Marketing Director of MXD Process: Daniel Loeschen, on Social Media

Daniel Loeschen, Marketing Director of MXD Process, shares how investing in the company website and social media catapulted them ahead of the competition.

Danny:

All right, well welcome back, let’s go ahead and jump into this episode. Before we do that, like always, we’ve got Daniel Loeschen here, if you can just introduce yourself to the audience and who you guys are, MXD Process, what are you guys up to?

Daniel:

So my name is Daniel Loeschen, I’m the Marketing Director for MXD Process, we’re based in Louisville, Kentucky. And we are a process manufacturer, process equipment manufacturer, and we take a three pronged approach to how we do it. So we manufacture everything in house, in Louisville, and we have a mixing equipment side of our business, so we build industrial agitators, mixing equipment, and then a stainless steel tank shop where we build stainless steel tanks from five gallon to 25,000 gallon, and then a process controls, like batch control systems. And we tie it all together though our process engineering and programming and all that right in our plant.

Danny:

Great, awesome. So, a couple questions I actually want to ask just to clarify on that, as far as your go-to market strategies, do you guys deal primarily with distributors? Are you dealing direct? Obviously I would think direct where you apply something.

Daniel:

Yeah, mainly direct. We’re not exclusively direct. The company started kind of that way, because we wanted to do something a little different in the industry where it was a hundred percent distributors, suppliers, sales reps, and so we started wanting to go direct to kind of cut that out, take the Warby Parker approach except in an industrial scale.

Danny:

Sure, yeah.

Daniel:

But over time, we don’t want to ignore that that’s how business is done. And so we do have some sales reps, but we don’t make any exclusive deals to do that.

Danny:

Gotcha. Okay, so, a little backstory for our audience who’s watching us. So we found MXD Process and we found Daniel through Twitter, actually, was interesting. So noticed that you guys had a really interesting profile, it was very well done. It was very accurate, there were a lot of things going on. And so we thought we’d reach out and just kind of see, what you guys are doing, if there’s value there and just to get an understanding of your story. And so, I’d love to just go through your story, I mean how you guys kind of transitioned, ’cause it’s kind of interesting, where you guys started from when you weren’t doing digital marketing, what was that aha moment and to where you are now? So, what did it look like? I think what you said is, the company’s about eight years old or so. Give us the snapshot of what it looked like back then?

Daniel:

Yeah, so, really, it started with our CEO. He was a chemical engineer by trade, and he was a vice president of another mixing company that just did mixers. And he worked there, I don’t know how long he worked there, but that’s where he started to learn all the ways that the industry is lacking in marketing specifically and ways that things could be done better, like going direct to the customer. ‘Cause one of the things that he believed was that the customer is smart enough to be able to know what they want. Which I don’t think… a lot of companies, at least, don’t encourage that. And so when he parted ways with the previous company he started, Mixer Direct was the name of the company at the time. And we just did mixing equipment, just mixers, not tanks and all that stuff. And so he wanted to take a different approach. An online first approach, which was something that had never been done in the industry. Really a customer online first approach to marketing and sales.

Danny:

So what did that look like? What was the landscape? You were taking it online, what–

Daniel:

Yeah, invest heavily in a website, which most, I would say 50% of the competitors at the time, didn’t even have a website.

Danny:

Wow.

Daniel:

And you’re talking 2010, so I mean, that’s crazy behind, but that’s the way, that’s the landscape of the industry. And so, invested heavily in a website and an e-commerce, which was a first in the industry to be able to actually sell that stuff online. For a customer to get online and buy an industrial mixer without ever talking to the sales person was completely new.

Danny:

And having a printed catalog or whatever.

Daniel:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And so, because the industry was old, you didn’t want to just ignore that. And so he did, we made a catalog and they sent it out, like the first time they blasted it out just to let people know, “Hey, we exist.” But then after that, never did it again. And that started driving people to the website, and then invested in SEO. I started, at first, there was a company that he was paying to consult and do that, same with ad-words, started doing ad-words. And then a couple years into it, we started seeing competitors kind of jump on board, trying to do the same thing, seeing that there’s probably value there. And that’s when I came on. So I got hired really to start the marketing department at now MXD Process, we’ve changed our name since. And so when I came on, that was where we were at. Everything was outsourced. We had an SEO company that we were working with, an ad-words company that we were working with, no social media. And we had a blog with two posts or something. Because someone probably told them that you needed to do that. And so when I came on, I started just evaluating, trying to figure out the industry, ’cause I didn’t come from manufacturing. Trying to figure out what it is that we need to do. What is working, what’s not working, just throwing everything at the wall, seeing what sticks, that kind of thing. And that’s when we started investing in social media, we brought SEO in-house. We brought ad-words in-house as well. Because of how niche our industry is, it was really hard to find partners that understood what we were doing and where the value was. And I imagine a lot of other industrial companies experienced that same thing, but most of the PPC companies are SEO companies come from e-commerce backgrounds, they were wanting to sell shoes and stuff like that.

Danny:

What do you search for?

Daniel:

Right.

Danny:

For industrial, I’m looking for big take.

Daniel:

Right, yeah, they just have no idea, which is understandable, but, we knew better than they did it, at what we were trying to do and where the value was. So, we brought all that stuff in-house and started optimizing it and trying to figure out where the value was. And, we were just from the out of the gate, just dominating our competitors in online search specifically. That was the first domino to fall was, we just–

Danny:

Online search.

Daniel:

Online search. We owned that and we did that by content, a lot of content and we still pump out a lot of content.

Danny:

So what different types of form? Like what forms of content?

Daniel:

Yeah, I mean back when, four or five years ago when infographics were a big deal, we jumped on that train and invested a lot to get really well done infographics that weren’t just cool pictures, but actually informative. And that drove a lot of leads to our website and started showing up in search results back when Google did rich snippets. I don’t know if you remember that?

Danny:

Oh yeah.

Daniel:

So that’s when we invested in video, we started, we bought equipment and started shooting a lot of videos, customer videos, and internal videos, just showing process builds and things like that. And that was really valuable then, because Google would rank those search results in there.

Danny:

You actually get search results from that.

Daniel:

Yeah. And then they killed that, they don’t do that anymore.

Danny:

It was funny, it was actually a short blip almost. It was like a year or so. And then everyone had, and then it, they said–

Daniel:

They were talking about it at conferences and everything, and it was a huge thing. And then all of a sudden they just killed it. And so video was still really valuable, but we just had to shift direction. So we use video now more as like a lead nurturing thing, not necessarily like a lead capturing, tool.

Danny:

Sure, yeah.

Daniel:

So yeah, search traffic was the first one to really go. And then we hired someone to start building our social media and I mean, I think now I haven’t counted in a couple months, but I think we have a following total of around 150000, which is by far more than,

Danny:

Across all on different social media platforms.

Daniel:

Across all the social media channels, yeah. Which is by far more than any of our competitors.

Danny:

I would think so, yeah.

Daniel:

Yeah. And I think the reason there is just because people don’t see that it is valuable. I remember a couple of years after we were doing it, we did a trade show in Germany. And I had someone from Russia that came up to our booth and was like, “I follow you guys on Instagram”. And he came and talked to us in our booth.

Danny:

Interesting.

Daniel:

And they were manufacturing something in Russia, so that global reach that you can get through, especially with social media, minimal investment. And we still to this day have not done paid advertising on social. It’s something we’ve looked into, and I know that there probably is value there. We just haven’t, it hasn’t been a priority for us with the way it’s going. ‘Cause it’s going well. And we’re investing heavily in search advertising. So I think that we will at some point, but that’s not where we’re at right now.

Danny:

That’s really interesting. So what would you say, let’s walk us through this ’cause a social media thing is, it’s definitely a question that comes up all the time. Should we be investing in social media? Should we be doing this or not? And I think certain times, yes, certain types, no, it just depends on who your target, where they are and all that. But what are some examples of content that you would put up on like Twitter?

Daniel:

Yeah, well I think the one thing before even talking about examples of content and the one thing to remember with social media is that I think that we all forget because we’re all B2B companies. And so we think in terms of selling to a business, like I’m trying to sell to a business, which is true. But the people that are buying are actual people that are on social media and they’re on Facebook, they’re on Instagram, they’re at home at night laying in bed, scrolling through their Instagram, just like you and me. And, so that was kind of the basic… we want to sell to these engineers, and how do we sell to them? What platforms are they on? How can we get in their mind, that kind of thing through. So we did that through like remarketing and stuff like that. And we would find accounts on Instagram and Twitter that a bunch of engineers would follow and then we would follow them and then produce content that they would be interested in. Like, how beer is made, for example. We sell a lot into the brewing and distilling, except we would, instead of just how beer is made with yeast and all this stuff, ’cause they already know that, we would focus more on the equipment. So what equipment is used with yeast propagation, things like that, so that they could see that and make the connection between what we do, what they do, what they need, and then try and get shares and likes and visits to our website from there. So it was all about finding the people where they’re at, treating them like people and then giving them equipment or content that made sense for what they did.

Danny:

I love what you said: at the end of the day, yeah, okay, maybe in B2B you’re selling to another business, but you are assigned to people and so you’re right. Totally forgot about that.

Daniel:

Yeah, I almost feel like the B2B shouldn’t exist, ’cause it’s like we are selling business to business, but it’s really B2C, you’re still selling to a customer, they’re just a different type of consumer

Danny:

I love it, that’s awesome. Just out of curiosity, what is your, in your mind, your best performing social media platform or which channel?

Daniel:

It’s definitely Twitter, definitely Twitter. We get far more visits and phone calls from Twitter than we do any other channel. Facebook at first was great and it’s just kind of gone on the decline since they made all the algorithm changes. It’s totally paid to play now on Facebook, which is why we’re thinking about launching some paid campaigns through there. Instagram has been really interesting for branding and community building, not as much direct value as Twitter. But man, when we go places, the people that always come up to us that want to meet us and follow us are always people from Instagram, which is really fascinating. I didn’t expect that , we built a community of welders, which really helps for finding welders for hire. All right ’cause I mean if we don’t have welders we’re out of business. And so we made a #titanwelds for our Titan Tanks brand and started doing… I think it was called Titan Tuesdays or something where people would submit their arcs and we would regram their stuff. And we built a huge following just from, initially from doing that. And so finding the people that are interested in that has really helped for branding on there. And it’s a tangible way to track it instead of just like, “Well, I think it’s going well.”

Danny:

Yeah, right, exactly.

Daniel:

‘Cause we’re not interested in hoping things are working.

Danny:

It’s a great segue into, all right, that’s awesome. You must be measuring it somehow. What does that look like?

Daniel:

Yeah, so the way that we measure that is through our marketing platform, we use HubSpot. But there’s a million other–

Danny:

Never heard of it, but…

Daniel:

Yeah, yeah. I’m sure that they all track fairly the same, but we track it through there. So it always starts with visits. We track engagement from the actual platform itself. And one thing that we noticed, and I don’t know if all the platforms are the same, but we noticed that numbers tend to be different, from HubSpot, for example, we’ll say that you had 50 shares of this one thing, but Twitter will say you had 70, so the numbers are always off. So we always try to go for those numbers specifically to the source. So like for Twitter.

Danny:

Hold on, you’re saying you’re pulling it out of Twitter versus–

Daniel:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. ‘Cause they have Twitter analytics for business and all that stuff. So we get the engagement numbers from the actual platform itself, the social media platform, but visits are always the same. And so then we track visits through our marketing platform, or you can do it through Google analytics. So you don’t have to buy a marketing platform to track this stuff. And you can track it all the way through the funnel of what pages they visited, how long they were on your site. And we can see what platforms are engaging more, once they get to our site, are they bouncing or are they sticking around and viewing a bunch of pages, that kind of thing. And so we track it all the way through like that to whether they fill out a contact form, and we count that as a conversion. ‘Cause then that goes directly to the sales person. And then from there, to a quote, it has its own conversion rate that we measure. But, contact form is a conversion and then a phone call. And so we have a, we use a program call tracking metrics to dynamically generate phone numbers on our website. So we have our main phone number on there all the time. But if someone visits our site from Twitter, then they’ll see a specific phone number. And then if they call that number then we know that they came and then when they call it, we can track that, the sales team then puts the deal source or the lead source in the CRM, so that we can attach where they came from with their record and then follow that all the way through.

Danny:

And at that point you can generate reports every month or whatever.

Daniel:

Yeah reports, so we can say we spent X amount of dollars on Twitter investment and we got this much in return, and there’s no lost, there’s nothing lost anywhere, especially if we just switched our website over to an HTTPS website, which we were losing traffic source

Danny:

Because it wasn’t secure?

Daniel:

Because it wasn’t secure, yeah. So we had a lot of, not provider direct traffic that we didn’t know where it was coming from. And we, immediately, as soon as we launched that, it just disappeared.

Danny:

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel:

Yeah. So, yeah.

Danny:

So interesting, I’m just curious from a CRM standpoint, you’d be able to track that, what are you guys using?

Daniel:

So HubSpot CRM.

Danny:

HubSpot CRM, okay.

Daniel:

Yeah, the way that it integrates seamlessly and it’s been really great.

Danny:

That’s awesome. So you’re able to generate those reports and be able to go back and have that information and that’s absolutely fantastic. A lot of great information in here. To the firms, to those organizations, those companies out there saying, “Hey, maybe we need to be looking into social media,” or they’re thinking about it. What would, let’s say, what would your advice be to them saying, “Hey, look at this, look at that.” Like what would you recommend?

Daniel:

Yeah, I would say, start with seeing what your competitors are doing, because that is a really great way to see what is working and what’s not. If all of your competitors are doing it and it seems like things are working, well, there’s a great jumping off point. But then do the research and see what they’re not doing well, so if they’re doing a great job, they’ve got a lot of followers, people are engaging, that’s awesome. Start doing that but then see what the pain points are. You can reach out to their customers, I mean, that’s easy to do. You don’t even have to have their phone numbers and stuff. You know what I mean? You can find them, see what they like, what they don’t like, what kind of content are they producing, that’s not being shared? There’s a really great tool, specifically for Twitter, it’s called Followerwonk. You can plug in any Twitter account and then it, for free, it’ll analyze it for you. And, they get really granular details of those people from demographics to when people are sharing the most online, what percentage of followers share the most, things like that. And you can make very, very good informed decisions based off that data. So yeah, I would say number one, do the competitor research and see what’s working and what’s not. I mean, maybe you were lucky like we were in your industry where you went to do the competitor research and no one was doing anything.

Danny:

There’s nobody there.

Daniel:

And if that’s the case, then it’s wide open for you. But yeah, that’s where I would start. And then, there’s tons of great resources out there. Like the Moz Blog. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that?

Danny:

Oh yeah.

Daniel:

They have a lot of great resources and even have an ebook if you’re starting out. I mean, this is basic, but if you’re starting out, they have an ebook that’s like the basics of social media marketing. It kind of walks you through that. And they talk a lot about the people to people connection in there. And, some stuff has changed. I think now people kind of have some blindness to a lot of businesses on social media because it’s just inundated. So you have to figure out how your stuff is going to stand out and not seem so robotic and corporate, ’cause people just don’t want to see that. Even the people that worked for corporate companies, they don’t want to see that. So, but I think it all starts with knowing where your competitors are, knowing where your, where the people in your industry are that you want to sell to, and then try and find that sweet spot of content that people care about. I mean, if you’re not going to invest in putting content out there that people will care about, then don’t do it. You’re just wasting your time.

Danny:

Wasting time.

Daniel:

Absolutely.

Danny:

Yeah. Another question I was actually just thinking up here, as far as the time investment in terms of not the time to do each tactical thing, but just saying, look at the time that it takes building the profile, putting content, building an audience, and all that stuff. What expectations are on that?

Daniel:

Yeah, I mean, I think to get started, like it’s not a huge time commitment. I mean, I think that doing a solid normal work schedule for a month, you can probably get a really good ground just like groundwork, of knowing where you should start. So doing your competitor research and all that, and you don’t have to hire someone to do that. I mean, if you’re, I don’t know, it depends on the size of your company, but you can task someone with doing that. Say, take two hours a day of your workday and just report on this stuff, do the research and we’ll make some decisions after that, but to do it well after that, I mean we hired a full time person, and I think that to do it well, and to get it to the point where you’re seeing value from it, you got to have someone dedicated. A lot of companies, and you’ve probably seen this too that want to get started on social media. The CEO is posting something every once a day or whatever, and not really responding. And they’re just like, “Well, as long as we’re on Twitter, it’s fine.” But if you want to treat it as a legit marketing channel that’s going to drive leads, I mean, I think the time commitment is a full time job, and there’s plenty of talented people out there.

Danny:

You’re saying you have to engage.

Daniel:

You have to engage, yeah. You have to engage. If you’re not, don’t do it. And that’s fine too. I mean, if your company’s at a point where that’s not practical for you, that’s fine, but don’t pretend to do it, if you’re going to do it, do it, or don’t. I don’t think there’s, especially now, there’s just not room for the in-between. Twitter is where I would start, because it’s not quite to the pay to play yet, like Facebook is. And also you get the added search benefit of it because now Tweets are being indexed in Google search.

Danny:

I did not know that, okay.

Daniel:

Yeah. Yeah, if it, right now, you really see it with high profile accounts. Like if you Google a celebrity, their tweets are along the top or whatever, that kind of thing.

Danny:

Oh that makes sense.

Daniel:

But it’s filtering down more and more into companies. If you Google search Nike or something, the big companies, verified accounts, I think that’s where they started. So, but it’s filtering down.

Danny:

Awesome.

Daniel:

Yeah.

Danny:

That’s been really interesting. There’s a lot of information here. I’ve certainly learned a lot. If any of our audience members, have any questions, is there anywhere where they could reach you?

Daniel:

Sure, I mean, you can just email me directly it’s daniel.loeschen, which is my last name, I don’t know if you want me to spell that.

Danny:

We can put it on the, well actually if someone’s listening, maybe spell it.

Daniel:

Yeah, so Daniel dot L-O-E-S-C-H-E-N @mxdprocess.com. You can email me there.

Danny:

Excellent, that would be awesome. And of course, I’m going to check out all your social media channels and things you guys got going on there. Thanks so much for joining us today and sharing just a wealth of information. It was- like I said, I’ve learned a lot. So thanks.

Daniel:

Well thanks for having me.

Danny:

It was awesome. So there you have it. Social media. It’s the myth of, do we really need it? Do we not? And to be a hundred percent honest with you, I learned a lot, I’ve definitely after this conversation, rethinking that whole social media thing. And at the end of the day, I think one of the key takeaways for me was that really at the end of the day, you’re selling to people. Even though it’s B2B, you’re selling to people. That was super insightful.

Daniel:

So, listen, thanks again so much for watching this episode. Take, use this, take some takeaways. They’re going to jump into social media, take into some of these recommendations and what Daniel was telling us here. And, feel free to be kind to us on our social media, share us, like, tweet, all that good stuff. We’d love to hear. If you have any questions, reach out to us at IndustrialSage.com/questions. We’d love to answer them for you. Thanks for watching. I’m Danny Gonzales, and this is IndustrialSage.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get every new episode, blog article, and content offer sent directly to your inbox. You can also subscribe wherever you download podcasts so you can listen on the go!