Digital Marketing From The Coalface

Transcript of Digital Marketing From The Coalface, Episode 87

Written by David Robinson | Mar 31, 2026, 9:15:00 AM
This podcast was originally released on 13/02/2023.
David 00:00:00

Okay, so we've got the strategy. And then we were getting into the delivery of the strategy. And I think this is where I think some agencies come unstuck. So what we would say to people hiring agencies is you want to be talking with meeting with the agency every week in order to grow your business, even if you don't want to understand the detail of what they're doing, you want to understand the big picture.

Alex 00:00:32

Just going back to that whole idea of education again, you know, I think a lot of people when they hire a marketing agency assume incorrectly that what you can do as a marketing agency is just kind of go away and magic traffic ups, you know, the honest truth is we can only really do good work when we have complete buy in from a client, right, where we're getting information about what we're doing. It's a two way street, and you really do need that input from the client to do a good job.

David 00:00:59

So welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Um, this is Dave.

Alex 00:01:04

And this is Alex. I'm assuming you were. I didn't.

David 00:01:07

Ask you to introduce yourself.

Alex 00:01:08

Sorry.

David 00:01:08

I had it all planned out.

Alex 00:01:11

I've ruined it now.

David 00:01:12

Uh, speaking of planning things out, that was an unplanned segue. Oh, I did, that's just genius. This week, we're going to have a chat about how to get the most out of your digital marketing engagements.

Alex 00:01:28

Yes.

David 00:01:29

Digital marketing agency engagements, previous podcast. We talked about what to do before you hire an agency. And as Alex quite rightly pointed out this morning, we felt it was a good idea to talk about how we think you'll get the best value from an agency engagement. And it's based on our own experience. We've been doing this stuff for a long time now, and the way that we're operating, uh, these days Seems to be something that clients like and delivers results and keeps everybody happy. We did a live cast, um.

Alex 00:02:07

On a live cast, a live stream. I don't even know. The proper terminology is now.

David 00:02:11

I don't care.

Alex 00:02:12

Well, fine.

David 00:02:13

We did a thing. What was live, uh, on LinkedIn, uh, on Thursday the was it the eighth? No. Thursday, the ninth of February. See, I'm across it.

Alex 00:02:25

Yeah.

David 00:02:25

But you see how I didn't say yesterday? Because when this goes out, it might not be yesterday. Oh. See what I did.

Alex 00:02:31

It's clever.

David 00:02:31

I've thought about it. We did it. We did a live cast. Um, uh, with the guys from Evisio. Is that correct? Yeah. And Michael's actually coming on the podcast, uh, next, not next week, week after. Um, and one of the things that he dug into and asked us about was the processes that we use. And so we just thought, well, you know, we're happy to share these processes. Um, it's not unique to us, but certainly I know there are other agencies, there are agencies out there that don't do this. So we just thought it was worth having a little chat about that. I don't know, we might wander into other other subjects.

Alex 00:03:09

I'm sure it will, I don't know. We have such a good track record for staying on topic and being concise, don't we?

David 00:03:14

So yeah.

Alex 00:03:15

We'll not jeopardise that.

David 00:03:16

And we've got t I t before we started, which is lovely. Um, so you've gone through the rigorous process of finding an agency partner. What did we call that podcast? Can you remember what it was called? Um, episode and stuff?

Alex 00:03:34

Uh, it was called What You need to know before you hire an Agency.

David 00:03:36

Is it and what's that about that podcast?

Alex 00:03:39

I'm not quite sure. I think parrots and how to buy them.

David 00:03:42

A bit cryptic, isn't it? So we've got this podcast, which is, you know, explaining, um, what to think about when you're considering, um, getting into the hiring and agency space. Um, so this podcast is assuming that you've gone through that process and you've hired an agency, and the way that you will get the most out of an agency based on our experience and the processes that we use.

Alex 00:04:05

Yeah.

David 00:04:06

Okay.

Alex 00:04:07

Because I think one of the things we do hear a lot from both kind of clients that have come on board, having previously worked with an agency and, you know, just general kind of chatter in the industry is that, you know, people aren't always sure what the digital marketing agencies are doing. They're not really sure whether it's delivering good value. I mean, that's all sort of par for the course, isn't it? So did I do it right? The golf thing par for the course. Is that the same.

David 00:04:30

It is.

Alex 00:04:31

Fab. I tried to score brownie points because David likes golf.

David 00:04:36

Yeah. And if we don't crack on with this. I won't be going out and trying to score par for the course at one o'clock. So enough of you dribble. Okay, so all engagements, in our view, all engagements should start with a discovery session in fact. Um, the way that we like to approach this is if we think we might be the right guys to help a company, and they think we might be the right guys to help them. We really don't ask them to make any sort of commitment until we've done a discovery session, and we do charge for that. I mean, you know.

Alex 00:05:07

It's a nominal fee though, isn't it? It's a kind of sort of cover costs.

David 00:05:09

And it's designed basically so that we can have a round table with the, with the customer, with the potential customer or customer and really dig into where they are, where they want to get to. Just what you'd expect a discovery call to be about.

Alex 00:05:23

Yeah. But I mean, you know, it's interesting because this came up in the live stream with Michael. Right. And it's one of those things that I always find really confusing. Some SEO or PPC or whatever. Agencies will just like pitch you a strategy completely cold. They'll just give you a proposal that contains, you know, this is what we'll do in month one, and this is what we'll do in month two. And they've never taken the time to get to know your business or what you actually need or any of that stuff. So. Yeah.

David 00:05:44

I mean, is there an element there of, of customers, um, saying to maybe two or three agencies, you know, we want you to give us a proposal for six months, twelve months, and we want you to tell us what you're going to do. Months one, two and three kind of thing.

Alex 00:05:58

Yeah. There's a there's an education problem on both sides for sure. People don't realise that you can't actually give a useful strategy. You can't you can't put one together until you know the business, until you've sat down and talked about this stuff. It's not possible. And anything that you do produce blind is kind of garbage, really, isn't it? It's gonna get.

David 00:06:13

You might get lucky. Yeah, you probably won't. Okay. So so the thing starts off with, um, some discovery work. Um, I think, you know, there are people that don't like the term discovery, but, you know, it's just getting to know you getting to learn all about you. It's that kind of stuff, isn't it? Yeah. Is it, is that what it is?

Alex 00:06:33

Yeah.

David 00:06:33

Okay.

Alex 00:06:34

I like it when you sing. You should sing more on the podcast.

David 00:06:36

Yeah. Um, so we dig deep and try and figure out exactly where a business is, where it could be, what its competitors are doing, all that stuff. You know, just what most if not all good agencies would do to try and understand. And that is really, really important to do that work. And as important is the next step, which is creating a strategy. So, you know, your agency should be talking about getting to know you. Your agency should be talking about developing a strategy, then discussing that strategy and making sure everybody understands what the initial thinking is, what the initial strategy is, what the initial tactics are going to be in order to deliver on the strategy. And, you know, there's complete buy in across the board.

Alex 00:07:24

We were having an interesting discussion, weren't we, on the way to Edinburgh to see a client the beginning of this week. And kind of at the end of that discussion we were having about strategy and about how people kind of misinterpret what it is and don't really understand it. I kind of came to the conclusion that that's another one of those really like discovery, sort of just overused phrases that are sort of lost all meaning really, because the strategy is not this kind of really broad, big picture. I want to grow my business. That is fundamentally not a strategy.

David 00:07:52

Isn't a.

Alex 00:07:52

Strategy, but it is what a lot of agencies, after doing a discovery session and being asked to deliver a strategy will produce is effectively, you know, we're going to grow your business. And I think that's like, I don't know if I prefer the word plan now or what, but a strategy should be actionable, right? It should contain things that you're actually going to do to achieve actual goals.

David 00:08:12

Yeah. A strategy is where to play and how to win. It's not just where to play. It's it is, it's all it's both of those things in very simple terms. And most, most people, I think do a lot of people do confuse. Um, we're going to be the biggest digital marketing agency in Scotland. That's our strategy. It's like, no, that's not a strategy.

Alex 00:08:32

It's at best a goal. Right.

David 00:08:34

Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So getting the strategy right, getting everybody signed off on it is the stage after we've done the um the initial getting to know you discovery type stuff. Um, and then everybody is on everybody then understands, you know where to play so and how we're going to win. Um, and then you get into, well, I should say more strategies fail at this next stage, which is implementation. Strategy execution is um problematic. There's lots of data around this. You can read um, Harvard Business Review type stuff. You can read some, you know, lots of papers do, do, do some research. Um, in probably not Google anymore. Is it.

Alex 00:09:18

That.

David 00:09:19

Now? Isn't it? You don't have to go to Bing now because, because basically Google made a tit out of themselves this week, didn't they, with the, with their AI chat thing.

Alex 00:09:26

Yes. Launched it. Got a question wrong almost immediately.

David 00:09:30

Yeah. Share price did what.

Alex 00:09:33

Was it like six or seven percent. They shaved off it. I don't remember. It was a lot.

David 00:09:36

It was. Yeah. It's amazing isn't it, to see these massive, incredible businesses getting things spectacularly wrong.

Alex 00:09:44

There's a hubris thing at play there, isn't there? It's like, oh, I'm just gonna go out on stage and like, I'll not bother to ask anybody if the stuff actually works, but I'm just going to showcase it as it happens with Tesla too, right? They did this. Was it. What was it with? Was it with the bulletproof thing or something? A big tech company did this recently with cars where they were like, oh, we've got this fantastic new technology brought out on stage and it just failed spectacularly. And you'd think you'd at least ask the engineers, wouldn't you? Hey.

David 00:10:10

Yeah. My face right now. Is it a face that looks like it is interested at all?

Alex 00:10:16

And you never look at me like you're interested, David. I've learnt to live with it.

David 00:10:21

Okay, so we've got the strategy, and then we're getting into the the delivery of the strategy. And I think this is where I think some agencies come unstuck. So what we would say to people hiring agencies, marketing managers, business owners, etc., is you want to be talking with meeting with the agency every week. It sounds like quite a commitment, but it. But it is.

Alex 00:10:47

Quite.

David 00:10:47

A commitment to invest money into digital marketing, search engine optimisation, all of these things in order to grow your business. You want to, even if you don't want to understand the detail of what they're doing, you want to understand the big picture. What are they doing? Why are they doing it? What are they expecting to see? And having regular catch ups, regular conversations with customers in order to work as a team and get the most from the engagement?

Alex 00:11:19

Yeah. And I think just going back to that whole idea of education again, you know, I think a lot of people when they hire a marketing agency assume incorrectly that what you can do as a marketing agency is just kind of go away and magic traffic out of thin air, or you use these special tactics, these sort of black box tricks to, to do SEO to a website and get results. The honest truth is we can only really do good work when we have complete buy in from a client, right, where we're getting information about what we're doing. You know, being on the right tracks, on the wrong tracks, whether we're saying the right thing about their business, whether we're going after the right keywords. It's a two way street, and you really do need that input from the client to do a good job.

David 00:11:55

Yeah. Because a lot of agencies, their approach will be more hands off. Their approach will be right. We now know what we need to do. Just leave us alone and let us get on with it. Um, they may not even in a month speak to the customer much other than to say we need X or we need Y, we need access to this piece of software or whatever kind of thing.

Alex 00:12:15

There might be exceptions where that works, right? Maybe. Probably not.

David 00:12:20

You know, when it can work. I think it can work when you're twelve months, eighteen months, twenty four months into an engagement and you know, the business inside out. And they basically just trust you to get on and do it. We've got customers that just kind of want us to get on and do it. We'll still speak to them quite regularly, but that's just because we want to keep them informed or whatever. But they're actually the catch ups that we have. It's it's, it's more of a social thing than anything else because it's just like we're part of their team. We're getting the results that they've asked us to, to go after they're getting increased enquiries or whatever. They're getting good business from the investment that they're making, and they don't really need us to be, you know, necessarily we don't they don't want them involved, sorry. They don't want to be involved, like you say. Um, but generally speaking, you know, working with an agency and letting them get on with it and then allowing them to send you some meaningless report full of pie charts and graphs and bullshit like that once a month that you won't read and may or may not understand, but almost certainly won't read. That isn't the way for this engagement to work.

Alex 00:13:26

Well, the ranking yeah, like that, that sort of thing where you get sent a report and it's like, this is what your keyword rankings are doing this week. I mean, that's, I, it seems so kind of immature. It seems so out of date now, but some people are still doing that. And it's like, yeah, that's not that's not why you engage in SEO company. Not really to grow your rankings. I mean, that's irrelevant.

David 00:13:43

It has all that information is available in real time and using various, you know, Search Console or tools like Michael Z or, um, SEMrush. Can you run projects in SEMrush? And you can just see in real time what's happening to traffic and rankings and all that good stuff. So you don't really need to do that. I mean, ultimately, I think that if you have regular weekly meetings with the agency who are doing the work for you, um, on the need for reporting kind of goes away somewhat because you're just kind of across it all the time. You're having, you know, having conversations about what's going on, you know, face to face, Zoom, whatever.

Alex 00:14:22

Um, yeah. And critically, not just because, you know, the, the agency wants to brag about what they're doing or you want to be placated and know that you're spending your money. Well, it's because that back to that implementation thing, you know, that's an iterative process. And if you're, if you're all involved in it, of course, you know what's working and what isn't because that's what you're discussing and trying to kind of drill down into isn't it so. Yeah. Yeah.

David 00:14:41

Yeah. I mean, part of the reason that we, we operate the way we do is because, you know, in the dim and distant past, we've done it the wrong way. You know, we've been in situations where we've had very little contact with a customer for maybe a month, two months, even three months. And then suddenly they come out of the woodwork and say, awkward conversation. Yeah, we've been paying you all this money. What's been happening? What have you been doing? It's almost it's almost adversarial at that point. Whereas the regular contact, you know, the regular contact also means that you will very quickly figure out whether you believe in the agency and the work that they're doing for you, and you're seeing results from the work that they're doing for you. And it actually means that you'll be able to terminate that engagement quickly if it's not. Yeah. If it doesn't work out, because let's face it, until you start to get into the weeds, you know, whether it's working with an architect to design your house, an agency to build you a digital marketing campaign or anything else. It's only when you start getting on with it, you get past the the honeymoon period of being polite because you don't really know people very well. And you get you get to that more to the the coal face, you know, and getting on with with with doing it is when you really find out. So the quicker you can get to that point, the better.

Alex 00:15:58

Yeah, I think so.

David 00:15:59

I don't think dragging these things out, it's very rare that we have been a month or two into an engagement. I can't think of any examples. And we've all kind of looked at each other and gone, no, this isn't working, is it? We're not the right guys for you. And you know, it just isn't. It isn't a worthwhile engagement for any of us to pursue. But it but it must happen. And I think what happens is some businesses fall into the trap of thinking we're paying this agency to do SEO, whatever that is, content marketing, whatever that is. And they keep sending us these reports. We're doing it. We've got that business box ticked, and it isn't the best way to do it just.

Alex 00:16:40

For your own peace of mind really, isn't it, I think. Yeah. Well, it's that whole thing. I mean, with anything in life, isn't it? Like if you're not kind of slightly uncomfortable, if you're not learning something new or being stretched in some way, then it's probably not right for you. Right. And I think that's a a lot of these engagements are what these agencies are actually selling is you give us two thousand pounds a month, and we'll give you the peace of mind of knowing that you're doing social media marketing, and who cares what that means and whether it works. And yeah, it's, it's just not the same game that we're in really, is it?

David 00:17:08

No. That's right. Now there will be people listening to this, I'm sure, who will be not unreasonably of the opinion that, wait a minute. If I'm paying an agency X thousand pounds a month to do stuff for me, then why can't they just get on with it? I've got people. I've got employees in my business who I don't have weekly meetings with. They just get on with their job. And, you know, I see things happening and, and which shows me that they're doing their job. I don't want to engage and chat to them all the time, so.

Alex 00:17:37

Well, I think part of that's to do with the way that people think about digital marketing, isn't it? I mean, I may be way off base here, but like, for example, you wouldn't expect to have weekly catch ups with your accountants because what they're fundamentally doing is just kind of something that keeps things ticking over, keeps the lights on. So you don't need to. But when you're trying to grow your business, that's something you have to put time and effort and energy into. I mean, this isn't digital marketing isn't something like your accounts that just sort of ticks along month after month. It's just there in the background. It has to be a sort of active process that you're committed to. Otherwise, why are you doing it? What are you spending the money for? It's supposed to be.

David 00:18:09

I think there are other reasons why people don't have weekly meetings with their accountant.

Alex 00:18:13

Well, I mean, accountants aren't there? Yeah.

David 00:18:19

It's such a it's so untrue, isn't it, that.

Alex 00:18:22

I don't know.

David 00:18:24

I know, I don't.

Alex 00:18:25

Actually know very many.

David 00:18:26

They're really not boring people. But there's this, this kind of like this kind of, um, trope, if you like that accountants are boring because I mean, knowing knowing about how business finance works is so important and it's dead interesting. It's not boring at all. Um, but yeah. Okay. Um, right. So I'm trying to think of anything else. So I mean, we've been very sort of, you know, the process that we've outlined is, is, is hardly rocket science. It's, it's, it's all about, as with many things in life, good communication, good regular communication and not taking this, this kind of hands off approach, um, anything else on this sort of broad subject of how to get the most from agency engagements?

Alex 00:19:09

I'm trying to think of places, times where we work really well with clients and sort of go above and beyond and what it is that they do to get that out of us. Because I feel like there must be something there to kind of wrestle down, because there are clients where we will do pretty much anything that, you know, to, to help them. And they must, there must be something they do to get that out of us. Maybe.

David 00:19:31

Yeah, that's a really good point. Um.

Alex 00:19:34

I'm trying to because. Yeah, I don't know, maybe this is too honest even for our podcast. But yeah, there are clients where you kind of like do what is required to get them the growth that they want. And then there are clients where you kind of sit up at three o'clock at night, you know, trying to frantically think of new ideas to really help them because you actually love working with them. And I don't know what the difference is really.

David 00:19:53

You know, I wonder if it's as simple as if a marketing manager, business owner, whatever is genuinely interested in growing their business and genuinely believes that. Digital marketing can help in that process.

Alex 00:20:11

Yeah.

David 00:20:12

So they're engaged. And that's not to say at the exclusion of all else. They've got businesses to run. And, you know, that is something that we as a digital marketing agency are acutely aware of. They're trying to run their business. In fact, some of the services that we offer, like website management, you know, the pitch is like, get on with running your business and let us take care of this stuff. That's been a pain in the backside in the past kind of thing. So isn't it not, is it not just like, like all things to do with humans, if somebody is genuinely engaged with you and interested, you kind of want to please them. You want to, you want to do great work. And so yeah, that's not to say that if you've got a kind of cooler, almost cold engagement where people are just like, look, just like, here's the money. We agreed to pay you this money, get on with the work and I'll see the results. And, you know, frankly, I, you know, I'm not even that interested or, you know, I don't believe in it or whatever. I mean, this is all just making us sound a bit needy, but I think but.

Alex 00:21:14

It's the same.

David 00:21:14

View. The engineering manager, you know, engineering company, engineering manager, you're working on a new project. You know, if the, if the, the guys and girls in the in the drawing office see, you actively engaged in the project. You know.

Alex 00:21:27

They're gonna work that.

David 00:21:28

Hard. Yeah, we all do our best work when the person we're doing it for is enthusiastic and genuinely, you know, is is willing us on and helping us do a good job.

Alex 00:21:37

And that's not to say that you have to kind of cheerlead for your agency either, because I'm just thinking about it now. Like there are clients who are kind of like pretty much not not in a horrible way, but like pretty much always negative as in like, they only ever really kind of come to the table with bad things, things they'd like to see, like journalists. Yeah, yeah. You know, sort of like, oh, don't do that. Or this isn't the direction we want to go in or that word is wrong or this image is wrong or whatever. But even that, you know what I mean? Like that's, that's still really engaging because they're still putting the time and the effort in to have those opinions. It doesn't have to be positive. You just have to be bringing something to the table and not sitting there and going like, yeah, sure, do whatever, put whatever you want on my website, which like I always think is really alarming when people kind of have that attitude.

David 00:22:17

But the opposite end of that scale is. Don't put anything on my website until it's been through a twenty point approval process, which will take at least six months.

Alex 00:22:29

That is a nightmare too, isn't it?

David 00:22:31

So again.

Alex 00:22:32

It.

David 00:22:32

Comes back to trust and relationships. You know, the quicker you can build trust, the quicker you can get a good relationship so that you know that that company, that agency are not going to put something on your website that's going to make you look like a fool.

Alex 00:22:43

And actually, you touched on something that is actually probably a really good actionable point for anybody listening, right? Which is just like, work out how to remove as many roadblocks as you possibly can, because it does kill momentum when clients are like, oh, I love it, but I'm gonna have to ask my manager to approve it. And they'll have to ask their manager to approve it, and they'll have to go to the board and they'll have to have a view on it. And like that kind of anything you can do to kind of streamline or eliminate that sort of nonsense is helpful. I mean, obviously in some businesses it is completely unavoidable.

David 00:23:10

But okay, so metrics, understanding and communicating or agreeing on, um, how we're going to figure out whether the work that we're doing is working is having a positive impact on the business.

Alex 00:23:29

I think I.

David 00:23:29

Might be that important.

Alex 00:23:31

Well, I think maybe I've oversimplified things in my head and maybe you'll set me right here, but I've sort of come to the opinion that actually not. It's like people make a mountain out of this issue. What metrics? What KPIs? What are we going to measure? It's like you will know whether or not something is adding value to your business, because your bottom line will grow. And you'll see more enquiries in your inbox. And I just think like part of me almost feels like it's something agencies are sort of invented to kind of complicate the picture and disguise, you know, whether what they're doing or not is working. You know, I don't know what metrics matter other than money in your pocket ultimately.

David 00:24:05

Well, yes, I agree. Um, I'm a huge fan of metrics that everyone can understand, such as enquiry and more importantly, a converted enquiry, a new piece of business, a new customer. Um, but sometimes in the early stages of engagements, um, unless you're using, you know, paid search, Google ads. That's that's that might not happen. So, you know, understanding what the lead, um, the lead metrics are the lead indicators. So I don't mean leads as in people filling in forms and picking up the phone. I'm talking about stuff that starts to happen before you start seeing enquiries coming in. So understanding that and communicating that. So, so get a feel, you know, make sure the agency is talking about the things that they're expecting to see, which will be a precursor to the good stuff, the new enquiries and the opportunities that are generated.

Alex 00:25:03

Yeah. But again, I think that it's relatively easy to explain, isn't it? I mean, it's almost always certainly wherever SEO is concerned, um, it's always going to be about visibility and impressions, isn't it? More people are seeing your site in search. You have more visibility around these search terms. I mean, I don't know if that's maybe it is still quite complicated to, to wrap your head around if you don't do this stuff day in, day out. But it seems like a very sort of straightforward thing to me. Mhm.

David 00:25:28

Okay. Um, yeah, I think, I think we're probably getting to the point now where, you know, the purpose of this isn't to talk about the software systems that are using. We use base camp. Some people use Monday dot com.

Alex 00:25:40

Yeah.

David 00:25:40

There's lots of.

Alex 00:25:40

Different tools.

David 00:25:42

For the mechanics of the delivery. But it's the, you know, making sure that you're working very closely with it's not a turnkey kind of you put some money in and then just wait for stuff to happen type relationship. Just repeating myself really. But the, the biggest thing is that is that regular catch ups, regular meetings, no such thing as a daft question. Make sure you totally understand. The other thing that comes out of that is that the agency and you might have agreed on something, and those regular communications, those regular meetings, mean that if somebody got the wrong end of the stick.

Alex 00:26:20

Yeah, you'd end up going down a path.

David 00:26:22

You don't.

Alex 00:26:22

Finish up. Yeah.

David 00:26:23

I'm sure if I really racked my brains, I could think of some examples of that, but I can't right now off the top of my head. But you could certainly use a month's worth of retainer budget going down a bit of a rabbit hole.

Alex 00:26:34

Yeah.

David 00:26:35

Which you're not going to do if you have these, if you have these regular meetings.

Alex 00:26:38

I mean, there are I mean, you know, there are examples even, you know, quite recently where we have kind of bi, bi weekly or twice a month every other week meetings. It's really confusing that bi weekly thing with clients. And, you know, even there where we're meeting once every two weeks, you can still end up going down completely the wrong rabbit hole. And after two weeks, they'll kind of look at what you've done and they'll be like, oh, but this isn't what I meant. So it's just the more often you can meet, the more often you can test ideas or throw something across the table and say, what do you think about this? Is this the right direction? The better ultimately.

David 00:27:10

Okay, that makes sense. Um, just to finish off then one other thing that, you know, one of the trap that that companies can perhaps fall into is deciding that there are elements of the campaign and elements of the work that we've all agreed is required that they can. Are you grinning at me like grinning like a Cheshire cat? Well, what was I going to say?

Alex 00:27:35

That they can handle themselves, right?

David 00:27:37

I just sounded rude.

Alex 00:27:40

Got a mind out of it?

David 00:27:44

Go on then.

Alex 00:27:45

Uh, no, no, you finish the thought because I.

David 00:27:48

Know you interrupted. You carry.

Alex 00:27:49

On. Fine. Well, no, just just finish it. Finish the thought.

David 00:27:53

Yeah. So some, some organisations, some businesses, um, will look, you know what, you go through the whole discovery, you create a strategy. You all agree what's going to need to be done. Be realistic if you want to do some of it. That's great. And conversation this week with a hopefully a new customer. Um, you know, he made it quite clear that he does like writing and is quite happy to and Enthusiastic about creating some of the content that we know we're going to need and be realistic about that. Yeah. You know, we've talked a lot about AI and you might be thinking, yeah, I'm just going to get ChatGPT to write all my content and it's just going to be fantastic. I don't have to use any of the budget or I can get get, you know, I can spend less month to month with the agency by doing all this stuff, you know, be realistic about what you can actually do and what you can produce or what you think. You know, you might say like, yeah, I've got people in the team who'll do X, Y, and Z, you know, make sure they're involved in that conversation because there's nothing worse than starting an engagement. And then immediately sort of the thing stutters because.

Alex 00:28:52

You're waiting on the client for content and oh, they've promised they can write three blog posts a week and it turns out they can only do one a month. Yeah, definitely.

David 00:29:00

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Um, enough of this drivel.

Alex 00:29:05

Yeah, I think so. I sort of want to make the opposite point actually very quickly, which is also that you should also shouldn't be afraid. Like if you can do something in-house, because I think a lot of people are right. They're like, oh, I've paid this agency to do it. I don't want to get in their way. I don't want to tell them what to do, but we really like it when like a client is really good at writing or like they produce fantastic video content, or they're really good in front of a microphone or whatever, if they can, if you if you are really strong at something like, don't be afraid to say to your agency, well, actually, like I'm really comfortable doing that bit of this because ultimately it's much easier for us if you can produce something of really high quality, higher quality than we could because you've been across it for twenty odd years or whatever, like, yeah.

David 00:29:42

That's right. Play your strengths.

Alex 00:29:43

Yeah, absolutely.

David 00:29:44

Don't be afraid to, uh, to leverage them. Okay. Um, I think I did mention we've got a guest coming up possibly on the next episode. Michael Michael from Evisio. Um, if you'd like to come on the podcast, we say this every time, kind of not nobody's really coming forward at the moment. No, I don't know, maybe.

Alex 00:30:01

Maybe in like fits and bursts it.

David 00:30:03

Does a little bit. Yeah. But if you want to come on and talk about, um, some sort of software that you've developed or your business or your digital marketing, really any aspect of digital marketing, business growth, then we'd be delighted to hear from you. You can get in touch with us at red evolution dot com or fromthecoalface.com. See, we just you're kind of breaking the golden rules. You're kind of confusing people, aren't you? You could do this or you could do that. Or you could send us a carrier pigeon or, you know, it's kind of you could.

Alex 00:30:27

I would love that.

David 00:30:28

Just got a red evolution dot com and fill in one of the fantastic forms on every single page of the website and tell us what you want to talk about. And we'll, we'll get back in touch with you. Yeah. Uh, in the meantime, um, I think, um. Well, I don't know when this is going out, but the, uh, second round of the Six Nations this weekend. I'm looking forward to that. AM I looking forward to it? I mean, England are just rubbish. Last week Scotland played really well. Well done Scotland.

Alex 00:30:55

Um, we're in Scotland. You can spot.

David 00:30:57

Them. Actually, I'm really looking forward to the France, uh, Ireland game. I think that's the Six Nations decider this year, so I'm looking forward to that. Um, okay. Thanks for listening and speak again soon.