Inductive Automation Blog

00:08 Lauren: Hi, welcome back to our sales and marketing training videos. I'm Lauren.

00:12 Shay: And I'm Shay. Today is all about one of the most crucial parts of any marketing effort, creating leads.

00:17 Lauren: We'll talk about how to get more sales leads by working with your existing customer base, growing your local network, leveraging your website and expanding awareness with great content.

00:28 Shay: We're back talking with Doug Dudley our Director of Marketing. Thanks for being here again, Doug.

00:32 Doug: Yeah, no problem, excited to be here.

00:34 Lauren: So, today's topic is about creating leads...

00:37 Doug: Yeah.

00:38 Lauren: And building your lead base. And normally when we think about creating leads, we think about new people, making new connections. But you actually argue the best way to find leads is to start with your existing customers.

00:54 Doug: Yeah, and the biggest reason for that is there is no easier sale than the person who's already been sold. Your existing customers already like your product, they already trust your company, your marketing has already worked on them. So they're gonna much more likely to give you an additional sale, maybe it's growing their use of Ignition inside their facility from one machine to another, or from one plant to another. Maybe they're setting up a chain trying to make it an enterprise-wide architecture. Or maybe they have friends or colleagues in other companies that would also be interested in Ignition. If you can win the trust of that customer instead of focusing on just making one more Ignition sale, actually try to win the trust of that customer and build a relationship there, you could potentially have a whole flood of new leads from inside that company or beyond from that relationship with that customer. So that's a way of looking at your existing customer base to find new potential leads for yourself.

01:57 Shay: So we had a tip on that, on maintaining these existing customers and being able to grow a business based off of that, that lead that you've already nurtured and been able to make a sale to, which is to make sure that you are performing magic tricks a little bit. Yeah?

02:11 Doug: Yeah, yeah. So this is actually something that Steve Heckman was talking to me about, and he said, that one of the best ways, especially with Ignition, one of the best ways that you can go in and make another sale is to go in to an existing customer who's had a problem, they've been hitting their head up against a wall because there's something they can't solve, and if you can go in there with Ignition and work a miracle for them, “be an Ignition magician” was the term he coined, you will just blow them away and win them over because you'll solve this problem that just seemed unsolvable and you'll do it with very little effort.

02:46 Doug: If you're able to do that... And Ignition gives you the tools to be able to turn those ideas into reality so quickly, if you can turn a proof of concept into a solution on your customer site when they think you're just coming out there to do an evaluation, you can totally blow them away. You can be that Ignition magician and they're gonna want you to come back and do more and more magic tricks for them, to solve more and more of their problems. So that's another example of what we kind of talked about before about doing more for the customer, kind of going above and beyond, and that can really help solidify that relationship so that they're gonna give you more and more, and more leads to help you have more, and more sales of Ignition. Yeah.

03:22 Lauren: I know another thing you've mentioned before that Steve and Wendy have talked about is looking for jobs while you're on the job. Can you say a little more about that?

03:31 Doug: Yeah, Steve told me that as an integrator, the best marketers he had were his technicians that would go on the job site, because they're there, they're building relationships, and they also have an opportunity to see opportunities on the plant floor. So if you go there with just the intention of solving that one problem, you might solve that problem, but if you're so laser-focused on that, you're very well gonna miss a lot of other opportunities for problem solving that your customers have.

04:00 Doug: They might not even know that they're opportunities. You might have ideas from things you've done in another customer's site. If you see those opportunities and just kinda share them with your customers, it's another example of doing more for them, being like, "Hey, I just saw this thing over here. I could use Ignition to solve this for you really quick, maybe we can take a look at it." It's just another example of doing more for your customers, being that initial magician, and finding opportunities. 'Cause if you're able to find them on the job, I mean you're getting paid, and you're finding more opportunities to get paid down the road. It's another example of being able to create those leads from existing customers. So those are just all some different techniques that can really help turn your existing customer base into even more and more, and more work for you.

04:40 Shay: Another piece of creating leads is figuring out where you want to look for those leads, where do you want your future customers to be. And oftentimes we tend to want to look big because if we're looking at a big area, that's going to equate to lots of customers, is kind of the mindset. Can you speak to maybe why that's not always the case, and what the better way to go about that is?

05:02 Doug: In so many things, it's better to focus in on what you're really, really good at and really be amazing at that, to do a good job. So in this case, instead of focusing on a big geographical area, especially when you're smaller, it's better to focus on a smaller geographical area and it's usually better to focus on your local area. There's a couple reasons for this. It helps you have focus so you can really do a good job of what you're doing, but also it helps you build a good local network. And as we've talked about before, word of mouth is a very powerful way to spread your brand. It's also a very powerful way to find new leads. If you do a really good job for someone in your area and they're just amazed with the work you do, they're gonna talk to other people about it. Very likely the people they're gonna talk to are other people at work, other people that are local. They're gonna have local connections too.

05:52 Doug: That word of mouth is gonna spread much quicker in a local area, and then the people they will talk to will likely also be in the local area or close by. So the word of mouth can spread faster and you'll be able to kind of build up a good reputation in that area. Once you have that good reputation, then it's easier to expand to a larger and larger, and larger area, but it's great to start with a good local network as kind of a base of operations, and really just kinda own that territory before you expand out too much further.

00:08 Shay: Hello and welcome to our sales and marketing training videos. I'm Shay.

00:12 Lauren: And I'm Lauren. Today, we'll be talking about another important aspect of good marketing, building your brand.

00:18 Shay: The topics we will cover today are: What a brand is, how to build your brand, defining a brand promise, and how to spread your brand.

00:26 Lauren: Today, our guest is Doug Dudley, Director of Marketing here at Inductive Automation. Doug, thanks so much for taking the time to sit down again.

00:33 Doug: Yeah, happy to be back.

00:34 Lauren: We're always starting off with kind of a hot-button question.

00:38 Doug: Okay.

00:39 Lauren: I know we've done a lot of crazy things, especially in our marketing department here at Inductive Automation over the years. What would you say is one of the craziest things you've ever undertaken as part of an Inductive Automation project?

00:54 Doug: Yeah, one specific thing comes to mind, and that was a few years ago at our conference, we were working on our keynote, and I'm part of the team that puts that together, and we had an integrator, Mo Moore actually. We'd found out he had actually put together a robot and was using Ignition to run the robot. And so once we found that out, we really tried to figure out how to work that into our keynote. And so trying to coordinate that robot on stage, and it wasn't just me alone. Travis Cox from our company played a key role, as well as Mo Moore, to do this, but that was kind of a crazy thing to be involved with, just because we had, as we're writing this keynote, we had this huge X factor of the robot's gonna go here. We don't definitely know what's gonna happen, but it'll be cool. So trying to build around that, but it all came off fine. The robot rolled out on stage.

01:46 Shay: Oh, so it rolled out?

01:47 Doug: Rolled out on stage.

01:48 Shay: On its own?

01:49 Doug: Well, it was by Ignition. Yeah, yeah.

01:52 Shay: That's so cool.

01:53 Doug: And he had a camera on his head, and he was looking out at the crowd, and even talked a little bit, and he was there at the conference at the INS booth after. It was a big hit, so that was a kind of crazy thing to be involved with, but it turned out pretty fun.

02:09 Lauren: I heard a rumor that there might be a robot 2.0 sometime in the future.

02:13 Doug: You never know. You never know what might happen.

02:16 Lauren: True, that's true.

02:16 Shay: The possibilities are limitless.

02:19 Doug: Limitless.

[laughter]

02:19 Lauren: That's very good use.

02:20 Doug: That's branding, right there.

02:21 Lauren: Yes, that's branding, and it's a great transition into today's topic.

02:25 Shay: Jumping into today's video, yeah. So, today, we're talking about building your brand.

02:28 Doug: Right.

02:29 Shay: And there's a lot of misconceptions about what a brand even is, so maybe we can start there. Can you talk to us a little bit about what a brand is and what it isn't?

02:37 Doug: Yeah, sure. When most people think of brand, I think the thing that comes to mind is a logo, because that's often what we associate with a brand. Like you think of the Apple logo, or the Nike logo, or something like that. The reality is the brand is what that logo represents, meaning the brand is what your customers think about you and what they feel about you, not what you say about yourself. So when that Apple logo shows and a customer has a thought about what that logo represents, who the company is behind it, the products they have, they have an idea of who they are and a feeling. That's what the actual brand is, and building that can be a little bit more challenging than just designing a new logo and putting it out there in the world.

03:26 Lauren: Right. I would imagine, you know, there's a lot behind it, beyond this logo and even a catchphrase or something, like we say, "Limitless."

03:35 Doug: Right.

03:36 Lauren: How do you really start to build and develop that real brand?

03:40 Doug: Sure. It's a lot like your reputation as a person, right? So what I mean by that is you build it basically the same way. If I want people to think I'm an honest person, then I need to be honest with people, and then when I tell people, "Oh yeah, I'm an honest person," they can either confirm that or not by hearing what other people say about me. So if I say I'm an honest person, but then I go around and I lie to everybody, I can say it as much as I want, but my reputation will not be as an honest person and my reputation will be the opposite, because it's what I'm doing that's actually building that reputation, and or taking it away from what I'm actually saying. So it's kind of like if you think about the logo for a company, it's almost like a person's name, right? If I, through my actions, build a positive reputation, when people hear my name or see my name, they'll start associating that reputation with it. The opposite will happen if you have negative actions that you associate with it. So it's what you do in the interactions you have to build trust with people that can result in building what that brand identity is.

04:56 Lauren: I can think about a certain internet provider who maybe like says that they are really great with customer service, and then you end up spending four hours on the phone with them.

05:08 Doug: Right.

05:08 Lauren: So even though the brand isn't saying that they have poor customer service, everybody associates that brand now with that bad customer service.

05:17 Doug: Yeah, and we probably don't even need to say who the name of that brand is, but most people probably know.

05:21 Shay: And that's kinda the power.

05:23 Doug: That's kind of the power of it, right? It's what you do, weighs a lot heavier than what you say about yourself. So, ultimately, for a company, it all comes down to building trust through making promises and then keeping those promises. So in the example you were just talking about, about the unnamed Internet provider, they've put a promise out there that they can do things in a certain way and a certain timely fashion, and handle customers a certain way, they clearly haven't actually followed through with that promise, and so, therefore, the things they say about themselves are automatically tuned out and not trusted by people. You have to build into your processes the ability to keep your promise in order for people to actually believe the promise, and that to build that trust that you need for people to trust your brand.

06:14 Shay: Definitely. So how do you get there? What are some things that you can do to make sure that you're in a position to keep the promises that you're making?

06:21 Doug: It kind of starts looking inside first. So, to start off with, you need to make promises that you know you can keep. If you do these really crazy outlandish things that there's no way to back it up, you're kinda setting yourselves up for a failure. I guess I'll use an example of one of the promises that we have for people, and that's to empower customers to swiftly turn their ideas into reality. That's our mission statement. That's a basic promise that we make to our customers, to empower them to do what they wanna do with our product. So, it's not just something we said and then don't do anything about. From the production team that works on our product to the support team that supports it, to the marketing team that talks about it, and beyond, every part of our company works towards fulfilling that mission, and each part of the company has an important role to play in filling that mission, as we work together as a company, to fulfill that mission of problem-solving for our customers, getting them the support they need so they can do what they need, making sure that our product actually gives them the ability to do things they need to do. Every touchpoint they have, builds trust upon trust upon trust, until they really start to understand who we are as a company. And that idea of who we are, that reputation of who we are, becomes what our brand actually is.

07:55 Lauren: What are some practical strategies that businesses can use to build this out in their company?

08:02 Doug: There are some very practical things they can do to help them keep their brand promise. One of the most practical things is, you've gotta find good people. Just like a personal reputation is up to that person for what they do, for a company's reputation, it comes down to all these individual people making choices. And collectively, that forms choices that the company ends up making. So, if you bring in good people that have high integrity, high intelligence, high energy, they're problem solvers not problem creators, people that really want to take care of the customers on a individual level, then collectively as a company, you're going to be taking care of your customers because you're making sure to hire people on the onset that already have that built into what they do, their own reputation. It's part of their own personal brand. That will help you form a good company brand. So, it's about building your company culture to be a culture that cares about filling that mission that you've set out and having each individual person contribute to that. But that starts with hiring those people, because those people are who your company becomes, basically.

09:25 Shay: Breaking that down even further, can you provide some little examples of things that we need, those people, now that we've got them, now that we've got those good people in our company, some things that they can do to continue on building that positive brand in it?

09:38 Doug: Yeah, it's very practical stuff. It's just best practices for your business, like, example is, when the phone rings, make sure to answer it, and make sure you have someone on the line answering it who can answer it in a very professional way, be very friendly, be very helpful and be very rapid and be able to transfer that call to the people that need to solve the problem for that customer, answer it. Just make sure you have a good front office. We're a software company, so a lot of our employees are for developing the software, supporting the software, but it's really important for us to have a really good front office staff too, to make sure the company runs well. You might have the most talented people in the world on your creative side, but you need to make sure you're taking care of the company too, 'cause if things start breaking down, like when our computers don't work in the morning because our IT department is not helping us out, or, yeah, the phone's not getting answered, or the building is not being taken care of, it's really difficult to impossible to do the job you need to for your customers, 'cause you're not taking care of your own office.

10:49 Doug: And then, just make sure you deliver things on time and fairly treat your customers. If you promise that you're going to deliver a solution in a certain amount of time, make sure you do it. If you say you're gonna bill a certain amount for the work you do, make sure you bill that amount. Nothing can ruin a relationship with your customers quicker than invoicing them incorrectly. And then also, it turns into this bad experience where, "Hey, the bill's twice what I thought it was." It's just, a lot of stuff, good business practice, to make sure you're not shooting your own brand in the foot by saying one thing and then doing another. And it just comes down to that very basic stuff, that you have your employees doing to just practice good business practices, yeah.

11:34 Shay: It seems really simple, but it seems like it would take some work.

11:38 Doug: It does.

11:39 Shay: To build that out for a big company, or even a small team.

11:43 Doug: It is, but in reality, it is simple, it's just done on a bigger level. It's simple, but it's powerful, because collectively, it can create this very positive experience for your customers. And I do think it takes the brand out of the realm of this abstract thing of like, "We have a brand, it's worth something, but we really don't know what to do to affect it, and try to get it more on a base level." It's just literally what you do, how you do it. And yeah, you have to think about every interaction, but it just starts by hiring good people, training them well, supporting them, support your customers. And it takes some time, but it's going to build a good, positive brand experience for your customers, which in the end, what they say, is what your brand actually is. Create a company that can treat your customers well, and they'll say good stuff about you, which results in a good brand.

12:38 Shay: I actually think it's really cool what you were saying about keeping a brand promise. That's such an important part, not only of branding but just great customer service. And we have so many exceptional integrators as part of our Integrator Program at Inductive Automation. I got the chance to sit down with one of our integrators, Vertech, and talk about this very thing. Here's what they had to say.

13:00 Chris McLaughlin: What makes Vertech different than Integrator X? And truth be told there is not a whole lot of difference between most integrators. We are largely doing the same stuff in the same ways and when we all come back to it, we're gonna say that it is our people that make us different, it's our culture that makes us different, maybe it's our processes that make us different, and there is some validity to that,of there are going to be better or worse of all of those different categories. But how do you show that off to somebody? How do you show that that is real and true? And the secret is, is that you really have to have it, you can't just say it. And then you have to show, not tell. And so the ways of doing that is to prove it and over-prove it. And the ways of doing that in this modern age, so much centres around your marketing and your website and your social media and videos that you put up and the content that you put up. And it's all an elaborate approach to prove that your people are the best and the brightest. Your solutions actually work. You're knowledgeable and experienced within your products. And that is the differentiation of, if I just tell you that we're the best that doesn't work, I have to show you that you want to work with us.

14:26 Shay: So, how can we go about creating and making promises that things are going to stand out to our customers and be easy for them to understand and grasp?

14:35 Doug: Yeah. Couple of things you can do. First is, you wanna make it a promise that's worth talking about, so that they'll remember it, it's memorable.

14:42 Shay: It's relevant.

14:44 Doug: Yeah. This goes back to knowing who your customers are, understanding what is gonna be relevant to them, what's gonna solve a problem for them. So, an example of this for us is, Unlimited, is a promise that we make with our product that's very memorable. One of the reasons it's memorable because it solves a very key problem that a lot of our customers face, and it does it in a way that allows them to turn their ideas into reality fairly quickly, and at a lower price point. So it makes an impact for them. It's also one word. It's easy to remember. And it says a lot about who we are as a company.

15:26 Doug: You also wanna keep it pretty simple, that makes it easy to remember. So another example of something that we do, we talked a lot in this last keynote about easy, fun and affordable. And a lot of that effort was trying, Steve Heckman working with us, to really try to figure out how do we say what we do as a company in a very kind of simple and succinct way, so that we can communicate that easily and make it something easy for people to remember. So three words, but each one of those words is a promise basically, right. Easy, we want Ignition to be easy to use. Then we work really hard, trying to make it easy for people to use. We want it to be fun, so that when you do turn your idea into reality successfully, there's a very satisfying fun feeling that happens there. We've had a lot of integrators tell us that because of the product and the way we support the product, their job has become much more enjoyable than it was a few years ago.

16:25 Doug: And then affordable is a promise obviously that we can keep with our pricing, but it's also tied into our licensing model. So each one of those is simple, easy to remember. Each one makes an impact and collectively they form a very strong promise that we make to our customers. So those are a couple of examples of how we as a company make promises that are easy to remember and simple, so that people can pass those along. Yeah.

16:52 Lauren: So let's say we've made our brand. We've made it memorable. We've put our little slogan together, our big slogan together. How do we get it out? How are we gonna get it in people's heads?

17:05 Doug: So this comes down to, you wanna create word-of-mouth, that's the best way to spread a brand. And to get people to talk about it, you need to do something that's worth talking about. And ideally, it's something that's tied to what your identity of a brand is. So, if your identity of a brand is to do an amazing job for your customers and go above and beyond, make sure that when your service people go out and service your customers, they do exactly what they say they're gonna do, and they also do maybe one or two steps beyond that. They look for more opportunities to help. They go the extra mile to make sure the customer's happy with what they're doing, really deliver an amazing experience for that customer that's worth them talking about, 'cause that's what's gonna spread the brand. They'll then tell the person they work with or someone who's a colleague in another company. And before you know it, if you keep doing that, that word-of-mouth starts to spread more and more and more, so that people are hearing about you and your brand before you even have a chance to tell them about it. So that's really how you get that brand to spread.

18:10 Shay: I think word-of-mouth is a really powerful tool for spreading information organically. And I think Lauren got to have some more conversations with another one of our premier integrators, Grantek.

18:19 Lauren: Yes. Yeah, we actually got the opportunity to talk to Grantek about word-of-mouth, so we'll have to roll that clip as well.

18:25 Shay: Perfect.

18:27 Geoff Farrer: Grantek's found a great way to get people to talk about our company is to try to share content across social media channels and our blog and really get buy-in. We have a concerted effort to try to grow our LinkedIn followers, for example. And we've found that it isn't so much pushing things that they don't wanna see, if we can appeal to them with content, they're gonna wanna read, they're gonna want to watch it makes it very easy to get people to actually talk and share and communicate this. So we internally encourage our staff and our employees, people who are there everyday on delivery jobs to actually share this as well across social media and our website. And in turn we hope that our customers do it as well. And we do see that and we can see a return on that in webinar registrations, for example. The same people who are sharing things across social media are also attending and inviting their colleagues as well. So it's always a great thing to see kind of all come together.

19:17 James Burnand: Yeah. I think if we deliver value to the marketplace, content that helps someone in their role, even if they're not a Grantek customer, they get to know who Grantek is, and that we are really out there to be able to contribute in a positive way. I think that goes a long way to creating a bit of the brand and the buzz around who we are.

19:42 Shay: So can we expect that word-of-mouth delivery to happen overnight? I'm imagining not. It takes time for things to travel.

19:49 Doug: It does take time for things to travel. It's not gonna happen overnight. You gotta give yourself... You have to be patient, you have to be persistent with getting your brand promises out there, but if you built it into your processes and you're integrating your promise throughout your marketing materials, like your business cards, your brochures, website, maybe even what your support people say when people call on the phone, or what your service tech, how they introduce themself or whatever they do when they're helping people. If you're able to integrate that into what they're doing, you can create all these different touchpoints, where you keep reinforcing your brand overtime.

20:29 Doug: So they've done a lot of marketing studies and they've found that it takes seven individual impressions for a person to remember a company's name. An impression is just any time that someone interacts with your brand in some kind of way, they see your logo, they hear your name of your company, someone tells them about your company, they stumble across your website when doing web search, whatever it is, they come in contact with you. It takes seven different separate instances for them to even remember who you are as a company and start to form some idea of what your brand is.

20:58 Doug: So that's a lot of different impressions. If you try to do that all with just your marketing, meaning just putting a bunch of print ads out or a bunch of emails, or whatever, you're gonna inundate people with too much. You've gotta build it into all your process to make those impressions kinda get out there. And if you're able to do what we talked about before and deliver experiences that cause your customers to spread, that is the most powerful way that your brand can be spread too, 'cause then they're creating impressions for you. And people will inherently trust the word-of-mouth from someone they know versus a company they don't, so that can weigh a little heavier too. So, if you pick your promise, you make it something you can actually fulfill and you stick with it and give it time, eventually, you'll end up with a strong brand that really helps your marketing efforts.

21:46 Lauren: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sitting down with us today, Doug, and talking to us about brand. It's an exciting topic but I think we've gotten to dive into it in a way that is really helpful for people.

21:57 Doug: Yeah. I've had a great time talking about it. I'm looking forward to the next time we talk.

22:01 Shay: Yeah. We'll see you soon.

22:02 Doug: Alright, cool.

22:05 Shay: Thanks.

00:08 Lauren: Hello, and welcome to our marketing and sales strategy series.

00:12 Shay: This video is all about providing a solution and not just selling a product.

00:15 Lauren: People wanna feel very confident and comfortable in choosing you.

00:18 Shay: So today, we'll talk about distinguishing yourself to build awareness and staying focused on the needs of your customers.

00:24 Lauren: And to help us with this, we're sitting down with Marketing Director Doug Dudley.

00:28 Doug Dudley: Hi.

00:28 Shay: Hi.

00:28 Lauren: Great to have you again, thanks for joining us.

00:30 DD: Happy to be here. Yeah.

00:31 Lauren: So I have a question for you.

00:33 DD: Sure.

00:33 Lauren: I heard that you're a bit of a salsa connoisseur and I wanna know what the secrets are? What is your favorite recipe?

00:41 DD: I am a salsa connoisseur. I grew up... I had spent some time in Mexico when I was a kid...

00:45 Lauren: Oh, that's awesome.

00:45 DD: And my dad worked for the government, so he worked at the embassy there. So when I was there, I kinda developed a taste for salsa, so when I got back to the States, I didn't like any of the salsa that I was in the stores, so I decided to start making my own salsa.

00:58 Shay: Wow!

00:58 DD: Over the years, I've kind of concocted my own blend of spices to, just the way I like it, so I don't know if I wanna give away the secrets exactly.

01:08 Shay: Well, we do have an Inductive Automation salsa contest every year, so you can't give away too many secrets, or else you might be imitated.

01:16 DD: Yeah, that, I don't wanna give away my competitive advantage there, although I have lost the last couple of years in a row to an outstanding mango salsa, which I've not been able to edge out. So I'll give you one little secret: little liquid smoke in there.

01:29 Lauren: Ooh.

01:29 Shay: Interesting.

01:29 Lauren: Very nice.

01:29 Shay: Yeah.

01:31 DD: Lifts it up a little bit, makes it smokey, people are like, "What's going on there?"

01:35 Lauren: Yeah.

01:35 DD: So there...

01:36 Lauren: I've gotta see this, I'm gonna try this out.

[chuckle]

01:38 Shay: Alright, so now that we've got our salsa tips out of the way, Doug, we're talking about selling a solution, not a product today. Why do we say it like that, we're not selling a product?

01:49 DD: Right. Well, we are selling a product or if you're a service industry, you're selling a service, but if you're just selling it a product or service, that really becomes about what that product or service does, what it is, what it can do. Selling a solution is thinking about the idea of not selling just what the product can do, but selling what a customer can do with the product or in the case of a service, what a customer can do with the help of that service. So it's a subtle difference but it does change the focus of how you talk about that product or service.

02:25 Shay: And what's a good way to start doing that?

02:28 DD: So you want to sell the benefits of it. Don't just list out 100 benefits because then that becomes too many. You wanna focus in on what the most important benefits are and the way to determine that is to focus on the relevance of those benefits to your target audience, as well as the impact that those benefits will have on the work of your target audience. So, those benefits can also vary depending on who you're targeting. So, for example, if your service is targeting engineers, for example, you might focus instead on how easy the product makes it to do their jobs, the good support that it has, maybe the knowledgeable staff that can help them, right? Because they're using that product or service on the plant floor and they need to know it's gonna be there for them. If you're targeting maybe a C-level person, you might be focusing on more about how much the product will cost, what the ROI would be of using that service, what the speed of implementation is, maybe the years of experience that company has had working with customers similar to that one.

03:35 DD: So depending on who you're targeting, you wanna focus in on what the most relevant and impactful benefits are and then focus on the benefits for that individual, and that's kind of the difference between a solution and a product, it's not the benefits of the product, it's the benefits of using that product or service for that specific individual.

03:51 Shay: So kind of the whole story?

03:52 DD: It's the whole story and they're a key part of that story.

03:56 Lauren: And that makes sense to me, as an engineer, however, as I'm thinking of pitching different benefits to different crowds, I would be thinking of approaching that from a logical standpoint. Why would we maybe wanna focus on emotions versus logic?

04:10 DD: Yeah, and you're not the only one that would be taking that approach, especially in this kind of industry, people will think it's all about the numbers, the logic behind it, making this very logical case for why this product is clearly, or service is clearly, better than the other one. This is especially the thinking that happens in a B2B marketing. So B2B means business-to-business marketing versus B2C marketing, which is business-to-consumer. Because the thought is, "Well, I'm talking to a business. Of course they're more focused on the raw data, the raw results." The reality is there's really not that much of a difference between B2B marketing and B2C marketing in terms of who you're targeting, because you're targeting people and people make emotional decisions, whether they're at their desk at work or they're in a grocery store, whatever, they're gonna make decisions usually based on emotion first, and then they'll use logic to back those decisions up. We all do this ourself, right? We'll go...

05:06 Shay: No.

[chuckle]

05:06 DD: Go to a store.

05:07 Shay: Never!

05:08 DD: Let's say we'll pick something up, we're not even sure exactly why we like it, but there's just something that feels good about that. And then we start thinking, "You know, this is in the budget and oh, this would help me do this." And right, you start doing all of that stuff behind it to convince yourself what you already knew you wanted when you picked it up, right? So people make emotional decisions first. And the other thing is, it just feels good to buy things, especially if it's something...

05:33 Lauren: That is true.

05:34 DD: That you feel like is a good buy, like you feel smart, you're like, "Man, I found this deal. I found the perfect product." Right? You just wanna help people feel good about decisions. So yeah, going at it from an emotional approach first, thinking about the emotional state of what that prospective customer is when they choose your product or service, is a better way of cutting through some of that noise and helping them make the decision we know they already wanna make.

06:00 Lauren: So it sounds like there's some storytelling involved with that. And I know we talk a lot about using success stories in our industry. Can you kind of walk us through what that would look like for someone who's providing a service?

06:12 DD: Yeah, sure. So, a very easy way to kind of get to the emotional center of a product or service is by telling a story. The reason this is a good technique is stories inherently are built upon some kind of emotion. There's a hero, they go against some kind of conflict. They have to overcome that in some kind of climactic way. And then there's some result of that. So, if you're able to tell a story with your customer at the center of that story, and your product or your service playing a supporting role in helping that customer get a win, you've built this emotional center into that. You've also made the solution very real, if you're telling a real story. Don't make your stories up, make sure they're real stories. If you can tell a story about, "Hey, I had a problem, I went and found this service. They came in and helped me look great in front of my boss, get the problem solved for my customer. Now, we're winning more business and I feel great."

07:19 DD: Showing the results for both them and who they were helping, that is a great story to tell. And it puts your product in the supporting role to put them in a successful place. So, if you're able to do that and you have a lot of these success stories, you really start building this strong case for people that can come in and look at your product or service, and they see all these different success stories other people are having, like, "You know what, I'd like to feel that way too. I'd like to have my problem solved. This problem I have right now, if I can get it solved like this person, I'd feel great." So, that's a great way of going about that.

07:52 Lauren: So, if we can tell real success stories, if we can make the customer the hero, then we'll be successful in telling the success stories essentially?

[chuckle]

08:00 DD: Yeah. And you want to try to give the prospective customer the feeling of what it's gonna be like to use your product or service before they use it. If you can get them to feel that feeling, they already make the decision to buy, whether it's a product or service. I mean, this happens too when we go in the store and we pick up that really cool phone, but it's not ours yet, but we're like, "Man, this feels good. I wanna put this in my pocket." You're getting that feeling right away. And if you can get them to that point, you're getting that much closer to help them make the decision that they already know they need to make or one you'd like them to make.

08:33 Shay: So, another way we talk about standing out in marketing is the phrase purple cow, it's kind of a marketing inside word.

08:42 DD: It's a little bit of a buzzword, yeah.

08:43 Shay: Yes, it is. Can you talk about where it comes from and why integrators could use that?

08:47 DD: Yeah, and why are we talking about cows when we're talking about products or service, right? Right. And so the term purple cow was coined by author and kind of marketing guru Seth Godin, he wrote a book called Purple Cow. And if you really are interested in this subject about marketing a solution, I think it's a great book to read. The basic idea is he was, I think he was driving cross country with his family, and they went past this field of cows and they were all black and white. And he had the thought of, "Hey, if I really wanted to stand out, if I was a cow," it's kind of a weird thought to have, "if I was a purple cow, there's no way you wouldn't see that cow in this field of black and white cows and you have this purple cow stand out." He used that as an analogy for marketing, because he makes the case that as a marketer, you want your product or service, your marketing, to be a purple cow. You want it to stand out from the competition in a way that's very transparent and big. You don't wanna be like a little bit more black or a little bit more white than the other cows, or gray, or off-white, you wanna be purple, because there's no way you're not gonna be able to see that purple cow.

10:02 Shay: Pretty memorable too.

10:03 DD: Be memorable, stand out, be different. But also be different for a reason, don't just be different for the sake of being different, be different, because it makes a difference for your customers.

10:18 Shay: I know we kind of have the unlimited tagline here at Inductive Automation, that's, maybe would you say, that's kind of our purple cow?

10:28 DD: It's definitely a part of it. It's something that makes us stand out from our competition. It kind of cuts through a lot of the noise, especially when we first launched unlimited, and it was something that simply no one else was doing. But it also was a difference that made a real difference for our customers, because we didn't just choose unlimited as a marketing ploy. We built the idea of unlimited into the actual product of Ignition, because it solves a core pain point that our customers were having. They would try to get on and make these systems and they were getting nickel and dime for every single client they had, a connection, or whatever it was. And when our founder Steve Hechtman was thinking through how to solve this problem, you just take the limits off that stuff, and all these problems get solved. So, by solving a problem for our customers, we created a product that stood out from the competition in a very distinct way, purple if you wanna say it that way. But also in a way that was very meaningful, and impactful, and made a difference for our customers. So, that's a great example of building your marketing into your solution by listening to what your customers need and then making that difference in your product, so that it makes a difference for them.

11:52 Lauren: So, how can we focus on being great for our customers and not leaning in towards the competition? I think that would be a pretty natural thing to do, focus on discrediting your competitors and maybe saying nasty things about them rather than focusing on delivering value to your customers and that sort of thing.

12:10 DD: Yeah, and I think when usually you talk in marketing about standing out from your competition, that's usually the way you say it. And so, the first thing that comes to mind is, "Well, I need to see what all my competition is doing and I need to do the opposite of them." And that is a way you can stand out. I'm not saying you can't do it that way, but that way you are letting your competition dictate what you're saying to your customer, and if you're trying to build those differences in your product, you're letting your competition dictate what you're building into your product. When you're building a good solution or service that solves problems of your customers, you have to start by looking at your customers, not your competition. The way to stand out is to focus on what your customers need, what they're not getting from your competition, and then to build a product or service that answers those questions directly. So instead of focusing on what your competition is doing, look at your customers, focus on solving their pain points and it's gonna become pretty clear pretty quickly what aspects of your product can stand out from your competition. So it's still getting to the standing out from your competition, but it's not by focusing on them, it's by focusing on your customers.

13:23 Shay: So within that, would you say it's kind of like being the best you can be for a much more specific audience? I know we've talked about kind of targeting our audiences, that kind of plays into that a little bit?

13:35 DD: Totally plays into it. And that's why we did the video about understanding your customers because that is very central to so much of marketing. So if you really understand your customers and what they need, what their day-to-day life is like, what their pain points are, going back to that emotional thing like, What gets them down during the day? What makes them feel like they're banging their head against a wall? That if you can solve that problem for 'em, they're going to love your company, love your product, be loyal to it. They're gonna remember it.

14:07 DD: So one way of thinking about this is focus in on the exact target that you have. Try to make the target a little narrow. If you wanna think about it, you could think about it of being more of a food truck than a franchise. Let me explain that. Food truck has a very specific food it's selling and it goes to where it's customers are, goes right to them. And you can't put too many things on a food truck. You have to narrow down your menu a little bit. The opposite of that is like a franchise like McDonalds where it's around every corner. You can't help but see it. And so because they're ubiquitous and they're everywhere, people are going to find it. One is focused on just as getting as many customers as possible, and being in many places as possible. The other is focused on finding who your target audience is, literally driving to them and giving them exactly what they need.

15:01 DD: When you start off in your marketing efforts, it's better to think of it that way. Who is your audience? How can you deliver exactly what they're looking for and get it to them as quickly and as readily as you can to just make them be delighted in what they have because if you do that, they're gonna be able to tell other people, "Hey man, I had the best food truck ever, it was great. You gotta come next time." They'll bring people, they'll want more people to come. You're gonna get to the franchise eventually, you're gonna get to expand, but you gotta start by pleasing your core target audience first. They'll spread it by word of mouth, and then you'll be able to grow and expand and really get more customers from there.

15:46 Shay: Awesome.

15:47 Lauren: Yeah. So how can we work in A Plus exchange there? This is something that we've briefly touched on. Can you talk a little bit about what that is and how you would accomplish that?

15:55 DD: Yeah. That's great, so this is another way of standing out from your competition and really focusing on your customers and that's to give them more than what they ask for. That's a big element of delighting them. I mean nothing feels better if you go find that deal and you find this amazing product that you wanted. You got it on sale, and then you get it, and it's even better than you thought, you're gonna tell everybody about that. If you can go in as a service and go to a customer and be onsite and deliver to them way more than their expectations. Don't meet their expectations, exceed their expectations. You're gonna give them something to talk about, you're gonna give them something to remember. That word of mouth is gonna come back to you, so you'll be able to find more people that way and you're also gonna be able to build a loyal customer there, and when you're marketing, you're not just looking to try to get one customer, one sale, you're looking to try to bring a customer who will be a customer for life. So, there's no better way of getting that loyalty than to continue deliver more to that customer than they could expect. That's a way of delighting your customers and keeping them loyal in your marketing.

17:02 Shay: Well, Doug, you've given us a lot to think about today, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us.

17:06 DD: Yeah, I've had a great time and I'm looking forward to talk to you next time.

17:09 Shay: And we'll see you again soon.

17:11 DD: Alright, see you soon.