“Assess Then Plan” Framework To Solve Makeshift Marketing With Brianne Hoffman From Wanzek Construction [AMP 149]
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- Internal and External Marketing and Communications: Create strategies that grab and engage target audience
- Wanzek Construction: Builds and maintains industrial wind turbines, solar farms
- Plan Persona and Associate with Audience: Long-term projects decrease need for brand new business and customers
- #1 Priority: Safety is cornerstone of Wanzek Construction’s people and property
- Core Values and Work Culture: Big, happy family
- 7 Internal Beliefs: Protect, Trust, Talent, Information, Integrity, Communication, and Profit
- Fist Bump App: Callouts to coworkers for a job well done
- Content Pillars: Document marketing and communication goals and game plan
- Plan in advance to help anticipate and alleviate fire drills and pop-up projects
- Weekly Summary: Reinforce and reflect on list of accomplishments
- Pressure to do more, with less: Identify inefficiencies to shift responsibilities, and find tools that get things done faster
- Wanzek Way: Be the best and deliver excellence
- Back to the Drawing Board: What do you think we should do?
- Marketing and Communication Metrics: Track popular posts, recruitment campaigns, followers, and more
- Brianne Hoffman on LinkedIn
- Wanzek Construction
- Xcel Energy
- ENGIE
- The Marketing Management + Strategy Statistics You Need to Know in 2019
- New CoSchedule Marketing Suite
- Who do you want on the podcast? What do you want to talk about? Send suggestions for guests and topics.
- “When we are marketing ourselves to the outside world...we’re maintaining our brand.”
- “We’re always looking to get them home safely every day.”
- “Feel of Family: The culture is important here, just as much as our product and what we produce.”
- “More resources doesn’t always equal more productivity. Additional headcount isn’t always the answer.”
Assess Then Plan Framework To Solve Makeshift Marketing With Brianne Hoffman From Wanzek Construction
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Nathan: It’s really easy to do things just “good enough.” But good enough doesn’t really solve problems, does it? It’s just like you’re skating by. Today, we’re talking with Brianne Hoffman. Brianne is the Senior Marketing and Communications Manager at Wanzek Construction. She wrangles everything from internal communication to external marketing there. There are a ton of moving parts to consider with something like this. What should get posted internally first and externally second, how should projects flow from one person to the next, when should projects swap the leading members, and the list goes on. Brianne has some pretty good advice here to share today on the Actionable Marketing Podcast on how she solves makeshift marketing. Now, makeshift marketing is what we call the tedious manual processes that suck productivity away from marketers. Makeshift marketing is all those spreadsheets, the endless email threads, the disconnected single function tools, and the list goes on. All those things add up and causing you spend a lot more time coordinating your work rather than completing your work. Brianne addresses makeshift marketing head on with her assess then plan management style. To top it off, Brianne is crushing it right here in beautiful North Dakota like all of us here at CoSchedule. I’m Nathan from CoSchedule, it’s time to get AMPed with Brianne. Hey, Brianne, thanks so much for joining me today on the podcast. Brianne: Yes. Thank you for having me. Nathan: We’re excited to have you. Brianne, obviously we know each other a little bit, running in some similar circles here in Fargo North Dakota area, but I was wondering if you can tell me a little bit about yourself, and some of the things that you do at Wanzek Construction. Brianne: Yes. I’m actually fairly new to Wanzek Construction. I joined the department here in March. Some of my past professional experiences, I actually started out with the publishing world. I started out in magazine publishing and was managing editor for about five years for a nationwide publication. The production office was based here in Fargo. I moved into the agency world for a brief period of time, into the marketing agency world. I didn’t really settle there too much, and then jumped into a marketing director role for a different construction company here in town where I was for about five years. That was a fairly smaller company. I wore a lot of hats, did a lot of different things from events to marketing strategy, to advertising, to graphic design, just smaller company, wore a lot of hats. From there, I moved over to Bobcat Company which I was at for three years and did Internal Communications for North America for that organization. Did some global and some regionalized internal communication for employees, and have just recently landed here at Wanzek. I am the Senior Marketing Communications Manager here and is spearheading their marketing and communications all around for our company. It’s about 1600 employees, total. We’ve got about 160 employees that are here in the Fargo Office and then counting our field staff for a total of about 1600 across the US. My day-to-day is just running the external marketing for the organization as well as any internal employee communication. Nathan: I love that background. Going from managing editor into a marketing role seems really fitting. You hear a lot that marketers need to think like editors and publishers. That expertise must land itself pretty well to marketing. Brianne: Yes, it definitely does because when you think of all the different facets of marketing, from the graphic design, the creative side, the strategic side, how you’re communicating something. Actually my degree is in Mass Communications and English. I’m a dual major. I think in all those hand in hand because I started out at publishing world thinking that’s where I wanted to be as far as editing and magazines, and that kind of thing. Really, the graphic design portion, the strategy, the engagement side has really lent itself so supportive of how we strategically market our business. Because I’ve learned the ins and outs of how it should look in order to grab somebody in, and then just being able to concept around that, like what’s going to be the thing that grabs them in, what’s going to keep them there, and how can we strategize that to a bigger audience. I started out all those stepping stones, really had led me to where I am today and being able to put those high level strategies together. Nathan: I love that. Knowing design is the end. You could create the best written content in the world, but with poor design, it’s still poor content. Brianne: Exactly. Nathan: Brianne, I’m just interested. Can you tell me just a little bit more about some of the details into Wanzek Construction. It’s important for us to know a little bit about your background there before we jump to this conversation. Brianne: Yes. We are in industrial construction. The primary business that we do for Wanzek is wind farms and solar farms. The construction and maintenance of the wind farm. We do construction across the United States and all of a variety of different areas for a lot of big clients. We also are in oil and gas a little bit and some processing facilities as far as egg and industry type things, any type of facility that does processing of sorts. And then a little bit of infrastructure, but I would say the primary business that Wanzek is known for is the wind construction and constructing those big wind turbines that you see when you’re driving on the highway and seeing in different places. We just recently finished one in Texas, that was about 280 wind turbines, which is the biggest one that we’ve ever created. It's a really big industrial construction. It all started here in Fargo. It’s fun how they started here and grew. We have just grown monumentally from one year to the next. The wind industry has just taken off. We’re busy for the next two years. It’s crazy. Nathan: If you could see me right now, my jaw literally dropped. That’s awesome growth. It’s super fun to hear another local company here in Fargo, North Dakota start something up and have a nationally recognized brand. With that, Brianne, it leads me to something I’ve been thinking of. I really like that your audience is not marketers. My audience that I talk to and think about every day is marketers. As a marketer, I get to think a lot like them. I’m going through similar problems as they are. But I would like to know just a little bit about how you go about associating with your persona and audience. How do you go about planning that or getting to know an audience that is a little bit unlike yourself? Brianne: That’s a really good question. I would say we’re a little bit different dynamic of a company in that I always say we’re a big company that works with big companies. We work with some of those bigger industry names, like Xcel Energy, Engie, some of those big energy companies. We have a big client base, so when are marketing ourselves to the outside world, a lot of our business has been established over the years of doing work for bigger clients. When I say we market ourselves, we’re maintaining our brand. We’ve got those big clients we continue to work with, and some of these projects takes years to come to fruition. We’re not always out there looking for a brand new business. Of course we are, but not as frequently as some companies might be because we got such long term projects.![](https://media.coschedule.com/uploads/149_Brianne-Podcast-Graphics_quote-01.png?w=3840&q=75)
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