This podcast was originally released on 07/07/2025.
How is AI going to decide that that content is right for that person?
Context really matters. And I do wonder that. Is it just that it's going to say, right, you've ticked X, Y, and Z boxes and that means you're good, therefore cheaper ads.
Well, here's an example. You must have come across situations where you're getting a rubbish quality score. And for anyone listening that's not sure, you know, Google ads is an auction. You see, if somebody types this in show my advert, there's all sorts of stuff goes on. Part of that is Google ads, keywords rather quality scores and says, well, if somebody types that in this page matches all the user intent and all that, and it gives them a good quality score, you must have had situations where you just cannot get the quality score up and the page, the content is fantastic, and you cannot persuade the algorithm that your page is fantastic and should have a better quality score.
And the opposite where you'll have an excellent and then, you know, that doesn't always match up either.
So welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Cam, it's your second podcast. There's been quite the hiatus between the first one. I just.
Want.
To say, why is it now you've been here, you've been a month.
A month.
Oh my.
Goodness. I thought it was going to be second week in second podcast. But we didn't. We waited a month.
I know, but we're not going to wait a month going forward. We will get back. I mean, one of the big thing is we much prefer doing the podcast with Leslie involved. Mhm. Leslie was working in Air France for the best part of a month or thereabouts, so it wasn't the same.
We couldn't function.
It wasn't the same. I wasn't on board with it, you know.
No.
Um, yeah. So welcome back to the, uh, Digital Marketing From The Coalface podcast, brought to you by Red evolution. It's the first time I've ever said that I don't usually say like brought to you by no Red evolution and Red bull. Red bull don't sponsor us. I wish they did, but they don't. I haven't got a Red bull. I sound like I've had a Red bull. I haven't even had a Red bull. I often have a Red bull before a podcast, and it kind of makes me bounce around a little bit. And I've got a little list sort of a bit ranty, some of it, but, um, and stuff that's been going on and stuff that I've been thinking about while I've been on my travels. Um, I know that you've put a few ideas together. Yeah. So if you want, you can pitch one of your ideas and we'll see if there's any, any, anything to discuss.
Okay. Well, mine are all around our favourite subject of AI. Um, so go the size, but the first one is um, AI max, which is Google's new in quotation marks feature. Um, the second is cloud. Cloud flares.
Oh yeah.
Battle let's say.
Well, don't list them all out because we might not get on to them. Just pick one and talk about.
A sneak preview.
But what if we don't? Then it'd be like the next podcast or the one after that. So be careful. You know you don't.
Want my favorite ones. The one I teach people and leave them unfulfilled.
You're asking for.
Trouble. Well, okay. Right. Well, the last one then, which is my favorite because we've talked about this this morning is the Google changing the user experience. The landing pages put in much more of a focus on that navigation. That's my, my go to.
That's that's first.
Yeah. So I have named all three to be fair. But, um, okay.
So we'll, we'll start by explaining to people what landing pages are, what they're not, and then what they've been traditionally, how we've traditionally done things. And then these changes that you, that the, that you're talking about, which is something that Julie mentioned, she sent a link out. Didn't she? And she was talking about. Yeah.
So yeah. So, um, just to kind of kind of explain it, obviously landing page clue is in the name, but it is where people land on your website and it's where you want to direct people.
Traditionally associated with paid search, paid social, etc., where you're controlling the entire experience. Advert. Click this advert. You go to this page.
Yeah, yeah. And even within that then it gives the next biggest clue. It's got to be relevant because people have searched for you for a reason, and you want to send them to the best kind of most relevant page possible. So that is where we want them to land. Okay. Um, Google has been doing some, um, let's say playing around with that and experimentation. Yeah. They, they find or they found that, uh, a better user experience, um, you know, should reward people for or advertisers and, uh, which makes sense really, isn't it really, you know, um, obvious that it should, but.
It's been banging on. Yeah. Forever. Yeah. About making sure that if you're bidding on a keyword that your advert and the keyword match up, that the landing page experience fulfils what the advert was promising, that's not new. They've been banging on about that forever.
But and this does happen. So use a frustration of you will click ads where it might say something, something near me. You click on it and it's not relevant to you.
Yeah, I've experienced that.
Um, or it might just be you click on something where the headline just doesn't match or you've still got to then go and dig for it on the website. Okay? Because there might be something on that landing page where it is kind of relevant, but they want to remove that. So it needs to be as quick as possible. So one of the things that they've talked about is using their AI to crawl that page and judge the experience themselves. Can does it match up to the keyword? Does it match up to the headline? Does that match up to the URL? And if so, or if not as well, where can where else can they navigate to on that site, which is, is really, really important. You know, it is something people bang on about. And I think it's talked about a lot, but I just don't think people follow through with it all the time. They should, but I don't think they do.
Yeah. Because one of the things that differentiates often differentiates landing pages is the lack of navigation. Yes, you can think of a landing page almost like a flyer. Yeah. It's like one piece of paper. It's got nothing on the other side of it. It's just there's the information and here's what we want you to do if you're interested. Yeah. And we're saying we're going to move away from that model. Yeah.
Yeah. And just well just develop it like, you know, there are so many times, especially within B2C as well, where you click on an advert and it's just, it's just frustrating. And the amount of times people will click on a shopping ad.
Did you say B2C?
Yes. So like, I think it's quite common.
B2B is probably worse.
For, for not being clear enough on the landing page.
Well, with B2B, you get a lot of people, um, you know, Charlie from accounts kind of knows what he's doing with PPC so gets involved. The boss says, all right, Charlie, we're not going to hire one of those horrible agencies like Revolution. You do it for us. And, and what Charlie does is he bids on a load of different keywords, all the stuff that that company does sends them all to the home page and sort of like they land on the home page and it's like, well, go on, go and find it. It's in the website somewhere. That happens a lot. We see that.
Yeah. Because someone else who is also an expert will write something on the website. And then, you know, I want this little bit in there. I want this little bit in there. I think they should be searching for this. Why is it not working? And obviously because it just doesn't match up. And you know, like anyone who like listens only has to think, how many times have you clicked on a link in Google and clicked off of it within probably less than five seconds, because your brain just registers straight away that it is not relevant. So long and short of it, Google AI will track that page. They'll have a little look at it. They'll see if it's relevant. If it is relevant, then it will help us. But again, that is the whole AI. It ties in. AI will crawl every page if possible, but that ties into the Cloudflare one.
So if Well, yeah. But before you move on to the Cloudflare one, which is interesting, um, this assumes that AI can do a good job of figuring out whether the content is relevant because let's face it, I mean, AI is still getting things spectacularly wrong. I'm not a curmudgeon. I'm not, I'm not. Um, I, you know, I embrace AI with a, with a degree of skepticism around some of the generative AI that's out there and certainly the generative AI that's out there. Yeah. But are we how do we feel about AI's ability to make a qualitative judgment? Is that what we're talking about?
Yeah. And, and we were talking about how if you especially if you use Gemini or. Well, it's going to have to be their model that. It can can it always give you a solution? Mhm. And then you've got a question. Well, can it do that for crawl on a website? Can it give you does it know what the solution is? And you know, are we then just going to always be chasing what a model, you know, formula.
If I allowed Grammarly to make all the corrections to my writing that it wants to make, my writing would be even worse than it is. Yeah, it would be appalling, honestly. Yeah. It does not get context. And that's the thing that people keep saying about AI, doesn't it? Isn't it that it doesn't understand nuance and context. And this conversation we're having might be, I mean, I am massively impressed by the way that Gemini, um, can take notes in a meeting that we're having and come back and, and Dave said this or cam said that. And what they meant was this and they were discussed and I'm like, wow, that is that is just like somebody sat there taking notes and they understand context and nuance quite nicely. Yeah. But, you know, coming at a landing page, stone called. Are they going to understand the motivations of the person visiting it, what their problems are, what their level of skill is? If somebody from procurement has said, go out and find, you know, somebody from procurement has been tasked with, go out and find us a supplier of, um, high pressure pumps, for example, that person kind of thinks they know a little bit about what a high pressure pump looks like, more or less what it does. How is AI going to decide that that content is right for that person? Whereas the engineer might go and, uh, research the pump and he or she wants to a much greater level of detail, they'll understand when it starts, oh, you know, this pump will cavitate at this pressure and, you know, it'll have this amount loss of friction. And, and that's a different audience.
Yeah. It is context really matters. And I do wonder that is it just that it's going to say, right, you've ticked X, Y and Z boxes and that means you're good. Therefore cheaper ads.
Well, here's an example. You must have come across situations where you're getting a rubbish quality score. And for anyone listening that's not sure, you know, Google Ads is an auction. You say if somebody types this in show my advert, there's all sorts of stuff goes on. Part of that is there's a quality score. Google gives ads, keywords, rather quality scores and says, well, if somebody types that in this is this page matches all the user intent and all that, and it gives them a good quality score. You must have had situations where you just cannot get the quality score up and the page, the content is fantastic, and you cannot persuade the algorithm that your page is fantastic and should have a better quality score.
Yeah. And the opposite where you'll have an excellent and, and you think obviously the landing page is good. And then, you know, that doesn't always match up either. Like, you know, it might say, yep, this is absolutely excellent. But then the results don't drive it. Yeah. And, and that is where understanding context really, really does matter. I think definitely, um, because yeah, it's just, you've got to understand obviously, and we'll never go as long as it's a learning process as you go along, because you're never just going to be able to second guess it. Otherwise people will just set it up, leave it and you're done. And it's just impossible.
So isn't that what Max does? Well, I know it mainly empties your wallet, but isn't that what it does? It kind of guesses everything and just tries to get it right.
Um, it will use a lot of automation, but they're now using well, they're also using on and introducing AI Max, which does very, very similar things. So allows AI to look at the website. Um, you can allow it to change, which is really similar to some of the stuff we've had in the past, but automate your headlines, your anything within your ad URL extensions, so it can choose what URLs it needs to go to. So you can put rules around it, but you can say, yep, you have the freedom. And that is also why I think they're saying navigation is really important. Because if that can't find it, and because that's where the context comes in, because I might drop onto a website, you might drop onto a website. We roughly want the same thing or maybe the same service, but maybe we need just a different experience. So it might send me to one you to another. If it's crawled that site and can't find it, it's going to penalise you. But again, that's really tough because it takes out that human element and you've got to tick the boxes.
Mhm. Are we talking perhaps about using AI to fail fast at the speed of light? So it's going to fail fast and get to where it needs to get to a lot quicker. Perhaps.
Possibly. I think it has been doing that though, in the background. I think obviously we talk about these things because they'll roll out a new feature. But um, so dynamic search ads, um for people who know or don't know, um, essentially that's been, that's been around for years now. And that was probably the very start of it. So you can put in your URL and it will suggest new keywords, search terms based off of the content. Well, that is new AI at a very, very basic level. So they've been they've been failing fast for, for years in a way, but they can be useful. So, um.
Yeah, but, you know, can I just flip this on its head? Because what we're talking about here is the usual thing. Advertisers getting punished, you know, advertising, you know, life becoming more challenging potentially for advertisers. What about users who are idiots? Don't you think we should like? What Google could also be looking at is like, if people click on an advert and the thing they click on presents the absolute solution and they don't fill that form in, then they should get a little electric shock or their computer should blow up or something.
I think, I think you should always probably just assume that people don't know, because I think if you assume they know, then you're making too much of an assumption. Really? Like you should assume that people don't know and you should make it as easy as possible for them. Um, because that makes the process enjoyable. Yeah. In my opinion. Anyway.
Okay, so back to, and I know I've mentioned this this week already, Steve Krug don't make me think. Make it just like, yeah, make it kind of not idiot proof because you know, you can use the, the idea of not making people think without assuming people are idiots. You just, you, you just want to make their life easier. Yeah. They're busy. They've got other things to do. They're not actually that interested in high pressure pumps. They just need to buy one for the business that they're working for or something. You know, they'd much rather be playing golf or tennis or fishing.
Yeah.
Or cycling or swimming or running. Yeah. Got you.
I'll go for one of them. But yeah. Keep it. Keeps a triathlete trying to be um but yeah, keep it, keep it simple, keep it nice and easy. And you know, content can still be digestible, can still educate. It can still be easy to read, but keep it really simple.
Okay. And because you're talking about AI, do you want to talk about, um, the Cloudflare stuff?
Go on.
Then. Go on then.
Because we've boxed off two of the three. Have we. Yeah. Yeah.
How many ideas did you bring?
Uh, three.
It's as bad as being back doing it with Alex. Alex would rock up with, like, no ideas and expect me just to kind of conjure stuff up. You've just.
Come. I am waiting for your.
Basically the same idea.
No. Um, so Cloudflare, um, have released the they essentially are introducing what's called a pay per crawl.
This is interesting, isn't it?
It is, it is because well, what's really interesting is that they.
Explain what it is first.
So they want to charge AI in the background. So AI um, search.
Which currently steals everybody's content. Yeah. So for creators, yeah.
They never get um recognition.
There's been lots of chatter in the creative community. And I'm not necessarily talking about agents agencies like us. I'm talking about, you know, musicians, artists, truly creative people who make a living by being creative, saying like, hey, I just stealing all our stuff so that a numpty can type a prompt into a computer and get something great back.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's not just.
Bullshit, really. And it is.
Unfair. I think the biggest, the biggest, obviously ones that people think about are like obviously images, music and things like that. But you know, you, you, you type a question into Google and it will take content from everywhere. But now Gemini is good at then linking that back, but they still all do it. They still take it without recognition. Most of the time. So, um, Cloudflare, obviously they want to, you know, preserve that and protect it. And they, they will control and handle the fee in the background. I'm not sure sure what it is, but what, what it is, what makes me laugh is it's in a private testing phase at the moment. Um, so if so, they're inviting AI companies to, to be involved and content creators to sign up if they're interested. So I think this is a bit more of a PR thing and testing the waters because like we said, my, my theory is if they do block AI from crawling, then Google will say, okay, well, we'll just favor the websites that allow it. Mhm. Um, they may not.
Certainly in the AI, uh, in the AI, AI snippets, the AI overviews because they obviously do link to the sources of their information.
Yeah. And that's where it's just, it's, I don't know. Do you fight that battle?
Um, probably not unless you're a behemoth.
Yeah. Well, exactly. Exactly.
Microsoft probably will. They'll probably say, you know, they don't want, uh, Google's crawlers, AI crawlers on their content. So like, and they don't care. So they'll just say they'll, they'll say, no, you're not not accessing it anymore.
Yeah, yeah.
And for example.
Yeah. No, that's a that's a good point. I didn't think of a think of that. I was just thinking straight.
Would be the same. They would probably quite happily block all AI crawlers from their content because they don't care.
Yeah. People deserve recognition. But also on the other hand, how many people, especially listening as well, will just do what we all do? And you? How many, how many, how how much has this evolved for people looking at like Gemini and the search results and suggestions? Because why do you do it? Because it saves you that time. Yeah.
And that's is this really are we talking about one aspect of AI? For example, if I've, if I'm using AI to go and look at content I've produced or we've produced, create a summary, create some content, but only use these sources for the content like notepad, obviously, which I've mentioned a lot. That's a fantastic use of AI. Yeah. If we're using AI to write some code and Phil's been raving about using Juni or whatever it's called to write code, it can. It basically produces the code that he would produce a lot quicker than he can do it, because by writing prompts. Yeah. But he's because he's a great coder, then the code that junior produces is better because he can look at it and say, yeah, that's how I would have done it. This is great, and it's done it quicker than I have. And it's commented. Put all comments in which I never have time to do and all that kind of thing. That's one side of AI that's leveraging that whole side of AI to enhance and help us leverage more stuff that we've labored over, whether it's developing skills or creating content or whatever it is. Mhm. The other side of AI, the generative AI, is basically stealing other people's stuff. So that talentless people, and I've said this already, I know talentless people can then produce regurgitated mashups of other people's creativity. Maybe that side of AI needs to be tempered, and we should lean more into the stuff that helps us make more of our own abilities and, and skills and yeah, hard work.
The only thing I would say is even if you're getting AI to look at the work you've done and summarise it in a different way, or to kind of help with prompts, the question will always be, well, how is that model developed? Is it because it's looked at other sources and went, oh, this is good, this is bad, you know, so I'm going to now do that to you. So it's will those models still be able to learn? Is it too late? Is it already past that point or.
Genie out.
Of the bottle. Um, but so that's, that's, that's a one to watch. I think um they'll be the middleman.
Paper crawl.
Paper crawl. Yeah. Too many.
Wouldn't it be funny if we did that to Google? If we just said write all the content that you've stolen off us over the years, you know that you've crawled and everything else and indexed and decided, you know, in your own little way, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, we want it all back. You can't have it anymore. And by the way, if your whole business model is based on crawling other people's data and organising other people's data, and we love Google and it does all that stuff. Imagine if we just said, no, we're going to we're going to actually take control. We're going to say no, we want it all back. And you have to pay us in order to access this. So you can then take that content and make money with adverts and all the different ways that you make money.
Which is essentially what Cloudflare are trying. Yeah, exactly.
It's exactly what they're trying to do.
It's like if you want it, you can pay for it. Nothing in life is free.
So as a small business, we would never dream of doing that because we want Google all over our stuff like a rash. We want to be in the AI snippet. We want to be on page one for certain search terms, etc. you know, we just we just wouldn't do it. I just, I just think it's a, it's an odd one.
That's the hard part because it's like, well, where, where else do you go? Because, you know, does it make that experience the end user experience better? Yes.
Because it's more authentic.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Yeah. But, you know, if you if you don't use them, any of the big ones, because like Microsoft may end up doing it for Bing and, you know, um, it's like, well, where else do you go? Mhm. And, and that's where it's really.
Do you think not using AI will become a badge of honor? Maybe already has become a badge of honor for some people like, like you won't remember, but I've got I've got some vinyl records and I've got like some of my vinyl records, our original Queen albums. And they always used to put on the back, no synthesisers. Exclamation mark. Right. That was their thing. Like all this music you're hearing, it's people playing drums, playing guitars, playing bass guitars, piano singing. We don't use synthesisers. They're all real sounds, in other words. And that was a big thing. I don't think, you know, obviously when you got up to some of the last stuff that they did, I mean, it was, you know, I don't think they exclaimed no synthesisers anymore. But I just wonder if like, you know, it's like, will we get to a point where I'm like, in agency land? We used to get asked like, you know, do you guys do this work or do you send it overseas and get it done on the cheap? Yeah, no, no, we do it in house. Here's the team. Come and meet us if you want to, sort of thing. I just wonder if we're going to get to that point with AI. Well, I'd like you to do content for me, but do you use AI? Yeah we do. Oh no, I don't want that. Then that's a good question. I don't.
Know. I mean, I think there might be a few stand out people in the beginning. Um that might use it as a badge of honor. Um they could do that in the beginning. But the problem again, the problem is they'll be so big that they could probably afford to do that because they're always going to be found on Google. Um, but the people who will affect the most are the smaller, any of the smaller enterprises. Yeah. Unfortunately. And that's, that's, that's the hardest part is that, you know, it doesn't affect the big guns. Yeah.
So, right. We have, we, uh, AI ourselves out for now.
I think that's, that is probably enough of that AI.
I just like on behalf of myself and the rest of the team to to apologise for that drivel. But anyway, let's let's move on.
I'm not bringing AI on the next.
No. Feel free. That's fine. I'm just. I'm just taking the piss. Um, okay. Um, I don't think this will take long to discuss, but it might, I don't know, it depends on what you think about it. And I did mention to mention it to you earlier. I love tech, I use tech, I've always thought of tech as like, you know, something I want to learn about and develop and embrace, etc.. Um, something that SaaS companies do is really starting to irritate me and I think they all do it because they all do it, if you know what I mean.
Um.
And this is pricing software as a service. So most people listening to this will use software as a service for something. They'll either be their cloud accounting system or they might use HubSpot for their marketing automation or their website. Uh, they might use a CRM. Uh, I mean, we use loads of different SaaS systems, whether it's Unbounce, HubSpot, SEMrush. I mean, these things that we pay monthly for them and the software as a service, we don't have to install the software. It's just through a web browser or whatever. And it just works. Yeah. And what they all seem to do now is they offer pricing per month. Yeah. As long as you buy it for a year. Mhm. And I don't mean like you pay, say, for example, they'll say twenty quid on an annual basis. They don't mean you pay them twenty quid a month. They may, they mean you pay them two hundred and forty quid one time. Yeah. In one lump sum.
Yeah.
But claim that what they're actually doing is giving you it for twenty quid a month. Yeah. I think we need to end that bullshit.
Yeah.
They just need to say it's twenty five pounds a month or it's two hundred and forty quid a year. Not claim it's a monthly fee. Brackets. Small writing.
Just to make.
If you pay annually.
Yeah, yeah.
But why? Well, we know it's obvious why. It's back to this marketing at its worst, you know, make it look cheaper than it really is.
Yeah, yeah. It's the psychology.
It's the psychology. It's it's, um. It's it's, uh, deceitful.
Yeah. Yes. I think yeah, yeah. You either have persuasive or manipulative and it is manipulative. Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's frustrating. This is definitely the what winds me up segment of the of the podcast because there's, there's things with this which I don't like. It's like the, the Klarna type, you know, although I know you do pay monthly for that, but it's that mentality of don't worry, it won't hurt you now. But yeah, a lot of that will hurt you and you and people will fall into that. And it is, it is manipulative. And, um, you know, like at the end of the day, the accounts team will be looking at and going, yeah, but we've still got this two hundred and forty quid a month coming a year coming out like, and that is it. So I think being upfront and honest. But the thing that gets me is that offering a really kind of For premium, easy service, a very low paid service that is just it's I know it's an entryway into a service. Um, but it's just so poor that you're never going to use it and it just makes the rest of it redundant. And you look at it and you're like, well, why would I want to go pay from paying five pounds a month to now I've got to pay forty pounds a month for just a, you know, the actual service that I wanted in the, in the.
Is it a bit like the in-app purchases type thing?
Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
You download it. Great. But the thing you really need. Yeah. That's that's that's twenty quid a month.
Yeah. We'll give you, we'll give you one of these. Um, it's like with a lot of hosting website hosting services, um, you know, you get one web page and then everyone has a giant home screen. Uh, but if you want the next one up and it's like, well, that's not helpful. Like, you know, and then I think those price differences are too far apart. So that one annoys me.
Yeah, I don't disagree. And I was there was one something on the tip of my tongue that I was going to say, uh oh, I can't remember. Can't remember. The other thing was, um, going back to the pain annual, etc.. Yeah. Um, you know, we love HubSpot. We pay HubSpot quite a lot of money every month or whatever. Well, not every month, actually every three months. Uh, they do it a lot. They'll negotiate on price and, you know, they'll say, this is going to be a thousand quid a month. And you're like, oh, well, if you sign by tomorrow, it's going to be seven hundred quid a month. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Seven hundred a month. Ah, yeah. Yeah. But we want three months in advance, minimum. And we'll bill you every three months or six months. They actually quite often ask for twelve months in advance.
Right.
You know, so they, they actually it's back to my original point. Yeah. Where they're saying, you know, oh, it's a thousand quid a month, but it's like you need twelve grand today if you want a thousand quid a month. Yeah, I know, I'm just repeating myself now because I've already made this point. Just stop with the bullshit. Yeah, it's either a thousand quid a month or it's twelve thousand quid. Yeah. For the year. And I want and they want and I want twelve grand now. Don't try and pretend it's something that it isn't.
Yeah. That and add ons. Like just add ons or just, just wind me up.
Yeah. Okay. That's fine. Talking about add ons, I, I, I, um, I was, I was away, I was away, um, in the motorhome and I used Google maps quite a lot. Um, I haven't got a satnav in the motorhome. It's quite old. I haven't got a satnav, but obviously everyone's got a satnav in their pocket. So I use Google maps and I was in um France and I was following it to get to get to this place to park for the night, which is great. It's going down, it's quite busy. Dual carriageways turn right, turn right and two meter two meter width restriction right and wider than two meters in my motorhome. Oh, right. This isn't this isn't good. Thankfully, there was a right turn up to sort of an industrial estate. So I sort of looked at Karen's like, oh, I'll go up there because I can't go down there, which is where we need to be. And we're literally a kilometer away from where we need to be turned. Pulled in, parked on a hill. And we were there about two minutes and this guy came out. Uh, you can't park here in French. Uh, you can't park here. And it was apparently like, um, some sort of government defense contractor organisation. But anyway, so we went further up, sat there, got maps out, looked at Google maps, figured another way to get to this place. Sam Benoit uh, lovely place. And we got there and it was fine, but when I got back I thought, you know what I mean? It'd be nice to have a sat nav that knows I'm a big vehicle and such things exist. So I went into the Forum's Motorhome fun forum. Um, and somebody suggested this Magic Earth satnav system. Okay, so you can use it online or you can download maps. The downloads were very slow, but what you can do is you can say I'm in a lorry and and then put in your dimensions. I'm two point five meters wide and seven meters long. I wear three and a half tons and all that kind of stuff. And then in theory, what it does is it goes, ah, this is a bigger vehicle, right? You can't go down there. It's a two meter width restriction and it figures it all out. That's clever and it's nice. And I knew these things existed. And everyone's raving about this thing called magic earth satnav thing. Um, and it's free. And you think, okay, it's free, but there's clearly going to be adverts, no adverts. Well, there's clearly going to be in-app purchases for the stuff that I really need. No, all they've got is like, if you like it, you know, give us some money. Yeah. Sort of thing. Yeah. Really surprising because what you were just saying is usually the case where you get something and either the adverts are really annoying or um you, you um finish up like you can't actually do the one thing you really needed to do without subscribing.
Yeah, yeah. We'll get you halfway there on your journey and then we won't tell you the other half of the road. That's right. Yeah. No, I like that. Um, I think there's a lot of I can't remember what the model is called, um, that people use that for where they were probably.
Is it where you just give, give people it all for free and then beg for money once they wants to get to like it.
It's, uh. But I think you'll find people probably more generous because they appreciate the service, and then they tend to pay what they think it's worth.
That's Fraser. He used to be in the fire service. Fraser. Um, he was a senior guy in the fire service and he's now retired. Um, because he's probably about twenty five or something. People in the fire service retire after about four months service on a good pension. Um, lovely guy. I just noticed him coming up to the door. He was going to come in, but he saw that we were recording so he decided not to. Um, it's funny because he was always a good guy when I was in the fire service. Lovely guy to deal with. He was a very senior officer. I was I'm just a retained on call firefighter, as you know, and, uh, but more recently, he's becoming, he comes to band gigs because he lives in Ballater and we play at the, um, we play at the, uh, what's it called in the place we pay. Anyway, it's good night.
Yeah. The corner, the one on the corner. That's right.
Yeah. Balmoral.
Yeah.
Play his favourite song, ever Fallen in Love by the Buzzcocks. And he's just bouncing around the room when that comes on. And he's absolutely loving it. Yeah, really good guy. Brilliant.
Um, more than welcome to come on the podcast.
More than welcome to come on the podcast. Absolutely. Um, what was I going to do? AM I changing the subject again?
Uh, no, I'm not.
Going to keep going much longer because I'm going for half an hour. And we were late starting because the client meeting was, was late starting because the client forgot.
Yeah. No, it's just more people should, uh, do things that they're passionate about apps wise or, or otherwise.
You got to make a living. I understand that and like, you know, we've been advocates of open source software and we've, um, we've contributed to open source projects and such like, but, you know, there are, there are still opportunities out there really good. Um, um, um, software and stuff that isn't, I'll maybe report back on how magic Earth goes. It'll maybe finish, I'll finish up down like, um, and now in a river.
Yeah.
That's, that's not very good. That software.
I think key takeaways. People value honesty and they will, they will definitely contribute um, to, to that and pay what you know, is fair and they will help out in communities like that. Yeah. So, okay.
I've got a few things to talk about, but I'm conscious of the time. So I'm not. I'm just going to introduce one final subject to finish on and then I'll, I'll switch on that one we've done. I'll cross that one out. Go for.
Your favourite.
So I'm well I was going to talk about the conversation we had this week. Lesley was involved was we are tying in with what we were talking about originally landing pages. Now these are not necessarily landing pages for paid search, although we will use them for paid search. We will sort of break our own rules in some respect and send paid search to a just a normal page on a website as opposed to a dedicated landing page. Yes, but we've changed our home page. We put the six CTAs into the key services that we offer. Yeah. And we were looking at when people click any of those calls to action CTAs, like for example, search or strategy, there's the pages they take, we take them to, they've got some words which say, yada, yada, yada. We do this Or we can help you with this. Or if you've got this problem, we can solve it. And we started talking about the imagery that should go with it, because we've kind of been a bit lazy and, you know, overused, let's say some imagery. Yeah. So some of the landing pages are sharing images and it's just like, well, why would we do that when we can do them a lot better than that? So we got talking about whether those pages, for example, see if, when you know, whether those pages should be like if we're talking about strategy. Yeah. Should it be people like with a notice board and yellow stickies and writing things and, um, you know, agreeing or disagreeing or sat around a table, all the stuff you would just expect to see.
Yeah.
Or should it be something a bit more abstract? Like I suggested the Mike Tyson thing. Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. So you sure somebody's getting punched in the mouth? And it's like there is a connection between strategy and somebody's getting punched in the mouth in the context of the Mike Tyson quote. And I don't know where we've got with that. I know Leslie's done some work since, which I haven't had a chance to look at yet. Yeah, yeah. Around this. And it's like when you're trying to market in the B2B environment, should you just be literal or might it appear to be edgy?
Yeah, I think that's the, the, the real it's the hard point, isn't it? And I mean.
Obviously you can test and try things and play around with things and split test and all the rest of it.
Yeah. I mean, the safe option is to be, um, very literal with it.
Well, you used the word safe option and that's it. You know, there is a safe option.
Yeah.
But this is what I expect to see in accountancy. And I'm going to go to a web page, you know. Yes, there's somebody counting money or somebody working a spreadsheet. So that's fine. That's safe.
Yeah. But does safe start a conversation and you can still be edgy with it.
Safe would start a conversation with safe people.
Yeah.
Yeah maybe.
But it may not always, you know, pique the interest of, of everyone who's on there because you can still have the whole layout and everything else that answers that, um, question or problem and gives them a solution, but you're doing it in an interesting way. Just because I said this last time, just because it's B2B does not mean it needs to be boring. It can still be very, very interesting. And that's one of the biggest things that I think that you come across in B2B is making complex ideas very simple. And, you know, that can be through something which is a bit more quirky.
So something so quirky is an interesting word.
Yeah. It's commonly used, isn't it, for when you can't find another word for.
Quirky is maybe different to edgy.
Yeah.
You could be quirky.
Yes. Yeah.
When I think of quirky, I think of the person, the boring person who wears a loud tie to work.
Okay.
And thinks they're being, oh, I'm being I'm being. Oh, I'm being really quirky here. People will think I'm mad. Me.
Yeah, I don't, I don't really want that on a banner.
You don't really want that, do you? Whereas edgy is like.
So I think edge is a bit more like mysterious, you know.
Like a spy.
Yeah. Don't tell.
Anybody wants to be a.
Spy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it is, but something to spark curiosity.
Yeah, yeah. Something to start a conversation. Spark. What we were thinking was we've got words on those pages and those words we've crafted them. You did some nice work on that. Oops. And I think I think there can always be improved. We can always, you know, finesse them, but they're actually not that bad. Mhm. Um, but what we were concerned with was that the imagery was either lazy, as in it's just a nice picture and it's got no relation to the strategy search web, whatever it is that page is talking about. Yeah. But at the same time, you know, safe.
Mhm.
We, uh, my view was that we shouldn't be safe because as an agency, you know, even if, uh, a B2B organisation that's thinking of hiring us is not going to go with us on a bold idea because it's just too much, it's too out there for them. They might still prefer, I think, or they might still go like, well, I kind of like the way these guys present themselves. We've had a lot of positive feedback in that sense, you know, about the way we present ourselves, the language. We use simpler language quite often. Hopefully most of the time that, you know, explains complex situations and helps people understand what what we've got to offer them and how we can help them. But I do feel that as an agency, we need we can afford, even though we're B2B, we can afford to be to be edgy rather than safe.
Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, we're people on our end. They are people on their end. Yeah. You know, they're just trying to find a solution to something that's a bit more complex doesn't mean we're not people. Um, and we enjoy things which are quirky or what.
I didn't do was come away with a bunch of examples of edgy, powerful, effective B2B. And there are plenty out there, but I didn't actually take the time to to bring some forward. Or maybe I maybe do that for next time because I think there's, there's more discussion around this around like, you know, can you be edgy in B2B? How edgy can you be? How edgy should you be? What happens if you go edgy and it backfires? Yeah, you know, all that sort of thing.
Yeah. Someone's got to lead the way.
Well, yeah, I think, I think plenty are. I think I think there's people out there are kind of taking a sort of subtly different approach, um, with their, you know, messaging imagery, whatever it is, the story they're trying to tell. Okay. Um, I think a second podcast score that was, uh, that was, that was not bad. What.
What did you think? Not bad.
Yeah.
Well, I felt.
Like I'll go slightly better. It wasn't awful.
I thought it was brilliant.
I thought it was brilliant.
Partly because Leslie walked off.
So all I'm saying is Leslie's walked away. So.
Packing up? Yeah. Pack it up.
Pack it in. Let me begin. It was good a song.
What's that? What song is that? Oh, tell him what song?
Pack it up. Pack it in. Let me begin. Something like that anyway.
Do you know the song?
Oh, do you know what? Jump around.
Oh, is that from. Is that jump around?
Something like that. Anyway. I don't know.
If you say it with confidence, I'll believe you. Yeah.
Anyway, um, enough of this gibberish. We'll be back with another episode of Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Next week we'll need to do one next week because the week after, remember, I'm going to Ireland. I'm going to Portrush to kind of help at the open. Looking forward to that.
That'd be.
Good. It'll be windy. It'll be cold. It'll be raining. My motorhome currently leaks. It's got problems, but I'll still be smiling. Yeah, it'll be fine.
I'm sure you're all right.
I'll stop now.
Thank you, thank you.
Bye.
