In this episode of the MFGMonkey Podcast, we dive into the world of authentic marketing with expert Katie Smith, Founder and CEO of Wild Path Consulting. Moving beyond traditional sales pitches, Katie shares her fresh perspective on building genuine connections with audiences. Discover how authenticity can transform your marketing strategy and drive meaningful engagement. Whether you’re a marketing professional or a business leader, this conversation offers valuable insights to elevate your approach and resonate with your audience.
How to Get in Touch with Katie Smith
If you’re interested in learning more about Wild Path Consulting or connecting with Katie Smith, you can reach him via the Wild Path Consulting website:
- Website: Wild Path Consulting
- Contact Through Website: Fill out the Send Message form on the Wild Path Consulting site, and Katie will follow up or Book A Call.
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiesmithwildpath/
- katie@followthewildpath.com
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Beyond the Sales Pitch: A Fresh Take on Authentic Marketing with Katie Smith
In this conversation, Katie Smith from Wild Path Consulting discusses her journey from outdoor guiding in Montana to becoming a marketing consultant specializing in B2B manufacturing. She shares insights on creating effective marketing strategies, the importance of understanding customer needs, and how to differentiate in a competitive market. A case study on Great Northern Metal illustrates the impact of tailored marketing efforts, leading to significant growth. The discussion emphasizes the importance of building relationships and trust in the B2B space, as well as the need for a comprehensive approach to marketing that considers the entire customer journey. In this conversation, Dustin McMillan and Katie Smith explore the evolving landscape of marketing and sales, particularly in the B2B manufacturing sector. They discuss the importance of building trust through authentic content, the changing dynamics of the sales process, and the role of AI in marketing strategies. The conversation emphasizes the need for consistency, transparency, and a service-oriented approach in marketing efforts to effectively engage potential customers and build lasting relationships.
Welcome Katie Smith with Wild Path Consulting. How are you?
I’m doing great, how are you doing?
I am doing amazing. We were just talking before this, I just got back from your neck of the woods out in Montana, and still as cold here as it is in Montana.
Yeah, you came during a really good snow spell, but a very cold spell, which I think is better than what you had last year, which was warm and no snow.
Exactly. We’d much rather have it cold and have a lot of snow. So, it’s so beautiful out there. I’m jealous that you get to live there.
Yes, I feel very fortunate every day to be out in the snow looking at the mountains.
Yeah. So, tell us again how you ended up in Montana, or did you grow up there? I forget now.
So, I grew up on the East Coast in New Hampshire.
That’s right. That’s right.
I was an outdoor guide for a while, and I had known about this cross-country ski ranch called Lone Mountain Ranch. And so, one winter some of my friends were heading back out to work in Big Sky and I thought, hey, I bet I can teach Nordic skiing at this ranch. I thought I’d just do it for a season and then it’s been like 16 years.
Yeah.
I worked for them, winters, guiding, taking people into the park, into Yellowstone National Park, and taking people in the summers as a wrangler. So, taking people out horseback riding, and hiking, before I decided to get serious and do more serious business-type things.
It’s definitely a place that can suck you into doing non-serious fun stuff for sure.
Yeah.
So, it was hard to leave and get on the plane, even though it was 35 below and we got up in the morning to take off out of a blush Yellowstone, but it is absolutely stunning out there.
Yeah.
We were fortunate enough to get in a couple of days of skiing at Big Sky and then ride some snowmobiles down in West Yellowstone, which had its own adventure. We had a Heli flight off the mountain. My girlfriend got hurt and we had to fly her to Idaho.
Oh No!
And then the next day I kind of spilled myself in the parking lot. Not nearly as fun of a story but probably cracked a rib or two.
Oh my god!
She had a Heli flight and she’s doing fine.
I’m glad she’s okay.
Just now she’s got a better story than me. Yeah, it was pretty scary for a minute.
I mean, the hard thing is it’s so remote.
It is. Yeah.
So, it’s like, that’s really your option. There’s not a whole lot that we can do. So, my gosh.
Yeah. The paramedics got to the hotel because she hit a tree actually. She was having a really hard time breathing. She is a nurse, and she felt that there might be some internal bleeding with how hard she hit.
Oh my god!
And the paramedics got there and they’re like, yeah, we’re just going to have to fly you. We’re two hours away from the closest hospital.
Yeah. Oh my gosh.
So, yeah, but it’s a fun story. So, then she’s all good. So, no big deal there, right?
Yeah.
I guess since you talked about getting into serious stuff, tell us a little bit about your company. So, you have a consulting company for marketing directly towards manufacturing, right?
Yes. Manufacturing, especially B2B. It’s called Wild Path Consulting and it’s really a marketing strategy. So, helping companies who you’re working on, you’ve got your supply chains figured out, you’ve got your operations figured out, and now you’re ready to scale, but you’re like, okay, what do we do with this marketing? What does this mean? How do I do this efficiently and effectively? So, that’s really where I come in. I assess a company, look at what you have going on, who are your customers, where do you want to grow, what are your business goals, and then I can build a custom marketing strategy that really ties into everything from the C-suite down to the production floor. So, there’s no waste, there’s no marketing just for marketing’s sake or following trends. Everything that we’re putting out there is really directly related to what your customers need when they need it. Everybody. There’s a whole sales process, a whole sales cycle. And so, we’re really here to support sales, really fill that pipeline, but make it custom, make it tailored so that everything has a purpose.
Sure. What, can you tell us, you know, for lack of a better term, a white paper or case study of where you’ve helped somebody do just that?
Sure, So, I’ve been working with a metal manufacturer, Great Northern Metal here, the guys who started it, we had worked together. I worked for another larger metal manufacturer. They broke off, I had broken off doing my own thing, and they were kind of at that point. They had really dialed in how they were running their business, which is pretty, it’s a really great smart way to do it in our industry. Where we are in Southwest Montana, there’s a huge building boom. And so, they wanted to focus on sustainable growth. They had learned a lot from the mistakes that the company had made previously. And they really didn’t know, they didn’t have any kind of marketing operations. They had a website, and they were doing some advertising, but the company they were using was pretty generic and wasn’t really a good focus with them. So, they brought me in to build up the system, the marketing system. What do we need? How can we take advantage of our market without exploding, right? Because that’s the whole thing. You can give me an unlimited budget and I can fill your pipeline, but how does that go down the rest of the chain? Like, can you fulfill it? Can you get the supply? What does that look like? So, I take all of that into account, take into account what’s important for them, how do we want to grow, and then the great thing about being a fractional chief marketing officer is that I’m inside the company. So even though I’m not like directly on staff, that’s really how I operate. So, I can pull in different agencies for them. We pulled in a full-service marketing agency that I had a relationship with. And I become the translator. So, I understand very clearly what the business goals are, and what they need. And I also understand what the marketing team needs to be really successful. So, I make sure that everybody’s getting what they need, that we’re really focusing on what’s most important, and that my client’s needs are really being articulated well. And that way, if we’re going to use an agency, if we’re going to use a contractor, everything’s really clear. The other thing that I always end up doing is creating like a brand identity, which is something that I did for them, which really just solidifies your idea of what the company is. It helps you make decisions. Is this on brand? Is this not? So that you don’t end up getting this wide-scope creep. You really identify who the customer is so that we can be really clear in our communication. It just really helps us make decisions. Putting in a lot of those processes for them, getting a really good team on board, and staying really focused. So, for them, we decided that we wanted to focus on contractors in the area and not really homeowners because the way that their business is set up, they can do a lot of bigger projects in a shorter amount of time. That was the biggest kind of bang for the buck was working with contractors and they’d all been contractors and have been in the industry for a long time. So, we really focused all of our communication towards contractors. So that meant we had to have high-level communication. We couldn’t just be putting out social media posts or blog posts that sounded like you could find them on Pinterest.
Right.
So, finding ways to work with our agency who have no building experience getting really being clear on voice, being clear on tone, and making sure that we show up in the same way throughout every communication, from website to email to social media. And then we were looking at long-term build. We really focused on SEO because they had a lot of like word-of-mouth stuff covered. They had a lot of relationships, so if we wanted to build extra, we focused on this long-term SEO that we thought would bring us sustainable growth so the company could grow slowly and without exploding. So, what we found, what we ended up with, I’ve been working with them for four or five years, and depending on the year we’ve had between 20 to 50 percent growth year over year.
Wow.
All of our stats are, I mean the stats are kind of crazy because we went from like a kind of a crappy website to like this really nice website with really good leads. So, we have like a 400 % growth, which is really good. Especially when you’re starting with nothing, but with website leads, we’ve had just this really sustained growth and a lot of it is just really understanding the market. Understand your customer and then deliver on that without delivering extra. So, I say we don’t do trends, we are trailblazers.
I like it. And their website, I got on your website and I’m on theirs and it is good. It’s clean. It’s easy to navigate all that fun stuff.
Yeah, and we just decide what do the contractors need, what do our customers need, and then we create it for them. So, we have a whole like blog section where it’s actually useful information and not just a bunch of fluff.
Yeah. Well, and I guess tell us, you said that you’re driving traffic to their website through SEO and the building market in Montana is exploding. Is that where most of that’s driven is just SEO local search or local within, you know, 50 or 100 miles?
I just got a lead from Australia, so.
Wow. And how do they deal with that? Are they even dealing with it?
No, that’s a little bit too far.
But it’s actually brought them in because they specialize in custom trim, custom colors, and things like that. So, they’ve gotten contacts from people on the East Coast who are like, can you do this specific custom piece for me? Because they can. So, they’ll figure that stuff out. But the SEO is not so much local. There’s a little, I’d say more of the advertising that we do. We also do advertising, and I work directly with our videographer. Everything is just specific and targeted to contractors. What they feel, and what they need, and I’m very controlling about that. So, we do a lot of social media ads. They pull in things really well. We will do YouTube with some of our ads and those are interesting because YouTube is really good for that nurture piece where people just to stay on top of mind.
Yeah.
So, when we do our advertising, we kind of focus it on local because that makes the most sense. But then the SEO is sort of it’s really search-specific. So, what kind of information do people need? And we kind of pull in the idea. We talk with the sales team to see like what are people asking, and what are you explaining seven times a day that you don’t want to explain anymore. And then we work with our agency to find search terms that match up. So, we’re creating content that is useful, that people are looking for, people need, and that our sales team can use. So, everything that we do is multi-purpose. Which really cuts down on the waste. So, if we’re going to create a blog post, it’s going to be something that our sales team can use. Whether they’re trying to answer a question for somebody or it’s a big project and they want an excuse to like kind of reach back out if it’s like a long-term sales process. And then it’s also because why wouldn’t you put something out there that’s not perfect for SEO.
Yeah.
Everything that we do is multi-purpose. Whenever we have these videos for ads and then we can chop them up to make sure that we have access to all the videos, we do one shoot and then we cut that up into lots of different size bits that we can use on YouTube, we could use on our website if we needed, we could use for ads. So, everything is really multi-purpose and multi-faceted and really fits into that map. That’s why it’s so important to have that customer journey map because then once you know kind of how you want people to move through your pipeline you can start to figure out what pieces of content we need, how can we repurpose this so we can be really efficient. If we were just sort of coming up with ideas and executing them there’d be a lot of waste, there’d be a lot of single-use things or it’s like you’re throwing a spade against the wall and some of it sticks and some of it doesn’t. So, we try to avoid that.
Well, it is interesting because they are manufacturing and they’re going after a totally different market than what we typically see in the Midwest is we’re very industrial. And 99% of the stuff that we work with that’s manufacturing is going into another manufacturing situation where these guys are manufacturing in the building industry. And you’ve captured that target market and crushed it. And I know that’s going on in our area, something that I honestly didn’t think about at all is going after that market. But the architecture out in Montana is just so much different than what we have in the Midwest, my opinion better, but it is really cool and very industrial looking. I love it.
Yeah, I mean, it’s good for that. But, you know, I would approach that same way that I approach them would be how I would approach any business, which is really like, who are your customers, especially with B2B? Yeah, I think we get stuck in B2B with feeling like we have to be very one-way and very corporate, and we end up feeling like we have to fit in this box. And that’s just not true. And I think actually it’s easy to differentiate yourself by just going a little bit outside that box. But you start by looking at who are your customers, what are the business goals, what’s the of like the feeling and the ethos of the business. And then you match that to create a brand identity and then you can create everything that’s to that brand identity. If you’ve done that research, then you know that you’re pretty certain that what you put out there is not going to be off-topic for your clients. It’s going to fit them and they’re going to be more excited about it. You know, I think there’s this real trend to kind of sound alike as if that gives you street cred or trust. But really, I think tapping into who our customers are as people, what they care about, what makes them excited.
Absolutely.
I can really help create a marketing program that’s a differentiator.
Yeah. And I totally agree with that. And I think that so many manufacturers, as you said, are stuck in this. We have to sound corporate and professional and, while you do, yes, but I think if you just, like you said, go a little bit outside the box and you create something that’s a little different, like with us recruiting, we make our job descriptions. They’re professional but they also sound kind of fun, right? And we’ve had so many people say, your ad actually caught my attention because it didn’t sound stuffy and like everyone else’s and we just make it sound just a little bit different, which, you know, we are. And I think it just attracts a different type of person. And then you create that personal connection with people when you’re just who you are.
Yeah, I mean, that’s really what that’s one of the pieces that draws people in. I mean, there’s all parts of it too. You have to provide a good product at a good price.
Yep. Absolutely.
I mean, that’s kind of like that baseline. But once you get that and maybe like, so this company that I work with, they’re not the cheapest. And race to the bottom is not really the best way to go for business. But if there are other pieces, we think about what are the other pieces of that product and so we focus a lot on service and knowledge. And that’s what brings people back when they have the option. They could go get a bid from somebody else but they know that they’re not going to get it. They may actually have to spend more time. Things might not be correct, and it might take more time to fix it. It’s not correct. And so, you have to find all those other pieces of value. Your differentiators within your market and then really dial in and communicate those and that can help set you apart and really help that kind of feeling of need. I mean if you’re doing commodities manufacturing then you know sorry there’s not a lot that you can do to differentiate yourself. But if you’re not manufacturing a commodity then there’s a lot of room for you to set yourself apart. And I feel like especially now, if your competitors aren’t doing that, it’s not going to take much.
Yeah, and I would disagree a little bit as far as commodity manufacturing and to set yourself apart, it’s not necessarily the widget that you’re manufacturing. It’s more about the people that you’re working with and how easy they are to work with and quality and on-time delivery. Everyone says, oh, quality on-time delivery is actually doing it and then having that personal connection and rapport with your customer, which nobody really wants to talk about anymore because we’re so on our computers every day and kind of personal touches kind of go out the window. But I found if you have a personal connection with somebody and you deliver quality on-time products, and you get along with them and they feel like family, you’re going to keep them forever. And you don’t have to be the bottom of the barrel. Unless you’re going after auto and then they want a price reduction for the next 20 years, regardless of what everything else does. So, yeah, it is an interesting marketing strategy and things that you’ve done. Have you worked with any commodity manufacturers like machine shops or other fabricators, things like that?
I was thinking like if you’re selling crude oil or corn or something were alike.
Yeah. Yes, that is a little different. But yeah, even commodities just like some machine widgets that anyone can make. But yes.
No, that’s actually, I think what you’re saying applies even more to those companies. And that I would put, so if we’re talking about the customer, the journey that the customer goes on to decide and any, you know, think about it. You go, if you’re buying like, say you’re buying an appliance, you go through the same thing, or you’re like, here’s the problem, here’s the thing I need. And then you’re doing all the research and what you’re talking about is that delight stage, which is after, which is how do you keep somebody. So, if I consider the production team on the marketing team. They’re the ones who are anybody who has anything to do with a client, which is almost everybody in the company has something to do with that experience. It costs so much more depending on your industry to get a new client than it does to maintain a client and so, all of those after-delivery touches are part, they need to be part of your marketing plan to help set you apart. And that can be one of the most cost-effective things.
Yeah. And I think just the folks in your facility, right? We have a new customer coming in and looking at warehousing and we’re putting together their widget. Anyone really could do that. I mean, we set ourselves apart in different ways, but I know when they come in and they talk to Diego out on our floor and they’re like, I know that this, dude’s like, he lives to get things out on time. And he’s going to bust his ass and that now I have trust for this company. And it doesn’t matter what our website looks like or whatever that may get them in the door. But 100%, the people inside your organization they feel comfortable with and they have trust immediately. That’s what keeps them around and really closes the deal.
Yeah, it’s so important and is easy to overlook or it’s easy to cut that when you’re thinking about like, how do we cut our process or our time? It’s easy to cut those personal touches. And because, I’d say like your website or your ads, those are sort of like that first phase, that awareness phase. If that’s all you’re doing and you don’t have a way to nurture those relationships either before the sale or after the sale, then you’re not going to get the most out of that investment because it depends on your product. But if you’re in B2B and if you’re in manufacturing you probably have a long sales cycle and those sales, you’re making are probably very big.
Yeah.
So, you need to consider all of that.
Yeah. And it’s so wild even today how some transactions come together that are big, and you may never meet those folks face to face. So, a lot of what you’re putting out there, they build their trust off of just things that they see, like video or interview that they see or a post that you do on LinkedIn or some of your folks that are posting on LinkedIn. So, it is interesting every little thing that you put out there how much of an impact it has today.
Yeah, and I think the frustrating thing is that nobody follows the same path. Like you can’t say, okay, first they’re going to see an ad and then they’re going to download this white paper that we’ve written and then they’re going to get all these emails. They’re not going to do that.
Right.
They’re going to ping-pong around this whole thing. And so, you have to set up your marketing and have everybody going to accommodate for whatever somebody runs into. Whatever path they want to take and what we’re seeing just like you’re saying, more and more people are doing the marketing and sales process on their own before they want to talk to somebody, they want to gather a lot more information. So, I think that’s a real big challenge for companies to adjust to that. And how do you know what to put out there and how can you know how do you help people with their research process and show up for them before they’re even talking to you? I think if they get on the phone with you most salespeople are really good at their job. They’re really personable, they have all of that. But people want to be so much farther down the line before they actually talk to somebody. How can we show up with the same energy of a really good salesperson throughout that process? So, that’s something that I think companies, especially B2B manufacturers, need to be considering. How that sales process is starting to change.
Yeah. It is very true because that’s so much different from every other industry. And I’ve always thought that if you go to a home builder, there’s a very methodical path that people follow. And Kevin Oakley, the guy that I worked with, owns a company now that’s all-home building marketing. Kevin, I wish I could remember your name or what your company’s name is off the top of my head, but I’ll remember it here in a minute. He’s got it down to such a science that he knows every step that everyone takes before and after the Superbowl and it’s wild. But he’s been doing data research for decades. That was the industry that I worked in for a while, home building in marketing and sales of that industry are just so methodical. And then you get into manufacturing like you’re saying, it’s not. You’re not tracking somebody. Well, they looked at this website and then they visited this neighborhood and then they did this and then they talked to that person. It is ping-pong everywhere. I walked in on one of my engineers one time. He’s searching for images. And I’m like, well, this is interesting. Tell me more about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. And he’s like, well if I need a process, I’ll search for a process and I’ll search for an image. And then once I find an image that looks like what we need, I’ll dig into that, because he’s just very visual. And then he’ll go, and he’ll read about that process, and it doesn’t match what we need or doesn’t it? And it was really interesting to see how an engineer would research something, because that’s who we’re marketing towards, right, is mainly engineers, and then engineers telling the buyer who to go to. But it was just really cool to see, okay, well, this dude’s looking at images, and now it’s even more important how our images are tagged online, and all that stuff. You really dig into how images are labeled, and the alt tags, and all that.
Yep.
Now it’s become even more real that engineers are searching this way. And then with AI, it’s even more interesting.
Oh yeah.
I mean, you can get onto AI and say, okay, show me five of the 10 best whatever widget makers in a 10-mile radius, and it’s better than what Google’s doing at this point.
Yeah, and it’s different.
Yeah.
You bring up two really good points. And the AI point is important. We can’t stick our heads in the sand about this.
Sure.
We have to understand how it works and keep up with it. And it’s a pain and it’s kind of frightening. But it’s also good, right now there’s some opportunity for a level playing field. Which I think is really great. The other thing that you bring up that I think is important is that the engineer who is searching your product is not often in B2B and in our sales processes, not the person who’s saying, yes, this is what we want. And so, your marketing has to take in that account throughout that process. So, it’s not just like the decision maker of the engineer who’s going online searching for solutions. Then you have to help that person make the case for the expense. Often, when you’re doing that, especially that middle piece, you don’t have the opportunity to talk to the main decision-maker.
Right.
And so, your content and your process have to take that into consideration of how I am going to appeal both to the end user, the person who’s going to be using this. And then their decision, how do you educate them enough to communicate? Because what they see as a benefit is different than what the executives or whoever’s making that decision are going to see as a benefit. So how do you educate that end-user on the benefits that are meaningful to their supervisor for them to say yes and sign off on this product?
Right.
And so, I think that’s a really unique issue in our industry.
Yeah. Like with the AI piece, it is here to stay. I mean, it is scary. It’s extremely useful. I gave a ton of pushback on it. I’ve talked about this on many shows, but my buddy Brooks challenged me, and I think in October to use it for 30 days and then report back to him because he owns an AI company. And I’m like, all right, whatever dude. And I did, used it and I was able to accomplish more in a day than I probably could in five.
It’s very useful.
Yeah. But you do have to be careful. And there have been some things that I’ve caught that are, you know, like, oh, well, that’s not right.
Yep.
But it is really frightening how well it learns about you and your mannerisms and your tone and all those things and how you research and put it all together. It’s wild. And so, it’ll be very interesting how we can utilize that in a marketing aspect.
Yeah, well, I mean, it’s really good. So, you have to be careful. It’s really good at aggregating data and finding trends, but you don’t want to put in data that is identifying. You have to scrub your lists of any identifying data, and then you can come in and ask for it. And it’s so great at finding trends. It’s so great at discovering if you can get good data. And that’s all that it is, especially like what you’re talking about. If we’re all on e-commerce and we’re doing everything online, it’s fairly easy. It’s getting harder to track that third-party cookies are going away. Third-party data is getting a little iffy and this is getting into the weeds of marketing nerdiness.
Sure.
You know, so even that is getting trickier, especially where traffic is coming from. It’s getting skewed. There’s a great Rand Fishkin did a great kind of like review into what’s happening with search and data, third party data. So, you know, too bad. The golden age of tracking everybody on the internet and getting really good data is sadly and happily behind us. But I think what that means is instead of just tricking people, you just have to be honest and tell the truth and put out really good and useful content.
Yes.
You know, I feel like I’m excited about this because I think it means that if you spend time, you put out really good information, then you’re going to win. And it’s not going to be whoever has the most money to trick the most people. It all goes back to authenticity and being useful, being of service. That’s really how I view marketing. Marketing should be of service. It should be of service to our customers. It should be of service to our C-suite. It should be of service to our sales team. It should be bringing the company together. And I think we’re seeing that pendulum swing back, although who knows what will be invented next? But it’s a really interesting age of marketing that we’re in, I think.
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think the more you can educate your potential customer, the better off you are. And it’s always been interesting that so many people thought, well if I give too much information away, what do they need me for? It’s like, I don’t agree with that at all. We posted some stuff online three years ago of us cutting a certain material with kiss cutting. And everyone said that it couldn’t be done. And I took a video on my phone, and I posted it on LinkedIn and people were freaking out because they’re like, why did you post that? And I’m like, what do you mean? It showed how we did it. We’re able to do it. We want everyone to know that we can do it. They’re like, well, what if somebody can do it now that, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, I don’t care. There’s so much opportunity out there that If we help a competitor out to be able to do something, pretty what I felt easy to do when everyone’s telling us that we couldn’t do it, and we were able to do it and then good for them. But we were the first ones in that video, it is always going to be the first ones out there.
Yeah.
So, I’ve always just had that mindset and there is so much opportunity out there. It’s like really who are you really hurting yourself? Are you really giving away secrets? But I don’t know. That’s my opinion on it.
I think you’re spot on. It’s showcasing what you can do. I like that it’s the opposite of that scarcity mindset where we’re in abundance. And it could be that you team up with this competitor.
Absolutely.
Or you get so many orders that you have somebody to pass them on to and then vice versa.
Yep. Yep.
I think you do have to walk the line, which is something that if you have like real trade secrets or the way that you do things.
Oh yes.
But doing things like that really shows you need to show how things and that’s what people are interested in.
Right.
And that can build trust. People see in that video, see the competency that you have, the ingenuity.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think sharing, being open, being truthful, and being authentic is the way to go. It just feels like the best in business. Everything that you’ve said about trust, I mean that’s the most important piece. That’s really what we’re building.
Right.
Relationships don’t happen, sales don’t happen without trust.
Yeah, totally agree. I do think that people, you know, part of that is just being, like you said, authentic. I think that maybe that snowmobile crash hurt my brain. But if you’re taking a simple video, instead of having, you know, paying a big production team to come in and do a big fancy video. There’s another video we did, and it was just, again, on my cell phone and I was messing around with TikTok. And I’m not saying TikTok is the best thing in the world by any means, but we had over a million views with the simple machining process with these parts falling out of the machine. And I’m like, it was just a cheesy little video. Now we can really dig into that and say, okay, out of a million views, was it all like 12-year-old boys that are interested in machining and welding and things like that? None of them are really validated leads. Well, yeah, maybe. But maybe there’s one person out there that needed that, and you got in front of them or that kid ends up going into manufacturing. A totally different subject is, well, maybe now that kid’s more interested in manufacturing instead of going and sitting behind a desk at a bank. So, there’s all those different aspects of the things that we put out there and it’s not all about getting business. I think a lot of in our industry is, if we can put things out there that kids can really say, okay, now this is an industry that I love and maybe I don’t need to go to a four-year college and learn accounting. I really want to be a machinist, or I really want to be a welder. We’ve gotten away from that society as well.
Yeah. I mean, thinking about all the possible waves of what we were talking about before, content can serve more than one purpose. I think if you have a plan, and you know, something that a big trend that we’re seeing within the market is the swing back towards brand, towards brand identity.
Yeah.
And so doing something like that, it’s building trust, and it’s also something that we’re seeing is that only 5% of your market is looking to buy is active. And so, what are you going to do for that 95%? That’s not in-market looking but would be potential customers. And that’s where that brand comes in. So, maybe you put out that video and somebody who is a machinist or who is an engineer or whatever, they’re scrolling by, and they see that, or you know, LinkedIn, maybe a more targeted I think there’s like, you know, work to put your resources?
Yeah.
And so, it’s priming that pump so that when they are ready, most people are not searching for what’s the answer to this thing? They’re searching for a brand name first.
Yeah.
So, if you can get your brand name out there, trade shows are, we’re just seeing the pendulum swing back up to where reputation is becoming more and more important. People are searching for brands instead of solutions. Because brands are doing a good job of showing that they are that solution no matter what. All of that, but doing it thoughtfully, like in a way that we know what the ripple effects are of this content that we’re putting out and we know how we’re going to repurpose it a million times. That’s like the ideal, you know? There’s also room for what you’re doing experimentation. Let’s just see what happens.
Yeah.
So, it’s not just like this really structured, boring, everything is what we do. There’s got to be a room. I feel like marketing is, it’s like creativity and it’s a science experiment, right? So, we have a hypothesis, we have an idea of what’s going to happen, and then we test that hypothesis and then we draw conclusions from it.
And you might have to test it five or 12 times.
Yeah.
So, a lot of consistency in what we do. And if you’re just shotgunning everything out and you never really figure out what works you have to do something. It is like the old-school email marketing. You’d have to send 12 emails before you get one reply. And you know, folks that are sending even today, I mean, email marketing still works, but if you send one email off, and you expect a reply, you’re foolish.
Yeah.
You know, you got to send 12 and maybe they say, leave me alone, never contact me again. Or a year later, somebody emails back and says, hey, you’ve been emailing me a year. I changed my role. I didn’t have a need for it then, but I do now.
Yeah, that’s that nurture.
And we’ve seen that. Yeah, absolutely. But you have to deliver good content though.
Yeah, you know what’s funny is that every year we hear that email is dead. Email is dying. Email is dead, right? If you look over the last 10 years, all the different forms of marketing, you see these huge spikes.
Yep.
And email is just kind of going along, just steady, consistent. Email marketing consistently works, but it is a bit of a numbers game, and you have to have good content for that to work. You can’t just put stuff out to put stuff out and that takes time, and it takes team. A lot of times I think a fallacy that people try to sell you on marketing is that it doesn’t take extra time because they’re trying to get you to do, you know, there’s like, who’s the man behind the curtain? But it takes a lot of time. It can take three to six months to start seeing any ROI come from your campaign, sometimes longer, depending on what it is. And it takes effort to do it consistently. And I don’t think that people talk about that enough. It’s hard work and it is a significant investment.
Well, I think so many marketers out there want to make their customers feel like they have the magic stick, the one that’s going to fix everything. And they’re afraid that they’re like, this could take 12 months for you to get anything out of it. And they’re like, yes. And I just think that so many marketers, unlike what you’re saying, are afraid to tell somebody that because somebody like me is going to go, no, I needed a median and return on my investment. Just like a machine, we bring a machine, and we know from day one, it’s making X number of dollars. Why isn’t marketing like that? And I think that they do. They’re just afraid to talk about those things. And it’s all about the expectation upfront of what you can expect from day one to day 365.
Yeah.
And if your program is not working in the first six months of the first year, then something is broken.
Yep.
Yep.
Yes, it is. I love that machine analogy because the other thing is that you invest in a machine, but you can’t just, I mean, maybe soon it can just be a robot and do whatever it needs, but you have to work that machine, right? Somebody has to be working on that machine. If it breaks, you have to fix it. And I think that’s the other thing that people think that they get like a marketing plan or something and they’re like, great, magic will work.
Yeah.
But you have to continually work, and somebody has to be running the thing and investing in the thing. And I think that’s an important piece. But I think some people just trying to sell you marketing and they’re trying to sell you the magic, it’s not magic. It’s really not.
Right.
It’s anybody who could do it who’s interested in doing it. There’s nothing super special about it. And I think that’s really important, but it is like a piece, it’s an investment. It’s not a bottom-line expense, it’s an investment. So, there’s only so much, if you want to get it done faster, you have to invest more money.
Yeah.
So, there’s like, you can have speed, you can have quality, and you can have all three things.
Yeah, what’s the cheesy quote? Do you want it cheap, faster or on time, but you can only pick two?
Yeah, yes, that’s it.
All right. Well, I appreciate you coming on. We’re getting close to the end of our time. And I know that you have a crazy busy schedule. And I appreciate you coming on and sharing these things with us. We touched on a lot of things that we haven’t touched on before. So, we’ve had a few different marketing folks on, and everyone has their different spin. And I think everyone, you know, it’s like anything else, whatever you’re doing is working. But I think the consistent message that we are from everyone is just consistency, building trust, and delivering good content.
Yeah.
Just how you go about it and then how big you want to nerd out over the numbers and track everything.
Yeah, I think that’s a big piece but thank you so much.
Yeah.
This has been such a great conversation.
Katie, tell us how our listeners can get in touch with you and all those fun things. And again, we’ll have everything in the bio and the transcript that we post and all that fun stuff.
Sure thing. So, you can find me on LinkedIn. Just search for Katie Smith Wild Path Consulting because there is a million Katie Smiths out there.
I’m sure.
Or you can check out my website which is followthewildpath.com or email me katie@followthewildpath.com. And yeah, I love to nerd out about this stuff and love to make connections and love hearing what kinds of things people are manufacturing.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, get in touch.
Yeah. And I’ll be back out in Montana in March. So, we’ll have to hook up.
Yeah, that’d be fun.
All right, awesome. Well, thanks for coming on.
All right, have a good one.
All right, bye-bye.
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