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

Often in small engineering companies, the marketing responsibilities are shared among a few technical staff. If your company is growing and marketing is not keeping up, it may be time to consider hiring a dedicated technical marketing manager. This two-part series will help you hire a technical marketing manager that can propel your marketing efforts forward and add value to your organization.

In How to Hire a Technical Marketing Manager: Part 1, we covered what to look for in your technical marketing manager and how to rank your potential candidates. Now in Part 2, we’ll focus on how to go about the process of hiring, and what to ask your candidates to best evaluate how well they fit with the culture of your company and the requirements of your position.

The Interview Process

Once you’ve begun promoting your position and receiving applications – from sites such as Indeed.com or through recruiters, social media, and your internal team – it will come time to start the interview process. The recommended approach detailed below is the process we follow at TREW, and is based on many years of hiring for a variety of marketing positions. It is proven, efficient, and requires an investment of time; but, when followed thoroughly, we believe it gives you the highest chance of finding the absolute best candidate for your technical marketing position.

From early screening to your final decision, it is efficient in the early stages so that when it comes time to conduct in-person interviews, you have narrowed down to three or four qualified candidates you can spend more time getting to know. Here are the steps for the interview process, with a short explanation of each:

1. Screen Candidates

Develop a list of 8-10 qualifiers and screen resumes to see if they have those qualifiers. Typical qualifiers include:

• Product management experience
• Web marketing experience
• Technical content development
• B2B sales or account management
• Vendor or partner relationships
• Years of experience
• Degree field

Your candidates may not possess all of these attributes, but screening based on specific criteria will help you filter out the candidates who aren’t a well-rounded fit for your company.

2. Email Qualified Candidates

Send initial questions to candidates that passed the screening via email. You’ll use the candidates’ responses to get a better understanding of who they are, what talents they have, and what they’re looking for in a career trajectory.

3. Conduct Phone Interviews

Use phone interviews to get more information about each candidate’s personality and past experience. You’ll base your questions on what you received via email to gain further insight or information.

Note: Have your candidates follow up after the interview by sending samples of technical white papers or data sheets they’ve created, examples of project timelines and results, and any other writing samples, along with three professional references.

4. Conduct In-Person Interviews

Invite your final candidates to your office for an interview. Because you’ve evaluated your candidates’ past experience well in steps 1-3, you now get the chance to dive more deeply into the way they would think and behave. Take this time to understand how your candidates solve problems and adapt to new challenges by asking them situational questions and giving them real scenarios that will arise within your team, company, and industry. Using these situational questions allows you to evaluate whether the candidate would have a good technical, creative, and analytical approach to solving problems for your organization.

In addition, bring in other members of your team and conduct up to three interview sessions with 1-2 people each. Use your team’s feedback to better understand if this person has the correct talents, “culture fit”, and experience to work well with your organization.

Note: we will not cover this here in detail, but you may also want to consider having your final two candidates prepare a presentation to give to the interviewing panel at your company. The presentations can be focused on topics such as their analysis of your current company’s marketing, or a specific challenge you give them.

Sample Interview Questions for Each Step of the Process

Now that you understand the steps in the interviewing process, let’s dive in and look at a sampling of the questions to ask at each point. Throughout the process, we recommend asking both behavioral and situational questions, such as those included in the list below:

Sample Email Questions for Screened Candidates

• What specific areas of the job description were most exciting to you?  What areas were the least exciting?
• What do you feel are your three biggest strengths and how would they relate to the job description? What is your most prevalent weakness that relates to this position?
• Describe a recent product or project that you’ve managed. What was the product/project, what tools did you use to be effective in managing it, what were the roles of other team members, and what was the outcome of your effort?
• What are your long-term career goals and how would this position help you achieve them?
• What are your goals for compensation?

Sample Phone Interview Questions

• Tell me about the journey of your career. Which parts have been your favorite and why?
• Review with me the strengths and weaknesses you noted in your email.
• In your resume, you list quite a few different product/project marketing experience areas. In which experiences did you excel the most? Why were you so successful?
• You have/have not worked for other companies in our industry. How do you find (or feel about, if they have not had such a job) working in this market?
• How are our products and marketing different than with other companies you’ve worked with?
• Describe your comfort and experience with writing. Do you like to write, and if so, what types of writing do you like to do (data sheets, white papers, blog posts, contributed trade press articles, etc.)?
• What do you recommend as the best tools and processes to understand a target audience?
• Do you have experience with sales and marketing automation software, such as Salesforce.com, HubSpot, etc.? What other marketing-specific tools have you used and what skills do you have with regards to each tool?

Sample In-Person Interview Questions

• What role do you feel content plays in B2B marketing and how have the teams you’ve worked on created and promoted content?
• What do you think separates excellent technical marketers from really good ones?
• Tell me more about the marketing challenges and successes you have faced, and your specific role in meeting those challenges and achieving the successes.
• You are asked to be the technical consultant for our web redesign. Tell us the process you would follow, how you would interact with our  marketing agency, the questions you would ask, the challenges you would expect to face, and how you would overcome those challenges. How would your leadership style help make the project successful? What types of metrics would you want to put in place to track success?
• We ask you, upon beginning your new role, to develop the marketing goals, strategy, and objectives for a new product launch. You have a month to work on the plan and at the end of the month, you’ll be expected to present the plan to our leadership team. What approach would you take to developing the plan, how comfortable would you be in delivering the presentation, and what would be the important elements of your presentation?
• You are the technical writer developing content for the biggest trade show we go to each year. During the content development and review process, you receive edits from several members of leadership and employees, and you find that there are some that are in direct conflict. I am unfortunately not available to provide assistance and the content is due that afternoon to the printer. What would you do to reconcile the feedback you received?
• We are invited to a partner event that will have a significant opportunity to garner media exposure and new sales leads. Imagine the product that you’re representing is something you’re very familiar with already (for example, the cell phone in your pocket). Explain how you would talk about the product and engage the partners, potential customers, and media at the event.

In conclusion, How to Hire a Technical Marketing Manager: Part 1 covered what to look for in your technical marketing manager and how to rank your potential candidates, and Part 2 has informed your hiring process. Understanding how to thoughtfully evaluate, carefully screen, and effectively interview candidates will help you find the best technical marketing manager for your company. Like any process, hiring takes time and effort, but we believe following the guidance outlined in Part 1 and Part 2 will result in efficient and effective hiring.

Related Blog Posts:

How to Hire a Technical Marketing Manager: Part 1

Will Your Employees Leave When the Recession Ends?

How to Create a B2B Marketing Plan that Drives Results

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

Often in small engineering companies, the marketing responsibilities are shared among a few technical staff. For instance, an R&D engineer may also be the web IT guy who fixes the website or writes code and content to update pages. Maybe a technical sales person is responsible for creating materials for a trade show in between customer visits and writing proposals. If your company is growing and marketing is not keeping up, it may be time to consider hiring a dedicated technical marketing manager.

Hiring the best technical marketing manager efficiently has the potential to propel your marketing efforts forward and gain a team member who will add much value to your organization.

Before you begin the hiring process, you need to know what to look for in your technical marketing manager and how to rank your potential candidates – we will cover these topics in Part 1.  Then, in Part 2, we’ll discuss how to go about the process of hiring, and what to ask your candidates.

What to Look For in a Technical Marketing Manager

One client recently took an approach to hiring that focuses first on talent rather than the list of experience bullets on a resume. After talent, they examine a candidate’s ability to fit with your company culture and his or her relevant experience. This is how we hire at TREW, and how we’ve had collective success hiring in the technical B2B space.

For technical companies, it is often challenging to find a marketing manager candidate who is specifically familiar with your technology. But, if a candidate is talented and embodies the values you hold for your company, they’ll be quick to learn the ins and out of your technology and customers. We really liked this approach and added a few of the client’s new touches to our own experience to create the following criteria that will help you know what to look for in a technical marketing manager.

Talent

Focusing on talent first captures candidates’ ability to learn, grow, and propel your company forward. A talented person can do much more than recreate a past experience – they can adapt to new ideas and understand what marketing efforts will serve your company best.

A talented person likely embodies these characteristics:

• Intelligence: makes decisions based on data, understands how to create actionable plans that get results
• Ability/Eagerness to Learn: wants to grow and understand new technologies, systems, platforms, and topics
• Creative Problem Solving: participates in developing new plans, can work resourcefully within tight budgets or resources
• Product/Service Intuition: understands a variety of products or application services, their markets, and how to best bring them to potential customers
• Integrated Marketing Expertise: understands a breadth of media, from traditional to digital, has a knack for growing their network
• Oral Communication: engages in conversation, holds the attention of a room, is polite and listens
• Written Communication: has clear, confident, and eloquent written communication, can develop new content

Culture:

Your company will become what your employees embody. You can influence what your company becomes by hiring a marketing manager that embodies the qualities and values that you hold high. Employees that bring distrust, melodrama, volatility, inaction, or arrogance to your workplace fuel a poor company culture. Design your company culture, teach it, reward it, and hire to fit it. A candidate that is a good “culture fit” will work alongside your existing employees collaboratively and add value as they move forward.

Each company culture is different, but here is a list of pervasive culture attributes that we value here at TREW:

• Achiever: wants to see data-driven progress made toward goals
• Assertive: confident in their talents and decision-making process
• Responsive: can be trusted to respond quickly and efficiently
• Collaborative, Team-Oriented: works well with others, doesn’t always have to be the leader or have a leader
• Enthusiastic: engaging advocate for what they are involved with

Experience:

If your candidate has proficient experience along with the talent and culture attributes you seek, they’ll be a rockstar in your company. However, if they have the talent and culture attributes but lack a bit of experience, they can still be taught and learn along the way. You can still hire this person, but consider them an apprentice to the person(s) currently running the marketing strategy or activities for a few months while they get a handle of your technology or a specific media area or partner relationship.

For a marketing manager, good marks of experience include:

• Relevant Experience: has worked with a company in a similar industry or application space
• Content Development: can create technical product content (case studies, white papers, data sheets) strategically and efficiently
• Product Management: has experience managing products or product lines and interacting with the potential customer associated with them
• Vendor/Partner Co-Marketing: has developed relationships with strategic partners or vendors, or experience developing new relationships
• New Media, Events: familiar with digital media, social media, web lead conversion, events, etc.

Create a Scorecard

To keep track of your candidates’ talent, culture, and experience, create a scorecard where you (and any others you have interview your candidates) rate the candidates 1-5 in each category. A scorecard will give you a rubric to systematically rank your candidates, taking the pressure off of your recollection of conversation, and ensuring that you don’t put too much weight on a few characteristics and become enamored by someone who lacks a lot of important attributes, or dismayed by someone with a fault in one area but a breadth of great qualities.

This scorecard uses the Talent, Culture, and Experience markers listed above, where talent makes up 40% of the candidate’s overall score, and culture and experience each make up 30%. Depending on the position and the attributes important in your company, you can modify the criteria to make it work best for you.

Now that you know what you’re looking for in a technical marketing manager, in Part 2, we will discuss how to go about the process of hiring, and what to ask your candidates throughout the interview process.

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

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

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This past week, the TREW Marketing Crew gathered in Austin Texas for a 2-day team retreat. The goals of the retreat were to get together as a team and strengthen relationships while discussing how we can deliver excellence to our clients. Here are a few highlights for our time together.

We started off with an ice breaker – the Great Egg Drop.

Using straws, tape and popsicle sticks, we had to build a structure to protect our eggs when dropped from a high elevation.

Unfortunately, none of the eggs survived the big drop – clearly we need our engineering customers’ help!

After the ice beaker, we got down to business. Wendy and Rebecca kicked off the retreat with our 2012 successes.

The team was excited to hear we had a year end revenue growth of 50 percent.

Day one finished up with happy hour and white elephant gift exchange.

Here’s a a glimpse at some of the great gifts.

Day two’s topics included marketing successes and goals, as well as HubSpot demos from each team member.

In between presentations we kept up the hard work, taking advantage of our time together.

We found the retreat to be a great success and can’t wait to gather again in 2013!

Agency Chosen for Collaborative Approach in Marketing to Technical Audiences

AUSTIN, Texas – December 4, 2012 – Crank Software Inc. of Ottawa, Canada announced today it has selected Austin-based TREW Marketing to lead its company awareness and lead generation campaigns. Crank Software chose TREW Marketing for their experience in developing integrated marketing programs that target embedded design engineers. The partnership entails brand and product-level messaging and positioning, PR, content development, partner co-marketing management, search engine optimization and advertising, social media and email marketing.

Crank Software specializes in embedded user interface (UI) solutions that enable R&D teams to more quickly develop rich UIs for resource-constrained embedded devices like in in-car graphical displays and animated GPS systems. Their product, Crank Storyboard™ Suite, manages the entire UI lifecycle, bridging the gap between UI design and embedded systems by streamlining the development process from months to minutes, helping their customers get products to market faster, with higher return on investment (ROI), and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

 “Crank Software has proven how collaboration during product development results in higher quality at a lower cost, and they sought to find similar advantages in their marketing efforts,” said Wendy Covey, Principal and Co-Founder of TREW Marketing. “The marketing programs TREW developed for Crank fully leverage both companies’ unique expertise, and will grow demand for Crank’s graphical user interface solutions.”

The new partnership includes the following marketing programs:

• Marketing communications strategy and integrated activity plans
• Marketing collateral and content development – case studies, webcasts
• Product launch media relations
• Search engine optimization and advertising programs
• Social media strategy and execution
• Database marketing with quarterly e-newsletters and email nurturing
• Partner co-marketing campaign and activity plan

 “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 excited to have them as an extension of our team.”

Click to Tweet: New from @TrewMarketing: @Cranksoftware Selects TREW Marketing for Embedded Industry Outreach http://ow.ly/feA6c

About Crank Software

Crank Software is an innovator in embedded user interface (UI) solutions that bridges the gap between UI design and embedded systems to deliver a competitive advantage by streamlining the development lifecycle so their customers can get their products to market faster, with higher ROI, and lower total cost of ownership. Today, time is wasted in the development lifecycle because the design goes back and forth between UI designers, user experience designers, and embedded systems engineers. The Crank Storyboard Suite enables stakeholders to work in parallel. Storyboard manages the entire UI lifecycle—from UI design to simulation to being optimized for the device.

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 goals. With goals and objectives defined, TREW then takes an integrated approach using a wide array of marketing services, including brand identity, positioning and messaging; website strategy and design; content development and publishing; search marketing; public relations and social media strategy and execution.

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Last week, the TREW Crew headed to Boston for a full-court press of training on HubSpot software and inbound marketing best practices. This follows over 50 hours of training by the team this past summer, culminating in TREW being named a HubSpot Certified Partner just two weeks ago. Here are our top takeaways from the week – look for lengthier posts to come diving into these and other topics from the conference.

1) 1+1=3

During Inbound 2012, HubSpot announced their latest 3.0 software release themed around cool new features combined together for a greater impact (or the more catchy articulation of 1+1=3).

Dharmesh Shah on stage at Inbound 2012 showing off the features of the 3.0 release

Of these new features, there are a few stand-outs that the Hubspot-Certified TREW Crew is excited to implement right away. (For illustrative purposes, we will discuss these features using a fictitious TREW prospect named Larry).

• Smart Calls-to-Action (CTAs) – Larry has already visited TREW Marketing and downloaded the Smart Marketing Guide for Engineers, so the next time Larry visits the site, he would see an offer for our white paper, Inbound Marketing: 5 Keys to Generating Leads on Your Website.
• Smart Forms – When Larry returns to the TREW site for more fantastic TREW downloads, we will remember his information and not ask for the same personal information again.
• Contacts timeline view – Not only can we learn about Larry from what he has shared with TREW, as well as by viewing his social media activity, the new HubSpot timeline view provides us with a visual story of the actions Larry has taken on the TREW site and lifecycle status.
• Social media management – HubSpot 3 makes social sharing easier, providing us with the ability to post to multiple accounts and platforms. It has built-in scheduling (and timing suggestions) so that we reach Larry when his is more likely to be plugged into his social accounts.

These are just a few of the many new cool features in Hubspot 3. For more about this new release, visit the Hubspot website.

2) Marketing Math – Calculating Visits to Leads to Sales

We all would like to formulaically know how many visitors to our website it will take to convert the right number of leads to generate the revenue our business needs. Up to now, that has been difficult, but with HubSpot’s automated and highly analytical inbound marketing tools, it gets a lot easier.

Mike Volpe, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of HubSpot, shared his process for doing just this, using an example revenue goal, sales data, and analytics from his HubSpot marketing tools. By knowing his average revenue per customer, and historical data on his lead-to-customer and visitor-to-lead conversion rates from HubSpot, he gladly signed his marketing team up to do their part to support sales.

Look for another post to come that goes into much greater detail about this example, including formulas and real numbers. In the end, his marketing team needed tens of thousands of leads to generate less than one hundred more customers for sales – and the key to marketing doing this job is a continuous flow of new content, distributed across marketing channels. To read more about this and whet your appetite, check out our new Inbound Marketing white paper.

3) Content is Still King.

We’ve said it in blog posts, we’ve said it books, and we’ve said it in probably every client meeting over the last five years:

Content. Is. King.

According to everything we learned at Inbound 2012, content is still king. But, marketing best practices have to adapt, because as Gary Vaynerchuk said (with much more *colorful words), “As marketers, we take every good idea, every great new technology, practice, and tactic, and we ruin it. We use it and we squeeze the life out of it until no one likes it anymore.”

Drastic statement? Think about traditional mail. Surely our grandparents were excited to get mail. Are you excited? Probably not, because it’s full of junk and ads. Marketers ruined it. We use a spam blocker to filter our marketing emails and a DVR to skip commercials. Mass-produced, generic content has been squeezed pretty hard, but content is still important.

So how is content evolving? With context. Content is still king, but it needs to be in the right context for the audience. Marketers have to understand what their customers and potential customers want, what their interests are, and provide content that will appeal to those customers best in order to succeed.

4) Try again.

The slide above is from Rand Fishkin’s, CEO of SEO software company SEOmoz, keynote speech on SEO tactics. In this new age of inbound marketing, we feel a sense of duty to constantly pump out content and make it go “viral” – to reach new audiences by blogging and sharing via social media.

Rand’s example of his guide, “SEO: The Free Beginner’s Guide From SEOmoz” was a great case study of how he launched and re-launched this guide. On the first try, it did not generate much traffic nor did it capture the top spot on Google’s results page. He then revised and re-launched it two, three, and even four times to finally earn the top ranking spot on Google, which now effectively drives traffic back to his website.

The lesson here is that you can launch a revised white paper year over year at the same URL. With each new version, Google will see the new signals accruing at this URL and will increase its ranking in the search engine results. Also, don’t be afraid to blog about the updated version, and post it on social media multiple times. If your first attempt failed, no one will care if you revise and repost it…because no one saw it to begin with.