Looking for additional insight? Check out our guide: Smart Marketing for Engineers

Last month, we gave insight on how to hire a technical marketing manager who can propel your marketing efforts forward and add value to your organization. In Part 1, we focused on prioritizing candidates’ talent, culture fit, and experience, and in Part 2, we gave the practicals for actually hiring your technical marketing manager, based on proven experience.

If you’ve now hired your technical marketing manager, pass along this information to help them understand the breadth and depth of technical marketing. Or, if you’ve just been hired as a new technical marketing manager, congratulations! These 10 keys – which focus on brand, positioning and website plans, content marketing strategy, and awareness and loyalty campaigns – will strengthen the skills and knowledge you need to be a successful technical marketing manager:

Technical Positioning, Brand, and Website Development

1. Create a Successful Marketing Plan

Having an effective marketing plan and following it will be critical to your success as a technical marketing manager. Without a plan, how do you know what you need to do, in priority order, to get there? In busy times, the tendency is to rush and complete any marketing tactic that looks promising at the moment, without taking into consideration your marketing strategy and goals. So, take the time to truly define your marketing goals and measureable objectives.

• Related Post: How to Create a B2B Marketing Plan that Drives Results
• For more about how to create your plan, read about 5 Critical Steps to Developing a Marketing Plan.

A well-defined marketing plan will set the course for your company’s marketing efforts.

2. Position and Brand Your Company Creatively and Carefully

Your brand is of utmost importance to your company, as it conveys who your company is and your unique value proposition. Positioning your brand well will be critical to the long-term success of the business. In marketing terms, your brand is personified both visually – through your company logo and branding style guide – and contextually – through words, such as your mission, vision, and positioning statements; core company and product-level messaging; and company and campaign taglines.

• Related Post: Understand the Components of Brand Messaging
• For more about positioning competitively, read about What Goes into the Decision to Market Against Your Competitors

3. Holistically Evaluate Your Website to Maximize Your Future Time and Spend

Your website will be at the core of your marketing efforts, so before you make any major changes to it, audit your web site so that you can prioritize how to go about making changes and additions to it in the future.

Evaluating your site holistically will help you create a better web experience for all visitors to your website no matter where they are in the buying cycle – those researching your business, learning more about your products and services, preparing to buy, or returning for another purchase.

• Related Post: A 15-Point Checklist to Evaluate Your B2B Technical Website
• For more detail on web systems, read about What to Ask Yourself Before You Buy a Web Content Management System

Content Marketing Strategy

4. Show Your Products or Services in Practice with Compelling Case Studies

Customer case studies are a great marketing and sales tool. By reading about how customers have benefitted from using your products and services, prospective clients know they are not the first to choose your company, and can hear from real customers to supplement what they’ve learned from reading your marketing brochure or website. To succeed as a technical marketer, you’ll need to know how to prioritize the most important applications for case studies, tell your customer’s story clearly, ask for permissions from the customer’s company and streamline and leverage your work.

• Related Post: 5 Tips for Developing Customer Case Studies
• For more, read about 8 Quick Tips to Create Great Case Studies

Learn all of the elements that make up a compelling case study.

5. Offer the Technical Data Your Customers Are Searching For

Because your company is trying to generate leads, create opportunities that engage customers, and ultimately close sales, it’s imperative that you offer the data, insight, and information that your prospects need and want. Offering quality content will cause your customers to see your company as an expert in the industry or technology area in which you work, and direct them to your products and services as solutions to their challenges. In addition to case studies, targeted presentations and white papers that cover relevant topics will build credibility, show your company’s experience, and convey a memorable message.

• Related Post: 4 Best Practices for Creating Effective Presentations
• For more on white papers, read about 5 Steps to Writing Effective White Papers

6. Engage with Your Prospects by Making an Investment in Video

Here’s a statistic that will make your head spin: according to Pingdom, a website monitoring firm, more than 800 million web visitors watch online videos per month. And, YouTube is now the second most popular search engine on the planet, just behind Google. Web visitors are drawn to video, so you should be creating videos as a technical marketing manager to add a dimension to the web that text and imagery alone cannot achieve.

• Related Post: Why You Need Video in Your B2B Marketing Mix
• For more about creating videos yourself, see DIY Marketing Videos on a Budget

7. Optimize your Content Marketing with Content Re-Use and SEO

One piece of well-written, well-placed content can have multiple uses. You can blog about it, amplify it as a call-to-action on social media sites, and repackage it in the form of a video, webinar, or white paper with tags and meta data that search engines will see. Just think about how that one piece of content used in multiple ways and channels can drive your search marketing efforts. And, search engine optimization (SEO) is all about tweaking your website to make it more search-engine friendly and earning inbound links through stellar content that others want to reference. Driving inbound marketing will help you widen the funnel of awareness, gain more leads, and convert leads to sales.

• Related Post: Content and SEO Fuel Inbound Marketing Results
• For more about SEO, read about how Killer Keywords are the Secret to Search Engine Success

Loyalty and Awareness Campaigns

8. Increase Customer Engagement Regularly with E-Newsletters

Staying top-of-mind with prospects and customers is a challenge you’ll probably always face. E-newsletters are a great way to maintain a conversation with your target audience, promote valuable content, and help nurture your lead base to increase customer loyalty and move prospects closer to the sale. A corporate e-newsletter, done right, can be one of the most effective and strategic marketing activities a company undertakes. You need to understand all aspects of e-newsletters, from design to content to mailing lists, in order to create ones that build your brand and bring new leads to your company.

• Related Post: Nurture your Leads: Harness the Power of E-Newsletters, Part I
• For more about e-newsletters, read about Nurture Your Leads: Harness the Power of E-Newsletters, Part 2

Use E-newsletter campaigns to stay top-of-mind with customers.

9. Get more Blog Traffic and Grow Your Potential Customer Base

Blogging is a great way to bring more visitors to your website, so you’ll want to constantly be seeking to get more blog traffic (and in turn, get more prospective customers to your site). It takes consistent investment of time, creativity, and ideas to develop a successful blog and reach an increasing percentage of your target audience, but the payoff can be worth it in the long run. Maximize that investment by understanding the potential of your blog, getting discovered, converting readers into subscribers, and finding advocates for your blog.

• Related Post: 4 Ways to Get More Blog Traffic
• For more, read about how you can Improve the ROI of Your Blog

Looking for additional insight? Check out our guide: Smart Marketing for Engineers

10. Grow Awareness and Traffic With Media Coverage

News coverage generates awareness about your company and its products and services, boosts organic search for your company, and drives traffic to your company web site. Quality news coverage starts with strong, longstanding relationships with journalists, so you’ll want to begin building those contacts. Overall, your interactions with the press should be productive if you’re willing to consistently contribute strong and relevant information that they can use to better inform their readers. They’ll come to appreciate your insight and value your relationship as an industry expert as much as you value their ability to widely publicize your company or product name.

• Related Post: 4 Steps to Building Meaningful Relationships with Journalists
• For about interacting with the media, read about Trade Show Media Relations Do’s and Don’ts

Want deeper insight?

Based on our decades of experience building hundreds of customized marketing programs targeted to engineers and scientists, we have written this guide to help you get started in your technical marketing career.

Download Smart Marketing for Engineers – an e-book that helps technical business leaders build and execute an efficient and effective marketing program where every dollar and every hour spent drives results.

Reinforcing branding and corporate messaging through web design and navigation

KTC website home before/after

TREW Marketing client, Kline Technical Consulting (KTC), a national defense solutions provider, needed a new website to highlight their expertise in defense solutions, directing users to their three main services – Physical Security Systems, Electronic Warfare, and IT Consultation — and to better communicate their branding and messaging visually throughout the site.

Site features:

• New home page that highlights the three services with feature banner images. It also features content, such as press coverage, blog posts, and footer items that direct users to lower level pages about KTC’s team of experts.
• Strategic usage of KTC’s yellow branded color, paired with modern black & white images to emphasize their visual branding across the web and in printed materials.
• A solution “quick find” feature so the user can quickly learn about past solutions KTC has deployed.
• A user-friendly, secure web content management system (CMS) so the client can easily make web updates to the solution quick find, content, images, and add new landing pages.
• Tabs for seamless navigation through service overview, solutions, resources, and technical blog posts that feed into the service pages.

Updating a website to modernize design and reflect new business and marketing direction

Wineman Technology home and product page after

TREW Marketing client, Wineman Technology, had recently launched three new products, and was in need of a web update to reflect their growing product portfolio and content, such as case studies, example solutions, white papers, and videos.

Site features:

• The new home page showcases their products with the rotating banner images and product feature bullets, with a prominent call-to-action button directing visitors to the product page.
• Two new product page templates designed for tier 1-flagship products, such as INERTIA™ test automation software and tier 2 products, such as RAPID test cell controller and Dynacar vehicle model simulator.
• Tier 1 template features a “learn, try, buy” experience, where visitors can familiarize themselves using the “get started” box at the top. Other features of the site, including the tier 2 product pages, and services pages showcase Wineman Technolgy’s content with lots of space for interchangeable promotional boxes and sidebar features.

Enhancing web user experience with accessible content features and quicker downloads

Hepregen services page before/after

Hepregen, a biotech company, partnered with TREW Marketing to redesign their website with a goal to improve the site’s overall marketing effectiveness. Their site needed service pages to accurately reflect their core capabilities, as well as the ability to offer lead generating content for their focused target audience of researchers.

Site features:

• New service pages that use a tabular approach to display highly technical content that users can easily access.
• A session-based cookie so that site visitors only have to fill out a lead form once for the many different technical resources and articles offered on the site.
• Updated site look and feel with modern and technical imagery specific to Hepregen’s core competencies.

Differentiating with new branding and communicating their open source ERP difference

Trek Global new site launch

Trek Global is a team of ERP integrators and developers, who use open source ERP to install ERP systems for high-volume distribution companies, and hired TREW to help launch their U.S. business. During the process of creating their U.S. “branding brain,” the company and with the help of TREW, crafted a new company name, Trek Global. The website redesign was an opportunity to launch the new name and brand to build corporate awareness in the U.S.

Site features:

• Developed the site navigation and web strategy to generate more web leads and communicate  corporate and product-level messaging and positioning.
• Page templates that clearly communicates Trek’s educational value to prospects, as well as the open source difference for ERP, using infographics and clear call-to-action buttons/sidebars.

Your new website is live, now what?

With a new website, you now have the foundations to generate web leads. The next step is to begin promoting content. Learn the five things lead generating websites have in common in our free, downloadable white paper, “Inbound Marketing: 5 Keys to Generating Leads on Your Website.”

>>Download now.

Related Blog Posts:

Need Leads? Tips for a Winning Landing Page

Microsites: Effective Marketing or Bad Idea?

Website Success: Web Traffic Grows 300%

Trek Global Chooses Agency for Technical Focus and Breadth of Marketing, PR, Web Expertise

AUSTIN, Texas – June 11, 2012 – Trek Global today announced its selection of Austin-based TREW Marketing, a specialized science, engineering, and technology marketing firm, as its brand and marketing communications agency. The partnership includes a business re-naming project, corporate positioning and messaging, and a website redesign, as well as ongoing technical content development, search engine marketing, and public relations.

Trek Global delivers ERP solutions for mid-size distribution companies that need to order, shelve, assemble, and ship their products efficiently. The company’s open source approach to ERP offers customers a cost-effective, low risk solution that harnesses the benefits of top-tier ERP systems, like Oracle and SAP, without the typical restrictions and expenses. Trek Global’s growth in North America drove a desire for integrated marketing communications to match its level of expertise and high standards for quality.

“Trek Global was founded by leading developers of open-source ERP and they have a clear and differentiated position in the marketplace,” said Wendy Covey, Principal and Co-Founder of TREW Marketing. “From our early branding and messaging work to an integrated strategy that drives traffic, engagement, and conversion, we are excited to increase marketing ROI for Trek Global.”

The partnership entails marketing projects including:

• Corporate-level branding brain and messaging
• Marketing communications strategy and campaign-based activity plans
• Marketing content development – white papers, case studies
• Website redesign
• Public relations strategy and execution

“The TREW team is passionate about marketing to technical audiences. Their diverse marketing experiences and the synergy between their team and ours creates a high-performing and high-character partnership. We consider TREW to be an integral part of our success and team,” said Chuck Boecking, Director of Education and Marketing at Trek Global.

Click to tweet: New from @Trewmarketing: ERP Integrator Selects TREW Marketing for Brand and Marketing Communications http://ow.ly/bfwQo

About Trek Global

Trek Global delivers powerful ERP solutions for mid-size distribution companies that need to order, shelve, assemble, and ship their products efficiently. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and with staff in five countries, the Trek Global team of system integrators and developers has more than a century of combined experience in enterprise software architecture and implementation. Trek Global’s software, based on the open source ADempiere platform, offers the benefits of top-tier ERP systems like Oracle or SAP without the restrictions or cost. With a focus on product and system training through Guided Implementation, customer education is Trek Global’s passion.

About TREW Marketing

TREW Marketing, headquartered in Austin, Texas, is a full-service B2B marketing firm uniquely serving leading engineering and scientific companies that target technical markets. TREW uses decades of specialized experience to create custom marketing programs that help customers efficiently and effectively achieve their business and sales. TREW takes an integrated approach using a wide array of marketing services, including market research, brand identity, positioning and messaging, product launch planning, website strategy and design, search marketing and public relations.

Read additional coverage in Austin Business Journal here.

Looking for additional insight? Check out our guide: Smart Marketing for Engineers

Brainstorm notes on hotel bar napkins.

Conversations that take you so far down tangents you’ve forgotten what your company does.

You need something that’s memorable but not too off-the-wall, specific but not excluding, and exciting but accurate …

Your tagline.

While it is a semantic branding piece that helps you in your overall messaging, tagline development doesn’t have to stop you in your tracks for months. Here are five practical tips you should consider as you’re creating your tagline:

1. Intrigue

You want your tagline to resonate at a potential customer’s first glance of your company, to draw a customer in and to make them want to know more about you and what you offer. You want it to enhance your brand, not cause a reader to question what it is that you’re doing or selling.

Starmount’s is a great example of an intriguing tagline:

Starmount sells a suite of software for mobile selling tools, digital signage, and interactive kiosks. The company wanted to give the idea that their software helps retailers transform the complete shopping experience from solitary and disconnected to personal and mobile, and their tagline shows it. The light alliteration makes the tagline easy to read and say, and the play on “making sense” makes it familiar and friendly, just like their customers want shoppers to feel when they approach in-store displays.

2. Differentiation

Focus on what makes you unique. To do this, think about your last 5-10 customer wins. What was it that made customers ultimately choose to do business with you and not a competitor? Maybe it was your company culture, specific aspects of your technology, your service, or your process or approach. Define what those differentiators are, and use them in your tagline.

Kline Technical Consulting is a security integrator that develops advanced security systems, from tracking enemy forces to leading anti-piracy efforts to securing special compounds and assets to implementing large cyber warfare networks.

Kline Technical Consulting’s differentiator is that they’re experienced in fierce, airtight security solutions that are engineered to meet very specific scenarios, and you easily understand that when you read their tagline.

3. Precision

Most likely there are words that are overdone in your industry. Maybe it’s the idea of “value” or ”quality,” or even generic nouns like “tools” or “systems.” Leave these words out of your tagline. You only get a small phrase to make an impact, and using words considered jargon are a waste of space.

At one point, multiple airlines had almost identical taglines:

And:

Western Airlines – The only way to fly. Delta – You’ll love the way we fly

Consequently, we know that there’s a way to fly and every airline thinks they’re it. The organizations aren’t willing to differentiate and none of the taglines are memorable.

Later, Southwest Airlines revved up a campaign saying, “Southwest Airlines. THE low fare airline.” Though a blunt statement and a bold stance, Southwest picked a differentiator and stood by it, and consequently, they avoided the “way to fly” jargon and created a memorable position in the market.

Seek not just to say the same phrase a different way, but to really decide what it is that makes your company different, and stand confident in that differentiation with your tagline.

4. Action

When your company offering is primarily a service, use an action verb to immediately bring your customers into what it is that you do for them. It would be easy to create a tagline that focuses on an end result, but if your value add is the way you approach a solution, convey that in your tagline.

Trek Global creates open-source-based ERP solutions for $50-250M businesses.

Their tagline gives you the idea that they walk through the ERP process with you, and don’t just deliver a standard, COTS solution. And their differentiator is just that – they guide customers through the process of evaluating and developing an ERP system that’s just right for each customer’s needs. A tagline that focused on the end results with no action verb (for example, “The right ERP system for you”) would lose emphasis on the whole process, and thus the differentiator.

5. Few Words

As a best practice, make your tagline 5-6 words or less. Keeping your tagline short will help it to be memorable, force you to hone in on your differentiator, and make it easy to integrate with your logo.

Alfamation is a global provider of functional test products and solutions for the automotive, consumer electronics, telecom, and medical industries. Alfamation services many industries, but their key thread is that they work with customers to create solutions for next-generation test systems.

The company’s concise tagline fits will with its logo and says just what it is that it offers – with Alfamation, you can make a reality that test solution that you can now only imagine.

In Summary: Best Practices

When you’re developing a tagline, brainstorm and then take a step back. Leave your notes aside for a few days and see what you think when you read the taglines again with a clear mind, as a prospective customer would for the first time. Reflect, and ask yourself:

1. Who is your target audience? Would these words capture their attention?
2. Is it specific to your company, or could it easily be the tagline of any of your competitors?
3. Does it contain words that are overused?
4. If you offer a service, does the tagline explain what you help customers achieve?
5. Is it too long?

When you need a break from brainstorming a tagline, take a look at these other posts about messaging development and advertising at first-glance:

TREW Helps Create Your Brain

Make Sure Your Print Ad Passes the 2-Second Test

Looking for additional insight? Check out our guide: Smart Marketing for Engineers

We have a motto at TREW Marketing: “Trust Drives Results.” TREW started with humble beginnings at one of the worst possible economic times – early 2008, just before the Great Recession began in earnest. Despite this, we’ve achieved a new milestone that less than half of all small businesses ever reach – the 4-year mark. It’s been a year of building trust and driving results for our growing clients, and here are a few highlights:

• The Wall Street Journal selected TREW as one of ten most innovative small businesses in America
• We self-published a new e-book, Smart Marketing for Engineers, and our promotional campaign won the Gold MarCom Award
• TREW revenue is on track to grow 34% YOY in 2011
• 179% more visitors came to trewmarketing.com and spent more time once there
• Our Twitter followers have grown by 4x in just the last 5 months of 2011

(click images to enlarge)

But books and awards can only carry a company so far. What really counts is driving results for our customers. Here are some highlights from their marketing successes in 2011:

Branding and positioning success

TREW developed client DISTek’s branding “brain”, including clear visual branding online and offline, and differentiated messaging that distinctly positions the company in the off-highway engineering markets.

TREW also created a “brain” for new client, Adaxa USA including a positioning statement, long pitch, tagline “Guiding You Through ERP” and company-level messaging such as, “Adaxa develops powerful ERP solutions for mid-size companies that need to order, shelve, assemble and ship their products efficiently.”

New website launches

TREW created new websites – including design, development and CMS – for clients DISTek and Bloomy Controls.

Growth in website traffic

Through ongoing integrated marketing management and execution, TREW client WTI had continued website traffic growth throughout 2011.

Optimized search advertising

Results from various paid search programs we managed for clients in 2011, including lowering costs while driving up clickthroughs and time on site

Awareness through targeted PR outreach

From news release development to major product launches to ongoing media relations outreach, TREW helped many clients drive results with their PR investments.

With this success, we continue to build trust with our customers. With this trust, we are honored to be working with many of the same customers as well as nearly ten new ones in 2011:

We believe this success is due to three key advantages TREW uniquely brings to our clients:

1. We know engineers and scientists.

We are focused. As one of the only marketing agencies in the world whose sole focus is working with B2B companies and organizations targeting engineering and scientific markets, we know the unique challenges of marketing to technical audiences:

• Engineers and scientists are skeptical of marketing.
• They need a wealth of technical information that is easy to find and read.
• They want to know a solution is proven – that they can trust your expertise and specs.

2. We plan broadly and then go deep.

The key to smart marketing is to start with a plan tied to business goals and with defined measurable objectives.  As a full-service marketing agency, we have a broad understanding of all aspects of marketing and how to integrate across media for the greatest impact. Once a plan is in place, we then go deep into each media to create thorough programs that leverage each other.

3. We believe Trust Drives Results.

We at TREW Marketing firmly believe that trust – with each other as employees, with our clients, and ultimately with our clients’ audiences – is the key factor for producing consistent marketing success.  That trust also drives loyalty, such that nearly 100% of our science and engineering customers who came on board in 2008 are still with us today.

With our proven record of thriving partnerships, more and more companies are coming to us for our unique expertise marketing to technical audiences. We look forward to delivering continued smart marketing and outstanding results to our customers in 2012, and wish all of you a joyful holiday season! To learn more about why engineering and scientific customers consistently choose TREW Marketing, see our video TREW Stories:

Staying top-of-mind with prospects and customers is a challenge all companies face. E-newsletters are a great way to maintain a conversation with your target audience, promote valuable content, and help nurture your lead base to increase customer loyalty and move prospects closer to the sale. A corporate e-newsletter, done right, can be one of the most effective and strategic marketing activities a company undertakes.

However, e-newsletters that aren’t executed according to proven best practices often turn out to be a liability, causing valuable leads to dry up, or worse yet, anger potential customers. Some of the biggest e-newsletter mistakes a business should avoid include:

- Sporadic, inconsistent e-newsletter timing
- Mailing to a purchased list or unsolicited e-mail recipients
- Poorly-programmed e-newsletter design and layout that displays incorrectly in various email programs
- Too much content in the email
- Unappealing subject line
- Lack of subscriber management/opt out capabilities
- Lack of analysis of open rates, click-through rates

This 2-part blog post will help you avoid the e-newsletter missteps that result in unhappy customers and prospects, and use the power of e-mail for your lead nurturing efforts. In this first issue we will cover best practices for:

1. Design
2. Content
3. Mailing list

1. Lay a solid foundation
Your first step in starting an e-newsletter is design. After all, this is prime real estate for your company and brand and serves as a key tool to communicate who your company is and how your products and services can help readers. Here are several design best practices:

- The design should be consistent from issue to issue and have staying power for many issues to come

- Key to design is usability – making it is easy for readers to open, quickly skim and find articles and links that are compelling to them. The design example below, from TREW client Wineman Technology, includes large, easy-to-read headlines, a sidebar with compelling content, and a prominent feature story.

Ensuring the design is correctly programmed in email engine software is equally critical for display in numerous different email clients. Unfortunately, each popular email client in the market today – Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc. – displays images, columns, and other design elements a little differently. Outlook, which has almost half of the email client market, is especially picky and requires specific programming techniques for your e-newsletter to display correctly to your recipients.

With poor design and/or programming, you may find that what was once a beautiful e-newsletter in the conceptual planning stage has turned into a mess of misaligned columns, images and text once your readers open it up. Here is what Outlook can do to an email that is not programmed properly:

Test your design at emailonacid.com – a web service that, for a small fee, will run the design code through a tool that mimics all popular email clients, ensuring that you discover any issues with your layout up front, so you can fix them before mailing out to your audience.

2. Develop compelling content
It’s tempting to focus your e-newsletter content on sales-driven topics such as new promotions. You will better attract and retain readers if you minimize the sales pitch, and focus instead on creating and offering content that helps readers do their job better.

Here are 5 types of content we have found to be the most valuable for a technical audience, driving click-throughs and keeping readers coming back for more:

1. Industry trends

2. Tutorials or “tips and tricks” that help readers use your products more effectively

3. Case studies from customers doing something unique and compelling with your products

4. A “Top 5” list – such as questions new customers ask, with answers, or new applications for your flagship product. It may sound gimmicky, but a Top 5 list blends valuable content packaged in an appealing format– people love lists!

5. Event news or snippets from presentations you’ve recently given at industry conferences

Two more content best practices:
- People have short attention spans, so consider how much content you put in and remember, the shorter the better.
- Provide a compelling headline, a brief summary of an article, an image, and a prominent link to read more.

These tips on content types and design will help your readers skim quickly and select what they want to read, and it helps you push visitors to your website, where you can offer even more valuable content to your audience.

The below e-newsletter is a great example of keeping content brief and compelling, while pushing readers to their website to learn more.

3. Build your readership

Once you’ve designed your e-newsletter and have a clear vision for succinct, compelling content, it’s time to build your readership. While it’s tempting to mail every contact in your database and more, there is a smarter approach that will gain you more loyalty and better results.

Focus on only your most relevant leads – those who have contacted you in the last 12 – 24 months. Older leads are less likely to remember you or be interested in and open your e-newsletter. In addition, older leads commonly include invalid or outdated email addresses, and your e-newsletter will bounce back when sent to them.

Also, to follow e-newsletter best practices and privacy laws, there are several key points you should adhere to when building your contact list:

a. Never use a purchased list. This is considered unsolicited email, and an e-newsletter should only be sent to contacts who know your company and have engaged with you in the past.

b. Only send to individuals, not a group inbox used my multiple people. For example, an email address such as info@msn.com or sales@ibm.com should be removed from your list of contacts.

c. Always offer an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your e-newsletter, and be sure that if someone clicks on it, they will be taken off your recipient list.

d. Don’t forget to offer a prominent “subscribe to our e-news” link on your website. People who have willingly subscribed are some of your most valuable readers, and they are highly motivated to receive your e-newsletter.

Following these rules isn’t just best practice; it also improves the chance that your e-newsletter is not flagged as spam. In addition, sending your e-newsletter to only your most relevant and valuable leads improves your ROI with higher open rates and click-through rates, and in the end these are the metrics that will provide visibility into its impact on your business and the goals of improving loyalty and nurturing an ongoing dialogue with your target audience.

In Part 2 of this blog post, we’ll share insight into e-newsletter analysis and discuss tips for improving your e-mail open rates and click-throughs. Also, look for details on recent successes from TREW clients who have recently embarked on their e-newsletter efforts.

While there continues to be a shift in marketing dollars to “new media” in the digital realm, where impressions, clickthroughs, and other metrics are easily tracked, there is still a place for traditional print advertising. But it has to pass the 2-second test – the time a reader will give to your ad before turning the page!

Here are a few tips to make your print ad dollars really count, and increase your chance that readers won’t turn the page after 2 seconds. I’ll reference a recent ad we did for client Geotest to illustrate the points.

Geotest print ad for semiconductor test.

One message…say it and show it

With this ad, the key message was “semiconductor test”, and we said that nearly 10 different ways, such as “SoC”, “digital I/O with per-pin PMU”, and “digital and mixed-signal test”

• This message represents 41% of all the words in the entire ad (32 words out of 78 total).

• We visually communicate this message through a large, eye-catching, colorful feature image of packaged ICs sitting atop a diced wafer.

One message - digital test - spoken through images, nearly half of ad copy.

Headlines – where it all stops or starts

Ad research, and common sense, tells us that headlines – in ads, articles, billboards, you name it – are what our eyes go to first. People spend about 2 seconds to decide if they’ll read more or move on, and that decision is almost solely based on their interest from reading the headline

• You only have 2 seconds – so keep headlines very short and interesting
• There is no silver bullet to the perfect headline. It can be creative. Straightforward. A play on words. One word. A spec. The key is to know your readership in the magazine where your ad will be placed, know the specific key and 2nd tier messaging of the ad, and then tailor the headline to best engage that readership to communicate that message.
• In this ad, the headline communicates credibility – adoption of “Big Industry” – and a key product benefit – the small size of the module, “Small Footprint”.
• It also communicates a product, via the model number, “GX5295″, another key message that a new product was being announced.

Short, compelling headlines - key to passing the 2-second test.

Clean, consistent branding

I often find myself looking at ads and trying to figure out who the actual company is who is spending this money trying to get my attention. If I have to look more than 1-2 seconds to find the advertising company, the money is totally wasted.

• As shown below, cleanly and clearly present the company logo, easy to find and read contact information, and ensure the ad is consistent with other company offline and online marketing.
• Make sure to have a relevant, targeted call-to-action with the company URL or customized landing page to direct readers to take the next step.

Stay on-message, prioritize with cues

The total word count in this ad, from headline to call-to-action (CTA), is 78 words. Total.

• Readers of this ad can learn every important message with 30 words total – headline and sub-heads, and treated copy in bullets.
• This copy is prioritized for readers through font treatment – bold, blue, all caps – to bring emphasis to words.

Creatively communicate 2nd tier messages

One of the biggest mistakes in advertising is trying to communicate too much. For every word or message you ad, you dilute the other words or messages that much more. Prioritze your messages – know what the most important message is and lead with that visually and in copy. Then, identify your 2^nd tier messages and find creative ways to communicate those.

• In this ad, one 2nd tier message is the industries the new product is ideally suited for. To keep the word count low, subtle icons were used to visually communicate this aspect of the product.
• Another 2nd tier message was the announcement of a new product – the GX5295 – for digital test. This was done both in the headline, subhead and also in the smaller feature image of the module.

The Hogg Foundation sought to understand internal and external perceptions of their key stakeholders, with plans to use the information gleaned from research to guide messaging, vision, and impact for the future.  At the same time, the foundation leadership knew they needed to take immediate action to improve their website experience.

TREW Marketing was engaged to conduct an in-depth market research project, focused on leadership and staff, as well as external groups of stakeholders and consumers.  Following this research, TREW Marketing redesigned the Hogg Foundation website to ease navigation, content updates, and better align with foundation initiatives.  TREW Marketing also provided an e-newsletter template and integration with Constant Contact for efficient e-communication efforts.

Results of this project included:

• Detailed, actionable data and recommendations for branding, messaging, and communications
• Re-designed website with clear navigation paths and a robust content management system
• E-newsletter template extending the web brand experience

Refreshed Hogg Foundation Website

Former Hogg Foundation Website

“TREW Marketing took the time to really understand our organizations brand research goals and challenges.  They put our staff at ease during internal interviews and helped us achieve a remarkable response rate for our external email survey,” said Merrell Foote, Communications Director for the foundation.  ”The website refresh project has given us a more visually appealing, user-friendly site and an easy-to-use, flexible tool for managing content.  The research data and the improved website leave us well-prepared to develop a new brand for the foundation.”

TREW Marketing partners Andy Pyle and Ryan Kagan were crucial contributors to this project.  Pyle provided his market research expertise to deteremine the methodology utilized and performed data analysis.  Ryan’s web design and programming skills were an excellent fit for this project, and the content management system built by Kagan provided a scalable web platform, which the Hogg Foundation can build upon following the results of the re-branding efforts.

About the Hogg Foundation:

Founded in 1940, the Hogg Foundation’s mission is to promote mental health in Texas. The foundation awards grants for mental health services for children and adults, public policy projects, academic research and conferences, training workshops, and other public education activities.  The Hogg Foundation is in the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.

Looking for additional insight? Check out our guide: Smart Marketing for Engineers



Congratulations!  You’ve created a product, figured out your pricing and distribution model (not to mention a ton of other details), and are ready to bring it to market. Or almost ready.  First you need a positioning statement.  The following blog outlines the what, why and how of creating a positioning statement.  This information was derived from a recent presentation by TREW Marketing at the Central Texas Funding Network Symposium.

What is a positioning statement? A statement or set of statements specifically used to create an image in the mind of your customers.  It is how you want them to visualize your product in relation to the market and competition.

Positioning statements should be created before beginning your marketing efforts, since it gives focus to your marketing efforts and influences your company branding.  Your positioning statement is a core component of marketing activity.

How do I go about creating my positioning statement?

Step1:  Deep thinking and research. This includes asking yourself some questions, such as “What business am I in, and how is it different?”  ”Who is my target audience, and what needs do they have that I can solve?”  ”What are the key benefits of my solution?”  To thoroughly answer these questions, you will need to do some market and customer research.  This could be done informally through customer interviews, social media, and Google searches, or more formally by engaging a formal research project.  Don’t assume you know it all — validate your ideas and thoughts.  Through this process you may find yourself aligning your product’s strengths to customer needs and care-abouts, perhaps even tweaking the product itself.

Step 2:  Create Your Positioning Statement v1.

Congratulations!  You’ve created your first positioning statement.  Have I mentioned yet that this is an iterative process?

Step 3:  Repeat steps 1 and 2. You will leverage your positioning statement like crazy, once finalized. Your sales force will become masters at delivering it.  Your marketing efforts will incorporate it into everything they do.  Get it right at the beginning and save yourself what could be a very costly mid-stream change down the road.

Step 4:  Unleash your marketing communications strategy, beginning with the communications brief and message matrix.  This is one of several areas where your positioning statement (and underlying research data) heads next.  Your internal marketing leader or TREW Marketing Virtual Marketing Director will create segmented messages based on identified targeted audiences.

In summary, creating a thoughtful product positioning statement will take you far down the road to success, and prevent costly mistakes once moving into sales and marketing execution.  TREW Marketing offers coaching services to help you develop your product positioning statement and make the transition into marketing strategy.  Please contact us at info@trewmarketing.com for more information.

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