What Marketing Really Is And Why Engineers Get It Wrong – Episode 163

So it's just about like understanding where your target market are hanging out. Where's your tribe?

Yeah, engineering companies are not going about it. They're just like, I've had this great idea. I want to make this thing. And then we'll try and find an audience for it, and we'll try and push it on people, which is not a marketing approach to running your company. It's an engineering approach to running your company. And there's a difference. And if you don't have any marketing people at a senior level in your company, then you're going to have to go and sell because the demand isn't there. You're almost having to go and create demand.

I would imagine if you run an engineering company, that the companies that you look at with a bit of envy.

Yeah.

Will almost certainly take marketing seriously. Whenever you do the intro.

Oh me! How exciting. It's a promotion. Welcome back.

That's rubbish. I'm gonna do it.

Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. This is episode one hundred and sixty something or other. One hundred and sixty four. It is. I can't believe we've made it this far. And, um, we're going to talk about something or other. Now I've done the intro. You've got to come up with something.

Okay. Um. I'm knackered.

Okay. Fair enough.

I went for a jog at lunchtime, and, you know, like, sometimes you go out and it's just so hard.

But your legs are.

Really.

Heavy and.

Low energy. But I went anywhere, any time, any time, you know, the same. But it just felt hard. It was windy, but it was a lovely day, so I did enjoy it.

I know.

Some.

Days, some days your legs just aren't.

So like I said, I have brought sandwiches because I expect you to talk a lot. But, um.

That's a lot of pressure.

I'd rather have them with some tea after we've podcasted. Yeah. Um, you've got quite a lot to say, I think. Or at least topics for us to discuss.

I've got choices, I've got choices. And we can either talk about, um, keyword research and personas and stuff like that and how it's all changing.

Or is it changing?

Well, it's gonna have to. Okay. And, um, or we can talk about, um, what is marketing? What does marketing really mean? And why do people on LinkedIn talk a load of bollocks?

Oh, I like that.

I thought you might.

Well, you're the only true marketer. You're the chartered marketer. I mean, I'm an interloper. So I think, um, I'd quite like to know what marketing really is and discuss that, but we could always touch on the other stuff as well because.

Yeah. Or we can save it for next time, depending on how long it takes me to.

How dull it is, just how how badly it goes. We'll base it on that. If it's going really badly, I'll just like, ring a fake bell and bing and then we'll just change. We have. Yeah. You bought it from.

You're not getting to ring a bell every time I get boring. Because that would be awful.

Ding! Okay, give us the intro.

The intro is that, um, I keep reading these posts on LinkedIn by somebody who sounds like they really know what they're talking about, and they're like, I'm going to explain the meaning of life and I'm going to explain the meaning of marketing, and I'm going to tell you the difference between marketing and advertising, and I'm going to tell you the difference between marketing and branding. And I'm going to tell you the difference between marketing, PR, and they come up with this very sort of believable, credible blurb that explains the difference. And it's.

I think this.

Is utter bullocks.

Good. I like this subject. It's good because I think, you know, given that we work predominantly with engineering tech businesses, marketing is often an afterthought for them. And they probably think it's the colouring in department and it's all a bit woolly. And, and it really isn't any of those things. And I think approaching this from, you know, looking at what other people are saying, which in your, um, esteemed opinion. That's not even a thing. But opinion I'll.

Do. My expert opinion.

Is expert opinion.

A technical term is that it's utter bollocks.

Yeah. Go on, go on. Off you go. Have a ride.

Yeah. There's people like, yeah, marketing's this and branding's that and like, no.

No no no no no.

No. Anyway, so I've.

Got a talking to the microphone though. You can look at your notes, but you do have to talk in the microphone.

I'm waving my arms.

Around to my friend in a podcast.

Oh. All right then. So right. I'm going to move my notes and then I can actually read because I've.

Got there was a thing that let you put them at an angle built into the thing that's actually attached. Oh, look, there is.

That's so annoying.

See, I don't need to worry because I've only got one note written down.

Right?

Oh no, it's all gone. Once I start.

Giggling, it can all go horribly wrong, right? Okay, so yeah, the official definition from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, which is the sort of main marketing body that makes people chartered marketers. Marketing is the strategic management process of identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customer needs profitably. So that's quite broad.

It is. Yeah.

But you.

Kind of get the gist of.

It. There's no colouring in in there whatsoever. It's about strategy. It's about working out what people want. And it's about making things that people want and then making a profit out of it. Unless you're a non-profit, but you know.

You see this is from a from an engineer's point of view or certainly a non marketer's point of view. I often thought that people come up with a great idea or what they think is a great idea. Then they hand it over to the marketing marketing department and say, right, go and go and sell that. Go and get people interested in that. Whereas in its truest form, marketers listen to the marketplace and figure out what the marketplace needs, what it's looking for, what it can't find easily, what the problems are, and then comes back and says, right, this is what we do. This is what the market needs. Why don't we use our skills to develop something that like, for example, you might develop a piece of software because you figured out that there's no really sweet piece of software to help small businesses like ours. Small agencies run the financial side of their business.

Yeah. For example.

Which is what we did.

Yeah. Marketing starts right back way before you're promoting something. Marketing starts with figuring out what to make. It's if your organisation is sort of marketing oriented, then your, your marketing is part of the, the sort of product development process. Product development is part of marketing. Yeah. And this is coming back to the marketing isn't just like this or that. Marketing is absolutely everything. There's other, there's other definitions that kind of help as well. The Oxford English Dictionary, the activity or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising, which is a bit confusing, I.

Think is confusing because it's wrapping advertising into it as well.

Yeah. It includes advertising, though it isn't one or the other. It is. So it's right, but it's it's not very helpful. Um, Philip Kotler, who was one of the great, um, original marketing gurus. Yeah. The Bible. Um, yeah, the, the original book that, um, you know, that you're studying marketing.

When you were at uni.

Yes. Um, the science and art of exploring, creating and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. So that one's quite good and that explains it. Well, we're exploring and creating and delivering value and you're it's for a specific market. Yeah. So that's quite good. And then there's a, another one. Peter Drucker who's another of these gurus, marketing is not only much broader than selling. It is not a specialised activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It's the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is from the customer's point of view. Yeah. So that's the same thing as you were saying. It's like looking at it from what the customer wants. Not, um. Oh, we're clever enough to invent this thing, so we're trying to find a market for it. It's like there is a market for this thing. Therefore we'll make it and promote it and distribute it and everything else. So it includes everything.

Well, could I say something at this point then? Because clearly most of our customers don't come along to us and say, we're an engineering company. We've got, um, precision machining capability, we've got welding capability. Um, and we've got um, MDT capability and we've got a team of designers with great software go out to the market and figure out what we should be making.

No, because that's not, that's not our speciality. That's not the part of marketing that we do.

But what I'm saying is where we are, where most marketing firms are, and correct me if I'm wrong, is businesses have established there is a need for whatever it is they do, the service, the product or anything. They're just not communicating it very well. So we.

Want to improve.

That and help them find more customers, because there's definitely a need.

For what we do is the communication side. Yeah, I think maybe to to explain it a bit better, um.

What even better than I just did.

No, that was good. That was, that was that made sense. But um, put that in context. I think that, um, once you've got your sort of overall marketing strategy, you know, where your business priorities are, you've got something called the marketing mix. The marketing mix is.

All there for a company.

I'm sure there are many companies called that one.

Anyway.

The marketing mix is all the, the parts of marketing, which is where people get muddled up, I think. So your marketing mix is your product. So that is the, you know, our this is our capability. This is our customer. What product should we be making to fill a gap in the market? So there's, that's, that's the sort of product development side. There's pricing. And we know that there are, there are agencies and companies that just specialise in pricing. And that is.

You heading towards the four P's here.

There's seven. But yeah.

There used to be four.

There used to be four or the I think the the other three are a bit confusing, but the basic four are product price, place and promotion. So your product development, your pricing, your places, your, your distribution. Do you sell direct? Do you sell in a shop? Do you have a shop? Do you sell through distributors, all that sort of stuff. And then promotion, which is the thing that most people think is marketing. It's the promotion side. It's all the communication, it's the, the getting it out there. And then the other three are people process and physical evidence. But let's not complicate life with them right now. But basically there's all these bits of the marketing mix that all go into your overall marketing. And then within the, I think then within the, the P of promotion, you've got PR, you've got advertising, you've got websites, you've got, um, branding, Although it could be in one of the other P's. But you've got lots of bits even within that promotion bit of marketing, you've then got all the other bits that make up your promotion. So if you're doing a full marketing plan that included all the P's, so you were talking about what product you're going to develop, how you're going to price it, and where are you going to distribute it, and how you're going to promote it. Within the promotion bit, you'd say, well, we're going to do PR to launch it. We're going to have an advertising campaign, we're going to build a website, we're going to do email marketing, we're going to run Google ads. And that is all within the promotion bit of the marketing mix, which is made up of lots of bits. So if you talk about what's the difference between advertising and marketing, you're.

Yeah, it makes no sense. Advertising is a part of promotion.

Bit of the marketing mix which is made up of lots of things.

Whose fault is it that people have got so confused about it? Um, I think it's marketing's fault.

Probably marketing's fault. Yeah.

I mean, marketing screw up everything.

So yeah, I would say.

The media, marketing.

Marketing breaks everything. Marketing broke social media.

And email.

Marketing broke email.

On the web.

Marketing broke the web. Yeah, yeah. Marketing breaks everything. So I probably marketing marketing broke, um, the definition of marketing because most marketing agencies are communications agencies. And it's actually probably the, the fact that just marketing is easier to, to say to people, just think of it as marketing, but actually what we're doing is a bit of marketing. So yeah, so next time you read a thing on LinkedIn, somebody says, I've, you know, here's the answer to, you know, the universe. And, you know, I'm going to explain to you that marketing is your strategy and branding is something else. No, marketing is marketing and you have a marketing strategy and branding is part of your marketing strategy. And it, it doesn't matter. But as people trying to show that they know stuff that they clearly know nothing about.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think you're right.

What LinkedIn is full of.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think it's quite funny because I think it's being it's been turned back on them to, to a certain extent. I was there's an advert running on LBC just now and I, he's a, he's a funny one because I can't actually remember who the adverts for. But one of the things that they they have in it, you know, if, if like if you're fed up of listening to the, to the fintech bros and in the background, you can hear the fintech bros going, oh yeah, scale, scale, scale. And, and I think what's happened in social media, including LinkedIn is, is that we've got a lot of self-professed gurus, self-professed experts. And, you know, if the camera sort of panned back a bit, you know, they'd be in there. Um, they'd be in their utility room in their pants and the washing machine would be in the background. It would just yeah, it would be all a bit shit. And I do you know, there are some genuinely, you know, um, fantastic people in social media. There are people like Rory Sutherland who speaks a lot of sense and you hang on his every word almost. Um, but yeah, but it's I think what people are doing is they're seeing people like that and they're just trying to copy them by, I don't know, maybe, maybe there's, uh, one of these courses somewhere that teaches you to be super confident. And if you're super confident, then people will buy the bullshit that you that you.

Seem a bit like that. You know, I'm here it is. I've, I've got the answer. Yeah. I'm going to explain this thing that you've never understood all these years. Like, yeah, no, no you're not.

But so I wonder why it is then, um, to keep this sort of on message a little bit. Why is it that engineering companies, manufacturing companies, sometimes tech companies, SaaS companies, even, they kind of don't get it. They don't really understand marketing.

Because they're run by engineers.

Well, maybe.

Yeah, they don't have they don't have marketing departments. They don't have if they have a marketing department.

Well they do.

It's a junior person who answers the phone.

Sits at reception and also makes the tea and also literally does the colouring in. Yeah.

And they just see it as like sticking stuff on LinkedIn every now and again. Yeah. It's a social media person and they do not have senior marketing people. They are not marketing led organisations.

They're very into their sales type people. They're very into having seasoned shoe leathery type.

Which is what you need if you're, um, if you're not a marketing led organisation and you're not fulfilling a demand.

You have to knock on doors.

Then you've got to push it at people because it's not being pulled through by people who are looking for it. So you've got to try and go and convince people that they want it. Mhm.

Um, and there's a whole industry supporting that with like, you know, trade shows and all that kind of stuff where.

Interesting one kind of on it is on topic, but, um, my next door neighbors just started a window cleaning business and there's obviously there's demand for window cleaners around here. There's not very many. And she she's figured that out. And so she started a window cleaning business. And I helped her with just doing some Facebook bits and pieces. And I did that on the Friday afternoon. By the end of the weekend, she had eight new clients. Mhm. Um, whereas you've seen other people, you put stuff out on Facebook and nothing happens because there's no demand. She's actually started a business that has demand, and all she's had to do is do a few Facebook posts and, um, eight enquiries converted all of them into new clients because they want it. She hasn't had to go and pressure them into buying. She hasn't had to go and knock on their doors and go, I think you need a window cleaner. Look, your windows are grubby. She just said, look, I'm a window cleaner. And people are like, oh yes, please, yes, please. Because she's she's gone about it.

It's a simple proposition. So it's just about like understanding where your target market are hanging out. Where's your tribe? Well, Facebook is, you know, a lot of people with gray hair and houses and they don't want to clean their own windows. And so, you know, you're gonna you're gonna definitely be in front of the right people. Yeah.

And, and there's a gap.

In the market. There's a demand. Yeah. If she, if she's advertised cleaning services, she would probably have had a one hundred and eight new clients because you can't get cleaners full of the money.

That is true.

So giving up time for the office.

But, um, yeah, engineering companies are not going about it. They're just like, I've had this great idea. I want to make this thing, and then we'll try and find an audience for it, and we'll try and push it on people, which is not a marketing approach to running your company. It's an engineering approach to running your company. And there's a difference. And if you don't have anyone, any marketing people at a senior level in your company, then you're going to have to go and sell because the the demand isn't there. You're almost having to go and create demand.

I would imagine if you run an engineering company that the companies that you look at with a bit of envy.

Yeah.

Will almost certainly take marketing seriously when you look at them and say, well, why? Why do they look so shiny? Why? Why is what they're saying so clear? Why are they doing so well? How come they've got those clients and we didn't get those clients? You know, we have written a blog post about how, you know, why businesses whose products or services are worse than yours seem to be succeeding when you're failing. Um, and I think that's definitely in the mix.

There's also the overengineering, isn't there? You're like, we're so clever. We can make this thing. Therefore we will. And actually what people want is just something much more simple.

We did a bit of work with a with a tech company over a year ago now down in Edinburgh. And yeah, they were very high tech and, you know, difficult to actually understand what they did. It was that high tech and they were like that. They were very clever people and they were dismissive of, of, um, of marketing. And, you know, we worked with them for a while, but, you know, not surprisingly, it didn't last very long. And I went and looked. I went and looked at their website and, um, various other things to sort of see. They don't seem to have progressed very far. They don't seem to have achieved very much in terms of, uh, their online visibility or anything else, you know, and I, I don't know, I don't, it just seems to me that it's very easy, I think, for bright people to be dismissive of this stuff. Um, and it's not rocket science.

It's really basic. It's fundamental, you know, if you, you, you, you find out what, what people want that doesn't exist and you make it and then you're going to sell stuff unless you do it really badly, you're going to sell stuff. And if you do it the other way around, it is back to front. Um, there there's a slightly more controversial, um, opinion that, um, that selling is actually part of marketing, which I think it is if you, if you look at the broader definition of marketing, which is like identifying needs and then getting it out into the marketplace, then selling is actually part of marketing, but you try and tell a salesperson that they're part of the marketing department and they'll smack you around the head. But it actually is. It's, it's all part of the process of if you think of marketing properly, it's all part of the process of marketing means getting something out into the market. And selling is part of that. It's not a separate thing. It should all be.

How old is marketing as a profession? Um, when was it really starting to be sort of noticed as a thing back in the Industrial Revolution? Or was it way more recently? And that was it?

Um, I would say early nineteen hundreds I suppose. I think when, when things started being mass produced and.

Yeah.

People actually had to.

Had disposable income and there was suddenly there was a choice.

There were choices. I think before that, you know, if you wanted to meet you, you went to the, the butcher and you bought what was available. And you know, once, um, there was a lot more choice. There was more competition. I think it became a thing. I mean, it always existed. You know, the butcher and the town was probably a butcher because people wanted to not slaughter their own sheep. So, you know, so that somebody saw a demand for slaughtering sheep and chopping them up and, um, created a butcher. Sorry, Leslie, I know you go vegetarian. That was a really bad choice. But we happened to be next door to butcher, so it was the first thing that came to my mind. But, I mean, it's always existed, but it's not. Had a name.

Anything else on that particular subject?

Um, no, that that was kind of kind of it. Trying to just explain that marketing is more than just shoving a few Facebook posts out there. It's, it's a process. And it's, it covers the whole organisation. And like everywhere that a customer coincides with your organisation is to do with marketing. You know, whoever answers the phone, they're, they're part of your marketing. They're part of how the outside world interacts with you. Yeah. Um, your vans, your, you know, your deliveries, everything, you know, everything where, uh, there's a touch point that your audience can, can see you or interact with you then that is, is marketing. So, you know, your entire workforce really should understand a little bit about marketing because they're, they're representing you. Mhm.

Here's a simple example. Then just to kind of see if I've got the, the hang of this, if you like. So we were approached by one of one of my neighbours who have a farm, and at the time they had a property that they'd built, which I think they're going to live in when they retire. Um, but in the meantime, they were renting it out as a holiday cottage and they were doing it through cottages dot com and cottages dot com. Um, they are quite prescriptive about the amount of time that you can use it for your own use. You can have it for your own use and when it must be available And you know, they would they just need it to be available. And you might have to do turnarounds on the same day and all the rest of it. And so they want it to be a bit more flexible. And, um, didn't really understand how Airbnb worked. So they came to me and said, look, can you build us a website? Because if you build us a website, then we can just please ourselves. And I said, yeah, I can absolutely build you a website. Um, and it wouldn't be expensive, but I wouldn't advise doing it because nobody will find it. Right. So they would not be able to take their product to market. Now that product is in demand, you know, holiday lets in this area, as you know, and I know are in demand. Yeah. And but the way that you take it to market is to make sure that the people with the problem I need somewhere to stay in Royal Deeside. Yeah. We'll find it. Yeah. And so you have to put it into that market. You have to market it to the people. And if you just did your own website, the chances are they would never find you. And your product, although it's in demand, would never prosper. Your business would never prosper.

Yeah, because because there's competition. And you've got to understand how the the customers operate. I mean, that's.

So in in that sense, cottages dot com, Airbnb and the like.

The cottages, the place p there, the distribution there, how, how you're getting it out there.

Yeah. That's right. And there's no point trying to try and fight against that. I mean they, they will always win you know. Pretty much.

Yeah. Unless you start doing TV ads for your holiday cottage that sleeps two and costs five hundred quid a week, then um, yeah, you're not going to compete with big companies that have the sort of.

And so for the engineering companies and the like, and the companies that we work with, broadly speaking, you know, what we're doing is we're helping them. And I know this is stating the obvious, but we're helping them the way that we're helping them is making sure that when people are trying to solve a particular problem that they can, that they have a solution for, that they're in the right place. And then. Yeah, but it's not just that, is it? It's like once they're in the right place, they get found. But then the way that that company is presented and the messaging it uses and the whole kind of does it instill confidence? Does what what they're what people find when they find you? What do they see when they find you? Does that make them want to engage? And that's all part of the communication piece as well.

That's the communication.

That's the creative part.

Yeah. It's the brand, isn't it? Yeah. It's the other thing. It's like your brand's more than a logo. It's um, how people perceive you. It's, it's a tone of voice you use. It's, it's how, how you are seen out in the big bad world.

And I think if we again, talk about the engineering people, I think brand and you know what you just said one hundred percent agree with that. What people say about you and you're not in the room. They don't get that. They just think it's the logo, for example. Yeah, yeah. We don't need any help with branding. We like our logo would be not an unusual thing to hear.

Yeah, yeah. And it, it is quite hard to understand branding and it's quite hard to explain, I think. And it is more than the logo. It's um, it's, it's the, it's how your company lives and breathes, if you like. And it is a tricky one of all the things that, you know, in the marketing mix or whatever. I think it's probably the hardest one to explain.

Yeah, I think I don't know whether you would do it, like with engineering companies, you know, with engineering type people. I mean, it's, it's like asking what car they drive and why, you know.

Most.

Of them will not drive a jalopy. Most of them will not drive a Dacia Duster. No. You know, most of them will drive a German car or, you know, if an Italian. Yeah. If they if they really want to fancy Japanese ones. Yes. Yeah. Alexis.

Yeah. Yeah. They'll be in BMW and mercs and Aston White.

Oh well you know, you know, and it's like you could get in a brand new inexpensive car and it'd be quite nice.

Yeah, exactly.

You know.

Yeah. they're not, they're not. The car isn't just four wheels and a bit of metal to get from A to B, they're not there. Yeah.

You know they're buying into the brand aren't they? It's the way it makes them feel and everything else. Yeah. Kind of waffling a bit now. But you know.

What. No that's that's quite a good way of explaining it to people who, who don't get it. And I can't be a good car analogy.

No. Yeah. We usually have a car analogy in a podcast, don't we?

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that's my, um.

Explanation in part. Anyway, a rant, wasn't it, that you were just kind of fed up of these so-called experts, self-proclaimed gurus who are waffling and just confusing people and trying to flog something on LinkedIn?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, they're just they're saying stuff that sounds really, really credible. And then when you read it, you're like, that is just such nonsense. And it just annoys me that that they're getting the same airtime as people who are actually, you know, talking not nonsense.

Mhm. Okay. Speaking of talking nonsense, what else have you got on your list?

What else have I got? My list, I think. Oh. Well, then we were talking last time about the, um, ChatGPT ads. Okay, so they are now, um, running in the USA.

Okay. Um, and what are people saying about them?

Don't know, but it's basically a free and go tier, but the pay the other like more expensive paid tiers don't get ads. Um, and they're completely separate. They're not related to the chat.

Oh, they're not.

They're related maybe to the person, but they're not necessarily, they're completely separate from the conversation.

So if you type in, I'm thinking of buying a new car, it's not going to show your car ads.

I don't know. But it says separate from the conversation. That's all I know for now. But did you see the, um, the Claude Super Bowl ads?

No.

Oh my God, they're brilliant. So because Claude said, um, I'm not, we're not going to show ads. We're not, we're not using ads. And perplexity has was testing ads and they've stopped because they think it's going to erode trust. But Claude took the big Super Bowl.

So. Claude.

Um, well, both.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it was basically, um, a kind of anti ad ad. Okay. Um, like somebody was, was working out whatever and was like, you know, Claude, how do I grow muscles fast? And then there was this bloke and this won't work at all in a podcast, but he kind of like was completely blank for about a second. Then he smiled for about a second and then he went, great question. And I answered the question. And then halfway through the question said, um, and if you use these shoe inserts, it'll make you look taller. And it was like, just we, it showed that.

Um, okay.

If you, we've, we've the ad into the, um, conversation. It is, um, it's really sort of, yeah, misleading and stuff like that.

Are they suggesting that they're not, they're not gonna offer ads in, in, inside the chats. Okay.

Yeah. And that was the whole point. It was a real dig at OpenAI.

They're just gonna make more money because they're better and keep becoming and keep being the best.

By.

Charging you charging.

Extra for. Yeah, charging for the service rather than putting ads in. Yeah. But yeah, there was, there was two or three of these, um, these ads, but they were, they were just really smart. The way that the way the person, it was like, if AI was a person, this is how they would behave. And they were just like, just this momentary pause of like blank face and then the, the fake smile and then the great question.

So yeah, very AI I am, if anyone from anthropic is listening, I know they're avid listeners of our podcast.

Absolutely.

All of them. There's one irritating thing because I'm a huge advocate of anthropic and Claude, as you know, um, when you're working on Claude and you get to the point where you've used it so much that your session, you've used your quarter for your session, it'll say session resets at two o'clock. It's maybe ten o'clock in the morning. But you can keep working by using, um, you know, you can buy extra usage. So you can just buy a block of it and then use it when you need it. So when you go in and it says, right, you've reached the end of your session, you click keep working and it'll pop up, comes up and there's like two options. Upgrade your plan or buy some credits to keep working. But it's like, I've already got one hundred and fifty Quid's worth of credits in my account, but there's no option like, but then you just have to hit close it, close the window down and carry on working. And then it goes, ah, you're now using your extra credits. But there was nothing that said.

Do you want to.

Use the extra credits that you've already bought that are sat in your account? Didn't do that. It actually tries to get you to buy more. It's definitely a nasty little bug. It's annoying.

Yeah, that's not good.

Because you have to kind of fluff it to keep working. You have to kind of do that, close the window, carry on working. Then it twigs and you think, how can something as amazing as, as, um, you know, an AI engine like.

Not know that you've already got plenty credits and you don't need to buy more.

It should just ask me, do you want to use some of your credits that you've, that you've, that you've got in your account to keep working? Yes, please. And that will be it.

Yeah. You think.

So? Either it's a sneaky attempt to try and get you to buy more credits or it's.

It's.

A book. They haven't quite.

Figured it out. It'd be interesting to see if that sorts itself out or if it's intentional.

It's been like that for weeks and weeks and weeks, so I don't know. Yeah. So okay.

That was, that was.

Um, he's a for no reason at all. I saw this on tick tock. There was a guy on tick tock did a thing about businesses closing in in Aberdeen and I knew a few of them. Um the kittybrewster because that used to be just, you know, about not even half a mile from where I used to live. I went in there maybe twice in the fifteen years I lived there. But and that's probably the reason it's closed down and various other bars have closed down. But one that really struck me was Donald Russell. I didn't realise.

Talking to butchers again.

Donald Russell. Uh, yeah. I mean, they've basically they're about to close about to close the doors. Wow. One hundred and twenty people will lose their jobs.

They were sending, like, doing online delivery.

I thought they were this huge success story.

They were supplying to all the big restaurants and things. It was like, oh, you know, we've got Donald Russell. It was like it was a, um, sort of prestige thing.

They were one of the massive success stories around, um, when e-commerce was really just starting to sort of start, you know, take off. And Donald Russell was like one of the huge success stories. And, you know, it's, I just don't quite understand. They've said it's, uh, operating costs, uh, fluctuating fuel prices, fluctuating farm prices. There's just so much going on that it's, it's just got to the point.

Where can't make money out of it.

I think, yeah, I mean, I think I.

Was talking.

To see if anyone wants to just buy their, their brand and continue, you know.

Continue operating by that. Yeah. They looked like they had a really good business model. I thought it would have been fairly.

Well speaking about really good businesses. And another local story is BrewDog, because I saw on the news this morning that BrewDog have closed all of their UK.

That was for one day only was it. It was for one day only. While they.

Something to do with the sale of the business.

Yeah, they had to like maybe like catch up on all the numbers and.

Okay.

But it was, it was a twenty four hour closure until they.

Okay. So they have been sold. Someone's bought them.

I don't think so. I don't know, I don't know, I just saw something that said it was a. All the bars everywhere were closed for twenty four hours because of. To do with the sale. But whether it was just that they needed to put a definitive figure or. I don't know.

Yeah.

I don't know what that was all about.

I mean, in a podcast about, you know, digital marketing, marketing, marketing in general, I think it's, you know, it's a sanguine tale, isn't it? Because there's two McDonald Russell weren't as big as BrewDog clearly, but and BrewDog enormous. And yet these were these are names that you would just expect would just keep going from strength to strength. And there's one of them looks like it's maybe closing and another one has gone through absolute turmoil and is maybe going to get bought or and has already closed part of its business down the gin distillery.

BrewDog, I think is a, um, example of the brand and had a really strong brand. They were cool, they were funky, they were edgy. Yeah, edgy and everything. And then all the, all the stories got out about, you know, what it's like to work there and things. And, um, the brand just lost its credibility and it's, it's, it's like the, um, you know, the Ratners jewellers thing.

Yeah. Once you're in the news again recently.

Once that, um.

Gerald Ratner.

Was it.

Yeah. Because he was, he was basically blaming immigrants for something and oh, it's taken slightly out of context, but he kind of said the way he described the point, the way he tried to make the point he was trying to make, he just came across as a villain.

So yeah.

But yeah.

For that once, um, once your, your brand is tarnished, It's really, really hard to get back from that.

Well, you know, BrewDog lost their b-corp stairs, didn't they?

Oh did they?

Yeah they did, they were, they were b-corp.

Thinking of B-corp is what.

I was at the Scottish Parliament last week. It's b-corp as an invite of um the um be local movement, the b-corp thing, um with a load of other b-corps at in Parliament. Um we, we had, there was an address by um Kate Forbes who's the deputy FM and um Gillian, Gillian. Oh I should remember her name, but anyway, another MP, they're both very good. Um it was one of those nights where, you know, I went down to Edinburgh, I went down and back in the, in the same day because it was like half five till half seven. So I went down, went to the Parliament.

And I got the train. In the interest of our environmental policy, I.

Did take the train of course. Um and I've never been in that building before. And it was, it was really, quite really.

I saw some photos of the event, enjoyed it.

Cafe was nice and um, and then the, the session itself was, uh, like a big b cop stuff can be a bit self self-congratulatory. It just can be. But I mean, you know, people's hearts are in the right places with it all. I think, um, you know, had a few good conversations. I met a really interesting research. Um, he's a professor, but anyway, I think he maybe is um from Edinburgh. Who, who, who um, his specialist field that was or is rather um what was it on entrepreneurial philanthropy.

Okay. So he was, he was in the right place.

With some really interesting conversations with him. And it was, yeah, it was altogether quite fine. I mean, I kind of came away wondering and it was, had it been worth going down, I think on balance it was, it was okay.

Yeah. I think it's.

Nice. And the interesting thing was, you know, we were there because we're a B Corp. We're one of only a hundred B Corp's in Scotland. In fact, when we got our status B Corp status last year, there probably weren't even a hundred. They've only just tipped over one hundred. A couple of thousand in the UK, ten thousand globally something like that. You know, and I, I don't I think we're, you know, we're in good company and I'm glad we did it. Um, but, um, obviously they want the boycott movement to grow.

Yeah.

So if anyone listening to this is interested in what it was like to go through the boycott process and feel free to get in touch, and we can sort of tell you what it was like from the coalface to keep the thing going.

Yeah. But it is, um, it is B-corp month this month.

What does that actually mean? That be cops walk around telling people how wonderful they are. It's about what we've got to do.

I think we've got to we've got to see what we're improving, what our priorities are, what we're what we're working on. It's like, we're not, we're just we're not just going to be, oh, we're a B Corp, but we're going to kind of keep working to be better.

Well, the reason we became a B Corp is we felt that the way we operated the business and the way we looked at business in a wider context was, was kind of in line with the B Corp ethos.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, broadly speaking, we were proved to be right when we went through the process.

Yeah. I think we didn't really have to change, not really.

We had to put some processes in place. We had to review certain aspects of the business, but not really. I mean, it's although it's an arduous process as it needs to be. So it doesn't just become like, yeah, fill in some paper and get a badge sticker. Yeah, yeah. That's right.

So yeah, I don't know if we're, if we're going to be working on improving anything.

Well, I suppose what.

We could.

Do is we could, we could probably look speak to B Corp and ask them if there is if there's a a B Corp northeast because our involvement came about. Um well we finally got through the process because of the B Corp five hundred.

It was Edinburgh, Edinburgh.

Chambers started out of put in place where they're trying to get five hundred B Corp by twenty thirty in Edinburgh. Um there are other B Corp up here I'm sure. Um but it would probably be worth finding out and then seeing if they wanted to do, you know, a sort of bi monthly meet up or something like that.

That's true. That's a good idea.

Something we could do and that kind.

Of putting something back in.

It's putting something back in and it's helping other businesses to understand, you know, what that process looks like and what to expect from it and not to do it if you're just looking for the badge. Yeah, I suppose you need to genuinely be trying to figure out, you know, how to do business in a way that's not just about the money that you make effectively.

Yeah. Seeing a slightly bigger picture. Yeah. It would be interesting to see if there are are many around here. Mhm. Um, that we can, can get.

I'm sure we can be very easy to find out. We just contact contact, um, contact the.

B b local.

The b u even just you be the B lab UK. Yeah. They would be able to tell us and say that we're happy to host it or we're happy to help organise it or whatever.

Yeah, that'd be quite.

Nice because they do tend to, you know, they do tend to want to do that. I think it was Muckle Media had organised or had been asked to organise the event last Thursday down at down at Holyrood. So that was good.

And presumably are they a B Corp?

Yeah. Yeah, they were one of the people that gave the talk um when we were starting out on the process of the becoming a B Corp there.

This neck of the woods roughly or originally, I think.

Are they okay? I thought they were based in Edinburgh. Oh, no. Maybe. Is it Inverness?

Inverness.

I think they might be Edinburgh office now, I don't know.

Yeah, I think they do. But we had an Inverness client and we dealt with them when we were working with them.

Yeah that's.

Right. So they definitely have some people up around, around that direction. But I think they started up, started off up there and then have expanded. But they might they might be up for it.

Okay. Well, my sandwiches are calling to me and I think we've kind of run out of steam a little bit. I think we'll save the, um, mind numbingly, uh, riveting subject of, um, keyword research to next time.

Yeah, I'm happy with that.

If you want to give me a heads up on that prior to the thing, I can maybe put my brain on adding some value. Yeah.

I think it would be good to sort of both have a look at sort of what's around and, um, what the latest sort of wisdom is. And compare notes and see if we agree, because it's one of those things that it was was the same for years. And suddenly it's like, ah, everything's changing and it changes every five minutes.

Broadly speaking, doing it right for search engines is going to stand you in good stead for the AI engines. Broadly speaking, the the whole schema markup thing, which sort of seems to ebb and flow. It's always been important. It's always been useful, it's always been worth doing. And that seems to be more prevalent with the AI stuff, because it's just easier for those machines to understand things if the structured data in there. So we could maybe just explore that in layman's terms.

Yeah, I think that would be good.

All right. Okay. Well, there's a good reason to listen next time then.

Oh, I bet you can't wait.

Please don't judge us on this drivel from today. Okay. You're listening to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. First with Dave and Julie. And I'm gonna go and have a ham sandwich and a cup of tea.

Nice.

Goodbye.