In this episode, we talk about five things that every manufacturer can do to improve their lead generation. The costs are minimal but they will involve a commitment of time and, perhaps, education. But there is a lot of value in these activities.
In this episode, we talk about five things that every manufacturer can do to improve their lead generation. The costs are minimal but they will involve a commitment of time and, perhaps, education. But there is a lot of value in these activities.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Industrial Marketer podcast, your place for the tips tech trends and tactics for industrials who care about driving leads to their manufacturers and industrial companies. I am one of your hosts, Joey Strawn, industrial marketer dujour and as always, I am joined by my cohort, my colleague, my friend, Nels, toastier health, Jensen. How you doing, my man?
Nels Jensen:I'm doing great, very healthy. Exerciseing, enjoying the warm weather.
Joey Strawn:So I try to stay out of the sun as much as possible. I am scared of the sun and the humidity makes me makes me shiver. And I'm like, No, give me the inside. Give me the I know, I love it. It's been beautiful lately this summer has, you know, we're finally all being able to get out into the world a little bit, I hope safely and, and, and, and carefully. But we're moving in the right direction. And as always, I am thrilled and tickled as punch to be chatting with you on this beautiful Friday about industrial marketer topics that are going to help drive business to people we care about, Nels. I'm so excited.
Nels Jensen:That's right lead generation, we're gonna unlock the vault to success for manufacturers everywhere.
Joey Strawn:Now, I do want to add a little bit of a disclaimer up at the top for this episode. The title of this is lead generation for manufacturers or whatever we decide to name it. But if you're thinking to yourself, I'm not a manufacturer, this episode's gonna be useless for me. Listen, anyway, these lead generation techniques can and some of them should be used across industry, some of them are going to be very helpful for the manufacturers listening. But everybody else if you're dealing with the sales and marketing speak, and you're dealing in that marketing realm of trying to figure out a b2b sales cycle and a nurturing cycle and how to get leads into your funnel. Listen, because we're gonna dive into all of that. And I bet you can find a couple tips along the way that are helpful. Yeah, these do apply to logistics, they apply to distributors, it's, you know, they're there in the similar spheres, ecosystems, whatever you want to say. So yeah, it applies, right, it applies, but we're gonna use the word manufacturer a lot today. And if you're a manufacturer, please open your ears. Let's take a listen. Add some comments and in the comments below or on social and we'll get back to you. But lead generation is a topic that I mean, Nels, I don't want to speak for you. But we get taught, we get asked about every single week at our agency. I mean, these are conversations, manufacturers come to us saying things like my sales are down and I don't know what to do about it. I don't have leads for my sales team to follow up on I'm not getting RFQs, like I used to anymore. It might be COVID. It might be I don't know, but all I know is I'm not getting the leads that I need anymore. And it's just a big question mark. I mean, I know you've dealt with this, Nels, when you're trying to figure out content pieces of content strategy for people, but lead generation is a big area of concern.
Nels Jensen:It is. And, you know, one of one of the clients that I deal a lot with is the National manufacturing extension partnership, MEP. You know, there's a there's 50 MEP Centers across the country. And I've been talking with some folks there. They're on the front lines dealing with small and medium manufacturers. And I had an interesting conversation this week, where, you know, there's a lot of small legacy second generation manufacturers who think they have a reach problem, right? It's like, hey, I need to dial up the marketing a little bit, we need to raise awareness. You know, if I just touch base with more prospects and customers, our business will go up. And they may indeed have a reach problem, but they probably have a messaging problem. You know, what, what is a lead, you know, is any time you have somebody touching, you know, hands with you via, you know, virtual or internet or phone or whatever it is. But so this engagement with this other party is a lead, right? It's an opportunity, it's an opportunity. And that doesn't mean it's a good lead, right? And it doesn't mean that you're necessarily answering the questions that they're asking or that you're dealing with the subjects that are important to them. So yes, what is what is a lead defining a lead? I'm kind of curious because you give this a lot more thought than I do. But to me, a lead is a is a touch point with an opportunity.
Joey Strawn:You're very astute Nels, and I I'm gonna dive in and just a second to that because you said a word opportunity in that phrase that is key to this whole conversation. But you know, I do want to let everybody know that if they're feeling that stress if they're feeling that push or that feeling that decline in leads. It's an not just you. This is industry wide. We were looking at some stats, you know, earlier this week. And you know, some of our, you know, the Thomasnet big group in has done a lot of studies. And they're finding that like 73% of industrial and b2b buyers are going to the websites when deciding you know whether or not to submit an RFI or an RFQ. So the website is an important, huge, huge hub. But what is more surprising is that nowadays, especially in the last year, because of COVID, and pandemic, and just supply chain issues, about 20% or more are less likely to go to a trade show because they're either not happening, or they're too worried to send their team and are using more digital means, like digital events, or webinars or online social media in double digit increases, instead of going to trade shows. So the idea of well, manufacturers, we just lost this huge source of leads every single year for us. And what do we do about that? is very, very anxiety inducing. And so if you're feeling that if you're listening to that you are not alone. This is a this is industry wide. This is country wide, and everybody's fighting through this together.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, sorry, I got ahead of myself with what is a lead there, The a? It's, it's not just manufacturing and industrials. Right? This is the way media is a much more fractured and segmented world, on all fronts. And it's no different once you get into these different targets, you know, manufacturing, the the pie is growing, but it's growing in niches. And so that's why it's really important that we understand people your, your, the personas that we're trying to reach the multiple personas are consuming information in many different ways. And so it's right that that is what makes lead generation so hard, is that it is a very fragmented, segmented and targeted world. So you have to be pay close attention to you know, whether if you want to call them lanes, or you want to call them channels, or you want to call them personas, but it's it is a little bit of a three dimensional chess game, right? You got to understand who you're trying to reach, how they consume information, and what is the message to deliver at that particular time.
Joey Strawn:This why I love doing this show with you Nels is you always hit on things that are so intuitive and so fun to talk about just so when you. And the reason I wanted to specify that everybody is going through these problems together is because as you said earlier, it may not be a reach problem, which is where everybody goes immediately in their mind, it may very well be a targeting problem, a messaging problem, a focus.
Nels Jensen:And that's not even the same targeting and messaging, you know, you have to get your targeting down, and then get your messaging done. Right.
Joey Strawn:And so that leads us right to this question that you asked Nels that I think is great is what is a lead? Everyone's like, Well, how do I drive leads? How do I drive leads Joey Nels? What do we need to write to drive leads? What do we eat? Let's take a step back. And what is a lead? And Nels I'm going to build off your definition, it is a contact that you have. And I'm going to add a word there a known contact. So not just user 247 or IP address, whatever it is a known contact with opportunity. And that's where it kind of is the answer of it depends a little bit because a lead for a contract manufacturer that's doing metal fabrication may very be a very, very different lead than a manufacturer that makes shelving units that are pre built and sold at a commodity level. Still manufacturers still sales processes, still b2b, but very different types of leads. And so when you're diving in on what is a lead, that's really where we need to look into analysis talking about as these personas is, okay. If everybody in the world were to come to your website, who would make the most difference? If they gave you their name and said they wanted to have a conversation? Is it the 18 year old janitorial intern at a company that you've never heard of? Probably not like the lead that you want is someone in your universe, an engineer, a purchasing agent, a facilities manager, whatever it may be, that has the opportunity and the desire to actually speak with you. So they've raised their hand they've called they've sent you an email they've submitted a form they have in some way I said to you, Hey, my name is Marjorie Clayman. And I work at XYZ fabrication, and I am interested in talking to you. Or I am interested in you, it can even be as simple as that sometimes, but really understanding for you, not just everybody that comes to my site is a lead, because let's be honest, guys, they're not. Not every single person. If the nephew of one of your cousin's is coming to your website and filling out an RFQ form, I doubt it's going to raise you a lot of money unless that nephew is a facility managers and a multimillion dollar firm.
Nels Jensen:Yep. And even if you just take it to the, you know, higher levels, so it, you get a contact from a purchasing manager, then you know that they're farther down the funnel than if it's just an engineer, I should say, just an engineer, an engineer might be at the front end of researching a product or a service, trying to figure out okay, could this help solve our problems or help our efficiency or whatever. But once you get a contact from someone in the finance department, there's probably a good chance that you're not at the top of the funnel anymore. You're a little farther down.
Joey Strawn:Exactly. Someone's asking about numbers that has that's a different phase than someone researching generalised specs online. And so
Nels Jensen:Yeah, no, I was just gonna say so at some point, you know, when we're talking about these leads, you know, that's a qualifier to me. I don't know exactly how you know, but that's, that's one of the difficulties here for a lot of head down resource challenged manufacturers is, you know, how do I score leads? How do I qualified leads, it might not be as complicated as they think, I don't know, maybe it is, I've never had to. But there are certain red flags, there are certain triggers, there's certain things that you could pay attention to, that are, you know, key events in a, in a buyer journey.
Joey Strawn:Oh, of course, I mean, some of the things that we've talked with clients about, you know, this is if you're, if you're using an automation tool, like a HubSpot, or Marketo, or an ActiveCampaign, you know, those tools will have these baked in, but you can do it manually, like you can say every contact that's not from a country that we do business in. And so if you only do business in Canada, and the United States, any contact from Australia or any contact from India, or any contact from Chile, can can likely be not prioritized. You know, if there are types of activities that, you know, you know, what, every single person that we end up closing, has downloaded one of our spec sheets, will then start making it a concerted effort around gathering information around who's downloading those spec sheets, because obviously, that's a step that they take when they're interested. I mean, the whole point of this is to and we'll get to personas and stages in just a second. But the whole point of this is to attract, you know, lead generation is attraction. It all all it is now is we're not putting we're not spending millions and millions of dollars to put an ad on the Superbowl to try and get in, you know, in front of 80 million people, it's not that wide of a play, we are really talking about focus, like we mentioned earlier, Nels. So really understanding and attracting the right people to you like a magnet, that's what we call a lead magnet, it's we have a thing that is designed specifically and scientifically to attract the right type of materials to us or leads. And that's really, really important is once you've defined the lead, and then once you know how you want that lead to interact with you, then it's time to actually attract them to you get them to come to you. That's how you know it'll be a good lead is because their intent has led them to you.
Nels Jensen:Sure. So I think what might be helpful too, in terms of the audience and what people can walk away from this, too is, let's look a little bit at what can we do to generate leads for the different stages. I'm not, you know, we can talk personas in a minute too. But in terms of education, and awareness is a different type of lead magnet, then consideration and evaluation. And so I'm going to I'm going to use an example fairly simple, but it makes a good case. It's like okay, so if you have education awareness, it very well could be a case study, where it's an article that says, hey, here's a success story we had with a particular client where we did x and y and it's all z. And so you are basically showing people that, you know, this is what we do. And this is how we help people. It could be a technical video could be a production product video that shows Hey, this, this cool stepping machine also does this and this or it could be that, you know, hey, here's machining that does this or here's the data, you know, analytics program that does this.
Joey Strawn:And to be nerdy about the video one right now, search engines and social media platforms love capital L love video. So if you have the capability to put some very targeted, very specific educational videos about your products, your services, and those things together, get them out there because they will work they will do good things for you. Just make the other good videos, don't embarrass yourself.
Nels Jensen:Sure and and blogs certainly are a very popular white papers will will I'm sure we're going to talk about white papers a little more at some point here.
Joey Strawn:Oh white papers and ebooks are like the OGlead generation lead magnet. It's like, oh, what are we going to do as an industrial like resource center, we're going to write an ebook, we're going to write a white paper like that is the the foundation that a lot of this was built on. I mean, one that a lot of companies don't think about mainly because it takes a bit more effort. But is a webinar, you know, collaborating with a trade publication or an association in your space to do an educational webinar about your products or services or benefit?
Nels Jensen:Yeah, let me ask you differently, though, because the webinars are pretty big investment in time for your lead, potential lead. So is a webinar a little better, farther down the funnel? Is it a little better once it's like, okay, these people, maybe it's not so much education, but maybe it's a little down more into the consideration, or you're getting into the weeds a little bit about some of the benefits? And, you know, that sort of thing?
Joey Strawn:That's a fantastic question. And, and while everyone may not agree, and I, you know, I don't know. But in my opinion, Nels, I think that any of these are a lot of these tactics could be used in multiple phases in multiple stages, for instance, a webinar that's like, hey, learn how to build the perfect automation funnel for your marketing, whatever firm. That's a very educational webinar, but it could be put on by a tool, or a SaaS product that then at the end of is like, Hey, you know, let us do this for you. And it could be the start of someone's journey on they're just trying to learn how to set up the best email program or finance, you know, a server for their, you know, off site, for their off site techs, or whatever it may be. And so I do think that while investment level normally will play later down into the funnel, so a consideration phase of this is why this solution is this or a sales presentation is very much later down the funnel. But you know, if you have the time, if you have the experts, HubSpot does this really well, HubSpot put out a lot of webinars, and most of them are very just five steps to a successful email program, how to set up lead magnets or how to, you know, do lead scoring in the most efficient way. And they're very educational? So it's, again, it's all about resources and time, but it there is an investment to be made for sure.
Nels Jensen:So you're telling me the answer is it depends.
Joey Strawn:Now, I yeah, when I say it that way, but it does depends.
Nels Jensen:It just goes to show you the pow-, this goes to show you the power of these tools, and we can run through them or put them in the show notes. But like, I'm going to use a blog as an example where we traditionally think of a blog as a lead magnet for the top of the funnel, where maybe it's going to be about the solution. And it's going to be about, you know, the engineer, you know, sort of facility operations person. Well, here's a good blog that your finance department might be interested in to, here's the ROI case for this investment. Right. And, you know, here, here's what it is from a, you know, cost, p&l perspective that your finance department likes, here's what how this piece might help your efficiency, which the you know, the facility manager is going to love if it's like, Okay, this is going to, you know, reduce downtime, or it's going to increase throughput throughput. You know, here's how this automation piece is going to help you take a machine operator and put them in a pod oversee several machines. So that's going to appeal to the you know, HR and the workforce side of it and that in the people, so there are ways to take blogs, for instance, and use them in the consideration phase as well. So, again, I'm supporting your answer of it depends. And that's one of the tricky things here is, you know, we've got 15 things you can do to help use to generate leads, and you can use almost any of them at different phases of the funnel. And that's what that's where, yeah, I'll shut up in just a second. But that's why it's so important. What are the questions that your, you know, prospects are asking?
Joey Strawn:Oh, man, yep. And that's, you don't need to shut up in just a second, because that's what I was gonna say. I was just oh, so excited about that answer, Nels. And it's right, it always just goes back to, who are we going after? And why? And so the ultimate answer of there are all these pieces and all these personas and all these stages of the funnel. And depending on your budget, your timeline, and your expertise, and the tools you have, any combination of those can work together for your benefit. You know, that's why working with experts or working with strategists who do this for a living can be helpful. But honestly, manufacturers know their businesses, they know their tool stacks. If you just set out all this on a table, you can play around and say, Well, we've got the the ability to do some social stuff, or Oh, no, we've got some product brochures that we could probably gate on our site, that there would be an easy turnaround. You know, there's another way that we haven't even mentioned that I want to talk about a little bit before we go on to segment two is conversational marketing. That's a term that's come up nowadays, but it's more of a passive play. So we mentioned earlier that like 75, or up to 75% of people are coming to your website to find answers. Well, I'm sure everyone that's listening to this has noticed the the uptick in the amount of chat bots that are now on websites. But that is a very effective way to just have a chat bot that says are you looking for something specific? Oh, by the way, shoot me your email in case we get disconnected. So I can send you a follow up on the resources that you asked for. Now you have their email, now you have the ability to follow up with them. And now you have a soft lead. That is someone that is actively asked a question, you know what those chat bots may annoy 40% of your site visitors, but it's not going to be enough to make them never come to your site. And the 60% of people that it does help, there could be some leads to garner from there. So another passive way to just have something on your site or have something in your mix that is working for you. That's that you don't have to think, oh, now I've got to dedicate three months to writing an ebook, you don't always have to do the ebook. There are ways to do this.
Nels Jensen:Sure. And let's also in the next segment, let's talk about streamlining the purchasing process. So you can have qualifiers on your site. And what I mean by that are calculators configurators, anytime you're asking somebody to filter down their interests, is a way potentially to gate content to get information. But it could just be Hey, whoever uses this tool is obviously signifying that they are interested in some aspect of your business. So you know, streamlining that process, use tools whenever you can, to help drive, you know that information as well, whoever's actually engaging with those tools is probably a better lead than somebody who doesn't.
Joey Strawn:And that's one tactic that it does take some investment time. And it's probably not one that every single person listening to this could turn around and do tomorrow. But I will say, uniquely within the manufacturing and industrial spaces, some of those calculator tools are free assessment tools, where it's put in your dimensions, put in your, you know, voltage, put in your space specs and put in your, you know, the building codes, and then we will generate the products that will work with these specifications with these, you know, government regulations at these power voltage levels. And having tools like that can be an extreme blessing for some manufacturers that a lot of their quoting process, or a lot of their proposal process is getting those calculations done that are repeatable. So again, it's a larger investment for some companies. So it's not one that I say, Hey, everybody, do a calculator. But if you have the ability to and it is a question or a mathematical formula that your customers ask for a lot. There is a lot of opportunity in it.
Nels Jensen:Yeah. And you don't have to make it super complicated that you know that it's an ecommerce mindset. As much as anything you're making. You might not sell the machine, on your website, but whatever you can do to streamline that purchase process is going to help, right?
Joey Strawn:And that's just again, you know, you mentioned the purchase stage of the funnel. It's the very last stage, everybody always assumes, oh, well, that's just my sales team. I just need my sales team closing at the purchase stage. Guys, manufacturers, marketers, listen to me, there are ways you can help. There are ways you can streamline and there are ways you can make that sales and that close quicker and increase your velocity on that. I mean, honestly, we keep dancing around some of the easy things that people can do. Nels, I think it's time to take a trip down to the shop floor, and actually narrowed down some things that everybody listening to this can do for better lead generation.
Nels Jensen:Alright, let's go. Alright.
Joey Strawn:Alright, Nels, that was a walk. You're, you know, we're all both recovering from our brisk walk down to the shop floor. This was one that you and I talked about. And we're like, oh, should we have a guest? So we get anybody here. But this is lead generation. We know people want, hey, we've talked what is lead generation, we've talked why we should do lead generation. Let's talk about how we should do lead generation. I mean, Nels, how often are you asked, How can I do some lead generation? I need some lead generation? Hey, give me some leads. How often how often, Nels?
Nels Jensen:Actually, they don't ask me that. They asked all my peers that. So.
Joey Strawn:I know. They ask me that. And then I asked you that? Yeah. So how many times do I ask you?
Nels Jensen:They ask me, they ask me what am I going to do about it? So, there you go.
Joey Strawn:So what are we going to do about it Nels? We have put together five things that every manufacturer can do for better lead generation. So we're gonna start off and I'll start it and then you can chime in as we need. But I mentioned it just a second ago, the number one thing and this is in no order. These are just five things, no ranking, no priorities, just five things. The first thing is conversational marketing. Facebook has automated chatbots that you can update. And that will ask questions for you. There's tools like drift, or a handful of others that you can just embed in your site, there's no coding knowledge, and they are started like $20 to $25 a month. So it's not super expensive. But it will allow you to passively gather emails, questions and intent needs from your clients. So it's definitely something to look into. It's not a hindrance cost wise, but it should probably be explored in 2021.
Nels Jensen:Are you talking just about automation? Are you talking also about potential social media engagement, and I don't want to make that a whole separate conversation. But the vast majority of us now assume that people will help customer service through social channels for b2b. So that's an expectation that, I don't know if that falls under the same bucket. But you know, the, if somebody is asking for help on through a social media challenge channel, on your b2b social, it's a good idea to be able, you know, to return respond, you know, I that's, that's a customer benefit thing. So I don't know if that falls under that bucket or not, but don't you know, that is don't ignore, don't ignore the expectation that you're going to be able to help me through social channels.
Joey Strawn:I would say that Nels, that's gonna fall under one of our other ones, but it is a valid, valid, valid point. Because if someone's asking you a question on any channel, answer them. With conversational marketing, this more is around like the AI of it, or the chat features of it. So you can have it on social you can do that on the site. And you can have real time conversations. One of the things though, Twitter is great about this, because Twitter has been used as a customer service, conversational marketing channel. So that's where I would say, is the exception to the rule Nels for this one is Twitter does count because companies like Comcast and some others have done fantastic things with customer service and conversational marketing tactics on Twitter. So it's definitely a place and an opportunity that can be exploited. So don't count it out.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, a little different scale for Comcast than for most of the people we're dealing with right?
Joey Strawn:They they have a bit of a team mentality.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, well, they have a they have a some customer service issues that come up a little more frequently. Anyway, enough about that world.
Joey Strawn:So the next thing on the list is and this I'm just cap, encapsulating a whole bunch of things, but essentially is make a lead magnet, make an expertise piece, some form of long form blog, a white paper, an ebook. We talked about it as sort of the foundational elements in online lead generation, and it still works. People in your industries are asking questions, they need to know specifics about the things that they are trying to accomplish, and the ways that you can help them do it. So write a piece, use your expertise within your company, one of your engineers, one of your purchasing managers, one of your strategist, one of your project managers, have them write an expertise piece, answering a question that you get asked, and then put it online, use it in the sales process, but have it have it and make it and use it. Nels, this is you live in this world of writing these long pieces.
Nels Jensen:It's, it's very important to frame it in a way that's customer centric. And there's, there's a reason you see many, many white papers and blogs that pose about five things you should ask before you do this, or, you know, five signs that you're ready for whatever or Yep, three, you know, three tips for better social media engagement or whatever. People want to be able to digest it they want to walk away with, they want to have takeaways, right? So there, there is a reason why a lot of this is framed in terms of, you know, tips and numbers of things. It's a, you know, a white paper usually isn't, you know, five things you should know about X, Y, and Z. But it could be and you're seeing more of them. Because that's what people are interested, that, you know, yes, you might want to do something about the developments in, you know, surface in profile grinding, right, you know, hey, here's a bunch of key improvements in this segment. But you still have to frame it in a way that people will want to read it
Joey Strawn:Couldn't agree more.
Nels Jensen:Right? How would this is the new social, the new surface and profile grinders, you know, will help you, you know, reduce outsourcing and, you know, whatever five ways the new surface and profile grinders will help reduce outsourcing and reduce cycle time.
Joey Strawn:I mean, well, one of the things and that's where it goes back to what we talked earlier about, it's not about reach a lot of times, it's about focus. And so you can say, well, this, this white paper, or this question, or this expertise piece is so targeted, that there's probably only 50 people in the world that would be interested in reading it. You know, what, sometimes that's okay, guys, let's understand the industries that we work in. Because if you have 1000 people that take no interest in your blog whatsoever, but you have 50 people that take a lot of interest, and then 20 of those that turn into viable leads, and four of those that actually turn into sales, you could have made triple digit revenue earnings off of a couple hours of putting your thoughts down on a blog.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, how many people are gonna buy? Right? How many people are gonna buy a$200,000 surface and profile grinder?
Joey Strawn:Right, right, that you've got to nurture them, you've got to tease that you've got to answer their questions along the way. And honestly, that leads right into the third tip for this lead generation is share your stuff on social media. Social media, isn't the end all be all channel for most industrials. But I will tell you that if you're sharing, if you have a company profile, obviously put your company's stuff on your company profile. But you if you have a lot of employees that are active on social media, or you yourself, you know, as a marketer are active on social media, and you have people within your spheres on LinkedIn or Twitter that are influencers or stakeholders in these spaces, share your company stuff on there, get those questions out into the world. The more links the more crawls, the more eyeballs that see them, the better it will be if it's a good piece of content, if a good thing that you're sharing.
Nels Jensen:And we've written about this on our, you know, on our website, and you should do research about this, because there are certain things that you should and should not do when you're sharing this kind of information on social, right. You want it to be, it needs to resonate with your tribe, right? It needs to make sense, you need to be genuine, you can't be a poser. But as long as long as you understand who you are talking to and with, then you'll be fine. But it does, you know, this is not a don't take your you know, engineering spec driven product innovation and, you know, put it on Facebook without the right without the right context and voice, right. That doesn't mean there are plenty of people on Facebook who might be interested in that. But again, it's all about the right voice and about the right context.
Joey Strawn:I yes, I totally agree. Voice and communication and consistency is everything on social media. Just make sure you have good content and you're putting the right stuff out there. And just it's all about how you're framing it when you're framing it and how you're sharing it, so.
Nels Jensen:Yeah, and I realize you can't take a lot of manufacturers can't just take their entire staff and say, oh, by the way, we know your we pay you to run a machine, but hey, help us with social media. But you might be able to help with social media from those folks. I mean, there's always a way. And it's, you know, anyway, don't discount the, the knowledge and expertise on your staff in some of the current technologies.
Joey Strawn:Totally agree. And you know what, there may be a guy who's super active on social media and is an influencer in your staff that you don't even know about, it wouldn't be an extra hassle for them at all. Just ask around. Anyway. Alright. Number four. This is an easy, this is an easier one. And this is one that's more design and website focused, but we do find that it's beneficial. Make your calls to actions stand out. And I mean, clarify what I mean by that a call to action is any button on your site that's like, contact us now fill out this form for a you know, fill out this RFQ file, this RFI, if sign up for our email, list, whatever it may be, whatever button whatever action, whatever identifier on the site that you want people to click on, make those standout. There's so many people that just take a standard template, they drop in the button colors, and the buttons match the exact backgrounds, people on their site, don't know if they can click on things, they don't know how to contact people, it's not obvious, it's not easy. So make those big colors, make the buttons a little bit bigger, make sure that people know that they can click here for a thing, tell them what you want them to do. And then add those call to actions throughout your site on a service page. If you're explaining your service on how to surface grinding, you know Nels to your example, if you're explaining your surface grinding, potential and capabilities and opportunities that you provide for clients, make sure on that page, there is a button that then says talk to us about how we can do this for you. And it immediately links to a way that they can contact you make it as easy as possible, and make sure that those calls to action stand out. Because as we know, a lot of people will end up on your site at some point during this process, whether it's in the consideration, evaluation or awareness stage, and you need to make sure that you give them every opportunity to contact you and make it as easy as humanly possible.
Nels Jensen:That's right, streamline the process.
Joey Strawn:And then the last one, the last one is more of a Don't forget what you already have piece of advice is leverage your current contact lists. Reach out to people that may be soft or cold sales that never closed, reach out to very, very good customers and see if they have people or companies or people in their spheres that they could recommend you to offer referral bonuses or referral VIP things. But reach out to your current contacts and see if there's business to drum up from there. Because they may need new projects that they just haven't reached out to you about they may have forgotten that there's a maintenance cycle that needs to be adhered to for some of the machinery that they bought from you, they may need you and not realize it. So reach out reminds them that you're around. If you have a monthly newsletter, this is a great way to do this and stay top of mind. But even if you're not doing something like that, reach out via email, look at your contact list and find the people that would hold some opportunity and reach out to them with a unique message that says, hey, you people in this situation, we can help you in this way. What do you think?
Nels Jensen:Yes, so, and in understanding the capabilities of your email platform to in some cases, it's like, Hey, you want to send a reminder to these folks that you sent this specific message to three weeks ago? Sure. Or, hey, here's the people who bought this, whatever. I mean, and we've talked a lot in the past about segmenting, right? So, you know, what's your, what's your specific message to former customers, right? What's your that might be actually something that you want to invest time in and not automate? Right? You know, but they're right, your current customers of a certain type, you know, if you if you have the ability to segment your email by personas. So yeah, that is that's that that's a, it's a simple line, but it's very powerful. We've talked before about how email is such a great b2b tool. So leveraging your current contact list there is I just like to echo what you're saying. There's a lot of potential there. But really look at in how you can, you know, where we started this conversation, right? How can you help fit the fragmented segmented questions that people are asking?
Joey Strawn:Well, and on top of that is, you know, one of the and this is going to be something that's not for everybody. I know not all manufacturers, I know everybody has different, you know, position in the supply chain or in their relationship with their distributors and partners. But if you're in a position to offer to make a promotion, or an offer, email is fantastic for that, send out an email to your current listeners, like, Hey, everybody who you know, has, has a contract that's in the five year mark, you guys get this promotion Are you as have this to talk to our salespeople, give them a carrot, lead them back, if you have the ability to do that. It might just be a loss leader to get you that revenue in the door to really churn and start that, you know, that sales process back up to where it needs to be. Get the work in the door, and then more will come.
Nels Jensen:Yep, sound advice.
Joey Strawn:All right. So that's it. That's our five I'll go back through them real quick, though, just so people can kind of recap, not just one of them was conversational marketing, get some real time and chat, whether it's AI based or human based on social media. And on your site, you can gather emails very passively that way. Number two, an expertise piece, some sort of lead magnet, write a long blog post, write a long white paper, write an ebook, write an infographic, make a video, something that is very expertise driven for your audiences, share on social, personal, and professional. Make your CTAs, your calls to actions on your website, stand out. Make sure that they catch people's attention and make them want to click on them. And then last, leverage your current contact list, make sure that you're not forgetting about the people that are already in your funnel already in your universe, and can help you generate some of those new leads. So that's it Nels. I think, and again, I wanted to we wanted to keep it very specific here. So we're not saying hey, launch a webinar series or start your own trade show or build a 10 piece video series, you know, using Martin Scorsese, as a director. We know that budgets are limited. These are things that everybody listening to this should be able to do and can do with their businesses with just some time and some sweat equity.
Nels Jensen:Yes. And it's always keep the customer in mind. Right? Keeps the prospects in mind. What questions are they asking? How can you help them? What are they what are their pain points? And what do they need solved? Right.
Joey Strawn:It's awesome. Well, Nels I am. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up here? Is there anything, any last bits of wisdom that you think our manufacturers that are trying to drive leads haven't heard? Or haven't, you know, aren't able to put into action quite yet?
Nels Jensen:Yeah. So I think if there's anything that you know, your your business becomes more sustainable, the more essential you are to your clients, right? So help them solve better problems. It's not just, it's not just reduce their costs. that's a that's a lead generation strategy. We can save you money. But it's also how we can help you solve bigger and better problems makes you more essential to them. So aim high and deliver. How's that for, how's that for a big, big ask?
Joey Strawn:I love it. I, you know what? Let's end there, aim high, and deliver. That's how you drive leads to your businesses. Know them, shoot for them, attract them and get them. We've we've laid out a lot of ways to do it. And as always, thank you so much for listening to the Industrial Marketer podcast. We will be back in a couple of weeks with more tips, tricks, tech and tactics for marketers and industrial marketers across the world. If you're not already subscribed to the show, what are you doing? Subscribe to the show, listen to the show, get get notifications when it's coming up. But if you haven't already, go to the site, read our articles, you can listen to past episodes of the show there. We explore and give articles. We have infographics and all sorts of lead magnets and things you can learn from over there. There are archives of ways to dive into this stuff and we can help you. So subscribe, follow, visit our website. And until next time, I've been Joey. Nels, thank you so much for your collaboration
as always. And listeners:We will see you next time.