Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. I have a very special guest today, Kait Gallagher-Wilsterman. She's a marketing and communications relations manager for Tusco Manufacturing in, I'm gonna try it, Gnadenhutten, Ohio.

Kait: Ohio. Yeah. You know, Ohio.

Bill: Yeah, in Ohio and then there's this other word we're gonna talk about here in a minute. She serves as a one-woman marketing and communications department and manages relationships with external lead generation and web development vendors and clients. Kait has over 10 years of experience in marketing communications, content creation and social media management and actively uses her professional skills in her community volunteer work. Kait, thank you for joining us.

Kait: Absolutely, thank you for having me.

Bill: So Kait, the elephant in the room right now is my absolute butchering of the town name. So let's just like let's deal with it and bring it out in the open. How do you say that?

Kait: Absolutely. So we, and to get you off the hook a little bit, I'm not actually in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, but our company is. I'm just up the road a little bit, but a lot of times we sub in the county name, which is Tuscarawas, so it's not really much easier to pronounce. There's a lot of vowels, but we're, it's a little German pronunciation town and the traditional pronunciation is Gnadenhutten. But everybody around here just calls it G-naden, because it's a little bit easier to pronounce.

Bill: I love that. So obviously that's a unique name and also the other name there that you were mentioning for the county is a tongue twister. But no, thank you for leaving me off the hook there because I was struggling mightily with when I read it in the documents, I was like, are they trying to make my life difficult? And the answer is yes, but that's okay. Well, let's jump…

Kait: Yes. You gotta say every single letter, that's the problem. And that's not usually how it goes.

Bill: Yeah, not in the English language, right? That's one of those words. Well, Kait, let's jump right in. You are in marketing department of one. And we've found with a lot of our interviews in the Missing Half of the marketing managers, there's a lot of challenges with being a department of one. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what it's like to be a department of one for Tusco?

Kait: Yeah, absolutely. I’m very, I know for a lot of marketers who are in positions like mine, they don't have a lot of times they don't have leadership support too. And I have to first say that is something that is not the case in my situation. I report directly to our CEO who's also our owner and his background is he has a marketing background as well. So I am the one who's executing, who's planning, who's executing every day, but gets to have that support as well. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that because it does set my situation as a one-person department, set it apart a little bit from others. But that means that I'm doing everything beginning to end. Having my boss be someone I can bounce ideas off of who has a knack for it and has the knowledge and the background is very helpful. As anybody who is that marketing–is the one person department and siloed where nobody really understands, it's a whole different animal. So for me, it's, you know, everything from that strategy planning to the execution, to the content creation, to managing the social pages, to our internal communications, as well as our external. I think that's something that a lot of us overlook and don't think about when we're getting into, especially manufacturing marketing, is that internal customer that you have, your associates and their friends and their families. But we've also seen so much of recruitment moving into the marketing sphere and manufacturing and what we're having to do in recruitment. So I work very closely with our HR department as well on that front, on top of that internal/external and communication piece of it.

Bill: No, I love that. And Kait, I think you've hit on something. So the Missing Half podcast is about discovering what's missing. And I think what's missing in a lot of marketing manager relationships with their companies and what is a direct predictor of success through our interviews is exactly what you just hit on. If there is someone in the C-suite, owner, founder, or in leadership who is aligned with the marketing manager position, everyone, every marketing manager that I talked to that has that same story as yours or a parallel story is happy. They feel like they're accomplishing things. They have the support of management and things which, let's be honest in marketing, everything doesn't go all as well as we'd like it. But they're winning more than they're losing. They're failing forward and learning and getting better. And with others that I talked to, if they're frustration is that they don't have management support, that they don't have the C-suite or some senior level person who's really their champion, there's not only the same struggles we all have, but then there's also just a demoralization of the department and just a disconnect. I mean, I think that's such a key thing you hit on and we've seen that trend. And when you look at that, maybe talk more about, cause I think one of the things I learned when we first talked is about you guys' community focus and engagement and recruitment and retention. And we completely agree that recruitment is now a marketing effort. Maybe talk a little bit more about that and what you've done, what's worked, what hasn't, and maybe your perspective on that community engagement and recruitment.

Kait: Absolutely. So before I came into my role, it wasn't so much, the person in my role in my company prior to me did not do as much of the community outreach. I've really been a champion of that. Our CEO and owner, Mike Lauber, he was that forward-facing person almost all of the time. So he was the one who was out in the community, who was building the connections and doing those type of things, which is great. He has a name that's known in our community. He's been an incredible influence in our community. And that's why people come to turn to Tusco and why our name comes up frequently. But some of that could be delegated out. And what we've found, one of the the biggest things we’ve found is partnering with our local schools. And that is not just for our, we have often brought in high school students. We're very lucky. We're located directly across the street from a high school. So we work very closely with the career connections coordinator there because she can be like, I have students who can walk across the street at the end of the day and come work for a few hours and would love to get paid a great wage to not necessarily work in fast food or retail and have the opportunity to do that just across the street. But when we were pursuing that, we tied in with it an all call to the families asking if there were any parents that were looking for employment in those school hours. So someone who might take kids to school in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon. And we really championed in our area some of the first flexible scheduling in manufacturing where we brought on part-time or full-time, but with flexible scheduling, parents out on our shop floor. And we have a couple of our full-time associates now who started off in those part-time positions when they needed to have the time to be picking up kids or do things like that. Our quality manager actually began as a part-time team member out on the floor doing assembly and finishing work. And now she's become our quality manager, which means she oversees our ISO certification, all of our audits, everything that happens internally with our quality system. And it's been, it's incredible that that's, that we were able to do that because we kind of went that non-traditional route of saying, okay, where can we find people who want to work but can't find an opportunity to?

Bill: That's amazing. And I have not heard of that. I mean, certainly in some tech space or customer service space, you hear about that very commonly, that half-timer, you know, leave the kids off at school and then work for six hours, but you have to be back by three. And certainly we at 50 Marketing have had team members historically that fit into that pattern, you know, had a career, then were juggling the parental role plus wanted a career but couldn't do the full time, go to the office, grind it out for 60 hours type of situation. So I had not heard about that in manufacturing, but I think that's incredibly innovative. And I think that type of strategy is the type of innovative approach that has to be taken to solving the employment issues and the recruitment and retention issues for the manufacturing workforce. So that's fantastic. Whenever, so you guys started that program, how are you communicating that in the community? Like have you involved that communication in your marketing to help attract and recruit and then retain workers or how did that work?

Kait: Absolutely. So we had a really cool thing happen where because of this, we landed on the Fox News channel on the morning show, getting to do an interview with two of our individuals who started in that program, who started out that way, and then Mike, our CEO. So they were interviewed live on one of the morning news programs on Fox News and the Fox News channel, not like local Fox News, but national. And yeah, it was picked up by national Fox News and it was huge. We heard then from people throughout the community, but we had been using those testimonials from our team members who were participating and able to take advantage of that program in written, in video. We did quick quick snippet videos where we were posting reels, things like that out into the community. And anytime we're doing a hiring push, those are things that we bring back and we're recycling that content because it's still true. It's still how we're operating with our part-time team members and allowing them that opportunity to be flexible. But it definitely helped to be on the national Fox News morning show.

Bill: No, absolutely. And the key to those moments is daily deposits and doing the right things. And then you have those moments where you get, I would almost call that a viral moment. I mean, that wasn't your social media viral, but it was a traditional viral. And that's amazing. Those are tremendous opportunities when you can get them. You got to ride that wave as long as you possibly can.

Kait: Yeah, absolutely. Exactly, especially in this day and age where the news cycle is so quick and things are, and so much of it is online. This was an opportunity where we actually got to be on that traditional media plus capitalize on it because I'm, even the joke around the office was that I can claim being a national news producer because I stood behind the laptop and made sure everything worked on our end while they were doing the remote interview. But I'm snapping videos and pictures and we're cataloging that, showing what's happening behind the scenes while that interview is going on as well.

Bill: I love it. That's great. Well, that's certainly something to add to the old CV that you've produced, Fox News. I love that. So let's take a little bit of a turn here and talk about, like, we'll take a deep dive here in that marketing department of one. What do you feel is working best for you and your team? And then maybe what's some of the challenges that you're facing with manufacturing marketing today? And I ask that broad question, because I want you to just kind of let it flow and see what you run into.

Kait: Absolutely. Yeah, you know, for us, it's there's a lot of how do we build a lot of for me challenge wise, of course, I'm going to go the hard route for it. We're to go with the hard things first before is that is making seeing how we can repurpose and see getting things out of silos. I'm really good. We're really good at saying, this would be a great blog. OK. What else can we do to expand that? We were tossing around some ideas today actually of how we're going to expand a couple of things that are upcoming and that are in the planning and in the storyboarding phase. And immediately, I'm trying harder to stop and go, okay, where else can we capitalize on this? Let's look at those other channels. Let's look at those other opportunities. One of the things that we capitalize on a lot is anytime we can feature our team members, but in showing off our capabilities. So one of the things that we do is we tout our end-to-end capabilities because we have designers on staff and we have a full engineering team on site. So because of that, we can take prints, we can take something that's already been engineered. Our engineers will go back and look at it and say, actually, that's not the best way to manufacture that. Let's look, this is a great pic. This is really pretty. Let's look at those prints. Let's see what we can do. And they can take that value engineering side of it. So anytime we can really be pushing where that value comes from for us, because of our team members, it's a super successful, super successful piece of content. We used to do a regular email blast that the open rate was okay, but we didn't get any turnaround on it. So after I took it over, I ran it for three years that we were sending this regular email blast. And in that three years, sending twice a month to different segments, six segmented newsletters, I had one person reach back out. And we went, is this really the best use of our time? And for us, it's not. We found that that is not the way that we can reach reach potential leads, that we can reach our community. And what we've found is social media is really one of our biggest. Our LinkedIn presence is something that we work on and it has been frequent and a frequent topic of conversation with prospects of saying, I've seen your posts on LinkedIn or I've seen your content on LinkedIn. I've interacted with you. Because of that, I thought I'd give you a call. Or one of our goals is to be a thought leader in our industry. And so anytime we get that feedback, of course, I'm grinning from ear to ear, because you have to, but to give us that feedback, but to hear that, oh hey, yeah, we saw you were on LinkedIn. We saw that you were involved in this program. We saw that you were out at, our owner is participating in a program called Civic Lab right now, and it's a national program of developing small collective areas. And so it's a huge national program and he's popping up on Civic Labs posts and things like that where we can reshare, where we can push that. And anytime we can do those types of things, it's a really successful moment for us.

Bill: No, I love that. And I think when you talk about the last thing you talked about there, which is testing something and then having the courage to not do it anymore, whenever it isn't showing results. I don't know what it is about us marketers, but once we start something…

Kait: We want it to work.

Bill: It's yes. Yeah. This is my baby and I want it to grow up and I want it to be amazing and I can't abandon it. And the reality is, is we need to be more harsh. And we need to say this isn't working. It's wasting our time. We need to stop. I think the tendency of us in this space, marketing professionals, just, well, just keep adding more. So yeah, do that. It's not working. Keep doing it. And then also add this other thing till you find it. And that's a recipe for disaster and overwork and exhaustion and futility. So I want to applaud you for, you know, if it's not working, cut it. That's great. And having the courage to do that. But I think the other thing you talked about there was repurposing content. The key that I've seen and what's missing in most people's strategy is they have that desire to use content as many ways as possible. But what we've found is the most successful part of that. And you hit the nail on the head is you can't do it after the content is created. You have to plan it beforehand and know, if we only did this, we could use it three different ways. And as long as you do that planning step, you can get more out of it. If you just hope to package the exhaust and get three or four different uses, that really, we have not seen that to be consistently successful to repackage the exhaust and get multiple content use. That's an amazing take on repurposing content and getting multiple pieces.

Kait: I love that phrase, repackaging the exhaust. I haven't heard that before, but that's exactly, I see that, I've seen it, I've tried it, because we've all been there and it's not gone well, and then have to make those adjustments. So, changing that thought process though, is always a struggle to get to that point where you are like, okay, well, let's think about this ahead of time. How can we jump in on this?

Bill: So I want to ask, maybe change gears a little bit and talk about the big picture in manufacturing marketing. What do you see as maybe some industry gaps in general? I mean, we're seeing social media grow, we're seeing, you know, maybe email die in some cases. And I think we're starting to see that more and more because the inbox is just so saturated. What do you think is missing in the broader world of manufacturing and B2B marketing?

Kait: You know, I think that one of the things that we haven't, and I think it's a little harder for us to do too, in manufacturing is the interactive components. And I'm not saying like you can go on the website and design your handbag and things like that, but having the opportunity to interact with those digital spaces, because so much of it has gone digital. We used to send flyers. You used to send that brochure that had the pic, or you were sending the sample of this is what we've laser cut. Here's a piece of it and that's just not the reality anymore. But those tangible things are what has always set manufacturing, what has often set manufacturing apart. And for me, of course, we're in custom metal fabrication. So we have a very tangible product that we're putting out, but it's a lot of times a component where you don't see what that is or you don't see it upfront. And having that opportunity to really get something tangible in front of individuals. And that's a big advantage for trade shows in the manufacturing industry. But it's finding the right ones and especially some things like Fabtech and some of the larger shows that have gotten so big. It's hard to be found to find what you're looking for, be seen in those type of spaces. And so I think that that is where, and tied in with that is the visits, the on-site visits of getting people into your space or getting to potential client spaces as well, that we need to continue to do a better job of that.

Bill: No, I love that. And I think I just had a conversation a few weeks ago about pattern interrupters and pattern interrupters are often spoken of when we think about Meta or TikTok or Instagram or even YouTube, where we're trying to get something that's going to grab people's attention. And one of the premises I have is that direct mail is a pattern interrupter because it's not on your phone. It's not digital. And it's something that interrupts the day to day in the offices where these potential clients exist. I think you're taking it another step further, which is interesting where we need to consider not only direct mail, but maybe it is a sample. Maybe it is something they can touch, taste, feel, and smell that is going to be the difference maker in them engaging our product. Because everything isn't a SaaS. Everything isn't a online something or other, and you actually have a physical product and maybe it could be, you you don't have to send them an entire engineered machine part that's huge or whatever, could be a key chain or whatever, just to show the type of work you're doing, but that could be a pattern interrupter that is completely different from your competitors who are relying on an all digital strategy to have an impact. So I love that takeaway. If you were going to give peer advice to maybe other marketing professionals managing small teams, or maybe there's someone a new marketing manager just got out of school, maybe only one or two years of experience and they're jumping in. No, don't give the advice of don't do it.

Kait: I won’t. No, I'm not. No, no.

Bill: What peer advice would you give other marketing professionals, tools or tactics, lessons you found particularly helpful?

Kait: So one of the biggest takeaways for me, and I've given a couple of workshops on this, is utilizing AI tools. I know, and I have a, my background is arts, is an art side as well. So I have a very strong opinions about AI being used in the art realm. However, there are AI tools that can enhance what marketers are doing and take some of the burden of what doesn't need to necessarily be a creative mind piece out of the equation and out of the time. I am a huge advocate for things like different data analytics and pieces where you can do scheduling. Before LinkedIn had their native scheduler, I was a tried and true Loomly user because Loomly had a scheduling component for LinkedIn and they were one of very few on a very minimal budget compared to some of the other larger scheduling tools. And having that opportunity where I could sit and I could bulk batch things and get things scheduled and get them ready to go and having that opportunity as well as with Loomly, it would give insights on when our audience was most active, what was engaging, what was working, what wasn't. So having those tools, one of my other favorite AI tools is a website called TaskAde. So T-A-S-K-A-D-E, and it will make you task lists for absolutely anything. And it breaks things down into a manageable outline a lot of times as well. So you're getting this outline, not necessarily to write from or anything like that, but if you're planning something, say you're planning a trade show for the first time for your company, you have not, your company or you haven't done a trade show since before 2020, know, pre pandemic, it's been years, you can pop onto Taskade and it's not only going to, it'll build you a great timeline and it'll say, okay, your trade show is October 12th. By September 1st, you need to have these things done. And then you can go in and edit the task list, obviously too. But if you're somebody who's looking for that starting point, it is an incredible tool that's gonna cut down the time so that you can refocus your time on designing the materials that you're gonna take to the trade show instead of figuring out when do I need to have things ordered by, or where do I go next? What else do I need to make sure that I have? What are the things I should be packing to take? What are the things that need to be developed? And having that opportunity to move that brain power and that capacity to the actual design and marketing work.

Bill: I love that. That's a great call out and AI is impacting everyone in so many ways. And I think we need to build on small wins and take pieces of the work because there is no AI button yet that says do my job and it does it. So it's helping us do our jobs. And I think it also is important for us to lean into AI where we may have a huge gap. Just like you said, if you've never done a trade show before. Do not jump into that both feet first with your eyes closed. Use these tools to give you guidance, show you your gaps and fill them in so you don't show up and, oh the booth is three days late. Everybody who's listening to this has gone to a trade show and walked the aisles and seen someone sitting at a table and all that is there is the little white label that they printed on and there's no brochures, there's no pull up banners. I mean, there is a usually a person sitting there completely dejected, probably polishing off their resume, getting ready to go and get another job. And we've all seen that person and God bless them and we hope we wish them well.

Kait: We hope the best for them, yes, absolutely.

Bill: But we know it's not going to be a good time. And so, yeah, don't don't be that person. Don't, avoid this at all costs. That's such a vivid picture that I'm thinking of right now.

Kait: Right, and that's why it's my example for that because it's so, everybody has, everybody goes, yeah, I get that one. Just to have those tools and to utilize those tools, they're not a fix all for everything. You still have to have that human component, but having that extra tool in your toolbox, especially when you're a department of one, makes a huge difference because that was you know, we did a trade show last October and I had my checklists and everything and I'm going through but it's me and I'm pulling in our client success specialist and she's helping with setup and a couple other things and I'm pulling my sales guys. Okay, you're gonna work, you're gonna be in the booth and I, because you have to be there because you have to talk about these things. That's what you do, but they're not going to decide what parts we're taking. They're not going to decide what the banners are going to look like. They're not ordering the backdrop. They're not making sure that the tables have everything or that we bring the right things. They show up and they expect it to be there. So making sure that I've got all my boxes checked and if I can use a tool to help me make sure I have the right boxes, it's going to save everybody some grief.

Bill: Love it, love it. Whenever you think about, so we just talked about avoiding danger, right? Let's talk about some success stories and wins. What have you seen or done or a campaign or something recently or over the course of the last couple years that you've seen this gone really, really well? Something that exceeded your expectations. And I ask that very broadly because I just want to see what we're trying to discover what's missing or what we don't know. So maybe just share with us what you've experienced.

Kait: Well, this is my favorite and it keeps us on kind of the trade show track and you'll appreciate it based on the introduction. So, my client services specialist, we were just talking about, okay, we were coming up with some different ideas for the trade show we were going to last October. And we were like, hey, we've always done this. What if we had a different kind of hook? What kind of hook could we have to pull people into our booth? And we always take some business card holders, key chains, all the candy, all the normal giveaway things. But she said, what if we ask people to pronounce Gnadenhutten? And so I designed up a poster, a trifle, a little standee, stood at the end of our table that said, do you think you can pronounce our hometown? And we were at the Design to Parts show in Akron, Ohio. So we're just up the road. Our engineering team had actually designed a key chain that looks like our county. So on our sign, we had the state of Ohio with the key chain popped out, the key chain rendering. So it was metallic. It looked really cool with this kind of zoom in on it popped out of where we are located in the state of Ohio too, because nobody knows where Tuscarawas County is. They know even less where Gnadenhutten is. So we're gonna give you, we're in East Central Ohio. We're an hour and a half from Cleveland, Columbus and Pittsburgh. We're actually in a really great location, but you don't know that reading Gnadenhutten. And so we made a sign that said, can you pronounce our hometown name? Give it a try and win a prize. And we consistently all day, both days at the show had people stopping and taking that, taking that bait, coming right in, and then ending up picking up a part and saying, you do powder coating as well. This is turret punch, that's really cool. This is, you laser cut in the house as well? Yes, all of these are pieces of what we have available. But it was, hey, can you pronounce our hometown? Give it a try, win a prize. And it was a great hook that we were able to pull people in with.

Bill: I love that. And I think when we think about trade shows, I feel like there's been a de-emphasis of innovation in the trade show market because of COVID, because of that whole disruption. Our experience here in the last 18 to 24 months is that trade shows are back. Business is booming. I mean, the attendance is through the roof. And we as marketing managers and professionals need to go back to the well of innovating at the trade show. And it's not, okay, having a video. Yeah, okay. There's table stakes, right? But then having something unique that's going to help you stand out in a crowded marketplace. You know, because if you're at Fabtech and there's a lot of people there and you're going to have to be different, hopefully you're not sitting there with just the white, you know, the chair, the table and the white. But then let's assume we're going beyond that to like having a nice booth and staff and maybe some pictures, product and all that stuff. But no, I love that unique approach. And I guarantee people will respond and remember, hey, wait, what was that outfit that had the Gnadenhutten? What was it? I mean, you're just trying to be memorable. And I think that's amazing. I can I'm just envisioning right now a social media campaign where people are trying to like pronounce it. Like, I don't know if you ever did that, but that would be amazing.

Kait: I haven’t on the social media side of it. Just for the in-person, but it was so funny to get to listen to people try and say it and then end up having those deeper conversations with them.

Brought to you by 50 Marketing

Bill: So we do something here at 50 Marketing as well that's somewhat similar in trying to create memorability. So 50 Marketing is based on in 1896, John Wanamaker, the father of modern advertising said, “Half or 50% of my advertising is wasted, I only wish I knew which half.” And whenever you're trying to differentiate in a very saturated and overcrowded market in the marketing space, I'll often have people call me back or be like, Hey, you guys are those like 50% wasted guys, right? And it like at least it's a brand. It's at least it's a message. It's something that's a hook that people remember you by. And so I think those are the type of things we still have to go back to the foundational ideas and marketing of memorability of being relevant and having something catchy. Like, I don't know that we're either of us are going to develop a jingle at this point, but like it's those little things that that help along the way. So I think that's a great, notable achievement. Anything that you've done that absolutely tanked that you want to share that you're just like, man, that was the worst ever. It just absolutely died. And if you don't want to share it, we'll just say it was the emails for three years and only one contact and leave it go.

Kait: I am 100% okay with taking the hit on the emails. It was just, and it's my understanding that that's how it was for my predecessors as well. It was not a me thing. I actually came in and I redesigned them and we kind of changed it up a little bit. I tested frequencies, I tested day of the week, I tested times, I tested headlock, I tested subject life. It was one of those things that it wasn't ongoing how can we learn, how can I get better at this? And I didn't get better at it. And I don't think that was necessarily me. I just think it was the approach was not the right fit for what we were trying to do. So it was tough. It was a tough hit, but when we actually, and I kind of got lucky and I'll admit this. When I came into my role, we have traditionally been one our niche markets is custom retail displays. So we're a custom metal fabricators. So we'll do parts, but we'll also do full design engineering of retail displays for brands. And that's really great when brands want to redo their entire display for a whole, you know, a big box retailer or something like that. One of our, we're very, very dialed in on the DIY space. So we have lots of clients who are in Lowe's, Menards, Home Depot. We're building custom unique displays for those locations for these brands. But we ran two websites with two completely different URLs. And one was the Tusco display and then one was Tusco Manufacturing. And although everything was manufacturing, we dumped more money into the display side because it was the more prominent, it was a larger percentage of our larger market share for us. And it was that, I mean, that was a fail piece of having these two websites. But part of that was that we were dumping our work, our money, our backend, our SEO, optimization, our optimization pieces, our Google ads, everything was directing people to the display page. So people who are looking for those custom metal fabrications, which tend to be more profitable for us having the higher margin, but also the higher repeatability because a brand is going to do a custom retail program out of metal, maybe every five years. Steel is the most recycled material in the country. But so one of the things that we tout a lot is the sustainability of actually buying a steel fixture as opposed to a cardboard or something like those temporary cardboard ones. We'll build a sign holder. You can switch your signs out, change your product, all that kind of stuff. But that's where we were funneling most of our focus and had been for many, many years. But in 2023, we decided, in 2022, we saw that the display business was kind of taking a step back. We've seen the continuation of a little bit more decline in brick and mortar stores. People are doing more and more shopping online. We know that just from the data. We can see that. So we said, okay, let's pivot a little bit. Let's see what we can do in the custom fabrication space. And let's look at that as opposed to focusing on the retail displays. So I undertook project managing a complete new website build. And our websites were hosted by, were built on a terrible platform that was proprietary to this company. It was awful. And so I headed up the whole, for a quarter that we rebuilt our website and moved off of the Tusco display domain, which was the domain we had built a ton of authority on, we had dumped a lot of money into, to that Tusco MFG domain that we had been using just for the metal fabrication side, because that's what we wanted to target. We want to be custom metal fabricators who can do custom retail displays. That's one of our niches as opposed to the whole focus now. So it's been two years of rebuilding. A lot of rebuilding and working towards that. But having the two websites was definitely a fail moment too. And that was before I joined the company, the two websites existed. And I advocated and advocated and advocated for us to get away from having two websites when we could have those retail displays reflecting on that larger custom metal fabrication abilities that we had. Because all those capabilities are the same. And let's go for the whole picture. Let's take that holistic approach and see what can come out of that.

Bill: Okay, I love that. And I think there's a challenge and maybe even controversy in our industry about whether, you know, some companies pull off unique domains for specific services very well, and some do not. I don't know what, like I haven't studied that specifically to see what the research indicates if there's like specific industries or verticals that that's more appropriate for or not. The other thing that is never available in that research is the amount of money that's poured into it. Cause certainly, with unlimited resources, I'm sure that you can make anything, successful, as long as you don't care about the ROI. So, you know, we can't see that as well. So, but no, I'm, I always advocate generally for consolidation and diverse communication on a singular platform, a singular website, as opposed to multiple URLs, unless it's very, very unique and it's just not natural. But no, that's a great take. Kait, when you look ahead at what you see as the next maybe six to 12 months of your marketing planning, what do you think is the next big challenge for your marketing team of one and your entire team to really undertake? And what do you see as like on the horizon?

Kait: We're definitely, because we kind of made this move now almost two years ago where we really said we wanna kind of get away from focusing on the retail as much and get more into that custom metal fabrication side. It's definitely been a bridge. It's because we're not pursuing those custom retail clients like we had been for a long time. So it was learning that kind of difference a little bit. And I, for us, I'm also in addition to having great leadership support in our organization, we also partner with an external lead generation firm. So for us, we have a really great opportunity because we have folks making cold calls who are prospecting for us that are not in our office or on our payroll. So we can have that support that's kind of external. Those aren't our, our two gentlemen who are our sales guys, but their titles really aren't sales because they're also project managing for orders that come in and our clients. They're really client relationship folks.

Bill: So Kait, that's interesting that you bring up something that I think a lot of companies are really afraid to do, which is engage lead generation agencies that have dedicated SDRs or BDRs, whatever you want to call them, sales development reps, business development reps who are calling and developing leads that then your senior salespeople can then like nurture throughout the sales process once their sales qualified lead. Could you maybe talk about that process, maybe how you got started in it, what you found to work, what to not work, and just kind of give us an overview of that process?

Kait: Absolutely. So we work with a company that's out of New York. They're located in New York state, but they had joined PMA, which is the Precision Metal Forming Association. And PMA is located, their headquarters is located in Independence, Ohio. So it is just about an hour away from us. And so we participate in a lot with PMA. And PMA sent out, hey, we have a new member and it's this company, Athena SWC. They, their owner did a presentation for a lot of the PMA members. And we started kind of talking about that. And it was something that our, our sales team had done in the past, had done the cold calling, had done the prospecting, but their roles had changed to more of the relationship management aspect and then project management. So they're working with our existing clients and have enough on their plates with our existing clients because they're the ones who see those orders coming in and they're saying, okay, I'm gonna make sure this gets through every step of our plan. I'm gonna help follow this project for you. We're gonna take on that aspect of it so you don't have to worry about it. So there wasn't a lot of time left to be, hey, let's develop a list. Let's go prospecting. Let's make cold calls. Let's do those type of things. But we saw that need coming because we knew we wanted to transition a little bit away from those custom retail displays and focusing so much on that because we knew that space really well, but it's not consistent. It's so episodic that we needed something a little bit. We needed to find some more clients who could be a little more consistent. And so engaging with Athena, they came in and brought a team. And so instead of having to have somebody on staff where we're, I mean, there's a cost component to that. Having someone on staff who's going to be making those calls, it's the equipment, it's the health insurance, it's all those backend things. It's not just the salary. And meanwhile, we can have a team of three or four people external to us that are making those calls, that are doing the market research, that we can hand them, here are our target market profiles, go find people to call. And you know, taking that off of my plate or off of our sales teams plate is huge. And so we get an update that they've been hitting the prospects in the list and these are the individuals they have and they're doing the digging to find the contact numbers and the emails and the titles. And we talk to them about industries and what titles we like to target. Like we know for us because of the way that we work and the way that the clients we serve, it's best for us to talk to someone in their engineering department usually. That's who we want to reach. So that's who they're targeting. They're doing the digging. They have all those the subscriptions to the zoom infos and the rocket reach and all of those to find those numbers and we don't have to do that.

Bill: No, that's great. I think one of the things that I hear a lot whenever we talk about this segment is a lot of companies feel like, only our salespeople can talk to these folks. Nobody can make an introductory phone call. You have to be an expert. And when we really break down the sales process and the business development process, those first couple touch points are not that deep. It's like, hey, who are you? Hey, this is who I am. What's your problem? What are you facing? What solutions are you looking for? You know, we have someone who could probably talk to you about that and help you through that. Can I help schedule a call for them? I mean, it's oversimplifying it a little bit, but not that much. And if we break it down and then you get that person, that prospect on the call or on a presentation with a senior level solutions engineer or product specialist, they can move them along that journey. So I think that's a viable option. We've seen it work consistently in some cases where, but you have to be committed and you have to give it a fair shot. You can't just like dip your toe in it, let it go for 30 days and then say, oh that didn't work. And then blame the whole, like that whole solution segment because it didn't work.

Kait: Yep. And, and you know, that's a, that is a big piece of it because we know it takes more than one touch point. Everyone who spends any time in it knows that you're not getting through to somebody on the first touch. It's not going to happen. You've got to hit it a couple of times. And so that takes that, that require, you know, that, that expectation off of our team members so that they can do the relationship side. And one of the other benefits that we found from it too, is that we sometimes will punt a cold lead to them. So if we get something that comes in through our website and maybe we make a couple of connections with them and then it goes dead. We don't hear anything, we're not able to connect again, they're not returning, anything like that, but we could really help them. That's usually what we see is that we're like, we could really be a good partner for you. And we're trying to sell ourselves to these potential clients, but we're just not making that connection. We'll send those leads. So they're a little warm. They're lukewarm for us at that point but they have the ability to then pursue that on our behalf too. So that like you said once they go through that first level and then they can come back to our senior sales team that can say, hey absolutely, let's continue to walk through this process together. Here's some more information. And part of the thing with part of the, for us, the appeal of Athena, our partner organization is that they specialize in manufacturing. And that's, you know, that piece of, nobody can talk about, nobody can really talk about us except for us. Like that side of it. You know, they, when, the way that they break things down is everyone who's working on your team works on metal fabrication clients. They're not necessarily, we all have NDAs and all of those pieces of course, but you're not getting someone who their background is wood manufacturing making your calls. So some of it is that the little more universally applicable, plus they have our full write up on us and most of the questions can be answered in that brief.

Bill: Yeah. And I mean, a good salesperson, a good SDR, good VDR can take a briefing and get through most of those calls. If they have a lean canvas or they understand your UVP, they understand the problems you solve. They understand common buyer personas, buyer persona challenges. I mean, you can in a day get a team dialed in to have those first conversations. And then the key there, and this is on the SDR team, is if they don't know, don't make something up, say, I don't know, I'll find out. And as long as you, as long as you pull that rip cord, you're okay. If you just start talking through it and overselling, that's where you really run into trouble. And like junior SDRs can really get themselves into trouble really quickly. But, you know, when you're working with a reputable organization that specifically focuses on your niche, you should be able to remove a lot of that variability and have a more successful outcome. So I love that. That's a great take. And I think there is another thing we've discovered that's what's missing in a lot of manufacturing and B2B marketing and sales is the willingness to step out and try lead gen and specifically dedicated SDR, BDR outreach channels and use that tool. So I love that takeaway and I'm glad that that's working for you guys.

Kait: I’m the queen of the I'm not sure about that but I know who to ask. Because you know I always my joke is always that I know enough to be dangerous and that, you know, when I'm at the trade show booth that's what I say I know I know enough to be dangerous. Let me introduce you to this wonderful person. This is John he knows everything about everything you want to talk to him not me but I'm definitely be hey come talk to me about this sign that says Gnadenhutten on it. And then you can talk to John about all of our capabilities and the fabrication specifics.

Bill: I love it. So Kait, this has just been an excellent conversation and I've learned a lot, which is always great in these conversations. I want to give you an opportunity to do two shameless plugs because we're all about shameless plugs on the Missing Half. So one, where can people find you and learn more about you to connect with you personally?

Kait: Yeah, absolutely. I'm on LinkedIn. I have a really long name in addition to living in a really long town, having a really long town name. But I have the really, I definitely was one of those people who was like, I'm doing the profile shortening. So I can be found on LinkedIn. My handle is Kait G.W. So it's K-A-I-T G.W. I love building connections, especially in manufacturing and in anything out in the community as well. And I love being an advocate for the manufacturing industry as well as my neighbors and my hometown too. But yeah, LinkedIn is the best place to track me down. Or if somebody wants to reach out to me, my email is the same, [email protected]. And that's also available on, that's listed on our website too.

Bill: Excellent. And then Kait, go ahead and give a shameless plug, maybe an elevator pitch about Tusco and kind of give us some framing about your company.

Kait: Yeah, absolutely. So, TuscoMFG is an award-winning custom metal fabrication company and we're one-stop shop. We can take a project from end to end, from design and engineering, all the way through to warehousing, shipping, and distribution. We offer onsite warehousing, so we will drop ship. That has been a great, especially for our custom retail display clients because maybe they don't want to have every single display that's going to every Lowe's in North America sitting in their warehouse and shipping it twice. So we'll keep it in our warehouse and then we'll ship it to every Lowe's that you need. So we have a really robust shipping and distribution program as well. And we're ISO 9001 2015 with design certified. So we go through ISO audits. We have a huge and robust quality system. And consistently, new prospective clients find that about us when they come in to conduct their own quality audits. We've just had two happen recently where the clients left and said, robust is one of the words that they use a lot of our robust quality system. So we're located in a great spot, we're within 75% of the retail doors in North America and 350 miles of a lot of ports as well. So we've got a good location right in the heart of Ohio and a 125,000 square foot manufacturing facility where we can do everything from that laser cutting to powder coating in-house.

Bill: That's amazing. You did a great job there on both. And I guess, you know, should we be surprised that marketers can give a good elevator pitch? Probably not. But because, you know, maybe that's like, well, hey, that didn't go so well. Maybe we need to think about something else. But no, you did an excellent job, Kait. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk with you on these subjects. It's very exciting to hear about how you guys are innovating not only in your the products you deliver, but with your recruitment marketing, I think that's amazing. And then your fractional or hybrid work model in the community, I think that's amazing. And then also we talked to very few manufacturing companies that are embracing SDR and BDR use. And I think that's commendable. And I think that that'll serve you well as a differentiator for your company as you move the marketing and sales efforts forward. So yeah, that's just, it's been exciting to talk through that.

Kait: Yeah, thank you. It was a great afternoon. I appreciate being a guest.

Bill: Well, thank you, Kait. And thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Like, share, subscribe. Have a great day.