A great discussion with Natasha Juhasz about traditional vs digital marketing in the Oil & Gas industry, filmed at OTC.
To learn more about Natasha click here
And to learn more about OFS click here

Mark: Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.

[Music]

All right. Today, we’re at OTC in Houston, Texas, the Offshore Technology Conference. And if you’re in oil and gas or you think about oil and gas, your butt better be here and if you’re not here, you better plan on being here next year. And we actually have a special guest today. We have Natasha.

Good morning, Natasha.

Natasha: Good morning, Mark. How are you?

Mark: I’m very good. How are you doing?

Natasha:  I feel great.

Mark: So, we’re going to talk about something controversial. Let’s talk about the difference in oil and gas between traditional marketing and digital marketing.

Natasha: Well, traditional marketing it’s as we call – we talked about it, every company has their marketing department, marketing manager at least one person doing marketing. What they used to do was go into publications that were doing the prints, doing publishing in the magazines, they were doing trade shows. But then, the internet came along and then we started – appeared on not just the television shows, not just going to PR agency because they’re expensive, we go into and use the social media sites, we go and use our YouTube sites which is another social media site.

So, we’re reaching out to customers from a different approach from the digital marketing the digital form. How is it different? And if you talk about your product, services, and your company in your magazines, in your advertisements, in your trade shows appearances, in the digital world, you talk about your customers. You talk about their needs, you talk about topics that interest them and not you. How do you find out? You talk to people, you ask questions, you generate conversation and genuinely interest – show you interest. You don’t just show, “Oh, I met you so and so, so how are things going? Do you want my Viber?” So, that’s not going to work in digital world.

In digital world, people only trust and believe and will reach out back to you if they see any value, if your presence is quality. So, that’s why I think that digital marketing, not that a traditional marketing is not quality, but it’s different, different. It’s more oriented to customers. It’s more customer-based targeting their interest versus your interest as a company.

Mark: So, let me see if I understand this right. So, traditional marketing is more like, here’s what I do, here’s my company, almost like a catalog. Right. And you’re saying digital marketing is about the problems that your clients actually have.

Natasha: It’s about their needs and their problems if I can solve it or there’s something may be don’t know yet, so you – part of other digital, it’s educating. It’s something that they will benefit from knowing the subject from something that they never knew because they’re not into that space, so the educational part is a big part of digital marketing as well.

One comparison that I always like to do that digital marketing and social media marketing, it’s something like banking, if you don’t have anything in the bank, you can’t withdraw anything. Imagine you have zero balance and you try to get $100, what are you going to get? Nothing.

Mark: Yeah, nothing.

Natasha: That’s exactly how it is. You have to invest in your customers, in your space, in your marketing, in your own people to withdraw and start getting the benefits of it.

Mark: Yeah. And we’re seeing in the oil and gas industry right now a shift where companies are actually looking and spending money on digital marketing instead of traditional marketing. Are you seeing that as well?

Natasha: It’s shifting. You cannot, you know, in everything in marketing sales, the common sense is the first thing. You shift and you analyzing by analytic tools that are available what’s working for you. Where you want to shift 70% versus 30% of traditional marketing or you want to do half and half or you want to replace it? I would never recommend to replace anything, you still need to public – do publications in industry magazines. You still need to public – do publication and interview maybe. You still need to have that human touch to your customers on all platforms. Yes, digital marketing shifted 70%, I would say.

Mark: Yeah. And so, let me ask you this, if you’re a company who have an existing marketing company, do the skillsets those marketing people need to change?

Natasha: Yes, they already have skills, they’re already there in the market, so that’s why they were hired to do a promotional, to do any kind of customer engagements. They are the front row. What they should need? They should learn. They should go to the meetings, they should go to and learn about others, they should read new books about marketing, and they should test. It’s all about trying in everything, it’s nothing they – if they don’t make any mistakes or even – even, you know, misspellings something on is that you can always take you down, nobody’s going to held account to you.

And, you know, nobody dies on the other end if something happened. But trying is much better than not trying. You’re not trying, you limited yourself to – to find new customer that you wanted to.

Mark: Yeah. And we say it all the time, go out and ask your client base, they will tell you what they need, what they’re struggling with, how they want to buy, you just have to ask.

So, speaking of social marketing, how did we meet?

Natasha: On LinkedIn.

Mark: Yeah. So there, it’s proven, right? So, she reached out to me on LinkedIn, we formed a relationship. She writes some really great stuff on her blog which I’m a big fan of and we agreed to meet here in person. So, what started as a virtual relationship is now a physical relationship. That sounds kind of bad, huh? No, it’s a business relationship.

Natasha: [Laughs] Yes, it is business relationship. Let’s just make it clear, right?

What’s great about social media is and what’s misperception, what’s great about just like we are here. We would not be here if I didn’t reach out to you on LinkedIn, you would never find – you have probably what? Over a thousand connections? There is our chances.

But then, you saw the value and Natasha does something which she says something valuable, I can find it interesting, maybe she made me laugh or she works for company that makes fiber optics which is a really – we have our place in oil and gas industry. Let’s connect. So that’s my thing. And then, when connection starts, we made connections for life.

Mark: So, real quick. You work for OFS. What does OFS do?

Natasha: OFS is the optical fiber manufacturing. We’re fiber optic manufacturing to mostly telecommunications. On the specialty side we have specialty division, we have different markets and oil and gas is one of them. I play a role, my role is manage oil and gas, industrial animation, and we also have medical, we also have government in aerospace. So we’re pretty much in a lot of markets – different marketing for the specialty division, also telecommunications so people will know and ask for telecommunications projects.

Mark: Yeah. That’s great. So, if people want to find out more about you and what you do, where should they go?

Natasha: They should go on my LinkedIn page and it’s Natalia Juhasz on LinkedIn.

Mark:  Yeah. And we’ll put up a link up to the show notes. So, folks I hope this helped. We will see you next time.