Blue Surge Marketing Agency

In 2021, building an audience on Instagram is no small task. But it didn’t always use to be this way. So much has changed since the days of Instagram's first launch; back when it was just an iOS-only app, you could only upload square photos with a handful of filters, and Direct Messages weren't a thing. 

Fast forward to now, and you have a myriad of features that have extended the app’s core functionality, from shoppable tags in Stories to long-form uploads in the form of IGTV and TikTok-like Reels. Despite all these changes in the past ten years, the constant has been the psychology of how users engage with the app. 

Instagram’s success lies in how it intrinsically rewards users emotionally. This reward takes place in the shape of base interactions like swiping down to refresh your timeline, being tagged in a friend’s post, or even just seeing your follower counts creep upwards over time. Nir Eyal, author of "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products," details how a four-step process taps into users' minds to ensure they can't put Instagram down.

As a maverick thinker and inexperienced entrepreneur, our CEO was able to use that hook psychology to transform an unknown shoe reselling hobby into a global sneaker powerhouse that gained an organic Instagram audience of nearly 260,000 followers and grossed $1 million in sales in less than 48 months — without the use of paid ads or a budget.

The Challenge

As the owner of a media outlet built for underrepresented groups on Long Island, Miya Jones knew the challenges of bringing a vital idea to the market. As her first independent venture, Shades of Long Island began to flourish, Miya wanted to expand her company and make it profitable. Although her news site was growing, she wanted to add a directory feature that allowed local Black-owned and Hispanic owned business owners from Nassau and Suffolk County to be found more accessible. 

The Strategy

As an advertising and marketing company for businesses of all sizes, our team at Blue Surge Marketing Agency knows the importance of visibility. If a potential client or customer is looking for goods or services in your industry, you had better be there. Otherwise, that potential sale goes to a competitor. Our idea for this directory was to make it a comprehensive, one-stop-shop where visitors could easily find businesses, along with the basic information necessary to make quick judgments about the individual company, such as reviews, photos, and hours of operation. Once we formulated the concept, we began executing the idea.

Our team frontloaded the directory with hundreds of listings by scraping data from popular social networks. This action helped satisfy the on-page component of search engine optimization. We carried out this experiment by adding our own business as a sample listing in the directory to test this. After a few short weeks, a simple search in Google led to the guide appearing within our branded keyword's top 10 results. The high placement of the site's listing signaled to us our hypothesis was indeed correct. The other positive of preloading the directory with listings was that it gave business owners an incentive to claim their listing and modify them accordingly, which they could only do after creating a user account.

The actions of our website design team led to strategies that have shown the growth for Shades of Long Island.

Challenge

Amistad Long Island Black Bar Association is an affiliate of the National Bar Association. Amistad is dedicated to the professional development of Black attorneys who either live or work in Long Island. Amistad presented two significant issues that needed resolving. One, their website was not housed on any content management system. This problem exacerbated issues where Amistad could not quickly update their content, resulting in an outdated, poorly designed site. Their other problem was that as a membership-based organization, they had no automatic system to keep track of paid and non-paid members.

Enter Blue Surge Marketing Agency.

The Strategy

Blue Surge used their in-depth history of working with local nonprofits to meet Amistad’s two-part objectives. First, we had to revamp their website thoroughly. We selected a CMS that would be robust enough to handle any feature requests but also simple enough to use with our training and guidance. We implemented the best web design practices and drew inspiration from more significant bar associations.

After the website design portion was successful, we conceived the best solution for their membership woes. We chose WooCommerce Subscriptions, a powerful plugin that allowed their constituents to renew their annual memberships automatically. Their members would finally be able to create user accounts, manage their subscriptions, renew early, and more.

As a bonus, we added site tracking to provide their organization with the data necessary to make valuable insights.

The Results

Amistad Long Island Black Bar Association was presented with a fast, mobile-friendly, and easy-to-navigate website to start the year. Members unanimously agreed the site was a vast improvement from its previous iteration. The completed site includes built-in AMP compatibility, a necessary feature to align with Google's recent search engine changes. With the right digital foundation, Amistad is looking forward to continuing its mission of empowering black attorneys in the Long Island community.

We designed the signage and marketing materials for Supreme Screw Products Inc. for their MD&M West and SHOT Show expos, including creating the tagline, "Critical Components for Critical Moments."

As an affiliate chapter of one of the 90+ Urban Leagues, the nation’s largest historic civil rights and urban advocacy organization, Urban League of Long Island was looking for a qualified web design firm that could meet its objectives.

Specifically, they were looking for a visually appealing website that effectively disseminated information about their ongoing work and increased the overall public awareness of their organization’s mission. As a local Long Island marketing agency, Blue Surge was proud to accept their challenge.

To meet their objectives, Blue Surge Marketing Agency worked to design a website that fit the needs of a nonprofit organization of their caliber. With the organization looking to engage with a younger audience, we implemented a mobile-first responsive design that worked on any device.

We also integrated an events features so that their members would be able to quickly register for upcoming community workshops, trainings, and networking events.

For organizational transparency, we added a staff page for members to include their biographies.

To encourage donations, we strategically placed donation buttons in the main menu and sidebar for easy navigation as a prominent call to action.

Trying to launch a new company is challenging.

Trying to launch a new company during a pandemic is even more challenging.

But that’s exactly what MMMint Bubble was tasked to do in 2020. After the launch of their website, designed by the good folks at Blue Surge, they needed to hit the ground running. As a new entrant in the gum, mint, and breath freshener market, MMMint Bubble required marketing to build their awareness and collect leads so that they could position their game-changing product to new customers.

Enter Blue Surge Marketing Agency.

Fresh off our website project’s wheels, our team was well prepared to help MMMint Bubble capture incoming consumer data. MMMint Bubble’s team seeded their product by collaborating with several food reviewers and giveaway platforms. Our role at Blue Surge was to strategize the best way to collect these leads and keep them organized succinctly. Because email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing channel, so we decided to use a platform that allowed for effective lead capture based on our design.

We set up an e-CRM that enabled consumers to provide their data in a fully consented way. This method was aligned with CCPA and GDPR laws, which govern consumer privacy. After this, we designed an engaging pop-up form that encouraged web visitors to take action, based on the offer MMMint Bubble wanted to run.

As huge e-commerce enthusiasts, we relish any opportunity to work with new brands setting into the retail ecosystem. We took the hours invested into our kickoff meeting and worked with the MMMints team to come up with a smart e-commerce solution.

While the site was being worked on, instead of the standard maintenance or “Coming Soon” page, we instead launched a “Try MMMint Today” splash page that allowed visitors to request a free sample box of Mmmints before they officially launched to public.

We set up an e-CRM that enabled consumers to provide their data in a fully consented way. This method was aligned with CCPA and GDPR laws, which govern consumer privacy. After this, we designed an engaging pop-up form that encouraged web visitors to take action, based on the offer MMMint Bubble wanted to run.

As huge e-commerce enthusiasts, we relish any opportunity to work with new brands setting into the retail ecosystem. We took the hours invested into our kickoff meeting and worked with the MMMints team to come up with a smart e-commerce solution.

While the site was being worked on, instead of the standard maintenance or “Coming Soon” page, we instead launched a “Try MMMint Today” splash page that allowed visitors to request a free sample box of Mmmints before they officially launched to public.