The Kula Ring

eCommerce expert, Curt Anderson from B2Btail, discusses common challenges manufacturers face when it comes to launching an online store, how to best overcome those challenges to boost online sales, and why certain manufacturers can gain a competitive advantage by simply selling online.

In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman talk with Tim Bay, Head of Digital Marketing at Fellowes Brands, about how manufacturers can use customer feedback to improve their marketing, approaches to introducing brand new products to the marketplace, and the benefits of working for a 100 year-old family-owned business.

In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman chat with Ross Simmonds, Digital Marketer, Speaker, and Entrepreneur who specializes in B2B. They discuss B2B topics including the heartbeat of SEO, the viability of Facebook for B2B, and the threat of Amazon. They also talk about how providing value is key to engaging your B2B prospects online, no matter what the platform.

Sarah Carson from packaging design and manufacturing company, Rohrer, talks about bringing together marketing and sales teams from two organizations, building in-house capabilities, and her approach to creating powerful sales enablement content.

For manufacturers optimizing marketing and sales processes to drive revenue performance, there's one rule that stands out above all others. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman dissect the Golden Rule of sales and marketing optimization while highlighting several illustrative examples.

Defining an ideal customer and sourcing a target account list to match should be easy, but it isn't. On this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman discuss how to craft an ideal customer profile (ICP), identify tools that can help, and warn about pitfalls along the way.

It doesn’t matter if you call it a niche or a nitch, how big yours is will determine your best next marketing moves. In this episode of the Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman explore examples of B2B manufacturers with large, almost B2C-style niches driving results by getting closer to end user customers.

Mavens of Manufacturing host Meaghan Ziemba started the live video broadcast series to help close the gender and skills gap in the manufacturing industry. The show is a place for women in the male-dominated industry to share their stories and support one another, as well as offer mentorship for women at the start of their careers. The Mavens community also works with the education system in the US to better inform young women and girls about manufacturing or engineering career pathways.

CJ Brey, the Director of Sales and Marketing at CNC Tooling Management and Application firm PF Markey, discusses the merits of the ‘in-person’ or ‘face-to-face’ approach to generating leads and maintaining client relationships in the manufacturing industry. When the push to virtual came alongside the pandemic, the digital approach to lead generation and sales became commonplace; but now, as in-person events are resuming, those same digital-only approaches are falling flat. Listen to CJ explain what can’t be replicated from a purely virtual interaction, why the right approach to customer service may be a combination of both digital and in-person, and why he ultimately thinks there will be a shift toward more in-person sales and marketing for B2B manufacturers.

On this week’s episode of The Kula Ring, Greg Paulsen, Director of Applications Engineering and Marketing at Xometry, gives insight into his formula for success when it comes to creating technical content for a B2B audience. Rather than focusing on the question of ‘what is,’ high-quality technical content that resonates should be centered around the question of ‘why’—why it benefits the customer, or why it matters to the industry at large. Listen to the episode to hear Greg talk about how understanding the ‘why’ comes through having been there himself; or in other words, through having empathy.