Secrets to Success

In this episode of the AM Insider podcast, hosts Dustin Kloempken and Justin Hopkins engage with marketing expert Ryan Hayford to explore the critical role of marketing in the additive manufacturing industry. They discuss the unique challenges marketers face when targeting engineers, the importance of understanding customer journeys, and the need for effective communication across departments. Ryan shares insights on successful marketing campaigns, measuring success, and the balance between fun and practical marketing strategies. The conversation also highlights innovative applications in the industry and key resources for marketers.

Takeaways

• Marketing is essential for success in additive manufacturing.
• Understanding engineers' rationality is crucial for effective marketing.
• Webinars require consistency and thoughtful execution to succeed.
• Mapping the customer journey is vital for effective marketing strategies.
• Your website is the most important tool for lead generation.
• Avoid exaggerated claims to maintain credibility in marketing.
• Balancing creativity with strategic thinking is key for marketers.
• Fun projects can lead to practical applications in engineering.
• Getting buy-in from other departments is crucial for marketing success.
• Chasing funding opportunities can lead to innovative applications in the industry.

Transcript

EP 11

Welcome to AM Insider, a production of our own. In this podcast, we will have a series of
informative discussions tackling the adoption of additive manufacturing, answering those
burning questions and swapping experiences. Learn from experienced individuals on how
innovation can push the boundaries of what is possible.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. My name is Justin Hopkins, and with me here as always is
Dustin Kloempken. Let's get inside AM.
All right, welcome to this next episode of the AM Insider podcast. I'm one of your co-hosts,
Dustin Kloempken, and I am pretty excited to have on this next guest today. This next guest is
someone that I know both Justin and I have known and worked with or been colleagues or kind
of seen from afar on and off for quite a few years.
And so it's a little bit different angle that we'll be exploring today that I know both Justin and I
hit on once in a while. But Justin, what are you looking to learn today from this next
conversation that we have? I'm looking to learn some of the skill that this particular person has,
right? Because it's an area that I could improve on for sure. As far as like marketing and
pushing yourself out there and how you do that with a business, I think will be very valuable.
I think me personally can learn a lot from this conversation. And I think it's a subject that can be
overlooked a lot of times by individuals or companies and themselves. And it's a very important
part of any business.
To me, it's even more crucial within an additive or 3D print business to have good marketing
because it definitely makes an impact. So I'm hoping to learn a little bit about that, that side of
the business. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think just from my experience so far in the additive industry, there's okay marketing and
promotion and shaking trees and stuff like that. And then there's good stuff. And there's a
couple of people that do it pretty well.
And this person in particular, I think it does pretty well for the industry and for himself and for
the companies that he supports. So without further ado, why don't we go ahead and introduce
our guest. So Ryan, why don't you go ahead and give us a little introduction about yourself?
Yeah, Dustin and Justin, Ryan Hayford.
I appreciate the nice setup here. My name is Ryan Hayford. Like I mentioned, I manage my own
marketing consulting firm, Hayford Consulting.
I've been in 3D printing additive manufacturing for about 15 years, originally with object
geometries, then Stratasys, a company called BigRep out of Germany. And for the past five
years, I've been basically doing marketing, contract marketing and consulting for a lot of
different B2B technology and additive manufacturing companies. So hardware, software
services and materials.
My responsibility is to come in and help their go to market, help their marketing, help their
business development, do market research, strategy, content. It runs the gamut, right? And I
think, Justin, you made a really good point that within 3D printing, having a strong marketing
presence is really important since we have so many different startups and new companies. And
many of these companies are built by engineers.
And engineers, they know what they're doing. They're excellent resources from when it comes
to technical, but when it comes to commercialization, you definitely need a business minded
person on the other side that can help kind of counter the engineering and add that sales and
marketing perspective. So happy to be here, guys.
Great. We're real glad to have you. And Ryan, I think you bring up an interesting point, and it's
something that I've seen many times where we'll say marketing experts that don't come from
the additive industry that come into the 3D printing industry or the additive manufacturing
industry.
And the approach to marketing and talking about and educating additive manufacturing is a
little bit different. And frankly, I've seen a lot of who, what I would say expert marketers kind of
struggle with talking about figuring out how to talk about this technology. And maybe it's
because we can hit on so many different sectors.
And so I'm just curious from your experience, you know, what are kind of some of those
common pitfalls and, and maybe what can they do to kind of overcome those? Because no
doubt there's going to be a lot of people who are going to be coming into our industry moving
into the future. And maybe you can talk a little bit about, you know, how you approach it. Yeah,
there's a big difference between let's say B2B or B2C marketing.
And the first thing you have to realize, especially talking with engineers, is that they're very
rational people, right? The speeds and feeds and all those numbers are going to be really
important. When you're marketing, you have to have those kinds of questions answered ahead
of time, in order to even break through, right? An engineer, most of the time, engineers that
are very rational folk, they want to problem solve on their own. So they're going to do their own
research.
So first step is you need to have that data readily available, whether you're a hardware
company, a software company, materials company, you need to have that information readily
available. So I think, coming into this, if you're a traditional marketer, and a lot of marketers are
really, they're really creative people, right? They have to balance the line between market
research and thoughtfulness and then actual doing and getting things done at the same time,
right? So when they come into this industry, there's a lot to learn about working with engineers,
being able to articulate a piece of hardware to the masses to other engineers requires more
than just regurgitation of what a CTO or some sort of mechanical engineer might say to you
about this piece of technology, again, across the board, materials, services, the works, and
being able to basically share that information, you need to kind of become part engineer, right?
You really need to go deeper. In my experience, in my career, the best way to do that has
always been to learn through the users and the customers and the people that are pushing the
limits.
That's why I've been so thankful to be a part of the added manufacturing users group and a lot
of these other engineering organizations, because once I get to ask questions from the
customer perspective, then I get to really understand how they're utilizing these pieces of
technology. So you kind of have, most marketers, when they come into this world or this realm,
they have to have some sort of engineering, they got to become part engineer, and then again,
speak to the rationality and really kind of learn what's going on and be able to ask the right
questions, which is really probably the hardest thing for a lot of newbie marketers coming into
this industry. But for the most part, I think a lot of that information can be gathered just by
having conversations.
Me personally, I like to do the research, I like to go in depth, and I get a lot of questions
answered just through a 30-minute phone call. So that's kind of my approach, but that's what I
would say, right? Emotional versus rational, thinking versus doing, and then how do you
become a part engineer? What do you think are the challenges between doing marketing for
someone that's selling parts over someone that is selling equipment? And is there a lot of
overlap or is it very different? There's still a lot of overlap. And in fact, they both have a certain
amount of challenges when it comes to selling a $300,000, $600,000, $1.5 million piece of
equipment, right? Versus selling a prototyping project or a one-off production project or
something like that.
Because for the most part, one project selling services, you're basically trying to cut costs down
immediately and try to get your best bang for buck when you go to market when you're selling
your product. You want to try to get as much money back as you can. When you're looking at
capital expenditures, right, and I'm trying to justify a half a million dollar piece of equipment or
something along those lines, that's a lot more to consider, right? You have training, you have
installation, you have maintenance, you have facility modifications.
There's so much more to consider outside of just a one-off engineering project that you want to
work with a service provider versus bringing technology in-house. So there's a lot more money,
there's a lot more evaluation, there's a lot more stakeholders involved. And of course, for any
organization, unless you're some sort of research institute or academia institute, you're trying
to evaluate your return on in your investment.
And that takes a lot of participation from whether it's a product development group, whether
it's a production group or the aftermarket group, all of those need to be taken into
consideration, especially now a lot of people are tightening their wallets. So if I'm going to buy
a new piece of equipment, I certainly want to make sure that I can get my ROI within 18 to 24
months. And that's not the number, but I would say that's a safe one to use.
Really good point. So I'd like to dig in here a little bit, Ryan, because you and I have done some
webinars and events together, and I've done quite a few of them over the years. And there's
some marketing people that I've worked with where I don't know what their process are, but
we go through all this prep work to get a really solid event put together or a good webinar or
training, and five people show up.
And a lot of them that I've done with you, you've somehow managed to get 50, 100, or more
people to show up, even at a webinar. And I don't want you to reveal your secret sauce, per se,
but I'm curious, how do you do it? Because there is a really big difference I've found from
people who have the experience like yourself and people who are kind of newer. And I know it's
no easy task, but I'm really curious how you figure out how to do that regardless of what the
topic is.
Yeah, there's no secret sauce, Dustin, and I appreciate a lot of the times that we've collaborated
on a few different projects, I appreciate that as well. And it comes down to me for over
preparedness, over communication, and proper execution, right? Setting the expectations and
your deliverables to say, listen, we're going to do six to eight weeks worth of promotion, and
here's what it's going to look like. And being thoughtful enough to say, you know, what is our
message going to look like? How is it going to be received? Also understanding that our
audience takes information in differently.
What I mean by that is some people like to read an article, some people go on LinkedIn, some
people go get their email blast from 3dprint.com, some people like videos, right? So how do
you get this type of different types of information in front of your audience effectively enough
so that they want to engage with it, that they want to push print, yeah, push print, they want to
push submit, and they want to send their information because nobody wants to be bombarded
with emails and nonsense afterwards. So people are pretty protective of giving out their
information to participate in any kind of one of these virtual activities. I will say, Dustin, you
know, and I'm curious your opinion on this as well, that webinars are still hard, right? I'm not
sure if it's the best channel.
It's a good education channel for internal communications throughout a company, but as a
lead generator, as a marketing tool, the really the ones that are the most successful are the
ones that are consistent, which means that if you're going to do a quarterly webinar, you better
do that quarterly webinar and people expect it to be there. If you're going to do that once a
month 3D talk show, I had a client that did that, you have to be consistent and note that
consistency will eventually lead to better results in the future. So really it's over preparation, it's
over communication, it's execution, and then I'll give you a fourth point, which is really about
consistency.
So I don't know if I have the perfect sauce, but I can certainly tell you that if you follow those
four, that eventually it will start turning into good results. And I think that's a really good point
because I've seen a lot of groups that they get so focused on doing the webinar or doing the
event, they kind of forget why they're doing the event and what the outcome is and what they
really want the customer to do next. You know, I'm constantly hitting on, Hey, what is the call to
action or what's a desired outcome? If we go through all this and make this amazing event,
what do we really want people to do? And I feel like we're so focused sometimes on the feeds
and speeds and the coolness of the technology, which there's no doubt there is that we
sometimes forget, Hey, there's a customer journey here and how do we pull them along and
what do we want them to actually do? Yeah, Dustin, you had made a great point the last
workshop that we worked on on that same subject.
And I really appreciate that because that's, that's forward, that's a holistic thinking. You just
mentioned that you stated it perfectly. And I think having that, that whole journey is super
valuable.
I couldn't agree more. Yeah. So with all the different avenues for marketing, you know, you
touched on a little bit of webinars, there's events, there's web pages, there's all these social
media, all these different things.
Like for 3d, where do you think is the best platform and way to reach the customers? I mean, it
might depend on who you're representing at that point, but what do you, what do you think
seems to be the most effective way to reach customers? Different avenues to reach your
customers. Right. And I think it all starts with doing some general basic research.
All marketers do some sort of persona research, right? So if you're going to be chasing
someone in the DOD industry versus the supply chain industry versus the energy industry,
whatever it is, right. Cause you have to understand your persona a little bit more. So what
organizations are they a part of? What type of technologies are they using? What type of
materials are they using? What kind of trade shows they go to? What publications they read,
what kind of user forums they're going to and be able to assess all of that, right.
About your persona for whatever your target audience is, which whatever market, then you can
start to determine, you know, how you want to spend your marketing dollars and where you
want to try to reach these different folks for, for different reasons. I do believe that you have to
have a combination of both live like trade show events and speaking engagements combined
with a digital approach, right. And it depends on how you want to do it.
Is it 50, 50, 70, 30, 80, 20. And then you also have to combine that into other avenues. Like, like I
mentioned, user forums.
Ultimaker a few years ago, they had an excellent user forum, which was a really great resource
for a lot of engineers to be able to go ask their questions openly and to get responses from
other users. And I think that was a really great example of, of kind of a community marketing
that was naturally born out of Ultimaker. They did a really good job with that.
So, you know, again, I do believe there has to be some sort of combination of digital versus live
versus a handful of other different ways, PR communications. There's so many different
channels to be able to use social media, as you kind of briefly mentioned before as well. And
really all of that is based on your persona.
You know, who is the, who is the target customer that you're going after? And then really be
thoughtful about what is the best way to get in front of them. I always use the example of
myself again, B2B versus B2C. But myself, if I'm trying to, trying to cook a brisket on the grill,
I'm going to research, you know, how to, and I'm going to look up recipes.
And after a year and a half of going to the same green egg website to look at recipes, I'm
probably going to go buy one of their, one of their grills. So it's just one of those things where
you have to combine a lot of different ways in order to get into, in front of your prospect,
genuinely, authentically, and also informatively, that you're, you're providing content and
you're getting information to them, that's going to and help them in their day to day in order to
eventually get them to a point where they say, I trust you so much that I want to use your
service. I want to use your technology, so on and so forth.
So what would you say is like a campaign that you're like, Oh, wow, that was smart. That work
that you're like, Oh, I'm going to take a tip from that. Or can you kind of give a, an example?
Yeah.
Product launch about two years ago that went over really great. And it was a combination of a
lot of great asset development. So new videos, brochures, content for social media and
whatnot.
And then it was a PR strategy. So we had actually brought in a PR company just to assist with
timing of a strong press release. But then on the technical side, we had to have information, I'm
sorry, on the technical side, we had to have obviously the basic engineering information about
the piece of hardware that we're launching.
So coordinating that was challenging. Getting the website updated, timing was really
important. And then it was launched at a trade show.
So the press release went out the week before all the assets were ready to go. And they kind of
came out systematically as we went. And then the trade show, which was rapid.
And really that was the prime audience because it was really, really targeted towards 3D users.
While the technology can be relevant for other industries, you had to get 3D users on board in
the beginning. And then you also had to combine this with a commercial component to this as
well, where having a beta customer was really powerful.
So marketing had to integrate trademarking, asset development, press release,
communications, sales, engineering, really bring everybody, finance for pricing and stuff like
that. Bring all of these different components together to launch a product. And that campaign,
while it was great before the actual event, so say two weeks before the event, there's obviously
about three months worth of work beforehand.
The execution on the event was great. And then post-event, really it's about the follow-up, really
making sure that all the questions were answered with people, getting surveys, getting
feedback. What it resulted in, I mean, the press mentions was through the roof.
The website traffic went through the roof. There was a sample part that they gave away on
their website with a very special material. That was over, I think, 400 downloads within two
days.
One of the videos, one of the interviews that we had was viewed over a hundred thousand
times with a company called VisionMiner. You may be familiar with that. It was an excellent
launch campaign.
I was really proud of that. And again, it took a lot of different departments in order to make this
successful. And then of course, just really thoughtful and well-coordinated attack.
So you brought up a good point that I've wondered is how should marketing measure success?
Is it views? Is it number of leads? What is a point where you go, okay, that worked really well?
It's all of the above. There has to be metrics. And there's obviously some anecdotal stuff too
that comes along with it.
But I think you have to have your goals and your metrics. For me, now I'm giving away what I
do with my clients, but I under-promise and over-deliver. That I set reasonable expectations,
maybe a little below just to make sure that we can try to hit these targets so that we can have
some sort of success.
Because if you do outrageous targets and unrealistic numbers, then it's a failure across the
organization. And marketing tends to be very responsible for the vibe within a company. We
are responsible for internal and external communication.
So our goal is to be the cheerleaders of the company. And so my job is to set the proper
expectations. And yeah, of course, there's metrics.
There's website traffic, there's social media impressions, there's press mentions, there's all
sorts of different metrics that you'll put into consideration for each campaign. And then of
course, when you're measuring leads, like we had all those downloads for those giveaway
parts, the goal is in that in three to six months that there's a certain amount of pipeline
developed accordingly. You work in your CRM system and you can say, listen, we gathered 300
leads, 50 of those turned into opportunities to generate that's about $5.6 million.
And we've actually closed one of those. To me, then the campaign is worth it. If you can get
triple back on your campaign, so say it takes $100,000 to run a proper campaign through and
through, and you can generate at least $300,000 and close one revenue, that's a really good
start.
People want more than that, of course. But that's a really good start. If you can triple your
marketing investment, then you're in good shape.
So Ryan, kind of related to that, if we could just imagine that you had all the 3D printing
marketers in a room and you had a microphone like you do now, what would you say to all the
marketers out there in this industry, what we should do more of in marketing and what we
should do less of collectively? Okay. First, I do plan on getting all the marketers in this industry
in the same room, so that is going to happen, Dustin. But I'm not sure I'm going to be the one
coaching them.
In fact, I want to hear what they have because I have a lot to learn as well. But I will tell you
what they shouldn't do. And what they shouldn't do and what they need to get away from is
exaggerated claims.
A lot of that happens in marketing. And I think that's because the marketers don't truly
understand what their product is capable of doing. They don't understand the market
structure.
They don't understand the addressable market. So they just kind of float exaggerated claims
like, we're going to revolutionize the manufacturing world and we're going to take over
electronic tooling. And it's just not realistic.
And that comes with, there's a big difference between public versus private company
marketing, right? Public companies, you can't really get away with those exaggerated claims.
Private companies, they can say and do whatever they want. And I think that's kind of hurt us as
collectively as an industry.
You know, and I would, and again, it's not for me to go and shame a marketer in this industry.
That's not me, man. I'm not, I have a lot to learn.
I'm not perfect either. But I can certainly say that we move away from those exaggerated
claims. Then we can be a little bit more authentic.
And then from there, our prospects and users and clients will trust us with the information we
share with them. Otherwise, they'll get disgruntled and then they're going to move on. And
we've seen that happen several times in this industry.
Yeah. Great point. So based on kind of what we've talked about so far, is there anything that
kind of comes to mind that you think is important to highlight or to talk about? Well, actually I
want to turn that question back on you guys, right? So what have you seen from some of the
marketers that have been good, maybe bad, maybe ugly? I'm curious your perspective of things
that you've seen.
I always wonder like how companies get to the top of the search list, right? I feel like, you know,
whether it's where we work now or other places, like how are certain people getting to the top
of the Google search and is it just being paid or how are, I mean, Xometry for example, you put
anything about 3D printing, Xometry is going to be probably the first one that comes up. So
whoever is over there is doing awesome. But how are they making that happen? Like what is
building upon that? So maybe it doesn't answer your question the way that you wanted, but I've
always tried to figure out like how do we get more of that where people can push up to the top.
And now it's time for layers of information. I love this question, right? And this is something I'm
dealing with every day with my clients on their digital approach. And I've done some really deep
dives into the different competitors that I work with and competing companies and whatnot to
try to understand the metrics exist, right? And so what that means is that the website, there's a
lot of this has to do with website traffic, right? When you go to Google and you search, you're
basically trying to get your website to the top of that list, right? You're trying to get on page
one.
So your website is your number one brand and lead generation tool by far, excuse me. And also
to add a little bit more to that, I think most marketers would agree with me and most
commercial companies would agree with me that your number one lead is the one that comes
into the website. And the number one lead, what I mean by that is that it's the highest
conversion rate to an opportunity and the most dollars generated per lead, per opportunity.
So your website is your number one tool. So investing in that is paramount. And now when
you're asking your specific question about how do you get to the top of the results, there's
certain things, right? There's a website authority score, which basically means that it's your user
experience, right? So when I go onto the website that the content comes up quickly, that it's a
seamless experience, that the videos don't lag when they're trying to load, that the content is
relevant for what I'm searching for, right? All of that stuff is highly relevant that you have a
good website and user experience when you go to that website.
The second is content, right? If you're pumping out bi-weekly content or weekly content that's
relevant, where it has the search terms, let's say FDM, MJF, Nylon, ABS, Titanium, and that's
your market that you're targeting, those kinds of search terms, the more often that they're on
your website, the more likely that you are to get people that are searching those kinds of terms,
right? That's your target audience and that'll improve your authority score. The next one is
backlinks. What is backlinks? Backlinks means that maybe your article has been referenced on
another website or maybe that people say, go to Endeavor3d.com or you're a resource partner
or you're a production partner.
All of these different pieces, the backlinks, the authority score, the content, the user experience,
all come together in order to get you higher up on the food chain and all of this data is
searchable. There's a tool called SEMrush that I've used many times, search engine
monetization, and that is a great tool to be able to look at what your website does compared to
your competitors and then where you rank on searchability in regards to the key terms that you
want to target and get in front of. So, Justin, on your side in the engineering world, there's a ton
of data and a ton of research and kind of protocol that you go through.
Same concept for marketers. Yeah. And to answer your question, Ryan, about where you think
we can improve from a marketing standpoint, well, the biggest gripe I've had over the years is
mapping the customer journey.
I honestly, because of how fast the industry is moving and how many things all of us are doing
all the time, I don't think us as an industry take the time to really map what the customer
journey is like and really figure out what they need and deliver to them when they need it. An
example I can think of is if you think about fitness, for example, you can think of someone that
goes to the gym all the time. They're going to maybe get excited about talking about macros,
for example, but the person who's just starting to go to the gym, they don't know what that is.
They don't care what that is. They're just trying to show up to the gym and just showing up to
the gym is a big deal. And so I think what happens, because a lot of us are kind of nerds and
engineers, we get so excited about the tech and we just want to talk about the feeds and
speeds when in fact, if you show that to someone who's just getting into the industry and just
learning about it, their eyes glaze over and you lose them.
And so I think us as an industry really need to take more time to map what that customer
journey is so we can lead them along the process and give them bits of information when it
makes sense. And then they're going to be happier and they're probably going to go through
the process much faster than maybe what they are today. I love it.
You know, we, the three of us have all been in a sales function in our life, right? And there's
marketing, which tries to open up the door and get people to engage. And then there's actual
sales, which is going through, you know, the benchmarking process and the different parts of
the approval and qualification of the technology for that particular company. You know, and it's
not easy.
Like I empathize so much with salespeople about what they need to do in order to get their job
done. So my intention is to always provide as much sales enablement material as humanly
possible, but all of that stuff needs to align, like you said, with the customer journey, that
whatever their maturity level is within their journey, that you're reaching them with the right
information. And it's again, because my attention is important, right? My attention is very
valuable to someone trying to sell to me.
So if you only get my attention for 10 seconds, you better make it count. And if you give me the
same generalizations and same exaggerated claims, I'm going to turn off immediately. And
that's how quickly it can happen.
That's why for marketers, again, there's that fine line between thinking and doing. And for each
project, it depends. It could be a 70% thinking project and 30% doing, it could be an 80% doing
project and 20% thinking kind of thing.
But most of the time, I think you're absolutely right. Acknowledging the customer journey and
the prospect journey is paramount. Yeah.
And one other kind of question that kind of comes to mind, Ryan, since you've worked with a
number of companies and hosted a lot of events, let's say you're working with a company and
they want to do, let's just say some random webinar and you ask them, okay, who do you want
to market to? Or who's your primary audience? And then they say, well, just everyone. How do
you work with that customer and how do you help them through that? Do you catch what I'm
kind of asking? Yeah. I mean, listen, the reason I love what I do guys is because I can ask
challenging questions.
I'm a contractor, right? So I have a contract to come in and do well. And so most of my stuff is
deliverable-based, project-based, and if I don't do well, they're not going to hire me again. So I
have zero problem asking challenging questions and challenging my clients right back at them.
Say, listen, are you really sure that you think that the medical world is really the right avenue to
go to? Do you have FDA manufacturing? Do you have the right materials? Do you have the right
engineering experience? Because that's really challenging industry to get into. And so I have
zero issue with pushing back. It's not one of my problems.
In fact, because at the end of the day, I'm the one executing this webinar. I'm the one.
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