Bryony Thomas, Author Of Watertight Marketing Talks About Effective Marketing – Episode 65

The more you say funnel, the more people think it exists. So every time you think of a pipeline or a funnel or a hopper, I'd like you to delete that image from your mind, replace it with a bucket at the bottom, then funnels and filters and then taps at the top. When I do talks, I often stand there with my actual bucket, I'm standing on stage and I say, okay, this has got a hole in it. Shall I run taps? Yeah. Okay. Are you running lead generation into websites that don't work? Yeah. Why are you doing that then?

I do love the bottom up approach, and it makes so much sense when you think it through.

Yeah. People do it upside down. So my advice would be you need to map the journey forwards, but build it backwards. You need to ensure that your marketers understand the decision journey and the humans involved in that journey. And then when it comes to measurement, I think people focus on volumes when they should be focusing on ratios.

Okay. Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. This week delighted to have a marketing legend as a guest. Um, I'm going to let Bryony introduce herself. Bryony, tell us all about you and your business and why we should care what you've got to say about marketing.

Thanks, David. I'm Bryony Thomas, I'm the author of a book called Watertight Marketing and the founder of Watertight Business Thinking. Um, why should you care? I don't know, sometimes I say some reasonably intelligent things. Um, quite, quite.

Often I would say.

Quite often. Yeah. I suppose um I've worked in marketing for twenty five years. Um, the original watertight marketing book came out in twenty thirteen, second edition, uh, last year. And I would say in many ways, the reason that digital marketers might find me interesting is that I'm perhaps slightly counterintuitive in the way that I approach things. So watertight as a methodology is upside down from from the way that most people approach marketing, which is.

Genius when you think about it. It's just when you when you explain it, it makes perfect sense.

Yeah. So most people do lead generation first. And I say lead generation comes last. Yeah. Um, you know, most people say, let's sell stuff to people. And I say, let's try and put people off. Um, so there's a, you know, I'm, I'm at least interesting.

Definitely. Yeah. Make people think. And then I think when they do start sort of thinking about it and looking at it properly, they're like, oh, yes, of course.

So can we, can we dig in a little bit and outline this kind of upside down approach?

I think it's definitely worth outlining that.

Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, you're not seeing my picture here, but I'm actually sat in my office behind me. There is a large red bucket. Um, and on the front of the water type marketing book, there is a, is there is a bucket. And the reason there's a bucket is because I get people to, um, delete from their mind the image of a sales funnel. Because a bit like in the, there's a scene in the matrix, I always think of where the child has the spoon in front of them and you go, what you need to know, neo, is there is no spoon. And what I need marketers to know is there is no funnel. Um, and so a sales funnel is shows a decreasing number of people at each stage in the process, which means that when you draw it, it looks like a funnel. It behaves like a sieve. Yeah. It is the opposite of a funnel, which makes it a sexy diagram and an awful metaphor. Yeah. So yeah, and I love metaphors. I love metaphors when they make, um, when they make things easier to understand.

We love an analogy on this podcast.

So yeah, fire ahead. Yeah. But only when they're helpful. And interestingly, I think the sales funnel is the opposite of helpful because it's showing the word is the opposite of what it is.

Yeah, the diagrams are great, but the word funnel doesn't make any sense at all.

No it doesn't does it. No. You know, um and the thing is, the more you say funnel, the more people think it exists.

Yeah.

So every time you think of a pipeline or a funnel or a hopper, um, I'd like you to delete that image from your mind, replace it with a bucket at the bottom, then funnels and filters. Filters are just as important. It says as important for marketing to be repellent as it is attractive and then taps at the top. And so if you have a hole in your bucket, there is no point in running taps. So you, you, you go to the bucket, you put things in place that keep your customers loving you and loyal to you. You then move up to funnels and filters so that you can filter out the wrong kind of work channel for with the right kind of work. And so that you're not running around madly with your little bucket under all the taps that are randomly distributed around the world, you're creating the kind of channels out to that. And it's only when you have the bucket, the funnels and filters in place that you should spend time, money or energy on taps. And most marketers sell taps. And, you know, you go to a tap shop, it's no surprise that people sell you taps. Um.

And what.

What we need as particularly client side marketers is to ensure that we have the marketing in place that keeps our customers loyal and loving us, that converts the right conversations into customers. And only then is it there at any point in doing cold traffic and lead generation.

So it's more about plugs than taps then it is.

Absolutely. My dad was a builder, um, which may explain why I use quite, um, kind of trades related, um, kind of analogies. Yeah, it's all quite, it's all quite kind of.

But everyone understands taps, buckets, plugs. It's not airy fairy, you know, you can picture a bucket, you can picture a tap, you can see the whole point of not turning a tap on if there's a hole in the bucket, because that tap, what's what's coming out of that tap is costing you money. So you're basically flushing fibers down the loop.

You are. Yeah. And people are. So when I do talks, I often stand there with with my actual bucket and a red bucket at my kind of bucket that I have behind me does go on Easyjet as hand luggage. I know because I take it with me to all the conferences I go to. So I'm standing on stage with my bucket and I say, okay, this has got a hole in it. Um, shall I, shall I run tap? So no.

Yeah.

Okay. Are you running lead generation into websites that don't work? Yeah. Why are you doing that then?

Exactly. Yeah. That's so taking it to the sort of digital idea, do you think that, you know, it's even easier to do that sort of thing with digital tools, you know, than, than sort of the old fashioned marketing where it was kind of quite hard to get an ad out there or whatever and create awareness. Whereas now, do you think it's just really, really easy to throw money at the awareness side and not even think about what happens once people sort of hit your website?

Yes and no. So when I started out in agency land, I worked for an agency called Mason Zimbler. Our clients were the likes of Microsoft and this was, you know, nascent digital. There were websites, but it was called, you know, the dot com boom, some radical new thing. And when we were doing awareness and lead generation for, for those companies, we would buy an ad in the times, spend the equivalent of what you could buy a small house for.

Mhm.

And then possibly correlate that with how many phone calls they had.

Maybe.

Yeah. Yeah, maybe. And so if.

Anyone remembers.

It easy to waste money. Yeah.

Yeah. That's true.

Um, and so these days you can absolutely put your money all over the place. So, you know, it's not just what should we do? Let's put an ad in the times or let's go to an exhibition. You've now got this proliferation of taps. You've got lots of options, but you can have them all at a trickle. Yes, yes, you can spend five hundred pounds, not five hundred thousand pounds.

So you're wasting money, but in smaller amounts. Yeah.

Well, and then you've got distributed attention haven't you. And that's, that's part of the problem. So you know when your only option was an exhibition and an ad, you really crafted your ad and you really focused on the exhibition. But now people do hodgepodge, quick and dirty all over the place. Don't craft it particularly well and then go, well, that didn't work. And you go, well, that's because it was rubbish. It's not because it was wrong. And also it was awful.

All those bits are probably being done by different people and they're probably not even kind of consistent. There's probably somebody doing, doing something on Facebook and somebody sort of doing some ad somewhere and somebody's doing something else and they it's probably just lots of bits and pieces. Do you think?

Yeah. So people, um, will often say, you know, Facebook ads don't work or Google ads don't work or whatever. Um, and it's not the channel.

Um.

It's potentially the ad itself. And so you kind of mentally cross out Facebook ads and then you look at the creative for the Facebook ad and you go, well, that wouldn't have worked anywhere except Facebook. So it's the fact that you're creative and your call to action was abysmal. Um, and so they cross out the technique.

Or possibly that your potential customers actually aren't using Facebook very much because they're too young or too old or whatever. So yeah, it's not, it's not Facebook's fault. It's the fact that you shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Yeah. So either you're putting it in the right place. You can put it in the right place, but it have no impact. Or you could put it in the best ad in the world in the wrong place. And either one's not going to work. But it's not it's not the channel's fault. It's the strategy's fault.

Exactly. But it's I think it's very easy just to go, well, we'll just do that because. Because somebody knows how to do it and because it's easy and we've got a nice picture. And should we just do that and we'll do this as well. Yeah. We'll sort of throw and people.

Think they're doing test and learn don't they. Yeah. Um but they're not, they're doing trash and burn. So they think, oh, I'll do a little, I'll do a little fifty quid test on Facebook. I'll boost a post or whatever. Um, well I've tested Facebook.

Yeah.

But no you haven't.

No. You've done one thing. Yeah. You haven't done the another thing to see which one works best.

You've just I've done one press up two. But you know I've got no abs.

Yeah. Yes exactly.

The biggest one in in line with what you're talking about there is, uh, Google ads. We speak to a lot of people who. Oh, yeah, tried Google ads. It doesn't work. And then you think, right, okay, so could we could we have a little look at the campaign you ran, please, and keywords all over the place. No negative keywords, landing, landing page? No, no, we just send everybody to the home page. It's all that stuff. Is that that's that's kind of it, isn't it? It's the sort of stuff you're referring to? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So that is classic. So Google ads doesn't work or whatever x, y, z technique doesn't work. Um, often it's about the next step. So let's assume it is in the right place and the creative is great. So this is why I say do it bottom up. Kind of put yourself out.

Of the room. This is a good example.

So let's say you, you know, you go, um, you've got to always have in mind the next step, haven't you? Because if um, if we use our taps analogy there as the Google ads and as you say, they're going straight to the home page and there's nothing content related to the ad and they bounce directly. The ad was fine. It was the next step that was the problem.

Exactly. And I think it's very easy to send a lot of traffic to terrible websites or send a lot of traffic to a page on the website that isn't doing the thing that it needs to be doing, because to relate to what you've just sent in, if that makes any sense. But yeah.

Yeah. So here's, here's an analogy I use for that, right. So, um, the website might be great. Um, you might even send them to a landing page, but it might not be contextually or content linked. So I love Breaking Bad and I loved Game of Thrones and I loved house, but I didn't watch one episode of each. Yes, I watched a, I watched a coherent narrative. And so one episode took me to the next episode that took me to the next episode. That took me to the next episode, and it built a coherent narrative. What you find with marketing journeys is that people go have an episode of Game of Thrones, and I'm going to land you on an episode of House. Yeah. Uh, yeah, they're both great.

I, yeah, I wanted this thing. And is that the same thing or do you what are you telling me now? And, and am I, have I come to the completely the wrong place? Yeah. And you lose them and you, you can lose people very quickly because they've clicked on something. And by the time they've clicked through, they've probably forgotten what it was they clicked on. And then if it doesn't, if it doesn't immediately add up in their heads, they're just like, what? I don't care.

Now imagine you're on Netflix and you know, you're, you're scrolling through for something to watch and you've got the little picture of, of house and you click on it. Oh, I'm going to enjoy a bit of hospital drama here. Excellent. And then it starts playing Breaking Bad. You go, huh. That's utterly incongruent. And that's what happens in digital marketing. So you have this, a Google Ads team that is responsible for getting someone to click on the Google ad, and then with one set of creative and content and themes and topics, whatever. And then, and then you land on something else and you go, oh.

Yeah, we see that a lot. And then we talk to people about landing pages and they're like, oh, do we have to like, well, yeah, you do really? Because otherwise you're not, you're not you're not making the most of that spend up, up front. You're just it's a waste of money.

And I would. And so with watertight, I go further than that. So I say go all the way back to the bottom. Yeah. So where do you want to get them to? I want to get to a retained contract of two thousand pounds a month from this kind of client. Whatever you go. Great. That's the destination. Let's work back from there. Yeah. And you put a tool in place for every step backwards. You don't get them half way. And then I remember a.

Really good case study on your website. I think that was about a storage company and you got them fewer enquiries. I think that's a really good example. Can you remind me what that went like?

Yeah. So that's red spot storage. That's George. Um, and, uh, we did a project with George where we put together a new website. Um, they do self storage. They compete with the likes of Big Yellow, but they're an independent an independent provider of storage. And so the website went live and we checked in with George, I think a week or ten days later and said, how's it going? And he said, oh, Brian, it's awful. I said, oh no, what's wrong? He said, I've got half the number of enquiries I normally get.

Mhm.

Okay.

Like you start panicking and.

And I said, how many of those have have booked storage with you? And he said, oh, the same as ever. I'd say you've had half the number of conversations for the same amount of bookings.

Mhm.

This is not a bad thing.

Exactly.

This is a good thing.

Saving a lot of time, speaking to irrelevant people. Yeah. And and that's because the website was actually getting the right people and the process was working better.

Yeah. And, and this goes back to my earlier point about filters and marketing being it's as important to be repellent as it is to be attractive. And so the sorts of people that were no longer calling him were people who wanted to store a load of knock off in his, you know, like dodgy dealers. So he was not getting the people going. Can I store a load of fireworks in your like. No you can't. Yeah. Um, whereas so because we really focused it on John Lewis couple somewhere to store your overflow skiing gear, um, is very different from Del Boy wanting to put his knockoff in your yard. Yeah. And so we totally configured the website to be repellent to the wrong work. And so all of the people who called George were delighted that they could get a cup of tea whilst they were unpacking their, um, you know, they were driving up their, their four four wheel drive SUV to his nice space and unpacking their ski gear and having a nice croissant whilst they were there, you know. And that was evident.

Audience. Yeah.

It was evident from the website that that's what they were buying.

Yeah. So it made it really clear. Um yeah. I think we've done, we've done something similar with our website. We've actually tried to make ourselves look more expensive so that we're not getting enquiries from people that we basically can't help which, which isn't really useful for anyone. So wasting everyone's time. So it's sort of trying to, yeah, filter out the sort of people that, that aren't really the sort of customers that we're able to work with.

Um, yeah, filters are so important and people often talk about reducing the friction in a sales journey. And sometimes I think you should put more in. So I, um, we have a members club, we have the make marketing happen club. Um, and in order to get really good value from the make marketing happen club, you have to be pretty tech savvy. You, it's best when you download the app so that you can access the stuff and jump on the forum. And um, so the people we don't want are people who send us individual emails who, um, want, you know, lots of individualised attention, don't want to put their topics in open discussion. You know, these sorts of people are anathema to us making that club work both financially and energetically. Yeah. And so it's quite hard to sign up.

Right. Yeah.

Ah, my co-founder Cheryl said, well, do you think we could just make the sign up process easier? I said, no.

Mhm.

Yeah. Because it's intentional.

It's intentional. Yeah. So I think we should make it harder.

Yeah. We've actually done something very similar for a client recently. They had a sort of enquiry form on their website, and we turned it into a calculator that asked them loads and loads and loads of questions before they can. So, so basically they can get a much more tailored quote. Um, and you know, there is this sort of thing. Well, are we not making it? Are we making it less likely? Are people not going to fill it in, but people are filling it in because they're taking it seriously. They're like, yeah, I'm glad you're asking me all these questions because I have all this information I want to give you. And I'm actually making it more complicated. Has has not. It hasn't deterred people because we're, we're getting the right sort of people filling in the forums. So yeah.

And you're probably giving commensurate value in return, aren't you? So I always say with data capture, and this is another classic classic error in digital, um, is that people put the data lock too far up the process. So, um, they, they think, oh, data capture. And by the way, the word data capture is horrible. Um, we're trying to catch capture people and trick them and lock them in. I mean, goodness me, the language is just heinous, isn't it? Yes. Um, now let's imagine a retail scenario. And you're we said earlier, didn't we, that kind of the website's a bit like your shop window. Um, so if you, um, if you were standing outside your shop and you said you can't come in until you've given me your email address.

Yeah. How many people would come? Isn't it?

No. And so because it's useful to you to have my email address, you're stopping me from looking at what you sell until you have it. But it's not useful to me to give you my email address. And so when I say.

Nothing, when you asked.

No, nothing of value in return. So I would say when you ask people for data, imagine that's valuable because it is. And imagine that they only give it to you when you return it to them with additional value. So you can't ask them anything unless you return it with extra value.

Yeah. You've got to be giving them something in return. That's it. We say that a lot. It's like, okay, you know, how much data is this worth? This piece of content. Is it worth an email address or is it a is it amazingly and really, really rare? And they really want to get their hands on it. They'll give you their email address and the phone number and something else, maybe to get hold of this, but probably not yet because they don't know you enough yet. It's again, it's further down the process. They've maybe had something and they trust you enough to give you this extra data.

Yeah, but I had to go more. Even more than that. You should only ask them for data that is relevant to what is being returned.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So, um, I might like to know what color your eyes are or whatever. Um, but if it is not valuable to you to tell me that, then I shouldn't be asking.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Um, and you know, yeah.

There has to be a reason for it and they have to be getting, you know, if you're asking what color their eyes are, it's because you're selling colored contact lenses, basically.

Exactly, exactly. And so when, when you see these forms and I and this is almost, um, uh, at odds with what I've just said about making things harder, I do make things harder, but it's relevant. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you should only be asking for information that is used in what is returned to them.

Yeah.

It's actually used. So you only ask for their email address if you are emailing them a tailored PDF, for example, and you only ask them for their revenue if you're giving them a benchmark by revenue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Otherwise, do.

You see what I mean?

Why would they give you that?

You want to know my inside leg measurement? Why are you making me a suit? Then it's relevant. Then it's relevant.

Totally. Yeah.

I mean, for us to do a website audit, for example, we need an email address so that we can contact them and give them some information. And we need to know if it's different to their email, email address domain. We need to know the website address. And in fact, for us, if they give us an email address that uses one domain and a website, that's another domain, then we nine times out of ten won't do that. We will go back to them and say like, well, why? Why? You know, we almost flip it around. Why do you want us to audit this website? You know, like you've got a relationship.

Are we auditing your competitor's website for you? You know, we do double check that so that there is a relevancy.

The research is quite strong on the on the idea that the more information you ask from people, the less chance there is they're going to fill the form in. Except in the instance where Julie said there's a lot of information required, but that's making them feel safe. That's giving them the reassurance that you know what you're talking about because you're asking all the right questions. And it's finding that balance, isn't it?

It is, it is. And I, and I, um, so I talk about that as, uh, value for data. So I have a model in the second edition of watertight marketing called time data money value exchange, where, um, we talk through creating tools that give value for time, then tools that provide value for time and data, then tools that provide value for time, data and money. And that there's a, there's a sequence to that. And it's a bit like, you know, it's a bit like the dating, you know, you, you get chatting to someone at a bar and if you've enjoyed the conversation and they say, can I have your phone number? You actually give them your real phone number. Yeah. Here's the data. And then and then they call you and they say, you know, shall we go out for dinner? And you're sitting having dinner and they ask you about yourself. More data.

Mhm.

So now you're spending the evening with them time and data. Mhm. Um, and you've enjoyed one another's company. So maybe, you know, you go on a few dates and then you go on a weekend together, a bit more of a commitment. Now he knows where you live because he's come to pick you up. You know, there's like and then it builds up to the getting a flat together, getting a mortgage together, whatever it might be. And so you do time, then time and data, then time, data and money. And if you try to flip that sequence, it feels wrong.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally. It's like, yeah, it's like going, going the first date and asking them to marry you and like, oh, wait a minute, I don't know enough about you yet, I don't know. Yeah. Wait a minute. Slow down.

Yeah. I mean, right now we get lots of calls. I'm sure you do as well. Um, we get calls from people. Um, hello. I'm phoning about your energy contract. Can you tell me when it expires or I believe your energy contracts expire and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute. Who are you? That's exactly like me phoning up a complete stranger and asking them to come for a weekend away with me.

Yeah, yeah.

This is the this is the digital marketing equivalent of dating. Let's imagine that you've been profiling somebody from a distance. You've scraped their data, manipulated and tricked them out of giving you information about themselves. And then you go up to them and say, I've been profiling you, and I know that you're the perfect match for me.

I mean.

Honestly, you'd have them arrested.

You would, you would. Absolutely. You certainly wouldn't. It certainly wouldn't make you warm to them. And, um, think about having a conversation. You would run a mile and that's why people put the phone down isn't it?

And so, so we talk about invitation information. So rather than lead magnets, we don't use the word lead magnet. We use invitation information because it's an invitation for you to tell us about yourself. Provide us with data. We're not there to capture leads. We're there to invite conversations. So we use the phrase invitation information. It's very deliberate. I mean, anyone reading watertight may not notice. Um, but we do not use the word target. We do not use the word capture. We do. We do not use lock ins. We don't use any language that makes it makes it sound like we want to profile target kill.

Um, marketing marketing started out with a load of sort of military language. You've got campaigns and you've got targets and you've got, there's tons of military language in marketing for some inexplicable reason. And, and we just use it without thinking.

Well and traffic. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to, we're going to traffic people. We're going to capture their data. We're going to put a trip wire in. We're then going to put a structural lock in in our contract so that they can't exit. We're going to make the exit barriers really high so that they have no other no other thing to do but to stay with us. Like blink in heck. How about how about you have a respect for a relationship with a human and they choose to be with you?

Yeah. Voluntarily. Yeah.

They could leave at any time. The exit barriers are low. Yeah, but because you are brilliant, they choose to stay and I. Marketing has this. And marketing methodologies have a a whole slew of not just military language but dehumanising activity. So homogenising and dehumanising where you talk about people as avatars. Again, we don't use avatars, we use characterisations. Mhm. Um, with there's, and like dehumanising language has never been a precursor to anything good in human history, has it?

No, no, I can't think of any examples of that.

It's a precursor to treating people badly.

Yep.

Um and so, you know, we're good, effective marketing shines a light on the truth. Um, my belief is that marketing is there to support someone through a decision with which they remain happy. Even if that's not to work with you.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

When we look at if I look at our own process, if we get an enquiry comes in, um, the first thing we want to do is spend some time with that company, spend some time with the, with the right people in that company, learn about them, answer questions and try and figure out whether or not we are the right guys to help them. That's the first thing that we do. We don't even charge for that. I mean, we in the past we've thought about, oh, that's discovery. It's valuable. You know what we need? We need to actually invest in this potential relationship. So we do that. Um, and the second thing is to, to the point you made, we will never ask people to sign a contract. We use the almost the exact words you said. We say to people, we want you to stay with us because we're adding value and you're enjoying working with us and no other reason. And I don't think in marketing you can do it any other way. And, but, but I wonder if the language that you guys have been using, you know, around like, you know, war related, um, conflict related language, is that why? And maybe this isn't true, but it feels like it is because I'm an engineer who's come into marketing. It feels like marketing conversations are often adversarial. They're often.

They are.

You know, tricky conversations. You know, as an engineer, you know, you would go and speak to an organisation because you're going to go and solve a problem that they've got and they're like, please come and solve this problem that I've got. But even companies that have got marketing problems, i.e. they're not generating enquiries, they're not they're not getting people interested in them and their business are still sort of adversarial. Suspicious.

Yeah. What are you going to do with our money and where is it going? And you know.

Why does it cost that? Yeah.

Yeah it is. It is really it's still seen as very much something people don't want to spend money on.

Well, but also the industry, um, as a, as a generalisation doesn't help. So, um, many of, many of the listeners to this are probably on Facebook being served ads every day about hacks and tricks as to how to get people to part with their cash.

Yeah, totally.

Um, you know, and I think there's, there's a, there's a whole industry that, um, a bit like the dieting industry that suggests that magic wands exist.

Oh, I know.

And then there's a whole decent industry saying there are no magic wands. And um, actually you've got to do it properly. And, and, and that's boring.

Spends a lot more fun, doesn't it?

Yeah. I mean, hey, you know, find magic wand. Um, uh, Julian um, you know, send it my way. I'd love one, but exactly.

Yeah. But yeah, if you've, if you're faced with both options, you know, spending quite a lot of time and quite a lot of money to get the result or just waving a magic wand for like twenty five quid. You know, if you're and.

And I think people think they have to be a bit of a wotsit to, to do well in marketing, they have to manipulate people. And marketing is a bit slimy and icky and a bit horrible, but the means justify the ends. And I don't believe it is. You know, I think I think marketing can our, um, for water type business thinking, you know what? We work with clients that agree with us that treating people decently is a business strategy.

Yes. Yeah, totally. Totally. I mean, we, we're the same, but, um, we're faced sort of day in, day out with people saying, but, but I've hired, I hired three SEO, SEO companies in the past three years and they all ripped me off and none of them did anything. And we're like, yeah, but we're different. It's like, they're like, no, but you're not, you know, about you're just the same as all the rest. No, no, really, we're different. But, um, it is hard when there's, there's so many people out there just, you know, doing, doing things in a way that that we wouldn't necessarily agree with. But, um, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a funny old industry.

So, but I think people who are looking at digital marketing, who think that they're going to have to be horrible for it to work.

Yeah, that's not true. Yeah. You don't have to call people out of the data. You don't have to, um, send them stuff that they don't want. What's the point in sending people stuff that they don't want? They don't want it. There's, there's no point. Get their permission. Send them stuff they do want. Um, surely that's a lot more productive than just building a massive list of people that actually don't want to hear from you?

Yeah. And I think if, if digital marketing in the past has made you feel uncomfortable, then that's probably, that's probably a good thing. Your instincts are probably right.

Yes, you're probably true. So question here. The things that people measure, the things that that boards want to measure, you know, they want to measure website visits, they want to measure likes and things like that. Do you think that encouraging this sort of turning on of taps and not encouraging the plugging of buckets.

Yeah, completely. People, um, people measure all the wrong things and they measure too often. So um, and too often is probably the, the key one here. So depending on the, on the length of your sales cycle, the, the decision journey, um, you can't possibly know whether something has worked until the whole time has elapsed in which someone would fully make a decision. And so, you know, if you do an ad campaign in a given month, you won't know whether that's turned into bottom line results, perhaps until three to six months later. It also won't turn into bottom line results if you don't have the full journey. And so you need a metric for every step in the in the decision.

Yeah.

Um, you need to measure from the bottom up. And most people measure volume. So let's say you've got a six step model and you've got a volume metric for each. That's a good start, but it's the ratios between steps that that really matter. You can buy volume ratios you've got to work for.

Yes, conversion rates and things like that. Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, of the people who attended our webinar, how many took us up on our offer? Of the people who took up the offer, how many um, went through to subscribe? Of the people who subscribed, how many people sustained their subscription beyond six months? It is the ratio between steps that proves the mettle of marketing volume like taps.

Yeah.

That's easy. There are thousands of them.

Yeah.

Volume is is just you just throw money at volume conversions you have to work for.

Yeah. Now, another question for you. So as you know, a digital marketing agency, we tend to be on this of the taps and the sort of top of the process. So, you know, yeah, we're getting people visits to their websites. We're very much looking at conversions. We're very much looking at getting them leads. Once we get them leads, that's where we we wave goodbye to this, this sort of process and the leads are theirs to do with what they will. So where what should people be looking at sort of after the lead comes in? The bits that, you know, we're not really helping them with what, what, what should they be sort of fixing at that end?

Yeah. So if you're a marketing manager and you're in a, in a small business, it's your responsibility to generate revenue of X. And part of that is to, to get leads at the top. The first thing I'd say is you shouldn't look at it afterwards. You should look at it first. And so you go bottom up in the water type marketing book. The. The key bit that I would direct you to is chapter two. And if you want a copy of the book, by the way, you can just go to water marketing dot com forward slash free book. Um, and I will ask you for your email address and then I'll send you an email. I'll send you a book because I have to send it to you by email Relevant data. Um, so go to chapter two. And in chapter two there are thirteen questions. And these are the thirteen touch point leaks. So from the bottom of a decision journey up there are thirteen questions. You rate them red amber, green. And then the red items will show you where the holes are in your process. And there are um tweaks to those leaks.

Yeah. Highly recommended. Um, how long does it take somebody roughly to um, to go through and, and look at their process?

So I chapter one and two of watertight marketing, I think you could read in half an hour, an hour. Um, if you were going to sit down with others and have a think, think through, I would put aside ninety minutes and, um, go through chapter two together, um, which will help you focus in on, um, on, on, you know, on where, where you need to do some fixes. And then when you've decided what it is you need to fix, you flip to part three and go to the. Go to the bit that you now want to address and it will their tried and tested tweaks in there. So there's also. There's also a free companion course. So when you get, when you get your book, there's a little kind of trot through how to do all of that. And the touch point leak assessment is probably the bit that we're best known for. And I think if you're, um, if digital is your thing, and particularly if you're, you're seeing the lead metrics being quite good, but it's not following through to bottom line results.

Yep.

You know, so we're getting lots of enquiries, but they are not converting or we're getting people to sign up, but they are not staying. So, you know, if that's if that's the the issue, then the thirteen touch points is a is a great tool for identifying where to focus time, money and energy.

Totally. I think it would be a little bit of time well spent for people just to go through. And because it could be very simple things and very small things that can actually be quite easy to fix and people just haven't thought about it. Um, so.

I once had someone described the book as a slap around the face with the bleeding obvious. I took it as a compliment.

Yeah, well it is. I mean, the whole of marketing is the bleeding obvious? It's not. None of it is rocket science. It's just knowing where to look and knowing. Knowing what questions to ask. Um, one thing. What is common sense? Yeah. And yeah. And doing it the right order. Like you say, there is no point sending loads of loads of enquiries if the sales process is completely broken or um, your customer service is so bad that as soon as you sign them up, you annoy them so much that they cancel. So yeah, there is no point. That's, that's a lot of wasted money if you get them all the way through the process just to, to sort of somehow upset them so that they then cancel or leave or whatever. So yeah, totally. There is there is no point spending any money if you're if your retention isn't working.

No. And sometimes people go, oh, it's a nice problem to have, isn't it, to be overloaded with enquiries, but not if you let them down. So let's say you've spent a load of money to generate a whole load of enquiries and actually turn around and say, really sorry, we can't help you. And now they go away with a poor opinion of you.

Yeah, yeah.

You've now spent a load of money to create a poor reputation for your business in the market. Yeah. Top marks.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's, um. Yeah, you could have spent no money and end up in a better position.

My, my understanding has grown a lot over the last few years. Working with Julie as well has helped with that. As Julie is a marketer, she's her background's marketing. And as I said, I come from an engineering background to me in my simple engineer's way. A lot of marketing to me anyway, is about showing people that you understand their problem and making them feel safe. You know, it's, it's less about trying to a lot of our customers start set out by going, we can do this. We are great at this. We, we, we, it's all about us, you know, and, that's one of the simplest conversations that we can have with people is to make them realise that if you're talking about the problems you solve for the people you solve them for, then there's more chance that you're going to get them to move along this journey that we've been talking about and, and get in touch is that, I mean, am I getting it.

Right or wrong again? Isn't it? Imagine, imagine a date where, where the other person just talks about themselves the whole time. Yeah. You know, you're probably not going to go on a second date, are you? I'm amazing. I'm brilliant. Oh, I, I climbed Everest. Well, I climbed it twice. Um, like stop talking about yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah it is, it's very much it's about asking the questions. It's about showing people that you get them isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah. My favorites, like people who tell you that they're perfectionists because they never are.

Yeah.

I just, I describe myself as a recovering perfectionist.

Yeah. Yes, it's quite hard. It's all from.

Yeah.

Okay. So anything around the digital marketing space that we are that we haven't yet talked about? I mean, the, the idea of digital marketing is, you know, it's twenty first century marketing. We've got all these fantastic tools. Um, what are we getting? We've, we've covered a lot of this, but what are we getting spectacularly wrong in this space, do you think? Is there anything we haven't covered that is, is like, yeah, we're just getting this so wrong still or have we kind of broadly covered most of it, do you think?

Uh, no. I'll tell you what I think people really do get wrong is that they recruit, um, young marketers into a team because young marketers know what buttons to press.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

So the youngest person in the company gets to build the website.

Absolutely. Well, they've been, you know, they've been brought up on social media. They know they know what to do. Yeah. You know, they might know how the platform works, but that doesn't mean that they know what to say or to whom or what the next step is. So we, um, we have a watertight, informed, um, digital marketer level three apprenticeship program that we, we've partnered with an organisation called the opportunity Group who deliver that program. And we've really deliberately, completely, um, re rebuilt the syllabus. So we, we, we looked at the syllabus and thought, well, you could go through this, you could get a distinction, you still be bloody useless.

Um, yeah.

Because you'd know, you'd know how Facebook ads work but not why or when to use them. And you would know so you would know each of the digital specialist technical skills, but you would have no idea about strategy. And so we unpicked the syllabus. We've put it all back together again. But within a framework where people understand the decision journey that the marketing is there to support and where digital fits into that alongside everything else, so that it's set in context and so that those young people aren't left, um, scheduling social media for the rest of their careers. They are given a pathway to being an actual marketing strategist.

Yeah, yeah. And there is a difference between scheduling Facebook posts and being a digital or a marketer. Isn't there.

Really? No. Well, I, I, um.

It's amazing, isn't it?

I do this thing at the beginning of my talks where I say, what do your marketers spend time on? It's a nice way to think. Like when people, um, what is marketing? So what are marketers in your business spend time on? And I did one yesterday and there's in the chat, there was, they make pretty social media posts.

Yeah. The colouring in department. Yeah.

Okay. Yes.

Yeah, I get that. I still get that here. It's like colouring in person. I'm like, yeah, that'll be me then.

Well, and what's interesting is that's because it often comes at the end of a process. So to go to your engineering piece, David, often in product led businesses, what you'll find is that there's a whole group of people who create the product and they decide its pricing, and then they come to the end and say, marketing. Can you, can you make that, put some words and pictures on it, go and tell the world about it. So it's the end of the process, right? Like now, now we've done everything. Now we're going now go and market it.

Yeah. I love going back to the sim definition of marketing. It's like it's the process about deciding what people want and then going and making it. And you know, you go to a company like that and they're just looking at you incredulous, like, what are you talking about? You mean we can't just go and make things that we like making and then tell you to go flog them?

No, no, because then essentially what you're doing is you're the Del Boy, aren't you? So you've, you've, you've managed to procure yourself a lorry load of watches. Anyone want any watches. Um like there's no point in just selling what you happen to have. Unless you're a market trader and you're doing, you know, like.

And even then, if you're a market trader, you probably know what the, you probably know your audience, you probably know exactly what the people in that market are going to buy. Sure, you're face to face with them every day.

You're buying.

Yeah. So you're going. You'll know exactly what to go. Nick.

Yeah. And, you know, we're being disparaging to market traders who I'm sure have fantastic businesses. And, uh, we're obviously using the Del Boy analogy from, from the comedy program, not the reality of people who I'm sure are doing great work. But it's, it's the point is that people often see marketing as the end of the process. And really, it's, it's the.

It's the whole process. Yeah. From, from the very beginning, before you even think about what to make it is the whole process. And yeah, if you're, if you leave it to the end, then, you know, you are just sort of ending up like putting stuff on Facebook in desperation to try and get some attention.

We probably could learn a lot from market traders because they condense that whole buying journey down into like ten minutes, don't they? They tell a fantastic story. They draw people.

In, they.

Persuade, they're convinced that they then get the trust. And even.

The person.

That the person walks away with an arm full of crockery. In the olden days, they start.

They start earlier than that. They go out there the day before. They look at the audience and think, you know, there's nobody here selling crockery, and that those people look like the sort of people that would buy crockery. I'm going to go and source a load of crockery for tomorrow because that's what the market needs. So, you know, it is the whole process. It's actually quite a good analogy. We might have to we might have to remember that one for future.

Yeah. Okay. So I think we've we've established why digital marketing doesn't work. Yeah. Haven't we. And it's for the same reasons that any marketing doesn't work. It's there's no strategy.

Of a plan, the lack of a process and the. Yeah, they're not thinking it through, but I do, I do love the, the bottom up approach and it makes so much sense when you when you think it through. Um, yeah. And I think it's something.

People do it upside.

Down. Do they.

Do they think they have to be manipulative, manipulative for it to work and somehow trick people into the process. They focus on how to use the technology rather than why to use the technology. And often they're looking for results immediately. And it's a bit like if you jump on the scales every day, you don't see the needle move. You need to kind of space it out. And so my advice would be, um, and marketing is about supporting somebody through to a decision with which they remain happy.

Yep.

You need to map the journey forwards, but build it backwards so that you sort of paint yourself out of the room. You've got that full path. You need to ensure that your marketers understand the decision journey and the humans involved in that journey. Um, not just the button, you know, not just which buttons to press because there are hundreds of people who show you what buttons to press. It's why, what conversations are you going to have? And then when it comes to measurement, I think people focus on volumes when they should be focusing on ratios.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that one. Love that.

Okay. Can we just a quick refresher of how people can find out more about what type marketing and you and get in touch and buy books and do all that stuff.

Yeah, sure. So we're watertight business thinking. We're business transformation consultants with a marketing lens. We work with businesses of around two to twenty million on a two year transformation program, where we put marketing at the heart of decision making. And the best way to, to determine whether it's the sort of thing you might enjoy is to go to watertight marketing dot com forward slash freebook and grab yourself a copy of the second edition of Watertight Marketing Book and help yourself to all the free companion resources at watertight.

It's a, it's a it's a nice read. It's not complicated. It just makes sense. Um, yeah, I would say definitely, definitely worth grabbing the book and, um, I'm having a read and um, yeah, I don't think there is anybody who wouldn't read the book and find something in there that go that makes them go, oh yeah.

We'll put some, we'll put some links into the show.

Put some links in and we'll put it out on social with, with some, some links on that as well.

Okay.

My top tip with the book is to read it through, to cover, to cover like a novel. Let it wash over you.

Did you not say read it through with a glass of wine? I am sure I've heard you say that.

I had, yeah, well, these days, unfortunately, Julie, I can't. I can't partake in wine myself, what with having only a third of a pancreas left. Um, your readers.

Your readers could partake, couldn't they?

They could, they could, uh, basically a holiday read like a novel. So if you read it cover to cover and sort of let it wash over you, and then on the second pass, you, you start implementing things. What I've found is that if people implement on the first read, they get distracted by the first idea rather than the best idea.

Yeah. So yeah, go through it, let it, let it soak in, and then go back and, and do it sort of more methodically.

Yeah. So you read it once to get the picture on the front of the jigsaw box? Yeah. And then you go back again. Piecing it all together.

Makes perfect sense. Great.

Good stuff. If you've enjoyed the podcast and you want to come on the podcast and talk about digital marketing or marketing or business growth or any aspect of the stuff that we like to cover on the podcast, that'd be great. If you've got any questions, send them in red evolution dot com. Fill in one of the forms. We won't ask for too much information, we promise. Um, and in the meantime, Bryony, that's been an absolute joy.

Thank you.

Very much. From my point of view, as a marketer of, um, not many years standing, uh, I just love talking to seasoned marketers and getting, uh, hoovering up all this fantastic information. So that was great.

Yeah. And I love the chance to actually talk proper marketing with people. So yeah, thank you very much. Loads of hugely important advice there and I hope everyone enjoys it. Thanks for your time.

Brilliant. Thanks, Julie. Thanks, David.

Thank you.