What are we talking about when it comes to digital marketing? What sort of things are making people feel safe and making people decide to engage? Do we think.
Well, yeah. The accreditations. I think the other thing that you touched on earlier is that that user generated content though, right? That whole idea of like, if you can get a real customer review from somebody that says, these guys were great, they delivered on time. It was fantastic. Then that's worth its weight in gold, isn't it really?
Video testimonials, if you can get them off people, are brilliant.
I read a thing once and I don't know how true it is, but I read a study that said that people trust reviews from other business people as much as they would trust a recommendation from their best friend.
So apparently more for some reason.
Apparently if you read a testimonial on a website, then you will take it as kind of given that somebody very trustworthy is recommended that brand to you.
Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. We've had a bit of a hiatus. I think Easter got in the way. Alex wasn't feeling well. Oh, bless.
I didn't have no voice.
To be fair.
Yeah. Voices are always good for podcasting, aren't they? If we can't hear you, it's not going to be very interesting.
It would have just been Dave talking to himself. I did think about doing some solo podcasts.
I did, I did consider it, but I just kind of didn't get around to it. So sorry. I'm just playing around with levels and things because I'm being a bit geeky.
Yeah. And we've all been away and moving about a bit more than, than normal because of, you know, we're actually allowed out to speak to people again. And we've been, we've been out and about, which has been fun.
And honestly, probably, um, nobody cares anyway that we have been.
I don't know that people listen to them in the right order anyway. So, um, yeah.
No, they probably don't even know that we've been away.
I don't imagine anyone's actually made it to fifty whatever we're at. So if they if they are, please, if you've listened to every single one, please write in and we will give you a medal, I promise.
Absolutely. Oh, speaking of medals, I did my sponsored walk at the weekend.
Did you get a medal?
I did get a medal. Yeah. That's right. That's why I was speaking of medals.
Oh. Well done. Congratulations. How many miles was it you walked?
Oh, a lot. Quite a lot.
Was it like he's saying a lot? He's like. It was about forty miles or something bonkers. So I think it probably does deserve a medal.
Yeah, I did get one. I got I actually got an actual participation award.
I think we need a picture of you.
I always used to get on sports day. You know the medal. Well done, well done, well.
Done for joining in. Never mind.
Next time.
Okay. Um, one of our values. And this isn't all about us, but it is. We're going to try and we're going to try a subject which is going to be a bit tricky, as in we it might get a bit preachy. We don't want it to get preachy, and we certainly don't want to be sort of saying, oh, we're great. Look at us. Um, um, but one of our, one of our values, our core values is to fearlessly pursue our client's best interests. Pretty simple. Uh, don't sell people stuff they don't need. Don't provide services they don't need. It's not about that for us. Um, and it does sound a bit kind of, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Holier than thou, I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean.
It's also, but it's also quite hard to do sometimes it's hard to leave money on the table.
Yeah.
People say we've.
Left a lot of money on the table.
We really want to do this thing and and we'll pay you to do it. And we go, that's a really bad idea. Or we're not the right people or yeah, that that is not going to work. And, you know, we have to turn money away. And when we've taken it, it's usually not worked well. So we kind of know that for the long term interests of our business, it's not going to work, but it's still really hard to turn business away.
I think most people can identify with that. Um, I mean, from time to time, quite recently, in fact, there was a good example we've come across. We've got new customers and they've clearly been sold stuff they didn't need.
Yeah.
And it's, it's hard to have that conversation with people and say, well, you've, you've, you've invested in this and you kind of didn't need to.
But interestingly, going looking at the longer term, they've invested something they didn't need. And now they've come to us because they're no longer with the people who sold them the thing they didn't need. So it kind of justifies the don't sell them stuff they don't need. Because actually, in terms of the business, it's not the clients aren't going to stay, aren't going to stay with you very long if you sell them stuff they don't need.
Yeah, I certainly think it's one of the main things we do come across sometimes, isn't it is people come to us and they'll say, you know, look, we've been mis sold SEO or digital marketing several times by several different agencies. How are you going to do it? Yeah, that's a.
Scary thing when it's like, we've had like three different agencies and they were all terrible.
I think it's one of the huge kind of reputational problems our industry has, isn't it really is. People do just mis sell stuff all the time.
Yeah, we have that kind of cobblers bend situation. I heard somebody in the office mentioned that they were talking to somebody yesterday and they mentioned the idea of cobblers bands, which, if you're not from Scotland, just basically means the person who makes the shoes. Their kids haven't got shoes because they're busy making shoes for everybody else.
Or the yeah, the, the joiners house is half built sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but.
So there's, there's this, there's this kind of issue that we come across a lot where there's been mis selling, there's been lack of delivery. There's, there's, as you said, Alex, there's just general mistrust. Now it's, you know, if you're a company using digital marketing, um, you know, this isn't just about digital agencies, this podcast podcast, obviously, this is about digital marketing in general. So how do we, how do we relate that to digital marketing in general? I mean, are we saying that if you're using digital marketing, you are going to get enquiries from complete strangers just like you do in business who may have been in a abusive relationship previously?
Yeah. I think there's two angles to it, isn't there? There's like, firstly, yeah, this situation is going to arise. People are going to come to you and ask you for something that maybe, you know, you're not the best person to deliver, or maybe, you know, they don't really need and you're going to have a have a choice of whether to sell them the thing or whether to have that difficult conversation and say, you probably don't need this. But I guess the other angle is, like you say, people who I mean, I'm thinking we have clients that we were talking about this morning that sell expensive services online. And one of the big problems they have is kind of establishing that that trust, you know, saying to people, you need this. You can trust me when I say you need this, please buy it from me is difficult, I think, especially on a.
Website, and particularly if people have had their fingers burnt before, which makes it a lot harder again. Um, they're like, well, are you just saying this because there are lots of people out there who will just flog me something that they're really not equipped to deliver?
Yeah. And I think it's definitely like the more technical the thing you're selling, the more technical the solution you're providing, the more likely this is to happen, right? If you're selling somebody shoes or a coat or whatever, they can see they need it. They can see you sell it. It's an easy transaction to make.
They can bring it back if it doesn't work. Whereas, you know, if.
You saying to somebody.
Providing a service, you can't return the service, the service has happened. The the thing has been done. Um, so you, you can't send it back. So you've got to be really sure. Um, so I, I think, you know, people who provide a service have to, you know, be, be reputable, they have to actually do the right thing because you, you can't, you can't take it back. So I think, you know, as if you're buying a service, you have to be really, really clear that you trust these guys to actually deliver what they say they can. And if you're providing a service, I think you have to, you know, be be honest with people. And if it's not right for them, I think you should be saying, look, you know, this isn't this isn't right, or we're not the right people to provide this service. Um, and, you know, if you, if you want the business rationale for that, it's, well, you know, if it doesn't work out and then they say you didn't deliver it and then you have to pay them all their money back, that's going to be really hard on your cash flow. So, you know, it's, it's not just doing the right thing. It's financially sensible to do the right thing.
Yeah, okay.
But we've got this challenge that's been mentioned there around demonstrating to strangers that you've got their best interests at heart. And I think that is where the power of digital marketing comes in. You know, we speak to customers a lot about content and some customers get it and some customers don't get it. But with with content, which is blog posts, videos, whitepapers, downloadable e-books, all that, you know, all that stuff, it's kind of what you're trying to do with that is demonstrate to people that you know what you're talking about. You can provide the services or what other product that they're looking for, etc.. So, you know, going back to what I said a minute ago about challenging challenged around challenges, around demonstrating to strangers, that's where digital marketing is hugely powerful, especially with the use of like video, which is easy to consume. And you get to actually see the person who you're going to maybe talk to. If you fill in a form on a website.
You know, you're looking at the person and you know, they're not looking shifty and they look like they know what they're talking.
About. Car salesman.
Maybe. And you've also got things like case studies and testimonials on there as well. So, you know, you can read a real life example of, okay, they've done this before and it worked. So they actually do know what they're doing. So I mean, that that's also part of content is, um, is the sort of the proof that, that you can do it, um, and presumably can replicate that.
You nearly said the proof is in the pudding then.
No, I didn't know. And that's not even right.
No it's not.
So I wouldn't say it would I.
So many people do.
The proof of the pudding is in the tasting or testing or eating or whatever. Yeah.
That's right. Yeah. It's not actually in the pudding.
No it's.
Not eating.
It's in. Yeah. Which makes sense. Really glad.
We cleared that.
Up. Okay.
That's.
A little English lesson while we go along.
Um, so with digital marketing, um, you have a really good opportunity to show people your illustrate you that you are capable, that you know what you're talking about, etc. um, and start to build trust because ultimately, whatever you're trying to sell product services, it's about making people feel safe.
Safe. Yeah. Safe, comfortable. They trust you. They, they're not.
Pretty much across the board.
Yeah. You're taking the risk out of the decision, aren't you?
I guess it's different if you're say, for example, you want to buy, you know, a Yamaha X, Y, Z keyboard and you've been you've tried it. And a friend said, it's great. You just want to buy it. You're just interested in the price, aren't you? Who sells it for the cheapest price? Because you know exactly the product is going to be exactly as the one you tried.
It's the thing you want. You just yeah, you just Google it and see which one comes up cheapest because you know, that thing is that thing. Yeah.
That's not going to be the only trust issue there might be if your website doesn't look like you'll actually deliver the keyboard, but it's a marginal thing. Yeah. In a B2B context, it's more it's more relevant, isn't it? What we're talking about?
Yeah, definitely. I think, yeah, like you say, with transactional websites, the only kind of hurdle you've got to cross is does it look like a real website that's going to send you the goods versus.
When's it gonna arrive? And is it going to be in one piece? But yeah, it's got to.
Be website has to do is not just say we offer this service, but persuade people that you actually consistently deliver and that people can kind of buy into your whole kind of brand and ecosystem, I guess.
Yeah. And I think having things like, you know, the, the badges, the, um, you know, partners, HubSpot partner or Google partner, whatever. And, um, you know, things like ISO nine thousand and one, which proves that, you know, you've got pro processes and procedures in place, things like that, just all, you know, just very subtly make people go, oh, right. Okay. They, you know, they haven't just made this up. They, you know, they are, they, they, you know, they've passed some exams or they've had somebody check that they're doing something right. So they, you know, they've, they've been verified in some way. So that helps as well, doesn't it?
What are we talking about when it comes to um digital marketing. What sort of things. are making people feel safe and making people decide to engage. Do we.
Think. Well, I think those those badges, the yeah.
The accreditations. I think the other thing that you touched on earlier is that that user generated content though, right? That whole idea of like, if you can get a real customer review from somebody that says, these guys were great, they delivered on time. It was fantastic. Then that's worth its weight in gold, isn't it really?
I think video testimonials, if you can get them off, people are brilliant because again, it's, you know, you're looking at a real person, um, who's, who's saying something that, that you're gonna believe even more.
So I read a thing once and I don't know how true it is, but I read a study that said that people trust reviews from other business people as much as they would trust a recommendation from their best friend.
So apparently more.
Yeah. So if you see, yeah, I don't know what it is, whether it's some kind of weird shortcut in the brain or like just a psychology thing. But apparently if you read a testimonial on a website, then you will take it as kind of given that somebody very trustworthy is recommended that brand to you.
So, you know, I can totally identify with that. I, I've read, uh, reviews on Amazon when I've been hearing about a product, I've read a review from a completely random person who I don't know is even a real person and actually said, right, that's it, I'm going to buy it. I definitely have.
A weird quirk of human psychology, isn't it, that we just kind of take it as well.
It's this idea of not wanting to be caught out. It's not wanting to be the fool. Like if you can see other people, even if you don't know them and they've bought the product, used the product, like the product, you kind of just think, well, okay.
That's probably exactly it actually, isn't it? You just don't want to go first. You want to see that somebody else has kind of taken the plunge before you. And yeah, that it's worked out okay. And.
And is that where our case studies and things come in B2B websites?
Yeah, it's showing that you've done it before and it's showing that it works. And, and it's showing that other people, you know, great, if you get a case study from a big company and somebody goes, oh, that company's done it. Therefore, you know, we can. But any case study I think is, is evidence. It's all, you know, they've gone. Yeah. You know, I've got a, you know, the buyer journey. I've got a problem. Okay. Well here's the or here's somebody explaining what the problem is. Here's somebody explaining what the solution is. Here's the solution that they offer. Um, and, and look, they really can do it. And yeah, next step is to, you know, how much is it going to cost? And can I buy it? So, uh, it definitely helps people just sort of reassure them that, that you're capable of doing what you say you can do.
Although with digital marketing, I mean, as a digital marketing agency, we could sit down and we could build a website for a fictitious company. We could make up a load of nonsense case studies, a load of nonsense reviews, even videos. We could make it look utterly confusing, not confusing, utterly convincing. Yeah, yeah. And but what you're saying, Alex, is that this the research suggests that, um, irrespective of the fact that it's all fake fake news, um, it's a beautiful thing. People will still.
Buy into it. Yeah. And I guess, Yeah, you can use that for good or evil, can't you? But but there it is. Yeah. I don't think people are that discerning. And I think maybe, you know, that's part of the the thing with online, isn't it? People are in a different headspace when they're online. They're not necessarily kind of expecting to go out there kind of trusting everything that they read and taking things at face value. And then when you kind of cut through that noise and provide them with what seems to be evidence, they're kind of just just in a place where they'll accept at face value.
So if you think about, um, about digital marketing, you've got two challenges. First of all, getting eyeballs on your website or on your social media pages of just getting people's attention. Basically, you've got that challenge and then you've got the challenge after that of convincing them that you are credible.
That's right.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Despite all that, it's really hard to do all that. We're saying that we're still coming across situations where people, uh, have been mis sold and another angle on the mis sold thing, uh, something that's quite relevant at the moment because we're doing a lot of HubSpot portal cleanups is that people have been sold and abandoned.
Yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, we'll sell you this thing. We'll, we'll make our money out of this thing. And then, yeah, we're, we're really not interested in helping you do it properly. And yeah, that's not great either. Um, but again, that's not long term because, you know, you, you get a customer on and sell them something and, and then abandon them, then, you know, what's the point really? You're not gonna make that much money out of it that surely it's, it's worthwhile doing that. Maybe, you know, maybe people do. But, um, for us, I think the fun bit is actually, once you've sold them the thing, getting them set up and get them sorted out and making it work and getting the results. So I can't imagine why you would be in business, you know, to not do the fun bit. Yeah. You know, that's maybe just us.
Well, maybe. I mean, I think maybe, um, some agencies are focused on profit and, and just making more and more money and that's absolutely fine. That's there. They're on a mission, and some agencies are maybe not so much focused on profit and are more focused on wanting to get that nice, warm feeling you get when you genuinely help a business. And again, you know, we don't want to make this podcast about, oh, how wonderful we are. And that's like, like our approach, but we, you know, we've said it before in previous podcasts, we, we get genuinely excited when we see good things happening with customers.
Yeah, like I said before, that's, you know.
That's part of the human condition as well.
In terms of business, surely getting results for people and, and holding on to, you know, it's how many more times it's like ten times harder to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. So if you're that sort of agency that kind of gets customers on board and then dumps them just for a quick buck, that's much, much harder than getting a customer on board and keeping them for like two or three or four years and getting to know them and, and actually getting results for them. It's actually that for me, that's much easier. And, you know, statistically, it's much easier to hold on to a customer. So, um, I think the ones that are just selling them something and then walking away or making life really hard for themselves.
Yeah. Again, going back to, um, previously mentioned HubSpot. Interesting conversation or several conversations around the subject of HubSpot, both with HubSpot and agencies like us. So two things to consider. One thing is that HubSpot are changing, I think in July, the way that their tier, their partners, the way that they give their partners badges of honor. And it looked to me like they were going to give a sort of equal weighting to agencies like us who are more interested and good at the implementation side, making HubSpot sing and dance, making it work for your organisation.
Using it.
As opposed to the agencies who purely sell and onboard people and then go, right, good luck. We're off. And it was interesting to me and somewhat disappointing that, you know, I was told that, you know, Really, in order to retain your status as a HubSpot or gold or platinum or whatever, you have to be selling HubSpot. Now, on the one hand, I get that, but to me, if you're keeping people on the platform, helping them get real value out of it, you're building long term value for the business. Whereas if you simply doing this kind of sell and abandon approach, that that's, that's never going to be a good thing, is it?
It's not good for HubSpot either, because they just get a reputation for being difficult to use or, you know, just, you know, people don't, don't use it properly. And then, yeah, then they're gonna have to get another new sale to replace that person that's just canceled their contract because they have no idea what they're doing. So I can't see that it's a great business model at all.
Anecdotally, I was told by somebody who's on the inside, not a HubSpot, but somebody who's got the ear of the high ups, um, that HubSpot have got a global issue with portals being in a bit of a dog's breakfast. Well, we've.
Certainly seen that. We've seen three recently, three or four recently that are just a complete shambles. And um, and once the shambles it's really hard to sort it out. It's much better to do it properly in the first place.
Well people will just think, oh, you know what? This HubSpot thing hasn't worked. It's a shambles. We're going to go to Pardoe instead. Or, you know, I don't know.
And I think that's kind of key, isn't it, just to bring the whole thing full circle. It's this whole idea of kind of reputational damage, right? Because I think when the internet was quite new, certainly when digital marketing was quite new, there was this kind of sense that there was an unlimited customer pool, that you could just kind of mis sell things as often as you liked, and there'd always be somebody else to sell to in the future. There'll always be somebody else to kind of dupe into picking up your software or whatever. But I think what we're kind of slowly starting to grapple with is the fact that, you know, the internet, although it's a very large place, is still a finite and limited pool of companies out there. You can only mis sell something so many times before people start to realise that that's what you're doing.
Well, yeah. And in any given industry, there's only a certain amount of companies you can sell to.
Yeah. And I think that's kind of the thing really, isn't it, that we're saying it's that you can't kind of keep mis selling people things and expect it to not eventually bite you in the ass. You know, people will eventually realise that's what you do. And, you know, you start to see kind of forum posts and threads on places like Reddit.
Really.
Saying, you know, these guys are just going to sell you whatever you ask for and tell you it's going to work and then disappear into the night. And then people do stop trusting your brand. So yeah, I do think you have to be really careful.
You know, you'll eventually go out of business if you keep doing that because you've run out of people to con. And then, yeah, there's nobody left and everyone else wants their money back. So that's you. You've had it then, haven't you?
Yeah.
Okay. I'm not really sure where we were going with that.
Don't be naughty.
Yeah. Well yeah that's right.
Yeah. It's it's you know, going for the quick buck is not a great business model. And um yeah, keeping customers happy and giving them really good service and giving them the right thing rather than just selling them what they think they need is going to be better for for the long term business is. Yeah. Is our theory on it? Um, rather than yeah.
Even when, you know, in most B2B, um, sales, it's a complex sale. It's a long term endeavor to try and sell somebody something or make sure that you're selling them the right thing. I mean, to what extent is there a, maybe a disconnect, if you like, between marketing and sales in that respect, because the salespeople are often motivated to make the sale. And we've seen it with HubSpot salespeople, they're motivated to make the sale. That's that's it. That's all they're interested in. They're not interested in what happens next. Whereas the marketing emphasis talks about the benefits and talks about making people feel safe and all the rest of it. And then then that's getting handed over to people who don't care. They just want to sell it. I kind of like polarising it a bit.
If I ran the world, you would, um, you would reward salespeople on kind of lifetime customer value rather than the, the, the one off.
So they get the paycheck once they're dead.
Yes, I know, but you know, you go, we want these customers to stay for three years. So, um, you know, we will reward you. But, you know, salespeople tend to be very sort of short term focused and, you know, on to the next thing. But, you know, there's some sort of reward based on people staying rather than just kind of getting them over the line. And if they cancel within three months, it doesn't matter because the salesperson's kind of met their targets. So if you targeted salespeople more on the, you know, getting the type of customers that are going to stay longer or get, you know, having some sort of involvement down the line and making sure that people stay, then it, it might change the, the approach, um, and make sure that them, they sort of qualify, keep their leads into people that are gonna be, you know, staying around, um, that you can kind of pass on to the marketing team to, you know, build a relationship with.
I think it just goes back to that thing we were saying before about, you know, if you, if you want to talk about tangible things we were saying earlier, you know, to, to market convincingly, especially in a B2B space. You need those positive testimonials. You need those good user reviews. Really, I think what the sales team should be incentivised to do is generate those good user reviews, right? If you can sell somebody something and at the end of it, they say, this is fantastic. I want to recommend you. That's making life easier for the marketing team. If you don't have that outcome, then things get a whole lot more difficult. You can't really generate leads without that kind of positive feedback, I guess.
Yeah. So I think, yeah, I mean, there is still a disconnect between marketing and sales. And that's why there's these like revops revenue operations, people who, you know, bring the whole thing together.
I mean, it's overcomplicating a very simple issue though. Yeah.
Well, in defense of salespeople, how about some organisations are so wedded to particular solutions. Like, for example, if we could only build websites using HubSpot, then every conversation we would have would be, of course you'll need HubSpot CMS.
Because.
That's true. Yeah.
But, you know, I joke about it, but we've seen it time and time again. We've seen um. And now. Now, that's not to say that agencies hang their hat on a completely system agnostic, because you can only have a certain number of skills within an organisation.
Everything.
But being sort of tech stack agnostic, I think is part of the solution when it comes to doing right by customers and making sure they get what they need and not just what you happen to sell.
Yeah. That's true. Yeah. You're not saying, well, yeah, you've got to buy this piece of kit to, to get this solution because it's never that's never that easy.
Well, it's really interesting because we're in a discovery yesterday and I watched David do the polar opposite. Right. The, the client we were talking to was basically saying, please sell me the system. And David was there kind of saying, well, actually, you know, you can probably get those results out of whatever platform you want to use. And I think that's, yeah, that's kind of like the, I guess the extreme that you can push.
But then I think that does build trust because you're saying to people, you know, you don't have to spend this money.
And you don't necessarily have to go with.
This is, yeah, this is the best advice for your business. Um, not the best advice for, for us. And I think that does build trust or you'd hope it would, um, either that or you just sort of.
You know.
Flushing down the toilet one or the other.
I mean, in our space, um, content management systems, you know, WordPress, HubSpot, Joomla, um.
Craft Drupal.
Yeah, millions of them that, that is often a topic of conversation and people have quite often got quite strong opinions on that. You know, we need to build the website in WordPress because it's the best.
WordPress in particular, because people are comfortable with it and they've used it before or they've been told that, yeah, WordPress is the sort of gold standard, which it kind of isn't, but you know, it, it's big and it's familiar and it's the one people have heard of. So they, they often get hung up on that. And it has to be in WordPress.
Where I sometimes struggle is when to your point, Alex, when I know I can provide a solution using a bunch of free tools like WordPress, for example, and maybe the hub, the free HubSpot CRM and, you know, maybe, but I know there's a better solution using some of the paid tools, some of the paid tech stacks that you can use for marketing automation and building websites and all the rest of it. And I do find myself conflicted there. Um, I don't think I've ever said to anybody, you must, you must build in. I mean, we came across one recently. I'm not going to name them. They went out of business anyway. But you know, we were told by the customer, their, their customer who is now our customer, that they had to use a particular CMS because you couldn't possibly do it in WordPress, which was complete nonsense, complete.
Nonsense when we looked at it. They weren't actually even using the the CMS that they told them they weren't really using it to do the thing that they told them they had to do anyway.
No. And that did come down to the fact that they had capability with that particular CMS that wasn't WordPress.
Yeah.
Rather than doing what's right by the client now, you know.
But then they went out of business.
So an agency is admitting that they don't know how to do something is a very rare thing, isn't it? I don't think many people hold their hand up and say, oh, I only know how to do that in this system, but you can probably do it with some other system because it's.
Difficult because there's so much stuff out there. I was at a conference yesterday, and a couple of the speakers put up this sort of MarTech map of all the software out there. And I mean, there's tens of thousands of pieces of software and you can't possibly know.
But you can probably get by...
You can only know a tiny fraction of them. I'll show you the map. It's amazing. But, um, yeah, you can't be expected to cluster them.
So they had all the CMS and all.
Yeah, it's a really good map and I am going to share it with the team. But, um, yeah, it's, it's, you know, you cannot expect your agency to know and, you know, very much of it really in the general scheme of things, because there's just so much out there now and it's utterly overwhelming.
But I don't think, just to your point earlier, you ever really need to be wed to one system. There is no system out there that can do something that none of the others can touch, and you have to use. You can get there with pretty much anything.
And I think it's it's good to know more than one. I think you're, you're you're in trouble if you only know one.
Okay. Just to, just to pull this back a bit from getting into, um, you know, conversation about CMS.
Yeah.
Um, we've, we've done that one if you're.
Really interested in what we were just talking about, we have a whole podcast about it we did a few weeks ago. So, um, we'll go back and revisit it. I'm sure it'll be fascinating.
One of the things in the B2B space, as I've already mentioned, is that sales are often, um, complex. You know, there's a lot of conversations, people involved.
Yeah.
That's right. And one of the things in our space that we will openly say to people and, um, maybe, well, we can give a, you know, there's a recent example which I could maybe give, but what we're effectively saying to people is we're not really sure what you need. We're not really sure what sort of tech you need. And we don't know all the problems that we're going to have to solve. Um, and by the way, it's going to cost, you know, three grand, four grand, five grand a month to sort it out. So you're actually what we're trying to pitch is a relationship. We're trying to pitch the idea that if you, if you partner with us, we will help solve, help find answers to all of these big questions. But right now, we don't know them. Now, that's not to say that we that there are like that there are no knowns. There are. We know that their website is going to be improved. We know that their search engine performance is going to improve. We know that the traffic's going to improve. We know that the leads are going to improve, but we can't put hard and fast numbers on that. What we're really saying is that, you know, if you hire us, we'll we'll help unpick this and solve all the problems. Now, it's not just in the digital marketing space, you know, in the B2B space in general, what a lot of B2B sales are trying to do is, is provide that persuasive, coherent argument, if you like that we're the we're the guys who can help you solve a problem.
Yeah, we're the partner and, you know, leave it with us and we'll sort it. But we can't tell you right now how we're going to do that, because we need to go and figure that out by, you know, getting to grips with your business and your technology or your website or whatever it is you're doing, but it's, it is risky. And you can see why people are kind of have to think about it because it's a, it's a weird thing to buy into.
We recently lost out on a piece of work. It was a competitive tender. Now we did get shortlisted. So it wasn't an altogether, um, wasted endeavor and journey exercise, but we kind of went into it knowing that we would struggle because our approach is, as we've just said, as I've just said, you know, to sit down with people and help them figure out, you know, we do this free discovery session with any potential customer in order to figure out what they need and whether we're the right people to help them get what they need. So with an invitation to tender, it's always a challenge.
Because they want the answers.
They want the answers.
We've actually had a chance to figure out what the question is really, you know, they they've said this is what they think, you know, needs to be done. But, you know, we would like the chance to figure out if that really is what needs to be done. And with an invitation to tender, you've kind of got to go with the, the problems that they've identified rather than doing our own research and, and figuring out from our point of view what, what really is the problem.
One of the pieces of feedback we got was that they were confused about which CMS would be used. Going back to the subject of content management.
Said that.
We offered too much choice.
Yeah. And what we were saying was like, because we will sit down with you if we are awarded the work and figure stuff out. Once we start figuring stuff out, we'll figure out what the best CMS is because we said that we were accused of being of confusing them. What they really want is someone to say, oh, you've got to use words. Back to what we were saying earlier. You must use WordPress. And the people saying that are probably saying it because that's their skill set, you know, not because it's the right solution.
Yeah, we could have gone and said, yeah, you have to use HubSpot, you have to use Joomla or whatever. But that wouldn't have been the best advice because we don't know yet.
That's right. And so when you know other companies in the B2B space will, you know, they've maybe done the hard work, they've done great digital marketing, they've got a good search presence, they're getting found. They then get invited to tender for work and they're going to be in a similar situation as well. I don't know what the answer is. I mean, I'm just putting it out there that, you know, what you really want is, you know, the best gigs that we've got, the best customers that we've got are the ones that went out looking for answers, found us engaged with us, had conversations, maybe did a discovery, became a customer, and now we're like part of their team helping them do what they need to do.
I think you hit the nail on the head there, though. It's people who are out there looking for the real answer to their problem, not people who are out there because they want to be told this is the quick solution. You know, it's, it's, I guess it's about the mindset of the customer, isn't it? A lot of the time, some people just want to be told this is what you're doing. This is how much it costs you. Others are kind of open to the idea that actually this is a collaborative process. It takes time. We're going to have to work stuff out.
The thing is as well, with digital marketing, everything moves so quickly that what the right answer is now in three.
Months time could.
Be could be the wrong answer. You could look at the data and go, okay, like things have shifted, things have changed, or the market's moved. And actually we need to be looking at this now. So, um, you know, saying right now this is the answer for the next three years. You can't, you cannot possibly do that.
Yeah.
So any businesses who are, you know, listening to this podcast because they're just generally interested in digital marketing, what message can we extract from these ramblings?
Um.
I think it's.
Like, look at somebody who's, who's genuinely got your best interest at heart and will work with you in the long term to get the right results, rather than just going for somebody who's got something new and shiny to sell you. Um, but, you know, may not still be there in a year's time helping you to use it.
It's, it's about methodology, isn't it? Not, not the tech stack they're going to use all the product that they're going to sell you. It's about how they're going to do it and what.
They're going to.
Do. Definitely. Yeah. And about somebody you can work with, um, and kind of see them as part of your team. Um, and yeah, definitely, you know, look, long term because if you keep switching agencies, you're just going to be stop, start, stop start and you're never going to get the results.
So from the point of view of anyone listening to this who's thinking of buying digital marketing, that's fine. But what about people who are listening to this because they're interested in the execution of digital marketing? Maybe they've got an in-house team and they're doing it themselves. What are the challenges they need to overcome so that they can set themselves apart from the people who are just, you know, flogging stuff because that's all they know what to do?
Well, I guess there again, it is just about how you position yourself, isn't it? It's about making sure that you are positioning yourself as somebody who's going to take the time to understand what your customer wants.
And you're having loads, loads of content on your website that that proves you're trustworthy and proves that you, you can, you know, work in the long term and, you know, get results and and that you you give best advice. So have lots of good advice on your website to demonstrate that.
Yeah.
So if you're a like, for example, if you're a firm of accountants.
Yeah.
What sort of information is going to be the right sort of information to show that you're not just a churn and burn type organisation.
You know how they like tax advice or something. So it's not like sales stuff. It's just like, you know, here's some really useful advice about tax.
That.
Shows that, that we really know our stuff. Or here, you know, here's a, a, a case study or a testimonial from somebody that we work with. And, um, because they work with us for, you know, a little while and we got to know the business. Here's what happened next because, um, we saved them a ton of money because we actually understood their business, things like that.
Yeah. They're, they're kind of two angles to it, aren't there? There's the, like you say, the kind of the case studies, the proof that you know what you're talking about. And then one of the things we're doing for one of our clients now at the moment is going through and actually just kind of like documenting their process and putting information about the process they go through every time they kind of do a deal on every page of their website that's relevant to it. And I think stuff like that is just like, be transparent. It's like set out what people should expect to find when they start working with you.
Yeah. There was a simple one that I implemented on our site a long time ago. And that's, you know, like on, um, trying to get people to fill in a form on your website in order to engage and start a conversation is not always.
The easiest thing.
And one of the things that we were missing was we weren't saying to people before they filled in the form, what happens if you fill in this form? Yeah. And you know, just adding that on, I think is effective because at least people then know what they're going to get. They're going to get, you know, a conversation or whatever it is, you know, so. Okay. Um, well, surprisingly, we've managed to ramble on for quite a, quite a while. I don't know how much of that was useful, but it's, uh, it was good to get back in the saddle and get, get the, uh, the podcast moving again after a couple of week break.
To.
Find out what other people think.
Of.
That, you know, has anyone else got a take on that? It would be quite.
Yeah. That's right. As ever, we're always open to people coming on and telling us about their experiences with digital marketing, running a business, business growth that whole side of things. You can go redevolution.com/digital-marketing-from-the-coalface or redevolution.com. I actually wonder about giving that choice. Like you got the redevolution.com/digital-marketing-from-the-coalface. I've got a redevolution.com. You know what? Just go redevolution.com. There's forms on just about every single page on our website or our phone number. Give us a ring, fill in a form, tell us that you'd like to come on the podcast and, um, what you'd like to talk about and, uh, or if you've just got any questions related to digital marketing because, um, we're always keen to hear about what people are really struggling with. So we can talk about it in our, in our own inimitable way.
Whatever that is.
Yeah.
Just nobody wants to imitate it. There's a reason for that.
Good. Okay. So, um, I don't think I actually introduced Alex and Julie. That's okay this time, but we'll put the introductions right at the end just to flip the thing on its head. You've been listening to, uh, you've been listening to Julie and Alex and me, Dave from Red evolution, and, uh, we'll speak to you next time.
Bye.