How are you integrating the use of AI into your business? Are you incorporating it yet? Our guest today is Are you familiar with the concepts of loccation intelligence and geofencing? If these ideas are new to you or you are looking to get some additional insights on these topics then today’s episode is for you. Our guests today are Barbara Wardell and Ernesto Cullari, who are digital marketing experts.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Geo fencing allows you to hyper focus on your local area.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at:
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- Get a copy of our guest’s book: CLICK HERE.
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
- Connect with our guest on social:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernestocullari/
- https://www.instagram.com/ernestocullari
- https://kitcaster.com/barbara-wardell-and-ernesto-cullari/
ABOUT OUR GUESTS:
Barbara Wardell, Cofounder CFO, of Cullari Wardell.
Barbara Wardell is a seasoned marketing and ad professional who left behind a very successful career in the specialty medicine world to become a disruptor on behalf of small businesses.
Ernesto Cullari, Cofounder CMO, of Cullari Wardell.
Ernesto is a writer, commercial photographer and commercial director, as well as our Chief Marketing Officer. He’s experienced at managing all aspects of content creation and digital ad creation, ad management, distribution, and optimization. He is a pioneer in the field of geofencing.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Tom DuFore (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I’m wondering if you are familiar with the concepts of location intelligence and geofencing. And if these ideas are new to you or maybe you’re just looking to gain some additional insights on these topics, then today’s episode is for you.
(00:34):
And our guests today are Barbara Wardell and Ernesto Cullari who are digital marketing experts and specifically focus on the geofencing and location intelligence. Now, Barbara is the co-founder and CFO of Cullari-Wardell, and she’s a seasoned marketing and ad professional who left behind a very successful career in specialty medicine to become a disruptor on behalf of small businesses.
(01:01):
And Ernesto is the co-founder of Cullari-Wardell and he’s a writer, a commercial photographer and commercial director as well as the chief marketing officer of their company. He’s experienced at managing all aspects of content creation and digital ad creation, ad management, distribution and optimization. And he’s a pioneer in the field of geofencing. You’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
Barbara Wardell (01:28):
My name is Barbara Wardell. I’m the co-founder of Cullari & Wardell, a geofencing ad agency. We work on foot traffic.
Ernesto Cullari (01:36):
I’m Ernesto Cullari. I’m Barbara’s partner. And like Barbara said, we specialize in foot traffic and location intelligence. Foot traffic in terms of driving it and location intelligence in terms of doing the research necessary to understand holistically what a neighborhood looks like proximal to your franchise location.
Dr. Tom DuFore (01:56):
Excellent. Well, thank you both for those introductions and this concept of geofencing foot traffic. Taking a look at all of this for location intelligence is one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show to talk about that, because this will become or already is a very important topic to the people who listen into this.
(02:14):
So, just as a place to get started, let’s zoom out and start with describing and defining what location intelligence is and what is geofencing.
Ernesto Cullari (02:26):
So, geofencing is the use of satellites to draw virtual fences around areas of interest. So, if you are a grocery franchise or, say, an insurance franchise, you might want to look at the local businesses that are like yours or just businesses that are in your area. And then what you would want to do is you would want to do a foot traffic study so that you can understand, A, if the population supports your business; and B, what the foot traffic trends are.
(02:59):
And why that’s important is we’ve spoken to many franchise owners that are making multi-million-dollar investments on location and other aspects of their business and they’re coming late to the game trying to understand if the local population actually supports the service they offer. So, I’ll give you an example. We had someone who started a franchise of his own of laundromats and he was looking to move into a college town because the assumption was is that college kids, they’re busy, they’re a growing market in the need for not just laundry services while they’re away, but in particular pickup and delivery or drop off laundry services.
(03:41):
Well, we did a foot traffic study for him. And then using our partner, Unacast, lo and behold, we found out that the university that he was next to actually provides free laundry services.
Barbara Wardell (03:56):
That wasn’t the best place to invest all that money.
Ernesto Cullari (04:00):
No. While we lost a long-term client, meaning that we couldn’t put him on retainer services to run his ads, we gained a long-term business asset. When he opens up another location, we’ll be using us to do geofencing. But through this foot traffic study process, this location intelligence process, we learned, A, while it might be ripe ground for his service. On the other hand, the service is already being provided for free.
(04:28):
So, that’s the location intelligence side. The flipside of that is when you have data, when you have good location data, you can then turn around and use geofencing. And geofencing is the use of satellites to draw virtual fences around areas of interest, and then you can capture every mobile device in that area and then serve them ads.
(04:49):
And then when they come to your store, the satellite pings us, alerting us that a new visit has taken place. And as a company, Barbara and I, on a monthly basis send thousands of visits to various franchise locations across the US, Canada, Australia.
Barbara Wardell (05:04):
And Australia.
Dr. Tom DuFore (05:05):
There are really two facets when we start to think about applying this to the franchise world, we have the perspective of the franchisor. And the franchisor looks at it in a few different ways. One is they likely would want to use maybe this geofencing and some of this very hyper-focused targeting to maybe find potential franchisees. And then on the other hand, being able to support their franchisees at the local level to help provide unique ways to bring new customers to their franchisees.
(05:37):
So, let’s start with, first, maybe franchise recruitment, on the first piece of this, how can maybe geofencing help and finding potential franchisees that might want to join a system or if it’s even been used in that way. And then the second piece, we’ll dive into at the local franchisee level, how this might help franchisees and what they’re doing.
Ernesto Cullari (06:00):
I think I’ll answer the first part and let Barbara answer the second part.
Barbara Wardell (06:03):
Okay.
Ernesto Cullari (06:03):
So, contextually, when a franchisor is looking for potential franchisees, you can run what’s called contextual ads. So, when someone is reading articles on the subject in a given area, when someone is typing into Bing, for example, what franchises are profitable? So, that would be a contextual campaign. So, you can run contextual campaigns in the areas in which you actually want franchise members.
(06:33):
So, for example, if you’re in Minneapolis and you are looking to open a division, say even a car dealership or you want to expand your car dealership or you want to expand your photography or computer franchise business, you can search, you can run ads that are contextual ads based in a given region. And with landing page campaigns you can collect their data and then even automate setting up appointments for yourself.
(07:04):
We actually do a lot of employee recruitment. So, that’s mainly where our experience is, it’s helping franchise owners recruit employees. But the same technology can be used when you’re looking as a franchisor for franchisees. And one of the important parts about that is we often talk about culture when we’re doing any kind of recruitment campaign. Culture-driven and culture-topic campaigns tend to be highly effective.
(07:35):
And Barbara, do you want to talk about how once you have a franchise, how you can target locally?
Barbara Wardell (07:39):
So, with franchises and targeting for the actual walk-in traffic into a brick-and-mortar store is so important, because you want to have that traffic coming in to build that business, especially when you spent so much money just to get into this franchise. So, what we do is we do a complete study of that whole area, the demographics, what needs to be targeted.
(08:03):
Our target is precisely the look-alike customer that would actually go into that laundromat or that other franchise depending on what kind of franchise, whether it’s a …
Ernesto Cullari (08:13):
A Jersey Mike.
Barbara Wardell (08:14):
… Jersey Mike’s or whatever. So, we target. We do a complete study of that building, a year study actually, focused on mobile traffic.
Ernesto Cullari (08:24):
Unacast has data all over the world for foot traffic trends and we happen to pull up a local Walmart. So, Walmart is traditionally what you would think of as a great anchor store. But if you’re pulling up a foot traffic study, say, for a Walmart they are your anchor store, but their foot traffic is down, I can’t read those, 44%?
Barbara Wardell (08:43):
Yes. Down.
Ernesto Cullari (08:45):
That’s 54% … Sorry. That’s terrible.
Barbara Wardell (08:45):
Yes. 64%.
Ernesto Cullari (08:47):
We won’t say what Walmart this is, but this particular Walmart location is down 64%. So, if you’re already going against the wind, you know that, A, as a place to source customers. So, you don’t want to geofence everyone who walks into this Walmart, but you want to ask yourself another question, is this particular area blighted? Meaning was there a natural disaster here? Is there some social economic upheaval here?
(09:17):
And if so, that is probably not the place where you want to open up a franchise location. So, if you think about it, how many business owners are like, “Yeah. We have Walmart by us, we have a Target by us, or we have this great shopping center, we have an Apple Store by us.” All those things are great.
Barbara Wardell (09:37):
But it doesn’t mean that’s your customer either.
Ernesto Cullari (09:39):
Right. And it doesn’t mean that if it’s not a healthy area, then it’s not going to support your business.
Barbara Wardell (09:48):
And it’s very important to know.
Dr. Tom DuFore (09:50):
How have you been able to help, let’s say, single unit brands or emerging franchise brands? A lot of our clients, we work with a successful entrepreneur, we help them franchise their business, and now they’re launching, and they have maybe 0 franchises, or 5, 10. They’re early on in their development. They are not at today’s stage a Jersey Mike’s that has hundreds and thousands of franchises that exist for some of these large brands. So, how do you help some of these smaller brands with something like this?
Barbara Wardell (10:19):
We had a customer that called us. He was asking us questions about geofencing and how it worked and how we used GPS technology. And he was like, “I love it. I want to try this.” So, we tried it. We were bringing him tons of traffic into his strip mall that was blighted at one point from a storm. He had bought the business right before that about, I don’t know, less than a year. He left his hedge fund company and he says, “This is what I’m doing.” So, he put everything in.
(10:47):
And at one point when the storm happened, he really didn’t have any money. He was living in his laundromat. We did not know this when he called us. He scraped the money together and he did a six-month campaign to start. How we found out, which was crazy, because he was on a podcast and he was talking about us, because we were word of mouth at the time.
(11:07):
And he literally talked about us and said, “This is one of the things that has helped me bring in a lot of foot traffic into my store.” And we got a call from one of our clients saying, “You guys are famous now.” Anyway, he ended up selling for a profit and he’s into something else now and we are so proud of him and we are also blessed because we actually got to help him build that business back up.
(11:36):
And that’s huge when you’re actually putting yourself out there and you’re helping someone. That was really a blessing, learning that we helped somebody and we didn’t even know that we were really helping him the way that he was flighted. So that was amazing.
(11:53):
And I think overall with foot traffic, it’s so important because you can build something and they’re not coming in. Unless you’re out there grabbing them, you have to get their attention. The mobile phones is prime real estate. If you’re not on their advertising outside of the Google, Facebook, Instagram, that’s all walled gardens. You’re fighting against each other. That’s not even your competition. This is not your competition.
(12:22):
We’re out there. We’re taking your competition and bringing them to you. We’re outside of all that. We are only focusing on the look-alike people that would come into your store. You’re not wasting the ad spend money on everything else. I think that’s the most important thing. And that adds a value to your customer coming into a franchise.
(12:42):
Because if you’re telling them you’re spending a million dollars for a business, don’t you want to know that there’s foot traffic coming in as soon as you open, because you’re sweating that day? So, it’s very important to have precise advertising. And geofencing is precise. It’s literally 3 millimeters to that door.
(13:05):
We know that they come in. When a GPS satellite knows that you saw our ad and walks into that door, they ping us and tell us, you just got a visit. I know what ad that you saw. I know what app or what part of the web that you saw it in. And that’s huge. Our data is so vast. Reports like that for a franchise is so important. When you’re investing all that money, you want to see the data and we have that data.
Dr. Tom DuFore (13:33):
One of the things that comes up in franchising, and I myself at one point was a multi-unit franchisee. And when I first bought into my franchise that I owned, I was the only franchise in town. It was me and that was it, in my metro, in the Atlanta area when I opened up. Well, after a few years, a bunch of others had opened up.
(13:53):
And even though I’ve been in franchising and consulting and know that generally speaking, when other franchisees come in, it actually helps the system. It doesn’t hurt the local franchisee. It almost every case, it’s going to help. However, it still didn’t change the fact that I was concerned and nervous about basically friendly competitors through other franchisees that come into the network. Even though I knew it, my heart and my emotions said, “I don’t like this. This is a new threat coming in.”
(14:21):
How have you seen this geofencing and some of the targeted things you are able to do? How have you seen that help franchisees in a local area really maximize maybe their marketing budget and really reduce some of that fear that might come along? Because I like how you said, people just can … You know which ad they clicked on, and they made me think about that “Well, boy, you could know that they clicked on an ad and came into that location.”
Ernesto Cullari (14:48):
So, let’s look at the friendly competitor aspect of the question. Let’s assume that we own … You’re familiar with the brand Wawa or 7-Eleven? So, let’s say we’re within 4 miles of each other. Really, our main customer is going to be found within a mile, mile and a half, 2 miles, on the outskirts, 3 miles. But then there are all of our customers, because they’re traveling, they’re stopping, they’re picking up a coffee, maybe they’re picking up a sandwich, and then we’re the Wawa nearest their homes, so they’re stopping for gas by us.
(15:22):
So, what geofencing allows you to do is concentrate your allocated budget to really focus on the neighborhoods that are within a mile to 3 miles. And you can go building-to-building, you can go business-to-business and you can cut out the waste. So, let’s think about mail. Remember every door, direct mail. So, you take a piece of mail and you deliver it … You have it delivered to the doors of the people you want to do business with.
(15:50):
Now, let’s turn that digital. Geofencing is going door-to-door, business-to-business in an infinitely more cost-effective way. You’re then sending your personalized message to that mile, mile and a half. And then what’s great is when they show up at your business, the satellite alerts that you’ve received a new GPS-verified visit.
(16:11):
So, you can really invest in that fertile ground that is directly next to your business. Whereas you’re not really stepping on the toes of another franchise owner. What you’re really doing is just planting more seeds local to you. And as you said, if your local place is doing well, that high-level of brand recognition and brand equity for franchises, that spreads.
Dr. Tom DuFore (16:41):
One of the things you had started going into, but I’d like to come back around to this conversation, is the idea of hiring and finding managers, technicians, field people who work in the day-to-day operation of the business. So, you’re talking about how you’ve supported other owners, other franchisees with hiring. Well, that is almost always the number one pain point for every franchisee once they start developing business.
(17:08):
So, franchisors, I’m certain are listening saying, “Okay. Well, how can you help our franchisees recruit quality managers, assistant managers or other people that they might need at their staff?” So, I’d love for you to talk through that.
Ernesto Cullari (17:22):
We run recruitment campaigns and in the way we do that is on the creative side and on the strategy side, we talk about culture. And a business’s culture will, A, attract the right people to work for you and to fill out an application. But what’s interesting, because we’re also able to measure foot traffic, we find that when we run these recruitment campaigns, it’s a benevolent double-edged sword.
(17:52):
Because then when your customer hears about your culture and that you’re looking for people of a certain character, they’re more likely to come in if they identify with that culture and that character.
Barbara Wardell (18:05):
Self-support. Yup.
Ernesto Cullari (18:07):
So, we did a recruitment campaign in St. Louis for a business and they have about eight locations, this business. They received in a 30-day campaign, recruitment campaign, they received, oddly, they received 101 new customers and very few applications. So, that is an example of how we failed on one hand, but we’re successful.
Barbara Wardell (18:33):
But in North Carolina, not only did we increase their foot traffic, their applications were piled up and they were like, “Please no more.”
Ernesto Cullari (18:42):
That’s right. Yeah. And frequently for the service industry like HVAC owners, electricians, plumbers, as you know, they’re always looking for new talent. For those clients in particular, they’re getting a great degree of increased business. But also, they’re getting a lot of applications. But the trouble with the trades is that you’re really looking for the most experienced people to join your team.
(19:11):
So, they are getting a lot of support staff, but the most challenging thing is are you going to get that very high-level skilled technician? So, that’s always like the holy grail. But as Barbara said, we definitely have successful campaigns. On the flipside …
Barbara Wardell (19:27):
It’s sprung in foot traffic.
Ernesto Cullari (19:28):
Yes. You do get a lot of incoming foot traffic and new business.
Barbara Wardell (19:32):
So, I think if you have a business and you’re putting out your culture and your beliefs that draws the people in that are like-minded that want to support you. It’s like the campaign that we did for one of our HVAC. They only do commercial. So, that’s very pinpointed of who we were focusing on. In the first 30 days, we got them the first big campaign.
Ernesto Cullari (19:56):
Yeah. I think it was their first week out, they landed like a $30,000 or $40,000 job. We also use … So, geofencing, just so people in the audience know, geofencing is a technology and it is a tactic, but you can use any form of media in a geofencing campaign. So, we run display ads that appear on your mobile device. So, Barbara and I were talking earlier about when we measure foot traffic, a lot of times how the last place where someone saw your ad was their mobile device and then they convert it to your store.
(20:30):
But we start with streaming ads on Amazon, streaming ads on Hulu, HBO Max. We do …
Barbara Wardell (20:37):
Laptops.
Ernesto Cullari (20:38):
Oh, yeah. Laptops, browsers, in-app, we’re using Spotify. So, really …
Barbara Wardell (20:43):
Amazon.
Ernesto Cullari (20:44):
Yup. You can really use any of the traditional means of digital advertising and convert it into a geofencing campaign that, A, can measure foot traffic; or B, measure an online conversion. So, I’ll give you an example of something Barbara mentioned before about social media is a walled garden. And those walled gardens, you’re really competing for minimum real estate and you’re competing not just against your neighbors, but you’re competing against a whole world of people that are advertising for your attention.
(21:17):
Geofencing is on the open web and there’s so many different places where people can find your ad. It could be in an app, it could be on the worldwide web, it could be on a streaming service. But the great thing that we find most interesting is we’re able to jailbreak your social media assets.
(21:34):
So, if you’ve been heavily invested with your franchise investing in social media, we can then take that brand equity that you’ve built on social and we can create a native ad or display ad or a streaming ad and then we’re able to deliver that asset to get the desired result, whether it’s an online conversion or foot traffic conversion.
(21:55):
So, geofencing is not just a technology, but that technology can take advantage of all the known digital ways that you can communicate to people.
Barbara Wardell (22:03):
And we have a basket of technologies that we use. We’re just not agnostic to one. We’ve made a platform that we can use all the different technologies. Because some areas or regions, you can’t use the same technology. Sometimes the demographics is, and that’s what’s really great about us is we’re flexible. We look into it, we figure out, and we’re in the system changing tactics, “All right. This is not working. We’re moving the money to a different tactic.”
(22:31):
We want to be good stewards of your money just like we’re good stewards of our own money. It’s very important when you invested so much money into a business, you need that care.
Dr. Tom DuFore (22:42):
How can someone learn a little bit more about what you all are doing or get in touch with you all?
Ernesto Cullari (22:47):
They can find us at cullarimedia.com, that’s C-U-L-L-A-R-I-M-E-D-I-A .com. We have tools available for both the franchisor and the franchisee. So, on the franchisor side, we have a platform that if you have multiple locations and you have a certain brand identity, obviously, you have a certain brand identity that you want to be uniform in your communications across the country or across the region.
(23:13):
We have built a platform that enables franchisor to onboard everyone in their system and then all the ads are there, all the tactics are already built in for your given industry. And you can execute highly efficient, highly targeted campaigns across the country.
Barbara Wardell (23:35):
And they can see what their franchisor is doing in those areas as a collective.
Ernesto Cullari (23:37):
As a hive, the queen bee gets to look and see how everything’s functioning, how all locations are performing across their franchise universe.
Barbara Wardell (23:47):
And you’re seeing that within a small timeframe. So, you can adjust those tactics that you need going in to get that performing franchise to perform even better.
Dr. Tom DuFore (23:58):
Well, this is a great time in the show where we make a transition and we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And since we have two guests, hopefully, we’ll get to hear each of your responses. So, in no particular order for either of you, however you want to answer these. The first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?
Barbara Wardell (24:17):
Yeah. We’ve had some misses. Starting a company and growing it, there’s always opportunities to grow as well as learn. And then the ones that you’re like, “Oh, my God. What are we going to do right now?” But yes, in the beginning, we had a few. One of the things that we learned is not using just one technology, because if that goes down, your business is gone. So, that’s why we have made our own platform and using a lot of different technologies to grow.
Ernesto Cullari (24:47):
I think one of the things that are most important, whether you’re the franchiser or the franchisee, is you want to really know your systems and have them … or A, you want to have systems that are in place and really know them and test them, make sure they’re reliable.
(25:03):
Barbara and I were just talking before we came on. We’re looking at our onboarding process and we’re like, “You know what? Yet again it needs to be improved. Is it a miss?” I mean, not necessarily. But we must constantly look at our systems and constantly improve them and find efficiencies. I like to say that’s the American way and that’s our way. Say what you want.
(25:27):
But what distinguishes our culture is the American culture, the Western. Let’s be honest, the American culture, is that we are constantly refining what we do and that’s definitely part of our culture at Cullari & Wardell. We are never resting on our past success and we’re always looking, “How can we improve the outcome for our client?”
(25:48):
Because if our client is not having their needs met, if we’re not constantly perfecting the smoothness of our wheel, of our mechanisms, then we’re going to have more setbacks than we need.
Dr. Tom DuFore (26:00):
The next question is looking at this on the other side. So, we talk about a miss. Let’s talk about a make or a win, a highlight or two that you’d like to share.
Ernesto Cullari (26:09):
I think one of the most amazing things that have happened for us is that we’ve developed our own technology.
Barbara Wardell (26:15):
Technology.
Ernesto Cullari (26:16):
And as Barbara said, we’re no longer reliant on … So, for those who don’t know, there’s such things as demand side platforms where you buy your ads, where your processes are for gaining impressions for your clients and conversions and things like that. So, our technology basically eats up. If you think of things like Make or Zapier, how you can plug-and-play, so our platform is a plug-and-play platform.
(26:46):
We’re looking at all the best. And when one fails, we just unplug that socket and we plug into another. So, I think the ability for us to come up with our own technology that keeps the user experience for the franchisee or the franchisor the same, and all we’re doing is under the hood, getting that NASCAR beast to perform. That’s what we’re doing. And I think that’s a game.
Barbara Wardell (27:10):
We’re doing all the maintenance.
Ernesto Cullari (27:15):
That is true. That is true.
Barbara Wardell (27:15):
And the performance, making sure that the performance is doing a great job, because that’s our business, to perform.
Ernesto Cullari (27:23):
Yay for us. We have one on our scorecard.
Barbara Wardell (27:24):
Yay.
Dr. Tom DuFore (27:27):
Wonderful. Well, let’s talk about a multiplier. The name of the show is Multiply Your Success and have you used a multiplier to grow yourself personally, professionally, your organizations you’ve been a part of?
Barbara Wardell (27:38):
I was in specialty medicines for a long time and I think that as you’re growing and going through COVID, it had one hand terrible, but the other hand it had positive to it. So, it’s yin and yang. I think that was a huge positive and growth and tenfold because this business wouldn’t have been started if it wasn’t for COVID, because this was out of necessity. When we were seeing those businesses close and some of our special were down the Jersey Shore, otherwise it wouldn’t have been started.
(28:11):
You were doing Instagram and all those kind of things. We would’ve never been in this business if it wasn’t for that. So, I think that helped us tenfold because we saw a need and we wanted to service it. And our passion was to help them to grow. And if we grow, they grow and it’s perfect.
Ernesto Cullari (28:30):
I would agree. Our impetus started in COVID, meeting a need. During that time, I was working with makeup companies from pretty much all over the world. Had Japanese hair care and skin care products, I had the Hemp beauty, which is a big US … It’s a vegan cruelty-free company. I was doing all their commercial photography and marketing. And COVID really showed the need that location, intelligence and geofencing is necessary.
(28:55):
But I think once we got to where we are today with Barbara and I running Cullari & Wardell coming out with our own technologies, a multiplier has been, I would say, workflow automation and AI. It has enabled us to really focus on communication with our clients. One of the things that we all experience is a breakdown in communication.
(29:20):
Obviously, it’s never a willful thing because we’re always trying to address needs as they arrive. Automation has allowed us to, anytime a report comes out, a client is able to … It’s sent on a schedule. A client is able to schedule a meeting with us if it’s needed, if they have any questions. There are several workflow automations that are enabled by AI. But they’re not agentic workflows. So, we’ve employed several of those so that we can spend more time communicating with our client.
Barbara Wardell (29:50):
Being hands-on.
Ernesto Cullari (29:52):
And more hands-on with them.
Barbara Wardell (29:53):
Because we’re our company.
Ernesto Cullari (29:54):
And at the same time, you want to set up your business as a franchisor or franchisee. You want to set up something of value. And value is when you’re actually not necessarily the most important part of the wheel. If you’ve set up something truly of value, it can work without you. Otherwise, it’s about Tom, it’s about Ernesto, it’s about Barbara.
(30:16):
So, our systems have been set up so that the greatest value is given to the client with or without us. And workflow automations and AI have certainly helped us. And then coming up with geofencing applications and interventions has greatly grown the bottom line for our clients.
Dr. Tom DuFore (30:35):
And the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Ernesto Cullari (30:41):
Success to me, ultimately means that the leviathan that we’ve built is actually not so heavy, the machine that we’re building. Success to me is a well-run wheel where the end result is that the client’s expectations were exceeded. And to me, that’s success. It’s like we won the game because we got the ball on the other side of the line and we did it in the most efficient, cost-effective way.
Dr. Tom DuFore (31:11):
Before we go, is there anything you’re hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Barbara Wardell (31:17):
I think overall, if you’re planning a franchise or you’re investing in a franchise or you’re starting a franchise yourselves, make sure that your marketing is set, your budget is set, and look really into it to make sure that you’re going to get the value for those customers who are going to buy into your franchise. Always offer value.
Dr. Tom DuFore (31:39):
Ernesto and Barbara, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So, takeaway number one is just the general overview on location intelligence and geofencing, that it’s using various satellites to draw lines around your area or to draw borders or perimeters to help understand foot traffic and start to understand what that looks like and how it impacts your business.
(32:09):
Take away number two is looking at foot traffic trends. And I found it fascinating when they talked about when you see foot traffic trends, for example, he gave the local Walmart where the foot traffic was down. If you see a decline, you might want to ask, “Have there been natural disasters in the area, or maybe something locally happened, maybe a traffic pattern changed or there’s road construction in the area?” It’ll cause you to start thinking about and asking deeper questions.
(32:39):
Takeaway number three is when they talked about social media being a walled garden. And I thought that was great, because it’s within the walls of the social media is the marketing that you’re able to do. So, you’re competing against all kinds of people within the walls or perimeter of social media. Ernesto and Barbara talked about how they can help jailbreak, as they described it, social assets to move onto the broader internet.
(33:07):
And now it’s time for Today’s Win-Win. So, Today’s Win-Win is talking about geofencing and then how it can allow you to hyper focus on the exact areas you want to market to, to the type of customers or prospective franchise buyers you want to get in front of. And it’s a digital form of door-to-door marketing. And it’s a win-win because it helps you focus your marketing efforts in the areas that you want to.
(33:41):
And it’s a big win for your customer or your franchisee or for that potential job seeker that they described as you are able to go directly to them and bring your message to the right people who want to see this type of message. So, you make their life easier as well.
(34:01):
And so, that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember if you or anyone might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.
