Click through to the good bits.

00:00:00 Introductions.

00:02:33 Why does marketing need passionate advocates and why are you one?

00:07:34 Do people understand what marketing is and why they should be doing it?

00:14:38 Why it is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to do marketing for themselves.

00:18:56 How are you qualified to talk to us about digital marketing?

00:24:17 Why marketing needs generalists.

00:32:29 What is it that large and successful brands need from digital marketing?

00:35:30 Who do you do business with, how do you add value to their lives?

00:39:00 How do young agencies go about attracting recognisable brands as clients?

00:43:23 The benefit of marketing agencies actually marketing themselves.

00:49:24 What is it that you do for your customers?

00:55:10 The value of digital marketing that digital marketing agencies don’t bother to deliver.

00:58:24 How to maintain customer relationships and retain digital marketing agency clients.

01:01:56 What is your recommendation for people wo want to get better at digital marketing?

01:04:32 What should people read?

01:07:12 How have you found this experience of appearing on the Talk Marketing show?

01:08:00 Who can you introduce us that might endure or maybe even enjoy to have a conversation like this with me?

Introductions.

Martin Henley: [00:00:15] Hello there. My name is Martin Henley, this is the Effective Marketing content extravaganza and if you’ve spent a second here, you will know that I’m on a mission to give you everything you need to be successful in your business. Providing of course, what you need to be successful in your business is to know more about and be better at sales and marketing. So I’m here giving you everything I know about sales and marketing in our What the series, we bring in Melanie Farmer every other week to talk about th2e marketing news and how it might impact your life. And as part of the Talk Marketing series, I’m pulling in anyone I can find with experience to share with you, to support you to be more successful in your business. [00:00:54][39.2]

Martin Henley: [00:00:56] So today’s guest is a marketing and advertising graduate with a master’s in marketing. He has agency experience going back to 2009 when he volunteered with a marketing agency. He spent six years at Sainsbury’s in customer service and then PR positions. He has also been an online partnership assistant and a senior Medick media executive. He is now CEO of Bubble Digital, which was awarded best digital marketing agency in 2021 and 2022 in Leeds. He people describe him as an extremely passionate advocate of marketing, an exceptional digital marketer, extremely helpful and knowledgeable about marketing and a pleasure to do business ways. There is a quote on his LinkedIn profile that reads Our legacy is how we spend our time and who we spend it with. We are extraordinarily blessed that he is spending time with us today. Today’s guest is Manpreet Singh. Good morning. MANPREET. [00:02:00][64.6]

Manpreet Singh: [00:02:01] Thank you. Thank you, Martin It’s a pleasure to be on. [00:02:04][3.1]

Martin Henley: [00:02:08] It is an absolute pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much for being here. It’s interesting. It’s really all interesting. What is interesting? Here’s the question I have for you before we get into the actual questions. [00:02:20][12.4]

Martin Henley: [00:02:22] You don’t hear about people being a passionate advocate of cash flow. The cash flow is a bad example. [00:02:32][10.3]

Why does marketing need passionate advocates and why are you one?

Martin Henley: [00:02:33] You don’t hear about people being a passionate advocate of accountancy. You don’t hear about people being a passionate advocate of architecture. You don’t hear about people being a passionate advocate of banking. Why does there need to be passionate advocates of marketing and why are you one? That’s the question. [00:02:55][22.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:02:57] It’s something you have to live and breathe. To me, this isn’t a job. This isn’t something that I get up and do 9 to 5. Very early on, when I was doing my A-levels, I don’t know if A-Levels even exist anymore, I feel that’s my age. It was the marketing modules in business studies that actually inspired me and was like, Actually, I love this. This is this is cool. This is great. The whole advertising thing. Sometimes you get into a career, you sometimes you get to an area and it just fits with you, who you are. So I guess a lot of that passion comes from my personality and who I am as an individual that links with the industry and allows me to thrive. I guess a lot of it is because when I started my own agency, I was on dialysis, my kidneys had failed so Bobble Digital became my lifeline as well. It became my reason why to get out of bed in the morning that most people probably don’t really get. As unfortunate it was for me to be on dialysis, I was quite fortunate to find something to cling onto, that gave me a reason, a purpose. So I’d say the reason I’m passionate about it is because every time I’m talking about it, whether it’s on my podcast or to clients or events, it comes naturally to me. I’m not trying to think of what I’m trying to say. It just comes naturally to me and authentic so people can see the passion come through because I start smiling, and I start getting into the nooks and crannies when I’m talking about something. That’s when you know you’re in tune with what you do and what you love. So I guess that’s probably why people say I’m passionate because it’s how I come across more than anything else. [00:04:42][105.1]

Martin Henley: [00:04:43] Okay, that’s cool. I mean, that’s really cool. I had that as well. When I was running my agency between 2005 and 2014, I launched myself out of bed every day. I was so happy to go out in the world and spread this message about marketing. The question I’m asking of you now is a little bit different. People don’t need to be motivated to do their accounts. They don’t need to be motivated to do their production. Do you know what I mean? It’s like there’s something about marketing. The thing about it for me is that this is the key to being successful in your business. I say to people, if this is what you need, 100% it’s what people need. They don’t know when they go into business that being in business is an exercise in having customers profitably. If you’re going to do that you have to be finding and winning or attracting and winning customers all the time that is doing marketing. Then we have to go out there and motivate them to do this one thing, which is the one thing that will make them successful. They know that everything else that goes on has to happen and they just get on and do it. Marketing seems to me to be different from that. [00:05:51][68.9]

Manpreet Singh: [00:05:55] Yeah. I guess it’s the unknowable element of it, how the environment constantly changes. You look at marketing from like five, ten years ago to what we do now, it’s so evolved. It’s led by their customers as well. So we as people decide what trends because that’s where we spend our time. I spend time on TikTok that is the next big trend in terms of a social media platform, for example. Everyone’s watching short video content, so we have to adapt. For businesses I guess the challenge and where the passion comes from is because it’s so unknowable but so beautiful at the same time in the sense that it’s so changing and it changes in front of our eyes in real time and that you have to keep up more than anything else. [00:06:44][49.0]

Martin Henley: [00:06:45] Yeah and I often think the challenge is, like when I was running an agency, we were running, I don’t know, ten or fifteen campaigns at a time. We always had ten or fifteen campaigns running. So we were in the tools all day, every day. Now, I’m not doing that anymore it’s really hard to keep up if you’re not on it all day, every day. It’s really hard to keep up. I’ve got a mate and he’s brilliant, he’s a brilliant marketer. He’s been in business for 20 years. He’s ridden every single wave and rinsed every single wave. It was it was PPC, it was SEO, and it was social and he really rinsed every single one. Now when he goes in to do it every six months, everything’s changed and he doesn’t know how to do it anymore. He’ll put together a PPC campaign and then go back to review it six months later, and he’s got no idea what’s going on. I think that definitely is part of the challenge. [00:07:34][48.9]

Do people understand what marketing is and why they should be doing it?

Martin Henley: [00:07:34] I think the start of the challenge is that people don’t really get what marketing is and they don’t know that they should be doing it and I think that’s weird. You’re shaking your head, do you agree with me or are you just shaking your head? [00:07:45][11.1]

Manpreet Singh: [00:07:45] Yeah, I agree with that situation. [00:07:46][0.9]

Manpreet Singh: [00:07:48] Yeah, I do agree with you. I think a lot of the challenges I face when we go to prospects or we’re going it’s clients and what separates us is the education. Not only do we tell our clients what to do, we tell them why they need to do it and the benefit of doing it this way. Not just for the now, but for the potential future, you can only predict so far with certain channels like the Google algorithm changes constantly, so you have to be on top of that with SEO. But there are fundamentals that you need to put in place that you need to explain and educate clients on on. You’re right and that’s why I was trying to nod my head, yeah, you’re right, so many people don’t know where to begin or what to do and why they should be doing it. [00:08:29][41.6]

Martin Henley: [00:08:30] Yes. And my frustration, although this isn’t about my frustrations, but my frustration was always that they would see you speak and they’d invite you into their business. Then I would blow their mind with the opportunity, and they’d agreed they’d want you to do something. Immediately I would go back, once things are things are in effect, and they would be the world’s leading expert on this thing. They only want this thing to happen or that thing to happen, and they only want it to happen this way or that way. Has that changed in the, I don’t know, eight years since I’ve been client facing, client winning? [00:09:04][33.8]

Manpreet Singh: [00:09:04] No, no, it hasn’t changed, but this is how I deal with it. If I’ve done a strategy for a company and they come in and they want to start changing it and doing it their way, I serve them notice. They get surprised because I’m like, well, no, you you hired me as the expert to come in and tell you what you need to do. I’ve come through educated you, done the research and brought the data around your competitors, your audience, what they’re doing online, how to target them, I’ve given you the blueprint, what to do it. If you think you’re better than me and my strategy is wrong, then do it your own way. I will not agree, the difference is, I’m not a yes person to clients. My job is to make sure that the strategy I implement delivers. Nine out of ten times we hit the nail on the head and the odd time this other circumstances, like in economical elements that you can’t control that means you don’t get the desired results you want, but you still get some results and it’s more of a learning phase. That’s why I go back, because that still happens, at which point it’s almost like a light bulb moment with them because I said, Well, now if you think about and you can do them, you’ve just wasted my time. I’m wasting your time. I’m not a yes person. Either do it my way and trust me to do it my way, which is why you pay me to do it and why you asked me to come in. If you think you can do it better go ahead. What you find is they change their tune and say, okay, no, because you give them a reality check that, no, I’m not going to accept that we do things. Business have to do things in certain ways in terms of tone of voice, specifically in industries like financial that you have to go through. I’ve said compliance. I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about, why don’t we just do LinkedIn in and do this – well, no, that doesn’t go in line with the overall strategy and understanding of who your customer is and why we develop the strategy that way . [00:10:55][111.1]

Martin Henley: [00:10:56] 100%. And again, this doesn’t happen, I don’t think, in other functions in the business, but I’ve never seen a business owner arguing with the accountant necessarily, no, we want to do the accounts this way or that way, or with the bookkeeper. I’ve never seen anyone going for open heart surgery and then dictate to the surgeon how they’re going to perform the open heart surgery. It feels like there’s something, marketing for me is way too ambiguous. I understand what you’re saying, it’s tremendously exciting, it’s evolving all the time. I think the stat is, I don’t know because I glanced it, but I think it’s something like 78% of the businesses that go out of business cite a failure in sales and marketing as the reason they’re going out of business. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s higher, but it just weirds me out Manpreet and I’ve been on this, like, my whole life since I started work. It’s still wierds me out that people don’t get that this is the thing they have to do if they want to be successful. You look at the most successful brands on the planet. They are the best marketers. They invest the most in marketing but small businesses don’t, still don’t, seem to get this. [00:12:02][65.3]

Manpreet Singh: [00:12:04] Because marketing’s a cost and they feel like if they’re already doing well, then they’ve done well and got to that point without sales and marketing. [00:12:13][8.8]

Martin Henley: [00:12:14] Yes. [00:12:14][0.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:12:16] This is what I find with business owners is they feel like the market is themselves and they have to be given credit because they’ve built that business without like a fundamental digital marketing strategy or without an agency and got that far already. So in the back of their mind, they kind of see it as like a it’s just a cost for cost sake. It comes down, back to that element earlier, which is education. They don’t understand that actually to go from yes, you’ve gone from A to B and now you need to go from, you know, B all the way to Z, because that is I want to sell my business, or Z is I want to be acquired by someone else, Z is I want to be a global company. I want to get X amount of revenue. To scale up, they don’t realise that they have to invest in not just the internal market but the external marketing as well. So everything they’ve done up to that point is good for that level of operation, but to achieve the future objectives they lack the understanding, and the knowledge, and the education of why sales and marketing is so important, at that stage, in terms of driving that element. I always see it with a lot of business owners, Oh, we can do it by myself. I know, because I’ve been doing this for like ten or 15 years. Yes, you are an expert in your field, so if you get, let’s say, a electrics company. They say, we know what we need to do in this industry, we’ve been doing it for ten or 15 years. But as I said earlier, marketing is changing so rapidly, becoming so much more digital, becoming so much more, you know, agile as well, that actually what you did ten or fifteen years ago is good knowledge to have about the industry, but you have to apply in a completely different way now. [00:13:58][101.3]

Martin Henley: [00:13:59] Yeah. Given that I stopped being an agency in 2014, what I say to people is, you know, your industry, and you know your business and you know what you’re doing. We know marketing. When those two things come together, it’s really, that’s how it works. There was something else that I used to say, which I really wanted to say, which was marketing, really, marketing is commonsense squared. Find a way to add value to the market, find the way to get the messages to them, do a good job, evidence the fact that you’ve done a good job, that’s common sense. [00:14:34][35.3]

Manpreet Singh: [00:14:35] Yeah. [00:14:35][0.0]

Why it is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to do marketing for themselves.

Martin Henley: [00:14:38] I would say to people, very often, the best person to do the marketing is you because you’re closest to it and you care the most about it and and all these things. The truth is, with the digitisation, if you’re not on the tools all day, every day, I mean, apart from anything else, you will get fleeced. You can spend a lot of money with Facebook or Google or any of these platforms LinkedIn and not see a return unless you are expert at doing that. What those corporations are really good at is taking people’s money and I don’t think they’re particularly interested in necessarily delivering value. That’s my personal opinion and that might be a great. [00:15:18][40.3]

Manpreet Singh: [00:15:19] I talked about this in a previous talk where I talked about Google has a monopoly, we may never agree on that. But if you look up, I think this is my 92% of all global searches done through Google. [00:15:32][12.4]

Martin Henley: [00:15:33] Yeah. [00:15:33][0.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:15:36] The evidence is that they have a monopoly. They changed their model where they started hiring these sales teams to call up the the owners of the Ad Accounts, the clients, as your Google support, account support, which changes every six months. All they do is go through their recommendation tools and it’s all about increasing bids, spending more money, introducing new campaigns and accounts where they give a little bit of fluff on the call. You’re right, they get fleeced and spend more money. Most of the time, say seven out of the ten audits we do on Google, the problems are because of the account managers from Google implementing basic stupid recommendations from the Google platform that has wasted spend on that account and not delivered, because they don’t look at it all the time. They come in, say, do this, do that, I’ll call you back in a month. That’s not what you need, you need, like you said, an expert, who’s in the platform every day understands what’s doing, has knowledge from all the campaigns and ideas of what’s going on, and I can implement that. So these platforms, if you’re not careful, will, that’s the job of the salesperson to come and say, yes, I audited this account. I got them to tick these key boxes and I got them spent X amount and then they get a commission for it. [00:16:48][72.0]

Martin Henley: [00:16:49] Yeah. I’m going through this. Our proposition in the old days was always, we will halve your spend and double your return on Google; and we never missed. You could look at an account and he will say 70% of this is completely wasted. So I just by cutting 70% off your never even going to affect the result, the return. I’m doing this at the moment because this year my mission is to get this channel working better and on the list of things to do was to advertise with Google and I spent a minuscule amount of money but they still managed to take more money than they were supposed to take and they delivered zero value. I phoned Google support because they’re the only people you can speak to at Google and there was no one there because of COVID. They’re saving their staff from COVID. Then weirdly, I got a message from someone at Google and got into a conversation and I managed to get her to admit, because I’m not a very nice person necessarily. She’s like, you’ve only got three exact match keywords and I’m yeah because that’s exactly the thing that I want people to be searching for to find me. She’s like, Oh, you need many more in. She said you need more and you need to make them phrases. And I’m like, Okay, so which part of the phrase, what is pricing strategy do you want people to find me for? Like just pricing strategy because that’s going to be a million searches or what is or whatever is. So she admitted, no, that isn’t going to help you. So I said, How is having less relevant search terms going to actually increase the efficiency? She’s like, Oh, no, it won’t. [00:18:12][83.5]

[00:18:13] So yeah, but this isn’t about me and my issues. You’ll know that you’ll come to know that I’ve got a million issues. This is about you and your experience. [00:18:19][6.2]

Manpreet Singh: [00:18:20] So as you know, there’s only five questions. Question number one is, how are you qualified to talk to us about digital marketing? Question number two is who do you work with and how do you add value to their lives? Question number three is what is your recommendation for people who want to get better at digital marketing? Question number four is what should people read? Question number five is who can you throw under the bus who might endure or maybe even enjoy to have a conversation like this with me? Most people, well, everyone recommends at least two people. So it has to be at least two people that you throw under the bus. Okay. So question number. [00:18:54][34.1]

Manpreet Singh: [00:18:54] I’ve got loads. [00:18:54][0.3]

How are you qualified to talk to us about digital marketing?

Martin Henley: [00:18:56] Excellent, cool. So Manpreet, how are you qualified to talk to us about digital marketing? [00:19:03][7.6]

Manpreet Singh: [00:19:06] I guess it’s my industry experience with the clients I worked on. Most people will be surprised when I start rolling off some of the clients and campaigns that I’ve done, and just ever evolving to the point where I’ve now built a successful agency off the back of my knowledge and experience. I started a career at Dentsu Agents Group, working with Jet2 and working on a Jet2 account so everyone in the UK will know who Jet2 are. Successful, obviously, travel airline from Jet2 to working on brands like Interflora, RHS, through to Parkdean Holiday Homes through to, you know, The Car People. The list was endless. The View from the Shard, SeaBrooks Crisps and even support on the ASDA account on the odd occasion as well, everyone knows who ASDA is. From there I was headhunted and picked up by an agency called Inter Marketing who didn’t have a digital marketing department, although were about to establish their offices in London, and Amsterdam, and Sydney. Originally they were looking for someone to come in as a media person, but when they realised my digital expertise and what I could do, and how I was pitching and bringing clients in they brought me in to support on the Adidas account originally. So the Adidas account, which actually Dentsu had. There’s a second side of that account which is dealing with what you’ve got people. Whereas Adidas will give money to people like Fanatics and Intersport, DW Sport, all these other retailers, independents, to promote their product. Those companies have to use a partnered Adidas agency to get the creative from and do it and Inter Marketing also had the account and still have the account to do the shop fit out design layouts. If you go down to London now and go to the man Adidas store most that fit outs probably done by Inter Marketing, in terms of the design element of it. So we amplified the paid media side and it was very sports and retail driven and from there I helped bring in clients like Liverpool Football Club pitch to nutrition. I was going out there working with the financial, I was then building and built the entire team from Leeds, London, Amsterdam, Sydney. Getting clients doing stuff like uni days. If you’re a student in the UK and know uni days, I did the launch for that in Sydney and Melbourne, but doing it from the UK. [00:21:42][156.1]

Manpreet Singh: [00:21:42] So I’ve done international, national, localised accounts, clients from a multitude of sectors. If you pick a sector out at random, I can probably tell you a client I’ve worked with in that sector, what I did and how we did it from a digital perspective. Then circumstances led to that needing to work for myself because at that point I was working 18 hours a day, but I loved it. So to me it wasn’t really work and I setup Bobble. The challenges I faced and the elements of Bobble have led me to become more of an expert in that field. Obviously, being an award winning agency helps, but it’s the fact that I get invited to events like this podcast. I get asked to speak by Google and other people at different events. I wish I could do all of them, but I can’t because obviously you’ve got to give attention to your own agency and your own clients. It comes down to I just openly share my knowledge and insights that I’ve covered over time, but then I keep adding on to it with everything I learn. So learning from historically what we’ve done, what the industry has done, to what’s happening right now, but what’s coming in the future as well. [00:22:52][69.7]

Manpreet Singh: [00:22:53] The way I think, the way I see it, I see marketing as a game of chess. Most people in marketing are a particular piece on that chess board. So you’ve got your PPC specialists, that might be the bishop. You’ve got your SEO specialist, that might be the knight. I play the entire board. I know how every different piece works with each individual piece to win. I like to look at from a different the opposing point of view as well. So to me it’s like constantly playing a game of chess that you’re trying to win, but you can’t win it because the game is neverending. It’s an unlimited amount of pieces, an unlimited amount of pawns, because the whole thing changes. Something new will come in, so randomly you’ll have a new piece come on to the board. Then you have to adapt that to your existing strategy of what’s going on in the industry. So that’s how I view marketing in a sense. [00:23:47][54.3]

Manpreet Singh: [00:23:48] That’s the experience I bring in just as an overview of the work I’ve done even now, working with clients in the US, international level, local level, delivering amazing results, just some of the reviews and elements we get. My clients are happy to actively feature on our new website where we actually put in their details in the case study. We are happy and confident to the point that we are that good, contact our clients and ask thems yourselves instead of just having a review. [00:24:16][27.5]

Why marketing needs generalists.

Martin Henley: [00:24:17] Okay, cool. Okay. So a couple of things. The first thing is. I think people like you who are overseers, like what would they say if they were if they were being mean, they might call you a generalist. I don’t care. I also am a generalist. Not so much anymore. When I was running the agency, I knew how all the pieces should be working together and which pieces were likely to be useful in which situation, etc., etc.. I think that’s the expertise of a marketing agency. The trouble is if you niche into PPC, for example, because when I started my business, we started in telemarketing, in 2005. When I went to pitch someone, the answer always had to be telemarketing because that’s what we did. So it had to be telemarketing. It’s the same for PPC, as you say. Then the answer has to be PPC. If you are a, I don’t know, an email marketing agency, then the answer has to be email. So I think generalists are a really good idea because I actually think the quandary is, the riddle is, how do we get this working as effectively and as efficiently as possible. If you’re limited to just one tool or another tool, then you’re not really answering that question. You’re only answering the question, how do I get the queen to be as effective as possible on the board, rather than how do I get all of these pieces working together. So I applaud that. [00:25:47][89.6]

Martin Henley: [00:25:47] I’m not sure what the question is. [00:25:48][1.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:25:49] Well, I guess that most people might say I’m a generalist, but I will, I will I will refute that fact. Even now, I can go in, and part of the onboarding is I know exactly how that platform works. I know how accounts should be linked, I know the hacks to get access to. I can go in, and even to this day I can onboard a client, I know how to get access to that account from another agency and switch it over, let’s say it’s Google, how to audit a particular account. So if a client came to me now, and I remember I’ve got got a team to do this, I could do, probably still, a better job than my PPC team on doing a thorough, detailed Google audit. I can do detailed SEO audit myself. I can do anything within Facebook and LinkedIn myself. So I’m a generalist because I’ve spent that many years doing those platforms. [00:26:41][51.5]

Manpreet Singh: [00:26:42] The difference with me is, even though I probably shouldn’t, there are on a couple accounts where I actively get involved. Because that’s the only way you can stay in this industry, stay up to date. You’ve talked about earlier you got a mate who every six months goes in and it’s all changed and he’s like, where do I begin? That doesn’t happen with me. I know what’s going on. I know what updates are going on and I get involved in that. The my team tell me all the things that go going in and then I’ll actively go in and play around with it myself without the team knowing that I’m actually doing that. So I’ve put a lot of my time in to educate myself in terms of what’s going on, so that actually, even though I’ve got senior paid media managers and senior SEO managers, they still come to me with challenges that they might face because they know that I’ll be able to provide them with a recipe, I’ll be able to direct them in the right way. So generalists to a degree, yes, but I’d say that because I’ve done all these channels and I continue to do these individual channels I know better than most. That’s rare, because most people like to just specialise in one area like SEO or PPC. That’s not me, that’s never been me. I would get to annoyed and bored if I just did PPC. I’m one of those people, I have to know it all. That’s a difficult task, but I have to know it all, that’s that’s the game of chess we play every day. I need to know it all, I need to know everything that’s going on. Not like what my teams do, but I need to know what’s going on and the different, you know, channels and how they work and how they’re updating.What’s going on with the latest Google updates and talking, which makes it easier for them to talk about. That’s where the passion comes through because I know it and I’ve done the research and I spent the time actually implementing it constantly, as my team do. That’s where that passion and alignment comes to it, because I don’t have to do that, I could just read some stuff. I don’t have to do the actual implementation, but I choose to do the implementation because that’s what I love doing. That’s why I like doing because to me that it’s like I have actual practical experience, not just theoretical experience. [00:28:51][129.2]

Martin Henley: [00:28:52] 100%. And I think, I mean, generalist is kind of a dirty word, so I don’t mean to call you that. I’m going to challenge you. You’re a generalist. You know it all like you said, you know it all, that is a generalist. The difference between you as a most generalist is that, you know the detail and the intricacies of all of these platforms because of your experience and your investment in continuing to do it. The thing is, it’s like you have to be fanatical about this because if you’re not, these these platforms will rinse you. The thing that makes digital marketing so dynamic, I think, is that it’s kind of operated by four corporations, Facebook, Google, YouTube, which is Google. Twitter, maybe LinkedIn and some dweeb in these organisations decides they’re going to change something and it changes globally and it’s got no reflection on what the users need or want or take value from or whatever. I think it’s a rollercoaster, it absolutely is a rollercoaster. I’ve mainly trained since 2014 and I’m that idiot who will open the tool up in front of a roomful of 30 people to show them how it works. I’ve lost count of the amount of times that I’ve opened up a tool and I’m like, Yeah, well, I’m sorry I didn’t look like this yesterday. We’re going have to work it out together, because it’s that it is that dynamic. The point of that is it’s the difference between being a marketing manager and being a marketing doer. If you’re going to be a marketing manager, you need to be able to think strategically, you need to be able to identify your resources and attract resources, and you need to be able to apply those resources as effectively as possible. So I think we should reclaim you and I, let’s start right here and reclaim the general’s title. It’s not a dirty word. It’s it’s a requirement, we absolutely need it. [00:30:40][107.9]

Manpreet Singh: [00:30:48] I don’t know many of the people in Leeds, because they define their skillset into one area, maybe it’s paid media, or it’s search, or it’s analytics, or it’s social. I can compare myself and I’m the one person in a room, there’s loads of other people that specialist in their areas, I’ve got all their skill sets. If you think of it like a game or power up then I’m the Power Tsar, in that room does that make sense? That’s that’s how I see it. It’s like, you know, you can say like this what I mean, if we have to reclaim that term, generally, it’s because at the end of the day, when I walk into a room other people are probably specialists in one area, whereas I can cover that topic as well as the topic someone else wants to cover, and the topic someone else wants to cover. That is a rare artform, and that takes time, and passion, and skill, and investment to understand all that. That’s where companies, clients and people find value, because then it’s being able to see everything. It comes to that top level. When you think about it from an army structure the people at the top are the people who have done it and know how the different elements all play together. [00:32:01][72.8]

Martin Henley: [00:32:02] Yeah, well, I’m thinking exactly, army at the top of the army, somewhere near the top of the army there’s the general. I mean, general, generalist. I don’t know. I think we should reclaim it. [00:32:10][8.3]

Martin Henley: [00:32:10] I think there’s something in it. I get all militaristic, I throw soldiers around the room when I’m training and stuff and there will be a general, because I think that’s how you motivate British people, you elicit some kind of Dunkirk spirit and they all get excited. That’s what I think. [00:32:27][16.8]

Martin Henley: [00:32:28] What’s the other thing that I wanted to ask? [00:32:29][1.1]

What is it that large and successful brands need from digital marketing?

Martin Henley: [00:32:29] The other thing that I wanted to ask was about the kind of brands that you’re doing business ways. They’re very different from the kind of brands that I do when I do business where this kind of small, small, not even small and medium, probably small businesses or used to do business with. So their requirement was really obvious, they need sales, they need leads. So that was a very direct digital marketing approach. What is it that brands like Adidas or ASDA, what is it that they need from digital marketing? Surely everyone knows about them already. [00:33:05][35.9]

Manpreet Singh: [00:33:07] I’m obviously I don’t work with huge brands now, that’s my previous agency experience. It comes down to the key things. It comes down to three key things. They want sales revenue; they want leads, quotes, enquiries, so if it’s B2C they want conversion from a consumer; they want leads and enquiries from a business if its B2B; or they want to build their brand in an effective way and become experts in what they want to do. That’s the three things. That’s never going to change over time, no matter how many different channels or how digital changes, the core objective of any business is always be to drive revenue, to increase enquiries and to make as much noise as we can and build our brand out so people know that we’re the authority, we are the experts. If you look at Red Bull, they probably do all three. Red Bull build their brand to be the number one brand and drinks brand. Where they assign ourselves to sports insurance from everything from ethics to you look at, they’re all focussed about actually building relationships with partners, different industries. Right now they are dominant in Formula One, Red Bull, working with other partners is dominant in one of the most competitive motor sport industries there is. But, you know it as Red Bull Racing. What’s that got to do with drinks? Nothing. But that just shows that diversification, that all that does is drive revenue, or the amount of cans and products that they have in terms of selling drinks around the world. Most clients will want one or the other. It’s either conversions and brand or enquiries and brand. It’s always that mixture of two. So that’s never going to change no matter what industry you’re in, it’s always, always going to be the case that you fall into one of those three key pillars. [00:34:50][102.9]

Manpreet Singh: [00:34:51] Our clients vary. I like to focus on the digital sphere because we’re a digital marketing agency, I like to work with digital clients. One of our clients is Pan Intelligence, which is embedded analytics. Now most people listening or watching will be like what the hell is that? You don’t realise power BI ia an embedded analytics, it’s a platform tool. You’ve got Site Sense and Sielefin, as key partners and competitors in the market, and Pan Intelligence is a challenger to that market. I love working with those kind of brands because it’s a digital solution, it’s a digital software, and that’s not going anywhere in the next ten, fifteen years in terms of where that industry stands. So it’s longevity in terms of working with clients so you can work with them long term. [00:35:29][37.7]

Who do you do business with, how do you add value to their lives?

Manpreet Singh: [00:35:30] The odds of you picking up an Adidas, or ASDA, or a Red Bull as a client is very difficult. You’ve got to rely on a lot of luck. Sometimes it’s who you know, not what you know. As well in the industry, as you know, when you’re building relationships, people buy into people as much as they buy into the business. So it’s hard to get into those kind of brands. You’ve got to build your authority as an agency to do that. Most of my clients, I try to focus on are B2B within the digital tech industry. We have clients in the education sector, we have clients in the e-commerce selling beds across the UK, furniture. We have clients that do marble worktops which are more B2B, higher end customers, School and New York Times for example, you know C Football Leadership Institute, to Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Through to Variant based in the US, Hoarding Clean Up our client in the US that features on the Hoarders Show. So it’s diversified. I think it might have been Gareth Healey who recommended me on this podcast probably. [00:36:41][71.0]

Martin Henley: [00:36:42] It was Gareth yeah. [00:36:42][0.1]

Manpreet Singh: [00:36:42] He talks about having a niche and an agency that focuses on a specific element. I take on 50% of what Gareth says. We try to focus on the digital sphere, whether that’s digital products that you sell B2B or B2C, or digital software tech but I want to build something different from what everyone else has. We have a philosophy, a way of doing things in marketing, that model can be taken to any business out there in the world, and it can be applied and it will deliver results. That’s a uniqueness, that’s a USP that’s completely different. [00:37:16][34.1]

Martin Henley: [00:37:18] Okay. 100%. So you Manpreet are busy answering question number two and I haven’t even told you that you’re qualified to talk to us yet. [00:37:26][7.5]

Manpreet Singh: [00:37:28] Sorry. [00:37:28][0.0]

Martin Henley: [00:37:28] It’s all right. I agree with you. I think this thing about being a general, that’s a general rather than generalist, and this thing about having something that applies to most businesses is really relevant. I was speaking to Abigail Dixon, her thing went out recently. She also doesn’t niche because she says there is real value, you might achieve, you might do something in an industry that hasn’t even been thought of in another industry. If you take it to that industry, it can work as effectively. I think if we’re as general as we are, I admitted a long time ago, I now work in the principles of marketing and how you apply those to digital. That’s kind of where I have gone to because I haven’t got the energy to be on these tools. I haven’t got the mental capacity to be in these tools and knowing them all anymore. I just haven’t. There will come a time where you won’t have either, but maybe you’ll have an eye implant at that stage and you might be able to just bolt on like the extra bits you need to do that. The point is, I think it is valid. I think if you can attract all of those different kinds of companies. Then the two pieces are really understanding digital marketing, for instance, having an understanding of the value that you drive and the industry that you’re working in their instance, and you can bring those two together, then that’s the ingredients that you need. So I’m just agreeing with you. [00:38:58][89.9]

How do young agencies go about attracting recognisable brands as clients?

Martin Henley: [00:39:00] The question I was going to ask, but you kind of already answered it, is it’s too difficult, is how do you attract those kinds of clients the Adidas’s those kinds of brands you’re just saying, it’s very hard. [00:39:11][11.6]

Manpreet Singh: [00:39:13] It’s not, it’s not hard, and it’s not going to be impossible for us. We have the same ambition over the next two or three years to bring on what we call a blue chip. Not to say our clients aren’t blue chip, because we work with City Football Leadership Institute, and that’s City Football Group. You know, we work with School of New York Times, everyone knows who the New York Times are. So we have a recognisable brands element and even some of the clients we’re talking to, I’m just on the verge of, obviously I can’t say because, obviously, not until they’re signed off on an engagement with us, highly recognisable brands. I’ve done collaborations with Disney and Logan Paul and elements like that. So it’s doable but that can’t happen at the start of an agency life because you’re starting out, you’re trying to find out who you are, where you fit with all the thousands of other agencies in the UK, you have to build your brand presence. We have, over time, built an authority to be best digital agency in Leeds for two years in a row, hopefully three years next year. We want to keep that record going and that’s what comes from building and working with SME businesses; building that reputation; making so much noise out there; collaborating and building relationships with people like Gareth; attending podcasts like yourselves; running our own podcast; being at the forefront of education and that’s how you attract them. [00:40:42][88.6]

Manpreet Singh: [00:40:43] I believe the best way to attract them is to educate because if you’re, and we go back to the accountancy, if you work for yourself and your freelancing and you’re looking at doing self assessment returns and we start Googling something like what’s the deadline to do a return? HMRC is more likely going to be the number one response, but the response below that will most likely be something like EY or KPMG. One of the big four websites will feature that and that’s where you will get your knowledge and insight from. So ideally, once they’re ready to convert, they’re going to go to the brand or the company they got the best response from. The meeting I had earlier this week came from me doing a talk and given an insight. At a previous event I stood up and I got the whole audience of 120 MDs and CEOs and I said, Can you summarise your product or service in four key words? Raise your hands up if you can, obviously everyone’s going to raise their hands because they can summarise the product in their company in four key words. I said so if I was to pick anyone out of the crowd, how many of them would become confident they’d be on page one of Google? All the hands started going down. I picked one out and he said on a LinkedIn training for businesses so I got my phone now and I typed in LinkedIn training for businesses. I’m in Leeds. He wasn’t on page one. I got everybody else to get the phone out and search PPC agency Leeds, which is one of the services we offer, we are position one on Google. That’s not to brag, but that’s basically when people are searching for services, if you want to attract the big brands, you’ve got to be an authority and you’ve got to be out there saying we know what we’re doing. [00:42:29][106.5]

Martin Henley: [00:42:30] Yes. [00:42:30][0.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:42:31] At the end of the day when an SEO client comes to me and I’m competing against someone else, I SEO and I want to attract Adidias I’m going to say, well the agency you’re using for SEO, do they even rank number one on Google or on page one of Google for the services they’re preaching to you, practise what you preach. What I find is when as we’re scaling up and going for bigger accounts is it’s the education, values, that expertise and proven track record that we practise what we preach as well as implement it for the clients and have the case study. So you can but it takes time. You’ve got to nurture it and as your brand as an agency grows, you just naturally attract bigger accounts that will monitor you and will eventually say, You know what, now we’re ready to go. Actually, I like the content from Manny and Bobble because they’re very, very active and elements like that, and that’s where it comes from. [00:43:21][50.7]

The benefit of marketing agencies actually marketing themselves.

Martin Henley: [00:43:23] Cool and while we’re bragging, because we are. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I do know why, because I really enjoyed it and I was free to do it exactly the way I wanted to, we always, as a company invested in our marketing. So there was a post out from Gareth today saying that he has stand out and stand still, and stand out agencies consistently do their marketing and stand still agencies do it when they need to do it, etc., etc. We always did it and very often people would come to us and they would say, We want marketing like yours, which was brilliant because then we know how to do that stuff. We’ve done it already, you know? So I always really enjoyed that. At the nadir of my business speaking career we were on a mission because the URL is Effective Marketing Company in the old days, if you had the URL, you were on your way. We very quickly went to top effective marketing company, then effective marketing and eventually marketing company, so we did quite well out of that. We got on a mission at one point to be top. We wanted to be the most effective website on Google. So we were trying to rank for the word effective. We got up to number three. So I was delivering a talk one day and I said, and if you Google the word effective, you will know that we are the third most effective website on Google. I got gigs from that. Agencies don’t do it, they just don’t do their own marketing. It’s like eating your own dogfood. So here’s the way I see the world now. People don’t respect marketing. Marketing agencies don’t respect marketing because they don’t do it. So how on earth can you engage with a marketing agency that doesn’t invest in and doesn’t do their own marketing and doesn’t believe in marketing. That’s the message I get. [00:45:09][106.4]

Manpreet Singh: [00:45:13] What I’m doing is getting other people to take note of what they’re doing. [00:45:17][3.9]

Martin Henley: [00:45:18] Yeah. [00:45:18][0.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:45:18] We have Lead Forensics and I’m going to do a post about this on LinkedIn and I’ll tag you in. I’ve just got the data through from lead forensics of the last 12 months of a breakdown of my industry who’s been going to our website that we can track. 27% or 28% of it is other marketing agencies and I know who they are. So I’m going to do a tag and I’m going to thank them all almost like an Oscar speech. I’m going to say this and show the date and say over the last 12 months, 28% of our entire traffic that we’ve been able to track has been other agencies looking at these fundamental key pages. Why? Because we do really well for what we do. I want to thank them all saying, you’re welcome. Hopefully you’re learning something from us. That is a bit egotistic and that is a bit like playing a bit of devil’s advocate, but I just like doing that, because it’s fun. That will create noise, that might ruffle a few feathers but I don’t care. I always said that I don’t care what other agencies do, I want to know what is Bobble doing. [00:46:25][67.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:46:26] I like the Apple approach. There’s a great story about Apple when someone went up to Apple, or one of the chief engineers, designers in Apple said, have you seen this new product by Microsoft. It does this and it goes, it probably does and he goes, Oh, it’s this price, which is good value, oh it probably is, and it’s better than this and he goes well, good on them if it is. Then the same engineer was like we’ll hopefully bring out product that is good for our users and something. They didn’t care what Microsoft were doing, they didn’t care what anyone else was doing. They cared more about, what does Apple stand for? What does it know about customers? It wants to be the industry authority, they want to be the example. They want to be leading the industry and that’s what I want to be in Leeds. I want Bobble to be the standard in terms of the like. I don’t really care about all these bigger agencies, smaller agencies, like for like agencies. I’d say I don’t have competition because I really don’t care what they do. If they copy us great, fantastic, you’re welcome. If they do other things, I don’t go on their website to see what they’re doing that I need to do. I know they go on my website to see what I’m doing because I’m the one who’s getting the rankings. [00:47:33][67.3]

Martin Henley: [00:47:34] Yeah. [00:47:34][0.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:47:35] So I want to be the one saying, well, I don’t really care what anyone else does. We’re doing our own thing. We’re going to continue to do our own thing and great if someone else does something better, congratulations to them. That doesn’t mean we’re going to shift our approach. We’re going to continue to doing our thing because we might come out with something better later on. That’s how I try to view it. A lot of other agencies neglect it, they rely on their brand, rely on word of mouth. Then I say a lot people neglect that digital word of mouth it’s all good having that agency reputation but a lot of people don’t know about even some of the bigger agencies in the world. You know the brands, if I went to someone and said, Do you know this brand Adidas? then I ask, Well, do you know which agency manages that? They will know the brand, know the campaign, they won’t know the agency. Yeah. That’s the case for every agency out there. So it comes down to the fact that you’ve got to do your own thing and stand out. To me, it’s music to my ears if they’re not doing that, great, because I’ll take that space. Thank you very much. [00:48:40][64.7]

Martin Henley: [00:48:40] Yes and I think you’re right but the thing is, it’s like if I’m right, I normally am, if I’m right, the businesses don’t understand what marketing is and why they have to do it why would another business that doesn’t appear to know what marketing is and why they should do it, convince them of that? That’s just that’s insane to me. [00:49:03][22.1]

Martin Henley: [00:49:03] Just to draw a line under the general or the generalist thing, if you take SEO, SEO can’t stand alone. You can’t do 20% of SEO if you’re not in corporates incorporating email and social and ads. And, you know, you can’t you just can’t do it anymore. So I think the world needs you as a general. That’s the last thing I wanted to say about that. Okay. [00:49:24][20.3]

What is it that you do for your customers?

Martin Henley: [00:49:24] So you’ve kind of given us an indication of who you work with. The question is, how do you add value to their lives? What what is it that these businesses need from you and and how do you go about delivering it? [00:49:35][10.6]

Manpreet Singh: [00:49:37] Fundamentally, when it comes down to us, that is our strategy. A lot of feedback that we get and the only way you can say you add value is by what your clients actually say about you when you’re speaking with them, when they come back to you. The biggest value our clients get back to us is the clear breakdown in digital strategy. Now, what people might think is what do they mean by digital strategy. The value we add is because all our strategy is free and complimentary, comes hand-in-hand with the services we offer. That doesn’t mean that anyone who comes to my door is going to get a free digital marketing strategy, we cherry pick who we do it for, if it fits within who we are as an agency. That knowledge and the value a client gets is a full breakdown of where they sit within the competitive space, within the industry. That’s the first thing we do, we look at them, the industry, the competitors and they tell us who they are and I’ll tell you why we ask for the competitors as well. So we get a full idea of where they sit where they compare, because there’s so many tools out there that allow us to understand what their competitors are doing, what keywords they are bidding on, what kind of ads they run across social media, how well they rank for particular keywords, what content does well for them, what kind of tone of voice they have. That’s really valuable because they’re the ones they are competing for business with, or leads, or revenue or a brand share, or voice online. [00:50:59][82.8]

Manpreet Singh: [00:51:00] Then we break down who their audiences are. So who is your ideal customer? If it’s B2C or B2B, what’s their job title? How many employees? What’s the revenue of that? We break that down, from that we understand that audiences’ media consumption, their online media behaviour at this point in time, a mobile, If it’s social channels, which social channels is it LinkedIn? Is it Meta? If it is LinkedIn what kind of content are there consuming? What influences that purchase decision behaviour? Online reviews? Do they spend time on Google etc. What websites are they visiting and what kind of brands do they associate themselves with? What kind of app are they using. Everything we want to know about them, we know about them through our partner GWI Web Index. From that, we create a marketing funnel, digital marketing funnel. From here we identify the channels based on what we know about where you sit in the competitive landscape to actually what we know about your audiences in terms of this is what’s going to drive awareness and good quality traffic to the website – top of the funnel. Bottom of the funnel here’s what we’re going to do to ensure through retargeting, on page SEO or the tactics to drive the end call to action or that conversion or lead or whatever is acceptable in terms of that element. [00:52:14][73.3]

Manpreet Singh: [00:52:14] Then we tell them how to do it by channel. So if it’s SEO, or LinkedIn or YouTube, they are the three channels we recommend. Because we’re an agile marketing agency within the first two or three months, we know what’s working and what’s not working. So what they see is not an equal spend on everything. They’ll see that more efforts going into SEO because it’s driving better results and better ROI. So the element comes down to the data, it’s the optimisation. The first value comes from the strategy. The second value comes from the analytics. So if you notice on our website, our services are strategy, SEO, PPC, paid social, video display and analytics. They don’t pay for analytics and strategy that comes as part of the value we offer as an agency. They pay for us managing the services in between. The analytics, what our clients love is that dashboard breaks down every channel, every insight from each different platforms, whether it’s SEMrush, Google Analytics, Meta, LinkedIn and Google ads, the finite amount of data that we break down and say, right, here’s what you spending per day, here’s where your results are coming from, here’s what you CPA is, here’s your user journey on your website, here is where people are dropping off. The recommendations and the insights they get, realises that actually they get a full overview of how effective the marketing budget is being and what’s driving ROI and what’s not driving ROI. So it’s that data performance and analytics, and that’s because we have our own USP, an internal software solution. So most people invest in stuff like Adzooma and third party tools. Our value comes in, it’s all in-house. So we create our own optimisation guide in terms of daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and quarterly checks across individual channels as a bare minimum of what we need to do to keep those accounts optimised. [00:54:03][108.9]

Manpreet Singh: [00:54:04] We have our own optimisation score that way a client can see exactly what we do, how we do it and what we’ve been doing. So there’s never an issue with what we spend in budget, drop off in conversion rate, or an increase in cost of acquisition, cost per sale, cost per lead, etc. It’s fully monitored and optimised for all our clients. On top of that is that we pay external individual freelancers, experts, ex-Google people to come in and audit us. To make sure we’re not missing anything. So it’s the length and the depth and the data that we go into, that value, that basically puts on a plate that says, right, here’s the data, and we make it easy to digest and easy to understand for our clients. That’s what the value is, because we take on all that burden of understanding and doing all the hard work, the slog, we just provide it. You know, I could go on my desk and say, here it is served on a plate for you. Easy for them to digest, easy for them to eat, easy to read, to make practical decisions on the business side of things. So that was a lot, but hopefully that helps. [00:55:09][65.3]

The value of digital marketing that digital marketing agencies don’t bother to deliver.

Martin Henley: [00:55:10] That was a lot. It’s genius, man and I’ll tell you why is because the value of digital marketing is that transparency, the data is the value of digital marketing. Digital marketing agencies aren’t delivering that. You know they’re not. The reason it’s genius is because I always wanted to get involved at the strategy level, because for me, strategy is 70% of the value. The issue with that, as a marketing agency, I always found nobody wants to buy strategy. They always want to buy tactics. They always want to buy getting stuff done. So also we used to end up bundling in the strategy because people didn’t want to sit around talking to marketing people for days on end, trying to work out what was going on is kind of the thing I think. So, yeah, that’s genius. The value is that, you know what keeps, I don’t know if you’re aware, I don’t even know if it’s still true but I still tell people all the time. They did a survey at some point in history, since digital marketing was a thing, the average lifespan of a digital marketing customer in London supposedly is three months, and it frazzleds my mind that that might still be true. I should probably take the time to Google it and see if it’s still true. But it doesn’t surprise me at all because digital marketing agencies aren’t delivering the value of digital marketing, which is you get a sense of what the opportunity looks like on the way in and what it will take to realise it and you get constant feedback throughout. So there’s really, like you said, marketing is a cost, it’s also a risk but what digital marketing does is it mitigates a large percentage of that risk because of it’s transparency, because of the data. And then digital marketing agencies don’t even bother to do like the benefit of these two marketing phrases. My mind really does. No. [00:57:03][112.8]

Manpreet Singh: [00:57:04] No, you’re right. One thing we also do is we don’t do long term contracts. It’s rolling thirty days. I’m happy to admit that, because I’m not scared of someone coming in and poaching a client because I know my client is not going to leave. If they want to leave, just got to give us 30 days notice, that keeps us on edge. The value of that is, and my clients ask why do we do that why do we do that, it gives them edge. Also the time that goes into developing that strategy takes days, it takes a long time, it’s not something we turn around. Yeah, there’s templates, elements that we cover off, but each one is unique to that industry of that particular client. But if they turn around and say, Well, thanks, but no thanks, I’ve got five other competitors that I’ve already done the groundwork of research and put that into the hands of my business development director. There’s five more, go find five others. [00:57:51][47.7]

Martin Henley: [00:57:52] Yes. [00:57:52][0.0]

Manpreet Singh: [00:57:53] Because we’ve done the research and it makes it easy to sell because then I say we’ve already done the ground, we talked to the competitors, they didn’t want to take it on board, but we can guarantee you X, Y or Z because we have the tool, we have the roadmap. Here’s what we know about them we are not under no contract, not to share any information on that. Our strategy is very, very clear, it’s our strategy we own it. You can have access to it, you can have the blueprint to it, but we’re the experts that can deliver on it and basically attest to it. That’s what we do. We do digestible elements. [00:58:23][29.5]

How to maintain customer relationships and retain digital marketing agency clients.

Manpreet Singh: [00:58:24] I don’t think I’ve ever had a client leave after three months. I come up to my recollection only a handful of times have clients given us notice. It’s always because they’ve been bought out by someone bigger who already has an agency or they take it in-house. Our viewpoint is different, this is where clients, and a couple have come back to us, we make that transfer process so easy like, okay, well what can we do to help? Go and take it in-house, make sure you got the right team, make sure they’ve got that. This is what we’ll do, full handover and even though we’re done and the contracts ended, I say we’re still available for the next two or three months. I’d say for the next month Keep us on your accounts. If you have any technical queries, a question we can jump on a call with you, we’ll show you how to do these kind of things. Nobody does that, nobody’s willing to do that because it takes time. It’s resource element things. That’s why I said it’s our values and our ethics as an agency that makes a difference and that’s why I want to be the benchmark, because that’s how you should treat clients, whether they leave you or they come on board with you, you want to leave a lasting good impression as opposed to, you know … we want the same impression when they come on board and leave the same impression, when they, if they if they ever choose to leave or take things in-house. [00:59:37][73.4]

Manpreet Singh: [00:59:39] We just recently had a client come through to us that says they’ve got two new employees and they want us to do their PPC, again found us by typing and PPC Agency Leeds. Yeah, but we want it to come in-house after twelve montsh. Right yeah, thats fine. But all the other agencies agencies said no, I went not a problem with. Here’s a 12 month plan. Here’s what we’ll do and here’s what we’ll do after 12 months, we reduce it so all we’re doing is consultancy. So basically you’ve got access to the team for training, support, advice, audits. And what we’ll do is we’ll do an audit every month and give feedback to your team. So they have what we call an independent view to make sure they’re keeping on top of it. We still are going to be client after 12 months, even though they’re going to take it inhouse, but it just changes in terms of our relationship with them. [01:00:25][46.7]

Martin Henley: [01:00:26] Yeah, yeah. [01:00:26][0.2]

Manpreet Singh: [01:00:26] I bet if they ever want to do something new or expand, they’re always going to come to us as a trusted source. That’s how you create longevity. It’s all about building relationships. It’s what I always say, if it works for the client, it works for us. [01:00:41][14.1]

Martin Henley: [01:00:42] That is marketing. Marketing is working out what it is that the market needs and supplying that thing and adding value and evidencing the value. You know, I mean, it’s just the thing is like win the client, add value. I think that the danger of giving people a strategy is that they will steal it and give it to another agency to implement. The thing is, I think even giving them it, even if they implement it themselves, there’s this ego that goes on where they don’t want to do it the way the data suggests it needs to be done. They want to do it the way they want to do it. And if they take it to an agency, their ego will be such that they won’t want to do it the way the data suggests. There is this thread of anti-digital marketing sentiment that runs through digital marketing. [01:01:29][47.5]

Martin Henley: [01:01:31] I don’t know why people think that marketing is such a vague thing that they can just do it however they like. You know, they wouldn’t run their accounts like that. They wouldn’t run their production like that. But when it comes to marketing, they want to do it. [01:01:42][11.4]

[01:01:43] Okay, we’re running out of time. We’ve only got 6 minutes left and we’ve only answered two questions. I’m happy to tell you. I think you’re eminently qualified to talk to us about digital marketing. Thank you. And it sounds to me like you’re offering huge value to your clients, so thank you for that. [01:01:55][12.4]

What is your recommendation for people who want to get better at digital marketing?

Martin Henley: [01:01:56] Question number three, just in like a minute or two, so we can put this on TikTok. What is your recommendation for people who want to get better at digital marketing? [01:02:05][8.9]

Manpreet Singh: [01:02:08] Two things. Understand who your ideal customer is, without knowing your customer, you don’t know basically who your … It’s the most fundamental element. If your customers older, they’re going to react to different types of content, different kind of messaging. So understanding your audience is the most important element. And a lot of people that realise that the data is already there. Look at Google Analytics, look at people who have already converted or existing clients. Look at their job titles, the industries, and really, really break down on profile who your customers are. It’s not just one profile. It can be multiple profiles. From that you then know who they are, you need to start developing, which is obviously the second most important thing, is strategy. [01:02:51][42.9]

Manpreet Singh: [01:02:52] Without strategy, there’s no fucking point. Pardon of my language. I always say that, which is why we offer it. Without a strategy you’re basically shooting an arrow in the dark, you know, what’s the point of that? It’s going to be a waste of money. It’s going to waste of resources. And then in the end, what always happens oh we tried and it didn’t work. No, you didn’t do it right. You tried and it didn’t work because it didn’t do right is as simple as that. You didn’t follow the process. You didn’t know who your audience is and you didn’t create strategy around it. By knowing your audience and creating a strategy around it, then you can start tailoring what messaging, understand where do they come from by channel, you know are they coming from organic, social, from Google, social media, how do they interact with your brand, how do they find out and then you can tailor your messaging, and your video, and content around that. You know, do these people want guides, or insights or informational booklets from websites. [01:03:43][51.4]

Manpreet Singh: [01:03:44] Understand your audience, develop a strategy and finally implement and test. It’s not going to work out all the time but if you know your audience and build a strategy around it, you’ve done 70 to 80% of the work. The final 20, 25% is testing, learning, taking the data and understanding what to do. I always say start with the fundamentals. You know, you’re not going to build, you know, a house without any foundations and that’s what people do. And that’s why it fails. And the project fails is that understand their audience, they don’t create a strategy which allows them to play with the implementation and be agile. [01:04:20][36.2]

Manpreet Singh: [01:04:22] 100%. I agree with that. I think you went over the 2 minutes. Tick tock will be denied that brilliant information just too long. Okay. [01:04:31][9.7]

What should people read?

Martin Henley: [01:04:32] What should people read? Question number four. [01:04:33][1.4]

Manpreet Singh: [01:04:35] Um. I spent a lot of time on specialist websites. So, like, Analytics Mania, I love this website Analytics Manie. So for anyone who is struggling with like the technical side of Google, or Facebook, or Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics or GA4, get yourself on Analytics Mania. The content that comes through my emails on that one is absolutely fantastic, very insightful, great guides of how to implement tracking. That is one of the biggest challenges within a lot of these platforms is with iOS 14 updates and Google changes, how do you track every thing on mobile? Analytics Mania is probably my number one, top three actually, elements I go to read. [01:05:22][46.5]

Manpreet Singh: [01:05:22] I do other things as I follow a lot of other podcasts as well, specific marketing ones from the more generic ones. But again, it’s up to you what you kind of really follow and listen to. I kind of tend to follow more the more local regional podcast from other agencies than anything else, because it’s always insightful and I always read a lot of content from media suppliers because it’s very, very useful. Media suppliers, like what comes up from Google, what comes out from Facebook, what comes out from companies like Modor 25, or suppliers that we work with like GWI, the darta that they come out with, audience insights. The platforms we partner with, I’m always reading their blogs and content because they’ll always talk about the latest updates of performance Max Campaigns, latest updates with SEO exceptions. You’d be surprised how many there is. [01:06:15][52.3]

Manpreet Singh: [01:06:15] And the final one is if I want to know something about YouTube it. I don’t Google, I YouTube because I want to watch a video on it and I want to see how they do it. I prefer to YouTube something as opposed to Google something, which sounds weird, but if you’re struggling on even basic things like Excel and you YouTube it, someone has the answer, has created a video tutorial on it. I always say I learn better from visual and actually doing things. It depends on who you are. I think YouTube is probably the most untapped resource of things, not just read to understand what the hell is going on and how to do it. [01:06:52][36.9]

Martin Henley: [01:06:53] And I think you’re right. If you’re going to be successful in this industry, you have to immerse yourself in it. You have to be in it all day, every day. You have to have it coming in to your inbox, you know, because there’s so much to it. I think I’m where you are, I will go to YouTube before I go to Google these days. So, yeah, 100%. Okay, good. [01:07:12][18.5]

How have you found this experience of appearing on the Talk Marketing show?

Martin Henley: [01:07:12] Question number five, how have you found this experience Manpreet? [01:07:16][4.1]

Manpreet Singh: [01:07:19] Oh, this has been great. I don’t where the time has gone. It’s been great talking about a lot of things and indepth. I’ve really enjoyed myself. I’m actually glad Gareth recommended me now. I think it was because I’m an advocate on education and market education, so any opportunity to share some insights and help some woman offer some value to somebody, even if it’s to their podcast to me is the key thing. And that’s what the industry should do more of 100%. [01:07:47][28.4]

Martin Henley: [01:07:48] Okay, good. So I just wanted to check in because the next thing I’m going to ask you to do is throw a couple of people under the bus who you think might also be willing to have a conversation with me like this. [01:07:59][11.4]

Who can you introduce us to that might endure or maybe even enjoy to have a conversation like this with me?

Martin Henley: [01:08:00] So do you have people in mind that you think, and it would need to be people that you can introduce me to and you do like a LinkedIn type of introduction like Gareth did for us. [01:08:10][9.8]

Manpreet Singh: [01:08:14] Yeah, definitely. Well, one of my closest mates also runs her own agency, Claire Daniels, a Tria Media. She’s featured quite a lot in the news recently because they’re one of the few agencies trying the four day week as well. She really focuses on content for the web, has a good specialism, I think is actually untapped genius and a natural when it comes to marketing, Claire Daniels. [01:08:39][25.1]

Manpreet Singh: [01:08:41] I would probably recommend, probably Fiona from FB Comms. When it comes to social media she is, the content I see from her is unreal on LinkedIn. As a social media expert her agency is amazing. She’s actually going to feature on one of our podcasts as well, but she is one of the few people when I go online and I’ve seen the content LinkedIn, that’s absolutely fantastic. [01:09:08][27.1]

Manpreet Singh: [01:09:10] And then I’ll give a shout out to one more. If one of those to drop off because they are quite busy, is Demi Ashby, who’s a freelance writer. Her content of late has been fantastic. She’s a copywriter, specialist. Her content on TikTok is amazing. She’s currently helping us redo our tone of voice and content on our website. So they’re the three I recommend and ironically all three are female to show you the dominance of females in digital marketing right now. [01:09:40][29.3]

Martin Henley: [01:09:40] That’s brilliant and I didn’t even need to comment that they were female. Thank you so much for that. It really does help I think I do want to speak to that. The trouble is, I think because I’m a guy I know mainly guys, I mean, so I think the balance isn’t right but you’ve put us in the right direction again. Thank you very much. I know you have to run, man. So what we’ll do very quickly is we’ll say goodbye now for the benefit of anyone who’s still watching. Well done. If you are still watching like, subscribe, comment, share etc., etc.. So we’ll say goodbye now for those people and then I’ll stop recording and we’ll say goodbye like normal human beings. Is that cool? [01:10:14][34.1]

Martin Henley: [01:10:16] Yeah, that’s cool. [01:10:16][0.4]

Martin Henley: [01:10:17] I have thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, man. Thank you so much for your time. [01:10:20][3.4]

Martin Henley: [01:10:22] No, honestly. Thank you for inviting me and thanks to Gareth for recommending me. I hope everyone who’s been listening has had some value from it. [01:10:28][5.9]

Martin Henley: [01:10:28] I’m sure they would have done. You’ve said some brilliant things, man. Thank you so much. [01:10:28][0.0]

WHAT DO YOU THINK?