apps and to selected third-party Twitter-management tools.

With Twitter, drilling down to your audience is straightforward; in addition to keyword targeting, Twitter offers segmentation by user geolocation, device type, language and other preferences. Setting up specific campaign parameters makes it easy to target in a pre-determined period, and specifying a maximum cost per engagement and daily budget allows you to lock in spend and prevent cost overruns. You’re paying only for each retweet, reply, favorite or click for your tweet, so you’ll be able to assess whether it’s working before a small portion of your budget is even exhausted.

Content management systems (CMS) are a dime a dozen and selecting the right solution for your next website can be challenging. They have become a commodity and being able to objectively evaluate one versus another is hard. All of them do the same thing and when you’re done you will have a fully functional website that will hopefully serve your needs. What sets them apart are their processes. Specifically, how they empower you and your team to build and maintain your website. It’s these differences like licensing, installation, front-end coding, content construction, user management, extension and maintenance that you should focus on when comparing one system with another.

In this post we’ll use these factors to investigate the differences between two popular content management systems on the market today: ExpressionEngine and WordPress.

Licensing
Before wading in to the features and how-to’s of each system you first need to look at their licensing. Are they open source or propriety? If open source, what license do they use? Any commercial limitations? If proprietary, do you have access to the source code? Are there ongoing expenses beyond the initial licensing fee? How much does it cost? It’s important to answer these questions first and make sure the answers jive with your organizations’ rules and regulations before deciding to move ahead with any particular system. You have access to the full source code and there are no ongoing licensing costs or restrictions.

WordPress is one of the most, if not the most, popular CMSs on the market today due in large part to its open source license. Users are free to use and/or modify WordPress for any personal or commercial project without restriction. ExpressionEngine is built on LAMP technologies, just like WordPress, but is closed source and propriety. Users can purchase it for a one-time fee but will need to ensure they continue to use it within any requisite license restrictions.

Installation
Before you can start using either CMS you first need to install them on your server and run any necessary updates. WordPress and ExpressionEngine are both very straightforward and simple to install. WordPress has its famous “5-minute install” process as well as plenty of automated install options offered by hosting providers. ExpressionEngine’s install process doesn’t get as much hype, or have as many automated options, but it is equally straightforward to get up and running. The primary difference is that WordPress requires less IT support and resources where ExpressionEngine will likely require a helping hand from IT to get up and running.

Front-end Coding
When it comes to writing the HTML, CSS and JavaScript of your site, content management systems offer two clear options: those that are theme based and those that are template based. Theme based CMSs, like WordPress, are more plug-and-play and modularized. You can easily purchase pre-made designs and be up and running in a matter of minutes. Template based CMSs, like ExpressionEngine, provide developers with easier workflows and lower learning curves but are not as modular, making it more difficult to find available plug-and-play front-end components. This is important to consider when determining what kinds of internal technology resources you will have to work on your project. It is important to ask yourself which will they be more comfortable working with?

Content Construction
How does the CMS manage the content? All systems tend to work off a content categorization concept that closely resembles the information architecture of your website. Meaning that if your site has a news section, you will likely have a news content type or category where all content matching that footprint should be placed. Out of the box, WordPress provides two content types: posts and pages. Posts are meant for “dynamic content” or content where content will be added or changed often and pages are for “static content” which doesn’t change. ExpressionEngine provides a different set-up out of the box, allowing administrators to create their own completely custom content types in the admin area which tends to keep things a little more organized and straightforward for website managers.

It’s worth mentioning that WordPress allows for the creation of custom post types, which creates a very similar kind of workflow to ExpressionEngines. However, this functionality needs to either be defined within the theme (by a developer) for each post type or enabled by installing a plug-in which allows administrators to create custom post types and fields through the control panel.

User Management
Will visitors be able to register for an account on your website? Manage a profile or configure account settings? These are common features on a lot of websites today and using a CMS that provides a framework for this out of the box can save time and money. Both WordPress and ExpressionEngine have user registration capabilities but offer different levels of configuration. WordPress’ approach is limited out of the box requiring users to use the CMS log-in screen, not providing much in the way of user profiles or other capabilities. ExpressionEngines user management functionality is extensive and highly customizable, allowing administrators to create custom profile fields, custom log-in pages/workflows and additional advanced features.

Extension
Your website is unique and as such will likely require whatever CMS you choose to be modified slightly to fit your needs. Can this be done easily or will developers have to hack in to the core code of the system causing all sorts of headaches in the future? Both WordPress and ExpressionEngine provide robust extension options empowering developers to modify both front-end and control panel look, feed and functionality. WordPress plug-ins can be written to change everything from the CMS log-in process to how content is passed to the front-end of your site independently from the core code. Same for ExpressionEngine, where developers have the option of developing modules, plug-ins, extensions, accessories or field types without interfering with the core system code.

Maintenance
You should always be keeping the concept of maintenance, as in “how much will this solution cost to maintain?”, in the back of your mind. Beyond the strictly financial cost there is also staff time and required skill level to consider as well. It’s very important that your CMS be updated and maintained on a regular basis to keep your website secure and ensure everything is working correctly. WordPress has the clear upper hand when it comes to updates and maintenance as it’s largely automated. The system will, from time to time, automatically install minor updates to ensure your install remains current. But other major updates can be completed with one click and little to no IT intervention. ExpressionEngines update process is much more traditional and requires IT intervention throughout.

Picking a content management system today is hard. Trying to filter through the marketing lingo and hype to find the right solution for your organization is difficult but extremely important. The next time you find yourself in the CMS isle of the Internet superstore try using some of the above criteria to help you choose the right software for your project.

Need help with a content management or other digital marketing project. Please contact us.

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

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

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.

 

In the ever changing world of digital marketing the phrases we hear from our clients more and more are around the “Customer Journey” and achieving pinnacle SEO success for their brands.

In order to address this lets first break down the two ingredients:

Search Engine Optimization Best Practices:

• Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs
• Categorize Keyword Research
• Find Gaps and Opportunities
• Define Competitors
• Learn From Your Competitors
• Customize an SEO Strategy & Recommendations
• Create must-have SEO Recommendations
• Prioritize and summarize

Customer Journey Best Practices:

These are five points any company contemplating, planning, or already undertaking a customer journey initiative should consider:

1. Define the Behavioral Stages
2. Align Customer Goals with the Stages
3. Plot Out The Touch Points
4. Determine If Your Customers Are Achieving Their Goals
5. Create Recommendations for Change

Now that you have your SEO and Customer Journey Best Practices in place, here is your roadmap to creating an SEO Customer Journey: 

1) Create your own customer journey map.

2) On your map, identify the specific points at which a user is conducting one of the three types of search queries (navigational, transactional, or informational).

3) Make a list of keywords/queries for each point in the customer journey that involves a specific query type.

4) Connect each keyword to a specific method of SEO strategy.

Now, take those keywords and plug them into your SEO strategy. How? Let’s take one keyword from the above example — “how much storage can I afford?” Here’s what you might do:

1) Create a page on the website

2) Page title: “How much storage can I afford? | Storage Planning”

3) H1:  “How much storage can my business afford?”

4) Article: Discuss answers to this question in the article, and provide a clear Call to Action (CTA) at the end.

5) Create a series of four evergreen blog articles that deal with this question. Use this keyword and any long tail variations of ”how much storage can I afford?”

6) Create an infographic that answers the question “”how much storage can I afford?”

7) Interview several experts on storage affordability, and post a video series on YouTube.

Need help with your digital marketing, search engine optimization, user experience design, and/or customer journey consulting, please contact us.

Today I was honored to be asked to speak to the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business MBA class about creative and digital marketing. The students were senior execs spanning many Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries.  The interactive dialogue was great.  Jeb Brown, the MBA professor, issued three mandates for my presentation:

1 – Describe what makes a bad client

2 – Describe how to get the most out of your agency

3 – Describe the way you solve clients problems 

#1 I wanted to start out with some humor. The following “client sayings” are great signals for what makes a bad client.

 

#2 When asked to talk about how to get the most out of your agency, I focused on this simple list…

• Be thoughtful

• Be patient

• Be open

• Be kind

• Be consistent

• Be appreciative

• Be budget-realistic

• Be schedule-realistic

• Be generous with your time

#3 When asked to describe the way Bluetext solves Marketing, Branding, and Communications challenges, I decided to use client case studies and present our methodology through the lens of each client’s custom solution.   Please click the following links to learn about those stories.

1 – Google

2 – Adobe

3 – FireEye

It was a real honor to talk to so many great marketing, branding and communication executives from so many industries.  The conversation was lively, with humor at times but also serious when talking about the importance of Return On Investment in the ever-changing marketing and digital world we live in.  To learn more about this presentation and Bluetext please contact me.

 

 

 

 

Messaging seems more like a PR term than a marketing creed, but in reality key messages are perhaps the most important element of every marketing campaign. While paring down thoughts, opinions and aspirations to effective messages can be a daunting task, it is often the first step in launching a new campaign. It informs not just the way you talk about your brand, but also its look and feel and the direction of the creative. It conveys the themes that you are driving into the market.

Solid messaging is integral to many campaign assets, including campaign microsites and landing pages. It often drives blog posts from top executives as well as infographics. And it can be a key element in any organization’s search strategy.

Every new campaign should begin with a process that is designed to identify the right messaging, and—in the cases where that messaging doesn’t exist or needs refinement—develop fresh messaging. Here are seven tips for developing the best messaging to insure that your campaigns will be heard by the right audience:

1. Don’t reinvent the wheel, or yourselves. Begin with a thorough review of existing messaging to see if that is still resonating and hitting the intended mark. If there are new products or services, see if the existing messaging applies, or if more likely you will need some new directions.
2. See what your competitors are up to. Conduct a thorough competitive analysis as to how they are positioning themselves in the market through their web site, digital campaigns, and advertising. If you have recent market research, that should be part of the review. If not, additional research might be a good idea if time and budget permit.
3. Talk to a wide range of stakeholders. Initiate a series of in-depth interviews with key executives, members of the sales and marketing teams, and external stakeholders that range from customers to channel partners to board members. These interviews should be structured with similar lines of questions in order to get results that can be compared and synthesized. But also make sure to let these interviews have some free flow of discussion to go into new directions and ideas for the brand.
4. Get buy-in from the team. Everyone will have an opinion on new messaging. It’s better to have that aired before implementing it. One of the best ways to reach consensus and maintain support is through a Message Summit, a closed door meeting with cell phones and laptops offs that includes the marketing team and key executives. The purpose of this meeting is to explore in-depth what you’ve learned, what you’re hearing and your initial thoughts, and to begin to gain perspectives how best to present the brand in the market. What is most important in the Summit is obtaining executive buy-in to the direction that you want to go. The goal is to reach consensus, not necessarily on the exact wording of the key messages, but on the tone and direction.
5. Put it on paper. Follow up with a Message Guide to allow the team to respond to the proposed wording from the Message Summit.
6. Follow the three “C”s. The best messages need to be Clear, Concise and Compelling:
   1. Clear is not as simple at it might look. There’s a great video of a 60 Minutes profile of Razorfish, the web enablement company. The reporter repeatedly asks the two Razorfish founders what the company does, and they are absolutely unable to answer the question without slipping into meaningless jargon. The frustrated reporter finally tries to explain himself what the company does–hardly an effective way of talking about your band. A clear message will remove uncertainty and insure that your target audience recognizes what you are trying to tell them.
   2. Concise is equally important. Brevity is important not just for campaign headlines, but also as the message plays out across a wide variety of collateral, including ads, direct mail and social media. In most cases, there just won’t be the space or the attention span to have a long message.
   3. Insuring that the message is Compelling may be the most difficult challenge, but it deserves the most attention. It is easy to have a message that might be an accurate portrayal of your products or solutions but that doesn’t convey the sense of value that you bring to market. A compelling message will resonate with key target audiences and entice them to want to learn more, to click on a button and download a piece of premium content, and ultimately to enter into the sales funnel.
   4. Align to your SEO. The right keywords based on search engine analytics can give a big lift to your search results. Make sure those terms are part of the your messaging, and use them strategically across your digital platforms. This can boost your rankings dramatically is best practices are followed.

The final messages can be leveraged for headlines and text throughout the marketing assets, and can jump-start the creative process of the right look and feel of the brand. They will give you the right tone to inform only the color palette and style but also the types of images that might be selected. It can extend to a refresh of the logo itself.

Messaging is too important to take casually or be an after-thought. A regular review of the messaging should be an integral part of every brand’s marketing programs.