Building Brand Awareness & Engagement Through Digital Marketing - A Conversation with Justin Ulrich

But Justin, why don't you introduce yourself for those that don't know who you are, if they've been living under a rock or they don't ever log into their LinkedIn profile, uh, why don't you explain who Justin is a little bit, and then we're gonna, we're gonna, talk a lot about what you get to do in the marketing world and kind of how, uh, how you've, uh, how you've really broken into the restaurant space in the last, uh, I dunno, 12 months or so.

And since then I've been in tons of different industries, you know, telecom payment processing, POS space, SaaS. did a quick stint, in the off-road industry, leading the marketing team over at a, Polaris, for the Razor and general brands. Um, lots of fun experience and it all kind of went through the same vein of demand generation. Um, and throughout my journey really learned how to.

create different ways to cut through the clutter and to engage in my audience or with my audience differently, to, make sure that you stay top of mind and nurture them through their journey. Um, so that's, that's kinda me and kind how I got my start. I currently leading the marketing team here is a lot of fun. Uh, we. We're a good size org. We've got, you know, our, our foot in lots of different verticals 'cause we're agnostic, um, uh, to verticals.

But recently in the past year we've, you know, really jumped in, in head first into the restaurant space. and it's been a lot of fun. Uh, it's kind of funny when I joined the team, uh, back at the, in the end of 2022. Uh, majority of our clients were all white labeled. So I came into a, a weird marketing problem where we had like 1.5 million users who had access to our tool and nobody knew who we were. We were basically ghosts,

And the more I look at what you guys are doing, the more I'm blown away with how you've been able to not only build a brand that was already incredibly successful in multiple verticals, but now, in the restaurant space, you guys are just, you know, kicking ass and taking names, which is, which is a really good thing. The other piece, I'd love to, I'm sure there's, I'm sure there's some way we can go look at somebody's CV and say. Electrician to tax accountant, to a marketing guy.

I, you heard probably some unicorn that there's one of one out in the world that has done those three jobs over your career. What, what, what do you, what, what would you say about that?

So if you get someone on your team who has the ability or who has experience coming from different areas, they, they can bring in new thinking and new ideas and, and new ways to, to cut through clutter, which it, to me is invaluable. And I think the other, the other, um, kind of, I guess characteristic or attributes of my, of myself that. That have really helped me shine is I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and I jump in and if I, if I. Feel like I want to do something, just go do it.

Like there's no very little time for hesitation. Yes, there's some strategic thinking, but when you wait, it's like you create this, the opportunity to get, uh, in your own head, to create your own barriers that you then have to try to break down, to procrastinate. Um, but oftentimes if you have a really good idea, it's inspiration as I see it and it's like, why not? Go try it, you know, with, with some good thought. See if it works. Crawl, walk, run, test into things.

And if it works really well, great scale it. If you fail, fail forward. Learn from it and, and pivot from there.

Talk to us a little bit about kind of what is your charter as a brand and what is it that you guys try and do? And then we'll talk a little bit about kind of how you've been able to, uh, to make so many waves, uh, you know, in the last, you know, 12 months or so.

Whatever they're running the day to day, they're engaging with their customers, their guests, they typically don't have time or candidly like the background to run really solid marketing for themselves. So some companies you, you've got, you know, at the enterprise level, you've got really big brands. Think of like a McDonald's. Like a Chick-fil-A like they've been around for many years and they've got lots of money and teams that they can, they can leverage to do all their marketing.

And we find like in, in a lot of the enterprise space, like even, you know, there, there's, there's, that's a lot of opportunity for, um, localized digital marketing. So instead of running these, these big. Massive, uh, brand awareness campaigns nationally where you're spending on the platforms in the, in the cities that are gonna take the spend. New York, Chicago, LA, big population areas, these metros. Um. You have the, the need for, you know, local operators to drive demand at their location.

If I'm in Des Moines and I, and you know, I need, I need marketing help now, I can't, you know, hope that the marketing that's done in these other big cities is gonna drive, uh, traffic to my location. So we help make local marketing super easy, super easy based on that location specific data. And we do it at scale. So we work with corporate. We create what we call blueprints.

Put all the guardrails, the parameters, all the branding, compliance, messaging, everything in place at the, at the corporate level. Then roll it out to the local level, automate it so that, that operators don't even really have to touch anything. But if they want, they also have the ability to log in and, and run their own campaigns, their own ads, uh, manually, uh, with a push of a button. Super, super easy.

The thread that I kind of wanted to go on and, and I know you and I talked about this pre-show, is, talk to me a little bit about how. Like you took on the challenge of not being known when you started with the brand in late 2022 and, and now, um, you can't go on LinkedIn, at least I can't go on LinkedIn without hearing something that's going on with you and with your brand and what it is that you guys are doing.

You guys have obviously made, you know, quite a bit of waves in the restaurant space. You know, very recently. Talk to me a little bit about kind of your strategic overview of how did you go about, about thinking about that because I have watched you, I've had a front row seat. To watch it go from where I would say is a zero to pretty significant, growth, not just of the.

Availability of people knowing who you are, but then really it's ultimately turned into good partnerships and good business for you and for the partners that you guys are partnering with. So talk to me about it at, at a super high level, Justin, and then we'll dig into some of the details because I think it's important for both restaurant operators and tech, um, companies that are listening to, uh, to think about this strategically.

And sit and quite frankly, sit at your feet, sit at your feet and say, how can I, how can I help do what Justin did? Because that's, you know, we're, we're looking to give back to the, to those that are, that are spending their time with us today.

And it's like, that really stuck with me because for me, coming into this opportunity, it was like, I, where can I put the majority of my energy where I know the majority of my audience is gonna be, I can get the, the quickest engagement I. Or the, the highest impact, uh, engagement to drive as much awareness as quickly as possible. And that was LinkedIn

And the thing that I cannot stand, which I'm sure everyone here is listening, is probably the same way, is when a sales person reaches out and says, Hey, let's connect. And then you say, okay, you know, it seemed like a nice person. They, lots of mutual connections. Boom. They go right into the sale. I'm like, dude, we didn't even date yet and you're asking me to marry you. Like, come on. So, um, and, and with LinkedIn, I, I figured, you know, I. Actually, lemme take a step back too.

When I first got into LinkedIn in my career, it was all very much self-serving. So I went into it when I was in telecom right after school. I was like, oh, I'm gonna build my audience. I'm gonna get as much people, as many people as possible and, you know, optimize my page so I can be found, I can get recruited. I, I've had recruiters, literally, I'm not joking, Jeremy. I had probably. One or two recruiters reaching out a week, uh, constantly with awesome opportunities. I'm like, this is great.

This is how I'll kind of work my career and I could write my own checks, type of thing. Um, and then now in this role as I've kind of matured, believe it or not, you know, people, people listening, this guy hasn't matured. Listen,

Uh, so many people out there know that if they reach out to me, I'll help them get their resume in order, help them try to, get the process nailed down for finding a new role or just help them in different ways. And that approach is so much more different than a self-serving approach, trying to say, you know, I'm gonna put out my own content just to get my word out there, et cetera. Right?

You have to build an audience on a social channel before any content you put out there makes any sense or, or will drive any impact, I should say. So building the audience is easiest when you realize, uh, and you take that approach, like, if I help others, they're gonna wanna help me back. They're gonna see, oh, this is just a good dude trying to just help me out. Oh, he's super supportive. Like, I'm gonna throw him a bone.

And so I started off by connecting with, with, you know, who I felt were the, the. Right, well connected folks who had similar mindsets in the space. Um, starting with, uh, Sean Walchef, Zach Oates, you, you, uh, were a great support as well. Um, Jim Taylor and really supported them for three or four months. You know, just liking, sharing content, responding, trying to be just, um, giving thoughtful insights, stuff like that, right? And eventually.

When it was time for for us to do a podcast, we figured it was a good strategic move. I reached out to, to you. I reached out to Zach. I reached out to Jim. All with experience doing this. reach out to Sean, uh, Troy Hooper. Another one. Great advice. Do this, try this. Zach gave me some stuff to, to help short shortcut the process as well. I was able to launch a podcast in, in, a couple weeks as opposed to. Months.

So, because I was able, because I took the time and effort to invest in building relationships before any ask at all, there was a willingness to help me and, and a desire, I think, from others to wanna see me succeed as I've tried to help them succeed. So that approach is, is a much different approach than people typically take.

if you, uh, I was, I was on a. Uh, an industry, um, kind of thought leadership group that Sean Walchef also leads, and, and Monty Silva was on there and he was talking about the last six months. He totally changed the way he did business. He never asked for anything. He only promoted others and he only helped others shine, and he doubled his business in six months.

It really is going back, um, Justin to what you talked about is, is that that fear of starting, you know, that fear of starting, there's so many people that are scared to get on mic, they're scared to get on the keyboard. They're scared to put those things out there for fear of being judged, for fear of being, you know, um, you know, people looking at it going, you're an idiot. You don't know what you're doing.

How did, how did you overcome that, I guess, first and foremost, and I guess how would you encourage those out in our space? Because I heard it said last month I was at a conference, um, you know, the, a podcast is like the new. Book, you know, a lot of people always wanted to publish a book. Now there's so many people that want to get their ideas out in the, in the verbal and, and video form.

And so for those that are scared to death about putting their ideas out into the world, I guess encourage our listeners as to why you might think and, and it doesn't have to be a podcast. It's a comment. It's a conversation, it's an engagement. It's sharing an article, it's sharing a book that you read on social media. It's not necessarily, it doesn't have to be. Full production podcast like you and I do.

It is a lot of that other stuff that you might do that might be able to help somebody and their business to get to a different place. So for those that are scared and get, get fearful that they're gonna put stuff out there and get judged by their friends, family, and coworkers, um, help, help 'em, help us overcome that.

So the other 98 ish percent are, are just listening, engaging, following, you know, and it's, it, it's kind of crazy to think that there's so much opportunity for anyone to jump in and get their content or their message in front of a massive audience that really, you might think it's cluttered because you have a constant feed of thing that's run of, of, of content that's running, but it's really not that cluttered if you think of those numbers.

So. In terms of getting started, like to me, to me the barrier was always, ugh, if I start this thing, I'm gonna be fully committed.

It was a long time ago, and he and I were chatting through it, and I, ironically, he's gonna be on the show for the first time after. Three plus years of, uh, of regularly recording hit I, you tagged him and he is like, dude, we, we should do this. We've never done it. Let's figure it out. And so I've got him coming up on an upcoming show.

Um, the, the second thing that, that a lot of the excuses that I hear about engagement on, um, on social and really just in general of creating content is I am so busy running my tech company. I'm so busy running my restaurant, I'm so busy. This is just gonna be a huge si time suck. And why should I do it? Help help people understand that it's, it is not a time suck. It ultimately is a time savings, oftentimes 'cause you shortcut and learn from somebody else's mistakes.

Some of the things that you may be able to learn, but, but encourage again, our listeners, if you could, Justin, on why this engagement is truly an investment more than it is a, you know, dropping money down a down a drain.

That quality content is what's going to be engaging and what you can leverage strategically for your business. If you think of from a, a marketer standpoint. Typically people, uh, spend 80% of their time developing a piece of content and 20% of their time promoting it, when in actuality you should spend the same amount of time developing it. And then, but really that should only be 20% of your time. I. And the other 80%, you spend a lot more time promoting.

And that could be through taking that first long form piece of content, creating a bunch of different derivative pieces, snippets, blog posts, social posts, all sorts of different content pieces from that initial piece. Now, it sounds like a lot, like you're saying, it sounds like a huge time suck, but there are tools now that help do this for you.

Like you upload a long form video, it'll crank out social posts, it'll crank out your, your, um, blog post, the, uh, the text from, from the transcript, from the actual, uh, video itself. So many different content pieces that then you can put into a social tool that schedules out your posts. So now you're not going in there constantly to schedule things. You have 'em all scheduled out for a week, two weeks, a month, two months, because you can continue to schedule the same content out.

over time. So it's this ramp where the more content you create, the more content pieces you have going each day. If I look at our top competitors right now, we've got, uh, they probably post two, between two and five times a week. We're currently posting 25 times a week, and we're gonna be posting this week, it's gonna be 30 times a week. Why I don't care about. fatiguing the audience.

'cause the data shows that it does not, it actually, you may get lower engagement per piece, but you are getting a lot more impressions and a lot more total engagement because you're pushing out a lot more content

You know, I've talked a little bit about, you know, kind of that permission marketing, getting the opportunity to talk to people. I, I think people hear, oh, I'm promoting, I'm just standing at the rooftop. Look at me, look at me, look at me. And the truth is, is that's not what you're doing. And so double click a little bit Justin on, on kind of what that is. 'cause you're adding value to their, they want to listen because they want to hear what.

Paul Tran has to say, they want to hear what Sean Walch has to say. They want to hear what Zach Oates wants to, he has to say so that they can make their business better. It's not just about pure promotion. And stand on the rooftops and look at me and look at how awesome you EEvocalizes. It's the opposite.

So if you're able to capture their content, share it, you know, drive, uh, awareness to what they're doing, they're gonna want to give that back in return. Right. And then the other piece with the podcast, you gain access to their audiences. So if I'm bringing on Jeremy, Julian as a guest.

Not only am I giving Jeremy a week's worth of promotion and tons of content throughout the entire week, but also I've set up some other subsequent posts to, to, to promote Jeremy further, further, you know, two months, three months out. Uh, it also creates a relationship with Jeremy and people who know Jeremy are associating Jeremy with me, and now I'm part of the inner circle. So when you give, give, give, eventually it comes back to you just by nature of how networks work.

Connected with, with this person in some time, and I, I was looking for something from them because I, I had a, actually, I was looking to introduce them to somebody because they had a need and I sent this person a note and I probably hadn't talked to 'em since before the pandemic, so we're talking three years, maybe four years. I, I'd seen him around trade shows here and there.

And the first comment out of his mouth, uh, you know, in response via email was, thank you so much for all of the content you're putting out there. It helps make my business better now let me help this customer that you had. And so the influence that we have out in that space, when you're producing content, you have no idea, um, how much it impacts.

And, you know, you and I have talked about my faith journey and it's amazing how I'll go to trade shows and people that are connected to me on Facebook or on Instagram will see pictures of my family. Comment about those things. And so, um, you know, it's, it's just the ripple effects because there's only one to 3%, as you said, of people that are actually producing content. The others are just, you know, they're, they're consuming it.

And when they're consuming it, oftentimes they're, they're getting an impression about you, your brand, who you are as a person, what you, what you represent in ways that you have no idea, the ripple effects that you know, that, uh, that, that they go out into the world. Just, I'm gonna pivot here for a second.

As it relates to B2C brands, Evocalize, CBS restaurant technology guys, a lot of these people are B2B, you know, we're talking business to business and it's a, it's a relatively easy, you know, easy stretch to say, I'm putting out business content. I'm talking to people that are, that are good business people. I'm talking to business people on LinkedIn, but. Not just, but, and there's a lot of brands that are doing LinkedIn successfully in a B2C world.

Talk to me a little bit about how that pivot or why you would encourage those brands that aren't just B2B to also consider this form and, and all forms of content production and content delivery to be able to help them grow their B2C B2C influence as well as B2C, you know, business overall. Anybody that's ever run a restaurant knows the craziness that happens during a meal period in a rush.

One of our partners, Restaurant Technologies, Total Oil Management Solution, is an end to end oil management system that delivers, filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking one of the jobs that none of your team wants to do and takes it off your hands, allowing your team members to focus on their guests. Control the kitchen chaos with Uh, restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer while maximizing your staff's time. The solution can be provided at no upfront costs.

If you want to learn more, please check out rti inc. com or call 888 796 4997.

A LinkedIn account and I can actually identify the folks and it has really good demographic information that I can segment my audiences based upon. What's interesting about the content, like what we would find when we push content across LinkedIn, it would get such high engagement because people were so used to seeing white paper, this PDF that, and it's like boom. You see a razor like just riding through a mud pitch just. Throwing mud, super cool, super exciting. It cuts through the clutter.

It's engaging. So it, with B2C, you have, it's a channel that you know, people like to see that content no matter which channel they're on. If you have really cool engaging content that sticks out and cuts through clutter, you're gonna be one of the only ones that are doing it on LinkedIn. 'cause there's not a lot of B2C marketing that's being done

Troy Hooper, you again brought up his name earlier in the show. Troy. Hooper posted an article and asked for opinions on items, and I'm of the opinion that we go to places where we. Get the experience that we're expecting. If we're a McDonald's person, we get the experience that we're expecting. We're getting fast food at an inexpensive price, and that's the experience we're looking for.

If we're an experiential brand, I'm in, in the process of considering spending quite a bit of money, I. Because I saw an advertisement for a local pizza place that's gonna teach you how to throw pizza dough in a Neapolitan oven and I'm gonna spend a thousand dollars for my wife. And I had to go have a date night there to go learn how to throw. But you think about that now, how much brand loyalty am I gonna have? And I saw it on on LinkedIn. So you think about that.

What is that experience you're gonna go now create because you've got this opportunity to engage your audience with people that you know, have money and, and, um, and now you're gonna create an experience. And that experience could be how well the kids get along in the play place. That could be the food, that could be your supply chain. That could be, Sean does, does a fantastic job of even. Honoring his employees and showing the people that, that make the ribs every day in his restaurants.

Talk to me a little bit about kind of how that storytelling aspect creates the experience that your viewership may resonate with. It's not just the, Hey, come in at lunchtime and get a, you know, get a free taco, because that to me does nothing for engagement. I only act when I get that free taco at that time.

Um, it's called Denver, like no one's ever heard of it 'cause it's so tiny. We have a small pizza place called Giovanni's, little hole in the wall. I go there probably, well, more than I

You're celebrating the uniqueness of these brands and really putting them on a pedestal without being asked. You take, you're taking time outta your day. That could be, you know, doing something else and you're now taking, whether it be, Wow Bao or you know, PDQ or whatever it is, and you're now putting their name up in lights and saying. Look at what these guys are doing. You should go check 'em out.

And so I guess, walk me through what that looks like, because even for restaurants out there, go celebrate your suppliers. Go celebrate your bourbon producer or your wine purveyor, or the guy that's coming and bringing your fish every day. Or the guy that's bringing flour in and sugar in for. Those guys work their butt off so that you can go do the thing that you do.

Talk to me a little bit about how you are working to celebrate some of the brands that you're working with, because I think it's really cool the things that you're doing out there.

He then returned and I created the video. he re returned it with a, a swag box much like Eric did from PDQ, much like, uh, Betsy did from from Duck Donuts. Um, and that creates, okay, well now I have to give back 'cause they gave me something cool. So I have to create some content. 'cause otherwise I have egg on my face and I look like a total ding-dong in the

There's an association there. and so there's a, a implicit trust that's built in me and my persona and the brand that we're building. And so it just. The rising tide raises all ships. We continue to share each other and we both continue to gain access to each other's audiences and continue to grow. And like that is what LinkedIn is all about. If you can find a core group of individuals who get it, if what, what happens every time? Jeremy, when I'm, when I post a an AI image, what do I do?

Quite frankly, I have enough of a relationship with you that if you did something that was inappropriate, I would send you a message offline and be like, Hey Justin, you went a little too far with that one, and I think you would hear it, and you would receive that message. Because we built a relationship, even though you and I have never physically met in person, and we've known each other just about a year now.

Because not only do they understand how the algorithms work within the first hour of posting something, if you get 10 plus comments, the algorithms, it shoots through the roof in terms of how many more impressions you'll get on that post. But they understand the more that they continue to reciprocate that, like the sharing, I'm going to give it back to them and I will continue to, because I follow all their feeds. I like, I share, I repost, I comment, I give it back to them.

So when you have a core group of people that gets it. It's like gold. That is how you just sh you know, skyrocket in terms of generating awareness. Our numbers for impressions. Hockey stick.

You and or a post today or a post tomorrow, it is now brand influence that when I look at, and I'm sitting at the market and I'm looking to buy product, or I'm in a city that, that there's a, there's a store, I'm gonna go there instead of somewhere else because I've been influenced to see that, to hear that and to, to engage and, and I think those are the ripple effects that nobody actually thinks about unless you start to start to live in this world of, of driving these things and adding value.

Because again. What I, what I don't want everybody to hear is we just stand at the rooftops and just scream, come buy our stuff. It's the opposite. We're gonna give, give, give, and eventually it's gonna come back to us and it, oftentimes it's a, it's a longer game or it's maybe not a direct one-to-One correlation, I. I place an ad sales increase, but the long-term effects the, and the sustainable effects.

If I've got a good product and I've got a good, uh, methodology are gonna resonate and ultimately be the win long-term.

How can they learn a little bit more about what you guys are doing in the brand side as well as kinda on LinkedIn? How can they, uh, how can they stay connected?

Giving actual real world insights to help folks grow their business at a local level.

So thank you guys for spending time with us and, uh, make it a great day.