here we go folks good morning everybody all right love to see people
streaming into these this is going to be such an awesome Workshop hello Adam and Anthony very
good Brian Deana gianan Christie Matt Goosey good to see you here Matt Matias
Paul Rob all right Rodney will very good Tony Tony and Tony there’s a couple
Tony’s and Susie fantastic Chris Su there you go Jamie
good to see you here awesome I would love as we often do to start with let us know where you’re joining from put that
in the chat presumably yeah everyone can chat with everyone that is awesome I
already know some of the states but uh there we go suie kicking us off thank you Susie down in Costa Mesa Austin
Texas Aurora Colorado rck Colorado ball River Tulsa
Louisiana awesome Fort Worth here we go Illinois Wisconsin Colorado lots of
Colorado good you guys are investing in sales and marketing in Colorado pamus Oregon good to see you Justin Fort Wayne
Indiana awesome well uh it is truly a pleasure to introduce Emily and we also have S
who is our marketing manager here at Pro Shop so these ladies are going to Dazzle
you with lots of fantastic advice and information on how to up your marketing game so it doesn’t have to suck so I
will Emily uh I will well actually one more thing so I’m sure there will be
Q&A but uh so please put in your questions in the Q&A rather than the chat that makes a little easier um but
feel free to use the chat to comment on how amazing all this comment all this this material is um I know it’s going to
be fantastic so with without further Ado I’ll hand you over to Emily thank you Emily for joining us and hosting this
for us hey thank you guys so much for having me um turn off the music
here um so I I think I know a couple of you I see Brett and Justin and I saw
Matt gooy thank you guys for coming um so I’m Emily Wilkins I um own a
marketing agency called marketing metal and I work with um with job shops so uh
machine shops fabrication shops um I work with some Automation integrators
and um product development engineering firms um anyone who’s doing custom
services for a larger manufacturing um customer so uh so I put
this little workshop together and um I hope that you guys find it valuable if there’s any um specific questions that
you have or um or comments or thoughts um put them in the chat and we will try
to get to them we’ll have some time at the end uh to answer questions so awesome thank you and I saw Sarah just
put in the chat if you don’t have the workbook definitely click that link and download it right now um print it out or
pull it up in some app that you can you can comment and and mark it up with um
because this is definitely an interactive Workshop you’ll definitely want to be working on that workbook yeah
um so just to give a little introduction to um kind of how how I approach
marketing um I think it’s it’s different from what a lot of how a lot of agencies
approach it with with shops because um they kind they tend to skip over what I
see is the really important part which is like the meat of the you know what is the brand and um what does it stand for
what is that message that you’re really trying to get to your audience um so this is a a customer of mine um Peter
Heat Treating and uh di came to me um last fall and she had this website it
was eight years old um and they just
they weren’t getting a lot of traffic and she just felt like it was kind of um not getting the point across it was um
not you know kind of overwhelming and she was overwhelmed by she was in the
process of taking over the company from her parents she and her husband and um
so marketing fell on her shoulders and she actually had marketing experience
and marketing background but uh she was just feeling overwhelmed by you know all of the things that she thought needed to
be happening um so we uh the way we we
kind of package our services so um so we put together this package for them where we we actually went on site and um took
some photography and video uh spent a lot of time with their team getting to know them and understanding um you know
what it is that’s really special and unique about them and um helping them showcase that on their in their web
presence so um so you can see this overwhelmed down here is kind of where
she was in the beginning and then afterward uh she was feeling very Carefree so um so we when I met with her
and they’re in Pennsylvania so we were doing all of this on on zoom and um she was sitting in her conference room on
our Zoom call and I saw this big sign behind her that said give a damn so when I was developing the brand I was I was
like hot damn like give a hot damn W that makes so much sense so um and you know At first she was like oh I don’t
know I don’t know if my dad’s GNA be okay with that this is her parents in the front row here um this was at a an
event that they had sponsored that we also were there to film um and this is
another one of their employees in the back and there were a few of them and they all showed up with this shirt that we gave them gave them a couple days
before and and that’s what you really want with with your um you know your branding you want it to be something
that people are going to wear proudly and be excited about so um their whole
team they were just so excited when they got these shirts it’s like give a hot damn and they wear them a lot so um I
just talked to her last week and she said that um seeing the videos the you know the employees really kind of it was
kind of this moment where they were like wow this is a real this is a real company like that’s really cool and um
she said that they you know they all have a pretty good idea of what their
work does in the world you know why how why it’s important and um where it ends
up you know playing out in our in our economy um but seeing the videos that we
put together really kind of drove it home for them so it was a really cool experience so um so this is what we
built for them um bringing a lot of that you know the fire and um using a lot of
words that you know speak to that passion that they have for their work because it’s it’s a really important um
a really important piece and it’s something that they uh their customers repeatedly told us that they really
appreciate it that they they take the time to actually um you know listen and help them develop their products and
develop processes specific to their application so um so this is kind of
what I want to focus on today it’s um we’ll we’ll talk a little bit you know there there’s a lot going on in this um
in this Workshop but I really wanted to focus on that messaging piece um and
really getting to the root of what’s what’s different about you what do your customers care about and how can you
bring that message to the Forefront of what you’re doing and I want to point out something that that seems clear as
you look through that site you know so many websites and people’s branding is all about me me me like us as a company
and this is very much focused on you as the customer like what do you care about
why are we going to do well for you and switching that messaging from us to you
I think is critical because people mostly care about themselves and their own companies and what they got going on
right 100% Paul yes yes go through your website and uh pick out all the places
where you say we we do this we you do this will you do this and like just change it to um you know start with a
problem that you’re addressing and and the type of customer that you’re working with yeah awesome good work that’s
beautiful site yeah so um so I Have This Acronym metal um and it stands for mine
for the magic uh e is the the three e of great
marketing educate entertain and engage and the third one is really important
and it’s something that I think a lot of marketing managers um get stuck on and
it’s take it slow and easy um I think a lot of people see marketing as this
massive thing like like Diana was in the beginning like she just felt like there was so much to it and um and it’s just
overwhelming and then you kind of get stuck in that like freeze mode of you don’t know what the next step should be
because you just you know get buried under the mound of um of to-dos so um
and then a is assess and adapt and L is leverage your links so we will go
through all these so um mine for the magic um if you look on your worksheets the
first page is um your customer so figuring out who that ideal customer is
that you work with and um I know a couple of you have been to some of my work workshops before and we we talk a
lot about this so um so what what I I always simplify it into two main things
who are the highest paying customers and who are the most enjoyable to work with um if you’re
uh the payment is a weird thing that people um a lot of shop owners uh tend
to be very humble and you know they they want to make sure that they’re being fair and that’s amazing and I highly
encourage you to do that but also you have to be um you have to be profitable if you’re
going to La you know if your business is going to last if you’re going to grow and be
able to invest in in the things that you need to invest in to make get a great experience for your employees and for
your customers then you have to be profitable so so who are those really profitable customers and um who are the
most enjoyable customers what what were the best projects that you worked on um
and why so um so if you want to take a couple minutes and just jot down um you
know a few projects that you can think of and um I’m just going to play a little music here for a couple minutes
and give you like two minutes to write down um some customers so we’re
doing just the highest paying section right now um you can do both enjoyable as well okay yeah yeah it’s great if they if you
have the same name in both sections that’s even more perfect right that is your sweet
spot I’m gonna go ahead and do this as
well yeah this is how I decided that I wanted to focus on job shops because I
enjoy working with you guys most and um it’s most profitable for me um more so
than you know startups and digital companies that have no idea what they’re
doing and um but but also being profitable means that I can deliver really awesome
work too at a high level and that’s something that I love about my work so
and if you don’t have a lot of experience to draw from just use your imagination and you can always come back
to this and you should always come back to this I would evaluate this
often yeah this is an exercise probably worth doing at least every year right or maybe every six months even yeah uh it
depends how how fast you go through customers but yeah
MH yes exactly what what are they asking to do and does it fit with what you do
are you are you moving Heaven and Earth to get this project done that is something that you don’t usually do if
so you’re probably losing money on it Paul actually has a really great uh
blog article about this recently too if um if Sarah’s able to find it quick yep
I’ll find it that’s the one on customer scorecards right yeah yep yeah that was
and in that blog there’s actually a picture of the scorecards that we developed at prnc which is this sign
right here um and yeah we we went really granular a
little over nerded it probably too much but um but for sure it was a great exercise and really helped us refine
what were the qualities about the customers that were really the best for us and when you can focus on those and
speak to them and find more of them your profitability goes through the roof it’s uh so
important 100% I’m drop I’m G to drop another link into
the chat as well just as you as I saw the word Niche here on your on your Workshop workbook um one of my podcast
guests was a guy named Ted Toth with a company that really leaned into their
niches and they were wildly successful but not trying to be a general shop for
everybody but really focused on what they are really excellent at and uh Works super well for them so that if you
want to listen to that episode uh it’s great education on on focusing on your
Niche yes I loved that episode it was really really good um yeah everything
listening to it yes I listen to all of your all of your episodes
thank it’s the most relevant to my Niche um which again is a reason to get super
specific about who you’re who you’re working with because then you know it makes your your research more valuable
you can um you know you can get more specific in your research and um and get
better at serving that specific Niche right um so yeah so once you have your
two lists then you see which are which are on both lists and then that’s where
um you know Paul’s blog post really comes in handy of breaking down okay what are the things that were that these
two or these customers really have in common why you you know why were they so
successful um what are the different features of you know is is it the
process that you used to onboard them is it the um the type of work that you were
doing for them is it the the values of the people that you’re working with um
you know company size and structure obviously is important um so there’s you can get
really deep with this and I encourage you to do so
um so so once you know who your ideal customer is then you can um you can
start get I I call it getting into their head so get in their head to find out
what their main problem is I’m forgetting my slides here so what’s their immediate problem
what are they coming to you with um and and use their terms so what are what are
the words that they’re using to describe their problem when they come to
you um so and once you
uh so yeah get inside their head start thinking about what are the frustrations that they have in their day-to-day so I
have two um in the worksheet I have two rows so there’s what are the things in
their business that they’re frustrated about what are they afraid of um you know what are the the things that come
up for them uh just in their day-to-day those are more of the frustrations the fears are more of the long-term things
like they’re worried about losing their job they’re worried about the economy they’re worried about um you know their
biggest customer pulling out or quality issues or some of the like think about
what all those bigger things are that they’re worried about and then reframe them in terms of your service so when
when when your customer is sourcing Machining work work what are the things
that frustrate them about that process and how are you addressing it um and
then long term what are the things that they’re afraid of when they are looking
for a machining partner like when they want somebody longterm and how are you
addressing that um so when you start to get into those types of fears and
frustrations that’s where um that’s where your good messaging comes from that’s what your website should be
focused around that’s what your some of your you know if you’re doing social media that’s what that should be focused
around um email blast any of anything that you do you you will always come back to this list of okay what are they
frustrated about what are they afraid of and how are we fixing that I’ll throw out a couple examples
that are probably relevant for machine shops because I’m sure all of you have heard this when you have a prospect come
to you they’re often frustrated by another vendor not delivering on time or not delivering good quality parts that
they have to reject or the paperwork’s not right or whatever so um so putting
that in your messaging and speaking to the fact that you uh deliver on your commitments you you know you your
quality is is great um and how you how you actually do that what sets you apart
from because everyone says they have great quality and on time but yes speaking to the the guts behind how you
can ensure and reduce their risk and make sure you be a reliable supplier is probably something they would love to
hear about yes yes and using stories to prove that so what stories do you have
with previous customers that you can actually talk about um that will help
that will really help your prospect um get the full picture of what you can
do so um so feel free to fill these out give you a couple minutes to to go
through your fears and frustrations yeah oh go ahead Sarah oh
um I think um this is uh super great people want to feel like you can solve
their problems but they also want to feel heard by you as well that you understand what they’re going through
like like you were saying with stories maybe that you’ve been there before you know what it’s like and now you have a
process to um to fix it and I think it can all be summed up in like you know just having empathy for people empathy
is huge in marketing um and yeah so that’s just what I wanted to
add yeah that’s the empathy that’s a fantastic word Sarah um and I think
people you know people love stories as you said Emily it’s like they they’re the things they remember the most like
when you and that can be in the form of you know quotes like you put on on that website yri did there’s some just short
little quotes but also like case studies and white papers on some problem you
solved and you know going more in depth about it um I know that’s strategy we use we do a lot of those as well as
putting you know just really nice memorable quotes that are just easy to consume um and customers might relate to
that what someone else said they’re like yeah I want to feel that way right
yep yeah like I started my uh my presentation you know Diana went from overwhelmed to Carefree right that’s
yeah that’s how everyone wants to feel about their marketing right
um and I I say in the description here like really really go to the extremes
and amp up the drama like what’s the worst case scenario like if if they don’t get their
parts what’s going to happen they they lose their biggest customer and then have to fire half their employees like
you can get really uh you know you can get really granular and detailed with this and and start weaving some of those
details into your um into your content can you hear my
dog little bit it’s cute he whines in his
sleep so
loud okay moving along so once you have um
once you have those then um we’ll start thinking about how
your solution fits so um and I kind of I call this part getting in their heart so what are the you know what are the
day-to-day desires that they have for the way that their their work plays out
what are the Big Dreams that they have for their for their company or their position in the company
um some funny funny music
um okay so again you’re you’ll start with
you know what are kind of the general things that they worry about in their day to-day is the service section supposed
to be our frustrations no so it’s um it’s their frustrations and fears as
it relates to your service so um so the first one is a little bit more general
of their business just getting inside their head and figuring out what are the things that they’re struggling with every day but then kind of more big
picture and then your service is like how that specifically relates to again
sourcing Machining work does that make sense you’re welcome
Brett yeah and and I’ll I’ll throw out something that might be relevant so you know an example might be um you know if
you’re speaking to the buyer BL of machine parts um uh if you’re speak
speaking of the buyer of machine parts you know one of their frustrations might be that a their vendors aren’t reliable enough and B they have all these young
Engineers that keep sending drawings that are really hard to make and so therefore expensive and if you’re coming
with some design for manufacturability you know sort of feedback and Consulting and can really be a partner for them to
help reduce the cost of their designs and then you know give them uh super
great quality always on time that could be something that’s really impactful and and and helps aeve some of their
frustrations and [Music] fears
yeah great example so then on the um on the other
side of things like their desires are to have a great relationship with a machine
shop that they know when their young Engineers send a super complex part that
you’re not just gonna quote it and make it for them you’ll actually take a look and see okay we can change it this way
and do it this way and we’ll save you this much money yeah so the reason that’s right at
the top of my mind is that’s the strategy we used at proc CNC we went all in on design for manufacturability and
and started doing newsletters and workshops and office hours with our clients and like we’re a true partner um
in helping them uh reduce the cost of their parts and and then always making
sure we deliver them on time that’s a that’s an amazing content strategy yeah and if you just give give
give really without the expectation of getting something in return um it’s it
it’s putting out good karma in the universe and that will flow right back to you you know um yeah yeah I would we
would you know during some of our office hours we would just sit with engineers and help them work through through
designs and it was amazing the amount of times they said hell why don’t you quote this
at the same time you know um or we even helped them with other parts that weren’t machined Parts they were they
were they were you know fabricated or sheet metal parts and we’d help them with those as well um and uh just you
know give them the best advice we could and send them on their way and they really saw that as a
partnership yeah for sure or if you can um you know Source components for them
so that they don’t have to deal with it or absolutely um you know send send your
parts through a quality you know a third party inspection service or something like any any additional things that you
can add that can really um distinguish you from other shops and make you stand out um and show that you’re you know
you’re going to go above and beyond for them um that’s that’s where this stuff comes
in yeah yeah cuz they are especially buyers
uh they are you know they are slammed they are busy they have a lot of stuff they need to source and they want good
partners that’ll just solve problems for them so your point you know great point of you know solving other issues for
them you know we would often ask them hey we’re making you this part and this part how do they go together like what’s
in between these parts and sometimes they say oh here’s the subassembly drawing you know if you want to quote it
that would be great because right now I have to Source it from four different vendors um and then we have to assemble
it before it goes into this major assembly and we got so many of those projects that uh they were just happy to
offload and have a solid solution for yep yeah that’s one of the things that
we put on right on peters’s website like we take care of um yep up and downstream
projects for you and so brilliant how’s everybody doing
with this question in the chat you feeling good
you’re perplexed stumped Brett’s feeling awesome thank you Brett
fantastic uman leave it to the leave it to the jenzy to be on top of
everything absolutely very good Jamie awesome cool
cool thank you Brad yeah
um okay so then that brings us to the ease uh so in all of your content no
matter what you’re putting together if it’s your website or your email or um
you know email blasts or social media posts or um you know if you’re doing a
presentation even like this um you should always be focusing on how how can
you educate them what what knowledge do you have to give them um what questions do your customers ask you a lot um what
do you wish they would ask you um really getting to getting to understand what is
it that you can teach them um because like Paul said you know if you’re you’re
training the engineers on manufacturability like that’s going to that’s going to improve the way that
they interact with your team but also make them um really appreciate you more
on a deeper
level um so if you want to take a couple of minutes and just write down what what
are some of the questions that your customers ask you a lot I think uh this is an important
exercise too um if you take uh those FAQs and you put them on your website or
you put other educational content on your website it’s not only you know positioning you as maybe a thought
leader in your industry but it can also help your uh SEO your search engine optimization because you’re filling your
website with those keywords um and Google will recognize that um as well so
uh yes yeah great Point Sarah yeah good stuff
Sarah bye K thank
you still can’t find the workbook uh oh Diana can we send can you send that
directly to her maybe yes uh Diana it doesn’t look like I can send a file directly to you but if you uh private
message me your email I’ll get that email to you for
sure
all right everyone got some good questions um so the next e
is entertain um what what makes you laugh
and what makes your customers laugh uh because this is your brand so uh you
know you want it to be authentic to you and your team so what are some of the things that make you make you laugh what
are some of the things that make you mad um you know entertainment doesn’t always have to be laughter right it can be
drama and um what are what are all the the types of
plays um comedy
drama romance yeah we we we we did some humor
things uh couple years ago we made some videos that
um we thought would resonate with shops that uh kind of poking fun at like some
of the common problems in shops and uh in sort of a I’ll try to find the links
or Sarah maybe those are the like the Post-it note videos yep yep did they do
well uh yeah they did they did well they did well yeah they were
uh thank you lot of fun to make yeah comedies dramas and
tragedies yeah I mean um so what are and again with the stories right what are
some entertaining stories you could tell or just jokes you could tell uh still
have too many post notes
always thank you Sarah yeah one was that one and I give them a game to play
or and fun fact if you click on that link to pull that video up the main person in that video was my son so if
you if he looks kind of like me that’s why yeah Black Rifle Company rifle Copy
Company that’s a yeah they do great branding I always think of the Dollar
Shave Club video too when that first came out absolutely that was gamechanging that was
awesome yes most shops do have good stories about their past employees or uh
also I’ve worked with a lot of shops that started their own place because the
you know the shops that they worked at before didn’t treat their customers or their people very well um you know those
all make really good stories too people want to know why you do what
you do absolutely
yeah that’s also really valuable for your employees too so it’s a win-win
when people understand your mission and what drives what you do yes that’s a great Point uh that I
meant to bring up earlier that this whole uh Workshop you can really
do um thinking about Pro uh prospective hires too so you know know you can you
can go through the whole thing and think about okay what are the types of people that fit the best here you know
who I guess it’s a little bit different with the highest paying thing but but you know like the quality of people and
um you know how do they fit in personality wise um and how well do they
work because I I think it was at one of your podcasts that somebody was saying they can you know you can teach any
skill but it’s the the personality that really I hear that a lot for fit teach
the skills yeah yeah so Brett asks besides LinkedIn what
are the other good platforms to engage in yeah that’s a good question
um I I would say if it’s just because I know Brett
and blae it’s a Twan shop and you guys are doing all of your marketing so I
would not not over complicated honestly um you’re going to get I think most of
your customers are going to be on LinkedIn um eventually you can start to expand once you have more bandwidth but
honestly don’t don’t try to complicate it um and we we’ll get to that in a
second here but and Sarah we we use different content a little bit different on different platforms and I know it has
worked like little more short pictures and video on on um Instagram
yep yeah you kind of think about the reason why people are going to places um so for LinkedIn people are ready to be
educated but on Instagram they’re looking to be entertained a little bit more so yeah
yep 100% yeah and same with like YouTube so um people will watch a longer form
YouTube video if it’s educational but they’ll maybe watch shorts for more entertainment but actually YouTube can
videos can kind of be both totally and you can use the same content on
multiple sites or tweak it slightly you know put a shorter fir form version of
something on on Instagram but a longer form version on Facebook or or LinkedIn
or whatever or YouTube yeah yeah good
point so the third thing is engage um
and it’s really how how can you get your audience to really interact with what you’re doing so um so you can do a poll
on LinkedIn or um you know ask
for ask for comments or ask people’s opinion on things um you can tag you
know tag certain people in your posts to get their uh get their input on
things um any way that you can really um get a conversation started is uh
that’s going to be a really good for your
marketing um so what are some ways that you can spark a conversation with your
customers and keep it going are there questions that they’re wondering a lot
or already talked about questions already but um a lot of this engage can be more like
what are some um trending topics right now you know what are thing what things are happening in in the economy or um
just in the way that people work you know there’s a lot of talk about um Workforce Development and um you know
how Robotics are playing into all that how’s AI playing into our Workforce and changing the way that we work things
like that are really good for engagement another thing that might be
relevant on the engagement side is um like if the economy is getting a little
softer or something and and the customers may want to you know like
reduce their their risk of spend on the parts they buy you know offering to do
um sort of blanket orders well you’ll deliver in small batches and just invoice at you know for each batch at a
time rather than them taking a huge batch of Parts all at once and having to pay for that upfront so trying to help
them maintain and their cash flow obviously that pushes the down on the shop so it’s not always feasible to do
that um but uh those are still often conversations that do speak to um some
of the concerns that that end customers do have and can definitely get a a
conversation going with them and I think at those oftentimes that engage goes
beyond just the marketing once you have someone that’s responded then you continue that conversation privately
with them right so you’re also talking about that that phase of it yeah um yeah anytime you can get them
off platform and on the phone or in email that’s always going to be
good um yeah I really what’s that oh I
was just gonna say that kind of feeds into the question that Brad put into the Q&A how do you get your foot in the door
with new companies and for me there’s nothing
better than um actually being in person um or you know a phone conversation
rather than email like the more personalized you can make it you know and when we were trying to find
customers at our shop um you know besides really focusing on SEO and marketing and having
companies you know from around the country you know find us um if it was a big enough Prospect we would get on a
plane and go fly there right or if it was local absolutely we would um you know go make the rounds and somewhat
cold call you know or um or try to you know say I’m going to be in the area can
I swing by and then we had a you know we had had a parts case a little aluminum
Briefcase full of really some of our most kind of tricky intricate machine parts and I they were all nestled in
foam nicely I’d bring those I’d pull that out have some nice brochures a nice crisp you know shirt with our logo on it
and just uh you know talk to them about the problems they’re having with their supply base and what we could do to
solve that people love handling things looking at physical things um they’re like oh you
know we have a part that’s kind of like this let me send that to you to quote right it’s remarkable how much of those
those little things like that can trigger their interest in engaging with you yeah yeah for
sure um I liked um I think I’m one of your
episodes to they were talking about how they always um they always provide three
different prices there’s like the the today price yes the you know normal lead time price
and then the longly time price um I think that was a really yeah that’s a great Str really smart idea
yeah um yeah and even like any way you can speed up your
quoting process obviously having a a solution like Pro Shop Erp would be
good yeah Justin great point that they know about all of your capabilities
because uh yeah I would sometimes go to a shop and i’ you know I’d maybe walk
their floor and be like hey you know we make Parts just like that and they’re like oh we had no idea you did that
right um or um yeah or or assemblies you know they didn’t know you do assembly
work they thought you just made Single components and um whatever it might be yep and that’s where case studies
come in really Cy MH yeah part of we in our newsletters we
did a part of the week or part of the month where we always put a different type of part as a picture you know a
tiny part A Long part a round part a square part you know an assembly whatever it might be something with finishing something without finishing
you know and we’d highlight sort of the special Parts about that you know maybe it was you know uh hard anodise plus
chem film with intricate masking and assembly right and we’d highlight that in the newsletter and on our website and
then they might see that and see like oh yeah I have a part just like that and I didn’t know you guys did parts that that
complex yeah yeah that was is what I was going to say too the email um emails are
so easy to put out to existing customers and and a lot of times that happens
where you’ll be working with a customer for years and they’ll have no idea that you you know do this other thing that
they actually need so
um um all right so uh this is my personal favorite
because as um we talked about a little bit like I think people get really overwhelmed with marketing and that’s
why I came up with this that’s why the title of my presentation is marketing doesn’t have to suck because I think a
lot of times people just get that glaz eyes like oh my God this is going to
take me forever to build this and um I know I I actually felt that way as
as an early marketer and um I I didn’t
uh didn’t always think that this was the career path that I wanted to take so
because I just felt like it was changing all the time and you never know what’s working and what’s not and um so like I
was just saying with to Blain um and Brett you know you guys are a two-person shop like don’t don’t try to bite off
all the things you don’t have to do all the things just start small um pick one thing and get really good at that um do
do LinkedIn make sure your website you know looks good make sure you’re using
the right keywords and um make sure that it’s fast and um and then once you
once you get through that then you know you can start posting some content on LinkedIn
um if you have video skills and you feel like making explainer videos you know
then start a YouTube um I really try to drive this home of you know what are the
things that you want to be doing like if you have to pick a couple what are the
things that are going to bring you most joy and be most fun for you and your team
um and then anytime you can break up break up your big projects into small
tasks um just focus on one to three big
tasks a day uh anytime I put more than three things on my to-do list they never
get done um yes Sarah and I have that same issue we’re trying to do everything all
the time yeah you’re trying to do everything I know and then you feel that at the end of the day you’re like oh my
God I didn’t get anything done and you’re like down on yourself because you didn’t get to all the things but um and
that’s good too also that as I had a mentor tell me that you know if you don’t get to all of your tasks then that
means you’re pushing yourself so that’s good but um but you know if you start with nine and you end with
nine abut it’s not gonna be good for your self-esteem so um so break it break
it down pick a couple to focus on each day um um I I’m really guilty of like
getting sucked into my focus and not moving from my desk for hours on end and then that’s not good either because you
you know you kind of burn your brain out um so make sure you take get up and take
breaks um I read that the perfect break is like 19 minutes because it’s like not
so much time that you’re getting a like forgetting what you were working on but it’s enough time to actually let
yourself relax a little bit MH um so and then with with the marketing thing I
always tell people just commit to spending so many hours a month creating
your thing and whether it’s um you know whether it makes the most sense for you
to do like a half hour a day or just block off like four hours a week or you
know two hours one hour a week whatever you can whatever you can work into your schedule just make a commitment to
yourself and then actually schedule it into here um in your calendar because
otherwise you won’t you won’t do it especially if it’s if it’s a new big scary thing it’s you got to make it
super easy to bite it off and and get started um momentum is everything yeah
if you can’t get started then you’re not gonna not g to keep it going so yeah and turn off your phone and pause your inbox
for that period of time like disconnect and just focus on it y yes Focus
mode there’s a great book uh called deep deep work I think it’s by Cal Newport
and he talks about some of the stuff that you both have been talking about um here
yeah yeah it’s so important we just have so many distractions all the time coming
at us if you need to get out of the office do that too like go to a coffee
shop yeah and to reiterate your point number one um uh yeah don’t try to do five
different things and don’t do any of them particularly well definitely focus on one and just double down on doing
that really well until it’s like you know reflexive and just you’re really
competent at it and then add something else it’s way better overall to be
excellent at a smaller number of things just like niches you know just like the Machine Shop business you know don’t try
to be a jack of all trades and take on every any type of work you can possibly get your hands on you know get really
good at certain types of things yep yeah for
sure um so oh I skip my slide any
um What About Bob fans in in this uh Workshop today sure what about Bob fans
I’m sure there’s got to be the baby steps is the name of the the book that
his um his his shrink is writing he’s just releasing this book called baby
steps and um yes Matt go cycling for an hour and
come up with yes uh yeah physical exercise and just getting outside and
walking if um that is a great way to let your brain relax and be able to come up
with ideas for things um and it’s counterintuitive because you feel like you need to be doing something right you
need to be sitting at your computer and doing something but it’s actually um getting out and getting out and getting
some exercise breathing taking in the fresh air that’s that’s what’s going to get your gears your gears turning so and
and I also contend that your brain will do that whether you make time for it or not um sure and doing that in a planned
time or you’re out you know enjoying yourself Sarah can attest that at like 3:30 in the morning I send a message do
our marketing chat because I woke up and my mind was racing but if I had gone for a w walk yesterday I probably would have
had the same thought and could have sent it at like you know 2: PM instead of 3:00
a yes that is don’t let it wake you up in the middle of the night because it’s you your brain’s working on it so hard
yes yeah that is exactly right your brain won’t shut down if you don’t give it time
to get everything out I’ve I write a well we’ll get to this but um so this uh
on the worksheet the take take it slow and easy page five is where we’re at um
so um buildin bulk is the second one um and that’s that blocking out creative
time Focus creative time um keep a shared document that you and your team
can access with ideas so that you can just write them down as they come to you um make it easy to access on your phone
um so that you know if you’re out walking or cycling hopefully you pull
your bike to the side before you type in your phone but um so and and be thinking about you know
what are the things that you want to change about about your industry what what kind of crusade are you on how are
you trying to make things better um what are the Hot Topics that are trending right now um and then again make a commitment
spend how ever many hours a month kind of playing with these ideas and coming up with possible titles so if you’re
let’s say you’re doing some blog posts which I encourage because that’s good for your search engine
optimization um so just pull pull an idea from your Vault and think about
different titles that you can come up with um do uh so I have a couple bullets on
here you know go deeper look for the angles find the objections like what are the things that people
would um would object to when you bring up your your idea um what are some
analogies and metaphors that will help your customer get a better understanding of what you’re trying to
communicate um Google your ideas see what other people are writing about them
um and another trick that I’ve picked up too is um when you see other people
posting in social media about your idea whatever you’re talking about look at
the comments and see like this is great on YouTube if you find a Youtube video
um look through the comments and see what people are asking about and then answer that question in your um in your
content um you can ask chat GPT for title ideas um they’ll you know they’ll spit
you out a bunch of titles um and you can prompt it so Emily do you have a
build-in bulk slide you want to move to thanks no problem that one getting sick
of seeing Bill Mary [Laughter] Walker um yes so and then um once you
have you know your ideas then you spend so many hours every month again make that commitment how many hours are you
going to spend um and schedule it out uh turning however many pieces of or
however many ideas into however many pieces of whatever type of content you’re doing so that’s what the blanks are so say spend four hours a month
turning two ideas into you know two blog posts and five
social media posts or whatever just just write it down so that you’re making that commitment to yourself so you actually
do it and for those that follow me you’ll see you’ll see uh this in action with
the stuff that we create so we have a a shared Google sheet called content
creation and there’s different tabs for blog posts or videos or things like that
and you know if I get an idea or if Sarah has an idea we’ll just jot it down
in that area under the sort of the ideas Tab and then we’ll sort of flush out
that that idea with you know what could we do with that for the actual title and what would be the talking points and
then we turn those into blog posts and then as you probably see I I do a short little video where for every blog post
where I just kind of summarize it for a minute or two and talk a little bit about why I think it’s important or
whatever and then you know we share that that that post in the links um but uh
you know there’s that’s it’s exactly the process that Emily’s talking about you know we block out that time we have a
brainstorming place where we spend time to put that and and then we just then we
execute on it and you know we we make sure we do it reliably enough because
consistency is really important um and uh and I’d love to even be more
consistent but you know I know nonetheless um yeah so great advice and
uh and I’ve I’ve heard people say that the Pro Shop marketing is is pretty decent you know and that’s partly
because we’re using the practices that Emily’s talking about here we really are it is great you guys do an awesome job
and um and you brought up a really good point too about um taking an article and turning it into a video or vice versa um
any starting with longer form content is is really easy to turn it into other
types of content um and you know if you’re better at just having conversations then just have a
conversation with somebody with a camera on and then you know edit that into a
video and then transcribe it um and then you can have somebody edit it for you
into an article um so it’s really figuring out ways of repurposing that
content and and you’ll get better at it as you as you do it but um it’s easier
to take a longer form piece of content and turn it into a bunch of smaller pieces than creating a bunch of social
media posts with tiny captions and then trying to turn that into a Blog blog post um so that actually feeds right
into a question that Jackson had what type of content can I create just getting
started what would you say to that Emily or Sarah that yeah who sorry who’s
Jackson would do you are you yeah so go ahead and put in the chat Jackson uh what yeah what kind of what
kind of company do you have there I think I know but
uh
I need to hire someone two generations younger yes uh yeah to work the camera
but you know the the knowledge is going to come from you Rodney right you you’re
the one with all the experience so how can you download that experience out of your brain and onto a video
or um I I suggest otter to my and I have
slide on this too but um I I suggest that to my customers a lot uh otter.ai
it’s just a transcription tool or you can even do talk to text too that works as well but um but otter is nice because
it’ll record your um it’s just voice memo so you can record a voice memo and
then it’ll transcribe it for you and like syncs the audio with the um with
the text so that you can go through and kind of you know you just speak a blog post and then have somebody kind of edit
it for you into something coherent
um so yeah I would say start small um
obviously that’s my my Mantra start small but um and I know I just said that it’s easier sometimes to
uh yes a marketing agency for machine shops you could use that
too um but um I mean Brett and Brett ler and Blain
is they’re a great example actually they’re just taking they’ve been taking
pictures of their work and posting it on LinkedIn with you know comments about the project that’s a really easy thing
to you know that’s a really easy piece of content to put together I know I just said start with longer form things and
turn it into smaller things but um but when you’re when you’re just getting started I mean just just do do yeah
right BR super easy to do um you know just start doing and see what see what
works just try some different things and see what you know what feels best to you
um what gets traction and that consistency is really important like give um I think I have
that somewhere in here but give yourself enough time like whatever you try make sure you try it enough like give it the
old College try make sure that you’re giving it enough um enough time before you give up on it
too there’s also been a bunch of questions around uh parts that you can’t take pictures of or itar parts um so
that’s definitely a legitimate concern um and the strategies that I might um
think about for this are um you can still I mean for for when
it’s not itar and it’s just like proprietary stuff from your client um asking them it is ideal of course to ask
them to share content share pictures um if you have the specific picture in mind
um you know sharing that with them uh if it’s maybe not even the whole part but just a little piece of it showing some
of the workmanship maybe um uh sometimes if we had clients that that weren’t um
that didn’t have a strong opinion about it we would just post the part without any reference to to them at all just
like here is a Aerospace part or here’s a medical part um and uh especially if
they’re showing the same types of Parts on their website right which is often the case um you know it’s relatively
safe to to be able to post similar pictures like that um if it is itar you
know you could um you can still describe the you know the the the types of Parts
uh you could you could take pictures of the fixturing of again an in complete part that’s partway done um as long as
it’s not showing the whole thing um you’re probably pretty safe yeah or like closeup on a detail yeah exactly yeah um
and saying the fact that you can’t show the whole thing because it’s itar just lets other prospects know that you do
that type of work you do itar work and and you care about protecting it you respect the rules around it yeah yeah
for sure yeah I love Matt’s Matt’s three things small think big move fast for
sure um so the last one is uh keep it stupid simple and um this is going way
back to Dick Van djk Heyday of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang um Mr pots the inventor
that does all he creates this crazy Contraption to make breakfast for his
niece and nephew and it blows up in his face um so so again remember that you’re
a small shop you’re not a Fortune 500 so don’t try to do all the things um don’t try to do it all yourself if you have a
team um Mar developing marketing content is a great way to build for team
building you know it’s a it’s a great way to really bring your team together and get them kind of outside of their
normal comfort zone and um thinking differently about about your work and um
you know anytime you can when you’re developing marketing content when you’re if you’re educating your team at the
same time you know that’s that’s only going to be good because that’ll help them better represent your company too
um get the get the veterans with the newbies and um you know have them have
the newbies try to pull the knowledge out of the veterans in the in a video form or whatever like there’s so many
different things that you can do um you can play games I’ve I’ve done um I have
a really fun game that I’ve played with a couple of my customers that’s like uh Cards Against Humanity um but it’s
called Brands against mundanity oh nice that’s a really fun uh
fun one always best with adult beverages but um so and then another thing that’s
really important your content doesn’t have to be compl completely original it’s not going to be um there are how
many billion people in the world now like eight billion I I don’t even
um there are a lot of people out there and we all have similar ideas so you’re
you’re not going to have something that’s like completely completely new that has zero influence from the outside
outside world so don’t worry about trying to be super new and original um
it just has to have your specific voice and your spin on it like no nobody’s going to have the same stories that you
do about um about your life or whatever so so anytime you can bring those personal elements in that’s that’s going
to make your content more personal to you um again no matter what you do
consistency is really important um making it fun for you to produce is
important um and knowing that you’re going to get better with practice um
anytime it’s fun for you or a challenge for you you’re going to be more likely to to try
it um yes Justin exactly any anything has it’s all been
done that bare naked l song it’s all been
um uh chat GPT again is great for um for helping come up with ideas so that
you’re not staring at a blank page um because that’s always the hardest place to start um and you can leverage other
tools um so here a few tools that we use that are free or were super inexpensive
um I did this presentation in canva Sarah and I were talking about the pros
and cons of PVA versus PowerPoint or Google size um we
love I love Google workspace I know a lot of shops use U Microsoft but um and
they’re they’re catching up I guess there’s some similar things but that right now but um grammarly if you guys
don’t have Chrome home and you’re not using grammarly go out and get it right now because um
it’s when you have spelling errors and grammar errors in your content and your
emails and it just um you know it just makes you seem a
little bit less less intelligent so um so use grammarly
because it’s uh it’s a great tool that helps you use proper English when you’re speaking
um T DPT again is free and easy um we use Squarespace a lot for websites
because um because most job shops don’t need a super uh you know super complex
WordPress custom built website you just don’t need that it’s it’s um it’s a waste of time and money so um
so we love Squarespace it’s allinone platform super easy to use um otter
again is easy uh if you’re on LinkedIn a lot and you see people um post where
their uh their captions have different fonts and stuff that’s there’s these websites out there like fancy fonts that
you can copy and paste your your text into and it’ll let you copy and paste a
formatted text into uh LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever I was always
curious about how I did that I know I know I was too I had to look it up so I
found fancy fonts um and when I have a lot of time I actually use it but it’s
not been the case lately so I’ve been pretty boring with my posts um um
MailChimp is a really easy uh email marketing platform and free still as far as I know
uh we don’t use that one so much anymore but um so and then the last point on keep it
simple is just focus on your strengths and hire out the rest um if if you do
decide to hire something out just you know be really clear on what you’re
trying to communicate um and uh know that you get what you pay
for you know Fiverr Fiverr is a great resource of uh yeah Jasper AI as a as
one for marketing content is just with any of these like AI tools or even even Fiverr when you’re hiring just a cheap
you know somebody to make a graphic for you or something you just have to know that you get what you pay for and always
be you know prepared to edit it too and make it make it your own because it’s
not chat GPT is not going to give you exactly what you need you still need
to go through and kind of make it your own you can you can get really creative
with prompts and get it to be really close to what you need but um but still
will have to tweak it so okay and we’re going way over on time here so
um so the rest of the worksheets are it’s really more of like um instructions
they’re not really not really a workbook so um so I can kind of let you guys do
this on your own but um but I mentioned earlier I I find it really useful to
track um track my progress in a paper Journal um they’ve done studies
on your ability to retain information um using a computer calendar or a paper
calendar and the paper wins hands down every time so um I just have this like
it’s a bullet Journal but I do like a habit tracker thing here um and I put my business stuff you know I’ll put
business stuff in there like Outreach and different things that I’m that I know that I need to focus on um if
you’re tracking it then you’re more likely to do it mhm
um analyze your data over time um and know which metrics matter we don’t have
uh time to really dive into this right now but um you know don’t pay too much
attention to your vanity metrics your your likes and shares are not always super important um the you know the
really important things are the quantity and quality of your RFS that you’re getting um the data can help you kind of
figure out what’s working and what’s not but um but try not to you know assess
whether you’re failing based on your likes and comments because that’s um not
I would I would also suggest keeping just even a simple sheet of when you do have someone reach out for an RFQ or or
to talk to you about anything um you know try to remember to ask them how they found you where they found you um
you know why they reached out and keep that note and you know we we track uh
where our leads come from and ultimately which clients um you know came from which which lead source so if you do
track it from the very earliest stages when they do become a customer you can say this customer you know came to us
because I posted this video on LinkedIn and they saw that and that’s what prompted them to reach out out um and
the more you can track that and keep keep a log the more likely it is it’ll
help inform what’s really adding value that to your own business and you can do more of that in the
future yeah y so keep adjusting as you figure out what works and what
doesn’t um celebrate your wins of in even and sometimes especially the small
ones oh I don’t know what’s happening that’s nice slide here but um for
yourself and for your team um it’s really important when you’re taking on new you know when you’re trying new
things like marketing um to just just acknowledge your progress you know know
that uh be grateful to yourself for actually doing it even if it was a complete failure whatever um just find
something to celebrate because it’s important to keep your momentum going um
keep you keep you engaged and keep you wanting to continue um so the last one is uh
leverage your links so um I know some of you have been to my uh my LinkedIn
Workshop which we talk about this a lot but um so the first page in the
worksheet is citations so um a citation is anything any link that is driving
traffic to your website so um so a social media account for example will
have a link to your website um or if somebody shares a blog post
that you made on social media that’s going to be considered a you know a citation um you can uh you want to make
sure that your listings are up to date your uh Google Maps being
um all these Yellow Pages um these things in the middle here the bright
local and SCM Rush those will actually manage your listings for you um if you
pay you pay like a yearly fee and they’ll make sure that they all stay up to date for you
um and then another good way to get citations is through um oh and Industry
specific links are uh listings are really good too so if there’s um like
modern machine shop um I think they have directory a lot of those those Publications will have a directory so um
It won’t always be free to get your listing in there but um but they are it
it is a really good high quality Source um to make sure that you have your website listed and um you know make sure
all of your contact information and everything is up to date uh make sure that your messaging is right there and
um really targeted and succinct um
so uh local and Industry press um sending press releases to your you know
your local newspapers or again to like modern machine shop or uh some other
industry you know if you’re targeting the Aerospace industry send it to like Aerospace and defense magazine or um
different things like that and um really getting to know those uh journalists and
building trust with them and um with editors and stories to them um and then
you can track your mentions in the news with Google
Alerts um and then there’s like these free services the newswire and prire
that you can submit um press releases too uh social media accounts as links um
and anytime you can get on a podcast or do a guest blog post on somebody’s um on
somebody’s blog um strategic Partnerships are good too uh if you have
a preferred vendor list even if it’s like your bank that you use you know if
they have a a a preferred vendors page and they’re willing to um link to your
website that’s another good way to get links out there so I imagine a lot of machine
shops are saying to themselves what could I possibly have that’s news PR worthy like yes that I that I got a new
machine that we got a new C like do you have any ideas about what they could submit press releases
about um yeah so anytime you get a new a new piece of
equipment that can be a good one um if you expand into a you know a bigger
building or do an addition or renovation um new employees especially
like key hires are good ones um quality
certifications yep quality certifications or new memberships like if you join a those ones are probably
not as as important but um uh anything anytime that you can do
um like if you do a tour with a school or you go to a school to speak or um or
if you come up with a you know a unique process for doing something um win an
award win an award yeah that’s a good one um and you can apply to win Awards
most of them are just gonna say apply apply apply you have to nominate yourself nobody’s gonna Nate No One’s
Gonna know yeah back in the Pro CNC days we totally nominated ourselves for like fastest growing in the state and the Inc
5000 and best PL companies to work for and we we often got those Awards and uh
we can you know we could put those on our website definitely do press release you know put
it in your newsletter um but yeah it’s just the whole concept of just just doing it try it get get out there um
don’t assume that you’re not important enough to or big enough or good enough to to you know to submit yourself for
some of these Awards um yeah there it’s you know it’s kind of
there for the taking you just go to got to take it yeah for sure um and then the last
thing is uh networking um this is something that people never think of
like I never thought of this this was something that I learned in a a marketing agency group that I joined um
reach out to your connections like people that you know um especially you know you can go through and rank them
and you know Target the ones that are more likely to know your target audience
but um just reaching out and having a catch-up call and seeing what they’re up
to and then um you know telling them about what you’re up to especially if
it’s something new um if you’re you know getting really specific about the type of customer you’re working with and what
you’re doing for them um so I put this little script in the um in the
workbook um it’s it’s really really easy way to get warm leads to your business
um because cold calling uh cold calling sucks and everyone hates
doing it people hate getting cold calls um so it’s really hard to actually make
the right connection and and turn a cold call into a sale so start warm instead
um just see if you can get a referral from someone you know start with previous customers right reach out to
your customers and say hey we’re you know expanding or we have extra capacity
or we’re looking to work with more customer you know you’ve been such a great customer we’re looking for more
awesome customers like you do you know anybody um things like that is uh you’re
more likely to make traction that way than starting cold
absolutely oh questions I have 10 minutes for questions you actually timed this
perfectly this is fantastic um sort of I’ll uh I’ll throw out there that um
just on the topic of just doing it and getting outside your comfort zone
um not a lot of people know this and probably have a hard time believing it but I used to be absolutely petrified to
speak in front of almost anyone like like freeze up get the cold sweats um
like barely get my words out kind of freaked out about it and uh I just had
to learn to overcome that and and there’s nothing better to do that than
to just do it you know um and actually I I I believe that when we had our machine
shop that um yeah you to Justin um that
the the organic growth over many years for that was actually one of the things that helped me do that because when we
started it was just the the original owners and they were just my friends and that wasn’t nervous I wasn’t nervous
about that but as we hired employees you know we’d have two or three and then five and then 10 and each time i’ you
know I’d have to speak to them at like a company All Hands meeting or whatever and as the groups got bigger and bigger
I had you know just got a little more comfortable speaking to more people at a time and pretty soon we had you know
well not pretty soon after many years we had you know 75 people or so and that seemed normal now to me to talk in front
of 75 people so um so yeah just got to try it um and uh and get out of your
comfort zone um one other tip I will suggest for getting uh sort of leads and
Prospects especially if you’re kind of trying to focus some of your marketing attention to design for
manufacturability or Engineers or people like in in that realm um we at at prnc
we um we uh basically bought a a a list
from it was a it was a website that did engineering content in engineering stuff
and they had lists of people that had opted in to receiving emails and so they
uh gave us you know we we bought a list or did some did some not we didn’t buy the list we did some um emails through
them so it was like when we first had our dfm newsletter and so we we
basically sent that through them and then the call to action for those newsletters was to sign up for our own
direct newsletter and so we ultimately called cultivated a couple thousand Engineers on that list over the course
of three or four years and that was a great you know source of of leads for
continuing to publish that content on design for manufacturability which did absolutely
led to lots of rfqs and lots of work um but we were doing it just by sharing you
know sharing our best advice on how to improve their designs so yeah for sure
and that’s that’s again those are warm Le because they’ve warmed up to you from
looking at your content right you know by the time they talk to you they feel like you they know
you yeah that’s why video is really powerful too and speaking you know getting on podcasts uh I totally agree
Paul I still get I still get sweaty and terrified when I’m talking to people
but so we have a question from Brandon in the chat or in the Q&A we have mainly
grown our book of business business from cold calls with hardly any marketing amazing uh it’s almost all strictly high
volume thousand plus pieces do you think trade shows are a good place to expand our customer
base yeah they can be um it it depends on what show you’re going to um and who
you’re targeting so um again that’s where getting really specific on who your Target customer is um is important
um and I would say to um to me the most
valuable piece of trade shows is the networking Parts um you know going to the parties or even um you know at the
end of the day a lot of times Booth will have like they’ll be giving out beer or
have food or whatever like any anytime you can do stuff like that um and just
you know go up and introduce yourself to people find out what they do and this is where having a really clear message of
you know who you work with and what exactly you do for them that’s going to be really key because Bill actually
remember you um and make sure you get their card and follow up
after um in terms of actually exhibiting at trade shows it can get really pricey
so I would say um you know make sure you have a really strong plan in place
before you do all of that and start small um you know try like a designed apart show or something like that where
it’s just a a low investment um if you’re if you’re near Michigan the
advanced manufacturing Expo is really awesome in Grand Rapids um it’s a really
low price point to entry too so yeah the design dep part show can be great uh but
as Emily said make sure you have a good plan don’t just uh throw together a booth and show up without a sort of an
action plan you know plan in advance you know kind of how you’re going to speak to those Niche clients that you the ones
that you really have identified you want like your point Brandon that you do higher volume
so that should be in your in your signage in your you know your your marketing
materials um and the pictures you have um and uh that’ll speak to people that
have higher volumes that that uh that uh need that kind of work yeah it helps to have really cool
giveaways that people will actually use um I have really fun stickers I have oh
here’s a stay sharp one but um people come to my both for my stickers because
they I have one that says Crush that that’s everyone’s favorite I’ll put
in the chat um this was a fairly recent um uh uh interview on on on my podcast
um and Dave Hannah the gentleman that I interviewed he absolutely went to trade shows even pretty far away from his
state so he’s in Idaho he went to trade shows in Texas and further and absolutely got clients that are still
clients today many years later right so oh yeah I think those were the designed toart shows so those can absolutely be
quite effective yeah you can’t beat that iners um you know you really can’t beat
the iners experience like these you know video calls and things like that are um they’re up there but it’s not
it’s still not like you know going out and having to drink with somebody after and i’ even suggest if you’re if you’re
making the investment to um you know to to to go somewhere uh particularly
further away for a show put make your return ticket like a couple days later
even and see if you can go visit their facility after the show they’re like yeah let me you know I got I’m not
leaving for two more days can I swing by tomorrow and like actually kind of talk to you and look at your parts and yeah
and you’ll find very likely people will say yeah I’d love to love to do that
that’s a great tip yeah always make sure that you leave room for for for after
events yeah the after after party so what are we looking at here on
the screen Emily yeah so um I do this
thing with new customers called the setup uh it’s where we Deep dive into um
you know who you are what you’re great at uh what type of customers you like working with the best um get really
detailed on um what your you know who you are what you’re about
what your goals are and then I I afterward will do some research and um
write up a brief that um details what I see as your best strategy moving forward
with marketing um it’s a it’s a really awesome exercise all of our customers
have loved doing it um it’s uh it’s $950 and um so you get $50 off if you
use r ad shop when you book um it’s a calendar link that you book and um yeah
and then at the end of the brief I uh provide a uh recommendation for moving
forward with one of our packages so um but you can also just take the brief and run with it so it’s really meant to be
valuable on its own awesome well thank you Emily that’s
fantastic let’s see and then uh yeah your last slide I
think says get radical there we goid stupid I like you flip those words um that’s
better um so yes thank you so much Emily thank
you Sarah for joining us and sharing your insights as well uh I know for sure just from the chat please put in the
chat if if Emily’s a rock star um because uh for sure she is and uh I
think this was truly a great interactive Workshop I love the engagement from everyone the questions the chat um thank
you everybody so much um oh Lisa child’s good to have you here um seeing all
these names I know so yeah this is uh an area that most manufacturers honestly
don’t put enough emphasis in and it is to their detriment and I know it’s not your first nature to be a marketer and
promote yourself as you said Emily a lot of shop owners are very humble and quiet and just you know want to make great
Parts but this is an important part of owning a successful business and you got
to get radical get out there and do it and uh and it will become less uncomfortable as you do it more so yep
thank you everyone if we’re not connected on LinkedIn make sure to reach out to me yep she’s easy to find um and
yeah thank you for joining us thank you all for coming to this really appreciate you investing in your
own business uh it’s so important to do that and kudos to you for showing up and
then and don’t put this on the shelf and don’t touch it again uh keep on working on the workshop on the workbook book
that time in your calendar I call mine Power hours so you can steal that if you want make your power hours do some
marketing content and uh and get out there and start crushing it yeah awesome
well thanks everybody appreciate your time today and great job Emily and Sarah thank you both thank you thank you guys see you
around
