Bringing B2C Discipline to a Forklift Brand Without Losing the PlotBringing B2C Discipline to a Forklift Brand Without Losing the Plot

Bringing B2C Discipline to a Forklift Brand Without Losing the Plot Transcript:

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White, and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how you doing, sir?

Carman Pirie: Look, yet another wonderful episode of the Kula Ring, so I am stoked to be here, good sir.

Jeff White: Yeah, me too.

Carman Pirie: How are you doing?

Jeff White: I’m doing great. I, I think this is something that I think a lot of manufacturers want to be able to do this play, but they’re not able to run in this way.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. I’ll even maybe go one step further to say as an agency, I will admit to poo-pooing B2C sometimes as a way of elevating, B2B expertise. Which, you know, it works. And, honestly, it’s often through the lens of you don’t want people, if you will, worshiping at the altar of B2C when they could be driving their business forward more effectively by some good B2B blocking and tackling.

So that’s often the lens through which that comment, I think, is offered. But today’s guest isn’t trying to say, “Oh, uh, no, no, no, all B2B should just be B2C,” but more, bringing some good solid B2C thinking to the realities of B2B and seeing some interesting results. So I, I think it’s gonna be a fun conversation.

I look forward to it.

Jeff White: No, me as well. So joining us today is Josue Vermes. Josue is the senior marketing manager at Carolina Handling. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Josue.

Josue Vermes: Thanks for having me. Excited to chat with you guys today.

Carman Pirie: Josue, it is delightful to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us as well. And, I would love to start by… I gotta say, for a name that seems like it’s kind of somewhat standard, Carolina Handling has a way of sounding very cool at the same time, and I don’t even know why that is. So tell us a little bit about Carolina Handling and what y’all are up to there.

Josue Vermes: Absolutely. I can’t take credit for the cool name. We’ve been around for 60 years. We started in a gas station in the middle of North Carolina. We had three employees, 60 years ago. And now we’re closing in on 1,000 employees across five states. And we are the exclusive dealer of Raymond Forklifts, which is part of the Toyota, TMH&A sub-branch.

At the same time, we’re expanding our services and our offerings into the automation place. We like to call it intralogistics solutions. So that means anything outside of a forklift in your warehouse, your distribution center, and some manufacturing we can help you with, right? So conveyor systems, vertical lift modules, racking, automated guided vehicles.

One of my favorite things that we sell are drones that actually count your inventory overnight, and then you have a nice report waiting on your laptop for you in the morning. No manual, inventory reports or anything like that. So we continue to expand, pretty significantly.

Carman Pirie: That’s really cool. You know, and as I think about it, Jeff, I think that Carolina Handling sounds like it could be a band name is why I think it’s interesting. If somebody said like, “Here’s a great band and it’s Carolina Handling,” you’d be like, “Yeah, I’m into it. Let’s do it.”

Yeah.

Josue Vermes: We m- maybe we have to start a, uh, a band internally .

Jeff White: A level of B2C that requires a fair amount of investment

Carman Pirie: Indeed it does. Josue, how’d you end up there? Tell us a little bit about you and, the path to becoming the lead at, Carolina here.

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I always joke. I can’t say I thought of, selling forklifts as a young kid. That was maybe never my dream. But, I started in the wine industry, funny enough. I sold high-end wines for almost 10 years, in Napa. Fun fact, a level one somm as well, so kind of a bizarre skill set. Then went back to school at the College of William & Mary.

Then I worked at JPMorgan in their leadership development program. Then I spent, quite a bit of time at HanesBrands in the high-volume CPG space. I manage the largest women’s apparel, brands on Amazon right now. And then I also ran performance marketing for target.com. Hanes is the number one apparel manufacturer on Target as well.

So got to see what that high volume is, what best in class looks like. And then I had the opportunity to join Carolina Handling. I’ve been here for, oh my gosh, going on nine months now. And to the point of this had the opportunity to learn best in class, biggest, brightest, and, we have a great brand at Carolina Handling.

I don’t get to take any of that credit, but now I get to amplify that with some new, fresh perspective and tactics. As B2B buyers are more and more online, they’re trying to find out the information themselves and, we see that traffic, and we see a lot of people coming to carolinahandling.com to educate themselves on, on what we can do and how we

Jeff White: Man, I – how much of your background, were you a target for Carolina Handling or were you like, “ I’ve got this understanding of B2C and CPG brands and e-commerce enablement. I can bring that to an industrial brand like this that’s selling Raymond Forklifts.”

Josue Vermes: It’s two-pronged there. So I have a mentor from William & Mary that said, “Never forget B2B marketing.” I took an entire course on it, and he said, “You will grow your marketing career. You will challenge your experiences and expectations.” B2C gets glorified, right? We all know the big brands out there.

But a lot of people don’t think about B2B as a path forward, and he always told me, “If the opportunity arises, jump at it.” I saw this role, and I got to touch everything marketing, right? So I’m the most senior marketing person at Carolina Handling, working directly with our C-level folks. So that’s everything from brand to sponsorships to our podcast, all of these interesting things that we do.

Then my boss will tell you, he was wondering why an underwear salesman wanted to sell forklifts. So that was – the first question he ever asked me was, “Why on earth do you wanna do this?” And I think it’s just such untapped potential, right? We get to try the things that maybe B2C has been doing for a long time, and get to build that in this high-touch, long consideration cycle.

We’ve had some success doing it, which has been super satisfying.

Carman Pirie: That’s really cool. I’m just sitting over here mortified at the previous wine conversation before we hit start on the record.

Jeff White: Realizing you’re a sommelier? Yeah…

Carman Pirie: yeah, no, people, people listening to this don’t understand is how much of an ass I made of myself just in the early stages of this conversation. But nevertheless, let’s what kind of…

I guess let’s peel that back a bit, Josue, in terms of the B2C, tactics that you’re deploying at Carolina Handling. I guess what would you say falls into that bucket? And maybe or you can just start with the one that you want to introduce us first, as to not overwhelm it.

That’s entirely up to you.

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I think the, the most basic one is, l- leveraging paid media at a high level. I came in and said, “I think we can sell all of our equipment through a tactical approach when it comes to spending there.” And a couple people looked at me wide-eyed and said, “What on earth is paid media?”

So now we’ve actually established that. We have geotargeted campaigns. We’re doing AB testing. We’re doing geographic lift testing. We’re doing account-based marketing, right? That’s pretty basic block and tackling B2B, but we didn’t have that in a paid sense, right? That was like one of the major things that I came in and focused on first.

And then next is reevaluating and refreshing, carolinahandling.com to be UX first. We have so much information, it’s almost overwhelming, right? And it’s maybe not super mobile friendly, but as you’re spending time in a warehouse, you’re on the floor, I want you to be able to find everything that you need in the palm of your hand, right?

So some of those things. And turning Carolina Handling into a conversion engine and a dollar driver and a sales pipeline impact driver has been one of the biggest goals. And then we’ve done some fun things too, right? So we’ve launched Handled It, the supply chain podcast. A little plug there for that.

We’ve done some guerrilla marketing through TikTok and others, sending Carolina Handling swag to people that are defending Raymond fork trucks on Instagram or Reddit or whatever it might be. Kinda doing that as well, which is not very typical for a forklift dealer.

Carman Pirie: Really cool. I wanna peel back that paid media side first. Are you doing that more as an awareness build or is it more of a conversion focus? How are you thinking about that account-based paid media, spend? I would be curious particularly about anything that’s not related to paid search but is maybe more, a little bit more traditional ad in nature from its, polarity, if you will.

Josue Vermes: Sure. Yeah. So we’re looking at it from two lens. So we’ve got an awareness campaign, that leverages video content, through YouTube, LinkedIn, all of those things to help explain what on earth Intralogistics Solutions is, right? That’s a mouthful. I’m surprised I haven’t messed it up already on this.

So we need to explain that, share that any problem that you have, we have the solution, whether that’s lean consulting, whether that’s throughput analysis, or if that is new machinery that can help with labor shortages or production costs, all of those kinds of things. So we’re looking at that awareness, just sharing that we’re more than just a forklift dealer.

We love to sell our Raymond forklifts, don’t get me wrong, but the growth is in that, intralogistics space. So that’s one facet of it. The next phase, is exciting. We’re actually launching streaming TV ads for the first time in company history this fall to coincide with football season. We have a large contingent of customers that are huge fans.

I can’t share who or what yet exactly, but we know that we need to build that relatability there as well. And then we have a strong contingent on the I-85 corridor. If you from the South, you know it, you hate it. But we also know that there’s a lot of warehouses and distribution centers, and that’s where we spend a lot of our time and energy and money, in the paid media section there.

Jeff White: Anything you can do get a few of those, lawyer ads off of the billboards off the I-85 I think I consider that a win.

Josue Vermes: Yes. It’s been fun, right? So some of our lower funnel stuff is a little bit slower than I’ve expected, because it is complicated machinery and you’re planning with budget cycles. So we’re learning that maybe there’s a little more pulsing of dollars than maybe an always-on B2C campaign, which is interesting.

On the other side of it, people wanna educate themselves. So we’re realizing intentional shorts with high-value educational content is, driving a lot of interaction. We had a, a couple of intentional shorts go over 50,000 views organically in a couple days, which is awesome, right?

So we’re learning that maybe it’s more education-focused sharing those kinds of things versus come buy this piece of machinery for $250,000. So we’re learning as, as we go.

Carman Pirie: Man, again, I wanna ask you about that idea of that learning that you’re discovering around politics and campaigns because it really… I guess my, probably my earliest start in marketing was selling advertising, right? So the notion of flights and having, advertising flights was something that was pretty early in my understanding of the space.

But then, of course, as in the advent of digital and whatnot, you do hear more of people like always on campaigns, things of that nature. It’s almost a bit of a retro idea, but it feels to me that’s a piece that especially people that are in market from an awareness perspective, it would, they would do well to learn, like it’s okay to do a, a six or a 13-week fight and then pause it for the same amount.

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I think we’ve learned that there are very seasonal moments, even if you don’t think of our business as seasonal. We’re realizing that in July everybody’s on vacation and they do not want to think about a forklift or a VLM or any of those things. But we’re also learning that there’s a heavy prep load to get to there.

So that’s just one example of that. We’re also realizing heat remediation is a topic that people need a solution now. They’re not thinking about that in the middle of December when you’re freezing in your warehouse, right? So those types of things. And then, we do realize those lower funnel, right?

We know when budgets end and plan, and we use that as a part of our data of when to start and pulse campaigns because these large CapEx hits have to be planned within that budget cycle, right? We try to understand what our customer’s planning cycle is and then, plan accordingly there as well when we’re doing lookalike targeting and all those things.

Jeff White: Tell us about the podcast. How are you doing that? Is it primarily an educational thing? Is it interview-based?

Josue Vermes: Yeah. So the, it’s called the “Handled It Supply Chain Podcast.” It is a kind of video first, podcast. So we have a podcast studio in, our Charlotte office. And it’s one of my favorite places, to go hang out. A really cool space. It is definitely more on the evergreen educational content, right?

How are you dealing with labor shortages? How are you leading warehouses and people and purpose and all of those kinds of things? We also have started bringing in guests from other places and other experiences, and seeing that’s resonating really well. That customers who work with us, they know us, can speak to what we’re doing at Carolina Handling really well.

And one of the tactics that, I would recommend if you have a podcast, is creating these intentional shorts with fun content that’s engaging, bringing use this or that or something to that nature. That’s what we’re seeing people engage with in non-traditional channels. Meta is getting really big for us now, which is crazy to think of a forklift company on Meta.

Then we just launched, the “Handled It” TikTok channel about two months ago. We’ve had our first TikTok go viral, relatively. We’re seeing that people wanna educate themselves in the platforms they’re already in. So it’s been a really fun journey. We re-leverage and repurpose that content all the time and find that the likability of our leadership and the entertainment value that they provide, has opened up a kind of new demographic for us as well.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I wanna understand that a little bit more so I, just so I’m not overstating the recommendation here. But, so if I speak it back to you, you’re saying, “Look, the, the content that’s being covered in the podcast, it doesn’t need to be the most sophisticated content. It doesn’t need to be the most engineering- centric or anything of that sort.

In fact, it maybe ought not to be. And if you can add a little bit of fun into what’s happening, people are having a bit of a drink as they’re recording the podcast or whatever, and you pump that out into some shorts then that’s where you’re gonna see the juice.” Is that what you’re saying?

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I think even in our first round of filming, y- you could tell people were a little nervous, maybe a little stiff. The second round people started to joke around a little bit, maybe razz each other. We have a fun culture here where no one’s above getting picked on a little bit in a good way.

Having these fun rankings and then we kinda had a almost like a gotcha moment in one of the shorts where the, the gentleman was ranking the types of managers, right? People first, all of those things. And the last one was micromanager, and that got put at number one, right?

So it was a, a fun play and isn’t overly sophisticated, but it makes a really big industry that, that maybe doesn’t sound super interesting, at first glance, more approachable, more relatable. We work very closely with our customers every day, so you definitely wanna work with people that you enjoy being around.

Carman Pirie: Hmm. It’s interesting ’cause I think some people would criticize that by saying, “Yeah, but the people that aren’t in the industry and whatnot aren’t really the ones that you want to talk to, aren’t the really the ones that you want to get exposure to.” But what you’re saying is, “No, no, no, those, the folks that are actually more involved, th- this is resonating with them too.

It’s not, – you don’t have to pick one or the other.”

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I think it is interesting, right? ’Cause you’re attracting consumers and people who maybe don’t necessarily interact with Carolina Handling right away. But they think of us as a destination even for employment, right? They’re like, “Wow, this place is unique. This is not what I expected for material handling.”

That’s one part of that. The other part is the level of influence is interesting. Decision-makers are much younger than, than I would’ve come to expect. I know that, based on my conversations, they’re looking up answers on YouTube, on TikTok, and educating themselves through maybe non-traditional channels.

That’s who we’re trying to influence in some ways, right? Outside of the traditional C-level, VP level, but those younger decision-makers who are trying to look good at work, trying to make opportunities show up and be that asset to the business. It’s been really interesting to, to see that ’cause you, you do see a lot of folks sub 30 making multimillion-dollar decisions in these warehouses now.

Carman Pirie: I love the idea of because conventionally, I don’t know about conventionally, but certainly common in, this type of discussion would be the thought that you almost wanna create content that turns off the generalist so that you appeal exclusively to the people that actually have a budget and that are in a particular and very niche category.

But here we’re saying, you know what? It may actually be, maybe an interesting KPI in the positive to see how much low-intent traffic the thing that you’re creating drives. And that low-intent traffic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s exclusively low intent, and it may be an indication that you’re creating something a bit bigger and more impactful overall.

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I think, I think w-we’re realizing that some of the work that we’ve done taking a, a three-person, gas station brand into nearly a billion-dollar business across the five states is we have more influence in this space, whether it’s supply chain, whether it is manufacturing and even from a, you know, employment standpoint, right?

It is a challenge, to bring people into, the technician roles. It is a challenge to bring people into these warehousing roles. And again, to your point earlier, B2C has always been at the altar, right? It’s always been the thing that’s the hot thing. But realizing that material ha- everything that’s on your desk now or you’re drinking out of, has been touched by a forklift at one point or time.

We wanna show that we understand that, and that we influence every purchase, whether it’s through Amazon or wherever it might be that that’s a part of that journey. And I think being broad there is actually a part of our growth strategy.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. very cool

Jeff White: Let’s dive into the TikTok channel because I think that’s one that, you know, if you talk to a lot of B2B marketers, it’s like the verboten example of networks that thou shall not pass to TikTok just because they think their audience isn’t there in any way, shape, or form.

Of course, we know that’s not true, especially, people in general are using TikTok and therefore that you will catch some of that audience. What kinds of things are you doing? What was the, the recently more viral kind of a video example that, that drove that level of interest?

What was the content?

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I think, um, starting in, one of the first things I was like, “I think we should launch a TikTok channel.” And my management team kind of looked at me and was like, “What are you talking about? Why would we ever consider that?” I think to your point, people are using that channel to educate themselves, right?

They are shorter form content. It is more interesting, it’s easier to learn and the, the search volume on TikTok continues to grow, right, from an educational standpoint. So that’s where I was like, if we’re trying to influence whether it’s people who wanna come work for Carolina Handling, people who wanna work with Carolina Handling, why not meet them where they are and as their career grows, right?

The generation even prior to me is growing in their careers, T-TikTok is one of those y- zero sum you have to be there kind of thing. And for the podcast, we have those intentional shorts that are built for that scrolling experience, right? They are 30 seconds, 45 seconds, but they have a hot take of some sort.

Maybe not the craziest thing, right? We’re not saying all forklifts are gonna start flying or something crazy like that. But we are ranking, the types of leadership. We’re saying this or that type and whether maybe a short meeting or a long meeting with an agenda. Is it better to call or is it better to text?

Those kinds of things. And having an opinion, people either agree or they don’t agree, but eliciting any response is interesting. And we’ve seen debates happen in our TikTok stream and, even on Reddit about some of the things we’ve said. The one that did go viral was the ranking of the types of managers and then, unfortunately he left the number one slot open and that, became the micromanager slot, right?

So it, it had some humor to it. It was entertaining and, I thought it was, one of those things that, that really stood out well and maybe not, again, not traditional material handling content

Carman Pirie: You raised or somewhat raised a, I think a point that I wanna touch on a little bit further. Uh, ’cause I think one of the… we’ve actually even experienced this on the podcast. I can remember us, doing a talking to one particular person who was – we were exploring bringing onto the show.

And, if you’ll forgive me their discussion was about how, they were taking more of a blend of B2B to, and B2C approaches. And quite candidly, they were unapologetic about using female sex appeal to help drive a B2C view, or B2B, B2C, style views in B2B. Which seemed to be like an interesting take that didn’t seem to have much more behind it, and that’s why we never had them on the podcast.

But, you know, the thing that kinda… that conversation is still, kinda hung with me a little bit because I think one of the things that people hear when they hear B2C is they say, “As a B2B brand, as an industrial brand or whatever, it means that we’re going to have to be more edgy to stand out.”

And maybe they’re a little concerned about that. You hit on that, but you also said not as much or not as, not over the top or whatever. I wonder if you can just talk us through that a little bit more, how you’ve thought about that the edge of being edgy.

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I think, I’m in a fortunate place where we get to push the envelope a little bit, right? Like, again, even opening a TikTok channel for a material handling company is almost taboo in some way, right? I – people are shocked that we’ve gone to that channel, right? I think we are willing to push the envelope, share an idea that maybe not everybody likes or everybody agrees with, or those types of things, but that’s okay, right?

We’d rather have a discussion with you and share, understand why you have that opinion or share why maybe one of us has that opinion. I think that even having a personality for Carolina Handling is edgy, right? The B2B brands, you don’t necessarily think of them having that online persona, that online personality, that digital-first mindset.

And we’ll continue to push the envelope there. I’m lucky again, I have that support, internally to, to say, “If something doesn’t work, that’s just as good as if it does,” because that way we learn something, right? So we’re encouraged to fail in a good way and, find opportunities. So I don’t think you need to go too crazy and be super edgy, but I think having a personality, having an opinion, whether it’s popular or not, is always a good thing.

Jeff White: Carman, I’m reminded of our idea for a forklift company about 15 years ago about doing forklift races as a YouTube series with other, events, of skill and, and prowess of forklift driving.

Carman Pirie: I’m glad you brought that up. I actually thought about that about five minutes ago, and I decided to myself I wasn’t gonna bring it up ’cause I didn’t want to have to try to explain the idea and embarrass ourselves. So we can stop there. No, actually, I think it was a really great idea, and it involved crashing forklifts off of the top of a, gravel pit as one of the, special, durability tests.

It was a bit of, modeled after Will It Blend?,

if you remember that series, but forklift-inspired. So that’s how long ago it was, but I think it was a pretty cool idea. You are welcome to steal it, Josue. We can just, not, uh, put out this part of the podcast, and it can even be your idea.

Josue Vermes: Perfect. Yeah, we’ll, we’ll do a forklift Olympics maybe. I do think it’s the, the level of bla- uh, brand loyalty to a forklift is much more than you would expect, right? You can relate it to a Ford or a Chevy or whatever it might be, and people won’t drive anything except an F-150.

There are a lot of operators that, who are best in class that won’t drive anything except a Raymond, right? So there, there is a little bit of that, brand loyalty that maybe you don’t think of, and honestly, I kinda like the forklift Olympics idea. We have a VR program as well where you can learn how to drive a forklift virtually.

So that, maybe there’s a, VR component so we’re not crashing.

Carman Pirie: Ah,

Jeff White: There is a whole segment of, of Instagram reels of forklifts doing really dumb things or, or things that have been caught on camera. I imagine you don’t wanna align your brand with that.

Josue Vermes: We do not, no. That is, not top of my list. I don’t wanna go viral for a, Raymond forklift doing donuts or something like that. That’s not on my journey,

Jeff White: Dropping a pallet of wine.

Josue Vermes: Exactly. Yeah, we don’t, we don’t need any warehouse disaster videos. We’re okay on that one.

Carman Pirie: Josue, this has been fascinating. I wonder what advice you would give to somebody a little bit maybe more junior in their marketing career because, you’ve, you got that B2B advice, and it stuck with you. I’m curious ’cause you bring to a very diverse background to this, podcast.

What can our listeners that are maybe earlier in their career learn from that? What advice do you wanna leave them with as we part the show?

Josue Vermes: Yeah, I think, being open to the opportunity, even if it isn’t something that maybe… Again, like I said in the beginning, I didn’t expect to be marketing forklifts and automated guided vehicles, but this stop in my career has been one of, if not the most satisfying nine months. I have got to do more things and be a part of more unique opportunities than ever before.

And I think that’s because it’s less structured, right? We’re still learning what works and what doesn’t. But the other day I was talking to an NCAA team about a sponsorship, and then today we’re working on, leave behind sales enablement tools, right? So the day is always changing and ever exciting.

I think, being open to that opportunity, even if it isn’t something maybe you had necessarily chosen as your dream job or in that CPG space, there’s so much opportunity here and you can grow your skill sets maybe even faster than a, than another, type of role.

Carman Pirie: I think that’s great advice, Josue. Thanks for joining us on the show. It’s been wonderful to have you.

Josue Vermes: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it

Jeff White: Thanks.