Digital Marketing From The Coalface

Well the after party following episide 150 went on, quite literally, for seconds which meant recording this episode was all a bit of a blur. Needless to say Alex rants about AI, in a different way, and Dave does his best to calm him down by taking the p**s.

The big deal with some digital marketing is it's ability to stalk the right audience and only pop up to annoy them, and nobody else. But it's broken and gets it spectacularly wrong. There's also a lot of self congratulatory drivel with this being Episode 150.

Alex tells us about how someone with whom he'd had several conversations and had a meeting on the calendar with them that day sent him a "Hey, we think you're a good fit for what we're selling" message. Such an abysmal fail. We obviously talk about other stuff as well.

Ever had service that felt like the company providing it just couldn't be arsed? We discuss that in this episode. We also thank super fan Amy AGAIN, and recommend the best curry you can have delivered to your house anywhere in the UK, no really, it's simply the best.

Marketing, messaging and signalling are all important aspects of your business. But with digital marketing it's easy to send out all the wrong signals. Also, Dave gets all excited about getting FTTP broadband and super fan Amy gets a namecheck!

As marketing becomes ever more embedded in AI and data are we getting to the point where people think that being able to use the tools is the clever bit? Because it isn't. We also discuss digital stalking and being bombarded with emails from people who want to do all our work for us.

In this episode, ALEX and Dave discuss dishonesty in business (and politics) and get into why playing it safe with your marketing might not be the smartest approach. We also discussed inauthenticity and finished off with a little anecdote about our local council phoning it in.

This week we have a rather nice time discussing faking it till you make it - or not - gated content and why people are so angry all the time. We also wander off and discuss the Chancellors' CV, more fake it till you make it, and whatever else takes our fancy.

It still surprises us how many great businesses are floundering with or even failing to engage with the opportunities presented online. We discuss that as well as the usual politician bashing and drivel.

This week Julie Mitchell-Mehta joins Dave for a chat about digital marketing stuff that's amused us, bemused us and annoyed us. There's the usual unrelated chatter and, thankfully, no Alex.

Marketing seems to attract self proclaimed gurus who spout utter nonsense. Well there's none of that here with these two clueless idiots.

In our first episiode of 2025 we talk about playing it safe, being like all the rest and then just wang on about all sorts of things. In other words, it's more inane drivel from Alex and Dave.

In our final stream of consciousness of 2024, we talk about Google struggling, Alex being rubbish at quizzes and more other stuff than is good for us.

In this episode, we talk about inbound marketing, awful HubSpot sales reps, fantastic HubSpot software, politics and anything else that came into our tiny little heads. Vive La difference!

Rory Sutherland said that we choose certain brands, not because we think they're the best, but because we think they probably won't be sh*t. We loved this idea and talk about it and plenty of other things - some of them marketing related - in this episode of the show. We also tackled a major operational risk for tech companies: agency vendor lock-in. Discover why letting an agency build your site...

This episode is excellent and gives a (mostly) non-technical overview of the work of some of our dev team. We talk about things such as being given third-party designs to work with and some of the challenges the devs face in their day-to-day endeavours to create the outcomes our clients need.

Google perhaps means well, but their Ads Platform is now so complex, that following their advice will almost guarantee your bank account empties while your sales pipeline also remains empty. Anyway, Alex has got things to say about that. We also discussed the pressure agencies are under to deliver, why not assigning enough budget is a false economy, AI - obviously oh and our journey towards BCorp...

We got it wrong and an engagement went badly. In this episode we unpick that and discuss why hiring a specialist then telling them what to do is dumb. We also unpick a "12 Steps" type SEO help list we were sent and turn it into plain English.

In this episode, we discuss how easy it is to get online marketing wrong and how to avoid doing that. We also, as usual, wander off into politics and other inane nonsense. If you like listening to Alex and Dave make it up as they go, this is for you. If not, go metal detecting or something.

I some niches it's hard to find meaningful data to help with your content marketing initiatives. It's some thing we come across and in this episode, alongside the usual drivel, we discuss the techniques we deploy. It's way more enjoyable than this p**s poor introduction makes it sound.

This week, amoung all the usual drivel, we discuss the tendency for businesses to create what amounts to digital landfill in their desperate attempt to create "useful content". Also, Dave tells us why he's feeling down in the dumps and Alex, for once, rocks up semi-prepared, with actual notes.

Good agencies really want, and I mean REALLY want, the work they do for you to add tangible value. They want the content they create to rank in searches, they want the videos they produce to pursuade strangers to do business with you, and they want the creative work they do to present the best possible version of your organisation. If you don't think your agency are doing this, stop wasting their...

This week we're chatting about what a pain it can be to inherit an awful website and digital footprint and have to make do and mend rather than start over and do it properly. We also talk about customer relationship management systems and why they are so great.

Are you overpaying for bloated marketing software to track your ROI? In this episode, we outline the exact, completely free data stack every B2B tech leader should be using: Google Tag Manager, GA4, Search Console, and Looker Studio . We dive into the operational challenges tech service providers face when trying to accurately price complex, open-ended software bug fixes without penalising their o...

We often speak to clients who think they know what they need, but on close inspection don't. We discuss ways to avoid wasting time trying to create a brief when you're unsure what you need. We also discuss Google Search Console data and why it's so wrong - but still useful.