What? No Data? How To Position Content By Going Fishing - Episode 132

I wanted to talk a little bit about that whole idea of sort of operating in niches where there isn't any data, and an awful lot of the sort of received wisdom around digital marketing is, you know, use data. Go and look at Search Console, go and look at SEMrush, find out what your customers are searching for when they go on Google, and you'll find out how to position your content. And the strategy will sort of write itself with this. The sort of niche that we're in is that there often isn't enough people searching for this stuff there to be any sort of pattern or any sort of simple, this is the keyword you want to target.

Or worse, people are not searching for it.

Yeah, potentially. Potentially. How would you tell go fishing? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it has to be a sort of a relatively sort of, uh, focused fishing exercise. Put content out there and see what happens.

Okay, welcome back to Digital Marketing drivel From The Coalface. I think we'll rename it Digital Marketing drivel From The Coalface.

Well, since you're hosting, it makes sense.

That's right. Makes sense, doesn't it? Um, you claim to have written some notes in preparation for this? For this chat?

Yes.

If you actually have, I'll show my arse in Woolies window.

Can you not.

Actually be saying that because it isn't really a Woolies anymore? In the UK there might be. In Australia there's still a Woolworths, isn't there? A Woolies as they call it?

Is it not different in Australia?

I think it was. I think it was a different company. Except um it was a bit confusing. If you visited Australia you think oh they've got Woolies as well, but it wasn't the same company. But yeah, it used to be a saying. Oh yeah. If that's true I'll show my ass in Woolies window. It wasn't Barrow. Anyway. Um. All right. So we are here to, um, talk about what we've been, what we've been up to and stuff like that, as usual. Mhm. Um, one of the things I was going to bring up, I kind of think I've written down like we made a mistake this week and we sort of jumped into tactics.

Yeah.

In brackets. We didn't really.

Yeah.

On a gig where we should have only done strategy and this, you know, we're big proponents of strategy first.

Yes.

And I think, uh, I, I come under some criticism anyway from from Julie amongst other people. So we've stopped doing as much strategy as we should be doing up front and all the rest of it. You know, I, I take on board what she's saying. I don't necessarily agree. I mean, there's different ways of doing strategy. I mean, to me, sometimes the strategy is like just trying to figure out which way is up. And then that sometimes then morphs into, well, you know, we're trying to figure out which way is up and put a strategy together, but we can see straight away that there's some very low hanging fruit there. Should we just go and fix it kind of thing? And I think then you can almost get into accidentally get into some transactional stuff sort of thing. That said, um, it's, I think vitally important that you do strategy first. But the dilemma and we've discussed this is although the output from doing strategy is a strategic plan and, and a document which says sort of lays out what you want to do. I think it's, I think agencies in general either get bullied is putting it too strongly, but almost cajoled into doing stuff quicker than we'd like to, rather than just leaving us alone to let us do some strategic work and, and get a much better understanding of the, of the, the job in hand. The challenge, if you like.

Yeah, I think a lot of this is to do with the way that people buy digital marketing, um, and their sort of expectations going into it. I think an awful lot of the time when things are like a distress purchase or somebody under pressure to demonstrate results, they can get very fixated on, you know, oh, like, you know, when will we start seeing results? Like, when can we see something? When will it deliver for us? And that is, I think how you do inevitably get sucked into that because often, you know, from experience, you can look at something and you can see quick wins. And when somebody is breathing down your neck and saying, oh, look, you know, I really like you guys. I really like your approach, but I need to prove that it works. You know, I've got, I've got my boss saying, oh, demonstrate value or I've got a board saying demonstrate value. So anything we can do just to get things across the line would be really great. And, you know, you can fall into that trap so easily because you're under that sort of pressure. And also, I think just because you want to deliver and you can see opportunities to deliver and you can sort of dive straight in. I mean, the one thing I will say, though, is like you say, there's lots of different ways to do strategy. I do think one thing that is probably worth noting is that a lot of that stuff like, um, strategy first digital marketing, um, data driven analysis, like they are like buzzwords that in our industry, like terribly, terribly overused. And a lot of the time when people say, you know, oh, we're going to spend the first month of your retainer putting together a strategy. When you see those strategies that a lot of agencies produce, we've been given them by clients who've sort of previously worked with an agency. You know, people have come to us and said, oh, well, it's okay. I've already had the strategy done for me by somebody, and it is utter bollocks. And I think this is sort of like what contributes to this problem, isn't it? Because sometimes there's a sort of nervousness or discomfort around the idea of saying to somebody, look, we can't do anything until we've got a strategy. We're going to put that together. And a lot of people, especially in our sort of niche that are engineers, that are sort of industrial manufacturing people just hear that and think, oh, bollocks, you know, marketing waffle. I don't want to pay for that. I want you to get on and do the work. And you have to be quite strong to say, well, actually, no, you know, we're not going to gonna do that. Um, yeah, I think a lot of things sort of conspire against you. I think ultimately as well, like a lot of the time, it's really difficult to pull a strategy together until you've started to get your feet wet and sort of see the lay of the land and see how things work and whether or not you're going to get results. I mean, and again, it comes back to the PPC thing. I mean, a lot of the time you can say to somebody on paper, PPC, fantastic investment for you. Nobody else is really competing in your space. You know, doors wide open, clicks are cheap. Let's get some PPC up. That's a, you know, that might be a big, a big part of your strategy. Um, and then when you do it, you realise that nobody else was advertising on it because it's the wrong sort of traffic or whatever. So sometimes you do have to experiment a bit before you can put together a sort of informed strategy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The quality of the strategy is important. I think you're right. I mean, we have had sight of and possibly, you know, in the past been guilty of confusing something which is really more of a tactic with being a strategy. Yeah. But you do you know, we've certainly come across situations where the strategy was to create informative, helpful content that Google will like as a strategy. And it's like, well, first of all, it's not a strategy and it's not even a very good tactic either because it's actually just meaningless waffle, the kind of meaningless, meaningless waffle that confuses people. But pads out, um, pads out an engagement document, perhaps.

So I guess that's a good question, though. Like what is a good strategy? Like, what does that look like? Because, you know, I think it is something that is very confused in our industry in general, isn't it?

Yeah. I mean, a strategy, you know, um, where to play, how to win. Yeah. In very simple terms. That's very simple terms. I get that. And I don't claim to be, um, an expert on strategy by any stretch, but, you know, by at least trying to understand the difference between strategy and tactics, you'll get close to it.

Yeah.

And even even if you just allow somebody to say like, if you say, well, you know, my strategy is to, to do SEO, well, no, SEO is a tactic. What's the strategy? What's the strategy is to see if by out, see if it's possible to, um, outcompete in, in, in search, in organic search, the people who are currently getting the people I want to speak to that I want, I want these people to, to find us. Is that possible? So there's, you know, the strategic objective is to establish whether that's possible and if it is possible, what would you need to do in order to win? Yeah. And then that would then come down to like strategy in terms of like, well, we're gonna have to produce long form content. We're going to have to do, um, you know, we're gonna have to do outreach. We're gonna whatever, you know, and then you start getting into the tactics. Yeah. And, you know, some people would would quite rightly point out probably that even that isn't a strategy. You know, it's the strategy at its very highest level in that instance would be like, we want to make sure when our ideal customers try to solve the problem that they've got, that somehow they find us, you know. All right. How might what might those somehow be? Well, they might be at a conference. They might be at a trade show. They might be sat on an aeroplane. They might be on a train, they might be using Google, Bing, etc.. And you've got to try and understand all that before you can then pick your tactics.

Well, and I guess that's my point really. These are ultimately sort of exploratory and relatively cerebral, and they may suggest tactics or lead you on to tactics, but they don't necessarily contain them. I think also sort of key to this discussion is really the fact that strategy evolves as well. Like I think loads of people, there's one particular client I'm thinking of who sort of came into an engagement with their SaaS software provider in the sort of HR space they come in. They came into the engagement with a sort of relatively set strategy. Um, and, you know, it was to sort of like position themselves as, you know, sort of disruptive alternative to cheaper technology providers in their, to more expensive technology providers in their niche and to sort of steel market share from them. And it very quickly became apparent that that wasn't really going to work and that what would really work for them was positioning them as a sort of, you know, a more sort of adaptive responsive provider. Um, but the point is, you know, if you fix your sort of flag to a specific strategy and do nothing but service it, you often miss opportunities. Yeah. Of course. And I think that idea of the strategy is as something that you do at the very beginning of an engagement, and then that remains fixed for years to come, is something that I really struggle with because I get the, you know, I mean, I get the point of producing them, but I think you have to do it sort of on a relatively regular basis. It's not sort of set and forget, is it this stuff?

Yeah. The time scales for big organisations where strategic planning is concerned and they go into it in in massive great detail rather and and, you know, use people like McKinsey and BCG and people like that or whatever to help them see. I can't remember which one it was help to help them put the thing together. And you can understand how they say, well, no, we all agreed that, you know, all, all the head high headings, as they say here in Scotland, got together in this five star retreat and spent a week and we put together this strategic plan, and this is what we're going to do. We can't deviate from it. Whereas, you know, more lean organisations, smaller organisations like us and organisations a lot bigger than us, but still, relatively speaking, quite small can, can, can pivot and, and do all the things. And if you do recognise that your strategy is flawed, then you do want to, you know, you want to be in a fail fast situation, don't you? And, and that doesn't mean that at the first sign of, of adversity, the first difficult obstacle that you come up.

We didn't hit our.

Goal. You just conveniently change your strategy because, well, my strategy was to go, like, as the crow flies from here to here, which would involve climbing over that mountain. No. To hell with that. I'm going to change my strategy and go round it instead. And then you miss the pot of gold that was sat on top of the mountain sort of thing. So, I mean, you know, if you think about like, you know, we often talk about a bit of politics in here, um, you know, Labor's strategy was basically, it seems to me and I, you know, don't talk to me about the Palace Tories, but Labor's strategy was to not be the Tories. And that has has now smacked them in the face so hard. It must be like the shortest political honeymoon period in history, because their strategy is like, oh, well, we just thought not being the Tories was was good enough. We didn't actually think, you know, and then and now now they're, you know, deeply unpopular. Just two months in. Um, and it's, you know, it's quite interesting to observe.

Um, they're, they're busy at it again today. You'll notice all over the news. Oh, just the NHS thing. So report independent report came out, says the NHS is in shambles. Um, I hope.

That didn't cost any money because they could have just given me a ring and I could have told him.

That it's shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In a word. Um although they don't do that anymore, do they? One word reports. That's not a thing. No. Um, and then.

Shit isn't one word either.

Stammers basically saying that, you know, um.

fourteen years of Tory blah.

Blah. It's all the Tory's fault. It's an absolute shambles. And then better still, it needs massive reform, but it won't get any more investment until it proves that it can reform itself.

Is that what they've said today?

Basically.

Yeah. That's interesting.

It's an interesting position to maintain. I'm not the like I don't know where I sit politically anymore. I'm not the world's biggest fan of this Labour government, though I'll say that much.

I mean, yeah, like you, I wasn't a fan of the Tories. I had sympathy with some of the curveballs that they got thrown in that fourteen year period. And I think anyone that chooses to ignore those curveballs is an idiot, but at the same time, um, yeah, I feel like you politically homeless as well. Um, yeah. So there's an example of a bad strategy. Let's just not be the Tories. People will love us and it'll be great. And we'll have this big loving and this big majority and people will vote for us and everything will be great.

To be fair, I think a slightly more accurate way of presenting the Labour strategy may be that they were they were basically hoping they could position themselves as the grown ups in the room. They'll come in.

Oh, no, totally.

They'll they'll make hard decisions. They'll turn over a new leaf. They'll roll their sleeves up. You know, all of that language. And unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that just doesn't really actually achieve it doesn't it doesn't.

Do any grown ups in your team. And they don't they don't have any grown ups.

You can't just say you're the grown up. But you know, it's funny really, because I think the parallels to a lot of brands who are like, well, we're going to position ourselves as X, Y, and Z, and they've got absolutely nothing to back it up. It's not dissimilar to that really.

Conversely, with with another client that we've been you and I have been working quite intensely on this this week. Um, we've sweated Over this strategy that we've developed for them. We felt slightly, I suppose, uneasy about the time it's taking to put together this strategy, not because of the cost. Set that aside. This is nothing to do with cost. Um, but we've been slightly uneasy that it's taken us so long to go back to them, but that's because we were going through a process where, I mean, you and I were, you know, in inverted commas, falling out about it. I mean, we were we were we, well, we in in that like you would make, you would make a statement, I would disagree, I would make a statement, you would disagree. But by going through this rigorous process of like, let's just make sure that we're not that we're doing the right thing here. Because I've said before, you know, as an agency, we spend client's money like it's our own money. We're not glib, we're not glibly stuffing money around just because we've had a, you know, five or six grand a month budget thrown at us. Oh, yeah, we'll just do this and this with it and see what happens. We're not doing that. We're you know, we are, you know, having restless nights sleep over this stuff. We want to get it right. Um, and so that, you know, that was another that's an example and that, you know, documents gone off for approval. And, and I'm, you know, hoping that we can get going with it really quite soon. Um, and we're not talking about like, oh, yes, it took us ages. And it's a sixty page tome that's virtually using.

It's not.

Management speak. I hate it like that.

I hate it when strategies are.

Yeah, it isn't because the strategy, you know, the work we did helped us like bring it right down to the essence of, of the work that needed to be done. And the document itself, five, six pages, nice and concise, spelled out into like.

This is where we're going into.

You know, what the strategy is, what the tactics are, what we expect to happen, how we're going to measure that, to see if that is happening, how we're going to phase different aspects of the strategy. So we only do that once we've done this and gathered some data from the from from doing that work, etc.. Um, you know, so it feels and it feels like with that, we've, you know, it's like the opposite of the other one where we kind of started wading around in data and stuff where. And now there's an element with that one. There's, there's an element of, of kind of not backtracking, but there's an element of like unpicking what we found in trying to execute some potentially quick wins.

Trying to do stuff before we were ready to do stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

Determined before we finish today that we're gonna have something that we can share with the client to say, look, this is, this is this is where we've got to. Yeah. With that sort of thing.

No. And I think, you know, there's a couple of things I want to pick up on there. I mean, the client that you're talking about that we put the strategy for it plays into one of the things I really want to talk about. But, um, that idea, that strategy takes a long time and that we're uncomfortable with it, I think is, is the key thing, isn't it? It's like what people have to realise is that it does actually take quite a long time to wrestle this stuff down. There is no quick fix, and you cannot get an agency or an internal marketing manager up to speed quickly. It's not a thing. And it's interesting because we have another client where they've just brought in a new, um, chief marketing officer, marketing manager, or whatever you want to call the position. And everything did slow down for a couple of months. And she was sort of, you know, wringing her hands in a meeting with me a few days ago and saying, um, you know, I feel really bad that everything's sort of like slowed down and become like treacle while I get in and get up to speed and work out what to do. And that's normal. That's, that's the reality. You know, if you engage in agency and you expect them to hit the ground running, well, realistically, the only way you can do that is by churning out bad work, you know, uninformed, not very strategic, just reacting. Um, so I think that's probably a good takeaway is that if somebody does sort of land and say, oh yeah, don't worry, like we'll have blog posts on your desk within the first month. There's something awry there. Um, but I mean, back to that, um, strategy that you were just talking about. Um, I wanted to talk a little bit about that whole idea of sort of operating in niches where there isn't any data for a little bit. Mhm.

Do we not do that last time?

No. No.

We've just been talking about it.

We've just been talking about it a lot. Yeah, absolutely. Just everybody day. Yeah. But it's the idea that, you know, like obviously we've, um, I say pivoted into a space. We've been working in a space for quite a long time, sort of tech, industrial manufacturing where we're often in very specific niches. You know, people make pressure vessels for offshore oil rigs, of which there are only a couple of hundred or people make, you know, sort of a very specific tool that does that's probably.

Not gonna answer that, are.

They? Yeah.

Karen must have gone to make a cup of tea. That's why she didn't get a chance to answer the phone. It's, um, there's none of the other lazy buggers answer the phone, even though I keep asking them to. Sorry.

Um, where was I?

No idea. It was moderately interesting as well.

Yeah. Pressure vessels. So, you know, we work with a lot of companies that operate in very, very specific niches and an awful lot of the sort of received wisdom around digital marketing is, you know, use data. Go and look at Search Console. Go and look at SEMrush. Find out what your customers are searching for when they go on Google. And you'll find out how to position your content. And the strategy will sort of write itself. And it does do that. If you're in a niche where there's lots and lots of data. You know, if you are trying to sell trainers or trousers or, I don't know, big things that lots of people buy watches, you can go and look at these tools and you can say, okay, well, everybody who's searching for a brand new watch uses this sort of terminology, this language, that sort of position myself. But I think one of the things that, you know, with this, the sort of niche that we're in, is that there often isn't enough people searching for this stuff there to be any sort of pattern or any sort of simple, this is the keyword you want to target.

Or worse, people are not searching for it.

Yeah, potentially. Potentially. How would you tell? Um, I still think if you unpick this, like right back to its core nowadays, irrespective of what you're trying to buy, at some point you're going to go to Google and ask a question about it. I refuse to believe that anybody buys, you know, software or technology or plugs for their oil pipeline without at some point picking their phone up and typing, you know, oil pipeline, plugging services just to see what's out there or to prove that they've got the right tool or to ask a question at some point, I think search is going to be involved. Um, the problem is you can't catch.

Up because that's how we make a lot of money.

You can't capture any of that data if everybody makes one off searches that are very specific to the way they think. And there's only a, you know, there's only twenty people doing it a month or something, you're never going to get any reliable data back from any of these tools. And I think, you know, I guess where I'm trying to go with this is that you have to have sort of a strategy or a game plan in place for when that is the case and know what you're going to do. If, if you go to these tools and you don't see any good data, really.

Are you going to talk about what you do?

Uh, well, I.

Think you just wanting to sort of like table the subject.

Uh, well, I, I don't know. Do you have anything to say? Do you think it's interesting to wade into the detail or could do. Yeah, yeah.

I think we just need a little musical interlude at this point. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I've got a brand new combine harvester and I'll give you the key because. No, no, you can't say any more than that.

I can't you're absolutely right.

Have you ever heard that song?

Yeah, I know the song. Yeah.

You're just very young. Like Leslie hasn't heard it. She's young and French. She won't have heard it. She'll go and look it up, though.

It's, uh. You have to. Well, I think the way to deal with that, certainly in our industry is put content out there and see what happens because. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it has to be a sort of a relatively sort of, uh, focused fishing exercise. But if you're pretty sure that people are searching for green and blue widgets, you look in SEMrush and it says, what do you want? You give an example, then flanges. I don't know what else.

Why is that so funny to you? That flange.

It's incredibly satisfying to say, isn't it? Is it? Yeah, I think so. I don't know what you think of an example then.

Learjets.

So. Fine. F*cking hell. Yeah. All right. If you're selling learjets. If you're in that the happy, happy business of selling learjets to people, you may go to SEMrush and and type gold plated.

Fridges for learjets.

Fridges for Learjets. That's that's better. Yeah. Because honestly, who the is buying them? Um.

No, but people would.

Yeah, of course they would. The three people that are in charge of maintaining Learjets would open the fridge, see? Oh, this thing's bust and go on Google and type in fridges for Learjets. You're in the happy, the very unhappy market. You're trying to sell those people fridges, the learjets. There aren't going to be enough people doing that for SEMrush or any of those tools to show you anything useful, but you're pretty sure that people will search it because at some point the fridge is going to break and your Learjet and you'll need a new one. What ultimately what you end up doing is creating really good. It has to be strong content around fridges for Learjets you put it out there not knowing whether or not there's really any data, and you wait a couple of months. And what you should then see in Search Console is people popping up, you know, you should see that your page starts to rank for searches because people will have triggered those searches by googling things, and you're now in a position to receive the data. You'll probably find that their freezers for learjets or fridge doors for learjets, or some variation of what you're trying to sell. And that then gives you a really good idea of, okay, well, I thought people were searching for fridges for learjets. They really want freezers.

Or coolers.

Or coolers or cold boxes for learjets or whatever. That's cool. I can, I can transition, I can change the page that I've put up there so that it more accurately targets the search behavior. But because I've put something out there, I'm getting something back. And it's that whole idea that you just have to do it and sometimes take a little bit of a stab in the dark. And it's uncomfortable and sometimes quite hard to justify to clients. But that is the reality of the situation when there just isn't any data.

So one of the things that came up in the situation I mentioned at the start, where it felt a bit like we hadn't done a strategy we had really, but it was it was a clumsy.

Not a sort of, yeah.

Kind of approach, if you like. Is the company in question? Their website is a dog's breakfast. It looks.

Well, that's an understatement.

I agree with you. I think I think it it doesn't look okay, but if you showed it to somebody, they wouldn't think it was a website that was built in nineteen ninety three or anything like that. Um, the problem with it is it's been put together badly. So if you think of a website, a web page rather as a document, if I handed you a document and all that was on, say on the cover page was title, the word title or the word innovation or whatever, one word, you wouldn't really know what was in that document, right? You wouldn't really know what was in the document. And, and, and the problem is that they've put these websites together in such a way that the poor old search engines, bless them, can't look at the web pages and have any clue about what the web pages are about.

Well, the.

And so they don't know what to rank the pages for. And so the pages don't perform or do anything. Now, it could be that even if they were beautifully optimised for whatever they're about. So I'm talking about if a page is about fridges for learjets, then it's optimised in a way that search engines will understand that that page about.

Fridges.

Fridges for learjets. And then if a couple of months down the line, it hasn't had a single visitor from search, even if you go to Google yourself and type in fridges for learjets, bang, there it pops up. It's number one. Great, but we haven't had any visitors yet because that's what you think your customers are searching for and they're not searching for that. But you've but you've got to that point by having a web page which is perfectly optimised for search engines, understand it. You can then definitively say, nobody searches for this because if they did, they would find this website.

And maybe they search something related, and then we can go on a different fishing expedition.

I mean, I did an experiment a long time ago. There was a, there was a blog post on our website.

Yeah.

And it was to try and in a kind of more rudimentary, clumsy way, illustrate this point, and I made a word up. It was just a completely made up word, which I won't repeat just now. It wasn't rude or anything, it was just a silly word. But I made this word up, put it on a web page, and lo and behold, about a week later, if you search for this word, that page was number one. Now that page never got any traffic because nobody searched for that made up word that I made up in order to to experiment and try that thing out. But you know, the point was with that strategy, not strategy situation was that, you know, what we realised eventually after working on this thing for a few weeks was like, you know what, what we probably need to do is go way back to basics. And at the very least, make sure the pages are optimised for what they're about. Because it was very it's been very difficult to try and understand what people do because.

We don't.

Have this piece of software might actually search for the data is hopeless.

Absolutely hopeless. Yeah. Although they had done one of those things that I think is also worth mentioning, that a lot of people listening to this will probably have also done inadvertently or not, which is where they had given the pages titles, or they had sort of thought a little bit more about what they wanted to be on the website. They'd done it by inventing language. Yeah. And, you know, you get that, you know, lots of people will have a page that's accidentally optimised for products. It's an easy mistake to make. Everybody's done it at some point or services or something generic that doesn't work. But it's even worse when people have just decided to sort of invent terminology and optimise pages for it, because you do just get absolutely nothing back from Search Console and things like that. And I think, yeah, it's that whole situation where you literally can't see, you know, a wood or a or trees or anything, really, if you haven't at least sort of got halfway towards optimising a website. And I guess that's the thing, isn't it? You just have to start and do things and see what happens in a, in a relatively focused way. Yeah. Please don't invent words. It's the amount of times I see it and it's like, yeah, people have invented engineering terms or ways of defining what they've done. And it's just like.

On the same subject, we, we and you've alluded to this already today, we do speak to people who are convinced that nobody searches for whatever it is they do. They're in a niche where, oh, you know, people do not search for what we do. You know, we, we only get business by word of mouth referrals, trade shows, and all those are perfectly good ways to find new business and generate, generate enquiries, perfectly good ways, good ways, in fact, especially referrals. But I don't think we've ever got to the point where we say to somebody, yeah, you're absolutely right. You're in such a tight niche. If you like that, you. Yeah, nobody, nobody's looking for what you do.

It's always wrong. I mean, you only have to think about your own behavior to realise this. Like, when was the last time that you were doing anything and didn't turn to Google at some point for some information or to find something out about it, or make sure you've got the right tool. It doesn't really matter what you're buying or or looking for. At some point in that process, you're going to open Google.

But when was the last time you went to Google and put a really good descriptive, um, search query in?

Never. My Google behavior is absolutely horrible. I will type in like the like half of words and expect it to do the rest. And this is the problem. This is part of the problem.

Okay, I don't, I ask Google questions and if I need to type a great long thing, I generally.

Google.

The point it was going to make. It's funny you were talking about Google. When we use AI, please create, please do this or please tell me, you know, it's.

Like it's a machine.

It's a machine. Um, but when was the last time that you, you, you, right. You know, this, this kind of going to Google, going to TikTok, going to YouTube, whatever, going to a thing and typing in a search query. Um, when was the last time you did that? And the results that came back were utterly irrelevant garbage.

Yeah. I mean, all the time.

Yeah.

And that's the point ultimately, isn't it? And what tends to happen is I'll be looking for something.

Still, it's what what's quite funny is still you look at it and you think, how could you possibly think that what you've given me is what I'm looking for? Yeah. Still quite common. And I think Google would would acknowledge that. I mean, that's why, you know, they're still refining and trying to improve the algorithm and and, and they're still hungry for data, hungry for web pages.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's really interesting as well because like we were, I was having this discussion with a client quite recently and we were basically saying like, when people go to Google to solve this particular problem, like if you were that person, what would you type in? And I would probably type in how to do X. And so I typed in how to do x. And what I got was a load of results that were, you know, really sort of why you should consider why and what were completely different. There were about a completely different sort of slightly related topic, and it was about how to handle written complaints. It's like quite specific, but if you work in complaints handling and people are writing to you and you want to know exactly what to do with written complaints, you might go to Google and type in how to manage written complaints. You type that into Google, and what comes back is a load of just like really top level, like how to create a complaints management process. This is not specific to search, but it's really interesting because there again, is an example of a place where, you know, Google understands what you're asking it, but because absolutely nobody has produced content to, to answer that question, it has no choice but to serve up a load of irrelevant garbage. And I think sometimes people fall into the trap of thinking, oh, well, I googled it and there was nothing related. And that means that nobody cares. But you know, Google can only serve you content that people have created and people aren't all that smart. It's often sort of big gaps like that where, you know, just, just nobody's serving that need yet.

How are you finding the AI snippets?

Bad. Really bad. Yeah, well, for that exact reason, you know, if you go and ask it something very specific and it doesn't have anything to draw on, it will just answer the wrong question. Um.

It's not capable of saying sorry. Dunno.

No, I did it. I did it earlier today and I'm pretty sure it was with that same complaints management thing where it was like, um, it just started answering a completely different question. I won't be able to find it now, but it was quite funny.

It's like watching paint dry, watching you trying to find something on Google during a podcast.

All right, all right, all right. I can't remember what it was. It got it completely wrong. It was just giving advice for the wrong question, basically. Um, but when, when, when it has good data, it's good. And I think that's probably the same with all of these systems. Right. It's the same with SEMrush. It's the same with Search Console. They're great when the data is good. An AI is really good when it's got some nice, easy, clean things to draw from, it'll give you a nice little list.

So how come in search, I'm not talking about Google, but when you use, say, for example, you're trying to find an answer to a question on, uh, help, uh, like a, a product guide website or something, you know, you bought something, you go to that company's website, you're going to the, into the help section and you ask it a question and, and it comes up no results. Yeah. Zero results. The search is quite happy to say no idea. I've got nothing. I've got nothing. Why is AI not not prepared to do that. Why does why is AI like searches? Um, you know, mate who's full of shit. Is that really what AI is?

No, it's well I was I think it's because, you know, I was talking to you yesterday about the whole like tokenisation and the way that these generators work, what you're asking it to do is not answer a question. What you're asking it to do is to predict a response to some inputs. Yeah. And, you know, if it's data isn't very good, it's not going to turn around and say, my data is not very good. I'm really not confident about these words.

Every single response AI gives you, it says at the bottom, like, this might be wrong. Yeah, go and check it.

But the point is, what it does is it takes your inputs. You know, you ask it, how do I rank a really, um, a really short web page. And it looks at that and it sees like rank short web page and it thinks, right. If somebody puts those things in, what is the words they expect to see on the other side of that? What is the probability of it being this word, that word, that word, and it will give you an output irrespective of whether it's right, because it's it fundamentally doesn't understand.

How far away are we from people going to Google to check the AI content. And Google goes, oh, you've been you've been talking to ChatGPT again, aren't you? How many times have I got to tell you that thing is full of shit.

Yeah, well, that's the thing. And yeah, I don't think Google embedding AI snippets at the top of search results pages is helpful in any way.

Why are they doing it? I mean, they've got, you know, Google have got Gemini, which is like ChatGPT. Um, why does Google feel compelled to use AI snippets if it knows that they're not very good? Or does it actually think they're all right?

No, it thinks they're terrible. Well, bear in mind they launched.

Their terrible Google said it thinks they're.

Terrible. Well, they're not going to. But what they did was launch them, bring them, take them away again.

So famous launch where it got the wrong answer in front of a million people. Yeah.

Sorry. This is really shit here. We'll have another go at it. And I mean, the honest answer to this question is because of the hype surrounding AI. I mean, this is what's happened, right? It's like Nvidia, you've seen the whole thing about Nvidia's CEO standing up on stage and saying, I'm gonna get rid of forty percent of Nvidia's workforce. Nvidia make the chips.

When did he say this?

Well, it was a couple of months ago.

But their share price is just insane. Did their share price tumble as a result?

No, it shot up. But this is the point I'm making. He stood up on stage and he said, I'm so confident. Bear in mind, they make the chips that power a lot of them. Yeah, I'm so confident. Yeah. I'm so confident in the power of AI that I'm planning to lay off forty percent of our workforce. Their share price skyrockets. Microsoft say, oh, we're going to start integrating AI. Their share price goes up. And this is just hype. You know, these markets are responding to what they perceive as as sort of confidence in this tool. So of course everybody has to get in bed with it. You know, Google couldn't not release this because Bing have done it and they can't fall behind. But I honestly think that bubble is so sort of ready to pop. You know, as soon as somebody turns around and says, actually, this is all a bit shit.

If you were if you were born twenty five years sooner, would you have been saying, oh, this internet thing's just a fad?

Yeah, maybe. But look, I'm perfectly happy to go on record. I'm perfectly happy to be wrong. If in in a year's time, if we're still talking about AI, I will.

I'm sure you're asking. Woolies window. You'll have to go to Australia.

I'll do it. Yeah. I'll just walk into the middle of Barrow and just say, well, this is where Woolies used to be. So I.

Can tell you where Woolies.

Used to be then. Yeah, it's probably someone's house now, but. Yeah.

Mhm. Um okay. I, I don't, I don't share entirely share your disdain, but only because I'm more I'm, you know, if it were, if we were talking about religion, I might be saying, well, I'm not really atheist. I'm more agnostic. Yeah. You know, so I'm kind of like, I don't know, it. It seems like useful in many ways. Like, like the designers might use it to extend a photograph that didn't fit. And now it does. Um, Leslie might use it when she's doing some video, um, for she needs something to put in somewhere and a little flash of video that's, that's been generated by AI might do the job because somebody to go out and film it would be expensive and or impossible. I don't know.

There's lots of somebody with eighteen fingers and no nose.

Yeah. And like we've come across customers who are using it. Like, where was the customer that was using it? It was an ERP system, wasn't it? And to make sure that if you put garbage into an ERP, you get garbage out the other end. And they were using AI to say, well, you've put this into this field, that kind of content doesn't look right for that field. Are you sure you've put that? Is that information correct? Oh, no. It's actually that should have been in the other field. That would have completely screwed things up. So things like that.

So this is the one use case for AI that I think is really good. And we watched we were in a demo not so long ago, um, with some guys who've built a tool that basically you feed all of your product data or all of your technical specifications. And then because website.

Documents, whatever you want, feed whatever you want into.

It, because that's all it's ever read. When you ask it to predict the response to something, it can come back with actually accurate information because it's not contaminated by a load of data that you don't want. And that I get. I think that's really smart. You know, if you're using it to retrieve information and it can't get it wrong, fantastic. Really like quite time saving. It means you don't have to click around and try and find things, but anything where you're asking it to sort of generate something. Yeah. Just know what.

Happens with AI. If you ask it a question and say, oh, I want you to give me citations to all of the facts that you state in your response.

But that's the absolutely brilliant thing. So this is why people sort of, you know, people just don't understand it. What AI will do, of course, is make up citations because it knows you want to see some and it's read lots of stuff with citations, and it knows what the general.

Knows what a citation is. So it'll make up a paper that nobody ever wrote and pretend to cite it.

That's exactly what it does, because it fundamentally doesn't understand concepts or the truth or reality. It just it just.

That video you sent me, I am going to watch it because it sounds like it really sounds like it's interesting.

It is really interesting, but it is also sort of like, why are we so obsessed with this technology? That's. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure Julie, having gone to a load of AI courses, would have something to say.

I've only been once. She's got the second one next week. Yeah. Edinburgh.

And you know, I'm happy to be proven wrong. I just have my opinion.

I think healthy skepticism is fine.

Yeah.

Don't have an issue with that.

I think you're right though. I verge on being a sort of Luddite. An AI Luddite.

Mhm. Okay. Um, knowing your audience. Mhm. Uh, like like all businesses, we get pestered by people trying to sell us things.

Yes. Are you being pestered right now?

I'm a watch trying to tell me that I've got a meeting in fifteen minutes.

So someone can sell you something.

So this person sounded credible initially, but basically they've been saying, oh, I haven't heard back from you. So I'm following up again. Wants to help us get into, um, the Scandinavian market. You know, working with engineering companies and things in Scandinavia. And his pitch was that like, you know, I can definitely help you. I've helped lots of other IT companies, right. So he's lost me now because we're not on.

It an IT.

Company. And I just think to myself is, do you think I don't know where I'm going with this? And it might, might, might be nowhere. But, you know, a lot of the work we do is around the idea of making sure you understand who your ideal customers are, the problems they've got, and everything else. I just worry that with with technology, the, you know, the means to contact people being so easy that, um, lots of people are doing what that guy does. Lots of people are trying to grow their businesses and they're not because you can just spaff out like, you know, fifty thousand emails at a click of a button. It's just this whole hit and hope approach to, to marketing, to outreach, to trying to get opportunities. Yeah, I don't know. Do you think it's, it's still effective, just.

Like.

Doing what he's doing and putting it out there and hoping that like one percent of the people who get his email are actually an IT company and they go, oh, he works with IT companies. He might be, excuse me, might be help me.

Is it effective? Yes, probably.

Probably just because of the numbers.

Just because the numbers. Is it efficient? No, not in any way, shape or form. But I think this is the thing. I mean, we you know, I funnily enough, I was writing a piece of content earlier today that is for a very specific subset of people in the renewable energy manufacturing sector and people making energy storage batteries. Um, and when I was writing the page, what I was very conscious of is that this is a very small audience and they have a very specific pain point. And I was like, no, no, no, you just, you just have to, you know, just target those people. Don't try and make it general. Don't try and talk about anything outside of what they're experiencing, because you do know that that's what they're struggling with and that's what they need to hear. I think it's really quite hard to do that sometimes, you know, and we had a similar conversation about our sort of positioning not so long ago to to say, you know, I'm pretty confident. I just want to speak to these ten people who have this very specific problem takes balls. It's much easier to just be like, well, I can, I can help anybody in the IT sector. I'll just email absolutely everybody I perceive to be in the IT sector and see what they say versus, you know, I'm only going to reach out to ten people.

Yeah.

one is risky. One is not you know.

I kind of wish I hadn't raised that one really. It's a bit boring. I, I wrote it down, you know, because I sort of try and keep notes in preparation for, for when we're chatting about stuff, but it just kind of, I don't know, it just kind of cropped up and I thought, oh yeah, just just kind of lazy. I think that's what I'm talking about. Lazy marketing is kind of, um.

Well, it's a massive turn off, isn't it?

It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you're never going to take someone seriously if they don't understand what you do for a living. Yeah. What you're actually struggling with, it just doesn't work.

I'll tell you another thing that kind of hacked me off. I'm going to mention this one. We got sent, um, by the Scottish Government. We got sent a thing to fill out a survey from their public procurement, whatever it is, system that we're, you know, we, we've got like, we, we listen out for opportunities on there. Very rarely do we chase them. But you know, we listen out for them. So they sent this thing through, which was the, you know, a survey. The first question was about the kind of organisation that you are. And it said, which of the following statements best describes your organisation? What the first one mainly seeking to make profit brackets, e.g. for owners or shareholders. Second option a charity, charity or voluntary sector organisation or a social enterprise. Third one a local government finance body. Uh. Last one, the central government finance body. And it really ground my gears. Um, this idea that like, that's the public sector procurement people.

Yeah.

Their, their definition of an organisation, if you're a private business, like we are, is mainly seeking to make profit. Fine. We, we do want to make a profit.

Well, the phrasing of that still deliberately.

Brackets for owners or shareholders. I just think like, no wonder the public finances are in the state that they're in. No wonder public procurement is such an utter disgrace and a nightmare when the people are sending out questions like that, you know, and think that's okay.

I think generally speaking, they're right. Companies fall into two brackets. They're either very worthy and noble or they're lying capitalist bastards trying to make a quick buck. That is. No, I mean, you're right. It's utterly reductive. It's stupid. I mean, the phrasing of that question is horrible. Just the whole sort of mainly seeking.

It's like seeking to make a profit, you evil white cat stroking bastards. You know, I just think you I don't know, I find it offensive, infuriating. You know, there's nothing on there. Like mainly seeking to make a profit, you know, for.

To pay people's mortgages.

In order to create employment, help people live a life, put money into the into into society, be part of your local community fund, public service. No, no, no, it's for owners or shareholders, you evil bastards. I think it's pathetic. And I've said my piece on that one.

Yeah. No.

I said it on Twitter as well. Not that anybody cares.

Not about Twitter. Not anymore.

You know what. Um, I, I decided for the last three or four months, maybe longer every time I've gone to go on a Twitter sorry X every time I've gone to go on X, he said. Well, before you go any further, we need to know your date of birth. I'm like, well, I'm not telling you so I just won't use X.

Anymore.

Anyway. Curiosity got the better of me today so I thought, right I am, I'm gonna, I'm gonna anyway, you know, I've been in there like two seconds and it was just like somebody making a statement about, about how, you know, the SNP's failings are all to do with Westminster or some bullshit like that. And I just thought, oh, it hasn't changed. I've been away for a while, but nothing's changed. The thing is, there are people on there who I like to listen to or, you know, I like to read what they put up there, thought provoking and it's good. So I've told them my date of birth now, so I might start sort of being in it a bit more. I used to be a huge fan of Twitter. I used to be like the main social media platform I used was Twitter. I know you're a Reddit boy.

Um, Twitter has sort of gone to the dogs a bit though, hasn't it? Let's be honest. Twitter. Well, I scrolled Twitter the other day and it was literally just like.

All of.

It. Well, I, I did that once. It was like Palestine. angry dogs, angry politicians, Palestine, something offensive. I was like, you know what? Life's too short. Yeah.

I did learn that Nicola Sturgeon's trying to get fit, so I'll sleep tonight. That's good. That's good. Um. But, uh. Yeah. Anyway, uh, what are we going what are we going to say? I think I think I've covered, I did, I did have some stuff down here to talk about and Lesley's probably going, oh, Christ. Has he not stopped yet?

Shut him up.

Uh, she's gonna hit me.

You can just unplug the cameras there.

Sketching.

What are you sketching.

Taking notes. God knows why. Dave. Marcus. At the end of it. Um, personal brand versus business brand, you know, so like Apple, the brand or Tim Cook. Yeah. The, the person, the brand, um, the brand boss who I, who I like to, uh, listen to and watch on, on tick tock. He was talking about, I think it was him talking. No, it wasn't him. I keep saying that it wasn't the brand boss. It was a filmography, a videography guy who's sort of like he's been doing some stuff about personal brand and everything else, which ironically, when you look, it's like nobody's really looking at the stuff he's putting up there. He's, he's, he's, you know, he's kind of clearly trying to develop his personal brand, but the stuff he puts up is.

Good if you can't teach. I mean, that's.

No, no. You know, I think he is um, he is a professional. I know he works for like sky and people like that and, you know, an outside broadcast and all things. But so he knows about filming and stuff. He's quite interesting. I find it quite interesting. But you know, he was making the point. If you look at like, like Tim Cook has got way more followers and social media platforms like X than Apple.

Yeah.

For example.

Yeah, I imagine it's the same with like Bill Gates and Microsoft.

I mean, you and I do these podcasts and you know, I know it's just unrehearsed, unscripted, few notes and, you know, it gives people, um, I suppose a sense of what we're about, you know, people will think and say things about us. Not many, because not many people listen to it, but those that do listen to it will will think something about us, you know, and have an opinion. Well, twats probably. Yeah, but they'll have an opinion about us. And you know, and that's kind of feeding into this idea of personal brand, isn't it? And we're not doing this and playacting this, this. You're being you and I'm being me.

Yeah. Well, no, this is a carefully rehearsed persona.

Well, you can get your hair cut off soon as well.

In real life. I'll talk a bit like.

This in case anyone listening wants to give you some.

Money. Oh, I, I don't know the just giving address. It's incredibly long and complicated.

I'll put it in. I'll put it in the in the notes.

I'm gonna cut my hair off and donate it to a little girls with cancer.

Which is fantastic. If I had long hair, I'd do the same. I did have long hair once, but I didn't donate it.

When I got it cut off. I didn't know about swept away. Into bin.

Bin.

Um, but no, sorry I interrupted you, but I, I mean, I do have something a bit to, to sort of say about this because, you know, on that point about people following people, not companies. I mean, you know, honestly, I think the clues in the name isn't it? It's social media. When was the last time you socialised with a company? Why would you follow Apple? I like their products. Um, you know, I have an iPhone. I have a this thing that you very kindly bought me. Um, I'm not gonna f*cking follow them on Twitter though, am I? I don't care what Apple say about anything. It's a company. And I assume that the people saying things are gonna be.

I think I'm.

A polished PR department.

In case they make announcements. That might be moderately interesting, but am I engaged with them on X?

Probably not. It's this real misunderstanding that because something exists, you have to be on it and present and saying something and doing something and making noise. And it's like, I don't really think it works. Like I'm not convinced that, you know, like, certainly our clients, we have this conversation all the time. Should I be doing stuff on social media? Well, do people go to social media when they're trying to buy what you sell? Because if not, then no.

But then why? Why would people who don't know Tim Cook care about what he thinks about anything. Well, he probably because he just because he runs Apple.

Yeah. I mean, he's a well he's. Yeah. I mean he's getting into why do we have celebrities now. Aren't you. I mean. Yeah. I don't know why people why I don't know why people respect Tim Cook's opinion on anything other than silicon and circuit boards. Yeah. I don't know really. Why do people think that Bill gates. Because he set up and ran a successful multibillion dollar company, has anything useful to say about anything else? I don't know.

Other than business, maybe.

Yeah, maybe. Um, you know, I think in general, we have this, this huge problem where we like sort of amplify the wrong voices passively, almost accidentally.

I guess where I'm going with this is like, to what extent should businesses be getting there in inverted commas, celebrities to appear on talk on social media do things like we do with this, like with the like with the podcast and, and be, I guess like, I guess you were being the face, the unacceptable face of red evolution.

Alex and Dave.

I guess we're being the face of red evolution. I think we're probably.

Putting people off, if we're being honest.

I wouldn't be surprised. Especially a boomer like me.

But I think you're right. I think ultimately the if you're ever going to stand any chance of being more than just a, you know, a business brand, you are going to have to find somebody within the organisation who can step up and be a personality, because I think that's what people buy into ultimately.

Well, okay, here's a thing. You know, we're having a conversation with a long standing client, and it's quite likely in a very amicable way that the engagement's kind of coming to an end because their, their business is may be coming to an end. Yeah. Maybe, you know, not in a going bankrupt kind of.

No, they're just in the enviable situation of not really needing to do it anymore.

Maybe the business will wind will wind down in a perfectly kind of natural way. Um.

So that, by the way, I think is probably the most successful outcome to a digital marketing engagement. We've made the client so successful, they just let.

It sail off into the sunset and spend the money. Um, but you know, they, the two owners of that business kind of refused. Yeah. They don't want to go out, they don't want to go out and meet people. They don't want to be videoed. They don't want to be. And they've seen, they've seen somebody else in the same quite specialised niche as them do the polar opposite. And they're going, oh, well, why are they getting this and why are they getting that? And why is this happening to them? And, and like, oh, you know, they're doing X, Y, and Z. It's like, well, because they.

Personable, put.

Themselves out there and want to communicate with people. They don't just want to hide behind a business brand and, and just take the money or whatever.

I don't know, I have an odd question for you. I mean, you may well tell me I'm being an idiot now and find a very easy example, but can you think of a single company you like or respect or think is interesting that isn't fronted by a personality? I'm really struggling. I think about all the all the companies that are not fronted by an interesting personality like Adidas or Nike.

Interestingly, I don't when I think of Apple for to go back to Apple, I think of my Apple Watch, my iPad, my phone.

And Steve Jobs doesn't enter into that equation at all.

Yeah, Steve Jobs does. But Tim Cook doesn't. No, I don't I don't think about Tim Cook. The only time I see, you know, I'll open up Mac user magazine and there'll be a picture of Tim.

Cook user magazine. You can sound more like a fanboy if you know.

I know I like Macs and things I like, but I don't clearly really. I don't listen to anything that Tim Cook says, but I will still watch things that Steve Jobs said.

But that's not that's not.

Yeah, I don't know what that means, by the way, but.

I don't think it matters. I think the point I'm making is we only really care about or buy into brands when they're fronted by somebody that we also buy in. I think you almost buy into and care about a brand passively by association.

Well, okay, I play the drums and I play Roland electronic drums.

Do you love Roland, the brand?

They are the best electronic drums. Well, Roland, they make amplifiers. They make keyboards. They make guitars, I don't know. Um, but the Roland drums I love, I would not buy any other electronic drum kit, no matter even, you know, if um, I mean, Yamaha made electronic drums, really respected brand, a big brand, successful brand. They make fantastic motorbikes. Did we talk about why they never made cars? Anyway, um, you know.

So they could.

Tell so, but I, I, I don't, I did see a video of Ian Pearce who was Deep Purple's drummer, talking about how he liked, although he doesn't play them live, I don't think, but he liked the, the, uh, the Roland drums, but I can't think of a face of Roland.

But but do you love the brand?

I wouldn't use any other electronic drums. I for whatever reason, I'm completely.

Enmeshed in.

That.

World.

Yeah.

I mean, I think you raise a good point about influencers and brand advocates. I think that's a good shoe in. You know, if your brand doesn't have a personality, find somebody who does to, you know, say like.

Oh, there's a thing. I mean, this is interesting because, well, how about things like, um, inadvertent brand ambassadors. So if you think of like Fender guitars. So I bought a Strat a few months ago, I mentioned it to you, an actual Strat, not a copy Strat I wanted. I have a copy and I wanted, I wore my drummer and I like to strum a guitar. I wanted a real one. So I bought a real second hand Strat. Yeah, but I can't think. I don't think of is it Jim Fender? Was it Jim Fender? I don't, I could I picture what he looks like he's probably long gone by now.

No, but you can definitely think of musicians.

I can think of musicians who used Strats.

But you see.

I think and I can see Mark Knopfler playing this Strat. Yeah, I can see, um, uh, you know, Eric Watson.

The guitar companies are masters of this strategy. They know they're not terribly interesting. They're not run by interesting people. They're run by people who ultimately know how to make good things out of wood, not personalities, but they've always been incredibly good at finding, you know, they'll make a signature Les Paul for somebody slash or whatever, and, and they become the face of the brand, you know, by going out and talking about this.

Well, yeah, that's people who are probably paid by Fender or Gibson or do it. But whereas like what Fender do is they inadvertently, they get brand ambassadors. They don't even pay.

Because their products.

Well, they may have paid Mark Knopfler to use Strats, but I think Mark Knopfler bought a Strat and used the Strat and loves the Strat as well as other guitars.

But the point I'm making. But but the point still stands, doesn't it? Well, my point is, you connect with people not.

Yeah.

Well, yes.

Thank you. That is the connection. Yes.

And I think the point ultimately is that irrespective of, of, of, you know, how, I don't know, sort of like exciting and modern and quirky a brand is unless it's fronted by or represented by a person, people are not really going to connect with it. And I think at some point.

You know, in a business to business marketing scenario, like the companies we work with, um, it's as important.

I think.

So that the companies have these faces, this human.

Especially if you're going to do it on social media, I think, you know, the idea of doing sort of like brand first social media.

Well, that's where I started. The brands themselves had people who followed them, probably don't listen to them, but follow them on social media. But the actual faces of those business, their followings are way, way bigger.

But, you know, it's really interesting because it even gets down to the point of like when you're publishing articles online. Um, there are some really interesting, um, sort of, uh, what's the right word? I'm looking for papers, experiments, uh, research that basically demonstrates that if you put an author photograph and a byline on it, people are way more likely to engage and remember it. And that's, you know, these are just like very simple human hacks. Like people, like people they don't like faceless corporations. And, you know, even down to the level of sort of reading an article, you're way more likely to actually take it seriously. If you think that a person has written it and you're sort of reminded of that.

Well, yeah. Well, this week I was doing some research for one of our customers who. Well, there is a state agent, but they're also moving into, um, financial advice and things like that with a, with a separate subbrand that we've developed. Well, not a subbrand, a separate brand that we've developed for them. And so, you know, I was thinking about engagement because, you know, he came to me with an idea and I wasn't totally sold on the idea. And that got me thinking about, well, where are your target audience? And for this particular thing that he was talking about, he'd come up with an idea of, of using, um, I won't go into the detail of it, but anyway, he came up with this idea and like I said, it didn't, it didn't convince me. So I thought, well, I looked at these stats on the demographic on for TikTok because he comes across well on video and they, they do, they're quite good at recording video and things and On TikTok for like financial services, property related stuff. There was there were two types of video that came up. One of them was like somebody from the Edinburgh Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre, clearly branded as Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre, talking virtually no engagement. Nobody was liking it, sharing it, commenting on it. And then there was, uh, it wasn't even a video. It was a series of photographs. And the photographs were sort of put together with overlaid words and some soppy music, thirty seven thousand likes, loads of interaction because it was real people. It was a real story.

Yeah.

And, and it resonates with, you know, so and I said, I showed him it and he was like, oh yeah, I get what you mean. I think, I think we can do something along these lines and make it make it real, I suppose.

Just don't be fake. I mean, I've talked before on this podcast, I think about this whole thing about right column blindness, which is like a really weird quirk of my generation where we can't see ads on the right hand side of websites because we're so used to them. The same is true of like stilted video, like really obviously sort of like commercial advertising. It's like you just ignore it. You just, you know what I mean? It goes in one ear and out the other because we're so used to it. And we talked about this a bit on the last podcast. You know, people can say things instantly clue you into the fact that you're about to be advertised to, or this is a marketing product. And I think as soon as you fall into the trap of producing that sort of thing, you've lost already. And I think it is really just about being human being. I hate the word authentic, but it is about that. Just be yourself. Don't try and sort of be polished and salesy and all of that stuff if you're not. And just sort of.

There was an interesting TikTok I watched yesterday and it was to do it's related, I think, because it was to do with change blindness.

Oh yeah.

As humans. So, so basically Elspeth, Elspeth, somebody, she put some really good stuff on TikTok. Anyway, I can't remember a second name and she showed us it was a picture.

She sat there now, like you.

It was a picture of like, military people queuing to get on a plane. Yeah, it was a military plane. People are queuing to get on. She said. Right. She said, I'm going to show you like the photograph and I'm going to flip it. And there's one change. There's one thing in the photograph that's different. So it's just like original copy. And I'm looking at it. I'm looking at like the there isn't that they are the same, right? Right. You know what the difference was? One of them, this is like a big jet engine, massive green. But, but like the sort of plane you go on, on your holidays in. Yeah. When you go off to Magaluf, they.

Often go Magaluf.

Yeah. So one of those planes and in the changed image, the engine wasn't there, the engine had been removed.

And cos you focused on the people, I guess. Yeah.

Didn't see it, you know what I mean. It was absolutely bonkers. Yeah. Just crazy. And it's to do. There's a science about change, blindness. And then it goes on to talk about it's something like it's like double barreled. It's like change, change blindness. I don't know something. I'll see if I can find it and send it to you. Yeah. It's nobody. Listen, I'm not going to send it to them. They can go and find it for themselves. You can.

Put it in.

Comments, but I think it was to like the stuff you were saying about. Yeah. You know, because we do a lot of work where we're putting an offer in front of people, maybe on a web page and we're like, ah, you know, we're doing conversion rate optimisation. We're playing with it, trying all different things, like, why are they not doing what we're asking them to do? And it could well be that they're just not seeing the call to action. They're not seeing that button. They're not seeing that message.

It's so bad with calls to action because so many of them just don't. There's a whole science. There's a friend of mine who does, um, she does like microcopy for banks, like the science of the text, you put in buttons and stuff like that. And she has a really good piece on this where she talks about it in really great detail, but basically this whole idea that if you put like a really sort of obvious call to action on a button, people just scroll past it. They're just like, oh, I don't want to do that. I'm gonna scroll past it. And it's like, you have to come up with something really weird and quirky to make people actually think, oh, shit. Like I could click that. And it's that whole idea that we do just become sort of immune to things that we see a lot, isn't it? So yeah, it's a real problem.

Talking about weird and quirky. Karen's pestering me, um, on my iPad here and that we're late for a meeting, so we're gonna have to stop the podcast now, which is probably a good thing because we've been blathering on, blathering on for over an hour.

I shall keep my last subject for another time, though I would.

Yeah.

Cliffhanger.

That's right. What we'll do is we'll annoy Leslie and we'll record it while she's away, and we won't do a video, and then she's gonna have to figure out how she can use AI to create a video podcast.

Can you, can you make a really ugly boomer and is very attractive.

Thanks for that. Uh, right. So you've been listening to Dave and Alex, um, Digital Marketing From The Coalface and we'll speak to you next time. Indeed. I'll speak at you next time.