How to Build Brand Equity In a Fast-Paced World | Episode 121

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In IndustrialSage Episode 121, Jason Walker (co-founder & CEO of Waypoint Robotics) explains why long-term brand equity is vital for any company.

Danny:

All right, so let’s jump into today’s episode. I have Jason Walker from Waypoint Robotics. He’s the co-founder and CEO. Jason, thank you so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage.

Jason:

Yeah, thanks for having us, Danny. It’s great to be here.

Danny:

Well it’s going to be good. So we met I think at MODEX was it two years ago? So 2018, 17? I lose track of time.

Jason:

Yeah, 17.

Danny:

17, okay.

Jason:

I think 17.

Danny:

That sounds about right. So, yeah anyway, we were there. We were doing some videos and we met and has these super cool robots and all these things going around. So for those who aren’t familiar with who you are, just let us know– yeah, these [robots]. Or actually, it wasn’t the big guy because I think that was maybe last year or so. But, yeah, so anyways, so you guys do robotics. But tell me about who you guys are. You guys are a startup. Tell me that story.

Jason:

Yeah, so Waypoint Robotics, we’re going on three years and we’re making autonomous mobile robots for factories and we’re really trying to build tools that small to mid-size manufacturers will find cost effective and easy to deploy.

And one of the main ways we’re doing that is by building a robot that is easy to use, not in the context of robotics engineers, but in the context of the people who are moving materials now. So the assembly line workers, the shipping and receiving clerks, the dock workers. Those are the people that we intend to own this tool and to set up the robot and configure it and reconfigure it and use it and deploy it.

And so we think that in a situation like we’ve had where there’s this huge labor shortage, if we can empower the workforce with great tools, they can be the ones that create that extra efficiency and increase their own capabilities, get involved in industry 4.0, and help their companies be competitive in a very dynamic global market.

Danny:

Awesome. Well there’s definitely a lot of – you mentioned, big topic buzzword – Industry 4.0, a lot going on in the space. But one of the challenges that you guys have had and when we were talking before off camera a little bit was with this whole move with this new shift in technology, Industry 4.0, there’s a – especially as it comes to robotics – sometimes there’s this idea that – and we can talk about AI as well, but anyway that’s a whole different topic, but – that these robots are going to come in and totally take away people’s jobs. How do you guys, how have you addressed that?

Jason:

Well, we’ve addressed this. So that was one of the things on a personal level that we really felt like we wanted to reconcile.

We care about the workforce. We don’t want them to be left behind or not included; and that’s a big part of what drove us to do this. And so, philosophically that’s what drives it.

The companies love their people and the people love their companies, and they just need better tools. And so philosophically that’s where it comes from; but on a more technical level if you look at the data, the data shows that countries and states and organizations that adopt robotics and automation technology actually have increased productivity growth. They have increased GDP.

All the data points to the robotics and automation actually creates jobs, creates opportunity, creates more revenue.

But there is a part of the workforce that can get left behind and the low-skilled workers are the ones who are susceptible, as the data shows, to being excluded from that rising tide that raises all boats. And so that is exactly the person that we want to be able to give the tools to be able to do that work, but in a much more efficient way.

And if you’re a company that’s trying to hire more workers and you can’t find enough help, or you need to increase your efficiency to be more competitive, if you don’t need to go find a roboticist to go with your new robot and you can use the folks you have there already that you know and trust, then you’re solving multiple problems simultaneously. And so that’s some of the reasons why we’ve worked so hard to build a great robot that we can make easy to use that we can put in the hands of the existing workforce and empower them to strengthen their company and strengthen the economy.

Danny:

That’s awesome. So what aresome specific use cases for some of the problems that you guys are solving? I guess you said, it’s not exclusive to inside warehousing and docks but– I assume, unless if I’ve got that wrong. But what are some of the typical use case?

Jason:

Yes, we built this product so that it would work well in a small to mid-size manufacturing environment. Think of the family-owned, 50-year-old machine shop that has been working great the whole time even without wifi. And that’s a tough environment for an autonomous mobile robot for a handful of reasons.

One of them is that you’re not going to tear down the facility and rebuild it around the capabilities of the mobile robot. And another one is that the work tends to change every day or every week, and so if you have a robot that cannot be configured and reconfigured by the people you have on site, then it is immediately a non-starter to be able to deploy it.

So we built a robot that would work well in that manufacturing environment and if it can work well in the most chaotic and difficult of environments, then it works great for warehousing and we have customers who are deploying them that way; and it works great in larger, more organized manufacturing operations for much larger companies and is being deployed that way. And we also have a customer that’s an industrial cricket farmer. And we have animatronic–

Danny:

Industrial cricket farmer? Okay, cool!

Jason:

Yeah, we have an animatronics company, so, lots of researchers. We recently shipped a robot to Washington River Protection Services, who are monitoring the nuclear waste tank farms with it. So, really broad applications. If you build a really good robot then it’s broadly applicable. But we want to make sure that the manufacturers can be a part of the revolution and that the workforce that they have are also a part of it.

Danny:

Awesome, no that totally makes sense. Which is super cool, all those different applications you have there, especially if you have the nuclear…I’d love to learn more about that. But I don’t know if we can talk about that without having some sort of classification.

But the, let’s talk about startup. Maybe there’s a little bit of that messaging, misconception, challenge to get out there. And also from being a startup, getting your name and all that out there, from a sales and marketing standpoint. Obviously this a very emerging technology, emerging markets. It’s not mature by any stretch of the imagination. It’s kind of like the wild, wild west a little bit.

What have you guys done in order to kind of break through that? I think it’s sort of a two-part question. One, what are you using to address those misconceptions? And then also, what are you using to generate that awareness, that, “Hey, we’re here”?

Jason:

Yeah, we do and always have done a lot of inbound marketing. We’ve always been exceptionally brand conscious, and brand equity is built through consistency and through commitment and dedication. And so we put that into the recipe for the company from day one, and into the products.

And so we charted a path early, very specifically, and we have stuck with it and we have added to it. And so building brand equity is really important to communicating the truth of the fact that although we’re a startup, we’re a stable and permanent company. We are a privately-funded startup, and so our objectives are long-term. We are long-term thinkers. We’re not thinking about the next quarter, we’re not thinking about the next round of funding; we’re thinking about what is going to make our customers and our partners happy so that they keep coming back and they tell their friends. And so that kind of thing is baked in from the beginning. That’s where it starts.

And then search engine optimization, SEO, inbound marketing techniques, those have really been tools that we’ve relied on very heavily to be able to create the, try to open our doors as wide as we can so that people who are looking for an autonomous mobile robot can find us. And we still find people who say, “Wow, I can’t believe I just learned about you.” And so there’s always more work to be done, but those tools are really effective and video has been an exceptionally effective tool. People love to consume information that way, and it has been and will be an increasing part of our strategy to be able to develop content that we can engage users with.

So we are going to trade shows, and events, and being involved in the community, and talking to first clubs, it’s all part of it. And it all makes a difference and it has an accumulative effect.

And so, you know there’s that old thing about, “You know you’re wasting half your advertising dollars but you don’t know which half”? We’re not in that situation, but it’s kind of a nice way to frame the idea that it’s really hard to point to one single thing that you do and say, “That’s the thing. If you do that, then you’ll get customers.”

We sold a robot to one of the biggest logistics companies on earth and we were able to go back through our data and see trade show visits and website visits and email conversations going back for the whole history of the company, and they bought a robot midyear. So, and I think if they hadn’t seen us at all the shows and if they hadn’t seen the permanence and they hadn’t seen the growth, that it would’ve been harder to take that risk on a startup.

Danny:

Oh yeah, absolutely, I mean you mentioned something earlier on just about from the sustainability standpoint…and I think that that’s definitely, that’s another big challenge. I think they’d be able to come across and say, “Hey listen, these are the new kids on the block over here. And are they going to be here tomorrow?” Those are the real things.

So having those touches over that time absolutely makes sense. So you mentioned inbound, are you guys using HubSpot or anything like that to help? Okay, cool. And so SEO, so you guys must be, are you guys blogging a lot on different topics? Are there particular industries that you focus on versus not? Or is it– what does that look like?

Jason:

We do work really hard on content creation and we try to have things that are generally useful. A lot of what we think about and what we talk about is of course rooted in our company, our products and what we want to do for the customer. And so there’s naturally a lot of the content we make that’s peppered with what we do because the reason we’re talking about it is because we care about it.

And when we’re talking about a problem that people who are shopping for robots need to know about and need to know what their options are and what the pitfalls are, and then when we use our own products as an example of how to do it in a way that we think avoids those pitfalls that’s kind of marketing. But it’s also generally useful, and so we have what we hear from the experts is an extraordinarily high open rate and click-through-rate on our email campaign.

And I think the reason for that is that we don’t carpet-bomb people. We curate the list carefully, we have people who have to actively choose to opt in. When we’re at trade shows we ask them if they want to be on the mailing list and so we have a list of interested people and then we generate content that’s genuinely and generally useful to the audience. And so that is another way where you’ve just got to be everywhere, and you’ve got to be useful, you know?

Even if somebody’s not going to buy a robot from me, ultimately, if I can help them out and in doing so help out the robotics community and help out the customers that are being served, then that’s good for everyone.

Danny:

That’s awesome and that kind of aligns with the whole brand equity piece there. So I’m curious, what is your open rate? If you’re able to share. You said it was high?

Jason:

It’s over 25% consistently.

Danny:

That’s pretty good. I mean, that’s good. So it speaks to, like you mentioned with the content, that you’re pushing it. How– just from a frequency standpoint are you guys sending stuff out monthly, weekly, daily, what is that?

Jason:

We aspire to do it weekly, I think, but life gets in the way. I think it’s probably monthly and the way we do it is through an iterative process of talking about what’s on our mind, what do we want to communicate, or what is the rest of the world talking about? And we have a thought about it.

And then we have the writers start to work on it and then ultimately it will come back to me and I’ll go through it and make sure that if I’m a roboticist reading that content, that it makes sense. That there’s not some small accidental or easy-to-misunderstand term that is maybe flipped around a little bit but completely changed the meaning and an expert would realize that, “This isn’t an expert!” So we really care about the quality of the products that we put out in terms of content so that it’s not just interesting and engaging, but it’s useful and it’s reliable as a good source of information.

Danny:

So you mean you’re not just trying to sell them every single email that you’re sending, “Hey, buy from us!” You’re actually providing value?

Jason:

We try, yeah. We really do. And I’ve just spent the last year giving talks of one kind or another to all sorts of different organizations on how important we think it is that robotics companies should be building products for the existing workforce, and how important it is that the people who are buying robots are demanding and expecting that to be the case. And so I always say at the end of my talk, “I hope nobody listens to me from the robotics industry, because that’ll be great for me. But if they do, it’ll be great for everyone.”

And so the robotics industry, especially AMRs, is small enough at this point. Albeit, at a ridiculously high trajectory that it’s so small and everybody’s doing things that are differentiated enough for the most part that we can all have our niche and we can be collaborative and cooperative as opposed to cutthroat and trying to do a race to the bottom. It’s certainly competitive, which is great. That’s what you need to push the envelope and, but yeah, I feel like the more people know, the more likely they are to choose our product. And if we educate them really well and they don’t choose our products then that means it wasn’t the right fit. And I’d rather have a happy customer I didn’t get than an unhappy customer I did get.

Danny:

That’s great, that makes absolutely a lot of sense. But currently you mentioned that inbound’s a big thing, so are most of your leads just coming in through the website? Are they just like, “Hey I’ve found you and I found this blog article about you, I read this thing or this case study and I’m not sure,” is that primarily how that’s working?

Jason:

Yeah, and certainly there are people who find us at trade shows and events who discovered us online more often than not, and of course we meet people at trade shows and they come in as a lead through our website. But most of the time it really is folks that are searching for an autonomous mobile robot and they find our webpage and find it engaging, and that compels them to contact us and then we reach back out and qualify them and try to figure out if the problem they have is a problem we can solve. So, yeah, that’s really kind of the main way that we have been doing sales. Although we are, we just hired a great new Business Development person and so were going to start to be more aggressive going outward as opposed to just drinking from the fire hose of inbound requests.

Danny:

I mean, that’s great, that is a great… You mentioned your fire hose and it applies, maybe you’ve got a lot of leads that’s coming and that’s great. There’s a lot of companies that don’t have that. And it sounds like you’ve built an inbound pipeline that is fairly robust and a sense that it’s doing its job generating interest and so, as far as where you’re seeing those major sources of leads coming from, from an inbound perspective, is it from the blogs? Is it from, what is it? What channel? You know, social or what is, if you were to say, “Hey, this is it.” Like people coming through our blogs all the time or whatever. What is that?

Jason:

Gosh, I should know that off the top of my head and I don’t, and I think the reason I don’t know it off the top of my head is because it’s a pretty balanced mix. We have really great organic results just, people have heard about us, read about us, and just type our name into the browser and find us that way. That might be number one. But my marketing director’s looking at me so…yeah, but it’s a pretty good mix. And as I’ve been saying, it all feeds on each other and it’s really tough to get really accurate attributions for where leads come from because it has to accumulate, you know? You’ve got to demonstrate your permanence and your value as someone who is worth listening to and talking to to have people eventually be compelled to reach out.

Danny:

Yeah, no that makes sense. And so, if I could recap everything that I’m hearing, really essentially is provide value, help to solve people’s challenges, let’s not sell sell sell, and really build that, you said that very early on, you said, “Really build that brand equity.” Build that brand through, obviously you’ve got great email campaigns going out with high open rates and providing value in there versus saying, “Hey, “buy, buy, buy.” That kind of thing. So I think it’s awesome.

Congratulations that you guys are, that in three years have been able to do that. Obviously, it looks like you’ve got some pretty great products there. I didn’t get to ride on one of them but one of our, Joseph I think, he got to, I think you guys did a standing interview on them in MODEX, right? You guys were both talking on them. That was pretty cool.

Jason:

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, we had one person on each Vector and were cruising around on it.

Danny:

And that’s, I think it’s super cool. I could never build what you do there. I don’t have that brain. But I really appreciate it. I think that’s awesome. So, listen right, as we go to wrap, is there anything that you would say, maybe to somebody who’s sort of, they’re on the fence and they’re sort of trying to figure it out? Saying, “Hey.” It could be another startup, it could be a manufacturer who’s been in this game for 90 years and they’re trying to, “Yeah we need to make a pivot.” What would you tell them?

In terms of marketing tactics, strategies…?

Danny:

Yeah.

Jason:

I would say, get your brand in order and then get your SEO house in order. And if that means hiring an expert or more likely hiring an agency that can tend that garden while you’re doing more important work relative to… I mean it’s very important– but you generate the leads and then you’ve got to do the business. And so I think that’s really important because even if your business is based mostly on going out and shaking hands and meeting people, the very next thing they’re going to do is look you up, and if they can’t find you easily when they do a search and they can’t educate themselves then it’s going to be tough to capture their interests.

And we say all the time that it feels like nobody’s really selling anymore, not successfully, and instead what’s happening is people are buying. And so the way we try to think of it is, let’s give those people as many tools and resources as they can to make their own decision that they want to buy; as opposed to trying to convince them and sell them something. And that’s how we approach it and I think that’s certainly the thing, that’s how it feels like the world is going.

Danny:

Yeah, 100% right. I mean, the way that people buy, the way that we’re accustomed to buying has completely changed. It’s shifted and even in B2B, so, and it will continue to do so.

Jason:

Absolutely. So yeah, and you need to… it still pays to have those classic business development relationships, and somebody who understands the importance of keeping in touch. And really learning what’s important to the customers. That’s essential. But you’ve also got to empower people with the tools they need to help themselves. And so that’s our philosophy in marketing, as well as building robots.

Danny:

Absolutely– no, it’s great. Jason, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on IndustrialSage. If anybody would want to learn more about you, I’m assuming they can find you on the web like we’ve just talked about for the last 20 minutes. Because your SEO’s good. Waypointrobotics.com? Is that the URL? Awesome.

Jason:

Yep, exactly right. And we are @waypointrobo on all of the social platforms. And yeah.

Danny:

So I learned a new word today, or a new acronym with AMR. I knew AGV, but I wasn’t sure with AMR so it was Automated…what? I messed it up. What is it?

Jason:

Autonomous mobile robot.

Danny:

Autonomous mobile robot, okay. All right, got it.

Jason:

And if in one sentence I had to say what the difference is between those is, an AGV is an automated thing that does one thing and one thing only in one place, one way, and if anything’s different then nothing happens. And an autonomous mobile robot is a thinking machine that you give objectives to instead of discreet instructions. And so when somebody gets a Vector in their place and gets it set up in 15 or 20 minutes, they don’t have to meticulously plan routs. They just, they go to the loading dock and it figures out how to get there on its own and if something’s there that wasn’t there yesterday it’ll plan another path.

Danny:

Well, when we’re ready for our first AMR I know exactly who we’re going to. So…

Jason:

Right on.

Danny:

Jason, thanks so much, appreciate it. All right.

Jason:

Thank you.

Danny:

Okay, another great episode. Hey, I hope you learned some pretty cool stuff today like what difference between an AGV and AMR is and when you’re ready for that AMR, you know where to go. I know where I’m going to go, and it’s pretty cool.

So I think one of the really interesting things that I took away from this is that these guys, they’re a startup. They started three years ago and they’re crushing it. They’re killing it. And they’re doing it, they’re driving a lot of leads online doing that inbound. And don’t think that, “Okay, we have to have…we have to get HubSpot or whatever now.” You may need it, all right? But you may not.

I think the idea is that the framework if you think about it is really providing value. They talked about building brand and SEO. Think about that. And I think a lot of times as manufacturers that brand thing just kind of, it’s totally kind of thrown out the window. Like, “Oh well, that’s just… I guess, I don’t know, we have 20 different logos and it doesn’t really matter and what we’re saying and what we stand…ah, whatever. We’re just pushing and we’re just selling products.” No, it’s super important. There’s a reason why they have a really high open rate with their newsletters. There’s a reason why people are finding them online and when they’re looking for that product that they have, okay? So think about that.

All right, so that’s all I’ve got for you today. If you have a question, I’d love to answer it on the show. You can reach out to me at IndustrialSage.com/questions and I’ll answer it for you on the show and we’ll go from there. So thank you so much for watching today. That’s it, that’s all I’ve got for you. I’ll catch you next week with another episode of IndustrialSage and that’s it. I’m Danny, I’m signing off. See you later.

(Looking for this episode’s blog article? Read it here!)

 

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