We use the term inbound and we, we, you know, we bandy it around. We know exactly what it means. There may be some people listening who don't fully understand what inbound means. Explain it badly and then I'll explain it, explain it very simply and quickly.
I guess it's, it's marketing that's designed to attract instead of interrupt people, right? It's people go to certain places to answer certain questions. You want to be there, provide the information. Did I not say that.
You said.
Answer. You want to be there providing answers effectively.
When people are trying to solve a problem, you want them to find you. Yeah, that's it in a nutshell, isn't it?
And I think once upon a time that meant writing blog posts and being present on Google. And I think now it probably means being present on Google by writing blog posts, but also present on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, wherever. Because, I mean, I think one of the things we do know is that people search behavior is changing quite rapidly and.
Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface, where we from time to time talk about digital marketing at the coalface.
We might manage some.
And then other times we just kind of generally shoot the breeze, talk nonsense and, uh.
Whinge about politics.
Whinge about politics, whinge about HubSpot. This week I think we have a little whinge about HubSpot this week. I mean, we love HubSpot, but we're still going to whinge about them. We love the products. We love stuff that they do. But yeah, anyway, we'll get on to that, I think. But, um, yeah, we live in interesting times. We do our, um, video specialist Leslie is French and uh, certainly it's very interesting times in France.
Well. I think most people saw it coming, didn't they?
Yes, I think so. So I know I spoke to you earlier on and you said you had a massive list of things you wanted to talk about. Oh, no. No you didn't actually, you said, no, I've got nothing to talk about.
Absolutely nothing.
Have you have you still got absolutely nothing?
Basically nothing. Yeah.
Basically nothing. Okay. Um, what was I going to talk about? We get a lot seems to get we get a lot of emails now from the. We can provide you with twenty leads a week, you know, for PPC or SEO, pay per click search or, um, search engine optimisation, that kind of thing. And, you know, we position ourselves as a lead generation agency. We help tech and engineering businesses generate leads.
So not quite the same.
Thing, but there seems to be like loads of people out there who their thing is, is to, you know, like work with businesses just like us and provide you with, you know, five or six sales calls every week. Yeah. Now, I don't know whether that works because we just usually delete those emails. Um, and the reason we.
Do.
That, the reason we do that is because we've always kind of lived by the whole inbound philosophy. And I don't necessarily think it's served us really well. It served us well. It's meant that our growth has been quite steady, quite slow, you might say. But we tend to want to speak to people once they've identified that they probably need to speak to somebody, not like because somebody has done a lot of spammy phone calling and, or, you know, hounding people on LinkedIn or scraping data from someplace in order to get somebody to say, oh, all right, then I'll yeah, okay. Then I'll speak to somebody about PPC, even though I don't even know what it means. And then you phone them up and you've got to pretend that you like them and pretend that you're a great person. And because I'm not, I'm horrible. And, you know, and that whole kind of approach to it, it's like, it seems it feels like the seedy side of business, whereas inbound feels and I might be wrong about this. It kind of feels like the more kind of respectful, grown up, sensible side of business.
Is the view from up there on that very tall horse. You're right.
You mean the pedestal I'm stood on? That's what you really meant to say, isn't it?
No, I mean, yeah, I think.
It's a rarefied atmosphere, one which you will never get to enjoy.
Um, I just sort of, like, try and claw my way up the horse's leg every so often and get kicked down. Yeah. Um, no, I mean, I think it is the seedy side of business. It is bottom of the barrel stuff, isn't it? It's sort of like, you know, it's a numbers game, that sort of thing. Um, and I think ultimately, you know, you say it hasn't been fantastic for our growth. I mean, I'd counter that by saying of course it hasn't. Look at the industry we're in. The telling thing is it has been very good for some of our clients growth. Yeah. Most of our clients growth because ultimately, you know, this is what we're helping them to do and it works really well. It's hard in our industry because unfortunately, you know, sort of, I would say fifty to sixty percent of the agencies doing what we're doing are just sort of trying to rip people off.
Well, interestingly, I think in the space that we're in, a lot of the people who position themselves as experts in online, lead generation, web, social, whatever it is, don't generate their business that way. They they know how to write blog posts and do content marketing and SEO and PPC, etc. but that's not how they generate their business. They generate their business from, I don't know, networking, prospecting, emailing, hounding, pestering, annoying people.
I always thought the best example of this was an agency that I won't name, but a very large agency in Leeds who sort of dominated the digital marketing SEO space, had a sales team that was bigger than their content team. And I think that, you know, I think that's probably a decent percentage.
I think some of the big SEO agencies are a bit like that. And again, I'm not going to name anybody primarily because I can't actually remember some of the some of the bigger ones. But we know that like these, these, you know, two hundred quid a month SEO type businesses are. They just have a load of people like dialling up all the time and pestering.
You'll get. I mean, this is the thing. Loads of our clients get phone calls and emails from them constantly. You know, just there's this barrage of like, oh, we can, we can help you rank better in Google. Did you know that you're missing out on traffic? And, you know, all I'd have to say about that is, you know, it's like a, a joiner that lives in a, you know, a sort of falling down shack. You know, if you can't, if you can't sort of keep your own business going by using the tactics you're selling. Well, they.
Do have a business in Scotland, don't they?
Do they? Oh, the cobblers burns.
The cobblers burns have got bare feet because the cobblers busy making shoes for everybody else. So it's. I can get it. I guess where I'm coming from with this is it suits my personality that we do inbound, that people come to us with a problem and we. And we work and we talk to them and figure out whether we can help them figure out, figure out whether we're the right people to help them. That suits my personality, because I would, I would, I wouldn't enjoy like trying to form complete strangers to say, hey, do you want to buy a website?
When does that ever work?
Well, I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of people do generate business that way. And I guess you get the I don't know, I don't know. I think because it doesn't suit me and it doesn't suit my personality, it'd be very easy for me to dismiss it. Whereas I think some agencies have grown to be really quite big by being extremely successful with outreach, with, with, with, with actually going out and prospecting and, and looking at companies on LinkedIn, probably looking at people on LinkedIn and their businesses and figuring out how you can make an approach because you've figured out that they're not doing this, this, and this particularly well. And they might be, you know, it might be worth having a conversation with them. Yes. And I get all that. It's hard yakka, as they say in Australia. And it's, and it's, it's something that I'm, I'm assuming works can work really well if you want to grow a big pile em high kind of business.
But that's the critical thing, isn't it? It depends.
I don't.
Know. Well, it depends what type of success you're looking for.
Well, how do the massive people like McCann and people like that. How? I mean, how? Where are they generating their business? Is it purely on reputation?
I mean, a good chunk of it will be, but no, I'm sure they do have a sales team. But. But the model is very different isn't it? I mean they are playing a very different game to them. Success looks like landing a contract for three years. You know get somebody to sign on the dotted line. You deliver something, you know, not quite enough to get the contract screwed up and throw it in the bin. And then at the end of it, you part ways and the whole process starts again. I mean, that sort of churn is where I think that gets you. You know, you play that very aggressive sales game. You sell people a service they don't really need. Eventually they'll figure out that they don't really need it. So you've just got to sell them as much as you can before they take a hike.
I do think we are probably missing opportunities to work with people who have recognised they've got a need, but didn't search for what they would need to search for to find us, or we are not moving in the circles that they're moving in, so they've never heard of us. That kind of thing. I mean, I think so it's not I don't think it's I think at the at the really shitty end where people genuinely don't want any of the things that we do, um, are getting pestered to, to, to speak to us by people trying to generate leads and flogging the flogging the leads.
But yeah, you're probably right. I mean, there's probably a good chunk of people who don't think to go to Google. I mean, we would probably say to any of our clients, were we having this discussion, that digital marketing is part of the puzzle. And if you know, a decent amount of your potential customer base are googling things and looking for things, then by all means, you know, get online and get in front of them. But we know full well that there are other avenues to and we don't exploit them. We haven't historically, for example, done any radio advertising or, you know, splashed a long.
Time magazine we did a long, long time ago, two thousand and ten ish, maybe twelve, maybe something like that, twenty ten.
But there's no billboard anywhere with, you know, a, Uh, you know, Dave Robinson with two thumbs up going, get your SEO here, which, you know, there's, there's lots of different avenues. I think we just had done.
Digital would, would, would things look very different now?
Maybe, maybe that's.
Would I be able to pile them up and sell them cheap if I'd done that? And would I enjoy that? Well, no I wouldn't. But anyway, um yeah, it was just a, there just seems to be I think there's a lot of activity in this space. It seems that there's a lot. Unless just because as we get bigger, we're attracting more of those people saying, well, they look like a big company. They must have a must be finding it difficult to keep the pipeline busy. You know, we can we can flog them some leads and things.
Well, the way I'd look at this is that like, I was having a conversation with a client a couple of days ago, they have to go to their global sort of like, um, you know, all team meeting and they have to justify the marketing they've been doing and they have to justify it to their, to their sales teams specifically and their CEO and a lot of people who are sort of kind of skeptical about digital marketing. And one of the key things that their chief marketing officer said to me is that what we really need to do in this report is demonstrate that the quality of leads is good. It's not about driving leads. It's not a numbers game for us. We're selling people a really considered purchase. So let's make sure that the people enquiring are actually the right kind of people that are, that are genuinely open to that sort of thing.
And thankfully, that's what we are also interested in, which means that's what we were doing, which means we had the right answers.
But this is my this is my whole problem with the whole concept of sort of like leads is that most people look at it as a numbers thing. I can get you ten leads. It's like, well, that's not important. I don't care whether there's ten or twenty or one hundred. I care that they're actually, you know, leads from businesses that want what we do. And that's not something that people really like to talk about. And I feel like in a lot of ways, we're back to where in the sort of, you know, twenty tens people were with traffic, you know, it's like, oh, we've got you loads of traffic, mate. And it's like, well, is it good traffic from the right people? Oh, I don't know about that. It's traffic though. Look, there's thousands of them and we're sort of there with leads now. People are like, oh, I'll get you ten leads. It's like. And you know, it's got to be.
But it's interesting that we get, like I said, every every day we get, we get emails from people and they, I'm assuming, must think. Yeah. In their, within their business model, they must think like, oh, you know, this is, this is a great business model. You may imagine if you earned and owned an agency and somebody came along and said, I can get you ten leads a week, mate. I mean, they would love that, wouldn't they? Let's deliver that. Whereas you and I are sat here thinking, you know, we'd rather have one good conversation a month than than have ten conversations for either work that's worth thirty bob or work that never happens because the people didn't want it anyway.
I do not want to pay to be given the contact details for Juliet, who owns an independent florist shop somewhere on a high street, and then to have to try and.
Make a good point.
A SEO service.
Whenever you look at some of these, I'm trying to think of some of these, uh, lead gen companies online. And we used to get like, we used to get emails from them, like with with very specific this requirement is now live. And, you know, this person is prepared to spend up to three hundred pounds on an SEO campaign, you know, and they, again, totally not understanding who they were trying to sell to, which is what we're really talking about here, isn't it?
I mean, do you not think this comes back to just like basic sort of behavior, like human behavior? It's like, when was the last time you bought something because somebody had asked you if you were interested in something and you said yes, and then they hooked you up with a phone call from the person that provided it, and then they rang you up. And that's never, you know what I mean? Like, nobody's ever gone through that interaction and thought, yep. Do you know what? I'll sign on the dotted line, you know, that's fantastic. You know, the last time I made a big purchase, like, say my car, you know, if somebody rang me up and said, are you interested in buying a car? Will you talk to a local garage? And I'd said, yeah, sure. And they'd rung me up and tried to pressure sell me an escort. And it just doesn't work, does it? It's like.
Oh, that sort of escort.
Sorry, I'm not Gregg Wallace.
I think you'll find quite soon Gregg Wallace isn't Gregg Wallace either.
Um, but no, I just I just don't know. I mean, certainly in the sort of niches that we operate in, I don't see that that sort of lead gen sort of, um, spam would ever really work because nobody's going to make a considered purchase from an engineering supplier on the basis of a cold call. It's just there's no trust there. There's no time to sort of familiarise yourself with the position. I just don't really see it personally. I might be wrong. I'm happy to be wrong. If there are.
Some people might argue that it is a numbers game. If we could give you fifty leads and forty nine of them are a complete waste of time, but one of them's a little golden nugget in amongst all that, and that's what it's all about. It's just a numbers game. Whereas what we do is kind of a numbers game. If you look at our deals dashboard just now, there's lots of really good looking stuff in there, none of which has come to fruition yet. Yeah. Um, well, you know, the stuff that's obviously in the closed one column has come come to fruition, but there's a lot of stuff in there. Yeah, this this stuff in there. We may not even hear from these people again.
Yeah. For sure. I mean, I think it's always a numbers game. I think it's just a question of, you know, you can abstract things like that.
That's what that number looks like isn't it? Is it thirty things in your deals dashboard, all of which have the potential to turn into like a scrappy piece of rubbish work? Yeah. Or is it like a deals dashboard that's only got two or three in there, but they're each like, you know, fifty, sixty, seventy grand engagements. Yeah. Which is, oh.
There's a hundred things in there and you're gonna have to ring people up and actually sell them on an idea versus people who've come to you because they genuinely need it and they already understand that. And that's just, that's.
The whole thing about cold calling. I mean, when I think we've covered this before, but when was the last time you, somebody called, called you and you actually went, oh, uh, you know what? Your time is pretty amazing because I am actually thinking about that. I don't think I could say literally never, but given that I'm nearly twice your age, it's probably happened to me once. Yeah, you know what I mean? So it, I don't know, the hit rate must be so low.
Yeah, I think it's just depressing. But I think that's just a very different world, isn't it, where people are sort of happy if one in one hundred or one in a thousand. And yeah.
But just coming full circle. So we kind of rely heavily on inbound, which means that we put a lot of time and effort into telling a good story across a range of topics so that people hopefully find us and go, hmm, like what these guys are saying, maybe we'll have a conversation with them. Um, do you think that is going to continue to be effective? Well, how effective is it? And do you think it's going to continue to be effective?
I think it's probably changing. I think probably now you have to to do inbound. Well, you probably have to have that presence in a lot of different places.
Just explain the we use the term inbound and we, you know, we bandy it around. We know exactly what it means. There may be some people listening who don't fully understand what inbound means.
Mhm.
Go on, explain it. Explain it badly, and then I'll jump in and explain it very simply and quickly.
Um, I guess it's, it's marketing that's designed to attract instead of interrupt people, right? It's people go to certain places to answer certain questions. You want to be there, provide the information. Did I, did I not say that?
You said answer.
Yeah. Uh, you want to be there providing answers. It's receptive.
They ask, you answer. Marcus Sheridan, who was on this podcast, he was.
Do you want to explain it better?
Many years ago. No, I think you did an okay job done effectively. When people are trying to solve a problem, you want them to find you. Yeah, that's it in a nutshell, isn't it?
And I think once upon a time that meant writing blog posts and being present on Google. And I think now it probably means being present on Google by writing blog posts, but also present on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, wherever. Because, I mean, I think one of the things we do know is that people search behavior is changing quite rapidly, and people are using more and more different sort of avenues to, to find.
I wonder if like, you know, the likes of TikTok is like a, you know, that is a cold calling environment in some respects, because I think the adverts that I get shown on TikTok are very rarely relevant to me. Um, and some of the content that I'm presented with on TikTok, I just swipe straight past it, but other content, I go, ooh, I mean, what purchases have I made? I mean, I bought Rory Sutherland's book. You did.
Um, and that's.
That's.
Perfect because.
You know, over and over getting exposed to Rory Sutherland talking about stuff. And why are you saying I'm really interested? And in the end, you go, you know what? I will actually buy the book, which I got the audiobook and I'm really enjoying it.
And the reason that you were exposed to Rory Sutherland saying things over and over and over again is because the algorithm realised that you were the perfect person who would be interested in what he was saying.
Well, he saw me watch, watch and stay engaged with some of those videos. I mean, that's the only thing about that's in its simplest form, TikTok just notes what you spend seem to spend time watching and then it'll show you more of it.
But I think it's very good at doing that quite rapidly. So I think for people who are sort of like in the midst of a really long purchase process. So like, I need to find a new digital marketing agency. They'll engage with enough of that content that eventually the algorithm will start sort of realising, oh, okay, you know, we'll show them more of this sort of thing and we'll show them read evolution's thing. And I think it's probably, if you're trying to do TikTok advertising, TikTok, sort of, you know, badly, it's probably very, very much like a cold calling environment. But I think if you're doing it well, as in just sticking to your guns, talking about stuff you know, about people will naturally.
The next subject I've got on here relates to TikTok somewhat. Um, and, and it is, it's a subject that is related, I guess, to cold calling in some respects because of the nature of it, but because what I'm seeing, I think I'm seeing quite a lot or quite a lot of is the everything has changed pitch. Yeah. You know what I mean? And specifically around AI and stuff. And I'm seeing quite a lot of that on excuse me on TikTok, where you'll, you know, you swipe it swiping through, um, in the usual, you know, addicted, addicted to Tik Tok kind of way. And you'll get some person saying, I won't say what I wrote down there. You get some person saying everything has changed. And you just before you, you know, you just swipe as quickly as you can get lost because they're basically trying to say like, if you don't engage with what I'm saying just now, then you're going to be left behind. And there's a lot of that stuff doing the rounds. That seems to be where we are. This fear of missing out, this, this you're going to get, you know, you're going to get, uh, you're not going to progress in life if you don't engage with this technology or this app or what I'm talking about right now. You know, I don't know, I just I find it a bit spammy.
Yeah, it's a lazy gimmick. I mean, it's like you remember the whole like ten things you must know about X or like the ultimate guide to this. And it's like, we just, I think marketers are just an unbelievably unimaginative bunch. And once they see somebody doing something, they're like, oh, I bet that works. We'll try it. And you yeah, bandwagon.
You won't.
Believe.
What Sharon Stone looks like now you know what I mean. All that kind of clickbaity absolute horseshit.
What's that network called? It's called like, Outbrain or something, where you go to the bottom of really crap newspaper websites and it will just be like this block of different articles you can click on. And it's all just like sensationalist clickbait nonsense. And it's like people pay for that. I remember when those services launched and they pitched to me and they were like, yeah, we can get loads of exposure for your content. If it's click worthy, you can just, you know, pay per click and we'll sit you in this block at the bottom of a load of websites and people will click on your articles. And it's all of that stuff is just a race to the bottom. I mean, I think the thing with marketing is everything you do is informing your brand, right? Or informing people's perception of your brand.
You're going to go into a Bryan Adams song then.
Um, and if you, if you spend your time doing like spammy, clickbaity shit on TikTok or trying to scare people into engaging with you or doing like top ten reasons that X, Y, and Z, all that you're really teaching people is that your, your brand is pretty naff. Really. It's pretty lazy. It's pretty desperate.
Is there a danger with TikTok that it's going to get swamped by people trying to flog stuff on TikTok because it's all like some little piece of plastic shit from China that washes your bike or something. You won't believe how great they are. I can't. My life has changed since I bought this thing that squirts water and it's like, you know what I mean? And it's I just find it's more and more prevalent.
Well, it's like the Instagram.
So unauthentic and dull and er.
I mean, the worst thing on TikTok for me isn't necessarily people trying to sell plastic tat. It's people selling courses or quote unquote expertise like in our space, especially like a lot of the digital marketing ones, it's all the sort of lead in for like, oh, buy my course or like learn how to use social media like a pro for just seven thousand pounds or whatever. And it's like, Jesus Christ, kill me. Um, but the same thing happened with Instagram, right? It's like to begin with, celebrities posted pictures of themselves looking cool. And then brands were like, oh, we can pay them to look cool in our sunglasses. And then Instagram basically turned into a giant advertising.
Do you use Instagram much?
Well, I used to, I used to because I I used to do quite a lot of fashion marketing. So it used to be you did? I did. Yeah. That was.
Do you know about fashion?
Quite a lot, as it happens. Enough to not care about it. Yeah.
Um, brilliant Netflix thing about the rag trade. Oh, it's just really make you think differently. It's a.
Grotesque industry.
There are too many clothes in the world. There are. There are beaches in Namibia that are just completely covered in clothes because everything gets sent there. Yeah. You know, and in bales and they're like, we don't need we.
Don't actually.
Need. You can't actually do anything with this. And it's all getting done. What a mess.
And, and, you know, the worst of it is that in loads of those countries, their actual textile industry has gone completely bankrupt and everybody's out of work because there's no point in running a clothing factory or, you know, sort of sewing clothes when you're just being sent millions of them by Oxfam. So yeah, it is a mess. But no, I mean, you know, the point is, inevitably these marketing channels eventually become so commercialised that they're not really usable by the common person. And I'm sure that's not entirely true for Instagram.
You mentioned newspapers. Yeah. Newspapers that, um, provide some of their content for free. Yes. You know, you're trying to just read a story and it's just throwing this irrelevant crap at you.
The independent the eye is absolutely hands down the worst for that. It's like just every five minutes just.
Screams desperation, doesn't it? You know, and it is desperation. They are desperately trying to figure out how to make money.
Well, yeah, but but there again, you see, this is the thing. All the things, the choices that you make do have a massive impact on brand perception. I mean, when I was a kid, um, you know, or a student, the independent.
Was.
Sort of on the same level as the Guardian. It was a serious newspaper. It was read by serious people. It had a following. Now, I think it's just, you know, if you say to somebody, oh, it was on the independent, they were like, oh, like that dreadful.
The observer just now as well, because it's for sale isn't it.
Yeah.
Which I don't know what tortoise are all about but it, trying to buy it or something. And people are worried about it because it's the only kind of true Sunday paper that's left proper paper because it's only a Sunday paper, although it's basically just the Guardian on Sunday, isn't it?
The observer is the Guardian on Sunday. That's exactly. It's the same team. Yeah. No, I don't know what will happen to it. I mean, I think the point is there isn't really a market for it anymore, isn't there? I think that's ultimately what you know, what's happening there. But yeah, I don't know. I think the point is you can and will ruin things if you do it badly. I think is really all.
Well, Julie, you know, Julie's a chartered marketer and she often says, you know, marketers give it, give something to marketers and it won't take them long to make a mess of it. They did it with email and doing it with web pages. They'd do it with social media.
They do it with our own services. I mean, this is the thing, loads of people listening to this podcast will think that SEO is sort of not synonymous with, but, but closely linked in their head to the idea of spam. And it's because marketers like us who just decided to abandon their principles, started cold calling people and selling them things they didn't need. And nearly every businessman you talk to now has had a bad experience with an SEO agency at some point. And that's sad. And it's also entirely our own fault. Not ours personally, but the industry. Yeah.
Okay. You did say that your list isn't completely devoid of content. Well, what is it you want to talk about?
I mean, the thing we brought ourselves to neatly is the whole HubSpot thing, isn't it? Really?
Yes, I've got it down there.
Crap. High pressure.
Sales. HubSpot reps make my teeth itch. Yeah.
Because it's the same thing. HubSpot is a, I think, a really smart bit of kit. It's very sophisticated software.
We use it. We pay a lot of money for it. Well, we, we invest, we've invested in it. And we've, you know, encouraged some of our customers to invest in it.
A HubSpot subscription. A typical HubSpot subscription is probably a couple of grand a month thereabouts, a grand.
Anyway. Yeah.
It's not cheap is my point. It's a serious investment. And I had an experience a couple of days ago where a client of ours who was paying for HubSpot.
And they were using HubSpot before they became clients. I know who you mean because we kind of rescued them when they migrated from WordPress to HubSpot and made a bit of a pig's ear of it. Yeah. Good client. It's a good long relationship we've had with them.
Well, this is the thing. Fantastic.
There's no way this annoyed.
You very heavily enmeshed in HubSpot. Their websites on CMS hub, which is now Content Hub. They use it for all their marketing. They've got a ton of automation set up. The sales team are completely reliant on it. So they're very wedded to it. And then randomly, a HubSpot wedded to a HubSpot rep, um, rang them up, booked a call. They were like, what's this call about? He was like, oh, it's about your discount, which is going away. Um, obviously with all of these software platforms, they offer you quite a steep discount for signing on in the beginning and then your HubSpot.
Generally speaking, if they, if you sign up to HubSpot at a, at a discount, you can usually get that in perpetuity. Well, usually, usually.
So he rang them up to tell them that their discount was desperately at risk. And if they didn't immediately upgrade.
Remind everybody when does that discount actually run out?
September next year.
And we're currently December twenty four. So we're talking September twenty five is when it's almost a year.
Yeah, it's nearly a year. Um, it desperately at risk. But, but if they upgrade to this new suite that bundles a load of the products together, including the ones that they just don't need, then they can secure their discount.
Um, you spend a lot more money in order to get the discount on the other thing.
So I managed to luckily, uh, sort of enmesh myself in this awful sales call and watched this guy sort of peddling this software suite, including a load of features that they just didn't need. And we kept gently telling him, we just don't need that. We don't have a use case for that. We're not that sort of business, you know, is trying to flog them operations software and, you know, and, and, um, and then he was like, oh, well, maybe you should consider just, just signing on anyway so that you can preserve your discount because, you know, if you take the discount away, the three tools you are using will still cost you more than these five, which is first of all, an incredibly cheap pitch. And it just makes the whole thing feel a bit tacky. Mhm. Um, and then when they said, well, how much would it cost if we did drop the discount, he said, oh, you can just go on the website and check our prices, which dismissive. Well, yeah, I mean, to say that to somebody who is a paying customer of yours.
Has been for a.
While is, I think, parlous. But the whole thing was just very cheap, um, very high pressure, very just sort of, you know, he was there to get a tick and say, yep, I've sold it to another customer, um, so that he can go home and say, you know, I did a good job. Look at my metrics completely forgetting, of course, that that the well, he didn't realise that the client in question has recently brought a new marketing manager in, and she's never had any exposure to HubSpot before, really. So she's just getting to grips with the software. We're, we're, they're saying, yeah, it's a great tool. It's really useful. And then her first actual experience with the brand is this awful sales rep trying to pressure sell her something she doesn't need and not taking no for an answer.
What was really interesting was the response you got from, yeah, somebody, somebody else at HubSpot who's not a sales rep when you give them the feedback.
Yeah. So I, I gave them the feedback and they said, oh, you're not the first person that's complained about this this week.
Was it complained about this or complained about a specific person?
Uh, I'm not sure. Yeah, that was left vague. Um, but yeah.
But HubSpot do it, do this stuff because it works. This high pressure buy shit. You don't need to secure your discount. Nonsense. I mean, is that working for them?
I'm not.
Persuaded. Desperate. Should we be worried that they're kind of. If they're doing shit like that, why are they doing it?
Look, it's not just them. Google do it too. I mean, you know, anybody listening to this who engages with Google ads will know that at some point every month, you'll get a call from somebody in Ireland pretending to work for Google. They do sort of work for Google. They work for agencies that are licensed to trade as on Google's behalf, offering you help improving your ad campaigns. And if you could just talk to them about the recommendations they have for your campaign, your business would do a lot better. And the. Invariably the advice is always to sort of do things that increase your budget or make you spend more money. And it's, again, a really shit sales tactic. And I don't I mean, Google certainly aren't desperate for the work. And I'm certainly not persuaded that if you go online and look at what people have to say about that, you know, should I trust a Google rep? Should I talk to my Google rep and you'll just see, you know, Quora, Reddit, any of those sort of forums on the internet, people will just be like, no, put the phone down. Completely ignore them. They're a waste of your time. And I don't know if HubSpot and Google and businesses like that realise how much reputational damage they're doing themselves.
Maybe they don't care because there are enough people who are gullible who will just sign on the dotted line. And so they do it because it works.
But what's the long term outcome of that? I mean, do you do.
You really care if you've got like a million people paid you, you know, a thousand dollars that they didn't really need to pay you, you know, once that money's in your bank, do you really care that it.
Depends on what your idea of success looks like, doesn't it? I mean, if you want to be going in one hundred and fifty years, if you want to be able to say, you know, we're, we're Google and we have one hundred and fifty year heritage. You probably can't act like that. It's, you know, long term in my mind, if somebody said, what do you think of HubSpot? I would say great software, terrible company or terrible ethos at least. Um, and I don't think, I don't know, I don't see how that supports long term ambition at all.
I mean, this will sound like a sales pitch, but to me, that's why I would always say like work with an agency, specifically an agency who are not simply trying to flog HubSpot licenses. Now, that is not easy because how do they how do people know? Because we know for a fact there are agencies that have come and gone. Yes. And all they were about was like trying to flog HubSpot licenses to get a recurring revenue from HubSpot. Now, you know, full disclosure, we get a recurring revenue from, from, from a few from HubSpot pennies. No, no, I mean, it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's certainly, um, quite a few thousand quid a year we get in commission payments from HubSpot that we've sold.
What I'm saying is it's.
We use it ourselves and we've always got the client's best interests. So if we believe Hubspot's a good tool for them, we'll tell them. We'll then go away and negotiate the best possible deal. We can negotiate with HubSpot to get them, to get them on board. But more importantly, our relationship with the client is all about it's all about building their brand lead gen. It's, it's a whole host of things. And HubSpot is only one little bit of.
That.
HubSpot. All they want is that license. They want to tie you into a twelve month contract because you can't buy it unless you commit to twelve months. And then salespeople get to tick the boxes, right? That's my, I've sold, you know, a hundred grand's worth of HubSpot this month. That was my, that's my target. I'll get my bonus that that's just how that industry operates. The whole SaaS industry operates like that.
But I mean, we're not the first people to point this out, but that that's, that's, that's not helpful for it's this obsession with growth, isn't it? Short term growth, specifically sales figures. And, you know, again, oh, we are in HubSpot. Try to and I think maybe this is something that people won't know is that HubSpot also tried to pressure us into selling a certain amount of HubSpot licenses every quarter or whatever to maintain our status. And again, their, their focus is entirely, entirely on getting us to sell things, not on getting us to retain customers, to keep people happy, to keep people engaged with the software. And it's, you know, it's just this sort of perpetual obsession with quarterly sales figures or quarterly revenue at the expense of sort of what's going to happen in one hundred years. And yeah, I mean, maybe you're right. Maybe they don't care about that. But it does seem remarkably short sighted to sort of built a very intricate system that basically forces people to flog things to people that they don't need. What's the what's the point?
Ultimately, yeah. But I would imagine there's plenty of SaaS software. We've certainly bought software, realised we don't need it. And it's taken us another six months to get around to actually canceling the subscription because we finally realised we absolutely don't need it. That seems to be like a SaaS model, doesn't it? It seems to just be. Well, I don't know, because the nice. I mean, one of the things about HubSpot is it's like, you know, to their benefit Hubspot's benefit is like once you're using it and realise how great the software is, um, you kind of get embedded with it and it's almost like it's too much of a pain to actually leave, you know, it's too much of a pain in the ass to change.
I mean, it's, I mean, we have it.
It's quite sticky, I think maybe.
Yeah, I mean, but I mean, you know, all I'm saying is, you know, we have a SaaS client who, I mean, probably like us could have grown a lot faster by peddling their solution as something that it wasn't and pressure selling it to people who didn't really need it, but who regularly, you know, when you, when you look in the HubSpot portal and you look at the emails they send sort of a good forty percent of them saying are saying, you know, look, on reflection, we don't think we're a good fit for you. We don't think we're the right tool. Go somewhere else. Um, and I think there are just two ways of doing business. And I don't want to sound sort of holier than thou, But.
If you would ever sound holier than thou.
If you don't take that, that correct approach of only selling to people who actually need what you're selling and want it.
Mhm.
You, you are just sort of, I don't know, you might be very rich in the short term, but.
I suppose it's like anything, I mean, any, any business listening to this will probably or many businesses listening to this, people listening to this would say like, in my line of business, we can do this fast book stuff or we can build relationships. I mean, we've thrived, if you like, because we've built lasting relationships by getting to understand people and their businesses and genuinely, you know, trying to help them, not just kind of flog them something in the short term kind of thing. That's gone a bit philosophical now.
The meaning of life. Yeah. By David.
Well, I mean, speaking of the meaning of life, um, what's exciting you in the world of politics just now?
What is exciting me in the world of politics just now?
Have you read anything yet about Kia's relaunch? She's done a relaunch today, hasn't he?
Yeah. Five months after the last one. Yeah. It's like one of the things I remember most about Keir Starmer at the start of his political, not his political career, but his campaign to become prime minister, if you like, was I don't know if you remember those seven sort of like testimonies. Well, no. What were what were the five of them? And he wrote them on some stones or something and had them presented.
In Yonks ago, was it that was Miliband. Was it? That was when Ed Miliband was trying to win in twenty fifteen.
I'm sure, I'm sure Starmer did something similar where he set out five ambitions or yeah, it was he was it was it was Starmer. He said. These are my these are the five ambitions of this mission led Labour government or whatever. He is a man who, like he would be a fantastic marketer. He is fantastic at just blather. It's like, it's like none of that stuff really means anything. You can say, these are my five ambitions, or these are the core tenants that you can judge me by, But like you are your actions, not your words. And I don't quite think that's sort of sunk into him. He's, he's, he lives in a world where like the messaging is really important, but delivering on that messaging is sort of a bit of an afterthought.
I think it's starting to dawn on some people in the Labour Party that, you know, we're now beyond the fourteen years of chaos. Look, what we we inherited stuff and it's now getting to the point where, well, okay, you've only been in power for five months or whatever it is, but this has got worse. This has got worse, this has got worse. And I a lot of them have never been on the receiving end of people's, um bile. Yeah. They've never been on the receiving end. They've been, they've been their entire political career. The good guys as in the opposition who. Oh of course, if we were in power, everything would be better. They've always been those guys. I think Starmer amongst them because this is he was never in the Labour government that was in power, I don't believe. Was he? When did he become a politician? It was.
I don't believe he was.
Was it in the like after twenty ten? Anyway. Yeah. So. And there's so many of them. So many of them are in that situation. I think they're kind of, you know, it's almost like, um, I suppose, you know, you mentioned you mentioned Greg Wallace, you know, so Greg Wallace has been for the last twenty years, like an icon of TV's been on loads of different programs. He's going to have to now figure out how he adapts to being, like.
Hated by everyone.
I mean, hate maybe hated, but certainly ridiculed and, and, and not respected. And nobody wants their photograph taken anymore with you. You know, there was actually talking about that someone I think it was it might have been on, uh, on ex, um, somebody had said, you know, they were kind of like a bit smug about what's gone on. And as in like his fall from grace because they were in a restaurant once and this guy really liked Greg Wallace. And, and Greg Wallace was there on his own, I think. And it was like, what some of those pizza, pasta, whatever it was. And he'd gone up to him and said, oh, do you mind if I have a photograph? And, uh, and Gregg Wallace said, no, I don't normally, but go on and make it quick. And he was really dismissive with him and he was like, and he, and he sort of made this comment. He's like, mate, you're in Nando's on your own having a summit to eat. You know what I mean? Like, like you're not, you're not all that. Yeah. You know, sort of thing. So he was and I always, uh, you know, that doesn't mean that he, you know, that, um, he's necessarily a bad person, although everything else that we're reading suggests that maybe he is. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it's, it's that kind of thing. And I think like in politics, there must be this, you know, we're going to fix everything. Oh, yeah. You're our heroes. You know, we can't wait till you're. If only you were in power, everything would be better. Yeah. And it's always thus. Yeah. You know, I mean, it doesn't matter whether it's left or right. You know, the people who are out of power have always got the answers. And they're generally the good guys. Well, I guess the Tories never are, but in people's eyes. But and suddenly, you know, they're not popular, they're not fun. You know, people don't just like them because they're labor, but they don't just like them because they're not the conservatives. And I think they might really struggle to adapt to that.
The one, the one sort of cautionary note I would sound about that, though, is I do think that like, one of the things that's very true of politics in particular is that perception of, of political figures is only really shaped by the media. Yeah. We do not really ever get a chance to engage with who Keir Starmer really is or who Angela Rayner really is. Um, and, you know, somebody pointed something out to me the other day because I was having a rant about how terrible this current incumbent Labour government are at messaging and why I don't really understand how people who, you know, have, have press coaching and that sort of thing managed to completely drop the ball so many times. And they made a good point, which is just that there is also never really in the history of British politics been quite such an aggressive and protracted campaign to catch them out. You know, it's like all the newspapers. Everybody is always constantly trying to find something that Keir Starmer has done wrong that points to him being corrupt.
And that's always was exactly the same with the Tories, is it? It was. I think it was. Yeah, yeah. I think I mean, look at look at when we were in Covid, you know, everything that John, I was never a fan of Boris Johnson, but everything that Johnson did, the opposition parties, the media, the BBC, everybody was trying to catch them out. Oh, do you want to murder, murder pensioners, Prime Minister? You know, it's it's always thus because the media needs to sensationalise, it needs to find fault. It can't report that everything's going pretty well. Right. What should we talk about? You know, they just don't do that. They always want to create controversy.
And this is sort of the the same story exists around Donald Trump in America, for example, where even though, you know, sort of ostensibly left leaning papers are involved, it's still in their best interests and has been their sort of tactic to constantly sort of fan the flames, but also constantly talk about Donald Trump and give him air time and give him exposure because it's better for their ratings. And yeah, I do agree with you. I do agree with you that they're, they're sort of thing is peddling misery ultimately or, or sort of confusion or.
What the politicians do exactly the same. Yeah. When, when Labour were in opposition, particularly through Covid. And you know, I firmly believe that they tried to they tried to make political capital out of it. Same as you know, I, I think the SNP did exactly the same in Scotland.
Well, it's very it's very similar to and I know you're not like, we don't talk about American politics as much on here, but it's very similar to the Biden thing. You know, the Democrats in America have spent years pointing at the Republicans and saying, you're terribly corrupt. You do all sorts of awful things. Hunter Biden and then and then, yeah. And then Joe Biden, on his way out, just broke a promise and pardoned his son, which, you know, irrespective of whether or not it's actually as bad as what Donald Trump's done. The point is, it sort of it genuinely proves the point that both sides are equally as bad as each other. And you know, I don't know where you go from there. I don't know. It's yeah.
I don't know. And then in France, as we alluded to earlier, we've got all this, this chaos just now where they're kind of giving.
Michel Barnier was so good at negotiating the Brexit deal.
I must admit it does sound odd to me that like basically during Brexit and I, I, you know I voted remain for all. It's for all it's worth. I voted remain. But um you know through the whole process, we were kind of told how Barnier was this like demigod. Yeah. He was just like, you know, oh you know, our guys have got to negotiate with this guy and oh they've got no chance. He's he's just it's just the, you know, the, the, the last word in, in, in negotiation. And obviously that didn't go awfully well for him. And then he's been supplanted in as the Prime Minister. And although thanks to my good friend patron, we I know a little bit about French politics. Well, I know enough to know it's horribly complicated. Yeah. Um, and so you've got like the president. And then he elects a. He appoints a prime minister, and then they build this government. And. But basically in there, you've got like a government, you've got a parliament, which is not what's it called, the Parliament. It's not called the Parliament, is it? It's called the Assembly or something. Yeah. So in the Senate. Yeah. So you've got the um front, front national and then you've got the equivalent left wing parties. So they don't agree with each other other than.
They hate the.
Centre, other than they'll come together in order to, you know, cause chaos because it's kind of in their interests, I suppose, to cause chaos because I don't know where this ultimately goes.
But I mean, the long term trajectory is that France lurches to the right is my point. I think that is generally the trajectory.
Well, that's happening. It's obviously already happened in Hungary. It's happened to a lesser extent in Austria. It's kind of happening to a certain extent in Germany. It's definitely happening to a certain extent in France, it's really, you know, it's really interesting times, um, politically across across Europe. I think it's interesting because I think a lot of people think that, like, the UK is the only place that's in this kind of political turmoil. But actually, things are pretty calm here compared to what's happening in France, Germany. I don't know what's going on in Italy. How many prime ministers have they had this month?
Malone yeah.
Well that's right.
Yeah. Europe in disarray. And here we are trying to sell people flanges.
Anyway, I have put something in to record another episode on on Monday which is only a few days away. So I think we'll we'll wind that up just now.
We can wind up. I've got one more thing, but it'll wait.
Oh no, you can. It's up to you.
It was just about Christmas marketing seemed like a tiny. It's a tiny thing, but it seemed like a timely thing as well. That was difficult to say. I'll just.
Check my emails while you do this.
one. Well, no, it's just that, um, because I think, you know, predominantly our client base is B2B, um, and predominantly they're quite boring businesses. Um, and it was just to say.
I agree with that, but go on.
To the, to the general public that one of the trends.
That I talk about the general public.
They're all idiots. I mean, what?
You sound like a politician.
The average IQ is one hundred. How scary is that? No, in all seriousness, one thing I see as a sort of trend is people who are normally quite workaday. They do something very worthy, very interesting as a business. Um, but you know, they're sort of persona and their voice is one of sort of quiet reason and sort of technical competence. And then Christmas comes around and they decide they're going to do, you know, some sort of like sparkly, you know, email with bells and reindeers and all that sort of thing.
Interestingly enough.
Something really, really naff and I don't know why it is.
We got a client who wants to do that.
We have several, several clients who want to do that and they're like, make us a Christmas card. Do it like this. And it's like, and it's really just to say that at Christmas, there are lots of things you can do if you want to stay top of mind. Um, some of them are very effective, but that is not it. Do you know what I mean? Trying to. Trying to abandon your brand persona and be really sort of cool and relatable and friendly at Christmas or like, celebrate with people. Like people just don't want that off their business contacts. Nobody really wants to open an email in their inbox and, you know, grinning Santa and like, Merry Xmas from X brand. It doesn't land.
This isn't a subject you want to discuss. You just wanted to rant.
Well, I do want to discuss it. I want to discuss ways to do it effectively because I think I think most marketing managers at some point get charged with like, oh, what are you going to do for our Christmas thing?
Well, here's the thing. Why even try to do it at all? Because I, if I got a Christmas card from Apple. Yeah, then I could not give you a.
Straight in the bin.
I could not care less. I get Christmas cards, corporate stuff coming through straight in the bin. Yeah. Because it's it's meaningless. So why.
Well, I think this is where the whole like, virtue signaling argument comes from, isn't it? It's like you're just trying to be relatable, trying to be on trend, trying to be, you know, sort of like leverage something that's happening to get yourself top of mind. Yeah, yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe you just shouldn't be doing it. I think if you can do it. Sorry. If you have to do it, you can do it in a way that's tasteful at least, or slightly more restrained. Yeah, but maybe you're right.
I don't know who does it really well. Who does Christmas stuff really well. John Lewis used to, didn't they, with their adverts. Oh, he used to tell a nice story. I don't know if they really. But that's relevant.
They're trying to entice you to go into the shop to buy Christmas presents. Look like, you know, the fact that like big oil and gas service companies in Aberdeen do Christmas cards is bizarre. It's like nobody thinks.
Here's our CEO wearing a tie with a flashing light on it. Aren't we wacky? That sort of thing is just like, Holy shit.
It is Christmas. Maybe I will buy another plug or bung, you know.
I'm not going there.
I set him up. Yeah, you did, you did.
And I chose to ignore that one. Yeah, because my name isn't Greg. Maybe you sound like him now, though.
All right. Um, no. Yeah, maybe you're right.
Maybe the what you're trying to say is, like, just because it's Christmas doesn't mean you have to like, like, do something naff and cheap and nasty just to say Merry Christmas from, you know, Acme engineering. Yeah. And look at us all wearing paper hats and and, you know, it's all pretending we're wacky.
It's awful.
It's cringe singing a song badly. You know what I mean? Doing our version of do They Know It's Christmas or something like that?
Yeah.
You mean like, stay classy, guys. Stay classy.
Just don't try and jump on a bandwagon just because I don't think you have to.
Make a quiet donation to charity or something.
Well, here we go. Here's the plug. Here it comes.
I'm not mentioning it. I'm not mentioning. I'm not mentioning that we're doing that. Yeah.
You should be a politician.
Uh, I don't think I'd make a good one. I found that out. Really? Because I've been heavily involved, as you know, with trying to get our bridge reopened here because. Because our council are not very effective and they've had to close a bridge that people rely on. And, um, yeah, that's opened my eyes a little bit, you know, to, to sort of certainly a local politics and things. And it, it, it must just be horribly frustrating to be honest, because you can get nothing done. Everything moves slowly. The answer is always, we haven't got any money. And with the best will in the world, it's just nothing much happens.
Yeah. Depressing.
Um, direct action is something. I mean, I've tried. I have tried to encourage people.
I'm surprised.
Let's go down to Edinburgh and stand outside the parliament with big plaques in. You're putting our lives at risk. And people are like, oh, what have much effect?
But that was surprisingly constructive.
Well, it doesn't matter if it has no effect, you know what I mean? At least we've done something. It'll be on the radio. It'll be it's, you know, you've got to try and make people feel.
You've not just taken it lying down. Yeah.
Tried not.
To. Yeah.
Gregg Wallace again.
This episode. I'm gonna.
I'm gonna get you canceled on this.
Podcast by the wokerati. Yeah. Suella Braverman would call them. Um, that was surprisingly constructive from Leslie, though I thought, I mean, she mentioned direct action and it wasn't immediately followed up with throw Molotov cocktails at the bridge, which, being French is the go to solution. Seems to be. All right!
Well, I'll do with this. Enough of this nonsense for now. Um, like I say, we are predominantly talking about digital marketing and stuff on this podcast, but we do venture off into what's going on in the world because when you're at the coalface of digital marketing, you are exposed to the media quite a bit. And you, if you like anything like me and I know you're the same, you are genuinely interested in the world around us. And I suppose sometimes we might find connections with the world around us. And yeah, you know, the broader subject of digital marketing. But when we don't, we can just have a whinge about the politicians. All right. You've been listening to Dave and Alex and we'll be back soon.