In this episode, Bill sits down with Scott Wesemeyer, Marketing Manager at Advanced Polymer Coatings. Scott shares his journey from the golf industry into manufacturing marketing and what it means to be a marketing team of one in a highly niche B2B environment.
The conversation dives deep into account-based marketing (ABM) for the maritime and industrial sectors, the complexities of video production in marketing, and the crucial role of customer conversations in refining strategy. Scott also shares hard-earned lessons on leveraging sales teams as marketing assets and challenges faced by professionals in chemical manufacturing. Bill and Scott explore the gaps in current marketing strategies and provide valuable advice for newcomers in the field, emphasizing the need for openness to failure and continuous learning.
Scott has been with Advanced Polymer Coatings for four years, helping shape how the company connects with the marine and industrial markets. With a passion for storytelling and strategic marketing, he works to position APC’s innovative coatings—like MarineLINE® and TriFLEX™—as industry-leading solutions. Scott thrives on building relationships, creating impactful messaging, and showing customers that APC offers more than just coatings—it’s about long-term protection, service, and value.
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Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. I have a very special guest, Scott Wiesmeyer from Advanced Polymer Coatings. Scott, you've been with Advanced Polymer Coatings for a while and been with that business and the family of businesses for a number of years. So thank you for joining us today and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Scott: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So I've been with the family that owns Advanced Polymer for nearly 15 years and in my current role for about four, a little over four. We're a paint manufacturer coatings, tank linings for the industrial and marine space based in Avon, Ohio. So everything that we do is literally made cradle to gate, from R&D, we launch it here. We put it out. Everything is from Avon, Ohio. And it's been that way since 1997. Yeah, so that's kind of where we're at.
Bill: Oh wow. We're certainly seeing a resurgence of what we would say is nearshoring, onshoring, made in America, right? And you guys certainly fit right into that whole idea and keeping jobs local. And certainly we're seeing a resurgence of that. Maybe talk a little bit about that.
Scott: Right, so actually the founder, our late founder Don Keehan, and he passed now about two years ago, he was a Marine. You know, so when he created this polymer, this special polymer that he created here in this laboratory, you know, he had in mind that he had one of the greatest polymers of all time and that he was going to change the coatings industry and he did. You know, because we're a very niche space. You know, our focus is really aggressive, nasty chemicals, you know, keep everybody safe and keep transportation of goods on par. So, you know, with that in mind, you know, he started that company, he started in the aerospace industry, you know, when he got out of the military. Again, he formed Advanced Polymer Sciences. And it wasn't really a coatings company until the 90s, right? So it was more of a polymer research company. He did a lot of things for the military before he got his footing into the coating space. So again, everything, you know, real homegrown in Ohio. He was a world traveler. His wife was a world traveler and they brought their band of children. They have a lot of kids that kind of built this industry from the ground up. And we've been really fortunate to have some of the same people here on staff for 25, 30 years that really saw that business come to life.
Bill: Nice. No, that's great. When you guys are into, mean, you guys make coatings and the word coatings is a huge industry, right? Because you have everything from Sherwin Williams, whenever my wife decides to repaint a room in our house, to garage floor coatings, to, I mean, what you guys are in is heavy industrial coatings of large infrastructure. I mean, look at your website and what you guys do and what we've talked about. I mean, you're doing some big, big iron, big stuff.
Scott: Right. Yeah, we have. So our focus is basically marine, the maritime industry, and then the industrial. So we have two segmented sales teams. I would say that the marine business currently takes about 80% of our bandwidth. And then the industrial, we're kind of getting steam, releasing new products. But our focus really is on MR size tankers, product and chemical tankers. So the inside of the tanks that kind of carry those chemicals across the seas, then to things that you use every day. Between your makeup to food grade products, pesticides, things of that nature.
Bill: Nice. So let's let's talk. Let's jump into a little bit of marketing because you're talking about things that my wheels are starting to turn. So when you think about the maritime industry, that to me seems like it would be kind of an account-based marketing approach. I mean, you probably have a very small list of clients. We have, like it's like you said, it's super niche. Right. This isn't household. Find it at the local Sherwin Williams store. You know, PPG. This is very, very niche. So let's talk a little bit about that maritime industry. Few players, very consolidated. I'm sure it's a long buying cycle, very competitive. Maybe talk about that process and how you've been using your marketing program to help reinforce the sales team to help them go win that business.
Scott: Sure, that's a good question. So setting it up, I kind of like to pitch it like this for anybody that's not familiar with our space, because again, I wasn't. If you go to a trade show or if you're in a room with a thousand people, nine times out of 10, we only need to talk to 10 of them, right? So if we're talking about the marine space specifically, we probably work with… on a daily basis between 50 and 100 people. Now our target lists are a little bit bigger than that, right? So a couple hundred, but realistically, you know, the marine space is very organized, right? So you have the hierarchy of owners, charterers, pools, divisions, things of that nature. So there's certain segments of that that we have to directly target. Again, for our niche coating, you know, not everybody needs this high test, high density polymer coating. Right, it's a little bit overkill if we're being frank. So there are a certain number of clientele that do. So with that in mind, you know, when we focus and again, we tie, we marry with sales perfectly. So I get with my marine manager and I say, hey, who are you guys targeting for the next one, two, three years? So he generates that list. So it might be ships coming online. It might be people that we've worked in the past and we kind of divide and conquer from there. And then at the end of the day, we maybe have 50 people that I have to target. So my the efforts on a daily basis, monthly basis, yearly basis is how do I get in front of those people? And how do I nurture them? Because again, like you alluded to, it's a very, very long sales cycle. We kind of attribute to back when buying a car was the haggle process, not just the price you pay, right? It could be weeks to months to years before you're like, hey, I'm gonna get that car and save that $1,000. So at the end of the day, most of our contracts that we win and companies and clients that we work with, it takes years, one, three, four, five years, depending on what they have going, what they're trading, what the market looks like, the age of their vessels, things of that nature.
Bill: When you think about, okay 50 to 100 in a target audience that you're trying to nurture in an account-based marketing program, what are some of the innovative things you've tried or different things you've tried? Because this isn't gonna be done just with cold calling and like sending them an email, right? This is building relationship through marketing and sales. Is there anything you found or tried that failed? We like to discover what's missing, right, and what's worked and what hasn't and not asking for anybody's trade secrets. Like if you found the secret sauce, we're not asking for that, but just general marketing principles.
Scott: Yeah. Well, it goes for anybody that's in this kind of space. I think a lot of people can relate. Again, a smaller size company with a really niche focus. So again, we need to get the long sales cycle, how do we make it shorter? And then how do we get in front of people with, A, things that they want to digest. So going back to your comment of what has failed, right? So four years ago when I came into the company, everything was kind of run a little bit old school. So we were still heavy into print advertising. We were going to every trade show. And again, we kind of, we wanted to rip it apart. Like, you know, why, you know, why are we doing this? And it was the same answer that everybody, I think my age and around about sort of they're starting a company and you're looking from going from A to B quickly is well, we've always done it this way. You know, and that's, that's, that's not a good answer. So I think when you look at it from that perspective, it's you just look at what worked in the past and then you have to look at the landscape now. So it's a very digital era. Social media is extremely present. So and then also everybody and their brother is flooding you with things in your inbox. So the most important thing that I learned quickly is you have to have things that people want to either read, digest, and it has to be fluent. It has to be simple. It has to be on par with what they need to know and if you start to over saturate that, that's when you either lose them altogether, you know, when they opt out of your email, that's a nail in the coffin for most people. So then you have to get creative, well how do I get back in front of them? So kind of building with that notion of how we're going to scale, you know, we did build a really good book of business off of relationships, you know, relationship selling, it's a little bit different nowadays I would say because again we're fortunate to have that small book of business and those relationships but now we have younger people moving into management roles, older regimes retiring, and they have a little bit different outlook. And they're a little bit more of, okay, what are you gonna do for me? And how quick can I get from point A to point B? And how are you gonna help me? So that's kind of where we tailor all of our marketing strategies and where we play in the sandbox, as it were, as to where our advertising dollars and marketing dollars. And again, you have to be really selective.
Bill: Sure. So Scott, when you think about making sure you have something that that viewer wants, something of value, something that really, you know, rings the bell for them, what is the process you've used to kind of test and or, you know, okay, this is a list of five ideas and this is the one we're going to go with. Are you doing voice of customer research? Are you really working closely with your sales team? How are you getting the feedback? Because as a marketer, you know, you can sit in the room around the table with the Nerf ball shooting the hoops and the whiteboard. We can come up with a zillion ideas. Ideas are never the problem. It's picking the right one and or ones and testing them and then finding something that works. What has been your process that's helped you guys really refine your approach to these 50 people?
Scott: That's a huge statement right there, right? Because we all think our ideas are great.
Bill: Absolutely.
Scott: You know, I could have 50 after the meeting and say, okay, I'm ready for three years. But long story short is you should talk to your customers. We do have, we started within the past three years, I would say a really active voice of the customer type campaign with our customer care teams. And then we just talked to our customers. You know, I'm a little bit more again, party of one here. I'm getting a little bit more ingrained into the trade show scene. So again, I can just be in front of those conversations, witnessing with the sales team, listening to actual things that are coming out of your customer's mouth. And I think that's really important for everybody. Because if you're just sitting, that's the difference, right, between sitting in an office and then being on property or being to any kind of site where business is actually going down. You know, we can all be keyboard warriors and read things off a blog post and follow social media this and influencer that. But if it doesn't work for your company and your customer, you're just spinning your wheels. So, yeah, we really just kind of take it from our customer’s mouth. And again, you do have to have a couple of ideas, you do, and you have to trial them. And you have to be okay with failure, you have to be okay with taking, okay, we did this well, we didn't do this well. But at the end of the day, for us at APC, and I think for anybody that's in a smaller size company, as long as you're learning a lesson, you're falling forward. And that's important to keep with you on your journey when you're continuing through the process.
Bill: Scott, I think you hit on something really important there. What we see in the market, as we talk to a lot of people, not only through the Missing Half podcast, but through our agency, is if you have an ownership group or a leadership group that accepts failure as the first attempt in learning in marketing, you're in a winning organization. If you have an organization that the marketing team feels afraid, timid, or they're worried that they're going to get reprimanded or yelled at or have tension because that one idea didn't generate 10 million in pipeline. Well, it's winners and losers. So for you, you're in a very fortunate situation with a good group of people, good leadership, and that's a key to success. I want to pivot a little bit, Scott. So we talked about ABM, marine. Then we look at, think, my guess, and we're going to talk about this and explore it, is if we pivot to the industrial space, which is a totally different animal, maybe talk about how that's similar and different to your ABM approach in the maritime industry.
Scott: It is very similar. I would say that the maritime industry for us, right, it's very global. You know, we're in the US, most of our target customers and things like that either live in Houston or they live across the pond, as it were. So it's a little bit different with the industrial side. You know, our focus right now is a lot of the US companies. We really focus on the rail sector, isotanks, over-the-road trailers. We do a lot of business with ISO tanks in Europe. We just started kind of moving that way with rail as well. But the way that we get in front of our marine customers is just the same. We actually have a, I don't want to say it's not a bigger group of people on the industrial side, but they're a little bit more active on a weekly basis as far as where they're at in the US traveling to see customers. So again, they're on sites, they're offering inputs, they're offering help, and they're talking to their customers, and they’re talking to applicators, because again, we don't apply our coding, we just sell it, manufacture it. So we're quick to lend a helping hand of, you know, what are your goals? What do you need to do? What can you help with? This is how you do it, right? Because again, a big thing that, you know, we should just get printed on a pillow here is, you know, our coatings are only as good as the people that use them, and the people that apply them. And it's just like anything in business, right? So if you have any kind of product that you're heavily based on the success of it or failure of your consumer, you know, you really have to be at their whim saying, hey, I'm giving you the arrow to your your bow. This is how you shoot it. And this is how you reload faster. So again, we talk a lot. We go to lot of trade shows in like the rail sector and things like that. But we're really open to communication. We're really open to seeing what works for them, what doesn't. And then we're actually really quick, kudos to the team and being small, right? We can kind of pivot a little bit differently. But again, at the end of the day, it's just talking to your customers.
Bill: Sure. So Scott, you hit on something that we hear consistently and we're doing a series on chemical manufacturing to really talk to this segment and understand it better. And one of the things we're hearing consistently is something you just brought up. Chemical manufacturers make a product and then there's an end user consumer of that product. And in between there's some type of application component, right? And whether that's a distributor, whether that's install team, whatever that if it's kind of a component in a manufacturing process that's an add on. How have you, how have you approached that? Because like you have to like there's almost two steps in the process. Are you guys focusing most on the end user and driving sales that way? Or do you have to put as much time and effort into that applicator development, that dealer or distributor development to help make sure that if you sell it somewhere, there’s someone who can actually apply it properly, right?
Scott: Yeah, it's a little bit of both. But if you look at three pieces of the pie, right, users, end users, and then you have the application specialists, right, I would say they're all equal. Because it starts with us when it leaves our plant. But if the application teams or whoever's applicating it, wherever they are in the US or outside of the US, they don't know how to do it, or if they're not doing it to spec, you know, that's where the issues arise for the end users and the people that benefit from our coatings. Or any coating or any paint in general. It's just like house paint. You know what I mean? You have to, you know, before I worked here, I just used to slap house paint on the wall. I never read the back of the pail, right?
Bill: There's directions? There's directions on this?
Scott: You know, ambient temperature. Right, humidity levels. Yeah, you roll it up here, it's 85% humidity on a sunny day with your windows open and you're like, why is it peeling off the walls? You know, so again, you have to control your environment. So it's important, it's important, it's very important.
Bill: So if my wife ends up listening to this, I know she's a very big fan of my podcast. She will now know that I am aware that there are directions on the back of paint cans. So thank you, Scott, for that one.
Scott: I am so sorry.
Bill: Yeah, yeah, way to go, man. That's doing me a solid right there. Oh my gosh. Yeah, and I mean, even as something as simple, Scott, and that's a great point, as house paint. I mean, generally we all have drywall. Right. We like so we're not talking about advanced science here. Right. It's relatively simple. But then when you're talking about the things your team is doing through your distributor applicators for the end user, we're talking about unfriendly environments. We're talking about industrial scale. We're talking about all types of moving parts and pieces. And I'm sure a lot of chemistry and a lot of physics and all that science that I tried not to get on myself when I went to college, I tried to avoid that building. But that's great. So that's interesting the way you look at that. And maybe what you're seeing is while there's fewer people involved on the maritime, the complexity of the multi-step process on the industrial maybe makes it as difficult or as challenging as the maritime business, even though probably the timing is a little different.
Scott: Yeah, you're talking about a grander scale on one side, you know, these massive ships that carry a lot of volume in products, you know. I can't quote you the number of tanks in each size of a vessel, but I mean, there's multiple, you know, 10, 15, 20 plus tanks that could actually be carrying a different commodity. So, and that's kind of where, again, you're talking about multiple stories tall, okay? And then if you're looking on like the industrial side, if you're cutting a rail tank car or a hopper car or an ISO tank, it's relatively a lot smaller, right? So things could go wrong on a more grander scale in the maritime side but on that side, they're also running all this through shipyards, you know, so these are people that do this every day. They do it day in and day out on just this grand great scale, so they're accustomed to it and then we have inspectors on that side that kind of follow up but again it's just more like I wouldn't say it's apples to oranges, but it's just size based, you know, yeah.
Bill: Sure. No, that's great. What do you so one of the things we like to talk about and this is a theme we hear not only chemical manufacturing companies, but basically manufacturing and industrial companies across the Rust Belt. And it is the Department of One. Many companies have one person by job title or role who is the marketing Swiss Army knife. Right. They are the Department of One. And Scott, think we'll be sending you your badge so that you can put like Department of One badge. Maybe talk about some of the challenges of being a Department of One and how you're learning to, as you said, fail forward across this diverse spectrum of digital and traditional opportunities while also navigating the waters of the internal department that has to interact with the entire company.
Scott: Sure. First off, I would be remiss if I didn't just give a shout out to my company, to be honest with you, because again, we hit on this earlier. If you don't have that support system and you don't have that hierarchy of people that understand marketing, then your business is going to A, cycle through employees incredibly fast, or B, they're not going to get to where they ultimately want to go as fast as they want to go. So again, being super fortunate to being in that space. Being a party of one, you kind of have to just like everything you do. You know, in the grand scheme of things, think people get, and I was guilty of this when I started, I got overwhelmed because I said, wow, how am I supposed to accomplish all this in a given day and produce quality? So, you you go through the rigors of, okay, let's rip it down to the studs of like, what do our customers really need? Priority one to five, and then let's start focusing on here and you segment it. And then year over year, you start to get hip to, okay, this works, we're good here, let's put this off the plate and then you really dive into okay what's really working for us, what's getting us results? But again, if you look into the marketing space, you have product marketing, you have digital marketing and social media. That's like the three big things that I kind of hang my hat on, right? Everything else is like an ancillary thing, like, okay, if we need to do this, you know, it'll come and I'll get to it when I get to it. But realistically, if you try to focus 100% effort on all of those, you will fail. And it'll show you quickly. But again, you have to take your failures and learn from it. And if you're not, and you just say, well, you know, we didn't spend enough money on this campaign or you know, if your cop-out answer is, well, I didn't have enough time to do it. You have to make the time because we actually quickly learned and again, we'll kind of throw ourselves on the cross because it's just good. It's good information for anybody in the seat in a party of one. You know, the social media and the digital train is so fast right now and the landscape looks completely different six months to a year over year. This cycle is just, okay, the focus is here, now you have to be this, and now people are not doing this anymore six months ago. So if you don't get on the bandwagon, again, you're gonna see these failures, you're going to see lack of engagement, you're gonna see lack of content. And again, you're putting so much effort into your content, be it email marketing, social media marketing, your brand literature, anything, you have to consistently be on an updating basis. But if I look at social media, for example, right, because this is like the Easter egg. Every six months it changes. What it was good for your business last year is not good for your business now. And we've all heard it, like, people want to follow people, they don't want to follow companies anymore. 16 months ago, it was different. Everybody likes to bring up the Elon Musk and the Tesla. If you look at how many followers Elon Musk has on his social media accounts versus Tesla, I mean, he's 10X, right? Because whether you like him or not, keeping that out of the equation, he's relatable because he's a human being. You know what I mean? It's just like Nike and their executives. And this applies to anybody, Apple and their CEOs and everything. So we kind of learned that, you know, it's not as much as what we're putting out from Advanced Polymer Coatings, but it's how do you use your sales team as your ancillary salesman for your marketing squad, right? So I kind of look at, yeah, I'm a party of one, but my team is so ingrained with the sales side, it’s like those sales guys and gals, they are my ancillary team members as well. And the more I can leverage them, the more the business is profitable and the more the business brings in not only good representation of where we're going and good product knowledge and getting things out to our customers in a more faster pace. It's like a spider web, right? And I'm at the center of it. So if I can pull these levers, you know, and I think that's a use case for everybody that's in kind of this situation. Yeah.
Bill: No, I think that's great. Scott, one of the things I want to ask you about whenever you think about everything that is changing and the different like segmenting it, what do you think is the most difficult part of digital marketing to in source and execute as a party of one? And this is a tough question because I have some opinions on this matter. But I think there's some things like you said, you can put them into buckets and you can prioritize and get clarity and do really, really well. But then are there any things you see that are just a super challenge to execute with only having a department of one?
Scott: I would say email campaigns just comes top of mind. And there's a myriad of things that are a little bit more difficult when you're a party of one. With email, again, and just relating to kind of how our audience takes in information is if the content isn't correct, the engagement isn't there. So if you're not taking the time and again, resourcing from talking to your customer, right? And if you're just pumping out again, if I sit in the meeting and like, I got 20 great ideas or if I leverage AI or something like, these pop industry trends, right? If I open my Gmail, I get industry trends all day and I don't read them. So you're going to be quick to turn that audience off. And when you're looking at it from like a CRM aspect or anybody in this seat when you lose that customer, you can't add them back in. You have to wait. Either they sign back up, you know, you have the privacy laws, then when you're dealing with the EU, it's a little bit different. Who can I market to? Who can’t I market to? Right? Do I have the legal basis? You can't just get a list of people anymore. You can't buy a list and just start marketing. It doesn't work that way. But I would say the way that you tell your stories and the way that you're selling your product and you're selling yourself and your business, it has to be on par every time. And slow is fast. And fast is the killer of a lot of people because if you're not leveraging all of your arms of distribution, right? Whether it be digital media, in trade shows, speak engagements, anything, but you have to learn that if it's not correct for that given time for that audience, maybe don't put it out there. If you just look at the buckets of whatever your company is marketing on or whatever they're trying to follow, like KPIs or anything, if it's not the right time, maybe don't hit that KPI. But again, it all ties back to the management team and the owners of the company and people that are way above my pay grade, right? They want to see results, but you have to know that marketing takes time. And again, but they could see trends or they should be able to see trends of like, hey, we've been doing this for quite a long time and haven’t, it could be a year, 16 months. Then if that's the case, yeah, maybe something you're doing is not right.
Bill: Scott, I love that. And I think the level of detail you answered that with is something that you're recognizing is a tremendous challenge, whether it's the headline, whether it's the body copy, and then it's like where you send them as the final resource for the conversion or just building value and where that is in the communication funnel. We see some of our clients we're able to do a much better job with on their email. When we hit it, man, do we hit it. And you can go through many dry periods where you're not hitting it or like, let's say they have five or six target markets and with three of them, you're just like going, going. And then you get called in the meeting. Well, why in this worth target market, aren't we doing the same thing? Well, because we're not like this isn't because we're not trying hard. It isn't because we're not doing our best. It's because we have not worked together with you as a client to figure out what the messaging is that matters to these people. We have not figured out the sauce. We launched a campaign for a company a couple of weeks ago that we had been really struggling with. And all of a sudden we hit gold. It just skyrocketed. Now that was on the ad side, but we had been working on it for four or five months. And I loved the question I got from the VP. It was like, well, yeah, let's do that for all the other campaigns. I was like, okay, great. I'll write that down. Let me write that to do down. I just hadn't thought of that. I wasn't even trying. We weren’t trying in that other space. That's a great idea. Let's try. Yes.
Scott: Yeah, it's not lack of effort, right? You know, and sometimes you have to be honest with yourself and I I'm more honest than most and it usually my management laughs at me because they're like you're so quick to nail yourself to the cross, you know, I'm like, hey, like this was just a happenstance happy accident because sometimes and again, we just like how my brain works is I don't like to focus on vanity metrics because you can always game the system, right? You have a management team or if you have expectations from higher up or a board of directors, whatever you're answering to and they're like, hey, we need to increase our open rates. I can make the most spammy headlines to get people to open them, but if they're the bounce rate’s 100%, you know what I mean? Down the road, you still have to answer to that. You know, it might get you by for a month, you know, so yeah. Right.
Bill: Free Super Bowl tickets, right? Click, click, click. my gosh, that's so funny.
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Bill: So Scott, one of the other things we hear consistently, and I'd like to get your feedback on this, is that video is also one of the most difficult things for manufacturers and in the industrial space to deal with because one, it's such a big word. Like oh yeah, video, we'll get on that. Let's write that on the to-do list and we're just gonna execute. And video means so many things. It has to be used so many ways in so many channels and have so many different messages. It's not just like the one three minute intro video about your company. There's interviews, there's testimonials, there's product video. I think there's a list of 60 common videos we recommend for manufacturers, right? What's your feedback on video in marketing and how challenging that is or isn't. And if you’ve figured it out, like we're gonna, we're just gonna, I'm gonna shut up and you're just gonna talk. And this episode will go viral in the industrial manufacturing space. I’ll have clients rolling in saying, Bill, can you and Scott come and like do like a big, yes, we will. Yes, we will.
Scott: Yeah, we'll do clinics. Yeah. Well, I don't have that answer. And you've struck a nerve. This is the biggest pain point that I'm currently dealing with. Because again, if we talk about the landscape over everything is 16 plus months ago, it was carousel ads and carousel features and PDF downloads were still OK. We still are. Don't get me wrong. But now with TikTok and Instagram and whatever, which don't relate to our business, but just in general. People want fast, they want cute, they want funny, they want shareable, they want something that grabs their attention, they can move on with their day, and that's video. So that laundry list that you talked about, right? So some of them are easier to create than others. You can do a lot of things with stock videos and make it tied to your business. That's great, but when you start taking it of, okay, I need to, my success is gonna revolve around another person and how they act on camera because this isn't easy to do for a lot of people. To sit here with a camera pointed in your face, knowing that people are gonna watch you, they just clam up. And I've seen it, I've unfortunately seen it. We've started to do some testimonials and trying to get some of our customers and stuff like that and it's really, really hard because we can have a conversation like we're having right now and they could spew me this, that, and the other and it's beautiful. I’m like, oh my God, if I could just get that on camera. And then I go, bloop, red button on and it's like they forget their name.
Bill: Yeah, it's deer in the headlight.
Scott: So again, it's a lot of it. It's it's it's people have to be comfortable. So it's a lot of moving parts that are out your control and you have to be a good coach at that point and some people aren't coachable. It's just it's just a hard truth. So that's like the biggest headache now and then also it's time. You know, so like in our industry, if I want to go to a rail shop, I have to leave Ohio and I have to go to a different state. So there's travel, there's hotel, there's airplanes, there's time away from family, there's time away from other resources and things that I need to be doing. So it's a commitment, right? Monetarily, time, it kicks everything down the road a little bit. So your timeframes for completions on projects get longer. Okay. So, and if I go, is my camera equipment correct? When I'm shooting it, I started with a GoPro and a camera, because they tell you, hey, this new iPhone, really nice. But you get there and you're like, what is this? It's terrible. And then you see, you get down this rabbit hole of YouTube videos, and people on LinkedIn, they're like, oh, you have to have this set up. Nope, you have to have this set up. It's really what the style of video that you want your company feel to be, just choose it. Whatever ties in your brand, and then learn from there. But again, it's still, it's hard to get all these panning videos. I shot a video, I went down to Texas and I shot a video and I brought it back to my management team and they're like, this is like guerrilla marketing. It's great, but it's so fast paced because I was so used to seeing these great Nike commercials and things that I was interested in and I'm like, wanna recreate that. And I just like, I wanted to throw up because I was like, there's so many panning shots and you know it had to be 4k and it was just, you know. But I mean all that to say it is a really really tough but it is the landscape that we're in and this is gonna be forever this isn't gonna change there'll be something next that's even better than this but it's it's the fastest way to get your customers what they want because they can listen to a 15 second commercial that you put out there and get a lot of information. Because you can't really get emotion and you can't really tie in a lot of things through like an image with, I know an image is worth a thousand words, but like if you want to really tie into like maybe a feature and benefits, you can do that in 10 seconds in the video, but it has to be shot correctly to land.
Bill: So Scott, you hit on a number of things and I think one of the, there's a myth in the market and you hit on it on one of them. Yeah, just buy a camera and go shoot it. I made this mistake early on in our agency career when we were trying to get into video and I bought the cameras. We had four GoPros and we had, we had all this, like we had all different types of cameras. And one of the things I learned from that is just because you can click the button doesn't mean that you can compose a shot. Doesn't mean that you can pan B-roll, doesn't mean that you can get good coverage of a scenario. So number one, there is a need to use professionals who run those cameras because they, the difference is night and day. I mean, it's just insane. The other thing we found is script writing and working like voice of customer research in advance to prepare people for interviews is so critical. Not that we're asking them to deliver a line. But just to give them talking points and give them like a frame. Hey, these are the questions you're going to be asked. And these are the things we're going to talk about. Here's a trick or a tip that you might be able to use. And you hit on it and you, might be so close to you you can't see it. If you sit somebody in front of a camera and they're looking at the camera and you ask them a question and then they're going to freeze. We have set up a program. We've done this so many times. You can replicate this. Set it up like a podcast. Sit there across from, do you know who Zach Galifianakis is Between Two Ferns? Like, and I'm not making any comments about the content or just the way that is organized. Set it up so that then you have multiple cameras on that space so that, you you're here and the interview candidate is here and you just get into a conversation. It generally takes five to seven minutes of warmup in a conversation. And then you jump right into, so Scott, you know, we've been sitting here talking and, know, so tell me about like really what's different about Advanced Polymer Coatings. And that personal, just like at some point in time, they'll forget the camera’s there and talk to you. And that's acceptable. Whereas like I've seen really, really talented people. As soon as you point that camera on them and it's just them and the camera. I don't know if they're envisioning like that, the, you know, the nightmare that they were, you know, they're all of a sudden in their grade school classroom without pants on or whatever, but they are just so self-conscious. It's ridiculous. So, um, yeah. And I think the other thing you hit on with video that's such a barrier to success right now is cost. Because like you said, when you go somewhere, it's a very expensive, the way we've seen to address that, there's a couple of things. Number one, if it's remote, find a local videographer that we can hire. I think we did like 37 remote shoots last year. So we would send a videographer so that you're not spending as much money on the travel. Right. Just find one local. The other thing is we are a huge believer in long days. So we did a content create session where we took in a big podcast like an interview rig and we did 14 interviews in a row. And it was just like stack on one on top of the other. Now, is that a big disruption to the business? Yes, for one day, but only one person one hour at a time. Not the entire, you know, you don't need the whole boardroom sitting there watching each other. In fact, we recommend that nobody else is there except for the, you know, the host. So that's a way we've been able to in one day, really get a lot of interviews and then you ask parallel questions. So if we ask the same question, let's say it's quality. Hey Scott, could you tell us about quality? And then Fred comes in and then Sally and then Joe comes in. Then you get enough conversations about quality and then ask them, well how does quality pertain to your business? Well, for Scott, it's about marketing and communicating quality. And for Sally, she's in quality control and she has to like do chemistry or whatever those folks do that is way above my head. So that's just for whatever that's worth, that's what we've seen, but I love that take on email being a challenge. And certainly we are developing consensus in the market that the pivot to video is very, very challenging right now. There's no two ways about it. Scott, if we pivot towards maybe like some big picture items in chemical manufacturing, what do you see as maybe some industry gaps, more broadly in the industry when you look at your competitors and even non competitors, just people in the chemical manufacturing space? What do you see as gaps in marketing programs that may be beyond what we've talked about? Or maybe what we've talked about is really where you see the gaps and what other people are doing.
Scott: I would say like the biggest gaps, it all depends on the size of your company. Because to me, when I hear the word gap, it's okay, you're filling a void that somebody might that's 10x your size or more, they have more people, they can do it faster. So that's where gaps kind of get closed. So that's like, that's where my head goes initially. And again, it revolves around anything. It's space and time, right? How much time do you have in a day, week, month, calendar year? And what can you get done and then what is most important to where you want to go? So when you're smaller, you have to make concessions. And if you don't realize that or your management or anybody else doesn't, then you guys are going to have a tough time trying to be all to everyone. And it's just the state of how it is. But if you have a marketing team of 30 people or 10 people, think about because you've always said you start off as a party of one at one point in your life as well. So think about what you can get done with a party of one and just multiply that to two or three, that's quite a lot. But when you're talking about these large cap companies with parties of 15, 30 plus, and then also if you're outsourcing some. Because a big thing to me when I go talk to people is I'm just curious. I want to learn. I want to ask questions to see what other people are doing because I want to be better and I want to make my time more efficient. And one of the big companies of the trade show I talked to, I'll never forget it. I said, hey, I always see your trade shows, your booth’s always set up. Everything looks perfect every single time. Your collateral is always set out the same time, same place everywhere I go and I see you five times a year. And they go, it's great. We outsourced this. And I just show up and it's already here. And then also, I don't even have to tear this down. This company.
Bill: Sure they just walk away.
Scott: Right, so that's a big thing as well because like the logistics behind shipping things and then moving things around and making sure they get on time, if you can depend on somebody else that's not making your time because planning event is a different side of it because when you're talking about doing now customer events, now you have to take on the planning and you have to talk to other people and things change, right? The gaps, when I think about that, that's kind where I think of gaps is when space and time allude you and how many people do you have on the team? So that's kind of where my mind goes.
Bill: Sure. No, I love that. And I think you hit on something there. You either have to accept the limitation or you have to apply resources or leverage or a combination of resources and leverage to get outsized results. One of the things I think that is happening in the marketplace with technology, tools, people now AI is that there has never been an opportunity as much as there is now for smaller and mid-sized companies to catch up. If we rewind seven to 10 years ago and you saw that amazing Fortune 500 company that has the outsourced booth and has like all the stuff, they were spending 20, 30, 40X what a small mid-sized, medium-sized manufacturer was spending. I believe now that with a department of one, some clarity and prioritization, a little bit of outsource resourcing and leverage, that gap has closed tremendously. We're not looking at 40X differential. It's still a differential, right? There's still a gap, but we can catch up quicker and we don't have to be 40 steps behind. We can maybe only be 10 steps behind, which if you have a hundred million dollar company and you're competing with a $12 billion company, you are always going to not be at the same level. Unless the hundred million dollar company wants to spend their entire revenue stream on marketing, that's never going to catch up. So no, I think that's great. Another question I like to ask, Scott, is what advice would you give other marketing professionals in your space? So in like manufacturing marketing, and especially maybe some of these younger folks who are just starting out, it's their first, they just got thrown to the wolves. Hey, you're going to be the marketing person. And yeah, we've never done this before. Go, go grow revenue. Yeah. Give us 10 million in pipeline in six months. Cause none of us have ever heard that. No unrealistic expectations. Right. It's just.
Scott: Yeah, and if you hear that run, you know, that's not.
Bill: Yeah. Don't take the job. That's the hot take.
Scott: That is it, end scene, that's it.
Bill: Yeah, I love that. But yeah, is there any advice because like some of these people will have to take the job because they need the job and can't just, you know, they have put food on the table. We get it. The first job may not be the right job. What advice would you have for these folks? That's awesome.
Scott: It's a really good question. It's actually what I'm seeing right now, right, because we've got the nod to kind of grow to my party of two, right? So going through the interview process, we're kind of focusing on a specialist role. And that's what a lot of people are going to be focused on. Or more or less, if you're in like a smaller size company, what's your specialty? What do you want to do for the next three to five years? And asking a person with maybe internship-only experience, they're like, I just want to work. And sometimes that's one of the best answers. But biggest thing that I could say, and honestly the biggest thing that made me as successful as I am in the short time in my career, be open to failure and be open to accepting new ideas because we've all heard this the adage on whatever social media or whatever you follow, growth is the fear you know, of doing things. You know, if you're afraid to look silly or if you're afraid that, I'm gonna, I'm not good at this, just do it. Because you're gonna learn so much more from that experience and you're only gonna get better. And that's the biggest thing. And honestly, it held me back when I started because again, you know, I kind of came from a different space. You know, I was in a different industry. When I moved into coatings and linings and they're talking about substrates, in my head, I'm like, well, that's just the steel. You know, they made all these fancy names for things, right? So, and that's kind of shocking for, you know, a younger person or somebody getting into a new role. You know, be okay with getting uncomfortable because that's where growth happens. And the more that you can learn from it, and it's, and again, if you do have a support system around you, a good manager, good team, a good co-worker base and a good family that you can kind of rely on. I mean, your possibilities are endless, but yeah, you're gonna have to sift through a lot of stuff to get, but it'll only thicken up your skin, you know? But growth is the big key there. Just always think about growth, think about getting uncomfortable and get very comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Bill: Well and Scott, I think this is a great advice and let's let's qualify that advice and provide some like a background for that because I know that you did not go to a business school for marketing and focus on that in your early career. So this isn't like some pie in the sky pithy statement. I mean, you you went from where you were to jumping into this role like kind of like jump. And then you looked and saw what was coming up at your feet very rapidly. So maybe take a minute to provide that context for our listeners.
Scott: Sure, yeah, that's a great question. More near and dear to my heart, right? So again, so I've been with the company on some degree over the family that runs the company 15 years. So what does that really mean? Right. So 10 of those years or 11 of those years, I was actually operating in the golf industry and the business space of the golf industry. So my background is, you know, I have a business degree, but it's in golf management, golf systems management, golf professionals. So I kind of cut my teeth operating golf courses, operating teams, operating facilities. And then I kind of moved into the teaching aspect of it. And then I where, I, you know, the first five or six years of my career, I kind of landed like, Hey, I like people. I like working with people. I like managing teams and I like seeing outcomes. So that's kind of where the last, you know, six or seven years have been was I was actually a general manager of a golf course, the entire property, food and beverage of the restaurant, all staff, about 65 plus people, you know, Northeast Ohio, it's very limited. So again, that's another thing that you have to look at, so how do you get as much revenue and people, you know, butts in the seats for six to eight months of good weather? So coming from that and then the transition into marketing, I always had to market myself. I always had to, I took marketing classes in college. It wasn't a specialized degree, but I always knew that I was a salesman and a marketer at heart because every time somebody would come to my golf course, I would want them to treat like an experience. So I'd have to sell myself, I'd have to sell my staff that they're coming to witness an experience for five hours. So you get comfortable with people. Marketing is no different. So when I took the job here and got my first office job, very big boy, right, it was a family move, right? So there's a lot of time commitment. So I made the decision with my wife you know we had a kid and I said hey I want to spend more time at home. So I got the seat here and again was super uncomfortable and again if you're interning or if you're fresh out of college again your first job is going to be uncomfortable. And again, it's okay. But coming from the background of not having that specialized degree, if you know that every room that you walk into, you have to sell yourself and you have to get people to buy into yourself. If you get really good at that, you can sell anything. You can sell a product, you can sell a service. But where you have to learn is building something else, building a brand, building a following. That takes a lot more time.
Bill: So Scott, think you've also uncovered another like myth or something that's missing, which is the perspective on the golf industry. So my full disclosure, my family used to own the John Deere franchise for golf equipment in a large portion of United States. And I always thought, oh yeah, these guys want to be golf pros. Like work in the golf industry, like that's gotta be like a great life. It's super easy, easy hours. It's not demanding. And then when we got into the golf business and met these poor souls who like, so I remember the open was in Pittsburgh, right? At Oakmont. And we had teams down there supporting the open. And they got there at like two o'clock in the morning and they left it like, I was like, why are we leaving? Like we're leaving at 12:30 and coming back at 2:30. Why don't we just like roll out a cot and just sleep here? Because let's be honest guys, but it is a miserable, I mean, it's awesome and it's great, but I mean, it is a hard, hard life. Scott, completely understand why you and your wife decided to make that pivot because if not 18 years later at graduation, you'd have been waving at a stranger. Because you would have never been home and I completely respect that. I mean, I have five children of my own and I try to spend as much time as I can with them. They don't appreciate that all the time, but I enjoy it as much as I can. So, no, that's great. Well, Scott, one of the things I've really enjoyed about this conversation is just your absolute candor. Sometimes we have guests who are very guarded and I feel like this conversation has just been like really laid bare and completely completely honest about challenges, about things that have gone well and perspective. Because I think as I'm getting a little older, I'm you know more older than you, but as my children, my eldest is in college, my second oldest is going to college next year. I start to think about this career advice and really trying to help prepare them for the sharp barbs of the world. And I think when you talk about failure, specifically when I was younger, that wasn't really something that we embraced as a concept, you know, in the eighties and nineties, that was like, you don't want to fail. You want to be a winner. And I think it's the opposite. You want to fail as much as possible. Cause that's what produces wins. Is, is learning to deal with, you know, the first attempt in learning and multiple times and going through that process. So I really love that candor. And I think that's been really helpful and especially to some of our younger listeners who are just getting into that department of one moment, maybe will reduce the fear and they'll be able to accelerate their careers a little faster.
Scott: Yeah, enjoy the ride. It's very, it's fulfilling. But again, you do have to put in the work. I'm not gonna lie to you, it's not sunshine and rainbows, there's hard discussions, there's things that you have to take to your management or whoever you're working for and say, like, you know I failed here, or hey, you know, I thought this was a good idea and I actually pulled some data and ran it and it just, it was a big miss. And unfortunately, you know, when you talk about the hard truth of the world, right? And unfortunately, a lot of people aren't gonna be in that surrounding, but if you can find yourself in it, you're lucky, but if you can't, you're not unlucky because if you have enough drive and enough self-awareness to know that the best people or the most successful people in the world, entrepreneurs, whoever you may be, people look at these people like they're icons. You know, the Gary Vees of the world that come from nothing and you know, you're laughing because I know you're talking about, but I watch those guys. I like content because they're not just spewing inspirational stuff. They've been there and they're giving that raw feedback. And what you do with it is up to you. You can save quotes on your phone. You can save things for later. If you're a marketer, you have 87 tabs open right now because you're borrowing content ideas and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, do the work. You are going to fail, but accept it because there will be good things that come out of it. I promise you.
Bill: No, I love that. And I think one of things we have to do a better job in this industry, and this is probably a marketing industry gap, is we need to be more honest, more quickly with every conversation. Whenever I'm starting with a new client and we're on an engagement, I'm just brutally honest about a couple of things. I'm like, yeah, all this isn't gonna work. Like if we do 10 things, if three of them are awesome and three of them are okay and four of them fall flat on their face, we need to celebrate. We need not to be like, those six were awesome, but man, we're really going to focus hard on these four bad. No, like we got to look at the collective effort and always want to be better, always want to improve. But we have to accept the fact that some of these things aren't going to work. And there's reasons for that. It's not for lack of effort. I think a lot of it is what you alluded to early in the conversation. Every six months it changes. There's so many and, you know, the biggest shift. I thought the biggest shift I would see in my career was the shift to digital. That is not true. AI is going to be the biggest shift I see. Yeah, there's no question about it. Nobody knows what it means. Nobody has any clue. So, well, Scott, this has just been an absolutely fascinating conversation, actually inspiring to me. I love having these conversations where I find kind of like a kindred soul. And let me, let me ask a couple of things. We're already in an hour. We could probably go two or three, cause I feel like we're just getting started. So looking ahead, what, what's, what do you see as the next big things for you and your company? Like, Hey, this is what we're going to be focusing once again, not looking for the secret recipe to Colonel Sanders, but like generally speaking and marketing, what do you see as the next steps and the things you're going to be focusing on that you feel are the highest priorities to help move your company forward?
Scott: That's a good question. And again, like even everything we alluded to, like you brought up a good point that's still resonating with when you said it is like, everybody's afraid of being open and honest. It's not like I'm telling anybody the secret sauce of how we're gonna get to where we need to be. It's just being a human being, knowing, and you talked about like telling your clients, right? That, hey, all these are gonna fail or whatever. You would have done them a disservice for not saying that. You know, so I applaud you and I applaud anybody that's doing that. But to answer your question, realistically in the future, again, highly leveraging video and getting more proficient on it. And then also keeping an eye out for what's next. You know you did mention AI. I don't really know how much AI is going to directly affect our industry per se over the next year. But for my seat, it already has, you know, all the AI programs out there. And if you're not leveraging them or dipping your toe in the water to get familiar with them, you know, they're a good resource for speed. They're not correct most of the time, but you can, you need that sounding board because again, if you think creative is easy, get out. That's the hardest thing is say, hey, I want five videos by the end of whatever. OK, let me clear my schedule because I'm thinking about it for 24 hours in a day. But if I can use that as a sounding board, it's only going to make my speed and my proficiency and efficiency for my department a lot better. So that's kind of something that I'll keep an ear on. But really, just keep doing what we're doing because we've seen a lot of good success year over year just doing simple things and talking to our customers.
Bill: Scott, thank you so much. Once again, your candor is refreshing and some of your takes and just your perspective. I can kind of see that golf, athletic, competitive approach to some of these things here, right? And I love that. And just like that self-improvement approach, just so refreshing. Scott, I want to give you an opportunity as we do with everyone to promote yourself. Where we can find you and also your company. All of this will be listed in the footers of wherever this is posted on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, but go ahead and verbally give that to us so you can kind of walk us through where they can find you and your company.
Scott: Yeah, so I'm predominantly just on LinkedIn. That's really the only space that we use or see benefit for our company. Scott Wesemeyer on LinkedIn. You can connect with me send me a connection, you know happy to talk with anybody bounce ideas, this that or the other. Advanced Polymer, adv-polymer.com is our website and we are on LinkedIn as well, Advanced Polymer Coatings. So yeah, connect with us send us an invite, you know open a dialogue. We're always here I'm always here. So happy to help.
Bill: Scott, thank you so much once again. Really appreciate you joining the show.
Scott: Yeah, it's pleasure. Thank you, Bill.