Product Startup Podcast Episode 200: Eight Pillars of Product Marketing

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learned the eight key pillars of hardware marketing strategy from a 20-year manufacturing marketing pioneer.

00:00:07 Kevin Mako: This is the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in hardware product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:17 Kevin Mako: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for hardware startups.

00:00:22 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Chris Peer to the show.

00:00:26 Kevin Mako: Chris is the author of The Great 8 Pillars of ROI-Driven Marketing.

00:00:30 Kevin Mako: He is also the founder of SyncShow, a 20-year-old marketing company specifically for manufacturers and supply chain.

00:00:36 Kevin Mako: Today, Chris is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups, and small manufacturers on the eight required pillars for building a great marketing strategy for your product, the importance of those pillars and best practices on how to build a successful marketing machine for your new hardware brand.

00:00:50 Kevin Mako: Now, on the episode.

00:00:51 Kevin Mako: This show is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services, tailored specifically to hardware startups,

00:01:00 Kevin Mako: small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:01:02 Kevin Mako: Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com.

00:01:07 Kevin Mako: Now on to the episode.

00:01:09 Kevin Mako: Hey, Chris, welcome to the show.

00:01:11 Chris Peer: Thanks, Kevin.

00:01:11 Chris Peer: Nice to be here.

00:01:12 Kevin Mako: We're excited to have you on today to talk about the key pillars to success for marketing a new or scaling hardware invention.

00:01:21 Kevin Mako: Now, whether a new inventor just starting out on your journey or whether you're an established hardware product brand,

00:01:27 Kevin Mako: these things are critical to have on your research.

00:01:30 Kevin Mako: radar to make sure that you are planning to market so that you can make sales.

00:01:34 Kevin Mako: At the end of the day, first thing, most important in hardware is you've got to have a great product,

00:01:38 Kevin Mako: of course. But when you have that great product, now how do you get it in front of eyeballs

00:01:42 Kevin Mako: and then convert those eyeballs to sales? And that's what we're going to be talking about today.

00:01:46 Kevin Mako: Chris, before we get into all that, just give us a bit of a background of how you became

00:01:50 Chris Peer: the success story that you are today. Yeah. Well, thanks, Kevin. You know, I started the company

00:01:54 Chris Peer: 20 years ago at my dining room table, quit my job at Ernst and Young.

00:02:00 Chris Peer: decided I wanted to get into marketing, but I wanted marketing to be different. I wanted to provide

00:02:04 Chris Peer: value for companies, not just the creative agencies that used to be around 20 years ago. Over

00:02:11 Chris Peer: the time, you know, we were developing marketing strategies and programs for companies. And then right

00:02:16 Chris Peer: around 2010, we had a very transitional moment in our business life. We had a client. It was actually

00:02:24 Chris Peer: a hardware product development company, manufacturer at Illinois. They wanted to get a

00:02:30 Chris Peer: into the automotive space. And I've outlined this all in my book, but I'll tell you the quick

00:02:34 Chris Peer: story. It was my business partner's cousin who owned the firm, and they were the sixth fastest growing

00:02:40 Chris Peer: company in Illinois. And they just wanted to get into the automotive space. And through our work,

00:02:45 Chris Peer: we helped create awareness for them and drive awareness to the top three automotive companies.

00:02:52 Chris Peer: Six months later, they landed a huge multimillion, I think it was a $30 million deal. Six months later,

00:02:58 Chris Peer: they fired us because of lack of return on investment. And it was at that point, we realized

00:03:03 Chris Peer: if we can't keep a family member as a client because of return on investment or ROI, we had problems.

00:03:11 Chris Peer: So we reinvented ourselves and it's been going great ever since. Yeah, that whole concept of return on

00:03:17 Kevin Mako: investment sometimes is foreign to the ad world. Of course, when you think about, especially marketing,

00:03:24 Kevin Mako: a lot of the big marketing initiatives and ads that you see and whatever else,

00:03:28 Kevin Mako: So much of that is driven to build brand recognition or many other initiatives for Fortune 500 companies.

00:03:34 Kevin Mako: But the reality, as a startup, a scale up, especially with a hardware product, the goal is to make sales.

00:03:41 Kevin Mako: And that's why it's so important to have marketing initiatives that are built to drive sales as opposed to

00:03:48 Kevin Mako: potentially some other goals that might be good for Fortune 500, but really aren't that valuable

00:03:53 Kevin Mako: or not necessarily your best return on budget that you actually spend.

00:03:58 Kevin Mako: end, as opposed to the return on investment that you are actually getting from marketing

00:04:02 Kevin Mako: initiatives that truly drive sales at the end of the day. So let's talk about these eight pillars

00:04:06 Kevin Mako: because you're pretty specific. You literally wrote the book on these eight pillars of success

00:04:11 Kevin Mako: for ensuring return on investment for marketing. What are those eight pillars? You can talk about some of them

00:04:18 Kevin Mako: at length and some of them, I know you might want to glaze over, but let's focus on what all eight of them are

00:04:23 Kevin Mako: And then we could maybe hone down on some of the key ones, especially as a new or early

00:04:28 Kevin Mako: hardware startup that's just getting off the ground with their innovation or trying to scale it to

00:04:33 Kevin Mako: the next level soon thereafter launch.

00:04:36 Chris Peer: So if you're a hardware startup, you may be financially backed or you may be shoestring in this.

00:04:42 Chris Peer: And regardless of what place you are, getting your marketing and doing it the right way up front

00:04:48 Chris Peer: is going to save you tons of time and money. Because if you don't focus on these eight key things,

00:04:53 Chris Peer: things, our data shows that your chances of getting a return on investment for marketing

00:04:58 Chris Peer: are pretty difficult. And just for clarification, when I say return on investment from marketing,

00:05:03 Chris Peer: what I mean is you should drive more sales from marketing-driven activities than you pay for

00:05:09 Chris Peer: your marketing. And at SyncShow, that's my company, it's my agency. Our goal is to get a 10x

00:05:15 Chris Peer: ROI. Now, some clients get a 2x, some get a 3x. We've even had one client get a 22x ROI, but the goal is you should

00:05:23 Chris Peer: be able to track it and measure it. So over the years, we found that if our companies and

00:05:28 Chris Peer: clients didn't have these things in place, it was very difficult. If you're okay with it,

00:05:31 Chris Peer: I'll jump in and just kind of read them off and then we can dive into them. Yeah, that sounds great.

00:05:35 Kevin Mako: I mean, I love the fact that you mentioned two things. Obviously, you're trying to drive more sales

00:05:38 Kevin Mako: than you spend on marketing. That should be obvious, but isn't always the case. That is the key,

00:05:43 Kevin Mako: especially as a startup. Return on investment. And second, well, how do you actually know that that's

00:05:48 Kevin Mako: achieving success? And that's how you mentioned measure and track. So if you're not tracking and

00:05:52 Kevin Mako: measuring the actual results from your initiatives, how do you know what your return on investment

00:05:57 Kevin Mako: is? Two very powerful things when you're talking about that sales element of marketing. So yeah,

00:06:02 Chris Peer: let's dive into it. What are those A pillars? All right. Great. So we'll go into them. They are listed

00:06:07 Chris Peer: in order of importance. And you may tweak these for your organization, but number one pillar is goals,

00:06:15 Chris Peer: KPIs, and industry benchmarks. And we can dive into this one a little bit more later. But basically what

00:06:19 Chris Peer: what you need to do is identify an ROI-driven goal for your marketing. And we'll talk

00:06:26 Chris Peer: about that more in a moment. Number two is your value proposition, messaging, and branding. To me,

00:06:31 Chris Peer: for most hardware product manufacturing companies, your value proposition is so critical to producing

00:06:39 Chris Peer: sales and future growth. Most companies skip that. Number three is your marketing strategy.

00:06:45 Chris Peer: We've had hundreds of clients over the years. Not one of them.

00:06:49 Chris Peer: has given us an existing marketing strategy and said, hey, can you guys execute on it?

00:06:55 Chris Peer: Most agencies and most in-house marketers skip that step. Marketing strategy is critical.

00:07:02 Chris Peer: Number four is going to be your marketing team. Do you have the right resources

00:07:07 Chris Peer: in place to pull off your marketing strategy? And that could be an agency or outsourced or it could

00:07:13 Chris Peer: be internal. Number five is your website. Number six are your analytics and reporting.

00:07:19 Chris Peer: Number seven is your technology stack. So that would be like marketing automation, your CRM

00:07:26 Chris Peer: platform. And then number eight are templates and guides. These are things that make you more efficient

00:07:31 Chris Peer: and productive as you're implementing your strategy. Oh, that's amazing. That's a very powerful list

00:07:37 Kevin Mako: of eight key things required for marketing. I want to spend some time because you mentioned

00:07:42 Kevin Mako: they're in the order of importance. So I want to go back to, especially at the top three and really

00:07:48 Kevin Mako: drive deep onto those. Because I know a lot of those, of course, are kind of the base of the

00:07:52 Kevin Mako: pyramid to some of the subsequent ones as well. So starting with the very first one, talk a bit more

00:07:57 Kevin Mako: about what goals and KPIs are and how that actually relates to return on investment.

00:08:03 Chris Peer: Yeah, absolutely.

00:08:04 Chris Peer: So as you'll notice about all eight of them, not a single one is a marketing tactic. What we're really getting

00:08:11 Chris Peer: to the root of here. And as I recommend for your listeners and viewers that are developing hardware products,

00:08:17 Chris Peer: think about your marketing operational infrastructure first. Are you set up for future success?

00:08:23 Chris Peer: Because if you are and you can implement these eight pillars, that snowball effect starts to happen much

00:08:28 Chris Peer: faster. So the future vision for your growth will happen much easier if you just build your

00:08:33 Chris Peer: foundation properly. So as we talk about goals, KPIs, and industry benchmarks, number one is to create

00:08:39 Chris Peer: that 10x ROI goal. And this is really easy. Don't overcomplicate this. Add up everything you spend on

00:08:46 Chris Peer: marketing. Your employees, your tech stack, your ad spend, everything. The cost of your

00:08:52 Chris Peer: website, add it all up, multiply by 10. There's your 10x goal. So if that equals 500 grand,

00:08:58 Chris Peer: your goal is, if it's a million, if it's a million, or if it's 100,000, whatever your number is,

00:09:02 Chris Peer: just multiply it by 10. Now you at least have a vision for where you need to go, which can set up

00:09:08 Kevin Mako: everything else. Yeah. I mean, that's great to have that goal and that objective clear and up front,

00:09:13 Kevin Mako: because if you can hit those targets and work towards those targets over time, that's what

00:09:17 Kevin Mako: creates such a scalable hardware startup. At the end of the day, you're trying to sell product

00:09:21 Kevin Mako: to the world. You've got a huge marketplace, a global marketplace in which to sell your products.

00:09:28 Kevin Mako: So if you can start building the infrastructure, the machine, let's call it, in order to market

00:09:32 Kevin Mako: and then convert those into sales, that is truly how these hardware startups that you hear about

00:09:37 Kevin Mako: achieve tremendous growth and scale. And the interesting thing that I find that you've mentioned here

00:09:41 Kevin Mako: is really looking at as a foundational platform. Whereas when most people typically start

00:09:46 Kevin Mako: businesses, especially in the hardware space, they start trying to do little bits and pieces

00:09:50 Kevin Mako: for sales here and there, not really thinking about an overall marketing strategy that then

00:09:55 Kevin Mako: funnels into sales and so on. So if you look at it as building a strong foundation first,

00:10:00 Kevin Mako: and you mentioned it really in the cost savings, it's going to make it not only cheaper and quicker

00:10:05 Kevin Mako: to develop those marketing strategies and initiatives, but you're going to have a much better

00:10:09 Kevin Mako: conversion ratio, which means it's going to be significantly more successful over time and allows

00:10:14 Kevin Mako: you get a true metric for the actual strategies that you deploy and how you tweak and refine them over

00:10:19 Kevin Mako: time, how you experiment, all those sorts of things. But it comes down to a platform. I think that's

00:10:24 Kevin Mako: a huge message here in setting up marketing and sales initiatives, especially for hardware

00:10:28 Kevin Mako: startups. Don't wait until too far down the pipeline in order to get this going. Build these

00:10:33 Kevin Mako: infrastructures into your business early so that you can layer on top of them over time.

00:10:39 Chris Peer: you nailed it. What we see more often than not is marketing agencies and even in-house

00:10:45 Chris Peer: marketers. Marketers, marketers in general, are great people. They're very dedicated and passionate about

00:10:51 Chris Peer: what they do. So they want to drive value immediately. So what they do is they jump right into a tactical

00:10:56 Chris Peer: effort. And we call that whack-a-mole-style marketing. So if you don't have your goal set, and then we're going

00:11:02 Chris Peer: to talk about the marketing strategy and your value prop in a minute, without those things in place,

00:11:06 Chris Peer: and without these pillars in place, you don't have any direction, so you end up just wasting

00:11:11 Kevin Mako: a lot of time and money. I want to dive a little bit deeper into number two and three. There's somewhat

00:11:17 Kevin Mako: interrelated as well. We're talking about value proposition and marketing strategy. Talk a bit more

00:11:22 Kevin Mako: in depth about those and why they're very critical in supporting number one, which is ensuring you get that

00:11:29 Chris Peer: 10x return on investment. So I use an analogy often. I'm a big fisherman. I love bass fishing. I've got a bass

00:11:36 Chris Peer: but I spent all my free time fishing. And going fishing is just like going hunting for new

00:11:42 Chris Peer: business. You need to have the right equipment, the right boat. You need to be in the right kind of body of

00:11:48 Chris Peer: water. You need the right lures and attraction capabilities. And so when you're going after new clients

00:11:53 Chris Peer: and you're bringing your product to market, especially with new hardware products, you may not always

00:11:59 Chris Peer: know 100% who your ideal customer is going to be, but you have to make some assumptions. So

00:12:05 Chris Peer: So when we talk about value proposition, you have to first nail down that ideal customer

00:12:10 Chris Peer: profile and you have to understand who your buyer is and what pain points you're solving for them.

00:12:15 Chris Peer: And this is whether you're a business to consumer seller or a business to business seller. And then

00:12:20 Chris Peer: you need to understand your buyer personas. So who are these human beings in those organizations

00:12:25 Chris Peer: that are making those buying decisions? Once you have those things, you can start to craft a value

00:12:30 Chris Peer: proposition. And in the book, when we talk about value proposition, we have a whole chapter on how to

00:12:35 Chris Peer: build a well articulated and differentiated value proposition. The key is to help your buyers

00:12:41 Chris Peer: understand how you're different and why they should choose your product over your competitors.

00:12:47 Chris Peer: Because if you don't clearly articulate that, and if it's not differentiated in the market,

00:12:53 Chris Peer: guess what? Now you're going to have to compete on price. Selling is going to be harder. And there's a

00:12:58 Chris Peer: chance your competitors are going to pick up market share over you. So value proposition,

00:13:03 Chris Peer: and then the messaging and branding to coordinate with it is pillar number two for a reason. It's

00:13:08 Kevin Mako: critical. And then how does that apply into the overall marketing strategy? Once you've really dialed in

00:13:13 Kevin Mako: that value proposition, what are some of your tips and tactics for building out a great marketing

00:13:19 Chris Peer: strategy to get to that 10x level? Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, of the hundreds of companies we worked

00:13:25 Chris Peer: with not a single one handed us the existing marketing strategy. So just building out a strategy is so

00:13:32 Chris Peer: important. And if you want a strategy template, we have them available on our website

00:13:36 Chris Peer: for download. I can give you that link to include in the podcast description after, Kevin.

00:13:41 Chris Peer: But building out a marketing strategy is really not rocket science, but there are some critical

00:13:46 Chris Peer: components to it. So one is have that ideal customer profile detailed and those buyer personas

00:13:52 Chris Peer: detailed. Then you have to make some educated decisions on where is your target market? You know,

00:13:58 Chris Peer: let's talk geographically. Let's talk the size of the company that you're selling into.

00:14:02 Chris Peer: Once you have some of these basics in place, you can then start to identify the channels

00:14:07 Chris Peer: or the places that these buyers are going to be looking for your solution. So if you're brand new to the

00:14:14 Chris Peer: market, which new products typically are, they might not know you exist. So you have to do some

00:14:20 Chris Peer: outbound marketing to present your product to them so that they know that there's a solution to these

00:14:25 Chris Peer: problems that they have. But they also may be searching on how to solve a problem. So you have to

00:14:29 Chris Peer: some inbound methodologies as well. So I would recommend download our template and it walks you through

00:14:35 Chris Peer: every component of that, including choosing the right social media channels to how to develop

00:14:40 Chris Peer: your messaging for each channel. And then the messaging and the funnels for each of your buyer

00:14:45 Kevin Mako: personas. I know you guys are very tech enabled, which is where some of these things come in further down

00:14:50 Kevin Mako: and some of the other points like analytics, templates, the technology stack, that sort of stuff.

00:14:55 Kevin Mako: You're a big advocate of tracking, which really requires that you have this foundational

00:14:59 Kevin Mako: technical infrastructure and also, especially for consumer products, it's something that's

00:15:02 Kevin Mako: very available. It's fairly easy and there's a lot of different software pieces out there that help

00:15:07 Kevin Mako: you track and understand exactly what your return on investment is for all of your marketing and sales

00:15:12 Kevin Mako: initiatives because you have a direct purchase event, basically, that you can track back to a

00:15:18 Kevin Mako: lead source. So talk a bit about some of the technologies that you like, just at a high level and

00:15:23 Kevin Mako: what consumer product company should be thinking about when they're at least looking into setting up

00:15:28 Kevin Mako: their tech stack for making sure that they can track all these sales opportunities that they're

00:15:33 Chris Peer: working on. Yeah, so you nailed it. Pillar number seven chapter in the book, it's all about

00:15:37 Chris Peer: technology stack. So some of the key technologies we're looking for, there's some primaries and

00:15:42 Chris Peer: then there's some tertiary technologies. The primaries are going to be your marketing automation

00:15:47 Chris Peer: platform. So Pardot, Marketo, Act-On. We like HubSpot. We're a HubSpot, Platinum partner.

00:15:54 Chris Peer: So I highly recommend HubSpot. We just found it to be the best for our.

00:15:58 Chris Peer: our clients, very easy to use and implement. Second would be your CRM system. So again,

00:16:03 Chris Peer: you already mentioned it, Kevin, but the goal is to be able to track first point of contact with

00:16:08 Chris Peer: your brand all the way through closed new business or closed sale. And so having one platform that can

00:16:15 Chris Peer: do all of that is a huge advantage over integrating or having an API connection between multiple

00:16:22 Chris Peer: systems. HubSpot has a CRM system as well. That's one of the reasons we really also like

00:16:28 Chris Peer: HubSpot is because your website, your marketing, and your sales can all be connected.

00:16:33 Chris Peer: They even have a customer service capability, too. Then some of the tertiary tools,

00:16:39 Chris Peer: I don't get into a lot of detail on those because those change rapidly based on the marketing tactic.

00:16:45 Chris Peer: So, you know, having a strong search engine optimization tool or technology you're using,

00:16:51 Chris Peer: having strong social media tools, those are the other technologies we talk about.

00:16:56 Kevin Mako: Yeah, that's great. I appreciate the high level overview.

00:16:58 Kevin Mako: you. And of course, if you want to learn more, you can go read the book. So, Chris,

00:17:02 Kevin Mako: just talk to us, but what is the title of the book? And where can our listeners go to buy a copy?

00:17:08 Chris Peer: Yeah, so the title of the book is the grade eight pillars of ROI-driven marketing. It's

00:17:13 Chris Peer: specifically built for manufacturing companies. If you're outside of manufacturing and maybe you're

00:17:20 Chris Peer: developing a product, but you're not in that niche, the methodology works for all B-to-B companies. It's

00:17:26 Chris Peer: available on Amazon. So you can buy it. I can buy the paperback. I think it's like nine bucks or

00:17:31 Chris Peer: something like that. I'll put that link in the comments as well. And you can get it there.

00:17:36 Kevin Mako: Thanks, Chris. As always, I'll put the links in the show notes below so anybody can click through.

00:17:40 Kevin Mako: Chris, thanks again for all your words of wisdom on how to understand marketing and how to do marketing

00:17:46 Kevin Mako: right focus on return on investment, which is how all hardware startups should really be looking at

00:17:52 Kevin Mako: their marketing and sales initiatives, making sure that when they're spending money, they're making lots of

00:17:56 Kevin Mako: sales as a result. So thanks again, Chris, for being on the show. We look forward to

00:17:59 Kevin Mako: to talk to you again soon. You're welcome. Thanks. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to this episode

00:18:03 Kevin Mako: of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor

00:18:09 Kevin Mako: and hit the like button and subscribe. If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else,

00:18:14 Kevin Mako: feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. This show is hosted

00:18:21 Kevin Mako: by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development for hardware startup.

00:18:26 Kevin Mako: And the podcast is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. That's M-A-K-O-Design.com. Thanks for joining and see you again soon.