Summary:
Thanks for joining us for another Startup Junkie episode!
This week we welcome special guest Howard Tiersky of FROM, a Digital Transformation Agency, onto our podcast! We are also joined by co-hosts Caleb Talley and Davis Mcentire, who were both honored and excited to discuss the digital transformation age with Tiersky.
Tune in now!
Shownotes:
(1:00) Introducing Howard Tiersky of FROM
(4:56) The Evolution of Brands Needing an Online Presence
(7:30) The Process of Evaluating Your Digital Marketing
(10:44) Difference Between Art and Business
(12:04) Addressing Website Problems 101
(18:42) The Journey Into Public Speaking
(22:49) What Does Winning Look Like?
(26:56) From the Dot Com Days to Today
(31:28) Three Ways to Make Digital Customers LOVE Your Brand
(32:52) Advice to the Past Self
(34:56) Closing Remarks
Links:
Quotes:
“You think you’ve got a great website because it’s pretty, but here’s a video of people sitting down trying to use it, and they’re trying to solve particular problems. They have a decision process they’re going through and you are not meeting their needs.”
(8:23) – Howard Tiersky
“Whether it’s a website or an app or any kind of touch point with the customer, I think the first thing you want to ask is ‘What’s our definition of success?'”
(12:33) – Howard Tiersky
“The three things that make brands that are really loved is one, meeting customer’s needs, two, occasionally doing something extra that delights the customer, and the third is to stand for something that the customer really cares about.” (31:34) – Howard Tiersky
The Digital Transformation of Howard Tiersky of FROM Digital Transformation Agency
“Once you actually understand what’s holding you back… figuring out how to fix it starts to look straightforward.” (18:26) – Howard Tiersky
It’s not shocking that everything is moving into the digital landscape, so why do so many companies and organizations have no idea how to make that switch. Our co-hosts Caleb Talley and Davis McEntire sit down with Howard Tiersky to discuss the importance of tailoring your business to succeed in the digital landscape.
Tiersky is the CEO of FROM, a digital transformation agency that assists companies in shifting into a successful position to meet the digital needs their customers require. Their focus is on business strategy, customer journey mapping, design, and implementation of a wide range of tech touch-points. We will discuss their development of digital products for avenues such as entertainment, banking, shopping, and even travel. With a specialization in solving problems and creating engaging and more profitable platforms, you will want to stay tuned to hear how they are doing it all!
Around the mid-90s, Tiersky was working with a large consulting firm as the commercial internet began, which allowed him to work with a plethora of fortune 1000 clients in the earliest stages of digital marketing. While this was just a minor component of business at the time, he was able to watch its evolution.
“Over the last couple of decades, [the digital landscape] has gone from something which is just a minor part of your market to, for many businesses, the single most important part of their success or failure.” (2:22) – Howard Tiersky
Clients began to pour in with a more significant need for digital services. The competitive landscape was changing, and so were customer expectations. Clients such as NBC Universal Studios, Avis, AAA, Transamerica, and Airbus were all trying to find out how to go digital in an effective and convenient way. The ongoing aim is to lower costs for each business while creating a helpful and easy-to-use tool for the customer.
Incorporating this process requires high lives of technology, design, organizational procedures, and occasionally a change in the business model.
Brands typically come to FROM when they realize they have a problem and have the money to change it. FROM’s first order of business is identifying the specific problems.This involves auditing the business’s digital user experience to diagnose obstacles that might turn customers away. Is it a lack of online traffic? Do customers leave before purchasing? Is the website itself challenging to navigate? Should there be a different product or service promoted?
In short, FROM helps you see what works well, what does not, and what needs to be created to give customers what they want and need. Often, that is 90% of what drives success, Tiersky adds.
FROM also has a strategy of listening to customers differently. Listening does not always mean asking your clients what they want; they may not always know. Listening actually means watching what your clients do, and understanding where they are being inconvenienced, frustrated, or confused. Finding those points and stepping in to correct them is where Tiersky has seen the most success.
If you want to assess for yourself how your website is doing, here are some helpful questions to ask yourself:
1. Why do we have a website?
2. What would it mean for the website to be successful?
3. What are our indicators of success?
4. How will we measure these things?
By getting specific and looking at what is actually happening, you may see more than the issues to fix, but also the successes to optimize.
“When you have a complex touch point, very often, there’s some good things and there’s some not so good things. So be clear about what [you] want and then be clear about what’s actually happening.” (13:23)- Howard Tiersky
For Tiersky, success means helping clients build companies that their customers truly love. We all know people who love Disney, Harley Davidson, or Ben and Jerry’s, but what if they could also love their bank, insurance agency, gym, or local grocery store in that same way?
While many brands are still in the pre-digital world, FROM wants to come alongside them to create a sufficiently elegant digital customer journey. He believes this will get them to the point where they can earn and deserve that true love buy-in of their digital customers.
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