Part of the problem with this is that you can make a ten pound Wix website sing, and I think you can luck out too. And I think, you know, you can be in a market where the audience isn't particularly discerning and you can slap something up and suddenly you'll get enquiries. I think the problem is that those kind of false positives and those stories about that happening online kind of lull people into a false sense of security. That can happen, but it probably won't. Right. And it just goes back to what we were saying at the very beginning of this podcast, which is that when you buy an agency to build your website or whatever, when you pay somebody to build your website, you're not really paying for the architecture or the technology, you're paying for the expertise, right? You're paying for somebody to sit there and maximise your chances of that website being a success. Mhm.
Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Um, that's me back from lovely Wales.
Aye, how was it?
Lovely. Good luck. You Q And I'm with Alex, which is great. And we're going to be talking. You know what, before we start talking about that, what sort of week have you had? It's been a weird week. We had, uh, we had a gig, which we really fancied, and we had a good conversation with some people a while ago. And anyway, we found out this week that we didn't get the gig and it was like, oh, the designs you showed us didn't really have the wow factor. And I'm like, oh, you know, everything that we do to help people understand that the websites that we create are the websites that the businesses need. And by the way, those websites that didn't really give you the wow factor are knocking it out the park. Well, I think those businesses and generating fantastic business for them.
We've talked before, haven't we, about the fact your website's not for you, it's for your audience.
Yeah, I know. Um, and then we've got some app development work going on web app and we don't do native iOS apps, etc. and it's going fine. You know, we've chomped through the first bit of budget and there's still a lot of work to do. And you get that usual, you know, why does it cost so much? Like, I don't think it should cost that. It's like based on how much coding have you done or none. All right. So I'm just winging I am, I just need to get that off my chest really, because this is a podcast from the coalface. We're a, we're an active, busy, successful digital marketing agency. We also do app development and stuff as well for a select few clients. And, um, you know, at the coalface, sometimes.
It's not all sunshine and roses.
No, it's, it's, it's hard graft and some weeks, some weeks you just seem to be one thing after another. That just seems to sort of, you know, I'm not I'm not into these sunny people. It's just it's always great. It's oh everything's always great, you know. Yeah, yeah. Couldn't be better. Couldn't be better.
You're not allowed to admit that sometimes it's hard or that things go wrong.
It's like that in life, isn't it? I mean, you get people you know, who, who, like, very sadly, take their own lives. And nearly every time you read about these situations that people say, well, I was with them two hours before they did it, and they couldn't have looked any happier. Yeah.
And it's just the mask. Yeah.
That escalated quickly.
It got deep. Yeah.
Anyway, um, the subject of today. Well, you saw the sort of outline I was speaking to customer. I think she was based over in the States and she had an issue with the website pinged me. I got one of the devs to look at it. It was all sorted in sort of half an hour. Um, because we're good at what we do. We knew her website inside out because we manage it for them. Yeah. And we're very experienced. And so we went bish bash bosh sorted. And she came back and said, oh, wow, speedy is always fantastic. Um, and it got me thinking about how it makes sense for businesses that haven't got in-house capability to, to have this really robust, solid arrangement with external. I'm not going to use the word suppliers. I'm going to use the word partners. But if you want to use the word suppliers, that's fine. Who can be that safe pair of hands? And it's, it's not just about digital marketing. I mean, I've got, as I've mentioned a few times, some old motorbikes now jerk up at Ballater. Um, an ex Suzuki, um, mechanic and a genuine expert in his field. He has machines and lathes. If he can't get it, he'll make it. He's one of these guys.
Yeah.
And he looks after those old bikes for me. I'd like to tinker with them. I don't have time. I need something doing. You know, Jake takes care of it. Safe pair of hands. He looks after me. I don't even ask him how much it's going to be. I give him the thing I need this doing, Jake. Great. Leave it with me. And then I go up and I pay him, and it's just that whole safe pair of hands approach. Same with the motorhome. Yeah. We put that to the the guys out at Dinnet who are a fiat service centre anyway. But even if they weren't, we put it out to them and you know, I need x doing, I need y doing it needs a service. It needs the cam belt doing. And it's a trusted, safe pair of hands to take care of that aspect of my life. And I honestly think that most businesses, apart from tiny ones that have got no money.
Should be working with somebody.
They should be working either with freelancers or with an agency who can provide those services. And there's a level of trust such that it you stop talking about money. You. Just as with most of our customers, we. You know, despite what I just said about the app thing, we don't talk about money. We talk about what we're doing, the success we're having, the issues we've maybe had, what's happening with the website, what are the enquiries looking, all that stuff. And they spend a set amount of money every month and we just get on and do it.
Yeah.
So, um, if you could just talk for half an hour about that. I'm kind of tired. I can't be.
Bothered. There's two things, right? So like, yeah, I know exactly what you mean because I have a similar thing with my Land Rover. Right. So I recently bought an older Land Rover.
Welcome to digital Land Rover mechanics and old motorbikes from the coalface.
Yeah. It's, um, but, you know, like most older cars, it is prone to it's, you know, it has its issues. Um, and yeah, very quickly, like I found somebody who is a Land Rover specialist, who is very local to me and who is fantastically good at what they do, and very similar thing. Now I just drop it off and I'm like, this is broken. And, you know, I'll come back and pay whatever it costs at the end. Yeah. I think the thing is there's two things though, isn't there? It's like a finding that person in the first place. I was really lucky, right? Because if you go on like Land Rover enthusiast forums, which are a thing, apparently, you know, everyone was like, oh, if you're, you know, in the north east of Scotland, these are the guys.
But you found them through through another route.
Well, I found them through word of mouth because my next door neighbor also has a Land Rover. Um, and.
That's known in the trade as a referral.
I think it is. Yeah. Um, but I think this is the problem isn't it? It's if you, if you're, you know, running a small business, even running like a medium business, if you don't know somebody who knows a fantastically reliable web agency or whatever, how are you going to find them? That's the thing. Because everybody and their grandmother pretends to be that reliable, safe pair of hands. I mean, I think it's one of those kind of marketing cliches, isn't it, that, you know, we're the ones you can trust. Everybody else is bad, but not us. Yeah. Kind of in this awful situation where you're kind of shopping around for a reliable provider and that's all you're met with.
Well, if you look at a lot of websites, I mean, they've nailed it because all they do is to say like, we are trustworthy and reliable and we put customer care first.
So, well.
You don't have to find out because they've told you. They've told you that they do that.
If only it was ever true.
I know. Yeah. I think it's funny when businesses do that on their website. You know, we really care what as opposed to all your competitors who actually don't sort of thing.
It reminds me when I was in year six, we had a new teacher and the first thing she did was write on the board that she was it was a white board, not a blackboard. Um, I don't know why I nearly said blackboard. Um. Oh yeah, I am fair. Um, and that was, you know, she was the worst, most kind of petty, horrible, unfair teacher I'd ever had. Um, and it's just like, if you have to say it out loud or write it on your whiteboard or plaster it over the front of your website, eh, it's probably not true. And B, it just shouldn't need to be said.
Really at risk of repeating myself because I know I am. But my favourite on that score is people who tell you they're perfectionists. Yes. They never are.
Yeah. Because the perfectionist is busy in his bedroom trying to find the perfect way of seeing.
What they're really saying when they say, oh, I'm a perfectionist.
I don't want you to notice my mistakes.
No, no, they're saying I'm a dickhead. They don't realise. They're saying that if they were perfectionists, they wouldn't tell you.
So if you're I mean, if you put yourself in the mindset of somebody who sells, I don't know, motors or whatever, widgets is our favorite, isn't it? And you're kind of looking around for this trustworthy and reliable partner that you can just kind of throw money at and trust them to keep your website up and running. I guess that's the first thing that I think most people struggle with, isn't it is actually differentiating between the scores of people who are offering something and can't deliver it, and the people who are actually capable of delivering it. And I don't know what the answer is. I don't know if there is a good way of finding those people.
Well, okay, so here's here's a way forward. Um, first of all, you do some research so you find some businesses that look like likely candidates have a chat with them. You know, you can just send them an email and say, how much do you charge for? Send me a price for. Send me a quote for.
Mhm.
Much better to have a chat if we get an enquiry. The first thing I do is say, yeah, when would you like to have a chat? And if they're like, no, no, no, no, just send me a price. It's like, no, no, not happening. Um, so I think.
That's just transactional. Then that relationship isn't what they're looking for is somebody that they can point the finger at and say, oh, I paid you two hundred pounds and now it's broken. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. But not only that, you know, if you take that very vendor esque approach to this stuff, it's not going to work out well. So I think doing that have some conversations. If you get a good a good vibe from an agency, then check out some references. Can we speak to some of your customers? We would always encourage anyone thinking about using Red evolution to speak to some of our customers. So speak to some customers. And then even at that point, do what we would call a foot in the door project. Just just something very small. We've got, we've got this, this problem. Can you go and fix it? See how they fix it, see how it goes, see how it's like.
To work with.
Yeah, exactly. That kind of thing. Um, but it all comes down to all of those things are how you start to build trust. You can't unless you get a referral. So if I referred, you say as I did, but it's not that handy for you. But I referred you to the garage I mentioned before dinner garage. Now, if you'd gone there, you'd have had fantastic service. You can you can immediately trust them because I've used them for years, trust them implicitly, implicitly know them really well. And I'm saying to you, look, just trust them. They're fine.
Absolutely.
So if you can find that, if you can speak to somebody you meet at a business network and they've got a really good going relationship with their agency and trust them and have had great results from them, etc., then yeah, you just hit the ground running. I mean, you might still find that they don't quite work out for you because of a personality clash or something.
But it's a good start.
It's a good start. But if that isn't there then just start to build the trust. Um, one of the things that we insist on with, with customers is that we meet them regularly. So if they're, if we're on a monthly retainer, and let's face it, we've got customers who've been on monthly retainer now for four years. Yeah, but we still want to meet them every week if we can. But every two weeks if it has to be. But no more than that. Because we want them to be involved as much as they can. They've got time. They haven't got all the time in the world. They've got other things, other priorities, which is why they've got us in in the first place. But we want them to know what we're doing, understand what we're doing, why we're doing it, what the results have been or what the results haven't been. Sometimes you have those difficult conversations. This campaign didn't work very well. Um, but those regular touch points is the key. I mean, if I look over the last seventeen, eighteen years that we've been running this business, maybe more, um, I think to myself, whenever it's gone wrong, it's when there's been two or three months where they've been paying us. We've been doing stuff, but there's been no communication. And then suddenly they go, what exactly are you guys doing?
Sure. And then even though we have been doing stuff, it's, you know, you still kind of battling the uphill battle there. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Do you think without kind of turning this into a, a whinge or a preach, do you think there's something to the idea that when you're engaging with agencies, a lot of the time you kind of get out what you put in. Like, I know there'll be a lot of people listening to this who have worked with agencies like that in the past where like, there's been no communication and they've gone to them and they said, you know, where are we with this? This isn't working out, blah, blah, blah. And everything's gone sour very quickly. But do you think there's something to the idea that if you're going to work with an agency, yes, you have to look for things in them that you can trust, but you also have to just trust them and engage with them and try and kind of work. Because if you do and you, you know, when people trust us and they engage with us and they're excited and they're enthusiastic and they give us interesting things to do, they get a lot more out of that relationship, right?
Yeah, one hundred percent. And I think they get a lot more out of it because we put a lot more into it. Yeah. They're engaged. They trust us. And we I think more than any other customers, those are the ones where you just overdeliver. Yeah. You just have such a great relationship. You think, look, we need to do this thing. It's going to go over budget for this month. If we do it. And we're like, look, we've got capacity. Just do it. They're a great customer. Let's just look after them.
Whereas the ones that kind of have that kind of transactional approach, they're like, right, I'm gonna pay you six hundred quid to do that. You'll do that six hundred quid work and then stop instantly because that's.
Yeah, you know, like, um, like, like with the guys down in Bristol, um, they came to us, James came to us and had a very specific request that was not directly related to the business. And he was like, could you help me out? I need this thing doing and like, I'll pay you. I'll pay you. You know, we did it. We nailed it. We did a fantastic job for him. We're not billing him for that. It's just a, it's just a value add because we've got such a great relationship with them. But that isn't that is an interesting one without, you know, getting into who the business are. Um, because James in Bristol doesn't really narrow it down does it, you know, so without, without going into any more detail, you know, the guys, the guys down in Bristol had had not a great relationship with their previous agents. They came and they came to us like they didn't trust. They'd found us in Google. They were like, can we trust these guys? They were very like, we want to know exactly what you're doing. What would you do about this? And it took a while to get to the point where we're now like powering through work for them, getting great results, and they just totally trust us. And in fact, they've have another business. They came to us and said, look, can you do some branding and development work on this business as well? And it's fantastic.
Well, the relationship is completely different now, isn't it? And it is much more kind of like they're much more involved as well and kind of excited about where things are going. And, you know, they had all that energy. They just weren't bringing it to the table because they'd been stung in the past. But I think the problem is we do also have or have had clients in the past who have never quite gotten over that. And you always end up in that kind of weird trap where you're just kind of servicing the retainer instead of helping a client grow.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, how do we, how do we normally, um, look at situations where people come to us and they've had bad experiences. If you think about search engine optimisation, SEO, nearly everyone that comes to us who's looking for SEO has had.
A bad.
Experience in the past. Yeah, usually because they were spending thirty bob a month and didn't and wondered why they weren't number one in Google for car insurance or something, you know? So it's sometimes not entirely the fault of whoever they were using that they had very unrealistic expectations against the budget. Sure. But, um, how do we how do we help customers? Because it's in our interests to help them build that trust as quickly as possible and show them because, I mean, we could go the other way. We could say, hey, just wait a minute. All that stuff that happened to you in the past, not our fault, not our problem. It could be really kind of officious about it because it isn't. We're not responsible for the sins of our.
But it is a it is a like you say. Well, first of all, you close the door on a lot of client relationships like that because a lot of people come to the table with that baggage. Right. And I guess the second thing is like the, the, the danger, I guess there is that what you were kind of suggesting before about do like a foot in the door project doesn't always work so well with SEO, right? Because it's not quick to generate results. So I think the place we always kind of, or that I always fall back to is like, educate, right? So like with the guys we're talking about in Bristol, for example, it was sitting down and explaining to them, you know, this is what we think needs to be done and this is why and going through the whole process, explaining the mechanics behind it and just being really transparent about what we actually do and why it works and how it all kind of fits together. And luckily, you know, they were engaged with that. They responded well to that. They were like, all right, that makes a ton of sense. We'll give it six to twelve months and see what happens sort of thing. By which point you can kind of deliver results and see that it's working. So it's all fine. The problem comes, I guess, when people don't want to be educated or don't want to kind of invest in that and aren't interested, and they're just like, no, just get me results, you know? And I don't know, like, I don't know, maybe it's a quite a negative outlook on the whole thing. But sometimes I think some of those battles you just can't win anymore. And it's almost not really worth engaging.
Yeah. So we're seeing that that quite rightly results help to build trust. But some aspects of digital marketing don't yield results. Um, with alacrity, you might say.
Yeah. I mean, some don't even ever really, um, yield kind of tangible results. I mean, I'm thinking about things like brand building and stuff like that. This is still like really important stuff for like, you know, we might spend ages getting the storytelling on someone's website spot on and you're not going to be able to say, oh, that generated X amount of revenue. So if there's, if they're basing their trust entirely on, oh, I want to see concrete results. Like, yeah, I don't think that's a sensible place to be really.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think, do you think in the digital space that some aspects of it can be transactional?
Yeah.
Which bits? Link building, for example. That could be transactional couldn't it?
Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of it that because because I think a lot of what we do in digital marketing, it requires quite a lot of buy in from the client. There are. But then there are things that you can purely just kind of like do on your own without their involvement, like link building. And I guess there's no reason for that not to be transactional. I guess to a certain degree, like the technical work, like I can see a situation where, where in somebody's got a really slow website and they just go to somebody and say, right, I'm going to give you two grand to speed my website up. And that could be purely transactional. But I think the overwhelming majority of the work that really yields the good results can't be really the strategy, the the content writing.
Yeah. And while I was down in Wales, I had a conversation with a potential customer who very quickly didn't become a customer. Um, it was an interesting conversation because interesting business, um, in the, in the IT field came from a banking IT background. So we're talking like fifteen hundred quid a day type people. Those, those consultants, um, if you can call them that, you know, they charge, you know, a money, a money situation and, and did a lot of work for banks and things like that. And he, and he had a website that he'd built himself using Wix. The business was now at ten people. The Wix website wasn't awful. I mean, it did some stupid things. Like it had a slideshow on it and you literally couldn't read what he'd said before the slideshow moved on, which is really irritating. And that's another reason why slideshows suck. Um, which is what the research shows. But it was a great conversation, very switched on guy. Clearly a very bright guy. Um, and so I went away and just quickly put together, you know, I think it was like three grand for design and messaging, three for grand for design and messaging. Then he wanted the site in HubSpot. So then there'll be a custom HubSpot CMS build plus putting the content in, plus optimising it and everything else, the whole thing. We kind of did it on the, on the to get to MVP, minimum viable product. Really, uh, I think we quoted about nine grand and he came back to me quite quickly and just said, look, I'm not going to waste any more of your time. He said, I didn't know what this, what this. I didn't know what to expect cost wise, but it was nothing like that. It's like, it's like a multi-million pound business and spending nine grand on branding, messaging, website design, build, optimisation. So I just don't know. I mean, is that because of the whole because he built his website in Wix and he'd done it in a day and, you know, it looked like it. But anyway, you know, it kind of it sets expectation really, really low. And that side of the business has become transactional there. Got there in the end.
Yeah, definitely. I'm trying to think of like the how I want to kind of relate this. Like I think it's like with cars, isn't it? When I was buying my car, I had a budget in mind.
They always get back to cars.
All right then I'll try something.
No, go for it. Cars. Go for it, go for it. It's fine.
But yeah, you know, you have a budget in mind because you can go on AutoTrader and you can see this is the range, right? Yeah. But the problem is with like what we do, especially with like the web stuff is like the range is like five pounds to five million pounds right there. There are agencies out there, agencies in inverted commas that will throw you up a website for, you know, twenty quid or whatever you can find behind the couch. And then there are people out there charging like hundreds of thousands of pounds. And I think the problem that people face is that, you know, trying to trying to differentiate where is the real value, you know, where is the price at which you actually start to get real websites is like really difficult. Like I do feel for these people because like I say, if you head on Google and you say, how much did it cost to build a website or blog post? Like never spend more than five hundred pounds on your first website. And, you know, it's, it's hard to kind of navigate that world. I think.
Um, just to keep with the car analogy a little bit in the car world, um, you pay a premium for a car that's got, well, can you call it provenance? Good history. Yeah. So say for example, you know, we've got a customer who primarily do classic Aston Martins, but they also service some models. And you know, the more I spend around, you know, with that customer, you look around, you think, well, I think I said to you in the past, you know, for the money I could sell the GTI for. Yeah, I could buy a two thousand and six ish vantage. You know, I might have to chuck a little bit of money in, but I could have like, wait, what? I me daft lad from Barrow could have an Aston Martin Vantage. Well, yeah, for about twenty five, thirty grand. You can get quite a nice looking vantage. So you can get a two thousand and six Aston Martin Vantage for, say, twenty five thousand. You can get a two thousand and six Aston Martin Vantage for forty thousand. It's the same car. What's the difference? Well, I'll tell you what the difference is. Who serviced it, what mileage has it done, what conditions it in, etc. so.
Whether.
It's the same car.
Doing donuts in a car park.
Can be wildly different. But I guess I don't know where we're going with this because it's wandering around a little bit. But we're talking about this idea of has the web design side of things become transactional because of tools like HubSpot and tools like Wix and tools like clink, Clank, clank, clank, clank behind me. Use that.
It's Julie.
Oh, Julie. Hello. I must get some quieter stairs.
I'm sure you're doing a perfectly good job.
Yeah, nobody heard any of that.
You must get some quiet stairs.
Um, yeah, it's, um. It's maybe that side of the business has become a bit transactional. And, you know, that going back to our idea of having a trusted agency, looking after you, etc. so just let me finish on this point because I was doing a presentation which I really enjoyed, uh, for business gateway, um, what they called the what's the elevator? Elevator? Yeah. So I was doing a presentation for them on Tuesday this week. There was about twenty business people there, predominantly quite young business people, predominantly women and not all. Um, great session. Um, and when I was doing some of the research for that, I was kind of because it was how to generate business from your website was the subject of the, of the talk.
And we talk about here.
It's all we talk about here, really? That's right.
That's all we know.
And I was like, well, yeah, I mean, can you generate good business from an off the peg? Everything done for you, as Neil Patel calls it, website. And it was interesting that some of the gurus in the space, like Neil, great to get Neil on the show. I wonder if he'd come on. But people like Neil, um, Neil, if you're listening, give us a call. You won't be.
Listening. sincerely.
Um, people like Neil, you know, in his fantastic article, he'd written around the subject of how to generate leads from your website, he basically said like, if you just get an off the shelf website, um, it's just not going to work, you know? Yeah. And I don't know, I mean, I don't know how skilled most people are who are time poor rushing, trying to find a solution to a problem. Are they really, is it like a subconscious thing? They land on a website and they go and it and it just doesn't. Well, to go back to what I was saying earlier, it doesn't have the wow factor.
The thing is, I think yeah, I think part of the problem with this is that you can you can make a ten pound Wix website sing. You can and you can luck out too.
Are we talking sing aesthetically or sing lead generation?
Well, as in appeal to your audience, resonate with people, make them think, oh shit, I want to get in touch with those people. Yeah, yeah. Um, I think you can do that. And I think you can luck out too. And I think, you know, you can be in a market where the audience isn't particularly discerning and you can slap something up and suddenly you'll get enquiries. I think the problem is that those kind of false positives and those stories about that happening online kind of people into a false sense of security. That can happen, but it probably won't. Right. And it just goes back to what we were saying at the very beginning of this podcast, which is that when you buy an agency to, to build your website or whatever, when you pay somebody to build your website, you're not really paying for the architecture or the technology, you're paying for the expertise, right? You're paying for somebody to sit there and maximise your chances of that website being a success. And then I think it's just a question of like, the more you pay, like with anything in life, the more you pay, the more likely you are to be getting the kind of expertise that is actually going to work for you. And the point of it is that it's all kind of a little bit chance based in a way. But, you know, if you don't spend the money and you just kind of like faff about at the lower end with a kind of two thousand pound budget for your website, you're not going to be paying the kind of people who have the expertise to actually make it work for you, because if they could make it work for you, they would be charging twenty grand for that website. That's my perspective. And maybe that's a little strong, but.
No, I don't think it's strong. And I don't think you're saying and I don't think we're saying that there aren't good people out there who don't charge enough.
There are people out there who are still on their way up. And if you're lucky enough to to catch them while they're at the beginning of their careers or while their business is growing or whatever. Yeah, they'll charge you less to deliver much more. But the thing is that ultimately, anybody who can do that will eventually end up like we have. I mean, you know, I'm sure when we started out, we didn't charge as much as we do now for websites or we didn't really know the value of what we did because we didn't know that we could consistently deliver it. But as soon as agencies or freelancers or whatever find out though, actually, I'm really good at building websites. I can build really good websites. They will adjust their pricing accordingly. So the chances of you going out and finding somebody for two grand that's actually capable is very low. Whereas at the upper end, you know, when you're paying twenty grand, chances are that you are going to be paying people who have got there because they've got a proven track record and know what they're doing.
What are. As a business owner, what am I going to get working with an agency like Red evolution or some of the other great agencies that are around? Plenty of them. Plenty of us. What am I going to get that I'm not going to get? Working with a freelance designer who can build WordPress websites.
When I see, I don't know, I might be off base here, but I think it's like when we build a website and we go through all the work of kind of making it, you know, researching what an audience wants, building designs around that, building the website. If it doesn't work, and somebody comes back to us and said, you know, look, we've launched a new website and it isn't having the results that that we thought it would have. We don't turn around and say, well, sorry, you know, we only charge you five grand for this. We can't really afford to keep helping you. We are kind of like committed to that project to, to kind of we buy into it. Right. And I think that is honestly what you're getting when you when you work with a bigger agency and you pay more money is you're getting the kind of emotional and professional buy in of those people. They are going to help you do what is right for your business. Hopefully.
Are you getting expertise that you simply couldn't afford to hire as a, as an, as an employee? I mean, is that one of the things that's happening?
I think so, yeah. You're getting a massive cost saving, right? Because if you go out and try and hire a dev to build one website, you're going to be. Yeah, yeah. It just doesn't work, does it? You can't do it.
That's right. So when I was, um, when I did that talk earlier this week, um, and Alex and I are available if you would like anyone to come and do a talk.
I do like doing a good talk.
Generating business from websites, as you know from the podcast. That's what we do. That's what we know about, um, what was pretty astonishing was I think they were maybe expecting me to talk about design and whether to use WordPress or Wix and that sort of thing. And we did touch on near the end. We did touch on, um, on technologies and things like that, but it was a complete surprise to them and they took copious notes and speaking in the networking afterwards, they were like, oh my God, my to do list is huge. After listening to all that and they were very engaged. I mean, I spoke for about an hour, including taking questions and having discussions with the group and everything else. It was really good. They were really interactive and up for it. Um, but I know that people went away from it thinking completely differently than they did when they arrived with, with maybe one exception of somebody who was kind of in the space. You know, I don't really know why she bothered going. I mean, she, you know, she seemed pretty switched on and she was in the space. And so whether she, she may have picked up some bits and bobs, she certainly contributed well to the discussion. So it was great that she was there. But um, I think because a lot of them were small businesses, they're not engaged with an agency. And so they just hadn't even started to think about their website and everything in the right way.
I think it's that weird thing, isn't it? Like we were talking earlier about like, which platform to pick is somewhere that like loads of people get stuck. And if you go online, there's like reams of content dedicated to like WordPress or HubSpot or like, you know, Joomla or whatever. But it's like, none of that stuff's really important when you've been doing this for like, you have like twenty odd, thirty odd years, whatever. Yeah. And, you know, you start to realise that actually all the stuff that makes a difference between a successful website and an unsuccessful website is in the work. After that, it's not about picking the right platform stuff.
That's why we talk about MVP, minimum viable product, get something great up as quickly as possible. There's your starting point.
The hard work is in like refining that and getting to the point where it actually works for you, but people are just kind of stuck at the very beginning of the process, thinking that these decisions are way more important than they really are and just kind of stalling their project.
Well, back to that project that I mentioned, I'm clearly bitter about that. We didn't we didn't.
Get.
I mean, they're going to go away, hire a design focused agency or person, and they're going to build what they hope will be a website that's got the wow factor and it's not going to wow anybody because if they're not building it from. Like, who are our customers? What problems are they trying to solve? How do we get in front of them? What are they searching for? Point of view, which we've gone on and on about over the last seventy three episodes, seventy four episodes. You know, they're just wasting their time and they're going to go, they're going to potentially because they said, oh, we'll come to you for the marketing. So they're going to come to us and we're going to go, well, they're going.
To give somebody.
Else the website you need. You know, we will build a website, the website that you need. And it's like, it's so frustrating to, to be once again, potentially working with a business who've got spent a lot of money potentially on a website.
That doesn't work isn't they.
Might like it, but it's not the site they need.
But this is, and I think, you know, we've probably said it on here before, and it's certainly a drum that I love to beat. But this is the principal reason I always say you should never really pay a web design agency that isn't also a marketing agency, because your website is primarily there to talk to customers and to persuade them. It's a means of communication. It's not a pretty brochure, and so many people go into it with this idea like it has to look really nice. And it does. Don't get me wrong. But it also has to do all the other stuff and people just don't pay any attention.
Yeah. Well, I think the the reason for that is as, as the audience on Tuesday showed, they, they were writing copious notes and, and had very long to do lists at the end of the session. Um, and the reason for that is that making a website add value to the business, add value to the bottom line, top line, whatever, generate enquiries. Um, and, and hopefully help to convert them as well. It's hard.
Yeah, it really is. Yeah.
Designing a great looking website, funnily enough isn't. Now that's not to decry the work of like, like people like our guys Rob and Diane and designers. It's not to say that their work isn't important. Of course it is. But to me, if you work with an agency, you know your website is going to look great. Whether or not it's got that all important wow factor, I don't know. It will have the wow factor that your audience needs. Let's say, let's put it that way. But it's it's almost the easy bit. And I mean, that's why template websites. That's why sites like squarespace, Wix, HubSpot allow you to go click, use that template, put your content in. And within a day you've got what looks like a very nice website. But that's how easy the design is, by the way.
But the idea and the key to those things is the people who actually make them work. Don't just sit there and say, okay, that's my website done by, you know, like they're then they're kind of like developing, improving, testing different ideas. Like, yeah, this is exactly it. It's just not, it's not a set and forget thing. And like you say, the kind of the baseline, the foundation is my website must look pretty. That's fine. That's a given. You'll get that working with small freelancers or massive agencies. The thing is, what comes after is what's actually going to make the difference.
Yeah. For us, um, going back to this idea of the ongoing help we have, I guess, broadly speaking, two types of customers, some customers, users as a website management company. Yeah. So we make sure their tech is up to date. The software's up to date. We make changes to the website website as and when they request it, they might consult with us when they want to introduce some different functionality. But in between that, they're adding content themselves and doing.
A lot of them. A lot of the clients that we have like that do have their own very well developed kind of in-house marketing teams as well, don't we?
And they just want a, they almost want a safe pair of hands to look after the technical aspects that they they don't have the expertise to do, whereas other customers are. We just do everything. They don't touch their website. In fact, we have it, you know, with with the tech stack that we use, they can't even go in and update it if they wanted to until we, you know, un un un decoupled it, if you like, from our dev stack, uh, because they just never need to do that. They don't, they don't want to do that. You know, they really want us to deal with everything.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think ultimately that is probably, I would say where we had the most value, right, is where we're kind of given free rein to not just kind of do what you tell us to do, but to actually go out and kind of develop the ideas and build the strategies and yeah, yeah.
Okay. Um, yeah, maybe we've, maybe we've covered that off. Um, this idea of in, in the twenty first century, as we record this September twenty twenty two, you know, it's, it's very unusual for a business of any size not to need some. That's Dolly Parton just walked past, um, not to need some expertise that's on tap. Yeah. And to get that, you either hire in-house or you tie up with a team externally, like, you know, as, as in an agency and you need to then build trust. And if you do that, you will get way more value than whatever the financial investment is. Yeah. People, you know, the agencies, not just us, become invested in your business. They want you to succeed. They want to play a part in helping you succeed, even as we would do if you decided you were at a point where we want to actually get some in-house expertise as well, or even instead of we would help them find the right people. You know, we would do we do genuinely care.
You're much more, I think with those with those people, you are much more invested in the success of their business than in the continuation of a three or four grand a month retainer. Right. That's just yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Good. Okay. Um, you've been listening to Alex and Dave. Dave and Alex on Digital Marketing From The Coalface. You can find us at from the coalface dot com, which is where the podcast lives or where we live at red evolution dot com. If you've got any questions or you'd like to come on the show, just get in touch. We'd love to hear from you. We have got a few enquiries from people who would like to come on the show. Um, so we'll, we'll have a look at those and see if any of those look like they might add some value to our listeners. Um, be great to get some more local people on the show. Make be nice. Um, again, Neil Patel, if you're listening, I'd love to get you on the show. Um, other than that, anything else to cover off today?
No, I think that's everything from me.
I'll do that.