Curbell Plastics: Charlie Riley On Where to Find Rich Marketing Content Within Your Organization

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Charlie Riley, Director of Marketing for Curbell Plastics, discusses how to expand marketing efforts and find rich content within your own organization.

Danny:

Hey, so let’s jump into today’s episode, I have Charlie Riley here from Curbell Plastics, all the way from Buffalo, New York. And it’s sunny there today as well, I’ve just been told. And it’s always sunny in Curbell.

Charlie:

Always sunny.

Danny:

Not Curbell, in Buffalo. It’s been a long day, you know, the temperatures have changed down here in Atlanta. I’m fighting a little bit of a cold, so I apologize. My head is not thinking super clearly, but anyways. Thank you so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage.

Charlie:

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Danny:

All right so, just to kind of give a sense of who you guys are, just tell us a little bit about who you guys are and what you do.

Charlie:

Sure, we’re one of the top plastic distributors in the United States. So, in a nutshell we sell plastic sheet, rod and tube, but we like to call what we do “performance plastics.” So we don’t, it’s not really disposable plastics, but higher engineered plastics that go into a lot of applications from aerospace to food processing, to bulletproof glass, LED lighting… so we cover a lot of areas of focus. But, yeah, we service all across the US.

Danny:

That’s awesome. So, even bulletproof glass? That’s pretty cool. And aviation and all that great stuff. So, tell me a little bit about yourself. Head of marketing here, what has been your marketing career? Like, when did you start? And tell me all that good stuff.

Charlie:

Sure, I started, I was a journalism undergrad, and I started taking marketing courses as an undergrad, and went through an MBA, because I knew that that was probably the path I wanted to take. So, I’ve always been interested in marketing. I’ve always been interested in the psychology of how to tell a story. And I think that’s where the journalistic background helps.

But really to tell a story, and understand what a buyer is looking for, and nowadays, with so much noise, I think that that’s more prominent than ever. So, I’ve worked in a wide range of industries, from higher education and education technology, SAAS products, to leading marketing for a Top 50 insurance broker, to heading up marketing for a Major League Soccer Team in Chicago. So I’ve kind of run the gamut of a wide range of industries, which kind of brings some perspective, to now, where we’re at. As we, you know, we talked about wide range of buyers of plastics, I think that, that helps bring some exposure to that.

Danny:

Yeah absolutely. Obviously a diverse background, in terms of different industries. So, what brought you into the manufacturing space, or distribution?

Charlie:

Yeah, I was kind of recruited here, to kind of bring some, maybe, different ideas to this industry and it’s been interesting, because we, being what we do, we are at the heart of helping people build things. And, as the country kind of has always been a big focus on manufacturing, and I think we are in a lot of industries, and there’s a lot of interesting stories, that you probably don’t think about, where, higher performance plastics can contribute to reducing the cost of things, from a weight perspective.

So, when you’re thinking about transportation, when you replace metals or you replace woods with plastics, they might last longer, it’s going to cost less for gas, so there’s a lot of applications that. It’s opened up some eyes for me personally, and I think that’s part of our job, is to really tell some stories about someone that might not understand how the right plastic could positively benefit their business.

Danny:

So that’s- couple of interesting things there. So you mentioned, the big word, storytelling. Big fan, big fan of that. But you also mentioned that you were kind of recruited, brought in. Because they wanted some different ideas, from different industries. What does that look like, I guess, maybe when you initially sort of came into the organization? I’m assuming that since they wanted those different ideas, that maybe they hadn’t been doing certain types of marketing? What did it look like, pre-Charlie, and now post-Charlie?

Charlie:

No honestly, Curbell has been looked upon as one of the industry leaders in terms of marketing, when you look at plastics distribution. So, they already had a really great base of content development, of e-commerce. I think head and shoulders, our team has been trying different things. And so, it was not a matter of starting from scratch, it was just a matter of, maybe we can try and tweak some different things. So, we’ve brought in marketing automation to tie into our CRM, really to do a lot more tracking and a lot more analysis of, “Alright we’ve built up a lot of great content, we’ve built up a really great base of driving leads. How do we just tweak that a little bit, and revise to kind of better understand the customer, to maybe tell some different stories?”

So part of what I’ve been trying to do is help us to position ourselves and our expertise. How we go to market is slightly different than our competitors, in that we have a very technical team. We have a lot of expertise and training behind what we do. So we’re trying to position that so that a prospect or a buyer- and even that word prospect. I mean, I think if someone has a need, and we just have to help them understand what that need is. Helping them to validate that we know what we’re talking about, that we’re trustworthy, we’ve been around for a while, and that we can help them. And even if it’s, in the way we go to market, even if we’re not the right solution, we’re going to help them find that.

So there is a lot of storytelling. I know content marketing is a big buzzword that everyone talks about, but we’ve already built a really great base of content, and we’ve got a great team of technical experts that can help with that. It’s more of finding that specific story for them, and figuring out, at the right point, is there an opportunity for us to help them?

Danny:

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. So you’ve said you’ve already got a lot of content. What does that look like in terms of, specifically in terms of different types of mediums and all that jazz?

Charlie:

Yeah, our content really spans across different layers. So, all the way up from whitepapers, which are very technical and time consuming, but that talk to an engineer or to a very specific application; down to sharing on LinkedIn, because that’s where some of our buyers are spending their time. So, it really spans the gamut. And what we’re trying to do is take a core piece of content, and turn that into multiple elements that might cross through video, through… we’re starting to do webinars. So really trying to do some different things that maybe, from one core piece of content has turned into multiple applications that can be used with a sales person out in the field. Like I said, through social, or through maybe a longer lead generation process.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely, that makes a lot of sense. Especially the whole, if I heard correctly, you’re just taking- figuring out how to take chunks of content, and then breaking it down, re-purposing it. And getting a lot more value out of one piece, versus saying, “Hey, here’s this one whitepaper.” Well, how can we replicate that across video and images, and all these of different things, so that you’re not reinventing the wheel every single time?

Charlie:

Correct, because not everyone has time to digest a whitepaper. But they might want to read a smaller article. They might want to read a case study or an application success story. So that might be the lead in for them to maybe share that whitepaper with someone more technical in their team. So we’re really trying to speak… Everyone has different learning styles. Some people are more auditory learners, some more visual learners. So, we’re trying to take that, like you said, that core piece of content and deliver that in the medium that someone wants and that someone is willing to spend their time to look at.

Danny:

Okay, so you mentioned that you brought in some marketing automation. Obviously that’s going to be able help to get a sense of, from a measuring standpoint, what pieces of content are performing better than others. Have you seen any particular trends, in terms of, medium, that is working better than others? Like the e-book versus images on social or video or webinars, or what have you. Have you kind of determined that over the last few years?

Charlie:

We’re actually just finishing implementation. We’re using HubSpot. So it’s a little preliminary with that, but we’ve been doing it now, since before, just to a level of depth that we have now, we’re able to share that information with sales and lead-score a lot better. So, that’s where that’s going to come into play. And really it’s coming down to, we see a lot of content being absorbed in different ways. The idea is that helping our salespeople understand what someone’s pain point might be, or where they’re having an issue, and helping them solve that a lot sooner.

So we’re really excited about the opportunity with that, but we’ve been able to do a lot of analysis before, and it’s kind of hit or miss. Sometimes a really niche kind of type of piece of content, might be specific to an industry, but that’s a small subset of the market. So, we really try to A/B test, and we try to try some different things when it comes to, you know, are we going broad, are we going narrow? How deep are we going with that? What’s the length of that? So you should always be iterating and we’re always trying to figure that out. So, we spend a lot of time looking at that, and like I said, trying new things.

One of the best lead generation resources we’ve had recently, was a webinar that we just, we adopted a piece of content to deliver in a different format. We’ve seen some really good success with people spending time there. So, that’s preliminary, but we’re always trying to figure out what works, and then you don’t need to re-create the wheel: you replicate that.

Danny:

Yes, so you say you adopted a piece of content. So it was in another format, and you said, “Hey, let’s kind of put this in webinar format,” is that what you were saying?

Charlie:

Yeah, so we- there’s a presentation that was delivered to several companies, that we realized there was a need for that. So, instead of just delivering that to an audience of one or ten or five, “Let’s open that up. Because more people are probably having the same issues,” and that’s something that we saw. So, when we find something that someone has an issue with. For example, one of our best channels to communicate with us is an ask-an-expert form on our website.

So we get a lot of requests for, “Hey, I’m having this problem, I’m having this breakage, help me understand how to fix that.” If we see some common themes there, I said, “Let’s figure out a way to turn that into not just talking to one, but developing those into short video segments, to answer that to multiple people.” So those are some of the things that we’re trying to do, to maybe answer some of the things that we’re seeing as trends. To more than just one person.

Danny:

Absolutely, that makes a lot of sense. I mean it’s very similar to, a lot of companies will kind of… sounds like you guys have been doing this for a minute, a good while; but a lot of companies are trying to figure out, content marketing, and saying, “Hey, we don’t even know where to start.” Figuring out those frequently-asked questions is really a great, sure sounds like. But the ask-the-experts, I love that. So you can kind of keep a constant measure of, “Hey, what’s going on? Hey, we’re detecting a lot of questions over here in this space about durability. Great, that’s what people want. Let’s make some content around that.” That’s great, I love that. Is that through a chat type thing, or is it, people email in?

Charlie:

Not yet with chat. We are going to implement that. When you do that, and there’s enough studies that show the lift on responses, or results from that are anywhere from 9% to a higher percent than that. So, we are implementing that, we want to do it the right way. To make sure that that gets routed to the right person. We don’t want to just throw up a chatbot, and then that goes and no one answers that.

Danny:

Right, yeah.

Charlie:

– But that is a form that we have on our website. Because, being more technical, sometimes people need to upload blueprints or drafts or really kind of show some things. It’s more of explaining it that way and then providing us with some of that additional information so we can make some assessment of that.

But that’s just one of those areas that we saw as, you can look at your site search. You can see what people, what they’re typing in and terms that they’re typing in. That might be an area that you can, like you said, there’s companies that are trying to figure out where to start. Start with that. Look at your search. Look at Google Trends. Find what people are looking for, and then start with a piece of content in that space. And then you just kind of keep going with it.

Danny:

Great. Absolutely, 100%. So, another question I’ve got for you. I’ve got all these questions, all these great things I’m firing at you. You mentioned earlier on, obviously you have a great level of experience in marketing, but across many different industries. When you came into this space, how did you sort of immerse yourself to really learn more about the industry? Because obviously , I think you said, you were at a Major League Soccer team before this. Is that… I mean, that’s kind of a big jump. And it’s a little different, a little bit more technical maybe over here. What did that look like for you?

Charlie:

Yeah, that was an experience a while ago. I came from insurance. So I think one of the nice benefits was, how we went to market was very similar, in that we used thought leadership. We were specific in certain industries. So, I think there was some translation there. When it came to coming to a new industry, you have to learn. You have to learn a lot of products, you have to learn the lingo. You have to learn a lot of things. And the best part about that was we have a very tenured marketing team, so I’ve been able to rely on their expertise and their knowledge of the industry and the company. And so in addition to that we have a very tenured and very solid training team. So we spend a lot of our time- that’s one of our core values at the company, is training. So, between that and the industry training, we put a lot of emphasis on that, and there’s a lot of support internally that really helps you understand.

I mean there’s still a lot to learn, and I don’t think you’ll ever… you should be a life-long learner. And never feel like you’re always there. I think between the tenure and the experience that our teams already had in marketing and the collaboration that we have between sales and business development, I think it’s given us that advantage that we have, like I said, in what we’ve been able to do in the marketing side. But it really just, I ask a lot of questions. You have to be willing to listen and to know where you don’t know what you’re talking about. And so that’s where you have either experts in certain markets or industries or products that you can rely on and you just, like I said, ask a lot of questions and keep learning from them.

Danny:

That’s great, that’s great. Let’s talk a little bit about storytelling. You mentioned that. How are you guys implementing that? How are you guys using storytelling, throughout your content and your marketing?

Charlie:

Yeah, I think, it’s interesting when you talk about technical products, because some of the things that we sell or the applications that we help fix, they’re very technical. And so you’re talking to an engineer, but you’re also talking to someone in purchasing, or you might be talking to a small business owner who may not have that technical expertise. So our job really as marketers is to take that technical knowledge and help to make sure that it gets found.

So the largest channel we receive activity from is organic traffic. So people are actively looking for problems they have and solutions for those, and then that’s when we can, when you have an eye for SEO, when you have the understanding of how to take something that may be a little bit dry or maybe very technical and either turn that into something that is engaging enough that can maybe cross over all those different constituents that have to read it. That’s where there is collaboration between teams and really understanding how to get that in front of the right people.

Danny:

So with that example that you have… you were talking about organic, especially if you’ve got very technical and dry type stuff… What’s a good example, in terms of, you mentioned a little bit earlier on some of the case studies, talking about, “He, there’s a story on how this industry is able to move from wood or some other material over to plastic, and how it’s- the cost savings is through the roof and all this good stuff.”

Is it, from the storytelling aspect, is it more of you’re talking about the positioning of it being, “Hey let’s lay out the background, let’s you know actually literally tell a story,” versus saying “Here’s the technical thing, XYZ client came in, here is their challenge, here is the result, done”? Just giving a little bit more background, a little bit more flavor.

Charlie:

Yeah, I mean, and that’s always a tough balancing act with a lot of case studies and especially with certain customers, there’s a lot of things you can’t tell. There’s a lot of proprietary information, both from their end and from our end. So, that makes it a little bit of a balancing act. But I think when you can relate a problem that someone has, to look at some of the information we’re getting and from hearing with sales, “Hey, we’re hearing that they have a similar problem,” and you find a way to fix that; I think you can give enough information to at least have someone, their interest piqued, and to understand, “Okay, these guys probably know what they’re talking about, let me ask some more questions, let me kind of dig into this a little bit.” So, yeah, it’s tough. It’s tough to get too specific sometimes.

Danny:

Sure.

Charlie:

Because you don’t want to get in the weeds too far. Because then you might alienate others that, it’s like, “Well, that’s not my industry.” It has to be relatable. So, it’s always a balancing act you’re working on.

Danny:

Absolutely. What’s next? Any exciting thing that you can share that’s not under wraps or whatever that you guys are going to be focusing on?

Charlie:

Yeah, nothing super secret. I think a lot of times, it’s the analogy of blocking and tackling. It’s doing the right things that, like I said, our team’s been very successful for many years, well before I got here. So, I think we take what we’re doing well, and you replicate that. You just have to, you just try to be more efficient with it. You try to test some different things. I think you always try to keep a percentage of your time and your money and your budget to test some different channels. We’re going to try to do some of that in 2020. And I think with building automation and the buy-in that we get from different things that, different tools that we’re trying, I think that that’ll just help us to learn. I mean, you’re always learning.

Marketing’s a difficult thing to put a dollar amount to sometimes, and I think that when you have the buy-in from the organization, that’s helpful. I think the next step is, how do you continue to either figure out what your metrics are that you need to track, and if you can put dollars to that. that’s great. If not, you figure out what is working either from anecdotally or from some other metrics that you can at least put attribution to. And then you’re always trying to do better from what you’ve set your benchmark at.

Danny:

Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s awesome that you guys are bringing in HubSpot marketing automation because it really will be able to help to be able to do that. Because, it’s kind of hard to measure, it’s kind of hard to fix what you can’t measure. I know you can measure stuff without that, but with today, with content and how far-reaching everything goes, it’s nearly impossible. You can spend so much time trying to aggregate all the data. And even with a tool like that, you still can’t get it all. It’s great. It’s certainly exciting now, where, some of the stuff that you can do now that you couldn’t do years ago. And just say, “Okay, I’m going to go generate some reports, and see. Okay, well look at this, we got opens and click-throughs, maybe we could look at a little bit of attribution.” That’s exciting.

Charlie:

It’s very exciting, but you’re right, it’s overwhelming, and I think when you look at whatever that chart is, the Martech Stack, now it’s up to 7,000 logos of different marketing technologies. I just saw a report yesterday that this year was the first year that marketing budgets, the allocation to technology is the highest percentage that it’s ever been. It’s more than labor right now.

So it’s, yeah, it’s always going to be a challenge to take that and I think you just have to find the right metrics, because there’s a lot of vanity metrics that you can use. There’s a lot of ways to spin it, but I think at the end of the day, we’re here to help sales and we’re here to drive leads- and quality leads. and I think that as you continue to tell quality stories, and you continue to help customers that have legitimate needs and problems and you can fix those, other people have those as well.

So I think that’s where we’re really trying to focus our efforts. We know the markets that are growing. We know the areas that we do a lot better in, and that we have a little bit more experience and technology in. So I think that we’re going to focus there. You can try to do everything, and that’s not really efficient. So, we’re going to really be the Jim Collins model of shooting bullets versus cannonballs. I’ve always been a big believer of that, so, I think we’re going to continue to work on that.

Danny:

Awesome, you nailed it for me. You said, “Marketing is here to drive sales.” That’s it. I mean, that… and I think, I feel like to a lot of people, marketing is kind of like, “Oh, well, awareness, and we’ve just got to be out there.” But taking that and getting in that driver’s seat and saying, “Come on, let’s get on the bus, this is where we want to go as an organization. All right, let’s go get there and let’s get these leads on this bus.” That’s it.

Charlie:

It is. You’re not in a vacuum, and I think, thankfully, at our organization, we support marketing, and marketing supports sales, and we appreciate what each other does. And that includes business development. So I think if you as a marketer understand that if there’s no sales, you probably don’t have a job; and as a sales person, marketing isn’t just creating a flyer, there’s other things that go into it. So they’re helping you get those sales, to keep everyone employed.

So I think that it’s just, it’s very cyclical. We all have to support each other. But you have to be realistic as a marketer and to know that, at the end of the day, you have to drive… you can have as much brand affinity as you want, but it has to lead to selling something. And so, we understand that, we appreciate that, and we strive towards that every day.

Danny:

Awesome. Charlie, I really appreciate. This has been a really great episode. Thank you so much for your time, and just letting me be able to just ask you all of these random questions. Not so random. But just to get to learn a little bit more. I think it’s super helpful for me, it’s super helpful our audience, just to get a real world understanding of what is going on. And just thank you for being an open book for us.

Charlie:

Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. I will never claim that I do know what’s going on, but if it sounded like a few of those things made sense, then I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Danny:

A lot of it made sense, so thank you so much Charlie.

Charlie:

Thanks.

Danny:

All right, so, another great episode of IndustrialSage. Listen, there’s a lot of key takeaways that I have for me. Obviously, the storytelling aspect is one. That’s one that I think, if you could have… if you could take one or two or three things away, that would be one that I would definitely tell you that you need to start thinking about, if you’re not doing it.

How do you position your content to really tell a cohesive story? That’s number one.

Number two is really getting a sense of measuring your content. Get a sense of what is working and what isn’t.

And aligning yourselves with sales. Making sure that there is real clear alignment between sales and marketing. Because, what Charlie said there at the end is that, “Marketing should drive sales and growth.” We have to take that ownership as marketers, we have to be able to do that. And now we have the technology, we have the tools, we have the capability of being able to do that. So, we need to own that. Take those three things away.

Thanks so much for watching today’s episode. If you have any questions, we’d love to answer them on the show for you. You can reach out to us at IndustrialSage.com/questions. If you haven’t filled out the insights report for the survey for this year that we’re just about to close, we’ll be releasing this here soon. You want to do that. There should be a link in the show notes where you can take that. And that’s it, that’s all I’ve got for you. Thank you so much for watching today’s episode of IndustrialSage. I’m Danny Gonzales, and I’ll be back with you next week.

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

 

 

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!

 

Sponsored by Optimum Productions