AI Marketing Strategies for Manufacturers: Narrowing Down Ideal Buyers
Ready to stop wasting time on marketing that doesn’t work? In this episode of Stop Being the Best Kept Secret, we explore AI Marketing Strategies for Manufacturers: Narrowing Down Ideal Buyers with digital strategist Theresa Mintzer.
Theresa Mintzer is a powerhouse in content strategy and social media. As a Customer Success Specialist at B2Btail, she helps manufacturers create platforms that build trust and drive real results. Theresa combines her passion for writing with deep digital marketing knowledge to help businesses speak directly to their soulmate buyers. In this conversation, we are diving into how manufacturers can use AI tools to narrow their focus, get laser-clear on their perfect buyers, and finally build marketing that works. Theresa will share actionable strategies that you can start using right away, without being overwhelmed by the tech.
Don’t miss this conversation if you are serious about reaching the right customers with less effort. If you are tired of guessing your marketing, this episode will show you how narrowing down ideal buyers simplifies your strategy and finds the customers who actually want what you make.
Key Highlights
• AI Marketing Strategies for Manufacturers: Introduction 0:01
• Discussion on Ideal Buyers and Content Creation 0:52
• Exploring Buyer Personas and Digital Game Plan 3:58
• The Importance of Understanding Pain Points and Providing Solutions 7:13
• Buyer Journey and Success Path 7:43
• Leveraging LinkedIn for Business Development 12:40
• Case Studies and Research for Marketing Success 14:40
• Building Trust and Overcoming Past Marketing Experiences 17:38
• Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts 18:34
Resources
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Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:01
Hey guys, happy Monday. Welcome to stop being the best kept secret. Damon, how are you, man,
Damon Pistulka 00:06
I’m doing great. Curt, ready for the week
Curt Anderson 00:09
I was how was Thanksgiving weekend? Was it nice?
Damon Pistulka 00:12
Awesome, awesome. Awesome. Good football. Yep, little bit of football. It was family. Lot of words
Curt Anderson 00:21
in my corner of the world. It was a wonderful football weekend. Theresa, how was your Thanksgiving?
Theresa Mintzer 00:26
It was lovely. A lot of family, lots
Curt Anderson 00:29
of family. Well, hey, good thing. You love your family, right? Otherwise, it could have been a challenge, right? So, all right. Hey, welcome everybody. Happy Monday to hope you had a wonderful holiday, wherever you’re coming to us from and so we’re going to spend a little time diving into AI marketing strategies for manufacturers. In particular, we’re going to be discussing we have this wonderful little sassy Damon, we’re getting sassy at 60. That Theresa. That’s our new thing, like we’re getting sassy at 60. So we create this little new SAS tool. It’s our digital game plan. And we’re going to dive in. In particular we want to dive into like, how important it is narrowing your focus, ideal buyers, that type of thing, Theresa, any any as we pull up, any insights, any thoughts that you have, as far as like, diving into like your ideal buyers and narrowing your focus.
Theresa Mintzer 01:16
Well, I think that’s what helps, in the end, to generate content, because once you’ve really locked into who your ideal buyer is, and also, like, who your you know, like, best ideal buyer is, that’s how that’s the person that you want to talk to when you create the content. Because you can’t create content for everyone.
Damon Pistulka 01:35
That’s right. Damon, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think you know, just like Theresa said, You got to know who you’re talking to, right?
Curt Anderson 01:42
Well, hey, speaking of buyers, how about this wonderful, amazing human being? So, hey, happy for all those that had a wonderful football weekend. So Diane, it’s gonna be a great week for your for your egos. This week I get I feel, I feel my bones. We’re gonna have a good week this week. So giving a shout out, hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thank you for stopping by. Guys, drop us a comment. Comment, let us know you’re there if you have any questions whatsoever. So speaking of where, I’m going to pull up an example. So let’s, let’s go here. So get the digital game plan. You guys ready? You sitting down? You ready for this one? Ready to go? Okay, let’s go here. Let’s go here. Let’s go here. And all right. Have you guys ever heard So, speaking of football, demon. Have you ever heard of the New York Jets? If you’re Did you know they’ve they have a football team in here?
Damon Pistulka 02:25
I heard they had a football team, and it’s questionable the performance.
Curt Anderson 02:31
That’s right. So hey, lots of love and respect to our friends and our New York Jets fans. Theresa, you did you know New York
Theresa Mintzer 02:37
has my husband’s from New York? Yeah? So he knows
Curt Anderson 02:41
about these guys, the jet, all right, so this is our little SAS tool. It’s a software tool. It’s our digital game plan. And what’s cool is it goes out and it reads a website and it provides information, like a little bit of a marketing strategy on that particular company. Now, Damon, you’re going to get a kick out of this. So like here, you know, dynamic special teams, performance, engaged, digital community, compelling video content. Then I come down here and it says, celebration of Team heritage. So it does a great job of like, celebrating, you know, things in the past. But the funny thing is that when I come over here, it says, Can you see that line right there?
Damon Pistulka 03:22
Yep, over emphasis on past glories.
Curt Anderson 03:25
Yep. Did you Hey, did you notice the user up here? David Ben, do you recognize that name,
Damon Pistulka 03:31
Joe? Yes.
Curt Anderson 03:33
So Joe Nemeth actually came on to our software tool and so, like, there’s nobody out there that’s probably old enough to even recognize that name. Theresa.
Theresa Mintzer 03:41
Do you recognize I actually do. One of my husband’s fraternity brothers was a huge fan.
Curt Anderson 03:45
That’s right. So Joe Namath, God, what a great player. He was one. So hang so it was just interesting, how this cool? It says how they Well, they oversize, past glories, man. I hope we’re not hurting anybody’s feelings out there for our New York we’d love the New York shots. So, but what was interesting, I thought we would pull up like, just a national brand that people are familiar with. And so what I want to do is I want to step into like buyer personas. And so when we go here, so we call those buyer personas soul mates, Theresa, when I say soul mate, like, what would cross your mind, when we’re talking about like a buyer persona, what comes to your
Theresa Mintzer 04:19
mind someone that is a good match for you. I think that’s the best way that I can think of that.
Curt Anderson 04:25
That’s right, like an ideal buyer, who’s your best fit? Damon, any thoughts that you want to add? What are your
Damon Pistulka 04:30
what do you add is it’s the the people that see the most value from what you
Curt Anderson 04:34
do, exactly. So, for example, I thought this tool was pretty handy. It went out and it said, like, Hey, how about Samantha Rivera from Pepsi, right? Pepsi be a great, you know, sponsor, good lead source for our friends at the New York Jets. And so what this tool does is it does a deep dive in getting an understanding, gaining an understanding of Samantha Rivera and like, what are her challenges, what are her frustrations? And what and. Information? Do we need to know about her to help her make a buying decision? So Theresa had to put you on the spot. Is there anything particular it stands out to you? Is kind of looking at the digital game plan, looking at this buyer persona, anything in
Theresa Mintzer 05:13
particular, I’m not sure, the age. Like, is that what?
Curt Anderson 05:20
Yeah, so like going through here, you know, like the buying process, you know, factors that would influence her, you know, it’s like, those are the types of things. So, like, you know, for our small manufacturing friends, works the exact same way. And so Damon, before I’m going to slide over to the soulmate Success Path, anything that jumps out to you looking at this buyer persona, anything particular stands out.
Damon Pistulka 05:41
Well, I think your factors influencing buying decisions down there is one of the and the roles in the buying process, right? Because, you know, the factors influencing buying decisions is really some of the things that you need to be communicating with them. From, you know, from the New York Giants perspective, you would need to be talking about those things and showing your soulmate how your product or service helps them within those in those factors, and then the role in the buying process does change. You know, we’ve got some industrial companies that that have multiple people, they may have an engineer, then they’ve got a buyer, then they’ve got an executive, and all three of those people need to be part of of the journey, and each one of them is concerned about different things.
Curt Anderson 06:24
Yeah, absolutely. And I in the big thing, what I love here is like this, you know, looking at frustrations, right? And so we think about, like, think of the product, the problem that you solve, the solutions that you provide for your ideal customers, and what are the frustrations that they’re going through? I know the cliche is, like, you know, hey, the pain, you know, what’s, what’s keeping you up at night. But that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, is like, Hey, what is keeping you up at night, and how can we solve those problems, right? So the more that we understand that. So like, in this example here, like, hey, we have difficulties measuring sponsorship impact, you know. Like, you know, Pepsi spends millions and millions of dollars with the NFL. What type of impact do they get,
Damon Pistulka 07:00
yeah, yeah. How does it come back? How does it come back?
Curt Anderson 07:03
So let’s dive into the buyer journey. And thing is, like, Damon, what we love to say is, like, I don’t like the buyer journey, per se, because i Nobody really particularly likes to buy. They want to be successful, right? So Theresa, when we’re working with different clients, you know, we’re we’re diving into their frustrations. And there’s a line that you always love, you know, the
Speaker 1 07:26
easy button. Easy button, easy for them, elaborate
Curt Anderson 07:29
a little bit from your perspective, like the different clients that you work with, and your perspective like, what does that mean? The easy button?
Theresa Mintzer 07:37
Well, I think it means speaking like what you were saying is, is that they have certain pain points, so we are trying to, in our messaging, give that particular person an easy path to success, so that they understand it, and so that we’re speaking to that issue with them. And I think by like you just showed like, keying into that buyer and who’s going to be making decisions. We need to really speak to that person, but also show them that it’s, it’s something like, like, we have an easy fix for you. Yeah.
Curt Anderson 08:13
Damon, what do you want to add? You on mute.
Damon Pistulka 08:19
Sorry, the easy button really is, as Teresa said, it’s giving them an easy path, understanding the way to go. Because most people, if you know where we’re going, you know the path, they can get there, right? And that’s where the easy button, I think, from our standpoint, with the soulmate success path, it shows people what they should be talking about and and the and some of these questions that are going to be asked in the process,
Curt Anderson 08:46
yeah, you know. And we just went through this personally. So like, this is our new software tool that we’re promoting here. And so, like, we had to hire out an agency to build this. I don’t do coding. Damon, do you do coding? Nope. Theresa, do you do so we had to hire this out. And so the thing is, we put it out to several companies for bid, and we went through that due diligence process, and I’ll tell you, the agency that we selected was the one that really brought it down to our level. They spoke our language. They understood like, you know, hey, I’m i. And I told them, like, I am the dumbest guy in the room, and please speak to me as such, you know, like, it’s not even, like, Don’t speak to me like an eight year old. Speak to me like a 57 year old that knows nothing, you know. And so the company that came in that really nurtured that whole process, that’s who, that’s who earned our trust, and that’s who we went with. So here, hey, Damon, a couple comments here. What do we got from Diane? Buyer, absolutely love this. Thanks, Diane, and we’re sending love right back to her, and she says, can’t
Damon Pistulka 09:41
implement solutions without fully understanding the pain points and problems. That’s right. Hey, she’s got one more. Oh, and then she goes the easy button. That really means work smarter, not harder.
Curt Anderson 09:52
And, yeah, man, couldn’t we? Man, if I could have learned that, like, 30 years ago, she’s maybe I retire someday, Damon.
Damon Pistulka 09:58
But well, I always, I always tell people. I love to work hard, to be lazy, right? I mean, it really is. You know, the initial work of building out your process, how you’re going to do this stuff, seeing these things, is a bit of work, but the result down the road is you have a really focused way of doing your marketing after that, right?
Curt Anderson 10:18
Exactly. So let’s, um, all right, let me come back here. Let me come back here. And All right, so as we take a peek at this, this is the buyer buying journey, buying process, whatever we want to call it. And again, like, I’m just kind of big fan of like, hey, the buyer journey. I like, I know you out there, you are dedicated to your customer success. So let’s get them on a we call it the soulmate Success Path. And so these are the five different steps of the the buying process, of you all, the evaluation process, the awareness stage, Theresa, I’m going to start with you. You do a lot of social media with your clients, and it’s really kind of like, you know, hey, that top awareness getting messaging out there any, and this is very broad, but any insight that you have as far as like working with different clients, like making that awareness, what are you any tips, suggestions, ideas, what crosses your mind?
Theresa Mintzer 11:09
I think it kind of goes back to what you’re talking about, the soulmate Success Path. You need to be able to hook them in in a way that that person that you’re trying to speak to is, is receptive, like you’re asking questions to make sure, like that that person wants to answer. But yeah, because you can’t speak to everyone, you really do need to kind of hone that even in a higher level, you need to hone that message in to a particular person.
Curt Anderson 11:39
Yeah, exactly. Damon, any thoughts, and if you take a look here, so this is the five stages. We’re looking at, the awareness stage, and this is for the New York Jets. Mister Joe Namath actually filled this out. Damon, I can’t believe it. I’m so excited that Joe filled this out. And who knew that he was looking for the so many success path for the Jets. But you look at the trigger here, right? What stands out is there anything particular out of all these lines, anything that stands out in particular for you?
Damon Pistulka 12:03
Well, I think one of them, to me, is the internal push for digital fan engagement, innovation, right? And it is really how you differentiate yourself, because that would really be a differentiator, especially if you’re something as high level as the NFL, if your team came out with something drastically different that really and change your fan engagement, it could, it could reshape the way that that you you operate.
Curt Anderson 12:30
Yeah, I totally agree. Theresa, anything that you want to add to
Theresa Mintzer 12:34
that, no, no. I mean, I think, I think that that’s a great idea. I think it’s, it’s helping businesses become more aware of what you have to offer and how, how you can speak to who they’re looking for, sports partnership leaders, yeah. I just, I think it’s very helpful. Yeah, I have these questions there for you, yeah.
Curt Anderson 12:59
And so I just, I found this fascinating. You know, we’re kind of in the thick of football season here in the States, and when you think, you know, and Damon, I hadn’t thought of this before, and I was eager to hear your response. But, you know, so what this tool does? It kind of gets inside the mind of your soulmate, that ideal buyer. How do we get them on that success path? And I had not thought of LinkedIn, but right here, it says, like, hey, a LinkedIn search for sports partnership leads, right? Yeah. In as I was going through their digital game plan, they’re recommending LinkedIn multiple times. And it makes perfect sense, right? Because, like, if I’m at the jets and I want to, like, you know, try to, you know, as a matter of fact, their home run, let me go back here, if I go to their home run, guess who their home run is? Amazon. Yeah, Amazon is one of their home run clients right here. So right there, Amazon, Pepsi lids and rally house, but Amazon over here. So if I go to the soulmate success path for their home run, which is Amazon and I and I go search, I’m like, Hey, maybe I need to be on LinkedIn, connecting with executives at Amazon. I hadn’t even thought of that.
Damon Pistulka 14:02
What’s your takeaway? Yeah, I mean, that’s it. Is when you, when you are in the B to B tell space, I don’t or the B to B space, you really don’t want to neglect LinkedIn, because that is especially in public companies, right? Because those people have personal brands they need to develop and curate and and keep track of. I mean, it’s it could be a very good place for you to be searching for and building relationships with these people.
Curt Anderson 14:31
Yeah, so very just fascinating. Had not thought of that. I found that really intriguing. And so we’ll start winding down and close out on this. What’s great is this tool provides, like, Hey, here’s some suggestions. And I’m sure, you know, the marketing acumen and just a market machine that the NFL is, I’m sure they’re way ahead of this. But I just found this, this portion, pretty interesting, you know, Global Case studies on digital fan engagement, you know, like, maybe if I’m at the Jets, I’m studying what’s going on in, you know, overseas, global, SOC. Or Curt, yeah, or, you know, how can I separate myself from the the rest of the NFL teams and come up with some you, you know, new and unique strategies, executive level partnership, briefings, that type of thing, Theresa’s as we close out, anything that stands out to you, any thoughts that you want to share for our friends as we’re diving into that, that buyer journey, if you will, that soulmate Success Path, and narrowing down your focus. What are your thoughts?
Theresa Mintzer 15:26
Well, I, you know, I really always love to see these case studies, because I always find that it ends up kind of intuitively giving me something that I thought. But if I had taken all that time to do the research, I don’t know it would have taken me days to try to figure out like and I think it that’s always the hardest part is, you know, who is your ideal buyer? Like, where are they hanging out, and what are some ideas to speak to them authentically? And that’s one of the reasons why I like the digital game plan is, is, I feel like it kind of gives you all that data pretty quickly, so that you can then start making your plan to go forward.
Curt Anderson 16:05
Yep. And Damon, we’ve got a comment here if you want to
Damon Pistulka 16:08
grab this one. Yeah. Abdulla says, totally agree with your point. But what if all of these are known to us, and that why? Why we’re reaching out to them? Then that’s why we reach out to them. But still, the other person’s prior experience wasn’t well, and they aren’t comfortable, and move further. Well, that’s something, honestly, that almost every company, I can tell you, that doesn’t matter what you’re doing, they probably have a bad marketing experience of one sort or another. And that really is about, I think, is diving into the deep, deep details, and saying yes, acknowledging that, and then going, this is why, specifically it is different. This is why, specifically you should expect different results from this because of what you did last time. I mean, it could be, it could be, yeah, there’s just so many examples of that, but you really have to get into that differentiation between everyone else and you, and why it’s different result.
Curt Anderson 17:05
And I think you know, kind of our time. So Abdullah, thank you for the question. Hope you’re having a wonderful, amazing, incredible day today. Thank you for stopping by excellent question. And something to consider is like, you know, we, as a matter of fact, we had a client situation recently. We’re like, we had to politely pass and we’re going to share it with another expert, because it just got out of our wheelhouse, you know what I mean. So the thing is, if you know, you know, you’re just 100% certain, like, this is a great fit, there’s nobody on the planet better than us. I think Theresa to like your point, the case study, the research, the expertise that you can share to kind of earn that person’s trust. And we’ve had a lot of clients that, like, hey, we were recently burnt by this other firm, this other agency. And like, you know, nobody wants to be burnt that second time. So I think you’ve got to put in a little bit more, you know, earn. You got to work a little harder to earn that trust. But I love the case studies Theresa. Anything that you want to add from Abdullah’s question, any thoughts?
Theresa Mintzer 18:01
There? No, no. I think that that is really a good idea. And again, it’s, it’s identifying those kind of pain points, and, you know, having, like, a counter measure for them, like, as you’re going forward, yeah.
Curt Anderson 18:16
And maybe Abdul, you know, something to think about is, like, if possible, okay, not saying that it is, but if possible, have a conversation with that person, if it’s, if it’s face to face, treat them to a cup of coffee, lunch or whatever. Try to build that relationship and say, Hey, share with me what happened. What, Where did it go wrong? How could I prevent this from happening a second time? You know, not to disparage the previous firm or whatever. Just like, let us know, like, what went south and how, what? What’s everything that we need to do on our team to help prevent it. So that might be something to share that’s been Damon, that’s something that we’ve done with our clients when they come in for like, an E commerce project and been burnt Damon, as we close out, any pardon, thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share as we wind down.
Damon Pistulka 18:58
Well, I mean, it always pays to really understand who your best buyers are. It does, and more about their pain points and more about everything. Because you know, you can go out and try to market to everyone, and it’s going to be very low success rate, but if you market to the right people, your success rate goes up considerably, and you get to work with people that really value what you do.
Curt Anderson 19:23
Yep, hey, drop the mic, Damon, that was awesome. Theresa cannot express our thanks and gratitude for joining us. Any parting thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share with the digital game plan or kind of going through this process of narrowing down your ideal buyer, what are your takeaways?
Theresa Mintzer 19:38
Kind of to piggyback on? What Damon said is, is to market to the right people and to also try to speak their language and what they’re looking for. Because I think, I think, you know, people get excited about selling their product, but they speak in their language, and you really want to speak to the customer’s language and what their specific pain points are,
Curt Anderson 19:58
yeah, and shame. Honestly, I’m going to share this super cool close out on this. So I really enjoyed some of these. So we have a content calendar that is created with a digital game plan. And as we wind down, you know, as we’re talking about, like, you’re working at the New York Jets, and you’re like, hey, we need, you know, we’re not having a great season. We need to get, we need to work on our sponsorships. And, you know, right here, it kind of ties in what you were mentioned, Theresa, like, you know, jets, digital sponsorship opportunities, what brands need to know and like, over here, building a legacy global partnerships with the New York Jets, you know, Jets fan community, how to stay connected and get more from your experience. So, you know, like, here they want to go. Like, beyond just the game is like, how we create that camaraderie the fandom, whatever you want to call it. But I just, I thought this was kind of neat how the tool spit this out for our friends at the New York Jets and demon, if they got into the digital game plan, I think they go undefeated next year. That’s just my humble opinion. What do you think
Damon Pistulka 20:53
not gonna weigh in? Not gonna happen? Yeah, I don’t know
Curt Anderson 20:58
about that. You don’t think so. Okay, all right, well, I can, it’s wishful thinking. Anyway, so I will start winding down. Guys, thank you. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for the comments. Thank you Diane, thank you Abdullah. Thank you for everybody else out there that joined us. Theresa went on to give, hey, how about round of applause for Theresa for joining? Yeah, awesome, awesome. Thank you. Her daughter, home from college, had a great weekend this weekend, and so he or she joined us. So guys, we’re going to close out. We’re back here Friday. Thank you. Appreciate you. Have an amazing, incredible rest your week. If you have any questions, reach out to Theresa. She’s on LinkedIn. Damon, I think you’re on LinkedIn once. I’m all right once in a while. Yep. And you, I’m on LinkedIn as well. So join us. Stop by B to B TAIL, sign up for our newsletter, the secret sauce, right? Dana, yes, the great newsletter.
Damon Pistulka 21:43
Yeah, there’s a curt profile. My profile, we got links there to to sign up for the newsletter.
Curt Anderson 21:48
So yeah, I be to beat tail. And one last thing, Abdullah, what do we got here?
Damon Pistulka 21:52
Damon, he said, appreciate it, guys, it’s great to have more and more knowledge from professionals like yourself, and hope we might cross our paths in the near future. Thank you Abdullah. Hey, thank you Abdullah.
Curt Anderson 22:03
I’m going to tell my mom that somebody called me professional today, man, I appreciate that. Thank you, my friend. So alright guys, we’ll catch you on Friday. Have a great rest of your week. Thank you. Bye.