Content Marketing, Engineered Podcast | TREW Marketing

 Targeting engineers and technical buyers? We walk through the ways your ideal audience is researching solutions, making purchasing decisions, and spending time online. The State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report is in its 7th year! GlobalSpec and TREW Marketing have teamed up all these years to understand the behavior and strategy of the technical buyer and engineer. What are their research habits? What are their channel preferences? How are they spending their time online outside of work? On this week's episode, I'm joined with CJ Haight, Content Marketing Manager at Global Spec to go over some of the findings from our annual report. We discuss some of the most popular topics such as artificial intelligence (AI) and how technical buyers are using and feeling about AI tools. We also discuss topics that industrial marketers what to know about their ideal buyers:What social platform do technical buyers value most for work?How many trade shows will technical buyers attend this year?How many newsletters are they willing to subscribe to?Which types of content do they value most?Which types of content are they willing to fill out a form for?How much time do engineers spend researching a solution before reaching out to a sales person?Where do engineers routinely seek out information for a work related purchase?In this episode we go deep into the topics above and break down preferences and behavior by age and geography. Does an engineer in Europe use LinkedIn as much as an engineer in North America? What social platform do Engineers aged 66+ use the most for work? What about for engineers younger than 30?Watch or list to this episode fore a great breakdown of the report or download the full research report here. ResourcesConnect with CJ on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInLearn more about GlobalSpecRelated Research: 2024 State of Marketing to EngineersRelated Content: Q&A form the 2024 State of Marketing to Engineers WebinarConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand.

 Matthew Olson of Signalfire shares how to boost organic search through Google Business Profiles and how to make visual branding and brand identity a priority. Matthew Olson is the President of Signalfire, a creative marketing agency based in Wisconsin. Signalfire was a brand sponsor of 2024 Industrial Marketing Summit and after meeting him and his team at the event we knew we had to have him on the podcast. Signalfire started in 2006 and has a unique mix of clients. Today Matthew and his team are focused on helping clients in the industrial manufacturing and tourism industries. While these two industries may not appear to have a lot in common, Matthew shared the key strategies that are successful in both and what industrial marketers can learn from B2C marketing strategies.This episode of Content Marketing, Engineered covers the importance for industrial companies to optimize their Google Business Profiles, including adding geographic locations and soliciting authentic customer reviews. Matthew goes into detail about the hidden SEO benefits of Google Reviews.Matthew and I talk about the future of SEO and Google Search as well as alternative avenues to bring in audiences like Google Ads and even TV ad placement. Another great conversation topic is the importance of visual branding and creative design - something stakeholders don't often see ROI in. Matthew shares his perspective on this and teaches us how to get buy-in from executives by sharing the benefits of great creative. ResourcesConnect with Matthew on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInRelated Research: 2024 State of Marketing to EngineersConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand. 

Meaghan Ziemba shares how manufacturers can attract young talent and how to use marketing to manage their brand to sustain success for years to come.Mavens of Manufacturing were a Media Sponsor for this year's Industrial Marketing Summit. Behind the brand is the very talented and champion for Manufacturing - Meaghan Ziemba. Meaghan is the owner of Z-Ink Solutions, a technical copywriting and editing service. On this episode, Meaghan and I discuss the skill development and hiring issues the manufacturing industry is facing, what benefit marketing has to correct some branding issues in the industry, and the important role of the technical writer.We also discuss the upcoming Manufacturing Ally Rally, taking place June 20th in Cleveland, Ohio. This full day event will host panels from experts across disciplines in manufacturing to help unite manufacturers as allies to their communities.ResourcesConnect with Meaghan on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInLearn more about Z-Ink SolutionsLearn more about Mavens of ManufacturingRelated Episode: How to Turn the Knowledge of Your SMEs into Exceptional ContentRelated Content: How to Write a Technical White Paper for EngineersConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand. 

 After a whirlwind few days in Austin, Texas at the Industrial Marketing Summit, Kasey Tyring and Wendy Covey share their highlights of the event. Wow! If you didn't attend the 2024 Industrial Marketing Summit, you missed out on one of the most special, engaging, and valuable industrial marketing events of the year - and it's not just us saying that! A quick look at the #IMSummit tag on LinkedIn shows just how impactful this conference was to industrial marketers. In this episode of Content Marketing, Engineered, I talk with Kasey Tyring, Senior Inbound Marketing Specialist at TREW Marketing. Kasey played a large role in organizing the conference but also got to attend many of the sessions and mingle with attendees. We discuss what went down at the conference, from the keynote, to the back-to-back sessions, and the stacked line-up of panels. We cover our key takeaways from AI sessions, branding and messaging sessions, and more. Of course, one of the biggest highlights of the Industrial Marketing Summit was the genuine networking and connection building everyone experienced - all wrapped together by a really REALLY fun time we won't soon forget. Catch the recap of the 2024 Industrial Marketing Summit!ResourcesConnect with Kasey on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInLearn more about the Industrial Marketing SummitConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand. 

 Patrick Hopper joins me to talk about the many ways marketers can partner with industry publications to grow awareness, reach new audiences and build leads. Patrick Hopper is the Publisher and President of OpenSystems Media which publishes well-known industry publications such as Embedded Computing Design and Military Embedded Systems.  As the president, Patrick straddles both sides of the operation, working on the content side and client/advertising side. I've worked with Patrick for over a decade in various capacities and I invited him to join me on the podcast to share all the different ways marketers can utilize technical industry publications they might not know about including some free avenues.Patrick and I spoke about trade show strategies with their upcoming trade shows Embedded World 2024 in Europe and Embedded World North America - coming to Austin, Texas this October. Specifically how to stand out in a sea of thousands of vendors. We also dove into the FREE ways small businesses can utilize the reach of OpenSystems Media properties. Most notably, marketers can submit content for free, whether it's just one article or several in a series, this content is then distributed across daily and weekly newsletter and LinkedIn. Marketers can get connected to their content team through their submissions page. Patrick encourages everyone to use this free resource.Listen to the full episode on how to utilize technical publishing using:WebinarsTradeshowsNewslettersBlog Articles/SeriesPodcastsLinkedInFor a true, integrated marketing campaign, marketers know they need to use many different channels to get their message across, working with an established, trusted media brand is an effective strategy.ResourcesConnect with Chris on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInLearn more about OpenSystems MediaRegister for the Industrial Marketing SummitConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand.

 Building a strong personal brand can be a game changer for salespeople in technical companies. A strong personal brand establishes you as authoritative and credible and helps you stay top-of-mind with your key audience. I invited Chris Luecke, Founder and Podcast Host of Manufacturing Happy Hour on the podcast to share how he built his personal brand, how it benefited him as a salesperson, and how to get started.Chris was generous enough to share how he got started building his personal brand. It all started when he needed to reach a new audience of technical buyers in his role as an account manager selling industrial automation solutions and software. Chris needed a way to reach a new audience, including millennials who were starting to be promoted into decision making roles. He wanted to share his solutions in a simple, casual way like you would if you were out having a beer someone. The venture grew from campy videos he would store on YouTube and include in his personalized sales newsletter to popular LinkedIn videos that grew his reach and personal brand exponentially. In this episode we discuss the challenges B2B brands have with utilizing the personal brands of employees within the company including less control of brand standards and messaging, and use of standard marketing materials. Ultimately their is a strategy that includes merging company and personal brands together so everyone wins.We also discuss the fear and workarounds of getting in front of a camera and growing your audience if you're just starting out. ResourcesConnect with Chris on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInListen to Manufacturing Happy Hour Related Episode: How Industrial Marketers Approach Influencers, Storytelling, and Personal BrandsRelated Article: 5 Actionable Ways to Position Yourself as a Thought LeaderRegister for the Industrial Marketing Summit Connect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand.

 So much has changed in the marketing landscape over the last 12 months. Erin Moore and Kara Moon share how your 2024 marketing scorecards should be adjusted to reflect those changes.  There have been so many industry changes in marketing over the last 12 months from how users are searching, what platforms their using, and how the channels themselves are serving up content. As we grapple with all these changes and its effect on organic traffic, it's important make adjustments to your marketing analytics, whether you keep a weekly scorecard, monthly spreadsheet for stakeholders, and so on.I sat down with TREW Crewers Erin Moore, Account Director, and Kara Moon, Senior Inbound Marketing Specialist, to talk about how they've updated their tracking and marketing benchmarks for 2024, why those changes were necessary, and best practices for marketing analytics.We discuss the continued need for differentiated and targeted channel strategy and what tracking for each channel looks like including YouTube, LinkedIn, events, PR, Google advertising, and industry advertising. We also talk about where to get your marketing data: GA4, HubSpot, or each channel individually.For many marketers, especially those wearing multiple hats in a small or one-person department, it can be tempting to blow off metrics but it's one of the most important marketing tasks. You need to be able to measure and track what you're spending time and money on, as well as make effective behavior changes using those metrics.ResourcesConnect with Erin on LinkedInConnect with Kara on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInRelated Episode: 2023 Marketing Wrapped - AI, Search, Social, and Strategy for 2024Related Episode: Optimizing for LLMs, and Google's SGE with Dale BertrandRelated Episode: How to Increase Organic Traffic and Improve Domain Authority with a Content AuditLearn more about Looker StudioRegister for the Industrial Marketing SummitConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand. 

January is the perfect time to audit your marketing content - and it's not just a housekeeping task! Jennifer Dawkins and Kara Moon explain how a content audit can increase organic traffic and improve domain authority. A content audit is a great exercise to complete in January when you're preparing and organizing your marketing plan for the year. A content audit gets you organized and can help you align and update your messaging. I spoke with two TREW Crew members, Jennifer Dawkins, Vice President of Account Services, and Kara Moon, Senior Inbound Marketing Specialist, on the podcast who shared how they execute successful content auditing projects for our clients. First, we talk about the reasons why you should complete a content audit, including updating outdated or irrelevant content, and ensuring all content on your site reflects your current products and services. We spoke about how a content audit can uncover the common issue of having too much or not enough content for each stage of the buyer's journey. Maybe you have too much content for the lead nurturing stage, but not enough lead generation content. You may also find that a high-traffic piece of content is not relevant or bring in the wrong type of user.In this episode, you will learn:What data you need for a content auditHow to analyze that dataWhat qualitative analysis you need to completeHow to determine what content to keep, combine, or killhow often you should be auditing your contentThe benefits of a content auditResourcesConnect with Jennifer on LinkedInConnect with Kara on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInRelated Episode: Lasso Your Content ChaosRelated Guide: An Engineer's Guide to B2B Content MarketingRegister for the Industrial Marketing SummitConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand. 

We've all heard of Spotify Wrapped, so this year we thought it would be fun to create Industrial Marketing Wrapped! Lee Chapman and I discuss the many changes to marketing in 2023 and what we and our clients are focusing on in 2024.In 2023, TREW Marketing celebrated its 15th anniversary! While we've seen tons of changes in industrial marketing over the years, 2023 seems to be unique in its changes due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the need to update many channel strategies. In this episode Lee Chapman, TREW's President and I discuss the biggest changes and lessons learned from 2023 and how we will approach industrial marketing in 2024.We start off the episode with the year's biggest topic, AI. We, like many marketers out there, spent many hours this year researching and testing different AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, Writer, Jasper, and all the built-in features of our favorite tools like HubSpot and Moz. Also with the rise of AI came its ripple effects across search behavior, how users consume data, and in turn how marketers should approach different channel strategies. As AI, LLMs and Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) start to take away opportunities for traffic to our own websites, marketers need to focus on their email strategy (newsflash, the trick is NOT to spam your database) and their social strategy. We've seen an uptick in engagement on LinkedIn as well as really interesting ways marketers are using LinkedIn whether that's the carousel posts, informal "letter" style posts or adding links in comments instead of directly in the posts.Another channel or medium to focus on in 2024 is YouTube and video in general. Our research shows YouTube is a top channel for engineers and technical buyers of all ages and experience levels. YouTube is a great place to build out your thought leadership, subject matter experts, and brand authority,In this episode we also touched on Moz's new Brand Authority measurement tool and our 2023 European and global research as well as the upcoming Industrial Marketing Summit. 2024 is shaping up to be a major year of growth for marketers to enhance their skill set and for industrial brands to reach new audiences on new channels.While planning your new year remember: successful marketers will be focusing on building a strong brand and a differentiated channel strategy and they will remain agile, curious, and creative.ResourcesConnect with Lee on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInRegister for the Industrial Marketing SummitRelated Episode: Optimizing for LLMs and Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) with Dale BertrandConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand.

The TREW Team is excited to have Dale Bertrand, CEO of Fire & Spark back on the podcast to discuss the changing nature of search marketing and how to optimize for the future of LLMs and Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE).Dale Bertrand is the CEO and Founder of Fire&Spark, an SEO agency. Dale is also a popular speaker, sharing his expertise at conferences like INBOUND and Content Marketing World. We invited Dale to share what he's learned in 2023 - specifically in regards to the changing nature of search marketing  and how marketers should update their strategies to optimize for Large Language Models (LLMs) and Google's future Search Generative Experience (SGE).Dale and I discussed how AI has had major implications on how search engines operate and how AI has changed user search behavior. For marketers, we've moved well-beyond "gaming the system" for SEO and instead should broaden SEO strategy to focus on optimizing for each channel (LLMs, SGE, bots, YouTube, etc.) and focusing on being seen as a trusted thought leader in the eyes of Google.Dale theorized that Google is going to determine which author has the expertise to write about a topic and who Google trusts to provide the answers users are looking for. We discussed this is the perfect time to develop internal Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and leverage them for the signals Google is looking for.ResourcesConnect with Dale on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInRegister for the Industrial Marketing SummitRelated Episode: Taking a Conversion-Focused Approach to SEO with Dale Bertrand Connect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand.