SEO for Manufacturers

Curt Anderson  00:01

Hey, happy Monday, guys. Damon, how are you? Dude?

Damon Pistulka  00:04

Doing great Curt ready to go

Curt Anderson  00:06

for the week? All right. How was how did you? How was Mother’s Day just oil?

Damon Pistulka  00:10

Very good. Very good.

Curt Anderson  00:13

You’re good. You’re good son. Good husband all that stuff.

Damon Pistulka  00:16

Did we did the right things.

Curt Anderson  00:17

You did the right thing. Same here I think I think I did. Alright, scored some brownie points with mom with my wife and aunts and all sorts of lovely people. So I, man we’ve got dude, like there’s all sorts of new people everywhere in a stage today. Like a busy day. It’s a busy day. So you know what, I want to kick things off. I’m going to start here we have, we have a couple of repeat offenders. But we’ll come back to because since they’re seasoned veterans, we need to get the new guy on the stage here. So Donny Kermick Donny, happy Monday, dude, how are you? Jess

Donny Kemick  00:46

doing? Well, it’s great to see everyone. And Lady. Sorry, Holly. Happy to be here. Excited. Also treated the mothers in my life. Well, yesterday, so yeah, life is good. Yeah. You’re,

Curt Anderson  01:01

you know, Danny’s a good son. So, Danny, we’re gonna dive in. I have tons that I want to ask you. It. Let’s slide over. We have another rookie on his show. Damon, we’ve got Zach in a house Zack Attack. Happy Monday. How are you? Dude?

Zachary Ware  01:12

Happy Monday doing great today. It’s

Curt Anderson  01:14

been great. Awesome. Good Mother’s Day in your world.

Zachary Ware  01:16

It was wonderful, great time with a family hotbed. It

Curt Anderson  01:18

was spoiled the wife God bless you love to hear. All right. Let’s hate the one the only how the job is in the house. Holly. Good morning. How are you?

Holly P. Jobe  01:29

Good morning. I’m fabulous. It’s so nice to see you guys.

Curt Anderson  01:32

Oh, repeat offender. You know. You need to be a better judge of character here. I think you’ve been on how many times you’ve been on the show have any idea?

Holly P. Jobe  01:39

Oh, God, I’d have to say at least 606.

Curt Anderson  01:44

Wow. All right. We got to keep that coming. We got to keep you coming back. So we have tons to cover today. So Holly, thank you for your energy, your passion expertise. Let’s slide over to my good friend Josh. Dude, we go my goodness gracious. Like in dog years. It’s like 100 How many? Josh Curico. From protocol ad. How are you man? I’m good. How

Joshua Curcio  02:03

are you? We even share the same haircut.

Curt Anderson  02:05

We shared the scene as a matter of fact, and you know, I don’t have my camera can show it. I’ve got a protocol at sticker right there. You see my sticker? I got that. So I have protocol ad on the mind every single day right on my little table there. So I got my little sticker I use I should put it back up there. So anyway, Donnie, let’s go. Let’s start with you, dude. All right, protocol ad, who is protocol ad? And most importantly, I want to get into the origin story. How did protocol ad get started? Sure.

Donny Kemick  02:34

So today, we are an inbound marketing agency. And we specialize in working with manufacturers, usually tier one tier two suppliers, some OEMs. But but not typically. But way back 100 years ago, 22 To be exact, we started as web applications, business. So there was no WordPress back then there were no DIY platforms, if you wanted to DIY platform, you wanted your marketing department to be updating the website, you needed somebody to do a custom content management system for them. So they could do that. That was us back then. And as the industry kind of changed, and, you know, we got things like WordPress and Google, this was like before Google, when we were kicking things off, we started to pick up people that we needed so that we could start impacting with search engine optimization, and pay per click advertising and all that. And then over time, it wasn’t enough to just get eyeballs on the site, right? You need them to turn into leads and people that sales can follow up with or hopefully nurture into some new business. And so we got really strong into content marketing and lead generation online. And that that started around I’d say, 2015. And since then it’s been, you know, pedal to the floor, trying to do every tactic we can to help manufacturers drive new leads new business through their website, and I’m blessed and fortunate to have built an awesome team of people much smarter than myself, I’m probably the last person in this group that should be talking right now. And having a blast doing it. Well,

Curt Anderson  04:06

that I’d say, This is awesome. I’ve had a front row seat watching the company grow in before we’re gonna be doing that fast round robin, real little rapid fire questions here. But Danny, before I move forward to your colleagues here, protocol. 80 So first off, what was going on your life 22 years ago 2002 that you took this entrepreneurial leap? And where did the name come from? What is where did protocol 80 come from?

Donny Kemick  04:29

I’ll share the name with you. We have very strict rules about the people who are allowed to know the origin of protocol at because it’s such a complex and hidden gem for PhD. But at 22 years ago, I was a sophomore in college and had a couple of like minded guys that we were just you know BSM saying hey, it would be kind of cool to start taking on some clients maybe and we all we went to a small university. So anything we could do to get some experience and maybe put ourselves a little bit of had when we graduated and went into the job market, we would do so we started a business and took on some pro bono jobs so that we could at least display that we knew what we were doing and then ultimately ended up with Zippo manufacturing in Bradford here, which is like the largest employer in our town, we were with the help of a professor at the University were able to land a pretty big project there that really kickstarted protocol at. And then, you know, fast forward two years, we’re graduating, we’ve got, you know, enough clients to sustain ourselves and we’re young. So he said, Well, why the heck would we shut this down? Now, you know, we’re doing pretty well with this business. Let’s keep growing it. And, you know, as they say, the rest is history. So the super secret story about protocol 80. So, when we started, we were doing more technical work than marketing work. We were looked at as like the computer guys. And so we would be meeting with a small business about their website, and they’d be like that you guys know stuff about computer. Do you think you could fix our printer while you’re here? And we’re like, you’ll pay us right? Yeah, we’ll pay you. All right, we’ll do it. Need your lawn mowed, we’ll do as long as you’ll pay us. So we fix the the printer, the computer problem or whatever. And we actually started a sister business called ominous technologies over time, it does business IT support because of that, but so when we sat down, we’re like, we’re a web company, we have to have a.com. Okay. And even back in 2002, all of the great names had been squatted on somebody had purchased, you know, bought tons and tons of domain. So it’s difficult to find something we didn’t want something associated with our names. We wanted something and have fun. And so the super secret sophisticated story of how protocol ad came together was us sitting in front of GoDaddy going, No, that’s not available. Now, that’s not available either. And, and so we were discussing, you know, technical words, protocol ad happens to be the web port that website traffic travels over port 80. So like, SSL is 443 SMTP is 25. So it’s a little geeky stuff. So we came, we were looking at Port 80. And that sounded sort of like a shipyard or something. And then we ultimately landed on protocol 80. It was available. We could think of some kind of cool logos. And here we are today. So maybe not as fun as and as exciting as it could have been. But hey, it’s stuff and it’s worked

Curt Anderson  07:22

to great day in Daymond. At was a great year. These guys weren’t alive, but ad was good here. Was it not? It was never around back then. So that’s I thought maybe there might be a year things but I’ve been friends of these guys forever. And I never knew the origin story. So Donnie, I want I was dying to have you on to catch that. So hey, we’ve got Harry in the house today. Daymond Happy Monday, Eric. So hey, anybody out there? Just don’t let us know you’re out there. You absolutely want to connect with this team at protocol at they are just their passion for helping manufacturers off the charts upside down to my friend Zack, where’s Zack? Dude, we’ve been working together this year been thoroughly enjoyed. I learned something new every time now you are kind of a master of getting found online. Just give us like a quick little overview. We’re here to talk about SEO for manufacturers. You just like a little overview for any manufacturers new to SEO, what’s fresh in your mind in that space?

Zachary Ware  08:14

Man fresh my mind. So many new algorithm updates, so many new things coming with AI, and how the search landscape pretty soon I think is gonna get shaken up pretty significantly. Across the board. It’s all very exciting stuff. So I think what a few of us know, several times a year Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, cozy all the big search engines, they released these broad core algorithm updates. Google just released this massive one, where they are trying to crack down on what they call like spam, or like unhelpful contents in search results, which is great for the users. And we’ve seen like a 40 to 45% reduction in page one and two were top 10 to 20 positions in Google of unhelpful content. It’s being replaced by more highly authoritative content. But the really cool thing is how that authoritative content is being defined. It’s no longer just who has the most backlinks who’s getting a backlink from whom, but now Google, Bing and the other big search engines with the rise of AI content, anybody can publish content at the click of a button. Now, that’s unhelpful in this kind of spammy. And it’s just unoriginal. So they’re taking a bigger stance on things like social signal show social proof. So they’re taking a look at who you are holistically, not just who you are and a blog. And we’ve seen that already started to turn the search landscape on its head. I think that’s going to continue and it’s been a lot of fun to dig into and watch what happens. But that’s not specific to manufacturers per se, either. It’s, it’s industry wide, but it’s something that is going to be impacting manufacturers pretty heavily and looking forward to I believe

Curt Anderson  09:59

one Wow, okay, David, how about that one there, huh? So we got we got like Mr. algorithm, we got the algorithm update guy right here like front and center. So like anything that you need to know we’ve got Zack Attack to like really kind of set the story straight. And that’s exactly what your role is. I understand what protocol at like, you’re really you’re kind of like the how to make the search engine happy kind of guy. Is that? Is that kind of your jam?

Zachary Ware  10:24

Yeah, that’s it that says exactly. I think we need a new title for me too. I like that.

Curt Anderson  10:29

I do too. I think Danny, I think we’re onto something. Right. Yeah. So Alright, so let’s Holly lead. When we talk about that authoritative content, we talked about those good eats, right? I know you and I do. We’ve done jam sessions. We talk about those good eats, share it before we get into eats I’d love for you to explain to folks what are good eats in the world of Google. But now if I want to be authoritative, maybe somebody out there should possibly write a book. Now, that was Mother’s Day yesterday. Does your mom have a favorite book by any chance? Which

Holly P. Jobe  11:00

book? Hmm, that’s a tough one. She does love like Tuesdays with maurey Like all of those types of traditional memoirs, but she also loves mortal, the undying art of attracting customers, which I wrote in October. I think that’s what you are getting at. If not though, I can get you her book list and

Curt Anderson  11:20

I was absolutely getting it that book. Let’s see one more time. I’m poor eyesight. We look at that. Damon thing. Is that just a thing of beauty? Or well? Yes,

Damon Pistulka  11:29

it is.

Curt Anderson  11:30

All right. So Holly, let’s go there. Just share a little bit about the book and just a little bit about your perspective, as you’re just you’re on this world just helping manufacturers everywhere. Just what do you got? Yeah,

Holly P. Jobe  11:41

so um, the book was born of honestly, frustration and having either prospective clients or current current clients come to us and having a hard time getting mixed messaging on what inbound marketing is how you do it, it felt like a lot of things were gatekeepers, or, you know, behind a paywall, and there wasn’t really anything that existed in my opinion, that felt like it walked the walk in terms of teaching people how to actually do inbound marketing. So I set out with the goal of creating a resource that one of our clients could consume, and then execute inbound marketing strategies without ever having to interact with us at all. Because I felt like we were sorely missing that I honestly was sick of attending webinars and conferences and things and then being like, you need to write content and you know, being like, cool how, like, physically, how do you do this? And feeling like there was a big need for that? Um, so it was it was born of that for sure.

Curt Anderson  12:34

Awesome. Okay, share with our friends out there. What are gute when we say eats for Google what comes to mind?

Holly P. Jobe  12:43

So that is basically the acronym that was created to as Zack was speaking to earlier define what Google is looking for in content and getting away from spammy content content that’s long for the sake of being long stuffed with keywords, etc. Zack and I have been having a really fun time on the SEO subreddit, just watching the world burn as people who have been doing blackhat seo tactics are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, because they’re not following that eat structure. But I want to toss it over to Zack actually to explain all of the acronyms and eat and how people are aren’t hitting that, because he’s definitely the genius there.

Curt Anderson  13:22

Awesome. Let’s do it. Zack.

Zachary Ware  13:23

Yeah. So for anybody who doesn’t know, eat, it now has a second in it is expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness. So that second E, for experience really helped kind of like what I’m saying earlier, to dictate the social proof aspect of everything. So are you more than what you present yourself to be in a blog or on a services page? Do you have the industry experience? Do you have like a long standing experience? Do you have a long history in that specific field? Do you have experts who are out there who are speaking to their their respective audiences? Can all these signals come together and show Google Bing and the other search engines that you know your stuff you deserve to rank higher? And then the the other letters end are kind of like the Evergreen Monsey expertise. So just can you publish regular contents? Can you show that you know, you’re talking about broadly authority? So what does your authoritative score look like online determined by backlinks now by increasing number of social signals signals from other websites? And then how trustworthy is your content? So are people coming to your content? Are they regularly consuming it? Are they coming back? Are they engaging with different calls to action, different assets that you have in the website? Are they scrolling through many different pages are the interactive and consuming the content? Or instead, do they come to your site? Say what the heck am I looking at and bounce off?

Curt Anderson  14:55

Excellent. I just so little recap there Daymond so we’ve got E Now you’re seven in the morning, you’re like your Are you hungry, ready to pray love breakfast, so eats my vegan Lord for you, right? So that experience, expertise, authority and trust. Josh, let’s get you in the game here, dude. So you and I go way back. We’ve take team and work with numerous clients together. You’ve seen the whole, you know, we’re using the word landscape, you’ve seen a lot of changes over the course of your timeframe here at protocol 80. What’s hot and heavy? What’s front of mind for you with clients today?

Joshua Curcio  15:27

I mean, Zack alluded to it. But AI is is big. I mean, it comes out.

Curt Anderson  15:35

Is that a thing right now AI is I don’t know.

Damon Pistulka  15:37

Something about it.

Joshua Curcio  15:40

It’s funny, it’s been around for many years now. It’s just that chat. GPT got the spotlight and made the news. And now that’s what everyone talks about. There was actually a update or an announcement yesterday, maybe not even an official announcement, but they expect chat GPT to be real time and potentially integrate with Siri on the Apple devices, some of the rumors that are that are spreading, but lots of conversations about AI.

Curt Anderson  16:09

Yeah. What what are they are manufacturers embracing this intimidated, overwhelmed, like kind of what’s what’s the pulse? You know, I

16:19

think as with anything in the manufacturing space, it’ll be slow moving, they’ll adopt it, but it’s going to take some convincing that they need to put the effort in the focus on actually doing it. So there’s the generative AI stuff that you know, sales teams and marketing teams can use to produce assets. But then there’s also all of this other AI things that might be happening in the background. Few weeks ago, a month ago, time all runs together. Now I spoke at an AI conference in New York, and just the things that people are doing are amazing. I talked to one gentleman that has an AI software that sits on top of ERP systems that allows manufacturers to pull information out of their ERP systems just by using natural language, as opposed to trying to programmatically get that out of their ERP system. That’s big. That’s something that I could see manufacturers moving on quickly, because they all want their ERP data and all of the places that they need it and want to understand it better.

Curt Anderson  17:28

Yeah, that’s, that’s powerful. And Damon, we’ve been hearing numerous examples. We’ve been intentionally interviewing just AI experts. And it’s just it’s truly, absolutely mind blowing. What an exciting time. And, you know, Damon kind of go back to, you know, search when searched at the scenes internet, online ecommerce in the mid 90s. It’s like this whole new generation shift, you know, technology shift once again, right?

Damon Pistulka  17:51

Yeah. Yeah. Like Zack was saying and others alluded to here today is, there’s so the prolific eight are, my words aren’t working, right. But so much more AI generated content, that just kind of BS that’s out there, I’m really glad to see that Google is is doubling down on, on going, Okay, let’s look at the whole person company, or whatever that’s generating this, to really understand if the content is worthwhile or not, because, man, you know, you go back a couple months, you can tell the difference, I believe in the searches now already. But you go back a while and some of those articles were really, really pretty poor, that you or blog or whatever the results you get. So it’s it is nice to see that they’re really doubling down on that and trying to get, because I think also then, specifically for manufacturers, it shows that if they want to continue to rank, they need to be more holistic and more well rounded. And, and that’s, that’s, I think it’s good for everyone when you’d have to do that.

Curt Anderson  18:51

Yeah, totally agree. So let me I’m going to put this out to the panel. So I was going wrong, but you know what, I’m taking a little diversion here. So I’m going to put I’m going to keep I’m going to go on that theme with eats. Okay, so, manufacturers out there, whatever. Okay, I hear you experience that’s easy, you know, expertise. Not sure what you mean by authority. And this whole, you know, the trust score thing? What are some things I don’t know who wants to grab this one? So I’m just kind of throwing it up? What are some things that small manufacturers you know, that we work with? Right? 20 employees or less? Maybe 30? You know, these are smaller manufacturers? What are some things that they can do? Besides just putting out that content? What are some experience and authoritative trust strategies? Anyway, Holly, you want to grab that first? You’re smiling. I

Holly P. Jobe  19:35

was gonna toss it to Zack first because he’s been working on some strategies with clients and then if he doesn’t cover what I’ve got on my mind, I’ll hop in

Curt Anderson  19:43

how selfless right Daymond just how the job selfless. She

Holly P. Jobe  19:49

is the person who taught me everything I know about SEO. So everything that I say is filtered because it came from Zach. So he’s like

Curt Anderson  19:59

He as more of a poker face how I was like, I was like, who’s smiling? Who wants this question? So exactly, it’s coming to us that we can do for our friends in manufacturing.

Zachary Ware  20:08

So thinking small manufacturers, maybe 20 employees less about the 50 or so, outside of just publishing content and hoping it gets seen hoping that gets linked to, like you mentioned, social proof is going to be another huge thing. I know, a lot of times, some manufacturers specifically are hesitant to start getting involved in social media any more than just publishing a blog and saying, hey, check out our new article and doing nothing else. But one of the things that we’re starting to see is, the more engaged you can be on social media. And largely, it doesn’t necessarily matter what platform, choose a platform, and use it LinkedIn, Facebook, X, slash Twitter, whatever you wanna call it, Instagram, Sophia, find one. And Kurt, I think this is going to hearken back to something says niche down. Find your niche in social to find groups, start sharing your content in there and start engaging as a human. And those different social groups as well answer questions become known gets seen in those groups as an authority. Because search engines are monitoring it, you are going to eventually be seen as an authority by search engines as well, if you can start by, you know, working in small social groups, and it’s something that only takes minutes a day to implement to certain to get engaged on Facebook or LinkedIn like that.

21:27

And if I could just add something really quickly for Holly says things I’m hoping that I take whatever she was going to say she’s like, Oh, no, the only thing I want to add to that was, as Zack mentioned, like engaging conversations, so one of the things that they’ll look at would be like that author’s reputation as well. So it doesn’t have to be on behalf of the brand. The person that is creating the content and engaging on social that are looking at that person’s authority individually, and their reputation as well. So build a personal brand as well as the company brand. I hope that wasn’t IRS Holly for real.

Curt Anderson  22:00

You know, real quick, that’s perfect. Josh, we had a branding expert on the show last week, Cheryl Jones and that and she did I tell you guys connect with Chairman, she was phenomenal. But that’s exactly what she’s talking about. For that small manufacturer. I love that you said that. So many of the manufacturers we deal with they’re you know, they’re skeptical, resistant, or what’s the social media thing? What’s LinkedIn, but boy, let your folks let your team run with it. Holly, lets you get the mic. What do you want to share?

Holly P. Jobe  22:24

And I think also, when we think in the realm of traditional content, and Kurt Damon, both of you have been really, really, you know, on the pioneering path of video, video is also a huge way to gain experience and trust, because, obviously, like deep fakes exist, things like that. But when someone is there talking and giving their experience, whether that be in a podcast, or something Zach has been experimenting with is with some of our top performing blog posts on the PT side, what happens if we pair that with a video of someone explaining that content? What does that do in search, so starting to investigate some of those things? And then, of course, one of the most important things about blogging, video content, whatever that long form, really meaty piece of valuable content is, is that your springboard for sharing on social media for sharing via email for sharing and paid campaigns, whatever that looks like. So if, you know if you can make charts, images, graphics, videos, GIFs snippets, podcasts, any of those things that like almost pair content together also can just help give that trust and give that authority there because it’s not just like a loose blog in the wind that was generated by some robot somewhere.

Curt Anderson  23:34

Danny, what do you have, man?

Donny Kemick  23:35

Yeah, just to add to that, you know, it’s also as a business, you also like to get as as much return on one piece of content as humanly possible. So if we can take that one piece of content that took a decent amount of effort to produce, and then turn it into a video, turn it into a podcast, you know, you’re not, those are not all separate subjects and new things that you have to produce, you’re getting a lot of mileage out of one thought, or one, one piece of education that you’re trying to share. And I just wanted to add another strategy that’s worked really well for some of our clients, helps build authority is using some third party sites that are industry specific sites, reaching out to them and saying, hey, could we just contribute an educational article, typically, you know, includes a link back to their site as well as to be very educational, zero sales in it, you know, whatsoever, just talking about a topic that would be helpful for the industry. It’s a great way to get to build authority, you get some additional inbound links and things like that.

Curt Anderson  24:35

Excellent. Excellent. Zack, what do you have? Yeah,

Zachary Ware  24:37

I actually thought he he just hit on a really good point that I wanted to mention earlier, too. As you’re getting engaged on all these additional platforms, and you’re starting to create videos, podcasts or any other derivative works as you’re getting more engaged in social and different communities. I think something that’s a lot of sales managers and marketing managers yours are going to be a little bit resistant to in some manufacturing spaces is that not everything needs to be sales focused on that every post needs to be contact us to, you know, getting RFQ or, you know, reach out here for an RFP or anything else. But a lot of those posts should just be to help the community to stay friend of mine. And if show that you know what you’re talking about, that every coach needs to tie back to a sale.

Curt Anderson  25:29

Yeah, okay. Drop the mic. Zack were so that was awesome. Right there. Let’s, I want to show how about shamelessly Holly, thank you for bringing it up. Damon, what do we got going on Thursday? By any chance? I think are you and I haven’t a little party at the Purdue. And What topic are we covering at the Purdue Manufacturing Extension Partnership on Thursday?

Damon Pistulka  25:53

You know what? I honestly can’t remember. Live Stream dude. It it? Yeah, we are. There we go. I knew you’re gonna see, as you said that, like, my mind. Just yeah,

Curt Anderson  26:03

it’s seven for demons. So yes.

Damon Pistulka  26:07

Presentations done. We’ve read through it several times. We’re doing the live

Curt Anderson  26:10

stream strategies for manufacturers that do MEP and then Holly a month from today ish or something, something like that. What topic are we you and I covering at

Holly P. Jobe  26:20

Purdue and we’re talking about AI. So we’re actually gonna go through some practical use cases and examples of ways to like ethically use AI, because we’ve spent some time here Pooh poohing it a little bit. But there’s definitely really effective ways to use AI that are valuable, that aren’t gonna get shot down by Google. So we’ll chat through some of that stuff, you

Curt Anderson  26:38

might have a lot of, you know, the AI experts that we’ve been bringing on what the big takeaway for us is, they’re preaching the process. You know, it’s not just getting that, you know, fast content. But, you know, gentleman the other day was, you know, he’s like, he’s helping his clients he has, Damon was that he’s, you know, graduate of Brown master’s degree from Brown, total Ivy League guy. Yeah, when he person firm, and he’s helping his clients go from three hours of content down to like, 15 minutes. And he they’re interviewing PhDs and, you know, high level folks that just really produced excellent content, but it’s all about the process. So alright, let’s slide in here. Danny, I’m gonna come back to you. You’ve seen a lot of changes over the 22 years, this landscape, what are you super excited about kind of coming into moving forward with your clients? Sure. So

Donny Kemick  27:23

I mean, I hate to, you know, jump back on the wagon of AI, but it does produce so many opportunities or, or I’m excited about the opportunities to not necessarily specific with content, but more to some of the points Josh touched on earlier. I’m excited for the ways it will make sales people’s lives more efficient, marketers lives more efficient, built within the ecosystem. And we’re a HubSpot shop, which you know, you know, so that some of the AI built into HubSpot now is just going to get better and better and better and saving everyone time and effort on the stuff that sucks, you know, the stuff that you just don’t want to spend your time doing every day is one of the things I’m most excited about. And the ability for looking way down the road, it would be really nice if somebody lands on the protocol at blog, or one of our manufacturing clients blog, that AI is interacting with them at a higher level to make sure that okay, this blog posts, it touches on like 60% of my question, but AI knows enough to know based on an additional question on your website that you actually need. These other two articles also are these other pieces of information. So moving beyond maybe the chat interfaces moving beyond Google search results at the top that are AI generated to the point where you are on somebody’s website interacting with their AI, powered by a HubSpot powered by WordPress or some other piece of technology underneath it. So AI really is the theme of the day. I think at the end of the day, we’re all businesses, and we’re still all going to need new leads, we’re all going to need more sales, and we’re all going to want to continue to grow. And if this if, if these AI tools end up being what we all think they’re going to be that should become much more efficient for us, but also much more competitive for everyone. So that’s what I’m really excited about. Awesome.

Curt Anderson  29:16

Okay, so Zach, let’s come back at you. I want to I want to piggyback off your topic about you know, aligning with, you know, trade industry magazines, maybe local Manufacturers Association chamber, that type of thing. What are some tips, strategies that you have for your clients? So we put out a great piece of content. And you said the word that we absolutely love, educate, educate, educate, one of our tag lines is Holly that we love to use out teach the competition. How do you out teach that competition? So for a manufacturer out there that this concept of the strategy is new? Can you walk them through like, you know, how do I reach out how do I do that go through like a little one on one of reaching out to that, that association or, you know, trying to get that piece of content out to that?

Zachary Ware  29:57

Yeah, so So final after the con has been published, there’s, I think, a few steps that need to take place there to really see the value and to, you know, break through. So first and foremost, we share the content on our own socials, right want to get this credit for low, oh my gosh, I’m tripping over my words to want to get those preliminary eyeballs on a piece of the content, see how it’s going to perform in social, see what some of the initial reactions are to it. And then I sometimes it really is as simple as finding the contact the email for the association that you’re reaching out to maybe through LinkedIn, maybe it’s through a legacy contact, maybe they’re already in your CRM, or maybe you have a like a link trade relationship with them already reaching out and saying, Hey, there’s this opportunity on your site that I’ve identified, or I have this piece of content that’s a really good fit, or I believe I can create a piece of content that answers this question that your site’s needs. Here’s what I’m proposing. What do you think it is, sometimes really simple is just the introductory email. And as a publisher ourselves, we receive emails like that constantly to from people reaching out saying, Hey, I have content that I think would work really well on your sites. I’ve identified a gap in your content. I’ve identified a question that your audience wants to know, here’s how I can help solve for that.

Curt Anderson  31:24

Actually, I absolutely love it. So I highly let’s slide over to my friend you and I when we were kindred spirits. One thing that we love to talk about is that ideal customer avatar, we have a little term that we use those soulmates, okay, so like everything that we’re talking I personally feel always stems back to that soulmate. When we say soulmate, like who has a problem today that that manufacturer has a solution that it’d be a great fit. So whether it’s aI whether it’s HubSpot inbound, you know, Zach’s talking about, you know, good eats, just share for a little just give us a little overview of like, why is that buyer persona so important? And how do you at protocol at how do you guys help clients? Identify that soulmate? Yeah.

Holly P. Jobe  32:06

So when we first take on a client, we immediately dive into that persona research. And there’s a lot that we do that I think could be taken by even just a solo marketer and a manufacturing company, a small marketing team to identify that, and one of the first places we start is by talking to the company’s existing soulmate customers, and asking them questions about whether or not they interact with the website, whether are and if not, why would they? And one of the other things we ask is, if God forbid, you know, client was to go out of business, what would you type into Google to try and find a different person? Or if you’re not going to Google, what magazines are you reading? So talking to those existing soulmate customers and seeing what do they have in common? What are those common threads to help us kind of cast that net into other soulmate customers? And then of course, doing research into competitors websites, seeing all of those types of things, what were the commonalities are there. And the importance of doing that we’ve found is because sometimes when we’re talking to the engineers, or the subject matter, experts, on our client side, they’ll refer to a technology or a piece of equipment as one thing. Maybe it’s a slang word, maybe it’s just they’ve always known it as this. And then when we start interviewing those soulmates, when we start researching, we realize they’re calling it something completely different. So making sure that our content is meeting those soulmates, where they’re at is presenting in search, the way that they’re actually searching is really important, as well as when you’re producing that content, making sure that you’re talking to them in a way that is appealing to them. So does the persona, enjoy some humor? Did they like a good metallurgy pun, making sure that we include that type of stuff in there to really, really speak to them. So it feels personal, even if it’s something that we’re sort of mass marketing as it were?

Curt Anderson  33:51

Right? Awesome. All right, Josh, let’s come over you, dude. So we’re talking about good eats, we’re talking about that buyer persona, that soulmate, let’s talk about social for a little bit. And maybe I can even put this out to the panel. So if somebody wants to grab it, you know, Zach threw out like, you know, X or, you know, formerly known as Twitter, right? Or, you know, Facebook, you know, what have you said, What do you seen as far as social? Where should our manufacturers be hanging out from that social standpoint?

Zachary Ware  34:18

Wherever you can identify your target audiences, there’s no one answer, I don’t think. I think a lot of times people fall into the trap of thinking. Facebook is solely b2c, LinkedIn is solely b2b, Twitter and x are for just a weekend browsing and really nothing else. But the truth is, at the end of the day, it’s like B to H marketing, business acumen. Your audience is likely on X, they’re likely on LinkedIn, they’re likely on Facebook, right? So if that’s where the your audiences, that’s where you need to be to, right. Unfortunately, there’s no like one answer to that is

Curt Anderson  34:55

1. Josh, what do you want to add to that?

34:57

Yeah, I guess I would agree with that. If there’s not one answer, like the easy response would be LinkedIn just because it’s b2b. But truthfully, as Zack mentioned, like, your audience, they’re probably spending time on tick tock. And if they come across something interesting that you can share and provide, they may engage and see you that way. And then the other thing, the other opportunity there is that they’re seeing you from multiple channels. They’re not just seeing you from one channel. They’re not just getting your email and potentially ignoring it. They’re getting your email. They’re seeing your website, they’re seeing you on Tik Tok, they’re seeing you on LinkedIn. You know, it’s more channels and more forms of communication as to where they can engage. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  35:42

I love that. Damian, what do you have?

Damon Pistulka  35:45

Yeah, and I think just to add is, Zack said it very well, it’s BDH. And they want to see the human behind you. They’re too busy doing business with an eye that’s getting more important, I think every day, because of the social aspects of social media and how we do see more of people’s lives, whether it’s the most famous people in the world or our neighbor down the street, you know, and that’s, that’s where I think that the BDH aspect of this really does mean that if you can be more omni channel, it’s it’s just that much better for you.

Curt Anderson  36:20

Right, absolutely. And that’s, you know, that’s why Daymond and I are so bullish on Livestream it really, you know, tagline we use it, our AI proofs your business, right? It said, yeah, it’s putting yourself out there and just being who you are. And not only finding those soulmates also, you know, like, Hey, I’m, you know, though my mom thinks I’m for everybody, Holly, I’m just not. So it kind of weeds out, you know, those those myths misalignments if we will, why go on a first date if it’s not going to happen. So let’s start winding down. I know you guys are super busy helping manufacturers everywhere. And we got the whole team here. So we’ll start writing down, I want to hit I want to talk about video. And a big thing is, you know, Josh, you just mentioned it, tick tock, right, the world has gone to that 60 seconds or less, we have no attention span. So it’s got to be the short videos, Damon, we’ve discovered even on our live show, we have these wonderful in depth conversations. Not everybody has time other than my mom has time to listen to these entire episodes, Holly. So you know, we’ve started pulling out little clips, and boy, we get tons of great views. We’re seeing that with our clients getting great views on YouTube shorts, I put it out to hook the whole panel, whoever wants to grab this one. What do you guys seen, you know, strategy, Target, you know, alignment with your clients, what do you seen from a video standpoint, and from the short videos, who wants it?

Holly P. Jobe  37:36

I can take it or

Donny Kemick  37:39

I was just gonna jump in and say, you know, we’ve seen a real uptick with the introduction of more video into our strategies and the requests from clients to do more video. Not only because it helps to dominate search, as we already touched on, but also just getting that authentic, right from, you know, the clients mouth, you know, you’re you’re meeting them, whether there’s talking to you directly or not, you’re meeting them and understanding them and video, so we are doing more and more of it, and seeing it be very impactful for our clients, Holly, I’ll kick it over to you.

Holly P. Jobe  38:13

I was just gonna say like 100% with that. And also video can be very resource and time intensive. So don’t make it more difficult on yourself by trying to guess what the audience might want, might want trying to guess where you should be, like we talked about earlier, ask your existing customers, what would they want to watch from you and also pair that with existing high performing content. So if you have a blog that’s doing really well and getting a lot of interaction, like what are the most important parts, turn that into a video, add some visuals there, put that out across different channels and see what works. And there’s a lot of really cool AI powered tools. I know HubSpot just released as a part of their content hub, kind of like a remix or tool that turns your content into different forms of content. So just make sure you’re not plunging into video buy very nice cameras, very nice microphones, you know, spending all these hours editing them beautifully to take shots in the dark use the existing data that you have in pair that existing successful thing. You know, with your video, not saying you shouldn’t try tick tock just saying it might make sense to pair some of those videos with your existing channels first, and then expanding from there.

Curt Anderson  39:23

Yeah, you know, and I apologize, man, Harry dropped a comment here and I didn’t pull it out. You know, many times if you do a Google search, the first four searches our short form videos, how can you better leverage so Harry? Here we are. We’re answering that question. And Damon, we found that exactly. We’ve been more intentional with our show and getting our keywords into the details. And we’re you know, we’ve got some very competitive key terms that like hey, there’s the two old guys going at it, you know, a video via video. So, you know, we’re utilizing we’re trying to practice what we preach with live stream. Josh, what do you what do you see with your clients from a video standpoint?

39:56

Yeah, I think they both kind of alluded to the fact Active videos nice because it can be repurposed as well, a new mentioned the same thing Kurt is you might have this long form video, but that can also be a blog post, it can be tied to just so many other things that can be turned into just an audio podcast. It doesn’t just have to be that one channel. So you’re doing this one thing that’s resource intensive. But you’re allowing yourself to spread that further. So it’s it’s not necessarily as much of an investment and a potential for higher return. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  40:31

I love that. And it’s perfect. A client of ours just they gave us a tool, they’re like, hey, check out this tool that I found. It’s a little AI video tool. We’ve started using it. It’s called min vo Am I Nvo. And we’re now it’s pulling out little clips adds a subtitles to it. And it’s kind of fun. And you know, so, you know, take advantage of those videos. Zack, anything that you want to add from a video standpoint? Yeah,

Zachary Ware  40:55

so one thing that I’m starting to see and starting to think about is the short term video or the short form videos capturing what used to be those knowledge panels or those like position zeros that we’d see. is Google’s exceptional now at being able to crawl through a video that’s posted on YouTube or whatever else and understand what’s being discussed in there. There’s 1000 Different AI tools that can do that. And of course, Google can do it too. And it’s not it’s pulling some of those video results into search. So think of them almost like you’re creating that short form video for that position zero for that featured snippet position. What’s the question you want to answer? How quickly and concisely? Can you answer that question in a quickly recorded video? And keep it simple as that?

Curt Anderson  41:45

Holly, what do you have something to add?

Holly P. Jobe  41:47

I was just gonna say with all of this, another really important thing is not to let perfect get in the way of good. Um, all of us, I think are just on computers. Right now our videos look perfectly fine. Like Zack said, like, just pop up, like, answer something quick and post it like it’s doing your videos are doing nothing if the scripts for them are still in your Google Drive. If the cameras still in your car on Amazon, you can certainly scale up to that once your reach is greater once you know that you’re generating leads there. But at the end of the day, it is important to just start don’t get too caught up in like what the best in the industry is using dual camera setup studio lights, like the most important thing is that you’re providing helpful contents to those soulmates, like Zach said, so getting that helpful content out there quickly, it shouldn’t be necessarily incredibly time consuming to get those super short form videos out there.

Curt Anderson  42:34

Love it, you know, for our sports fans, Damon just get on the field, right?

Damon Pistulka  42:40

Yeah, it might mean a day it is. And that’s what I love about video today. It’s like the old days of produced video, yes, there’s a time and place for some, you know, in some of your product base or something, there’s some video but you know, this beat ah, again, if you can explain something that I could understand, in 60 seconds, that’s a great short form video for people I mean, and you can let your your your personality and the BDH shine through and really connect with the people. And as Curt said earlier, make sure that the people that you don’t want to be together with they’re not coming to the party. It’s an in as you said, Holly and Zach and everyone is like, yet don’t have to invest 1000s and 1000s of dollars into a studio and Super cameras and you know, hundreds of hours in editing, just get on and get started.

Curt Anderson  43:30

Just get started. I have I’m being self esteem. And I have another question. So Josh, you know, you’re gonna know this one. So I Josh and I were working very closely a number of years ago. And we I’ve watched so I’ve watched a protocol at you know, I always bring this up but you guys had two or three employees when I first start working with you guys. And now they’re 20 strong or so. And I’ve gone there they have this wonderful amazing facility and Holly maybe when you come back on the show next month, I might come down maybe we’ll do it together in person that just had so much more fun and energy. But Josh let’s go here I if I’m not if I have this correctly 2015 issue and I were running all over, you know, working with manufacturers and you guys made a really nice pivot and this is and most will wind down in this how you use the word niche and I think Zack even said you know I was shamelessly use that word, you know, that line niche down till it hurts. You guys took a big pivot and went all in on inbound marketing. I like to hit that for two reasons. Number one, just to talk, you know, give us a one on one what that did for you. But number two, from a marketing standpoint, why is it so important for manufacturers to stay in their lane? You know, that sometimes we all try to be a little bit of everything to everybody. And we’re a jack of all trades, master of none, but I really admire love how I’ve watched you guys grow as a company when you niched sure a little bit about that and why it’s so important for other friends out there to be the standard lean and niche down. Yeah,

44:54

you know, prior to making that shift, Donnie and I dealt With, we need content, we need content, we need this, we need this for your website, and then they launch a website, they put so much effort into doing that. And then it would essentially just sit there, you know, not really do anything. Despite telling everyone, you need to continue to produce and add informational content, but it just never happened, right. And that was a lot of times, because in the manufacturing space, people are pulled in so many different directions, you don’t usually just wear one hat, you’re wearing many hats. So at that time, we said, well, if they can’t do it, and they’re not going to do it, we’ll do it for them. And we’re going to start hiring for those skill sets and produce the content, whether it be website content, article based content, video, doesn’t matter, we’ll produce it for them. So since that time, we’ve been able to do that and make it be something that is more impactful for them. Because it’s not this big website project that they never think about, again, now, it’s a change of business, essentially, we’re using this to drive leads and be part of our sales pipeline and drive, you know, real revenue for for our business. And being able to do that was impactful for them more so than the website project. And it’s been helpful for us. As you mentioned, we had three people, being able to move to a more retainer model and have partners instead of just customers, has allowed us to grow the team and hire more people that can be really great at producing marketing for manufacturing companies that are very technical and complex. Don, anything to add to that, that I might have missed back way back then.

Donny Kemick  46:44

No, I think you hit the nail on the head is just sort of that evolution from we need a website. Okay, now we need a website that people see now we need a website that people see and hopefully raise their hand and become leads, you know, and the best way to do that as Holly’s book would tell you works 10 out of 10 times on if you give it the right investment and effort is to educate. And so you know, if you look if we were to tour our office, which I’m not at right now, but if we were to tour our office, you’d see the vast majority of the seats are filled with content writers are filled with people brainstorming, you know, educational content, not sales content, but educational content that’s going to help manufacturers help that engineer find you or help just answered their questions. So they remember you. So yeah, Josh, I think you you explained it really well. And it’s been really valuable for us to be so focused with in helping manufacturers and really just kind of understanding what makes them tick.

Curt Anderson  47:37

I can’t understate from my perspective, Josh, I can’t tell you what a gutsy move I thought that was and how much I admire what you guys were doing. So Damon, I had this little thing. It was called the million dollar ecommerce club. And I had like a bunch of manufacturers in it. And we long story short, we brought in protocol ad they were working with a number of manufacturers, they still have some of those clients. This was like eight, nine years ago, they’re still working with some of these clients today. had more clients since then they’ve been on our show. We were Webber Knapp, I think Hollywood was back in September, we were on site together on the live show. And so you know, again, I’ve had a front row seat. It’s like Uncle Kurt watching these guys just grow this company. And I just I salute you guys. I commend you. Danny, my last question for you. I think you’ve built such an amazing team, again, gone from three people to all these wonderful folks here you have, you know, just awesome talent. I don’t know how you’ve pulled this off. What’s your secret? Dude?

Donny Kemick  48:34

It’s a lot of two steps forward, maybe five steps back sometimes. And then, you know, seven steps forward. And it’s not just it’s certainly not just me. You know, Holly, Josh, Zach, you know, the the folks that have been with PHP for quite a while, we’ve come a long, long ways. And I’m sure you know, Zach, looking back to when he was on boarded. Oh my goodness, versus what we do for people who come on now it was Zach was sort of like your there’s your computer and it was training, you’ll be good luck with that. Good. And again, now we have, you know, a very sophisticated onboarding and very sophisticated off boarding earlier to say no, this is not a fit, you know, sooner rather than later, and I think hurt you. And I’ve talked about this in the past. I think we’re all similar in that. But what are we serving them? Right? Like, are we doing everything we can to make them successful? And sometimes, you know, that bites you in the butt because you’re you’re waiting too long to say no, this is not the right you know, there’s a better position for them somewhere else and it’s not on our team you know, so I’ve to long way of answering your question to say we’ve been through a lot of trial and error. We’ve been through a lot of process improvement to try and make sure that we’re hiring for our core values only and then teaching skills if we have to. And you know, we’ve just been super fortunate to come across a great group of people that really gel and work great together. Awesome.

Curt Anderson  49:54

Great. Drop the mic, Danny. But so I’d say it’s i You guys are are a true you know, when you’re just doing something on a daily basis yours I, it’s Monday I’m just it’s Monday I’m just going to work but I’m telling you as an outsider, it’s extremely inspiring. I admire what you guys are doing. It’s an honor privilege for me to be, you know, part of the team and just love love, love what’s going on here. Let’s Let’s wrap up. Donnie, words of wisdom parting thoughts that you want to share with friends out there today on how they can keep crushing it for SEO for manufacturers.

Donny Kemick  50:27

Think helping, don’t think sales. So the more you can be helping through content through even in your sales process, be the helper be the consultant versus the here’s your RFP or here’s your quote, here’s your quote sign sign sign you know help as much as you can and the sales will follow.

Curt Anderson  50:44

Know your soulmate. Help your soulmate you do those two things, man, you’re gonna be successful right Damon? It’s honestly that simple. Zach attack, parting thoughts, words of wisdom that you’d like to share for SEO for manufacturers.

Zachary Ware  50:59

Just get started, your first blog is likely not going to be the greatest, your 100th blog, you can’t get there without your first you can’t get your 1,000,000th website visitor without the first one. Just get started. Just

Curt Anderson  51:11

get started. I listened to a podcast with the founder of Twitter today or over the weekend. Just you know, just does he remember the first day of Twitter? No, but man, look what you know where that went. So how he words it was empowering thoughts for folks, SEO for manufacturers,

Holly P. Jobe  51:25

things are changing really rapidly with AI and with SEO right now. And I would say it’s really time to put back on the thinking caps to get out your pencil and paper. And you know, start learning as much as you can. So consuming webinars from different resources consuming the latest from stos who know what they’re doing. It’s more important now than ever to not sit on your hunches. And you know, do it the old way. Because that’s how you’ve always done it. It’s time to really start learning and changing your habits and thinking about what’s coming next. And what’s you know, coming down the pipeline, especially with AI and that shouldn’t be scary, that should be exciting. There’s nothing fun about doing the same thing over and over again. And Google’s given us this wonderful opportunity to as marketers change and be creative and think about new ways to do things so just got to take the bull by the horns and like Zack said get started

Curt Anderson  52:14

and how he one more time Can we see your mom’s favorite book? I didn’t look at that. So go on Amazon and connect with Holly connect with all four of these amazing wonderful human beings on LinkedIn grab Holly’s book her mom will thank you both will thank us because it’s such a wonderful book Josh Kersey Oh my friend parting thoughts words of wisdom that you want to share on this wonderful Monday post Mother’s Day

52:39

yeah being in a sales role I still hear hear people say that their customers don’t shop this way you know, they don’t go online and it’s just it’s so not true. Every industry every person everywhere uses some form of online research when making buying decisions. So no matter how complex and how technical at some point, they’re doing some research online so don’t let that get in the way of considering an inbound approach.

Curt Anderson  53:07

Love it I dropped the mic on everything Daymond pistol got my friend any takeaways What was your what was the highlight of the poll 50 minutes was for me what what were your highlights?

Damon Pistulka  53:18

You know, all of it actually there’s so much in here just go back and listen to it because they’re all the way from you know, talking about eat talking about the video and how important that is pairing content with blog or other popular articles they just so there’s so much in here. I think if you’re a manufacturer you should go back to the beginning start over listen to it and and if so, you think it’ll help reach out to protocol ad I mean, you guys know what you’re doing and do it well. So

Curt Anderson  53:47

as these words of wisdom are all my traps. Thank you everyone. Great stuff, Harry. Thank you, my friend. We appreciate it. Thanks, guys. We will close up please connect with our friends here at protocol ad on LinkedIn. Check out their website, tons of amazing content that they have. And they are here to help you move the needle. Damon, Thursday dude, I will be will be ready and raring to go Purdue MEP. We’re going to be teaching manufacturers how it’s called live and thrive. Right? Yeah, he’s about to go live stream. We’ve got another great guests coming up on the show for Friday. Holly, you’re gonna be back with us live next month. You and I are gonna be at the Purdue MEP next month. So all sorts of exciting things going on here. Guys have a great rest of your week. And like we always like to say just go out be someone’s inspiration, just like these wonderful people. How about a big round of applause for protocol ad today. So thank you guys. God bless you and hang out with us for one second. And guys have a great rest of your week. We’ll see you soon Aaron. Thanks, everybody.