Jacksonville Business Journal’s 2015 BizTech Awards honor companies at ‘cutting edge of the technological landscape’
Content marketing and public relations firm Reputation Ink and its client Stellar have won the Jacksonville Business Journal’s 2015 BizTech award for “Best Website for Generating Business and Leads.” The honor recognizes Food for Thought, Stellar’s educational blog focused exclusively on the design and construction of food processing facilities.
Launched in 2013, the blog addresses the many issues and challenges that face food manufacturers, from refrigeration to food safety, sustainability, planning, automation, operations and maintenance. The blog focuses exclusively on the food industry, helping drive SEO, capture a niche audience, and build Stellar’s reputation as a food industry expert.
“Before we launched Food for Thought, our marketing was very traditional and mostly offline, including tradeshows, networking, direct mail and print advertising,” said Justin Bridegan, Stellar’s Marketing Director. “However, the team at the time knew that the Internet was changing the way that people bought services.”
“Our prospects use the Internet to solve problems and answer questions,” Bridegan said. “It’s imperative that we are the ones to answer those questions and help solve those problems. By doing so, we position ourselves as the industry expert and go-to provider prospects turn to when they are ready to buy our services.”
Reputation Ink, one of Jacksonville’s only firms with in-depth expertise in content marketing, concepted Food for Thought and serves as the blog’s content strategy, editing and ghostwriting team. Using its public relations expertise, the firm regularly pitches the blog content to food trade media publications, securing multiple weekly placements in publications such as Food Manufacturing, Plant Engineering, Process Cooling, Control Engineering, Consulting-Specifying Engineer and more, extending the blog’s monthly readership to more than 610,000 people. Reputation Ink also manages weekly and monthly email distributions of the blog posts via marketing automation platform HubSpot.
The blog’s results on Stellar’s bottom line have been impressive: over the past year alone, Food for Thought has generated more than 600 leads. Of those leads, over 80 have been “qualified leads”—or prospects with a timely need that Stellar can address. Of those, 18 have resulted in proposals, with three high-value contract wins.
“In addition to direct sales, the blog helps in many other ways,” Bridegan said. “For example, now when our sales people walk into meetings, prospects don’t have to be convinced that Stellar knows and understands their market. At one sales meeting, the prospect—a CEO of a large food manufacturing company—said at the very beginning: ‘I love your blog and read it every week. It really demonstrates how well you know and understand our industry.’”
Bridegan continued: “Food for Thought is not only an invaluable lead-generation tool for Stellar, but a platform that’s positioned Stellar as an esteemed thought leader in the food and beverage space, creating brand awareness that has translated into hundreds of thousands of dollars for our business.”
About Reputation Ink
Reputation Ink is a content marketing and public relations firm based in Jacksonville, Florida. The firm’s content marketing strategists, writers, social media experts, and public relations pros develop a range of content, including blogs, e-newsletters, articles, case studies, e-books, white papers, press releases, award submissions, videos, websites, microsites, infographics and more to help clients inform and educate their prospects. The firm also deploys inbound marketing and lead-generation campaigns using marketing automation software such as HubSpot and conducts public relations campaigns, securing media coverage in local and national media outlets. Its clients span a range of industries including technology, professional services, business to business, sports, real estate and more. For more information, visit www.rep-ink.com.
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