Ep 5: Beth Boeh of Boeh Agency

EPISODE DESCRIPTION Beth Boeh has been in water for 30 years — and like most of us, she didn't mean to be. What started as a temp job at a Philly-area instrumentation company in 1996 turned into a career, and eventually into Boeh Agency, a marketing firm that works exclusively with water companies. In this conversation, Beth and I get into why she made the call to specialize, what too many water companies still get fundamentally wrong about how they go to market, and the line that should probably be on every water CEO's wall: marketing is not sales. We also dig into a hot take on where water companies are overspending versus where they should be putting more, why PR is suddenly more valuable than it's been in years (thanks to LLMs), and what's actually shifted in water marketing over the past three decades. WHAT WE COVER (01:00) Thirty years in, by accident — from a 1996 temp job at Capital Controls to building an agency (05:00) An introvert running an outgoing business: navigating trade shows and relationship-driven work (10:00) Agency vs. fractional CMO — when a water company needs one, the other, or both (12:00) Green flags for a good engagement: budget, leadership buy-in, timing (19:30) Inside Boeh Agency's recent rebrand and the return Beth is already seeing (21:00) "The brand is not the logo" — what brand actually means in an engineering-driven, risk-averse industry (25:00) What water companies still get wrong about taking great technology to market (29:30) Hot take: where water companies overspend (paid digital) and where they underspend (PR) (31:00) PR in the age of AI — why earned media is having a renaissance now that LLMs are pulling from it (33:00) Standing out in an AI-flooded content landscape (34:30) The next shift in water marketing: storytelling, brand, and moving away from collateral (36:30) One thing every water CEO should hear: marketing sets the table for sales — they aren't the same thing ABOUT BETH BOEH Beth is the founder of Boeh Agency, a full-service marketing agency that works exclusively with water and wastewater companies. She got her start in the industry in 1996 at Capital Controls and has spent three decades helping water technology companies — from early-stage startups to global manufacturers — sharpen their brand, tell their story, and grow. CONNECT WITH BETH Website: https://www.boehagency.com Recommended reading: Boeh Agency's blog post called, "Engineers Deserve Better Marketing" CONNECT WITH PAUL Paul Balsom is the founder of Balsom & Co., a fractional CMO firm serving the water, wastewater, and environmental technology industries across the US and Canada. Balsom & Co. partners with water technology startups, environmental tech firms, and municipal and industrial water companies to build marketing strategy, go-to-market plans, brand positioning, and demand generation programs that actually resonate with engineers, utility decision-makers, and plant operators. Website: https://www.balsom.co LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbalsom/