May 14, 2017

Note: This is Part 4 of a 5-part series on our annual international B2B marketing conference this past November. Read Part 3 here.

Matt Bowen, President and CEO of Aloft Group, shared with us at the Global Marketing Challenges for B2B Companies the key success factors for Israeli companies to scale their product in the U.S.

Mr. Bowen cited this article from Harvard business review which noted that in a survey of 112 Israeli companies founded between 1996 and 2013 that met or exceeded $20 million in revenue, most shared two common characteristics. The vast majority – 91% — had both Israeli CEOs and had received funding from foreign VCs.

Growing Your Brand in the USA: Key Success Factors

Mr. Bowen believes that in addition to these factors, Israeli companies that desire to successfully penetrate the US market must be truly remarkable. We’ll examine three key factors that contribute to a company’s “remarkability” in this post.

Mr. Bowen believes

Step 1 – Zoom and Focus

Zoom and Focus

 

While the US market offers a lot of exciting opportunity for growth for any Israeli company, it is also quite diverse. The market forces can create a lot of voices, as well as choices, and your company’s brand needs to be able to be heard above the noise. Mr. Bowen showed us how his company was able to zoom and focus on the market for one client, Greiner Packing, by creating customer personas. By focusing on specific personas and understanding what these personas do on a typical day, their pain points, values and possible objections to the product, his company gained a much clearer focus of who would benefit from the product and how. Here’s a detailed example of a customer persona:

 

From this type in-depth understanding of your customers, you can start to build your company’s story more clearly.

Step 2 – Tell a Bigger Story

From his vast experience in the field, Mr. Bowen told us: “Companies that seek to enter the US market successfully need a bigger story.” That also means not overly focusing on your products or technology, but how it can make your customer’s lives better. It’s the customer’s emotional connection to the brand that ultimately builds your customer relationships and brand loyalty.

Step 3 – Cultivate Relationships to Inspire Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is a goal that is achieved by a journey – a journey with each customer. Through focusing and zooming in on your market and telling the right story, you’ll start to build relationships. Customers with good experiences will be happy to share it with the world, especially if they believe in your product. Many of these relationships will develop into brand advocates and slowly build your brand and customer loyalty.

Cultivate Relationships to Inspire Brand Loyalty

To Make it In America, Be Remarkable

As we’ve explained, there are three key factors to successfully entering the US market. First, your company must focus and zoom in on its market. Creating in-depth customer personas can help with this. Secondly, you’ll need to come up with a way to tell a “bigger story” – one that doesn’t focus too much on your products and technology, but how it will add value to your customer’s life. Finally, you’ll need to build relationships with customers based on exceptional customer experiences in order to create brand advocates and loyalty. These three factors can go a long way in making your company truly remarkable and successfully scale in the US.

Want to learn more about how to make it in America?

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seo to geo

From SEO to GEO: How to Make Sure Your Content Shows Up in AI Engines

By 
Einat Talal-Cohen
, 29/06/2025

Your brand is more than just a logo - it’s a powerful strategic tool. Discover how CEOs can leverage branding to build trust, differentiate, and drive business growth.

min read

SEO to GEO marks a new phase in online success. For years, success online meant ranking high on Google. And that’s still true - but search itself is expanding. Today, visibility doesn’t stop with search engines.

It also means showing up in AI-generated answers from tools like GPT-4o, Gemini, and Claude.

Here are some facts you need to know:

  • 67% of technical queries never make it to Google
  • They’re being answered instantly by ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity
  • Google’s AI Overviews now appear in ~13% of all searches - up from 6.5% in January 2025
 

If your brand isn’t part of those answers, you’re invisible to a growing share of your market.

Search behavior is evolving:

  • Queries are longer (23 words on average, not 4)
  • Sessions are deeper (lasting around 6 minutes)
  • And AI engines don’t just search - they remember, reason, and respond with personalized, conversational synthesis

SEO still matters. But it’s no longer enough on its own. That’s where GEO - Generative Engine Optimization - comes in: the next evolution in making sure your content gets seen wherever people search for answers.

Here’s how to start positioning your content to show up where it matters most:

5 Ways to Optimize Your Content for AI Engines

1. Build Topical Authority, Not Just Keyword Lists SEO taught us to chase keywords. GEO rewards expertise. AI engines prefer trusted sources that consistently publish valuable content on specific subjects. What to do: Create content clusters. Go beyond isolated blog posts and build topic ecosystems: guides, FAQs, thought leadership pieces, and deep dives.   2. Write Like You’re Explaining It to a Smart Friend AI engines favor content written in a natural, conversational tone. If it reads like stiff marketing jargon, it’s likely to be ignored by LLMs. What to do: Break down complex topics clearly and simply. Use questions, summaries, and direct answers. Write to inform, not impress.   3. Format for Easy Extraction AI engines love content that’s easy to lift, quote, and summarize. Dense paragraphs are ignored - clarity wins. What to do:
  • Use H2s and H3s properly
  • Add bullet points and numbered lists Start with a TL;DR or summary whenever possible Think: Could ChatGPT easily use this paragraph in an answer?
  4. Build Trust with Credibility Signals AI models look for trustworthy, well-sourced content to avoid hallucinations or misinformation. What to do: Use expert bylines, cite credible sources, include data, and showcase expertise. Think “thought leader,” not “content farm.”   5. Optimize for Zero-Click Visibility People may not click anymore - they may just read the AI’s answer. Your goal is brand visibility in the answer itself. What to do: Include brand mentions, URL citations, or phrases like:“According to [YourBrand].com…” Help the AI connect your expertise to your name.

Final Thought: Be Part of the Answer

SEO isn’t dead. It’s evolving.  GEO is the next layer, giving your brand the power to show up not just in search engines but in the AI-generated answers people increasingly trust.
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Your Brand Is a Strategic Asset

Your Brand. Is it a Strategic Asset in the CEO Toolbox – or Lost Opportunity?

By 
No items found
, 05/03/2025

Your brand is more than just a logo - it’s a powerful strategic tool. Discover how CEOs can leverage branding to build trust, differentiate, and drive business growth.

min read
Here's a surprising fact: Many CEOs still see branding solely as a marketing function, overlooking its potential and missing a major opportunity.

Your brand does more than create awareness — it's an engine of influence

A smart branding strategy connects your company's vision, unique value proposition, core values, and business goals. It answers a critical question: How does your company want to be perceived by all your stakeholders – within your company and beyond your walls to your target audiences?

3 Key Branding Principles Every CEO Should Adopt

1. Your Brand = Your Reputation Your brand is what people think of you. Your brand strategy defines what you want them to think. It's a long-term process, and while it's not possible to control every aspect of perception, clear and consistent messaging helps shape a positive reputation and build lasting influence. 2. Branding + Marketing = A Winning Formula "Marketing is asking someone on a date. Branding is the reason they say 'Yes!'" Your brand is much more than just a marketing tool—it's a strategic asset that can drive our business success. To get more people to say yes—whether they are customers, employees, or investors—your brand must be:
  • Relevant to their needs
  • Differentiated from your competitors
  • Inspiring and compelling
3. A Brand Is a Promise—and Promises Must Be Kept Each time someone interacts with your company, you have a chance to show them you mean what you say. That's why every interaction with your company should reinforce your brand’s promise.
  • Your employees are the face of your brand every single day. They bring your promise to life through their words and actions.
  • When customers use your products and services, they're testing your promise over time. Each positive experience builds trust and reinforces why they chose you in the first place.
  • Your digital touchpoints, from customer dashboards to online shopping, are opportunities to make your customers' lives easier and show them you understand their needs.
  • The partners and distributors who work with you are extensions of your voice. When they speak to customers, those customers hear your promise through them.
  • Your support team does more than just solve problems—they turn satisfied customers into advocates who will share your promise with others. What others say about us is more powerful than what we say about ourselves.

B2B Branding—A Challenge and an Opportunity

B2B branding navigates long and complex sales cycles, interacts with multiple decision-makers from different generations, and has a strong focus on technology and sales, which often doesn't prioritize marketing. When you manage the customer journey strategically, branding becomes a powerful opportunity—building trust, differentiating your company, and fostering long-term relationships with your customers. A Strategic Brand Accelerates Your Business Whether your goal is converting leads into customers, attracting top talents, or driving organizational changes, leveraging your brand helps you achieve it intelligently and elegantly. Great brands don’t just sell products—they bring people together around something bigger and more meaningful. Ultimately, people seek meaning. What is your brand doing to provide meaning to your customers?
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OZ Blog DesignSystem Blogimages 2025 v1

How Can a Design System Help Anyone Working on Your Brand?

By 
Naomi Lifshitz
, 13/02/2025

A Design System ensures brand consistency, saves time, and unifies teams worldwide. Learn how top companies use it to streamline workflows.

min read
Imagine this scenario: You’re a marketing manager in a global company. Your company operates in various markets, and you have different teams producing marketing materials—creating a landing page in England, designing an app interface in the U.S., and crafting a digital catalog in Germany. Now think about the outcome: The logo appears differently in each country, the colors aren’t consistent, and the font in the German catalog doesn’t match the brand identity you’ve spent so many resources developing. It doesn’t just look unprofessional—it sends a message of inconsistency and unreliability to your customers.

The Solution: A Design System

A Design System is the key to turning these processes into seamless, efficient, and most importantly—consistent ones. Instead of every team “doing their own thing,” a Design System provides a clear set of rules that define how your brand should look and behave—across all markets, platforms, and marketing materials. A Design System includes a variety of elements designed to create a unified and consistent user experience. Key components might include buttons, icons, fields and labels, principles for visual design, and user interaction guidelines. Together, these elements form a framework that ensures consistency, accessibility, and efficiency in digital products.

Real-World Example: How It Works

Let’s say you’re launching a global campaign for a new product. With a Design System:
  • Your team in Eastern Europe and Western Asia all use the same UI components, colors, and typography.
  • The UK team builds a landing page following predefined guidelines.
  • Designers in France create a marketing brochure that feels like an integral part of the same brand.
  • In Israel, the team developing the app adds a new feature—without breaking the design language.

The result: A consistent user experience across all channels, which strengthens trust in your brand and saves work hours (and headaches).

Why Is This Especially Important for Global Companies?

For companies with diverse teams worldwide, a Design System is not just a design tool—it’s the glue that unites all the different parts of the brand under one umbrella. Here are some pain points a Design System solves:
  • Inconsistent Colors: When each team chooses different brand shades, it creates a sense of unreliability for customers. With a Design System, there’s a predefined color palette for everyone.
  • Wasted Work Hours: Instead of every team reinventing the wheel, they use ready-made components that save hours of design and development.
  • Fragmented User Experience: A digital product that behaves differently in every country alienates users. A Design System ensures uniform functionality and appearance.

The Secret of Leading Brands

Google, as in many other aspects, was one of the first to take the concept of a Design System to the next level and make it accessible to everyone. With the launch of Material Design in 2014, they introduced a highly organized and detailed approach to interface design—with clear rules, simple guidelines, and ready-to-use components. Google was one of the first to lay it all out, making its Design System one of the most influential in the industry. Today, every leading global company—like Uber, Porsche, Apple, and more—uses a Design System to maintain brand consistency across platforms, from websites to apps. These companies don’t hide it; on the contrary, they showcase their systems proudly and in a clear, user-friendly way. It’s not just a tool; it’s a clear message: This is a company that knows what it’s doing. Take, for instance, Mailchimp’s Design System. Everything is neatly organized and clear. You can easily navigate between components, view the code for each element, and even get important notes for design and development. Everything is accessible and open to everyone. Another great example is Shopify’s Design System, Polaris. It offers a broad knowledge base on using interface components, visual elements, content, and design language—all aimed at helping create a better user experience and a more successful product.

Now It’s Your Turn

It’s time for you to take this step too. Want to discover how a Design System can work for you?
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