Steering the ship back to CRO. We were sending paid search to a very specific page on our website. We actually, first of all said like, this isn't working. Turn off the campaign because the clicks were quite expensive. We were paying anything from fifteen to fifty quid or whatever for a click.
That won't surprise people who are in B2B listening to this because that is yeah, that is the price.
So we turned it off. We had a cup of tea and we looked at the screen and we thought, well, think about the people who were sending to that page using a paid search. What are we not saying to them? So, you know, and this is what I mean about helping people experiment with CRO, but in actual fact, what they're really doing is like finessing, tweaking a web page so that it starts to get a better response from people. And so what we did is we changed the heading on that page, nothing else, because we were getting a lot of ten second clicks and we had three solid enquiries in the two days following that change. Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Third time lucky.
Third time lucky.
Yeah. I'm not going to go into any detail about what that means. Um.
We've got the yips. Okay.
Yeah, a little bit. So, um, we have had like last week was a bumper week. Lots of good stuff happening. Uh, some amazing enquiries coming in and trips to Edinburgh and all sorts of stuff. But we're not going to talk about that. I've got a list of things which I'd like to kind of cover and, uh, and I know you haven't, so you can just hopefully add some value to my.
List and pretend I'm a part of this.
Podcast. My list. Yeah, please. So the first thing I wanted to talk about is something which, um, you know, that term talks a good game.
I do know.
That. So I'd like you to talk about, to talk about conversion rate optimisation, because I think where CRO is concerned, you talk a good game.
But fail failed to deliver.
I'm not saying you fail to deliver. In fact, resoundingly. No you don't. You don't fail to deliver. But let's just kind of in in the the most general terms possible, the plainest English you can muster from your Leeds degree in English, whatever that was.
Um, I wonder where you're going with that. Then you were either gonna call me common or light up myself. I was trying to decide which way it would go. Eh, awkward.
Yeah. So you went to you went. You went to a building in Leeds and eventually came out the other side of it with a degree in English. So talk in plain English about conversion rate optimisation and not necessarily about the specific thing that we did last week, which we, we will talk about. But first just lay the ground as to what conversion rate optimisation is.
When you put up a web page. Um, lots of people think that is the web page in its finished form. If you go through and scientifically tweak tiny things to change the story that you're telling, or to change the way the page works.
Scientifically, how.
Well you measure before.
Measure what the width of it with a ruler.
Yeah, that's it's always about length and rulers with you, isn't it always with men? It is. Everything always comes down to size, doesn't it? No. I mean, you look at things like how long do people spend on the page? How far down the page do they get before they get bored and tell you to f*ck off? As in close the window. Um, you know, how much time do they spend reading a given paragraph before the analysis? Boring drivel and move on. And then we go in and we tweak tiny little things. The smaller the better to begin with, until we see that they spend a little bit longer on the page.
Isn't there a school of thought that says, like, you should change massive things? Yes. Okay.
Um, but you said explain it in plain English. And now we're just getting into the intricacies.
I didn't say explain it incorrectly using plain English.
Well, there's a philosophical, philosophical question buried deep in there, isn't it? Which is can you explain something properly? Correctly and in plain English, I don't know. Look, the point is you change things about the page and then hopefully the metrics that you're measuring, as in, you know, how long people spend there, whether or not they convert at the end of it, they improve. And then you keep changing things and you keep getting more and more improvements. And it's a virtuous cycle. And the idea is you don't just stop and say, this is my web page, take it or leave it, but you keep working to make it better, right? So long and short.
Do you want me to explain it now in plain English?
That was. Yeah. Be my guest.
When you build a web page on your website, you want people to do something. You want them to form. You fill in a form, tell their friends you want them to do something. Generally not on every page. On some pages you just providing information and you just want them to go, hmm, that was interesting. But generally speaking, in a B2B sense, a web page is built to try and make somebody do something, persuade them that you've got the answer to their problem and they should fawn you, pick up the phone and send you an email, fill in a form, whatever. Agreed? Yes. If it doesn't do that, you dick them out with it until it does. How about that?
Well, I'm annoyed because it is a better explanation than mine. How revolting. Um, yes. No. Absolutely. That's exactly it. The key is let you say what do you want people to do? And then help them get there.
It is scientific in that or it's it's technical in nature in that you make a change and measure and see what happens as a result of that change. Yeah, it it isn't, it isn't scientific because there's no way of absolutely knowing that that thing you did was the main reason. It could be, for example, you could have had twenty people looking at the web page who were, who were the wrong people for what you were selling, and then you changed something. And then the next five people need exactly what you're selling, and they all buy it off you. You go, there you go, CRO worked.
Don't you be telling the world at large that marketing data is bollocks. Yeah. I mean, well, that's one of the key problems, isn't it? It's like you say, okay, so often when we're doing CRO or conversion rate optimisation, we do what's called an a B test, right? Or multivariate test where you put different variations of the page live and you send a percentage of traffic to each one and you see which one performs better. But that's hugely flawed, of course, because like you say, the fifty percent of the traffic that you send to page B could have been the fifty percent that would have really liked page A if they'd seen it and vice versa. So yeah, it's not really a science, but it's scientific ish, I suppose. Yeah.
And I think it's, it's a bit like search engine optimisation in that it's, it's, it's part art form. It's part science, you know, you've got, you need an inquisitive mind. What would happen if we did this? I wonder if this is putting people off. I wonder if this text is clear enough.
And that's the idea. But but I think, you know, to pick before TikTok, drag us over the coals again to pick up on something you said, I do think you're one hundred percent right that generally conversion rate optimisation is best when you're changing a when you're testing a radical change, as in, let's completely change the story of this page tells, rather than the classic example is like, oh, let's change the color of the button. But also like people get really stuck in like, oh, I want to change the images. I want to change the order of the story elements. And it's like, just, just test something substantial that you think might be wrong. And I guess that's you have to have a hypothesis, right?
So if you don't hire somebody to do conversion rate optimisation, maybe you can't afford to or you don't want to or whatever, what sort of things would you do on a page that you are using to try and persuade people to get in touch with you, because you've got a solution to their problem? B to B, we're talking about what sort of things might people consider changing.
As in things, things, levers you could pull, things you could.
Levers you could pull. For example, if you have got a page and it's finally got some search traction, it's getting found in Google. People are clicking through to your website from Google and they only stay 10s. What might that be telling you?
Some the first thing that is on the page. Probably the heading or the title or a massive picture isn't grabbing people's attention. 10s is not very long, really.
It's probably not just about grabbing their attention though, is it? It's it's about what it says to them is, this isn't what I'm looking for. Yeah. I mean, because we all do that. We all go Google search, click na bang gone.
I think that's like ninety percent of my internet searches end like that. So can I very quickly get what I want from this page? No. So I'm gone.
Yeah. I mentioned, uh, when I'm on tick tock, you know, within not even a full second has passed. And I can tell that the video is like, nope, swipe.
So it's, it's really interesting though, though, isn't it? Because I remember there's that really famous, um, stat that floats around where like people make a sort of, um, what's the right word, subconscious decision whether or not to read your web page and like less than a second. And I always thought, okay, you know, it's a stat, it's probably true. It's probably based on some research, but I always sort of thought in the back of my head, that's kind of bullshit. But then when you start sort of like browsing reels and stuff, like I use YouTube shorts a lot. It's amazing how fast you sort of condition yourself to be like, nope, nope, nope. It's it's kind of.
You know, one of the dead giveaways in video marketing. Well, yeah, it is video marketing because it's like the adverts on TikTok or, or the people on TikTok who are trying to flog me something. You know, you might argue everyone on TikTok is trying to flog you something, but some people are just trying to be funny. They're just trying to make you laugh. Videos of people who are now dead, stuff like that, like, you know, old comedians and that sort of thing. You know, they're generally, if they are trying to sell me something, they fail because I haven't bought anything and bought anything off TikTok, full stop. But and what they do is as the video comes on, they immediately start talking. There's no gap whatsoever between the video coming on. There's never kind of, you know, and then there's other ones where you get a sense that they're like, right now I've got you. Yeah. Right. Um, and I'm like, f*ck off. And I've gone, you know what I mean? It's like you're getting that balance between like clearly trying to sell me something because you're jumping straight away and then thinking that I'm going to indulge you when I don't know you and probably don't want what you're selling anyway.
There's probably a marketing lesson in there from Tinder as well. I know it was a bummer. You won't be familiar, but.
As a boomer know. You know what? I'm so jealous that. I mean, I'm in a wonderful relationship, and I'm. I'm very happy, but if I if I'd if Tinder had been around when I was like twenty, thirty, I think I'd have loved it because I was always really shy. I could never bring myself to speak to people.
Well, you'd think you'd have loved.
The opposite sex, I mean.
Until. Well, it's one of the really interesting things. So as you probably may or may not know about Tinder, there's a huge imbalance in the number of men using it, the number of women.
Using no shit.
And lots and lots and lots of men never get any matches. So there are subreddits and forums where.
They the incels.
Not really. It's just sort of like, I think it's just the general population, man. Like there are subreddits on Reddit, for example. Those are like little micro communities within Reddit that are dedicated to helping men finesse their picture so that it will strike the right color, balance, the right pose, so that women won't just immediately swipe away.
Are you pretend to be something they're not.
Well.
But sometimes what a great way to start a relationship. Pretend to be something you're not.
But sometimes it's like, just don't. Don't be in a photo with two of your friends that are better looking than you, right? Or it's like, wear a different colored shirt or whatever. But I think it's amazing because again, we're getting down to that thing with the human brain that's really good at recognising very quickly whether or not something is something they want to engage with. And it's like, you know, we're sort of like trained almost now, especially like current generations to just immediately be kind of swiping away from things or clicking away. I mean, I don't know about you, but I think that we get way more ten second visits to our website than we would have done ten years ago. I think in general, people's behavior is more sort of, uh, I don't know, lazy. They want things quicker. I suppose.
Not everything.
Not everything.
But when it comes to steering the ship back to crow. So without going into specifics, we were sending paid search. We weren't sending it to a landing page. We were sending it to a very specific page on our website. So it is kind of a landing page. It's not a dedicated landing page. It's a page that also gets organic traffic. And we were we actually, first of all said like, this isn't working. Turn off the campaign because the clicks were quite expensive. We were paying anything from fifteen to fifty quid or whatever.
Yeah. And that won't surprise people who are in B2B listening to this because that is yeah, that is the price. Um.
And so we just turned it off. So we turned it off. We had a cup of tea and we looked at the screen and we thought, well, think about the people who are coming, who were sending to that page using a paid search. What are we not saying to them? So, you know, and this is what I mean about helping people experiment with, you know, c r o, but in actual fact, what they're really doing is like finessing, tweaking a web page so that it starts to get more a better response from people. And so what we did is we changed the heading on that page, nothing else, because we were getting a lot of ten second clicks Yeah. And we had three solid enquiries in the two days following that change.
We didn't just change a heading, we didn't. Well, we didn't even change a heading. What we actually did was insert one word.
I think it was more or less.
It was one word. Yeah. But I think that like, it's going to be tricky to articulate this in a way that doesn't make you roll your eyes at me. In my mind, CRO is sort of inseparable from just like web storytelling. And this is sort of exactly the kind of thing when people are like, oh, but how do I know what to change? Or you see people all the time on like LinkedIn, for example, talking about experiments they've run that just seem sort of completely pointless. Just like, oh, we tried exchanging all the passive language for active language or, you know, just something weird and nerdy and frankly, not very useful. But really all it comes down to is, is the page that you're on now telling the right story. And there is only one story that will resonate with the people you're trying to reach. Probably there's one particular way of framing things that will be more effective than any other. And it's just, are you doing that yet? And like for us, France, for example, I think that they're heading without the word that we added, just added a little bit of ambiguity that was making people uncomfortable. And as soon as you remove that ambiguity, people think, oh, okay, I can engage with this. It's going to tell me what I need to know. And then they'll spend five, ten minutes on the page, reading it in detail and then contacting us. Whereas before they were just like, ah, I don't know if I'll get what I want from this. And I think nine times out of ten, that's all you're really doing with Ciara. You spend a lot of time working your way around to the point where you're just telling a slightly different story that resonates better.
Yeah, slightly different story. And you know, Steve Krug's book, don't make me think, yeah. AM I making people who land on this page think a bit too hard? AM I making it straightforward enough? What's on offer here and how we can help kind of thing? No.
Yes, absolutely. I just had a little epiphany. Go on. Well, there is another PPC account that, um, that I was working on this morning and I was like, there's something about this just isn't quite working. And I just when you said, don't make me think, then I realised that's exactly what we're doing is we're advertising on a keyword and we're offering the service that's connected to that keyword, but we're not explicitly spelling out. This is the product for this problem. And yeah, it's all it's always just stuff like that, isn't it? Make it really simple for people.
Absolutely. So just to wind that little, this little piece up, um, if you're getting eyeballs on a web page and you're not getting conversions, enquiries, whatever you want to call it as a result of that, and you know, you're not, make sure you're not. Yeah. Because if you are, don't change it. Um, then thinking about some of the really simple things and not worrying too much about whether, um, sorry, me watch pinging at me, not worrying too much about whether um, um, not worrying too much about what, what am I going to say? Not worrying too much about whether the buttons are green and they should be red or anything like that. Just, just concentrate on what you're saying to people. So it's absolutely crystal clear what's on offer. Yeah.
And I think as well, like one thing I would add to that is don't be afraid to, to sort of try and get into some of the deeper data. I mean, one of the things we do for clients and for ourselves too, is set up sort of custom events so that we can see specifically what people are doing. Because I think one of the key problems is that when you say, oh, my page isn't converting, there's a huge sort of swathe of things that could be happening in between. People are landing on the page and people are not converting on it. And if you don't have the data to track the events, to see how far they scroll, whether they click any of the downloads, whether they leave the page for another page, they've clicked a hyperlink in the text. If you don't know any of that stuff in detail, or even like we've seen with some clients websites, whether they're clicking through the image carousel or not, you can't really tell how engaged they are. And if you set up those custom events, if you track what people do on the pages, you can make much more informed guesses about what it is that isn't working. And it goes from, oh, you know, something in the headline isn't working to, oh, okay, I know halfway down the page lots of people are losing interest. I need to put something there, like a video or an interactive element or something that's going to keep them on the page. It's, you know, try and make things easy for yourself.
So despite the fact that there are people out there who are, who dedicated their life's work to conversion rate optimisation, actually making informed guesses is not a bad place to start.
No, I don't think so.
I don't think so either.
I think the web.
Is for us last week didn't.
It? Yeah.
It's actually do understand it a bit more than the average person. But we were still kind of like, well, it just doesn't feel like that. What we're saying to people is quite right and boom straight away.
But I think an.
Awful was it just previously the wrong person? The wrong people were looking at that and then the right people started looking at it. And even if we hadn't changed it, it wouldn't have made any difference. What do you mean, you don't know? I thought it was scientific. Anyway, a related subject. Moving on. Um, the way that people use websites, I think is misunderstood in the B2B community at large.
Well, I was about to say something. You said something earlier. You were saying, um, it's not a landing page on our website that we're sending people to. It's a web page that we send PPC traffic to, and I was going to say, what is a website except a collection of sort of individual and loosely linked landing pages, which is, I think, where we're gonna, where we're gonna come to here, isn't it?
It is, it is effectively, we often say to people, like when you're putting a webpage together, think like, who's it for? How are they going to find it? What do you want them to do when they land on it? That kind of thing. And I think what a lot of businesses miss is this idea that people come into their website might only land on might, sorry, might land on a page and might not look at any other pages we've had in the last seven days, some fantastic enquiries. And those people that were now having conversations with only looked at one page on our website and went, yep, these guys, I need to speak to them. And I think a lot of business to business organisations do not get that. They, they genuinely think that people are going to indulge them and read the home page, then the about page and then read through the services and read through the case studies. Some people might read some of that stuff, but by and large, people land on a page, often not the home page from a Google search and make a decision and either contact you or disappear. And that's the only time that you ever touch their lives.
Our website. Interestingly, our website is packed with content and at the bottom of all of our blog posts, for example, we recommend three related blog posts. The menu is really easy to use. HubSpot does. We, we, we have done everything that we can to try and keep people browsing around to make sure that they're sort of fed with useful information and that we hold the engagement. It doesn't work well. It works better than it does for most people's websites. But the point is, on average, it's still one point seven pages per visit, right? People in general do not want to sort of how.
Do you look at point seven of a page?
Well, you ask Google statistics again, the the gift that just keeps on giving. What's the Disraeli quote? Lies. Damn lies and statistics. Right. Mhm. Um, yeah. I mean, clearly nobody read point seven of a page. Um, but yeah, the point is, um, I can't remember what the point I was gonna make is. Now, the point is, the point is you can't really hold somebody's attention and it is very indulgent. I mean, we work with clients sometimes who are like, yeah, I've mapped out the whole process, like how people are going to navigate down the category tree and they'll read this page and then this page. So we don't want to, we don't want to like sort of like put all the information about this product on this page because it's a product and we want them to read the service stuff first and then get to the product. And it's, it's like, I feel bad for you, man, because you can't tell a story on the internet like that. Like it has to be quick and it has to be self-contained. And this idea that, like you say, you've got this sort of like huge tapestry of information that people will engage with is wrong.
So the bottom line is if you are attracting people to your website with helpful content, what a term that is. But anyway, helpful content that that you are hoping will get them to your website, then put in a call to action. We had a really good session. Was it last week or the week before? Julie and I and this website for this, this organisation has got loads of great content on it. And you land on the content and there's nothing on there. They haven't got anything.
Where do I.
Go? What do you want them to do next? And, you know, you might think that's fine because you're providing this content, which is educating and helpful. And it's like, but you are also trying to run a business. So you're trying to say like, if this was useful, do you want a conversation? Can we help you sort of thing? It's not pushy. It's not old school. It's just kind of that's the whole point of inbound marketing.
Well, there's two conflicting things going on, isn't there? Because on the one hand, you've got Google saying, give people helpful content, give people useful information, and they'll remember you and they'll love you and they'll come back time and time again. And that's, that's how to market. Or at least that's generally the sort of ethos that Google seem to recommend, be helpful and be authoritative and people will love you. And then on the other hand, you've got all the platforms like HubSpot that are constantly telling you that you have to stay top of mind. Here's an email marketing tool to help you stay top of mind. Make sure you post to social. And it's like, you know what I mean? You can't have it both ways. The truth is, people have a really short attention span and they will forget you almost instantly. And I think that is the reality of the situation. You'll help them. They'll think, oh, that was nice, that was useful. I don't remember. I was building a bookcase over the weekend, and I went on a website and I looked up how to do a specific measurement, and then I left, and I couldn't tell you what that website was.
You're listening to Digital Marketing From The Coalface with me, Dave Robinson, and.
Who am I again?
What's your what's your name?
Alex, I think.
Alex, even you don't know, Jesus. You must be dull. You even forget your own name.
It's the end of the day. I'm asleep.
Um, okay. I think we've kind of done that one. I've done that quite well, you know? But just kind of don't get obsessed with like, thinking about how people are going to navigate through pages and pages on your website. The chances are they're not. I mean, just go and look in your, in your stats, you've probably got GA4 installed or whatever. You'll see average visits, average pages per user, and you might be quite disappointed when you see how low that number is. Um, I'm trying to think some sites might be an exception to that, but.
Of course they would. Of course they were. But in.
General.
It has to be a self-contained story. Really?
Yeah. Okay. Another thing that came up at the coalface of digital marketing was, was somebody telling me that they, their organisation would never use a particular social media platform. It doesn't matter which social media platform. Yeah. They might not use Facebook or X or TikTok or whatever. You know, they may say, oh, we'll never use that sort of thing. Fair enough.
But it's interesting because that's either I hate the kids statement or I hate Elon Musk's statement. And there's no other way of interpreting it, really.
Well, the thing is about dictating the platforms where your brand will and won't appear is kind of counterintuitive because ultimately, wherever your tribe hangs out, then if you want to be in front of them, then you should consider getting in, getting onto that platform irrespective of whether you personally like it or not. I mean, I mean, every single day you speak to somebody who's you say the word Facebook. Oh, I don't use Facebook. I don't like it's the spawn of the devil, you know what I mean? Like, like it's somehow cool to make a statement about not using a particular social platform. And, and it really isn't it really. I mean, do I think Facebook is wonderful? Nor do I quite enjoy looking on Facebook Marketplace for old guitars. Yeah, I do. Do I need to use it because because our business needs needs me to use it. Yeah, I do. Do we need, do we do I use it because some of our clients businesses need to use it then yes I do. Yeah. It's just, you know, it doesn't matter whether I think it's wonderful or not. It has its place.
First of all, you shouldn't look for used guitars on Facebook because you will bankrupt yourself very quickly. Well ask me how I.
Know so.
Far. Yeah, but no, I think in a weird way, something strange has happened. And I think it's happened over the last sort of five or six years, or that's when I've noticed it, is that people have become very tribal about their social media platforms. It's a bit like football teams, right? It's like old people are on Facebook, Facebook's for boomers. And then like, you know, all the like Uh, all the like sort of forty to fifty year olds are like, oh, TikTok's gross. It's for little kids. And it's a very strange thing. It's like you say, it's almost like people define themselves by the social media platform they don't use, which is if you look.
At some of the content on TikTok, for example. Well, first of all, I love TikTok because I, I absorb information when it's in video format, I just do. I've always been rubbish at reading. When I start reading something, even if I'm enjoying it, I usually fall asleep quite quickly. Just kind of, I think my brain goes, oh, great, you know, and it sort of it occupies itself and lets me.
Rest.
And relax.
You'd have not enjoyed my English degree.
Yeah, I know, I, I mean, I don't wear it as a badge of honor. I really do wish I read more, but I just I've never been a great reader.
Um, but but, but.
I do like, you know, snippets of information and I, and I and, but not only that, there are lots of people my age older than me, some a bit younger than me who are doing useful things on TikTok. So this idea that it's just for the kids, I mean, I just don't think it is.
Well, the problem is it's really short sighted too, too, isn't it? It's like Snapchat. I don't know if you've seen all the stuff about Snapchat recently, but like in the drama and marketing week and all that, they're like brands that spend more on Snapchat do better or, you know, that spend more time thinking about short video content, stuff that will do well on those kind of platforms, advertising on them. And it's really interesting because the point is people get older. And if you grew up using Instagram or TikTok or whatever, fine. You know, you were fifteen, ten years ago, but those platforms have been around for quite a long time now. And those people are now the decision makers in businesses. And I think it's incredibly ignorant to just be like, oh, well, that's a kid's platform because, you know, guess what? People are still using it, you know, as they grow up and they're going to keep using it. So if you're not there, you are missing them. And I think that's the that's the rub really. Mhm.
Yeah. So I think really just the, the, um, what we're really driving out there is let, let the, um, the places where your tribe hang out dictate the platforms that you use from a B2B Marketing, you know, perspective. Don't just dismiss it because you personally don't like it. Yeah. And that's not to say that any of them, you know, you might be, you might work for a business or run a business and none of the platforms are worth being on. That's fine.
Yeah, we definitely have clients who it's a waste of time for them to be on social media, because what they sell is so weird and specific that, you know, people just don't want to shop for it. But yeah, absolutely. And I think again, probably you just have to experiment, do try different platforms.
Yep, yep. Okay. Um, speaking about platforms, um, something else that came up this week really is digital marketing from the first this week, um, is don't choose a partner, an agency to work with based on them knowing a certain type of software. Now that's not strictly the case because you might just need somebody who knows how to build a website with HubSpot, for example. That's fine. But broadly speaking, I do hear conversations where businesses are making decisions like we, we definitely want to build our site with WordPress. Therefore, we're only going to work with an agency who can build a website using WordPress. Um, we're pretty much CMS agnostic. We'll build a website with whatever's the right tool for the job despite having some favorite tools where we've got expertise.
But there are platforms we definitely wouldn't touch with a bargepole.
Well, there are, there are. But, but I think what I'm the point I'm trying to make rather clumsily is you don't make the decision as to which partner to choose, if that's the right way, which. Well, digital marketing partner, you know, by all means choose the right website management partner based on their expertise with the software that you've invested in. So, you know, don't pay somebody who's a WordPress expert to look after your HubSpot website unless they also have to be HubSpot expert as well, because that would be silly. But when it comes to the creating a platform, you know, a website and all associated, you know, assets and things don't kind of start from, we want to use WordPress, therefore go out and find WordPress experts.
I think I might get some flack for this, but I think a lot of the problem is that agencies have been trading for quite a long time on the idea that their knowledge is exclusive. You know, we're a Magento agency. We're a HubSpot agency. I mean, HubSpot especially, it's really bad. You see agencies that are like, we are a HubSpot website agency. Yeah. The implication being that nobody else can build your HubSpot website. Now, I might be speaking out of turn because I'm not a developer, but certainly on the marketing software side, none of it is that complicated. There is no piece of software in our industry that somebody else couldn't learn. It doesn't make you special, but people like to sort of really ham up this idea that like, we're the experts for Marketo. And it's like, okay, like I get what you're going for, but they're trying to create this sort of like little ecosystem where people think that Marketo is exclusive and desirable and you're the only people that can provide it. So I'm going to come with you. And it's all a little bit silly, because I think most good agencies could use most tools if they needed to. Yeah.
And, and none of this is about like having invested in, for example, the Joomla content management system. So if you've invested in that, your website's working well for your business, but you've got some issues, technical challenges with it because the people who built it for you have gone bust or disappeared or whatever. By all means, go out and choose a new partner who can use that software.
But if you're not.
Using a creative partner based on the software that they can use. Yeah, we benefit from people looking for HubSpot specialists, WordPress specialists, uh, Joomla specialists. We benefit from that because we've got specialisms across those content management systems, but don't pick us because we've got that. If you're actually able to, if you're starting over, let's say, you know, you don't, you're going to build from scratch. So it doesn't matter what it's built in.
Choose a partner that you like.
Pick the partner that you can get on with that can do a great job for you. Not based on anything else other like like the software. We did have some of that recently where it was going to be a complete new build, but they were like.
But it has to be.
But it has to be built with.
WordPress. Our tech guys say it has to be in WordPress. It's like, why? Yeah. What is that? That's right.
It just seems a little.
Bit again, tribalism, but I guess as well, like one of the things that I was, I was going to say about that is we, and I'm sure other agencies are in the same boat. We benefit from people searching for HubSpot website experts. But if somebody came to us and said, I need a HubSpot website, and they didn't. We'd always be the first people to tell them that. Yeah, I think that's the other thing is like, you should never be having a discussion with somebody where they're like, well, this is the only solution for you because that's never true.
Well, here's the thing. We've just landed a new customer. And they, their website, which they've made an investment in quite recently, is built using webflow. Now we have looked we've looked after our webflow website over a year ago. It was a it was.
Saying that fast three times.
Webflow website. Yeah. Yeah. Uh. Not easy. We looked after a webflow and what we. But but the thing is, I was totally up front with them and said, we are not webflow experts, but our devs are expert across many systems and webflow is just another system. And we yeah, there'll be a learning curve, but, but it's at the end of the day, you know, these things are still squirting HTML, CSS to a web browser. Broadly speaking, um, if they'd said we need somebody who is a Ruby on Rails expert in order to manage our current website, because we're not going to rebuild it, we would have said we're probably not the right people for that. You do need somebody who knows that system. Um, but even then you could have you could work with us for a marketing perspective and then just find a geek who can look after the tech, you know, a geek firm who can look after the tech potentially. But, um, I suppose, I suppose it's fair to say my, my thinking is a bit muddled on this because, you know, we don't suffer because of a lack of expertise in any particular system, but I just worry that people kind of hang there, hang there. What's what's what's the term I'm looking for?
Not hang their hat.
Nail their colours to the mast. Yeah.
Lots of pirate themed things. What was it you were talking about? Cuts of gems earlier as well? Yeah, it's a running theme. Um. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's it. It's just people who sort of, like, fall in love with the idea of a technology over and forget. I think, and I think probably where you're coming from on this, and I think I'm in the same place is they're just tools. They're not that interesting. The right CMS or the right content management system or the right marketing automation platform isn't going to make you rich. You can use it to get rich, but you could use any of them. And it's yeah, sure. You know, some, some tools are better suited to what you're trying to do than others. And they have features that you like. But what I find really difficult is when somebody is sort of like very in love with the idea that they're going to use HubSpot Marketing Hub and it's going to make them rich, and it's going to do all these wonderful things. And it's like, yeah, it's, you know, you're.
Using.
A tool to solve a problem.
Enquiries that come in. You know, there's been a couple very recently where people have basically said, you know, we've invested in HubSpot, but we're not making good use of it. Uh, it's a, it's a bit of, um, a disaster area when we log in, it's kind of been had lots of people messing with it and stuff like that. So I think that's most people. But I think HubSpot traded on that for a while. I think they were like, you know, buy this and it will make everything great. You know, it's like, you know, it's like buying a set of weights isn't going to build your muscles, is it? If you just leave them gathering dust under the bed? Well, I think speaking from experience.
Yeah, but I think it's, it's something in, in marketing and a SaaS tools for marketing, especially, like they all do it like Monday dot com, Marketo, they all trade on the idea that if you just buy this subscription, it will change your life. And I guess you're right, it's similar to gyms and stuff like that. Yeah. But I guess we just have to be a little bit more cynical about it and say, what is this actually going to do for me? And am I going to be able to use it properly? And like you say, pick partners, not not tools. Ultimately.
What about partners who are tools like.
Us set you up there, didn't I? Yeah.
I didn't say you were. I didn't say we.
You were feeling generous.
Yeah. Anyway, um, I've, uh, the Red bull starting to wear off, and we've got a team scrum coming up. So I think what we'll do is we'll wind up, um, this episode of Digital Marketing From The Coalface. I think we've covered off quite a few things there. Uh, and it was a case of third time lucky because we had a couple of podcasts, which we put in the bin, didn't we? Because we were kind of waffling away thinking, this is absolutely shite. Now, I'm not saying this is any, you know, this is maybe marginally better than absolute shite, but at least we've kind of covered a lot of interesting, interesting topics in a, in a, in a very easily digestible way, I hope. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I better stop there.
Before you ruin it for yourself. Do you mum ever say that to you? My mum said that all the time. Stop talking before you ruin it for yourself. I see the irony of what I'm doing now by.