Manufacturing eCommerce Success – with Dianna Huff and Rachel Cunliffe

Nicole Donnelly  00:02

Oh my goodness, Damon Pustaka. We’re live. How are you?

Damon Pistulka  00:05

I’m great, Nicole, and we’re ready to go. It’s another great week. And we’re starting off with Monday motivation. Monday

Nicole Donnelly  00:12Huff industrial marketing. And we also have her counterpart Rachel here who’s the owner of creative designs. And Rachel and Diana just have this really cool and exciting partnership and love what all that they’re doing to support industrial manufactures and can’t wait to dive into this conversation. So how are you doing today? Damon? How are you doing? What’s going on with you?

Damon Pistulka  00:42

Great, great. Well, you know, the Seahawks won yesterday. So that’s a good thing for us up here in the Northwest. And we know it’s it’s the time of wintertime. So it’s good for getting ready for the holidays already. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. It’s coming around coming around.

Nicole Donnelly  01:01

And Dianna and Rachel, how are you guys doing? What’s going on in your world today?

Dianna Huff  01:05

It’s cold.

Nicole Donnelly  01:11

And you live in New Hampshire? How do you like the cold? You must love it.

Dianna Huff  01:15

You know, I’m from I’m from California. So I have adjusted but it’s cold. It’s cold. It’s cold. And you know, and you know, you all know I have the dog who has to go out no matter what. So I I feel like I purchased half of LL Bean. And so I can walk them and I’m out there this morning. Oh.

Nicole Donnelly  01:40

So funny. I grew up in California to Diana and I moved to the East Coast after college and have been here ever since. So I can totally relate. I feel like even though I’ve lived here for 20 years, I still get freezing cold. It doesn’t matter. It’s like you can take the girl out of California but you can take the California to the girl and Rachel is like a completely on the other side of the world. She’s down. Zealand. So like down there, Rachel.

Rachel Cunliffe  02:06

Opposite measure. It’s it’s heading into summer here so nice and warm and longer days. So yeah, Diane and I often share stories of opposites.

Damon Pistulka  02:17

Yes,

Nicole Donnelly  02:18

very cool. Well, so uh, so while she’s wearing sweaters, you’re wearing shorts. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. I think we we usually kick off the show and ask a question. So I’m going to honor Kurt here. This is a question he always asks, and I’ll ask it to both of you. We’ll start with Dianna Diana, when you were a little girl growing up in California. Who was your hero?

Dianna Huff  02:53

Well, you know I did so it’s hard. I did a lot of reading. Laura Ingalls Wilder. Yes. Yeah. Love her. I I read her books repeatedly growing up. I read all of them. And and actually when? So in 20 I think it was 2014. I drove from New Hampshire to Missouri and visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder, Laura Ingalls Wilder house.

Nicole Donnelly  03:22

Very nice.

Dianna Huff  03:23

Yeah. And all the stuff that’s in the books is in that museum. Yeah, I made that drive by myself. It was it was an amazing trip.

Nicole Donnelly  03:32

Very, very cool. So which little house is your favorite? Or do you have a favorite?

Dianna Huff  03:36

You mean of the books? Yes, farmer boy. No kidding. I actually I’ve seen that house too. I drove up to New York and saw the Almanzo Wilder house that he grew up in the farm. Yeah.

Nicole Donnelly  03:53

I loved her books, too. When I was a kid, just the resilience and the family focus and everything was

Dianna Huff  04:00

just Yes. And in the grit and the determination. They never gave up.

Nicole Donnelly  04:05

actly Exactly. That’s what always it was very inspiring was very, very part of my formative years. I love that’s such a cool answer. I love Oh, you strike me as a reader, like you’d love to read? You probably

Dianna Huff  04:17

Yeah, Rachel is the only person I’ve met who reads as much and as fast as I do.

Nicole Donnelly  04:23

Wow, very nice. Very nice. Well, let’s let’s turn it over to Rachel. Rachel. It’s your turn.

Rachel Cunliffe  04:30

You know, mine is also a literary character, but mine’s a character growing up. And Green Gables was my favorite book series.

Nicole Donnelly  04:40

You guys were best friends Green Gables like Anna green. Not the author but the actual and character. Yeah, and

Rachel Cunliffe  04:54

when I was 12 I had the opportunity to go to Prince Edward Island and see everything so for you like you die. It just, it’s lovely to be able to go and see real places that have been written about.

Nicole Donnelly  05:08

So Gables is another amazingly resilient character. I adored all those books when I was a kid too. And I went to see the house to on Prince Edward Island. And it’s such it’s such a special place like, Hello country is so beautiful. It’s like, magical.

Rachel Cunliffe  05:28

Let me down when I saw it. I was a little nervous that perhaps, you know, the world in my imagination was not as beautiful but no, it was the opposite.

Damon Pistulka  05:37

Oh, that’s always awesome. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So we got some people that are dropping by today to already Nicole. We got Dale and Antonio and Dan bigger. Dan, it’s great to hear today.

Dianna Huff  05:53

Hi, Dan.

Nicole Donnelly  05:57

Watching from Bangladesh for international or international. Yeah. From Nigeria. Very nice.

Damon Pistulka  06:03

Thanks so much for stopping by the International

Nicole Donnelly  06:05

manufacturing ecommerce success.

Damon Pistulka  06:07

Yes, there we go. Well,

Nicole Donnelly  06:10

I would love to hear a little bit more about how you two got to know each other. Because you know, Rachel, all the way down to New Zealand. Dianna, you’re from California, New Hampshire? Like, how did the two of you connect? And how long have you guys been partnering together?

Dianna Huff  06:23

So we’ve been working together since 2010. And before I met Rachel, so I was already I was a freelance. I was DHT communications. I was doing freelance copywriting. And over time, I had been picking up these gigs to write website content. And I would work with different website designers. And I decided to start project managing these projects myself. So I was and also at that time, WordPress was starting to come in. And I worked with a designer who said he could do WordPress websites. And the site he did was so bad that the client called me and chewed me out. I was almost in tears. And he when he the way he had customized it was he just added clipart Oh, client was furious. And this was all new to me. And, and then I had another experience that was equally as bad. And I thought, I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to find somebody who knows how to do design in WordPress. And I did you know, I did all this searching and there’s got to be a way to do it. I tried to see if I could do it myself. I’m like, No, I can’t do this myself. So I started calling website designers that I found in Google. And I you know, everyone said, Yes, I can do website design in WordPress, but they really couldn’t. They didn’t know, design, or they didn’t know WordPress, they didn’t know both. So I just kept going through Google and I finally hit on the creative design website. And I looked at it like, Oh, she’s in New Zealand. Oh, I don’t know, can I do this? So I don’t know. So I call it hidden American phone number, a US phone number. So I called and I just she she has a different memory. But my memory is grilling her can you do design inside WordPress. She’s like it, she has a beautiful accent. And so um, she did, I think it was the dentist website, you did first, I think she did a website for one of my customers. And it was so wonderful and so awesome that I never looked back. And so that was in 2010. And then we just kept work doing more projects together. And now she’s the only designer that I work with. So we because of that, we become very tightly integrated. So even though she’s her own company, and she’s actually the designer to some of the top food bloggers in the world. She She is the only designer that I will work with and and then she brings her brother Steven Merriman, who does all the programming, or coding. So we are a very tight knit team. So we have a whole process and everything. But that’s how we met Google. And I’ve been to New Zealand, and she’s been here. She’s been to East tech three times with me and IMTS Oh, that’s

Nicole Donnelly  09:25

an amazing relationship. It’s almost 13 years that you guys have been working together.

Dianna Huff  09:30

Yeah. And I think the wonderful thing is, is even though she’s 9000 miles away, I can write stuff. And, you know, I give her you know, a Google Doc, and she’s able to take all my words and turn it into the website that I see in my head. We have a wonderful collaborative relationship. It’s wonderful.

Nicole Donnelly  09:51

Oh, man,

Damon Pistulka  09:52

I there’s so cool.

Nicole Donnelly  09:54

I love that. So what what do you see are the strengths that complement each other? As you guys have been working together, like what are some of Rachel strengths that you feel fill in the gap for you, Dianna and vice versa. So

Dianna Huff  10:06

with Rachel, she’s a statistician. So that’s her background, master’s degree, correct Rachel in statistics, and she used to teach at the University of Auckland. So she brings a lot of data science to projects. So she keeps me in check. She’s, again, the collaborative Vnus very open to ideas very, we often have zoom calls, where we talk things through. And then of course, the designs, very creative. But the other thing is, because she works with all these food bloggers, so they are in the how many did you say hundreds of 1000s of website views? a month? million. Yeah. So she has all this data. So when she tells me, I’ve already tested this, I know what works or what doesn’t I listen to her. Yeah. And because my, you know, I work with smaller manufacturers who have? Well, as I said, in my matomo, presentation, small data, very small data. And so she’s I, it’s harder, it’s harder to test things. So she’s, she knows what’s going on. And plus, she just does beautiful design. I mean, you go look at our food blogs, and you almost want to eat all the food.

Damon Pistulka  11:26

That’s very cool. Yeah, I

Nicole Donnelly  11:28

think that’s amazing. And Rachel, what do you think? What’s it been like working with Diana, what do you think? How does she complement you? And what do you love about that collaboration? Yeah,

Rachel Cunliffe  11:37

I think the first thing is, is from a designer and a statistician point of view. I love all sorts of challenges. But initially, when it came to manufacturing, I thought, Gosh, it’s really heavy technical, dry content. And you know, it often is quite tough. I’m not an engineer. So I don’t understand some of the terms. But what Diana does is she really transforms all those complex ideas into something that’s accessible for a broader audience, which is what’s needed on a website. Yes, there will be engineers who are coming and they can find their TDS is and things that are on the website. But I think that’s really been a skill that you can turn if you’re a really good writer, you can turn any content into something that’s interesting and accessible and usable for people.

Dianna Huff  12:24

Yeah, that’s what Ogilvy said, there are no boring right? There is no boring there are no boring products, only boring writers

Nicole Donnelly  12:33

will be such a classic. Oh, amazing. So let’s let’s go back down memory lane a little bit more. Let’s go back further. Down dying, I’d love to I know, I remember the first time you and I met. And you told me this cool story about how I used to work with Brian Halligan, who is the co founder of spot.

Dianna Huff  12:51

And I remember a long time ago.

Nicole Donnelly  12:54

I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. But tell us a little bit about what led you down this path? How did you get started in marketing? And what what led you to kind of start your business? And then I’d love Rachel, for you to chime in and share on your end, too. Yep. So

Dianna Huff  13:07

I actually, when I got started, I started. I used to make sales for sailboats, and college. That’s how I put myself through college. So I was actually a production. Yeah. And I, I knew how to sew from high school home at class. So I used to sew sales and the bags that the sales went into. And I did that for five years. And, and then after the sailmaking, I went, I worked for precision technical sewing in Palo Alto, California, which was a small woman owned business where we did technical sewing, for military and aerospace and all we did all this work for all these companies in Silicon Valley, you know, including Silicon Graphics, which is now what Google that’s the Google complex. So this was way pre Google and I lived in Mountain View. So I used to live like three blocks from Yeah, Google is and completely different place now. But anyway, I worked for seven years for pts. And that’s where I learned everything. Because I was the office manager. I learned everything about how to run a small office of manufacturing because we did all this work for military we had all this milspec stuff. This was in the days of those big Thomas registers the big green man’s nose, no internet. Yes, I answered four phone lines. And actually that’s how it’s funny because we would advertise in all these yellow pages throughout the Bay Area. And I would keep track when people called I’d say, How did you hear about us you know, however, oh, I found you in the Yellow Pages Well, which directory so that when the Add Person came the sales rep I was able to say no that booked doesn’t work or we need a bigger ad and she was astounded. She said, No one does this. She said, You’re the first person to so I guess like the marketing was bred in the bone, right? So then from PTS, I went to Verizon, which was now I went corporate fortune 500. And for two years, two and a half years, I was there. And I was the mark comm rep for nuclear magnetic resonance and analytical instruments. And what’s so funny, I was just thinking before the call, that was where I did my first website, I over not that I did it, but I worked with a designer, because NMR had created their own web page with all the variant branding with, you know, the corporate people going oh, having heart attacks, and, and they had the guy had put Christmas lights across the top that bloom I remember those days, counter, website counter. So that was the one of the first websites that I, we helped, because we had to redo it, we couldn’t let that stand. But then from Varian, then I went out, then my husband at the time, he moved back, he was from here, we moved back east, because he got a job I had had my son, and I didn’t want to keep them in daycare, because he was in there, you know, 50 hours a week. So that’s I woke up one morning, I’m going out on my own. And that’s, that’s, so I did DH communications from 1998 to 2013. And now I’m helping industrial marketing.

Nicole Donnelly  16:34

That’s amazing. So you have been an entrepreneur for 25 years.

Dianna Huff  16:39

Yes.

16:40

It’s amazing. Love it. Always love

Damon Pistulka  16:44

the stories to you know, your story, the history and how just especially like yourself, were you saw pre website to now. You know, it is just free internet. Now. I mean, there’s very, there’s very few of us that have that experience in in marketing, but the fundamentals still carry through. You know, like, where are you getting your like, when you were talking about the Yellow Page ads, which yellow page ad actually got us? Got us a call, you know, yes. Still still carries true.

17:20

Very cool. Love it.

Dianna Huff  17:22

Thank you,

Nicole Donnelly  17:23

Rachel, what about you about your entrepreneurial journey? How did you end up where you are? And what kind of inspired you to want to move in this direction?

Rachel Cunliffe  17:33

Yes. So before working with Diana, I started out in the early 2000s lecturing and doing research at the University of Auckland here down in New Zealand. And I really got excited about statistics, but, and also sort of statistics in the media. So that was my field of like thinking about lies, damned lies, and statistics. And the second thing that really interests me, I’ve always had too many interests to try and somehow piece together, which has been really cool. Yeah. So that’s been online learning. And so back in 2001 2002, that was actually quite a new space for universities to be moving into. So we were getting forums going starting using chat messenger to talk with students to get help to them. And then started blogging. And in 2002, was when I really got into blogging, it was a very early

Nicole Donnelly  18:26

pre wedding. How, and then called

Rachel Cunliffe  18:29

Movable Type. Yeah, remember Movable Type. Yeah, and a few other tools were out there. And they were all sort of competing for which blogging tool would would work the best. And it was a really small community of bloggers back then really small. We knew all the big players in New Zealand, and in Australia, and a bunch in the States and Canada as well. And I started just because of just more for my own interest designing because I knew coding as a back background as well, designing some simple blogs and helping people because I think originally the tools were made by coders, not by designers at all. And so I was doing some really innovative things there. I was working, I started getting some small jobs while working at the university and the university loved me actually expanding my interest and because it actually helped inform my day job as well. Some of the cool things sort of were to do with blogs, just really attracting a big audience all of a sudden overnight. And some of the early ones were the the Olympics we were running a Olympic blogs, and also entertainment. So that’s like the American Idols of the world type of thing. Suddenly, overnight, you have a massive audience of people wanting to talk now this is before Facebook, right? So this is where we’re coming to talk about TV Online Project

Dianna Huff  20:00

Runway there were those two guys that had that blog member that one I didn’t follow. Yeah, they had a massive following. Yes.

Rachel Cunliffe  20:13

Yeah. We were getting hundreds of 1000s of visitors. And, you know, so we’re at the forefront of how do you make money with blogs, because this thing is becoming pretty big, what do we do with it, but also just that kind of gold rush, initial feel of this is a new space, there was a lot of freedom of expression. So I loved it. And I got the attention of some pretty big names like TechCrunch, I was one of the first blog designers working with TechCrunch, ProBlogger, and a few other people. And through that, I got a lot of interest from Americans and people worldwide, that here’s someone who knows design and logging. So that’s sort of how I got started. You know, the university was one of the first ones who did a blog talking about statistics in the media. So making them accessible to a wider audience about here’s some headline, and instead of the professors are sitting in their offices at coffee breaks, saying, My goodness, the newspaper did it again, you know, they don’t understand how to understand DNA caught results, you know, they’re just they mess it all up. Here’s the probabilities. So let’s package it up and make it accessible to a wider audience. So that’s, I think, the my heart and you heard that when I was talking about what Diana’s skill is, it’s, you know, transforming knowledge that you have into something that’s accessible for others. I think that’s a really lovely thing about blogging, you can see you know, why food blogs took off in the pandemic, people need to go to get inspiration for their meals. Oh,

Nicole Donnelly  21:52

so cool. I mean, to be there from the beginning of blogging, super curious, is there’s been such a change when it comes to blogging from those early days to blogging now, what is your perspective on blogging, then versus now and what the future of blogging looks like?

Rachel Cunliffe  22:12

It’s very, it has evolved an awful lot. And I think some of the original bloggers still reminisce about the good old days where all the comments were contained on the blog. And then there’s a new bloggers who accept that everything is fragmented now. So commenting is happening through email, through checks, social media, through Facebook, through the blogs all over the place. So it’s way more of a machine and now than it ever used to be, it used to be sort of very all in one place very tight networks, you’ve if you’re a food if you’re a blogger, in general, you’ve got to have all these platforms covered not just one and so I think there’s a reminiscing for those simple old days when it was just your blog. And I think that’s why medium and substack have really taken off because that’s kind of the basics of let’s just write in for not everybody they don’t need everything they just want to write and get their ideas out into the world.

Nicole Donnelly  23:16

I love that but I think you make a really good point about omni channel that today you like it was so much simpler than but now if you’re gonna blog not only do you need to blog but you’re gonna need to share it in other channels you know, you know break out your blog, if you will and share it on your social channels and you know, start conversations in that way. That’s interesting point about medium and substack to

Damon Pistulka  23:43

it had to be looking back it had to be so much fun being in that early stages of blogging though because it was literally like you said the gold rush when people when

Dianna Huff  23:56

I had my I had a blog and I first had my website and I did I started doing SEO in 2001 And that’s how I generated all my leads. Would it worked it would did really well. Talking about the good old days. It was really good. I all I did was optimize around keyword Mark comm copywriter, and all these leads came in and then SEO caught b2b SEO calm but then I had a blog, and I think it was around 2005 or 2006 the blog eclipse the website, I never and I and they at the time they were two separate entities, you know and the blog was getting far more traffic and me talk about the good old days I you know, I remember what it was some website, some publisher, they named my blog, the mark calm writer, one of the top b2b blogs of the decade. And I was like wow. But you know now like people We’ll say who she

Nicole Donnelly  25:04

was Diana, and she’s amazing. But

Dianna Huff  25:07

those were the good old dance they were and they were so much fun. It was just fun. And you know, people and you left comments on people’s blogs, and they would leave comments on your blog. So it was I met so many fun and nice people through blogging.

Nicole Donnelly  25:22

Interesting. It’s kind of like blogging was what social media is now, what community is becoming like people are building these communities. We got a comment here from Alexander Smash. Zuck, I’m not sure if I’m sorry, your name wrong. I’m so sorry. Now we need to talk about villagey people are not reading so much as it was, what do you guys think about that?

Rachel Cunliffe  25:42

I think it’s complimentary. It’s actually broadening the audience. It’s not. So there’s a certain type of people who will read there’s a certain type of people who watch and you know, just like with podcasts, you can listen to it, you can watch it, you can read a transcript. Let’s just provide people all sorts of options, and different needs for different people.

Nicole Donnelly  26:02

Oh, you’re so right. You gotta meet them where they are. That’s great marketing, meet them where they are. I’m a reader, I would much rather read it than watch it, for sure. So I bet there’s a lot of people these days that prefer to watch and that short form videos becoming huge.

Rachel Cunliffe  26:15

And the other thing is, is every video now has subtitles or captions. Because there are many people who have their sound off or it’s you know, they don’t want they just lose to reading even on.

Damon Pistulka  26:30

That’s a great point.

Nicole Donnelly  26:31

You’re absolutely right. This morning, a TED talk. I was like, I just want to read the transcript.

Dianna Huff  26:38

Right? Because you could read it faster.

Nicole Donnelly  26:41

Yeah, exactly. You’re absolutely right. Go ahead.

Damon Pistulka  26:45

That’s really interesting, because I noticed it in my kids who are in their mid to late 20s. Right? They watch a lot of YouTube. But the end when they’re watching TV, they like the subtitles turned on just regular television. So if you’re on Netflix or something, they like Netflix, because they like to be able to reach the along with it. And I thought that was really strange. Because to me, it’s annoying when you’re watching television options. Oh, yeah. But it’s on all the time in my house now because of this.

Dianna Huff  27:16

Yeah, see resting in it is that

Damon Pistulka  27:18

you talked about the transcription. And I think I think it’s just an evolution of of understanding that we can watch video without the sound. Yeah, I mean, it’s really cool.

Nicole Donnelly  27:30

It’s true. My brother’s really big on the subtitles when he watches any show, even if it’s an English, you know. And it’s interesting, because when I watch shows with him, I know now I’m I’m like, I want to do this because you pick up things that you read the subtitles that you don’t hear properly, if you’re just hearing it, read it. And so you get a lot more. I think you catch a lot more that way. Hmm. Interesting. Well, so let’s talk about like, how do you guys I love this question. How do each of you and your company make the world a better place? What is it about your company, Dianna, nice or whatever that makes, that you feel as a world better?

Dianna Huff  28:08

Well, Rachel’s already given me enough send up about transforming complex technical concepts into accessible content, but what so what I do so when I started Huff industrial marketing in 2014, I knew I wanted to work with industrial manufacturers, so that I did what I always do, I went to find books to learn more about what’s going on in manufacturing. And I happened upon these two books put out by the Alliance for American manufacturing, which is a nonprofit. And the first one was, oh, oh, it was all of these articles about what had happened to us manufacturing, but all the offshoring and whole industries, leaving our country and, I mean, I just remember my jaw dropping, like every other page, like, in all these underlyings and doggy ears and, and so after I read that book, I said, and not knowing what I was getting myself into. I said, Okay, all right, I’m gonna make a commitment to buy Made in USA whenever I can, not knowing. And so that’s how I, that’s how it started in 2015. So I remember my first trip to Home Depot, reading all the labels going, Oh, my God, like a whole display of tools made in China. And that’s when I realized how bad it was. And I said, okay, if I’m going to work with us manufacturers, then I need to support what they’re doing and I need to buy Made in USA as much as I can. Obviously, you know, not you can’t do it for everything. I mean, I’m on a MacBook. So, but I said I’m going to do that and it I and I didn’t really talk about it over time. I just started talking about it. And the more I talked about it on LinkedIn, the more traction you I would write, I would do a marketing post. I would do a Made in USA post, I get all this traction and people would say yes, and all sorts of things. And so I don’t know if you can see it. Cool. My customer Brandon Acker from Titan abrasive. He sent that to me, he said, since you’re the queen of meat in USA, you need this in your office. And it’s made by a service disabled veteran down in South Carolina. So, but that’s what I do. I, I tell people about products that are made here. I buy as much as I can. And, you know, I said, that’s how I support American manufacturing. And it’s my and then I have my blog. Keep it made in the USA. So I write about what I’m learning. And that’s how I’m giving back.

Nicole Donnelly  30:50

And I love it. We’ve got some comments coming in from Genesis. I

Dianna Huff  30:54

purchased $1 tree, I didn’t think Dollar Tree would be a good place,

Damon Pistulka  30:59

either, but thinking about them from my knowledge. Um, they probably are. Yeah,

Dianna Huff  31:03

you have to be very intentional. You and it is hard. I mean, this is not made in the USA, it’s hard to find clothes. Only 3% of clothing apparel is made here. So I you know, you do what you can. Yeah,

Nicole Donnelly  31:19

it’s really exciting to see a lot of the reshoring coming back. There’s a been a big I hope that continues. I hope that yes, me to continue. That’s very exciting. And I do love and appreciate your your Made in USA posts. It’s really cool to see some of the the details of the fun stuff that you find and how you it’s very intense.

Dianna Huff  31:38

Thank you. I really enjoy it. I enjoy writing about them. And I want to you know, I got to get week reconnected with my blog again. The dog took a lot of time out of me.

Nicole Donnelly  31:50

I can imagine Yes. Yeah, yeah. Says he’s gonna send something of your of theirs.

Dianna Huff  31:56

Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you. Thanks, Dan.

Nicole Donnelly  32:00

And then Adam Baker says, would have never thought Dollar Tree who would have known so I know. Yeah. Rachel, how do you feel about American made not just getting? What is it that you feel like how your company, you know, is making a difference in the world? What inspires I would

Rachel Cunliffe  32:17

say that it’s very inspiring to see people get excited about American made New Zealand, we have the same sort of thing in the 1980s when the floodgates of imports came into our country. That’s yeah. I think you’re seeing manufacturers and people getting excited about American made is a real wake up call for the rest of the world as well like to really support local. And, yeah, I think, even if it’s just at your local farmers market, wherever you can see the impact of your buying decisions. And we all have a lot of choices available to us still. But to your question, where I, you know, I’ve got so many different things in my life projects that I’m working on. But one of the common themes, I think that ties it all together is, and it’s going to be a lifelong quest to become a better communicator, whether it’s, you know, working with data, and communicating that to people, or whether it’s website content, or just writing in general, even answering client queries, the clearer you can be, you know, you stop that email chain of 20 emails back and forth to get to the heart of the problem. You know, whether we’re apparent, better we can communicate with our partners, our children, those we work with, that really makes a difference in the world, the way you communicate with people. And so I think that’s, I read a lot of books about psychology now, and I’m trying to bring in, you know, a lot of thinking about empathy, and we’re going to talk about distraction free websites, but I don’t think you’ve reached the bottom of, or the pinnacle of, of understanding how to be the best communicator. And it’s something that I want to keep working on, I want to become a better communicator of ideas and, and learn from others as I go.

Nicole Donnelly  34:15

I, that’s so dropped the mic, we had my moment. Like, becoming a better communicator is such a challenge. And you’re right, there’s never going to be a peak there. There’s always going to be room for improvement. However, we’re communicating as humans, whether it’s, you know, how we do it digitally, how we do it in person and all of that. That’s really very, very cool. And I love what you said about local, I think there’s something to, like, with so much happening in the world of sustainability, being able to have something made locally, just really from a just, it’s just good for our world, you know, to be able to produce a lot of the impact that happens when we’re shipping things all over the world. And that carbon foot Right. So cool, man.

Damon Pistulka  35:04

Well, we’re we’re gonna start talking about distraction free websites, because I’m excited about this. And ya know, I could talk about data science forever, too. But we I want to go down that road. So when when you guys are out there, Dianna, you’re out there helping people try to cut the clutter, cut the things on the website, what are some of the most common things that you see when you go? Oh, my goodness. That’s just that’s just Oh, that is hurts me?

Dianna Huff  35:35

Well, first off, it’s just when we look at our I do, I look at a ton of manufacturing websites. And the biggest one is that a lot of them are completely outdated. And Rachel and I were talking about this yesterday in preparation for this call. So she’s working with food bloggers, or even as we were talking about bloggers. So for example, I’ve been doing all this research about German shepherds to help me with my dog. And I couldn’t figure out like, Why does everything look the same? And it’s also poorly written and all these sub heads that are questions, and I finally realized after reading those verge articles that have been coming out about Google, that this, they’re all writing to the algorithm. And so and they’re writing for page views. And so there, as Rachel can tell you, I mean, page views are the end all and be all. So that’s it, because they’re selling stuff. And they have to prove that people are coming to the website for ads, she can talk more about it, but I’m not in that space. So. So a food blogger, or anyone else can’t have an outdated website, a manufacturer on the other hand, they can have an outdated website. And you know, I always joke, yeah, it was built when, you know, enact a change my president, I used to say, when George W. Bush was president. But literally, some of these are so old. And and you you you talk I would talk to them. They don’t care. That’s I think that’s the biggest thing. They don’t care. They’re like, well, I don’t need any more leaves. And I want to say, Well, what happens when you do?

Nicole Donnelly  37:10

A lot of them have these legacy counts, right? But they just they’re, you know,

Dianna Huff  37:14

that’s what they say, to all of our customers then, or the big one, I always and I still hear it. All of our customers know who we are. And I want to say, what about the ones who don’t? Yes.

Nicole Donnelly  37:30

customers that do, you are now want more on a website, they, they want to be able to have a better experience when they come to your website, and even being able to build a community element to that too, like buyers want and expect more today than Yeah,

Dianna Huff  37:44

and that’s and Rachel, she can bring a lot to this conversation. But I think a lot of it has to do with social media, because and also the pandemic, our whole expectation changed with the pandemic. Because everything went online. And and then the photographer we worked with, he said, You can’t get away now with bad photos as I look at my own blog. But you have people expect high quality photos. And because of social media, and you know, we all everybody has these great cameras now. But yes, the biggest thing is just the ones where I see where it’s been completely outdated. And and I can even you know, okay, budget, you don’t have time, you don’t have the knowledge, you don’t have a lot of that we work with people with companies that are 50 employees or fewer. So they don’t have marketing departments, I get all that. But the whole, I don’t need to change. That’s the one that bothers me the most.

Damon Pistulka  38:42

Yeah. I was talking to someone last week about this. And they said, you have to remember the people that are that own these companies are not most times not the same kind of person that’s going to be looking for your company to solve their problem. And the kind of people that are going to be looking are in the it was Chuck Cox said we were talking on my show last week. And he was you said, if you’ve got people that are in their 30s and 40s out there for the CEO of a company for the for the head of a company or a head of the the procurement department, they’ve got someone else that’s researching companies, those people are going to search Google, they’re going to look at LinkedIn, they’re going to look at all these places to see what your company is. Yes, you you as the business owner of that company, you would never do that. But the people you got that are looking for products and services they are they’re looking to see what your social presence like they’re looking to see what your your website looks like. Is it inviting? They’re also looking to see Are you good in your community? And they’ll go to glass door and he was even brought up glass door you know, they’ll look to see how you treat him or

Dianna Huff  39:52

what’s your environmental footprint you know, yeah, ya know, all of that stuff. Yeah. If

Damon Pistulka  40:00

we can, and we have to remember that as executives in these companies, the bars are not. Yeah, this aren’t ours. But the researchers is who we have to be be courting. be attracted to. Yeah,

Nicole Donnelly  40:16

Alexander, I’m sorry for business owners unfortunately, don’t have enough knowledge experience. That’s why they need people like Dianna and Rachel. Right. For sure. Yeah. So um,

Dianna Huff  40:25

so, yeah, so yeah. So, Rachel chime in. So another one poor messaging and content. So you said you wanted to talk about the about section? You had mentioned at the beginning? Yeah. Yeah. So you want to add, Rachel, I’m doing all the talking. Why don’t you say something, Rachel?

Rachel Cunliffe  40:49

Yeah, I think I mean, the one of the biggest challenges I see on manufacturing websites, when I put aside my designer eyes, is that I don’t really know, who’s behind the website. And, you know, it’s like, amens, you know, Google’s thing is about trust, one of the biggest things, they’re looking for indicators. And humans. You know, when we see each other for the first time, we’re making all sorts of judgments correctly and incorrectly about people. But if you don’t know who the people are behind it, you’re left wondering, is this? Is this a genuine company? What are these people? Like? Do they understand me, we need that human connection on our website. And if you don’t have photos of the people, you don’t have bios, you don’t have contact details. I know people are worried about getting robo calls, that everyone’s phone numbers are getting robo calls, whether it’s on your website or not. Everyone’s getting spam coming. Yeah,

Dianna Huff  41:46

then you say you’ve worked with someone who took the phone number off their website, because they didn’t know they took the phone number often in the you know, and I track conversions for our customers. And they come in through phone, they come in through email, and they come in through our contact forms, RFQ forms, and one of our customers he got the biggest RFQ request in the entire company’s history from a phone call. You know, so you got to make it super easy for people to contact you however they want to do it or people we just want them to fill out our form. Well, what if they don’t want to fill out your foremen and to go back to the about section? It really hit home for me once I started buying Made in USA because I was buying direct to consumer so for example authenticity 50 who make their sheets you know see distich that’s I love their tagline you know, cotton grown in California it’s all woven and the whole sheet is made the United States and their about page you know, you see who they are their story why they started their their challenges trying to find wide sheeting Weaver’s in United States and you hear they tell you about, you know, the obstacles and they you know, their entire story, you’re like, Yeah, I want to buy these sheets, even though they’re three times as much as what you’d get at Bed Bath and Beyond the old one. But you know, you the about the about section? You really you have to who you know you Who are you who are the people, you know, when I’m we’re working on a website right now for a machine shop. And the more I interview these the people who are working on the machines, the and I learned their bios and their backgrounds and how they got to the company and how the company has promoted them and their their background. I’m just, I just keep saying to the guy I’m working with your company is amazing. It is amazing. And I want to make sure the website, from design to content to photos shows that fact. And you know the about page, who are you What do you stand for? What, what are you doing to help the environment if anything, and a lot of these manufacturers, they they are doing stuff like every time I walk into a facility if they’re doing any kind of metal work, that these humongous containers where all the scrap goes in that gets recycled. You know, there’s there’s all kinds of stuff that they’re doing that they don’t even talk about. Yeah, because it’s just what they do. Yeah,

Nicole Donnelly  44:24

they don’t even think of it. That’s what’s that’s one of the beautiful things about manufacturing is just how humble they are. They don’t realize some of the extraordinary things that they’re doing. And they’re just like, oh, yeah, why would I put that out? It’s amazing.

Dianna Huff  44:37

Yeah, there’s this quote by that guy, Bassett, Bassett furniture, I forget his first name, but he said, you know, everyone thinks all the great ideas come out of MIT, but a great deal of innovation comes off the factory floor. So every time I go into a facility, I’m just I’m astounded by what I see. And I purposely don’t read a company’s website until after the tour. So then I could go see the disconnects. And then I’m like, Oh my God, there’s nothing on their website about what I just saw. And I can see, like, all the, you know, it’s amazing. It’s amazing what manufacturers do, and how they don’t talk about themselves. You right? I don’t know if it’s being humble, or they just, they just do it all. It’s like me, you know? And Rachael, doing what we do all day long. You know, is it you just start to think, Oh, well, everybody does it this way.

Nicole Donnelly  45:26

Yeah, exactly. You’re right. It’s very important to show your customer. That’s a great point. Yes,

Dianna Huff  45:31

exactly. Without and you don’t have to give away your secrets. So that’s the other big thing. Oh, well, we don’t want our competition to know, well, you don’t have to give away at the store. But if people want to see who you are, you can we always like to get a photographer in to, you know, show people working and not just the headshots and it’s so important. Yeah, I

Rachel Cunliffe  45:58

think people often look to the like, to the shiny on the other websites, or the bling or the little features. But actually, the things we’re talking about, they almost sound sort of too basic. And yet, the basics is actually what makes machinery run, you know, you can have the little sticker on it and make it look pretty at the end. But if it’s the basics of your machinery isn’t working, it’s not going to work. And it’s the same with the website. You know, and this is why we focus really on distraction free, because many of those other things, you know, the animations, or the moving lists, or the even the video, they’re nice to have, maybe in certain circumstances, but they’re not essential for good communication. And good communication does not have to be boring. Storytelling is an art. I mean, you know, for us to sit down and watch a comedy show for 90 minutes, one person on stage, that’s just a very simple stage setup. And yet they’ve got your entire attention, hopefully, if they’re a good comedian. You know, so I think the last few years, it’s gone up a next level, though. distraction free websites has become even more important than ever. We look at how people are today. They’re overwhelmed, they’re stressed, they’re hurried, they’re unfocused, they’re exhausted. And we’ve got information coming in at us faster than ever before. And I think it was like 2010, there’s an amazing book by Nicholas Carr, called The Shallows, talks about how it’s a very what the internet is doing to your brain. Yeah, yeah. And that actually is changing. And, you know, when you sit down to read a novel on your summer vacation, and you kind of struggling to read it, there’s a reason for that, it’s that your brain has been trained to just quickly scan through, grab the important details. And to train your brain to sort of give that slow focus is quite a challenge now. So we need to, you know, be aware that people are not coming to your website, with a calm and hurried, endless amount of time in their disposal. There was a term that came up earlier this year, a public health researcher, and she called this chronic type of stress weathering. And I really like it, there’s some good articles about it, just how we’re coming to, to a website wizard, or a situation with it, we’re not coming in pristine condition, ready to absorb all that you have to show us, you know, and then we have the obvious things like politics and, and COVID. And even the fear of being canceled, saying the wrong thing, getting it wrong, all the fighting online, all of those things. How are we bringing them to us or to, to our situations to our lives? And so when we look at a website, we need to think, how do we raise it to someone, when how do we sell it? How do we make it a calmer experience? We don’t need all the shiny movie things all over the place? How do we really get our key messaging even if they don’t read all the copy? What can we pull out that they will read? What are the key messages? You know, if they go to our about page? Do they want to see our 50 year history as the first thing? Or do they want to see hey, look, they hire people that look like me? And they seem to be okay with people who don’t have, you know, college degrees or all they seem to be okay with people who want to do different projects outside of their nine to five and then they’re going to support them in their endeavors or whatever it is. You know, everything on a website is communicating. It’s just like a person. It’s saying a lot about it in manufacturing websites often are like they’re either one or the other. It’s like, look, we’re trying to be shiny, attractive. Look over here. Look over there. And you end up itches. bolstered and more fatigued, or we don’t care about our website, it’s 20 years, 15 years old, we don’t touch it, we don’t, we’re not interested in investing in this. I think distraction free when you come online is a rarity. And if you can find it and get the info you need and leave in an efficient manner. That’s incredible. You know, when for manufacturers,

Dianna Huff  50:27

and so what we’ve been doing, we’ve been focusing for several years now on improving the user experience with the website. So we we build them. And then if they if the client hires us to do ongoing marketing, we actually don’t do a whole lot more marketing, we’re constantly focused on improving the user experience to increase the conversions. And it’s just amazing how very, very simple things can increase the conversion rate, or the number of conversions, you know, and so that’s where, you know, I have now just when I say we build these distraction, free websites, but they’re really calm, Rachel, use the word calm. So when people come to them, and we’ve had people will say, well, there isn’t anything. You know, we want it to be interactive. Well, it is it’s a website, people they are interacting, just not the way you think that the way you’re used to being interactive, they don’t need all this fancy moving bits, they want to come in, find what they’re looking for, contact you and go, and they want to contact you very quickly. And you know, so like, for example, one of the things that we’ve done on contact forms, instead of asking for the phone number, if we put the phone number field in, but it’s not required. And then people if people put in their phone number, a new field opens up, it’s a conditional, you know, the new field opens up, what’s the best time to contact you. So then you’re not paying playing phone tag, you know, then. So we do we make dozens and dozens and dozens of these very small changes all the time. And then we track all this stuff. And it’s, it’s I have I have really learned a lot in the last three years.

Rachel Cunliffe  52:18

It’s like the book we read diner about the Toyota Production says yes,

Dianna Huff  52:22

yes. Why Toyota is number one, it was a book written many years ago. But the they detail the author details of Toyota Production System, about how Toyota makes all these little tiny changes to increase productivity. I mean, it could be anything from moving the wastebasket, five inches, because it was blocking the way or something to something really big. And, you know, when I just finished the bio for Elon Musk, you know, he he increases productivity by going down on the floor. And he’s on the production line, looking at everything. Why does this thing have four bolts? Why is this doing this? And he makes the engineers, he puts their offices right on the line too, because he wants the engineers to see what they’re engineering, how hard it is to manufacture. Yeah, so we’re sort of doing the same thing. We build these websites, then we track them. And then like, Oh, if we change this, the conversion start going up a little bit.

Nicole Donnelly  53:22

Oh, that’s so wise. Because I think times as marketers, we can get so caught up in like, the big shiny thing, or start over? Yeah, yeah. Or we need to do this, we got to do this massive big investment. But I think what you’re saying is incredibly wise is like, really focusing in on the details of what can you optimize? And I love that you’re saying just you’re really focused on the user experience. So it’s not based on assumptions of like, what we think that they’re actually going to want on the website. It’s actually based on real live data from how people are Yeah,

Dianna Huff  53:55

and that’s why I love working with Rachel because she she has all this data, even if it’s is from food bloggers, you know, and then she understands taxonomy as well because she has to organize all those recipes. So if a manufacturer has, you know, 1000 parts with all these variations, she and Steven know what to do. I just put it in their hands

Nicole Donnelly  54:22

this is so amazing. Well, I can’t believe it Damon we’re coming up on the time now. Wow, we are all these questions we didn’t get through about matomo You know, we’re gonna have to do a part two and have you come Yes, we

Damon Pistulka  54:33

will. Yes, we will.

Nicole Donnelly  54:36

Well, thank you so much to both of you guys for being on the show today. This has been so incredibly rewarding and enriching for me to just learn from you guys and see you collaborating together and action it’s pretty exciting. And yeah, and Damon Do you have any like final questions last words that you wanted to know I?

Damon Pistulka  54:56

You the two of you said something and collaborate us something here that that I think we should people should live that are listening need to understand is these little tweaks to your website, these changes to the words that are focusing on the user experience can go a long ways you don’t need to completely trash it and start over. It’s like make these little changes to all the time. Just keep trying to make it better.

Rachel Cunliffe  55:21

Apps. Yeah. Fantastic.

Nicole Donnelly  55:24

Yeah. Love it. Well, thank you guys, both so much for being on the show today.

Dianna Huff  55:29

Thank you for having us. This has been fun. Thank you. Yeah.

Nicole Donnelly  55:33

And And thanks, everyone out there for tuning in and for listening. And Dianna and Rachel, if you guys can just share where people can get a hold of you how they can reach you. That’d be wonderful. Yep.

Dianna Huff  55:43

So Huffindustrialmarketing.com. That’s the website. Unless you’re a food blogger, you can contact Rachel directly at created si r e eight, D is in David hyphen design.com. And then we’re I’m on LinkedIn. I think, Rachel, you’re on Instagram. Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. So those are the only two places where I am. website and LinkedIn

Nicole Donnelly  56:12

was named to like powerhouse women who have been in marketing and doing this for decades. So please reach out to them take advantage of their expertise. And I know Dianna is just doing phenomenal work for manufacturers and just having that experience. Thank you. Thank you so much. Great. So thank you guys, both for being here. And thanks, everyone for tuning in. And until next time. Okay,

Dianna Huff  56:36

thank you. Thank you so much. Have a great week everyone. Bye bye.