Ping — new text message! For the average American this notification is nothing new, appearing 32 times a day…even more for the younger demographics.

As more and more consumers turn to their mobile devices for online shopping, text marketing has emerged as a powerful way for businesses to connect with their audience in a personal and engaging way. In this post, we’ll explore the reasons why text marketing has become such a popular form of marketing, why it’s poised to become an even bigger player in the e-commerce landscape, and even emerge in B2B businesses’ marketing strategies in the coming years. 

First, what is text marketing? 

But before we dive in, let’s take a moment to consider what text marketing actually is. Simply put, text marketing involves sending promotional messages, coupons, and other marketing content directly to consumers’ mobile phones via SMS or MMS. Seems simple right? Deceivingly yes, but many nuances and personalized targeting capabilities are hidden behind these messages. This approach allows businesses to reach their audience in a way that is immediate, intimate, and highly targeted. 

So why has text marketing become so popular in recent years? There are several factors at play. For one, mobile devices have become an increasingly important part of our lives – we carry them with us everywhere we go, and we rely on them for everything from socializing to shopping. Text marketing takes advantage of this trend by delivering marketing messages directly to consumers’ devices, where they are most likely to be seen and acted upon.

In addition, text marketing offers a number of advantages over other forms of marketing. For one, it’s highly personalized – businesses can tailor their messages to individual customers based on their past purchases, preferences, and behaviors. This makes the messages more relevant and engaging, which in turn increases the likelihood that customers will take action.

How can text marketing be useful in a B2B landscape? 

While at first glance text marketing may feel like a more beneficial strategy for the B2C segment, the tactic can also add value as a supplemental channel in the B2B segment. While B2C text marketing is centered around quick touchpoints and quick results, B2C text marketing is more focused on building a relationship with your customer and improving your brand reputation. Here are a few ways that B2B businesses can leverage the power of text marketing:

1. Lead generation: One of the most important goals of any B2B marketing strategy is to generate leads. Text marketing can be a highly effective tool for this purpose. For example, businesses can offer a special promotion or incentive in exchange for customers opting in to receive text messages. This allows businesses to build a list of interested prospects who are more likely to convert into paying customers.
2. Event promotion: Many B2B businesses rely on events and conferences to generate leads and connect with potential customers. Text marketing can be a great way to promote these events and drive attendance. For example, businesses can send out text messages with event details, special offers, and reminders to register.
3. Customer engagement: B2B businesses can also use text marketing to engage with customers in a more personal way. For example, businesses can send out text messages with exclusive content or behind-the-scenes insights, or offer special deals to loyal customers. This can help businesses build stronger relationships with their customers and keep them engaged over the long term.
4. Account management: Text marketing can also be useful for B2B businesses looking to manage customer accounts more efficiently. For example, businesses can use text messages to send invoices, payment reminders, and other important account information directly to customers’ mobile devices. This can help streamline the account management process and improve the overall customer experience.

 

These are just a few examples of how B2B businesses can use text marketing as part of their marketing strategy. By leveraging the power of SMS and MMS messaging, businesses can connect with customers in a more personal and engaging way, generate leads, promote events, and more. So if you’re a B2B business looking to take your marketing to the next level, consider adding text marketing to your toolbox.

So what does the future hold for text marketing? We believe that it will continue to grow and evolve, becoming an even more important part of the e-commerce landscape. Whether you’re a B2B business looking to connect with your customers in a more personal way, or a consumer looking for deals and discounts, text marketing is a trend that you won’t want to ignore.

The technology industry, especially B2B, is high-paced, extremely complex, and simply put overly saturated. From start-ups to the legacy giants, the constant evolution of cybersecurity, managed IT, SaaS, AI, and not to mention the emergence of FinTech, HealthTech, and EdTech has widened the competition pool. Beyond a sea of overly hashtagged buzzwords, there are millions of companies trying to make or sustain a name for themselves. This makes marketing more critical than ever. 

Marketing technologies start with building brand awareness but involves consistently showcasing proof of concept, case studies, and current customer experiences with the ultimate goal of driving lead generation. As technology companies grow, those that leverage marketing strategies in partnership with engineering, product development, and sales will become market leaders.

Taking a technology start-up to an enterprise, accelerating company growth, and disrupting the status quo require a powerful marketing strategy that solidifies and shares core messaging, generates attention, and creates demand. But no marketing strategy exists without challenges. Here are the top challenges Bluetext sees across marketing in the technology industry:

1. Messaging to Experts, Not Decision-makers

Let us state the obvious: technology is built by smart people. Highly educated, highly technical and well versed in a technology tongue the average person doesn’t use day to day. But when companies attempt to explain their product or service to primary audiences (usually the person with the purchasing power) as if they were an insider with perfect knowledge, they don’t support the customer decision process. Successful marketing strategies acknowledge and accommodate a natural learning curve to deliver digestible information. No matter how impressive the technology product or service, it still must serve a business benefit.

Marketing teams should strive must meet the audience halfway, understand where they are in the decision-making process and deliver ongoing, accessible, and understandable value.

2. Riddling With Industry Jargon

When you have mere seconds to capture prospects’ attention on a website, it’s critical to make the product relevant, instill its value, and motivate the prospect to learn more. Getting deep in the weeds with specs and jargon-filled content wastes everyone’s time because it often has no meaning to the prospect, and simply wastes time as for a user to scan, find no interest, and give up. A common mistake in attempts to establish expertise; is alienating the user.

Instead, marketers must speak in the prospects’ language, not their own. Messaging should convey everything a customer needs to know and lead with high-level business value.

3. Overlooking the Journey

Marketing is a journey, often not a straightforward linear point solution. When done successfully, it guides prospects and customers through the twists and turns of purchase decisions. Technology marketers should work backward from the business value of their products. No matter how flashy, impressive, or advanced the technology your prospect is tasked with solving a business challenge. To prove you can offer a business benefit, break down the steps your prospect must take to find a solution, evaluate the effectiveness or get the ultimate purchasing decision.

Rather than focusing on immediately driving revenue, technology companies must understand their target audience and the overall journey so that marketing efforts can weave in the right information at the right times.

4. Fine Line of Pushing vs Telling

Marketing and sales teams in any industry have a bad rap for coming on too strong, too soon. Cold calls, aggressive or unsolicited emails, and unqualified leads rarely result in success, because they don’t account for their audience’s stage of the decision cycle. Your sales and marketing team can shout impressive stats and flashy specs all day, but unless you convey a relevant and necessary value, you may as well be on mute. Consider how can you establish credibility by illustrating, not telling, and specific ways your technology impacts their business.

Technology marketers should strive to anticipate what information prospects need to learn in advance of purchasing — and create compelling, helpful content that will answer their questions before even asked. While we know marketers can’t be mind readers, but you can leverage historic customer profiles and past learnings to cater your content. 

So How Can You Be Sure Your Strategy is Effective?

Data, data, data. The amount of data available from a tech product creates unique opportunities for marketers to make decisions quickly, optimize products, develop campaigns, and reach customers where they are. The effectiveness of your technology marketing efforts depends on your organization’s unique goals. Whether that be selling more products, raising awareness in a new audience, or solidifying a reputation to an existing customer base, make sure your marketing campaigns are adaptive and always optimizing. 

Regardless of industry, marketing is getting the right information in front of the right people. Successful technology marketing comes with its fair share of nuances, especially in identifying the right target audiences and ensuring your message resonates to enhance the customer experience. Partnering with an expert with the right skills and experience in the technology industry landscape, such as a technology marketing agency like Bluetext, can help your organization overcome these challenges and reach your goals.

Sound as a Brand, Voice as a Channel

We know sound plays a pivotal role in brand marketing. Sound helps your brand tell a story and feel like something real and memorable.  But the power of Sound exceeds bolstering brand identity; it also introduces a world of more inclusive opportunities and easier ways for users to communicate, search, consume, and transact via Voice as a channel. 

Voice marketing has been booming the past couple of years and for good reason. What exactly is voice marketing? It’s a channel of marketing that utilizes voice technology to reach customers. Think the Alexas, Siris, and Google Assistant’s of the world that seem to have taken over our homes, cars, office settings, and more. 

Voice enables increased information accessibility, and effective task automation, and populates quick results in a hands-free, interactive way. Voice is intuitive, fast, more efficient, and easier for our brains to process compared to reading/typing text. NPR and Edison Research state 57% of “voice command users used voice commands daily in 2022.” From Siri to Google Assistant, to Alexa – AI (Artificial Intelligence) and voice search has been infiltrating our lives, and there’s no sign of it slowing. It’s expected that by 2024, voice marketing will reach 8.4 billion people. With this explosion of voice as a channel, let’s take a minute to voice our thoughts on the benefits of this rapidly growing channel. 

Why might Voice trump Keyboard?  

 

• Accessibility 

Nearly everyone in the modern world has a voice assistant in their hand or pocket, and likely a smart speaker not too far away. But aside from easy access, voice as a channel helps more people with disabilities (both physical and language based) to use technology. For example, dictation software enables people without vision or the function of their hands to operate a computer by using their voice. (Of course, voice marketing can create challenges for people who are hard of hearing or Deaf. Provide a transcript with your audio content to be more inclusive). All markers should aim to be as accessible as possible, and Voice can be a huge aid in the quest for accessibility. 

 

• Improved CX  = Increased Engagement

With text-to-speech and AI tools, the process of content creation becomes more manageable and allows companies to reach consumers in a new, engaging way. Voice marketing content captivates, converts, and retains customers, especially customers that don’t like to consume long-form written content. It’s not just more engagement in personal audio books or articles, consumers are using voice as a means of education and communication for business-related research and transactions. It allows users to multitask; it’s efficient and more productive for the user, and more manageable for the content creator, making for a digital marketing strategy that is results-driven and prioritizes the customer.

 

• Lead Qualification

Voice can be used to ask prospective customers questions like “what’s your name and email” and then populate the responses on the form. It can also help answer customers’ questions. Customers now don’t have to sift through lengthy FAQs and knowledge bases to get the exact information they’re looking for quickly – they can connect with a voice assistant to get their questions answered. This approach of course can’t answer every question, but it is a great starting point to help guide users to the content they’re looking for quickly and easily. 

Sounds great right? Voice as a channel is still constantly evolving and as we’ve seen has huge benefits for both companies and consumers, but we know our old friend Mr. Keyboard isn’t going anywhere any time soon, either. So how can marketers optimize their more traditional marketing strategies to better accommodate voice as a channel? Contact Bluetext today for help on improving your digital marketing strategies, and check out our tips for optimizing a website for voice. 

It’s here! While it may seem like just yesterday that Drupal 9 arrived, the Drupal community has obviously been hard at work releasing Drupal 10 this past December. 

Drupal, an open-source Content Management System (CMS), is increasing in popularity as new versions tout continued innovation and improvements. Coupled with relatively low cost to implement and scalable architecture, its vast features and flexibility meet the demands of today’s modern website requirements for businesses and organizations globally. Let’s take a review of what’s new with the latest version.

In general, most seem to agree that Drupal 10 does not come with major upgrade headaches or a learning curve for content administrators. The upgrade path and UI should feel seamless for current users. But what are the benefits? Here’s what Bluetext website developers are excited about:

• New themes!
  • The administration theme Claro, replacing Seven, provides a modern look while remaining familiar to content editors for ease of transition.

• The new front-end theme Olivero, replacing Bartik, works with the popular Layout Builder and will be WCAG AA compliant.

• The Starterkit Theme, according to Drupal, will provide a theme to be copied for front-end developers to easily start from, while also allowing Drupal to provide more frequent updates to the default markup and CSS shipped as part of Drupal core. Sub-theming will still be possible. 

• Automatic Updates, which will reduce the maintenance burden for core updates as they are automatically integrated as they are released
• Project Browser, though still in its infancy stages, is intended to provide a one-stop shop for exploring and installing contributed modules.
• Enhanced content editing as the WYSIWYG is replaced with CK Editor 5, including cleaner and easier copy and paste functionality from external documents.
• Better decoupled development experience, in particular for menus and URLs, as Drupal lays the groundwork for future headless capabilities. 

This may be enough to sell you on the upgrade now, but if not, keep in mind that Drupal 9 support will end in November 2023. It’s better to begin the upgrade process sooner rather than later to mitigate any risk. At a high level, you’ll need to do the following:

• Upgrade in order. Meaning, if you are on Drupal 8, you’ll need to upgrade to Drupal 9 before 10.
• Test your site for readiness using Drupal’s Upgrade Status tool. The tool will validate your compatibility requirements and provide helpful planning. 
• The Drupal Rector tool can help fix deprecated code and ensure all of your modules are ready.
  • As with most upgrades, a number of core modules and deprecated code with be removed.
  • Some use cases of jQuery will also be replaced with modern JavaScript components in an effort to move away from browser-dependent functionality. 
• Ensure you have also upgraded to PHP 8.1 and Symfony 5 or 6.

Whether you’re looking to upgrade or are considering Drupal for the first time, an experienced digital marketing agency, like Bluetext, can ensure your project benefits from everything Drupal 10 has to offer.  Get in touch to learn more about our website development services!

There are constant conversations online about which industries are going to be impacted the most by new technology like Open AI and ChatGPT. Marketers are worried about how their jobs will change with the expansion of artificial intelligence, but they should be looking at it as an opportunity to have more of an impact rather than a threat to their job. Here are three ways AI is changing search engine optimization and the marketing landscape.

Automated Keyword Research

Knowing what keywords your target market is using to find solutions to their problems is a crucial step into setting up a successful organic search strategy. Without understanding the customer needs, it becomes a bling uphill battle to convincing your company can be the solution. This requires a little research and machine learning can help accelerate this process with a wide variety of SEO AI tools on the market. These tools go a step beyond your initial keyword list, to give you semantic keywords and ideas for what people might be searching for.

Content Creation and Optimization

Once you have your keyword list, you need to create content for those keywords. Tools like Copy.ai can create blog content around your keywords and can also write meta descriptions and meta titles for you. Though you can create a high volume of content with these tools, this should be your content creation starting point. Though use with caution, and be aware the content will require a round of copywriting and tweaking to optimize it for your website.

Insights from Analytics

There are a number of SEO analytics tools that utilize AI to help with optimization. SEMrush has AI features that help with competitive research and content optimization. MOZ Pro has an AI tool to help with link building, as well as providing insights on how to improve website performance. Learning to leverage these tools will help improve your organic search rankings.

 

Marketers should keep in mind that AI can’t replace human creativity, strategy and analysis, but it can be a powerful tool to help with optimization and decision-making. As technology evolves Bluetext is ready and eager to test out the top technologies within our toolset. If your company needs assistance putting together a foolproof SEO strategy, an agency partner is the best first step in creating a realistic action plan and analytics tracking. Contact us to learn more about our search engine optimization and content marketing services.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, has obviously been an important factor for website performance for well over two decades. However, with increasing refinement and understanding of Google’s (and other alternative search engine) algorithms, website managers have gotten wiser and more strategic about the deployment of their SEO strategy. To rank ahead of the competition, modern SEO implementation methodology must be quite nuanced, and frequently updated to keep pace with ever-evolving algorithms and updates. In this article, we’ll talk about how website schema will be a key differentiator for organic search.

Traditional Methods of SEO Alone are Insufficient

Traditional methods of search engine optimization, like metatext optimization, H1 headings, and backlinking are by no means non-essential nowadays. In fact, it is quite literally the opposite – they are the mere table stakes that every single website should have to be considered even operational in 2022. However, what once was the complete focus of organic search strategies has evolved to the foundational building blocks. Though true optimization, or distinguishing your website from the rest, takes far more complex and nuanced forms. In 2023 we will see a noticeable shift and prioritization of schemas. 

2023 – Year of the Schema?

Website schema isn’t a brand new concept – Google has offered “Rich Results” or “Structured Data” since the 2000s. What has changed, however, is the importance these displays are to organic performance. As existing SEO methods become commonplace, the remaining distinguishing factors will become increasingly important factors.

If you aren’t familiar with structured data markup, you’ll be surprised to know that you likely interact with them every day. Structured data markup is simply website information formatted in a specific, “structured” schema (as outlined by Google’s engineers) that feeds Google’s Rich Results — these Rich Results displays are the interactive elements (that aren’t sitelinks) that you see on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Some common ones include:

• Articles
• Events
• Job Postings
• Related Images
• Related Videos

Visual Density Search Can Improve Clickthrough

What role does the schema of structured data markup play with regards to SEO? For one, the most critical factor is that of density and representation. A hallowed rule of SEO has been one link per domain (unless you’re lucky enough to get a sitelink sitemap). Rich Results is a clear break of that rule — there’s no limit to how many Rich Results one site can return. More results simply mean more opportunities for viewers to click through to your site organically. 

Furthermore, vertical density is an important consideration. Without rich results, if a prospect scrolls past your sitelink in the SERP, it’s very unlikely that an individual is ever going to interact with your link ever again. In contrast, Rich Results can be inserted at any point through the SERP — meaning that a site can have multiple points for visual interaction through the SERP.

How to Implement Website Schema on Your Website

It is incredibly important to understand that structured data website schema cannot and will not happen accidentally — website managers need to spend time and significant effort to ensure any provided data matches what Google is looking for. Even a single error will mean Google will largely ignore the whole provided schema; Google isn’t looking to do any fuzzy logic or favors for website schema.

Thankfully, Google provides an easy-to-reference listing of ALL the possible Rich Results and their expected schema. Traversing the whole list is daunting, but it is vital to realize that structured data schema, unlike traditional SEO strategies like metatext or image optimization, is not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solution. Before embarking on updating your website data to meet Google’s schema requirements, identify what your website’s strengths and priorities are, and then match them with a similarly minded structured data requirement.

For example, a site heavily devoted to recruitment would certainly be interested in adding the Estimated Salary and Job Posting schema items — both would be a big driver for interested applicants. A site with a focus on video could leverage various Video layouts to encourage prospects to click through in a visual way not possible through metatext alone. Websites with more complex service offering could leverage Q&A and How-tos to convince and coax wary end users. Don’t bother trying to implement every schema — instead focus on what is most relevant for your website. 

Google doesn’t do all this schema creation by themselves. Much of these definitions are defined by a consortium of web stakeholders through an organization called Schema.org. Schema.org offers comprehensive documentation of their data structures online. Above all else, however, it is important to note that both Schema.org’s and Google’s structures are quite fluid. Web needs constantly shift, and both organizations are very much in deep conversations with web users at large to identify what would be relevant changes and schema updates. Bluetext would recommend adding the Schema.org changelog as a bookmark, and referencing once a quarter. It may be deep in the weeds, but it also acts as a bellwether of what schema and data structures are being actively updated and worked-on — a good sign of increasing relevance for that data structure.

Finally, no task is complete without verification. Thankfully, Google has made that easy as well with the Schema Markup and Rich Results testers. You can easily validate website data against what Google’s crawlers see, to ensure your work did not go to waste.

SEO is no longer a paint-by-numbers game. People have gotten too smart and traditional monolithic strategies are simply insufficient by themselves to propel your website to the top of the rankings. Schema and website markup offer a way for dedicated and driven website managers to distinguish their organic results and secure a stake of organic traffic away from lackadaisical competitors.

If you want some help in identifying opportunities for your website to leverage Rich Results and website schema, come talk to us here at Bluetext.

Word on the street is there is a new AI program that may mean big changes for many business models. ChatGPT, a new product launched by OpenAI, is a revolutionary API model designed to optimize artificial intelligence. But that’s what every AI company promises right? Sure, yet those currently in use by the public still serve up half relevant, overly robotic and not always so helpful responses. And that’s where ChatGPT differs. It’s specifically designed to interact in a conversational way, not the ‘by the book’ technically correct manner that doesn’t always fit the user’s needs (ahem, looking at you, Siri). This product can be applied to any language task, with the capacity to  serve millions of production requests each day. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. So…like a person? Kind of! ChatGPT was created using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), meaning real live human AI trainers provided conversations in which they played both sides—the user and an AI assistant, to provide comparison data to refine responses. 

This new product has generated a powerful buzz across businesses of almost any industry. Companies of all shapes and sizes are eager to explore its capabilities and hypothesize how it may change their industry. 

So let’s test it out, as Bluetext was curious too. 

Hey ChatGPT, can you “tell me how chatGPT will change business models in a Snoop Dawg voice”? 

“Yo, what’s good? It’s ya boy Snoop Dawg here comin’ atcha with the scoop on how ChatGPT is gonna change the game for business models.

First off, let me just say that ChatGPT is a straight-up beast of a language model. It’s been trained on a ton of different text, so it knows how to generate all kinds of crazy-realistic sounding text in a variety of different styles and dialects. And that’s where things get interesting for business models.

See, with ChatGPT, businesses can train the model to understand and generate text in their brand’s unique voice and tone. This means that they can use ChatGPT to automatically generate all kinds of content, from social media posts and customer service responses, to sales copy and marketing materials.

And that’s just the beginning. With ChatGPT, businesses can also automate a whole range of other tasks, like answering FAQs, providing product recommendations, and even conducting market research. This frees up time and resources that can be spent on other, more valuable activities.

But the real game-changer is the way that ChatGPT can help businesses connect with their customers on a more personal level. By training the model to understand and generate text in the same dialect and style as their customers, businesses can create a more authentic and engaging experience for their customers. This can lead to increased customer loyalty, higher levels of customer satisfaction, and ultimately, better business results.

So there you have it, folks. ChatGPT is the future of business models, and it’s gonna change the game in a big way. Stay tuned for more updates from ya boy, Snoop Dawg. Peace out!”

Impressive, we must say. Our request was met with an informative and relevant response that even nailed a super specific spot-on the tone of voice. Let’s try again and get some more insight.

Hey ChatGPT, “tell me about ChatGPT’s effect on marketing”

“ChatGPT is a powerful language model that has the potential to greatly impact the field of marketing. By understanding and generating text in a variety of different styles and dialects, ChatGPT can be trained to understand a brand’s unique voice and tone. This allows businesses to use ChatGPT to automatically generate a wide range of marketing materials, such as social media posts, sales copy, and email newsletters.

In addition, ChatGPT can be used to automate tasks such as answering frequently asked questions, providing product recommendations, and conducting market research. This can save businesses time and resources that can be redirected towards more valuable activities.

Furthermore, ChatGPT’s ability to understand and generate text in the same dialect and style as a brand’s target audience allows businesses to create a more authentic and engaging experience for their customers. This can lead to increased customer loyalty and satisfaction, which can ultimately result in better business results.

Overall, the potential impact of ChatGPT on marketing is significant. By providing businesses with the ability to automate a wide range of marketing tasks and create more authentic and engaging customer experiences, ChatGPT has the potential to greatly enhance the effectiveness of marketing efforts.”

ChatGPT said it best. New developments in A.I. could have major impact on marketing strategies across industries, as many are now able to leverage artificial intelligence to confidently adopt a “work smarter, not harder” approach. Time will tell how businesses adopt A.I. products and how consumer trust levels react, but one thing is for sure: 2023 will be the year to test these new technology strategies and take big strides towards the future of digital marketing.

There’s a reason why TikTok is the fastest growing app in America, and it’s not because of the lip-syncing teens or the viral dance moves. Users are drawn to TikTok for one primary reason: they love video. So much so that brands and companies recognize the power of audiovisual advertising opportunities and pump out more video content than ever before. But looking just beyond social media trends, video marketing remains highly effective across all platforms. In 2021, a study by Lemonlight found that 98% of marketers agreed that video would play an essential role in the upcoming years. In a media environment where consumers are constantly being bombarded by new information, it is absolutely vital that companies garner attention and engagement. One of the most effective means of capturing attention is through video marketing. Not only has video been shown to drive more engagement than any other type of marketing, but it can also be a powerful way to humanize your brand. Using eye-catching visuals, voiceovers, and music can translate your brand’s story and mission in a concise and memorable way. Producing video content may seem daunting, so here are a few key pointers to help break it down.

Different Types of Video Marketing

Commercials

The most common kind of video you can produce is oftentimes referred to as a “spot”, and it entails any kind of advertisement that airs at a specific time. Businesses choose where and when they want their advertisement to appear, and the content can vary depending on the brand or product being marketed. Since spots are typically less than a minute long, brevity is the name of the game. The key here is to immediately engage your audience and get to the meat of your message within the first couple of seconds.

Social Media

Videos for social media include anything that would be made and posted on a company’s organic social media account, or promoted through paid media placement. For organic social profiles, video content is often leveraged through temporary or traditional posts, while paid media promotion can target social media users with inline video ads based on profile data or website cookies. The content can vary, but the main focus for organic placement is to increase brand awareness and grow a social following. Putting some ad spend behind your video content offers more precise audience targeting, and offers opportunities for direct calls to action such as “Learn More” or “Sign Up”. Nevertheless, organic and paid social videos are typically short, with the exception of content for YouTube or Facebook, which is better suited for longer content.

Company Culture

The primary goal of this type of video is to help show off your company’s personality. These videos are an effective means to build trust between the company and its target audience, whether that be potential customers or prospective employees, by emphasizing core values and missions. These can include interviews with team members, clips of the office or events, or anything at all that shows what makes working at your company unique.

Product Demonstration

With a demo video, you have the opportunity to show off your brand and your products while teaching people how to use them. These are usually a bit longer and more detailed than the other video types mentioned, however, they should still grab the viewers’ attention. Product demonstration videos typically feature a charismatic host that speaks passionately about the product, but animated videos are effective as well.

Getting Started with Making Video Content

Okay, so now you know a few different types of video marketing, but where do you start? Although there are plenty of online sources for learning how to create amazing content on your own, it can be helpful to invest in a video marketing agency. This powerful method of marketing is not going anywhere anytime soon, so if you are interested in increasing user engagement, brand awareness, and conversions contact Bluetext about our video production services.

In late 2021, Apple released its iOS 15 update with a pretty drastic change in browser layout, creating a ripple effect in website UX design. The beloved search bar on Safari had been moved from the top of the screen to the bottom. Many users, who are less familiar with the thought process behind UX design were left with one question. Why?

Well, according to MacRumors, the move was more functional than aesthetic. Think about how one naturally holds and operates a smartphone; usually held within the palm of the hand and touchscreen controlled by your thumbs from the bottom corners. Therefore, controls brought to the bottom of the screen are easier to reach with one hand. This feature also creates more space for users to focus on the webpage’s content.

Research confirms that “75% of users touch the screen with one thumb.” This has led UX designers to favor a thumb-driven design, placing the most important and frequently-used features at the bottom of the screen. This ensures easy access with one thumb.

Traditionally, many website designers place navigation in the top corners of the screen. While that works with a desktop device, due to the greater range of motion coming from the computer’s mouse, it does not translate that effectively to a mobile device. With the navigation menu being placed on the top corners of the screen, the range of motion that the user’s thumb has can restrict easy access to that navigation menu. Especially as technology evolves and mobile screens grow in size, users find themselves having to reposition their hands. This in turn slows down the user’s ability to navigate webpages and ingest content. 

What’s the big deal? I just have to move my hand a little to be able to reach the top corner of my screen. The answer is simple: efficiency. Bottom menu navigation allows the user to accomplish tasks faster and with a greater level of comfortability, which really adds up considering that the average American spends 5.4 hours on their phones.

A lot goes into the design process, and it is not all about aesthetics. It’s about how the product functions. In today’s world, 55% of website traffic is generated using mobile devices, so functional and efficient mobile layouts for a website is imperative to the success of a brand. It is essential that UX designs make easy navigation a priority because the easier a product is to use the more often it will get used or recommended. That is why features like bottom navigation are so effective. Especially if it is designed in a streamlined way that makes content visible, clear, and simple.

As users experience the bottom menu trend, users will likely have to take some time to readjust. Looking ahead at UX design trends for 2022, there will be a continuation of the emphasis on overall usability, navigation, and aesthetics being driving forces for design. There is a desire to achieve a seamless experience, where user experience designers focus on the continuity and natural progression of connecting all the steps of finding a landing page to purchasing an item. It is imperative that functionality is favored, so it will be interesting to see more experimentation with navigation placement and overall screen flow on mobile devices in the future.   

Does your website menu need a refresh? Contact Bluetext today to learn about our web and UX design services.

We jumped at the idea when Phosphorus approached us here at Bluetext about creating a new campaign. After extensive brainstorming the team agreed that a video integrating animated 3D objects into real-life footage would be the best way to tell the story of the Thing Tamer. It’s a trend that’s been going on for decades, from previously cheesy CGI such as The Scorpion King (2002) to more stunning recent examples like Disney’s live-action version of The Lion King (2019). The advancements in integrating 3D animated objects into real life have come a long way! Let’s dive into some of the techniques used.

The Thing Tamer video we created consisted of animated 3D IoT office devices presented as wild creatures creeping through an office. To accomplish this, we had to carefully plan out our shoot during the scripting and storyboarding phase with the expectations of adding 3D animated creatures created in post-production. This entailed detailed storyboarding ahead of filming, then taking 360-degree spherical images of the intended 3D objects’ locations using a DSLR before creating the HDRI maps in Adobe Photoshop. While capturing 360-degree panoramic images isn’t essential, it can significantly increase the photo-realistic illumination and reflections of 3D-generated objects. HDRIs help in matching the color and lighting from the set or location to the inserted animated footage. This along with color correcting the footage to match the colors of the HDRI ensure any lighting and reflections are as realistic as possible. 

Once we got our raw footage it was time to get started in Cinema 4D. After motion tracking the footage, which creates points in 3D space to use for the animated objects we placed the 3D IoT creatures in their planned locations, aligned with their relevant tracking points. From there, we modeled the movements of the creatures using their real-life counterparts as inspiration. This is where things got interesting as we had to account for the various joints of each creature. For example, we ended up using the general motion of the first black widow spider’s leg as a baseline for the other legs, then accounted for individual differences between the legs and height of the printer torso. Small details like this help sell the illusion, keeping viewers believing the object is truly part of the scene.

Once we finished adding all the objects, animation, lighting, and reflections to Cinema 4D, we were ready to render the various sequences. While there are a number of GPU-based rendering engines on the market, we use Redshift because it’s built to work seamlessly with Cinema 4D. While we also like Redshift for being fast, keep in mind that each rendered frame can take 3-5 minutes to render in high quality. So the actual render time can vary depending on the length and complexity of the shot. Thankfully, if a project has a tight timeline, you can either add additional GPUs to your rig or employ the aid of a render farm. At the end of the day, if the goal is to be as photo-realistic as possible, the project will likely lean towards the longer side. 

Once we finished exporting all our renders from Cinema 4D, it was time to start loading the sequences into After Effects. Once imported, we dove into layering the various sequences. Once again, this is a stage where it was vital for us to take our time to ensure the best quality. At this stage, as you work with the sequences, you may notice some issues such as particular lighting not working well with some 3D objects. So take the time to adjust the color to match the lighting of the footage. Always remember, the goal is to create a life-like 3D render that nearly or fully fools the user into believing it’s real. Any adjustments to the passes should increase the believability that the 3D objects are native to the footage. Once we were satisfied with the lighting, shadows, and reflections applied to the 3D objects, all that was left was to export the finished product. And that’s how we successfully created a film that blends live-action with 3D digital assets!

Whether you’re trying to create the next big 3D-blended campaign ad or a short teaser video, the experts at Bluetext can help. Our professional videography team is eager to identify intriguing stories to tell and how best to capture them. Want to learn more about how Bluetext can help your video needs? Get in touch with us here. To learn more about our Thing Tamer campaign, check out the full breadth of our work here.