State of Marketing to Engineers Research Findings

Curt Anderson  00:01

Hey, good morning. Good afternoon. Happy Monday. You know what, Damon I just set you know, I think Mondays you should do the intro. You know you do the Friday intro then I kind of do the Monday. I think you just need to do both by Can we just?

Damon Pistulka  00:12

Well, we can start that next week then.

Curt Anderson  00:17

Right now, the intro, Damon.

Damon Pistulka  00:19

I, I gotta get myself ready for that one. Oh, you

Curt Anderson  00:22

gotta get I gotta get geared up. So

Damon Pistulka  00:23

there’s like a whole preparation process. Alright, T I have to do you know, it takes a little while you’re Zedd? Yeah,

Curt Anderson  00:31

I threw a curveball at you Ray come. Dude, are you sitting down for this one? Are you ready? Like, no. One? Let’s see if I can count this right. 234 This is a five time repeat offender program. I did you know, did you know that? You’ve been on five came on the first time, right? We totally geeked out had a great time. I asked who your hero was? Do you remember what your answer was? My dad, Leonard. God bless Leonard, the college professor at Texas a&m. Damon. Remember we had a great time. Leonard number took a big pivot mid life. i That was an awesome story. Then we were together in person in Cleveland at the industrial marketing Summit. So we were together and Joe Sullivan, Nicole Donnelly, the whole crew, Jeff Long. Honored like the whole crew. Right. So that was number two. Then in December, you Joseph and Adam came on to promote the industrial marketing Summit. That was number three. And then number four, we were together at the second industrial marketing summit in Austin, Texas, right in your backyard. And you came on the program. And so you’ve been on twice in person. And this is your fifth time. So what do you think of that?

Wendy Covey  01:49

I think that’s amazing. I’m honored. Thank you very much for not only having me on but helping to promote, you know, to helping us marketers connect and hear each other’s stories and experiences and learn together. So you guys are doing a great service to us. And I thank you for that.

Curt Anderson  02:09

Well, right back at you. And we have so much to unpack. So we’ve got one, Avi Happy Monday, boy, drop a note in the chat box. Let us know you’re out there. Let us know you’re coming from and boy, if you have your questions, this is the place to ask man we have the authority V expert, the guru, we’re gonna be talking about marketing strategies, all this research that when he does urine, you’re out. We’re gonna deep dive there. Now when he I asked you, who was your hero, and we said, Of course dad, Leonard Smith, if I have that correct, I have that correct. You, okay? Let’s go here. If I were going to reverse I don’t think I’ve asked you this. Who would come on the show? And I said, Hey, who is your hero? And they looked at me and Damon and said Wendy Covey is my hero. Who are you the hero? Don’t

Wendy Covey  02:57

make me answer that. No, no, sir. No, no, no, you’re gonna have to do your own research. Who I hope would say that. I have a good enough job with with my two kiddos that they would come on and say that so I’ll start there.

Curt Anderson  03:18

Perfect. And you two kids are college or they college. I have

Wendy Covey  03:22

my youngest is graduating in a few weeks actually go into grad school to be a clinical therapist, and she is so fired up about her career. So I’m really excited for her. And then my oldest is an insurance adjuster for a financial technology company. Wow.

Curt Anderson  03:40

Well, I can’t imagine where they get the energy because, you know, you’re just you’re such an introvert,

Wendy Covey  03:44

you know, right. Oh, right. Yeah. All right.

Curt Anderson  03:47

So Wendy, let’s go here, founder of co founder of TREW marketing. And so you know, been on the show multiple times we’ve got dug into your background, just for folks that are new to maybe to true marketing. How what was going on in 2008? If I’m not mistaken, I think it was like a little economy thing going on, but what was going on in 2008 that inspired you to launch to marketing, and then we’re going to do a deep dive right into your research.

Wendy Covey  04:11

Yeah, well, it certainly wasn’t the economy that led to starting a true marketing. But Rebecca Guyer, my co founder and I both worked at Nashville instruments, now known as EMI or now known as a division of Emerson, which I’m still getting used to, and we saw an unserved need to help midsize small to mid sized engineering companies do marketing appropriately, helping them build a strategy, create a website build content that resonates with their target audience. So that was the need that we saw and then right after we started the business and leave our cushy corporate positions is when you know the market fell, but that’s okay. Because by defining this niche and committing to it and adding value to this, you know, this narrow and History, if you will, it’s not that narrow. But because of that our business took off. We went to Wall Street Journal award, that was great. But but most of all, we saw these companies grow and flourish because they had somebody that actually speaks their language. So it’s been 15 actually going on 16 years now.

Curt Anderson  05:18

Isn’t that crazy? 16 years absolute love it. And so, you know, for for entrepreneurs out there, or say, for folks that are corporate wire warriors, like yourself, you know, that nice, stable corporate job, taking that leap of faith. But if you go back in time, can you remember what scary exciting what was? What was that? What was that time like for you? Yeah,

Wendy Covey  05:39

it knew it was scary. And in fact, I remember us sitting at, you know, restaurant at lunch, and she’s like, I just, I just don’t think I could do this. I’m just, you know, she got cold feet. And I’m like, well, Rebecca, I’m gonna do this either way, because I feel like it’s just, it’s the right time. It’s the right thing. And she was like, Oh, I can’t stand it. Okay, we’re doing this. And I will say, what helped us pull it off and fund this ourselves is our two wonderful supporting husbands that said, Sure, don’t make money for a few years. Sure. You know, do you know someone needs to take my husband said to me, you know, one of us needs to take a risk, and stick our necks out there and start something and build something and do it. This is great. I’ll support you. I’m your biggest fan just and, and having that financial security. I mean, I’m not saying it didn’t hurt. No, not take paycheck a few years. But that made all the difference. For

Curt Anderson  06:38

sure. Yeah. Well, I love it another hobby, right, another person analyst that deems you a hero. So let’s go here, you’ve written a book, content marketing, engineered, it’s also name of your podcast, I’ve had the honor and privilege. We were just at the industrial marketing summit together, which you were one of the fearless leaders. And I want to we’re gonna dive into that today. Just and now we’re going to talk about this research project. Okay, so let’s go. Let’s dive in there. And again, for our friends out there, check out true that’s t r e. W marketing, incredible amounts of information. I did put a link to her to Wendy’s website in the chat. Check out true marketing, and we’re gonna you’ll get information on this research. Wendy? What? So it’s, it’s deep dive marketing information for engineers? What inspired you to start this research project? What year? And what was the trigger that really got this going for you?

Wendy Covey  07:31

Yeah, you know, and I’ll flip it. It’s it’s not marketing information for engineers. It’s information about engineers for marketers. It’s Monday. But but that’s what makes the report so unique, is there’s there’s a lot of several studies, really, really solid, good, good studies. And one’s called the mind of the engineer, decoding engineers. There’s lots of, you know, let’s get in the mindset of the engineer and their buying process. But what I wanted to answer, or what we wanted to answer was, you know, what are their behaviors? So they go to social media? Do they like newsletters? Are they willing to fill out a form questions that we wanted the answers to, or things that we knew through experience, but had trouble convincing that Executive Engineer at a midsize company that yes, you know, here’s the data to back up what we’ve seen to our own experience of how engineers seek and consume information. And so we’ve been producing the state of marketing to engineers for seven years, with our partner, partner, global spec. And it’s been a wonderful partnership, because they have a giant database, they do a lot of research during the year. So they have a good research mindset as well. And it’s just been a wonderful resource for my own marketers within my company, to make sure that we’re validating our experience and staying on top of how these engineers are finding that information and making decisions.

Curt Anderson  09:00

Well, there’s so much to uncover right there. Because, you know, we could round about being you know, the mark, you know, when you’re marketer or consultant, lot of times we’re the cobblers kid with no shoes. And what I love again, you know, you have a podcast you’re spearheading, you know, the industrial marketing Summit, you’ve seven years ago, you collaborate with global spec, which anybody in the engineering space, anybody in electrical world knows global spec in the muscle behind, but behind that, what, like, how did you trigger? How did you spark that collaboration to have you kick that off with global spec to begin?

Wendy Covey  09:33

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. And the credit is due to Rebecca, actually, she had this idea and we had an as baby marketers, if you will, back in our ni days, that the folks will come in and present mind to the engineer to our group. So we had been exposed to that for years. And so when we started the business, and we were running into these headwinds of these kind of, you know, old all stuck in their ways sales oriented executives, we said, man, be nice to have data, like I said, that supports our viewpoint. And so when she had the idea to do this study, we actually did the first versions of this with several different media companies. So we didn’t start with global spec, we, you know, not bounced around a little bit, but tried this out, did this with different partners. But once we are with globalspec, it just something worked. It was just the biggest sample size, the best in depth view that we had, I mean, just everything clips, so they were just the right partner for us. And because we had this history of doing this report in the past, they have the history of doing research and other areas. So I think we just both had something really great to bring to the table together. That makes sense, a

Curt Anderson  10:48

lot of chemistry a lot of synergy. Synergy, right, just all of the above, you know, you’re targeting the same folks. And this is fantastic. And so, again, I’ve had the privilege, you know, so it was just keep going. It was a year ago, already a year ago, you and I were at Purdue University, doing, we were doing a report on the 2023 results. And so we wanted to get you back to come on and talk about hey, what’s new? What are changes? There’s a lot of things going on. I don’t know there’s this little AI thing that’s gonna change, you know, getting people a little, you know,

Wendy Covey  11:19

fun topic.

Curt Anderson  11:20

Exactly. So let’s dive in. Like, what are some of the big takeaways that you think the crowd here would love to hear about? You know, especially for manufacturers who, you know, there’s a tagline, Damon, you know, when the engineer, you win the sale, if you win the engineer, you win the sale. So boy, this is Wendy, what you’ve done here is just pure gold. How do you market to engineers, curious minds are dying to know,

Wendy Covey  11:43

I love that. When the engineer when the sale I was when I when I teach some people about defining audience personas. And, you know, they get overwhelmed thinking, oh, there’s all these different people on a buying team. And I say, man, it boils down to one thing, who is that first person who’s going to specify your product, you’re gonna kind of find you and champion you. And that’s that engineer. That’s that person. So that’s all we care. Yeah. So okay, so the finding that I fixate on, and I love the most out of all the ones is we ask an engineer, how much of the buyers journey is conducted online? Before you choose to speak with somebody at the company? And we’ve asked this, we asked this every year, it’s a benchmarking question. But this year, what we did is instead of giving them choices, like zero to 25%, of the journeys done, or 26, to 50, we decided to just give them from from 0% to 100%. Pick a number, which was complete, and it came out 66% 86%. Yeah, that’s a lot. So. So if I’m a brand that hasn’t invested in content on my website, and I’m just trying to have the basic information and get them to reach out to sales, I’m really making this buyer work very hard. And I’m running a risk that they won’t even consider me because I’m not giving them enough information. And that the friction is so strong there. I don’t want to talk to sales, you know, give me information online. Right?

Curt Anderson  13:17

Absolutely, man. All right. Absolutely. Maybe we’ve got a couple of people stopping by Damon, we’ve got MDS in the house and pronounce this correctly. Shubh. So Happy Monday, everybody and eight when the engineer when the sale hashtag. Wow, I love it. So again, drop a note in the chat box. We’re here with Wendy Covey, co founder of true marketing checkout True T r e. W, you want to connect with Wendy on LinkedIn, you’ll thank us later, tons of great information that she puts out on a regular basis, including this great research project that she comes out every year. So 66%, that’s two thirds of the buyer journey is done on line. Right. Let’s take it. Let’s keep it rolling. What else have you

Wendy Covey  14:01

discovered? So So then if we so I’ve convinced you, okay, we need to invest then on on on online tactics, whether that be our own website like owned properties, our website or own social media channels, or other people’s channels like trade shows and technical publications. So another interesting thing we asked and again, this is another benchmarking one that we ask every year. This is say, where do you routinely turn to? To get information like every week, where to go? Where do you routinely go? And the number one place is supplier vendor websites. And so once again, you know, if someone’s listening to this, and they’re cringing because they know their website is dated and you know, doesn’t work? Well, you can’t navigate it, you have a big issue, because that’s really where we go. And then that is followed by technical publications, both online and print. So if you’re not investing any time in pitching contributed articles or advertising Technical Publications, you need to bring back and consider those tactics because you can’t just rely on somebody to find you in search and come visit your website, you need to go to where they are. And you know, Google, I don’t know if you guys have heard as GE is right around the corner from being launched, Google’s making lots of changes to their algorithm. And every time they make a major change, like they did with the helpful content update last year, it can tank people’s websites, even though they’ve been doing everything right. Because Google’s decided everything you’re doing. Yeah, we don’t like it that way anymore. We likely to a different way. So you can’t just rely on organic, you need to look at other channels. And just think about where your buyers are. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  15:44

Okay. Damon, lots of digest right here. So a couple of big guys, we’ve had multiple drop the mic moments. Yes. First off, if you’re just joining us, hey, Harry’s in house, Harry. Happy Monday, my friend. Today, we’ve got Anna. Anna Anna is a fierce engineer. So as an engineer, I definitely do a lot of research before purchasing or suggesting that we purchase something. So Anna, thank you. please chime in with questions here for Wendy. Now, Wendy, I’m going to take I have to take a detour. Wendy Covey, Damon, do you know when he’s related to like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People of eat right now? Or something okay. But we feel like this. We’re getting a masterclass here on the seven habits of highly effective marketing strategies. Engineers. How’s that? Wendy Covey.

Wendy Covey  16:34

I like that I have to steal that.

Curt Anderson  16:36

Shamelessly take it right. So I, so I love it. Okay. Two thirds of the buying journey is done online. Number one. Number two, when I heard the number one source is going direct to somebody’s website, or some type of trade publication. Let’s keep it rolling. What other information we need

Wendy Covey  16:54

social media, do engineers use social media? Well, certainly they do. And YouTube, which I always go back and forth. Is YouTube social, I guess it is, you know, sort of, anyway, YouTube and LinkedIn, are the top sources there, followed by GitHub, in a distant third. And of course, if you’re familiar with GitHub, it’s very software oriented. So that’s pretty specific. Yeah. Reddit is kind of midway down the list, if you look at the research report, but it jumped in popularity quite a bit this past year. And my theory, and I think it’s substantiated is it’s done. So because Google, with their most recent helpful content update has surfaced Reddit results much higher in the results, because Google is trusting that those are shoot that’s human generated content, not AI generated content. So read it, it’s another source another place to consider putting your subject matter experts and joining a dialogue on on technical threads.

Curt Anderson  17:54

You know, I love that we had a electrical component kind of wire harness company years ago. And we’re like, hey, let’s start posting on Reddit. Let’s start posting on medium. And, you know, sure enough, like their ranking started going through, you know, we’re doing a lot of other things. But when we started attacking Reddit and medium, we started seeing some really juicy, you know, ranking. So I liked that you’re talking about Reddit. I think that’s a fantastic place for engineers, taking those deep dive geeky conversations, when he What are you hearing about kind of the, you know, the gorilla, you know, Facebook acts? Were those two fallen on your list? Yeah,

Wendy Covey  18:29

yeah, they were still there, EC X fell a bit as one might expect, it didn’t fall as much as I thought it would. Instagram was pretty low. Facebook was way higher than Instagram. Even even for younger engineers. So in the report, you can see a breakdown by age. And then new this year, we asked personal use, you know, what do you use for personal use? And believe it or not, LinkedIn still made the top three and personal use? And then threads was popular for certain age? Which that was really surprising. Yeah. And speaking of medium, we didn’t ask that. We need to add that next year. I’m glad you brought that up, Kurt.

Curt Anderson  19:10

Yeah. You know what, I used to be a pretty big proponent medium. And then, you know, they’ve had a lot of gateways and you know, so but medium is a fantastic source. Have a couple more comments here. Yeah. I think you guys need to discuss AI Artificial era, we’re definitely going to take a deep dive there. And it says, in most cases, purchases are made based on emotion. Great point, and I couldn’t agree with you more, then login justifies a purchase. Do you find this also be true for engineers? Wendy, any comments there?

Wendy Covey  19:40

Yeah, you know, we we’ve never asked a question that gets to that. And I find that an intriguing idea to do. So. What we’ll do instead is ask questions like, What do you value in a company and we said things like, you know, is it their technical acumen? Is it that they’re Good to the environment. And they have a good social mindfulness aspect to their brand, that they’ve been around for a long time. And so we gave this list of, of different things that, frankly, that companies message about themselves and said, you know, rank this in terms of what you value. And that technical acumen came out on top. And the value based stuff was pretty low on the list. So I, you know, to me, that speaks to say a motion is less important, but know that just because an engineer answers that way, they’re still humans over the motions. So be interesting to test that.

Damon Pistulka  20:37

Yeah. You know, it is it does make sense what you’re saying, though, it’s, I really the 66%. As an engineer, when you’re working in a company, I mean, you you have a specific a specific problem you’re trying to solve, usually. And it’s like, the sooner you can get to that website that gives you that technical information that says, hey, I need a hydraulic sensor for something like this, this operating condition. And it’s a first of all, if you can just put that into Google and something comes up. That’s the best. And, you know, if you want to be on the other side of that, you kind of need to think of that. But then once you get into that website, just, you know, just much information about those things are a pathway for that engineer to find what they need really easily is got to be important in this.

Wendy Covey  21:26

Yeah. No Daman you that really well said. And another question we ask is, What content do you find most valuable during that search? And you will be surprised to hear data sheets? Of course, you know, that table steak, right, have all the technical data served up to you? And then CAD drawings? Very popular. Yeah, your products, right. Next, you know, parametric search, you know, letting me know whether or not the this product is available right now. So how can you self serve, to help that engineer to self serve as much as possible? And just take that friction out of the buyers? Buyers Journey?

Damon Pistulka  22:02

You know? Yeah, you said one thing in there, I think these these people that are trying to get the engineers can add is there’s nothing more frustrating as, as an engineer is going to a website, finding the perfect product and then trying to order it and go, Well, that’s not a that’s not a normal product of ours. It’s a special that we only make and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you’re like, damn, I just put all that time into figuring that thing out. And now I can’t get it. Right, or it’s crazy cost crazy lead time. Yeah. And that does anything, if it’s available is huge.

Curt Anderson  22:37

And that does tie with the emotion of it. Listen to what we’re hearing. Be easy to be found, right for shameless plug. Let’s stop being the best kept secret number one, right? You’re 66% of the journey is online. If I can’t find you, I don’t know you. So now I’m going to your competitor. Right? So number one, you’ve got to be found number two having that information. When Damon I have a little line we’d love to share. Maybe this resonates with you like how can you help that buyer make a buying decision on a Friday night at midnight? Yeah, without having to wait for you to open up your door on Monday morning, you know, and that’s I, right? It’s exactly what you’re describing here. So like, how can we get that information? And the word that I love is I’m getting like chills and think about frictionless, right? Because even if you’re not the cheapest, maybe you’re not the you know, whatever. But boy, you made it easy for me to find you made it easy for me to get that information made it easy for me to kind of build a prototype, maybe add a configurator or whatever that information is. And now you are my person, you are the company. I’m going to do it.

Damon Pistulka  23:37

Go ahead. Yeah, because you think of this, think of the engineer going in there. A lot of engineers, if they’re in r&d, they have budget, they can buy. If you could say, if you had it as simple as this, you got down to that same sensor I’m talking about do you want prototype quantities? Great. You can get them here for this much just order here, boom. If you want production quantities, well, then you go to a different route, right? Because 1000s or hundreds of 1000s or whatever it is, and you let them go that way. But you could get that, like Kurt said, make it super easy. So there’s like Big Bang, it’s coming to him.

Wendy Covey  24:09

Yeah. Okay, so what’s fun in this report this year is when Okay, so all of that applies really well don’t say electronic components, right, or sensors or whatever. But people look at the report and say, Well, what about software? What about turnkey systems? How are their content needs different? And so we actually ask that in this year’s report, we said what think about a major purchase you made recently and we put them in those three buckets and we said what content was most valuable? And it won’t surprise you probably here for software. It was demos and for turnkey solutions and software. I believe it was customer testimonials and case studies and things like that. So another thing to look for if you go download the report.

Curt Anderson  24:50

Nice. Okay. Wendy. So if you recall being a five time repeat offender on our program, we have dropped the mic moments. Then we have like those really You know, we take what we call moments of silence where we need. So if you’re in a software space and this could slide into other aspects of your business demos, show the person how to use what you make. And then testimonials that social proof out there. Couple of comments. I’m going to get Hey, our dear friend Kelly’s in the house, Kelly Kelly, how are you happy Monday, she said, Hey, we had a lot of success getting insights from engineers on Reddit. Love it. Hey, we’ve got a question here. From Harry. What lessons Wendy have you learned from fishing? You can fly them. Hey, what a coincidence. Eight. Before we come back, we Timothy’s coming across the pond. Daymond Happy Monday to you my friend coming to us from Amsterdam. But Wendy, let’s I will digress for a second. Okay, I know we’re coming to the top of the hour sometimes like if you have a top of the hour call in your in you need to leave us please connect with Wendy on LinkedIn. Check out True T r e w marketing. She has her research report. Right on the website. Wendy, you had a wonderful weekend. You were just telling me before we went online, what lessons and fishing apply to engineer marketing to engineers?

Wendy Covey  26:06

Thank you, Harry, so much for asking that question. I have this dream of this whole podcast episode or this keynote. Actually, I have a whole outline in my head of like, fishing and I can imagine like actually wearing a fishing outfit on the keynote stage and doing this whole thing about this a lot here about about a lot. I was fishing over the weekend actually Texas coast. And and I think it comes down to this we often talk you know, marketing speak about making sure that we’re speaking to the personas they want to be, you know, address, what are their pain points? What are their needs? You know, how can I craft my messages and my value proposition just perfectly for them? And how is that any different than what type of beget? Should I use? And should I have a bobber on and you know, just this weekend, we were fishing with some live shrimp and some plastics and we had barbers and not and trying everything we could and then whoever got the bite, we were like, Aha, okay, we’re biting on you know, cut bait today are whatever it is. So really good question.

Damon Pistulka  27:09

That is? That is a great question.

Curt Anderson  27:10

That’s a fantastic question. In perfect analogy, Wendy, and I’m looking forward, I’m going to be front row when you are on that stage delivering that keynote. In your title, I absolutely love it. All right, we have a ton more to unpack. We’ve got another let’s let’s another question here from Timothy. What about custom SaaS applications, integrate applications together, automate, automate repetitive tasks? Wouldn’t that work in manufacturing space? Any? You

Wendy Covey  27:37

know, so I’m in just relating it back to what we asked in the research that’s, that’s somewhat close to what you’re asking, is we did ask about AI. And so when I hear about automate repetitive tasks, I, my head turns to how are engineers using AI? Do they trust AI? And so for the first time, we did ask a set of questions about AI this year. And of course, everything’s changing so quickly on that landscape, I go back and say, Oh, I should have added more questions and different answer answers that here are the things we asked that I think you might find insight from, we asked How are you using AI for work? And the number one answer was 60, something percent was to search for solutions. So I was like, to me talking about my crop moments that gave me chills, because I’m like, Okay, here we go. They’re not just going to Google, they’re going to large language models and searching. And then it was too, I believe, I don’t have any, no, I do have in front of me, hang on, I want to read the other findings, because you asked, improving and testing solutions was the second and then analyzing purchase options was the third. So we didn’t necessarily say Automate, you know, regular tasks, I think that would have been an easy thing for us to, to put on here have a great thing to add. But those were the top three, creating content, interestingly enough was in last place. But of course engineers, engineers don’t really have that as a core part of their job. And then the thing I found more interesting is we said, on a scale of one to 10, where 10 is complete trust in one is lack of trust. How much do you trust AI based tools? You have any guests guys? And I’ll give you Europe. Here’s your hint. You get to Europe and North America, we have both of those numbers. So on a scale of one to 10. Let’s start with with North America. What do you think? How do you think came out? Five.

Curt Anderson  29:36

David, what do you think? Three?

Wendy Covey  29:38

It was actually 6.5 6.5 way higher than way, way higher than I expected to, but the Europeans were at 4.1. I’m

Curt Anderson  29:49

just gonna say three. Okay, so sorry. Yeah. So, alright, so 6.5. So that’s actually pretty high. Right? It’s a lot higher than I would have anticipated. Right? So I have two quick questions because I want to backtrack to a couple of things you said earlier, this is more this is for me, and then we’re gonna let’s do a deeper dive into AI. Okay, for On a personal note, you said LinkedIn, if I heard you correctly, I head down was number three personal what was number one social media platform for engineers personally, that

Wendy Covey  30:18

YouTube, YouTube. And Facebook was number two. So it was YouTube, Facebook, and then LinkedIn. And then in the report, and I’m happy to share it, but but we break it out by six different age groups. Yeah. And YouTube was number one for everyone except 25. And under, and those guys had Instagram and LinkedIn tied. Okay. Very

Curt Anderson  30:40

fascinating. For content, our engineers, are they going to podcasts? Are they listening to going to live streams? Was there any? Any? Yeah,

Wendy Covey  30:50

yeah. So podcasts, podcasts was a really exciting finding. Last year, it was some somewhere around 73%. listen to podcasts weekly for work this year was up to 90%. Not our weekly.

Curt Anderson  31:06

Men are there a lot of drop the mic moments? So for manufacturers out there that are trying to get their foot in the door with manufacturer with engineers? What did we hear 90% podcast? Every single age group is going after YouTube, YouTube consistently LinkedIn. So I mean, there’s, you know, Damon, we’d like to use that line success. Success leaves clues. I mean, there are a ton, when like, you’re just dropping gold. This is just your pure pure gold. Let’s see. Is there anything before we were going to dive into AI? Is there anything else that you want to really hit hard on the research report? Maybe

Wendy Covey  31:47

just a rapid fire. Couple other things that you’ve seen Report? Email is not dead. We’ve seen more people subscribe to six or more newsletters than ever in the past. LinkedIn newsletters are not only known by engineers, so we thought a lot of them wouldn’t even know what that was most new of them and subscribe to them. So that was great to see LinkedIn newsletters, LinkedIn newsletters.

Curt Anderson  32:14

Okay, let’s let’s another moment. Let’s think that in for a second. Yeah. Damon, we I have I have a little newsletter. Wendy, you know what, on my newsletter, the replay of this show, I think goes out on Thursday, which is what does it cost me to? What do you think? Here’s a pop quiz, pop quiz. Damon, what does it cost me to put this little, like, I don’t know how many like little slice video like, like Mike drops that we have, I probably have like, 20 right now with Wendy, that we could put out on a newsletter or on YouTube or anywhere else? When the what does that cost me to put that out on that newsletter? Any? Oh,

Wendy Covey  32:50

I mean, let’s say 1015 minutes of your time? Because the contents done? It’s not I mean, depending on how much narrative you add to your newsletter, but Okay, let’s take us an hour of your time. Very inexpensive, it’s

Curt Anderson  33:03

negligible. And what a great way. So they are aware of LinkedIn newsletters, and email is not dead. So for anybody out there, like, you know, I, I’m a culprit of this one, he may be annoyed with your clients. If it’s something I don’t want to do. I’ll nobody does that anymore. You know? So yeah, we have to, we have to meet our customers where they’re you. Right? What do you say is that like a big takeaway for you when you do this? That’s,

Wendy Covey  33:29

that’s what this report is all all about really is, is helping them meet them where they are. And then of course, with the right message, and the report hints at some of that. But that also takes study of your own customers and that sort of thing. That’s a whole different topic for another day, which I love. I

Curt Anderson  33:48

have to go here for a second. Okay. Okay. What has this research project? Seven years you’ve been doing this? What is it done for you personally? And what has it done for your company, like you put a lot of time, a lot of energy, you’ve really branded yourself, this has taken you to, you know, as a marketer, this has taken you and your company to a different level. Describe what it’s done for you personally, and what it’s done for your company. Yeah,

Wendy Covey  34:13

well, three things. So one, it gave us insight selfishly, for us to do our job better as marketers to serve our clients, to it adds credibility to us as an agency that we have this knowledge that we share this knowledge people come to us, they see that we’re very committed to this niche. And three, it’s a great lead generator, right? Because I hope that everybody listening and watching is gonna run on my website and download it. And of course, you know, what happens then? I have you in my database. And yeah, if you like what you see,

Curt Anderson  34:47

right, yeah, I’d say it’s just so admirable what you do. And again, if we’re anybody in this earlier demo, we go back and like, replay this over and over, there’s a lot of I suppose but, but again, you put out a podcast, you put out all sorts of videos, you are spearheading the industrial marketing Summit, you have a book, you put out all sorts of great research information. How have you created as a leader, as you know, founder, you know, head of your company? How have you taken on to Crete that culture of like, Hey, we’re gonna practice what we preach here? Like, how, how have you been able to do that? So? Well, um,

Wendy Covey  35:25

you know, it’s always been ingrained in our culture of eat your own dog food, you know, let’s try it out first on ourselves, like LinkedIn newsletters, we tried it out on ourselves, before we ever do that with a client, you know, for two reasons. One, is it really effective does it live up to the hype, but also, let’s logistically make sure that we do this well, before we ask somebody to pay us to do this. And as you know, digital marketing is always changing and evolving. So we’re just, you know, like having a podcast and we’re just early on adopting and trying things and learning from it. Well,

Curt Anderson  35:58

absolutely love it. And hate. We’ve got a question here. So. So if I’m saying it, I’m not sure if I’m saying it correctly, I apologize if I’m, which is the best platform for freelance mechanical design engineers, Wendy?

Wendy Covey  36:10

I mean, that’s what type of platforms you mean, social media platform?

Curt Anderson  36:14

What is the best? Let’s Yeah, let’s say social. What’s the best media platform for freelance mechanical design engineers? Let’s say that

Wendy Covey  36:21

that is a very specific, like sliver of audience, if you will. So the report I have here doesn’t ask which engineering discipline They’re in it asked whether or not they’re in r&d, or manufacturing, are they in a technical role, that sort of thing? So there’s certainly mechanical engineers that have answered it, but I don’t have that cross. Yeah, sorry. But, but I will say, you can see, I think, if I did do that cross section, it would come out the same as the group as a whole, because the results have been very consistent over time, and we have a large sample size. So I think you can, the results stand pretty well for that audience.

Curt Anderson  36:58

Cool. So safe to say some takeaways here. If boy manufacturer, if you’re not super active on LinkedIn, or some presence on LinkedIn, there, you’re you’re at a deficit, YouTube videos, definitely getting content, getting information, answering those questions, really going full throttle on your website, boy, if your website is from 2000, even I was gonna say, 2005 2015. We’re behind the curve.

Wendy Covey  37:26

I mean, a good rule of thumb is every three years, you need to be reinventing your website. And it may be it’s not a massive overhaul, but you need every three years, I guarantee you your performance has slowed something, something’s up. So be sure to run an audit and your content gets stale. So just edit your content, look at your site for performance and consider redesigning, refreshing every three years at a minimum, right now. When,

Curt Anderson  37:56

again, I so we’re gonna dive in AI before any other takeaways on the report that you feel would be really pertinent value?

Wendy Covey  38:07

I think the major ones I mean video content, very important. You touched on that. So the YouTube findings back that up? And then there was one other one What did we know? Oh, tradeshows. Most said that they were going to two or more trade shows this year. So you know, we saw that come back after COVID. And I don’t think that’ll surprise anyone. It feels like in person events are are hot right now. Yep,

Curt Anderson  38:31

absolutely love it. And again, speaking of hot, you certainly put on a wonderful party at the industrial marketing Summit. Man, that was, oh, that made my year. That was just such a great time. One thing that I love them, and I obviously we love the live stream platform, it’s a great, it’s extremely efficient way to create content, we’d like to say it’s a great way to AI proof your business. So when do you started touching on some different aspects that you discovered in the research? Let’s dive into the research. And then I’d love to, I want to find out what’s going on at true marketing how you guys are embracing AI. But let’s go back to the research, you discovered that people are using it. Can you go through that list one more time? The AI.

Wendy Covey  39:13

Top Ways engineers are using AI is for search. And then there’s sort of myth when it comes to trust, right, somewhere somewhere in the middle, depending on where you live. Yep. So those were the the two things that we studied. And so what we’re seeing though, as we look at the search landscape, and we see what’s happening is people are going going to more of a multimodal search approach. So they’re going to Google for quick answers. And then they’re going to the chat Qi pts and clods and you know, all those other platforms to do more in depth research and have that conversation. Gemini. You know, Google’s Gemini is like that. And so when Google introduces Ste we’ve been in the beta for this for over A year, that’s going to be sort of be in the middle, it’s going to have some of that generative answer kind of like snippets on steroids. But then it’ll also have some of those links where you can find sources of to me, if I’m an engineer, I’m not going to trust that generative response, I need to know the source data, especially since we know that there’s some inaccurate stuff lying around, or some made up stuff. And so perplexity is great because it shows actual sources. And I think SGX is going to do the same. So I’ve we’ve just been studying that really closely. Because, as a, you know, as a marketer that wants organic traffic, I’m now sort of panicking and saying, oh, okay, so Google is going to drop and now, how do I, excuse me? How do I optimize for these other platforms? And the answer right now looks kind of ugly. Do you know what the answer is? Have you heard? It’s a volume game. It’s the more time your company is mentioned, along with whatever, you know, that phrase that application, whatever that you want to be associated with, the more you’re mentioned, on as many places as possible, the more lengthy you’re going to surface. On those large language models. It’s it’s a terrible news for smaller businesses. It is it is. You’re an expert of that. Right. So we want to hold out hope that this is a temporary thing. And over time, they’re going to put more I don’t know, if if the, the AI, you know, the what will improve to make it make sure that it’s quality content? Yeah. There’s me interested, so

Damon Pistulka  41:44

easy now just to spit out garbage with just posted? And it’s like,

Wendy Covey  41:49

yeah, do not do that. Yeah. So what we’ve been coaching our clients to do is to focus first on quality content that your engineers actually need. I do think that that content that’s unique, and its quality will win over time. But then take that same content that same, you know, idea and pitch an article and go in somebody’s podcasts in post on Reddit, so you can be in all these places, but be there for something that’s, that’s unique to you with your own viewpoint. That makes sense.

Curt Anderson  42:23

It makes a ton of sense. So okay, so a little bit of, we’re diving into a little bit of AI, how do you AI proof your business, if you will, right? Because for if it becomes a volume game, then you’re at the risk of like, you know, if your competitors just, you know, putting out tons of you know, now we will see garbage Damon, we won’t use that word, right? Like not great concept, Wendy, but, you know, I’m using it, Damon’s using it, I’m sure your company is using it. Let’s talk about the real productive, efficient ways. We had a speaker, you had a speaker, you had numerous speakers at the industrial marketing Summit. And hopefully, I’m creating a little bit of FOMO on the program today, because, you know, rumor has it that there might be another industrial marketing summit in 2025. And if there is, boy, I encourage everybody to go to it, because it really was a highlight for me, we have a number of your speakers that are going to be on our program talking about AI. We have Karla Gregory Dale, a couple other folks. And we heard a lot of different strategies with AI that are really powerful. What’s going on at true without giving away any secret sauce? Yeah,

Wendy Covey  43:27

no, I’m happy to talk about this. And, you know, I’ll go to I was recently at an electronic components conference, and it was targeted towards sales and executives at these companies. And they had aI speakers that said, you can do you know, everything with AI, look at all these marketing functions. They said, it can write your marketing plan, you can do you know, 14 LinkedIn posts today, you can do this. And so Morgan and I were presenting after that, and we were very furiously creating new slides to say no, no, no, you could do that. But that’s not what you should do, right? Because those LinkedIn posts, those aren’t going to be authentic to your company. And that marketing strategy isn’t going to be something that’s tailor made to your business goals and what you need. So I like to tell people think of AI as a marketing intern, would you give an intern Junior strategy over to your intern? No. But could your intern make your life easier? Like, Hey, intern, create this very well written white paper? And why don’t you create social posts for it, and then write those in a tone that matches our executive spokesperson. And then let’s put it in a queue for them to review and then use and post great use of AI. Right save me a lot of time to do it that way. But expecting, you know, that intern to just write the white paper from scratch, now you’re gonna run into some trouble. Right.

Curt Anderson  44:53

Damon, what what what are some tips that you want to share from your perspective?

Damon Pistulka  44:58

Well, I mean, you If the any of the AI tools out of the box, I think are honestly kind of just toys. But if you take them or you buy a you subscribe to some of them that are highly customized. I mean, we’ve seen in applications, summary of data really good at that, if you’re if you’re using it in a closed environment, it’s incredible at that. Yeah. And and if you are willing to put the time into creating custom GPT, and no, Timothy’s talking about that, you can get things much closer to what you want them to look like and what what they sound like, what’s still, like you said, it’s not just blah, and post blah, and you can’t do that. But we’re for engineers and stuff. And we’re people that aren’t normally creative writers, the process that’s from zero to 50%, is often the hardest. And I think it can help a lot with the zero to 50%. And then from there to the end, then you go, Oh, I like this. I don’t like this and you start to make it sound like you and do that. It saves so much time because you’re sitting here with mindmeld just going I don’t know what I’m going to embody. Yeah, bring

Wendy Covey  46:13

it over. Here you go. Right, bring for Buddy. And that’s exactly how we’re using it most is, uh, you know, brainstorming and then imagine coming in and saying, Okay, I have an outline have we’re solid, I’ve interviewed the subject matter expert. But maybe there’s some other aspects that I’m missing. You know, hey, I, what else am I missing on this subject, and some of it is garbage. And some of its really helpful. Into the custom GPT point, I heard something interesting recently, which was a year from now, we won’t even talk about prompt engineering, we won’t have to do as much customization or it’s going to look different, because we’re going to have this application layer, right, we’re going to have companies like Jasper that are building off of closed loop MLMs. And they’re providing us the shortcut to where I as a marketer don’t need to do this really long prompt every time and figure out how to get the most out of it. Jasper send that for me or HubSpot has done that for me. And so it’d be interesting to see if we still go straight to the LLM itself, or this application layer becomes more popular to do our jobs.

Damon Pistulka  47:22

Yeah. And I have some of those some of those applicants, some of the newer ones now. And that is probably the way it’s gonna go for people that are going to use it seriously. That’s for sure. Yeah. All kinds of things. It’s going to be able to power but awesome stuff. Yeah. A couple

Curt Anderson  47:39

eight, Timothy says, Sure. Matt, on the trust and effectiveness. So I love that comment. Anna says AI can be helpful, but I tend to want to rewrite the content to make it more interpretive. Wendy, what do you think of that comment there?

Wendy Covey  47:54

Yeah, I agree. And of course training, I heard Morgan had did a presentation on helping salespeople. And one of the things she said I found interesting is she said feed AI like a transcript from a call or a presentation and say, what is the tone of voice, and then it’ll it’ll describe it to you. And then now you know how to then the next time you use AI assist to write something you can say, do it in this tone and voice and tell it that same tone of voice that it said to you if that makes sense. And I thought that was interesting. But I think she also touches on a point. Everybody thinks AI is gonna save all this time. But for our writers, it for that original piece, it hasn’t necessarily save time, but it’s made it a more robust quality piece because of that aspect of research and brainstorming. Yeah, absolutely

Curt Anderson  48:44

love eight and Allen’s in the house here. I did. Alan might have caught us at Purdue last year. When when he’s out in Indianapolis. So Happy Monday to my friend Ellen and Timmy. Some of the jobs boring, repetitive tasks without feeding it any sensitive data, beware. But that’s what I feel you should feed A I? Where were the thoughts on that comment. Love

Wendy Covey  49:05

that. Absolutely. And that privacy thing is important. So unless you’re on a paid version, and yeah, it’s everything’s out there. You know, I’ll give you an example of a boring repetitive task. I have this research right and have all this data. So once this research report became public, we went ahead and loaded it in and started to test it. So I might have been able to say oppo freelance mechanical engineers, let me just, you know, go into my AI tool, ask that question. And I’m not going to a pivot table and you know, looking through information so I think Timothy is on something there. Well,

Curt Anderson  49:40

I absolutely love it and I so when I want to be mindful of your time because I could keep you for like three or four hours here and it’s just such man I tell you every I have such patients every time you’re on the show, and you just absolutely just so much fun blast past my expectations. So let’s, let’s go here. First off before Have any folks that have been cutting out for their next upcoming call? Where can people find Wendy copy?

Wendy Covey  50:05

LinkedIn is the best place. It’s my name so easy to find me and then true marketing.com And it’s t r e w. Marketing and you’ll find the research there. You can find my podcasts on any of the major podcast platforms. And we also have a podcast blog on the website too. Right?

Curt Anderson  50:24

Yep. And her she has a book on Amazon right same name is your podcast Content Marketing Engineer. So Alright, a couple quickies before we let you go Wendy off. First off, I want to give a huge roaring Thank you. So for everybody has been sitting down and having your lunch or whatever time zone you’re in Timothy’s probably having dinner. But about a big round of applause for Wendy Covey. Giving us the seven habits of highly effective marketers to engineers, right money like, Hey,

Wendy Covey  50:53

girl, I need to discuss trademarking with.

Curt Anderson  50:57

We’ll work that out. But first off, thank you, Wendy, from the bottom, my heart, I appreciate you. Your friendship. I just my respect, admiration off the charts for you. And what you’ve done again, with your podcasts, how you’re leading the charge with this industrial marketing Summit? Can guys Google industrial marketing summit for 2024, you can check out what went on last year, strongly. And we have a number of their speakers coming up on the show over the next few weeks. So we have some really juicy topics coming up and it’s going to be great. When he before I let you run if you have one more minute. For for folks out there. You know, back in 2008, Monday, K, con mes a little upside down in 2008. You took this leap of faith as you shared earlier, if you’re just catching us now go back and hit the rewind button. But when you started your journey question for you. What was what was the as you started your entrepreneurial journey? What was the best business advice that you received? with getting your business off the ground? What was the best business advice that you recall? Receiving that you felt really helped you as an entrepreneur? Yeah.

Wendy Covey  52:05

Avoid analysis paralysis, you need to act you need to trust your guts and get whatever information you can but be be an activator, you know, be action oriented and avoid analysis paralysis.

Damon Pistulka  52:20

Avoid that one.

Curt Anderson  52:22

That’s a huge just be decisive man. Sometimes even if it’s not the right decision, just making a decision, just plowing forward. Now when he left someone you’re on a show we had Monday, we had Adam and Joe and we did the walk up song. Do you remember what your walk up? Song was?

Wendy Covey  52:37

Oh, yes, of course I do.

Curt Anderson  52:39

It was the tiger. Yeah. I think you said you’re a high school mascot. So, so we always liked that question. Here’s my last question for you today. Who 20 I’d say you are and I mean this from find my heart. You are just such an inspiration to me. I’m just so honored that we became fast friends. Who are what is an inspiration for you coming into the rest of the year? Who or what is the inspiration?

Wendy Covey  53:10

Goodness, you know, I’m right now I’m inspired. And I know I keep turning a family members here. But my husband’s inspiring me right now. Nice. And what’s your, what’s your husband’s name? You know, his name is Randy. And he changed careers. About three years ago, nice, completely changed from technology sales to ranch real estate. And, and is just picking up new hobbies and making new friends and helping the community and he’s just connecting with people in new ways. And as newly as new empty nesters. It’s like you kind of start life over a little bit, you know, and I just, he’s just put himself out there and been brave. And I think coming out of COVID A lot of people are still dusting off those skills of, you know, how do I network? How do I make new connections? And even at networking events, it’s kind of funny right now because people are like, you know, awkward, but then they’re acknowledging their awkwardness and I love that and so he’s he’s really just being vulnerable and putting himself out there and I think it’s awesome. Well,

Curt Anderson  54:20

what a thank you what a great and as husbands Damon answer, so, yeah, shout out to Randy and just I absolutely love that. And what’s fascinating is you shared your dad’s story, Leonard had a huge career pivot, kind of midlife or later in life and you shared that story about mom and you know, how does it now here Randy’s doing something very similar. So I just I love how you’re kind of found that trend. Harry our friend here says great content Monday your tone, your smile your energy is appreciated and had completely contagious so Damon takeaways as we close out what man was this?

Damon Pistulka  54:59

I This I look forward to your report every year when it because you guys are digging deep into the engineering mind and really understanding how the engineers are making buying decisions and really helpful stuff for manufacturers or people with products that engineers are going to be specifying. So it’s always cool talking to you and I know you guys from marketing standpoint to the AI and how you’re using it’s so cool to hear. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  55:23

same thing. Okay, well, any parting thoughts, words of wisdom you want to share as we close out? Yeah,

Wendy Covey  55:29

everybody get there. Get out there. Experiment with AI. Experiment with reaching your, your target engineers and buyers in new ways, but never forget. Content is king quality content.

Curt Anderson  55:44

Cool. That’s the last job my job of the day so windy. Thank you. We appreciate you just more than you can know. Everybody, thank you for the comments today. Thank you. We know how busy you are. And there’s a lot going on. And that’s why we just love Daymond I love taking time to bring just Rockstar all stars, incredible marketers like our friend Wendy here. So have an amazing, wonderful, fantastic week. God bless you. And we will David I think we’re back here Friday with another great

Damon Pistulka  56:12

Friday,

Curt Anderson  56:13

man, fair that we get to hang out with such wonderful people. So guys, have a great Monday. We will see you soon. Hang out with us one second Monday. Thanks

Damon Pistulka  56:21

everyone. Bye