The Manufacturing Marketer

Marketers often find themselves as the task masters behind company events: Trade shows, an open house, a plant tour or a customer appreciation party. And while there are times these events just need to happen, there are also times when there are opportunities to level up the experience. Enter today's guest: Chris Casey, founder and effectuator at CJC Works, an experiential marketing company based in Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Homepage Hero Horror! When people land on homepages to get acquainted with manufacturing companies, what are the mistakes these manufacturers make that weaken that initial impression? Nihal and Brendon talk about it.

Speaking at live events is a great way to harness the expertise of your engineers and product experts and present it at scale. However, too many companies try to turn these opportunities into a sales pitch and seriously undercut their effectiveness. So how do you do it right? That's what we'll tackle today.

How do you make content not just more compelling, interesting, and insightful, but also a delight to read? Rose Hansen, writer and Director of Accounts at Gorilla, is here to talk about it in this week's IMC Live.

Peyton and Nihal bring Mike Hill, General Manager at Big Rocks Engineering, back onto the podcast to talk about a question that arose during our last IMC: Live episode: What do you do when engineering is getting in the way of releasing marketing content? How can marketers and engineers work better together? Let's talk about it.

On this week's IMC Live, we talk about marketing by and for engineers with Mike Hill, General Manager and Product Development Expert at Big Rocks Engineering.

Brendon and Peyton dive back into leveraging gated pricing content as a call-to-action – and if we even should – with Dale "The Pricing Guy" Underwood of SafePrice.io. Revisit part one of Dale's conversation on IMC Live by listening to the previous episode here in your podcast player or watching the screen-share version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/TpwIDizrVkE

Dale Underwood joins Industrial Marketing Collective: Live to talk about his concept of pricing curiosity -- and exactly how it can drive conversions.

You may have caught our IMC Live episode with James Boeckmann, Content Director here at Gorilla and a dear friend. He talked about longform content for short attention spans, and it turned into a conversation that kind of led into some of the ways our thinking on content has evolved over time. Time to dig deeper.

We're joined by Gorilla 76 Content Director James Boeckmann to talk us through longform content's role in marketing.

Industrial Marketing Summit organizer and Gorilla 76 Marketing Director, Peyton Warren, sits down with Aren to discuss favorite moments and takeaways from the Industrial Marketing Summit in Austin this past February.

Today we've got Grace Halverson, Senior Writer here at Gorilla 76 and a clean up expert – which is great because we're talking about the trendy topic of Spring Cleaning marketing edition: refreshing content, cleaning up your CRM, and focusing on tactics with impact.

Allen Fennewald from Gorilla 76 asks questions from the floor of MAMstrong to talk all things trade show with marketers.

This week we're joined by content creating maverick, Jordan Yates, to talk about not the marketing, but the marketer. We all want to advance our careers – obviously you are here listening to this – but we don't often talk about what that advancement truly looks like. So enter Jordan! She's a Technical Solutions Manager at Noble Corporation and the creator of Jordan Yates Marketing, where she leverages her engineering background helping industrial businesses to create fun and relatable technical content, train their teams on how to use LinkedIn effectively, and manage their Business LinkedIn profiles. Oh and she has a YouTube channel and a podcast. So you could say she keeps a little busy.

This week we're joined by Schuyler Van Sickle, a serial entrepreneur and the Founder & CEO of 3MERA, a company dedicated to empowering US manufacturers through quote un-quote “digital transformation” – Digital Transformation sure is a buzzword lately isn't it folks?! We'll we're excited to unpack it with Schuyler!

Today, we're joined by David Peterson, Director of Engineering Content at Control.com, which is the largest online community of Automation & Control Engineers. Control.com, a community from EETech, is also a sponsor for the Industrial Marketing Summit, so we're super excited to talk with them today and see them down in Austin next week! David has done a lot of research on what engineers read/don't read, how to best convey information to them and what their preferred sources of critical information are. We're going to dig into how you can tailor your messaging to engineers so it lines up with what they want (and need) to hear.

This week's topic is about what sometimes feels like speaking a foreign language: Creating technical content with the help of engineers. We've got two experts joining us to translate. TREW Marketing Senior Content Strategist Jamie Tokarz and Sr. Brand and Content Strategist Morgan Norris.

Today, we're talking about how to audit your current marketing activities. Is it worth it to continue doing them in 2025? If not, how do you justify that to leadership? Especially if it's something “we've always done." We're going to talk through a framework for assessing your current marketing mix with a mix of qualitative and quantitative factors to consider.

Today, we're going to dig a little deeper into the conversation about emails we had last week, on Industrial Marketing Collective: Live. We're going to get a little bit more tactical here. What goes into a good-looking email that gets clicks? Should you use a template, or plain text? And how should you handle your marketing email workflow? We've brought TJ Sheridan, designer here at Gorilla, to join the conversation.

Email nurture campaigns are critical for keeping your brand top-of-mind with your audience, delivering personalized content that resonates, and establishing trust by sharing value-driven insights. Whether you're nurturing leads, strengthening relationships with existing customers, or positioning your company as an industry leader, email offers an opportunity to connect on a deeper level. Today, we'll explore the why and how behind successful nurture campaigns, from audience segmentation and content strategies to measuring ROI and keeping your emails engaging.

Aren and Nihal talk through lessons learned in 2024 and how they're planning on approaching industrial marketing in 2025.

It's tradition. For 3 years running now we've saved the final show of the year to bring a big ol' troop of Gorillas together for a special Ask Me Anything episode.

Today, we're joined by Randall Zaitz, Digital Creative Director at Gorilla 76, and Rui Huang, Lead Developer here at Gorilla, to talk about the move toward block-based websites in Wordpress. Why are people getting excited about it? And what does it mean for the future of your site?

Today, we're talking about how to make an impact with marketing at a global company. So, to help us solve this puzzle we're welcoming Karlaa Gregory and Brittany McCall from Sumitomo Drive Technologies.

With Thanksgiving cutting into our normal recording schedule, we thought we'd provide you all with a replay of an IMC Live episode from 2023. We are going to be talking about the creme de le creme of marketing: social proof. Peyton, Brendon and Allen get together to talk about why social proof is powerful in the framework of demand gen, and how it can be done right.

A lot of us have heard about the big manufacturing trade shows like The International Manufacturing Technology Show and FABTECH. Those big trade shows can provide a lot of opportunities. But for many of us, a smaller mid-sized trade show could offer higher quality opportunities, if you do it right. As we know when it comes to high-quality leads, sometimes you can do a lot with a little. So, to help us better understand the magic of the mid-sized tradeshow, we're happy to be joined by Andrew LeGrand, industrial marketer at the Missouri Association of Manufacturers, aka MAM.

Today, we're joined by our marketing designer TJ Sheridan to talk about how to build a strong visual brand as a marketing team without a full time designer. Branding can feel pretty daunting. What elements make up a strong visual brand? How do you know if you need to update your branding or not? What can you do yourself and what should you try to outsource?

Today, we're tackling a topic that comes up in industrial marketing a lot: How do I get my SMEs to post more on LinkedIn and become industry thought leaders? Harnessing the power of organic LinkedIn from individual profiles has a lot of opportunity. After all, people want to follow people, not companies - and we know this can have a major impact on business results. We're joined by Rich Ward of Acromat to share his story of building an organic, thought leadership-based strategy on LinkedIn - including results!

We've brought Rich Ward, Marketing Manager at AcroMat, on to talk all things Reddit. He's been using the platform to help his company bring in new leads and up their marketing game, and he's been kind enough to share what he's learned with us today. Let's get into it.

You know them, you sometimes love them – they're emails. Aren and Nihal dig into what makes for compelling emails that can snag you conversions. And talk about how we approach email here at Gorilla 76.

Sometimes design creative has to get a little more creative. If you don't have an ideal set of design assets, how do you build compelling design creative? Today, we're joined by our own Marketing Designer TJ Sheridan to talk about how to use the resources at your disposal to make unique ads and overcome design barriers.

Today, we're drawing on Allen's study of conversion writing techniques to get to the root of what he and others have called ambiguity aversion, as well as some other psychological phenomena that can really help elevate your messaging. Let's dig in.

Today, dear industrial marketers, we're talking about… G-g-g-Goooogllleee. From the changes that have been happening on the pay-per-click platform to how we've been modifying our own tactics, Google Ads has kept us on our toes! Joining Allen and Peyton to hash through it all, we've got our own Senior Performance Marketer Kevin McClary and Performance Marketer Nick Robinson.

You may have caught our episode with Katie Klaus from Broaster Company about planning your 2025 marketing budget. A lot of that conversation tied back to the importance of knowing your company goals and budgeting for the marketing activities that are most going to help you achieve those goals. Sounds a lot like making a marketing plan, right? That's exactly why we asked Katie back on the show to talk more in depth about creating a marketing plan from a strategic perspective.

It's the age old question: “How can sales and marketing work better together?” Particularly when it comes to sales enablement. Marketing doesn't want to be a brochure-making factory, and sales doesn't want to be left high and dry without the materials they need. Where's the balance? Today, we're joined by a special guest with a unique perspective, Luke Wittenbraker, marketing and sales director at Mactech, to talk about how to better enable your sales team.

Today, we're tackling an issue that has surely been a source of frustration for anyone that's run paid digital advertising - attribution. All the data available in digital channels can lead us to believe that attribution should be easy. But behavior online and the impact of paid channels is much more complex than click and convert. So how do you talk about this with leadership and show the impact of paid channels? That's what we're here to talk about.

Today, we're joined by our own Katie Klaus from Broaster Company to talk about planning your 2025 marketing budget. Listen in to see how you can start your 2025 off right.

Developing your company leadership into compelling thought leaders in the industrial space? Depending on your leadership, that could be a tall order. But with the help of our guest, Brianna Langely Henderson from Bailey International, we'll be unpacking all things media — from establishing relationships with journalists to coaching your leadership on handling tough questions.

If you want to run a revenue focused marketing program, you want to make sure your leads actually get quoted and worked by your sales team. That can't happen if your lead hand off process is messy or confusing. In this episode, we're joined by Gorilla 76 Strategy Director, Grace Wright, to talk about managing better website lead handoffs.

If you tuned in to last week's episode, you'll remember our guest, CEO of Fire and Spark, Dale Bertrand. We talked about how AI is changing the SEO game for industrial marketers. Google's introduction of AI summaries is certainly going to have an impact in 2025 and beyond, and in this episode we're getting tactical about how you can adapt your content playbook to make the most of AI overviews.

Today, we have AI and SEO researcher Dale Bertrand to talk to us about how to level up your SEO game in the AI age. Dale is the founder and CEO of Fire & Spark, which helps people transform their SEO content into high-ROI assets.

You may have caught Mary Keough during her recent appearance on Industrial Marketing Live. And today, she's back on the podcast to talk more about leveling up your product pages. To help us get more tactical, we've also brought Allen Fennewald back on to talk more about the copy that really brings these pages to life.

Today, Mary Keough is in the house! And she's talking product pages. Mary is fresh off a big website project for CoLab and is here to share her knowledge.

We're talking trade shows, folks! How do you make your booth more engaging so you can draw in more visitors? But how do you balance flashy gimmicks that get people in the booth with true value adds and education? Trade show pro, Emily Ting, is here to talk shop.

Today, we're joined by a very special guest - Brendon Forrest! You probably remember Brendon from The Manufacturing Marketer and Industrial Marketing Live. He's a senior strategist here at Gorilla 76, but he's also in the military and is currently on leave serving our country. Brendon is keeping his marketing skills sharp though! He's been doing some “side hustles” in his free time while deployed. That's our topic for today! Whether you're volunteering, freelancing, or building your own personal brand - how can marketing side hustles help you excel in your career? Resources from Brendon: Podcasts: Perpetual Traffic: https://perpetualtraffic.com/ April Dunford: https://www.positioning.show/ Purposeful Marketing Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-purposeful-marketing-podcast/id1633312083 Youtube: Aaron Young: https://www.youtube.com/c/AaronYoungGoogleAds Wes McDowell: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMq1R1LgS04lIKdpLh_OS1w

Today, we're joined by Gorilla's Digital Creative Director, Randall Zaitz, to talk about a topic fresh on everyone's minds - AI. More specifically, how AI is being used in design and creative content. What's working? What's not? What should marketers know before using these tools?

Today, we're joined by a special guest, Sami Birch, to talk about career growth for marketers. Sami has had a few different roles within industrial marketing (and outside of it) from designer, to CRM admin, to project manager. Now, Sami is the Director of Marketing and Communications for Mission Design & Automation.

You might've caught our Industrial Marketing Live with Jenny Wang and Allen Fennewald a few weeks ago. And this week, they're joining us again on the pod to get deeper into the weeds on paid social creative. We'll get into some more principles for effective paid social content. Let's dive in.

Today, we're joined by special guest Todd Imming, Chief Marketing Officer of The Korte Company, and he's here to talk about how to stay true to your brand while working with agencies.

This week, we're talking all things branding and rebranding. What makes it important for industrial companies? How should marketers start thinking about it? And what does the future of branding in the industrial space look like? Here to help us map out the territory is a special guest, Paul Kiesche from Aviate Creative.

A lot of us are taking previous marketing experience and trying to translate it into the B2B industrial sector. And a lot of us are trying to grow our teams, and may be hiring for or managing some more entry level marketing roles. And that's who today's episode is really for: marketing managers who are starting to build out their teams. We're here to unpack this topic with special guest, Julian Schaaf of Industrial Growth.