In this episode of the MFGMonkey Podcast, we delve into the unique challenges and opportunities of marketing within the manufacturing sector with industry expert Chris Peer, the founder and CEO of G8P and SyncShow. As manufacturing evolves, so do the strategies needed to effectively reach and engage target audiences. Chris shares his insights and proven strategies for navigating the complex landscape of manufacturing marketing, offering valuable advice for industry professionals. Whether you’re a marketing specialist or a manufacturing leader, this conversation provides actionable insights to enhance your marketing efforts and drive business growth.
How to Get in Touch with Chris Peer
If you’re interested in learning more about SyncShow and G8P or connecting with Chris Peer, you can reach him via the SyncShow and G8P websites:
- Websites: SyncShow and G8P
- Contact Through Websites: Fill out the contact form on these websites, and Chris or a member of his team will follow up.
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispeer/
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Navigating Marketing in Manufacturing: Insights and Strategies with Chris Peer
The conversation between Dustin McMillan and Chris Peer focuses on the importance of marketing in the manufacturing industry. They discuss the changing landscape of marketing in manufacturing and the need for a well-defined value proposition and messaging. They also emphasize the significance of having a marketing strategy and a strong marketing team. The conversation highlights the importance of tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and measuring return on investment (ROI) in marketing efforts. In this conversation, Chris Peer and Dustin McMillan discuss the challenges of marketing for small manufacturing companies and the importance of having a comprehensive marketing strategy. They cover topics such as defining marketing goals, understanding the buyer’s journey, creating a value proposition, and building a marketing team. They also discuss the role of a website, the use of templates and guides, and the importance of analytics and reporting. Chris provides valuable insights and offers resources for small manufacturers to improve their marketing efforts.
Hey Chris, how are you buddy?
I’m doing great, thanks Dustin.
Yeah, thanks for joining us on the monkey here and talking about some of the marketing. So it seems like a common theme these days where more and more folks are doing marketing and understand how important marketing is in the manufacturing world.
Yeah, definitely. I think I was just talking with somebody earlier about how just in the last five years, manufacturing and marketing really is exploding compared to the previous couple of decades.
No, I totally agree. I remember 20 years ago, when I worked for a manufacturing company, we had a pretty healthy marketing budget, but we were working with a group that didn’t concentrate on manufacturing. So, it was kind of frustrating to work with them because they are really good at marketing a doctor’s office, a donut shop, or a dentist. But when it came to marketing, it was a completely different learning curve for them. So, it was challenging at best.
Yeah, I think it’s really changed a lot over the last five years, as I mentioned. And I think my experience with manufacturing is a lot of manufacturers thought of marketing as smoke and mirrors. And now they’re realizing like our sales teams, our salespeople aren’t as productive or as efficient as they used to be because it’s harder to get and get through all the things,
Yeah.
the channels to get in touch with somebody. I think the one thing I encourage people to think about the most is not to think of marketing as marketing because it does have that kind of facade as to this unknown area but think of it as communications. How do you communicate better?
You may have a different opinion than me, but I think the best marketing is an educational piece where you’re really teaching and not telling. Whenever you’re sharing knowledge and things, at least for us, we’ve found that that works the best where if we’re sharing, we’re creating value and we’re sharing that knowledge. We see a better return by just pounding our chests and telling everyone what we’re good at.
I think you’re right. Education is a huge component of marketing today, especially for manufacturers and the shift we’re seeing more. It’s a rapid shift that’s happening now really over the last probably year or two, but more aggressively in the last six months is a shift more towards this kind of medium with podcasting. Where content creation, like blogging. Is not as effective as it used to be.
Yeah.
Because it’s just the internet saturated with so much content now. It’s another form of clutter.
Yeah. Well, I guess we kind of jumped into it and just got right after it. Why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your company, and what you do?
Yeah, thanks. My name is Chris Peer and I’m the CEO and founder of two companies. One is SyncShow, syncshow.com is my marketing agency. I’ve been running that for about 22 years. And we specialize in working only with B2B companies in the industrial space. So about 50 % of our clients are manufacturers. The rest are in transportation and logistics or warehousing and distribution. And then some of the professional service firms that serve them. So, we’re very niche focused. Typically, we work with the SMB market, the small to medium-sized businesses in those industries. My other business is a newer business. We launched it last year. It’s called G8P. G8P.co is the website and that’s a marketing consultancy exclusively for manufacturing companies.
Awesome.
And typically, it’s going to be for larger manufacturing companies. Our whole mission at both companies is to help manufacturers and those other industries we serve, those businesses to scale through improved marketing communications and sales enablement, and really work with the sales teams to drive more revenues and success for businesses.
What have you found to be the most successful with what you’re doing for manufacturers and warehousing?
Yeah, so it’s more of an infrastructure framework we identified. So last year I published a book called The Great Eight Pillars of ROI-driven marketing. It’s specifically for B2B manufacturing companies. I’ve got a copy here. So, this is the book. You can buy it on Amazon, but the general impetus for the book was we realized we were doing great work and getting great results for clients. My VP of client services, his name is John, and he’s a co-author of the book. He walked into my office one day and said, how are we doing this? He was new on the job. He had just come from another agency. And he said, Chris, I’ve been at other agencies, nobody’s getting these results. How are you doing it? And I said, John, I don’t know. I said I’m not really sure.
Hahaha.
I said I know we do custom solutions for every client. And I know that we have a strategy first and we get to know their businesses on a detailed level, I didn’t know. So, we spent those two years diving into every single client we’d ever served over the past 22 years. We identified where they were at in their level of marketing, what their goals were, and then the services we provided.
Mm-hmm.
And what we realized Dustin was we thought it was going to be all about like which marketing tactics worked the best and which ones didn’t. And at the end of the day, we realized that it really boiled down to just eight areas of marketing. And those eight areas are all related to the marketing operational infrastructure and had nothing to do with tactics. So, in my book, we outline those. I’ll mention them really quick so you can get a gist for it or your listeners can get a gist.
Yeah.
Number one is goals, key performance indicators, and industry benchmarks. So, what are your ROI-driven goals as it relates to your marketing? So, if you’re going to spend 50, 100, $200,000 a year, no matter what you’re spending on marketing, it shouldn’t be an expense on the books. It should be an investment. So how are you measuring ROI?
I agree.
Number two is your value proposition, messaging, and branding. By the way, these are in order of importance. So, what we realized along the way is that if your value proposition was really weak and it wasn’t differentiated in the market and it wasn’t well articulated, then you had a very little chance of getting new business sales because your buyers are just going to go to your competitors that are able to tell their story a little bit better.
Ha ha ha.
So value prop messaging and branding is number two. Number three is the marketing strategy. In 22 years of business, we’ve worked with hundreds of companies. To this day, not a single one has come to us and said, here’s our marketing plan and our strategy. And can you help us implement it? Because nobody’s ever had it documented in writing.
Right.
So having that strategy documented and identified. So, when we’re doing strategies, it’s like a 70-page strategic plan, including your search engine optimization strategy, your social strategy, who your ideal customer profiles are, buyer personas, and how it works.
Wow. Okay.
Number four is your marketing team. You have got to have the right team in place to pull off your strategy. Number five is your website. Does it meet all the gold standards? Does it meet Google standards? Is it built for lead generation and conversion? And does it communicate your value proposition really effectively? Number six is analytics and reporting. So, what are you reporting on? Do you have the tools to get the data you need?
Number seven is, I’m trying to think now, number seven is the software and tech stack. So, do you have the right tech stack and software in place? Like we use HubSpot as our primary software for our clients and how are those tools integrated? And then last but not least is templates and guides, which are basically the tools you use to make you more efficient and productive.
I love it. We use HubSpot as well and love the tool. I’ve used every CRM out there, I think. HubSpot seems to be the most, the one with the most widgets and tools, and the easiest to use in my opinion. And you can track everything. We’ve used everything from the free version to the enterprise. So, I agree. I love that tool.
Yeah, we love it for its capability of tracking, like first point of contact all the way through new customers and then the cost, the entire customer life cycle.
We don’t use it as much for there’s like a playbook in it. So, it would tell it, you know, get guide your sales folks along with, the sales cycle or whatnot. We haven’t really dug into that. But I guess, let’s go back and talk about each one of those individually because I am very intrigued by it. I’ve always loved the marketing aspect of manufacturing. And when you and I got in touch with each other, it was pretty awesome. There are not many firms out there that are solely focused on manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, or logistics. There’s one other gal that I had on the podcast a month or so ago. She’s just starting out and that’s her full focus, which I think is awesome that more and more companies are fully focused on the manufacturing industry for marketing because it is so different. It’s a different animal how you threshold a new customer. So, I don’t know that many marketing firms are as focused as what you are on the ROI. I mean, for me, we’re a small company, so we have a healthy marketing budget.
Yeah.
But when I talk to our partners about ROI, they kind of like glass over. They’re like, well, you’re the marketing. I’m like, yeah, but it’s got to return. Like we’re not McDonalds. People don’t need to know our logo. You know, it’s not a branding exercise. Like we need a return on our investment. And I need to understand how much each new customer is costing us. If we spend a hundred thousand dollars and we get one new customer a year.
That’s $100,000 we spend on one new customer and then how much are they spending with us? So, it’s good to hear that you guys are focused on the ROI. But yeah, let’s go back to number one. I have a short memory, so you have to remind me what number one was again.
Yes, and number one our goals KPIs and industry benchmarks.
So, you’re tracking return on investment and what are some of the KPIs that you are tracking?
So, when we talk about return on investment, and in my book, real quick, not to promote the book, but the feedback.
No, I actually like your book, send us a link and we’ll put it in the description and turn this into a blog. So, we’ll put the link to your book in our blog as well.
Awesome. I appreciate that. But I think when we wrote the book, we wanted to help manufacturers to do it themselves. And if they can’t do it themselves, give me a call. But the reason I mentioned it is, I’m not making any money on book sales. I think I get like four bucks a copy. So, I’m not trying to promote book sales here, but I’ve got a lot of feedback that when people read the book, they’re like, oh my gosh, you showed me how to do it and I’m doing it with my team.
Yeah.
On my gap.co website, you can download all the same tools we use at SyncShow for our clients and do it yourself. And if you need help, we’re there to help. But the first exercise in ROI is identifying what is the return on investment. So, what’s your marketing spend? How much are you spending on your entire marketing, expense on your PNL, your website, your advertising, your marketing team, your agency, whatever it is, add it all up. And then the goal is to make sure that you’re at least breaking even on marketing, but really you should be striving for a three, five, or 10 X return on investment. Many of our clients do, but you also have to look at what ROI is. A lot of companies, especially manufacturers, equate ROI.
Okay.
Specifically, to new business revenue. And I think that’s a mistake. It’s a slippery slope because good marketing is going to provide value in many other areas. Some of them you can track, some of them you can’t. But for one, I think it’s important to state that should good marketing drive leads? Yes. It should drive brand awareness. It should drive leads. Are all those leads going to be high quality? No, you’re going to get a lot of junk. You’re going to get a lot of vendors, but you have to realize that when your brand is put on the map on the digital map, you’re now getting a lot more eyeballs on your organization. And there is going to be, there is some gold. There’s some gold in that, in those eyeballs. So, you have to work with your marketing agency to identify which of those leads are really strong and which ones are not and communicate it so that when you go hunting for new business or fishing for new business,
Hmm.
you can get the right people into your mix. And Dustin, I’ll give you an example. When we first met, we talked about fishing. I’m a big bass fisherman and you’re more of a walleye guy. So very different approaches to the boats. We use the bodies of water. We’re fishing in the depth, the lures, the gear, everything.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Fishing for new clients is the same way. You know, you need different gear, different approaches, different bodies of water, different geographies for the different types of businesses you’re going after. So, getting all that nailed down is really important. And then also looking at the other areas where marketing can assist. Marketing can assist in helping you with your close rates, and your quote to close rates on sales. It can help with average order values. It can help with customer upsells and cross-sells,
Mm-hmm.
which increases customer lifetime value. So, I think those are really important for everybody to consider when you’re investing in marketing.
Yeah, I totally agree. And I love that analogy because, same thing with fishing, you can make that analogy with multiple different things, but yeah, if you’re using the wrong lure for the wrong fish, you’re not going to catch them. I don’t care how many fish are under there. So.
Yeah.
So that’s pillar number one was goals, KPIs and industry benchmarks.
Very good.
And so, on the KPIs too, like when you’re tracking KPIs, you want to make sure that you’re monitoring and measuring your ROI goal by certain key performance indicators. So, a lot of what marketing agencies and marketers track are what I call vanity metrics, like how many followers you have on LinkedIn or social media. And while those can be important, they’re more of, they’re indicators of brand awareness or loyalty, but not necessarily ROI.
Right.
So, you need to be looking at all the conversion rates, your bounce rate on your website or your engagement rate now. How many visitors are you getting? Are they qualified? How many leads are you getting? Are they qualified? So, every company that we set up KPIs for is a little bit different, but they follow pretty standard KPIs. And those are all listed in the book as well.
What’s probably the top three KPIs that you’re measuring?
That’s tough because every client has different goals and objectives. But if it’s for like lead gen, which tends to be more common. One is we look at website traffic. So how many visitors you’d get into your site each month? Is that increasing or decreasing? It should be increasing. How much of that is organic versus direct traffic? Meaning how much of it is coming from people that found you through a search?
Right.
So that’ll help you to identify how well-optimized your website is for search engines. Then we look at the website visitor to lead conversion rate. So, you know, if you’re below 1%, which is very common, there may be, that tells me that there are opportunities for improvement. Typical conversion rates are anywhere from, it depends on the industry and the type of business, anywhere from 1 % to 5%.
But also when you’re starting out, your website’s not going to go from like two-tenths of 1 % to one and a half percent overnight. I mean, that could take a long time. So, what you want to do is look for continuous improvement.
Right. Well, I would think that another important factor in the conversion is qualified leads as well. I mean, if you’re converting at 5%, but it’s all, you know, vendors reaching out to you, it really doesn’t matter.
Yeah, so we track what is called MQL and SQL’s Marketing Qualified Leads, and Sales Qualified Leads as well. We track a lot of those for our Edification. But a lot of our customers only care about Sales Qualified Leads. Leads that my sales team said they’re good. So those are the conversations we have to have and continue monitoring that.
Right.
And then I think what’s really important too, is as you’re implementing marketing and you’re looking at all this data and these analytics, the real gold is in identifying where the bottleneck is. So, I was just talking this morning to somebody about a past client. I’ll tell you a quick story. So, it was a membership-based organization that was a bulk purchasing group for manufacturers.
Okay.
I won’t mention the specific names, but they were based out of Chicago, and it was a female on business. And the one-woman CEO and founder, she was really fantastic. She asked me what I should expect, and what she should expect in working with SyncShow. And I said, well, I’ll be able to tell you within nine months, whether you have a sales issue, a marketing issue, or a value prop issue. And we went out to Chicago for our nine-month meeting.
And we were excited because we were driving a lot of leads. All the KPIs were up. So, we were pretty confident, a little arrogant walking into that meeting. And she had a staff of like 10 people in that meeting. And when she walked in, the meeting hadn’t even started. And she goes, Chris, where are all my new members? You told me I was going to get new members and I don’t have any new members to show for this.
Mm.
And I said I promised you I’d be able to tell you where your issue was. And I said I can tell you with high confidence marketing is doing well. I can also tell you that sales are doing really well because I can see all their activity in your CRM, which was HubSpot. I said you have a value proposition issue. And we went through the rest of the meeting. I found out later that she was pretty mad at me because I called her baby ugly.
Mm-hmm.
But to her credit, she was willing to listen, and we worked on that value prop over the next couple of months. We changed how they were communicating what they do. Within six months they landed 18 new members. It was the most they’d ever landed in that period of time. About a year later, she sold to one of the largest book-purchasing organizations in the country and she cashed out, they were our client for several years after that too. So that’s just an example of how good data can really inform how to fix things.
Oh wow.
I can’t agree more. I think we need to do that exercise ourselves. Cause there’s, we do, as I said, we do a fair amount of marketing for die cutting and kiss cutting industry that we play in and warehousing and distribution. And I think that one of the things that we struggle with is really understanding our value proposition and telling our story appropriately for sure.
I think it’s the number one opportunity for most companies. And the reason is because it’s not easy. Developing a well-articulated and differentiated value proposition and then crafting a story to tell, is really hard.
Yeah, it is.
It’s hard and what’s really scary is when you recognize you don’t have a well-articulated or differentiated value proposition. So, then you have to come up with a plan on how you’re going get one but it’s worth it because your quote-to-close rates will go up your average orders or go average order values will go up your customer lifetime values will go up. It’s definitely keep piece of the puzzle.
Yeah, very cool. Are we on two yet? My brain is all over the place now.
Yeah, number two is value proposition and messaging. So, we kind of transitioned over, but yeah.
Okay. Perfect. We’re right on track. My brain, I started thinking about 900 different things as we’re talking here and everything that we could do better and things like that. So yeah, the value proposition and messaging, we were horrible at it probably two years ago. And I’m a member of Vistage and on my first day in Vistage, I had one of the other CEOs in Columbus look at me and he goes, I don’t even know what you guys do. And I’m like, whoa. There’s nobody’s holding any punches in this room. And it like, I left that meeting and I’m like, is our website, is our story that bad that this guy has no idea what we do? And it was, I mean, I was kind of offended, but you know, later that night, I’m like, okay, we got to fix something. I mean, this guy’s a very smart individual and he’s in the manufacturing industry. And if he doesn’t know what we do by going to our website, then neither do our customers. So, we spent a year just fixing that problem and really breaking what we do, you know, up into different buckets and you know, telling that story better. And we’re not all the way there yet, but I think we’re certainly getting closer.
So, yeah, I think, with your client in Chicago, that got a little offended. Sometimes you need to hear those things and you need to have somebody you know tell you that. Because there are so many people out there that don’t want to offend an owner and they won’t tell them what they really need to hear. I think the most valuable person that you could have on your team is not a yes. Yes man or yes woman.
Yeah.
They’re going to tell you what you don’t want to hear. And that’s where you really move the needle.
And it’s hard to do. We had a client. It was a tool and die company. I won’t mention any names or geographies, but pretty well-established organization and I went to my first meeting with them. And I’m sitting in their waiting room. And I’m in a broken plastic chair. Sitting across from three other fake leather chairs that had dead bugs all on them and spiderwebs.
There was a jeans fabric couch in the waiting room that looked like it was pulled out of a fraternity house. And there was a broken wind chime on the coat rack. And the waiting room hadn’t been vacuumed for 10 years. And then we went into the conference room and the conference room was just as bad. And so my first question to the owner was, how many customers come visit you?
Right.
I mean, it was a disaster. So, I mean, I think as you think about your branding, all those little things come into play. And I asked about what I said, what’s going on with the wind chime in the lobby. He’s like, oh, one of our largest clients is a wind chime manufacturer. I go, it’s broken.
So, I think sometimes it takes a third person, a third party to come in and look at the big picture because as business owners, we come into our offices every day and we’re so busy and so focused on other things that you don’t see.
Right.
some of the other things that really need to be fixed.
Again, I can’t agree more. I think I worked at that place by the way, being facetious. But I went to work at this manufacturing company 20 years ago and the same thing, the lobby was horrific. The office was, you know, the carpet hadn’t been, it was swept every day, but it had multiple like roles in it. And, it’s like, we have Raytheon coming in or, whatever other customer. And my question to the president was, why does the office look like this? And he’s like, well, if we have a nice office, then they’re going to think that we make too much money and then they’re just going to beat us up on price. And I’m like, I don’t know that I agree with that. So, you know, it never changed. I mean, I wanted to replace the blinds of my office because half of them were missing.
And I just went out and bought new blinds for my office. And he comes in, he’s like, did you get approval to spend this money? I go, man, I spent my own money on the blind site. Like I’m not even going to go down that path with you. I painted my office on my own. I put new blinds in it. You know, I want to be comfortable when I come to work every day. And he just, he’s like, I think that was a waste of money. I can’t believe he made that decision. I’m like, we’re on different ends of the planet here.
Yeah.
Different paths.
So yeah, So.
Well, I think that’s important, like for the companies that we work with. It is that part of the story. And I can tell you from experience, we’ve worked with hundreds of manufacturers over the years. Ones that have their things together and put a good image out and have nicer offices, and you don’t have to have the greatest tech, but you know, they’ve got nicely painted, well cleaned. Just I think it tells a story that you’ve got your act together and that you care about quality and there are a lot of other positive messages other than they’re going to beat us up on price because I think we’re making too much money. Because that’s part of the value prop like hey, we are a professional organization. We can charge more because. We do things right. So.
Yep. And then you get into the psychology of your team and how they feel. There are so many things that go into that way over and above, you know, marketing, just how people feel and the type of person that you can attract the work at your company and the attitude. I mean, it’s just, I think it’s so important to have a nice facility and a nice office and well-kept lawn and trimmed bushes and no weeds and all those things. I think that it’s just, it is. Some people may think it’s silly and I just think it’s a part of a bigger picture.
Yeah, I agree. And then it goes in all your marketing materials and your website and all those things.
Yeah, absolutely. What’s three?
So, number three is the marketing strategy. So, as I mentioned before, not a single company has ever given us an existing marketing strategy and said, can you help us implement it? So, on our website at gap.co, you can download a marketing strategy template that you can fill out.
Right.
Okay, I’m actually on there right now.
So, I highly recommend that.
Okay.
Yes, we do ask for your email address and your name when you download it, but we’re not going to be sending you a ton of stuff.
Sure.
That’s my personal consulting website. So, you’ll probably get an email or two, but we’re not going to be handing you, we don’t sell information or anything like that. But yeah, I think having a marketing strategy, identifying who your ideal customers are, who the buyers are at those organizations, how are you going to find them? How are you going to attract them to your brand? And then what’s the story you need to tell them to engage them into having a conversation. And with your sales team to get a proposal or quote.
Mm-hmm.
What are all the tactics you’re going to use? I’ll give you an example. Like a lot of people, they jump straight into tactics. A lot of marketing agencies and a lot of marketers, like if you hire in-house, they’re going to jump right into tactical marketing. And the problem with that, I call it whack-a-mole style marketing.
Mm-hmm.
The problem with that is you’re just doing things for doing things sake.
Mm-hmm.
How does promoting your brand on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or Instagram for that matter, should you be doing it? How does it contribute to the larger strategy? And then what are you doing? So those platforms all have their values for different reasons. Email marketing, how are you leveraging email marketing? How are you leveraging search engine optimization or content marketing or podcasting for that matter?
Mm-hmm.
How are you getting your content, your thoughts leadership, and your brand in front of other folks? You have to have a strategy for it.
Sure.
I use the analogy a lot that I think a lot of people can resonate with is, when you’re building a custom home, you don’t just hire a builder and start building because you’ll end up with some crazy freaking house with rooms that are too big or too small or too many rooms, too little bathrooms, no closets. You hire an architect who builds a blueprint, then you execute on the blueprint. That’s the same thing we do when it comes to marketing.
I love it and we have fallen victim to whack-a-mole marketing as well. And especially you get halfway through the year and you have, you know, you’re like, oh, this seems like a good idea. And you sign up for that or you do this. And then at the end of the year, you’re way over budget and nothing’s working. And it is interesting to definitely have a plan and execute that plan and be able to measure against it and be flexible and change as you need to.
Yeah, it’s critical. And then having the pieces in place to pull off the plan, which is number four on the pillars. Number four is the marketing team. So, I think what a lot of people don’t realize is hiring one internal marketing person. It’s almost impossible. I would say it is impossible to pull off a proper marketing strategy.
Okay.
You may be able to hire one person to subsidize some of the marketing more cost-effectively, but you’re still going to need somebody to drive strategy project management. You’re going to need a writer, a graphic designer, a videographer, a website developer. You know, there’s a search engine optimization person. I mean, you’re going to need all these different areas of expertise that no one person can possibly have.
Sure.
So, in the book, we talk about how to break that up.
Well. Yeah. And for a company like our size, there’s no way that we have the budget to hire seven different people. So, we would need a team that does have all that at their firm. So, is that something that you guys offer? Do you have all those people on your team to work with a small company that can’t, you know, we don’t even have a marketing person at our company. So, we look outside to have a web designer and a videographer and a content writer and all those things.
Yeah, so when we work with companies, we have all those resources within our organization. So. And some we outsource to, but the important piece is it’s all managed and directed by one marketing strategist.
Okay.
That has built a marketing strategy with you. With goals. With all the things we’ve talked about.
Sure.
And then we have full-time resources and many of those areas of expertise, but you’re only going to need those people fractionally. Like, you don’t need a full -time graphic designer. So, with SyncShow, we become your marketing team.
Right?
Okay. Awesome. I think, and I don’t know out of all of the manufacturers that I know, I don’t even know that any of them have a marketing team. We work with companies that are a hundred, $200 million or $300 million. They may not even have a marketing person after, you know, they probably have a dozen salespeople, but zero marketing people.
Yeah. In the book, we break down what we recommend for your marketing team, whether it is in-house or agency based on revenue size.
Okay.
And I think you nailed it, Dustin, like a majority, I’d say half of our clients do not have a marketing full-time person. We are the entire team. The other half have one marketing full-time resource and our customers are small to middle market companies in general. So anywhere from 20 million to 350 million is kind of where most of our clients are. We have clients smaller than that and we have clients that are over a billion in revenue. And even some of those manufacturing companies that are a billion in revenue don’t have the marketing staff. So, it does make a lot of sense to outsource that and have that expertise.
Wow.
Because when you hire internally, you need somebody who can manage that person and make sure they’re doing the right things.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And that usually falls on a VP of sales or the owner of smaller companies.
That’s very interesting. Very interesting point. What for a small manufacturing, five, six, seven million, I would consider that smaller manufacturing and there are definitely manufacturing companies out there that are much smaller. But what would be your like number one thing that you would suggest that a small company like that does?
Kind of a loaded question.
Ha ha ha.
So let me explain why. So, we really don’t look at revenue size as a determining factor in the marketing approach.
It’s more having to do with your level of marketing maturity and where you want to go. Like as an example, you could be a six million dollar manufacturing company that has been acquired by a private equity company that’s looking to make you an 18 million dollar or a $50 million company in the next three to five years, that’s going to be a very different strategy than a $6 million company that wants customer diversification and is looking for three to 5 % growth over the next year over year for the next three to five years.
Sure.
So, I think looking at the right approach for your business is key. And then what can you expect for a budget? So, at SyncShow we have clients that spend as little as three or $4,000 a month. And then we have clients that are spending well over 20,000 a month.
Mm-hmm.
It really depends on how aggressive you want to be. And I use an analogy often Dustin that’s Hey, at three or four grand a month, that’s the equivalent of hiring a marketing intern or like a full-time marketing intern or a marketing person right out of college with very little business experience.
Sure. Right.
We just happen to be able to do it much more professionally and get you much better results in that one person can versus somebody that’s spending 20 grand a month or more, that’s going to be the equivalent of like a VP or a chief marketing officer at a larger organization. So, it really depends.
Interesting. And I knew it was a loaded question, but it’s like, I think so many people, small businesses, they end up getting paralysis by analysis, right? So, they know they should be doing something, but they really don’t know where to start. So, then they end up not doing anything at all. And that’s a dangerous thing to do. And then those that are doing something. Cause they know that they need to be doing something. They may be spending two, three, $4,000 a month and doing all the things, but it’s just like hurting cats.
Yeah.
You know they really don’t know what they’re doing. And they’re just trying to hurt a bunch of cats and to their organization and nothing’s really working and everything’s just kind of squirreling off and they’re probably not tracking things through KPIs and that, especially with, you know, even, yeah.
Oh and –
Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
I was going to say, no, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Getting back to that, you know, five to $10 million company. Let’s just assume they’re marketing immature. They’ve never invested in marketing and they’ve kind of got that analysis paralysis that you’re talking about.
Mm-hmm.
I would recommend that they start with the basics. Like in look at your revenue operations infrastructure. So, you are most likely at that size, you may have one salesperson, or it may be the founder and CEO doing most of the sales.
Mm-hmm.
So, if you’re looking to just sustain, like I’ve had clients say, Chris, I’m the third-generation owner. I don’t want to screw up on my watch.
Right.
My grandfather started the company. My dad’s still on the board. I want like three to 5 % growth. Okay. That’s a big difference.
Mm-hmm.
That’s a smaller engagement that we’re just driving some awareness for and doing the basics versus, Hey, we’re a $6 million company. In the next five years, I want to get it to 10 or 12 million. We need our largest client is 3 million of our 6 million in revenues and we need diversification.
Right.
Or we’re looking to penetrate new markets. Okay different strategy, different approach that you’re not going to get an ROI on that in six to 12 months.
Right.
Because those buyers might have a two, three-year sales cycle.
Sure.
So, you got to think about how does marketing support sales in the short term? What kind of tools and sales collateral and processes can we help with so that your close rates go up?
Mm-hmm.
Can we get that value proposition nailed down? Can we massage the existing website to perform better and rank higher and convert more leads?
Mm-hmm.
So those are just some examples of like just getting to brass tacks.
Right. And with your number five actually founded on your website, I think that a lot of folks overlook how important their website is as well.
In the book, I call it the almighty website. It’s number five because as in the level of importance, because you need to have goals. You need to have all the other things first.
Yes.
But this is the first thing that we start really working on that’s publicly facing.
Yeah.
So, once you have all that behind-the-scenes strategy work and value prop work and your goals, you got the team in place. Now let’s get to that website. First thing we do is get that website up to par.
Right.
We’ve identified over a hundred gold standards across these eight pillars that we’re talking about. And in the book, it gives you a checklist of all those pillars. There’s actually a checklist at the end of every chapter. So, you can look at your website and say, okay, does it have a phone number on the website? How do people contact you? Does it have a privacy policy? What are all the gold standards for websites? Does it work on a mobile phone or a tablet?
Right.
We’re working with a very large company right now and their websites got to be 15, or 20 years old.
Oh, wow.
It’s got flash animations all over it that haven’t worked for over 10 years because Flash isn’t a supported technology anymore. It hasn’t been for 10 years.
Huh. That’s wild.
So, I told the owner and said, you’d be better off taking this down and having a one-page website with your logo on it and a phone number. Let’s just fix some of these things.
Yeah. Well, there’s a company that I’m actually meeting with tomorrow that we’re looking at buying. They don’t even have a website. Their URL pushes you to a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated in four years.
Yeah.
It might be an opportunity there. Yeah. Very interesting. So, good.
Yeah, I mean, definitely.
So, we just redid our website. I think it took us over a year to get our website done. And I won’t mention who did it. It was a horrific experience, but it was a huge marketing company that we hired. And the importance of a person that you’re working with who knows the manufacturing industry is so important to me, anyway, building a website. And we chose this company because they are a manufacturing marketing company. The project manager who got assigned to us didn’t know the difference between a flat gasket and an O-ring. And finally, we got to a point where I was just so frustrated. We chose you because I don’t want to have to explain what an O-ring is, or what a gasket is, and the very basics of what we’re doing here. And it was awful. They were making zero suggestions on what we should do to our website and they’re asking me, and I said we’re hiring you because I don’t know. If I knew how to build a website and I knew exactly what to do, I wouldn’t need you. We would just build our own website. It is very interesting, as a manufacturing company, and so important to hire the right company to build a website for you. I had that opinion before and I still have it now. So.
I will challenge that a little bit Dustin.
Okay.
Because I think it’s a really good topic to talk about here when it comes to marketing niches or expertise and what the agency should know.
Mm-hmm.
I could tell you a majority of my team probably wouldn’t know the difference between a gasket and an O-ring either.
Okay.
But what we are is we are experts in manufacturing marketing. So, we always tell our clients. You need to educate us on your business from a product and service and why you’re unique.
Right.
We know how your buyers think and choose to do business with businesses like yours.
Mm-hmm.
So, we need the marketing team is typically not going to be the thought leader on your unique business.
Okay.
We can go do research, and we can write articles and we can vet that with you. But what the real power in it is, is when we can tap your brain or your team’s brain for that real in-depth like thinking.
Mm-hmm.
Leverage somebody who knows how to attract the buyers in the manufacturing space for businesses like yours, whether you’re a tier one, tier two, or tier three service provider.
Right.
Those are big differences. And then a good marketing team that knows your industry is going to know a lot of your acronyms, your industry terms, who your buyers are. Like I already know If you’re in a tool and die or kiss cutting, die cutting who your buyers are.
Right.
Like I already know those human beings. Like we have a whole, what we call a buyer persona Bible that we’ve created, which is all the different buyers of manufacturing services.
Mm-hmm.
So, we’ve already got them identified as to, you’ve got a financial buyer. Maybe you’ve got a project manager. You’ve got an engineer. You’ve got a purchasing person. We know how those people make buying decisions. And if we can get your thought leadership in front of them the better chance of converting that into a customer.
Sure. Okay. Maybe you changed my mind a little bit. We were very frustrated though.
Yeah. It can be. I think to find that person or an agency that’s got that unique, because manufacturing is so big too. Because what’s going to happen is like, if you say, hey, I want somebody with that level of experience, then you’re probably going to need to hire an agency that focuses exclusively on die cutting and kiss cutting manufacturing.
Sure.
That’s going to be hard.
Yeah, very true.
And then there’s going to be a lot of conversations about, okay, well, are you going to be exclusive to us and not share our marketing with other companies and competitive challenges?
Right? Yeah, very true.
So, it was just an interesting experience. I’ve been through a website build-out with multiple different agencies. And this was by far the most frustrating one that I ever went through.
Yeah. And it shouldn’t be. I agree. We hear that from new customers. They’re usually coming to us because they’ve had a bad experience. And it shouldn’t be that way.
Yeah. And we nearly jumped ship. I mean, we got to seven months in, guys, let’s just get it to this point and we’ll go find another firm to button it up and move forward. But they ended up coming through. I think it turned out well, I think there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done, work to perform like it needs to. But you know, your next point with reporting and analytics, that’s where we’re really going to know if it’s working or not, right?
Exactly.
So, using our HubSpot and all the backend analytics is where we’re really going to understand if it’s working.
Exactly. And that’s pillar number six is analytics and reporting. And it’s really the root of it. It’s not complicated, but it’s what should you be reporting on.
Mm-hmm.
How often or what’s the cadence for reporting? Monthly, quarterly, annually type of thing. And then who gets the reports? Who has insight into that? So, we want to make sure that we’re reporting on the metrics and the KPIs that matter. And then who do they matter to? Do they matter to me as the marketing agency owner, your marketing strategist, or you as a CEO on the client side?
Right.
And then how are we leveraging that data to make informed decisions for the future?
Yeah, the data end of things is so significantly important. It’s just like anything else, if you have a workout program or whatever, if you’re not measuring, then how do you know what you’re achieving?
Yeah. Exactly.
With the technology stack, we mentioned HubSpot. What other software and technologies are you guys using with the technology end of things?
Yeah. If you don’t mind, I’ll start with HubSpot just because for people who aren’t familiar with it, I think it’s important to understand what it is. So HubSpot is a software as a service. We are a platinum partner with HubSpot.
Okay.
If you’re thinking about HubSpot, feel free to call me or reach out to SyncShow. The HubSpot salespeople are great, but they’re salespeople. They’re trying to just get you on the platform. And I’ve seen oftentimes where other agencies and HubSpot reps will push you into a solution you don’t necessarily need and don’t need to pay for. Our ethos is making sure you have the minimum tools you need to get the job done and that’s it.
Mm-hmm.
And then you can always increase it later, but we can also get good discounts on it. But the key here is HubSpot is a multifaceted tool that allows us to not only implement your marketing more effectively and efficiently and give us the data and analytics we need, but they have a sales hub as well,
Mm-hmm.
Which is basically a CRM platform with sales automations, which helps to make tracking that data from the first point of contact with a lead all the way through the customer lifecycle. And it gives your sales team a variety of tools to make them more productive and efficient. So that would be number one. Some other tools we use, like professional search engine optimization tools, like SEMRush are one of the tools we use.
Okay.
Again, not a cheap tool. It’s more of a professional-level tool to handle your search engine optimization. It allows you to track all your keywords and your rankings. You can do website analysis and tests on it to find out if you’ve got certain things that are broken. That’s one. We’ve also used other tools like Lucky Orange, tools that will track eye movements or mouse movements on your website to see how people are navigating.
Oh wow.
So, you can get some data on your visitor experience to your website. All kinds of AI tools are coming out now. We use the professional version of ChatGPT to help us with some idea generation. I don’t yet recommend using ChatGPT or AI for content creation.
Okay.
You can use it for elements of the content creation process. But I wouldn’t recommend just having it write an article for you and saying, oh, this is great. Because you still need to incorporate search engine optimization and keywords and make sure it’s written in your brand voice. But those technologies are quickly evolving in a positive way.
Yeah. And HubSpot has integrated some AI. I noticed that ours, in the blogging portion of it, you could type in a subject and it’ll write a blog for you. And I was pretty impressed with how good that blog actually read.
Yeah.
It was just something that I was like messing around with one day and you can type in, you name it, you can type it in, and it would write a blog for you.
Yeah.
It was like, amazing. And then I’ve noticed with emails that we get, it’s got to be written with AI. I mean, it hits on. Well, however, it’s doing it, I’ve never gotten an email before probably in the last three weeks where it will talk about things that are on my LinkedIn. It’ll talk about MCMILLANCO and MFG Monkey. It incorporates all these things where maybe there are multiple salespeople out there like doing that much research and typing a personal email, but it’s coming from multiple different companies and they’re all very similar in how they’re written. It’s pretty impressive.
Yeah, I mean, it is amazing how personalized and how much data they can get. And it’s evolving. We’re starting to see email marketing and blogging to be less effective than it was last year from an ROI perspective. So that’s why we track and measure everything.
Yeah, and we used to do a ton of email marketing in it for several years. It was very effective, and we know it’s the same thing as email marketing does not return like it used to.
Yeah. And that’s why we track everything so we can see how it is performing for you. You know.
With the templates and guides, are you using more templates in HubSpot? So, are you setting up different response templates, outgoing email templates, coding templates, and things for people in HubSpot? Or what does that look like?
Yeah, so in the templates and guides chapter, we talk a lot about just what are the tools that can make you more productive and efficient so that you’re not recreating the wheel with all of the sales and marketing communications.
Mm-hmm.
We can do auto-responses. You have email templates. You have your sales collateral, even your website page templates. So that when you want to create a new web page, you’re not starting from scratch. You’ve got a template. It fits, so it’s consistent.
Right.
There’s just a lot of ways and this goes back to ROI marketing. It’s how you do things faster and cheaper and templates and guides are a way to do that.
Sure. Well, I would think that it communizes the touch and feel for all of your people that are doing an outreach using the same font, the same brand, whatever the brand guidelines with the same colors and all those things.
Exactly.
No, I like it. We try to use that not, as effective as what you guys are, I’m sure. So, I don’t know. My brain’s going a million miles an hour now. Everything that you guys are doing is just awesome. I’m on your website and it’s very cool. If people go to your gap.co and you’re under the framework, you have a video for each of the eight topics that we just talked about today, which I’ll be watching after we get off of this. It’s very cool. Self-assessment is awesome. All those things are very unique. I’ve never seen any other marketing firm have the tools that you’re offering for free on your website. So that’s awesome.
That was the goal. We’re very passionate about our manufacturing clients and the industry and we understand that, especially for small manufacturers, it’s a challenge to invest in marketing.
And we want it to just, I believe manufacturing is the lifeblood of our company or our country, I should say.
Yeah.
And I think it’s kind of our way of giving back, but also, it’s a marketing tool for us. If you do need help, we’re here.
Yap.
On the gap.co website is a marketing certification course.
Okay.
And if you use SyncShow, S Y N C S H O W as a coupon code, you can take it for free.
Okay.
If anybody has any challenges getting in, let me know.
Perfect.
And then SyncShow is my marketing agency. So, if you do need help implementing any of the things we talked about today, myself or my team can happy to just talk, point you in the right direction. If we’re not fit, we will point you in the right direction. And if we are fit, maybe we can help you out.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think what our next step should be is you come over here and do a little bit of bass fishing in the bay and then we go out and crush some walleye maybe the next day.
Sounds perfect.
So that’s the way I like to talk about businesses on the water. So yeah.
Let’s do it. I think that’s a done deal.
Yeah, Have you fished over here for bass before around the islands?
in West Harbor?
Well, West Harbor or even around the islands.
I haven’t gone out to the islands much. I’ve done a little smallmouth fishing out there. Just because I got a 19-foot bass boat and getting out on the main waters of Lake Erie can be a little hairy sometimes.
Yeah, I agree with that. There’s a lot of folks that’ll ferry over and put in on the island. But you come over, we’ll run over there and do some bass fishing. My son caught a small mouth a couple of years ago and I’ll send a picture to you. We didn’t measure it. We didn’t weigh it, but the thing was a pig, and we took some pictures and threw it back. And last year before somebody caught a new record up here. And I’m like, Oh man, that fish may not as been as big as my son’s fish.
Hehehehe.
You know, you can’t really tell by picture, but I sent it to my son and I’m like, Shelby, is this fish bigger or smaller than your fish that you caught last year? And he’s like, Dad, I don’t know, but it’s close. And I felt like such a knucklehead for not even weighing it or measuring it or whatever, but it was really hog.
Wow, yeah, send it over.
But it’s. Yeah, it was fun that he had the experience of catching it, and truth be told, we caught it trolling. We weren’t fishing for bass, but we were in real close to the rocks trolling and he hooked up with that thing and it was pretty awesome. But yeah.
No, he can go up. Sorry. One of the guys, my dog was whining and he’s like, can I let your dog outside? So yeah, these guys are really good guys that are here. My dog just wanted to go outside and lay in the sun. I can’t blame him.
Yeah, nice day.
Yeah, yeah, it is. It’s turning out to be a really nice day. It’s supposed to get some pretty bad thunderstorms that roll through and then it’s supposed to be super nice tomorrow. So we’ll see what happens, but man, thank you. So.
Well, hey, I appreciate it. Good conversation.
Yeah, absolutely. I had a lot of fun with it. Very insightful. I learned a lot. I know our listeners will learn a lot and then that’s what the whole goal of this is. People learned at least one thing, I hope. We’ll have all the links that you talked about in the description. So, you don’t feel that you have to remember everything and all that. If you need anything, certainly reach out. I know we’ll have your email and links to your guys’ websites and that. Very informative. I’m very appreciative that we got on and did this today. So, thank you so much!
Yeah, no problem. And if you need any help with the marketing, just reach out. I mean, I’m happy to do like a free analysis or as a thank you for having me on your show.
Yeah. Thank you so much!
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