Digital Marketing
The Art & Science of Winning Featured Snippets on Google (+ 3 Success Stories)
Written by: Dave Currier
Digital Marketing
Written by: Dave Currier
Case Studies —
Texture Plus designs tools and manufactures polymer-based faux wall panels that mimic stone, wood, metal, and brick. They do all of their manufacturing in the U.S. at their headquarters in Lincolnton, North Carolina. They were one of the first companies to enter the faux panel space and have been leading the industry for over 30 years.
Two factors were driving Texture Plus to pursue a more consistent digital marketing strategy:
As Texture Plus’ competition grew more intense, the need for it to stand out and capture both organic search engine and paid advertising real estate increased. At the same time, the increased competition resulted in paid advertising bids increasing, which made it critical to maintain Texture Plus’ cost per lead. Furthermore, it became paramount for Texture Plus to build an email list in order to gain ground against the encroaching organic search engine and paid advertising competition.
Vital’s multi-pronged digital marketing approach to achieving Texture Plus’ goals resulted in:
“Since we began partnering with Vital all of our most important KPIs are strongly trending up and to the right, including the most important one – sales.”, says Stefa Normantas, Marketing Director, Texture Plus.
The combined expertise of Vital’s internal teams — digital marketing, content, design, SEO and programming — has resulted in increased leads and site traffic for Texture Plus.
Texture Plus continues to engage Vital on a retainer basis to implement a digital content marketing strategy and PPC program on its behalf. Vital’s work is not done in a vacuum. Vital and Texture Plus team members regularly discuss objectives and strategy. This collaborative and transparent approach helps ensure that Texture Plus’ marketing goals are achieved.
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Case Studies —
Chinburg Properties, Inc. is a fully integrated development and construction firm with over 20 years of experience in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine. In addition to new home construction, the Chinburg portfolio of services includes: general contracting, construction management, renovation and restoration, commercial and residential rentals, and property management. In this case study we’ll outline how Vital implemented a content-based inbound marketing strategy in order to reach Chinburg’s goals.
Chinburg hired Vital to:
In order to meet these objectives, Vital planned out a content-driven inbound marketing strategy heavily focused on driving website traffic and increase leads.
The goal of any inbound marketing strategy should be to increase leads. Therefore improving lead generation was a key focus of Chinburg’s content strategy.
In order to increase leads we needed to increase quality traffic to the website. The below chart illustrates the month-by-month incremental increases in website traffic that were achieved thanks to a consistent and dedicated inbound marketing strategy.
Before Vital could get started with a content marketing strategy (writing blogs, email, and eBooks), we first had to do some brand architecture housekeeping.
Chinburg Properties is not only focused on new home construction, but they also develop historic mill buildings into residential and commercial rental space. When the project started, Chinburg Properties managed a total of six rental properties—each of which had its own website on its own individual URL.
The first exercise here was a branding exercise to unite all six of these properties under one consistent brand architecture. Before Vital, the six different properties were individually branded, as opposed to branded under the Chinburg name, so we first dealt with uniting the brands. It was important to provide users with a uniform experience across all of Chinburg’s rental properties. To learn more about this brand architecture exercise, read the full case study.
Additionally this united architecture strategy was important for website users because it allowed them to understand the full breadth of Chinburg’s offerings in one easy-to-use website. Once the brand was unified, the websites also needed to be unified. Instead of presenting the user with seven different website experiences (six rental properties plus the main home construction website), it was important to present the user with one single, fluid experience.
From a search engine optimization standpoint, this fragmented architecture presented a great opportunity.
Chinburg Properties was actively maintaining the seven websites (listed below). The first question we asked was whether combining these seven different websites under one domain would improve the user’s experience. At the heart of all inbound marketing and SEO strategy, the user’s experience must be the #1 consideration. And luckily, in this case, combining the websites made sense.
Combining these websites improved the user’s experience because these six rental properties are all in close geographical proximity to one another. Therefore if the user is looking for an apartment to rent at Chinburg’s Newmarket location, it’s not out of the question that you would also be interested in the apartments for rent at the nearby Exeter location (only 8 miles away). Thus pulling these six rental property websites under one roof and allowing the user to seamlessly navigate between them in order to find their ideal rental property made a lot of sense.
From a link building perspective, this situation was a huge opportunity. Here’s why:
Below is the full list of domains that were combined:
http://www.chinburgbuilders.com/
http://cochecomills.com/
http://onewashingtoncenter.com/
http://newmarketmills.com/
http://www.canalstreetnh.com/
http://www.exetermill.com/
http://www.millportnh.com/
We decided to combine all these domains under a brand new domain that represented all the brands. This new domain became www.chinburg.com. Therefore not only were we combining domains, we also had to pull off a SEO-Friendly Domain Migration. This essentially means transferring the full contents of one domain and moving it under another (in this case www.chinburgbuilders.com to www.chinburg.com), and then setting up all necessary page re-directs so as to not lose any link equity in the process.
Once all the brand and website domain architecture projects were completed, we began our inbound content marketing strategy. This strategy was focused on the goals of growing both the new home construction business, the commercial real estate rental business, and the residential rental business.
In order to hit these goals, Vital drafted a content strategy focused on writing new blog posts and web pages. During the course of the inbound marketing program with Chinburg, Vital created over 50 new pieces of blog content and web page content. Additionally two new eBook landing pages and a 4-minute video were added to the website.
All the content created for this inbound marketing strategy focused on educating around topics of new home construction, how to build an eco-friendly home and how to procure commercial office space. Chinburg has a rich photography library, which helped further improve the overall quality of their content. The investment Chinburg Properties made in professional photography was very important to the overall success of this campaign because the photos helped give website visitors an idea of the true quality of the finished product Chinburg is known for.
Additionally, this inbound strategy also focused on sharing all the exciting news happening at Chinburg Properties. Vital wrote news posts about new home developments, green building technology being used on their homes and new homes they recently finished construction on.
This represents just several of the 300+ keywords that are tracked for this campaign.
At Vital, we’ve helped all kinds of companies implement effective inbound marketing strategies—content-driven strategies designed to drive web traffic, increase leads and drive keyword rankings. We’re proud to tell the story of how we helped, and continue to help, Chinburg remain among the best thought leaders in their industry. Their success is our success.
“As Chinburg Properties evolved over time, it became challenging to tie together our services in a unified way. We needed help to refine the brand story and to integrate expanding lines of business and new communities. At the same time the landscape of marketing was rapidly changing, as online, mobile and social platforms replaced more traditional marketing. It became clear to me that Vital could help us to address both of these challenges.
Working with Vital has been an intense and rewarding experience that has born great success. Their commitment to understanding our business and our needs is unparalleled. We have spent countless hours brainstorming together over the best ways to address new opportunities and those sessions have produced excellent results. It is clear that they value the relationship and that they continue to work on solutions. The strategy and the execution reflect our vision and voice. The metrics speak for themselves.
Vital is at the cutting edge of all things inbound and I have full confidence that our investment of money and time is yielding the very best possible results. And finally, I genuinely enjoy working with every member of the Vital team.”
Jen Chinburg, Marketing Director
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study Case Studies — Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries.
Customers continue to come to CSS because they promote a product line manufactured 100% in the USA, and they offer the industry’s best prices, functionality, predictable quality and customer experience in sales and service.
CSS’ overall goal was to increase revenue through improved lead generation from their website.
Campaign goals were measured through the following metrics:
CSS faced several key challenges:
Despite such a rich company heritage, hallmarked by quality craftsmanship and customer satisfaction, CSS’ digital infrastructure challenges and well-established competitor base meant they had an uphill battle ahead of them.
The very first step was to re-design and re-build the CSS website in order to provide a more intuitive experience for website visitors. Strategically, this new design and functionality would more intuitively help users evaluate CSS’ offerings and pinpoint answers to their exact questions and needs. In doing so, users would be encouraged to contact CSS and become a lead. Additionally, the new website was built to search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, grounded in comprehensive keyword research and analysis.
Once Vital completed and launched the new website, CSS experienced an initial traffic boost, indicating that step one efforts had been successful.
Upon initial keyword research, Vital uncovered over 250 target keyword opportunities; in other words, chances to capture people using search engines to answer their autoclave questions, be it sales, service or otherwise. This was crucial, as competitors were outranking CSS for many of the highest valued keywords.
Using multiple keyword research and analysis tools, Vital was able to identify which high value keywords would drive the most traffic and which represented the most relevant and valued website visitors, i.e., those who could benefit CSS’ primary offerings.
Like many companies, CSS has a distinct sales offering for its five key target demographics. Each audience has different pain points, and each has unique motivations for purchase. To satisfy each audience, Vital crafted a content strategy that provided each audience with topics they would find helpful and engaging.
While implementing a content strategy is crucial, it will not amount to much if it is not repeatable and everyone is not on board.
Together, Vital and CSS embarked on a comprehensive content strategy, which included blogging on a weekly basis, social media distribution, creating a new video, writing a helpful eBook, recording a webinar, and running multiple, targeted email marketing campaigns.
CSS’s increase in keyword rankings led to an 87% increase in overall, quality website traffic, (a 107% increase in organic traffic) and this new traffic led to a 177% increase in “Request a Quote” leads generated through the website.
Thanks to new micro-conversions added to the website (such as a downloadable eBook and webinar), CSS was able to also increase their monthly email subscriptions by over 200%. And CSS even experienced an over 100% increase in social media traffic to the website.
Vital believes in metric-driven approaches to deliver measurable results and improvements. By staying true to these values, Vital was able to collaboratively work with each of its internal teams and the client to increase leads, performance and overall business capabilities and efficiencies for CSS. Today, thanks to this dedication, we have a true success story on our hands—and one that is only growing more each day.
This comprehensive and highly technical content strategy was possible thanks to the continued crucial input from the CSS engineering and sales teams and the unwavering support of the CSS executive team, especially CEO and President Arthur Trapotsis.
As part of Vital’s inbound marketing strategy, Vital still meets monthly with CSS to discuss progress and planning—what’s doing well, what can be worked on and how these goals will be accomplished. Then it’s back to the grindstone where every current and additional inbound marketing effort is executed. This is how Vital’s work repeatedly brings CSS’ product line and services to the attention of prospects in the autoclave marketplace, adding the ideal complement to CSS’ proven industry expertise and manufacturing excellence.
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study Case Studies — Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries.
Customers continue to come to CSS because they promote a product line manufactured 100% in the USA, and they offer the industry’s best prices, functionality, predictable quality and customer experience in sales and service.
CSS’ overall goal was to increase revenue through improved lead generation from their website.
Campaign goals were measured through the following metrics:
CSS faced several key challenges:
Despite such a rich company heritage, hallmarked by quality craftsmanship and customer satisfaction, CSS’ digital infrastructure challenges and well-established competitor base meant they had an uphill battle ahead of them.
The very first step was to re-design and re-build the CSS website in order to provide a more intuitive experience for website visitors. Strategically, this new design and functionality would more intuitively help users evaluate CSS’ offerings and pinpoint answers to their exact questions and needs. In doing so, users would be encouraged to contact CSS and become a lead. Additionally, the new website was built to search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, grounded in comprehensive keyword research and analysis.
Once Vital completed and launched the new website, CSS experienced an initial traffic boost, indicating that step one efforts had been successful.
Upon initial keyword research, Vital uncovered over 250 target keyword opportunities; in other words, chances to capture people using search engines to answer their autoclave questions, be it sales, service or otherwise. This was crucial, as competitors were outranking CSS for many of the highest valued keywords.
Using multiple keyword research and analysis tools, Vital was able to identify which high value keywords would drive the most traffic and which represented the most relevant and valued website visitors, i.e., those who could benefit CSS’ primary offerings.
Like many companies, CSS has a distinct sales offering for its five key target demographics. Each audience has different pain points, and each has unique motivations for purchase. To satisfy each audience, Vital crafted a content strategy that provided each audience with topics they would find helpful and engaging.
While implementing a content strategy is crucial, it will not amount to much if it is not repeatable and everyone is not on board.
Together, Vital and CSS embarked on a comprehensive content strategy, which included blogging on a weekly basis, social media posting on a daily basis, creating a new video, writing a helpful eBook, recording a webinar, and running multiple, targeted email marketing campaigns.
CSS’s increase in keyword rankings led to an 87% increase in overall, quality website traffic, (a 107% increase in organic traffic) and this new traffic led to a 177% increase in “Request a Quote” leads generated through the website.
Thanks to new micro-conversions added to the website (such as a downloadable eBook and webinar), CSS was able to also increase their monthly email subscriptions by over 200%. And CSS even experienced an over 100% increase in social media traffic to the website.
Vital believes in metric-driven approaches to deliver measurable results and improvements. By staying true to these values, Vital was able to collaboratively work with each of its internal teams and the client to increase leads, performance and overall business capabilities and efficiencies for CSS. Today, thanks to this dedication, we have a true success story on our hands—and one that is only growing more each day.
This comprehensive and highly technical content strategy was possible thanks to the continued crucial input from the CSS engineering and sales teams and the unwavering support of the CSS executive team, especially CEO and President Arthur Trapotsis.
As part of Vital’s inbound marketing strategy, Vital still meets monthly with CSS to discuss progress and planning—what’s doing well, what can be worked on and how these goals will be accomplished. Then it’s back to the grindstone where every current and additional inbound marketing effort is executed. This is how Vital’s work repeatedly brings CSS’ product line and services to the attention of prospects in the autoclave marketplace, adding the ideal complement to CSS’ proven industry expertise and manufacturing excellence.
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Case Studies — Brand Development
Often, it’s the most successful businesses that lack a strong brand strategy. When a company grows quickly, acquiring other brands and adding services, there isn’t always time to devote to brand architecture resulting in a disjointed house of brands that do not harness or build brand equity. As a result, many thriving businesses find that they need to implement brand architecture on an existing portfolio of brands. This was the challenge Chinburg Properties of Newmarket, NH, brought to Vital Design. 
Chinburg Properties is a full service real estate firm that manages several restored mill buildings around the NH Seacoast, each with their own brand identity and logo designs. Before this branding project, their management arm was Great Mills Properties, which had its own logo and branding. Chinburg is also a highly recognized builder and developer of single-family homes and restorer of some of NH’s most recognizable mills. The building and development sector of the company was known as Chinburg Builders and had the most recognizable logo and brand. As a result of this fractured brand strategy, Chinburg Builders was not benefitting from brand equity of the mill properties or the increasingly more visible management company and vice versa. The challenge of this project was to extend the brand equity of the Chinburg Builders name to all of the company’s brands, without compromising the brand equity and rich local history of Chinburg’s established rental properties.
Phase 1: Create a New Brand Architecture Before starting the design process, Vital conducted extensive research into brand architecture for real estate firms, and presented Chinburg with three possible options. 
The first option eliminates the Great Mills Properties brand, and brings all Chinburg brands, including Chinburg Builders, under the parent brand of Chinburg Properties. The Chinburg Properties logo design will be used to endorse the Mill Properties, keeping the uniqueness of the mills while extending the equity of Chinburg. This was Vital’s recommendation, as it is cost-effective, flexible and intuitively architected. 
This option maintains the Chinburg Builders brand for the building/development sector of the company. It eliminates the Great Mills Properties brand and it creates a new property management brand, Chinburg Properties, which endorses all of the mill properties. This solution although effective at extending brand equity embraces more moving parts which would come at an increased cost. 
The final option keeps Chinburg Builders and Great Mills Properties, and uses Chinburg Properties as the endorsing brand of Great Mills Properties, which would then endorse each mill property. This is both the most complicated and most expensive option. Chinburg selected Vital’s original recommendation, Option 1. Vital’s brand architecture strategy unified and streamlined Chinburg’s business segments by creating the umbrella brand of Chinburg Properties, revitalizing the existing Chinburg logo, and eliminating the Great Mills Properties brand from the equation. To ensure the newly-unified Chinburg Properties logo clearly communicates the company’s full range of services, Vital added the tagline “Design • Build • Manage”. 
Phase 2: Brand Mill Properties To bring the company’s managed mill properties under the Chinburg Properties parent brand, Vital developed a wrapper concept to tie the properties together while allowing each to maintain its own unique logo. The mill property logos are able to maintain precedence and their unique brand characters, and the Chinburg logo takes a subservient position. To preserve the brand equity of the individual mills, Vital maintained most of the original branding. However, some of the existing logos had a background color, some did not; and some had a pictorial icon while others did not. To unify them, Vital created containers for each logo, and added icons to the logos that formerly were only script. These containers are endorsed by the Chinburg name in an oval, in a complementary color. 
The Chinburg endorsement on the mill logos does not use the deep green color or the full Chinburg Properties name, but the brand equity is preserved in the Chinburg name and the distinctive oval. The new brand architecture extends the Chinburg name to all of the company’s holdings, while preserving the brand equity and rich local history of the individual rental properties. This hybrid brand architecture establishes a scalable brand identity that can be applied to properties Chinburg acquires or develops in the future.
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Case Studies — eCommerce
Sanders Lobster Company wanted a new website that would help them broaden their customer base. Locals already know and trust the Sanders Family brand—both the Lobster Company, established in 1952, and the local fish market, a staple in Portsmouth since the mid-1980s. Sanders Lobster Company wanted the new site to communicate quality and reliability to a wider audience and convert those new leads into eCommerce customers.
The new Sanders Lobster online store allows shoppers anywhere in the country to order lobsters, mussels and steamer clams for overnight delivery.
We knew that the new site had to convey Sanders’ reputation for quality seafood and tell their unique story. The company’s rich heritage and history in the Seacoast community had to be communicated in a way that would reinforce a perception of quality and service, and position Sanders as a trusted leader in the seafood industry.
True to the mission of increasing the audience for Sanders Lobster, Vital developed a lead conversion strategy that would generate sales through call-to-action prompts and a rich, seamless user experience.
Not surprisingly, live lobsters are a tricky product to ship. Sanders needed an eCommerce store that could ensure the freshness of their products. Vital worked with Sanders to build an eCommerce solution with OpenCart that could accommodate inventory issues, payment processor options, shipping calendar restrictions, and integration with their shipping networks.
Vital developed a user interface that made the website extremely simple and intuitive to navigate. The store gives customers the ability to select live or cooked lobsters for overnight shipment, plus an “up sell” option to add steamer clams or mussels to their order at checkout.
The site had to be easily found by those searching the web for New England seafood. This required a solid SEO strategy and a website built with a well-optimized foundation and poised for growth with a blog. With the integrated WordPress blog, Sanders can share updates and stories from the lobster pound.
With Sanders new, custom OpenCart eCommerce store, it’s a cinch for land-locked lobster-lovers and far-flung New Englanders to get a batch of bugs overnighted to their doorsteps. It’s easy, fast and wicked fresh.
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Case Studies — Social Media
The New Hampshire Film Festival came to Vital Design with three inbound marketing goals. 1) To engage new social networks without detracting from the value of their established Facebook and Twitter communities, 2) to provide followers with a simple way to build anticipation and join the conversation about the Festival, and 3) to extend their social media reach by providing value to current and future sponsors.
New records were set in ticket sales, submissions and films screened.
Because of our focus on key social networks, the NH Film Festival had its biggest year on social media. Data represents one month prior to and one week after the festival 9-11-12 – 10-20-2012.
It was important for the NH Film Festival to expand their reach into new social networks without sacrificing the value of their already established Twitter and Facebook community. Vital Design reviewed four social networks for the NH Film Festival to expand into this year; Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Instagram was a natural choice because of its:
One key question many organizations have is how can they harness and take advantage of all the conversations that are happening around their online brand? We accomplished this by using a simple hashtag (#NHFF) allowing users across multiple social networks, including Instagram and Twitter, to share content and connect with the New Hampshire Film Festival.
Vital Design used the #NHFF hashtag to share key content leading up to and throughout the festival. Especially leading up to the festival this was designed to train our followers to join us in using the hashtag without having to correct followers during the festival. Vital Design chose to use the simple #NHFF with no date this year to cause less confusion in having to switch to a new hashtag year after year.
Vital Design also monitored multiple variations of the NH Film Festival’s name including #NHFF. This allowed us to engage with their followers and provide support to any questions that arose.
The PR push began in early September with press releases about sponsors and special guests of the Festival, and gradually ramped up to 1-2 press releases a week as the Festival drew closer. During the Festival, the publicity team facilitated distribution of press passes, and organized interviews and a press conference for local media with actor and screenwriter Mike O’Malley, a special guest of the Festival. Mike O’Malley’s interview at the Festival was featured on WMUR’s New Hampshire Chronicle.
The PR team also created short NHFF videos leading up to the Festival and during the Festival weekend. These included the “Director’s Minute” series which featured Festival Executive Director Nicole Gregg announcing various news about Festival guests, parties, and other updates. These were shot in a variety of locations around Portsmouth, from the NHFF office to the top of the One Hundred Club, site of the VIP brunch. The videos were published to YouTube and shared via NHFF social media channels.
Because of our focus on key social networks, the NH Film Festival had its biggest year on social media. Data represents one month prior to and one week after the festival 9-11-12 – 10-20-2012.
Twitter interactions – 1,047
Twitter impressions – 1,221,523
Twitter follower growth – 356
Facebook interactions – 3,371
Facebook impressions – 297,226
Facebook fan growth – 230
YouTube views – 1,944 video views
#NHFF reach – 358,000
#NHFF impressions – 1,400,000
#NHFF tweets – 860
Instagram photos – 147
Referral traffic from social media networks – 2,347 visits to the NHFF site, an increase of 15% from 2011.
Approximately 30 stories published in print and online resulted in over 1,750 pageviews from Sept. 1- Oct. 31.
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Case Studies — Brand Development
Successful businesses and entrepreneurs often share the same challenge: they have been following a pattern of success and growth, creating or acquiring new brands, without having time to stop and take a bird’s eye view of their brand identity. Successful businesses often find themselves with a brand portfolio that, while thriving from a fiscal standpoint, is not clearly defined as a strong brand. This was the challenge Key Auto Group brought to Vital Design.
Key Auto came to Vital with several different disassociated brands: from new cars to pre-owned cars to service to financing to towing and more (Figure 1). Vital Design was tasked with creating a brand architecture that leverage brand equity across the 10+ businesses already in the Key family and allowed the flexibility to bring on board any future brands.
After researching the industry and the brands, it was clear that Key Auto needed a hybrid brand architecture that could accommodate both logos where Key was the dominant brand, such as the Key Portsmouth Used Car Superstore, and where it was the subservient brand, as in Key Portsmouth Chevrolet. Working with world-renowned brands like Chevy, Ford and Hyundai while also having used car brands and other industry-related brands required an emblem that would function in both dominant and subservient positions.
The final choice of logo was a simple emblem style design, showing the Key name in a chrome font that showed movement and energy, capturing the bright, modern feel of the Key rebrand. This emblem can be placed either above or below another brand, so that it can be used in both the used car dealerships and the locations where it is linked to a strong international brand like Chevrolet.
The Key emblem ties together the overall brand architecture, allowing the many different stores, locations and services of Key to be branded as separate entities that all co-exist under the same parent brand. The hybrid structure also allows Key’s brand to grow: if they open a new location or acquire another dealership, the Key emblem can easily be transposed onto new brands.
The phrase “brand architecture” is just industry-speak for something that that most of us, as consumers, experience every day: how a company’s brands work together, and how consumers will understand and interact with the brands.
There are two main schools of thought when it comes to brand architecture, commonly thought of as “house of brands” and “branded house”. A house of brands is a “silent” parent brand, such as Proctor & Gamble. No consumer products come plastered with Proctor & Gamble branded labels—the company instead encompasses Olay, Febreeze, Tide and other recognizable consumer brands, even brands that sometimes compete with one another. This is also known as multiple brand architecture.
A branded house, however, is a company such as GE. The company is diversified into a huge variety of products and services, but every one of their sectors bears the immediately recognizable blue and white GE logo. This is also known as a logo-linked brand or master brand – the name and branding is consistent across all segments of the company. This is an expensive branding strategy, and it can make it difficult to access both very broad and very niche markets.
The middle ground between these two main brand architectures is a hybrid brand architecture: a company that is branded like Marriott, with one main brand with themes and elements that carry throughout the branding for several sub brands (Figure 4). Marriott has brands like Courtyard and Fairfield Inn under its main brand, and the Marriott branding appears (in a minimal way) on the logos etc. for most of the sub brands.
A hybrid brand has many benefits, including improved flexibility for growth. Any acquisitions or spin-off brands can all be brought under the brand umbrella easily. A hybrid model also protects brand equity and allows the brand to adapt to fit each target audience—for example, your extended stay hotels and luxury hotels can be branded differently but still within your main brand.
From a production standpoint, a hybrid model also much more affordable than creating a variety of different logos or building a monolithic brand (such as GE). By having so many common elements, your cost of adding new brands is fixed and relatively inexpensive, and you don’t need to build a brand from the ground up every time you acquire a business or move into a new market.
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
Case Studies — Blogs
The Anticancer Lifestyle Program came to Vital with an impassioned mission, but they were unsure of the most effective means to promote their program offerings and manage their wealth of knowledge. Not only were they starting a 12 week support and educational series for local patients of the hospital, but they also wanted to expand the concept to a wider online community. Their website needed to be the groundwork for inspiring patients and survivors with optimism and the empowerment of knowledge.
In designing this site it was critical that all design elements embody a feeling of trust, calming, optimism, and clarity. We accomplished this through the use of welcoming imagery, a friendly, approachable font and vibrant colors.
A major challenge all information heavy sites face is the organization of content. Anticancer Lifestyle Program was no different. They had a wealth of information to disseminate and needed to do so in digestible portions and relevant categories. We took our cue from the program’s key areas of concentration: Anticancer Diet, Anticancer Fitness, Anticancer Mindset, Toxin Free Living, and Social Connections. Not only does this segment content into logical topics, which is helpful to users, but it also supports the organizations cornerstone programs. To visually organize the content we established icon and color indicators for the programs and used them throughout the site. This graphic approach to a text heavy site visually segments topics without adding more text.
Last but not least, we addressed how users would interact with the content. Knowing most visitors would be there initially for program information, it was imperative to integrate the knowledge resources to all applicable program pages. You no longer need to visit a standalone resource page or blog to find articles that might interest you. With dynamic RSS feeds we are able to bring the relevant information directly to the related landing pages. This gives additional opportunities for targeted calls-to-action and creates a more robust user experience.
By creating a site that is dynamically updated through the use of a singular blog, the Anticancer Lifestyle Program is able to streamline their website maintenance and maximize content value by serving it to areas of established interest. The result is a site that is uniquely customized by content and encourages visitors to get involved with their programs.
What the client said:
“Vital Design created a perfect online home for our program. It serves as an incredible resource for current, past and potential participants in the Anticancer Lifestyle Program. “
We love how we are able to update the site content ourselves, and the color-coding and clear navigation makes the site both beautiful and easy to navigate, it’s our first foray into content marketing strategy. This ease of navigation was especially key to this project, and helped us reinforce our key pillars of diet, fitness, mindset and environment. A strong content management system can empower a business and the WordPress CMS is at the forefront of the CMS game.
Vital delivered a site that is an effective and powerful resource for our participants and the general community. The program is currently at capacity, and we expect to be for the foreseeable future. As we gain recognition and expand our reach, we’re so glad that our program has an online portal that we can truly be proud of.”
– Betsey Rhynhart, Anticancer Lifestyle Director of Program Development
Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
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Digital Marketing
CSS has manufactured water stills and steam sterilizers (autoclaves) in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1946. Through 65+ years of research and development, CSS products can now be found in many of the leading universities and medical research and biotechnology facilities across 70 countries. ...
View Case Study
