How Rogers Machinery Built a High-Impact Webinar Program That Drives DemandHow Rogers Machinery Built a High-Impact Webinar Program That Drives Demand

How Rogers Machinery Built a High-Impact Webinar Program That Drives Demand Transcript:

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

Carman Pirie: Look, man, we’re recording this post-lunch on a Friday. I’m feeling good. Like I’m pleased to be… if we can stay focused in this podcast and not stray too far off topic, I’ll consider it a success.

Jeff White: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. No, in all seriousness, beyond the fact that it’s Friday. I’m excited to dive into today’s conversation because I think so many people, when they’re looking at how to build the foundational pillars of a marketing program and a content marketing program for B2B manufacturers, webinars often surface to the top of that consideration list. Then they quickly plummet to the bottom as people start to consider the lift involved, maybe, or they’re not comfortable with the technology, or maybe they’re not quite sure how to leverage all aspects of it. I think today’s guest is gonna help shine a light on this. 

Jeff White: Yeah. I think that people who are thinking that may not be considering all of the potential upsides.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. But I don’t wanna give it all away.

Jeff White: No, absolutely. So joining us today is Rachel Cossette. Rachel is the marketing manager at Rogers Machinery Company. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Rachel. 

Rachel Cossette: Hi. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me, 

Carman Pirie: Rachel, thank you for joining us. It’s wonderful to have you on the show.

Rachel Cossette: Yeah. Thanks. 

Carman Pirie: Let’s learn a little bit more about Rogers Machinery and how you ended up there. Could you fill us in a little bit? 

Rachel Cossette: Yeah, sure. So I’ve been with Rogers for almost five years now, and we are an air compressor manufacturer and supplier and distributor. And we also manufacture vacuum pumps, and we distribute all sorts of process and utility equipment, pumps, industrial air compressors, and vacuum systems. We do air audits. We have an engineered system, solutions teams, so we can build highly customized and technical systems. Essentially, if you work for a company that makes anything. Then you are probably using one of our products, an air compressor, a vacuum or a pump to make or refine or package that product, and that’s what we do. 

Carman Pirie: I’ve gotta say, every time I hear somebody say something, if you make something. Then you probably use whatever. I look at the negatives of that. I’m like, oh my goodness. The targeting problems that we have. Coming up with a target account list for that. 

But appreciate that background. Thank you for sharing it. And we started off a show by talking about that webinar program and how it has become a bit of a pillar for the work at Rogers. So I guess let’s just start peeling that back a little bit. How long has that program been on the go now, Rachel? 

Rachel Cossette: So I started that in 2022. I hosted a handful of webinars that year. And then 2023 was actually the first full-scale year where I launched the webinar program and had a clearer idea around pre- and post-production and bringing in some of our vendor partners. And really fleshed that program out a little more. So this 2025 has been our third year working on our webinar program, and it continues to grow. 

Jeff White: How about just starting? What was the impetus for beginning a webinar program? 

Rachel Cossette: Yeah, so really it’s ironic ’cause when I’m sitting here thinking about it.

Which doesn’t happen often. If you manage marketing in a mid-size or small company, you’re probably all by yourself. Or maybe you have one other person on your team. So it’s almost that entrepreneurial mindset. You see a space where there could be some opportunity.

That you can apply to your current company, and you make it happen and figure it out. So I saw other companies having webinars, and some of our vendors that we distribute they were having webinars. And I wanted to create another channel that would really benefit us. Especially, in that 2022, 2023 time range, we were coming into this, cookies were going away, and people were caring more about their privacy, and you really needed to make it worthwhile. You needed to give more than you were asking. So if you’re gonna ask someone for their email or their information, or even more valuable, their attention, you have to make it really worth their while. And the webinar program was just the perfect solution to that. So we could grow our first party data list and our email lists while also providing education in these webinars that they would find valuable.

And there are several different ways that I really made it tailored to them. So it’s not one of those webinars where you hop in, and it ends up being a pitch for that for the company or for a product line. I was super strict with all my presenters. No one cares about you. No one cares about your company. No one cares about your quick bio. No one cares about what product you have, and it’s model numbers and features; they’re here to learn. They wanna be educated around this very specific thing, like, for example, how vacuum pumps work with liquids. That was one of our most recent webinars, or nitrogen 101 or how to size a compressed air dryer. And they want to be educated on those things, and they don’t care about anything else. And the beauty of the program is you really don’t have to sell in the forward-facing sense. Everything you teach these people, within that 45 minutes or an hour of time, they’re going to come back over and over to learn, and you’re building credibility with them and trust with them every single time.

When they’re at the point where they’re looking for something like that, and they do want the actual product information. They come to you because you didn’t waste their time before and you didn’t take advantage of their time before, and you gave them value the entire time with these webinars.

They look forward to the emails where you’re like, Hey, this is what’s coming up next. And the follow up emails were, Hey, thanks for joining the webinar. Here’s the recording, here’s the slide, here’s the brochure and all of the documents that maybe were asked for within the Q&A at the end. And oh, by the way, here’s an article or a case study that we wrote around that specific topic in case you wanna learn more. And it just is super organic and really easy, 

Carman Pirie: That kind of pursuit of providing value. It is, some people look at that, and they think, oh, that, that’s gonna be harder. Like it’s a, now I need to really make sure that this is taught. And I really like what you said there, Rachel, on that. It actually makes it easier for the non-salespeople. Like, it is not about teaching non-sales people how to be salesy. It’s about No, as long as they know that their job is to teach and convey what they know, and the rest of the sales process will work itself out. 

Rachel Cossette: Exactly. And the other thing too, this whole, creating demand. It’s going to create itself. So it’s really just about positioning yourself so that when somebody is ready, they think of you because you’ve already built trust with them. And we’re at a point with our program too, and maybe we’ll get to the steps that I took to scale the program. But one of the things that we offer is PDH certifications, which engineers need every year. And so if you attend one of our webinars, then you get a PDH certificate. If you attend the live webinar, we get emails immediately. Hey, can I get my PDH certificate? We send them out within 48 hours, but people are chomping at the bit for the recording and the sides.

Our Q&A section is a portion of the webinar, and becoming more and more active, and they are registering. We get repeat people who register for our webinars because we’re actually solving a problem for them as well, which is, oh, I gotta get these PDH credits in every year, for my job and, for my education and to stay current. And we’re making that super easy for them too. 

Carman Pirie: That’s a huge hook. 

Jeff White: Was that part of the original thinking or something that you realized you could do later, once you? Started covering some interesting topics. 

Rachel Cossette: That was something. We started that in 2023, so the very first webinars that I did.

It wasn’t a part of my thought process, but very quickly, because obviously a lot of engineers attend webinars and they were requested, and I was like, oh, that’s easy. I can make a beautiful looking PDH certificate with the date and the name of the webinar they attended and our branding on it, like on Canva. Super easy. Download them and mail them a PDF of their certificate. It’s the PDF of the PDH. It gets to be a mouthful there, but yeah, and it’s just, oh, yeah, easy. I can make that for you and send it to you, and it looks official. Now, I will caveat this by saying, because I did get inquiries later on. It varies by state.

So our corporate headquarters are in Oregon. And in Oregon, you, the criteria to provide a PDH certificate may be different than, whatever state the listeners companies are located. So for us. It just had to be educational and meet certain criteria, but it didn’t need to be reviewed. I think some states have stricter criteria where the content would need to be reviewed and approved, so that’s something to keep in mind.

Carman Pirie: That’s excellent advice, but it certainly is a destination worth pursuing, I think. What a hook. Incredible. Rachel, I wanna explore what you’ve done with vendor partners here as well. ’cause you mentioned that it’s part of your inspiration initially is that the number of vendor partners we’re also doing webinars.

But I know that you’ve integrated them into the strategy and it’s part of this plan. So I guess enlighten us a bit as to how… what is their role and how do you leverage their support. 

Rachel Cossette: Yeah. So I started reaching out to our vendors as well because I wanted to build those relationships and engage with them. And I’m also not we represent a lot of different brands and a lot of different products. If you look at, the Rogers Machinery, our website, we have a lot of different offerings and I can’t be the expert in every single product, every single brand. I’m just… That’s, I’m capable of a lot and that’s not one of ’em.

So reaching out to our vendors, I was able to say, Hey, we’re doing this webinar program. I would love it if you presented on this topic and here are the parameters. Or even asking them, Hey, when it comes to like oil lubricated or oil free air dryers in medical manufacturing. Okay. They can put together a presentation around that, and then they get to be in front of the people that are attending that webinar as well, that may not be on their email list, and they get to be in the Q&A. We’re building credibility as well because we’re not an OEM for every single product that we sell and service and offer. We do, we manufacture our own line of air compressors and vacuums. But if it’s, we offer a breadth of different things and so I wanted to bring them in because that lends credibility when it’s like, Hey, we partner with them and they are the experts and we work with them and their products and they know their stuff on this topic, and you can learn from them.

The other thing is they’re really eager to do that because they want to partner with their distribution network and see that we’re engaged. So it was a really great way to say hey, we care about this partnership and we’re nurturing this with you. Also, if I have them share we have this webinar coming up, why don’t you go ahead and promote this with. In your social community and with your email list, because I don’t share my registrant list. So I host the webinars, they’re run by me and you can promote it to your people. And then I will happily get that, registrant list. And then I’m expanding mine that way as well. But I’m not opening up I’m not, sending that list to everyone and their dog, because I wanna protect that too.

Carman Pirie: And have you been able to leverage vendor support dollars co-op dollars, things of that nature as well to fund this program? 

Rachel Cossette: Yes. So then I started, so part of my advertising budget, we used to buy ad space within industry publications. So, oh, here’s our ad. They click on it and go to an article or something. And we never found any real impact with those. So I shifted to sponsoring some of their webinars, where we might get a 10-minute speaking spot or a 20-minute speaking spot or even have our own webinar, but it’s hosted and managed by them by a third party. And then I would bring in a vendor and say, we wanna do this webinar, it’s around this topic, and we want to work with you. You’re our supplier for this product line. You’re the expert in this topic. We want you to be the presenter for us. And this sponsorship costs this much. Let’s go and just see what they say.

And it’s typically pretty small dollars and they’re eager to do that. The partnership. They love seeing that. They love seeing that one of their distributors is actually engaged. And seeing them being involved in your marketing program and bringing them in and saying, oh, they care, as opposed to … You know how many people work with distributors that you send them, here’s product images in our logo in a short bio, and then you never hear from them again. But if you bring them in and show like, Hey, we actually really care about this partnership and promoting you too, and we’re getting all of these contacts and we co-brand the deck and all of this there, I’ve never gotten a no from any of our vendors that we’ve brought in.

Jeff White: Man, that has to do wonders for that distributor manufacturer relationship too, right? 

Rachel Cossette: Absolutely. And we do that as well with case studies that we create that feature some of their, product that we’ve sold and installed and, we support our customer base with the products that we get from them, and then you share that with them or the webinar recording and they send it to their higher ups and are just singing your praises and then you become the favorite child, and it’s just a win-win. And that’s not even talking about the excellent content that you get. Every webinar we produce, we have the whole recording, and then we get three clips out of it. So we can share on social and on YouTube and across, all of our platforms. And you get the transcript and it’s just amazing content 

Carman Pirie: And that content is created with vendor support, of course. Then they’re also promoting that same content. You’re getting the cross link benefits, et cetera. Have you, and now that you’ve been at this a while, I have to assume you’ve begun to experience some organic search or maybe even generative search lift as a result of having this kind of depth of content.

Rachel Cossette: Definitely, in the months that we have multiple one. We take one month break in September to get a breather because it’s not a small amount of work. So it’s not daunting. So anyone listening, you can do it and it’s so worth it. But it’s no small amount of work. And so we do take that month off and we definitely see. A significant drop in the amount of traffic to our website from email ’cause we’re not promoting the webinars, and then the next month it immediately spikes back up. 

Jeff White: The thing that I really love about that is that, and this is a great lesson for a lot of marketers who may be one lonely person, maybe two within a marketing department at certain size organizations, and you may not have additional budget for media or other things or an outside agency or any of that.

This is something that you can do without any of that. Just the people and the resource and the human resources that you have and a bit of elbow grease. You can build a webinar program and eventually even turn it into, with that vendor support inside of things that actually make money. So I think that’s something for people to consider who are maybe sitting around thinking I can’t really do anything because I can’t buy ads. Or I don’t have a program in order to hire somebody to shoot a video for me. No, you can do this yourself. 

Rachel Cossette: Exactly, and we do our webinars still to this day, just on teams.

We use Microsoft Teams and you can set up a webinar using that. Obviously Microsoft isn’t free, but if your company uses Microsoft, like most do, I would assume that tool is available to you and you can just use that to create your webinars and, we can get into the nitty gritty, or maybe that’s for a later time, but I’m like, make sure you check this box in the settings and things like this, or, do different things that I’ve learned over time. But yeah it’s been excellent for us and we continue to grow it and. It’s checked all of the boxes and we actually, when we started in 2022, I think our email list had 20 some contacts on it, and now we’re at almost 3000. So that’s with filtering out employees and competitors that attend our webinars as well, which we don’t exclude.

This isn’t anything you can’t Google, so I don’t care. If a competitor wants to attend, that’s fine. I’m just not gonna promote the next one to you. You have to go to our webinar page on our website and register for the next one. But that’s almost 3000 contacts of customers, end users, and engineering firms that we can actually work with and help and support, and that’s gonna become even more valuable.

Carman Pirie: It’s always gratifying when you see a competitor consuming some of your content. Releasing Industrial Buyer Pulse research over the last while. So a special shout out to Joe if you’re listening. Thank you for consuming our content even though you’re a competitor. I’m curious, hooking on Jeff’s inquiry a bit around resourcing or comment around. It’s something that you can do in-house and that’s certainly true. And I think you’ve proven that, Rachel, but you have said as well that you’re not shying away from saying, look, it is a lot of work.  So I guess with all that in mind. Any tips for a small, midsize manufacturer with a small, maybe one person marketing team? How ought they think about resourcing this? Can you give us some, wrap your arms around the estimated effort once you get up and running per episode, or any kind of guidance that you could give that way.

Rachel Cossette: Absolutely. First of all, find me on LinkedIn and I’ll give you the in detailed playbook. I’m not about gatekeeping, but seriously, the very first thing I would do is think about who in your company would be a good presenter. And it’s not just the most knowledgeable person. Which is what you want, but it also needs to be somebody who has some presence and can give a presentation. They don’t have to be some TED Talk person. They don’t have to be a professional speech giver. They can, you actually want them to come across as human and conversational and relax and Hey folks, we’re here to talk about this. And because it puts people at ease and they know they’re, gonna be getting what they came for.

But it’s probably going to be someone on the engineering team or one of your product managers. Or it could even be somebody in sales that’s been there a long time. Be careful with them though, ’cause you gotta put the bumper rails up for them and and be vicious about that. I would also say, be like, this is strictly educational. Make sure you manage all of the slide decks. So I have all of my people, all my presenters send me their slides and then I put them onto our slide deck because it’s our webinar program, we’ll co-brand, but it’s on our deck and I will delete out things unneeded. We don’t need your company history, we don’t need our company history, we don’t need your bio. None of that. Get straight into the content, but think about who’s going to, who are gonna be your presenters, and also, if you have vendors that you work with… Who those people might be and then just shoot ’em an email and say, Hey, I wanna put together a webinar program. Do you think that you could put together a deck for a presentation on this topic?

That would be 30 to 45 minutes long? And then I’m gonna host this on teams. It’ll be really casual. We’ll have our cameras on to so people can see your face when you’re giving the presentation. And we’ll just go through. It’ll be interactive. I always have people muted because nothing’s worse than hearing someone’s dog in the middle of a presentation or something who’s not muted.

But people can use the chat and you can just interrupt and have your questions answered as you go along. So it’s just all about the attendee, and that’s really what you wanna focus on. Find your presenter. Just get something going. It’s better to just start and make it better and make it better. That’s what I did.

Just start and then see what you get out of it, and then just keep going and share all that content on social and say, Hey, here’s our next webinar. The other thing that we did too, and this might. Depending on what your website backend looks like, maybe you could put this together yourself, maybe not.

But we have a page on our website where you can view all of our past webinar recordings and see all of our upcoming ones to register. And the past webinar recordings all pull up a form. So you have to give me your info. I wanna see who’s accessing the recordings. And, but then they’re also an excellent sales tool.

They’re great for onboarding a new sales person, so that’s a great way to get people internally involved because all of our webinars around compressed air, we put into a playlist. And oh, here’s the link to the playlist. You can learn about all the different topics that we talked about within compressed air or within vacuum or nitrogen systems, or compressed air dryers or filtration.

All of the different things. It’s oh, they’re here on a playlist, and you can see all of the things that essentially we’re an expert in without saying that. And, the possibilities are endless, 

Jeff White: Man. It was like the promise of social media in the early days. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah,  it is a great recipe for a pilot though, and recipe and encouragement, I would say.

Rachel I’m wondering how many how many webinars did you get out into the wild before you said to yourself, we really needed to make this a thing. Like how long did it take for the pilot to really take hold? If you’re gonna say, this needs to be a regular program. 

Rachel Cossette: It was almost immediate.

It was almost immediate, which is why I’d have to look back, but I think we have five maybe webinars that we did in 2022, and then I had a full program by 2023 . It’s almost immediate because, especially because your, I know my boss and ootentially, listeners, the people above you, they want to see your vendors engaged.

They want vendors talking about you and your company and being like, oh my gosh, they’re so great. I just did this webinar with them and we had this great conversation and we had 20 attendees. 50 attendees, a hundred attendees. Even if it’s a small group, it will build. It’s almost immediate and you can use that content for all sorts of things.

Carman Pirie: I think that’s very encouraging. You’ve talked about starting with an email list of 20 folks and and, five episodes in your seeing the wind in the s ails enough to invest into a a fulsome program at I think for anybody listening that’s considering it maybe take Rachel up on our offer and connect with her on LinkedIn.

Rachel Cossette: Yeah, feel free. Feel free. 

Carman Pirie: Rachel, we’re quickly coming to a close. Is there any what’s been your biggest surprise? What’s been the thing that you didn’t see coming that has happened as a result of this webinar program? 

Rachel Cossette: Biggest surprise. This might, not to toot my own horn, but I guess it’s one of a webinar program, is honestly a sure thing.

So I can’t recommend doing it enough. So I would say the surprise though, was how eager our vendors became to be involved. I get emails, so I’m in that period right now of planning. Next year we already have our calendar together roughly. But I keep on, this is why we need a month off, guys, because I keep on having to add more and more. I think we have 22, 24 webinars a year that we plan, but then there always seems to be more we need to sneak in there ’cause the topics are endless that we could do these webinars around. But all of our vendors wanna be involved. They all want the exposure too. And that’s been the biggest, pleasant surprise, I guess I didn’t, I wasn’t expecting the level of buy-in that I got, and that’s just another cherry on top. It’s been excellent. 

Jeff White: Wow. What an incredible story and success and potential option for people who maybe are struggling to find a channel that works for them. 

Carman Pirie: Absolutely. Rachel, thank you for sharing this with us today. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show. 

Rachel Cossette: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I had fun chatting with you guys about it. Hopefully, I’ve dropped seed in their minds and they’ll get something going for themselves. 

Carman Pirie: With any luck at all.

Jeff White:  Thank you.