No matter how organized, succinct and well-designed your website is, if it doesn’t display well on a smartphone or tablet, you may be missing a significant opportunity. While people are still using laptop and desktop computers at a large rate, mobile device adoption rates are growing fast, with no signs of abating.

How ubiquitous are mobile devices in the business world? According to The Untethered Executive, a joint report by Forbes and Google, 82 percent of business executives use a smartphone at work, and 2/3 of respondents say they would make online purchases using their mobile device. And, a whopping 65% of executives surveyed believe they will use their tablet more often than their traditional computer in the next 5 years.

Source: The Untethered Executive

The growing trend towards smaller devices begs the question: what do visitors see when they access your website from a smartphone or tablet? How seamless is their experience? Many sites function normally on mobile, but it requires a microscope to make out the links, buttons and text, rendering those sites difficult to use and navigate.

The solution to this conundrum is called Responsive Design, a new approach in which your site dynamically adapts to the size of the screen it displays on. When the website displays with narrow margins such as those of a smartphone, large images respond by resizing automatically, buttons across the page might stack vertically so they are still large enough to read, and all elements on the page respond in kind.

TREW created a Responsive Design web experience for Parallon Business Solutions. To the left you can see the desktop version, and on the right is how the screen responds to more narrow margins such as those of a smartphone.

Responsive Design has a “cool” factor, but there are other clear benefits:

• Significant usability gains: Visitors can easily read and click on navigational buttons using their fingers and don’t have to zoom multiple times to see the options on the page.
• Scalability: A responsive site will display appropriately no matter what the size of the device. Many smartphones and tablets vary in their size and dimensions, so it’s impossible to program for all permutations without using Responsive Design.
• Large monitors: Even desktop users see improvements to your site if it’s responsive, since it ensures proper layout on very large or wide screen monitors.
• One URL site-wide: There is no need for a mobile-specific URL or back-end programming to detect the device in use.

Despite the benefits, Responsive Design requires additional planning in the web design stage and additional programming and QA testing upon implementation, so it’s not without its costs. In fact, it can increase the price of a web redesign by 30 to 40 percent. This begs the question – should you go responsive or leave good enough alone?

Here are a few key factors to explore before determining if you’re ready to make the move to Responsive Design:

• How much of your web traffic comes from mobile and tablets? Certain audiences are more likely to use these devices more often. For example, if your average web visitor is young and urban, Responsive Design is a no-brainer. A good rule of thumb is that if more than 1 in 10 users are accessing your site via mobile, you should consider Responsive Design to ensure you’re serving all your visitors well.

• How transactional is your site? If visitors to your site are using it for e-commerce, detailed and complex searches, or other highly transactional tasks, Responsive Design could make a big difference in usability. Transactional behavior requires greater accuracy and attention from the user, and you’d be making their lives much easier with responsive screens and easier-to-read links and buttons on mobile.

• Do you currently have a separate website for mobile, and is it a resource drain maintaining two separate URLs? With Responsive Design, you can enjoy the efficiency gains of maintaining just one device-agnostic URL. There is also the added benefit of allowing users to access all the rich content from the desktop site on their mobile phones (many mobile-only URLs offer a watered-down version of the main site’s content and navigation).

• Do you have a highly competitive SEO field? Responsive Design allows you to have just one URL for all devices, which translates to better page rank than if you have a separate mobile URL versus desktop.

• Do you have access to the right talent to pull off Responsive Design? The approach is fairly new, and requires the attention to detail and expertise of both an experienced web designer and web programmer who are well-versed in the proper best practices to achieve the results you want.

Smaller devices are ubiquitous and continuing to surge in popularity. Businesses that adapt will see greater success as this trend continues to take hold. Responsive Design is a great tool to help you provide an efficient, friendly online experience for your customers and prospects.

For a free web and Responsive Design consult from TREW’s web experts, contact TREW today.

Related resource:

Website Checklist – Evaluate your B2B Technical Website

Nearly one year ago, TREW on-boarded HubSpot’s marketing automation software. We expected a sophisticated, yet user-friendly, marketing automation software , with built-in tools such as landing page and smart forms, email workflow automation, social media scheduling, and SEO analytics. HubSpot not only met our high expectations, it exceeded them. Using the software helped TREW become smarter marketers for our business, resulting in a 130% increase in web traffic and 150% YoY lead growth.

Want to know how we did it? Below are the top 6 ways that HubSpot has helped make TREW smarter, more effective, marketers.

Crafting Landing Pages That Increased Our Leads Over 150%

HubSpot’s landing page creation tool is one of our favorites. Creating a landing page with a custom lead form in HubSpot is simple, easy, and immediate. With the ability to craft an attractive landing page in a matter of minutes, we have been able to capture qualified leads on our website through our premium content downloads. Since implementing HubSpot we’ve seen our leads increase 150% YoY.

The picture on the left is an example of TREW’s HubSpot landing pages and the chart on the right illustrates our 150% YoY lead growth.

Giving Credit Where It’s Due: Social Media Converts 13% of TREW’s Leads

One of the biggest issues businesses have with social media is that it takes too much time, with questionable return.  With many different channels, each with unique audiences, etiquette and analytics, social media can be time-consuming and confusing for many small businesses.

Using HubSpot’s social media scheduler and conversion metrics, TREW has gained efficiencies and valuable insights on what channels and what time of day converts the most leads. With this, we can now track our efforts based on conversions, and have seen our social media lead conversion rate go from unknown to 13%.

Drastically Improving Search Engine Page Ranks with HubSpot’s SEO tool

In our webinar, TREW Talk: How to Build an SEO Keyword Strategy, we discuss that SEO is not just about generating traffic to your website but generating the right traffic to the right area of your website. In order to increase rankings for the right traffic, you need to do your keyword research. Unfortunately, not everyone has the time or resources to sift through hundreds, if not thousands, of keywords to find the right ones.

The HubSpot keyword tool helps you to quickly find suggested keywords, ranked by difficulty and monthly searches, as well as ranking and conversion opportunities – keywords considered as “low hanging fruit” and ideal to include in your SEO strategy. By using this tool with our own SEO strategy, we have seen page ranks jump up 85 spots.

In the chart above you will see the ranking progression for the keyword “seo keyword strategy.” In March we were ranked over 100th. On March 19th, we released a webinar and blog post promoting it. The orange line graph shows that this content helped our rank go from 100+ to 15th in 3 weeks.

Testing CTA Banners and Buttons for Optimum Lead Conversion Rates

Do you have a call to action (CTA) on every one of your blog posts? How about throughout your website? HubSpot’s CTA creator makes it easy to promote your most important lead generating content throughout your site, helping you guide web visitors to becoming a lead.

TREW uses the CTA tool to create buttons and banners for our lead-generating premium content, such as Smart Product Launches for Engineers.  We use the tool to create, and track which CTA converts the most leads. For example, we know that 56% of our leads come from our Spotlight Blog, which reinforces the significance of the blog – generating awareness online and guiding visitors to premium content.

An example of one of our CTA banners, driving our blog readers to download our ebook.

Serving Up the Right Content at the Right Time

Email automation is a marketing tactic to nurture your leads and help keep your business top of mind. By offering related content around a specific topic of interest, you are moving the lead further down the marketing funnel and closer towards closing the sale.

In HubSpot’s email tool, we can set up multiple time-triggered emails, offering targeted content based on a reader’s engagement, and track its performance with send, open, and click through rates. These metrics help us to serve content that ignites interest, increasing our click through rate by 2X the industry average.

With email performance metrics, TREW has gained insight into what stories interest our audience, thus increasing email click through rates and engagement.

Intelligently Pursuing Business Leads

To keep our business pipeline full, we leverage HubSpot to help qualify our sales-ready leads. We do this with lead scoring – a tool in HubSpot to notify us when a lead has reached a specified activity goal, whether it’s visiting X number of web pages, downloading premium content, or opening our emails.

Once alerted, we have lead intelligence on what services are interesting to the prospect based on pages visited, content downloaded, and emails opened. This enables us to come into the sales meeting with discussion topics prepared. Armed with this intelligence, we see a successful 50% response rate from our introductory emails.

TREW + HubSpot = Love

Since joining HubSpot one year ago, we have gained valuable insight into our target audience and improved methods to reach, nurture and convert that audience, ultimately resulting in an increase in website visits and leads. We are more effective and smarter marketers of our business because of the tools and efficiencies HubSpot provides.

To learn more about HubSpot and the services TREW provides around marketing automation, visit our HubSpot Services page or contact TREW Marketing today.

You may have great content on your website in PDF files, but are they getting found by searchers? Search engines, like Google, can easily locate and read PDF files on your website, but these documents often lack basic information that help search engines know what the content is about, which ultimately effects the page rank for some of your most valuable content. This article will help you understand the basics of SEO for PDF files in popular programs like Word, Acrobat and InDesign, providing you with the knowledge to optimize your PDFs for search.

It should first be noted that HTML pages vs. PDFs, are generally better as landing pages for search engines because site visitors have access to the navigation and can easily re-engage with the website. Also, it is easier to include calls-to-action on an HTML page. If you want to drive traffic to a PDF, consider creating a search optimized landing page introducing the PDF – you can also direct relevant traffic to this landing page through an AdWords campaign. If you only make your PDF accessible to those who fill out an online form, there is no need to optimize it for search.

The Basics of SEO for PDF files

The top priority and most important step in optimizing your PDF for search is including the Title and Subject of the PDF in the file properties – the Title is read like the website page title tag and the Subject is read like the page description meta tag. While Word 2010 includes this information under File > Info (click “Show All Properties”), other versions of programs will include this under File > Properties or in an area called Description.

Other important steps:

• Make sure the text in the document is readable by a search engine and not in an image format
• Don’t just bold your title and subheads – use styles such as Title, Heading 1, Heading 2 etc. to show search engines how the document is structured
• Include text from the title in the page URL, separated by dashes
• Include text from the title in the file name, separated by dashes or underscore (SEO_For_PDF_Files.pdf)
• Use keyword-based links in your website to link directly to the PDF

Including Keywords

While brainstorming the title of your PDF, or if it is possible to change the title of a published PDF, consider doing keyword research to determine what targeted keyword you can use for optimization. The Title of this blog post was chosen to attract search for “search engine optimization PDF” because Google is reporting 1000 global searches per month for this keyword. Make sure the keyword is included in the Title, Subject, URL and file name, and try to include the keywords closer to the beginning of the text. To learn how to use the Google AdWords keyword tool to research the best term for your PDF, please watch our webinar or read our blog post.

You are welcome to read more about our SEO services, or please contact us if you would like to get started today.

Following our discussion from Part 1 on how to create an amazing white paper, now comes the important but oft-forgotten part – promoting the article. Without promotion, this valuable piece of content will languish in the dusty corners of your website, never to see the light of day. Instead, use these practical techniques to make sure your white paper is effectively exposed to your target audience and has a long-lasting impact that continues to bring in hot leads over the years.

Capturing the Audience

After spending so much time writing, perfecting, and designing your premium content, make sure to create a web lead form in front of it so that visitors need to enter their contact information in order to download it. To access such technical, in-depth information, the reader will be willing to give up their name and email address. Creating a landing page with a descriptive intro paragraph, bulleted table of contents, and enticing image will inform the audience of the white paper contents and attract more click-throughs.

TREW Marketing uses a descriptive landing page and a short lead form to encourage visitors to download the Smart Marketing for Engineers.

This main landing page should be easy to locate on the website. To prevent it from getting lost in a long list of resources in your technical library, link it appropriately to related products and services pages. Consider promoting it on the home page as a banner image or a featured highlight box, or on other relevant, high traffic areas.

Silex Technology featured their white paper on a major landing page using a picture of the cover page, catchy description, and download button.

Beyond good website navigation, search engine optimization (SEO) is a must. This can be accomplished by using keywords on the landing page and in its meta description. The white paper itself should contain keywords in its title, body content, and PDF document properties. You may also want to make an SEO-friendly URL that is short and easy to remember for promotional purposes.

Shouting It Out from the Mountain Top

Now that the white paper has a good place to live on your website and has been optimized for search engines, how can you more proactively publicize its existence? Email marketing to your existing contacts is a good way to start. Feature it in the company e-newsletter or even create a special one-off email. Use it as a related resource in a lead-nurturing automated email for another piece of content.

Social media is another great channel for promoting articles, especially with the shareability factor that leads to viral content. Create tweets on Twitter, posts on LinkedIn and Google+, and catchy images for Pinterest if applicable. Blogging about the white paper gives you more flexibility to publish excerpts of the content, either as a preview paragraph or multiple sections. Depending on the subject matter, you can also use outbound marketing to announce the new findings in the paper via a news release. And finally, don’t forget to share it with your partners to backlink on their websites and distribute via their marketing activities.

Increasing Longevity

Once the initial promotional blast has been completed, it doesn’t mean that your white paper’s lead capturing days will be over after a few months. New visitors will continue to see the article through search engines, and you can continue to endorse it as a related link on new blog posts. Another easy way to revive the white paper is to wrap it up with other related content in a resource kit.

Wineman Technology created a resource kit for their RAPID controller that includes a white paper, case study, datasheet, and more.

Just because a white paper is old doesn’t mean you should retire it. Refresh the document and re-release it as a newly updated version. Reuse the source material to create content in other media forms, such as a webcast or podcast. Expand on the original topic and create a whole new series of white papers. The possibilities are endless.

Need help brainstorming, creating, and promoting white papers and technical content? Contact us today to find out how TREW Marketing can help you.

For technical audiences, white papers have traditionally been seen as unbiased, lengthy academic articles that look like a chapter straight out of a textbook. However, nowadays many companies commonly use this media format in content marketing to attract and inform customers.

What is a White Paper?

A white paper is text-based narrative that presents technical information in about 1000 words or more. For use both online and in print, they generally contain images, diagrams, and even embedded videos and links. In contrast with blog posts – which are usually shorter, are frequently written and address current trends and issues – white paper content tends to be lengthier and more in-depth. Given the amount of time it takes to create a white paper, choose an “evergreen” topic that is not tied to a specific date or time period. Write the content in a way that addresses common or recurring pain points for your potential customers. Common subject matters include:

• Introductory information about a technology
• How-to tutorials or best practices
• Authoritative reports  about industry changes
• Lessons learned about an engineering challenge
• Analysis from your research and experience

Follow these 3 steps to create a thoughtful and compelling white paper that will increase web traffic and gather highly qualified leads from potential customers.

Phase #1: Establishing the Plan of Action

Before undergoing the writing process for a white paper, it is essential to establish the purpose and parameters of the document. Marketing writers often have standard white paper questionnaires to fill out that lay out all the necessary information in the preparation stage. Details to nail down may comprise of:

A)    Goals and Key Messages

What is this white paper for? What is the end goal you want the reader to do, understand, or believe? For example, Kline Technical Consulting (KTC) has a goal to be seen as the leading industry experts in physical security systems. Therefore, they chose to write about The Top 7 Most Critical Considerations for Physical Security Systems. By discussing important industry considerations interspersed with customer examples, this white paper shows how KTC understands the application pain points and has insights on solutions.

Look at the big picture purpose of the white paper and determine what key messages about the company and its offerings the reader should come away with.

B)     Audience

Who are the primary and secondary target audience for this white paper? What is the reader’s level of knowledge about the subject matter? Make sure you are attracting the right kind of customer with your content marketing.

C)     Tone

Decide whether to use a first person versus third person voice. With the first person point of view, directly addressing the reader with “you” sounds more personal, whereas the third person voice may sound more objective and unbiased. The level of objectivity may depend on the usage of the white paper, such as establishing credibility, attracting new clients, or sharing updates with existing customers. Regardless, use an authoritative tone that shows you are the experts on this topic.

D)    Release date and timeline

Are there any deadlines for the release of the white paper? Will it be used for a product launch or the next company e-newsletter? Make sure that you leave time in the schedule for not only writing, but also for reviews, copy editing, formatting, and printing or uploading onto the website.

E)     Length

If you have a lot of solid source material or if the discussion is fairly lengthy, will you shorten the white paper to make it more concise or will you create multiple white papers? If the subject matter is easily dividable, the content may have more widespread impact or greater longevity as an e-book with several chapters or as a series of articles released one at a time.

Phase #2: Tackling the Writing

The key to writing a good white paper is to put yourself in the reader’s shoes and consider “What does the customer want to learn?” However, the hook is just the first step to get the audience to start reading the article. Remember that ultimately your goal is not necessarily to keep the reader reading, but to get the reader to accomplish your goal and complete that next call-to-action (CTA).

Committing 1000 or more words to paper may seem overwhelming, so the best way to defeat writer’s block is to create an outline. Does the structure and flow of the document make sense and drive to your key points and goals? Once the framework of the white paper has been established, take your source material and organize them under each outline point, adding extra notes and thoughts as they come to mind. Voilà! The first very rough “draft” has been completed.

As you begin thoroughly cleaning up and rewriting each section, it may help to print out the outline with its notes and cross off sections of source material as you use them. Don’t forget to include appropriate references and links to other sites to increase credibility. Since white papers can be very text-heavy, keep the readers interest by visually breaking up the content with quotes, call-out text blocks, and enticing images. Label the pictures, diagrams, and tables with full-sentence descriptions that help summarize the content in case readers scan the material.

This white paper from Viewpoint Systems contained lengthy discussions on five different considerations for prototyping embedded systems, and they broke up the sections visually with prominent summary blocks highlighted in blue that matches the company branding.

No matter how educational or objective the white paper may be, remember to include CTAs, next steps, or related links you wish the reader to follow. You are not writing this white paper for free; it is intended to forward people down the sales and marketing funnel. If nothing else, add a short corporate overview at the end with a link to company website, especially if the white paper will be used as a print media.

Measurement Computing (MCC) wrote a very academic, almost textbook-like document on temperature sensors and how they work, yet they weren’t afraid to outright pitch their temperature measurement products on the last page.

Phase #3: Putting on the Shine

Once the white paper is ready for review, get another set of eyes on it to uncover areas where you may need to explain certain concepts more clearly. Having both reviewers who understand the core messages and technology discussed in the article along with those who aren’t familiar with the subject matter can be very useful. With multiple reviewers, it will be more efficient for the writer if all the feedback is consolidated into one file. Microsoft Word is one of the easiest tools for tracking changes and adding comment boxes. Adobe Reader also has the ability to insert comments, highlight areas, and cross out text.

After all the feedback has been collected and integrated (for multiple iterations if needed), do a final copy edit sweep for spelling and grammar errors. For some extra polish, consider putting the white paper in a design template with elements of your company branding. This can be as simple as adding the company logo and website URL to the footer so people will see it on every page.

MCC used a fully designed white paper template, complete with a cover page, whereas Wineman Technology used a simple header and footer with the company logo.

Now that you’ve spent all this time and effort completing the white paper, how do you get the most bang for your buck? In Part 2, we’ll discuss how to best promote this content so that it reaches the widest audience possible.

Related Blog Post:

Content IS King – 5 Steps to Writing Effective White Papers

As a reader of this blog, you hear the TREW Crew talk often about the marketing funnel, from generating awareness and “getting found” at the top to nurturing your leads and creating opportunities for sales further down. At this point in the funnel, a key marketing tool small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are using is webinars and online events. Marketing webinars – one-to-many virtual events delivered online for marketing purposes – have leveled the playing field so that any business or organization can appear to be a market or thought-leader and expand their reach. A key reason for this shift is the underlying technology, which is low-cost, easy to use and widely accessible.

My name is Scott Serrano, Senior Software Sales Executive of Citrix Online Saas Solutions, and the TREW Crew asked if I’d share my knowledge via this guest blog post to help readers understand the best practices for executing a webinar and how they can leverage online meeting technology platforms, GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar, to effectively market their business online.

Webinars can be a robust and lively marketing tool that effectively showcases your expertise and drives further engagement with prospective customers. Attendees and businesses that host webinars love them because webinars are:

• Powerful in reaching and influencing hard-to-reach prospects or decision makers
• Interactive and social, like a real-world classroom where you can ask questions and chat with the speaker in the conference and outside the conference using social media
• Affordable to host and attend
• Effective at generating leads and qualified sales opportunities
• Re-used as other forms of content, such as blogs, white papers, podcasts, and an on-demand webinars

Want to host a webinar? Here are 10 best practices we share with our customers at Citrix to produce an online webinar event that engages your audience and compels them to take action.

1. Think about what your customers and potential customers want to learn from you. What problems are keeping them up at night? How can you help them resolve those problems?
2. Most webinars can be defined into two categories of content – inspirational and big thinking or tactical how-to. Consider starting with the broadly appealing topic to generate more awareness and leads, and then producing smaller more specific webinars after the first one that reviews how-to and implementation.
3. Really think about your lead form, and use fields that will inform who the hottest leads are to pursue after your event.
4. Show a compelling story. Create visual slides, with one idea per slide, using authentic imagery (not stock).
5. Be a responsive moderator. Good webinars have a moderator who is energetic and pays attention to the feedback of the audience.
6. Always schedule a rehearsal of the webinar before the date. Run through procedures and review the flow with all the speakers.
7. Encourage attendees to interact with the speaker using the chat panel or to chat via social media with an event-specific hashtag.
8. Record your event so you can reuse it as an on-demand webinar for those who couldn’t make the event. This way, it will continue to pay dividends for you by generating leads far into the future.
9. Follow up promptly after the event, ideally within 24 hours, and include any promised additional content, copies of the presentation, and next steps. Have one primary call to action that moves them further down the funnel, and as a result, further identifies strong opportunities for sales to follow-up on.
10. Use a reliable and easy-to-use technology platform to host your webinar event.

Finding the right webinar technology platform is extremely important in creating a successful online event. Citrix’s GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar is a leading platform, because it is:

• Easy to use, GoToMeeting Corporate enables salespeople to begin meeting with prospects and clients right away.
• Patented bandwidth-adaptive compression technology ensures exceptional performance and successful meetings over any Internet connection.
• All You Can Meet® pricing eliminates meeting duration limits and overage charges, encouraging salespeople to use the service as often as they’d like and increasing their productivity.
• Industry-standard security features are built in to ensure that confidential meeting information remains private.

In addition, GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar include a full array of functionality, with:

• HD Faces Video conferencing: Share up to 6 web cams along with your desktop
• One-click meetings: By simply clicking an icon, a salesperson can begin a meeting.
•  Instantly change presenters: A salesperson can pass control to the prospect or another employee who can show what is on his or her screen.
•  Easy integration: Meetings can be started, scheduled or joined through Microsoft® Outlook®, Microsoft Office®, IBM® Lotus Notes® or various instant-messaging applications.
• Shared mouse control: A prospect can be granted the right to take over the salesperson’s mouse on his or her desktop, enabling the prospect to experience a product firsthand.

To learn more about GoToMeeting, visit Citrix’s client story video and read Citrix press and awards.

TREW Marketing is a partner with Citrix GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar. To learn more about how to incorporate webinars and video in your marketing mix, contact TREW Marketing today.

Related blog posts: 

Why You Need Video in Your B2B Marketing Mix

DIY Marketing Videos on a Budget

“TREW’s marketing expertise and knowledge of the embedded space make them a trusted advisor to help us drive awareness and demand, as we continue to grow our business and market share,” said Jason Clarke, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Crank Software. “They have a proven track record developing and executing strategic marketing plans that focus on results, and we’re extremely pleased with the results they helped us achieve on our launch of Storyboard Suite 3.0.”

Crank Software specializes in embedded user interface (UI) solutions that enable R&D teams to more quickly develop UIs for resource-constrained embedded devices like in-car graphical displays and animated GPS systems.

When Crank needed to launch the latest version of their flagship software, Storyboard™ Suite, they chose TREW Marketing for our experience in developing product launch plans that target embedded design engineers. Crank sought to increase awareness of Storyboard Suite 3.0, drive web visits and capture leads through software evaluation downloads.

Deliverables:

Marketing communication strategy for the Storyboard Suite 3.0 launch including:

• Media relations strategy and execution
• Search engine optimization and advertising
• Launch email and automated direct marketing
• Social media strategy and execution
• Partner co-marketing with QNX in the Consumer Electronics Show concept car

Results:

• 85% increase in evaluation downloads
• 56% increase in online leads following the launch
• 38% increase in total web traffic following the launch
• 237 news release postings to online sources
• 2 contributed articles in RTC and Embedded Computing Design
• +3-minutes time-on-site to launch landing page
• 2-hours time-on-site generated from Twitter links

Beyond the Storyboard Suite launch, TREW Marketing continues to serve as Crank Software’s marketing partner, providing ongoing strategy consulting, brand and product-level messaging and positioning, media relations, content marketing, partner co-marketing, search engine optimization, search advertising, social media and email marketing services.

Want to learn more about product launches?

Last week I attended the Design West trade show in San Jose. The exhibit floor was packed with design engineers looking for new embedded technologies and solutions (attendance looked to be up from the previous year), however I was utterly astonished at the ways in which some exhibitors wasted their marketing dollars. Care to join their ranks? Here are top ways to waste money exhibiting at a trade show:

Fail #1. Have a lousy company website. Trade show attendees, especially engineers and scientists, research exhibitors’ websites ahead of time to determine which booths to visit. If your website does not immediately communicate what you do, how it is relevant to your site visitor, and provide a decent impression of your brand, you are very likely to be passed over on the show floor.

Fail #2. Place a big trade show logo on your home page.  Unless you combine the logo with a headline or copy with a direct tie-in to your company’s value proposition, accompanied by a meaty show landing page, this logo does absolutely nothing to influence a potential booth visitor (or web prospect, for that matter). Instead you’ve wasted prime web real estate, which could have instead be used to promote something compelling, such as a software demo or case study.

Fail #3. Sit on a stool, frown, and play on your smartphone. Your lack of enthusiasm and engagement gives me a very poor impression of your company. While I am combing the show floor for a solution to my engineering challenge, you seem to be tired and are clearly not interested in talking to me.

Fail #4. Blow off social media. “Engineers don’t use social media,” right? WRONG! Events are one of the best times to engage in social media, especially Twitter and LinkedIn. There were very active Twitter threads, using the event hashtag (#designwest), about the conference and expo. Exhibitors show attendees, and the trade press were all engaging together virtually. The reach extended well beyond the walls of the show, as others following Design West who could not attend were no doubt interested in the buzz and could follow through their social media accounts.

Fail #5. Use Twitter as SPAM. There were a select few exhibitors who drove us all CRAZY by posting banal messages, such as “Stop by booth xx for a free recycled shopping bag,” which don’t add real value or help show attendees learn or find solutions. The worst offender would send the exact same message 10 times in succession to fill our newsfeeds with this garbage. Marketing FAIL!

Fail #6. MIA. I have two categories of MIA. 6a. Put some literature and a demo board on a table, and then leave the booth unstaffed. This approach guarantees you will bring home a full box of lit and no leads. 6b. Forgo the booth backdrop, relying on the show organizer’s small stencil sign to serve as your banner to the world. This sends a “my company is broke and does not really care about this trade show anyway” vibe. And since the stencil signs are too small to read, you are almost guaranteed that no one will know that you were at the event anyway.

Ok, so now that you’ve heard my list of how to waste money, I’ll leave you with a few images of smart trade show tactics from my time at Design West.

Synapse Wireless created CapNet, the “world’s largest wireless network of propeller beanies,” and heavily promoted this in their booth and social media. The beanies created much buzz and had big staying power on the heads of attendees during the show. Synapse did a great job tying in another exhibitor, Altium, whose software was used in the design of the beanies.

Not only did the Silex booth staff know their stuff, they were so friendly and energetic I just had to jump in a photo with the group!

Stonestreet One did a great job of demonstrating their partnerships with bigger companies, such as Texas Instruments, through hardware on display.

Rohde and Schwarz held short product seminars inside their eighteen-wheeler, parked on the show floor

TREW can help you create a smart event strategy, from planning promotion, design execution, and post-show lead nurturing. Contact us today for more information on trade show marketing.

Related blog posts:

Trade Show Media Relations Do’s and Don’ts

TREW’s Top 5 B2B Trade Show Items & New Ideas to Boost Your Booth Traffic

6 Smart Trade Show Tactics Seen at Design West 2012

So you’ve developed a new product for your technical industry – spent hundreds of hours and undergone multiple rounds of revisions and beta tests, figured out your pricing and distribution model – and now it’s time to bring it to market.

The initial step towards launching your product is to name it.  You’ve invested significant time creating it and it’s your baby — not just any name will do. It needs to be memorable, searchable (particularly on search engines), unique in your industry, and relevant to your target audience.

So where do you begin? First you need to collect ideas. Gather a cross-functional team from across your organization of at least 3, but no more than 10, to brainstorm name ideas. After the initial brainstorm, have a few decision makers come together and decide on the top 5-8 names. Then take those 5-8 names and create an online survey that you can distribute to your internal key decision makers.  From there, you can reduce the options down to the top 3, and vet each one out and make final recommendations.

The following 7 tips will help guide you through items to discuss when narrowing down the choices to a final product name.

1. Determine a naming strategy that you will follow for this and future product names. Two primary strategies exist in the realm of product naming: highly descriptive and suggestive. The former will roll under your company brand and will not be trademarked, the latter may be stand-alone brands or can be linked with your corporate brand and can be trademarked. An example of a descriptive naming strategy is Apple, with its iPod, iPhone, and iPad products. OXO is an example of a suggestive naming strategy with names like GoodGrips, Touchables, and SteeL. While less descriptive than Apple’s product names, the OXO product names still strongly suggest what distinguishes the different line.
2. Use short, descriptive names that are generally three or fewer syllables.
3. Make it easy to spell, pronounce, and remember. Italics and capitalization of different letters make it difficult for people unfamiliar with the product name to remember how to spell it correctly.
4. If the product will be launched and used globally, consider the implications of the product’s name in other countries.
5. Avoid naming a product by an acronym that has to be spelled out in order for the public to understand the mark.
6. Research potential product names by performing online searches for third-party use of an identical or similar name, mark, or description used in connection with similar products
7. If you plan to apply for a trademark, visit www.upto.gov to search the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for third-party applications or registrations of a similar designation for a similar product. If the application or registration has been abandoned or listed as dead, know that the third party still may have rights, where you would want someone in the legal field to review.

Evaluate the potential names with specificity and objectivity. It’s not enough to say, “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” Use the following eight categories to understand why a name will or won’t work.

1. Appearance – Is it easy to spell? And how will the name look in a logo, ad, billboard, etc.

2. Distinctive – How different is the name from the relevant product competition?

3. Depth – Names with depth have layers of meaning and association, and keep surprising you with new ideas with each layer.

4. Energy – Does the name have life to it? Can it carry an ad campaign on its shoulders?

5. Positioning – How relevant is the name to the positioning of the product?

6. Sound – This is two-fold – how does the name sound and how easily is it spoken to the customer? Word of mouth is a big part of marketing, but if people aren’t comfortable saying the name, the word won’t get out.

7. Trademark – This is easy, is it available? It’s either likely available, may be available, or not available.

8. Web Domain Name – Again, this is easy, is the URL available? If so acquire it before someone else does. If not, determine if the URL is available for your option 2 or option 3 name; or find out who owns the URL and see if you can acquire it from them.

After you have chosen a name for your product. It’s time to launch it. Smart Product Launches for Engineers provides a framework for how to plan, position, and implement a marketing activity plan that generates buzz and drives leads for your new product.

Related Blog Posts:

How to Use a Well-Time PR Launch to Spread Your Message

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Want to Marketing Against Your Competitors? Proceed Carefully

Creating search engine advertising campaigns is like peeling back the layers of an onion. As you go through the different stages of setup and execution, you reveal new complexities at each step. Acknowledging these details, we decided to re-surface an old search advertising post, 5 Steps to Building an Outrageously Successful Paid Search Campaign, with added advice to each step, so you can create an even more outrageously successful campaign! 

1. Select User-intent, Long-tail Keywords

Give some thought to how your target audience seeks information. For example, people who search for products and services on Google are at a crucial stage in the buying process. Searchers looking for “embedded design” could be looking for a Wikipedia entry, but those searching for “embedded design services” are much more likely to be future paying customers. For the services you provide, look for terms that end in services, solutions, and companies.

Once you’ve selected your keywords, now you need to set the keyword match type. Adwords allows you to set your keywords on three different match types: exact, phrase, and broad.

• Exact match: Keywords set to exact match will only display your ad if the search term includes that exact keyword, with the words in that exact order.
• Phrase match: Keywords set to phrase match will display your ad if the search term contains the same order of the words, but it can also contain additional words around it.
• Broad match: Keywords set to broad match will display your ad when the search term contains any or some combination of the words in your keyword, in any order.

Using the example above with keyword “embedded design services,” if this was on exact match, the ad would only appear if “embedded design services” was typed in. For phrase match, your ad could show up for, “embedded design services in new york.” For broad match, your ad could appear for search terms “design services,” “web design services,” “define embedded design” and so on.

So what’s the best approach? Start with phrase match and monitor the search terms, especially during the first weeks of the campaign. Phrase match drives traffic without being too broad. Once you’ve run a campaign for at least a few months, and have enough data to find the keywords that convert well and make sense for your business, you can set those to exact match, because they’ve been proven to work.

For more on how to select keywords, you can read Killer Keywords: The Secret to Engineering and Technology SEO Success. 

2. Group Like Keywords

Create ad groups by topic. When you group keywords by topic, it ensures that your ad will match your keywords. Using the example above, if you’re a service company, use the different purchase intent permutations of embedded system services, such as “embedded design services, embedded design solutions, embedded design companies,” and group them together. Or if you’re a software company, think about grouping keywords together by product features.

Below is an example of the hierarchy of how Adwords groups keywords into ad groups that are then housed under campaigns.

3. Write Keyword-rich Ad Text

You don’t need to be a prized wordsmith to write Adwords copy. Here are three simple rules to follow for writing successful ad copy:

• Use keywords in the ad.  Keywords should be used in the ad text and headline. If you find it too difficult to match ad copy to the keywords in the ad group, it’s a sign that you need to split the current ad group into two.
• Be specific to the offer.  The ad should preview what the landing page is about. If it doesn’t, you’ll see that people click on your ad and then bounce off your site, which is a huge waste of your budget.
• Study what others are doing. What are other companies offering in their ads? You will quickly obtain ideas of good and bad copy.

Ad examples:

 Keyword: Real-time control

Keyword: Vibration monitoring systems

4. Direct Traffic to a Relevant Landing Page

Once someone clicks on your ad, where will you send them? The most important thing is to deliver on what was promised in the ad text and keywords. If your ad offers a white paper, make sure the visitor can easily find it once they get to the landing page.  Below is an example of an ad that offers a white paper, which directs traffic to a landing page, discussing what a reader will learn from the paper and a simple lead form to capture contact information of those who download it.

The key components of lead-generating landing pages are:

• Lead capture form placed prominently above the page fold
• Page title and detailed sub-title highlighting offers
• Brief 1-2 body paragraphs, followed by bulleted reasons why the reader needs your content, and how they will benefit from it
• Company contact information
• If you have a short video that further explains the content, embed it on the page. It makes the page more interactive and engaging.

To learn more about how to create a landing page that converts visits to leads, read Need Leads? Tips for a Winning Landing Page. 

5. Track Metrics that Lead to Insight, Action, and ROI

Search engine advertising can be flashy with all the numbers and reports you can pull. Don’t fall into this trap! Since we all have limited bandwidth, it’s a good idea to pull a short list of key metrics on a bi-weekly or monthly basis that give you the meaningful insight into what’s working and what isn’t.

Here are key metrics that will provide a good overview of campaign performance:

• Click-through-rate: This metric is a percentage of clicks over impressions, and tells you whether or not your ads are relevant to searchers.
• Conversion rate: This tells you how many people clicked on your ad and then took the next step – whether it’s downloading a white paper, requesting a demo, or purchasing a product.
• Cost-per-conversion or action: Look at how much you’re spending to produce leads or an intended action, and then how much you’re willing to spend to obtain a lead. Essentially this number is the line that separates success or failure from an ROI perspective.
• Search terms report: In order to avoid wasted spend, pull the “search terms” report. This report shows the entire search phrase that a searcher typed in and then clicked your ad. If you find irrelevant keywords, add negative keywords to your campaigns.

Most importantly, search engine advertising is not a “set it and forget it” activity. We recommend testing new keywords, ads, and offers frequently. This will give you valuable and actionable insight as you measure and analyze each test.

TREW has deep expertise in search engine advertising with Google Adwords certified specialists. Let us help you determine if search engine advertising is a great solution for your technical business. You can read more about our search advertising services or contact us to get started today.

Want to learn more about search engine advertising and SEO best practices?

How TREW Cut Ad Spend 60%, Increased Web Traffic 75%

Killer Keywords: The Secret to Engineering and Technology SEO Success

Need Leads? Tips for a Winning Landing Page