B2C is made easier because of social media, because it's prevalent, and because everyone's using it and it's in their pocket, etc. but there's a lot of negativity about social media. So I think one of the reasons that, you know, maybe an engineering firm or some other sort of tech firm, manufacturing firm, I wonder if they're reluctant because it's too risky. Whereas the B2C kind of don't care a little bit. Do you think I mean.
Yeah, I think companies in B2C are more outgoing because at the end of the day, especially within B2B, where it's considered to be very professional, it's your brand perception. And I think people are worried that if you do one wrong post, then your brand perception is going to be ruined. And that matters a lot to be, to be.
So welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. And today I'm going to chat with Cameron or Cam. Either of you don't mind? I'm like that. People always say to me when I when I meet people, like when I'm playing golf, and you might be in a competition where it's a draw so you don't choose who you play with, you just get put with somebody because silverware usually first thing, is it Dave or David? I don't care man. No. Yeah.
Just go go with any and.
I don't mind. But it's not always the case. I've got a friend, Stephen, Stephen, Jay Innes. And you do not call Stephen. Steve. He doesn't respond to Steve. He doesn't like being called Steve. He insists on Steve, and that's his prerogative. It's fine. Fine. I don't mind him doing that. Uh, so you have to be careful. So. So Cam's started with red evolution. How long is it now? It's, what, four, five, six hours ago.
I'd say that. Yeah.
So so cam started with us today and has agreed to jump in at the deep end and do a podcast. Stu's off in his camper van doing whatever people in camper vans do. And, um, so we wanted to get a podcast, do a podcast. Digital Marketing From The Coalface is all about what's happening at the coalface. And what's happening at the coalface right now is cam has just started with us. So I think it's fair to say that you have come from B to C.
Very much so. Yeah, very much so.
Okay. So what we thought we might do amongst some of the other gibberish I've written down in my notes is um at some point, um, and we'll, we'll have a chat about what are the crossovers differences, etc. between B to B and B to C. Um, there's a couple of other things I'm just going to throw these, throw these ideas out there and see if we can actually talk about them at all. Um, we recently had a request come in um for something and we had, we used AI to, um, write some code for us. And it did a phenomenally good job. So I think it did a phenomenally good job because the person prompting it is a phenomenal quarter. Mhm. Phil um, you haven't met Phil yet, have you? Not yet. No you haven't.
Not not in the first six hours. No.
No. That's right. Yeah. And I noticed Diane has now come on stream as well. She's obviously over in uh over in the States, but she's now um at her desk as well. So we need to do a quick intro after we've done the podcast maybe. Yeah. So when Alex and I were doing these podcasts, we often spoke about AI and he was skeptical and sometimes, um, just dismissive of AI, you know, with good reason. He kind of, he didn't just sort of say, hey, I shit, you know, he was kind of like, he said this, I did this, I tried this and this is what it gave me, which was garbage or whatever. And so there's a degree of skepticism there. And I think I would share his skepticism, maybe not to the same degree. Um, have you got any examples of using AI?
Yes. Not from not from a code point of view. But I think first off, I really like it. I think it's if you look at the learning from it, from when the public have had a larger access to it, the learning.
Is still quite new in.
It. Yeah. But the learning has been exponentially you know, it's rocketed. Um, I'd say from a B2C side, a lot of ad copy or website copy content copy is used with it. And it's the same thing. If you, if you put in rubbish, you'll probably get rubbish. If you prompt it in the right way, you can, it can learn a brand's tone and then that can reduce your workload by a large amount.
So are you convinced that. Well, no, I'm not going to. I'm going to frame the question differently. Do you think a good writer is, on balance, gonna gonna outperform AI in terms of writing? Copy that. People will engage with and enjoy reading.
That's a really tough question because I think I think a good writer will have the edge on understanding a brand's personality better than AI can. But I think where AI is, it outperforms writers, is having the data behind it to understand just in general from the data, what people click through more for. So it will understand certain words and, you know, um, yeah, just certain words that people might react to better, whereas a writer might just be purely locked in with a brand and thinking, I know this brand, and then you just need that fresh, fresh pair of eyes or AI eyes. And, uh, yeah, I think that's so they both both have their pros and cons, I'd say.
But you're suggesting that there are definitely situations where AI is going to be better than a, than a human being.
Providing the human being behind it is open to letting it mold. Mhm. Definitely.
Okay. Okay. And have you found that previously, when you've used AI, you've managed to kind of get to the point where you don't have to do an awful lot of work to the copy for it to pass muster, for it to find its way into the blog or into, you know, whatever it is, whatever it's been used for. Or is it generally helping rather than literally just doing the work?
I'd say helping for about eighty. No, I'd say it's doing the work for about eighty percent of the way. But I still think you've just got to be kind of religious in, um, conditioning it and, and supplying it the info, um, just to make sure it's on track, but it can still do the majority of the legwork. It just needs someone who's efficient behind it to, um, sense check it essentially, uh, at the, at the end.
I mean, I've given some quite hilarious examples in the past in this, well, hilarious to me in the podcast where, you know, I, there was one very recently where I said to the AI, okay, redo it, but I need it to be, you know, British English. And it was just, it was just go, blimey, governor. It was, it was, it was ridiculous. In fact, it was, it was, it was almost like the Dick Van Dyke version of, of, of, of a, of a piece of content. Um, he was one hundred last week. It was, I saw a piece on might have been on Facebook or somewhere where Dick Van Dyke cor blimey guv was um yes. Was uh one hundred years old and still going strong. Um, yeah. So, uh, I don't know. I mean, um my experience of it is that and certainly I know Julie's a fan, uh, she's using Gemini quite extensively. And and her experience, I think is similar that it just kind of you can just tell it's AI, I don't know, I don't know whether I can I'm not sure. I'm not an avid reader or more of a listener. So, um, I don't know whether, um, we've, I've just, you know, been unlucky or rather, you know, I'm just, um, Julie's been unlucky when she said, oh, you know, I got AI to write this, I, you know, I've heard her say like, oh, AI did it. And it actually did a reasonably good job. But I think, I think you're right. I think the more energy you put in and you get it to refine it and you make sure the prompts are absolutely on the money. Um, and I guess I guess where I'm going with this is like when it comes to, when it comes to chord, the job that the AI did on this piece of chord was phenomenal. It wrote like eight hundred lines of chord in, you know, very quickly. And the interesting thing was what Phil said, like when he looked at it, he was, he was like, it did it exactly how I would have done it. Now I think again, that's because the way he prompted it was really skillful, but it still was a huge time saver. And what it produced, it produced was fantastic chord, he said. In fact, he said, in some respects it was better than my chord because it puts all the comments in, you know, chords, generally speaking, don't comment the chord particularly well. No, it's just, you know, it's a laborious task to do it and they just don't do it, whereas the AI did. So you've got this thing where, you know, you're getting AI to write some code, and the chord is kind of what a chord I would have done because Coding's got rules. And so it's written the chord and the output is exactly what was required. It's like a little mini application, and the output is exactly what was required versus a piece of content, something creative. And I guess, I guess what I'm saying is like, you know, is it I wonder if getting AI to do the things where there's different ways that you can code to get the same output and chord is, you know that better than I do. It's a long time since I wrote any code, but. But ultimately, the thing it does like. Answer these questions, press a button and get a response. You know, that's predetermined. So as long as the code actually gives you that response that you're expecting, that's one thing. Whereas when you want something creative that engages people slightly different, I suppose.
I think it's very literal. So I think that's why code can can work. My brother's a software engineer and he's a front end developer, and he says the same things I say to him, why don't you always just use it to just speed things up? And he says, because it's literal in how it thinks and how it works. And he says, you can use it. But I guess because it's so detailed and it doesn't have that context behind it, it can be harder to do. So maybe that then takes more reading through, whereas from the brand side and the content side, it still is literal. But as long as you kind of feed it certain expressions or good prompts. Um, and, and really try and educate it what the brand is, it can, I think it can get there. Mhm.
Yeah. I'm, I'm very much, you know, open minded. And there are, there are some tools, like I've mentioned plenty of times on this podcast. I'm a big fan of notebook notebook LM um, because I like listening to things so I can feed it loads of sources and then say, create me a podcast on this subject. Yeah. Um, but you know, I don't know, it's, um, I'm not, I'm, I'm not minded to try and resist AI for any reason at all. I don't feel threatened by AI. I just, I just worry sometimes that we're going sort of headlong into, you know, AI can do everything.
Yes.
And, you know, well, it can't so or if it can, it'll do a, you know, a, not a very good version of everything that it does. And, you know, what's the end game? I don't know, I don't know. Anyway, um, that's the, you know, at least we've touched on the subject of AI, um, briefly, um, because it's a little while since we've spoken about it. Moving on. Um, I had a really interesting conversation with a, well, I say potential customer, but I don't think they will be a potential customer because when I spoke about budgets, you know, like the color drained out of the face, the realisation. Yeah. And, you know, you know, the person had spent, um, quite a lot of time, you know, telling me about the situation that they were in and then kind of, um, went to great lengths to tell me that I'm very budget conscious and very budget conscious. And I said, I can't remember exactly, but I said something like, well, yeah, if we're working on such projects, I mean, probably sort of anything from three grand a month onwards, you know, upwards, um to make it, um, to make it work, you know, for everybody, for you and us and make sure we can actually do the work that's required. And at that point, you know, they went very quiet. And, um, I think one of the challenges and I spoke spoke to you about this earlier on when we were looking at that, uh, looking at some of the work on our, on our home page today, the, um, she's got there you go. She, she's got a boss old school who really doesn't see the value in marketing, doesn't see why the why it costs, what it costs and why you should do it or anything else. Just really kind of just doesn't see the value of it. And they're an engineering company. And, um, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that that might be one of the big differences between B2B and B2C.
Yes.
Because you're probably used to working with people who chuck inordinate amounts of money at marketing. See the value of marketing are open and ready to invest in marketing. Yes. Whereas we are often working with organisations where the decision makers are proper old school. They get all their work on the golf course. They don't think that the colouring in department, as they might call it, is worth the investment.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, definitely. I think I probably come from a background or an industry where everything can be done so quickly by the end user. So people who come from word of mouth or where decisions take a lot longer, um, even for, even for high value items, you can speak to someone directly in their pocket essentially, because you know, everyone's on mobile and when you come in from the other end where decisions have to go through people and then, you know, you're speaking and, and a lot of referrals might come through word of mouth to then convince someone to say, well, you should spend your money where you know you are speaking directly to that end user and you can be speaking directly to them. I think some people can't conceptualise how that would work.
In a B2B context.
In a B2B context, whereas B2C one, because everyone does, it is easier to jump on the bandwagon. But even within B2C, like you still need people to be industry leaders and, and make that first step. For example, tick tock, tick tock shop. No one was really within that space to begin with. And a few people started to do it. Everyone saw that it was working and then everyone wants to do it. Um, and it's just, I think because it's very modern and there's a lot, you know, of, of talk around social media or even search engine marketing. Um, I think people from an old school background can be very wary of it. Um, and the assumption is it doesn't work because they might know of someone who's been burnt in the past. And that's really difficult to convince someone, especially because the audiences that you go after in B2B, I think every, every click, there's a huge focus on every click because that one click can result to a much bigger value outcome. Whereas in B2C, the, the, the value and the lifetime value can be a lot smaller. So you're not as dependent on that. Um, which makes it, you know, it makes it difficult and it means that you've got to do it right. But, um, it's, it's, it's still as equally important to me.
Okay. You mentioned, uh, you mentioned in that, in that, you know, social media, um, so B2C, sorry, B2C is made easier because of social media, because it's prevalent and because everyone's using it and it's in the pocket, etc. but there's a lot. Certainly more recently there's maybe not that recent. There's a lot of negativity about social media. So yeah, whether it's because it's been used to perpetrate crimes or because of all the lies and propaganda that that's out there. So I think one of the reasons that, you know, maybe an engineering firm or a, some other sort of tech firm, manufacturing firm, you know, I wonder if they're reluctant because they think that TikTok and Facebook, etc.. And I'm a huge fan of TikTok and Facebook for that matter. I wonder if they think it's too risky because whereas the B2C kind of don't care a little bit. Is it, do you think? I mean.
Yeah, I think I think people in B2C or companies in B2C are more outgoing. Um, because at the end of the day, it's especially within B2B, where it's considered to be very professional. It's your brand perception. And if you I think people are worried that if you do one wrong post, then your brand perception is going to be ruined. And that matters a lot to be, to be. However, there's loads of examples of companies where essentially that a lot of companies have moved on and they've decided, you know what, our audience is out there. We're going to explain who we are and try and reach them in a different way. And they've done well with it, you know, and some brands don't even post about their exact product. They just post about the brand.
Mhm.
And it's not, it doesn't always have to be product pushing or just selling your company. It can just be explaining to people, you know, just a bit more about you and who you are and just making it a bit more personal. Mhm. Um, so there are always options. It doesn't it doesn't matter if you're on B2B or if you come from a B2C, you've still got that opportunity to connect with people where, you know, they might just not be doing it. Word of mouth anymore. Like it just all the other forms and other, um, methods of marketing, just not, not outdated. But if, if the shift has moved from the consumer, then you've got to move with that shift.
So do you think maybe B2B are more followers than, than risk takers than leaders in terms of like what they're prepared to, to try what they're prepared to do, where marketing is concerned?
Definitely, definitely.
I would agree with that. I mean, you could probably say that there would be I mean, there will be plenty of serious manufacturing, engineering type businesses that are doing good stuff on TikTok. And they might be they might be using the humor angle. They might just be using the education angle. They might be mixing the two things together. Yeah. And if you're an engineering company, you might, you know, you say the, you know, the CEO of an engineering company, you might think, oh, no, I'm not going to we don't need to be there until they see either a competitor or just somebody they respect, do something and what they've done, they really liked it. So suddenly they want to do it as well.
Yeah.
And we all like that, I suppose in general, aren't we? We're, you know, we're all kind of like followers to a certain degree. We want to see somebody else do it first.
Yeah. And I get it. And sometimes I think it's easier from a marketer's point of perspective, because it's not my company. And, you know, like, it's easier for me to say, but I guess then from the other side is I have that experience to have seen it been done. And, you know, I can see the effects of it. Um, so yeah, I understand why the kind of a bit more cautious about doing it, but I mean, ultimately, if you get a referral through someone, a word of mouth referral, someone rings up your company and says, such and such has told me about your company, they've explained this, this and this. I'm really, really interested. What's the difference between that person doing it or that referral coming through social media? Mhm. There is no ultimately they're speaking highly of your business. So why wouldn't you speak to the right people yourself? You can get your message out there. Just speak to them the way you want to. Yeah. Um, and people will, will, will follow.
Yeah. I suppose it comes back to the idea of, of, of people, you know, in their leisure time, they might be looking at, you know, one of the, one of the social media platforms, I suppose on the one hand, they might, they might not enjoy seeing something that's related to, however loosely, to the job that they do the work that they do, you know, their day job sort of thing. But on the other hand, I don't know, I think I can't think of any really good examples of, um, our people who would be loosely, you know, typical clients of ours using it really effectively. But I do know that I've got lots of really useful educational content off, for example, Tik Tok. So if it's a platform that is known for useful educational content, educational and entertaining content, then why wouldn't it be? I don't know, I don't know what is the demographic of TikTok? Is it changed? Is it, is it is it a wider demographic than it used to be? I think looking at the stuff I see on there, there's plenty of people sort of my age putting out content and doing stuff on TikTok. It's not like the realms of only the young, cool people doing it.
Yeah, exactly. I think the perception is, is that it's, you know, thirteen to twenty three year old twenty five year olds. But I spoke to a TikTok representative a while ago, and they were saying that they have a large proportion of thirty year olds up to around fifty five. They just don't always kind of post themselves, but they have that huge kind of account. Um. Um, subscription or following or signups that they are there. And I think because of the nature of TikTok and people see trends, I think there is a big assumption that that's all it is, but it's not. It is an educational piece. And education doesn't have to mean unprofessional. It can be like you say, if it if it's talking about even just the impact of a company, if a company's sustainable in any way. And we're talking about that earlier and it might just be showing what they do or just explaining it in a bite sized way to people who don't understand. And yeah, that's all it is. And, but things, yeah, you know, people, consumers change. Um, a lot, a lot of people will search on TikTok for suggestions of local businesses, um, whether that be to eat or to find something specific they want to purchase Is the use that as well. And you know, that just shows you how that's changing and amongst kind of to throw it in amongst search engine marketing. So it's a, it's a competitor there.
What have you done much with TikTok shop a lot.
Okay, tell.
Me about TikTok shop because it's a bit of a mystery to me. I'm kind of old school enough to think that if you engage on social media, you would then say you would then send people to your Shopify, Magento or whatever shop. What's tell me about TikTok shop. So I want to learn something.
From, from a marketer's point of view, especially B2C attribution is, is a topic of the century. So you know.
What, what out of the stuff that I'm doing is working, where am I getting the engagement? What is it that I do that generates most business, that sort of thing? So yeah, understanding what's working attribution.
If you can see an advert. How do I know you've that adverts caused that purchase and that I get it right is. And you know, sometimes we'll say, well, it's part of the branding process that you see a video and you might come back to it, search, go through Google. So it is a multi-stage process. However, with something like TikTok shop where you wouldn't leave the platform. So you'll see an advert, whether it be a video or just, um, a product specific product, uh, shopping ad that would direct you straight to the TikTok shop. So it all stays in platform. So it never leaves.
So, so TikTok shop a little bit like eBay in, in that it's one platform and people just sign up and become sellers on eBay. Like, so it's like multiple sellers, one platform as opposed to all those people having their own Shopify instance.
Um, I'd probably say it's closer to something like, um, it is like a Shopify within. Yeah, it's just there is no search engine to then go and find each individual shop. It's just you'll see that advert or you click onto that brand's profile. You then click onto their shop from there.
But it's the same platform. You're not leaving the shop. This TikTok platform. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So then all they do for the boring techie part is they upload a feed or they'll upload it individually, make sure all their products are there, and then you can link a product directly to a video. So this product or multiple products actually, um, and then they purchase there all the transactions completed there, all of the, the billing information, everything like that. And it's you, you can then keep all of the data within that.
Okay. So you at the start of that, you were talking about attribution and there are loads of attribution models, the data, you know, there's a huge amount of data available. But again, Alex and I often used to talk about this, and Alex used to make the point quite strongly that the attribution is still a problem, because you can't really understand if somebody came clicked in via an advert, and then three weeks later they come back through some other means, but they actually decided to buy from you because of the advert. But when they came in and made the purchase, they didn't come from the advert. So you don't think the advert generated the business? That's that's what we're talking about. Yeah. It's still not as good as people maybe think it is. Yeah. Or rather, it's not as good as Google would have you believe it is. For example, if we're talking about the Google Ads platform.
Yeah. I mean, every platform is always going to be as is always going to be biased to it. So Facebook ads or meta, they will always be biased to them. Um, and, and again, I understand it, I think to try and move away from attribution because I think if you become too focused on attribution, you limit yourself for where you can grow. Mhm. Um, and there is always the other side of just not assuming that everything is directly linked. But as long as you to like one video, um, but as long as you can kind of understand that there are other metrics that can push you in the right direction. Um, and, and that you could say, well, do you know what, I think this actually is working because we can see that people are engaged through this, through high click through rates, really strong CPMs. Um, even if that doesn't link to that purchase, and then you can cross-reference that with on site analytics and you can see if people, what they're looking at in the videos, are they actually doing that on site? Are they coming back to that? Are they reading those blog posts? And so there is a wider picture to it, but it's, uh, attribution. It is a tough one. That's why I speak very highly of the tick tock shop for that argument.
What's worked really well in, I just mean type of product, not specific brands on tick tock shop.
Um, Surprisingly so. Uh, footwear is, is, has been quite a good one because it's very consumable. You can see, you know, all these styling videos, you can see influencers wear them. Um, but surprisingly, I work with a brand who, um, they sold a lot of household items and they almost were like an Amazon in the sense that you, you had everything that you could get within a house. And, uh, they were fortunate enough that their inventory was so large that if an influencer did a video. So there was, um, there was these deck chairs that were just went viral and you could just push that. And it was just, they absolutely rocketed. And then other people would buy certain things. So even within the house, there was a, there were things like yoga mats that performed this is outside of Covid, but yoga mats that performed very well. And then that just again rocketed. So they have that inventory. Um, but I've worked with other brands where the inventory has been much smaller and it might be consumable items and perishable items like, you know, chocolate and things. And they've done really well. And again, it's good videos, good products. It will sell.
I mean, I'm going to say that we, we don't like being sold to. And it's dead easy when you're, if you're flicking through, for example, TikTok, it's very easy to sort of see something and like the person or the person in the videos barely open their mouth and just going, next. You know what I mean? Because they're clearly gonna say, hey, guys, you know, you won't believe how clean your car will be if you use this, this bottle of whatever it is that they're trying to flog. Yeah. So I think you mentioned, you mentioned earlier that people are doing well when they're, when they're just, I don't know, just talking about their brand or just talking about, I don't know, I don't know where I'm trying to go with this, but what I'm trying, what I'm trying to get to is like, what did you find was the most effective? Was it like an influencer talking about something or was it showing the product being used and just like subtly making people aware if they want it, they can buy it or pushy in your face, kind of like, here's a product. It's brilliant. Go and buy it.
So I hate to give the vague answer, but it really depends. So influencer can work very well. And the what's clever? Let's use TikTok for example. They have a community where the influencers, um, you will, they will charge a percentage commission. So it can be expensive for the brand because they lose a lot in terms of profit or can lose a lot in terms of profit. Because if you have to pay obviously commission to TikTok, then a commission to the influencer. And that can work really well because the more traction it gains, the more influencers want to work with you. Um, but I have seen it where brands cannot, they just don't want to go down that line and they don't want someone speaking directly to camera. And it really is just about testing all the different types of video content. So how you would use it? Um, uh, maybe kind of not, not necessarily like before and afters, but examples of using it, um, maybe just videos about the brand itself and not the product. Um, and then so they're what we call video shopping ads. On the other side of it is just product shopping ads. And that is literally the product image. Um, and it might be in a carousel links directly to site. Yeah.
And, and that's just like, almost like, um, Google a Google ad that appears in, uh, YouTube or something. Yeah. So it's the ones, you're very subtle at the bottom of the screen because it's a tiny screen. Usually, you know, you're on your phone looking at it.
Yeah, yeah. So in, um, like a Google shopping ad and it's just a little tile image of the product. So they'll show that within the TikTok feed and then they'll click that product, go straight to their shop. Um, but it's not just going out to just random people. You will, you will in the background, kind of encourage it to find the right people through data. But, um, they're very, very powerful as well.
Are there any examples at all of, of B2B organisations effectively using TikTok? They won't be, they won't be effectively using TikTok shop. I mean, there won't be I can't think of any where B2B. I mean, could it be, I guess, you know, very simple B2B like office consumables or something like that might, might, might find some traction on there maybe, I don't know.
Yeah, I think they could, um, you know, for the, for the next time we do a podcast, I come back with top examples from each kind of industry. And because I guarantee there'll be a leader in each one and they will not some of them will do. This is who we are. It's, it's almost like the way they kind of structure. It is like a website. So a lot of people will go down the content of saying, our team and they'll do videos behind the scenes of how they. What the process is of working with them as a company. Um, education. This is what we do. This is how we, um, you know, how our product works. So, um, yeah, there will be, there will be, there will be, uh, examples of, of people within each industry. Uh, and then new people breaking in.
I guess it's about understanding which aspects of your speciality, your industry are interesting in a generic way. There will be, for example, I mean, if you think about the documentaries you see on TV, there'll be a documentary about, I think I can remember what you're watching a documentary about, um, people who work to keep the sewer system working. And you'd think like, well, it's a very industrial thing. It's big pipes, it's valves, it's lots of effluent running through them and all that. What, what could possibly be interesting about that? Yet if you can make a documentary which is popular about about that. Yeah. I mean, I think it's is it channel five ran the kind of um, um, enormous machines or whatever, you know, like they do stuff about huge quarry machines and stuff like that. So I suppose from A, B to B point of view, there's a lot of stuff that goes on in the world that, that, you know, creating products or providing services that we use in our everyday life that we don't really know how it, how it comes about. Yeah. And maybe like, that's where it gets interesting because again, you know, looking back at the sort of thing that documentary makers have made on televisions and, you know, the series about, um, I mean, there's the obvious ones like, um, what's it called? Police interceptors. So you're seeing people at work driving fast cars, chasing down the bad guys and pulling them over and, and seeing everything that happens. But equally, there will be, if you're running a, you know, a B2B organisation, there will be something about the stuff that you do that. That has got the potential to create interesting content. I guess the big question is, can that interesting content then turn into an enquiry? Yeah, a lead, a conversation that might be useful.
Yeah.
Well, if you don't know, I guess the bottom line is if you've got the budget, try it.
Yeah, exactly. And and you've got nothing to lose as long as you're happy with the style and the tone that you put it out, you've got nothing to lose organically. You're not, you know, even if you're not paying money at that point, and you can just see how people react and engage with you. And what's the worst that could happen at that point? You put your brand out there and people engage with it and they actually go, they understand you more as a company. And just to go back to your, it was the, the, the, the quarrying and the, I think it was like tunnelling and you know, how the, how the, these things work. That's right. And a lot of people don't understand how these businesses work within B2B. So, you know, how many times have you ever watched like videos on how, how things work? And it might be manufacturing of cars and that process? Yeah, it's fascinating. And I think people are interested when they've got an avenue to understand. Mhm. And obviously the hard part with social is you've got to do it quick and you've, but you can still do bite sized pieces of information and education. Uh, and I think people would be surprised that you, they will respond quite well to that.
Yeah. I'll tell you something that if I'm watching a piece of content, uh, you know, I like to consume, um, educational video content, you know, tick tock. I've mentioned a few times and one of the things that I, I, if, if it comes on, you know, thing comes on and it's a subject that I'm interested in, I often look at the, um, the, the player bar thing. And if I can see, oh, this is a short video, I'll just move on. Right. I actually want the content to be longer form. Yeah, yeah. All right. It might not be interested if it's like on TikTok and it says this is a thirty minute video. I was like, no, that's not why I'm here. And I probably won't do it. But it's finding that balance, getting it so that, you know, the content is long enough without being too long. Um, certainly I think short form is good, but if it's too short, I kind of think, well, they can't possibly give me what I want in what looks like a thirty second video. So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna carry on sort of thing.
Yeah, no, I agree, I agree. I think short form content is good for piquing interest and getting you introduced to the band brand, but then that that can be part of a wider strategy to push you towards longer form content. I personally like it on a longer video where you can see the contents. I really hate it when you click on a long video and you can't see the contents and timestamps, but I like if I click on a video and see that, I'll probably watch the whole video because I know what's coming up anyway. And it's just it's just feeding in, you know, drip feeding. Yeah. Um, but yeah, shorter form content piqued the interest. And then you can monitor what works, what doesn't work, push them towards a larger piece, a longer.
I would say also avoiding the self-indulgent stuff. Mhm. Um, if you like, I was um, last year, uh, me and Karen got into metal detecting, so I was watching a lot of metal detecting videos. There you go. Proper geek. And, um, quite a lot of the people who produce videos for metal detecting, they'll have like a whole intro piece with their music and, and, you know, and, you know, smash the subscribe button and all that, all that kind of stuff. And it's just like, it's too self-indulgent for me. I mean, get on with the content. I'm not interested in the music that you've picked. And literally like some of them are like nearly a minute of intro music and just some animations or something like that. Yeah. And you know, I think, yeah, it's like, it's the same with websites, you know, in a B2B context especially, I think, you know, people being self indulgent is, is, is just such a massive turn off. Yeah. So I suppose if you are going to look at this like short form video or even longer form video, is, is cut to the chase. Because if you know, you might spend a lot of time trying to get it, you know, polished in a, in a, in a sense that it's something that could go like broadcast on TV or something, but people are just going to skip past it anyway.
Yeah.
They will. I, um, yeah, I think we've covered quite a, quite a lot. I don't know. Um, obviously it's, it's an interesting thing trying to get this podcast going with a new co-host and it's, uh, your first day in the office. So it's been interesting trying to figure out what we could talk about. I think we've covered some of the sort of crossover bits between B2B and B2C. Um, I think as the, as the, you know, as time goes on, we'll, we'll probably have some interesting insights when we're working on some specific campaigns and things. And you then start drawing on that, that B2C background, um, to give us, you know, things to try. What do you think might be the most challenging aspect of moving into, into the world of B2B? I think will it be a bit slow and boring and dull?
Never, never. I think not being too reactionary because with, with B2C, you can get a lot of data very quickly.
Yeah. Yeah. Something we've been talking about a lot in the past, like sometimes the data sets that we're working from are just tiny.
Yeah.
Um, even things like keyword research, you know, the data is just sketchy as.
Yeah. And it's really difficult in the sense that the, the, the search volume might be low, but that could link to something very kind of lucrative for, for a brand.
Yeah.
For sure.
And where most of our customers will tell you that I'm not really interested in like lots of people seeing the website. I'm interested in the right people finding us and talking to us because. One good enquiry could be millions of pounds worth of work.
Yeah. And I think having that there is more pressure in the sense that you definitely need to make sure you send the right people to the site. But so I think that that is probably the bigger challenge where with it's just I think it's a given within B2C that it's, you know, there are some people that just say, look, just send tens of thousands of people and we know the right people will convert. And you can do that for a lower cost. Whereas in B2B, it's a bit more, I think there's more care and attention to who you are sending. Yeah. And that is really important. So it is a challenge, but it also makes sure that further up the process or further up the funnel, you are really thinking about this is the right person. Yeah. Um, and you can explain why that is through whatever search query they come through. So I think that would probably be the biggest challenge.
Yeah. But literally the numbers are just not there. Yes. We were looking at something earlier for our own website around industrial marketing. And the numbers are just not there. You know, there are only maybe a hundred searches a month for that, for that thing that we want to rank for and try and get engagement from people who are searching using those search terms. Yeah. Whereas I guess in B2C, it's more akin to the old sort of TV industrial complex or whatever you want to call it, where, yeah, I just want my advert to go out in during the break of Coronation Street because, you know, like four million people will see it. And as long as like, you know, I don't know, ten thousand of them are interested in it or maybe it's a lower number than that. Yeah. You know, it's the volume, the volumes are huge. So you can just learn so much quicker.
Yeah. And a lot of people in B2C focus on, um, CPMs or cost per one thousand impressions. And that that is how a lot of it will work. They'll say, how can we get this out to the masses quickly? And yeah, then they kind of hope for that to then come through and, you know, making sure you're pushing it in the right direction. Um, but I think that's also something that can be brought into B2C from a B2B background is a lot of the, the specific content that you, because there is a big focus on content within B2C and you have that opportunity to test. But then within B2B is making sure that content also looks really good for the right people. It can still be professional, it can still have a really good tone, but there are certain things that you may look for to improve, you know, click through rates or, or just watch time on a video and just making sure that does go out to the right person, uh, rather than it just be too broad of a keyword or, you know, ad group. Um, so finding the right people, right content, it's still the same process. It's just a slightly different audience.
Yeah, yeah, it's still people. You're right. You're still trying to, you're still trying to get their engagement. Yeah. And they might be more, more. They might be. Yeah. They might be more motivated. And because they are, generally speaking, trying to solve a problem. Yes. Whereas I guess with the stuff you've done with B2C, you know, like I might never have thought of buying a pair of those particular trainers, but you've got it in front of me. And I went, oh, I quite like the look of them, you know? So it's just kind of, I don't know, opportunist almost. Yeah I suppose. Did you, I mean, so just to, just to finish that off, when you were thinking about getting in front of people with B2C, to what extent did you do like buyer persona development and understand all that? Or was it literally just numbers, get it, get it out to as many people as we can and don't worry too much about the detail.
I think I always try and push it to the it's got to be in front of the right person and then we can test that, you know, for, for as long as we like. Um, depending if it's on pure brand awareness, some brands will just say, look, get it out to relatively the right customer, but it can be as broad as anything like as long as the content in the video is right. We're happy to just get it out as cheap as possible. Um, but I think it's really important to not. Well, I think it's also it's important to know who your customer is, but equally not to be too focused on who that is because some people can be really literal within, um, B2C and say, you know, if it's not someone who's aged within this age bracket and.
That data is not that accurate anyway.
No, it's not, it's not. And they have within B2C and, uh, within social media marketing a lot of what they call lookalike. So it's just a similar to so is this is a customer out there similar to your current customer? And that's really powerful. That's all algorithm focused, but that's really powerful. And that is a way of pushing it in the right direction. Then making sure your content's right and then, you know, things will work. As long as you're analysing that data, you will be able to work out what, what ticks and what, you know, gets conversions. Um, so that is really important. But as a rule of thumb, I would say still pushed abroad and monitor what happens, but be smart about it. And then, but for the majority of you focus, make sure it's going to the right person. Mhm.
Okay. And that would be just by understanding where your tribe hang out in terms of platforms. Or would it be. Yeah, I'm trying to understand. I mean, when we're looking at trying to get in front of people, we are using platforms like LinkedIn, for example, lots of B2B activity on there. And then we would use, you know, um, keyword research and trying to be to appear in search results, paid search, organic search or whatever, and that kind of thing, which is, I suppose that's like somebody, you know, we're trying to get in front of the person who's actively gone out and looked for a solution to a particular problem by understanding what their search habits are, etc.. Whereas I suppose if you're trying to sell a particular product, or you were trying to sell a particular product in the B2C, it was more about knowing that your tribe, the people who would buy this product, even though they don't know it exists right now. This is where they hang out. Yeah.
Is that yeah, there's a there's a bit and there is there is that crossover. And again, that's one of the things that you can, because my mindset can sometimes be, where is that person right now before they've even thought of what their problem is going to be? I'm just going, I'm going to give them that solution before it even becomes a problem. Um, but there is also kind of the retargeting side once they've been on.
Yeah.
How can I kind of make sure I'm in the right place for them to convert? Um, but it is that with, with B2B as well and, you know, making sure you're, you are there for, but I think this is something that you mentioned earlier, which is really important is that because obviously yourself, you understand what the problems are. So it is easier for me to then say to you, well, what is it that this person will be looking for? Because I can see things from the data. But what is the problem that these people are actually searching for? What do they need to solve in their business? And then at least I can then create something within the, the digital side or the tech side to say, right, okay, we need adverts that show to these people. Mhm. Um, so having obviously I, you know, you have that knowledge to, to understand what that problem is, um, and, and why people would need it. So I think that helps me, um, to understand who to be in front of. Mhm. So okay.
It remains to be seen. Okay. Uh, you've been listening to Digital Marketing From The Coalface for me and my colleague Cam. Uh, we'll be back with more and streams of consciousness. Um, probably next week. Cheers.
Thanks.