52:28
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, inbound b2b marketing, josh, favorite, question, band, music, customers, manufacturers, play, content, years, business, andrew, bit, listen, starting, hubspot, talk, pink floyd, Business broker, Business value builder, M&A consultant.
SPEAKERS
Josh Curcio, Damon Pistulka, Jennifer Wegman, Jacob Warren, Brad Smith, Ron Higgs, Ira Bowman, Dr. Elia, Andrew Cross, Michael Southward, Pete Alexander, Curt Anderson, Corey Hansen
Damon Pistulka 00:00
Gotta get them going here. Andrew, want to put them on the stage? Josh? Find it. find you in the list here and put you on sometimes this is this is it’s it’s like it’s like buggy sometimes it doesn’t do it automatically.
Andrew Cross 00:16
It’s like we were sitting in the green room
Damon Pistulka 00:17
there. Yeah, you’re sitting in the green room.
Ira Bowman 00:20
We’re all having fun in the green room
Damon Pistulka 00:21
getting on Josh isn’t working. If not just hit the chat.
Andrew Cross 00:26
Yeah, you had to invite me I couldn’t. I know.
00:29
Weird.
Ira Bowman 00:30
What was up with that? I didn’t even check. But Josh
Andrew Cross 00:32
if you can hear us turn your camera on.
00:35
You should be good. Do
Damon Pistulka 00:40
maybe he’s suffering the Microsoft Edge curse like we were just talking about? Hmm.
Andrew Cross 00:45
Well, let’s get on with it anyways.
Damon Pistulka 00:47
Yeah. I’m gonna add it one went back in to get one more time then we’re gonna go. Then we’ll get rolling. One more time for him on screen. There we go. Got it. Just had to redo it, man.
01:05
Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.
Damon Pistulka 01:07
It’s just the way it is. There we go. All right. knology. We’re rolling live here on LinkedIn as well. Welcome everyone to the exit your way round table once again, Thursdays. If you haven’t been here before. Glad to have you. It looks like we’ve had a lot of returning people here which is freaking awesome. Today, we got Josh Curcio a little bit later talking about Inbound B2B Marketing.
Andrew and I are up here on the stage with us helping helping keep the things rolling for us and, and providing that awesome comments, along with our guests here. So we’re going to start out again, as we usually do with the introductions, and our question of the week. We had this music hard, but it’s gonna be funny. So hopefully, it’ll be funny.
Maybe it’s not funny, but great to see everyone hear the conversations. As we got started, they were awesome as usual Love, love the discussions and, and the sharing. So today, when we bring you on, you’re going to do your introduction. Tell us a little bit about yourself what you do. And then I want to have you explain when you are 18. Who is your favorite band and musician? Or musician? And who is that for? Same band or musician today?
02:32
real simple.
Damon Pistulka 02:34
So, Andrew, who we got coming up first?
Andrew Cross 02:37
Let’s see. Why. You Oh, you know what your? Well, let me see here. You’re gonna have to do it. For some reason. I’m not a host today. That’s what I’m having issues.
Damon Pistulka 02:51
Ah, okay, I reckon you are. Weird.
Ira Bowman 02:57
Can I do what I’m saying?
Damon Pistulka 02:58
Can you bring people up by hitting the participants where it says bring them on stage? That’s where that Yeah, I can cool. Go ahead and go ahead and do it. Man. That’d be awesome. All right,
Ira Bowman 03:09
Andrew, come on up, my friend.
Andrew Cross 03:12
All right. Pull up another one too. At the same time. And then
Ira Bowman 03:17
Brad Smith.
03:18
Yeah. All right.
Ira Bowman 03:22
cameras.
03:23
Andrew. How you doing man? Doing well.
Andrew Cross 03:26
Cool. Cool background loving it.
Brad Smith 03:28
It looks great. It’s it’ll blow your mind what we do with this thing?
Ira Bowman 03:38
We’re talking about this.
03:39
Yes. Oh, crap. I
03:40
just got COVID Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 03:44
Yeah, it wasn’t a part was it? That’s what yeah, if you watch the the Christmas,
03:50
I’m better now.
Damon Pistulka 03:51
The Christmas video my wife made for our family on Facebook. My son is actually blown apart with it turns into flames. So. So go ahead, Andrew.
Brad Smith 04:01
favorite band when I was 18. Singer.
04:04
What do you do first?
04:06
What do I do?
Damon Pistulka 04:07
Yeah. Or how do
Brad Smith 04:09
I come on these meetings and create havoc? No, we’re, I do programs as a fractional chief marketing officer that help companies convert every touch into voracious advocates for their brand. We work we work globally, we have contacted about 120 countries to take American products abroad and we go strategy first, to take your company to the next level. Cool. Cool.
Damon Pistulka 04:36
Well, great seeing you here today. Andrew. It’s awesome. We got to tell you we got the chat rolling on LinkedIn like crazy today for some reason, which is cool as well. Glad to see people there trying to get them up. So Brad Smith, don’t bring yourself and answer our infamous Question of the day. Okay,
Brad Smith 04:53
so I help CEOs business owners add if they’ve got enough courage zeros to their revenue, right zeros. I just double it add zero. So other than that and guide them through that process. So my favorite band my favorite band, I had several, but I actually had to look it up. Born to be wild by Steppenwolf was my favorite song at that time.
Damon Pistulka 05:25
The only thing about that song is it’s like 15 minutes long. Oh, no, that’s
05:30
the good part.
Damon Pistulka 05:31
Get to the end and you’re like, man, I I’m tired. This song has been going on forever and it keeps on going for another five minutes. Yep. Good stuff. So today, what is your? What’s your band of the day to day?
Brad Smith 05:44
My music today? I’ve kind of drifted back to the 1800s I’m pretty deeply into Mozart. I have been for years.
Ira Bowman 05:53
So he went back to the basics or went back to the basics. Yep. Knows Bob.
Brad Smith 06:00
Yeah. That’s that’s my current.
Damon Pistulka 06:03
Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. Thanks for that. Bradley.
Corey Hansen 06:08
Corey. Good mornin, yeah, man. You do that Corey Hansen 100 business. Got a five x now program with Ron Higgs Roddy, Ron Higgs, and I’m basically an investor in a couple of select companies. And our goal is to get $100 million valuation as quickly as possible. And got some interesting companies going. Anyway, we’re favorite band. I had to think. Yeah, I was 18. I don’t know why you keep going back to such young ages. You know, but anyway, it was 18 I think was Moody Blues.
Ira Bowman 06:48
It’s called a midlife crisis.
Corey Hansen 06:50
Is that what it is? Yeah, I believe. So Moody Blues. And then nowadays if I when I wake up in the shower, I listen to like something fun like Texas swing band. asleep at the wheel.
Damon Pistulka 07:06
asleep at the wheel. Yeah. All right, down, down. Cool. Yeah, very good. Cory. Thanks for being here today.
07:16
The one and only Kurt Anderson. Kurt Anderson. What’s happening today? Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So I have to give a huge shout. Well, good morning to everybody. love everybody here. So
Curt Anderson 07:27
my dear friend Josh Curcio. Oh, for those of you that don’t know, Josh Curcio we’ve been we’ve been Josh business together for a long time, about eight, nine years or so. And when I met Josh, he had a he’s a business partner, Danny. And I think what would you have one or two employees at the time, and now they’re up to up to 20. And so we’ve spoke at each other’s events for years, we’ve worked with clients together for years. And so you guys are in for a treat. He just spoke this week at for Alibaba. And Damon and I we did an e commerce bootcamp together. I was speaking next week for Alibaba. So Josh is a rock star.
So Josh, welcome. Thank you for joining us. My ecommerce guy for manufacturers 1986 you know, I was a classic rock guy. I was a huge doors guy. I was big into Jim Morrison the doors. And now you know, there’s a band I love now Cold War kids. I’m a big Cold War kids guy. So have a phenomenal Thursday, everybody. Josh, thank you for coming. Dr. E your next.
Dr. Elia 08:28
You know, it’s really hard. It’s really hard to follow up CT Anderson, man, he’s passion. And he has the biggest heart like really? I don’t know anybody else who’s like when he makes comments on your post, they’re so thoughtful. And he doesn’t just like something. I mean, he’s, it’s hard.
Yeah. You know, there’s so many bad it’s such it’s like having to choose between which one’s your favorite kid, right. I mean, I was I grew up with the Beatles, but my favorite song growing up really was Stairway to Heaven. I used to love that song. board is another great one. But Stairway to Heaven was like, you know, epic. And now I think you know what I really love. I’m going back to like, Leonard Cohen’s hallelujah.
It could be Christmas season. I love pull it out deep. So I’m a happiness expert, a corporate wellness international keynote speaker and I can’t wait for 2021 for this pandemic to slow down enough. So I get to travel again to go across the pond and share happiness and wellness with organizations, obviously, with this new year with Coach Khan and nine learning how to navigate a crisis and sharing that with organizations as we’re dealing with multiple crisis. So love you guys love being here. Merry Christmas. Are we having another meeting or is this our last one?
Damon Pistulka 09:51
We have another one next week. Oh, yeah.
Dr. Elia 09:54
Next week, then
Ira Bowman 09:55
all right. For security next week.
09:58
Yeah. Okay. Great.
Damon Pistulka 10:10
Jacob, yeah.
10:13
So what was my favorite?
Jacob Warren 10:16
Oh, well, first off, Jacob with one research, we do it for businesses helping keep it simple. I had to go back and really think about when I was 18. And think about what ban if there was a lot of different music that was out at that time. And honestly, I’d have to say my most favorite from that time frame was Nirvana. There you go. And then actually smells like the what was what my favorite was for there? Nowadays, believe it or not, is jack Johnson. For some reason. It’s just that whole chill that he’s been my favorite nowadays. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting how it changes over the years.
Andrew Cross 11:04
I’ve been waiting for Jennifer wegman. Want to hear it.
11:09
Thanks, Jacob.
Jennifer Wegman 11:12
So Hi, everybody. I’m Jennifer. I am a social media strategist and done for you content writer. I write social media content, custom content and blogs for people, entrepreneurs and small businesses who are overwhelmed, frustrated or too busy to do it themselves. And my favorite band when I was 18, and my favorite band now is the same matchbox 20
11:33
There you go.
Damon Pistulka 11:35
Yeah. That’s very, very popular.
Jennifer Wegman 11:39
I was second row center for matchbox 20 concert. So that was like
Damon Pistulka 11:46
that’s cool. Simple. Thanks, Jennifer. Thank you. All right, Khan. What do you have going on today? Let’s hear about your bands. Good morning, everybody. Know I’m a little bit older than Jennifer. So I’m going to go a little bit further.
12:07
I want to switch gears on all of the rockers out there. I’m gonna go my at the time. I really love listening to Rufus and Chaka Khan. I’m going eight, nobody,
12:19
funk style. Come on,
12:21
I’m going that way. So that was a good time was right before I went into the military. So that was a good time. It was fun. Now, what do I do now I am a change management, change leadership and performance improvement expert. I am the owner of fresh biz solutions and HR consulting firm.
And my area, my area of contribution to my clients, mostly mid cap companies is to help them improve performance, manage change, by managing and supporting them in the areas of purpose, process, and people. So I touch all of those areas when my clients and I helped them make a difference so they can achieve their goals. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks for being here today, Khan. And Chaka Khan. man that’s, that’s going back there. Mark, awesome to see you today. morning, everybody. Band wise
13:13
for me. It’s Pink Floyd. I
13:14
just think they you know, push the button went off on just some really interesting things that just add so much to, to music. So I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan, particularly dark side of the moon, but pretty much everything they do.
13:28
As far as I do. I help businesses with retention and succession planning, I help individuals protecting their income and assets against inflation taxes, themselves, their own bad behavior.
13:44
I do that as financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual using their investment insurance products. Very good. Yep.
Damon Pistulka 13:52
I remember Pink Floyd Mile High Stadium in the mid 90s. Sometime. They played money in there. I will never ever forget the way that sounded. Yeah, I’ll never ever forget that. Because I remember two things about that the sound and I reach down and touch the ground where john Elway played on the 50 yard line which I don’t know why I’m not a big Denver fan, but I thought was cool. So awesome. Awesome stuff. Mark. He was
Ira Bowman 14:17
he was hired Am I
Damon Pistulka 14:19
yeah, it was probably that it’s
14:23
great to see you today. Hey, good to be seen Michael good, loose key with achievement unlimited. I’m a growth catalyst. I work as an irritant with my clients to help them scale their business and grow their people. help them develop the leadership skills, the communication skills.
We do that through a number of tools and assessments, some online KPI dashboard tracking stuff. Anyway, my favorite bam. Like Mark was it was Pink Floyd and, and Fleetwood Mac is a tie between the two but since Mark took Pink Floyd, I’m going to take fleet Matt, and I was just going through some tickets that I had laying around in a box. Would Matt $14.29 for that for that ticket, right. So, so that was
15:17
two years ago in Philly.
Damon Pistulka 15:20
$300 a seat, right? Yeah, yeah. So things have gone up a little in 40 years. That’s awesome, man. That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing and great to see you here today, Michael. Good to you guys.
15:35
All right.
Damon Pistulka 15:36
Thank you, Michael, southward. First time visitor I believe right?
Michael Southward 15:40
Yeah. Yep. finally made it I appreciate keep sending the invites is very good.
Damon Pistulka 15:44
Well, let’s talk a little bit about yourself. How are you helping people and then we get to the all important question of the day.
15:51
Great, thanks. Well, good morning, everyone. Happy to be here. I’m Michael and my company. I’m another e commerce guy. We do marketing advertising and building some software tools for e commerce brands and and agencies. And, and my favorite band, it’s it’s so hard to pull in I was gonna go with Metallica. But then I was really really loved Ozzy for a lot of years.
And then you know, Queen’s Reich, I was guitar player so I just the musicality and the technicality that was just, I really was drawn to bands like that with with huge talent and, and lots of harmonies and things going on. So that’s it nowadays, I angels and airwaves I think would have to be my biggest if any of you heard of it, the lead singer, Tom DeLonge. From blink 182 he’s had probably at least five different bands and things that he’s done and and that I just love, it’s just, it’s just really good energy and positive, you know, flow.
Damon Pistulka 16:49
So it’s very cool.
16:51
I like to just summarize, I have a very short drive from my house down the street to my office, and I’ll just try to get to it quick on my phone, you know, get the Pandora my angels and airwaves station so I can hear half a song on the way and get me juiced up.
Damon Pistulka 17:05
Yeah. Well, I can tell you, you’d never have enough volume when Metallica is playing Enter Sandman and blink 182. He’s got some really good songs that he’s to add. When I wakeboard, we always blast. Always blast of that. Thanks for being here, Michael.
17:23
Thank you.
Damon Pistulka 17:24
Pete. How are you doing today? Good morning, gentlemen.
Pete Alexander 17:27
Thank you for pulling me up. Um, so what do I do so I help hard driving leaders better protect their health and handle challenging situations with grace through very simple to implement stress relief activities. Um, when I was 18, that would have been Huey Lewis. In the news, the I really enjoyed their their music. Went to a couple of their concerts actually went to one of their concerts not too long ago, actually. They’re on the playing. They’re on the downside of their career. They’re playing in some of the the state and county fairs.
18:11
And, you know, it’s
18:11
funny going retro actually, for what I if I’m going to choose something, I actually gotten back into cool in the game. I really liked upbeat stuff there that they play and so and i and i went to see when they’re they’re playing the the county fairs as well. I think that that was the most fun concert
Ira Bowman 18:37
for them to go to Reno and see Cool. Cool,
Damon Pistulka 18:39
there you go. There you go. Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Pete, thanks for being here today. All right, Ron, great having you here today. Rod, come
Ron Higgs 18:50
- Great to be here. So I’m Ron Higgs. I’m in Seattle. A fractional clo, but I am looking for my next opportunity. Somewhere in operations. This music thing is hard. I’m going to tell you why. right cuz I am a hip hop fan. Hip Hop was kind of in its infancy. You know, when I was 18, maybe a little bit past its infancy right. So there’s so many small little groups, that they’ve all just kind of disappeared, but I remember just kind of that music just coming along and just starting just starting to get popular.
- And you know, I have to say it I was a huge Michael Jackson fan, you know, as well. Um, nowadays, you know, my music taste is evolved quite a bit right. So now I like I like reggae music so slightly stupid as a good band. I mean, they can’t go wrong with these guys. mellow ironically. I don’t think any of them were even born. Yeah. So I love that music because reggae music always makes me feel like I’m on vacation like Jimmy Buffett music I become Jimmy Buffett. To write Can you listen to Jimmy Buffett movie and not not be put in a good? Yeah,
Ira Bowman 20:06
it is easier to be in a good mood if you’re listening to Jimmy Buffett have maybe a margarita.
Ron Higgs 20:12
Let me add something here. So finally Damon you’re gonna you guys are gonna love this. So I finally got a chance to be daymond in person over the weekend. So we we had a more than a couple of
Damon Pistulka 20:23
hours and a half
Ron Higgs 20:26
life we had a great time. So I felt like I had known him for years, which I had.
Damon Pistulka 20:30
Yeah. It was great. We
Ron Higgs 20:34
had a lot of Professor Pete Next time we will give you
Ira Bowman 20:38
let me ask you a question. Okay. So you’ve known Damon for years you meet with them? A couple of them and you meet with Damon all the time, virtually anything that surprised you?
Ron Higgs 20:50
Well, you know, his wife, right, because, you know, the generosity and money will never cease to amaze. She’s never
Damon Pistulka 21:00
better so he knows.
Ron Higgs 21:01
Just kidding. I actually had a great time meeting his wife, but you know what? Maybe I guess I say he’s taller than I thought.
Damon Pistulka 21:09
Okay. Oh, nice. Cool. It was fun, though, man. And next time we do have to get Pete because Pete can walk off the ferry to where we were. Yeah.
Ron Higgs 21:21
Thanks, guys for bringing her on. The
Ira Bowman 21:27
Okay, that’s it.
Damon Pistulka 21:29
We got to get Andrew Deutsch back up. Andrew didn’t wasn’t able to give us his bands. Yeah, we got a listen to his bands.
Ira Bowman 21:36
Andrew. My backup brother I thought he did.
Brad Smith 21:41
When I was 18. Number one was sort of a toss up between either Frank Zappa or Jethro Tull. Oh. When I when I became friends was that this kid I told him that he didn’t know that his dad raised me. So I was I was the brother than ever talked about.
21:59
Yeah.
Brad Smith 22:00
And lately my go to is rockabilly player. The Reverend Horton heat.
Damon Pistulka 22:05
Oh, yeah, that’s a good one.
Brad Smith 22:06
I’ve used them. I’ve seen him like 10 times. They played his Burgess a lot it
Damon Pistulka 22:11
at their bike rally. And that’s where I saw him a couple times. I think he is the
Brad Smith 22:19
perfect psychobilly rock show. If you ever if you ever never never seen a perfect show? Any night? guaranteed?
Damon Pistulka 22:27
Yeah. Cool. Thanks a lot, Andrew. If we, if we didn’t get here, raise your hand. But now we’re to the people that are on stage. So Andrew Krause, you’re the you’re the top center. Let’s see what you got a
Andrew Cross 22:44
pretty eclectic taste in music. I have so but back in eight when I was 18 I probably I was listening to the who really into them stones Genesis, and then kind of fell into so Polly by the time I was 18. I was listening to Tom Collins in the air at night. That kind of, you know, stuff was great. Nowadays, a lot of different things but kind of kind of like an EDM. Listen to atmosphere LCD. soundsystem Rufus Del Sol saw some concerts out here. So you know, my kids are late 20s. So the Yeah, just kind of into it. Cool. Like this stuff?
Damon Pistulka 23:26
Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. So IRA, where are you at with that?
Ira Bowman 23:33
So when I was 18, I was mostly country. So I would have to say Travis tritt. would would have been my favorite at the time. I you know, maybe if I was 18 I would answer a little different but just thinking back I think Travis could have a couple that I really like right now. It’s mostly like Christian music soon if anybody would know a big daddy weave but Big Daddy weave is probably my favorite. For munchery genre. I’d probably stick with like, George Strait. Something more classic like them.
Damon Pistulka 24:06
Oh, awesome. God, George j A number of years ago in Vegas and man he you know, he’s a he’s a legend. He’s a freakin country legend,
Ira Bowman 24:15
but it’s just like song after song after song. How many number ones is the guy half? It’s kind of like, get you banned Alabama, for every song was a hit. It’s like Oh, yeah. Yeah.
24:26
Good. Let’s put on some shows. Yeah. Well,
24:29
Josh, where are we at here? with you on? For me my music.
Josh Curcio 24:35
So this is actually pretty easy one. So 311 was my favorite band. Back when I was 18. And still my favorite band today. I saw them live. I’ve seen them about 1617 times. But I saw them live the first time that I was maybe 16 to 17. And I just saw them again last year. We had plans to go this year but you know, those moments change. So that’s an easy one. I love some of the answers though.
Damon Pistulka 24:59
Yeah.
25:01
You get a Van Halen?
Damon Pistulka 25:03
Yeah, that was kind of the deal.
Ira Bowman 25:06
I guess we didn’t have a lot of people that didn’t because if you’d asked me elementary school, I would have said Van Halen all day.
Andrew Cross 25:11
Yeah, I did. I had I had friends in high school that were doing the Van Halen, and Motley Crue kind of thing. Yeah.
Ira Bowman 25:18
And some of the other things yet. There was a lot of there was a lot of that. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 25:23
yeah. Yeah. Well, that
Ira Bowman 25:27
is entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and business owners. There’s a different type of worker, maybe
Damon Pistulka 25:36
it’s funny for me, Josh, is I used to listen to 311 a lot, you know, all mixed up is one of my favorites. I know, it was a popular one. But it’s, it’s just, it’s got the way the drums are playing in the back. And the way it just it’s kind of a mixed up tune. Like they like the sound or that idol. But it’s good. But for me when I was 18, it would be AC DC. I mean. Yeah. Everybody in that time in the in the early 80s. man you are, you’re, if you didn’t have AC DC, you know, Highway to Hell came out and whatever, 82 or something like that. And then that just changed the world and rock and roll. And those guys until they started dying off here a few years ago.
I mean, they’re still making music 15 years ago, I think. But that was one and then and then now I actually, we’ve got I was looking it up because my my daughter was showing me my 2020 playlist on Spotify because they put compiled it and I actually listened to Zac Brown band of all things the most this year. And I cried. Yeah, chicken fried. That’s actually the song because my son is put together playlist and stuff. And I’ve got some playlists, but I switched into country a little bit, but I still I’ll listen to the three elevens the Metallica is and that kind of stuff too, because I’ve got different playlists, but I listened to probably four to eight hours of music a week.
So it’s just playing all the time. And but country now I came back with the stories. Yeah, I’ll be listening to the lyrics man. And I never when I was young, I didn’t do that. But man the connection to the stories that they tell is what I enjoy about it. So anyway, enough of that, that diversion but I think it’s fun because we get to know know people better and it really does. It does make it Yeah, it’s just fun. I think so. Now without further ado, we’re gonna have Josh Talk to us a bit about inbound B2B marketing and and how he’s helping people. Take it away, Josh.
Josh Curcio 27:43
He’s getting ready. All right, can you guys see my screen? Sure can. Awesome. First of all, I want to thank Kurt for the kind words. Always, always willing to share some kind words about people. I love that about him. And, you know, thank you to IRA Damon, Andrew for having me here. It’s it’s awesome what you guys do every week and happy to be a part of it when I can.
Alright, so I’m going to talk as little as I can. I want to hear your questions. This is such a smart group of people that I don’t know that I’m going to teach you a whole lot. But I want to be able to answer any questions or concerns, thoughts, whatever you guys have. So just a little bit more about me. I’m CEO and partner at protocol at Inc. We work primarily with manufacturing companies. We’ve been in business since 2002. So in the digital space, we’re like dinosaurs, doesn’t mean we stop learning and stop improving.
But we’ve been around a while and as Kurt mentioned, you know, for a long time we were to three people. Now I think we have 1718 getting close to that 20 number. I’m a HubSpot certified trainer HubSpot user group leader in Rochester, New York. I’m a HubSpot community champion now more importantly, maybe outside of work on Strava follow me Josh curzio on peloton Josh laces calm Do I have any other peloton people here? I’d love to get some more peloton connections.
So if you do ride the peloton toss your username in that untapped sign. I know some of you guys are an untapped share some share some cheers via untapped and on Yelp. Alright, enough about me. What I plan to talk about today just what is inbound show some real life examples of how we’re helping some some manufacturing companies talk about you know, does it actually work, give you some points of caution to think about if you’re not doing in bound or maybe you’re trying inbound and is not working. And then as I mentioned some questions and answers.
So some of you may have seen this slide before Damon you probably seen this. Curt you know inbound B2B marketing is really buyer centric. It’s all about your prospects, your customers, the people that you need to sell to it’s not it’s not about what you want to talk about. It’s not about your history. It’s not just all about you, it’s about them and the problems that they’re facing. Because when we have problems, or we have opportunities today, we can go to the internet, search for it, and find solutions and find help there. Inbound is all about being there and being in front of them and answering those questions.
So what is it, you know, really, we’re looking at this, this is kind of the new the new model, looking at the flywheel where we know that our customers can help us get in, get new work, get referrals, and so on, and so forth. But it comes down to attracting strangers, engaging prospects of getting those strangers essentially to raise their hand and say, I’m looking at this, I’ve got a problem, I need some help turning those people that are raising their hand into customers, and then turning those customers into raving fans of yours and promoters and being that great referral source.
And that’s ultimately how we try to help or how people using inbound B2B marketing should be trying to help grow their businesses. So what are some of the tools that kind of play, play the parts there, as far as attracting strangers, you’ve got your ads, blogging, social media content, I’ll get into a little bit more of that. As far as engagement, you’ve got your email marketing, lead management, conversational bots, one point on, on engagement there, and email marketing and working with manufacturers is a lot of these contract manufacturers, their customers or other manufacturers, and they have no reason to go to these to their websites all the time, right.
So they’re like, Well, you know, we could be getting more work from this customer, this customer, they just don’t know we do it or they don’t know, we have that capability or capacity. They don’t know that because they’re not coming to your website, they’re not engaging with that with you on a regular basis. through email marketing, through content creation and blogging, they’re able to increase reengagement, and not only pick up work from new customers new prospects, but bring on new or new lines or new products from their existing customers, which it’s much easier to sell an existing customer than it is to find someone brand new and sell to them.
And then delight, so just reducing as much friction as possible in your overall sales process and how you work with customers, delivering success, transparency, delivering results, those people will become fans, and a referral source. So, inbound, at least how we approach inbound is very content driven. And when I say content, that’s blog posts, that’s video content, that’s website content, ebooks, white papers, all of that stuff. But when we break out content, we look at the funnel approach.
Again, tofu means top of funnel that’s like your content that you write that’s relevant to a lot of different people, it’s relevant to your customers, but it’s probably relevant to, you know, 1000s, and 1000s, millions of other people as well, that will never be your customers. But it’s still important to have that type of content, because that’s what feeds some of the website traffic and attracting some of those strangers. Because sometimes, when you get too specific, those people that are your potential prospects, they don’t know what to look for. But when they’re researching, they start out on that broad level, just because they don’t know their options yet, right.
So that’s top of funnel, the broad level, in the manufacturing space, that’s the only area that’s super difficult to get a manufacturer manufacturer to talk about. They’re really good about talking about themselves and their capabilities and the machines they have, and you know, how many parts they can produce and whatever. Getting them to talk about the high level stuff is a challenge. The middle of the funnel content, that’s where like, all right, you know, it’s it’s more specific to the problems that people are solving, you’re starting to hone in on here’s my solution.
When we talk about, you know, manufacturing, for example, you might start talking about specific types of metal manufacturing or specific metals that you could be using in in building those products, as opposed to just the manufacturing process itself. And then bottom of funnel, so bottom of funnel content is still pretty important. And that’s when it’s about our customers or our partners or you your businesses, you only will appeal to a certain audience at that point, the ones that have a shortlist of who’s going to fix this problem for me, that’s when they care about bottom of the funnel content.
Historically, that’s where people live in bottom of the funnel, easy to write about yourself to talk about yourself, do videos about yourself, okay? But we have to have that whole scope there all of it. We can break that down a little bit further into when someone’s researching versus when someone’s weighing their options versus when someone’s trying to find their vendor or their, their, whatever that whoever they’re going to do business with and the awareness stage. We’re looking looking at things like the blogs like ebooks, it’s purely educational and it’s free.
And you want to be really helping to educate and make those people that are researching, be able to help find the answers that they want. What we don’t want to do is give a little bit like a tiny little bit, and just be like a sorry, I’m not going to give you the rest of it, you have to contact me for the rest of certain element of that. But when you start to turn a prospect away, at that point, they’re just going to go find it elsewhere on the internet. So that broad level, we have to give all the information you can and consideration stage, that’s where we break that down a little bit more get a little bit more specific.
And then it may be that point, you can be like, you know what, it’s a little bit difficult for me to explain how we could tailor this to you. At that point, maybe we should talk a little bit more about it. And then decision stage that’s again, where they have their shortlist. They’re trying to figure out who is the best provider to help me with my opportunity, fix my problem, so on and so forth. But again, it’s not just content, there’s a lot of other things that come into play with bound. And one of the important things to remember is, inbound itself is not a tactic.
And most of these things here won’t work alone when we’re talking about a considered purchase, right? Something that you have to think about before you buy. So when we’re implementing an inbound strategy, we’re looking at all of these different tactics that may come into play at some point in time, search engine optimization, social media, email marketing, inbound B2B marketing, automation, all of these will come into play at some point. But there’s not really a magic formula of you need to do X at this time, you need to do this many blog posts, you need to invest this much in paid, it’s different for every business.
But it’s not just about content. So let’s talk about a real life example. This is a horizon technology. To most people, their industry is probably super, super boring. It’s powder metal. Some of you may know some things about powder metal, but most of you probably didn’t even know that metal is made from powder even existed, right? So these guys are a powder metal manufacturer, there’s a lot of them in the world. But they have a specific niche in powder metal with soft magnetic composites. So like the, the materials that make up their components that they make have a magnetic factor with them.
So they come into play with like high performance engines, electric motors, so on and so forth. So what you see here, on the left side, is their blog post listings. These are all like just educational information about powder metal, about soft magnetic composites, right? It’s giving me information, it’s not trying to sell the business. This is what a specific blog post would look for look like, right? So if you’re an engineer in, you know, GM or somewhere, you’re gonna care about these numbers, majority of people aren’t gonna care about those numbers. I don’t know what those numbers mean. But somebody cares about that. And somebody is looking for that information.
Right? So you’re right, the information that people are looking for. And then from there, you’re saying, All right, well, you know, we have more information about this if you need it. On this right side here. There’s what we call a call call to action. It’s a beginner’s guide to soft magnetic composites. So this would be for someone that maybe is even an intern that’s researching for an engineer, maybe it’s a junior level engineer. But it’s just more information. And if they want it, they can say, hey, I want this send it to me via email, they give their email address, and now horizon knows who that person is. or someone’s in the process of designing something.
And this could be anyone from a junior level engineer to a doctor of metallurgy. Right. But they’re designing something in they’re not experts at soft magnetic composites, most people aren’t. That’s where they come into this like middle of funnel offer, where they’re offering say, hey, you have questions about your design. Let’s bring bring one of our engineers, we’ll talk we’ll see what we can do to help you through whatever stumbling block you’re at at that point, right. So there’s two pieces there, the attract, which is the blog post, and the engage, which are these calls to action.
When they click one of those calls to action, it takes them to a landing page where they can then give their name and their email address. One nice thing about inbound is if you create, continue to create new content and new offers, you can start asking different questions. So we’re keeping it pretty basic here with name and email. But the next time they engage with the website the next time they download something else, or re download this will ask them a different question. Maybe their job title, maybe their next project using PM, something like that.
It’s called progressive profiling. But then we also, as I mentioned, want to have some bottom of funnel type of content when someone cares, like hey, I’m researching Stop magnetic composites. But who can help me with this. So we also continue to write and offer the bottom of funnel content about horizon. So this is a capabilities guide that somebody can have emailed to them. And you see that we’re starting to ask industry in this case. So how do people get there? Right? We’re creating this content. But how do people get there? Well through email is one way, right? You’ve got an email database, send it to them. There’s social media, some people have a social following.
There’s influencers out there, you can get them through social. One of the ways that we really strive to achieve traffic and visibility through organic search. So in this case, someone searches for powdered metal for electric motor, right? horizon is the first one. In this case, this person probably searching how do we, you know, build whatever electric motor, we want horizon to show in that case, then as they kind of dig into it a little bit, they might search for soft magnetic composites. Again, horizon is the first result here for soft magnetic composites.
And this is a blog post. Okay. The cool thing about this, I love this screenshot because hoganas is a huge company. And GKN is like, one of the biggest powder metal companies in the world. And they are ranking above GE can. Awesome. And horizons a small business. Right? Cool. All right, so does it work. So these are just screenshots of three different manufacturing companies, because again, we primarily work with manufacturers, I’m not giving you any information here specific to which ones which but there are different industries in the manufacturing world.
We see here that it goes out slow, go slow, go slow, most of these people are starting with less than, you know, 100 visitors a month, 200 visitors a month. In this case, this company last month got almost 10,000 visits, mostly from organic search, which is green. Same here, they started out very low. We’re maintaining over 10,000 visitors a month. Last month, they had about 11,000 in here, starting probably about 1000 last month over 15,000. And they’ve been maintaining that, again, mostly from organic search. So you might be saying, All right, well, traffic is not enough contacts, contacts, or conversions leads follow those same path.
Most of these companies were not generating anything from their website prior to starting inbound, nothing. Like maybe some people trying to sell them SEO from overseas, that would be the type of contacts or conversions they would get. But now they’re starting to be able to generate conversions and leads to salespeople can have conversations. More importantly, what about customers? Right? We can track back and say, all right, well, these types of things are driving customers. And these are smaller numbers.
But we’re talking about part production and contract manufacturing where that contract is a year long, potentially multiple years long as opposed to selling a widget. So closing one contract is a big deal. Okay. And we’re seeing that organic, in both of these cases is one of the highest driving avenues for customers for both of these manufacturing companies, great to see inbound, digital, whatever digital path that is you can track all of that today with tools, things to be aware of.
Again, as I mentioned, inbound is not a tactic. It’s a strategic approach. It consists of a bunch of things. It’s not a marathon, or it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint takes time, as you saw in the screenshot, some of those people took 18 months before they started seeing significant growth. But the impact was compounding grew and grew and grew once it started to have that growth. It’s an investment. It’s either going to be a financial investment, or a time investment if you plan to do it in house.
And sales can’t be the old school legacy sales people that they have been in the past they have to shift to adjust to that inbound lead mindset and help to continue to educate have conversations. You have that buy in from the top down. If your marketing manager wants to do this great. If they don’t have buy in from the CEO, it’s not going to last. It might last for six months until the CEOs like Well, I don’t know if this is really working and then they cut the budget on that right.
If it weren’t route required to do it right require some form of inbound B2B marketing software and a CRM, we’re HubSpot people but there’s other software’s out there. Last one, most importantly, if you’re going to have asset you might as well not do it at all because you’re not going to see the results. This was fitting we got Freddie Mercury here in our conversation favorite band awesome. Alright, so that’s it. That’s all I had. I know it’s quick. We want to get you guys out on time but I want to answer questions.
Damon Pistulka 44:55
Yeah, well, that’s that’s awesome, man. I just really appreciate you sharing that because Cuz there’s so many takeaways and people in the in on LinkedIn in the in the chat here, go ahead and start firing some questions at Josh. But you know, the way that you laid out the top of the funnel abala mother funnel and showed the example I think was really cool understanding manufacturing, where we work a lot of our a lot of the time was really interesting and how that’s a wide ranging information down into the really specific specific information at the bottom.
And then the The other thing that clicked is what you said right at the end, because I was actually talking about the other day is that you really can’t let your traditional sales just roll along, as they always were, when you have this strategy, because they have to understand what’s going on and how it’s affecting the overall sales process and how you’ve integrated the two.
Josh Curcio 45:55
Yeah, yeah, you know, sometimes we have to cringe because we have insight into the emails that salespeople are sending to their, their contacts to their leads, because it’s in the CRM, and you look at someone that’s, that’s in the early stages and doing some research. And you can tell from their inquiry, that’s what they’re doing. They need some answers. But the sales rep on the other end is just like, I want to sell you something. They’re just jumping all over. We just want to get to an RFP as quickly as possible. It doesn’t work. It turns people away, and there’s no response. Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Cross 46:26
I think it’s amazing how they were up ahead of GKN, you know, that, you know, and that, you know, that’s so but that’s so there. It’s, it’s, it’s, you know, so when for anybody not to get in it, you know, in a small manufacturer or something like that. I mean, you can’t do that it really in other industries, but you know, to pull ahead of, that’s a fortune 50 company. Yeah. It’s huge that you you don’t have the ability to do that. But in these technical markets.
Damon Pistulka 46:55
Yeah. Yeah. So Allison’s got a question here. It says, What do you say to prospective manufacturing clients who question the ROI of spending money on creating content and diving into social media?
Josh Curcio 47:09
Yeah, so it’s a lot through education. And through examples, at least from our experience, manufacturers want to see what has worked for other manufacturers. So showing them the data showing them case studies always help. But we also on every sales process for us go into an ROI discovery, like is ROI possible, because if it’s not possible, we’re not going to achieve it in a timeframe that’s acceptable for you.
We’re not going to be a good partnership for you, and we shouldn’t work together. So we will dive into things as to like, you know, what does that look like from a sales perspective? Can you close enough in a in a timely amount, or in an amount of time where it makes sense for us to work together and go through and actually work the numbers as much as possible? Now, there’s no guarantees there.
But it’s helpful to dig in and dive in and say, if we can give your sales people these types of leads, what can they close? And if you’re investing at this level, what’s that return look like? If you’re maintaining margins, the social question is always so much more difficult for manufacturing, manufacturing people. LinkedIn is kind of the space where we talk in spend most of our time talking about social media with with manufacturing companies, the other ones, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you can be there. But connections just aren’t going to be as great. It’s almost just like, an outlet to help spread the word and share.
Damon Pistulka 48:41
Yeah. Cory had another good question said, What ROI range? Do you project for customers?
Josh Curcio 48:49
Oh, gosh, that’s a really tough question with contract manufacturing, because one job can be a quarter of a million dollars, it can be multiple millions of dollars. So in most cases for our clients, our ideal business, one contract pays for multiple years of our marketing. Yeah. Yeah.
Ira Bowman 49:12
Which firms are you working with? joshy Do you have a you have a
Josh Curcio 49:17
we’re mostly we’re mostly small business to mid market. Most of our manufacturers are 10 million in revenue a year up to 100 million maybe. But they’re smaller.
Damon Pistulka 49:31
Yeah. Yeah. And that and that’s that’s the The unique thing about a you your kind of client is one sale is is millions of dollars. It’s similar to when I was working in the molding. You know, we would do a contract with period Enzo and it might be a $10 million contract, one year renewal.
And it’s renewable, right? No volume. That’s, you know, multiple A year or those kind of things are, that’s that’s where you can spend these dollars on this kind of stuff because one lead, but most manufacturers, I mean, how many of you go to now the clients that you’re talking to? This question just came to my head? How many times do you go to a client that reaches out to you? That’s that $10 million manufacturer and you start by looking at their website, and you just go, Oh, my God,
50:28
gosh, almost every one.
50:31
Every one of them.
Josh Curcio 50:33
And they know it, you know, it’s not shocking to them, they’re embarrassed by it. They don’t even want to send their website to people. When they’re talking in sales conversations. 2020 has been such an interesting year. It sucked in a lot of ways, right. But it’s driving manufacturers to do things differently from them from what they’ve always done. they now know, we don’t have to be on site.
Every time we have a sales meeting. We can use zoom and we’ll survive. Yeah, we need our website to work for us as opposed to just relying on manufacturers reps or, or our sales team. We need it. It’s been interesting in CRM, only as people are finally saying, Yeah, we could probably use a CRM.
Damon Pistulka 51:16
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting stuff. Well, it’s been awesome to have you I’m so grateful for you to come and share with us, Josh. Man, I’ve heard you speak and you guys. You You’re the knowledge you’re sharing and is so good, dude. I just, I get I get I just it’s so cool. So cool. So we’re here at 855 Andrew, Ira, you got anything more to add before we go back to the tables? Yeah,
Ira Bowman 51:49
he did a great job. Yeah,
Andrew Cross 51:51
thank you judge Christmas shopping done.
Damon Pistulka 51:56
Dr. Theo protocol ad. On the exit your way roundtable a we’re gonna be back here next Thursday talking about cybersecurity, practical cybersecurity, not just the technical details with Ron Craig and Jacob Warren. Looking for some good stuff. They’re going back to the tables now shutting down on LinkedIn live. Thanks for being with us on the LinkedIn live music and using going.
