Podcast - Andy Lambert on Social 3.0 and Marketing Your Agency

PODCAST: 46:09 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Andy Lambert

In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Andy Lambert of ContentCal. Andy is one of the founding team and director of growth at ContentCal. From starting out as an agency and then launching their software product in 2017, ContentCal is now used by over 40,000 businesses in over 140 countries. In December 2021, ContentCal was acquired by Adobe.

Robert and Andy talk about Andy’s new book ‘Social 3.0: How forward-thinking B2B’s can unleash the power of social media.’ Plus Andy gives his insight into the journey of building and selling ContentCal.

To purchase a copy of Social 3.0 Click Here.

Transcription:

Intro  00:05

In this guide to talks Robert talks to Andy Lambert ContentCal. And he's one of the founding team and director of growth at ContentCal who's starting out as an agency and then launching their software products in 2017. ContentCal now used by over 40,000 businesses in over 140 countries. In December 2021ContentCal was acquired by Adobe. Robert and Andy talk about Andy's new book, Social 3.0. How forward thinking b2b can unleash the power of social media fast he gives his insight into the journey of building and selling content.

Robert Craven  00:51

Hello, and welcome to GYDA Talks and today I am delighted to have a returning visitor a returning visitor for very good reason because people love him. It is wonderful Mr. Andy Lambert from content cow. Hello, Andy.

Andy Lambert  01:07

Hello, Rob. How you doing?

Robert Craven  01:09

Absolutely fantastic. And this is an exciting one. Because this is the one that says and is written a book. Sorry, can't spill the beans. Who's it for? What's it about? Go for it.

Andy Lambert  01:26

Yeah, I'll keep it nice and short. So this is off the back of six plus years of firstly growing an agency then growing a social media software business of which got sold to Adobe in December. So over those six years, quite a lot of experience generated in how b2b can market their business, particularly through social, lots of things that we missed up on the journey and obviously 1000s of conversations with people as we were building this business, it became abundantly clear that  b2b are very much behind the curve compared to their b2c compatriots when it comes to social media in particular. And we know that social media is not going away. It's only becoming even more pervasive given recent growth, another 10% year on year growth of social media, the way that it's permeating our lives influencing our decisions, there's no going back. But for some reason, b2b users still fixated on short term results can't understand how social media impacts don't understand attribution, get confused between demand creation, and demand generation. All of these things we can touch on. But fundamentally, there are lots of notes that I've taken over six years of which needed to come out on my head into a book. So it all became this book, which is Social 3.0, which is how b2b is can harness the transformative power of social media. And that's how we ended up with it.

Robert Craven  02:58

Right, the straightforward question which people will the first question, which Is this just another bloody lead magnet? Or is it this thing you had to get off your chest? Or is it educational? Or what's the purpose behind the book?

Andy Lambert  03:15

Yeah, great shout. So definitely not a lead magnet because all there's no profits in it either. Because every bit of profit I get from it goes to UNICEF's plight in Ukraine. So zero profit, there's no community off the back of it. There is no business. There's no consultancy. I work for Adobe now. Anyway, so. So ultimately, it's just my experience put down on some paper. And if anyone has, like, met me over the years, they'll know that has been a core tenant of all of our content strategy is just, you mentioned actually on the kind of preamble between this it's just teach, teach, teach, teach, teach. That's all it's been, it's just been giving away as much as we know for free and then hoping we get business in return which has kind of netted out.

Robert Craven  04:04

Okay, so great. I have nothing I hate more than a lead magnet book, you know, which every fifth page says, join the community QR code. Here's another case study where I was totally amazing and fantastic. YouTube could have this you can get a 10% discount, you know, it's like if you're going to give stuff away, give stuff away generously to help other people which I love about you. So b2b is aren't very good at social. I can hear people going. Oh, is he talking about us? I mean, are you just talking about accountants and lawyers and doctors and accountants, accountants and lawyers and manufacturing companies and or are you the are you talking about marketing a agencies or digital agencies? Who's in the firing line when you say b2b aren't very good at social?

Andy Lambert  05:09

Great question. It kind of runs the whole gamut of any b2b, to be honest, but the lens that I've written it through predominantly two lenses, just based on my own experience, which is initially us being an agency ourselves, and the word is shoe makers shoes, you know, you'll always find the shoe maker with the worst quality shoes in the street. And the same applies for agencies and doing their own marketing. There are some notable exceptions, which I will touch on. But by and large marketers care least about their brand than they do for their clients, which, you know, to a degree, there is some inherent rightness in that. But there is inherent challenges in that too. So yeah, agencies usually the most guilty culprits for not understanding or at least unleashing their marketing potential on themselves, which, as a result is impacting their growth. I obviously wrote it through the lens of product orientated businesses, of course, content cowl was a well still is a software as a service business. So naturally, a lot of my experience in growing that has been written through that as a lens. But you could apply the same it's pretty broad brush across any b2b. Because the always the theory is like, b2b is boring, right? And it absolutely doesn't have to be if you approach it with the right degree of creativity understand the right framework. Yeah, which we can make sure we can touch on it. Does that make sense?

Robert Craven  06:43

Yeah, I'm just thinking about this. This accusation that agencies are a pants at social? I mean, do you really mean pants? Or do you just mean, not quite as good as b2c?

Andy Lambert  07:06

I think you might have used that phrase, rather than myself, Rob, but we'll go with it. We'll go with it. So I think that by and large, I've haven't seen many agencies other than two notable exceptions. And I'd love to be proven otherwise by case studies, or whatever. So there is an agency called refine labs in the US run by a guy called Chris Walker, that guy gets b2b like no one else, to be honest, he's a bit of a hero of mine. And unbelievable understanding of social, but it's not actually that complex. It's just he recognises the transformative power and recognises that the fact that there's a big difference between demand creation versus demand capture, and we'll touch on that in a second. It's the second time I mentioned that. The other one, which close to home in the UK rise at seven, brilliant example, because, you know, similar to kind of one of your clients that you were describing, Rob, earlier, riser, seven, run by Kerry rose, very much the inspirational leader of that organisation, documenting the journey, which is fine, we all know that from a CEO perspective as a kind of employer branding type of stuff. But beyond that, all of the subject matter experts within the organisation on SEO, on PPC, on whatever it is, all of them have their own platform. So it's not just like the CEO show, it's really about raising the capabilities across the organisation and sharing that as a platform. And as a result, it levitates and gravitates the expertise of the business so that ultimately everything gets filled around word of mouth, because fundamentally, you know, they know, inherently these organisations that I've just referenced these two agencies, they know that people don't care about brands, they care about people, right? It's pretty simple. And we always know as agencies from going back to the days of running our agency, all we want is word of mouth referrals. That's how all agencies are grown, right? Because that's the only way you can generate the requisite level of trust for someone to say, You know what I want you as a consultant, I want you as a business partner to help us grow our business. And I'll give you a, you know, X grand a month retainer, because it's all built on trust. The only way to build trust is by representing the humans behind the organisation. None of this is rocket science, right? And none of the stuff I say in my book is rocket science, put some frameworks behind it, but fundamentally, it's just the missing piece because either fear holds them back a lack of time, lack of prioritisation, but typically what these agencies will then do be like, Alright, our pipeline is looking a bit shallow for this quarter and this month, let's go fire up some Facebook ads and some PPC stuff and try and capture some demand that way of which we know, and this is the kind of elephant in the room of marketing is that, you know, this is data from the IPA. They say that only 95% of a market is not actively looking for a solution at any one time, only 5% of the market is actively looking for the proposition that you sell at any one time. So really, if you're funnelling money into PPC into Google, AdWords, yada, yada, you're missing the other 95% of opportunity. And this is a difference between demand creation and demand capture, is that we fixate, as marketers on demand capture that 5% that might be looking for a new agency that might be looking for a new software product. And then we fixate around, how do we engineer like the right SEO strategy? How do we engineer the right PPC strategy? Yada, yada, it is important for sure. But like the quote I said to you, in the preamble as well, Rob, and this is this remark written is that, you know, us as marketers, and agencies and a lot of b2b to guilty of this, you know, we're spending so much time thinking about the low hanging fruit, we're forgetting to water the tree. And that is where demand creation comes into it. So demand capture, everyone gets loads of tactics for that, fundamentally, all of those tactics are trying to hit the 5% of a market, the shallow piece of a pie that actually are going and recognised. Oh, yeah, I need an agency forgetting all the factors and 95% of those people are like, they're struggling with growth. They're struggling with all manners of marketing their business, but they've not yet cognitively realised that they need an agency yet. And that is where our opportunity is. And that is where trust building brand building and all that stuff that I go on to, at length in the book, is what it's all focused on. Well, that was a long ramble.

Robert Craven  11:47

Long sentences. So what I'm trying to get is I get that I'm trying to think through for agency owners what normally happens is a knock on the door, and someone says, Hello, I've got 1000 pounds a month to spend on PPC. Can you help me spend it? Yeah, walk this way. Fantastic. Click. Another one comes along, says Hello, I've got 5000 pounds a month to spend on PPC or SEO? Can you help me? Yes, I can walk this way click. And I think agencies have become so used to plants being there or there abouts. They assumed that's how clients arrive. And they forget all about in a way the stuff that you've been doing for years that content, how about all those engagement conversations and warming up and getting to know and getting to understand and non pressure so that people get to know who you are, what you stand for, what you're trying to achieve, and so on and so forth. So that when they're ready, they go, Oh, who was that nice guy? I'll go and find out if they can actually really help me out. He kept mentioning they had a free trial, blah, blah, blah, I'll see whether that actually is any good or not. And what you want, what was done is you've invested in the relationship, so that all is kind of transferred in that instance, to the trial. So there's lots of positive investment in the emotional bank account. And it's like people like us, buy from people like us, you know?

Andy Lambert  13:36

Exactly.

Robert Craven  13:40

So why don't agencies get that?

Andy Lambert  13:44

Well, you've hit the nail on the head with the point around emotion. And that's where we as marketers get a little bit confused, because we forget the mindset of the individuals that we're trying to target and the emotional mindset that they're in, is because when we're in demand capture mode, right? That's when marketers are at their best, they're being rational, they're saying our features are better than their features. We do this better than our competitors. Yeah, you've got 1000 pounds to spend on PPC come to us, because we'll deliver better results and X, Y,  Z rational I get it, you know, and you know, we do need to have that as part of a strategy for sure. But the the issue that causes that we fixate so much on the rational elements of our product and service. We forget the reasons that people actually buy products in the first thing and they buy products based on purely emotional reasons. They buy brands based on emotions, how it will make them feel how it will make them be seen. All of those things are the fundamental buying drivers. Now we go into a lot of detail in the book, right? Because that's the bit that we forget. And that is at the heart of decision making. Decision Making isn't based on any logic, right? We like to think it is, but us as humans are fundamentally flawed characters will make different decisions based on our moods of a certain time, right. And that's the challenge that marketers face where we default just going, alright, I'm gonna run an ad or put some rational messaging in there, hey, presto, we're done. Whereas what we should be thinking about is actually, if we have a truly intrinsic understanding, understanding of the audience that we're trying to serve, and the problems that they're facing, then we're going to be in a much better place to then build our propositions out from that. And that's why I kind of developed a six step framework, which starts with like, the customer persona and the problem statement, and all fixates around this idea of a minimum viable audience, which I didn't make up. This is Seth Godin. And this is where marketers get things wrong, more than anything else is that we try and target too broad. And the great thing about agencies is that you don't need 3000 customers, 4000 customers, 10,000 customers, like a software business you need 50 maybe would be a pretty chunky agency. So maybe even 20, so you can be super focused on the particular niche that you're trying to serve. So as soon as I start to hear businesses that are trying to fit, focus on someone and go, Oh, you know, we target real estate, and then banking, and then housing or whatever. I'm just like, it's bullshit, because you cannot target all of those people and tell the right story.

Robert Craven  16:34

All the time. If I come across another agency that says we work with SMEs, government organisations, charities, b2b, footsie 500, international corporations, you know, and it's like, just No, just we work with a David Gilroy, is conscious solutions. We work with law firms with between 25 and 100 desks in the UK. And he knows more about them than they do know about themselves, you know? And so are you saying, when I choose an accountant, b2b purchase, it's an emotional decision?

Andy Lambert  17:24

The fact is when you choose because you're in, that's demand capture, right? Because you've already elected to go, I need an accountant. Because you know, for whatever reasons, right? So you are now in a rational frame of mind of decision making, because you have now cognitively said, I need something, I need to solve a pain. So you're now in that 5% of a market that is now looking for accountants. Now, there is another 95% of let's just say, agency consultancy firms that don't yet know they need an accountant, because I don't know X Y, Zed reasons. And it's really that we need to focus on more than anything because, you know, demand capture. That's let's be frank about this. And I my behaviour for this comment is easy, right? Because it ain't hard to run social ads, or Google ads and go, these are my keywords. These are the people I'm trying to target. I'm going to put some budget in all at all, the only differentiating factor is the depth of your wallet, right? Yes, there is some creative stuff in there too. A little bit, not when it comes to Google, though. But fundamentally, the bit that's much harder, which is why people don't do it. I told you, I'm gonna get hated for some of these things. Why people don't do it? It's because it's so much harder to think about the challenges before someone realises they know they need a solution. And that is brand building, right? That is how we build trust. Because if we truly understand who we're trying to serve, let's just say, you know, we're trying to target accountants, you know, size between 20 to 50 employees, for example, we need to fixate on that, beyond anyone else. We need to understand the problems intrinsically, we need to understand the other alternative solutions that they sought to try and solve a pain because we only know the problem and the pain is deep enough if someone's tried to solve something. Going back to like days at content cow we knew we had a product market fit as it's called in software land. When we went to people who have tried to build what we would we were visioning on a spreadsheet, right, tried to build their content calendar and approval flows and all that kind of stuff, because they felt the pain so intrinsically that we knew we had a market and the people that felt the pain. So intrinsically, we're kind of freelance social media managers. That is a small piece of the pie that we could have targeted. But we focused on that because we knew that if we went deep in an audience rather than going wide, we knew we would create much better word of mouth we would take to tell a better story which gets more people to tell other people Whoa, big fish, large pond, big fish, small pond. Sorry. And that's the important point because suddenly through recognition, because we're popping up in so many different communities are freelance social media managers is that suddenly everyone's like, have you had a contact cow? Well, everyone I know uses them. Because suddenly, you seem quite big because everyone in their sphere of influence begins to use you. That is the power of marketing to the minimum viable audience doesn't mean your audience can't change and have different segments, and you can't grow it over time. It's about if we fixate on one to begin with, we tell a better story. And the story is the thing that predicates everything that you will do. I'm going to stop talking, because I will talk for the whole hour.

Robert Craven  20:45

No, that's okay. I mean, so the shoes of Cabela's, etc, etc. I get that. But what I don't get, I guess, I mean, again, thinking about the agency owners is, you know, these are bright cookies. And I get they do push back when one of the large platforms says you must buy this from us. But this is actually in their own interests, you know, it's like, it's almost like, just sit down the MD or the CEO of an agency, or any other professional service firm and say, Look, can I just point out that, yeah, this sales obsession that you have, that you call marketing, buy from me buy from me buy from me, is actually not working. And you know, to go back to the roots and thing you're not watering the tree for later on, and people won't be coming it may work short term, but in the long term, it's not sustainable. So whether you're in a an accounting firm, or you make six inch pipes, or bloody concrete, you know, there's still the relationship to be had, you know, and everything has a brand. You know, I love this thing from Malcolm MacDonald, who I used to work with it. at Cranfield always used to say, here's a couple of engine oil, and here's a couple of Castrol GTX. It's the same stuff. But this stuff cost 10 pounds a litre and this stuff cost 25 pounds a litre because it has Castrol GTX. No one can tell the difference. Yeah. But the brand and the impact of the years and years of Castrol being cool and blah, blah, blah. And it's bizarre that people can't see, not just see, but actually work on the brand and the personality and in engagement with people. And they always just go for the sale. Is it just because sales more measurable? That's certainly part of it.

Andy Lambert  23:03

That's at the core. And I think it's there's a cultural thing at play. Because, you know, the Castrol example is a really good one, right? Because in consumer world, as we said, right at the start of this is that our consumer, friends get it right. But they also have massive budgets, right. And typically brand building in a lot of people's minds is all about massive expense above the line advertising, you know, like sponsoring the Formula One car, for example, right? That ain't cheap. But branding is actually so much easier to achieve. Because really what a brand is, if you strip it down is trust, right? So all we're trying to do is engineer trust at scale. And the best way to do that, right, is going to be through social and elevating the individuals that operate within the business. We go right back to that point again, because fundamentally, people buy from people, we get that we know that. And that's how that trust is transferred. And that's how a brand is then built. Because a brand as I said, it's just trust, not necessarily a logo, we've always fixated on a logo, but it's just the fact that trust, because we associate it with, you know, the most winning Formula One driver or something like that. So actually, achieving branding scale is much easier now than it ever has been because we have the networks to help us leverage that. So the thing that also that's the cultural piece, there's also a budgeting piece that holds us back because fundamentally in a lot of organisations, you know, marketing  doesn't really have huge sway. So if there's a marketer with an agency, if the agency is big enough, the marketer very much will be performing probably sales support stuff, stuff that is focused on delivering demand capture, which, you know, like we said before, it's going to be those kind of programmatic adds that kind of stuff. But the issue then comes into the fact of when marketing just support sales, it all then fixates on short term results. Because you know, sales, the nature of sales is to drive short term results, not results three months from now, right. And there's nothing wrong with app sales are an important facet of every business, for sure. But the problem is then what we're actually doing, we don't have a marketer, then we have a sales support function. Because they're executing the same thing. They're trying to capture latent demand that already exists, someone's already searching for an accountant, we're just capturing. Great. So that's not marketing. And the problem is, if you look across this data from IPA, when you look at the budget, is that in a consumer world, those budgets split between brand building versus performance is 60% brand building 40% performance, right. And in b2b, it's only 17% to brand building. It really doesn't get a look in. And there's, you know, when you think about it from that context, it's little surprise that we're scratching around trying to figure out where our next large contracts gonna come from, because we are not preparing the field to help us deliver sales, three, six months down the line, right, we need a balanced approach to how we operate. And it doesn't need to be costly. But the problem is, you know, it's about resourcing it effectively. And I would, I'm going to call final point on this is that I'll just call out that refine labs and following Chris Walker on LinkedIn, because fundamentally, if more agencies operated like they do, they'll be you'd be in a so much of a better position. Because his business is all built on word of mouth, through his content age producing just on LinkedIn and tick tock purely on the fact that it's just designed to give so much actionable value, and at that result builds trust. Yeah, we all know this, right? We inherent nothing they say is unknown. It's just about classes, the mini case, in many things in life is about doing it is really the big difference. Those who are willing to commit and actually do it.

Robert Craven  27:18

So I working with an agency recently, and they said it was a problem sales and problem sales and problem sales, and they came back to me to do just figure it out. I don't need a new salesman. In fact, I don't need my salesman, what I need is better marketing, this kind of realisation that, again, the same thing about watering the tree, that if your marketing is sublime, compelling, seductive, beautiful, draws people in, then the sales literally drop out of the bottom of it. But if you're marketing, you're targeting segmentation differentiation, then it's you're going to you're going to really struggle selling and you are going to end up with commoditized selling. So it really it feels that people revert to social almost when felling stopped working. That's not a kind of an irony. Like, we can't get more sales and we gotta get more sales, we can't get more sales and we gotta get more sales. It's not working. We've got more salespeople, we've got more process. I know what we could do, we could go up the funnel, we could try talking to people. So your definition of social is that content sharing? Or is Does that include advertising on social channels? What's your work? Where are you kind of drawing your lines?

Andy Lambert  28:59

Yeah. And the any thing that happens on social, right, because I think at some point for where we close this, I need to share like what a class is a six golden rules of social which kind of shape like any form of strategy, I would say. So I need to share that in a second. But I don't draw the line of paid even though I've kind of talked about paid and talked about programmatic stuff, but it's it goes back into the camp of rethinking demand creation versus demand capture, is that what we don't want to think about a social paid social is just like, Oh, right. Okay, well, we can run our ads here. There's an element of that we should do. You know, we've got a story to tell to the right audience, yada yada. Of course, there's an element of that because we'd be mad not to capture some latent demand for sure. But we also need to think about social ads from broader brand building activity to give like the content that we've created, whether it's, you know, a video that we've created, describing, you know, the latest trends on a certain subject you're in area of expertise. And as the best thing about agencies is because inherently there is so much expertise within our business, that we've got so much good stuff to share, that will truly help people get it. And sometimes, we get so scared, especially as consultants and agencies about sharing all this is our good stuff. This is our hard won expertise, I can't share it. The fact is, you're marketing to people who don't want to do it themselves, you know, so that audience don't want to execute it themselves, they need someone to execute it for them. So it doesn't matter whether you give them all the goodness, they ain't gonna do it, because they don't have the time, or the inclination, or the desire, whatever. So that's why we should just, we shouldn't care about that we should give away our expertise willingly, to help people understand who we are, as an organisation, the change we seek to make, and truly the personalities that sit within the business, because they will choose your agency based on you know what, Rob's a really good guy, I really recognise and resonate with the stuff that he says, I want to do business with him. And more than any other business agencies, you know, because you're a people focus organisation, like, it's just such a no brainer, it's ridiculous. It's just about how do we then scale it? How do we then make sure it gets enough priority in our agency that we resource it, because it's not a case of just like, throwing our money into it really to hire people that can do this stuff that can create content that do feel natural in front of camera? For sure. You know, we do need to think about that. And then we also need, and this will help your clients as well, because we need to be talking about a broader mindset shift as well. Because not just for our own mindset, but for our clients mindset. And what I mean is this is that if we're attracting to come to our agency, and let's just say we've got a lead for someone who wants to run like PPC or Facebook ads on it, whatever our job as an agency will be yes to service a need, but also to get the clients thinking more broadly about the broader impact and the strategy and all of the things that help them create a better business as a result of this, of course, us as an agency, we want to increase the size of a retainer. But of course, we also want to maximise the success of our client. Of course, what we also want to do, though, we don't want to be and I've we've been in this position and agency is bloody horrible, where you get someone that's so fixated on, you know, attribution, just through leads, just go, oh, how many leads did we get today? How many clicks do we get today? And that micro analysis, there is an element, of course, need to deliver returns for sure. But when you educate your client more broadly, you can start to talk about the impact of, you know, unprompted awareness. So, which is a really important metric to think about? So how is our organic site traffic increasing, not just through like our SEO stuff, just through people becoming aware of us, what's the share of voice that we're getting relative to our peers. So and share a voice is something that's criminally under utilised as a metric in most marketing teams, we just fixate on the bottom of the funnel to drive attribution purely because we can't, you know, think about, oh, actually, there's a lot more we can impact towards the top of the funnel, because the more impact we create at the bottom, the more impact at the top rather than what impact will create at the bottom. So there's a bit of a mindset shift that goes on here. But that mindset shift is equally applicable to how we'll deal with marketing in our agencies, but also how we should speak to our clients and our prospects as an agency to get them thinking more broadly. Because otherwise, we'll have another three month contract where, you know, potentially the leads delivered through a certain campaign didn't meet their criteria, they fire us and we got to go find someone else again. So we've been there.

Robert Craven  33:55

I kind of feel like we should break open a bottle of red wine even though it is the middle of the day and start talking about this because it's so great. So, six golden rules. I have a pen I have paper.

Andy Lambert  34:09

Go. Six golden rules shape every strategy, because tactics change often, but fundamentally, you should think in a first principles methodology, these principles never change. So number one, scaling word of mouth is our ultimate ambition irrespective of channel tactic whatever we are trying to build trust at scale. The way to do that is to get as many people talking about you as possible, your minimum viable audience and working in certain communities where those audience hangout Facebook groups, Reddit groups, Discord is your golden ticket to getting people to talk about you scaling word about utterly critical. Point two collaboration creates opportunity. A criminally underutilised tactic through people on social is that we think as a business Oh, right, we've got our four social channels for our agency. We'll just post the message today for channels, forgetting the fact that content created in collaboration not only creates better content, obviously, we're doing something right now. But it also means it goes further. So the content that you and I will create here, just this very simple level will go on both of our feeds across multiple different channels, we have now multiplied the approach of this particular content. So collaboration creates opportunity, irrespective of any platform, that is a golden rule. Number three, audience participation is key. So this often holds people back, because we don't think deeply about the content we're creating. In fact, we just think about the content we're creating as us. And that is my pet peeve for most b2b marketing is that we treat our social channels as we do our email subscribers. And we try and subject them to our marketing messages, as if they've opted into it, they have not opted into it just by following you. They want some good stuff. So we need to give people a reason to care. Because fundamentally, I can tell you, they don't care about you, they care about the next cat video that they're going to see. So give them a reason to care. The way you get them to care is by encouraging participation, whether it's through questions, whether it's through polls, or whether it's through using some of the latest functionality that exists on reels and TikTok things like duets and remixes, ultimately give people an opportunity to say, to be part of the content experience, right, encouraging people and your content to really start a conversation or start something. So on 2.4, where engagement drives reach. So that is a truism across all of your different social platforms, irrespective of any changes that they make. It's all about getting more people to spend more time on the platform. And the way that all of the social platforms define success is about interaction on that content. And of course, if you've nailed the audience participation bid in point three, then ultimately we're going to be driving more engagement. What I say by engagement, is likes click shares, retweets, any form of interaction we see on our content. And sometimes people don't appreciate this as much as they should, in my experience is that let's say we have 2000 Facebook followers, under 10%, wonder 1% of that audiences and average will see your content. So in fact, you know, we strive to serve 2000 followers, it's like, it's unlikely we're going to get more than 20. To be honest as to see our content reach is terrible, especially on Facebook. So the best way of engineering additional reach is through engineering, more interaction engagement, it's the surefire way to get our content to go further, which then leads nicely into point five, which is reached drives awareness. And it's a kind of common ly known rule of seven in marketing is that for someone to become cognitively aware of a certain message, they need to have seen it seven times. So increasingly, increasing our reach, ie making content goes far and wide as possible is the best way to generate awareness. And particularly, as I mentioned this before, unprompted awareness, we want to be the first product that comes to mind or company that comes to mind when someone goes, you know, what I think we're struggling with marketing, I think we need some assistance, I want to go to x agency, that's unprompted awareness purely in the fact that you've engineered your content to get into as many feeds as possible, which when then leads into the sick then the final point, which we as marketers need to have on our walls somewhere, and I do as well. And this applies as well, for software businesses, which I'm very guilty of this. In most people's eyes, the best product is the one they know. So people, when they make decisions, they don't compare a list of 100 different agencies, they go to the ones that they know or have been recommended. They don't necessarily would like to have the best, but as far as I can said the best is the one that they know. So that is a really important thing to think about. Because it's not always about feature comparison. It's not always about rational differences of US versus our competitors. Fundamentally, it's that emotional connection again, because the common term around this and I was reading a really interesting book on this, that the person who came up with this term, won a Nobel Prize, and is the term of satisficing. The way that humans make decisions we satisfice which is a portmanteau of sacrifice and satisfy, because we don't make we don't look at all of the options because we got too many things to do. And quite frankly, as humans can't be bothered, so we'll actually just look at the smallest possible batch and then we'll go well, this asked my friends so Rob, what do you reckon about this agency if you guys Oh, yeah, I've heard of them too. Doesn't matter if you know if they're good or not. You'll go I've heard of them being trust. box ticked, I'm gonna go with them. And that is how we make decisions. And the more we understand that, the better we can think about marketing and social media unlocks all of this potential within those six golden rules. And if we think about those six golden rules, it doesn't matter about our tactics, it doesn't matter that there's been a new feature rolled out to Tik Tok or Tik Tok or Instagram on Instagram TV. All those actions are going to change often. But we stick by those first principles. Hopefully it made sense.

Robert Craven  40:33

Absolutely love it. I mean, it's just turning up. It's kind of turning a bit upside down, if that makes sense. But this is my Theodore Levitt bear with me. 1961 Harvard Business Review, said, You know, it's not about the tactics and you go, of course, it's not about the tactic. It's about the strategy. And you goes, it's not about the strategy, not about the tactics. Obviously, this man comes from a different world. He says, No, it's about the customer. It's just about the bloody customer. And it's like, so blindingly obvious. And I think that we've just been conned. We've been mesmerised. We've been blinded by the light of tactics of, oh, look, it's down to five seconds. Oh, look, you can have an audio chat room, this will take off this is the new this is the best that we've actually forgotten about the fundamentals, which is that piece of engagement with that real person, whether they run a beat with a business or a consumer, and how we actually interact with them. Now, I get that, if you're buying a pair of scissors, you just go to Amazon and you buy the cheapest pair of scissors. That's not a lot of engagement going on there. But the other stuff is quite personal. And it is, you know, I really want to like my accountant, I really want to like my lawyer. And if I'm gonna give someone some money, I want to make sure that it's a good experience. Amazing, amazing. I am, my jaw is sort of wondering what to say next. I think that's absolutely spot on. And suddenly, you see everywhere that people aren't doing what you're saying. They're not actually following you through. So you got two agencies to look at one of the states around the UK, which I think everyone's going to do. Love the fact that the proceeds go to UNICEF, charity off my own heart, I think that's really brilliant. Final thoughts from you, Andy? Because we covered oodles in 45 minutes. Absolutely. But I guess one way of putting the wrapper around it is what are the top two or three nuggets that you want to make sure are embedded in people's heads as a result of this conversation?

Andy Lambert  43:05

First nugget it's make sure your leadership team if you're a leader or a business, you're in charge of this, but if you're not a leader of business, try and help your leadership team I understand the importance of this, show them all the data from IPA, you know, from all of the studies within the book of which I think is only 299 of which to quit goes to UNICEF anyway. So on the Kindle version anyway. So it's cheapest. Yep. So super accessible. Because I kept on saying like, Oh, by the book, like it's buttons. So anyway, but make sure your leadership team truly appreciate this, because then they can get behind it. So that you can start thinking that marketing is not a lead generation, engine, demand capture versus demand creation, very different things. Please, think about that. Please think about your minimum viable audience and the story you need to tell. And we didn't speak about storytelling much, but your story predicates, everything. Your story is how you talk and to your target audience, which absolutely needs to be crystal clear around the change you seek to make. Who do you serve? What do you do for them? Super clear. So ask yourself some very detailed questions around that and be hyper focused, the more focused you are around that customer bit, then you can operate in a really customer orientated model and you nailed it anyway. With what you just said, about we start everything starts and ends with the customer. We overcomplicate everything in marketing, because along the way people have made a lot of money by selling marketing strategy books, social unlocked, it removes so much complexity by going, here's who I seek to serve. I'm going to represent the personalities of our business so we can build trust like we used to in person and go, Oh, I like that person. I'm gonna work with them. And we just encourage that at scale. That's it.

Robert Craven  45:11

Absolutely amazing. 45 minutes it's a wrap. Thank you, Andy, so much everyone should go up and get the book cheapest chips as you say, not even a pint of beer not even a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And as always, it's been a bit like you're a bit like the BBC not only do you entertain but you educate and uniform. So that's been a really provocative conversation, especially if we're looking at our brands and our strategy literally. I literally was writing stuff about our brand proposition of customer value proposition literally just before we came on the call, so it's been brilliant. Thank you, Andy, very much for being a real. Thank you very much.

Andy Lambert  45:54

Thanks, Rob.