Nine Labs is an Atlanta-based user experience and product design firm with clients including major airlines, hotels, and startups.

The problem:

With years of blog posts, podcasts, videos, white papers, and ebooks there was plenty of content but no strategic method to effectively share it on social media. Potential traffic and leads were left on the table. Nine Labs wanted to organize and share all their content to increase engagement, brand recognition, and ultimately leads.

The solution:

We created a robust social media marketing strategy and guide to help Nine Labs with content marketing. We also launched an Alexa Flash Briefing to establish a voice presence in the UX design category. Then we provided ongoing guidance in implementing, empowering their in-house team to manage it.

Custom Content Marketing Strategy

Goals:

Increase blog traffic
Increase leads
Increase social engagement
Establish voice presence on Alexa

Strategy characteristics:

Content buckets and monthly themes based on Nine Labs’ driving principles from 4 Steps to a Human Centered Business Model
Specific guidelines to create social posts (text, graphics, video, and audiograms) for different social channels including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn - each with different goals and slightly different audiences
Introduction of audiograms
- Guidelines on creating effective, short audiograms for Instagram and Twitter by repurposing past podcast and YouTube video content

Audiogram for Instagram (static image with 1-minute audio and captions)

Alexa Skills search ranking in app for “UX design” keywords - Nine Labs Flash Briefing

Brand separation from executive profile: Clarity and direction on content strategy for CEO (and helluva smart guy) J Cornelius’s personal brand and the Nine Labs brand
Strategy and launch of Design Driven, an Alexa Flash Briefing about UX and product
Fact: Design-driven companies outperform the S&P by 228%.

Interested in the intersection of business, design, UX, and product development? Enable this daily briefing about using design to build great products and lasting companies.

Repurposing and repackaging high quality content instead of starting from scratch, saving the client time
Optimize lead magnet forms on blog and website
Strategically drive traffic to lead magnets, downloadable PDFs, and blog
Optimized Alexa Flash Briefing keywords, description, and daily content. Hear past briefings below:

Results of 8-week marketing engagement:

Increase in social engagements:
- Facebook up 21%
- Instagram up 893% (from 312 to 3,100)
- Twitter up 178%
- LinkedIn from 0 to 48 average weekly engagements
Increased blog traffic and leads from social
VOICE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION: Within two weeks, ranked on page 1 , top three results of Alexa Skills search results for terms including “ux”, “product design,” and “ux design”
Empowered marketing team to efficiently run with this strategy on their own

“Emily has an incisive mind about marketing and how voice is rapidly changing the landscape. She worked hard to find the right use of the technology without compromising quality or our brand message.”

— J Cornelius, Founder and President, Nine Labs

Why We Love Nine Labs

If you need guidance on designing a digital product, we recommend J Cornelius and his ace team at Nine Labs. Hands down, they’re the best. Nine Labs understands design and how it fits into business as a whole. They also run killer workshops and training.

Get the best thinking from startups and enterprise to give your projects the support to succeed. https://ninelabs.com/

We launched an organic and paid social media strategy from ground zero, resulting in over a 110% increase in app MAU (monthly active users) in 2018.

About Brightwell:

Brightwell is an Atlanta-based fintech company offering end-to-end payment solutions through cutting edge technology and unparalleled support, serving cruise lines such as Carnival Cruise Lines, Norwegian Cruise Lines, Costa, Princess, and AIDA.

End Users (Audience for Ads):

Cruise crew members and seafarers who live all over the world, concentrated in Indonesia, Philippines, and India. Many of these seafarers are unbanked or underbanked. They work on ship for months at a time and travel to their home countries in between.

Carnival Cruise employees are paid through Brightwell.

Our Goal:

Educate and increase app adoption among a user base largely unfamiliar with digital payments, credit cards, and banking. Change habits from mainly cash and ATM use to online transfers within the Brightwell Navigator app.

Challenges:

Language barriers
Technology barriers (many crew lack experience with online banking)
Spotty and slow Wi-Fi onboard ship
High turnover of active crew
Crew’s mistrust of payments providers due to past negative experiences
Cash-centric cultures such as Philippines

Strategy:

Facebook and Instagram advertising targeting crew members, encouraging app install and adoption through features and benefits as well as persona-based messaging.

We created customer personas (AKA avatars) for each nationality on ship because culture plays a key role in relationships with money, both emotionally and logistically when it comes to banking.

Year 1 of Facebook Advertising:

launch, test, iterate, optimize, repeat

Results:

Over 110% increase in MAU (monthly active users)
Decreased CPI (cost per app install) to one-tenth that of the benchmark / goal
Optimized CPC and CTR with over 60% and 35% improvement, respectively

Brightwell remains a client as they continue to establish themselves as a major player in the payments space and one of the fastest growing companies in Transaction Alley (Atlanta’s fintech ecosystem).

Details available upon request.