It’s October. That means CyberSecurity Month. Unfortunately, the breaches are getting more severe, with global companies dominating the headlines. So what should companies do for CyberSecurity month?

I am not a cybersecurity technical expert, but my company does have a lot of experience working with cybersecurity software and services organizations to help them drive brand awareness and visibility. I am not here to educate on the right technical architecture or newest solution that should be employed, but instead list several ideas that marketers of cybersecurity companies can do to differentiate in a very crowded market.

1. Don’t Rely on Just Words to Differentiate. Visual storytelling to create an attitude can help a company stand out from the crowd. Our team had the opportunity to work with Sourcefire twice to rebrand the company. The second time we created a series of animated brand elements to represent their key areas of focus and differentiators that you can see on their website today at www.sourcefire.com. Things turned out pretty well for Sourcefire, as they were acquired by Cisco in October 2013 for close to $3b.
2. Attack Vertical Markets Aggressively. We recently completed an exciting project with FireEye, one of the most successful cybersecurity companies of 2014, to create vertical focused videos that target specific cyber challenges found across key verticals. The videos, built in a 3-D world, focus on the concept of “We Don’t Blink” and visually tell the story about how the company is re-imagining security.
3. Take the Message to Your Customers. There is a growing challenge, especially across the public sector market, where potential customers are not going to events and therefore cannot learn about the solutions that vendors are bringing to market. For Intel and McAfee we designed a virtual Federal agency environment called www.futureagency.com, so that prospective customers and partners could learn directly from their thought leaders in an engaging digital environment.
4. Take on Your Competition, and Have Fun Doing It. While this example is not cybersecurity related, many cybersecurity marketers face a similar challenge as Citrix did when they hired us a few years ago to take on their largest competitor. Their solution was better, but they were getting out marketed. So we launched the Rumble In the IT Jungle, a channel driven campaign to demonstrate their product superiority in a bold way – check out http://www.rumbleintheitjungle.com/game/boxing.html

When you are competing in a crowded market, it is not enough to say that your product or service can “out feature” the competition. You need to get creative. You need to get bold. And you need to get moving fast, as the company just down the street is already thinking of their next move.

User experience (UX) as defined by Wikipedia involves a person’s emotions about using a particular product, system or service. User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership. Additionally, it includes a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the system. User experience is subjective in nature because it is about individual perception and thought with respect to the system. User experience is dynamic as it is constantly modified over time due to changing circumstances and new innovations.

The two most critical points of Wiki’s definition are that users are individuals each with unique goals and behaviors – and that user experience is dynamic. In the name of user centered design principles,  however; designers often segment users into personas based on similar (vs. individual) goals and behaviors that ultimately define a user experience that’s good for the masses some of the time rather than best for each individual user all of the time.

This definition of UX is also guided by the principle that there are real humans standing behind every brand or product. And while a great UX continuously learns from its users to deliver a more intuitive, human centered experience – thanks to AI –  it no longer requires an actual human to deliver it.

And like AI – which ‘learns’ how to avoid design ‘mistakes’ by memorizing the experience of every user – UX is in itself a designer’s primary source of human intelligence that, if properly applied, will recognize patterns in human interaction to mitigate frustration and optimize usability.

What this means is that ideally, designers should continue to employ traditional user centered design principles to lay the groundwork for major design decisions, and at the same time, leverage AI to continuously calibrate incremental changes to that design in real time based on the individual goals and activities of every user.

The compound effect of applying AI to UX in this manner will empower designers to humanize the customer experience for each individual user and usher in a new age of a dynamic and truly utopian, user centered design methodology.

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Google has done it again, quietly making a significant change to the way its algorithms process Google AdWords that could be significant challenge for digital marketing if not understood and managed.  At Bluetext, we closely monitor all of updates to how the Google’s search engines returns query results, and we have posted a number of blogs to let our clients know about these changes and how to address them.

This time, it’s a little different because this change, which Google announced on March 17, addresses AdWords, the tool companies use to implement their keyword purchasing strategies, rather than a revision of its organic search functionality. With this change, marketers may need to adjust their spending programs for purchasing the keywords that drive traffic to their sites.

In the past with AdWords, marketers would select a set of short-tail search terms that would be part of their search advertising mix. For example, a hotel chain might include simple key phrases like “best hotels in Nashville,” mirroring the way customers search for a list of places to stay. Up until the latest change, that exact phrase would drive the Adwords results. But Google has decided that people don’t always type their searches as that exact phrase, dropping the “in” by mistake or even misspelling it as “on.” As a result, Google has decided to expand its close variant matching capabilities to include additional rewording and reordering for exact match keywords.

What does that mean? In layman’s terms, Google will now view what it calls “function words” – that is, prepositions (in, to), conjunctions (for, but), articles (a, the) and similar “connectors” as terms that do not actually impact the “intent” behind the query. Instead, it will ignore these function words in Adwords exact match campaigns so that that the intent of the query will be more important that the precise use of these words.

Sounds like a good move, because if you search for “best hotels in Nashville” or “Nashville best hotels,” the result will be the same in AdWords.

But what if the search is for “flights to Nashville,” which isn’t the same as “flights from Nashville”? Ignoring the function words “to” or “from” would change the purpose of the query. Google says not to worry, its algorithm will recognize the difference and not ignore those words since they do impact the intent.

Hopefully, Google will make good on that promise. But advertisers who have been briefed on this revision aren’t too certain. Their carefully constructed AdWords investments might take a hit if the function words are not managed precisely to meet this new approach.

We like the old adage of “Trust but verify.” While we take Google at its word, we know there are always growing pains with these types of revisions. For our clients, we are recommending that they carefully review the terms they are including in their AdWords mix. Our advice: Be as precise as you can and factor in how these functions words might be perceived before pulling the trigger. Losing traffic to your site because of placement of a simple word should be a real concern.

Want to think more about your adWords, search and SEO strategies. Bluetext can help.

It’s the beginning of a new year, and that means that industry experts will pull out their magic eight balls, clean their Google glasses, and attempt to see into the future. But as a marketer, it’s going to be tricky to understand what trends are real, and which ones aren’t worth spending time or resources chasing. Here’s what we can confidently predict: When technology experts take a stab at projecting into the future, they both overestimate the rate of consumer adoption and underestimate the resistance from political regulation. We all love the idea of Amazon’s warehouses in the sky delivering our packages by remote-controlled drones, and we may well be able to manufacture self-driving cars that are safe and efficient. But saying yes to UAVs circling our neighborhoods and giving the green light to driverless vehicles, that’s a different story altogether.

Digital marketing is evolving by the hour, but we can make some predictions on what’s going to be important to markets this year. Most important is how to survive these changes. So what should we expect in 2017 that may be more down to earth and actually come to pass, and how should you plan your strategy?

To find out, download our 2017 Digital Marketing Survivor Guide.

Today’s “need for speed” mantra is evident in everything we do. Your website is no exception. We all want everything to be instantly available at our fingertips – including our online experience. For websites, that means the faster the page speed, the better.  Top B2B Marketing Agencies have been working with their clients for the past decade to improve page speed, looking for all sorts of tricks and tips to reduce load time and improve response.  Some major players – including Akamai in the hosting space, Google’s AMP and Lightening from Facebook –  have developed significant technologies and innovations that are worth considering for your digital game plan.

A survey from Statistic Brain concluded that the average person’s attention span has fallen to 8.25 seconds down from 12 second in 2000. This statistic is projected to continue to decline. As a marketer, that means you have even less time to grab your audience’s attention before they’re on to the next shiny object.

Page speed is defined as the load time of one particular page on your website. Ideally, the site is completely rendered and ready to go on a screen within microseconds of someone typing in its URL and hitting enter. Does this seem like an impossible ask? The short answer is yes.  Since a feat such as this is borderline impossible in most cases, we’re forced to resort to more realistic metrics to achieve this lofty goal.

Here are the  top three reasons why lightning fast page speed is essential for the success of your organization’s website.

1) It’s all about the User

User experience is the number one priority. Without them, of course, your site is just a jumble of html that serves no purpose.  Site optimization is key and should be performed often.

• Fast page load time means users will be able to quickly navigate the site, increasing pages per session, time on page, and (possibly) decreased bounce rate.
• Better numbers for the metrics listed above mean better rankings from Google.
• Referrals become more likely when a user has had a good experience on your site.

In today’s ultra-competitive marketplace, a positive user experience could easily be the edge between your site and someone else’s.

2) The Fast and the Mobile Friendly

Google expects a mobile page to render above the fold in one second or less. Since more than half of the 3.4 billion daily Google searches are done on mobile devices, it’s imperative to have a fast and mobile-friendly site. According to an experiment done by Moz, Google has indicated it may actually be measuring “time to first byte” (TTFB) — which is how long it takes the first byte of information to get from a server to a browser.

Now that you know what Google’s looking for, there are numerous tools to help pinpoint where improvements could be made on a site’s backend. At Bluetext, we like to take out any guesswork and get our insights straight from Google. Put any URL into Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool and it provides recommended fixes, as well as a speed score on both mobile and desktop.

3) Page Speed + Stellar CTA = Increased # of Conversions

It’s been proven that page speed has a direct correlation to the number of conversions as long as it’s paired with an enticing Call to Action (CTA).  For example, if a user wants to download a white paper but has to wait for the page to load, that user will lose interest and most likely leave the site. For businesses, that means a prospect is bouncing and may be lost for good.

Every second counts. Don’t wait, start optimizing your site speed today because if you’re not recognizing the need for speed, you might as well go home. For more tips on making a great first impression? Click here: https://bluetext.com/top-branding-agencies-know-never-get-second-chance-make-first-impression/

Need help speeding up your digital platform to get the performance you want ?  Contact us