One of the things that we often talk about being a digital marketing agency is having a credible website. I think people miss that websites are there to be found. So like somebody's got a business challenge, they might go to Google, they might go to social media, whatever. But one way or another, they're going to find your website. And I think it's easy to lose sight of just how powerful, you know, websites can be. There was a clear illustration of that this week. We've got a conversation with a company down South and in the email that they wrote, and I'll just quote this bit, we are currently seeking marketing support for our company and were particularly impressed by your website. Now, that was unsolicited. It's illustrative of the fact that, you know, when companies have identified, they've got a problem and they're looking for solutions and they identify two or three organisations that might be able to provide that solution. The thing that's going to tip them over the edge. Potentially is having a great website. Okay, welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface with me, Dave Robinson and my associate in crime, Stuart Harrison. Good week?
Good week. Yeah. Busy busy all over the place. Typical.
Yeah. Down the motorway and stuff like that.
Yeah. I've been enjoying the delights of the M6 again for the last few months, which I managed to avoid for the best part of six years. So. And I have to say, after the first trip, um, yeah, I, I'm quite happy to miss it again, but, um, so be it.
Just have to warn you that that noise then was me opening a can of Red bull. Oh, and Alex always used to get very nervous when I had Red bull when we did a podcast, because it sometimes made me a bit hyper.
Well, if it's any consolation, I've just had an espresso.
I don't know whether there's more caffeine in an espresso or a Red bull. I'm not sure. I don't know if there's caffeine in Red bull is I'm just looking now.
Just a little bit.
I really like Red bull. It's funny, the number of people I speak to. And so I'm just gonna have Red bull. Oh, how can you drink that stuff? It's a very Marmite drink. And did you say you'd never tried it?
No, no, I used to drink speaking.
I was speaking to somebody a while ago on the. And they said I've never tried it. It's like, oh okay.
I quite like it. I think it's like cough mixture. But again with cough mixture you either like it or you don't, you know. So and I do like Marmite.
I wouldn't pour myself a glass of cough mixture and mix it with carbonated water. I wouldn't do that. But I don't really think it is. Although if I had to describe it, I probably would say it's a bit like cough mixture. When I went down to Barrow last weekend. Weekend before to do the Keswick to Barrow Walk sponsored walk. Um. My mother knows I like Red bull, but I also know that she likes going to Aldi and places like that. So she got me this stuff from Aldi called Red Thunder, which the can looks very like the Red bull can. The name is obviously a little bit like the Red bull name. And you know what? It actually tasted like Red bull. I mean, God knows what's in it in order to, you know, what chemicals they've used to try and recreate the taste of Red bull, because I'm sure their recipes are secret. But she got me this stuff. And, uh. Yeah, I've kind of guzzled my way through four cans of it. It's gone now. Finished it. And, uh, it was quite drinkable. And. And it's like probably about thirty pence a can instead of. I've just bought that from the local shop and it was one pound sixty five for a tiny little drink. Have you ever seen the, uh, Rory Sutherland when he talks about.
Red Bull and Coke? Yeah.
Well, yeah, that's right. He specifically talks about Red bull and says like they had this drink which tastes disgusting and like, how are they going to compete with Coca Cola? And so he said, so they decided just to like make it more expensive and you get less of it and go for a whole different angle. And it worked. You know, it's now I mean, Red bull, I mean, what you know, the money they must make for all, all the extra curricular stuff that they sponsor, like Formula one and guys flying around in wingsuits and screaming down mountains on bikes and shit like that.
And Monster Monster energy is the same. I mean.
They're big into motorbike. Aren't they all motorbike motocross? I was watching highlights of the North West two hundred and they were all over that.
Yeah, well, it's really interesting, you know, going back to the original start of this, driving up and down the M6 course, stopping at motorway services, and you used to have the cold chill account drinks counter, you know, and there was twenty six different brands of water, all variously different price. Yeah. But it's just water. Yeah. Now there's twenty seven different flavours of monster energy, six different varieties of Red bull, you know.
Yeah.
Aldi though. Right. This is a marketing related thing. I reckon Aldi must have the best patent lawyers or copyright lawyers in the world.
Amazing.
Because there's so much stuff that is Aldi. Stuff that looks at first glance just like the branded product and isn't.
I know, I know, and, uh, yeah, I'm a fan. I've got to say, I'm a fan.
Absolutely.
Of I always get confused between Aldi and Lidl and there was another one. Is that gone now? I can't what was the other one? There was Aldi, Lidl and oh, I can't remember the name of it, but Aldi and Lidl still exist, don't they? You know, because I love their little um you know, talking about marketing for a change on our Digital Marketing From The Coalface podcast, um uh, blah blah blah. And always Lidl on price. That's so clever. Isn't that good? It's good. It's so good. Always Lidl on price. Yeah. Love that love a pun.
The one that really got me with, uh, with Aldi was they started producing their own beer or lager that looked distinctly like brewdog's beer or lager.
Yes.
So BrewDog brought out a beer specifically for Aldi.
Yeah, I mean, BrewDog would be all over that. I mean, they would love that.
Absolutely.
Um, you know, they would absolutely love that. And interestingly, when you're speaking about BrewDog, um, we're um, sort of early stages of working with another agency, uh, quite local to us here in just outside Aberdeen. Uh, they're based in Aberdeen and um, they're the person who's in charge of heads up, head of creative or whatever they call them. Um ex BrewDog was with BrewDog for about nine years. Um, and it's, and it's actually the same agency who originally came up with the BrewDog brand and everything. So yeah, I'm quite excited about working with them. It's, it's a, it's a nice little, uh, because they don't do what we do. And, you know, at the, at the extreme level, we don't do what they do, you know, so it's, uh, it's a, it's a potential, uh, you know, marriage made in heaven, let's say, but we'll see how it goes, see how it goes. Early days, we're trying to find something to collaborate on just now. Um, we've got a few possibilities. Not, not least because, you know, we've had some fantastic enquiries coming in over the last couple of weeks. You've seen them as well. Um, you know, everything from sort of SMEs, thirty to one hundred people type businesses. Uh, one of them came in from a PLC looking for some HubSpot help. And, and, uh, yeah, just it's, um, yeah, it's really exciting. There's so much, there's so much good, good stuff flying around.
What do you reckon it's called the new financial year, new budgets.
I I don't know. I mean, don't you feel that that the economy is generally just feeling a little bit more stable, a bit more normal? Um excuse me. Um the, the initial, um Trump nonsense has kind of simmered down a bit. He's kind of wound his neck in a little bit and it's all getting a bit more business as usual kind of thing. And I think maybe that brings a bit of confidence, feel good factor of the summer and all that kind of thing. Um, I mean, people are still taking time to make decisions. I'm still still, still definitely seeing that, um, broadly speaking, you know, decisions seem to take a while, but, um, yeah, just, I mean, this week it was, I think on Friday alone, there was like three decent enquiries came in, you know, from, from all over the place as well, from well, predominantly down south actually down, down in England. But um, yeah, it's good, it's good to uh, it's good to be reaping the benefits of having a, a strong online presence. I'm going to talk about that later on actually, uh, it's something that we haven't touched on for a while and it's probably worth a quick revisit, But speaking about leads, and I'm not talking about the, uh, I'm not talking about the football team. How are leads football team doing? You're a football person.
They're going to be in the Premier League next year.
Oh, I didn't even realise they were. That's how much I know about football. I only watch golf on telly.
Your last football match was nineteen seventy eight, was it?
Does Billy Bremner still play?
No. He's retired now. Yeah.
Oh, dear. Uh, did Chopper Harris pay for that play for them as well? Was he part of that whole Don Revie? You remember? They had a whole thing where Don Revie was in charge, and they were just the dirtiest team in the world.
You can't say that about Leeds. You can't. You?
They were, they were, they were though. They were. They were just go and like, you know, never mind the ball. Just get the man. You know what I mean? That was just the way they operated. And people people were like, people were scared of him, you know, I thought anyway, but again, that's going back to when I was a kid. So it's a long time ago.
I don't think they were unique, let me put it that way. Yeah.
Peter Lorimer, He was.
A little bit before me.
Surely you remember Pete. He could volley a ball at like, a million miles an hour. He was just like, unbelievable. Goal scorer. No! Peter. Peter. No, wait a minute. Peter Lorimer was. No. Peter Shilton was a goalie. Peter. Oh, Jesus. This is getting ridiculous. Anyway, I.
Understand the Red bull now by Alex. Yeah.
I've only had a few mouthfuls of it. God, give me a chance. Um, anyway, I was talking about how we got lots of leads coming in and, you know, and businesses. Businesses. Great. Um. Oh, there's my phone ringing. I can't answer it just now. I know what it is. I think it's Ted from Ballater talking about my carpets. I can do without. I can do without that just now. I'll ring them back. Um, so um what was I going to say. Getting leads. So we, we get quite often daily. Almost daily. Yeah. Daily we get a message comes in and says, we work with marketing agencies like yours and we can get you ten to twenty In enquiries leads, you know people to speak to a week. Why don't we get in touch? Let's let's have a conversation about that. And what it made me think about was how people don't do when they're doing account based marketing. I like they've identified like they work with marketing agencies. So they go and find marketing agencies who they can get, who they can generate business for, potentially generate business for generate leads. And then they come and hit us with like, we can get you ten to twenty, you know, conversations a week. I would, I couldn't, I mean, it's so at the other end of the scale from what we do, if I have, if I have three or four good conversations a month, I'm very happy with that. Very happy. I don't need ten to twenty. And it just got me thinking about if you're going to do account based marketing, make sure that you research the businesses that you're going to reach out to and make sure you really understand what they do, who they do it for, and what they what they would need to hear from you in order to be interested in having a conversation about doing business together. Why are you smiling at me like that?
A couple of reasons. It's a personal bugbear and hate of mine. To receive an email that says we work with companies like yours and we can give you leads. Two reasons for that. One, they're nearly always the ones I get for my own business. They're nearly always to do with photovoltaic cells because I've got the word solar in the company name, even though I have nothing to do with solar. So that immediately tells me they haven't done the research properly. So that's a delete. Yeah. But the other thing is if you've got ten to twenty worthy leads for me, you can give me every week, why aren't you picking up the phone and telling me.
Yeah I know.
Yeah that's right. If I could generally provide a company with ten to twenty high quality leads that could go somewhere, I'd be picking up the phone at the MD and saying, I've got a really exciting opportunity for you if you're interested. Yeah. But yeah, because they're not going.
To not only that, you might even be tempted to send them a couple and say, look, this is what they need. Here's the managing director's phone number. Give him a ring and like, go and do that business, you know, and then, and then, and then I'm showing you the quality of the stuff that I can bring to you. Then you're going to be all over me like a rash and wanting a conversation with me, aren't you?
Well, yeah, I was actually thinking of you the other way around. You know, I'm never going to put in writing. Try these two companies, and here's a phone number. Because if you don't respond, I don't know whether I can then give those names to somebody else. If I have a phone call with you, though, and you say, okay, I'm interested, have you got one? I can try, you know, try for free try before you buy. No, but you can try it. And if it lands, you can pay me X what do you say? You know. Um and you know, I give you that name, I give you those contact details. You try it, you come back and go. Do you know what? They were right up our street. Okay, let's have a conversation. How many leads would you like a week or a month? Yeah, yeah. But to put it in.
Not.
Doing.
It suggests to me, sorry, the fact they're not doing that suggests to me that the leads are shite. Yep. And they, they don't want you to know that otherwise. Yeah. Why wouldn't you come to me and say Acme engineering. They employ fifty people. They've been on the go for twenty years. Their marketing's awful. They've spoken to me about how, you know, they need some help. And I think, you know, it'd be a great opportunity for you to have a conversation with them, for example.
I mean, if you think, you know, a really poor analogy, but as you know, my car insurance is due up. So that annual pain that is renew your car insurance. So because I registered last year with one of the, you know, price check sites, I get an email about four weeks before now that my, my insurance is due. But guess what? The first thing they put at the top, your renewal is due. This is the cheapest quote we've got here. And they give you a figure and you go, oh, I can't remember what I paid last year. Let's have a look. Oh, that's a lot cheaper. Click. And and then you start looking, you know, because they've already got my attention. They've told me it's going to be cheaper. Yeah. Brill. That's what you want to hear. Yeah. Then you get into all the nuances of oh does it have legal protection and windscreen protection and all. And by the time you've done all that, you realise it's just as expensive, if not more so than last year. But yeah, at least there's something tangible in that email, you know?
Yeah. I mean, the moral of this story is, I mean, account based marketing can be powerful. But if you're going to do it, just make sure you do the hard, the hard yards and make sure that the people you're reaching out to genuinely would potentially benefit from a conversation with you. Totally not hard, is it?
No, it's not hard, is it? Unless you're playing the numbers.
Game, don't reach out. Oh, look at that. If in doubt, don't reach out.
Oh, there's a slogan there.
Yeah. Oh, there's a slogan. You can have that anyone listening, you can have that.
That sounds like something from the milk adverts in the nineteen seventies. Oh, no. That was. Watch out, watch out. There's a Humphrey about.
Yeah. Or clunk click every trip. But we won't go there. Anyone listening of a certain age will know why.
Move on.
Yeah. Go on. Moving on. Give it. Give us. You said you had some ideas which you you brought along. Um. So. Yeah. What's been going on in your digital marketing week or. Well, what's, what's whizzing around your tiny little brain that's related to digital marketing? Yeah.
There's two things really completely unrelated. One thing is obviously we've been writing some content for a client in the last week or two. Um, and it's, it's a, it's an engineering company who sell both products and services. Okay. So I won't mention them, but, um, and it amazed me how my mind has had a huge paradigm shift over the last twelve months, two years. You know, I never believed you could sell services digitally. Products. Absolutely. You know, you can advertise products, but advertising services on a website, digital platform, social media. I was like, how do you get across that nuance of the, the subtlety of how they are to deal with the personality of the organisation? And I am an absolute convert now, but it takes some time and skill because often I think the more I work with the clients who offer services, the more I kind of realise that, um, they don't necessarily understand why their clients value them. They just know that they do. And you have to kind of, you know, there's a, there's a humility with them. There's a humbleness. Well, they just seem to really like us, you know? Okay. But why is that exactly? You really have to kind of push and dig to find out what those those little differentiators are. You know, and, and why they come back to them. And, and then to try and articulate that back without sounding. So corporate is really, really quite an interesting challenge. Yeah. Um, one that I'm enjoying. So that was the first, you know.
one of the things that you can do obviously is, is, um, is either ask for or you might just be lucky enough to get testimonials because quite often the, they often go beyond. Um, yes, we gave them a project and they delivered it on time and on budget. You know, it's like they often go beyond that and talk about, you know, about oh yeah. You know, they might say it was a pleasure working with Dave and his team. You know, they answered questions. They were responsive. They delivered everything that we wanted them to deliver. They added value by suggesting things that we hadn't even thought of. There's a lot of information in something as simple as that to somebody who doesn't know you. It's back to this idea of your website having, you know, social proof and a very powerful type of social proof is client testimonials even more powerful if they're video testimonials. So somebody just having a conversation later on today with their business consultant, he's down based down in the Midlands. He'll drive through the Midlands quite a lot don't you. Yeah. Yeah. So we've just lost all our listener in the in the Midlands. Um so I'm having a conversation with this guy and he's kind of reached out. Uh, at first I thought it looked a bit spammy, but then he clearly had done his research because he works with primarily manufacturing businesses, which is not necessarily our niche. We're more kind of engineering and tech companies. But, you know, manufacturing is not a million miles away. He works with manufacturing businesses. He's he's found us. He wants to see if there's any sort of mileage in working together. I checked him out. I looked on his website and there was some really nice video testimonials from people he's worked with. And I just thought, yep, sounds like a good guy. And I reached out to him and said, you know, here, here's my, uh, you know, link to book a meeting immediately. Booked a meeting. In fact, if you're around, you could join the conversation. You'll see it in my calendar. You're just off a call with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at half past four. And I've got that conversation with, uh, with this guy at half past four. So I'll maybe add you into it if you fancy it. Yeah, I think it'd be quite good because I think, you know, he's a guy, you know, kind of ages with us, I think ish thereabouts and certainly sounds like he's got like, you know, the kind of experience that that may well be of, of interest to us. Um, and it could be that, you know, our skill set is something that, uh, he could leverage as well. So big conversation, but, um, how did we get on to that? Remind me you were talking about.
Selling services digitally and how it was kind.
Of. Yes, that's right.
A big paradigm shift mindset shift over the last few years.
But it's not unusual for us to get, uh, feedback, um, about our website. And because we use plain language, we don't try and baffle with bullshit. We, you know, we explain sometimes quite, um complex um subjects, uh, in very simple language in our, you know, in our blog and some of the, some of the other content that we produce and we've had that feedback over the years. You know, I think what we, you know, we're trying to come. We're trying to be approachable. We're trying to be come across as a get shit done kind of business. Um, you know, and, and I think that does come across in the content that we produce. So, so to your point, I think, you know, you do have to get that right. And we went through this very recently with, um, you know, the client we're working with who were based down in Somerset where, you know, we're trying to put together, you know, we're not trying, we're putting together the brand guidelines. And I kind of pushed back a bit on the, you know, I don't want platitudes when it comes to the tone of voice section, you know, yeah, we come across as friendly and communicative and professional. Yeah, yeah, professional, whatever that means. Um, you know, so, you know, you do need to, to sort of do a bit of work to get this tone of voice, that tone of voice, right? And, you know, an interesting thing happened last week. Um, Leslie, who's a video expert, um, she's a French national and I was playing around with one of the tools in HubSpot where you can basically press a button and it will create a French version or Spanish version or whatever of a blog post.
Interesting.
And, and it's a really nifty tool, but I thought, well, it's only nifty if it's any good. So I said to Leslie, um, I did a converted a blog post into French. We do have one customer in France and I'm sure there are plenty of other opportunities, especially now Psaki has gone off and done whatever deal he's been doing today so that the floodgates are going to open and the EU work's going to come pouring in. Um, but I asked her to read it as a, you know, a native French speaker. And she said, yeah, it was okay. Um, she said there was a few bits that were grammatically incorrect, where there wasn't a French equivalent of whatever we'd said in the blog post. But she said the only thing is, she said, it doesn't really feel very read evolution. The translation didn't have a kind of feel, so it was exactly to that point of like, there is something about the way we communicate and the language that we use that is unique or sort of unique to us. And, you know, whether whether we realise it or not, we have got a tone of voice which seems to resonate with people, so much so that this French translation, courtesy of HubSpot, wasn't really in line with our tone of voice, didn't.
Capture.
It. You know.
When you think about.
What is difficult, though, unless you're a native speaker who understands, read evolution, you know, and which she obviously is because she's been with us a while. And so, oh, there's a blue tick right outside the window. Oh, gorgeous. Oh. Anyway, um, yeah. So she's, you know, she looked at it and she was, um, I.
Know you're on the red.
You're on the red.
Think about.
It. It is an actual bird. Yeah. With wings. Well, the Red bull would give it wings if it didn't have wings, wouldn't it? Um, sorry. Yeah. So. All right. So services, you were skeptical about selling services. But you are a convert. Absolutely. What else were we. There was two things I think you said. Yeah. Completely unrelated.
They were unrelated. Yeah. The second one. Uh, as as you well know, I'm not getting any younger. I'm, you know, I'm in my mid fifties and realised, God, I've been around.
You're younger than me, sunshine.
That's all that matters. Um, and I realised I've been around the block a bit, and I was working with some younger colleagues in a different, you know, not to do with the digital marketing, but in, in a technical world. And they were struggling because there was a particular challenge in this project, not a technical one. It was to do with people, as it usually is with projects. And they were getting themselves in a real flap about stuff that they basically had no control or no influence over. Mhm. And I thought, well, that's interesting. And then I realised, and we've had this discussion before, but I was lucky enough to work for a big company back in the nineties who poured thousands of pounds into me in the form of training, personal development, behavioural development, leadership training, all those wonderful things. And all a lot of the content we covered in those days, my peer group covered seems to have fallen out of favour or forgotten about, fallen out of favour, even not flavour or forgotten about. It's fallen out of flavour as well. But, and there was a thing called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I don't know if you remember that back in the day. Yeah. And you know, it stormed the world number one in the bestsellers for years and years. And then, you know, the audiobooks came out and they were number one. And all he really did was it was a, it was a great bit of marketing exercise. He took some psychological theories that were well known and well tested, some models just to simplify it for the layman, and he packaged them up really, really well. Yeah, yeah. But one of them was the three circles, and in the middle was the circle of control, then the circle of influence and then the circle of concern. And he basically said, you know, you can only control what's in your circle of control. So how can you expand your circle of control? Well, you do that by influencing. So you start off by influencing something until you're in a position to control it basically. So you increase your circles. And it just made me realise with social media, modern pressures, all this information, we get ninety percent of what we read, you know, whether it's on news websites or apps or news feeds or social media, it's all in the circle of concern. You can't do anything about it. Yeah, yeah. And when I kind of I shared this model with my younger colleagues and they went, it was like, it was like an epiphany for them. You know, it was like, oh my God, yes. I spend all my time worrying about stuff that's in my circle of concern. You know, you're never going to influence the site directly because the five layers of management above you, or if you if you do get a chance to influence, it's for about 30s, you know. Yeah. Um, so don't worry about it. Just accept whatever decision they make and move on, you know, and it's a lot more pain free. And I just thought it just made me reflect. I'm looking across at my bookcase over, you know, to the side here, how many of these kind of books I had from the nineties that you just don't hear about them anymore. And I wonder why that is? Have they just are they just not fashionable? Did did people embrace it and then take two percent away and say, that's me done. You know, I just wondered why. Because it's all about how we work and how effective we are at work. And, you know, the stuff that we deal with, with clients and, you know, we, we can't control somebody who looks at one of our website pages, but we can influence them. We can influence through the words, the styling, the creativity, the messaging, the videos, etc.. You know.
Well, this is interesting because I, I've been seeing stuff on, on social media, particularly on TikTok. Um, and it's basically, um, talking about the benefits of stoicism being stoic and the Stoics, if you like, they say, for example, um, never, um, never criticise, you know, never, never, never complain, sorry, not criticise, never complain about anything, not even to yourself, you know, like you're driving along and some idiot does something in the road and, oh, you know, just don't do it. It's completely non-productive. And that was like, it was like seven bit like the seven things you were talking about. But the second one was, you know, I'll paraphrase, don't fret about things that you can't change. Yeah, that was it. It's exactly what you were saying. Like some stuff you can't change. Right. So I'll give you an example. It was on Facebook and BBC Scotland posted a story and it was about the lavish spending of the water regulator saw their expenses. Right. So you saw it. Person said. So this is the headline written by a journalist. Lack of Scottish Government of scrutiny over lavish spending at water regulator. I'm just reading it. That's exactly what it said. Lack of Scottish Government of scrutiny over lavish spending at water regulator. And I commented lack of proofreading of headlines as well. That was my comment just for a laugh because I thought, you know what I mean, for Christ's sake, it's the BBC and they can't even write a headline.
There's so many.
Typos. So a lot, a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people just want a smiley face, thumbs up. And then one guy, you know, one one guy said, oh yeah, report writing script is very poor these days. Exclamation mark. What can you do? But somebody else, this guy, I'm going to say he's called Neil Borthwick and his comment was Dave Robinson. Eh. Let's focus on the proofreading and not the story. Marvellous. Now obviously what I could have done is gone back to him and said, you're a dick. Or I could have said like, well, I'm not really commenting on the story. I was commenting on the fact that there is a dreadful headline, but then I thought, you can't influence an idiot, somebody who wants to be offended or wants to kind of take exception to the fact that I thought it was poor, that the headline was badly written for the sake of a spell checker, or just somebody else cast over this place for a post it. But he wanted to make the point that, you know, oh yeah, I'm a bad guy because I was I was talking about the proofreading instead of the story, but I didn't write anything. I didn't respond because I thought, you're an idiot and there's no point in me responding. And I think if more people did that on social media, I let the idiots howl at the moon and just get on with your life. Social media would gradually become a much nicer place. Just let the idiots howl at the moon, you know? Don't do it. We can't influence them. We can't improve them. We can't fix them. Just let them be idiots.
Well, and also the beauty of living in a free world there every right to be entitled to their opinion.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. Might disagree with it. We might disagree with it. But I think that's, that's the other thing that I noticed is disappearing. And there's been a lot already made of this. So I won't dwell on it. But apparently you can't have differing opinions and debate them anymore. You have to agree with everybody or they have to agree with you. Well, when did that happen? It's not. It's not a law of physics. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. People are entitled to a different opinion of me than me. And I'm absolutely entitled to try and debate it with them if they want to debate it. But a debate.
And change your mind, potentially.
I change my mind. Yeah. God, yeah. That happens on a daily basis in a professional world, doesn't it? You know?
Yeah, of course it does. Absolutely. It does. It does. And it does in our line of business. It does in, you know, with engineers, the people we work with and people that do tech stuff. Absolutely. It does. You go, oh yeah, I never thought of it that way. Oh yeah. We'll try that. Yeah. That's that's the open mind of that's a sorry, that's an inquisitive mind would be open to that. But yeah, I hear what you're saying.
Anyway rant over. So no.
No.
I mean.
It's an interesting one because, you know, talking about digital marketing, we are talking about communicating with people, um, helping to influence people, um, helping to educate people, the whole sort of raft of things that we're that we're trying to do. And, and so that's why I think, you know, communication in all its guises does interest me. And, and, you know, I'm fascinated by, um, you know, understanding what motivates people and understanding how trying something completely different, um, that isn't kind of the received wisdom is interesting. And, you know, because the human brain, honestly, it's, it's a, it's a complex thing, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
And you said stating the obvious.
Well, no, it's quite simple actually. Dave, let me explain. Um.
Stuart Stewart, as my dad used to say, nobody likes a smart ass.
And he used to say it to me as well. Um, the, that's one of the things I really liked about alchemy, Rory Sutherland's book, because I thought it was going to be a book.
That's what I was referring to, really?
Yeah. I thought it was going to be a book about marketing. And it's not. It's a book about behavioural science. Yeah.
And one hundred percent.
And whilst that science is not, um, what's the word? A fully qualified science yet you know, the research is still relatively young, but by God is it coming on in leaps and bounds? Yeah. Mhm. Um and, and that fascinated me. I mean, the human aspects always fascinated me. To be fair, there was another book in the nineties called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. And I remember I remember a trainer mentioning it in a course I was on and they said, um, you know, you know what it's like in every working life, you get that one email that winds you up or you get a comment that pisses you off, you know, and, you know, gets the heart rate going and the adrenaline going. And they just said, what were you doing one year ago today? And what were you worrying about? And it's very, very rare. You can remember exactly what you were worrying about. Unless it was like a major family crisis or something, you know, bereavement in the family or those kind of things. It's we we forget quite quickly what's been bothering us. So. So when something bothers you today, just remember in a year's time, you won't remember it in the slightest. So just move on, you know? Yeah. And it's a really powerful, simple little tool just to give yourself a prompt, you know?
So yeah, but if you're, if you're a worrier and let's face it, you know, people, it's usually in, well, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a compliment. It's usually intelligent people who are, who are worriers, you know, and stupid people are cocksure. They go through life just being completely cocksure because they're stupid, you know, and like, intelligent people generally are the worriers. And to your point, and anyone who's listened to this podcast for a while will obviously be, um, familiar with what I'm about to say. But there's a, the famous saying is I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened, you know, and, and the first time I read that, I was like, oh, yeah, you've just described my life, you know?
Yeah.
It's so powerful. It's been associated with various people. I'm not sure if it was, um, if it was Bertrand Russell or Mark Twain or Marcus Aurelius. I have no idea. It's it's, you know, somebody of note, obviously, because it's a very, very clever observation. And when you hear it, it's so obvious and simple. But it had never been articulated to me till I till I read the actual quote. And I was just like, Holy shit, that is just me to a T and.
You know, and by the way.
And I know it's you as well. I know it's you.
Absolutely. And and, and by the way, it's very common amongst people I've worked with over the years because they work in engineering and science. And guess what? The discipline teaches you to go, okay, what might go wrong? And let's mitigate it. We spend our life looking for what might go wrong and mitigating it, you know? Um, so, and that's fine in a, in a working environment, but if you start to take that into your home life and it does, it just pervades because you've trained your brain to think that way, you know?
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. One hundred percent.
And if you've got any form of imagination, you can make those worst case scenarios really quite severe without much effort. Yeah.
Oh, no. Well, isn't there a, there's a, there's a famous joke isn't there. And it's probably, you know, it's probably Bernard Manning or somebody like that. And it's about the guy who, um, wants to borrow his neighbor's lawn mower. So he says, I'm so remember it's you, so Stuart, you know, and he's like, oh, Dave's got a lawn mower. I wonder if he'll lend me it. Well, I could, I suppose I could go around there and ask him. Yeah. But yeah he might, he might, it might be broken. Oh well. Yes. Well it might be broken. What. Yeah. Well I could go and ask him if I could, if I could get a shot of it. Yeah. But you know, maybe it's maybe it's run out of petrol or something. Yeah. But it maybe it hasn't. If it is, I can put petrol in it. Yeah. But you know maybe maybe he won't want me to lend it. Well why wouldn't he want me to lend it. I mean surely, you know, surely you wouldn't mind lending it to me, you know, wouldn't mind me borrowing it and I could I could just go and ask him. And this goes on and on and on, and you get yourself worked up and eventually you come, you come round to my house, you knock on the door, you go. Hi, Stu. What is it? You can stick your bloody lawnmower up your arse. You know what I mean? Because you've just got yourself worked up into such a state. About what? What's going to happen if he says no? And it's just like Jesus Christ. And so, you know, I mean, a comedian will tell that joke much better than I will, I ever will. But it's that kind of thing. I just, I just, I find it, it's back to this human condition.
Yeah, yeah.
And the psychology of what makes people tick and the psychology of how you persuade people on a website, for example. Speaking of which, um, one of the things, um, that we often talk about being a digital marketing agency is having a credible website. I'm actually writing a blog post just now, which is, um, it's kind of quite a long post it's turning into, but it's basically talking about, you know, why is it worth investing in a website? And if so, why kind of thing? Um, and I think people miss that websites are there to be found. So like somebody's got a business challenge, they might go to Google, they might go to social media, whatever. But one way or another, they're going to find your website. Equally, you might ask me for a recommendation for something and I might recommend somebody or an organisation. First thing you're going to do is go and check out their website. And I think it's easy to lose sight of just how powerful websites can be. And I just started like, there was a clear illustration of that. Um, this week we've got a conversation, um, with a company down south, um, down, uh, near the south coast down in Hampshire somewhere. I think, um, we've got a conversation with them and in the email that they wrote, and I'll just quote this bit, we're currently seeking marketing support for our company and were particularly impressed by your website. Now that was unsolicited. They could have just sent the thing saying, you know, we're looking for some help. But what they did, they did is they took the time to tell us that we've looked at your website, and I was looking at the tracking software that we use. And I could see I think it was them. You know, I could see these this company returning, returning and spending time on the website. So it's illustrative of the fact that, you know, when companies have identified, they've got a problem and they're looking for solutions and they identify two or three organisations that might be able to provide that solution. The thing that's going to tip them over the edge potentially is having a great website. The thing that's going to make them say, we're going to contact these guys and have a conversation with them because we really like what the what they're saying. Case studies speak for themselves. They're working with some good organisations that produce some good work. There's just something about that company that we like and we want to have a conversation with them. Now, this may or may not turn into a gig, but if it does turn into a gig, it'll be worth quite a lot of money to us. It'll be a nice company to work for, you know? You know, give them what they do. And I won't go into any detail on that, but I just think some organisations, especially in the space in which we're operating in the, you know, not so much tech, but certainly with engineering companies, they still think the website is like, as long as it's got a picture of whatever they build and a and a and a contact form on it, that's all that's required. You know, it's just a bit like, you know, well, you know, if that isn't enough, then, you know, obviously humbug. Humbug, I don't know. Just like they don't recognise that spending the time investing in making sure that going back to what we were talking about earlier, that telling a great story, you know, in language that people are happy to consume maybe videos and things because people like to watch, um, you know, videos rather than read quite often. Um, but I just thought, you know, it's a simple example, but it's a really strong example. I think of how a website can turn a stranger into somebody who is, all right, we don't know them very well yet, but they're not, you know, we're no longer strangers to each other. They've we've had an email conversation. They've booked a meeting for a for an actual meeting with their managing director on Friday. And, you know, hopefully that.
Will.
That will turn turn into a nice chunk of work.
Do you think I mean, this is a very crude analogy again, you know, like bad analogies. But and tell me if I've got this wrong. I mean, you used a key word for me in there, which is a credible website. And you described a little bit about what credible was. It tells a great story. It's got the right kind of language. You know, it might contain visual imagery and videos to make it.
Visual imagery.
Visual as opposed to non visual imagery. Yeah.
You weren't getting away with that.
I was a bit of uncertainty principle in there again you know.
Yeah I know.
But for me it's like a shop window isn't it. You're an idiot, I am you're an idiot. You're an idiot. All right. I believe it.
I'm just trying to get that subliminal message into your head. I saw these seeds of doubt.
I'll come back to self-talk in a minute. Um, but it's a shop window, isn't it? Excerpt. If you go down the high street and you're lucky enough to have High Street, there's still got bakers and butchers, not just, you know, chain shops. Can you imagine going, you know, you know, your local bakers. It's got the best bread, the best cakes, whatever you imagine if they had no window and it was just like a brick wall, and it was just a sign that says, we're bakers, you know, you wouldn't go in, you know. But the minute you see, like the delicious doughnut or the nice loaf of bread or whatever it might be, that grabs your attention, you know. And to me, that's what the website is. It's, it's an initial shop window into your business.
Yeah, yeah. That's right. But it's a sophisticated shop. It's a very sophisticated shop window. Yeah, yeah. Because it's, it's covered in so many things. And it's time and again, you know, we have these conversations and there are still plenty of businesses out there, thankfully, who've got a dreadful online presence. And we're not just talking about websites. When we talk about online presence, we're talking about, you know, the way that you present in social media platforms, the way that you're interacting in forums, whatever it might be. There's a whole range of things, but it's really powerful. In fact, going back to that guy that we're going to have a chat with today, one of the one of the video testimonials was from. It's an engineering company I think he works with, or a manufacturing company rather that he works with who were really skeptical. They just they've been around for thirty, forty years. The internet was just a lot of nonsense. You know, the guy, the managing director was talking and he said the that they were, um, you know, they were very reluctant. They thought, oh, we don't, we don't need to do anything more than we're currently doing. There's some pictures of the stuff that we do. There's a, there's a, there's a way to get in touch with us. That's all we need. And this guy who we're going to have a chat with kept sort of just chipping away at them. Maybe he met them in business networking or whatever. And in the end they were like, okay, okay, let's give it a go. And it has been transformative, transformative for their business in terms of the additional revenue it's generating, the business that's coming in that they would never have ever had a chance of getting had they not upped their game up their online game. So, and I know in this podcast, it's not this isn't this isn't us trying to sell red evolution. There are lots of great agencies out there who can do this work for you. Or you can hire and bring a team in-house and do it. But you know, the idea that some people have that it's, uh, you know, it's not really worth it. Nobody's going to be looking for what we do online. Uh, you just bullshit.
You've just you've just hit on something else for me there then, which is assumptions, you know? So based on the experience of that person, you know, there was no internet when they created the business, etc.. So why do they need one now? It's almost an assumption it won't work. I remember years ago working for an engineering business that we were training business. So we did engineering apprenticeships, you know, all the black trades, all the modern trades, some of the techie trades as well, you know, and I had to go to a business breakfast where we were a private training provider, but there was the local college there as well. We worked with and they stood up, you know, it was like towards the end, any other business just to say, we're going to start recruiting for apprentices this year. And one of the there were some big businesses represented there, you know, some of the big transport and logistics companies and one of the MDS basically stood up and went. There's absolutely no point in taking apprentices on because nobody wants an apprenticeship these days. And I thought, that's interesting. So that was their perception, you know, and they'd got an assumption. I actually had some data because we just run our apprenticeship recruitment campaign. And this was a rural area in north of England. So we had something like one thousand two hundred and fifty young people wanting an engineering apprenticeship. Fifty four percent of them were girls. Yeah. Female. Yeah. Yeah. So I stood up and said, I'm actually going to correct you with some facts. Yeah. I said, it's not to criticise you. It's just so you know what? The market is out there, you know. Yeah. And I explained these numbers and he went, oh my God, I never realised. Yeah. And he came up to.
Me afterwards for that all power to him. Yeah.
And he came up afterwards.
If he'd been in social media, he would have just called you a twat and then. And then deleted the conversation. Yeah. Probably.
I would have pointed out his headline was badly written, though.
Absolutely. But you said he came up to you afterwards just to just to kind of like say, you know, thanks for that kind of thing.
Yeah. I mean, he was obviously clearly an intelligent man. He ran a pretty big business and very successfully, you know. Um, and he realised his statement was built on information that was years out of date. And he hadn't he hadn't had a requirement to go and test that information out. So that belief that those, that data had become a belief in his mind. So when I was, you know, I depersonalised it, I didn't criticise him. I just said, here are some numbers. Yeah. And this is the quality of applicants and this is where they are around the county. And, you know, if this is of interest to you, drop us a line. He went, well, actually it is. I just didn't think anybody wanted an apprenticeship anymore.
Uh, okay. Yeah. So he's he was a part of an organisation that would have liked to have apprentices, but just maybe they, I don't know. They had they tried to recruit. I had no success, I suspect.
So yeah, maybe maybe the terms weren't right. Or the organisation they went through to recruit from wasn't, wasn't the best to do that, you know, or.
Or they just didn't tell a good story.
Or they didn't tell a good story. And interestingly enough, on our website as an apprentice training provider, we effectively had two different websites in one. One was aimed at commercial clients, i.e. those that wanted to recruit and the other was aimed at um, wasn't actually aimed at the sixteen seventeen year olds. It was aimed at their parents because most of the decision making about whether you took an apprenticeship on was actually, it was the parent making the decision.
Oh for sure. I mean, I, uh, I served my apprenticeship at Vickers Shipbuilders, which is now BAE systems, and it was kind of I went to the tech, the tech, the technical, the local technical school for boys. Um, then went into Vickers, as you well know, to serve my apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer and designer. And, you know, my parents were delighted about that. But while I was serving my apprenticeship, I, you move around the training school and I went into the welding shop and I absolutely loved it. And I was like, wow, I love this. And I was good at it. And that was what the instructor told me. Actually just me blowing my own trumpet. I was good at it and I thought, this is it. I want to do this.
Was that was that the instructor, one eyed Jeff. Was that was that him?
Yeah. One eyed Jeff one. I one eyed Jeff. That's right. Um, and basically the head of the training school, George Stringer, and my dad had a conversation and my dad had said, don't let him become a welder. I don't want him to become a welder because I'd gone in there as an engineering, you know, designer, draftsman, uh, which was, you know, not easy to get in as and I and then the boilermaking trades like welders and, and caulkers and things like that. They were kind of right at the other end of the scale. But, um, I wanted to do that because I genuinely loved it. I mean, I really enjoyed it. No way, no way my parents would let me do that. You know, it was just not, not acceptable. But, um, yeah, so I get it that parents would be the target audience potentially anyway. And I hear conversations with some of my colleagues at the fire station, you know, I'm an on call firefighter. So like some of the some of my colleagues have got kids who are now at the age where they're starting to leave school and get apprenticeships and all the rest of it. And it's quite often then the parents are having conversations with the local Sparky. Are you taking on any apprentices or the joiner? Are you taking on any apprentices, that kind of thing, to try and encourage the kids? Because I do worry that a lot of kids are getting brainwashed into thinking they've got to go to uni.
Yeah, I agree.
With you and I have both been to university. Um, I went as a mature student. You went through the traditional A-levels, uni um route. Um and it ain't the be all and end all.
No it's not. It's also a hell of a lot of debt.
A lot of debt these days. Yeah. Debt in inverted commas I think because you know, potentially you never pay it back depending on what sort of job you get. But um, but if you, if you get into the, uh, the trades and serve an apprenticeship, I mean, there's a really good living to be made and, and, and they work weird shift systems now, so you can finish up with so much time off, you know, it's like four on, four off and all kinds of weird and wonderful things. I've got two nephews, both one works for, um, Orsted, the wind power people and the Danish. Are they the wind power people? And another one works for, um, Spirit energy who, uh, you know, they manage the, amongst other things, they manage the gas terminal down in Barrow that takes the gas from the Morecambe Bay field. They both earn phenomenal money. And from the outside looking in, you know their uncle David, it's like, are you guys ever at work? Yeah. I mean they just never seem to be at work. Unbelievable. It's a great it's a great way to earn a living. I think it's it's it's I think young people who are not don't grow up in a town like Barrow. Maybe like where I'm from and where you're from where there's a strong. Um, I know you moved to Ulverston. Stewart, but you were from Barrow. My parents did.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, when you're not from that kind of engineering town and you're not aware of what's on offer. I mean, Bay systems, as they are now in Barrow in Furness and build the Trident submarines. I mean, they are really struggling to find people, and they're taking on thousands of apprentices because the nuclear program, the submarine program was going on for donkey's years. And there's a job for life if you want it on very, very good money as well. Um, but, you know, if you're, I don't know if you're, I don't know, a kid in London where there isn't a lot of heavy engineering industry on your doorstep, certainly not of the size of bay systems and places like that. You're just not being exposed to it, you know, so you're missing that opportunity to sort of do it.
I also think there's another challenge. Um, you know, my youngest son got a place at uni and then didn't go in the end, but he initially wanted to do. We've talked about this before. He wanted to do um, it was a degree in, I thought he said media studies and I was like, oh God. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't, it was media post-production and editing. Okay. So I went with him to the open day.
Which instead of being, oh, God was oh.
It was, oh, what the hell is that? You know? And then, yeah, then I went down to this university department. Now, as you just rightly said, I went to uni. You know, I went down to this uni department. It wasn't anywhere near the main campus for the university. It was based in Media City. So it was surrounded by Salford in Salford. So it was surrounded by all the main employers. For these skills. They only did two degree programmes. Every one of the lecturers worked part time in industry and part time as a lecturer. So they were getting real world experience. They didn't just do the qualification, they got all the software licence they would need to practice, you know, and they had a ninety six percent employment rate by by the end of year three. Yeah. Most of them were freelancing in the third year. And I was like, I've just realised this is a whole range of jobs that have come along in the last twenty years that I don't understand technically. So how the hell am I supposed to advise him on them, you know? Mhm. And there'll be another raft of those. Yeah, but for sure, if there are any parents listening, don't dismiss them out of hand just because it sounds like media studies, you know, it's there's, there's a whole technical field and a very good living to be made. Yeah.
Yeah. That's right. I mean, obviously in our line of work, um, those, you know, people that do that sort of thing, the sound production, etcetera, and video production are, you know, worth their weight in gold.
Absolutely.
You know.
I just a slight aside, though, I did find the learning environment very dull. We went into the fourth room where they had, you know, yet another audio suite or a color fixing suite or whatever it was. And all the walls were battleship gray. And I thought, God, the universe must have been on its backside for getting this cheap gray paint. And we went in the studio and the guy went, oh, you might have noticed all the walls are this particular color of gray. And we went, yeah, yeah. And he went, I know it's not very inspiring, but it means that the colors when we're doing color balancing on the screens, it's the most, it's the best color background wall. So it doesn't affect. All right. It was from psychologically driven basically to, you know, to allow you to do the job as best as you possibly could. And it was like, okay, then maybe put a bit more thought into this. And I realised, yeah.
Whereas when I was a kid in Barrow in Furness, because there was a shipyard there and it was naval work that they did. You quite often find lots of houses that were battleship gray, and that really was because they nicked the paint from the shipyard to paint their houses. Anyway.
You start to worry when the extensions a gun turret though, don't you?
Yeah. Well that was, that was a bit, yeah. A bit of a challenge in the FH seventy in the back yard was always a bit of a giveaway. Um right. I think we've taken this as far as we can today. There. I've got some more stuff on my list, but, um, there's no way I can segue it into what we're currently talking about. So I'm going to leave it for next time. Um, when we, when we finished recording, I, you know, I do want to actually quiz you about the voices in your head and see if they're the same as voices, same voices that I have in my head, but we'll take that offline rather than leave people feeling worried and disturbed. Uh, you've been listening to Digital Marketing From The Coalface with me, Dave Robinson, and my colleague Stuart Harrison. Hopefully, um, some of this inane bullshit has been moderately interesting, and, uh, we look forward to trying to entertain you next time.
Goodbye.
You can say. Tara. Tara.