Ten Years In And You Don't Actually Know How To Market (with Mark Roskowske from PierTech Systems) | Ep. 50

Organic traffic is falling thirty to forty percent across multiple industries, but the raw number of leads looks about the same. That combination is strange enough to stall a marketing team for a quarter. Mark Roskowske has now watched it happen from inside three different businesses, and his read is that the funnel didn't shrink so much as it shifted downward.

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Kyler Nixon and Mark work through what happens when the channel you built the company on starts to wobble. Mark spent about 15 years in e-commerce where paid search fed the pipeline and scoring systems handed prospects to sales. It worked until cost per acquisition went through the roof.

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They get into why years of bottom-of-funnel spend covered up a messaging problem, what it costs to rebuild mid and upper funnel work you skipped, and why trade shows are the number one budget item at Mark's company this year by ten X. Plus the first mention of ABM in 50-plus episodes of the show.

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👤 Guest Bio

Mark Roskowske is VP of Marketing and Technology at PierTech Systems, a Chesterfield, Missouri manufacturer of patented helical pile and deep foundation systems sold to general contractors and specified by engineers. He spent roughly 15 years in B2B e-commerce marketing across the ShowMeCables and Infinite Electronics family of connectivity brands before moving to the manufacturing side. He consulted with PierTech for ten years and directed its marketing before taking the role full time, the first full-time marketing hire the business has had.

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📌 What We Cover

Why thirty to forty percent organic traffic declines aren't showing up in raw lead counts yet, and what that says about where the funnel actually movedHow plenty of budget, plenty of runway, and not enough competition let a team harvest buy-ready demand for years without building anything above itWhat happens to your campaign ROI when you subtract branded search from the reportingThe USP work Mark did at his last two companies, and finding messages the company believed that customers had never heardWhy trade shows are the number one budget line by ten X when a project takes three years from booth conversation to active bidSelling to general contractors, chasing spec position with engineers, and Kyler's former boss's term for it: belly to bellyThe account-based marketing push aimed at a dozen named companies, opportunities that would double or triple the business, and another 50,000 square feet of manufacturing spaceWhy Mark can use generative AI safely and would be nervous doing it at 22, plus Seth Godin on attention as something you ask people to pay

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🔗 Resources Mentioned

Seth Godin, on attention as a currencyLovable, the AI build tool Kyler used to make the Forward Studios site look like an email inboxJeff Hedrick of Keep Supply, from the previous episode on attentionGoogle, TikTok, and Facebook, as channels discussedDell and the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" campaign, referenced by Mark's former bossThe CMO of Harley-Davidson, on doing the opposite of everyone else