[Top Agency Series] Leveraging the Voice of Customer Research With Andrea Wolkofsky of shyft digital

Andrea Wolkofsky is the Co-founder of shyft digital, a marketing agency specializing in assisting marketers and business owners to find their authentic voice when communicating with their target audience. She is an experienced sales and marketing professional with a demonstrated 20+ year history of working in the sales, marketing, and advertising industry.

Andrea is passionate about helping companies communicate their message to their audience in the most authentic way possible through branding, messaging, websites, social media, paid ad campaigns, or other digital or traditional means of marketing. Before shyft, she held senior roles at Viewbix, JK Design, MyClothingCalendar, and more.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [02:44] Andrea Wolkofsky introduces shyft digital and its services
• [06:55] How Shyft acquired its initial clients
• [09:42] Who are the ideal clients for shyft?
• [11:49] Andrea discusses shyft’s team
• [13:07] Starting and running a successful digital marketing agency amidst the pandemic
• [16:05] Shyft’s customer success stories
• [26:28] Utilizing customer feedback to optimize marketing success
• [33:47] The experience of working with in-house marketing teams
• [39:06] A unique sales experience Andrea had and what she learned

In this episode…

Digital marketing has become an integral aspect of any modern business strategy. Through effective digital marketing techniques, businesses can reach a wider audience, build brand awareness, and drive sales. However, it’s not just about reaching as many people as possible; it’s imperative to understand your target audience and what drives their behavior.

The proliferation of social media and online platforms has made it more crucial than ever for businesses to establish their authentic voice when communicating with their target audience. According to digital marketing expert Andrea Wolkofsky, leveraging the voice of customer research is one way to achieve this goal. This research helps you understand your client’s needs and what motivates them to engage with your brand. Doing so can help you improve your messaging and create a digital marketing strategy that resonates with your audience.

Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz as he speaks with the Co-founder of shyft digital, Andrea Wolkofsky. They discuss Shyft and its services, starting and running a successful digital marketing agency amidst the pandemic, leveraging the voice of customer research, and the experience of working with in-house marketing teams.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Andrea Wolkofsky on LinkedIn
• shyft digital

Special Mention(s):

• Brett Fielo on LinkedIn
• Harmony Program
• Sara Blakely on LinkedIn

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Create a Fun Environment for a Culture of Remote Workers With Niki Fielding” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Giver Series] Making Powerful Connections Through Warm Introductions With Joe Mindak” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “When the universe puts all of the pieces in front of you, you just have to listen.”
• “To change perception in the industry, you need to speak to clients and customers and understand their perception.”
• “Your messaging has to resonate with the people you’re talking to.”
• “It’s not what you want to say to people, it’s what they want to hear.”
• “Just because there’s eight, nine, 10 different platforms and channels out there, that doesn’t mean you should be on all of them.”

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:01

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz  0:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Andrea here who is the co-founder of shyft and Andrea, I’m gonna formally introduce you in a second before I do. I always like to point out other episodes, people should check out the podcast since this is part of the top agency series. I had Niki Fielding, I know Andrea because of Niki Fielding and she runs a group called The Connective that we’re in. Also, Niki is the CEO and President of Digital Brand Expressions, which she has been in the marketing agency world for 22 years plus, so that episode was great. Also Joe Mindak is part of the Top Givers Series, he’s the founder of The Connective which is a great network immunity check those episodes out and more and inspiredinsider.com. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships. How do we do that we actually help you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch or on a podcast. We do the accountability, the full strategy and the full execution for the podcast, Andrea call ourselves the magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the hosts in the company. So they can create great content and create amazing relationships. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world with their work. And so if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should any questions go to rise25.com to learn more. And I’m excited to introduce Andrea Wolkosky, she’s the co-founder of shyft and you can learn more at partnerwithshyft.com. And that’s SHYFT. She’s more than 20 years of experience in the industry. And she understands what business owners and marketers need for their business to thrive. And so because she takes a holistic approach and looks at everything. shyft helps companies create unforgettable brand experiences for their customers. It could be through their website through digital through social media campaigns and much more. They’ve worked with companies such as Smith House, The National Restaurant Chain Checkers and Rally’s and, and the medical device company, Integra and many, many more. Andrea, thanks for joining me.

Andrea Wolkofsky  2:38

Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Jeremy Weisz  2:40

So tell people a bit more about shyft and what you do.

Andrea Wolkofsky  2:44

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I love your intro, you guys are doing such great things. And podcasting is it’s something that I’m talking a lot about with my clients. So I’m excited to continue to share your story and what you’re doing. And Niki’s great and The Connective is great. The connections that we’re making has been really fantastic. So at shyft, we started the business about four years ago, with myself and my business partner, Brett, like you said, we create brand loyalty by helping marketers find their most authentic voice when talking to the customers they’re trying to reach. The whole premise of starting shyft was about authentic marketing. We came from a place of working with a lot of clients that we were at an agency, I was the head of sales and my partner, Brett was the head of technology. And we came from a place where everything was very transactional. I need a website, okay, I’ll build you a website, I need a video. Okay, I’ll do this. And when we started to dig down and really trying to understand, do these people that are asking for all of these things, do they really understand who their audience is? And what are those people really want and need from these brands? The marketers couldn’t answer those questions. So when we had the opportunity to start shyft, we wanted to provide marketers a way to think differently about their marketing. And that’s what we’re trying to do and really make it authentic. So everything is about helping these businesses and these brand marketers understand their audience and make any type of strategic work that we do or tactical work that we do execution as authentic as possible.

Jeremy Weisz  4:21

Talk about the services for the company early on. Like, what your thoughts are the services and then how they’ve evolved in the last few years.

Andrea Wolkofsky  4:33

Yeah, so when we first started the business, and this is still a good part of our business, we started as a software development company, we have two SaaS products, actually three SaaS products in the market. One is a turnkey website solution and document management system for condos in HOAs. Another one is an electronic voting platform for condos and HOAs. This allows this very niche industry to really be focused on utilizing technology to help their business operations run a little bit more smoother. The third one is a turnkey website solution and document management and Bill Pay system for undergraduate and graduate fraternities and sororities. And what we’re doing with these software products for shyft is, first of all, it allows us to stay in the software space, thanks for putting that up on the screen.

Jeremy Weisz  5:20

So if you’re listening the audio you can see the video, right here we’re looking at you can see partnerwithshyft.com. But I was looking through this, because I’m like, this is interesting. You have software packages unique to a company that most companies, if they’re in this is a pretty good space, they don’t necessarily have all the software products. So I did find it interesting. You can see my community site Becker ballot by chapter site here. This was the original services that you offer.

Andrea Wolkofsky  5:48

It was, it was our original product offering.

Jeremy Weisz  5:50

Is that Brett tool set. Is that why?

Andrea Wolkofsky  5:52

Yeah, Brett and I knowing when we were starting the agency, marketing agencies, unless you’re working with the Nikes and the Coca-Colas which we’re not right now. It’s very project-based, right. And so you’re always chasing that next project, you’re always looking, obviously, to build out those retainer agreements, which we do have with some of our clients, which are fantastic. But really, marketing is very project-oriented. And so having these SaaS products for recurring revenue for the business, but also being able to keep a handle from a tech side is something that we felt very strongly about. My partner is a developer, he is the tech lead behind everything that we do. He teaches at Rutgers for mobile application development and human interface design. And so we really love the idea of anything that we do with the marketers that we work with, whether it’s in website design and development or mobile applications, that were always powered by the latest and greatest software technology innovations.

Jeremy Weisz  6:49

So it started off with software, how did you get the first few clients?

Andrea Wolkofsky  6:55

So with our software, our software is interesting, because we are in partnership with a law firm down in Florida, whose largest practice area is community association law. And that’s actually how we started the software engagement. They came to us and asked us to be their third-party software developer, based on some very particular laws and statutes that were coming out in Florida at the time back in 2018, and 2019. They wanted to make sure that their clients would be compliant with Florida Statute. Although there are many states and many associations outside of Florida that are utilizing us in Florida, there is a demand for it, which is really nice. So if anybody follows me on LinkedIn, you’ll see that every couple of months, I’m down in Florida doing condo and HOA shows, which is great because it gets me out of New Jersey and down into the warm weather.

Jeremy Weisz  7:43

It happens to be during when it’s warm.

Andrea Wolkofsky  7:47

Exactly. I’ll be down there next Thursday, doing an event down in Fort Lauderdale. So I’m not complaining about that at all.

Jeremy Weisz  7:55

So it started off as software development then talk about the evolution of some of the services you added on and why.

Andrea Wolkofsky  8:01

Yeah, so the idea was always to build out shyft as a marketing agency. So I would say about 50% of our business is the software. And then the other side of our business is helping marketers with their brand marketing. So everything from the strategy side of the business, I talked about this a lot. This is what we call voice of the customer research, helping marketers understand that voice of their customer, and what that customer wants and needs from them as a brand. So doing that strategy work. And then that execution. So that’s anything from website design and development, video production, social media, multi-channel marketing, campaigns, content marketing. We just launched a website for a nonprofit in New York City called The Harmony Program. And on their website was their annual report from last year. And they realized that the look and feel of the annual report didn’t match the new website. So they asked us to redesign the Annual Report during the time that we were doing the website. So it’s really any type of marketing asset, we can design we can rebrand and we can execute for our clients. We’re also very heavily involved on the digital side was one of the things that I felt very strongly about when I started the business was really helping marketers from digital activations that could be paid search, social display, and other digital event activations to help them really utilize digital technologies to grow their business.

Jeremy Weisz  9:27

Who are ideal clients are how is the ideal client changed for you from being useful now because not everyone, not all agencies are, you’re working with full teams of marketing managers, right like you.

Andrea Wolkofsky  9:42

That’s right. So I am a small business and I do definitely like working with small businesses when we can I definitely get a lot of enjoyment out of helping small businesses with their marketing. My ideal client is those larger, mid and large-sized enterprise clients national organizations. They have in-house marketing teams already. And they’re looking for partners like us to help them execute. So we’re not putting their in-house team out of business. But what we are doing is actually working and partnering with them maybe bringing on different vendors that they might not know about, and then helping be that accountant project manager to help those individual activations or campaigns be successful for them.

Jeremy Weisz  10:27

So has that changed, from the beginning, was it always the thought of we will serve these mid and larger-size companies?

Andrea Wolkofsky  10:36

Yeah, I think from the beginning, we’ve always had some of those, Integra has been one of our clients from the beginning. We’ve had some larger clients, we did an engagement with checkers, and rally’s, which is a large restaurant chain, we’re not currently working with them now. A lot of the marketing team that we were working with is no longer there. But at the time that we were working with them, we did a great internal HR marketing campaign for them, which was fantastic. So we can come in and work with any large company, we’re very quick at understanding a client’s brand guidelines and can pick up and take over what we would call overflow work. So for example, one of the national insurance companies that we’re working with on digital work right now, they’re going through a rebrand, they made you to utilize our design team, just to help with overflow work, because their internal design team just might be too overloaded. So we can really be a partner for our clients from a full-service agency support, from a rebrand on down, or you can call us and say, Hey, we need you to be a production agency for execution of a couple of assets. And we’re happy to do that as well.

Jeremy Weisz  11:44

Or was the team changed from the beginning, till now.

Andrea Wolkofsky  11:49

So Brett and I feel very strongly that we want to keep our team small, we’re not looking to grow this agency to be a 50-person agency, we do have one full-time software developer who has been with us from day one, we do have a part-time marketing coordinator who handles most of our software, customer support on the back end. And we have a lot of really good strong, trusted partners, freelancers, and vendors that I utilize to execute, I feel very strongly that that model works for shyft, because what it allows me to do is spend my time vetting really good partners that are not only trusted, but that are really invested in being part of a team for the clients, I can then build a team. So for example, if I have a client that comes to me and says, I need this campaign done, it’s now my job to go out with all the people that I know. And I can formulate the best team to support them for that engagement. It’s very different from that traditional agency model where you have a full in-house team of a staff that you’re forced to use, regardless of whether they’re the right fit or not.

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