In this episode, Bill sits down with Courtney Houtz of Butler Technologies, Inc. to discuss how they are transforming the manufacturing marketing space by building a trusted brand, enhancing digital customer experiences, and embracing a self-service model. Courtney shares her journey from building a foundational marketing strategy to adopting advanced content tactics, all while navigating industry challenges like buyer trust, employee engagement, and lead generation. Gain insights on how to build a customer-centric, future-ready brand in the manufacturing industry.
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Courtney: People, especially Gen Z, they don't want to get on the phone. They don't want to email you. They want to have everything available to them at their fingertips. Like they want to treat you like if they're a buyer for another company and they're coming to you as a manufacturer, they want you to act like Amazon. And I think that's coming and it's coming very quickly for manufacturers. Like any B2C consumer brand like right, they're all self-service. That's coming so soon for manufacturing. I think it's important that everyone is prepared for that so you can be on the right side of it when your customers come knocking and say, why don't you have this?
Bill: Not only do we have to have that buyer's journey, but what about our current customers? What about them being able to interact with like reorders or just ongoing communication? Don't they expect, are they not going to expect that to continue after they purchase as well?
*Intro music*
Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. A very special guest today, Courtney Houtz of Butler Technologies. Courtney, thank you for joining us.
Courtney: Thanks so much for having me.
Bill: Courtney, you have been on, I would say from what I'm aware of a whirlwind journey at Butler Technologies, kind of starting with very little and growing the marketing function there to something that I think you at Butler Technologies, your team and yourself should be very proud of. So could you maybe like start at the beginning of your journey and talk to us about how you went from where you were two, three years ago to where you are today?
Courtney: Yeah, well first thanks so much for saying that. I'm really proud of the journey and like what we have today as far as marketing and better technologies. But like you said, I really did start with I don't want to say nothing because I do want to give the interns before me credit like they did create content. There was a website, you know, but it was kind of all scattered. The social media was scattered and it didn't really have a focus or a strategy, right? So my team and I, and I had a really great team at the time, who really understood the importance of building up a marketing foundation. And we referred to that a lot of our marketing house. So before we could buy the curtains and pick out the paint colors for the house, we had to start at the foundation. And that really meant starting with the basics. So there was already a website in place, but like I said, it was kind of all over the place, had a lot of different products. Some products that we weren't even offering anymore. So it needed a lot of updating. So we kind of made the website our foundation. And just like anything, like you can't start, you know, with a Google ad creative before you have a great landing page, right? Like I can make a great creative for an ad all day long, but if I have no great landing page to send them to and really no great form, on that landing page, it's not going to do me any good. So we started with the website, took that, like overhauled that probably within six months, timeline wise from start to finish, and focused on more on lead generation with that website. But that was just like one of our core pieces of the foundation at the time.
Bill: So whenever you looked at that initial state, what caused you to start with the website? Because when we come into an organization as a marketing manager and we see all of these problems, all of the audience here, marketing managers, manufacturing, B2B companies, whenever you start with a company that is a late adopter, you look at it and there's 1,000 things that need done. Right? And what really led you to see what was missing in the website and like diagnose that as the first stage of what you wanted to tackle?
Courtney: Honestly, I think it was a little bit selfish too. Starting with the website gave us a place to like house everything, right? Like if we started with the website, we could branch out from there. So like I mentioned, like the forms, like, if we start with the website, we can then build the forms for the website. Like we know what we're using as a CRM and how it's all going to be interconnected. We can go from there. If we know what pictures we want on the website, we can then repurpose those pictures for other different types of content. If we know which product pages and like what our pillar pages are on the website, we can repurpose that. So it was kind of honestly a selfish decision, but it made for great organization at the time.
Bill: Well, and sometimes I think we don't put enough value on clarity and having a clear picture because especially if whether you're dealing with your internal team and the executive team only, or if you're also dealing with a hybrid model where you're working with an agency as well, we have to have a North Star. And if we can all rally around a tangible product that's an outcome of all those efforts, at least at the end of that six months, you had a great website. Or at least the beginnings of that foundation, as opposed to, we all know marketing work takes time and there's a lot of work that happens behind the scenes during long periods of time that it's hard to get more funding resources and support from the executive team because they're not seeing a lot of progress. So I think it's very important whether you're running an internal team or whether you're running an agency team for a client to make sure you have tangible results to show early on to get more buy-in support and resources to keep moving forward. So I think that's a great first win for you and your team.
Courtney: Yeah, and I think like what you said, Bill, with the funding, I think it's important to note too, like you don't necessarily need a big budget to make changes to a website or like refresh content, right? Like a website can look brand new if you refresh the copy and like change a few pictures out. You don't have to completely rebuild from scratch if it's not in your budget.
Bill: Absolutely. I think sometimes we run into clients that their problem is their website isn't performing. And the default action that the company takes is, we need to redesign the website or we need to redevelop the website. Well maybe there's…
Courtney: Throw it out and get something new.
Bill: Yeah, let's start all over again. Well, maybe we just need to work on copy and offers and organization of the website. And like you said, presentation, there's a lot that can be accomplished with a budget of $500 to $2,500 for a professional photographer to come in and get candid content and like at our sites and at some of our client installations that will absolutely transform the visuals on a website that we can't do in like in the lab or, you on the computer. So no, I completely agree with that. We can kind of bootstrap some of those functions. Getting clarity around our core client, getting clarity around messaging and the pain points we solve for our core client. We can't skimp on that because that's where it really happens. But no, I really agree with picking that type of tangible project to really get buy-in and create momentum. Courtney, one of the things I want to ask you about, you said you did the website, you got some of the core messaging and got that foundation built and you started with LeadGen. Whenever you started with that lead gen journey, did you discover anything that might've been missing in the market? And specifically when I ask you about maybe brand awareness, I mean, we can go out there and offer our wares, but if companies don't know who we are, it's really tough to ask for a sale or ask for that next conversion if we're the brand new kid on the block that nobody's ever heard from.
Courtney: Right. Yeah. Brand awareness is so important and that's the hardest thing I think to get buy-in from sales or from other executives, not just sales executives, any executive that's helping you make budget decisions. But 95% of buyers are not ready to buy when they first interact with your brand, right? There is only the 5% that's ready. What is it, the 95/5 rule. And so brand awareness is huge. Like you can say marketing, maybe you're going to do some like third party agency, like a third party online catalog, and they haven't heard of you before, but they can find you in this third party catalog. And then they get to you and you have no brand presence, right? Like you they land somewhere that like is not familiar to them. They have never heard of you before. You have no customer reviews on there. Like they're not going to trust you are who you say you are. You have to build up that brand first. And that's really what we focused on too with Butler Technologies, we realized even from our current customers, we heard all the time, well, we don't know what you do. Like we thought you just did this. We didn't know you also did this. And like that's awful to hear as a marketer, awful to hear as an executive at the company. Like what do you mean you didn't know what we did? But a lot of that comes from brand awareness, right? Like if we had a solid brand presence first they should know all that already right nobody's gonna confuse Coca-Cola with making milkshakes.
Bill: Sure. No, that's absolutely true. And I think when you look at branding, brand efforts are going to answer what is the number one problem faced with the buying market today, which is trust. We keep hearing more and more and more. And it doesn't matter if you're selling that milkshake or you're selling aircraft carriers or anything in between. Buyers are being saturated through all channels. We have so much technology to reach these different buyers, so many different ways, and everybody's promising certain things. Usually in that lead gen area, they're, buy us now, we'll solve that. Well the trust and the trust deficit is what we have to be working on, I think, in the second half of this decade, because that's going to be the difference between the winners and losers. When we look at brand awareness, that is the only prescription we have to, and there's a lot that can be under brand awareness, right? That's not just like a little word that doesn't encompass a lot of things, but we have to focus on brand awareness and that brand standard and the brand promise and communicating that to our core audience. If we're going to win the trust battle.
Courtney: Yeah, and I think the most helpful thing to think of, too, when it comes to like a strong brand presence is you being the marketer and the employee of that company are going to get sick of it way faster than your customers and your potential customers are going to get sick of it, right? You're in it every day. You're hearing your slogan every day. You're seeing your logo every day, but your customers and your new customers are not, like you want to reiterate the same thing over and over and over again, and I promise it's not tiring to your customers.
Bill: Yeah, that messaging fatigue that we as professionals deal with and as the executive team deals with when they see the branding campaign. Here's a hot take, if your branding campaign and messaging doesn't bore you to death, if it is not like a yawn fest and you're like, this again, then you're doing it wrong.
Courtney: Yep.
Bill: If you're being so creative with the brand messaging that it's like, wow, that's a brand new experience. Every time we see these new creatives or we see these new campaigns, it's so unique and different. Fail. We have to say the same thing over and over again. We have to get sick of it. It's kind of like dad jokes with my children. I have like three jokes. They're not good, but they're my three jokes and they're kind of like my dad brand three jokes to get me through most conversations. Are they good? No. Are they consistent? Yes. Ask my children. The eyes start rolling. They start wanting to check their phones or run away when I use them, but I am consistent and that's who I am. Companies need to have those. Maybe this is a book I should write. Like the dad jokes, bad dad jokes branding 101. I don't know. And I think one of the other things that we have to recognize with branding is there's not only value for prospects, but I think you hit on something that we can't undervalue, which is we need to make sure our brand message is delivered to our current clients consistently because they don't know everything that we do or our brand promise. We don't know how they ended up engaging us or if the person who engaged us originally is still at the company and has been replaced by someone who doesn't know our brand promise. So have you seen, how have you tried to balance communicating with your current clients as well as with your prospects?
Courtney: Yeah, that's probably the hardest thing we're struggling with currently is like how to, right, like what do you give more time to? Is it current customers? Is it new customers? Especially from a marketing perspective. I think a lot of times marketing will like wash their hands when somebody becomes a customer and they're like, that's it, we're good. We got them in the door. You guys, like client success, you take care of them from now on. But like that's not, that's really where the sales enablement and like even client success enablement, right? Like that's a new phrase, but comes from marketing after they become a customer. There's ways you can help your team help their customers and make them stay customers, whether it's as simple as like helping them create email templates, holiday cards, right? Like just continual touch points from the company that, sure, they're going to talk to their client success manager every day, but they also need to talk to the company as a whole, right? They need a touch point from the company as a whole.
Bill: No, think exactly that that's a hot take as well is that when we think about a branding initiative for it to be successful, one, we have to define who we are. We have to set that brand standard. And then if that brand standard is only exhausted and gets is, you know, annoys the marketing team only in its repetitive nature and consistency, we're not winning. It has to be consistent in the sales team. It has to be consistent with the customer service team. If you're sending the annual holiday card or the, maybe you send not many people do the same orbit, send paper invoices or whatever communication you have with that client. It needs to be consistent and that will win over the longterm. And one of the things we're seeing with branding initiatives is a lot of our clients and the industry in general is starting to accept the fact that we have to break down the silos, even in the branding initiatives to make sure everybody's singing from the same song sheet and exhausting the market. What's the goal of branding? Exhaust the market with your message. There's probably some truth to that.
Courtney: Yeah, and I think it's important to note too, like branding helps you from a tactical sense in marketing too, right? Like, especially with what Google's going through with all their nice new algorithm updates with the AI overview stuff, like brandings and now more important than ever now when it comes to SEO, because now you have to go back to the basics. Like how are you going to tell Google you're that authority on whatever subject? That's where your brand comes in.
Bill: Absolutely. Well, and that's a whole other topic that we might get into here later on. But when we think about preparing for the AI future, we're going to have to, I, my personal belief is we don't have to go forward with a lot of new techniques. We need to go back to the basics. So if we want AI, that exists in the search engines to find us and be the answers to the questions that people are asking, it's not going to be through a thousand-point SEO checklist and all of the things that everybody was doing for years, the levers that our SEO specialists would pull and all of the special tactics. It's doing core messaging and answering core questions that will win over a thousand point checklists. And I think that as we deal with AI, AI is fast. But it does not read nuance. It reads facts quickly. So we can't have the nuance of a salesperson and then put that online and then AI will grab it. It has to be the core facts. It has to be the brand promise. And that should win over time, at least theoretically, who knows?
Courtney: Theoretically, right. Google might change their mind tomorrow.
Bill: Could be, yeah. Five years from now, this podcast may not be Courtney and Bill. It may be two AI chatbots and whatever. We don't know. We'll see how that goes. Well, Courtney, one of the things I want to dive into with you is content and digital tactics. One of the things I think that our industry has struggled with is gated versus ungated content. And I'd love to get your take on what you see. And this is a controversial topic, right? Some people are staunch. Yeah, they're staunch one way staunch the other. So could you maybe talk about what you've seen and what you believe is the right fit? And maybe this isn't the right fit for everybody, but this has been the right fit for Butler Technologies.
Courtney: Yeah, so we do gate some of our content at Butler Technologies, which is, know, is a huge taboo in the marketing world, especially when it comes, like when it comes back full circle with SEO. But I think it's important, especially when you have proprietary information, right? Like something that's worth giving, like getting people's emails over. Like you shouldn't get people's email over like a fact sheet or a checklist or whatever right like that should be something that's just on your website. Especially if they can get it from someone else. But if it's something that an engineer sat down and helped you write and that like it came from their brain and your brain, and it's really proprietary information that can help your customers and help your prospects, I think it's a totally fine to gate. And then that just helps them funnel down like whoever downloads that content then can you can funnel them down the marketing funnel, right? The customer journey funnel. They download the gated content. You have some maybe some drip campaigns, some email drip campaigns in place with more tidbits from other gated content, right? You only need their email address once. That's the other thing I see with a lot of websites like, okay, hand me your email address. Now give me your email address. Now give me your email address. Like you already have me. Calm down.
Bill: I love that. That's so great. I agree that as the value of the content increases, we should be more willing to gate content. If it's low value, give it away for free. But as the value increases, so should be our willingness to ask for something in return. You know, one of the things I think that you guys deal with at Butler is that you guys do a lot of design, right? You're not just like, it's not like buy now these thousand widgets we make every day. There's a lot of custom customization that occurs in your process for each client. So there's a lot of information that has to go back and forth. And building that muscle memory with you and your client early on that there's going to be some back and forth, I think is a good idea. So if they're not willing to give you an email for some high value content and for them to engage you, it's going to be a long and not long because I don't want to like overemphasize that point, but it's a design process with engineers and very technical people. Then I think that is a very reasonable ask.
Courtney: Absolutely, yeah, like you said, if they're not willing to give me their email address for this 20 page design guide, then they're not going to want to sit through 20 different emails with our engineers. Probably not a good fit for each other, and it's fine.
Bill: Yes. Yeah. Move along and we'll wait. We'll have the next person who's willing to engage in that process for this, you know, very large and intense capital investment project that's going to move them forward. One of the other challenges we see with a lot of manufacturers with their marketing departments is that we're all told we need case studies. We are all told we need to give examples of our work and client testimonials. But in reality with a lot of manufacturing clients, especially technical manufacturers and design build manufacturers, we have NDAs. We can never talk about, like I was in a client meeting that was like, man, we just did this amazing project. It's amazing. The outcomes, the results. I mean, it's so beautiful. We should, just amazing. I'm like, great. Let's document. They're like, yeah, we can't talk about it. Cause he's like, I can't even really tell you even though we have an NDA with you. Who we did it for. I'm like, okay. So have you experienced that in your position? And what do you think, you know, that's something that's missing is those case studies. And is there any way you've been able to work around that if that is in fact a problem or a challenge for you and your team?
Courtney: Definitely, definitely a challenge, a challenge like every week that we deal with because Butler Technologies is a custom components manufacturer. So everything we make, we make for our clients. Like we don't, I mean, I might get a sales sample through every now and then that like we've designed for us, but everything we make is for our customers and it's their property then. But a lot of the times it's just asking. We're always so afraid to ask, right? Because the answer can be no, but it's fine if the answer is no. But what if the answer is yes? Just ask the client. Ask who your point of contact is there. Is it the buyer? Is it an engineer? Just ask them. If you get permission, you get permission. Then that's great. Especially ask them over email because then you have written permission that you can document somewhere that, yes, they give you permission to use that whatever for the case study. But yeah, if you can't get permission and it's something you really want to do, we've worked around it before with no name case studies, right? Where you describe everything you've done, you being the manufacturer to help the client and you describe the client very generally and describe their product very generally, right? Because at the end of the day, it's not about the end product, it's about the process that you took to get to that end product with the client. That's what other people want to read about.
Bill: Yeah, I think storytelling is the answer, right? Tell the story and the narrative of how you arrived at that outcome, as opposed to citing the client, citing the product, citing like an exact picture of the thing you made, right? So like, if we can tell that story and use that narrative case study, that's very generic. I think that's a great solution and maybe that's something that some of the marketing managers who may be listening can pick up as a solution to their challenge. One of the other things I wanted to ask you about in your content strategy is when you went through the website redesign and you went through the process of building the foundation, did you see a need to refocus your content on buyer's problems more so than about the company? Was that like a construct that you had to shift from the past to where you are now?
Courtney: Yes, most definitely. And especially with a lot of the content that was written before I joined, right? It was all very product focused and product heavy and like, this is what the benefit of, you know, a user interface component is and like a lit, right? Very product focused, but that's not necessarily like, of course our clients are coming to us for user interface components. That's what we do. Like they don't need to know the benefits of it. They need to know what makes us different and then what we're going to do to help them through that process. So we really kind of redesigned all the content to focus on each stage of the buyer's journey, right? So we do still have those like, okay, what, you know, is a user interface component? What are the benefits of this material over this material? And it kind of progresses along, especially when you get to that gated content, right? Like that's something we have right before someone converts. So there's suggested next readings, of different blogs, and we've kind of ranked them throughout the buyer's journey. So that way there's a touchpoint or a content piece at every stage that someone's going through.
Bill: No, I love that. I think whenever we, so you guys kind of used your website as part of that content mapping that may be done in more of like a traditional approach from like a holistic strategic marketing approach. But I love the fact that you map that out and then made sure that the website had that content and that you changed the messaging. I think that's so important. And if anybody's out there listening and they need to go on that journey, it is worth going on that journey the results you will see. If you start to talk to your audience, right? I mean, that is where the...
Courtney: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and trust me, it gets it gets not fun at point from that some points from marketing, because you're right, you're like, okay, I'm missing a blog for like this thing right here. And now I have to write this blog when I really want to write like the more fun blog about whatever like, nope, you got to write you at some point, you have to write the not fun blog because it's going to help.
Bill: One of the other things I'm aware of and know about you guys is that you have integrated HubSpot CRM market automation platform into your business. Could you maybe talk about like at what stage of your journey you invested in HubSpot? And maybe it was purchased, so like there's a difference between when you purchased the license because many companies purchase the license and it sits there for five years because it sounded like a good idea. And then it's just a place for their emails to sit, right? And then there's when did you choose to invest in optimizing and actually using the HubSpot tool to help activate your content marketing?
Courtney: Yeah, so like you said, I can't take the credit for having HubSpot, purchasing HubSpot, because it was purchased before I joined and before one of my team members joined as well. And she was really a big part in getting us on board and everyone using the system and using the system accurately. So I want to give her a lot of the credit for that as well. But really, we focused everything back into the CRM. We built our website, the new website in HubSpot, so everything flows smoothly together, right. HubSpot is our CMS platform and our CRM platform, which makes my life easy, but it also makes our sales team's lives easy too. We made sure we built things for them to make the handoff between marketing and sales really, really simple. It's everything they need to see is in HubSpot on one record. All at their fingertips. It's just right there, right? There's no excuses for them not following up with leads anymore because they have them all right there, which was a big struggle at first to get people to adopt even. Like it was there, you're right, Bill, it wasn't used. And so to get them to adopt a CRM system when they were like used to doing things on pen and paper still was like pulling teeth. But now I get to hear some of our engineers and some of our even our sales reps say, I love HubSpot and I love hearing them say that.
Bill: No, that's great. A new system, no matter what area of your business it's in, a new computer system, a new SaaS product is awful. It's just by definition, right? I think there's even statements going back to Ronald Reagan about new computer system, worst thing ever, or whatever these that was talked about. But whenever you can get people to buy in and the tool actually saves them time and improves efficiency and helps them do their job better and then delivers outcomes. That's when you start to see the magic happen.
Courtney: Yeah, and you really need that champion too, like that person who is 100% on board, like going to let all insults go in one ear and out the other and like willing to help everybody else learn, right? Like that's change management, like having the one cheerleader, like maybe even more than one if you're lucky, but at least one cheerleader of that system that's not going to give up on it.
Bill: Well and I think that's one thing that's missing in a lot of companies' strategy and budgeting is they think, we're going to buy HubSpot and it's going to cost X thousand dollars a month and we're good. It's going to solve our problems when the real investment is also in having that champion who's going to really care and feed that system over time and help assist with that change management and that change initiative. And when we look at the outcomes that can be generated when you're implementing like a strategic marketing function or marketing automation, CRM integration, and those types of things, the outcomes are tremendous. And when we look at B2B and manufacturing companies with their LTVs, I mean, these are large sales, multimillion dollar contracts. It is a small investment over time that yields results. It builds great foundations. It's evergreen. It creates marketing assets and scalability. And then companies are like, we can't invest in that. by the way, let's go book that trade show again. And let's spend 350,000 on the booth and the per diems and the whole thing, right? It's like, okay. But I think that's shifting. Yeah, that's right.
Courtney: It goes back to the foundation then. Like, can't go to a trade show if I don't have anywhere to put leads. Like, need somewhere to put the leads.
Bill: Oh but we could still collect those business cards. can scan in right at the, my gosh, it brings back like really bad memories. One of the other things I want to ask you about in your content strategy is, you know, we all recognize that the most efficient and effective means of content marketing today is video. It's the most digested it’s the most, engaged, right. And it's on mobile, it's on our desktop. It's available all the time, right? That's what we're doing right now. We're recording a video. What have you seen as video as part of your strategy? Where do you maybe see some gaps? Just kind of talk about your journey with video at Butler Technologies.
Courtney: Yeah, so video is a sore subject for us. Like we have committed to video and then recommitted to video and then recommitted to video and currently we're in like a breakup with video right now.
Bill: I love that. I love that. We need to call Dr. Phil or some relationship expert to come in and talk to you guys. I mean, I don't think this breakup is forever and don't listen to Taylor Swift. You are getting back together again. Anyway, that's one of my dad jokes.
Courtney: Yes, yes, yeah. It's a relationship that's never truly going to die. It’s, video is always going to be around and it's going to be around so much more going forward. So we are going to have to recommit to it in the future, but we have dabbled in like a couple. We worked with an animator at points like to do some animation, like customer journey. Like this is what you can expect from us. This is kind of how, what industries we work with. Very cute explainer animation videos that we were really happy with went on YouTube, right? Like, but animation costs a lot of money, especially if you're working with a good animator. And then a lot of it went to vertical, right? Like vertical video is the new thing that like, and everybody should be doing it from like, you should at least be dabbling in it in some perspective, but we did dabble in TikTok for a while and it's and I think it's important like that you do consider it dabbling at first because you need to find what's going to work for you. Like maybe it is the more STEM, especially with TikTok focusing more on like the STEM feed now too. Like, so maybe it is like you're showing your engineers designing something and they're explaining how they're designing it in a, like, again, you use your phone. TikTok does not cost a lot of money. All you need is a marketer with a phone. But figuring out what works for you. So maybe it's that maybe it's using the trending sounds and trying to make like more trendy videos. You're gonna have to do it all until you find something that sticks and that works well for your audience and works well for that platform. But I've with vertical videos too. I think YouTube just announced this week that they're moving to what? 90 second on their YouTube shorts. So everything's gonna be vertical but that the good news is is that it's all repurposeful, repurposeful or easy to repurpose. Whatever you put on TikTok can go on Instagram, can go on YouTube now. Like it's beautiful. You make one piece of content for three things, which is funny because we used to say like, all social media has to be different and we were all different and now we're back to like, okay, well I'm going to post the one video on three platforms, see how it does. Yeah, everything comes full circle, right? So I think your experience with video is very common. And I think what we've found with our clients and some colleagues and some experts we've interviewed on the Missing Half podcast about this subject is what we have to do as companies is just like what you did with your content and your website is go back to basics and go back to the foundation. And what we're seeing in the market is that authentic candid conversation about brand has to be available. know, clients want to self-service. They don't want to talk to a salesperson. They don't want to get the elevator pitch. They don't want to, you know, from a salesperson, they want to be able to watch that online and see if you, you know, meet the qualifications of potentially moving forward. And we're finding…
Courtney: Right. That's a huge, you know, that's a huge part of like the brand presence too, right? Is that community engagement. Like they want to know, especially Gen Z, they want to know what type of company are you? Like, are you truly just company that makes your employees work all day long and like they go home and that's it? Like, or are you doing activities? Are you celebrating your employees? Are you celebrating your community? Right? That's really important to your prospective buyers now.
Bill: Yeah, when we talk about, we have a program we call videos every company needs. And, you know, we want to tell people who we are, what we do, where we do it, why we do it, who we do it for. But then also our mission, our vision, our values, our extracurriculars, like you're talking about. Do we like to do Habitat for Humanity projects or veterans projects or Earth Day or what is our thing? Right? What do we build our culture and community around? Is it some type of theme? We have a client that has a big theme that they've used to help recruit their new employees with. So those are important brand tools that have to be developed in video. And in some ways it's easier to capture than like writing blogs and technical articles. One, because we don't just have to deal with like the SMEs, the subject matter experts. There's a lot of people at each organization that can participate. And we've developed a concept called our content create sessions where we go in for a day with a bunch of cameras and a bunch of microphones and interview and just capture all those conversations. And then like basically create six to 12 months of content for a company. So we're, and we're seeing other companies solving that riddle in new ways. I love where you're at though with the animation. And one of the things we do really see more and more technical manufacturing and B2B service companies using animation for is complex illustrations of products and services that we can't really film. Right? Like we work with some clients that have very high temperature burners that we can't even get cameras close to or into or whatever. So that's another way that we've seen video work. Well, no, I, hey, I thank you for being.
Courtney: Yeah, or you can really make something, a manufacturing process pop too, right? Like maybe, you know, you boxing something up and assembling it, like doesn't look all that cool in person, but you can make it look really cool animated.
Bill: Yes. No, and I think that's part of making it attractive. And sometimes the things that occur in manufacturing aren't super attractive and we need to remove some of that dirt and scuff so that it presents a little better online. Well, one of the things I really want to thank you for sharing what's missing and what you feel that you're struggling with, because I think when we as a community of marketing professionals can share those things and talk about them, and we'll be hoping that your relationship with video and Butler Technologies that we can mend the fences and they can keep seeing each other in the future.
Courtney: Yep, yep, come back stronger than ever.
Bill: That's so good. That's so good. So one of the other things I want to ask you about. You're one of the very few manufacturers that we're aware of in the mid market that's actually done experimentation with TikTok. And could you just maybe share some of your strategies and thoughts around the way you're approaching social media? Because I'm sure you're not, well, I don't know, but my assumption and after looking at some of your content and dealing with it is that we're not sharing the exact same things on LinkedIn that we are on TikTok. Like we're managing them as channels and we're coming up with a strategy for how we're engaging each channel and the type of audiences that exist on each one.
Courtney: Right, right. I'm going to sound like a walking oxymoron now, but I think it's like, because I said, you know, you can post the same thing on TikTok on Instagram that you do on YouTube. Like that's when you're experimenting with it, like trying to find what sticks. So like maybe what sticks on TikTok is a more community engaging post and what sticks on YouTube shorts is a more like technical post, right? Like you need to go to your audience and give them what they want, where they are. So we found with Butler Technologies, like our audience on Facebook and Instagram are very much like, they might be our customers. Yeah, there are a lot of employees on our Facebook and Instagram that are gonna follow us, right? A lot of our community members in the small Butler, PA community, right? That we service, that's who's following us on Facebook and Instagram. So on those platforms, we do way more like of our community engagement posts, like whether we're volunteering, like we do an Earth Day cleanup every year. That always goes on our Facebook and Instagram. Any employee recognitions that we do, awards that we do for employees, that goes on Facebook and Instagram. I never ever put a technical blog on Facebook or Instagram because it's going to flop. Like there's no, it's not for that platform, right? But on LinkedIn and then on TikTok too, we've seen a little bit, is for the more technical content. Like LinkedIn is where we do have our engineers that are following us. So that we'll, we'll put technical content on LinkedIn, more customer focused content on LinkedIn. Of course we do the employee recognition on LinkedIn too, because that's what LinkedIn is for originally. But yeah, I think it's separating that out and realizing like, okay, it's okay. Like the blog only has to go out on LinkedIn. Like that's fine. And that's your only channel. Like just because you have all the channels available to you doesn't mean you should use them all at the same time.
Bill: No, and I think that makes a lot of sense. One of the other things we've seen that's missing with a lot of companies is a recruitment strategy centered around the community channels. Right? So like, we need to hire more welders or we need to hire more factory workers. Let's go to Indeed or one of the job listing agencies or LinkedIn. Fail. It's not going to work. Right? We need to be on that phase. If Facebook and Instagram are our community channels, then we need to be posting things about employees, about employment opportunities, about career paths, about what it's like to work culturally for that company. So we find people who are the right cultural fit because that's so important to find people that are going to buy into who you are. And this goes back to branding and mission and vision and values and communicating that correctly. But we see that as something that's been missing from a lot of companies. And I love the way that you're using Facebook and Instagram as kind of that community channel that you can not only build your like with the stakeholders locally, but you also could maybe pivot that and leverage it for recruitment, retention, and just goodwill as good corporate citizens and neighbors there in the Butler community.
Courtney: Yeah, yeah, and I'll let everyone in on a secret too, like, maybe it's not that big of a secret, but Facebook groups, you should be joining as your company page. You should be joining Facebook groups and commenting on those posts, interacting with those posts in those Facebook groups. Like that's, Facebook groups is where all the activity now happens on Facebook because everybody's feed is all ads, all whatever all the time. But Facebook groups is truly where that organic activity happens still. So join the Facebook, like if you're looking for welders, find the welders Facebook group because there's probably 500 of them. Like join a couple, get in there, make comments, make posts, but be original about it, right? Like don't be so salesy, like be informative, be helpful.
Bill: I think you've just uncovered something that's missing. And this is, I think, something that a message for marketing executives and the C-suite. Whenever we look at what does marketing do, whenever we're answering the question of what marketing does and what it can do and how it can do more and have outsized results without a lot of outsized expenditures, when you talk about joining Facebook groups, commenting and interacting, with a core ICP, with an ideal client or an ideal applicant profile. That seems simple, but it takes time, it takes energy, it takes resources. And I think most importantly, it takes consistency. You don't go and join the group and six months from now when you need that particular employee, you make one post and all of a sudden, it's like field of dreams, you build it and they come and you have this amazing team. You've got to be consistent. And these are things that when we ask the question in, cause we, get it. The executive suite, the C-suite, they are always asking, well, what does marketing do? What can they accomplish? How are they contributing? They're always looking for outcomes, KPIs, the data points, but there are these things that we can do that one can actually save money. Cause maybe then you don't have to do the job postings that are very expensive and do the recruiting efforts that costs a lot of time, energy and money. But this is a classic example of where marketing can impact a broad range of outcomes at a company if they're given the resources and the opportunity to do so. So I think that's just a huge takeaway. I love that frame and that look at that function. Let's pivot a little bit.
Courtney: And takes a lot of trust to go right? Like trust that your employees are going to be on Facebook all day doing the right things on Facebook. Well listen, there's a lot that happens too, like a lot of research. You have to scroll, you have to scroll TikTok. Like that's where you're going to come up with your ideas. You have to know what's going on.
Bill: Yeah, that's a good point too. I think, like what does marketing do? Executives just want us to do the stuff and get the outcomes. And this is true in the agency space as well. Everybody is fine to pay us for the outcome, but they don't want to pay us for the research and like digging deep and figuring it out to make sure that we're doing the right thing. And that's a challenge I think our entire industry faces. And if you can be forward thinking enough as a business owner, as an executive, a marketing manager to get the budget in the space, to do it the right way, pay for some research, pay for some planning, and then execution, the outcomes will be, will far outsize the investment and overshadow what was, you know, what was invested in the first place. Courtney, recording, I'd like to switch gears here for a second. Let's talk about some emerging trends in manufacturing marketing, because I think there's, you know, we've talked about some content, we've talked about video, there was some controversy, we talked about some dad jokes, you know, there's all kinds of color commentary there, but let's talk about maybe some of the things you see as emerging trends in manufacturing marketing today.
Courtney: Yeah, and I think, Bill, you've hit on it a couple times. Like I've heard you say it a couple times throughout the podcast. Like people don't want to interact with sales anymore. You're always going to have sales. You're always going to have that sales person. This is nothing, I love all the sales reps I work with. Like nothing against them. But people, especially Gen Z, they don't want to get on the phone. They don't want to email you. They want to have everything available to them at their fingertips. Like they want to treat you like if they're a buyer for another company and they're coming to you as a manufacturer, they want you to act like Amazon. And I think that's coming and it's coming very quickly for manufacturers. Like we've seen everyone else go through this self-service option. Like any B2C consumer brand like right, they're all self-service. That's coming so soon for manufacturing. I think it's important that everyone is prepared for that so you can be on the right side of it when your customers come knocking and say, why don't you have this?
Bill: Sure. Absolutely. When we look at the buyer's journey, if today there's some research out there that 60, 70, whatever percent of the buyer's journey happens online in a self-service way before they contact a sales rep, if that's true today, and we look at the distribution of who's in the buyer's chair, there are still very few baby boomers, but still a lot of Gen X that are in that distribution. As we see more millennials in Gen Z make up a greater portion of that distribution, the assumption and the anticipation is that that group is going to want to probably go into the mid 90s before, you know, only talk to somebody if they have to. If all else fails, yes, I will talk to that person. So, no, I think we have to be prepared for that. And when you look at that, I think there's another thing we need to maybe talk about that may be valuable in this conversation is identifying something that's missing. Not only do we have to have that buyer's journey, but what about our current customers? What about them being able to interact with like reorders or just ongoing communication? Don't they expect, are they not going to expect that to continue after they purchase as well?
Courtney: Exactly. Yeah, they're gonna be want to, they're gonna want to be able to see all their orders like when they last or why would they want to email you for a spreadsheet? Like they're not gonna want to email you for a spreadsheet. You're not gonna want to put that spreadsheet together. Like they should have somewhere they can go, they can see their past orders, they can see when they ship, they can see their invoices, they can see outstanding invoices. Right, now like finance teams are gonna love me. But yeah, there should be a place. And like that's the foundation of it too then is like you have to have a really good CRM system in order to build a place where all of this information is stored, right? Because if you have this information stored between like a QuickBooks and your ERP and your CRM, like now we're talking about three different systems and like how are you even going to pull an Excel spreadsheet for that customer when they ask? Like you need to have a complete order process for your customer. Like that's ultimately what it's for. It's gonna make your life easier when you don't have to go to three different systems to get an answer, but it's really for your customer. So they have everything available to them.
Bill: So we have a very forward thinking client right now who basically is having us mirror a self-service client portal around their experience at a local car dealership. So they purchased a luxury automobile and whenever the automobile is in for service or for repair, there's a progress spectrum of, we just checked your car in. Oh, it's in this stage of the process. The whole way through to like, yeah, in about 15 minutes you should be ready.
Courtney: Yep, Yep, an almost pizza tracker.
Bill: Yeah. So this, this client is saying, Hey, we want this same type of client experience for our current customers to track with our order system and our manufacturing system so that they have that same level of communication. And I think they're way ahead of their time because I think they're going to lead the market with that type of customer care and communication.
Courtney: Most definitely, yes.
Bill: But in 10 years, think that's going to be something that purchasing managers are going to, you know they always have their checklist beyond the product. Well, what is after a sales service or what's the support or whatever? And, do you have a continuous communication portal that we can see every step of? Like that's going to be like a have to have a something that's table stakes for the game to participate in the future. And 10 years might be long. It might be five years, but it is coming and it is coming quickly.
Courtney: Yes, and the thing you can do now is just get prepared for it. Like start collecting that data. Start collecting those Excel spreadsheets, like, and finding a place to store them other than Excel.
Bill: Well, yeah, like, yeah, be amazing and have it in Google Drive, right? Like have it in the cloud, right? Like, hey, baby steps, whatever those baby steps need to be. Another thing I want to ask you about switching gears again, because we're going to be all over the place here, but Courtney, you guys have participated in manufacturing day initiatives in the past. I think you're planning on participating in those in the future and not only manufacturing day, but manufacturing month. Maybe tell us a little bit about what you've learned about that. And there are, more manufacturers have not participated in those events than have. So maybe if you could share what you've learned and what you've gained from those activities that maybe some other marketing managers at manufacturing companies might say, hey, this is missing from what we're doing. So maybe we need to do this in years to come.
Courtney: Yeah, so October is National Manufacturing Month and then the first Friday in October is National Manufacturing Day. And it's really meant to like inspire the next generation like at its core to inspire the next generation to consider careers in manufacturing. But we really use it back to like that brand awareness, that brand presence, the community engagement. We use it to not only like inspire students, mainly high school students, come in for a tour of our facilities, do some hands-on demonstrations. Not only could they potentially be employees of ours going forward, they could also potentially be customers of ours going forward. And think about that, if their first interaction with your company is when they were in high school and they did some cool hands-on demonstration, and then they go become an engineer for so-and-so, and then they want to work with you again because they remember your cool tour that you did that day, like it pays off in the long run. And I think it's so important that like you just continuously engage with your community, with those students and with that next generation to build that relationship from like the very beginning.
Bill: So one of the things we're seeing, number one, congratulations on your consistency and your commitment to manufacturing day. I think it's a wonderful program and we are encouraging all of our clients to participate as much as they possibly can in some form. But let's also talk about maybe something that's changing with manufacturing day is we're talking to a number of folks who are really starting to think about manufacturing month or the manufacturing day because that set day is a little bit tough. So maybe talk about what you're seeing there or what your thoughts are, what could be missing in a day only strategy as opposed to looking at the entire month and taking advantage of other opportunities.
Courtney: Yeah, definitely. Like if you're going to participate on manufacturing day, you're going to have competition because probably other manufacturers in your area are also going to host very similar events on manufacturing day. And then you have like these high schools that are trying to go to everybody and maybe they can't go to everyone. So you're not going to have as big a draw as you could. I think manufacturing month is going to be the strategy going forward for us just so we can like encompass everyone when we're available and when they're available. Currently also our production team enjoys a four day work week. So having them come in to see manufacturing on a Friday when we're not really working on a Friday, not a great idea. But it worked out this year. We had a really cool demonstration. We partnered with a local group called Bots IQ. We have like as part of, their technology is just a lot of laser cutting. So we have big lasers that laser cut different materials, different overlays and whatnot for our customers. They brought in a little portable laser cutter. So then the students like went on the tour, saw the big laser cutter, came back, did their own little small laser cutting and they made jack-o-lanterns that they could take home.
Bill: That's awesome. See, that type of innovation and participation will be remembered for 50 years by those kids or young people, I guess I should call them.
Courtney: Exactly. Yeah. And it's just a jack-o-lantern. Like, it's not like it's some brand new idea.
Bill: But when we see the intersection of technology and technological advancement in our everyday, that has an impact on people, right? And that's where you, I think that's a great, great story. And I think also when we look at manufacturing, its resurgence and its opportunity in the United States over the next several decades, we have to be good community stewards and community. Yeah, we have to be ambassadors. We have to go out and sell the job. We have to sell the career. And I feel like this is a, the manufacturing day and the manufacturing month initiative will pay greater dividends than some of the other activities we as companies participate in because it is directly aligned with who we are, what we do and our mission, vision and values. Then say like, you know, whatever the other activities are that don't need to be canceled, but this needs to be an emphasis for our industry to really run our ideas and our claim up that flagpole and have people rally around it.
Courtney: Absolutely.
Bill: You've built a department basically from scratch. You came in and it was loosely defined. You had a late adopting company that had some things going and we're not disparaging anybody. It's just like, hey, this is where we were. And we had to build this department and really take it to the next level. Whenever you reflect on that experience, what are some key insights that you may have around, you know, starting in that late adopting space and really trying to accelerate and grow a marketing department at a manufacturing company?
Courtney: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is one, like you do need a lot of trust, especially like if you're starting from the ground up, and people at your organization may not be as friendly to marketing, like you have to find a way to earn their trust first before you say, I'm going to overhaul all this because I said so, like I'm the expert in this. Like you have to start with that base level trust with your coworkers that everything is going to work out. And then two… a lot of, like you have to stick with it. Like that's the hardest thing. Like you have to write the blogs that are not fun. You have to do the, you know, what you don't want to do to get it done. Like to get the whole foundation built, right? Like picking out curtains and picking out paint colors is way more fun than building a foundation, but there's no walls to paint without the foundation in place first. So you have to stick with it.
Bill: I love that illustration. I think, and this goes back to when executives are asking the question or the what does marketing do question and what does this really mean? There is a ton of hard work that goes into good marketing. When we look at companies we aspire to be like, those market leaders, and maybe they're Fortune 500 companies or maybe they're smaller than that, but they have dedicated teams that have been doing this for 10 years. With multimillion dollar budgets and a lot of team members who are very educated and have a lot of resources. Whenever we in the, like what we call the middle market aspire to have that type of marketing, we have to recognize how hard it is to get there. And it is not going to happen in 90 days. It is not going to happen in six months. I mean, our experience is if you have put a lot of money into it, you can have some pretty significant transformation in 18 months, but most manufacturers want to dribble some money out and dribble resources and people's time out. So it's more like a three year timetable. Have you seen that type of timing necessary and resourcing necessary along that type of a timeline to actually see results? And not that you don't see results along the way, but to really get to where you're going.
Courtney: Oh yeah, absolutely. Even with like when we redid the website, we overhauled our Google ads too. And like for it to reset with Google, right? For Google to realize like, yeah, we redid this and that this you should rank us here now. It took so long to get a lead. Like we were getting tons of clicks on our ads, but then to get an actual lead, like to get a conversion from one of those ads, it probably took like a year. But when that first conversion came in, all of sudden 20 more came in, right? Like it's this snowball effect, like it's going to happen, but you're right, marketing takes time and you have to be patient with it.
Bill: The other thing I love about what you just said there is we have to test things. If marketing professionals knew everybody's ideal client profile, where they hung out, what pain point they had, and what message an offer would activate them, then shortly there would be no need for us. But we're all trying to figure it out, right? We're all trying to test and because I love it. And I think this is a disservice. This is something that's missing in our market. Whenever you look at marketing professionals, agencies to get business, we have to say, we can solve this problem and we're going to get this result. And that may have been true for a client, but the probability of that exact roadmap or process being able to deliver that exact result for another client is unrealistic. It's probably not going to happen. There's going to have to be some modification. There's going to have to be additional testing because a lot of companies are a little bit different and we have to figure out those differences and test them. So I love that recognition of the fact that you had to do things, work hard, test them and figure them out. It wasn't just, oh if we worked harder, we'd get better results. No, you still have to test it. You still have to experiment.
Courtney: Yeah, and it's easy. It's way easier in marketing to turn things off, right? Like I can turn things off at a click of a button and it's gone from the ether. But like to turn those things back on, like you want, you want your test to last a long time because you're, cannot have the disruption of, I'm just going to turn it off this week because it's not doing that well. Like now you're starting from zero again.
Bill: Yeah, the algorithms, and let's go back to your dating analogy with like Butler and video, the algorithms are a relationship and there is something to showing up every day. And not only are the algorithms a relationship, your ideal client and your target market are a relationship and they want to see you show up consistently because if you're not there, then there's always that nagging in the back of their mind of, when I need them most, are they not going to be there after I buy it from them? Whenever I have a problem or a challenge and my management is down on me or putting pressure on me, are they going to be there to support me? So think that's so important to recognize. Yeah, we've got to work hard. We've got to test things, but we have to be consistent and have a longevity to our effort to show up consistently so that the market, the algorithms, our ideal clients, everybody recognizes that we're there to stay.
Courtney: Yep, yep, I've never wanted to buy from somebody less than a company that hasn't posted to Facebook since like 2019. Like, what are you doing?
Bill: Oh my gosh, that is so true. I'll leave that where it is. That needs no further explanation. But there's a lot of truth to that. So Courtney, where can listeners connect with you and or learn more about Butler Technologies? One of our exit strategies to this is let you do a shameless plug. We're all about shameless plugs. So please let us know where we can connect with you and Butler Technologies.
Courtney: Yeah, so you can follow Butler Technologies on TikTok and see what else we're dabbling in on there and boost my followers a little bit. But yeah, otherwise go to our website. Look how great of a job me and my team did at figuring out all that content. It's www.butlartechnologies.com. And then as any true marketer, like my personal brand's really lacking, but I'm also on LinkedIn and you guys can kind of connect with me on there.
Bill: No, that's great. And we'll include those links in the footers and all the places that they include the links on YouTube and those places. So you guys can see this and on the LinkedIn posts. Well, Courtney, this has just been an excellent conversation like you and I talked about before. If we got going and didn't like put a time limit on this, we would be here for six hours because there's so many meaty topics and neat things that I think we agree on a lot of them. And it's interesting to see how the experience that 50 Marketing has had with our clients and the ones that you've had and collectively in the market, there's a lot of consistency and lot of similarities. But we just really appreciate your time and for joining us today on Missing Half.
Courtney: Well, thanks so much for having me. I enjoyed our conversation too.
Bill: Thanks for joining the Missing Half Podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Please like, share, subscribe and comment. Thanks and have a great day.