Joey and Nels discuss what developments from the many disruptions in 2020 are carrying into 2021 and beyond in terms of manufacturing and digital marketing. Hint: We are not reverting to pre-pandemic tactics.
Each of the hosts also offers up worthy content entities for you to read and engage with.
Joey’s suggestions for digital media tips
Nels’ suggestions for learning about the industrial sectors
Joey and Nels discuss what developments from the many disruptions in 2020 are carrying into 2021 and beyond in terms of manufacturing and digital marketing. Hint: We are not reverting to pre-pandemic tactics.
Each of the hosts also offers up worthy content entities for you to read and engage with.
Joey’s suggestions for digital media tips
Nels’ suggestions for learning about the industrial sectors
Welcome, welcome. Welcome back, everybody. And thank you for joining us again on the industrial marketer podcast where we're covering the intersection of digital marketing and the industrial and b2b sectors. on this show, we dive deep into the tips, tools and trends that helped marketers like you and me who make design and move the world. I'm one of your hosts. Hello, I'm Joey strong. And as always, I'm joined by my counterpart. Nels Nels. Who else Jensen, how are you today? Now? I'm doing great. Thank you, Joey.It is good to talk to you. We're coming up on the holiday season. And so we're recording our final episodes of 2020. I couldn't think of a better co host to do it with how how's the week been? How are you and your family now for the holidays?
Nels Jensen:Well, like everybody else, we've got some things to look forward to and some things to be cautious about. So right well, good. The house looks great, though. My my wife has had her business really take a big downturn, which is unfortunate, but she's putting a lot of energy into the into the house and it looks spectacular. So that's a good thing.
Joey Strawn:We did the same thing around Halloween, we figured well, we're gonna be here we may as well make it look just fantastic and great. We want to build I'll segue back into the show, we want to manufacture a holiday surrounding in our in our environment right around us. I'm glad that you guys are taking the time to do that. I'm excited to dive in to round out the year. I know there's a lot of companies thinking about, you know, how do I finish 2020? How do we go into the fiscal 2021? What is business going to look like in 2021? So So Nels, you suggested us kind of taking a look back before we take a look forward in this final episode. So give us kind of summary. What are we going to talk about today,
Nels Jensen:you know, so let's we'll have some takeaways about you know, what really is meaningful that carries over from 2020 into 2021. And as always is the case with the industrial marketer podcast, we will look at this from the manufacturing and industrial lens and how it intersects with the digital media lens. So whether you are whether you are the hybrid sales and marketing person who's looking further your, you know, qualified leads with your manufacturing company, or whether you are the Dewar at those companies who basically is tasked with every tactic under the sun,we can help provide you with with some, you know, insightful information on that or whether you're the agency pro who, you know, needs a little bit more background and trends on b2b and especially exposure to the industrial world. And we're here for you.
Joey Strawn:Oh, man, and and even agency pros. And yeah, I consider you Nelson, myself included in that no one can take 2020 with a grain of salt and say that we know anything that's ever going to happen. ever again. Honestly, last year around this time, all US marketers were sitting together and being like, let's come up with the best trends that we think are going to happen in 2020 conferences and trade shows and oh 2020 is going to be the year of digital connection. And so now No, we have we know nothing. We know nothing anymore. So What in the world? Can we go into 2021 thinking now it's like how? How can we take from 2020? and look forward?
Nels Jensen:Yeah, well, the the lessons learned from 2020 are front and center and absolutely good core business development approaches. So let's look at manufacturing 90% of manufacturing. manufacturers say their business was negatively impacted by the pandemic, right, that's either a revenue decrease, that's an increase in supplies or materials for pricing that supply chain issues which we saw, you know, just all over the board, you know, you just think a PPE equipment where, you know, China was producing the vast majority to pee pee in the world, and they needed it all themselves. So this this was a supply chain that had to be totally reinvented here in the United States. But you know, so at the same time, these negative impacts in a survey that fictive did have 215 senior leaders in manufacturing 97% of those respondents said they had new opportunities because of the pandemic. Now, that's not a Yay, opportunities. I mean, this let's not forget that, you know, the health, the public health impacts and tragedies associated with this, but they also realize that they had to change the way they were doing things if they're going to capture some of these opportunities. And I think so the biggest takeaway from the manufacturingThe world is, you know, the the agility and leveraging your your strengths.
Joey Strawn:Right. So what I hear you saying, and it's like there's kind of this like no just statement of 2020 wasn't great for the manufacturing and industrial sectors. I think that's kind of as a statement that everyone would take me like, Well, yeah, of course, 2020, the year of the pandemic, it wasn't. But it was interesting in the way that you say that on the flip side is, because of that, because of those restrictions. Because of those hurdles, new opportunities had to be drummed up, you know, when there is our when when there is market when there are market factors playing against you. And your business has to be really agile and sort of dig up new opportunities from old prospects or new industries that you didn't think that you could move into yet, you know, those are some of the bigger shifts. And we even saw that within our own clientele. I mean, we had clients who were taking their unused machinery and using it to manufacture PP equipment. To get into that supply chain, we saw people making big shifts within the year to take advantage of market opportunities that they didn't feel they were ready to address earlier in the year. And it was sort of a I don't want to say a desperation move, but it was, we're going to attack this this channel, because now we can now we need to sure, and that it really opens up a lot of those opportunities.
Nels Jensen:Yeah. And the manufacturers realized that the same old tactics weren't gonna work to get those new opportunities. And I imagine there's a similar, a similar take on it from the marketing lens, what can we take from 2020?
Joey Strawn:Well, that was that, to me has been the most interesting part of this is because I came up in the world of, well, I'm going to integrate a lot of these digital tools into my profession into what I do. And I will talk to either family members or different people who haven't, they're like, Oh, you, you're able to work from home, or you're able to do these meetings remotely. And the the kind of the norms of the past are starting to be taken down prematurely. For some people, they're like, Oh, I guess we're 10 years away from everything being digital. And then 2020 comes around, it's kind of like, nope, you're gonna be digital this year, or you're not gonna do great. And so I think those trends of will trade shows change to virtual conferences, and in person meetings and golf outings change to zoom meetings, and internal production teams went entirely remote. And companies had to figure out what those infrastructures look like and what those sales funnels look like, and how to close a deal that they may have relied on an old, an old Rolodex and hand to hand deal close, when that's not available anymore. And really figuring out how to quickly shift into the model of, we need to be using these tools, like we've been using them for years, when we've been scared of them for a while, and really kind of adapting and building those into the infrastructure of their companies quicker than they thought they could, but easier than they thought they were going to be able to
Nels Jensen:Yeah, you know, I think we took a little a jump, if you will, over a chasm the scared of is is sounds worse than then we mean, but let's talk about right nipple. Right, but but trade shows were losing their effectiveness for the past five, six years anyway, you know, people are searching online for products and services, you know, up to 50% of their research is done before they ever contact anybody at a company. Yeah. So trade shows we're losing that. Yeah. And this that same trade shows are going to go away. That's not well, no saying, but you, you know, people knew, yeah, we got to kind of evolve from this model. People are searching for content, you know, for product information,services. So they were already engaging in this sort of model before the pandemic, and what the pandemic did, is just sort of, like take this, you know, battery charge electro volt to the, you know, dynamic and say, we're just flying ahead here. Right, and leaving that old model behind. Now, like I said, that doesn't mean trade shows are going away. They will they will be back, of course, but they will be different. And that's the trick is how do we you know, from a marketing perspective, right, the content marketing is changed for industrials. Right? There's it's not well, we should do better by what we have searchable content on our site. No, no, you absolutely have to now it's it's not a differentiator. It's a table stake.
Joey Strawn:Yeah. Well, and the same wayThat, you know, one of the things that I feel like this pandemic has brought is the necessity for efficiency. And so a lot of tools and, you know, things like zoom that we've mentioned, but even automation systems, like, you know, Salesforce just bought Slack, which is a big deal. You know, Salesforce is building out their infrastructure between Salesforce and par dot and slack and all of the things that they own. They're building an ecosystem around efficiency and automation and algorithm to algorithm based tools. And this year, if nothing else, companies have had to cut back on personnel cut back on budgets, and that requires you to do more with fewer people and rely more on automated sequences and automated dynamic smart AI programs and programmatic ad vendors, and those types of things, I feel like you're gonna stick around, going forward, like these are things that as we build in the efficiencies around how we communicate with our customers, and personalization and dynamic content, that that pops up without having to have multiple people involved in those steps, those things will become more natural, and then we can build more sophisticated programs on top of that DNA on top of those bones.
Nels Jensen:So let me ask you, you know, a question along that vein. So, you know, inbound marketing is something that a lot of industrial companies have signed up for it. So it's almost like the AARP the you know, the the resource plans where all of a sudden, when lean comes in, you have supply issues all sense like we have this tool, we need to figure out how to use it better. So inbound marketing, I'm I'm assuming that this is, you know, similar to, you know, content marketing, where it's like all of a sudden, hey, we need to know where these leads come from. We used to be able to just say, Well, yeah, well, that one came from this trade show. And this one came from that sales network. But now when the question is asked, well, where did we get this lead? And how good are these leads? There are tools that a lot of people have that they may not know how to use? I'm assuming that the reliance on these products is going to be a trend in 2021.
Joey Strawn:I would hope I mean, honestly, it is. It's, it's a common industry trend. It's a common issue and recurrence I see with tools like this. And Salesforce is a great example. But so that was the other way, Roman, right. Salesforce is so robust, that I don't think any company outside of maybe like a Walmart or an Amazon or whatever the uses it to its full capacity. And I think everybody who has Salesforce would probably say that's like, Oh, I know, there's a bunch of stuff in there. We don't use but we have our systems and they work. And that's true for almost all systems, HubSpot Marketo. So, Sprout Social sendible, any that you have, you're not going to use 100% of the availability in there. But I do think to your point now that as, as is required as requirements grow for more knowledge around leads, and especially leads that come in digitally, because in the past, you said, Oh, well, this came from this trade show, or more commonly, this came from this came from Dave in sales, you can trace it back to that now it'll be this came through our website, or this came through email or somebody called us. And if you're not doing coupon codes, or if you're not doing those kind of regional promotional activities that are historically trackable, you're going to need to be able to use whatever system you're using to know that, okay, this lead came through our website, but they got to our website from one of the social posts that we that we put up or that we, you know, an ad that we ran in modern machine shop, or whatever it may be, you're going to need to be able to trace those things back. Because as budgets get tighter, as personnel gets tighter and more focused around these activities, you need to be able to say we can't afford to spend as much money in this channel, as we do in this channel for these reasons. Sure. And a lot of time in the past it was guesswork, and the hits are you know, the I think the big famous quote is I waste 50% of my marketing, but I don't know which 50% right. And that's nowadays that's different. Nowadays, we can tell you like we can get that granular to say no, no, you only waste 12% of your marketing and it's in these channels.
Nels Jensen:Yeah. Though, though. The reality alsois that it's not either or. It's a Yeah. And it's it's a case of a lot there. There's there's just a more fragmented audience behaviors that are going on. So in many cases, you know, we're going to have to do more tactical approaches to reach these audiences. Right?
Joey Strawn:And well, I mean, and that's and that's a great point now. So to your to your point that you made earlier trade shows are going to come back, we all know that eventually a trade shows coming back, you know, that's going to happen. But that doesn't mean that video production and storytelling online and different avenues, either through YouTube or through in person video sharing, will stick around. Because of this, there has been a big trend this year in a growth in video usage and more visual storytelling for brands, because that's how we're all taking in content, there's our phones, and through our computers, I think that visual storytelling is going to stick around if it looks if it follows the trend of how television has gone have, you know, television used to be these big, you know, channel conglomerates. And now there's these streaming services, and everyone's making their individualized programs, and you have Instagram, you know, superstars and tick tock superstars and YouTube superstars. You know, we'll have influencers and all of our industries throughout those networks as well. And video storytelling is something that brands can't afford to not take advantage of.
Nels Jensen:Absolutely. So you're setting the table for 2021. So let me let me take a second to bring up two points about moving into 2021. The first, like we've talked, I don't want to dwell anymore. Let's stop dwell. And now slow go forward. So, and you know, me, I love my data. And I love my history and market reports. McKinsey and Company, big consulting firm. And I tell you, what marketers, you know, McKinsey, Deloitte, there are there's fantastic information in the industrial sector, by by some of these big finance companies, you know, their their house, can you link some of those in the in the episode description would be a great idea. Yes, let's do that. Awesome. And they had a post pandemic survey. And this will not be a surprise to you, Joey, but 89% of those that developed new digital selling models are going to retain them after the pandemic ends, they are not going back to the old world. And, but in terms of going back to the old world, I think it's fair to point out, you know, while there certainly has been the negative impacts we talked about, there is anticipation of a strong marketing rebound. And I'll give you two stats to help set that table to a good manufacturing rebound, excuse me, you know, mag manufacturing technology orders, basically, we're talking about capital investments, we're talking about equipment, they were up 26% in September from August, and they had just about hit the same level as a year before. So that's manufacturers ordering equipment to improve their efficiencies, and increase output. So that's a really good side. The other one is the purchasing managers index, which would be people who are ordering parts and supplies from the manufacturers. So that speaks to the supply chain. That index is a is a, a number I there's a phrase for it that I forget at the time, but it's as long as it's over 50, its growth mode, if it's under 50, it's retraction mode. And in November that this just came out 57.5 was the number in November. So there is that's the seventh straight month of expansion in manufacturing at once. So, you know, yes, will the rebound will be uneven. There's plenty of categories we see that, you know, are still suffering horribly. But in terms of manufacturing and industrial, you know, there is definitely an anticipated up tick. And that means more business and more competition.
Joey Strawn:And that and it has more people saying, hopefully, I can go to Aerodef next year.
Nels Jensen:Yes, that's, that was. That's what I think big. That's the big hope that had that one has a very, very good chance for from us little amateur predictors.
Joey Strawn:You were talking lowercase? lowercase, Nostradamus
Nels Jensen:Yes. Yes. So video is obviously a trend. Yeah, that and again, this kind of falls under the, you know, time is more of a convert and reason, right? You know, just sometimes it takes right these things to actually take hold, but the video is gonna be huge in 2021 whether it's product demos, whether it's, you know, just even brand messaging storytelling, you know, we we are a very visual society in industrial marketing has some catching up to do on our visual storytelling.
Joey Strawn:And that's and we'll reference other industries throughout this podcast and you know, this is a I think a great example of this is there are other industries that have been using video in these ways real estate is one of the first ones that comes to mind where you can do virtual tours of houses or even nails, you know, you Google Street View, will do Google Store view. And so if a, if a store pays Google, they'll come in and take photos of their shop. So not only can you use Google streetview to walk down the street, you can go into a store and see the layout and see what they have in there. Like those types of things have been happening in other industries, retail and real estate specifically, But to your point, you know, going forward ecommerce stores that aren't following the examples of like Amazon that have 3d product demonstrations, or multiple angled views of a product as opposed to just a long description and a broken JPEG. You know, those types of advancements, those types of care about the details will be vitally important in a world where people aren't going to one on one trade shows or aren't meeting people one on one as much and can open a briefcase and see what they need to say.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, when you mentioned virtual conferences earlier, you know, people still even without a trade show, people still want to see what the new innovations are, they still want to see the new product worse weren't about the new services. And I you know, this I certainly think this could also be like, buying a car where, you know, I'll do so much research online, but I still want to go there and kick the tires and you know, sit in the back seat, you know, to see if my my son when he's visiting actually will have any leg room.
Joey Strawn:So it's true. I although I you may feel that way. There's a there's a car. What's that? That car Max? Who does the car vending machines? Yeah, well, I drive by it every single day on the on the road. So I know exactly what you're talking about. But oh, man, why can't I think of that brand? Oh, whatever. I'll come to me in an hour. Where were we? Oh, yeah, virtual. Yeah, we were seeing that pickup. And I think that's gonna stick around, I think some conferences. Here's what I honestly think is gonna happen, though. So I'll put this on a prediction calendar. You can refer to this later if you want to, and embarrass me if I'm wrong. But here's my prediction. I think when conferences and trade shows come back, they'll come back like normal, but they'll include a virtual element. So you're seeing this happen in like Comic Cons, and, and other industries, where, okay, well, we're gonna have a virtual event in 2022. But now, we're also going to, we're going to have an in person event in 2022. But we're also going to have this virtual event where you can attend all the conferences, and see all the things and it costs half as much. I feel like we're going to see that being start naturally integrated into the conferences, and trade shows that come back, whether it's fab tech, or Aerodef that we mentioned earlier, I think some of these bigger shows, will start to have to or will just out of, you know, out of expansion and interest, add in a virtual layer.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, and the way that innovation cycles work is things it takes longer to fix things, things break quickly, and it takes longer to fix them. So this is an evolution. And yeah, you know, we all missed imts this year, there is imts virtual things, you know, it will get better. You know, there's there's absolutely no question that the best of what we come up with from this will be improved upon in the future. So and we'll spend future episodes, we'll get into more detail in terms of some of the tools and some of the best practices for definitely, yo and things like that. So that's just sort of a teasing of a topic to come down the line, right?
Joey Strawn:Oh, there's gonna be a bunch of fun stuff. You know, we we've talked about 2020, we've looked a little bit ahead into 2021. You and I are about to take a break for the holidays, Nelson. Then when we come back next year, we're going to be bringing friends, we're going to have angry developers and media mavens, and all sorts of specialists that are going to come and talk to us about these different tactics and industries and needs and studies and, and we're going to dive in. But before we go, you and I talked about this, we wanted to give everybody a little holiday treat. We want to give everybody gifts. And since we can't come to your house and give them to you personally, we're going to give them to you in the form of the podcast. And so now you want to tell everybody kind of what we're doing and the gifts that we're bringing?
Nels Jensen:Well, these are gifts that you can search you an we'll we'll send you to this ocation and you can enjoy them here. Put it that way.
Joey Strawn:Yeah, it'll be they'll be linked in the episode description. So we brought either blogs or articles or things that we have found helpful over this past year to learn about and stay up to speed on things and we want to share them with you guys. And so now sort of your what are your top three resources that.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, so need to know. So if you know, maybe you're new to the manufacturing and industrial sectors, here are a couple sites that are not deep into the weeds, because it doesn't take long on some of these sites to get the technical aspects in the jargon and that these are not these are places that will help educate you on industry. And they, you know, certainly talk about marketing in various ways, shapes and forms specific to the sector. The first is a long standing feature called the z axis, it's a monthly column, it's written by winsky. He's the editor of modern machine shop, easy to say, right modern machine shop. And as I said, he's been doing it for 20 years, he's really good at it. He's a great follow on Twitter, you know, we'll put the handles in the in the show link, but Peter just just brings this to the, you know, very readable even if you're not into manufacturing, it's it's, you know, the kind of thing that you could talk about at a at a, you know, holiday party when those emerge again, just in terms of, well, this is what's going on in driverless car manufacturing or something. So anyway, Z axis, good stuff. The other two, these are our marketing, Maven is a is a PR marketing shop in the industrial space. And they have a really solid newsletter and a blog. And again, they, they are very, the content is very digestible, very approachable, and it's not deep in the weeds. And the third one, gardener business media has a whole bunch of niche pubs in this space. They're you know, specialty company. And they have a manufacturing marketer email that's worth signing up for. Again, like the others, they put the Twitter handle in the show description. They don't have a separate handle for the newsletter. It's for gardener business media, but they do a really nice job on their newsletter and on Twitter, of curating the topics and trends because in their ecosystem, they get pretty narrow on those publications right about added manufacturing or, you know, specifically about welding or whatever, but the, but the general site does a really nice job of curating information.
Joey Strawn:I love it. Well, awesome. I will add in mine as well, mine err more on the digital marketing side. But one of the first ones and if people don't follow it, I would highly recommend you read the HubSpot blog. They are great about just general digital marketing and inbound marketing and how to attract people to your website, how to build content, or how to write blogs or how to edit things in ways that bring people to your site and convert leads. It's just if it's not kind of a staple reading, if you're a digital marketer, I highly suggest it. The other side is the social media world. Social media is something that's always changing. It's always expanding. And so a blog that I really enjoy is Social Media Examiner, I think, and I think it's just socialmediaexaminer.com yesterday's social media examiner.com and they have great industry reports, usage reports, best practices, updates on algorithm changes, or privacy changes, things that you need to be aware of from business perspectives, or personal usage perspectives. So I recommend Social Media Examiner as well. And then finally, a little self plug, industrialmarketer.com that's my final one guys, you got to go check out industrial marketer.com that is the publication heart and soul and core behind even our show here. Industrialmarketer.com has industry articles, trend reports, tool reviews, expert analyses, everything you could want you know, subscribe over there, you can subscribe to the podcast or listen to the podcasts over there as well. But if you're not already bookmarked on industrialmarketer.com that's the highly highly suggested that'd be a holiday present for you and for us. So come on guys, what are you waiting for? It's free. It's free and got nothing
Nels Jensen:Good stuff
Joey Strawn:But that's those are those are those are my three those are my three shares and and helpful gifts for our listeners. And and I hope everyone checked it out. I mean, I hope everybody checks yours out. I hope they check mine out. Now so are you excited about of heading off into the holidays?
Nels Jensen:Yeah, you know, it's 2021 is going to be a fascinating year. It's going to be a trying year. But you know, I think the a lot of dynamics are changing. We know we're working from home for you know, you know, at least the first five, six months. You know, it might be a while before we can go fill stadiums and concerts and all that stuff again. But there is going to be you know, I think coming out of this is going to be some real opportunities. And I think I think we will benefit as industrial marketers in the long run from some of the pain that we're going through and some of the transitions we're going through now.
Joey Strawn:I agree. And as they say, you know, rising tide can save all ships. And so that's what we want to build here as a community of industrial marketers that learn and grow and help each other. And so, you know, as we look forward into 2021, obviously, the thing that everyone is most excited about is this show coming back and being on a weekly basis. And we hope that you joined us in 2021, as we as we come back and really hit the ground running to give you these tips and tools and trends and, and these insights. As always, thank you for listening to this episode of the industrial marketer podcast. We would love to hear from you guys. If there's a topic or an issue that you want us to address your questions you want us to answer, reach out, you can comment here on this episode, you can reach out on our social media channels, you can all of those are listed on industrial marketer.com. If you're searching industrial marketer on social media, you should be able to find this pretty easily. And as always, be sure to Subscribe here to the industrial market or podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, comment, review, share, let all the industrial marketers you think could benefit from this conversation. Bring them into it. Have them join us here. And until next time, thanks for listening for myself and from nails. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful holiday season and we'll see you next year.