By DAVE MANZER
Swyft Communications
Sponsored Post
The only industry booming in Austin more than commercial real estate — nearly 10 buildings over 40 stories are either approved or in the planning phase for downtown — is the tech industry.
According to Crunchbase, Austin startups raised $368 million across 39 deals in the first quarter of 2018. That’s more than double what was raised for the same quarter in 2017. Austin’s even on track to post a billion dollars in fundraising for the year, which may very well be a first.
But the growth in Austin’s tech scene isn’t just about startups. Existing tech companies like Apple, Oracle, and Google have sunk deep roots in Austin over the past decade, fueling the real estate boom.
Indeed, the home-grown Austin job search company plans to soon have 3,000 tech employees working in a downtown office tower. Resideo Technologies, a $4.8 billion spinoff from Honeywell International, just announced it will move the HQ of its 14,500 strong global workforce to Austin in 2019, making it the city’s largest publicly traded company.
Nor is the growth limited to U.S. companies. Shopgate, a global e-commerce company from Germany, moved its U.S. HQ to Austin. So did Purple, a UK-based Wi-Fi data analytics company with over 20 million users across 73 countries.
In short, Austin is slowly pivoting away from being a hip, trendy town to launch a bootstrapped startup to one that now sports a diverse cross-section of tech companies looking to make waves around the globe.
To match this evolution in the tech industry, we in the creative industry must make a similar pivot. Many of today’s startups and established tech companies have their sights set on disrupting markets outside the U.S. They need support from creative agencies based right here in Austin that are familiar with working across continents, time zones, languages, and cultures. They also need agencies capable of harnessing Austin’s combination of commerce and cool to put them on a path toward profitable growth and market leadership.
Over the past few years, our focus has been on helping international B2B tech brands grow in the U.S. and abroad. Through that work, we realized there was an opportunity to create a new kind of agency that stood in contrast to most multinational and regional agencies, which can be cumbersome and costly options for small and mid-sized enterprises seeking global growth. These companies need an agency that is highly-responsive and works at the speed of a startup. Hence our new name: Swyft.
In addition to our Austin-based team, we’ve developed a global network of like-minded PR and marketing agencies. At SXSW this year, when we were providing media relations assistance to the Brazil Trade and Investment Promotion Authority, it dawned on us that we had achieved something special: we successfully supported three clients at three trade shows on three continents, all within a week of each other. For an independent agency with its roots right here in Austin, this was a moment for high-five.
Yet, we also knew that an ability to work across continents is not enough for today’s global tech brands. They need highly agile agencies capable of moving in lockstep with their marketing team in order to drive measurable gains in brand awareness, website traction, and new leads.
Rebranding as Swyft has put our agency squarely in the B2B tech marketing space. To make that happen, we added new services, including website design, lead management with marketing automation support, and video marketing. We went from a PR agency dabbling in marketing to an agency focused 100% on integrated sales-funnel activities. Our team is now capable of designing websites, building high-impact content assets, and executing email and digital marketing campaigns to drive more website traffic, downloads, and marketing qualified leads.
So, even though we’ve changed our name to Swyft and embraced a new vision for helping our customers grow here in the U.S. and abroad, we still provide the same level of agile, creative, and results-driven support we’ve championed since our founding nearly eight years ago.
Editor’s note: this a sponsored post.