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. Nathan Wrigley.
Hello there, and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. Glad to have you around. This is episode number 168 entitled making an impact. It was published on Thursday the 27th of February, 2020. My name's Nathan Wrigley, and I will be joined in a few moments by David Waumsley because we're having one of our discussions.
In fact, it's the final discussion in a long series, but I'll come to that in a moment. Before I get to that, just a few bits and pieces to do with WP Builds. WP Builds obviously produces quite a lot of content, and we'd like you to be aware of what it is that we're . Producing, and so we've put together a page, WP Builds.com forward slash, subscribe, and if you go over to that page, you'll be able to join our mailing lists.
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You can find out [email protected] forward slash advertise. And somebody who's done that is Elliot Condon from advanced custom fields. Want to build anything with WordPress, with the advanced custom fields plugin by your side, you can take full control of your WordPress edit screens and custom field data with a few clicks.
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Speaking of which, well, we are talking today for the very final time about the book of water type marketing by Briony Thomas. This episode, as I said, is called making an impact, and it's all about, well, how do you know what you need to do to make an impact. How do you even know what it is that your potential clients or customers might want out of you?
So we talk about things like slimming down the services that you offer so that you are only doing the ones that are profitable to you. We talk about the clarity that you might need to have in your business name and no, it's not too late. That is possible to change. Talk about your product kind of exclusively, you know, make sure that you only talk about your product well at least 80% of the time and avoid trying to do what everybody else is doing and getting known for things that actually you don't really want to be involved in.
It's a nice episode, and as I say, it finishes off this series of watertight marketing. I hope that you enjoy it.
David Waumsley: [00:03:50] Today's discussion is called making an impact, and it's the final discussion in our series based on the book watertight marketing by Brony Thomas. The book talks about 13 areas or leaks, has she calls them where businesses can lose potential customers or clients.
We've been working through them and today we're discussing the last two, which are on the top of our imaginary sales funnel, and it's where. We or our clients are trying to gain awareness. The leaks are number 12 not known for what you do and leak 13 which has no emotional impact. So well, well, Nathan, we've cut down the book a little bit, haven't we, to slimmed it down to the kind of main points that we'll talk about.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:04:36] Yeah. On these two topics. Yeah. Yes. I think probably best. Yeah. If we did every single one of her suggestions, we'd have been here for six months or more. so we've combined in the last few episodes of combined two different topics in one, but I think these two. Fit fairly well together. I wonder if anybody's actually gone out and bought the book on the back of this.
It'd be quite interesting to know if anybody's sort of taken, you know, taken some important information out of the book and read it for themselves.
David Waumsley: [00:05:02] Yeah, well not, I know a couple of clients who are , which is really good. I've been passing it on to them. Oh, nice.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:05:08] Oh, that is a good, that was good too. Well, I suppose in a sense, you know, you're not doing yourself out of any work if they're coming to you armed with better ways to utilize their website.
I'm guessing that this book could be deployed in any business as well. Obviously we've been taking it from the perspective of somebody that uses a WordPress and has a website building business, but you can use it if you're a gardener or a lawyer, for example. It wouldn't matter.
David Waumsley: [00:05:31] Yeah. And what I like about it is because it's got a form format, and if you're going to talk to a client, if they've read this and basically got the 13 leaks, in their mind, at least you can refer to it.
You know, we've got some kind of starting point to have a conversation, particularly if you're trying to sell them ready, some digital marketing that they could do that would help with one of these leaks. It's really useful if they've got a framework to understand that. So
Nathan Wrigley: [00:05:55] yeah, I have to say I didn't really, I didn't really.
Until we started this series and you put this book under my on onto my radar. I didn't really regard it as leaks. I just always regarded clients that I lost as kind of lost clients. I wasn't really thinking of ways of shoring it up or having more intelligent purposes. So it is quite nice. I just haven't applied this level of thought.
I, to be honest with you, when I was, let's say we rewind the clock about 20 years, I, I used to read a lot of this kind of literature. I used to read a lot of literature about. Actual coding, you know, learning the skills of CSS and all of that. And I used to read marketing books a little bit, or, or how to run your business type books.
But I've noticed more recently looking up at my bookshelf now, there's, there's been no new additions like this for many years. And I wonder if that's a, because I'm just not that interested in acquiring new knowledge or, or I've just, you know, I've sort of gone off the ball with these kinds of things.
So it was nice that you decided that we'd go down this route.
David Waumsley: [00:06:53] and it's down to someone in our community who mentioned it. It was, you know, I wouldn't have known about it until somebody on that Facebook group mentioned it, so it was great.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:07:01] Yeah. Well, anyway, go and check it out. I do actually, each time we put this podcast together, I do post the link to it.
So anyway, you could Google watertight marketing by Briony. Thomas is B. R. Y. O. N. Is that right? B R. Y. O. N. Y. Bryony. I can't remember. Anyway, that sounds right.
David Waumsley: [00:07:21] Yeah, there we go. Okay, so should we do 12 which is not known for what you do? So we boiled this down. Didn't wait the first. The first thing I'm going to pop you talk about this for a while, is to me what she's suggesting is that we've kind of slimmed down the services that we have if we have multiple ones to the ones that we like that are profitable.
So we make sure when we're going about our marketing, that we're picking things up we actually like to do and that they're going to make as money. Makes a lot of sense. It doesn't make this
Nathan Wrigley: [00:07:51] stuff. Perfect. Common sense, isn't it? I suppose the, the diff, the difficulty there is sometimes matching the two things, isn't it?
You know, the things that I. Like doing aren't necessarily the most profitable. So maybe it's not necessarily the thing that I enjoy the most. but somewhere along the line of enjoyment, you know, at least it's not a task that I really, really dislike. And like I say, it makes common sense. I remember when I was a child going to see a careers advisor and they, they advise me to do that.
Just pick a career. That you enjoy simply because there's a chance that you'll Excel at it because you're enjoying it. You know you'll be willing to engage with it. You won't be grumpy or miserable about attending work each day, and that will in itself lead to success because you're good at it. You will become more good at it because you enjoy it and it will make people take notice.
I mean, clearly that didn't happen, but good advice. Anyway. Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:08:46] I mentioned G before dinner when it was a advice at school. I wanted to be a Butlins red coat. Yes.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:08:53] That would have been a great career. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect alignment there. If you can match the two things, in our industry. I, you know, my take on things is basically just building websites and that can be quite profitable and I do enjoy doing it.
So I suppose that's what she's saying, you know, pick a career. I'm not going to get into the minutia here of whether or not you should be selling and ciliary services, like, I don't know, sending emails out to people or, or doing their marketing for them, or building funnels or, I don't know, even hosting and all of those kinds of things.
But whatever it is that you personally enjoy designing, building, creating, liaising with clients, whatever it is, I guess do more of that cause you're going to be, you're going to Excel at it. Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:09:42] And we have that. I mean, I have this issue with clients who do multiple things and they want, everything has to be on that homepage and you know, different departments are going to be arguing or different, just, just different ideas that have a different points.
They want this one to be the focus of everybody's attention. And you can't do that if you've got to be known for what you do. It's got to be fairly simple. It can't be a whole list of people to a whole list of things that people have to remember to know what you do. And I think we're guilty of that as well.
Actually, you were guilty of this as when you've changed your website a little bit, haven't you? To get rid of some services.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:10:16] That's right. So I going back about five or six years, I. Dabbled in all sorts of different things. So I did do those things. You know, I created email templates that look quite nice with HTML tables and all of that kind of stuff.
And I became, I became pretty decent at it in a fairly short space of time, but it wasn't a good revenue stream for me. I was essentially, learning because I thought that this might generate some revenue, but it never really did. I had a couple of clients and it kept me fairly busy. But it never, it never took off.
And so in the end, I just cut my losses. I didn't have an overarching strategy. I really wasn't thinking about, you know, doing things that I enjoy. At that point, I was simply coming at it from the point of view of profit profitability and wasted time. And I looked at it and thought, do you know what?
There's just. There's no way I'm going to make this a winner without putting a massive amount of effort into it, and I'm just not willing to do that. So I stripped it back. I had a whole bunch of different ideas making simple videos for people. Like I say, emails, I still do the hosting side of things, but I'm slowly but surely.
Moving away from that because it's just fraught with problems. And you know, the way of hosting from five years ago is considerably different from the way of hosting in this day and age. And I, I as an individual simply can't keep up with that. so I have, I've got an awful lot out and it's, it's definitely enabled me to just focus on building websites, which is the thing that I enjoy the most.
David Waumsley: [00:11:46] Yeah, and I've got to do it as well. I mean, my own pages and embarrassment to me, cause I, I started to list if you'd like packages to try and give some clarity about the cost of a website, which is usually the first question. But in doing that, I've also kind of wanted to UB sell. On the homepage, the digital marketing side.
So I know I got some feedback via one of my clients as one of our relatives who looked at it and said that they should do an awful lot, don't they?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:12:12] It's interesting. Well, and they saw that as a negative or as a positive.
David Waumsley: [00:12:17] I think it was a negative. I mean, I took you that way. So I felt though, right, I need to do something about it.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:12:22] Yeah. It is interesting though. You know, if you go into like a shop, the more that they do the better on is often the case. You know, if you're going to like a closed shop and they sell like a thousand different products, that's kind of appealing, isn't it? You want to go to that place, but I think you're right.
If you, if you're going to a business and you want to have a website built, I think it's. Probably going to be easier for them to understand what it is that you do and how that process is going to work if you just concentrate on the one thing. Certainly from the beginning. yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:12:52] Yeah. In fact, well, when we move onto to the next one, which is impacted, it's really connected with this one, cause I found this problem and I just think I'm only just starting to grasp where I've gone wrong over these years, but it's. I watch what other people's messages are for what they do. And and I've kind of copied them to a large extent,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:13:12] right?
David Waumsley: [00:13:12] Where in fact, the kind of people I'm naturally going to attract, all the, the only type of person I'm going to be bothered to go after are only interested in one kind of thing, which largely my case is how much is it for a website that all they want to know is it's not going to cost them too much and it's going to be easy to implement.
It's not going to be too onerous on them. And I, wow. And I'm really giving out the wrong message for those people, you know?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:13:34] So are you going to have more messaging around the fact that it's affordable and it's not going to, you know, break the bank? Is that going to be where you're positioning yourself going forward?
David Waumsley: [00:13:44] Well, I've done that. And actually I'm jumping a little bit to our next bit of topics and maybe I should just get off that one.
Let's come back to that then. Okay, fair enough. So the, the next point, after deciding that you should do something that you enjoy doing, which is profitable, the next one was, be aware of the clarity in your business name.
Are we literally saying that the name of the business, not some sort of like strapline the actual name. Hmm.
I think that's what she's talking about. She's talking about the fact that a lot of businesses just use initials and maybe some kind of vague description of the thing that they do, but it's not always clear.
I think, you know, people like even even simple businesses that I think we understand, like my brother's is landscaping. I think that can often mean a lot of different things to people. You know, because there's a kind of hard and soft landscaping element, and it's not clear if you just had the initials or, you know.
I don't know. That's an example I can think of.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:14:41] So in my case, when I decided on things like picture and word, which is the name of the. So a website built building business. I just did that because I thought that that's what the internet was. you know, it was made of pictures and words, which in the day it was, you know, there was very little video.
It really was just images with, with text. That was it. And I thought that was quite clever. But you're right, it doesn't in any way, shape or form reflect what I do. I was actually standing at a foot, a, a rugby pitch the other day, and, and I was looking, because I knew we were going to talk about this, I was looking, all the advertising holdings are all local businesses because you know where I live, that the rugby team is quite small and they, you know, the, the big, bigger businesses, the Coca-Cola's and the Nikes of the world, they're not going to be interested in sponsoring this little stadium.
So they're all local little local businesses. And it popped up. As a lot of people have done exactly this, you know, the name of their business is directly a sales tool. so you know, the, the, you know, if they're selling windows, it says windows in the name of the business. If they are a dentist, it's got dentists in the name of the business.
And I just cast my mind. Sorry, cast my eyes across and one after another. It was really obvious excuse me. What it was that they did, and I was thinking, well, if I put an advert for picture and word in there, I would then have to explain that we, we build websites, you know, which in a sense was wasted a wasted opportunity.
It's too late for me. I've got, I've got far too many years under the belt with that and you know, all of the accountancy and everything that would go with it to change. But, yeah. If you're starting out, I can't see why you wouldn't have something, something, web design or something, something. Website builders.
Why not? Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:16:28] I think it's just been a aware of it. Ready? Because I mean, obviously there's going to be companies like Apple where their name doesn't mean anything. It's not connected and they can afford to do that. It's just what your budget is. And I know with say my brother, he would need to, I mean, I, and I advised him to take his name.
I literally just said. Take your area and what you do and put those two together and don't bother with the fancy branding, which they originally wanted. And this made it so much easier for him, right. Because obviously because the his website, it means that he's going to be an exact domain match for some of the key words that people are going to type in for his business.
So that's helping him.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:17:05] Yeah. Well, that's a really good point. So in my local area, there are lots of businesses where they've used the word Scarborough in the title, plus the name of the product that they're selling. So a very successful company around here is just simply called Scarborough windows. I mean, how much more specific can you be than that.
That is probably what people are going to be searching for. You know, a window in window manufacturer in Scarborough, they're gonna, they're going to win every time just on the strength of the domain. So yeah, I can't, why not? If you're doing it, if you're going to be starting out tomorrow, you use something obvious and if you're geographically bound, use the name of the geographical location as well.
David Waumsley: [00:17:46] Yeah, I want to ring him tomorrow and ask him if they do Macs as well.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:17:49] Yeah, very good. Scarborough Linux.
David Waumsley: [00:17:54] You know what? I think the clarity and your name is so much better than mine. It just makes sense. It's pretty clear. And even we've got video that's even moving pictures for some people, but yeah. But look at mine, WP corner shop, it means nothing.
People don't even know what WP means that they, unless you're in the business.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:18:10] Yeah. I suppose that's it, isn't it? And there is the temptation, whatever industry you're in. Is to, is to use the, the, the vernacular of that industry as the name of your business. And of course, the, the vernacular of your industry, nobody is going to get, so just sort of dumbing it down.
Yeah, you're right. WP to us is sublimely obvious. That's so obvious what that is. But for anybody else, it's not. and you, you, regrettably, you can't use WordPress. That would be a lovely know, be really nice if you could use WordPress, because I think that's being searched for, you know, millions of times a day.
And if you could, for example, if it was possible to have, I dunno, WordPress Scarborough or something, that would be it. That would be really good. But no, you're not allowed to use that. But, yeah. WP corner shop, you're going to change that. You're going to stick with it.
David Waumsley: [00:18:59] I think I've got this tick quit it now. A few people are kind of like it once I, again, the concept is constantly changing as I'm kind of working out where I fit in and what I'm offering. So the idea is still quite useful because it does mean, and I, I intended it that way, is that I can sell different types of products if you'd like. And it would kind of make sense that though.
Strung together, you know, they, because they are separate things that we do. So that kind of helps in a way. But it also gets in, in terms of understanding, the name doesn't help me at all.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:19:27] I like the idea of shop. you know, having, having shopping there is quite good because it does imply that you've got a range of things, as you just said, we should probably point out, cause I don't know if corner shop is a, is an international word, but in the UK, a corner shop is basically the, the little tiny local shop that you would go to.
If you needed a pint of milk or you needed some matches or something like that on, on, it's dying out as the giant supermarkets take over. But when I was a child, virtually every street corner had a corner shop and you would go there and it would be your local go-to for just anything that you needed right away.
So it, it has the resonance of. Of, of being, you know, kind of one stop shop. But also, I suppose it's kind of dying out because, you know, the, the, the new generation of children don't know anything about corner shops. They probably wouldn't even know what that meant.
David Waumsley: [00:20:21] No, I guess that's true. I mean, I, I guess I'm appealing to the UK audience of a certain age anyway, so I wanted that kind of homely feel to it.
You know, that that was the, the thinking behind it and also the idea of kind of transparency. We've been. That was where I tried to be different, try and get prices up front and that kind of thing. Try and make it easy, so it was a good idea, but it's a terrible name. Really
Nathan Wrigley: [00:20:42] don't know. I suppose like anything you said Apple, and I'm going to throw Amazon into that as well.
It just doesn't mean anything. If you've got certain critical mass and you've. Got enough SCO juice where the, you know, the keywords that you actually want to rank for. So for example, WordPress or website builder or whatever it might be, that, that can work for you. But it's a quick, slightly easier win to, to go with a business name, which, which will impact Google, I guess.
Hmm.
David Waumsley: [00:21:11] Yeah. Yeah. So the next one, so the, her other point was make sure that we, that 80% of what. We talk about publicly is related to what we do. So I think she's talking about the fact that, yeah, I think she's mainly looking at where we have kind of social media and we might, you know, that we might pay out an active active channels, but we're not talking about, you know, we're not reminding people of what it is that we do.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:21:39] right. Is she sort of trying to say that don't muddy or. Your social platforms with personal stuff. So in other words, if you've got, let's say for example, a Twitter account that you're, that you're using or an Instagram account which is tied to your business, don't, don't then Madi that with stuff about your, your family or what have you, and be very mindful that, that you.
80 well, she's saying eight times out of 10 for every 10 posts that you make, make sure it's directly talking to, in our case, building websites or building services around websites. So I don't go off in random directions. Don't go talking about internet security for a couple of weeks or three, you know, three posts in a row and make sure that you really are hammering home that message so that, cause I do it all the time, I end up on it.
Twitter feed of somebody who's caught my attention and I do go back. It's like a little habit that I've developed. I go back and I look through to see, what it is that they've been talking about. You know, I've found a tweet. I found a post somewhere, and I think, well, that's really insightful. That's great.
I'm glad somebody shared that. And then I want to see if that person is an authority on that. So I scroll back in their past and, and in many cases that's the case. You know, they've, they've probably obeyed this rule, whether they knew it or not. And then in other cases, you realize it was just a bit of a one off.
And so you kind of closed the window and, and move on. But yeah. Yeah, good point. I mean, why not?
David Waumsley: [00:23:05] Yeah, and I think really, I mean, maybe that figures a bit silly, but it, I think she's trying to make the point really with all of these things. It's like if we want to be known for what we do, we have to have a.
A lot of clarity. And I think that's the whole point. If, if our conversations don't focus or, or make clear what we do within those conversations, then we're wasting the opportunity, aren't we? I don't think it has. I think it could still be done in a, in the same way as if your, we did this a little bit. I'm in, I'm hopeless at it, but when I had a small business and we had a, I think it was a Facebook page that we had for our cards. We managed to get at least a couple of times conversations building around cards, like, you know how you placed a card in an envelope and do, do it this way or that way. So the debate was at least related to what it was that we did, where we attempt to be at do other things.
The where they were coming, just general chat stuff and it didn't remind people of what we did. So I think that's probably what sound about,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:24:03] Oh, you know what? Sorry, I was going to
David Waumsley: [00:24:05] intro that. Apologize. It's okay. What I was thinking about, and it was even with the last point, is that there's a difference, I think, with local markets because the one client we have though I think is really good with their Facebook page, has a lot of interaction, really doesn't talk about what they do because it's so clear what they do.
Just on the header, that I'm not so sure if that's the case. And I think building community for them because they're only going to get their customers locally is the best thing. So I would kind of argue a little bit with that. I need to be. Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:24:38] The book is also slightly old, isn't it? You know, we're going back a few years since this is, since this was written, and I'm sure that those platforms have become much more ubiquitous.
So Twitter and Facebook and so on. you know, you've got the capability to put a business page up and so on, on Facebook and, and maybe, maybe that's moved on. People are much more willing to, to, to use those for more social means. So, yeah, I, I can imagine that that could be, that could be the case. You know, it's interesting.
David Waumsley: [00:25:05] Yeah. And it's the same, I suppose local's gonna have an impact on how you slim down your services. Because you know, if you are the, as you were doing, if you are the person that they might go to, to all related things regarding the web, they might come to you for a whole list of services anyways. So you need to have them shown, don't you?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:25:25] Yeah. Cause yeah,
you're
David Waumsley: [00:25:27] known for what you're known for, where really they aren't you. So the what becomes less important.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:25:32] Yeah, that's true. I suppose also thrown into this is, is how much to do it as well, and I know that we've dealt with this previously, but you know, if you're going to do 80% of 500 tweets a month.
That, that could be an interesting concoction. Or if you did 80% of 10 tweets a month, that could be a different blend altogether. So I suppose you've got to, you've got to think about this, you know, if you're constantly pushing stuff out, there's maybe a point at which people just switch off cause you're just deluging them too much.
But anyway, the point stands and it's, I think it's worth having in the back of your mind. That as this anecdotal figure, if you produce 10 bits of content, make sure that roughly eight of them are very publicly related to what you do. You know that they're on message, they're talking about the service that you offer.
So in my case. If, if I was to go back to blogging for my business, which I really don't, I just can't seem to sustain that. make sure that eight out of 10 are directly related to what I do, not to go off on random directions. A good example of that would be when I did do blogging years ago on, I didn't stick with it for very long.
I found that I was creating blog pieces, which would help. Although WordPress users to solve fairly technical things and that that was completely the wrong message because all the, Oh, the audience that I'm attracting there. Is people doing the work that I already do? So basically my competitors, so it, there, it would have been far more useful to write more generic posts about how to, I don't know how to use a page builder or how to get WordPress to do some simple little task.
And in my case, it was about things like, I don't know, adding a. Adding a class to the body of the, the HTML so that, you know, it reflected what categories were as it were, are attached to that page or something like that, you know, which wasn't, wasn't really helpful for the end user.
David Waumsley: [00:27:26] No. And I, I think that's pretty much most of us would have done that if we tried to do some blogging.
I did as well. Cause I tried to set my business up under my own name and then I did exactly the same cause it's really hard to know for our business. What they're going to read, what are they going to search for? For web developers?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:27:46] I suppose it would be, you know, in my case, I could certainly write about, you know, all sorts of less difficult things.
I think that's the, that's the measure of it, isn't it? If somebody is coming to me to have a website built, clearly they want to sort of hand that over to me. So I might do. Posts about, I don't know how to set WordPress up or how to maximize the reach of your SEO, how to use a certain SEO plugin that I know that I'm going to install on their website anyway, those kinds of things.
Perhaps perhaps the sort of things about care plans and what you offer those, those kinds of things, more about the business and less about the how tos of WordPress.
David Waumsley: [00:28:22] Yeah. I mean, I think that's the problem when you, when you do these books, how tos do really well for gaining traffic, but how to, how to for our customers is really quite tricky because if, if we don't want the type of client who, who wants to do it themselves and we want the lead as experts, then it's really hard to come up with content for them, I think.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:28:41] Yeah, it is. That is tricky, you know, because. Essentially most of the content that you or you would create would in some way jeopardize the, the capability of selling a website. It's just the nature of it, so yeah, that is, it's interesting. Anyway, blogging I suppose is one thing, but it might be less about blogging and more about social media and and so on and so forth.
A lot of my clients. Do do social media posts about, for example, you know, events that they attend. So look, this week we're at the law festival in, in Richmond or something, and here we are Manning our booth. And, we spoke to 17 people today, all about this, that, and the other. That seems to be quite effective, you know, so there, there are ways to do it in terms of, Yeah. Whatever industry you're in, us, I expect with a, with a little bit of thought you could take, you could come up with a whole ton of ton of articles that don't pauperized the chances of you getting clients.
David Waumsley: [00:29:38] Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. We go on to digital meet as I, digital marketing is probably the area we stopped doing posts on now.
Hoping that might attract some people that don't necessarily are, we're building skills on them. So
Nathan Wrigley: [00:29:52] yeah, that seems to be the direction of travel for most people, doesn't it? It's creating content about about marketing funnels and things, and in a sense that seems to make it. That seems to be a good way to go because I don't think most of the people that I'm building websites for would want to get involved in that at all.
They would want the outcomes, but they wouldn't have the, they wouldn't want to actually do it. But learning that somebody can do that. So you could write posts, couldn't you, without revealing the secret sauce without revealing how to do it. Just this is, this is what you can do these days. Look at this.
Isn't this amazing? You can turn to, and this little form on your website into a tool, which you can then. re repurpose, with targeting and pixels and all that. But you don't have to say how it's all done.
David Waumsley: [00:30:34] Yeah. Should we get to the next point, which is, I'm just mentioning a avoid following what everyone else does because some things, some things are just like mama, where you can, you know, you're just gonna lose everybody if you try to please everybody, you know, you say you've got to, got to take a side.
And, I, I think. It may be not true, but I've often said this about people in our industry, and what I've done as well is that we do tend to copy each other with the same kind of messaging, and instead of going out there with something different, which is what I tend tend to do now, but I'm doing it blindly.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:31:09] But yeah, I think it's very hard to be original. yeah, I think I really struggle to, to find anything. Unique about what I do. My, my UVP, if you like. The one thing that I keep saying to people on the phone is, look, it's just me. You know you're going to end up just dealing with me. I'm going to build it.
I'm going to take, I am going to be your single point of contact, and I'm local. You know, I'm literally here. It's not like you have to pick up the phone. I could be at your office within half an hour if I'm, if you want me to come and have a meeting with you. Those kinds of things. But putting messaging out there, which is unique.
Goodness. I really struggled with that, especially because competition is Sophie as the, so many people trying to put their messaging out. I've never, never succeed. I don't think I've ever really succeeded at that. My, like I said, the only thing I can say is it's just me. And if that appeals to you, if you like that relationship, then maybe I'm a good fit.
David Waumsley: [00:32:09] Yeah. You know, it's interesting that because, yeah, it was mentioned before. I think the wear is so important, more than the watch with you, but interesting. You don't put your face up there and they do buy into you, so you're not, I mean, you're public everywhere. I've obviously too, in this podcast and all the kind of video stuff as well that you do, everybody can see who you are, but that's not part of your, of your own essential business.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:32:33] No, I don't mention it at all. Unless, unless somebody specifically asked that question, you know, something along the lines of how long have you been working with WordPress or something, which is very rare actually. Then I might say, look, I do this podcast, and I think I've done that twice. Maybe, maybe, I don't know, but not a lot.
I don't, I just make up. But I think that's, that's where you're going to succeed as well because you know, you're very amiable, very easy to talk to, and you want people to have that relationship with you. It's not like you want to get their money and then literally you'll never see them again. You want to be.
Actually on a Skype call working through with them. And so those, those things are going to be important to you. And I think you've got that in bucket loads. You know, you can talk to your coach and you make sense. Your, you're very kind, you know, you've got, you've got a nice, nice manner about you and I think that's going to be one of the, one of the ways that you'll win.
Oh, can I have the fiver now? Yeah,
David Waumsley: [00:33:36] you can have a tenant. you know, and it's true. And I guess it depends what kind of I was talking to somebody actually on, the Facebook group or thread about that, and I was just mentioning the fact that I'm assuming coming up to 56, my aims are very different from what I want for my business.
So it just make you approach things differently. And it really is that, it's just that I want. You know, a fairly close bunch of clients who are like a lot who want, want to look after for life. They're kind of my pension as I slowly retire, you know, as I wind down. So I've got to have this good friendship.
They've got to see me as the person, they're just going to call up to ask them advice about what they want might want to do next, rather than be somebody who I will might, might want to make a short term. Larger profit out of, you know, as a distant business. Yeah. So there's a big, and you know what, it's not communicated yet. Again, you know, look at my name, so I'm terrible at it.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:34:28] You really, you really should go for David Wamsley's friendly web design.com that would be a, that would be the perfect name. But you know, maybe that is us doing something, which isn't. Following the trend. So the, the quote here is avoid following everyone else.
And it feels to me that in the way that the world is going, everything is conglomerating. Everything's getting bigger and bigger. And the idea of, of agencies growing, to be huge and to have many personnel that that seems to be the direction of travel for a lot of people. And that's fine. And all success to you.
It just, it just isn't something that ever appealed to me. And. And there's no doubt in my mind that the clients that I deal with, they, they definitely like the fact that it's just me. There's no question. They like the fact that it's me and they can talk to me. And that over a period of a few months, we get to chat on the phone quite a lot.
We get to see each other in the real world often. And, and so maybe, maybe there's something in that, you know, there's a, there's a real Renaissance of kind of like little sh getting back to corner shops, you know, little boutique shops in the U K because people are willing to spend what they know. Is extra money more than they could get things in a different shop because they want to support the local business and they want to sort of go against that trend.
So whilst at the beginning I said, I'm not very good at this paps upon reflection, just that one thing is slightly different. Yes, I
David Waumsley: [00:36:03] think, I think you're onto something there. It just really does depend on what kind of business you want to run and we are, we are slightly different to many people in our industry, so yeah, that you should be definitely sort of milking in that side of things.
I think that is our, what is our what.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:36:19] Yeah, and you've got you, I think you've got a great scope for that. Like you said, you want to have these clients for life, and if you, if you manage to pick the right ones and you always do right by them. yeah, I think they're, they're willing to, to stick with you, you know, and you'll be the GoTo for just everything because, Oh, it's David.
We'll just phone up David, and that's, that's kind of what you want, isn't it? They won't even sort of say the company name. It will be, let's phone up David. He'll, he'll get it sorted for us. And that's, that's where, that's the sweet spot that I think you and I want. I mean, I, I don't want them phoning up, David.
I want them phoning up Nathan.
David Waumsley: [00:36:52] But this leads onto the next one. avoid, getting accidentally known for something that you don't do. And she mentioned, you know, for. Where do you search here using things like negative keywords. So an example would be of negative keywords was a, if you're doing your adverts on Google, you'd probably want to exclude certain terms.
So if you are, say a corporate lawyer, you might want to exclude terms like divorce, wills, custody, those kinds of things. So you don't pick up a kind of other lawyers work, but you know what? This is the thing. Why, why. This led on nicely is because accidentally getting known for something you don't do. How many flicking calls or conversations do I get into about flipping emails and things like that and other computer issues,
Nathan Wrigley: [00:37:37] so, Oh, I see. And how's that happen then? I
David Waumsley: [00:37:41] don't know. It's just because you're, as far as many of my clients are concerned that really I'm the it guy. So it is taught today by more and more of them. Many of them. Yeah. I think I've reduced this a little bit though. Think that you know something you don't know or it isn't what we do.
So I think it's really hard one to avoid.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:38:01] Right? Well, that's the downside of the personal approach, isn't it? Is that you end up coming, you know, literally the, Oh, the . Printer's broken. Let's phone up David, despite the fact he's in India and we're in the UK. David knows about computers. We need David to fix our printer.
Yeah, I can understand what you're saying. yeah, I've done suffer from this too badly. I don't often get people asking. the last one I can remember is somebody emailed me and asked me to log into their router and mend it. Which, which I kindly told them. Do you know what? That's just not, that's just not really what I'm an expert at.
no thanks. But, but that was clearly somebody who misjudged what I did, but that we, we got them straight fairly quickly. But yeah, avoid getting known for things that you, you really don't want to be involved in. who knows, though, there could be a flip side to that. Maybe you'll discover a niche.
Because somebody phones you up and asks you to do something quirky and you do it and actually discover that you're really good at it.
David Waumsley: [00:39:01] Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. My old colleague though, she used to do that as well. I mean, she really, her work for web design came in really through so many different kind of roots.
Part of it's a natural networking, but yeah. Also, it really was that she started to ended up as a side business going around and helping people who just didn't know how to use their computers, how to do that. I mean, she's not that on the head because it was too much work. But yeah, it just grows from that.
So it's quite, I think it's quite tricky in what we do to get people to focus on, you know, to. To know what it is as likely we do and don't do. So email hosting. I do hosting. So a lot of people think it's the same thing. Email hosting, wri.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:39:43] Okay. Yeah. And I guess it's just about being clear with, you know, and just declining to do things when I'm, when they're really not part of what it is that you should be doing, but yeah.
Okay. I understand. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.
David Waumsley: [00:39:56] Hmm. So that's probably covered the what side of things? Number 12 yeah. Okay. Should we move on to the 13 no emotional impact
Nathan Wrigley: [00:40:05] indeed. No emotional impact. Good grief. This is going to be interesting. Yup.
David Waumsley: [00:40:10] Yeah. Well, kind of had to, again, narrowed down what she'd put in a book to what I think is probably the essence of it, and really, I think she's talking about having a value proposition that connects with the right audiences, pressing their right buttons emotionally and finding the right pain points.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:40:30] I think that I've probably on balance got this wrong, and I would need to address this again because I went, I can't remember where I picked this one up from, but I, my, the route that I've gone is to, it's almost like a scare tactic. I didn't mean it to. Be like this, but basically it was, firstly, you've got a broken website, I'll fix it.
So I was working from the basis that, okay, everybody's now got a website that that ship has sailed. It's very unlikely, unless let's, they're starting up their business. It's pretty likely they've already got one bought. It's also quite likely that it's a bit out of date, or the software that they've been using for many years is grown cumbersome or something's broken.
So I went for the, okay, we'll, we'll refocus you, we'll build something on a platform, which is easy to use and widely deployed, and it'll be, you know, we'll, it'll be responsive and so on. So I went down that route of, let's refresh if you like what you've got going on. And then from there. It was about kind of, okay, now that we've done the website, we, we've now got the problem of maintaining the website and, and look, here's a list of scary things that could happen.
Like it could be hacked, or do you really want to be logging in every day to, to update your plugins and themes and so on. We'll do all that for you. So I'm not sure if that fits, if the messaging about me. You know, as the individual, the person that I want to, you know, I want, I want to deal with you on a one to one basis.
Not sure how that jibes really, I think I've got a bit of a mismatch there. I think I should go more for the friendly local bloke with pictures of me on the website rather than the, you know, the fairly faceless UVP, which I've got at the moment, which is about refreshing your, your online ambitions and that kind of stuff.
David Waumsley: [00:42:26] Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point actually. But actually I think it's quite ingenious that you've kind of picked the, the angle of kind of refreshing and modernizing the site as a, as a kind of starting point. I tried to do this and then if I mentioned this before, but I tried to do this whole cold call thing was set up as sort of separate product.
Their ideas. Oh yeah. Well I picked a kind of niche. Oh, we did talk about it. Cause I, it was a. The bed and breakfast, but the idea of the marketing behind this was focused on only people who sites were broken in some way there. So they didn't have certificates. They didn't have, in fact, they had to have three things missing.
No certificate, no UpToDate privacy policy that would be GDPR compliant. And a nonresponsive. So is they have these three things. We, we sent out something to contact them, and it was nice the way that we did. Set up and kind of modernizing. We didn't sort of put the blame on them, but zero from it.
Absolutely nothing. Now, let's maybe just cold call him for you, but, I just, what you have mentioned in there, one I came away with from this is that particularly with them number of bounced emails, that these people who had sites like that literally just forgotten and left them. Right.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:43:39] You know? Right.
David Waumsley: [00:43:41] They just didn't want to know about it. I mean, it wasn't their pain point. They weren't sitting there thinking, Oh, you know, at some point I must have this, and if somebody turns up, they'll be our person, which is what I had in mind. It just didn't work.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:43:51] So did you go around the internet looking for sites that had those three things missing?
So. they're very sort of visual, aren't they? You know, you can see in the browser that the, the responsiveness isn't happening. You could see in the browser that they, they don't have a certificate, and I forget what the third one was, but but they were all, you were literally going around looking for sites which were broken.
Yeah. That period of time, that ship has now sailed as well, hasn't it? If that was the model going forwards, pretty much everybody within the last. Three, four, five years has got that job, got that fixed, so that that had a limited shelf life. Anyway, he didn't know. I think.
David Waumsley: [00:44:28] Yeah, well, I'm coming in after I thought these were the leftover people and they needed something.
Somebody that would come in with a very low cost offer to fix these problems, you know? But, and I absolutely got no takers on it at all. So it clearly wasn't finding the right pain points. It didn't have an impact on the people I expected it to have an impact on. But it could be, again, just the cold calling.
Maybe if I found a different way to approach these people, it might have been exactly the thing they wanted, but yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:44:55] Okay.
David Waumsley: [00:44:57] Do you know what I mean? You've shed how you kind of put your, yeah. The main value proposition over minus moved. When I started off, I was doing exactly the same and it came out these marketing books, which was kind of, it was all along this skyrocketing your business to success type thing.
Are you missing out on leads? That's the common thing that I think is still out there. Most of them, I did that and it was entirely wrong because I w the problem was that would work if I. Did the network in and found the folks who wanted to grow their enterprises. That was their main objective. That would have been perfect.
In reality, I did none of that work. So really the best hope I had to get in people were people who were really, those who saw. Sites as a, an expense, a bit like ordering business cards. Do you know? So their first and only question, it still is the case is how much is this going to cost me? So it's ease and costs were their main goals.
So my messaging was entirely wrong.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:45:57] Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting as well, because you. You really have built a business where, from my point of view, I can see that the marketing for you going forward, I forgive me, I could be completely wrong about this, but it does feel that the, the friendly David Waumsley, pictures of you warm and cuddly.
I will help you. I am a normal person that feels like that would be really powerful for you. yeah, maybe that's, maybe that's food for thought for the, you know, the year 2020, to adapt it more to that and the, the helpfulness and the personality and the one on one relationship.
David Waumsley: [00:46:37] Well, that's why I'm going now, you know?
That's what I'm thinking. I'm the one thing I do do in terms of marketing, and it wasn't intended that way, but is the YouTube videos talking about how to do stuff. So I very much thought, well, I will probably now start to focus on what I think is a growing number of people, the number of people now who are building their own websites or starting to do that.
a growing. So I'd like that to get in with those people who like high did, pretty much who I was years ago and say, let me know. I can help you with that. I can take care of your hosting. I can take care of certain parts of the build that you don't want to do, but you still have some control. So I think that's going to be the new message.
Yeah. More friendly and more helpful.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:47:19] Yeah. The, that that's certainly sold for me at least. Anyway, that ticks the emotional impact box. you know, you are going to, you are going to hit that, that person that wants that personal touch. I guess the, the opposite will be true for a lot of you as well. You know, you don't want to deal with clients.
You, you'd rather be in an agency or be much more hands off and it may be that you want to. Get to the clients who are looking to skyrocket their sales, in which case your message to impact those people and have an emotional connection with them is going to be entirely different. But I reckon for the people that you want, David, you've, you've cramped your emotional impact message there, I think.
I think you've got, it just needs to be, just needs to give it a bit of time to mature and see how it goes.
David Waumsley: [00:48:07] Yeah. No. Well, it'll be interesting anyway, so, but it's interesting how the journey takes you down these paths where you can completely be misaligned. So I think that's the beauty of this book actually.
Cause I mean, it doesn't really come up with anything that's, you know, stagger Indian news as such. But it does ask you the right questions, doesn't it?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:48:25] Mm. Yeah. Well, speaking of book. Are we going to put that book to one side, do you think? Where do you think we're done with this for now?
David Waumsley: [00:48:34] We, we are done and dusted.
Last series. I've enjoyed that.
Yeah, we must do it again with another book, but we know where we're going next, don't we?
Nathan Wrigley: [00:48:44] Goodness me. right. Yeah. We should say shouldn't, we were going to be much more adversarial in a friendly way. We're going to start these debates. the next time we're going to be talking about, well for the next period of time.
I don't know how long we're going to do them. Basically, until we fall out. I expect we're going to, we're going to have debates where David's gonna take one position and I'm going to take the country position and. Many of you have contributed topics that you want us to discuss. So that's, that's where we're going next.
Instead of just chatting and having a discussion, we're gonna, we're going to take positions and see if we can argue, argue each other round.
David Waumsley: [00:49:20] Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to give away what's up next.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:49:24] Yeah, why not? What's our first topic.
David Waumsley: [00:49:27] It's page builders versus Gutenberg.
Nathan Wrigley: [00:49:29] Yes. But we're not going to tell you who's taking which side just yet, although I'm sure you can work that out for yourself if you know anything about David Waumsley.
So that's what we're going to be doing next. So that'll be in a fortnight, which I should say is two weeks, because I had a conversation yesterday with somebody who said, I don't know what a fortnight is. It's 14 nights, 14 days. So we'll come back to you with a page builder versus Gothenburg debate. But for now.
Briony thomas, thank you for giving us so much food for thought and a, yeah. Okay. There we go. Well. There you go. I always enjoy chatting with David Waumsley and it's been particularly pleasurable chatting through the entire book water type marketing by Briony Thomas. You can find a link to that book if you've enjoyed this series in the show notes, as well as the links to all of the other episodes in this series of which there were many, as David said, in a couple of weeks, we'll be having a debate Gutenberg versus page builders, and we'll have to see how that goes.
Do we remember that w P builds is more than just this podcast. We have a Facebook group over at wpbuilds.com forward slash. Facebook. We produce a news item every Monday, which you can subscribe to if you go to WP Builds.com forward. Slash. Subscribe. We produced the content, which is all audio every Monday morning at 7:00 AM UK time, so you can listen to it on your commute to work on Monday morning and also at 2:00 PM in the WP Builds Facebook group as well as.
WP Builds.com forward slash. Live. We have a live version of the news and we chat through what's happened in the previous week with some notable WordPress guests. So join us for all of that, and I hope that you have a good week. As always, I will fade in some cheesy music, which this week is very, very jolly. Bye bye for now!
