Weekly News Update 10.23.20; FiveStars Loyalty Program; Job Outlook in the Digital Industry; Marketing Trends of 2021

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 If you're listening to the latest Radcast news update
 Here's Ryan and Riley
 Hey guys
 Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It's our weekly news segment here in the final stages of October
 Like today is officially the 22nd
 Yes, yes, it's my mom's birthday. Oh happy birthday, Riley's mom
 Yes, yeah, 45 years young. Oh exactly. Yeah, she's turning 27 today
 Yeah, for a couple of times, but it's okay. No, well, she's listening to the Radcast at all then. Happy birthday
 Exactly. Yes, happy birthday, Tracy
 Tracy, yes, yeah, Tracy happy birthday
 And you having a good week there, Riley? Yeah, I'm having a really good week. I feel like we've been really busy like in a really good way
 I'm really excited about a lot of the upcoming stuff that's coming up on the Radcast and just radical in general
 I feel like there's just been a lot. I feel like it's just been non-stop, but in a good way
 Do you know what I mean? Just there has it's been busy. Well, we're doing we're busy with client stuff
 And then we're doing a lot of internal marketing and different things like we're revamping our website
 We're busy with the radcast and things that come with it and then you know some other content things
 Which I'll talk about here shortly. So it definitely felt busy and
 You know, we just finished, you know, probably one of the bigger e-commerce sites. We've built
 Not that I've built, but that we as radical as built right all about fabrics has got several thousand
 skews
 And that's all about fabrics.com if you'd like to go
 Purchasing your craft needs, but uh, that's awesome
 So excited to get that it's never done because we're going to be doing the marketing and fulfillment of marketing services for them
 To really drive traffic to the site. That's always the two sides of the coin. We're with a lot of clients
 especially
 non-marketing
 Driven clients that hey, we've built an online store to just start selling now
 You you actually have to do marketing to drive it to it whether that's digital ads or paper click or
 Content in SEO, which takes a little longer
 So we've been doing that in Senate baller email flows and campaigns. So it's pretty complicated
 But excited to get the site live and up. We've seen several orders come in
 Yesterday and today already oh nice super exciting
 So that's been big and excited. I mean we had Dave Gerhard on the show this week that'll be launching next week
 You know Dave is the CMO at privy and if you're on LinkedIn at all you probably see Dave's content quite a bit
 He's definitely in the algorithm
 Because I mean when I get on I like he's like the first and I feed maybe because I engage with it because super bright guy super approachable
 And definitely one of the leading voices in e-com if not marketing as a whole
 Right now, so it was a really great episode
 I'm excited to push Dave a little bit on a few topics, you know trying not to make it the standard stuff
 He's talked about a hundred times and I thought we got some good stuff out of him and some real practical advice
 Oh, yeah, for sure and we also have a fun little promo for his book
 That's exclusive for the radcast so that's always exciting
 So we'll give that promo when that episode comes out on Tuesday. Yeah, he'll set up a link
 They just did an e-commerce playbook kind of the definitive guide
 We've ordered copies here for the agency and that should be arriving as a hardback book
 I believe he said or it's he liked the idea of it being tangible
 And this makes a lot of sense like I was that person in college where I needed the I needed the book like I needed the hardcore book
 And I needed the right and do all these things and I think he made that point very, you know clear
 And I like the fact he's that's why they have like that hardcover book, but so many great
 Little promo there. We'll put links up to everything like that
 It's I think it comes right off the privy site
 And I think they're starting to deliver shortly and then you know from an agency perspective, you know
 We started and I've always kind of
 We've always had a few little side projects from our agency marketing perspective
 It started with Greenville hustle right with doing local community stuff
 And then we kind of built some merchandising around that they gave back to the community
 A lot of the profits are actually all of the profits over the summer
 gave back to the Greenville United Way fund for COVID relief
 And so we've carried that through but we're kind of doing a little detour to create a sub-brand for the agency
 It's going to be called the radical label right and it's going to be merchandise that's you know, we have a very hip cool
 Team as you know a lot of agencies do but we most certainly do oh my gosh trendy
 Yes, so we're and I've always wanted to be able to practice what we preach and almost have
 Uh a living breathing
 E-commerce presence that we're testing and doing things on our own with our own brand
 That we then translate to clients and so we did that a little bit with Greenville hustle
 But it's obviously been very localized
 So this is going to be much larger much bigger scale and going to be kind of our our testing ground for different e-commerce
 Strategies obviously we're going to use the traditional playbook that we do for most clients
 They kind of get the machine going right but then we can test certain things and do certain things that then we can
 To pull it for clients and we have a working living breathing case study for them
 And it also gives our people a passion project a little bit because these these these designs are going to be from our team
 You know, and we're kind of playing around positioning but
 The working positioning is by radical for the radical
 And so you know, we're going to play off of the notion that people that are
 Inspired that can inspire others with the armor so nice, right?
 So
 We're excited about that. It's going to be fun. We'll have t-shirts and sweatshirts and pullovers and all the traditional stuff and
 And excited to see where that goes. Yeah, I like all the designs that our teams have been doing for those two because I just I don't know
 I love that. I just and they look so cool. I mean, I love the sweatshirts. I can't I'm about to buy one actually
 I cannot wait to buy one. I haven't put put my order in yet, but
 Yeah, I'll put the link in the in the episode notes. Yeah, we're gonna have a big
 Site launch. It'll probably it we're probably still
 30 to 40 days away from having
 That specific store set up, you know, Jeeville Jeeville hustles there, right with all of our green bull and have local stuff
 Jeeville hustle.com
 But the radical label will live like right on top of our website
 And the radical dot company website and so excited about it and here's Riley with the news
 Here is the Radcast news
 Okay
 Okay, so five stars
 They're already established as a company in an app, but they are expanding now
 With a new way to run loyalty programs and shopping analytics for small brick and mortar retailers
 What or what's something that like small businesses can take away from this
 Expansion from five stars. Well, I actually use this app
 I've only used it a couple times, but the local
 Butchershop. It's called New York Butchershop
 Apply named
 But the New York Butchershop is there, you know, it's like there's only New York fashion and New York Butchers
 You know like anyway New York gets all the will of anyway, but
 Use it there you plug in your phone number you get rewards points
 It's very integrated because I do like it because all you have to do is get your phone number and then
 They're keeping up with my ticket, which is actually pretty high because I buy steaks like every week and I'm a carnivore
 I love meat. I love steaks with big bones
 My Bronisers burgers
 Yes, I did how he didn't meet there is I except human
 Thank God
 But in all seriousness you plug in your phone number they keep it with your tab and next thing and every time
 Not every time, but every third time this is how much I order
 They go how you save five ten or 20 bucks on this order and so it's all pretty integrated loyalty points
 Um, I haven't gotten any emails. I haven't got any SMS marketing. I imagine that's probably part of it
 Maybe I didn't sign up for it when I did it, but um, it's definitely more towards the
 Two to three four store type chains. I'm sure they
 Someone's gonna go once again. No, we do a 30 we we have 30 franchise eat. They do 30 store front. Okay. I get it
 But it's still small
 Smaller chains as as noted in the article mom and pops right and so it's interesting
 I think loyalty in these types of programs are growing
 First of ones that are simple to use easy to use like this one is and 50 million and funding is anything to sneeze at and so
 It'll be interesting how they spin that if it's more in application development or marketing of the program
 We'll see but it's a cool platform and we'll see where it goes
 Yeah, what's the initial takeaway you think small businesses should like should I mean the reality is
 Any small business needs to know who your customers are and you need to be rewarding repeat purchases
 It increases lifetime value
 Which is everything, you know, it's expensive to gain customers
 It's more expensive to lose them and it's
 About that lifetime value and when they know a customer knows when they keep coming back their building points
 You know that reward system works. It's proven to work
 And so if you're a small business you should have some type of reward program that feeds
 Text message slash SMS
 Phone numbers, you know your cell phone numbers into your system or email addresses so that you're capturing and you know
 Who your customers are right and so any platform that that allows small business to do that
 I'm a fan of and if you are small business you get to know who your who your customers are and how to serve them right right
 Chaining gears a little bit. I
 That's obviously something it's super important for small businesses
 But I think this the kind of the second part of this episode
 I think is really just going to be focusing on some of the effects that covid's just had on
 Businesses in general and jobs in general, which ironically I think a lot of people are like oh
 This is actually slow down a lot of job growth and to some degree it obviously has like I'm definitely not going to doubt that
 You know or downplay that there's you know actual data
 I mean I know there's no telling it it's a reality
 But with that being said I think this is a really interesting turn for the digital careers
 Because I think a lot of companies realized oh my gosh
 This is actually a valuable career
 We should actually invest like and really good graphic designers and having cyber security
 You know that kind of thing and I think this is something that if you're in the digital career
 This is something that you need to start investing in and you know
 It's worthwhile to have
 Some of these jobs that are coming up cyber security experts
 Obviously you want to make sure that you know everything that's going through online whether that's paying or you're schooling or submitting assignments
 Whatever it is that someone is there to make sure that every no nothing's gonna get hacked everything's gonna be just fine
 Um graphic designers the same way and digital self-service just making sure the user experience is nice for the customer
 Whether it's a customer whether it's a student or whether it's someone just trying to access your site randomly
 You know that user experience I think is super important and I'm glad to see that those kinds of jobs are you know
 On the up
 Well, it's just
 Covid is accelerated trends are already there. Obviously we've been online
 You know in the masses for 20 plus years now
 But it's escalated
 escalated am I saying that right escalated or
 Increased e-commerce and more
 transactional
 Things that happen online that require a sharing of data, you know
 The the just brochure type surfing that that still happens
 But it's now more transactional flow of data whether that's credit card data whether that's images where there's all those things and all that's been happening
 But you just got a gas of
 poured on top of fire that was already burning and so
 All of that means hey, there's more increases for security. There's more need for content creation
 From companies because there's more sources, you know, you think that digital is like streamlined things
 When in reality, it's actually complicated them because the the outlets of digital whether that's social media whether that's your website
 Whether that's communication channels whether that's e-commerce
 There's endless channels within digital
 That require content development and so graphic design at a high level that differentiates because you have more coming in
 So you need more of it
 And so everyone's doing more of it so you need to differentiate
 And so having great graphic designers is important so you can see that continue to increase right and then the UI back to our
 episode just from last week with satia from
 cons home plus who has a great background in UX design
 talked about this being kind of the crux of your brand in a lot of ways is that user experience yes because
 Again more people coming online more people getting the amazon experience expectations are through the roof
 Oh my god, they expect seamless they expect omnichannel they expect what I do online works offline that you know and understand what I need
 Quickly and so that user experience is huge
 So you're going to see a lot of growing UX needs is already there, but again
 Growing quickly. Yeah, and you know just gas on the fire to your point. It's all these were already there
 But now I think more companies especially as more companies go remote and other things are happening
 They realize
 Okay, we need to invest a lot more and more graph, you know like more of these kinds of career fields. Yeah
 So you're going to see all those grow and and more anything with the word
 If you know I hate a cringe at the word digital
 You know or online or whatever
 But it's it's explanatory to what it is so exactly you're going to see anything with the word digital grow
 Mm-hmm
 What is something that like if you're a small to medium-sized business? What's something that you should take away from this kind of growth
 That was it something that you're like okay? I need to hire more of or is it something that you should just be aware of and then realize
 You know, you just don't want to get to that crisis scenario when you're like okay wish I would have hired a couple more graphic designers
 Are UX do you know what I mean like I think the biggest thing is
 Securities are important, but there's a lot of locals, you know, just like their small businesses
 We have it. We're considered a small business right and we have IT specialist that we contract out that do our network security
 They were just here this week doing upgrades exactly and so there's local IT experts that can help with the security part of things
 And then yes from a perspective of design and UX all that stuff
 It's either get with a good agency that handles small business radical or
 You can't you can't ride
 Have a radical cough. Oh, no, but in all seriousness
 You know, I also advocate when the time is right having your own in-house
 At least designer or someone of creative
 expertise that can do some of this
 As your needs grow you might need to contract an agency, but some of this stuff just it will make sense for some companies sooner rather than later to do
 some of it yourself so that you can
 Kind of execute quickly and be nimble
 And so you know, I think that's the the perspective for small meeting business
 I got you as far as the marketing trends go that are kind of taking place again
 I feel like we've talked about these before
 But I I like this article that just kind of walked through some of the things that are happening right now
 And I think there's something that even goes back to
 Our episode with satya something he had said and the fact of
 You know as a brand you folk you should be focusing on your brand and the passion of why you even started your brand
 And that kind of thing and let the marketers do the marketing for the brand right because unfortunately sometimes it can kind of get like
 Miss like I don't know it just kind of blends together and then you kind of lose side of one thing
 But I like that this I like this
 List because I feel like it brings more the human aspect into the brand
 You know having a purpose having the human connection having agility
 Fusion trust participation and then obviously talent transformation
 But I think all these things are really good things that you know brand
 Should be taking advantage of and their marketing
 But I do think they could be kind of separated a little bit. Yeah, I think
 These are things that were already in motion as well
 This is Deloitte's seven marketing trends for 2021 or seven things to focus on
 Purpose has been one that's been growing you see this with a lot of companies a lot of marketing that you see out there
 um, it's
 People are just a lot more and and you know there there are people that I follow that that fall into two channels
 They firmly believe in this or they believe that ultimately all the consumers care about is convenience
 I think it's both and it just depends if you're buying a pack of gum in the in the grocery store line
 It's convenience and opportunity
 But about 70% to 80% of your other purchases. I do think people are starting to be more considerate
 Of what is the brand stand for and what are they doing?
 Um again convenience can no rule at any time
 Uh, but I do think a lot of people just want to know that
 The brands that I'm buying from are conscientious of the things that are happening today
 They're conscientious of the mindset that covid's kind of created right and that they're doing stuff to give back
 In some way sure you're foreign to things that mean something to me exactly and so I think this had already taken on but I think
 You have this collective
 um, I don't want to call it depression, but I think it there's this collective
 Weight or burden that are on people right now from everything that's happened
 Even the people I mean knowing you're wrong. I'm talking about every day people
 You know the the millionaires have gotten richer
 Uh, yeah, and I'm sure they're feeling it in some way shape or form
 But I'm talking about more that the common everyday person
 I think all has a little bit of a
 Wearing an extra coat
 I feel like I've had a jacket on the last seven months, you know, it's just like a little weighty
 And so I think any of the brands that's back to kind of point two here with this human connection
 That can be relatable and not generic in that understanding in their communication
 And I think that's going to be huge next year
 Um, and definitely one of their trends
 agility is not surprising to me because again things are changing quickly and ability to adapt
 Exactly removing and and I think of agility is not
 reactiveness
 Which they talk about and this is isn't about deploying
 Quickly some new tactic per se I think of agility more in the essence of
 Removing friction and getting the bullshit out of the way of process and procedure
 Right and and being able to move quickly even we work with companies and big and small
 And it's never fails the biggest ones we work with are the slowest ones
 And
 It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy because they have all of these historical legacy processes that are in the way and
 They say they're going to remove them then they don't because everyone's always justifying their position or things like that
 And I think if companies will start to realize that we just need more people doing these things instead of
 17 layers. I think you're going to see that increase
 Which then improves the process for the client or the end customer
 Because you will deploy
 Quickly more quickly with less friction and it will have both that human connection and purpose built into it
 It's been more time on those things than uh, well, you know, we always did it this way Sam
 You know, or we know I needed I need that to go through this the 47th lawyer to look at it
 You know and again, we know he wants to get anything out there
 That's been brushed but at the same time you're going to see that
 Trust participation talent transfer again all of these things make a ton of sense with kind of where we're at
 I think trust is a big one and when I think of trust
 Yes, I want to trust the companies that I work with in a holistic way right
 I think this is about
 Expectation and delivering on expectation. Okay. I think there's an expectation for consumers that your e-commerce store
 Or your brick-and-mortar store or things that you do that you're going to know and understand
 What I expect and you're going to deliver on that and I think that is building trust
 Okay, and in yes, you know in a more macro sense you can think about it as what about trustless company? Are they
 You know, they're their profits being recorded properly and all you know you can think of like
 Ancillary things that might imply trust which definitely matter
 But I think this is as much about delivering on the expectation that a customer expects
 You to know how they feel right to you to know what they expect
 To deliver a seamless experience for them and really deliver on that we actually talked with Citi about that as well
 Plus that same thing of building trust I agree in confidence with the the customers and now is back to the supply chain because
 There's there's been somewhat there was some increase demand in certain things while there was a decrease in the supply chain
 Because of the impacts of COVID certain things closing and all that things and so if you're going to have stuff online
 And say I'm going to have it there in seven days. Well, you better have it there in seven days
 If you're out of stock of something it better say it's out of stock and you're not gonna and you're gonna be 30 days
 You know, right because I've dealt with this myself some things we've ordered for the agency
 And I had no idea I just ordered it and I wasn't expecting two-day Amazon delivery
 But it was like four weeks later, right and I'm like what I got that okay. I'm realistic. I'm reasonable
 Right customers and people are
 Reasonable right now. They understand the most people understand but you got to communicate that exactly
 You've got to set it up with your email flows whether it's your online experience
 Whether it's your you know, call line or face-to-face, you know
 Do what you'll say you'll do right and be clear on your communication
 Do you feel like people are for I'm when I'm saying people
 I mean like people in customer service of that business or whatever like do you feel like people are afraid to almost have that kind of real
 Communication because it's almost like that you know because everything is just very uncertain right now and necessarily like
 They don't like I'm going to guess that this is going to get to you in two weeks
 Do you know what I mean? But then it's like when that comes to them and then it's like actually it's four weeks
 I mean, I feel like I would kind of be right of being my head a little bit like
 Okay, like I think there is concern
 I think the way you handle that when you have unknowns and your best assumption you be up front with the customer
 Which that's an online experience you have in there in your clear shipping terms. Okay. These products are
 Coming directly from our manufacturer. They should deliver in seven to 14 days. Yeah, it's possible that they will
 They will take longer and we will email you with an update by day 10 or whatever
 It just be clear and right and that way if they needed it immediately they go somewhere else
 If they didn't need it and they want to be loyal to you. You've been clear with them exactly. I think consumers can take it
 I think that's the biggest thing that brands
 Have are starting to learn the ones that really succeed
 Consumers can take it yeah, they get it, but you just have to communicate and I think there was this fear
 Well, you know leave it ambiguous or whatever that was the way to get to sell
 I'm not going to make the sell unless we're ambiguous if we're ambiguous we'll make the sale
 But then you never keep them exactly it's back to lifetime value right if you if you make it
 How many wanted done sales as it take to overcome that the acquisition cost to get them there in the first place
 All of those things have to be in in consideration and that's all lines under trust right
 Right right no, I liked that trust when I felt like that was um a very I think that's going to be coming up a lot more and especially into
 2021 and again, I know it's already been here. I know all these things have already been here
 But I do just think that
 That human aspect of branding is becoming way more apparent for like most every brand now
 Versus just like the bigger brands realizing they can have the aesthetic like I think smaller brands are realizing
 No, we can have this aesthetic and we can have this you know human kind of feel and we can create passion and energy through what we're branding
 And I think more people are receptive to that because it it's emotional right and I think that's important to be
 Highlighting with your brand because I mean
 Humans are humans because we have emotions right you're not going to get your AI person
 You know because they don't have a motion like you know, but robot can't convey emotion
 He might can if he helps you get what you want makes you happy
 But uh, no b to h business to human exactly
 They're talking about that for years and I didn't coin that but it's just it always made sense to me like the first time
 I heard that I think it was probably seven or eight years ago
 I see him out when I previous lifetime jobs, but uh the uh I heard that I was like that really stuck with me
 I started using it and I've used it ever since because it just made sense and now I mean
 It's becoming full mainstream exactly and and you know and I'm glad it is to be honest. Yeah, it should be makes sense
 We buy whether it's b2b marketing or b2c
 The yeah until we're taking over by robots the person on the other end is human
 Just be human be human in your communication and you're
 Messaging in your emails. It doesn't have to be so corporey right here's our bland standards and we are here to help our customers
 Because we help our customers help and that's great. You should help your customers right but just like have that like
 Hey, it's like hey Sally, you know, we're here for you. It's times are tough. Yeah, we got to be honest our supply chains have been interrupted from all this
 Hello, you know talk to me. Thank you. Okay. I get it. I understand yeah and yeah
 Yeah anyway all this aside now
 I'm I'm looking forward to see like how 21 goes and I know that something we're gonna be highlighting on the broadcast with other
 guests just kind of where marketing trends are going in 21 what other people's opinions are so
 That's kind of where we're at now and then um, you know, I'm excited for Tuesday's episode of Dave
 That'll be super exciting. It's to tune in for Tuesday's Dave Gerhardt
 CMO of privy and we had a great talk 30 plus minutes and I think you'd get a lot from that
 And I think that's all for today. Riley appreciate it. Yeah, that's great episode and we'll see you guys next time
 Yep
 To listen to full episodes or to contact us visit us on the web at the radcast.com
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