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Publishing prices and transparent sales with Stewart Townsend
23 Plays11 months ago
This is the second time Stewart Townsend has been a welcome guest on the Yeseo untitled SEO podcast. In our first conversation, we touched on the death of email and lightly grazed some other fascinating topics we wanted to dig deeper into.
Most of our conversation revolved around sales and marketing. We shared experiences and ideas for improving customer engagement. We also dug into transparency and why some companies refuse to put prices on their websites.
Stewart Townsend has a long history of working in tech, in the corporate world and in startups. This episode is fascinating, friendly and insightful. If you are interested in the evolving sales and marketing landscape, this podcast episode is for you.
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Transcript
Welcome Back Stuart Townsend
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, welcome back to the Untitled SEO podcast. It's a first today. I have a repeat guest. Well, a repeat guest for someone who I don't work with anyway. So I've had kind of colleagues and associates on before, but welcome back Stuart Townsend. It's a pleasure to have you back in the room.
00:00:16
Speaker
Thank you, Andrew. It's a pleasure to be back on and to be a second guest as well, a repeat guest. That's the first of me as well, I think. There's a good reason, it's because when you were on as a guest last time and everyone, I don't want to spoil the magic here, but everyone who
00:00:33
Speaker
who's on the show fills in a little release form to tell me a bit about themselves and what they might like to talk about. And when I saw your release form, there's like loads of things that I want to talk about. And then we had the last recording and didn't touch on any of them. So I think I do like the fact that the pace is very natural and we sort of find our own feet and the conversation meanders around. But there are some things I really want to talk to you about.
00:01:00
Speaker
That sounds a bit ominous actually, doesn't it? It's like the big reveal. I can feel the big reveal is coming off. There's no big reveal.
Evolving Marketing Post-COVID
00:01:09
Speaker
It's the whole future of marketing thing. So you mentioned about how SMS, I think we might touch on it in the last episode, how SMS is gaining ground again, but also how we can't just keep repeating the same methods of marketing that we have done for years.
00:01:27
Speaker
I think we've had a period of relative stability for about the last six or seven years, but just in the last two years, and COVID might be a part of that for the last few years, everything's changing again. So I'd really love to know what your take is on this because on the release form, you said, well, marketing is changing.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah. No, it's interesting because I think it is. I think also sales is changing as well in general. So, you know, we've gone through this stage of marketing being content marketing. Let's throw loads of stuff out there. Let's hope for the best. Then we've got personalization. That's great as well.
00:02:11
Speaker
Around that side, but now it's I think well, I don't know if companies are realizing this but I'm hoping to realizing this to actually do marketing from the aspect of focusing on what the customers needs are and Not targeting them
00:02:26
Speaker
I was talking about this of the week as an event the other weekend was talking about sort of how i can help improve marketing and sales and stuff i said but the crooks that is just need to talk to people but listen to them i think we've lost that in marketing i think not i think we can get it back but i think what i've seen
00:02:44
Speaker
Over the years he's just that whole no we're just gonna keep throwing things at you but we're not gonna listen to whatever you're gonna say we're just gonna keep telling you all this messaging and hope that if we send a million emails out or a million blog posts or 500 Reels it'll stick but nobody's going actually mr. customer
00:03:04
Speaker
What would you like? Let's come back and let's have a channel that you can engage with. Oh no, let's put some robots in there instead. And you can talk to a robot and let's put some other blockers in. So we're going to throw all this stuff out. And then when you want to, it's like today. Sorry, I'm ranted already. I love it. I'm very honest. This is great.
00:03:24
Speaker
There was, with the SMS company, I wanted to talk to a company that we've integrated with, but not officially. So we've integrated for a client. So it's like, right, okay, go to the website. Can I get in touch with them? No, the only way I can get in touch with them is by filling a demo for me.
00:03:41
Speaker
And it's like, really? So we're in this state now of, let's throw everything out, let's market to you, but let's not give you an opportunity to talk to us unless you want to ask for a price, because we've took the price away, or you want to ask this, but actually we'll give you no contact, because you've got to talk to a bot first.
00:03:59
Speaker
It's really frustrating. It's literally marketing has to change, align with sales and all the other departments to actually just allow that customer engagement.
SEO and Customer Interaction
00:04:09
Speaker
It just rails me. Maybe I'm old and grumpy. No, not at all. I was listening to a podcast by someone I quite like and he had a guest on talking about
00:04:24
Speaker
sort of SEO. There's always lots of topics around things that are sort of SEO. I mean, I think that there's a lot of blurring around the edges of what SEO actually is as a definition. And they were talking about, you know, getting people in the funnel and like, yeah, I'm fine with the concept of a funnel. That makes sense. I think it makes sense to know what you want to offer people at what time. But they were saying, everyone needs to take their phone number.
00:04:50
Speaker
off the top right hand corner of their website because from an SEO perspective, they're saying what Google sees is people coming to your website and they're not looking at the pages because they're just using, oh, there's the phone number, I'll ring the phone number. And I thought, well, there's two sides to that. The first one is that the website's still open. Google, if you're really worried about that, Google will see someone being on a website for a while. Gone are the days where we're obsessed with
00:05:20
Speaker
crap like bounce rates and I'm so pleased bounce rates dead because I think it's a measurement for anyone doesn't know what bounce rate I imagine you probably do. It's largely a measurement of somebody who lands on a page on your website and then leaves after a set time without going to any other pages. And I've always thought, doesn't that mean that you've successfully given them what they want?
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah. Why push them through a funnel? It's just why would you do that? So it's a classic case of humans are more important than SEO. I've got at least two clients who if they took their phone number off.
00:05:56
Speaker
They were stocking leads. Well, I used to contract a while back. I think it's pretty COVID to a call tracking software company. And literally what would happen is the phone number would change and it'd be unique. So I'd go there. I see one number. You see a different number.
00:06:14
Speaker
And their message was, yeah SEO is great and do all this stuff, but actually you need to have this mechanism for people to get in touch and then track when they got in touch and then do a follow-up of when they're happy when they got in touch and stuff. And it is, it's literally, I think you see appointment-based businesses with websites and really great content and they're getting traction, they've got experts, they've got all this stuff.
00:06:38
Speaker
And then, like you say, there's a blocker there. It's like we've got to have these blockers of please don't get in touch with us, because that's a resource we need to have a conversation with you. But the conversation has to be on our level. So actually, yeah, there's an inquiry. It's come in. And then we'll ring you back at whatever time we deem that's annoying, because you're just driving at the time or whatever it may be. And you're like, I always anchor it back to retail.
00:07:09
Speaker
It's like going in a store, isn't it? And you go in a store and you can't talk to anybody. You can't ask anything. You can just pick some stuff up and look at it, but actually nobody will communicate with you unless you're ready to buy and then a little swamp all over you. And that, you know, it does feel that's where we've sort of over, we've just inched an inch, an inch towards that mass outbound mass volume, no,
Transparent Pricing Debate
00:07:35
Speaker
no channel communication. Let's block all those off.
00:07:39
Speaker
I've always fought it. Sorry. Sorry. No, that's my rant over. No, that's good. You're a very easy guest to have because you just provide the content. I've always been very anti that attitude. I remember first client I got in London, this is back in like 2000. They, their whole model, they were a nonprofit, actually, they're membership organizations, they didn't have to really convert in the same way.
00:08:05
Speaker
But they had this whole, their whole model was that they distributed information, really good information. I mean, genuinely like world beating stuff. And they were obsessed with the idea that no one should be allowed to download a PDF without filling out a form and giving away all their details. And they were really pleased that, you know, maybe a hundred people a month were downloading PDFs. I was like, just take that out. So just let them have it because they go, but we won't capture their information and they might not become a member of this organization.
00:08:35
Speaker
I said, if they read that and they like it, they will ring you. They will contact you. And of course, predictably, the number of PDFs being downloaded went through the roof. Absolutely skyrocketed.
00:08:47
Speaker
and the things afterwards. Nothing's that special. No, exactly. It's always like, you know, if you produce that content, and I've done it as well on podcast talk, I've put the guard rails there of like, please give me your details. And then they've experimented of taking that off and going just floaty belt, just because if it's a value to you, that's great. But it's already branded. So you know where it came from. You know, it came from me.
00:09:10
Speaker
And if it's a value, you'll get back in touch. But also, you can then do the post follow-up if you want to after the download of it. Then say, if you'd like to leave your details for more interest, do so. But don't feel obliged to. Don't put it in the front. Put it in the back if you want to. But it's, like I say, it's already branded. It's already of value. And also,
00:09:31
Speaker
Once you've got it, there's more inclination for them to then share it with other people if they've got it easily rather than going, oh, I've downloaded under my email address. Some people think, is that tracked? I don't know. I'm not technology savvy. It may be tracked. If I send it through to Andrew, is Andrew going to get tracked? Or, yeah, I won't do anything with it now. So you put this sort of mindset in there, don't you, where if it's open, it's like, great, got all the information I need, I'll share that wherever.
00:09:57
Speaker
It speaks to a type of marketing and sales actually, more so sales that I kind of was hoping would be dying out by now. And it's the, excuse me, it's the, what can we do to trick stuff? What can we do to trick someone into becoming a customer? No, it is essentially what you're doing. You know, there's things that smooth the process through and make it easy for somebody to become a client or a customer. If you're looking for ways to trick them into becoming a customer, then
00:10:26
Speaker
That's not going to be a great relationship. You're starting off by being devious. So just be human.
00:10:33
Speaker
You know what my pet hate is? SaaS companies that went through the stage. And I've not looked at it in a while because it really annoyed me off. Oh, we won't give you a prize. You've got to contact us for a prize, give us your details. So, right, okay. So are you a quid or a million quid, 500, you know, what are you? I don't know, because you've got to, we've got to have a conversation with you to qualify it. And there's a couple of competitors in the SMS space, mainly in the US that do this sort of aspects. And to me, that's like,
00:11:03
Speaker
It's wasting everybody's time because if like what did I get? I was looking at a webcast platform and the chat came back and said I think it's like $25,000 a year Etc etc. I was like, okay. I'm not in that game. I don't need it. I just saw it in choir. That's great And it was through another chat from a podcast but again, that's time wasted that we've gone through this sort of cycle of
00:11:29
Speaker
just waffle going back and forward. It's literally, if it said 25 grand on the website, I just want to approach them because it's not my budget. It's too complex for me. I don't need that. That's great. But you do get SaaS companies that do that. Literally, they put that sort of enterprise. There's always been, here's your three basic prices. And for enterprise, get in touch. Fine. When it gets to a point where there is no price whatsoever. So marketing, they've done all this hard work. They've got people to come to the page.
00:11:56
Speaker
And they're there, and they've got all the information they need apart from the starting price. That has to be on a phone call, literally. Okay, so again, I'll anchor it back to basic, you know, I always think of online as basic life and to go into a car dealership. It's like, oh, I really like this car. It's really great. Okay. Make an appointment for next week. I'll tell you what the price is then. And I'll laugh, aren't you? But that's what it is, isn't it? You know, if you think of it as an online presence, that's what you're doing to people is,
00:12:26
Speaker
I'm ready, but I've got a booking appointment for you to tell me how much it is to then work out actually. Yeah, you know what, forget it. I'll just go and buy something else. I'll go and buy the other car. Sorry. This is one of my favorite, favorite topics at the moment. I, um, I obviously I'm very familiar with the concept of inbound marketing, having been in SEO for so long, but I was at a conference last year and I saw somebody called, I don't know if it was this year or last year, they're all blending together.
00:12:55
Speaker
I saw somebody called Marcus Sheridan speak. Have you heard of him? No, he's a brilliant, brilliant speaker. And I'm, you know, I'm a, I'm a, I am a trained speaker. I'm a trained public speaker through going to Toastmasters. And, and I was going to brag that I'd won awards then, but I won't, I'll just leave that bit out. This guy's a fantastic speaker, but he's written a book, which I'm reading at the moment called, They Ask You Answer. And it's really good if you're not, if you're not
00:13:25
Speaker
like deeply familiar with what inbound marketing is and you want a really good starting point. He's written this book for business owners. It's not written for the tech world. It's written for people who own businesses just to explain not only the importance of inbound marketing, but actually how to do it, how to get buy-in from your team, how to make it happen. And one of the first concepts in the book and one of the first things that he spoke about when I saw him talk was prices on websites.
00:13:52
Speaker
And his story is he ran a, he's an American guy, he ran a fiberglass swimming pool business. I don't know much about swimming pools. We don't have a lot of call for them on the east coast. We've got the sea and it's too cold. But he started putting, you know, him and his competitors, none of them would put prices on the website because partly,
00:14:18
Speaker
know, they just want to, you know, probably sting the customers for as much as they possibly can. You know, I know of people in a very broad, undefinable way, who will decide on a price, you know, after going to company's house and looking at the turnover and stuff like that. And, you know, I'm not saying that's bad necessarily, or it's just, it's just not something I want to be a part of. But
00:14:43
Speaker
I halfway through this book and I thought, right, whenever you read anything like this, if you agree with maybe more than 60% of it, the next natural instinct I always have to say, yeah, but that won't work with my industry. So I thought in SEO, I have never ever seen an SEO agency put a price on their website.
00:15:07
Speaker
I've only seen a couple of people, freelancers on LinkedIn, mention prices, and then it's like an hour. You can spend 50 quid and speak to me for an hour or whatever. So I thought, yeah, I'm gonna write a pricing page. And about two weeks ago, I published a pricing page on the SEO website. And I'm not gonna lie, it worried me. It really, really worried me, but it's still there. And I haven't burst into flames. And in fact, I've got two new clients,
00:15:38
Speaker
in the time that's being live. And I know for definite no one is ever going to work for you if you're an agency or in marketing without going to look at your website.
00:15:47
Speaker
But in the primary navigation, it's absolutely there. There's actually a nice SEO reason to do it, which is that a lot of people search for SEO pricing, not a lot of people. There's not a lot of places for them to go for that. So I was like, yeah. There's several reasons why I like it. And I'm experimenting with it. I like the fact it's there. And one of them is its trust. What we're always doing in sales
00:16:15
Speaker
and marketing is building trust. For the first second somebody gets onto your website, you need to build trust with them. It's what it's all about and you can forget SEO, you can forget user experience, you can forget anything. If you're not building trust, you're not going to get anywhere or you can end up with a website that has
00:16:36
Speaker
hundreds of thousands of visitors that doesn't generate you any leads. Because at that level, you're then going back to the ye oldie fashioned numbers game of saying, well, I need this many thousand people converting to one fine or customer. We're not still there, are we? No, it's that sort of bottom-up forecast model of how much do I have to get in to try and get to my 1% type of thing.
00:17:00
Speaker
And you're right, it's like, yeah, I mean, that's a brilliant exercise because nobody else is doing it. You're going to get traffic from it, but it's open and transparent pricing because you'll have a baseline of what, what your worth is. So why not be open about it rather than going, Oh,
00:17:15
Speaker
Stuart's a one-man band, he can't afford us, but actually, I know, Bob's shop over here, 25, blah, blah, blah, he's doing X amount of revenue, actually normally charged 500 quid, but it's 1500 quid. And the trouble is, I mean, with any untransparent pricing, it's literally, conversations will be had somewhere, and somebody will be like, oh yeah, I work with Andrew, and he, yeah, it's great, and it's only a thousand a month, and somebody else will be going,
00:17:42
Speaker
I thought, I paid him 10 grand a month, what's going on there? And then that trust, gone. You never get it back ever again, do you? That relationship is broken. And it's just because of an ad hoc conversation and such around it. And you do find that happens across multiple businesses in general, because salespeople, salespeople, no damning them. They want to earn as much money as possible from that side.
Building Trust and Customer Relationships
00:18:10
Speaker
It is a relationship. I can't remember if we talked about it the last time, but so I started life at a steel firm.
00:18:18
Speaker
And I still keep in touch now with some of those people. And on Saturday, all the guys I used to work with at some microsystems, we'd go for a kebab. On Saturday night, we'd go to a kebab shop in Manchester. We used to go for some reason. I don't know why, but that warms my heart. You've got 20 grown men that have been around IT for a bit, going for a beer, and then a kebab on a Saturday night. It's rock and roll.
00:18:46
Speaker
But, you know, we all talk about the customers and the people that not just that we work with, but, you know, those customers we dealt with that we still kept in touch. Even was it now it's like 13, 10, like 10 years since leaving the company. And some people are still in Oracle and they keep in touch with them.
00:19:05
Speaker
But it's about those relationships, isn't it? If you have good relationships and you trust and you're open, it just works. Sorry, the final point I was gonna make about the steel side was, there's certain things I remember from being young and starting work was, it's really a simple stew. If you're gonna be late on delivery, ring the customer. Do not leave at five o'clock knowing it's not turned up at nine o'clock because that's gonna really annoy them. They're gonna be annoyed
00:19:33
Speaker
they're going to be less annoyed than turning up the next day. Things happen, the steel isn't right, it's wrong tolerance, whatever. It's the same when you're selling software or a product or services, just being open with the customer and pricing is the key. That's where I feel marketing should be now, is that relationship-based marketing model, being open and transparent,
00:19:57
Speaker
and also taking the blockers away so that the gates aren't shut anymore, customers can come back in and have a dialogue. Because if you're a product marketer, how are you going to develop the product if nobody's coming back and giving you feedback? How do you know that that landing page and that messaging is correct? The bot's not going to tell you. The bot's just going to be, we've signposted him elsewhere. He's got an answer. No, he hasn't. He's just got fed up. Absolutely.
00:20:25
Speaker
There's a lot of pluses.
The Power of Podcasts
00:20:27
Speaker
I talked earlier about smoothing the process. I was going to say lubricating the customer, but that sounds horrible. Just one last thing on the pricing on the website. One of the things that Marcus Sheridan says is people won't put the prices on because they're worried their competitors are going to
00:20:45
Speaker
prices are. They don't know. They've already got secret shopper empty. The secret shopper has already been there and got the price. Under no doubt the quote quote proposals I've given
00:21:00
Speaker
clients who haven't gone on to work with me are in the hands of my competitors. I'm happy with that. Good. In fact, I take some of that into consideration when I write the proposals and the things I put in them because I'm really proud of the way we work. So this wasn't meant to be bigging up this company. But talking about making it an easier and smoother sales process, one of the things I've realised now that I've just gone out there and put all the prices on the website,
00:21:25
Speaker
is that there's no reason not to add them into my CRM. So I've recently moved to HubSpot, and you can add products in there. And it means that my salesperson, when I've finished doing that, or anyone who's in a sales function with me, including me, instead of saying at the end of a meeting, right, and then I'll go away and write a proposal for you, which invariably takes a few days.
00:21:47
Speaker
and just finish the meeting, click a few buttons and the proposal's gone because there's nothing to work out. But the other thing, just to answer something you said about people worrying that old Bill down the road won't have the money, you know, so he'll be put off. Well, he's either not going to become a customer anyway, but more accurately, if you want to not reject people like that, change your product ladder, change your pricing.
00:22:14
Speaker
because I identified, I mean, embarrassingly recently, that there's a lot of people who want to speak to me but won't, because they know how much the full agency shebang is, you know, the full product. But I found people are very willing to pay a much smaller amount of money for half an hour, an hour of my time. And I love packing as much value as I can. That way, you're not turning away anyone and everything, everyone's getting their fair price.
00:22:42
Speaker
But, but also for them, you know, it becomes a starting point as well, isn't it? Because it's like, well, I'm not ready for the full agency. I may not even be the ready for the full agency, not from a cost basis, but actually internally, we just don't have all the processes and stuff, but I'd like to start small.
00:22:57
Speaker
and build up. But then when you've got that blocker of no prices, it's like, oh, it's a full agency model. It's going to be a million quid. It's not even worth having a conversation. I'll just find somebody freelance, Fiverr, have a really bad experience. Whereas like you say, if you change that product ladder and have entry points that go
00:23:13
Speaker
You can go from here all the way up to there and just have those conversations. At least then, they may not be a customer now, but you're building a pipeline of a potential customer in six months, 12 months, 18 months. You're not, like you say, you're not blocking them out, are you? And the fact that you're doing a proposal in CRM, it's already pre-built templated prices. You can put them back in a loop and go, there you go. Come back and just set a notification because then
00:23:39
Speaker
You have got details on them. You know what they want. You know what they're looking for. They've come to the site. They've run away because it's not transparent pricing. You reduce that conversation point straight away down to, I'll make a decision because I can't speak to anybody. It's doing exactly what we've been talking about, is building a relationship. Many, many, many years ago, long before I was ever an SEO, I was sent on a training course for an accounts
00:24:07
Speaker
to my account software. And for some reason, this is when I was really young. For some reason, a part of this training course was on pressure sales. And we were sat down and spent half a day being told the most horrible things that I just thought were just the scummiest, most terrible thing. And the only good that came of this is a few years later, we needed to get our double glazing done because we still had old sash windows. And when we first bought the house, this chap came round.
00:24:37
Speaker
They're smoking in our lounge, which just seems weird these days. He stung us 1500 pounds for a back door. And this was in like the year 2000. So that was a fair amount. So when we came to get our windows done, the annoying thing was this product that this guy's company sold genuinely was the best product. We knew it was because we knew people who had it. But
00:24:59
Speaker
they had such a bad double glazing salesman reputation. So the only good thing that came out of that pressure selling course was that when the double glazing salesman came round, every time he started to put one of those tactics into use, I was able to shut it down. And he was in and out in 25 minutes. And we did buy from him.
00:25:18
Speaker
But he said, I can only keep this price for the next two hours. He said, I'll ring my boss. I was like, don't bother ringing my boss. He was like, I can't give you the presentation unless your wife's also here. Like that's not going to happen. So he rang me back the next day. He said, oh, you've got to sign today. I said, right, because you said that, call me back in a week. And surprise, surprise, the price was still as good as it was. It was just from that point, I remember thinking that's that's got to be
00:25:43
Speaker
nowhere near any business I ever run. Just nowhere near. It's like in the SaaS world, it's always like the end of quarter deal to be had because you're trying to meet your numbers, you know, to hit the revenue target and stuff and it's like, right, okay. But then buyers know, oh, right, okay. So I'll wait until the last day of March. That's when I can sign the contract and we'll keep sort of getting some added in additions. But everybody knows that now. So it's like, right, okay. So we're not going to buy anything until the last day of March.
00:26:13
Speaker
It completely ruins for that part of the business that's bringing in bringing in work, that kind of motivation causes so many problems everywhere else in the business. So a good example I've got is I pay one of those for one of those wine clubs, I'm not going to name them, but where a small enough amount of money leaves your bank that you forget about it. And then then they then you get a case of wine.
00:26:39
Speaker
And it's got to the stage now, when they offer me something, I will always say no. Because I know if I leave it till the end of each quarter, the salesman will be desperate. So why would you buy any other time? So all that's done is their supply chain, their warehousing system, their everything has been compressed into one little bit. It's like when number plates on cars used to change once a year.
00:27:04
Speaker
it made the industry horrible for the other 11 months of the year. Yeah, just chaos. I know in the past when I've worked with some B2B SaaS companies around my sort of channel consulting business, and it's always come on, there's always a side conversation about sales and marketing and price and such.
00:27:21
Speaker
And it always comes back to, so what about discounts? Well, what about discounts? So where do we start? Well, you don't start anywhere. Because if you start with a mindset of discount straight away, you're putting in force a sales force that is discount orientated. If you don't believe the value of your product is worth that price, then reduce the price. Don't increase the discounts. It's like, I don't get it. Well, how would you do that? Sales need discounts.
00:27:44
Speaker
Now, sales don't need discounts, they need a really good value that solves a problem and they articulate it clearly and they build that relationship and they sell it at the price. If you want to give anything away or discount something down, it's not your monthly revenue, then look at your services. But even then, you've got to think
00:28:03
Speaker
You don't go, again, you don't go into the shoe shop and ask for discount, you may do, but you don't just naturally go in a sale with a position of, ah, I can sell this at 100, but ideally, I want the sale. So I may give 20% off. Why start with that mindset? It's just wrong, isn't it? It's just the sort of space that we're in. And again, from a marketing aspect, it's like, why would you want to bring all that effort in to get all qualified leads in?
00:28:30
Speaker
for the sales organization to then go, brilliant, we're going to sell that and at the end of the quarter, we're going to drop 30% of everything. So your cost of acquisition is now higher, the revenue is reduced and the model is just broken. Well done, everybody. That was a great job. There's always so many pluses to not discounting
Transitioning to Transparent Pricing
00:28:50
Speaker
though. If you've got a premium brand, you're putting a big dent in the side of it if you discount it.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. If you look at like Gucci or Chanel or those sort of things, they never discount. And there's a reason because of that whole aspect. It devalues the proposition. And it's the same with anything. It's like, you know, if a customer can't afford it, they haven't got the budget, then position something else or something they can afford, but keeping your price, because otherwise it's just like literally you're just giving it away all the time. You start with a thousand and if you're going to sell it at 500,
00:29:22
Speaker
Just sell it at 500. If it's not worth a thousand pounds, don't sell it at a thousand pounds because it's not worth it around that. Again, it's that positioning piece in turn. It's like one of the things I learned many years ago now is that when we send out proposals, although I'm not going to be doing this anymore now that our prices are all... Sorry, I need to finish a thought. I'm not making any sense. I'd always put in three options.
00:29:51
Speaker
And I was just thinking I can still do that with pricing. So we'd always say, look, this is option one, option two, option three. And most of the time people would go for the middle option. But I've noticed recently people are going for the Rolls Royce option more often. But these are people who we've had longer conversations with and have got to know. And sometimes we, I'm very, very relaxed around when I first start speaking to somebody and when I give them a proposal. I mean, no rush.
00:30:18
Speaker
I don't want to rush anything at all. Nothing at all. I did lose a client today because I spoke to them last week and I said, look, just take your time. Think about it. Let's speak again when you're ready. And he just told me he's going with someone else, which could be for any reason, to be honest. But I forgot my point there. I tell you what, I do want to speak to you about this, Stuart. Podcasts. I didn't quite bring that back round as smoothly as I had hoped.
00:30:44
Speaker
But I'm going to say that podcasts are a good trust builder. So one of the reasons I originally wanted to speak to you is because of your involvement in the podcast world. So you've mentioned podcast talk a few times. Can you just give us a lowdown on what that is?
00:31:03
Speaker
Yeah. And you're right about the trust aspect. So podcast talk is a SaaS based business for B2C or B2B. So we work with either agencies using the product or individuals. And essentially just think of it as a search engine for all the podcasts shows that are available. So 4.2 million at the moment with some data attached to it. So things like we take the basic podcast feed and then we identify
00:31:28
Speaker
the gender, is it an interview, we pull in domain authority and website data as well, so the number of backlinks. So a consumer can come in and go, I want even 100 podcasts that are about marketing, entrepreneurship and SEO that have a website and I also use the word broadcast, I don't know why, I've never worked at the BBC.
00:31:50
Speaker
and then publish as well on YouTube. So we do that and then in the back end is an automated like campaign tool to send the emails out to the host like yourself Andrew going hey look to be on the show and here's why and it's like it's a drip campaign so it's four emails that go out and if you don't reply to keep on going and if you do reply to stop and it came about because being my co-founder
00:32:15
Speaker
Ray had a language business and wanted to go on more shows to promote his language business. I had an itch with my consulting business to go and talk about channel and sales and direct sales and stuff on podcasts.
00:32:27
Speaker
but go to search for podcasts and then try to find the host details. And then finding out actually the show hasn't been live for three years. So you've just wasted all that time. So we built this service a couple of years ago now, but it's only really in the last six months, eight months. So we've got all the features in there and all the data set to automate everything. And then we've got a plan with another set of data as well. But yeah, just going back to your starting point, the rationale behind it is
00:32:56
Speaker
Even though my voice has gone croaky, like the human voice, your voice builds trust, whether it's on video or just that conversation. You listen to somebody and they're talking about stuff and it's like, oh, and you still, you start to build a rapport, which is you can't get that same sort of context from a blog post or an article or a very short, real type of thing. It's just like a 30 minute conversation. It sounds okay. Okay. Great. Um, and that's why I love podcasts.
00:33:25
Speaker
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I mean, they're warm to so many brands just by seeing a human connection. I want a mission at the moment to try and create a video with me in it at the moment, although the rest of my team, they're a bit reluctant to get involved at the moment. But I want every page on the SEO website to have a video with the same content on it.
00:33:48
Speaker
and every blog post, it's partly for accessibility. In a way, I haven't quite sort of got straight in my head yet. One aspect would be one of my associates struggles to read massive long, long bits of video works nicely. That's really good.
Human Connection in Online Content
00:34:06
Speaker
But also just to get that humanity across as quickly as we possibly can, because I like your real world kind of examples, you wouldn't go to a networking meeting in the real world.
00:34:17
Speaker
and sit underneath a box with adverts around it, plastered around it. It wouldn't have the same effect, would it? If you want to stand up and awkwardly... I always try and come up with an analogy to explain SEO involving classic films or something, which never make much sense, but people always remember them and they seem to laugh, so that's how I get the humanity across.
00:34:39
Speaker
But it becomes an anchor point to them. They associate that with you because it's that human aspect. And the same again with the podcast because it'd be anecdotes that you may say or pieces about historical stuff or that sort of thing. And you associate that with that person in a different way than if I wrote a post about what we talked about today about some microsystems and a retail in the Kebab.
00:35:02
Speaker
it just be a light touch, wouldn't it? It wouldn't be contextual from that side. But I think, you know, the voice aspects definitely, again, same for me, it builds brands. It's like, right, I'm going to go listen to that. I'm going to go take a look at what that person said, because that's how I learned a lot of stuff over 10 years or so, just about things that happen in the world by listening to
00:35:25
Speaker
Pat Flynn and those sort of guys, it's like, ah, they're talking about stuff that's over in the West Coast and it's all like, we're not doing it over here. I'd look amazingly intelligent. I'm not, but a new 5% more because I've just been listening to some stuff on some podcasts.
00:35:42
Speaker
I think podcasts and audio, podcasts specifically, is such a rich texture for information because, yeah, I write articles, but I really consider them like anyone does when you write an article. You look at the article and you hack bits out of it.
00:36:04
Speaker
And you have a lot of control over where you put the emphasis and how strong it gets in one bit. But when you talk, especially in conversation, things can pop up that won't make it into an article. So you get kind of a more honest picture of anything being discussed. And I think the way brains work, if you're talking to somebody else, it also awakens part of it, which parts of your brain that just aren't in play if it's just you and the keyboard writing.
00:36:34
Speaker
And also I think, you know, I'm, I'm the worst for this is, um, like our attention spans are less now. I struggled to, I've got hundreds of books and I struggled to read a book.
00:36:44
Speaker
Because my brain is like, I have to really zone out until I start reading it from that side. But at the networking event or whatever it may be, you're engaged with people, aren't you? Talking to them. Or you may be on your phone. But again, we're in an isolated society now where it's very, I think I can't remember the term, but again, I was listening to it on the podcast about loneliness and stuff about you.
00:37:07
Speaker
you wander the streets and you just be people looking at the screens, they're not engaged with each other. And that's, to me, is like what a blog post is sort of in that sense of it's very much somebody may be engaged with it, but not fully 100%. Whereas in audio, it's like, boom, I'm listening to it. It's just the tone of sort of picking up characteristics very quickly. And what I've started to do now, some of my blog posts is
00:37:31
Speaker
I use a service called recaster and it'll take the blog blog post and then, um, two voices interview style. So it sounds like a podcast. It's I'll send you a link to it. And it's a guy that was chatting to about it, but the way it does it, it sounds like a really natural interview. So, hey, Stuart, we're going to talk about some AI stuff today. What do you think? Oh yeah. And it's like, wow. Okay.
00:37:57
Speaker
And I did it again a little bit more for accessibility and a bit more of a different dynamic and testing some of that content sharing. And it's not that expensive. But yeah, take a look at that as well. Because again, it can just help sort of lift some of that content off the page. I sometimes put it at the top of the post or I'll just share it socially from that side.
00:38:19
Speaker
I really like the idea of those kind of uses for things like AI. I mean, one of the problems that I have is I write an article, then I'll do the video version. I'm not reading it. I'm just going from the same, you know, I'll jot down the structure and I'll use that structure when I'm writing the article. So when I then do the YouTube version, the video version, I'll use the same structure. The problem is I've realized that if I write the article first, then do the video, there's always stuff in the video, which is better.
00:38:47
Speaker
and has been that I didn't think of. So instead of now writing it, reading it, and then having to go back and rewrite it, I'm trying to get used to talking it first. So to take that on the next level, I started mucking around using just the dictation just on the Apple Mac near the iOS dictation. And it's made me speak better because
00:39:09
Speaker
I can't abide having to edit out the word so about 200 times from every article. But the good use of AI, I've written quite an extensive prompt I use for chat GPT, where it will now change my dictation and make it more correct. So put paragraphs in. There's a street destruction not to add anything, because if you let chat
00:39:35
Speaker
it will run away and just it'll come to you. And start talking and making stuff up and things like that. And it's like, really? I don't remember writing this stuff. Well, you think this one, I don't remember talking about kebabs. Where did that come from?
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting to say that though about the transcripts and the sort of audio thing, because I can't think of a chap's name, but about two or three years ago, I was talking about again, my consulting business about sort of putting what was in my brain over 30 years into like a product type course or some educational material.
00:40:10
Speaker
And what he said is, if you want to do something like that, I'm not a writer, I struggle to write a lot of content, I'll just start going into Mancunian typing thing going on and it'll just be... So like you said, do a transcript, brain dump, just whatever you're thinking about, because that's more natural, and then take the transcript and then start to edit that and that'll then turn into some content structure for you.
00:40:35
Speaker
Rather than sitting there because when I did my masters after write 15,000 words I am never ever going back there ever again. It just ever But if I would have followed that process I could have talked for England took the components out and then put it into structure And I think again, it depends how it your brains wide that really works for me audio first then into a piece of content and from that side, but you know, we're not we're not all wired the same are we
00:41:03
Speaker
No, fortunately not, because it keeps everything very interesting.
Audio Platform Experimentation
00:41:09
Speaker
But you've really struck something in my mind talking about the conversational aspect of how we absorb information. Have you played around with LinkedIn Audio? No, it was a bit of a thing for a while, but I've never really gone back there again. I'm not sure. I've not seen some good use cases of it. I don't know if you have. Have you seen?
00:41:32
Speaker
But we're mucking about with it. I genuinely don't know how to put it any other way. There's a friend and associate, a guy called James Kindred, who we work together quite a lot. He's kind of a designer and a UX guy, and he's a serial startup. We currently has just grown an alcohol-free brewery to quite a big, big level. But we both have this real attitude of play.
00:42:03
Speaker
to tech and learning. So we've decided that every Wednesday at noon, we do an AMA and ask me anything on LinkedIn audio. And during today's episode, we were saying, why is LinkedIn doing this? I don't know where LinkedIn audio fits in this sort of infrastructure. We do it because, well, it'd be like having a chat for half an hour. And we let anyone who wants to pop up and join in. But the listener numbers aren't
00:42:32
Speaker
massive, you know, 30 or 40 would would be a good one. We've only done a few. But I just don't see it doesn't generate any assets. I did record the first couple and turn them into podcast episodes. But I've stopped doing that because the first five or six minutes of any LinkedIn audio is us trying to get it to work. Trying to get trying to get people to happen to edit all that out just made it it just wasn't worth it. But yeah, I don't I don't know where it fits in. I don't know what the point is.
00:43:01
Speaker
No, because I know they do like LinkedIn meetings and things like that and sort of their own type of webinar things, because a friend of mine uses it to do like an update on a Friday lunch time. But the audio side, I can't, it's like they try to extend out into areas that aren't really in their wheelhouse type of thing, because I can't see where audio, you know, if you're on LinkedIn, it's for professional, it's for business and such and that sort of thing.
00:43:28
Speaker
unless they can have a podcast platform or some sort and they do that rather than it just, yeah, it's like, I can't see any real, unless there's some amazing, maybe we're both missing something out there and there's some amazing audio channels that are going on and people are really sort of found a niche for it or a niche. I've been looking for good, yeah, good use cases, good examples. I want to hear what other people are doing because I've got politics on here for everyone else who struggles as much as we do to get guests.
00:43:57
Speaker
He's literally like, no, you got to put your hand up. No, no, press that button where we can't see it. But like so, so much of that going on. But it's something I was thinking the other day, and I meant to go and have a look at this, and I got distracted by probably a million other things is what's happened to Clubhouse? Because obviously Clubhouse went crazy in COVID time, because we're all sat at home, we had nothing to do. And then Twitter spaces came out. But again, those sort of live audio channels, they all turned again into
00:44:24
Speaker
cheesy snake oil sales places. So you go in this clubhouse and it'd be somebody just basically trying to sell stuff because they had a million people in the room. It's just like, really? Again, it's like they're not bringing, you know, it just didn't work. Not that it didn't work. It's just sort of people leverage the platforms for the wrong use cases. They'd be interested in it. I've not even looked at clubhouse. I meant to go and have a look and see where they're at if they've still got three people working there.
00:44:50
Speaker
I gave this a lot of thought. We discussed it. It was today. We're recording this on a Wednesday. So it's today that we did our LinkedIn audio. And my current theory is the reason the functionality is so bloody awful is like
00:45:05
Speaker
other LinkedIn functionality. There's no connectors. You can't use Zapier or if this and that or anything really with LinkedIn. I think that's probably a good thing because as soon as somebody can configure it away to blooming humans, those marketers, as soon as someone can figure out a way of stuffing it out for the rest of us, they absolutely will.
00:45:33
Speaker
So maybe it's just that, maybe it's just an experiment by Microsoft. Let's not forget that LinkedIn is a Microsoft product just to see what happens. But yeah, it just seems a bit odd. We're having fun mucking about with it. No, it's like because they've gone down the path of LinkedIn newsletters and things like that as well, aren't they? But then again, you've still got a lot of
00:45:54
Speaker
I always sort of look at stuff maybe cynically because when I was at Datasith we'd always sort of work with third parties and Twitter was the main one so we had Twitter's firehose but we're beholden to a third party and it's the same if you build your community or build something into LinkedIn it's in a closed community which is good but also bad because if your newsletter isn't there you can't bring it out
00:46:17
Speaker
assuming to beehive and stuff, all that sort of thing. Yeah, but again, if you want to target business professionals, that's the space to be.
Closing Thoughts
00:46:27
Speaker
If we're in Germany, you know, I can't remember the name of the one in Germany now, you've got the same sort of offering, but LinkedIn is a core one for Western speaking or English speaking audience, isn't it? Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what else you experiment with. What else are you going to get in there?
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, we've run massively over time, it's been a really enjoyable conversation. As ever, when I speak to you, I've now kind of got lots of other things that I'm now going to go and look into rather than doing the work I should be doing. And so thanks for that. It's close to tea time anyway, so you're justified, but that to-do list has now just got longer and longer. Well, I'm having another look at podcast talk because I
00:47:16
Speaker
Well, I deliberately didn't look into it because I wanted to speak to you and I don't...
00:47:21
Speaker
I don't do well with those. I'm not one of those podcast hosts who can do all the research and then sound surprised when the guest tells them stuff. I have to be genuinely surprised. And sometimes... Do more naturally. We've just met and we're having a conversation rather than, I already know this stuff. And then it's like, oh, did you do that? It's like, yeah, that's just, you don't need all that. On the fly. I think anyone who's listened to any of these podcasts know that it's not really that kind of show.
00:47:47
Speaker
I always think they sound like a lot of hard work to run. It's much nicer just pressing record and then talking. Yeah, exactly. It's more natural, isn't it? Right, so I'm going to go off and have another look at podcast talk. And I'm just going to say thank you for being a guest again, Stuart. I thoroughly enjoyed your company. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. It's always a great conversation, isn't it? It's like I feel we should be having a beer at some stage. Maybe a bit early for a beer, yeah.
00:48:13
Speaker
Mate, well no, this is why you need to check out James Kindred's Big Drop Brewery because all their beer is 1.5%. It's really good. Genuinely is brilliant beer. OK, well I'm going to say goodbye. Would you like to say goodbye? Yeah, thanks again. Great to see you Andrew and thanks everybody for listening.