A Fast Paced Lead Generation & SEO Recap – Episode 84

Just to finish off the SEO piece, we've talked about keyword research that leads us on to creating the right content that people are looking for so that we get found. We're talking about how we build up the authority of our website, so that we've got an increased chance of appearing in a search result. And then just the last thing we'll touch on is technical SEO, making sure your website actually works properly.

Just making sure all the foundation is in place for your website to work well and be very clear to Google.

Moving on to the whole lead gen bit, because a lot of people will think, right? So I get my SEO right. I invest time, effort, energy into making sure people find the website. So when they find it, they're gonna ring me, they're gonna fill in a web form, they're going to jump on a web chat. And that isn't the case, is it?

Yeah, that's exactly it. You've got people into your shop, but actually persuading them to buy something is a completely different ball game. Right?

Okay. Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Um, the first full week of twenty twenty three. Almost finished. Good week Alex.

Yeah, yeah. Like you say, easing back in. That's right. Yeah. But yeah.

We've been, uh, we've had a lot of enquiries this week. Um, and we've landed a new customer, which is lovely. Um, but we've also had some, you know, decent conversations with people that have ended with. Oh, um, I didn't know it would cost that much kind of thing. Um, and that's, that's obviously related to not fully understanding what they need. So what we thought we'd do with this, um, podcast today, episode eighty four is, um, talk about SEO and lead generation of SEO and lead generation explained. And that's Karen using the printer and now clomping around the room in the background. So sorry about that, but it is digital marketing from the coalface. So it's okay that there's background noise going on. It's not a problem. Don't worry about it.

Karen.

Yeah. It's not really an issue. Um, so SEO and lead generation explained, um, I am actually in the process of rewriting an old blog post as part of our content cleanup. Um, and it was kind of about this subject, but I'm repurposing it and making it very much about this subject because although we've covered it a lot over the, over the more than a year now that we've been doing the podcast, um, I think it's always worth now and again, just kind of going over some of the basics again to give people a feel because I don't know if you were involved, it was me and Rob that were involved in one of them. One of the conversations that we had with a potential new customer, and it was very clear that they thought this stuff should be quick, easy and cheap. And then but, but if you step back from that and think, what happens if you get search engine optimisation and lead generation working properly, it is phenomenally powerful. And so why would it be quick, easy and cheap? You know, so I don't I don't I kind of don't get that. But that's not to say that I'm being cynical about people not understanding what things cost, because there's plenty of things in this world that I have no idea why they cost what.

They cost day. Couldn't we?

Yeah, totally. So, um, what, what I think we need to do maybe is just kind of very big picture overview of SEO. Uh, same with lead generation. And then just see where we go with this general chat and the purpose of this, uh, podcast for anyone listening is to at least give you a solid idea of the job in hand, whether or not you haven't started it yet, actually using your website to generate business, or whether you're on that journey and hitting a few road bumps. I started hitting a few bumps in the road.

And so I think, yeah, I think the other thing that's quite important to pick up on is there is there is a real importance to stressing the fact that SEO is a lead gen tactic, right? I think that's something that people really overlook. I mean, one of the things that I notice in conversations quite a lot is that people are saying, oh, I ought to do SEO, or I know I should be doing SEO, but haven't necessarily joined the dots up and realised that actually, you know, it's not something you do just for the hell of it. It's not something you do because you have to. It's something you do because it generates leads and works for your business. And I think maybe thinking about it in those terms is, is maybe part of the problem for a lot of people.

Yeah, I think so. Um, they, they may be, I don't know, I think if we were having this conversation five or six years ago, then I think SEO was very much misunderstood. Uh, I think that's less so now. I think, I think more people now kind of get the, can I use the word complexity? Because I'm always quick to say that search engine optimisation isn't necessarily particularly complex.

Complex.

In the grand scheme of things, but it seems to be misunderstood. Still, it seems, it seems to be that, you know, going over the basics again probably does make sense.

Yeah, I think so. And like I say, I think a lot of people do get really caught up in like the idea of, you know, getting traffic for their business or climbing the rankings rather than actually, you know, is it generating leads? Is it making me money? I mean, at the end of the day, some people talk about SEO still as like an overhead as a cost, but it's not. It's an investment ultimately.

So can we can we say that, broadly speaking in a nutshell, um, SEO is pretty much any activity designed to improve the chances of pages from your website appearing high enough in a specific Google search to be seen. Yeah. In a nutshell. Simple. So it's making sure when people are looking for stuff, whether that's services or products or just generally information that they find you. So anything you're doing to improve the chances of them finding you can, broadly speaking, come under the auspices of search engine optimisation or SEO.

Yeah, one hundred percent.

And is it also fair to say that this type of work is often dismissed as alchemy.

Yeah. Is it that age old problem that we. It's a mystical, dark art that you can't understand the secrets of. And it's really not, is it? I mean, ultimately it falls into a couple of very distinct buckets. And it's you know, there are processes and, and tools involved, but they're not particularly complicated.

No. Okay. So let's just break them down. And we're not going to go into great detail with this. We're just trying to give you, you know, broadly, broadly speaking, you know, how you go about getting more people looking at pages on your website, which we're calling search engine optimisation. So generally starts with keyword research pretty much.

Yeah.

I mean, you need an overarching strategy, don't you? You need, you need an overarching strategy. You need to understand the marketplace. You need to understand how competitive it is. You need to understand, you know, just how difficult it's going to be in your particular field to be seen. And then your strategy has to be adapted to that. So very simple example and I've used it before. Apologies for that. But if you sell car insurance, your strategy can't be. We're going to be number one in Google for car insurance because as a brand, as a brand new business or a small business, you're never going to achieve that. But you might figure out that there are niches within that market where there are definitely some opportunities. You wanted to say something about that, right?

So that's the main thing about keyword research. I think a lot of people think of it as like, right, I've got to find the best keywords in my niche or my industry. I've got to find out what people are really searching for. I think the actual exercise is find the keywords that you are likely to be able to rank for and that are going to drive the type of customers you actually want, which is a completely different thing, really.

Okay, so there's lots of tools, um, Google's keyword planner, search engine, sorry, SEMrush, um, h refs. I mean, the list goes on. If you Google something like keyword research tools, you'll find loads of them.

It's interesting though, isn't it, because I only ever find myself using one or two nowadays. Yeah. Like, like we have this abundance of tools and it's very confusing. Like if you go out and look for like guides to keyword research, people will list like ten or twenty tools. I think realistically, you only really need a couple. You only really need like SEMrush and keyword planner or, you know, a paid tool and a free one to compare the data to, to make sure it's all relatively accurate.

Well, I mean, from a totally free point of view, if you hook your website up to Google Search Console, it'll tell you all the keywords that you currently rank for, including the ones that you don't rank very well for. And they themselves are will, might, will probably give you enough in terms of, um, seed seed keywords, starting positions to do all of the content that you need in order to dramatically increase your traffic. If you're kind of on page two or page three for a specific keyword, search console will tell you that and it'll tell you how many people are currently, you know, I'll give you some, some idea of how popular that keyword is. And so you can even just use Google Search Console, which is totally free to figure out. You can stuff like that.

Yeah. with the slight caveat, I guess that if you've got your search engine, your current search engine optimisation is truly horrible. It won't actually, if you're not ranking for anything relevant, it won't help.

It's probably right. I think as you as your site improves the key word there, sorry, the search console becomes very useful because your content is now targeting the right keywords, the right people. It's the right kind of content. And if it's still not quite cutting it, you'll get lots of great ideas of how you could either improve existing content or write new content that nobody else is particularly competing for.

And it's a really interesting point, right? Without getting too much into the weeds, I mean, one of the things that I notice about our content strategy, where we've been going through and doing this whole blog content refresh, is that it's actually better for us to use Search Console data than the data from those third party tools, because we have that kind of wealth of information. And also critically, because the search, the keyword research tools that you find online are not actually that accurate, especially when it comes to really tiny searches. I mean, we often find things that keyword planner says don't bother trying to advertise on or write for are actually driving kind of hundreds or even thousands of visits to our website. So there's a real value to moving towards that model of using Search Console when you can.

Yeah. That's right. Um, okay. So we've kind of understood by doing some keyword research, what our ideal customers are looking for, what they're actually typing into the search engines, Google, Bing, etc.. I'm seeing quite a few quite, I'm seeing an increase in traffic to our site from, from Bing. Uh, and I have heard people before saying things like in the B2B space, they seem to get better quality enquiries, etc. from people who've come to their site from Bing. I have no idea why that would be the case. If anyone does know, feel free to contact us at fromthecoalface.com.

I could hazard a guess. It's probably something to do with the fact that a lot of larger organisations just use Microsoft tools. Of course, straight out of the box.

They kind of force people to to use Bing inside their organisation, maybe. Okay. So content what do we mean by content?

I just you just go on ChatGPT now. Don't you basically type in, write me an article about whatever you're trying to rank for. No, I mean, yeah, so after you've done your keyword research, the next most important thing is obviously to actually get some content on your site that talks about those keywords. Yeah. Critically, I guess this is the bit that takes the most time, right? This is the bit where you want to invest most of the time and energy.

That's right. And I think this is the bit that people really struggle with. Nobody likes well, nobody likes writing. You like writing? I like writing, but a lot of people don't like writing. Businesses find it hard to, um, to write about either what they offer or more importantly, write with authority. Um, on the subjects around what they offer in order to, you know, have, give people something meaningful, interesting to read, you know, thought leadership. Um, again, one of the conversations we had this week with a really nice guy, small business, um, you know, we started talking about content and he said, oh, basically I can just get people on Fiverr to, to, to sort of write, write me a bit of content and that he might find some somebody really good on Fiverr who will write them him some content. And he said, so basically, in order to get my website working, I just need to sort of like do that once a month and, and things will come good. Uh, and I said, yeah, they will. I said, they will come good in about five or six years time because it's at that, at that rate of at that run rate. Um, to use a cricket analogy, um, things are going to happen slowly. They might happen, but they will almost certainly happen quite slowly.

Plus I think it just goes back to that whole idea, like the whole premise for this podcast is about the idea that SEO is actually a lead gen tactic, right? If you can pay people on Fiverr to write you content that writes that ranks well in Google, that's all well and good, but that's only actually half the battle. And I think this is what a lot of businesses miss. It's like, this is not a game of like, how quickly can I rank something? It's a game of how quickly can I rank something that actually makes me money and nobody is gonna come and buy your product or service unless it's a, you know, a gimmicky ten pound watch or something on the basis of some content that's been written by somebody on Fiverr. Like it's just, you're just not going to be able to find freelance writers for, for cheap that are capable of persuading people that you're a decent prospect.

So what we're saying is don't pay lip service to content. Believe in it, invest in it, do it properly. And that will ultimately probably pay dividends. Yeah, probably.

Maybe. You know, we were having a conversation earlier this morning in the office, weren't we, about like the importance of competitor research and going and finding out what other people are writing on the subject, because ultimately your content is going to end up in a list of content, you know, rubbing shoulders with all these other bits. And if you've not gone away and done all that research and you don't know what other people are saying, how can you know that what you're saying is better or different or more interesting? If it's not something you can just rush? It's not a case of like, all right, I'll just write a thousand words on this. It's got to be the best thousand words you can write on it. Really?

Okay. So like you said, quite rightly pulling me back, that this isn't a podcast episode, just about SEO. It's about SEO, um, as a lead gen tactic. So just to, just to sort of get through the basics of SEO. So we've, we need to understand what our ideal customers are searching for. We need to look at what sort of content we're going to need to produce in order for us to be found when they carry out those searches. And we need our website to have authority. Now, this is the one that confuses a lot of people and they don't quite understand it. And let's just try and very quickly explain what what we mean by your website having some authority. It's probably the most challenging aspect of improving search rankings.

Yeah. I think like the only real analogy I think that's useful is the scientific articles one, right? It's like scientific papers are generally considered to be more reputable. The more often other people cite them. And Google thinks the same thing about websites.

It's where.

Their.

Their whole idea of the of the link based, you know, algorithm comes from, from academia. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So the more often people talk about link to your website, the more Google think, oh, hang on, this is a really good, authoritative, trustworthy website that everyone wants to talk about. And a critical aspect of this just based on a conversation me and you were having with someone yesterday, is that the quality of the websites that link to yours is actually the most important aspect. So you can have a website that is linked to by a thousand tiny websites that Google's never heard of, and that's okay. Or you can have a website where two or three big authoritative publications link to you. And that's probably a lot better. Realistically.

So this small business that we were speaking to yesterday have got a website that's got a grand total of six pages on it. It's a pretty awful website built on GoDaddy on for three hundred quid or something like that. Um, and.

It shouldn't work.

And, and absolutely shouldn't be a website that works. But when we looked at it, it's, it's authority, it's ability to rank its potential to rank was significant because the few links to it from other websites that it did have came from the University of Aberdeen. It came from the University of Edinburgh. I mean really authoritative websites, websites that Google trusts are linking to this website. So this little tiny website has got that trust. So this is why it's, it's, it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing to fake. There are people who will, for a fee, help you do it. Um, but it's, but it's a challenge. I mean, it sounds like a hackneyed thing to say, but if you've got great content that people love the, the chances of them linking to it increase and the chances of your authority improving increase. But it isn't, it's an absolute slog to get a website from having pretty much no authority to having the kind of authority that's going to mean it's got a chance of appearing in search results.

Yeah. I mean, there is no quick fix, really. I mean, I think one of the things that's quite interesting to me is that, you know, a year ago, everybody was talking about digital PR as the kind of fix for link building. Is that the new way to build links? And that seems to have died down quite a lot now. I mean, I think the truth is it's just really difficult. But also probably fundamentally, the most important aspect of this is getting your website out there, getting people to link to it, giving them reasons to link to it, really.

Getting, you know, getting links to your site that are actually half decent is expensive, you know? And I guess that's the one piece of advice would be if you're being offered links for a very small fee, like, you know, we can get you fifty links to your website for ninety nine dollars, then their chances are they're not going to work. There's a small chance they might actually hurt your website, but the the main thing is they almost certainly won't work. Um, yeah. You know, I think that goes without saying. So just to finish off the SEO piece, we've talked about keyword research that leads us on to creating the right content that people are looking for so that we get found. We're talking about how we build up the authority of our website so that we've got an increased chance of appearing in a search result. And then just the last thing we'll touch on is technical SEO, making sure your website actually works properly. And, you know, there are plenty of tools, free tools like, for example, the Google Lighthouse tool, which will analyse your website and tell you all the problems with it and tell you all the things that are wrong with it that you maybe need to fix. Some of them are easy to fix, some of them are virtually impossible to fix. Um, but making sure that your website isn't, although it might appear, you might say, well, I can see my website clearly works because there it is on the screen in front of me. But under the hood, there could be aspects of it that are broken and it just kind of gives, it gives out a signal that if this website's a bit broken and there's stuff not quite right, then it's going to be, you know, why would Google trust a website that's that's a bit broken. It kind of looks unloved. Is it really a credible resource?

Yeah. I mean, obviously we want to keep things entry level, but the other thing is like, it's just stuff like having proper robots.txt files and sitemaps and stuff like that, isn't it? It's just making sure all the foundation is in place for your website to work well and be very clear to Google, you know, this is what this page is about. This is what's going on. This is the structure of my website. This is what I like to talk about. Yeah. It's just make sure that it's clear and easy for Google to understand because ultimately Google's not that smart. It's not. We like to think it's kind of this omniscient thing, but it's just software at the end of the day, isn't it? So.

That's right. Yeah. That was almost straying off too far into geek land a little bit. I think out of the four people listening, there might only be three or even two of them left now. Alex so let's, let's try and steer away from that. No, I'm only joking. Um. Overall, um, doing all this stuff and getting it right, um, creates opportunities and hopefully, you know, by just talking through each of the, each of the different aspects of it. And we probably haven't, you know, there's other aspects of it we could, we could cover as well. We could get into all kinds of pseudoscience and things where SEO is concerned, but it takes effort, you know. And that's why, again, if you're looking for somebody to help you with it and they're offering to do it for a couple of hundred quid a month, you've got to ask yourself, well, realistically, what could they achieve for that sort of money? You know, the chances are not very much. So just just tread carefully when it comes to that. And that's not just because, you know, we do search engine optimisation here at Red evolution, which obviously we do. Um, and, you know, and we certainly don't charge two hundred quid a month for it. Um, but, you know, like I say, if you, if you do it right, bottom line, good SEO creates opportunities.

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I don't think it's self-promotional. I think it's just an important point to make, isn't it? Because one of the things we do run across a lot is people saying, oh, but so and so says they can do this for me for five hundred pounds a month or, you know, whatever. And I just don't think that's very realistic. Like you say, what you're what you're always essentially paying for, whether you're paying an agency or a freelancer is time, the time they're going to spend on, on your account optimising things for you. And ultimately, if not enough time is spent on it, you won't get the results. You'll just be in a place in a year's time where you're thinking, why did I bother? Yeah.

And we often say to customers, don't we, that their budget dictates, dictates the speed at which we can start to see results. If you spend a couple of grand a month, and we might start seeing some results in six or seven months, if you're spending significantly more than that or doing some sort of accelerator program where you chuck a decent amount of resource at something to move the dial quickly, then you'll see results, you know, quicker. So, so.

Yeah, critically though, I think, and I don't know where you sit on this, but I feel like you're right, the, the amount you spend dictates the cadence. But I feel like there's a threshold at which if you're spending less than kind of, you know, a couple of grand, you may just not ever see any results. And I don't know, like whether that's necessarily true, but I feel like a lot of the people who are doing the kind of the little itty bitty SEO for five hundred pounds a month are just probably going to be waiting several years before it actually benefits.

Well, that's one of the reasons we won't take on gigs at that level because we just, we're, you know, we're honest, we're honest people. And we'll say, you know, with that level of investment, um, the, um, progress will be slow, you'll get disappointed, we'll be disappointed. Nobody's going to win, uh, in that situation. So yeah, totally. I think you're right. So moving on to the whole lead gen bit because a lot of people will think, right? So I get my SEO right. I invest time, effort, energy into making sure people find the website. So when they find it, they're going to, they're going to ring me, they're going to fill in a web form, they're going to jump on a web chat. And that isn't the case, is it? The SEO is difficult and takes time. Um, but, but getting it right does not mean that you've solved the conundrum of using your website as a lead gen tool.

Yeah, that's exactly it. You've got people into your shop, but actually persuading them to buy something is a completely different ballgame. Right. And I honestly think this is why the internet's so full of rubbish content now, because people just completely forgot about this bit of the equation. It's like, how can I write something that gets me traffic? It's like, well, that's fine, that's easy, but how can you then turn that traffic into paying customers? That's the the science bit really, isn't it?

I mean, yeah, the only thing I would take issue with with there is that actually it is hard to get the traffic. I don't think it is easy to write content and get people looking at your website, which means that if you manage to get that done, then for goodness sake, get the next bit right, because.

Otherwise.

The really difficult bit is now has now been wasted. So, um, what we're not going to do in this podcast, and we might do it in another podcast is talk about lead nurturing. So if you do manage to engage with somebody, somebody finds you online and they engage with you and you have a good conversation with them, what you how you then move them from being a prospect into being, um, a customer is, is not what we're going to cover here. So what we're really doing here when we're talking about lead gen is, um, if the content they find is, is, is suitable, how do we make them do something as a result of.

The conversation, right?

Effectively, I mean, we'll start that conversation with a very simple question. And it's very difficult when we have conversations with potential new customers to cover this off. But ask yourself the question and be honest with you, with yourself. Is your website credible? If people land on your website because you've done your SEO really well, and you've done that really difficult piece of work and you've got them looking at your website, you know, are they going to do something? Is your website credible? Will it engage them? I was amazed to see that most people make a decision, according to the source. I found when I was writing the blog post, within fifty milliseconds, people have looked at it, but within fifty milliseconds, they've decided whether or not just to hit the back button or whether or not they in quotes like you or don't like you kind of thing, trust you, don't trust you, what do you think?

It's a really tricky one, this because it's so subjective, but I feel like it's also quite straightforward in the sense that you can show somebody a web page, and they will very quickly be able to say, yeah, that looks trustworthy or no, that looks shit. And I think that's probably the best way to do it right, is just to like, not you, you are way too close to your own website to say, you know, whether or not it's trustworthy or whatever, but just show it to some people, show it to friends, show it to family. Say, would you buy from this website? Would you trust this website? And most people can tell you almost instantly, and they might not be able to explain why, but that at least will tell you whether or not you're in a good kind of starting place for.

Can I, can I, can I take issue again with something that you said, um, don't ask your friends and family.

You don't have to ask permission.

Yeah. No, but don't ask your friends and family because there are a number of times we've had those tricky conversations with people and said, look, you know, if you look at if you look at your market, your website is, is very poor in comparison to the other websites people are going to find when they're looking for product or service A, B, C, or whatever. Um, and you know, we think that you're not gonna get the results you want with that website. And the response is sometimes, oh, no. But, you know, I've been told lots of times that how great my website is, you know, your friends and family are just going to massage your ego and say, oh, you know, I see your business is doing well. I was looking at your website. Oh yeah. It's really great. I mean, what does that even mean anyway? A great website is a website that generates business. I don't care, you know, about any other aspect of it, but certainly you need something that's credible. And if you've done all the hard work and you're sending people to a website that doesn't look incredible, then, um, you're really missing a trick. Yeah. And that doesn't mean that you need to spend fifty grand on a, you know, a, on a branding exercise and, and the world's coolest design agency to, to create something, you know, really special. You can have a really great looking website without spending a fortune. Although I suppose the definition of fortune and website, you know, I mean, we, we, you know, let's face it, we speak to people who, who, who think spending a thousand quid on a website is a fortune, because you can get a website for thirty bob and a fried fish. Um, you know, it's yeah, it's a difficult one, but just be honest with yourself, you know, look at look at what you're offering. Look at what your competitors are, competitors are offering and think, does it stand shoulder to shoulder with what's out there? Or do does it make me look does it make me my business look small? Does it make my business look a bit rubbish? Does it does it tell a good story? Okay. So. Right. Okay, so let's, let's assume we've tick that box. We've done the SEO, they've found us. They've landed on our website. They didn't immediately hit the back button with, you know, inside that fifty milliseconds, they made the decision that actually these guys look credible. They look like the real deal. Um, I guess what we've got to ask ourselves now, and this is to some, the point you made earlier is the content that worked from an SEO point of view and got the rankings. Is that equally as effective in Persuading, telling a good story, making people think, I kind of fancy having a conversation with these guys I like. I like what they're saying. I understand what their offer is. I, they've helped me understand this problem that I've got and what the solution might be or whatever. Come on, Mr. Content, add some value to this conversation around this subject.

I feel like this is the hardest part, right? Realistically, I think anyway, like is, is telling a story that persuades people. And I think the only like this is going to be so dependent on the market you're operating in because different people have different expectations. Lawyers looking for an accountancy service want, you know, something very specific, and they want you to reassure them about very specific things they may worry about. And that's going to be very different to how a builders merchant feels about finding a new supplier or something, but ultimately understanding your market, knowing what kind of objections they'll have, meeting those objections head on. And then it's also just doing little things like, I can't count the number of times where, you know, we've had clients who say, oh, but you know, I'm the best in this area at doing you know, X, Y, or Z. And I've worked for all these big companies, but they don't actually say that on their website. You know, they don't have any of their, their client logos on there. They don't have like a case study. They don't prove it. They just kind of make broad brush claims about being an excellent accountancy service or whatever. Yeah. So I would say like, get specific, try and reassure your audience and try and meet their objections head on and try and tell a really compelling story about what sets you apart from the competition. Because there will be, you know, even if you think, oh, loads of people do this, there will be something about you, your approach, your experience that sets you apart. And it is just about highlighting that, I think.

Would you would you think that content that informs, educates, entertains should always be the goal? I mean, is it I guess not. I mean, some content by its very nature will be will probably not include the entertain bit. For example, if it's a very serious document about some highly technical thing, then, you know, it just needs to try. It just needs to demonstrate competence, doesn't it? As opposed to entertain. But, you know, I suppose the entertain element. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, when we write, we always try and make the content engaging and entertaining, no matter what we're writing about because it's digital marketing. So it should be reasonably engaging and entertaining, I suppose.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I think again, this just goes back to the whole kind of understand your audience thing, doesn't it? Because ultimately, you know, humour works really well in our, in our industry. It cuts through a lot of the noise. People think, oh yeah, you know, these guys are real people. They're interesting, they're fun. I think in a lot of industries it has the opposite effect and it really puts people off. And I think it is just about kind of understanding that balance really isn't it? Um, yeah, people waffle about brand voice an awful lot. I think the important thing is like, understand what your, what your customer actually wants to read. Yeah.

I think, I think one, one thing to take away, which we've spoken about before, is make your content about your customer, not like, you know, we are fantastic accountants. We have been around for ten years. You know, we are brilliant. You know, we we this, you know, it just kind of doesn't work. It's, it's got to be content, you know, depending on what, you know, if it's a, if it's an opinion piece, then it's a, it's an opinion piece. But if it's some of your, you know, some of your selling content, again, it should demonstrate that you understand the problem they're trying to solve. They're not, they don't. They, they might not even believe you if you say like, we are great at X, Y, or Z, it's like, well, ah, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I want you to show me, you understand the position I'm in. More is more important, isn't it?

That's exactly it. I mean, I wrote a very ranty blog post a while back about this because I see loads of people, especially on like content and copywriting forums kind of banging on about things like, oh, talk about features, not benefits and like relate it to how it helps your customer. I think ultimately, irrespective of what you're selling, what people actually want to read is something that says, we get your problem and we can actually help you solve it. And I don't think any kind of. Yeah. You don't need the kind of business waffle. You just need to tell a really compelling story. Showcase how you've solved the same problem for somebody else. Whatever. Just don't kind of bang out a big old list of, this is why we're better than everybody else. Because that's right. Nobody wants to read that.

No one hundred percent. Um, again, thinking about the people who are finding you in search, they're not referrals, generally speaking. I mean, all right, somebody might say, oh yeah, you need to speak to revolution and somebody might then go and search online for revolution and find us in Google. But it was a, it was a referral. You know, it's not the same. But when complete strangers are finding your business because you've done a great job with search, and then you've managed to engage them with some great content, the next thing for me is like, make them feel safe. You know, how about some social proof? So do you want to just touch on what we mean by that?

Yeah. So like, well, social proof, it's really interesting actually. So I think I've, I think I always quote this study, but I think it's like the most compelling one. It's like a recommendation from somebody online, like a testimonial Counts psychologically has the same impact as your best friend recommending something to you. And I think that's really the nail on the head, isn't it? It's what you've got to do on your page is get things that are from supposedly or, or, or actually impartial third parties that say, these guys are trustworthy, these guys are the real deal. And it's just about finding ways of bringing like, whether it's video testimonials, whether it's quotes from happy clients, whether it's a list of logos, whatever things that prove you actually work with people that they trust you and that you can actually provide the service you claim you're providing.

Yeah. So social proof. Social proof can be simple things like Trustpilot, Google reviews, reviews, and Google reviews is free. Trustpilot you have to pay for, don't you? Um.

Case studies Google reviews into pages is like one of those really overlooked things. I think a lot of people go straight for the paid options like Trustpilot, but actually, you know what? Like I think some people, I think almost Trustpilot just seems a bit gimmicky sometimes when I see it plastered all over people's landing pages, I'm like, okay, well, now you're trying to make me think that you're really trustworthy. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, in a weird way, yeah.

Um, client testimonials, I think you mentioned including potentially video testimonials can be very, very, uh, compelling. I also think case studies because, I mean, when people are trying to decide whether or not you can help them solve their business conundrum, provide a service, a product or whatever, they want to make a good decision. They want to make a right decision. A good example of this is in the public sector, because it's notoriously tricky winning public sector work because of the hoops they make you jump, jump through, excuse me. Um, but ultimately the people buying the services within the public sector, all they're trying to do is make good decisions and your, your response to their request, although it has to tick various boxes, needs to make them feel if we choose these guys and because they've scored the right amount of, um, they've scored the highest number or whatever, if we choose these guys, then, you know, we have to be sure that we're not going to be made to look silly. So, so providing people with case studies can be good because you're showing them that you've been on this journey with other customers and provided a solution. Those customers got a good result. And so, you know, if you do decide to get in touch with us, you're not going to be disappointed. You know, we've, we've, we've, we've been on this journey with other people. We've trod this path before. Um, yeah.

It's the first piece of advice I always give to creative writers at uni is show, don't tell. And I think just going back to what you were saying earlier, the first thing you have to do is persuade somebody that you're trustworthy. And the best way of doing that is by showing them that you're trustworthy rather than saying, we're trustworthy.

Yeah, well that's right. And that goes back to the, uh, the idea of telling people, you know, you know, we are great. We're the best accountants. Uh, we've been around for ten years or whatever, as opposed to like, you know, like your business is our priority sort of thing. We understand your, you know, what the problem is you're trying to solve. I mean, our website management page on our site, which generally attracts, um, decent, decent traffic and decent enquiries. Um, you know, it talks about like how a website management service will help you in that. It'll just let you get on with running your business and not have those headaches of like, oh God, our website's down again, what's going on sort of thing. You know, our website's out of date because there's nobody keeping it updated for us and doing various bits and bobs. It talks about the problems it solves. It doesn't talk about like how great the business is and how wonderful the technology is that they're using.

Yeah. And it's interesting too, because I've been doing some work recently for a client that sells irrigation systems and they sell them to property developers, they sell them to sports stadiums, they sell them to loads of different places. And, you know, in writing content for them, I think the thing I spent the longest time doing was just sitting down and thinking, okay, but what does this customer like? Why are they buying it? What do you know what I mean? Like, what's their actual motivation? What do they need to hear? And I think that's probably the best thing you can do is just spend some time thinking, you know, for the specific audience that are googling this, this search term you trying to rank for. What are they actually trying to get out of this engagement? Yeah. And just give them that.

Just to wrap this up. Um, one thing we would say is if you get your SEO right and you get traffic and you get your lead gen, you get your, um, pages really working. And by the way, we're not going to get into it now, but, um, conversion rate optimisation is an area of, of lead gen dev that specialises in, in making your content work harder. Go on.

Oh, I was gonna say there is one little bit of CRO that I'm not going to let you go without touching on, which is just that if you've done all this work to get your page up and ranking, and you've invested loads of time and effort in the content, please, please make it easy for people to actually convert. Because the amount of people's websites I see where they have this great page of content and no, no CTA, no call to action, no button that says click here to get in touch or here's our contact details. It just kind of leaves you hanging. And that is the most frustrating thing because if you've done all that hard work, you know, people are not going to hang around and look for a way to contact you. So you've done all that hard work. You've persuaded them you're a great prospect, and then they're just left with no next steps. So, you know, without diving into the nitty gritty of CRO, please at least do that.

Mhm. Yeah. Okay. Makes sense. Uh, one thing I was going to say, just to finish off, we'd recommend, um. And there are some great free tools out there like HubSpot. Use a customer relationship management system, use a CRM. So when these leads come in, and by the way, if you use a decent CRM, the web form on your web pages can feed people's data. The people that fill the form and feed their data straight into the CRM, because then you can create a deal, create some follow up, start doing the lead nurturing and everything else that we're not going to necessarily talk about just now, but, um, you know, definitely get something in place to manage the leads because if you do this stuff right, you will start seeing leads coming in and there's nothing more frustrating than, you know, the leads went into somebody's email box and three weeks later somebody says, did anybody phone Dave Robinson at Red evolution because he was interested in our accounting services and oh no, where was I was in my email. Oh, you know, nobody saw it. It's, you know, you don't want to be missing these opportunities as they come in. So, um, definitely think about using a CRM.

I was gonna say, who was it we were talking to earlier this week and we were like, do you have a CRM? And they're like, oh, we don't need one. We just keep up. We just have an email spreadsheet that we add things to. And then about two minutes later, he was like, but then saying that it is really difficult to manage. Yeah. It's like, just, just use the software that's out there.

Certainly when it comes to managing opportunities that are coming in from all the lead gen work you've been doing with your website, um, you want a single source of truth. You want them in one place. You don't want them in a spreadsheet or in somebody else's email box or whatever else you want, you want, you know, you want. I want to be able to come in and look at the CRM and, and immediately see the conversation you, Alex, have been having with one of our customers, um, not kind of sit there thinking, oh, I wonder what's happening with that? Because, you know, yeah, just, just doesn't make any sense at all. Okay, this, this has actually been, um, a little bit longer than I thought it would be. We've, we've gone at speed and I've been doing my usual speed talking as well. Um, anything else we need to cover just to finish this one off. We've kind of covered SEO. We've covered like the elements of it without going into a huge amount of detail. We've then said like, once you get the eyeballs on your website, these are all the other things you need to consider. And it's probably not an exhaustive list. And because well, because there's a lot more to it. And like, you know, conversion rate optimisation, which we only loosely touched on in CRMs, which we only loosely touched on. The bottom line is if you get this stuff right, it could be very, very powerful. It can be transformatory for your business. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, definitely.

Okay. All right. Um, so you've been listening to, um, Digital Marketing From The Coalface. If you'd like to come on the show and talk about your digital journey and the stuff you're doing, then we'd love to hear from you. Um, in the meantime, um. Oh, well, get in touch with us fromthecoalface.com or read evolution dot com, which is the agency website. In the meantime, it's Friday. I've got to go and make bacon rolls for everybody, which you're not going to get because you're working remotely today. I'm not nil. Look, um, thanks for listening. And, um, it's goodbye from me.

Yep. Goodbye from me as well.