How Manufacturers are Using Content with Greg Mischio, Winbound
Live with Alaska MEP
Join us for an insightful live interview with Greg Mischio, the Founder and CEO of Winbound.
Live Summary
Join Sami Jo Lewis from the Alaska MEP and eCommerce Evangelist for Manufacturers Curt Anderson - Founder of B2Btail as Greg Mischio, the Founder and CEO of Winbound discusses content strategies for Manufacturers.
Tune in for an exclusive live interview with Greg Mischio, the Founder and CEO of Winbound. Learn about the inception of Winbound and how this company is revolutionizing the manufacturing industry through content marketing. Join us on Oct. 19 at noon to discover the innovative strategies manufacturers are using to connect with their audience and drive growth.
Key Highlights
• Digital transformation in manufacturing. 0:53
• Manufacturing content and trust. 6:41
• Social media usage among manufacturers. 12:22
• Manufacturing industry's content marketing efforts. 17:50
• Digital sales and marketing strategies for manufacturers. 23:56
Transcription
Sami Jo Lewis 00:02
Hi everybody. Happy Thursday. We're super excited to be here again today we have such a great topic and a great interviewee today and we're super excited to get started. Course I have my wonderful friend co host Curt Anderson. How are you today? Curt?
Curt Anderson 00:17
sameach oh my goodness gracious. I couldn't sleep a wink last night for this wonderful interview with our dear friend and so let's I know we've got a ton of packs. We're gonna dive right in. Hey Bentley's here today. Bentley Happy Thursday brother. So hope you're doing awesome. So, guys, I want to introduce my dear friend. We've got Greg miss you Greg is hailing from the great state of Wisconsin. He's a badger and he is the proud owner of a man he's fine the W and so that that was that's where when bound the name of this company, b2b industrial marketing expert here when bound Greg Happy Thursday. How are you buddy?
Greg Mischio 00:53
Hey, Curt. Hey, Sammy Joe. Hello, Alaska. I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me here.
Curt Anderson 01:00
Awesome. So hey, we've got some fun questions to ask you. You've done a really exciting research project that we want to dig into. Before we go there, Greg. So for folks that are aren't aware of like, how you make the world a better place what you do for manufacturers, you have a really unique spin on like combining that sale like for that sales and marketing together. Just share a little bit about what you guys do at Winbound.
Greg Mischio 01:20
Sure. So when bone is a digital marketing agency, but we actually refer to ourselves as a digital sales and marketing agency. As you everybody knows, manufacturing has traditionally been a very sales driven industry. And, you know, as the customers as our prospects, b2b prospects are migrating more online and doing more of their searching for products and solutions online. We've been trying to push along with Curt, I know you're doing the same thing trying to encourage manufacturers to get more involved with what I call the digital territory. So if you're going to talk about sales territory, as we'll call traditional territory, up to 58% of a customer's journey takes place online before a meaningful interaction with the salesperson. That's according to Gartner. I think by 2025 80% of sales interactions are going to occur in digital channels. This is how more and more people are searching. And we all know that when we go online, we search for things, even in the b2b space, so it's just the way that way in the world now. So we need manufacturers to get their story online. And so what we've done is we understand that with complex products, you need the salesperson involved, we're not saying you don't. So what we've tried to do is integrate sales as much as possible into the online content that we're helping manufacturers produce. So the one way I kind of explain it, is you need to make a digital twin of your sales team with your content. So what that means is whenever your people are searching online, and remember they're doing most of their research online before they talk to a salesperson, they're going to run into your content and your content is going to act almost like a salesperson in terms of how it for presenting information, how it convinces them to that your product air services better and ultimately helps you transition into a lead for your real live breathing salespeople. So as what we call the digital twin sales and marketing framework, and that's what we do for our clients.
Curt Anderson 03:52
Well, I love that, dude, it's a brilliant strategy. I know we've done several webinars where you promote that and you've been we have a little live stream show that you've come on and so I just I love how you break it down and just the simplicity of it. Where like this digital transformation can be daunting and overwhelming for a lot of manufacturers. And they do understand that digital twin concepts I love that you put a unique spin on it. By combining that marketing sales. We're not replacing a salesperson. We're just trying to enhance and make their life a little easier road smoother. So, Sami, I know we got some questions here for Greg and that might kind of tie in with our first question, but once you go ahead and kick things off, we'll get the party rolling here.
Sami Jo Lewis 04:28
Thank you so much Curt and thank you so much for being here. Greg. I think I really enjoyed learning about when bound by let's can dive into like a little bit more about like your background and then how to wind down and get started kind of startup. Sure.
Greg Mischio 04:43
My personal background is as a copywriter. For an ad agency. That's I mean, I'm a like a journalism major out of school, worked with a lot of ad agencies and then, you know, internal communications departments that actually went out on my own. And that's when content got really big. And the internet and I'm like, wow, people need this. They need this content out there. Huge need and started to work with a bunch of different clients and a bunch of different industries. And then we really saw that manufacturing was an underserved market and we really liked the challenge of working with manufacturers as well. Just because the products and the services are amazing and the people are so brilliant that work in it. Just a fascinating field, the more and more we got into it.
Curt Anderson 05:40
Excellent man. I love that. So Greg, let's why. Why b2b Like why manufactured like, why? First off, why are all the cool kids going into manufacturing? Like we talk a lot about that Renaissance like, you know, you've really gone all in with your business. Why Should folks be considering going this direction towards manufacturers in the United States?
Greg Mischio 05:59
I mean, I just think it's, it's something that was just thinking about this earlier today that we just so take for granted, but yet it is so amazing and produces so many miracles, and I was thinking about, like how many times have you seen somebody get super irritated with an app or something on their cell phone, or their cell phone provider or whatever? And it's like, Tuesday night realize what a miracle that thing is in your hands. Like, they want to share that with somebody about like 30 years ago, they would have said, you can walk talk to somebody face to face. I mean, that's basic stuff, right? So I just think that in terms of manufacturing, I mean, like, we'll go up we have a company is in the mix converting machinery, and they've got the machinery that puts together like band aids, and puts together, you know, converts different materials into a little band and for me, it made me think, Wow, a band aid. You know what's going into putting that thing together, putting it in, you know, between the liner, putting together that paper around it, and it's just fascinating. And I also think, you know, besides just the utilitarian need of manufacturing and everything around me that there is also the integration of, I mean, just the so many levels. And you know, everybody's fascinated with tech, and it's just amazing how many advancements it's, it makes in the manufacturing space as well. So it's, it's kind of ticks all the boxes, like, you know, it's helping us in so many ways, so many productive ways. And it's also a lot of fun and exciting as well.
Curt Anderson 07:59
I love it man and manufacturing, you know, truly the heroes of our economy, the backbone of our country and so just absolutely love it and just thank you for your support to the manufacturing community. Right and less MEP friends are certainly supporting the manufacturing community. See me Joe, what's next on our list for Greg?
Sami Jo Lewis 08:18
Yeah, so you recently conducted a research project for manufacturers that was called the manufacturing content benchmark report. So what inspired you to conduct this research?
Greg Mischio 08:31
Okay, so I mentioned before that we are trying to make content, the digital twin of your sales. So when we were thinking about that, we as marketers realized, hey, we're lousy at sales, how, what's how involved in really making a sale? And we've studied tons of sales techniques, everything from the Challenger sales. And neuro selling new sales, simplified it a lot of different sales cycles, we integrated into kind of strategy. But the one thing I kept coming back to is this, this golden rule of sales that people will only do business with you and I know Curt said this a lot if they know you like you and trust you. So it just seemed as we looked at our content that we need to create content for each one of those stages. And essentially, what this has come down to is the no new content is that top of funnel content that really addresses a customer's pain points or challenges. And that's usually found in like blog posts or YouTube posts or things like that, where you're just getting people to know who you are. And you do that by talking about their their issues. They'll like you content is what we call like the mid funnel content. Now this is where you're giving them the insights that will solve those those top of funnel problems, you know, you're showing them a better way to do business. The only way to get somebody to change the way they're doing business in a complex sale to move from A to B is to show them that the pain of the status quo and doing business the way they're doing it is far greater than the pain of spending more money and moving over to what you want to do. So those are that over to your solution. So the that's the like you content and then the final is the trust you content. That's where you prove that you actually can do what you say. And that's like case studies and testimonials and data on your site. So we looked at those three key areas know you like you trust you content. And then we said how many manufacturers are out there actually producing this kind of stuff. And I've got some slides here and whenever you're ready, I can share some of that show you
Curt Anderson 10:57
Yeah, COVID up. Yeah. Does a great insanely job. While Greg's pulling it up. I refer I use no like trust frequently and you know why is solely because of Greg Greg taught me that and I take zero credit for whatsoever. And so I always love giving Greg my buddy Greg miss you credit for the know, like trust so it doesn't matter if you're selling a restaurant, you're selling bagels you're selling your accountants on a service or manufacturer just producing incredible product. Boy, you have to have that know like trust.
Greg Mischio 11:31
So true. Yeah, very intuitive. So can you see that? Yeah. So we analyzed over 400 manufacturing websites, from under 200. I'm sorry, under I believe 25 million. If we broke it out to like 25 million to 100 million then over 100 million. We eliminated companies I think that were below I think below five because a lot of these companies didn't seem to be able to I mean, they were just had very basic websites. But we then if there's a segmentation we forget to put the breakout in there. Over 100 million up there does it and then we looked at the three types of content. So I'm just going to give you an example of a few of these. So this was percentage of manufacturers using social media. For example, now we found that these are 51%. were active on social media and this is across the entire gamut here. But we found these these results are pretty specific are pretty consistent, even with all those bigger breakdowns. But 51% of manufacturers active on social media, about 9% inactive on social media. There was 39% not using any social media at all. So the the active would be and I think we're very conservative on that. So like I think we try to are you on one channel and just a very minimal amount of posting up there. So, you know, to me, social media is almost like table stakes in today's today's world. And, you know, I just in the report, I'm gonna give you a link to the report. We've got a lot of manufacturing experts and sales and marketing experts in there Jay Cole, he chimed in. He's, uh, do trade shows meet people exchange information. But if you are only doing that and not using social media, you're wasting money and losing customers and Jake, you know, as part of his job as sales and generates a lot of referrals, a lot of business off his LinkedIn channel. So that's the social aspect. That's one Askbot aspect of it and Kurt and Sammy Joe, if you guys have any questions, obviously jump in.
Curt Anderson 14:14
Yeah, no, that that's very telling and boy, Sammy, Joe, what do you know? 30 not you know, basically 40% are not using it whatsoever. And you know, and it is challenging, you know, so in these are sizable companies, right? I mean, these are not the, you know, five employees like you said, you know, million dollar shop like these are sizable companies that are collectively just you know, whether they're Gen Xers baby boomers, just you know, it has not been a priority and it's so that this is very telling. See me Joe, what do you think, did you Are you shocked by these numbers? Are you kind of did you expect these numbers or what are your thoughts? No, I
Sami Jo Lewis 14:49
am shocked. I would say I'm kind of shocked by the numbers because it just seems like something but that's also something we're telling ourselves the NDP is we are trying to get on and we're after we make our time to utilize social media. I guess something I want to ask me to throw a curveball at you is what would be your suggestions or tips for people that you know there aren't using social media to the best of their abilities because of their time commitment, or they're just much smaller manufacturing operation? And how do they really prioritize to make sure that we're not losing customers losing money?
Greg Mischio 15:24
Yeah, and that's such a great question Sami Jo, because I think yeah, as I as I was looking at this, I was thinking the same thing. It's a little not might not really showing a ton of empathy for how how busy people are. And I know personally, when I'm not doing something, it's usually not because I don't think it's a priority. It's because I'm not exactly sure how to approach it. I'm not sure what I should be doing on it. So I think you need to get a little bit strategic in how you're going to use social media. You know, what is going to be your approach because I think a lot of people especially they don't use social media. And then using LinkedIn is really kind of my primary. What I'm referring to here is get a LinkedIn strategy. Understand that look, we're probably going to use we're going to use this to meet people and this would be the simplest way I would I would explain it treat it like you would get your salespeople to treat it like they would any in person networking event. You're just going to go to expand your network and meet people and look for opportunities. That alone just with that kind of mindset that I'm going to build referral networks after this. I'm going to meet people like Curt Anderson, who's going to maybe going to introduce me to other people and refer business to me, that alone can be your framework for getting on there. And then then you do what you can I remember once I was talking to a guy about investing in retirement, and he said, Look, just do what you can right now. So if you can budget out 1520 minutes, half an hour a day, do it and then you can just slowly build and build on these things. I mean, Kurt, I don't know what you think about that. But I find that on social getting in there consistently. Your results kind of build on each other from home.
Sami Jo Lewis 17:34
Yeah, and I appreciate that. And I appreciate that. You got to start somewhere. And so you know, maybe if you take smaller chunks or smaller manufacturers have just, you know, it's just 15 minutes today, just try to hop on 15 minutes today and then starting somewhere and that will help grow it.
Curt Anderson 17:50
Yeah, Greg, I think you're spot on as far as like, if you can treat your online presence and again, like say for us Gen Xers or baby boomers, you know for folks that are digital immigrants, little bit daunting waste of time, you know, those types of things, but you know, as Greg saying, if you could just wait, great, you know, like our friendship, our relationship we've done a ton together and in St. George's pestis, you met my partner, Nicole Donnelly in person at the MEP annual conference last month, and she's a direct referral from Greg. And so the only reason I know Nicole Donnelly is thanks to Greg issue. So Greg, I couldn't agree with you more 110% Drop the mic. You are spot on my friend.
Greg Mischio 18:32
Okay, great. Well, let's jump ahead. This is percentage of manufacturing websites with a blog. Now this shrinks down considerably. Active blog and website 21% inactive 4%. No blog whatsoever on website. Now we do a lot of writing for our clients. In manufacturing really, a lot of manufacturers just rely on their YouTube channel if they are doing any kind of top of funnel these are kind of top of funnel No You piece of content. And they they typically don't do a lot of content, written content but I will tell you this that written content is very important for search engines. So if you're just doing videos only, I think you're kind of missing some key components on search for some of your products, which are probably more keyword driven. We've also seen when we write with one of our clients, they do centrifugal casting. They are foundry and we've been writing a ton for them. They're a little tiny foundry in Watertown, Wisconsin spun cast and they are going up against some really big foundries and they went into chat GPT and just said what is the best centrifugal casting foundry and they came up ahead of this, some of the big competition. So it's because we've been writing so much about it. So there is a written element that you need. And this is a quote from a guy named Andy Crestodina. Very prominent in the manufacture or SEO and content marketing field. And he's saying if you don't get out there with some kind of written content like that, you are deliberately letting your competitors win that huge amount of visibility and traffic.
Curt Anderson 20:21
Yeah, fantastic point. Hey, our dear friend teammate from the last coming up Meghan melotel. is here today. Megan, she resists. Wait, if you guys are if you want to catch Meghan, she was our guests last two weeks ago, and she on social media Greg she says yes, it's a practice just like anything in life. You can build any habit into a daily routine. And she's a fierce workout guru. She's a warrior and she has served our country probably two tours in Iraq. So Megan sending lots of love to my friend. Great comment there in great. So that's also very telling somebody basically you know, three quarters of manufacturers are not putting out any written content and what I love what you said is CME Joe if you recall we interviewed our dear friend, Greg and Greg mutual friend Jeff Long. So if you guys are catching this and you want to learn about video strategies for manufacturers, go back and going to Alaska Me page and you can circle back and catch up once sharing video strategies and one thing that Greg, I'm sure that Jeff talks about is like get the transcription if you're like, you know, hey, it's really painful. I'm not a journalists major and I'm not gonna sit here and type out a blog. I don't have anybody that can do it. It's a little bit overwhelming. Wait, just you know, get those videos and you can use the transcription tool. And now you can convert that into written content. It's a little bit of a shortcut to help you go there. So great, great tip there, Greg. Love it.
Greg Mischio 21:41
Absolutely. And then the final slide here then I've got active YouTube channel, so Okay, can I do anything written? Get some YouTube videos out? There and your products? Demo your stuff? Only 11% active on YouTube 22% inactive and no YouTube at all. 65%. I heard the Gasp their current and you know, no wonder provide all the necessary information. To help your ideal prospect, make a buying decision. And again, it's so this is why this is also critical. I think I think the big I'm gonna go back to what Sami Jo said here and I'm just going to put this up. This is where you guys can go and get the report the full report. You can do that Bitly window and dash report or you can just follow the URL code you don't even enter a new email to download the report. But if you would like to sign up for our newsletter and get future content like this, please do but I think back to your point, Sami Jo, you're not surprised and I'm not surprised either. This industry is lagging but if you show these stats to some other b2b field that is seeing a lot of you know actively marketing and reaping the benefits. They would be somewhat shocked
Curt Anderson 23:06
right? Yeah. Great. So if you don't mind let's let's so guys, you know what if can you grab your presentation real quick. Again, I would just want to recap a couple of things real quick. And we've got a couple of minutes left here, but it's great one that backup guys would I strongly encourage you welcome you to do is number one, you know if you're just coming into this, we hit the rewind button. Button. Greg is just dropping tons of value here. And number one, number two, what I love about Greg and Greg you can plug your ears because I know you're very humble guy is great guy. He doesn't talk the talk he walks the walk and so when you go to when bound and you go to check out his content, you know, like if you're gonna go somewhere, Greg, it'd be like coming to me to be a barber like, you know, nobody's going to come to me to get a haircut right? But when you go to Greg, and you're like, Hey Greg, Mr. Content King, are you putting your money where your mouth is? Absolutely. He has all sorts of amazing blog posts he posts about Sammy Jo a lot of our mutual friends. He's like Harrison Ford and you know, interviews on all sorts of different people, even people that he overlaps with a little bit so he's he has no problem putting some competitors out there because he knows that they bring value. Great, great family man. You have a wonderful blog post by your dad I have some love that blog post that you shared. I know your your your son has joined the team here recently. So congratulations on that. But if you go to with bound, there's just all sorts of great information to help manufacturers understand like how content works, why contracts are important. You mentioned that digital twin early on and so again, check out when bound.com Great information great let's let's start taking home and any parting thoughts that you want to share with anybody Sami Jo kind of mentioned like, Hey, we're just somebody start we're I got 12% have a YouTube channel like what a competitive advantage out there for manufacturers to jump into what are some other steps that you would recommend for folks to get the party started here for content?
Greg Mischio 25:05
Yeah, it's, it seems like an overwhelming and daunting task and it really is. It isn't is and I mean, it's one of those things where you know, you have what is the best time to plant a tree? Well, 20 years ago, what's the second best time right now? So you know, you start out with the strategy. And then what we've just tried to do is, you know, I'm not I'm not the smartest, you know, cookie in the cookie jar. I don't know what the expression is, but I just try and keep things simple in so we're trying to follow the map the model of sales and, you know, do what's worked for your sales for your manufacturing company in the past and try and replicate what those salespeople are doing online. You know, get get your message online as best as you can. There are a lot of smart marketers out there too, who have kind of published, you know, like, we've got an approach page here. I'm just gonna share this real quick. If you go to if you go to our site, just share it real quick here. I mean, this page alone if you just go here this just actually kind of walks you through what our process is. And if you can even just take a framework like this and just follow it straight, a strategy, jot document, create some content for each stage and then track it with some you know, very basic metrics. You know, that can help you quite a bit. So that's our approaching pricing tab on there and you can check that
Curt Anderson 27:06
out. That's fantastic. And just you know, a you're not, you know, the cookie jar example. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed either, Greg. Let's do the math. Okay. I'm no math major. Sammy Joe, but let's just crunch the numbers real quick. It's fact 80% of the purchasing process is going to be done online. 75% of manufacturers don't have a blog like there's there's a there's a little disconnect there. See me Joe, do you smell opportunity? Can you do an opportunity here?
Sami Jo Lewis 27:41
Right. No, I absolutely see it. I think that's something we hear frequently from our manufacturers. I think in Alaska, we deal with a lot of small size manufacturers and it's really just taking the time but I think like you said you plug away 15 minutes a day you start adding to it it will just open up so many more doors for opportunities and you showed there and especially because as you also demonstrated, there is no a lot of people doing it or taking advantage of it. That should be so absolutely
Curt Anderson 28:10
incredible. Opportunity. So guys, we'll start winding down here. And so first off, say me Joe, how about a huge round of applause for our esteemed colleague here, our superstar guest and so a big shout out to our audience. Bentley, Megan, everybody out there that's listening, which connects with the Alaska MEP. They are just here working their warriors, just working tenaciously to help manufacturers in Alaska. Greg, words of wisdom parting thoughts that you want to share with our audience today.
Greg Mischio 28:40
Boy, well, first of all, thank you too, for having me on the show. I think you know, just creating awareness, checking out some data like this. And just engaging with the game. You know, and getting yourself started. I read something very interesting. On a different topic. about someone who had reached a certain point of enlightenment and intelligence about a certain area. And he said, you know, you can't go from, you know, the entry level to here. It's like, you know, you have to go in subsequent stages. So, you know, you're not going to be as smart as Curt Anderson started out, you know, but you will build and get better just like you built your business in and this is, you know, you can do the same thing with digital digital sales and marketing.
Curt Anderson 29:38
But we got to set the bar just a little bit higher than that one my friend So Greg, thank you for joining us, dude, we appreciate you. Thanks for just your relentlessness and just your just the curiosity that you constantly bring your humility, your sense of humor. Absolutely love it, my friend. So thank you for joining us today. Sammy Joe, once you close us out in this beautiful, wonderful Thursday in October.
Sami Jo Lewis 29:59
Yes, thank you so much Curt, and thank you so much, Greg. I think everything you're talking about was very insightful. I really appreciate the slides and just seeing those statistics are super eye opening. And thank you all for joining us. We do these every other Thursday at noon. So check us out live in two weeks. Have a great Thursday.
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