Manufacturing eCommerce Success
Manufacturing eCommerce Success with hosts Curt Anderson and Damon Pistulka dives into interviews with industry leaders and professionals that provide insights into various aspects of Manufacturing eCommerce and inspiring entrepreneurial stories.
Manufacturing eCommerce Success
Episode 110: Industrial Marketing Summit Preview: A.I Solutions with Dale B.ertrand
Are you still chasing SEO traffic that doesn’t convert?
If so, join us for this MFG eCommerce Success show to hear Dale Bertrand, Founder of Fire&Spark, share how AI is reshaping search and what manufacturers must do to stay ahead.
Dale has helped brands recover millions in lost revenue due to broken SEO strategies and site redesigns. He’s a sought-after speaker on AI, SEO, and the future of search, showing businesses how to ditch outdated tactics and turn SEO into a revenue engine.
At Fire&Spark, Dale and his team focus on intent over keywords, experimentation over guesswork, and brand-building over chasing rankings. Their strategies help manufacturers dominate AI-driven search results and convert visitors into buyers.
The Industrial Marketing Summit is the premier gathering for industrial marketers—organized by the teams at Gorilla 76 and TREW Marketing. Scheduled for February 26-28, 2025, in Austin, Texas, it brings together innovative marketers in engineering, manufacturing, and technical industries to connect with peers, enhance programs, advance careers, and grow businesses. Don't miss this opportunity to hear from a leading voice in manufacturing marketing.
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Hey Damon, what's happening, dude? Oh, we've got a special Wednesday edition of the new show man.
Dale Bertrand :is this special or what? So hey, we are here. We're talking about how do you stop being the best kept secret? And I'll tell you, this guy is no best kept secret whatsoever. So, dale Bertrand, how are you, dude? Happy Wednesday. What's happening?
Damon Pistulka :Well, I'm happy to be back, so I'm glad I got the invite. I remember we had some spicy conversation last time and somehow I got invited back, so I'm excited so you know what I talked to mom and you know we were hello.
Dale Bertrand :She was like hey, could you have Dale back on the show? I said absolutely anything for you, and so here we are. So you know, thank your mom, how's that? So all right there we go.
Damon Pistulka :Yeah, so I know she, she are, so you know. Thank your mom, how's that? So All right, there we go.
Dale Bertrand :Yeah, so I know she. She did some begging but you know it worked out. Yeah, so you know so that it's always about the mom. You know it's always about the mom. So I we've got a ton to unpack, lots of uncover, and I'll tell you, since last time and, as you mentioned, repeat offender but founder CEO, extraordinaire Fire and Spark we're going to talk about what you're doing. You have a bunch of speaking gigs coming up. Can't wait. I'm going to be in the front row seat watching you do a keynote at the Industrial Marketing Summit that's going to be coming up at the end of this month. But just for folks out there that are not familiar with Dale, just give us a little background. I know you've been doing AI for what? Like a good two or three months now. Is that right?
Damon Pistulka :Well, a little bit longer than that, but so my very, very quick background. I have an engineering background, so I studied engineering in school. I started my career working in electronics manufacturing with paradigm testers and I also, in grad school, studied AI. So I was working on computer vision research for manufacturing and medical applications. So that was in grad school. The technology was different back then, but it was fun. If you fast forward to today, now I work in marketing, so now I run Fire and Spark. We're an agency. We're 25 people in Boston. We focus on SEO and search strategy. We only do SEO, so we don't pretend to be world-class at anything else. So we're really focused on how search marketing is changing, how Google is changing with generative AI and how consumer like search behavior is changing. Like the customers you're going after are searching for information differently and that matters.
Dale Bertrand :So, all right, man, I got so much to uncover because, dale, I bet you, I bring your name up like every week. Well, all right, man, I got so much to uncover because, dale, I bet you, I bring your name up like every week. Well, dale says well, dale says this. Well, I learned this from Dale. So we're going to, we're going to dive deep. So, man, everybody out there, get your, get your fingers ready to type or, if you're a pen person, start taking notes, because this is going to be a wonderful masterclass on AI. Now, damon, I you know I'm always the dumbest guy in the room. Now, dale, I think, are you Brown? Did you go to Brown, aren't you?
Curt Anderson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, undergrad.
Dale Bertrand :Undergrad Brown. So we've got an Ivy Leaguer in the house. It's such a privilege. Talk a little bit about AI. What were you doing at Brown as a graduate student? What were you doing with?
Damon Pistulka :AI back then. So back then, I mean, I was in the engineering department and there was also an AI lab in the CS department, so we were kind of bouncing back and forth, but primarily the work that I was doing was in the computer vision lab in the engineering department. So what we were focused on was these dedicated algorithms for vision. So what it was really doing was building these big databases of objects and then taking pictures of things. For the military applications, it was taking pictures of airplanes that were flying overhead and it would identify them based on the shape of the objects in the images by looking in these database of, like you know, thousands and thousands of objects that we had in the database. So there were military applications, healthcare applications and then some more consumer applications.
Damon Pistulka :But for the military, it was really taking pictures of airplanes flying overhead and identifying them as friend or foe, so you can imagine where that goes overhead, and identifying them as friend or foe, so you can imagine where that goes. It's like shoot it down or don't shoot it down. So that's what we were working on. But these were dedicated algorithms. The folks in the CS department were working on neural networks, which ended up being the foundation of the AI technology that we're all using today. With generative AI, we were working on dedicated algorithms that were very, very specific without getting into the technical details for computer vision, decomposing shape into matrices so you could do like matrix multiplication and matrix operations on the shapes, and that technology lost to the neural networks like the deep learning algorithms that we use today, because that was 20, 25 years ago.
Dale Bertrand :Right, did you so? Goofy question for you were you following AI like the past 20 years? Were you kind of keeping in the loop? Did you see what was on the horizon or like what was kind of your AI?
Damon Pistulka :I would say yes and no. I mean, my claim to fame is that I did my first conference talk on AI before chat GPT, and that's usually what people want to know, you know. So inbound conference before, before chat GPT. So that is important because we've had we've had usable AI in the marketing space for many years now I go to the Marketing AI Conference and I know that the Marketing AI Institute was founded seven or eight years ago, way before ChatGPT, because their founders saw AI coming and with image recognition and content generation, all of that that's actually been around for a while predictive and generative AI for marketing.
Dale Bertrand :Yeah, excellent. Okay, let's dive into Fire and Spark. I'm going to pull up your website. Give us a little background. What I absolutely love is how you, nick, know your superpower is. With your opening. You're like you know what we do SEO. We don't do all the things you know. If somebody needs Facebook ads, you're not the guy. If somebody needs, you know everything else, right? Video like. You're really rocking and rolling SEO For entrepreneurs out there and I'm talking to myself, so maybe asking for a friend type of thing right? Suffer from that shiny object syndrome. How have you done such a great job to stay so laser focused in your lane on SEO without deviating into like the shiny object? How have you been so?
Damon Pistulka :successful with that opportunity, because we all know our customers are searching for solutions to their problems and we want them to find our solutions in the in the form of, like, our products, our services, like. That's always going to be true, regardless of how search technology changes. So, because there's such a huge opportunity and there always will be a huge opportunity um, there's, it's worthy of focus, right, but also it's changing quickly, like I thought it was changing fast five years ago, when you know, when, when YouTube was becoming a thing, amazon was really starting to grow and become a search platform of its own, but now we have generative AI, like full stop. It's so much is changing. So you asked me like, how were we able to stay focused on SEO? The reason why is because it's such a big opportunity, and it will continue to be, and there's so much to learn to get it right that you know it's we're not going to get distracted.
Dale Bertrand :Yeah, I love it. So, all right, let's take a peek at your. Can you guys see my screen? Yes, Excellent, okay. So I love, love this tagline right here. So we've got igniting growth through purpose and possibilities and my favorite words right there. So just walk us through. A little bit about Fire and Spark, how you guys make the world a better place. Let's talk about your team. Don't be humble, don't be modest. I'll just share a little bit of what's going on at Fire and Spark.
Damon Pistulka :Well, I guess the not humble explanation. We don't focus on ranking, so I guess it really comes down to like my agency is my response to an industry that doesn't serve clients very well. So you can imagine working with an SEO agency that you pay them a bunch of money, they got you on a rigid retainer, you're forking over the money every single month and you're just not getting the results that you need. There's often a disconnect where your agency gets excited when you rank number one for something Like you've got these rankings, or they get excited when you get traffic to your website. But as a business owner or a marketer responsible for a brand or a product line, you know that that traffic and rankings is not translating into the business impact that you need, which is like revenue and customer acquisition Full stop, like I need new customers, I don't need rankings. So the rankings and traffic are important when they're the right rankings, when it's the right traffic.
Damon Pistulka :So really, the first thing that we did with our agency is we're reporting on conversions and revenue and then, to a lesser extent, you know, here are the rankings that are going to get us there.
Damon Pistulka :Here's the traffic that's going to get us there. Here's the traffic that's going to get us there. So when we start working with a new client, we need to make sure that they have the analytics where we can see revenue from organic purchases or we can see organically generated leads and the revenue that we're creating when those close. What is the lifetime value of the organic leads that we're generating so that we're creating when those close, what is the lifetime value of the organic leads that we're generating so that we're optimizing for organic revenue and customers, not just rankings, which isn't going to get you there at the end of the day. So there's a lot on the website case studies related to everything that I'm saying, but that's really the core philosophy is that SEO is a tool that grows your business, and you would be surprised how most SEO agencies think SEO is a tool to achieve rankings.
Dale Bertrand :Boy, that's a. That's a powerful distinction. Yeah, I love what you're saying here. Let's give a little shout out. Talk a little bit about you know people do business with people. You've got 25 strong. I'm sure you've had a number of people with you for a long time. Just talk a little bit about when somebody engages with you, you know. Talk about some of your teammates and how awesome they are. Let's let's hear a little bit about what's going on underneath the hood.
Damon Pistulka :Yeah, I mean so I've you. You know about my background. I mean we've got folks on the teams that have worked with some big brands. Either they were in-house at a big brand or they've worked at some agencies where they were able to work with a number of big brands and understand the difference between how the brands operate, the different markets, different tactics and, importantly, how SEO integrates with your activities, your marketing activities on your other channels.
Damon Pistulka :Because a big part of what we're doing is not only making sure that organic is driving revenue and customers, but making sure that organic integrates as a force multiplier with your other channels. So you can imagine, if you put a dollar into online advertising or you put some resources into email marketing or maybe some social media marketing activities, you want to make sure that your organic is multiplying the returns you're going to get on those other channels. And that's important because we all know as marketers that when someone buys from us typically especially in the industrial space and manufacturing they're going to touch our website or touch our brand multiple times. Maybe we meet them at a trade show, then maybe they find some information on our website a few times, maybe they call us, maybe they hit up one of our ads, maybe now they're on our email list. They get some information or case studies through our email. Those are multiple touch points before they ever actually buy something. So we need to make sure that all of those channels are working together well.
Damon Pistulka :And the mistake that a lot of marketers tend to make is that I'm investing in any one channel as a direct response channel, when most sales just don't work that way. When we're deploying SEO as a tool to grow your business, it's not just SEO as direct response, meaning somebody types in this keyword and then they swipe their credit card. Sure, we love it when that happens, but real sales in the real world don't usually happen.
Curt Anderson:Yeah, really different about the manufacturing space or the technical space right or the industrial space, because it does take these multiple points, multiple touches, information gathering, multiple people trying to gather information to really complete a sale.
Damon Pistulka :Oh, I love what you're saying there. It's even multiple people. You already said yours now is limited right, because it's still multiple stakeholders gathering information to vet your brand, vet your products, and you've got to make sure you've got consistent messaging, the right messaging across all of your channels and the right messaging for the stakeholder that you're touching, that you're speaking to at that point, because the CFO is going to need different messaging from an engineer versus the CEO of the business, but they've all. They all need to be on board with the transaction.
Dale Bertrand :I love that, dale, and so thanks for teeing that up, damon. So let's dive in here, because one of the my biggest takeaways from your keynote last year and of course you were on the show last year was, you know, search, understanding human behavior in the search intent. You know, I think like that's been a big distinction of my learning from you, know, hanging out with you, talk a little bit. Uh, if you could, you know, all right, you've got the CEO. Maybe you've got, you know, a buyer Bob or buyer Betty or whoever it is. Or maybe engineering Ernie, engineering Elsa versus executive, like from your SEO standpoint, like how are you trying to tailor that to hit those different buyer personas?
Damon Pistulka :Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because this is what I talk about. A lot. It roils me that a lot of marketers are kind of stuck in a different frame, but I do want to talk about the traditional frame for SEO. Like, the way we traditionally think about SEO is we're targeting a keyword search. So when somebody types in industrial water filtration, I want my article to show up so they could learn about industrial water filtration from me and then eventually buy something. There's so many things wrong with that. That's not the way people buy. That's not the way Google works with that. Like, that's not the way people buy. That's not the way Google works. It's just not what happens. So instead, if you think about it from the other way around which is, who am I trying to get my message in front of, who am I trying to introduce my brand to, and what are they searching for? And it's not what keywords are they typing in. It's what is their intent when they're searching online, and intents begin with a verb. So it might be something like fix my broken water filtration system or buy a new water filtration system, or they just need to get it certified, qualified or maintained for whatever application it is, or maybe there's a specific regulation that they need to make sure they're in compliance with. So it would be to get certified for regulation 5B, whatever it is. But those are all the intents. And then when you think about the different people in the organization, let's say one person who's running a particular program within the organization has an intent to buy a water filtration system. The CFO has an intent to verify the total cost of ownership, right. And then the CEO has an intent to understand what the compliance issues are going to be, or if it even satisfies the compliance issues that the CEO be, or if it even satisfies the compliance issues that the CEO understands, or something like that. Different folks within the organization. So those are all different intents. They're not keyword searches, they're not blog article topics, they're not keywords, they're intents.
Damon Pistulka :So when we're doing this customer-centric SEO, intent. So when we're doing this customer-centric SEO, we're starting with these personas like who are we trying to get our message in front of? What intents do they have when they're in market? This is like their intent when they're searching online. We can use those intents to filter keywords so that we can eventually figure out what keywords they might be typing into Google.
Damon Pistulka :But even when we have the keywords they're typing into Google, we need to make sure we're creating content that satisfies the intent, not content that has the keyword in it. That's very important, because the way Google needs to work is that if your buyer typed a keyword into Google, google would find pages that had those keywords on it, and that's the way a lot of us are practicing SEO still, but Google doesn't work that way anymore, like what Google's doing is looking at the keyword that your buyer might have typed into Google and, in addition to that, pulling in a lot more information about the context of the search. To that, pulling in a lot more information about the context of the search. What did your buyer type in the last 10, 20 searches that they did? What else does Google know about your buyer, what they clicked on the last time they searched? All of that and using it to figure out what the intent is. That's why we start with intent and Google's finding content that aligns with the intent, not necessarily the keyword, and that's the core.
Dale Bertrand :That's the big distinction. Hey, we've got a couple of comments I'm going to grab here real quick. So Rasul says AI technology makes our work easier. And my dear friend Trish, happy Wednesday. Trish. Dale has such great info. I saw him last year. He is a phenomenal resource. Trish, we totally agree.
Dale Bertrand :Again, anybody out there, drop a note, let us know that you're there. Do yourself a favor, if I could politely request. Connect with Dale on LinkedIn. I'm telling you he is an absolute powerhouse gifted speaker. We've got a couple of events that we're going to be talking about. Dale's going to be speaking at the Industrial Marketing Summit at the end of the month in Austin, texas. Dale, I cannot wait. Take us further, if you could. So for our marketing friends out there and even for myself, help us. You're making a phenomenal distinction between the keyword and the intent. What are some little tips and strategies we could share for our manufacturing friends out there? How do we take that to the next step? What do we do so now? You've given us the light bulb, the aha moment. Now what's there? How do we? How do we take that to the next step? What do we do so? Now we get that. We have the. You've given us the light bulb, the aha moment. Now, what's next? What can we do to fill that intent?
Damon Pistulka :well, break, break away from this. Like blogging, yeah, yeah, mentality right, so when you're? I just listed a whole bunch of intents that, um, different folks would have if they might be looking for, like a water filtration system. So now you need to think what is the right type of content to create for someone with that intent, and I'm really pushing my clients towards not blog articles. I want the content that we create for SEO to be content that Google's AI cannot summarize, so that we don't lose clicks to AI overviews or AI summaries. So I want that content to be interactive content or video content or comparison content Even better, data-driven content.
Damon Pistulka :But people get confused when I say data-driven content. They think data-driven content means an article with some numbers in it. That's not data-driven content. Data-driven content is like a database behind maybe a piece of content with a form in it. Maybe you're looking up statistics or part numbers or parts that are equivalent to this other part that I'm using, or parts that meet my thresholds or something like that, with some kind of interactive widget and obviously marketers are more adept at writing blog articles than they are at crafting interactive widgets on pages. But that's actually not true anymore. Markers don't realize it, because AI allows you to create these interactive tools very easily.
Damon Pistulka :So one of the slides I was working on this morning is a tool. It's actually a prompt. So it's a prompt that I basically plug into any AI tool and it spits out a quoting tool that you can put on your website. Like, we've all seen these quoting tools. Yeah, like, maybe you have a cad file or maybe it's more of a configurator, um, where you've got a configurable product. It might be a parameterized cad model behind the scenes or something, but these are quoting tools on websites that allow you to get a custom quote for a custom whatever.
Damon Pistulka :Um, we used to license these quoting tools or pay for them. There are businesses out there. Don't tell them. I said this, but there are businesses out there that sell these quoting tools. Yeah, good money doing it. Now, as marketers, we can create these interactive tools. Uh, with ai. I created one this morning with a prompt that's like this long. It's on my slide for my for one of my talks at international, at um, the industrial marketing summit. So, um, I want marketers to realize that they can do it. You don't need to know how to code. You type in the prompt, tell it what you want, you paste the the embed code that that the ad gives you into your page. You're done. Um, it's really nuts yeah okay let's impact.
Dale Bertrand :This is powerful man, so, dale, let's go here. So for the marketer out there that's listening to this, and then like hey, now you said you know, like in the past it was always blog, blog, blog, you need to blog. What you're here now and saying is, like you know, are you are you saying that they should they still keep blogging, or are you saying, like you really want to think about it?
Damon Pistulka :Here's the thing, Blogging is like a chronic disease for marketers. If you are still blogging in 2025, and if you're blogging with educational content now, there's still reasons to blog. Maybe it's more like opinion pieces or thought leadership. I mean, I still do that, but if you're writing educational content, then you might as well quit your job, drive to Google headquarters and volunteer to work for free, Because what you're doing is you're writing training materials for Google's AI Training materials for Google's AI. That's not going to get you much traffic because Google's just going to give your customers the answer on the search results pages without ever introducing them to your brand for the most part. So you do want to be creating content because, remember, we've got valuable search traffic out there. Your customers and you need customers, every business does are still searching for products and services the same products and services that you sell. So it's still very valuable traffic.
Damon Pistulka :We just want to make sure it's the right content, and the problem I have is with educational bloggers. What we do is a lot of, let's say, comparison content, comparing two products or services or maybe two different manufacturing processes If I'm working for like a service bureau that does like 3D printing or injection molding or something like that right? So you want to make sure it's the right content and it doesn't have to be interactive. It can be written content. It could be data-driven content. Some of the best content out there is based on original research or a survey that you're doing in your space. I mean that's wonderful, but that's not educational content. That you're paying an intern to research.
Dale Bertrand :All right, let's dive deeper into so. You're speaking our love language when you say configurators. We talk about that consistently on the show. We have some folks call it like a quote builder, configurator, a product builder, whatever it might be, but you're really leaning heavy into that for that search result. Is that what you're saying?
Damon Pistulka :What I'm really leaning into is AI can generate interactive tools and you no longer need a developer to help you create them. That's the message I want everybody to like sink into their brain, and 99% of marketers just haven't realized that yet. They're not sitting down when they're doing their content calendar. They're not identifying like one interactive tool a month that they're creating for their website, because they think they need a developer to do that. It's just not true anymore. So we're limited by just understanding that you don't need a developer to do interactive tools, that you just paste on your website pages, and we're also limited by our creativity. Like you know, what can you think of? Is it a pricing tool? Is it a? There's so many different. I don't want to go too far with it because, like you could personalize them.
Damon Pistulka :I have a friend in a different space where he runs events for debate teams at high schools, and every debate team at every high school has a page on their website with, basically, their schedule for the year.
Damon Pistulka :Like the other teams they're going to debate against. So what he did is he just collected all the URLs to all these pages there's like a thousand of them that he has and he created one of these interactive widgets for every single high school and created a page on his website for every single high school. And created a page on his website for every single high school, but he automated it with AI. And what that interactive tool does is it allows you, as the coach for, you know, south Bay High School in Boston to look at you know what your ranking would be nationally if you win these debates but you lose these debates. It's just a widget you can play with, but it's specific to your team, and he just generated a thousand of them with AI, based on the schedules that are publicly available on all the different websites. So not only does AI allow you to create these interactive tools without a developer, it also allows you to customize them and personalize them at an insanely granular level.
Dale Bertrand :It also allows you to customize them, and personalize them at an insanely granular level. Wow, I mean, it's just mind-blowing. Do you remember a speaker last year at IMS? Do you remember Carla Gregory, by any chance, did you?
Damon Pistulka :meet Carla.
Dale Bertrand :Yes, so Carla was on the show last year and she was actually showing us like almost exactly what you're describing. She was taking like HTML I'm sorry, google sheet code and like converting it into HTML. Like you know, she did it right on the show for us, you know, basically with like a configurator as you're describing. And we've got a question here from our dear friend, melinda Marks. Melinda, happy Wednesday. She says how about a buyer's guide? Does that help with intent?
Damon Pistulka :It's the right thing.
Damon Pistulka :So one of the things that we've done is create what we call niche buying guides, and it really depends on who we're working with.
Damon Pistulka :But you could imagine an organization that has a pretty deep product line, like lots of products that they offer. I can think of one in the consumer space that sold curtains and it's like blackout curtains and then every other kind of curtain you can imagine. So you wouldn't write a curtains buying guide. You would write a blackout curtains buying guide and then 50 other ones, right, and the reason why that helps is because it forces you, as a marketer, to really go deep into what type of information could we offer that is based on our experience, our unique perspective, our opinion on a super niche product category, and now, all of a sudden, we have unique content. Now, that doesn't protect you from Google just training its AI on it, but what it does is it makes it much, much more likely that when Google gives an AI summary at the top and we'll call that a zero-click search Google's going to cite your website as a source for that answer, which is what you want for those informational searches, excellent.
Dale Bertrand :Okay.
Damon Pistulka :And just to be super clear, the reason why you're in that scenario you're much more likely to get cited is because you've got that super niche, super unique answer or information on a super niche product category that nobody else is writing about in that level. Right.
Curt Anderson:Yeah, yeah, because I mean you could get a design guide on blah, blah blah skateboard wheels for the winter or something you know. You could get really crazy about how far you niche down with that stuff and it would position it differently, that's for sure.
Damon Pistulka :Yeah, we did. Once again, this is in the consumer space, but a while ago we did one that was what to wear on safari. So it was like high-end women's clothes that you would wear when you go on safari. It's like, wow, that's pretty darn niche.
Curt Anderson:Yeah, so well, like it's sold product and it's a product because it was the only page on the internet about what to buy when you're about to go on safari yeah, that's awesome, yeah, yeah, that's a great example, and it's a that's a total consumer product's a great example, and it's a com. That's a total consumer product too. It's not like it's necessarily an industrial thing, but it's the same products right yeah, it's not like I need safari products yes
Damon Pistulka :you know so. So, going back to like the industrial water filtration, like you know, there's thousands and thousands of different applications for water filtration, so you could imagine a buying guide for each and every one of those different applications. And that's what's hard for marketers, right? They're thinking well, I've got this one product, so I'm going to build this one buying guide for this one product, with all the strengths and benefits of my product. It's like no, you're not thinking like your customer. Your customer is thinking about their application. So what you need to be doing is writing a number of different buying guides for all of those different applications and I'm not saying I'm the only marketer to ever think of that, because we see those all the time but what I would argue is to get even more niche, because we see we see a lot of websites that are doing what I'm talking about by industry or by application. So they end up with maybe a dozen industry pages and a dozen application pages. Well, what would those industries be if you had a hundred of them? And I'll give you another example.
Damon Pistulka :I talked to a manufacturing company last night. They do contract manufacturing for 3D printing and low volume manufacturing and he was telling me 70% of his business was in automotive, so he wants to figure out all right. Well, what should we be doing for online content for automotive? And I said, well, you really need to dig deeper into automotive. Like, who are you selling to? Are these like the big car companies? Are we talking about tier one vendors, tier two vendors? Are these like electronics? Like what is it? Because we need to break that up so that we can really get niche into those different spaces, so it wouldn't just be an automotive page on his website. We would want to have 20 of them into those different niches to just really get specific.
Curt Anderson:Yeah, because if you had niched down into, you know, low volume 3D production for steering wheel component, electrical components or something like that, and or the design of or manufacturing considerations for, or, you've got a lot.
Damon Pistulka :It's. It's the process, the material, post-processing, the, the industry, the application, like there's so much you could do there and then, and all the cross products of that use. You just have to figure out the right ones like and the right ones like and the right ones. So many of us on this call like might have a more technical background, so somebody like me thinks, all right, wow, the cross product of all those things. I could create thousands of different pages and it's like, well, slow down there.
Damon Pistulka :Like, what we really want to think about is how are our customers thinking about it? Right, and our customers might be thinking and you got to talk to your customers to figure this out but our customers are probably thinking about it in terms of, like, um, they might be looking for different um, paints and finishes for automotive applications, so that's a a certain type of material for an industry, even though and that's what we would go after like, different industries, different materials and those combinations versus every combination we can think of, because those are the combinations that our customers are thinking, that were top of mind for them, that's what they're searching for.
Dale Bertrand :That's how they're searching. I absolutely love this and I'm going to pull up my buddy, Trish. So Trish gave you a shout out. She was at IMS last year and had a great time with Trish and she loved your speech. She does translation services, so just kind of an example would be like. If I'm hearing you correctly and please correct me if I'm not going the right direction here, Del instead of targeting, hey, translation services overall for manufacturers, which is great, but maybe specific languages, or niching that down, what type of manufacturers or specific languages or specific countries, is that the direction that you're going? So, yes, and and.
Damon Pistulka :Okay, please. Yes, everything you're saying will help us brainstorm ideas, Please. But the and is we need to talk to our customers to figure out which of those are good they're looking for Got it, got it Okay.
Damon Pistulka :You will hear It'll just all click when you're talking to your actual customers and some of us who are on this call today don't have access to our customers, and sometimes we talk about crimes of humanity, crimes against humanity, in the news, but a crime against marketers is not giving marketer direct access to the customer In the sense of maybe setting up some one-on-one calls or inviting marketers to sales calls, or your marketing manager needs to be at the trade show so they can have some conversations. Whatever that is, we want to make sure that, as marketers, we're not practicing digital marketing in such a way that we're hiding behind analytics and the tools that we're using are Google, ga4, and maybe SEMrush SEO dashboard, right, and it's like, okay, those are cool tools, but what happened to? Like talking to your customers? Because that's how you answer that question, correct.
Dale Bertrand :Right, yeah, god, I couldn't love that more. So, damon, for a shameless plug. That's why we love doing these LinkedIn Lives. Yes, we feel like this is a great way to AI-proof your business is create this interactive content. Like Dale said earlier, get on video, get your customers on a LinkedIn Live or a Facebook Live or whatever social media that your clients are hanging out and interview them. You know, shine a bright light on how awesome their business is, but at the same time, man, you're discovering a lot of wealth of information about your customers.
Damon Pistulka :Yeah, and I'm going to take it one step farther. If you don't mind me making a strong statement, please Like. If you're a marketer listening to this and you're at an organization where maybe you don't have access to your customers, that means you're not doing your best work and you've got to figure out how to solve that problem, hopefully you can solve that problem where you're at, but there are some cases where you need to move on because you're just not going to be able to do your best work.
Damon Pistulka :And then there are other marketers who are at an organization where they can't use AI for various reasons, sure, and that is another situation where you need to solve that problem because you don't want to wake up two, three, four years from now and, basically, the profession has moved on without you. Yeah, yeah, because when the change happened, you just happened to be somewhere where they didn't invest in that capability.
Dale Bertrand :That's a direct to Mike moment right there. So you know what. So if you don't mind, I'm going to pull our friend Melinda. She's with a company in Chicago and they do. They made in USA wonderful products it's a heavy duty outdoor power pedestal products it's a heavy duty, outdoor power pedestal. So say, like they, you go to like a Ritz hotel in a beautiful landscaping and they need outlets. And so instead of like just this wooden, you know bad outlet, it's a nice heavy duty you know industrial steel outlet that you know flips up, you can plug in that type of thing. Golf courses you know, if she were to do a buyer's guide, would we be. And again, like I'm just kind of putting you on the spot a little bit, but would she be thinking about power sources for hotels, power sources for golf courses? How niche would she want to get?
Damon Pistulka :The answer is, of course, it depends, but I would want to talk to her customers. You want to get niche our customers, yeah, yeah. Like you want to get niche, but not too. Niche is always the right answer, yeah, yeah. So you want to get niche enough that you don't have much competition? Yeah, so imagine you're niche enough that there are only a few other companies out there writing on that topic and you're going to do a better job. So you win. But it doesn't have to be zero, because then you run the risk of getting too niche.
Dale Bertrand :Yep, excellent. Hey, we've got a comment from Syed. He says AI technology simplifies our lives. I agree a hundred percent. I could keep you here all day. I know you're busy man. You're traveling all over. You've got a big gig coming up in Kentucky and I want to dive into the Industrial Marketing Summit. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to spear. I'd like to talk a little bit about just give everybody a preview of the Industrial Marketing Summit. Now I've got you right there. There's that handsome devil. So just can you give us just like a little sneak peek of like what are we going to be talking about in this one?
Damon Pistulka :You're doing two sessions. What are we talking about at this one? Yeah, so when it comes to the inbound marketing playbook, like, what's going on there is that inbound marketing, popularized by HubSpot, is all about this partnership between marketers and Google. Marketers generate a ton of educational content and Google supplies the traffic. Right, google needs the content in order to get people to search. Like, if the web didn't have tons and tons of content that was constantly being published and refreshed, the web wouldn't be that valuable and people wouldn't search and Google couldn't make advertising dollars, you know, and the founders wouldn't be billionaires, you know, a hundred times over. So inbound marketing was this partnership between marketers and Googles, but it's changing right.
Damon Pistulka :So I'm really going to be talking about the rise of inbound marketing over the last 20 years and then the fall as AI hits. But then the rebirth, and the rebirth is a beautiful thing because inbound marketing is not dead. Hubspot is still I don't know, still a I don't know a hundred billion. I don't know what they're worth, but many, many billions and they're still growing. And they're they're still growing because inbound marketing is still a thing. It's just changing, going, going forward.
Damon Pistulka :What marketers need to do is make sure that your content is cited in the AI overviews and the generative AI platforms, and we need to make sure that you're creating content that Google's AI can't summarize. Those are the content formats that I talked about, and you also need to make sure that, just like the time that we were all focused on creating as much content as possible, going forward, it's not going to be as much about content as it is about attention. So we really need to refocus on where are our customers hanging out, and that might be Google searches, it might be Reddit forums, it might be private communities, it might be in-person events, but they're still searching. We need to get in front of them wherever they're at, and we need to re, re rethink, you know, so that we're focused on intention rather than generating as much content as we possibly gosh, great, brilliant advice.
Dale Bertrand :Man. I I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to be here. Um, I want to go your your keynote speaking, the closeout, uh, let's uh on friday of the industrial marketing summit. Again, if you just join us, you're here with dale bertrand, the founder ceo of fire and spark. Uh, he's speaking at the industrial marketing summit at the end of august, end of august, end of february, in austin, texas. Can't wait to see you there, dale. What's the? What can we expect on the? So for people that like sneaking out early of the conference man, if you do, you're gonna miss that you're gonna miss, like the, the grand salami at the end.
Dale Bertrand :What are we talking about as you close it out?
Damon Pistulka :so, first of all, like um I, I like to applaud the uh organizers of the event because they put the best keynote last. And so this is. This is about, like all of the expectations that we have on us, on our shoulders as marketers, like we are expected to increase our output, to increase our results, to single-handedly grow the business Well, I guess, while everybody else kind of sits on their hands and does whatever they do, and there's just a lot of pressure to do more with less as marketers. Now, fortunately, we have new tools. We have new AI tools. We have the AI mindset, which is more important than just the tools that will allow us to be more productive and do better work going forward.
Damon Pistulka :What we've measured on our team is like a 40% productivity improvement over the last two years, applying not just AI tools and this is what's important.
Damon Pistulka :It's the AI mindset, so that you've got AI open in front of you all day.
Damon Pistulka :Every day, while you're working, you're turning to it to help you brainstorm and plan, to help you delegate, to help you remember things that you've squirreled away, to help you brainstorm when you're writing, to suggest changes to documents and emails that you're writing to help you reformat things so that you can take a screenshot and it creates a spreadsheet or a table so that you don't have to spend time on that, and that's how we at my agency were able to get a 40% improvement in productivity, which is measurable. Right, that means we can spend our time doing other things, which tends to be the things that I enjoy doing, like strategy and ideation and brainstorming with my team in front of a whiteboard, not formatting a spreadsheet or a document or copy and paste. That's like control C, control V. I used to do that, so that's what I'm talking about in terms of like, how AI and the AI mindset can help you just, you know, get more zen in your work life as a marketer. Yeah, absolutely.
Dale Bertrand :Gosh, I can't wait, man, this is going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome, you know, and you know when they say like big shoes or like you know who you follow Damon, like he's going to be following this guy right here, so that crazy bald guy right there. So we set the bar really low Dale. So there's like there's no, there's going to be no issue of like you know what You're right Dale. Yeah, like I'm going to set the bar so low, you'll blow it away at the end.
Damon Pistulka :I'm starting to rethink the whole thing. I didn't know I was going after the crazy ball guy. Nobody told me this.
Dale Bertrand :It's not in the contract. Can you get a razor dude Like can you help me out, man Like, come on shave it off and we'll be brothers. How's that?
Damon Pistulka :Well, it's Texas, so I can grab some protection while I get down there.
Dale Bertrand :That's right. So, all right, we're going to start winding down. One thing I did want to ask you is you mentioned the word you've said interactive multiple times. So we've talked about configurators like Quote Builder. The intent what are any tips, advice? Do you have a social strategy? When you say interactive, are we talking user-generated content, you know? Are we talking LinkedIn content, videos, like? What are some tips that you would share?
Damon Pistulka :It's all of the above, everything plus original research, do a survey, do research, scrape some websites Like the easiest way to do research is scraping some websites that have information. The easiest way to do research is scraping some websites that have information. Another easy way to do research is grab some data sheets off competitor websites or a bunch of different brand websites and start to do some comparisons, make some broad statements about the industry, make some broad statements about the products in a particular product category, like that's easy, right, right. Like you're downloading some pdfs, right, right, so, so yeah, I just was oh. And then there's google deep research and then there's a new one, um, open ai's, I forget what it's called. It's also called deep research, research, um, but what that does is it makes the research even easier. I'll give you guys an example.
Damon Pistulka :I did some original research where I was basically looking at zero-click search. So right now, 60% of the time people search, they don't click on anything, or at least they don't click outside of Google. They might click on a Google property or something like that. So I went to Google Deep Research, which is an amazing tool, and I said I want you to find all the statistics that have been published over the last 10 years anywhere on zero-click search and it basically found 30 different websites that mentioned it and it filtered them down to 10 different studies published over the last 10 years and it gave me a table with all the different numbers that showed that, roughly over time, that number went from 30% to 60% over the last 10 years, and then this data is published in a lot of different places. Right, and this was done automatically for me in four minutes by Google Deep Research, by Gemini. So if you haven't used this particular tool I'm talking about, you need it.
Damon Pistulka :You gotta try it yeah, Especially for the type of research that I'm talking about. Like Kurt, you asked me a question like how do you create original research? You can have Google deep research do it for you, and what I just described is more of a meta analysis, where you're grabbing research from a number of different places, aggregating it in a way that's adding value, generating some visuals which is what I did for my presentations and it's very useful and then putting some insights on top of it. Now you've got something original that nobody else has based on other people's research, but you're aggregating it and adding value in a useful way, and you're using an AI tool, Google deep research, which costs me $20 a month to do it for you in four minutes. It's like a no freaking brainer once you learn how to use those tools.
Dale Bertrand :Right Gosh, all right. Man Damon, how much do we owe you for this master class? Yes, thank you so much.
Damon Pistulka :Probably $1 million.
Dale Bertrand :Well, hey, check my mail, my friend $1 million.
Curt Anderson:Should I do my dr evil impression?
Dale Bertrand :that's uh all right, so let's do this, dale. Um, I have a couple quick questions before we let you go work. You've got some speaking gigs coming up. We were really uh super excited to catch you at the industrial marketing summit. You're gonna be speaking next week in kentucky. Do you have other speaking gigs that you want to share with folks that they can find you?
Damon Pistulka :Yeah, well, I would say, look at my website so fire and sparkcom all spelled out If, if you want to talk SEO what I love doing I love talking about this stuff so I love to take a look at people's website, take a look at the existing content you have and I can give you some pointers on how to update it for, basically, for the future of search for 2025, that I've been doing a lot of that. It's fun for me. So let's take like 20, 30 minutes and just, you know, let me volunteer some time to just take a look at your website, take a look at your content and I'd love to give you some advice. So you can hit me up at Dale at fire and spark, all spelled out, so I'd I'd be happy to talk to anybody, um. So, yeah, that's, that's really the best way to connect with me. Um, and connect with me on LinkedIn, because I post a bunch on LinkedIn.
Dale Bertrand :Connect with Dale on LinkedIn. I and I love you're always posting, like you're speaking. I love following you're speaking here, speaking there all over the place. So, uh, just admire your work. You become a dear friend and I just can't describe my respect, admiration for what you're doing for AI and for marketers that are just really it gets overwhelming intimidating just trying to figure this thing out. So please connect with Dale on LinkedIn Fire and Spark that's his website. Check it out. All sorts of wonderful information there. Go to the industrial marketing summit in awesome. Love to see you guys in person get there now dale's gonna be speaking.
Dale Bertrand :He's gonna, he's got a work session and he's the closeout keynote speaker. Dale, you've been an entrepreneur for many, many years. Question that I absolutely love to ask you best business advice that you personally have ever received. I think I asked you last time. I'd admit you again best business advice that you personally have ever received. I think I asked you last time. I'm going to admit you again best business advice that you've ever received or that you'd like to share with a young or new entrepreneur as they're starting off their journey.
Damon Pistulka :That's really interesting. I think I've had a great mentor that I started working with early in the 2000s, bettina Hines. She's a serial entrepreneur. She's been great to me and she at the time she confided in me. But it was really just really good advice where she said, dale, most of what I've done, most of what I've tried, hasn't worked. And I'm looking at her like, wow, you're my entrepreneurial hero, like you've launched three businesses that you've sold for many millions of dollars each. She's on Shark Tank in Europe.
Damon Pistulka :It's like the switch between Shark Tank. She's one of the sharks, it's called Dragon's Den. Most things I do fail, crash and burn, like most of everything I've tried. Yeah, no good, I just give up on it. But a few things work and that's been good enough and I'm like, huh, that's interesting and I can say for sure, I've been exactly the same way.
Curt Anderson:Yeah. That's right, there you go, drop the mic dude.
Dale Bertrand :Drop the mic right there. So this was amazing. So, dale, first off, thank you Heartfelt. Thank you Appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule. Damon thoughts takeaways as we close out.
Curt Anderson:No, I just thanks a lot, dale. It's awesome talking to you and getting your perspective, because you're doing it every day, laying out things that work, and you understand AI enough to explain it. In terms of that, thankfully, we can understand, understand and and really help people do this, because it's a it's a constantly changing course, like you said yeah, it's.
Dale Bertrand :It can be very, you know, and for folks out there it can be very intimidating. But I think, dale, that's a gift of yours, is that you, you know you're standing in the forefront of the cutting edge of ai, but you bring it down to a level that people can like. A guy like me, if I can understand I, a guy like me, if I can understand it, I set the bar pretty low If I can understand it. Hopefully everybody else out there can understand it. Dale, parting thoughts, closing words as we close out anything else you want to share with everybody.
Damon Pistulka :Well, thank you for the invite and I'm looking forward to when we can do it again and I'm going to see in person pretty soon, so we'll grab a beer and yeah, and like I said, and like I said, I'm excited to talk to folks. If they want my opinion about what to do with the content they already have, get it updated for 2025.
Dale Bertrand :I think it's going to be mandatory. Dale, we need to have you back every so often. As a matter of fact, we're going to be doing our live show at the Industrial Marketing Summit on that Thursday. I would love to have you there, being that you're a repeat offender on the show. As we close out, guys again, please connect with Dale, do yourself a favor there. But the other thing is go out and just be someone's inspiration, just like our dear friend Dale was for all of us out here. And Damon, how about a big standing ovation for Dale for just crushing it. Dale, thank you, dude, appreciate you. Hang out with us for one second, I wish.
Dale Bertrand :I want to thank everybody in the chat If you missed this, if you came in late. I encourage you, I invite you, I implore you, go back. This was a an absolute AI masterclass. This was a gift. This is why Damon and I, you know, come out here every week doing this, just to bring wonderful people like Dale, just to kind of give everybody a little sharper edge. So, dale, thank you and you guys have a great rest of your week. We'll see you guys on Friday.
