Modern B2B Marketing Strategy: From Expense to Profit Center

Discover how to transform your B2B marketing from a cost center to a revenue-generating powerhouse in this insightful episode of the CTRL+Listen Podcast, host James Sweetlove sits down with Chris Peer, B2B Digital Marketing Strategist and author of "The Great 8 Pillars." Chris shares his proven framework that's helped industrial clients achieve up to 27x ROI on their marketing investments.

The pair explore how manufacturing and industrial companies can leverage modern marketing strategies to drive measurable growth. Chris explains his 8 pillar approach to marketing operations that turns traditional tactics into strategic revenue drivers for B2B organizations.

Resources from this Modern B2B MARKETING STRATEGY episode:

• Connect with Chris Peer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispeer/
• The Great 8 Pillars: ROI-Driven Marketing for Manufacturing: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Pillars-ROI-Driven-Marketing-Manufacturing/dp/1544544065
• SyncShow: https://www.syncshow.com/

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Transcript

James: Hi everyone, this is James from the CTRL+Listen podcast, brought to you by Octopart. Today we have a very special guest for you. This is Chris Peer. He is a B2B digital marketing strategist, author of The Great Eight Pillars, and the founder and CEO of both G8P and SyncShow. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Chris: Thanks, James. Pleasure to be here.

James: Anytime. So, just to get started, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience?

Chris: Sure. My name is Chris Peer. I'm the founder and CEO of two companies. One is G8P.co, a consulting company specifically for manufacturing firms and how to help them improve their marketing operations. The other firm is SyncShow, which I’ve founded and run for 22-plus years now. We help B2B industrial companies get a return on investment from their marketing and implement their marketing for them. We basically become their marketing team.

James: Okay. And what was your background before that? Before you started these companies, where did you come from?

Chris: I grew up for the most part in Ohio. I moved around a lot as a kid. I went to Kent State University, just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I worked for a number of different marketing agencies in my early days, then worked for American Greetings for five years, helping to design greeting cards, gift wrap and similar products. After that I worked for Ernst & Young for five years in a project management capacity for online education and training. At that point I decided I really wanted to put the shingle out and start my own business. I started doing some freelance work, then started this company, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

James: Fantastic. What was the transition like into the manufacturing side of things, as opposed to what you were doing prior to that?

Chris: That was a big difference. When I first started SyncShow, if I'm being completely blunt, we took money from anybody that would pay us. In the early days you're struggling to get clients and make a living. One of our first clients was a manufacturer of golf balls. They were a startup company and stumbled upon an amazing golf ball recipe, which is a whole other story, but they started getting a lot of traction.

We started working with them on their marketing, and I realized manufacturers were just great people to work with. They were down-to-earth, they paid on time. Those that valued marketing really enjoyed the work we did with them. It was great to work with them. That’s why I started specializing on the industrial side.

Today we also work with transportation and logistics companies, warehousing and distribution, manufacturing, and the service companies that serve them, like professional services.

James: It makes sense to kind of all exist in the same ecosystem.

Chris: Yeah, exactly.

James: You touched on this a bit, but I want to expand on it. How important is the world of marketing in industries like manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and distribution? What are people missing out on by not taking that seriously?

Chris: Marketing is starting to be rapidly adopted by the industrial community now. We noticed it in transportation and logistics probably a decade ago, where they started to embrace marketing as a growth tool. Manufacturing lagged behind but is starting to catch up.

What has changed dramatically over the last 10 to 15 years is that buyers have changed the way they buy. Especially in manufacturing, doing business used to be a lot of handshakes and personal relationships. COVID really changed that, because you couldn’t meet face-to-face. It forced sellers to look for buyers in a different way. They couldn’t go to trade shows or networking events.

But it was a natural progression anyway. Even without COVID, the trend was moving toward online digital communications. That’s a big opportunity for manufacturers if they haven’t adapted already. Buyers are buying differently. They’re looking online, they want online communications and simplicity. That’s probably the biggest change.

James: The other thing I’m going to show you, obviously, but I wanted to bring it up as a discussion: generationally, what people look for when they’re buying has changed as well. Millennials and Gen Z buy very differently to previous generations.

Chris: I think you're spot on. With younger buyers, they have a job to do. They’re typically in a buying role, whether it's purchasing or engineering, but they want to go home to their families. They don't want to work incredibly long hours. They want to get their work done, and they've got people knocking on their door all day.

When they’re making buying decisions, they’re vetting you not on the handshake, not on the relationship or the gifts you’re going to buy them. They want value. You have to prove that you can do a good job, or they won’t even consider you. That’s a big difference.

James: Right. I was in sales for years, so I only saw the end of the funnel. I definitely noticed with those demographics that people would, first, do a lot of their research before even approaching you. Someone would come in having already looked online at your product before talking to a sales rep. And second, people cared a lot about whether they could trust the company as a whole, as opposed to just “Is the product what I need?”

Chris: Yeah, I think you're spot on.

James: I find it all fascinating. It’s a trend people need to keep up with, in my opinion, and I’m sure you agree. I want to jump into your book, The Great Eight Pillars. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Chris: Sure. Probably easiest to tell a quick story about how it came to be. I had been running my agency for close to 16–17 years. We were a very traditional marketing agency: you hire us, we do your marketing tactical implementation. We did some unique things that helped our clients get greater results.

One day, a new employee of mine, a VP I had just hired, came into my office and said, “Chris, how are we getting these kinds of results? I’ve worked at multiple agencies and I haven’t seen these results before. How are we doing it?”

I fumbled through the answer while realizing I didn’t really know. I knew there were certain things we were doing that were unique, but I couldn’t answer his question with confidence and detail. He said, “We’ve got to figure this out.”

Over the next 18–24 months we looked at every client SyncShow had ever had in the history of the company. We thought we would identify which tactics, how much of them, and the timing would be the answer. We were completely surprised that success or failure of a company’s marketing largely depended on their marketing operational infrastructure.

We narrowed it down and boiled it into key categories of that infrastructure. In the end we identified what we call “the great eight pillars,” or eight categories. We found that if you don’t have those eight things in place and aren’t doing them well, your chances of getting a return on investment from marketing are very weak.

That became our new framework. We identified over 120 gold standards across those eight categories. Now what we do with our clients is help them achieve those gold standards while we’re implementing their tactical marketing plan or strategy.

James: Okay. My question would be, if a company’s interested in doing something like this, how long would the process take from start to finish to overhaul what they need to change?

Chris: That’s a great question. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to answer specifically.

James: Case-by-case basis?

Chris: Yes, but let me explain. Every company has a unique stance in their level of marketing maturity. We work with small to middle-market companies. Most do not have a full marketing department. They may have one or two marketers on staff and may have worked with an agency in the past.

We start with a diagnostic. We ask, “How are you currently ranking across those gold standards?” Everybody’s different, so their starting point is different. Timing is also tied to budget. If you have a smaller budget, it will take longer. If you’re more aggressive and hungry for growth, you can accomplish it faster.

James: That makes total sense. I can understand why it’s a case-by-case thing. Could you give us an example of one of those eight pillars?

Chris: Sure. In fact, I’ll rattle through them quickly so everyone knows what they are. These are somewhat in order of importance.

Number one is ROI-driven goals, key performance indicators, and industry benchmarks. The message is: if you have a marketing operation or you’re engaging in marketing, you need specific goals tied to return on investment, typically tied to a sales dollar. You want to quantify how much new business or growth you’ve achieved because of the marketing effort. In the book we outline how to do that.

Pillar number two is your value proposition. This is critical. It’s the story behind why buyers should choose you over the competition. If your story is not extremely strong, the competitor with a better story will win. Even if you have great sales and great marketing, if your value proposition is weak, you won’t see the growth you want.

Number three is marketing strategy. Put your marketing strategy in writing, on paper, and make sure it’s vetted. In the book we have a template you can download free at G8P.co—G, the number 8, P dot co—in the Resources section, along with a bunch of other free templates.

Number four is making sure you have the right people in the right seats, so we map that out.

Number five is your website. You need to transition from an online brochure to a lead generation machine. We talk about that and all the KPIs and gold standards there.

Number six is analytics and reporting. Are you measuring the right things, and who is seeing those reports? You have to make sure marketing is tied to sales.

Number seven is your tech stack. What technologies are you using? Is marketing tied to your CRM so you can track deal flow?

Number eight, last but not least, is templates and guides. This is about efficiencies. You can build ROI and more value by being more efficient and effective using templates and guides.

James: Okay. That makes total sense. It’s the type of thing where you’d say, “Oh, that’s obvious,” but when you look at whether a company is actually doing it, the answer is often no.

Chris: I get that comment all the time, and I agree. This isn’t rocket science; it’s common sense. But for some reason, nobody does it. So this is more of a play-by-play.

Another comment I get a lot from business executives who’ve read my book is that it’s not a “marketing book,” it’s a marketing operations book. They say, “Now that I’ve read your book, I know how to manage my marketing agency better. I know how to manage my marketing team better.”

James: Just before I forget this question, because it connects to your first point: obviously ROI is crucial. Would you say social media operates slightly differently from other forms of traditional marketing in terms of ROI? A lot of it comes down to brand awareness and trust, as opposed to directly selling, depending on the product. For some companies it’s more of an awareness channel.

Chris: Yes. In the analytics and reporting section and pillar one, KPIs, we tie those together. We highly encourage you to track data and KPIs that inform the potential for ROI.

However, there are other data sets I call vanity metrics that are also valuable to track. Social media has more vanity metrics than some other areas. I agree social media is very important. All of our clients have some form of social media strategy in their plan.

You can’t always track all social media to a direct ROI, and I wouldn’t suggest you try to force that. But it can be a very powerful tool within the overall system of marketing and communications.

James: Right. And just in reach alone, it’s one of the most effective tools—you can put in some ad spend, not even a huge amount, and reach a lot of people in a targeted audience, which is very useful.

Chris: Absolutely.

James: How do B2B companies generate a return on marketing spend?

Chris: A lot of it comes from following the framework in the book. If you put those best practices in place and execute on the eight pillars, we find your ROI multiplies exponentially.

To give you an example, we strive for 10x returns. It sounds cliché because you hear “10x” all the time, but we’re always striving to provide great value. I have clients who say, “I want a 10x return,” and my answer is, if I could get a guaranteed 10x return on everything, I wouldn’t be in marketing—I’d just go do that thing!

But when you strive for 10x, you have a strong chance of at least making your marketing department a profit center versus an expense. That’s a win, because most marketing is not a profit center, at least not on paper. Just because you can’t prove it doesn’t mean it’s not making you money, but most people don’t know how to prove it.

We have clients that consistently get 2x, 3x. Ten-times is definitely possible. We had one client that got a 27x ROI in the first year. At the end of the day, it’s about value—making sure marketing is providing that value.

James: That makes total sense. How can manufacturers overcome their biggest sales and marketing obstacles, and what actionable advice can they implement today to address them?

Chris: I highly recommend that in small to middle-market manufacturing and industrial firms, sales and marketing not be treated as separate silos. They’re often considered two different departments. I recommend they’re really one department.

In the industrial B2B space, marketing should focus heavily on lead generation. Brand awareness is part of that, and there are other roles, but at the end of the day, you want leads and more business. Marketing can also be a valuable tool for cross-selling and upselling existing customers.

I recommend that, especially in small to middle-market companies, the VP of Sales oversee the marketing effort and tie those two together. All the reports I mentioned in pillar six should tie into sales reporting.

Some key things: make sure you have a CRM—customer relationship management system—and that you’re tracking your deal pipeline. Know your average order values, customer lifetime values, cost per lead, new business acquisition costs, your sales pipeline and timeline.

If you have that in place, you can start tying all sales and marketing efforts back to your pipeline. I’d say that’s probably the number one thing most companies aren’t doing, and it’s not that difficult to implement.

James: Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve worked anywhere that had that implementation. It makes sense when you say it, but people don’t seem to view the departments as intertwined—they’re separate entities.

Chris: We’re a HubSpot Platinum partner—that’s just one of the tools you can use. But I tell most people, because everyone has a different definition of “marketing,” that you can even throw out the term and just say “communications.”

How are we communicating with our employees, our customers, our communities, our prospects? Can it be improved? If the answer is yes, you’ve got a strong business case for bringing on a marketing communications team.

James: That makes sense. I want to circle back to your company, SyncShow. Do you want to tell us a bit more about it, what you’ve been doing, and how the company has changed over the years?

Chris: Sure. As I mentioned earlier, when we started, we pretty much took business from anybody that would pay us—B2B, B2C, retail, you name it. That quickly morphed into primarily business-to-business.

Today we’re highly specialized and niched in the B2B industrial space. We help these companies scale through brand awareness and marketing initiatives by proving the return on investment. Once you can do that, you find customers will spend more on marketing because now they believe in it.

A lot of executives think of marketing as smoke and mirrors. I have this in the book: I was at a conference years ago and the keynote speaker said, “Sales is the lifeblood of every company, and marketing is arts and crafts.” That was about 15 years ago, and it really upset me.

So I have a new phrase in the book: if sales is the lifeblood of a company, marketing is the blood pressure. I truly believe that. That’s what we do at SyncShow—we become partners with these companies and help them hit growth objectives they haven’t been able to reach.

James: I really like that blood pressure phrase. That’s an excellent one.

Chris: Thanks.

James: I might use that. How have you seen B2B marketing change in recent years, and are there any trends people should be paying attention to?

Chris: As we talked about, buyers and sellers don’t have the same relationships they used to. It’s more transactional today than ever.

When I first started, our manufacturing clients would take their customers golfing. I remember buying them golf clubs and gifts. A lot of that went away over the last decade and a half, partly for legal reasons—policies against taking gifts—and partly due to tight margins.

Now people are making decisions based on what they see online. It’s like the Amazon effect: they’re looking at reviews, profiles, and digital presence.

This is a bit off-topic but related: one of the biggest challenges industrial companies have today is finding staff. We do what we call workforce marketing or employer marketing as well. Many companies don’t think about their employer brand.

If you’re not marketing your employer brand, prospective employees are also looking online. They’re checking Glassdoor, reviews, your culture. If you’re not communicating that, just like with customers, your chances of landing new employees is going to be tough.

James: Yeah, I think in that employee space, particularly since COVID, things have changed dramatically. The power dynamic between hiring and employees has shifted. People now say, “I have a choice of where to work, and I’m going to look at things other than just pay before deciding.”

Chris: Yes. And when you think about manufacturing—again, I love manufacturing, so this isn’t disparaging—there’s a certain type of person who loves working in a manufacturing facility. Manufacturing plants in general are cold in winter, hot in summer, not always well-lit, not as modern or “hip” as some other workplaces.

So as a manufacturer, the more you can do to make your culture and workplace exciting is extra value for employees, just like your customer value proposition.

James: That makes sense. I guess the other side is there’s probably an outdated view of what a manufacturing facility is. People picture a 1950s factory, whereas in tech-heavy manufacturing it’s very different.

Chris: Exactly. We have several customers that fit that modern profile: you walk in and it’s bright, clean, high-tech, low-noise, making amazing precision parts. That’s exciting too.

James: I think it’s an image issue to some extent. There’s an expected shortage in specialists in high-end manufacturing, so they’ll have to address that somehow, and rebranding what manufacturing means might be part of that.

Chris: I agree. And I think sometimes, as leadership, executives get mired in the day-to-day. We’re busy people. You don’t see the forest for the trees. You come into your workplace every day and you don’t see the dead plant in the corner of the lobby.

I had a prospective customer a couple of years ago. They had a very large dead plant in the lobby. This plant was dead-dead. It had clearly been dead for years, and no one removed it. The lobby was very dated. I thought, “How many people have walked past this plant and not noticed?”

Those little things matter. When we talk about lead generation, marketing, and branding, you sometimes need an outside perspective to say, “Hey, maybe your baby’s a little ugly. How do we clean this up?” That dead plant says a lot about your organization. What else are they not noticing?

James: Right—if it’s something that obvious and easy to fix.

Chris: Exactly. So I use that analogy a lot. Take a look at your business from the outside perspective, and you’ll start to see those things.

James: I have one more topic I want to discuss before we wrap up, which I’m sure you expected: what role do you think AI is going to play in the marketing space in the coming years?

Chris: AI is obviously the hot topic. Everyone’s talking about it. I believe AI is going to radically transform marketing and many other industries.

Just this morning I used AI to write a clause for a legal contract. That would’ve cost me probably $1,500–$2,000 with my law firm, and I got it in 30 seconds from AI. Now I can send that to my law firm to vet and clean up, but it saves money.

In marketing, I’m really interested to see how AI will transform search engine optimization and how it will disrupt what we know as a search engine today. You’re getting information from ChatGPT or Gemini very differently than we used to from traditional search.

We just got our first new business lead where they said, “I found you through ChatGPT,” which was interesting. Content marketing and editorial are already changing rapidly. Our firm has built its own AI framework for how we leverage AI to produce higher-quality content at lower cost.

I think it’s going to be very interesting.

James: I think so too. One of the main things happening is people view AI as something that will replace people, but right now it’s meant to be a tool used by people, not to replace them. Marketing departments shouldn’t be scared of it. They should embrace it as, “This can do the time-consuming tasks that don’t require my creativity, so I can focus on big-picture ideas.”

Chris: I agree. I’m old enough to have been around when computers first entered the workforce in a big way. At American Greetings in the mid-1990s, we were the first wave of employees to use computers for creative purposes. Everybody was scared it would replace people.

I do think some specialty areas of marketing will be replaced—some social media, some SEO, some content. Programming and development for certain applications like basic website development will eventually be replaced as well.

But I also think it’s a powerful tool. If you embrace it now—learn to use it as an engineer, prompt engineer, or power user—and don’t sit on your hands and wait for the world to pass you by, it will make you more valuable. That’s our strategy at SyncShow.

James: That’s great. Like you said, it’s just like any other technology. If you fight it and don’t embrace it, others will learn the skill and you’ll be replaceable where they aren’t.

Chris: Exactly. At SyncShow we have an AI task force and an AI mission. We’ve got almost everyone on the team leveraging AI in some capacity in their jobs, even if it’s just testing and playing with it.

I’d much rather have a staff that can leverage AI, reducing our need for future hires while making the team we have more competent and skilled in those areas.

James: Definitely. That brings us to the end. I have one or two more questions relating to your companies. If people want to buy or read the book, where’s the best place to do that?

Chris: You can get the book on Amazon. There’s also an Audible version coming out any day now. My original book, with the orange and black cover behind me, was written specifically for manufacturing. I just published the new one, which is for all business-to-business companies. You can get it on Amazon as well. It outlines everything and has the same links where you can download all the templates I mentioned.

James: Fantastic. And if people want to contact SyncShow or follow SyncShow, what’s the best way to do that?

Chris: You can go to syncshow.com and fill out a request for a consultation. If you mention this podcast and me specifically, it will be forwarded to me. I also have ChrisPeer.com, which is my personal site for speaking and consulting, so you can reach out there as well.

James: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, Chris. It’s been a really fascinating topic.