Poor Wee Scammer, Digital Marketing Chat With Alex & Dave – Episode 104

It's how little importance the marketing seems to have to them. Do you know what I mean? That's the bit that I find like quite challenging sometimes almost like it's a sort of side project or something they're gonna spend ten minutes on and then go about the rest of their day and you're just like depressing.

Yeah. If there's one thing that irks me, it would be that the lack of value, you know, the fact that marketing isn't valued the way it should be. I mean, this stuff works. We, um, we changed our email system last week. And as part of that process, I kind of signed up for some of the group emails, which I wasn't previously getting from client website enquiries. And so certainly one or two clients of ours, you know, I've just been blown away seeing these enquiries coming in just like day after day of like really solid enquiries as a result of the work that we've done. And these will be one hundred thousand pounds, two hundred thousand pounds, maybe million pound projects that these engineering companies are getting a sniffer because of the work that we've done. Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface, where last week and once again this week, probably following weeks, I'm just going to talk about the stuff that we're doing at the coalface, at least the bits we remember, which will hopefully be the interesting bits.

Well, yeah, you'd hope so, wouldn't you? Maybe not.

So I'm gonna start off with a completely un digital, non digital marketing related note if you like story. Quick story. Um just got a phone call earlier. In fact, it came through to our office main line, um, and duly transferred it to me. And when she transferred it, she said this sounds a bit suspicious. So suspicions were raised. Anyway, it was somebody pretending to be our bank. Um, asking, asking about, uh, or really advising that there's, there's some payments which look a bit suspicious, so we're not letting them go through. But we need you to check them to see whether you think they should go through. I imagine, and he kept kept saying, oh, you need to go to the I portal in order to log in. I was like, I have no idea what that is. Oh, well, one of the, um, one of the senior directors at your organisation, that's what he uses to log in.

So one of our senior directors of the organisation of eleven people. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So I said, well, I'm the managing director and I've never heard of it. And and then kind of long story short, I said, look, everything you've said today is suspicious or wrong. At which point he said, she's kind of funny now, but at which point he said, well, if it sounded suspicious or wrong, you should have realised this is a scam, you twat. So I've actually managed managed to irritate a scammer, which is actually really quite good fun. Um, although, you know, I do genuinely hope he dies a slow and painful death quite soon because I just detest people like that. If I'm putting, I'm putting it too strong.

No, no.

I don't think I am.

Most people as well, aren't they?

They are massively on the rise.

I mean, we we get emails all the time. I get emails all the time from you telling me to transfer money before the end of the day. And I'm like, that's right.

Well, I told you that someone's actually opened a bank account in my name. Yeah. And it's appeared on my Experian system Experian score as well. I have, I have now got this bank account. Excellent. I won't name I won't name the bank yet, but they have been worse than useless. I've now I've now written to my MP and my MP is now on the case to try and sort it out for me. The Bank have advised that they have actually um sort of locked the account because I let them. It's actually a month since I told them about it.

Yeah. I mean the worrying thing there is.

I only got a note recently that it was being added to Experian.

The worrying thing is that somebody could open it in the first place. I mean.

Totally.

Who cares what they.

Think it might be linked to that capita. You know, these big behemoths that we look up to, you know, we, we, we sort of like worship at the doors of these huge organisations who, to be fair to them, why should we be? But we're going to be we'll be fair to them, do amazing, you know, volumes of work in terms of looking after squillions of people's pensions and all that kind of good stuff. But they had a massive data breach. And so much so actually, that I've been given, I think, either twelve months or eighteen months free use of experience so I can monitor stuff going on on my account. None of this has got anything to do.

Not, not at.

All digital marketing, but I thought it was maybe an interesting way to break the ice and at least get the conversation going. And it is sort of mildly interesting as well. So. So if you've been scammed by a scammer, call Robinson and Bussey solicitors who are not solicitors, we are actually scam artists and we will pretend to help you, but you will pay us lots of money for doing it. Yeah. Meantime, in the world of digital marketing, uh, what's been happening in your world, Alex, if you say nothing, you're going to look really silly in front of the boys and girls.

Lots of content to be honest. Lots and lots of content. Um, so we've got a.

Content important for digital marketing. Alex talk about that.

Well, David, as we've mentioned in several of our other podcast episodes, I mean, uh, in all seriousness, I mean, it's probably the staple of most of our digital marketing retainers. I think after a certain point, isn't it? Because ultimately, unless you are constantly producing the right sort of content, interesting content that your visitors want to read, your website's not going to be sort of popping up in search for relevant terms phrases, and nobody's going to know that you exist and people will stop coming to your website. So yeah, I mean, it, it is really important is a sort of pivotal part of the, the puzzle that just seems to have been rather a lot of it recently. I did as I was saying, we have a new ish client, um, fairly big SaaS business. Um, and we have weekly meetings with them and we've spent a lot of them sort of coming up with content calendars and content plans, um, and sort of working out how we're going to build the content around their website because, you know, like a lot of clients, they have been sort of neglectful of it. You know, they've done the obvious thing, which is put up a website with sort of ten or eleven pages that says what they do, and then neglected the whole sort of thought leadership and, and that sort of thing. So yeah, helping them get to grips with that, helping another client in Florida, um, to get to grips with sort of blogging more regularly. Um, and then we've got another client.

You don't have to tell me all of this in one without taking a breath. You can pause. I know like before you started, you were kind of nervous because you thought, well, I've been doing lots of content and I might have not much not have much to say this week.

Well, you.

Know, you don't have to say it all in 30s.

Uh, what's that thing? The fire hose of truth. You know, if you just. You just spray shit at the wall, people won't actually listen to that specific.

Water that comes out of a fire hose. Not shit. But yeah, usually if shit comes out of the fire hose, then something's gone wrong. But when I was a kid, sass was my favorite drink.

Really?

Yeah. Used to get a bottle of sass.

Taste of.

Sarsaparilla. So. it was, but it was a bottle of sass. It was kind of like a brown sugary, very nice.

Like, see, my wife really likes that taste and I think it's revolting. It's a very like Marmite thing, isn't it? You either love it or hate it, I think.

Um, okay. Um strategic thinking we did some of that last week. Um so we've got a client that we've been doing some work with and they were running a content workshop and we were invited to go along and it was good. Nice bunch of people. Uh, really exciting, interesting business, but it was very interesting listening to them. Again, we don't name names in these.

It's very hard not to though, when you were like a client that does this, I know, just blurt it into the microphone.

So they are software, a software related client. Um, but it was interesting in the meeting that like we were trying to look at, help them understand the bigger picture. So it was a session to talk about content. Yes. But it was like a bigger strategic, um, piece that we were trying to, to direct with them very quickly. It kind of descended into quite granular levels of conversations about tactics and things like that. And it's, I think it's hard sometimes in digital marketing when there are so many shiny things to try. Yeah, I think it's hard to actually say, well, what are we trying to achieve? And what's the best way of achieving what we're trying to achieve? And, but not, you know, not just deciding what to achieve, deciding what you think is the right thing to do, and then digging even deeper to make sure that is the right thing to do, and then figuring out the best way to go about doing that right thing to do.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting. It's something that I've definitely learned a lot watching the way that you operate. But it's something because I think I've been guilty of that in the past too. Like I like the shiny bit. I like the sort of gritty bit at the end. But yeah, quite a few times this week when I've been having these content meetings with clients, I've found myself doing a similar thing. You know, they all want to get to the outputs, the list of blog posts that they're going to write and they're going to want they want to work out who's going to write which blog posts and what we can do with them and that sort of thing. And you have to keep sort of pulling people back and saying, well, no, first, you know, before we start coming up with blog post titles, let's think about the audiences we want to reach and what they actually care about and what are they already seeing and what can we do to differentiate ourselves. But that sort of thing is sort of glossed over very quickly, I think, by a lot of people. It's just sort of straight to the what's the title of my next one thousand word blog post?

Yeah. That's right. Or where should we post? You know, where should we post this video that we've created? Um, the tactics is the fun bit, I suppose figuring out, you know, where to play.

It's exciting.

Yeah, it's the hard bit. Um, but, but yeah, I think, you know, it's fair to say that the conversation eventually kind of came, came around to where it needed to be. We kind of, I think we in a small way helped to direct it. And, um, certainly the, the marketing manager, um, who we enjoy working with immensely, um, was kind of they got what they needed out of the meeting if you like. So, um, and I think we played a small part in that. So that was good running interference. Yeah. That's right. It was good. There was some interesting dynamics in the room as well. It was it was quite good to watch. It always is when we when we sit with clients, if it's if it's a meeting that involves a number from the client side, it's amazing how many times that you can just sit there, say nothing and watch.

As.

They.

Argue across.

The table and. But that's healthy. I think that's a good thing because it all comes. It all sort of helps to finish up in the right place. It all comes out in the open. And I thought this and I thought that, and I think we should do this and I think we should do that. And, you know, maybe we sort of like throw a few bits and bobs into the mix to try and guide the conversation. But it's, it is interesting how often you just finish up listening to clients disagree with each other. Um. I find healthy anyway. So.

Well, yeah, I mean, the only thing I find mildly depressing, and I can't speak to that meeting because I wasn't in it. But more often than not, when you sit around the table and it's sort of the, the client sort of marketing manager or chief marketing officer or whatever they want to call themselves, whatever fancy hat they're wearing and some other sort of top level execs. It's how little importance the marketing seems to have to them. Do you know what I mean? That's the bit that I find like quite challenging sometimes sort of watching people talk about how almost like it's a sort of side project or something they're gonna spend ten minutes on and then go about the rest of their day and you're just like, mm. Depressing.

Yeah it is, I think when you work in this. I'm an engineer by profession, so I've worked on some big engineering projects, you know, big noble endeavours, etc.

And save the world.

Didn't quite save the world though. Um, that project failed, but um, I enjoy the work I do now. I love working in marketing. I'm still involved in engineering when we're doing software projects and things like that, which is good. But, you know, if there's one thing that irks me, um, it would be that the lack of value, you know, the fact that marketing isn't valued the way it should be because it's an incredibly powerful discipline for business growth, he said. Says stating the obvious. But, um, and those people that get it, you know, very, very successful businesses get it, you know, very successful could mean you've got, you know, five hundred billion in the bank like Apple or very successful could mean you're a one or two person small business, but you're actually making a great living working with some great clients or something like that, you know, but it's, it's, um, yeah, marketing, I don't know, it's.

I think it's almost universal, isn't it? If you think of a big business, you think of a very successful business like Apple or Amazon or any of those. I mean, they are companies that do great marketing that do sort of put budget behind it and sort of buy in fully. And the companies that do seem to sort of flounder around are the ones that don't really have a, a sort of vision for that.

Yeah. I mean, this stuff works. We, um, we changed our email system last week or I did, um, I changed the, you know, I moved us over to, uh, away from Rackspace and to, to a different, completely different system. And as part of that process, I kind of signed up for some of the group emails, which I wasn't previously getting from client website enquiries. And, you know, so certainly one or two clients of ours, you know, I've just been blown away seeing these enquiries coming in just like day after day of like really solid enquiries as a result of the work that we've done. And these will be, you know, one hundred thousand pounds, two hundred thousand pounds, maybe million pound projects that these engineering companies are getting a sniff at because of the work that we've done.

I do think.

It's really it's really rewarding. It's great to see.

It is really rewarding. It's also really strange though, because always like, I feel like whenever we're talking to new clients who don't quite get it yet, that we always have these conversations and they don't quite believe that a website could genuinely sort of generate enquiries. Do you know what I mean? There's a sort of vision that or this sort of understanding that in business to business a website is just a fancy brochure. And of course it's not really going to get you any enquiries. And what's the point in all of it? And then, you know, we're kind of sat there and we have that, you know, insight into how well it works when it works. And trying to convince people of that is frustrating, I think.

Yeah. Um, speaking about getting enquiries, we did a little bit of work with an agency over in the US. Um, I'm in an agency mastermind group with the agency owner and we did a little bit of work with him, which was good fun.

Clearly not a mastermind group if you're in it, but.

Well, clearly not a mastermind group if I'm in it.

Yeah, it's a group.

Yeah.

But no, yeah, we did, didn't we? Um, that was really interesting one as well. Because again, you know, to start with, even I was sort of sat there like, is this gonna work? Do you know what I mean? You sort of, I mean, you know, it works in principle, you know, all the right things to do, but you're putting it in place and you're watching the sort of doubt in their eyes. And then it does work. And you're like, yeah, you know, that's the yeah.

I mean, I haven't checked back with them. I'm not sure if we're supposed to be catching up again today or tomorrow, but it won't be today, now will it? But maybe tomorrow, I can't remember. Is it something in the diary to catch up?

I think so is there.

Yeah. I think you're actually right. I think you're actually right. But it's really good because from our point of view, working, not working with them because we're not getting paid to do it. I volunteered to help them look at it because it's maybe it's not quite a core competency of theirs, a very capable agency, but the PPC stuff wasn't quite a core competency. They'd been given some bad advice about.

The.

Type of PPC that they should have. They should have been running. And, you know, we suggested that probably that wasn't the right approach and maybe this was the right approach. And, you know, pretty quickly, I think they got well, I think at least one enquiries come in already. And like I said, there might have been more, um, as a result of the work that we did with them. And I have no doubt that once that campaign is refined, it looks like it's got huge potential to bring in lots of enquiries for their client. Yeah. Um, but I've really enjoyed it. I mean, that's, that's a side of this, this business side of working in digital marketing, which I think is good, is that there's lots of sharing of information. There's lots of people out there who are quite happy to give you the ins and outs of pay per click or SEO or content marketing or, you know, anything, any aspect of digital marketing. So the information is freely shared.

And I think it should be really because it is all like, it's fairly straightforward really when you drill down and the real work isn't in sort of knowing this stuff, it's not in having this esoteric knowledge, it's in actually applying it sort of again and again and again and, and getting the thing to work and sitting and troubleshooting. So yeah.

Speaking of drilling down, that's a nice segue into, uh, you and I, uh, and we'll hopefully we'll do this again tomorrow or Wednesday, but you and I sat, um, both of us at one desk, uh, doing some GA4 reporting.

We did.

And wasn't that good fun.

Yeah, it's been really interesting, actually, but I think I've learned more about GA4 and what it's really capable of in sort of the few hours that we've spent, sort of sat next to each other doing stuff than I have, watching countless YouTube videos and reading all these articles that are like, get the most out of GA4, and it just ends up being a recycled list of the same sort of bullet points.

I've kind of been there a little bit, um, with the GA4 journey because, you know, initially I was kind of like looking at some of the tutorials. I was like, how can I fast track this and look at some of the tutorials and things, which is fine. But you know what I quickly realised, and this is the same across the piece with digital marketing, it's like doing, trying to solve a particular problem using the tool. So like, I want to know this information because this will help me do X, Y, or Z. So I want to know this. So is that a starting point? That's much better than like, I'm going to do a GA4 tutorial, or I'm going to go to Edinburgh or London and do a course on where you get a lot of insight and a lot of detail.

But it's just also like.

And you'll forget a lot of it Almost within a week you'll have forgotten a lot of it. Whereas if you just focus in on like, I really want to know, um, you know, which parts of a landing page where we're sending paid search traffic to a landing page, which parts of that are people interacting with? Because that will help me understand what's what they really need to know in order to make a decision to, to, to, to get in touch, perhaps. So, um, I thought, you know, we've got a lot more, a lot more work to do, I think on it. But, but it's by doing that, I think we've significantly, uh, fast tracked, uh, you know, becoming quite expert with it. Yeah. Go on. What were you gonna say?

No, I was gonna say, like, it's all the really interesting insights as well. Like we were drilling down and looking at, you know, whether or not PPC traffic was, you know, more engaged on specific pages than organic traffic and stuff like that, I think is really interesting where you can dig down really deep into the data. But again, like you say, you don't get there by sort of saying, what is this platform capable of? You get there by saying, I need this and I'm going to make the platform do it.

Yeah, it's the same if you're trying to learn to code, you can do the tutorials and do the hello world tutorial and you can, um, like, you know, do this tutorial and build a piece of software that does X, Y, or Z. But it's when you have a problem that you need to solve is when you really understand it because you are driven to.

Actually solve problems.

It's not just digital marketing. It's, it's not just software development, it's any aspect, you know, you sell, you're doing a lot of renovation on your house and you're sort of driven to kind of like, I need to learn how to do this because I really want this thing.

Driven to throw my tool to.

The window. I can imagine.

Yeah.

I can imagine.

But no. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really interesting as well. It's been a really interesting experience for me because for as long as I've been in digital marketing.

Um, ten minutes.

Yeah. Universal analytics was just, it's always been there, you know, it's the sort of like you come into digital marketing as a profession and it's there, it's omnipresent. Everybody knows how to use it. It's all solved. It's a, it's a sort of finished equation, if you like. And then to have this sort of thrown into the works is really interesting, because it's the first time I've ever had to sort of adopt a brand new platform that isn't well documented. Everybody isn't already across.

It's documented by Google if you can read gobbledygook.

Well, yeah, I mean, it's not terribly helpful.

That's right. It's really powerful. So you're marrying Google Tag Manager with Google GA4, and you can be very specific about stuff. The real trick is like trying to figure out what is it I want to know. I mean, for example, a blunt instrument for in the work that we do is, is conversion. So let's say a conversion is somebody lands on a web page, fills in a form, says, I am John Smith. I want to solve this problem. It looks like you could solve it for me. Presses a button. It goes into the CRM, and lo and behold, that's a conversion. You know, you could argue that it's a conversion once they buy something off you, but it's certainly heading towards buying something off you from a marketing point of view.

I think from a.

Marketing qualified lead, it's a conversion to hand to the sales team, the sales team.

And then if it doesn't convert, it's the sales team's fault. Yeah.

That's right. But it's a blunt instrument. What if they didn't fill the form in? What else could we learn about them in order to improve that landing page? So you know what? Which bits did they interact with? Like we had a thing on a page which was client testimonials and it had forward and back arrows. So we wanted to know, are people clicking them? Do they want do.

They actually care.

What people, you know, actual customers are saying about this product? And there was screenshots of the software forward and back arrows. So do people care what the software looks like? Because, you know, some software people want to see something or if that's what the software looks like, that looks really nice to use user friendly. I'm interested, I'm going to give you my details. So things like that, it.

Was.

Even like clicking in the form as if they're gonna fill the form in. But then like, well, twenty people clicked in the first name field, but only twelve people submitted the form. Why are those people doing that? What's what's sowing that seed of doubt? What could we do to persuade them to continue and type all the details in and press that button?

Because if you think, well, yeah. And like from a conversion rate optimisation point of view, I think that's like hugely useful and really interesting, isn't it? Because you could, if you were just looking at the conversions that you mentioned before, trick yourself into thinking nobody converts on this page. You know, five hundred people have seen it, no conversions, everyone hates it. And start gathering form data and see that actually two hundred of those five hundred people actually started filling the form out. Something went wrong. They didn't finish it. There's a problem with the form. And now you can solve that problem. But without that data, you just sort of a bit in the dark. Really?

Yeah that's right, that's right. Um, we have as we're talking about this, it's Monday actually. So what we're talking about last week, um, but um, we did get an enquiry in last week and we had a couple of conversations with them. And tomorrow, um, me and Phil are gonna have a chat with their CEO, managing director type person. Um, and it's a company who do servers and things, high end Linux servers and things. Not like GoDaddy hosting its thirty bob a month or something like that. It's like decent, you know, chunky stuff. Like, you know, they look after some big organisations. Um, but they're looking for a partner who can help them, um, or rather not, who can help them. They have got some work that they need a digital marketing company to, to help them with, but more importantly, they get asked by their customers, look, we could really do some help with X, Y, or Z. And they kind of say, um, that's not what we do. Sorry. And that's the end of it, which is fair enough. We all, we're all presented with that situation, but it's much nicer in business. If you can be asked to question and say you need to speak to because they will help you. And you know, we all like to get a nice warm referral rather than sort of go out and try and hunt for.

It's really interesting.

To help.

Us. Yeah. Like I'll out myself as a quite naive here, I think, but it's really fascinating to me how much of business is just referrals really like how much of it does just come down to that sort of human element of connection, doesn't it? People love being able to recommend someone and people love having someone recommended to them. But yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.

Um, I'm trying to think what else, um, happened to so that we can just round off our coalface chat. But to be honest, I think, um, I think that just about covers everything from, from my side. I've got a fairly busy week this week. I've got, um, potential new client meetings. I'll tell you one thing we did get, we got an enquiry in last week. Um and it's for an organisation who they want some um help on a kind of jam tomorrow basis. So they are preparing to go for I think third round funding for a really interesting product. Um, and it's a B2B market, but the end product is a very much a consumer item, high end consumer product, um, part of a high end consumer product. I'm being really vague and.

It's becoming more mysterious by the second. Is it vibrators? David. It's a.

Thing. It's a thing. It's not actually. No it's not, um, high end vibrators for the connoisseur. There's definitely that we need to go after. Um, so it's raining. Can you believe it's raining? It's beautiful out there, but it's raining. Um, so we've got to have this, you know, kind of conversation. We're having this conversation in house. But again, as a digital marketing company, you know, we have over the years, many times been approached by, you know, for example, in, in, you know, in the earlier days, we were approached by people who've got a great idea for a web app. And if you build it for me, you can have zero point five percent of it sort of thing. You know, there was tons of that stuff going around, people who had a great idea or they thought it was a great.

Idea.

And no skill, didn't.

Have.

The skills to build it. And obviously that that very rarely ended. Well, um, this one's a different one. It's not quite there, not quite looking for pro bono work. They're kind of looking for a jam tomorrow type situation where we're going to take some risks because we don't get the funding, we won't get paid and we can't quite decide because it. On the one hand, it sounds like a really interesting product and a really interesting project. And for us, that's important. We like doing interesting, challenging work. Um, but we've also, you know, we've had the piss taken out of us in the past and these guys, you know, great conversation with them. They definitely weren't taking the piss, but I just don't know whether the rest of the team have kind of been there too many times with, you know, something that Dave said he would.

Do.

He would do for now.

That's what the.

Promise of work in the future.

That's what he does, dear listener. He promises us the world. I do sometimes know. I mean.

I don't know, I don't know if we've got to a conclusion or not. There's some interesting chat going around.

I just think the one, the one thing I do have to say about it is I think it's very difficult working in a digital marketing agency not to become jaded by these things. I don't think people outside of the industry appreciate just how much time we spend fielding enquiries from people who do not have money and do not want to actually invest in it. You know, it's always sort of kind of get a website for three grand, you know, can I do my marketing for five hundred pounds a month or, um, do my marketing for me. And when I'm really famous, I'll pay you back. And I mean, yeah, we have been stung a few times. Not by sort of silly ones like that, but, you know, fairly developed grown up businesses that have sort of spun us a line and we've sort of worked on a contingency basis and then nothing's come of it. But I think it's important not to become jaded because those are also that's also how you miss opportunities, isn't it? And I think that's the thing, like, you don't take the risk, you don't get the reward.

So yeah, I don't know. I think if it was a dull project that the answer would be no.

No, no.

Thanks. But it's the fact that it is quite an exciting, quite an interesting project. Um, the ones that really grinds my gears are the, you know, I would do this myself, but I just haven't got time tight.

Brigade, you know.

Whether that I'm not talking just about free gigs here. I'm talking about, you know, in digital marketing and it must happen in other professions, but we are subjected to a lot of that kind of rhetoric. I had a really interesting conversation with the chap who came in here to discuss, um, us helping to promote like a festival of speed kind of events. And we had this conversation. It lasted about half an hour. He was telling us all about it and he said, well, you know, the Lord so-and-so, who's who's he's on his grounds where, where this this event will take place. He's got a friend who does web stuff and this is what they've quoted. Can you beat that? And he sort of slid this piece of paper across the table and like they'd been quoted and it was like, you know, website, promotional materials, PR post, just the list just went on branding, you know, this, this kind of halfway down in Norfolk had offered to do it for fifteen hundred quid. And I, and I sort of like looked at him and I was like, yeah, you know, we're going to need significantly more than that to do this. And, and he was, he was, he was perfectly nice about it. It was one of those kind of awkward situations where he kind of didn't realise what shit cost. So that's fine. That's fine. But just to finish the story off, I chatted with him last week. The event got postponed because it's been an unmitigated disaster. Nobody was buying tickets. It was a complete. So they just basically postponed the whole thing. And he just said to me, he said, I wish I'd listened to you. He said, I knew there was a reason why you were. He actually used the word expensive. He said, I now know why you guys were so expensive compared to the compared to so-and-so's friend, you know, who was doing it for thirty bob and fried fish. But it, you know, we don't make these numbers up that we charge people. There's a reason things cost what they cost, you know, and yeah, if you if you listen to this because you're looking for digital marketing tips, then great. We do provide digital marketing tips in this podcast.

But sometimes.

But if you're listening to this and you work in digital marketing, you're gonna, you're gonna know exactly where we're.

Coming.

From. You know, you're just, you're gonna be like us sometimes a bit jaded by it.

It's funny though, because, you know, I can forgive the naivety. I can forgive people for not knowing what stuff costs. And I can also forgive people for seeing, you know, the headline price of a website at ten grand, and then seeing somebody on five or whatever, offering to do it for five hundred quid and less. Yeah. And I can see why they come to the conclusion that we're overcharging and taking the piss or whatever. The bit that really gets to me is people who, like you were talking about earlier, sort of come to you with a laundry list of things they've read about on the internet that they need and the exact prices that you should do it for. And, you know, it's sort of like, I need you to do this and sort out my meta descriptions and set up a PPC campaign for me. And it's like, oh, you know, get in the bin.

I suppose like, I mean, your wife's a doctor. I mean, I imagine like in the medical profession, people come along and tell the doctor, what's wrong with Doctor Google?

Yeah, they call it Doctor Google. Yeah. It's like yeah you've seen Doctor Google because you come here and you said oh I've got I've got a hacking cough and a temperature of forty two degrees. And I've checked and it's definitely leprosy. But we, I mean, we field enquiries like that all the time don't we, where people are just like, I need this by tomorrow.

And say, I've got a hacking cough or a temperature.

Of.

forty two degrees. And we say, you need a PPC company.

Well, you know what? Squeeze it out of them while they're still alive. Um, no, we got one the other week. I think it was actually last week, wasn't it, where somebody was like, I have this much money and I need it. I need a new website and I need it to be live by like twenty eight days or something.

Yeah.

And it's like, you cannot be serious. Like it's not a way to do business.

But yeah, we politely declined and we never heard from him again.

Surprise surprise.

Surprise surprise. That'll mean something to some people. But I just didn't know.

It did not mean anything.

I'm sure it didn't. The, uh, points of reference between you and I are quite different. Um, okay, so we're going to continue with this format. We're just going to be talking about our week in digital marketing at the coalface. And obviously we're going to pick out the things where we might be able to share some wisdom. Although this week we've mainly just bumped our gums and warned about stuff.

Well, you know, there's always next week.

Yeah. In a light hearted kind of jolly way. Yeah. Okay. Bye.