65: Unlocking Restaurant Marketing Success

Join us as Justin Ulrich, VP of Marketing at Evocalize, unpacks the secrets behind successful marketing strategies for restaurant chains. You'll discover how the innovative "Be the Mayor" strategy can boost traffic for independent eateries and learn about Justin's transformative journey from electrician to marketing guru.

Chapters:
00:00:08 - Marketing Strategies and Restaurant Experiences

00:11:32 - Building Relationships in Hospitality Industry

00:18:43 -Building Community Relationships for Marketing

00:24:54 -Innovative Marketing Automation Technology

In this episode, we highlight the pivotal role of genuine relationships in the hospitality industry. Justin shares his experiences in transitioning from B2C marketing with Polaris Razor back to the SaaS world and eventually returning to hospitality with Evocalize. Discover how storytelling and authentic human connections can significantly impact marketing success, moving beyond traditional sales funnels. Justin also shares practical strategies for amplifying stories and engaging with communities, offering valuable tips for independent restaurant groups and larger chains navigating the competitive landscape.

Uncover the power of community relationships in marketing as we explore the effectiveness of engaging with local events and businesses. Learn how Evocalize automates local digital marketing efforts. We dive into cutting-edge marketing automation technology, such as inventory-triggered advertising, that optimizes ad performance for businesses. This episode is brimming with actionable insights and innovative solutions tailored for anyone looking to enhance their marketing efforts in the hospitality industry.

Resources:
Justin Ulrich
Evocalize

More from Christin:

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Podcast Production: https://www.lconnorvoice.com/

Chapters

• 0:08 Marketing Strategies and Restaurant Experiences
• 11:32 Building Relationships in Hospitality Industry
• 18:43 Building Community Relationships for Marketing
• 24:54 Innovative Marketing Automation Technology

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

If you are curious about the marketing strategies that concepts in the 50 to 100 location space used to drive traffic, then stick around for this conversation. Justin Ulrich, vp of Marketing at Vocalize and the host of the Local Marketing Lab podcast, joins me today to talk all things marketing. Join us for this conversation where Justin shares the Be the Mayor strategy for independent restaurants looking to drive traffic and how Evocalize is leading the charge to make sophisticated digital marketing accessible to all businesses. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Welcome to the no Hesitations podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators.

Speaker 1: 1:01

I'm your host, kristen Marvin, with Solutions by Kristen. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses without wasting time and energy, so they can achieve work-life balance and make more money. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about, leadership lessons you want to learn and any feedback that you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes and I'll give you a shout out on a future episode. Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to connecting. All right, justin welcome. Thank you so much for being here. How are you?

Speaker 2: 1:46

You bet. Thanks for having me. I'm doing well, doing well. Just came off coming off the heels of the QSR Evolution Conference. Just got back last night.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Yeah, I saw some of your posts. It looked super fun.

Speaker 2: 1:58

It was fun. The posts I push out during the event are a little kind of like just a brain dump, a process that I like to follow when I go to events, because I know many times there's like overlapping sessions or just folks who aren't able to attend each event, you know, because all the events typically they're pretty pricey, especially on the vendor side too. So I like to try to pull in the key learnings into different posts, kind of in real time while I'm in the session and then afterward it's also great for me to say OK for that whole event. I had these eight posts for the sessions that I attended. I can pull them all together into one kind of summary post for the whole event and kind of, you know, sprinkle in some of the fun pictures of friends and stuff that we had throughout the duration of the event.

Speaker 2: 2:48

So it's just a good way to track and to stay top of mind and capitalize on those hashtags.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Oh, the hashtags. I'm still trying to figure them out. Are you just in a marketing brain and like marketing mindset all the time? Everywhere you go, everything you're looking at. Can you turn it off?

Speaker 2: 3:09

I do. It's kind of like when you're my dad growing up as a building contractor and our house was like constantly being renovated and it was never finished, because when you work doing the construction all day, you don't want to come home and do it type of thing Totally. I do find that it's very easy for me to notice things and if someone brings something up, we can jump right into a conversation about whatever it may be related to marketing. But at events, what's funny is you know, as a marketing leader, when you expect folks on your team, they're going to an event. Let me just give a slight background. So I work for a tech company, so when we send as a vendor, when you send a team to an event, it's like, oh, you want to make sure not only are you engaging with folks, but you're also capturing different content so you can post it on social.

Speaker 2: 4:08

But I find when I'm there, I'm like a for lack of better term like a social butterfly, because I'm pretty extroverted and I'm just like, oh, what's up, what's? And I'm floating around and talking to everybody and I'm at I get back like I was doing my summary post today. I'm like I took like six pictures of like selfies with friends. I'm like what is going on? I should have had like so many different selfies because we do all these events and there's great partners like Branded Hospitality did an awesome event they did with DoorDash and some other companies and I just didn't capture really any of the really fun stuff. So I don't know, I'm kind of kicking myself today, but that's all right. I've got friends that are sending pictures that I'm in today.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Good, good, they've got your back. Yeah, I'm learning. I'm learning how to balance that. I did my first expo last week or the week before and did a live recording and I walked out of there and I was like, oh, same thing. I was like I didn't take any photos, or I was like Krista, I was so focused on one lane I missed the opportunities. So it's difficult to manage for sure. Let's go back to kind of your background. Where are you from?

Speaker 2: 5:11

Yeah, where am I from geographically?

Speaker 1: 5:15

Yep.

Speaker 2: 5:17

So I grew up in Buffalo, new York. I was there about 20 years and it's a suburb of Buffalo, and then I moved to Denver, colorado area, and I was there for 16, a couple of years in Minnesota and now I'm in Charlotte, been here for three years now and love it.

Speaker 1: 5:35

What brought you to Denver?

Speaker 2: 5:40

My family actually moved out just after I graduated high school and I got a job right after I graduated. I was 17. It's like a September birthday thing. So I got a job with an electrician right out of high school like the first week after I graduated for $5.50 an hour, Wow, and I thought I was balling. So it's like for the first time like I could go to Denny's and buy myself a meal, like even my buddies, you know.

Speaker 2: 6:09

So so. So I did that. I was there for like, oh gosh, maybe two and a half, three years. I kind of lived on my own and it made it work and it was awesome. But it got to the point where I started you know, maturing, and I'm like man I should probably consider, you know, going to school or something, because I know that this isn't what I want to do long-term, especially in Buffalo. I was doing outdoor work a lot and my hands were freezing and you'd smash your fingers with the hammer, like when you're holding the cold staples, and oh brutal. So I moved to Colorado and, you know, just kind of got a little bit more direction and started going to school and had some good mentors.

Speaker 2: 6:57

After well, let me say this, I went to school, I got my econ undergrad, went into tax accounting. From that point I knew I didn't want to be an accountant. So I had some good mentors that gave me some recommendations as to what I should be doing, because they were in marketing and they thought that I had the personality that was a much better fit for marketing. So I went back at my MBA and got into the marketing world and absolutely love it. There's so many fun aspects of marketing, whether it's from engaging directly with customers or you're doing events and you're, you know, making friends out on the road or demand gen. You're getting into the technical stuff and leveraging like software and and focusing on marketing apps. You can get like automation stood up, but there's so many different things that you can do within marketing stood up. There's so many different things that you can do within marketing. So the day-to-day is always exciting, never a dull moment, and there's always something new that you can be trying and testing into to see what works and what doesn't.

Speaker 1: 7:55

Yeah, were you kind of a part of the dining scene when you were in Denver and interested in restaurants then, or did that come later?

Speaker 2: 8:00

Did that come later? Actually, yeah, I had my first. So I started marketing within telecom, which is boring, went into payment processing, which is also boring, but we made those jobs fun. But then transitioned in my next role into the POS and tech like SaaS space with a company called Avero and they were a restaurant technology and they had like 95% of the biggest strip use the tool.

Speaker 2: 8:29

All the celebrity chefs you know, you see on TV, like Tom Colicchio, danny Myers group, everybody who was a name in the space used the platform and it was really cool because that role I lived in Denver but I worked remotely as 2016 to 2018. So before COVID and I traveled a lot into New York city uh, they're right, in the, you know by union square, if you're familiar, if you're listening uh, union or union square park, and we would do site visits and stuff to like these really nice restaurants, and so I would be in town for maybe four days and I would, you know, you'd go to two or three locations. You know one or two of those days and you're just eating eating, eating at fantastic food, Right, and so we'd have these.

Speaker 2: 9:23

You know, folks, you're just going to just check up on you know, hey, just seeing how things are going, maybe try to get a case study or something like that. And they're like, oh, why don't you take a seat? You know we're trying some new menu items or compliments of the chef on this and that and desserts and everything. And it actually became an art to figure out how you can stir the food around on the plate to make it look like you actually had some, because you would take a bite and you're like, oh, this is so good, but you were literally you could not eat anymore, so I would, within three or four days. I'd come home like you gain five pounds easy, just in a couple of days.

Speaker 2: 10:01

And it was like, yeah, it was, but it was fun, it was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 10:04

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Speaker 3: 10:35

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Speaker 1: 11:32

When did you know that you wanted to stay in the hospitality space?

Speaker 2: 11:38

So I, after that role, I took kind of a dream job and went B2C selling. I was leading the marketing team for Polaris Razor, the off-road vehicle Super exciting. It's a brand I've loved for years and have loved off-roading. So I took that role. And then COVID hit. They had a bunch of rounds of layoffs because they didn't know where people were going to spend the money and I was part of that Um, and so that kind of transitioned me because there were things about the role that I didn't appreciate and wanted to get back into the SaaS space. I took a couple, uh, a couple roles within the home services space, which was cool, but I really wanted to get back into restaurant. And when I was sought out to join the vocalize team, one of the verticals that they were talking about going into because we started in real estate primarily was restaurant and I thought, oh, I would love to get back into the space.

Speaker 2: 12:39

I love hospitality, I love the way that people are when you go to these events and you just interact with folks. It's it's uh, it's totally different than, um, many of the other industries that I've worked in and everyone is very hospitable for lack of better term but they love engaging with with others. Uh, they love having a fun time and it's all really relationship based. So I found, like, from a marketing standpoint, uh, and as a this is from a vendor's lens as well Most folks typically go to an event and they say, oh, I'm going to sell my product.

Speaker 2: 13:23

I mean, there's many leads and you know, and we're going to, it's going to be a huge success. Right, and you, you track everything by the funnel, but really that that approach doesn't really work in in hospitality and in the restaurant space in particular, it's all about relationships, meeting new people, making friends and just being authentically who you are and getting people to know you. For you, and that human connection plays so well into a sales process, because we're not really trying to sell at that point. You're just like, hey, let's just get to know each other. Naturally, if there happens to be a fit through general conversation, we can talk, you know, but if not, you're just making your you're. You're building friendships, and what's cool about when you build those friendships whether it's with other vendors or with brands or agencies or whatever it might be you also open the door to find opportunities just to help others and to amplify the things that they're doing.

Speaker 2: 14:29

And the approach that I also found wins really, really well is to give, give, give, give, give, and so if you help others tell their story like we're both friends with Sean Walsh. He's a great storyteller. One of his big things that he talks about is he realized when running his business the reason why he started the media company says nobody's coming to tell his story, and so he had to tell his own story and try to figure out a way to do so, you know, and amplify his own message. Knowing that that's an issue for many other folks, I try to figure out ways to help amplify and tell their stories. Because at the end of the day, whether you're a tech provider or you're an independent restaurant or you're, you know, you run a fitness, a gym, whatever it might be If you can figure out a way to help tell other people's stories, not only are you benefiting them, you're building rapport and a solid relationship and you'll get them to want to help tell your story.

Speaker 2: 15:35

Then also, you're gaining access to audiences that already exist and you don't have to build your own from the ground up. So if you're telling other people's stories and highlighting others within your community, you're able to really build your audience exponentially fast and it all just comes back to you. Even if you give, you have to give without expectation. All just comes back to you. Even if you give, you have to give without expectation, but when you do that, it it's always come back to me, uh, in a multiplier that I I wasn't expecting when giving in the first place.

Speaker 1: 16:07

Yeah, I love that. You, um, I love what you said about obviously building relationships. You know, finding opportunities to serve, give back and, um, helping people be really authentic. I think that that's that's super powerful. And, um, you know, and helping people be really authentic, I think that that's super powerful.

Speaker 1: 16:21

And I was having a conversation the other day with a client who was saying we've got a great social media presence, we love what we're doing, but again, kind of similar to Sean where is everyone else in the community helping us tell our story? We're doing all the right things, we're connecting with the community, we're sustainable in our business practices. How do we, how do we get louder? You know it is such a we, you know, we know this. The space is so competitive. There's so many different ways to reach audiences these days. You and I know that from. You know, just from our businesses and our shows and all that good stuff. It's hard to get out there and it's about the long game and it's about staying consistent and really capturing people's attention. So would you share a success story that you've had? Let's talk about, maybe a restaurant group that let's start with two, maybe one that really hasn't had marketing but wants to. You know, was curious about how to get started. What would you, what would you recommend or what have you had success with there?

Speaker 2: 17:30

So I would. So I'll I'll take a two-pronged approach to this. One would be if you had, if you were, an independent or a few locations. The other I'll talk about is if you have like 50 to a hundred plus, right, cause there are two different issues. Um, one, let's see, if I were to recommend what someone could do that has a few locations, that they're they're trying to grow, grow or maybe they're struggling to drive traffic, I would pass along a suggestion that's been tossed around quite a few times on our podcast. As you know, kristen, I have my own podcast that I run, called the Local Marketing Lab, and on that I bring on other industry leaders and they talk. I ask questions around like what would you do from a local marketing perspective to try to drive traffic or revenue into your locations? One of the suggestions that was brought up from Eric Knott at the time he was at PDQ he's now the CEO of Tiki Taco was to be the mayor, and this has been repeated by multiple other folks. Most recently, I just recorded an episode that launches next week with Sam Stanovich from Big Chicken Be the mayor.

Speaker 2: 18:43

So if you can go around and do whatever you can within the community to shake hands, kiss babies, get your product in people's hands, but also, like you're showing up at little league games, you're showing up at high school basketball games. You're doing everything you can. You're going around to all local businesses. You're just shaking hands and meeting people. You're not expecting anything, right, you're just introducing yourself as someone in the community. This is what you do. You just want to stop by and just meet other folks.

Speaker 2: 19:14

Right, doing so, you're starting to help build rapport and relationships within your community and then over time, it'll open doors to do other things that you may. Since you've built a relationship and you kind of build upon that over time. Maybe there's an opportunity to do some co-marketing or a collaboration or something like that. Maybe you go into these other locations I talked about and you start telling other people's stories right, highlighting the dry cleaner within your community, or highlighting the gym, or highlighting other restaurants, even they may not be directly competitive to you, highlighting plumbers, roofers, whatever real estate agents, whatever it might be right, whatever real estate agents, whatever it might be right. Because when you highlight these other folks, like I mentioned earlier, you're doing something that typically nobody ever does for another business. When does someone ever come? I would just ask those who are listening when does someone ever come to you in your business and tell you hey, I want to give you some free marketing?

Speaker 1: 20:13

It doesn't happen. They want to sell you something.

Speaker 2: 20:16

Yeah, it doesn't happen. And what's crazy is, with social media, we have the ability, now more so than ever before, to amplify your message Like 10 years ago. 20 years ago this would have been way harder because it costs a lot of money. Right now, organic, like, the algorithms are geared to really boost anyone or give anyone reach who actually has compelling quality content. So if you're doing things that are engaging within the community, you can really help to not only, like I mentioned earlier, build your audience, build rapport and relationships, but those folks are greatly going to appreciate it. So whenever anybody comes into town like if I have, like a bakery or whatever it might be if someone goes to the dry cleaner and says, hey, I'm heading out, or someone goes to the pet store and says, hey, I'm just going to go pick up a quick snack or whatever it might be, do you have any recommendations? Boom, you'll be the first one that comes to mind. So you're building effectively a sales team to drive you leads or traffic to your business by going around and just giving. Sometimes you don't have to. I would highly recommend don't go into this thinking, hey, I'm going to go into this business, I'm going to make a relationship and they're going to send me people. Yeah, because then you're going to get into a place where, oh, this thing isn't working or whatever it might be and it's like it's the right. It's not, it's inauthentic, it's not going to be received. Well, yeah, but truly go, just form relationships, get to know others, highlight their stories, share whatever you can about others on social Um. You'll build your own audience and in doing so, you'll drive more traffic into your doors or online orders or whatever it might be.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Yeah. Now on the larger enterprise side, that's where we, our software, evocalize, we automate local digital marketing. So, if you think Google, facebook, tiktok, instagram and other channels, it's kind of a pain in the butt to go in and push a campaign, let alone set up a campaign individually on each channel, and then, if you want to do that across each location, like that is a nightmare. So scale becomes a big issue. Our patented technology actually will launch ads on those channels, multiple channels at once, instantaneously, based on data triggers, so you can manually activate campaigns. But you could also say, hey, if sales are trending below a certain level, we want to launch a campaign. That's one use case.

Speaker 2: 23:05

So we work with a great partner of ours, taziki's. They have, I believe, 75 to 80 locations. So one of the issues they had was this this problem where what we're talking about scale and how do we actually effectively launch campaigns in each locations when they're needed, as opposed to just pushing national campaigns. Because what happens when you push the national campaigns? That spends in the metro areas there's heavy population and where the platforms can spend the money as quickly as possible so that they're just making money right, they're not driving you traffic or whatever your goal might be. So with Taziki's, we set them up so they look at year-over-year comps, like last week sales trends, and they say, hey, was last week below where we expected it to be based on the year before. And if it is, we can automatically trigger an ad around the location where sales are low to drive traffic into that location or to drive online orders and on average, we see with that partner that they get a 30% increase in revenue around those locations where they're launching the ads.

Speaker 2: 24:26

Um so it's it's really effective and it's it takes um a few minutes to set up. We we work with corporate directly. We set it up for their locations and it's we work with corporate directly, we set it up for their locations. And it's like I said, it can be, you can do, you could launch based on instantaneous triggers with data. If you have integrations, or with a spreadsheet or whatever it might be, any data at all, you can launch any campaigns at all. So that's where we see it work really, really well. And to give one other example, smoothie King's, another client of ours. They have and I don't know why this is, maybe you can verify but kale, for some reason their inventory of kale comes close to expiring more often than other things, and my hunch is that nobody likes kale.

Speaker 1: 25:14

Kale. I love kale, but kale had its day. I don't feel like it's as popular now as it used to be, which is funny. I would be curious to on Cal.

Speaker 2: 25:23

But if Cal is going to expire and they have excessive, inventory, it will automatically trigger an ad around that location for 20% off Cal smoothies. So you can do literally any data at all. That's how like, like, if you're a savvy marketer, like that's how you do it. Because if you think of the time savings, like, we've got folks who have saved 98% of their time every week that they would be spending on managing ads. They're only spending 2% of that time and they're focusing their time on other initiatives.

Speaker 1: 26:09

So, Justin, I want to go back to Kale for a second. So Smoothie King's established how long have they been with you guys?

Speaker 2: 26:17

A year and a half, I think.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Okay. So they call you on what? Wednesday? And they say, hey, our kale is going to expire in two days. Can you go ahead and get the ad up today or tomorrow? I mean, what's the turnaround time there?

Speaker 2: 26:28

Okay, Um, so it's much faster than that. So our product is um, it's an actual tech platform, so it's fully patented technology. That layer API plugs directly into the channels, uh, google, facebook, uh, you know all the meta channels, um, as well as Tik TOK. So it's near instantaneous, when you can, because the ads that we create within the platforms are all pre-approved by corporate. So when that thing happens, whatever the trigger might be and you want to push an ad, it just if it's.

Speaker 2: 27:09

If you have the automation set up, it'll just trigger the ad. If you don't, and you want to manually go into the system, it's like three clicks. You want to pick a program? You know, pick the automation set up, it'll just trigger the ad. If you don't and you want to manually go into the system, it's like three clicks. You want to pick a program? You know, pick the amount of money and the radius around your building and you hit go. And it's not like other. There are other solutions out there where that will then place an order with someone to go in and manually create an ad. That's not the case with us. Ours is there's no one behind the curtain.

Speaker 1: 27:36

So the I want to make sure I'm understanding this from an operational perspective, because this is just so, so new for me. So the operator are they loading, are the companies loading in their inventory into this platform? And then the marketing side, just the your tech just kind of owns it and manages it. The operators aren't having to come to you and say, hey, I'm assuming that the operators are not managing their inventory this closely and then making the call, your system's just doing this for them.

Speaker 2: 28:04

The answer to that would be yes, because there's some companies who have the ability to automate. They may have some don't. Maybe they have disparate systems in each location and so it may be a little bit more difficult to automate. So then they would upload a spreadsheet, you know, so you could do that, like once a week or whatever it might be Like with the example, with the sales counts for last week. It's very easy to say, hey, on Saturday, the week before was low, let's boost these 50 locations, you know. And you upload the spreadsheet and then it launches the ads.

Speaker 2: 28:42

Um, there's two, two interesting uh components to automation within this space. There's there's the automation of the creation of the ads and then there's the automation of the deployment of the ads. So there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes with what we call our blueprints, where it brings in audience data, keywords or all the data that we need to package together to drive traffic or to drive online orders. So you have the copy, the imagery, the logos, all that stuff. It's all prepackaged into a blueprint. That blueprint can be activated manually or it can be activated by data. It can be triggered. The blueprint is set to create the ad. That's one automation and then the trigger and launching is the other automation piece that we specialize in.

Speaker 1: 29:44

And then, who is managing how well the ads are doing and what the ROI is? Is there human element to that, or is the system just continuing to learn and grow and make adjustments there?

Speaker 2: 29:59

The answer to that is also yes. So we have, within these platforms there's machine learning that happens, and then also with our technology, there's additional machine learnings. We could take what's working across the system and apply it to other locations, stuff like that. What's working across the system and apply it to other locations, stuff like that. But also we have a client success team that works with our partners, you know, and they have regular calls and say, you know, say hey, here's what's working, here's what's not. Maybe let's try this thing, let's create this other program. So, like when we set someone up and implement their technology for them, we don't just leave them high and dry. We're there to help. It's kind of crawl, walk, run, and then it's a perpetual engagement where we can continue to help them build their repository of blueprints.

Speaker 1: 30:41

So what's important about 50 locations? And you guys using that as kind of the starting point, like could a group do this with 20? And I'm assuming that 50 means all the same concepts, but could a group do this at 25? Could they do it at 10 or 15? Or does the cost just not make sense? What's the reasoning there?

Speaker 2: 31:01

That's the barrier. Yeah, because there's an implementation component and there's costs associated with getting blueprints and stuff set up. Because it's not a plug and play. We're just pulling something off the shelf. We start with a good foundational piece and then we, you know, we'll tailor it, uh, to the, to the business needs, um that we're partnering with Um, so that implementation costs. It typically is where we've decided hey, if it's, if it's uh, 50 or more, ideally, ideally 100 or more, that's where we fit really well. It's because we're an enterprise software. That said, there will be other options for folks to use the product in the future that don't require them to be enterprise. So we're just not there yet.

Speaker 1: 31:53

Okay, got it. Dangle in the carrot forest, got it.

Speaker 2: 31:55

Little carrot dangle.

Speaker 1: 31:57

I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you for that information. I love it. What's one additional thing you would like listeners to know about? Vocalize, before we wrap up today.

Speaker 2: 32:12

Their marketing leader is really cool. I mean really cool, um, and that's kind of funny, because when you're on a podcast and you try to make a terrible dad joke, um, you don't know if it resonates or not because you can't hear any feedback and people are laughing, um, but uh, a vocalizes, um, it's, it's industry agnostic. So we, actually we, we we started 10 years ago in real estate, uh, just because that's where we had, we had, uh, our founders had connections and and we're able to get the ball rolling there. And now, um, today we have about 60% of real estate ads across the country run across our platform. So we power like realtorcom, like, if you think like platforms that are like um, like, uh, I'll just call it real, there's some we can't call out, um, but like realtorcom, uh, as well as brands that are out there that, uh, in real estate, like United real estate, we have, like we have probably seven out of the 10, like United Real Estate, we have probably seven out of the 10 top real estate brands leverage our platform as well as other technologies that we white label into. So it's a huge space for us.

Speaker 2: 33:25

So we're also mortgage insurance anywhere that requires a local marketing effort. So, if you think an agent or real estate agent, insurance agent, you know any location-based business massage, fitness, whatever it might be, we're really good for any of those types of businesses and we're constantly evolving, adding new features, channels we are patented, and we're the only technology uh, adding new features. Channels Uh, we are patented. So, um, and we're the only technology that I'm aware of that does what we do, that that has a patent. Um, we just got that issued, actually a couple of weeks ago, so it's super exciting for us, but yeah, and we, we are not.

Speaker 2: 34:08

it's not a manual behind the curtain tech veneer, you know, it really is a full blown API technology. So those are kind of the key things. Also, you know, if you're, if you're not big enough, that's totally fine. I like to connect with everybody, and we do have the podcast that offers plenty of tips, tricks, advice. We push out episodes every week where we get industry leaders to come on that you know it could be CMOs from, like we just had someone from Big Chicken that we just recorded with. We've had gosh. We've had 50 some episodes so far. So, like Jeff Alexander Jim Taylor, you know Jim. Like Jeff Alexander Jim Taylor, you know Jim. Uh, we had Sean Walsh, troy Hooper, paul Tran, like tons of names in the restaurant space as well as within real estate and mortgage and the other industries that we serve. So, um, it's a lot of fun. Uh, I like to to laugh on the episodes too. So, uh, it keeps things exciting and energized. So check it out.

Speaker 1: 35:13

Yeah, it's a great show. Yeah, I love it. How?

Speaker 2: 35:20

can people get a hold of you if they want to connect? If you want to connect with me personally, justin Ulrich, on LinkedIn, it may be Justin C Ulrich, but just look for the coolest looking person that has that name and then and then you know on. If you look for vocalize, it's just at a vocalize across all different channels. So you know Facebook, linkedin, instagram, tiktok, whatever it might be Awesome. As well as vocalizecom yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:49

There you go. I love it. Thank you so much for being here and sharing a little bit about your background and love for hospitality and what a vocalize is doing to help strengthen the industry, and thank you for the perspective on the local marketing aspect for the independence. That's super special to special to so being the mayor, I love that. So, yeah, that's great. All right, everybody that's going to do it for us this week, please share the show with anybody you know in the industry that could benefit and we will see you next week. Thanks so much.

Speaker 2: 36:20

Thanks, Kristen.