Rebranding is not to be taken lightly. It demands a commitment of time, energy and resources to be successful. There are many things a company should consider and analyze before the decision to rebrand is made. As the world grows increasingly digital, more and more aspects of people’s lives are affected by the instantaneous nature of information. This needs to factor in to the direction the brand needs to take. The accessibility of information at people’s finger tips has changed the mindset of consumers, posing significant challenges:
Where are your consumers? It is difficult nowadays to find someone who does not own a smartphone with the ability to access the internet anytime and anywhere. As consumers spend more time on smaller screens, companies must optimize all aspects of their websites and platforms to perform on these devices— or risk hurting their brand with hard-to-read and poorly-rendered webpages. Companies either need to rebrand and keep up with the times or risk becoming obsolete.
Are you targeting effectively? With the rise of the digital age is the emergence of social media platforms and numerous new ways for a company to reach the people they would like to target. Each new medium requires a different strategy to navigate and not all companies are equipped to immediately do so. A company’s current messaging and image may not have the ability to capture the attention of its target audience. These obstacles are a clear sign that a company needs to revamp its brand to maintain a strong market presence.
How flexible is your current brand? A company’s graphics and visuals must be scalable and adapt to different mediums. Brand assets in the modern era are used for web, mobile, print assets, social media, icons, and the list goes on. All these elements must be taken into consideration starting at the core of a brand’s design for the company to grow along with its consumer base. When a company is unable to effectively utilize its brand in new mediums, a brand redesign is needed before the company falls too far behind.
As the digital age brings new challenges, it also brings new opportunities. An increasingly responsive world may cause initial difficultly for a company adjusting to adapt, but by rebranding doors are opened for the new brand to reach its target audience like never before.
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Today, a website is the front door to your association, and every effort must be made to deliver a powerful user experience for current and prospective members. Your digital platform must be modern and intuitive. Beyond a great design, it is important to make sure your website is addressing all of your association key performance indicators around member services, member retention, communications, activism, and engagement.
To this end, when thinking about your association’s website, a great design is not necessarily where you should begin. The first question you should ask yourself is, “Is our website working as hard for our association as it can to help us achieve our association goals in the most efficient manner.” Understanding where your members are coming from, how are they accessing the site, and what tools they need to be successful all must be asked up front through a discovery process in order to maximize the impact of a new website.
With that thought process in mind, here are some recommendations to consider when undertaking a new website design for your association:
- Provide the tools and resources to help your members do their jobs more effectively. They are paying you to be their advocates, and they need your help in taking action, remaining relevant, and proving the impact and rationale for their membership. For one membership organization, we built a tool that enabled human resources professionals to directly send a presentation to their bosses to show the value and impact of their membership in that organization. It was a very effective tool for ensuring membership dues.
- Clearly communicate the value and impact you provide. Make sure your messaging and value is clear right up front. We have worked with many associations who are going through an identity crisis and don’t understand why membership may be down or why they are less relevant than in the past. It may be time to audit your messaging and positioning, both internally and externally, to ensure it is relevant to your members and the communities you serve.
- Don’t be afraid to brand with impact. Changing colors or changing logos can go a long way toward sending a powerful signal to your constituencies. And make sure that the design direction you take aligns with that of the industry you serve. If you that’s the tech community, make sure your brand feels techy. If you serve the healthcare community, make sure your brand aligns. You get the picture. Modern, fresh and engaging can really make an impact in the perception of your association as you go to market with a new website.
- Content. Content. Content. Being a thought leader and delivering authoritative content is critical for success. Keep your content fresh and engaging, update it regularly, and address the current and emerging topics that are of importance to you members. Association content marketing is becoming a must for the most advanced associations.
- Make sure your content is Search Engine Optimized and your architecture is designed for SEO best practices. There is so much talk about SEO that people get confused. But that should not be the case. Go analyze what people are searching for and align your content around that. Ranking high with Google and Bing can be very effective.
- Go mobile. Look at your stats. People are accessing the web from mobile devices more than ever and the stats continue to rise. A responsive site is a must in today’s digital environment. If a user does not have a great experience with your association on a mobile device it can impact your value immensely.
It has been a tremendous first half of the year for Bluetext across many fronts. We have won many exciting new projects, landed some very interesting clients, added some awesome staff, and taken on and won against some stiff competition.
In the last three weeks alone we were named public sector PR agency of record for two of the most recognized technology companies in the country, one on each coast.
For each of these two companies, the public sector is a critical market for their growth as each has technology that is in high demand across the Government. Interestingly, each company has a corporate agency which provided little support across the public sector, and each indicated that their agency did not focus on or “get” the public sector.
We get the public sector. We know how to effectively market and communicate in this market. And we know how to craft a PR campaign that is impactful to make noise and move the needle. Here are five recommendations to consider when thinking about your public sector PR program:
1. Get Creative. Product announcements don’t garner much coverage unless you are a massive company or it is a major breakthrough. But leveraging a trend in the market to talk about how your product can drive mission effectiveness can be a subtle but smart way to let your audience know about your new product or solution.
2. Government-ize the message. Take the product and solution announcements coming out of corporate and look at the messages that will resonate in this market. We know the public sector buyer is unique, therefore the message needs to be relevant and directed.
3. Make Your Content Consumable. Create listicles and snackables that can be shared easily across a wide variety of mediums.
4. Be Present and Relevant. Make sure your thought leaders are trained and ready to deliver a strong message. Many companies are competing for limited ink. The right PR team and the right message can go a long way.
5. Find the References. Sure, it is hard to get a Government customer to speak with a reporter about how they are using your technology. But if you approach them in a more subtle way to jointly pursue an award or speaking opportunity it can provide a great way to put your customers in the spotlight and begin the process of finding out how reference-able they really are.
If the public sector is an important market for your company and you are not garnering the right type of attention give us a call. We would love to talk about how we can deliver a campaign with impact…that is what we do best.
Brand Strategy
The Message and Brand Story
Rarely do you get a chance to work with a client so convinced that they can change the way cancer is diagnosed and treated that it energizes an entire agency. That was the case with Inspirata. After spending five minutes with founder Satish Sanan, it became clear that he had the resources, vision, and passion to shift an entire industry. With significant backing from major investors including the founder of NetJets, Satish came to Bluetext to launch a brand in a very short time. He wanted to focus on building and executing the business and asked us to develop a name, logo, messaging, website, brand story, process and video. The Bluetext team was up to the challenge.
The Name
Creating a name across the medical informatics industry is a challenge as every great idea seems to be taken. But after an extensive messaging process and a team that was open to exploring many possibilities, we came up with this concept of Inspirata, meaning inspiring data. By digitizing the entire pathology workflow process, Inspirata is focused on transforming cancer diagnostics and driving better patient outcomes for people across the globe. They are focused on inspiring a market and everyone fell in love with the name Inspirata.
Brand Presentation
The Logo
Clean, elegant, professional – that is the hallmark of this brand, and the logo is designed as a simple yet elegant mark that is recognizable but not overpowering.
Corporate Visual Identity
Bluetext designed a corporate visual identity system that aligns perfectly with the brand mission and story. It is simple and elegant but not overpowering.
Website
The centerpiece of the Inspirata brand is a powerful, responsive website designed to be easy to use, easy to navigate, and drive users down a path to understand the vision and mission of Satish and his entire management team. Big bold imagery, vibrant colors and lots of original content are the hallmarks of this powerful website which can be found at www.inspirata.com
Brand Delivery
In advance of the company’s launch at the USCAP 2015 Conference in Boston, Bluetext designed a powerful tradeshow booth to highlight the pathology office the future, designed an interactive infographic which demonstrates the company vision of transforming the case review of the future, and developed, in partnership with Philips, a partnership video to talk about the impact the two companies will have on the global digital pathology market.
If your digital marketing agency team doesn’t have a SMAC roadmap, you may find your company drifting off-course in 2017 and beyond. Here’s brief refresher course on SMAC.
Social Media
Social Media continues to evolve. Platforms rise and fall by the year vs the decades of old. Some new trends we see emerging that we see potentially continuing to gain momentum.
1. Snap’s Evolution Will Result in Interesting New Opportunities.
2. Twitter Fatigue Will Worsen.
3. Users Will Crave More Vicarious Experiences.
4. New Areas of Communication Will Emerge.
Mobile
Mobile devices are the cornerstone of how new business is being built and legacy businesses are reinventing themselves. Mobile devices allow users to constantly update their profile, stay aware of deals and promotions, and track locations and buying habits by virtue of connecting to various wireless signals and near-field communication (NFC) devices.
Some new trends we see emerging that we see potentially continuing to gain momentum.
1. Consumers redefine purchase boundaries; mobile marketing, brand partnerships deepen
2. Department stores, mobile marketing partners tackle the ‘Amazon Effect’
3. Programmatic accelerates: brands, tech, marketing continue to invest
4. Next-generation creative, video redefine mobile engagements
Analytics
As databases have grown larger and processors and memory have become capable of chewing through hundreds of millions of records in a short time, we have begun to see how analytics can do more than just track clicks. Analytics can establish links between entities and make intelligent predictions about customer behavior based on knowledge a system has about a customer — knowledge that has been informed by social networking.
To keep up with the explosion in Big Data, companies and corporations are beginning to invest in BI projects and more and more sophisticated analytics infrastructure. Some new trends we see emerging that we see potentially continuing to gain momentum.
1. Multi-channel Attribution
2. Focus on ‘Return on Analytics Investment
3. Monetization of Data
4. Exciting new players in the MarTech arena to complement the core analytic platforms
Cloud
The cloud element of SMAC refers to the capability a business has to spin up vast amounts of capacity that are paid for by the minute or hour. Businesses do not need to spend millions of dollars building another data warehouse – they simply rent it from a cloud provider, do their work and turn it off. When the business environment changes, they simply spin up another cluster in the cloud, pay another few hundred dollars and continue building insights.
Some new trends we see emerging that we see potentially continuing to gain momentum.
1. Artificial intelligence (AI) will make personalization a reality in 2017.
2. Self-service will be the new normal.
3. Enhancing the Buyer Journey
4. Google Tag Manager and other granular analytics modules being the norm
With buyer sophistication growing daily, marketers need to deliver increasingly smarter strategies and campaigns. Are you taking the time to measure how your efforts are working and think about how you might enhance your efforts, or do you find yourself quickly moving from one campaign to the next?
Need help with your SMAC TALK? Contact the digital marketing gurus at Bluetext.
As one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Washington, we get called in by a variety of prospective clients to discuss their needs. These clients are corporations selling to business, selling to government, or selling to consumers, and even associations and other industry organizations with unique audiences. Invariably they hone in on their target audience and want to see recent examples of work we have done for similar clients with similar targets. In other words, if they are selling directly to consumers, they want to see consumer case studies.
The more work we do across different industries and types of clients the more I am convinced that the question people should be asking is not have you done something similar for another client, but what are examples where you combined your creativity and ability to drive a unique message into a specific market. Let’s face it… a business buyer has a lot of similarities to a typical consumer buyer and the lines have blurred. They do a lot of research on their own, they want to read the reviews and see what other like-minded people think of the product or service, and they expect to engage with your brand in a unique, differentiated manner in order to take action. While the channels to reach them may be different and therefore the message needs to be able to translate easily, they want to be wowed with your product or service and they want to make sure you are addressing their needs.
Business and consumer buyers react to a strong message, delivered with impact in a creative way. They require multiple interactions. They are smart. They expect you to speak to them.
Now don’t get me wrong – consumer buyers are traditionally more emotional than business buyers, and business buying cycles are generally longer. I could write a similar post about the differences between the two. But as the world of marketing evolves and buyers have the power in their hands, the lines are clearly blurring.
So the next time you ask your agency for similar examples of client projects, maybe the better question to ask is “what examples can you share to demonstrate your passion and creativity to address a unique challenge.” The way the agency responds to this question, no matter their previous expertise or client projects, should go a long way in helping you decide on an agency partner.
We provide deep drupal development best practices with unique creativity and strategy to drive success for our clients.
Through discovery, our drupal developers and product managers create the perfect project plan aligned to your goals. Our drupal plan is customized to your needs. We have created drupal websites for clients across multiple industries, including commercial, government, education, non-profit, association, consumer, and native web designed for mobile.
Our technology team implements custom Drupal modules, design themes, server support and platform upgrades to meet your unique goals. For Bluetext, drupal is a platform to help you achieve your marketing and business goals – implementing goal is a means to an end, it is not the goal. Our full service approach includes:
- Strategy. Results from competitive analysis, focus groups and user surveys inform our decisions for Drupal features, as well as the site’s information architecture and content.
- Design. We provide a powerful Drupal design that reflects the brand, engages users and focuses on usability
- Content. By understanding your goals, audience and brand, we craft meaningful messaging that drive traffic and inspires action across your Drupal website.
- Marketing. With Drupal’s powerful email, search engine optimization and social media tools, we help you create long-term relationships with your users. Plus, we continually optimize campaigns with your ROI in mind.
A lot happens every 60 seconds online across digital platforms. In fact, a staggering amount of posts, uploads and emails take place in the space of a minute – every minute of every day. By looking at this data in detail, and comparing trends over the past three years, marketers can glean a lot of useful insight as to where to focus their brand’s attention when developing media programs – whether for specific targeted campaigns or for ongoing outreach.
A collection of these stats across the most important platforms was recently published by SmartInsights, and it reveals some significant trends. First and foremost, the 800 pound gorilla platform in terms of activity isn’t Twitter and it isn’t email. It’s Facebook. While there are nearly 450,000 Tweets every minute, there are 3.3 million Facebook posts in that same amount of time. In fact, if you said that Facebook literally dwarfs the other contenders, that would be accurate.
Except when it isn’t.
As the stats show, the outlier that is the largest by far is What’sApp, the free cross-platform app that can do just about what every other app does, and encrypt it in the process – with more than 29 million messages sent every minute. It’s widely popular around the globe (although not so much in the United States yet).
And who owns What’sApp? Facebook, of course. See a trend here?
60 Seconds Online: Where to Focus?
So where to focus your media campaigns? Look at some of the trends for what’s growing the fastest, and what’s being left behind. For example, Twitter’s 2014-2015 growth line came way down for 2016. Yes, there are more Tweets than a year ago, but not by much. Facebook shows no growth from 2015 to 2016 – which could mean that it has reached its upward potential. On the other side of the spectrum, YouTube and Instagram have increased their activity significantly.
Let’s not forget – Facebook also owns Instagram, while Google owns YouTube. So the upstarts are really just growth opportunities for the giants who continue to battle it out for dominance.
What does all of this mean for marketers? We tell our clients to look at where the growth is, not what was hot two years ago. Twitter is great for sports, entertainment and politics, but not so strong for b2b marketing. Instagram, on other hand, is expanding its reach across demographics, and can reach new target audiences that may have not been a focus of previous campaigns.
Thinking about your marketing and media mix? Contact Bluetext
Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about persistent navigation. But of course (wink)!
At Bluetext, we are designing and producing websites for the most exciting brands of all sizes across a multitude of industries. We live in the cross section of trends. We see things happening cross markets, and that can be essential when looking at user behaviors and preferences when needing to grab their attention and entice them to engage with a brand. And that means when we see a trend that is becoming more prevalent across platforms, we take notice.
The biggest new user-interface trend we are seeing today is navigation on the left side of the screen. Clients are calling this:
- Unique
- Different
- Fresh
- Smart
For us, this is going full-cycle, back to first-generation sites that were left dominant. But this isn’t your father’s left nav. These left navigation paradigms lock. They personalize. They respond to resolution and device and browser. They have many ways to expand and drill into the subpages structure of the site map with ease.
We see great brands like Qualcomm, VW, and Riverbed, all moving to left navigation systems.
Are you thinking about going left vs top for an upcoming site redesign? Here are five things to consider in making this decision:
- Is desktop a heavy user-base? If yes, then investing in slick navigation can pay off handsomely. If no, then it may not be worth the effort to do an adaptive responsive navigation module.
- Is your sitemap narrow and deep? If you answer yes, then you’re a strong candidate for a left nav.If you answer no and you have a bloated tier one navigation, then best to leave it alone.
- Does your brand logo work in the narrow navigation plate system? Many brand systems don’t contemplate this web application possibility. They also don’t have rules about stacking text about the logo mark. Or they show no name at all, just the logo icon.
- When you look at sites like Riverbed’s, you see the logo move over on scroll down. And when you look sites like ATT’s, you see they are throwing out the word all together. Just like Starbucks is doing everywhere.
- Is your target demographic a savvy web user audience? If you answer no, then consider a small user focus group to ensure they learn and adapt to the new navigation system paradigm with ease. If not, plan on going top navigation.
Here are some more sites that go left nav (or quasi left nav):
Thinking about redesigning your website. Contact Bluetext
Having worked with Drupal 8 in a production setting at one of the top development agencies for the last 15 months, I feel that I can responsibly say that Drupal 8 is ready for prime time. In fact, given all of the great improvements that the platform has to offer, it’s hard to think of an scenario where I would recommend Drupal 7 to a client. These include a standardized Symfony2 framework, a twig templating system, partial page caching, configuration management, layouts, and much more.
To learn more about Drupal 8’s new features, I spent a day recently at DrupalCon Baltimore, an experience that has heightened my excitement about Drupal and the future of the platform. Here are the takeaways that we got from the conference:
- Focus on Lowering the Barriers of Entry
- Core initiatives targeted at improving content authoring
- Revamped Release Cycles
- Drupal maturing in large enterprise
Opening the Flood Gates
The Driesnote was amazing as always. This one was more exciting than usual as there was a strong emphasis on the community and the shift for Drupal to become more user-friendly and lowering the barriers of entry. From a technical standpoint, the standardization on the Symfony2 framework and the addition of the twig templating system make working with Drupal more attractive to PHP developers, opening the platform up to a much wider developer market. From the content side, Dries highlighted the work being lead by Keith Jay to provide a better out-of-the-box experience to all users.
Content is King
In an ever changing market, it is important to stay ahead of the curve and adapt your organization to meet the needs of your client base. We validated a big shift that we are seeing in the market where the decision-maker is no longer the IT team – It has shifted to the marketing team. It is great to see Drupal follow this trend with the strong focus on the new core initiatives around UX, such as layouts and in-place editing. Dries also highlighted Cristina Chumillas for her work in improving the UX of several core pages.
Maintenance made easy
Another exciting announcement was around the revamp of the Drupal release cycles to make core upgrades for both minor and major versions of Drupal easier. The new 6-month cycles have been running great, and I for one am excited to see it. In this new model, functionality will slowly be deprecated (instead of removed) throughout the minor release versions as new functionality is added. This will give module developers an extended period of time to upgrade. Major releases will go one step further and remove the set of deprecated functionality to start the codebase off on a clean slate.
Climbing the Corporate Ladder
Drupal continues to gain traction in the large enterprise space with organizations and marketing teams looking to spend more of their budgets on content and campaigns rather than recurring subscription fees. This can be validated by the uptick in features and functionality that the community is providing for Drupal 8. As the market changes, so should the technology. The greatest thing about Drupal and the community around it is that we are the ones choosing the direction of the platform. We have thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people validating this platform in the market and pushing the direction of the platform forward.