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It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?

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You're listening to the latest Radcast News Update. Here's Ryan and Riley. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. We are live actually for this episode on Instagram. So if you're listening or watching on Instagram, we are commenting back to anything you're saying.

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We apologize, but all hands are on deck for the episode. Anyone listening to the episode, welcome. This is our news episode for the week. We're here in the last week of October. Halloween is tomorrow, is it tomorrow? No, Saturday. Saturday, yes. So the week of Halloween, so good to have you Riley. Thanks, good to be here again. It was funny because I remember when the year started, everyone was so excited for 2020 because like Valentine's Day was on a Friday, like Halloween was on a Saturday, like all the big holidays.

01:06
we're on weekends and you know obviously a lot of those don't get to happen but you know it's just funny that well it's helpful in some ways but when you're not gonna the kids aren't gonna be trick-or-treating and you know but

01:19
The COVID parties, I guess, will still happen, right? Yeah, exactly. No social distancing and no handling of the candy or whatever. I mean, we're six feet apart. You're wearing a mask anyway, right? Exactly. It all works out. So everyone's like social distancing and wearing masks because they're dressed up. But we do have a small gathering at the agency here. Whoa, whoa.

01:46
Swore. I, but it's just a responsible one. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

01:51
How's your week been? It's been a good week. I feel like we've been, I feel like I say this every week, I feel like we've been busy, but I feel like this week has just also been just very busy. A lot of really exciting stuff for the Radcast. Dave's episode that came out on Tuesday, which if you haven't listened to, you definitely should. There's a lot of really great insight, obviously from a marketing standpoint, but just more about his book that came out recently. And we have a special promo code, which is really cool.

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of cool and it's code Radcast at checkout. So if you go to get Dave Gerhardt's latest book, if you go to privy.com slash book and then you use code Radcast, you will get five dollars off the book. So Dave Gerhardt, this episode felt the closest to home. You know, we have a lot of guests that are broad marketing or radical guests. Right. It felt the closest to home being an

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You know, Privy is an app that we put on several of our clients' sites that really allows for kind of building your newsletter list and attracting emails. And they have SMS automation and email automation. And Dave is really kind of one of the leading voices in B2B marketing and email. So it's great to have him and their latest book, like you mentioned, the e-commerce playbook. We actually, I think I saw Tracking, we ordered some for the team here.

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Supposed to show up today, but I definitely encourage you you're learning about e-commerce. You're already good at e-commerce But you want the definitive playbook. This is a great book I already know enough about it to to recommend it and I know Dave's Track record as well as privies and the amount of sales they're generating for people on Shopify and all the other e-commerce platforms, so use that code radcast for five hours also yeah, I was I was pumped for that episode and was really pleased with how it turned out and

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If you haven't listened, go listen to it. We'll be putting up some more highlights on that from the episode. But yeah, it's been a good week that day. Yeah, it's been a good week though. It's been good. You know, I mean, just staying.

03:57
You know, focused on, we're kind of rounding out several projects and had a couple of new ones come in, a new company called Tech Styles. I don't know if they're textiles, but T-E-C-H. They're really going to be leading innovation in the fabrics and textile business, kind of pivoting a little bit for them. So it's a new business from a larger brand, a new subset. And so we're going to be doing...

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some branding, marketing, and website development for them. Meeting with some cool little things on the website for a fabric finder engine and different things. So just getting that kind of off the ground and so that's always exciting. And you know, yeah, it's been busy. I like to say it's been an effective week. Right. Not just busy, but... Yeah, exactly. So it's good. And you know, the...

04:52
Kids just finished, Nash just finished soccer. He left from dead season. He's done with his soccer season. And uh. Did he enjoy it? Was this his first season? First season, four year old soccer. Aw, that's so cute. So uh, we went from uh, you know, crying and not really sure if I wanted to get on the field to you know, barreling down, you know, other kids a little bit. Of course. Towards the end of the season. He was one of the bigger kids out there. Go figure. Right. Daddy's not a small.

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person either. But he's learning and getting there. It's funny, he's so grossed out with his brothers, but when it first started he's kind of like this gentle giant. Oh, bless his heart. He's getting there. He's getting there. But baseball season for Hogan is almost over. One more game and then we've got basketball. I coached three of the boys basketball team and...

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there are days where they actually can play on the same team. So that starts in January, so we'll start practices soon. So, you know, a little personal stuff, but yeah. Yeah. So here's Riley with the news.

05:56
Okay, so have some good articles for you today. First off, starting off with, you know, automated messages from a business standpoint. Is this actually the most effective way to reach back out to people? Is this something that more people should be taking advantage of? Or is it something that seems really impersonal and just is not worth it? What are your opinions on it? Well, this has been a...

06:24
you know, it's been happening for a while. I was going to say, yeah, I don't know it's not new, but it is, it's growing as, and I was reading an article that was unrelated, but related, that marketing budgeting for next year for most brands is going to shift from acquisition to more customer-based management. And a lot of this automation comes in with customer service and upsells and those kinds of things. We use this currently with, it's in the radical

06:53
playbook for e-commerce especially with our clients where there's a series of automation using multi-last pretty has this but Clavio is another large one for Shopify that we use and it's it is exactly what this is it's an automation of certain things based on triggers from the website or Actions that customers take and they are automated messages and it works really well for generating additional revenue

07:22
But it's also highly relevant because it's, for example, when you think about, when you shop online for a product and you buy, you know, a pair of socks. Right. Well, there's a series, there's, maybe there's an undershirt or something else that goes with it perfectly that you haven't purchased. The email automation will pick up products that make sense to go with that. So it's relevant. Okay, okay. So there's things like that. That's at its base level. There's other things like welcome series for.

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emails and different things that automate the trigger from actions either from purchase or from actions on the site. All of the customer has signed up for these by the way. You don't want to spend them if they aren't, they haven't signed up for it. But assuming that they have these automated messaging is really smart and really efficient instead of because I think historically a lot of companies think of email as we're creating a newsletter. It's very manual. We have to come up with the content.

08:17
These automated messages, whether it's an SMS works the same way, and that's text messages that come that people signed up for. You can do similar things, whether it's text message or email. It removes a lot of the steps and a lot of the legwork because you've set up these triggers and these automations. And so it can reduce the strain on your team and it can really drive increased revenue, especially on the e-commerce side. And even if you aren't an e-commerce brand, if you're...

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any type of business, these things make sense and they save time. And as long as they're relevant to the customer, you're not going to run into it being impersonal. Because I think consumers are trying to understand it. They understand that they're going to get these and as long as it's not spammy, as long as it's relevant, I think it's okay that you do it. But I also think there's a time and a place for that personal communication.

09:12
that one-to-one. Well, this is what I was about to say. So like I hear you on all that, right? And I think that obviously the efficiency of automated messages makes sense. But I guess my thing is if you're messaging someone in a direct message on Instagram and you start to realize this is an automated message, I feel like you kind of lose, I mean, definitely you kind of lose that really personal, like in the moment kind of conversation, like, oh, they actually want to have this conversation.

09:40
versus actually realizing, oh no. I don't disagree, but let me give you an example from this morning for me. Okay. So I ordered some products from Amazon this past weekend and they were supposed to deliver on Monday. Oh, uh oh. And it said, the tracking had said, or I'd gotten busy and didn't even look for them quite honestly, but I looked today, I kind of remember getting that and it said it delivered on Monday. And so it hadn't, couldn't find it.

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So I went into the app, the Amazon app, and I hear contact customer service, and I did the chat. It was all automated. There was not a human being. It was, what product are we talking about? They recommended the product. They gave me the list of things that I ordered. I clicked that box, said what's the issue? They had options up, but did not get item. I clicked that box. They said, oh, we're sorry to hear that. They go, they asked me one other question, and within five seconds they said, we've refunded it to your account. And this was not a person on the other end. This is all automated.

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Right. And so within a one minute text slash app conversation, I filed my problem, dealt with a bot, and had a refund coming back to my credit card. Yeah. And so again, you could say, well, that'd been nice to have a person, but they did it so efficiently. Why would you argue with that? Why would I argue with that? Right. Right. Right. Now I do think there's oftentimes where community, you know, especially

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COVID and some of the negative things that have happened where the CEO or president of the company needs to write a, you know, text only email, not a bunch of pictures, not a bunch of sales stuff. Like you're like, hey, this is Tom, the CEO of Insert Business here. Right. And he needs to do a heartfelt message. It needs to be personal and you need to have people that are there to reply to certain responses of things one-to-one. But a time and a place to work. But I think the key to this working great

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is how well you set it up from the beginning. It can work terribly if it's not truly automated and you haven't thought through the sequences. This is all about sequences. If this happens, that happens. And if you haven't thought that, it's no different than how we build chatbots or different services for clients. If that chatbot sucks and you haven't thought through the right sequences, it's a terrible experience and you should never do it. Right.

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But if you've thought through it properly and you have your processes, you have your purchase path mapped out, then this thing makes sense. And it can help the business scale, save time, save resources, and focus on more impact through other areas that don't really need or don't have the opportunity for that same level of automation.

12:24
No, I think that makes sense. Okay, next topic is more about the psychological bias of shoppers. I think this has been something even for the episode on Tuesday, you and Josh kind of hit on a little bit. But I feel like...

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psychology in advertising is obviously becoming way more of I'm not gonna say trend but I am in the sense of people are starting to major more in it or starting to make it an initial career starting point of like the psychology of advertising or you know the mindset of shoppers but I really liked that you know if you're trying to create a better target with how you're getting your shoppers to feel

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you know, good about what product they're picking up from you in your store. This article kind of broke down some of the three things that were really important for that reinforcement for the shopper. The first one was confirmation bias, then there was the bandwagon effect, and then the zero risk bias. I feel like this is, they broke it down and it's like another way to skin a cat. Like there's certain things in tactics and marketing that...

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you've been doing it long enough, you know it's kind of the playbook of how you do things. But this is another way to think about why you do what you're doing in marketing. Confirmation bias is big. And it's really back to, so the riches are in the niches. And if your product or service is designated for a specific niche. I use my, I use mine as my cheap example a lot, Sean Whalen's company. And again,

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it's confirmation bias because they are targeting a group of individuals that typically have a leader mindset that typically are.

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don't really want to follow the herd and everything that they do. You know, you could argue it's its own herd that you're following. I understand that perspective as well. I appreciate it. But I'm self-aware enough to know that. And you know, that is kind of tired of being force-fed everything and knows there's a slant with news. Whether you're Republican or Democrat, you know that the news channels that follow those are feeding you what they want to feed you. And so thus, this brand, you know,

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reaffirms that belief that they know that their people and their niche has. Right. And so thus it increases their sale. It's confirming the bias that that niche already has. No different than if you're a 21 year old girl that follows a pop artist and her messaging is all about empowerment and all the things that...

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you know, that generation is about and believes in, you'll see that through the lyrics and everything else. It's confirming the biases that their targets already have. It's not accidental, you know? Every lyric in the song. Why do I feel like you just called me out? Like, honestly. Yeah, RBG, you know. Give me a couple years, please. No, but it's true, you know? And so it's in the marketing playbook. I'm moving to here. And then bandwagon effect is again.

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Okay. Um, social proof, right? I've used reviews. Yes. How big are reviews now? Huge. Comments are huge. Yep. So everyone loved this product. So I'm going to buy it. I get on Amazon and I go, Oh, it's got five stars and it's, you know, some supplement I've never heard of. Man, everybody likes it. When you see ones that have like, you know, 5,000 reviews and five stars and you're just like, okay, now I feel like an idiot for not have already purchasing this. Like, you know what I mean?

16:05
Yes. And so you know that social proof, you see that testimonial video. Yeah. You know, of someone that you believe in influence or marketing is the band. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes, it is because this even gets into what we were talking about a couple of weeks ago with TikTok becoming more, which we're going to get into as well. But with TikTok becoming more of that digital.

16:28
The video commerce aspect that's also happening on reels and that kind of thing, but that all feeds into exactly what you're saying. It's right here, it's, you know, you have to get it now. FOMO. Zero risk bias, money back guarantee. You know, like, and think about, you know, I have been watching a lot of Fox News lately. Not necessarily because I believe every word of it, but it's just been with the reelection coming up, I like to watch and see both sides. For sure.

16:57
And you know, but the commercial that comes on Fox News all the time is MyPillow. The MyPillow guy, they are zero risk bias. It is that 60 day money back guarantee on the sheets, the pillows, the bedding, the towels, everything. It is like they give back. And a lot of people offer the guarantee, whether the product's wonderful or not, because it makes people, it gives them that perception that they're not going to risk. But you know what this dirty secret is in all of this?

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When people get it, 85% of them will never take the time of returning it. I was just about to say, even if it doesn't work, it's like that, you know, I mean, we have, when we were talking about the Halloween party earlier, I mean, we had a sign that said, you know, like costumes were mandatory, right? But if you didn't put mandatory on there, then it becomes, oh, we should wear a costume, you know? But now that it's mandatory, people are like, I don't wanna wear a costume. But it's like the same with like this kind of, you know,

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money back guaranteed, okay, but then it actually doesn't work out. Well, I don't, you know, well, there's no like, the momentum and inertia is a powerful thing. You get it. Even when I get stuff I don't like, it sits on my desk or I think at home, like, oh, I gotta return that. You never get to it. And so they know that that's going to happen. So they'll offer it. I know, I know. Because 85% of people just keep it anyway, like, oh, screw it. You know, exactly.

18:20
So yeah, but till Amazon has someone coming knocking at your door like three days later just to make sure you know Hey, did you like the product so I can return it for you if you don't like it until that happens But look, you're listening to this marketing advertising. It's all psychological. Yes We're just we're we're just bad people over here

18:39
and playing on your psychology. I know, I know. Low key, we probably should. But I think it's all in good humor. Hey, if it's relevant, it's serving your purpose and your ultimate need, then that's when it's helpful. Exactly. This will be a really good segue. TikTok and Shopify are like partnering up, yeah? Oh, big. Yeah, they're having an in-feed shopable video ads directly linked with Shopify. Yep, huge.

19:08
Yeah. So TikTok has all this amazing data, all these people listening, or excuse me, watching. And, you know, incredible data. But it's like, how do you pivot into selling stuff? Ultimately, that's what that means for these platforms. They've got to monetize that audience for the ad spend. Because again, as much as we like to think these apps are set up for entertainment, and they are, they're set up.

19:34
so that they can sell ads to brands and get in front of consumers. But the big challenge has been, it's been this challenge for Snapchat, it's been this challenge for a lot of them, is monetization of that audience. And this goes a huge way. Shopify is the biggest e-commerce platform in the world.

19:53
It covers the gamut now with Shopify Plus. You got small, medium, large brands that use Shopify for e-commerce. And having that direct integration, we're a Shopify partner, I love Shopify. It's the easiest way for people to get commerce built and going. To have that integration no different than they have Facebook shops or Instagram shopping or the shoppable products. This is huge because it will lead to direct monetization of the platform.

20:18
and it's really smart by both to leverage, you know, both of each other's popularity and having that integration within Shopify just absolutely will... Something was going to happen on this fast no matter what, but it's like, again, gas on the fire to making that integration into shopping and the direct attribution of video.

20:45
viewership into selling because you're going to have the TikTok pixel which goes on the website It's going to integrate with Shopify site. You're going to see the impact of that So as people see that attribution, you're going to see more ads that go to TikTok. You'll see more products sold from it, right? Really big well It looks like they're going to be testing things for the first couple of months like a couple different features and then eventually I think they're going to create whatever

21:08
you know, strategy actually worked from those tests, like those kind of pools or whatever. But I'm excited to see just like when you scroll through to kind of see when they start popping up, like what's going to work and what's not going to work, because it would be interesting to then evaluate what didn't work and how you could fix it to eventually work, because that could be transferable to even like Instagram or else or something too, you know? Yeah.

21:32
Big news. This other news article, I think this is super sweet. It's like, I don't know, this kind of has this good kind of feeling to it. Dove and Pandora partnering up to create this kind of tropical mood, sound escape kind of playlist, which I think is fun and I think it brings in all the layers of the, like you know, the aroma of the mango.

22:01
which is obviously a part of Dove's collection and that's kind of why this is happening. And then, you know, Pandora creating the birds chirping and the soft rain and all the very, you know, therapeutic kind of meditative vibes, right? Yeah. I think it's brilliant, to be honest. Disappointed it's not on Spotify, but that's okay. Well, forever, you know, some people that I follow and other things, well, you better have an audio strategy.

22:29
I've thought, you know, with the brands we work with, it hasn't always made sense working with more medium-sized business. The larger brands have made sense, but just given the time period and the mental mindset of people needing that self-care, the relaxation, you know, there's so much stress that's going on between COVID, the election, staying at home. If you're staying home, dealing with how do I manage children and school and all, there's just so much happening that's putting a toll

22:59
on the mental mindset of people. Yes. I think it plays really big into anything at any brand that can get in the game of being a solve for meditation and relaxation. I always look at these kind of things a little bit with a slanted eye of how much brand attribution and how much brand love is it generating, to be honest. Really? But I think it's the right place, right time, right.

23:29
tactic. Yes. If it's going to work, if it's going to drive some brand lift for them, this feels like the right place and the right time. Right. So I'd like to see the marketer, the doubter or whatever. I don't want to see the analytics from this in like a year. Like call me in a year. Like doves, if you want to listen to this. Let me take notes. I'll get them on there. If the agency or dove can call me in a year, I want to know what this did exactly. That would be the CMO in me.

23:57
You know, I've played both sides on the client side and the agency side the CMO would be like show me like I want Really want to track this but you know, they've got There's dollars in the coffers for some of these brands because of the lack of event marketing The the sports marketing some of the the dollars that would have been spent experiential in person in-store things

24:22
I think you're going to see that distribution into tests like this. Yeah, that's what this symbolizes. Uh, and so again, checks a lot of boxes, but let's see the analytics. Okay. All right. Noted. Um, that's all tagged up and we'll get their CMO on here. Um, no, the clause out today. I mean, I mean, you know, we're in Clemson. We need to talk about this. Trevor Lawrence, you know, the, you know, the Achilles Godlike, you know, guy that he is.

24:52
is might be staying at Clemson for one more year. Now, okay, I'm not gonna act like I'm a football expert, okay, but I do like to think I know a little bit about what's happening. You might be asking if you're listening to this, what's the implication? Well, he is the largest, what is it, largest, big dude, but biggest NFL prospect.

25:13
at quarterback, which is the most important, most popular position in the NFL. Since Andrew Luck, so in the last 15, 20 years, and could be proven to be larger, depending on if it all works out. But so the implications on that from a business standpoint and marketing standpoint, from endorsements to wearing signs and all that, there are implications. And yes, I am a Clemson fan. So we're just going to go with this. But the point being...

25:40
The New York Jets are likely to have, and sorry, Gary V, but I know you're a Jets fan. I know. Look, we've got Sam Darnold. You need to make those, Sam. Your problem is a quarterback. It's management of your roster and everything else. But they're likely to have the number one pick and they are not a well-run organization, generally speaking. And there's a lot of concern, typically. You saw this actually from 15, 20 years ago.

26:08
Eli Manning and Philip Rivers came out at the same time and Eli Manning's parents or whatever didn't want him going to the Jets. I forget all the details of the story but you had similar type things and Philip Rivers, or it might have been the other way around, Philip Rivers went to San Diego or something like that. So it was all this jockeying because they didn't want to go there because the Jets are not a well run organization. They prove it year after year.

26:33
And so what's happening is you've got people and Trevor's here for his parents and others going to we want Trevor going to the Jets. And so he's reconsidering coming back. But look, I think he's gone. I mean, there's just too much money, too much opportunity. And if he is the generational quarterback and they can build around him, I don't think you're going to see him come back.

26:52
There's too much risk with injury and other things. I think that will weigh out, but that's just how little the Jets are thought of that he's even considering it. And so it does have implications on marketing and other things. And if you've seen Trevor, kind of his involvement in the players movement, till you get back on the field and you're going to see him, no matter how long you stay around, some of the...

27:19
the likeness marketing and things like that, that college students and athletes are gonna have the opportunity to do. I think you'll see the poster. He'll be the poster child if he were to stay. Maybe he's thinking about staying because he knows he can make $5 billion next year just using his profile. See, I don't know. Yeah. I'm curious to see what he does do, but that was my initial thought, was if he stays another year, what if he gets injured? Then he's absolutely screwed.

27:48
You know, and then it's also just kind of like what I mean, what would next year, what would next year do that this year wouldn't do for him besides? Yeah, he didn't have anything else to prove. It would just be purely if he didn't, he might decide he wants that college experience. But he's like, look, this year has not really been the college experience. There have been 10,000 fans and stadiums. And that can be the case. He might want an authentic senior year or like a last year, you know. So if you just get the pick and he cuts back, you'll.

28:17
He may want a senior year, but it will be because of that. But we'll go with the senior year. And Sam Darnold will be traded. But we'll see. Yeah, probably until Gary Vee gets the Jets. So cool. Good News Week. And I think that's all for today. Anything else, Riley? No, that's it. We have an episode coming out Tuesday at noon. And yeah, have a good, safe Halloween. And yeah, that's it.

28:44
Boom, we'll see you next time. To listen to full episodes or to contact us, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow our host at Ryan Alford on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in.