Nathan Wrigley: [00:00:00] Welcome to the WP Builds podcast, bringing you the latest news from the WordPress community. Welcome your host, David Waumsley and Nathan Wrigley.
Hello there, and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. One small. This is episode number 166 in titled the when and who of marketing. It was published on Thursday the 13th of February, 2020 my name is Nathan Wrigley and I will be joined in a few moments by David Waumsley so that we can have our little biweekly, fortnightly.
Discussion about all things WordPress this week. It's a marketing discussion, but we'll come to that in a moment. A few bits of housekeeping before all of that. It's the usual stuff, but I like to say it anyway. Head over to WP Builds.com forward slash subscribe over on that page. You're gonna find a whole load of ways that you can keep in touch with what we do.
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Okay, let's get stuck into the podcast. It is today with David and I, David Waumsley and I are talking about the when and who of marketing. So this is all about the fact that, well, sometimes we may be leaking clients. We might be not really understanding when we've got to contact those clients or indeed who they even might be.
And so we're dipping into Briony Thomas's water type marketing book. Again, David and I. Discuss this at great length. There's about 40 minutes or so here. So yeah, it's an interesting topic. We're not experts in this, and we're just trying to thrash out what our approaches might be, but I hope that you enjoy it.
David Waumsley: [00:04:01] Following on from the how and where of marketing, which we discussed last time. This discussion is called the where and who of marketing. And both of these are based on a book called watertight marketing by Brian Thomas. This is the penultimate discussion that we're going to have. So there's just one more left in the series, but then this series we've been discussing 13 leaks identified in this
Where businesses can lose potential customers and clients. And this time, Nathan, I'm not going to go through them all. We're really just on the end stretch. So we first discovered what were the blocks, if you like, all the leaks for people who were, had already made their decisions, and now we'd be moving in for these last ones onto awareness when we really need to attract the attention of people.
Potential buyers. So that's really, we're on the last stretch now.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:04:52] Yeah, it's been a good little journey. It's kept us going very nicely. This book, a watertight marketing by Briony Thomas, just to say that, there, there've been many episodes prior to this one, and on each of the show notes, I add all the links to the, the previous ones.
I don't link to all of the ones that would be in the future, just to the ones that you wouldn't have listened to at that point. So anyway, they're all, they're all there. Right at the top of the show notes. So let's get stuck into it. The the when and who have marketing.
David Waumsley: [00:05:21] Yeah, exactly. So this, we were talking about this for a little while and it was almost slightly depressing, wasn't it?
Because really what we came to the conclusion was the book was saying that we just need to be. Around when people might be interested in looking for what we're delivering and yeah, we need to be known by everybody, I guess.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:05:41] Yeah. Given what we do, if we, you know. Quite conceivably, I could have a product which is available to everybody in the entire world.
You know, if I have a, for example, if I'm selling a WordPress plugin or something like that, that means that every single minute of every single day of the year. I could be making a sale. Whereas if you know, in the old fashioned world, go back 60 70 years where you run a shop and you open at nine in the morning and by five o'clock everything's finished.
That's really the, the only thing that you need to worry about. Obviously there's the marketing around that and making sure that people know that you're around at those times. But T to man the Fort during those hours was a little bit easier and yeah, Brian, he makes the point that these days you need to be available.
Kind of 24 seven which means you need to be conscious of putting out your message 24 seven and so when you said at the top that maybe that's a bit depressing. That's, that's where that comes from. The idea that essentially if you want to be successful, just don't think too much about sleeping.
David Waumsley: [00:06:48] She talks about lucky timing and often is given an example in the book that that really was just down to the fact that she would put out, she had somebody in mind as a potential client and they didn't respond to any of the blogs that she created or the posts that she had made in LinkedIn, but it was just that one moment.
Which would now consider as lucky telling him when they had something available for that potential customer, when they were ready to investigate that thing that she was selling. And I, and I think, yeah, it's really, that is the bottom line, isn't it? We have to try and if you like zoom in on who we're trying to sell to, but we need to start putting out sort of constant content or being around in some form or another.
So that seems like hard work, but. You know what I think I do. You know, when I'm talking to clients, I think they don't think about the whens very much because I've had quite a few discussions about whether he should be making the telephone or the contact form or call to action. The prominent thing on their website, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people I've built sites for not really given it thought they liked the telephone because that's how they often get a lot of their business.
But they're not really aware, but the sites are often being viewed in the evening when people think, well, I'm probably not going to call you, and if they did call, they're going to get a voice message and they're probably then not going to leave a message.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:15] Yeah. If, if like you sort of, sorry if I interrupted. Apologies.
David Waumsley: [00:08:20] No.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:21] Okay. Is just going to say that if like us, you live on the internet and have done for many years, it's kind of just a foregone conclusion that everything's open 24 seven but going back to the example of you, well, the, the person that owns a shop or somebody that comes to you and wants to have a website built and they do something quite locally, there might be a plumber or something.
They're probably very much in the modus operandi of, well, I work from this hour and I'll stop work at that hour and I don't wish to be contacted. But I'm increasingly, you know, it seems a bit silly if as a plumber you could have a contact form which is available to, to at least offer some kind of way of getting in touch and saying, I would be interested in your services in the future.
It seems silly not to use those things, but yeah, I get a lot of pushback from clients about those kinds of things. Oh yeah. I want my phone number on there cause that's how I operate. and even people sort of saying, is it possible to sort of switch the switch to the form off. At night and peculiar things like that sort of saying, well, no, that's not really.
The point is supposed to be there all the time, but you don't have to reply at night. You just leave it until the morning. Yeah,
David Waumsley: [00:09:29] yeah, and I've seen, certainly with that same example, there's Kasam got the analytics on one and then launched you doing business to business. I can actually see that the good chances are that most of the people who are looking at their website are actually doing it in the UK between nine and five.
They're looking, so the prominence of a telephone number. Which seem quite high. In fact, it isn't it children, their site, I've been, you just kind of realized that's the case. But I, I definitely got, again, actually my brother's site and can use them as an example because they give equal weight into the telephone.
In fact, that came first before the email contact on an earlier one and the contact form was on another page. So I th pretty sure they were getting, phone calls more. And when we moved it to kind of. Call to actions all through a page which popped up a form, made a huge big deal. Empower third increase in the business they've got.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:10:24] Nice.
David Waumsley: [00:10:25] Yeah, and, and this, because I'm pretty sure they were doing, you know, there were business to customer. Those customers who were looking for their services would look in at nighttime when they'd finished their working day. Cause they wanted something for their homes.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:10:38] So that's a really good point, whatever it is that your, your clients are actually hoping to sell. as an example, I have, I had have still a client who does like yoga and nobody is going to be searching for her business during the nine to five period because they're all at work. And I be saying nobody that a very small proportion, and although I haven't done the analytics, I'm, I would be a hundred percent certain that.
Most of the contacts will come in, like you say, in the evening when the people have gone home from work and you know, maybe they're watching tele browsing the internet for a local yoga practitioner. And, I'm find them that way. And so her telephone is switched off. The telephone is the, is kinda the last way that she can be got in touch with really, she's, she's back into her own family in the shot or like communication down because of the, the kids and all of that kind of stuff.
And so having the contact form, really useful and just gets loads of stuff and replies begins in email communication, which gets so quite a bit of work.
David Waumsley: [00:11:37] Yeah. The when. Yeah. I think as well with, my business one, I keep thinking about the, the, when people might be looking for isn't like, I could be wrong, but I do feel there's a, there's a slight seasonal element to when my work comes in, it dies.
For the summer because I just think, well, certainly for those businesses who have say five or more staff, they, I've heard this a few times, we're just going to leave this project we want to do until everybody's back from their summer holidays because people are for like two weeks at a time, and then I need to be involved.
So I think. Do you think there's any kind of seasonal element to your work?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:12:14] Yeah, it was interesting because before we started this call, we, well, before we started recording, we had a little bit of a chat around this and because a lot of my work is seasonal and in the place where I live is, is what you might class as a tourist town.
There's, there's a real frenetic period of time where in the summer. It's just very busy. You know, the, the sort of, the population of the town goes up by, I don't know what the numbers are, but let's say it doubles because all of the hotel rooms are full and so on and so forth. That's the time when the, the people hope to have their websites built, but equally Christmas time, which is kind of like a family time, it's the winter basically.
And Christmas especially, is a time when it's dead. And you would have thought that that would have been a time when they'd be, But you kind of looking to get website worked on, but it tends not to be the case. My busiest times, I think generally speaking, are kind of October-ish. So in that little window between.
The summer Madness's is over and we haven't really turned our attention to Christmas. And then it goes, I think it was significantly quieter throughout sort of mid from mid November through till about now, actually, sort of January time, and I'm usually, the phone starts to ring a bit more and more contact forms are filled out from about now.
So yeah, there's definitely a seasonality, but that's largely driven by the. Is it the sort of the climate and the, the, the industries that a lot of the people where I live are in. But I guess if, if your, in different industries and you live in a different part of the world with a different climate, it might be entirely different.
And your, your business might need to be open 365 days a year. I have a half a, well, had I no longer maintained her website, but I had a lady who had a toy shop, and she sold. it was an eCommerce website and she sold toys and she, she basically did 90% of her annual transactions in a sort of three week period in the run up to Christmas.
She was one of those websites where you go there because Amazon's run out and she's got it still. and so she would just sell ridiculous amounts of stock in a tiny window of time and essentially have most of the rest of the year off. You know, it wasn't like that. She still treated it like a business and fielded calls, but basically it was incredibly seasonal.
David Waumsley: [00:14:36] Yeah, it's, you know, it's interesting what you said about October, cause I told you about this, but I don't think I've mentioned it on the podcast. I did a, an experiment. Well, I set up a kind of niche, so I, I made some templates if you like, of BMB and guest house and kind of small hotel templates. And I sent this out to a whole bunch of people as cold calling.
And I T actually time that thinking this is going to be the end of their season I'm putting in for October to see what's going to happen there and send stuff out. It was absolute fail. But one of the interesting things was that this was sent on time, so they got a few emails unless they responded, they got, they got something following number up.
So. Yeah, that's a really kind of spammy stuff, but it did no good. But it's only, I think it was a couple of weeks ago or one of those contacted me. So this is from October?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:15:28] Yeah. Well, I can tell you for certain that if you're a hotel owner in where I live in October, you're on holiday.
David Waumsley: [00:15:36] I see how he got it wrong, didn't I?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:15:38] Yeah. You're definitely that because you've, you've worked flat out for kind of three months and your annual leave starts when everybody else goes back to school. So September and October, those kind of times they take advantage of the, the . Fairly good weather in Europe at that time for cheaper tickets.
And then when they've taken those holidays, they then turned their attention to Christmas, you know, family suffer. And then when, when that's all done, we, we move into January and, and now it starts to warm up. So maybe, maybe there's an opportunity to send that exact same sequence out again to, well, should we say some different people and see what happens.
David Waumsley: [00:16:16] I could probably say, I think I could send it to the same, it was quite a fascinating, this is off what we're talking about today, but it was really interesting just how few responses I've got. Then this was an email that was sent out, which you could, you could read as potentially as somebody wanting to use this, you know, their hotel or something.
It could be a booking. I was so stunned at how many were not opened.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:16:41] Well, yeah, holidays. You have your answer anyway. Yeah. Getting back to this subject, one of the things that I think prevents this being a kind of a workable solution, the idea of being on 24 seven and what have you is that you need to be, nobody can be so focused.
Well, I say nobody. There's not many people that can be so kind of strict with their calendar that they can push out this meaningful content on a regular basis. You know, how many times have, have you heard stories of. Clients who desperately wanted to have a blog and you've told them the benefits of blogging, and you've told them the benefits of putting content out and you, you look at the site and the first couple of weeks they totally do it.
They absolutely mastered it. They've got the post and they've written some long form content and the some then maybe a video or two in there and some images, and then you go back and monitor it. Utterly dried up and it never goes anywhere. And that, that's just the problem with all of this is, is getting that content on a, on a shed jewel is just a nightmare.
So it, it, it brings forward other possibilities where you, you write a whole ton of content in a very short space of time and then, and then drip it out. The problem that I would have with that is just targeting the wrong time of year, you know? So in the example of your card business, presumably you'd be writing content about Christmas cards.
I don't know in July or something like that. So you had loads of Christmas content ready, and yet you wouldn't be feeling Christmasy in the slightest, which is kind of strange.
David Waumsley: [00:18:06] Yeah, yeah, no, that actually happened. So we had the greeting card business that was selling cards online, and I think I understood something about the type of people we were selling to.
So we've settled in RT cards to, you know, kind of a cultured middle class people. And we really couldn't get some of the cards cause we rolled in from the supplier until, I've kind of quite late-ish. But people were all doing last year's cards because they were trying to get ahead already. These were the type of people, and we learned that we had to get our cards online much quicker than we thought was.
We should do. It didn't seem right to be putting this stuff out for Christmas so soon, but that was just the nature of the people. They were just very organized type of people who, you know, knew they wanted to get ahead.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:18:51] Yeah, I guess fascinating. There's other options though. You know, it doesn't have to be just writing content and blog posts.
There's a whole slew of different things that you could be doing. So it might be that you regard your Twitter feed as your primary way of marketing. You know, just constantly dripping out messages about what it is that you do. And you know, I don't know, posting little videos of. things that you and your business have, Don, or it might be running a Facebook group or having a Facebook page and updating that, but it still all comes down to the fact that you've got to just keep creating this stuff.
And as Brian, he says, eventually, hopefully one of those bits will hit. I'll tell you what, it's really interesting. With with now we're well over 160 episodes on WP Builds. It is always fascinating when you just get some random comments in, in the mail or maybe on the post itself from a P from an episode, which was.
Oh, I dunno, from two years ago or something like that. And somebody for some reason has just picked this one up and has listened to it and it had had something that they wanted to add about it. And in my life, because I've never been good at creating content for my business, WP builders is the only time I've stuck it creating content.
I, I. Aye. Everybody told me that that would be the case, that they would be, you know, a long tail to it, and that people would look at the content that was produced a long time ago, if it was still relevant and fitted a Google search. I sort of doubted it to some extent. And yet it totally is true. You know, we're not talking large numbers.
I mean, single digits probably in most cases, but it still happens. And it might be that if, you know, if WP Builds was selling something, which of course it isn't. That. That would be the, just the way of confirming, okay, you're the right business for us. Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:20:41] You know, I think I've been, when it comes to the, when clients are ready, I've been very, I think, naive about this.
I'm starting to get relaxed and I feel more relaxed about it because I've just been aware that almost every time I've been asked about a website, it's been six months to a year before they're really ready to commit to that. And this is my beef. I have a little bit with the magic email, which is a way of getting kind of closure by sending an email back.
You know, the quick inquiring. Do you remember what the, with the magic email that she says
Nathan Wrigley: [00:21:12] something along the lines of, because we haven't heard back from you for a little while. we take it that your maybe not ready to move forward with this project or something like that. It's kind of like a, not a complete nonsense.
It's a sentence which says something, but at the same time really doesn't, you're saying. Come on. And at the same time you're saying it's okay.
David Waumsley: [00:21:32] Yeah. We had this whole discussion about it and it's talking about the wins, which makes me remember why I felt uncomfortable. I'm sure it works and it gives you closure often.
Cause some they'll come back and they'll realize that they'd been a little bit rude by not coming back to you. And they may say that it might mean that they will go ahead with you cause you prompted them. Or that might mean that they come back and say, well, we've had, you know, we're going with somebody else or something.
But that's the bit that I've. Feel unsure about doing because you get the closure. But in my experience now over time is that many of these people who make an inquiry new thing, they were just wasting their time. Some point in the future, they come back, probably they have tried somebody else and they've come.
Full circle and come back to you. But if I'd have send that email and force them, if you'd like to close it off, I wonder whether they would come back again.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:22:20] Yeah, I've sent it a couple of times and we spoke about the, when I did it earlier before we hit record, but I've always got a reply, but it's not always been what I wanted.
You know exactly what you said. It sometimes has come back with a, Oh yes, sorry, I'm just getting my ducks in a row, or, well, that's fine. Yeah, I'll, I'll get back to you when I'm ready, or something like that. So I agree. And I completely agree with your sentiment that it's six months. I mean, I don't know, six months is the exact number.
Anecdotally, in my head, it feels like it would be a little bit less, but there's so many times that I've. Met people in real life, and we've talked about, building them a website, at some, you know, some point in the future. And I just assumed that that was never going to happen. And then the phone rings.
It actually happened to me last week. in the most peculiar of places I've stood in my children's playground and this other parent who I talked to well over a year ago, and she found out that I. Built websites and what have you. And so we started talking, and it wasn't even a sales call, it was just, Oh yeah, you could do this or you could do.
And then the other week she just came up to me in the playground and said, yeah, I think we're ready to move ahead with the website. Now. What? Okay. Right. So anyway, that hasn't happened yet. I'm waiting to see if, yeah, again, there's another six month delay, but totally out of the blue really can be a long time.
David Waumsley: [00:23:46] Yeah, I mean, I'm where I am because my colleague, and I think she was, you know, she'd been out at kind of 10 years, really professionally doing it before, and she seemed fairly relaxed with the fact that people came back. So I guess I'm getting there myself and I don't get so anxious when somebody seems really keen on getting a website started.
Whether I'm going to have the time because of other jobs I've got, because I just know now, but it's just going to stretch out that time and it's just the way it is. So I was thinking, sorry, we didn't make the magic email or just finish the thought. What we didn't say is that instead of the magic email, shouldn't, we've just been putting them on a, have some kind of list or something where they get contact from us every so often.
Even even now on a Christmas card list or something like that.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:24:27] Well, that's perfect. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to suggest. I think that's. That's really valuable. something I've never managed to do, largely because, as I said, creating that kind of content has been something that us, outside of WP Builds, I've never really managed to stick out.
But I think that's a really great idea. Just, it's just a gentle nudge. I don't know how often that would feel, but if you think about your own life. And all the things that you do. As an example, there's this little bit of tech. I won't bore you with what it is, but it's just a little bit of tech that I would like to buy and I'm, I'm really into minds as to whether I can afford it be needed or see.
There's a couple of rival products, but I've been looking at this bit of tech this exact same bit for well over a year. Yeah. And, and I still haven't made the decision, but there's this one company, who coincidentally, are actually based fairly close to me. They're in York, which is about, I don't know, it's about an hour's drive away, just by pure chance.
And they have pixeled me at some point. And, and I keep going back to their website. I must be costing them a fortune in goo in, in Facebook ads. But. I am so close to buying it now because of these little repeated little pings, just this company sort of saying, you know, look, this item is still here.
It's still here. It's still here. And so I think your idea of putting them on a sequence, just massaging, giving them useful tips, and I think that's the point, right? Is to give them content as opposed to give them a sales email. Just give them content around what. What can be done with a website. I think that would be gold and I'm sure it would convert over time, but the problem is it's so unmeasurable and you just don't know.
David Waumsley: [00:26:17] And it, but it's the opposite to what we often say a lot. We're trying to get rid of the tire kickers, the time wasters and stuff like that. You know, you just think, well, maybe flip that on its head. Maybe I'm now coming to the conclusion. Most of them are like that. They appear like they're tire kickers, but a some point they will come good.
They will, they will purchase. They will get on with it.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:26:38] Yeah. And if you think about it, what possible reason do they have to be in touch with you. Between the point at which they worked out that yes, you build websites and yes, you can do what we need to do. And yes, the price is right. You know, all of those things that, that presumably they've worked out at some point in the past and you've given them some and then they go completely silent.
What possible reason, if they got to talk to you until the moment where they're very, very, very much closer to actually deciding. And the answer is probably mostly non. There's no reason. So you can't really expect them to be phoning you up saying, yeah, we're still interested in that website. Just wait a couple of months, we'll be all there.
Don't worry. That's just, well, I wouldn't.
David Waumsley: [00:27:20] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But you know, I have this little, I've mentioned this before, this little Facebook group, which I made for clients to try and feel like I'm, you know, still around and we do services and it's not really taken off. I haven't put enough effort into it still, but I knew before when people are passed on somebody too.
to kind of join these . I made it open and I have another moment and I'm thinking, should I do that? Should I welcome people to come into this group to just talk about that? A website issues anyway because they. Yeah, they will. We mend the me and they could be potentially clients cause I'm going to put other content up there.
Should I just be welcome in those people? And then I've got the other side of it, which is why I decided not to do that is because at such a high number of people in our profession who think yes. They, they can just pick our brains for free and do the job themselves.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:28:12] Yeah. I think there's also a slight danger. I've, I remember when you said that for the first time that you've got a Facebook group of clients. I remember thinking, Oh, that's interesting, but not something I would do because from my point of view, I'd be too worried. Not only that they were going to pick your brains for free, but also it kind of feels to me like it's crossed some.
Boundary, a little bit of familiarity that I'm really over-emphasizing that I don't mean that as in quite as so severe as way as it sounds, but I like to keep like a bit of a separation. You know, I'm over here building your website, you're over there, you're the client and we'll, we'll do all the formal communications through my, software of choice and all of that.
And I've set all that process up at the beginning, so I want to keep that going. But your model for. Having clients is so very different to mine that if it works. Great. Go for it. I mean, it could, could, could as easily be a, a forum on a WordPress website, or it could be something in, you know, a little collection of things going on in LinkedIn.
It's the, I think for me, it's the nature of interactivity with that. That is peculiar. whereas. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know.
It's never, it's never taken off anyway. It's just been, in fact, it's the kind of stuff I wouldn't put in client reports, like I've updated them to latest PHP, which is really tedious.
And I've even shared a video of the book we're talking about as well, because you know, this might be worth. 45 minutes of their time for their business, you know, things like that. you know, it doesn't get much dialogue or anything ready.
Like, are you going to pursue that though in, in the sense that you say it doesn't get much engagement.
Is that because you don't engage with it very much and, but when you do, do you get any engagement other, are there enough numbers in there to make it worthwhile?
David Waumsley: [00:30:01] No, there isn't really, it's just a few people in there, but it has made me wonder whether I should kind of expand, which was the original plan with it, just to kinda, and so friends of friends, questions about WordPress and but then of course it stops being the client's group, doesn't it? Where I'm updating them on their services.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:30:18] Yeah, it feels, so, it kind of feels to me that if you're going to make content about WordPress, would it be better to have that in more open format? You know, in the, in the same way that you've made a whole heap of videos before, that's just, you know, it's not in a group, it's just publicly available on YouTube that that feels like, that may be a more useful, useful thing to do.
I don't know, because then lots of other people can find it and especially not just your clients, but people who might be your clients in the future.
David Waumsley: [00:30:45] Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. But in a way, what I was thinking, this is on, I could open it up to what it initially became when there was a few people who had just joined because they'd heard that I did what I did, and they wanted some, basically, they were happy to talk about a problem that they had.
So in a way, it was almost like publicly pitching for their work almost there, because. They were asking me how they could fix a certain issue. And before everybody, I'm answering their question, you know? So it's more personal than putting out content as such. But anyway, I don't know if he's got an idea I took, there is one of our friends, I won't mention them, who does have a group like that is expanded upon.
They do offer WordPress help, I think, to the more general public, or they invite anybody who they may have had some indirect contact with or. Or perhaps they, you know, they allow their friends to invite other people to come to them. So maybe they use that as a tactic. I've never talked to them about it.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:31:41] Hmm. That's an interesting idea though, the, the notion of having these digital platforms as ways to just keep the messaging going out, you know, in the same way that email does, as, as I've said so many times before. I th I, I really do think that word of mouth is, is my best ally, or at least it has been in the past.
Whether it will be in the future, I don't know. But I think the, the fact that people that I know have told their friends that they've got a website with me is, is, is the, the golden bullet. If I could, if I could somehow pass all that up and wrap it up as a service, I would, cause I think that's the best way.
David Waumsley: [00:32:18] Yeah. You've just beautifully segwayed into leak 11 really, isn't it? Not being known. Yeah. Word of mouth. It's about, because people make their decisions often first by asking those around them who they could recommend. That's kind of one of the leaks we need to plug. So, you know, it's interesting she mentioned something, I mean, largely she's talking about the power of referrals, which is where I think.
Most of us get our work from, isn't it
get well? Certainly I do. Yeah. The vast majority is from referrals. I don't play the Google game particularly well, so word of mouth seems to work. Yeah. But she's also talking about, yeah, word of mouth in this kind of referrals, but she's talked about word of mouth.
Beaners are kind of broader concept. Two referrals where it's just that people are actually talking about you.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:33:09] Oh, so word of mouth in her sense, could mean a, an interaction on Twitter, but it's somebody that you know on Twitter and you trust their judgment. Is that, yeah. Yeah. Okay.
David Waumsley: [00:33:18] Yeah. Well, she's got a whole list in our book.
We were just reading through them before. It wasn't, we were, she was suggesting how you can kind of be a person who gets talked about by kind of putting out content that's. Yeah. The thought provoking questions that you ask in certain places. It's starting a debate, which is what we're intended to do in our discussions in the future.
Yeah. All that kind of stuff being controversial. And, one of the other points which you liked the most was write a common theme. So keep talking about stuff that's in your industry.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:33:49] Yeah. I think if you can, I think the message, the reason I say that is because the only experiences I have. and this is not me, I'm talking about.
This is just other people that I know who've been really remarkably successful at this. This idea of getting word of mouth via online forms is when people are just banged the same drum over and over again. In other words, they're not trying to be, a generalist. and again, it's nothing to do with web design, but their businesses.
You know, completely nothing to do with that at all. It might be that they sell baths or that they sell plumbing equipment or whatever, but they, they just somehow managed to put out content, which to my mind is not interesting to read because I'm not interested in baths or plumbing equipment. But if you're into that, and there's just this.
Does this, this guy or this lady or, or this company that just keeps pushing out content that's helpful and interesting and well-written and timely. I see that as a fabulous area to put your efforts in. but you've gotta you've gotta keep going at it. And it may in the end, you know, you may sort of have lots of self doubts and whatnot because you just keep going on about the same thing.
But in the end, I think you gotta it. You only have to look at people who are successful in the WordPress space. Let's say, for example, on YouTube. There's YouTube content about WordPress all the time, and it just, in the end, it gathers all those people in and in just about any niche, there's going to be, well, certainly with the internet, there's millions of people who are interested in your thing into knitting.
There's millions of you into, I don't know, crochet. There's millions of you into tennis. There's maybe billions of you. You know? Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:35:37] but she talks about Southern Kelsey as well, where you could bring a bit of your personality, you know, asking the start in the debates and being controversial thought provoking questions if they kind of, so, okay, so you might do knitting, but you might have a particular perspective about how that might need to be done, which is controversial.
Let's say you'll have a product and your big beef is that other people who sell this stuff. They don't, they're not as green as you are. More green credentials. You can really, you know, find something within what you stand for as a company and use that as a way of getting kind of known because you'll challenge people and be.
You know, remembered for that. And there's lots of forums. Forums are all about that, aren't they? They're all about kind of argument.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:36:20] You know more about the psychology of this than I do because of your background in, in things like that. But it feels to me as if, as if humans are kind of built to be drawn towards controversy a little bit, you know, it's the, it's the reason why people.
I think, you know, when, when they're on the road and they see an accident, they slowed down. They just fascinated what's going on over there. That's curious. That's not normal. And so again, apparently Facebook promotes controversial content because it gets engagement. So whilst it's something I would be, I would not be predisposed to do it.
It just doesn't fit me. I don't, I mean, listen to us, we are constantly trying to be, not controversial. The, I'm sure it works. I'm sure it works. You know, if, like you said, if you're, if you're into knitting and you know, this, this pattern Sox is so last year or whatever, I don't know anything about knitting.
Yeah. You get the point, say something controversial, stick your neck out a bit. I bet you it would gather you, viewers whether or not that's a great strategy in the longterm. If you're always missed a controversial, yeah. Might in the end come back to bite you. But you know,
David Waumsley: [00:37:27] you know, if it's, if it's in line with what you stand for, I mean, we, most things, most arguments of course they are by nature polarized.
But I think it's because we are pack animals by nature, aren't we? I mean, I, so the stray dogs that we have around here, and it's really fascinating just to see, you know, when one starts to bark at somebody who's coming into our village. Just the rest of them all run to come and do the same thing.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:37:54] That's a good analogy. Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:37:56] You know, and you do get these packs, you know, where you get opposite sides. And I think we're, we are, we have the inners. Even though I think you and I fight against that quite lot, we try and get rational about things that we do have that inner, so sometimes standing for something that's quite important, I think.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:38:11] Yeah. I'd love. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah, so the controversy doesn't have to be controversy for the sake of it. It could be because you genuinely actually believe something is worth sticking up for. Or you know, this thing over here is objectively better than that thing over there, so I'm going to say it how I see it.
Yeah, fair enough.
David Waumsley: [00:38:28] Yeah. And you're going to get remembered, aren't you for that? I think above the thing that you unnecessarily saline, so it's going to be connected, but it's a way of making your, you know, people know where they stand with you, which is quite, I think that's quite important really. I see a lot of people put out content, like you're saying on the same stuff all the time, but somehow I think I connect with them when I understand where they're coming from.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:38:51] Right. Do you, does it matter to you though, what the person's history is? Let's say, let's take an example. Let's say that you come across, you're, you're interested in a new plugin for WordPress. Take that as an example, and you go searching and several YouTube videos come up and one of them is by the face that you've seen many times.
So you know that you can watch that one. But then there's this new face that you've never seen before. Are you likely to distrust what they say or are you likely to engage with that content? As much do you think the, the sort of the heritage, the fact that this person has been putting out content for ages just makes any difference.
David Waumsley: [00:39:28] Yeah. That's a really good question. I think when there's something new, then I, I'm more cynical. Oh, I'm looking, I'm looking out for why there might be wrong until they convince me otherwise.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:39:40] Well, I think that's probably human nature as well, you know? But so, so the. Leading from that, the idea that if you keep producing content for a really long time, eventually you build up enough Q dos enough.
well w the following comes as a result of it all, but enough or authority. That when you talk, people start to listen. and I'm sure that's the way it works. So, yeah, I think if the difficulty is, as I've said, is just creating an environment where you feel able to do this stuff. You know, we're constantly told that post blog posts need to be of a certain length.
You know, let's take a thousand words as a, as a rough dipping your toes in the water. That's not easy to do. Writing a thousand words takes. Well, it will take me well over an hour, and that's what I'm ready to write. You know, if I was just to say that, sit down and try to come up with lots of different subjects, that's, that's going to be difficult.
But I think it's worth it. And I'm sure that there are countless stories from people listening to this who've got clients who have produced content regularly and have just been able to absolutely win in their little niche because of that.
David Waumsley: [00:40:50] Yeah, absolutely. I mean she's, this book is talking to business people I think, and I think it's really important that they understand kind of debate or being social really, I guess when they're on the social networks.
Cause most of the businesses I know who set up their social networks, they still see it as an advertising platform and they don't engage in any conversations. I'm terrible at this. The only time I did it with our old greeting card business, I simply. Ask the question, how do you put a greeting card in the envelope?
Is the image kind of the first thing you see when you pull it out of the back or the front end and start a debate culture that people love that because they could just take one side or another. It's the only bit of successful Facebook page marketing I ever did, but it again is based around this.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:41:36] Do you think the cause, cause we're talking about the who in this case, do you think the the who.
As in the specific person matters as well. So as an example, if, if you, if you publish content, let's say on LinkedIn or YouTube or Twitter or what have you, and it's coming from, the company name that feels to me far more clinical and boring than if it comes from an employee. And although you can never guarantee that the employee is going to stick around and they might take some of that cue dos with them when they leave, it feels to me like an individual.
doing stuff over time works better than the company trying to pretend to care. You know, if Sarah Smith or John Smith or whoever it is, is constantly having their face push forward, eventually I get to know John Smith. A good example actually would be a couple of years ago. AppSumo you know, there's the site that sells lifetime deals.
They started putting out videos of the product and they, they use the same person. I presume she's now sort of moved on a little bit, but they use the same lady whose name I think is Christie, over and over and over and over again. and I think it was really successful because people just sort of got into the way that she delivered things, got into the, the patter that she had and so on.
And she presented a really. Public face for what it is. You know, it's a soft, they sell software, they sell other people's software, but they sell software and that's hard to do. But having that public face is good. And so it feels to me that if you've, if you've got a company, you know your web design business as an example, and you've got somebody in on your staff who was particularly good at this, isn't afraid of the camera, knows the technology, is quite happy to bang out videos for you or write content for you, then.
That feels like a, a bit of a win as well. A, an easy win. Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:43:28] And I think, you know, I mean, I engage in on other people's forums and that I think is important for business as real people. I know companies are often very cautious not to say something that might split people. Yeah. Because they want it, you know, or their employees need to.
We, I mean, I had to be careful as a civil servant what I could say publicly because I'm a crown employee, I suppose, to represent the values of the crown, you know? and that happens in companies right. Everywhere. But I, in some ways for marketing, and I think it's a mistake. So I, there's some people that I now are aware of now in WP Builds areas are people that I saw leaving comments in, you know, a blog I used to comment on.
So the eight years ago, and I know them and I, and in some ways also through just them appearing in different places. Yeah. I kind of know them for the values,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:44:23] right?
David Waumsley: [00:44:24] Do you know what I mean? And I think it's a kind of important thing, even if they might be different, I think it's important that I've got that attached to them.
So I think the who becomes important, even with my greeting cards stunt, I did the, who was important, I think in that, because I took a stand on, which I thought was the right way.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:44:40] And the truth is, you're never going to get this right for everybody. So as an example, I'm always drawn. To the, to the, you know, to the, the sort of the humble personality.
I'm always drawn to people who make videos and you know, they, they're not too bothered if they make little clumsy mistakes and all of that. It's totally all right with me. But for another, you know, if you are representing a pharmaceutical company and giant multinational car manufacturer or something, it's just.
Totally different. You know, you've got to rehearse it. It's gotta be perfect. It's probably going to cost a lot and be super slick. But if you are a, I don't know, a software developer, you're trying to sell your WordPress websites, I think less so on the human angle for me always wins. But, but, but other people won't want to see the human angle.
They want to see the slick professional. you know, Uber produced and, expensive video. So there's, I don't, there's a right answer to creating content. There's just finding your stride and finding out what gels with your audience. And I suppose that's the hard part, is working out what, what sort of tone to have?
Is it going to be, are you going to adopt a sort of, you know, a humorous personality? Are you going to go for really serious and professional? All of these things. We'll hit some people. I mean, goodness knows if you can, if you can figure out a way to get to everybody all the time. Fabulous. Well done, but I think that's going to be a tall order.
David Waumsley: [00:46:00] Yeah. You reminded me of a fabulous bit of marketing that went out and it was full, a company that produce a sanitary towels, and I know we're part of a, a bigger organization. So they didn't have a CEO, but somebody had wrote some. Comment about how the advertising was all, you know, lots of women bounce it around and enjoying life with sanity towels and lots of images of water.
And the whole business is, you know, ministrations is a bit more messy than that. And they did this wonderful campaign. They did this whole ad where they invented a CEO reply in, did you see it until.
It was such a funny video. And then they showed, yes, we, we've skirted over the issues. We agree with you, but this is what happened when we brought people in and they show all these men crying at the reality of the situation, women's menstruation cycle, and then we couldn't put this out in the public.
It was fabulous bit, you know, they'd just invented this it, but it was like they took. It was the last thing you would expect a company like that to do and it was kind of honors then they would get, it was the opposite to what their general marketing was all about and they humanized it. It was fabulous bit of marketing.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:47:13] Interesting. When large corporations somehow managed to get. Grab onto something where you feel a personal connection with them that that is, that is gold, isn't it? John Lewis, for some, I don't know quite how they managed it. This, this retailer in the UK called John Lewis, and every year they spend an absolute fortune trying to, trying to pull the heart strings of people that Christmas time, and they do it really well year after year.
They produce these adverts to the point where. The advert every year. He's now a talking point. You know, what's the John Lewis or it's a bit sad really, but it's what's the John Lewis advert going to be like? And so that content is gold, but. Boy, that must take a lot of getting used to, I think when you come across the that moment, probably more by accident than anything else.
Yeah. Really write it down and, and I suppose milk it for everything it's worth. Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:48:06] And there's been terrible adverts out there as well, which I'm sure weren't planned to be so bad, but they'd go viral themselves.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:48:13] yeah. Yeah. For me though, staying off controversy works, I just, it just doesn't fit me. I like the idea of just producing content of on a common theme over and over again.
But this, this all started debate thing. We're, we'll see how that works out because as you alluded to, we're going to try doing that in, in the WP belts podcast.
David Waumsley: [00:48:34] Yeah, exactly. We've got one more of the leaks to go through in this series and then we're on to debate, so I'm really looking forward to that.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:48:42] Actually speaking of which, if you are still paying attention to this podcast, do tell us what you'd like us to debate. It's obviously got to be something to do with WordPress and clearly something where we're not going to put anybody in anybody's nose out of joint or. Forced David and I to have a fight. but it would be quite nice to have some, the idea being that we, we've had these discussion episodes going for ages and, might be nice to have a sort of, well, adversarial tone.
Maybe that's the word, but, yeah, that was, no, there's a post in the Facebook book group.
Yeah, it's going to force us to do a bit of homework, isn't it? For change?
David Waumsley: [00:49:14] We're gonna. Yeah. Because we're, we're, we, we agree with each other and we have our ideas, but sometimes we just don't go and look up stuff to, to have an argument with each other.
So I think it's going to be good for us. We're going to learn,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:49:24] well, I'm going to, I'm going to win all of them. That's the, yeah. There you go. Right, right, right, right, right. So a controversy begun, but that's not until we've got one more of these episodes out of the way. So, should we, should we knock it on the head for this week?
David Waumsley: [00:49:40] And it's done and dusted. You see, I've got my own catch phrase now.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:49:43] Ah, very nice. Well done, David. I'm gonna say, right. yeah. Enjoy. And, we'll see you next week. Well, I hope that you enjoy that. I always enjoy chatting to David Waumsley and this week the women who have marketing. Well, very interesting indeed.
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