Here, then, are seven digital trends worth paying attention to.

1. Online events

According to a recent GlobalSpec Marketing Trends Survey, 47 percent of industrial companies are increasing their spending on online events. Online events, sometimes called virtual events or online tradeshows, are a trend made possible by high bandwidth availability and emerging technologies that allow media companies to produce and host highly-interactive experiences. Online events targeted to your specific audience offer you an excellent opportunity to showcase your product line, build your brand reputation, provide content to your audience, and connect with prospects and customers. What’s more, you can do it all from the comfort and convenience of your desktop — as can your audience.

2. Video

Video is experiencing a significant growth spurt — in fact, a high percentage of companies are increasing their spending on video, and it’s easy to see why. In the age of YouTube, videos are cheap to produce; homemade production quality is not only acceptable, but cool. Also working in video’s favor is the fact that many people like to watch, not read. Looking for some good ideas for video? Try brief interviews with executives, conversations among product managers, product demonstrations, or on-site visits to customers using your products.

3. Social Media

Although many companies have begun implementing social media, make sure you understand the specific reasons and goals for your own social media strategy. For example, the top reasons companies use social media are for branding and lead generation purposes, yet only 3 percent of companies say social media is one of their top three sources for leads. At this point in the maturation of the social media market, increasing brand awareness and building relationships are the most effectively achieved outcomes. LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform the industrial industry, for example, followed by Facebook and then Twitter.

4. Digital Content

A few years ago, everyone was saying, “Content is king.” Well, in many ways, content still is king — digital content — as attested to by the huge growth of e-readers, the iPad and other devices for consuming digital content. And it’s not just web pages. There are videos, webinars, downloadable PDFs, e-books, interactive tools and more. Your customers and prospects are hungry for content to help them do their jobs and make better purchasing decisions. Your job is to create that content and get it to them in digital format.

5. Internet Banner Advertising

Internet banner advertising has become a strong value proposition for marketers because of the availability of highly-targeted advertising networks that can place your ads on specific sites frequented by professionals in your industry. Online advertising networks also offer the convenience of reaching many sites with a single buy, helping you save time and make the most effective use of your budget. Banner ads are highly visual; they offer great branding opportunities and can drive qualified, targeted traffic to your website.

6. Testing and Analytics

One big advantage of digital media is that it is easy to test and measure. A/B testing is becoming a popular way to optimize email campaigns, web pages and other online media. A/B testing basically means you split your list in two and send each list a slightly different version of what you’re testing, changing only one thing at a time and measuring what performs better. In addition, every company should be performing some type of website analytics, such as measuring traffic, page popularity and visitor behavior, to help make informed decisions about optimizing its site.

7. Online Marketing Budgets

The top eight channels for increased marketing spend in 2011 are all online — from social media and SEO to internet banner advertising networks and online newsletter sponsorships and more. In addition, according to GlobalSpec’s 2011 Industrial Marketing Trends Survey, companies spend an average of 38 percent of their marketing budget online and 50 percent report that online marketing is a larger percentage of their overall marketing budget this year than last year. Online marketing should continue to take a bigger slice of the marketing budget in subsequent years, as more marketers experience the ROI associated with online programs and discover they can connect better with customers and prospects online.

This data suggests you need a library of brochures, specification sheets, Webinars, e-newsletters, white papers, application notes and more to help make your case. But the content shouldn’t be sales-oriented; it should be educational, helping prospective buyers do their jobs better. Offering good content to your prospects helps you gain an advantage over competitors.

To provide useful content, you need a strategy for developing and publishing content that your potential customers will consume with great enthusiasm — to their benefit in terms of making informed purchase decisions, and to your benefit in terms of earning new sales.

Make sure someone is in charge of developing and managing content in your company, then follow these five steps to develop a strong content strategy.

1. Analyze Your Audience

There are generally three types of decision makers involved in the buying process, and you should have content to meet each of their needs:

• The economic buyer is concerned about return on investment of the products and services their company purchases
• The analytical buyer wants to know if the product under consideration can solve the problem at hand
• The technical buyer is interested in how well the product works or fits within his or her technical environment

2. Conduct an Audit of Existing Content

The good news is that you already have content. Compile and organize information such as Web pages, brochures, presentations, data sheets and videos in one place. Map your content to the types of buyers you have: economic, analytical, technical. Conduct a gap analysis to determine what’s missing from your existing library. Add in new products/initiatives coming to market in the next year. You’ll likely end up with a long list of content needs. Don’t despair.

3. Prioritize Needs and Develop New Content

You know the needs of your audience, and you know what materials you have — and what you don’t. Now decide what your most pressing content needs are and put together a development schedule. This is important to prioritize since you won’t be able to do everything at once.

Maybe you’re short on information aimed at economic buyers. If so, create an ROI calculator. Maybe analytical buyers don’t understand your novel approach to problem solving. That might call for a white paper. You need more visibility and authority in the market: start a blog.

Also, consider re-purposing existing content or creating something new for use in multiple media: a white paper that becomes a Webinar that becomes a video, for example. Or a technical article repurposed for a conference presentation that also morphs into a series of blog entries.

You’re likely to need additional resources, either company contributors or outside writers. Line them up and plug them into your content schedule.

4. Publish new information
The vast majority of industrial buyers are looking for online knowledge, and that’s where you should focus your publishing efforts. Get everything up on your Web site. Publish articles and videos on targeted sites such as GlobalSpec. Promote your Webinars and white papers through advertisements in industry-focused e-newsletters. Give presentations at online events.

Publishing content on sites your audience visits is reason enough to focus on online channels; but there is another advantage: you can measure and track your success. Page views, click-throughs, downloads, time spent online, and video viewings all can be measured. You can see what content is most popular (i.e. relevant and useful to your audience)—and what content is a dud.

5. Update and Archive

Your audience has an almost insatiable appetite for useful information. That means you must continually develop fresh content and updating older information. This puts you back in the audit phase, where you catalog and keep track online materials.

Archive items that are no longer topical or relevant — don’t purge anything; you never know when you’ll need an old white paper or article. The important point here is to have a system to track the lifecycle of your content. Keep publishing fresh material while taking what’s old down from the shelves.

ADOTAS: Tell us a little about your business, what EdgeTech does and how you measure success with your marketing efforts? Targets? Specific goal outcomes?

MURRAY: EdgeTech moisture is a small manufacturer of humidity and dew point chill mirror hygrometers; we are one of three divisions owned by EdgeOne. Founded and design by NASA and MIT in 1967, chill mirror hygrometers have become known as the NIST transfer standard for all other humidity products. EdgeTech moisture, formerly EG&G, has been making chill mirror hygrometers for over 40 years and offers a wide variety of humidity solutions for most humidity applications.

Our marketing success is measured by profits and sales. We define target markets and design products through customer feedback for those markets and our goal is enter these new markets and gain market share.

Why is GlobalSpec a fit for those marketing objectives and targets?

We are a small manufacturing business operating in a very challenging time where budgets are tight and marketing dollars must produce results. Although unofficial, we consider Global Spec, EdgeTech’ s marketing team and has a proven track record of getting us market exposure and qualified sales leads resulting an increase in sales.

What objectives and goals did you specifically hope to apply to GlobalSpec?

Our objectives and goals in using Global spec is to get our product and name exposure, resulting an increase sales, an increase in market share and more web-site traffic.

How did you and GlobalSpec go about planning for the specifics of your marketing objectives and campaign?

EdgeTech and Global Spec teamed together putting together a 12-month news letter program aiming at target markets. Within this plan, we are able to get most of our product lines exposure to these markets.

Tell us about the experience and outcome of that initiative?

The results of the news letter program has been tremendous, we are receiving qualified sales leads, we getting product line exposure, we are getting names of the decision-makers and most important of all we are getting sales results.

Do you currently or have plans to do more?

We are always reviewing and tweaking our marketing plan as the year progresses and do plan to explore some of the new programs that GlobalSpec offers, one being the new virtual trade show.

ADOTAS: Tell us a little about your business, what Vulcan Spring does and how you measure success with your marketing efforts? Targets? Specific goal outcomes?

Bob Gustafson: We are a custom flat steel spring manufacturer. Our products include Constant Force Springs, Variable Force Springs, Power Springs and Pullboxes. We make the springs that push products forward on a shelf, trigger the use of a medical device and open solar panels on satellites in space, among many other applications. We have been in business since 1967.

Our goal is to be available online for engineers and designers who are searching for this type of niche product. Since our customer base is spread among many different industries we need to have marketing tools that casts a wide net on one hand, and can selectively target markets on the other.

Why is GlobalSpec a fit for those marketing objectives and targets?

GlobalSpec allows us to be found online when an engineer of designer is looking for a solution to a problem and knows that a spring would help. GlobalSpec is searched by many different industries and we see this in the results. They also have targeted newsletters that we have utilized for different industries, customizing our message.

One other part that we like is the ability to add products to our on-line profile to show the engineer the type of products that we offer. We can add updated information and new products at any time.

What objectives and goals did you specifically hope to apply to GlobalSpec?

Our goal is to reach as many engineers and designers as possible, hopefully in the early stages of design. This way, we can work with them to make the best possible product. We work to integrate the spring into the other components of the product and usually can add to the overall design.

How did you and GlobalSpec go about planning for the specifics of your marketing objectives and campaign?

We mainly set up our profile so that we can cover most industries and key words for search results. We then strategize to pinpoint various newsletters that will gain us attention.

Tell us about the experience and outcome of that initiative?

We receive leads on a weekly basis, sent directly to us. We can also go on and download custom reports at any time. Our results are magnified when we run the newsletters. We can increases of 400% when we run a newsletter.

Are you currently doing or plan to do more?

We are always looking at the newsletters to increase our visibility. We are also trying to work our way into the on-line tradeshows that are now available. That would be something we could do to gain exposure.

And with the economy in its current state, it’s more important than ever to keep the customers you have.
When we surveyed our user base of engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial marketers at the beginning of this year, 13% indicated that customer retention is their primary marketing goal in 2009, up from just 5% last year. This increase can be attributed to the fact that companies cannot afford to lose customers now, and many realize it is easier and more cost effective to retain current customers than it is to find new ones.

So how do you retain your customers and earn their loyalty? It’s like any successful relationship: If you want customers to be loyal to you, you must be loyal to them. For starters, you must have a product or service that delivers as advertised, but that’s just the minimum requirement, kind of like dressing appropriately and smiling on a first date.
Follow these strategies to keep your customers loyal to your company.

Provide Stellar Customer Service

Customer service is the key differentiator for companies that offer similar products and services. Customers have problems; they want them solved. Customers have questions; they want them answered. The winning company makes it easy for customers to speak with a service representative—a real person, not an interactive voice response system—who has the authority to resolve a customer’s issue and make them happy.

The problem with some companies is that they see customer service only as a cost center, which leads to constantly trying to cut customer service costs. Rather, customer service should be considered a customer retention initiative, or in the best of cases a profit center if your customer service team is trained at cross-selling and up-selling appropriate products and services to customers. A change in perspective can equal a change in service.

Make Your Web Site a Customer Self-Service Center

It’s more cost effective having people answer customer service telephone calls if your Web site is set up to answer most customer service questions and easy for customers find those answers. Your call volume will decrease, and customer needs will still be met.

Consider a customer-only area of your Web site that provides support information, refund and exchange policies, FAQs, interactive discussions and message boards, or click-to-chat functions. Plus be sure to have up-to-date and comprehensive product information available and special offers just for customers.

Use E-mail to Communicate with Customers

It is hard to foster customer loyalty if your customers forget about you. A great way to stay in touch is through e-mail. Establish a regular customer-only e-newsletter and send customers information that is relevant and helpful to them: white papers, technical articles, invitations to Webinars, and links to industry news stories.
While there’s nothing wrong with promoting new products to customers, your main objective in customer retention e-mail should be educational rather than promotional. If you help them do their job better, they’re more likely to come back to you when they have a need for products or services.

Pick Up the Phone

Begin an organized effort in your company to call customers at regular intervals, simply to see how they are doing or if they need anything. A courtesy call can go a long way towards establishing customer loyalty. Sales representatives for each account are ideal, but it doesn’t have to work that way in order to be successful. The caller should know how to route a call to the appropriate person in your organization if a customer needs help.

Establish Customer Friendly Policies

Have you ever been a customer of a company that retired a product without continuing to support it? Have you ever faced strict return or exchange policies? Poor warranty support? This is a good way to send customers fleeing to competitors.
An organization focused on customer retention and loyalty will always realize the consequences of any policies that are not customer friendly.

To foster a healthy long term relationship with customers, you must do much more than provide a good product or service. You must pay attention to your customer needs and meet them. There are always competitors ready to lure your customer away. And there are always customers who will switch given any slight, perceived or real. Following these steps above will help minimize the chances of this happening.

Who: Chris Chariton, Vice President of Marketing Services and Product Management for GlobalSpec, the leading specialized vertical search, information services and e-publishing company serving the engineering, technical and industrial communities.

What: Free One-Hour Webinar: How to Drive More Sales in Today’s Industrial Marketplace

When: Thursday,  May 14, 11:00 AM PST/2:00 PM EST

Where: Webinar Registration

So often the online advertising industry is creating campaigns with contests and promotions and interesting creatives, but are left out and unable to participate. It’s one of those catch 22′s that lead GlobalSpec to jump in and catch their attention by targeting what media buyers say they are interested in. “I think their promotion is brilliant because they want to reach the media professional using gifts that they care about, it’s very targeted and offers a way for them to grow relevant leads.” said Robert Regular, Publisher of Adotas.

The GlobalSpec contest can be found at: www.adotas.com/globalspec

The contest is targeted to media buyers and professionals and the lucky winner will nab a day at the spa or a shopping spree at the Apple Store (their choice).

“GlobalSpec is second-to-none in their industry,” Robert Regular, ADOTAS’ publisher said. “The company is a leader in vertical search with 4.2 million registered users and monthly traffic of about 3.8 million. We’re thrilled to help them launch their sweepstakes – may the best player win!”