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Strategy, tactics and the dance of humanity with Phil McEwan
46 Plays1 year ago
Marketing Strategist (and part-time Viking) Phil McEwan wants to know if your marketing strategy can take a punch? Are you the guide in your marketing story, or are you trying to be the hero?
In this entertaining podcast episode Phil McEwan and Andrew Laws explore the differences between strategy and tactics, and why the two things are often confused.
We also explore the art of the impossible and peel apart 'the smelly onion of SEO.
Find Phil McEwan on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/philmcewan/
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, welcome back to the SEO Untitled SEO Podcast. Now I have a guest today and I'm going to leave it as that. Guest, would you like to introduce yourself? Hello, my name is Phil McHugh and a long time listener, first time caller.
00:00:16
Speaker
I'm a digital marketing strategist and independent business consultant. I'm a trustee for a men's mental health charity, part-time viking, and also do events and festival management. So, yeah, an eclectic portfolio.
00:00:33
Speaker
An eclectic portfolio. So how do I know you? It's going to be beer, really, isn't it, to be fair? Probably did meet you in a pub. Probably. But I think it's like the East Anglian digital marketing sector is quite incestuous. And there is like almost that is three degrees of separation. So you'll always know somebody who knows somebody. But yeah, we vicariously crossed paths a few years back, but actually only really properly linked up just during the kind of the end of lockdown, really, wasn't it?
00:01:02
Speaker
It's probably not that long ago. I think it was when you made a burst for freedom from the agency you were previously working on. Yeah, and you gave me some fantastic, well, not necessarily advice, but you gave me contact with a very astute accountant who helped me with debugging a particular situation I had, so yeah. Excellent. I'll give a shout out to Duncan Jay. You won't hear this. He's never going to listen to a podcast. He doesn't need it. His rego's rock solid. Excellent.
Strategy vs Tactics in Digital Marketing
00:01:27
Speaker
Right so as you know this is an SEO podcast and I called you along Phil because I've seen you do a very good talk on strategy versus tactics and we don't have to kind of go all the way into that but I was trying to boil SEO down to the friction points
00:01:48
Speaker
And we have loads of tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, our brains and all the other stuff for figuring out what the problems are or what the opportunities for optimization are. But I think one of the biggest challenges for anyone SEO is then what do you do with that?
00:02:06
Speaker
It's an area quite close to my heart, right? Because I've worked agency side for probably about 13, 14 years. I've been independent for close to two decades now. And one of the biggest things that grinds my gears is people saying strategy when they actually mean tactics. And it's kind of a word that is banded around so easily. But it still never ceases to surprise me how many few either digital marketing practitioners or business owners don't actually really have a strategy.
00:02:34
Speaker
Right. And what is it? It's the dictionary definition. It's just a plan to achieve an identified objective. It's how the resources applied help you achieve the means or the identified objective. And I think that's prevalent, particularly in digital marketing, because everyone gets excited with the new shiny, shiny tools and the delivery mechanism, but not necessarily focused on what is actually being delivered by that mechanism.
00:02:56
Speaker
So I've done a lot of talks around the relationship between strategy and tactics, so how they are fundamentally different, but there is a Venn diagram and one can't work without the other. See, it's interesting how you talk about this without kind of having the slides that you show, partly because I think I'm on one of those slides. You are. I might include that on the show notes for this. Maybe that should be your title image. That's a wonderful idea.
00:03:25
Speaker
So, I mean, yeah, you're completely right in my subjective experience.
Challenges in SEO Strategy
00:03:30
Speaker
People in SEO and digital marketing as a whole love a bit of software, they love a new bit of tech. There's always something that people are getting excited about, whether it's a system or a tool for making things easier, whether it's a faster way of gathering information, whether it's a more accurate way of assessing data,
00:03:49
Speaker
But all of those things, in my opinion, aren't actually the answer. It's like saying, well, now I have two spanners in my toolbox, which are both slightly different size, but the head's still falling off the robot. I wish I had a thought of better analogy than that.
00:04:05
Speaker
No, but it's true though, isn't it? Because that's where you end up defaulting to the tactics rather than thinking about the overarching strategy. And I think, again, with SEO, it's you taking sneaky camera photos. I'm just taking pictures of you for fun now. Yeah, I should have at least put a shirt on. But yeah, so that, at least in my humble experience, that's what I've always kind of come across. It's like, you know, if we align this directly just to SEOs,
00:04:32
Speaker
you're beholden to technology, systems, processes, algorithms that you really don't have a clue about, because the powers that be are never going to share how they truly work. So there is a lot of guesstimation involved in it. And I genuinely do find it hilarious and entire industry sector has been built on the term, well, it depends. It is. But again, it is about the application of those tactics and how they fall into the wider range of what is the overarching strategy.
00:05:00
Speaker
and again in my experience working with seo's is that incredibly good at identifying the opportunities right you can work with the insights you can define what the variables are you know what you're working with you know what you're working towards you know what you know others are doing within that space what's working for them and you can kind of guess what isn't too um then you have your rule book as to what
00:05:20
Speaker
the art of the possible actually is the easier tactics and the things you can do, but then inherently it always comes down to a lack of strategy or then no confidence in the execution of that strategy. So we could do a load of different things to try and achieve that objective, but you're generally default to the kind of the tributary routes that you're most comfortable with.
00:05:44
Speaker
It's one of the biggest challenges in any SEO collaboration is that a lot of businesses outside of marketing, a lot of businesses rely on systems and rely on, well, we know that if we do this, then this happens and then this happens.
00:06:01
Speaker
And
The Role of Creativity in Marketing
00:06:01
Speaker
for years, I tried to put together kind of a roadmap. Every new client I work with, we can go through this roadmap. And you can't get even close. It's just not possible. We have something we call the, it's kind of like the sanity check that we do for all new clients. And it's real basic stuff to us. Check their own search console, check they've actually got analytics, check their website isn't laden with viruses.
00:06:29
Speaker
It to our mind really really basic things which doesn't devalue it from a financial perspective But from that point on it's really a lot of chin scratching I had a meeting with Bex and Matt who part of my team earlier this morning and I was trying to reinforce into in them for just internal reporting that
00:06:46
Speaker
what i'm really paying them for or what they are yeah i'm paying them they're employees i can't can't get around making that sound any any less capitalist than it is hmrc are listening hey they know all about them anyway um and i said no i'm not paying you for how many reports or how many words you discover i'm paying you for the time that you spend thinking because matt was saying well
00:07:09
Speaker
Sometimes when I know I've got to get things done, I find myself just staring into the space and thinking, like, no, no, that's where the genius is. That's where the benefit is. I'm going wildly off track now. No, but that's test and learn, because that's a fundamental principle of digital marketing as a whole, not necessarily just SEO, right? Because there's things you can't control. There's things you can't necessarily foresee. So it is a lot of trial and learn and test and experiment, and that is a big part of it. But therein lies also the challenge of getting that buy-in with people like clients, because you've got a broad spectrum of understanding.
00:07:38
Speaker
All right, and it's black magic. You'll never understand SEO, but within a business, you might have a business owner that, you know, I need to do some of that internets. And it's like, okay, cool, right. You're not going to be on search console, are you? Definitely not got goals set up in your analytics account, all the way through to an organization that might have an in-house marketing team with an SEO specialist.
00:07:58
Speaker
And then often you'll find, particularly in SMEs, it's like the SEO specialist is like a generalist, you know, broad brush. They know how to optimize, write some title tags, write some head of meta descriptions and things, but they really don't know what they're doing. They've kind of inherited SEO under the umbrella of marketing and they're certainly not experts in that field. So it's that kind of balance of the message of going, right, am I producing a report for the set to try and validate how clever I am or what we're actually doing here? Or am I trying to translate this to somebody without making them feel inferior that they don't really understand it?
00:08:29
Speaker
Every every person in SEO that I know has has a different take on one of those two main themes and mine personally has always been democratization of that information But one thing I think if I'm someone's giving me money I'll give them the details that make it relatable and it's it's my opinion that in SEO all we're actually doing is using a tactic and
00:08:51
Speaker
to meet, see I brought it back around, using a tactic to help meet a business goal. So however complex what we're doing is, that's kind of of no interest or little interest to the business owner. It's what the result of that activity is, but I will explain it in real business terms because there is nothing in SEO that doesn't relate back to core business theory that's been around for what, 200 years?
00:09:21
Speaker
The things in the toolbox are different now, and some things are faster. But ultimately, I would like to be challenged by anyone. I'd like someone to tell me, but in SEO, we can specifically do this. And I will always be able to say, I hope, yeah, that's the same thing that happened in the 1940s. We're just doing it in a different way now. The outcome is still the same. It's also just marketing and reaching an audience.
00:09:47
Speaker
Well, that's it. What is marketing? Put the right message in front of the right person at the right time. SEO as a skill set is you're trying to get in front of self-identified need. For something highly technical, it's very much based on human behavior.
00:10:07
Speaker
Right, because you're just trying to get your message in front of the right people at a time they've identified they're looking for it. And that, again, is the detachment you'll often have. It's like a business owner is going, we need to do some SEO. We need to do this. I want to rank, you know, page one of Google.
00:10:22
Speaker
Okay, what does that actually mean? And what you're going to do with it? Exactly, exactly. What terms, what language, and often you'll find that there's a disconnect between that internal self-view as to the language we use and how we explain what we do and what the value adds are and what the benefits are, whether it's a product or a service, these things, actually into the reality of what people are actually looking for and more importantly, what terminology they're then putting into search engines to be able to appear for that stuff.
00:10:49
Speaker
So it's an education journey, but it's a dance of humanity, isn't it? Dance of humanity. I've got loads of good quotes coming from you. I would write that one down. Painful. I'm full of this nonsense, unfortunately. Dance of humanity. But yeah, you're right. It's all the dance, so I'm still thinking about that.
00:11:09
Speaker
But but it is though, isn't it? It's because again, it's like you think SEO and you think you know highly academic You know mathematic thought process But in reality what you're trying to do you're trying to anticipate or you know research to find out what language people are actually using when they've self-identified something they're looking for and then you're using technology to be able to put that message in front of them at the right time and
00:11:33
Speaker
And therein lies the connectivity back to the strategy and the tactics stuff is, you know, strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory and tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
Interplay of Strategy and Tactics in SEO
00:11:42
Speaker
Have you got this on your screen? Yeah, man, I've got some notes on that. But yeah, Sun Tzu, Art of War, you know, great, particularly for the Viking combat side of things. I'm all about battlefield strategy.
00:11:52
Speaker
But it relates to this stuff too because fundamentally it comes down to there needs to be an overarching strategy. What's the plan to achieve your objective? SEO is, by definition, a tactic, part of that bigger picture.
00:12:08
Speaker
But it doesn't necessarily mean that the next layer down doesn't mean that the SEO approach doesn't have its own strategy, right? There are specific goals. There are layers. It's like an onion. The smelly onion of SEO. Exactly. So, yeah, it's an odd one because, again, it's a highly, highly academic discipline because you're using technology to ultimately achieve your ends.
00:12:34
Speaker
It's the missing piece with marketing. Everyone's obsessed with the delivery mechanism, not necessarily the thing that's being delivered, right? Yeah, but I think, I agree with you that there is academical, but in my, well not just my experience, it's the creative solution to some of those academical problems is what has kept me interested for 20 odd years. If it was as simple as stuff like on-site audits, which
00:12:58
Speaker
are an essential part a lot of the time. That is a black and white thing. Those 10 links on that page are bust. Go and fix them. There's not really much creativity there, but when it comes to solving a problem and making the most of an opportunity, that's where the creativity comes into it, and it becomes less of a science and more of an art. So I've got a client who sells shipping containers.
00:13:27
Speaker
And it's really hard to come up with a lot of interesting copy about exactly what a shipping container is. Largely we know they're big metal boxes. So we start writing other long-tail things around that, like we write about the biggest shipping container ship in the world, and we write about people who convert their homes, and that's where the creativity comes into it.
00:13:48
Speaker
It's an interesting one actually because I had a client many years back that worked in that sector and they were absolutely adamant that they needed to be using the term freight forwarding and yet it became very very very quickly apparent that actually freight logistics is the preferred term within that sector and again it was like that education of trying to get things like no we need to kind of steer this in the way that the audiences are searching and looking and that was an internal argument but
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah, how do you make shipping containers sexy? That's the beauty of marketing. A good marketer should be able to make the unsexy sexy. PG Woodhouse, which I'm surprised how often I quote in the world of SEO actually, but he said, the facts aren't the thing, it's the story. And there's always something. I've got a client who sells
00:14:37
Speaker
These little bits of metal, essentially, that are used for hot melt adhesive application within a particular temperature band in a very specific industrial process. And they said, how are we going to write anything sexy about that? And I said, well, how much do your parts cost? Hot metal in your area.
00:15:00
Speaker
Well, your parts cost this much, yeah? How much do the competitors cost? Okay, how long do yours last? Uh-huh. How long does the competitors last? Okay, so the total cost of ownership of buying your parts compared to the competitors are, see, that's when it starts to get appealing, because the business owner, whoever's in charge of the boots, isn't looking at a piece of metal. They're looking at a method for increasing profit and reducing loss. There's always a story. That's the creative part of it. That's not really SEO, it's just kind of
00:15:30
Speaker
No, but it's a fundamental part of it, though, isn't it? Because that's answering the human element to the equation, which is, what is the challenge I'm trying to overcome or the problem I'm trying to solve? Because that's what people are searching for. They've self-identified that they have a need. And it's
Navigating Marketing Trends and Tools
00:15:43
Speaker
like, age of the internet, ignorance is a choice now, right? If you want to learn something or find something as you search for it, it's just the way it works.
00:15:49
Speaker
which from a sales perspective often now means that a huge proportion of the research element before any purchase or engagement with a salesperson is done way ahead, you know, because you can find that information. So where the SEO comes in is making sure that you're in that pack to be able to be seen and discovered and, you know, engaged with.
00:16:06
Speaker
But again, it's that message where, and I say this about marketers all the time, is they're so obsessed with the new shiny, shiny delivery mechanism, right? And it's the same with content. It's content for the sake of content, right? It's like, okay, right. A bin has contents, right? But it's inherently throwaway and rubbish, right? It's got contents, but it's not adding any value to anyone really, isn't it? It's throwaway, it's going in the trash. And it's exactly the same with all marketing and SEO. And we kind of talked about this before we came on air, where it was,
00:16:35
Speaker
There's always these peaks and troughs of these interesting things. It's like, oh, marketing automation, that's the new thing. Yeah, how many people actually really do that now 10 years later, even with the content personalization and CMS platforms? Rarely actually see it used well.
00:16:49
Speaker
you know in the same respect as then all of a sudden it's like all right yeah cryptocurrency blockchain yeah that's the new thing and then everyone forgets about that and then all of a sudden now we're into ai and now everyone's obsessed with ai and it's just like they'll gravitate towards the new shiny shiny before actually really looking at the applications
00:17:07
Speaker
I'm nearly 50 now, and I always wondered at which point I was going to turn into my dad. And I can remember when I was really young, getting all excited about, I don't know what it was, probably the A-Team or something, my dad would be like, nope, seen it all before, seen it come round before. I'm thinking, how can you possibly have seen it come round before? Because I've been in digital marketing for so long, whenever there's a new thing everyone gets excited about,
00:17:31
Speaker
And clients, ultimately, because the people selling the tools and making the money from the tools have got such loud voices because they're very good at marketing, it invariably leads to clients saying to me, how can we, should we be using blockchain for our blog? And they sort of take bits of different messages and genuinely say, let's just, let's see what happens. I do react, you know, and I do spot trends that are genuinely useful. Most of it, 99% is just,
00:17:58
Speaker
You have to take it with a pinch of salt, but again, that's the rational, critical thinking that you apply to the process of SEO, right? It's like, where's the value, where's not, where should my attention be, where can I move the needle, rather than getting obsessed with the shiny, shiny. I think you can, again, I'm being very opinionated in this, but I guess that's the point. No one wants to listen to something about opinions. Yeah, this is our forum. And if you disagree...
00:18:20
Speaker
then find Dan Callis and tell him. That's a little plug for my other SEO Will Die podcast. I think one of the safety nets for that critical thinking is... I was going to say, what would Stiff Baetas do? That's not quite what I mean.
00:18:42
Speaker
I'm going to throw myself off there. What would, how would you explain if anything new and exciting comes up, how would you explain it to someone who started a business 75 years ago and what would be the first thing they'd say so what to. It depends again and this relates to that whole point of going
00:19:04
Speaker
Be the guide in the story, not the hero in the story. Great book, Building a Story Brand, which I love the Star Wars analogy as well. It's like everybody wants to be, and particularly marketers and digital agencies, they all want to be the Luke Skywalker in the story. But you're not, you're the Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're the person that empowers people with the tools and the knowledge to be able to be the hero in their own story.
00:19:30
Speaker
That's what we need to do as marketers, is to be the guide, not the hero. And I think that is always one of the challenges, is you're trying to relate that back to, okay, but what is this thing actually helping people achieve? You don't get a catalytic converter because you need it for your cut, because the car needs to work and you need to get from point A to point B.
00:19:49
Speaker
You know, it's not necessarily about what that thing does. Don't get me wrong, you've got luxury products. You know, you're not buying a Rolex watch over a G-Shock because, you know, it tells the time better. You know, it fundamentally tells the time. There's a value connected to it as well. But it is about, okay, I need this thing because it's going to help me achieve something else, right? So it should be, I need SEO because I need to attract the right kind of traffic to my website to be able to convert into repeat clients. And it's a piece of a bigger pie.
00:20:18
Speaker
Right? Nobody does SEO because they think SEO is cool. Really? Well, now I'm saying that I've got personal sites that I do SEO in my spare time because I do enjoy it. But I'm fully appreciative of the fact that it is just a tool. That's a tool to cure my own kind of boredom or whatever.
00:20:41
Speaker
But is it, and again, if we relate this back to the what are you getting out of the thing rather than the thing, is you're getting the reward of overcoming challenges, identifying new approaches, applying, testing, learning, experimenting, seeing if that worked, learning from whether it did or it didn't. So it's not the fact that you do SEO in your free time because you're a sadist. No, you do SEO because of the vicarious feelings you get out of the successes or the failures that come off the back of the work you're doing, right? Sick, isn't it?
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird world. It's a weird world. We are sadists. But yeah, so that's why I always kind of relate it back to it. It's like, not necessarily focus on the thing, but what can the thing help you do?
Adapting Strategies to Changing Conditions
00:21:22
Speaker
What can the thing help you achieve? Yeah. It's so relatable in so many different things. My mother-in-law still, she said, oh, you love computers, don't you? I said, I don't. It's a tool. But you've always got a nice computer. And like, well, if I was a carpenter, I'd have a sharp chisel.
00:21:39
Speaker
It's not the tool. Where's the cobbler shoes analogy come from? As you're saying, the SEO on your website's terrible. I forged my website with a chisel, which is why I have to keep buying a new laptop, but I've always got the latest. It's not the right tactic to use for that strategy. No, it's not. I keep derailing both of us. Where were we? SEO's cool. What else do we need to cover off?
00:22:07
Speaker
Well, it's an SEO podcast, so yeah, it kind of bringing it back to the whole kind of point again, it's like, what's the purpose of the strategy and how does SEO fit into that? The strategy is the plan to achieve an objective, but the other aspect to it that I'm a massive advocate for is that analogy I use around, it's like, can your strategy take a punch, right? You know, what was it? God, I used the quote in the talk I did for suffering in college recently, but everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
00:22:34
Speaker
No, Mike Tyson, but fundamentally the same thing. So it's like, okay, so my strategy is, is I want to knock you out. You know, my tactics are my fists and the feet moving underneath me. My objective is the other person's head or kidney shot or whatever. But you don't know what's coming back at you, right? You can't necessarily always anticipate those variables. So it's the same we were talking prior to coming on air about like industry sectors, for example.
00:22:58
Speaker
Can your strategy take a punch? Your SEO strategy, your marketing strategy, your brand marketing strategy, whatever it might be. You need some flex within there. And that's that cyclical nature of, okay, I've got a plan to achieve an objective, I'm going to execute it, but I'm also going to review, refine, assess, and then apply the learnings and go back through that cycle and over and over again, right?
00:23:17
Speaker
So you had a global pandemic, nobody necessarily saw that coming, apart from, you know, controversially, maybe a biological weapons lab in Wuhan, but, you know, things happen. But the entire world shuts down, right? No more international travel. I had, you know, luxury travel brands as clients, you know, travel brands, airlines, hotels, entire industry sector shut down.
00:23:41
Speaker
And that's the thing is from a marketing strategy perspective, it's like, okay, what's the first thing to get looked at budget wise is marketing or that marketing strategy. The reason is, is because you cannot influence consumer behavior because consumer demand or behavior isn't either there or can't be appeased because the entire industry shut down. You know, what's an airline going to do advertising flights if there's no international travel? It's a it's a mad one. And
00:24:10
Speaker
I've got one client who is a creative as well, and the decision we took is that if we can't influence people to buy, because they can't, they can't buy the product because of lockdown, what can we do that's the next best thing? And we decided to spend the budget.
00:24:31
Speaker
on getting to know the audience better person by person and then I nicked the idea of doing an online pub quiz off James Kindred of Big Drop. I don't know if it was his original idea anyway but we did that and what happened was we built up
00:24:49
Speaker
such a head of pressure that when we were able to take, sorry, the royal we, the client, was able to take bookings again, they had their best month they've ever had. So yeah, this is such a bugbear that everyone in marketing will say, in tough times, don't cut the marketing. But we're not just saying that because we still need to buy food for our families. It's because it's the truth. But things like flights, that fundamentally can't happen. So what happened next?
00:25:19
Speaker
That was an interesting one. Luxury travel, it was more steering the strategy around, much like you say there, is about having a relationship and an engagement with that target audience because you want to be front of mind and present for when that consumer demand can be appeased. Now, the beautiful thing within that particular market is it was luxury high-end travel, shall we say.
00:25:40
Speaker
They weren't necessarily as concerned as people that were looking at their EasyJet budget flights to Mallorca or whatever. So it was more about steering it around, okay, plan the experience for when we come out of this. It was providing a sense of confidence and reassurance and something to look forward to people. So they could plan and start thinking about, okay, when we actually get through this as a planet,
00:26:07
Speaker
I want to celebrate, I want to do this, I want to get out there. So it absolutely was about changing the tactics within the overarching strategy. So there was no point necessarily doing paid advertising or SEO. It was more about, okay, let's refine it and double down on the existing audiences we already have, because it's going to be harder to get new customers than it will be to spend the time during this period having a relationship with the existing ones that we do.
00:26:32
Speaker
that quite frankly can't be spending their money anywhere else so let's make sure we're doing everything we possibly can to reinforce that relationship with them so when we come out the other side of it is that we're front of mind and you know have the best first month out of the gate you know so yeah it's it's just thinking about that rather than being doggedly going
00:26:49
Speaker
No, we've still got to spend money on SEO. And it's like, okay, well, you know, it's self-identified need. No one's searching for that at the moment, so let's look inward for a second and, you know, focus on looking after the people we already have. Yeah, and even if we use, well, we do use SEO for education, not nowhere near as much. The self-identified need is really what we're going for.
00:27:08
Speaker
But it astonishes me that anyone who cuts a budget is completely ignoring one of the fundamentals of business. The most expensive thing you can buy in a business is a new customer. So why would you stop communicating? It's marketing and comms, communications. It's not just acquisition. It is actually retention and actually keeping people there.
00:27:32
Speaker
Well that's the interesting thing as well because you've got that delineation between sales and marketing and the connectivity about customer service or client services and ongoing delivery and those relationships and often they're not operating together, they're operating in isolation. It's like in times of feast or famine when sales aren't doing it, it's marketing's fault and that's not necessarily the answer is because there's not always an immediate... The leads were weak. The leads were weak.
00:27:57
Speaker
which is always going to be a challenge there but it's trying to create shared ownership and accountability and responsibility for those relationships and I think again with the advent of technology and all of these kind of like it's constantly lumbering forward and there's always new techniques and approaches and technologies that can be applied that we're getting all the excess of the shiny shiny
00:28:16
Speaker
Take it back to that original point. It's that human dance, you know, it's like we're engaging with human beings that have a need All right, so be the guide not the hero, you know have that relationship with them And again, it's age of the internet We are bombarded with marketing and sales messages on every platform handheld pocket computers and mobile phones, you know advertising billboards radios internet everything, you know, it's noisy and
00:28:41
Speaker
It's absolutely noisy.
Building Authentic Marketing Relationships
00:28:43
Speaker
Granted, it probably was 50, 60, 70 years ago, but it was just different. You'd look at a tram and everyone sat engrossed in their newspaper and there was billboards going, guitar lessons. It's like, I don't want guitar lessons. It's not there, it's fire and forget. That's all marketing tends to be, is let's just put messages out for the sake of messages because we need to be present, rather than actually trying to make authentic relationships with people.
00:29:06
Speaker
Now, it's probably going a bit off topic from a marketing sense. I've been in conversations with people at networking things. Okay, so we've got to be authentic. Can you tell us how we can be more authentic? Well, that primarily needs to come from you. I can help you amplify the message, amplify the signal, but I can't create the noise.
00:29:27
Speaker
No, and again, I think this is another kind of point or a grind my gears kind of thing is this I genuinely think marketing and agencies and marketing departments have imposter syndrome.
00:29:40
Speaker
Right, which is a human condition anyway. It's about self-confidence and self-belief fundamentally. But I think it's like part of the disparity between that relationship of end clients and people that are employing us to do things like SEO and marketing comes from how marketers, digital marketers, agencies, marketing departments conduct and present themselves because it's not authentic. It's almost that imposter syndrome of going, well, they might find out I'm actually full of shit, you know, and it's like,
00:30:04
Speaker
Oh, it just depends. You know, we don't really know what we're doing. We're just kind of test and learn and we're going to do this. And we've got this great campaign where hopefully it works, you know? And it's that imposter syndrome is then often then projected in how they engage, communicate, report, you know? So let's use all the acronyms and let's present it in a way where you'll never be able to do this without me. That's why, you know, we're indispensable. You know, you can't do this without us because we're the experts. And it's like, no, calm down, try and make it more accessible for people, you know, demystify it, cut through the bullshit.
00:30:34
Speaker
and get down to what truly matters which is what is the objective we're trying to achieve and help me understand the plan and the things we're doing to actually get there and then that imposter syndrome is like it bleeds into everything from reporting which often seems more defensible or like defensive than it does you know proactive okay so we've done this and that worked we found out this didn't work so we're not going to do that but what we recommend is actually we're going to try this often you see SEO reports and marketing reports that are going
00:31:02
Speaker
We did this and it was great, honest. Here are the vanity statistics. We've definitely got impressions and it's like, okay, cool, right. There's a client who, I'm not gonna mention their name because we both know them. When I first started working for them, I prepare part of their monthly board report. Fairly standard in my world.
00:31:19
Speaker
And they rang and they said, you keep including keywords that are dipping in rankings, God bless you. And that's what they said. And I said, well, yeah, because otherwise it just turns into a circle jerk. I probably didn't say that, but it just, if we're not, if we're only patting ourselves on the back, then
00:31:39
Speaker
We're going to miss stuff. So, no, I'm perfectly happy to say when things are going wrong, but also just personally that helps alleviate some of the imposter syndrome. To say, no, I don't have the answers. In fact, I challenge people when I give talks at places, if I'm introduced as Andrew's an SEO guru, first thing I generally say when I then get the microphone or whatever is, I'm not. I'm not. I've just been geeking out on this stuff for longer than
00:32:04
Speaker
Well, probably most people at this stage. But I don't have any answers, which makes the question and answer section at the end of a talk really interesting. Yeah, exactly. Because you get questions that you hadn't even necessarily thought about. But that's the beauty of one of the things that, you know, I've shit on digital marketing and marketing quite a bit. But that's where I've come from so many years agency side is like a position as being I was a poacher turned conservationist now. So I'm trying to, you know, again, demystify this bullshit from it and just try and make it a little bit more accessible and human for people.
00:32:35
Speaker
But yeah, it's a weird one. We all have that imposter syndrome, but fundamentally, we're all kind of muddling our way through and learning from each other because people are testing and trying different things that you haven't thought of and vice versa. And again, on an industry relating back to the SEO and industry built on the foundations of, well, it depends, you rely on that community and that testing and the stuff, because nobody's ever going to really have the right answer. And, you know, John Mule doesn't know. John Mule is never going to tell you.
00:33:00
Speaker
He doesn't know. He doesn't know himself. People, it's one of the fundamental kind of confusions with SEO. People assume Google know what they're doing. Do you think it's like, do you remember that episode of, I think it was South Park where they were sending up Family Guy and they said how Family Guy episodes are written is basically a bunch of manatees picking balls with phrases and words on them. And it's much the same. I'm pretty sure that Google is just some manatees.
00:33:25
Speaker
Sorry, it was like, this is what the algorithm is going to be like now. And it's like, yes, page authority. Core Web Vitals. It's the thing that keeps it fun. I think if SEO, if Google really were that good and it was that black and white, it wouldn't be half as much fun to work in SEO. Oh, no, of course. And that's kind of the attraction, isn't it? Again, it's like you might be a bit sadistic, but it is about, OK,
00:33:48
Speaker
there's an opportunity to overcome a challenge here. And it's like, you know, a lot of the work that I do can end up from a top level strategy perspective, be quite academic. And that's the worst thing I ever, you know, experience is doing loads of work and theory and creating strategies and building commercial plans and then not being able to see it be delivered. Because I want to know I was right. Equally at the same time, I want to know what bits were wrong.
00:34:10
Speaker
So you are increasingly working long-term with clients, that's my understanding of it. So I sort of just worried that anyone listening might think you sort of swoop in, say clever stuff and bugger off, but you don't. You introduced me to the phrase fractional, the fractional marketing director. Again, a bit of keyword research there. You've not sold yourself at all during this episode. Because I don't have to, because I don't need the work.
00:34:38
Speaker
So this is the beauty is as I market marketing services to marketers to marketing and I barely do any marketing for myself which inherently is Again, the best marketing is when other people are talking about you and not yourself. Absolutely, right? So yeah in answer to that question is I'm in a very fortunate position because I don't tie anyone into long-term arduous contracts because I
00:34:57
Speaker
Again, coming from agency side is that's what a lot of businesses do. It's
Phil's Role as a Fractional Marketing Director
00:35:00
Speaker
like we lock you in for three, six, 12 months and it's like, you know, I don't really have an interest in that. What I want to do is make sure that the plan that's being created is appropriate for the business and therefore it's generating the right results. So a lot of work that I do tends to be more capital projects up front to be able to identify, work with the variables, let's learn from what has
00:35:18
Speaker
been attempted, what hasn't been attempted, what are the market conditions, what's your market penetration, looking at your personas, how your technology is performing, websites, advertising, all of the different tactics that fall within that, and then let's create a plan to achieve an identified objective and then build a commercial plan around that. Now there might be more cost-efficient ways to deliver that,
00:35:36
Speaker
Lo and behold, almost every capital project then ends up turning into a retained, ongoing relationship. But I work on a rolling 30-day basis because I let the work and the relationship speak for itself. It was one of my biggest anxieties after leaving agency side for many, many years.
00:35:55
Speaker
I like to be a bit of a champion of the people because my ego is rock solid. I sleep absolutely fine. So I don't need to do it for me. But I liked working with other people and other experts because they helped me learn more. Because if my entire brand positioning is around sharpening your axe, if you give me six hours to cut down a tree, I'm going to spend the first four sharpening my axe. So therefore, it's easy to swing.
00:36:21
Speaker
I still need to spend time on my own axe. If my job or my role is to critique what other people are doing, I need to authentically be able to do that by actually keeping my tool sharp and doing a little bit of everything and understanding it and looking at how other people are doing it and spending a lot of time researching, seeing what works, what doesn't.
00:36:40
Speaker
And that was my anxiety, was leaving is not necessarily having that, but the beauty of it was actually is I went from being part of one team to being part of numerous teams, which was a beautiful thing before Christmas as well. It was like having six or seven Christmas parties back to back. I was mad, didn't have to cook for a week. But it was epic. It was lovely seeing those teams and those businesses move on and be successful and haven't contributed to where they were at the end of the first year out of the pandemic. And we're really kind of gaining momentum
00:37:09
Speaker
I'm seeing things that academically I've outlined and then actually tangibly helped implement and then seeing what the results of those are. So yeah, the majority of relationships that I have with people, I'll parachute and do a bit of project work here and there, ironically that tends to be for agency owners.
00:37:25
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, all the time, all the time, because they're like, again, it's cobbler shoes, right? It's like we spend so much time focused on our clients, we often don't take a step back and go, okay, well, how are we perceived in the marketplace? And every agency is the same. It's like, we're an award winning full service integrated marketing agency, and we make sure that all your marketing is measurable.
00:37:43
Speaker
Oh, great. Okay, cool. So if everyone's award-winning, is anyone award-winning? And your full service? No, you really don't. You outsource some of it. And then at the same time, you're saying it's measurable. Well, duh. If you ain't measuring it, how are you learning? I kind of think, why do you have to even say that? And there's no point of differentiation. And the irony comes back to the human dance is the only point of differentiation within any agency or any marketing department are the humans.
00:38:05
Speaker
It's the individuals, their unique ways of looking at things and approaching challenges and applying different methodologies and testing and learning and experimenting and then fundamentally sharing that with other people and that's where we progress and that's where we kind of go with it. I think you and I always hesitate to say I have something in common with someone because we're all such complex creatures but I identified many years ago why do I do what I do?
00:38:32
Speaker
I could have a job. I've never worked in an agency in my life, but I don't know. I think I could probably fit into an agency. But why don't I? And it's because I like starting things. So I've started several businesses over the years, but ultimately I like going into a business and getting the opportunity to share in lots of successes. And I'm really, really pleased to hear you say it's not an ego thing, because I think it must appear that way, you know, reflecting on myself here from the outside.
00:39:02
Speaker
But it's genuine. I just think it's quite cool. I just think it's quite neat. Who wouldn't want to be around people who are really happy? That's what it comes down to. Especially if you've got clients who we're not going to mention, we've taken on fairly recently, who really haven't embraced
00:39:18
Speaker
SEO or a lot of other digital marketing and we've only been working with a little while and things have gone absolutely through the roof form and they're thrilled and I like going to see them because I sit down and we have a lovely chat and it's all nice and they do give me money as well which does help. Oh yeah we've all grown accustomed to paying for food and accommodation that's an important part of the relationship. It is yeah but the more you can share success well the faster you get paid I've found as well over the years.
00:39:44
Speaker
Which, again, is a challenge within the SEO industry because most people go, well, it's longer burn. It's
Transparency and Communication in SEO Reporting
00:39:51
Speaker
going to take some time to get some traction. But actually, there are tactics that can be applied within a strategy that can have quicker results. And often, that is sharpening the axe. Things are already being done. It's just about refining the approaches and the tactics and the delivery that's being done without that. It might be the keywords. It might be the targeting. It might be the messaging that's being put out. It might just be the performance of the destination of that search result.
00:40:14
Speaker
There's so many different things you can do to move that needle quicker than going, now we really need to work on long tail and build up this content hub and all of this is like, okay, all right, let's see where the effort is actually best placed. Well, this is why it can't be the same with every client, why there is no one SEO tactic. Yeah, that and it's witchcraft.
00:40:33
Speaker
I've spent years telling people it's not and then I had a consultancy I worked with a consultant who he built up and sold a very big PLC he said he swore which I'm I'm just keeping this podcast just on the right side of the Apple explicit or clean thing
00:40:52
Speaker
I shouldn't tell anyone that during a recording, but he said, why do you do that? Stop telling people it's not witchcraft. And I'm like, well, I kind of can't for the same reason that you were saying about kind of sharing the information. That's the imposter syndrome, though, isn't it? It's almost like the lack of trust in your own ability and impact of what you're actually delivering for a client.
00:41:13
Speaker
It's like if you're trying to protect it, you're trying to be the hero, not the guide. And that's where the relationship will start breaking down. And like you mentioned with that client that came on board, it's like they're a little bit frosty at first because they probably have tried the internets before and not seen results. And that might be because the strategy was wrong, the tactics were wrong. The communication was bamboozling. It could have been any number of variables in that equation that gave them a bad experience or an understanding of what it is you actually do.
00:41:38
Speaker
But if you demystified it and gone through that process, explained why you're doing it, what you're doing it for, where the identified objectives are, you know, set the expectations as to, well, this is the plan, this is what we're doing, when we're doing it, and this is what we're going to report on, align to the identified objectives. They're like, okay, cool, I'm on the bus here. Right, let's see where we go with this. They're more willing to actually give it a try. And then when the results come back, you know, you can all be party to that success.
00:42:02
Speaker
It's so at the foundation of how I think all digital marketing should be. You should be able to make yourself clear. It keeps going back to this what I was saying, that what you're doing should be relatable to something the client understands as a part of their overall business strategy. It shouldn't be, I cannot believe, I've been an SEO firm more than two decades. And I thought 20 years ago when I heard people say, oh, we've done SEO,
00:42:32
Speaker
And I'd say, what did your SEO people do? No idea. I cannot believe as I'm recording this in 2023, I still get that response when I speak to new leads. Oh, we've been doing SEO for a while. Okay. Can you send me some of your reports? We don't get reports. What's your SEO people done? Nothing. I, one time we managed to chase it down and they sent this potential client, sent me a report.
00:42:56
Speaker
From their SEO and it said we have been assessing crawl budget And they'd been doing that for six months at 500 pounds a month assessing crawl budget is Like going to the chip shop and saying can I have some wooden forks? Yeah, you need a wooden fork if you don't get your hands dirty But the big hot thing full of food is far more interesting and it's far more gratifying to kind of get into and
00:43:24
Speaker
But it's that BS again though, isn't it? It's just a line item that they think they can charge for and it's just like, okay, you're assessing that where every single month when in reality you're not doing anything, are you? That's just a BS for Garzy to kind of pull the wool over your client's eyes because they're never going to question it again because it's been positioned in such a way where it's like, if I ask what this is, am I going to come across as dumb?
00:43:46
Speaker
You know, and that's the thing that I genuinely hate the most. It's like, make it accessible. It's not witchcraft. You know, we're all in this together. We know what we're trying to achieve is the plan to achieve that identified objective and these are the tactics and this is we're going to try, this worked, this didn't. Let's go through that, not just throw, you know, let's just play corporate bullshit acronym bingo for, you know, a couple months and go, nah, it didn't work.
00:44:10
Speaker
So I speak to a potential new client and they say, what are you going to do? And for one thing, I trot out that I can't prescribe until I've diagnosed because that's true. I don't know. But that is the fundamental root of my answer is I haven't got a faintest idea. Absolutely not a clue. Same with you. Somebody said, come and help us with our overall strategy. How are we going to do that?
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. It's exactly the position. I get those questions all the time. It's like, again, when your agency side and somebody comes to you and goes, I need a new strategy, Phil. And I was like, OK, cool. Well, I'm agency side. So it's inherently going to only be the services that this agency offers, whether they're right or wrong.
00:44:45
Speaker
But now being completely independent and agnostic to that industry is I can recommend the right things Completely authentically because it is a case of going. Okay, right. I need new strategy. Okay Well, let's dig into this then right why what how what have you done where you come from what the targets? Let's look at the P&L. What have you actually approached? What's the resource capabilities? Which partners are using we delve into all of those things and okay now we can start talking about strategy Because you need the insights first to identify the opportunities and then you can structure something around it to actually create a delivery plan
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah, cool. I think that because we hope for the future. I think anyone actually who is in SEO or is in PPC or any one of the channels, one of the types of digital marketing, one of the best things you can ever hear them say is no.
00:45:31
Speaker
And this relates back to the point about being the guide, not the hero in the story, is because the ones that want to be the hero will come in and go, ah, what you need is a new website. Before they even looked at it, you know? What do you sell? Well, we sell new websites. Exactly.
00:45:46
Speaker
Ironic that, isn't it? But it is about being that guide in there and asking the right questions and go, okay, right. Because again, it comes down to self-identified need. A business owner has come to you and gone, I really need some help and I've identified you and I've gotten in touch because I need some of that SEO. I was like, okay, well, let's actually look into this. It's a self-identified need. So what's driven that question you have put into that search engine?
00:46:10
Speaker
Are you losing traffic? Are you losing sales? Are you not converting? Have you got growth ambitions? You want to grow the organization? You want to build revenue? Where are you going with this? Let's look at the reasons that prompted you to actually make that inquiry in the first place. And then we'll go through from there because we've got some shape around what your objective was in the first place and what the emotional and commercial drivers are behind looking at that. Okay,
Phil's Consultancy Approach and Career Overview
00:46:35
Speaker
now we can look at the variables. We can draw those insights and then create you a plan.
00:46:39
Speaker
This is why that first diagnosis part of SEO, I sometimes think it's probably best done by someone who isn't an SEO consultant. Because I'll give you an example. Somebody came to me, household brand.
00:46:56
Speaker
all their money spent on TV advertising and Google Ads and they said well the board is concerned that if we switch off advertising then we disappear have you ever measured it so I said they didn't they didn't become clients actually I don't knock to that I don't think get out but yes it's what's the real world thing you you almost want
00:47:22
Speaker
I think just kind of thinking in the future, for the pure SEOs, for the real techs, the people who just want to dig into the technical stuff, I don't really consider myself that way. I think I'm nearer to the creativity and the what is it you actually want to achieve rather than actually here's the box of tools. Obviously I do that.
00:47:43
Speaker
Is that it's a business consultant who should hire us really we've identified that there is a weakness in the way that this client acquires New customers and we think that whole might be loosely SEO shaped Can you have a look and we'll have a look and say it's not SEO. I'll give you an example. We got contacted by somebody who was
00:48:08
Speaker
Going to start a brand that Chuck that's really hard to say this stuff without actually revealing who it is. They they wanted to Start a competition to a very established brand. Mm-hmm
00:48:23
Speaker
They said so we want to do that with SEO and we talked I say it's not SEO Because people when they identify the need to buy that competitive brand that established brand We can't position you in their place. No, that's just flat-up Not how Google works. Thank goodness because that would be what's how it used to be and it used to be a right mess but
00:48:44
Speaker
I dare say they might have spoken to another rescue agent so you said yeah come on let's let's do it. Of course of course they have of course they have and again that's why the barrier to entry is so low because there's that element of you know fog between the client's understanding and what people know they can actually sell and that's that's fundamentally how my relationship with clients tend to work is because I am
00:49:10
Speaker
independent, so I can look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and then look at a broad range of things to a, you know, I would say a high level, you know. I know enough about everything and I know I'm looking in the right places and all of the different tributaries that are kind of pulling towards what we're trying to achieve, but then I bring in, when those gaps have been identified, I bring in specialists, you know, because I'm not an SEO, I'm not a paid advertiser, I'm not a graphic designer, I'm not a web developer,
00:49:35
Speaker
And that's the beauty of it being is. Okay, so this is the big picture. This is the strategy. This is the plan to achieve the objective. And now we're all going to centralize around this and we're all pulling in the same direction. And we're using the right tactics, albeit they might all have their own sub strategies, but we're all pulling in the same direction for the benefit of the client. So I might use an outsourced designer.
00:49:54
Speaker
an outsourced branding agent or an outsourced web development company, which is always the hilarious one. It's like a farm out website projects to partners for clients that I'm working on. And I give them all the briefing information that I pull together and they're like, I wish we could get this out of clients.
00:50:12
Speaker
And it's like, why can't you get that out of clients? I didn't hypnotize them or anything. I spoke to them and... Yeah, so it's an odd one. It's an odd one. So everyone kind of silos into their own little, you know, route and they don't look outside of that. We have been talking for 50 minutes and 30 seconds. This felt seamless. And I didn't say f*** once.
00:50:36
Speaker
You've caused me work with that. It would have been worse if you had a sed- Yeah but now you can put some beep noise over top of it and then you can literally let it be any swear word you want. Right, so that was absolutely fascinating. So I'll put links to, you haven't got a website. I'll put you- No, I'm linked in.
00:50:55
Speaker
A lot of people I collaborate with still now don't have a website. I got rid of mine a couple of years ago. The phone rang almost immediately and it was somebody I worked with. Are you alright? We've just seen you shut down your website. No, I just... It's different now because of the type of business I'm running.
00:51:13
Speaker
I will have there is actually plans to have one but that I've got a bit of a schizophrenic Kind of brand because again, I'm a digital marketing strategy consultant. I'm a trustee for a men's mental health charity I run a Viking medieval full contact combat group and I also do event operations management How do you package that up, you know as an overarching umbrella of going look at all the things that it was? Difficult, but I think the world is more accepting of that now than it's ever been
00:51:40
Speaker
Absolutely, but that's the authenticity. But fundamentally, all of those different things, regardless of what industry sector or activity they're involved in, everything comes back to strategy. There you go. We'll wrap up on that. I'm going to say goodbye. Do you want to say goodbye?