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Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Welcome to episode number 130 of the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is Lee. And on today’s show, we’ll be talking with Jeremy Bernal from 93 Digital, a WordPress agency based in London. We’re gonna be learning about how their team get on with each other, how the company generates leads, what their affinity with WordPress is, and learn about their content marketing strategy. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. This podcast is brought to you by the Agency Trailblazer community. Is agency life stressing you out? Then it is our mission to help you build an agency that you love. We’ve created a community which includes the agency reset roadmap that will allow you to get your agency back on the right track.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We also have lots of noble straight to the point, easy to consume workshops. We have a thriving community of other agency owners. And we all wrap up every month with a mastermind call with myself and sometimes a special guest where we unpack your questions. For more details, check out agency trailblazer.com. Welcome to a conversation with me, your lovely host, mister Lee Jackson. And today, we’re talking to mister Jeremy Burnel from 93 Digital. Jeremy, how are you doing today?
Jeremy Burnel:
Aloha. I’m doing very well. Thank you, Lee. How are you?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Aloha. Oh, is that your Hawaiian an ancestry coming in?
Jeremy Burnel:
Well, it’s hello and goodbye, and it’s just I like being a bit zany.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Very zany or zen?
Jeremy Burnel:
Both, depending on the occasion, I suppose. But, in this instance, I’m very psyched to be here, so I was going for zany.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, I’m I’m I’m very psyched to have you. I mean, this is gonna be a different conversation. Normally, we have agency owners on the show, which is freaking awesome. But today, you are actually part of an agency. You are the marketing manager, which is an awesome title, but let’s talk about that in a second. You are the marketing manager of 93 Digital. And it’s gonna be great to get, kind of a from the shop floor perspective, I guess, of running a successful WordPress agency. You guys, run the leading WordPress agency in London, I assume, is what you tell people.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, you’re an award winning agency, at least.
Jeremy Burnel:
That is correct. We just won another award yesterday, actually, for Oh, really? Piece of work we did for a technology company called Kite. So, yeah, that’s all good. That’s it’s really happy with that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m only a lot jealous, so that’s cool. We’re all good with this. That’s fine. And your title is marketing manager, although you did tell me you’re going for a a title change or you’re gonna attempt to.
Jeremy Burnel:
I mean, Alex, my my boss, will be listening into this. So I haven’t I haven’t planned anything telling him just yet, but, thanks for outing me there, Lee. It’s I mean, we’re we’re we’re looking at we’re looking at doing a lot more as an agency, looking towards, you know, the future of marketing and the innovation, and we have a lot of, like we put aside time to, improve ourselves as an agency, and I I I do sometimes look after a bit of that. So I was looking to go to marketing and innovation manager at some point, but you’ve, spoiled the surprise there. Cheers, Lee.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’ll tell you a story. I I used to be called junior junior network administrator, and I hated the word junior because I had a chip on my shoulder, basically, as a kid as a you know, I was a I was a, like, 19, 18 year old, whatever it was. Can’t remember. I was young. I had a chip on my shoulder. Hated the word junior. So I kept saying, can you change it to something else? Change it to something else. And, eventually, I wrote this letter saying, oh, it’s it’s, it’s ageism calling me junior because it and stuff like that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And, like, I think I really annoyed the boss. Eventually, they I kinda I think they called me, like, assistant, which is just as bad, and sucked being me, but it kinda talks. Yeah. Exactly. But, there are ways.
Jeremy Burnel:
So, things are looking promising for my for my, idea there. Yeah. Okay. This is Oh, no. Good. But, yes, but, yes, I am the marketing manager at 93 Digital, and we just we’re doing a lot of things. Marketing, what does it even mean anymore? So we’re trying to put a face on what marketing means. We think it means a lot of different things, all outward communications, one could argue.
Jeremy Burnel:
So, yes, there’s there’s a lot of work going on there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, let’s start let’s start in the time machine and to kinda jump back into your life. And, can can you kinda give us a bit of insight into how you got into marketing initially?
Jeremy Burnel:
I I can. So at university, I was in a middling successful band, with a record contract and got to play alongside, now the biggest rock star of all time, Ed Sheeran. Wow. He was a nice guy, actually. But, yeah, we we had a record contract. And I was marketing that band, and I enjoyed that side of things as well. And when things inevitably went, south, I kind of looked at advertising and marketing as a career. Didn’t get into marketing or advertising for a good few years, if I’m being honest.
Jeremy Burnel:
Ended up on the new business side of things and kind of discovered agency life through new business and eventually realized that all agencies hate doing new business, and, actually, what they should be doing is better marketing. And, that’s led me eventually to 90 3 Digital who are very successful and know what they do. And I’m helping them become more successful. So, yeah, it’s all great.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s so cool. Now for people listening, you know, I think you you alluded to it, earlier, but marketing is a, I think, a very misunderstood word.
Jeremy Burnel:
I agree.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And what is involved in marketing is is extremely misunderstood as well. I would love to get your perspective as, can you give us either a tweet version or a which is now 280 characters, or at least a paragraph version of what you feel marketing is. We can always expand on it later. But Okay. If you were gonna explain it to my 11 year old child, how would you explain marketing?
Jeremy Burnel:
So I would say that, every company is trying to sell a product or a service, and marketing in any shape, way, or form essentially helps that company sell that product or service. I would also say that people hate being sold to, so it’s doing every imaginable way of interacting with your customer without selling to them. So it’s selling without selling, interacting with your customer in every way, shape, or form, and trying to do that with as much knowledge as you can.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s good. Now selling without selling, I I I you’ve hit the nail on the head there because I’m one of those people that gets instantly irritated when the salesperson comes up to me in either a car place or at the Dreams bed store or something. And, apparently, my wife says I get really rude with them. I don’t realize I’m doing this, and I’m I I apologize to everyone who I’ve given issues in the past, but I apparently get really, really angry and really rude because I know that all they’re going to do is sell at me and not really necessarily help.
Jeremy Burnel:
Exactly. That you get a bit snappy at the faux friendliness, is it?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Exactly. They’ll, hi. How are you doing? I’m like,
Jeremy Burnel:
Yeah. I know. You were so rude. I was like, oh, sorry. I think it’s because you you’re probably quite a naturally friendly guy. I can say that. We’ve had a few conversations off air now. But, yes, you’re quite a naturally friendly person.
Jeremy Burnel:
So when someone who comes to you with their their vague ambitions of selling something to you and not being, you know, faux friendliness, you just get a bit, the cheek of this man or or lady.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Does he know who I am? You don’t
Jeremy Burnel:
know that I’m naturally friendly, and I believe in I believe in this as an idea. I mean I mean, yeah, I I I think I’m possibly the same. I like to talk to people with no agenda most of the time, and if somehow the gender forms out of it, great. So the idea of of of literally just pressing someone for a sale is is disturbing. And I think that’s that’s a lot of people in the UK. I’ve been to the States and seen people readily, hardly accept it, and it’s part of their culture. But in in the UK in particular, I think sell selling without selling is key.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So let’s unpack selling without selling. Can you give us some ways that you guys at 93 Digital are marketing your agency?
Jeremy Burnel:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. There’s a number of things we’re looking at do well, we’ve looked at doing this year. Principally upon them is is trying to get more face to face contact with people and giving them a reason to attend this free event or or so forth. And what we’ve been doing for that is we’ve been putting a lot of our marketing budget into into real qualitative research. So we are a WordPress agency, so we deal with many different types of companies, who will have a need for a WordPress, site. One of these kind of sectors we’ve looked at, I suppose, is, the business to business technology and in particular, fintech, financial technology. Yeah.
Jeremy Burnel:
So we decided to pour our resources into some real serious serious research, into into the fintech industry and how they were marketing their products and services. Obviously, our clients are effectively we see our clients not as the company, but as the marketing director of that company. It’s that human being that we’ll be interacting with, and we’ll be, hoping to influence their decision. So, yeah, we we we’ve done a lot of research into Fintech marketing, and the process is we’ve asked a 150 CMOs in the UK Wow. About their business and and their marketing in way, shape, or form, and, you know, different types of marketing, which ones they see are successful, how much budget they’re allocating, what they where they believe the most important parts of their website are, so forth. And we’ve, compiled a very pretty report. I’m gonna say pretty because it’s got some some ways of using data that I had never thought possible before until I saw them, and they just look magnificent. And, yeah, we’ve compiled a report, and we’ll be showcasing that report at an event in a in a month or so, in Canary Wharf, with a Fintech Accelerator.
Jeremy Burnel:
And looks like there’s loads of people signing up, and it’s really exciting. And be able to talk to some people there and not try and sell to them. Just provide them some real value, I think.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s I think that’s really important. Like, to me, marketing is about providing value. It’s about providing knowledge, helping educate people, etcetera. We had a a guest on a few months ago who was explaining that what he likes to do is to educate his audience as much as he possibly can. That’s through the blog or through whatever platforms he’s got. Because through that education, people will then recognize the value of what you’re offering. So you’re not actually selling them a particular service. You’re providing them lots of free information, helping them improve their businesses.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Like, with your doing with this report, you’re giving them this amazing information, which is going to help them, you know, learn from other people’s information. That’s a 150 CMOs you’ve interviewed. So there is gonna be amazing value in that report. They’re gonna get value from that. They’re gonna recognize, oh, actually, maybe we should adopt this as part of our marketing strategy and you on our front of center because you’re the guys that provided that report. And they’re more than likely gonna approach you and say, hey, guys. We’ve done some research. We’ve got your report, and we’re really interested in x, y, and z.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Would you guys be able to, to work with us or partner with us on this?
Jeremy Burnel:
I can Freaking amazing. I completely agree. And, I mean, that is particularly niche. It’s Fintech marketers. But, you know, as a as a WordPress agency, we like to give away free resources all the time. There are people who are just starting their own WordPress blogs who might eventually, go on to do other things, and we provide them, like, tips on how to supercharge their WordPress site, loads of tools and plugins. And, you know, we like, it’s almost like a giving back to the community kind of thing. And Yeah.
Jeremy Burnel:
You know, it’s great. We really like downloading well, we like people downloading our resources, and it’s just it’s a nice tingly feeling to know that you’re also helping out whilst also building a business. So With
Lee Matthew Jackson:
regards to the content that you create, is that all then through your blog, or do you have different platforms? Are you using different types of media to share this information?
Jeremy Burnel:
Currently, it is, blog, LinkedIn, Twitter. We are looking at, kind of the angle of creating a larger community that isn’t necessarily 100% related to 93 Digital. I’ve also discovered this new video tool which helps me make videos for my blog posts, and I think that’s something we’ll be, looking at pushing a bit for SEO purposes and just general people like watching videos now, don’t they, Lee? So,
Lee Matthew Jackson:
What’s this what’s this cool tool? We we need to share tools with people.
Jeremy Burnel:
Yes. It’s called Lumen5.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Lumen5. I feel like that was on AppSumo the other day for some reason. I could be wrong.
Jeremy Burnel:
You’re completely right. That’s how I took advantage of this.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. Okay. So Yeah.
Jeremy Burnel:
Yeah. So I have access for a year, and it’s free and well, it’s it’s definitely not free, but I feel like I’ve won the lottery with this tool. So I’ve got a free access for a year, and you can just, it artificially, intelligently is that a word? Yeah. You know, read read your blog post and then kind of sections it into different slides, then it has a load of, real quality stock images that you can then kind of pick and choose and different music music ditties to kind of depending on the tone of your blog now video, and creates a really nice video in about 12 minutes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, that that’s called repurposing. And, folks, if you haven’t heard the episode we did on repurposing with Amy Woods, she’s just put out an episode about 2 weeks ago about Lumen 5, talking about how to repurpose your blogs with, and some good top tips in there. So highly recommend you go and check her podcast out, and I will put that in the show notes. There you go. So you got that little little promotion there for a fellow podcast person.
Jeremy Burnel:
Very good. And actually Sweet. You mentioned that one because that is, that is how I discovered you and found your magnificent series. And, yeah, Amy’s Amy’s repurposing content was was very useful for me.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yes. I I highly recommend connecting with Amy. She’s absolutely brilliant. The stuff they’re putting out for other clients is absolutely phenomenal. Now then, I I would love to kinda get a little bit of insight into agency life for you guys. Do you mind just sharing us, like, what what’s your office like? Where are you based? Are you an open plan office? You know, that sort of stuff. Can you just kind of try and verbally create a picture for us of your office space and the environment and what you folks get up to? Not kind of work wise, but just more how you all work together. That’d be a really cool insight.
Jeremy Burnel:
Word picture coming right up. We Nice. Yeah. So, your 93 Digital, there’s 13 of us. So we’re quite small, very kind of niche. We’re all very specialised in what we do, but we have a lovely, shared well, it’s kind of how’s it? We’ve got our own studio in a shared office facility, kind of like a WeWork, but this one’s called Workspace. It’s in Farringdon. It’s right by a food market called Leather Lane, which is quite world famous, and I have definitely put on a few pounds since I’ve joined, Lumbridge for Digital, but it’s all in the good name of working hard, so it’s great.
Jeremy Burnel:
And, yes, so we live we work in Farrowndon, a studio there is quite large for our for 13 people, so we’ve got enough space to kind of move around, break out to other other kind of tables and so forth. Yeah. We’ve got designers, developers, project managers, marketing, and, Alex, the MD, all working there. We we got a quite, got quite a flexible outlook on when people come in to do their work. It’s, as long as you do your work and you’ve got you do your 8 hours, then then it’s cool. So you’ve got some people coming in at 7, leaving at 3, some people, coming in at 11, leaving at 7. And, yeah, I think that’s a really important thing because I think everybody works best at different times. And, what that does is that creates there’s no there’s no animosity.
Jeremy Burnel:
No one’s feeling that they have to be in the office and they shouldn’t be kind of thing. So everyone comes in when they have to or when they feel they’re at their best to work. Everyone’s very polite, very, you know, friendly, but I’ll be honest, in in core working hours, the office is very quiet because people are headphones in or on a on a call with a client, just getting down to some real deep work. And, I think that’s quite important. I think it’s toward the beginning and the end of the day, people are quite friendly and chatty, but during the call, people are just really focused. And that’s probably why we get we get we do our we do so well.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I think there’s something in that as well. I mean, for for for us in our office, very often, we can go down the rabbit hole of having, like, an hour long conversation and a laugh. And it can be really difficult then to refocus. But when everyone’s focused, when you know everyone else is working, it’s it’s quite an encouragement for yourself to really kind of zone in and just get on with what you’re doing as well. I think it can be quite an inspiring environment. I think it’s something that people often struggle with who maybe work from home. I I when I work from home, I kinda find it a struggle to keep motivated sometimes. So I’ll end up going on a Zoom call with a few people.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And even though we won’t all talk to each other, I can still hear them.
Jeremy Burnel:
We know
Lee Matthew Jackson:
we’re all kinda working together, and it just creates, I’d say, sort of atmosphere for us as well. Now, obviously, when you’re not all kind of super zoned in and and being super professional and creating awesomeness, which I know you guys literally do every minute. But what do you guys then do to bond, and what do you guys do to kind of, have a laugh,
Jeremy Burnel:
loosen up a bit? So there’s plenty of things. We obviously when it’s as soon as the weather gets nice, we literally all go out en masse and, go to a park somewhere and actually have a a lunch break, which we don’t always necessarily do, and that’s not the greatest thing. I think it’s it’s it’s difficult sometimes to to find just a whole hour in the middle of the day to take out, but I think it does benefit you somewhat. But, I’m I’m saying that, and I never do it. So well well, literally, don’t listen to me, kids. Yeah. We we we have a Slack channel where we have plenty of Slack channels of varying degrees of silliness and lols. Yeah.
Jeremy Burnel:
We always like if there’s a we have an inspiration Slack channel, which we kind of share really interesting work stuff, and then there’s obviously less work related things like Rick and Morty memes and so forth that get passed around in certain aspects. And, obviously, I’ve mentioned this deep, deep focus, and we all sound super, super serious, which we are. But, on our internal days, once a month, we drop down our tools. We don’t work for clients, so we just think about how we can better ourselves. And, obviously, to do that, it’s a lot of communication between departments. So we we do we do all get around circles, like, chat together. And that’s obviously a little bit more jovial because there’s not, a time pressure on, you know, client needs this in an hour or so forth. And, you know, it’s that’s where we kind of really kind of gel a bit more and talk about what could be good for the agency, how that works for us.
Jeremy Burnel:
And then, of course, the the the final method is, having a few pints at the pub that that can that never ceases to to provide bonding.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, yeah. I’ve I’ve worked with a few quite a few land well, London based companies, especially, seem to have this lovely tradition then of especially on a Friday going to pub afterwards.
Jeremy Burnel:
You Londoners drinking your beers all that time. Yes. It’s it’s all true.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, it’s all true. I I thought so. Yeah. And it’s exactly what my experience as well. And I used to have to make up lots of excuses not to because I knew I’d just be hungover the next day and not be able to enjoy my weekend.
Jeremy Burnel:
That makes sense. I I also yeah. I live in the countryside, so I always use my, got one train an hour excuse, and it works.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s perfect. Now one one thing I’m interested in is you guys have, kind of stuck your colors to the master of WordPress. You are the London WordPress agency. It’s very clear when you land on that. So, and you’re you’re talking about putting on this event for Fintech, etcetera. Can you help us understand kind of what’s what’s the remit of the services you offer? Do you literally, for example, just design and build WordPress themes, or do you guys do an awful lot more for clients than meets the eye?
Jeremy Burnel:
Oh, certainly. I wouldn’t say we we even develop themes at all. We’re we specialize, obviously, in WordPress web design and development and digital strategy. We like to we like to look at the the problem and see if we can provide a, you know, really innovative solution. We like to create projects on on WordPress. We have a modular development framework, so we pro we build we build things in WordPress in modules via themes and pages. And, yeah, it makes it a lot more flex even more flexible because WordPress is the flexible CMS.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’re preaching to the choir with regards to WordPress.
Jeremy Burnel:
I’m very aware of we can start it with Angular.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, there already is. Wpinnovator.comforward/group. If you love WordPress, then head on over to our free Facebook group. Wow. This is brilliant. I’m loving dropping all of these little plugs everywhere. What else can we plug whilst we’re over? One thing I wanted to pick up on, which I think was really key that you mentioned what you do is put your, you’ve put your master in your that you stake in the ground. We are a WordPress agency, which is phenomenal.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But what you’re doing is you’re approaching, clients more on a consultative basis, aren’t you? Actually consulting with them, helping them solve problems using WordPress as one of the main tools to solve that problem. But you’re not necessarily coming at each and every client with, hey, can we design you a WordPress website? I I get the impression what you’re doing is, you know, how can we help you achieve goals? And that’s the driver for the conversation, and they may share a whole load of things that they’re struggling with, etcetera, etcetera. And the website a website or something to do with WordPress could be one of the solutions, but it’s not your limitation.
Jeremy Burnel:
I suppose so. Yeah. In terms of solving the goal, yeah, absolutely. I think we everything we do is within WordPress. So that that that is that makes us a niche specialist, which is also quite good in terms of business business success, actually. I found the more specialized you are, the more likely you are to do well. I mean, for example, with work when a customer or when someone comes to us and and says, hey. Can you help us out with this, this, or that? What is usually determined by this point is that they’ve already chosen.
Jeremy Burnel:
They’ve already they’ve done their research. They’ve already decided that WordPress is is their guy. You know? It’s it’s it’s the person it’s it’s the CMS they want to use. It’s it’s their solution. They just don’t know how, potentially. We don’t we’re not kind of in the business of necessarily converting the world onto WordPress. That is slowly happening all by itself, and, 31% of the web now is now WordPress related. So so, yeah, we,
Lee Matthew Jackson:
31. It’s going up every day.
Jeremy Burnel:
It’s going up. It’s an inch. I guess
Lee Matthew Jackson:
what I mean, though, is is you’re saying you work in a modular way. So I’m assuming then that if part of my problem is is that when a lead comes in, I don’t know what to do with it. I maybe don’t have a good, CRM system or whatever, then you guys potentially would be building with solutions and or integrating with third party solutions as well to allow you to kind of get the full so it’s more than just a WordPress website here. This is a overall solution.
Jeremy Burnel:
Oh, yes. It’s a kind of it’s a exactly. It’s to create that. The idea is to create that website as the marketing fulcrum, the hub of which everything else you end up doing later on, comes back to that. And, yeah, we will custom build integrations and, you know, integrate with APIs just so that things are done in a way that you you might not have initially thought possible with WordPress. But Yeah. Because, we are, as a team, very experienced in that, and Alex, who has been building WordPress websites, since he was 17 or so.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Isn’t he 17 now? No. I’m joking. I’m joking.
Jeremy Burnel:
Sorry, mate.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
If you’re listening, I’m sorry. It was low hanging fruit. Forgive me.
Jeremy Burnel:
I mean, I mean, we are all very youthful looking, and I completely just Alex is the more the more youthful looking ones. And, no. Yeah. I mean, massive massive credit for
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Burnel:
For for for what he’s built, and that’s why that’s part of the reason why I I joined because I was just so excited to Yeah. Work for someone who’s just so youthful, and vigorous vigorous, in his processes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Confessed to you, haven’t I, how extremely jealous of his success I am, but I’m also, not jealous in a negative way. I just, like, as in jealous as in well freaking done.
Jeremy Burnel:
It is just But
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I kinda wish I managed managed to do that myself as well.
Jeremy Burnel:
It’s basically well freaking done. And, yeah, it’s really impressive. It’s really impressive. So it’s just yeah. I mean, not many people can do that, and that’s really cool. I mean but you but, you know, Lee, you you do have a a few minor chips on your shoulder. You’re jealous of Alex’s success. You you you’ve already told me you’re jealous of my hair.
Jeremy Burnel:
Like, you know, there’s, I think I think you need to just chill out a little bit more. You know, just enjoy the podcast. I think I’m jealous of your podcast series. I hope I
Lee Matthew Jackson:
think you’re totally right. I’ve already confessed I’ve got a chip on my shoulder though, mate. I’m an emotional being. It’s terrible. Like, someone says something and I I slightly misunderstand it. I worry about it all day.
Jeremy Burnel:
We’re all just bored. Chew for
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Larissa’s ear off. I did it this morning. Someone put a comment on Facebook. I was like, woah. What what what does it mean about that? And then I was just, like, chewed Larissa’s ear off for a whole hour. She was just like, are you done now? Are you calm down now, Liam? I’m okay now.
Jeremy Burnel:
I think me I think we’re all just one contextually different, message away from fragile breaking down. You know? I think we’re all we’re all just fragile beings or something. So, like, trying to make our way in this crazy world.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Full circle back to agency life. I’ve got literally no segue for this, but you you’re a busy agency. There’s 13 of you. How do you guys keep that pipeline healthy? That’s a big question. That was
Jeremy Burnel:
a big question. So, I mean, you’ve got to look at it from a point of view as in where people will have chosen WordPress. So they will then research it. So you’ve got to be really good at SEO. You’ve got to be in the top 3, 4 positions for a number of keywords. That is, you know, almost marketing 101, isn’t it? So we’re constantly writing content to keep keep on that on that, number one spot, which we currently are, and, you know, obviously, people will inquire through then. We will do reports, like you say. We’ll do we’ll go to events.
Jeremy Burnel:
We’ll meet people. Mhmm. Alex himself is a big driver of that pipeline by being so famous and successful, actually, because, you know, he he gets he gets a lot of recognition by the by awards industry, and just the advertising industry itself. So that, in a turn provides, you know, always a few few leads and interests. The work we do, we write detailed really detailed case studies. What I’ve noticed on a lot of agency websites, it’s, it’s all about the image. It’s all about the look how beautiful design. Look how beautiful it is.
Jeremy Burnel:
But we make a real, or a concerted effort to to write really deep technical bits of what we’ve done. You know, we’ve custom built this this integration with an API and the other and it’s just, like, serious, like, bullet points and
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Jeremy Burnel:
Actual work that we’ve done to change this particular solution and problem. And so yeah. And that those are our case studies to get a lot of time spent on according to mister Google. So, yeah, there’s so many
Lee Matthew Jackson:
could be a female as well, mate. You know?
Jeremy Burnel:
Oh, I’m so sorry. You’re alright.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Just saying. Just putting it out there. I’m messing with him, mate.
Jeremy Burnel:
Pleasantly.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Hashtag awkward.
Jeremy Burnel:
Yeah. No. My my my girlfriend will read this. She’s like, I can’t believe he said mister Google. And she’s so
Lee Matthew Jackson:
smart. We’ve got SEO, absolutely important. And weirdly enough, I’ve I’ve I’ve always thought social media is the way to go. But, like, we’ve had 2 leads from New York within the last 2 weeks, literally. And I’m like, what the heck? And, apparently, we’re doing really well with no effort, to, in the New York area for WordPress agency. I don’t know why. So that’s nice. And we’ve had 2 inquiries.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, actually, it’s been 3 inquiries now. We had our 3rd inquiry yesterday.
Jeremy Burnel:
Yep. So from moving to
Lee Matthew Jackson:
New York. I’ve got to open it. For sure. Yeah. Why not? So it kind of made me realize that I really need to sort my SEO game out because that was an accident and a nice happy accident, but it’s kind of therefore made me realize that, actually, it is so freaking important to appear there in the search results because, like you said, people have already decided what they want. They’ve already decided they want WordPress. And if and they’re your target audience. The people who want WordPress are your target audience to blend with us.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’re then also working on, generating leads through the personal brand of Alex. He is a very inspiring person. Like you said, he’s he’s he’s out and about. He’s putting himself out there, providing lots of free value, and he’s a great guy. I aspire to be able to do the stuff that he does, but I’m a fanboy over here.
Jeremy Burnel:
Mhmm.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So sorry to get weird, but that’s good. And that you know, people like to work with people, so they’re attracted to work with people like that. The other thing you’re talking about is these case studies where you’re actually providing people with really valuable information, which is that full circle marketing thing, isn’t it, of providing really, really valuable information that people can use. Some people are just gonna take that for free, and that’s fine. That’s good. You’ve helped someone. And karma will come round, and and you will have something bless you in the future, no doubt. But equally, eventually, someone might also become a client.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We can learn loads from you guys. That was phenomenal. Thanks, mate.
Jeremy Burnel:
That’s okay. That’s fine. There’s a few other things we we kind of looking at doing as well, like, in terms of that free that
Lee Matthew Jackson:
that value children and holding them to ransom and Yeah. But don’t do that one. We tried it, didn’t we? That’s
Jeremy Burnel:
good to know. That was literally
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Liam Liam Neeson came and got me. So, anyway, carry on.
Jeremy Burnel:
Literally crosses that off
Lee Matthew Jackson:
the list.
Jeremy Burnel:
Right. At least there’s one one less thing to do today. Fantastic. I’m
Lee Matthew Jackson:
glad I could help,
Jeremy Burnel:
mate. Cheers, man. But, yeah, in terms of, like, providing that value, we do we do think I don’t know. You you must have this problem as well. Like, at least it’s an interesting problem to have. Like, everyone wants a website these days. Every not not every individual, every company, every every entity needs a website, and not many people know how to commission 1. So not many people some people know how to build 1 and they’ll build it, but the people who want these websites don’t necessarily know how to commission 1 in the correct methodology or they don’t know what they’re looking for.
Jeremy Burnel:
They don’t know what type of technologies they need to integrate it integrate with it or what you know, they don’t know what their customer’s looking for when they’re looking for it. So what we find what we’ve what we also want to do is, we’re looking at providing some kind of digital university course in how to how to write a brief, how to commission a website, what you’ll be looking for, which just saves yourself time and will save your agency time. Doesn’t have to be us, but, you know, we just wanna educate people, on the methods of getting the best out of your agency, which is also soon to soon to come ebook that we’ll be writing. So
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, you guys have already done the web design and development brief template as well, which is phenomenal.
Jeremy Burnel:
That gets so much traffic, Lee. You would not believe. I think I
Lee Matthew Jackson:
imagine the PR strategy guide, I’m sure, is a close second.
Jeremy Burnel:
I think it’s a, it’s a a long third after the supercharge your WordPress site. But, there’s, yeah, plenty of free plenty of free resources, man. So we’ve been looking at GDPR since, like, October November of last year. And Yeah. It’s amazing just quite how many people seem to have just gone, oh, there’s 3 weeks ago about this huge thing. We should get everything out there and send you all of the emails now.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. I don’t know.
Jeremy Burnel:
How’s your inbox looking at the moment?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, mine mine on GDPR. Ours is full of GDPR stuff. We’ve been I mean, we like you guys there, we’ve been looking at this since last year. Actually, 2 years ago when it first was announced. Yep. And how are you guys handling that with regards to the the legal aspect of things?
Jeremy Burnel:
Or are
Lee Matthew Jackson:
you not the guy to ask? Is this too early? Should we just go ahead and download your strategy document?
Jeremy Burnel:
I think that’s probably the best idea. Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Oh, mate. Sorry. Sorry to spring that one. We totally diverted off marketing there, didn’t we?
Jeremy Burnel:
You can think of GDPR as, like, marketing compliance, if you will. So, we haven’t strayed that far away, but it’s it’s a heavy issue for a podcast. That’s a whole different podcast series, which I’m not willing to be on.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I feel like we should have it out now just to just to
Jeremy Burnel:
Virtual hug. Yeah. I’m sorry. Sorry.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Let’s let’s forget about that. Okay. So I love the idea, though. Let’s go back to, providing kind of all of those, kind of workbooks and helping people know how to plan and build a site. There are some phenomenal tools out there, like page builders, etcetera, which are really helping people build attractive website. However, because it’s lowered the quiet the skill requirement, it’s meant that we’ve seen a lot of new startups spring up that don’t necessarily have the infrastructure to support what it is they’re putting out there. So when it comes to a point of and they’ve not had the skill or the the kind of the journey in understanding how to implement websites for people. So for example, you know, you guys have been doing this for many years.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You’ve had that experience. So if you’re putting this sort of information out there, that fills me with hope. Because that means that there’s gonna be tons of information freely available to educate both clients and also people who are looking at growing their agencies out there. So we’ll be keeping an eye out for this.
Jeremy Burnel:
To be honest, most of the pea most of the people who download our GDPR checklist, our Supercharged WordPress, our
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Mhmm.
Jeremy Burnel:
Our other resources, our website briefed, resource. They are usually from other agencies. Every now and again, I do check check out their sites, and they are kind of, 1 or 2 man bands. And they’re literally kind of getting started, and they’re looking for these resources to grow their to grow their businesses. So, you know, that’s really cool in itself. It’s not necessarily our bread and butter of building WordPress websites for clients, but if we’re also
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But it’s also helping giving back, isn’t it? Like you said. Yeah.
Jeremy Burnel:
It’s it’s part of this entrepreneurial living. It’s it’s it’s great. It’s it’s good to be working for a company that also appreciates that because not all not all companies are that way inclined.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I think on that note, I’m gonna say, guys, you should be checking out 93digital.co.uk. Check out the blog. There’s some great stuff in there, but I do recommend you go and have a look at the resource section particularly for things like the security guide, GDPR, the, design and development brief template. There are tons of things for agencies in here that would be super, super useful, very educational. And with the backing of an agency who has clearly been killing it for, a good amount of time. So, Jeremy, thank you for your time. I like you a lot. I think you’re cool and funny, and I’ve really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope we get to do beer soon because it was That’d be cool.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It was good fun, mate. So Flattery
Jeremy Burnel:
gets you everywhere. Thank you very much, Lee, but you’re also bot on. So
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Thanks, mate. So if someone wants to have a natter with you, how can they connect? Are you on Twitter or something?
Jeremy Burnel:
I am on on the Twitter On Twitter? With my I’m on the Twitter with an actual quite ridiculous handle. I am at saint enormous, which is my, which is my drummer name. And, back in the days when I was in that band, I was called Saint Saint Enormous. And,
Lee Matthew Jackson:
How do you spell saint? Did you say saint?
Jeremy Burnel:
Saint, as in the patron saint of being enormous. Oh, no. I’ve just realized, no. I’ve just given you a completely falsehood. I’m at Jeremy Bernal, but then my name is kind of Saint Enormous. Oh, alright. Just just building a brand here, Lee. Just building a brand here.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So guys, it is not Saint Enormous. It is twitter.com /Jeremy Burnel. Follow this guy. He’s quite funny and cool. And, follow 93 Digital as well.
Jeremy Burnel:
Follow 90 3 Digital. I have to, we look after that quite a lot. There’s always some interesting resource going around. So
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Absolutely. It’s 93 Digital UK if you want to follow 93 Digital as well. Mate, thanks again for your time. You are a legend.
Jeremy Burnel:
Absolutely pleasure, Lee. Thank you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Thank you. Bye bye. And that wraps up today’s show. If you are not a part of the Agency Trailblazer community, then be sure to check out agency trailblazer.com for more information on how we are helping each other grow agencies that we love. If you’re also not a member of the Facebook group, go ahead and check that out over on wpinnovator.com/group. We’ll either see you in the groups or on next week’s episode.
