September 28, 2022 • 41 mins
The key to the awareness phase in industrial marketing is getting on the prospects’ radar screen. Another way to think of it is as the Attraction Phase. You want the prospect to be attracted to your brand and how you will meet their needs. For both the prospect and the marketer, that means the awareness phase messaging should be about solving problems, getting answers and meeting needs. Listen to this episode of the Industrial Marketer Podcast to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Joey Strawn (00:00):
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
the industrial Marketer Podcastyour place for the tips, tech
trends and tactics forindustrials who care about
driving leads to theirbusinesses and living in the
world of digital and industrialmarketing. AI as always, at one
of your hosts, digital marketersawareness broker, Joey, and, you
(00:22):
know, as always, it's the firstday of fall into everything
Nels, Nels, Nells, there is aseason Nels Nels Nels. Nels
Jensen, how are you my man?
Nels Jensen (00:34):
Great and glad to be here as the awareness author.
Joey Strawn (00:38):
I like it. So we've got the awareness broker, the
awareness author, and we areabout to dive in because you
know what? Something you know,what else? Something I was made
aware of recently.
Nels Jensen (00:50):
What's that Joey?
Joey Strawn (00:52):
That was those Well played, it was like a natural
conversation that we had. Onething I was made aware of
recently is that our previousepisode, the 10, things to
consider during theconsideration phase is like a
fan favorite. People love thatepisode, it's been listened to a
bunch. And honestly, we need todo part two of that of that
(01:13):
series. And so here we are todayon our mystical journey into the
customer journey. So in the lastepisode, we talked all about the
consideration phase and 10things people need to consider
when they're diving intocreating content and inbound
marketing for that, for thatconsideration face. But today,
(01:34):
we are all focused at the top ofthat funnel. Now today is tofu
supreme, vegetarians are goingto love this episode, because we
are talking top of funnel, weare talking driving awareness
and what all that means. But weare gonna get to five pieces of
content that you need foractually just five pieces of
(01:55):
general awareness marketing thatyou need to have in market when
you're diving into yourawareness phase. So it's gonna
be exciting now so I'm gonna I'mlooking Yeah,
Nels Jensen (02:05):
I'm gonna gonna change my title to awareness
advocate. So what's wrong?
Joey Strawn (02:11):
I like that because of the awareness alliteration
involved. Now, we should justdive right in. So when we talked
about this, you know, one of thethings we talked about
specifically with theconsideration phase is kind of
defining it. And honestly, Iwould love to start there.
Again, before we get into kindof the top five marketing
(02:31):
materials near the end of thisepisode, let's just set the
stage for what we're talkingabout when we talk about
awareness. Because I mean, Iread this interesting thing. The
other day is like HubSpot saysthat only about 19% of buyers
actually want to connect withthe salesperson during the
awareness stage of the buyingprocess. Does that sound
(02:54):
accurate? Or do you think that'stoo high, too low?
Nels Jensen (02:57):
I think that may even be a little high. I think
most people want to learn, andare going to take multiple steps
to learn and you don't want toget you know, every white paper
you download, or every gatedpiece that you look at, you
don't want to immediately becontacted by a salesperson. So I
my instinct says maybe that thatnumber may even be lower. But
(03:20):
you know, there are people whoare, you know, they're all about
getting things done quickly. Andso they want to get right to the
point. But yeah, awareness isit's a little bit of a fuzzy
picture. How do you how do youdefine it? I mean, to me, it's
really, it's really about, youknow, offering insights,
education, expertise, it'sbasically, you know, I think of
(03:42):
it as a chance to reallyeducate, I guess, is the best
summary.
Joey Strawn (03:47):
I think, you know, we're gonna hit on that theme a
lot today analysis, becauseeducation, I think, is the key
parameter that has to beinvolved in the awareness stage.
Because, you know, when we talkabout the awareness stage,
everybody's heard of it. It'slike, well, everyone's aware of
us, or everyone in our industryis aware of us. And so I want to
(04:08):
go a little bit deeper of like,what that actually means, like,
you know, aware of us, you know,that could mean so many
different things to so manydifferent people is like, well,
do they know your brand name andkind of what colors you are? Or
do they know, do they think ofyou when they have a need for
something that they could solve?
Like, those are two verydifferent levels of awareness.
(04:30):
And they all fit into this sortof matrix that we're going to be
talking about today. I mean, oneof the things that we've said to
clients here and there is like,you know, awareness is sort of
like the attraction phase aswell. You know, it's like, well,
yes, you know, everyone's awareof all the noise that's in the
market, but you need to attractpeople into your universes into
your realms and into your tofucontent. Yeah, top of funnel
(04:55):
content.
Nels Jensen (04:58):
Well, I think, you know, awareness. You know, it's
yes, buyers are wanting tolearn. They're not specifically
wanting to necessarily learnabout your product. They want to
learn how can they solve theirproblems? How can they get
answers? How can their needs getmet? And there is an
(05:19):
intersection of those twouniverses, right? What am I
trying to solve? What does yoursolution do? Right? So, you
know, the faster that you canestablish that intersection, you
know, the quicker you'll getthat prospect into the buying
journey?
Joey Strawn (05:36):
Well, I want to circle back to that education
thing for a second, becauseagain, what I don't want us to
do is we always have the habit,especially in b2b marketing. And
if you're a b2b marketer, orindustrial marketer, you know,
this, it's the idea that themarketing journey is really,
really truncated. And that salesis really is what's going to
(05:56):
drive the drive the bus, if youwill. But what we're learning
more and more is, I mean, nowthis is a stat that we've thrown
out from 100 Different sourceson 100 different episodes, but
it's you know, sometimes peopleare, like, 80% of the way
through the buying processbefore even talking to a human
being. So these stat thesestatistics of, well, when should
(06:18):
a salesman get involved? It'snot really up to us anymore. So
what we need to be cognizant ofas marketers, as tellers of
those industrial stories, is,what questions are we answering
for people who may not need usright now. So, you know, the one
of the things I think of, andthis is a b2b b2c example, but
(06:40):
it's kind of like that thirst,you know, if you're not thirsty,
at the moment, you have no needfor a Coke, you're not deciding
between like a coke or a wateror, you know, Capri Sun or
whatever it may be. But ifyou're thirsty, then you need
something at that moment. Andthen the different brands, you
(07:00):
know, make a whole lot moreappeal and a whole lot more
sense to you. But if you're justaware that you know, Will, Coke
is a major player, and this is amajor player, and this is a
major player, then when you'rethirsty, those are the ones that
are come that are going to cometo the surface, the quickest.
And those are the ones thatpeople are going to jump to,
(07:21):
without having to do all of theawareness research. I mean, if
someone is needing, jumping backinto the b2b world, if someone
is needing machine maintenance,and like when they need it now,
they should not be justdiscovering that you may
possibly do machine maintenance,they should already know that
and you should be a choice ofselection. But all that has to
(07:44):
happen before that need is eventhere. You have to be setting
that playing field way, wayearlier for them. And that's
where the awareness field ofplay comes in.
Nels Jensen (07:53):
Yeah, exactly. So the the, your top of funnel
analogy is an excellent one,because there are different
benefits of awareness,marketing, right? Your
attraction phase is a subset ofthat. And that's actually a
really good phrase, but it's,it's also the are you on the
(08:14):
radar screen? Do I know aboutyou? Yes, I understand that your
you know, colors are, you know,green and, and yellow, right,
Joey Strawn (08:25):
If I could vaguely describe your logo, and I am
you know, okay,going to drop millions of
dollars on one of your pressingmachines are not the same.
Nels Jensen (08:36):
So here's a quick little tangent, saw TV
advertisement, the last coupleof nights for John Deere, for
their construction, earthmovingindustrial huge, huge piece of
their business. And their colorsare yellow and black for that
they've actually branded youknow, that heavy industry
yellow, just like caterpillar.
But yeah, it's it's green meansagriculture and, you know,
(09:01):
smaller entities, if you will.
But anyway, so they're trying toget on the radar screen for
earthmoving and heavy industrialthings. And, and so that's
anyway, that's like I said,that's a tangent. But yes, am I
all of a sudden more attractedto John Deere, if I'm looking
for Earthmovers because of that?
Maybe so but that's, that's anawareness thing. It's in their
(09:22):
case, it's it's, it's, maybemaybe it's a nuance, maybe it's
not, but awareness servesmultiple functions. Yeah. And I
think that's, you know, that'skind of a master of the obvious
statement here. When you're atthe top of the funnel, you, you
are not being as precise in thejourney as you are later. But
yes, that's what makes awarenessso fascinating, right?
Joey Strawn (09:46):
You bring up a good point, though, that I actually I
may get you on another tangent.
And that's kind of my hope is,you know, a lot of times people
equate the awareness stage withjust thought leadership. It's
like, oh, we should just soundsmart. and have our CEO out
there doing thought leadershipstuff, aka our awareness funnel
is covered. I'm gonna put you onthe spot mouse, is that the
(10:08):
correct mindset?
Nels Jensen (10:12):
I think it is. But where I get hung up is the I'm
so literal, you know, this ishow you define thought
leadership because we come froma world where 10 years ago, it
was like, okay, thoughtleadership, we're gonna write a
blog post about the importanceof smart motor controls, and we
are not going to reference ourbrand name or our product names.
(10:34):
And at the very end, we're gonnasay, hey, check out our company,
because we offer the latest inthese technologies. And the
thought leadership was all aboutthe importance of being able to
communicate with your loads, andbe able to adjust the torques
and just the speeds. And all ofthose things that make smart
motor controls, so important.
And that's a little bit outdatedof a, you know, idea, to me, at
(10:54):
least, because I think there'sso much content out there. And
major brands have figured thisout. And, you know, most
industrial major brands now haveblogs, they have libraries of
content and resources. And so tome, I equate thought leadership
more with this sort of academicoverview stuff that's above the
(11:16):
sales and marketing. And I thinkthat's, I just has, the longer
I'm doing this, the more I'mconvinced that No, there's
nothing wrong with working inyour brand and your products at
the appropriate time and place.
And you do not need to be abovethe fray. When you're educating
and in the awareness phase.
Joey Strawn (11:37):
I love it. I you know, it's funny, I'm going to
put this out there who knows, Imay get backlash for this. But I
the way that we as an industrythe way as we as marketers and
the digital natives, if youwill, that we talk about it. We
just equate thought leadershipwith the awareness phase. At
this point, I think like thoughtleadership is just another word
for good content marketing.
Because thought leadership, theway that people talk about it
(12:00):
now is that we want to presentourselves as a smart leader in
industry x, right? And that'sreally, my inbound marketing is.
So yeah, it's almost that muchaction between how someone
called a white what a whitepaper was 30 years ago, and what
people say a white paper is nowyou know,
Nels Jensen (12:22):
Yeah, well, we've we've learned that a white paper
is a fairly meaningless term,b2b marketing anymore. But the
idea to me, I think it's thatyes, thought leadership is good
content. And good content caninclude references to your
brands and your products, aslong as you're doing it in a way
that makes the most sense forthe customer.
Joey Strawn (12:42):
Yeah, I agree. So we've tasted, you know, we're
gonna get into these top fivemarketing materials that people
need for their awareness stage.
But I want to get into thenuance a little bit more,
because we've talked to youknow, awareness, or people being
aware of your brand. We'retalking b2b marketing, and more
specifically, the people wholisten to this are industrial.
So they're long buying cycles,we're talking huge, either
(13:04):
industrial equipment purchases,or industrial services,
purchases, contracts, andvendors, some even working
through distribution models. Soit's not as cut and dry, as you
know, well, when you're thirsty,you raise your hand and you buy
a thing, because there may youmay have long standing
partnerships and agreements,etc. And we understand that. So
what we're talking about in thenuanced version of awareness is,
(13:26):
are they aware that you canprovide the solution that they
need, because one thing that wedo find, I mean, unless we've
built content calendars aroundthese, or even inbound plans
around these is that we workwith a company and they're like,
great, we are known as great,whatever, you know, duct
(13:47):
builders are, we're great at,you know, fluid maintenance,
whatever it may be, it's like,but we also, like all of none of
our customers know that 50% ofour business, we are also
experts in these other things.
And just connecting those dotsand making sure that your
clientele are aware that you canprovide services in different
(14:09):
areas. That's all part of theawareness phase too. So be
thinking about how you cancommunicate what you think
everyone should be aware ofabout you already. They may not
be if you're not constantly andconsistently communicating it.
Nels Jensen (14:22):
Yeah, and there are plenty of avenues to do that. In
the traditional inbound area,you know, it's directing people
to other content on yourwebsite, whether it's the you
know, news, the newsletter, youknow, approach as well with
multiple topics. It's, andthere's other opportunities.
Yeah, for the awareness phase,as well.
Joey Strawn (14:44):
And don't even forget, and this one
specifically, you know, puttingsome money where your mouth is,
this is a great opportunity,especially at the awareness
phase to say, man, we have thiscategory of E commerce that we
just do really, really well atAnd we really need to get the
message out. But we can'tcompete with Amazon and Granger
(15:04):
and all these mega stores thatshow up on the first page of
Google. That's a greatopportunity to start building
some ad campaigns, build landingpages, build content that is
specifically designed aboutthose categories in the GEOS
that you guys sell in. And thenuse those as lead magnets,
(15:24):
because you can pay to get tothe top of Google for, you know,
very specific and very targetedthings. And if that's a strategy
that you want to employ duringthe awareness phase, very much
it should be considered becausea lot of money and a lot of
media is focused on making surethat people are aware of each
other. But not enough of thatmedia is focused on answering
the question of, well, what'sthe benefit of this awareness?
(15:47):
Like, I'm aware of you doingwhat, you know, like nails? How
often do we get asked like,well, let's make people aware of
us? Well, the next question is,like, aware of, of what, uh,
what about you? Should they beaware of right now? Like, what
are we would those benefits talkabout those things that we have
to talk about?
Nels Jensen (16:06):
My favorite is that, you know, our primary
audience is aware of us. Yeah,well, and how often do we
actually find out that? Yeah,there's a segment that is aware
of you, but it's not yourtarget. It's not your target
audience, right. And I thinkthat just speaks to that just
speaks to the brand awareness,right out of sight, out of mind.
And, you know, there are ways tomake sure that you stay on the
(16:30):
radar screen, or you get on theradar screen, that can be, you
know, some of it is going to besort of earned and organic, and
some of its going to be paid.
And it could be writing fortrade publications, you know,
having your experts, you know,show off their knowledge and
educate that readership of atrade publication, you might
need to pay for sponsoredcontent, you might be able to,
(16:51):
you know, find a way to get someearned coverage in there as
well. But, and, and I thinktrade shows right there. You
know, a trade show is not justabout converting people already
in the buying cycle, it's aboutputting you on somebody's radar
screen for their next purchase,for when they are thirsty.
Joey Strawn (17:12):
Yeah. And I mean, and a lot of people, you know,
who are listening to this mayhave just gotten back from IMTS,
you know, the benefit of walkingthe floor and seeing the
equipment, seeing the machinery,seeing the software in use and
doing what it's meant to do. Imean, we saw a lot of things. I
mean, that's both good and bad.
Were were pointing to us like,oh, wow, they're really drawing
in with their messaging. Andit's like, oh, I have no idea
(17:35):
what this company does. And youknow, just by those first
impressions, we know how, hownoisy it can be and getting
people to your booth, gettingpeople aware of your brand. And
your solutions can be, you know,a very, very key factor in going
to and succeeding at tradeshows. I mean, to your point,
are you on their radar, it's soneat. When I hear people say,
(17:58):
Oh, it's like, well, all of ourcustomers know about us, it's
like, well, great, well, whenthey have a solution, and they
have a problem do they call you?
It's like, well, no, it's like,well, why aren't you on their
radar? Then like when itmatters? Like, what is it about
their awareness of you thatdoesn't breach that next level?
(18:18):
And so let's think aboutawareness. And those factors,
you know, like nails, we'reabout to step in here to our top
five materials. But you know,what, what else should we be
thinking of before we dive intothe tactics around this
awareness?
Nels Jensen (18:35):
Yeah, so I mean, the, you know, if you and IMTS,
to me, the biggest takeaway washow hard it is to stand out in
that crowded environment, right?
So, yes, if you if you want tobe on somebody's radar screen,
you know, you do need there's alot of inbound tactics we're
about to talk about, too. Butyes, there is definitely a
(18:57):
mindful strategy to it's notreally creating demand, but
you're offering up, you know,education and information on
topics that people will belooking for that will be in
demand at some juncture.
Joey Strawn (19:17):
That's right. You want to be able to answer
questions, and have people beaware of your skills during the
awareness stage and what youhave to offer. So when those
problems arise, you know, to usethe marketing terminology and
they have to consider asolution. You're one of the
(19:38):
selections that they can divedeeper in. And we've talked
about what pieces you need tohave for the consideration
phase, but this is the awarenessphase. And here we go now as
we're diving in to the thingthat people are listening to
this episode for the five typesof awareness, marketing
materials, that all industrialsneed to think about. If you
(19:58):
really want to cover the playingfield when it comes to making
sure that people are aware ofyou and your solutions. All
right, so diving in, we're gonnastart with an easy one. Now,
we're working our way in theeasy one of blog posts and
articles. That's it, you got tohave blog posts and articles,
(20:19):
talking about the solutions andthe problems and the questions
and the things that you do foryour audience. You got to
Nels Jensen (20:25):
Right it's it's obviously it's good discovery,
you know, the, you know, makingsure this is really cannot be
under overstated. What's theright term overstated? Aligning
your keyword, your SEO strategy,you know, with the, with the
right way that your mainheadline, you know, your first
(20:46):
sentence, your first subhead,you know, there's it's essential
that your SEO strategy alignswith your content production, if
you will. But yes, so blogs andarticles, the the always on
marketing on your site, thealways available content that
you can link to from newslettersand from social, just that
(21:10):
strong foundation of contentthat talks about what problems
you're solving and what whatwhat are the needs that you're
meeting? And what are thesolutions actually doing? It's
not just that, hey, we have thisnew, you know, XYZ thing. It's
like, okay, this allows you tocombine these two operations in
(21:30):
one process.
Joey Strawn (21:31):
Well, and on a technical side, this is just the
one we start with, because it'sthe lowest stakes. It's the
lowest hanging fruit, Google asan engine, all search engines,
Google, Bing, Yahoo, all of themincluded, love a website that is
constantly being updated, itfeels fresh, it feels new, it
(21:51):
feels like things are happening,and that they will give their
users good experience.
Nels Jensen (21:55):
They reward the reward asides that? Yes.
Joey Strawn (21:59):
And so that's just a technical necessity. But on
the other end of the spectrum,is how beneficial and how
valuable is it? If so one ofyour clients is searching the
best ways to deburr a recentlymanufactured part. And you're
the first three articles becauseyou have three different ways of
looking at the deburring processand how your software and or
(22:22):
technology and or robot doesthat. So the fact that you could
get people when they're lookingat how a process is done when
they're trying to learn abouthow to do their jobs better.
That's a key element of theawareness phase. And a blog is
one of the quickest and easiestways to do it. It's a place to
drop consistent content on asite Nels, to your point, look
(22:45):
at the questions people aresearching for, and then just
write posts about that. It's avery easy entry mechanism.
Nels Jensen (22:53):
Yes, and maybe you've got a blog post from two
years ago, that still is, youknow, right on target. And it's
like, oh, I don't really want towrite another one, whatever, you
know, refresh that, change itaround a little bit, update it,
you get credit for that. Googlerewards you for updating and
freshening content,
Joey Strawn (23:12):
And believe it or not guys, people have the same
questions year after year afteryear, and may ask them again. So
keep that those answers thosegood answers updated. And so
taking a step further, sodigging into a little bit more
effort required. The number twotype of awareness marketing
(23:33):
material that every companyshould have, somewhere is a
video, you should be using videoin some form, or fashion. In
this day and age, you know,between all of the mechanisms
that we have how people engagewith content, on their phones,
or on their mobile devices, evenon their desktops is a lot of it
(23:55):
is video based, closed captionvideo, short form video, tic toc
or stitched video, there's a lotthat's going on in the world of
video. So a good brand videoabout your company or your
solutions or your benefits. Evensome more of like manufactured
like how to videos that could beperfectly cheaply. But video is
(24:18):
something that as a as a contentmechanism. And as a marketing
material, it's just becomingmore and more important as the
years go on.
Nels Jensen (24:27):
And we've done other episodes on this and so we
don't need to go into greatdetail but this morning I was on
a client call where one of theexperts asked Okay, so we're
talking about like how to selecta you know, what's the right
selection process for nozzle andtip for your spray gun
applications? And he said Well,shouldn't we just do a two
(24:49):
minute video that just showsthis and so yes, the answer is
both post about it and you andyou want a video too. And the
videos also like I said we'vewe've gone into great detail On
this elsewhere, but yeah, itcould be just a CAD drawing that
that 3d CAD drawing that rotatesaround while you describe the
the, you know, parts involved inthis or the part itself or, you
(25:12):
know it, it's it's just activemotion. We're visual learners.
The videos are great awarenesscontent.
Joey Strawn (25:21):
And video again is searched very well, if you want
more technical, nerdy reasons todo it, is people click on them.
And so Google and other searchengines seem to prioritize
video, if you don't believe me,go to Google type in a how to
and then fill in the blank,whatever it is, and see if some
videos aren't the top thingsthat pop up. So the fact that
(25:43):
you can answer those questionsand get to the top of the
searches quickly. And thenpeople are more apt to click on
video walkthroughs. It's just alot of good reasons to have that
type of awareness content outthere. And those marketing
materials handy when people wantand are just searching for them
without even knowing who you areyet. Let them find your
solutions before they find yourbrand name. All right, we're
(26:07):
diving into the third one. Now,the third one's kind of a catch
all, don't get Don't get mad atus guys, because there's a lot
of different ways to think ofthis third one. And essentially
what we've called it isvegetarians delight, tofu
downloads, this is what we'retalking about when we're talking
about something that's a littlebit bigger than a blog post, but
not an in depth industry study,it's something that would need
(26:30):
an email address, or you know,some sort of hand raise and form
submission to prepare and bedelivered to. So the, you know,
we're talking about checklists,or E guides, or you know, a
quick infographic or a kit, or atool, you know, that somebody
can use or put in their emailreally quick to unlock those
types of tofu top of funnel,download assets, high value
(26:53):
assets, some people may callthem.
Nels Jensen (26:56):
Yeah, and again, these are based on the questions
that people are asking, in fact,one popular list in this genre,
if you will, is just sort ofquestions you should be asking
before you invest in, fill inthe blank extra water. Exactly.
Yeah. And, and there's, there'scertainly, arguments to be made,
(27:17):
you know, that we can get intothe gated not gated aspect of
it, just because somebody givesyou an email doesn't mean you
should hound them right away,maybe that just goes into your
lead scoring and vaults them upfor the next conversation or you
can do something more passive interms of, you know, they're at
the awareness phase here, don'thammer them just because they
downloaded, you know, a, how isit that this is compliant? White
(27:40):
Paper, you know, right, you'reeducating people on compliance.
You're educating people oncapabilities. It's a nice merger
of that intersection I wastalking about at the beginning.
But yeah, but Right, justbecause it's a download, please,
folks, you know, use use your,your, your download, leads
(28:02):
carefully.
Joey Strawn (28:03):
Well, and here's an here's what I'm gonna say for
the awareness stage. And I knowpeople won't listen, but it's
okay, I'm going to tell you todo this anyway. So I can say I
told you so later. But tofudownloads for the awareness
stage, need to be more thananything else helpful. That
should be really a greatbreakdown of your products, they
should not be overly salesy. Itshould be something that you as
(28:26):
an individual, would yourself,save on your desktop and
reference again. So somethingthat they would want to use or
share. I mean, personally,there's a handful that we have,
like I, every year, I woulddownload an infographic of like
the best days to send emailsbased on statistics from the
previous 10 years or, you know,we'll have industry shutdown
(28:46):
calendars that will pull up andsee what periods of the year are
down for different industries ordifferent areas. And so those
types of things are really,really important for what I do
and for what we do as inboundmarketers, but think of those
types of things that would bevaluable for your customers,
could there be a one sheet orthing that they would save on
(29:08):
their desktop and open and lookat every single week, and then
see your brand name at thebottom? And then oh, they have a
problem they need to solve? Youknow what, I use XYZ Corp for
this other thing and they dothis, like we should look into
them. That those are the typesof downloads that we're really
thinking of is if it's nothelpful, and if it feels like
something that salesy probablyshouldn't be in the awareness
(29:31):
phase. Correct. All right.
Moving on, number four, numberfour is going to be a little
tip. Some people are going tocringe, they hear it. But number
four is super social media.
Don't like to say it because weas industrials and b2b
marketers. We're like a socialmedia. Come on, everyone's gonna
buy a $10 million stamping pressfrom Facebook. But awareness is
(29:56):
a different ballgame. We'retrying to make people aware of
what we do, and that we havesolutions. Yeah, honestly I'm
just gonna, it's ubiquitous atthis point with our lives, were
on it, everyone's on it.
Nels Jensen (30:10):
I'm just gonna offer my now overused, you know,
out of sight out of mind, youknow, it's this, remembering
that, you know, oh, seeing,seeing the occasional social
message about Mountain Dewreminds me that when I'm
thirsty, I could go get aMountain Dew, you know, because,
you know, it's just a way tokeep the brand on the radar
(30:31):
screen. And I'm, I'm I shouldn'tminimize and say it, it's just a
way, social is an avenue to keepthe brand alive for your
prospects and undecideds.
Joey Strawn (30:43):
Well, and this is another area we mentioned it
earlier is social media, thereare a handful of ways to
approach it when you're thinkingabout the awareness phase is
obviously you want some youknow, any blog posts that you're
writing or any content thatyou're creating, you want to be
able to share that through yourchannels, but also, you know,
Forbes articles you're readingor things that are industry
relevant and industry specific,and just putting them out there
(31:06):
for anyone who may be followingyou. It's not trying to generate
business, it's not trying to,you know, make sure that your
CEO can get on, you know, thenews, it's just about making
sure that there are things therethat anyone in your orbit could
benefit from. And then there'salso the layer of paid. We
mentioned this earlier, butsocial media and especially on
(31:28):
the awareness side of things,social media can be a valuable
tool, if you put 1000 or $2,000a month, just aside to growing
your, your audiences over acouple of months, you're going
to have a pretty good sizedaudience, that then the content
that you naturally share into itcan become more circulated, but
(31:50):
can become more shared. So thereis value in growing the
eyeballs. And media can be athird party way to do that it
can be a bolt on and anadditional cost that for the
time being, we're going to rollout this awareness campaign and
really get it people into ourorbit, and then the content that
we share, can, you know cyclethrough faster. So you know,
(32:12):
when we say social media as anawareness device, we're really
talking about it at that toplayer of content.
Nels Jensen (32:18):
Yeah, and then again, master the obvious
statement here and not to soundtoo lecturing, whatever. But
please be sure to use theplatforms appropriately, right?
Instagram, unless Instagram andLinkedIn should not have the
same format of post, or evennecessarily the same content
(32:40):
approach. So I, you know, Iunderstand that, oh, I can use
some tools to like, post all ofthis at once. And it's like,
yes, but, you know, social, ifanything has taught us to be
authentic with your audience.
And the audience's are slightlydifferent on the different
platforms. So please use yoursocial wisely.
Joey Strawn (33:02):
And if social, something that like you're like,
well, we just don't have thebandwidth to do that there are
partners out there that willhelp agencies can help be good
partners. And that too, theyusually have teams of people who
have the tools and expertisealready at play. So you know,
look into getting a partner tokind of grease those wheels, and
really understand what thatrhythm is, and then take it over
internally. Okay, the last one,this is the one that would
(33:26):
probably is probably going toinclude the largest amount of
effort, but it is just a greatawareness vehicle. And it's
something that within amarketing mix needs to be
included somewhere is webinars.
If you are a leader, and if youhave people that can speak about
your expertise and yourleadership, then get those
(33:46):
people out there. Now notice,we're not being specific, or at
least I'm not here with, youknow whether or not it's hosting
one yourself or getting to be aguest on a pre established one.
I say there's value in eitheror, obviously, the level of
effort is different. And from anawareness standpoint, it may be
it may be very valuable to finda show that caters to your very
(34:10):
niche audience with a host thatthey trust. And if you can get
on that show, then immediatelythe believability of what you're
saying goes up as well asthere's a pre established
audience baked in so there arebenefits to going either way.
Nels Jensen (34:28):
Yes, and if you do invest in hosting your own or,
you know, creating one with atrade publication partner, for
instance, to don't overlook thepossibility of using that as an
asset over and over again oreven really if you have access
(34:49):
to the recording to be able tochop it up and create
subsections and pieces, smallerpieces atomizing the content if
you will, that as you Youmentioned earlier higher degree
of difficulty higher degree ofresource allocation. But a
webinar can be a giant assetthat creates many, many smaller
(35:11):
assets.
Joey Strawn (35:11):
Well, and that's a good point is that because there
is a higher level of effort atthe beginning, it is an asset
that should be planned to usedbeing used on a future and
ongoing scale. So if you'regonna put the time in to build
the webinar content to build thedeck that goes along with it,
and have it recorded either viasomebody else or your own
(35:32):
methods, then you shoulddefinitely plan to have that if
it's evergreen content on yoursite for future download that
people could listen to the prerecorded one or included in
emails that go out to yournewsletter subscribers, and so
really think about ways to makethat investment worth that over
time. That's a great point. Now,it's because you don't want to
just be a one and done thing,unless it's supposed to be a one
(35:56):
and done thing. It's about like,a regulation is gonna pass next
week, and this webinar won't berelevant in a month. That's a
different situation.
Nels Jensen (36:05):
Yeah. And as you as you point out, it is a little
bit more work, or a lot morework depending upon. But again,
you know, awareness is a longterm play, it's not it as short
term play. And videos often docost more to produce than a blog
post, but they have shelf life,they have long tail that
awareness is a is a long game.
In many, many cases, and sotreat your investments
(36:31):
accordingly. Because it's, youknow, two years later, people
are still reading your mostpopular blog posts, right? Well,
and you can't look at it as atransactional investment.
Joey Strawn (36:44):
And we see that time and time again, is the you
know, the content that getsinvested over the content that
hits continues to hit over andover and over again, and becomes
consistent consistently driver.
You know, one of the things thatyou mentioned, and I don't want
people to not hear this, soplease, please, here this is,
this isn't ever, always oneffort. Awareness is something
(37:06):
that should never stop workingfor, for your customers, for
your clients and for youruniverse, because, and I forget
the exact number, but it'ssomething like eight to 16% of
your, your, of your buyinguniverse is in the market at any
one time. So at any one time,you just pick a day of the year,
(37:28):
there is only a small percentageof people that you even could
sell to, at that time, they justdon't need it, they're closed,
it's a shut down, their budgetisn't unlocked. So it's a very
small number. But what is alwayshappening is people are always
doing their jobs. And so if youcan slowly eke your way up in
(37:48):
their minds for when that eightto 16% happens, and they need a
solution, that you're one of thefour names that they think of
because then it's a 25% chancethat they'll pick you as opposed
to 1,000,000,001% chance theymay accidentally stumble on your
ad on Facebook at the righttime. And that's what the
(38:10):
awareness stage is building. Itreally is just setting all of
those landmines out into thefield so that people say I need
this and boom, you're there. Ineed this, boom, you're there.
How do I do this, boom, you'rethere. And you want to you want
to be covering that landscapewith your awareness so that
people find your content andthat people in that you're the
(38:33):
one answering their questions,before they even know what your
name is, you should be able toanswer their questions.
Nels Jensen (38:41):
So you've talked about we have talked about five
types of awareness marketingmaterials,
Joey Strawn (38:48):
You want to and I want to read us down the list
now.
Nels Jensen (38:51):
Yeah, so we're at number one, number one, blog
posts and articles. Right?
Foundational number two videovideo of all times, right,
number three, we're calling themtofu downloads, top of funnel
downloads, how basically helpfulhelpful, right, arming people
with helpful information, numberfour, social media, the ongoing
interactions with your with yourdaily audience, and whatever
(39:15):
that mix looks like for you.
It's good and different, right?
Number five would be webinar,you know, basically, a really
good opportunity to leveragenetworks and audiences,
Joey Strawn (39:27):
Teach some people something and then keep it for
later. Now, so this has beengreat. We we have now done two
of these stages. So we have theconsideration journey, we have
the awareness stage covered.
We're going to be knocking out acouple more as we go through. I
can't wait to get to thedecision phase episode, but I
think this has been really,really helpful and I hope that
people were paying attention,taking notes and jotting it down
(39:50):
but if anybody has any ideas orthings that they want us to talk
about that we didn't in thisepisode, always please feel free
to reach out To us, we love tohang out and talk with
industrial marketers. And youcan email us directly at podcast
at industrial marketer.com.
Speaking of industrialmarketer.com, if you haven't
(40:11):
subscribed to that website, goover there. Subscribe to the
newsletters get notifiedwhenever a new blog is updated.
Nelson's right in edit, we gotguest posters right now, there's
all sorts of good educationalcontent on there. And of course,
you know, subscribe to our show.
Have other people listened toour show. This is the community
for industrial marketers that weare building, we are talking and
(40:31):
we are learning and trudgingthrough this world together. So
we want to do it together withyou. Subscribe to the show,
subscribe to us on Facebook andInstagram and all those good
social places that we talkedabout. But now any parting words
for our faithful listenersbefore we wrap up our awareness
episode?
Nels Jensen (40:51):
We are Awareness Advocates, for sure.
Joey Strawn (40:55):
And we want you to be Awareness Advocates for your
brands.
Nels Jensen (40:59):
That's right. And again, this is yes, this is long
term investments that pay off inthe long term. So don't overlook
it. You know, it's, it's aworthy endeavor.
Joey Strawn (41:13):
I agree. All right now, let's go raise some
awareness. I'm on it. Let's doit.
Welcome back everybody to another episode of
the industrial Marketer Podcastyour place for the tips, tech
trends and tactics forindustrials who care about
driving leads to theirbusinesses and living in the
world of digital and industrialmarketing. AI as always, at one
of your hosts, digital marketersawareness broker, Joey, and, you
(00:22):
know, as always, it's the firstday of fall into everything
Nels, Nels, Nells, there is aseason Nels Nels Nels. Nels
Jensen, how are you my man?
Nels Jensen (00:34):
Great and glad to be here as the awareness author.
Joey Strawn (00:38):
I like it. So we've got the awareness broker, the
awareness author, and we areabout to dive in because you
know what? Something you know,what else? Something I was made
aware of recently.
Nels Jensen (00:50):
What's that Joey?
Joey Strawn (00:52):
That was those Well played, it was like a natural
conversation that we had. Onething I was made aware of
recently is that our previousepisode, the 10, things to
consider during theconsideration phase is like a
fan favorite. People love thatepisode, it's been listened to a
bunch. And honestly, we need todo part two of that of that
(01:13):
series. And so here we are todayon our mystical journey into the
customer journey. So in the lastepisode, we talked all about the
consideration phase and 10things people need to consider
when they're diving intocreating content and inbound
marketing for that, for thatconsideration face. But today,
(01:34):
we are all focused at the top ofthat funnel. Now today is tofu
supreme, vegetarians are goingto love this episode, because we
are talking top of funnel, weare talking driving awareness
and what all that means. But weare gonna get to five pieces of
content that you need foractually just five pieces of
(01:55):
general awareness marketing thatyou need to have in market when
you're diving into yourawareness phase. So it's gonna
be exciting now so I'm gonna I'mlooking Yeah,
Nels Jensen (02:05):
I'm gonna gonna change my title to awareness
advocate. So what's wrong?
Joey Strawn (02:11):
I like that because of the awareness alliteration
involved. Now, we should justdive right in. So when we talked
about this, you know, one of thethings we talked about
specifically with theconsideration phase is kind of
defining it. And honestly, Iwould love to start there.
Again, before we get into kindof the top five marketing
(02:31):
materials near the end of thisepisode, let's just set the
stage for what we're talkingabout when we talk about
awareness. Because I mean, Iread this interesting thing. The
other day is like HubSpot saysthat only about 19% of buyers
actually want to connect withthe salesperson during the
awareness stage of the buyingprocess. Does that sound
(02:54):
accurate? Or do you think that'stoo high, too low?
Nels Jensen (02:57):
I think that may even be a little high. I think
most people want to learn, andare going to take multiple steps
to learn and you don't want toget you know, every white paper
you download, or every gatedpiece that you look at, you
don't want to immediately becontacted by a salesperson. So I
my instinct says maybe that thatnumber may even be lower. But
(03:20):
you know, there are people whoare, you know, they're all about
getting things done quickly. Andso they want to get right to the
point. But yeah, awareness isit's a little bit of a fuzzy
picture. How do you how do youdefine it? I mean, to me, it's
really, it's really about, youknow, offering insights,
education, expertise, it'sbasically, you know, I think of
(03:42):
it as a chance to reallyeducate, I guess, is the best
summary.
Joey Strawn (03:47):
I think, you know, we're gonna hit on that theme a
lot today analysis, becauseeducation, I think, is the key
parameter that has to beinvolved in the awareness stage.
Because, you know, when we talkabout the awareness stage,
everybody's heard of it. It'slike, well, everyone's aware of
us, or everyone in our industryis aware of us. And so I want to
(04:08):
go a little bit deeper of like,what that actually means, like,
you know, aware of us, you know,that could mean so many
different things to so manydifferent people is like, well,
do they know your brand name andkind of what colors you are? Or
do they know, do they think ofyou when they have a need for
something that they could solve?
Like, those are two verydifferent levels of awareness.
(04:30):
And they all fit into this sortof matrix that we're going to be
talking about today. I mean, oneof the things that we've said to
clients here and there is like,you know, awareness is sort of
like the attraction phase aswell. You know, it's like, well,
yes, you know, everyone's awareof all the noise that's in the
market, but you need to attractpeople into your universes into
your realms and into your tofucontent. Yeah, top of funnel
(04:55):
content.
Nels Jensen (04:58):
Well, I think, you know, awareness. You know, it's
yes, buyers are wanting tolearn. They're not specifically
wanting to necessarily learnabout your product. They want to
learn how can they solve theirproblems? How can they get
answers? How can their needs getmet? And there is an
(05:19):
intersection of those twouniverses, right? What am I
trying to solve? What does yoursolution do? Right? So, you
know, the faster that you canestablish that intersection, you
know, the quicker you'll getthat prospect into the buying
journey?
Joey Strawn (05:36):
Well, I want to circle back to that education
thing for a second, becauseagain, what I don't want us to
do is we always have the habit,especially in b2b marketing. And
if you're a b2b marketer, orindustrial marketer, you know,
this, it's the idea that themarketing journey is really,
really truncated. And that salesis really is what's going to
(05:56):
drive the drive the bus, if youwill. But what we're learning
more and more is, I mean, nowthis is a stat that we've thrown
out from 100 Different sourceson 100 different episodes, but
it's you know, sometimes peopleare, like, 80% of the way
through the buying processbefore even talking to a human
being. So these stat thesestatistics of, well, when should
(06:18):
a salesman get involved? It'snot really up to us anymore. So
what we need to be cognizant ofas marketers, as tellers of
those industrial stories, is,what questions are we answering
for people who may not need usright now. So, you know, the one
of the things I think of, andthis is a b2b b2c example, but
(06:40):
it's kind of like that thirst,you know, if you're not thirsty,
at the moment, you have no needfor a Coke, you're not deciding
between like a coke or a wateror, you know, Capri Sun or
whatever it may be. But ifyou're thirsty, then you need
something at that moment. Andthen the different brands, you
(07:00):
know, make a whole lot moreappeal and a whole lot more
sense to you. But if you're justaware that you know, Will, Coke
is a major player, and this is amajor player, and this is a
major player, then when you'rethirsty, those are the ones that
are come that are going to cometo the surface, the quickest.
And those are the ones thatpeople are going to jump to,
(07:21):
without having to do all of theawareness research. I mean, if
someone is needing, jumping backinto the b2b world, if someone
is needing machine maintenance,and like when they need it now,
they should not be justdiscovering that you may
possibly do machine maintenance,they should already know that
and you should be a choice ofselection. But all that has to
(07:44):
happen before that need is eventhere. You have to be setting
that playing field way, wayearlier for them. And that's
where the awareness field ofplay comes in.
Nels Jensen (07:53):
Yeah, exactly. So the the, your top of funnel
analogy is an excellent one,because there are different
benefits of awareness,marketing, right? Your
attraction phase is a subset ofthat. And that's actually a
really good phrase, but it's,it's also the are you on the
(08:14):
radar screen? Do I know aboutyou? Yes, I understand that your
you know, colors are, you know,green and, and yellow, right,
Joey Strawn (08:25):
If I could vaguely describe your logo, and I am
you know, okay,going to drop millions of
dollars on one of your pressingmachines are not the same.
Nels Jensen (08:36):
So here's a quick little tangent, saw TV
advertisement, the last coupleof nights for John Deere, for
their construction, earthmovingindustrial huge, huge piece of
their business. And their colorsare yellow and black for that
they've actually branded youknow, that heavy industry
yellow, just like caterpillar.
But yeah, it's it's green meansagriculture and, you know,
(09:01):
smaller entities, if you will.
But anyway, so they're trying toget on the radar screen for
earthmoving and heavy industrialthings. And, and so that's
anyway, that's like I said,that's a tangent. But yes, am I
all of a sudden more attractedto John Deere, if I'm looking
for Earthmovers because of that?
Maybe so but that's, that's anawareness thing. It's in their
(09:22):
case, it's it's, it's, maybemaybe it's a nuance, maybe it's
not, but awareness servesmultiple functions. Yeah. And I
think that's, you know, that'skind of a master of the obvious
statement here. When you're atthe top of the funnel, you, you
are not being as precise in thejourney as you are later. But
yes, that's what makes awarenessso fascinating, right?
Joey Strawn (09:46):
You bring up a good point, though, that I actually I
may get you on another tangent.
And that's kind of my hope is,you know, a lot of times people
equate the awareness stage withjust thought leadership. It's
like, oh, we should just soundsmart. and have our CEO out
there doing thought leadershipstuff, aka our awareness funnel
is covered. I'm gonna put you onthe spot mouse, is that the
(10:08):
correct mindset?
Nels Jensen (10:12):
I think it is. But where I get hung up is the I'm
so literal, you know, this ishow you define thought
leadership because we come froma world where 10 years ago, it
was like, okay, thoughtleadership, we're gonna write a
blog post about the importanceof smart motor controls, and we
are not going to reference ourbrand name or our product names.
(10:34):
And at the very end, we're gonnasay, hey, check out our company,
because we offer the latest inthese technologies. And the
thought leadership was all aboutthe importance of being able to
communicate with your loads, andbe able to adjust the torques
and just the speeds. And all ofthose things that make smart
motor controls, so important.
And that's a little bit outdatedof a, you know, idea, to me, at
(10:54):
least, because I think there'sso much content out there. And
major brands have figured thisout. And, you know, most
industrial major brands now haveblogs, they have libraries of
content and resources. And so tome, I equate thought leadership
more with this sort of academicoverview stuff that's above the
(11:16):
sales and marketing. And I thinkthat's, I just has, the longer
I'm doing this, the more I'mconvinced that No, there's
nothing wrong with working inyour brand and your products at
the appropriate time and place.
And you do not need to be abovethe fray. When you're educating
and in the awareness phase.
Joey Strawn (11:37):
I love it. I you know, it's funny, I'm going to
put this out there who knows, Imay get backlash for this. But I
the way that we as an industrythe way as we as marketers and
the digital natives, if youwill, that we talk about it. We
just equate thought leadershipwith the awareness phase. At
this point, I think like thoughtleadership is just another word
for good content marketing.
Because thought leadership, theway that people talk about it
(12:00):
now is that we want to presentourselves as a smart leader in
industry x, right? And that'sreally, my inbound marketing is.
So yeah, it's almost that muchaction between how someone
called a white what a whitepaper was 30 years ago, and what
people say a white paper is nowyou know,
Nels Jensen (12:22):
Yeah, well, we've we've learned that a white paper
is a fairly meaningless term,b2b marketing anymore. But the
idea to me, I think it's thatyes, thought leadership is good
content. And good content caninclude references to your
brands and your products, aslong as you're doing it in a way
that makes the most sense forthe customer.
Joey Strawn (12:42):
Yeah, I agree. So we've tasted, you know, we're
gonna get into these top fivemarketing materials that people
need for their awareness stage.
But I want to get into thenuance a little bit more,
because we've talked to youknow, awareness, or people being
aware of your brand. We'retalking b2b marketing, and more
specifically, the people wholisten to this are industrial.
So they're long buying cycles,we're talking huge, either
(13:04):
industrial equipment purchases,or industrial services,
purchases, contracts, andvendors, some even working
through distribution models. Soit's not as cut and dry, as you
know, well, when you're thirsty,you raise your hand and you buy
a thing, because there may youmay have long standing
partnerships and agreements,etc. And we understand that. So
what we're talking about in thenuanced version of awareness is,
(13:26):
are they aware that you canprovide the solution that they
need, because one thing that wedo find, I mean, unless we've
built content calendars aroundthese, or even inbound plans
around these is that we workwith a company and they're like,
great, we are known as great,whatever, you know, duct
(13:47):
builders are, we're great at,you know, fluid maintenance,
whatever it may be, it's like,but we also, like all of none of
our customers know that 50% ofour business, we are also
experts in these other things.
And just connecting those dotsand making sure that your
clientele are aware that you canprovide services in different
(14:09):
areas. That's all part of theawareness phase too. So be
thinking about how you cancommunicate what you think
everyone should be aware ofabout you already. They may not
be if you're not constantly andconsistently communicating it.
Nels Jensen (14:22):
Yeah, and there are plenty of avenues to do that. In
the traditional inbound area,you know, it's directing people
to other content on yourwebsite, whether it's the you
know, news, the newsletter, youknow, approach as well with
multiple topics. It's, andthere's other opportunities.
Yeah, for the awareness phase,as well.
Joey Strawn (14:44):
And don't even forget, and this one
specifically, you know, puttingsome money where your mouth is,
this is a great opportunity,especially at the awareness
phase to say, man, we have thiscategory of E commerce that we
just do really, really well atAnd we really need to get the
message out. But we can'tcompete with Amazon and Granger
(15:04):
and all these mega stores thatshow up on the first page of
Google. That's a greatopportunity to start building
some ad campaigns, build landingpages, build content that is
specifically designed aboutthose categories in the GEOS
that you guys sell in. And thenuse those as lead magnets,
(15:24):
because you can pay to get tothe top of Google for, you know,
very specific and very targetedthings. And if that's a strategy
that you want to employ duringthe awareness phase, very much
it should be considered becausea lot of money and a lot of
media is focused on making surethat people are aware of each
other. But not enough of thatmedia is focused on answering
the question of, well, what'sthe benefit of this awareness?
(15:47):
Like, I'm aware of you doingwhat, you know, like nails? How
often do we get asked like,well, let's make people aware of
us? Well, the next question is,like, aware of, of what, uh,
what about you? Should they beaware of right now? Like, what
are we would those benefits talkabout those things that we have
to talk about?
Nels Jensen (16:06):
My favorite is that, you know, our primary
audience is aware of us. Yeah,well, and how often do we
actually find out that? Yeah,there's a segment that is aware
of you, but it's not yourtarget. It's not your target
audience, right. And I thinkthat just speaks to that just
speaks to the brand awareness,right out of sight, out of mind.
And, you know, there are ways tomake sure that you stay on the
(16:30):
radar screen, or you get on theradar screen, that can be, you
know, some of it is going to besort of earned and organic, and
some of its going to be paid.
And it could be writing fortrade publications, you know,
having your experts, you know,show off their knowledge and
educate that readership of atrade publication, you might
need to pay for sponsoredcontent, you might be able to,
(16:51):
you know, find a way to get someearned coverage in there as
well. But, and, and I thinktrade shows right there. You
know, a trade show is not justabout converting people already
in the buying cycle, it's aboutputting you on somebody's radar
screen for their next purchase,for when they are thirsty.
Joey Strawn (17:12):
Yeah. And I mean, and a lot of people, you know,
who are listening to this mayhave just gotten back from IMTS,
you know, the benefit of walkingthe floor and seeing the
equipment, seeing the machinery,seeing the software in use and
doing what it's meant to do. Imean, we saw a lot of things. I
mean, that's both good and bad.
Were were pointing to us like,oh, wow, they're really drawing
in with their messaging. Andit's like, oh, I have no idea
(17:35):
what this company does. And youknow, just by those first
impressions, we know how, hownoisy it can be and getting
people to your booth, gettingpeople aware of your brand. And
your solutions can be, you know,a very, very key factor in going
to and succeeding at tradeshows. I mean, to your point,
are you on their radar, it's soneat. When I hear people say,
(17:58):
Oh, it's like, well, all of ourcustomers know about us, it's
like, well, great, well, whenthey have a solution, and they
have a problem do they call you?
It's like, well, no, it's like,well, why aren't you on their
radar? Then like when itmatters? Like, what is it about
their awareness of you thatdoesn't breach that next level?
(18:18):
And so let's think aboutawareness. And those factors,
you know, like nails, we'reabout to step in here to our top
five materials. But you know,what, what else should we be
thinking of before we dive intothe tactics around this
awareness?
Nels Jensen (18:35):
Yeah, so I mean, the, you know, if you and IMTS,
to me, the biggest takeaway washow hard it is to stand out in
that crowded environment, right?
So, yes, if you if you want tobe on somebody's radar screen,
you know, you do need there's alot of inbound tactics we're
about to talk about, too. Butyes, there is definitely a
(18:57):
mindful strategy to it's notreally creating demand, but
you're offering up, you know,education and information on
topics that people will belooking for that will be in
demand at some juncture.
Joey Strawn (19:17):
That's right. You want to be able to answer
questions, and have people beaware of your skills during the
awareness stage and what youhave to offer. So when those
problems arise, you know, to usethe marketing terminology and
they have to consider asolution. You're one of the
(19:38):
selections that they can divedeeper in. And we've talked
about what pieces you need tohave for the consideration
phase, but this is the awarenessphase. And here we go now as
we're diving in to the thingthat people are listening to
this episode for the five typesof awareness, marketing
materials, that all industrialsneed to think about. If you
(19:58):
really want to cover the playingfield when it comes to making
sure that people are aware ofyou and your solutions. All
right, so diving in, we're gonnastart with an easy one. Now,
we're working our way in theeasy one of blog posts and
articles. That's it, you got tohave blog posts and articles,
(20:19):
talking about the solutions andthe problems and the questions
and the things that you do foryour audience. You got to
Nels Jensen (20:25):
Right it's it's obviously it's good discovery,
you know, the, you know, makingsure this is really cannot be
under overstated. What's theright term overstated? Aligning
your keyword, your SEO strategy,you know, with the, with the
right way that your mainheadline, you know, your first
(20:46):
sentence, your first subhead,you know, there's it's essential
that your SEO strategy alignswith your content production, if
you will. But yes, so blogs andarticles, the the always on
marketing on your site, thealways available content that
you can link to from newslettersand from social, just that
(21:10):
strong foundation of contentthat talks about what problems
you're solving and what whatwhat are the needs that you're
meeting? And what are thesolutions actually doing? It's
not just that, hey, we have thisnew, you know, XYZ thing. It's
like, okay, this allows you tocombine these two operations in
(21:30):
one process.
Joey Strawn (21:31):
Well, and on a technical side, this is just the
one we start with, because it'sthe lowest stakes. It's the
lowest hanging fruit, Google asan engine, all search engines,
Google, Bing, Yahoo, all of themincluded, love a website that is
constantly being updated, itfeels fresh, it feels new, it
(21:51):
feels like things are happening,and that they will give their
users good experience.
Nels Jensen (21:55):
They reward the reward asides that? Yes.
Joey Strawn (21:59):
And so that's just a technical necessity. But on
the other end of the spectrum,is how beneficial and how
valuable is it? If so one ofyour clients is searching the
best ways to deburr a recentlymanufactured part. And you're
the first three articles becauseyou have three different ways of
looking at the deburring processand how your software and or
(22:22):
technology and or robot doesthat. So the fact that you could
get people when they're lookingat how a process is done when
they're trying to learn abouthow to do their jobs better.
That's a key element of theawareness phase. And a blog is
one of the quickest and easiestways to do it. It's a place to
drop consistent content on asite Nels, to your point, look
(22:45):
at the questions people aresearching for, and then just
write posts about that. It's avery easy entry mechanism.
Nels Jensen (22:53):
Yes, and maybe you've got a blog post from two
years ago, that still is, youknow, right on target. And it's
like, oh, I don't really want towrite another one, whatever, you
know, refresh that, change itaround a little bit, update it,
you get credit for that. Googlerewards you for updating and
freshening content,
Joey Strawn (23:12):
And believe it or not guys, people have the same
questions year after year afteryear, and may ask them again. So
keep that those answers thosegood answers updated. And so
taking a step further, sodigging into a little bit more
effort required. The number twotype of awareness marketing
(23:33):
material that every companyshould have, somewhere is a
video, you should be using videoin some form, or fashion. In
this day and age, you know,between all of the mechanisms
that we have how people engagewith content, on their phones,
or on their mobile devices, evenon their desktops is a lot of it
(23:55):
is video based, closed captionvideo, short form video, tic toc
or stitched video, there's a lotthat's going on in the world of
video. So a good brand videoabout your company or your
solutions or your benefits. Evensome more of like manufactured
like how to videos that could beperfectly cheaply. But video is
(24:18):
something that as a as a contentmechanism. And as a marketing
material, it's just becomingmore and more important as the
years go on.
Nels Jensen (24:27):
And we've done other episodes on this and so we
don't need to go into greatdetail but this morning I was on
a client call where one of theexperts asked Okay, so we're
talking about like how to selecta you know, what's the right
selection process for nozzle andtip for your spray gun
applications? And he said Well,shouldn't we just do a two
(24:49):
minute video that just showsthis and so yes, the answer is
both post about it and you andyou want a video too. And the
videos also like I said we'vewe've gone into great detail On
this elsewhere, but yeah, itcould be just a CAD drawing that
that 3d CAD drawing that rotatesaround while you describe the
the, you know, parts involved inthis or the part itself or, you
(25:12):
know it, it's it's just activemotion. We're visual learners.
The videos are great awarenesscontent.
Joey Strawn (25:21):
And video again is searched very well, if you want
more technical, nerdy reasons todo it, is people click on them.
And so Google and other searchengines seem to prioritize
video, if you don't believe me,go to Google type in a how to
and then fill in the blank,whatever it is, and see if some
videos aren't the top thingsthat pop up. So the fact that
(25:43):
you can answer those questionsand get to the top of the
searches quickly. And thenpeople are more apt to click on
video walkthroughs. It's just alot of good reasons to have that
type of awareness content outthere. And those marketing
materials handy when people wantand are just searching for them
without even knowing who you areyet. Let them find your
solutions before they find yourbrand name. All right, we're
(26:07):
diving into the third one. Now,the third one's kind of a catch
all, don't get Don't get mad atus guys, because there's a lot
of different ways to think ofthis third one. And essentially
what we've called it isvegetarians delight, tofu
downloads, this is what we'retalking about when we're talking
about something that's a littlebit bigger than a blog post, but
not an in depth industry study,it's something that would need
(26:30):
an email address, or you know,some sort of hand raise and form
submission to prepare and bedelivered to. So the, you know,
we're talking about checklists,or E guides, or you know, a
quick infographic or a kit, or atool, you know, that somebody
can use or put in their emailreally quick to unlock those
types of tofu top of funnel,download assets, high value
(26:53):
assets, some people may callthem.
Nels Jensen (26:56):
Yeah, and again, these are based on the questions
that people are asking, in fact,one popular list in this genre,
if you will, is just sort ofquestions you should be asking
before you invest in, fill inthe blank extra water. Exactly.
Yeah. And, and there's, there'scertainly, arguments to be made,
(27:17):
you know, that we can get intothe gated not gated aspect of
it, just because somebody givesyou an email doesn't mean you
should hound them right away,maybe that just goes into your
lead scoring and vaults them upfor the next conversation or you
can do something more passive interms of, you know, they're at
the awareness phase here, don'thammer them just because they
downloaded, you know, a, how isit that this is compliant? White
(27:40):
Paper, you know, right, you'reeducating people on compliance.
You're educating people oncapabilities. It's a nice merger
of that intersection I wastalking about at the beginning.
But yeah, but Right, justbecause it's a download, please,
folks, you know, use use your,your, your download, leads
(28:02):
carefully.
Joey Strawn (28:03):
Well, and here's an here's what I'm gonna say for
the awareness stage. And I knowpeople won't listen, but it's
okay, I'm going to tell you todo this anyway. So I can say I
told you so later. But tofudownloads for the awareness
stage, need to be more thananything else helpful. That
should be really a greatbreakdown of your products, they
should not be overly salesy. Itshould be something that you as
(28:26):
an individual, would yourself,save on your desktop and
reference again. So somethingthat they would want to use or
share. I mean, personally,there's a handful that we have,
like I, every year, I woulddownload an infographic of like
the best days to send emailsbased on statistics from the
previous 10 years or, you know,we'll have industry shutdown
(28:46):
calendars that will pull up andsee what periods of the year are
down for different industries ordifferent areas. And so those
types of things are really,really important for what I do
and for what we do as inboundmarketers, but think of those
types of things that would bevaluable for your customers,
could there be a one sheet orthing that they would save on
(29:08):
their desktop and open and lookat every single week, and then
see your brand name at thebottom? And then oh, they have a
problem they need to solve? Youknow what, I use XYZ Corp for
this other thing and they dothis, like we should look into
them. That those are the typesof downloads that we're really
thinking of is if it's nothelpful, and if it feels like
something that salesy probablyshouldn't be in the awareness
(29:31):
phase. Correct. All right.
Moving on, number four, numberfour is going to be a little
tip. Some people are going tocringe, they hear it. But number
four is super social media.
Don't like to say it because weas industrials and b2b
marketers. We're like a socialmedia. Come on, everyone's gonna
buy a $10 million stamping pressfrom Facebook. But awareness is
(29:56):
a different ballgame. We'retrying to make people aware of
what we do, and that we havesolutions. Yeah, honestly I'm
just gonna, it's ubiquitous atthis point with our lives, were
on it, everyone's on it.
Nels Jensen (30:10):
I'm just gonna offer my now overused, you know,
out of sight out of mind, youknow, it's this, remembering
that, you know, oh, seeing,seeing the occasional social
message about Mountain Dewreminds me that when I'm
thirsty, I could go get aMountain Dew, you know, because,
you know, it's just a way tokeep the brand on the radar
(30:31):
screen. And I'm, I'm I shouldn'tminimize and say it, it's just a
way, social is an avenue to keepthe brand alive for your
prospects and undecideds.
Joey Strawn (30:43):
Well, and this is another area we mentioned it
earlier is social media, thereare a handful of ways to
approach it when you're thinkingabout the awareness phase is
obviously you want some youknow, any blog posts that you're
writing or any content thatyou're creating, you want to be
able to share that through yourchannels, but also, you know,
Forbes articles you're readingor things that are industry
relevant and industry specific,and just putting them out there
(31:06):
for anyone who may be followingyou. It's not trying to generate
business, it's not trying to,you know, make sure that your
CEO can get on, you know, thenews, it's just about making
sure that there are things therethat anyone in your orbit could
benefit from. And then there'salso the layer of paid. We
mentioned this earlier, butsocial media and especially on
(31:28):
the awareness side of things,social media can be a valuable
tool, if you put 1000 or $2,000a month, just aside to growing
your, your audiences over acouple of months, you're going
to have a pretty good sizedaudience, that then the content
that you naturally share into itcan become more circulated, but
(31:50):
can become more shared. So thereis value in growing the
eyeballs. And media can be athird party way to do that it
can be a bolt on and anadditional cost that for the
time being, we're going to rollout this awareness campaign and
really get it people into ourorbit, and then the content that
we share, can, you know cyclethrough faster. So you know,
(32:12):
when we say social media as anawareness device, we're really
talking about it at that toplayer of content.
Nels Jensen (32:18):
Yeah, and then again, master the obvious
statement here and not to soundtoo lecturing, whatever. But
please be sure to use theplatforms appropriately, right?
Instagram, unless Instagram andLinkedIn should not have the
same format of post, or evennecessarily the same content
(32:40):
approach. So I, you know, Iunderstand that, oh, I can use
some tools to like, post all ofthis at once. And it's like,
yes, but, you know, social, ifanything has taught us to be
authentic with your audience.
And the audience's are slightlydifferent on the different
platforms. So please use yoursocial wisely.
Joey Strawn (33:02):
And if social, something that like you're like,
well, we just don't have thebandwidth to do that there are
partners out there that willhelp agencies can help be good
partners. And that too, theyusually have teams of people who
have the tools and expertisealready at play. So you know,
look into getting a partner tokind of grease those wheels, and
really understand what thatrhythm is, and then take it over
internally. Okay, the last one,this is the one that would
(33:26):
probably is probably going toinclude the largest amount of
effort, but it is just a greatawareness vehicle. And it's
something that within amarketing mix needs to be
included somewhere is webinars.
If you are a leader, and if youhave people that can speak about
your expertise and yourleadership, then get those
(33:46):
people out there. Now notice,we're not being specific, or at
least I'm not here with, youknow whether or not it's hosting
one yourself or getting to be aguest on a pre established one.
I say there's value in eitheror, obviously, the level of
effort is different. And from anawareness standpoint, it may be
it may be very valuable to finda show that caters to your very
(34:10):
niche audience with a host thatthey trust. And if you can get
on that show, then immediatelythe believability of what you're
saying goes up as well asthere's a pre established
audience baked in so there arebenefits to going either way.
Nels Jensen (34:28):
Yes, and if you do invest in hosting your own or,
you know, creating one with atrade publication partner, for
instance, to don't overlook thepossibility of using that as an
asset over and over again oreven really if you have access
(34:49):
to the recording to be able tochop it up and create
subsections and pieces, smallerpieces atomizing the content if
you will, that as you Youmentioned earlier higher degree
of difficulty higher degree ofresource allocation. But a
webinar can be a giant assetthat creates many, many smaller
(35:11):
assets.
Joey Strawn (35:11):
Well, and that's a good point is that because there
is a higher level of effort atthe beginning, it is an asset
that should be planned to usedbeing used on a future and
ongoing scale. So if you'regonna put the time in to build
the webinar content to build thedeck that goes along with it,
and have it recorded either viasomebody else or your own
(35:32):
methods, then you shoulddefinitely plan to have that if
it's evergreen content on yoursite for future download that
people could listen to the prerecorded one or included in
emails that go out to yournewsletter subscribers, and so
really think about ways to makethat investment worth that over
time. That's a great point. Now,it's because you don't want to
just be a one and done thing,unless it's supposed to be a one
(35:56):
and done thing. It's about like,a regulation is gonna pass next
week, and this webinar won't berelevant in a month. That's a
different situation.
Nels Jensen (36:05):
Yeah. And as you as you point out, it is a little
bit more work, or a lot morework depending upon. But again,
you know, awareness is a longterm play, it's not it as short
term play. And videos often docost more to produce than a blog
post, but they have shelf life,they have long tail that
awareness is a is a long game.
In many, many cases, and sotreat your investments
(36:31):
accordingly. Because it's, youknow, two years later, people
are still reading your mostpopular blog posts, right? Well,
and you can't look at it as atransactional investment.
Joey Strawn (36:44):
And we see that time and time again, is the you
know, the content that getsinvested over the content that
hits continues to hit over andover and over again, and becomes
consistent consistently driver.
You know, one of the things thatyou mentioned, and I don't want
people to not hear this, soplease, please, here this is,
this isn't ever, always oneffort. Awareness is something
(37:06):
that should never stop workingfor, for your customers, for
your clients and for youruniverse, because, and I forget
the exact number, but it'ssomething like eight to 16% of
your, your, of your buyinguniverse is in the market at any
one time. So at any one time,you just pick a day of the year,
(37:28):
there is only a small percentageof people that you even could
sell to, at that time, they justdon't need it, they're closed,
it's a shut down, their budgetisn't unlocked. So it's a very
small number. But what is alwayshappening is people are always
doing their jobs. And so if youcan slowly eke your way up in
(37:48):
their minds for when that eightto 16% happens, and they need a
solution, that you're one of thefour names that they think of
because then it's a 25% chancethat they'll pick you as opposed
to 1,000,000,001% chance theymay accidentally stumble on your
ad on Facebook at the righttime. And that's what the
(38:10):
awareness stage is building. Itreally is just setting all of
those landmines out into thefield so that people say I need
this and boom, you're there. Ineed this, boom, you're there.
How do I do this, boom, you'rethere. And you want to you want
to be covering that landscapewith your awareness so that
people find your content andthat people in that you're the
(38:33):
one answering their questions,before they even know what your
name is, you should be able toanswer their questions.
Nels Jensen (38:41):
So you've talked about we have talked about five
types of awareness marketingmaterials,
Joey Strawn (38:48):
You want to and I want to read us down the list
now.
Nels Jensen (38:51):
Yeah, so we're at number one, number one, blog
posts and articles. Right?
Foundational number two videovideo of all times, right,
number three, we're calling themtofu downloads, top of funnel
downloads, how basically helpfulhelpful, right, arming people
with helpful information, numberfour, social media, the ongoing
interactions with your with yourdaily audience, and whatever
(39:15):
that mix looks like for you.
It's good and different, right?
Number five would be webinar,you know, basically, a really
good opportunity to leveragenetworks and audiences,
Joey Strawn (39:27):
Teach some people something and then keep it for
later. Now, so this has beengreat. We we have now done two
of these stages. So we have theconsideration journey, we have
the awareness stage covered.
We're going to be knocking out acouple more as we go through. I
can't wait to get to thedecision phase episode, but I
think this has been really,really helpful and I hope that
people were paying attention,taking notes and jotting it down
(39:50):
but if anybody has any ideas orthings that they want us to talk
about that we didn't in thisepisode, always please feel free
to reach out To us, we love tohang out and talk with
industrial marketers. And youcan email us directly at podcast
at industrial marketer.com.
Speaking of industrialmarketer.com, if you haven't
(40:11):
subscribed to that website, goover there. Subscribe to the
newsletters get notifiedwhenever a new blog is updated.
Nelson's right in edit, we gotguest posters right now, there's
all sorts of good educationalcontent on there. And of course,
you know, subscribe to our show.
Have other people listened toour show. This is the community
for industrial marketers that weare building, we are talking and
(40:31):
we are learning and trudgingthrough this world together. So
we want to do it together withyou. Subscribe to the show,
subscribe to us on Facebook andInstagram and all those good
social places that we talkedabout. But now any parting words
for our faithful listenersbefore we wrap up our awareness
episode?
Nels Jensen (40:51):
We are Awareness Advocates, for sure.
Joey Strawn (40:55):
And we want you to be Awareness Advocates for your
brands.
Nels Jensen (40:59):
That's right. And again, this is yes, this is long
term investments that pay off inthe long term. So don't overlook
it. You know, it's, it's aworthy endeavor.
Joey Strawn (41:13):
I agree. All right now, let's go raise some
awareness. I'm on it. Let's doit.
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