The Most Common Marketing Mistakes Businesses Make and How to Avoid Them

Curt Anderson  00:06

And we’ve got all sorts of friends. We’ve got Scott. Happy Thursday, Scott, Christy Kelly, my buddy Alan’s in the house today, Alan Happy Thursday. Got Michelle, Amanda. Ashley, and I’m letting people pile in. We’ve got Caroline’s here today. Hey, Caroline. We’ve got Brian. And please join us. Okay, man, did everybody get a good night’s sleep last night or what this is? Man, we need me. Julie. Do you? Did you stretch out? Did you get some rest and like get a little stretch before? This is gonna be a good one. I

Julie Warner  00:52

did. Yeah. No, I’m super excited for this.

Curt Anderson  00:54

Awesome, cool. Okay, um, you know what we I’m letting people in my name is Curt Anderson. And we are Brad time I like to be prompt for those of us that you know, people that show up at the top of the hour. Julie, do you want to kick things off a little intro?

Julie Warner  01:09

Sure. Thanks to everyone for joining. I know, we still have some people kind of rolling in. But Special thanks to Curt and Laurie for offering these webinars for our clients in our you know, our friends in the Hoosier State. Everyone likes to know, mistakes before we make them instead of making them then finding them. So we’re excited for this program. But Purdue MEP for people who don’t know, there’s a manufacturing system Partnership Center in every state plus Puerto Rico. And I like to say we just help manufacturers with any of their problems, whether it’s Lean leadership, quality, anything man marketing issues, we have resources to help so reach out to us.

Curt Anderson  01:51

Absolutely. Well, Julie, thank you. Thank you for hosting the big party today. It’s always such an honor and privilege. I’m still letting some friends in today. And so all right. My name is Curt Anderson, what an honor and privilege we know how busy all of you are. And so we we really appreciate you taking the time to join us. We encourage us to be super interactive, if you want to. First off if we were on person, we’d be high fiving we’d be maybe stoned out hugs. Right Laurie and maybe and handing out business cards. I don’t know people even use business cards, Larry, I don’t know. But you know, if I would encourage you guys welcome you encourage you drop your LinkedIn in the chat box if you could. And it’s a great opportunity to connect with some new friends here who know me, you know, maybe there’s a new vendor, a new collaboration partner, maybe there’s a customer sitting right here. So great opportunity, drop your LinkedIn in the chat box. Laurie, I’ll keep an eye on the chat as we’re rolling through and so I’m going to give a great introduction here for my dear friend Laurie Hi began my name is Curt Anderson. My company is called b2b tell about my LinkedIn and profile we do these little fun webinars at Purdue every month as Julie just said there’s an MEP Manufacturing Extension Partnership in all 50 states what a great incredible resource for our manufacturers. If you’re coming to us from another state encourage you invite you welcome you. Check out your local MEP, but here at the Purdue MEP the number two team in the country for hoops this year. Congratulations. You guys were this close. But a great year of basketball for Purdue but we want to do a deep dive on marketing strategies for manufacturers. I’m gonna introduce introduce my dear friend Lori. Highby. Lori. Highby is the founder and CEO of Keystone Click we’d like to call her since she’s from Wisconsin, the big cheese. Click. She’s a fierce advocate for US manufacturing. She specializes exclusively for industrial b2b and manufacturing companies with her marketing guru on this I just made up that word Laurie. So I know your guru nests for you. And so we’re gonna take a deep dive here. And by the way, if we have any hockey players out there, Laurie is a fierce hockey player. So Laura, you are dedicated to educating folks who work at different universities. And so we’re just thrilled to have you. Thank you for joining us today.

Lori Highby  04:07

Yeah, I’m very excited to be here. Thanks for the invite Curt and obviously a truly and everyone I’m excited to share the knowledge so we’re gonna dive in right away. But as Curt said, don’t hesitate to ask questions Curt’s gonna be monitoring the chat and he’s he’s good at the pausing need to get deeper. So if something’s you’re scratching your head on whatever, you want some clarity, I’m always open to making sure that you totally understand the ins and outs of what we’re diving into. That being said, what we’re gonna cover today is the b2b customer journey, which is extremely important to understand that so that the you understand deeper what are the top mistakes that I’m finding, but not only I’m going to talk about what the mistakes are, but how you can be proactive and make sure that they’re fixed and then we’ll open up for questions at the end. If you did You get your question and throughout the conversation. So real quickly, Keystone click is a strategic digital marketing agency. We help our clients build brand awareness and generate leads online. We do that by first conducting research to help our clients better understand their customer. We take all the data and the insights we collect, build a strategic plan and support the full implementation of that website. Social media, paid advertising, media production and marketing automation. I knew there was another one in there. Me, Curt did give a awesome intro I also host two podcasts one is called social capital where I interviewed professionals globally on the topic of networking. And then the other one, I co hosts a show called a broadcast for manufacturers. And it’s myself and two other broads. And we talk broadly about manufacturing. Great, great show, we’re actually about to have our 50th Episode go live very soon, super excited for that. Right there on that slide is a picture of my dad, he worked at a tool and die shop when I was growing up and has always been in the manufacturing space. And that’s where my love of manufacturing came in to be. So I have great memories of walking in and just seeing how things are made. And I love telling that story and helping others. Other manufacturers really do that. And as Curt alluded to, I’ve been heavily involved in the teaching space for quite some time, I was an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee for many years. And now I teach for a national marketing organization called agency Management Institute, I teach a handful of workshops a year for that along with wherever Kurt pulls me in. I’m a big advocate of education, but also encouraging you to share what you’re learning with others. So if you want to take a screenshot of something posted on social media, and share what you learn, and kind of that aha moment, feel free to tag us in it, I definitely am a fan of paying it forward and, you know, letting everyone win. So let’s dive into the customer journey. Why is it important to understand that the customer journey is really about knowing the different stages that that buyer is in, and really what type of messaging needs to be communicated or experience at that person needs to have. So the customer journey that we fleshed out is in five different stages awareness, consideration, action, experience, and advocacy. And we’re going to kind of dive into all of those. But the more that you understand kind of what that ideal customers thinking at those different stages and how you need to be able to connect with them, the easier it is to ultimately have a sale at the end of the day. So the first stage is awareness. And really, it’s important to make sure that your ideal customer understands who you are, and what solution you’re able to bring to the table for them. So it’s kind of just casting a really big net saying, hey, world, this is who we are. And then when they’re at that stage of I need to start making a decision. This is where you want to make sure that you’re nurturing and providing valuable insights that are going to really focus on establishing that trust. So that it’s easy for that ideal customer to say yes, I have options to pick from, but this is a company that I want to move forward with. And then action at the end of the day, you have to make it really easy for that customer to say, to decide how they want to move forward working with you, whether it’s signing that contract, you know, adding something to a shopping cart, you know, whatever it is, you want to make it easy for them to move into that taking action phase. And then oftentimes people think the customer journey kind of stops on is only focused on the sales side. But we have to deliver an amazing experience as well. Because that’s going to create brand loyalty for your customers that’s gonna have that repeat business. But also we want to get to the point where that customer becomes an advocate of your brand. And so making sure you’re delivering awesomeness throughout the entire experience gets them to be an advocate. So when someone says, Hey, do you know anyone that does X, your brand is the one that shows up at the top of their mind, and you’re getting the referrals. That’s where advocacy is extremely important. And I find a lot of people tend to focus more on the front end, which is the sales side, and less emphasis on the nurturing your current customer relationships and turning them into brand ambassadors for you. That being said, let’s dive into this. So I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years, I’ve worked with Fortune 500 companies and worked with small mom and pop shops. There’s definitely trends that I’ve seen and all all stretches are making these mistakes. So it’s not just the little guys it’s not you know, not just the big guys, it’s all of them but knowing what these mistakes are are going to is going to help elevate you and reposition you and In a better spot than your competitor competitors, excuse me. Mistake number one, the self centered website. I’m sure Kurt’s going to appreciate this one quite a bit. A lot of times, and this is catered a little bit more on the manufacturing side, obviously. But I see a lot of manufacturers websites where they’re just talking about themselves. And there’s no clean flow or organization. There’s a lot of big mistakes, specifically on the homepage, or just saying, This is what we do. Or this is our list of equipment that we have, or look at our really big building. No one cares about that. At the end of the day, what they care about, is can you solve the problem that I have? They don’t necessarily care about the equipment, unless they’re educated enough to know this equipment is going to solve my problem. But more times than not, they’re just worried about, can you solve this problem that I have? So how are we going to fix this? First and foremost, focus on that problem, make it very clear and obvious for someone that’s visiting your site to really understand that one, they’re in the right place to you understand their pain, and three, you are ultimately the solution for that. So oftentimes, when I look at a website, I do what I refer to as the billboard test. So when you’re driving down the freeway, you see a billboard, you basically have seven seconds to capture someone’s attention, because you’re driving. So things happening on a website, someone clicks on a website, they look at it, seven seconds goes by, they’re not finding what they’re looking for, they’re clicking the Back button and finding something else that is hopefully going to be the solution to their problem. There’s three certain things that I look for in this billboard test. One, is it clear and obvious? What it is that you that you can do? So is it are you getting to the point right away. And this example here, I put the statement, very big and bull short and long run metal stamping with 6000 pound capacity for aerospace, hardware and medical industry, it is very clear and obvious what this company does, who they do it for and what their capacity is. The second is, what is the proof that you have that you can actually do this. So and we’ll talk a little bit more about this. But this is other clients, case studies, testimonials, industry, recognition organizations. That’s the proof. And the third thing is, is it clear what the next step is that I should take in order to start a conversation with you. And that’s where scheduling an appointment request a quote, whatever it is, those three things are vital and should be positioned on every single web page of your site. If not, they’re going to hit the back button and find someone else that can solve their problem. All right, moving on to mistake number two, ignoring email. And I’ll admit, I have a love hate relationship with email, my inbox is quite ridiculous. But that being said, it is a very, very, very important tool of your marketing strategy. You need to be focusing on building that list. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. Three in particular, and I hope I remember all three of them. One, you have control of Route pushing a message that you want to be communicating to get in front of someone’s in their inbox. Now think about this, people only open an email because of one of two reasons One, the sender to the subject line. If you don’t know the sender, or they don’t know you, the subject line has to be so enticing that it’s encouraging them to open it. One of my biggest pet peeves is getting an email that just says like March newsletter, there’s no information that’s telling me what this is about, and why I should open it beyond March newsletter. The only reason I may consider opening it is because of who the sender is. And they’ve already established that credibility and trust me, so having an enticing subject line that will help open the inbox. Reason number two, why email is important. You can build that list that you have and upload it into different social media channels, and do targeted advertising to what’s referred to as a look alike audience. So if you have a list of all of your customers that you’re working with, and let’s say there’s like 500 names on there. Well, everyone’s email is associated with some sort of social media account. There’s a lot of demographic information, size of business, Job Title, Location, the list goes on and on. What we can do is like upload that to Facebook, or LinkedIn or Twitter and say look at and analyze the characteristics of this email list and find everyone else that looks just like this within a 200 mile radius and put my ads and messaging in front of them. That’s extremely powerful. But you can only do that if you have a quality email list. The third thing and this is something that most people don’t even think about, but the value of have an email list aligns with that word right away the value of it. So if you’re looking to sell your organization one day, and I have heard so many amazing stories that the value of this community and the email list and the strength of it, the integrity of the quality of that email list was considered up a factor, and the total sale price when someone wants to sell their business, so that is extremely powerful. So let’s take a look at that, how are you going to start doing that sending regular newsletters to educate your, your audience, and then you can share that information on your social media channels, really leaning into marketing automation. So you can use automation for things such as welcoming a new customer and getting them set up to have an amazing experience working with you that goes back to that experience part in the customer journey, you can use it for nurturing. So if you’ve got someone in your sales funnel, you can continue to nurture them and remind them of the value they’re gonna get by working with you, or even upselling or cross selling. All of that can be automated within email. And then we also talked about the targeted ads a little bit further. So building your email list is all about adding value. You don’t want to just put on your website, sign up for our newsletter, there’s no reason or value add for me to sign up to the newsletter by just saying sign up for our newsletter, you have to explain and communicate what they’re going to get in exchange for sharing their email to you. So if it’s weekly tips, or how to how to save money on your production system, whatever it is, you need to have some sort of value exchange to capture their email address. Any questions on those two things so far? Kurt? Well,

Curt Anderson  16:49

I’m going to I’m going to throw a shameless plug for you, Lori. So plug your ears because I know you’re very humble. You’re very modest. So Lori does a great job of you know, not do as I was do is I do not do as I say one of those things,

Lori Highby  17:01

I say not what I do, but

Curt Anderson  17:04

But you have an amazing newsletter, I look forward to reading it, it is very thorough, it’s helpful. It’s the word you just said, valuable. The other thing is, you know, you know, manufacturers are notorious for being active on social media. But you know, with social media, you don’t own those folks, you know, if something happened, or you know, whatever something went away with Facebook, or LinkedIn, or whatever it might be, you own that email list. So two points. I strongly encourage everybody check out Lori’s website Keystone click, she has a wealth of information for manufacturers. Number one, number two, I encourage you to check out her newsletter, tons of information there. And it’s I think you do a great job of practicing what you preach, Laurie. So that was, that was no and again, if you guys join us late, I encourage you invite you connect with the folks at the Purdue MEP connect with I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn, Lori and I have both dropped our LinkedIn profiles in the chat. Also encourage you if you if you popped in on a few minutes after drop your LinkedIn in the chat box great opportunity to connect with people. My friend Ellen has a question I’m going to grab here. Sure. Laurie, how do you see the timeline from prospecting to scheduling a call? How many email touchpoints? Do you use to get that meeting? And what is your typical Keydets? I was great question Ellen. Thank you, my friend. Yeah,

Lori Highby  18:20

it’s a great question. And I’m gonna give you the very typical marketing answer, which is it depends. You have to understand your customer and what is involved in their buying decision process. And that’s going to be different for every single business. It depends on the pain and the frequency in which, you know, what is that typical timeframe? I like to do anywhere between three and seven emails. And you know, that’s kind of broad. And I would say it changes based on is it weekly? Or is it every couple of weeks, whatever that cadence is. What I do specifically for our sales process is the first three weeks, it’s weekly, and then I moved to a monthly cadence of just kind of nurturing. But depending on where they move in the sales funnel that might shift depending on how, you know if they’re closer to the sale point, I’m a little bit more aggressive with my messaging, as opposed to that brand awareness such as more kind of value add nurturing, but it depends, and that’s why the research is really important to understand. You know, what is that that typical buying decision timeline for your target customer? Good question.

Curt Anderson  19:27

Great question. Keep them coming. Guys. If you have any other questions, please don’t be shy.

Lori Highby  19:32

Great. All right. Number three is ignoring your credibility. Basically, what we’re not doing is telling our audience how awesome we are. So yeah, there’s a level of we want to you know, being humble is okay. But the reality is we have to show the proof that we can indeed do the thing that we’re saying we can do so share the stories and there’s a ton of different ways that you can do that awards. You’ve received any sort of accreditation that you’ve earned. Client logos can be extremely impactful. And I know oftentimes in the manufacturing space, there’s some challenges with that. But really, if you have some great client logos, and you have a prospect looking at your website, they’re gonna say, Oh, well, they do business with this company, okay, I’m gonna pay a little bit closer attention. I’ve literally seen people, business owners sit up in their seat when I’ve presented to them and said, Here’s some of the brands that we’ve worked with, they went from slouching to like leaning in, because of the logos that they saw in our presentation. Case studies, data stats, I always like seeing that on websites know if you can get it have some fun with it animated a little bit, but like, we’ve built X amount of millions of parts, you know, like, that’s a factor of Wow, that’s amazing. They’ve done this testimonials. Any sort of media or press exposure, if you’ve had articles written about you, you know, industry publications, or whatever local news, that is trust factors, it’s important to show that you have credibility. And social proof is, is probably one of my favorite things to really talk about that other people advocating for you. That’s an advocacy component in that customer journey. If someone is writing on social media, or raving about you, or publicly stating that they’ve enjoyed the experience of working with you, that’s social proof proof that you can indeed do the thing that you said you want to do. Number four, and this is probably manufacturers are notorious for this. But lack of distinction. Basically, you’re all saying the same thing. Everyone is saying, we’re cheap, we’re fast, we do it, we have the highest quality, you have to really stand out. And I know there’s the saying The riches are in the niches but trying to be like everyone else, you’re gonna attract no one, you’re just kind of blending in the sea of sameness is what I like to say, and you want it you want to stand out. So this is a great example of the sea of sameness. This is a company that we worked with a few years ago. They do hydraulic cylinders, and their message. This is their big message that they would talk about, we manufacture high quality air and hydraulic cylinders, all cylinders are made same high quality components, we’re located in the Midwest, you know, this is very blah, messaging. We have an exercise that we do, we call it the XYZ statement. The X is what you do, y is who you do it for, and z is the benefit that they received by working with you. So we have that old statement. And we’ve crafted it using this exercise. And the new statement. This is the differentiator that’s really pulling at the strings of trying to get in front of that right fit client. We build legacy pneumatics and innovative light sensor controls for forward thinking disruptive companies. So they can resolve and repeat iterative processes of those two statements, which one would actually draw you in to want to learn more? Differentiation is key. And the beauty here about saying who it is that you’re working for, I mean, forward thinking disruptive company. So this company, when we did this for them, their website and whatnot, he actually decided to put this that statement on his banner at a trade show, and it just pulled people in. Because if you’re an owner of a company, you’re like, I’m going to be known as a forward thinking disruptive company. What are these guys got going on? The more adjectives you use, and I’m typically not a fan of overusing adjectives. But in this statement, if use correctly, you’re going to really pull and attract the right type of people that you want to be working with. Take a screenshot of this, whatever you want to do, I can promise you this exercise. What we do with our clients is typically around an hour, an hour and a half, because it requires a lot of thinking and really getting clarity on what is it that we want people to know us for? Who is it that we’re servicing? And what is that outcome benefit that they get at the end of the day. This is a great formula for that elevator pitch when you need to just tell people in 30 seconds what it is that you need to do. All right, ignoring SEO, I know this is kind of Kurt’s little ecosystem here. Lots of value add here. But at the end of the day, I see a lot of companies that are not putting the time and energy into SEO, because it’s a long game. They want that immediate quick win. And I and I know and I understand and I appreciate that. But it’s very important. And actually it’s becoming even more important. With Voice Search and AI. Google is processing close to 8.5 million searches probably more than that. Now, this was like last year and data point. The majority of that cost Summer journey experience typically starts on Google, someone has a challenge that they are unable to solve. So they go to Google, they type in and they realize that was a broad search, I’m going to refine it a little bit. And then they’re kind of looking at their options that they have. And this is, you know, really simple it down like Android or iPhone, what are the pros and cons, we’ve all seen these types of articles, but you can do the same thing for yourself and your business. They’re watching videos, YouTube is owned by Google, for eight YouTube videos, it’s gonna help take over those search engine results page. They’re asking their network for recommendations, and the reading the reviews and the experience that other people have had working with you. And all of that starts in Google. So it is definitely a mistake if you’re not taking the time to invest in your SEO. So some things to think about. Definitely being proactive on this, stay educated on this. And Google is constantly changing, they just came out with a major update last month, where, because of the depth of AI content that’s being created, they want to reduce low quality and on original content in their search engines. So you’re gonna see some drops if all of your content is generated by AI. And I know, that’s a whole nother topic and a whole nother presentation if we want to go down that path. But it’s important to know that Google’s looking at really closely focused on they don’t care if it was generated by AI, is it valuable educational content that’s going to help the search the searchers problem that they’ve entered in. So that’s the type of information you want to be showing up for knowing the language that your audience uses. This is a big mistake that comes into play here is that internally, you have your own, you know, language that you use, and you assume everyone speaks the same language and talks about your parts and your services the same way you do. But the reality is they don’t. So I’m a big advocate of doing customer interviews so that you can hear the specific language that they’re using and the words that they’re using. Therefore, you can put that messaging into your content, which is going to help you show up on the search engine results. Another big mistake to avoid is trying to keyword stuff all of your your words on one page, where the reality is you should have one key phrase dedicated per page on your site. Because at the end of the day, when there’s a query that comes in, someone’s typing something into Google, it is one page that shows up. So you want to dedicate that strategy for one keyword or one key phrase per page is what you should be focusing on. All right, mistake number six, not integrating traditional and digital marketing. I see this happening a lot, where companies are kind of siloing, what’s happening in the traditional sense, and the digital sense where the reality is, this could be a very powerful marriage, if done correctly. Traditional is brochures, trade shows, your printed publications, any direct mail kind of in person, tangible type of experience, where digital is obviously what’s happening on a screen, your websites, your blog, social media, email, all those components. So Let’s marry those together. Instead of separating them. You can use QR codes on your printed material, to drive people to learn more about something, get some additional information, leveraging online signup forms where you can then send them something to touch them in snail mail information. You know, cross promoting the advertising of in person events, online and online events in person. I mean, a lot of these things very, very helpful. Just you want to make sure that you’re sharing your cohesive message across all spaces, both digital and traditional. Number seven, ignoring free online resources, which is referred to as reputation management, threw in the little mismanagement here, but not taking advantage, especially of Google My Business Profile. So Google business, again, this is owned by Google, if you use it, the more information that you’re giving Google, the better at the end of the day, you want to make sure that you’re properly optimizing your profiles so that when someone’s going to Google, it makes it easy for Google to say, Oh, this is the answer to your question. Here’s, here’s the company that I recommend based on your query. If you’re part of any chambers or associations, more times than not they have these fields available to you. These profiles are these directories. Definitely maximize that fill out every single field that’s available to you. It’s going to help elevate your position in the search engines in the directory, all those components. So for example, Google business business hours, the services offered how they can contact you. And actually Google My Business can function kinda like a social media channel where you can actually craft posts that are published so that when someone searches for your profile, it will display kind of like an actual post that’s happening. And also Google reviews extremely important. So right here, they if you log into your Google business account, they have a little call to action that says, obtain more reviews, like share, sending a link to people that you know, love working with you and are advocates of you encourage them to write a positive review for you on Google, people will go out of their way to write a bad review, but you have to ask to get that good review.

Curt Anderson  30:53

Real quick tip right there. On reviews, I was just going over this, I first off, this is just pure gold. I just I couldn’t love what you’re presenting here more. So for if this is new to anybody, or just like, this is just such a great tip right here Google business profile, it’s free. And a great way to get reviews. Give a review. That is a wonderful way. And I wanted to say way back you mentioned like, you know, say a lot of manufacturers struggle like, you know, Department of Defense or, you know, proprietary clients don’t want to say anything with some what a lot of my clients, what we’ve worked with is like, Hey, could you get a personal testimonial from somebody that you work with, at that company, so say you work with Boeing, or you work with, you know, Halliburton, or you know, whoever that company might be, you know, when you have a great relationship, you know, give that person a testimonial on their LinkedIn profile. And they might be apt to return the favor. But Lori seen right here for these, especially if you’re targeting local business, this is a great way to improve. You know, I just had a manufacturer, hey, how do I want to come up locally? Get those reviews. So this is just pure gold. So great, great tips here.

Lori Highby  32:02

Thank you. All right, we got two more coming in. Hi. All right, mistake number eight, ignoring providing value and education, you’ve probably heard me talk about this, a handful of times already value, the content on your website should be focused on value. And I see this and this is Kurt, I learned this phrase from you, and I love it, the we syndrome. We do this, we do that we’re awesome. Look at all this awesome stuff we have look at our awesome building. People don’t want to hear that at the end of the day, you want to redirect the focus to be on that ideal customer that you’re trying to get in front of. And that’s where you’re speaking to the pains that they are experiencing, the industry that they’re in, because you want to showcase that you understand their challenge, you understand their industry, and you are the solution to the problem that they have. And this is where content that showcases you’ve done it before the case studies, testimonials, educational content, such as blogs, white papers, webinars, whatever, the more that you are adding value and helping them make that decision. The closer you are to establishing that trust to the point that there is no other alternative they are going to hire you to work with. All right. Number nine, you’re dismissing social media as a fad. And I know we’ve you know, there’s back and forth. manufacturers aren’t on social media. I disagree with that. I have lots of manufacturers I met current on social media. It’s not going away. And I see companies say okay, well we create an account, we’re on Facebook or on LinkedIn, but they don’t post anything. They have followers. And this This is always a little IRQ of mine. A follower is basically someone raising their hand saying I want to hear from you. If you have followers. That’s amazing. Now give them something give them something of value that encourages them to want to continue to hear from you to establish that trust to a degree that they’re ready to when they are ready to buy. There’s no hesitation they’re moving forward with you. Yeah, so definitely identifying where that is somewhat of a challenge and heavily. That’s where the research comes in and understanding your customer but you want to be in the spot that your ideal customer is hanging out. You want to be posting consistently even if that means once a month, which I think is a little too too low of a number. But at least you’re doing it consistently and you’re going to be showing up I refer to that as like the keep the lights on social media. You want to make sure you have a consistent and cohesive message that aligns with your brand and is communicated across all All channels. So whatever you’re saying in the traditional sense, is also being communicated on the digital sense. Focus on adding value, educate, be a resource, help them make that intelligent business decision, because you’re providing the information they need. And I also say I often say just start with the FAQ. So what are the questions that people are asking? More times than not? Other people are asking those same questions. So you should be the one providing the answer publicly, and make sure your profile is properly optimized. What do I mean by that? Again, all of the fields that are made available to you on those social channels fill out as much information as possible, that’s going to help you show up whenever someone’s using like LinkedIn, they use it as a search engine more, you know, they’re not just connecting with people, but they’re searching to find information on these tools as well. All right, last one here, not investing in marketing automation. I mean, with AI and these technologies, there’s so much opportunity to create efficiencies. So instead of repeating the same labor and time intensive tasks, or missing tasks, because of that redundancy, or recreating processes over and over again, we really want to lean into automation. So you want to start by what are those repetitive tasks? From a sales standpoint, a marketing standpoint, communication standpoint? And how can we leverage automation to create that efficiency so that we can be more human is what I like to say, Let’s lean into the technology. So we can have more of those face to face conversations with our prospects, but then leveraging the tools to nurture those opportunities, and still provide that valuable information. Same thing with AI. One of the things that we’re starting to see a lot more happening is leveraging AI with a chat bot on your website. So if you’ve got a really nice database of information, such as a blog, or whatever, podcasts, any type of value, add input, you can connect that to the Chatbot and AI so that if someone’s asking a question within your chat, that it’s going to kind of filter through all the information you have and give them that valuable insight. But also, it can encourage them to take that next step. Hey, would you like to schedule an appointment? Would you like to fill out our quote, request form? So I’m leaning into automation can be extremely beneficial. All right. I’m going to open it up for questions. But I’m also going to let you scan this if you’d like to take get a copy of the whole deck in your inbox. So what questions do we have here? Yeah, feel free

Curt Anderson  37:47

to please drop any questions in the chat or you’re more than welcome to take yourself off of mute. We’re here to answer any your questions. I know Laurie covered a ton, especially in if if we if we get if folks are shy Lori, we can even go back to like the SEO portion. Some of the social strategy. So any questions that you guys have here today for us, we would love to tackle those. And like I said, you’re more than welcome to take yourself off mute if you’d like to, or dropped or drop a question in the chat. And Laurie, while we’re waiting, if you want to could you if you don’t mind, go back a few go back to your your SEO. And I go because SEO can be a little a little daunting for folks. Right? A little intimidating? Yeah, I want to go back to it again. So I don’t mean that your questions are the priority, but just by we’re here we go. Julie’s got what? What marketing automation platforms software, do you suggest for someone just entering that arena? Fantastic question. Laurie, what do you?

Lori Highby  38:51

Yeah, I’m gonna say it depends. Sorry. So there are so many tools and technology and automation platforms that are out there. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some of them try to do everything, but they only do a couple of things very, very well. So what you need to do is, is really kind of figure out what is it that I’m trying to streamline and automate and then find the tool that best aligns with that specific goal that you’re trying to achieve. We have our own platform that we call, it’s called Boost Genie. And I’m happy to talk more about that offline. But again, there’s there’s so many of them out there. There’s new ones coming out every single day. But really getting clarity on what you’re trying to do will make it easier for you to then find the tool that best fits with your goals and objectives.

Curt Anderson  39:40

So look, let’s talk about a couple of different tools that, you know, let’s talk about a couple of the free Google tools. If you don’t mind. I am a Google Keyword Planner junkie. I do a lot of keyword strategy with folks. And that’s that was one of the topics I wanted to hit with you. So if you’re not if that’s new to you, I welcome you guys jot that down Google Keyword planter is completely free. And it’s just a really fantastic tool to kind of brainstorm for keyword strategies. Now, you know, if you want to leave for our friends out there using AI or chat, you know, if you’re looking for a shortcut, put in a chat, say, hey, what would be great keywords for CNC machining on Tuesdays or you know, whatever your you know, Laurie, throughout the riches are in the niches but think, you know, whatever service whatever superpower that you have, you can use Google Keyword Planner, use chat GPT. But Laura, you made a great point. A lot of times we are so married to our solution, but we’re not thinking and I think you and I we did a little jam session on Friday and I might have covered this a little bit. I wanted to hit that. So I have a pop quiz. I like doing it our presentation. I don’t know if you remember this one. Do we have any coffee drinkers out there? Are you guys any coffee? Can I see a show of hands? Who is right? Okay, I see. Man is only when it’s showing her camera. Amanda, happy Thursday. Thanks for joining us happy Friday Eve. So I’m going to make an assumption. Everybody here is a coffee drinker. So like when you go through your favorite coffee, whatever, right? If you ever leave your touch that little cardboard thing that goes around the cup, right every Amanda you guys have touched that right? And I think I might have done this to you guys. Buddy. You might heard this one before. But does anybody know the name of that little cardboard thing that goes around your coffee cup? Does anybody know the name of that? I have no idea. But he did we cover this at the last jam session you’re at? I don’t know, man. Are

41:30

you talking like like the the sleeve around it? Yeah.

Curt Anderson  41:34

So does anybody know what that’s called? Sleeve. It’s called a Zara zar F XOF. So if we were all accompany and I was like, Hey, guys, you know, the whole world is our key word is RF, you guys would look at me like Curt, you are not the brightest bulb and you’re not a smart guy. You’re an idiot. So nobody knows where it czar. If the guy that founded it was Jay Sorensen. I wouldn’t worry, I wish that God I founded that guy made a fortune. He called it the Java jacket. Now, if that was our key word, who’s going to know now the customer is thinking, buddy, Amanda, what are you thinking? I don’t want to burn my fingers today. Right? We’re thinking czar. If we’re thinking Java jacket, that our customer doesn’t always know what our expertise with our services, I can’t tell you how many manufacturers the bed in average is super high, where we have that aha moment of we need to think about, I don’t want to burn my fingers today. Or I have a runny nose. I don’t know what a tissue is. So I don’t know how to Google tissue, you know. So we want to think about the solution. Lori wants to chime in a little bit. I know you do a lot of that work with your clients. Yeah,

Lori Highby  42:42

it’s understand it’s as simple as what is what is that pain or challenge that they’ve experienced. And it couldn’t be different for multiple customers, it could be the same end solution. But the more that you understand that challenge, and that’s that’s how that searching happens is they’re going to Google saying, How do I not burn my hands on a cup of coffee every single time. And that’s just like really high level really broad? Because we don’t know what those exact words are. We don’t know what it’s called. We don’t even and the reality is, I don’t care what it’s called. I just want to solve this problem. People search based on the problem that they have, because they’re trying to find a solution. They’re trying to get educated on what those options are. And that’s why I’m a big advocate of creating content that’s educating your audience.

Curt Anderson  43:39

Absolutely. And I tell you, when Laurie, we’ve done a you know, we were doing cohorts together a couple years ago and a lot you know, our tagline is how do you out teach the competition? And that’s what we try to preach with our manufacturers. Like, hey, you know, you can spend money on advertising, you can do this at the other thing, but why don’t we just be fierce educators, just like our dear friend Laurie is, and you know, and just what we’re doing here today, we’re at a university, we’re at, you know, top engineering school in the country. And we’re just working all together in a community setting of like, how can we help educate each other on a topic? As a manufacturer, if you can just dedicate yourself get out there? You know, I was on a call with a client yesterday, one word that I would love for everybody to eliminate from your vocabulary, Laurie, assume, right? We’re going through like that keyword strategy and we’re going through content on their website and we’re like, oh, what are buyers know that needs to you know, they know I’m like, man, let’s just let I let me put assume back into vocab. Let’s assume that they know nothing. Let’s assume that they just, you know, fell out of the sky laying on a plant and just started the job today. Yeah, I don’t know your products and services. Look, my wife’s a preschool teacher. Let’s talk to him. Like, you know, like a four or five year old. I’m not to insult them or be disrespectful. But let’s not assume that they know the expertise that you have, and just pour that expertise to help educate them. So I love what you’re saying. Let’s talk a little bit about like blot like, what? If any of our friends out there are just starting from scratch? Okay, and there’s a lot okay, we can do social we can do video we can do this. Walk us through what would be some steps of like what would be like a good one on one starting point for some of our marketers out there today

Lori Highby  45:16

as far as like the type of medium to like Like what would be like a

Curt Anderson  45:20

good starting point? And I know the answer could be depends on it’s.

Lori Highby  45:25

So one of the big things I’m a big advocate of current Gnosis is doing research, the customer interviews are so powerful because then you understand not only the messaging are the how they’re searching for the challenge that they have, but how they’re also digesting and consuming their educational information. Do they like watching videos? Do they like attending webinars? Do they like reading articles do they like listening to podcasts, the better that you can kind of understand and get into the editor ideal customer, the easier it is for you to focus on the type of content that’s going to be easily digestible. That being said, I am a big fan of going big, like this webinar, which we recorded, which we can now pull the transcription, craft a blog post out of it, take the video, make short little snippets and post that on social media. I can also turn this into a LinkedIn newsletter or an email newsletter that I’m going to send out, I could also go traditional with it, take that written or transcript and then make it into a pamphlet that I hand out like 10 biggest mistakes that I see in marketing. So starting with one mega piece of content, and then kind of slicing and dicing it and redistributing it into a lot of different channels is an efficient way you don’t have to recreate from scratch every single time. The other thing I could do is pull the audio from this recorded webinar and publish that as a podcast episode two. So one big meaty piece of content could turn into like 100 little piece of content. Right,

Curt Anderson  46:56

absolutely love that. And so what what Laurie is kind of laying out there, Laurie? You know, repurposing, right, how can we just be as efficient as possible with our time and just for another plug. So next month, we so we do these webinars every month. So next month, we I do a ton of live streaming. And so we have a live stream show. It’s called manufacturing ecommerce success. I know a couple of you popped in and caught it. Laurie was just my guests on Friday, we were promoting this webinar, and why I personally love live streaming, it is just so efficient. I’m a solopreneur. I’m a one man band. And we put out just an enormous amount of content and use exactly those strategies as Laurie just described. Laurie, for your team, you guys put out a ton of content yourself can practice what you preach, talk a little bit about and I’m gonna be mindful everybody’s time. I know we’ve got another minute or two, just your little bit about like, how, how is your internal teams approach with content strategy?

Lori Highby  47:55

Well, again, it’s understanding the pains that people have. So we do our own. We practice what we preach, as you said, doing our own research and figuring out how are people searching for the challenge? And it’s not like how do I do social media? It’s how do I get more customers to my business? You know, how do I increase sales? How? So those are the challenges that people are coming to us with? Or how to work? How do I get more people to understand what we do, or even that we exist. So it’s, and then we we build a whole content calendar, we look at the whole year, we have quarterly content arcs is what we call it. So there’s like a overarching theme for the quarter. And then we create a monthly webinar that aligns with that theme. We create blog posts that align with the webinar and social media content and newsletter content that again, aligned with the big webinars. So we be plan really high level, this is the theme for the quarter, webinar, newsletter, social posts kind of all fits within that ecosystem. Yeah, love

Curt Anderson  48:57

And again, I encourage everybody go to Lori’s website, it’s Keystone click sign up for her newsletter. Great value. You do a thing. When I was asked this week, I think you posted on LinkedIn every week, every Friday. Every Friday, you have your podcast, the broadcast, which is just amazing. You and two other folks. So I want to be mindful of everybody’s time. Are there any? And again, please don’t be shy. We’d love diving in buddy. What do you have for us, my friend? Yeah. Is

49:23

there any value of creating kind of a scarcity to this content? So people join live? So like, for example, I did a webinar a couple of weeks ago, we decided to post it emailed out to as a campaign put it on our socials. But is there a value of keeping that to hopefully drive engagement live?

Lori Highby  49:43

Worried? You know, I think there’s a balance of both. So I mean, this presentation, I’ve shared a handful of times to different organizations, and I’ve also published it on my social media in short, shorter snippets of it. Not everyone one’s gonna watch the live. And you know, there’s nothing wrong with repurposing content. And we know that social media algorithms, oftentimes only like 3% of your audience actually see it that one time. So posting it, again, could be a completely different set of 3% of your audience that’s seeing it. So I wouldn’t do all of the above.

50:21

Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  50:23

thank you for the question, buddy. And Laurie, and man, don’t turn, I’m over 50. Now, don’t you know, everybody don’t turn over 50 Because then your memory just goes out the window. We’re talking on Friday. And so we’re, you know, being in the b2b space, it really, you know, LinkedIn, you know, it’s hard to, you know, everybody should probably be on LinkedIn at some capacity. There’s a great little thing, and I can’t remember who it was you and myself that were talking about it on Friday, there’s a newsletter that you can do, and it’s free, it’s completely free. And what LinkedIn does is they automatically send it out to your entire network. And other folks that I’ve talked to that do that newsletter, the batting average is off the charts of people that accept it. And so you know, buddy, to your, you know, to your point, or for everybody out there, you know, and even if you have a smaller audience, it’s free. And it’s just a great way. And if you take Laurie strategy, he lives repurpose. We did a webinar, we did a live stream, we did a podcast, we shot a video, and now we’re going to get the transcription. And now we’re going to do this, put it on that newsletter I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback from So Lori, what I do you run my live show on Friday. I then add that to my newsletter, it goes out to my entire newsletter. And we’ve we’ve had some real positive feedback from that. So anyway, there’s as Lori’s mentioning automation. There’s a lot of free tools out there. We mentioned Google Keyword Planner. Any other any other tools that you want to throw out there, and we could, right

Lori Highby  51:45

Oh, yeah, I mean, from an SEO perspective, SpyFu spy faq.com is a good one, it’s free miam meaning like, you can do so much free, but then there’s a paid level of service for it. But what’s cool about that is you can type in your competitors website address, and kind of see what keywords they’re showing up for, which is really nice. Nice.

Curt Anderson  52:05

So you know, as Lori mentioned, Google business, Google business profile, Google Keyword Planner, you know, get active with Google Analytics, Google Search Console. So you know, there’s a lot of those free tools out there. Be mindful of, you know, chat, or are there opportunities to take advantage with AI? And, um, you know, again, I don’t want to keep everybody or just keep going. Are there any other questions that you guys have loved to tackle them? And if not, we could start winding down? Well, I’m going to ask everybody if we could give if you’ve been hanging out sitting down, great opportunity, maybe stand stretch, and you can give a huge round of applause for Lori high B for absolutely crushing it today. Just what a gem she is. Lori, thank you, you know how special you are to me, you know, I? I won’t go there today. Right? I know where you’re thinking. I encourage you guys connect with Laurie on LinkedIn, follow her at Keystone click, I’d be honored. I’d probably try to connect with you guys. If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn. I have my LinkedIn and chat we’d love to connect with you. Laurie parting thoughts, words of wisdom, motivation, inspiration that you want to leave everybody with today? You

Lori Highby  53:20

know, oftentimes people are afraid of getting started, just do it. It’s gonna suck the first time but the more you do it, the better you’re gonna get at it with anything else. So just do it. Just

Curt Anderson  53:29

do it. I love alright guys. That’s our man who’s who’s ready to run through a wall. Manda buddy. That’s why we bring the hockey player on so I want to give a big also round of applause to our friends. Julie, you’re out there. As you know, Julie, Julie, Julie had little had some things going on in her life. Julie sending lots of thoughts to you my friend lots of love to you. Thank you for hosting the event today. We just love our friend friendship with the folks at the Purdue MEP are manufacturers out there. If you’ve not connected they can help you with cybersecurity. They can help you with Lean they can help you with leadership workforce. Just make the phone call reach out to Julie go on the Purdue MEP website. If you’re coming to us from another state check out your local MEP Manufacturing Extension Partnership connect with Laurie connect with me. We’re here to help you guys. We just love what we do. And it’s just such an honor privilege. And Laurie, how about this for our main event? Let’s give a round of applause you and I for our manufacturers out there. Yeah, the heroes of our economy we salute you we applaud you thank you for the jobs that you create for our country. Man we might get a little meeting USA chant going here so I’m Where are you gonna be so fired up? I can’t take it. I love it. All right, guys. I’m gonna have the recording for everybody. Again connect with us if Julie I think you’ll be sending a recording out to everybody probably be like maybe Monday ish, something like that. But if you guys have any questions circle back to us. And thank you guys for joining us today. We really pretty Shoot you thank you Laurie one more right

Julie Warner  55:05

thank you

Lori Highby  55:06

yeah this is fun thank you

Curt Anderson  55:09

hey I’m gonna stop I’ll stop recording I usually I’m not the best driver Laurie thanks