Smart Marketing Blog

How Do Engineers Search For Content Online?

Oftentimes, marketers targeting technical audiences grapple with how to best implement online and content marketing to attract skeptical engineers, scientists and technology professionals. To shed light on this, we recently partnered with ENGINEERING.com for a survey, Smart Marketing for EngineersTM: Content and Online Marketing. The survey of 580 engineering professionals reveals insightful findings about engineers’ preferences for online content marketing and channels such as the types of content engineers most value and trust, and where they look for that content online.

6 Steps to Strategic LinkedIn Advertising

If you’ve visited LinkedIn in the last month, you’re far from alone. More than 260 million people around the world visit the social platform at least monthly, and engineers in particular find LinkedIn to be a valuable source of information. TREW’s 2019 research shows 61 percent of engineers globally believe LinkedIn to be somewhat or very valuable when seeking information on the latest engineering technologies, industry trends and products or services.

Are News Releases Dead?

In short, no. News Releases are still very much alive and well. While anyone can make a “news” section on their website and include blog post-style announcements, today we will talk about official, wired news releases, paid to be published online via a newswire at a certain time.  

Social Media for Engineers: Best Practices

Social media is an easy and strategic method to promoting your content from blog posts to case studies.  However, to successfully create a social buzz, you must center social media to your target audience.  Catering social media posts to engineers is much different than promoting content targeted towards millennials.  This post will discuss the best practices for reaching engineers through social media and what platforms are most effective.

3 Inbound Marketing Proof Points

You may be tired of hearing us preach the importance of inbound marketing when it comes to reaching B2B technical audiences. Or maybe you think developing content and maintaining a website is too much work. Whether you doubt the inbound marketing methodology or believe it's too time-consuming to implement, here are some data points that may serve as a catalyst to spark your interest in implementing an inbound marketing approach for your business. 

Want to Market Against Your Competitors? Proceed Carefully

Remember when you were young, and there was that kid who spent more time dissing you or others than making something of themselves? Maybe you wanted to let them have it, but you knew (or maybe your parents gave you some advice) that it was best to take the high road and focus on your strengths and success. There is some wisdom in this childhood scenario for grownups running businesses, product lines, and service areas, who are competing for awareness, customers, and marketshare. In every market, every town, every application space, you are going to face competition. And that's a good thing - for companies and consumers. But maybe you are considering making a move to directly market against your competitor. Is this a good idea? The answer is, maybe, but be careful. Let's look at a a recent example to help illustrate some upsides and downsides for consideration: Microsoft's recent ad campaign against Google in the mainstream business press. Here is one of their ads: Microsoft ad, Text to the right

Make Content King of Your Marketing Strategy

Smart, well-developed content is key when coming up with your company’s marketing strategy, but what qualifies as quality content? Quality content is targeted towards your key personas, has relevant themes, and engages your target audiences through a consistent cadence of content development.

Make Sure Your Ad Passes the 2-Second Test

The shift in marketing dollars to online advertising has changed advertising, but there is still a place for traditional print advertising. But it has to pass the 2-second test - the time a user will give to your ad before scrolling past it. 

Gating Your Content: The Great Debate

Gating content like white papers, ebooks, and webinars behind forms is now so common and widespread among inbound B2B content marketing programs, that it’s difficult to find a modern website that doesn’t do it. And here's why: it’s a proven tactic for generating new contacts and qualified leads, which are the top content marketing priorities for any growing business. 

A Blog About Blogging: Four Tips to Reach Blog Success

Back in 2004, I was fresh out of college and working at my first job as a PR writer. I’d kept in touch with one of my favorite professors, who was the editor of a news magazine, and one day he emailed to ask if I would write a blog for his magazine. Blogs were relatively new back then, and while I’d seen a few of them in my college days, they were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are now. My former professor was interested in trying out this format as a way to get some different voices and opinions on his site without just having people write a bunch of formal op-eds.