Geofencing in the B2B Industry

Bill Woods: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast, where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today I have with us Jeff Swartz, a longtime friend and expert in geofencing marketing and fellow agency owner. Jeff, thanks for joining us today.

Jeff Swartz: Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure.

Bill Woods: Thank you. Yeah, it's good to see you and good to get back together here in the Burg. We're here in Pittsburgh where Jeff and I met. We were just reminiscing, probably eight, nine years ago, somewhere in that range. And, Jeff, you own a marketing agency as well, in a little different vertical and, focus space, than we are in. But we've certainly, shared, some more stories, referred clients over the years and been in a lot of, different situations together and learned a lot.

Jeff Swartz: So we definitely, met in our infancy stages of our businesses. And, and now we're coming up on a decade of, of doing it. So it's been a cool journey to see you, you and your growth as well as I know, share with what's been going on for me as well.

Bill Woods: Yeah, yeah. It's great. And you guys, just checking out you guys just stuff here recently, and the people I'm engaged with at your organization, a lot of growth for you guys. a lot of, new faces I saw at the recent company retreat, which is exciting, right? And, so, yeah, congratulations on your ten years and your growth and your recent birthday, like, big days here all in a row, stacking up for you. That's great.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah, a lot of big days.

Bill Woods: So, Jeff, let's start. I'd like to start with every guest and get a little background. start with maybe, the educational experience, whether it was college or post-college or what kind of led you to be an entrepreneur and start your own agency and get into that space, which is then going to lead us into, obviously, geofencing and that whole experience. Let's start at the beginning, not so far back, but, the middle, maybe we'll start in the middle.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah. I mean, it's I, I'm 39 now, so that actually it's about dead center in the middle. So when I was 20, I went to University of Dayton, and studied communications with minors in marketing and sociology. And when I, when I went there, I was between zoology, which they didn't really have a program for that. And advertising, those were just the two fields that I wanted to, to look at. And I had a great internship with a small agency out there, called The Next Wave. And, it made me fall in love with the different aspects of agency life, creative and business and strategy and media kind of all mixed into it. And, at that point I said, I want to run this, and I don’t want to do just one thing in the year. I want to know a lot about all these different moving parts, and I want to run it. So I spent almost ten years at CBS television and, as a media buyer and planner, for, like, Church’s Chicken and or, I guess it's Church’s Texas Chicken now, Zales jewelry, Shoney's, and a few other things. Get into real estate investing. we, you know, we bonded over the home improvement side of things in the past, and, all that up to get debt free and launched my, my agency in 2014. and that's kind of the the journey to get to the point of, of the entrepreneurship. It was just always kind of in me it was always something I wanted to do, and I really approached it with, if it doesn't work out in a year, it was something that I've, I was a ten year dream and that I, I got to see it through and, and go through that and and I just got lucky and, and rolled up the sleeves and put in some hard work to have it turn into a, a deca decade long dream so far.

Bill Woods: No, that's great. Well, congratulations on that story. I know you've, just like every entrepreneur, you've had your peaks and valleys. We've all come through the struggles, but that's, part of it. I always tell my kids, you know, it's it's about winning, but it's about going through the process. And if it's hard, it's good because fewer people are going to follow you and you just need to keep grinding. So.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah, don't look at the at the, at the actual line graph. Look at the slope. Right. As long as it's going upwards and everything, even though it's got all these steps and feats and vallies and stuff it, you're in good shape.

Bill Woods: Jeff maybe talk just a little bit about that experience at CBS. I know, you know, one of the experiences I always thought was amazing that you have was buying in big markets and dealing with some really big planning for some big brands. And maybe, talk a little bit about how, you know, that wasn't your first step in the entrepreneurial journey from a standpoint of being an entrepreneur. But that first job, maybe right really laid a good foundation for, like you to expand what you did in the future.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah. So, yeah, I've been in Pittsburgh for 13 years now, but before that I was in Dallas. So fifth biggest, TV market in the country. So I was at CBS there and in Pittsburgh. And then, I was with the agency down there as well too. So I bought small markets. I bought big markets. I was part of, national TV buy, so I did a bunch of different things. And, and what I kind of realized is that there's not a lot of differences between the two. There's a lot of similarities, but there's the compartmentalizing of whenever you get to a massive scale. So one of the things that I really did not enjoy that much as, being working on a bigger project is I was in the media department. I didn't know what was going on 100% with creative or sales or, you know, all these different things. And this was a while ago. This is this was probably 13 years ago. So things have definitely evolved and changed. But I didn't like the fact that I didn't know the results, from a sales standpoint. So I could tell you the, the, the post by analysis and all these, all these technical terms, to make sure that the gross rating points are what I bought is what I actually got and that we delivered on that. But I was like, well, how many chicken sales did we actually get, like how well were profits up? And I was curious about that aspect, which I think is the entrepreneur in me and my specialty at my agency, is to focus on hyperlocal and to focus on, advertising budgets that are anywhere between $50,000 annually and upwards to the, the, you know, the low millions of millions. And and in between there. So six figures is like a nice little sweet spot for us. It's a big enough budget that we can do a lot of different things with, but it's a small enough budget where we can have that cross collaboration that gets a little bit lost whenever there is something that becomes too big. You have this $50 million media spend with creative and all these other components. It becomes very labor intensive. And too de-compartmentalized.

Bill Woods: So this experience in dealing with the budget ranges that you're dealing with, Jeff, it feels like that was one of the reasons why you got into geofencing. You started to explore, you know, and we're always, as agency owners, are always looking for niches that we can find that can outperform and do a better job for our clients. And kind of give us that leading edge. So maybe talk about how, you know, you started to investigate and test and learn about geofencing, and then we'll get down into some nitty gritty, because one of the things we try and do with our podcast is we like to start from beginner and then go as far as we can. So because I guarantee there are people, we get questions from some of our clients about geofencing. So that's one of the reasons why we're talking. So we can provide value to marketing managers so they can, you know, kind of level up on that knowledge. We will also have people who watch this podcast. They'll be like, Geo who? Isn't that geo caching, do you mean? Nope, it's not geocaching it’s geofencing. So if you could maybe, talk about how you started your interest in it into geofencing and then we'll get into the, the whats and the hows and the wheres of geofencing.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah. So there's a couple things in there. And if it's cool, I actually like to start with with the what is geofencing. To give that to that example. So geofencing as we refer to it is using hyper specific location data, mainly GPS data, to identify that somebody has been at a very specific location. So if we're going to talk in the industrial sector and I'm interested in 100 different potential buyers that are that I know where their offices is, I'm going to geofence those locations. If I'm going to switch gears and talk about, maybe a automotive, client that has a big client customer list, maybe we'll grab that and we'll do addressable geofencing, which automatically grabs the property lines around there either way. And there's a couple different, formats that we use. But either way, it's all about something that's been a very specific location. And we're talking about accuracy down to about 16ft or, you know, roughly. but there's a lot of factors that makes it a pro and a con that you can kind of use it for. And then what you end up doing is that's the targeting side of things. Well, okay. What where does the advertising side of things come into play? Great. We know that we have this basket of potential devices and devices that are connected devices that we captured. So if my cell phone was captured, well then I can maybe serve, be served a ad on my TV or my tablet or my computer if it's connected to that device as well to we're talking about banner ads or display ads. We're talking about video pre-roll ads, which is a little commercial that runs before, maybe like a, like a news, video that you're going to be watching on CTV, Hulu, Roku, sling TV commercials that are on those streaming services, digital audio as well too. So if I'm streaming iHeart or a podcast or something like that, then the commercial that gets interjected in those places, but the targeting is based off of location. But then the distribution is those kind of programmatic, distribution into those ad platforms. So that's in the nutshell of what geofencing is. How I got into it is you, you and I actually had a parallel that was happening. You were ahead of me where you were like, I want a niche. I want to be specialized in something. And you went, category with an industry as like, I like that, but I'm stubborn and I like working in a lot of industries, so. Right, wrong and different. My niche was the budget niche, but also that more hyper localized kind of components. And with that, I had to dive deep into digital. And if I'm going to talk hyper local, well, one of the best tools is geofencing. For me to be able to have that extra hyper local level. There's a lot of other resources and strategies that we use from a media advertising distribution standpoint, but we specialize in paid advertising. That's the main thing that we do. So we're like, okay, let's get this geofencing thing figured out. And what I kind of realized is that there are so many middle people in advertising, and especially in the geofencing space, that it was very common at the time for an agency to buy from somebody who's buying from somebody who was buying from somebody who was buying from, the demand side platform that was actually buy it from the exchanges. I'm not exaggerating.

Bill Woods: I remember a couple, attempts we had in campaigns with clients and we were just like, how can it be this expensive? And it was because there's so many mouths to feed in that whole process. So, yeah, I don't absolutely. We experienced that many years ago. We experienced that challenge.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah. And it's wild because you can I mean I saw everything from I'm going to say cost per thousand. So the cost to have a thousand impressions, you know, if I'm going to say banner ads, so, you know, to have you have your ad be seen a thousand times, I've seen the price be as little as, you know, 4 or $5 when you're super ultra direct all the way up to $15. And that's a big gap and does like, oh, five bucks, 15 bucks. That's not big of a deal but when you're buying hundreds of thousands of impressions, millions of impressions. That adds up quite a lot to where you can literally get, you know, two x the number of impressions, three x the number of impressions, for the same amount of money. So what we did is we strategically started trying to figure out, well, where do we need to get to be to leapfrog all these middle people to get to the point where we're actually doing this in-house? So that's where we kind of started that journey. We got to a point where we invested in having people in-house that can have the time to do it, that were spending a minimum amount, which is about a quarter million dollars on the platform, to give us the direct service that we need. And it took time to ramp up to that and build up to that. Now, luckily, that platform can do other things as well too. Other targeting components, for us, such as keyword targeting and site retargeting and third party data, first party data overlays. But geofencing was one of those things where, hey, we think we have something here that's kind of unique. And then people just kept asking for it. We, we we struck a nice little handshake deal with geofencing.com started getting their leads. Our partners were like, hey, can you do this for us? Other agencies have come to us and said, hey, like, you can do this more cost effectively and better. And we actually understand it because you'll sit down and explain it to us then other things as well too. So we started developing this reputation around geofencing, which caused us to say, okay, well, we're having hundreds of conversations in this space. Maybe there's something here that we can open it up. And that's what led us to not only dive into using other people's technology, but overlaying with our own technology to make it accessible to really anybody.

Bill Woods: No that's great. And, I think when I think back to some of those early days and we were part of that journey a little bit, then just in a very small way early on, where we saw that layering of service providers and then the fact that you innovated and you went and figured it out. And then before we get into more of the details of geofencing, let's just talk about where that led you to the next step beyond that in Ethic Ads, you moved you into starting your own, company around geofencing, Qujam. So maybe let's talk about that before we get into all the the nitty gritty educational content about geofencing.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah, yeah. So Ethic Advertising Agency is is an ad agency that's focuses on pay paid advertising and the creative services that support that video animation, graphic design, website development, those kind of things. So we were having all these conversations. We were having to require minimums, minimum spend, in order for us to do what we need to do, because we’re really hands on and we were starting to have so many geofencing focused conversations because our reputation in the space was preceding us, that years ago I was like, wouldn't it be great if I could, you know, send them somewhere that they can get help, you know, people who just want to do it themselves, but they don't want to spend the amount of money to get the good technology. The people who want to use their credit card get live data, get, you know, a hands on and maybe they have a really small budget and, you know, there's options for people to get into geofencing when you have a small budget. But it's not uncommon for someone to take a 300% margin because they need to eat too, which is completely, completely okay in my opinion, it so that's where we developed Qujam, which is, a it's using the same technology that we use, but I like to consider it the Facebook boosted post version of geofencing.

Bill Woods: Love that

Jeff Swartz: It’s simplified. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it allows you to do, two forms of geofencing, allows you to do polygonal drawing so you can actually draw around a specific location. So if you're an industrial and you have this, you know, these list of customers that you want to go after and they have these big factories. Well, instead of going after the whole factory and geofencing that, well, just draw it around the offices that you think that they're in, then it also does addressable geofencing, which can take a list that you provide and we upload into the system and it'll automatically grab property lines. That's really nice for residential, for big lists, those kind of things. It not only uses GPS data, but it also looks at other data points to identify, that a device is connected to a specific address. So there's that little extra layering. And then also does video pre-roll, OTT and display advertising because that's got the most inventory in the geofencing space, for us. So we made it accessible for anybody and everybody. So we have, you know, industrial folks, we have laundromats, we have restaurants, we have an, politicians, a number of different, people who are like, I just want to go on there. I want to I can register for free. $1 a day campaign, if I want, I can do a $10,000 a day campaign if I want. If you want to do that, I would actually recommend working with us, because I can give you all the bells and whistles, but you can really have the freedom to to be in control of your campaign and test it out and see how it goes for you. There is an element of it's kind of like giving an eight year old a, a lighter and, and an a can of gasoline. They could do something cool with it. They could blow themselves up as well too. Because we've seen people get on there and their creative is just really not good. Or their landing page is really not good. Or they I've seen campaigns where people set it up and, they're doing this massive area versus using it for geofencing. I'm like, okay, you you don't need to do that because you can just do zip code targeting and that's cheaper. So we try to do as much education on there as possible. But we created a tech platform that allows people to basically do geofencing themselves.

Bill Woods: Great. Well and congratulations. And I think, you know, the one many of the credits that you guys have achieved in this is it is a do it yourself platform. It's as scalable as you want it. So if you want to do it yourself, it's that's there and there's great educational resources. If you want some help, you guys are available for consultation. If you want do it for me. You guys also have that layer that you can just kind of take it over, you know, getting that 10,000 a month or beyond. Yeah. You probably want a professional to take a look at the Ferrari, and make sure it runs well as opposed to if you just got one of those, you know, soapbox cars, you're cruising down the hill. So, no. That's great. Well, Jeff, exciting to hear about that part of your story and what you've done. And what I'd like to do now is transition into more of an educational conversation about geofencing, because obviously, you have the experience and you've done so many things with and not only participated with it but kind of become a master of your domain in, providing, so much access, to our audience, and any audience, for that. So when we look at, some of the benefits of geofencing, some things I just I gathered from your website and from online resources, precise targeting reduce wasted ad spend, personalization and segmentation, customer loyalty. Those are like four biggies. What do you feel is the most important? Or if like, let's say a marketing manager is going into the C-suite or to their manager and saying, hey, I want to promote this as an idea, what do you think they should focus on and prioritize in their communication, as this is the most important thing we can do with geofencing, specifically from an industrial B2B standpoint.

Jeff Swartz: So, I mean, the right answer is, is what's it? What's the most important thing to the C-suite individual answer, because that could be that could be different because all four of those things, sure, those things are going to be valuable shape and geofencing and can assist with all four of those things. That said, geofencing, like all advertising and all marketing efforts, in my opinion, are not silver bullets. One thing that magically changes everything. So having it incorporated into a very good holistic strategy is going to be where you're going to get the best results. So if you have a very good converting website, great. If you have a good sales team that knows what they're doing, great. If you have, good creative, that's vital to something like this working, a search component, you know, all these other things working well together. Now, that said, obviously geofencing can be very precise for your target audience and reduce a lot of that waste. Those kind of two things go really hand in hand, and some people might like that. And that kind of depends on what you're already doing. If you are doing something that's more broad, like if you're an industrial and for whatever reason you're doing TV advertising in your area or billboards actually could be even, be, more appropriate. We're reaching a lot of audience that has a lot of waste, very low cost per thousand, on some of those things. But a lot of audience members means pretty expensive. This could actually reduce the amount of waste that you have by targeting the individuals that you want to, you know, target that because they're in a specific location and it's a lot more precise. Instead of being in the general area that your customer’s in, in your industrial field with something that's more broad preaching, you're doing something that's a lot more specific to that those individuals. So I do like it for those components. So that's kind of a comparison of what you've already been doing right. Versus what you could be doing. Personalization and segmentation and then customer loyalty. You know, I think that especially for industrial, where you have a lot of repeat buyers and you're trying to get in front of them, maybe you're trying to get to that meeting and you're trying to get customer loyalty to contact you first. It's a nice little reminder to have that drip campaign, and you can personalize it as well too. Let's say that you are, a, a sheet metal, cutting manufacturer and you have all these different machines and that, you know, that there is a certain category of your, of your, target audience that would be interested in some of the larger mass production machines. And then maybe you have your smaller, shops that can't handle those. So you actually change the creative, you can personalize it to those different, locations, and you have the big machining, geofencing list and you have small machining, geofencing testing can go after it that way. You can't legally actually say, hey, Joe, buy from buy from Bill, you know? But, like, that's a that's a big no no, but you can do things because you're trying to figure out, okay, what kind of audience we have to customize the creative messaging both in the ads and in the landing pages and with your website to help personalize it a, quite a bit more.

Bill Woods: Great, so one of the things we look at, in this space and I guess there were three early promises of geofencing. One was location-based offers, which I think geofencing has completely delivered on. Right? We can do location-based offerings. We all of the things you talked about, the polygon and the addressable, we can dial in data to locations. There's two other like, I guess, early promises of geofencing. And I’d just like to get your feedback as to what you've seen is how these have developed. One would be competitive or competitor conquesting. And then the second would be audience nurturing. You spoke a little bit to the audience nurturing already, so we can maybe put a green checkbox by that one. But what about competitor conquesting? Because I hear less about that today than I did maybe 3 or 4 years ago. It do, you see, is that an emerging opportunity or is that something that didn't really materialize as well as we had hoped in the geofencing space?

Jeff Swartz: Depends on the industry, depends on the business as well as Covid is or like probably the three things. And actually for you, the fourth thing is, is because of your specialty. So Geoconquesting is kind of how we refer to that. It's really good whenever you're trying to go after your competitor's location. And there's an audience that will go there that you can then try to steal that audience back over. A good example is if I'm McDonald's and I want to get Burger King, people are going to Burger King, well, they're going to eat again and they're probably gonna buy at a restaurant again. So if I can get those people to see McDonald's ads, and I know that they've been to a fast food place that's in my area, that's a really good case study. Now, if you're talking about industrial manufacturing, how many people are actually going on site? Especially with Covid. So there's a lot less movement that had happened with Covid to, to make that happen. So the competitive like geoconquesting doesn't translate as well between all all categories and all industries. Now we're that, you know, in this space where it could maybe be, you know, very beneficial is knowing that, hey, they do go into the office, but they go into their office or there's a event-based geofencing component where, well, there's a trade show coming up. We can maybe grab some of those as well too. And don't get me wrong, geofencing. And I want to make this very clear geofencing has its limitations. It's not like every single person that enters a geofence is going to get served an ad. There are a multitude of reasons why they would not get served an ad from their collection process. They have GPS turned off on their phone, which about 10% of phones in America have that turned on. They have ad blockers enabled. And then it's also a bidding system as well, too, say we're going after a high net worth individual that's making some good money because they're one of the decision makers you're going after. Well, okay, then maybe so is Audi and Lexus and Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, and they're all bidding on the same inventory in real time. And we're bidding on that as well too. So there's a lot of things that can happen. And then even the nature of the geofence that you put up, event-based geofencing tends to have a lot lower success rates because it's small period of time. There's some Wi-Fi interference with these big convention centers that could take effect and all these other things as well, too, where something that's longer term and something that can kind of exist a lot longer, like a, like an office, let's say, or a home or you know, even like a general kind of area of, of a business sector, that's going to be a little bit more successful of a collection rate as well, too. And there's validation that happens with the technology. You know, it just isn't instantaneous. The system wants to actually validate that they're actually have been there, which takes a, you know, maybe a day or two to kind of complete its cycle after one day. So there's a lot of different elements that there's got to be a big enough audience that you're going after to grab them. So if you're going after one competitor that has no foot traffic of your, your, clientele going in there well a, you know, your people aren't actually there, and then b, it, it's it's not enough foot traffic through really kind of make that difference because you have to play a numbers game to have all these factors be, kind of washed out.

Bill Woods: So maybe and this is a broad brush conclusion. But competitor conquesting in this space is probably most likely more for a D2C or a high throughput location program for geofencing as opposed to what it would. You know, it sounds like a great application for, you know, turf wars over pizza in town or, dog kennel or dog grooming business. And you have a competitive dog grooming business four blocks away or whatever. So that's an easy decision. When we look at most of our clients, we're dealing with really long purchasing cycles, a lot of loyalty and that, you know, you have to really displace. So it's not going to be, oh, we have, cheap, lattes today and they're going to divert to the new coffee house. It's going to be you're going to have to provide a really unique value proposition that's going to wear well over time, and probably have your current provider mess up for you to really think about that opportunity. So maybe there's less of an opportunity there. But that's great because like what we're here for is to discover what's missing or would discover what's a possibility. And maybe this, early promise of geofencing does hold true for D2C, but isn't really great for our market, which is a good discovery for our audience to understand what they should and shouldn't be promoting. Because we want to prepare our marketing manager community to have good conversations with their management and their owners and C-suite. And we I had a client the other day ask me about geofencing and great, glad they're interested in learning. But then the question they ask and the application they were looking for was 100% wrong, and it was going to be a complete waste of money. So it's good to really explore, like kind of the bookends of what's available in in this space.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah, I mean, you can do a lot of different things with it. it's if it's a, it's a, if it's aluminum. My dad was in aluminum extrusions for his entire career. If it's aluminum, you can do extrusions. You can do, you know, sheets. You can do a whole bunch of different things with it. But it's at the end of the day it's still aluminum. You know, it's geofencing, but at the you can do a whole bunch of different things. Whole bunch of different tactics where it that can be very valuable to a whole bunch of different, organizations and industries. But that doesn't mean that every tactic is going to be applicable for every single industry as well too. So geo conquesting, I don't really see that being a space for it. However, I know, I mean, we did it for, a manufacturing company that only cared about 400 offices, in America. And so we targeted 50 of them with geofencing, and their sales leads went up 150%. And it leads more into the fact that is a longer, sales cycle. Right. So when you're talking about your kind of audience, there's got to be a pain point that causes them to want to solve it, and it's going to be a big enough pain that's over overcoming the other pain in the butts that they're dealing with. So there's a timing component. And what this does is it kind of ensures that a small, desirable audience can see your brand and your message on a consistent basis, because as a sales person, by by nature, you don't know if that phone call, that email is coming at the right time and everything. But if you can automate that with a little bit of advertising, and the nice thing in this space is usually a nice high ticket item compared and so the ROAs return on ad spend tends to be pretty nice if you get results, because usually it's, you know, you're not selling a cheeseburger, you're selling something else. And everything, but your audience is much more targetable and narrow than the wide ordering audience that's going after a cheeseburger or a shirt or a car.

Bill Woods: So let's talk about that case study for, example. You had, an industrial manufacturer, targeted they had a very niche audience. It’s not only a niche manufacturer they had a very finite niche audience. And you guys targeted their clients. And one of the things I think we need to communicate to the marketing manager community, that we represent in industrial is geofencing when we talk about that for D2C is generally offer-driven, location offer driven. What do you see for the industrial space as far as the right mix of branding and offer, or should we lean more into branding in these type of examples? Because, my guess and I don't know, you're hopefully you'll share with us what you can this the campaign you did for this industrial manufacturer, who had, like, this 400 small, target audience. It wasn't buy now or right. It was more like, hey, we can solve your problems. We have, like, make them brand aware, make them problem solution aware as opposed to here's your coupon for your industrially manufactured product you can pick up this afternoon. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about branding as an important content vehicle or strategy in that type of, industrial approach to geofencing?

Jeff Swartz: And and I'll kind of flip it on this with, with you doing the podcast and, and social media, do you pick up the phone and call somebody in like, oh man, I saw you work recently on something and I was just meaning to talk with you. It's the same kind of thing. It's it's one of those things where it makes them more likely to pick up the phone when you call, as you know. And if you're in, in this B2B space, you have a sales force usually. Right. So it's it's kind of aligning with what your sales efforts are. Are you doing emailing? Are you doing LinkedIn? Are you doing, calling in person? You know, tradeshows, whatever it might be, but it kind of primes them a little bit. And allows them to be like, oh, I should take this call, or I should even reach out to them because there's a time because I'm feeling this pain right now and it kind of like triggers it. Right? So people historically like to work with brands that they're comfortable with, some strength that they see and everything, as well as the creative that you can put out there not only gets your brand out there, but it can also, you know, if you have benefits over, you know, your competitors, you can display that, you can showcase why you have a better product or solution. You can showcase the pain as well too, and remind them that this is that you're experiencing pain. And we have a solution for that. So it's one of those things where in B2B it's definitely a long term play, just like all the sales tends to be sure, but it allows it to be in front of them on a more consistent basis. That allows those closing ratios and those opportunities become more prevalent when your sales team does call. If you have problems with your sales team, that's something to address before you get into geofencing or really any other advertising as well, too. But if you have a good strong sales team, this should actually make their lives a little bit easier.

Bill Woods: No that's great, because one of the things we really talk about with our clients a lot is the 95/5 rule and the fact, you know, 5% of your market at any given time in B2B is actually buying. And we need to be available to them and more problem solution focused at that point because it's they're either going to talk to you or they aren't. The 95 we need to be making them brand aware, problem solution aware and creating that authority, and familiarity so that whenever they move into the 5%, they consider us or our clients as a solution to their problem. And consider, you know, sending them the RFQ or including them in the presentation process. So I think as I've thought more about geofencing specifically in the B2B, and then we're going to circle back to some creative elements and some of those like like more tactical items in the process. It feels to me like the big opportunity is brand awareness in campaigning in those tight audiences more so than and what gets all the press, I think in geofencing is more of the, you know, the pizza wars or like that's everybody understands that more and it's more available to that market. But, that feels to me like a big opportunity for marketing managers in the industrial and manufacturing and B2B space is brand awareness and also potentially tied in with ABM. So account based marketing, let's say we've got our top 100. These are our whales. These are this is who we want to aspire to. And we get that it's a long-term play. It might take us the next three, five, ten years to pick up 1 or 2 every 2 or 3 years. And what are we willing to invest? Well, the reality is we don't have to invest that much to really make sure we're getting there. And we have other methods to do that as well in other capacities, since social media and other, ad platforms. But in this specific way, it's almost an insurance layer. And when you look at the like, the long term value of those clients and how much they can add to the bottom line, it's you don't want to leave any of it to chance. Right so if geofencing is another layer like we've talked about. It's another layer in that holistic strategy. Why not.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah. We we refer to as spider webbing or, you know, going back to integrated marketing communication for, you know, going back to a textbook kind of thing. But if you think of a spider web and each thread of the spider web is a different, targeting tactic and a different medium and different creative, then the more of those webs spider webs that you have. And they have to be strong if you have flimsy webs and not a lot about you behind them, or they just aren't done really well. But if you have all these interlaced, webbings, you end up with a larger, stronger, more effective spider web to catch your prey. And then keep keep a hold of them as well, too, once they're in the web, then you should have, you know, account based marketing strategies and sales efforts and retargeting and all these other things to, to be able to keep on dripping on them even more so once they're, they're kind of captured in that, that net.

Bill Woods: So one of the other things I think that'll help our audience, understand geofencing is let's talk about Qujam and the problems that you guys tried to solve. Because I think that really, it illustrates your, company and we're willing to do shameless plugs, right? Like we're willing to plug our friends and people we respect in the industry. But also, I think when you I think you guys did a great job of Qujam of of defining where there were problems and then solving them. And our audience doesn't even know what the problems were, right, in some cases. So when you started from that beginner or intermediate level. So, one of the things you talk about is self-service, which you guys absolutely addressed. And that to me sounds like that was kind of the table stakes, like the primary thing you wanted to start with. But then you guys moved on. And I like the way you frame this, with the six, closed doors of geofencing advertising. So, Jeff, if we could really talk about that, I think because, like, for instance, I don't think, a beginner would understand the fact that high minimums were such a hurdle 3 to 5 years ago. Even less than that in some cases. I'm sure you can still find providers today that have incredibly high minimums for the service that you guys are disrupting. So let's talk through some of those. Let's start with high minimums.

Jeff Swartz: So a lot of options out there that are self-service have minimum spend in order to do it. Along with that, some of the options that are out there, they are complex demand side platforms. And they, you know, that can do way more than geofencing. So it might be one of those things like, oh, well, this is this is more than I can handle. If it's the Ferrari thing, it's like, this is a bit too much car for me. But, you know, minimums have fluctuated and they've kind of done different things. The demand side platform that we mainly utilize and that Qujam is built on, was it $10,000 a month and went up to $20,000 a month? And I think it's back down to ten because of Covid. In order to just ad spend, the you have to have on their on a consistent basis to maintain a certain level of status. And then the more money you spend, you can get some different price breaks. Right? So there's a barrier of entry for that. Then you can go to vendors that utilize it and they are going to manage it for you as well too. So there's a lot more service, a lot more people that are using that methodology. So then you lose the self-serve aspect, which some people like, but then you get managed service, so you get maybe a little bit less insight into what's going on and stuff, but you have at least theoretically, specialists sure to help you out. With those the minimums tend to be can be a little bit less, but sometimes are still minimums. My agency likes work with people who are going to spend at least $25,000 a project that could be spent in a whole year over $2,000, a month. One for just doing programmatic advertising, which includes geofencing. That's, for some people are like, I don't really need to do that much. I'm only caring about targeting these these kind of things or I don't want to have that kind of consistent spend or commitment, even though we do have a 30 day cancellation policy. So there is not a big commitment. But there was this kind of hesitation of having to invest in something at a higher dollar amount than I was comfortable without even seeing it kind of work and how it works. So that's one of the things that we knew that we had to we're one of the the selling points that we, we wanted to to address because we had probably a few, maybe a thousand conversations or inquiries over the years of people that maybe there were a lot of them are tire kickers, but they just, they they asked us a question and it was too expensive or they didn't want to do it, or and then we couldn't, we couldn't send them anywhere. There was no other option that we felt comfortable. We could send them to somebody who was going to price gouge them. And I have nothing against that other than the fact that that's I don't feel right whenever I'm referring somebody like that. But, but I would tell them to like, you can some this so-and-so will do this, but they're going to have to have a really high markup, and you're not going to get that good of results for it or it just won't work out that well. So we wanted to address the, the low minimums or having no minimums, really, to see if that could service, an audience that just seemed to be popping up on a consistent basis.

Bill Woods: Well, no, I think that was key, Jeff because one of the challenges we had in presenting this to industrial and manufacturing audiences, say, two or 3 or 4 years ago was this was going to be a small percentage test of their budget, right? This wasn't going to be the core. And to talk people into new technology and then having those larger minimum spends became a real barrier to entry for us. You've removed that. And I think that's one of those closed doors that Qujam has really, changed and opened right for that community. Another, the next one of the six closed doors, you have high rates and CPM. So maybe talk a little bit about that.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah. So CPMs are cost per thousands. I kind of touched on that. That's the the cost out of a thousand impressions. Have your ad seen a thousand times that goes really to people's bottom line. If you have a lot of people that are buying from other people, well, that raises the the rate. If you have somebody who needs to or wants to, take a very high profit margin well that raises the rate and then you have less impressions and deliverables, the issue that we had is for Ethic we, we we wanted to take what we thought was acceptable. But could still get the most bang for our client's buck. I mean, that's we're an ad agency at heart. Our job is to get the most for our clients. So we had to create with Qujam a system that was kind of on the same methodology, where it has very reasonable cost per thousands. But in order to do that, we had to automate it. We had to take the human element out of it. So we replaced human element with with or some of the human element with technology costs, but it kind of washed out a little bit. So if someone's going to want to spend a decent amount of money, they can actually get a little bit better of a CPM if they go through our managed service and we're helping them out, a little bit, kind of almost like a volume play. But with Qujam it's it's not that much more, for the cost per thousand compared to our managed service, which is better than some of the other prices that are out there. Kind of land somewhere in the, in the middle, where it's where it's a competitive cost per thousand that people should be comfortable. with where it's not meant to price gouge them and everything. It's meant to, you know, for us to make money. But it's also meant to make it kind of appealing where it's like, oh, we’re spending $12 cost per thousand, display ads. Now it's $9.20 max.

Bill Woods: Which is a good value. The other three, doors closed doors that you guys really opened were really to me speak to your focus on user experience and convenience for your users, which would be, providing the reporting dashboard, which you guys do, allowing people to take credit cards or your company take credit cards, which, you know, we we're finally, I think seeing in this entire industry a more convenient and efficient way to move money, as opposed to the billing cycles and all of the challenges especially. I mean, I go back long enough to remember the huge receivables and those problems. That were probably more of a a late 2000s issue and less of a today issue. But and then the last one was the inferior tech. You guys have built a platform that is state of the art that's really easy to use. And that, allows your, clients to take in clients at Qujam to take advantage of, you know, they can self-serve with lower minimums, great CPMs that are great value and then they can measure and manage what they're doing because they have a great dashboard the communicates to them. So those six doors, I thought you guys did a great job of communicating that. And I think as our audience is looking at what they would want to do for geofencing, obviously Qujam is a great opportunity for them to do that if they want to self-service or, if they need managed services that's also available.

Jeff Swartz: There isn't like the two extremes sort the self-serve side of things of of Qujam. And it's not just the service side of things. Ethic is 17 people and that includes the Qujam, side of things as well. So if someone has a question we want to hear from on our, on our platform for Qujam, or if you know, if they're a client of ours for Ethic, there's a, there's so that that kind of white glove service that we're looking at doing, even though we want Qujam to be easy to use and automated, we didn't reinvent the technology. We drove the technology that makes it accessible to the to to anybody. So the technology is actually backed by a 200 engineer staffed like like they they have all the tarring and stuff. I would never be able to do that. But Qujam is, is the technology that gives you access to it. But, you know, for us, we're big on problem solving. We're big on I mean, Qujam was born to try to, you know, give back to the small businesses or the small marketing teams or the people who were just like, hey, I just can't, I want to do this. I just can't find that right fit. So it was all intended to try to fit this little, little gap in the market, to, to provide a service that didn't really exist prior to in this format, prior to us creating Qujam.

Bill Woods: One of the things I want to hit on with geofencing, and this was probably one of my earliest misconceptions, or maybe it was just the way the geofencing industry kind of evolved was around it was all static ads, and now we certainly have the opportunity to include video. OTT, pre-roll. What are you seeing in, you know, you're watching a lot of campaigns for a lot of clients. You have experience in the industry, you talk to other folks. How how is video outperforming static and what do you what do you seeing in the video kind of revolution that's occurring in geofencing?

Jeff Swartz: Yeah, I mean video is one of the most impactful mediums and it has been for, for, for as long as video has really been around. Right. So video can use sight, sound, motion and emotion as well too, unlike any other medium. in the past, there's been a lot of people think of banner ads and they think of static. Well, those can even be animated GIFs or HTML5 files, so animated kind of components. But video is the pros are being able to if you have 30s video and someone watches, all of that will have 30s of visual and 30s of audio to communicate that that's a lot longer than seven seconds that a banner ad is up. Now OTT and video pre-roll are higher cost per thousand. So you you know, if I have $1,000 to spend, I put it on RTT, I'm going to get a lot less impressions than if I put it on display ads, those impressions are going to be more impactful. But I get a lot more display ads. So my reach and frequency goes up. But my impact isn't as good with the the display ads. So there's pros and cons to both. And that's why using a combination when available and appropriate of video display ads, even digital audio. We can do this with native advertising as well too. Can play a nice little kind of combining mix to really let it resonate with an audience. And then the other thing that does is it opens up inventory too, so, you know, OTT with the streaming is interesting because like, it's really hard to to get inventory on Hulu. It's high in demand there’s a lot of use for the use of that. So there's limitations on inventory and supply and demand for all these different categories. But if you're going after somebody’s audience and all I have is banner ads. Well, all that video and audio inventory that I could be in, I'm not in and vice versa. So, you know, those are some of the pros and cons between the two. But how video is outperforming banner ads. It just it it always has brought more awareness. It has more of a psychological staying power. Most of OTT is not clickable. Some video pre-roll is and some is and as well too. So there's a little bit of give and take with that. But we find that video tends to give more of a longer lasting impact. But we really like to use all of the different components when we can. So we can get a good mix of reach, frequency, impact, fullness in front of mind. And then, you know, there's that consistent basis of having all these super mediums that are at the ready. So when somebody opens up their computer or turns on their TV or opens up their, their phone, that we have a the best chance of getting your message in front of them.

Bill Woods: Well, I think, one of the things that's interesting there is when we look at. So when we compare banner ads and geofencing to video ads, geofencing, certainly there's a cost differential. However, one of the things we talk to our clients about is the whenever we're doing all of the things we do at 50 Marketing for our clients and recommend that they do for their their like in our AIM reach B2B program is that we are getting very narrowly focused and surgically striking a very small audience. So even if we're paying more for an ad to our key demo, to our ideal client profile, you're still getting your message to your ideal client profile. And I feel like this geofencing fits right in there because you're not just putting it out there on Times Square and hoping that that ICP walks through, you know, one of the 10 million the walks through that day. It's going to your audience. So I think that's where we can see, even though, you know, it's the cost is higher, the the effectiveness is so much higher that you're probably it's probably very equivalent, to what you're seeing there.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah. And, and I like the return on investment, the return on ad spend analysis, but also doing it at a higher level of all efforts being done to get that, that person, because it's not like geofencing just doesn't, doesn't perform 100% on its own. It's complementing the other things that you have going on as well too. And it's feeding off of each other. Google just did their study where I'm going to botch it, but it's it's, you know, people spend four hours of research on seven different platforms, on, or across a certain number of days. I forget what the exact numbers are, but it just reinforces the fact that you need to have these multiple touchpoints, especially over the course of a longer buying cycle, to get somebody convinced enough to actually take the action that you want them to take. Fill out a contact form, request a quote, set and send the RFP to the, to your vendor. Pick up the phone call, be open to the call when it comes through. Respond to the email as well too, even even that, you know, can be nudged in a certain way with sure advertising and account based marketing.

Bill Woods: What are the other and this is something I don't know. Do you guys have frequency capping? Because one of the things we're really, doing a lot of work on in all of our outreach is trying to find that right mix of frequency. Because certainly if I go on Amazon today and I look at a pair of shoes, I'm probably going to buy a pair of shoes relatively shortly. Right? In the next couple of days, I'm going to go buy a pair of shoes or I'm not. If I need to buy a car, that's probably a little longer because it's a larger purchase. And we're talking about industrial and we're talking about these major multi-million dollar, long term commitments that take 3 to 6 months to investigate, 3 to 6 months to ramp up the supply chains and the tooling or whatever, and then start delivering and then integrating that into the, you know, the end customer's factory or whatever situation. We have to recognize that we don't want to oversaturate our market with too many touchpoints immediately, like you would with those shoes. If I look at a pair of shoes tonight, yeah, they should hit me pretty frequently over the next several days. so you guys have the same frequent, frequency capping tools that we kind of see across other digital delivery platforms?

Jeff Swartz: Frequency and recency capping. The frequency capping we can do, like, hey, we don't want to serve more than four ads per 24 hour, seven hours for 20, whatever it might be. The recency capping. so if I set up a geofence and I it's my it's my it's going after my office. I go there five days a week. I enter that office on Monday. I can be targeted with ads for the next 30 days. I enter that office on Tuesday. Hey, I get I can beat the next 30 days targeted ads. We can also change that up a little bit. Well, let's try to get some of these people who aren't, you know, went there, but then they aren't really there that frequently. And we can knock that down to maybe like two weeks recency. So after two weeks someone will drop out. So if I go in one day 14 days pass and I don't go back into the geofence, I don't trigger it again. Then I'm not going to be targeted with ads anymore. So we have those two different layers, of of capping that, that we could potentially do. That's on the managed side of things. We have a couple of standardized goals that will set some of those parameters on the back end in Qujam. The last like, do you just want to hit somebody over the head with it, or do you want to try to reach more people? less, you know, but you're okay doing it less times. So we have the a little bit of that, kind of like the hand-holding do it for you kind of thing with Qujam. but we can actually set those parameters when it comes to our managed service side of things.

Bill Woods: Excellent. Interesting, because that's an area we're trying to explore more in all of our programmatic and all of our, outreach. So that that's an interesting, layering component there.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah. The system also does optimizations to try to get people that are going to, to convert and going to take the actions that, that, that we want it to. So it's going to push creative that seems to be doing good a little bit harder than others. It's going to, take that into account as it's trying to serve ads because someone doesn't click on that or doesn't take action that we want after a while. Well, we're probably not going to serve them ads. The system's not going to serve them ads. for a little bit. It's going to try to focus on some other folks as well too. So it kind of cycles through as well to try to get you the best results, which means that, you know, you don't get that, that fatigue. That ad fatigue, for a couple of different reasons. But we can actually implement to make sure that we have those caps in place to really reduce any kind of fatigue that would be on there. And then for B2B, that means that, hey, you don't need as much of a budget because you're not over serving. And sure, and your ROAs can just increase and be good.

Bill Woods: So Jeff, you mentioned creative there. And I think one of the areas that geofencing has some unique delivery and targeting. Could you maybe highlight what do you see as different or the same with the creative we need. Like, you know, some of the some of the things we have to make sure of with our, creative is are we, you know, good message, call to action, branding, triggering words, short and sweet. You know, keep it fresh. Have a great landing page. size variations, of course, are very critical because we have the different, you know, we're trying to get across all those connected devices and, you know, just the regular do's and don'ts of fundamental creative. Is there anything in that, a kind of big bucket of creative? Because we could we could sit here and talk for days about creative variations and performance and topography and all that. Is there anything you would like to highlight specifically for geofencing around the creative that we're going to deliver?

Jeff Swartz: So depending on the geofencing campaign that you have set up and we touched on a little bit earlier as well too, that you can actually alter the creative based off of the type of audiences that you're going after. So if you can kind of categorize the different campaigns that you have based off of the people that you think are going to be going into geofences, then the creative can kind of be altered to that, but it's going to be very similar to any other ad creative as well too all the things you said are important. And one of the things I think gets really lost, especially in B2B, is great we're just going to target the people. Well, okay, but what are you going to say to the people? I always associate it with dating. I always associated with trying to find the one in everything. If you go on a date and it's with the wrong person, that's a bad date. But if you go on a date with the right person, you say the wrong thing. That's not going to end well either as well. You have to have the right combination of being in front of the right audience, the right person, and saying the right thing to get to a second date to get to that next level. So the creative is critically important. If you don't have good creative, don't don't even bother doing geofencing, put into another initiative as well too. Because poor creative is is just in any advertising format. Is is is never advantageous for the advertiser.

Bill Woods: When we look at budgeting, for geofencing and obviously, you know, Jeff, you've managed a lot of budgets over the years. And when we started looking at the marketing mix, if we have marketing managers out there who are thinking about next year's budget, and I want to put a test budget in for our geofencing and try this in manufacturing and B2B and let's not talk dollars, because I think that gets a little bit harder. Let's talk percentages. What do you feel is a great test percentage that they should try and allocate. And so that if it doesn't go well and they learn and it doesn't blow their budget and they don't miss their objectives, but they get start to build some traction in the geofencing space.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah I think percentages is even hard as well to to estimate because percentage of of what size budget, everything. You know, with something like this, you, you want to see some kind of traction in about 3 to 6 months. You also have to factor in your sales cycle, you know, a really long sales cycle that can be kind of difficult, that could extend it into a 12 month, kind of cycle. You also have to factor in. Well, what else are we doing to complement the efforts that we have going on? Are we, combining it like that manufacturer that I mentioned, they combined it with their normal sales efforts to make sure that they also called those those locations, as well as all the other control locations as well, too. But, that can also help us as well too. Like, do you have a coordinated sales effort and other strategies that are going with it to factor in? But I would say that if you're going to do geofencing in in the kind of sectors that you're talking about, minimum three month tests, probably more like 6 to 12 months is what's realistic. I would say. And you want to factor in from a budgetary standpoint, the number of locations and, and even try to estimate the number of people. That are going to be at those locations. When we start running a campaign. And if we're going to do something with somebody and they're like, hey, can you can you figure out how many people are actually there yet? We can actually do like a micro, like 25 bucks to, to run a campaign. We just have that one ad that's live, and then we can actually get some data on the active traffic that's, that's going on in there. And we can say, hey, there's about this many devices that we think that we can collect and serve ads to, and we can actually provide that information. But I would really kind of encourage at least that probably six, 12 month, time period in this, sector. I would encourage using multiple mediums. So not just display ads, but also getting probably video and audio in there. And it can be relatively small budgets. But you got to think about your ROI. You got to think about your audience that you're going after as well too. And then that will help dictate the budgetary, elements as well too. In all honesty, if someone has questions about it, they can hit me up and, and there and walk through all these things and kind of hold their hand a little bit and say, okay, if I were you, I would say, you need to spend $1500 to $4000 or $5000 to $10,000, $1000 to $2000. Give them a little bit of a range, based off of the information that they can provide.

Bill Woods: We are launching, here in a couple of weeks, a live series where we're actually going to workshop things like that. That may be a great workshop where we could live with some of our, participants in like a Zoom session with a worksheet and say, okay, for how many targets with how many people in this would kind of give you actually a budget range. That might be a nice little, add on to this for those who would be interested in just kind of seeing what that looks like. Yeah. Because I think that the key I see for our clients in these marketing managers is they need to have this in the budget with a plan to defend it in advance, because industrial in the industrial marketing space, you're not in six months into the year and management comes back to you and says, oh, hey, here's an extra $10,000 a month. Let's what do you want to do with it? So we have to like, do the homework and planning in advance. So maybe we'll look at having that session, a live planning session to kind of here's what the budget could look like. Here's what you could possibly do and present this to management. And then obviously on the back end we can execute with either through Qujam in self-service or through your managed services and execute that for our, marketing managers.

Jeff Swartz: Yeah, I'd be happy to do that as well as I think that's like the best way to go about budgeting is you figure out you actually take one step before that as well too. You figure out what do you want to accomplish for the year. And then you figure out, well, what kind of budget do I need estimated to to achieve those things? And then how do I divvy up that budget to get me the best results, to achieve the goal that I have set forth? So that's actually the structure that I usually like to see. Because then it's just a math problem. If I know the answer, the problem is to increase sales by 12.3%. Okay. Well, what do we need to do in order to get to 12.3% about this kind of spend? Okay. How do we invest those dollars? Okay. We're going to do this, this and this. We have a little bit of money left over. Maybe we should test this geofencing thing as well too. And then all those things, you know, added together is what's going to in reverse, get you ideally to that 12.3% increase in revenue.

Bill Woods: Great no Jeff, So this has been, just as always, just a pleasure. we go a long ways back, at least for people our age. It's a long way. Right. And I'm sure in 20, 30 years, we'll be able to say we weren't really far back. Yeah, but, I just want to congratulate, you and the Ethic advertising team on your success. Also Qujam and your success has been great to watch. you guys take a different path than we did. We niched on industrial manufacturing, B2B. You guys niched on more technologies and kind of ad budgets and hyper local and, but we've one of the things I always enjoyed about our conversations, was not so much one was learning about the techniques and the variations, but the core thing, I think that you and I really hit it off on early on was what's true to our brand and what's true to your brand, which is value and integrity, and trying to get the most for our clients for their money. Whereas, I came up early in my career dealing with newspapers and radio and TV back in the early 2000s, where there was a ton of fraud that was exposed, overcharging. You certainly, came up through some of that industry shuffle where, you know, the internet and digital really blew that up because we actually had data. And one of the core values that we've shared is making sure that we're not participating in those type of practices, that we make sure our clients are getting what they pay for. You know, our our motto is, you know, the John Wanamaker half my advertising is wasted. I wish I only knew which half. And, you know, we're trying to find what in our client's, portfolio is not working and help them figure that out. And what's wasted. And and you guys with Ethic Advertising, you've been focused on that same type of approach from that ethical standpoint. So, congratulations, Jeff. It's been a pleasure as always. And thank you for joining us.

Jeff Swartz: Thanks, Bill. I really appreciate you having me on here. And all the the kind words.

Bill Woods: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast. we'll see you next episode. Have a great day.

Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast. I'm Bill Woods, your host, where we're discovering what's missing in B2B and manufacturing marketing. We're here today live from the Ascenso Tires warehouse in Stow, Ohio. As you can see, we're surrounded by a lot of tires, both large and small. And with us today is the marketing manager of Ascenso Tires. Annie Boyer. Annie, thank you for joining us today.

Annie: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Bill: Excellent. Well, thank you. So we've been working with Ascenso Tires and Tyres International before that for a number of years. And I wanted to start by just getting a little bit into your background. So you're newer here to a company that's been around a long, long time. But in the two years you've been here, you've been baptized by fire and this transition and growth. So maybe if you would talk a little bit about your educational background and maybe where you came from, because I think that also ties into why we maybe we could talk about the heritage you have in the tire industry and just start there and we'll just learn more about you.

Annie: Sure. Yeah. I went to school at Bowling Green State University. I actually started out as a marketing major, switched to public relations and then finished with a communications degree. So I took a lot of classes it just worked out that way. I was able to study abroad in France for my last semester. So that was that's an amazing experience to discover really, who you are as your final release before the real world.

Bill: Yeah. My daughter is advocating at least a year abroad to study art, and so I'm sure that will cost me a lot. Anyway, that's great, and I think that is an experience. Those are the type of experiences that really can shape you internationally and then you're now working with an international company. So that's kind of a neat transition.

Annie: Yeah, I learned early on the communication styles. I was told I have a very American accent and I need to slow down a little bit. So yeah, it was it was a great experience. And now working with an Indian company has really benefited that I'm kind of learning the cultural shifts and the communication styles. So yeah, it's great.

Bill: Excellent. So your background before the college experience, maybe there was some foreshadowing as to how we arrived in the auto and tire industry. Maybe talk a little bit about that heritage your family has in the tire business.

Annie: Yeah, my dad just retired from Bridgestone. He was there the last half of his career, he was in I.T. He actually graduated with an accounting degree, but found a passion in technology, infrastructure. So he he was there for a really long time. And it might have been the Bridgestone Invitational Golf Club seating that got me here. But it was yeah, it was a great industry to be in. And he just, you know, when I applied for this job, he was like, it's benefited me very well. And it's a growing industry and it's never going to go away anytime soon. So tires are needed on every facet. So yeah, it was a good encouragement from him.

Bill: Yeah. Ever since what, the invention of fire and the wheel, there's been certain industries that have stood the test of time and certainly wheels and tires are a big part of what keeps this economy going and keeps things moving, whether it's an agricultural tire, keeping the backbone of our country, moving with food production, or if it's the construction tires and some of the other things you guys have that keep building and road construction and just commerce moving. Yeah, I don't think you have to worry that the tire business is going away anytime soon. So that's a that's interesting. So one of the things we had, the interesting position of at the time Tyres International came to us, Mike came to me, and said, Hey, Bill, we need some help recruiting in-house marketing talent because we're just growing so fast. We need support. He didn't have the capacity or the resources to do it anymore because of his moving up in the company and extra responsibilities. So we actually helped recruit and hire you, which is kind of a neat story to see it all came full circle and now you're sitting on our podcast. So that's the we have, I guess, a vested interest in your career. But as you came in and this I think is an interesting topic, we could kind of discuss. You came in as a marketing manager and that didn't replace our services as an agency. It really was more about teamwork and support and working together. So how have you seen your role with the company and then working with us to really drive campaigns, content, social media, video, all of those things? What have you seen over the past two years?

Annie: Yeah, so I actually come from my past career. I was the only person marketing department in nonprofits. So having someone to talk to and strategize and think marketing and less business like with Mike who was just thinking, you know, maybe a little political about as we get to have creative conversations. And I think it's been a huge help. And even with the small stuff you guys helped with like posting on our website page, or Hey, can you translate this to a PDF because I don't have the software at the moment. Like even small stuff like that, but then then they can share ideas as well. I think it's a huge help. And you guys had the experience and background in manufacturing marketing, which I don't. So it’s been helping me grow in this role and learning the different facets of it and where we need to be in ten years and not just how to get something done tomorrow.

Bill: So we see strategy is a huge component and we can’t just go out and do things in marketing anymore. I mean, one of the things that's critical to our brand is, you know, in 1896 John Wanamaker, the father of modern advertising, said half or 50% of my advertising is wasted. He only wished he knew which half. And that's so much more true today because there's just an infinite number of possibilities and ways to approach it. And I think as we've seen Tyres International move to Ascenso Tires North America and that transition has been pretty amazing and fast and approaching that with an incorrect strategy could be costly or more costly and inefficient. So I think the collaboration we've been able to establish and working on the strategy first was super important and has really helped the growth and where we are today. So that's that's been exciting to see. When you look at Tyres International having been around for 50 years and as a distributor here in North America, and then you look at Ascenso while they're a new company, they're the family that owns Ascenso, has 30 plus years of manufacturing experience in the tire industry. It feels like and you can see why both companies came together because there should just be a tremendous output based on, you know, collectively 80 years of experience or however you want to do that math. Are you seeing that day to day as you watch some of your colleagues work together, both from the factory and then here from your distribution work here?

Annie: Yeah definitely, so we have so we have both the technical side and the sales side working together now. So we have people who are communicating from the plant in India saying this is where we want to go in the future. And the sales guys saying, well, this is where you should be going based off our customers needs and wants. So it's been a it's been a lot of communication, but it's gotten us really far. I think we're 700 plus SKUs now in four years, which is we're the largest growing our fastest growing tire manufacturer in the world. So I think we're in over 90 countries. So it’s not just in North America. So you get the feedback actually do communicate with our partners in Ireland and Australia and the UK and we kind of collaborate just like on the side in LinkedIn. But it's still, it's, it's great because small stuff like where do you get your tires hands and, and what are you putting at your trade shows or what kind of social media do you think is more important than others some of those things. So it's so it's really helped us kind of meld all the experiences together and to really push forward and to see where it leads.

Bill: We, my family, in the early 2000s owned about 14 John Deere dealerships, and we often found when we got together with the other dealers, we learned more than when we were talking sometimes to the manufacturer. And I think there's what you're describing, there's very important. You have your sales team here in North America, but also around the world that’s giving good market feedback. You have your technical manufacturing arm that is bringing in their feedback and it feels like with Ascenso they're listening to both sides and really trying to find the best path and the best like balance point for those things. And that probably is what is contributing to them being the fastest growing tire manufacturer in the world because you can't operate in any vacuum on the marketeting side or on the manufacturing side. You have to find that balance. So that's exciting to see. We also know that Ascenso has this credo, their tagline, mission statement, whatever it is, never stop rising. Can you talk about maybe how you see that every day and what that means here in North America to Ascenso. 

Annie: Yeah, definitely. I think honestly, it's very inspiring to like to look at that every day, which is awesome and I think it's just we're not just doing what everyone's doing. We're looking forward to what needs to happen in the future. Whether that's bias to radial or the the technology that we've been importing, that's seen a lot of traction and the steel belting and all that stuff.

Bill: Yeah. So when we look at so I have a personal interest in agriculture. I own a my family and I own a organic dairy farm. So like we actually have, full disclosure, we have some Ascenso Tires on our tractors. Yes, we paid for them. So this is not a paid program, a paid promo or whatever, but we have enjoyed those tires. But one of the things the point of this is agriculture around the world is very similar. And while there are cultural variances based on geography, climate, etc., people are just trying to grow food to feed their customers. So in specifically in the agricultural segment, I can see how you you're finding parallels in Ireland. I saw there was a recent a big event in Poland and the UK, Australia, certainly India because that's where they're from. The factory. So that's exciting to see. And I think I've been watching, I've been lurking on the social media of these different folks. I think we're starting to see that “never stop rising” really penetrate each distributor or dealer or distributor organization however that's termed in those countries really, really embody that. And I think that's a great credit to the leadership and to each member who’s really focused on that and receiving that inspiration every day. So that's that's exciting to see. So one of the things we like to talk about in this is this is the Missing Half podcast and we're trying to discover what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. So when you look at what you're doing in marketing today, for Ascenso and then maybe even compare and contrast that to your nonprofit work, what do you feel maybe a year or two ago was missing that you're now kind of fulfilling and doing? And we always like to talk about what's working and also what didn't work because let's be honest, it's marketing. It all doesn't work, right? We have to test, we have to experiment, we fail, we optimize and pick ourselves back up and try again. So what do you feel are any like missing components that you were observing in the past that you fulfilled, and then after that, maybe we'll pivot to what do you feel is still missing that is part of the future.

Annie: Yeah, I think there was not much of a marketing presence before I came to be completely honest. It was very much just B2B marketing being a distributor. But now we are the manufacturer there's a little more end user involvement and I think what has been working is almost using end user marketing to get the B2B sales. So while our digital ads and our sponsored ads are more end user targeted, it's that B2B, the sales guys, the distributors are going to see that and see that we're putting in the money and effort into marketing us as a company. So they see that and like, that gets us in the door. So we did our market mapping with you guys. So you are so they those names and numbers are in the sales guys' hands as well as in our ad. And so they see the ad and they get the call from the sales guy and they’re like, I know who you are. So it's kind of melding the two, which is a lot different than what we were doing before. I think also a social media presence wasn’t much before. I think it's kind of a goal of ours is to do something every day. Just to have something out there to keep the presence front of mind. And then also our sales guys want to use that stuff in their sales. They’ll share it or they'll take that graphics and give it to their distributor. They’ll say hey you should use this on your social media help you market our company. It's those are kind of the things that have been working that maybe were missing first.

Bill: No those are good points. So when you look at those things. So let's talk about branding Ascenso was brand new to the market. And one of our first initiatives was to get branding information out there. So it wasn't to sell SKU wasn't to sell whatever SKU this is, right? It was just to say, hey, we're Ascenso, never stop rising and specifically we’re in that R1 which for those of you aren’t tire folks that's the agricultural tire this this type of profile here but front and rear on a but the that was our first effort. And one of the things I felt that was really gratifying is you don't always get attribution to every marketing dollar you spend. But whenever we got the feedback from the sales team that whenever they were walking in and talking to people on the phone, email, in person at trade shows or polishing doorknobs because it still happens in the industrial segment, they were known, the people had seen the ads. People were aware of the brand in a very short amount of time, and I think that really helped tee up some of your trade show activities. Hopefully there was more volume of people into your trade show booths. So I think that was exciting to see that branding component take place. And one of the things we're seeing in the market is branding for B2B is now so important. If we're not in front of our clients on a consistent basis, we're going to miss the opportunity for that 95/5 opportunity and the 95/5e rule states that 95% of your market is not actively buying or looking to investigate a purchase. Only 5% is active in buying. The 95 we have to stay in front with branding so that whenever they move into the 5%, we're top of mind and a consideration for that buying event. So I think that was one of the initiatives we did that was really successful. And that we continue to do because branding is so important. We've extended that with your unique value proposition. And then also you guys had some independent testing done, which I'm not a tire scientist, so I can't go into a lot of detail and I don't think that's your space either. We just as marketers, we recognize the arrows were pointing up and our performance was good, so we want to tell the market, but that's another initiative we use. So I think we had a great marriage of branding and then getting into some more features, benefits, and more importantly than that, telling the story of the value of those tires. So that was that was very important. So and I think social media is also something that you mentioned that we we've done some work in. And you're right, we've gone to the end user. So we did a wonderful shoot with Vince, a farmer in northern Ohio. This gentleman has been farming for forever. Like I think he started with the first John Deere and now he has big John Deeres and beautiful tires, wonderful man, a rural cropper here in northern Ohio. And I think he told a valuable story that is very much an important part of marketing today, which is we can't just show the factory and the machines and can just show this beautiful warehouse with all these amazing tires in it. We have to show solutions. And that end user story with that solution was so important to, I think, kind of rounding out the the company's story this year. And it was great production value. The drone, beautiful day and I think Vince may wax the tractor every day. I don't know. It's a beautiful tractor, but it was just such an amazing event. But are you seeing those social media inputs really drive conversations, not only like in the office with the factory, with the sales team and then with distributors and possibly end users?

Annie: Yeah, definitely. I think that video, we got so much great content from it that we can use in almost every section of our marketing. So while yes, it looks very nice to have this gorgeous video production on our social media, we take that to the distributor. We're using that in our OEM prospects at the moment. And saying this is a real life testimonial of someone who's had it for two seasons who has testified that the tread doesn't look a day old is the insane thing. It has everything he wants with the dual mud breakers and how long he's been farming, he he knew his stuff better than I did. He knows some of the things he was saying. I was like, That's great. I don't know what it means, but it sounds great and it's stuff I have heard our production team talk about as I'm learning, I'm like, okay, this is I'm so glad I can match what our production team’s goal is to what the end user is saying. I think that's so important and those testimonials are kind of what’s driving our business right now, bringing those videos, those small snippets. And I know we talked about doing smaller like that for a good minute and a half video, but pulling some small things from that and expanding that beyond into construction and forestry, I think is just what's really going to put us on top as the value high quality tire that we are improving it.

Bill: Sure. Yeah, I think that's an important point. You know, one of the stories, it hasn't been told yet and it's young, right? We're impetuous and impatient and we're like, we’ve got construction, forestry, we want to go and market it. And that's hopefully I'm not spoiling 2024 and 25, but there's the value proposition and the value story, the brand promise, and then the brand delivery and agriculture is going to be extended into those other markets. I think that'll be exciting to see that story play out and then also see some end users really utilize those tires or tracks or whatever type of situation there is and to execute their business and do it really well. So one of the things we worked on this year and I guess something we found that was missing was in the website, a lot of users were looking for a selector in a search functionality, not to look for the Ascenso X, Y, Z model, etc. They know their machine and they know the tire they need. So I think one of the things we found there was an area that was missing in like the usability of the website. Maybe talk about how we came to that conclusion, like the feedback you got from the sales team. And then we know we're actively addressing that even as we speak. I think there's folks back at the office are working that today, but maybe talk about how you got that feedback and learned what was missing in the website user experience in finding the tire that they needed for their application.

Annie: Yeah, So we definitely still have those customers, those and users like our our friend Vince still has a flip phone. And I couldn't email him had to call him and he wants the mailers and the print catalogs. But we're moving a little more into the digital space with our dealers and they want to make sure that they have what their customers are looking for and really cleaning up our website to showcase our range. But also what they're looking for specifically on has been a huge and just to like talking to the sales guys and having them go through the website and then communicating that to you guys and you by saying, okay, this is like the perfect mix of that. Of what's going to help clean up the website, make it, optimize it faster, and show that also what they want in the specific search functions. So I think it's been it's been that it's improved a lot over the years. I'm sure if we we we work on it constantly. I feel like it's not something that you can do and leave it alone for couple of years. It's going to need constant updates and there's development happening and new products being added. And you know, we've developed a really great process of doing that with you guys, where because it's kind of it's going to take a couple people to got there. So yeah, making it user friendly but also dealer friendly and compliant with India what they want. So it's something.

Bill: Yeah. So I think when we look at the website process and optimizing usability, probably one of the recognitions there was while large distributor deals like ABM type of work where we're looking at maybe someone has 20 or 30 branches that they're going to buy the tires by the container and then redistribute. They're probably looking more at that high level, high funnel value proposition, you know, support, supply, on time delivery, etc. When we're looking, though, this is a business that sold basically two tires at a time, right? Because you generally are based in pairs. So when we look at that, we have to recognize that not only do we have to meet that ABM or that big corporate client and communicate to them, we also have to communicate to the final transaction is going to be done with several digits, dashes and back slashes that you know, as this tire right here is 420 backslash a 90 or 30 and I don't know what that means per se. I know there's a grid and we can look it up and we can define that. But those are that's ultimately where the transaction occurs. So we have to be mindful of the different buyers personas that are involved in your website and involved in all of your digital, and then making sure that we have a user experience that meets both of them or multiple buyer personas where they're at. So that's exciting that we've we've kind of figured that out and we're developing an optimization plan for it. So when we look at what's missing and what didn't work, are there any examples and some of our clients really struggle with this So it's fine if you don't have anything. What we tried, where you tried that was not as successful as you would have liked it to have been, or your you want to change for next year.

Annie: I think something that I've learned when it comes to especially social media, there's difference between paid and organic and they going to be completely different campaigns in a sense even between social media is like our LinkedIn presence is going to be different than our Facebook presence. Our LinkedIn is very is more B2B, whereas our Facebook is more end user. So we actually got an opportunity to work and partner with his name’s Juan from Gold Rush on Discovery Plus. So yeah, and he has really helped with his influence. And if we think about influencer marketing, you think of people selling stuff on TikTok. And you, they go, we're a manufacturer. We can't really working in influencer marketing. But he has grown our social media following and by one with one post. Crazy. And it's going to be like we've given the tires he has we've made them a little more shinier and like putting the white on it. So when he's on the show you’re able to see it too so we wouldn't do that he's not on LinkedIn. That's not where his audience is. So it's completely different. And so I think trying to have the same target market for different avenues was kind of where we learned over this year. So it didn't work to do the same thing for everything. I mean, we talk about in general marketing, but anything tailored specifically like our digital ads are going to be completely different that our organic social media cause they’re not the same. And so I think that's that was the missing part, is that learning of those differences.

Bill: No, that's that's great. And I think that that talks about a category that we're very passionate about, which is no one in manufacturing and B2B marketing should talk about social media. Social media is too big of a word. We have to have a LinkedIn strategy oh wait that's even too big. We need a LinkedIn organic strategy. We need a LinkedIn paid strategy. We need LinkedIn employee advocacy strategy. We need LinkedIn and some people don't even know about this sales navigator strategy. And it is so important in today's B2B and manufacturing marketing space that we look at those things and really segment them, segment them by target audience, by message, by value proposition, by problem solution definition, and it’s so critical that we identify the differences that occur or need to occur in our approach and execution to deliver on something like social media, which has to be broken down. So Annie I think that's a that's a great insight. And I agree that Ascenso has come a long way now that was something that was missing, let's say, 12 to 18 months ago. We're getting there. We're not there yet. I don't know that we’ll ever get there. Right. It changes every day. But we're getting there. And I think the other thing that's neat about working with you guys at Ascenso is in it's exciting is your product line is changing every day. They're constantly sending out new inventory lists of new models and sizes and SKUs that they've developed. Maybe talk about that, that dynamic environment of it's never the same day twice at Ascenso Tires North America.

Annie: It’s definitely not. I think we do so much across the marketing channels. It's not because we do have those end users who need the print catalogs, but we also have to cater to the digital stuff. We have to do the trade shows, which again isn’t as fancy, I guess it's is not as digitally up and coming. You don't have screens everywhere. We have tires everywhere. So we're not going to I'm saying you need to kind of tailor to the end user who's coming to touch and see what you have. And then they're asking you, do you have this exact size? And is like, we might in two days. Like, who knows? So yeah, it's been a lot of a lot of growth and a lot of figuring out how to implement that growth smoothly and not just throwing information at people. It's collecting it in a way that you can put it out in what how they want to like take it in on how they want to talk about it to their customers. So it's it's not just, hey, we have this and it was one new size. It's like we have to twenty sizes. Where does this fit into your customer base? And I think we have been doing like even the old school presentations and USB drives and, and that stuff. That helps because then, I mean, but then we're sending them a new one in a couple of months. So it's in that works for some people more so than just putting on our website and saying, hey, go find it.

Bill: I think the important thing you're getting at there and we talk about this a lot with our clients in our office is we have to recognize that the buyer's journey is not linear. The buyer's journey is messy. It involves traditional channels like paid search, paid social, seeing ads and kind of coming in through that high funnel attraction content. But it also involves a new and emerging field called dark social, where people are watching a podcast like this and getting information and learning about 50 Marketing and learning about Ascenso Tires and then they maybe take a screenshot because I know my staff loves it when I do this on social media. Take a screenshot and send it to them and say, Talk to me about this. I'm sure there's no one else on the planet that does that. So there are so many ways in this messy buyer's journey that we have to be mindful of and make sure that we're meeting our buyers where they are, wherever they are on the journey. There's a statistic that 86% of the buyer's journey happens online before a client contacts you, via phone text email chat, however, and we have to make sure and I think you're alluding to this, that we are meeting that buyer on that 86% of the journey wherever they are and filling in those gaps. And if it's an old school USB drive, I mean, I'm a good bit older than you and I've been around a lot longer. And I remember like we used to print CDs and hand out the sleeves and then the USBs and then did you get the lanyard with the USB or did you just hand it a whole bunch of things we did back in the dark ages. But if that still works in this industry and it helps the buyer and meets them and fills that gap in their journey to get them to that purchase point, I mean, ultimately what we're here to do is not to do digital marketing, it’s to affect markets and to help our clients grow and help you grow. And if that means USB drives let’s do USB drives, if it means trade shows, as much as we all love business travel, let's do trade shows. And you know, so and to follow up on that, your trade show business you guys have done and this industry seems to still be very trade show centric. I mean, it's just the nature of it. People like to touch the tires, which I guess that's still important. I don't know. Like my family used to own a furniture manufacturing company. And people love to sit in the couches and the chairs that I kind of got because like, you would touch it, you'd sit in it, you would feel it. But this industry seems to be very they want to touch the tires. They want to see it. They want you to be there. And you guys have how many trade shows did you guys do?

Annie: It was just a handful. And I say that as an we're looking to a lot more in the future. And it's kind of, again, that building the brand awareness and then that will lead to those distributor purchases. Proposition so I it's it's and I will say that working with you you put that so much better than I could have and I think that’s such that’s a point of kind of our relationship is I have these ideas and I can you can eloquently say them and put them into action whereas I'm just like this happened and I think we should do this about it. You're like, okay, let's do a little more professional than just that. 

Bill: That's hopefully what we bring to the table. What we really strive to do and is kind of at our core is we do not want to do digital art. We want to be part of the journey at the inception with the strategy and making sure we have the right goals and objectives set forth. And it's trickier than ever, right, because we're seeing a lot of generational shifting. So there's more millennials in the workforce than ever. And the way they buy, even in the professional B2B space, is wildly different than certainly the baby boomers. I think I'm Gen X, I can't remember. You know, all those different generations. So I think it's very important that we have the right strategy and that's what I do all day is talk to clients and develop strategy. So that's hopefully why I can put those things together. But getting the information from you guys is what's so important to understand the business. And I feel like in the last two years you've come up to speed really, really quickly, even though you have that heritage in tires. Your dad was at Bridgestone in I.T. So it wasn't like you were touching the tires, but you were aware of the industry. But I feel like in the last two years you’ve really come up to speed quickly in understanding the market, which is so critical because for us to have a successful client relationship, we need a point person at the factory or representing the factory or the distributor who can help extract information, who can help be that bridge for us and will we find that team between our team and your team, when we can really work together. That's where we get outsized results. And we found that with Ascenso. So we've enjoyed the relationship certainly. And I know Mike isn't here today, but I'm going to shake his hand again so I always like to see Mike whenever I'm in town. But this is my second visit to this warehouse. The last time there were flat tires moving everywhere, which is great, but right now is a downtime, so we don't have all of the forklifts running and all the tires moving. Well, Annie, the the other things we look at is as we look towards the future and as you think about B2B and manufacturing marketing, is there anything you see as being like critical in the next phase for Ascenso develop? ome of the things that come to mind are the social media, the the organic content we’ve talked about. Those or anything else you can think of that would be super by more part of your strategy.

Annie: I think we're looking a lot closer at sales enablement stuff that we're doing. We have the initial promotional items that we give at trade shows. Pens, post-its. We've actually been becoming known for our hats. I'll give you one.

Bill: Nice, I'm looking at our producer Noah, you're going to get a hat. I got a thumbs up.

Annie: It's just as in we're really looking into doing things well. Not just to do them. And that comes with the sales enablement stuff and not just putting out fliers. It's the correct flier. It's creating a flier for a distributor. It's that kind of stuff that's going to, again, get us in the door, keep us in the door, keep us front of mind. But then it also complements everything else we're doing. It's not just those fliers are going to match our ads a little bit. Our trade show stuff is going to get into the right hands and end users are I'm I'm trying to do a little sponsorship action in there I think that's a huge deal especially these big shows because you've got the right people there who are interested in this stuff and but like the hats, they’re nice hats so it's like just like wear it out or like the shirts or the polos we're trying to invest things that are going to the dealers to get them to where to get stuff to go in their stores, like posters and tire stands and just attire out there so people can see it. So that and these are asked, is that I've never maybe never heard of that before. I'm sure something we've implemented this year is the farm service truck technician recognition program. So it was kind of it was from one of our products managers. And he sees that the truck technicians, the guys who go out and replace the farm tire in the dead of winter, in the freezing rain. They are some of our biggest advocates. Because they work with them so often. So we really wanted and they’re never really had the spotlight before because everyone's worried about the end user or the dealer. So we’re starting a program we’re taking nominees and we're going to have a committee choose a winner. We're going to fight it out for SEMA. Yeah. So it's really feeding in. We've already gotten some submissions, even though there's no submission form people are just emailing us. So it's and we got a lot of traction with publications and stuff too that are saying, wow, this is something that no one’s done before, but they should be doing it. And so we're nominees. If you have, I think like five years, you get gloves hitting the 15 years, you get a really nice cargo jacket. And so and it's just a way to say, like, we see you, we appreciate you deserve this. And it's not for the faint of heart to do this work. So it's it takes a lot to stay within it in fifteen years.

Bill: So it's a physical it's a physical business. I mean, this is you know, this isn’t even the largest tire that's in here. I've seen them replace them on our tractors at our farm. My father was in the mining business. So some of the largest tires that I see down a couple rows on the rock trucks and the wheel loaders, I saw those being replaced and it is not for the faint of heart. I will say this, though. The skill and the artistry with which a single person with a crane in some like large rock class can take on and off a huge tire by themselves makes it look easier than whenever I'm trying to change the bicycle tire on my ten-year-old's pedal bike. They they like they they learn this craft. And I think that's excellent and just amazing that you guys are recognizing their contribution to not only the American economy, but also in the whole value chain, of what you're doing. We have other clients who are doing similar things, who are really recognizing every person who's involved. And I think maybe one of the things we learned from the from Covid one of the things we've learned from the whole pandemic, whatever you want to call it, is that the blue collar work is honorable, it is valuable and it is so important to everything we do every day. And when we saw that, you know, the challenges the companies had with maintaining a workforce and then, I don't know all the figures but like Mike Rowe talks about 7 million people dropped out of the workforce on his in his Dirty Jobs or whatever it is publication or show is that there was a real crisis. And I think the other thing we deal with is the younger people and the younger generation don't value that as much so we're having trouble getting the younger people to go into that field of study and that we could about that's a whole other show we could do on like society, but let's get back to this technician recognition program I think is just amazing. I think that's going to be great and it should provide and help your story. But whether that happens or not, I think when we look at the “never stop rising” attitude of Ascenso that falls right behind with recognizing people who are always rising to do that craft and do it well. And if it's rising through a rainstorm underneath a muddy piece of equipment or it's in the mine or whatever, that certainly embodies Ascenso I think that's that's amazing. And we'll be looking forward to seeing how that pans out this year. Annie this has been an amazing conversation. We have covered everything from, you know, college days through the growth of Ascenso and your professional involvement and experience here. So that's been amazing. So thank you very much and we really appreciate you joining us today.

Annie: Yeah, thanks for coming out and sparking more ideas as we had this conversation. So I'm going to run back to my desk. I'm going to watch this over and over again.

Bill: We’ll get you a transcript so you can take those points down and will include up to 2024 2025.

Annie: I’ll be typing up the notes really fast. 

Bill: Well, thanks for joining us.

Annie: Of course. Thank you.