In this episode of the B2B Marketing Methods podcast, host Terri Hoffman, CEO of Marketing Refresh, talks with Liz Andert, Director of Digital Customer Experience at HB Fuller. Liz shares her journey in marketing and gives her best tips for navigating the changing landscape of digital marketing.
The conversation covers a wide range of topics including the interaction between sales and marketing functions, creating meaningful digital customer experiences, and the growing importance of LinkedIn in the B2B landscape. Liz also discusses a groundbreaking project using AI for multilingual website translation, which significantly reduced costs while improving global SEO. Tune in to learn actionable insights on how to effectively embrace digital transformation and leverage AI in B2B marketing.
Topics Discussed:
- Navigating the relationship between sales and marketing
- Utilizing LinkedIn for company growth
- LinkedIn Ad practices for companies to consider
- The importance of understanding your customer’s digital experience
- Ways to leverage AI in B2B marketing
To learn more about Liz Andert, connect with her on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-andert/
To learn more about Terri, connect with her on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrihartley/
To connect with Marketing Refresh, visit: MarketingRefresh.com
Full Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Terri Hoffman: Welcome to B2B Marketing Methods. I’m your host, Terri Hoffman, and I’m the CEO of Marketing Refresh. Let’s face it, embracing digital marketing is daunting. This podcast was created to make it more approachable. Join me as we talk to CEOs, sales leaders, and revenue growth experts who will share lessons learned and tips from their own journeys.
[00:00:24] Terri Hoffman: Welcome today to another episode of B2B marketing methods. My guest today is named Liz Andert. Liz is the director of digital customer experience at a manufacturing company, that’s actually a Fortune 1000 company, and the name of the business is HB Fuller. I’m going to let her tell the audience a little bit more about the business and what they do and what they manufacture in just a second.
[00:00:47] Terri Hoffman: But I’m really looking forward to this conversation today. We’re going to hit on some pretty interesting topics. We’re definitely going to talk about AI and how she’s been able to integrate AI into her role, to improve customer experience. We’re going to be talking about how the sales and marketing functions can interact to really make sure that they’re maximizing one another’s skill sets and roles within the company operations.
[00:01:13] Terri Hoffman: We’re going to be talking about, for more of a big picture, how to create a meaningful customer digital experience. That’s the core of Liz’s day-to-day job responsibility. So we’re definitely going to dig into that and talk about some of the programs and initiatives that she’s helped to put into place at the company.
[00:01:30] Terri Hoffman: And then, we’re also planning on talking about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is definitely becoming so much more important. It’s always been important in the B2B world, but I think it’s starting to become more adopted by manufacturers and be a more meaningful part of the sales process, prospecting process.
[00:01:48] Terri Hoffman: So I’m really excited, to have Liz share some things that she’s learned and been able to integrate. So, welcome Liz.
[00:01:55] Terri Hoffman: Let’s start with some basics. Let’s talk about how you started your marketing career and maybe you can just walk us through how you ended up where you are today.
[00:02:03] Liz Andert: Yeah, definitely, because I started my career in more of a traditional marketing communication sense. That was my passion. What I really liked about marketing was kind of the idea of creating that omni-channel campaign where you’re focused not just on PR or not just traditional marketing efforts at the time. It was a lot of print marketing and graphic design and that sort of thing, but I really enjoyed the communications piece of it, which brought everything together and just making sure that your messaging was consistent and that really was my passion.
[00:02:37] Liz Andert: So I started out in more traditional marketing. I work for a hardwood flooring distributor. So that was more of a B2C market. I worked for the Radisson Blue Mall of America, which is the hotel at the time, it was the first one attached to the mall of America. So we ended up doing a lot of really cool
[00:02:54] Liz Andert: partnership type things as far as traditional marketing, offering packages and partnerships, doing social media influencer. And that’s really where I first started to get to dabble in digital. And you know, it was something where, it’s not something that was offered in college when I went to school, right?
[00:03:13] Liz Andert: Everything I really learned as far as digital marketing, I learned on the job as I grew my career. When an opportunity came up at H. B. Fuller for a position that focused just on digital, that was really intriguing to me, and looking back, that was probably one of the smartest things that I’ve done in my career because really, all of marketing is really going towards that digital. And understanding digital , what tools are out there, how you should push your customers through that journey, through their digital journey, and how you should really have those digital touch points.
[00:03:48] Liz Andert: So, really focusing on that digital was really important. So when I first started at my job, I was still one of the only employees at the company that had digital in their title. Now, thank goodness we’ve understood that, that true traditional digital transformation is really what a company needs, even though we are B2B and we’re manufacturing.
[00:04:14] Liz Andert: So traditionally, we’re maybe a little bit behind as far as our outbound technology, digital marketing efforts, but really now we’ve been able to expand that digital marketing person into now we have still a smaller team, but a digital team that’s really driving digital marketing from a centralized corporate standpoint.
[00:04:38] Liz Andert: And then recently expanded my job to really focus on that entire digital customer experience. So the whole digital experience all the way through to even buying as well as repurchasing and things like that online and what does that whole digital ecosystem look like? What are our customers asking for and how can we make that a better
[00:05:00] Liz Andert: experience for not only our customers but for our employees as well.
[00:05:05] Terri Hoffman: Oh, well, that’s a good point, too. can’t forget about employees. So,
[00:05:09] Liz Andert: They go hand in hand when you start to take a look at it.
[00:05:12] Terri Hoffman: What do you think was the driver behind your company embracing this whole transformation that you’re describing?
[00:05:20] Liz Andert: I mean, I think some of it was our competitors are doing some of it. So we really need to do this in order to keep up. And then it was kind of like, well, what can we do now to even catapult ourselves even further and get a step ahead of our competition and doing this. the other one was customer demand.
[00:05:38] Liz Andert: Customers were starting to demand it. So, customers, whether they’re buying a small piece of adhesive for a car that they’re manufacturing, they still want that Amazon-like experience online, and they want to be able to just go online and do some of their research before talking to someone. Especially when it comes to a reorder, they just want to reorder online, and they don’t want a lot of customer interface necessarily, buyers are becoming younger.
[00:06:06] Liz Andert: So we need to adapt to those demands.
[00:06:09] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, I think that’s like interesting, statistically if you look at it, it’s people, you know, I’m, I’m 52 years old so I didn’t grow up with the internet, but I got the internet very early in my career. And so a lot of my day-to-day habits at my age have been built around being able to use the internet.
[00:06:28] Terri Hoffman: So anybody younger than me. Started there, you know, probably in high school or in their college life already having those habits be formed. And so their expectations as just a consumer, it doesn’t matter. Like you said earlier, it doesn’t, that Amazon-like experience is something that is really important.
[00:06:49] Terri Hoffman: I still like talking to people and meeting with people and having the experience of working with a salesperson. If there’s something that I like more help understanding the value to my organization,
[00:07:00] Terri Hoffman: but how you can then look for those opportunities to build it. Like maybe you can elaborate on that.
[00:07:05] Liz Andert: Yeah, because I’ve run into some of that stigma in the position that I’m in because I have to relay to, the sales team, that this is not going to take your job, but it’s going to enhance your job and it’s going to get people further down the funnel, it’s going to get them more digital touchpoints, we have a very technical product.
[00:07:24] Liz Andert: We’re adhesives and sealants. There are certain chemistries that you need to understand. You’re gluing this substrate to this substrate. We absolutely still need sales people to be working with our customers to make sure that they’re getting the right adhesive for their job. We don’t want them making the entire decision online.
[00:07:45] Liz Andert: That’s why we don’t have an e-commerce platform where people just come and buy online. So we still need that human touch. That’s very, very important. When you’re talking about marrying a digital strategy with a sales strategy that’s potentially a little bit more traditional, you still need that. And I don’t want any salespeople to think that these digital tools are going to take their job, but I need them understanding it’s going to enhance their job.
[00:08:12] Liz Andert: And we do have to provide this information online because that is what our buyers are demanding.
[00:08:18] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. So I would assume that you guys have to spend some time thinking about and doing research on what are our customers looking for online versus what constitutes this is a conversation that needs to happen.
[00:08:33] Terri Hoffman: Like, do you guys spend time doing that research?
[00:08:35] Liz Andert: That is part of our customer listening that we’ve really kind of expanded from digital marketing, yes, and my team still does all that, but we’ve really understood that we really need to be looking at that whole experience, so that digital listening, what are people saying, what are people wanting, how are people wanting to interact with us, and what information should we be automatically supplying ungated on our website so that people can self serve for as much information as possible, to free up time from our salespeople so that they can be doing the more value-added part and helping them pick out the right product that’s right for them.
[00:09:15] Liz Andert: But we know that people are still doing that research online before even contacting us as well.
[00:09:22] Terri Hoffman: Right. I saw a stat from Accenture that came out, I want to say in 2024, it’s like 94 percent of B2B buyers are actually doing that research online before they reach out to a salesperson.
[00:09:35] Liz Andert: And that’s why in even the B2B area, you have to stay on top of these digital trends if you want to stay, you know, in the game, to be honest, I think that you, you have to be focusing on this, you have to be investing in it and you have to be in charge of that organizational change management within your company that places
[00:09:59] Liz Andert: having this digital mindset and using data to make these data-driven decisions and using online tools to create those additional digital touchpoints for these buyers. Even before a trade show, right? Like trade shows are a very traditional selling tool for manufacturers and there still is absolutely a place.
[00:10:21] Liz Andert: But then after you go to that trade show, for example. Write about what are the trends that you saw at the trade show. What is your value add? Create that piece that has all this SEO and GEO to amplify that message that you were saying at that trade show. What is the hook? But also make a digital piece to complement those more traditional marketing methods.
[00:10:43] Terri Hoffman: Okay, you used a brand new acronym not new to you, but I would say for sure new to the industry, right? So can you explain what GEO is?
[00:10:53] Liz Andert: Absolutely. Yes. It’s something that, you know, I’m, I’m forcing my team to really focus on because It’s not gonna go away. GEO is the Generative AI Engine Optimization.
[00:11:05] Liz Andert: So when you go to Google now, and they’re rolling this out all over the world, you get an AI summary instead of the website listing of key points. So you’re gonna type in a question into Google, and it is going to give you a chat GPT summary of those results. So it’s forcing marketers like myself to think differently about the content that we’re putting out.
[00:11:32] Liz Andert: It’s bumping down our website, right? Where we used to rank higher with certain keywords and see in certain terms or questions that we were getting those higher results on. And now we have to focus on optimizing our pages and content for this new algorithm that Google has come out with. So we’re working on really making your content readable, searchable, digestible. Now you’re concentrating on getting that zero-click result. So you are concentrating on answering the FAQ, answering the question, being that domain authority that the search engines think you are And you want to be that generative AI result as opposed to just the top page or the top listing for your website.
[00:12:24] Liz Andert: So, it’s interesting. I actually assumed it would have a little bit more of a negative impact on my organic search traffic, but I haven’t seen as deep of a dive as, you know, at first, I think people panicked a little bit. You just need to think a little bit differently about your, your strategy there.
[00:12:42] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, no, I agree.
[00:12:43] Liz Andert: And I mean, I think some industries have seen a deep cut to their organic traffic. It all comes down to how competitive is your space in terms of search results. And so if you’ve been able to kind of escape at this point without that deep cut to your organic traffic, that’s, to me that is kind of a reflection of your user habits, right?
[00:13:06] Liz Andert: You still have users who are relying on those search results and they’re probably scrolling down further and looking for a certain brand or reputable website that has the information they’re looking for and they’re not maybe going to trust the top results that are AI generated. But you’re preparing your brand to be ready
[00:13:26] Liz Andert: for user confidence to be a little greater in those AI results. Absolutely.
[00:13:31] Liz Andert: I will say, I have a very diverse brand. We’re 32 different markets, so where it may technically have dipped in some areas, it maybe has gotten better in some areas. So that probably does help too. If you’ve got a really, really niche
[00:13:47] Liz Andert: market or area. I could absolutely see where you probably would see the results or the effect of those a little bit more than others.
[00:13:56] Terri Hoffman: I would love to hear a little bit more about how you, how your group interacts with
[00:14:03] Terri Hoffman: the sales team and the business development folks particularly because you have so many
[00:14:08] Liz Andert: Right.
[00:14:08] Terri Hoffman: different areas. But like what are some of the disciplines that you have in place to make sure that you’re communicating and kind of holding each other accountable?
[00:14:16] Liz Andert: Yeah, that’s a really great question, right and kind of an, an age-old thing that a lot of marketers and salespeople are S\still kind of trying to figure out and it’s, I think it’s important to remember like you’re on the same team the work that you do can complement each other. So a big thing for me is building those relationships and helping them understand that, showing them results.
[00:14:38] Liz Andert: Showing them things that we’ve done. It might be overkill as far as showing some certain analytics and things like that, but I think it’s really important to just maintain that relationship. So I have regular meetings with all of our different global business units and I tell them what we’re working on and I use it as a fact-finding, to like, what are you working on?
[00:15:00] Liz Andert: I need the information from them just as much as they need the marketing teams to support their initiatives. They’re the ones closest to the customers. So I also need what are you hearing? What do you need from me? What are you answering over and over that might benefit having something online where people can just search for it and that might free up some of your time.
[00:15:24] Liz Andert: Who are some of the prospects that you’re going after? And me helping figure out where do they live online. So, that we can be getting to them that way so that those prospects are seeing our name, seeing our brand in a couple different areas. So really working together to complement the work that each is doing and then circling back and then reporting on those efforts as well and showing sales the value that you’re bringing to them and listening to the sales teams and hearing what areas are they really working on where digital could help boost those efforts.
[00:16:03] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. I mean, so what you’re describing is sort of, an oasis in the desert.
[00:16:08] Liz Andert: Yeah.
[00:16:09] Terri Hoffman: That’s really hard to get to where you are now. Were there some breakthrough moments where as you were working with the salespeople to create this regimen of interactions?
[00:16:19] Terri Hoffman: Like, can you think of some times where they were like, Oh, I’m getting it. Salespeople are busy, right? They’re extremely busy. They’re held to a quota. They’ve got to be busy. They’ve got to be prospecting, talking to customers. And so pulling them into kind of that boring marketing meeting can be hard.
[00:16:34] Liz Andert: Right. Yeah.
[00:16:35] Liz Andert: I think a lot of it starts a little bit with education as well because even before I got to those points in my relationships, I did a lot of educating on what we did, what tools we have, showing them and kind of wowing them almost.
[00:16:52] Liz Andert: So I would say in particular with LinkedIn, and I know we wanted to talk a little bit about this anyways, but, showing them, the people that follow us on LinkedIn, they’re not just our employees. That was one of the things that I would get when I first started. They’re like, oh, just our employees follow us on LinkedIn.
[00:17:07] Liz Andert: Like, well, no, because we have 4, 000 employees and 40,000 followers when I started, right? Now we’re up to 165, 000 followers. So showing them, see, I can put this out here. I can get this in front of this many thousands of people and it’s one article or one piece and then getting the sales people understanding that digital is casting that net for the sales department and getting those inbound inquiries and hopefully market qualified leads.
[00:17:40] Liz Andert: It’s coming in 24/7, so, but just, I, I think really showing them the reach and sitting down and showing some of the numbers. That’s the beauty of digital, is that you have all these analytics. Same thing with visits to our website. People wouldn’t put the value in our website or they don’t see the value necessarily, but when I sit down and show them our traffic and how much time people are spending, especially on certain pages that might be a little more technical.
[00:18:08] Liz Andert: See, if people are on this page for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, they’re reading the whole thing, right? They’re not just on it for 19 seconds and they’re bouncing. So I think education number one, and then showing them numbers and analytics and impressing them with the amount of people that you can get your brand in front of with, you know, simple pieces of content, I think is really important.
[00:18:36] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. I think that’s really well said because. I think as marketers, we really get lost in our own world, in our own universe, especially when we get stuck in a little echo chamber with other marketers, where we get into jargon and terminology and knowing how things work. But a lot of times the salespeople are your audience internally, right?
[00:18:55] Terri Hoffman: And you have to kind of sell to them the value of what you’re able to do. And so if they don’t even understand what’s possible. Like you’re describing that search result earlier but, I don’t think it’s always safe to assume that the business development folks know that because their job is to be out talking to customers.
[00:19:12] Terri Hoffman: Our job is to know how a search result works, but if we’re not explaining how that connects to what they’re trying to do, it’s pretty hard to get their engagement and buy-in.
[00:19:23] There’s tactical strategies behind what we do and why we do it.
[00:19:27] Liz Andert: Well, and I think a really important point actually too, because, you know, I will have people and you’re right, like this is not their area of expertise. So it’s my job to teach them. Now digitals always changing, it’s part of what makes my job very challenging.
[00:19:42] Liz Andert: One of the things that I do is I teach and train that digital mindset within our organization.
[00:19:48] Liz Andert: And that is part of the organizational change management that we’re really working on as well as making sure that people are using digital and that they’re not afraid of digital, that they’re not thinking digital is going to take their jobs, but it really is the way that we have to go with these things.
[00:20:06] Liz Andert: As it relates to the sales teams, really kind of teaching them what tools are out there and showing them that value. And then ultimately everyone wants to know what are these marketing efforts giving me as far as sales goes so that I can determine an ROI on that.
[00:20:22] Liz Andert: It’s marketing’s job to bring in those leads and then it’s the sales job to close those leads. But you both need each other. You’re both there for the same purposes. You’re on the same team. So working together and building those relationships is really important.
[00:20:37] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. It sounds like what you did is you said, all right, we need some common language
[00:20:41] Terri Hoffman: and we need some common ground that we can start growing our relationship from, because if we’re both speaking different languages, very hard to get on the same page and view ourselves as on the same team. I would suspect that you had some really good support in the upper management teams to make sure that those gaps were kind of being filled and that the relationship was being nurtured between the two groups.
[00:21:04] Liz Andert: Absolutely, and ultimately, the culture shift that digital is important to our company has to come from the top down or you won’t get everyone on board as well. So and then just continuing to repeat that message to show that message in different ways. To show all of the different ways that these things are already happening within our organization. It’s also not just my department doing these initiatives, but we can build some of the fancy tools. But we also need digital to be working on the other side of things; that people need to be able to track their orders, they need to be able to know if their order is going to take a, have a delay or something like that,
[00:21:44] Liz Andert: they need to be able to reorder easily. So all of those digital scosystem has to also be working on the back end in order for me to also do my job from a digital marketing perspective
[00:21:55] Terri Hoffman: No, I love that you just pointed that out. I do think, for a company like a manufacturer that has a product that might be six or seven figure purchase.
[00:22:06] Terri Hoffman: What you’re describing can be hard, but it’s still very important, right? If the price points are lower than six or seven figures, maybe more like a four or five figure purchase every time. Then, If you don’t look at that whole experience, I think a lot of people operationally think, Oh, marketing = leads. Marketing needs to help me get new leads.
[00:22:24] Terri Hoffman: Well, yes, that is one area of responsibility, right? Building awareness, generating leads. But what about how marketing is supporting your whole role, the whole customer experience? What about after they’re a client? The easiest way to get more revenue for any business is through existing relationships, right?
[00:22:43] Terri Hoffman: So how do you look at dividing your time as a group between those different areas like from prospecting to demand generation to
[00:22:53] Terri Hoffman: existing customers?
[00:22:55] Liz Andert: Yeah, that’s a really good question because also in our particular industry. We have an extremely long sales cycle So we are talking like even 12 to 24 months for some of these things.
[00:23:06] Liz Andert: So, you know, you could be talking like a big purchase. It takes a long time to convert that prospect into an actual sale as well. So I also spend a lot of our time on brand awareness in order to help get people thinking about us when they are ready to purchase.
[00:23:26] Liz Andert: I want them to think about us. So positioning our company as industry thought leaders, but you can do that really, really well through digital content pieces, through featuring your technical experts. By showing your customers that you know their industry without hard selling them an actual product, but getting in front of them.
[00:23:44] Liz Andert: So my team actually does spend a lot of time there and building that brand awareness. Because of how our products are so specific and because of that long sales cycle. But then, ultimately, we want to stay in front of them, right? Which is another great way digital is able to do that.
[00:24:03] Liz Andert: So we’ll spend some time on that. We’ll spend some time on Google ads and working with our SEO strategy. But where can Google ads really get us to where we need to be for some of these long tail keywords that are maybe a little bit more overarching for our company? Because we serve so many different markets, that’s even more challenging where I really have to focus on the more overarching strategy where some of our business marketers.
[00:24:26] Liz Andert: Within the organization, they’ll concentrate a little bit more on really business specific type strategy as well. So, that also makes my job, a little more challenging as far as in making sure that those strategies align. And then ultimately, you’re dealing with the customer, and when they actually become and like maybe retaining that customer is just continually putting out that thought leadership content or that what’s next, or if sustainability is really important to your customers, making sure that us as a brand and a company are about those things that we know are important to our existing customers as well.
[00:25:05] Liz Andert: So honestly, we really do spread our time across, but we do probably spend a lot more time in that prospecting section just because of that sales cycle.
[00:25:16] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. 12 to 24 months is really long.
[00:25:19]
[00:25:19] Terri Hoffman: I do think in a manufacturing business, that’s, probably more common than not, you know, because most manufacturing purchases are,
[00:25:27] Terri Hoffman: of the multiple different ways we could solve this problem, which one is the way that we’re going to go and does that make sense to the whole team of us involved in
[00:25:36] Terri Hoffman: this because it’s usually a team sale that has multiple stakeholders on the other end of the relationship and you’ve got to make sure you’re answering questions for it. It’s got to meet all the emotional needs and it definitely has to meet all the logical needs for every single person that’s on the other end.
[00:25:52] Terri Hoffman: It’s complicated.
[00:25:54] Terri Hoffman: So let’s talk a little bit more about LinkedIn. I think one of the things that I would love people in our audience to just really maybe develop more of an appreciation for is one of the biggest mistakes that marketers can make is jumping immediately to tactics and trying to figure out like, Oh, this would be a great way to use Google ads, or this would be a great way to put an email campaign in place.
[00:26:18] Terri Hoffman: It sounds like what you’ve done is you’ve worked very hard to like really step back and study what’s going on with your customers and have a strategy.
[00:26:25] Terri Hoffman: Then from that strategy, determine which channel or tactic would make the most sense to sort of attack this part of the strategy. I just think so many marketers jump straight to tactics.
[00:26:38] Liz Andert: Absolutely. So yeah, we focus basically our entire social media strategy on LinkedIn. And that just absolutely makes the most sense for us. Now, I’m in charge of the whole corporate strategy, so I also have to worry about our, the employee brand and, you know, recruiting and things like that.
[00:26:59] Liz Andert: I actually use Instagram a little bit more for some of that strategy as far as employees go, but really, LinkedIn, it’s gone from not just a powerful recruiting tool, but a tool where people are getting industry expertise from. Where people are going to figure out what is going on in my industry.
[00:27:18] Liz Andert: Here are the trends for 2025 that I think might affect my business and exactly what I do. People are seeing LinkedIn as a resource. So as a brand, you need to be out there talking about the things that are important to your customers. Helping them understand that you know their industry, you’re right alongside of them.
[00:27:37] Liz Andert: You have experts that know their problems and here’s how we can help you solve your problems, right? Whether it be talking about a case study or something like that that’s speaking the same language as your customers. So, positioning ourselves as thought leaders is our overall strategy for LinkedIn and doing that through a lot of storytelling.
[00:28:06] Liz Andert: Hey, come see us at the trade show. We launched a new product. really telling the story about who we are. And you mentioned it earlier, that personal touch, a brand like ours, adhesives and sealants, you might not think there’s a lot of feeling there, but there are a lot of really creative ways about how we can tell the story about how adhesives and sealants are changing the world and making it a better place. Anything from lightweighting a car to getting better gas mileage to sealing a window that’s going to be more energy efficient to a car.
[00:28:39] Liz Andert: Disposable diapers that aren’t filling up our landfills as much and things like that. So, there are stories. No matter how sexy or not sexy your brand and your industry are that you can tell that touch people. So really, being thought leaders and telling that story, also telling the story about how we’re a great place to work on LinkedIn but In a nutshell, that’s my overarching strategy for LinkedIn.
[00:29:05] Terri Hoffman: One thing that I see getting in the way for brands and individuals on LinkedIn, is that they feel that if they talk about things like you just described,
[00:29:14] Terri Hoffman: that, oh, everybody already knows that, you know? Like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to say things that we already know. Except don’t assume that. People are very busy.
[00:29:23] Terri Hoffman: And so maybe they don’t know these things about the company, no matter how long they’ve worked with one of your salespeople or how long they purchased from you.
[00:29:31] Terri Hoffman: You never want to assume that people know all of these little bits and pieces of information. It’s no different than a friend you’ve had for 20 years or 25 years. You’re always discovering something new about that friend. Right?
[00:29:45] Liz Andert: Absolutely. And people are using social media as search engines.
[00:29:50] Liz Andert: So then when people are searching something in the search bar in YouTube or LinkedIn, I want our content showing up because that makes our content last longer too. So you’re right, not only can you not assume that people know it or saw it when you first talked about it, but you also want that content to live out there.
[00:30:11] Liz Andert: There is value in putting out that content, articles on LinkedIn. I’ll talk about one tactic now. I will take a blog that we have written. I will use AI to summarize it into a shorter LinkedIn article, not reinventing the wheel. But why would you sit down and spend that time to redo that blog? But then post it as a LinkedIn article.
[00:30:36] Liz Andert: Then there’s search engine value within LinkedIn when people are searching. Gosh, how could I do this down the road? Or what would be, you know, I’m this big architectural glass building. What would be cool sealants for this window or whatever? Like, then our content is showing up. So I treat LinkedIn like a search engine as well.
[00:30:56] Terri Hoffman: I think that’s really smart. I think I kind of alluded to it earlier, but a lot of people have gotten accustomed to not trusting a search engine result, whether it’s Bing, Google, Yahoo, whatever they use, you know? Most people use Google of course, but some people just don’t trust the results, because they know a lot of ads are run and they would put more trust in LinkedIn search and the results that show up there.
[00:31:19] Terri Hoffman: Or YouTube and like, maybe they don’t realize Google owns YouTube, but that’s okay. Right. Exactly. It’s, that content just holds more weight and more credibility I think on those two channels.
[00:31:31] Liz Andert: Yes. And, you know, along those lines too, part of my LinkedIn strategy is also encouraging our salespeople to build their own brand. Again, trusting, right? Yeah, of course the company is going to say something great about their company, but also if you have salespeople and you have personal connections. So I will start with, optimize your LinkedIn profile for selling, because it’s different.
[00:31:55] Liz Andert: Have an HB Fuller banner behind you. Talk about what you do. Talk about HB Fuller as a company. I will give them an optimized description of the company that they can put on their LinkedIn profile with all the right keywords in there. I encourage them to grow their network within the industry and connect with people that are like-minded. Connect with prospects. Connect with those people then start by sharing the company content. Once you get a little more comfortable add your own commentation in there. Then when you’re more comfortable with that, do your own posts and share some of the digital content that we’re putting out. Share that you’re at a trade show. Become that expert. Create your own brand on social media that positions you as an industry thought leader as well. So that complements what we’re doing from a business perspective, but having that activism from your salespeople or other connections and people within your company on LinkedIn, help you amplify that message as well.
[00:33:04] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. Can you tell if there is a difference in the success of those salespeople?
[00:33:09] Liz Andert: I get success stories from them. And then they’ll say, Liz, so and so reached out to me, it was right because of this post, then I advertised that and share it out broadly, right?
[00:33:21] Liz Andert: Like, here’s a real life example that takes a little bit to get some of those, but people have coldly reached out to salespeople on LinkedIn because of something they saw.
[00:33:33] Terri Hoffman: Yep,
[00:33:33] Terri Hoffman: That’s awesome.
[00:33:33] Liz Andert: And if that turns into a customer that buys from us every single year, And it costs nothing. I mean, why wouldn’t you do that?
[00:33:42] Liz Andert: I encourage our salespeople to spend at least 10 minutes a week on LinkedIn, right? Like that costs nothing. Share our company information. Post something. Take a photo next time you’re at a plant or something like that. Talk about where you are. It’s really easy and it’s free. And so why not get that digital to start working alongside of you if you’re a salesperson.
[00:34:07] Terri Hoffman: That’s awesome. In fact, out of all the stuff that we’ve talked about, if there are, smaller manufacturers who are listening to this episode, well, actually small, large, doesn’t matter if you’re just trying to get started and take that first step, that is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get started to see if it can create some impact for your brand.
[00:34:28] Terri Hoffman: People buy from people they know, like, and trust. And so if you’ve got this platform that you can start getting known on and build trust then you’ve just got to be likable when they actually pick up the phone and talk to you. Exactly. We can’t help you with that part.
[00:34:44] Liz Andert: No, no, no. We draw the line there.
[00:34:46] Terri Hoffman: We’re not responsible for personalities, but we can. I think there’s a lot that just when brands are looking at taking those first steps and just getting started LinkedIn and even the, the salespeople just getting active is such a critical first step.
[00:35:01] Liz Andert: I think so too. I think it would be a great, you know, fairly easy, fairly user-friendly way, you know, very similar to other social media platforms that would use in your personal life and just make it more professional.
[00:35:15] Liz Andert: And I think that is a really great way to start getting out there, honestly.
[00:35:21] Terri Hoffman: Okay, so can we talk a little bit about LinkedIn targeting because when you and I were, preparing for this interview, I was telling you that, back to education, it’s really, I think it’s hard for business people, business development professionals to fathom the ways that we are able to reach
[00:35:40] Terri Hoffman: prospects and reach the audience on LinkedIn. So could you talk a little bit about how you use some of the targeting strategies?
[00:35:46] Liz Andert: I do invest in LinkedIn advertising and I encourage all of our markets to do the same. First off, you’re going to build that online community.
[00:35:54] Liz Andert: Second off, it’s a great compliment to a specific sales or marketing campaign. If you are prospecting or trying to get after certain companies and certain job titles. Think of all the data and all the information that is available to LinkedIn users. And you’re right. There is a reason why Google owns YouTube and Microsoft owns LinkedIn, right?
[00:36:18] Liz Andert: The data, the data, there’s so much data. So what I will do is I will work with the salespeople to say, what are you really going after? What niche are you going after? And it might be a certain market. And I say, okay, give me your list of companies.
[00:36:33] Liz Andert: You can upload an Excel list of companies. Then what I like to do is you can layer on job functions within those companies. You can layer on regions. You can layer on a lot of different, you know, lookalike audiences, followers of competitors. Followers of certain groups. And you know so much about these LinkedIn users, so you can get a really, really targeted list, you can compliment what the sales team is going after. Okay, you’re making cold calls to this list, well guess what, I’m going to put the same list on LinkedIn, of the same list of companies, the same list of job functions, I’m going to advertise to them the same thing, or at least our brand, so that they’re seeing the same things online.
[00:37:19] Liz Andert: You’re gonna pay more per click for your advertisement on LinkedIn, but you’re getting a very very niche audience. So in my opinion in Google, you’re still going to pay for people that aren’t quite the right audience, no matter how long you refine. But on LinkedIn, as far as I’m concerned, you can get so niche as far as your target audience goes that I do feel that you’re paying more per click, but it’s a more valuable click.
[00:37:44] Liz Andert: It’s, it’s quality over quantity.
[00:37:48] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, exactly. I think that was a really good way to summarize also the connection between sales and marketing. One thing that I guess we have run into from time to time is just because you supply that list to the marketing team to use in LinkedIn ads, outside of your company, no one is going to see what that strategy was, behind the scenes.
[00:38:11] Terri Hoffman: It’s all privy to administrative access to that account, but you’re being smarter about getting in a more targeted way in front of your prospects instead of doing it as like a rifle approach.
[00:38:25] Terri Hoffman: You want to be laser focused on that audience.
[00:38:28] Liz Andert: Why not be laser focused on that audience and that message and then make sure that message is exactly what’s going to hook that audience. The other thing that LinkedIn does that really well that I really appreciate is you can set up a campaign,
[00:38:43] Liz Andert: you could set up AB testing basically within that campaign and it automatically adjusts the money that you’re spending on the different markets that you’ve set up. So you could A B test a tagline, you could A B test an image, and then LinkedIn will adjust your spend based on which one is performing better based on what your conversions are or whatever your KPIs are.
[00:39:08] Liz Andert: And so I’ve found a lot of success with that. The other thing that I found a lot of success doing is doing a broader brand awareness campaign and then retargeting the people that interacted with that particular ad on LinkedIn or that actually went to your website from that ad then retargeting them with a lead gen campaign. You can get an Excel spreadsheet from LinkedIn with the information of the people that wanted more. Maybe they downloaded a white paper or something like that. Like you can get that information and you can hand it to sales and you can be like here’s the five people that interacted with this. Now,
[00:39:45] Liz Andert: now you go do your job and right and go after them. And so here’s what I’m, I’m providing for you.
[00:39:51] Terri Hoffman: Yeah. Well, you said something really interesting there. Here’s the five names. that might be all you need and that’s how focused you can get. Another interesting stat about the B2B space is at any given time, only 5 percent of your prospects are actually in the market.
[00:40:08] Terri Hoffman: They have that on this quarter’s priority to take care of 5%. That’s such a small number. So what about the other 95 percent? You want to prepare them for that time they’re in the 5% and have them ready. So maybe they were in that first group that saw the brand awareness ad and didn’t visit your website and, aren’t ready for a retargeted lead generation ad, but now they’re in an audience that you’ve built on LinkedIn.
[00:40:33] Terri Hoffman: And that’s another value point of LinkedIn ads is you have an audience built that you can, you can choose in six months to retarget them. You don’t have to do it today.
[00:40:42] Liz Andert: That’s a really good point. You’re absolutely right. And then you’ve got that list of people that know your name.
[00:40:48] Liz Andert: They know your brand. They’ve seen it. They’ve interacted with it. You need them thinking about you when they are ready to buy, so they remember who to go to.
[00:40:57] Terri Hoffman: Right.
[00:40:58] Liz Andert: And that’s a big part of my strategy
[00:41:00] Terri Hoffman: I want to share something because I think what you’ve educated yourself on and built a team around isn’t commonly found within an internal marketing team.
[00:41:11] Terri Hoffman: And so, like, I would encourage people if, if they don’t have this in their internal team. You should be looking at maybe like the educational list of things that you want your internal team to build competencies around. Because if you don’t know it as a business leader, well, then your marketing team better know all the ins and outs of how LinkedIn ads work, for example. And if they don’t know it, well, how do you help them learn it?
[00:41:38] Terri Hoffman: Like what are the next steps there? But then also maybe while they’re doing it You might need to bring in external people to help who do know it because you can waste a lot of time and money.
[00:41:50] Liz Andert: Absolutely.
[00:41:52] Liz Andert: do that with some of the stronger tactics like I know this much, right? About it and I know how to talk about it and I know yeah how to articulate what I want and to ask the right questions but I don’t know how to go in and like adjust my Google ads.
[00:42:10] Liz Andert: I mean, that’s like an auction, right? Like I can’t know all those things, not to mention it’s changing all of the time. So like, you’re right. Like, I absolutely rely on other people to know the whole depth and breadth of all. The way that a lot of that works and, you know, paying attention to some of those campaigns that you’re doing and really maximizing what you’re getting out of that.
[00:42:32] Liz Andert: I have in the past, probably wasted way more time and money, but then when I have someone just focusing on it, just in their every day adjusting and knowing all those things, my money is way better spent and my results are better. So why wouldn’t you want that all day long?
[00:42:52] Liz Andert: Absolutely.
[00:42:53] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, yeah. And I think, marketing has evolved over the past probably like 10 years the most, over like the hundreds of years marketing has been a practice. The last 10 years have been a significant shift.
[00:43:06] Terri Hoffman: And it’s more complicated and it’s more specialized.
[00:43:10] Terri Hoffman: So even within our firm, Liz, they don’t let me log into any of that stuff anymore. Cause there’s, there’s nothing good that can happen.
[00:43:16] Liz Andert: Sure.
[00:43:17] Terri Hoffman: Into any of it, because I don’t get it. I don’t, if you don’t do it every day, it has become so specialized that you’ve got to have people who specialize in each one of those areas.
[00:43:27] Terri Hoffman: And then you can determine like, do we want to build that in-house? Is there enough justification, or is this something we want to outsource and that’s like a whole other podcast episode we could do.
[00:43:38] Liz Andert: And I don’t think that’s going to change. I think it’s always going to be that way too.
[00:43:41] Terri Hoffman: Yep. You’ve got to know enough about all of those different areas so that you can manage and hold whatever resources you’re using accountable.
[00:43:50] Liz Andert: Yes.
[00:43:51] Terri Hoffman: And have them educate you the same way you’re educating the rest of your company.
[00:43:54] Liz Andert: Yep. Absolutely.
[00:43:56] Terri Hoffman: I know you had a really, really cool project that you worked on this year with AI. So I do want to give you some time to talk about that. Can you tell us about that website project?
[00:44:04] Liz Andert: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. one of the things that I’m looking at, I’m hoping everyone is really familiar with using AI to do mundane tasks and things like that.
[00:44:13] Liz Andert: I consider, I would really like people to kind of move to the second, right? Like, okay, now we’re AI 201 or whatever that is. But, we’re really taking a hard look at what AI can do for us to automate things and to make our processes a little bit better, make our content a little easier, give us a jumpstart on those types of things.
[00:44:39] Liz Andert: But one of the bigger projects that I worked on this year was we used AI to translate webpages instead of using a, you know, and paying a pay-per-word type of model with an agency to share that information. So what we did is we took, and it’s machine learning, right? So you still have to train the machine.
[00:45:01] Liz Andert: So we created a dictionary specific for ours. I used, native language speakers. We’re a global company. We do business in 120 countries worldwide. We have locations in 40 different countries around the globe. So translations is a really big deal for us, and it can be very, very expensive.
[00:45:21] Liz Andert: And it’s tricky because we have a technical product that we’re putting out there. Things don’t translate. The word clean energy together, those words clean energy means something, but separate, the word clean and the word energy means something different, right? So you really have to pay attention to how you’re translating words.
[00:45:45] Liz Andert: So what we did is we trained AI platform with our brand our technical words. I used people within our company just to validate certain words hot melt is another one You’ve got the word hot you’ve got the word melt but hot melt glue together is a totally different thing, right? So I needed people from HB Fuller to tell me okay, what is hot melt in Spanish?
[00:46:10] Liz Andert: What is hot melt in Chinese? I used, people to basically create my own H. B. Fuller dictionary that I had validated within our company. We uploaded that to our own instance of AI and trained it with our brand, our speak, our technology. We told it words not to translate. So brand names and things like that, that were important to us, that you don’t translate.
[00:46:36] Liz Andert: And we connected it to our website. And instead of sending out our inquiries, you know, Google translate just as it used to be five years ago. Was not working for our company. We actually took it off of our website, but now because of how far AI has gone and how you’re able to actually train a machine we were able to translate it using our new AI automatically with a connector, put it back into our website so you’re not copying and pasting back and forth again, automating that process that used to cost us tens of thousands, if not more every time we wanted to launch a new language.
[00:47:18] Liz Andert: Right now, we can have a machine doing that, and we’re virtually not paying anything for translation on our website anymore because it’s become that sophisticated. I was really proud of that too, because we solved such a big problem and a costly expense for our company, but you know, it’s just, it’s kind of, it’s, it just demonstrates thinking outside the box and how can we really use AI to really move the needle on some of these things in our company.
[00:47:49] Liz Andert: And this is the, that is another thing that is not going away. That is, you know, AI is here to stay. So really embracing it, not being afraid of it. And using it to make your life easier, using it to save money, using it so that you can be doing more value-added projects, your employees can be doing more value-added projects, and I was able to then spend the money that I normally would have spent on translating into website development. Which I’m going to get way more ROI out of spending that money in another bucket that’s going to make the user experience better rather than just spending it on translating into one X, Y, Z language that, you know, may or may not help a ton for our company.
[00:48:36] Terri Hoffman: Well, it is really interesting because at the end of the day, people are going to be more comfortable doing business in their first language.
[00:48:44] Liz Andert: Absolutely. Right.
[00:48:45] Terri Hoffman: You have to check that box on delivering the right customer experience. Yes. Like I’m gonna, I’m gonna search in English and if I’ve learned some Spanish so that I can function with a Spanish speaker that’s probably not going to be what I want to search and I’m gonna search in English
[00:49:00] Liz Andert: Absolutely.
[00:49:01] Terri Hoffman: And so you were able to come up with a solution that met the customer need in a meaningful and impactful way.
[00:49:12] Terri Hoffman: While doing it in the most cost-effective way that you could possibly do it.
[00:49:16] Liz Andert: Then you’ve got a global or regional SEO effort as well, right? You need to have those keywords in those other languages for those people that are searching in those other languages.
[00:49:28] Terri Hoffman: Major bonus.
[00:49:29] Liz Andert: Yeah.
[00:49:31] Terri Hoffman: That is like massive SEO value.
[00:49:34] Liz Andert: Yeah.
[00:49:35] Terri Hoffman: And, but you took a customer-first approach, right? So customer first, and if you focus on the customer and what they need, the SEO value will come. I think when you do it the other way around, it is typically disastrous.
[00:49:48] Terri Hoffman: Yes.
[00:49:48] Terri Hoffman: Yes. Short-lived for sure. Yeah. Okay. Let’s discuss a part two. This was really good. I think, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on.
[00:49:59] Liz Andert: Oh, of course. I enjoy this.
[00:50:01] Terri Hoffman: I think it’s just amazing how generous you were with kind of sharing information. If people, I guess, industry are interested in getting ahold of you.
[00:50:11] Terri Hoffman: What’s, what’s the best way to connect with you?
[00:50:14] Liz Andert: Probably LinkedIn is probably the best way to get ahold of me. I have LinkedIn open on my screen all day long, every day because of what I do for a living anyways. So, yeah, that’s probably the best way. And I’m always open to help other people in similar positions as mine. If I figured something out or tried something, why not help other people out or have that conversation?
[00:50:35] Liz Andert: I often learn the most from people who do similar jobs as mine within the industry.
[00:50:42] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, well, I think it says a lot about you that you’re willing to share it and then for sure It says a lot about your company.
[00:50:48] Terri Hoffman: Yeah, you know that they’re,
[00:50:49] Terri Hoffman: they’re giving you the space to, to kind of talk about this. Yeah It definitely, for those who think, oh, manufacturers are just old and boring and they don’t keep up.
[00:51:01] Terri Hoffman: No.
[00:51:01] Liz Andert: I mean, look at us. We’re not old and boring.
[00:51:03] Terri Hoffman: I love to hear about the things that you guys are making a priority, all for the customer.
[00:51:10] Liz Andert: Absolutely
[00:51:11] Terri Hoffman: Just really better serving the customer. So that’s really neat. Thanks for sharing all of that.
[00:51:15] Liz Andert: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:51:16] Liz Andert: I enjoyed it.
[00:51:17] Terri Hoffman: Thank you for listening to B2B marketing methods. Please be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast channel and leave us a review. We’d love to hear from you and connect. You can find me on LinkedIn or visit our company website at marketingrefresh.com.
