STOP Taking Advice From People Who Don’t Have A Clue!

Welcome to this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer. I’m Darren Jamieson, and today I want to tackle a topic that might sound counterintuitive coming from someone in digital marketing — especially someone who literally advises people for a living. But hear me out.

This episode is all about one thing: stop taking advice from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

I don’t mean ignore all advice. But I do mean stop listening to people who haven’t got the slightest clue what they’re doing — because if you do, it could cost you your website, your traffic, your customers, and ultimately, your business.

Let me explain by sharing a story — and I’ll keep it anonymous because this is a long-time client of ours and a genuinely lovely guy.

A few years ago, he came to Engage Web for a website. We built it. It worked well. Then he wanted to grow his business with digital marketing — more traffic, more enquiries, more leads. That’s exactly what we do. But someone he worked with suggested using “a guy they knew” instead.

This guy, who claimed to be a digital marketer, took over.

The result? Utter garbage. His version of SEO was something out of 2006 — keyword-stuffed, duplicate-ridden spam. Lists of towns. Repeated phrases. Not a single thought for the user. It was the kind of crap Google stopped tolerating 15 years ago.

The kicker? This client actually paid him a lot of money to do it.

We did a full audit, showed him everything that had been done wrong, and gave him documented evidence of how it had damaged his site. He was furious, and rightly so. His original site — the one we built — had been completely trashed.

Now, we’re talking to him again about converting his brochure site into an e-commerce store. We’ve done this with loads of clients — many of whom are now turning over six or even seven figures a year online. Some are doing over £100K a year. One of them? £1.5 million. Another? £300K last year, £100K in January alone.

But here’s where it gets painful again. He’s doing the same thing. Listening to people around him — people who’ve never built an e-commerce store in their life — telling him to ignore WordPress and bin everything.

Why? Because it’s what they know. Not what works.

And that’s what this episode is really about

If you’re going to take advice — about websites, marketing, SEO, e-commerce, or anything — make sure the person advising you has actually done it. Not once. Not just for themselves. But successfully, for people just like you.

Because we all do this, don’t we? We listen to people who’ve never started a business tell us how to run one. We take financial advice from mates down the pub who’ve never made any real money. We listen to family members who mean well but haven’t got a clue. Hell, my son was once on a business course taught by people who’ve never even run a business.

It’s a disease.

People take advice because they trust the person, not because the person knows what they’re talking about.

So please, stop it. Don’t let your business suffer because you listened to the wrong voice. If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this episode, it’s this:

Only take advice from people who can prove they know what they’re doing

That applies to business, money, websites, marketing — the lot.

Look for track records. Ask for results. Don’t accept opinions from people who haven’t got the experience to back them up.

You’ve been listening to The Engaging Marketeer. I’m Darren Jamieson. If you want to connect, find me on LinkedIn — I post there regularly with tips, strategies, and a bit of sarcasm for good measure.

Catch you on the next episode.

 

About your host:

Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.

iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/

Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com

Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk

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