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

Looking for additional insight? Check out our TREW Talks- SEO Slideshow

Unlocking the secret to keyword ranking success

Looking for additional insight? Check out our eBook: A 15-Point Checklist to Evaluate Your B2B Technical Website.

Maybe it’s because we work with so many engineers and techies, but here at TREW, we can be real skeptics. We take an “I’ll believe it when I see it” approach – relying on hard data and proof points when making decisions on the most effective ways to help our clients market their brand.

So when it comes to creating effective web layout and designs that get results, we rely on usability data from trusted sources to help us make sense of how people use the web. One type of web study we rely on – and prove out time and time again – is eye tracking research.

Eye tracking is a form of research that allows the proctor to track web visitors’ eye movements across a page, providing insight into what people truly spend time looking at on the screen, what order they look at it, and what their eyes avoid. Some of the key questions eye tracking research can address include:

• Which area of the page draws a web user’s attention?
• What do users tend to look at first, second, third?
• Which areas of the page do users avoid or ignore?
• What specific elements of content do users gaze at for more than a second or two?
• Do web visitors notice key elements of the page or recall key messaging?

By incorporating what we learn from eye tracking research, we can determine the best format and placement for content, and establish optimal page layout. It’s truly an opportunity to apply hard data to marketing activities for improved ROI.

Below are 3 key takeaways that TREW has learned from recent eye tracking studies performed by Jakob Nielsen and the Poynter Institute and successfully applied to our clients’ web redesign efforts:

1. Follow the Zig-Zag

Eye tracking studies consistently show that most web visitors approach a web page similar to reading a book – we start at the top left and move right with our eyes.  People’s eyes fixate first in the upper left of the page near the logo, then pause in that area before going left to right. This is often called an “F” layout or even a “Z” layout because our eyes zig-zag across the page as we skim it.

The heat map on this web page shows a distinct F pattern where web visitors eyes focused on the page

2. Keep it Short and Sweet

When you have something to say on a page – especially a home page or a campaign page that serves as an entry point to your site – make it brief and impactful. Why? Because eye tracking research reveals the following about web users’ behavior:

• You have only about 20 seconds to pique a web visitor’s interest before they lose interest
• Web visitors only read about 20% of the words on a page
• Users tend to gaze more at brief headlines in large fonts than any other words on a page

This means you have very little time to capture the interest of your very busy and distracted audience. Don’t waste it with lots of text in small fonts. The shorter and more actionable your headlines, and the easier they are to read, the better your success at communicating your message.

Notice the brevity of text and large fonts that help simplify this home page for TREW client Asuragen

3. Navigation is Power

Eye tracking reveals that the top action on any web page is clicking on buttons and links, and the global navigation – when situated at the top of the page – is gazed at and clicked on much more than sidebar navigation. What does this all mean?

Keep it simple – If you offer global navigation across the top of your site as well as section-specific navigation down the left, you may quickly overwhelm your web visitors. Unless your site includes hundreds of products and offerings, the top navigation alone can do the job. People are more likely to use it as their “anchor” on your site to find their way.

TREW client Parallon’s corporate site section relies on top navigation, freeing up the entire body of the page for relevant content

No dead ends – When you get on a boat, you want to go somewhere, not just sit there. People coming to your site have that same need for movement. Make sure no page is a dead end, and that you offer links to compelling content or to related pages so users have the ability to carve their own path through your site.

These are just a few of the key points eye tracking data has revealed about web users’ habits and preferences. Knowledge is power, and eye tracking research provides a great deal of knowledge that allows TREW the ability to build the best and most effective websites around. Talk to the web usability experts at TREW today to find out how we can apply eye tracking research to your next web redesign.

Looking for additional insight? Check out our eBook: A 15-Point Checklist to Evaluate Your B2B Technical Website.

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.

TREW Co-Founder Wendy Covey recently sat down with Michael Aivaliotis from VI Shots for an interview titled “Why Engineers Should Love Marketing.”  Michael Aivaliotis, founder of VI Shots, records audio podcasts targeted to scientists and engineers who use LabVIEW. The podcasts include interviews, discussions, and ideas centered around LabVIEW development and growing a successful technical business.

In this interview, Wendy discusses how to approach B2B marketing to technical audiences and provides practical advice encompassing a range marketing topics, from planning and positioning to conferences and social media.

Highlights from the podcast include:

• Planning– what are your business goals?
• Messaging – how are you truly unique?
• Branding – it’s more than pretty colors and a creative logo
• Website and Content – your virtual storefront and the #1 marketing investment you should make
• Conferences – personify your brand, capture leads
• Thought leadership – it’s a marathon, not a sprint
• Social Media – start with a blog, listen first
• Email – stay top of mind

Listen to the podcast at VIShots.com.

Related blog posts:

New eBook: A 15-Point Checklist to Evaluate Your B2B Technical Website

Infographic: B2B Marketing in 2013

How to Create a B2B Marketing Plan that Drives Results

Looking for additional insight? Check out our checklist: A 15-Point Checklist to Evaluate Your B2B Technical Website

I attended the Inbound 2012 conference by HubSpot, and one of my favorite sessions was on blogging. The session was called Getting 100K followers to your Blog. As an author to this blog, they had my full attention – who doesn’t want 100,000 people reading their blog?

We’ve already established that increased, quality traffic fuels growth in leads, and that blogs are great traffic-generators. So how do you increase traffic to your site through your blog?

In reality, just like anything with marketing, there is no silver bullet. It takes consistent investment of time, creativity, and ideas to develop a successful blog and reach an increasing percentage of your target audience. Here are four ways that you can get more blog traffic from quality readers:

This graph shows the relationship between the number of blog posts TREW Marketing published in 2012 and our website traffic, with a strong increase in traffic over time.

1. Understand The Potential of Your Blog

Is your blog just another communications channel in your marketing efforts? Or do you have a defined marketing strategy just for it? For those who answer “yes”, and “no”, to these two questions, consider a mind-shift to think about your blog as much bigger. In the Inbound session, they used the analogy of galaxies. For example, when you first start a business, the business is the center of your galaxy, and all of your marketing efforts (e.g., email marketing, PR, website, and SEO) are the planets that revolve around and support your business.

A good marketing strategy includes a variety of efforts to support your business. Image: HubSpot.

In this same way, think of your blog as the center of its own galaxy, using all of the same “planets” as supporting planets.

The same marketing activities that support your business can be used to promote your blog. Image: HubSpot.

By making this shift, you see how your blog can be bigger than you imagined. If you start to think of your blog as such an asset, you’ll be able to grow and scale it. Case in point – the TREW Marketing Spotlight blog now brings in 49% of our monthly traffic.

2. Get Discovered

In the session, the HubSpot bloggers talked about creating “big hits”. That is, creating fresh content fueled by new ideas and data that make your content compelling for potential readers to ultimately find your blog. Here are some ideas to create big hits.

• Publish original data and findings. Create your own surveys and case studies and showcase this original data on your blog. If you created it, the content is sure to be new and fresh for your readers.

Create your own surveys to get firsthand data that you can share through your blog.

• Give your take on relevant topics. If there’s news topic that’s already popular in your industry, write a blog post about it so that when readers are searching for the topic, they come across your site. For example, if a prominent engineering school was granted $10M for its robotics program and your company makes robotic medical devices, talk about how you think that university could spend its grant to further medical advancements. Or, if you’re a software integrator and one of the platforms you integrate has a new release, write a post talking about how customers can use the features in that new version to better their businesses. This tactic is called newsjacking, capitalizing on the popularity of a topic to boost your sales and marketing success. Be sure to use the news topic in your headline for the best search results.
• Be one of the first to talk about a new trend. Is there a new idea in the marketplace? A new product? A process once used in another space that could be applied to your industry? Share your thoughts and best practices on the topic first with a blog post.
• Be interesting and use catchy headlines. It seems like a no-brainer, but it’s important to write about topics that would interest your potential customers. Think outside the box. For example, your customers may be manufacturing test and measurement equipment, but they’re also hiring experts to use that equipment, so consider, for example, writing a blog post about hiring the best engineer for the types of applications your customers are creating. And, a quick, eye-catching headline will draw a reader in to read the “must-see” material, such as “XYZ”.
• Continually promote your post. Is your blog auto-synced to your social media channels? While this is a great time saving tool, if you’re not careful, it can also be a trap. Twelve percent of HubSpot’s blog traffic comes from social media, but this doesn’t happen with just one auto-published post, they continually share their blog posts on both big and small social networks. Your audiences may not see your blog post the first time you promote it in your e-newsletter or social media, so make a note to promote it again via social media a few weeks later. Or, if you wrote in the past about a topic that becomes a buzz topic in the future, promote that post in social media and point people back to your thoughts on the topic.
• Use images and graphics in your posts. You can’t deny it – we humans love pictures. Pictures power social media. Visual content is revolutionizing social media and how web content is consumed. As an example, on average, links on Facebook with photos generate 4 times more shares than links without photos. Therefore, to grow the reach and sharing of your posts, use compelling images that showcase the points you’re making.

TREW Marketing’s 2013 B2B Marketing Infographic is informative and engaging for readers

3. Convert Readers to Subscribers and Keep Them Coming Back

If you can convert your readers to subscribers, you’re creating a base of potential customers who will likely keep coming back to your site, and share your blog with others.

To earn subscribers, make a subscription option available on your blog page above the fold so that it’s easily noticeable. In addition, consider sending an email to your contacts, encouraging them to subscribe to the blog.

To keep your readers and subscribers engaged, we recommend you blog at least once a month, and more frequently if possible. The more frequently you blog, the more often you’re giving those subscribers a reminder to come back to your site, and share your information with others. 

4. Empower Subscribers be Your Advocates

Speaking of sharing, how can you make it as easy as possible for your blog subscribers to interact with and pass on your quality content? The easiest way is to use social sharing buttons to for readers to share your content via LinkedIn, Twitter, email, and other outlets.

Include social sharing icons and a subscription form on your blog, above the fold.

In addition, seek guest blogging opportunities, and offer your expertise to other bloggers. If you post on their blogs, there’s a good chance those readers will come back to see the rest of your ideas on your site. And, have guest bloggers write content for you. It’s likely their loyal readers will come to your site to see what their familiar author penned, and then become engaged (and hopefully even subscribe!) to your content.

There’s no silver bullet to growing blog traffic, but by making your blog the center of its own galaxy, careful planning and idea-brainstorming, you’ll be able to attract the readers most relevant to your business, and convert them to subscribers and advocates.

Looking for additional insight? Check out our checklist: A 15-Point Checklist to Evaluate Your B2B Technical Website

Related Blog Posts:

Content and SEO Fuel Inbound Marketing Results

4 Ways Pictures Power SEO and Social Media

Did you know that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text? (HubSpot, 2012)

You can’t deny it – we love pictures. Visual content is revolutionizing social media and how web content is consumed. Facebook recently reported that their users upload an average of 300 millions photos everyday, and the rise of photo sharing social media sites like Pinterest – now the third largest social networking site, behind Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram – bought by Facebook for $1 billion this year, tell us that there’s real power behind pictures.

So what does this mean for B2B marketing? It means that pictures are a viable content opportunity for your marketing mix of web pages, white papers, videos, webinars, case studies, and blog posts.

Read on to learn 4 quick ways to optimize and effectively integrate photos and visuals in your B2B marketing activities.

1. Name the file appropriately. Pick a related keyword for your web content and use this in your file name. Many users will name their image as “image1” or “logo.png” or “screen-shot 2012-10-22.” Is this you? Search engines, like Google, rely on textual cues to understand what the image is about. So if you leave your image file name like the examples above, Google will not know what to do with them.

2. Add alt text. Use keywords in the “alt tag” text box when you upload an image to your blog or website. By adding descriptive alt tag text, search engines can better identify what the image is about and how it relates to your content.

The image below shows how a blog, dynamometermanufacturers.com, found an image of TREW client, Wineman Technology’s dynamometer system via Google search and used it for a blog post. The blog attributed the image to Wineman Technology by linking to winemantech.com, which generated web traffic that spent more than 11½ minutes on-site and viewed an average of 6 pages per session. This cyclical effect of posting and tagging images helps increase your backlinks, gain third-party credibility, and generate highly engaged web visitors.

3. Add context for the image in the page text. In addition to naming the file correctly and adding keyword rich alt text, Google also recommends you add text on the page where the image is located. Referencing the image in the page text ensures that Google understood your alt text correctly. See tip #2 above for an example of referencing an image in your page text.

4. Use rich visual snippets for Facebook posts. Using visual content for Facebook helps increase fan engagement with your page. The more engagement you receive on your page, the more positively Facebook’s EdgeRank Algorithm will favor your posts, thus expanding your reach.

TREW Marketing tracked our Facebook page content metrics to learn what content generates the most engagement. The results are very telling of engaging visual content on Facebook. Updates with photos receive 2X more total impressions versus posts with just a link. Additionally, our photos receive 12X more engaged users (people who like or comment on the image) over the link posts.

So here’s what you can do. By snapping a quick shot of a chart or image used in a blog post, you can upload it as an individual image and link to the blog post. This makes your Facebook post stand out more in the newsfeed and in the timeline. Below is an example of this, from Rand Fishkin’s presentation at Inbound 2012.

Contact us today to learn more about TREW Marketing social media and search engine optimization programs.

Related blog posts

3 Free & Easy-to-Use Social Media Tools

Content and SEO Fuel Inbound Marketing Results

Lasting SEO Results, Part 1: How PR Affects SEO

Inbound marketing strategies are fueling growth in conversions and leads for the savvy companies who adopt and implement them as part of their integrated marketing plan. However, there are holdouts in B2B marketing who still aren’t convinced that inbound marketing tactics are worth the effort. So let’s look at how two key inbound marketing activities, content and SEO, make a big impact in driving marketing results.

First let’s define inbound marketing. Wikipedia defines it as the concept of earning the attention of prospects, making yourself easily found and drawing customers to your website by producing content customers value.

1. Content — it’s probably our favorite word at TREW marketing and with good reason. Having quality content on your website is a staple for inbound marketing. And it’s not always for selling or marketing, it’s also for educating and/or establishing thought leadership.

One piece of well-written, well-placed content can have multiple uses. You can blog about it, use it as a call-to-action on social media sites, and repackage it in the form of a video, webinar, or white paper.  Just think about how that one piece of content used in multiple ways and channels can drive your search marketing efforts.

2. Search — Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about tweaking your website to make it more search-engine friendly and earning inbound links through stellar content. As our culture becomes increasingly digital, search is now one of the largest channels for demand generation. Ranking in top positions on generic search terms has a large impact on your brand and gains in customer mind-share vs. your competitors. How do content and search impact each other and how can you leverage them to drive your results?

Let’s consider blogging. One of the main benefits of business blogging is the rewards it delivers to SEO.  Having your SEO and blogging strategy aligned is key to ensuring that you are optimizing blog content with keywords for which your business is seeking to rank high in natural search. If you are pushing to rank for a specific keyword, your blogging strategy should support that. For example, let’s say you are a software developer; by creating content about best practices for software development, the best tools to use when developing software, etc. and working in using specific keywords about your software, you will optimize that blog post and earn higher SEO results.

3. Measurement. Now that you’ve created content, and are optimizing SEO to your advantage, how do you measure results? The most effective way to make sure you’re getting the most from your inbound marketing efforts is to regularly analyze data across all of your marketing channels so you can see how your integrated campaigns perform, and make adjustments to your marketing programs on an ongoing basis. Key inbound marketing metrics include web visits, time on site, leads, and sales conversions.

Need help building your inbound marketing strategy, or managing your integrated marketing efforts? Contact TREW Marketing or explore our services, including:

• Marketing audit
• Virtual marketing manager
• Search engine marketing
• Content development

Don’t be a hold-out — join the inbound marketing revolution. You’ll not only see an increase in awareness and conversions, but you’ll build a cohesive customer experience that will lead to long-term loyalty, and bottom-line results.

TREW Marketing is proud to introduce TREW Marketing Resources, a portal of B2B marketing resources, and the inaugural addition of TREW News, our new quarterly newsletter.

Looking for a collection of B2B marketing resources? The TREW Marketing Resources area of trewmarketing.com is a compilation of marketing guides that contain best practices, industry data, and practical how-to’s on a variety of topics, specifically for marketing to technical audiences.

The TREW Marketing Resources page features the following guides:

• E-books and White Papers:
  • 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.
  • Inbound Marketing: 5 Keys to Generating Leads on Your Website – A white paper written to educate small to mid-size companies that serve scientists, engineers, and technical professionals on the importance of inbound marketing

• Webcasts and Videos
  • Survey Report: 3 Must-do’s When Marketing to Technical Audiences – A three-part webcast describing how engineers use different media sources with practical takeaways for applying these findings in your marketing plan.
  • TREW Talks: Case Studies – Our newest addition is a webinar that steps you through a crash course in creating lead-generating case studies that will build credibility for your products and services.

In addition to these resources, you can receive updates via email to new resources we add by subscribing to TREW News. This is our new quarterly newsletter highlighting our most popular marketing resources, offering industry best practices and marketing tips to help you reach technical audiences, and keeping you up to date on what’s new at TREW Marketing.

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