Trefoil Group, formerly Scheibel Halaska, is a strategic marketing communications firm with nearly 20 years of experience serving a broad range of companies in the plastics industry. The full service firm brings deep understanding of big-picture goals and an ability to quickly distill today’s complex business challenges into decisive marketing communications actions and crucial results. Well known in the plastics industry, Mary Scheibel, has spoken at several premier conferences including the Plastics News Executive Forum, the NPE Educational Series, and SPI regional conferences. She is a frequent contributor on marketing trends and issues in the industry’s trade publications and has been instrumental in helping many companies in establishing a leadership position.

1. Marketing for Manufacturers:
What Today’s CEO
Needs to Know

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• Marketing in Manufacturing Today: Key trends
• Marketing Effectiveness Research & Where You
Stand
• Your Brand: A Company’s Most Important Asset
• Today’s Marketing Fundamentals

3. About Trefoil Group
• Full service strategic marketing communications
firm
– Business/strategic counselors
– Solid understanding of both traditional and new
mediums
– Experience in attracting both customers and talent
• B2B with 20 years of experience in manufacturing
– Niche focus in plastics
– Launching the Dream It. Do It. Wisconsin Campaign

4. Our Three Critical Success Factors
• Partner with business leaders to distill complex
environments and issues to advance their visions
• Create meaningful differentiation through brand-based
communications, grounded in research
• Integrate communications to reach target audiences
wherever they are – with information they care about

5. Marketing in
Manufacturing Today:
Key Trends

6. Marketing in Manufacturing Today
• New opportunities. New technologies. New tools.
– You can reach targets more easily & directly than
ever before
• Expanded focus
– From lead generation to lead nurturing
– Attracting talent as well as customers
• Customer penetration strategies are critical
– OEM decision makers are changing chairs and focus
• Brand-based communications to create
differentiation with customers & recruits

7. Key Findings: 2011 Marketing Effectiveness Research
• Conducted in partnership
with Plastics News 52.90
%
– A significant shift: 24.20
companies are investing %
more in marketing than
in sales
– Feet on the street no Increased marketing
efforts
Increased investments
in the sales force
longer enough:
• 50% report sales are
reaching less than 50%
of their targets

8. Key Findings: 2011 Marketing Effectiveness Research
• 72% of respondents claim unique expertise (in
what they do or how they do it), but don’t
communicate it well
Above Average Excellent
22.90%
20.30%
10.10% 5.60%
44.10% 35.90%
23.50% 28.80%
Sales Internal Website/online Marketing
conversations communications presence materials

9. Where You Stand
• 73% of you believe you have a differentiating
offer, but don’t communicate it well either
9%
Above average Excellent
55%
55%
36%
9% 27%
Sales tools
Internal
9%
comms. Company
website Digital
marketing Customer
comms. Social media

10. Key Findings: 2011 Marketing Effectiveness Research
• 72% say recruitment is critical to success, but
don’t know how to reach younger audiences
Important/very important to
future success
71.60%
59.80%
40.50% 48.10% Ranked themselves as very
31.70% 39.60% good or excellent at the
following
20.60%
18.70%
Recruiting and retaining talent
Equipping employees to be brand ambassadors
Getting your message out via new mediums
Using social marketing effectively

11. Where You Stand
• 100% of you believe recruiting and retaining
talent is very important or important to
success, but don’t know how to reach younger
audiences
100%
Important/very important to
future success
73%
55% 55%
45% Ranked as excellent/above
36% 36% average
27%
Recruiting and retaining talent
Equipping employees to be brand ambassadors
Getting your message out via new mediums
Using social marketing effectively

12. What This Means to You as the CEO
• The risks: You can increase investments without
a correlating ROI
– Absent a strategic, brand-based approach (that includes
measurements) it is an expense, not an investment
• Marketing savvy, yet inferior competitors, can
beat you more easily than ever before
• The opportunity: To connect marketing to the
goals and objectives of the business, creating
measurable ROI – and a competitive advantage

13. The More Specific Opportunity
• Be strategic in aligning marketing with sales
strategies
• Move the needle from lead generation to lead
nurturing
• Create meaningful differentiation that speaks to
both customers and recruits
• Own the leadership position where you can
• Integrate programs to include face-to-
face, digital, PR and social media
• Equip your employees to be brand ambassadors
in your marketplace and your communities

14. Where the Journey Begins:
Your Company’s Brand

15. Your Company’s Brand
• The brand is a company’s most important, yet
most overlooked asset
– As important in B2B as it is in B2C
– Crucial in both customer and talent acquisition
• Your brand is what you want people to think
about you
Your company = X

16. B2B Branding Example
Moving | Building | Powering | Curing

17. Your Company’s Brand

18. Common Branding Pitfalls
• Basing your brand on the category you’re in
– Leading Plastics Injection Molders
– Thermoforming Experts
• Staking your claim to entry level attributes
– Solutions Provider
– Meeting or exceeding customer expectations
• Relying on internal perceptions of your value
• Mimicking what your competitors do and say

19. Your Company’s Brand
• Good Brands:
– Establish relevance, personality and connect
emotionally
– Specify the company's value proposition
– Change the conversation
– Reposition the competition as followers
– Drive perceptions externally and the culture
internally
– Differentiate the company for a competitive
advantage

20. Your Company’s Brand
• Strong Brands Produce ROI By:
– Sustaining differentiation in a crowded
marketplace
– Supporting premium pricing/guarding against
price-based competition
– Accelerating entry into new markets
– Recruiting and retaining top talent
– Increasing enterprise value

21. Your Company’s Brand
• Discover Your Brand
– Answer key questions:
• What do you do better than anyone else?
• How does this align with what your audiences care
about today and in the future?
– Conduct research – information today is easy
& fast
• Internal interviews with leadership, sales and others
• External research with customers, suppliers, industry
experts

22. Your Company’s Brand
• Discover Your Brand
– Look at your competitors
• Your value is a relative assessment against the value
I can get somewhere else
– Be different. Not the same.
• Understand what your competitors are saying and
determine the opportunity to say something better
• If everything else is equal, all that’s left is price
– Remember, if you don’t tell your
story, someone else will tell it for you

23. Create a Story People Want to Be Part Of

24. Create a Story People Want to Be Part Of

25. Create a Story People Want to Be Part Of

26. Create a Story People Want to Be Part Of

27. The New Marketing
Fundamentals

28. The New Fundamentals
• Your Website: The #1 B2B Marketing Tool
– Create your website as a marketing portal
• Hub for both outbound and inbound marketing
• Make it engaging and easy to navigate
• Optimize your site for easy search engine
discovery
• Use on-line newsrooms to build awareness and
leadership reputation
• Use microsites and landing pages to reach
specific target audiences with audience-specific
messaging and to increase quality content for
search engines to index

29. The New Fundamentals

30. The New Fundamentals

31. The New Fundamentals

32. The New Fundamentals

33. The New Fundamentals
• Create a robust online presence:
– Customers are now their own gatekeepers
• Active users of websites, social networks, search
engines, product/company reviews, news
venues, industry bloggers
– Video, frequently updated content and strong
search optimization can immediately impact
search engines
– Job seekers are online and actively searching.
Be where they’re looking with information they
care about

34. The New Fundamentals
• Make marketing communications your
supplemental sales force
– Deepen relationships, keep prospects
warm, free sales to focus on more productive
prospect engagement.
– Use tools to help navigate this new buying
cycle
• Lead nurturing software
• Content that’s relevant, meaningful and customized

35. The New Fundamentals

36. The New Fundamentals
• Own the leadership position through
strategic PR
– Position business executives as thought leaders
through
• Leadership positions in industry and local organizations
• Becoming a voice for your industry
– Raising awareness and providing analysis of
industry trends and topics
– Demonstrate expertise and capabilities through
– Leveraging PR successes to:
• Build reputation with current and prospective customers
• Build a sense of pride and commitment internally

37. Build Your Reputation as an Industry Leader

38. Build Your Reputation as a Local Leader

39. Use PR to Connect with Key Audiences

40. The New Fundamentals
• Equip Your Employees to Be Ambassadors
– Provide consistent messaging that they can
take to the marketplace
– Empower them to be confident in all their
external communications, hold the promise of
your brand
– Distribute internal communications
– Reward and recognize top performers