If you’re in marketing, sales or want to grow in your industry, this episode is for you. 
Marketing niche software can guarantee business Humility prepares you to grow and learn new industries How to build trust with your audience to facilitate the sales cycle Strengthen the marketing and sales relationship for your business Strong marketing requires strong relationships 
00:00-8:28 | Ingenious software solutions for engineers 8:28-12:52 | Marketing products that sell well 12:53-17:18 | Ask the right questions to grow in your industry 17:18-23:22 | How sales and marketing can work together 23:22-28:10 | Optimizing your sales cycle through trust 28:10-32:55 | The importance of building relationships with marketers 32:55-37:42 | How to find and build your audience 37:42-48:44 | Strategic Marketer Podcast highlights 48:44-50:17 | Consume content that inspires you
“When you're working with a technical audience, the first thing is you have to be curious.“ - Joseph Lewin “One of the most challenging things or biggest impediments to your growth is you.” - Joseph Lewin “The more technical and niche your space is, the more you need to get your fingers on the pulse of your audience, of who your customers are and what they're doing.” - Joseph Lewin “When you're a marketer you should be talking to everybody in your company.” - Joseph Lewin “So many businesses are still looking at sales and marketing as two separate divisions of the company.” - Kap Chatfield “Marketing exists to build trust in your space to make the sale easier.” - Joseph Lewin “ Focus on building relationships through the content that you're creating.” - Joseph Lewin “If COVID-19 taught us anything, it's that the digital marketing world is no longer an accessory, it's a necessity for businesses.” - Kap Chatfield ”The only thing worse than a mediocre piece of content is a great piece of content that nobody sees.” - Kap Chatfield “It's way harder to create demand for something than it is to solve a problem that people already know that they have.” - Joseph Lewin “If you create okay content that's building relationships with other people, and grows an audience, you're going to be 10 times better off than creating two or three or four polished pieces of content a year that nobody sees.” - Joseph Lewin- Rveal’s website: rveal.media
- Rveal’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rvealmedia/
- Rveal’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC69p14R2ccMdyUbbmdlWCEw
Full Transcription:
Kap Chatfield 0:20
Hey guys, welcome back to B2B Podcasting. I'm your host, Kap Chatfield and I am with Joseph Lewin. He's the marketing manager at Cadenas Part Solutions. And he's also the host and the producer of the Strategic Marketer, a brilliant show that's on Spotify and other podcast platforms. Joseph, great to meet you. Great to have you on the show today.
Joseph Lewin 0:41
Yeah, thanks for having me. Kap. Really looking forward to our conversation today, it's gonna be fun.
Kap Chatfield 0:44
It is. So I want to just kick it off by giving you a little bit of a platform to share what you're currently doing in your in your field and your job as the marketing manager at Cadenas. Because when we were talking off the recording here, man, I could tell that you were like trying to hold back some some pretty intense lingo for what you're doing. And there's very specific industry that you're working in. But I don't want you to hold back for our audience, I want them to know, even in a very specialized industry that you're in, specifically engineering and manufacturing, you're trying to navigate what it looks like to be a marketer in those in that field in that world. So please explain to us to the entire audience, what are the two types of software's that you are currently trying to market for your company?
Joseph Lewin 1:28
Okay, so we have an engineering software it's called Part Solutions. And without getting too technical, it's basically a way for engineers to be able to find and reuse parts that they've created in the past. So when an engineer creates a part they're usually going to create a 3d model of that part. And when they create that part, after they use it, it usually goes into a big pile in their file management system and it's almost impossible for them to find it. You know, if you think of creating a Word doc, you know, last year, two years ago, three years ago, but you can't search it using text. How would you find that?
Kap Chatfield 2:05
Wow,
Joseph Lewin 2:06
Really difficult?
Kap Chatfield 2:07
Sure,
Joseph Lewin 2:08
Especially if you're creating, you know, 100, 100 Word documents a month, and then you're supposed to go back and find it, but you can't search for it with text. That's kind of what it's like for the engineer because they've created a 3d model and it's really hard to describe the 3d model in text. So it's very hard for them to go back and find it. So our tool, it's actually pretty cool technology. It's a 3d shape search tool. So they're able to create a napkin sketch of a part, and search their database and find parts that have a similar 3d profile to the 2d sketch that they made. Or they could take a part that they have and search their database and see if there's parts that are geometrically similar, you know, that have a similar 3d shape to the part that they are bringing in. So there's a lot of different tools, and it gets kind of technical, but it's, it's just a way for engineers to be able to find stuff. So they're not reinventing the wheel.
Kap Chatfield 2:58
Dude, that's actually really cool. I'm not in the engineering world, but I can already kind of gather the brilliance of that. It's, it's kind of like how, I don't know if you are you a Slack user? Do you use slack for communication?
Joseph Lewin 3:12
To some degree? Yeah, I've used it.
Kap Chatfield 3:13
So slack is, I was just talking, talking to my partner about this, so you can obviously share videos with your teammates. And that's been easier for us than like typing out a ton of stuff sometimes. And I was just telling them the other day, I was like, dude, when they have a voice note feature, that's gonna change the game for just being able to communicate simply in slack. But here's where they could take it to the next level, if they could transcribe the voice note in slack, so that all you had to do is type in what you remember the conversation being about, because you know, voice notes on your phone, you can't find a voice note if you're trying to like search for it. So they found a way to make it so you could search for those by transcribing the actual voice knowing we were freaking out. So basically, yeah, you're doing the same thing, though, for for a world that's very visual. And you said even like, taking a napkin sketch, being able to like scan that or take a picture of it, and then it basically populates with hey, here's some designs that kind of match the, the geometric shape of what you drew, if Am I hearing that correctly?
Joseph Lewin 4:15
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool software actually. So it's a that's pretty neat. And there's only a few companies that are in the market that do it. And ours works across different CAD systems and different file types, more than most of the other ones do so. So it's a pretty cool product. And they, the crazy thing is our CEO of our company in Germany, I don't know how he does it, but he sees like 15 or 20 years ahead of everybody else, what is going to be needed. And so the the challenge of that is that it takes a long time for people to catch up with what he's doing. But I mean, some of the largest companies in the world haven't been able to create or replicate the same level of technology that he did, like 15 years ago in creating this product, so it's pretty cool. So that first product Part Solutions, the 3d shape search tool is being marketed to engineers and procurement people at these, you know, usually like fortune 1000 companies, fortune 500 companies. But yeah, very technical audience on that side. Engineers and, and procurement folks. So then the second product is it's really a marketing tool, it's a lead generation tool for manufacturers. So we work with, there's a couple different types of companies we work with, but we mostly work with component manufacturers, so people who make things like springs or bearings or motors, you know, an individual part that's used in a larger, in a larger part, in a larger project. So, you know, if you go to the store, and you buy a remote control car, it's gonna have motors in it, that spin the wheels, and then it's gonna have screws or fasteners, it's gonna have brackets, it's gonna have some electrical components, it's gonna have all of these different parts. And the company that designs that that remote control car, they are not actually designing and manufacturing all of the individual components, or at least, usually not. They're going to find suppliers that specialize in creating those individual parts. And that's going to be true of the microphone we're using, and the camera we have, and cars, you know, when you buy a Ford, F- 150, the the parts on that car, not, not all of them are manufactured by Ford, there's a large portion of those parts that are manufactured by other companies and Ford pulls them in and uses them. So we work with the suppliers to create 3d models, CAD models of the parts that they that they sell. And engineers specifically need 3d CAD models of their parts to use in their larger design. So if I worked for Ford, and I needed to get some type of motor to use in, you know, say it's like the, the side mirror for your car, there's a motor that's going to operate in there to move, move that. So if I need a motor for that, and I'm working on that design, I'm going to search for suppliers that have those motors. And I'm going to have specific special specifications that I need for that. So I'm specifically looking for somebody who's going to have that information. In the past, an engineer would have to go find that supplier and they would have to get a really complicated specifications sheet and create a 3d model of that themselves, and just hope that they're accurate enough to be able for it to actually fit in the end. But today, with using our software, or similar software, the engineer is able to go to their website and download a CAD model with all of that specification information inside of the model. I know it's kind of complicated, and getting a little bit industry specific. But the main idea is engineers are looking for that content, and manufacturers already have it. But a lot of manufacturers are not putting it in a way that's easily accessible to engineers, when they download it.
Kap Chatfield 8:11
They're a thing. So basically, what you're doing then is helping them create, like, almost like a lead magnet for their website so that someone can submit an email, and then the company can stay in touch with that individual after they download that piece of content. Right?
Joseph Lewin 8:28
Absolutely. Yeah. So if you think of it, you know, from a marketing perspective, like us, if we're marketing, whatever it is, you know, marketing services, we're gonna try to create some type of content that is valuable enough to where somebody would want to give them their give us their email in exchange for that. So that could be a guide to b2b podcasting, you know, and you have all this breakdown or a checklist or something. And we have to jump through hoops to try to think of what's going to be enticing enough to do that, and constantly creating stuff. But the crazy thing for these manufacturers is that they already have the information that engineers want, but they're just not packaging it in a way that engineers need. And when they package it, package it correctly, when an engineer goes to a manufacturers website, and they download a CAD model, from research that we've done, there's an 80% likelihood that they will purchase that part when it goes in their design.
Kap Chatfield 9:20
Whoa, oh, man, that's high.
Joseph Lewin 9:23
It's pretty killer.
Kap Chatfield 9:25
So you guys help them, so the company, the manufacturer, you help them create that downloadable thing, downloadable document, so that the engineer can basically download it from them, and if that occur, basically there's an 80% chance that that engineer would actually buy that product from them.
Joseph Lewin 9:48
Correct. Yeah, and it's a little bit one layer deeper than that. So they can download the document, it's called a spec sheet, usually in the industry, and that's going to be just a PDF document with all the specifications in it. But what our software does is we, we work with them to create all of the possible configurations of a part. So say that you have a motor that has 10 sizes, and I'm not gonna use technical terms. But you know, say that there's 10, different sizes of motors, and there's like 30 variations of speeds for each of those motors. So an engineer can go to the site, and they can select the size of motor that they want, and you know, the speed and power and you know, all these different things. So every time that you add a layer on there, there's an extra layer of complexity. So some of the parts that we work on for manufacturers, there's literally millions of possible configurations. And our software basically creates a CAD model of that part, even if it's never existed before. And then engineer can download a CAD model, so that's going to be a 3d part that has all of this information in it, and they can pull it directly into their CAD software, move it around and put it on to their, into their, whatever they're working on, whatever their project is, and test it out and make sure that it works. And then for some reason, it wasn't the right size, they could just jump back on, reconfigure it, make any changes they need and download it again. So it goes way beyond just like a document download, because they're getting an actual 3d model without having to create that model themselves.
Kap Chatfield 11:24
That's legit, and not, I don't think that I'm sure you could probably go super technical into it, but if I can understand what you're saying, I think most people can understand. I'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but that's really amazing what you're what you guys are doing. And I think what's going to be even more amazing is for us to talk about how you and your position, how are you bringing those things to the market? How are you marketing these software's, to these, these very specialized audiences? Because I've talked to I even just got got lunch today with a guy, not the same industry. So the friend that I was grabbing lunch with, he works in the medical device industry. And we were talking about marketing for his industry. And it's, it still has to happen. But the thing is, is that you you really need to know the language of your audience of that potential buyer, which in their case is going to be orthopedic surgeons. So I'd love for you to talk to our audience, because there's probably people in our audience right now who are in that position, whether they're whether they are a marketer, within an organization that has a very highly specialized product or service, a very technical audience that they're trying to speak to. Or a CEO, who's trying to be convinced of how will digital marketing actually help us move the ball forward? Because our our industry is so specialized, we've done it this way, for so long, how are we going to transition into this new kind of digital marketing landscape? I'd love for you to kind of share about your journey of marketing in such a specialized field. Take it where you will, I mean, just take us on a journey of like, what does that what does that look like for you? And learning how to market in these areas?
Joseph Lewin 13:07
Yeah, that's a great question. I'm trying to think of how to piece it together in a way that'll be coherent enough. But I started in the engineering space, only about two and a half years ago, and I had zero experience. I couldn't have told you what a PLM or ERP system is. So if people who know what that is, you know how little I knew about engineering and in that world. If you don't know, don't worry about it, if you're not engineering, don't think about it,
Kap Chatfield 13:35
Leave that to you guys.
Joseph Lewin 13:37
But I knew nothing about engineering at all. And since then, I've written articles that are being read in and, you know, getting feedback from engineers, and they're getting value and learning things from the content that we're creating. So I will say that I can't, when I came into the company, they had been doing SEO, and a lot of digital marketing for almost 10 years. So they, you know, I didn't come in and have to convince this the executive portion of our company that we should do digital marketing, that was already established. But I did have to learn a completely new industry. And then we didn't have almost any content for that first, I don't wanna say we didn't have any, but we didn't have a lot of content for the first engineering product that I mentioned. So if you're going into a new space, you're working with technical audiences like that. I think the first thing is, you have to be curious. And I think you have to be humble enough to just admit that you don't know what you're talking about. And that's the easiest way to learn what you need to know as fast as possible. And so what that looked like for me is going to different industry conferences that we had trade shows at, and just going up to random people and saying, "Hey, I'm a I'm a marketer, I'm not an engineer, I'm new to this space, can you tell me a little bit about what you do? Because I, you know, I'm pretty clueless with this stuff". And then they just tell me all kinds of stuff. And I could ask them whatever questions I wanted and there's a few people that I run into that were jerks and, you know, arrogant and, and would be rude about it. But for the most part, you know, you'd run into people who are really open to sharing and by not feeling like I had to prove something to them, and, you know, show how much I knew about it, I was able to gain a ton of information. And I, I'm trying, and I would like to continue keeping that attitude moving forward, because it's just so much more beneficial when you go in with, you know, not not having to prove something. So, then it's a matter of just going and learning as much as you possibly can, and trying to look for industry trends and trends. And you know, what's going on in the industry as a whole and being able to speak to that, and then yeah, just talking to as many people in the field as possible. And I think the other important thing is having a close relationship with your sales team, people who are in sales. So if you're in a technical space, you're going to have a sales team and if you don't have a sales team, the company basically doesn't exist. I mean, you have to have sales, a sales team to be able to, to make it in that kind of a world. Sure. And so you should spend a ton of time talking to the sales team, learning about what questions people are asking, and digging in deep. And then the other piece of it is interviewing customers, you know, and talking to them and getting customer language. And I think this applies whether you're a marketer, or you're in the C suite. I think if you're in the suite, C suite, you're the CEO, you own the company, you know, whatever the case is, it's very easy to be blinded by your own assumptions.
Kap Chatfield 16:39
Wow, true. 
Joseph Lewin 16:41
And I think that's the most challenging thing that that one of the biggest impediments to your growth is you. And you assuming that your customer is like you, you're assuming that you understand your customer, you're assuming that you understand your product, you're assuming that you understand the problem that you're solving. If you haven't taken a very close look at those things recently, those are all areas that really need to be explored. And the more technical and niche your space is, the more you need to get your fingers on the pulse of, of your audience of who you know who your customers are and what they're doing. I feel like I'm going to keep right I'm going to ramble if we don't
Kap Chatfield 17:20
I mean ramble on bro, like, that preaches so hard. Because that's, that is a that's like the number one thing you need. If you're going to be a successful marketer. You have to, if I can summarize what you said, you said a few amazing things you said: Be curious, be humble. You said learn as much as you can, be close to the sales team. If I could, if I can sum up everything you said, it's really it really comes down to being a good listener. And if you are, it doesn't really matter, whatever, whatever industry you're in, if you're a good listener, and you're thinking about how you're asking the question, How do I speak the language of the audience that I'm trying to market to? Man that you're on the path of success right there, but it's, it's living in the place of, of deciding, this is how my audience speaks, this is what they care about whatever actually doing your due diligence, I think that's gonna really shoot you in the foot. So you, you personally kind of went on this journey, where you're in an industry that you're not an expert in. But in order to market more effectively, you said, "You know what, I'm going to hunker down, I'm going to learn, I'm going to talk to customers". I love that, I think it's such an important strategy that can be often overlooked, asking your current customers like, hey, what, you know, we may be trying to present our business to you in this one way, what actually got you to do business with us? And what's keeping you doing business with us? What problem are we solving for you in your own words, that we can kind of leverage that language and use it for other people? So that's really, that's really great. I want to just talk to you practically about talking to the sales team. What are some things that you've learned in such a technical space as yours, that matter a lot to the sales team, or to the customers that the sales teams' interacting with?
Joseph Lewin 19:15
Yeah, I mean, I think I was running an agency for a little while, it was a pretty small operation. But doing that, you start you understand the value of making sales. And if you don't make sales or you don't have a company. And you know, I like very marketing driven companies, where the sales team is more of a support for marketing. And I think that is possible in b2b and in technical spaces, but it, it's hard. It's hard to make that happen. And especially if you already have a very sales driven culture in your company, it's very hard to be marketing led. So having said that, you just have to understand what is important to the sales team and it's, it's making sales and serving their customers, hopefully, but definitely making sales. and so if you understand that, then you're able to pitch things in, in the context of what's going to help them win, you know, I would say that's another thing is, you have to think in terms of, what problem am I solving? And how can I help this other person win? If you have that attitude towards your customers and towards anybody on your internal team, that's gonna really take you a long way. So as far as customers go, if you say, what's coming, keeping my customer up at night, and how, how can I position my product to help the person that I'm marketing to get a raise or get promoted in their company? And if I can achieve that, that might be a lofty goal, in some some cases, but especially if you're selling an enterprise product, it really can help somebody kind of move up to the next level, if it's successful, but it could also have them crash and burn and, you know, destroy their career also, if they invest in something that was a total fail. So if you think in terms of the risk that somebody is taking by working with you, and you help to figure out well, how do I make this less risky? And how do I help this person to win? You know, that really goes a long way in being able to communicate about your product. But I think that's true also, when you're a marketer, you're, you should be talking to everybody in your company. And to be able to market the product, you have to really understand what it can do, not just what your team says that it can do, but what it can actually do so you're not over promising. So you have to talk to people on the implementation team, and you know, the, the business side of your company and your sales team. And no matter who it is you're talking to, you have to understand what's in it for them and how do you help them win. And so if you can position, whatever it is you're doing on the marketing side, to your sales team, is I will help you win. And I want to help you win by creating content that you need, that's going to speak to these areas where you're having a really hard time and you're getting stalled out, because it takes you two or three times of meeting with this customer to explain this one idea, or you're going through your deck and there's this one place, when you're going to present to a customer, where you're getting stuck. How can I come in and help you tell that story more clearly? And if you can do that for your sales team, and you can help to break something down and help them to sell better and easier, then they're going to be more likely to communicate with you and share their ideas with you.
Kap Chatfield 22:14
Oh, that's, that's so that's so powerful. Because I think so many businesses are still looking at sales and marketing as two separate divisions of the company that, you know, marketing basically grabs a lead, hands it over to sales, and then sales takes it from there. But what we're seeing today, and I'd love for your input on this, because you're you're very active online, the content that you create, and we'll talk about your show in a second after this question. But what we're seeing today is that the buyer journey for most people is is online, it's happening for the majority of the time online, Consuming a handful, you know, a handful of different pieces of content from a company before they ever even talk to a sales rep. And so what that communicates to me is that marketing and sales they are they really need to go hand in glove more than ever before. Sales needs to understand that marketing is actually having the conversation is having the sales conversation with the customer, before they ever talk to a sales rep. Whether an absolute the customer knows it or not. So how talk to us about the journey that you you've been on and, and maybe some if you if anything comes to mind about some wins that you've seen in your own organization. You don't have to talk through like, anything that's confidential, obviously, but some some higher level wins that you've seen where marketing and sales worked together to close more deals.
Joseph Lewin 23:42
Yeah, I mean, I think there's, I don't want to get too philosophical. So I'll try to keep it as on top. Because I can't quite, you know, there's definitely a little bit of a little bit of a challenge because, I think that, that there's two there's a, there's a tendency in companies that are technical, or in b2b space to think of marketing as an extension of your sales team. And if you're not careful, then you're not really letting marketing do the main thing that it's there to do, which is to build trust in your space, so that, like marketing's jobs is to make the sale easier. And they're gonna be able to make the sale easier if your customer already knows about you, before they even go to search for a solution. Maybe you're the one that even helped them to understand that they had a problem to begin with. And then they already trust you because you've given them something that's so valuable, that they're not getting from anybody else, that you've built trust with them. And you gave it away for free, you didn't coerce them, you're not you know, charging them a ton of money, you just help them understand something in their life that they were struggling with, that made that made their life easier. And in the context of their business, you know, reduced stress in their life. And then when they actually get to the point where they're ready to talk to somebody in sales, hopefully, if marketing is done right, they're already going to know a lot about your product. And hopefully they're at the point where they really only have a few specific questions that are holding them back. And the more of those questions that you can answer upfront before ever, they ever have to talk to the sales team, the more likely you are to win that deal before that person's in a conversation with other salespeople, and doesn't necessarily mean they're not going to talk to other salespeople from a different company. But if they're using your materials, to decide what they need in the product, your competitors are going to have a much harder time bridging that gap. If you taught them what the problem was, help them to frame it, help them to frame exactly what they needed, the chances that they're going to end up going with somebody else go way, way, way down. At that point, they're just making sure that, you know, your pricing isn't like astronomically different than everybody else, or doing their due diligence. So marketing can do all of that. But if you're not careful, you can make marketing basically there to create sales brochures for your sales team. And they are to spin up a webinar for your sales team when they want you to do it. And to put on a trade show and go to the trade show. And you know, you get you get a lead in and you want the marketing team to, quote call that lead and qualify the lead. And I'm not saying those things are bad and that marketing shouldn't have a hand in all of those things. But if you think of marketing as being, you know, basically account based marketing, which is really sales. But you know, if you think of marketing in those sales terms, you're basically trading quota today and meeting you're meeting your pipeline goals today and sacrificing, building that trust with the audience in the long run. So I know I'm kind of going on a little tangent there. But the main point is, you should have your marketing, you have to understand your sales process and how it works and hopefully help improve that process as a marketing person, so that the customer goes smoothly from learning about you through, you know, whatever means LinkedIn, podcast, whatever it is, and smoothly transitioning over into a conversation with your salesperson. And then ideally, in my ideal world, you don't even have a demo, your customer is already knowledgeable before they get on, they get on with a salesperson and your salesperson is going to have a discovery call where they ask questions. And their job is not to teach the customer anything, their job is to ask the right questions that make the customer think about something that they didn't quite place in the right way. And by asking those questions, you're framing up the conversation to make them think about something they haven't thought about before. And then helping them to understand what it is that they actually need. And you could do all of that through asking questions. And then whatever questions they have, you follow up with materials that you've created that answer those questions. So that to me would be the the ideal world it doesn't really typically work though.
Kap Chatfield 27:46
I think it's it's getting closer. And especially in an industry like yours, I can see why there's, it's a little slower. Because it's it's been there's been such a traditional way to do that sort of marketing and sales for so long. But I think we're if COVID-19 taught us anything, it's that you know, the digital digital marketing world is no longer it's no longer an accessory, it's a necessity for businesses and
Joseph Lewin 28:10
Absolutely.
Kap Chatfield 28:10
So I think it's really cool that you've had the experience to do that in such a specialized world. And our our hope our desire is that a lot of this audience would actually be in the SAS space. So b2b, SaaS, particularly. So what you're talking about is software solutions that are, you know, very highly specialized, very, you know, very segmented audience persona profile. And I think you're you guys are doing some cool stuff with that. So let's talk about your show now, cuz you're you're a guy who's really passionate about the power of marketing, in general. And so you started a show called the Strategic Marketer. It's not necessarily tied to your business, I think at all, but you're using it for some some really cool opportunities to build relationship, to grow as a personal thought leader in the world of marketing. So tell us a little about that show, when you started it, and what the shows about?
Joseph Lewin 29:02
Yeah, so I started the show just a couple months ago, beginning of August, maybe? So I have a few episodes out. And the main purpose behind the show is, let me take you back one step. I started the show, because probably about a year ago, I started to realize that to do any kind of marketing, well, you have to have relationships with other marketing people. And the more the closer they are to your industry, the better in the end of the day, but relationships with marketers in general help you move the needle. So are creating.
Kap Chatfield 29:34
Yeah, I want to ask you why why is that so important?
Joseph Lewin 29:38
Yeah, so basically, I took a bunch of courses on different topics. And I kept hearing the same thing over and over again. So I took a course on SEO, and they're like, yeah, at the end of the day, SEO comes down to having relationships with other marketing people in the same industry. The reason being that you need you know, people that are in the same industry, to be writing content with you, to be creating content with you. That to be published. stuff on your site, you publish stuff on their site. And then one of the most powerful things you can have in SEO is backlinks from super specific industry specific websites. So now if I'm friends with people who run 10 other websites, because I've networked with them over time, when I have a new article go go out, I can go to them and say, "Hey, I just wrote an article on this topic", they know what it is, because their audiences after the same stuff, they link to my blog, you know, from, from these 10 sites, and then when they have something come out, I do the same thing. And if we don't compete directly with each other, honestly, even if you do, but if you don't compete directly with each other, then you're all gonna help grow each other sites exponentially by working together like that. And that's true with PR. If you're going to be in the PR space, you have to know journalists, and you have to build relationships with journalists, to be able to communicate with them. And then, you know, if you want to write content to these niche audiences, like we're talking about, you have to know people in that industry, and you have to add value to them, you have to give them something that's worth it for them in order to get that information that you need. And if you don't have somebody like that at your company, that's that subject matter expert, you have to have something that you're offering to that person that's valuable. And you have to build relationship with them to to prove that out.
Kap Chatfield 31:14
Oh, amazing, amazing little tangent that I've, thank you for allowing us to go on so you can help explain that. So. So that's partly why you're starting the show, I'm guessing is to help build your network and build these relationships? Correct?
Joseph Lewin 31:28
Yeah, so the idea is, I want to be better connected in the marketing space. Well, there's, there's really two things to it, I want to know more marketers, and build relationships with them for the reasons we just talked about. And then the second thing is, I love marketing, I love talking about it. I mean, if you ask my wife, what I like doing, it's like listening to things, and talking to people. And if it's about marketing, it's like, top of the list. So this is an opportunity for me to reach out to people that maybe wouldn't have taken the time to just sit down and chat with me over coffee. But I get to ask them all kinds of questions that I'm curious about, that helped me be a better marketer. But it also helps them to get their message out and grow their thought leadership as well. So it's a win win for both of us. And before I started the podcast, I did just reach out to people on LinkedIn and say, "Hey, can we grab a virtual coffee or real one if you live in Cincinnati in the area I live in?" And we would share ideas, but this way other people get to join in the conversation and be part of it. So we're growing network, growing audience, growing thought leadership, and then you know, a little side benefit of that is some of those people are in the industrial space and I've already had some potential leads for the company that I worked for, even without trying. Because some of those people are in the space and they go and look through my profile and go to our company's website and they're like oh wow, I didn't know that you guys did that. And you know so it's been pretty cool opportunity for even networking and bringing in leads for my company.
Kap Chatfield 32:55
Man, in just two months, cuz you just started this thing two months ago, and you're already seeing some some quantitative business results for it. So that's cool. Your employer must be happy that you're doing this podcast then. So you've you're using it to build your network in the marketing world. The marketing world if we can both agree, though, is huge. There's so many different routes down you know, that you could do in marketing. So what area of marketing do you feel like you really want to double down on? Is it Seo? As you mentioned, is it content marketing? Tell tell the audience what what you really feel most passionate about.
Joseph Lewin 33:33
Podcasting?
Kap Chatfield 33:34
Yeah, okay. So why so because of the ability to build relationships or is I know that you even the, if you're if you're not watching the video, you're just listening, you can't see Joseph's, I call it the 007 golden microphone. It's, it's beautiful. It's like the holy grail of microphones. So clearly, you have a background, as you mentioned in like recording music. But why? Why podcasting? Why is that your your go to marketing medium?
Joseph Lewin 34:02
I would say that the hardest thing for me in marketing so far has been audience growth. You know, how do you how do you grow an audience? How do you connect with people? And I, I've liked to just sit off in a corner somewhere and do my own thing and create content, whether it's videos or blogs, or whatever in I mean, last year, I wrote a 7500 word researched article on industry 4.0, which is a engineering topic, you know, so I went in, did research, we created an infographic. It's awesome, right? But to get that in front of people, you have to have relationships with people. And that's the part that's always challenging. And if you don't have an audience that you're growing as a company, you can create as much content as you want. But if there's nobody there to see it, and I would have always said before, "Oh, content is king, you have to create the best quality content and you got to create better quality content to anybody else". And to be honest, I do not believe that at all anymore. I think that's total BS. And you know, you want to have as good a quality content as you can. And I'm not saying, you know, purposefully create terrible content for sure. But if you, but if you creates, okay content that's building relationships with other people, and grows an audience, you're going to be 10 times better off than creating two or three or four polished pieces of content a year that nobody sees.
Kap Chatfield 35:19
Wow. Yeah, I experienced that when I went to film school, because I saw, you know, I went to film school at the University of Miami. And, you know, you have all these really amazing, brilliant creatives that you're going to class with, working on projects with. And the sad thing that I discovered was that so many of them that they were so talented, but they never actually created a career out of filmmaking, because they didn't have a community, an audience to show their work to, which would kind of become this, like, momentum building snowball effect, to get them in front of more people to build better work to network with new, you know, other companies that they could produce content with. And I'm just thinking, man, I actually you might have, you might have been the one that commented on one of these posts that I made on LinkedIn a while ago, but I said, the only thing worse than a mediocre piece of content is a great piece of content that nobody sees. And that's essentially what you're talking about here is if your contents not being seen, if you're not building a relationship with an audience, then what's the point? Right, it's you're doing is only doing in order for it to be seen or just to be heard. So how are you? How are you? Sorry to interrupt you, but how are you actually moving that forward in your own work? How are you getting it in front of more people? Is it through just networking and inviting people on your show? Or are you doing other strategic methods?
Joseph Lewin 36:48
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of goes in line with that. So, you know, how do I know that the podcast is working after I've only been doing it for a couple months? Well, I'm on this podcast? So are you guys, it's working? Yeah, it's working. Because I, I don't think you would have reached out to me if I didn't have the podcast. And if you didn't see stuff on LinkedIn.
Kap Chatfield 37:06
The content you're putting out there. And may that be an encouragement to you, and may that be an encouragement to anybody else listening, because you might be, you know, just briefly kind of looking at the analytics of your LinkedIn posts or whatever you're putting out there. And thinking, "Man, no one's actually seeing this it like there's not many people engaging with it". But I'm telling you, if you just keep showing up, you're going to start, you're going to start turning some heads, and you're going to start getting some, some LinkedIn, DMS, or some phone calls, and it's going to materialize into something. I mean, you're living proof of it. I mean, two months in man, that's amazing. You should, you should totally be proud of yourself. Okay, as we as we come to the end of this podcast, I want to share that your your show the Strategic Marketer, there was three episodes, that really stuck out to me. And there's some there's some things that I wanted to pull out from those episodes to just get your take on when these individual said it. So episode, we'll start with Episode One, actually. So Jimmy Nguyen, in this episode, one thing that he said that really kind of stuck out to me was that the audience is looking to solve their problem more than they're looking for the features of your product. So I want you to talk about that a little bit when he's when you start talking about that in regards to marketing your product, and what is the audience really care about? They're not really care, they're not searching for the features of your product. They're searching for how to solve their problem. How is how has that affected your marketing strategy? Or do you think what he said was just total BS?
Joseph Lewin 38:38
Now, Jimmy, I would have said his name wrong, except for I just asked him when I was doing the podcast. So it's Jimmy Nguyen.
Kap Chatfield 38:44
Oh, it's Nguyen
Joseph Lewin 38:45
Jimmy Nguyen, not how you would think it was pronounced by the way it's spelled out. But yeah, Jimmy Nguyen is a brilliant marketer, if you need SEO, somebody who's just an SEO Ninja, although it was funny, we had a whole conversation about how he hates that. So that's, yeah. But if you if you need an actual SEO Ninja, then, man, he's, he really knows what he's doing. But I'm using actually his advice on an article I'm working on right now. So basically, if you if you want to write an article about a topic, and you want to know what people are doing, put it in, and then look at the the Google results where it's saying other questions people asked, and then just look at what those questions are, and then incorporate those into whatever it is you're writing, because those are things that people are actually asking about. So if it's way harder to create demand for something than it is to solve a problem that people already know that they have. And in a space I'm in we've I've run into that multiple times, when we're trying to solve something that is actually a serious problem in the industry, but nobody recognizes where the problem is coming from. Whereas if we go to somewhere where people are clearly have a problem, we can do something about it. And that's where the questions come in. So we're assuming that somebody cares about our feature, but they care about, about the problem, you know, they care about the issue. So, for instance, you know, if I have a leak in my metal roof, which I currently do, and it just rained, so it's on my mind. You know, my issue isn't the features of the, you know, piece of metal that I need to get and how much better it is, and how much more functional it is. It's like, how do I stop my roof from leaking? Yeah, I and that's my concern
Kap Chatfield 40:27
Page like, does does your roof leak? Here's the perfect patch for you. Oh, perfect. That's what I needed.
Joseph Lewin 40:34
Exactly. And you could be trying to go into all these technical details in the whole page could be about how it's so much better and will last so much longer. And I don't care. And I don't really even want to know any of that information. I want something that I can find that I can easily just add to my cart, order, and put it on easily. So if you're like, the easiest way to patch a hole in a metal roof, that's the that's the question. That's literally what I'm going to look up on Google when we're off of this call. That's, that's what I'm looking up. So if you're answering the questions people actually have, then you know, you're going to be way, way better off, that's probably a longer answer you're looking for.
Kap Chatfield 41:06
No, that was great. Perfect timing, too. So, bottom line, Jimmy Nguyen, what a great man. Who doesn't want to who doesn't want to be in the Nguyen family, right? So totally agree with him. Your audience is looking for how to solve their problem more than they're looking for the features of your product. The second one is from Episode Two. You're gonna have to help me with her last name Michelle Hironaka.
Joseph Lewin 41:32
Hironaka.
Kap Chatfield 41:33
Here you go. Alright, I got that one. So you're talking about a real social media strategy. And actually, what I want to talk to you about what this one is actually something that you spoke into. So she was talking about how any social media strategy needs things like an engagement strategy, a social listening strategy, a research strategy, and then she got to video strategy. She started talking about how LinkedIn the you know, LinkedIn video might not be that effective. But you were able to kind of bring some insight for the audience to share that that LinkedIn video is actually super effective, but they don't share metrics appropriately for you to understand that. Can you help us understand his audience? Why, you know, what is that about? And should we be doing video on LinkedIn?
Joseph Lewin 42:19
Yeah, and by the way, Michelle is brilliant. So you know, this is a very small hiccup in the conversation.
Kap Chatfield 42:24
I wouldn't even say hiccup, it was more like you, you just had another angle that you're able to bring to add value to it. But I think that what you're what you're going to talk about right now is super valuable to our audience.
Joseph Lewin 42:35
Yeah, I mean, as far as LinkedIn goes, it's an animal of its own. And the algorithm changes all the time. And I don't know, you could try to beat it. But I think the best thing is just to create a variety of content, you know, have some text and some video and whatnot, but what you're referring to specifically is the the metrics on the video. So if you post, if I post right now a text post, and then I post a video, my text post is going to say, you had whatever, doesn't really get this, but I'm gonna say it for fun. You got 25,000 views on your last, your last post. Sure. And you know, say it was 300 engagements, I'm totally getting. Yeah, maybe by the time you this is really so I'll be there. But anyway, the point is, you're gonna see that this, these engagements, on the posts, you know, whatever, 300 likes and 50 comments. Now you could post a video that has 300 likes and 50 comments, and maybe that same one has 5000 video views is what it's gonna say. They're actually two completely different metrics. So the one is showing you impressions, how many time that was shown in a feed for the text post, and then the video post, if you click on video views, it says people who have viewed at least three seconds of your video. So it's a totally different metric. And if you look on the business pages, it does actually show you video views, and then it shows you impressions. So you're literally comparing apples and oranges, if you're looking at video views and impressions are two totally different things.
Kap Chatfield 44:00
Totally differnt things.
Joseph Lewin 44:01
I think the thing you want to look at, if you post the video is the it'll show you how many minutes, total minutes were watched the video. And that's a much more interesting stat. I think so out of the people who viewed it, how many of those people watched a significant amount of your video. And that's going to give you much more interesting insights into how effective the video was.
Kap Chatfield 44:23
And the reason why, for our audience that might not understand what is the value of minutes viewed versus an impression. What we're talking about here is if the if the person watching the video is going to watch for more than three seconds, if they're going to watch up to 95%, or even the full video, what that obviously would communicate to us is that this audience is interested in the content. And if they're interested in the content, then they're likely to be interested in our product or our service. So that's a level they might not like it, they might not comment on it. They might not even share it, but if they're going to watch that money and invest that much time into watching the content. The odds are that they are they're somewhat interested, intrigued by what you have to say. So that's why Yeah,
Joseph Lewin 45:09
And I know, I know we're probably run out of time. And but let me give you one one more piece on that. Do we have time? Or should we bring it?
Kap Chatfield 45:15
Yeah, let's do it.
Joseph Lewin 45:16
Okay, so one more piece on that is the most successful thing. Some of the most successful posts I've had on LinkedIn are videos. And it's kind of funny because I stopped posting as much about super technical stuff on there as far as engineering because that doesn't really fit where you know, my personal brand, per se, it's very geared towards the industrial space. But I was posting some stuff that was very technical, long form content, it was right when they switched over to letting you do 3000 characters. So I had a 4, four to seven minute videos with 3000 characters, with the video. And those are some of the best pieces of content I've made, like some of the highest engagement I've gotten on, on any content. The only things that I've done better are personal posts about personal things. But whenever somebody tells you, people on LinkedIn, want short videos, and they don't want technical information. I think that's true when you're reaching out to marketers and sales people. But if you're in a technical audience, people want you to break that stuff down, and they they eat it up. So the more niche you are, I think the more long form content you can post on LinkedIn and do better, at least that was my experience doing it. Whereas if I tried to do that with about a marketing topic, forget about it. Marketers don't take the time to watch a seven minute video.
Kap Chatfield 46:29
No, that's all we do is is consumed content all day long. We got to kind of dial it in. But speaking of consuming content that comes to the final thing I want to share from a previous episode that you did, and it was episode number three. With Meghan Campbell. Her name is a little bit easier to say than the other two, I'll, I'll admit so. But one thing that that she made the point of was, if you want to get better, she's talking about writing specifically, if you want to get better at writing, you need to read more. And I just kind of paraphrase that to say if you want to get better at creating content, you need to consume more content and not just consume content, kind of passively. But be like an active consumer and ask yourself, Well, why did they do it that way? Why is there so much engagement in this regard? This many questions or this many comments in the comment section? or Why did I stop? What made me stop to actually be interested in that? So that's what I wanted to ask you about as a marketer. What are some things that that you're learning from content that you're consuming? Whether it's a podcast, or copywriting or video, what are what are like maybe just give us even one one thing that you're learning as you're consuming actively.
Joseph Lewin 47:38
Yeah. So one thing is, if you're gonna create that niche content, go as deep as you possibly can. So find an article or a piece of content, read it, and then look at the sources, and then read all of the source sources, when you get down to the actual source material and not the quote, of a quote, of a quote, that's when you really start learning. And it's usually digging through some really, really hard to read technical jargon. And you're gonna have to look up half of the words when you're reading it, but that's where you're really going to connect the dots that nobody else is connecting. And then besides that, for, you know, a little higher level for the rest of us who aren't creating that kind of content, it would be focus on building relationships through the content that you're creating, anytime you can or consuming. So if you're going to consume something on LinkedIn, read something and comment on it and add to the conversation. And that's what's really going to make it valuable and take it to the next level. And if you're gonna create a piece of content, why not create that content with somebody else, like what we're doing right now? Sure. And it goes so much further. So when I'm consuming, I'm usually looking for people I can connect with build relationship with and that we can help grow, you know, help each other move forward. And what we're doing.
Kap Chatfield 48:46
Joseph, by the way, is the He is the king of meaningful comments on LinkedIn. I've through a lot of the people that I built relationship with on LinkedIn, Joseph, your, I can tell that you're reading the stuff that I put out there, which just means a lot that you take the time and you leave a thoughtful comment. And that's how you really that's how you build genuine relationships, even in digital platforms. So just want to commend you on that when it commend you and all the amazing work that you're doing at the show. It's already a hit success, even in two months. The metrics might not be as high as you want, as you alluded to earlier, but you're impacting an audience and it's, it's, it's ultimately affecting your business. So that's super encouraging. We'll have the the show link for Joseph's show in the show notes in the description of this episode. Now, Joseph as we're closing out, I'd love for you to leave our audience with a show a single show that you're consuming now a podcast that's been impacting you. What show would you recommend to the audience today?
Joseph Lewin 49:43
For digital marketing, I love Neil Patel's Marketing School podcast. Super short, easy to consume, and he's always got just super great stuff in there.
Kap Chatfield 49:54
Perfect. Joseph, thanks so much for joining us on the show today. Appreciate you.
Joseph Lewin 49:58
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
