1347: A 3-Part Framework for Customer Listening w/ MJ Peters

WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.040 --> 00:00:07.990 Welcome back to be to be growth. I'm Logan lyles with sweet fish media. 2 00:00:08.029 --> 00:00:11.669 I'm joined today by Mj Peters. She's the VP of marketing over at 3 00:00:11.710 --> 00:00:14.310 fire trace. MJ, welcome to the show. How are you today? 4 00:00:14.310 --> 00:00:17.429 I'm great. Thank you for having me. Awesome, MJ. We love 5 00:00:17.469 --> 00:00:20.870 to get to know our listeners a little bit more and it's a hot debate 6 00:00:20.949 --> 00:00:24.940 here over at sweetfish, and I think this tells a lot about a person. 7 00:00:24.980 --> 00:00:28.260 Are you team coke or team Pepsi? MJ? Oh I don't really 8 00:00:28.260 --> 00:00:31.859 drink coke or Pepsi that often, but when I do I usually drink coke. 9 00:00:32.179 --> 00:00:35.500 Gotcha. Are you a coffee drinker or no? No coffee, no 10 00:00:35.619 --> 00:00:39.649 caffeine. Yeah, I'm a coffee drinker and my parents actually are part owners 11 00:00:39.689 --> 00:00:44.009 of a coffee roastary up in Colorado, so I have become a coffee SNOB. 12 00:00:44.049 --> 00:00:47.369 I guess you could say Nice, Nice. I'm not a coffee SNOB. 13 00:00:47.450 --> 00:00:51.679 I'll take anything with caffeine. I actually the antithesis to that. I 14 00:00:51.759 --> 00:00:55.000 think some of the best fast food coffee out there is actually McDonald's. I 15 00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:58.359 like that. The only one I don't like really is Chick Fila, although 16 00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:00.600 chickflate touches everything else and it turns to gold. So we'll give him a 17 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:03.750 pass on that. I'll never eating that chick fil a in my life. 18 00:01:03.950 --> 00:01:07.230 Oh my goodness, it will change your life all right. So we now 19 00:01:07.310 --> 00:01:10.870 that we've got that out of the way, we've understand now we know some 20 00:01:11.030 --> 00:01:14.150 things. We've got to get MJ to Chick Fil A. I love the 21 00:01:14.189 --> 00:01:17.390 connection to Colorado. I'm out here in Colorado Springs, so I love that. 22 00:01:17.750 --> 00:01:19.500 But today, Mj, we're going to be talking about how to market 23 00:01:19.620 --> 00:01:23.819 to customers that you have nothing in common with, and I think this is 24 00:01:23.019 --> 00:01:27.140 really important, because not everybody's like the team here at sweetfish, where we 25 00:01:27.219 --> 00:01:30.900 market to other marketers are folks that are, you know, marketing for an 26 00:01:30.900 --> 00:01:36.890 account based marketing platform or a marketing automation system, and if you have gone 27 00:01:36.930 --> 00:01:41.329 through different iterations in your career, you've probably had times where you're marketing to 28 00:01:41.450 --> 00:01:45.049 folks who are very similar to you and therefore some things come very, very 29 00:01:45.090 --> 00:01:48.239 easily. But when that's not the case, it can be a rude awakening. 30 00:01:48.359 --> 00:01:51.879 What's what's been this situation? What has kind of led you to this 31 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:55.560 being a point of passion for you that you want to share with others in 32 00:01:55.680 --> 00:01:57.760 your career so far. M J. Yeah, so I am in the 33 00:01:57.799 --> 00:02:02.109 manufacturing industry, always have been, and first of all, I am a 34 00:02:02.310 --> 00:02:07.629 woman in manufacturing, which makes me part of the minority. It's a male 35 00:02:07.750 --> 00:02:12.949 dominated field and I'm also on the younger side. So it's always this debate 36 00:02:13.030 --> 00:02:17.580 in tech that people over forty are super underrepresented. It's the opposite of manufacturings. 37 00:02:17.620 --> 00:02:23.580 People over forty are absolutely the majority. So I'm oftentimes marketing to people 38 00:02:23.939 --> 00:02:27.979 that I don't have a tone in common with outside of work, and I 39 00:02:28.139 --> 00:02:31.729 think it's really important to talk about developing the ability to market to people that 40 00:02:32.050 --> 00:02:36.210 you don't share a lot in common with as a skill, developing that as 41 00:02:36.250 --> 00:02:40.090 a skill, because if you can develop that as a skill then it allows 42 00:02:40.129 --> 00:02:46.719 us to create opportunities in industries for people who don't look like the industry norm, 43 00:02:46.960 --> 00:02:51.120 and that gets new perspectives, new opinions into those industries. And then 44 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:54.120 the flip side of that is we need to get more people into certain industries. 45 00:02:54.159 --> 00:02:58.949 So every industry I've ever worked in has a young people problem, and 46 00:02:59.150 --> 00:03:04.509 I've worked in fire safety, I've worked in water quality and there's this problem 47 00:03:04.550 --> 00:03:07.509 of people are retiring and there's nobody in the pipeline to replace them. And 48 00:03:07.669 --> 00:03:10.430 I don't know about you, but if, if we run out of people 49 00:03:10.430 --> 00:03:14.419 working on water quality, that seems like a really big problem. So that 50 00:03:14.539 --> 00:03:16.060 sounds like a problem to me. I would not like that. Now we 51 00:03:16.139 --> 00:03:20.860 need, yeah, we need to get people interested and give them opportunities to 52 00:03:20.900 --> 00:03:23.460 be in these industries, because there's a lot of opportunity to create really good 53 00:03:23.460 --> 00:03:28.330 change. Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's something that micro has talked a 54 00:03:28.370 --> 00:03:32.770 lot about in in America in different trades where there is just a shortage of 55 00:03:34.210 --> 00:03:38.210 talent coming through the pipeline that are interested in certain trades. So you make, 56 00:03:38.490 --> 00:03:42.080 you make a really good point about the broader impact that taking on this 57 00:03:42.199 --> 00:03:46.479 mindset and taking on this sort of learning can can impact not only yourself but 58 00:03:46.680 --> 00:03:52.080 more broadly society and different industries that you're working in. I will say you 59 00:03:52.159 --> 00:03:54.909 know, for anyone listening to this selfishly, it's going to help you in 60 00:03:55.069 --> 00:03:59.509 your career. You know you're not just going to be pigeonholed as that marketer 61 00:03:59.669 --> 00:04:02.349 who can market to sales or who can market to marketing, because if you 62 00:04:02.430 --> 00:04:06.750 can say hey, I have a framework to be able to help me understand 63 00:04:08.069 --> 00:04:13.539 any demographic, any industry, any buyer persona, and then do good marketing 64 00:04:13.620 --> 00:04:15.819 after I've done that. But here I can show you how I've done this 65 00:04:15.939 --> 00:04:19.819 in three separate industries. Man, that seems like a pretty good career hack, 66 00:04:19.860 --> 00:04:23.740 if I do say so myself. So I think you know, there's 67 00:04:23.779 --> 00:04:27.449 benefits on both sides. And speaking of a framework, you've got a three 68 00:04:27.569 --> 00:04:30.089 part framework to really doing this. Tell us at a high level, what 69 00:04:30.209 --> 00:04:32.730 are the three parts of it and then we'll dig into where you start, 70 00:04:32.769 --> 00:04:39.439 Mj. Sure. So basically, the three ways that I do customer listening, 71 00:04:39.519 --> 00:04:43.759 which is what I would call this broad category, are deliberate customer listening, 72 00:04:43.839 --> 00:04:46.839 where you're either researching new customers or a new segment for the first time, 73 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:53.269 or doing a sprint, a regular cadence where you build customer listening into 74 00:04:53.550 --> 00:04:58.470 your processes every day, and then experimentation, which is when you take the 75 00:04:58.589 --> 00:05:01.709 insights that you've gotten from your research or your regular cadence and you apply them 76 00:05:01.870 --> 00:05:05.509 to get additional feedback and create a feedback loop. Makes Sense to me. 77 00:05:05.589 --> 00:05:10.540 Anytime we can create a continuous feedback loop, the better off. We're going 78 00:05:10.540 --> 00:05:13.019 to be, because, if two thousand and twenty has taught us anything, 79 00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:16.300 things change, and things change very quickly and things change faster than we think 80 00:05:16.300 --> 00:05:19.500 they're going to change. All Right, I won't beliebor that point too much. 81 00:05:19.500 --> 00:05:23.610 Let's go to step number one in your framework, Mj, when you 82 00:05:23.730 --> 00:05:28.089 and I were talking offline, you called this an intimacy sprint. This deliberate 83 00:05:28.170 --> 00:05:31.329 upfront research to get very, very close to the customer. You know if 84 00:05:31.370 --> 00:05:34.879 you're in an early stage company or you're a new marketer and it to a 85 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:39.439 company or two, to an industry. Tell us a little bit about this 86 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:42.600 one. Why do you call it an intimacy sprint and what does it look 87 00:05:42.600 --> 00:05:46.959 like? Where should people start? I like the term sprint because it challenges 88 00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:50.389 you to get a lot done in a very short period of time and I 89 00:05:50.509 --> 00:05:56.189 think a lot of things in marketing, and especially strategic marketing, are kind 90 00:05:56.230 --> 00:05:59.870 of ambiguous, which makes it easy to take a really long time to do 91 00:06:00.069 --> 00:06:03.379 them. So if you give yourself a time bound project and say we're going 92 00:06:03.420 --> 00:06:06.259 to do an intimacy sprint and we're going to learn as much as we possibly 93 00:06:06.339 --> 00:06:11.180 Gan about our customers in ten weeks, then you find that at the end 94 00:06:11.180 --> 00:06:13.980 of those ten weeks you have learned a lot about your customers. Gives you 95 00:06:14.060 --> 00:06:15.819 no excuse to put it off. So I like the term sprint because it 96 00:06:15.939 --> 00:06:20.730 challenges you to move fast. When I'm doing a customer intimacy sprint or when 97 00:06:20.730 --> 00:06:26.529 we're doing one as a team, we use something that is called the scientific 98 00:06:26.649 --> 00:06:31.250 method, and I think this was originally coined by Steve Blank in the book 99 00:06:31.410 --> 00:06:38.600 the four steps to Epiphany. And basically you call it the scientific method because 100 00:06:38.600 --> 00:06:43.240 you're using a hypothesis. So I call it a customer hypothesis, and you 101 00:06:43.519 --> 00:06:47.430 create a hypothesis of who is it that we're trying to sell to, what 102 00:06:47.629 --> 00:06:50.310 are we going to learn about them and what are we going to do with 103 00:06:50.470 --> 00:06:55.269 that information? And so you write down that before every single interview that you 104 00:06:55.389 --> 00:06:59.670 have and you in in order to create your customer hypothesis, you you also 105 00:06:59.709 --> 00:07:01.740 want to have an idea of who you think the customer is in a lot 106 00:07:01.860 --> 00:07:05.540 of detail. Right, create a customer persona that has a lot of detail. 107 00:07:05.939 --> 00:07:10.300 And what problem is it that you're going to try to solve and what's 108 00:07:10.339 --> 00:07:13.180 the impact on them in their daytoday? So you know the customer, their 109 00:07:13.220 --> 00:07:16.649 problem and what kind of solution you want to make available to them. So 110 00:07:16.889 --> 00:07:20.370 what does the solution look like? Customer Problem Solution? And then, once 111 00:07:20.490 --> 00:07:25.449 you have that hypothesis, that allows you to build your hypothesis for every individual 112 00:07:25.930 --> 00:07:29.370 customer conversation, which is the first piece of that that I explained, where 113 00:07:29.370 --> 00:07:31.600 you are writing down who is it I'm talking to, what am I going 114 00:07:31.639 --> 00:07:34.759 to find out and how am I going to use that information? One of 115 00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:38.959 the questions I think some listeners might be asking in their head right now. 116 00:07:39.079 --> 00:07:42.920 In Jay's I love this idea, but I'm not sure how to execute it 117 00:07:43.079 --> 00:07:46.790 quickly and if I want to get to the end of this ten weeks brind 118 00:07:46.870 --> 00:07:49.709 and having accomplished something. But I like what you said about having a deadline. 119 00:07:49.709 --> 00:07:51.949 Even if you get to the end of that and you've had that deadline 120 00:07:51.990 --> 00:07:57.110 in mind, you probably accomplish more more quickly just by having it, even 121 00:07:57.149 --> 00:08:00.180 if you fall short. So I want to say that about what you mentioned 122 00:08:00.220 --> 00:08:03.779 earlier. But for folks listening and saying I'm not sure how to run this 123 00:08:03.899 --> 00:08:07.300 outreach, I'm not sure how to effectively. Am I going to get people's 124 00:08:07.339 --> 00:08:09.139 time? You know, when our director of audience growth. Dan Sanchez joined 125 00:08:09.180 --> 00:08:13.970 sweetish he wanted to do some customer causing one to press in, and one 126 00:08:13.009 --> 00:08:16.569 of his first questions was how do I make this valuable for them, so 127 00:08:16.649 --> 00:08:20.050 I'm not just extracting value and saying, Hey, I need more of your 128 00:08:20.089 --> 00:08:24.410 time. You're already paying us. Give us more of your time. Any 129 00:08:24.610 --> 00:08:28.040 thoughts on making this appealing for the customers doing it effectively getting them to say 130 00:08:28.079 --> 00:08:33.679 yes? Yeah, for sure. First of all, it's really important to 131 00:08:33.759 --> 00:08:37.600 recognize that you are asking for somebody's time and you so if you can add 132 00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:43.149 value to them, then by sharing maybe the insights that you've gotten through all 133 00:08:43.269 --> 00:08:48.269 your other customer meetings and talking to people like them, then you can play 134 00:08:48.309 --> 00:08:52.269 that back to them and that's always a good way to add value. However, 135 00:08:52.309 --> 00:08:56.179 if you are basically asking to make a withdrawal, you want it to 136 00:08:56.299 --> 00:08:58.259 be a small withdrawal. Right, you should. I always say in my 137 00:08:58.379 --> 00:09:01.580 emails when I'm asking for a customer meeting, I will not take up more 138 00:09:01.659 --> 00:09:05.659 than twenty minutes of your time, and I do not take up or than 139 00:09:05.700 --> 00:09:09.539 twenty minutes of the time. And actually the person who taught me pretty much 140 00:09:09.539 --> 00:09:13.049 everything I know about customer listening. When he goes and does a customer meeting 141 00:09:13.049 --> 00:09:18.649 himself, he brings a little red clock and he puts it on the table 142 00:09:18.929 --> 00:09:20.970 and he says I will not take up more than twenty minutes of your time, 143 00:09:22.250 --> 00:09:24.600 and the reason he uses a clock is because it's kind of rude sometimes 144 00:09:24.679 --> 00:09:28.879 to look at your phone for the time, so he uses a real clock 145 00:09:28.960 --> 00:09:31.120 and he just make sure that he never goes over and you'd be surprised how 146 00:09:31.120 --> 00:09:35.720 much information you can get in just twenty minutes. Yeah, absolutely. I 147 00:09:35.879 --> 00:09:37.909 had a sales up that I worked with at one point and that was actually 148 00:09:39.029 --> 00:09:41.309 part of his pitch to get in person and he'd say, you know, 149 00:09:41.429 --> 00:09:45.789 I will only take up twenty minutes of your time and when I get there 150 00:09:45.830 --> 00:09:48.750 I will take my watch off, I will set it on on the table 151 00:09:48.149 --> 00:09:52.350 and at the twenty minutes you we can either be done, you can say 152 00:09:52.350 --> 00:09:54.299 hey, I want to I want to talk more or whatever the case is, 153 00:09:54.539 --> 00:09:58.500 but I will actually stick to it and I will give this visual que 154 00:09:58.659 --> 00:10:01.779 to both of us to make sure that I follow through on that commitment. 155 00:10:01.820 --> 00:10:05.100 So I love that in this context as well. I'll anymore on on reaching 156 00:10:05.179 --> 00:10:09.370 out, or do you should we transition now, Mj, to step number 157 00:10:09.370 --> 00:10:13.850 two, which is that that regular cadence of customer feedback and customer listening? 158 00:10:13.889 --> 00:10:16.690 Yeah, I mean the other two things I would share is, first of 159 00:10:16.730 --> 00:10:20.330 all, just breach out to a lot of people, because people will say 160 00:10:20.409 --> 00:10:22.159 no, they don't want they don't have time, they don't want to spend 161 00:10:22.159 --> 00:10:26.919 their time that way, and that's fine. I probably say no to that 162 00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:28.559 sometimes as well. I try to say yes as much as I can if 163 00:10:28.600 --> 00:10:33.080 it is for informational purposes and it since you're a marketer and you can get 164 00:10:33.080 --> 00:10:37.110 away with it, you can always put in the body of the email I'm 165 00:10:37.149 --> 00:10:39.309 not trying to sell you something, as long as that's true, and sometimes 166 00:10:39.350 --> 00:10:43.509 it gets you a yes. I love that. That's actually one of my 167 00:10:43.629 --> 00:10:46.830 pet peeves when salespeople say they're trying to get a discovery call and say I'm 168 00:10:46.870 --> 00:10:50.899 not trying to sell you something. So only use that when it's actually true, 169 00:10:52.019 --> 00:10:54.659 but if it is, use it to your advantage. I love that 170 00:10:54.019 --> 00:10:58.019 all right, MJ. So you we talked about the intimacy sprint, that 171 00:10:58.340 --> 00:11:03.490 deliberate upfront research in a very narrow point of time to get as deep as 172 00:11:03.529 --> 00:11:09.330 you can with current customer basis and in really understand the demographic that you're serving. 173 00:11:09.730 --> 00:11:15.250 Number two is still research, but it's more in an ongoing, regular 174 00:11:15.370 --> 00:11:18.960 cadence sort of way. What do you suggest folks think about here in step 175 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:22.559 number two at this framework? Yeah, so you can't always be doing a 176 00:11:22.639 --> 00:11:26.440 sprint. That's why it's called a sprint it it tires you out quickly. 177 00:11:26.480 --> 00:11:31.879 Right. So I think it's it's really good for marketing teams to find a 178 00:11:31.960 --> 00:11:35.909 way to build in an opportunity to capture the voice of the customer in there 179 00:11:35.029 --> 00:11:39.470 everyday routine. And so the way I do this personally at fire trace is 180 00:11:39.629 --> 00:11:43.950 I read every single contact form and every single request for quote form that curling 181 00:11:45.269 --> 00:11:48.899 into our website. Yeah, so we were, again, not a huge 182 00:11:48.019 --> 00:11:54.580 company. So this is probably five to six new contact forms every morning that 183 00:11:54.659 --> 00:11:56.980 I'll go to. So I'll wake up first thing in the morning, log 184 00:11:58.139 --> 00:12:01.649 into hub spot, I will see the five or six new contacts that are 185 00:12:01.649 --> 00:12:05.250 appearing at the top of my contact list and hub spot and then I will 186 00:12:05.250 --> 00:12:09.769 go in there and I will read the contact form that they submitted and if 187 00:12:09.210 --> 00:12:13.450 something they said was particularly interesting to me, then I'll dig a little deeper 188 00:12:13.570 --> 00:12:16.639 and look at every page they looked at and kind of what they were researching 189 00:12:16.679 --> 00:12:22.120 before they decided to reach out. And that probably takes me less than five 190 00:12:22.200 --> 00:12:26.360 minutes to do every day, certainly less than ten, but it allows me 191 00:12:26.519 --> 00:12:30.750 to just in the back of my mind, have a grasp on what kinds 192 00:12:30.750 --> 00:12:33.350 of things are people saying that they picked up from our messaging? What are 193 00:12:33.389 --> 00:12:39.110 the pages that people look at before they convert? What kinds of leads are 194 00:12:39.110 --> 00:12:43.309 we getting based on the sources or the advertising that we're doing? And over 195 00:12:43.509 --> 00:12:48.539 time that becomes a hugely powerful source of data and you can get that source 196 00:12:48.539 --> 00:12:52.139 of data kind of embedded into your brain with an investment of just five minutes 197 00:12:52.179 --> 00:12:56.019 of your day. I love that regular cadence and how you start your day 198 00:12:56.100 --> 00:13:00.009 with that to kind of reorientate. The Nice thing about doing that first thing 199 00:13:00.009 --> 00:13:01.490 in the morning. I just kind of thought of MJ, is the rest 200 00:13:01.490 --> 00:13:05.769 of your day you're working on in campaign or you're working on email, are 201 00:13:05.769 --> 00:13:09.330 you're directing your team on a new content channel you guys are trying out or 202 00:13:09.649 --> 00:13:15.559 you're reviewing add creative if you have those comments from actual customers in your brain 203 00:13:15.679 --> 00:13:20.360 to start the day it's like it infuses the rest of what you're doing throughout 204 00:13:20.360 --> 00:13:22.679 the day with the voice of the customer because you took time to pause and 205 00:13:24.080 --> 00:13:28.110 listen to the customer. So I think at whatever scale that you can do 206 00:13:28.269 --> 00:13:31.710 that, it's definitely a good practice. You mentioned there's some of the quantitative 207 00:13:31.710 --> 00:13:35.549 things that you're looking at. I'm sure what sort of companies they come from, 208 00:13:35.549 --> 00:13:39.070 lead score, you know, what pages their viewing, all that sort 209 00:13:39.110 --> 00:13:43.139 of stuff. is kind of the quantitative metrics that you're looking at qualitatively when 210 00:13:43.139 --> 00:13:48.539 you're reading those contact forms. Are there's some certain things that you've got your 211 00:13:48.580 --> 00:13:52.700 radar up forward to seem I seeing some common themes or how do you kind 212 00:13:52.740 --> 00:13:56.769 of look at that qualitatively as you read those contact form submissions? Yeah, 213 00:13:56.889 --> 00:14:03.570 so this plays really strongly into messaging and I'll give you two examples of that. 214 00:14:03.049 --> 00:14:07.929 The first one is what do they talk about when they're explaining why they're 215 00:14:07.929 --> 00:14:13.159 reaching out to you? And we market our product to machine shops, so 216 00:14:13.279 --> 00:14:16.639 they're doing automatic metal cutting more or less, and one of the things we 217 00:14:16.799 --> 00:14:22.320 realized early on in one of our customers sprints is the main reason that somebody 218 00:14:22.360 --> 00:14:24.950 would buy our product is if the coolant they're using in their metal cutting is 219 00:14:24.990 --> 00:14:28.470 an oil based coolant and not a water based coolant. So I leaned in 220 00:14:28.830 --> 00:14:33.590 super heavy on that in all of our marketing materials. Your risk is higher 221 00:14:33.629 --> 00:14:37.740 if you're using an oil based coolant. We created auxiliary content about benefits and 222 00:14:37.820 --> 00:14:43.580 drawbacks of oil based coolants and after several months of doing this and putting that 223 00:14:43.659 --> 00:14:46.500 message out into the market place, people started saying in the contact form, 224 00:14:46.580 --> 00:14:50.100 hello, I'd like a quote for this kind of machine and I'm running an 225 00:14:50.139 --> 00:14:54.690 oil based cooling whereas before they wouldn't mention that they were running an oil based 226 00:14:54.730 --> 00:14:56.450 coolant. So it becomes clear to me that, Oh, you've read some 227 00:14:56.610 --> 00:15:03.009 of our marketing messaging. And then the other example is I noticed actually in 228 00:15:03.289 --> 00:15:07.679 Google search console that one of the terms driving traffic to our site is self 229 00:15:07.720 --> 00:15:13.519 contained fire suppression system. And I would never describe our fire supression system as 230 00:15:13.559 --> 00:15:16.480 self contained. It is self contained. You don't need to plug it in, 231 00:15:16.639 --> 00:15:18.840 you don't need a battery, don't need a water source, but that's 232 00:15:18.879 --> 00:15:22.629 not the term I would use to describe it. But people were using the 233 00:15:22.710 --> 00:15:26.350 term self contained and I noticed that they were using the term self contained in 234 00:15:26.470 --> 00:15:31.710 their form submissions as well, and so this is the language of the customer. 235 00:15:31.830 --> 00:15:35.820 Now it's prominently on our home page in the benefits section, self contained, 236 00:15:35.220 --> 00:15:39.500 and those are really great examples, Mj, and I think that's the 237 00:15:39.580 --> 00:15:43.700 Nice Segue to step number three in this three part framework. Number one is 238 00:15:43.820 --> 00:15:48.860 doing your deliberate short term of front research. Number two is making sure that 239 00:15:48.980 --> 00:15:54.409 you're a consistently listening and baking in some ways to have a regular cadence of 240 00:15:54.929 --> 00:15:58.649 listening to the customer, and then number three is then experimenting. So maybe 241 00:15:58.769 --> 00:16:03.879 off of one of those examples where there's some experiments that you ran executing part 242 00:16:03.960 --> 00:16:07.159 three of your three part framework, or some other examples that you could speak 243 00:16:07.159 --> 00:16:11.399 to where you're taking this feedback either from a sprint or from your regular customer 244 00:16:11.480 --> 00:16:17.600 listening and then experimenting to see am I hearing the customer right and now am 245 00:16:17.639 --> 00:16:19.830 I saying what they want to hear? Because just because you're listening doesn't mean 246 00:16:19.830 --> 00:16:22.629 you're going to nail it on the first try. Right. Yeah, so 247 00:16:23.830 --> 00:16:27.750 customer listening is great, discovering insights is great, but all of that is 248 00:16:27.789 --> 00:16:32.029 a waste of time if you're not going to implement it in your marketing. 249 00:16:32.429 --> 00:16:36.220 So the place where we're doing the most experimentation is in our content and our 250 00:16:36.220 --> 00:16:42.379 advertising. So we're using paid social media to promote our content and guarantee delivery 251 00:16:42.419 --> 00:16:45.940 of the content to the right prospects, and so we can test both the 252 00:16:47.100 --> 00:16:51.450 content that we're delivering to them as well as the ad copy and add creative 253 00:16:51.889 --> 00:16:56.210 and one of the best examples of where experimentation helped us level up is at 254 00:16:56.250 --> 00:17:02.200 the beginning of when we started marketing more heavily to the machine shops, we 255 00:17:02.440 --> 00:17:06.960 used a photo of a machine shop. It was probably a stock photo and 256 00:17:07.359 --> 00:17:10.319 we have we had original creative now, but we didn't have it at the 257 00:17:10.400 --> 00:17:12.519 time. We used to stock photo and it was a photo of a machine 258 00:17:12.799 --> 00:17:18.589 where you would never use our product in that application because it wasn't basically it 259 00:17:18.670 --> 00:17:22.190 wasn't an advanced enough machine. But we didn't know that as marketers looking at 260 00:17:22.230 --> 00:17:25.190 that picture of that machine and we just put it out there into the world 261 00:17:25.230 --> 00:17:27.309 and you know, we got destroyed in the comment section. You guys don't 262 00:17:27.309 --> 00:17:30.660 know what you're talking about. But if we hadn't been experimenting then we never 263 00:17:30.859 --> 00:17:34.420 would have learned that. So you do have to be kind of unafraid of 264 00:17:34.539 --> 00:17:38.420 failure, to put your ideas out there and test them. But now we 265 00:17:38.900 --> 00:17:42.380 know what kind of creative is going to a work with the algorithm and catch 266 00:17:42.420 --> 00:17:48.089 people's attention but also be accurate and true to the subject matter expertise that we're 267 00:17:48.089 --> 00:17:51.529 trying to present to the market. Of that that makes a lot of sense, 268 00:17:51.609 --> 00:17:56.009 m J. are there some other examples where you guys tested the creative 269 00:17:56.089 --> 00:18:00.920 and maybe there was an another misstep or maybe there was a surprise in something 270 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:06.440 that you got from the customer listening and you applied and then you were either 271 00:18:06.640 --> 00:18:11.599 pleasantly surprised or negatively surprised, similar to this example of the stock photo in 272 00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:15.549 in the add creative. Yeah, so I'll actually give you an example of 273 00:18:15.589 --> 00:18:21.430 a success story. So another place where I incorporate customer listening into my regular 274 00:18:21.470 --> 00:18:23.950 day to day cadence, probably not day to day, but maybe week to 275 00:18:25.029 --> 00:18:29.099 week or month to month, is I will follow all the main accounts on 276 00:18:29.500 --> 00:18:33.779 social media that are part of our industry and in machining there is a huge 277 00:18:34.019 --> 00:18:38.779 network of machining influencers, both on Youtube and Instagram, which people might not 278 00:18:40.019 --> 00:18:44.130 expect, but it's a very visual will industry right, automatic metal cutting makes 279 00:18:44.170 --> 00:18:48.170 sense. Usually compelling. Yeah, and so I would follow those influencers and 280 00:18:48.210 --> 00:18:52.089 I noticed that some of the most successful organic accounts on Instagram were people that 281 00:18:52.210 --> 00:18:56.519 had gone out on their own. They were machinists and they started their own 282 00:18:56.759 --> 00:19:00.680 machine shop. So I reached out to two of them, actually my team 283 00:19:00.839 --> 00:19:06.000 reach out to two of them, and they agreed to be on a Webinar 284 00:19:06.119 --> 00:19:08.440 with us. That was called hat making of a machine shop. What some 285 00:19:08.559 --> 00:19:11.710 things to consider if you're thinking about starting out on your own? And it 286 00:19:11.910 --> 00:19:17.109 was by far, probably by two or two or three x, the most 287 00:19:17.109 --> 00:19:22.309 successful Webinar we've ever run in terms of registrations, not only because the topic 288 00:19:22.430 --> 00:19:26.619 was super compelling to the people that were signing up in the people that were 289 00:19:26.700 --> 00:19:30.819 targeting with our marketing, but also because we got that extra boost from those 290 00:19:30.980 --> 00:19:34.579 two machinists that have big followings on organic social media. So we got the 291 00:19:34.660 --> 00:19:38.930 paid social boost that we are running through our advertising, but we also got 292 00:19:40.009 --> 00:19:45.650 additional sign ups because those those machinists, cross promoted us on their own platforms 293 00:19:45.009 --> 00:19:48.450 and I never would have come up with that idea and I'm guessing the team 294 00:19:48.450 --> 00:19:52.000 would not have come up with that idea if we weren't plugged into the industry 295 00:19:52.119 --> 00:19:56.960 and social listening and customer listening in addition to kind of running our campaigns. 296 00:19:57.319 --> 00:20:02.039 Yeah, then, is such a good point. I just posted maybe a 297 00:20:02.160 --> 00:20:07.150 week or two ago about generating your own reach on Linkedin and how you need 298 00:20:07.230 --> 00:20:11.069 to stop just posting and you need to take time to engage and to listen. 299 00:20:11.109 --> 00:20:14.670 And I think whether you're building a personal brand or you're you're trying to 300 00:20:14.710 --> 00:20:18.509 figure out how do I how do I execute in different marketing channels for our 301 00:20:18.589 --> 00:20:22.099 company, the same as true. You've got to take time to engage and 302 00:20:22.259 --> 00:20:26.460 listen and monitor. One of the things I've noticed just tactically, if twitter 303 00:20:26.619 --> 00:20:30.619 is one of the the channels where people in your space are really active, 304 00:20:30.940 --> 00:20:34.970 build bliss. You can even build private lists to where someone doesn't see that 305 00:20:36.049 --> 00:20:38.569 you added them to a list, and so you can segment kind of everything 306 00:20:38.609 --> 00:20:41.730 that you're following on twitter and get rid of all the sports and news and 307 00:20:41.849 --> 00:20:47.490 politics and just go to, you know, manufacturing or machining or education or 308 00:20:47.529 --> 00:20:52.200 h or whatever sector that you serve and you can just follow along in there 309 00:20:52.640 --> 00:20:56.200 within your own twitter feed. So just an example of that I've seen in 310 00:20:56.839 --> 00:21:00.640 my own practice. M J, if someone's listening to this and you're like 311 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:03.279 I just want you to at least take this away from this episode and they're 312 00:21:03.279 --> 00:21:07.990 going to walk away with with one thing they could start doing tomorrow out of 313 00:21:07.109 --> 00:21:14.990 this three part framework, develop deliberate, intentional, time bound research with customers. 314 00:21:15.509 --> 00:21:18.940 Make sure that you have a regular cadence of listening and then make sure 315 00:21:18.940 --> 00:21:22.700 that you experiment based on those listenings. I love that framework. If there's 316 00:21:22.700 --> 00:21:25.460 one thing people could start doing tomorrow, what would you suggest they do? 317 00:21:25.619 --> 00:21:27.299 Is it? Is it go and check out the contact forms on a daily 318 00:21:27.380 --> 00:21:30.380 basis, like you're doing? I think that's an easy thing to do, 319 00:21:30.619 --> 00:21:34.170 for sure. What I would leave people with this. It's all about momentum. 320 00:21:34.650 --> 00:21:38.329 So if you are listening to this episode and you're feeling inspired by it, 321 00:21:38.690 --> 00:21:45.250 go track down five email addresses from customers and send them just a three 322 00:21:45.369 --> 00:21:48.440 sentence email. Hi, I'm just trying to learn more about this industry. 323 00:21:48.599 --> 00:21:52.000 I noticed that you're an expert because I read x, Y and Z on 324 00:21:52.119 --> 00:21:56.119 Linkedin. I'm not trying to sell you anything. Would you be open to 325 00:21:56.160 --> 00:22:00.400 talking to me for twenty minutes so that I can learn keep it very simple. 326 00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:03.869 I couldn't agree with that more, MJ. That's great. Final thought 327 00:22:03.950 --> 00:22:07.190 for folks. If anybody listening to this would like to stay connected with you 328 00:22:07.390 --> 00:22:10.509 reach out asking any follow up questions on the topic today, what's the best 329 00:22:10.509 --> 00:22:12.430 way for them to go about you and that you can find me on Linkedin 330 00:22:12.670 --> 00:22:17.700 my profiles. Just MJ Peters. Awesome, MJ. Thank you so much 331 00:22:17.779 --> 00:22:19.700 for joining us on the show. This has been a great conversation today. 332 00:22:19.940 --> 00:22:25.420 Logan, thanks for having me. It's sweetish. We're on a mission to 333 00:22:25.539 --> 00:22:30.130 create the most helpful content on the Internet for every job function in industry on 334 00:22:30.210 --> 00:22:34.289 the planet. For the BB marketing industry, this show is how we're executing 335 00:22:34.369 --> 00:22:37.730 on that mission. If you know a marketing leader that would be an awesome 336 00:22:37.809 --> 00:22:41.569 guest for this podcast. Shoot me a text message. Don't call me because 337 00:22:41.569 --> 00:22:45.200 I don't answer unknown numbers, but text me at four hundred and seven for 338 00:22:45.359 --> 00:22:48.319 and I know three, three, two eight. Just shoot me their name, 339 00:22:48.640 --> 00:22:52.680 maybe a link to their Lincoln profile, and I'd love to check them 340 00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:55.799 out to see if we can get them on the show. Thanks A lot, 341 -->