Peters' Heat Treating
“Thank you again for going above and beyond on our project! We’re very impressed with what we received. I’ve already been singing your praises.” –Diana Peters Wilkosz, Owner
Since agreeing to take over the family business in 2015, Diana Wilkosz and her husband, Andy (with the guidance and support of Diana’s parents), have more than doubled its size by getting new certifications, purchasing new equipment, expanding their facilities, improving processes, and implementing a higher level of professionalism. Not to mention, they’d been preparing for the transition for years and have always made it a point to get into the trenches with their team and ask for input often. Diana and Andy are huge fans of American manufacturing and love knowing how many vital industries they support with their services.
Peters’ biggest challenge, as with most manufacturers in the US today, is attracting and retaining the right people. Another challenge is that the industry as a whole undervalues heat-treating operations. Peters’ has incrementally increased prices, but compared to other manufacturing processes, their profit margin is pretty small. One way they’ve created more profitability is by offering to outsource for their customers who appreciate being able to hand off their parts and not have to deal with post-op logistics. Additionally, Peters’ delivers parts at a high level of quality and with much shorter lead times compared to competitors. They also pick up the phone and keep customers well informed on the status of their projects.
From a marketing standpoint, they wanted to build a robust marketing machine that they would be able to turn on and rev up when they’re ready to go after new prospects, but with Diana running HR on top of Marketing, she has a lot on her plate and doesn’t have the budget to spend thousands of dollars a month retaining an agency. So, our intensive Buildout process was the perfect fit.
In order to help Peters’ run toward their big vision, we recommended up-leveling their brand and messaging to better position them as experts who can help customers get their parts finished correctly and quickly, making life easier through proactive communications, continual sharing of knowledge, and handling of secondary operations and logistics.
Noticing a big sign reading “GIVE A DAMN” on the wall of their conference room, we suggested using it as a tagline in their marketing. Injecting a little heat, we changed it to “GIVE A HOT DAMN,” which their team now proudly wears around town on t-shirts we designed for them. If ever there was a tagline that perfectly described the personality of a company, it’s this one. We used similar terminology throughout their website and marketing materials and provided a list of fiery words for them to use in their content.
Their website was performing adequately and they didn’t want to pay for a new site, so we initially just planned to optimize it for search engines, reorganize it to create a better user experience, and update the design with new branding and imagery. However, once we took a closer look under the hood, we decided it would be roughly the same amount of work to build a whole new website with a more modern look and feel so that it would be easier for them to manage internally. To further bolster their search engine rankings, we updated all of their online listings with the new imagery and messaging, created even more listings, and recommended they pay to be featured in industry-specific buyer’s guides.
Video is known to be the most powerful way to connect with your audience, and a great picture is worth so much more than 1000 words, so we planned and executed a 4-day shoot onsite in collaboration with our partner, ENE Video Productions, to film and photograph the team in their work-life habitat. We scheduled it around their annual company picnic so we could capture their camaraderie to use in recruiting materials. We interviewed people from leadership and operations on what they do and what it means to them, how they ended up in their position, and what they love about working at Peters’. The shoot also included interviews with two of their customers that we turned into case studies to help potential customers connect with them and understand their value.
From the footage we gathered, we edited together six different videos (the most recent on their YouTube channel). One was a company overview, one was a tour of the facility that was also edited into shorter clips explaining the different heat treating processes, one was for recruiting, two were case studies, and the last one serves as a background on their website’s hompage. Our goal was to showcase the company’s passion for American manufacturing, tell its epic origin story, and illustrate its level of professionalism and dedication to doing things right. We also created shorter clips for them to use on social media and provided everything we shot for them to use in their marketing going forward.
In order to empower Diana and the marketing intern she was planning to hire, we built a new Radical brand design and messaging guide and then brainstormed with her to put together a 6-month content plan that would include social media graphics templates, one full month of content, a social media scheduling system, and a virtual training session on how to easily use these assets going forward. In addition to that, we edited 25 video clips that she can post as Reels on Facebook and Instagram (and TikTok if they decide to take that on at some point).
Knowing the power of having a personal presence on Linkedin, we recommended that Diana connect with all of her customers and colleagues and develop a weekly practice of engaging with their content, posting about her own experience, and sharing content from the Peters’ company page.
To keep Peters’ top of mind with existing customers, we set up and trained them on an email marketing system, created a branded template, and built out 6 months of emails. To keep the Peters’ team engaged and informed, we created a company Facebook group where they could share exciting news and ask team members to share job listings with their networks. We also recommended offering some sort of bonus to any team member who was willing to help create marketing content going forward.
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