Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies, exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee:
Hello and welcome to episode number 80 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is Lee and I am controlling the giggles today because Larissa will not, I say will not, make me laugh. Although she is trying to pull faces and actually she doesn’t like the tea. Did I make that tea for you? Oh, okay.
Lee:
News just in. Larissa has just tried to drink cold tea because she forgot she hadn’t drunk it for the last hour. So that would explain the face. Sometimes I do wish this was a video episode because that was a classic. Anyway, guys, on today’s show, we have Pete Everett. He’s a mate of mine. We met for coffee the other day and that was awesome. It was just so cool to meet someone that you’ve known online and then meet them in person. And you get to have just such a great chat. We had coffee and, you know, really just got to know each other and learn stuff that we didn’t know about each other. So I think we really need to start doing some meetups at some point just to start meeting each other because there’s real power in just connecting with people in person, having conversations, sharing coffee. So head on over to the Facebook group if you want to start arranging things like that. I’m going to be in Florida. I’m also going to be in the UK. So it’d be great to do some meetups in both of those locations. Head on over to wpinnovator.com forward slash group and let’s have a conversation in there.
Lee:
So guys, sit back, relax, enjoy this episode, but do remember to keep your arms and legs in the vehicle at all times. And welcome to the conversation that I’m having with Mr. Pete Everitt from Yorkshire. How are you doing, mate?
Pete:
I’m very well, thanks, Lee. How are you?
Lee:
I’m doing all right. We were just chatting beforehand, weren’t we, how you’re not even from Yorkshire and yet unbeknownst to you, somehow you’ve got a little bit of an accent going on there.
Pete:
Yeah, I’m really from the northeast from a place called Darlington and you’re telling me that I sound more Yorkshire than Geordie. So over the past 11 years or so, they must have rubbed off on me somehow.
Lee:
I’m pretty sure. Well, you’ve been there long enough, haven’t you? I’m a Lancashire lad myself and I’ve lived down here for a long time and I’ve got two, a local child now and a local wife. So every now and again, I found myself saying path and then going, oh, oh, where did that come from? And kind of like washing my mouth out because it just sounds way too posh.
Pete:
I must admit, I’ve got two boys and the first time they come in this house and say the word rate to me, I’m going to be giving them some serious discipline.
Lee:
Oh yeah. Oh no. Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs.
Lee:
My brother lived in Bradford for years, so he’s moved down here now, but he’s got a full-on Yorkshire accent. He was born down here, but then when he was, when I think it was about three or four, mum and dad, dad got a job up north. I stayed because I had my wife, well, I had my girlfriend then and I wasn’t going to leave her, so I bought a house. True story. This isn’t about me, by the way, but I just want to tell you anyway, as soon as we’re having a conversation. And anyway, he moved up when he was four. So when he came back down a couple of years ago, he’s so broad Yorkshire, it’s hilarious. He went from southerner to complete broad Yorkshire with the broad Yorkshire attitude as well. You know, so laid back, he’s horizontal. Do you know what I mean? It’s hilarious.
Pete:
It’s the only way to be. It really is. In fact, you just turned the camera off a minute ago, but this podcast is actually happening where Pete is actually laid prostrate across the floor.
Pete:
Well, I thought it was best to get out of bed for you.
Lee:
Thanks, mate. Anyway, people are probably wondering who you are. So I’ll just give you a quick introduction. There you go. Me and Pete, we are part of the WP Innovator Facebook group. You can find that on wpinnovator.com. And we were all having a general discussion about SEO, et cetera, and Pete piped up to offer some help. So whenever you do that in the group, remember, you’re probably going to end up on the podcast. And that’s exactly what’s happened. Pete, welcome. Could you tell everybody who you are, a little bit of background, your favorite color, you know, color of your underpants, anything like that, any kind of pertinent information that you think would be relevant to this podcast? I’m going to shut up and I’ll let you go for it.
Pete:
Thanks, mate. Yeah, I’m Pete. I run an agency called So. Lee will put the link to that in the show notes, I’m sure. We specialize in branding, web design, web development, and digital marketing. And we, well, we’re a little bit young. We’re trying to niche into education, which I know, Lee, you’re going to mention in a bit. So I won’t talk about that right now. But we’re quite a young agency as well. So at the moment, we are trying to niche. But on the same note, we’re not in a position that we can turn away too much work. So we end up sort of working across the board. I started as a WordPress developer back in, God knows, 2005 sort of time, working for some agencies. I then had my own freelance business for a few years. And then back in 2014, was headhunted to go and head up a digital marketing team for an e-commerce agency in the Midlands, where I worked until we set So up about 10 months ago, eight, nine, 10 months ago. So that’s kind of where I’ve come from in the nutshell.
Lee:
Excellent. That’s a great story. Basically, full on WordPress and digital agency background and have decided to launch your own, I presume with a group of people. Who did you launch So with?
Pete:
Right. Well, this is a bit of a story, actually, which you’re kind of responsible for.
Lee:
Oh, excellent. I’m sorry. I apologize now, just in case.
Pete:
So I, to give you a background, I used to run my own company called Coda, which was, I build it as a web development company, but really it was a glorified freelance agency. And I got too busy and needed to employ somebody and didn’t have the money to do it. So I, this job offer came along, as I said, and I took it because it was a, it was a kind of nice get out of jail free card. And it helped us with some, some personal stuff, you know, mortgages and that kind of thing. Then the rub of it was though, I really couldn’t get used to working for somebody else. And then through, through another podcast that you featured on, I, I got hold of the WP Innovator podcast and you were on like episode seven, eight, nine, one, one of the really early ones when you were still asking scripted questions.
Lee:
Oh man, that was boring, wasn’t it?
Pete:
Sounded like a robot. So, you know, and, and obviously I heard what you were doing with Ejax and Dev as it was at the time. And it put this idea in my head that I could, I could potentially try and find agencies as clients, but offer them digital marketing services rather than obviously you’re doing the WordPress development. So I contacted a friend of mine who I met at the very first agency I worked in and sat and had a pint with him and ran, ran the idea past him. And he thought it was a great idea by the way, but he, he then sort of hummed and hard in all the right places. And when it came to the rub, he said, right, well, let me tell you where I am. And he’d left, you know, different agencies and he’d moved to Margate. He got married. So he lives in Margate in Kent and he’d been running a branding consultancy business, but with no digital offering at all. And he was starting to lose business because he didn’t have the digital offering. So we put two and two together and created So Digital. So I work with him. So in a roundabout way, it’s because of the thought process you sent me on Lee, that I kind of had the balls to go and re-go back into self-employment.
Lee:
The WP Innovator podcast gives you balls.
Pete:
That’s probably going to be our new strapline, I think. Perfect. All right. Well, that’s really kind of you to say, but it sounds like it was mainly your thought process. I’m glad though that stuff I said did help prompt it, prompt that. And that’s brilliant. That’s a great story, man. Now I’ve got to ask because I think we’ve fallen in love, but what point did Frank join the studio?
Pete:
Frank is about 10 years old. He’s, he’s a wild, mad, mad dog. He’s, he’s actually Steve’s dog. Steve’s my business partner.
Lee:
Yeah.
Pete:
So I only see him when I, when I travel down to Kent, but we, we operate a remote team. Right. So there’s, there’s eight or nine of us in total based around the country. And then we’ve got two offices, one in Mansfield and one in, in Margate. Yeah. Frank, Frank frequents the Margate office. So you said he’s 10, but on the website, it says he’s got one years of experience being a dog. What was he before?
Pete:
He’s 10 months old.
Lee:
Oh, okay. I was really confused. He was like, is this a dog who’s gone through the change? Like was a cat?
Pete:
Yeah, absolutely. He started off as a gerbil, actually.
Lee:
No way. That’s amazing. Right. Okay. Back, back, back to, back to the process. So you were inspired by a podcast episode and you chatted with someone and you both realized you had skills that you could put together and you started So Agency. I guess the next question then is why So?
Pete:
The, simple reason we called it So was the Steve’s branding company was actually called So Branding and Communications. And the first influx of clients that we had that we tried to sell to was, was from his portfolio due to me working with an agency and having non-disclosure agreements in place. It was, it was a little bit difficult for me to bring too many clients to the table when we first started. So for some continue, continuity from that, that, that’s where So came from. There’s, there’s very little sort of meaning in it, although it does work quite handily when you’re giving pitches and presentations and talks where you can just say, so I like it and leave an awkward pause.
Lee:
Do most people get it or, or does it just fall flat?
Pete:
No, actually it works, it works quite well to be fair.
Lee:
That is a real good icebreaker. And that’s actually really good advice for anyone who’s scared of, or just worried about presenting or doing something along those lines. If you can raise a laugh in the first few seconds, the, the power that has a, like it just, it just reduces all of that stress and you can kind of relax into the meeting. I got a lot lost at so many times when I’ve tried to create a laugh in a presentation and I don’t get one. And I just spend the entire presentation then just flummoxing and freaking out because it just gets the better of me so if I can get a laugh in the first five minutes tops then I’m a happy bunny so it sounds like you guys have got one in the bag so now I mean being a digital agency you kind of do a lot of services is there any kind of sweet spot that you guys operate in because looking at your website you come across as a full service agency that probably can do everything do you have a sweet spot?
Pete:
Yeah, we really the the place that we we do do our best work if you like the place we enjoy the most is with the is with the ongoing digital marketing services so you know one-off jobs are nice you you get to you get introduced to a client you get to you kind of get under the skin of what they’re about but with a one-off job that’s just where it ends and I guess you know what that’s a bit like with with the the client sites that you build but actually working with the client ongoing and saying right so not only discussing what are your business goals what are your business objectives how can we develop those online but then working them out in progress that’s that’s really what kind of makes makes us tick certainly what makes my side of the of of the business tick and then of course with with having steve steve and a couple of designers and their creative their creative skills on the side we really can make some you know some some bold kind of communications and think a little bit outside the box we try not to have a one-size-fits-all model well we don’t have a one-size-fits-all model but of course it’s it’s difficult to to do everything completely bespoke for every client but having the space with clients to to explore different things and actually to sometimes be able to hold our hands up and say you know what we’re not 100% sure that this is going to work it’s a bit of a hunch nobody’s done it before but we’re going to learn from it anyway is a good place to be.
Lee:
That’s that’s good if you can have that sort of relationship with the client and a lot of the time people do think don’t they that that you can’t admit sometimes that you don’t actually know but if you do they become a part of that don’t they they become a part of the process that you’ve agreed together and both agree with you know they’re both responsible for the results as well I guess because they got to put their effort in.
Lee:
Now digital marketing is still mate a really general term because I guarantee you digital marketing to one person on this podcast means something completely different to another so can you define it because right now i’m thinking of those 12 year old funnel guys that keep appearing in my in my facebook feed and all of them i want to punch because they apparently all own ferraris so yes so number one do you have a ferrari and number two what do you define as digital marketing?
Pete:
No number one i don’t have a ferrari and i wish i did digital marketing is in its i’m gonna i’m gonna sit really on the fence here and say it’s obviously the the operation of your business in a sort of outreach kind of phase online the the reason i’m not sort of getting more specific into that is the the best approach we have and what we work through with all clients to from start to you know when we start with their accounts is we put a plan in place for them and we we do we do the research and we actually narrow down what digital marketing looks like for them so for for some clients where all they want is masses of traffic so i don’t know a retail brand or or something like that actually digital marketing is is quite a broad term but when you’re starting to deal with educational institutions where you’re looking at people that are you’re looking at prospective students that are maybe 16 to 21 max kind of uh rate age range for an undergraduate course all of a sudden you can very easily start to whittle down what digital marketing looks like for them so you know facebook and their demographic profiling is invaluable to our business the fact that they purchased instagram a year or so ago is a brilliant move yeah we’ve then got you know email still becomes the one of the go-to and highest converting sources of communicating with clients uh communicating with prospective clients on you know for on behalf of our clients so an email strategy and then then it’s it then comes down to business objectives so um are you looking for organic search engine result page rankings are you looking for what’s the word i’m looking for are you looking for engagement with social media or building your social medias what is it that is actually going to convert for your business i guess that’s a very long-winded get out of jail free card on the question what is digital marketing but it is such a broad subject that it differs from one client to the next and secondly on that it’s always a developing field that’s the um uh that’s the rub and that’s where actually just referring back to the earlier point about you know being able to say to clients that we don’t know if you can it when something new comes on online like uh just before christmas facebook released that facebook marketplace and we were or we are working with a cycling brand and you know i could go to them and say look i have no idea if this is actually gonna work for you but uh you know the statistics say it should the stuff that facebook tells me says it should but let’s just try it and see uh and it and it did quite well for them so there you go let’s suck it and see that’s it.
Lee:
I mean i gotta admit that was a that was a very good political answer i guess there is an election coming up there is i know in the uk on the is it 29th of june or something like that so i think it’s a bit late though for you to to put in for account i think everyone’s covered i don’t think i want to to be honest no no that’s fine but i think i need my brain is very simple i’m black or white basically in my brain so i need to kind of distill this down to a few things and i think what you’re saying is number one digital marketing to any business is completely different to digital marketing for the other business so everyone is unique and you need to start with who they want to attract or you know who well who they are but who it is they want to attract and also what it is they want to do with that person what what do they want that person to do which would then dictate what specific channels of digital marketing you would utilize to get those results that could include social media it could include the good old email campaign it could even include a tv advertisement for all we know but the idea is is that you would term digital marketing as the anything to do anything digitally that will help a client achieve a goal with a key demographic would that be a good kind of summation i’m trying to i’m trying to say big words it’s not really working for me is that a good summing up?
Pete:
Yeah, that’s you you’re basically you’re basically hitting the nail on the head and then the the sort of talent i suppose or the the expertise comes in when you then start stripping away different layers and i have the have the confidence have those wp innovator balls to say that you know what you don’t need to do all of this just because xyz company down the road who you think is a competitor to you is doing 59 tweets a day doesn’t mean that that’s what’s actually working for their business and doesn’t mean that that’s what you have to do and the data is telling us that this would be a far better approach for you.
Lee:
That’s that’s a really good thing you know comparison is a killer isn’t it and look at data so there you go there’s a takeaway guys straight from pete comparison is a killer don’t compare yourself with the uh with the competition actually look at the data because that’s where the real real results are happening actually i think if you find if someone’s doing 50 odd tweets every day i think that might i think they might not have a very good strategy you’re probably right i mean i do do 12 a day which feels like too much already and they are every every two hours but hey you know we’re all going to start somewhere now higher education is something that intrigues me and i was really pleased to be honest to see an agency who does offer a full service agency but has very clearly this pretty much a central menu item or practically central for he specialists what got you into higher education and why are you sticking with it?
Pete:
We’ve from a creative point of view we actually have from the from steve’s side of the business again going back to the sort of conception of the business we have quite a good history within within higher education within uh prospectuses and sort of those those high level publications and actually the the way he institutions seem to work in the uk anyway is they they still focus a lot on this book which is their prospectus off the back of that hangs so many other different tactics but you’ll you’ll see that they spend a disproportionate amount of their money trying to get this one book right that is going to be wrong in 10 months time right so we it’s a good hook for us to get in but then we can we seem to be finding a a niche within ourselves within within this that we can then talk about digital or digital marketing in a way that they’re not necessarily coming across before so we’ve worked with a university for example and what we did for them was course specific marketing so hooking it back into this return on investment into you don’t need to do everything for you know everything that’s digitally available kind of idea we were able to say to them right which of your courses aren’t recruiting well and they gave us a list of a dozen or so and we could then go and run specific campaigns to prospective students with the right demographic profile with some of them were postgraduate courses you know that so they’d already had undergraduate undergraduate qualifications working for particular employers in particular locations and actually really then focus their marketing spend down onto where you don’t need to go and market english literature because you’re well known for that so you’re going to get your applications in any way but actually policing is something that not many people know you do so we can really hone in on that and get you a high quality traffic it’s it’s a great process you’re breaking it down and you’re saying do one or two things really really well so i love it i love the idea of saying yeah yeah yeah it’s doing really well we don’t need to sell that but you’ve got you’ve got this over here policing is not doing very well and actually we think that we can attract that that audience via this particular channel not every single channel we don’t need to do twitter and blah and blah and blah your ideal demographic is actually sat over here on facebook in these sorts of groups so that’s where we’re going to go and we don’t need to spend all the extra money on also an email campaign and doing every single type of digital marketing just for that demographic is that what you’re saying?
Pete:
That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. And of course, across a university where you may have 180 courses, you know, this particular one gave us, I think it was about 13 number 13 they gave us, you know, 13 of them so we were running sort of 13 almost individual campaigns but it then puts you in a from a consultancy point of view it puts you in a great position where you you can look at what they’re spending on their marketing spend and say right well you don’t need to spend that we can save you marketing you know we can save you marketing spend or we can give you good advice as to how best to redistribute it to you know to achieve your business goal which in of course universities case is the number of applications and eventually the number of students that get through onto the course that starts in september.
Lee:
So if you’re listening i’m pretty sure you’re like me your brain will be worrying and you’re probably thinking back to the time when you’ve had a client who kind of dumps a huge problem on you and you’re like whoa how the hell do i even start with this and the lesson i’m learning from today is quite simply that you can ask some very simple questions to hone that problem down to some very very specific acute problems so they’re so let’s let’s just visualize this right now you’ve got a higher education institute and they are saying we need to drive more traffic or whatever it is and get more people at our university that seems like a massive problem to solve with social media but what pete and the guys have done have said all right well give us your absolute acute the sharpest pain points what are the x amount of places you really need to fill there we go we’ve got that down to 13 and now you can then do 13 very focused campaigns that sounds so much easier than just trying to solve that big massive problem and just potentially putting a okay you need to do a bit of everything hoping it’ll fix its solution so mate i’m loved that you shared that process with us and i have totally learned because i can think back to at least three projects in the past a few years ago where i panicked i thought this is a massive problem and i literally threw at them like oh you need to do everything and just like threw everything at them without actually getting under the hood and if i had have got under the hood i probably have found two or three things that we could just really tackle which would have gotten more results than just trying to give them a catch-all solution so thank you.
Pete:
That’s that’s fine that’s absolutely fine and you know there’s there’s another commercial element to that as well you know obviously we we essentially have to sell ourselves that we can do this and you put a bill in front of somebody for a full service agency that’s gonna that’s gonna market 187 courses and all of a sudden the bill is you know like or the quote is through the roof you then hone that down and say right well look let’s not worry about the 175 that are selling well let’s just worry about this and this is the budget we can then look at you’re making yourself more affordable but you’re also making the sell easier and within that you’ve then got the ability to prove yourself where they are hurting most so as as these things then start to develop you know you’re you’re really gaining a lot of trust and a lot of authority with the client at a price they that isn’t going to scare them away and of course then things develop over time and you can look at broadening your horizons and and you know expanding your service base and all of that kind of stuff as time goes by that’s kind of the model
Lee:
You’re also massively de-risking it as well because you know me saying to them oh my gosh this is a massive problem here’s a big quote to do everything they’re still expecting as a result of that thank by the way for the record thankfully none of the people i sent those proposals to actually took me up on the offer because i would have actually cried if they did but the fear in my mind was that if they did take me up on it i had no idea whether i could even achieve the results whereas what again what you’re doing is you’re breaking it down and you’re saying all right let’s de-risk this trust us with three courses maybe and let’s see how they go and then then maybe we can pick up some more and and learn the lessons as well from those three courses and apply them to the next three that we’re going to try and drive registrations for etc so that’s really cool i love it all right we’re going to pivot because the original reason we had this call was seo but i did i did want to find out about higher education and then this kind of happened by accident which is what i love about the podcast and why i love not having a script anymore because we probably would not have found this out from you if we had a script i’ve got a big question for you is seo dead?
Pete:
No but that probably doesn’t make a great podcast for you if i just say that does it?
Lee:
No not really it kind of makes like a dead awkward silence and that’s it thanks from the wpa podcast next week’s episode will be more interesting why why isn’t seo dead talk to me.
Pete:
So the seo seo isn’t dead seo is just simply changing so the the you know the days the days are gone where you could cram keywords into the footer of every page of your website or linking to other pages of your website you could go and buy 15 000 links from some you know dodgy website somewhere and and all of a sudden hey look you’d be at the top of google google is getting a lot more a lot more intelligent and you know you’ve had guys on your podcast already talking to you about how you know google’s algorithm is changing to look for user intent how content is the big driver there’s google seem to release stats almost every month to do with the conversion or the influence of video marketing to be perfectly frank from the clients that we’re working with we haven’t seen anything like the the figures that they are citing but of course they own youtube so they’re gonna they’re gonna gild the lily a little bit but from the the same premise though were applies which is you’ve got to do the basics right if you keep doing the basics those basics now include a plan to do with content then you you are going to do well from a an seo point of view but also being realistic about what what your seo objectives are so you know trying to one of the examples we give when we’re when we’re doing pitches is if if we’re servicing a client and they’re selling four by fours if you try and rank for the term four by four it is going to be an exceptionally difficult term to get therefore from a technical seo point of view we can get your website clean quite quite efficiently but then all of the other stuff that goes into it is going to lead you to quite a long and arduous journey for a term that is massively generic if however you want to rank for bmw x5 three litre diesel all of a sudden the that is a far more achievable thing to go after but we can you’re also going to get a far more higher the rate of the the quality of traffic is going to be far higher because of your further down that user intent so you further down that user buyer journey so it’s kind of good advice from both sides of the coin from a technical point of view you still need your website to be clean you’re going to fight a losing battle if from an seo point of view you’re trying to do all your keyword targeting your demographic profiling all of that kind of stuff but if your website isn’t it is littered with errors if it’s not structured correctly if you’ve got too many h1s on a page all of that kind of basic stuff that was the same back in year dot when we were buying 15 000 and to be for the record i never actually bought 15 000.
Lee:
Did you?
Pete:
Yeah 2001 or something like that i didn’t know any better it was 15 all right yeah there you go all right it feels good to confess it it’s like therapy carry on mate
Pete:
So you know but if you need to get your website clean because otherwise you’re fighting a losing battle yep google isn’t going to rank a website that isn’t responsive the websites that we’re working with you can see a massive change in those websites that are running on https as opposed to those well those that working on non-https standard http have started dropping in the search engines they did about six or seven months ago yeah clients we’re now having conversations with saying well we did tell you and they’re like well we want you to do it now and we’ve got to say well we’re gonna have to charge you more than we originally quoted if you want us to shift our schedule around to get your your site on an ssl certificate yeah so that’s you you know you the basics have to be right foundation has to be right and then you start it’s boring i know but then you can start having some fun with the strategy after that.
Lee:
I guess people say or presume seo is dead because it’s so easy to to buy a facebook ad you know or a linkedin ad or whatever and be able to say i want to put my advertisement right in front of the md of a particular type of company so that seems to outdo seo but something that you said really sparked my interest where you said buyer intent to stick an advertisement in front of someone is easy and it costs a few cents or maybe a few dollars at most but they may not necessarily have the intention to buy that particular type of widget the widget x4 1z they’re not interested you just put an advertisement on because they happen to be a particular demographic i was quite interested when you said when they’re actually putting in that search term then they are actually at that point really looking for something and they’re putting in the relevant information to narrow their search results down to that particular thing that they are finding so yeah i’d never considered that i’ve always thought oh seo must be dead because i can just i can put an advertisement in front of someone but no that’s that doesn’t equate to buyer intent that just means that they are the avatar but they may have no interest in buying that particular widget at that particular time or they might even already have 10 of it so why would they want another one so i’ve just paid for that impression when i didn’t really need to i think it’s clicks anyway you end up paying for but but yeah no that that makes sense that’s really good so seo is not necessarily dead at all in fact it’s alive and kicking and i love that phrase as well you started off with seo is not dead it is changing and seo especially is a good indication i think from what you’ve said of a buyer intent i love that i really like that this is like a this is a blog post as well i think you need to write this blog post if you haven’t already make i haven’t you know what all this advice that we give out yeah and our own stuff is the stuff that just dives down the pan we’ve we’ve got a new website coming it’s been coming since about december we’ve finally set another launch date of which we’re we’re aiming to so actually the new site may well be live by the time this goes to air although if past experience is anything to go by it probably won’t be just do it that’s what i did with angle crown because we we had angle crown for months and then eventually i was like sod it the website is going live it’s not finished it’s right now of this day of recording our website is not finished it’s very basic and plain but i don’t care i just got the damn thing live and then we’ll work on it and we’ll improve it over the next few months yeah yeah that’s it’s definitely so when that is just you know stuff blogging and and that kind of thing i’ve got a trello board stuffed full of ideas for stuff that i should be writing about and i only ever look at it to add something else on the bottom you know it’s a bit like my facebook saves you know when you save a link in facebook yeah but i never actually then go back to to look at all the links i’ve saved yeah that’s that sounds that sounds very familiar so um you know where it’s the the thing and every time every time i hear somebody on your podcast or wherever saying yeah you know you need your content strategy and i’m thinking i know that we generate them all of the time can i action one for myself can i billion well here’s here’s a piece of advice then for you and for anyone listening who is struggling to action a content strategy because you may all know i produce content every single freaking week how it’s easy you know that paragraph of text you said to me a minute ago in answer to my is seo dead you could literally cut that snippet out from this podcast and send it to rev.com or scribey i think it is whoever and they will transcribe that for like i think you talked for two minutes i think that’s a dollar a minute so it’s going to cost you something like two or three dollars for someone to literally transcribe your response to me and then you can then edit that to make it into a bit more of a structure blog that’s probably going to take you another 10 minutes on top so within 12 minutes you’ll have a blog post ready so if you’ve got a trello board full of ideas for posts you could literally open up the rev app or uh or some sort of tape recording device obviously you wouldn’t use a dictaphone you could that’d just be annoying and and speak into it answer the question just like you answered me and send that recording to someone to write it up for you edit it you’ve got another blog post that’s exactly how i blog post i go for a walk in the morning i’ve got a list of questions i record them all and then i send them off to rev.com for someone to type up now there you go there’s there’s you see there’s advice flying all over the place.
Pete:
I know it’s everywhere you’re throwing it at me i felt i just had to give something back man real well i’ve made a note of that good i’m going to draw more out of you then so i’m looking at my google analytics right okay and i’m frustrated because i don’t understand google analytics half the time because i’m not really a very well data-driven guy at all but i can see on my google analytics that it tells me organic search is 26.5 and direct access is 45 now i’m kind of lost oh 25 is also social so i know from social i’m getting at the 25 of my traffic which is surprising i thought i was going to get a hell of a lot more organic search if i then go and try and look at what searches they used it just says it’s not available so i don’t even know what they’re searching so that drives me mad in google analytics i presume there’s something i’m doing wrong in there but also i don’t even understand what direct is does that mean people are actually typing in anglecrown.com into their browsers can you shed any light?
Pete:
Well yeah or they’re basically yes or they’re coming from a link from somewhere else actually no that would be referral traffic but if if it was a that’s tiny that’s the tiny little slither on this on this that’s yeah 13 the thing you’ve got to bear in mind with direct traffic that is people that are going directly to your website or they’re clicking a link a link that’s going from a from an offline email so an email that you open in mac mail or whatever yeah that isn’t through something like mailchimp or an email distribution system that would also come in as a as a direct link so if you’re sending a link to your clients to view something on your website for example you just tap it into a normal a normal email that would then come through as a as a direct link onto your website as well so yeah hey i’ve just got your screenshot i know i’ve just sent you a screenshot because you can see there as well on that list of organic searches number one there’s been 126 sessions generated from a not provided search result and that drives me insane i don’t know how to fix that i’m wondering if anyone else listening has this same problem and if you have the answer if you don’t that’s cool but just to put you on the spot i can tell you that everybody has the same problem really because that is not something you’re doing wrong that is google being annoying oh it frustrates the hell out of me that basically under their the terms and conditions of their privacy settings any search that’s done under an https search on google they will not provide you the keyword data.
Lee:
Oh well that is that conversation i can tell you exactly what it is and i can also tell you there’s been a bearer of bad news for damn it that is really frustrating because the ones i’m getting are like really boring search terms that like i can’t even market to
Pete:
There are other ways of getting that of getting that data okay so we use a we use a service called the ip track which it’s a bit like a lead forensics type piece of software yeah we we use it on we use it on a number of sites particularly where lead generation is is is an issue and that will actually pass the keyword terms if people have looked from an organic from an organic source
Lee:
What’s that called then ip ip track
Pete:
I track all right we’ll pop that in the show notes as well what’s that ip track on tracker online actually it’s ip track dot io is the is the domain name although actually i think it’s service in the uk mate it’s got a different name uh and that’s just the the domain name that they host it on i’ll have to email down to stop any random so i’ll just go back in and find it no worries so live on the wp nevator podcast we’re trying to find the url because that dot io just just did not work it gives you a login if you find me that at the end that’d be great yeah i’ll find it for you at the end i’ll send it over
Lee:
All right guys so so far we’ve discovered who pete is uh lots of information about his dog which was fantastic how his agency got started how they’ve done or they’ve grown into higher education i’ve loved his breakdown of how to solve massive problems that these organizations have by distilling it down to what are the key acute pain points and then dealing with them first to build up that credibility etc we’ve started to learn about seo which is awesome we’ve learned the depressing news that unfortunately google sucks a little bit sometimes when it comes to finding your keywords but we’ve also learned that seo is not dead it is just changing and we need to keep up with the times unfortunately though there’s not really going to be enough time for us to draw lots of key benefits from you or key strategies for seo so maybe i’ll have to tempt you back to the podcast so maybe you could give us like the top five seo strategies for digital agencies or something that sounds like a cool podcast that me and you could do in the near future.
Pete:
That does sound like a cool podcast actually this hasn’t been far as painful as i thought it was going to be so i’ll i may consider it
Lee:
Well that’s good that’s good news so i’m certainly looking forward to getting you back on the show then mate could you let us know how people could get hold of you or have a communication with you?
Pete:
Yeah absolutely my email address is simply pete pte at so so hyphen the agency.com and linkedin is uh sort of the place i use most kind of business networking although you know we do have quite a good thing going on the the innovator group lee so if anybody wants to um to just drop me a message on there you know i that’s that’s absolutely fine as well
Lee:
Cool and uh like some recent guests you very kindly offered a gift to wp innovator listeners can you tell us a little bit more about that gift?
Pete:
Well yeah absolutely so this is a uh in in june i’m uh june 2017 i’m delivering a uh presentation about demystifying digital marketing which i’m giving in dartford i believe that presentation will have happened by the time this airs so all of the work i put into exclusive slide deck needs to sort of come out yeah uh because it won’t be all that exclusive by the time this goes to bed but basically i’ve cut part of the slide deck from that presentation into a kind of top tips for digital marketing nice and it goes through getting the uh getting the technicals right understanding your audience becoming looking at how you can use content what sort of plans you can make and then just a a couple of final bits of advice basically the questions i get asked all day every day by different people so hopefully it’ll be of use to to the guys that you know that are listening and um if you want to get hold of that you can go over to so hyphen the agency.com forward slash wp innovator and i’ll drop it over to you in an email
Lee:
It’s very kind of you very generous of you if you want to get access to that you’ve already heard that pete knows his onions he’s full of great advice and uh i recommend you go check that out as soon as it’s available so we we are going to be episode 80 so that’s where we’ll work out that date i’ll record that i’ll record that in the intro mate so so we’ll also put that in the intro for them as well so mate mate thanks so much for your time you are a legend have a wonderful afternoon and you and you cheers cheerio
Lee:
Well that’s a wrap of episode number 18 next week’s episode number 81 i can count we’re all happy about this this is fantastic is jerry king he is a fellow member of the wp innovator group and if you’re not then do please join us over at wp innovator.com forward slash group there are some fantastic conversations going on in there and also people are sharing tools i tend to do that quite a lot sharing tools that you use for productivity so go ahead and have a look in the facebook group remember there are some pre-qualifying questions what that means is we’re just checking a that you’re not a robot and b that you actually could be bothered to answer the questions if you pass that test then you’re in that’s amazing essentially we had problems a while back with spam etc so just having that little extra step of having people just fill in a question answer just knows we just know that people aren’t gonna waste time etc so it would be so cool to have you in and integrated and and contributing and all of that good stuff and also if you are sitting on an amazingly funny cat meme that’s that is absolutely a reason to join the group because the internet was built for cats and pictures of them so let’s do it let’s post cat pictures the wp innovator group see you next week.
