How to Build a Marketing Plan for Manufacturers (Lessons from a 30-Year Industry Leader)
In this episode, we sit down with Kirsten Austin, President & CEO of DCSC Inc., to explore how to build a marketing plan for manufacturers through the lens of her 30+ years of industry experience. Kirsten shares her journey from the early days of accounting software to leading-edge ERP and warehouse management solutions, offering powerful insights into how manufacturers can adapt, innovate, and stay competitive. This conversation highlights the critical role of customer feedback, operational alignment, and evolving technology in building a strong, sustainable marketing foundation.
We also dive into the power of community-driven marketing and Kirsten’s leadership in building a thriving manufacturing network—now transitioning from Twitter to LinkedIn. If you’re looking to understand how to build a marketing plan that drives visibility, engagement, and real business growth, this episode delivers practical, real-world strategies. Whether you’re a manufacturer, distributor, or industry partner, you’ll walk away with actionable ideas to strengthen your brand, expand your reach, and connect more effectively with your audience.
Key Highlights
• Introduction and Guest Announcement 0:01
• DCSC’s Evolution and Services 0:55
• Challenges and Adaptation 5:57
• Community Building on Twitter and LinkedIn 7:13
• Transition to LinkedIn Live 12:13
• Closing Remarks and Future Plans 16:15
Resources
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How to Build a Marketing Plan for Manufacturers: Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:01
Hey, happy Monday. Damon, how are you, dude, I’m
Damon Pistulka 00:05
doing great. Curt, ready to go,
Curt Anderson 00:07
Let’s rock and roll. So we, you know what, we’ve got a special Damon, did you notice we have a special guest today? Yes, man, I just wow. My heart is just beating. I’m just thrilled. I’m just so excited. We’ve got our dear friend, Kirsten. Austin, Kirsten, how are you
Kirsten Austin 00:23
I’m doing great. How are you doing? Curt Damon,
Curt Anderson 00:27
you know what she she, you know, Kirsten, you need to, you need to find new, better company to hang out with, right? She’s just, she was just kind of, you know, minding her own business. Next thing you know, she’s on a LinkedIn live with us too. Like, how, yeah. How does something like that even happen, right?
Damon Pistulka 00:39
Yeah. You just never know what’s going to happen. You never know.
Curt Anderson 00:42
I think your mom might have warned you, Curt son, but hey, thank you for joining us today. What an honor, what a privilege. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and I think you’ve got some new, exciting news to share. What’s going on with you.
Kirsten Austin 00:55
So, so a little bit about myself. I have I’m the president of DCSC, and we are a software company, so we only work with distribution and manufacturing companies, and we’ve been at it for 30 years. I’m 30 years young at this. And so we sell ERP systems, WMS systems. We also are a software developer, and then we have a consulting arm to our business as well. So we’ll help manufacturers and distributors go through all of their operational processes, give them recommendations, you name it. So we’re all things, manufacturing, distribution,
Curt Anderson 01:45
30 years ago. So now you started this when you’re in kindergarten or grade school.
Kirsten Austin 01:49
Now how you are too kind? How you are too kind? How did you get started in this? Um, you know what? It is, a funny story. But I actually originally went to school to be a graphic artist, and, you know, I found myself way back then, kind of getting jobs that I was I thought I was going to create logos and do all this fun stuff, and all the jobs that I got were really redefining other people’s logos, etc, etc. So, you know, I never was really good at working for other people. No offense to to anybody. So I fell into an opportunity to join someone else and started this, I mean, from scratch, boots, Boots scratch. So we, you know, started off selling way back when it was accounting software. Then it morphed into ERP software, which is enterprise resource planning. Then we ended up being a developer of a warehouse management system. And then we also have a multi carrier shipping solution. So it helps manufacturers and distributors go, okay, who’s going to be the cheapest to send it out? Or if somebody needs some something lickety split, who can get it there the fastest? So we’re that’s pretty much it.
Curt Anderson 03:24
So 30 years ago, mid 90s, you got into, like, I mean, that was pretty cutting edge at the time, selling software for manufacturers, right? I mean, what a, what a,
Kirsten Austin 03:33
I mean, I was literally in this business when they used to call the Internet the World Wide Web, worldwide. Yeah.
Curt Anderson 03:41
Damon, we’re old enough to remember those days, right? Like, this man, this
Kirsten Austin 03:47
blackberry and and I was so old school, I like that BlackBerry so much. And even when it started going out of style, I kept getting it fixed. And finally, at a phone store, they’re like, Curt, and you really got to move into more modern foam. So I don’t want to age myself here, but I I’ve been at this for quite some time.
Curt Anderson 04:14
Well, that is phenomenal. And, yeah, with the evolution, how, like, how did you go about adding, like, you know, counting to ERP to shipping. Like, how did you just keep was it listening to your customers or like, what did that look like?
Kirsten Austin 04:28
Well, we’ve always worked with ERP systems. I would like to tell you something, you know, a little more exciting or interesting, but the whole reason we started writing our own warehouse management solution for a product called Sage 500 is, you know, and I’m not going to mention the name of the company, but I had a prospect. I sold them sage 500 and. Needed a WMS solution. We found some folks out there, and I ended up selling their software, but they over promised all the things they could do, etc, because it was me. I’m the person that sold the system. I could either get sued, which wouldn’t be a lot of fun, or we could say, hey, we have developers on board. We’ll make our own WMS systems. So it really came out of, you know, a vendor did a poor job, and, you know, I took responsibility of the sale that I made. And so that’s how it started. And now we have tons of installations all over North America of our product called DC warehouse. That’s honestly how it started. Wow, that is powerful.
Curt Anderson 05:47
Damon thoughts, comments, what’s going through your mind?
Damon Pistulka 05:49
No, it’s interesting hearing how things start all the time when you have business starts, and a lot of them do start with a with a challenge in front of them, and a decision to make. And that’s cool, how you guys have been able to leverage that and turn it into something pretty
Curt Anderson 06:03
cool, very resilient in 30 years in business. Damon, we talked about this a few times. You know, five was four out of five businesses fail in the first five years, then the next five years, then the next like, like curtson, like surviving 30 years. I literally think you’re in like a It’s, I think it’s less than 1% of businesses live 30 years.
Kirsten Austin 06:23
I’m not gonna say that we didn’t, like anybody have hard times. Everybody’s been through, you know, after 911 you know, the whole covid situation. You know, thank God I’m not a startup. But that pushed a lot of my major projects off, you know, new customers, because they’re afraid to spend money because no one knew what was going to happen. So there’s been good years and bad years, but you just got to kind of roll with the punches and do the best you can do, and keep you know your blinders on. Make sure you know what’s out there. Always keep yourself relevant. I learned new stuff, like, literally, I’m on your show now because I wanted to be on a fly, a fly on the wall, and learn how to do these LinkedIn lives. But you gotta always just keep keep pushing, keep pressing. Learn new things. Do do what you can and have fun too.
Curt Anderson 07:18
Well, let’s go there. So you’ve done an amazing job helping build a community over on Twitter. X, and it’s been going on for many, many years. Many of our mutual friends please share a little bit about your the community on Twitter, x, if you will. And let’s talk about your transition over to LinkedIn.
Kirsten Austin 07:35
Okay, so Ruby raisin with social success marketing, who I’m sure you guys know, she’s the reason a lot of us are connected. And several iterations of folks that have helped me along the way. Dan bigger when he was with the manufacturing company at the time, Julie bussello has been involved. Oh, we’ve had so many people involved, but basically Ruby and I were at the very beginning and all the way up until this point, we started in X chat, and that chat is hashtag, USA, MFG, hour, and it’s just been Amazing. Both of you have led a chat, multiple chats. Actually, I know you have Curt what the goal was is, even though I love everybody, I still am very pro America. That doesn’t mean I’m a bad girl, but I’m pro USA manufacturing. I try my very, very best to buy, you know, goods manufactured here in the USA. I believe in our country and creating jobs and opportunities here. So the chat, you know, has gone on for years and years, but what we do is we’ll have someone lead the chat and it, you know, if they’re a manufacturing company, they bring to light something that we all should know about, what manufacturing companies are dealing with if they sell the manufacturing companies, let’s say you have a service like, in your case, Damon, you help manufacturing companies sell to other companies, right? So questions on, how would you prepare yourself for that? Curt, you do marketing. So you, you know, ask questions on how to do this, how to do that. You provide the answers. So, you know, we got the idea from the UK, and we have a bunch of UK buddies on x. I still call it Twitter, but we really got the idea from a chat from them, and we still have people from across the pond that are very devoted and very supportive of us, and come every single week. But basically the whole premise to the chat that’s going to move over to LinkedIn. Here soon is we want to focus on manufacturing, helping manufacturers, giving them knowledge and anything to help them grow. And we have covered everything. I mean, we have covered marketing. We have covered HR. We have covered how to attract the new generation. We have covered maintenance, preventive maintenance. We’ve covered technology, the stuff that I cover. We’ve covered business personas, so how to target the right people to sell your product, or even make sure that you’re known. We’ve covered SEO, e commerce, everything that can help manufacturers grow and stay relevant and get a broader audience for you know, people to purchase their goods or start working
Curt Anderson 10:55
with them. Yeah, all sorts of like culture leadership. My, my goodness, I we could, we could be here all day, rattling off all the wonderful experts that you had, all the wonderful topics, you know, we could go on and on and on, but it’s been just such a gift, such a blessing. And just we, Damon, we’ve made wonderful friendships. Yes, through this, probably just about, you know, anybody or everybody that was on that chat has been on our show in some capacity over the years. So person, you’re making a transition to LinkedIn live any details, any timeline, like when, when we can expect it, or what’s that looking like?
Kirsten Austin 11:33
My My goal is to have our first one in April. It may be the end of April, and the the first one I’m just going to just bring everybody together, like the Brady Bunch, just so we can reunite, because we’ve been off X for a couple months now. I think Wesleyan Whitaker was our last ex host, and she did a beautiful job on sales, transforming your sales. I I’m halfway into the book. I am halfway into the book, and it’s so good. It started off good. It’s, it’s, oh, God, God bless Wesley. She’s awesome.
Curt Anderson 12:13
She’s wonderful.
Kirsten Austin 12:14
She’s wonderful. But anyway, yeah, so what happened is, we’re really pretty powerful on x. I mean, we really did make an impact there. We trended that. We know that it helped, because we would do recaps and it would give people, you know, brand awareness that they were on there and hits to their site. But quite frankly, you know, it is a lot of work to keep these chats going on a weekly basis in the lineup, host, etc, and we noticed a few people dwindling off. So that’s when I got everybody together. We had a meeting, and we talked to a lot of people, you know, manufacturers, news, my snap, Tron, total distribution. Oh, the list goes on and on and on, manufacturers and, you know, people that have services for them. And everyone said, Hey, if you can do it on LinkedIn, I think that it would be better for us, because we play here more in LinkedIn. So, you know, I’m a perfectionist. I pray to God. It goes, Okay, you know. But you know, anything can happen live, but you know, hey, I’m the party girl. I you know, it’s not, it’s, it’s not a party until something’s broken or something.
Curt Anderson 13:36
That’s right, yeah, that’s right. So, well, this is super, super exciting news. We applaud you, commend you, thank you, support you. Anything that we can do with your your exciting transition, this new venture and curtson, people can find you, of course, on LinkedIn. Where else can people find you? Or if they have any questions,
Kirsten Austin 13:57
definitely connect with me on LinkedIn, and I’m a great I love to help other people. You know, I may not be able to help your company specifically, but everybody knows I talk to everyone. So I love to meet new people on LinkedIn. You can reach us at on x. The name of my company is dcsc Inc, and then you can definitely look at dcsc corp.com and we’re on YouTube too, just dcsc Inc, you’ll find us, and you can check us out on all sorts of channels there. And thank you for the opportunity to announce that Damon and Curt, that’s super sweet of you.
Curt Anderson 14:43
Awesome, absolutely great. Our honor, our privilege. We’re just thrilled that you guys decided. And I’ll tell you, this is a great business lesson right here. Like you know, don’t throw in the towel. You can just make a pivot. Right when communication went in different direction, you guys reach out to your community. The community responded, and you guys are taking action. So I commend you for what you’re doing here, closing thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share as we wind down. No, I
Damon Pistulka 15:09
think that’s that’s a it’s cool how you know, taking the success you saw on X or Twitter and really bringing that community LinkedIn, I think that the visual that you’re going to get the video aspect on LinkedIn is going to be kind of fun. Your question and answer format that you use, I think it’s going to be great for the chats and the comments in there. Just excited to see how it goes.
Curt Anderson 15:33
Yeah, Curt, and
Kirsten Austin 15:34
you, you love it. I’m excited. I do have some more questions for you, but I don’t want to waste your live time, but I do have just like, a couple more questions. Like, yeah, we’ll get for you. So if you keep me later, or, Oh
Curt Anderson 15:50
yeah, yep, stick with us. We’re going to, we’re going to, yeah, stick, stick right there. And so guys, wish you an amazing, incredible rush of your day. And again, reach out to curtson. Keep your eye out for the new LinkedIn. Live your manufacturer out there. Man, all the cool kids either. So you don’t want to miss it. They are cursing again. Hang out with us for one second. We appreciate you guys. Have a great rest of your week, and we’ll catch you next time. Thank you. You.