Digital marketing tools to enhance the customer journey

Tony Adams
Hey, Justin, thanks for having me. Really appreciate the opportunity.

Justin Ulrich
You bet. Hey, this was a really exciting opportunity. Not only did we recently start working together, but I just loved digging into your background and just seeing all the myriad experience you had. First off, just want to start with saying you’re a combat vet and you currently volunteer as an emergency room volunteer. I guess if something goes wrong, they’ve got you as an extra pair of hands-on staff.

Tony Adams
Yeah, well, so the emergency room volunteering, a little bit of a past experience, but yeah, something kind of in my wheelhouse that used to do so. Before deploying to Afghanistan, received my EMT just as I could be a second pair of hands in any of our missions. And so actually, a lot of times I ended up being the combat medic on a lot of patrols and missions and ambushes, know, you name it.

Justin Ulrich
That is crazy. Well, let’s start by saying thank you for your service.

Tony Adams
Yeah, thanks, man.

Justin Ulrich
Genuinely appreciate it. You bet. Hey, so it looks like your background is kind of like mine. So my path is just crazy. Like, I started off as an electrician right out of high school, and I worked as an installation tech for a couple of companies and worked my way after school and to be in a tax accountant, and now I’m leading a marketing team. It’s been a wild path, and I’ve done it across many industries, just like you. 

The really cool thing that I thought stuck out about your background is that you did have experience in many facets of business in many different industries. And just knowing what I bring to the picture with that experience, I see a ton of value in what you can bring from one industry to the next, because it’s no longer thinking within an echo chamber, but you’re able to bring solid experience from external into the space that you’re currently working.

Tony Adams
Oh, 100%. I was an executive at Remax World headquarters and at the time had owned a hair salon, which you think like real estate and women’s hair coloring. What’s the commonality here, right? 

When you really bring it to the table, it’s a local business, local markets, local customers, and people have expectations of the experience that they receive. People have expectations about the product that they get, the service that they get. 

And at the end of the day, I would walk into some meetings and people would just kind of almost roll their eyes a little bit because I’d go, well, we do this at the hair salon and it works really well. And they’re going, well, it’s not real estate. Well, no, it’s actually customer service, and it actually parallels across all industries.

Justin Ulrich
Fantastic. Well, I guess we could start with you just giving a little bit in your background and we’ll go from there.

Tony Adams
Yeah. Goodness. I guess I’m kind of just an innately curious dude, big-time problem solver. Sometimes I have to take a step back. Sometimes if my wife comes home from work and has a dilemma or issue, I have to ask, okay, do you want me to go into problem-solving mode or do you want me to go into husband-listening mode? Just because I just always kind of default to the first one. 

But yeah, background-wise was a kid, grew up in a little farm town in Missouri with like 350 people. I’m an only child, so used to fill my time with running around and doing stuff and being curious and getting into all kinds of trouble. And moved to Colorado when I was ten. And that’s really kind of, I think what kind of kicked my wheels off on just not limiting myself to what I focused on and what things I got involved with. 

My next door neighbor to my left was a master carpenter, and my neighbor to the right was an auto mechanic. And so I was between each house every single day, either building something with wood or tinkering on an automobile. Yeah. So just really had this kind of mechanical curiosity and lots of cool experiences from there. 

And also when I was ten, my uncle owned a bicycle manufacturing plant that he put me to work like hardcore. Should not admit how many hours I worked as a kid for this guy and built bicycles, got into bike racing and met some cool guys, like, met some Tour de France racers and got to ride Moab with these guys.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, that’s cool.

Tony Adams
So anyways, that was kind of me growing up a little bit and then had some cool jobs when I was…I actually took a stab at trying to go to college in engineering school at 18, and that just didn’t pan out, wasn’t ready for it. Failed out of college miserably and just immediately went back into the working world. 

Some life happened, and at 19 ended up getting hooked into mortgages and learned the business as a punk kid mortgage broker and would call clients and figured out really quickly how to build rapport and how to overcome being a 19-year-old advising 40, 50, 60 year olds what to do with their mortgage. Not an easy task. Not an easy task. 

And, yeah, a lot of times I’d show up to meet the client for the first time and they’d go, wow, you’re a punk kid. And I’m like, still the same guy that knows all this stuff. So you were listening to me before, so why don’t you keep listening to me?

Justin Ulrich
That’s hilarious. I could not imagine that would be a significant hurdle to overcome.

Tony Adams
Yeah. But as you mentioned earlier, really quickly, the owner of the mortgage brokerage really just took me under his wing and mentored me really well and taught me how to speak with people. And really since then, I’d always been in sales, really? And really taught me how to have quality sales conversations that were educational and not pushy and not salesy. Right. 

And so I think that’s what a lot of people appreciated about the conversations I would have is because they were just open and honest and I wasn’t afraid to tell people that. I just don’t think that this is going to be the best choice for you to do anything or this is the right time. 

I was motivated by making money and motivated by commissions, just like making a living. Most people are, but I never let that come in front of telling someone that you need to wait or you need to even seek another option that I just don’t have. So never tried to push anybody into something that wasn’t going to be quality and that they’d be happy with me with.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, very interesting.

Tony Adams
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
That experience, for sure, translates, like you said, in many different industries, it’s just customer service. It’s understanding command of message, knowing the pain point and what the customer is dealing with and being able to provide the right recommendation that’s good for them and solves for what they need now, as opposed to just trying to sell them on something for the sale.

Tony Adams
Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I’ve always struggled a little bit with that customer is always right vernacular that everyone always just repeats out of business school. Right. And at the end of the day, if the customer is really trying to push something and, you know, really in your heart that that is not what’s right for them, and then they will ultimately regret or be unhappy. How do you deal with that as a business person? 

I think it’s only right to really kind of stick to your guns and say that I’m really doing this for you at the end of the day. And no, I’m sorry, that’s just not going to work out how you think it’s going to work out. Whether you think you’re right or not, at the end of the day, I have to live with this too.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, exactly. Yeah, especially if you’re trying to build a book at business. It’ll quickly deteriorate if your customers are unhappy with the recommendations you’re giving based on what they want.

Tony Adams
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
What you know they need.

Tony Adams
Yeah. Moving on. Mortgage meltdown hit. A couple of years after getting in the mortgage business, I actually started my own mortgage company. And that went extremely well until the day that I came into the office and I would say 95% of my wholesale lenders had sent some form of an email in a day saying that they had closed their doors. 

And your lending world, like your resources as a business owner, if they all just fly out the window in 1 second, it’s like, what do you do? And so decided to make some life choices at that moment. When I was 25 and joined the army and something I had wanted to do out of high school but never had kind of the opportunity, I’ll put that in quotes, to do, and then joined the army and spent four and a half years in the service.

Justin Ulrich
Very cool. And then from there, obviously just from looking at your background, you led teams on tons of combat missions. And when you got out, you then took your experience from there and parlayed it into what?

Tony Adams
Well, as I mentioned, was able to get my EMT before joining or not before joining the military, but before deploying and had the opportunity to go through lots of different military schools before deploying as well. And so originally kind of went on that career trajectory of wanting to become a medical professional, a doctor. 

And immediately, I think it was three weeks after I left the army, I ended up starting full-time at University of Denver to get my bachelor of science. And so I actually double majored in biochem biology and minored in medical physics and went down this whole rabbit hole of trying to become a doctor, but was just freaking horrible at standardized tests. 

Standardized tests, at the end of the day, nobody really told me this up front that they’re like, standardized tests are basically going to make or break you. And I kind of learned the hard way of going through this huge experience and checking all the box, like literally all the boxes except for being able to be good at taking a standardized test.

Justin Ulrich
If you check all the boxes, you automatically get the answer wrong.

Tony Adams
Yeah. Anyway, yeah. But also, upon leaving the military at that time, my ex wife and I wife at the time, I helped her start a hair salon, like, right out of the gates of getting out of the military. And so also had that kind of running in the background as kind of a side gig, side project. And when the medical school field didn’t really work out, we kind of doubled down on the hair salon for a couple of years. 

And then that’s when I really started kind of getting the business bug again. And then that’s when I went back to school, got my executive MBA, met. He was then the senior vice president of marketing for, you know, we’re business school buddies. Then, you know, a couple months into the program, he’s like, yeah, you want to go meet the founder of Remax, Dave Liniger? 

And I’m like, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. And so go to lunch. Yeah, go to lunch. We’re chitchatting, and Dave’s an Air Force vet, Adams’ a marine vet. We’re just chatting military stuff for 45 minutes, and Dave just kind of leans over to him halfway through lunch and goes, hire him. 

I’m like, well, I didn’t know this was an interview. Ended up getting pulled into Remax that way and spent a few years there and then started my own consultancy a couple of years after being at Remax. And then the guys, both Dave and Adam, have kind of taken lesser roles at the company. Adams is no longer affiliated with Remax. Dave’s still the chairman. 

And then they started this private equity company, Area 15, and said, hey, Tony, we want you to come back and help us out with a few things. And those few things have just continued to multiply, and it’s just been awesome. So here I am.

Justin Ulrich
When you find the right people, he just said, hire them. It’s like, to do what? It doesn’t matter. We will find something that you do really well. But, you know, if you got the right person with the drive, with a motivation, it’s like they’re a fit. Then you can teach them into the world that you want them to fill. That’s super cool. I guess now that you’re at Area 15 Ventures, what’s your role over there?

Tony Adams
Yeah, I have the opportunity to kind of step into a lot of different projects. Leading technology, Port of Subs, Daddy Chicken Shack on the restaurant side, and get to come in and out of a number of other things that we’re working on. And largely just kind of overseeing technology, marketing, and whatever else may need to be done. 

It’s kind of funny. Remax, they used to on all job descriptions at the very bottom would put “and other”. And so I think the chief of staff kind of fills in the “and other”.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, yeah, yeah. Incredible. So, so you’re in this CTO role, you’re working with a portfolio of brands, trying to determine what technologies you put in place to not only benefit your level at the portfolio level, but also you want to put tools in place that benefit franchisees and make it attractive for them to come over because they now know that they have the support of corporate for their endeavors and to build in their market.

Tony Adams
Yeah, absolutely. I think having prior businesses, I understand that business owner mindset and really what business owners have to deal with, and a lot of times what business owners have to deal with is unexpected during the day. 

And I empathize with the day has completely gotten away from me. And the three things or five things that I wanted to accomplish today just never happened. And so I look at it from that perspective for tools and resources that we provide for our franchisees and what can we do for them so that they can focus on either putting out the fire or managing the employee or trying to build their own brand and business. 

All of our companies are independently owned and operated, and so these folks need support that they can rely on and not think about.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, because it’s so much like you said, so much changes on a day to day. Like someone calls in sick, two people call in sick. It’s just like so many things that you have to now pick up and handle the list of things that you had planned on doing. It just never, you never get to it. 

I see that in my role and it’s just like, oh, man, I’m constantly trying to find new tools and technology to help streamline or scale what it is that we do so that I could free up time to get done the things that I know need to get done as well.

Tony Adams
Yeah, I’m real big on trying to automate tasks and work, even if it spends a little bit of time kind of setting up whatever that process might be, just so that I don’t have to think about it or even do it later on in the day, week, month, year, whatever, you name it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. So you mentioned, I guess with all of your background in different areas, you’d mentioned real estate, you mentioned the salon. You’ve got the businesses that you’re running now in the restaurant space. 

With all of this experience, you have visibility into what’s worked over the years from a local marketing perspective. You’re driving traffic into the salon, or you’re trying to drive leads for your mortgage business, or you’re trying to drive foot traffic into their restaurants. What do you think is the most important aspect of local marketing?

Tony Adams
Well, I guess I’ll tell a quick story first, and then I’ll get into that. So the first location that we opened for a hair salon, really funny, because it was actually our house. So how do you get people to show up to your house? What actually ended up happening is we would have people show up night and day, and this is when we knew that we needed to get a commercial spot because it was like the doorbell would ring and people wanting a haircut, and it’s like, no, we’re having dinner. Come on. 

With marketing and just in general and local marketing, it’s like, so how do you get found? How do you get people to come and visit you? And so kind of learned early on a little bit of that formula, and I’ll talk outside of the house on our first location. If you tried to find our first location, good luck. It might as well have been buried under a rock behind a building out back somewhere. And, God, you couldn’t see the sign. You couldn’t see anything. 

And so largely with our local marketing, we started big time with our web presence, our social media presence, our local listing presence, and really just getting on point and making sure that we were highly visible in every possible way where people could be looking. And so that really helped us to magnify our online presence where people could find us and could see us so that we would at least have the opportunity to start a conversation of how to get there. 

We got really good at connecting things. I mean, I think, where a lot of businesses today, they struggle to kind of manage all these different platforms. You got the Facebook and social media and then your Google business listing and your website and then your Yelp page, and you’ve got all these different things that people are trying to attack, but they’re kind of attacking them one by one. 

And so they really don’t have this strategy on how to combine all of it together in one big package and really transfer the data and transfer all of the insights between everything together into one place to kind of look at and manage. And that’s just a time saver in itself.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, 100%. When you have all these disparate platforms, it just takes so much time. It’s just the time to learn them all, to do them all and to do them all efficiently, I mean, it just takes a ton of time. So you lean more into finding technology to help you streamline this process, bring everything to one place. And then more specifically, you think, I guess from what I’m hearing, it’s managing your online presence in a way that people can find you.

Tony Adams
Yeah. And I think it’s also really taken a hard look at what your customer’s journey truly looks like. And so at Remax, kind of learned this real estate, especially with the successful real estate agents, you always hear that all my business is by referral. I don’t have to do a lot of marketing, that kind of thing. 

And a lot of agents, they don’t understand that well yes, someone may be giving you a strong recommendation, but I look at it like, even when I get a strong recommendation to a great restaurant that I like, what’s the first thing that I do? I go, oh, cool, thanks for telling me about that. And then I go and I look it up online to see some food photos, some reviews, get a little bit of a background before I make that final decision to pull the trigger. 

And so where a lot of folks think that that customer journey is just literally from A to B? Well, there’s a lot of A, B, C, D, E, F before they finally make that decision to reach out. And I think when you kind of understand what your customer journey truly looks like in today’s age, where there is so much information about you and about your business on demand, you start thinking a little bit differently about how you’re going to hold their hand through that journey. 

And that’s really what differentiates, I think a successful business and a successful local marketing plan is when you are actually guiding your customer through their awareness journey through their journey of finding you and learning about you versus just letting them piece together the pieces on their own.

Justin Ulrich
100%. Do you have any examples that you can think of where you’ve helped guide someone through their customer journey to get them to the point where you want them to arrive?

Tony Adams
Sure. Well, think about someone. Well, we happen to own a chicken sandwich franchise, so let’s talk chicken for a minute. So someone thinking about lunch right now is about lunchtime. And so what are people doing right now? They’re googling stuff about lunch or restaurants near me and things like that. And so, wow, googled this and saw Daddy’s Chicken Shack is 0.7 miles away from my location. I’m going to check out their website and they start looking at your website a little bit. 

And then the phone rings and they got to put the phone down or they close the browser. And then a couple of hours later, they’re starving and they go, shoot, I can’t remember the name of that restaurant. And then they go to the fridge and eat the ham sandwich that they packed for lunch. Right? So a lot of journeys start like that. 

And unfortunately for a lot of businesses, a lot of journeys never continue for that business because that one single impression wasn’t enough to cement a memory, an experience significant enough to become a customer. 

So you have to have tools in place. Like on your website, for instance. I love remarketing, and I love remarketing pixels and retargeting because that customer that made it to the website but didn’t make it to your cash register, you as a business owner now have a way to reengage that person later on. 

And when they’re at home or when they’re at work or when they’re taking a moment to scroll through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, you name it and remind them about you, and they go, oh, yeah, that was the place. And then have them find their way back and maybe get a little bit farther down the journey. And maybe it was even as far as adding a few things to a delivery order on your cart and then the phone ring or the baby cries or whatever again. Right? 

But now you got a little bit more information on this person and you remind them again that, hey, you added this Big Daddy Sandwich and you were almost ready to check out, but you didn’t. So just want to remind you and say, hey, we’d love you to try it and finally get them there.

And so you have to realize that there’s a lot of journeys like that for customers, that that’s how that happens. They attempted to become a customer on that first time and had that interruption not happen, you would have snagged them. But life’s busy. Things happen, pop-ups happen, text messages, you get interrupted. And so you just have to be there when they’re ready to look and accept you. 

But a lot of times, people have already taken one step down that journey. It’s a little step. You just have to have the mechanisms in place to be able to reengage folks and just get them off the shelf.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that’s why I love digital marketing, because like you said, if you don’t have digital pieces in place, it’s like you’re starting from square one every single time in hopes that the individual will get all the way through the journey.

Tony Adams
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
It’s ideal. But to be able to guide them all the way through, but that’s not normal every day to day how things actually work. So, like you said, you capture as much information as you can, continue to remarket to them and guide them further and further along. And eventually you’ll get them into your doors and then you could retarget them and remarket to them in different ways and turn them into a loyal customer and keep them for life.

Tony Adams
Yeah, absolutely.

Justin Ulrich
So there’s a lot of our listeners, they listen into the show to try to get insights as to what they could do today or this week to help turn things around. If they’re struggling to drive traffic or their sales are low, like, what are some suggestions or maybe even just one key suggestion that you might have for our listeners to help them turn things around and start driving towards hitting their goals?

Tony Adams
I would take a hard look at your website. I think that’s probably my number one place to start with a business and just making sure that you’ve got some of your basics kind of lined up. So mentioned that I have a consultancy and I take clients occasionally, and that’s usually where I begin. And one of the first questions, and it sounds crazy almost to ask because it’s so simple and it’s, have you submitted your website to Google? 

And you would be surprised like, I’ve worked with big marketing firms even, that have spent tens of thousands of dollars developing these grandiose websites. And you ask, okay, has this been submitted to Google? And they go…like huh? And it’s so easy. 

You know, there’s a tool that Google gives everybody. It’s called Google Search Console, and it’s something that you can just simply create an account in. And that’s where you submit your URL and you register your website with Google. And then the next question I ask is, have you submitted your website site map to Google? Because that should be every web page that your website hosts. You want to tell Google about it. You want to tell Google about all those web pages. And that’s like step two. 

And then if you have done that, you got Google Analytics. Is that set up? Because you need to start learning about your web traffic and how much you’re getting and how engaging your website is. Bounce rate, right? Like, bounce rate is like, super focal for me because I want to know that the people who land on my website, are they using it? Are they engaging with my content? Do they think my stuff is spammy and boring or irrelevant? Or are they spending some time on the website? 

Because then if they are spending time on the website, but they’re not converting into customers, then we’re having a different conversation. And I think, again, because everything really, at this day and age, starts with some sort of digital reference point in a lot of people’s journey. So I think starting with your website is probably my best piece of advice.

Justin Ulrich
It’s very good. And I think with emphasis on start. Don’t let the thought of having all these things to do bog you down and get in the way of you actually moving forward. Just get started. Do like you’re saying. Just log into Google Search Console, set up an account, and then it’s pretty easy just to poke around in there and index your site and just to see how pages are working. And 15 minutes here or there can get you moving in the right direction.

Tony Adams
Yeah. A lot of these things aren’t massive tasks or massive amounts of labor. It’s just checking some little boxes here and there and getting moving with it. But a lot of it, too, is just becoming aware of what your website is actually doing for you. And so many business owners really are just clueless about it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, for sure. This isn’t things that you typically learn about in school, and it’s like, unless you’ve done it, you don’t really know about it. So getting these tips from someone like you is incredible. 

Let me ask you this, Tony. Who do you think is doing their local marketing really well? Who would you want to give a shout out to?

Tony Adams
Yeah, I think, you know, one company that I like, we’ve really started to frequent a lot. So I’ve got some kiddos and kind of a big kiddo myself. And that’s Crumbl Cookies. Yeah. Fantastic product. I think their whole brand image is amazing. I think the experience in store is great. I think their app is awesome. Website is awesome. So, yeah. Fan of the brand, for sure.

Justin Ulrich
Their brand is the vibrant colors, like the zoomed in, just high def shots of the cookies. It all is really cool. They just announced that. I think they launched another brand. It’s called Crustable or something like that. It’s a pie. It’s a pie concept.

Tony Adams
Yeah. I haven’t seen it, but I dig pies.

Justin Ulrich
There are two things in this world I can eat a lot of cookies and pies. Ice cream.

Tony Adams
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
Ice cream is one of your go to.

Tony Adams
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
Well, let me say this. Another go to of yours that I found out while doing a little bit of digging is that you love Marvel movies. And so when I reached out and know, what’s your favorite character? And you told me Iron Man, and I thought, man, Marvel movies, obviously, they started out really good with Iron Man, but they’ve come a long way in terms of just nowadays being able to bring to life the things that we grew up with. And I absolutely love Marvel movies as well. So I figured, you know, how cool would it be to show your four kiddos that they’ve got a dad that also has connections?

Tony Adams
Nice. Love it. Man. You’re going to have to send me that. That’s awesome.

Justin Ulrich
100%. I’ll send it to you. It’s funny, when I was making this image and then I pinged you and said, hey, who’s your favorite character? I was working on Thor.

Tony Adams
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
And that was also coming along pretty cool, too. So, anyways, yeah, I’ll definitely get this over to you. Your kids will love it, I’m sure.

Tony Adams
Yeah, it’s cool. I actually have this kind of hand-painted rendering an Iron Man on a painting in the house. I’m not 100% sure how my wife feels about it, but it’s been there since day one, and I love it.

Justin Ulrich
I’m willing to guarantee your wife does not love it.

Tony Adams
Yeah, probably not.

Justin Ulrich
That’s hilarious.

Tony Adams
She puts up with it.

Justin Ulrich
Yeah, that’s right. I’m also the same way with legos. I would put them on display in the house all over if I could, but my wife’s, like, not my style.

Tony Adams
Yeah.

Justin Ulrich
Awesome. Well, hey, Tony, it was a ton of fun having you on the show. I appreciate you taking the time. How can our listeners follow you? Follow your brand online?

Tony Adams
Oh, yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn under Tony Adams. Also Area 15 Ventures. Boy, we’re always doing lots of great things, and we continue to make posts and post some of our successes, as well as our learnings and some of our podcasts that we publish as well.

Justin Ulrich
Oh, very cool. Yeah, you’ll have to check out their podcast. I was just talking with Tony about that just before we started recording here. But check it out for sure. Stop into Port of Subs, pick up a sandwich. Stop into Daddy’s Chicken if you’re nearby Daddy’s Chicken Shack. Pick up some chicken. These guys are doing great things. They’re growing like gangbusters. Tons of brands in their portfolio. Check them out. Tony, again, thanks for joining us in the lab, my friend.

Tony Adams
Awesome. Thanks, Justin. Thanks for having me.

Justin Ulrich
You bet.

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.