In this week's episode, Julian Schaaf breaks down what’s broken in the traditional B2B agency model and what manufacturers can do instead. Bill and Julian dig into the inefficiencies of bloated teams, the disconnect between strategists and executors, and how manufacturers can build leaner, more effective marketing operations using fractional and hybrid models. They also cover what’s working in 2025: from SEO and Google Ads to surprising wins in print trade publications.

Julian shares practical insights on building a marketing team when you don’t have a CMO, how to hire freelancers when you don’t know what you’re looking for, and the “player-coach” model that gives companies both strategic direction and execution without the overhead.

Julian Schaaf is the founder of Industrial Growth and previously led strategy at Gorilla 76, one of the top industrial marketing agencies in the U.S. With experience across manufacturing and software, he brings a no-nonsense, results-driven approach to helping midsize industrial companies get real marketing traction.

Julian: So just having a good product that people really want to buy in simple terms. That's actually where marketing starts. And most people think about website or other things, but great marketing starts with having a really great product and a really clear understanding of who is buying it, why are they buying it, what is it competing against, and why is it better? Everything starts there.

Bumper

Bill: Thanks for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today, I have a very special guest with me, Julian Schaaf from Industrial Growth. Julian, thank you for joining us today.

Julian: Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

Bill: So Julian, you and I met, we're in the same space. We service a lot of the same type of clients. And I'd just like you to maybe tell us a little bit about your background, how you got into this, whether it was you lost a bet or it was a dare or how did you get into industrial and manufacturing marketing? If you can tell, like if you're still in a witness protection program or something, we won't ask for, but like maybe tell us a little bit about that background.

Julian: Yeah, I've come to learn that most of us landed in it by accident. Even the owners and the founders of the machine shops or whatever they started, it's just by accident, but I guess that's life. I moved to the US from Germany, actually. It's a little bit of a rabbit hole, but a little bit unplanned and overnight. And then I was looking for my first job out of college and I really wanted to work in marketing strategy because that seemed up my alley. I was trying to think about going into management consulting, which turned out I hated. So I was looking for a marketing strategy job because it seemed like it would be more hands-on. And Gorilla 76, which is still one of the big industrial marketing agencies in the US was looking for one and they ended up hiring me. It was my first job out of college and I knew nothing about manufacturing. I knew a little bit about marketing, but not a lot either. And from there on, I really liked it. I liked that manufacturing people are usually builders, engineers. It's a lot less flashy and glamorous than a lot of other industries that you can market for. And I really liked that, that it was a little more gritty.

Bill: Yeah, I think when you look at the, let's call it the buyer persona or who is in the space that we're serving, they're folks who are methodical, they're builders. They understand that you have to test and fail. None of them, you know, the first time they manufactured their widget, did it come off the line perfect? Right. They understand that process. And I think that attitude really aligns with the way we have to approach manufacturing and B2B marketing in 2025. What do you think about that?

Julian: Oh we're diving right in, approaching B2B marketing in 2025. I don't know if I can draw a parallel between those things. I probably could, but I'd be, it'd be a long shot. Just put me on the spot, but I don't know. I just like that. I worked in software for quite some time, maybe to go full circle, you know, after I did three years at Gorilla and led the strategy department there when I left. Then I did a few years of head of marketing and startups in software startups. And after three years of that, I was just tired of software. I feel like, you know, obviously software has its place and we all use it, but so many startups make these bold claims. And in a way, a lot of them do the same thing. And it's not a physical thing that you can see. And coming back to manufacturing was just refreshing because there's, to me, really cool products that I get to work on and promote and help get out in front of people. You know, whether it's a clenching machine or a bandsaw with a safety system, or one of the clients is actually in software or just starting to work with a chocolate machinery. It's just fascinating stuff.

Bill: Julian, when you think about today's agency model and the way you're approaching it in Industrial Growth, what do you feel is maybe broken or what do you feel that companies are frustrated with when working with traditional agencies?

Julian: Yeah. Where do I start? A lot of people that come to me were at some point burned by an agency and if they haven't yet, they probably will at some point be burned by an agency. What's wrong with it? I think they're, I think traditional agencies and by traditional, I mean the model of you usually have an owner who starts out by themselves, like you and I did probably, and then they hire account managers, some junior marketers, and a certain level of bloat starts happening because you have, all of a sudden you have three, four, five people working on one account. One account often has a strategist, a writer, an account manager. Sometimes there is a project manager also in the mix. And then sometimes you also have like a paid media specialist. So you might have to up to five people working your account. And no one knows what the hell is going on. No one has like one overview of the whole picture. Paid person doesn't know what the strategist person said. The copywriter is like somewhat looped in, but has like 10 other clients to take care of. It's just like, and then things start moving slowly because there's so much handoff between all those five people and updating each other and like, oh I was supposed to do that. I thought I was supposed to do that. There's a giant amount of bloat that you have to pay for all these people's salary. And all of a sudden, you know, you can't really sell retainers under 10,000 bucks a month, even 5,000 bucks a month, but you can't get anything done. So that's like the two problems that you have. Your things are taking forever for the client and the output is not that good because you have all these special hyper-specialized roles where everyone is pretty junior so the owner can have some kind of margin and there's just no results. And that's what the agency model is for a lot of agencies. Obviously there's really great agencies still, but you have to pay the price for those. So yeah, what, what is the normal manufacturer supposed to do who can't afford the premium agency that's going to cost them an arm and a leg? Maybe they just want to dip their toes. So you got to go with the cheap guys and you're going to pay your price. And yeah, I think in the, in the time of freelancers and remote work, you can just do a lot better and you don't have to do that anymore. And that's what I'm trying to change. I'm also an agency, I guess, and I have some of the same problems, but I have a vision of where I want to take things and how I want to do things. And ask me again in five years how it worked out.

Bill: I love it. Yep. Sounds familiar, right? I have some of those same struggles. Julian, one of the things I've recently seen a post from you on LinkedIn where you talked about three budget tiers, three approaches that you felt, and this would be something I think that would be valuable for our listeners if they're a marketing manager, if they're an owner or founder or in the C-suite and a manufacturing or B2B company, and thinking about how do they approach the marketing function and executing growth? Could you maybe walk through those three tiers and how you describe them? Because I think you had some really great insight and I think I agree with just about everything you say and how you describe these three tiers and I think it's something that most manufacturers are becoming more aware of, but are not acutely aware of these different constructions.

Julian: Without going into too much detail with each tier, because I think if I do, I might miss the main point. Maybe you can link it in the show notes, but I think the main point of these tiers was showing manufacturers that there is another way to hire marketing teams than hiring either full-time people or agencies. There is an in-between. Traditionally–

Bill: The hybrid. Yeah.

Julian: Yeah, the hybrid. Traditionally, manufacturers, industrial companies think a little more traditionally because on the shop floor, you can't really hire remotely. That's not really a thing. And even in other roles, it's a little bit unusual still to hire remotely, but the ability to hire people from all around the world on a freelance basis has really changed things. So in the past, if you built a marketing team, as a manufacturer, you probably had a marketing manager. You maybe had a writer, a social media manager, maybe a designer, maybe a developer. Something like that. Not everyone had all of these roles, but they would tend to hire full-time roles for everything. And no matter how much of each position you really need, because usually you don't need a full-time writer, you definitely don't need a full-time designer or developer. You probably don't need a full-time social media person, but all of a sudden it was a giant payroll of all these people and this weird thing happens where you feel like you have to fill their plates and then you're just doing activities and the writer just keeps writing all these blog posts. The social media person is posting on the LinkedIn company page and maybe on Twitter or X or, and Instagram because why, I don't know, cause they have time and they're full time hire. It's just silly. You just have this bloated team. You're blowing, I don't know, 500, 500K, a million bucks on salaries. It's crazy. And the result doesn't add up to what you're spending on salaries. So what I think, especially as you're starting out, what you need to do is you have one person that's the brain or the quarterback. That might be someone internal. It could be someone like us who's like a fractional head of marketing that you bring on. Or it could be the owner. It depends on the size and the appetite people have for working in marketing, but you need one brain that's coordinating everything that puts together a strategy and it says, all right, we have limited resources. We're going to focus on X, Y, Z, and then bringing on freelancers for the things where you don't need a full-time role for. The strategist or the brain that should, that could probably be a full-time role of like a player-coach that can execute some things on their own, but bring on a freelance designer. There's a, an amazing amount of talent out there that is really easy to hire if you just know a few things to look for. The same goes for writers, extremely great talent, even technical writers. You don't need to pay a fortune. You can pay 20, 30 cents a word. That's like my range, for a really strong writer with a journalism background. And you bring them in when you need them and when you don't need to write content, or if you want to just test content and see if that works, with a freelance writer, you can spend three months working with them and see where it gets you in three months. And if you, if you find out it doesn't work, you don't feel like you have to be stuck because you don't want to want to fire that person. You just, you know, you can off-board the freelancer and it didn't work. And you can do that with a lot of different roles. I'm convinced you can do it with a social media manager as well. And that just gives you a lot more flexibility. First of all, you don't have to pay for full-time roles. You just pay hourly. Or maybe on a project basis, which just frees up a lot of budget. And it also gives you flexibility to test more. And you don't have to feel like you have to now keep all these people busy. You just test what's best for the company. And if you feel, if you feel like it's working and you want to double down on it, then bring on the full-time person, then bring on the full-time writer who can really dive deep into your company and become a part of it and become a part of the team. Then you, then obviously that makes a lot more sense, but before that, work with freelancers. The talent out there is just amazing and it's not that hard to hire anymore. That's my recommendation instead of just bringing on five full-time people. And then you have the rest of the budget to, I don't know, to actually spend and produce stuff instead of having full-time people on your payroll.

Bill: So one of the things, and I love your model and like your approach to this, one of the barriers I see to this shift is the fact that most executives and owners and founders at manufacturing B2B companies are good at hiring and building internal teams. And that feels very natural. And they understand how that looks on their P&L and like they can envision that. And while you and I know how to pull many levers and source talent globally and we have refined that skill, we have that muscle memory. A lot of these folks, it just feels like a foreign language. It feels like a completely different space. And to me, that seems to be the biggest barrier to this shift. Julian, do you see that as well?

Julian: I agree. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's really hard. If you don't know what you're looking for, it's like me trying to hire a machinist or some kind of operator. It's like, I don't know what the hell I'm looking for. You could, they could be telling me anything. I'd be like, yeah, that sounds great. Sounds like you know what you're doing. I don't know what questions to ask them. I don't know what to look for. And it's probably feels the same for manufacturing exec trying or an HR person in manufacturing, trying to hire a designer or a writer. So I think it all starts with the brain of the operation that needs to have some experience working in marketing, either B2B marketing or specifically in manufacturing. So it could be someone like us, someone like you, that can either consult or works in-house full-time and has hired these kinds of roles before, or can at least figure it out and knows what to look for. So it's, it has to start with the brain. If you don't know what you're doing, yeah, that won't work well.

Bill: Julian, when we're seeing another shift I think occuring right now, which is the rise of the fractional CMO, that seems to be much more available. There's just more and more people entering that space. How do you see that approach impacting the future of manufacturing and B2B marketing? How do you see that piece fitting in the puzzle?

Julian: I think that model is, has caught on a lot more in other industries. And, do we have to explain what a fractional CMO is? Probably not. Right.

Bill: That's a great question. That's a great question.

Julian: It's like you bring on, you bring on a CMO or a really experienced marketer who you could never afford to hire full-time, but you can maybe hire them for a day a week and they can bring in a lot of value. the problem is that they don't have a lot of time to execute, but that's another story. I think it's a, it's a really great model, a really great alternative to the agency model for the reasons that I explained earlier, because agencies tend to be a lot of juniors for reasons of margin for the agency owner. And the, if you hire a fractional CMO, you just work, you know, exactly who we're going to work with. It's not like the owner is going to hand you off to another fractional CMO. You know, the fractional CMO is usually a one-man operation. The person you talked to in the sales process is also the person who will handle, you will get to work with. And you see their resume and what kind of companies they have worked on. And you get advice from someone who's done it before and who ideally knows the pitfalls and what to avoid. And I think it's a great model. It's how I started and I'm trying to, I wouldn't say scale, but I'm trying to turn that model into an agency of senior marketers that you can work with instead of. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I'm answering your question. I feel like I'm starting to ramble.

Bill: No, that's great. No, no, you're doing great. I think the other thing we're seeing with the fractional CMO push is that fractional CMOs are really, really great at that strategy. They're really great at dialing that in. But like you said, they have no time and probably don't even have a lot of the technical skills to execute. They're big picture people. They've always had people to do that, to execute whatever the thing is. We've found and had some relationships with fractional CMOs where they've brought us in, not even in a white label fashion, but just as, Hey, this is a strategy. Could you do the technical work and delivery? And certainly we've been able to discount our prices to do that because number one, we don't need sales. Yeah, there's no SG&A. And also we don't have to distract our senior leadership team and our senior strategists to activate that account. We're just really doing the work. But then we have the infrastructure, we have the project management, we have the proofing, all the QC processes to bring that to fruition. So we're seeing some of that work come our way. But I do think this fractional CMO role makes a ton of sense because a lot of companies can't afford a $300,000, $400,000 payroll hit. But they can afford $60,000 for six months or a hundred grand for a year or whatever to really dial that strategy in. And they get an amazing value. They get a four or five hundred thousand dollar body. And let's be honest, a lot of CMOs out there are probably only needed a day a week who have full time jobs because there's just not that much strategy. Like how much strategy can you have? Like at some point in time, you have to go and attack the position. You can't just sit there and twiddle your thumbs and think about what's next. So.

Julian: Yeah. And for anyone who's thinking, okay, a fractional CMO or a CMO is not really what I need. I would probably widen the scope to fractional in general. Cause what you mentioned is very true. You don't need a CMO for more than a half day a week, probably, especially if you're one of the people I work, I usually work with smaller midsize manufacturers who have a small marketing team or nothing. And you don't, it makes no sense to hire a CMO because who's going to execute their strategy? It makes no sense. So I actually, position myself as fractional head of marketing because it's somewhere in between. It's like that player coach. Cause I knew they don't just need strategy and like, okay, here's your plan. See you later. That's no value. You need the plan and you'd also need to help them execute it or execute it for them because just the plan doesn't help them a lot.

Bill: I think that's an interesting positioning because that is different, Julian. Okay, so in the Missing Half podcast, we're trying to discover what's missing. And that may be one of the major missing components in structure today is, we have CMOs, we have fractional CMOs, but this player coach, fractional head of marketing who can do a lot of the strategy that a CMO or a fractional CMO could do, but also tactically knows how to get things done. And, like, drive a creative brief that isn't just pie in the sky, but is like, okay, this takes it to fruition and makes it happen. That may be a very large missing component in the structure, the agency-client relationship here over the next several years that needs to be filled. And I think that's a a great approach and a great take. So we've accomplished our goal here. Julian, we've found something that was missing already so we can coast the rest of the conversation.

Julian: Yes. Nice. All right, cut.

Bill: Yeah, check the box. We're good.

Julian: No, but one thing I want to add also, I'm blurry all of a sudden. There we go. Obviously I'm biased because that's what I sell, but I think that model is exactly what you need when you're just starting. Remember I work with smaller, midsize manufacturers who are usually just starting to build or trying to figure out why it's not working a marketing program. And in that you need a player coach because you can't afford to hire the CMO and all the execution people. You need a player coach who can do both. That's just the best value for money you can get. You need someone who's going to walk the shop floor and understand what you actually sell. You need someone who wants to talk to customers and understand why they're buying. You need someone who's going to live in your CRM and understand why are some deals closing and why others not, and where did they come from? And you need that person to also run Google ads and maybe make a LinkedIn post. And like you said, trying to find that person is like a unicorn, especially if you don't know what to look for as a manufacturing exec. And that's the gap we're trying to fill is that it's really hard to find that person and that you don't need to hire all these, the really expensive exec plus all the execution people. And I guess other agencies are trying to fill that as well, just with a different model. That you have the strategy and you have the execution. I mean, I'm sure that's what you guys do too, right?

Bill: Yes. Yeah, we try to do it. We have a little bit of a different division of labor where we have strategic and then more execution teams. And we work really, really hard to try and make sure everybody's on the same page. That doesn't always happen. And we execute that to different degrees of success. One of the things I would like to talk to you about is when you're thinking about execution and head count, one of the tensions I see with your model and the traditional agency model is you can do it quicker because you're working on it and you own the whole process. But at the same time, you're not going to be as fast as someone who like all they do is HubSpot work eight hours a day, right? Like, so there's that trade off of expertise and knowledge. What do you see and how are you trying to address that?

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a fair point. Usually when there is something like that, where I really feel like, and I say this to clients often, I don't think I should be doing that. I am way too expensive to work on this. And it might be something like cleaning a list or sometimes it's HubSpot work, where I tell them, yeah, just go watch this tutorial or take this course and you can figure it out and I'm, my time is way too expensive to spend time on this. So that's how I handle it. And I try to teach people in, that, that work on our team to also have that mindset, like spend the client's money like it's your own. If, if there's something that you would never do for yourself, why pitch it to a client? And the nice thing is that we are not super specialized, so we can do it. You know, they don't, they don't buy a specific service from us, like paid ads. So I can afford to say don't, don't do this. Don't, don't buy it from us. It's silly because yeah, it's not good value for money if they have me, I don't know, set up some kind of HubSpot workflow that is not that hard to do, but takes a lot of time. That's not good for us to pull off. Sometimes we do it because it's just faster to, to pull off, but you got to, like you say, you got to find the balance of yeah, doing things efficiently and and getting things done.

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Bill: So shiny trends are always a problem in our space because every day there's something new in marketing, right? Like, you someone will say to me, hey, did you see that newest release by such and such? I was like, well, the eight o'clock, the nine o'clock or the 10 o'clock this morning release, like which one are you talking about? When you look at manufacturers and B2B, the industrial space, should most of the folks in that space be looking heavily at AI or do they just need to get the fundamentals and the basics right first before they think they're going to find some, you know, SaaS or AI application that's going to fix it all like super quick?

Julian: In the end, AI is just a tool like any other tool. I mean, it's maybe more than a tool at this point. It's probably the, I haven't been doing this for that long, you know, maybe 10 years, but it's the most fundamental shift that I've seen. It's certainly more than a tool, but in the end, it's just a tool. And if it can help you get the job done and then yes, you should definitely be using it, especially. I don't think you're going to get around it as a marketer. But yeah, at the same time, marketers really get carried away. And also execs, by the way, that read about new trends and then send it to marketing and then marketing thinks oh, CEO said it, so I have to do it. So it's marketing and leadership that get carried away by shiny trends. And it's fine to spend some time of your, some amount of your resources on trying out new things and you should, but it should be maybe 80, 20 to where 80% of your attention and your resources goes toward things that you know are already working. And then 20% toward things that you've never tried before where it might fail, it might work really well, but you're just not sure. And I think marketers tend to over index and just say, well, this month or this quarter, we're going to, you know, really double down on this one thing that we've never tried before. It's like, wait, you're going to spend 80% of your resources on something that you've never tried and you have no baseline for how this is going to work? And it might fail completely and you waste three months of your life and three, three months of your company's resources. That's, it's a pretty risky way to operate. So 80, 20, I think is best. And I think AI, won't get around it. I find new ways to use it every single day right now. And it's both fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

Bill: Sure. If you think about core marketing basics, do you have a top three, three or four things that you always want to make sure are your first priorities when dealing with a new client? And let's describe this client as someone who is not sophisticated in the marketing space, has not been investing consistently. And they're not a startup, per se, but they're a manufacturing company, been around for a while, somewhat established, but from a marketing maturity standpoint, they're very immature. Do you have a top three or four things that you want to make sure, get the vitals on really quickly and get started?

Julian: Yes, it starts with product. And I used to, I didn't use to realize this when I was just starting out at Gorilla, for example, also in roles after that, that if you don't have a great, it's really hard to market a mediocre product or a product that might be great, but nobody in the company knows who you're selling it to, why they buy it and who you're competing against and why it's better or different. It all starts there. It's like a combination of having product market fit is more of a startup term. So just having a good product that people really want to buy in simple terms. That's actually where marketing starts. And most people think about website or other things, but great marketing starts with having a really great product and a really clear understanding of who is buying it, why are they buying it, what is it competing against, and why is it better? Everything starts there. If you can't, if you don't know that, if your product is mediocre and you're just one of a hundred, then don't bother marketing. You're just going to waste a lot of time and resources. It's unless you, you have a lot of resources and you're just going to brute force it and put your name in front of everyone. But most people are not in that position. They can't, they need to work somewhat efficiently. If you don't have that figured out, you need to start there because you can't build on that. If you don't have clarity, if you don't have a good product, who are you don't even know who you're going to and what to say to them. So what's the point. And I used to do that in past roles. I just, yeah, I had a gut feeling. Like, I don't really feel like I know, or I don't have much to go off of, but I'm just going to try. And it just didn't work. And then we tried to optimize ads and optimize the website, but in the end, it was always product that didn't work or we just didn't have clarity in terms of who we're targeting and all the things that I just said. And that's the biggest lever that you have. And as a marketing team or a marketing leader, it's your job to figure it out and ask for that and challenge leadership to get it out of them. And as leadership, it's your job to provide that obviously not just to marketing, but to sales. I would say most people who run a good business, they know, and they can communicate it to us and all of our clients do and we helped them put it to paper essentially, but that's, that's the starting point for everything. And once you know that, then you can start thinking about the website because that's the, that's the next place you go to, because now you need to all the things that you know about your product and who's buying it and why, you need to put that on your website. And there's two components to it. One is the words that you use, which are probably the most important and where you should start. It needs to be clear. Most manufacturers have some like word salad of we are efficient providers of tailored solutions. Like what the hell are you selling? Just tell me: who's it for? What do you do? Just tell me. But that's, so one is one part is the words and then the other part is the design, which I used to think, it's not so important. Don't over invest in it. But in the end, the design and what your website looks like reflects on you and your company and the product. So if you're selling a premium product, but with a premium price point, but your website looks like it was built in the 90s, it's a little bit of a contradiction, you know, who wants to pay premium for product that looks bottom shelf? So you can't forget about that, but those are the fundamentals. And once you've got those in pretty good shape, you build from there, then you get it in front of people and think about channels and promotions and the fun ideas. Yeah, things like that, but it's got to start with the fundamentals.

Bill: Whenever you think about what's working and what isn't, do you have any major wins? And you don't have to name clients or specific campaigns, but things you're seeing that are really working more than you would have expected this year, or things that you've seen that have just absolutely cratered? Like just, man, we thought we had this, and it just, you know.

Julian: I'll just rattle some things off if that sounds good. So things that have really worked this year and it's all across the board because strategies are a little different for, for each client, like you mentioned, but for one client SEO is really working well. Old school tactic, but their space isn't really competitive and we've just written like 10 to 15 articles. So not a lot. We've done a lot of work with guest publications to get their content published. So great content and links. There, people are finding their machines on Google, reaching out, and buying. Very simple. For another client, Google Ads is working well. It's funny because the person that is using SEO and is working well, for them Google Ads didn't really work. I can't tell you why, but it didn't work that well for the money that they were spending. Another client, Google Ads is the number one channel for them. I almost never touch it. Maybe once a month I go in there and make some tweaks. But it's almost set it and forget it. Once, the first three months, we had to do some dialing. I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole, but Google ads is working great for them. They're not spending a fortune, but it's delivering revenue almost every single month. For another client, LinkedIn ads is working really, really well. Thought leader ads specifically. So they write posts, we promote them to their, to a small target audience. People book a demo and want to talk about their software. Those are three things that are really working well and are pretty much the things that we do most. So content, Google, LinkedIn ads, those are the three things we do most and work best. One more thing is that I was surprised by is, trade publications. So, you know, each industry has their little niche publication that has the surprising amount of readership still. That worked really well. So we're testing some trade publications with them. I don't know if you can see this because it's. So this is a casting magazine and this is their ad. So we decided to just spend more, but fewer times and just buy the cover ad and put like a faux cover on the front of the magazine with just something borderline shocking. So we really get people's attention. It's a bloody hand if you can't see this and just listening. It's for bandsaw, safety bandsaws and worked like a charm. So it's very traditional and it's print, but it worked. Things that bombed, we tried Meta ads, so Instagram and Facebook ads for a few clients. Now bombed every single time. We tried LinkedIn ads for some clients that bombed. We tried Google ads for some clients that bombed. We tried pitching industry publications or press releases that has bombed. So we, it's like, you know, sometimes I say a lot of great things about what we do and how we, how successful we are, but at the same time we bomb all the time. And the thing that maybe we, we are confident enough to say, this bombed, let's not do it again. And then at the same time, we find other things that work really well and we try to double down on them. So overall, trying a lot of things, but doubling down on what's working and try to avoid bombing twice on the same thing.

Bill: Facebook Meta ads seem to have really lost their utility in our space over the last 12 to 18 months. We have not been nearly as successful with Meta as we were historically. And I don't know what, why that is. I don't know if the viewer is abandoning the platform. I don't know if the algorithm is, it hates people in industrial and manufacturing. I don't know what it is, but we have seen similar degradation of Meta campaigns and the ROI just isn't there anymore.

Julian: I think it, I think it can work well if it has a lot of data and a large audience, like for a consumer product, for example, I think it works great because the pool of potential buyers is just huge and you can directly measure when somebody buys something, the algorithm has data to optimize on. But if you're a manufacturer, you know, you might be selling a $200, $500 million machine. The sales process is six months, if you're lucky, sometimes years long, you know, the algorithm isn't going to know, are they going to buy three years from now? You know, sometimes, and a lot of manufacturers have smaller audiences, you know, it might be plant managers at 500 companies. And it's really hard to target those exact people on, on Facebook. At least efficiently, you just have a lot of ways to trying to do that.

Bill: Yeah, the only place we've really seen great success with Meta over the past two years is where we're dealing with like a dealer channel for a manufacturer and they are D2C. That's been a rocket ship. That still works.

Julian: Yeah, I can imagine.

Bill: But yeah, Meta and ABM are strange bedfellows. They just do not work well. Because like you said, if you have 500 target accounts, that's more appropriate for an ABM LinkedIn thought leadership, very small market, very focused. And like you said, if there's a trade journal that you can do something shocking with. One of the things I would like to ask you about that, because I'm a print guy, I'm old and I came from dealing with print in my early career. Whenever you put the print ads together that are getting results, is it something that is very like one idea, one visual? Or is it putting the entire feature and benefit list of every product and service in the ad?

Julian: I feel like this is a leading question.

Bill: It is a leading question. This is teed up, Julian. This is easy. But like, I think it's an important point to make because whenever we deal with clients and try and I would say bring Madison Avenue, bring the David Ogilvie approach to print. The old school, you know, Marlboro man, those type of mad men, one big headline, one image, one idea, be quiet. To me, that is the recipe for success in trade journals, magazines, periodicals. Putting the entire line card and like six point font that someone has to use a magnifying glass to read all the details is not, but manufacturing loves their data. They're very proud about those items. So what have you seen work? And maybe if you could, yeah, I teed that up. This is the layup. So.

Julian: Yeah. I mean, the more you try to say, at the same time, the harder it's like, imagine looking at a menu that has like a hundred things on it. Try to decide on something that you want. It's like, you can't even remember the first thing you read by the time you get to item number 30. And I think it's kind of the same way for ads. There's something, a concept that I learned along the way it's called information hierarchy and the concept is named different things by different people, but in the end, you need to have some level of information hierarchy. So the most important thing should be really big. And then the second most important thing should be a little smaller. And then the third most important thing should be a little smaller. So I think that's, that's one way to still, if you're manufacturer and you want to talk about all your products and their specs and all the things you do, at least use information hierarchy. So have one thing, the most important thing, just make it really big. So for us, if you look at this ad and if you can't see it, it's basically a rectangle has a big bloody hand, which is the most important thing that we wanted to show. Because in the end you, you need to earn their attention. So they, with the first thing, so they read the second thing and with the second thing, you need to earn their attention. So they read the third thing and it's like a one hook after another. So the big bloody hand is just the first hook, but alone it does nothing. So we have this in the second level of hierarchy. Now we, we tell them a little more. We can blur bandsaw injuries. Your operators can't. Okay. Now I know a little bit more about the problem. Bandsaw injuries. Okay. Tell me more. And then we tell them about the product. Only a third thing is we tell them about the product. Prevent bandsaw accidents with guardians, vision safety bandsaws. And then there's more stuff like the website and the phone number, QR code, logo, but there's a hierarchy to it. And with each level, you gain their, approval or you get their approval. So they move on to the next thing. So yeah, instead of dumping everything on, on level one, try to have different levels. So that, that usually helps. So I think to answer your question, yeah, try to, try to keep it clean or have hierarchy, ideally both.

Bill: Julian, this has been a fascinating conversation and I feel like we could go for hours because we have similar approaches and probably a lot of similar, what's that?

Julian: Oh we won't? Is this, are you kicking me out?

Bill: We find that after about 45 minutes, the viewership chops like crazy so you and I could talk for the next four hours and nobody's gonna listen to it.

Julian: We gotta do something crazy now so they keep listening.

Bill: So if I cut my hand and we did a visual demonstration of your saw blade like.

Julian: You'd have to scream a lot so that it gets across on the podcast, but I mean, it could work. It's not sustainable though. I guess you could only do it twice.

Bill: But yeah, you can't scream it at the end of every podcast. People are like, they're going to scream and then it's over.

Julian: I would listen, honestly.

Bill: But so Julian, this has been a great conversation and I want to give you guys the opportunity. We are all about shameless plugs. So please tell everybody where they can find you, how they can get in touch with you if they're interested in dealing with Industrial Growth.

Julian: You can find me on our website, industrialgrowth.co or you can also find me on LinkedIn. I hang out there a good amount if you want to chat there or connect, I try to post about manufacturing marketing and help people out with some good content.

Bill: Julian, thank you so much. And all of those digits and links will be in the posts in the YouTube video footers, all of those areas. So you'll be able to connect with Julian there. And yeah, Julian, very excited to continue on the next five year journey. You and I have to check back in and see if we're still kicking in five years, if not sooner, and see how the journey's going. Right. Cause this tumultuous game we call industrial or B2B marketing, it's a roller coaster at times.

Julian: For sure.

Bill: But yeah, thank you for joining us and we look forward to talking again.