Building a Digital Game Plan for Manufacturers

Curt Anderson  00:02

Hey, Damon, good morning, good afternoon. Hello. How are you? I’m

Damon Pistulka  00:05

awesome. Curt, happy to be here today. Gonna dive into something that’s really important for businesses today,

Curt Anderson  00:12

I tell you, man. So hey, welcome to Stop Being the Best Kept Secret. And today we are talking about how to build a digital game plan for manufacturers and Damon, why is a digital game plan so important for anybody in marketing?

Damon Pistulka  00:28

Well, I’m going to tell you Curt, in my experience, whenever you get approached with marketing, right? It’s, where do you start? Where do you start if you get approached by somebody that does Google ads, you’re going to need Google ads. If you get somebody that approaches you that says you need to be doing cold email more cold with they do cold email marketing, you’re going to need cold email marketing, right? Right? That that really isn’t the case, and we, we need to understand a lot about your customers. We need to understand a lot about where they are. We need to understand how many customers you’re looking for. There’s so many different things that that come into play before you even start going with what should I do? And that’s where the digital game plan really comes in to help you clarify focus and not go down all these other roads spending money on on, you know, maybe for Google ads, and you realize that it wasn’t the right approach,

Curt Anderson  01:27

right? No, I tell you, that’s a great point that you’re making. And you know, it’s one of like our dear friend, Wesleyan Whitaker, she always says, you know, when you try to be everything to everyone, nothing to no one, nothing to no one. So we’re going to dive into so we’re going to go through a little example. So for friends out there, drop a note in the chat box, let us know that you’re there. I would absolutely be honored. Love for you to connect with Damon and myself on LinkedIn. Love to hear what you have going on. If you have any questions whatsoever, please drop those in the chat we’d love to hear where you’re at, what’s going on. So you know, when you talk about solopreneurs and over solo marketers, you know, it is, it’s daunting, it’s challenging, it gets a little bit lonely, and you’re doing like you said, you’re trying to do all the things. So what we’ve done working with clients over the years, we’ve put together this little thing. We call it the digital game plan, and this is just a wonderful tool that we love to use. And man, we are using this thing every day, all day, every day. And so basically, it’s, it’s just, it’s this here it is right here. And Damon, you can see my screen pretty good, right? Yeah. Okay, let me just move things around real quick here. And so this digital game plan, I go, you know, we’ve got on a little Google Sheet, but we dive into, like, you know, some of your core assets. So this is, like, a digital asset management tool that we use with our clients. And so if you are interested in a free copy, love to send you no strings attached, not trying to sell anything. Just drop us a note. We would love to get you a digital game plan. And Damon, let’s run through, you know, we will do a super deep dive, but we’re going to come and cover a couple of the topics here. And I’m going to start with why the strengths and opportunities is so important. Okay, so now, most of us out there, maybe you’ve heard of the SWOT analysis. You know we have our strengths, our weaknesses, our opportunities and our threats. Well, guess what? When you hang out with Damon and myself, my friend, you have no weaknesses. You have no threats, for living in little utopia. But Damon, why are the strengths? Let’s start with the strengths. Why are strengths for our friends out there and marketing solopreneurs like, how do we get laser focused? Why is that so important?

Damon Pistulka  03:29

It really helps you to start to understand you your unique value proposition to potential customers. I mean, that’s that’s really where you start to clarify why we’re special, why people would want to choose us, and who would want to choose us, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Curt Anderson  03:47

So when you think about you know where your you know your journey, where you’re at. Why customers come to you? Why do customers trust you? What solutions do you provide? How do you make the world a better place? How do you make their business and their world a better place. So what we would encourage you to do is, like, you get in here and you start like, just, you know, and don’t even be humble, right? Like, this is a total little brag party. We like to call it. And you talk about, like, what are you absolutely best at? So maybe it’s, Hey, we’ve been in business for decades. We have amazing, incredible machinery that a lot of our competitors don’t. Maybe you have, like, a certain proprietary processes that that you know after years of expertise, your engineers, or whatever it might be you know. So really, what we encourage you to do is dive in here and just like, really express what are the core strengths that you bring to the market. And why have you been in business for as long as you have, or maybe, as you know, if you’re just starting out. But what encourage if you are just starting out, what encourage you to start right? So, David, let’s talk about, like, that expertise, that experience, that trust, like, why is that so important here? And let’s, let’s dive into a few examples for our friends.

Damon Pistulka  04:55

Well, I think you, I mean customers, want to know a lot more about. About you before they even reach out. So the more examples you have of showing what you do really well, how you’ve helped people, other people, and your systems and processes you use to do that, the more trust you’re going to be able to help generate with that person so they can really become more informed and make a better buying decision before they even and it’s not even the decision to buy, but it’s really make that decision to reach out, because they, you know, we have all this information at their fingertips now they really need to be able to go, Okay, I feel good about this company to solve my problems. Now they can go to the next level and reach out. Yeah, I like what you’re saying

Curt Anderson  05:43

there, because not necessarily that they’re ready to buy, but they are ready to reach out. And that’s a big thing right there. And so we just, we did a webinar last week, week and a half ago, at Purdue University, with our dear friend Wendy COVID. And Wendy came on, she did a big research project. They interviewed over 1000 engineers. They said over 60% of the buying decision is done online for engineers and for people in the B2B space. Yeah, think about that, right. 60% of the buying decision is done online. So when you you know as you’re maybe I’ll use the word scrutinizing or analyzing or taking a look at your digital assets, your website, your social media. You know, are you truly expressing your core strengths, or do you kind of find yourself a little bit trying to be everything to everybody? So let’s dive into some examples here. Damon, so like you you know, we could take like, circuit board manufacturer, somebody in CNC 3d printing. Like, you know, any some of the broad topics, but we want to get away from broad and we want to really niche. Let’s talk to talk a little bit about why it’s so important. Like, when you’re talking about your strengths, it’s just not like, Hey, we’re wonderful, great CNC shop. We deliver with a smile. We’re happy. People like, talk about why it’s so it’s so important to get into that niche.

Damon Pistulka  07:00

I think CNC machining is a good example. And you know, it could be 3d printing, it could be screen printing, it could be painting, finishing anything really, these all all different broad categories at the top. But that doesn’t help someone that’s looking for a CNC machining company to help them with their specific part, item, whatever they want made, because it could be, is it high production, or is it low volume prototyping? Is it out of a special metal? Is it? Does it take complex machining? Does it? I mean, there’s so many variables in it that really understand to help the buyer understand if you’re the right choice. Because I, I ran a company that was, this is, this is what we did. We did complex five axis aerospace machining and hard metals, like it was, like, I forget that there was two or three metals that we we would use, for sure, and because I’m just losing the prank right now, but it was, that’s what we did. And there were, and even to the point that there were certain envelope sizes, right? So the size of parts, the industry, complexity of the part, everything people knew not to come to us for a 4000 you know, 400,000 piece run of some small aluminum piece that’s not the right place. You want to make sure that that buyer can really understand who you are and who you help. Yeah, I absolutely

Curt Anderson  08:30

love that, because you’re you’re segwaying into the next piece. So, you know, focusing on your core strengths helps you really expose like, where are the opportunities? Well, if we’re manufacturing, you know, like, Hey, we’re old enough to remember, like, eight track players. Anybody out there? Like, what the heck’s an eight track player, right? But if you’re manufacturing components, or parts that are going into something that’s maybe becoming obsolete, or maybe you’re you’re looking out on the horizon, you’re like, Man, I don’t know how, if I’m in the long game, or if this is really a short term thing, but take your course ranks what you’re best at. How have you built your business? Combine it with like, where do you know, we don’t have a crystal ball, but where do you feel the opportunities are? And, like you just said, you know, like, hey, we weren’t the best if somebody was running 400 400,000 pieces of like, this little widget, like, we weren’t your we weren’t the company for you. So so what we have down here is we call it like the so versus the so what? So? How do you eliminate those things that you know, like we’re just not really good at, and you can you be disciplined enough, you know, we call it? How do you niche down till it hurts and just stay in that lane, because, like, when we get a client, or we get a project that puts us over here and now, like, we’re exhausting time and energy and resources, and we’re not doing our best, and we’re denying ourselves for more we’re really bad. So we call that, you know, trapping, like, what are those? So what things? What are those things that we’re not good at? And how can you get that on here? And really, you know, as a team, hold each other accountable to say, You know what next time? Somebody knocks on our door to do this. We have a great referral partner. We’re going to send it to them, right? What are your thoughts there? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  10:06

you need to know what you shouldn’t be doing. Right? It is. And I think everybody’s been in a company that that’s figured that out the hard way one time or another, you really do. I think it’s a think it’s a process that’s almost inevitable in earlier stage companies, until you really focus in on I do aerospace, I don’t do automotive, I don’t do electronics, I don’t do something, you know, but you really need to understand what you do and what you don’t do, because what you don’t do is going to be just as critical as what you do

Curt Anderson  10:37

exactly. So now let’s take it one step further. Damon, so you know, the folks are out there, we’ve built out, we’ve typed out like, you know, little brag party, what are our core strengths? What are we absolutely best at? And so I’m going to jump over to like, when you think about who that ideal buyer is, okay, what we call them soul mates. And we want to start like, Okay, what questions do they have about our core strengths? Yeah, okay. Now the the challenge is, like, I’m notorious for this, David, like, when, when people come on and they we do a demo, like, I get so excited, and unfortunately, my enthusiasm, like, I’m going to go into the weeds and like, Hey, you’re going to go, you know, check out. This up. So we get caught up in our enthusiasm for what we’re best at, because we eat, drink, breathe and sleep what we do, like those that you talk about, that unique value proposition, like what we’re best at, however, your ideal client, that soulmate, they don’t know your process, your solution, your superpowers, the way that you do. And so we need to take a step back and talk to them at their level, right? So here we have, this is a tab here where we call it the soulmate questions. Okay? And we have, Hey, what are the top questions and challenges that your soulmate is facing like right now, right this minute, that encourage them and incentivize them to either go to Google, go to chat, go to AI, turn somewhere and say, raise your hand. Say, I need help. What are your thoughts about soulmate questions? Why is this so important? Here?

Damon Pistulka  12:06

It’s, it’s huge to understand, because, as you said, we can get so far down the road, like in the example of the CNC machining company, we may be worrying about advanced capabilities of the CNC process, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and, and the buyers just understanding, can they make this part for me? I mean, really? So you step back and you go, Hey, is your part this size? Is it in this volume? Is it in this material? Do you do you need this or that to really in that example? You come back to basic questions. Answer those basic questions and understand that. You know my buyer persona, if I’ve got an engineer, that’s my typical buyer, what are the questions my engineer wants? If I’ve got a corporate buyer, purchasing person that’s going to be doing the buyer the engineers are specifying, but normally, I’m working with purchasing people. What are the purchasing person’s questions? And then how do you do that? Because they’re drastically different questions, but when you understand them very well and you answer them, either in FAQs or with the text or documents you create that they can download that helps you become that source of information that they use to help make those decisions, right?

Curt Anderson  13:26

Absolutely. So again, let’s kind of recap, and then we’re going to wind down. So when you’re going through, you know, we call this a digital game plan. It’s just, it’s a wonderful opportunity. We it’s a digital asset management system. It’s a marketing hub for all of our clients that we work with, this is a tool. It’s completely free. If you’re interested, be happy to send you a free copy. And so focus on what you’re absolutely best at, your strengths, your opportunities, and even put on there like, Hey, this is an this is an opportunity right now for us to list out what are we not so great at, and maybe we could shift away from those to let us, like, really move the needle further on what we’re best at. And then the next thing we’re talking about today are like, what are those questions? What are they, you know? So think about, okay, we’re, we’re the best kept secret. We do this awesome, wonderful process. And people aren’t, you know, man, people, more people should know about us, right? And so we want to start thinking about, okay, what are the questions that we have? And then the next step, next time Damon and I come on, we’re going to be talking about how to help create that content around those questions. So Damon, parting thoughts, words of wisdom that you want to share with our friends out there as we’re diving into digital game plan, talking about our so versus so what, and the soul mate questions. Well,

Damon Pistulka  14:40

I think that this, you know, first of all, this is, if you’re really want to get in, do marketing effectively, you have to understand your customer more. It seems intuitive. It’s kind of like driving. We forget about driving and how hard it is, and all the little steps from starting the car to putting in Drive. Even going down the road or putting in first gear, or whatever we’re doing, but we really have to back up when we do marketing and start over and really understand our customer, understand what they need to have answered, how we can make that easy for them to see all the way through to the point of reaching out to us and talking about us helping them with something. And that’s a huge it’s a huge thing, and I it seems so basic, but when you overlook it, and this is why, this is what goes back to the beginning of this, you’re kind of shooting off one direction. You’re shooting off another direction, shooting off another direction, hoping what you’re doing is going to actually help. And that’s one of the things that the digital game plan really helps you to do, is focus in what makes a difference to your customer and help them make informed decisions. Yeah, last but not least, though, you can go download this yourself at the B to B, tail website to B to B, B, B, the number 2b, T, T, a, i, l.com, and you can find the digital game plan there. That’s right, so

Curt Anderson  16:06

awesome. Well, Damon, thank you, man. I appreciate you. Appreciate your expertise, your insight, and I just want to wish everybody an incredible, amazing day connect with Damon on LinkedIn. Love to connect with you. My name is Curt Anderson. We’ve got my buddy here, Damon pistoca, and so just go out and keep crushing it. And by the way, Damon, we’re back here. We have an amazing guest coming up on Friday, and we’ve got Derek Ellis is in the house. He fierce, just a veteran, served our country proudly. He does amazing work helping manufacturers in the US. And so we’re thrilled and honored to have Derek with us here and so. And we have a jam session coming up next week. Yes, little webinar coming up next Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  16:45

yeah. Sign up for our may jam session on the B to B, tail.com website. It’ll take you right to it. You can get signed up. Yeah, it’s going to be fun. We’ll be talking about AI in marketing there. I mean, we’re going to be going through a bunch customizing chat GPT, using Claude to create content. Just it’s going to be a good one. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  17:05

So go to B2Btail.com go to the bottom. We have our all of our jam sessions are always posted on the website. Totally free webinar. We have wonderful speakers. We have Lori taiban, Lori hybe. We have Amy sarago. We’ve got three AI experts coming on, and we’re going to be sharing some incredible, wonderful marketing strategies just for you to take your business to the next level. So with that, we want to wish you an amazing, credible day. Thank you for spending these minutes with us today, and we will catch