3 strategies for meaningful customer engagement

What’s up, everybody, and welcome to the local marketing lab. Today I’m super excited. We have an awesome guest with over 25 years of restaurant technology experience. He’s a board member for the RSPA and the host of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast and blog.

We’ve got Jeremy Julian with us. Welcome Jeremy.

Jeremy Julian
Thanks for having me, Justin. As I say, every time I do one of these, it’s always weird when I’m on the opposite side of the mic because I’ve done so many of the episodes where I’m the one asking the questions. That’ll be fun to get into the conversation for today.

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. Yeah, no, I’m super excited. I’m sure it’s got to be odd for sure. But I got a couple of quick nuggets about you. And this is from your bio and some info that you’ve sent over. But I know you’re pretty active in your church. You’re an avid hiker and father of four kiddos, but I typically would ask our guests, what is it that keeps you busy? But I feel like I already know the answer to that one.

Jeremy Julian
Running a business, running a blog and podcast and then having four kids that are extremely active and then church. Yeah, it’s a lot, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, quite frankly. I love spending time with the kids and love spending time with the kids. They’re pretty active in sports as well, so they’re constantly out at the ball field. So it’s exciting times.

Justin Ulrich
We have four kiddos as well and it’s like we actually made a recent move. I know that you’ve recently moved to Texas a couple of years ago. We recently moved to North Carolina and know, moved into a smaller town, know, kind of slower pace of life. But we found that as the kids are getting older, it’s actually a lot busier. We’re driving further for activities and stuff and it’s like you don’t have a free minute.

Jeremy Julian
Absolutely. At the time of recording this week, actually, in less than 48 hours, I’ll be on the road to drop off my oldest at college. So by the time this probably goes live, the world will be a different place in our household. So we’ll be minus one kiddo. But I’ve got three teenagers, so if any of you people out there are praying people, you should pray for me because three teenagers at one time is a lot.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, I’m sure I’ve got two. I can’t imagine.

Jeremy Julian
Yeah, and then I’ve got a seven year old who ultimately runs the house, unfortunately, because she’s the boss baby.

Justin Ulrich
So there’s, right? Suit and all. So you mentioned running a business, so one of the things that I left out earlier is that you’re the CRO over at Custom Business Solutions. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jeremy Julian
Yeah, so family business has been around. Next year we’ll be celebrating 30 years in the point of sale world. Prior to that, we were selling cash registers, so I don’t really copy and it was real, but it wasn’t necessarily point of sale. 

And so since 1994, we’ve been selling point of sale. We developed our own point of sale. North Star point of sale. And I get to run the revenue operations and help solve customers problems. But over my 26 year history at the company, I have done just about everything from bookkeeping to help with desk calls, to repairs, to installations, to sales calls and such. And at the end of the day, we try and solve restaurant technology problems and try and partner with our customers, build really deep relationships to solve their problems and help them out.

Justin Ulrich
Very cool. Yeah. As you know, this podcast is all about marketing and local marketing, and you get a lot of visibility with working with so many different clients. What do you think is the most important aspect of marketing that stuck out with your experience?

Jeremy Julian
I guess the way that people perceive you and your brand out in the market space is hugely important for us. 90% of what we work on is from word of mouth, either from partners like yourself that we work with that go, hey, these guys are really good people, they understand what they’re doing or existing customers. And so we all recognize that the experience that you have with a brand is really important in ensuring that you do that. 

And part of why we have relationships with brands like the Cheesecake Factory for over 20 years, you don’t do that unless you solve problems for them continuously and continue to dig deeper on how you do those things and continue to meet their needs. So that, to me, is probably our most effective way of marketing. 

And then the second piece that I like to tell people all the time is to understand who you are, understand who you are and who you serve. And in marketing, oftentimes, if you try and serve everyone, you can’t serve anyone. And so understanding that we do technology for restaurants, for mid sized to enterprise customers, we don’t try and take on every little nook and cranny of every little small business and do retail and do grocery. And I would say it’s probably the biggest piece of our success over the last 30 years is just ensuring we know who we are and serving those clients really well, better than anybody else.

Justin Ulrich
That’s a really good point. Yeah. A lot of times, just from a marketer standpoint, it’s like if you’re not focused on your ICP or who you’re going after for your ideal client profile, it’s like your messaging is going to be all over the place. You’re going to try to be everything to everybody. And then in doing so, you create your own clutter. You have to cut through and you get the message through to nobody.

Jeremy Julian
Absolutely. We have what we call buyer personas. And probably familiar in the marketing world is we’ve identified with an Avatar with an actual picture of who our buyer personas are and what their fears and objections are. So that when we’re selling to the CFO, we understand that his needs are different than the IT guy, the IT guy’s needs are different than the CEO. 

And so understanding what those profiles are has really been helpful to helping ensure that we’re solving the right problems. Because if the message doesn’t resonate with them, it doesn’t matter how great your product is, you’ve got to get the message in front of them, which is part of what marketing does.

Justin Ulrich
Couldn’t agree more. So let’s say you have your messaging nailed. What are some successful things that you’ve been able to do to get your messaging out there?

Jeremy Julian
It’s understanding what their pain points are and truly living a day in their life. For myself, we do QBRs with our customers, and part of our QBRs and part of our investment in our customers businesses is that we understand what their needs are. We understand what their needs are. We understand what keeps them up at night by sitting with them and talking with them and then going out and trying to solve those problems. 

In the technology world, everything’s changing every day. I go to no less than 15 trade shows a year and that’s just me. Not counting our CTO and our CMO and all these different people that are part of our business, our CEO, we constantly have our ear down to try and understand what those business needs are and then come back to them with a solution for what their problems might be. 

Again, I think that’s part of how we got connected is I had some people that were looking to figure out how do they get better local store marketing? And if you guys can help them do that, and we can help solve a problem for a customer, amazingly, they come back to you and continue to write checks, which is nice.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Who’d have thought? Yeah. It’s an interesting thing. Like if you think about the way that people sell and solution selling is where it’s at. 

Jeremy Julian
Absolutely.

Justin Ulrich
Otherwise, it’s the same thing with your messaging. Even if you’re talking to the right persona, if you have the messaging that you’re trying to hit on every single value prop, you’re just going to clutter up your conversation and you’re not going to be able to cut through with any one thing. But if you’re able to listen to what their needs are, you can then provide the solution to actually fit their needs and they keep coming back for more.

Jeremy Julian
Absolutely. And we’re a big proponent. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework, but we’re huge StoryBrand people. Every story has an arc, whether you go to the Bible or you go to The Hunger Games or you go to Braveheart, where there’s always a hero of the story, there’s always a villain of the story. There’s always a guide that helps the hero find their path. 

Our job is not to be the hero of the story. Our job is to make the customer the hero of the story. And we’re here to guide them to their desired path. And the villain oftentimes is doing nothing or staying with the incumbent or not doing what it is to get them to the journey that they want to see. 

And if people out there haven’t checked out story brand, building a StoryBrand, I think, is the name of the book. He also has a workshop in Nashville that he does a couple of times a year. And now he’s got different coaches all over the country that’ll teach you. 

And it’s all about marketing and messaging, whether it’s emails or your website or your sales messaging, to make the customer the hero of the story. Every single restaurant that we work with, they look at all of their customers are the hero of the story. And they’re truly trying to help them get to whether it’s a brand that is a quick service chicken brand that’s trying to help the mom get food on the table on the way home from a soccer practice, they’re the hero of the story to get them what they want.

Justin Ulrich
That’s very good. So switching gears just a little bit. So you have your podcast as well. What are some things that you’ve done? Leveraging technology or AI or anything like that to try to give people a glimpse into what’s new and current that they could be leveraging to help them get their message out there.

Jeremy Julian
So my favorite thing about the podcast that I built, I built it selfishly because we’ve got a team. We’ve got a team. And there’s two pieces of selfish content about the podcast, the first of which is the fact that I have a team of employees or team members that don’t get the privilege to go to 15 shows a year, that don’t get a chance to talk to people like yourself and others in the industry to learn. 

And so I get a chance to learn from people like you and then distribute that information to our team. The second piece is for me, I am constantly learning. I was taught by my grandmother at a very young age, learn something new every day, at least one thing new every day. And so I’m constantly inquisitive. It’s amazing how often I get off the podcast and I’m like, I had no idea that this actually existed in the world. And it’s so amazing to me to help not only myself learn because now I have that as a piece of information to give out to the rest of the world to make it a better place.

Justin Ulrich
Wholeheartedly agree with that. As you’re saying that I think of too, and you’re raising four kiddos as well. It’s like the things that I’m learning, I’m able to then pass on to the kiddos and they are able to learn at such a faster rate before they even get into the world.

Jeremy Julian
Absolutely. And again, it’s gotten me the privilege to talk to people that I never thought I’d be able to talk to because they want to share their message with the world. And it’s awesome from my perspective because I get to be this person that’s asking them inquisitive questions about how did they get created, how did they get to the place that they were. 

I mean, my passion in life is that I think everybody is created for a purpose. Back to my faith and as a leader, I want to help people fulfill what it is that God created them to be. That’s not necessarily to impose my views on people, but it’s really just to say Justin was created for a purpose. How do I help him fulfill that to get it out into the world? Because if I can help in any way, shape or form to do that with people, I feel like it’s a win for the.

Justin Ulrich
You know, if you look back five years ago, Jeremy, would you ever thought that you’d be on a podcast with me? Justin Ulrich.

Jeremy Julian
It’s funny, I didn’t even think that the podcast, even my podcast has been around for a little over three and a half years and when I look at the download statistics or I look 500 people downloaded the show yesterday, I’m like, what? 500 people actually want to listen to me talk for 45 minutes? But I’m grateful for the opportunity because there’s not a room in the world that you and I can get into on a regular basis. 

We’re not Tony Robbins. We’re not Elon Musk where we get 500 people, but through this digital medium, we’re able to influence and help people. Because at the end of the day, yes, we are marketing who we are and our brand and all. Of those things. But at the end of the day, you’re looking to help businesses get better through this, and you’re not putting it behind a paywall. 

You’re not looking you know what, you’re going to influence them and they may call Justin and go, hey, dude, I want to know how you did that, which is awesome. And at the same time, nine out of ten are just going to take it and use it for their own purposes and make their lives better, which is also part of what I believe we’re put here to do is to give away the things that we’ve been given.

Justin Ulrich
I agree. And for those of you who are listening to hear the rest of the show, please fill out this form and submit $100.

Jeremy Julian
Yeah, exactly. You can subscribe via patreon or yeah. And again, I think it’s funny because you and I were talking preshow about just our kids even making fun of us. But it’s a medium where we can get the word out. And it’s amazing to think because 100 years ago, you couldn’t do this. Even 30 years ago, you couldn’t do this. It’s amazing, this medium that allows us an opportunity to get out in front of people and share some of this knowledge. So I’m grateful for it.

Justin Ulrich
That leads into the next question I had for you. This is like a podcast is one thing. It’s one thing you do from a marketing standpoint to get your word out there. But what is something that you think you could recommend to any business, whether they’re multilocation or a single location, what could they implement today to start driving more traffic at their location, start driving more awareness, just to start getting their marketing out there?

Jeremy Julian
I mean, I think the biggest thing and I actually had a customer call me, you’ll laugh about this because they listen to the show, happens to be a CIO of a brand that’s got a little over 200 stores, a little over a billion dollars in sales, happens to be a customer of ours. And he called me because their marketing guy who’s no longer there was sending out I don’t happen to drink. I’m not here to judge people that do drink. I just don’t drink. I haven’t drank in a number of years. And in the messaging, as part of my messaging, I was constantly getting come to this beer club, come to this wine dinner, come to this and at the end of the day, the message didn’t resonate with me. 

And so understanding and segmenting who your customers are and speaking to what it is that they do. You come in and say, you know what? Free kids meal on Tuesday. Or come in and try the new kids menu because they know I have four kids and it’s Tuesday night and it’s soccer practice night. That is going to resonate with me so much more. 

So understanding who your customers are and segmenting them is critical, critical, critical to understand it. The second piece is use the data. Use the data that you have. You have lots of data. Some of it’s formalized and in your POS or in your data warehouse and in your marketing database. Some of it’s just you know that Tuesdays are slow. You know that Tuesdays are slow. Figure out how to get people to engage with you in the times where you can deliver a great guest experience. 

So the third thing, and you and I talked about it again, pre show, is be present be present digitally. Be present in your stores, whether you’re a single unit or in a multi unit, be present. Be present with your staff, be present with your customers to understand what those needs are, those three things, I think, are critical and are some of the most underutilized marketing tactics. 

Again. We talked about Sean from Cali BBQ down in San Diego. He’s constantly online, whether it’s on TikTok or it’s on Instagram or it’s on Facebook or he’s constantly out there. Do you think it’s adding value to his business? And people are now top of mind. 

One other thing that I think a lot of people make a mistake of is they don’t hit you when you need it. Emailing me at two in the morning with an offer for a dinner special. Probably not the best idea for a date night. Emailing me on a Thursday, trying to get me in for a weekend, for a steakhouse dinner when you know it’s my anniversary. Much more likely that I’m going to look at that offer and be able to consider it. 

I know you chuckle with it, but it’s true. How many brands do you see that post these things because their email server said the best time to send it was at two in the morning because they’d get the best deliverability. But at the end of the day, I wake up in the morning and I got 40 messages to go buy something, I highlight all of them and hit delete. And you never even saw the message.

Justin Ulrich
I could guarantee you, if I woke up in the middle of the night to check a message at two in the morning for a date night dinner promo, I’m not going on date night that night.

Jeremy Julian
I promise you. You wouldn’t. But these are the things that people don’t consider when they do these things. They don’t consider what their message is. They don’t consider who they’re messaging to. Segment those customers and have that customer avatar. Because you know what, to me, they know the data of who I am. They know every single time I go into this brand I order these things. Why not make sure that, hey, it’s been a while since you’ve been here. Come in and get these things? 

And the brands that do that successfully, it’s amazing. They’re top of mind, and I think that’s what marketing ends up. Helping people achieve an objective that they wanted anyway, is what, to me, I define marketing as they’re trying to achieve a result as a restaurant, to feed somebody, to feed their family, helping them achieve it through your brand is what marketing is going to create that awareness to do.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, when you talked about being present, that one to me, rang pretty true. I was watching just kind of scrolling through LinkedIn and I saw a video of Gregg Majewski from Craveworthy Brands. He was at a festival, and it was a video that they had made. And I think he was cooking up the fries, or he was doing something with a fryer, and it could have been fried dough or something. But I was like, man, this is a solid leader who’s present with his team, and he understands the business, but he also is getting out there with his customers to engage with them and better understand them. And that, to me, is awesome from a leadership perspective.

Jeremy Julian
Well, and there’s a whole show on NBC called Undercover Boss because they don’t ever get down to a place where they can do that. Geoff Alexander does it. I know In-N-Out has a Founders Day where every single home office employee has to be down in the stores working for at least one day, if not two days a year, even if I’m in payroll or you know what, too few people actually understand what it takes to make these things happen again. Geoff Alexander did it. He was in that same him and Gregg were going back and forth from he does he does the same thing. 

They’re out with their customers, understanding what it is that they need. Undercover bosses. This whole job of you going and doing the job to understand what your employees are dealing with and what your customers are dealing with. And at the end of the day, if we just did it more often on a regular basis, we probably would figure out and solve some problems before.

Justin Ulrich
They became a problem 100%. We’re kind of coming up toward the end here. I did have one more question for you, Jeremy. I like to ask the guests if they could give a shout out to someone that they know is doing something really cool or really interesting or effective in the space. Who would you like to call out?

Jeremy Julian
So the guy with the best hair in the business, Zach Oates from Ovation. Sorry, Justin. I know that the hair is an important part of the uniform every day, but I think you’ve had Zach. I know. You know, Zach. He is fantastic. The product that they have is know, but he’s one of those guys in the restaurant industry that I think is way underutilized. And I think the more people that learn about what he’s doing because the ways that guest engagement has been done in the past has been done so unilateral and one directional, and it’s not necessarily an engagement platform that can help do those things. 

There’s so much that him and his team have been able to do that every time I watch them present or every time I talk with him or his team, I’m just blown away. So he’s one that I’d love to have a shout out, not just because he has the best hair in the business, but lots of other reasons there.

Justin Ulrich
We all try, but yeah, we’ll never get there.

Jeremy Julian
Yeah, we should probably post in the article know, just a picture of just his hair, like, just the very top.

Justin Ulrich
What I what I really admire about Zach is his ability to he fully understands the industry, the business, various aspects of the business. Yes, he focuses on the customer experience, but he gets it all. And I think that he just has really good sound advice. And all of us have seen tons of content he’s put out there. It’s all great.

Jeremy Julian
Yeah. No, the thing I say about him, and I know some of his team members as well, he’s the real deal. He’s this guy I had dinner with him this past March. He happened to join us at a conference and how it took place. He ended up sitting next to me, and he and I talked. And he’s the real deal. He truly believes in the guest experience being paramount to ensuring that people get what they need and being able to engage with those people. 

And that’s part of being present, even. I mean, back to the presence. He’s now asking his customers what they say and then forcing response. Not forcing response in a bad way, but ensuring that customers get the response they need so that they can take action to solve the problems 100%.

Justin Ulrich
Jeremy, before the show, you had sent over a couple of quick nuggets about yourself. And I know you got the kiddos and stuff, but the hiking thing seemed really interesting to me. I guess you hiked the JMT for eight days.

Jeremy Julian
I did. It’s one of my favorite stories. And my wife was eight months pregnant when I did it with our fourth. So that was a thing, too, to get the approval. Maybe seven months pregnant, but it still was with our fourth. And so had a customer who had been at a brand for a really long time, and they opened up a Sabbatical program where you could apply for a certain amount of time off. And he happened to be a good friend of mine, was in my wedding, and was a good friend of mine, still is a good friend of mine. 

And he and I were just talking one day, and he’s like, oh, we got the Sabbatical program. I’m applying. I said, well, what are you going to do with it? And he goes, I’m going to go hike the JMT. And I’m like, okay. So for those that are unfamiliar with hiking, the JMT is John Mirror Trail. It’s in California. It goes through Sierra Nevadas. It’s fantastic. It’s like 260 miles, 280 miles, something like that. And it ultimately finalizes at the end if you go north to south at the highest peak in the continental US. Mount Whitney. 

And so he and I are talking one day, and he was applying for this Sabbatical, and he had watched this movie that was put together by a bunch of hikers called Mile, Mile and a Half. And if you’re a hiker and you haven’t seen that movie, it’s fantastic. It’s a group of videographers that document the entire JMT, a whole 270 miles or whatever it is. And he goes, I fell in love with it. 

He’s like, My wife and I are going to go do this. He says okay. I said, can I tag along? He’s like, absolutely. And then he’s one of those guys that once he dives, he dives to the deepest end of the pool. And so every day for the next six months, when we’re applying for the application to hike the trail, he’s sending me gear, he’s sending me training routines. He’s sending me, you’ve got to do this and you got to do that. You got to read this book. 

It became all consuming for a while, but I can tell you that the amount of experience I had in that seven days, I hiked just about 80 miles over a seven day window. I was gone for eight, but I hiked actually for seven days. First day we drove in, slept to get acclimated to the altitude, and then I hiked from Yosemite to Mammoth. So any of you guys that know California, Yosemite Valley is one of the most gorgeous places in the world. And I hiked for seven days through to Mammoth. And then that’s where I’d parked my car, walked to my car, got in my car and drove home.

Justin Ulrich
I was distracted, candidly, and I was looking at the thing I was going to put on the screen next, and all I heard was, you got there and you drove home. I thought you didn’t do the hike.

Jeremy Julian
I got to my it was, it was know, hiking through Ansel Adams wilderness. If you’re familiar with the photographer Ansel Adams, he’s got a whole wilderness. That’s probably two days of it. We would stay in the valley. We’d hike up to 14,000ft and hike back down, stay in the Valley, everything on our back, nothing carrying with us, nobody. 

It was the three of us. We sent food ahead to these post offices. He ended up hiking the entire John Mir trail. Took about 24 days, 25 days. The 200 and 6280 miles ended up summiting Whitney. He ended up having me for the first half. And another buddy came and met him for the last seven days, and he hiked the last seven days with him. But yeah, it’s a story that I still tell people, and it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

Justin Ulrich
If you’re listening and not watching, you’re going to want to check out the video because I’m showing now a picture of Jeremy on the JMT, although it’s not quite the JMT and it’s not quite Jeremy, but I wanted to create a Pixar version with AI just because Jeremy’s got the kiddos. I thought they might appreciate that.

Jeremy Julian
I love that. I love that that might be my new profile picture that I got to use around LinkedIn or at least on TikTok or Instagram at some point.

Justin Ulrich
It’s pretty. It’s. It’s funny. Like, AI typically messes up hands and faces, but this one is pretty dang close.

Jeremy Julian
That’s pretty darn good. Dude, I need you to go download that and send it my way because it may show up in our family group chat too, or my kids will totally be making fun of me.

Justin Ulrich
This is as good as an NFT without the value. But you’re the only one with it.

Jeremy Julian
Nobody really wants a picture of me hiking through the Swiss Alps, that’s for sure.

Justin Ulrich
That’s right. Awesome. Well, Jeremy, if you want as we kind of sign off, why don’t you tell listeners where to follow you?

Jeremy Julian
Yeah, you want to know about the business and the technology stack Cbsnorstar.com. You want to learn more about restaurant technology in all of its forms. Restauranttechnologyguys.com. 

I’m pretty active as you and I talk about on LinkedIn, so you can find me there. If you just search Jeremy Julian, my cell phone number shows up. I’d love to engage with you and see what I can do to help you out.

Justin Ulrich
Awesome. Yeah, definitely. If you’re not in touch with Jeremy, get in touch with him, follow him. He’s got awesome advice, great content. Follow the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast. Like you said, the blog, it’s incredible. And if you have any questions with relations to business restaurant technology, Jeremy is the guy. Thanks again, Jeremy. Loved having you on the show.

Jeremy Julian
Thanks for having me and can’t wait to get out there and share it and see what people think even about my NFT or my so we’ll get it out there.

Justin Ulrich
And for you listening, thanks for joining us. 

As always, thanks for joining us in the local marketing lab. This podcast was sponsored by Evocalize. To learn more about how Evocalize can help you grow your business, visit evocalize.com. 

If you learned something from today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook at evocalize. That’s Evocalize and on X at Evocalize. 

And remember, keep innovating and testing new things. You’ll never know what connects with your customers best unless you try. Until next time. Thanks for listening.