So I was chatting to my friend who's a mixing engineer. You know the terminology better than me.
Sound engineer, I think.
And he does a lot of mixing. He does a lot of mastering. We were talking about mastering services and he was saying, one of the things that really annoys him is that there's an AI mastering platform on the internet that will basically you give it your track and within about two minutes it will, quote unquote, master it. Yeah. And it's bad, but loads of people use it, including like big brands like Disney and Sony because they can't hear the difference. So they think, oh, that's fine. And a professional sound engineer will listen to it and think, that is atrocious. And I think the same thing happens all the time in our industry, too. It's just that people who cannot see the difference between a good website and a bad website are the key decision maker, or have the final say, and they'll let stuff past completely missing the fact that people who can tell the difference are going to sit on the other end of that and be like, I don't want to work with these guys.
So welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface with me, Dave Robinson and Alex.
My name is Alex.
Just one word.
Just Alex. Yeah. Or Zendaya or.
Zendaya.
Yeah.
Well, that's a cockamamie name if ever I heard one. Yes, I got cockamamie into this podcast. I said I would and I did, and you just threw it up and all I had to do was hit it.
Yeah. That's our generation's this generation's not my generation's. I'm too old now. Beyonce.
I guess you know what's really funny? Um, as an older guy, he's listening to young people talk about how old they are. I listen to Jeff Northcott's podcast, a comedian, he's in his late forties, forty six, something like that. And he just keeps, oh, I'm so old and middle aged. I'm so old, I'm so old. I'm like, Jeff, you know, he's like, you're forty six, you know, like, get over yourself. It's just like, and then you, you're what, like thirty two?
I am thirty two. Well remembered.
Surrounded by youngsters and me an ancient kind of guy.
I guess it's all a matter of perspective, really, isn't it?
Kind of is. Yeah. I mean, I might be ancient, but I've just spent the last hour and a bit. Hour and. Yeah, hour and a bit, um talking to, um journalist, the rural affairs correspondent from The Scotsman.
Mhm.
Um Katherine and she's walking around Scotland doing um, doing a sort of like looking at the rural communities and meeting people and all the rest of it, because we got the problem with the Boyne Bridge, and I've been active in trying to get the bridge sorted out. She'd got in touch with me about meeting up. So I went down the bridge and she rang me and said, uh, I'm still in Dinnet, which is like an hour and a half's walk away. So I was on my bike. So I cycled to dinner, caught up with it, and, um, we and we just walked back chewing the fat and talking about Aboyne and various things. And she was telling me about her adventures as she's now just, just embarked on this trip around Scotland as the ruler rural affairs correspondent so that she can speak with them Authority about rural affairs.
It's a good way of doing it.
She actually is from a farming family herself, I think. So she's she's already an authority on the subject in my book. But yeah, it was good. It was interesting.
Walking around Scotland is a brave choice, especially this time of year.
Yeah. That's right. And it did. And it was absolutely pissing it. Yeah. You know it's disappointing because it hasn't been yesterday. It was lovely when it was it yesterday it was because the moon was out. And you could see I think was it Jupiter or something. Right next to the moon. Was it Jupiter.
I'm not sure. Oh I'm not an astronomer or an astrologer.
You look like the sort of person who should be.
Well which one? Careful. Okay, you you tread carefully there.
So have you made notes for this week's digital marketing from the coalface, or are you just winging it again?
I would never come to this podcast unprepared, David, as you well know.
Yeah. Well, bear in mind, you know, Leslie's filming, so she's trying to get some snippets for tick tock and things like that.
So she, she can capture me sort of desperately spinning for ideas. It's uh. Yeah, no, I've got a few.
Just do your usual. You just look at my notes. From all that you've learned how to read upside down. You'll nick my ideas, steal my thunder and leave me with nothing to say.
I might be able to read upside down. I definitely can't read that upside down. Whatever it's meant to be. I think there will be a lot of crossover just because we have been well.
I have started taking my notes in hieroglyphics so that you can read them upside down or make any sense out of them.
We have been bitching a lot this week, so I imagine that there will be some crossover in our notes anyway. But yes, I do have some.
Are we going to. It's not going to be totally morning, is it? No. Well, I think people come to expect it of us, but I don't think we should just. I don't think we should just try and keep delivering it.
Informative stuff. Well, I have something that's non whingy to start us off if you want, which is mainly just.
Start us off. I was just about to say thanks for listening and look forward to speaking again next week. And with all that nonsense at the start, we've got no time left.
Yeah, well go on. Um, no, it's just a couple of days ago, um, Forbes published a really interesting article and it was just about how Gen Z, which is, you know, talking of youngsters and the generation or two below me. I just get very confused. I think it's two generations below me and they don't really use Google anymore. So Forbes are basically saying that when they charted it, it's sort of like sixty two percent of that generation actually use TikTok to search the internet and another sixty two percent use Instagram. And then how.
Did they use TikTok to search the internet? Do you mean they search TikTok?
They search TikTok, but they think that they're searching the internet?
You didn't say that.
Well, that's the thing.
I was confused.
So instead of going to.
Our listeners would have been confused.
So instead of going, I apologise. I'm very sorry.
Go on, try harder.
I think most people would have understood what I was saying, but no, it's like if you've got a question or a query, we go to Google. That's our sort of generation's thing. We Google things, but they don't. If they want to know how to do something.
I don't use Google.
Go to library, encyclopedia.
Excuse me, and then ask me, mates.
Do you have an Encyclopedia.
Britannica.
All forty volumes or whatever it was. Um, but no, it's really quite interesting. So they're basically saying that like studying people's behavior, sixty two percent of Gen Z will actually, if they want to know something, they want to find something out, they have a question to ask, they just go straight to TikTok and type it in there. And then another sixty two percent. And there is a caveat in the article that says the numbers go up above one hundred because people search using multiple things. After TikTok, they'll go and use Instagram, which baffles me, but apparently is an actual thing. And then Google is sort of way behind in the low fifties, and it's just.
Google will know this as well.
Well, Google admit it. So they say that they're they have a youth engagement problem. They say that about forty percent of young people use Google. That's it from there, like looking across all generations. But I think it's quite interesting even though. Yeah, yeah, even the people who are sort of like, I guess Gen Z will be what, like twenties now?
But I have no idea.
And, and sort of moving into positions of importance in business and sort of starting to, you know, become the, the buyers and the people that we're marketing to, but they're not using the search engine that we think they are or that a lot of people assume they are. And I guess it's really just, you know, there's that and then there's the whole thing going on at the moment with AI and Google rolling out a new helpful content update. And, you know, by, by the time this goes out, I guess probably it will have finished rolling out. But I mean, that helpful content update has been a spectacular failure for a lot of people. You know, they're saying, oh, search results now are just full of sort of Reddit and Quora, and there's no actual content on the internet. You know, you can't find any sort of articles. And it's just quite interesting because I guess Google have got these two opposing pressures. They've got all this AI content appearing that's sort of making it very difficult for them to serve up good search results. And they've also got the fact that lots of younger people are just moving away to different platforms. And I guess quite a few times this week, I've heard people say things like, oh, I've been told I should do some SEO and, and stuff like that. And it's just quite interesting because I think a lot of people who run businesses who are maybe moving towards digitalisation or thinking, how can I make the internet work for me, their first assumption is still, oh, I'm going to go do some SEO. The tactic. And actually, that might not be the best idea for, you know, in the near future. That could actually be a very poor decision. So it was quite an interesting thing, really.
What I thought was quite interesting was that at one point in that term tirade, you you said, this is quite interesting, and then went on to say something that was not interesting. Ah, here we go. I just thought that was dishonest as well. And I looked it up on tick tock and tick tock agrees with me. You were being dishonest.
Point is, I guess that yeah, tactics that have been historically a really good investment might not be for much longer. You really do need to think about these things.
The changing tide of digital marketing.
I mean, I think we're a digital marketing is always changing. I think we are at a moment of pretty, pretty seismic change. I think the landscape will look very different in a year's time. Yeah, and I may have to pay for that when in a year's time, you're like, you remember when you said everything would be different and it's actually the same, but there we go.
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of TikTok and I've said this before, um, and Leslie patiently sat over there taking photographs and doing various things. Um, you know, we do need to sit down with Leslie and figure out how we, we contribute to the TikTok ecosystem to think. Then I nearly said ecosphere. That would be new, wouldn't it? I think I have a new buzzword, the ecosphere. Uh, I think we do need to figure it out. And almost without exception, almost without exception, the stuff that I enjoy is guess what? Educational and.
Funny.
Funny, entertaining, always funny, but certainly entertaining. And this kind of magic formula. It's not magic. This formula of entertaining and interesting and educational is just a fantastic I think so, I think so I think, um, I'm thinking about the, um, obviously by the time this goes out, um, the, the work we've been doing for our client in Edinburgh who look after people who have property rental properties. Yes. Um, I, I talk about that in a roundabout way, because we do have a kind of unwritten rule where we don't talk about specific clients in our podcast. We talk about stuff we're doing for clients. We don't talk about the specific clients. Um, we were actually doing some, um, van backer van type things and, you know, that's exactly what we've done for them. We've told a really, really cool story. It's a little bit educational, it's entertaining.
It's, it's a twist on a twist common way.
On what we know that their ideal customers want to know before they, before they engage. So, um, so yeah, it doesn't have to be grandiose. This idea of entertaining and educating, it can be, it can be a five second snippet of video, you know, tick tock learns what you're interested in or what it thinks you're interested in because of what you looked at. So be careful. Yeah. Um, you know, but it throws me lots of golf stuff because I do a lot of golf videos because I'm quite a quite a keen golfer. Um, and you know, but, but it's not just that, I mean, I've learnt loads of digital marketing stuff. I've learned loads of um, what else, what else, what else. You know, philosophical stuff, stuff that makes you just kind of stop and think and um, software stuff and yeah, you know, music stuff as well, you know, guitar stuff, drum stuff. And I, I mean, I know there's, there's a lot you could say, um, about tick tock, which is not good. I mean, there are concerns about how involved in it The Chinese government will probably find out now because I'll probably disappear after saying it or even saying that. Um, so there's, you know, there are concerns about that, but you can't get away from the fact that it's just rammed with great content.
It is rammed with great content.
Fairly new to it as well. I'm like a year or so, that's.
All I think. But I do think the volume of content on there is one of the things that certainly puts me off, sort of like when I'm thinking about ways that we could start leveraging it, you know, digital marketing. I mean, there are no shortage of people in that space on TikTok doing digital marketing tips that are funny. And I think that's the same for a lot of businesses, isn't it? The hurdle is really sort of not, I want to be involved, but how to be involved in a way that actually stands out from the crowd and isn't just sort.
Of there's a lot of people on TikTok getting it spectacularly wrong, you know, they're being really serious and earnest. And I've got to be honest, I've I can now I'll swipe within a second. I can tell instantly bullshit and just swipe.
Yeah. Well, it's like LinkedIn, right? If you remember when LinkedIn was introduced, everybody was like, get on LinkedIn, do some videos, write some thought leadership. And then it really, it got stale really quickly. And you just got used to sort of scrolling past everything. And I think that's the problem. Yeah. I think a lot of businesses are wary of sort of being seen to be just chasing the, the zeitgeist, as it were.
Mhm.
Here we go. We've got zeitgeist and cockamamie into our podcast for only ten minutes in. That's pretty.
Good. Yeah. We haven't got paraphernalia yet.
Well, I mean, technically.
Oh, I just did, didn't I? Yeah. Okay. I mean, one of the things that I've got on my list, um, like I'm going to try and keep this upbeat and not ranting. Um, so one of the things I've got is a little, a little chat around the, and it's not just agencies like us, it's not just agencies full stop. It's not just professional services. I'm talking about the extra stuff that you do for your customers, whatever business you're in that they never see, you know. So when you can't capture it, you can't really report on it. So a simple example for us would be, let's say I'm working on some strategic something strategic, a strategy piece for one of our customers, and I really need somebody else's input. So I kind of play around with it for a while. And I say, right, I want some people. So three or four other people will sit around the table with me and, and listen to what I've got to say, you know, throw stuff back at me, mix some ideas up. That kind.
Of stupid you being.
Usually. Yeah. And normally. Right. They would almost certainly be correct. But that stuff you you every business does it. And I, you know, I to contradict myself. Maybe we do it more than other businesses. And I don't mean read evolution do it more. I mean agencies maybe do more of this unseen thinking and, and, and agonising that we do for our customers. And all they see is the end result, the the web page, the piece of content, the video, etc.. I mean, Leslie's again, Leslie's sat over there. I mean, when she's putting videos together and it turns into a forty five second video. You know, I think clients would kind of understand they probably took a bit longer than forty five seconds to put it together, but they might not appreciate it took six hours to.
Put it.
Together. You know what I mean? It's anything in the creative industries and is just.
I'm sure.
Difficult.
Yeah. I'm sure that architects, for example, or lawyers probably have this as well. Like any job that involves a lot of thinking.
The other unwritten rule, we don't mention our clients and we don't use the A word.
The architects word. Yeah.
Not any architect we've ever worked with has been an absolute pain in the ass.
There might be architects listening to this, I don't care.
I don't and probably lovely people, but we have never worked with a firm of architects who were actually great to work with.
Yeah. It's true.
They were always penny pinching, unreasonable, picky, impossibly difficult to work with type people.
Well, now you've really blown it, haven't you?
Lovely people.
Charming people.
But no, no, no thanks. Not as clients.
But no. But, you know, any job where there's a significant sort of cognitive overhead where you're going to spend a lot of time thinking about a solution before you can zero in on it.
Which is most of what we do.
Right. And I think people really do underappreciate that. And I don't want to make it a sort of anarchist, sort of anti-capitalist rant, but I do think it's got something to do with the fact that in general, the society we live in only really cares about things and commoditises everything. And when you get something like this where it does, I imagine it's actually must be the same in advertising too. You know, where you spend hours coming up with an idea, but all the client sees is the idea, the thing, and that's all they really care about. And they don't really understand the work that went into it. And maybe, maybe that doesn't really matter. But it's certainly quite challenging, I think, sometimes. I mean, there's been instances, I mean, not even in terms of like creative stuff, but there's been instances recently where clients have asked me to investigate something in a very offhand manner. They're like, oh, you know, for whatever reason, we've lost some rankings on this keyword or, oh, we've noticed that we're getting sort of ten percent less leads than we're used to this week. Fewer leads. Fewer. Sorry. Yeah. You're right. That was bad. But and they say, oh, just, you know, can you can you work out what's going on. And the bit they don't see then is the sort of like several hours of investigation where you sort of unpick all the different things it could be. And you look through all the stats and you try and hone in on what's happened or what is happening. And all they see at the end of it is, you know, you come back with an answer and they're like, all right, thanks. That was, you know, I asked you to do something. You did it not, you know, not that took three or four hours. And I think you're right. I think a lot of that goes unsaid because you don't really want to be the people that are saying, oh, you know, we've done a three hour meeting. Like you say, you know, we sit down around a table with, you know, a client sort of website open in front of us and spend three hours talking about it. We don't want to be the people that go running back to them and say, oh, look, look, look how hard we worked. But then it does mean maybe that people don't understand. We do it. Mhm.
Yeah, one hundred percent. Your turn.
My turn.
You've got no ideas, have you?
I've run out. Now? No.
That was one idea.
I came prepared. Can you believe an idea?
Can you believe this clown? He turns up to a podcast with one half baked cockamamie idea. Cockamamie. Twice.
Twice in one. In one minute.
Mhm. Yeah. Okay. Um, what about SaaS companies that keep pestering you to unlock feature X, Y, z? So we use HubSpot. We love it. And in HubSpot, you know, you've. They're not too bad in that when you're in there, they show you menu items with a padlock next to them. So you haven't got access to this, but others are like in your face pop ups, like unlock this feature, unlock this feature, this. I just find that it's, it's become hackneyed and tired for me again.
Again, I really don't want to turn this into a sort of anti-capitalist rant, but that is that's where we're going, isn't it? I mean, this isn't this isn't unique to SaaS products anymore. I think it definitely started there.
Don't mention BMW. Well, you mentioned it last week.
Yeah, but it's everything. It's that process.
Everything.
It will be soon. Absolutely. Will be. When you have to pay to get into.
It, everything's quite a lot.
You know it's you mark my words when you when you're trying to when are you trying to turn your light on and it's like, oh, actually, hold on. You haven't, you haven't paid for a premium Evo or OVO subscription. You mark my words. That's where we're going. No, I think it is really bad. And I think it's really bad because a lot of clients will certainly on on the HubSpot thing or the SaaS software thing. A lot of clients get very excited about buying into this software and all the things that it's capable of and how much fun they're going to have using it, and then realise that certain features are locked. And the thing that's really disappointing from my end with that is that suddenly they go from being very excited about some, you know, a new marketing technology to being very disappointed. And then you have to sort of feel that. And I get it one hundred percent. You know, if I felt like I'd been mis sold something, I'd also be fairly annoyed. Yeah, but it's not they're not transparent with it a lot of the time.
Well, we've got a new customer who we haven't actually agreed. Um any sort of fees. We haven't actually invoiced them anything. Um, but we are quite embedded in their organisation as we try and figure some stuff out in order to head in the right direction with them. And they were, they were, they came to us already having, um, a free trial of HubSpot set up. I remember with HubSpot, you can use it free of charge forever. The CRM is free and some of the other, you can actually build a website, you know, it'll have.
HubSpot logos.
Has HubSpot logos just at the bottom. It's actually okay. I mean, for like club sites and freebie stuff like that, it's fine. Um, but what they need is, um, marketing pro and they want to move away from WordPress smart move and put their website into HubSpot as well. Yeah. But in conversations with HubSpot. HubSpot have persuaded them that they need sales pro and they need, um, service. Is it.
Right? Service hub.
Service hub. Yeah. They don't need service hub and they don't need sales hub. They do need marketing pro and they do need or could could benefit from CMS. Um, and that comes down to the people at the vendors, people at HubSpot or whoever it is part or Marketo or whoever it is, they are only there to sell. And, you know, and this, this, this is a new client of ours, a really interesting business, a real go getter business guy. And, um, you know, he's already jaded with Hubspot's approach. Now, you know, they're a billion dollar company. They're a successful company. But they have been, I think something you said to me last week, they have been plagued with, um, being in a situation where there's a lot of people in the, in the platform on the platform, rather who were mis sold it.
Yeah.
And they're continuing to do that despite what they say about not wanting to do that?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the thing, isn't it? I mean, like, to be honest, I mean, you know, chat about that conversation I had with HubSpot because I think it is, I don't know quite how to frame this.
We chatted about it last week, didn't we? Or did we not in the podcast.
Because it only happened a couple of days ago. It only happened yesterday. Yeah.
No.
I spoke to.
Tuesday.
Yeah.
It's Thursday.
Well, yeah. At the coalface where we lose track of time. Um, no, I mean, the point is, I think with HubSpot and all of these companies, they talk a good game, don't they? This is the thing, you know, the, the, the sort of allure that they offer, the sort of like, oh, don't worry, you know, we have all these fantastic features. We have all this brilliant technology will usher you into our sort of world and it'll be fantastic. And you'll get to use all of these fun things. And then, yeah, the reality is a lot of it's quite predatory under the surface, certainly with a big word.
It's a strong word.
Yeah.
Predatory.
I think it is. I think it is. I think I don't.
I didn't say it.
No, I think because the thing that's challenging is I think it's unfair because it it's often targeted at people that just don't know any better. I mean, that client in particular is a really good example of this. You know, you go into this stuff thinking that you've got your eyes wide open and you very quickly find that you're sort of being, you know, being asked to put your credit card information in for this and put your credit card information in for that. And it's the same on the agency side too. I mean, we are very strongly encouraged to sell the software to people, not necessarily people who need it always, like you say, because, you know, you have to keep up with your if you want your partner status, you have to sell a certain amount.
And goody two shoes alert. We have never, ever mis sold HubSpot and we would never, ever miss Ole Miss, sell HubSpot, no matter what the attraction was financially.
But that is also why we teeter on the brink of losing our gold partner status. Because we don't really play that game.
Don't play the game, I know.
And there is a sort of expectation in our industry. And I think that's something a lot of people who, when they first start working with digital marketing agencies, just aren't aware of that. Actually, a lot of agencies are incentivised to sell you things that you don't necessarily need. And that's sort of how their business is propped up. And it's the same for HubSpot. To be fair, you know, HubSpot exists because I imagine a fairly large percentage of its user base are paying for tools that they don't use very often. And that's, that's just the unfortunate reality.
Yeah. I mean, we've rescued a few sites where they, well, you know, we've got ongoing engagements with customers right now where they're using a small percentage of what they're actually paying for inside. Yeah, it just, it just has kind of become a bit bash HubSpot this I'm aware of that.
No, I don't think it is. I think for me, it's more just a sort of like, make sure you're only going to use those tools if you're going to get the full use out of them. And I think like the thing I would say about it is that an awful lot of businesses could be bootstrapping everything, using free software, using the free versions of everything until they hit a size at which the convenience that something like HubSpot offers, you know, outweighs the, the cost, you know, and it is just a convenience thing. It's not that you need these technologies to grow your website. You can literally do it with Wix and you can.
And that's something, you know, that's, um, that's, uh, what's it, um, I've, I've pushed that point considerably over the years and I'd stand by it. But having now gone all in on HubSpot website, CRM, marketing pro, you know, the whole kind of stack, not sales, we don't need it, not service desk, we don't need it. Um, operations, we don't really need either, but we've gone all in on the bits we need. Yeah. Um, and it is great. It's seamless, it's.
Convenient.
Just kind of works. Yeah. I'm, I'm a fan. I am a fan. So despite everything we say about HubSpot, I guess what we're saying is it's a great system. We love it. We encourage people to use it. We encourage people to buy the bits of it that they need. We kind of dislike the way that it's continues to be mis sold and people who benefit from flogging it because they get a commission or they get a pat on the back. Um, you know, uh, getting businesses, sometimes small businesses to spend money they can ill afford to spend on software they don't need. And that just pisses me off.
Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's exactly it, isn't it? It's going with your eyes wide open and going, making sure that you're actually going to make good use of it as well. I think that's the other thing that's really important because, you know, the best will in the world if you're going to pay, you know, two, three grand a month in subscriptions for something, you've just got to make sure that you're actually going to put the time and the effort in because, and we found this to be fair. You know, there were times when in the in the dim and distant past, we didn't put that much effort into HubSpot and we didn't get that much out of it. We were still paying them. And I think that's the thing really, isn't it? You have to be making a concerted effort to actually leverage those tools.
I kind of liked what you just said there, but I don't I don't hear a single.
A.
Single. Yeah. You don't remember that. Is that Tom petty or. No, I don't hear a single. You know, it's like, here's our demo tape. Yeah. Listen to it. I'm not. I'm not hearing a single.
I missed.
The. Can you still get what? What's the equivalent to a single these days? Because Vinyl's coming back. Are they going to do forty five as well, or is it only twelve inch?
I don't know, I think.
It is big. You know, they've put it back into the basket of goods in the.
Of the consumer like inflation index now isn't it.
They put it they put they put vinyl back in.
Yeah. And they took dehumidifiers out and I was like.
No, they took hand gel sanitiser out because.
Because of Covid.
Because of Covid. Yeah, yeah.
It's a strange world. I don't know what people do now. I think they just release tracks. I think that's what we call them. Yeah. I have to ask the kids.
Um, what about typography getting phoned in.
Yes.
So we did some work. We did some work for a really cool company. Uh, last year. Yeah. Uh, when, when they engaged with us, they'd already engaged, um, a branding company to do rebranding for them and they've done that. Um, and I think bits of it, bits of the branding are okay. And some of it's like, why have you used a font that you can't read? Which to me seems fundamentally a bad idea. But anyway, um, but when we looked at the website, set aside, sorry, set aside funky fonts, alliteration, I haven't done any alliteration.
That was.
Good. So set aside funky fonts, um, the typography, the typography on the website. And then the closer we looked at it, just the general lack of attention to detail blew me away. Yeah. It just, I just thought, why would you invest in a cool new brand, go through the exercise of completely rebuilding your website, using this new brand, and then let let the whole thing down with some really shoddy typography and really shoddy layout. Center.
Center.
Text and centered, sprawling text.
The devs, if they ever listen to this, is.
That clusters alliteration person with a degree in English centered sprawling. No, because it sounds the same.
It does sound the same.
Is it not? Kind of pseudo alliteration?
Alliteration? Is it.
Almost alliteration? Oh.
Like a half rhyme? Yeah. It's good. Very clever. Right? You think you're on. You're operating on another level today, aren't you? Um. Center text is a crime against you.
Like balloons when they get like, a tiny little puncture and they kind of over 30s, they just deflate. I'm gonna do that in a minute. It's because I had a Red bull. I got back from my walk. I had a Red bull. And so that's why I'm bouncing off the ceiling and bouncing around a little bit. It'll all end in tears.
Some agencies hoover up lines of cocaine when they want to get us Red bull.
You know, you don't come in on Tuesdays. You work at home.
Oh, what? That's the cocaine.
That's the cocaine.
I'll have to go. I'll have to come and surprise you all.
You did. Come on. No you didn't. You came in on Wednesday this week. When you don't normally come in. Yeah. So again, it's not a rant. It's just like, you know, like, um, you've all you've done this. I know I've seen you do it and I've certainly done it. You're writing some content. It's going really well and then you just get bored with it. So you're kind of going, it's like it's descriptive, it's great. And then it just goes fizzles out.
Absolutely.
And it looks to me like that's what's happened with this probably significant investment with this website. And it is actually built on HubSpot. And, um, you know, it's kind of like when you first look at it, you think it's pretty cool, and then you start scrolling and looking in more detail. And it's like the lack of attention to detail and the sprawling centered text and text overlapping images when it shouldn't be. It's fine if it should be, but it's like it shouldn't be stuff like that. And, you know, and, and the funny thing was, I, I almost wrote, uh, email, I almost wrote an email saying like, really? Like where this has gone, but it really needs a professional touch to finish it off. Or at least it needs a, like somebody with an attention, with attention to detail to finish it off and decided not to send it and then saw a post on LinkedIn.
Being like, oh, I'm really proud of you.
So pleased with you. And I'm really glad I didn't send that email because I'm just not going to get into that.
But that's the thing that I think is really interesting because there could be a few things going on. Well, let's not lie in our industry in general, people often leave stuff until deadline day and then.
I know you.
Do. Well, yeah. And then rush to finish it. And that does happen with websites. Unfortunately it shouldn't, but it does. And that's one thing that could have happened there is that they, you know, they blew their brains out making a nice new brand or whatever, and then started building the website and then was like, oh shit, we need to get this live in a couple of days and rushed it. And that that's possible. But I don't know. I think there's something else at play that that I don't really know how to navigate, which is like I was saying to you yesterday or today, I think that I was chatting to my friend who's a mixing engineer, over the.
Sound engineer.
He's a sound engineer. You'll know he's.
A really good bloke. He's an engineer and he's sound.
You'll know the terminology better than me.
Sound engineer, I think.
Yeah.
And he does a lot of mixing. He does a lot of mastering. We were talking about mastering services, and he was saying one of the things that really annoys him is that there's an AI mastering platform on the internet that will basically you give it your track and within about two minutes it will, quote unquote, master it. Yeah. And it's bad, but loads of people use it, including like big brands like Disney and Sony. And because they can't tell the difference, they can't hear the difference. So they think, oh, that's fine in a professional sound engineer will listen to it and think, that is atrocious. Yeah. And I think the same thing happens all the time in our industry too. It's just that people who cannot see the difference between a good website and a bad website are the key decision maker, or have the final say or, and they'll let stuff past completely missing the fact that people who can tell the difference are difference. I'm going to sit on the other end of that and be like, mm, I don't want to work with these guys. Maybe they can't put their finger on why, but I think it's just one of those things. Like in music, for example, people with good ears are trusted because people say, well, I can't hear the difference, but they'll be able to, and I want them to be the last person to touch it. That doesn't happen so much in our industry. We don't say, you know, I think it looks fine, but I'll give it to a professional just to make sure.
But you must you must have been in a situation in your very short and uninformed life, where, where something's happened to, you know, where somebody where somebody has said, listen to this. And they and they go, he's, you know, he is the first thing. And you go, yeah, and, and they go the second thing, and they go, can you believe that? And you go, oh, God, yeah, that's awful. And you're like, I have no idea what they're talking about. It sounded exactly the same to me.
Yeah, but.
Guess what I'm saying is, is good enough, not good enough.
For you? But what?
But for the world in business, if your website has got rough edges, but people find it in Google. They go and visit it. They go, yeah, okay. They fill a form and they say, give me a shout. I've got a gig for you. Is that not good enough? Does it not? Does it matter if it's not perfect? I think it does. But I'm asking.
If if they're.
Asking you what you think.
If there was a Gen Z in this conversation that had studied UX design at university or whatever they call it now, they would sit here and waffle on about font sizes and micro impressions. And, you know, the split second decisions that you make that you don't realise you're making. I'm not super sort of up on all that stuff. I do think there's something to it. I think, you know, maybe not quite so much sort of waffle and buzzwords, but yeah, I think people do notice things that you might not notice. And they do form very strong opinions about things on the basis of a misaligned image.
Or would you not think it's maybe like if it's if it's okay, you look at it, you go, it's great. But then if you see it called And it's perfect. You know it's not okay. It's like, wow.
Yeah. And that's.
What is that? What is it? Is it the wow that's missing more sleep?
I think so because I think it's the same as as music, isn't it? If you listen to a track for the first time and it's been like, perfectly, like mastered and mixed and all of that stuff, and it sounds really good. You think, Jesus Christ, what an amazing track. If you don't, you know, you just think, yeah, that was all right. And you can't always put your finger on why. But that lack of wow factor, I think, is, is what will stop somebody doing business with you. Potentially. They'll look at your website. I subliminally yeah, yeah, absolutely. They're not going to consciously say, oh, that was sent to texts. I'm not going to work.
I was just about to contact you about this fantastic project I'd like you to look at. Then I found a page on your website with centered text. I thought, no, these are not the guys for me.
But but I think you can. And I think anyone listening to this will be able to do the same thing. If you think about websites you've looked at before, and you sometimes just left with the impression that this isn't a professional outfit and there are extreme versions.
Define professional.
Well, I'm talking about how it feels really.
I mean, it's I just think it's a massively overused, much abused word.
Agreed, agreed. So I guess like.
We'd like you to design our website and we want it to look professional.
Yeah. Trustworthy. Um, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. They feel like an outfit that you'd want to give a million pounds to and that they do a good job. And there are extreme examples of websites that feel unprofessional or untrustworthy or like Ling's cars, for example, that sort of thing.
Purposeful.
Personal. Yeah. I mean, that one's on purpose for sure. But but there are also, I think, just a whole load of websites that sit in this gray area in the middle where they're sort of good enough. They pass first muster, but they just you just left with the impression that, oh, I'm not really super sold on that.
But we went through that, I think with the redevelopment of our own website, which although our new website is now live, it's still a work in progress, he said. Covering covering his ass in case people go and look at it and go, well, he's saying all this stuff and he's he's breaking all these rules. Um, but.
Uh, but the rules. Yeah.
But when we were doing it in its early stages, I was looking at it and I was saying, well, because I tried to keep out of it and I was saying, you know, but I was finding myself needing to say there's something missing. And there was, wasn't there, there was something missing. It just didn't have the wow factor. It just I think it has now. It has now. It's got something special. And but although I am not a, um, a trained user interface, typography, whatever, I am not trained, but I have over the years sort of developed an acute sense of what is and isn't good from a typography point of view. And I'll look at a web page. I can almost look at a web page as a picture. Yes. And if it doesn't hang as a picture and I'm talking like the words and everything as one sort of amorphous mass, if it. You can tell straight away when it when it looks crap. Now if it's if you're in a niche where people, you know, where you. you've got something that not many other people can do. People will tolerate like an awful website because you can solve their problem. But if you're not in one of those niches, it's I think it's worth spending the time to make sure that nobody can say, well, I went to your website and like, to be honest, I couldn't even read it. The font was weird or I couldn't, you know, I couldn't. The menu didn't work on my phone or. All right.
The menu.
Wasn't particular areas.
But. Well, no, but I think you make a really good point. Which is about tolerance, isn't it? Like if you if you're the only person that provides a given product or service, your website may succeed in spite of itself. But let's not mistake that for, you know, if somebody puts your website up on one of your competitor's websites and there's just feels slightly more polished, there's every chance they'll be left with the impression that, oh, those guys were a little bit better than those guys. And you can't control for that. And you certainly can't change it after it's happened. So.
That's right.
Yeah.
Okay. You did mention just to wind up, you mentioned AI, um, like an AI tool that does the job of a sound engineer. Yes. Just just to finish off, I mean, I'm a huge fan of Grammarly. Um, I'm sure you are, but I do like Grammarly. It's all right. I find it useful. It kind of keeps me on the straight and narrow a little bit, but I was using it a few times this week and you know, using it's obviously got artificial intelligence built into it. And it just got in my way constantly got in my way, completely wanted to completely change the meaning of sentences. And I just thought, like, what is going on? Um, you know, and I'm hearing it more from other people where, you know, after you've been wowed by how quickly ChatGPT created a thousand words about blue widgets. Yeah. You know, now that this is not this is not coming from a fear angle because I could not care less if if we can't write content for clients anymore and get paid for it because AI does a better job, I couldn't care less. but it genuinely is just getting it spectacularly wrong.
I would be thrilled if we could not write content because some computer software could do it better. That would be a brilliant world to live in. I just think it's not the world we live in, and weirdly, I think in a way, this is sort of the same point we were just making. People who can't tell the difference between AI generated content and real content. Just because you can't tell the difference doesn't mean that, you know, everybody else isn't looking at it and thinking, that sounds awful. I got into a fight on LinkedIn about this yesterday, actually, where somebody had said that they sometimes used AI to grease their writerly gears, and I said, I just commented on it, and I just said there might be a direct correlation between people who like ChatGPT and people who say things like writerly gears. And she was not impressed. But I think it's true. I think it's just that lots of people can't really tell the difference. They don't like writing, they can't be bothered.
To that point. Um, my business partner, the business in Australia that I'm involved with, uh, Steve and I've known Steve since we were at school. I love Steve to bits. I was his best man. Uh, he's he's a genius of a guy. You know, he got a first class honours in mechanical engineering. He got a distinction top of the class for his MBA that he did later on in life. And he's just, like, probably one of the brightest people I've ever known. And I love him to bits, but he can't write. He honestly, when he writes, it's actually when he's explaining things. Sometimes to me, he kind of. He starts sentences, then stops and goes back and he's. And he writes. He doesn't write well, he doesn't write well. And today we talk most mornings, uh, his evening, his his afternoon, my morning. And today he said, yeah, I think we'll be okay using ChatGPT because we're looking at some blogging and stuff like that for, for, for alerts. And he said, it'll be all right because I put some stuff in and I read it and it absolutely read fine to me. And I thought, okay, it's that bad, is it? Yeah.
Yeah.
Because he thought it was okay. But to be to be fair, he did say to me like, you know, it'd be better if you're involved in it because you do. Right. Um, So you do right. My style is more sort of free flowing. It's not quite conversational, I don't suppose, but I try to keep things simple and I think I explain things reasonably well. He doesn't really. Yeah. And I hope he's listening to this because he'll shout at me next time we talk, but it's coming from a good place. It's just making that point that, you know, ChatGPT produced this content. He thought it was fine, but he actually himself doesn't write very well. So.
But hey, and isn't that really the main point? Isn't that the key takeaway here that, you know, what we're saying is if you aren't very good at something, acknowledge it and then let somebody who is really good at that thing just check that you're not.
I see what you did there.
A secret ass of yourself. Yeah. And I think that's the the thing. Yeah. You're not necessarily the best person to say this website looks shit hot. This this article is really well written, and getting other people's eyes on it can really make the difference between you embarrassing yourself and actually doing a good job.
Mhm. So speaking of embarrassing yourself, have you got any more drivel for today or I was like, you done?
I think I'm all out of drivel.
Okay, that's that's sort of ranted on a little bit longer. Um, hopefully you've enjoyed our little, um, rants and conversations around, uh, loosely around the subject of digital marketing from the coalface. Um, if you want to come on Digital Marketing From The Coalface, uh, don't bother getting in touch with us because we don't have guests anymore. We just like to do it ourselves. So, um, sorry. Um, we.
Would if you were interesting enough.
Yeah, I know that's the problem, but we would be interested in any sort of comments and feedback. And if there's any subjects that you'd like us to cover, again, don't bother sending them in because we won't cover them either.
Um, we might rant about them.
We might rant about them. That's right. If they come up. Um, so you've been listening to Dave Robinson, Alex Bussey from Red evolution. Um, hopefully we'll speak to you again, speak at you again. Sorry. Next week.
It's not a conversation.
It's not a conversation.
Yeah.
These people are just being noisy anyway, listening to us talk.