This Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs will square off against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV; anticipated to be one of the most entertaining sporting events of the year brought to you by gunslinging quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes and Jimmy Garoppolo.

Thanks to two electrifying football teams and the unofficial holiday that comes with Super Bowl Sunday, a projected 100+ million viewers in the U.S. will tune into FOX at the same time, creating an unparalleled opportunity for marketing pros to cultivate a memorable brand association with more than a quarter of the U.S. population.

But these opportunities do not come cheap

Outside of the cost of producing the commercials, (which anyone in marketing can tell you isn’t cheap) you have to pay egregious dollar figures just to place it on the primetime Super Bowl stage. FOX sold out of its Super Bowl ad slots in late November, which reportedly sold for between $5 million and $5.6 million.

$5.6 million!

Let that number sink in. $5.6 million could buy you a five-bedroom house with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge in downtown San Francisco. Or 10 five-bedroom houses in the Kansas City-area. Suffice to say, there’s a lot you could do with that money.

From a marketing standpoint, if your brand is considering purchasing a primetime 30-second Super Bowl ad, or you’re simply wondering how you could make a splash during the event without blowing your entire annual budget, consider these marketing alternatives that you could buy for the same price:

1. 20 years of a PR retainer at 20K per month

While it probably does not make sense to stretch one year’s marketing budget over the next two decades, this illustrates how far your marketing dollar could go over time with a PR budget as opposed to a single, 30-second Super Bowl ad. A monthly PR retainer could produce the ability for your brand to demonstrate expertise to more targeted audiences than the general public watching the Super Bowl at a fraction of the cost. This is typically executed with media relations and strategic placements of messaging within publications of interest to the brand’s most important audiences. Spending your marketing dollars in this way would create a steady burn of messaging over a long period of time as opposed to one, 30-second firework explosion of your brand that a large portion of the Super Bowl audience could miss.

2. Multiple omnichannel digital campaigns

In order for any Super Bowl campaign to be successful, it must eventually migrate to the digital realm in one way or another. Outside of the $5.6 million it will cost to run the ad in the spotlight, brands also have to shell out at least another $1 million to market the ad via social media. So why not go straight to digital with your campaign?

Newcastle Brown Ale was among the first to attempt this digital-first Super Bowl strategy in 2014 with a satirical YouTube commercial featuring Anna Kendrick about the Super Bowl commercial they almost made but didn’t have the money. By posting the video directly to YouTube and spending all of their resources marketing the commercial online, they found a witty way to poke fun at the nature of Super Bowl commercials by making one while also saving A LOT of money in the process. Digital campaigns can be an extremely effective (not to mention more targeted) way of maximizing your exposure to your key audiences. Ultimately the third-party validation that will come from individuals sharing your content will be the mark of a successful campaign, so digital-first strategies could be the next iteration of Super Bowl commercials.

3. Yearly platinum sponsorships in ten of your audience’s favorite publications

If your brand is targeting audiences that congregate around specific media outlets, paid partnerships with those media outlets can be a great way to enhance your exposure to the people who matter most. Sponsorship packages at media publications vary based on their target audience, the type of content they typically publish, and what you’ll get for your spend. But with big dollar figures in the hundreds of thousands, you could expect millions of unique viewers, digital ad space, thought leadership content, lead-gen, sponsored webinars, and more!

As Americans and football fans around the world tune in to the game on February 2, household brands will be vying for your loyalty and lesser-known companies will be introducing themselves to the world on the hottest advertising real estate money can buy. However, you can also expect to see many organizations turning to alternative marketing to make their splash during the game.

The real winners of this international media event will not be limited to just the Chiefs or the 49ers, but also to the organizations who strategically employ ALL of the marketing tactics available to them.

Programmatic Advertising – No Signs of Slowing Down in 2020

If you spend any time at all surfing the web, you have encountered some form of programmatic advertising. The video ad that plays before you stream your favorite TV show? Programmatic. The banner ad that appears alongside the cooking recipe you’re reading? Programmatic. The sponsored article content that shows up as you’re scanning your favorite news site? You guessed it – it’s programmatic.

Programmatic Advertising – What is it?

Programmatic ad buying is the use of software to purchase digital advertising in real-time, as opposed to the traditional ad buying process that involves RFPs, human negotiations, and manual insertion orders. It allows digital agencies like Bluetext to strategically select where we want to show display, video and native ads, and when.

A huge benefit of programmatic advertising is that the software grants advertisers access to the biggest data providers in the game. Not only are we choosing where and when to show ads online, but we have the capabilities to choose who actually sees our ads. Advertisers are able to hand-select from thousands of audience segments collected by these data providers and layer those segments onto programmatic campaigns. 

A diagram of how programmatic advertising reaches consumers

Why Invest in Programmatic?

While targeting capabilities and ease-of-use are two major benefits of investing in programmatic advertising, there are a number of reasons why digital agencies should hop on the programmatic bandwagon in 2020.

Here are Bluetext’s top 3 reasons for investing in programmatic advertising in 2020:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning

Programmatic advertising already makes digital ad buying easier for advertisers than it ever was before, but AI and machine learning have simplified the process even more. For years, media buyers and digital marketers relied on a manual process to review campaigns, manage budgets, make adjustments to ad creative, and more. However, AI and machine learning have become so sophisticated that the manual days of optimizing are nearly over. Once your campaign has launched, the AI will start to learn what’s working and what’s not, shifting budgets and making adjustments to enhance efficiency in real-time. Studies show that by 2035, AI will boost productivity and profitability by nearly 40%.

As a leading digital marketing agency, Bluetext has seen the benefits of AI and machine learning pay off in major ways. Not only is our digital marketing team more efficient, but the results we were able to drive for clients in 2019 far exceeded their goals. With AI and machine learning only becoming smarter, Bluetext is equipped to reach new heights with programmatic advertising in 2020.

2. Digital Out of Home (DOOH) Opportunities

Digital Out of Home (DOOH) advertising is a unique marketing channel that allows advertisers to reach users outside of their homes in digitally-displayed spaces. Though DOOH media isn’t new, it’s expected to grow exponentially in the coming years. Reports show that between 2016 and 2023, the DOOH media channel will grow from $3.6 Billion to $8.4 Billion.

With the average person spending 70% of their time outside of their home, investing in DOOH in 2020 is a no-brainer. From mobile geofencing to digital billboards, the opportunities to reach people on-the-go are vast. Most importantly, because DOOH is now offered through programmatic platforms, advertisers will have access to significantly more data from DOOH advertising than ever before.

Digital marketing agencies like Bluetext now have the ability to measure results from a digital billboard ad or an animated kiosk through the data and technology programmatic tools provide. Bluetext is looking forward to expanding DOOH capabilities in 2020 to connect the dots from in-home browsing to in-store purchasing.

3. Multi-Channel Advertising

In the past, advertising agencies had to leverage several different platforms, media vendors and direct buys to ensure they reached their audiences across all mediums. Programmatic advertising has simplified this process so that marketing agencies like Bluetext can execute all advertising efforts through one simple-to-use platform. 

Programmatic solutions include paid social, display, video pre-roll, native advertising, geofencing, DOOH, connected TV and more. Digital marketing agencies like Bluetext now have the capability to run one digital campaign across all different mediums and – most importantly – track user behavior across all touchpoints. With AI and machine learning, programmatic campaigns will optimize to reach users at the right time on the right medium, whether that’s on the computer, on their smart TV, or in a store on their mobile device. In 2020, it’s expected that even more multi-channel solutions will be announced, such as voice-activated ads powered through devices like Alexa and Siri.

Programmatic advertising has opened the door for digital marketing agencies like Bluetext to effectively run and execute campaigns across a number of channels and mediums, making media dollars more efficient than ever before. With the expansion of programmatic solutions in 2020, there’s no limit to the number of possibilities Bluetext will be able to leverage to drive digital media success for our clients. To learn more about our work with programmatic advertising contact us.

2019 has been a big year for Bluetext full of limitless growth and many successful launches. As one of the top digital marketing agencies in the Washington, D.C. area, we are growing faster than ever in both size and knowledge. 

 

As we look back on 2019, we can reflect on some of our major accomplishments. Partnering with impressive and innovative clientele gives our team the opportunity to push our creative boundaries and exceed client expectations. 

 

This past year, ResMan, a property management platform with a robust range of solutions, sought out Bluetext as a top marketing firm for their digital needs. With the introduction of a new suite of offerings and a more holistic platform, ResMan needed to repackage their solutions and relaunch their digital presence. ResMan brought in Bluetext to reinvigorate the ResMan brand with an updated website and CVI, while modernizing and streamlining their existing brand.

Bluetext took inspiration from Resman’s customer-centric philosophy and delivered on a request for external messaging and marketing efforts to reflect their goals as a company. Bluetext stepped up to the challenge and seized this project as an opportunity to enhance expertise as a top user experience agency. Resman’s request was met by a fully redesigned—and responsive—website, focusing on an enhanced UX that guides users with an intuitive⁠ website flow. 

Similarly, Bluetext assisted in creating the new Mindtree.com, which offers an intuitive, fully responsive user experiences and personalization to serve relevant content to each user. As a leading global digital transformation and technology services provider, MindTree needed a brand and website that reflected their capabilities and future-focused customers.  The website utilized Drupal 8 CMS platform to provide the utmost flexibility and scalability needed by such a large enterprise while allowing a design that reflects a vibrant brand and its employees. This improved user experience translated to measurable results, as the bounce rate decreased by 20% and website traffic rose 60% post-launch.

What does MindTree have to say about the experience? “Bluetext has been a tremendous digital agency partner to the Global Marketing Team at Mindtree. From digital brand strategy, to innovative user experience design, to enterprise Drupal content management implementation expertise… they were impressive every step of the way. Great collaborators with our in-house folks – I would strongly recommend the amazing team at Bluetext!”

Bluetext takes pride in offering exceptional client service and taking the time to learn a client’s distinct brand values and user needs. Bluetext has succeeded in bringing our client’s values to life through digital marketing and campaign deliverables. A portfolio of industry-leading clients has taught us to treat every new project as a two-sided relationship to grow and enhance both parties’ business value. Our efforts to work backward, prioritizing the end-user experience and ultimate brand goals have translated into the measurable success that we look forward to continuing into 2020. 

 

In today’s Internet ecosystem, there seems to be a blog for everything. Fashion blogs, fan club blogs, cooking blogs, review blogs — you name it. Blog types range from personal, professional, niche-interest and most importantly, business. 

This begs the question; who writes these blogs? What does it take to be a blogger? 

The beauty of the Internet is anyone can be a blogger.  Blog writers range from influencers to B2B government contractors! In 2019 there were over 500 million blogs published on the Internet. Blogging is more than just a hobby, it is actually a very useful digital marketing tool.

What is the point of these blogs? 

The average reader might guess entertainment. But to a digital content strategy firm, the value is search engine optimization. 

But what does that mean and why should my company care about SEO? 

Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to the strategic content writing and website design meant to increase a website’s organic visibility. With over 3.5 billion Google searches a day,  it is critical for customers, partners, and even investors to be able to find information about your business through search engines. 

Blogging helps boost SEO quality by positioning your website as an appropriate answer to your customers’ questions. When potential customers and partners enter queries or keywords into the search engine, they are matched with algorithm-based results Google has determined most valuable and relevant to their search intent. 

When you optimize web pages — including blog posts — you’re making your website more visible to people who are entering keywords associated with your product or service via search engines like Google. 

But…how do I optimize?

There is more to a search engine optimization strategy than repeating select phrases over and over again! A digital content marketing agency will advise you to be smart about your blog. Almost as smart as Google’s algorithms, which crawl websites to determine which websites best match the intent of each user. 

Sound complicated? It is, but your search engine optimization strategy doesn’t need to be. A consistently updated blog can be an incredibly effective and user-friendly way to boost your website’s organic search rank. 

A digital marketing and analytics agency will analyze not only your business’ website but also competitors’ sites to identify a strategic blend of keywords to integrate into your website. Blog pages are an optimal place to include keywords because content can naturally accommodate frequently searched subjects. Using digital marketing and analytics tools, such as SEMrush or Moz, a top search engine optimization firm will recommend a series of blog topics and titles, a strategic cadence for updating your blog, and some expert tips and tricks. 

 

Here are Bluetext’s top tips and tricks to blogging your way to the top: 

  1. Identify the focus keywords. These should 2-3 phrases or words per post that receive high levels of search volume but have a realistically achievable level of competition. 
  2. Head for the headers! H1 text and titles are weighted more heavily by search engines. Put your keywords in these fields, but don’t fill your pages with H1’s, as this will deduct from your search equity. 
  3. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Aim to repeat the selected keywords 4-5 throughout the post. However, be warned: Google crawlers are smart. They value relevancy and will not rank a site that seems inauthentic or filled with spam-like content. 
  4. A picture is worth a thousand words…quite literally! Place your keywords in the alt text section on post images, and Google crawlers will include this in your keyword count and most users won’t ever even notice. 

 

For more tips and tricks when it comes to blog writing and SEO, check out our blog.

Do you remember when you used to have to consult books and encyclopedias for the answers to your questions? Just over 20 years ago, you had to reference the yellow pages to find a marketing agency. Nowadays, Google is the search engine king, the go-to for 73% of searches online (and 81% of mobile search). Top marketing agencies depend on Google and it’s algorithms to direct current and potential customers to their clients’ sites via both organic and paid search.

What’s the difference between non-organic and organic (search)?

Organic search is the result of entering search terms as a single string of text into a search engine. Organic search results appear as lists that are based on relevance to the search terms and exclude advertisements; they do not filter out pay-per-click advertising. Paid search is a form of digital marketing where search engines like Google and Bing allow advertisers to show ads at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). Paid search operates on a pay-per-click model– meaning there is no cost until someone clicks on your ad or content.

Organic traffic is widely considered the most valuable traffic source for multiple reasons:

The downside to organic search is that it takes time to get indexed and generate traffic. Although evergreen content ranks higher than paid (time-limited) placements, the lag in rank visibility may not work for every business case.

Rev up your (search) engines with a paid approach

Besides considering how much traffic will reach a site via organic or paid search, top marketing agencies also work with their clients to enhance their performance with search engine algorithms through search engine optimization (SEO). Improving your company’s search engine optimization isn’t just about the politics of appearing first, it carries financial benefits, too — 57% of B2B marketers say SEO is the biggest factor impacting lead generation.

To optimize your site rank in the organic search results, you need to employ SEO techniques to make your page as crawlable as possible to search engine algorithms. This includes using keywords in critical real estate (headers, links) and including content that relates to those key search terms.

Paid searches are the companies that have paid to appear at the top of your search engine. Even with the little yellow disclaimer “Ad” box, many users click intuitively on these paid placements. Rather than having to wait patiently for your SEO to build up through indexing, you can pay for the chance to get seen on page one of Google immediately.

You can put your money where your mouth is, or play the long SEO game

Sometimes paid search isn’t in a company’s budget – fear not, having the deepest pocket does not ensure SEO success. Google has processes in place (quality score, copy rules, landing page quality, and more) to make sure that the ads that rank are still highly relevant for searchers. Investing substantial budget in ads or paid search will only float a company so far in the ranking algorithms if their content isn’t crafted to support these buys.  In both organic and paid search, Google puts user experience first, which is why top marketing agencies such as Bluetext focus on a holistic approach to SEO, creating high-quality evergreen content that ensures both organic and paid efforts are supported through continuous search engine indexing. Digital marketing agencies are experienced at selecting organic keywords that will be both effective and realistic, and they provide support in creating a strong content base to perform in SERPs.

 

See how Bluetext can help improve your SEO »

We’ve all heard of SEO – but what exactly is it? And how do you achieve “good” SEO? Before attempting to tackle your own search engine optimization strategy, take a look at these five SEO basics.

  1. What is SEO?

 While there are varying definitions for SEO, SEO can be thought of as increasing the visibility and traffic to your website, brand, or company through non-paid search results.

  1. Why is SEO important?

SEO is important for many reasons, but here are the top four factors a digital marketing agency considers in their optimization strategy:

  • The majority of online traffic is driven by search engines
  • Organic search has no direct cost to run
  • Visibility is determined by the relevance and utility of content, not your budget
  • SEO helps effectively communicate your content to search engines
  1. How do search engines work?

 SEO matters because it helps search engines determine if your site is relevant to users. But how does the search engine know? The specific search algorithms are complex and unknown — even to top digital marketing agencies —  but a premier SEO strategy firm will tell you that search engines pick up keywords by crawling websites. They arrive on the website, go through every link and all text on the site, and summarize and bucket the content into the search engine’s index. The index is updated, and search rankings are updated to match it. This process can take days, or even weeks, depending on the popularity and size of the website. 

  1. What is a good SEO keyword?

 In order for a search engine to give you a good SEO ranking, it is important to incorporate keywords into your site that the crawlers will pick up on. Here are four factors that Bluetext, a leading digital content marketing firm, recommends considering when selecting your SEO keywords:

  • Relevancy: Can you write multiple pages solely dedicated to this keyword?
  • Search Volume: Do people actually search for this word?
  • Competition: Is this keyword popular among your competition? Make sure your keywords are unique enough to you in order to show up on the first search results page.
  • Campaign: Are there plans for a paid campaign around this keyword?
  1. What is the best way to utilize my chosen keywords?

Content, content, content. Blogs are not just for recipes and personal stories! They actually serve a critical function to search engine optimization. This is why digital content marketing firms recommend before your site launches,  you have a solid repertoire of resources and blog posts. Here are some tips to help ensure that your SEO keywords are utilized in the most productive way possible:

  • Make sure your pages have a central focus. Select one or two keywords to write about and stay on topic. If you have other keywords to optimize around, start a new post! 
  • Regularly link back to relevant pages with internal links. Otherwise, the search engine crawlers will not know what pages on your website are relevant or important
  • Leverage the H1. H1 headings are especially weighted by search crawlers because of their visibility and size. The H1 is the single most important line of text on a page
  • Ensure that pages are long enough to have crawlable body text, usually 200 words or more

Search engine optimization is a tricky terrain to navigate alone. Google search engines use a number of complex algorithms to improve the end user experience, so it is recommended you consult a digital marketing agency in planning your SEO strategy. Digital content firms, such as Bluetext, are a strong asset to leverage in keyword research and content planning. Digital marketing agencies are experienced and skilled at selecting organic keywords that will be both effective and realistic.

Top digital marketing agencies are quickly learning that mobile retargeting is now a key element in any successful campaign. But moving our clients to this strategy is not always an easy sell, as the many challenges that mobile presents can be intimidating. In spite of the roadblocks, mobile retargeting can increase reach and engagement far beyond other channels. Here are Bluetext’s six top tips for getting started with a mobile strategy:

  1. Unsure on how to reach target audiences on their mobile devices? Think social media platforms. Today’s target audiences are more likely to browse their social media apps on their mobile than search websites. Take advantage of the tools that Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter offer for their ad campaigns.
  2.  Want to increase mobile traffic to your site? Optimize your website for mobile to fully take advantage of this platform. That means a design that is responsive for all devices, and features simple and concise headlines, titles and other text. More importantly, make sure that images are sufficiently compressed, reduce the number of redirects (nobody wants to wait for a new screen to load), and minimize code to maintain a high-performing experience.
  3. Not sure how to design for mobile? Think like a visitor to your brand would, accessing your site via a mobile device. That means simplified designs and copy, but also calls-to-action that are clear about where the visitor will land if they click on that button. Viewers don’t want to leave the screen they are on unless they know there they are going.
  4. Need to improve your reach on mobile? Safari is the leading browser for mobile devices, but leveraging Apple’s tool is not so easy. One simple trick: Make sure you are enabling Safari, which typically blocks third-party cookies in its default setting. Find a provider that is skilled at accessing Safari’s massive number of users.
  5. Still not seeing the conversions you expect? It could be your landing page. Try to simplify the actions on the landing page to make sure there is no confusion or abandonment from that conversion point.
  6. Want to get hyper-specific with your targeting? Try geo-fencing for conferences, events, shows and other gatherings of target audiences. Sophisticated new geo-locating tools allow geo-fencing to specific blocks around convention centers, hotels and other venues. Serving ads at the right time and place can pay big rewards.

Any marketing campaign can be much more effective with a mobile component, as long as it’s well-executed.

If you want to learn more or need help with your campaigns, Bluetext can help.

B2B website design that focuses on the user experience will continue to be a top priority for brands who thought UX was only for consumer and e-commerce sites. In a recent blog post, we offered some of the best practices for developing an effective user experience on a business-oriented website. In this post, we will explore some additional best practices for the B2B website design that puts the user first in its architecture.

Write the way your targets think.  When potential buyers visit your website, they will have a level of knowledge that most often is not as deep as you. Write content for who they think and eliminate jargon or text that won’t keep their attention. Use language, phrases, and concepts that are more likely to be familiar to them.

Make sure the text you include on your site appears in a logical order, but it should be natural as well. Confer with key customers and ask them to describe what your solution, services or products mean to them. What problems do they solve, and what were their pain points before working with you?

Let the buyer maintain control. Eliminate designs that override how a prospect might want to interact with the website. Autoplay videos, which have become ubiquitous across social media platforms and many news websites, can frustrate visitors who view these are a nuisance.

Don’t assume what the visitors want to do; let them play the video only if they want to. It should supplement, not be a substitution for, good content that is in text on the page.

Automatic carousels, once a common feature on many high-end websites, have also lost their allure, for the simple reason that they don’t work. Besides the fact that motion in carousels is distracting and rarely timed at the right intervals, it doesn’t present key messages to the visitor where they will be certain to see all of them. Layer information for your website in a way that makes it easy for your buyers to discover and explore instead of using an element that is less effective.

See how Bluetext can help your brand deliver an effective user experience.

As every top branding agency knows, the brand style guide is a key component in a brand’s visual identity. It sets out how brand elements, including color palette, imagery, iconography, and layout should be incorporated into every piece of collateral or content that represents the brand. In essence, it’s the brand bible for every designer and marketer in the organization.

Yet, for a typical top branding agency, it’s often an afterthought. Only after the new brand elements are designed, options are provided to the client, the visual identity is applied to the website, collateral templates, and signage, and all is approved, does the team turn to the style guide. And even then, it is often lacking in the type of detail and content that will make it useful for more than a brief period. It needs to be thorough and future-proof.

Let’s face it: The brand style guide isn’t the sexy or fun part of the project. Oftentimes, it’s delivered as a thinly printed document and other times as a PDF with limited detail. We understand that digging through a lengthy document to find out precisely how to use the logo, fonts, and imagery can be frustrating. Here, then, is the Bluetext guide to a good – and useful – brand style guide.

  1. Make sure the style guide is comprehensive. The goal of the guide is consistency, in how the brand is represented regardless of platform, outlet or venue. It will be used by a wide variety of people, ranging from employees to partners to media. This doesn’t mean it has to cover every random or infrequent scenario, but more detail works in your company’s favor.
  2. Go deep in coverage. Even the term “brand guide” is sometimes misleading. While it is important to include details on the specific usage of a creative asset, such as how much white space needs to pad a logo or how a logo should play out depending on the background color, this should be only a part of the what the guide includes. Don’t neglect core brand-building guidelines, such as what the organization’s tone and voice need to be in different contexts, or how employees should use branded imagery on social media. Provide enough detail so that anyone reading the brand guide from cover to cover will feel like an expert on every aspect of the brand.
  3. Update the guide on a regular basis. With the prevalence of eBooks, articles, and infographics, brands are experiencing a faster rate of evolution than ever before. That means it is important to do a regular review of the guide to keep it up to date.
  4. Make it easy to find, share, and update. Many style guides look great in a printed, bound volume. But those are hard to find, hard to distribute, and really hard to keep updated. And if the brand guide requires time and money to update, executives will be reluctant to refresh the guide to match their evolving brand until they absolutely have to.

Our recommendations as a top branding agency: Make the style guide a dynamic window to your brand. Include intangible elements that come from the brand’s core message platform, like tone, voice and the types of language to use. Use a digital platform that is easy to share and easy to update. Make it comprehensive. And make sure you review it at least once a year.

Style Guide Examples:

Learn How Bluetext Can Help With All of Your Branding Needs!

 

The year was 2014. The new Apple Watch was all the rage; selfies weren’t annoying the bloody hell out of everyone yet; and The Ice Bucket Challenge had everyone soaking themselves for a good cause. It was also the year I examined some of the most innovative B2G marketing and PR strategies that were helping government contractors and IT providers stand out from the crowd and grow their public sector revenues.

This past February, I put together a brief update on B2G digital marketing ideas for 2017, looking at the emergence of B2G virtual reality initiatives, innovative go-to-market campaigns, as well as 3-D interactive experiences for lead generation. But as we approach 2018, the time is right for anyone selling technology products and services to the government to think about what will move the needle in sales, branding and market leadership next year. Yes, white papers, webinars, as well as traditional public relations and advertising all play a valuable role if executed properly, but it requires more to become top-of-mind with government decision makers – and to stay there.

Here are 5 innovative B2G marketing strategies to consider for 2018:

Geo-Fencing

Geo-fencing is location-based digital technology that allows you 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 can be served up.

For contractors and Federal IT providers, there are multiple ways that geo-fencing can be utilized to reach government decision makers. If you are seeking to do business with a specific agency, you could pinpoint a single DC Metro station in proximity to the agency office, then  deliver a targeted ad to anyone who comes within a 1-block radius of that location. Ads delivered through geo-fencing typically yield higher conversions and better ROI for marketers since they’re highly contextual.

Geo-fencing can also make an impact reaching prospective buyers at key industry and government conferences. Geo-fencing at conferences:

  • Uses GPS or Wi-Fi information
  • Create a barrier around a location and target everyone within that location
  • Usually a tight radius (around an event or storefront)
  • Deliver display, audio, video ads or mobile app notifications

Bluetext recently completed a project for client ARQ at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Conference. The police body cam and digital evidence market is crowded with products that frustrate their users. So when a new player with a better, complete approach wanted to enter the market with a solution far ahead of the competition, it turned to Bluetext for a name, brand, corporate identity and website that would get attention and convey its value to law enforcement agencies. For the official launch, Bluetext executed a sophisticated outreach campaign including mobile geo-fencing to drive attendance to ARQ’s booth at IACP that included interactive product demo’s, and a comprehensive retargeting campaign pre and post show.

Mobile Retargeting

The government decision makers you need to reach – as well as government workforces if you are employing bottom-up marketing initiatives – are on mobile devices…a lot. Frost & Sullivan found that almost three-fourths of government organizations issue smartphones to at least some employees and more than half deploy tablets. Consumers overall spend 5 hours per day on mobile devices, so the bottom line is that if you want to reach government decision makers, mobile has to be a big part of the equation.

Mobile retargeting is now a key element in most any successful government-focused campaign seeking to increase reach and engagement far beyond other channels. There are six key strategies to get started with mobile retargeting:

  1. Unsure on how to reach target audiences on their mobile devices? Think social media platforms. Today’s target audiences are more likely to browse their social media apps on their mobile than search websites. Take advantage of the tools that Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter offer for their ad campaigns.
  2. Want to increase mobile traffic to your site? Optimize your website for mobile to fully take advantage of this platform. That means a design that is responsive for all devices, and features simple and concise headlines, titles and other text. More importantly, make sure that images are sufficiently compressed, reduce the number of redirects (nobody wants to wait for a new screen to load), and minimize code to maintain a high-performing experience.
  3. Not sure how to design for mobile? Think like a government decision maker visiting your website via a mobile device. That means simplified designs and copy, but also calls-to-action that are clear about where the visitor will land if they click on that button. Viewers don’t want to leave the screen they are on unless they know there they are going.
  4. Need to improve your reach on mobile? Safari is the leading browser for mobile devices, but leveraging Apple’s tool is not so easy. One simple trick: Make sure you are enabling Safari, which typically blocks third-party cookies in its default setting. Find a provider that is skilled at accessing Safari’s massive number of users.
  5. Still not seeing the conversions you expect? It could be your landing page. Try to simplify the actions on the landing page to make sure there is no confusion or abandonment from that conversion point.
  6. Want to get hyper-specific with your targeting? Try geo-fencing for conferences, events, shows and other gatherings of target audiences. Sophisticated new geo-locating tools allow geo-fencing to specific blocks around convention centers, hotels and other venues. Serving ads at the right time and place can pay big rewards.

Bluetext does mobile retargeting for many of its engagements, including:

  • For a leading satellite networking services provider, Bluetext surrounded the perimeter of a major trade show to drive traffic to its booth
  • For a leading cybersecurity company, Bluetext surrounded the perimeter of the RSA conference to drive traffic traffic to their booth featuring a cool virtual reality experience
  • For a leading healthcare company, Bluetext coordinated with their sales team and surrounded medical centers where their prospects work to drive brand visibility when they walked into work everyday on their personal cell phones.

Account Based Marketing (ABM)

If you are an old-timer like myself who still buys clothes at actual physical stores, you know that the sales racks are filled right now with unsold summer inventory, probably the same summer clothes you paid double for just a few months ago. But no matter how enticing the sale, we often bypass the out-of-season sale items in favor of what we will wear in the here and now.

This comes to mind as I started thinking about how businesses market their products and services to the public sector. You not only have to hit prospective new customers you want to convert and existing customers you want to upsell with the right message, but it has to be the right message at the right time. The right time, as is the case with summer clothes on sale as the weather turns colder, often comes down to when prospects and customers are in the frame of mind to be thinking about your product or service. Catch them too early and they will get distracted and move on; catch them too late and, well, that’s self-explanatory I suppose.

This challenge becomes more difficult for marketers trying to blanket a large number of customers and prospects. The ability to personalize the message and the timing is why more marketers are increasingly intrigued by Account-based marketing (ABM). With ABM you concentrate efforts on a very defined set of target accounts – a single Agency or even units within an Agency – and then utilize campaigns personalized down to the single account level.

Marketing automation leaders are also looking at ABM to round out their services portfolio. Recently inbound marketing and sales leader HubSpot invested in ABM startup Terminus as part of a $10.3 million Series B round. In its blog explaining motivation for the investment, HubSpot talks about the fact that while inbound marketing is valuable for targeting an individual throughout the purchase process and beyond, ABM is useful when there is a need to build a relationship with multiple stakeholders at once. When done right HubSpot notes, ABM is about “precision and personalization not brute force.”

Embrace the Inhumanity of Content Marketing

For government marketers, it can be incredibly frustrating to create a compelling white paper or develop a webinar you know will be of value to agencies, but see that content sit untapped or underappreciated. The fact is that prospective customers may want your white paper or webinar but…they may not know they want it. You might have to sweeten the pot.

Cards against humanity, the self-described, “party game for horrible people,” has gone from kickstarter campaign to global phenomenon. It is also an example of how you can utilize the concept of game cards to incentivize key prospects to download and access marketing content – ideally using a more sanitized version of the game.

Think about your buyer persona. What is their typical age range, gender, title, geographic location, etc.? This can inform a creative content marketing campaign in terms of theme (Game of Thrones, professional sports trading card sets, or a variation of Cards Against Humanity like ‘Cards Against IT Complexity’ that could feature various challenges that Agencies face with their IT systems and available only to prospects who download an ebook or whitepaper, or participate in a webinar.

Virtual Reality and 3-D Interactive Design

Virtual reality can lead to real government contracts. For all of the noise surrounding virtual reality in the consumer market, it has emerged as an effective platform for storytelling with technology companies targeting decision makers in the government and enterprise markets. For a Bluetext virtual reality project with client Varonis, we enabled their marketing team to navigate a complex customer landscape and to share the Varonis story and product to a wider audience using innovative technology. The Varonis Digital Briefing Center launched at a major conference that many of their existing and prospective customers attended, and enabled Varonis to scale their demos concurrently by 6x, differentiate in a global trade show, and drive traffic to their booth.

To drive user engagement and leads, forward-thinking B2G companies are looking beyond white papers and webinars and towards immersive user experiences. Bluetext client NJVC was looking for a powerful new message as well as an immersive experience to engage and inform its global audience. Bluetext delivered a cutting-edge user experience that merged 3-D interactive design with thought leadership content marketing.

With 1,300 IT professionals deployed globally supporting 200+ sites on six continents, NJVC is the partner of choice for federal agencies, commercial clients and large and small businesses. The NJVC experience is integrated into a responsive Mission CrITical campaign microsite designed to enable users to easily access the content that best aligns with their needs. Bluetext also recently collaborated with XO Communications to develop a 3D “Etherverse” experience placed prominently in the site to drive user engagement and leads.

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