On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m going to be talking about something that seems strange for a digital marketing company and somebody that advises people on how to do their marketing would even be talking about, and that’s: don’t take advice from people.
Now let me quantify that a little bit. I don’t mean don’t take advice from anybody. I kind of mean: don’t take advice from people who don’t actually know what they’re talking about.
00:40
You see, we’ve got this client — and I’ve got to be careful here because he is a client of ours. He’s such a lovely guy. He’s been a client for a long time. But he’s been taking advice from people who he really shouldn’t be taking advice from.
And I feel sorry for his business. I feel sorry for him, for the way it’s turning out.
01:05
He came to us some years ago for a website, and we designed and built a website for him. Absolutely fine. Everything went well.
The problem was, he wanted marketing for his website. He wanted someone to help him get more traffic to the website, get more leads, get more enquiries, get more business — grow his business. You know, the kind of thing that we at Engage Web do for our clients.
01:38
But the issue was, somebody who he worked with didn’t want to use us. They decided that they knew a guy — they knew a guy that was going to be able to do it.
I don’t want to say better or more effectively — I’m probably thinking cheaper. Although, as it turns out, what he was paying isn’t particularly cheap. It’s probably on a par, maybe even more expensive, than what our initial quote was.
02:11
And he got this guy to do his digital marketing for him. And I can only describe this as the worst kind of shitty spam that I’ve seen on a website since mid-2000s. Maybe 2006, 2007.
I really struggle to put into words the kind of crap this guy put on this client’s website. Loads of really awful, shitty text. It was clearly written for search engines. Just had lists of keywords, lists of locations, smacked onto every page.
Loads of duplicate content. No effort whatsoever to make this for the user. It was just for search engines. The kind of stuff that sort of did work back then — but Google is well on top of this kind of crap. And it doesn’t work now.
03:07
And funnily enough — it didn’t work for him. He didn’t get any increase in rankings. He didn’t get any increase in leads. The website hasn’t helped grow his business.
The website that we built.
That’s the problem. The website that we built — that this guy has, quite frankly, completely ballsed up.
03:26
Now, I felt sorry for him. I really did. I did a full analysis of the website. I looked at all the stuff that had been done on it, and I gave him a full report showing:
This is what this guy’s done
This is the reference material online telling you not to do this
This is the effect it’s having on your business
This is the effect it’s having on your rankings
And I said, “You really need to get this off the website.”
03:51
And he was — quite rightly — furious. Quite rightly furious. But he’d paid this guy a lot of money for it.
That was the infuriating thing. He’d taken the advice of a business partner, or a colleague, or somebody that works with him. And they’d used a guy that he didn’t know. No connection. No prior understanding. No relationship. No real grasp of whether they were any good at what they did.
04:17
He just took someone else’s advice at face value — and it backfired massively. And he completely fucked it up. Basically fucked up his website.
04:30
Now we’ve been talking to him again about potentially turning this website into an e-commerce site — a website that’s going to sell a product.
Because it was a brochure website at first, to get leads. Turning it into e-commerce so that it can sell, like we’ve done with a number of other clients.
04:49
We have many businesses we help that sell online and do incredibly well.
Some sell over £100K a year
One’s done over £1.5 million in turnover a year
Another did £300K last year — and £100K in January alone
Some of these websites are doing pretty well in e-commerce.
05:15
And we were speaking to one of his people about doing the same — and oh Jesus Christ, it’s happening again.
Because again, he is listening to the advice of people who don’t know what they’re fucking doing.
05:31
And this is the point of this podcast. If you’re going to take advice from someone — whatever it may be — you need to know that they are:
An expert
Experienced
Proven
Successful doing this for people like you
Do not take advice from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
05:53
And this goes beyond digital marketing. Beyond websites. Beyond SEO.
How many times have you started a business and had friends or family say:
“Oh you don’t want to do that, mate.”
“Nah, stay in a job. Steady wage. Don’t take risks.”
“Just work harder. Do longer hours. That’s how to earn more.”
We take advice on money from people who haven’t got any.
We take business advice from people who’ve never run a business.
We go to college courses taught by people who’ve never done it.
06:49
My son was doing a course in business at college — taught by people who’ve never run a fucking business in their lives. Not a clue. Yet they’re telling people how to run a business?
What the hell do they know?
Nothing.
They’ve never done it.
07:06
We take advice down the pub. About money. Investments. Crypto.
From people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
So why?
07:15
Why is our client still taking advice from someone who knows nothing about digital marketing?
Why is he listening to someone telling him WordPress isn’t good for SEO?
WordPress powers the majority of websites online.
You’ll struggle to find a site that outranks a WordPress site.
You’re not getting a Wix site to the top of Google. You’re not getting those other platforms to outrank WordPress.
WordPress is the best fucking platform for SEO.
08:15
If you’re going to take advice, make sure they know what they’re talking about.
Let them prove it. Show you evidence. Results.
Do not take advice from people who don’t know what they’re doing — because it will come back and bite you on the arse. It will ruin your business. Ruin your career. Ruin everything you’re trying to do.
08:33
Take that advice from me now.
You know I know what I’m talking about — you’re listening to this podcast. You’ve listened to others. You follow me online. You’ve seen me on LinkedIn.
You know I’ve done this.
This is my thing.
08:51
Take advice from people who know what they’re talking about.
Not people who haven’t got a clue.
You’ve been listening to the latest episode of The Engaging Marketeer, and I’ll catch you on the next podcast.
