Industrial Marketing Summit 2025 Preview with Wendy Covey

Curt Anderson  00:00

Hey guys, hey, happy Monday. What Damon, what a wonderful weekend. Was a good weekend on

Damon Pistulka  00:06

your end? Yes, it was, yes, it was good. Some people

Curt Anderson  00:10

had a good football weekend. Some people maybe not so good. Little playoffs are going on right now. So depending on where you live, could have been good. Could have been not so good. But hey, we’re going to dive in. We’ve got, speaking of football, we’ve got a we’ve got a Aggie in the house here today. So we’ve got Miss Texas A&M. We got Wendy Covey in the house. Wendy, good morning to you. I know your central time. Good morning. Happy

Wendy Covey  00:31

Monday to you. Happy Monday. Good morning. Ish, good morning.

Curt Anderson  00:35

Ish, well, hey, thrilled to have you here. You’re a repeat offender. Damon, do you know, how many times Wendy’s been on, you know, how many times? How many times has she been on Curt, it’s been a lot, dude. And not only has she been on multiple times, she’s actually been on the show, I think twice, in person. So, and we’re going to do it a third time next month, because Wendy, what’s coming up next

Wendy Covey  00:53

month, the industrial marketing summit,

Curt Anderson  00:56

the Industrial Marketing Summit. So, alright, we’re talking about the Industrial Marketing Summit. Wendy, curious minds want to know. I can’t imagine anybody doesn’t know about it, but if there’s a B2B, Industrial Manufacturer, manufacturing marketer out there, please enlighten us. What is the Industrial Marketing Summit? Yeah.

Wendy Covey  01:14

So this event is designed for marketing practitioners in engineering and manufacturing. So it’s pretty broad within that but think B to B to B, think technology. Think about manufacturing processes. We have product companies, services companies, but we all share a common need, which is to reach technical buyers, reach buyers that maybe aren’t in traditional jobs, sitting at a desk, and a lot of us have to tell complex stories about complex technology. So how can we help each other grow in our careers? How can we help move these manufacturers along, some of which have, I don’t know, marketing that’s, that’s kind of 20 years aged, right? That hasn’t kept up with the time. So helping to move this industry along by marketers, helping marketers that understand each other’s industries. So

Curt Anderson  02:09

Wendy, let’s go here. So the industrial marketing Summit is coming up in Austin, Texas, your hometown? Well, I guess your your current hometown. And so this is a, just a powerhouse event. It’s at the end of February, 26 through the 28th all the cool kids are going to be there. So you got to be there, right? So, Wendy, let’s go here so you get your find the colors right behind you. True marketing, please. You’re the CEO of true marketing. Please share with us what is true marketing. First, how do you and your incredible team? How do you guys make the world a better place? And then we’re going to dive back into the industrial marketing center. Okay?

Wendy Covey  02:43

So we’re a strategy driven marketing agency, and what we do is help companies define their brand, define their marketing plan, and then we serve as a partner to implement that plan, along alongside internal marketing resources in many cases. So some companies come to us because they have no marketing strategy, no marketing function, and we can help step in and do that. And then larger enterprise companies come to us to help develop, maybe a campaign strategy and then execute on that. And a lot of our, lot of our businesses, content development, so highly technical, complex topics, how do we write about that? How do we make it compelling? And how do we make sure that the content we make is is suitable along the buyer’s journey, so that we can take someone from awareness all the way through to being primed and ready to talk to sales?

Curt Anderson  03:38

Well, I love that, and that ties in with, lo and behold, you, you don’t talk to talk. You, you, I’m sorry. You don’t walk. You don’t talk to talk. You walk the walk. I got that straight. You never you knew what I meant, right? So you have a wonderful book and podcast content marketing engineered and so again, we’re here with Wendy COVID. Stop by Wendy’s LinkedIn page. Do yourself a favor. I’d love for you to connect with, Wendy, learn about true marketing. As a matter of fact, if you don’t mind, I’m going to pull up your website super quick. All right, I’m going off. We’re going to talk about the summit. But you know what? I just want to give a little credence to. All right, well, who’s this person throwing this summit? Can you guys see my screen there? Mm, hmm, yes. Okay, Wendy, so I have your website here, so we’ve got true marketing. Founded your company. I believe, I always recall you started your company. There might have been, like a little economic thing going on at the time. What was, what was this little economic thing? What year did you start your company? 2008

Wendy Covey  04:32

before the Great Recession of 2009 Damon,

Curt Anderson  04:35

what were you doing? 2008 we’re having a good time. It was good times back then, right? Yes, yes. Lot, lots of lots of fun. Well, hey, Wendy, decided, like, hey, there’s nothing else going on. I might as well, like, go start a company, right? So when again, you speak to you target, I target high level engineering us. You offer high level engineering solutions. So I’m going to cruise around your website for a second. So just share a little bit, because you guys have tons of information. We have research, and then we’re going to, I want to just give some credence and like, how powerful this industrial market somebody is going to going to be, but just you get a nice taste at the true marketing website, just give us a little background, a little deeper on the company and what we’re looking at

Wendy Covey  05:13

here. Yeah, well, for the same reason that we’re having this summit, is also the reason that my agency doesn’t work with just anyone. Right we want we specialize in this niche. We want to very deeply understand how engineers seek and consume information to make purchase decisions, and with that knowledge, we do marketing differently than, say, an average B to B marketing agency would do. So there’s nuances in the tactics. There’s definitely nuances in how you present your brand and your content, and so that’s why we focus so narrowly, and that’s what makes us so differentiated and and we have a good time and we respect complex companies that have these solutions like RF and radar system integration to automate something on the manufacturing floor many times, these are complex challenges that engineers are trying to solve, and we respect that, and we want to be a part of that process. And let’s give a

Curt Anderson  06:16

shout out to the team, because you have a powerhouse team. I know a couple of your teammates are going to be speaking at the industrial marketing Summit. How about, let’s, let’s go there. About the this powerhouse team that you’ve built? Uh, talk about that a little bit, and then we’re going to talk. Then I’m going to jump over to the industrial marketing Summit.

Wendy Covey  06:32

Yeah. So I’ve gathered a we’re fairly small team, but very focused on this niche. So most of my team has spent their past career working in engineering companies, and about half the team worked at my alma mater, National Instruments or ni are now part of Emerson, if you know those companies. And so with that together, we all, you know, play different functions. So we have from brand strategists to senior writers to marketing strategists, and then we have specialists that understand tools like HubSpot and Canva and and can implement and execute off of those plans that we create. Well, absolutely

Curt Anderson  07:16

love it. So you’re going on your I’m not, I’m not a math major. What are we on 17 years or so. 17 years, yeah, 17 years as, let’s go here, Wendy as a, I know in your humble gal, right? I heard a term yesterday, false humility, Damon, and we gotta talk about that one. I’ve never heard like false humility can actually be a negative. I’ve you know, it’s always like, oh, you should be humble, humble, humble. So false humility, please don’t. Don’t offer any false melody. Please share it for entrepreneurs out there, or maybe Wendy from 2007 if there’s a young entrepreneur, even maybe a more mature, seasoned entrepreneur, you know, in age, but they are new to entrepreneurship. What’s been the key to your long term success?

Wendy Covey  07:58

Focus and the fact that we niched down, because that first year, we were like, Okay, we’ll work with anybody who will hire us. Yeah, we very quickly learned that we’re not we. We didn’t learn all these different industries, like we worked with a nonprofit that was attached to Dell Children’s Medical Center and help them with a fundraising campaign, and we put together a pretty good campaign, but we’re not experts at fundraising. We’re not experts at at pediatric healthcare. So there was a lot of ramp up to doing that, and we can work more efficiently if we stay in one niche and we’re more deeply servicing our customers, because, for example, audience personas, we have about 80 different audience personas all built out around the nuances of different types of engineers. So imagine the knowledge we bring to a new client already, before we’ve even learned about their business that we couldn’t bring, to say, somebody outside of our niche. So depending on, you know, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, or, excuse me, what type of business you’re starting think about how you can deeply serve someone by going niche and being more specialized in what you offer. And I guarantee you have a more quality product as a result.

Curt Anderson  09:12

You know, I just, Damon, you love it. I just listened to a phenomenal podcast, Ray Guy, Raz, you know, you wrote the book, how I built this. You guys listen to the podcast how it’s how I built this. And it was the founder, raising canes, you know, down in your corner of the world, right? And you know what? You know, if you walk into a raising canes, you know what’s on the menu, four items. That’s it. Four items that like, that’s it like, he’s intention. That’s how he started the business at 2223 23 years old, back in the 90s, and you walk in there today, it’s like four items, like you talk about, like, just laser focus. So Wendy, I love that. Hey, Damon, we got a couple friends here. John Bucha, Hey, John,

Damon Pistulka  09:51

what’s up? Everyone? That’s great Monday.

Curt Anderson  09:53

John, great to see you, brother. And hey, how about skylers in the house here? Anything e commerce related? Wendy, do you guys? Us do anything e commerce related, skylers asking, we

Wendy Covey  10:02

do not touch e commerce. So what we think of do, and what how we think of ourselves is we are marketing strategists that understand the customer and what they need out of your website. But when it comes to building e commerce, we look to the experts to come in and implement that, and we’re that marketing strategist that writes the content and drives traffic to that and make sure they have a wonderful experience through that partner implementing, yeah,

Curt Anderson  10:31

great question. Skyler and Wendy, you guys might be a great connection. Skylar was on the show in November. What he does? He does high level 3d rendering of products, which is absolutely fascinating. So he does a great job. Check out Skyler on LinkedIn, what he does. But Wendy, let’s dive into the industrial marketing Summit. So I had the privilege, I guess, you know, yeah. So I met you at the industrial marketing summit in Cleveland to, I guess, in 23 now. And what was fascinating you were there as an attendee, just walk us through a little bit of the story of, like, how you know you, how do you go from attending to like, you know, one of the main, you know, like, you’re, you’re the, the sponsor, the main person. Like,

Wendy Covey  11:10

yeah, and I presented that year to be fair, but yeah, and hey, yeah. Back

Curt Anderson  11:16

to the humility part. David, she power. Just like, she’s a great pickleball player, she’s a powerhouse presenter. I think when Morgan did a presentation, if I’m not mistaken, and it was, you are a great public speaker. No, thank

Wendy Covey  11:30

you. I appreciate that. Yeah, our history with the event goes back even further to pre COVID times. And so when you mentioned Cleveland, that was part of Content Marketing World, and over the years, they’ve held whether it be a two hour master class or a full day separate event. So they used to do these full day separate industry focused events, and they had different names. One year it was called the manufacturing Summit. Another year it was industrial marketing. And so on and off. We’ve been speaking, but this past one, the one that you’re referring to, post COVID In 2023 we realized that there was a big appetite for amongst industrial marketers to have more programming than what could fit in this one day function, you know, this one day Summit. And so we decided, let’s, let’s go ahead and launch an event that’s multiple day, multiple track. We can bring in more of the industry practitioners to speak. And so we absolutely still support Content Marketing World. We go. In fact, we presented the manufacturing master class past two years. Morgan Norris presented those. But it was time to stand alone and put together our own event, and we’re doing this with Gorilla 76 and then the support of quite a few sponsors, including Kadena spark solutions that was so instrumental in helping us that first year, take it independent.

Curt Anderson  13:00

Yeah, I love it. And so as a matter of fact, Joe is going to be on the show this Friday. Damon, so you know, if you have any more, you know, just we’ve piqued your curiosity on the Industrial Marketing Summit. Come back Friday, and we’re going to dive in even deeper. So alright, I’m going to pull up a screen here, Wendy, so let’s take a look at the industrial marketing Summit. And you know, before I pull this up, talk to us about for the phone. Let’s create a little FOMO Wendy. Okay, there we go. I had the honor and privilege I was at the show last year, man, it was phenomenal in the tagline that everybody kept saying, and I know I came back saying it, and then also like, like, Man, I found my people found like, this is my crowd. Yeah, there’s also everybody go. And everybody on LinkedIn is like, hey, we found our people. We found and, man, I felt that first hand. Megan Zimba and Addie Saunders and Chris Lukey, Greg. Miss you. Like all these guys that I’ve known for years, like pre COVID, during COVID, and you know, you and I had met before, but just, you know, Joe Sullivan, it was just such a privilege that you can’t describe that, you know, if people hadn’t gone through COVID, it’s like, that’s no big deal. You met in person. But when you’re in COVID, you’re like, Hey, Rob, met in person. Talk about the energy, the excitement at 24 industrial marketing Summit. Then we’re going to talk about this year’s

Wendy Covey  14:17

Okay? Well, when you brought that up, I got goosebumps. I did. It was these, yeah, and it wasn’t, I mean, the programming was great. We had wonderful speakers. We had these, you know, networking events at a party, and all of that was great. But the overlying thing was, I have a community now I have, I met people in person I had only known on LinkedIn, and I actually got to talk to them and ask questions and trade ideas. And so we, what we did to foster that was we had a lot of longer breaks than you would see in a normal conference. So we had some 30 minute breaks where people could just connect. And sit down and talk, and that format works incredibly well, and so we want to repeat a lot of that and even help people who are coming by themselves to the event that don’t know anyone. We’re going to do some things like table assignments and connections to make sure that everyone meets somebody else has a buddy and starts to just, you know, feel supported and listened to and understood, and what is really a very tough industry for a non technical person,

Curt Anderson  15:28

yeah, I’ll tell you when. So, first off, I loved it. So, you know, I went and had a great time. Met a bunch of you know, Wendy, as you know, we are big supporters of the MEP network, manufacturing, extension partnerships, and a dear friend of mine, I think there were a couple of MEPs there. So it was just, it was just such a phenomenal, wonderful experience. The great venue, you know, it’s in Austin. What a great scene, you know, just everything going on there. Number one, secondly, I you’re hitting it on the head, because you guys had I, and I want to say my Ben Joe’s team did a kind of a workshop, and it was, you know, like, presentation. You’re sitting there, you’re digesting, well, all of a sudden they stopped, like, Okay, we’re going to split everybody up into groups. And all of a sudden, like, I’ve got an opportunity to meet people that I normally would have talked to. And it was wonderful. So I love how you guys are being very intentional on not just the immense value that you’re going to give on the education side, but the connection. I think you guys are doing a great job there.

Wendy Covey  16:29

Yeah, you know, I’m glad you brought that up. The subjects where we they broke into groups was by CRM, and it was so popular, we decided to have a whole session for 2025 with with no speaker instead, with table moderators, and we’re going to break it out and imagine several HubSpot at table, several sales force and so by CRM, and then we have one of, I don’t even have a CRM. We’re using Excel, but I need to find one moderators that aren’t there salespeople just there to facilitate conversation. And I think that’s going to be very successful. And so all the hubspotters can go deep like, Oh, this is the HubSpot one on lead scoring, or on sales enablement, or, I don’t know, we’re still working out what exactly the topics are, but it’s going to be a good one. Well, yeah, that’ll

Damon Pistulka  17:19

be very helpful, because that kind of stuff you don’t, you really, unless you’re active on Reddit or other in other groups or something like that, you really can’t get into the, you know, cross pollination of you’re using this in your company. I’m using it in my company. How, what are you doing? And the learning that you can, you can achieve from that people solve problems

Wendy Covey  17:44

and also, what? What do you what have you used that you’re like? This features trash. Don’t even bother you know. That’s, you

Curt Anderson  17:52

know. And here’s the brilliance behind it. Wendy is, you know, I’ve gone to tons of conferences over the year, and you sit there and you digest it, and then the person that has the courage to raise their hand and ask the question. So now, okay, we know that person is a Salesforce person, or like that person raise a hand. Or like, you know, hey, let’s see a show hands of who uses what. So then when you, when you’re out in the hall, you’re trying to find that you know, like, what you did, like, it’s now, it’s happenstance. What you’ve done is like, you’ve intentionally created a small group to say, like, Hey, do you have Salesforce pain points? I have Salesforce pain points, or whatever, CRM, or, you know, I don’t have a CRM. What do you guys recommend? Now what you’re doing is you’re creating that group, and now we can solve it together. I brilliant. It was absolutely phenomenal last year. Good, good. Okay, all right, let’s, man, I’m having a great time. Let’s go through the let’s go to the website. So, all right, pull it up here. Let’s go in the industrial marketing Summit. Okay, you guys can see my screen, yep. All right, Wendy, let’s talk. When is the industrial marketing summit by chance?

Wendy Covey  18:52

Okay, so you can see the date right there, February 26 through 28th which is normally a warm week in Austin, believe it or not, 60s, 70s even. So hopefully that’ll be the case. So for all of you people in colder climates, that’ll be a nice break for you. And I think the first place to understand this event is to go to the schedule, just to kind of understand the flow. So what we have here is starting on Wednesday. We have optional workshops in the morning. So both gorilla 76 and true marketing are giving two hour workshops that are back to back. So there’s an extra fee for that. We go way deep on topics you and we’ll get to the topics in just a minute, but those are building a marketing plan and building brand branding for your company, and personal branding are the two things. So then in the afternoon, that’s when we kick off the conference for everyone. So we’ll have a keynote, which is by Paul razor, who is the founder of the marketing AI Institute, who I have Matt. Massive amount of respects, respect for he saw AI early on, saw the impact it would make. He sold his marketing agency, and he was the first HubSpot marketing agency. So we go way back, Paul and I, and he’s just doing a phenomenal job educating everyone about AI. So that’s our keynote, and then we’ll have a panel, an afternoon panel, on, on recruiting, on in and the next generation coming into manufacturing. How do we attract talent? How do we retain talent? What does that look like? So, really powerful panel there. And then we’ll have a marketing mingle out outside in the courtyard, because the weather is going to be beautiful. And this is when you know people can really connect with each other, see people you’ve only seen online, and then those first timers will have been with a whole table of people that they’ve met. And so it’s an easy transition to our first social event. Nice,

Curt Anderson  20:58

awesome. Okay, so that’s a first day, Wednesday. So now everybody gets to sleep early, because now Thursday is just as power packed. Thursday. What do we have on what do we have on Thursday? Wendy, yeah.

Wendy Covey  21:09

So Thursday, we have two tracks. One is strategy and branding, and the other one is tactical excellence. And so all day long, they’re 45 minute presentations with breaks in between. We have wonderful food. And then we have, like, about, I think, eight booths set up outside in this foyer area, so lots of time to mingle and visit booths. We’re even going to have a hatter there, so if someone wants a custom cowboy or cowgirl hat. We’re going to have that going on outside. There you

21:43

go, Curt man, dude,

Curt Anderson  21:45

you need one. My wife, that’s right. Keep my head warm. That’s right.

Wendy Covey  21:51

That’s right. And then, and then, after we finish that day, we’ll have a two hour break, and then we have a party in East Austin at this really cool venue called luster pearl. So we’ll be heading out there on busses, and then finally, we’ll end on Friday. We’ll have another half day of sessions, and give everybody the flexibility to either fly home or, of course, transition into a fun tourism weekend in Austin. That’s weekend mode. Yeah, perfect.

Curt Anderson  22:21

Okay, you mentioned a couple of speakers. Let’s dive in here. Let’s take a look at Paul. And why don’t we rattle off a few of the speakers? So again, if somebody’s on the bubble, if they’re like, man, should I go to this? You really cannot afford to miss this, yeah, my humble opinion. But let’s go here. Let’s talk about some of the speakers.

Wendy Covey  22:38

You know, what’s great about Paul is is, not only is he keeping up with with AI and its future as as just a business person, but because he was a marketer, he’s going to give a lot of practical advice on how to apply this, how how to think about your approach with AI and how your mindset should be Shifting this year. So he’s, he’s great, excellent,

Curt Anderson  23:02

right? So we’ve got a powerhouse. And speaking of powerhouse, how about this guy, Damon, you know this guy, you know, Jay,

Damon Pistulka  23:06

seen and talked to that person before. That’s right?

Wendy Covey  23:09

Yeah, so Jake, last year came with his robot dog after Scout spot. You know

Curt Anderson  23:15

what? I What’s his name? Pretty fat. He’s like, you know, dogs kind of like, but it’s like, Odin, it’s like Damon’s dog, you know, he said this little robot walking down the hall, yeah,

Wendy Covey  23:25

yeah. But one of the things that you know Jake does extremely well is is build and engage with people on LinkedIn. So he’ll be pulling back to Curt on what he does to be successful there. And then, of course, he’s been in the industry a long time. And then we have Dale from fire and spark. Have you? Did you catch Dale’s presentation? Curt, have you seen him present? I

Curt Anderson  23:50

caught Dale. And then, not only that, we Damon. I had Dale on. The matter of fact, Dale was on the show. Was on this live show right after you run last May. We’re trying to get, we’re having schedule challenges, but we’re trying to get them on the show before, before the industrial marketing Summit. But Dale is a, I need another word, but I guess everybody’s a powerhouse, but this guy is phenomenal. Yeah, you

Damon Pistulka  24:14

know, he understands it from an engineering standpoint. He’s been working with AI longer than people even knew what the words meant. And it just if that’s going to be a phenomenal session. Yeah.

Wendy Covey  24:26

And guess what? He when I said, Dale, we’d love to have you back to present. He goes, Okay, here’s some options. And he shows me the list. I’m like, I want all of this. And so Dale is actually presenting twice. So was he presenting twice? Yes, he is. So he’s presenting one topic on Thursday, which is the topic you should have on your screen, and then he’s closing out the whole conference as our closing speaker on Friday. And we’re being pretty smart, because no one’s going to want to leave before they hear Dale. Nobody wants

Curt Anderson  24:57

to if you’re not familiar. Earlier with Dale, connect with Dale on LinkedIn. And, you know, he’s an Ivy League undergrad and grad. He, like, you said, I think Damon, I think when he, I think he was doing, AI, like, I think, yeah, 90s or like, it’s, yeah,

Damon Pistulka  25:13

yeah. He was working on artificial intelligence before, I mean, literally, before anybody even uttered those words together. I think, yeah, yeah,

Curt Anderson  25:21

work better. He’s a that’s he’s worth the price of admission. Just yeah. So Dale is phenomenal. Alright, we’ll keep we’ll keep flying through. Who else we

Wendy Covey  25:30

have here. Okay, we have Jenny from Caterpillar, and she’ll be talking about content strategy. So how do you build a customer centric content editorial calendar? And what I love about Jenny is she’s prepared to show for large companies how, here’s how you approach this, and for small companies here, here’s how you approach this. She’s a lot of energy, and she’s just a great person. So very cool. Plug her in, and then this guy, Chris, I know you. I don’t know.

Curt Anderson  25:58

I don’t know if anybody, yeah, who? Who doesn’t know Chris Loki, right? Yeah. So Chris

Wendy Covey  26:02

will be talking about how to stage events, how to how to take advantage of trade shows, to to stage events, and how you create a rolling thunder of marketing campaign around live events. And then, separately, he’ll be broadcasting. He’ll be creating a podcast from our party, our after summit foray. So he’ll bring a list here and do that. Alright,

Curt Anderson  26:27

Damon, we’ll have Wendy. We’ll have to figure out. We’ll have to do a little Curt and Damon, something down there, right? We’ll have to do our live show when we’re there. Yes, we’ll have to. We’ll figure it. You know what? In the past, in Cleveland and in Austin, I kind of just did it on the fly. I don’t think we even had it planned. We’re just like, hey, let’s just go live. We just, we just make it work. So we’ll definitely go live down there, yeah, um, I won’t go through every single person because I because we need people to go to the website. We need them to check it out. Yes, what do we I’m, hey, what day is, uh, what day is Chris speaking?

Wendy Covey  26:59

Is Chris. I think, Oh, I can’t remember. Trying to think if he’s Thursday or Friday. Gosh, I don’t remember. They’re still tweaking the days right now on that and let you know that in the next two weeks, we’ll release that schedule where you can see who’s on what day, fairly certain he’s Thursday and Jake is Friday. So anyway, yeah, okay, what do we have

Curt Anderson  27:29

with Craig? Craig

Wendy Covey  27:30

from Eaton, so he is a very seasoned content marketer and marketing strategist. So he’ll be talking about, again, a content strategy topic about how to really think about the right form factor of content and how to reach that audience and content distribution. So not just about selecting topics and writing a good piece, but how to how can we get the right distribution of that information

Curt Anderson  27:55

Perfect? Now, this next one, Damon and I had the privilege of Carla came on our show, yeah, she actually did. She showed us how, like, she created this incredible guide. And she showed us, like, almost like, step by step, how she used AI to create this robust, high level engineering guide for customers. Then Damon, remember she had a configurator? Yeah, they have a page on WordPress that was in HTML, or no, it was in Excel. I’m sorry. It was in Excel. She took it out of Excel, put it in AI, and had aI convert it into HTML, I mean, and she did it like she showed us, right,

Damon Pistulka  28:32

right online while we were watching it. Fantastic. Yeah, she, so

Curt Anderson  28:36

I need another word in powerhouse, but Carla,

Wendy Covey  28:41

powerhouse, man, yes. So she and Brittany and Carla did such a great job on the panel last year. Like, okay, it’s not a matter of if we have her back, it’s just we want to focus on Carla Mac so skip,

Curt Anderson  28:53

is there anybody else that we want to really highlight we got

Wendy Covey  28:58

needs to go to the website, take a look at all these speaker bios, take a look at the topics. The biggest feedback we’ve heard is, how can I decide what to go to? Want to go to both of these things, and they’re at the same time, and I think that’s a wonderful problem. And to bring a colleague, let’s give a big shout

Curt Anderson  29:18

out to our dear buddy, Paul. He’s a dear friend. He’s been on the show multiple times. Can’t wait to I finally get to meet him in person. Nice. Let’s, let’s hear what Paul is going to be talking about. Yeah,

Wendy Covey  29:27

so Paul’s gonna be talking about branding, and specifically his, we’re going to get into creative. And so I don’t know a lot of details about his presentation, but his is one that we wanted to make sure we had a design session, and his looked very strong, because it’s about bringing your brand through into your downstream creatives. So, and he’s really well suited for that topic. Well,

Curt Anderson  29:53

I love it. There’s Dale, again and again. Check out all the speakers here now, Wendy, just for the record. There’s like, there’s now. To I want to talk about yours real quick. Just yeah, let’s talk about your sneak sneak peek on your research program.

Wendy Covey  30:04

Yeah, this will be our eighth annual year of producing the state of marketing to engineers report alongside global spec. And this year we’ve also brought along a collaborator from Europe elector who has helped us expand our footprint to make sure we had a robust sample size from in particular Western Europe, so we could do more regional comparisons and have a bigger data set. So we’ll be doing a sneak peek of the 2025, report at IMS, and then the following week, the first week of March, we’ll release it to the general public. So unless people get a little sneak peek, and let’s see a couple of things that are new this year, interesting this year, all the data, and we had some AI questions. So seeing how engineers are using AI for search. Do they trust information given from generative AI? So those are some things we dove into. We also had some questions on branding. So what is important about a corporate brand, and then, when you’re evaluating a company for technical acumen, what aspects of their brand are most important? And we wanted to ask those questions, but I because I think it’ll help with messaging, right? What should I emphasize? Where should I put more or less real estate around my messaging and so some interesting things there. What else? Oh, we got into sponsored content versus organic content. Is there more or less trust in one versus another.

Damon Pistulka  31:42

Big point. Yeah, that’s a big point. Because, you know, a lot of people, if you got money, you just think you can go out and spend it, but that may not be your best way, right?

Wendy Covey  31:50

Exactly. Yeah. So we dive into that. And then social media use, which is always really popular, to see what the trends are by age, by region. And then finally, this is another benchmark, but we just say, where do you routinely go to find information? And we’re specifically watching for changes in order of things. And there’s been a change in what is number one and number two on that. Oh, no kidding, wow. They’re going to tell you what, though,

Curt Anderson  32:19

no exactly, don’t. So

Wendy Covey  32:21

a year ago, we added chat, GPT and generative AI search to see where that ranks compared to everything else. And so that’ll be some interesting data for you guys to find out in a few weeks. Wow.

Curt Anderson  32:34

So you, you have to go to the industrial marketing summit to get a little sneak peek of this report. And then I think Wendy, we might have to have you on a one of our webinars or jam sessions that we do, probably like March or April. So after you’ve presented a few times, we would love to have the privilege of capturing

Damon Pistulka  32:53

so much interesting data from that. And every year, I

Curt Anderson  32:57

learned so much when I think you and I’ve done a few webinars together, if I’m not mistaken, and I have a front row seat of watching that, and it’s just, it’s priceless. You’re doing so much heavy lifting for people, and you’re like, here’s the information. Now go, you know, do what you need to with it. So

Wendy Covey  33:12

it is a heavy lift. I won’t, I won’t argue that. But for for my own business, I need this data. And yeah, it didn’t exist for marketers. You know, there’s, there’s other mind of the engineer and things like that, but they’re definitely the nuance is a little different, and this is much more marketing centric, helping marketers be more effective with their budget allocation and how to reach this audience. So I’m happy to keep doing it. It’s worth it. Well,

Curt Anderson  33:39

again, for folks out there, if you’re on the bubble, or if you’ve had, our goal is like a little FOMO. So hopefully, I hope you’re just like, just steaming with FOMO right now, you have to go to the industrial marketing summit in Austin. What a great opportunity to catch this presentation with Wendy first hand, live. And then on top of it, have an opportunity to walk up after the presentation, talk to Wendy about, like, Hey, what are some some information? And I’ll talk about a couple things I want to hit on Monday. Is number one, I just love how you’ve partnered with global spec. So anybody in that, you know, electrical engineering, anybody in that space knows global spec is just a force to reckon with in that space. How did you line with these guys? Yeah,

Wendy Covey  34:19

well, you know, part of it is we focus in the same space, obviously. But also, in order to conduct this research, I needed a database, right? I needed a trusted database, so the sample size, but also a company that was really having being a good steward of that database, and and they fit the bill, and we’re very easy to work with. We have a great partnership all these years, and just very pleased with how that’s developed and continues to go,

Curt Anderson  34:53

yeah, and talk about, you know, the networking portion and Damon, the food is phenomenal. I think you mentioned that earlier, so I’m going to back. Back you up on that the food is exceptional. I had the privilege of, I had lunch with the global spec team, and they’re from New York State, and so we were geeking up, you know, we were talking about New York and stuff. And so it was just, it was great. And I have a couple electric a couple clients in electrical space. So it was just great, having those conversations, meeting new people, getting new LinkedIn connections and so again, strongly encourage everybody go to Austin and check this out. We’re going to fly through here. So like this. This lineup right here. Yeah, perfect. Wendy, this line up here is so good, if I’m not mistaken, the track that’s on the other side of this is that guy, like, I’m not even going, I’m not even going to like my session, because I want to go here. Megan,

Wendy Covey  35:41

oh no, no, no. We’re not putting any panels against each other. Don’t you worry about that. Curt.

Curt Anderson  35:46

I’m going to try to I was going to try to sneak out of my session. So I go to go see Megan. So this

Wendy Covey  35:51

branding one is actually the first day panel, right after the first day panel. Okay,

Curt Anderson  35:56

perfect. So I don’t promise Megan, that’s all right, you’re fine. So alright, I was

Damon Pistulka  36:01

gonna say, though you could have a pickleball match. You could have a pickleball between the between the panel members. See, you know,

36:11

you know what for, just for honor and

Damon Pistulka  36:13

glory. That’s all he would be for.

Curt Anderson  36:16

Jennifer. Do I want to be Jennifer Megan? Or these are some good athletes right here. So,

Damon Pistulka  36:22

yeah, you got some athletes there.

Curt Anderson  36:24

Yeah. So we’re excited, as a matter of fact, Wendy, what I’m I’m meeting up with these, we’ve already met, and like, we’re meeting, we’ve got a cadence of meetups, like, we’re super excited for our panel. And Damon, you’re going to love this. So it’s, you use this line all the time right there, taking that friction out of the buying product, easy. And I’ll tell you these, I’m just, I’m just moderating, that’s all I’m doing. But we’ve got three high level experts that are going to be diving into, like, how do you remove that friction? And then kind of wrapping things up, here’s, here’s our here’s handsome Joe. And I met James last year. I met Aaron last year. And so this is another great workshop right here.

Wendy Covey  36:57

Yeah, yeah. So that’ll be, these are the the day one workshops, yup. And

Curt Anderson  37:02

Morgan’s been on the show a couple of times. So we got Morgan here. So, so again, okay, I’ll stop sharing. So Wendy, let’s go here. You know, we always use that line. How do you when we’re working with clients? How do you, you know, with with manufacturers that are brand new to marketing, don’t know where to start. You know, they like, they don’t want to be salesy. So we always say, like, hey, to build that trust. And you are the queen of building that trust is we always use that line, how do you out teach the competition. How do you out teach and just be like that fierce educator, man, I’ll tell you, I don’t know if I know anybody who’s more dedicated to educating than you are. Your team at true just talk to us a little bit on like, what it took for you, like, what spearheaded you to do the research project? You just said it yourself, like, that’s a heavy lift. I’m going to make a little assumption, like, throwing a little shindig, a little party in Austin, that’s a bit of a lift. But like, you’re dedicating yourself to research, you’re dedicating yourself to a conference. How talk to us as an entrepreneur? Like, why you’re going that direction for your company?

Wendy Covey  38:01

Yeah, yeah. Education has always been pretty core to how we wanted to operate, and it started a little bit out of necessity, in that our first set of technical customers were system integration companies that were partners with National Instruments, and they had horrific websites, and they didn’t know what they were doing when it came to marketing, but when we would come in and try to educate them using B to B data or whatever, they were just so skeptical, so when they didn’t understand how modern marketing works, and then also just skeptical of any data that we’d put in front of them that wasn’t very specific to their industry. So we started to develop educational ebooks and have people, Hey, could you read this ebook before we even meet and have our first sales meeting? Because we want you to understand our marketing philosophy and what it takes, because it’s not an overnight thing. And they read that, and they were like, Look all in his names for my sales people call that. They weren’t a good fit for us, and we weren’t going to ever make them happy, because that’s not how we work. So that it started with those ebooks and then the need for research. And I have to credit my co founder of TREW
Rebecca Geier , because she, very early on, saw this, recognize it, found partners to do this research with, and then said, Hey, I think I need to write a book. I was like, what we need to we need to get customers. And it was this for the same reason. And it was one, to educate before we started working with someone. But two, we only have bandwidth to work with so many companies. Yeah. And we saw this greater need. And so for all the people that we’re not a good fit for, or we just can’t get to, here’s the book, and we’re going to show you everything we do, and you’re either going to feel overwhelmed and hire a marketer to do this, or you’re going to go implement it, and either way, we’re making the industry better. And so there we

Curt Anderson  39:57

I’d say, Man, I. Commend you, applaud you, admire you. And just, man, I tell you, it’s I loved our friendship, and I just, I, and I can’t overstate how much I just love what you guys are doing for the industry. Just live, you know, elevating folks, like you just said, you know, rising tides, lifts all ships. And like, you know, by you putting out the book, you put out a podcast, you’re doing all the things, this massive research project, this conference that I, you know, I knew multiple solo, solo marketers that went to the conference, and they were just like, I feel so alone. I’m buying, you know, I’m running around this, this big manufacturing facility I’m with, you know, people on the floor, engineers, HR, blah, there’s nobody that speaks my language, and they just felt like this big sense of, like, relief and excitement that they had community. And I just really recommend you guys that you and Joe, how’s it? And let’s go here. Yeah, Gorilla 76 I mean, like, you know, are you fighting for clients? You’re fighting for clients. And you guys have just shown like, collaboration is bigger than the you know, being competitors. How’s that been working with Gorilla? 76 wonderful,

Wendy Covey  41:05

wonderful. Everyone that we met from their team, so smart, so collaborative, so friendly. They say the same about my team. It is just been a joy to work together, and just like marketers can learn for each from each other, agency owners can learn from each other. And so that’s been a nice benefit of just, how do you do this with your business? How do you do this with yours? And so we got along extremely well. And you know, underneath the hood, it’s, it’s rare that we’re both in some competitive situation for the same client. There’s a big world out there of customers that we can service, and where they focus is slightly different than where we focus. But at the end of the day, we’re just all trying to, you know, you know, make our employees happy, make our customers happy and be successful.

Curt Anderson  41:56

Well, I love it all right. David, let’s start winding down your thoughts, takeaways from this? Just another amazing conversation with Wendy Covey.

Damon Pistulka  42:04

What are your thoughts? Yeah, I just want to say thanks for being here Wendy and sharing this about the Industrial Marketing Summer Summit. And I want to encourage people, if you haven’t checked out the industrial marketing Summit website, go there and do that again. I believe it’s industrial marketing summit 2025 you’ll find it. Get on there. These are people that are in the trenches doing manufacturing marketing every day, helping others do manufacturing marketing and real leaders in the industry. And it’s an it’s an opportunity, as you said early Wendy, to get and talk to and meet and learn from people that are actually doing it in manufacturing and other industrial kind of companies that are that are really focused in this niche, where you do have a more technical sale, you do have a different kind of customer that you really need to help educate. And it’s just so cool. You guys have broken this out and put it into its own event. Thank you. Yeah. Wendy, I don’t

Curt Anderson  43:03

know if you’re comfortable sharing, like, what’s your Do you have a vision? Like, if we come back five years from now, what does the marketing summit like, what’s your long term you enjoy young well, like, what’s your vision for this, this conference? Yeah,

Wendy Covey  43:14

yeah. You know, we had a conversation about this not too long ago of because the idea was presented to us, oh, should we make this a curated, like invitation only, small, intimate thing? And we both had the same gut reaction. Said, No, we want to serve as many marketers in this niche as we can. So if you’re in engineering, if you’re in manufacturing, if you’re in a deep tech there’s not another place like this. And so we want to continue to make it larger, and hopefully we can do that. We have wonderful sponsors this year that are help making it possible, because these events are not inexpensive to put on. So with the grace of continued sponsorships in the future. We just want to make it bigger, larger, more tracks, more days. That’s it.

Curt Anderson  44:08

Yeah, and I have to say, for the folks I again, just met such amazing, wonderful personalities. Everybody was just so, you know, every I know, every industry that you’re in, they probably like, you know, they’re biased for their industry. But second manufacturing, it’s just like, it’s just wonderful. Everybody uses that line like, down to earth people, and it doesn’t matter. I met folks that were at major, major companies with hundreds, or, you know, well over 1000 probably 1000s of employees. Were the, you know, team of like 20 marketers and a couple people went there were a lot of other folks where it was the owner of a small machine shop, or a small manufacturer, a lot of solo marketers were there. Like, maybe they were part time, full time, 50 employees. So, I mean, it doesn’t so I want to say, like, you know, like you said, you need to stay niche, right? Wendy, so like, this conference is for everybody, but man, I tell you, if you’re in B to B, you’re industrial, you’re in manufacturing, some capacity. And you have multiple different roles, I either met or saw that type of person there, and you’re going to get tremendous value going to the summit. So, yeah,

Wendy Covey  45:09

thank you. And you know, I want to mention one more thing that that hasn’t come up, and I regret that I bring up sooner, but this event is being held the same week as the electronics representatives Association event, and there’s a fair amount of electronics marketers that attend that event, so we purposely shifted our event by two weeks to try to align with that one, because so many of them said we really want to be there. This is great programming. It’s perfect for us. So those listening that specifically are aware of that conference your company’s already going. Maybe this is another way to justify your trip.

Curt Anderson  45:47

Perfect. Okay, Wendy is what we wind down. So you know, I respect you as a mom, as a business woman, CEO, but there’s another claim to fame that you have, and I bring it up every time on the show. Did you like state in this great state of Texas. Do you have any claim of something I might still

Wendy Covey  46:03

on year 13 or 14? I think, what

Curt Anderson  46:08

is that claim that you have in the greater Texas,

Wendy Covey  46:12

record holder for the largest catch and release red fish? So I have a fishing record.

Curt Anderson  46:19

Nice. I always have to, you know what? As long as you hold that record, we’re going to bring it up. To bring it up every

Wendy Covey  46:23

Yeah, good. Have I ever showed you the mount? Because it’s back in my office now it, it was somewhere else. So you get ready for those of you who are watching, running, running, running, let’s see, oh my goodness, hammer back. I can’t quite get it. So there’s marine light, but there, yeah, there’s the fish mount. So I need to stand next to it, so you really get an idea of

46:43

the size. Yeah, that looks like it’s a three foot long fish. It’s a five foot Yeah?

Wendy Covey  46:48

Oh my goodness.

Curt Anderson  46:52

Damon, I think we’ve had a picture of her. I think we’ve seen a picture of her holding it. So it’s, it’s phenomenal. So, well, I know you’re super busy. You’ve got a big conference ahead of you. You’ve got a business to run, you’ve got clients to take care of, so we will let you go. Any parting words, thoughts that you want to share that we other than what you just mentioned, anything else that we should wrap up on?

Wendy Covey  47:10

No, I would say just everyone take a look at the industrial marketing summit com. Join us if you can, and then, separately, be on the lookout for a research report releasing first week of March.

Curt Anderson  47:23

Love it. So alright guys, man, Damon, like we always love to say, just go out and be someone’s inspiration, just like this young lady right here, man, so you’ll go out and make the world a better place. So hey, Damon, how about, you know what we’ve been going for, 47 minutes and 37 seconds? How about a How about a big round of applause for Wendy Covey, for absolutely crushing it today. So guys, check out shoe marketing. Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn. Stop by industrial marketing Summit website. And just, you know what? Just have your credit card ready. Just have the credit card ready. Hit the button. Hey, work your flight already. I booked my hotel room. Jeff Long’s going. So Greg, Miss you is going. Everybody’s going. So Alright, you guys there. Wendy, thank you. Thank you for taking time to join us today. Thank you for everybody in the chat box. Thank you for everyone out there. If you’re catching this afterwards, there’s a lot of golden nuggets here. Damon, what do they do? Need

Damon Pistulka  48:13

to go back to the beginning. Watch the whole thing, because you know, like what you hear, that’s right. Alright.

Curt Anderson  48:19

Wendy, I cannot wait to see you. I will see you in Austin, Texas, my friend. So hang out with us for one second and guys and come back Friday, because we have Joe Sullivan and we’re going to take another dive into the industrial marketing Summit. So yeah, see you. Then. Have a great day, everyone. You.