 there's the age old challenges between marketing and sales and how they communicate. And it is really important. And I have to always keep myself in check to make sure that I am communicating what I'm doing to them. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am taking over completely for Zach today. So we are running the show without him. We are very appropriately going to be talking about marketing departments of one. It is a huge issue within the Building Materials manufacturing space. We see companies do incredible things all out of the brain and power of a single person in their marketing department. And we have brought on a guest today who is living and breathing that incredible space. Her name is Tracy Dacco. She is the marketing manager for Shook and she is leading the US division of Shook as a marketing department of one and getting some really cool things done just on her own, obviously with some additional support, but at least from a marketing department of one standpoint. So Tracy, thanks so much for your time. Thanks for having me. Before we get started talking about marketing, Tracy, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about who you are and what you do at your company? Yeah, I'm Tracy Dacco. I'm the marketing manager for Shook North America. And my background started out in more design and creative roles. I work for agencies and for different manufacturing companies. And I built and ran my own marketing communications firm for about 10 years. Then following that, I took on a broader marketing role for a kitchen and bath manufacturer and then joined Shook in 2016. So my role here at Shook North America is to oversee all of the marketing activities for the US and Canadian businesses. Shook is a global manufacturer of structural building components and they've been around for about 60 years. They're based in Baden-Baden, Germany. The main product that we sell here in North America is structural thermal brakes. And these are modules that get integrated into the design of the building and they help to insulate the point where steel or concrete passes through the building envelope. This is a very common product within Germany and throughout Europe. They've been using structural thermal brakes there for decades, but it is a little bit newer to the North American construction market. So a lot of what we do here is educational. We help to ensure that architects and engineers are aware of them as a solution. And we help to encourage adoption within the building codes and more widespread use throughout North America. So can you paint the picture for me of what marketing looked like within Shook when you joined in 2016? Were you the first of their marketing managers? Were you the long line of marketing managers? Were you taking over and launching as they broke into the US? What did that look like for you? Yeah, I was the second marketing manager in North America and there was a lady in this role prior to me and she did a good job of kind of getting things rolling, a lot of foundational setup. And there was also a lot of back and forth within the company of where do we fit in, what do we do, what do, and so I think there was a lot of trial and error that happened during that time. So when I came in, I think a lot of my focus was to build a bit more structure behind it and to kind of formalize things. Can you talk to me a bit about what that process looks like? Is it like you in a room? I'm imagining like you in a room with like a thousand pieces of paper on a board and like registering tied to different things and markers and circles happening. Like what's your process look like when you were putting more processes in place and continuing the marketing but really just from a single person's point of view, how did you tackle that? Well, one of the first things that I was tasked with and really one of the first major initiatives for me was finding a marketing automation system. So we had a lot of bits and pieces all over the place and we needed to sort of tidy them up, put a structure behind them and also start to automate things because of course there's so many different things to do, so many different moving parts that anywhere that you can automate something or streamline it is hugely beneficial. We had started up with Salesforce about six months prior to my starting with Shook. And so it was really important to get that marketing automation in place and tie it in with Salesforce and start to build a structure that was largely centered around our Lunch and Learn program and all of the gathering of those attendees, their information and kind of formalizing all of that within those systems. So it was a lot of moving parts of various things beyond the marketing automation. We had events, trade shows, things like that, advertising, PR, of course, content generation, literature. There was a lot of things that were being done over in Germany when I started. We do have a marketing team over there of 20 or 30 people. So they serve Germany and a lot of the closer European countries. And so there was a lot of things that had been developed over there, but a lot of them were very European focused. So they weren't appropriate and had to be modified for this market. So there was a lot of sorting through what was there and trying to put it in a few cleaner buckets and then figure out what the priorities were. So that's not a small amount of work that you just mentioned. If I can think about your previous experience versus your experience in Shook, and in case Shook is listening, Tracy has been very complimentary about her experience there. Can you explain to me how you see, what feels different when you are having to tackle a problem or bring new ideas or set a strategy into motion? What's different about your experience in Shook versus in larger marketing departments in your previous careers? Well, it definitely took some getting used to to be back to a department of one. When I started my own business, obviously it was just me for a couple of years. And that really taught me a lot about being a single individual running a lot of different things. But it also taught me about setting myself up for having a larger team. And so as I got a larger team, when I had my own company, I started compartmentalizing things that, okay, I can hire someone to do this. I can hire someone to do that. Accounting was the first thing because I'm not an accountant. I know your strengths and weaknesses. Good, good. Creative tasks. Accounting. No, you do not want me doing the books. But, you know, it was really beneficial because I had started to set things up with the thought that I would have a larger team. And as I grew and was able to delegate those tasks, it was really helpful to be able to kind of, you know, put it aside and know that someone else was taking care of it. As I am in this role here, my priorities were to, of course, see what I could delegate with the resources that I had because I do have the support of the marketing team in Germany and there's certain things that they can do to help me out. I also determined pretty quickly that PR and advertising and doing our case studies was something that I needed to outsource. And fortunately, I had enough budget to be able to do that. And, you know, I recognize that, you know, my background is not in PR. It's not my specialty. And knowing all of the editors and being involved in that process and relationship building in that space is so important. And I just knew I wouldn't have the time to do that at all effectively. So fortunately, I was able to, you know, start to outsource the chunks of it that I could. So, you know, it really, it was compartmentalizing, streamlining and automating everything that we possibly could and making good use of those resources also. So that might be asking the same question in a slightly different way, but if you were, let's say you're sitting in the president or CEO of a manufacturing company seat and you know that you have a marketing department of one, what would you give that marketing department of one based on your experience to really help them excel? A larger budget? Yes. You just got to say it. It's okay. That's okay. I say that to my boss from time to time too. I don't think it's a secret that marketing always asks for more budget. That's okay for us to say. It is, but I also, I think having run my own company, I can put myself in their shoes. And you know, when you're trying to build a business, you need to look at where everything is going. You need to look at what money is going out the door. And I think having that experience, I'm very conscious of where I'm spending money and conscious of looking at my budget, keeping to it of course, but also really looking at setting things up so that I'm getting feedback about what's working and what isn't and eliminating the stuff that isn't. I mean, there's things that I came in and I said, nope, nope, nope, we're slashing this. It's just not necessary right now. Maybe, you know, maybe it's a standard traditional thing like people will put a certain budget towards advertising. They'll put a certain budget towards, you know, a lot of different component, the SEO, the trade shows. And we've pulled back on a lot of that. I pulled back on it because I just didn't see it as giving us the most bang for our buck right now and also being the most important at this stage of the game. So I think as a CEO, I think the main thing to have a good conversation with and an open line of communication with, with a marketing department of one is just to really be crystal clear about what you want to accomplish and then letting that person hopefully, you know, someone who has the ability to, you know, to do that but letting them move forward based on those goals, not just moving forward based on, okay, I need to do this, this, and this because that's what you're supposed to do in marketing. If that makes sense, I'm not sure if that does make sense. No, that makes total sense. It makes exact sense. And you should, right? We shouldn't just say, this is the way we've always done it and so this is the way we'll continue to do it. That's not how good results are achieved. So you said something really important that we've talked to tons of marketers who are either marketing departments of one or very small marketing departments within rather large organizations. And the key word that like perked my ears was feedback. And that's the main pain point that we hear is you are often creating things and then deciding if they're good or not in a silo. What does that feedback system look like? Who are you bringing your work to, your ideas to, your results to as a measurement for success? Yeah, and that's, there's a number of different components to that because it can feel like you're working in a silo. There is the feedback with your supervisor, whoever that is, the head of the company. There is the feedback to the people that are on the front lines, your sales force or your distributors if that's your business model. But those things I think are really important to have in place and to have a regular occurrence of that feedback. So having a meeting however frequently you need to, a monthly meeting, a weekly meeting with the people that you need to share information with. It's very easy when it's just you to like, I know what I'm doing. I know that I'm doing this this week and I know I'm doing that next week and you forget that no one else actually knows what you're doing. And it's a constant struggle to, for me in this role to remind myself to tell people, I have a call with my boss once a month where we'll kind of chit chat about what's going on and anything that I need help with from his end of things. There's the age-old challenges between marketing and sales and how they communicate. And it is really important and I have to always keep myself in check to make sure that I am communicating what I'm doing to them. And one of the things that I did recently is I had, that my internet team in Germany had brought up Google Data Studio. I had never heard of it, didn't know what it did. But I saw the reports that they were doing over there for Germany and for the other European countries. And I looked through and said, wow, this would be a great way for me to crystallize all of the information in Google Analytics and in Google Ads and bring it into a more concise format. And when I sat down and thought about what that would look like, I talked with my internet team in Germany and they said, okay, yeah, we can definitely do that. It'll be probably by the end of the year. I was like, now I want this now. So I taught myself Google Data Studio one afternoon. And now I have a four-page report that I can send to my sales team and to my boss and to our internal sales manager and our product manager and they can see what's going on on the website. They can see the trends. They can see how Google Ads is doing and where we're spending money, what search terms we're searching on. So all of that is part of setting up the regular intervals of dialogue between the people who need to know what you're doing. And the other part of the isolation also is isolation of your ideas. As you said, you're looking at something and saying, is this good? Is this right? Is it on target? I'm not sure. And I actually, I know that that is a potential issue. I've experienced it before from both ends of the relationship. And I know that you always have a better product and a more effective product when you have multiple people involved, multiple inputs in there. And I work very closely with my product manager who is a very technical engineer and he's the one that kind of gives me the checks and balances to make sure that everything that I'm creating is technically correct. And I also created a cross-functional marketing review team. So it's the head of sales, our product engineer and our product manager and myself. And we have, anytime something is created, literature and ads, something like that, I will circulate it to them just to get the input from different sources to make sure that we're on target. Because I can talk to one of them and we can be completely in line. And then I talk to someone else and they're like, whoa, wait a minute. Why aren't you mentioning this or how come you said it this way? And you need that different perspective because you cannot work in isolation and be effective. So you basically made like your own little marketing think tank. Yeah. I love that. I guess so. I love that. It's, I had started this journey of surrounding myself with people from other areas back when I had my own business because being the top of the food chain in the business I could, you know, certain things that I talked to my employees about, but there was also certain running a business things that you just don't know about and you need someone else who is also running a business to think about these things from a different perspective and give you good input. And I had started then we had a mastermind group and we met for dinner once a month and it was myself running a marketing community I was running a marketing communications business, a life coach, an attorney in like a large corporate firm, someone who was running a benefits company and an accountant. So completely different areas than what I was in. Yeah. But it was great. And I thought at the time, you know, what am I going to teach someone who's running a benefits company, you know, who has like 30 employees, but you see things differently. And there was a lot of input that I think was unexpected from all of us. And, you know, I think it was all well received because you did have other people's opinions, people with completely different backgrounds. So maybe you already said it, but it's November 2021. You're a marketing department of one or small marketing department within a manufacturing industry. What advice would you give to other smaller marketing departments as they're planning for the next year? Whether it's how do you prioritize? How do you evaluate strategy? How do you execute? What advice would you give as they go into the next year when probably I'm assuming marketers in departments of one feel overwhelmed because I know marketers in much larger departments also can feel overwhelmed at this time of year. Yeah. And it is. It is easy to feel overwhelmed. And it's one of the challenges of being a marketing department of one. You can't get deep into something. You have to kind of be a generalist and, you know, field whatever fires you need to put out that day. And, you know, and quite honestly, let's face it, sometimes you, you know, you can take half a day looking for receipts for accounting or troubleshooting something in, you know, your marketing automation software or something like that. And those things get you off track. So I really, I try to keep everything in one spreadsheet. I'm sure there's probably some fancy softwares that do this too, but I'm a lot. I like to keep things simple. I also like to write out my to-do lists every day. I just, I know their software to do it, but writing it is just somehow, I like writing it. I like highlighting what it's done. On to the paper. I can identify with that. Yep. But I try to keep everything in one place and schedule certain activities for certain days of the week and make sure that I have goals for each marketing channel. You know, so I'll, you know, I'll look at what I'll have on different tabs of a spreadsheet. I'll have, you know, trade shows and events on one tab, you know, Google ads on one tab, web content, you know, and I try to set a schedule to make sure that I don't forget one channel because it's just me. I mean, you know, we're all imperfect. And we, you know, all of a sudden we're like, oh my God, I haven't posted anything on LinkedIn in a few weeks. Like, you know, those things can slip your mind. So I think it's really important to have everything in one place. Take the time to lay out each different channel and what you want to do with each, even if the choice is to somewhat put it aside and put it on the side burner and say, you know what, I don't have time for this right now. One of the things that I did when I first came in is I closed the Twitter account. I put aside Pinterest, Instagram. I don't have time to do Twitter. There's just no way. You don't need to. That's not something you can do half-heartedly. You have to have someone, you have to have a need for it first of all, which I don't know. But I wanted to just kind of put aside the things that were not really going to happen and that weren't terribly effective anyway. And we're going to suck up a lot of time. So, you know, putting stuff aside, focusing on only the channels that you want, figuring out what you can outsource, how you can outsource. I, you know, I also, there are some tasks that I kind of have a list. I keep a running list of things that I can compartmentalize for a virtual assistant. You know, if I have, I work with a great person up in Canada who helps me out with, you know, spreadsheet stuff and things like that where I know it's going to take me time to go through things and she can go through it very quickly and effectively and it's, you know, it's relatively inexpensive and it gets something off my plate. So, you know, I think all of those things and, you know, getting yourself kind of organized, making sure that you have measurements for what you're doing, some way of telling, you know, so of course it's the age old problem in marketing is, you know, there's so many channels where it's so hard to tell the effectiveness. But I use my, you know, I, in a way, I use my sales team as a bit of a barometer there of like, what do they need to know about this? And, you know, how can I tell them whether it's effective or not? And that has helped me to do things like the Google Data Studio report because it's something tangible that they can look at and understand what's going on at a glance and they can see what's working and what isn't. And so can I, you know, it's great for me too. And, you know, and I think the other part of it being a single person working in that silo is that you need to also devote time to self-education. You know, you have to stay in the loop. It's very easy to sit behind your little desk and do your thing and kind of forget that there's a whole world out there. Obviously there's so many resources, videos, podcasts like this one. I do the LinkedIn learning, you know, and I try to do some of that, you know, every other week or so. I'll try to at least listen to one video and sometimes you can do it while you're doing something else too. So it's good, you know, to go to conferences, to go to meetings, things like that and just get out in the world and know what other people are doing because then you can at least, you know, get a feel for what else is possible for you and maybe what you should stop doing too. Oh, man, like, what should you stop doing? You said incredible things, but then that's, that can't be understated either, right? What's on there that's just, it's not going to be a priority? Like Twitter, PSA, it could be Twitter. Yeah, it really could be. You know, I think a lot of people, they, you know, they think, oh, these channels are out there and they're being used by other companies. I should use them too. But you shouldn't necessarily. I, you know, squished all of our, I think we have five different social media accounts and for years I said, we're doing LinkedIn, that's it. We're not, we're going to ignore all the others for the time being. I've recently started doing some Instagram, but that's like dipping one toe in. I mean, that's the exact right next channel. I don't, I obviously can't say that I know your web presence like in great detail, but that feels like a great next step. That's really smart. Well, Tracy, this has been fabulous. Thank you so much for all of your wonderful advice. If any of our listeners wanted to get in contact with you and pick your brain a little bit about marketing, what would be a great way for them to reach out? Seek me out on LinkedIn and make sure that you put something in there that's like a personal message, not just like connect with me. Because I tend to ignore people who I don't know who don't actually write anything. But if you truly want to connect, you know, LinkedIn is probably the best way to do so. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. 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