The premise of the shorter day of this particular episode is the simple fact that we're often required to unpick websites, clearly built by people who didn't know what they were doing. And the question, the real question is why would a business do that? I think the overriding message we're trying to get across is by all means, you know, use credible freelancers. You don't have to use an agency. Agencies do tend to cost a bit more than freelancers, but just kind of don't, you know, put something as important as your online presence, your website, your social platforms, etc., in the hands of somebody that just wants to have a go at it?
And just to add on to that, also, I would say just don't let things come completely off the boil. It's one thing if you're going to take work off an agency and give it to a freelancer or whatever, if they're going to work really hard to keep up the pace and keep up the momentum and keep growing your business. But the worst thing you could possibly do is just kind of let your website sit there.
Okay. Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. You know, I nearly did say podcast and I know I'm like a stuck record with that, but I nearly did. I had to think not to say it. Right. And so this podcast has got a working title of why do serious businesses entrust their website to idiots? But we're definitely not going to use that. We're not going to talk about that and use that kind of provocative language because would we ever. That would be just the wrong thing to do. We wouldn't do that, would we?
That's not what we're about here.
Uh, so as we said in the, uh, the notes that we wrote about this particular episode, you know, we'll definitely soften that up.
But I think it's going out. But, but.
But it is. Yeah, the, the premise is, um, oh, the word premise. Can we talk about the word premise just just briefly? Yeah. Um, does it, does it like really, um, boil your piss that people in the IT industry talk about on premise servers or not. Does it not bother you?
I've honestly never encountered before, but it would annoy.
You've never encountered. I've encountered it in the last thirty six hours, I think.
Right. The one.
Like that.
It's just that always gets me.
It's something that really winds me up. It really does. The industry has adopted this, but they're not the only people that use the word premise when they mean premises. Because a premise is a thought or an idea. A premise is not the singular of premises. It just isn't, you know. Um, but the, uh, as you know, I'm an on call firefighter and in the, in the fire and rescue service and I've seen it in the police as well. They talk about a premise. Yes. So the team entered the premise and, um, put the fire out. And I'm just like.
No, I didn't.
Really, you know, they didn't know. They didn't. It really winds me up. Anyway, the premise of the shorter day of this particular episode is the simple fact that we're often required to unpick websites clearly built by people who didn't know what they were doing and loosely referred to as idiots. And and and the question, the real question is why would a business do that? Why would a business sign up for that? We've got various examples. I'm not going to name and shame, but we have got some examples. And the reason we thought we'd do this podcast is because there have been some examples. Some quite notable examples have come up in the last sort of few days last week or so.
Yeah, it's a very common thing, I think, isn't it, in our industry. I'm sure, you know, a lot of people will have kind of, um, felt the temptation to do it in the past. I mean, I'm going to go ahead and say, at the risk of kind of setting off the, the key buzzer that an awful lot of the reason that people do it is price, right? I'd imagine.
Of course it is. Yeah, yeah. And there are some fantastic freelancers out there who are freelancers for life. They are they've chosen that as a lifestyle and they can do a great job. They can work with businesses, and I believe they can do a great job and have a long term relationship with the customer. But just before I can see the look on your face and you really want to say something. But just let me finish this point. But there are also lots of people who are like, have a go heroes. I'm going to start a web company or I'm going to start some sort of business. And they start offering services. They quickly realise they can't make any money at it. They get offered a job and they disappear and they leave businesses in the lurch. That that's, you know, the situation that we've helped rescue people from numerous times.
Yeah, for sure. It's a tricky situation. I mean, my experience with this is obviously slightly different, right? Because we're talking mainly about setting up and managing or maintaining a website. I guess obviously my background is digital marketing. I will say that a lot of digital marketing freelancers, um, have the same kind of mindset. You know, you don't work for a company, therefore you don't have to play by the same rules as everyone else. You know, if you've had enough of a contract, you can just walk away from it at any time. And I think that's the operationally, I think it's just a bit of a risk for businesses to work with freelancers because ultimately there is nothing kind of keeping them there.
Maybe. I mean, I'm not quite as fatalistic as you on that particular one. I think there are examples of businesses that have had a freelancer working with them for years and years, and they've provided great service. And I think I think that's absolutely fine. And I get it. I totally get it. But it's it's not so much the credible freelancers that I find strange. It's the it's the have a go hero. I mean, a conversation I had with a former client who's come back to us looking for help was, um. Oh yeah. You know, back in twenty sixteen, we decided to use this local guy to sort the website out. This local guy, you know what it was really strange is like, you know, the, the, this local guy taking over their website strangely coincided with the data, um, showing them falling off a cliff and no longer ranking for the things that was generating business that were generating business for them. Isn't that strange?
Yeah. Correlation and causation and all that. Right. I mean, Yeah. I mean, I think this is the thing, isn't it? People have an immediate need, which is to save money or they think, you know, we could we could shave a few pounds off here by just passing this to a freelancer instead of leaving it in the hands of an agency. It probably won't hurt that much. I think like you say, it almost invariably does in the end, unless you're very careful or very lucky. Um, yeah. But I think you kind of touch on something that's really interesting, isn't it? Which is that it might not necessarily be straight away that you kind of feel the burn, as it were. Things might go swimmingly for a good few months where you think, oh, you know, this is fantastic. And I'm not paying X amount per month for a retainer anymore. It's only later when things start to dip or drop off that you suddenly realise that actually this is not going the way you wanted it to.
Yeah, that's right, I agree. Um, it does seem odd to me that people with credible businesses, decent sized businesses would choose to take that level of risk, if you like, where they have a potentially a single point of failure. Um, one person can't simply can't have the range of skills, if you like, that are required to make sure a website runs smoothly. There's, there's, there's just an element of seat of the pants about that whole approach.
Yeah. Do you think the problem is like potentially just to unpack that, like an education, one that maybe the people who are kind of making these decisions and that's, you know, not to go in on, on marketing managers at all, but, you know, maybe just don't realise how much work is involved in keeping a website up and running that, you know, you think it's been up and running for three years. Nothing bad has happened. It can't be that difficult. Probably nothing bad will happen.
Yeah, but that's kind of like, you know, I'm gonna do it. That's kind of like not servicing your car.
Wait. Hold on.
You know, if you don't service your car, there's a good chance. Yeah. If you don't service your car, there's a good chance that it'll keep running and everything's fine. Um, but it's, it's, you know, that that three o'clock in the morning on the M5 when the thing breaks down, that you'll actually find out that it was a false economy. And, you know, suddenly then you also remember that you're not a member of the RFC either.
That it's too expensive. It's funny though, isn't it, because you say that I wonder what proportion of people service their car who never had that experience as a young adult. You know, if you don't break down on the side of the motorway at three a m in a crappy old car that you haven't bothered to service, do you ever think, you know when you're kind of forty and driving a, you know, an Audi or whatever you're driving? Oh, actually, I need to get the service all the time. I think you probably don't. Right. I think there are probably plenty of people out there who think, you know, I would service my car, but it's new. It's shiny. My car's never broken before, so why bother? And I do think that's probably the same websites, isn't it? It's like if you've never been stung.
Yeah.
You feel kind of invincible, I guess.
Yeah. That's right. I mean I've certainly, um, in my, um, you know, years ago when I was a lot younger and I had cars that were old and held together with sticky tape and glue. You know, I have broken down three hundred and fifty miles from home and just been in a, you know, perilous situation. Um, I actually, I was, I was a member of the RSC, in fact, the first year I joined the RAC and I've been a member now for a long time. First time, first time I joined the RSC, I actually got relayed back from Somerset or somewhere up to north west England. And I always said to myself, well, that's it paid for for the next twenty years. Yeah. So I always, I've always kept my membership going. Um, I mean typical issues that, that we come across when we, when we become the rescue agency, you know, we kind of put our underpants on the outside of our jeans and come to the rescue is, uh, things like, um, content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, all these things, they're usually out of date. So they're potentially insecure. Uh, things are going to start or have started to stop working. Uh, there's quite often no backup strategy in place for the website. Um, outdated and insecure servers. Um, there's just a whole sort of list of things that can be wrong. And that's, that's obviously on the sort of technical, slightly geeky side of things, but probably the more important aspect, and this is one that came up quite recently is, um, you know, the client, the guy who was a client and went away somewhere else came back to us. And in the last say four or five years, he has added pretty much no content to his website. Um, the rankings that he did have have disappeared. He doesn't even rank for the key things that he does in like the first ten pages of a Google search. And in that situation, it's, and I did explain this to him, you know, in a situation like that, you've got a mountain to climb, a digital marketing mountain to climb, I think.
Well, I think we've talked about this before in a previous podcast, haven't we? But it's all about the kind of opportunity cost of not doing anything while other people are. And I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's like, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure about that particular example, but I'm assuming when he kind of decided to get his freelancer, his site was probably ranking quite well at the beginning. Right. And things look fantastic. Yeah. You know, getting lots of ranking.
It was generating business. It was ranking for some stuff that was that was getting making the phone ring, that's for sure.
And I think what people don't realise.
When we were actually looking. Yeah. When we were looking at his website and looking at some SEMrush data, some SEMrush data, um, and then just he said, oh yeah, those guys, they're definitely competitors of mine. And we went to that competitor website and they had something like twelve hundred pages on their website. And we went back and looked at his website and he had less than twenty.
Yeah.
You know, so, you know, it's not just a volume game, but volume is certainly part of it. If that company have got that many pages on their website, They've obviously been making an investment in content and trying to answer the questions that people are asking and give people the content that they're looking for. And, you know, to try and come back against that is so hard.
It really is. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's not even the same ballpark at that point, is it? When you're looking at that, that kind of massive disparity and you can't churn out content to fill a void that somebody spent kind of three or four years creating, you know, if they've been literally consistently publishing content for three years and you've done nothing, then you can't kind of rush all that out in a couple of months. It is an uphill battle, really, isn't it?
Mhm. That's right. I mean, I know that I know that to people listening, this will sound somewhat like us, like we're saying, hey, you know, hire an agency. Hey, guess what? We're an agency. And honestly, you know, honestly, there's, you know, we're out the door. We work. I am not saying that I am imploring people who run businesses to take this stuff seriously, make sure they've got somebody competent looking after their website, steering it in the right direction, and that they are working towards having a website if they haven't already got one that deserves to rank, has fantastic content and gives people a reason to visit it, and if they do that, it will become a really significant business asset. It will help them grow their business. You know, whoever you do it with, whether you hire in-house or even if you use decent freelancers, however you go about it, make sure you do it. Don't wait until you you know that moment where you recognise, you know, it's like people who don't don't keep fit. For example. I mean, if you don't keep fit and then suddenly a.
Huge swathe of people.
Yeah. But I mean, you know, there's only so far you can go where one day you think, you know what, it's about time I get I got fit and you go out and you run a hundred yards and you're literally out of breath and on your knees, and then you think, ah, this is a bit worse than I thought it was. Yeah.
Sure. I think. Speaking not from personal experience, of course. No. I think the funny thing is, I think in a way this is kind of about momentum as well, isn't it? Certainly with digital marketing. Like I was having a conversation with a client earlier today and we were saying, you know, the important thing here is to keep the momentum going. And without getting too kind of wanky or airy fairy about it, there's no kind of tangible way of measuring it. But I do feel that momentum is so important for like the success of a digital marketing campaign. If you're not consistent, if you're not building on something, if you're not growing something, it's very hard to kind of get started or get any traction. So I guess, yeah, just like get started, get going and don't let things come off the boil and don't kind of hand off to somebody who's just going to sit there and keep your website running because, yeah, this isn't a game of kind of keep the lights on and everything will be fine. You have to be kind of moving forwards all the time, don't you?
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things in my experience that the have a go heroes themselves just don't get. I mean, I think a lot of these people who do this stuff like, you know, like pop up web agencies, one man bands who have a go managed to lure in some people friends. I mean, the same person who we're talking about, um, actually, when he took his website away from us and gave it to this local guy, actually was involved in another organisation who again, I won't name. And he said, oh, well, I might as well get them to do that as well. And so he spoke, he spoke to the same guy and he said, oh, you know, our our new guy is going to take care of that as well. I'm involved in this other organisation, which is a sort of part charity, part something else. He's going to do that as well. And you know what, like literally about an hour before we started this podcast, I got an email from the people who are in charge of that website and they said, oh, you set this website up for us. And, uh, we've now found a local guy who's going to look after it for us. And I had to tell them. Yeah. And another local guy, uh, was actually been has been responsible for it for the last two years. Not us. Sorry, mate. Can't help. You know, it was just like you couldn't make it up. It was just like one useless local person had taken the website. Now another potentially useless local person. Have a go. Hero was going to take it over and they didn't even remember that we had nothing to do with it anymore. It, I don't know, I just find it quite amusing. All this stuff, I really do.
Yeah. I mean, sometimes it does feel like you're kind of the only grown ups in the room, really, doesn't it? You're just watching people make these kind of endless mistakes, and you just, just stop doing the same thing over and over again. But yeah, I mean, it's not it's not to go in on people, is it? Because, you know, like, like you were saying earlier, we understand why people do it and we understand how it happens. It's just, yeah, try, try not to, I guess is the overwhelming advice.
Yeah. I am racking my brains and trying to think of any aspect of my life where I don't entrust stuff I can't do to professionals. I mean, you know, we, we, our accountants are on retainer. They look after the financial aspects of the business. For example, um, if I need something doing to my car, I go to the people I trust to do it. I go to a credible organisation who are not cheap, who will do a good job and I can, I can trust them. Um, you know, when I need my um, oil central heating, boiler servicing, um, you know, there's, there's a, there's, I go to a credible person who, who will do a fantastic job. I'm not interested in like trying to find cheap solutions. So I don't know if it's, if it's a mindset thing about marketing where it's okay to find somebody who's cheap. Um, because marketing's not important. Websites are not really that important. I don't know, I'm not, I'm not sure or because it's a, because it's the sort of thing that on. From the outside looking in, it's pretty easy to download WordPress, download a template and build a website and go, Tada! Look, look how look what I just did. You know.
I think it's twofold. Yeah, I think it's kind of a bit of both really, isn't it? I mean, one thing I'll say is that, you know, having worked as a freelancer and frequented platforms like Upwork where freelancers get hired, one thing I've noticed is there is an abundance of people in digital marketing and website building. I guess that will market themselves as kind of ten dollars an hour and be quite happy about it, be quite upfront about it. You know, they'll say, oh, I can do what somebody would charge you one hundred dollars an hour to do it, an agency for seven dollars. You don't get that with cars. There aren't mechanics out there saying, I'll service your car for three quid. I'll get it through. It's not just kind of slip me a fiver. So I think there's that angle, isn't it, where people, you know, really the freelancers are very guilty of massively overselling and kind of undercharging and kind of creating the illusion that there's a marketplace out there as skilled and talented people for five pounds an hour or whatever people think they can get away with paying. And I think the other thing is, like you say, the kind of perceived simplicity of what we do, you know, it's very easy to just look at a website and think, oh, that's just simple. And it's just just some code. It's not that difficult. But the actual realities of kind of keeping them alive and functioning and growing is, is, is very different to what a lot of people expect, I think. And I don't think that's people's fault.
But no, I don't, I really don't. No, I totally get it. Um, we had an enquiry in um yesterday I think, and I've just had a sort of email back and forth with the person that sent in the enquiry and um I went back to them and asked them a question about the, a bit more detail about the, the services that they were particularly looking for. And they sent us a significant list of things, um, quite detailed, extremely useful. Um, and I've gone back to them and I've said, okay, that's, that's a comprehensive detailed list. Thank you very much. Um, based on experience, based on current clients, etc. that looks to me like a four to five thousand pounds a month type retainer. Um, now I'll be really interested to, first of all, will I get a response or will they just go quiet? They might do. Or if they come back, whether they say, yep, that's what we were thinking it was, it's going to be something of that order or like, oh, uh, that's that's that's unbelievable. I mean, I thought this would cost me two hundred quid a week, two hundred quid a month or something, I don't know. It'd be interesting. I'll be interested to see how, how they respond um to that because they clearly have an idea of what they need. So I don't know.
That's quite.
Unusual. There is, there is a there is a lot of confusion. I know we've spoken to some of the other shows about what things costs and why they cost, what they cost, but it just keeps coming back, doesn't it? We just keep, we keep coming, coming up against it. And that may be our fault. Maybe we're just kind of, dare I say it, speaking the wrong people. If there's a kind of emphasis on cost, we're kind of attracting the wrong people, potentially.
I just think it's because there's nobody out there actively trying to kind of educate people and not kind of blowing our own horn and saying, oh, this is the show that's going to right the wrongs of the digital world. But I think the problem is there is nobody sat having these conversations and saying, well, actually, you know, this is what's involved in managing a website. I mean, people come to us all the time, don't they? And they say, I need somebody to look after my website. And we say, well, prices start from, you know, whatever, however many thousands of pounds a month. And they turn around and say, what? That's ridiculous. I was expecting to pay one hundred and fifty pounds. And it happens so often. And people have such a clear misunderstanding about what the value of this stuff is, that I think eventually that we have to kind of look inwards and say, are we doing a good enough job as digital marketers, as professionals, of telling people, of explaining to people what what our work is worth? I mean, lawyers don't have this problem. Yeah.
But if you if you if you flip that on its head, if you. Sorry to interrupt. If you flip that on its head and look at the number of customers that we've got who are paying us X thousand a month to look after them, and we've got a fantastic relationship with them. They totally get the value of what we do. Then there does seem to be like a gap between those two groups, and I don't know why that exists. First of all, people who are not in this industry, you know, it's not surprising. They don't understand what things cost and why they cost, what they cost. And, and, and it's therefore clear why they're attracted by low cost. Um, you know, have a go heroes. But I still, I'm still perplexed because equally, we've got a solid order book and a great range of retained customers who do understand it and do get it and do pay us, you know, um, you know, really great retainers.
I wonder what proportion of our customers, if we went actually and asked them, would have at some point have tried using a have-a-go hero and been stung by it. Though I do wonder whether or not it's just one of those issues, isn't it, where, you know, once you've been stung by it once, you'll never do it again. But yeah, I don't know. It is interesting.
So to try and generate, to try and provide some, some wise words, um, some help, um, how can we help people figure out whether they're talking to a, have a go hero or whether they're talking to somebody who's credible? Because again, I am not against the idea of businesses using freelancers. Freelancers are a vital and important part of the economy. I guess to a certain extent we're an agency, but to a certain extent, we're freelancers. You know, we're we're available for hire where, where we're hoping people make contact with us and we can have a good conversation with them, and then they can hire us to do some work for them. So we're kind of like a group of freelancers in some respects.
Yeah. A well organised group of freelancers where if one of us is sick, then somebody else can fill in and you're not going to be left with no website for three days. But yeah, yeah, generally speaking, I get what you mean. I guess for me, I don't know. I guess at the risk of being overly reductive and oversimplifying things, it would be about having that conversation, right, that you were talking about earlier. When you ask somebody what they're actually going to do to manage your website, if they're a have a go hero, they're not going to be able to really sit down and go through what they'll do on a kind of day by day or even month by month basis to keep it up and running.
I would say it's more likely that they're going to speak in riddles and try and confuse people and potentially make people think, oh, wow, these guys must really know what they're doing because I haven't a clue what they just said, but it sounded clever. Yes.
That's how I feel about all websites.
So basically, if they explain what they're going to do, if they explain what they're going to do and you don't understand it, then that is a pretty good indication that they are idiots.
Or they're trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
It's not me who said that. It's I think Albert Einstein said it. If you can't explain what you do to a six year old, then you don't understand what you do. So I would say that would be good advice. Would it be a good place to start?
Yeah, I think that's yeah, definitely. absolutely. And then after that.
I guess after that it would make sense. And we have said this in previous podcasts. After that, it would make sense to ask to speak to some of their existing customers, customers actually. So what's it like working with Red evolution? What's it like working with Alex? What's it like working with, I don't know, some of the other agencies in town. I won't name them in case they get their knickers in a twist. But you know. But what? You know, just just find out. Just just speak to the people who they work with and ask them what it's like to work with them.
Yeah. And I guess failing that, asking for testimonials is always good, isn't it? I mean, I think it's still better than, better than nothing. Um, I'm trying to think what else you can really.
You mean ask them for some made up soundbites?
I'd like to think there are still people operating with some integrity in our field. You know, it helps me sleep at night.
You think? You think? Yeah. So I guess so. I mean, do. Yeah. Can they explain to you what they're going to do in a way that you understand it. That's a good starting point. Um, who are they currently working with and can you speak to some of their existing customers? That's another good thing. All of this should then help to start building a building, a picture of whether or not you are entrusting your business, your digital marketing, that you know that your business relies on for business growth to a have a go hero or or somebody credible, whether they be an agency or a freelancer.
Yeah. I'd also say I don't know how to articulate this point properly, so it might come across a little garbled, but I'd also say there's something to be said for looking out for people who are trying to lock you into a contract, or do things in such a way that you can't easily escape, because that's another, I think, really good sign of somebody who knows that doing something above board. Yeah. And I think it's quite common.
I reckon there'd be different schools of thought on that one. I mean, our school of thought has always been, we want you to work with us because we're adding value to your business. We don't want you to work with us because you've signed a contract. Yeah. And that's worked for us. It's great. I'm not saying we don't believe us. They do. We do. They do leave us from time to time and for various reasons. But we have a lot of very long standing customers, customers that have been with us for years. Um, and they're not tied in with the contract. They're simply getting what they need. So I think that's a really good point. I think, you know, if people start talking about, well, I'll need a twelve month contract signing, etc., that to me is a real red flag.
Kind of it just means you're not confident in what you're offering, isn't it? It means you're kind of anticipating somebody at the three or six month mark saying, hang on a minute, why are we, why are we paying these people or this idiot as it, as it stands? Um, and yeah, I don't think ultimately, I don't think a contract actually going to keep anybody that doesn't want to be there. So the whole thing is an exercise in pointlessness in my opinion. But yeah, I'm sure somebody out there listening to this will have a very strong opinion to the contrary and will no doubt write in and shout at us.
But yeah, and I will, you know, I want to keep reiterating that I am not talking about I'm not down on one person organisations. I'm not down on freelancers. I'm just kind of down on the. Plethora of, of people who are just kind of winging it, you know? I mean, all agency people at some point wing it to a certain extent. We might wing it as in, oh, yeah, we know about that stuff, but we haven't done it for a long time or we've never done it. But we would say to people, yeah, that sounds we know, but you would be honest enough to say, look, yeah, we understand something that you've asked for and we haven't done it, but, you know, we'd like to, we'd like to do it for you. We'd like to we'd like to give it a go. We'll take some of the risk on it. And and we would do that with a customer. We would be honest with them. And, you know, agencies are full of people who who are who are inquisitive, who are quick, quick, quick to learn, who want to try things, etc. so I think that's a bit different to people that you've used bluff and bluster to try and get some work, you know, without really appreciating, if you like, the importance of the work that they're doing without really recognising that if they get this wrong, if they, if they take somebody's website and rebuild it with some unbelievably awful content management system, they wrote themselves because they did a quick course on how to write PHP, that they could be putting somebody's business at risk. And that's the bit that I'm, I'm wary of.
Yeah. Like I was a freelancer for a couple of years. Right. And I remember at the very beginning, there was that kind of pressure to prove yourself, to get work to, to, you know, to, to make people believe that you could do what you wanted to do. And it very quickly turned from that into, you know, me being having to be quite selective about the work that I took because ultimately you ultimately, you didn't want to end up in a situation where you couldn't deliver or you were going to disappoint or annoy somebody. I think to anybody listening to this, it will be immediately obvious whether the freelancer you're talking to is in the former camp, where they're desperate for work, where they want the work, and they're going to tell you whatever it takes to get it versus somebody who's actually kind of being considered and thinking, is this a good fit for me? Um, yeah, I think that's like you say, it's the bluster, isn't it? That's ultimately the big red flag there.
Yeah, yeah. And the reason we decided to do this is because it's happened quite a lot in the last sort of few weeks where we've, we've kind of rescued situations for people who've been in. And to be perfectly fair, I mean, one of the ones that were actually in the process of rescuing right now, um, they did entrust the work to, um, and you air quotes in inverted commas, an agency, um, here in Aberdeen and you know, the relationship broke down very, very quickly. I think they were one of those agencies who basically claim they can do stuff, and then they outsource it to low cost economies, which again, can work if you're honest about it. And you say, look, we're offshoring this stuff because this came up in a conversation last week. Actually, somebody, a potential customer, a potential new client down in London had said, do you do the work in-house? Are you are you offshoring it? And we said, no, we do it. We have our own team. You know, here in the UK, we actually we've invested in, you know, building a good team here in the UK and we don't offshore it. Now, the offshoring is a model, but there are, I think this particular agency who this person has now fallen out with and we're helping them out. Um they very much if you look at their website, you can tell, you can just tell that they're a, an organisation who don't have a team of experts. They're just basically a front for outsourcing work all over the place, which is a common model. And we know some big agencies who are doing that as well. So, you know, in the in the current climate where there's a shortage of skilled people, but there's plenty of work available. I can see the attraction and why people are doing it. But and that's, that's, that's something different. It's not what we were talking about. Like, have a go hero heroes necessarily, but you know, people who are outsourcing key components of a project.
Well, they are.
When initially.
They claim.
They're doing it. Yeah, a little bit I suppose. Yeah.
I mean, I think I guess at the at the risk of taking this completely off topic and into a very rambling discussion, do you think one of the main problems with our industry is.
It's already a very rambling discussion, Alex, because it's you and me.
Targeted and focused and actionable advice. What are you talking about? Um, I mean, I think one of the big problems with our industry really is it's not regulated in any way, is it? Anybody, anybody. I could, you know, tomorrow go and set up a website claiming to be an agency of twenty people. And, you know, you'd have to work pretty hard to disprove that. And I think this is part of the problem we face, part of the burden of skepticism, if you like, that people have towards marketing agencies is that there are an awful lot of people out there who are willing to say whatever it takes, and there is nobody out there to say, oh, actually, that's not true. These guys can't do this work. And, you know, you say that outsourcing is a legitimate model. I mean, I think personally, I think it is steps away from theft really. But. It's just the problem with our industry in general, isn't it? Is you can't ever really tell whether somebody's actually going to do the work themselves or whether they are capable of what they claim to be.
I actually, um, I don't know if I followed them or I see their tweets, uh, and it's a Twitter account called something like Fess Hall or something where people confess to things. And one of them was like, it was a guy saying, I'm, I pretend to be a digital marketing agency. I'm it's just me. I sell, I sell the services for like ninety quid an hour or something. And I outsourced a whole lot to a. It might have been India or somewhere like that, and where I get it done for eight dollars an hour. And he said, and I'm totally comfortable with that. I thought, well, okay, fair enough. I suppose it's, it's a way, a way of making potentially making a good living. Um, all the rest of.
Us down to that level though, doesn't it? Sometimes. And I think that's the.
Yeah, I suppose a little bit, I don't know. It's, it's, it is a, it is a strange business to be in. I think it's a business where, um, you know, the, the starting point can often be one of mistrust, which makes it seem even stranger that people will enlist the services, if you like, of the people that we've been talking about because like, you know, we're a really credible agency. We've been around since two thousand and three. I mean, we're, you know, we're well established. We've got some great clients, great track record, etc. and yet we're still in that position where you can often in the early stages of conversations, be having to. I don't not justify yourself, but certainly you can sense that people are somewhat skeptical because they've maybe been burned in the past, probably by a have-a-go hero, I suppose. Um, it's the sins of our fathers type thing, isn't it?
It is. Yeah. And I think it's ultimately just one of the things that you have to kind of like you say, constantly work to, to reassure people about. And hopefully eventually it gets to the point where you're kind of reputation precedes you and people don't, I don't know, maybe one day don't ask those questions anymore.
Okay. I mean, I think the overriding message we're trying to get across is by all means, you know, use credible freelancers. You don't have to use an agency. Agencies do tend to cost a bit more than freelancers. But as Alex said, you've got the opportunity with an agency to make sure that you don't have a single point of failure. You know, if your if your web person goes on holiday for two weeks, then, you know, basically you're left high and dry. If something goes wrong or something needs doing. So there are some downsides. Um, but by all means use freelancers, but do a little bit of due diligence and try and, you know, recognise that that things can go wrong if you've, if you've got that single point of failure, you know, the alternative is hire people or hire an agency, whatever, but just kind of don't trust, you know, put something as important as your online presence, your website, your, your social platforms, etc. in the hands of somebody that just wants to have a go at it.
Yeah. And just to add on to that, also, I would say just don't let things come completely off the boil. It's one thing if you're going to take work off an agency and give it to a freelancer or whatever, if they're going to work really hard to keep up the pace and keep up the momentum and keep growing your business. But the worst thing you could possibly do is just kind of let your website sit there because your competitors won't be doing that. They'll be constantly working to outrank you and take as much traffic as they can. So yeah, just be aware of that too. That's right.
Mhm. Agreed. Okay. Um, you've been listening to digital marketing from the call. First you've been listening to me, Dave and Alex. Um, morning about have a go heroes. Um, if you're a have a go hero and you want to come onto a podcast and defend, defend your have a go hero, then then get in touch. Go to redevolution.com and go to the contacts tab. If you just want to come on the show and talk about some aspect of digital marketing, that'd be great. We'd be we'd love to have you on the show. Um, if you've got any questions, send us your questions and we'll do a show about those questions. Uh, in the meantime, anything to add, Alex?
No, I think that's pretty much everything from me. Okay.
Um, right. In that case, um, that's enough for now. And, uh, look forward to speaking on the next episode.
Indeed.