eCommerce is changing how industrial brands serve customers, support sales teams, and prepare for AI. In this episode, Jason Greenwood shares what successful digital transformation looks like for manufacturers and distributors.

Jason explains that B2B eCommerce extends beyond an online checkout. B2B buyers want convenient access to inventory, pricing, order status, technical information, and quote requests. Even customers who purchase through other channels can benefit from digital tools that simplify everyday interactions.

Successful adoption starts inside the business. Jason emphasizes aligning sales commissions across digital and traditional channels so representatives have a reason to encourage customers to use new tools. Automating administrative tasks gives experienced salespeople more time to build relationships and provide consultative support. Leadership commitment and employee buy-in are equally critical.

The conversation also explores how conversational AI can help companies serve buyers through familiar channels, including email, WhatsApp, Slack, and Teams. Rather than requiring every customer to use a portal, businesses can bring digital capabilities into the workflows customers already prefer.

However, Jason cautions against skipping foundational work to pursue AI. Complete, accurate product and customer data underpin effective eCommerce, automation, and AI applications. He also warns that hiding entire product catalogs behind login screens can limit visibility in search engines and AI research tools.

For marketers, digital improvements create opportunities to connect brand promises with the customer experience. Something as straightforward as automated shipping updates can solve a significant operational problem and strengthen customer loyalty.

Jason closes with a preview of his Industrial Marketing Summit session on eCommerce in complex and regulated industries. His message throughout the episode is practical: understand how customers want to buy, remove friction, and build the digital foundation that helps your business consistently deliver on its promises.

Early bird tickets for the Industrial Marketing Summit are available now through October 16, 2026. Get your tickets today!

Resources

• Connect with Jason on LinkedIn
• Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Greenwood Consulting
• Register for the Industrial Marketing Summit
  
  
• Apply for the Industrial Marketing Awards

The Industrial Marketing Summit is returning to Austin for its fourth year! IMS 2027 is shaping up to bring even more depth, practical education, and connection to the industrial marketing community. In this episode, summit co-hosts Wendy Covey and Joe Sullivan preview what attendees can expect.

The 2027 Industrial Marketing Summit will take place in Austin, Texas on February 23 -25. Co-hosted by TREW Marketing and Gorilla 76, this event is in it's fourth year. Wendy Covey and Joe Sullivan reflect on how IMS has evolved over the past three years, especially the sense of community that has formed among marketers working inside manufacturing, engineering, and other technical organizations.

The 2027 program will balance foundational marketing strategies with the technologies reshaping the profession today. Sessions will explore topics including messaging, product launches, omnichannel content, trade shows, marketing measurement, AI search, and practical ways marketers can use AI within their organizations.

Attendees can also go deeper through three hands-on workshops focused on AI context engineering, go-to-market strategy, and AI-powered search. The episode also introduces 2027 keynote speaker John Graff, former longtime CMO of National Instruments and current business strategy and AI instructor at the Texas McCombs School of Business.

Another major addition for 2027 is the new Industrial Marketing Awards, created to recognize standout campaigns, product launches, content programs, events, innovation, and individual marketers across the industry.

Resources

• Connect with Joe on LinkedIn
• Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn
• Register for the Industrial Marketing Summit
• Apply for the Industrial Marketing Awards

Trade shows can be one of the biggest investments in an industrial marketing budget, requiring significant time, money and resources. So how can marketers make sure that investment pays off? This week, we discuss everything from the 18-month planning cycle, to prepping your sales team, to accurately following up and reporting on quality leads.

In this episode, Wendy Covey is joined by TREW Marketing’s Kara Koch and Vicki Klanang Pfister to break down how industrial marketers can take a more strategic approach to 2026 and 2027 trade shows, from deciding which events deserve a spot on the calendar to creating an experience that attracts the right people.

The conversation starts with strategy. Rather than attending an event simply because the company has always been there, marketers should consider business goals, target audiences, past performance and the desired outcome of each show. Those factors should also determine the level of participation, whether that means exhibiting, speaking, sponsoring or simply walking the show.

They also discuss why successful trade show planning starts earlier than many marketers realize. Major events may require commitments 12 to 18 months in advance, while detailed booth, messaging and promotional planning should begin months before the show.

But logistics are only part of the equation. Kara and Vicki share ways to build pre-show campaigns, align marketing and sales, establish clear lead qualification criteria, tailor booth messaging to the event audience and give attendees a compelling reason to stop by. They also cover common mistakes, from scanning every badge to staffing booths with disengaged employees.

Whether you're planning one major trade show or an entire event calendar, this episode covers all the bases to a successful industrial B2B tradeshow strategy.

Resources

• Connect with Vicki on LinkedIn
• Connect with Kara on LinkedIn
• Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn
• Learn more about TREW's Marketing Strategy Service
• Explore TREW's Case Studies
• Register for the Industrial Marketing Summit
• Download the 2026 State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report

Quarterly marketing reviews are more than a chance to report results. They're an opportunity to align leadership, evaluate what's working, identify what needs to change, and prioritize the initiatives that will drive the next quarter forward. TREW Marketing President Jennifer Dawkins shares her framework for running productive quarterly marketing reviews that keep teams focused on business goals, spark meaningful discussions, and ensure future decisions are backed by data.

In this episode, TREW Marketing President Jennifer Dawkins shares her framework for running productive quarterly reviews. She explains that effective quarterly reviews should begin by revisiting the marketing goals established during planning. Rather than diving straight into dashboards, she recommends reminding stakeholders of the objectives everyone agreed upon and highlighting the major initiatives executed during the quarter. From there, marketers can review high-level health metrics before taking a deeper look at significant campaign performance, unexpected trends, and lessons learned.

One of the episode's key takeaways is that marketers don't need to report every metric they track. While detailed data helps marketing teams optimize their work, leadership is primarily interested in metrics that influence business decisions. Jennifer encourages marketers to tailor reporting to their audience by focusing on business outcomes, meaningful anomalies, and initiatives tied directly to strategic goals. The result is a more collaborative discussion that leads to informed decisions instead of simply reviewing numbers.

The conversation also explores several trends TREW has observed across industrial marketing clients. While organic website traffic continues to decline, AI referral traffic is steadily increasing. More importantly, the visitors who do arrive are proving to be higher quality, spending more time on websites and converting at higher rates.

Whether you're reporting to executives or leading your own marketing team, it's critical to define success before campaigns begin, measure what matters most, and use quarterly reviews as an opportunity to refine your strategy.

Resources

• Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn
• Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn
• Learn more about TREW's Marketing Strategy Service
• Explore TREW's Case Studies
• Register for the Industrial Marketing Summit
• Download the 2026 State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report

Breaking into a technical industry can feel intimidating for marketers, especially when you're surrounded by engineers, product experts, and complex technologies. But you don't need to become an engineer to become an effective industrial marketer. In this episode, you'll learn practical strategies for building confidence, creating stronger content, and connecting with technical audiences. \

In this episode, Natae, Content and Brand Marketing Manager at Novaspect, shares how she immerses herself in new industries and markets by interviewing customers and subject matter experts, joining industry organizations, reading trade publications, and learning the language her audience uses. She explained her goal isn't to know every technical detail. It's to understand why customers care and what challenges they're trying to solve.

The conversation also explores the growing importance of authentic, human-centered content. While product specifications and technical capabilities still matter, the people behind the brand often create the strongest performance across social media platforms. From showcasing company culture to capturing unscripted interviews with sales engineers at trade shows, Natae has found that genuine content consistently outperforms overly polished marketing.

The episode also highlights why content creation shouldn't be limited to the marketing department. Encouraging leaders, salespeople, HR professionals, and technical experts to share their knowledge helps build trust, supports recruiting, and extends a company's reach. Marketing's role becomes one of enabling, amplifying, and repurposing that expertise across channels.

Whether you're new to industrial marketing or looking for fresh ways to strengthen your strategy, this episode offers practical advice for building credibility, creating better content, and connecting with technical audiences in a meaningful way.

Resources

• Connect with Natae on LinkedIn
• 
  
• Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn
• 
  
• Learn more about Novaspect
• 
  
• Download the 2026 State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report
  
  
• Related Episode: AI Visibility: The Future of Search Optimization

If your content strategy still revolves around publishing endless "what is" and "how to" articles, it's time to update your strategy. Learn why taking a clear point of view, investing in original research, and building credibility beyond your own website are becoming key differentiators in the age of AI search.

In this episode, Sooraj Shah, Content Marketing Lead at Aikido Security, shares why thought leadership and PR are becoming more valuable than ever and how companies can create content that both audiences and AI trust.

Drawing on his background as a technology journalist, Sooraj explains why Aikido has shifted away from producing generic "what is" and "how to" articles in favor of opinion-driven content backed by evidence. Rather than publishing the same advice as their competitors, the team focuses on taking clear positions, sharing original perspectives, and supporting those viewpoints with research and real-world expertise.

The conversation also explores how AI search is changing content strategy. While SEO remains an important foundation, Sooraj believes brands need to think beyond rankings and create content that offers unique insights, original data, and credible perspectives that large language models are more likely to surface. He also shares why third-party media coverage, annual research reports, and strong relationships with industry publications play an increasingly important role in building authority.

Finally, Wendy and Sooraj discuss a challenge many marketers face today: measuring the impact of thought leadership. Unlike traditional SEO content, success isn't defined by rankings alone. Instead, marketers should look for signals such as media citations, industry engagement, social sharing, and whether their ideas are influencing conversations within their market.

Resources

• Connect with Sooraj on LinkedIn
• Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn
• Download the 2026 State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report
  
  
• Related Episode: AI Visibility: The Future of Search Optimization

AI search is changing how buyers discover and evaluate vendors, yet many industrial companies have no idea whether they're being cited in tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity. Over the past few months, we've conducted AI visibility audits for several clients to uncover exactly how often their brands appear in AI-generated responses, and why. The findings revealed clear patterns separating brands that are consistently recommended from those that are virtually invisible. In this week's episode, we share what we've learned and outline four practical strategies that can help increase your visibility, authority, and chances of being cited by top AI platforms.

In this episode, TREW Marketing's Kara Koch joined Wendy Covey to discuss the growing importance of AI visibility and the strategies industrial marketers can use to improve it. The conversation also explored the differences between SEO (Search Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). While traditional SEO remains foundational, marketers must now optimize content to become trusted sources for AI-generated answers.

To assess visibility, Kara recommends conducting AI visibility audits that evaluate brand mentions, citations, content structure, and competitor performance across AI platforms. She emphasized that many industrial companies possess deep expertise but fail to package that knowledge in ways AI systems can easily understand and cite.

When it comes to improving visibility, the most effective strategies include strengthening technical SEO fundamentals, creating problem-focused content, organizing content into topic clusters, earning third-party validation through PR and industry publications, and showcasing authentic thought leadership.

Resources

• Connect with Kara on LinkedIn
• Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn
• Download the 2026 State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report
  
  
• Related Episode: AI Visibility: The Future of Search Optimization
• Related Episode: Evolving Your Website Alongside AI and Shifting Buyer Expectations