Purdue MEP Webinar

Curt Anderson  00:12

ready? All right, we got the recording and practice so I didn’t mess that up. Lisa Bachmann Good morning, Lisa, how are you? Actually, we just turned the top of the hour. We’re at noon. So happy afternoon, everybody. So, you know what? Michelle Jones I’d like to get things started on for our friends at our prompt and get here on time. I’d like to get the party started. Michelle, back or anybody from Purdue? Do you guys want to give a shout out? You want me to take it away? What did? How’s it How’s how’s the intro looking? Are you on mute? Michelle? She was taking us out. She was just testing us right there, right.

Michelle Beck  00:50

Technology sometimes gets in the way. Welcome, everyone. I’m Michelle Beck, the senior event specialists with Purdue MEP. This is a great crowd and we are excited to have Curt Anderson and Michelle Jones here to discuss marketing party of one.

Curt Anderson  01:10

Well, Michelle, thank you, Michelle, back. Thank you. And first I want to give a huge, huge shout out to our friends at the Purdue MEP Manufacturing Extension Partnership. But without them we just we simply I’d be talking to my computer and it look kind of weird if I was just talking to myself right now. Michelle, so thank you, you saved me on that at least right. So we have a great program. My name is Curt Anderson company b2b tail I have. We have a number of friends here. So you’ve got you’ve caught me in the past. And Doug, Doug, Lisa, I see some other friends here today. So thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule join us, we’re going to dig right in because we have a ton to cover. My dear friend, Michelle Jones is in the house. She is a marketing powerhouse. This is gonna be so good. She is a product of two manufacturers. Her parents are just wonderful, incredibly successful entrepreneurs. And boy, you’re gonna get a taste of the success rate here. Her company is creative eight. I’ve been practicing that all morning, Michelle and I got up at four o’clock this morning to practice that. So Michelle Jones, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.

Michelle Jones  02:11

Thank you for having me, and you beat me up, then I was up at six o’clock. But if you were before you’ve got me beat but yeah, I’m excited to be here. This is the first program I’ve done with the Purdue MEP, super impressed with everything they’ve got. So thank you to everyone for joining today, we promise this hour will be packed full of all kinds of resources and good things. There’s a wide variety of people on this call too, in terms of titles. So we’ve got presidents, we’ve got HR, we’ve got people in full time marketing, roles, sales, there’s technical sales, and even shipping is on this call. So there’s all kinds of people that have registered for this. So this list is there’s something for everyone that we’ll go through today. But I asked you like this, so we’ll get into some of the tactical stuff. There’s some high level cultural stuff. There’s something for everyone and we’ll we’ll do q&a throughout. So feel free if you have a question or a comment or something you’d like to discuss. Drop it into the comment the chat, then we’ll we’ll either address at the moment or we’ll do it at the end. Perfect.

Curt Anderson  03:11

So hey, we’ve got a couple more friends popping in here. Angie Holt’s in house. Angie, good. Good afternoon. Almost said good morning. We’ve got more people popping in. Oh, no. Man, Michelle back. Jean Jones is in the house, Jean Jones from Purdue, any of our friends that know Jean Jones, Navy veteran, God bless Jean. So he’s part of the Purdue MEP crowd. So Jean, thanks for joining us today. Guys. Good afternoon. If you’re just popping in huge favorite ask you there’s a handsome Jean Jean, happy Thursday, my friend, how are you, brother. So if you if we were all in person, we’d be high fiving maybe you know, we’d be shaking hands, hand out business cards. I encourage you, I welcome you drop your LinkedIn or your website, let us know where you’re coming from great opportunity to connect with each other. There might be a great vendor on the call here today, there might be a great customer and a call here today. So this is a wonderful opportunity for networking. encourage you guys drop your LinkedIn, drop your website in the chat. And as Michelle just said, this is going to be interactive. So Michelle has a great program for you. We’re going to do a hard stop at top of the hour, but we encourage questions through the program. Jot them in the chat. I’ll be keeping an eye on it. Michelle, go ahead. Pull up your program, if you wouldn’t mind. And we’re gonna get things started.

Michelle Jones  04:23

Sure thing. All right, let’s go. So I’ve got a slide deck, but I promise it won’t be death by PowerPoint. Is that coming through? Okay,

Curt Anderson  04:32

that is clear. as clear as clear. Yes. Hey, Chris Vangel just joined us, Chris. Thank you for joining us, guys. If you’re just joining us strap your LinkedIn job, your website, and let’s rock and roll Michelle.

Michelle Jones  04:44

All right. So here we go. So like I said, we’ve got all kinds of people on this from sea to shining shining sea, there’s New York, Washington. But here’s the deal. So you’re here today because something about this title intrigued you. Either you have some type of a fractional marketing role you’re in full time Marketing or you are looking to add more marketing to your company. And here’s the thing, anyone can Google a list of cheap marketing tools. And we wouldn’t be here. There’s no reason for this. So I decided to dive a little bit deeper and see, okay, if you’ve got minimal resources, how can you get maximum results, and I’ve been in marketing and manufacturing for over a decade. And so I actually end up coming with up with a list of 10 things. So Curt, and I’ll dialogue a little bit about these as we go. But these are, these are a lot of these are cultural things. These are non traditional, no box checking actions that you can take to really maximize your ROI, cut the fluff and see real results with your marketing. So as Kurt mentioned, I am the daughter, I’m going to move my screen around a little bit of manufacturers, which I talk about all the time, because quite frankly, my parents have made me who I am today, I love my parents dearly. They’ve been in manufacturing for over 25 years. And this picture, we took this picture last summer when I stopped by to say hi, which I love doing. And the growing up all I heard around the dinner table conversation, were topics about business and topics about manufacturing, because that was the world we lived in. So I have stories upon stories, I was thinking of a couple of them and talking to my dad the other day. And you can nod and kind of laugh along. If you’re in manufacturing, I’ve encountered anything like this, there was the time someone decided to leave the product the forks up on the forklift and drive it straight through a closed door. Or the other fun time when my dad had a lot of Amish employees. And they had funerals to go to constantly. So many in fact that he implemented a new policy that you had to know the name of the funeral, the person that you’re going to in your Amish church before you could take the day off, because otherwise they just go to every funeral that’s on the schedule. So not so fun moments like the economic downturn, he’s fired someone one time, I remember the guy came back and threatened his life. It takes a lot of patience to be in manufacturing. We were laughing about this one time where my my dad’s employees dumped over a whole bunch of lumber back when they were in millwork and dumped it all over their planer, which is the piece of equipment that they use quite often. And as you know, manufacturing machines, it’s not like you can just run a Walmart grab a fix for a part so they broke apart. And so he made them restock the whole pallet of lumber. And he was a little bit steamed. And he said I’ll take this lumber out of here. So he took the lumber out on the forklift went into the other warehouse, took the corner a little too fast and knocked it all over the floor himself, which is unfortunately no one’s gone. He just put the door down. But there’s so many lessons not only in manufacturing, but for life that I picked up along the way. And where I really learned a lot of leadership. So it you know, it takes time in patients to be in manufacturing, for sure. And also in this photo if you’re going left or right. The two on the left are everything in the company, you are looking at human resources, you’re looking at sales, accounting, new product development, operations, and yes, marketing. My mom on the left is an incredible salesperson and she’s 51% owner, but she also does all the marketing for their company bio blocks. So she calls me all the time and we dialogue about all kinds of stuff. I went through website proposals with her when she needed a new website. She’ll call me and she’ll be like, hey, does this photo look okay for my Facebook post, or this is textbook okay. So the first point that I have here on this lineup of ideas for how to be a better marketer and get more done with less is to find some type of a mentor. So it could be someone internally, it could be external, if your internal and a marketing department and you know, there’s maybe you’re more than one person, God bless you, if that’s the case, that’s amazing. You may find someone in marketing at your company or really outside of your company. It could be someone that is at another company. And I’ve put up a couple photos of my mentors. Over on the left is Tammy Hoffman I worked with her 10 years ago, and she was actually the CFO of the company. And she became my mentor and my friend and helped me navigate culturally how to get things done. Dave Loomis in the middle was the Chief Marketing Officer at a agency in Cleveland. This is him and I on a walk last fall. We’ve since started our own companies. And he’s still an ongoing mentor of mine. And then over on the right is Mike Reardon and he owns a manufacturing company here in western Ohio where I’m located and very, very successful guy. And I love how I just had breakfast with him yesterday morning and have the chance to pick his brain. So again, whether you’re in marketing or not, this is just good advice in general. But especially if you’re in marketing, especially if you’re solo, find other people that can help you and be in your network.

Curt Anderson  09:45

Absolutely love it. Michelle and hey, we’ve got more people popping in so Gary woods in the house. We’ve got David here. We’ve got Maury Jean Jacques to comment, Jonathan. So Scott, I saw the J. Skinner’s here so again, guys, thank you for joining us. I think I saw Lance from big commerce is here. So guys, drop your LinkedIn, drop your website, again, great networking opportunity. We’re here with Michelle Jones. Michelle, keep it going,

Michelle Jones  10:08

I’ll keep going. So next up, we have developing allies. So sometimes resources can be in unlikely places within your company, especially in terms of marketing. If you’re a solo marketer, you have no choice but to talk to other people in other departments. So finding other people to help support you is so important. For example, sales, let’s talk about sales for a minute. In fact, sales and marketing go hand in hand together, sometimes they’re called smarketing. Which, you know, US marketers love to mash words up, like the name of my company is creative eight, it’s a bunch of words mashed together. But yeah, if you look at, especially sales, that’s an easy place to go to, to find some allies, in terms of either bouncing around ideas, salespeople will always tell you what they think about your flyer, or about your idea or about your concept. And they can become great allies for you as well. Finance and Accounting can be kind of an unlikely ally. But hey, guess who controls all the money of the company and where it goes? Finance. So I actually minored in accounting, in college, I had a marketing major and accounting minor. So I get that left brain right brain thing. And let me tell you, you want to shock and awe and accounting person, give them a beautiful budget that you’ve reconciled every month, and that you’ve kept track of all of your expenses and show that you have some accountability and an understanding of dollars, because marketers sometimes get a bad rap for just liking to spend money and not being able to show where, where it goes. So I have a picture here of this is not I would love to say this is my parents farm. This is the view from the road, we have a little we have a four acre slice. So like this is my property, my parents property, but we were blessed to live in four acres in the middle of surrounded by cornfields, or this was weed at one point. But in the back, you’ll see these three objects here. And these are silos as I’m sure you know, in silos definitely serve a purpose. So silos are great on a farm, you can store very specific types of grains and feeds in them. There’s no cross contamination, there’s no cross pollination, farms, silos, great location, silos do not belong in marketing, let me tell you, every single marketing department that silos themselves is going to be suffering, big time. Because if you don’t talk to other departments within the company, you’re going to be in big trouble. You got to know what new products are coming out, you got to make sure you’re talking to engineering, you got to make sure your technical sheets are up to date, you got to talk to sales, shoot human resources, and marketing is kind of the fun. I don’t know I don’t see that one coming, I guess in terms of like recruiting and all that. It IT and marketing are huge spends and investments for companies now. So if everyone’s on the same page, and we’re all marching in the same direction, and we’re not siloed, we can stop duplicating efforts and making sure that the efforts we are making are all going towards the same goals.

Curt Anderson  13:09

You know, Michelle, one, I absolutely love the direction you’re going here, you know one person that who were dragging and kicking and screaming into our marketing meetings, purchasing your local, whatever company you’re at, to buy, make purchasing your absolute best friend, buy them a cup of coffee, find out what snacks or treats that they enjoy. And boy, just get your pen pencil or your recorder and find out how they buy, why they buy how they search look over their shoulder. Because like whoever’s in your purchasing department, how they’re buying ads are your ideal customer is doing the exact same thing. So buddy up to your purchasing department.

Michelle Jones  13:49

It’s so true. And then also in terms of operations. One that is always a gray area is labeling. So some companies are great about going to their marketing departments and saying hey, can we make sure the label on this product looks good. I’ve walked into warehouses and seen some frightening labels of no brand standard compliance, like DIY homemade stuff, like if you think about your brand, and everyone that has some type of interaction within your brand that applies to your whole company and all the functions of the company. So I’m not saying go and get up in everyone’s business. It’s important to invest in some relationships that will help better serve both marketing but ultimately your customer. So this one’s always fun. Let’s talk about money. I’m not going to get into like the you know, church time tithing type conversation, where everyone sits and cringes. This boundaries are healthy boundaries are very, very empowering. When I started at a it was $100 million manufacturing division of a $2.3 billion company. I walked in the door and I said what’s my budget and They said, Oh, what do you need? I was like, well, in order to do marketing, I need a budget. Oh, yeah. Well, how much do you need? Okay, so then it turned into this chicken or the egg thing, because they’ve never thought about, hey, if we hire someone in marketing, they may need some money to spend. But also, I didn’t want to just, I mean, I could have said, All right, no price tag, it’s a free for all. I can spend whatever I want. But I wanted to make sure that I was being a good steward of the resources that I was being given to work with to help contribute to growth. So go talk to your county departments put together a specific budget, if they say there is none. That’s not true. There’s always a budget, someone always has something in their mind somewhere. There is a budget. absolute love that. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  15:44

What do you want for return on investment? Well, we’ll get deeper into that one, right?

Michelle Jones  15:48

Well, I am so glad you asked. Because you’re not looking at costs anymore. Get rid of that. No more costs and marketing. It’s an investment. If you haven’t made your marketing department or your marketing function and ROI center and not a cost center yet. I would say today is not too late to start you Absolutely. This is not something where I take it lightly and say you need to do this, but you absolutely need to do this. Whenever the economy blips the first place people go is marketing. Oh, okay. Well, what’s that, you know, ad that we’re spending really getting us if you don’t know where, what investments you’re making, and where they’re how they’re generating ROI for the company and ultimately contributing to top line sales. Yeah, you might be on the chopping block. One of my favorite quotes that I’ve heard recently is you can say Don’t, don’t step over dollars to chase pennies, or nickels to chase dimes, or whatever. But I think as marketers, it’s so easy to say, Okay, we’re given a budget, we got to do things cheap. I hear this all the time, we got to do it cheap. How cheap Can you do it? Well, you know what, you get what you pay for. And I have clients now that they tried to do it cheaper. But guess what, they end up spending more in the long run, because they have to then redo it the right way after they flushed money trying to do it the wrong way the first time. So graphic design is a good example of this. A lot of times companies don’t know how much it costs to actually put together good graphics. Or if you’re putting together a big binder manual, or whatever it is, those things take time to lay them out properly. And if you take the time to identify the process, maintaining it every time will be relatively inexpensive, you’re just updating something that’s already done. If you tried to do it the wrong way, and outsource it and just get it done cheap and don’t set it up and structure it properly. You’re gonna be paying out the nose every single time that you need to update it, because it’s a full overhaul every time. So making sure that you take the time to look at where areas where we’re just, we don’t just want to do it cheap. And we don’t just want to do it quick. We want to do it right. So I look at software’s like I found HubSpot back in 2015. I love it. The number one objection I get whenever I show my clients HubSpot, it’s too expensive. Okay. So you know, it’s also expensive, wasting money on marketing and advertising that you don’t know that you’re getting an ROI for. So using the right software allows me to see where my digital efforts are making getting me an ROI and where they’re not telling me that there’s not value in that. And that’s why it’s not a cost. It’s an investment.

Curt Anderson  18:22

Well, Michelle, I love that I too, grew up in a house of an entrepreneur and my father taught me never chased sales, Chase profits, Chase profits, Chase profit. So absolutely love that, you know, but I don’t know if I practice that all the time. But I’m working on it.

Michelle Jones  18:37

It’s something we all have to work on. I did this. I mean, when I was another company I was at, I went through and it blew my mind. They had never done a cost of sale analysis. So I took their most recent sale was $150,000. And they were all cheering Yeah, I’m gonna 50,000 this is great. And then I went through it and said, Okay, what are the operational costs to, to actually assemble this product? And then there were a number of inputs that they had, that they would just buy in markup, it turned out I think less than they were making less than $10,000 on their $150,000 sale. And I’m like, Huh, that’s not great. You know, like, that’s you, we could do better, we could do better, but without taking the time to actually sit down and do that. Otherwise, yeah, to your point, Kurt, you’re just gonna look at that top line and be like, Wow, that’s great. But if you’re not making any money, last time I checked, we’re all in business to make money. But if you’re not, by all means, just raise your hand and dispute me. That’s right.

Curt Anderson  19:32

That was that was that was me my earlier years right? That was I used to sell my dollars for 97 cents, you know, so unless you sold yours for 96 Nobody sold their dollars better than I did at 97 cents right Jean? So, alright, Michelle, let’s keep it rolling.

Michelle Jones  19:44

No, I love that. I love humor. You know, what’s life if not laughing? So this one they’re like, how did the campaign do and as marketers we get stuck in jargon. Oh, yeah. We have the CPC for the PPC campaign and people were like, did it make me any money so So, here, nearly a 10th of the 1% clicked on our ad, possibly some of them on purpose. This is better than the industry average. This is amazing. Well, did it drive sales? I mean, we got to get away from conversations like this. I know this is like a cartoon version of something. That’s kind of funny. But we I mean, let’s check ourselves. How often do we actually have these types of conversations? If we just talk a little bit differently around it? Are there any questions before I move on to the next one?

Curt Anderson  20:30

Yeah, you know, chat box is looking good, guys. Thanks for the comments. We have Andrews here again, jays dropped a couple of domains in there. That’s a great domain you’ve got there. J. So Lee is here. So great comments, drop your questions in the chat. We’d love to make this interactive. We’d love to have you feel more confident with your marketing strategies here. Drop those in. I’m keeping an eye but let’s keep a round number five. Let’s keep it rollin.

Michelle Jones  20:53

Five. So this one is align your goal. So you have a budget. We’ve talked about other areas in your company, make sure you have goals. As marketers back to that jargon. We love to set goals. Oh, I would love to increase, I would love to decrease my bounce rate. Okay, like why? Oh, I would love to get a higher or lower cost per click. Okay, that’s great. Those are goals that we set for ourselves in marketing. But if they’re not aligned with overall company goals, we’re barking up the wrong tree. So for example, I love looking at the difference between lead generation and brand awareness. So this is the busiest slide I have, I promise. On the left is the lead generation flywheel. According to HubSpot, they’ve got great graphics, I love to hack their stuff. But basically, if you look at this flywheel, you attract strangers, you engage prospects, you turn them into customers, you delight them, and then they become your promoters, who that attract strangers engage prospects alike. So once you start to feed, especially if you’re using lead generation, once you start to feed that attract strangers piece, the business starts to grow. So if you’re if your company is in high growth mode, this is the model that you absolutely need to follow on the right from sem rush are 10 ways to increase overall brand awareness. And these types of things don’t have as hard of an ROI. Typically, as some of the more like Ford or lead generation inbound marketing strategies do So investing in great PR, social media platforms, networking within your industry, those are all really good things to do to make sure that your brand stays alive and well. But those are very different activities than if you are intentionally trying to feed the lead generation machine to drive sales. So you got to know what your goals are. These are just two examples of common ones that we hear in the marketing space. So creating your overall goals will then drive your tactics.

Curt Anderson  22:55

Michelle, absolutely love that. We do have a question coming in. And this is from our dear friend Doug metal fat dog. Happy Thursday. Thanks for joining us today. What is a good percentage of budget for marketing and advertising? How about that one? That was a great question.

Michelle Jones  23:12

I love that question. And I hear that one a lot too. As a marketer, hopefully, like give it as much as you got. But the reality is, is it depends on your goals, right. So if you’re protecting hold mode, protect and hold MODE, you’re going to spend less on your overall marketing than you are if you’re an aggressive growth molt more aggressive growth mode, say that 10 times fast. So I have a client, for example, they’re 40 million looking to go to 60 million this year. Big Growth Goal 50%. So they’ve started they spent the first quarter they put a couple different tactics out there to see what was working. They’re really strong in Google AdWords, and their AdWords are driving out of out of Google AdWords, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, their Google AdWords are driving the best qualified leads. So after the end of the quarter, they said, alright, we had kind of a dismal q1, but our best leads came from Google AdWords. So they’ve turned the faucet off for Facebook ads, and all the other ads, and they’ve doubled down on Google AdWords. So for them, they’re looking at it as they’re throwing more money at it than your typical company as a percentage of total revenue, because they’re seeing the value that it’s driving right now to top line sales. So typically, I’ve seen everything from 1% of top line sales, up to five to 10% if you’re in an aggressive mode as a percentage, but again, all that depends on the type of market you’re in how mature the market is your overall profit margins. It just It just really depends on what your goals are.

Curt Anderson  24:48

Well, that’s a great answer. And I know we’re coming to the bottom of the hour in case we lose anybody. I just want to share a big shout out thank you to our friends at the Purdue MEP and Jean we’ve got Jean on the call All Julie’s gonna call Michelle, if you guys have any questions whatsoever, you want to reach out to the team at the Purdue MEP, they provide all sorts of great incredible resources. Just like our little jam session here today. Michelle, I don’t know if you can my my I have 130 pound Rottweiler. He’s howling upstairs right now. So I don’t know if anybody can hear my rowdy. But anyway, I think he’s excited about the program. So I wanted to share that. But with Michelle with with with the 10 points you have on this slide, one tagline that we’re really hammering in is mehrfach. Not only we walk in the walk, talking to talk, we’re walking the walk, what we preach, you just made a great comment about like, Hey, should we be spending money on Facebook ads on Google ads? One takeaway, I would love for everybody, for our friends who are taking notes at home, we are preaching and teaching how to out teach the competition, instead of like fiercely how to outspend the competition. Hey, Michelle, let’s double down. You know, like that’s it’s great to double down on Google ads when it’s working. But if it’s not working, and people like, hey, maybe we should spend more, right, maybe we should spend more on ads, or whatever, whatever it might be. But a lot of our friends and family here on the call today you get we’re at work I’m connecting with I hopefully most of you, if not all of you. And if I’m not I would love before the end of the call. But it’s like you’ve come to these webinars at the Purdue MEP puts on or like we have a live stream show. Michelle was just an incredible guest of ours on Friday. So when you come in with a fierce advocate of trying to educate that is just such a wonderful way. And then you apply it to these 10 points that Michelle has on a slide. Boy, that’s where the magic really happens. So I just wanted to go on that little diatribe there, Michelle, but think about how to out teach the competition.

Michelle Jones  26:37

Yeah. And that’s where I get out of this box chair. I’ve been on this mission for this last year to get people out of the habit of checking boxes. I mean, you can also ask the same question of budgets if how many social media posts should we do a week? Why don’t know what’s really driving value? Is it good? Can you come up with something really valuable five days out of the week? Or realistically? Is it one post a week, that’s really meaty, and really good, and people are really going to love. So we got to get out of this, like, oh, I checked the box as a marketer I did for social media posts a week and I wrote two white papers. And I did three case studies. If they’re not good, your customers and your prospects aren’t going to like him either. And they’re not going to use them. So quit wasting your time with that stuff, and put your time and energy and money into things that are truly driving value. Excellent point. Yeah. So create a plan and stick to it. So on the next slide, I’m going to show you actual footage that we recorded of marketers over the last year. This is what we’re calling now the hamster wheel of insanity.

Curt Anderson  27:37

So, so I have to chime in real quick. So Michelle was that we so many of you know, we do a live stream show on Fridays. And Michelle was our guest and she She trapped that comment, the lot the hamster wheel of insanity. And I just I’ve been laughing in that comment. So Michelle, what is the hamster wheel of insanity for our solo marketing friends,

Michelle Jones  27:57

sadly, most of us are on it. It is a very low level tactical, last minute Agnus approach to marketing, oh, we need this sign, you know, or else the world’s going to end. It I call it shiny object syndrome to I mean, I don’t know if you’re like the if you’re unlucky enough to be the hamster, you’re at the bottom that’s kind of stable, I feel more like the one that’s about like filling up the fun off like 15 times at this point. But basically, when you have all that last minuteness and shiny object syndrome, you’re moving away from your plan, you’re moving away from your goals, it’s distracting you. And if you want to waste money, start doing things last minute, you’re gonna pay more just from $1 sense, you’re gonna pay more for expedited shipping, you’re gonna pay more for last minute production, you’re gonna pay more for literally everything, your health, quite frankly, can be at risk your life. I’m a big fan of it’s not even work life balance anymore. It’s living in a way that that is sustainable. And we’re taking care of ourselves, and we’re taking care of our mental health. All of this last minute stuff is stress. It’s big. And it’s stress on you. And it’s stress on the company. And it’s a great way to flush cash quickly.

Curt Anderson  29:09

Man, I couldn’t love that enough. We have another great question from our friend, Doug, how much value do you see in social media posts towards building brand awareness? Simply getting the name known? Can your thoughts there?

Michelle Jones  29:21

Ooh. So I tend to rip on social media a little bit, but I actually do love it. So I believe each platform really serves a very specific purpose. So if you’re just creating the same post and copying and pasting on all the platforms, it’s not a good approach. LinkedIn, especially for b2b marketers, is where I see the most value, but you know what time and time again, regardless of platform, the posts that tend to perform the best are the ones that are about employees are about culture, celebrating milestone celebrating awards. One of my manufacturing clients posted all this cool stuff about these new new this new equipment they had invested in and it was the first in the country to get this and blah, blah, blah. Their number one LinkedIn posts still to this day is of the owner son’s baby in a little onesie with the logo on it announcing the arrival of the grandson, that’s still their number one post. So there’s still such a human element to it. And when you think about brand awareness, that’s such a great way to just like engage with people. And there’s so many things, especially in manufacturing, and in more the technical sides and industrial sides of industries. We get stuck in this like really a sterile like depersonalized approach to our brands, we have really strict brand standards, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, we’re selling to humans, it’s still human to human. So I love using social media as a way to reflect your brand’s true personality.

Curt Anderson  30:46

Yeah. And if you didn’t, if you guys didn’t read the cartoon, please take a second to read the cartoon that is classic. Did you see a cocktail napkin with our entire marketing campaign on it? Jean, that might have been me and you in Chicago? Right. That’s something that I would do right there. So all right, Michelle, I’ll take it.

Michelle Jones  31:05

The other thing too, I mean, again, maybe I’ve over killed it on these comics. But I mean, it’s allowed. Like I said, it’s a light hearted way to approach this. But I mean, this is this. This is what conversations have sounded like this year, especially AI. All right, we made it 31 minutes, this time without talking about podcasts and marketers. Yeah, let’s do it all, let’s do all the things, we love it all, we love it all, you know what, you’re probably going to do all of it really poorly. If you try to do all of this, pick a few things and do them really, really well. And when you can do that, you can take something and you can get so much mileage out of it and stretch it and make such a bigger impact. So for example, if you write a white paper, you can turn that into a social media post multiple social media posts, you can summarize it turned into an article or press release and send it off to publication, you can do a summary of it and write a blog post, you could do a little mini video, you could turn it into a presentation or get a CEU, get AIA accredited, whatever. There’s so many things you can do if you’re so much more intentional and strategic than just flying all over the place all the time. Because when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So when you’re a marketer without a plan, everything looks like a building on fire.

Curt Anderson  32:13

Now, you have another term and I hopefully I’m not spoiling I don’t know if you have the slide coming up. But what what what is the tactic? Can you go back to that cartoon? What’s the tactic spread? I kind of this reminds me of your tactics, sprint comment.

Michelle Jones  32:26

Oh, yeah. So basically, for people that there’s a reason if you’re in marketing, it’s for a reason isn’t expertise. I think marketing is very undervalued. Everyone sees marketing and consumes marketing. Therefore they think they’re a marketer. Right? So. So this tactic sprint we get into is people who are not in marketing, sales and not saying anything about you tend to say, hey, we need this, we need that I need one of this, I need one of that without any real concept or idea of how much it takes to actually put something good into place. So for example, I need a flyer, any social media posts, I need it now. I need all these things, you end up just sprinting from thing to thing to thing without ever really taking a breath to step back and say, why are we doing this way? Do we need to be doing it? And actually, this is part of my next slide. So this leads right into it. Kurt? You stopped saying we should do this? We should do a lot of things. There’s a lot of things we should or could do. Why are we doing it? We should go to more trade shows? Why should we go to more trade shows? We should update our website? Okay. Why is it a bad user experience? Is it breaking down? We should optimize something we should do this or that? Cut it out. I’ve had someone who has they were spending 10,000 a month on Google AdWords and they killed it completely. Because they kept saying well, we should be in the space. We should be doing something our competitors are here. We should be doing something. The number of leads they got after a year of $10,000 a month. goose egg

Curt Anderson  34:00

I just had a client on what’s today. It’s Friday Eve yesterday. He’s cutting $3,000 a month on his Google ads campaign. Same thing zero. So I love what you’re saying you know we don’t have to be everywhere can’t be everything to everybody because then we become nothing to no one. Michelle, what do you think? What I you know what I’m trying to do? practice what I preach what I’m what we’re sharing, get good at one thing, man, like just really, you know, like you’re describing one client that is killing it on Google ads. They’re finding great leads. It’s a great resource for them. Their ideal clients. When you come to our workshops, we call them those soulmates. If your soulmates are finding, you know, finding you on Google ads, man go all in or at least stay there but I love what you’re saying eliminate the Facebook ads or eliminate the other things. Now majority of us on here, friends family that are on the call today. We’re connected through where Michelle, how did you and I connect? Jeff Long linked it Jeff Long who? And guess what Jeff Long is our speaker on June 15. He’s right here at the Purdue MEP and we’re gonna be talking about videos. And he is a dynamo man of integrity. Just a wonderful father. I can’t speak enough about Jeff. But Jeff connected you and myself through what through LinkedIn. And how much did LinkedIn how much that costs us for United Connect? Zero. Boy, I if you had to pick one thing, man I for our manufacturers on the call, I would strongly encourage get super active. I know Gary J. Skinner, dog jammies, on a call from tech today Janee Happy Thursday, bunch of us our LinkedIn friends. So I don’t mean to go on a diatribe there. But that’s a great place to be. And it doesn’t cost you a penny to be on LinkedIn. So keep it going. Michelle,

Michelle Jones  35:39

actually, just here, bonus tip, my two favorite things right now are LinkedIn, for your company. And for you personally, if your LinkedIn profile isn’t updated, please go update that today. Same for your company, even if you don’t want to do like a full court press on strategy of social media and all that people use it as a way to validate you and your company before they will want to do business with you. I’m obsessed with that. The other one I’m obsessed with right now is email marketing. And here’s why. So I pulled this from Neil Patel, which he’s a really well known marketer. And he has this chart of the blue is the most effective. And the yellow or the orange is the most difficult in terms of lead generation. So if you and so if you look at email marketing, it’s the most effective. And it’s actually the second easiest on this list, website and landing pages 44% to 13%. So if you look at social media, it’s 26% effective and 36%. Difficult, it’s more difficult than it is effective. So why would you not spend your time on the things that are driving the most effectiveness and require the lowest amount of effort. Another reason I love email marketing right now is social media platforms literally change their algorithm like every day, at this point, it’s constant. Anytime I go into the Facebook side of things, I’m like I’m in a whole new land, every time I go in, I have no idea where anything is. LinkedIn tends to be a little more stagnant, which is great for that. The email marketing, once you have their address, you own it, unless they leave the company and go somewhere else, you have that email address, unless they subscribe or unsubscribe from you. You’re not subject to an algorithm, when you want to put something together and push it out. You can do that anytime, day or night, whenever you feel like it, it will end up in their inbox versus with social media, it may or may not end up in their feed. So I agree with actually the top like three or so there are my favorites. And I will just say LinkedIn as the exception of kind of the other like general social media stuff, just because it’s so good for b2b.

Curt Anderson  37:49

Yeah. And I in a look difference with LinkedIn is like, you know, when you like I broke up with Facebook this year, last year, and boy, was that a relief? You know, in like you said, it’s like just, you know, social media fatigue, you know, I have to be on Twitter, I have to do this, I have to do that. But the nice thing with LinkedIn, it’s about nurturing and creating relationships. That’s really what it’s about. And Alan just dropped a note here. You know, we’ve grown our followers from 155 to 600. ALAN I just connected he sent me a wonderful note. And I appreciated that it was wonderful connecting with you love to talk more. We do have a question from Scott Scott, thank you for joining us here today. What is the best cadence for emails? Great question. How many is too many? How often is too often?

Michelle Jones  38:31

Another one? My favorite answer for everything is it depends. And it’s not. I promise. It does depend. It depends on it depends on your email list. Is it going to your customers who know you or is it going to prospects? Is it going to? What’s the content that’s in it? Are they company updates? Are they product updates? Or are they more like lead generation types of materials? Are they personalized? Or are they like more newsletter type? If it’s prospects, you definitely don’t want to blow them up. So I hate even putting numbers on this at all. But usually what most of my clients do is they tend to do like a monthly newsletter that is really meeting adds value. And then they do more of the like personalized types of one on one type of looking emails that are set to sequences and other cadences that are automated. And then when you automate those use HubSpot for a lot of stuff, you can start to see how like, at what point do they unsubscribe, when do they open? Are you losing them after seven days does it need to be every four days, you can start to look at trends. So it’s not just one on one off emails. The other trend that’s in emails in general right now too is not waiting until a call once a quarter and loading an email full of tons of stuff. It’s more dropping out nuggets that add value whenever you actually have them. So again, don’t send emails just because you’re like, Oh crap, we said we would send An email this week, what are we going to put? Um, I don’t know, what are we going to put? You know? Don’t even send it, it’s not worth your time. Don’t do it. Don’t do it, skip it. If it’s not there, skip it. So, um, so, so make sure it’s just adding value. And so the question is just, what’s, it’s not about you, it’s about what information can you provide to your customers that brings value to them? Or to your prospects? Yeah,

Curt Anderson  40:25

great answer. So again, you know, you know, you don’t have to add this to like the marketing list of like, What else then am I not doing right? Trying to reduce the overwhelm. And I’m just I’m shamelessly going to use that tagline again, out, teach the competition, when you when you feel like a great, juicy piece of information that you feel your ideal client would be would benefit. You know, it could be part of your process part of your product, maybe it’s something on leadership, maybe it’s something inspirational, maybe it’s something about supply chain, you know, but if you want, if you feel that, as Michelle just said, value and educating, man, get it out there, you know, that’s how you’re going to build that street cred. That’s how you’re going to just, you know, really keep building that trust. And Mary says, great answer, Michelle. Thank you, Mary. Thanks for joining us today.

Michelle Jones  41:10

Yeah, thank you, Mary. I mean, your goal here is to be a great resource for your customers and for your prospects. You don’t want to be annoying, you don’t want to be bugging them. You don’t want to be spamming them. You want to be a resource, you don’t even want to they don’t even realize they’re being sold when you do it. Right. Right.

Curt Anderson  41:23

Great answer, man dropped the mic on Alan, Michelle.

Michelle Jones  41:27

Boom. So along those lines actually saw this at my gym. So I mentioned this in my LinkedIn live last Friday. And I feel like I’m those people that I hate where I’m like, I worked out this morning, but I did work out this morning, I got a personal trainer to help me do it because I need the discipline to actually do it. And so they had this quote, I love James clear atomic habits if you haven’t read that book yet, rate. But this, this isn’t the gym. But you know what this applies to marketing, too. Most people need consistency more than they need intensity and some examples. Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress. And here’s how it applies to marketing. We again, social media, because it’s so visible. We’ve all gone to vet a company before and we go to their social media page 2023. We’re like, Wow, looks like in 2019, they posted 15 times Wow, are they even still in business anymore. That was what intensity looked like consistency is progress. So they would have been better off posting one post a quarter for the next like three years to make it look like they’re actually alive and well and still in the industry than doing that little sprint. So I always say that a well written but in executable marketing plan is not worth the paper it’s written on, then you’re better off going slow and steady and consistently, then I’m just packing everything into one real fast and just really seen it. I’m a recovering perfectionist, and I had a boss that used to tell me that perfect is the enemy of done. So sometimes you just have to get it done and just get it out the door. And know there’s gonna be mistakes, there’s gonna be ears no matter how many times you look at something, and you always aim for it to be in the best possible shape possible. But if we did that, for websites, for example, we waited until we had every single thing perfect on a website. The Internet wouldn’t exist, there would be no websites out there.

Curt Anderson  43:13

Great point and I want to be mindful of everybody. Michelle, just give you a time check. We’re at cord coming in quarter off. We do have a question here. Leah says how can you tell if your marketing is adding value ROI seems more difficult and b2b than b2c? Great question. Great point. Leah. You know, many manufacturers have a six month a year you no sales process. Michelle, we in your rating thick, have thicker things in that world? What’s your response to this question?

Michelle Jones  43:42

I love that world. That’s the world I live in breathe most of the time. So basically, it goes back to making sure you have goals setup, and long term goals not just for one month. This is why we cannot do shiny objects, we need long plans. And then we also need to make sure that we have processes in place so we can actually track and do that ROI. So I promise I’m not here just to talk about HubSpot. But I use HubSpot. So I’m gonna keep using it as an example. They can track everything that comes in for me for my company. And then I also do this for my clients. They can see how you came into the website, they can see all the pages you engaged with, they can see when you submitted the form. And then you can track that the whole way. If they come back again, if they engage with you on social media, there’s all these other things. So a year down the road. When you finally say, hey, company B became a customer, you can go into your HubSpot and say Company B and you’ll be like, Oh yeah, they came in a year and a half ago from this search term or from this social media posts or this whatever. And then you can actually see what actually worked and drove value and drove revenue, especially with b2b A lot of times we have long sales cycles because they’re more expensive sales. So if you’re selling a half a million dollar product, once you like to know that the $20,000 you spent on social media that year was worth it because you got one one sale. Let’s See, spend 20,000 get half a million. That seems like a pretty obvious ROI for me. Right.

Curt Anderson  45:08

Great answer. So what you know what I’m going to stop interjecting, if you want to go, you know, let’s get through eight through 10 on your time and then quiet, keep the questions coming. But take it away, Michelle. Yeah, I’m

Michelle Jones  45:18

gonna rip through the last few. So back to that accountability for yourself. And for others. If you set those goals, but your solo marketer, sometimes it’s hard, if you’ve got the discipline to go to the gym every day, you’ve got the discipline to do this. But some people, it just takes a little more discipline to make sure you have when you’re setting your own deadlines and you don’t feel a crunch, it’s harder to meet them. So set accountability for yourself, and then also get others involved in your process. So I love pulling sales into thought leadership or product development into thought leadership to help me develop things because then I owe them something or they owe me something. And so when you have that accountability there, you’re more likely all the way around to get better results. The next one is knowing your audience, both internal and external. So a lot of times we talk about knowing your audience, we’re talking about personas, and prospects and all that stuff, you’ve got an internal audience, and they’re loud, and they are strong, and they are all of your other colleagues that work there. And they are not necessarily in marketing. So internal communications is a great example of one. HR and marketing has become an unlikely but strong alliance over the last few years, especially in terms of retention and recruiting and workforce development and all that stuff. Having them buy into and understanding what’s going on within the rest of the company. And better spreading that message amongst all employees brings so much more value for you. And it helps get that alignment with sales. And the other thing too it with with marketing overall. And the other thing too is that all of your employees are brand ambassadors, every single one of them. So yes, you can do sponsorships out in the community all day long. And you can do these cute little recruiting videos and all that stuff. But if you’ve got someone out actively recruiting their friends to come work there, especially on the shop floor, that has so much more power than any amount of money you could spend on any kind of sponsorship and telling everyone about how awesome you are. And then also knowing your audience from an external standpoint, I in the same week, I have seen articles that are like Target personas are dead. And then I see target personas, the greatest things ever. I don’t care what you call it, you can call it an ideal client, you can call it a target persona, call it a prospect, call it whatever the heck you want. The bottom line is there are good companies that are good fits for your company. And you need to know what those people look like and find more of them. It’s like dating, not everyone is a good customer. There are people that are ideal customers or companies that are ideal customers. As a marketer. One of my favorite things to do when I worked for me, when I would work directly for a manufacturer was to get the heck out into the field. I loved tagging along with sales, going into contractor offices going into manufacturing offices, going out on job sites, you name it, I’ve been on oil rigs in Texas, I’ve been on super tall 10 storey 30 storey roofs all over the US get out there and actually see how your customers are engaging with products, how people talk about them, and then what your customers also need to sell to their customers and how you can better partner up and I don’t want to miss one of my nuggets that I put together for this. So use your resources that you have differently. Sometimes you already have what you need. So if you want different results, you’re going to have to think differently. So, for example, there’s other departments that can absolutely help resource marketing that you may not have thought of before. So here’s an example. When I worked for a manufacturer, there was a guy over in product development that was a really strong, I found that he’s a really strong technical writer. And I found this out because I asked him to help me write and edit a paper. And I was gonna put his name on our blog post and I was gonna put his name on it. And he goes, No, I want it to be my voice. I’ll just do it myself. Great. He’s a fantastic writer, I had to do very, very little editing to it. Guess what, I got a blog post done. And so then I went to his boss and said, Hey, would this be something that other people in your department could help me with? Absolutely, he thought it was such a good idea. So he actually mandated that his other product managers had to do at least two or three blog posts a year great. If I do one blog post a month, I got other people writing my blog posts for me. And you know what, it turned into a competition between those guys. They you know, gamification, we haven’t talked about all that much. But it turned to competition. Everyone wanted to be that original guys post everyone did in terms of conversions and clicks and views and all that. They wanted to beat them. So just think about that and think of I’ve had people come in from actually the shop floor. I’ve had people come in from customer service, who were interested in marketing or had a marketing background, and I had a gap as a CIO. Little marketer, I always have a gap. There’s always something I need help with. So shop floor, I’m like, Great, can you take pictures and helped me put together some social media stuff that talks more about our products and how they’re made and features, the people and all that? Great, they were doing that customer service wanted to start getting more into video work. So I tasked them with, you know, helping me put together videos and things like that. So get creative, like your pain could be a stretch goal for someone else. And you both can win from this. Outside, there’s associations, of course, your trade associations, partnerships, I really want to talk about this one, because get creative with your partnerships. If you and one of your suppliers are both targeting the same company at the end. How can you align better at trade shows? How can you put together some type of killer event, we had a supplier that really wanted to get this one type of polymer out to the market. And we were the only product on the market that had it. So we asked for a rebate and don’t you know, they gave it to us because they really wanted to dominate that market. So every year, I would pull together a certain number of ads that I had ran and they would rebate me for all of those ads. And guess what we both win, I got another $80,000 into my budget every year from that. And they go ahead and incentivized me to push more of the products that had their product in it. So get creative. And then of course, the MVP, because that’s why you’re here. You’ve already heard about this. There’s so much available to you. I was blown away by Purdue’s MVP and all the resources that are available on there just on their website, all the different programming that’s offered. So kudos for you for being here now. And if you happen to end up here through me or through hearing about one of our posts and you haven’t checked out produce MEP program, check it out. It’s pretty powerful. Last but not least, it never hurts to ask for what you want. Negotiate the living daylights out of everything. If you are paying list price for your advertising. With media outlets, you are doing it wrong, everything is negotiable. Even if you still have to pay list price for some act of God. Haven’t throw in a few extra hay something that’s high value to you and low costs to them. I want a banner ad in your next newsletter. I want to sponsor on your next email newsletter. I want a banner ad on your homepage. I want to be able to guest blog once a month, get creative and negotiate the heck out of everything. Everything in life is negotiable.

Curt Anderson  52:27

Excellent. Hey, we’ve got a couple of comments here real quick. I’ll chime in. So we’ve got Hey, Alan gives a big shout out to our dear buddy art Thomas Jean, how about that great person and partner. And again, as Michelle just said, if you have not connected with anybody from the Purdue MEP, we strongly encourage you invite you I welcome you to do so. They are just a wealth of information to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. They are dedicated to helping manufacturers and a great state of Indiana, please do so J. Skinner has a comment here. He’s looking for a partner here. And Michelle, I’m not I’m not sure what you have left. And I know this could be a whole episode in itself. He’s asking about chat GPT. So I don’t know if we were like one minute or less if you want to go into like a chat. I know you and Jeff got into a little AI conversation Friday. Do you want to do you want to scratch the surface there and your opinion on AI?

Michelle Jones  53:15

Absolutely. I use it a little bit in my business. Now. It’s just like anything else. It’s a tool. There are places where it’s appropriate and there are things that is not appropriate to use. So for example, in Canva, now you can go in and edit a headshot. So if you have a very nice photo of you, but you are in a inappropriate work shirt and you need a new headshot, you can highlight that and it will draw shirt on you. That’s great. I don’t have time to go get new headshots. Or I’ve asked for headshots a zillion times from the rest of my team can’t get them. I can get creative.

Curt Anderson  53:48

I’m sorry, I have to interrupt. Gee, I have to go here. Does AI put hair on people? I’m just I’m asking for a friend. I’m not asking for myself. I’m just wanting like, can you get hair on AI? I’m just wondering.

Michelle Jones  53:59

So hypothetically speaking, yes. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  54:03

I’m gonna get the jean Jones hairstyle. So anyway, Michelle, keep it going. I didn’t mean to interrupt. So keep going. You’re good? That’s a

Michelle Jones  54:09

great question. But that’s the part of the problem though, is that there’s no laws for this stuff. Right. So we’re already starting to hear about like copyright infringement, trademark violations and all this stuff. So you know, use it like anything else, use it like a tool and use it the right way. In terms of text, a lot of times I will use it to kind of get me going for ideas for something to write about in terms of blogging, or the other thing too is email subject lines, use it for email subject lines, because it may think of if you’re solo you got one brain right like you can’t bounce it off of a team for ideas. So chat GPT or Jasper or whatever it is that may help you give you ideas that for things you may not have thought of before and then you can a be tested and see what performs the best but Chad GBT Jasper still edit it. It’s the sources stuff from the internet. The internet is not always right as we know. So you still have to edit it and make sure it’s really, factually correct.

Curt Anderson  55:05

For our geeky SEO friends out there. If you when I say SEO title meta descriptions, all that stuff I have, we’ve been working with other MVPs. And like we’ve been coming in with clients and manufacturers were they’re getting very creative, like product descriptions, titles for your web pages. And again, we’re not violating any, you know, there’s no infringement talking about your own product. But you know, if you’re a little bit stuck, and you just need to get the creative juices flowing, it’s, it’s a great little, it’s a great creative, buddy. I’ll call it that, right? It’s a creative, buddy. So alright, Michelle, anything else that you’ve got here.

Michelle Jones  55:39

Um, I was just gonna say, connect with me on LinkedIn. This has been really fun. And I know I’m new to the Purdue MEP community. So here’s a little bit more about me. But yeah, and then there’s also a totally close out. There’s also I think, Kurt, you dropped my LinkedIn on on there. So please connect with me or follow me. I love LinkedIn. This is the next session that’s coming up. You mentioned with Jeff Long on June 15. So if you want to scan this code, you can register for it right now.

Curt Anderson  56:11

And I’m dropping Michelle’s LinkedIn, in the chat box once again. So guys, I’m June 15, we have a power another powerhouse, dear mutual friend, Michelle and myself, Jeff Long. He is a video expert for manufacturers. Just a dynamic speaker, just a guy of integrity. He’s gonna be we do these little fun jam sessions every month here at Purdue MEP. I’m just so honored and blessed to be a part of this. So how about if you’ve been hanging out? You’ve been sitting around for the past hour? How about if you want to stand up and give a big round of applause to Michelle Jones, for just knocking the ball out of the park today? And Michelle, I don’t know if you’re related Jean Jones, but Jean, I’m gonna give a How about could you you want to take it away? I want to thank everybody for joining us. We know how busy you are. Thank you. We never take that for granted. But Jean, do you want to close us out for our session today?

Gene Jones  57:01

Yeah, thank you, Curt and thank you, Michelle. Kurt, you really, really picked a great presenter today. Michelle Jones, no relation to Jane Jones. Just so you know, I’m not making these comments because we’re related. You know, Elon Musk. They said last week that he hired the velvet marketing hammer, I think he missed I think Michelle Jones is really the person you know, it was what I liked about this session was it was straightforward. It was it was you know, small businesses are really focused on not wasting money. Michelle, and I mean, you know, that as the as the daughter of a small small business owner, and, you know, easy to digest. And, and I suppose that there’s fractional support out there. Because, as you know, like your mom, she’s got 15 Other things she has to do besides just marketing for the, for the business. And I think that’s the case for many of Purdue, any few small business clients. So you addressed all those points, great session, really appreciate it.

58:12

Thank you for having me.

Curt Anderson  58:14

Thank you, Jean. So, guys, we’re gonna close it out. We wish you an amazing rest of your Thursday. Have a great weekend. Again, we encourage you invite you connect with Jeanne connect with the folks at Purdue MEP. They are here for your success. They cover lean operational excellence. Jean is a cyber expert. Michelle, we’re here to talk about marketing. So all sorts of different things that the Purdue MEP brings to the table to help you guys. One more round of applause for Michelle Jones. Michelle? Boy, yeah, I had super high expectations and you just completely crushed it. As always, whenever you and I are on stage together. So guys, thank you. We will see you next time at our jam session here at Purdue. I’ll have the recording if anybody wants that. I’ll Michelle back. I will connect with you and we can get that recording sent out. And so thank you, everybody. We appreciate your time today. Have a great day. Thanks. Thanks, Michelle. Thanks, Jean. We’ll see you guys