To celebrate 100 episodes of The Kula Ring, co-hosts Jeff White and Carman Pirie share lessons from remarkable podcast guests on customer feedback across the manufacturing enterprise. They reflect on insights from Greg Palmer, Director of Marketing at National Nail, on how to develop a customer-centric approach to product development and marketing. They share thoughts from Tim Bay, Head of Digital Marketing at Fellowes Brands, on how his team leveraged customer feedback to introduce new products. Finally, the co-hosts talk about digital transformation in light of comments from Augie Ray, Senior Research Analyst & Executive Advisor of Customer Experience at Gartner, Inc., on how marketers should focus on CX and customers’ unmet needs.

Digital marketing enables manufacturers to fine-tune their tactics down to their best-fit accounts, but it can also create a false expectation that each marketing engagement can provide a guaranteed ROI. In this episode of The Kula Ring, Ahsan Javed, manufacturing marketer veteran, talks about his customer collaboration framework and how his background in engineering and marketing guides his iterative approach to co-creating products and solutions.

James Stanaway, Director of Marketing at Epilog Laser, talks with Carman and Jeff about how video content plays a major role in their marketing strategy. From creating how-to videos that support their customers post-purchase, to co-creating video with customers and showcasing user-generated content, James shares how Epilog has grown its YouTube channel to over four and a half million views—along with how they track each video’s contribution to sales.

Greg Palmer, Director of Marketing at National Nail, talks with Carman and Jeff about how the marketing and product teams work together to use a customer-centric approach to product development. They also discuss which channels National Nail finds successful when launching products including trade shows, social media, and print.

Jen Miret, Director of Marketing at Bendheim, describes the listening strategy she uses to create marketing that resonates with specialty architectural glass and systems customers. Tools such as keyword research, social media, and public relations enable Jen to identify market opportunities so that Bendheim can better serve its customers.