2022 Content Marketing World Industrial Summit Preview

Take a sneak peek at the speakers and topics included at the 2022 Industrial Marketing Summit, a one-day event held as part of Content Marketing World.

On this episode I'm joined by Adam Beck, Director of Marketing for CADENAS PARTsolutions, and Joe Sullivan, Thinker and Founder at Gorilla 76, to take a sneak peek at this year's Industrial Marketing Summit event which will be held on September 15, 2022.

As the event sponsor representing CADENAS PARTsolutions, Adam has put together a stellar line-up of industry marketing leaders to share inspirational ideas and practical advice for industrial marketing professionals. Adam tapped Joe as the event host and panel facilitator. He will not only introduce speakers, he'll also help to pull out relevant points of value for the audience. 

Here is the line-up for the day:

Panel: Marketing for Manufacturers: Creating content to power direct AND channel sales 

Presenters: 

• Lara Schneider, Senior Marketing Manager @ Toshiba International Corporation
• John Vander Linden, Director of Digital Customer Experience @ Columbus McKinnon Corporation
• Eddie Saunders Jr., Head of Demand Generation @ Flex Machine Tools

Session: Inside the Mind of the Technical Buyer: Create the Content your Prospects Actually Want

Presenters: 

• Wendy Covey, CEO TREW Marketing
• Morgan Norris, Sr. Brand Strategist at TREW Marketing

Session: Earning a Seat at the Exec Table: A Field Guide for Marketers in Traditional Industries

Presenter:

• MJ Peters, VP Marketing @ CoLab

Session: Meeting the Customer where they are: Content Delivery in the Digital Environment

Presenters: 

• Ashley Quinlan, Vice President of Global Distribution and Marketing Strategy at Samtec Inc
  
• Daniel Williams, Chief Information Officer at Samtec Inc

For more information about the 2022 Industrial Marketing Summit, visit the event page on the CADENAS PartSolutions website. There you'll find more in-depth information on each session, and links to a registration page for Content Marketing World. You can also visit the Content Marketing World page directly if you are ready to register now. Reach out to Adam, Joe, or myself for a registration discount code before you take that last step! We look forward to seeing you in Cleveland on September 15th.

Resources

• Industrial Marketing Summit Event Page
• Content Marketing World Conference and Expo
• Adam Beck on LinkedIn
• Joe Sullivan on LinkedIn
• Wendy Covey on LinkedIn

Transcript

Hey, Industrial Marketers. Mark your calendar for September 15. That is the date for the Industrial Marketing Summit that is going to be co-located within the Content Marketing World Conference. I hope that all of you can make it. And just to get you excited about it, I'm bringing on two guests that are going to preview all of the speakers and all of the topics for the day. And we'll even point you in the direction for a discount code. Let's do this.

Welcome to Content Marketing, Engineered. Your source for building trust and generating demand with technical content. Here is your host, Wendy Covey.

Hi and welcome to Content Marketing, Engineered. On each episode, I'll break down an industry trend, challenge, or best practice in reaching technical audiences. You'll meet colleagues, friends, and clients of mine who will stop by to share their stories, and I hope that you leave each episode feeling inspired and ready to take action. Before we jump in, I'd like to give a brief shout out to my agency, TREW Marketing. TREW is a full service agency located in beautiful Austin, Texas, serving highly technical company. For more information, visit trewmarketing.com. And now, on with our podcast.

Hey, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Content Marketing Engineered. I'm so thrilled to be joined today by Adam Beck and Joe Sullivan. Adam is the director of marketing at Cadenas Parts Solutions. And Joe Sullivan is the thinker and founder at Gorilla 76. Welcome to the show, gentlemen.

Thank you.

Good to be here, Wendy.

Well, today we're taking a sneak peek at the Industrial Summit, which is part of this year's Content Marketing World Conference. And boy, it's so exciting to have it back in person after two year hiatus. And I can't wait to be with both of you guys in person soon.

I know it's crazy. I haven't encountered people in a real setting in years.

Yeah, it's not. Adam, you had asked me to kind of be the host or facilitator of the event a couple of years ago, and I was super stoked for it. And then all of a sudden, here comes this pandemic, and two years later, we have to try again. So I'm really pumped.

Yeah. This is the third try on that offer. I'm glad you're sticking with us.

I'm with you.

Well, here we are. And Adam, you are the sponsor of the event, so I thought we'd leave with you. And maybe you could start by just telling those who are not familiar what the heck is the Industrial Summit and when is it?

Yeah. So the Industrial Marketing Summit is at Content Marketing World. It's September 15 of 2022, and it's really a full day of programming dedicated to industrial b to be marketing. The sessions are going to be tactical, they're going to be informative. It's just like everything else at Content Marketing World. But these are really tailored to the challenges facing industrial manufacturers.

So why that focus?

Well, it sort of came out of a selfish search that I had to find an event to attend and learn myself, and I was not finding it. It was 2017. 2018. I was really exploring a lot of different events out there I've been to inbound a lot of times, and they have a lot of really good general marketing sessions. And you can kind of extrapolate the nugget that applies to industrial marketing or B to B marketing, but there wasn't that much that was like industry specific marketing on the tactical level. So I attended Content Marketing World in 2018, and I was blown away that there was an event that was we're in Cincinnati, so Cleveland is right in our backyard. And I didn't know about it before that. And it was a well run, well organized event, and that started the conversation from there.

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned inbound not having that vertical focus, and we've been HubSpot Partners for 13 years, and I've been such a big proponent. I've told them, you're missing the boat, guys. You need to have more vertical content, because for this audience, this is a very nuanced approach that you need to take towards technical buyers and industrial marketers do feel like they're a bit on an island. So this is a very important event for our industry, I believe.

Yes. I think you might have a good case study to show inbound after this one.

So you found the event, and then why sponsor? Why put dollars and effort in time towards the event?

There's a couple of factors. First, Cleveland, we had a heat map, and we did it as far as manufacturers in the United States and Canada, too, I mean, right on the Canadian border, it was like 60% of the manufacturing United States is within driving distance of Cleveland. So we're like, all right, this helps kind of decide that this event is where we can be. And then we started talking to Drew and Stephanie, and I said, I have this idea for an event. I want to have a place that we can rally people that we know and have a little extra for them to come and not just be there to see us, but also we want to meet people that are in the manufacturing space and have them come and share ideas and have this great knowledge share. And content marketing. World was all in. And in 2019, we did it as an add on event. It was The Friday tagged onto the main Content Marketing World, and it went so well that we worked with the team and we said, we want to move it into the main event. We don't want people have to add it on.

We don't want it to be an extra charge. We want to be in the mix. We want people going up and down the hall and be competing against the other B to C events for attendees.

Cool. Very cool. All right. So Joe, your role this year is the master of ceremonies. So this honest episode is almost good practice for you, right?

Yeah, it really is. Podcasting has been become a big part of my career over the last couple of years. I've been a guest on a bunch. I launched my own a couple of years ago. And so, honestly, Adam, when I think about you asking me to host this a couple of years ago, I was like, yeah, sounds great. It'll be kind of new to me. Now I'm like, all right, I've kind of done this a couple of hundred times at this point, like hosting these sorts of conversations. So I'm excited. My job is going to be to essentially facilitate some conversations, to set some people up, put the spotlight on them, get them talking about the right stuff, some TREW experts in industrial marketing. So, yeah, I'm really excited.

Yeah. And given your experience as the podcast host of the Manufacturing Executive, you're going to ask those insightful questions and really pull out, I think, what the audience wants to hear that maybe that speaker isn't aware they need to include. So I know you'll do a great job of that. Why don't you walk us through the topics and the speakers that are planned for the day?

Yeah, for sure. So Adam and his team have done, I think, a really nice job planning an agenda. We've got four distinct sessions here that, again, a couple of them are panels that all sort of facilitate the conversations. And then there's one that will be setting up the speaker, who I know is going to crush it. I'll talk about her in a second. So the first one is really going to be about marketing for manufacturers, creating content to power direct and channel sales. The three panelists here are Lara Schneider, who is a senior marketing manager at Toshiba, john Vanderlanden, who is a director of Digital Customer Experience at Columbus McKinnon, and then Eddie Saunders, Jr. One of the most lively guys you will ever come across, head of Demand generation at Flex Machine Tools. I've had Eddie on my show and we've had some really good conversations. And I know of the other two, so I'm excited about this one. But the three of them, they're going to be talking about, as I said, direct and channel sales. So in particular, what happens when you're trying to market through a channel, a distribution channel, and sort of what's unique about being able to do that, how you can create and sort of distribute content itself in a way that is when you've got somebody sort of between you and the customer.

So, Adam, I don't know if you want to add to or build on that at all. You've kind of helped plan this session.

Yeah. So this one's interesting because they all come from completely different types of companies. I mean, Toshiba is an industrial motor manufacturer, columbus McKinnon makes these lifts and cranes for large manufacturing facilities. And Flex makes these sort of robotic arms to help on the manufacturing floor. But they all have the same challenges keeping their distribution channel fed, keeping them stocked with great content, and keeping them on message. So I think they're all going to bring really unique perspectives. These companies are all different sizes, different parts of the industry. But I think your biggest challenge is containing Eddie.

I think we have for sure channel enablement is such an important topic to focus on. So I really like that you led with that one. Very cool. What else do we have planned?

So the second session, when do you may be familiar with maybe a couple of the people who are going to be a part of this one? Inside the mind of the technical buyer, create the content your prospects actually want. And the presenters will be Wendy Cubby and Morgan Morris Senior, who is a brand strategist both from TREW marketing. Wendy, I'll let you talk a little bit more about this since this is your session. But what I love about having the two of you here is you understand engineers and technical buyers deeply. I just had Wendy for those of you listening here, I just had Wendy on my show. Those of you listening here obviously are familiar with her business. But I love the study you guys put out every year, the research report and the findings. We've been using that for years. It's very clear that you understand that technical buyer. And I just think it's becoming more and more important. Something I talk about all the time that we talk about in our business is procurement might write the checks. The CFO might be the one who's approving those checks. But so often it is the engineer or the technical person on a plant floor who is experiencing a problem or trying to get to a solution.

And so if you can earn the attention and trust of those people as a marketer and build advocacy with them, that's how you can win through sort of delivering expertise to those people. So, Wendy, I'll hand it to you maybe to talk a little bit about your session, but I'm pretty excited about this conversation.

Yeah, see, you have it down. You already have your intro like that. Thank you. Now, I appreciate your kind comments and it's a nice segue because that's exactly what we'll be doing, is talking it's kind of a two part presentation, one part research. So going back to some of those key data points that inform how to find these technical buyers. And then the second portion, which Morgan will lead, is how to create the arc of a technical story that sticks. And so she's a masterful storyteller and she's really honed in how to tell that technical story in a way that's engaging. And not to spoil her presentation, but she talks a lot about the protagonist and the problem and kind of like the superhero that comes in to solve the problem. So she has a neat methodology complete with charts and graphs that support how to create that sticky content. And so I think it will be a nice, very practical session for these industrial marketers that might be struggling with that content creation portion of their marketing mix. So that's what we have going on.

It's going to be fantastic. I think another challenge that you address really well is that engineers always seem to have their marketing radar up. Like they can smell marketing from a mile away. And having stuff that they want and they need and they're interested in is super key, and they will walk away if they don't want it.

Yeah, exactly.

Awesome. Should we go to session three here?

Let's do it.

All right, so the third one is going to be a solo presentation. The title is Earning a Seat at the Exact Table a Field Guide for Marketers in Traditional Industries and for anybody listen who is not familiar with MJ Peters, go follow her now on LinkedIn. MJ is one of my favorite marketers out there. I was lucky enough to stumble across her probably about three years ago or so, on LinkedIn, of all places, of course. And we kind of crossed path with a similar audience. She was working at a company called Fire Trace that does fire suppression systems at the time. And since she's moved on, she worked at one of the best marketing agencies out there called Refine Labs, and then moved on to take a VP of Marketing position at Colab, which is a software company that does, I guess, software for engineers and sort of the world of, I think, like, CAD design and stuff. Right? Am I right at it?

Similar. Yeah. Similar.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right. But anyway, MJ is her story is just great, and I love that she's going to talk about. Her topic is perfect. You're earning a seat at the Executive table because it sort of follows or she could speak to her real life experiences where she came in as kind of a junior person in that first marketing role at Fire Trace. And worked her way up to a seat at the executive table and has since taken on even. I guess.

More.

I don't want to say important. But worked her way up the chain into her current roles. And in the process of doing so. Has just had an incredible impact on the businesses she's worked for. Her thought leadership content she publishes digitally. You really can't beat it as an industrial marketer. But a few things she's going to be talking about inside of this are how to demonstrate business acumen and align your marketing strategy to your business model, three things your CEO cares about other than ROI, what to do when you have little to no budget, and how to get buy in for new marketing tactics. I'm really excited to just sort of set MJ up for this one, to sit back and learn something from her myself.

Boy, all of these sound like familiar challenges, particularly when I was on the corporate side. Wow, that's an excellent presentation. I'm looking forward to learning also from that.

Yeah, I'm very excited about this one. I feel like we're catching MJ on an upward trajectory, early on an upward trajectory, and really excited to see what she brings here and in the future.

Awesome. We'll go to session four here.

Wendy, go for it.

All right, so we have meeting the customer where they are content delivery in the digital environment. And so this one is going to be two marketers. From Samta, Inc. We have Ashley Quinlan, who is the Vice President of Global Distribution and Marketing Strategy at Sam Tech, and then Daniel Williams, who actually is the Chief Information Officer at Sam Tech. A couple of things they're going to be getting into here are like, the idea of decentralizing your content marketing and pushing content out to your audience where they are. And so I think this is something I think is really important right now. There are a lot of trends going on in the marketing world where your website is not always the hub the way it might have been five to ten years ago. I'm not saying it's not important, it absolutely is. But there is definitely a rise in sort of the trend of being able to figure out where does your audience consume information and how can we go reach them in those places, because in a lot of cases, they don't want to leave those places. And so I'm very curious to see something we talk about from maybe a little different perspective quite often, but I'm very curious to see where Ashley and Daniel take it.

So, Adam, I don't know if you want to kind of get into a few details of this session. I think you know a little more about what they're planning to cover here than I do.

Yeah. So Sam Tech is a connector manufacturer. They're based here out of the Midwest, and they are just at the forefront of marketing in their industry. They are just taking bites out of the competition year over year over year because of their creative approach to reaching their audience. Speaking to these electrical engineers specifically, but other types of engineers. Daniel actually used to wear a marketing hat. Now he's CIO. And a lot of this is going to be how somebody as an information officer works with marketing and vice versa. And their data and their infrastructure is super key to how they just push all this content to all these different avenues. Their website is amazing and they have all kinds of great stuff there, but they're not requiring you to come there to get all the great assets that they have. And I think they just have all kinds of unique insights to deliver. I also feel like Sam Tech should be a household name, so I'm all for them having a higher profile and just having more people see the cool stuff they do.

Nice. Well, I've run across Ashley as part of the Women in Electronics group and they also have a competing event the same week. So she and I were trading messages on. OK, can we possibly pull off both? And at the end of the day, the Industrial Marketing Summit, of course, went out. But yeah, it'll be great to finally meet her person.

Thank you for choosing the Industrial marketing side.

Of course. Anything for you, Adam. All for you. All right, joe, is there more that's.

The lineup, unless I'm missing anything.

Adam no, that's all of them. Other than obviously Joe is going to bring value to this. Like you said, Wendy, he brings insights. He talks to manufacturing executives daily and I'm really excited to have him bring his perspective and flavor to each of these two. I think he's going to do a great job at steering the conversations, put it in the spotlight on the cool nuggets that this audience wants to hear and just making it a truly special event.

Well, thank you.

And Adam. What about you? Will we hear your voice during the day? Are you working in the background?

I sort of MC the last time and I think I'd rather be shaking hands and kissing babies and doing that in the background. Definitely I'll be doing a lot of other things, but I will definitely be there probably to say welcome and thank you and hand it off to Joe.

Good. Great. Well, before we wrap up for you both, I'm curious what you hope to get out of your time at Content Marketing World and also what advice do you have for industrial marketers that are planning to attend.

So I'm really excited. I mean, I'm always looking to grow my skills as an industrial marketer. I think even though I know everybody that's going to be presenting in these specific four sessions, I plan to learn something from all of them Wednesday. There's all kinds of the general Content Marketing World sessions that people should attend, so I'm looking forward to joining some of those and learning some new nuggets for my next year. Also, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is always great to check out and that's on Wednesday night. That's just a fun cocktail party to hang out at and see some Ziggy Stardust gear or whatever they have on display.

Excellent. How about you, Joe?

Yeah, honestly, I am so excited to meet some of the people in person that I have met digitally over the last couple of years, launching my own podcast and just doing more sort of digital face to face stuff. I've met more people probably in the last couple of years in the manufacturing sector that I've met in the previous five or maybe even more. And a lot of those people are going to be here and I'm just really excited to actually interact and drink a beer with somebody and then be able to sit back and listen to facilitate some of these conversations. So that's just really exciting to me to have a sort of human in person element to everything I've been doing the last few years. And as far as what I want people to be able to get out of this or advice for sort of what to keep your ears open for, the thing I will say is that I talk to so many people in the manufacturing sector. I look at all the amazing technological advancements on the operational side of these businesses. Things that are going on with AI and various industry 4.0 technology, robotics and automation.

And manufacturing right now is cutting edge. There are amazing things going on and then you look at the marketing side of the businesses and it's lagging behind and that's probably not going to be a surprise to a lot of people listening to this right now. So I think I'm really excited for there to be a platform here in a place, an event for some TREW experts out there to be able to share what they're doing, how you can kind of take a step forward here, especially in the context of content marketing because I think there just needs to be a shift in the way that manufacturers think about what marketing is. There's so much first person pronoun stuff. I mean, my wes are talking about all the things we do and how our people are the best and our customer service is the best and why you should buy from us. And what the manufacturing sector needs right now is to be building trust and advocacy with the people they're trying to reach on their customers and to be a resource to them, to be the best media source, frankly, to these people. And that's what this convention is all about really, a content marketing world.

I just think it's very timely and it's needed in the industrial sector. I hope that the whole manufacturing sector takes a step forward in terms of marketing after an event like this.

Yeah, boy, you hit it. And industrial marketers often feel so alone. And I think part of that is so many are a department of one and they're trying to do everything and be everything and they're exhausted and they feel like that's a very lonely place to be. And so to have a gathering where they meet other people that are struggling with similar things is powerful. And then to your point, I think it goes into is marketing a respected profession and how is marketing viewed within the organization and the impact that marketing can make? And there seems to be so much skepticism amongst technical leadership, these technical people that go into leadership positions that even in the presence of data, of performance, are still skeptical of how marketing can make a difference. And boy, those are the companies now. Covet is kind of exposed as following further and further behind, and the companies who have leaned into content marketing and digital tactics are the ones that are thriving. So it's an exciting time to be a content marketer. And I think this event is kind of a culmination of everybody getting together, sharing those best practices, and feeling a little bit less alone.

So hopefully this stirs up some people who are on the fence about attending and kind of pushes them over the edge. Rock hall of Fame alone.

Just that.

So let's just say someone is listening and they haven't registered and they're thinking, well, maybe I should go to this thing. Adam, is there a place where they can go for more information and, I don't know, maybe a discount?

Yeah, so we have a page dedicated to the site on Parksolutions.com. I can tell you, you can go directly to Content Marketing World, register for a main conference pass. We're in the main event. You don't have to add on the Friday. They can, if they like, plan ahead, make sure you kind of strategize what sessions you want to get to on Wednesday. Thursday is easy, though. Plop down. We have a room all day. Just work yourself one place. As soon as the morning keynote is done, we'll have you covered basically all day. And then again, go to those evening events, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We'll be having you get together on Thursday evening that everyone's going to be welcome too. And we will have a discount code. I cannot give it out on this, but if you email me Wendy or Joe, we can give that to you directly. So my email address is Adam Beck@partsolutions.com, and I'm sure Wendy will put that in the accompanying post with this.

Happy to. And of course, you can also message any of us on LinkedIn. I know we're all pretty active there, too.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. Well, thanks to you both. I'm looking forward to seeing you at this year's event. And again, it's on September 15, so mark that in red on your calendar, circled a bunch or highlighted bold and whatever. And thank you. I appreciate you being here today.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thanks Wendy.

Thanks for joining me today on Content Marketing Engineers. For show notes, including links to resources, visit TREWmarketing.com podcast. While there, you can subscribe to our blog and our newsletter and order a copy of my book, Content A Marketing Engineer. Also, I would love your reviews on this podcast, so please, when you get a chance, subscribe and leave me a review on your favorite podcast subscription platform. Thanks and have a great day.