Is Your Digital Marketing More Like Digital Land Fill? - Episode 131

Basically a big advertising firm called David. Their whole thing is that they use AI tools to sort of work out whether or not your advertising is hitting the mark, whether it resonates in inverted commas. A really interesting thing where they basically looked at loads of branded content on TikTok and sort of concluded that eighty four percent of it either completely fails to generate a strong positive emotions or doesn't capture people's attention or doesn't actually help people remember brands. They have this concept of sort of digital sort of landfill. Ultimately, what we're doing marketing sort of helping people find the information they need online. It only works if it is actually servicing a real need. And when it stops doing that and becomes about doing something to be there, or it all falls apart so quickly, doesn't it?

It's getting to become a waste of time.

It's a waste of money, I think is their point. However you produce this content, it is going to be a complete waste of money if it falls into that bucket of eighty four percent of branded TikTok content, that doesn't actually do anything.

So, uh, welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface, etc..

Etc..

Well, we always talk about other stuff as well, as well as digital marketing from the coalface.

So quickly lost focus.

Yeah, I'll warn you in advance as well. I just feel a bit, a bit flat. I might cheer up.

It's good that you've brought that energy and.

Looking at your notes for this podcast. I very much doubt it. They are far more extensive than mine.

Which is why you have them up on your iPad instead of your own notes.

Anyway, yes, I just thought I would start this, this whole process off with a, you know, a really upbeat kind of.

Yeah, I was gonna say you've sold everyone. They're all on the edge of their seats.

I know. Well, you know, digital marketing from the coalface. It's like we're talking about work and stuff and all the rest of it. And just like everybody, you know, some weeks you're just not feeling it really. I just I don't know what it is really. I mean, I think it's partly I end of the summer, like, it's just kind of that kind of slightly. Oh, here we go again towards the dark nights and things like that. And, uh, it's.

It's impossible not to be sort of negatively affected by all of that.

It kind of is because it's been a rubbish summer and it has been two days of great summer. Weather wise. It's been a rubbish summer. Everyone's everybody, wherever you are in the UK is saying the same thing, that pretty much the weather has been been awful. So um.

Yeah. And it is starting to get dark. I mean I noticed this last night at sort of what, half eight or something. It's dark dark dark.

Mhm.

I don't know what that is but I don't like it. Yeah.

You better get used to it. It's gonna get worse.

Yeah.

Okay. I mean, you've actually taken some time to write some notes for once, so why don't you, um, why don't you lead off?

Uh. Yep. Yeah. There you go. That was a hot potato or a bomb. Whichever way you want to look. Yeah. Um, well, I guess the first thing on my notes is this whole thing around staying up to date, which I guess is sort of relevant at the moment because there's been a lot of talk about Google updates again, um, algorithm updates, all that sort of thing. And I also read over the weekend a really dreary article on a search engine journal about how to present SEO updates to the C-suite, as in how to go to your boss and sort of get them, because.

Obviously it's keeping him awake at night.

Yeah, absolutely. It's this whole idea that, you know, you know, chief marketing officers are sort of lying awake at night thinking, how can I, how can I get my boss to care about the fact that Google's tweaked something with the helpful content update and now your blog posts on page four instead of page one or some nonsense like that. But it did get me thinking, you know, in general, in our industry. I mean, things do change pretty quickly. I think that's probably fair to say. And I think to people who aren't sort of enmeshed in it that don't sort of live and breathe this stuff, it can be quite difficult sometimes to know, first of all, like where to look. And second of all, just what to pay attention to. Because there is, I don't know, like, like, I know that, um, you know, you'll often link me to articles from sort of search engine, journal, search engine land, things like that. But like sometimes when you go through their news pages, I think sort of seventy to eighty percent of it is sort of, you know, irrelevant dribble.

Well, yeah, irrelevant dribble maybe. But what I, what I notice is you get a headline, you think, oh, this might be quite interesting. And then when you start reading it, you think this is kind of just regurgitated nonsense because it's, it's almost exactly the same thing you could have been reading a year ago or two years ago, just, you know, with a slightly different headline. Yeah. Like, oh, right. So Google still wants us to create helpful content, does it? Whatever that is, you know, it's just kind of that's, that's the only thing I would say potentially.

Yeah. And it, well, it's like this whole thing with, um, the updates, isn't it? You know, people sort of act like every announcement that Google is updating its algorithm is this big thing. But they do, you know, they do something like nearly two thousand a year that's gone up.

I mean, it used to be a few hundred, but.

They're like always sort of tweaking and fiddling with things and stuff.

You can almost think of them like, um, like a Formula one racing team. They're always trying to get things to work that little bit better. And the changes are incremental. They're just often very, very subtle and tiny. And well, is it not still the case that a lot of the things that they're doing is to try and filter out the garbage? It's to try and get the people who are trying as, uh, vociferously good word to, to beat the system.

Yeah, I think that's exactly it. And you see all sorts of people, you know, um, certainly like I really like the, um, big SEO subreddit and stuff like that, but you'll see people hanging out there and they'll like, you know, they'll read something on search engine journal and they're like, right now I need to change my SEO strategy in light of this information. Like, how should I do it? And, you know, people get really twitchy and really sort of strange about it and they sort of, you know, rushing around and trying to change everything every three seconds. But like you say, you could open search engine, journal, search engine, land on, on any month of the year, and you'd be pretty much guaranteed to see a couple of headlines about a recent algorithm update. And I just don't really think it matters that much. And I guess what I was thinking about would be quite an interesting thing to talk through is where we where we actually do sort of get news and information from how we stay up to date and how other people can do the same without just getting lost in this sort of mire of sort of terrible, you know? Yeah. Clickbait.

Ultimately, I'm a huge fan, as you know, of TikTok. I think almost every time I go on, well, every time I go on TikTok, I'll be somewhat entertained. And nearly every time I go on TikTok, I am educated. I learn something like last week, I learned that you can put an MP3 file into Logic Pro, press a button and it'll split it out into all the relevant tracks like the drums, the vocals, the guitars, the bass. It'll just split it all out for you. It's great. I didn't know it did that.

As jobbing musicians, that seems super relevant again. Um, but to be fair.

I thought it was useful because, you know, I, um, I don't know why it just caught my eye. I have got a copy of Logic Pro which I never use on my laptop and, uh, and so that was, that's just a very simple example, but I although I would say when you're talking about SEO, a lot of the, a lot of the people who are kind of popping up in my timeline speaking about SEO, I going, hey, did you know that page title elements are really important? Hey, you know, you're missing this key. Why are your SEO is not working? And you know, which is funny to us, but actually a lot of the time when we're taking, you know, when we're engaged by a company to help them improve search presence, etc., then that kind of fundamental basic thing has been missed. So, you know, maybe they're on to something by, by talking about this basic, basic stuff.

I think the other good thing about relying on things like TikTok or YouTube shorts, like I really like YouTube shorts, um, for this sort of thing is that these algorithms do generally learn what you're sort of looking for. And I find that the more I watch, certainly on YouTube, the more I watch around a specific subject, the more and more educated it gets as to what I want to see and that sort of thing. So yeah, I think that is like a really like.

A lot of people think that's creepy.

Yeah, no, I really enjoy it because, well, you know, when I'm trying to learn about something, you want to you want something that follows you on that journey from sort of like really beginner sort of basic shit to, oh, actually, you know, you've been watching these for a while. Here's one that's, you know, slightly more advanced and slightly more in depth. And I quite like that.

I'm not, I'm not strictly speaking, I'm not a musician. I'm a drummer. I do strum a guitar as well, badly. And I've certainly been educated considerably on Tik Tok around music theory and how chords are built up.

Yeah, this is exactly what I mean.

A suspended fourth means, and you know how you get a seventh and, and actually even just like learning about, you know, very, very basic stuff. It's been, it's been really enlightening. I think, again, I think I've said this before, I'm a visual learner. So someone explaining it to me in a video is a great thing.

But I bet you started off watching the shorts or the, or the reels or TikToks or whatever that were about, you know, how to sound really impressive with just three chords and that sort of thing. And it seems to learn from there quite quickly what you actually need to be.

Probably also listening to the conversations you're having when you're not.

Well.

We were talking about that earlier.

Weren't we? Yeah. Well, again, it's one of those that's one of those funny things where that's been all over the sort of headlines it was in the Daily Mail. Weirdly, I think that I first saw it. Um, Daily Mail reader, I'm not a Daily Mail reader. David, you.

Look like a typical Daily Mail.

Do I? Fish and chips are taking Christmas again. Um, no, I don't read the Daily Mail. Um, but they. So the headline was about one of the, um, a marketing or advertising firm, a large one, um, that, basically that somebody had leaked one of their internal slideshows, which was about how they can use sort of voice data to guide advertising and Facebook. And all of those people were very quick to say, oh, no, no, no, no, like, um, not, not that's impossible. But no, no, no, no. Um, advertisers, when they sign on to use things like Meta's business, uh, you know, the whole sort of advertising platform promised that they won't do that. Right.

Well that's good. Well, if they promised, well, then they won't do it.

And everyone knows you can't break a promise.

Makes promises.

Absolutely not. They pinky swear. I heard. Um. So yeah, as to whether or not it's actually a thing that happens, I don't know.

But when it comes to learning new information, because it's a moderately interesting subject that you're is, um, when it comes to learning new stuff, what are some of the pitfalls? You know, certainly for people who are maybe run a business or they're heading up the marketing in a business and they, you know, they kind of know what SEO is search engine optimisation, but they mostly don't really know what it is. So what's the danger of like potentially picking up information? That's, that's garbage because, you know, from time to time as an agency, we'll get people coming to us and saying, oh, I've read this thing and I don't think we're doing this thing. Why are we not doing this thing? And it's like, oh.

Yeah. I mean, I think sort of being dogmatic about these things is a real danger. Like in SEO, when people start learning, they really want there to be like set rules. You know, your title must be this length. And if it is this length, exactly one hundred and sixty characters or not for a title, but you know what I mean. You know, Google will definitely use it and everything will be fine. And you know, if you, if you use exactly one percent of your keywords on the page, you know, correctly, it'll definitely rank and none of that stuff's really true. I think there's an awful lot of nuance to it. I think one of the biggest things you see with people when they're just getting to grips with SEO is they do tend to think that there are sort of set rules that you can follow, things you can learn sort of magical rituals that if you do them, Google will definitely listen to you. And that is all just sort of magical thinking, really. It's, it's a nice idea, but a lot of the time you sort of deliberately ignore guidelines or rules because it's, it's better for the end user or, you know, you think long term that's not going to have that much impact. Um.

Thinking about what I was saying about, um, you know, learning about, you know, a very, you know, rudimentary level music theory, etc. on TikTok, if you think about, you know, you think about SEO and, you know, like you say, if you do this, this and this, then amazing things will happen. Yeah. So if you go back to the music analogy, um, there are, as you mentioned, four chords which are used to write hundreds of songs, some of the most well-known songs that, that you're, that you're gonna, that people listen to this. The person listening to this will definitely be familiar with. And it's those four chords. Um, and so it's quite possible to write a song using three or four chords that becomes huge. And that one song makes you incredibly wealthy and you never have to worry about money for the rest of your life. Yes. So if you, if you think about that, right. So why are we running this business? I can play four chords. Yeah. Why don't we just do that? Why don't we just write a song that becomes incredibly popular and we can just, like, it'll make us wildly, you know, incredibly rich. and and you just can't, you know, you literally they are the same chords as that song, that song and that song. But there's something else is making those other songs like work.

And, you know, actually, now that you raise it, it's something you hear about music all the time. And people will say about Taylor Swift, for example, oh, it's just really formulaic. You know, all of these songs have the same structure. It's just it's just the same sort of, well, I'm gonna make the opposite point so, you know, chill out. Taylor. Um, you know, you just recycling the same shit over and over and over again, but that's never actually true. And if it were really that easy and it were really that formulaic, absolutely everybody would do it and they can't. You know, you get the same thing in literature too. You know, people will accuse authors of just sort of like churning out the same old garbage over and over again. And it follows a formula and it's like, well, you know, if, if you think you've, you've sort of clued onto this magical trick that will allow you to produce a three minute pop song that sells, you know, hundreds of millions of records, then by all means, go ahead. But no, I mean, like you say, there's more to it. And it's frustrating because I guess we sort of circle back to that whole idea of SEO as a sort of a, a dark art or something. You need some sort of insider knowledge to do. And I'm not a big fan of that position, but there is there is a lot of nuance to it that you can't learn just by reading sort of Moses beginner guide to SEO isn't there? I guess ultimately that's what we're saying is you actually have to do this stuff and don't sort of make the assumption that because you've read something online, you understand it or you know how it works. Yeah.

But that's, that's the case not just across digital marketing, search engine optimisation, conversion rate optimisation, etc. it's the same across business in general, because what seems to have happened is, is with the, the ease with which we can communicate our ideas using YouTube and TikTok and everything else means that there has been a, you know, a exponential growth in the number of experts who are out there. And they do kind of create these like formalised list based, formulated approaches to everything like business, if you want your business to succeed.

Ten things these CEOs do.

That sort of thing, you know? And do they though? Yeah. And, and it kind of misses out the element of, of luck that comes into every aspect of our lives, whether you're a musician and you're strung a few chords together and got a bit lucky and, and suddenly you've got a hit single on your hand or whether you're, you know, um, a business person who was in the right place at the right time and saw an opportunity and took it and had a little bit of luck on their side. And then they become like a very successful business person. And oh, how did you do? How did you achieve all this? You know.

All through my like careful planning and hard work. And it's like, no, you got, you got out your sort of like, yeah, your Ford Escort at the right time and chanced into a situation that made you very rich in the long run. Yeah, absolutely.

Do you think it's the whole the whole internet phenomenon over the last, you know, twenty five, thirty years or whatever it is that's actually created these these people who are, I don't know, self-appointed gurus, I suppose.

I think it's no, I think it definitely makes them more present. I'm thinking in particular of a book that Stephen King, obviously wildly successful sort of horror author who's written hundreds of books. Um, he who released it, he released a book called On Writing, which is supposed to be like sort of how to turn yourself into a really successful writer in like, basically no time at all. So this has been going on since like the eighties 90s. And let's be honest, like sort of eighteen hundreds to people positioning themselves as experts. And the funny thing is, Stephen King writes this book, you know, all these rules for writers and all these ways of thinking about writing a novel. And the bit he missed out was the fact that, you know, pretty much everything he ever wrote was done on a massive cocaine binge. And, you know, and that, let's be honest, he owes most of his success to to hard drugs. Um, but but this is the thing I think in general, isn't it? It's this idea of sort of like, yeah, there's an element of people positioning themselves as experts when they don't really understand why they are where they are. But I also think there's something in the idea that, you know, just like received wisdom, you can't just distill things down to sort of soundbites, tell them to somebody, and then that person instantly becomes an expert. That's just not really how it works. And I think people sort of confuse this idea that, you know, that really famous saying of, of Einsteins, allegedly Einsteins, you know, if you understand something properly, you can explain it to a five year old, doesn't necessarily mean that the five year old will then be able to go on and do astrophysics. You know, it's like, just because you can simplify something down into a soundbite doesn't mean that receiving that soundbite then sort of allows you to unpack all of that and do it. And I think a lot of people think, you know, I've, I read a top ten list or ten ways to do X list. I'll know how to do it. And that's just. You actually have to learn yourself. A lot of the time.

We have conversations with. Um, customers, potential customers, where they kind of seem to think that their SEO is broken and. Like we need, you need, we need you guys to fix it. Now, on the one hand, their website can be put together in such a way that it's not helping the search engines to index it and decide whether or not to rank it, etc.. And they think like, we can fix that so that the next time they, they search for, um, you know, um, something related to their business that they're going to be number one because they paid read evolution or any other agency to fix it for them. And what's missing out of that equation, I suppose, is this, this element of, of luck and chance. And by that, I mean, if somebody somewhere along the line in their niche swap out niche, if you're listening in America for people in their niche happen to create some content that resonated and other people talked about it, linked to it, etc., you know, that one thing that happened and there was an element of luck there as elevated their sight in the eyes of the search engines to being really important. And no matter what anybody else does underneath, you're just never going to be able to get to number one for that particular search term because this page did something, something happened, serendipity. Call it what you like. Certainly luck plays its part.

Yeah. You see this.

No matter how much you optimise, no matter how many links you try and build, no matter how much content you write, etc..

Yeah. And it's getting stuck in this idea like, like I talk to clients all the time who have got sort of stuck on this thing and they're like, there's a specific keyword that they've decided they need to rank for. Normally for vanity reasons, one of their competitors is ranking for it probably has been for a long time for exactly the reasons you sort of mentioned there, you know, luck, serendipity, all of that sort of thing. And they're like, it's not fair. You know, my page is better. It follows the rules more closely. Why am I.

Even the content's even better.

Oh it's better.

Mine's better. Everything about it is better. And it might well be.

Yeah. Objectively, no. Um. Yeah. I mean, you know, you can, you can play, you can tick all the boxes. You can play by the rules better than anybody else and still not necessarily come out on top. And that's not to say that there's no point in trying, but the amount of times I see people sort of banging their heads on this brick wall and it's like, just move on. You know, if somebody else has cemented a position on a search term, whether it's fair or not, and you're not getting any traction, go somewhere else. There are plenty more keywords that your ideal customers that are not just using this one keyword to try and find whatever you're selling.

Where did this thread start? What did you start with when you when we when we went down this rabbit hole.

Oh oh. Where to stay up to date with SEO news, I believe.

Yeah. Okay. And so what we're saying is, um, you know, if, if you're working with an agency, trust them, ask them first if they're a good agency and they don't know, they'll say they'll find out. Um, trusted sources like engine land, search engine, land.

I think they're okay as long as you use them carefully. And again, don't sort of take everything they say at face value. And when they say like, you know, Google have made a slight tweak to the algorithm. So delete all your blog posts that start with the letter D, maybe think, hmm, that sounds ridiculous. I won't do that. Um, yeah, I, I, I think, you know, there are, I mean, like you say, there are plenty of good people on TikTok. There are plenty of good people on YouTube.

But how do you know? How do you know somebody's not spinning you a line so that so that they can flog you something? How do you know that they're absolutely got your best interests at heart, and they're telling you it like it's telling it like it is in SEO.

I think probably the, the best thing you can do is ask yourself, are other people saying this? Because anybody who professes to have a sort of super secret thing that they've discovered, and only they know about nonsense, Like all of this stuff is well documented. It's well known, you know, the sort of mechanisms and the way that things work are, you know, sort of they've been built up over years and years and years. So if somebody else will corroborate it, then it's probably valid. If, you know, you never hear it from any other source, then it's probably nonsense. And I think that's probably the best way to to think about these things. Okay.

Moving not so swiftly on.

Yes.

You've got.

I've got the list. Do you mean to say you have no notes at all? David?

I've been racking my brains for this, for this edition, because I went I went out to that client meeting, so I had a, I don't know, I suppose in total about an hour and a half driving, you know, there and back. Um, and so I was kind of ruminating and I think because I'm in a kind of end of summer kind of bit of a funk, I was like, oh, I don't know. I don't know what to talk about. I don't even care.

What.

I do care. I mean, I just felt like I didn't, if you know what I mean.

I'll take that at face value. We won't dig any deeper. Um, eight out of ten brands get TikTok wrong.

So this is interesting to me. Yeah. I'm interested to know where you got that information and what your thoughts are.

Search engine Journal a reputable and trustworthy source. Is it? Well, no it is. No, but this is quite an interesting one. So that basically big advertising firm called David and they do something fancy.

Where I v.

I'd because it's AI powered, you see. Um, anyway, they're a big advertising firm and basically their whole thing is that they use AI tools to sort of work out whether or not your advertising is hitting the mark, or whether you're sort of telling the right story and all this sort of thing, whether it resonates in inverted commas. Um, and a really interesting thing where they basically looked at loads of branded content on TikTok and sort of concluded that eighty four percent of it either completely fails to generate a strong positive emotions or doesn't capture people's attention or doesn't actually help people remember brands. So basically, it's a complete waste of time. Um, and I sort of can well believe it. I think if you spend sort of ten, fifteen minutes on TikTok, you very quickly realise an awful lot of brands are doing the whole sort of, and I think it's something we sort of talked about on here before or decried on here before this whole MeToo thing where it's like, you know, I should be on TikTok doing something, so I'll do something and hope that it resonates and hope that it lands. Mhm. Um, but I think it's really interesting because they have this concept, David, this agency of sort of digital sort of landfill and about how agencies, not unlike ours are just sort of filling the internet with, with sort of rubbish. And it's becoming harder and harder to see or find anything useful. And I just think it's one of those things where, you know, they're obviously talking about TikTok and they've gone through a very sort of rigorous analytical process to see whether or not this content really resonates and lands with people. But I think you could also apply it to just web the web in general, write like blog posts, social media. So much of it is just sort of drivel now. Um, and it's really hard to sort of, I don't know, I don't want to make it all sort of like deep and, and sort of mangy and miserable, but it is.

I'm bringing the melancholy.

To the.

Podcast. You can't bring it as well.

I'll try and keep it upbeat, but I think it is one of those things where it's just worth reflecting on the fact that, you know, ultimately what we're doing marketing, you know, sort of helping brands connect with people, helping people find the information they need online. It only works if it is actually doing that and servicing a real need. And when it stops doing that and becomes about being present on a platform or doing something to be there or garner attention, or, you know, to use an awful buzzword, grab a certain percentage of, of market share. It just, it all falls apart so quickly, doesn't it? It all becomes sort of miserable and depressing and also useless. And it is a thing to be careful of, I think.

If we dig into that a little bit more, is that research, research suggesting that it's as simple as if you're just me tooing and we talk talk about we've talked about that before internally, about just literally doing what everybody else is doing and hoping that something amongst all that sea of mediocrity, you come to the surface. I mean, is are they saying that that's, you know, there's a dearth of ideas. It's like, we've got to the point where if you want to know the most efficient way to pack your storage unit, then there's plenty of content out there already which answers that question and you producing more content in the hope that you'll percolate to the top of the search results so they find you and buy shit off you is getting superfluous. It's getting to become a waste of time.

Well, it's a waste of money, I think is their point. It's like you are going to spend money producing this content. You know, whether you pay somebody to film it or whether you film it yourself in the office and you spend time on it and then send it off to an editor or however you produce this content, it is going to be a complete waste of money if it falls into that bucket of the sort of eighty four percent of TikTok branded TikTok content, that doesn't actually do anything, because what they're effectively saying is putting it up there is not helping you. Like, you know, measurably, you can see that people don't engage with it. They don't care about your brand. They're not going to remember you. So, you know, what is the purpose of it? And I think it's one of those arguments you hear a lot of the time about this stuff is that if I'm there and if I'm present, then at least there's a chance I'll be top of mind or that people will remember me and they're saying categorically, it just isn't working, you know, if you're there, but your content's not memorable, people won't remember who you are, and there's really no point in doing it. Um, but I think to flip it on its head slightly, you know, we talk about the eighty over twenty rule all the time in all aspects of life. It is no great surprise to hear that sort of eighty ish percent of TikTok content is nonsense. I think the flip side is probably to look at it, you know, twenty percent of the content does land. And if you can be in that twenty percent, you know, if you can actually work at doing something slightly original, slightly engaging, it doesn't have to be sort of world changing, but it is actually possible to sort of think a little bit harder, work a little bit harder, and end up there instead of in the pot.

I can understand doing that in, in a personal context. Mhm. Um, but in a business context, it's, it's even harder or rather, it's a lot harder. It's hard at a personal level to come up with something that people go, oh, that's interesting.

Mhm.

Um, I'm trying to think of some of the people I've started following most recently on TikTok. They've surprised me, intrigued me, interested me, taught me something. And I'm not just talking about like chords and, and notes and musical theory. Um, there was somebody I was following and they called it. Now it's called something, the something heuristic you'd maybe know about it. But anyway, what they were basically saying is if you, if you ask a bunch of people, if you show people a picture of very deep water, maybe from under the surface. So you're looking at this expansive dark blue that goes into black, but you're clearly in the water. Most people think, oh, if I was in there, I'd be scared shitless about getting eaten by a shark. Right. But fourteen people a year get eaten by sharks, two hundred and fifty four thousand people a year drown. The thing we should be worried about. And she was. And there was other things she was talking about. And she and she she posts very thought provoking stuff. Stuff that won't be thought provoking for some people. But for a dimwit like me, I thought it was very interesting. And it was, you know, and she captured my attention. But she doesn't seem to be trying to sell me anything. She's just trying to develop her personal brand on TikTok, maybe. But I've had the same same experience with other people. But very quickly, just swipe past them because it's because it gets boring. So not only do we have the challenge of, of producing something that's really genuinely interesting and engaging, like having the staying power. Going back to the music analogy, um, lots of bands when I was growing up had one hit, one hit wonders. That's, you know, the phrase was coined and I think one hit wonders are probably still a thing. I can't think of any in a more modern context because I'm very old. But, you know, back in the day, there were bands who literally had one hit and they must have thought to themselves, well, this is it, we've cracked it, you know, the big time we're going to be superstars. And yet they probably made very little money. They probably went on to stack shelves in a supermarket and and it never happened for them, despite. They were absolute flavour of the month for all of, you know, seven days or something like that. So how do we make sure that we've got not only something interesting to say today, but something interesting to say next week or the week after this time next year and keep people engaged at a brand level. Mhm.

Yeah.

Even Apple can't engage me that much. I mean, I'll, you know, they'll bring out their big is it this week isn't it. They're bringing out there's a big show and oh, we're unveiling iOS eighteen. I mean, you know, actually talking like rock stars about an operating system because it now does this other bunch of stuff. And by the way, you only use four percent of what it currently does, but hey, it does all this other stuff as well. Now it's really important, you know what I mean? So even massive brands like that, they don't engage so much because, because if you listen to on TikTok, the brand boss is a good guy to follow on TikTok, you know, and he, he talks about that idea of, of, um, like even massive brands advertise because if you don't, they slip. You slip out of out of your, out of your consciousness. You know, people's consciousness and and become irrelevant.

The whole hydrox Oreo thing, isn't it?

Where sounded posh, sounded, sounded, sounded know biscuits.

So the whole thing where Oreo was actually the copycat product. So Oreo are now sort of like one of the biggest and best known sort of brands or snacks or whatever, however you want to define them. Um, and, you know, they were literally the, the sort of copycat. Um, but they managed to entrench themselves much better in the sort of public's perception and managed to create a more sort of intriguing brand and all that sort of thing. And then therefore stuck around while all of their competitors sort of dropped out of the race. And yeah, one hundred percent get where you're coming from. I think the important thing to remember, though, is that like with the best will in the world, we are not trying to make people love a brand or a company. We're not trying to make them sort of like, you know, an advocate. I really hate all of that language because it sort of presupposes this idea that people actually care enough, Like you say, you can like Apple and respect them without having an apple tattoo. And you know, knowing Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs birthday and celebrating it every year or whatever Apple fans do. Um, I think all we really have to do is sort of cement the idea that our brand is sort of useful, helpful, engaging enough for people to come back a few times.

So it's okay, maybe for a, for somebody. Well, what we're saying is when somebody encounters your brand, you know, and assuming it's somebody who might be interested in, in speaking to you, working with you, buying something off you, because we're talking B2B for the most part, you know, engineering companies, tech companies, what we need to make sure we do is make sure when people do encounter the brand, they're suitably engaged. Impressed.

Yeah.

And take it to the next stage.

Yeah. Well, that's exactly it. I think so ultimately, I mean, it's, you know, it's great if you can sort of keep up the cadence and you can keep producing really engaging TikTok videos and stuff like that. But like, doesn't, doesn't necessarily have to be. I get what you mean. You don't want to be a one hit wonder. You know, brands can produce a single piece of viral content and it's not actually going to make them any money. I think the the trick is to find that middle ground between producing enough decent and engaging content to persuade people to sort of stick around for long enough. Um, and, and trying to, yeah, getting bogged down in this idea that you have to produce something that's like sort of game changing and industry defining. I mean, I think that is a fool's errand, but equally, I think just doing what everybody else does too is also a mistake. You just want to find an angle. And well.

We had this conversation recently with a, with a, with a long standing client. And they, we wanted to go down a slightly different route, which carried an element of risk. And they said, no, let's just do the me too stuff first. Let's play safe.

Yeah. And, and what we were talking about was, was satire effectively, wasn't it? What we were saying is, you know, this is incredibly tired. Everybody is producing the same sort of content. We don't want to do that. We can make fun of it. And we can be a, you know, a bit more light hearted and a bit more sort of joking, which.

Would have been difficult.

But it would have been challenging for sure, but it may actually have worked.

He said it would be easy.

Yeah. And I go back to that because, you know, the more I think about that, you know, the client made the decision that ultimately like they were most comfortable with and that's fine. But we all know that deep down it's the wrong decision. And I think that's the thing with so many brands, you know, they end up doing stuff, especially where you've got a lot of stakeholders involved or people being very cautious. You end up doing stuff that just isn't really going to work. You know, it's just going to be boring and nobody's going to pay attention to it. And I think ultimately, much better spending the time trying to find an angle, do something slightly different and slightly unique because yeah, you know, you just sort of paint by numbers. Eighty four percent of content just doesn't do anything for people. They just scroll past it.

It sounds about right. I mean, if I think a typical, um, tick tock session for me, um, if I think about the percentage that I swipe past compared to the percentage that I'll engage with for, let's say, more than 30s. Yeah, sounds about right. Probably. But, you know, there's a lot of adverts in there. You can spot them immediately. Yeah. You're not trying. You're trying to sell to me. You're not trying to entertain me or educate me. You're trying to sell to me. Well, but surely that's it. The essence is educate, entertain. If you focus on that, you've got more chance of.

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. You know, you were recounting a story of somebody you remembered, partially because what they were saying was interesting, but also because they weren't overtly trying to sell to you. And I think this is the thing, you know, so many people will write a fantastic blog post and then neuter it by making a sort of sales pitch at the end of it. And it's like, if you just sort of, you know, if you just hold the line and just give people useful and engaging content without being a salesman for five minutes, people will actually be receptive to what you're saying. And if she pops back up in your feed, not just you, I think everybody, I think.

You get that because I don't really do YouTube shorts. You could you get it on there as well? Yeah.

one hundred percent. There are people on there who are like overtly there to sell you something and they cannot get through.

Changed my life. You know, it's it's like.

It's worse than that, man. It's like somebody will give you like legitimately interesting or useful information and then at the end of it just completely ruin the whole thing by being like, and if you want more of these helpful tips, you can subscribe to X, Y, and Z. And it's like, well, I'm not gonna do that. And you've kind of spoilt it. You know, it's like just, you know, just have faith in your audience. If you're interesting and engaging, people will want to engage with you. And if you have to ask them or tell them to, you're doing something very wrong.

But what is it about that? I mean, a hull, is it like some green gunk you drink and it makes you like.

It's brown gunk, actually.

But yeah, so like on TikTok, you know, you're scrolling along and this thing you scroll and it's like, I've been drinking this stuff now for three weeks and.

Yeah, well.

It's, you know, I'm not in the and like, you know, in other instances, the and like, and what tell me more. But in that it's just like, no, yeah. Why, why are we, why are we so dismissive? Because you could be sold to and entertained and educated, surely? Well, I think is it like you can't have that holy Trinity?

Well, no, I think you definitely can. I think part of the problem is that the human brain is an incredibly sophisticated pattern recognition machine. And what happens when you engage with the sort of content is you very quickly learn that people who talk a bit fast and are a bit breathy and, and have something really cool to reveal to you, are probably going to sell you something very boring and mundane, and you learn that. And this is the problem. When you first started using TikTok, you probably wouldn't have scrolled past that ad, but you know, it's just it's just down to like crap marketers ultimately, you know, you watch the rubbish content, you learn to recognise the sort of hallmarks of it.

It's so desperate now that you can be scrolling along and it's like you scroll onto a video and it's like, don't scroll away. It's the first thing they say, guess what?

Guess what? Yeah. And you'll find this really interesting.

Said nobody starts speaking at a million miles an hour, like with no gap at all. You know, I think it'd be interesting to experiment with, you know, a video where you scroll onto it and you just get like.

Yeah, but we.

I was doing.

It. Sorry.

I was actually doing the, I was doing.

Do the video.

Advertising. You know, carry on.

We've talked about this with our podcast too. You know, we know that the more controversial and edgy titles generally perform slightly better if we want it to be really cynical. And we just wanted to drum up numbers to show an investor or show the boss that we're doing a good job or whatever. We would continue down that trend. And, you know, the, the that's.

Just like clickbait, isn't.

It? Yeah, exactly.

Clickbait, like ninety nine point nine percent of the time. Clickbait disappoints. It serves its purpose. All the exciting bit is in the headline.

Yeah. Well, this is the problem, isn't it? It serves its purpose the first couple of times. But people get wise to this stuff so quickly. And this is the thing, it's like, you can, I think with marketing, you can either try and do that short term shit where you just like clickbait headlines, you know, really, really excited. TikTok video. Or you can actually take a long term sort of pragmatic approach and say, okay, if I actually want to build an audience that gives a f*ck, I'm just going to have to be consistently sort of interesting and lose the gimmicks. It's very hard. It's really hard.

It really is hard. Even the non selling content producers that I like, you know, it doesn't take long before I'm swiping past them.

Yeah.

You know. Yeah. That's that's very good person A but yeah, you know, not in the mood right now. Yeah. I need something. I need another fix. You know, it's it's it's a drug isn't it really?

It is. And and I think part of that's to do with like the, the problem with TikTok and all of these platforms, sort of like they, they, um, sort of hype up this idea that, you know, you're just around the corner, you're just a couple of swipes away from learning something else really interesting. And it does make audiences very transient. I think that's very true. But ultimately, you're probably not the target market for a lot of these people.

Yeah, I guess that's where podcasts come in, because the podcasts I listen to are generally long form forty, fifty minutes, an hour kind of thing, and I pretty much stick with them. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.

Um well, yeah. And I think like podcasts are a really good example because like I, I'm the same, I have like a pool of five or six podcasts that I will routinely listen to. And I don't really go outside of that now because I get annoyed when I try something rubbish. But that again, is all based in this idea that I'm going to spend an hour listening to this, and I want to invest my time wisely on TikTok. I'm much more tolerant of nonsense because.

I.

20s right. So it's there's probably an argument to be made there as well for people sort of investing more in, in, you know, sort of long form, interesting, engaging marketing because you can get very tied up with TikTok and trying to be interesting and grab people's attention.

But yeah, I mean, if anybody who's listening to these podcasts that we do, you know, they might think we're just a couple of idiots, you know, droning, droning on about whatever. Maybe we're giving them a sort of window that we're showing them kind of who we are. They kind of would know what to expect. If they decided to engage with us, that we would be, you know, we we'd be thoughtful. We'd be we'd be looking for answers. We'd be not just me to ING and producing garbage sort of thing. Yeah. You know. Um, okay. What else have you got on your list? I'm sticking to your list today.

Um, well, the last one, it's a dead simple. Last one? Yeah. It's just about.

God for that.

You can leave whenever you like, you know.

Don't tempt.

Me. Um, it's just based on a few conversations I've had with clients over the last couple of weeks where relatively new engagements, um, where they've, they've basically said, oh, like, I've been a bit embarrassed to ask, but I don't know where to find X or I don't know where to look for X or I can't really tell if Y is working, you know, and it's this whole idea that, you know, people are sort of afraid to push their agency too hard or afraid to ask sort of difficult questions or afraid to sort of like shine a light on stuff and say, but is it really working? And can you show me proof of that? And like, I don't like that. I think if you come to me at the beginning of my career and sort of offered me that as an option, instead of clients being awkward and asking difficult questions, I'd have said yes, but I'm sort of at a point in my career now where, like, I really do welcome those questions. And I think it's probably worth reiterating here that, you know, for people listening who do employ an agency or a consultant or an expert of any kind, like really do not ever be embarrassed or afraid to ask questions.

Smart people ask dumb questions.

All the time. And like, there's absolutely nothing wrong with like, not knowing where to find data or not really understanding what the data means or saying like, is this actually a good thing or a bad thing? And I think if you are working with a decent agency and you do ask those questions, you start really sort of stimulating an interesting conversations. And it's, it's not the case that if you don't ask those questions, agencies won't do good work, but it is probably the case that you'll get a lot more out of your engagement if you're actually sort of asking probing questions and saying, have.

You got any examples of.

Well, it was about.

People being embarrassed to ask something.

Yeah. It was about. Well, yes, but I won't name names because that's a bit mean.

We don't name names on this podcast. Yeah we do. Leslie has to bleep out.

Somebody trying to find. So basically, um, HubSpot and platforms like that will often tell you how many conversions you've had from a PPC campaign. But unless you know how to sort of drill into that, you can't really tell if the conversions were worthwhile or not. So the question was around, basically, they were sort of like seeing this thing that said, you know, seven conversions this week, five conversions last week. And they were saying, well, okay, on the surface, this looks really good, but I don't really want to ask the sort of probing question of like, what does this really mean? Like, are they good conversions? Um, and when they did ask, it was a really good opportunity to then sort of drill into that data and sort of bring up each conversion and say, okay, you know, they came in on this page, they did these actions. This is what they wrote in their form submission. Um, you know, is, is that a good conversion? Has it gone anywhere? Yes or no? And it creates a dialogue. It lets you explore things. And by the end of the conversation, they were reassured that, yes, they were good conversions. And I knew a little bit more about the sort of process and what was going on inside the business, and whether or not an enquiry that asked for this product or service was likely to turn into money or not. Um, and ultimately, I think you just like everybody learns more by just sort of being, you know, the client thought they were being a bit difficult and a bit awkward, but ultimately you learn way more about everything. If you actually do just sort of ask those questions and say, you know, well, you know, show me what this actually means.

I think clients who ask questions we love. Yeah, absolutely. And the opposite side of that is clients who try to tell you how to do your job.

Yeah.

We don't love. Um, now, that's not to say that we are not open minded enough to recognise that a client may have had a conversation, read something that we weren't aware of, and they share some information, say, I read this, what do you think? That sort of thing. That's fantastic. Of course, we're not across everything just because we run an agency. But at the same time, you know, we have over the years experienced clients who wear the granny and they try and teach us to suck eggs. You don't we? We do get that. And that that just that does annoy.

There are like, there are clients, there are definitely like most of our clients have more like domain specific, industry specific knowledge than us. Absolutely.

Of course they do.

Yeah. A couple of them maybe know things about marketing that I don't like for sure. But yeah, the majority of the time, like they're not equipped to special insights. And I think part of the problem for me is that a lot of that stuff often comes from a place of like deep insecurity, and I find that quite difficult to deal with.

Now you're talking about clients who clearly don't trust us.

Yeah. And they'll tell you how to do your job. And it's like, because they're trying desperately in their heads to make themselves feel better about the fact, well, I've told them, I've told them to do it like this. So if they don't or if something goes wrong, it's not my fault, you know? And it's that whole idea that if you're just very sort of dogmatic and you come to people and you say, well, I read this in Search Engine journal, and by the end of the week, I want you to have done this. And that means that they've sort of absolved themselves of responsibility for things not going well. And I think that's a deeply frustrating place to be because, you know, ultimately to do good work, you need people to just be sort of open and receptive and engaged. Yeah, absolutely. And you can't do this stuff.

We're learning. We're all trying to do we're all trying to trying to achieve the same thing.

And when knowledge starts only traveling in one direction, like things can't really get much better, I don't think. Um, so yeah, I think you're definitely right. Clients that try and sort of dictate to you, especially when it's not genuine, you know, they're not doing it because they are one hundred percent sure they're right and willing to sort of hash that out with you. It's because they want to feel better about something I think is challenging. Agreed.

Okay. Digital Marketing From The Coalface and other stuff, um, was brought to you by me, Dave Robinson, and my colleague Alex Bussey here at Red evolution. Thanks for listening.

Thank you very much.

I'll try and cheer up for next time.

Deal.