Ep. 11 Joe Sullivan
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[00:00:00] Corey Quinn: Welcome to the Vertical Go-To-Market podcast, where you'll discover new opportunities to grow your business. From seven figures to eight, from the world's most successful agency and B2B SaaS executives. I'm your host, Corey Quinn. Today I'm joined by Joe Sullivan. Joe.
[00:00:20] Joe Sullivan: Thanks, Corey. Great to be here.
[00:00:21] Corey Quinn: Could you please introduce yourself and share a little bit about your background for those listeners who may not be familiar with you.
[00:00:26] Joe Sullivan: Yeah. Happy to do so. So, um, Joe Sullivan, as you said, I, um, am a, I'm a co-owner of the Industrial Marketing Agency Gorilla 76. Um, we're a. Marketing agency that works specifically with kind of the manufacturing ecosystem. B2B exclusively, we've been in business for, 17 years next month, and about the last 12 or so have been, completely niched down into that space.
[00:00:51] So I know it's very relevant to what we're talking about here, the idea of specialization, but yeah, that's, that's kind of where, where we've lived, so yeah.
[00:00:58] Corey Quinn: Cool. We're definitely gonna [00:01:00] zero in on the transition at about the, I guess year five is when you, it sounds like you decided to specialize. We'll, we'll talk about that in a minute. and could you share a little bit more about what Gorilla 76 does with regard to your B2B manufacturing clients?
[00:01:13] Like what, what, what services do you provide?
[00:01:15] Joe Sullivan: Yeah, for sure. So I think if you had to kind of break it down into the things that we really focus on doing, it's kind of the first thing is, is positioning, helping our clients. Everybody comes to me and says, well, we. We, we serve this vertical and this vertical, and we've got these products and these ones and we do service and maintenance and blah, blah, blah.
[00:01:33] And, and so I think the first thing is focus and positioning. Um, you know, dialing in the right people from the right company, what matters to them, helping 'em craft the right messaging. Um, Second piece of it is, is surrounding that with content. So always been a huge advocate of, uh, of content marketing in general, and just kind of taking the expertise in the brains of, of the people on your team and, and figuring out how to use that as a way to educate your audience.
[00:01:59] [00:02:00] Um, third piece of it is, is distribution or delivery of content. So rather than sitting back and waiting for. For the world to find you. How do we go out and reach the people that the buying process influencers inside the companies you need to reach in a proactive way and in a way that actually creates value for them, rather than waiting for Google to send them to you.
[00:02:19] Um, and then the last piece of it is kind of how do we quantify the impact? Both, you know, we, the signals that, that we're going in the right direction, we're reaching the right people, the message is resonating, but all the way through to, you know, impact on revenue. So,
[00:02:32] Corey Quinn: Awesome. based on just that overview, I could tell we, we have a lot of, uh, similar, thinking and approach about how we, how we go to go about our, uh, our marketing. I loved all that. Uh, and just for the listeners sake, could, what could you share about the size of the business, maybe the number of clients, revenue, employees, whatever you're comfortable sharing.
[00:02:48] Joe Sullivan: Yeah, so, um, we're a 23 person company, uh, recruiting our 24th right now. Um, we're, we're based in St. Louis, but our team is kind of, about two thirds of us are here at this point, pre pandemic. We were all [00:03:00] here and now we hire the best people we can from wherever they are, which I love. Um, we work usually at, you know, at any given moment in time, we've.
[00:03:07] Probably got somewhere from 15 to 20 clients. So we work pretty intensively with them rather than kind of doing project work. Um, some, one of our longest standing clients been with us for 12 years and we've had, you know, a few more that are five years plus, which is, is cool. And, um, and yeah, we're about, uh, three.
[00:03:25] We will be somewhere between three and 4 million this year in sales. So to give you some perspective
[00:03:29] Corey Quinn: Beautiful. That's awesome. And your title according to LinkedIn, is Founder and Thinker. Could you tell us a little bit about your role there?
[00:03:38] Joe Sullivan: Yeah. Um, we, we stick the thinker in front of all, all job titles here and, and it kind of just goes back to when John, my business partner and I founded the business. You know, again, 17 years ago we had that on our first business card, as you know, thinker. And I think mine was thinker and designer and his was thinker and writer, which were really our, our skillsets at the time.
[00:03:55] But, um, You know, I think that's always been, been key for [00:04:00] us is, uh, is hiring people who are critical thinkers and problem solvers. And I think a lot of marketing happens kind of mindlessly and, um, without true business outcomes at the center of what you're doing. So there's that. But my role at the company at this point is, is mostly like my accountabilities are marketing and sales for Gorilla, as well as, um, you know, kind of some high level consulting for clients, especially early on.
[00:04:25] Corey Quinn: Got it. So you're mostly outward facing, helping to spread the, the, uh, the brand and the message and the, the offers that you guys have.
[00:04:32] Joe Sullivan: Yeah. You know, it's been nice over the years. You know, there's a time where me and John wore all hats, right. As, as, uh, when we were a two person company, and even for many years after that, still, you know, kinda just taken off one hat at a time and John's found his home in, in overseeing the, the people side of our business and recruiting, retention, culture, uh, all of that.
[00:04:51] And, and I've kind of been business development for, for our, our company as me, and built a great leadership team to really run operations.[00:05:00]
[00:05:00] Corey Quinn: Sounds like a great, uh, partnership with your co-founder.
[00:05:02] Joe Sullivan: I've been very lucky. Yeah. We we're, we're very, we're really good friends and we, we were friends first and, and you know, of course you have your, your bumps in the road along the way, but I've been very fortunate to, to John, you know, to be partner with John for this long.
[00:05:14] Corey Quinn: So you mentioned that about five years into your journey as an agency owner, you specialized, you began the specialization process. Could you take me to the period before you began to specialize? What was going on in the business? What was working, what was not working, and what led you to realize that specializing was gonna be, important for your business going forward?
[00:05:36] Joe Sullivan: Yeah, the strategy, the first five years was, uh, take a check for whoever would write us one for anything that could be, um, categorized as marketing. Right. And so it was, um, you know, we, we were, uh, In, in our earliest days, we were kind of a creative shop, uh, first and foremost, I, I was always an art kid growing up and, and was, you know, I, I went to, to school for, um, essentially graphic [00:06:00] design.
[00:06:00] Took my first job as a, as an art director. And, um, my business partner John, was a writer. And so we had these sort of complimentary skill sets for, you know, advertising, which is sort of where we, where we landed, like more creative advertising at first. But, um, you know, I think it, it. We learned pretty quickly like what an opportunity there was to do so much more than the creative side of things.
[00:06:21] And we saw companies that were struggling with, you know, just connecting what they were doing on the marketing front to like impact on the business and, um, being problem solvers ourselves. We, we kind of just sort of naturally found our way into solving those, those larger, big. Business challenges and wrapping marketing around that.
[00:06:39] So, you know, we, we kind of moved from being a creative shop to do, doing a lot more than that pretty quickly. Um, but it, it was, yeah, but yeah, about five years in is probably about right when we sort of looked around our, our client base and said, you know, who are we really best at working with here? Um, who do we like working with?
[00:06:58] You know, we did some con small [00:07:00] consumer brands and local stuff, you know, restaurants and whatever. And, um, It, you know, the, the companies we really enjoyed working with were business to business. They were selling things that you didn't even know existed somewhere along the supply chain maybe, or, um, and, you know, real technical sales, like working with engineers who had all this incredible knowledge but uh, weren't leveraging it, you know, in, in the marketing, um, that they were doing.
[00:07:28] And so, We kind of figured out what we really liked doing. We saw this huge like gap in, uh, or, you know, unmet demand for, for marketing and, and really a lack of education about what marketing really is. And I think still today, so many companies that are, are less sophisticated on the marketing front, they don't really even understand the difference between sales and marketing and where that line's drawn.
[00:07:49] Um, so we saw a big need in, in sort of b2b. We would've said, um, you know, we would've just probably at the time said just industrial sector. We've kind of [00:08:00] specialized quite a bit more since, but it was a lot of construction, manufacturing. Um, I think it was a time we called it kind of blue collar brands is who we worked with, like people who made stuff with their hands or, or whatever.
[00:08:11] But, um, so part part of it was just recognizing a need. Some of our earliest clients were there, we liked working with them. It was, it was the types of clients that weren't calling you at, you know, 9:00 PM on a. Saturday night cuz there was some emergency they needed. And like, honestly, the lifestyle portion of it was something that mattered to us too.
[00:08:28] Like we wanted to, um, you know, not, not just live a life of stress, I guess all the time. Um, but so the, the niche for us sort of happened by accident. It was our earliest clients were there. We figured out who we'd like and then it became very intentional. That's kind of the way, way I describe it.
[00:08:43] Corey Quinn: what were the conditions in the business that led you to want to make a shift from what you were doing?
[00:08:49] Joe Sullivan: Um, it's a good question. I, it's, it's hard to remember like if there was a. An actual tipping point or not. And I think it was more just we, we were, we're the types who were [00:09:00] always just looking at the business, like what's working, what's not, what do we actually like doing? What are we actually good at doing?
[00:09:05] And so I think it was just kind of the, the regular cadence of going through that. I can remember, John and I used to, we had like a weekly. Tuesday morning standing meeting at this restaurant. That's a few blocks down from us right now. It's no longer there. But we would go there and we'd, you know, we'd, we'd eat breakfast and we'd, we'd get coffee and sit there for like three hours, um, and, and just work on the business.
[00:09:26] And so it was, it was probably in one of those morning meetings when we sort of figured it out. But, you know, the things, the things we were, we were definitely looking at were, You know, where are we actually profitable? Like we'd find ourselves working with, with companies that were maybe exciting to work on or the brands were known or, or something.
[00:09:44] But like, we're just grinding away on these and, and when we're actually, you know, looking at, at, at profit on it. Like we're, we're, you know, we're putting in twice as many hours on these projects just to get 'em to the finish line as, as others. So I, again, I don't know if there was a true [00:10:00] tipping point as much as just this decision to, to.
[00:10:03] You know, be honest with ourselves about what we like doing, what we're good at doing, where we're profitable.
[00:10:08] Corey Quinn: It's, uh, so it sounds like you were, you were spending time on the business as well as in the business. And you had some perspective and that's, that was, yeah. so you mentioned that the B2B manufacturing, or, or, or you know, the blue collar, the industrial kind of business partner made sense. You had, it sounds like you had a couple of those customers at that time, and you were able to use that experience as a reference to want to go and explore this further.
[00:10:32] Joe Sullivan: Yep, that's exactly right. And I think that's, you know, again, I, I, I'd say it happened by accident first and then it became very intentional and there was sort of a snowball effect that started happening pretty quickly. You know, I remember it being a little bit scary when we changed, you know, whatever it said on our homepage at the time, and probably something in some ridiculous statement about how we do everything for everybody right to.
[00:10:54] You know, we're, we're an in, we're an industrial marketing agency, right? And, and like, cuz that was a, that was a big shift. And [00:11:00] it was like, well what are our current clients who aren't that gonna think about us? And what about the fact that we're now cutting off 95% of our total future customers because they don't, you know, they're not part of that category.
[00:11:11] Um, so, Yeah, I remember it was, it was it, I kind of kind of remember that moment in time it being a little bit scary, but it didn't take long before, you know, all of a sudden the things you hear on sales calls when you're on the call at the right person is, I love that you specialize in, in working with companies just like us.
[00:11:31] And early on it felt a little bit like we were faking it cuz you know, Okay, because we had six or seven manufacturing clients over the first few years, or, you know, industrial sector clients, did that make us an expert? No. We had some experience there, but, um, it opened the, the door to more opportunities that fit that description and then all of a sudden you start to learn.
[00:11:52] You see the patterns. I think the pattern. Being able to identify patterns of like what's similar between this company and this company, because they're both [00:12:00] B2B manufacturers, for example. Um, that tribal knowledge within that space becomes really valuable. And then all of a sudden, you know, a few years later we start hiring people who were previously marketing managers inside of companies that fit that description and they bring, you know, language and, and other insights to, to our company that.
[00:12:20] Are relatable to our audience. And so this, it's just a sort of snowball that starts rolling when you finally commit and say, this is who we're gonna be. We're gonna figure out how to be experts here and, and just sort of run with it.
[00:12:34] Corey Quinn: You mentioned that you began to see patterns in the manufacturing clients. Could you share what some of those patterns were?
[00:12:39] Joe Sullivan: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, you know, I think something that, and this is, this is really no different than, you know, if you're, if you're in Sass or, or other, you know, Professional services or healthcare or whatever. But I think some of the things, like a lot of our best clients over, over the years have been, you know, they, they manufacture [00:13:00] some custom piece of machinery, CNC machines, industrial ovens, packaging equipment, like, you know, pieces of machinery that are half the size of my house and they cost $800,000 and it takes a year and a half sales cycle to, you know, get to the finish line and it's.
[00:13:15] Engineers talking to engineers and to plant managers and to, you know, CFOs and to machinists and, um, and so I think it's, it's when you start to see all the same personas and job titles that are like the influencers on the buyers and for our, for our customers. You know, when I can get on a, a sales call and they say, okay, well, you know, we sell this piece of machinery.
[00:13:36] And I'm like, okay, yeah, I, I've heard that before. I, I know who you try, who you're trying to reach. I know where those people spend time digitally. I've, we've run effective campaigns at those exact people. We understand what their mindset is. It's, it's like seeing that time and time again, even though the product may be completely different.
[00:13:54] Um, serve of a completely different purpose. Uh, so I think it's like [00:14:00] understanding the how to, how to talk to different, Members of a buying committee, and you know, what an engineer needs to hear is very different from what a maintenance manager and a plant manager and a CFO need to hear. Um, so you kind of, you kind of learn that.
[00:14:14] You learn where, where those people collect their information, how they like to communicate. So I think those are probably the ones that the, the patterns that relate to the audiences that our clients need to reach is probably what's most important. It's also let us. Over the last few years, now all of a sudden we have software companies coming to us or technology companies or robotic systems integrators like vision inspection systems for manufacturing production lines where they're not manufacturers themselves, but they serve the manufacturing sector that we understand pretty deeply.
[00:14:44] Um, and so I think the understanding of the audience and the things related to that are the patterns that become most important.
[00:14:50] Corey Quinn: And as you began to build your expertise in your, uh, focus and specialization in B2B manufacturing, did you just fire all your non B2B [00:15:00] manufacturing clients or, you know, what does that transition look like, uh, over that period?
[00:15:04] Joe Sullivan: That's a really good question. No, we did not fire anybody because they didn't fit the bill. Actually, I think we may have a couple, but it was less about, oh, these companies aren't manufacturers, and more about, you know, the type of work we're really shifting to doesn't really align with what we're doing for you guys.
[00:15:19] And we, we want to help you find a, a, a different, different partner that may. You know, maybe better suited for you. And, um, so we had a few of those conversations. I don't remember if it was exactly at that moment in time, but the way I, like, I have one client right now that they're in the, they are, they're a dairy, they're like a traitor of commodity products in the dairy.
[00:15:39] World. Right? And they're an amazing client, and we love 'em. We love working with them. They love us. They don't care that we work with manufacturers. Like everything we do is completely relevant to them. And we've been working with 'em for like eight years. So no, we didn't fire 'em. We, we love working with them still.
[00:15:52] But what I'm not gonna do is, is put, uh, you know, case study from them front and center on my website, right? Because I think a, a lot of [00:16:00] it is just how you're positioning yourself. To the world. We'll still land clients periodically that don't really fit the description. But if you know, again, a lot, I think a lot of the things that are true for manufacturing, marketing are true for professional services, marketing for sas, for healthcare, for, for whatever.
[00:16:18] Um, we just may not have as deep an understanding of the audience those people are trying to reach. And it might be a little more work to do there, but, um, that's my take on it.
[00:16:27] Corey Quinn: That's awesome. I think, uh, the reason why I ask is I, is, I, I've talked to business owners who have asked that type of question, like, how do I transition? Am I going to be burning the ships and basically starting over? And then obviously it's, it's more of a gradual transition over time. The clients that continue to get value out of you, even if they're not in that specialization, if you're still serving them and, and meeting and exceeding their needs, of course they're gonna stay with you.
[00:16:50] So,
[00:16:52] Joe Sullivan: Absolutely. And I think I'll add one more thing there. Like I remember so, so one of our, our best clients I mentioned, we've got one client that's been with us for 12 years or something, [00:17:00] still, still going strong with it. They're, they're a general contractor, like a design build contractor, so still in the industrial sector, but they're not a manufacturer.
[00:17:06] And, and my business partner, John, and, and their head of marketing, their cmo have a great relationship. Like they, they go, they climb mountains together. They like, it's just one of these things where they're, they're. Probably friends as much as they are, you know, client agency relationship at this point. I remember him, John, my business partner, being kind of worried like, what, what's he gonna think about this?
[00:17:25] Like, now that we're repositioning our ourselves and, um, and we, I think just having those conversations with your existing clients, if this is a, a shift you're thinking about making is, Hey, listen, we've got a lot of clients over here. We're really looking at specializing here. Doesn't mean we can't serve you any differently, but wanna just get your.
[00:17:42] Feelings on that? How does that make you feel? If, if all of a sudden our homepage says we work with this segment, which doesn't fit you? I think cause we had a couple of those conversations and I think if they're good fit clients and you have a strong relationship there, I think probably most of 'em aren't gonna care as long as what you're doing for them keeps is, is [00:18:00] working.
[00:18:01] You're not gonna keep attracting others from that particular segment if you're positioning yourselves to others. But to me it's more of. A marketing decision for yourself and how you're, how you're, you know, choosing to communicate what you do and who you help and how to the world. Then a reflection on the work you're, you're still doing.
[00:18:19] Corey Quinn: You mentioned in the early days you had about six to seven of these types of clients within this new specialty. You also mentioned that you updated your website. What are the are, what are the other things that you did to build momentum in the B2B manufacturing space?
[00:18:33] Joe Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, honestly early on a lot of it was just marketing and positioning for ourselves. It was what are the things that, um, we've, we've got a, we've got a page on our site that's been there forever and we refined it over time, but it's, it's just says who we help and how you can get to through our navigation.
[00:18:49] Um, but we, we based that on, um, on a sales book actually by a guy named Mike Weinberg, who he wrote a book called New Sales
[00:18:56] Corey Quinn: I love my expl stuff.
[00:18:58] Joe Sullivan: I've. You know, Mike. Okay, awesome. [00:19:00] So yeah, I've, I've had him on my podcast, which was probably my favorite episode I've done in 150 episodes.
[00:19:05] But, uh, but anyway, Mike, his, his, he kind of helped us, like just by looking at his stuff and he helped us sort of think about how we communicate that. And I think that's a great starting place is to just get down on paper, you know, com. Like we help companies who fit this description. They come to us when they're having these issues.
[00:19:23] Um, you know, this is what makes us different from the other guys who on paper look the same as us. This is what it looks like to get started working with us. And so we just really latched onto the language we crafted there. We used it in, in, in the way we, we talked, you know, had our team talked to the outside world, the way we talked internally, what it said on our website.
[00:19:41] And I think that was the starting place. And then once we got some momentum going in terms of like lead generation in that sector, And we started landing some clients to kind of reinforce that the case studies, we'd show whether in sales conversations or uh, or marketing content on our site or elsewhere.
[00:19:58] And we made sure we were focused on [00:20:00] comp on the companies that fit that description. So it was relatable. So I think the first thing you need to do is you need to make, you need to make somebody who fits the description of, of the segment you're trying to specialize in, say. Okay, that's me. And these people get me, and I've had that problem before.
[00:20:16] Um, so you, I think it's about becoming relatable first and then over time it's the things like, as I mentioned, we've hired a handful of people that have come from inside manufacturing and they bring, you know, a network with them. They bring expertise. They can speak the language that, you know, the engineers speak at the.
[00:20:34] At our customers and at the customers of our customers. Um, and so all that stuff snowballs. We also started building media properties inside of, um, inside of, you know, my, my podcast is the manufacturing executive. Um, I, I published 150 straight weeks as of next week of episodes without missing a week, and I.
[00:20:54] You know, built a really great following there. I talked to CEOs. We launched a second podcast that is us teaching [00:21:00] marketing. My podcast doesn't teach marketing. It brings other experts that are helpful to mark manufacturing CEOs in, uh, we run industrial marketing live every other week. It's a live, you know, sort of event where we've got 50 or 60 people with marketing in their job title from manufacturing companies showing up, helping each other.
[00:21:18] We've got a Slack community running with that. So, Over time. It sounds overwhelming if you think about it all at once, but these are things we have layered on peace, after peace, after peace over the course of 10 or 12 years. And like I said earlier, it's just the snowball. Everything kind of keeps, um, building momentum for you and you gotta just pick, pick a few places, but I think it all starts with how you position yourself to the outside world.
[00:21:42] Corey Quinn: In those early days as you, once you had updated the, the website, the positioning built some case studies really built that, you know, relatability. Once they got to your site, you communicated that you understood them. How did you attract new B2B manufacturing clients at during that time? I.[00:22:00]
[00:22:00] Joe Sullivan: Yeah, during that time, um, I, I can, I can remember doing, um, some like list building, cold outreach type of stuff. I, we don't do any of that anymore. I think it's gotten so crowded and noisy that even if you're doing an amazing job with it, at this point, you're kind of. Getting lost with all the people who are ruining for, for all of us, right?
[00:22:20] But, um, so I did some of that, you know, the, like doing little mini audits of people's websites that I really wanted to work with and send in. I was sending loom videos and things like that, like six or seven years ago. And, and now it's just, there's too much of it going on to, for it to even be effective.
[00:22:36] But, so there was some of that. But we also, you know, we were huge content marketing advocates from. A long time ago, and it played to our benefit for sure. There were years where we've, we've spent a lot, we've invested a lot less in SEO ourselves over the last few years, but there was a period of time there between five and 10 years ago where we owned almost everything related to industrial marketing, industrial marketing, strategy marketing [00:23:00] for manufacturers, and, um, and there was a lot less competition for all that.
[00:23:03] So we definitely played the s e SEO through valuable content game for a long time and, and, and were winning that game. So that was a. Piece of it. I think it's a lot harder to do that now than it was 10 years ago. Not saying you shouldn't do it, but I think today it's more like, if I think about if I was doing this all over starting now, I would be, I would be focused on, on building a media property that you can own and, and you're bringing in people who have, um, who have.
[00:23:33] Influence in your space and will cross promote with you. Um, sort of has this halo effect where when you're putting yourself next to people who are influential, it, it reflects positively on you. So I guess I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but a lot of it early on was, It was, you know, some, some cold outreach, but really it's always been rooted in, in developing content that matters to the specific people we [00:24:00] need to reach and figuring out how to get it in front of them, which just looks a little different back then than it does now.
[00:24:05] Corey Quinn: Mm-hmm. What about associations, conferences in the space? Did you spend any time getting involved with the associations or going to conferences? What? What did that look like?
[00:24:15] Joe Sullivan: You know, I didn't, um, But I, I think it's a really smart thing to do, and I think if, um, if I were doing this now from scratch, like we're finding ourselves doing more of that now than we did in the early days. I think a lot of it was sort of intimidation factor, feeling like, um, you know, do I really belong here?
[00:24:36] Am I, there's some imposter syndrome going on for sure, especially early on. Uh, And I wish I hadn't felt that way. I wish I had just gone in. I felt that way when I launched my podcast three years ago. I'm like, geez, am I real? I mean, am I really qualified to be talking to CEOs of these companies and Yeah, absolutely.
[00:24:53] Like you're go in there and, and be confident and, and do that. But I think I look at some people [00:25:00] who, um, in the manufacturing sector, some kind of millennials in particular, who that are probably, you know, I. I just turned 40 last year, but I'm looking at some people in probably the early thirties who are some of the biggest voices in the manufacturing sector right now that have emerged by just putting themselves out there by, you know, setting up shop at conferences, interviewing people that are in their audience, turning it into LinkedIn content like, and uh, I would, I would be a, a huge advocate of, of, of just trying to build a, a brand for, you know, your, your company and, and yourself personally, um, in your niche.
[00:25:36] And I think the, the events and conferences are a great place to do that.
[00:25:40] Corey Quinn: What role does associations play? Uh, you mentioned that that's. Something you, you're thinking about doing more of to create more content and to get more visibility. But what, what is, uh, what are associations? What's the value of, of getting involved with them for a business who's specializing?
[00:25:57] Joe Sullivan: I think it's the fact that they already have an audience that, [00:26:00] you know, if, if their audience aligns with yours, you know, you have a message you need to deliver, you have expertise, whoever you are. And if you can figure out how to, um, you, you need, you need a place to broadcast that. Right. And if you're gonna do it through your own personal LinkedIn profile, you better have 20,000 followers and, and be publishing daily if you're gonna Right.
[00:26:20] So it's, it's like there's that, there's, there are paid channels to do it, but I think industry organizations are a really good way to, as long as you can, you know, you've got a common audience, you can create some value that maybe the industry by themselves can't. Um, It can be a, a great way to go.
[00:26:38] Corey Quinn: What role does word of mouth play in your ability to generate more sales opportunities in the B2B manufacturing sec, uh, sector.
[00:26:47] Joe Sullivan: it, it's a hard thing to, to quantify and measure, but I'm a huge advocate of the importance of that sort of brand marketing, to build awareness, to generate word of mouth, et cetera. you know, [00:27:00] there's, I. Like for most of our clients when we're helping 'EM launch programs, there's kind of a few things we're trying to do side by side.
[00:27:07] One of 'em is, you know, for, for any given company, some machinery manufacturer, let's say, you know, there, there's some percentage of their audience that's out there looking for a solution cuz they're having a problem. They're, um, you know, they're not satisfied with whoever they're currently using or they're, you know, doing some facility expansion and need, you know, additional equipment.
[00:27:26] So, but usually we find it's a very small percentage of. Any company's audience that's actually looking for a solution. And so much of marketing sales gets focused on just delivering that. Like, buy now, we're the best. Here are our features and benefits of our product, uh, across their, their audience at scale.
[00:27:46] And most of those people aren't paying attention cuz they're not looking, you know, I, I bought a new car two years ago for the first time, and I don't want to admit how many years, but, um, I wasn't looking at, like, I wasn't searching for, you know, [00:28:00] mid-size SUVs until, you know, my third child was born and I needed another row on my car, and so, You know, I think all, all the, all the sales messaging coming at you and, and just sort of like bottom of funnel stuff wasn't gonna resonate.
[00:28:14] So I think the, while there's a component of that that needs to be happening when somebody's looking, you need them to find you, whether you're a manufacturer or you're a software company or whatever, but the real opportunity is to look at that total addressable market to say, who are the companies that we.
[00:28:29] That fit our, our, our ideal customer profile that we want to be able to reach and influence. Who are the people inside those companies that, um, that we really need to, to, uh, our, our message to resonate with? And how do you build awareness and trust and credibility and be a resource to those people at scale?
[00:28:48] How do you deliver messaging in the right places at the right frequency so that when the time is right for them, you, you already ha there's awareness for you. There's. You know, positive associations with your brand name, [00:29:00] um, and whether they, you know, ideally they pick up the phone and call you first, or when they go to Google, even if you're ranking sixth or seventh or, or whatever you're the, the first one they click on.
[00:29:09] Cuz there's that, you know, trust has already been built. And so that's I think where so many companies miss it's, there's so, it's such a nearsighted approach. Nearsighted approach to marketing and sales. And they're ignoring the opportunity because they. To, to, to build awareness and trust across their, their whole market, cuz they don't have the patience to do
[00:29:29] Corey Quinn: Yeah, they're so, short-term focused.
[00:29:31] Joe Sullivan: Yep. And I get it. And people have sa, you know, sales targets they need to meet to reach. Most executives don't really understand marketing, so they're putting pressure on marketing to deliver tangible results in a month or two months, when really they need, you know, six months or a year to build a, a program and, and even get the right signals in place.
[00:29:49] So, I understand why it happens, but it doesn't make it right.
[00:29:53] Corey Quinn: Reminds me, I was, uh, I worked at an agency many years ago and we had a, um, a big [00:30:00] client for the agency who. Was spending a million dollar, a couple million dollars a month on PPC ads. Uh, they were in the business of forming LLCs and, and uh, s-corp for businesses. And the business like PPP C was working so well for them.
[00:30:18] Joe Sullivan: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:19] Corey Quinn: And we, we would advise them, Hey, you know, in addition to managing your PPC spend, it's important to allocate some budget to seo. Like you have to, you have to build some, and their build, their site happened to be built in such a way that was not very SEO friendly. And so, um, they understood the need for that.
[00:30:37] Never took our advice. And over the years, guess what happened? PPP C got more expensive and. All the while they had, uh, an upstart competitor that they didn't even pay attention to who was all in on seo. And all of a sudden they were in a position over the years where PPP C was no longer [00:31:00] profitable for them.
[00:31:00] They had to figure out other channels. And meanwhile, they had lost all that time to build up that their, their seo and this other company was killing it on SEO and ranking. Uh, you know, top of the search results. And so it was a, it was a mistake that they had made, and I think it's a, it's a natural mistake.
[00:31:18] I've seen it where, uh, the short term focus of PPC and paid ads, transactions, was, took precedence over doing more the long-term type of tactics that would serve them over time.
[00:31:31] Joe Sullivan: Yeah, it's a really good example of that nearsighted approach. You get a little bit complacent and, and satisfied with what you're doing in the short term. I think like a simple way to look at it is, you know, what things can you be doing that are gonna transcend the channel? Um, and I, I think it's, it's really hard to go wrong with, you know, if you, if you are a company that has.
[00:31:53] You know, tons of collective experience among your people and deep knowledge and expertise. Um, I think it's gonna be a [00:32:00] long time, if ever before, you know, that having that knowledge packaged up in some way to actually help your audience is, is not gonna be relevant. Like, that's just that, you know, 10 years ago you could probably crush it in your niche in, in seo.
[00:32:15] Now it's harder to do and it's again, still relevant. Um, You know, there's probably a time right now we're, we win huge on LinkedIn at Gorilla. We, I've got eight people on my team probably who are publishing great insights daily and building great networks like, but you know, we're relying on a, on another platform and, and if, if LinkedIn went away tomorrow, um, It would be a bump in the road for us, but all that knowledge that we're publishing there, well, okay, now where, where, where are we gonna go with that knowledge now we've already got it.
[00:32:44] We've packaged it up, we've made it, we're gonna have to deliver it in a different channel versus just relying on, on some, some media channel or something that could, you know, cut you off tomorrow if they wanted to, so.
[00:32:56] Corey Quinn: Yeah. That kind of leads us to your podcasts. Holding up your [00:33:00] own, um, brand through the podcast. So why did you choose to, to launch the the Manufacturing Executive Podcast, and what has that done for your business?
[00:33:09] Joe Sullivan: Yeah. Um, so it, it's interesting. I was, um, I launched the podcast in, I think the first episode went live in May or June of, of 2020. It was very early pandemic, but it was really pre pandemic when I was, I. Exploring and talking to some different companies about, you know, helping me launch it. I, I, the way I sort of looked at it at the time was, you know, I think it was in 20 18, 20 19, between those two years I had written just myself even over 50,000 words of content like teaching, marketing strategy and, and tactics, et cetera, published in our blog.
[00:33:46] A lot of that stuff's still alive and has been, some of it needs a refreshed really badly. Other stuff has been refreshed. But I guess the point was the written. Written content and blog format was really kind of the platform for publishing knowledge. And I said, well, all right. The [00:34:00] podcasting medium's blowing up.
[00:34:01] I'm interested in it. I don't know if I'd be good at it, but, um, I, I'm definitely interested in it. And so my original intention with the podcast was, well, okay, naturally I'll launch an industrial marketing podcast. I'll, I've already got all this written content. I can easily just start publishing that in, in audio format.
[00:34:18] And I, I always, I'll always be thank. It was Dan Sanchez at, um, he was at the time at Sweet Fish Media who, um, if you know Dan, but he, uh, he, he was, I hired Sweet Fish to produce the podcast for me, and Dan was advising me early on. He's like, no, you're not gonna do, he told me You're not doing a marketing podcast.
[00:34:36] You're gonna do a podcast where you're gonna interview the types of people that you wanna reach and connect. With, and, um, the owner of Sweet Fish, James Carberry, his, his book, content Based Networking was, was influential to me. It was, how do you use a media platform as a way to meet people you'd otherwise never get a chance to talk, to, put the spotlight on them, not yourself.
[00:34:56] And so I, I would in. Fuse, you know, I still do it. Probably [00:35:00] every, every 10th episode or so is, is marketing. But you know, specific to manufacturing. But other, you know, I'm talking about supply chain, I'm talking about labor, I'm talking about, uh, and I'm not, by, I'm talking about it, I mean, I'm interviewing other people who are talking about it, things that the CEO and.
[00:35:15] COO and CFO and cmo, like the people that I need to reach inside the companies. I wanna reach what matters to those people? How can I bring in other experts? And the effect of this has been incredible because, um, as opposed to just me, me talking. Like a, I've met so many people, I would never meet, like, you know, owner, what CEO wants to, of a manufacturing company wants to, you know, take a 45 minute call from a marketing guy, right?
[00:35:41] None. Right. It's, we're not gonna make it past the receptionist. Um, but you have those conversations and in a, in a way that's non-intrusive, that puts the spotlight on them. So I've, I've, it's just opened the door to those conversations. Um, it's, it's led me to, you know, I've been asked to speak at events because my name is, You put yourself [00:36:00] next to people who are influential.
[00:36:01] I think I said it earlier, there's sort of this halo effect that comes off on you. Um, It has been the best market research I've ever done hands down. You know, I've had 150 conversations over three years with people in manufacturing and I've learned so much about things that might matter to my audience just by having, you know, all these conversations.
[00:36:25] So, you know, I'm way better at my job as a result of doing this. I understand my audience that much better, and we can trace. Plenty of revenue at this point to, to this podcast. Even though not once have I ever asked for a sales call after, after one of those conversations, it it, it just sort of happens cuz naturally it turns into, so tell me a little bit more about your company, Joe, and talk about it.
[00:36:47] And you're like, all right, we should, let me put you in touch with our cmo. You guys should have a conversation at some point or something. Right? And that sort of thing just happens. And then the other thing that happens is, Yeah, I have a podcast and, and I have episodes [00:37:00] that I get downloaded by. I think we have about 800 unique listeners.
[00:37:03] It's not anything insane at this point weekly, but it's, it's significant enough to be impactful in my niche. But the thing that happens is I, every podcast episode, I break down into three, four video clips. We use 'em on LinkedIn. I hand the folder of those clips to the guests. Their companies promote them, and often their companies have way bigger reach than my 23 person company does.
[00:37:24] So it's just another one of those. Snowball effect things where, um, one conversation like we're having right now turns into so much more and you're doing it for three straight years. It's, um, yeah, it's been a really positive experience.
[00:37:38] Corey Quinn: That's awesome. Taking a step back, what are to you, and based on this, this experience, what are the positive aspects of. Taking a vertical approach to an agency or a business.
[00:37:51] Joe Sullivan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. The positive facts, I think the, the number one thing is understanding the people you need to reach. And as an agency, [00:38:00] understanding the people that my customers need to reach. Right. You just, um, When, when you're, I kind of said it earlier, but when, when we know that we need to reach for our clients, we, they need to reach engineers and plant managers and CFOs, and we understand how those people think differently from each other and what matters to them, where they spend time, how they collect information, how they prefer to communicate, um, that, that understanding.
[00:38:26] It just gives us such a, a leg up on other agencies who don't regularly work with those types of people. And, you know, we, we, the mistakes we were making for our clients five years ago, we don't make now. Cuz we, we know, I mean, not to say we don't make mistakes, but like, you know, a lot of that. That testing work and, uh, is has, you know, we, we've learned from it every single time.
[00:38:51] So I think that's a big piece of it. I think it lets you, uh, the positioning and marketing element for yourself of just being able to [00:39:00] state, we work with companies like I have a, another page on our site. Called our ideal client, and we say we're best at working at, with companies who do 20 million to 200 million a year in sales, in manufacturing.
[00:39:11] Um, commodity products aren't our specialty. It's better when you're heavy, heavily engineered, highly customized products with long sales cycles selling to engineers and plant managers, et cetera. And so we kind of go through a list of these characteristics and when people see that, they're like, oh my gosh, that everything on that bare.
[00:39:27] Box or all those boxes, I can check that's us or six of the seven are so naturally like you're in a better place right out of the gate when you have, um, those sales conversations cuz there's some trust built already that you understand the niche. You feed case studies into that, you build media properties around it and then people can hear you talk and know that you're not just, it's not a bunch of bs, but you actually like know what you're talking about and you can speak their language.
[00:39:52] So I, I think there's just so many advantages. I think that the challenge sometimes for a lot of people are, is just gonna be making the [00:40:00] leap. There's. For many, there will be a tough period of time there potentially. Um, I think you want to have a good sense for, you know, is, is there actually product market fit for the, the service we sell and who we're trying to reach?
[00:40:14] I mean, manufacturers, for example, they are not. Marketing savvy in general, and I, I, 10 years ago, I had to do a lot more education in my audience just to help them understand the value of what we did. Versus a SaaS buyer is, marketing is ingrained in what they do maybe. And, and so you have to talk in a even a more sophisticated way to them.
[00:40:32] So you know it's gonna come with its challenges. But from my perspective, um, the, the, the benefits are gonna far outweigh the, you know, the, the risks and, and challenges.
[00:40:43] Corey Quinn: Are there any negatives to verticalizing your business?
[00:40:47] Joe Sullivan: I mean, you're cutting off, uh, most of your potential customers, right? Like you're, we don't, we don't position ourselves to, we've never positioned ourselves to b2c. So like from, from day one, we were [00:41:00] exclusively b2b, or not day one, but by, you know, a year or two in at least, um, very early there was that. So we cut off a large percentage of our audience there.
[00:41:07] We did it again when we zeroed into industrial sector. We did it again when we started. Specifying which type of manufacturers even were best at working with. So, um, some of it can be incremental, I think, but, uh, where you kinda just keep going a little deeper as you really realize what you're good at doing and validate that there's demand for what you're selling.
[00:41:26] And, um, And there's enough value in, in, you know, in terms of how, how what you sell is perceived by your audience. Um, so I think the, probably the number one negative, if you want to think of it that way, is just the fact that you're, you're taking on more risks by cutting off a, a large. Percentage of your audience.
[00:41:45] I think you can also, you don't have to ver specialize in a vertical. I think it can be a horizontal specialization where you, something you do, you do really well. Sometimes it can be a persona based segmentation. I've seen companies that work with, you know, B2B companies [00:42:00] that, you know, the owner is, is nearing retirement and they want to start transitioning the business whether internally or to an outside buyer and like, That could be your niche and you could work with healthcare companies and SaaS companies and
[00:42:13] Corey Quinn: Mm-hmm. Yep.
[00:42:15] Joe Sullivan: So I think there are a lot of different ways to specialize. Um, but you, you, you are gonna limit your reach and that, that to me is probably the number one risk. You just, you need to be smart about how you approach it.
[00:42:27] Corey Quinn: Awesome. Two final questions for you. The first one, just taking a big step back, let's say there's someone who's listening to this or watching right now and they have a generalist business. They were like you 12 years ago, and they are thinking about verticalizing their business. Um, what advice do you have for them or maybe to your, to your, your younger self, um, as you were thinking about going through this process?
[00:42:56] Joe Sullivan: Yeah, I, I think I would look at, um, you know, [00:43:00] Do you have expertise here? Is there something that you can at least build on? And, and maybe if you don't, that might even be okay. Like, you know, it's, we had a little bit right. But, um, but I think it's gonna, it's gonna be really helpful if your own experiences have led you to experience the need for.
[00:43:17] The thing you sell in the space that you, you think you wanna specialize in, um, and that that's gonna help you out. And, and if you've got a team or building a team to, you know, hire some people maybe who came from inside that space, I think that would've been really helpful to me if I had some people with manufacturing specific experience, um, early on, I think.
[00:43:35] Right now versus when we started, um, our business or even specialize, you know, you have so much access to your audience right now. Like, I just think about LinkedIn alone, being able to pull your audience, um, and figure out like we're launching a product right now. We're launching a training course, like sort of a paid resource center training course.
[00:43:56] We polled our, our, our audience and got 40 really great [00:44:00] responses without even trying very hard of qualitative, paired with quantitative like, Insights and feedback about what people would actually wanna buy and what the biggest challenges they're trying to solve are in their jobs as marketers inside of manufacturing companies.
[00:44:13] And I think that you could do plenty of that by just leveraging your network, um, and, and getting some real insights rather than just basing everything on assumptions. If you're gonna make a leap or make a big shift in your business. Obviously that's a. Big move and, and I think any sort of insight you can gather would be really helpful.
[00:44:29] You could, you could double or you could double down on, or sort of like kill two birds with one stone by doing what you're doing right now, Corey, which is interviewing people that are, you know, maybe in the space. Um, you don't even have to have a podcast. You could just try to start booking. 20 minute zoom interviews with people who fit the niche and try to explore a hand in, you know, like firsthand what things they're struggling with and sort of validate that there's a need there and in the meantime you're making content that you can use to promote your business and to put a [00:45:00] spotlight on them and things.
[00:45:01] So those are the things I'd look at is like, can, do you have some expertise you can build on or can you get help from people who do and try to do some kind of, some kind of, at least, you know, preliminary market research to, to validate. Product market
[00:45:16] Corey Quinn: That's awesome, Joe, this has been great. One last question for you. What's your motivation?
[00:45:25] Joe Sullivan: That's a great question. I, you know, I, I mean, if, if it sounds cheesy, I apologize, but like, it's, it's my family. I've got three little kids. I've got an eight year old, I've got a six-year-old and I got a one year old, and we're done by the way. But, um, for me as, as an agency owner, you know, from the first day, what, what, well before I was even married, like it was, a lot of it for me was about, You know, trying to build a business that, um, that fit the life I wanted to have.
[00:45:49] I wanted some freedom in my life. Um, and so a lot of that drove it. And, and now it's my family that, that drives it. And being able to like, have time with them when I want to. But from inside of the, the sector we work [00:46:00] with, I've found a, I love the manufacturing sector now. I've legitimately have a passion for working with these companies.
[00:46:06] And I look at like, The way, um, American manufacturing is perceived as dark, dirty, dangerous, and I, I get to see inside these companies and see all the amazing technology the way that like young people with, you know, computer science backgrounds and, you know, look at robotics and everything happening there.
[00:46:23] And a lot of people don't really understand this. And it's been really fun to work with companies that are on, on the. Um, sort of at the forefront of like leading this, this new industrial revolution, um, that's so much different than the way people see manufacturing. So I feel fortunate that I fell into a niche that I legitimately wound up falling in love with almost after the fact.
[00:46:43] But there's a lot of mo motivation there. It's what drives me with my podcast too, is meeting people who are, are making actual change in, in, uh, you know, in manufacturing in America. So that's, I guess that's my answer.
[00:46:55] Corey Quinn: That's awesome. I'm a big family guy as well, so I resonate with that. [00:47:00] Where can people reach out to you?
[00:47:03] Joe Sullivan: Yeah. Um, I'd, I'd say find me on LinkedIn. If my name wasn't Joe Sullivan, I'd say look up Joe Sullivan on LinkedIn, but there's probably about 600 Joe Sullivan's. Um, so, but yeah, my company is Gorilla 76, um, gorilla, like the animal in 76. You can go to our website. Look up Joe Sullivan, gorilla 76 on LinkedIn.
[00:47:19] Um, and if you happen to be, you know, somebody who's, who's interested in this, Space. You know, we, we run industrial marketing live every other week where we are just teaching. Um, and, uh, that's, that's probably my favorite thing we're doing right now. So check that out. If, if you're interested,
[00:47:34] Corey Quinn: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining, Joe,
[00:47:36] Joe Sullivan: I appreciate the opportunity.
[00:47:38] Corey Quinn: All right folks. That's it for today. I'm Corey Quinn, and I hope you join me again next time for the Vertical Go-To-Market podcast. If you receive value from this show, I'd love a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks, and we'll see you soon. [00:48:00]
