1194: Cullari Media: Dominate Local Ads and Foot Traffic Through Geofencing with Founders Barbara Wardell and Ernesto Cullari

Robert Plank 0:01 Hey, we're here. We're back on the podcast. It's the marketer of the day with Barbara Wardell and Ernesto colari. They are from colari media.com and we're going to talk today about geofencing. We'll talk about foot traffic, because they are a geofencing ad agency. They're called colari and Wardell Barbara embraces a growth hacker mindset that strategically focuses on identifying and amplifying her client's strengths. And Ernesto is a trailblazing ad man in the data intense field of geofencing advertising, and they have turned complete industries upside down. Each month, they drive over 5000 satellite verified in store visits to small businesses across the US, Canada and Australia. So we will wake some people up. We'll show people a new way. We'll get them excited about the opportunities that are in front of us. So Barbara and Ernesto, glad to be speaking with you.

Barbara Wardell 1:00 Thank you for having us on We're excited today to share with your your audience,

Ernesto Culliari 1:08 your people, your people, our people,

Robert Plank 1:10 whatever, whatever the the term is. You know, I heard once from some speaker to say, don't, no, don't use the word people and things right. Say what the things are, say what kind of people they are. And so I always kind of like, Oh no, I said the word people again, because I should have said, you know, business owners, entrepreneurs, but we can't be perfect, right? Sometimes we just have to be authentic and be where we're at and say we want to say. And so we read a little bit of your bios, but in your own words, what is your ad agency about? What has you just super excited lately?

Barbara Wardell 1:41 I think our ad agency is mostly about foot traffic and sending in customers into your door or to your to your online traffic. That's that's pretty much sums that on.

Ernesto Culliari 1:54 Ernest, yeah, we're a foot traffic company. Um, we specialize in using satellites to draw virtual fences around your competition, or businesses that would have a similar customer profile to yours. And after we capture devices in those locations, we can send them ads. And then the beneficial parts of that is we can also measure when they come into your store, or we can measure when they convert online. So we're a foot traffic company that started during COVID, and we're here to stay. We're help. We're here to help small businesses to stay as well. Well, great, and that's actually

Robert Plank 2:31 going to support them. Yeah, you can make a difference, right? And yeah, and help out the mom and pop and help your local economy and everything that goes along with that. And so whenever you think about ads, you always think that it's a kind of like a long slog, right? A long term process. I'm at home, and I keep seeing the same stuff, and I say, I better get in my car and go to some other location. But when you can be over at some competitions store, or you can fit some kind of profile, and you're like, hey, there's, there's this item I need right now. I need to go there right now. That's more exciting. And so what does this geo fencing look like? Like you mentioned, you run ads, but like on what platform and what's the kind of customer process like?

Ernesto Culliari 3:12 So it really depends on what part of the funnel you're going after, if you're trying to go very high up with brand awareness, you're trying to go somewhere in the middle with retargeting, or you're really trying to go hardcore for a conversion. Maybe it's foot traffic, maybe it's an online sign up that you're looking to do. So from the top of the funnel, we would look at things like audio podcasts, ads that are pre roll before a podcast comes on, or before, say, Morgan Wallen comes on on, you know, you're listening to the country channel, you get a little pre roll audio commercial. But it's very local, so we could do it based on zip code, or it could be also top of the funnel. It could be a connected TV ad, so on Hulu or HBO Max, or Game of Throne comes on. It could be an unskippable ad there. And then we can somewhere in the middle of the funnel, target re target people on their mobile devices. So as they're going from store to store using the Weather app they're using, you know, it

Barbara Wardell 4:13 could be anything on the open

Ernesto Culliari 4:16 web, all the apps. So it could be apps the open web. And then the great thing about geofencing is because we're targeting local and along the lines of where a person naturally travels, sending them an ad to divert off. So say, for example, you you eat at and drink a cup of coffee from the same Starbucks every day, we can send you an ad to come to a local coffee place that's small business, owned, privately owned. We can send you an ad to divert you from your natural path of Starbucks. We just give you a little nudge to suggest another coffee place along the way. Or if you're at a local or Mercedes Benz dealership and you're having your car service. We can send you an ad to say, Come to Barbara, her Mercedes Benz dealership, because she offers better rates or better service. So we're really just it works so well at different aspects of the funnel, because it's all locally based, and we're just giving you a suggestion of where else you can go along your travels, and that's why it's such an effective technique and technology, awesome.

Robert Plank 5:27 Well, you know, there's always the so I, first of all, I like the three layers there, right? You said they're, like, there's the awareness, and then the retargeting in the middle, and then going for conversion. And what you say makes a lot of sense, that you're, it's like, not that much of a stretch, right? If someone goes to Starbucks regularly, then, okay, they can go to the local coffee shop if they're getting if they're at this location where the Mercedes dealership is, how about the other Mercedes dealership? But there's always the concern about how connected it is, right? Like, it would be great in an ideal world if, because, you know, you think, like, Okay, I have a Facebook pixel retargets me on Facebook, a Google Pixel retargets on YouTube. But then, like, it would be great if like one person, you could follow them on the external radio and follow them on whatever app they're using. And then there's also, like, the you always hear about how, like, they dial back the fine grainness for like, the all these privacy laws, right? Where? Like, well, it can I really target someone who goes to Starbucks and so like, what have you seen with that? As far as like, it seems like they let us do all these cool things with the ad targeting, but then they kind of take it away from us. So like, what have you seen, as far as like, is it possible to connect all those things, or is it come and go, or like, what's up? So

Ernesto Culliari 6:39 with Google and Facebook, they already have a lot of your private information, so they're really not allowed to track you or follow you. Geofencing is the most respecter of persons and privacy, because when you walk into a virtual fence, we anonymize your device, your so we don't know your name. We don't know we, you know, we don't know your personal details, but we can draw certain inferences based on your location. Do you want to talk more about that Barbara, how, you know we always talk about Same, same thing, like how location is indicative?

Barbara Wardell 7:14 Yeah. So basically, you're online. If you're online and you're just say you're searching for a Lamborghini, or maybe even a Mercedes. That doesn't mean you're actually going to buy one, right? Your actual behavior that you do every day is what you're going to do, like if you're driving around like, we know we do a foot traffic study when we first look at a business, and we know for that year where they go from a half hour before they go to the store and a half hour after. So all that is a behavior that you actually do every day, whether or not you're paying attention to the things that you see every day. You don't always see a business that just opened up, or maybe something else that's in your area that could have been there for three years. I've just had that happen. I had no idea they were there. And they're a great pizza shop, so nudging them into the direction that we want them to go is that's when it comes into foot traffic and geo fencing, and that's just basically targeting those people in that area that would normally go to a business like that and mimicking that to drive the traffic to another business in that area, while

Ernesto Culliari 8:26 at the same time respecting their products. Yes,

Barbara Wardell 8:30 you're only you're anonymized, so you have a number. We don't know your name, like on Facebook, they know your name, we just know their behaviors.

Robert Plank 8:39 Okay, well, now that we kind of we got some of the facts laid out for us, it's always fun to jump into stories, right? And like you mentioned about how you help out some of these small businesses, because it's it's sad and it's scary, like I'm in a town now where, when I first moved here, 20 years ago, it was a little college town. The the target was brand new. But now there's like, an Amazon warehouse here, and all these people from the Bay Area are coming in and all the chain restaurants, and it's like, not sure how much I recognize my small little town anymore, and you worry about the smaller shops getting edged out and and then that becomes sad, right? It all becomes kind of the same as as any city in America. So we want to, we like the new stuff in the comedians. We want to preserve the mom and pop restaurants, and some of these people live down the street from us. It's a nice thing to keep going, and so it's great that you guys help out these locations. So do you have any fun story to share with us? So someone that said, hey, you know, we need your guys help. We need Ernesto and Barbara to work for magic, to do some of this geo fencing, to get some foot traffic in the door. What do you have to share as as far as some fun case study success story,

Barbara Wardell 9:47 I think I'm going to start with Daytona. So we had a customer. They actually had a laundromat, and it was in Daytona, and, um, he had bought, he was in a hedge fund. Um. And he decided that he was going to buy a laundromat, and then a storm happened, and, you know, people weren't coming in, and so many things were happening. And then all of a sudden, he was living in the laundromat. But we didn't know this at the time when he called us. We had no idea when he called us and said, What is this foot traffic? I don't understand. Can you explain it to us. So we set him up. He got the money together, and he did a six month contract with us, but he was there a lot longer, but the first month was the first part of it was six months, and we drove so much foot traffic to his establishment. Everyone that was in the strip mall was like, Where is this traffic coming. So to point where the story starts is he was on a podcast, and he was explaining his story, and that's where we found out that he was actually sleeping in his laundromat for at one point, and he was telling how he was, how he was, his laundromat gained so much customers, and he was making all this money, and that he contributed to what we were doing as well for his growth, and he ended up selling the business to another patron who bought the business, and he made he really did, really well, and it was a sweet story, because we were impressed that we know that we help, but we don't always see the stories or the personal circumstances that they contacted us with. And I think that's important, because it just made us feel like, wow, like this. We did something really good, you know. And there's many more stories like there

Ernesto Culliari 11:40 was one you said, you mentioned, you mentioned, you live in a college town, Robert, we had a client that was looking to open up a bunch of different laundromats, and they were looking at a particular Rite Aid that I don't know whether it's a technical word to say, they went out of business, but that Rite Aid closed down. So Rite Aid has been and so is CVS and Walgreens, a lot of them have been downsizing their big box locations, and this is one of those locations that was left vacant. So he was considering in a college town, buying this and then setting up laundry services specifically targeting college kids, yeah, like pick up and delivery and wash dry fold so because we do, we have we're a nationwide company, and we do foot traffic studies all over the country. We knew that a lot of colleges have started to offer Wash, dry fold plans for their for their students, just like they're offering food options, they're offering laundry options. So what we ended up doing is we did a foot traffic study to see how viable that particular location was, but then we let them know, like, Hey, you might want to call the college and see what kinds of services they're offering their students, because chances are, there's they're, you know, offering laundry. And sure enough, he called the university. So we ended up saving him about 1,000,005 in build out, renovations and putting equipment in. So you know, knowing what's really going on on the ground, knowing foot traffic, knowing trends, can really save you a lot of money if you're looking to open a business, if you're looking to expand a business, and if you're looking to expand your services. And the bottom line is, you really need to know what's happening on the ground if you if you're in a brick or mortar business.

Robert Plank 13:31 And those are some great insights. And I can tell how some of these, these kind of conclusions that you draw only come from being deep in it, right? And having like, seen it done in all these different cities, all these different industries and what to do and what not to do. And speaking of that, there must be something that drives you crazy, right? Like, when you see these, these businesses trying to market locally, they'll just like, slap an ad on something a little bit lazy with, with the targeting or what they're doing, and you're just like, oh my gosh, there's got to be a better way. Like, they should have made this phone call, like you mentioned, they should have looked into this. So is there anything coming to mind, as far as, like, just like, a mistake that drives you crazy in your space?

Ernesto Culliari 14:15 We started off in the laundry industry, and I am getting ads all the time, and this, this drives me crazy, one we have seen. So one of our clients has had a laundromat, and we were getting their ads from Illinois, a competitor of theirs from Illinois, appearing in New Jersey. We're on their jersey shore. So our client had a competitor, and I don't know what their agency did or how they ended up targeting us in New Jersey with their ad, but our client, this was their competitor. And then I saw on Facebook the other day another example that a buddy of ours also an advertiser in the laundry industry. You know he. He posted the same thing where he was getting an ad in New Jersey, because he's, it's one of our buddies. He's also on the Jersey Shore, and put put up another ad about how he's getting a local ad for another state appearing on the Jersey Shore. So you're really when you deal with an agency, I think a lot of the issues nowadays with agencies is they're developed either by people on the creative side, so they're graphic artists, website developers, or they're programmers, but they're really not admin. They really are not hardcore advertising, marketing people, educated and highly experienced. They're usually one or the other. They're either some sort of technologist, or they're on the creative side, but they're not ad people, and unless you deal with, you know, the fundamentals of sales and advertising and marketing, you're gonna end up with a lot of screwed up end results. So that's, that's what bothers me, yeah,

Barbara Wardell 15:55 the waste of money for that client. I mean, it's different state. Nobody who's coming to that ad

Robert Plank 16:01 possible. And I think I see less of that now, but maybe up until a few years ago, on Facebook, I'd randomly see, like, some like, a Best Western in Wyoming. And I guess maybe they think, like, maybe I visit Wyoming on the off chance and happen to stay there, but like, just every now and then I see something like that, just like some random town I've never, I've never been in that state, that part of the country, even I get an ad for it, I'm just like, I don't know if they're targeting was quite right. And so that's, that's great to know that that some of these people or these agencies running ads, they don't have the proper skills and training, and not necessarily advanced training, just like, the the marketing fundamentals and what to target. And like, Who would want that instead of just like, blasting of the whole all of America and running out the ad budget and saying, but look at all these impressions. Look at all these clicks. Yeah, but did it even lead to anything? And so this whole idea around geofencing and foot traffic and local marketing, it's super exciting, but I also, I'm not quite sure I know what questions to ask both of you. So is there a missing, hidden question in our conversation? There's something that I should be asking you, or I wish, or you wish I was asking to you, I just don't know to ask it.

Barbara Wardell 17:13 I think one of them should be geofencing as what it takes to do a geo fence, like us drawing polygons around your areas, like we go into the system, and we literally draw polygons around the areas that would go to that business. After we do the foot traffic study and see where the traffic is coming from. And then we go into the system and actually draw geo fences around those areas. And when someone walks into that geo fence and has an app open, say, the weather apps are looking up the weather, they'll see a banner ad that comes up, or maybe they're reading, say, The Wall Street Journal, they'll see a native ad in there. Once they read or look at that ad, the satellite tracks them at that point, just their phone, they don't know who you are, and when they walk into that establishment, the actual GPS, the satellite, sends us a ping and says that person saw this ad and walks into that establishment from seeing it.

Robert Plank 18:19 And what I mean, what's the the platform like? Because, like, you hear about, like, there's these ad networks that run on different like, mobile ads. Like, is there a or is, like, a bunch of platforms? Like, I'm still, I'm not quite sure, like, where do the ads live? How is it tracking?

Ernesto Culliari 18:32 So there's a couple different, um, answers to that question. One, there are many demand side platforms that you can use. We're agnostic to what platform to use, meaning we use multiple platforms, but we use out. We use our own algorithms. We have our own proprietary targeting system. We come up with buying personas, and we use those buying personas on different platforms to carve out niches for our clients. But so but basically how it works. When someone walks into a geofence, there are the demand side platform is, you could think of it as your Facebook. Facebook is a demand side platform, but it's a walled garden. So instead of advertising on Facebook, we're advertising in over 100,000 different apps after you walk into that geofence, and we're advertising on the open web. So to give you a great example, Barbara mentioned the Wall Street Journal. When you look at the ads on the Wall Street Journal could be a video ad, could be a display ad that you see on the side, could be a native ad that Barbara mentioned in the middle of a news story. There are dozens and dozens of platforms that are serving each of those ads individually. So if you see a Hyundai commercial from your local Hyundai dealership, it could be optimum. You know, it could be the local optimum cable company delivering that ad. If you see a demand, if you see a banner ad on the side or top, that could be from someone who's using. Yahoo or or some other platform to deliver that ad. So we're agnostic to the we use multiple platforms, but our technology, our tactic, our main tactic and technology is geofencing. But with that said, people think of geofencing if they think of it at all right, as okay, you're tracking devices, you're sending ads, but you're able to use any sort of creative you want, which is what we love. It's never boring, you know. So we might be doing TV commercials. We might be doing audio commercials on Spotify. We might be advertising in the Amazon world with either a display ad or a connected TV commercial. But what we love most about geofencing is it's local. If you need to carve out a local business for yourself, you could be a divorce attorney. You could be a slip and fall attorney. You could be a dentist, HVAC, restaurants. If there's a use for this, because you need to everything happens locally. Politics is all. All politics is local, and all true commerce and business is local.

Barbara Wardell 21:09 And say that you have an event that's local, we can geofence that event as well and send them ads after they leave the event as well.

Robert Plank 21:19 There's some exciting possibilities you're mentioning, because when you run any kind of ad, you're always concerned about how qualified is the lead. But if they're within physical proximity of this business, of this event, of this political event, of this HVAC repair place, you're like, they have probably driven by that place, and like you said, Barbara, they might just not have noticed it. But then they hear the ad on Spotify, like, oh yeah, that's the place over on Main Street. It's a lot of fun to think about the awareness that you can develop, and then also how you can be have someone like you and your team think the these things through and be like, Okay, well, we'll draw the polygon around here, but they might frequently visit this other location, or they might fit some kind of profile. And hey, now we're running these ads that all these other competitors don't even know can be run, and we're doing it in this clever way, and testing and tracking and making sure that it's a lot more effective than just trying out some random meta ad, Google ad, you're like, you're jumping into these app networks, you're running the Amazon, the Spotify, and these are all like, we've been to these websites. We've probably seen the little ad blocks, the on the Yahoo ads. But then it takes someone like you to say, you know, there's like, hundreds of different marketplaces, and we can kind of think outside the box and do this kind of multi prong strategy. It's a lot of fun to think about, but it is also overwhelming to think about us doing it ourselves, right, because of all the connected pieces together and all the rules, and then it all changes, not to mention you have to run the thing ads. Pay for the dang ads, and it's and think, think about the ad, copy the landing page, copy all these other just nightmare scenario, and would help so much to have someone to do it for us, instead of us confusing ourselves trying to learn it. And so what's that about? What is your agency do? And how does someone know if their company is the right fit for it?

Ernesto Culliari 23:15 If you're the right fit, it really doesn't work. The great thing about geofencing is, as long as you're the expert in your field, and you can describe to us or any geofencing ad agency, but I happen to think, based on reputation and accomplishments, we're one of the best in the world out there, specifically because we've transformed industries like the laundromat industry. We're currently doing this in HVAC and private aviation and the car wash industry, and we've seen such large results. But you know, if you can describe who your customer is then and you're the expert, then we can recreate that audience online, and we could look at the platforms available to you as a client and then make a match. So as I said before, we're agnostic to what platform we work on. You know it, but as you said, based on experience, we know where the best buys are for our clients. So essentially, any advertiser is a media buyer. So you go to an agency, you really want them to have experience of where to do the best buys. And there's something you said earlier about, um, you know about the waste of ad dollars, having one ad appear in the wrong state. You know, you really need an experienced ad buyer, particularly also when you're doing big cities. So you could be a small business and a big city. And you're wondering, like, how do I get exposed? How do I get exposure when you know, on Facebook, so many other businesses are spending more money on Google, everyone is spending more money on me. How do I get more exposure? Well, geofencing allows you to carve out that little niche so as the big business down the street has all this, like population density in. Our business? Well, we could target that business if they're a look alike to your customer, and we can compete with your competitor with by issuing 1000 little cuts at a time, 1000 little cuts. So you really need experience buying in big markets, but in a big market where you have big competitors, you really can be victorious over your competition with those little cuts that you may just start carving out your little niche. Very cool. Well, there

Robert Plank 25:26 are multiple paths to success, and this sounds like a great path for a local business that wants to increase their foot traffic. And just out of curiosity, you said that, if this applies like all sorts of local businesses, is there one in particular that is maybe, like, untapped, underserved, or that, or when it like, really excites you,

Ernesto Culliari 25:49 undertapped, I would say both commercial HVAC, the services, the Corporate Services, and the Home Services, businesses, so and franchises. What's that? Franchises? Sure, yeah, if you're a small business owner and you own, say, five or six Burger Kings or shop rights, most people don't realize that a lot of grocery stores are privately owned. They may have a, you know, I know, in New Jersey, for example, there are 11 different shop right, owners, for example. And you know, they're all independently owned, but they share the same business name, so it's really underutilized for them. I think, you know, particularly now with hopefully prices should start coming down, but what places like ShopRite are doing is they're doing prepared foods. So there's a lot of differentiating things that these companies are doing for their local customers, and they would benefit greatly by say, hey, at this shop, right? We have prepared soups, we have prepared meals like at Wegmans and things like that. So there's a lot of businesses. It would help. I think HVAC is untapped, and I think grocery for sure, particularly now, landscaping, yeah, absolutely, yeah, you're right. Landscaping, yeah, any

Barbara Wardell 27:06 service based business too, yeah, very cool as products.

Robert Plank 27:11 Well, there's so many possibilities here, right? That that grocery store, they they might like the they offer these things, and people aren't even coming in the door, but they're just right down the street, so they need to be targeted. And as far as the landscaping, like, you drive past someone's house like, oh, man, their yard looks so well. I wish I knew who, who did that. What am I going to do, like, knock on some random person's door and say, hey, who cut your grass? So it's like, there's like, people out there who are just, like, needing your solutions, right? They need to know that you exist. They need that awareness. They need that retargeting. They need to be converted. And it helps to have these two very knowledgeable experts who have done it. They've been there, done that. They know what kind of strategy that they can apply, as far as geofencing and foot traffic, so you can become a Giant Slayer with GPS targeting. And that website is colaremedia.com and so Ernesto, before we started recording, you spelled out the address so well, you ran off letters. Can you spell that out for us?

Ernesto Culliari 28:09 Sure that's C, as in, Charlie, U, L, L, A, R, I media.com

Robert Plank 28:16 Very nice. You're a podcaster Pro. Sometimes I start reading the letters that I'm happy. I'm like, Oh no, what have I gotten myself into? So I delegated the work to you, and so colaromedia.com, is the place to go, and as we're going there, it's time to try to stump you guys a little bit. I like to put my guests on the spot and ask about a fun quote or lesson that has helped them, that can help us. So it's up to you. It can be like separate answers or both, or one, I don't even care, but just what's a fun quarter lesson that has helped you in business and life, that you can pass on to us.

Barbara Wardell 28:49 I would, I would say, for me, is that the story of the business is important more than anything to relate to a customer,

Robert Plank 29:02 I agree completely. Ernesto, is it a pass or do you have an answer?

Ernesto Culliari 29:08 Um, my favorite quote, and my my mindset is Barbara and I are very competitive people, and we have a client, we basically want to destroy their competition. So I think of everything. And I was telling Barbara, isn't isn't it weird? Like I watched like crazy violent things to calm down. Yeah, to calm

Barbara Wardell 29:25 down. We were just talking about that. So he

Ernesto Culliari 29:28 whose forces are of one mind shall be victorious. And that is Sun Tzu, The Art of War. He whose forces are of one mind shall be a victorious whether you look at a political campaign or an advertising campaign, if the client's ground game is solid and all their employees or associates and teammates are all on the same page, they're going to be successful. I can look at a political campaign and say the same thing, if you know, if there's infighting, bickering and backstabbing, I could tell you right now. Help who's going to lose that race? And if your competition is in disarray and they're not providing the service that they promise in an ad, then by offering a better proposition, we're going to their would be client. We're going to outpace them.

Robert Plank 30:18 I love it, very cool and exciting. So we need focus teamwork, cooperation, make it happen. Go to war, annihilate your competition. But also part of that, the nicer side of things is Barbara also says it helps to think about your companies and your brand stories that we can stick and so these are some very interesting and fun marketing ahas and insights. And let's think about that as we go to colari media.com Kalari Wardell, a family owned agency where you can measure revenue growth through geofencing, Smart TV ads and more. Go there right now, you can click a button get a free consultation and find out what's possible with GPS and smartphone location data to inform potential customers about your services and provide them with directions leading right to your door, kalarimedia.com and thanks to you both for stopping by and the most professional podcast studio I've ever seen from a guest with the two cameras and the lighting, I'm so impressed, but people will be even more impressed when they go to kalarimedia.com and check out what's possible. So thanks to you both for showing up.

Unknown Speaker 31:22 Thank you, Robert, you.