How To Turn A #FFS Website Into A Lead Gen Website, With Alex & Dave - Episode 123

So what do we mean when we talk about content in a web context, we mean content that's written to engage people, content that's written in a way that is likely to make that page of content be found in a search engine.

Because, and I think it's worth stressing this, you can write the best page of the most compelling copy in the world, but if Google can't find it and rank it for something, no one's ever gonna see it. And you see that all the time, people will, you know, pour their heart out on their web page and they'll write the most compelling thing in the world. But because they haven't actually done the job of looking at what people actually search for in Google and working out how to make sure that page shows up, it doesn't matter.

So we've already touched on this idea that what we need to do is understand our customers, understand the problems that they've got, and have a website that responds to that. And the way the website responds to that is by having content, the kind of content that is genuinely going to help people. Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. After a short hiatus, not one of our three month hiatus.

Just a three.

Week hiatus or hiatus, you've got a degree in English.

That's Greek.

Okay. Is it though? So anyway, we've had a bit of a break. I think you were off. I was off, so we've got a.

Bit.

Of summer. Yeah. So what I thought we'd do for this episode of our fantastic podcast is we might talk about some of the coalface stuff we've been doing, but this is kind of this is coalface related because I've noticed an increasing number of the kind of companies we like to work with tech companies, engineering companies starting it feels it seems to get more serious about generating business using the web, using digital marketing website, social video, podcasts, TikTok, all that stuff. They seem to be getting a little bit more serious about it, as in like, oh, we're not doing this and we should be. Which is odd because, you know, it's twenty twenty four.

Having recently replaced their typewriters with laptops.

Well, yeah, it does feel a little bit sometimes it feels a bit like that, but it's just the kind of requests that have been coming through have been, you know, we've realised we need to get serious about generating business online, you know, in, in short, how to create a lead gen website is the sort of broad subject that I thought we'd take a somewhat irreverent stroll through.

Yeah.

You know, we're not deadly serious about this stuff, but, you know, if you listen to this, um, you'll come out the other side of it. We're more informed than you are. Now, if you don't know anything about like, where to even start with the whole process of using your website or creating a website that generates leads. Yeah, but not just websites, you know, the whole kind of digital marketing piece, the whole kind of generating business online, telling great stories, you know, establishing your brand, finding your brand voice, tone of voice, all that. That whole thing. Let me just take a little stroll through that and see and see and yeah, like, yeah.

A decade or two of learning in, in an hour. Yeah, sure.

Basically just spill the beans. Um, and do ourselves out of, out of a job. Sure. So I thought we'd cover like, you know, the essentials of a lead gen website. We talk about content, obviously, which is one of the essentials of a lead gen website. We'll talk about video. We'll talk about podcasts, we'll talk about AI. We'll talk about paid search. Just kind of just a kind of a bit of a wander through the hole, because I do think that there are quite a lot of businesses out there who recognise that they don't really use the web effectively, don't use digital opportunities, don't, don't go after opportunities digitally that could be misconstrued.

You got there eventually.

I did, but.

I just know what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I just.

Think your website's meant to be an asset. Oh, shit. I'm not doing enough.

Right? You know, as opposed to the whole kind of brochure website. It's all about me. Website, all that kind of stuff. So I just thought, you know, I think we've covered this before. We've got we've got a blog post, which generally, generally, if you type how to create a lead gen website into Google, you'll find an article that we wrote quite a long time ago. We've updated it a few times. We've always been on a mission to try and help people understand the bigger picture, because I think people often focus in on, you know, oh, it's about SEO, isn't it? Or it's about PPC, isn't it? Or it's about it's about meta meta doodles or whatever. You know, they always have some weird concept in the brain. And I think if we just sort of like I say, just take a little wander through it and kind of simplify it and make it clear what the endeavor actually looks like.

So that you never go to an agency and say, can you SEO my website ever again?

Yeah. Can I have some SEO optimisation, please? That one. Yeah. So we'll maybe start with websites. Okay, so we'll try and cover some of the things that are going to trip you up and are gonna possibly bog you down when it comes to websites. So let's start with Alex. What, in your opinion constitutes a good website?

No, that's a trick question.

From a business perspective.

Uh, well, a website that a good website, I guess.

Wasn't supposed to be a trick question. It's what you get paid to do.

Yeah. Well, but, you know, define good a good website.

That's what I'm asking you to do. What is a good website from a business perspective? A website leading question.

That tells your prospective customers everything they need to know to buy your product or services. No, a website that gets in front of the right people.

Well, you're starting to get in the right direction now. Heading the right direction now. Yeah.

A website that attracts your ideal customer. These are just buzzwords. Yeah yeah yeah.

Attract. Engage. Convert. Yeah. We've been indoctrinated by HubSpot. We know, we know all the buzzwords.

Okay. Well, how about this then? A good website is a website that when somebody who is legitimately interested in what you are either selling or doing goes to the internet and types, I need help with X, Y, and Z pops up and gets in front of them and gives them some useful information that might herald.

It's no more complicated than.

A.

Sale. So I've. I run a business. I have a problem. I go to a search engine, I go to a YouTube, I go to tick tock, whatever. And I look for a solution to my problem. I find you somehow by magic. We'll talk about the magic in a minute. And I then look at your website or the video you put on TikTok or YouTube or the podcasts I listen to the podcast you create whatever it is, you know, because, you know, people are into different things, thankfully. And, um, that makes me think, hmm, these guys might be able to help me. I'll get in touch.

And then you get to.

Me is a, is a good website or a good digital presence. I'm trying to talk just now about websites, so I'll maybe try and focus on that, because I immediately wandered off into all the other wonderful things that you can do. So if we start with the premise that a good website is a website that gets found by people who are trying to solve a problem that your company has the solution for. Um, and, and furthermore persuades them that they should give you a call or send you an email or open up an online chat or send you a pigeon. Yep. In order to engage. That's.

That's a, yeah.

That's a, that's a good outcome.

I think so, yeah.

So if we accept that, is that website one that is all about me just says we, this, we that we the other. We're a great company. We've been around for twenty years. We make widgets. We provide this professional service. We are great. We are great, we are great. Is that the sort of web web presence that's going to work? Which is another leading question.

When shopping for suits, I often like to go into a shop and be told I make great suits without any evidence or back up or anything about me. Yeah. No. Absolutely not. It's a terrible idea, isn't it? But this is, I think.

But isn't that where a lot of people start?

Yeah. You hit on the right thing, which is that like ninety percent of the people use the web as a platform to talk about themselves. We've been doing this for forty years. We're fantastic. We do great things. You can trust us. Please get in touch. No, I don't think that's the right approach at all. I mean, like you say, I think the point is always to be focused on the idea that somebody has come to you trying to solve a problem, right? There's something wrong. So everything that you have to do once they hit your website is talk to them about the problem that they're facing. You show them that you understand it. Show them that you anticipate what they're going to need, that you have the solution. And don't lose track of the fact that what you are actually trying to do to generate leads is solve people's problems, rather than just sort of, as you say, using your website as a brochure platform to talk about your business or your experience. I mean, you know, all of that stuff can come into it. I mean, I was just writing a page of copy for a client where I was talking about the fact that I've been in business for forty years, but I was doing it at the end of a massive page about how their specific technology solved a very common problem. So that always has to be the focus, I think.

Okay, here's an example. If you go into Google and type in website management services.

Are you going to plug us?

You will find red evolution near the top of the search results. We, I think we we pay for a position in the paid search. And we also appear usually position one, position two in the organic search results. And when you land on that page, we say website management services because that's what you were looking for. So we reinforce like, yep, that's what this is about. And then we immediately say, would you like strategic, technical and creative help with your website on an ongoing basis? So we understand that people are searching for website management services, have a problematic website. It's broken far too often. It doesn't generate business. It looks awful, it's flaky, whatever, whatever the. But we've understood that problem and we've set our stall out and said, if you're looking for ongoing help to solve all these problems, worth having a chat with us. Yeah. And that page converts that page generates enquiries and has created some fantastic new customers. Well, not new customers. It's created, it's created. It's brought in customers over the years because we've understood the problem that they've got presented a piece of information which solves their problem and made it engaging so that they want to contact us.

But we are doing several things in there without getting too stuck into the nitty gritty. Okay, that a lot of people miss out on, which is that we are being very specific and we're leveraging a lot of knowledge about what our customers actually need, because you could just as easily set up that page and take on board the rough idea of like, you have to provide a solution to somebody's problem and just write a headline like, or a subhead even like, you know, do you need website management services or do you want your website to run really fast? Yeah. And we know from experience that that's not actually what people are looking for. That's not really what they need help with. And that's not really the problem they're trying to solve. And I think that's the real key to this. It's got to be the right problem that you're trying to solve. And you've got to use sort of what you know about your customers to write something that's very specifically calling out what they're going through, because generic stuff just doesn't actually generate leads online, I think.

But what a lot of people might do if we stick with the website management services, um, example is they might say, right, we provide website management services. So we're going to write a page which is, which starts, we provide website management services. We've been doing it for twenty years. We've got these skill sets.

Website management services are. And then write a definition of website management services and then be like.

Which we do actually on the bottom of that page in the FAQ.

But like I say, all of that sort of stuff is fine to have in there. But this is the thing. I mean, like I say, it's weird that we're having this conversation because earlier this morning I was working on a piece of copy for an engineering client of ours, a very long standing one. They have some content on their website that was written by a PR company, donkey's years ago, around all of their technical, non-destructive testing facilities. And they all start out like phased array is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, and by the way, we do actually offer phased array testing, you know, after you've gone to sleep reading it. And I think that's the thing, isn't it? You've got to, like you say, start out engaging, grab people, what grabs you. Well, it's somebody asking you a question. It's somebody anticipating something that you're feeling. It's not somebody saying, I'm such and such and I do this because that is yeah, boring, obnoxious.

I think you've got to you've got to understand, and we've talked about this in previous podcasts. You've got to understand that people do not care about you or your business. They only care about whether or not there is a solution that you provide that will help them. And that's the starting point. Now, that doesn't mean that your website doesn't have to talk about all the services that you provide. Yeah. It does. Yeah. But it also, in order to capture people in the first place, needs to tell a good story and engage them and show them that you understand their problem. And, you know, you want to have a conversation with them to help them, you know, kind of get to the place they need to be with a problem solved and getting on with running their business effectively. It's such a great about the kettle noise in the background.

It's such a great principle to start with that. I think you frame it really nicely. You know, operate from the assumption that nobody cares about your business because all the guides that you'll find online address this problem that are sort of like how to build a lead generation website. They all just start, sort of start talking straight away about how to sort of, you know, how to present what you're doing, how to present what you're selling. And I think if you do just start with the assumption that actually nobody cares. And you have to be sort of really strong on, on making sure that people feel like, okay, these people are talking to me and they understand me and they care about me and what I care about, rather than having anything to do with yourself in there to begin with.

Okay. So, so I think it's, you know, the main takeaway from that, um, diatribe is that if you want to build a website that actually helps you grow your business, then start from the position of trying to understand the problem that your ideal customers have got and, and provide them with, um, some information which helps helps them understand that you understand the problem and you've fixed it for lots of other people and you can fix it for them kind of thing, not just simply set a stall out like a shop window with for sale prices on widgets.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And that's the thing that people, traditionally, companies that we've worked with over the, over the millennia, um, Don't get. Well, that's what they don't understand. And that's why we're getting people coming to us who've invested in websites, pretty websites, um, websites with lots of information in them, but they're coming to us saying our website isn't generating any business.

Well, but do you not think this sort of speaks to a problem, both with the way that a lot of agencies think about websites and the way that generally people think about websites, which is that, you know, that approach does actually work for ninety nine, well, maybe ninety eight percent of websites on the web because they're selling a product.

Websites on the web as opposed to websites, websites.

In people's drawers, in your shoes.

In people's drawers.

Yeah. Knocking about in the boot of your car, wherever else you know. You know what?

You did invite that.

Uh, the point I'm trying to make is most websites.

Try and make it again.

Are just simply, here's a product that I sell. Here's the price. Add it to your cart. Go away. And I think it's sort of fair that the majority of business people, and indeed website agencies think that that solution works for complex B2B problems where you need a lead gen website. They're just operating on the assumption that websites sell things. This is a service. It's not that different from a product. I can sell it online. It just it's just unfortunate that that never works because people don't make complex decisions about, you know, engineering services or subscriptions to something on the basis of the price and the availability, which is all you really care about if you're buying shoes. So I get what I'm saying is I get where people have gone wrong. It's just completely the wrong approach.

Mhm. It's tricky, isn't it? You you can't get away from the fact that you do need to set your stall out and make it clear what you actually do on your website, you know, just just the common or garden. Like this is the stuff we make. This is the these are the services that we provide type pages, but even they can be made way more engaging by just thinking a little bit. The thing that I often say to you guys when we're talking about our own website is, um, is that we need to put ourselves in the position of the person coming along who doesn't really understand what we do, thinks they probably need what we do, whatever that is. And they're concerned. They're worried they don't want to get ripped off. They don't know if we're any good, you know, so social proof is a big thing there, you know, talking about companies that you work with and what those people you work with say about you, all that kind of thing. It's, you know, it's stating the obvious, but it's incredible. Again, the number of times we have conversations.

I don't think.

That websites don't say anything about how many satisfied customers they've got and the social proof that they've, they've, they've, they can.

Well, I don't think that is stating the obvious at all, because I think the general progression of going back to that whole idea of what is a good website, certainly what is a good sort of landing page experience or service page experience is, like I say, start by proving that you understand the problem and then move straight into saying, like you say, we've solved this before for other people, and loads of people miss that step. They're completely oblivious to it. They go straight from. You know, even if they do the good thing and they start with, this is the problem. And and. I understand your problem and I can probably help you with it. They go straight into how they'll solve the problem and they miss the bit where you actually have to prove that you've done it before. And I think that's sort of like the majority of people want to see that. You want to know that the, the car dealership you've walked into has sold a car before. You want to know that your estate agent has actually managed to sell a house before, before you engage with them. And I don't think it's enough to just say, you know, well, my company's been around for ages, so people will infer that I'm good at my job. I think you do actually have to put the proof right in front of people. And it is back to that whole sort of keep it simple, stupid. You know, people really do just need to see, yeah, we've done this one hundred and fifty times before. Or here are six client logos that you'll recognise or a quote or something that says you don't have to worry about whether or not we're actually any good at this, because there is some proof that we are.

Yeah, yeah. Which takes us neatly on to content. But before we do that, um, let's just touch on something we've been talking about recently, about the different ways you can build a website. So basically, there's kind of two ways you can build a website. You can install some software and pay for a server and have a geek look after it and do it that way.

Yeah.

Or you can use a software as a solution, a SaaS solution such as HubSpot, webflow, Wix, squarespace, and the list goes on. I think increasingly, nine times out of ten, going down the route of a SaaS package, you know, something, somebody else's problem to keep the servers spinning, somebody else's problem to keep the software up to date is definitely worth considering. And we, as I've said before, we come from a background of, you know, Jesus, we could actually create a content management system from scratch by coding it. But certainly, you know, we wouldn't do that. But certainly installing WordPress or Joomla or craft or any of these systems is absolutely fine. And running the servers for people is absolutely fine. But there are other solutions out there which take away all of that technical pain.

Well, and I think specifically in the context of talking about lead generation websites, that's really important because most people listening to this who have thought, oh, maybe I need my website to generate leads, or maybe I need a website, or maybe my website could be better, will inevitably resort to like WordPress first. That's in everyone's head. That is sort of like the default simple platform. You get it, you use it. The problem with building a lead generation website specifically, and I think we'll probably get on to this later, is that you have to be able to iterate quite quickly. You have to be able to change things on the fly and test different messaging, different content, and all of that stuff is much harder. If you have to go to a developer and say, please, can you change X, Y, and Z please?

I mean, in theory, you don't have to go to a developer to change content on a WordPress website.

Why wouldn't be able to do it?

Even you would be able to.

Do it even you. Yeah.

Um.

Yeah, yeah, but, but the point I'm saying is that, you know, in the context of building a lead generation website specifically, I think SaaS systems that have very simple, like, you know, nice, easy to use drag and drop editors or whatever are way more preferable than something that you're going to hard code and then have to unpick later on and mess about with. Yeah, it's sort of my assumption.

Yeah. I mean, if you want a what if you want a different explanation, you could buy, I think you can still buy Microsoft Word, for example. Yeah. I think and get it on a CD. Yep. From a car boot sale.

I don't think they exist anymore.

And install it on a.

Listeners will be like, what is a CD?

Yeah, I know we're talking about this. When I was coming back from band practice yesterday with Peter and we were talking about like CDs and Minidiscs and all of these fantastic things, which I mean, Minidiscs came and went in a heartbeat.

Absolutely. Because I never.

Obsolete so quickly. Yeah. Oh, I tell you what, just as just an aside on stuff like that, uh, I was on tick tock and this guy was talking about the how to identify the first edition of pressings of the wall.

Right.

By Pink Floyd.

This is a deep cut. This is niche, isn't it?

It is. So he was he went through it and I thought, oh, I wonder. So I went raking through my records, oh, loads of LPs. And there it was. It's looking a bit dog eared now because I used it. I played it for, for like a year. I don't think I played any other record. I just was so engrossed with it and got it out. And right enough, it is mine because I bought it when it came out, so it didn't surprise me.

Original.

It's an original first edition, a little bit tatty. So what did I do? I went on Google, said, okay, first edition, Pink Floyd, the Wall, four hundred and seventy quid for a piece of vinyl. Well, it's a double album, but I was amazed. I mean, mine wouldn't be worth that because it is.

Dog eared.

Dog eared, but you know, patina, it was a carp. Some people are into that. Oh, it's clearly been used. I mean, why would you have a record that was bought in like what, nineteen seventy eight, nineteen seventy nine that was still pristine?

You know, collectors are.

Like, yeah, I know morons.

Yeah, they'll keep it right. They'll keep it wrapped in the original shrink wrap if they had shrink wrap in those days.

But going back, if you, if you take like, buy a copy of Microsoft Word and install it as soon as you install it, it's out of date and then it'll tell you it's out of date. And if you've got a good internet connection, it'll try and update and or like we do, you could use like Microsoft three hundred sixty five or Google Workspace. We use Google Workspace. The software is always up to date. It's somebody else's.

Problem. It's on somebody else's server.

You just log in and use it. So if you think about websites, it's the same thing. If you use Wix, HubSpot, webflow, etc., you just log in and edit your pages, add new pages, change stuff, and it just works. And it's definitely worth considering. Um, you still need to hire a designer if you want a unique look and feel. You don't want to use a template. You still need to hire developers to create the original website and you know, the initial setup and everything else. Once you've done that, you can really expand and grow it without any developer input at all.

I don't want to take this off massively off track, but.

What I.

Did, can we touch on that for a second though, that template thing? Because interestingly enough, one of the things that comes up in the top ranking guide for how to build a lead generation website is, and I'll quote here how to build a lead generation website in three simple steps. Step one choose your template as if it's that simple, but I think it's worth touching on because I'm still not sure where I sit on this whole idea of sort of like if you're, if your purpose is to build a lead generation website, emphasis on build as a process rather than a sort of, you're not going to arrive at a lead gen website instantly. Our templates a good idea. Are they a bad idea? Is it fine?

Yeah, that's a really good question. Um, if you were going to get bogged down for six or seven months, getting the perfect design and then having that custom template created because all, all websites use templates, it's just whether it's a template that's created just for you unique, or whether it's a template that you can buy off the shelf for a fraction of the cost of doing, doing, you know, doing the custom way. Um, if you're going to spend seven or eight months doing that, that's seven or eight months, you're not growing your website. You're not adding content, blog posts, videos, whatever. You know what I mean? So I would say like, if you hire an agency like us or other another great agency, um, they can give you that custom look and feel that you need that's on brand and everything else very quickly. So you can then actually get on with building up the website. So don't go. Okay, here's a simple thing. Would I rather have a not great looking website rammed with great content that's got superb Google rankings and gets lots of traffic? Or would I rather have an amazing looking website that gets bugger all traffic?

Because it's taken me.

Because.

It's taken.

Me three years to build it. Then the former, not the latter.

Get something up basically.

So but you can have both. You can have a website which is created quickly, which is unique and is the right fit for your business from an aesthetic point of view, but then crack on with the whole content thing. Yeah. So yeah, I think we, I think we've covered it enough. So that again leads us neatly on to the whole, you know, the whole conversation around content. And I think, again, this is where people get confused when it comes to content. So the content that we're talking about is the content that's written in, um, response to research and strategic thinking.

Yep. As opposed to. Content you just slapped down on the page because you thought it sounded good.

You get Gemini or ChatGPT to write, you know, write me something about this. So what do we mean when we talk about content in a web context? We mean content that's written to engage people. First of all, content that's written in a way that is likely to make that page of content be found in a search engine or somewhere.

Because, and I think it's worth stressing this, you can write the best page of the most compelling copy in the world, but if Google can't find it and rank it for something, no one's ever gonna f*cking see it. That's just. And you see that all the time. People will, you know, pour their heart out on their on their web page and they'll write the most compelling thing in the world. But because they haven't actually done the job of looking at what people actually search for in Google and working out how to make sure that page shows up, it doesn't matter.

So we've already touched on this idea that what we need to do is understand our customers, understand the problems that they've got and right, you know, and have a website that responds to that. And the way the website responds to that is by having content, the kind of content that is genuinely going to help people. Somebody who's working at a firm of accountants who needs a solution to, I don't know, they're looking for a debt collection agency they can work with on behalf of their customers. So, you know, they might just search debt collection agency and then they might just stumble across somebody in paid search. They tell a decent story, they pick up the phone and job's done. But you know, if they're more inquisitive, if they're trying to find out like what differentiates like ethical And debt collection from, you know, the kind of, um, you know.

Unethical loan sharks.

That we've all seen on TV programs, that kind of thing. So maybe it wasn't a great example, but the way that that debt collection company is going to, uh, appear in the search that the person at the firm of accountants carries out is because they've understood that accountants want to work with debt collection agencies, and they understand what the accountant will want to know about their credibility, certifications, etc. they'll want to know they've got a good track record, how they approach the whole thing, you know, whether or not they operate in an ethical way, all that kind of stuff. And by understanding that, they will have created content that tells those stories and that's how they'll get found. But more importantly, once they've found that's how they'll get the engagement that they need.

And it's worth probably picking up on the point here that you don't, you shouldn't necessarily already know what that language is, what people go to Google and search when they're looking for what you do. I mean, we've been doing this for you've been doing this for, what, a hundred years? Seventy eight years, seventy eight. Yeah. However long you've been doing it. But we still regularly go away and think, right, you know, first principles, let's just have a look and see what people are searching for. Again, let's make sure that we're not making silly assumptions, because the worst thing you can do at that stage where you're like, what do my ideal customers go and look for on Google is just assume or guess, because that's how you end up down weird rabbit holes producing content that no one's ever going to read and that nobody really cares.

Which we've done. Certainly I.

Have. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think everybody does it from time to time. It's really hard to just remember that go away, you know, use tools that let you and we're talking at least I guess I'm talking about things like SEMrush, Google Search Console. There are loads of tools out there that will help you go away and find out what people search for in your industry, in your niche, what questions they have, what what problems they're trying to solve, and use them to inform everything else. Because otherwise, yeah, you're on a hiding to nothing.

So that kind of content we're talking about, where does that go on a website?

Uh, it's on pages. I don't know.

Jesus Christ. Might it go in a blog?

It might go in a blog.

So blogs are, um, misunderstood.

Yeah, absolutely.

So a blog isn't an opportunity to bore the tears off. People bore the tears off people.

Or the tears.

Or the yeah.

This is boring.

Tears. Is that right?

Well, you can bore people to death.

Bore people to death. Okay.

I don't think I don't know if people say, oh yeah, my blog, your.

Blog isn't an opportunity to, um, be a boring isn't an opportunity just to talk about anything that might interest you. It's an opportunity to share expertise and show people that you can provide the services, the products, whatever it is that they need and they're looking for.

You don't have to call it a blog either. I think that's the other thing. I think.

People often call it like Incyte.

Incyte Incyte Incyte is a sort of wonky. We wish we were a consultancy company, isn't it?

Some of our clients use the term insights.

I think. Do we not?

I think we might. I think we do.

I think we do. Yeah. Um, but no, all I'm saying is I think, you know, in some people's head, a blog is quite a hackneyed and tired thing now, isn't it? It's just like, oh, like you say, like it's updates about your sponsored work or your company outings or whatever. And you know, it doesn't do anything and it doesn't generate business and it's a slog.

Put it in the news section. That's news. Nobody will read it, but put it in there if it makes you feel good.

I guess what we're saying is that all good lead gen websites have a dedicated section that is for insights, thought leadership, things that you think about your industry that give you a space to talk about those problems and how to solve them in a way that isn't sales related.

Mhm. Yeah. I did have a pearl of wisdom there, and it's gone. I actually listened to what you were saying and forgot about what I was going to say. Um. Oh that's right. That's what it was. So one of one of the things that people get hopelessly wrong when it comes to blog because we'll, you know, we'll work with new, new customers and oh yeah, we've got a blog, we've got a blog. You go to the blog and it's literally two paragraphs. It's like two hundred and fifty words. It's one hundred and fifty words. It's maybe even five hundred words. It's just a a puddle deep piece of content that is valueless. And, but they convince themselves that, oh yeah, yeah, we do a blog. It hasn't worked for us. Or yes, we've got a blog. We don't know whether it works for us. You know, blogs are considered weighty. Well, what's that recent blog that you finished which isn't published yet?

I don't it's not published. It will be by the end of today. I think that's good. Yeah. I mean, it's nineteen minutes, so it's about six thousand words long. Yeah. But you know, it's.

A blog post that's like almost like a thin thesis, six thousand words. It's a chunk of work.

But there's a, there's a really important thing.

Not bother you that nobody's gonna read it.

Hey. F*ck you. That was my life's work. Um, no, there's something really important. You said at the beginning that I think it's worth sort of picking up on here, which is.

I never say anything important.

You did. It was quite. It was quite good. No, you broke it up into a two part process. Right. So like stage one of, of a good lead generation website is people find it. It gets found on Google. And then stage two is it tells a good enough story to persuade them. Right. And I think with blogging especially, loads of people get really sort of you break it into two parts. And I think that's really important because loads of people zero in on the first bit. They write their blog posts to get found on Google, and they completely forget that the aim is to actually answer the question that people have asked in a way that the person having googled something like, how do I what is an ethical debt collection agency, say, actually get an answer to that question and come away thinking this was quite useful.

I've had a great idea what? I'm going to write a book and I'm going to call it they Ask you answer.

Yeah, well, and that's the principle.

Have I been beaten to it by.

You have been beaten to it.

Good book. Read it.

Um, but yeah, so the point is don't get too locked in, in this idea of like we're writing, like you say, we're writing puddle thin content because this is a Google search term and we want to rank for it. We think we should be up there. That's not good enough. It has to be right content that gets you ranking. And then when people click on your website, it does actually answer their question. Otherwise you're not going to generate any leads. I cannot count the number of times that we've inherited or picked up websites where the blog is just full of this sort of like SEO drivel, where it is just sort of like, oh, some people searched for that. We'll write a quick couple of paragraphs about it. Even if you do rank first for that search term on the basis of a two paragraph blog, which you won't. But even if you happen to, nobody's ever going to convert on that. And the reason that that blog post that we published recently is nineteen minutes or six thousand words long is because it actually took that long to answer the question. And they're not all like that. Some of our blog posts are a thousand words. You know, if you can answer the question succinctly, do it.

But it's not a case of padding it out to make it two thousand words.

And this is again, a thing, a thing that a lot of people get very confused about, especially when it comes to blogging for lead gen is like, oh, I must write at least two thousand words or no one will take it seriously or I do. You know what I mean? Like, they set these weird sort of arbitrary limits. And the thing is, you're blogging for people, you know, if it's if it's not answering the question in the most straightforward way possible, then it's a waste of time. So just yeah, write what needs to be written about a subject.

I guess one of the things that you said there is puddle thin. You just could you just dig into that for me?

Is that not a phrase you said?

No, I said puddle deep. Puddle thin means nothing.

All right, you got me.

Will you apologise to the ladies and gentlemen?

Dear listeners, I'm terribly sorry for Misspeaking. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last either.

You'll be telling me that the proof is in the pudding. Which it isn't.

Is it not? No. Is it in the eating? In fact.

The proof of the pudding.

Is in the eating.

Yeah.

I'm glad we cleared that up.

I think we needed to clear it up. So content is huge in terms of helping you succeed online, but not just for your website.

Mhm.

Would you agree?

Agreed.

And what am I referring to?

Well, things like LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram.

So I'm talking about different mediums. Yes. So what the written word. Google will read.

It. Thank you for. Yeah.

You know, and thank you for it.

Yeah. But then like, for example, YouTube is supposedly I hear this a lot. The second biggest search engine.

I wouldn't be surprised if TikTok could be up there.

To be honest, no. Any of that stuff means in the grand scheme of things. But the point is people do also.

What it means to me and how I've used it is when I wanted to know when I was thinking of buying myself a transalp, just an old motorbike to have as a live outside hackabout type motorbike. And I watched tons of videos because I was researching. Is it the right bike for me? Is it a low maintenance, reliable.

You wanted to see if I could climb.

That I'll enjoy and everything else. And I watched loads of videos and those videos, you know, were from people who owned them, people that were testing them. And it helped me form an opinion. So I used YouTube as a search engine when I was trying to solve a problem. The problem being is that a reliable bike that I can use and abuse, and albeit I just push the button and use it whenever I want to, and it'll pretty much go and take me wherever I want to go. And so far it has. I haven't used it extensively, but so far it has been that bike. But I did the research using a search engine. That search engine was YouTube because the answer was visual.

Yeah.

It was. You know, if the answer to the question is best communicated visually, then you know, what's the saying? You know, a picture paints a thousand words. So a video paints a million words probably.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I think it's a really good point, isn't it? You sort of get locked into this idea that people use Google to answer problems. People use the internet generally, and that might take many different forms. And increasingly, I think with younger people especially, it is more multifaceted than just go to YouTube and ask a question, isn't it?

Yeah, I think so.

So, I mean, what were we suggesting then, that to have a good lead gen website, you also have to have a presence across all of those platforms.

It depends. So if you understand your ideal customer and you understand that they you know, the demographic, you know, age, sex, all the rest of it, and you can establish that they are likely to be the sort of people that like to consume video content. Then why spend all of your time producing blog content? Because although that might help with search rankings, it's likely going to get people going. Click. Oh, I have to read that. No.

Yeah.

Just show me a video.

Yeah.

You know, but you can use.

You'll see in your analytics stats, you.

Can combine the two things.

Yeah.

So you can produce the written content to help with rankings. But you can also produce the video content that will help with rankings and help with engagement.

Which I think is probably another really good thing to touch on. That does take us probably slightly off your list, which is that if you're building a lead gen website, working out how to efficiently repurpose content is probably quite an important thing, right? It's like, if you're gonna write a blog post, turn it into a video, you know, turn it into a series of social media posts, try and get maximum value out of everything you do, because otherwise you'll be there forever with the.

Um, HubSpot Content Hub, you can use AI to turn a blog post into, well, it's not really a podcast, but you can actually.

Get.

It. Yeah, it reads it and it actually does a decent job of it. It actually is listenable. It's not just like that. It's actually quite good. It's not monotonous.

Sounds better than if I was reading it.

What you're gonna get, you're gonna get somebody coming along and go, oh, that's a nineteen minute read. Well, they've now got an option just to push a button and have that thing read to them while.

They're washing up.

Driving the car or while they're washing up or, or as a, you know, to help them get to sleep at night. And I say, I know I'm not, I'm not, I'm not looking for a joke there. And I personally like to use audiobooks, you know, you know, put an audiobook on at night and just set the timer to turn it off in ten minutes.

Spent years of their life writing that book. And then just like, I'll use it to send myself to sleep.

But but yeah, but it's entertaining. You've got to pick the right audiobook. Otherwise you don't want to go to sleep. You just get another, give me another ten minutes. Um, so yeah, you can use that video. Not so much. Yeah. I mean, we're lucky here at medieval. We've got Leslie, who? You know what Leslie does his video. That's it. She's a video expert, produces videos, records the videos, just does the whole thing and. All right. She's not very good, you know, but but at least we. At least she's there. No, you know, it's an invaluable resource for us. Yeah. And not everybody can. But, you know, with some of our customers, Leslie will go to see them once a, once a week or once a month or whatever to record video, which then can be used in all different ways. The big video can be chopped into little videos for TikTok and, and shorts and things like that. And, you know, it's, it's go on. I'm genuinely.

Well, I'm genuinely struggling to remember the last time that I bought anything or seriously considered anything that That where there wasn't video involved, somewhere in that process, you.

Obviously didn't watch many videos about Land Rover discoveries.

I did watch loads. Actually, all of them started with the premise of this car will cost you lots of money, but and I was like, nah.

I'll be the exception.

To.

That golden rule. Oh dear.

No, but I mean, and just the point I'm making is now the majority of websites where I come away thinking, yeah, that seems compelling. That seems sound at some point in that process, they've used video. And that's not to say that, you know, it has to be a sort of ten minute explainer video on YouTube or something. It's just sort of embedded videos, customer testimonials that are a video. I think increasingly we expect as customers to see some sort of like, you know, moving, animated real things. And I think websites that don't use any video feel a little bit sterile sometimes personally.

Yeah, yeah. Like I say, we're lucky. We've got a fantastic video resource person in-house. So we, are getting better at using video. We use it increasingly and it's obviously something that we we use with our customers as well because because we've got it on tap. Yeah. Um, I think to a certain extent, we're still learning how to use it. And we've only recently started recording the podcast. And the numbers, when you look on YouTube, they look abhorrent. They're not great. I mean, but I mean, our numbers for this podcast are not huge anyway. It's pretty niche. You know, it's just a couple of guys sort of, you know, rabbiting on about what they've been doing in the field of digital marketing and trying to share information and using very plain English. You know, we're not kind of doing that, you know, six ways to do and four ways to do it and all that kind of stuff.

Ten ways to make sure your website generates leads.

We're a bit niche and we do this because we kind of enjoy doing it. Let's just looking at our watch, you must be getting fed up. Um, so let's, let's just recap, um, you, your website, the look and feel is really important. Yes, but not as important as fantastic content. Your website can look okay, but if it's got great content in it, it's almost certainly going to add value to your business and, and generate enquiries. Because when people have got a problem to solve and you look like the people that can solve it for them, they'll kind of see past the not brilliant website. Now, that's not to say, you know, having a website that looks like it was built in nineteen sixty three is going to be particularly conducive to generating business. It's not. But, you know, it's not maybe the most important aspect the content is. So when you start thinking about your website, you immediately start thinking about who's it for, what problems do we solve? Who's our ideal customers? Where do they look for content? What sort of content do they look for? And make sure that you're thinking about all those things. If you can build this lead gen website, build it probably using a SaaS system. If you don't want any technical headaches and you just want the thing to be pretty reliable, um, and think about all the different types of content, including video and podcasts. We haven't really mentioned very much. I mentioned that like with the HubSpot Content Hub, you can turn a blog post into a sort of podcast. But when it comes to podcasts, I think we talk about podcasts with customers whenever we get the opportunity and try and encourage them to consider doing a podcast. Um, what do you think is the main, the main thing that puts people off doing them?

It's time commitment. And I think the main complaint that most people have is, oh, what would I talk about? Which really puzzles me because I think the first sort of reason to do a podcast is to demonstrate expertise, you know, as a business owner or whatever a ton about your industry, your product, your market, all of that stuff is of interest to somebody, and getting it out there helps to generate leads because it persuades people that you know what you're talking about. But a load of people are sort of like, oh, I'll have to think about six episode titles. And it's like, that's not.

It's not going to be any good if you if you don't have anybody in the business who is.

Quite.

Happy just to get in front of a microphone and bullshit away and doesn't care if they get called, um.

A boomer.

A boomer on tick tock. And don't you know, they don't care what people say when they comment? I mean, you know, if you put yourself out there using video or podcasts or anything, and this is a video and a podcast, if you put yourself out there, there's always some.

Oh, yeah, somebody always knows best wet.

Rag who's gonna, who's gonna sort of get so much pleasure from, from downing you, dissing you, whatever you want to say. They just are. The world's full of people like that. So just forget about them. Um. Yeah, absolutely. Do it anyway. Because you might find an audience. You might find a tribe. I actually, when I look at the numbers for our podcast, which are not great, but I still get a buzz out of it. I still think, you know what, that's like thirty, forty, fifty people or whatever who've listened to what we've got to say. Hopefully they've found it moderately entertaining and, um, and that's, that's fine.

Yeah. Well, again, it's back to the lead gen thing. You know, you only need one person to contact you on the back of a podcast they've listened to to make it a worthwhile endeavor. It doesn't have to be, you know, thousands of people listening in every time. Yeah, it's fine to just be a sort of niche little podcast. Yeah.

Okay. So we're down the line now. We've, we've built our website in HubSpot, so it's hooked up to the CRM. We've got these fantastic content hub tools, which are helping us repurpose our content and, and a whole host of things. We understand our, our market, we understand our ideal customers. And we're in this position now where the website is starting to get noticed in search engines. It's starting to bring in traffic from people who've never heard of us before, starting to generate an occasional lead. We now need to kind of keep the momentum and keep the thing going. And that's maybe, although you could have adopted it earlier than this, is that where AI comes in?

Is it? You tell me and don't ask me questions about artificial intelligence. You should know better.

Well, all right, so if you use ChatGPT or Gemini, you can. In theory, I suppose there are others you can accelerate and upscale your content production.

If.

You use if you use it carefully, am I wrong?

No, you're not wrong at all. And I think it's a perfectly good thing to do. Like you say, it's about scale. At a certain point, you know, once you've proved the formula and you know your website is working and you know it can generate leads, then yeah, I mean, getting more content out there is good. But stress that, you know, going out there and saying, right, I'm going to quadruple the size of my website by letting ChatGPT do everything is not a good use of anybody's time. And you can quickly tank a website that's doing quite well by doing that sort of thing.

So do you think?

I think so, yeah. If you put a load of irrelevant garbage out there, people will look at it and be like, what's all this? You're putting in a different direction. You're thinking.

I'm not, I'm not, I'm, I'm, uh, I don't know. Um, I think it's possible to leverage these tools effectively as long as you don't assume that the I mean, let's face it, If you Gemini we get Gemini with with Google workspace. And at the bottom it says basically check everything that Gemini tells you because it's probably wrong.

Wrong. Yeah.

You know, it kind of tells you that. Yeah. So if you accept that and just accept that these, these tools are doing some of the grunt work for you, you then need to go in and give it your tone of voice, you know, brand voice, whatever you want to call it and make sure that the information is actually correct and make sure that person isn't dead and make sure that person did say this and all the rest of it, then I think it's okay. It's whether or not that's more hassle than just writing it yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, but I think it's, it's got its part to play. And I'm going to ask Leslie now she's going to come into the microphone and talk about this. Leslie, come and talk to me.

Um, she's still cross at you from earlier.

You can have I'll slide across and you can sit here. I want to know how AI is being used, uh, with video.

I guess the main main area would be transcription. It's been there for a long time in professional software with like expensive subscription, like Premiere Pro and Final Cut. But I guess it's just democratises the thing. Uh, other than that, I think it's, I mean, you can find AI in softwares, but you can also find AI on YouTube. So for example, AI on YouTube will help you identify specific sections in your main longer videos to just create shorts out of them instead of actually having to go through everything and maybe do a small edit, um, of it and also suggest thumbnails, for example, and stuff like that.

So that's pretty huge though. Like you upload like a twenty minute video and it tells you how to make it into short content.

Yeah, it actually does it for you. Yeah. Like it selects the, the extract and then.

Okay, well, what about this? What about a tool that you would say to the tool, I need a clip of video that shows a man walking into a room and sitting down at a table, and another man brings him a cup of coffee and puts it in front of him. And I need a video clip that does that. Can I generate that?

Uh, yeah. What's the name of this specific software? I can't remember, but you can actually ask that. And it creates this kind of video like deepfakes as well and such, but it's more for entertainment than the wow factor than actually using it for business purposes for now. But I guess we will come to that. It's just that there is a lot of copyright issues that are being raised. I guess it's more obvious in the video like sector because you have to actually pump like data, information archives from, well, films that are not copyright free. So I don't know, maybe that's why it's not, I don't know, it's not used as widely as the text.

Well, probably also because people don't read very carefully, but people do watch videos quite carefully and they'd be annoyed if it was. Yeah, I think so. I think people pick up on small mistakes much more quickly in video than they would reading.

I don't know. I'm always amazed by how people can be very gullible, even when watching things like images and videos. Like, no, that's, that's a fake. But everyone is questioning everything they're seeing now. Yeah. On Instagram, for example, which is the platform I use on social media platform I use, everyone is questioning in the comments, you can see is this AI or is it like actual live footage?

Thank you very much. And I just put you on the spot there as well, obviously. So, um, like I do with Alex every week. No, it does, it does intrigue me. And what Leslie said about deepfake. Yeah, I was, I was on TikTok and there was this app. So buy this app and I'll get this app in, in, in in-app purchases available. And basically it was a scene from Gladiator and you give it your face in a photograph. And it basically that's it. The whole scene from Gladiator, whatever angle.

For five minutes.

You.

Can.

Feel the voice and everything else.

Big strong man.

Actually your friend or your face that's in there. It is like you say. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think even to the untrained eye, a lot of deep fake stuff can be identified as deep fake. But I don't think it's difficult to trick people. I mean, that isn't what we're talking about today. We're not talking about the evils of AI. We're just talking about leveraging AI in order to create our lead gen website and content. I know you're not a fan. I'm saying, you know, I think it's got a part to play. If you're careful with it and you understand the subject, or you're prepared to do the research and check the work that it's doing, etc..

You know what? I think the golden rule here is probably just iterate, experiment, try things, do it. Because ultimately a lead generation website is, as you rightly point out, a website that's growing quite quickly. You know, stagnant websites don't generate leads. Websites where you publish twenty pages and then stop. That's not going anywhere. So whatever it takes, you know, if if turning to ChatGPT helps to sort of grease the wheels and keep things, keep things moving, then by all means, because I think the important thing is to sort of have your foot on the pedal and be sort of heading in a direction. Really?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. I think we'll we'll wrap this up now because we've got a scrum in five minutes. Um, but something you wanted to.

Well, there's just one last thing on the subject of lead generation websites that I think an awful lot of people get wrong is just don't make it difficult for people to contact you. It's like the final bit, right? It's like you spend all that time getting it up on Google, persuading people, and then it just all sort of fizzles out. Your page just ends with like a footer and some legal text. You know, it's like, let's just make sure if you're gonna set up a lead generation website, CTA's a nice clear form. Just make it really easy for people to actually get in touch. Because the last thing you want to do is to have persuaded someone to the point where they're right on the cusp of enquiring, and then make it so difficult to find your contact information that they just think, f*ck this, I'll go somewhere else.

So yeah, I mean, we didn't get into the weeds with search engine optimisation, conversion rate optimisation. We didn't get into the weeds with link building and how you help your site grow its authority and rank better. We didn't get into all of that, but the idea with this was just to at least stimulate some thinking around what your website really is. It's not an opportunity for you to stand there and tell everyone how wonderful you are. It's a way. It's an opportunity for you to show people that you know your shit and that you can help them.

Well, if you.

Want to summarise.

It, that being the most important point, I think, yeah, that you're there to help people and that you can do that. Yeah.

That's right. Okay. Uh, you've been listening to Dave and Alex on the Digital Marketing From The Coalface.

And Leslie.

And Leslie have.

To give her credit to.

Now, the others came round from the other side of the camera and added virtually no value whatsoever to our podcast, but it was worth a try. It was worth a try. She knows I'm joking. Um, okay, that's it for this episode and thanks for listening. Tell your friends how good it is. Well, we nobody listen at this point so I can say whatever I want. Please, please like us. And please give us five star reviews. I know I'm pathetic.

I'll shut up now.