Marketing Automation for Manufacturers: From Clicks to Customers

Damon Pistulka  00:02

Alright, everybody, it is Friday and it is 932 right on time. Curt Anderson, and we’re ready today to talk about marketing automation from manufacturers for clicks to customers. We’re here today on stop being the best kept secret. I am one of the CO hosts, Damon Pistulka, that pretty gentleman right over there is Curt Anderson, we’re gonna have a little fun today, aren’t we? Curt,

Curt Anderson  00:29

we, dude, we have fun every day. So Happy Friday to you, man. How are you?

Damon Pistulka  00:34

I’m doing great. I’m doing great. It’s so it’s so incredible to be here. We’re on a Friday going into a holiday weekend. So we’re gonna take it easy, let the guests go. We’re just gonna do a little little education, like, like to say, little edutainment, that’s

Curt Anderson  00:51

right, do some edutaining. Just, you know, let’s take a moment of gratitude. You know, it’s like Memorial Day weekend. Just think of like, you know, everybody that served, and just everybody, you know, it’s a great weekend. Just kind of step back and just be so thankful and appreciative. And life gets challenging stressful, but, you know, just kind of stop and just enjoy family and friends the outdoors. It’s just a wonderful weekend. Just kind of put everything in perspective. What do you think? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  01:19

I think my back is hurting, getting ready for this weekend.

Curt Anderson  01:24

That’s good. That’s good because

Damon Pistulka  01:25

it is going to be enjoyable. And it is. It is this is really, I know we, we don’t think about it enough, but there’s, I it’s hard, hard to find somebody that doesn’t know, someone that’s been affected by by someone that served, someone that served is not here anymore, or someone served and came home injured. There’s just so many people that we have. And you know, on the the suicide problem with with veterans is just not acceptable in the United States. If there’s anything, I’m gonna stand on a soapbox for a minute, that’s it, because there’s too many people every single day. I think it’s like 20 people a day, 20 veterans a day, or something like that. It’s a crazy number. And, you know, we just, we just, it’s not acceptable, yeah, but it’s going to be a great weekend. Yeah, we’re going to have a good time. We’re going to have a little fun today talking about marketing automation. So Curt, in the world of marketing automation, how quickly have things moved in the last few years? It’s

Curt Anderson  02:27

it, dude, it’s like, it’s wild, isn’t it? It’s just absolutely wild. It’s, it’s, uh, you know, literally between AI and automation, it’s like you blink and like, anything that we discussed today will probably be obsolete tomorrow, right? It’s like, it’s changing so, so fast. But I tell you, you know, kicking and screaming, you know, you got me into the automation world. Thank God you did, you know, and never forget when, when I ever when I got everything set up and running. I almost, I was a like, what do I do with all my time now? Like, you know, it was almost like shocked, of like, how much time that actually freed up. And so, you know? So let’s dive in. Let’s discuss some automation on, like, you know, baby, baby. Because when you I think, for me being, I’m a digital immigrant, you know, it’s kind of daunting, overwhelming. Don’t know where to start, yeah. And so the thing is, when you try to tackle the whole thing at once, right? And we’re going to tackle the entire offense in one, one swoop. It doesn’t work, right? But when you just take it like in little bites, yeah, then it’s much more manageable. Your thoughts, what do you want to share? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  03:31

that’s exactly how you do it, Curt and and as we talked a long time ago, just start with the simple things that will make a difference, and then just keep adding to them. And that’s really the thing that we see, and we see it really benefits manufacturing businesses and business businesses in general, is when you just continue to build on that knowledge base, you know, with good tools and good foundations to keep automating more and more as new technologies become available, or new ways to connect with different systems. I mean, on Tuesday, we talked about that with a gentleman on on the face of the business, about how the interoperability between systems now, because, you know, your ERP used to not talk with anything else, and now there’s an API connection that you can probably do, and that’s a little bit of techno jargon, jargon with the API connection, but the right technical people can usually make those systems talk now pretty easily, rather than if my, you know, in manufacturing, your ERP system is usually your hub. Well, if my ERP system isn’t good for my sales and marketing activities. It doesn’t mean that the two systems can’t talk anymore, right? And that’s what’s really been cool, some of the technology development with the APIs and just simple tools like Zapier that can move information back and forth, because now I can use like a mark. Training System of some sort. You know, we use go high level. That’s everybody knows that, if they heard us before. But now you can take that information and go, okay. Now it is a customer, and they get their information transfers into my ERP system now automatically at the right point and begins the journey that way. And things like, when you deliver an order you can now. It can come out in back into your your CRM system or your marketing system, and it can say, Hey, how did we do on the order? How did you like it? And things like that that you just couldn’t do before. And that’s super cool, super exciting. How it’s changed, just the interoperability and the exchange of data between systems, right?

Curt Anderson  05:41

Okay, so anybody out there that’s just starting, how, what? What advice, what suggestions would you have for people to just kind of get the party started?

Damon Pistulka  05:53

Well, I think one of the first things is getting your calendar automated, right? If you’re a salesperson and you’re still, you’re still doing the email tag to set up a meeting, I think that is, that is one of the easier places that you can do and like you’re showing there. Curt, that’s a great that’s a great example. If someone goes to our website, they can book a digital strategy call right there. You know, whether it’s Calendly, whether it’s high level, like we use behind this connected everything you know now what happens is, when we put these out, they’re usually connected to something, and you can book a meeting, and as soon as you book that meeting, that meeting is on your calendar. First of all, you can if you wanted to put a zoom link in there automatically, it’ll put a zoom link in there automatically for the meeting. And it also will put the the information from that contact into your into your CRM, so you don’t have to search for it later and and you can use it. So these kind of things are are very valuable to save time. It’s we’re saving time and being more consistent, I think the calendar is a great place to start. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  07:01

and again. So this might be, might be below. Many folks, we’re like, Well, of course, I’ve been using a calendar for years. But for other folks, maybe this is new man, I tell you, just like eliminating that back and forth. Of you know, hey, you available? Tuesday, no. How about two? Wednesday, well, Thursday at nine, no. How about Friday? You know, like that back and forth. You just eliminate all that process. I was on a call with a dear friend of ours yesterday, and she pulled up she wanted to share something. She pulls up her email, and I could see the email notifications of our meeting, you know, in her email, it was like, you know, 24 hours prior, you know, an hour ahead of time. And so just having that automation, just this is just such a simple one on one. But again, if this is new to somebody out there, just that’s a great place to start. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  07:47

and I’ve talked to people before that say, Well, I drive a lot. Well, I will River. Why? Wherever? Well, if you if, if just put some time in between the appointments, the calendars are able to set up now that you want to leave an hour in between each appointment, two hours you only want to book, you know, one hour, one meeting in the morning, one they’ll they’ll flex around what you want to do, and it’s so convenient for who you’re trying to meet. And just send them an email with the link in and go, Hey, Curt, just pick a time, and we’ll meet, right? And it’s, it’s just makes it so much easier for people to do that, and it’s on your calendar and you’re ready to go, right? You can. And then you talked about the automations. If you send an audit, the automation can send out something and says, Hey, let’s if there’s any specific points you want to cover, let’s do that. Yeah, so that the calendar is a great place to start. The other one that I like to like to talk about a lot too, are the the the forms on your website, because, you know, we all have contact us forms. Or in manufacturing, you got a quote request form, well, what happens to that now? And how does it get tracked after you get that? And I can show you a quick example here of that. Curt, if you’d like. Are you pulling something up? Well,

Curt Anderson  09:00

I’ll, you know what you drive you. I have an

Damon Pistulka  09:04

example. Let’s see yours first. Oh, we’re sharing examples.

Curt Anderson  09:10

It’s show and tell on Friday. Show and

Damon Pistulka  09:12

tell on Friday. So it can start out as simple as this, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna get it up on the right screen here, so I’m looking at some different forms. So this is a quote request form, right? So this is something that you have put in in the in thing, and you can go, you know, why you’re doing it. So, okay, this goes into your if you want to get more specific, this is a generic form that we start out with. But if you wanted to say, Hey, I I’ve got a aluminum CNC machine part, or I’ve got it, you know, whatever. I’m manufacturing doors, and I need one this size, or three windows. You can get all this stuff in your form. Well, when you do that, they can goes right into your pipeline. And you’re you’re into your opportunity pipeline here, where it says, and we’re in our manufacturing snapshot. These are some standard things that we. Issues, that new lead would come right in here as a new lead in this stage, in the pipeline. And I tell you what, for fun, let’s just fill it out. We’ll just fill it out. How about that? We’ll go back there and do this because Curt, Curt is going to need something here. And I’m just going to add an opportunity quick. Sorry, I got a little confused here, but when they go into these pipelines, we’ll just add an opportunity there’s gonna say, Oh, I don’t have I got all kinds of different names and stuff in here for this is Curt. We’re gonna put Curt as the opportunity. So now I’ve got an opportunity in my pipeline. My pipeline can be however I want, when we have so Curt, got an opportunity in here. We came off the website. Quote request came to us. We can go, what happens after this? This is where the automations really start to kick in. Well, first of all, I acknowledge the person and say, Hey, we got a we got a quote request from you. We’re on it. Then you, then you go, Okay, we reviewed it. Was it something that we can actually do? If it is, well, then we say, okay, let’s, let’s get going. Maybe it’s time then to meet a schedule. Maybe and, and you can say automation can then send out the scheduling link to schedule a meeting to talk about it a little bit more. Or if you’re ready to go, you can move it into the quote in process stage. If you’ve got all the information you need, your automations can then notify your internal team, notify the the the person that inquired about it, and say, Hey, we’re working on your quote. We got what we need. If we’ll reach out with more stuff. You can tell your engineers, it’s time for us to put the quote together. This is what we need. Here’s your information again. It’s it’s just taking the steps out of it. Because you think, if I’m a salesperson that’s trying to do this, or a project manager that’s trying to do this, there’s a lot of emailing back and forth or or other things that we have to worry about to get these kind of things done. And when the quotes done, they can, they can then go, Okay, it’s time to send the quote. And we upload and send out the quote through the system. So again, we send it automatically. It lets our sales people know that we’ve sent the quote. They get a copy of it as well, so they can see that if they need to review and follow up with them. They can. You can set up sequences to follow up with the people by email. Or you can even say, send something to me internally and hey, hey, Damon, you need to call a follow up on that quote, if that’s our process, to follow up with a phone call every time. These things can work universally, it’s not just sending an email or a text or something like that. It can come back in and too, and it can send something to someone that says, hey, you need to reach out in person and talk to them and keep that touch like you want through these processes. Yeah, absolutely

Curt Anderson  12:53

love it. So let’s take a look. I’ve got, I got an example I’ll show on the front end of things so people, so that was underneath the hood, yeah, if you’re like, you know, what’s a pipeline. So, so Damon just explained, it’s just kind of taking that client, that customer, the prospect, you know, through a process that’s automated, where you’re not hands on, through the entire each step of the way. And so let’s see if I have an example that I’ll show. So now Damon, I’m going to go to the front end of what we’re doing. Okay? And so if you go on the B2BtAIL website, we have this little so shameless. We have this free tool that we love to give out. We’re just super man. We just love this product. It’s called the digital game plan. And if you go to this web, this web page here, and when you land there, you just pop in your name, your email, and you receive your very own digital game plan. Now, what we’ve done, it’s a step by step digital marketing hub for folks, and there’s like an eight week process. Well, as people are signed up for us, that would be very challenging, very cumbersome, very daunting, expensive for us to be sending out emails one at a time on each step of the way. Well, Damon has done. Damon, you explain what you’ve done an amazing job. I Dude, I’m so proud of you.

Damon Pistulka  14:07

Well, what that does? You know, in something like this, if you’ve got a guide for somebody or you, you’ve sent out something, you’ve got something that you want to help potential customers with, it could be a buyer’s guide. I mean, I’m a big proponent on buyer’s guide. You can then set up a sequence of emails asking about the you know, do you have the information you need? Do you and two or three or four or five? And in this case, this our digital game plan has 12 sections. We have emails that talk specifically about each section that come out in in a cadence to be able to help the person do this. These are the kind of things that that it just happens, right? You don’t have to. There’s no input from you. You’re given your the person that’s requesting the information, valuable information to help them go through something like this and offering to. To help them along the way if they need it. So

Curt Anderson  15:02

yeah, and we’re trying to be like a discrete accountability partner. Now, again, it’s not like super hands on, but it’s a light touch. You know, our hope is high value, but it just makes your life so much easier and very efficient. So okay, we’re going to start winding down Damon any other so we talked about a calendar. We talked about, you know, having a form or any type of like the what I want to say, be like that. Go Giver on your website. What is value that you can just give away to folks, to just share your expertise, anything else that you want to hit before we wrap up,

Damon Pistulka  15:36

there are just so so many things you can do with automation, starting from the ultra simple to the insanely complex but incredibly cool that could could save you a lot of time that if you haven’t started looking at these automations to save time in your day, you’re really missing out, because your competitors are. You owe it to yourself, just because you can get some of that time back that you are working on stuff that is probably not something you really should be working on, and working on more of the valuable stuff, and the automation is there to do it, and the simple tools, simple tools, that’s the other thing,

Curt Anderson  16:14

absolutely. So I’m so last thing that we’ll wrap up on is, hey, how about a social scheduler, right? So, yeah, hey, do are you on LinkedIn? By any chance I am, are you’re on LinkedIn? Okay, so let’s I wasn’t positive if you were so I was talking. So if you So, you you post once a while, right? Yeah, I do. I post. So this was hysterical. I love this video you put out. Yeah? But yeah. Well, anyway, so you are super aggressive. That

Damon Pistulka  16:41

was me a few years ago. Yeah, that’s why I was like, Oh, I’ve had one of those moments. Yeah, that

Curt Anderson  16:48

is absolutely hysterical to how they, they like in the thing, like, you know, I’m sure, with stage. But anyway, this was absolutely hysterical. Great post. But you do talk, just talk about how you how efficient you’ve made this process for yourself. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  17:01

you know, when you have a when you have a social scheduling tool or scheduling tool, it is incredibly efficient. I mean, if you want to get something across all your social channels, you have special social channels where you want to do it and repurposing information that you want to go, Okay, we’ve got something coming up. I want to do it every week for so long. This just takes care of a lot of the lot of the headaches in that and really gets you, saves a ton of time, and you go to one place rather than multiple locations, to try to to post it on, yeah,

Curt Anderson  17:36

and just, I couldn’t love that video more. You know, being a dog lover that I am, yeah, what a heartwarming, great. So you do an amazing job just sharing all sorts of inspiration, wonderful posts on a daily basis. So please follow Damon on LinkedIn. So Damon, let’s wrap up and so first off, thank you, dude. Thank you everybody out there, if you’re catching this, yeah, catching it on replay. Appreciate you. You have any questions whatsoever, please reach out to Damon, reach out to myself. And I just want to wish everybody just an amazing, incredible, wonderful, blessed Memorial Day weekend. Go out and just love your loved ones. And just, you know, let’s, you know, give a little love to our folks in the military and anybody that served in your past. And, you know, stop by the cemetery and visit anybody that meant something to you. And Damon, what do you? What do you? What are your thoughts as we wrap up? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  18:26

I just echo that. You know, this is the weekend to really think about them and and may you just put them in your thoughts. That’s for

Curt Anderson  18:33

sure, awesome. So alright, guys, hey, we’re, we’re taking Monday off because it is Memorial Day. So yeah, we have, hey dude, we’ve got. Carol Thomas, I know, so we’ll be back next Friday. We’re talking about the MEPs. So great conversation, manufacturing, extension partnerships. We’ll see you next Friday. And just, you know, go out and just keep crushing it out there.

Damon Pistulka  18:55

Thanks, everyone. You.