Leveraging Your Collective Industrial Audiences to Increase Your Brand’s Reach

Our guest industrial marketer today is Blaine LaFleur, founder of Vested Marketing. He’s going to share with us how they leverage their clients’ collective audience to help everyone increase their reach and close more sales.

About Vested Marketing

As a certified Platinum Tiered HubSpot Partner Agency, they do not only understand the benefits of using the inbound marketing platform to increase traffic, generate leads and boost sales, they know how to make it happen. They are honored to be among an elite group of agencies, out of thousands of HubSpot Agency partners worldwide.

(337) 351-4731 | [email protected] | www.vested.marketing | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn

Transcript:

David Caron:

You’re listening to the Agency Success Podcast by Industrial Sage, sharing sales and marketing success stories from agencies working with industrial and manufacturing companies.

David Caron:

Great to have you here on another episode of the Agency Success podcast on Industrial Sage. We’re really excited to hear about what you guys have done for your clients in the manufacturing industrial space, sales and marketing. Let’s dive in and talk a little bit about you. Can you give us a little bit of background, how you got started and got here today?

Blaine LaFleur:

Yeah, man. Sure. I’m a mechanical engineer, professional engineer. I own an engineering firm called Stonewall Engineering in Lafayette, Louisiana. I’m more of a sale guy and I have a professional engineering license and a mechanical degree. But I realized a long time ago that I was more of a marketing and sales guy then I was actual … I wanted to get behind the computer screen and just do the engineering work. So opened my own firm, and when I opened that firm, it was in the downturn of the oil industry in 2016. I knew that I could create revenue by just hitting the streets and people that knew me, but I wanted to create revenue another way by people that didn’t know me and outside my network.

Blaine LaFleur:

A mentor of mine pointed me towards HubSpot software. Being an engineer, we’re taught to trust but verify. I wasn’t going to pay a marketing firm to do it because that’s who I am. So I decided to do the marketing myself. Since I was paying for it out of my own pocket, they onboarded me and trained me and started doing it in October, 2017 and I think around December of 2017 I got a call from HubSpot and it was the chief people officer or something like that called me and said, “Man, you’re killing it for a small business from metric standpoint and how you’re creating content and how you’re using the software. We want to fly you to Boston to talk to our entire sales team. Kind of tell them what you’re doing and how you’re doing it because you’re doing it different than most people that we’ve seen.”

Blaine LaFleur:

So I couldn’t fly because of a snow storm, but whenever I presented via a web conference like this in front of about 150 people, it was awesome. They called me after, they got [inaudible 00:02:27] and they called me after and said, “Man, you need to open a marketing firm.” And I was like, “Hold on man, I’m just doing my own marketing here. I don’t have time to open a marketing firm.” “I’m telling you, you’re using it in a way most people don’t use it and in a space that a lot of people aren’t using it in. People are going to see what you’re doing around your area and want you to do it for them.” And, boy, was he right. A lot of people started calling me to do the marketing and asking me, “What are you doing? How are you doing this? Because I can see your stuff everywhere. You’re popping up everywhere.” So told him what I was doing and started helping them and then I opened a marketing firm in 2018 in August and started.

Blaine LaFleur:

It was really my business development strategy, man. As a sales engineer it’s hard to sell engineering, so I figured how do I use this software to get more clients? I felt like the best way to get more clients was … Saw that there was a hole in the industrial space, manufacturing space, that they just didn’t really have good marketing. Being that I’m an engineer and I design and understand manufacturing industrial, I figured I’m going to go do their marketing, they’re going to pay me to do their marketing. So my clients, right? I went to potential clients or existing clients in my engineering company and started offering to do their marketing for them. By doing their marketing for them, I can then generate revenue for them, which is easier to generate revenue for, say, a tool that they were selling or manufacturing that they were doing besides trying to get engineering work.

Blaine LaFleur:

So if I could get that manufacturing work for them or that new tool design, then they would end up using me to do engineering. And then I just found the niche in it, man. Found the niche and being able to market certain types of oil and gas customers. I understand the industry, and we’ve got quite a few success stories, Stonewall being one of them. But outside of Stonewall I’ve got a couple of clients that I’ve done really well for from an SEO standpoint and getting them contacts from around the globe, just being found because they never were being found. So that’s in a nutshell a quick story about how I got started and what I’m doing now.

David Caron:

Yep. Okay. So Stonewall is your engineering firm, correct?

Blaine LaFleur:

Correct.

David Caron:

Okay. And your agency is …

Blaine LaFleur:

Vested. It’s called Vested Marketing.

David Caron:

Vested. Okay. Okay. So that’s kind of crazy to think about how you went from being focused on your own engineering and trying to drive a revenue that way for your own business, and then having that opportunity with HubSpot. There are some great software to be able to help with sales and marketing teams. Obviously it’s not going to do the hard work. It just helps. Going from being engineering focus to, “Hey, I can actually help other manufacturing companies, oil, gas companies generate revenue for their businesses using the same strategy”, same tactics that you’re using to generate revenue for your own engineering firm. Then that has in turn brought engineering work to your engineering firm?

Blaine LaFleur:

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean it’s done a bunch of things, honestly. I mean, because I’m doing that marketing, I can get real strategic in that marketing. So say I design a tool for a customer of mine, right? There’s literally design their downhole tool. Well then I can go in and do … my marketing strategy can get really broad. Instead of just marketing on Stonewall’s website and saying, “Okay, I designed this tool”, not only can I create a content on my website, I can create content on their website that points back to me. So then I can connect the two, right? But I don’t have to ask them to connect the two. I connect the two. Then you can see how it starts growing over time.

Blaine LaFleur:

Say I designed this downhole tool, so Stonewall did the engineering, and then I got one of my other clients who does machining and manufacturing to manufacture and machine that tool. Then I have the customer that actually has the tool itself, and then I have their vendor which then buys that tool. That’s four different players that I can have access to their website, social media channels, blog content and be able to link all of that together and form somewhat of an SEO strategy through that. That’s been my main strategy, is getting really, really strategic on how do I partner with these guys on the marketing instead of just trying to build out marketing.

Blaine LaFleur:

Because it’s hard in this industry to kind of create that marketing platform. You have to have something that’s kind of a … What’s the word I’m looking for? Indirect, like not direct. I can’t just directly market engineering services, it’s not like an iPhone or something flashy. Right? You have to have that indirect referral and so if I can create that content on, say, one of my customer’s website that indirectly refers back to Stonewall or indirectly refers back to the machine shop that did that part, I’ve seen that to be way more successful than that direct marketing of yourself.

David Caron:

Yeah, exactly. It’s almost having that third party type of validation, which is … when you’re trying to sell something directly, everyone puts their barriers up, the walls up, their guard. They’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t really want to be sold to right now”, but if you come through that second avenue, like you said, that referral, then it really opens up. Their walls are down. They’re a little bit more receptive to what you have to say and odds are they’re probably more likely interested in it because they’re also seeking out that third party validation in the first place.

Blaine LaFleur:

Yeah. Especially in the oil and gas network. Oil and gas is still good old boy handshake kind of deal. It’s starting to move away to where it’s getting bigger and more of a commonplace type of business or industry. But it’s still old school and so you have to be validated for people to want to work with you.

David Caron:

Yep. Exactly. So maybe you can highlight … because when we talk about sales tactics, marketing tactics, HubSpot software, other software tools that can help you do different things. Let’s talk about specifically a set of maybe tactics that you’ve leveraged within a specific campaign for one of your clients where they saw the results that they were trying to get.

Blaine LaFleur:

Yeah. So one of my clients is a company called Rotating Solutions. They do a lot of manufacturing but centrifuge type work in the oil and gas space and refineries. So they rent a couple of pieces of equipment called Manway Cannons and three-phase centrifuges. So that was one of their biggest pushes in 2019 and 2020, but if you went to their website, you didn’t really understand that they did that and they weren’t even close to being found if somebody googled Manway Cannon or centrifuge. Or a decanter centrifuge or three phase centrifuge, what they were trying to be found.

Blaine LaFleur:

I identified really quick that there wasn’t many players out there doing marketing on those types of keywords or that type of … Not just keywords but just that type of equipment. So I put a strategy together using Stonewall, using my other partners within my network that I was doing marketing for by creating the content on their website, enough content. Like base content with downloads and landing pages and blog posts and just the basic stuff that you would use in HubSpot to create some really foundational content around their Manway Cannons and their decanter centrifuges. So the strategy I use start with a Wikipedia type strategy. If they have nothing, I need to build out some foundational content, almost stuff that people would not read. They’re not going to go and read this entire page or about how the Cannon centrifuge works. You’re not going to read it, but you have to have it there.

David Caron:

Yeah, probably not. Probably not going to happen.

Blaine LaFleur:

No. No, no. No. nobody’s going to. But you build out that content and then you start piecing content around that, that maybe they will want to read about. About how we use the decanter centrifuge to clean this spill. Or the difference between the decanter centrifuge and a press and just certain content that certain people would read out there to start getting viewers of that content. Then once you start getting the viewers, then you can start rising in SEO. So I think they’re still there, but if you googled Manway Cannon right now, they’re number one and number two on Google. Both of their posts are number one and number two. If you google decanter centrifuge, they were number two behind the Wikipedia page. So in a six month, eight month strategy, now they’re ranking number one and number two across the world in it. So obviously that’s been one of my biggest success stories with using these tools.

David Caron:

Okay. So that’s amazing. When you approached them with this concept, this idea that, “Hey, your customers are actually googling online and trying to find the products you guys are selling”, what was their initial response?

Blaine LaFleur:

They didn’t believe me. They said this doesn’t work. I said, “Look, I get it. You’ve never done it this way.” I just asked him, I said, “When’s the last time you bought something from a salesman? Think about how you buy online. People don’t want to be sold to.” I said, “In the industrial space, manufacturing space, it’s not 100% there.” But my age group, I’m 34 so I’d say about 40 on down … I look up everything. I don’t have a physician. I google my physician if I have a problem. I’m not even going to go to a doctor. I’m going to google him or look at his reviews, I’m going to look at everything there and then I’m going to go to the one that I need specifically.

Blaine LaFleur:

So that was kind of my case to him, and then I said, “Let me prove it.” SO I lowered my retainer and I said, “Watch.” I didn’t start with the Manway Cannon and the decanter centrifuge. I started with, “I’m going to give you contacts that you’ve never had before. Just watch. Give me a second.” So it was more like building out … I put their product catalog together. They had no way of capturing a lead on their website at all, right, at first. A lot of these manufacturing industrial people, they don’t, they have nothing. So it’s really easy to get 50 new contacts in a month for them and say, “Look, here’s your 50 contacts that you didn’t know existed.”

Blaine LaFleur:

They’re like, “Well, that’s still not sales.” I’m like, “I know. Give it a second. We’re going to nurture those contacts through what you’re doing, and then five of them are going to want to know more about you. And then three are going to possibly inquire.” It took 10 to 12 months. The good thing for me is I found one of the owners there is younger and he’s my age and he’s just like me and hungry and he wants to try something new. So that was the kind of the key to that is he’s the champion inside their organization for me.

David Caron:

Yeah, exactly. Its so key to have that inside person and the industry, it’s getting younger and younger every day. So like you said, buyers, they’re not buying the normal way. Sure. Maybe they’re not going to buy a $25,000 or $50,000, $100,000 a piece of equipment or something like that, punching in a credit card online. But that initial introduction and how they’re discovering your product online, it’s all done online now. So if you’re not there, you’re definitely not going to get that phone call, especially from that younger buyer.

Blaine LaFleur:

Yeah, and I think there’s a self-conscious side of it too. Sorry, I didn’t mean to-

David Caron:

No, no, no. Keep going.

Blaine LaFleur:

[crosstalk 00:14:55] is just being out there and being present. Even people don’t understand. If you put stuff out there, even though they’re not clicking on it, they’re seeing you associated with a certain type of industry or a certain type of offering in the industrial space. If your competitor is not doing that or they’re not doing it well, when that problem does arise, you get the phone call because it’s subconsciously stuck in their brain that, “Wait, I saw that Rotating Solutions offers Manway Cannons. I’m just going to call them.”

David Caron:

Yeah, exactly. Now with any of the work you guys did, that involve social, where you on LinkedIn, where are you doing Facebook or YouTube or anything like that?

Blaine LaFleur:

Yeah. So when people ask me … a lot of people ask me in this space all the time today, they say, “Blaine, I can’t afford to do full in marketing. What’s the one thing I need to do?” And I laugh and I say, “It’s 2020. All of it.” And they’re like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Everything.” You can’t do one thing, it doesn’t work to do one thing. So we leverage everything. The only thing I’d say we kind of didn’t leverage is YouTube. I haven’t hammered hard on YouTube lately, but I mean we use Google Ads, we use social media, LinkedIn, boosting on Facebook, email marketing, everything.

Blaine LaFleur:

I mean, everything you can think of, except we didn’t push YouTube very hard yet. We probably should. I mean they have a couple of videos on YouTube already and it’s just some overall videos of their shop and what they do, and I leveraged that. But I didn’t go and create a bunch of new content around that. As you well know, that’s a really big initiative. You live in it. So if you don’t have the base … They didn’t have the base. I mean, I think they’re getting to the point where now it’s like, “Okay, we have a good base but we have to do something different.” But without that foundational base, I didn’t want to push that too hard yet.

David Caron:

Yeah, it makes sense, where you got to crawl before you run. So I think the approach is what? Crawl, walk, run. So get that foundation in place. Once you have that there, generating leads, generating traffic, starting to get those sales qualified leads coming through. Then you have that proof of concept already there, you’re starting to generate some revenue, you can then reinvest it into your marketing efforts. Drive video, things like that. So I think that’s a really key takeaway is you got to have the basics. You got to have a good looking website that represents your brand and what you believe in. A way to capture those leads that’s not just a Contact Us form. I think it’s what? 3% of website visitors are going to actually convert on a Contact Us form.

David Caron:

But on another type of contact offer, landing page, things like that, you’re getting what? I think 10% or 20% is average, is the industry average there. So I mean 10% more leads coming through can mean a lot to an organization, especially when your primary lead generation sources, trade shows, cold calling, trade magazines … Do any of your clients leverage any of those, say, traditional means? The trade magazines? I think trade shows are still pretty valuable for our industry. Maybe not working as well as they used to, but do any of your clients use those?

Blaine LaFleur:

Yeah, they all do. The biggest pushback I give to them is what are you doing with the contacts you’re generating from that? So I think one of the biggest value adds that I bring to these clients is that I am a salesman. So I do sales for myself. I do sales and marketing for myself and I go, “This is what you have to do to be successful in this day and age”, which is a lot of them don’t even have a CRM. Or if they have a CRM, they’re not utilizing it properly. So I’m usually the one that pushes like, “Look, I’ll do this for your marketing, but until you grab ahold of your own CRM, I can only be so successful because you’re not going to be utilizing.” So for the trade shows, I’m showing them how to set up their contact lists and workflows and automation and sequencing for these trade shows or these contacts that are generating that … I mean a lot of people still buy lists in my industry, right?

Blaine LaFleur:

So how do you nurture this list? How do you get this list down to actually people you can talk to and leveraging the tools to be able to do that is a big deal. Yeah, so they definitely still do trade shows. I still do trade shows, but it’s what do you do with the contacts after the trade show and how do you stay in front of them because nobody really … you don’t really sell anything at trade shows anymore. It’s more just getting the contact and then it’s a way longer play these days, so how do you stay contacting all [inaudible 00:20:13]?

David Caron:

Yeah. Building that relationship. I think buying to a certain degree hasn’t really changed that much. Okay? When it really comes down to it, people buy from other people and when it’s online, you believe in what you’re reading or the videos you’re watching or the content that you’re reading. When you’re in person, you’re believing that person. So I think it’s like you said, what do you do with those leads you generate at the trade show? Are you tracking it? Do you have a CRM? I mean, there’s so great CRM systems out there. Some of them are clunky and horrible, but it’s probably better than an Excel file or Larry’s Rolodex on his desk. So what happens when Larry retires? What are we going to do?

Blaine LaFleur:

I have a client, literally his name’s Larry and he doesn’t use a CRM.

David Caron:

Yeah, I mean, I love Larry. Okay, Larry’s great. Everybody knows a Larry and they’re actually great salesmen. I mean, salespeople, however you want to call it and they know their trade. They know what they’re doing. I think it’s taken kind of a world of hurt for them to realize that the way people are buying is very different, is changing. So it’s great to hear these stories now of your clients being successful leveraging digital marketing, being able to continue with those traditional trade shows, trade magazines, those different pieces to be able to generate revenue for their organizations and then open up an entirely new stream of revenue through digital marketing.

David Caron:

So I think that’s really exciting. That’s exactly what we want to showcase here on today’s podcast. So we’ll get all of your contact information on the show notes, but if you want to go ahead and give a shout out to your agency, phone number, website, email, all of that. We want to make sure everybody knows how to get hold of you because I feel like you’re going to get some calls from the gas and oil industry. Do some digital marketing.

Blaine LaFleur:

Yeah. Awesome, man. Well I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. I’m happy to do more. Like I was saying earlier, I can speak, I can talk on this all day. It’s very interesting, but my agency is Vested marketing and online our website is www.vested.marketing, and email address would be [email protected], if you want to contact us.

David Caron:

Awesome. Blaine, great having you here on the show. Really appreciate it.

David Caron:

Industrial Sage is an open platform where companies can showcase their expertise and solutions to a captive audience of industrial professionals. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and while you’re there, please leave us a review. Want us to tell your story? Go to industrialsage.com.