When engineering marketers talk about their plans for 2014, one recurring theme is content. They are planning more blog posts, more webinars, more white papers and more video than ever before. There is a lot more willingness to allocate some budget to pay for distribution by sponsoring their content on editorial web sites.

On our tour of engineering marketers, Adrian and I are hearing different things about the number and quality of leads that our marketing customers want to generate. Some want a huge pool of relatively unqualified contacts. Others want just a few who are closer to a purchase decision.

Adrian and I got back last night from a tour of New England. At every stop, planning for 2014 is underway. In every case, these marketers know what they are looking for. They know the industries that their sales forces are targeting. They know the size of the companies that are most likely to buy their products. And they know what roles in those companies are the decision makers and the influencers.

ENGINEERING.com is investigating marketing automation software. We’re a small shop, so we ruled out the big guns like Marketo and Eloqua right away. If the budget didn’t kill us, the implementation would. Our wish list: intuitive toolset for creating landing pages, email creation tools with delivery and reporting, lead management including nurturing and scoring, social media campaign management.

If you’ve never watched the expert interviews on BeetTV, a site that covers video advertising, it’s worth a visit. They recently aired an interesting interview with Amir Kassaei, Chief Creative Officer at the giant agency DDB. Amir points out that there is now endless data. He says, that while analyzing data may give you insights into how your prospects behave, you still need great creative to engage your audience.

In the month of September, ENGINEERING.com delivered over a dozen sponsored stories. These were written at our clients’ request by members of ENGINEERING.com’s regular editorial team. (In every case the author disclosed that the post was sponsored.)

It’s no secret that digital media is replacing print. In 2013 US adults spent 309 minutes online, while the time spent reading magazines has dropped off a cliff. The average U.S. adult now spends only 14 minutes a day reading magazines. Print advertising costs 15X more for a print impression than online; marketers should consider dedicating more budget to digital.