The Kula Ring

As marketers, the conversation invariably comes up: “what do you actually do?” Sometimes, that conversation leads to non-marketers putting in their two-cents on the process. Suzi McNicholas, Director of Marketing and Transformation at Johnson Controls, tells us that this is because everyone is a consumer of something and has been marketed to at some point. In this episode, Suzi helps explain what...

In this episode of The Kula Ring, Kevin Summ gives us a peek into marketing a niche, high-value product with a lengthy sales cycle. From multinational hurdles to the ubiquitous love of stickers, we get into the nitty-gritty of how Anguil Environmental stays a partner to their clients. Kevin also discusses the diminishing presence of email and print strategies in their field.

In this episode of The Kula Ring, Sylvain Marseille, VP of Marketing and New Product Development at Pelton Shepherd shares why understanding the pain points along a customer’s whole supply chain is essential when innovating a new sustainable product. He discusses the importance of a long term vision when it comes to developing sustainable products and why your actions should be driven by what the...

In this episode of The Kula Ring, Justin Rinaldi from Safety Speed Manufacturing discusses the impact of switching from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, how to help ease that transition, and ways to adapt to increased privacy regulations.

BALYO is a global manufacturer of autonomous robotic forklifts. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman sit down with BALYO’s Global Marketing Director, Rob Patey, to discuss what makes marketing in manufacturing unique. They also talk about the challenges of digital marketing for manufacturing companies, the best way to find and reach customers online, and what sets BALYO apart.

In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman talk with Murray Bain, VP of Marketing for Stanpac, about implementing ecommerce to enhance their customer service and effectively manage orders of all sizes. They also discuss how this has resulted in continuous sales growth from online sales.

In this episode of The Kula Ring, Ellsworth Adhesives Marketing & Digital Experience Manager Jas Kaur talks about how her background in design thinking has helped her lead her organization toward a more human-centric approach to B2B. Her “business to everything” philosophy is guiding a tightly integrated marketing and digital team’s efforts in making their customers’ buying process fast, efficient...

Jon LaPorta, Vice President, Marketing, describes to Carman and Jeff how he has helped transform the marketing at Pfannenberg USA—the American arm of a German-owned manufacturer. Jon’s team works locally in order to appeal to the US market. Although they continue to align with headquarters on content and branding, this has allowed them to implement marketing automation, create their own website, a...

Alex Lovdahl, Digital Experience Manager at Brandt, talks with Jeff and Carman on The Kula Ring about getting leadership’s buy-in for digital marketing initiatives by using results to demonstrate their effectiveness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CJ Brey, the Director of Sales and Marketing at CNC Tooling Management and Application firm PF Markey, discusses the merits of the ‘in-person’ or ‘face-to-face’ approach to generating leads and maintaining client relationships in the manufacturing industry. When the push to virtual came alongside the pandemic, the digital approach to lead generation and sales became commonplace; but now, as in-per...

On this week’s episode of The Kula Ring, Greg Paulsen, Director of Applications Engineering and Marketing at Xometry, gives insight into his formula for success when it comes to creating technical content for a B2B audience. Rather than focusing on the question of ‘what is,’ high-quality technical content that resonates should be centered around the question of ‘why’—why it benefits the customer,...

Manufacturing marketers can face a lot of pressure to do more. Include more. Say more. Sometimes it seems like the favourite word in marketing is “and’... there’s always an excuse to add this, and that, and this thing too, and.. well, you get it. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman discuss why you should often choose to do less.

Understand your customers better by humanizing your marketing approach. This is what Cindy Deekitwong, the Global Head of Marketing, Incubator Business, at Henkel Adhesive Technologies believes. In this week’s episode of The Kula Ring, Cindy talks about how she and her team use a customer-first marketing approach, which she calls B4E - Business for Everyone.

Agile Project Management is not something that typically comes to mind when discussing marketing. But, when clients discover that is how we manage marketing work at Kula Partners, Jeff and Carman often find themselves answering curious questions about it. In this episode of The Kula Ring, we discuss what Agile is and share how our experience can help manufacturing marketers weigh the benefits and...

What does a marketing world look like where account-based marketing and privacy legislation can co-exist in harmony? We are not sure yet, but we can prepare by delivering high-quality content that target accounts will opt-in to receive. Of course, that is a simplification of the situation. Jeff White and Carman Pirie dive into the details of the imminent collision of these two trends on our 200th...

The stats around video consumption grow exponentially each year. To what extent should manufacturing marketers care about that? Everyone seems to agree that producing video content should happen and is easier than ever, but taking the plunge feels overwhelming to the point where it doesn’t get done. On this week’s episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff Long, Owner of True Focus Media, shares his approach...

We don’t have a crystal ball to predict the future, but we can foresee a wave of economic changes. From inflationary pressures and workforce shortages to living with COVID and a looming recession, these factors all have an impact on how manufacturing marketers are approaching their strategy. In this week’s episode of The Kula Ring, Jeff and Carman predict how marketers in the manufacturing industr...