Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Weekly News Update 10.23.20; FiveStars Loyalty Program; Job Outlook in the Digital Industry; Marketing Trends of 2021

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

In this episode of The Radcast, Ryan and Reiley give us our Weekly News Update for the week ending 10.23.20.It's FRIYAY! We have some great headlines for you today...FiveStars, the service we know and love, has raised a little over $50 Million. CEO and Co-Founder, Victor Ho, said the money raised is to expand their current services to help small businesses.Jobs that are on the horizon in the digital industry:Cyber Security Expert (I mean common... with practically everything moving to online in one way or another, it's important to have a security expert ensuring no data will be taken, manipulated, or hacked, etc!!! You get the jist - Protect your stuff.)Graphic Designers (This is a no brainer! As more online networking and shopping takes place the need for quality work that makes an impact is vital!)User Experience (It's important for each business to take the user's experience on the website into consideration.  Make it easy. Make the transactions seamless. UX designers are your people!)Marketing trends leading into 2021: Have passion in your brand!!!PurposeHuman ConnectionAgilityFusionTrustParticipationTalent  Transformation Follow along for more radical happenings in the business and marketing world...  SUBSCRIBE! Visit us at theradcast.com | Instagram: @the.rad.cast | Instagram: @ryanalford | Get your GVL Hustle gear we mention in the episode, here! If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

Hey guys, Ryan Offord, your host of the Radcast. Before we get to today's episode, just wanted to drop a quick note. If you've been enjoying our podcast and want to work with us directly, either with Radical or if you'd like for me to be consulting on your business from a marketing perspective, we'd love to help you and you can reach me directly by text message at 803-855-1832. Again, that's 803-855-1832. Text me. We'll get back in touch with you. We'd love to work with you and help your business in any way that we can. You can learn more about Radical at radical.company online. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and we'll talk to you soon. 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 i think today is officially the 22nd is that right yes it's my mom's birthday oh happy birthday riley's mom. Yes, yes. She's 45 years young. Oh, exactly. Yeah, she's turning 27 today. Okay. Yeah, for a couple of times, but it's okay.

Well, if she listens to the Radcast at all, then happy birthday. Exactly, yes. Happy birthday, Tracy. Mom. Tracy. Okay. Yes. Let's call her by her real name.

Yeah. Tracy, happy birthday. And, uh, you having a good week there, Riley? Yeah, I'm having a really good week. Um, I feel like we've been really busy, like in a really good way. Uh, 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 nonstop in a good way. Do you know what I mean? Just. There has, it's been busy. We're, well, we're doing,

you know, 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. Yeah. We're busy with the radcast and things that come with it. And then, you know,

some other content things, which I'll, I'll talk about here shortly. So it's definitely felt busy. And, um, 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 has built. Right. All about fabrics. It's got several thousand SKUs. And that's all about fabrics.com if you'd like to go purchasing your crafted needs. 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, uh, 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, uh, driven clients that, Hey, we 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 driven clients that, hey, we built an online store to just start selling. Now you actually have to do marketing to drive it to it, whether that's digital ads or pay-per-click or content and SEO, which takes a little longer. So we've been doing that and setting up all our 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. Yeah. Super exciting. So that's been big and excited. We had Dave Gerhardt on the show this week. That'll be launching next week. Yes.

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 in my feed, maybe because I engage with it because super bright guy, super approachable and definitely one of the leading voices in e-comm if not marketing as a whole right now. So it was a really great episode. I tried to push Dave a little bit on a few topics, you know, trying not to make it the standard stuff that he's talked about 100 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 the episode comes out on Tuesday. Yeah, he'll set up a link. They just did an e-commerce playbook kind of the definitive guide um we've ordered copies here for the agency and uh that should be arriving it's 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 to write and do all these things. And I think he made that point very clear. And I like the fact that's why they have like that hardcover book. So it would be a great little promo there. We'll put links up to everything like that. 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, with doing local community stuff. And then we kind of built some merchandising around that that gave back to the community. A lot of the profits or actually all of the profits over the summer gave back to the community. A lot of the profits, or 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. 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. And so I've always wanted to be able to practice what we preach and almost have 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 Bringable 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 testing ground for different e-commerce strategies. Obviously, we're going to use the traditional playbook that we do for most clients to kind of get the machine going right but then we can test certain things and do certain things that then we can deploy 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 are inspired that can inspire others with our merchandise right so uh we're excited about that. It's going to be fun. We're going to have T-shirts and sweatshirts and pullovers and all the traditional stuff. And excited to see where that goes. Yeah, I like all the designs that our team's been doing for those too because I just, I don't know, I love that. And they look so cool.

I mean, I love the sweatshirts. I'm about to buy one, actually. I cannot wait to buy one. I haven't put my order in yet, but I'll put the link in the episode notes. Yeah, we're going to do a lot more on that. We're going to have a big site launch. We're probably still 30 to 40 days away from having that specific store set up. You know, GVL Hustle is there with all of our Greenville and kind of local stuff, gvlhustle.com.

there right with all of our green bull and kind of local stuff jubilehustle.com uh but uh the radical label will live like right on top of our website um and the radical.company website and so excited about it and here's riley with the news here is the radcast news okay so five stars um they're already established as a company and 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's something that 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 butcher shop it's called new york butcher shop um aptly named uh but uh the new york butcher shop is there you know like there's only new york fashion and new york butcher you know like anyway

new york gets all the love. 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 admit it. I love meat.

I love steaks with big bones. Like my brontosaurus burgers. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. You're like Joe Rogan. I eat oak. Yes, I do. I'll eat any meat there is. Except human.

Thank God. But in all seriousness, you plug in your phone number, they keep up with your tab. And next thing, and every time, not every time, but every third time, that's how much I order, they go, hey, you saved $5, $10, or $20 on this order. And so it's all pretty integrated loyalty points. I haven't gotten any emails. I haven't gotten any SMS marketing. I imagine that's probably part of it.

Maybe I didn't sign up for it when I did it. But 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 franchisee they do 30 store front okay i get it but it's still small right right smaller chains as as noted in the article mom and and pops. So it's interesting. I think loyalty in these types of programs are growing, especially the ones that are simple to use, easy to use like this one is. And $50 million in funding isn't anything to sneeze at. And so it'll be interesting how they spend 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, they're building points.

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 a small business, you got to know who your, who your customers are and how to serve them. Right, right, right. Changing gears a little bit. I that's obviously something that'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 has actually slowed 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 actual data. I mean, I'm doubting it. No, there's no doubting 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 in really good graphic designers and having cybersecurity,

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. Cybersecurity 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 nothing's going to get hacked, everything's going to be just fine.

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. 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 has accelerated trends. They're already there.

Obviously, we've been online, you know, in the masses for 20 plus years now. But it's escalated. Am I saying that right? Yes. Escalated or increased e-commerce and more transactional things that happen online that require a sharing of data. You know, the just brochure type surfing that still happens, but it's now more transactional, a flow of data, whether that's credit card data,

whether that's images, whether it's all those things. And all that's been happening, but you just got a gas 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 think that digital is like streamlined things when in reality it's actually complicated them because 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're going to see that continue to increase. Right. to increase right and then the ui back to our uh episode just from last week with satia from uh 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 Expectations are through the roof. They expect seamless, they expect omni-channel, 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. It's already there, but again, growing quickly. 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, OK, 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 of those grow and more. Anything with the word, even though I hate it, I cringe at the word digital, you know, or online or whatever, but it's explanatory to what it is. So you're going to see anything with the word digital grow. 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 though? Is 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 or UX. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think the biggest thing is security is uber important, but there's a lot of local, you know, just like there's small businesses. We have it. We're considered a small business. Right. And we have IT specialists that we contract out that do our network security.

They were just here this week doing upgrades. 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 and all that stuff, it's either get with a good agency that handles small business. Radical. Or, shameless plug. UK, right? Yes. I 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 perspective for small to medium 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 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 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 sight 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 and a lot of marketing that you see out there. People are just a lot more. And 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

is convenience uh 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 percent of your other purchases i do think people are starting to be more considerate of what does the brand stand for and what are they doing um again convenience can overrule at any time 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 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, shape, or form to things that mean something to me.

And so I think this had already taken on, but I think you have this collective, I don't want to call it depression, I don't want to call it depression, but I think there's this collective weight or burden that are on people right now from everything that's happened. Even the people, I mean, no, you're wrong. I'm talking about everyday people. The millionaires have gotten richer. Yeah. And I'm sure they're feeling it in some way, shape, or form.

But I'm talking about more the common everyday person. I think all has a little bit of a wearing an extra coat i think 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 which is human connection that can be relatable and not generic yeah in that understanding in their communication i agree And I think that's going to be huge next year and definitely one of their trends. Agility is not surprising to me because, again, things are changing quickly. An ability to adapt. Exactly.

Removing. And I think of agility as not reactiveness, which they talk about in this. This 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 and being able to move quickly. We work with companies big and small, move quickly. We work with companies big and small, and it 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, and 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. Spend more time on those things than the, well, you know, we always did it this way, Sam. You know, or we, you know, I need that to go through this, the 47th lawyer to look at it. You know, and again, nobody 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. I think this is about expectation and delivering on expectation. Okay. 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 yes, in a more macro sense, you could think about it as, well, do I trust this company? Are there profits being recorded properly? You could think of 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, to you to know what they expect, to deliver a seamless experience for them and really deliver on that. We actually talked with Satie about that as well with Homes Plus,

that same thing of building trust and confidence with the customers. And that was back to the supply chain because there was some increased 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 going to, and you're going to be 30 days, you know? 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

how 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 know you've got to set it up whether it's 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, when I'm saying people, I'm meaning 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 necessarily like they don't like I'm gonna guess that this is gonna 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 rubbing my head a little bit like, okay. 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. Right. If 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 7 to 14 days. It's possible that it will it will take longer and we will email you with an update by day 10 or whatever no and just be clear 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, the ones that really succeed.

Consumers can take it. Yeah, you just have to communicate it. But you just have to communicate it. And I think there was this fear, well, you know, leave it ambiguous or whatever, that that was the way to get the sale. I'm not going to make the sale 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 make it, how many one-and and done sales does it take to overcome that? The acquisition cost to get them there in the first place. All of those things have to be in consideration. And that's all lines under trust. Right, right, right, right. No, I liked that trust one. I felt like that was a very, I think that's going to be coming up a lot more, 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'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 A.I. person, you know, because they don't have emotion.

right you're not going to get your ai person you know because they don't have emotion like you know but that robot can't convey emotion but he might can if he helps you get what you want that 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. The first time I heard that, I think it was probably seven or eight years ago. I was a CMO at one of my previous lifetime jobs. But I heard that, and I was like, that really stuck with me. I started using it, and I've used it ever since. It just made sense. And now, I mean, it's becoming full mainstream.

Exactly. And I'm glad it is, to be honest. It should be. Yeah, it should be. It makes sense. It's like, we buy, whether it's B2B marketing or B2C, until we're taken over by robots, the person on the other end is human. Just be human.

Be human in your communication and your messaging and your emails. It doesn't have to be so corporate-y. 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.

Times are tough. We've got to be honest. Our supply chains have been interrupted from all this. Hello. Sally's going to go, thank you. Sally's going to go, okay, I get it. I understand. Yeah. Yeah. go, thank you. Sally's going to go, okay, I get it. I understand. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, all this aside. Now, I'm looking forward to see how 21 goes, and I know that's something we're going to 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 I'm excited for Tuesday's episode with Dave.

That'll be super exciting. So tune in for Tuesday's Dave Gerhart, CMO of Privy. And we had a great talk, 30 plus minutes. And I think you can get a lot from that. And I think that's all for today, Riley. Appreciate it. Yeah, it was a great episode. And we'll see you guys next time.

See ya. episode and we'll see you guys next time see ya to listen to full episodes or to contact us visit us on the web at the radcast.com or follow our host at ryan alford on instagram thanks for tuning in