Industrial Marketer
Industrial Marketer
An Industrial Marketing Feast of Inspiration
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Co-hosts Joey and Nels give thanks to advances in the industrial marketer sector, from clients embracing new mindsets and technologies to the evolving nature of trade shows and the industrial companies that have become agile and made the most of unexpected opportunities throughout the past two disruptive years.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the industrial Marketer Podcast your place for the tips, tech trends and tactics as this week. Thanks is for industrials who care about driving leads to their companies. As always, I am one of your hosts Joey Straughn, fellow niq dude and industrial marketer advocate and as always in my co pilot chair is Nels pumpkin spice Jenson. Welcome to the party Nels.
Nels Jensen:Thank you, Joey. Not a fan of pumpkin spice. But hey, for those who are go for it, you know, do your thing.
Joey Strawn:You know, what? Neither am I to be completely honest now. So you and I have that in common. We're anti pumpkin spice will stand on that will stand together. As the hordes of pumpkin spice lovers come and come after us. I am so happy to be here with you today. I know I say that every week. But this week in particular, because this episode is going live on Thanksgiving Nels.
Nels Jensen:So yeah, and you know what? I'll be honest with you, Joey right now, I need an attitude adjustment, because some of these clients are kind of driving me nuts. What am I gonna do with these pesky clients? And so, you know, I got to get that setup going. And I was like, oh, yeah, we're gonna be like giving thanks. So I need to, it's the week of thing, hey, I need to get squared away here. Because not every day is hunky dory in marketing world, especially industrial marketing.
Joey Strawn:And it's not we live in a tough market. I I'm happy to hear you say that now. And honestly, and all jokes aside, if you're one of the clients listening to this, it's totally not you. But I I'm kind of with you. And I was talking about this the other day with with some people. And it's been a long, tough two years, honestly, let's be completely honest, it's been a long, tough year and two years, for a lot of people in the industrial markets. You know, there some industries have seen a lot of growth and a lot of advancement. And that's good. You know, there's still some, you know, supply chain industries, and specifically in driver, you know, we see shortage driver recruitment, we see shortages. So there are industries that are still having, as you say, you know, a tough time of it, there's a lot of people that are in pesky, pesky situations. And, and that's true. And that's something that we live in every day. And while I while we're talking always about strategies to overcome those hurdles, I thought this week, on the week of Thanksgiving, we could try and identify some things that have actually come up out of the year of this year, last year, this time together, that have been good that we have learned at the E as either professionals that we have seen happen in the industry or movements that we have seen happen. It's just you know, this is the week of Thanksgiving. And I thought what a better time Nelson for you and I to spread out a smorgasbord on the table and have ourselves of our very own industrial marketer Thanksgiving special.
Nels Jensen:What do you do? This is where yeah, this is where we put in the Charlie Brown music and that Wow. Thank you.
Joey Strawn:Yes, we need is like I don't know if that's the challenge. All I know is the Charlie Brown music from the Christmas was just the Jazz Ensemble. Those are the those are some great ones. But yes, we need the Charlie Brown like we're out in the leaves on the rollers are here. They're falling. There's a big table with a lot of latchkey kids running around it. And and we're there to educate all of them on industrial marketing. And we've been doing that all year now. So that's one of the things that you know, that I have noticed that is has been something that I've enjoyed this year is you and I having a regular touch point, to step outside of the individual pieces of the work that we do, and really look at our industry as a whole and look at ways that we as industrial marketers can help those other industrial marketers that are out there, whether they're on the ground floor working, or they're up in the budget level thinking of ways to make their coal company better through their marketing department. You know, I have really enjoyed having this time to really step outside of ourselves Nels Ooh, that run and and look at what's going on around us. And so you know, I will actually start this off by saying that one of the first things one of the biggest things I'm thankful for this year Nels is you in this podcast. I'm thankful We have gotten to do this, that has been a good thing for me. And and I think it's been a good thing for clients. And I believe it's been a good thing for the entire industry, you know, not hyperbolically
Nels Jensen:Yeah, well, thanks. I appreciate that very much. It's been a lot of fun. And, and that dovetails right into the top of my list is I'm thankful for the audience. And I, you know, we don't get we don't get a lot of direct feedback. And, you know, that sort of, you know, we're not, we're not like a consumer social media site with, you know, a million followers, or anything like that
Joey Strawn:Not yet. Now,
Nels Jensen:I know, to echo your point, it is cool. When we hear the topics we're we've discussed being put into use with our clients. Oh, that is so fun. You know, and just the other day, someone on our staff was talking about how we could attach certain values to someone who exhibited certain behaviors and engaging with the client. And, and, you know, I'm just like, hey, implicit, explicit lead scoring. Hey, it's no, it's just, we were just talking about that. That's right. So it, you know, so it is cool when you and we frequently steal from everybody else, right? That's a lot of our a lot of our content is based on, you know, we learn from our peers, but it's on NASA and people have succeeded at this. It's yeah, but it is cool when our audience is. I don't know if it's necessarily putting what we talked about to use, they may well have known about it before, whatever. But it's..
Joey Strawn:No, no, they're getting it from we're leading the way now. Come on. Now. I you know what, it's funny that you mentioned that as I have also seen this happen. And I this is the thing that it wrapped up in this that I've been thankful for is that throughout the year, whether it's myself in a meeting or with a in a client presentation, and it just naturally coming into the fold of something that we have talked about, I will pull bits and things that we have discussed on this show, and put it into practice and watch it work. And that has also been very fun. I've seen other people do it or seen strategies or things that have worked or case studies of, of elements that have come back and shown success, where I can look at it and be like, yes, what we were talking about the information and the the community that we're building is one of value. And that made me happy. And so that was why I wanted to start the list off on a saccharin note and say that I'm thankful for yes, you in the show. And of course, and I love you included in yours, the audience. That's right, the most, the most important part is that we're helping the community at large of industrial marketers out there.
Nels Jensen:So what else is on your list?
Joey Strawn:Oh, man. Okay, here's, here's one thing, I am thankful that this year has proven that content remains King. I in here, I'll explain what I mean by that I, you know, I've been a marketer for a while, I usually live in the inbound realms of content creation and how it's distributed. And now so you know, you know those worlds. And so, I am happy that as we have seen more and more eyes and focus, go to the internet, go to the digital realms go to marketing tactics that require in depth analysis, that we haven't seen focus go away, we've actually seen long form content and in depth, educational content do better. You know, I was reading some studies that are that are saying in 2021, companies are more noticeably seeing results from their SEO efforts and their content marketing efforts. And I can tell you, I've been in this game a while. And for a client to be able to say, Yeah, content marketing and SEO are really working for us is lightyears away from where I've been, you know, five to 10 years ago. So the idea that that content is remaining a strong force in the marketing mix is good, because that's a realm that I live in. And I am thankful that helpful. Educational, good quality content is still just the center crux of a good marketing strategy.
Nels Jensen:Yeah. And we've trotted this stat out before, I should have it memorized, but I don't, but it's about 60% of the research and industrial buying is done before a contact is made with the company
Joey Strawn:I think it might be in the 70s. But you're correct.
Nels Jensen:So that feeds into my next item of thing. And actually, I'm going back and forth here. Yeah. So this is going to be a double dipper. I'm going to do tonight here so Okay, so then I get to do next. Okay, so, yes. I'm so thankful that ROI has become a bigger part of conversations. Yeah, marketing. You know, it's the promise of years ago. It's like, well, you know, the old fashioned TV ad In print ads, you know, you didn't really know what you're getting. And, and we really have seen case studies, real life examples of how marketing automation has allowed us to track leads and attribute revenue to specific marketing efforts that you, you can show, hey, when we did version A instead of version B, or when we took away display, budget and put it into, you know, ad, you know, search, whatever that, you know, you can adjust the tactic dials and see the results. So I'm very thankful that analytics is getting a bigger, that's I was gonna mix my metaphors getting a bigger seat at the table, is getting a seat at the table, or getting a larger piece of the allocations because ROI is very real. And marketing technology can be amazing, if you use it to its capabilities, which brings me to the next one.
Joey Strawn:Okay, well, I was gonna say before you go to the next one, I, you that point makes me think of that old adage of I waste 50% of my advertising dollars. But the problem is, I don't know which 50%. And it is true. And I actually think we've referenced that on the on the show before but it is true to your point where we're sort of emerging into a world where if you can only attribute 50% of what you're doing, it's not good enough. No, like we're living in a world we are living in the areas of efficiencies and technologies where that sort of stuff is not only possible, but at least in our worlds nails and the b2b industrial marketing world is necessary and expected if you can't tell me what my advertising and marketing dollars are bringing to the table that you won't have that money. So I am i That's a good one now. Okay. You said you had two though.
Nels Jensen:Yeah. So Mark, marketing technology can be amazing if you use it to its capabilities, right. So, yes. So my next point is, I'm thankful that CRMs are getting the attention that they deserve as well, right? It's, yeah, I've used I've used this sort of analogy a lot in the course of the past year, but manufacturers between lean continuous improvement, whatever, they're always willing to open up the hood on their operations and take a look at how can we do things better, right? It's also, you know, ERPs, you know, now are part of a successful strategy to streamline your inventory and your production schedule and become more efficient in the office. And as companies have opened up the hood and looked underneath at their marketing and sales operations, they have figured out that you know, what, if we do a better job of leveraging our CRM, we're going to actually be able to attribute this revenue and we're going to be able to tell you what happened when, you know, between a qualified lead and actually a deal, right, it's, you know, you can really get into looking at your close rates or getting it why deals don't close and you can find more obstacles in your process to streamline to reduce friction, there's the you know, CRMs are a powerful tool. And as we've seen, you know, industrial marketers, you know, industrials haven't been the fastest to embrace a lot of Yeah, you know, modern marketing technology, but we're starting to see it because it pays off.
Joey Strawn:We really have and I know people that have listened to we you know, our sister, podcast, industrialist, and with with James Soto have heard him talk with even people who work at HubSpot, talking about the importance of the MAR tech stack and marketing technology and, and what it is allowing brands and companies to do, I mean and Nels, to put it like let's we can put it into very grounded terms as as a content creator, how cool is I? I can't think of a better word. How cool is it? That it you could sit down and say okay, well of the blogs that I've written, and of the site pages that I've written, and of the white papers that I've written and of the ebooks that I've written, I can tell you exactly what has performed well, and how much money it's brought in for the clients that are wrote them for. That's a pretty cool thing. If you connect the dots the correct way, we have entire episodes in our back catalogue and trust me next year, we're going to be diving in deep in tech stacks, and talking about some of this plumbing and piping because that is an ever increasing more and more important element is being able to connect the dots between activities and revenue and bottom line and just as you were saying now the ROI. I see why those work together now is having a Mar tech stack and having the tech Knology stack is a is one of the things that's allowing our better understanding and better utilization of ROI tactics. I like that well, well grouped Nels well grouped indeed.
Nels Jensen:Thank you.
Joey Strawn:i Okay, well, then I guess that that leaves is my turn, I need to take up too, though. And, you know, luckily, I think I have to this sort of work together. So one of the things that I am thankful for this year, and one of the things that I have seen grow out of some of the, the trials and the toughness of how the markets have been lately, is, are the recent adaptations of innovation. Companies are really looking at ways to adapt and innovate around their offerings around the ways they make money around the ways they think of themselves. You know, one of the things that I remember this a long time ago, but there were stories that that I was saying is like, why did the railroads fail, as like? Well, because they were in the railroad business, and they needed to be in the transportation business. And it was just a simple thinking, well, we make railroads No, you make transportation devices, that get people from A to B. So if railroads are phasing out, then you need to phase into what the you know what it is. So I've always really enjoyed that analogy and that story, and this year, especially because of the trying times, a lot of companies have been forced into rethinking about how they do things. So looking at things like uptime as a service for maintenance companies, you know, looking at it, making sure that you're keeping machines that your your value is in keeping other people's machines online and running, or equipment as a service engineering as a service. All these as the services that have been popping up are a lot of the result of people looking at their businesses looking at the ways they make money with a critical eye and seeing the ways they can provide additional value. And that to me is exciting.
Nels Jensen:Can I jump in with a relative with a relay? Yes. So what this is all about, we threw this we threw this one out early in the pandemic, fictive did a survey of 400 leaders in the industrial sector, a lot of marketers and executives. And this was done in spring, it was done last May. So people were at the, the, the troughs of, you know, the pandemic impacts. And it was like 80 80% had already been directly impacted by the pandemic and figured more, but 91% of these executives said, there are already opportunities they see coming out of this. So disruption does equal opportunity. Now, that's not to say yay, disruption. No, no. Right. But But that's part of, you know, great business, cultures, adaptability, flexibility, and being opportunistic. So, yeah, absolutely.
Joey Strawn:So I've been it's been, it's been encouraging to see because and, and selfishly, it's given us new things as marketers, to, to build narratives around to build campaigns around is to think of ways that we can then expand and do better as industrial marketers, for the new and growing needs of the businesses that we service like, that has been really exciting. And then it's the one of the reasons I'm thankful for, but again, I love to see people be not shifty, but you know, crafty and agile and really, really critical about improvement. Um, you know, you and I are big advocates for the Kaizen method, we'd love small improvements over time. But you know, as you said, times of pressure times of disruption can cause some of that to speed up, and I definitely have seen that. So my second wood does sort of relate to this. And it is more of built out of the times that we're in, but I've been thankful that more people and it's become more natural, and inherent in our working is virtual collaboration and virtual events. Seeing the trade show market get stripped and gutted in 2020 was was devastating as especially for a lot of our clients. A lot of clients we've worked with in the past, a lot of the industrial sectors, heavily heavily rely on in person sales gatherings and in person conferences and in person in trade shows. And to see that in a single year just get ripped out was was scary was not great, to put it mildly. And so this year to see more virtual collaboration, virtual events, some of those conferences coming back online and having duel in person and virtual abilities. It has been nice to not so much see things get back to normal But see some of the normal conversations that I'm used to hearing around the industry start to happen again. And that's been a nice thing to hear is, you know, people, people going to the different conferences and coming back with different learnings and people, you know, sending out a speaker requests. And it's just been, it's been nice to see now.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, it's an evolution. You know, what, and a lot of people are acknowledging now that you know, what, we're not going back to the old world, right? The new world of trade shows is going to be different. Yes, there's still tremendous value of face to face networking, relationships, right? The trade shows will still be there. Right? Right. But they will not be the same. And they'll have more visual components. And you may even have more conferences where, okay, there is a opportunity for the people who can be there, but there will be a much more robust experience for the people who can't sew.
Joey Strawn:And for nothing selfishly nails. One of the reasons I'm thankful that this is come to fruition, and this year is back in January, on our predictions episode of what were the trends that we think are going to happen in 2021 virtual events was one of the things that you and I said, and so I'm thankful we were right, you know, I not for nothing. I'm thankful that that came to fruition because it was a trend that we saw that we predicted. And then it happened, Just as we said, so, you know, kudos, hey, kudos to you. As well, I think, man, I think we're, we're coming to the end of our feast here, we each have, I think you've done 123. But you got like one
Nels Jensen:or two, I'll get you one more. So all right, I got one more for us. Right. And this is I'm gonna say, supply chain solutions. And really, this again, this is well, this is where, you know, this is not yay, we've gone through a lot of pain to reach this point. But, you know, it's like, distributors, for example, you can't just succeed, any this speaks to your innovation point, you can't just succeed anymore with inventory and price. Right? How do you add value? Right? This is the same for the supply chain, it was a race to the bottom how, you know, yes, things were done more cheaply. Labor was cheaper in Asia and Mexico and other issues. But people have come to the realization that cheap is where innovation goes to die. And that no matter what we have to add value, one of the ways to add value, of course, is to reduce friction. But, you know, we're getting to the point where people understand partnerships revolve around adding value. It's not just cutting costs. And so distributors are seeing it, you know, up front in their face all the time, right? How do they provide more custom solutions? How do they provide more advice supply chains are looking at, okay, how do we redo you know, secondary sourcing? And how do we have to work with our partners to improve product development, you know, so the race to the bottom is over. And we've, in my estimation, I'm thankful that we've turned a corner. And now we are focusing again, on adding value and reducing friction, as opposed to just cheaper is going to be the way to go.
Joey Strawn:Exactly. I mean, one of our ongoing mottos, and this is internally around where we work, but is, you know, we want people to actually improve for having worked with us and around us, you know, and so now, so you and I hold that very dear to be able to say, well, the work that we have done, has shown value, true real value to companies. And that is the idea that, you know, those moves are being made, those innovations are happening, those conversations are happening to allow companies to make those moves to see those benefits, is encouraging. And I'm thankful. And I'm glad that you brought that up. I mean, it is again, it's not a saying that it's everything is over. But it's been a tough time. And from that tough time, some good things have sprouted, we're still working through it. And we're still finding those solutions together. But it is encouraging, especially in this time of this week of Thanksgiving to to be able to say you know what, there have been solutions that are being moved towards. And that is something that we can all be happy about.
Nels Jensen:So excellent.
Joey Strawn:My my last one is actually a little bit similar to one of the ones you mentioned earlier. But and it also relates to an episode we had a handful of weeks back, but one of the things I am thankful for is the movement towards account based thinking when it comes to marketing in the b2b sector, not Account Based Marketing as the buzz word. And you know, we dove into that element of it a few weeks back, but the idea that as an industrial community as industrial marketers together, we are now more We're focused on who are the exact people that our clients need to be working with? And how can we track our communications with those people and those companies, because, again, we've mentioned that a handful of times this episode, but we are strive to provide that value. And one of the quickest ways that I have seen historically, provide that value is get the exact right person at the exact right company, to talk to whoever our client needs them to talk to. And so and that relates directly to your ROI conversation is this is the fastest way that we can see if saying, we know that this money was brought in by this contract from this company, and we attract that company, we went after that company and provided helped provide that value. And so I am very happy that we have moved in the realm of conversations of okay, well, these content pieces that we're creating and these emails that we're creating and the site pages, that we want to rank for certain keywords, how are we getting those in front of the companies and the people that need to benefit from them? And so that I am happy that those are the conversations that we've been having, because a waste is not possible right now. Marketing, waste, engineering, waste, vision, waste, and none of it's possible right now, in the worlds in the budgets that we live in is everything has to be thought through. And everything has to be strategically used. And I am glad that that we are now having the conversations of saying, okay, Ah, great. You got 8 million impressions. So what, what did that do? Yep, that is the world that I love to live in. And I'm glad that we are doing it more and more now.
Nels Jensen:We'll put the ability to match, you know, different engagements and hone our messaging more specifically, it's very powerful, so very well put.
Joey Strawn:Thank you, sir. Man I have, I felt like we brought a lot to this face. So I feasted quite a bit on this on this. It was a cornucopia of good ideas and good thoughts.
Nels Jensen:I'm kind of fired up,
Joey Strawn:You know, and that's and that's just the gravy on top of all of this. I know I'm running out of Thanksgiving puns Nels Do you have any final words or final final things to say before we wrap up for the holidays for people?
Nels Jensen:You know, if you put it after Thanksgiving, if you if you put it a week and go back to where we started. If you put enough whipped cream on there, pumpkin pie will work though.
Joey Strawn:That is true. That's you know what that is good advice. And with that, I think we can wrap That's great advice. Whipped cream on top of it. Let's do this, everybody. Thank you. As always for listening to an episode of the industrial Marketer Podcast. We can't wait until the next episode. And if you can't wait until the next episode, be sure to subscribe. However you listen to podcasts, subscribe, you're going to be around your family this week at Thanksgiving, just gather all their phones and say hey, I'm going to put these in another room so we can have some family time. But when you're in the other room, subscribe all of them to our podcast, and then come back in and say let's do Thanksgiving and then have a great Thanksgiving. Thank you so much. Once again for listening to our show for supporting this comment on social and Facebook and on the posts online if you want us to talk about topics that you want to hear, but if you haven't already check out industrialmarketer.com we have a lot of articles and a lot of g eat, helpful advice. So until n xt time, thank you guys for l stening and Nels, thank you f r talking with me.
Nels Jensen:Thank you Joey.
Joey Strawn:Have a good one, everybody.