welcome to bets on the future where we highlight the various career paths in the electrifying Metals World from the vehicle you ride in to the bridge holding and up metals are everywhere why not in your career too I’m Jennifer bets a medals industry veteran with almost 20 years experience here to highlight these incredible career paths As Told by the women who are living them this week I am extremely biased on who we have on our podcast this week she is an incredible in colleague co-worker um incredibly educated in in this realm that we’re going to be talking about today Marissa Watkins graduated from Boise State University in 2018 with a degree in Communications with an emphasis in marketing and a minor in nonprofit management she got started in the recycling industry in 2017 working at the front desk at United Metals Recycling in Boise handling everything from road taxes to petty cash for the six yards they had at the time after after a brief Hiatus she found her way back to the recycling industry with United Metals in a purely marketing position and the rest is history Marissa thank you so much

for coming on and taking the opportunity obviously I’m a little biased you are in charge of our marketing development from the digital marketing side of things at recycled media so thank you so much for coming on um I know you’re a little busy these days so really appreciate you taking the time absolutely I’m so glad I’m able to um sit down and do this with you um I’ve never been on a podcast so this is going to be a um a different realm I love to Market them never actually been on this side of the camera usually I’m behind Sky who is filming or editing them and I’m like poking her going this yes so this is um this is a different place for me to be definitely well I I really do appreciate it because we’ve had this conversation uh a few times where I’ve been you know sort of encouraging you to get maybe more in front of the camera because she is really wonderful with our clients behind the scenes encouraging them helping them with their strategy helping them with just their overall digital footprint and so I thought it was

time uh more more people got to know some of our team members especially Marissa at recycled media definitely I’m so excited um yeah this is definitely it’s definitely different but it’s it’s kind of nice because now I can talk to clients when they’re nervous about being on podcast um I number one in particular we were at the scrap Expo and he was so nervous about being on the side of the camera because he’d never had to do a podcast before never really done Marketing in any sort of platform and he was like I don’t I don’t know what to say I don’t I don’t know what to do I’m like it’s fine just you’re having a conversation with a friend and it’s nice that I can actually like now do that usually I’m just like yeah it’s just like having a conversation with a friend I’ve never done it I’ve never had said conversation with a friend so this is going to be a good um good back pocket thing to have yes it it really is and your background and your history of how you got into this industry is from my perspective

very interesting so if you don’t mind sharing I mean how how did you find this industry um yeah so I was in college I had finally moved out of my mom’s house and I needed a job step pole of you know things that were hiring in the area um I had a lot of experience with customer service and things like that um and I saw a Front Desk position and it was literally just near my house and I was like oh I’d never been over there but it’s near the airport um okay I you know did more research on it and they had a really long history of being there they had multiple locations so in my head I’m thinking okay this place has been here for a while clearly people trust it they have more than one location usually more than one location I’m thinking okay obviously like good customer service they like the people they work with like they’re good to their employees um so I went for the interview got the front desk job and um was there for a couple years um I literally follow people around the yard every

once in a while remember like the first couple days I was in office they had um made me shadow the guys in the scale house just for their day just to kind of see what was going on and I’m so thankful for that cuz that was something I obviously didn’t know that we really did I’m thinking it’s just front desk stuff I’ll handle the paperwork whatever I’ve never had another job like making me shadow them um understand the full scope of it so that was really helpful and insightful um to kind of see like what all we were handling and even just like the truck driving on the scale and I’m like asking questions I’m like so why are you weighing it now it’s just things that were completely unknown to me um beforehand and so um I really fell in love with just like the camaraderie at that office um the United medals team is is incredible and I’m so so beyond thankful that I got started with them um and still work with them so but um yeah you know took a little break went to a different industry came back which

is so fine um and they W welcomed me back with open arms which I’m so thankful for um but at that point I’d already had a degree and I wanted to just do marketing I didn’t want to be at the front desk anymore I’m like I want to level up so um I kind of talked them into just letting me just do marketing only um which was perfect and they found a role for me and at that time I was just creating social media content for like every brand that we have Under the Umbrella which is a number of them if you know anything about United medals we have like a toe in every industry so um at that point I was literally pumping out like five pieces of content for each brand every week oh my gosh which was Insanity uh it’s like I mean I like like thinking back on it I don’t know how I had the time or the creativ like the creative ability to do that um but on like the side I was I was starting to create like a recycled media website I didn’t want to know

I was working on it but I knew that there was potential there so I kind of was like when they weren’t walking by the office I was like working on a new website to kind of like market like to think about like our like that we could offer clients or we could offer other businesses and like things like that so that kind of got started like way back when and then finally like Brett hopped on board it always takes him a little bit and I always joke around with them and so he finally hopped on board and then I was like hey I kind of already started building a website for it and so um once we got Nick and Brett on board it was Game On which was really cool and for those who may not know on LinkedIn social media Brett is Brett eart CEO of the United medals family group of companies um go ahead and give him a follow give Marissa a follow they’re fantastic on there um just for perspective the social media side of things you know what Marissa has been able to help with United medals has

helped grow their business uh and so I think it’s really incredible that you just took the initiative thinking like okay I’ve got this experience in the you know the metal recycling side of things I’ve got this passion for marketing I know it can help grow this business let’s take a look to see if we can help other businesses grow it as well so it’s it’s really quite quite impressive to see the initiative behind it just to say all right nobody told me to do this but I know this is what we should be doing and so you took the time you know when you had it to get that up and running yes yeah it was um it’s always kind of like like goofy looking back at it because at the time like there was we didn’t have have anyone to really help we were just servicing oursel at the time and we were just like an in-house marketing agency um which was kind of brilliant at the time because I we can kind of get our feet wet with all the different types of marketing we were going to be handling whe

that be like website design content creation podcast recording um because we were doing all that at the time but it was under like every single brand and there was no like main umbrella for it um yeah it’s just like thinking back it’s just kind of crazy like looking how far we’ve come and like gosh that was what 2020 perfect timing if you think about it like 2020 was the year to get online because couldn’t see each other in person right absolutely and I think that really helped um the industry like the smaller to midsize like yards because people were home all the time they were stuck like like oh I guess I’ll clean up finally and then next thing you know they’re Googling like scrapyards near me and then if you didn’t have any sort of web Presence at all they weren’t finding you they weren’t going to you which was kind of an incredible like timing I’m like you know I’m pumping out all this content we’re using Google AdWords um we were fixing up all of our websites one by one I think I went through and redid like seven websites in

the last like in like a like a year and a half time frame which is insane to think about but that created an incredible amount of organic CEO or SEO um for each of those Brands those all had content each of them had this different social media platform on every single platform I mean it was insane to think about but just a simple Google you were getting exactly what you needed and all of our Brands were just thriving because of it which is like it was literally a wild time it it’s still surprising to me when you and I have had conversations with prospective clients and you know we meet them at conferen or Expos and you know they’re either not really on LinkedIn or their website hasn’t been updated in several years or you know oh we’re on Facebook but you know we don’t do any Google adws people just know who we are and it’s just surprising to me because that mindset of just like well it’s always worked for us so we’re just going to keep doing the status quo is so surprising because when you take a look back and

you think about the Yellow Pages the Yellow Pages Billboards you know yeah they have a place they had a peak time when it came to marketing but things changed right and so it’s it’s incredible to hear the story of how you helped get that reach get those additional clients get those companies to a point where people could find them because you know we we we don’t really use the Yellow Pages um I’m assuming um so much anymore and how else are you going to you know use the tools that are at your fingertips you’re already on your phone all the time yeah if your business isn’t on there how do people find you and it’s it’s fascinating because it’s like I don’t mind if people don’t want to get on like every single social media platform every platform isn’t for them and that’s perfectly fine but in 2024 like the biggest push in all of marketing right now is find your one to two platforms and give it your all so like if you know that Tik Tok is not your thing which is totally fine I make Tik toks that get three views

and I do digital marketing for a living like you know what I’m saying like it’s it’s not for me and that’s fine but like my Instagram does well so I push out more content there um like for personal stuff but it’s if you don’t need to find if you don’t need to get on every single platform don’t do it give one to two year all whether that be like LinkedIn and um Facebook perfect those can coincide if you want to do Instagram and Facebook even better because then you can post to one and it’ll go to the other um I mean it it is so much more important to have good content on one platform than a bunch of mediocre content on seven different platforms it’s just not doable and if and all that time that you’re spending on one of those needs to also be like almost doubled when you go into Google like I don’t I think I’m kind of weird when I do this but I don’t really use Google for a lot I go into my Apple Maps which is linked to Google and I search things there so like

I’ll look I’ll literally type in grocery stores when I’m in different cities and it’ll populate all the grocery stores near me so I type in scrapyards near me it’ll populate like all the scrapyards on a map but that’s all Google like that is proximity but it’s also popularity reviews all of that I mean the reach that like just paying attention or giving five minutes to Google like it’s literally spend 10 minutes on on it every week update your times that you’re available update your website your phone number I mean the most minimal stuff there’s places I don’t go to if I don’t see the website linked a absolutely I did a 50 states of recycling Series last year and it was shocking to me that almost every single state where I tried to do like the top you know five to 10 um metal recycling yards that were in that state and almost every sing Le state would have somebody that I knew was large and was very difficult to find on Google Maps because I wanted to take a screenshot to Showcase like here’s where all their yards are here’s where they’re located

this is like where in the state they’re located at and it was shocking to me if I could find them not everyone had a website attached to their Google profile through Google Maps it was just mindblowing or we didn’t touch on this yet the Google reviews there would be these Google review that people would leave for these businesses most of them would be positive but there would be some negative ones that either they did not handle the appropriate reaction on how to handle a negative review or they never responded at all positive or negative like it just it’s like they just went radio silent on these reviews and it’s uh you know obviously you and I have talked about it you know off offline here where those are great prospective clients but that doesn’t help us as an industry that doesn’t help us you know overall to get our industry a little bit more out there so that people can find us absolutely and it’s like reactive marketing is it’s that’s what it is it’s reactive so you’re like you’re seeing something out there that you know you can um you can like correlate

to or like how don’t want to say this like if you’re seeing something out there that you think oh I could associate my business with this react to it so and that also is including reviews so if you’re seeing a bunch of reviews that are like oh we saw a really hilarious dog that sits outside the yard all the time you’re like oh that’s weird I’m seeing all these reviews that say that whose dog is that and you realize it’s like the business next door go take a picture with it oh here’s the dog everyone’s here’s like our new mascot you know or something like react to it and even the negative stuff you have to you have to react to because those people are unhappy unhappy people talk the loudest like I in everything like the people that hate airlines are they’re going to be the ones that are yelling about it like they’re always yelling about it and they’re probably going to you know sway you on never flying whatever Airline again the amount of crap people talk about Spirit you’re probably like let me not buy a spirit ticket right so

like people complaining about it all the time but people love you know Delta and that’s fine and they talk about it all the time so you’re like oh it’s great but you have to react to the negative stuff as much as you react to the positive stuff because both of them are going to talk but the unhappy people are going to talk the lot us all the time every single time and that you’re going to have to have a plan and a strategy for that too as you get online and get your business online because obviously those are going to be usually your most frequent either commenters or engagers is you know when you go to a restaurant for instance if you have a wonderful meal you’re still only one out of five times likely to actually leave a good review but if you have a terrible experience you’re four out of five times more likely to leave a terrible review even though most of the time people have a wonderful experience it’s the same thing with your your presence online by not being online and not opening yourself up to that criticism doesn’t

actually help your business because then people aren’t going to even be able to find your business to have those positive experiences or every now and then maybe a negative one but those negative ones are ones that are going to allow you to grow as a business as well with without constructive criticism how are you expected to actually like get to that next level get to an improvement Place put any of that in in action absolutely and even talking to like potential clients where you know I’m like hey like how are people finding you the most and it’s always Google in Word of Mouth hello if people don’t like you they’re not gonna go to you they’re not going to recommend it and that’s like and that’s fine like they may not you you’re not going to jive with everyone but if someone’s leaving like someone going to Google and they’re seeing good reviews they’re so much more likely to go somewhere so like why not just take care of both of those with one stone and just spend like 10 minutes a week on your Google account it’s very easy to claim your accounts

um recycle media can always help you with that hello y enter a little marketing plug there yeah we like and it’s so simple we’ve all done it anyone that’s had a business um has done it you have to because you could all it just it takes takes five minutes to claim it probably about maybe 48 Hours Google will you know do the full scope of your website your email make sure it’s actually you trying to claim it and then it’s yours I mean I get emails constantly about the recycle Media One just because I’m like hey let me make sure I claimed this our website’s linked our address is on there even though we’re all kind of all over the place um but it’s I it’s so simple it’s simple it’s the easiest thing you can do in 2024 for your business is claim your Google account and fix it up I really like that suggestion our industry just doesn’t I I should step back our industry historically has not wanted to step out there and there’s a lot of you know uh reasons why that that’s been the case and so we’re still

kind of coming out of this mindset of well if we don’t put ourselves out there none of the negative will come towards us and yet we still see negative news stories about the metals industry about the recycled materials industry and you don’t see those positive news stories because we we don’t put those out we have 99% more positive news stories of what we’re doing for our local communities our economies the environment and yet we very rarely the majority of us do not put that kind of content out there to connect with our communities to connect with like other potential business clients that exist out there and and it seems so so easy just to take that next step and I guess I mean this industry is so different than anything like I’ve experienced before and I have friends that also work in Mar marketing but they’re working with like makeup brands and like all the beauty stuff so it’s so funny when we all like sit down together and we’re chitchatting about this stuff because the problems we have in this industry with marketing are things that they’ve surpassed and already like are onto

the next problem and their industry like five years years ago so it’s so interesting to me that like an industry that needs customers it needs clients it needs business deals is just like years almost behind on like normal marketing growth and not that it’s a bad thing I think I think a lot of this industry has focused so much on Word of Mouth so much on just small community building which is great like I know when I go into like Boise and I say I work for United metals and recycled media they’re like oh yeah I’ve been there before but if I go in like anywhere like in anywhere in like South Idaho and that’s great I go like one state over maybe because they’re also like the same sort of like region if I talk to somebody from here probably not which is fine but because they’re focused on their small communities um but I think like the community building that we’re talking about now in marketing especially this industry is online you and it’s not just looking for clients that are going to bring stuff in or small business partners in the

area and that’s bright and dandy if you have those but what we’re looking for mainly now is um people in other states that are like hey we can’t handle like this level of of of scrap coming in can you take some you know or hey we have all this stuff we need to hold on or hold on to do you have one that can buy it in this amount of time which is what we all need like this this industry is so great about coming together like the camaraderie because it’s it’s something that we all deal with like every single scrapyard has dealt with the same stuff bottom to top pretty much so it’s the same experience which is great but it’s just we all stay like so close to home sometimes but the community that’s available and like the people that are in this IND industry are so impressive they’re so inspiring they’re so hardworking it’s like why not share your story and become a voice in that Community to also maybe Inspire someone else like I and it’s just it’s fascinating to me because it’s it’s this industry is just so different

and it’s so much fun to like be in all the time but it it just it could grow so much more and I know it can so I’m really hoping in 2024 we can kind of like take some some steps down that path to more like online community building um but you know we’ll see and it baby steps it’s obviously something that recycled media is working on you’re working on you know behind the scenes trying to encourage you know friends of mine in the industry just to start just like maybe post a news article every now and then on LinkedIn nothing crazy right just maybe even comment on somebody’s um at that time as well just to get started get comfortable with it and you know just kind of open your your eyes and opportunities up to something a little different absolutely and but that’s branding like right then and there like that is branding and people don’t like really think about it that way but like you are your brand you rep it on your shirt every day you go to the office you know you live in Bri you live and breathe

it while you’re there you go home you’re probably still like talking about it you’re texting people from the office like that is your brand and that’s perfectly fine you need to expand on it right so and I love this so much one of our clients um Jake bronstein um down in marville he didn’t really post a whole lot on LinkedIn which is fine um we got him to start posting which we all love we gave him you know some content that’s some options like just some things that you will hey consider posting things about this my favorite post to this day is him showing and telling the story of two workers that bike to his house in the morning every single day so that he can drive them to work because they don’t have a car to get down there and I’m just the passion and like the Adoration of like him as a business owner a CEO you know of this brand to be able to be like hey yeah I can take you to work it’s fine like that’s something like it’s like the small things like that but it’s like it

is so incredible to meet like there’s people like that like that’s this industry that is his brand he is that kind of person when he goes to the office and I’m so glad he shared that because that’s just that and to me and I you know as a client I’m still like but that’s I keep saying that’s just it’s incredible to me like that is the brand that is his brand that is him doing branding that’s storytelling that’s all of it and it’s going to bring him clients future EMP employees uh you know Community leaders that appreciate that that are going to relate to that that are going to be more likely to do business with him based on knowing that about him that that’s the type of person that he is versus having to cold call someone that doesn’t know anything about you or your business and then having to explain to them verbally over the phone or at a conference who you are versus he was able to use storytelling to Showcase who he is as a person who he is as a business leader exactly and it’s it’s so funny because

like with with Jake and all the great stuff he does he has such a hard time getting online still yes yes so it’s like the few times a weeky posts are incredible um and that’s all we’re asking like just post a couple times it does not have to be anything crazy it just doesn’t it it could be a couple posts a week and if it’s something like that and then you know you just promoting your business perfect you know you’re getting both hands you’re getting the cell side you’re getting The Branding side and that’s perfect if I try to tell bre eert Brett eert to post once a day every single day at 9:00 am I will be unemployed yes that man will post whatever he feels like it when he needs to anything he sees he’ll post about it and that’s perfect that’s his branding and he’s built you know who he is and the brands underneath him because of that but you cannot put people in a box um especially him but um it’s it really is like go at your own pace start slow if it’s once week when you

have time you know if it’s you know Monday you got done reading all your emails for the weekend oh hey I had this picture from last week let me just post that perfect yes it’s a muscle it’s essentially this practice that you have to get into the habit of doing and if you don’t exercise it if you don’t use it a lot you know it it’s not going to be your your strongest suit I I’ve noticed that as well um for reference and you know spoiler behind the scenes of when we’re recording this I took a couple weeks off at the end of the year you know kids are off on um school break so you know I even took off from like you know the digital marketing side of things for a couple weeks I didn’t really even schedule anything out I just wanted mental break and I will have to say it’s taken me like a week or two to get back into that mental like habit of of seeing when there’s opportunities to post about something seeing how there are different stories that I could send to various clients you know

like just hey this is an idea I’m finally getting back into that habit again and it’s crazy it was only two weeks off like it was and i’ had been doing this for a while exactly and like so much happens so much changes so many things you want to talk about within two weeks and you’ve missed like something from 10 days ago and it’s like if it’s a even like okay to talk about this now like should I bring it back like yeah I don’t know about taking two weeks off that’s good for you yeah yeah I don’t know if I’m gonna be doing that again I I should I know I should but it’s also hard from a business perspective yeah it it it it was a lot um that was the first time that i’ done that in um probably a decade crazy the Europeans listening to this are probably like that’s such an American um absolutely 40 hours is like light work for us over here yes hours a week yes exactly um before we head out I want to you know just pick your brain like for one last thing

is there anything in particular based on what you know about our industry about the metals manufacturing recycled materials communities what what do you see is like that next thing that can get our industry out there that can help these businesses like you know we talked about the Google side of things but is there anything in particular outside of that that you’re like just do this in 2024 that’s a hard one because there’s so many different things and like some things aren’t going to work for other people um I would say like tag team someone in the office just to kind of help you like with content and because it can’t be a one person job I mean if you’re in the office and someone’s out in the yard or someone’s on the road you know talking to clients and customers and things like that just have them like hey if you could take a couple pictures or something crazy happens not crazy but something great happens with a customer you like client interaction just write it down for me I want to be able to share those kinds of things with um potential customers

and clients I think just like maybe even just tag teaming someone in the office to kind of help you with content will make your life so much easier um because then you don’t feel like the burden and the Guild of having to always do it um I know for us we have a giant um folder on on our phones that we can just dump pictures into so I mean almost every single day I’m getting like um updates from like the guys like all over that are just like had this really cool like shot of one of our trucks with the load on going out out to wherever and it’s like well these are cool pictures like cool and then like sometimes you’ll see Brett post them and things like that but he can’t be out there all the time doing that kind of stuff like and nor can nor can most of these like yard owners and business owners and things like that you guys cannot be out there all the time you guys cannot see everything um yeah just tag team someone else in to help you and then you know if they

want to start posting great help build the brand from two angles of the business that’s a really great advice because a lot of the time our clients have said you know I can’t do this like it’s too much work it’s it’s you know it’s overwhelming and what um people I think are comparing themselves to or somebody like Brett that’s on there posting consistently and people forget that he had to start at some point like his first post was probably terrible right like probably not great okay like let’s just like set the bar there like your first post is probably not going to be great your second third you’re going to get better like it’s just going to be what it is but like you said he can’t be everywhere all at once and so leaning on employees who probably do have a at least a small passion for the visual content side of things because they’re usually a consumer of it in their personal lives right to engage them and to utilize them I think is going to also retain your employees longer because now they have a second facet to their job is

to capture those moments to really appreciate what are a part of in this Metals community in this recycled materials community that a lot of times we think is normal because it’s what we see on a daily basis but in reality what we do is not normal most people don’t normally see what we do and honestly it’s really cool and I just I I just want to keep encouraging with you others to to share it and to Showcase what we’re a part of absolutely and like even that’s like just like a side note to that if your employees are giving you content give them a small shout out in like the post like that was like some random thing I learned in my nonprofit management class on my volunteer side of stuff like people are volunteering to give you pictures and give you content and give you videos and interactions hey like you know we had um Claire out in the yard today working on um whatever she took this really cool picture and then maybe go into it or maybe that’s at the end like thanks like picture credit Claire because then when she

sees that post like hey I took that picture let me just share that because all my friends can see that I took this really cool picture and my you know my boss is like mentioning me like that also in just creates more um employee retention and like a passion and that they feel at home in these places too so I I love that advice I I mean it’s it’s perfect to you know kind of wrap up this episode Marissa Watkins director of our digital marketing at recycled media thank you so much for coming on board you can find her on LinkedIn you can find her on um you know the various social media sites if you’ve got any questions she’s an excellent resource in this industry so feel free to reach out to her and find her thank you Marissa I really appreciate it and thank you for um having this be your your first podcast uh experience thank you for having me to many more in the future yes cheers