5+ tips for meaningful customer engagement

Matt Plapp
Thanks for having me in the lab.

Justin Ulrich
You bet. Hey, I was super excited about getting, you know, you’re a huge personality in the space, but you have such really good, compelling content, consistently pushing it out across tons of channels. I see you have four podcasts. It’s like you are an absolute media powerhouse.

Matt Plapp
That’s very friendly. I wouldn’t say powerhouse, but we’ve got a lot going on and we’re getting there. One day we’ll be a powerhouse.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. I think what’s really cool is your charge to help local businesses, local restaurants improve their marketing. And that’s really what our show is all about as well. It’s trying to get insights from leaders like you to help give them something they could do today or this week to really just turn things around and start heading in the right direction. So that’s actually why I really wanted to get you on the show.

Matt Plapp
I appreciate that.

Justin Ulrich
All the other stuff. You bet. Yeah, all the other stuff was just smoke and mirrors until I got to that one liner. Awesome. Well, hey, if you wouldn’t mind, I dug in a little bit to your background. I found a video of you telling your story. It’s pretty compelling how you started off just kind of doing, you were in the radio space selling radio ads and you got into, I guess your family had a boat and RV company and kind of accidentally fell into SEO and digital marketing. And then from there it just kind of took off. 

But if you wouldn’t mind, just give me a quick, like three minutes about your background and kind of how you got to where you are.

Matt Plapp
Yeah, a lot of it’s accidental and I jokingly say that my expertise is accidental, but it’s based off of a lot of experience. And in 1999, I was working in radio and TV and then eventually went into radio sales. And at the exact time I wanted to do something different, but I know what it was. And my dad came to me and my brother, my brother was coming back from the Navy and I was early in my media career and my dad had this idea to start a boat and RV dealership but on consignment. 

And I had no clue about anything business. I was a 23, 24 year old moron. My brother was coming back from the Navy, so we were trying to figure out a way to do this, and I thought, well, what’s the lowest hanging fruit to start a business? It’s this thing called the Internet. And self admittedly, I have no tech experience at this point. 

I had a client of mine I sold radio to that had a small computer company called SNS Computer Solutions sold. I guess you could almost like a miniature Best Buy. I mean, back then, there wasn’t those guys. So this was a little miniature store. And I went to him and said, Glenn, my dad’s got this idea. I think a website would be cool. And he’s like, cool, here’s a book. 

So it was on Adobe page-building software. I built the website, still look back from this day, and I’m like, how the hell did I do that back then? Because building websites in the 90s was a different animal than it is in 2023.

Justin Ulrich
It probably looked like garbage compared to today’s standard, too.

Matt Plapp
So that led us to building that company. And within six months, that company had a brick and mortar location. Within three years, it had grown to about 3 million in sales. And I was in radio at the same time, so I was making a lot of connections and relationships in radio. I was nights and weekends working about 40 hours a week on the boat dealership, mainly the website and the marketing. 

And flash forward to 2003, I decided to go full-time with the boat dealership, and that’s really where things took off. So around 2005, what year was that? 2004 / 5. We had an IT issue. We kept having viruses. So of course I called Glenn, the guy who sold me the website software, because he was our IT guy at the time. 

And I’m like, dude, you got to show me what’s going on here, because are you planting viruses? Because I was convinced it was every month. Like, how is it possible that every month the same thing happens? He’s like, I’m not planting viruses. Let’s put a code in, and let’s put a terminal, I guess, an interface. Every computer is networked together, so if they get on the Internet, they have to go through this gateway. We know who it is, and we can find out what moron is downloading this virus. 

That’s a whole nother story. It turned out to be a very attractive female in the dealership that was downloading adult content. So when this all got out, because of course, after I fired her, I told everybody, and then they all wanted to get her number. Different story. But I had, at that point, figured out a little bit about the Internet. 

But about a month after all this went down, Glenn comes back, throws this giant binder on top of my desk, and says, Matt, you’re going to love this. Your dad’s going to fire everybody. You’re going to love it. So this is the Internet usage of all of your employees the last six months, and it’s categorized by chat room websites. Like, what’s a chat room? It’s like, well, bassboatcentral.com, it’s where there’s 22,000 active bass boat owners in there daily. 

He said, I think it would behoove you to understand this because you’re a marketer. And that’s when I dove in the chat rooms and I started to understand what was going on in there. I got all of our salespeople behind it, and within a couple of months, we were ranking high on Google. I didn’t know Google was, but I go to a conference, guy named Ben Jared, who is the head of marketing for Yamaha Marine, comes up to me. 

He’s like, Matt, I want to show you Google. I want to show you what I found. And I’m like, I didn’t do it. He’s like, you’re not in trouble. I’m like, okay, I did it. And so at that point, I became their Yamaha, which is even scarier because I was literally, when I say I was a moron back then, I was egotistical. I had made way too much money. Early on, I thought my shit didn’t stink. 

And so here I am as Yamaha Marine America, their Google expert, back in my early 20s, mid-20’s, I guess you’d say. So flash forward. A couple of years from then, I had gotten back into consulting for small businesses. I realized I was a terrible employer. We had 40-something employees. Everybody we ever fired was somebody I hired. 

And 2007 comes around. My dad wants to get out of the boat business. I want to get out of it. My brother doesn’t like it. So we decided to wind it down. Went back into marketing in 2008. Didn’t realize that come the summer of ‘08, as we were closing the dealership, the economy would crash, but kind of gave me a good kick in the ass out the door. And that’s when I started what this company is now. It’s America’s Best Restaurants. 

Now, back then, it was driven media solutions, and the idea was to bring a different level of expertise to a local business owner, because what I also saw back then, not only the Internet, because we were early adopters. ‘08, ‘09, I was knocking on doors in northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, telling car dealerships, you got to get a Facebook page. And they thought I was on drugs. 

But I also knew media. And so that was my leg in, was that I understood radio and TV at a high level. And I would go to these car dealerships, say, hey, you’re spending $200 grand a year on radio, your commercials suck, your rotation sucks, the creative is not any good, and you’re buying it at too much of a premium. Let me come in and buy it for you. And free of charge, we’ll do all your digital media. 

And that’s what launched this company. And my vision back then was to be a one-person operation, to have no employees and to be the at large marketing director for 30 businesses. Well, I didn’t succeed at the only employee. We have 56 people. As of today, we have offices here in northern Kentucky and Las Vegas. So I messed that up. But we are servicing somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 restaurants annually between the three divisions.

Justin Ulrich
Wow, that’s incredible. Great for you guys. 3,000. All the learnings that you’re generating, over 3,000 accounts, they’re mostly independents, I’m assuming. And you’re able to roll out those learnings to your other folks. So the rising tide just continues to raise all ships, is that correct?

Matt Plapp
And that’s where it came from. I keep this growler on my desk. It’s a brand called Hoffber House. It’s a loose franchise, it’s more of a licensing deal. But they were a restaurant client of ours back between 2010 to 2017. And that was when I first realized the opportunity was I had hired a consultant guy named Billy Jean Shaw out of California. And I sat down with him and I had myself and one employee at the time, and this is 2016. 

And I said, hey, I love what I do. We have some really cool things we’re doing for our clients and we are really good at acquisition. And showed him my portfolio of clients. And we had nine restaurants, three Quaker Steak and Lubes, which is a franchise, three Hoffberg Houses, and we had three independents. And he looked at it, he’s like, wow, have you noticed a trend here? I’m like, what do you mean? 

He’s like, well, you leave the car dealership and you go to your vacuum store. There’s nothing that transfers. You leave the vacuum, you go to the pain clinic, there’s nothing that transfers. You’ve got nine restaurants and you’re doing the exact same thing with all nine, for the most part. And I’m like, yeah, I love it because it works. And I had never, in my infinite wisdom, thought I could take this and roll that out, because it was simply a part of the marketing plan. 

Like, I’ve got this binder I keep on my desk, and this is what we guide our clients through. This is an annual marketing plan, 52 weeks. It’s everything. And for me, the vision is that acquisition program is simply one of the barstool legs. You get twelve barstool legs. It’s one of the legs. So if one gets kicked out one week, the other eleven work. And so that’s when, in 2017, we rolled out that product called the acquisition engine to restaurants across the country. 

And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since, trying to figure out how to leverage all of the shared knowledge we have. Because it’s pretty cool when you’ve got a success coach on your team who has 18 pizza restaurants, and a friend of yours calls you and says, hey, I’ve got a buddy who has a pizza restaurant that needs help. Can you help? And I’m like, well, this one coach on my team works with 18 restaurants that look identical. So I would be willing to bet, yes, we can help in a very big way.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, super cool. And the suggestions that I see you make online, it’s not a lot of things that are, like, earth-shattering. It’s just things that people just don’t realize. And it’s relatively easy for them to stand up and move forward and achieve success. They just need the guidance of someone like you to help get them going in the right direction.

Matt Plapp
Let me ask you a question, Justin. You look like a pretty fit guy. What is a huge issue?

Justin Ulrich
Probably obesity.

Matt Plapp
Obesity. How hard is it? Eat somewhat responsibly, move consistently, take care of your body with regards to stress, with injuries. It’s not rocket science. If you’re 100 pounds overweight, do the math and figure out your calorie deficit and the exercise regimen for the next three years, and you won’t be 100 pounds overweight. But everybody in this country is fat. 

Well, I equate the same thing to restaurants and to small businesses. It’s not rocket science, because when I look back at 2008, when I started this company, nine out of ten of my clients were getting their attention from paid advertising, radio, TV, direct mail, cable, billboard, sports marketing, and then the Internet handed them, free of charge, these amazing tools. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, their website, email and text, it’s almost all free. 

And they all have managed to screw it up because they said, oh, shit, we were giving all these places we used to pay for radio ads. Let’s now take our radio advertisement and blast it to everybody 24 hours a day. And so to me, it’s amazing when people can’t see that. Hey, I’ve got a Facebook page, Papa John’s. It’s the greatest case study ever in the history of restaurant marketing on Facebook. Go to their Facebook page. 6.7 million fans or something like that. It was at eight at one point. It keeps going down. And on their average post, they’ll get two to 300 engagements. 

If I’m Papa, I know John’s gone, but I’m sure there’s some CEO there. So if Mr. Papa CEO, look at your social media, it is nonexistent. We did the math the other day because we have it in a presentation and I don’t even know how to articulate this number. It’s .0004 of 1% is their engagement.

Justin Ulrich
That’s crazy.

Matt Plapp
And so, like you said, it’s not rocket science. Nothing I’m saying is like, I’m some savant and it’s like Gary Vee stuff Gary Vee talks about isn’t some miracle. It’s common sense practiced over and over.

Justin Ulrich
Correct. Yeah. Consistently over time. Yeah. That Papa John’s example is really interesting like, because I do remember seeing some content you put out about it as well and basically talk about, could you imagine if any of these other restaurants that you’re working with had the following that they have. 

It is crazy. They have the ability to basically just push a button and get their message in front of millions, and they’re doing it all wrong. Unfortunately, it’s the same type of content over and over. It’s relatively boring. And they’ve got a celebrity face that they can leverage too. If they did it the right way, they could go gangbusters.

Matt Plapp
I mean, you’ve got Shaquille O’Neill, one of the most charismatic, energetic, likable people endorsing your product, and 200 people out of 6 million. So number one, that tells you that the algorithm is blocking you because you’ve done such a shitty job of using their product that they can’t afford to expose you to their audience because their audience tunes out. 

That’s why I told a friend of mine the other day who doesn’t grasp it, and he’s like, Matt, because I did a speech recently where I talked about Red Bull and I said, hey, it was literally a two minute segment of an hour presentation, but it went viral, like 3 million views on Instagram. And I was talking about how Red Bull, which it’s top mine because we have Red Bull in our office and I drink one a day, probably. 

But I’m like, Red Bull’s not marketing Red Bull on Facebook. He’s like, well, they’ve got BMX guys. They’ve got the Tony Hawk skateboarders. How is that relative to a restaurant? I said, you’re missing the point. They’re using. They’re using the platform to reach their audience. 

And if you looked at radio station, this is an easy example. We all know radio stations that if you looked at 700 WLW in Cincinnati, the audience that tunes in there every day tunes in for the talk radio, the sports, the news, the live sports from the Reds, the Bengals, Xavier UC. If Matt Plapp had a pizza restaurant and all of a sudden tomorrow owns 700 WLW and inherited those half million followers, and I just played my pizza commercials on a loop. Twenty four seven, that audience would leave. 

And I told him that example, he’s like, you’re right. I said, well, dude, you have the same radio station, your Facebook page with 28,000 fans, where only five of them and one of those five is your wife, engage. So you have literally just done what I said, because all you do is get on Facebook and get on Instagram and puke your restaurant’s sales pitch every day.

Justin Ulrich
I love the points you’re making about Red Bull. I used to be in, I led the marketing team for Polaris Razor for a little while and worked really closely with the Red Bull team and other energy drinks. And it’s the same thing. It’s like you’re not marketing the drink itself. You’re tying it to things that are fun, that are exciting, that you know that the audience is going to engage with because that’s like the typical avatar that you’re going after. 

It doesn’t have to be that every time someone pushes the post out about their pizzeria that it’s going to be a shot of the pizza every single time. Like you said in that post that went viral. What are the things that you can put in there that are going to be fun and engaging to the audience that really get them going? 

I think one company that does it really well, like social, is Primanti Brothers. Their brand is so funny, the way that they’re sarcastic and engage with their audience just in store and online, it’s hilarious. They do some pretty engaging content and their followers pretty big relative to the size of the company.

Matt Plapp
And I had lunch with their CEO and president like two months ago. We went up to Pittsburgh. One of my COO is friends with him from LinkedIn. Amazing product and great story and they do some cool stuff. But what restaurants have to realize and really any business: think about the platform and why somebody’s using it. 

So email is different than text. Text is different from Facebook, Twitter is different from Instagram. Why are they using it? Well, when I get on Facebook personally, and this goes around for what most people, so it’s not like just me. I go to my newsfeed and I start scrolling and I’m looking for something that relates to me that I can engage with, that I can dispute, that I can argue about, that I can have fun with, that I can share. 

And the restaurants have to realize, okay, I’m a restaurant that’s located in Florence, Kentucky. I want to relate to people around me. I’ve got Boone County High School, Connor High School, Cooper High School. I’ve got nine elementary schools. I’ve got 20 churches. I’ve got the chamber of commerce. There’s a lot going on. The Florence Freedom baseball field over here has this Christmas event going on. 

I’ve yet to see. And I follow restaurants locally, just see what they’re doing. None of them have posted about it. And I’m like, you realize how many of your customers are going to the damn Christmas celebration at the Florence Freedom baseball stadium. Go buy some tickets. Go up there, do some live video tours. Post it on your Facebook page and say, hey, we went, it looks really cool. We’ve got five tickets up for grabs. Click comment below to get a chance to win them and let us know if you went yet. 

Now all of a sudden, you get people sharing the video about, hey, did you see this new Christmas thing they’re doing? Hey, did you see this? And they’re seeing it’s coming from your restaurant. And now you’re getting shares, getting virality for something that’s not your food, with the idea that they’re going to see the name and go, that sounds good. Let’s get a sandwich. Let’s get a pizza.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Do you have any examples of folks that you’ve worked with, maybe some of your clients that you know are doing it really well?

Matt Plapp
Oh, yeah, we have a lot of them. I’ll give you two that are top mind because I watch their stuff and it shows up every day, is a place called Louie’s Waffle House up in near Chicago, the southwest suburbs. The two young brothers, and they’re doing a lot of good stuff. They do a lot of good stuff with the restaurant, but also in the community. 

Another guy, Avery, from Little Italy Ristorante in Groveport, Ohio, near Columbus. And what’s funny about Avery was Avery has been a client of our company for probably going on two and a half to three years. And we have three divisions of our company, and one of them focuses on acquisition. Pretty simple. You want customers, we’ll find them. 

Now, what you do with those customers after we give them to you is a different story. Well, Avery was one of those for about a year, year and a half. We did the acquisition, and all of our clients are given the resources. We call it ABRU. ABRU University, not a university disclosure. And we give them that resource and say, hey, here’s our advice on how you should market your restaurant on your own. 

And honestly, seven out of ten don’t take the advice. Five out of ten never log in. And then there comes a point where something clicks. Well, with Avery, I don’t know what it was that clicked, but in early 2023, 2022, he started doing a little more and getting a little more, and he’s gotten to a point now where every week he drives to a different business in the area and films a little micro story that’s funny about that business. 

Like, he went to a dentist the other day. And he’s highlighting the dentist. Like, I’ve got a toothache. They’re like, oh, come in, Mr. Ristorante. So he goes in, and this is literally stuff that can be filmed on an iPhone. He walks in, he sits down, she pulls a piece of pizza from behind his mouth and says, you’ve got pepperoni-dontist. And they had fun with it, but he’s having a little fun. He’s promoting a dentist down the street, and you can do a lot of different things. 

One of them, he got pulled over by a cop, and I thought it was funny because he bribed a cop with a VIP offer. And so he’s having a good time with it. But there’s a lot of things you can do. One that I harp on all the time is the high school band at Ryle High School in my area was one of eight bands picked last December to go to the Pearl Harbor parade in Hawaii. One of eight.

Justin Ulrich
Wow.

Matt Plapp
In the United States, not one business covered it. And if I’m the pizza place down the street, I’m going over there when the bus is leaving and I’m like, hey, I’m with Steven, the band director. Steven, what’s going on? Where are y’all going? I mean, next thing you know, you got a hundred parents whose kids are on the bus sharing your Facebook live. 

And that’s what it’s all about. Money follows attention. And if you don’t get any attention with your marketing because you suck at it, don’t complain about your sales. But if you go out and you tell the stories of your community and you get more attention because those band moms and dads share the video, don’t be surprised when they walk in and spend money with you because you supported their band.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. I don’t typically get into too much about our product, but we help automate some local digital marketing. And that’s one of the things we do is we tell restaurants or our clients, like, set it up. So all your locations you have, if a local high school wins the game, you’re firing off these ads just in this specific neighborhoods around your store that tend to high school. 

It’s one of those things that if you have your local engagement nailed down, it’s like that’s where the growth starts and really kind of takes off because you can create these loyal audiences of folks who really are there to support you and your business. As long as you’re giving to them, they’re going to want to give back and support you. No, what, what struggles you might be going through Covid, whatever it might be, they’re going to be there for you.

Matt Plapp
Justin, can I give you a great Polaris Razor story?

Justin Ulrich
Yes.

Matt Plapp
Because you mentioned Polaris Razor, this is the greatest story for me. So I used to go on an ATV trip twice a year with about six guys, and you can’t even make this stuff up. There’s no part of this that’s exaggerated. So we’re getting ready to go on the trail. And this is when the razors had first come out and they were the rave. Like, everybody had to have them. And I have my Arctic Cat ATV and these guys had a couple of them had Polaris Razors. 

Well, the place we were staying, the little campground, rented Polaris Razors. So we’re standing there. I want you to picture a little log cabin and 15ft in front of it, straight uphill, like this crazy dirt trail that nobody ever took because it was too steep. And these guys come out and we’re standing there, we’re getting some drinks, we’re getting ready to load up for the day. 

And these guys rent it. These two young guys rent the Polaris Razor. And he’s like, hey, go ahead and sign here. Do you want the insurance now? We don’t need that. He’s like, I would go with the insurance now we’re good. Puts his helmet on. Again, I’m not making this shit up. Puts the helmet on, turns this thing, aims it at that hill, straight up the hill. The only problem was, they get about halfway up and he let off the throttle. And we’re all down there still standing there. 

And it’s like a cartoon, like right on a bugs bunny. Like, what is that? Where he’s chasing them through. What’s the roadrunner? It’s like those type of scenes. This Polaris Razor just starts cartwheeling back down the hill and eventually lands, flips over onto the tires right in front of us. Dust flying everywhere, plastic going everywhere. We’re all standing there cracking up, thinking they’re probably dead, though. They stop, the dust, settles. 

The guy comes out and goes, should have got the rental insurance. They had just totaled this thing. And so when you said Polaris Razor, whenever I hear Polaris Razor, that was like, when they first came out and you couldn’t have made this up. Like, these guys are like, dude tobacco. I don’t need no insurance. And then 30 seconds later, the unit was totaled. I mean, it looked like somebody took a can up and just squished it.

Justin Ulrich
You can’t write it. That same story like, I’ve seen that type of thing happen so many times. And what’s funny is I used to manage the offroad race team as well, okay. And some of these guys, they’re such funny dudes, and they have egos, and they get out there in the dunes and they rip it up, and they’ll lock tires on each other and just. 

We call it wading up the vehicles. When it rolls so many times, it’s like a ball of aluminum, and it’s just like, up. They get out, and they’re like, all right, you have another one I can use?

Matt Plapp
I never forget that moment because we’re literally just standing there. We’re like, did that just happen? And it’s just sitting there, smoke going everywhere, dust. I told him I feel like I’m waiting for the little “meep meep” to go running by because that’s what it was. And these guys were just. I don’t think they realized. I don’t know how they paid the 18 grand the guy said they owed, but.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that’s funny. Yeah. It happens all too often. But that’s what I think what people love about it. They have these stories that, like you said, you will never forget that.

Matt Plapp
And that ATV going down the hill, unfortunately, is a lot of restaurants’ marketing plans. Goes up in a big thing of smoke.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah. Way to circle back on that one. That’s awesome. So, I guess, Matt, actually, let me ask you this. What is something that you think you’ve tried specifically that you would try to encourage our folks to do or our listeners to do today or this week? Like, hey, this thing works. Go start. Go try it.

Matt Plapp
So I’m going to give you a little marketing strategy here that I love that is not practiced. What’s the number one thing you see somebody at the gym for the first time in a long time, or you walk into a small business, what is the first thing they say to you when you see them?

Justin Ulrich
Welcome to the store.

Matt Plapp
Hi. How are you doing?

Justin Ulrich
Yeah.

Matt Plapp
You don’t care. They don’t care. And what I’m adamant with, especially restaurants, is we want to have meaningful engagements. Somebody walks into your restaurant, that is the most important customer that exists. They found you. They drove there, they parked, they walked in. They’re going to give you their credit card, which means they trust you. You need to engage them. 

So the other aspect of that is, okay, how can you engage them in a fun way without bugging them? How can you get social media exposure? And how can you build a database? So the first thing I’m going to tell you. We’re going to have this. We just bought a software company called Repeat Returns. So in the next 30 days, we’ll have what’s called the comment growth tool built into this. 

But there’s a product called Minichat, and I don’t make any money from Minichat. We spend a lot of money with them, but they have a product called the comment growth tool. You can hook it up to Facebook and Instagram so that when somebody comments on your post, it will open up a conversation in messenger and say, hey, Justin, thanks for your comment. Would you like to enter to win the contest? Would you like a free burger? Whatever. 

So here’s the tactic. This is a growler. It’s got a bunch of coins in it, can hear it? So a customer walks in your restaurant, they walk up and they say, hey, welcome to Matt’s Barbecue, or Hoffbrouse, Pittsburgh. Have you been here before? Yes. Come all the time. Great. Let me get you over your table. But first, you want to win $100 cash? Hell yeah. Do me a favor. 

Go to Facebook by scanning this code, or just go to us on Facebook. You’re going to see a post that is pinned to the top. It’s a picture of this growler. You can guess how much money is in it. We’re going to give away $100 this week to the closest or the exact guess. 

Now what happens is you just had a different conversation with somebody in the restaurant versus, hey, how are you doing? You now engage them differently. You then get them to scan that and go to your Facebook page. So now you got an engagement there. They comment on the post. You got an engagement there that helps it go viral. And it’s going viral for the right reasons. Why? Because somebody who’s in your restaurant is commenting. 

Facebook will look at who’s commenting. Birds of a Feather. Let’s find other white dudes with orange shirts that are married, that have two kids, that live in that zip code. Boom. Now that person gets delivered it. And then the best part is the comment growth tool. It now goes to messenger and says, Matt, you’re entered to win the contest. Thanks for your comment. Click below to get a free burger for your next visit or whatever. 

So now you’ve engaged people in the store, you’ve gotten them to engage in your social media, and then if you build your automation correctly in Facebook messenger with that comment on that post, it can open up and it can ask any question. What is your email? What is your phone number? What’s your birthday? How often do you come to the restaurant? Great. You’re entered to win. See you next time. 

And now you’ve got a database, you’ve got engagement, and you had a meaningful conversation with somebody in your restaurant.

Justin Ulrich
Very cool. That’s a super cool example. Hey, I wanted to put something in front of you. I did a little bit of research on you before jumping on the call, and you sent over some facts. And of all the facts that you sent over, whether or not you love the buffalo wings or you’re from Cincinnati, you’re probably a huge Reds fan. I don’t know. 

But the one that really stuck with me was that you wanted to be Michael Scott. And to me, the fact that you want to be him deserved me putting you in AI to generate an image of you actually as Michael Scott.

Matt Plapp
That is so good.

Justin Ulrich
The best part about it is I was able know get Dwight peeking in on you. I figured that was gold. And I see you have the Dwight bobblehead there.

Matt Plapp
I got Dwight on my desk. I literally just texted somebody this morning that our cleaner for our office that your check for the month is below Dwight.

Justin Ulrich
Well, perfect, man. Well, hey, it was a lot of fun having you in the lab today. Why don’t you let our listeners know how they can follow you?

Matt Plapp
Just check me out at Matt Plapp on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Mattplapp.com is the easiest place to find me. And then that’ll push you out into the different company websites we have.

Justin Ulrich
Perfect. Yeah, give him a follow. Matt has some really good content. As I mentioned earlier, he’s got four podcasts. He’s on MPTV, Restaurant Expert Roundup, Own Their Phones, and Restaurant Marketing Secrets. If you could check out those podcasts on your favorite platform, give him a follow, give him a subscribe, you will not regret it. His content is fantastic. Follow on all the social channels, including LinkedIn. 

Matt, it was a ton of fun having you to lab, my friend. Thanks for joining us.

Matt Plapp
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Justin Ulrich
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 @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.