Smart Marketing Blog

Let’s Chat: An Intro to Online Chat and Chatbots

Online chat is one of the fastest growing areas of web right now, with Business Insider experts predicting that in 2020, 80 percent of enterprises will use chatbots. TREW’s own research with IEEE GlobalSpec showed 17% of respondents considered chat one of the three most important features of a website, ahead of video content and regularly added new content.

10 Keys to Success as a Technical Marketing Manager

To be a successful technical marketing manager, you must understand how to apply marketing best practices in the context of a nuanced technical audience.  If you’ve hired a technical marketing manager, pass along this information to help your new staff member understand the breadth and depth of technical marketing. Or, if you’ve just been hired as a new technical marketing manager, congratulations! Here's a jumpstart to your job: research from hundreds of engineers that shows how they search for information and how they want to interact with marketing and sales. These 10 keys – which focus on brand, positioning, website plans, content marketing strategy, and awareness and loyalty campaigns – will strengthen the skills and knowledge you need to be a successful marketing manager in a technical, B2B company:

3 Reasons Why A SMB Doesn't Need a Custom Website

As the inbound marketing account manager at TREW Marketing, I work with a lot of engineering companies to strategize, build and grow their new websites. Any time a company comes to TREW for a website redesign, we start with strategy to thoroughly outline who the site is targeted to, the content that will best suit those audiences, and the general hierarchy and design of a site. We also talk through the web platform a site will be built on and whether the site will be templated or custom. Clients don’t always have a content management system preference, but the custom vs. templated question usually elicits a couple common responses. Below, I’ll cover the top reasons why clients think they need custom sites- and why they probably don’t.

The Importance of Content in the Digital World

In today’s digital world, creating content should be a top goal in order to increase more inbound traffic to your website and become a trusted advisor. Start by identifying a handful of employees who could provide quality blog content and then start out at two per month if you are new to blogging. To make sure to stay on top of the craft, block out an hour on your calendar each month to dedicate to writing your post. From there, move to bi-weekly posts and then weekly. Creating a steady content stream doesn’t happen overnight, but the more effort you put in toward it, the greater your return will be. Over time, your content will become better crafted and more educational, making your site the go-to place for relevant knowledge within your industry. Let’s dig into the top reasons content remains so important.

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.

How to Build a Topic Cluster

Topic clusters are now king when it comes to search engine optimization. Building out topic clusters is a new SEO strategy that focuses on fully covering a topic and building relationships between keywords.

5 Web Hero Headers that Capture Technical Buyers' Attention

Whether you’re meeting in-person at a trade show or a customer finds your company via Google search, first impressions are important. Companies were once judged based on their store fronts or conference rooms. Now, buyers are making judgments and gathering information about you based off of your website.

Stop Expecting Engineers to Write Marketing Content (and vice versa)

You likely have many subject matter experts and levels of marketing expertise floating around your marketing organization. For that reason, creating content often becomes everyone’s problem (read: no one’s problem). There are a lot of hallway conversations and a lot of big ideas, but very few actual words on paper. 

Microsites: Effective Marketing or Bad Idea?

This blog was updated and re-published July 2019. As Google’s search algorithm has evolved to emphasize trusted, well-established domains and unique content, the debate is heating up on the marketing value of microsites. Some experts believe that creating a microsite is never a good idea, diluting the brand and hurting coveted search results, while others think they still have a place in a targeted, strategic marketing campaign.

4 Crucial Elements to a Website Redesign

Your website serves many roles. It has the unique ability to serve as both an outbound and inbound marketing tool, as a way to communicate your brand image to your audiences, and as a response mechanism for prospects interested in learning more about your company, products and services. You can think of your website as a valuable, 24-hour-a-day employee in your marketing organization. It’s always on, always ready to communicate your brand value and always focused on generating leads.