The Kula Ring

During an ERP rollout, manufacturing marketers in small and medium- sized enterprises often find themselves on the outside looking in. Sam Gupta, Principal Consultant at ElevatIQ, says marketers should be integrated into ERP initiatives because of their unique ability to identify new products and new markets. In this week’s episode of The Kula Ring, Sam talks about what marketers bring to the table that service personnel might miss, and how providing all team members with access to real-time ERP data can improve customer experience.

Manufacturers who offer a broad range of solutions rely on face-to-face conversations with prospects in order to find the best fit, but the pandemic has reshaped the sales relationship into a virtual experience. In this week’s episode of The Kula Ring, Brian Wellhouse, Supplier Marketing Manager for Sensor Products at TTI, talks about how virtual prospecting drives the conversation to be more action-oriented sooner. He talks about how his company conducts virtual prospecting with engineering teams, how they use LinkedIn to find new prospects, and what kind of marketing materials they develop to find engineers on LinkedIn.

Flexfab is an industrial B2B manufacturer who designs and manufactures highly-engineered products in a wide variety of materials and designs for the aerospace, automotive, rail, and heavy-duty truck industries. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Ryan Knox, Director of Marketing & Innovation at Flexfab, talks about the company’s initiative to connect innovative startups with industrial companies to leverage emerging technologies within their manufacturing processes. Ryan talks about how Flexfab draws on existing relationships and industry connections to establish new revenue streams and foster innovation within industrial industries that are often overlooked.

Video marketing is not new, but many B2B manufacturers are still searching for a strategy. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Allison Wagner, Marketing Communications Manager at Morrison Container Handling Solutions, shares how she helped make video the company’s biggest marketing tool. She talks about the resourcing effort, why video is important for manufacturers to invest in, and how Morrison leverages video content to help prospects envision how to use their solution.

Like many B2B manufacturers, ARCA sells to a small number of very specific niche markets. Targeting a small list of banks and credit unions who could benefit from ARCA's cash automation and recycling solutions, their marketing team crafted highly personalized one-to-one account-based marketing campaigns and successfully generated awareness and opportunities within key accounts. Learn how ARCA successfully piloted ABM on this week's episode of The Kula Ring podcast.

Career development planning and performance assessment can be a challenge for internal marketing teams. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Ryan Benbo, Senior Director of Marketing at Vermeer, talks about the framework they have developed to coach and grow their marketing team's capabilities. Additionally, he discusses how Vermeer has been able to attract more than 70 talented team members to establish a cross-functional team that acts as an internal agency.

As younger prospects prioritize digital spaces for information-gathering and networking, how can manufacturers create influential, opportunity-generating content? In this episode of The Kula Ring, Adam Peek, Business Development and Channel Partnership Manager at Fortis Solutions Group and Host and Founder of the People of Packaging Podcast, talks about using social platforms to build a personal brand and how he translated visibility gained from the podcast into new business opportunities. Additionally, he talks about how his experience as a former pastor and full-time packaging industry expert plays into his podcast content and he shares tips for how to create and own content that no one else is talking about.

How can manufacturers leverage their distributor relationships through ecommerce? In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff Bercume, Director of CX Marketing at Berry Global, shares how the company’s subsidiary brand, Laddawn.com, operates as an ecommerce site with a distributor-first model. He talks about how the website’s workflow is geared towards distributors, and how this ecommerce configuration can address capacity issues across manufacturing.

How can manufacturing marketers repurpose existing content for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) campaigns? In this episode of The Kula Ring, Renee Tarnutzer, Marketing Director for Digital at Kerry for North America, talks about reviewing the company’s bank of content marketing in order to make it fit an ABM model. Additionally, she shares their process for compiling target accounts and optimizing content to serve different verticals.

How can Lean methodologies and processes, which require iteration and imperfection, generate a robust marketing strategy? In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jason Grizzi, Global Director of Marketing at Corning Inc, In-Building Networks, talks about how his team has applied Lean practices to shape their marketing operations. He shares tips for a successful Lean deployment and talks about why cultural transformation is key to Lean processes running smoothly.