Donna Peterson with World Innovators, Inc.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

FABTECH Orlando, B2B marketing, AI integration, email marketing, personalized content, social media insights, industry relationships, lean marketing teams, ChatGPT usage, video editing, public speaking, humanizing brands, family-owned company, future trends, industrial innovation

00:00

Scott. Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott. MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots and let's go all right

00:21

once again. Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. You are bold, brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you solve problems each and every day, and that's why Industrial Talk is here for you. And we're just your cheerleaders. That's all we are. We just think that you are doing great things. We if you can hear in the background, there's a bit of a buzz. FABTECH is the the event. We're in Orlando, Florida, and we're in one of the they call them concourses. You know, it's big when you have concourses. There's a couple of concourses in the hot seat. Donna Peterson, the company is World innovators, innovators with an S. We're going to be talking about B2B marketing, because you need to know about it. You're an industrial professional. You need to sell more, you need to be successful. And this is definitely in that realm. So let's get cracking. Hi, Donna. Hey, Scott,

01:19

how are you today? Good,

01:20

no, no complaints. All right, listeners with what we did was Donna walked on by. Donna said she has a podcast. Donna said that she talks about B2B marketing. And then Donna said, Yes, I'll be on your podcast.

01:34

It was very sophisticated, yeah, that was, that was

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the criteria. Very, very Yeah, I enjoyed it. So you've been to FABTECH before? Yes, I have Yes. What makes it what makes it great? What makes it so spectacular? It is

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phenomenal. It is because it brings so many people in one place. You know, last year in Chicago, it was just as big. I don't think there was three concourses, like you just said, but there are a lot of companies here from all over the world. And for me, it is good to see the equipment in motion. Yeah, you can't market something if you don't know exactly how it works, how large it is, what it can do, and also, what are the advancements that a lot of these manufacturers are using with? Ai,

02:18

yeah, see, that's the big deal. And of course, there's just a lot of and I was up in in Chicago last year and broadcasting there too as well. It's, it's fascinates me how the conversation has changed in in one year. Yes, it is like there was a tipping point. Now, how do we how do we leverage AI? And what else have you been seeing?

02:38

A lot of it is the AI. But when it comes to marketing, it has to be about building relationships. Now, it can't be just sending out, I know, right, mind blowing. Well, think about it, the marketplace is so crowded, you can't be just sending out these generic messages saying, buy my product. It's not going to work people and if you want to stay around for the long haul, it's building those valuable relationships and showing people that you care, you care about this industry, you care about their company, and you're going to help them succeed.

03:09

Yeah, I think that you're touching on a really passionate point for me, and that is marketing, that is sales, and that is being able to do it in such a way. Because the reality is, is that, as an industrial, professional company, whatever it might be you need to sell. You need a market. They need to know about you. You can't just live in a cave and think that everything's going to come to you. A

03:31

lot of companies think they can. They think they're a legacy brand. They don't think they need to advertise. Everyone will come to us. They know us. You can't do that anymore. You got to make sure you're out there with your brand. You got to show them what new advancements you have. You've got to be out there talking.

03:50

Tell me your thoughts about email marketing.

03:52

Oh, I love email marketing. Tell

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me about it.

03:56

Well, our company was founded 44 years ago, and at the time, it was founded as a list company, and my mother went around the world meeting with B2B publishers, asking if they could use the postal list. Because imagine 44 years ago, it was only postal, it's only print, and she was working with Frost and Sullivan Gartner Cal Tech, some large companies, and they needed quality lists. That hasn't changed. Obviously the channels have, so we've evolved into doing email marketing. But even with email, you can't do a one off email blast and expect to get all these sales in. Even if you segment your list and you give a personalized message, people are busy, so you got to make sure you hit them more than once, but with valuable content that they'll want to read. Yeah, see, I have you speechless. No, that's

04:52

a challenge, because I, I'm of the opinion just me, I get, I get emails, yes, and. Do I read them?

05:02

Probably not there. I don't know, but I bet you, if you got an email that had a subject line that spoke directly to something maybe you were working on, or a challenge you were having, right then you would open that email. Yeah,

05:15

it's true. How do you? How do you, how do you do that? Well,

05:19

you whittle it down. You really get to know your client. You get to know their audience. You look at their house file. Make sure, first, that file is cleaned and updated, but look to see what they're engaging in. See what they're doing on social media. Social media, you can look on social media, but if it's an industry publisher, I work with a lot of the industry publishers that are out there in this space, and I ask them, like, what are your subscribers interested in? What articles are they reading? What are their challenges? So then, when I go to my manufacturing clients, those are the kind of topics we talk about in their email piece. So maybe they will have, maybe a part leveling machine, but we start the email out of, are these your challenges? And then we show them how this piece of equipment can help them with their challenges, apart leveling machine can help them with quality. And so we incorporate that in, but we give them a takeaway in every piece we put out there, so that it's not just that marketing piece of here's our product. Buy it. That's it. Yeah. They get value out of it.

06:24

But I think the the area that I hear what you're saying is, yeah, I get it. I get it, but it's that level of consistency. There's this expectation out there that I do it one time, and people are going to be knocking down my door or and and they lack the tenacity. I'm not pointing at you.

06:45

It's okay if you are. No, I'm ready for it.

06:48

Who's ever listening? I don't want to say that you you lack tenacity. You

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can, you can say it to me. Come on. Bring it on. You think so I'm gonna toss the table. You

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suck. No, the it requires that. It requires that effort to be able to just pee. Top of Mind. Yes, you don't know where they're at in that buying or that decision making process, but you're just saying, if you do your research, if you do your

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it's a lot of research up front, which it comes a lot of companies don't want to do they don't want to do it because they feel like it's wasting money. And a lot of top decision makers are like, just get it out there. And I'm like, No, you're wasting your money doing that. Take the time, do the research and put things out there. And I'm not saying all of them are going to be a home run, but we're going to monitor them, and we're going to change them as we go along, so that we are going to continue to get better and better at your marketing messages. And that's where we step in, because a lot of manufacturers here have lean marketing teams, lean sales teams, and then they'll be like, Oh yeah, Donna Forget it. We don't have any time for research. Our marketing team is one. How could we possibly do it? That's where we sometimes go to support them. Or I go to conferences and I just give them tips that they could do it themselves. And we mentioned it at the beginning. Ai ChatGPT is a great resource for that.

08:20

How are you using it?

08:21

Chat, GPT, I will I do the paid version and one of the new there's a few areas that I love with the four zero version one is I upload maybe, like, 10 documents. I ask it to analyze those 10 documents and give me the five biggest takeaways for B2B marketing company that would be helping industrial brands.

08:42

So they've evolved in a way of being before I would, when I use AI, I would just sort of copy and paste whatever the verbiage. Now you can load up actual documents, and it'll go into the document, do the AI thingy, and then come up with the five takeaways,

08:59

yes, and one thing I will stress is, no matter what they give you, you have to always look it over, fact check it, but then also put it into your own voice. It has to sound like you, your brand. If you just take what AI does and post it out there, it's going to be generic and sound like everybody else. You're not going to stand out from the competition, and you're not going to get

09:21

those sets. And again, you're asking me to do more work,

09:23

but it's a human element to it. It's really going to save you time, because when you're getting the ideas, for instance, let's say you have a presentation you want to do, yeah, I can go to chat GPT and say, Okay, I'm going to give a presentation on how manufacturing companies can utilize chat GPT. Could you give me an outline? And I'll come back with an outline. Sometimes I have to give it more you always have to give it more information. The more information you get it, the better the responses. So I have to say, well, we're a 44 year old B2B Company. I can't have anything from us. Saying, well, hey dude, this is what you need to. It's like, I don't sound like that, and I really need it to sound very professional, because industrial brands, we're not selling a pair of shoes here. We're selling expensive pieces of equipment, and that needs to have a certain tone to it. And so chat GPT saves time with helping you with that outline, and then you can go out and create it.

10:22

What other AI products are you using?

10:24

I use descript. I love descript for our podcast. One of the features I love, especially with being here at FABTECH, is I'll upload a video, and I can cancel out all the surrounding noise so that people would hear just the two people talking, yeah,

10:39

but I like the noise. Well, the noise is good,

10:41

and it's important, and it's important for people to see that you're actually on the floor at these shows. Because don't say you are Industrial Talk and you're not here, yeah.

10:53

Well, you know, sometimes I'm not here.

10:57

I'm here. Tell anyone here. Now, don't tell anyone I was

11:00

supposed to be at a conference yet last week, but they had a hurricane. Oh,

11:05

my goodness, that hurricane. It caused a lot of problems.

11:10

So descript, I don't know that one.

11:11

Descript is a great one for editing videos. Of course, video is very popular. It's very responsive. You come to a trade show like this, you can show people how a piece of equipment is used, what it produces, and people will watch the video before they'll just look at words,

11:32

oh, yeah, absolutely I agree with that 100% Are you consulting clients on how to deliver messages, yes, and videos and how to put them together, because sometimes there's a lack of confidence.

11:49

Yes, there, no, there's, there is. Matter of fact, I was just at a booth, and I said to the woman who was we were discussing the media kit, and I'm like, I really would like to film you telling me this just oh no, no. I said it'll be easy talk. It's like you're just talking to me. Don't even pay attention to the camera. But you have to remember, 75% of our population is scared to death of public speaking, just in general, in general. But what you have to realize is, if 75% of the public population is scared of public speaking, if you just get up, they think you're a hero before you've even opened your mouth. Yeah, that's good point. I was petrified of public speaking four years ago. You know what changed? I joined Toastmasters. Did you really? I am a big proponent of Toastmasters. I joined Toastmasters. I now lecture in church. I do a podcast. I will jump on a video when I walk by some crazy man's booth where normally I would have done the quick like, step away I didn't really hear

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him do the crab, which happens quite frequently at industrial conferences. Yes.

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Oh, my phone rang. Oh, we gotta go.

13:00

The Hub, I don't know.

13:02

But what people don't realize is that if you sit on a video, your customers, your prospects, can get a real feel for who you are. Oh,

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it's a no brainer. It makes Yeah, it's a no brainer. And I'm a big proponent of the fact that if you're doing it, you can open doors. Yes, you can open valuable doors. No, you don't have to look at the the analytic you do. I know I do some people do, but sometimes it's just a simple fact that you're out there, you're doing it, you're stretching yourself, and you're just saying, Okay, I'll just be real and just just go with

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it. Step outside your comfort zone. You'll be amazed at the wonderful things that have can happen. You know, me starting a podcast has opened up so many doors, and it's even with people I've known who have been guests, but we do the podcast and I'll find out something new about them I didn't know,

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or a lot of them say, oh, yeah, it always happens. It does

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you learn something, and what are we doing? Then we're building that relationship. We're developing our relationship even deeper. Yeah, that will last stand the test of time. Yeah, when my mom started the company 44 years ago, there are still people we do business with. Yeah,

14:19

yeah. That's a hell of a statement. It?

14:22

Well, it is. That's a hellish and a lot of our clients that we had have been for over 20 years, because we try to always show them the value that, hey, I'm not just going to help you market your industrial products. I go to your trade shows, I talk to the exhibitors, I find out what the challenges are. It's like actors who say, when they're taking on a role, they kind of get into that character, and they stay in that character for a while before the movie gets shot. That's what I try to do here. I try to get into the feel of, I'm a manufacturer. This is my product. Who would be interested? How can I make them pay attention to the marketing message?

14:59

Okay, I have to ask this. Question, just because of it. I remember when I decided that I I needed to podcast, which was just out of the blue, I'm driving back from a client, I'm listening to podcasts. I said, I need a podcast. And I at that time, I had a company, and I contacted my IT group, and I said, I'm gonna do podcast, and it was just that simple, yeah, and then I remember going through the process, and there's a reason why I wanted to, is because I wanted to create the create the relationships, and so I'm heading down that road. I'm doing the research, I'm finding the mix. I'm telling you, I was almost throwing up with all of the stuff that hit me, right? I've got the mixer, I've got the mic, I've got, I've got a website that I've got to update, and I've got to do all of this stuff, right? And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm definitely pushing the envelope. And then when I did all that research and I have everything in place, I had to do one, yeah. And I remember that that point vividly. And I said, All right, you can, you can push it off no longer. Yeah, you can research it no longer. You've got to do one. And then I remember just saying, What am I going to do it on? Well, I'll just chirp on time management or something like that, right? Why it's important to have a sense of urgency, whatever it might have been, yeah, and what was that like for you, where you're just like, Okay, I gotta get that mixed, I gotta get that mic, I gotta get that thing, I gotta get this, I gotta be able to and

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then all of a sudden, just gotta get started. You just do it. You just,

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what was your first one?

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Oh, my first one was with a publisher who I had known for years, yeah, and it was all about crossing. It's right around COVID. It was crossing over B2C to B2B, yeah, because what we saw with COVID, you know, B2B was very, very stoic. You didn't talk about your personal life at all. When I had my children, no one in my industry even knew I was pregnant, you know, like I had them. I was back to work the next day, you didn't talk about it. COVID hits. All of a sudden, we're in people's personal homes. We're seeing their kids. We're seeing their dog. We're getting a mailman, for goodness sakes. And it just broke down those barriers. And it was talking about humanizing these B2B brands, and so these large manufacturers sometimes think, oh, I don't need to market. Everyone knows who we are, what products we have. Well, they want to get to know the humans. They want to get to know the humans and the

17:29

brands you're touching on a very, very important component. There's a challenge with companies like I take it for granted that I can get out on LinkedIn, and I can be Scott out on LinkedIn, and they can look at Scott and look at my stat card, and get to know me a little bit more as Scott, but if I was a company, then it just you have a hard time. And I think companies in general, have a hard time showing that, that human aspect, I don't know, I don't know what the secret sauce is, because I'm dealing with that with another company right now, and I'm just like, well, if it was me, yeah, Scott, you know, I would be doing this, that, and the other thing. And it's Scott, yeah, but you have a company,

18:18

yeah, I think you have to do baby steps. I agree. I've been gotten a lot of pushback from companies, either one, they're too busy or they don't see why it's necessary to get that human flavor out there. But what it does, it just deepens that relationship. Because people like to, especially now, people like to work with brands that have common interests, common philosophy, common paths, and if you get it out there in a natural way, you know, don't come up and say, Oh, you're green. You're sustainable. If you're not, don't, don't do that. You got to walk the talk, whatever you put out there. But for us, we never used to talk that we were a family owned company. We we never talked that we were women owned, but now, if people, yeah, I talk about it, because there's a difference when you deal with family owned like all our skins in this game, like we do everything for our clients, because we treat our clients as if they're part of the family. That's different than other marketing agencies out there that might want to, you know, build up their revenue and then sell off the company. Yeah, around 44 we're not doing that. So when we go into manufacturing companies, it's the same thing. Show us the inner you what makes your company unique. And when you get into the uniqueness of a company, they don't really have a competitor, then you know you might be manufacturing a similar product to somebody else, but if you show your uniqueness and you connect with people because you're family owned, or maybe your offices are in Texas, or maybe your whole place runs, whatever it might be, you start to connect with people on a personal level. You. Want to work with you.

20:02

It just seems so basic and straightforward. It's

20:04

common sense. It

20:05

is. It really is common sense. Think

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about who you want to buy from.

20:08

Oh yeah,

20:10

that's exactly the philosophy you have to put out absolutely

20:12

and I and it's a learning process. Look at, look at where we're at, speaking of where we're at outside of AI. What other future things that you see sort of trending out there in the B2B market?

20:28

AI is just so big.

20:31

You don't want me to talk about it, but that's

20:33

just big. But it is fascinating some of the platforms that are coming out, whereas they are incorporating some AI, I was just at a booth here, where they're going to be able to analyze the different sketches you have of your pieces of equipment, the parts that you use. They're able to analyze it to figure out maybe what would be your next product offering, which would be easy for you to do in a cost effective way because of the information you already have in house. I also find it fascinating these pieces of equipment now that have features built in, where they know when it's going to shut down, they know if a part needs to be replaced. They're saying that because there's been such a labor shortage, that with this technology in these pieces of equipment, you could maybe have one person Manning three pieces of equipment, not just one, you won't have down time, creating just a more productive atmosphere. And people will say, Oh, but you're taking away human jobs. And I don't believe that. I believe that the AI and the technology is going to help with some of the more mundane, but it's going to raise people up to do higher level jobs that they'll be more impressed with you out on LinkedIn, yes, I

21:46

am pretty active. Yes. If you were going to say no, I was going to say,

21:53

what kind of a marketer Are you? Wow.

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Delete this

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episode.

21:58

Thank goodness. Well, you are absolutely wonderful. Thank you for saying yes. Oh,

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thank you for asking. All

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right, listeners, we're going to have all the contact information for Donna out on Industrial Talk. Fear or not, you need to reach out to her. Need to find out more. She's definitely got her fingers on the pulse of what's taking place. And if you're an industrial individual market, please. We want you to succeed. We'll do everything we can to help you succeed. All right, we're broadcasting from FABTECH here in Orlando, Florida, and again, we're in one of the concourses, so there's a lot of people here. You need to put this on your calendar. If you're not here this year, put it on your calendar for next year. You will not be disappointed. Stay tuned. We will be right back.

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You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

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We here at Industrial Talk want you to succeed. That's the name of the game. You industrial company, you industrial professional, you need to succeed. It is incumbent upon you succeeding. You need to reach out to Donna. You need to attend FABTECH. They are absolutely vital for your success. I hope I'm painting a great picture, because I think you need attention. You need more attention. Attention is not bad. Attention is good. So figure that strategy out. Contact Donna. Donna Peterson, contact information out on Industrial Talk. Speaking of attention, you have a podcast. Put it out on Industrial Talk. You have technology. Put it out on Industrial Talk. That's our sole focus. It gets you attention, period. End of story. It's easy, peasy, easy equation. You want to be on a podcast. Contact me. Be bold, be brave. Dare greatly. Hang out with Donna change the world. We're going to have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned. You.