Brennan Industries: John Joyce, on Creating Content that Meets Buyer Needs

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John Joyce of Brennan Industries shares a presentation from the Content Marketing Institute on creating content that meets buyer needs.

Danny:

Hey, so, on today’s episode I have Mr. John Joyce here, who is the Global Marketing Director for Brennan Industries, and he is going to share with us an awesome presentation that he gave at Content Marketing World, which is part of the Content Marketing Institute. They had a summit for industrial market, it was called Industrial Marketing Summit, and he gave a really awesome presentation that I’m super excited to have him on to present to you, our audience. John, thank you so much for coming on IndustrialSage.

John:

Yeah, I’m glad to be here, thanks for having me.

Danny:

All right, so John, for those who aren’t familiar with Brennan Industries, what do you guys do?

John:

So Brennan is a hydraulics manufacturer. We make hydraulic fittings primarily and related products, and we sell them all over North America, Europe, and Asia. And we have some ancillary products related to the hydraulic industry too, so mostly stainless steel and carbon steel hydraulic fittings is our bread and butter product.

Danny:

Okay, awesome, all right. And so, a little bit about you as a background, because I don’t always do this on IndustrialSage, I kind of want to do it because I get to know the people behind the marketing here, so tell me a little bit about your background, how did you get into marketing, were you always in marketing with industrial companies, or what’s your story?

John:

So I started my career off, I’ve always been in communications. It wasn’t always marketing. But I started off in a media production company, and in that company, I worked in graphic design and video production and conference production, multimedia production, all kinds of different types of content production, I guess. So in that company, I worked my way up to Director of Marketing, and I did that for a number of years, and then after that I went off and started my own agency. So I ran an agency for about 12 years, which was fully integrated marketing, both traditional and digital, and worked with a bunch of different kind of clients, from some sports teams, local sports teams, banks, industrial clients, a variety of different types of businesses, and that’s where I first got into industrial marketing, was working with clients in my agency.

Danny:

Very cool.

John:

I sold my agency and then became a consultant. Kind of an international industrial marketing consultant. We lived overseas for a number of years, in Morocco and in Portugal, and then came back here and became the Director of Marketing for Brennan Industries, which is in Cleveland.

Danny:

Very cool, ah! The world traveler over here, with a lot of experience.

John:

I’ve a little, done a little traveling, and some marketing in different areas of the world, which has kind of been an interesting experience, too.

Danny:

That’s really cool. So, actually, just off-topic, well maybe not super off-topic, but okay, Morocco. How long did you live there for?

John:

We only lived there for about 6 months actually. So it was a kind of a hop skip and a jump between the US and Lisbon. So from US, we went there, and then we moved to Lisbon and lived there for about three years.

Danny:

And how was that?

John:

It was awesome, actually. Yeah, the economy is very different, but I mostly did consulting with US-based clients or I did consulting with a company in Saudi Arabia too, but basically, not companies in Portugal because their economy is one that’s suffered recently, with the economic downturn and whatnot. But it’s a great place to live in terms of the climate, the food, the culture, the music, everything is great there.

Danny:

That’s very cool. That’s a place I would love to go visit, or country rather, I’d love to go visit. That’s pretty cool. Very neat. So I kind of want to jump in to a little bit about, on your presentation that you gave, and the title was very exciting. Saying how you guys were able to increase your leads by 800% using content marketing. So that is lots of big flashy, big numbers, big percentages, and this weird thing called content marketing, which none of our audience knows anything about. I’m being very facetious obviously. But…okay… we were talking about a little bit beforehand here, oh content marketing, and oh, maybe in the industrial markets are a little like. Tell me this story, how did you guys start into this, and give me some background information.

John:

So, I don’t know, this was probably about 2015 when I started at Brennan. And when I came in there, they were like a lot of other industrial manufacturers are. And this isn’t to their detriment, I mean, a lot of industrial companies are kind of in the same boat, which is generally speaking, 10 to 20 years behind the times of other types of marketing, and even just other types of business in general. So when I came in there, they were spending a lot on magazine ads, trade publication ads, and that kind of thing, which I knew from other experience just wasn’t the best way to spend money and get kind of a return, and very very hard to track leads that are coming from that, and drive anything, it’s very, it’s just like you’re throwing ads out there into the ecosystem and hoping something happens.

Danny:

Yeah, exactly.

John:

Yeah, so at that point, I immediately knew I needed to change things to a more digital-based, something a little more modern, digital marketing approach using content to draw people in. So not to really give a basics in 101 content marketing, but in a super short nutshell, the difference is instead of trying to go out to where the customer is and interrupt what they’re doing and get their attention, you try to be a source of knowledge, a place they go to when they’re looking for information about your products, or things related to your market. So we had none of that kind of content at that time, and had no momentum in that area, so we just started on square one, with the blog, putting content out there. And one of the things I said in my presentation, I showed a graph that showed our growth, and it was an exponential type graph where it starts out real low here, and it goes like this and then goes like that. And the reason why I showed that was to show that it took a good year and a half before we really got any kind of momentum or traction off of our content marketing program. And then it’s kind of been exploding for the last couple of years, just growing off the chart as we just continue to build it.

Because one of the things about content marketing is, it’s a momentum-building approach, like rolling a snowball down a hill, you start with just the tiny little bit, and you just keep adding layers and layers and layers, and that first tiny bit doesn’t go away, it’s still those first things that are still bringing people in, and still converting leads. And we’ll go back and fine tune them, but they’re still out there, so as you expand your content, the effectiveness expands, the reach expands, conversion rate increases, the number of leads increases. And yeah, we saw really exponential growth over time in the amount of leads generated, and the process is pretty simple, but it produced outstanding results to us, to where every year since I’ve been there, I’ve cut the advertising budget in half every single year, for regular ads. We still do a few, because that would be in my brand building kind of category. It’s okay to build brand, that’s important. But the majority of the budget has just gone into developing more and more content and more different types and attracting leads that way.

Danny:

That’s awesome. All right, okay, so you said it took some time, obviously, to able to build and start getting some of those results. And you said you were doing blogging. What did that look like in terms of frequency and what were you blogging about?

John:

Yeah, so, what we did, our process, it kind of begins with research, even way back at the beginning, it starts with research, so we go to the sales team or go to the actual customer and try to identify what’s an area that people don’t know something and they need to know it, you know?

Danny:

Yeah.

John:

They did it in our space. We feel like we know everything and everybody else already knows it, but in reality they don’t know it. You overestimate what the market knows, because you’re so steeped in it, it just seems like, of course they know all this stuff, but they don’t! So we identified some areas that would be educational areas. And we just developed content targeting those educational areas. And basically, at the very beginning, it was very slow. We would create some content piece, some sort of what you would call now premium content piece, like a whitepaper or guide or whatever it may be, and then support that with blogs and social media and a landing page, et cetera, and we might’ve done one of those for something like the first year, just trying to figure out how to do it, you know?

Danny:

Yeah.

John:

But now, we do about four to six new pieces a year. Also, we take the old pieces and rework them or extend them. So we’ll take an old piece and make it into a series of infographics, or a video, or something, because that old content, even though it’s older, is still relevant, it still matters. So one thing I want to address real quick, you’ll probably get around to asking me about it, but I just think it’s important to establish, we talked about it earlier, which is the difference between industrial marketing and other types of marketing that are out there. And one of the things that’s unique about industrial marketing is it’s not just an impulse buy, for instance, in consumer marketing obviously, things are much more an impulse buy. This tennis shoe makes me feel special, I’ll buy it.

Danny:

Right.

John:

With manufactured components that go into someone else’s manufactured component, you have a whole company that you’re trying to sell this product to, so there’s new product development team, which is engineers and buyers, and then there’s a supply chain team, and executive team, and you may have OEMs and you may have distributors, and they have, all of those players are doing things for totally different reasons, and have different motivations and are really looking for, completely different types of content. That’s another thing that we’ve tried to do is provide content of real value for specific audiences. So maybe really valuable engineering content about certain things about an O-ring, or different types of materials that go into a product, or even content in the form of CAD documents or drawings or measurements or cross-references, pressure ratings, all of that data is still content. And that appeals to an engineering person. We provide information that might appeal to a distributor, or to a procurement person. And all of that, all those people get different types of content. So that’s another thing we’ve expanded over time. The different audiences we’re trying to reach.

Danny:

Yeah, and that’s fantastic, that’s great. Because obviously everybody’s got a, as to your point, a different reason on why they want to buy or they’re in a different area. So when you said you’ve kind of evolved with that, are you writing out personas, or sort of developing that, and then, as far as your content strategy, how do you, are you developing it based off of that, like sit down once a year or something, or what does that look like?

John:

Well, we talk about this stuff constantly, way more than once a year, but, and we don’t do personas in the fine-grained kind of traditional, if I can say traditional, the way you would think of personas, like this is Bill Bob, engineer, and he’s 45, and whatever. We don’t develop them to that degree, but we do target personas, like I laid out before, like OEM in specific job positions, distributor in specific job positions, MRO, different markets, hydraulic, aerospace, pneumatic, and we lay them out like that but not for instance down to like personal details. A lot of times you see in personas you would have so many, the matrix is big enough already but this map way, you know?

Danny:

Right.

John:

So then we just, we have approached it from what do we think would be the most effective route in to a new company. The first foot in the door in most industrial things like this is through the new product development group through engineering. So that’s how, that’s where we started, and then we just have expanded into other groups from there, just because it seemed like the engineering side of new product development team specing in your components into their assemblies, made the most sense to hit first. If a guy in engineering isn’t specing your part, a guy in procurement isn’t suddenly going to buy it, you know, because of your whitepaper. That was the approach we took. Start from I guess tactically, strategically, what made the most sense according to the buying process.

Danny:

Yeah, that makes sense, and I think it’s a very smart approach, and we talk about this a lot on this show as well. A lot of people say, okay great, we need to do this, we need to do blogs. What the heck should we do, where do we start? And you mentioned very early on you went and you sat down with your sales team, you talked to your customers to get a sense of, okay, boots on the ground, what are you guys looking for, or what are our customers or prospects always asking for, so you can really help them to be able to use that content throughout the sales process or even be able to help dare I say generate leads, you know, that way. Or you’re going to be able to, hey, we’re able to nurture these people. They already know who we are, because they found some great content, that we’re helping to educate them. They might not be ready to buy today, but maybe six months down the road, or a year or what have you, when they’re ready, we’re here, we’re ready to go.

John:

Correct. Yeah, the idea is they come across your brand in the marketplace out there. They start getting a favorable impression, maybe they see something that piques their interest enough to click on it. They drill in, they navigate around, like one of the things we’re doing now is ungating older content. We already have enough gated content, so now we’re going back and making ungated content. So as you navigate around, without even putting information in, the website is giving you value. So we really try to give value, to provide value. So, the content, a lot of the content is ungated or just requires, you might have to put your information in but you’re still getting something of value.

Danny:

Yeah.

John:

And another thing we’ve done that’s been super successful is going old school, which means, like for me, one day we just decided we were producing this thread identification guide because there was a need in the market for education on the line of identifying threads, okay. In our product there’s lots of different configurations, different thread types. They look very similar, they’re hard to tell apart, you’ve got to get it right, a lot of confusion. We said okay, we’re going to make this guide, but this guide, we’re not going to make it a PDF. Like everything else in the world that’s a PDF. We’re going to print this guide, we’re going to make a 20 page, 28 page booklet, and print it in full color on glossy stock. It’s going to be nice, because we try to do everything excellently. And we’re only going to make it available in a physical form, okay? But, we’ll give it away. So this was a test, and this has been basically the second most popular thing on our website, is people download, well you can’t download it–

Danny:

Yeah, yeah.

John:

They put it in, and we mail it to them for free, okay? Costs a couple of bucks for us to mail that, but two dollars for a lead is actually pretty cheap.

Danny:

It is, yeah.

John:

And so we send that guide out, and the result has been we’ve gotten many people who come back to us and say, can you send us a case of 100, we’re going to use this as our training material for new people who are coming on board, because yours is the nicest and best guide along these lines, and so quickly we realized, one, there’s definitely a need, and two, this is a value, not just the information, but think of the last time somebody wrote you a physical letter. If somebody wrote you a physical letter, if you went home and there was one in the mail today from a friend of yours, you would read it and you would feel like, oh, he took time and wrote me a real letter and look how nice this is. Because we’ve gotten so digital, that the physical is gone. So now when you have it, it’s like unique again.

Danny:

You’re 100% right. It’s funny to see that sort of come back, sort of full circle, and we’re starting to hear that a lot, and even experience it ourselves. I remember, so we, every year, we do the insights report, so we survey 150 manufacturers or more about sales and marketing trends, and we put it into an e-book and a downloadable, it’s 52 pages, all this. But I’ll never forget, we went and printed it, and I remember looking at it and being like wow, this is amazing! It was our own thing, but it’s just that physical form was amazing, but to take it to the next level, where you guys are actually sending it to them, yeah. It’s funny, you get stuff in the mail all the time, primarily because of Amazon, but as far as a letter, or something like that to your point, yeah, when’s the last time that happened, outside of being a bill, and nobody wants that.

John:

Or junk mail. But the thing is, this is something somebody asked for. So it doesn’t go in the garbage, we know it doesn’t. People get it, we started including a little form in there that says, a flyer that says gives this to your friend if he wants one. Just give it to him, it has the web address and he can download, or we’ll e-mail, see I can’t even say it. We don’t physically mail him his own copy, and we get a ton of people who get this guide, their friend sees it, they give him the paper, their friend goes and, goes and orders one, and we send it to him too. I think it’s something simple, but the difference is it provides a different sense of value. So you get that thing, it sits on your desk, you hand it to somebody, it’s tangible, we make it at our own expense at a very high quality, and it leaves a good impression of the brand, and it’s seen as value. So we’ve actually extended that, to even catalogs. Of course, our catalog, our products are online, but we still develop catalogs and we also make those available. You can download them, but we’ll mail it to you for free. Because product catalog, product information in a physical form, it’s actually still wanted by a ton of people, and it transcends the inbox or the downloads folders a little differently than just another PDF lost in the shuffle of PDFs, and now you’re nurturing–

Danny:

Absolutely.

John:

Info and whatever, but okay, instead I’ve got a physical item, and that’s pretty cool.

Danny:

Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense, it’s funny, I’ve seen a lot of people with the product catalogs and they still, they do the dog ear, you know. So you go through it, and you can kind of, because you can get totally lost in the digital. Yes, you can measure, you can do all that stuff. But there’s still an element of that. But one thing I think that, just really commend you guys on, which is great, is a lot of companies you’ll see that, yes, we still have the catalog, and that’s what they’ll send. You know, it’s like oh! Do you want to, I mean I know you guys will do that, maybe later down the funnel there, but it’s like, the key word is value, is that you guys are providing value and you’re educating people and that it’s like, you’re helping them in their jobs do something. You’re providing value, you’re being thought leaders and experts in your industry. And so instead of saying hey, buy from us, it’s hey, how can we help you? This guide can help you.

John:

Exactly.

Danny:

And the same thing with what you guys are doing with your content online that is digital. And I think a lot of people kind of get lost, particularly in the industrial and manufacturing world, it’s like oh, we’ve got to sell, we’ve got to, we want that order, we’re going to the trade show and I want to come back away with all the PO’s and the sales. The way people buy is totally different now, you know? I mean, to be honest with you, actually, I don’t even think that it’s really shifted so much, like the process of how we buy, maybe the medium is a little different, right?

John:

Right.

Danny:

But it’s all about that value, I love it, that’s, and educating, that’s awesome.

John:

Yeah, I think what’s changed is that people, marketing, has become a huger part of the funnel– of the sales funnel than it ever was before because of the self-education approach to buying anything.

Danny:

Right.

John:

And how are people going to self-educate if you’re not giving them educational stuff, basically. So that’s what we really try to do is do that, provide that value, so when you’re looking for the information on how to choose what it is, or what are the differences between this and this, or whatever it may be, that we are the ones giving you the answer, and that’s a value exchange. And through that process, you begin to build a relationship with the company, just like because you go to the same bank and work with the same teller, or buy your bagel at the same place in the morning, you start to get to know those people, they know what you want, you recognize them, they recognize you. There’s a rapport that starts to build there, even though you’ve never really hung out with that person or anything.

Danny:

Right.

John:

You didn’t have them over for dinner, but you know that person on some level, and that’s what you’re doing as a brand in the digital space when you’re providing this education. You’re basically saying look, you can get to know us, you can see what we think, we’ll help you, we’ll invest in you, we’ll provide you value, and then you’re building a trust basically between your brand and your consumers. And hopefully, what we’re trying to do is target all those different people in those different roles so that they all have the same experience. And they’re like, yeah, their procurement guy’s like yeah, Brennan! And the engineering guy’s like yeah, Brennan! And then when it goes to the buyer or whatever, he’s like oh, Brennan, yeah! And you just get a string of green lights, because there’s several people involved with an industrial sale, it’s not just one little simple decision. They take a year or two, sometimes.

Danny:

Yeah. Absolutely.

John:

So, that’s the goal.

Danny:

Yeah, so, all right. So this is what you did here. An 800% increase in leads, and that took you what, a week?

John:

Right, so that’s over four years, comparing the beginning to four years into it. But the increase was so big, we actually had to create a new role, of inside sales more or less, we call them Business Development Manager, to handle the leads, because we get so many. And then we actually had to put together a lead routing system, a software solution, for routing those leads. Because as an industrial company that works with distributors, a value that we give to distributors is our lead generation capabilities. So say you’re a little distributor, you can’t have a massive content marketing initiative going.

Danny:

Right.

John:

But we can, and you’re our distributor and we’ll give you those leads, because we’re not going to sell to your leads. I mean, a lot of these leads just go to our distributors, right? So that’s another way you’re just creating value by investing in that lead generation system. And now it’s a funnel for all your distributors, and when they’re choosing what product am I going to carry, they look out there say, well who’s working the hardest to get me leads, you know?

Danny:

Exactly, yeah, exactly. We on a previous episode that we had here on IndustrialSage it was one of the things that we were talking about, was how can you, for those who are going through working with distributors, how can you facilitate that, and really, how can you use marketing in different ways to be able to sort of help them there, and that was one of the things, is just make it easy for them. If you’re sending leads to your distributor, I mean come on, hey, look, I got these people and they’re ready to go. Even if they’re repping other, or they’ve got other competitive products, I mean they’re going to say, oh these guys are making it easy for me over here, this is helpful, keep it coming! You’re making my job easier. This is awesome.

John:

Sure, yep.

Danny:

Okay. So I’ve got another question. All right, so great results. Obviously it takes time. Obviously it didn’t take a week, I was joking. It took a little bit more than that. And where a lot of companies are in, maybe a similar boat to where you guys were maybe four years ago, or even five years ago, is maybe they know, okay, yeah, I like what I hear, I would love that, we want to do this, but we think we know how now, but there’s inevitably always that obstacle of getting that buy-in. What did that look like for you guys?

John:

Well, since I was kind of coming in to a new role there, I had a lot of automatic buy-in, but for somebody else already in that role, what I would say is, I mean, it’s clear that this is the direction everything is going. There is a lot of hesitation, I suppose, and even when I was getting started, there was hesitation, but once results start coming in, the hesitation completely goes out the window. And you start seeing some results. So what I would say is if you’re going to make the move, and you ought to make the move, to a more digital and content-based inbound strategy. So drawing people to you. If you’re going to do that, make the commitment to do it, and don’t do it half-heartedly. It takes actually a lot of effort, it’s a major change from a traditional, we’re just going to create ads. You find yourself basically slowly turning into a media production company, your marketing department.

So we have a video guy on staff now, we have designers, we have video equipment. We didn’t have any of that kind of stuff. So over time, the transition to the marketing department is actually kind of profound. There’s a lot of changes that go on there. And a lot of new, I guess, expertise and a new skillsets, that need to be there. So it’s going to take an investment, and it’s going to take some commitment, and it doesn’t happen quickly. So that’s actually kind of like the triple whammy for the FCO, I mean the CFO, who’s looking into everything going, our marketing is going way up. Well I can tell you though, and the publishers won’t want to hear this, but you can cut that publishing budget. I really doubt you will see a change. We’ve noticed no change in four years of cutting the advertising budget down, half each year, we haven’t noticed a loss in the amazing leads that those ads were pulling in. It didn’t, it went the exact opposite. The advertising graph goes like that, and the results graph goes like that.

Danny:

Yeah.

John:

So there might be fear of, oh well, we’re going to drastically reduce our ad spend in order to make money available for content marketing, which is some new unproven thing, but, yeah, do exactly that. Take money out of your ad spend, and put it into content marketing, and just commit. And don’t be afraid and just go for it. Doing it half-hearted is just going to make it take even longer, you know? And just know okay, we’re going to settle in, and it’ll take a couple of years to get this thing up and running, and we may actually need some new people, or some training, or all these kinds of things. But put it as a goal on somebody’s job description and say you’re responsible for making this happen. We’re going to go this way.

Danny:

That’s awesome, wow. Now that’s just some great wisdom there. That’s some great thoughts, I mean, yeah. It’s not easy, I mean I get it. But you’re 100% right. You have to make that investment, that’s where everyone is going, it’s the Blockbuster or the Netflix. I mean it’s where things are going and to not be afraid. But it is exciting to be able to see those results, when you start seeing those little things. Oh wow, this actually, this is interesting. It’s new. And so it can be scary. But there’s light, there’s a big light at the end of the tunnel, and no, it’s not a train. It’s actual light, right, it’s a good thing. So John, listen, I have really appreciated and really enjoyed our conversation. Before we wrap up, anything else you’d like to leave for our audience? Leave it open-ended?

John:

No, I mean, I think just to recap, I think it’s definitely worth doing. I mean, content marketing isn’t a silver bullet, marketing in this day and age changes rapidly. In 10 years from now, it’ll be something different than the content marketing approach we’re doing now. But the key is not to be afraid of change, and even though your business model may not have changed drastically in 40 years, or your parts or whatever it is might be, I heard one company at Content Marketing World saying they still sell an item that’s been around for over 100 years, so okay, but the world is changing. The way people buy things is changing. The way business happens is changing, even in these stalwart industrial sectors, so don’t be afraid to push the envelope in your marketplace, and honestly there’s a really good chance you might rush straight to the front if no one else’s doing it. If everybody’s lagging behind, then go for it. And I think you’d be surprised with the kind of results you see.

Danny:

And that’s the opportunity right there. So John, with that, thank you so much. If anybody has, would love to reach out to you, what’s the best way of getting in contact? Do you have LinkedIn or Twitter or something?

John:

Yeah, LinkedIn you can search me, or Mr. John Joyce on Twitter is easy, so you can look for me there.

Danny:

Perfect. We’ll do that. John, thank you so much for spending some of your time with us and sharing a lot of your great insights.

John:

Glad to be on, Danny, thanks for having me.

Danny:

All right, so how about that. Man, that was a really awesome episode. I really enjoyed that a lot. There’s a ton of takeaways from that. I think for me, a couple of them are, we talk about this a lot on here, it’s the long game, and that’s exactly what they were, they were playing the long game. This wasn’t something that they turned on immediately and boom results, which is to be honest with you a lot of times is that expectation. Oh, digital things are going to go viral, and we’re just going to hit a couple of buttons and things are going to go magical. And it’s not.

There’s a lot of fear involved, there’s a lot of learning, as you heard John say, for the first year, they had one type of premium content, and they were trying these different things, and they said okay, this that works, or this didn’t work, and now let’s double down. And now look where they are, they’re creating new positions inside the company, because it’s shifting the dynamics of how sales are happening. They’re able to really excite their distributors, be able to pass leads to them and help make it easier for them. So there’s just a lot of incredible benefit from this. So listen, if you’re sitting there on the fence, saying, gosh, I don’t know, we’re getting here towards budget season, planning season, if you’re a calendar year company. January is just around the corner. Now is the time to really put those plans in place, get things going, lock down that plan, and say we’re going to start doing this, and map out a plan. It doesn’t have to be super high level or big, but start. Start doing something, start getting those results, and keep moving forward.

So that’s all I’ve got for you. Thank you so much for watching this episode of IndustrialSage. If you have any questions, we’d love to answer them for you on the show. You can reach out to us, IndustrialSage.com/questions. If you’re listening on any of the podcasting stations, we’d love a review. If you’re looking at stuff on social media, hey, make some comments, share the love. We’d love it. And that’s it, that’s all I’ve got for you. I’m Danny, this is IndustrialSage. Thanks so much for watching.

 

 

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