The zestful Andrew Cock-Starkey (aka ‘Optimisey’) joins me on the podcast to discuss how to conduct organic competitor research.

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(Full transcript at bottom of page.)

Andrew runs an SEO consultancy in Cambridge, and also runs a series of events for learning, networking and sharing about SEO too, as well as being hands down, one of the nicest people in this industry, who I just had to get onto the podcast to share his knowledge.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The benefits of conducting competitor research organically.
• How often he would advise people to look at their competitors organically.
• The most common mistakes he’s seen when people undertake this activity.
• For those who are new to the industry and want to start looking into this area, recommendations on where to begin.
• How to manage time and ensure that you don’t spend too much time looking into competitor performance.

…and much more!

As always, if you enjoyed this, and previous episodes, please like, rate, share, and subscribe to the podcast – it all helps!

Useful Links:

Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks

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My website: https://iamazeemdigital.com/

Sign up to “The Marginalised Marketer” newsletter: https://iamazeemdigital.com/the-marginalised-marketer-newsletter/

Andrew’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Optimisey

Episode Transcript:

Azeem Ahmad:
Hello, and welcome back to the Azeem Digital Asks, The All-Round Digital Marketing Podcast. A brilliant episode, and a brilliant guest I have for you today. We’re talking all about conducting organic competitor research, something which I think we could all do with learning a bit more about. A brilliant guest for you, Andrew Cock-Starkey, AKA Andrew Optimisey, AKA the nicest man in this industry. Hands down. I love him, Andrew. Welcome to the show, mate.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
Thanks, Azeem, it’s an honour and a privilege to be here.

Azeem Ahmad:
I’m really looking forward to this episode, let’s just dive right in. So for those who shamefully do not know who you are. First things first, hit pause, and go on, click the link in the notes and follow him. Would you like to, obviously once you’ve done that, would you like to give yourself a proper and better introduction my friend?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
Well, I think you summed it up neatly, in it is Andrew Cock-Starkey, AKA Andrew Optimisey, because yeah, so most people know me, who have heard of me, a few outside my household, but yeah, know me as Andrew Optimisey, because that’s the name of the consultancy that I run. I also run some SEO events, free to attend ones in Cambridge, in the UK, where I’m based, and have had some phenomenal speakers come and speak at these events. So lots of people who have also been on your show too. So yeah, lots of people have heard of the Optimisey events, but that’s, I guess, what I’m known for. So consultancy and running SEO events.

Azeem Ahmad:
And being very good at it. So let’s dive straight in, all about organic competitor research. I think the best place to start, Andrew, is the benefits of this. So what would you say the benefits are of conducting competitor research organically?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
So I think you really need to know what kind of ballpark you’re playing in, because we’ve all had those kind of clients that turn up and go, “Oh, I want to be top of Google.” And the first question is then, “Okay, top of Google for what?” And they’re like, “Well, top of Google for, I don’t know, ‘Buy shoes in Cambridge’.” “Is that right? Great. Well, who’s currently top on the search for results when you go to, ‘Buy shoes in Cambridge?’ Oh look, it’s Amazon, and all these other huge retailers and all these … Are you really going to go and play in that playground with those kids? Or do you want to be something a little bit more niche?” So if you don’t know, it’s like going in blind. If you don’t do your organic research, and know about the SERPs, the search engine results pages that you are trying to compete in, and the keywords you’re trying to compete against, and who you are trying to compete against to get into those search results, then you’re just shooting bullets in the dark really.

Azeem Ahmad:
Love that. Reminded me of a story where I was at an agency, and I had a very niche client for industrial glue, but he was adamant, anybody who typed in, “Glue,” wanted to be number one.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
Yeah, not really … Well, it’s all those kind of things, yeah, we’ve all had those kind of clients. It’s like, “So where you want to be number one for a term,” I’m trying to think of a good example now, but where the one single word like Glue is also the name of a movie, and it’s also the name of a band, and it’s also the name of a product, and it’s also the name of a brand. Number one for “Apple,” they want “Apple.” Okay, right so Apple is fine, we all heard of iPods and all that kind of stuff, but what about the little people that sell fruits, and all those because things? And what about yeah, all those other … I’m sure there’s a band and a movie called Apple somewhere, but all those other, kind of things. You can’t just say, “Oh, I want to be number one for that,” you need to look at what’s there at the moment.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s led me nicely to my next question for you then, so how often would you advise that people look at their competitors organically?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
Okay, so do I get penalty points for every time I say, “It depends?”

Azeem Ahmad:
It depends. No I’m joking.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
So it does depend, because it depends on what kind of markets you’re competing in. If you are in some fast-moving consumer goods, lots of retail competitors, and you’ve got the budget and the time, and you are one of the … I don’t know, your Next, who’s competing against M&S, who’s competing against Primark, who’s competing against all these other big high street retailers, then it’s probably for those big brands, it’s probably already part of their day to day. And they’re doing it every day, keeping an eye on their competitors. If you are a consultant who’s working on smaller clients, or local businesses and that kind of stuff, then you can get away with doing it less often. So I think as long as you set a cadence for it, it needs to be one of those kind of things you have in your calendar, where it’s once a month, or once every three months, once every six months, whatever it is. As long as you know then what kind of window you are looking back on.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
So it’s, “Okay, I’m going to look at my competitor’s sites. I haven’t done it for three months. So what have they done in three months?” Or I can look and I can see, “Okay. Right, well, in the last three months, their rankings went up in these areas. They produced this new content. Oh my God, they’ve got this whole new section of their website that we’ve never done anything like that before. How’s that doing for them?” All that kind of stuff. So you, yeah, as long as you’ve got a rhythm to it, then I think sticking to that rhythm is better than saying, “All right, you must diligently do it once a day,” and then you feel terrible because you didn’t.

Azeem Ahmad:
That is really useful advice. Thank you very much for sharing that. One question it made me think of, is where would you begin? Where do you start when you’re looking at competitors organically, typically, where would you start in your process?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
So when I’m working with clients, it’s really interesting to ask them who they think their competitors are, and then looking at who Google thinks their competitors are. Because often they’re really different because everybody goes like, “All righty then, so my competitors …” It’s like when you ask the marketing team, whatever, “Who’s your target audience?” And they go, “Oh everyone. Everyone wants our product.” And it’s like, “No, not really. My mom doesn’t really want your running shoes, she’s in her ’70s, and she last went running 40 years ago.” So it’s like, “Okay, not everyone.” So yeah, of course there are, and I’m sure there’s some septuagenarians out there who are very keen runners, but you can’t say everyone. But that kind of stuff where it’s like, “Right …”

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
So when you are starting with this kind of thing, ask the clients who they think their competitors are. And that’s really useful, because then you’ve got some kind of benchmark of like, “Well, you think you’re competing against Amazon,” or Next, or Apple, or Nike, or whoever it is. And it’s like, “Okay, that’s a nice aspiration to have, but actually you are way down here, and you are competing with Dave’s Shoes on the High Street, and you are competing with all these other kind of things.” And sometimes they’ll be competing with people they won’t even have thought about, because they’re completely in this tunnel-vision of, “Apples are the fruit that you eat, and they’re green thing that you grow on trees, and you sell in your green grocers.”

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
And they might not have even realized that actually when you Google for, “Apple,” the thing that comes up, is I iPads and iPods. And they’ll be like, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t even realize that.” And it’s those kind of things, where you can open client’s eyes to, “Okay, what you think your competitors are, and who Google is putting you alongside in the search results, or who is currently ranking number one in those search results where you want to rank higher, these are the people you’re really competing against.” So that’s often a good starting point, I think.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yeah, brilliant. And I love that distinction that you made there between what they think and what Google thinks. I think that’s really important.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
Often terrifyingly different.

Azeem Ahmad:
So I’d love to learn more from you then, certainly in your experience, what would you say are the most common mistakes that you’ve seen when people are undertaking this type of activity?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
I think a big mistake, that I do often see, is then people always look, and they have a particular competitor in mind. They’re like, “Oh, I want to be like,” and again, I’ve used the same examples, “I want to be like Amazon, and I want to be like Apple.” That’s great, okay. But start comparing like for like, you’re probably not going to compete against those people. But also just because you, even if your competitor, that you’ve chosen, or your client is really focused on, because they know the other person who’s a baker in their village, and they really hate that person, and they’re determined to beat them, and it’s, “Okay, well you’re getting a bit obsessive about this one person. Actually A, they’re not the person you’re competing with in the search results, and B, they’re actually in a, really different from your business.”

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
You might hate them, but they sell wedding cakes, and you sell birthday cakes, and it’s totally different. But also just because your competitor’s doing it, doesn’t mean it works. So you see this kind of thing where people go like, “Oh my goodness, our competitors brought this brand new section of their website, and they put this whole new thing in, and blah, blah, blah, and it looks really great, and it’s got whizzy things in it, and the colors go up and down and the menus all look lovely.” And actually from a search point of view and from a marketing, is it working? Because you could then just copy them exactly, word for word, what they’ve done, and it could also be, you might, unless you’ve got an insight into their finances, they might be shooting money up the wall, and be really regretting it and pulling it down as you speak, while your site is frantically trying to catch up and build exactly the same thing.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
For all you know, they’re frantically pulling it down off their website. Because it’s been an absolute car crash, and a huge waste of time and money. But, “Oh, we’ve got to copy it, because they’ve got it.” It’s this classic keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ thing. So yeah, that’s a common mistake I see. This like, “Oh my competitor’s done it. I must jump and quickly do exactly the same thing.”

Azeem Ahmad:
Solid gold content, thank you very much for sharing that. I guess now is a great time to discuss one of the features from episode sponsor SE Ranking. So their competitive research tool can help you understand which channels and keywords bring traffic to your rivals, or which products they offer that you miss. You can get a general impression of your rival’s backlink profile and dive into the history of the ads your competitors have been betting on in search. Some of the information provided by the tool includes a domains’ traffic estimate and its cost, the traffic share by a page, the keywords that every page ranks for, the keywords that are driving traffic to a website, the keyword rankings, new and lost keyword statistics, CPC, and the number of advertisers for each keyword. You can look at Google Ads marketing campaigns and the monthly ad history.

Azeem Ahmad:
So a huge thank you to them for sponsoring this episode. And if you’d like to take advantage of a 14 day-free trial and learn more, please visit the link in the show notes to get started. It’s a cool tool, I’ve used it. You should definitely check it out.

Back onto the episode. One thing that I’ve done with all of my guests, Andrew, is I’ve had people reach out to me, who are very new to the digital marketing industry, and they’ve said they would love to know what sort of first steps to take. So for those who are very new to the industry and want to start taking their first steps into competitive research, where would you recommend that they begin?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
This is going to sound really trite, but start on Google. Everybody gets very excited about tools in SEOs. Because it’s like, “I’ve got to have this tool and this tool, and this software, and this thing.” But at the end of the day, it’s what ranks on Google, so start there, it’s seems a really obvious thing, but it’s something that lots of people really overlook, and you’ll be surprised at a number of SEOs, or people that work in SEO that don’t actually spend a lot of time in Google search results. They’re always viewing it through this lens of a tool, or another tool, or a system, or something like that.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
So go and have a look at the search results. Google around for those things that your client, or the site you’re trying to work on, that’s like, “Oh, I love to rank for …” I don’t know. So the silly example I often come back to is like, “I want to rank for cricket,” because it’s like, “All right, I’ve got a cricket kit that I want to sell.” I used to work at Lord’s Cricket Ground and we had great things around that. Obviously we were trying to rank really high for, “Cricket.” We’d rank really well for those kind of terms in certain markets. But then there were lots of people that were actually looking for the insect, crickets, to buy, to feed to their pet reptiles. You don’t want any of those. We didn’t sell insects by the box to send people to feed to their pet snake.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
So all that stuff is okay … So those kind of search results would be not quite what you thought they would be. And Google was a bit ambiguous of those things, because you can tell, because it mixes up the results. Google will put in one that’s about cricket bats, and one that’s about cricket, the sport, and one that’s about crickets, the insects, and one that’s about cricket, like firelighters, used to get little cigarette lighters. Well, there’s a brand called Cricket that make fire … And if Google doesn’t know, then that’s a big clue that actually this is probably a bit of a hot mess that you want to steer clear from. If you are selling cricket bats, then maybe go and have a look at the searches for cricket bats. And so it’s really easy thing to say, but go and look at search results and things.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
And then, start with tools, and yeah, it’s very exciting and you spend lots of money, and you can shoot your budget up the wall, buying SEO tools. But things like SE Ranking, that have free trials and stuff that you can have a go with. There’s lots of tools out there that have these free trials, give them a crack. Some of them are really expensive, but some like SE Ranking are a bit more affordable, and you can have a look at your competitors. It feels like spying and cheating in a way. If you’re brand new to this, a lot of people will ask me like, “Am I allowed to look at this kind of data on my competitor?”

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
It’s like, “Is that okay? Is that espionage or hacking or whatever?” And it’s like, “No, you’re okay. This is all publicly accessible stuff.” And you can see things, like in SE Ranking you can see what they’re spending money on, and if they’re spending money on PPC ads, to bid for those keywords, again, it doesn’t mean that it definitely is making them money. They might be wasting all their budget, but probably if they’re spending PPC money on those keywords, they’re probably worth having. If your competitors think they’re worth having, then maybe you can have a little bit of a look into it, and play around with these free trials and tools, and see where that information gets you.

Azeem Ahmad:
Brilliant. Thanks very much for sharing that. Plus one, couldn’t agree with you more. You’ve made me think of a question which I’ll come back to, but the next one that I wanted to ask you, is from what you’ve mentioned there, it’s obviously a very fine line, and a fine balance about how much time that you dedicate looking into your competitors. What dangers would you say there are? Would you say there’s a danger that you can spend too time looking to competitors, and not focusing on yourself or your clients? How do you manage that?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
Yeah, that’s really difficult. And that’s one of the other, like your previous question about mistakes that people make. It’s another really obvious one to make. When you are looking at your competitors, and you spend all your time looking at them, then you end up almost chasing the wrong thing, because you don’t want to be same as them. If you’re always thinking, “Oh, they’ve done this and they’ve done this, and we should do that,” you are chasing them to the same point. They’re already there. If you’re looking at their site and going, “We must have that,” by the time you get there, they’ll have moved on another three steps, and you’ll always be chasing the game. So there’s always this urge to, “Oh, we must keep up with the Jones’,” is the cliche thing, but it’s like, “Don’t forget about your aims, and your business and what you are good at, your USPs.”

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
Don’t always be the same. What makes businesses stand out in everything, not just SEO, it’s that unique selling point. What’s unique about your business? How can you get to the point where your competitors are looking at you, going, “Oh, we must do what Azeem’s doing,” or, “We must do what they’re … They’re way ahead of us now. We’ve got to get that new thing.” So it can be easy to get distracted and totally bogged down in just obsessing over what your competitors are doing. So remember that kind of thing, take a step back every now and then and think, “What do our customers really want? And are we in the right place to give that to them? And how do we tell them about that?”

Azeem Ahmad:
So we’re almost at the end of the episode, but there’s one question that I’d love to ask, and learn from you about, because you’ve got a vast experience in the industry, while still managing to look younger than me, I will add. That is, what differences have you noticed throughout your career in the art of organic competitor research? So how has that changed?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
Bless you for talking about experience, and saying how young I look, but not mentioning how old I am. So the art of organic research and stuff has changed a lot, I think. As with lots of things, it’s driven by what Google does, right? So when Google changes things, everybody jumps. It used to be that everybody would be, “Oh, I want to be top of page one,” and then that wasn’t good enough anymore, because then it was you’ve got to be position zero on page one, because you get the featured snippet result. Now there’s all these other kind of rich results and FAQs, and all these other things, these enhancements which you can get on your site’s appearance, when it appears in the search results. I think that stuff makes it really interesting, because you don’t have to be number one anymore to get those rich results.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
You can get those expanded site search links and FAQs, and all that stuff just by having useful stuff on your site. Like making good use of schema markup, and using all sorts of things like that. So even if you are competing against the really big guns, like Amazons and the Apples of this world, who’ve got, spend probably more in a couple of hours than most of us have in a budget for a year, you can still get in there, sharpen your elbows a bit, and get a really good looking search result, that appears in position three or position four, and still get an absolute boatload of traffic off the back of it. So I think those are the things which are then interesting for me around organic research and stuff.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
And I think, like with lots of it, it’s just moved on. It used to be, we’d all obsess about word counts, and, “They’ve written 500 words, so I’ve got to write 600.” And Google is getting better at discerning that stuff, and I hope that’s leading the SEO industry in that way to getting more down into the weeds of what’s the actual intent here. If the intent is to find out the time in Toronto, 600 words is probably overcooking it a bit. If the intent is to find out the ins and outs of solicitor fees in land conveyancing, then 600 words is probably nowhere near enough. So I think hopefully it’s moving the industry away from those obsessions about the wrong kind of things.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yeah, that’s brilliant. That’s a fantastic way to put it. I’m hopeful that people will listen to this, and take away a lot from that answer and from all of the answers that you’ve provided really, Andrew. So yeah, thanks very much for that. Just before we go, if people are listening to this and they don’t follow, or are not connected with you already-

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
They’re bad people.

Azeem Ahmad:
Where can they find out more about you? Where can they follow you?

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
I spent way too much time on Twitter. So I’m on there a lot, but pretty much everywhere, I’m Optimisey. So if you go onto Twitter and look for Optimisey, for our non-UK based friends, it’s Optimisey with an S, not a Z. So Optimisey on Twitter. You can find me on LinkedIn, I spend a fair bit of time on there too. But yeah, if you want to find all the talks from the great events stuff I did, Optimisey you on YouTube. So yeah, stick, “Optimisey,” in Google and I’ll come up.

Azeem Ahmad:
If he’s done it right.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
It’s all right, I mean I’m average at SEO. So I’ll be somewhere on page one.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yes, absolutely. Andrew, this has been brilliant. Thank you for taking some time out and sharing your knowledge, not only with me, but with the listeners. As always, I’m going to shut up now, and let you have the final word on your episode.

Andrew Cock-Starkey (‘Optimisey’):
It’s been an absolute pleasure to speak to you, Azeem. You are a marvellous professional at this sort of thing. So it’s just like having a chat with a good friend. So I hope if this is moderately useful to anyone, that would be great. The only thing I would say, is if you’re listening to this thinking, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much, and it’s all so intimidating,” if you can do one thing to make your site better, just this week or this month, then you’re moving forward, and that’s great. So just take one thing out of this, and try and make your stuff better and you’ll get there.

The awesome Amanda Milligan joins me on the show to discuss how to build authority in digital marketing.

Listen now, right above the subscribe button, or pick your favourite listening platform from this list:

Spotify: Click here
Apple Podcasts: Click here

Use a different listening platform? Choose it here.
(Full transcript at bottom of page.)

Amanda Milligan is the Head of Marketing at Stacker, a data journalism platform and newswire that also partners with brands to create and distribute content to build brand awareness and links. With a degree in journalism and a decade in content marketing, she’s spent her career helping brands harness the intersection of content and SEO. Her expertise has been published in Entrepreneur, Forbes, TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, Moz, The Next Web, and more, and she’s spoken at industry-leading events, including SMX, MozCon, BrightonSEO, and Pubcon.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How to define authority
• What makes a brand authoritative
• The value there is in brands seeking to build/grow their authority
• The common mistakes people make when going through this authority building process
• How brands with more authority stand out from those who don’t
• What response she would give to a C-suite/senior manager who isn’t interested in building authority

…and much more!

Useful Links:

Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks

My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/AzeemDigital

My website: https://iamazeemdigital.com/

Sign up to “The Marginalised Marketer” newsletter: https://iamazeemdigital.com/the-marginalised-marketer-newsletter/

Amanda’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/millanda

Episode Transcript:

Azeem Ahmad:
Hello, and welcome back to the Azeem Digital Asks podcast. A brilliant episode I’ve got for you today, an absolutely brilliant guest, someone who is probably right up there at the top of my list of people who I would love to bump into at a conference, and just pick their brains, the absolutely awesome Amanda Milligan.

Azeem Ahmad:
We’re talking all about, how to build authority in digital marketing. Amanda, welcome to the show.

Amanda Milligan:
Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here, and honestly, every time we chat, it’s just a delight. So thank you.

Azeem Ahmad:
Ah, that’s made my day. Thank you so much. You are an absolute legend. For those who shamefully do not know who you are, and what an awesome person you are, would you love to give a little intro to yourself?

Amanda Milligan:
Sure, yeah. I’m the head of marketing at Stacker, and stacker is a news wire, essentially. It’s like digital journalism news wire.

Amanda Milligan:
So when you think of the AP for breaking news, or Reuters for financial news, it’s that for digital journalism, which is really cool, or data journalism … I don’t know why I said there’s digital journalism.

Amanda Milligan:
Data journalism, which was awesome when I discovered what they do, because I had no idea this model existed. And my background has been in a lot of data journalism, when I was back at Fractal and other marketing stuff that I’ve done, a lot of content marketing, digital PR work.

Amanda Milligan:
So they have started about a year ago. They work with brands now, and brands will underwrite content, and get the benefit of authority, as we’ll talk about today, in addition to canonicals and backlinks, and all that fun stuff.

Amanda Milligan:
A lot of what I’ve done is in the authority realm, through content. I’ve been in this industry for about a decade, and I love talking about it. Hopefully, we can keep me to the 20-minute time slot, so you don’t think I am totally rogue.

Azeem Ahmad:
Awesome. Right. As I mentioned, the episode is all about how to build authority in digital marketing. I think the best place to start, really, is how would you define authority?

Amanda Milligan:
Sure. I mean, in the most fundamental way, I just think of it as knowing what you’re talking about, and coming across that way. So literally, demonstrating your expertise in a topic, right? That’s what it comes down to.

Amanda Milligan:
I think we’ll talk a little bit about this more, and we’ll dive into it now, but I think a mistake a lot of people make is, most companies have so much expertise internally, and they’re not doing everything they can, to showcase that through marketing. It’s just, they have it, but they’re not harnessing it in any way, people don’t realize, and they try in sales to overcompensate for it.

Amanda Milligan:
But there’s so much you can do in marketing to tell that story, and show know that there are people here who know what they’re doing, and they know how to fix your problems. We’re just not explaining it very well.

Azeem Ahmad:
Love that. I also love the fact that you are such an excellent marketer, that in that answer there, you’ve already given a hook for people to carry on listening to the rest of the show. So, fantastic.

Azeem Ahmad:
Let’s move on. What do you think makes a brand authoritative? What makes a brand authoritative for you?

Amanda Milligan:
Sure. I think there’s a lot of answers to this question, and that’s the fun of the marketing side, because there’s so many different ways that you can demonstrate authority.

Amanda Milligan:
For example, perhaps the founder or somebody else at the organization is very public facing, and they share a lot about their perspective. We see this in the marketing industry all the time, right?

Amanda Milligan:
I mean, brand is the reason why a lot of people trusted Moz in the first place. But there’s so many agencies, there’s so many companies where people really respect the founders, or the head of marketing, or whatever it is.

Amanda Milligan:
So that’s a way to be authoritative, is doing it through your people, the people who know what they’re talking about, getting them front and center, and allowing them to communicate out to the public. That’s one way your brand could look authoritative.

Amanda Milligan:
Another way is to create your onsite content in a way that it’s solving people’s problem. I mean, this is On-site Content 101, answering questions, the keyword research that helps you decide what people need help with.

Amanda Milligan:
But if somebody’s turning to you, if they have a question or a problem, or even a curiosity, and they’re landing on your page, and thinking, “That answers my question. This site, this brand, this person understands what I was going for, and they had the answer.” That’s a way to build authority and show that, you know what you’re talking about.

Amanda Milligan:
Or even just, when you create content like that, ranking for it. Because then you’re getting the signal that other people have found this useful, and Google agrees that this is probably the best resource for what I’m looking for.

Amanda Milligan:
So that’s a lot of reason why, obviously, organic traffic is the reason why people want to rank. But it’s also an authority signal, and I think people overlook that a lot. Just seeing that brand name at the top of the surfs says something pretty huge.

Amanda Milligan:
Then there’s the stuff, the industry section that I’ve worked in a lot, which is the PR, the media side. Brands want to be mentioned by authoritative sources, and this is where it’s good to think, “Okay, I can build my own authority, but I can also associate and be trusted by other authorities. That helps amplify my own.”

Amanda Milligan:
If you’re getting mentioned in the news, that means that those respected publications are trusting what you have to say, or you do something co-branded with another brand that people really trust, or get another, an influencer. So many different ways to get at demonstrating your authority, but it’s important to make sure you’re tackling it from a few different ways, just to increase the chances that people can access this. You might not be reaching a wide enough audience with these demonstrations of your authority.

Azeem Ahmad:
There’s so much to unpack there, but a lot of it you mentioned was about building and growing your authorities, and naturally, that’s where I’m going to go into. What value is there in brands that are seeking to build or grow their authority?

Amanda Milligan:
Sure. There’s two perspectives for this. There’s the perspective of the users or the potential clients and customers, right?

Amanda Milligan:
If you were to give them two brands to choose from, and they hadn’t heard of one and the other one, they’re like, “Oh, I know that founder. I’ve seen their stuff.” Or, “Oh, I’ve read their blog, and I trust what they have to say, and it’s helped me.”

Amanda Milligan:
Authority is not tangible in a lot of ways, but it will definitely make an impact on decision making. That’s why concept marketers always struggle with this.

Amanda Milligan:
It’s being able to measure the impact of certain things, awareness authority being two of the major components that is really hard to explain the full impact of. But authority is certainly one of those things that just permeates into every single thing that you do, in marketing, in sales, pretty much in every stage, even when you’re already engaging with somebody.

Amanda Milligan:
So you think about it from that perspective. But there’s also the more SEO focused, Google perspective of authority. We know EAT. I’m not going to get into the whole debate of whether that’s a ranking signal or not, but just, authority does matter, regardless of exactly how Google’s implementing it.

Amanda Milligan:
Obviously, if Google’s trying to rank, what’s going to be the best answer to something. If they have two articles that are not exactly the same, but just as valuable as each other, “Oh, these are both good,” let’s go with the one where we already know this site has proven that they’re authoritative.

Amanda Milligan:
It’s just a better bet, right? So Google determines authority, and whether it’s just the content itself, but also links. That’s why that comes up a lot, because you’re trying to prove, “No, it’s not just us saying that we’re good. Other people are confirming that we know what we’re saying, and that we can be trusted.”

Amanda Milligan:
So I think you come at it from both of those perspectives. It’s not just the search engines, it’s also the user experience. An authority can influence so many things from both sides of that coin.

Azeem Ahmad:
Again, I’ve got so many more questions to ask, I’m probably going to have to get you back, and just do a whole other episode.

Azeem Ahmad:
This is, honestly, really, really fascinating. Thank you for sharing this. Things that are just ticking through in my head now. I need to write them down for sure.

Azeem Ahmad:
So there’s a lot out there about building and growing authority, like you mentioned, both from a user’s point of view. But also, for example, from a search engine’s point of view as well.

Azeem Ahmad:
One of the things that I’d love to cover off and learn from you is, trying to avoid that the most common pitfalls, or what do you think are the most common mistakes that people make when they’re going through this process?

Amanda Milligan:
Yeah. So I alluded to this little earlier, where people aren’t really doing a good enough job reaching a wide enough audience with this authoritative information. And I think a good way to think about it is applying authority to every aspect of the marketing funnel.

Amanda Milligan:
I think where a lot of people start, and this makes total sense, and they should, is the bottom of the funnel. So, “Okay, let’s make sure we have case studies and testimonials, and explanations of our product or service,” or whatever it is.

Amanda Milligan:
You definitely want to have all of that foundation set up, and make sure that you can tell that authoritative story when someone’s ready to buy, obviously. But I think a lot of people stop there.

Amanda Milligan:
And I think that’s a shame, because you’re working harder and hard and harder in your other marketing tactics, to get people to that point, where now they trust you. Get them trusting you way sooner, and the process gets much easier, right?

Amanda Milligan:
Literally, if you sit there and you map out, “Okay, how are all the ways we’re building authority? And are they all at the bottom of the funnel? Is there other stuff we can be doing?” Top of the funnel is where you get into, “Maybe this is more tangential,” and this is what I talk about all the time, tangential content, so stuff that’s not directly tied to your brand offering.

Amanda Milligan:
It’s not directly about your products or your service, but it’s about something that is still relevant to your target audience, and perhaps even a wider audience, so that other people, it’ll rank for higher volume terms, it’ll be covered in the media, because a wider audience cares.

Amanda Milligan:
Whatever it is, you’re reaching a wider audience. You’re building other authority signals that’ll help get people into the funnel, to then understand exactly how authoritative you are in your niche.

Amanda Milligan:
But overlooking that, I think, is something that’s very commonly done, and people are afraid to deviate too much from their core branding, and I understand that. It’s not always intuitive to be like, “Let’s spend money to talk about something that’s not going to convert immediately, or lead to sales.”

Amanda Milligan:
But when you build that authority up top, the sale of everything else is so much faster. If someone’s like, “I’ve been reading your stuff for a year,” that is a much easier conversion to get, than somebody who’s just heard about you for the first time, and they’re reading a case setting.

Amanda Milligan:
They’re like, “Yeah, I think this is cool, but I don’t know. I don’t have a foundation in trusting this brand.”

Azeem Ahmad:
I love this. That’s made me think of a question, but I’m going to come to it later on, and I definitely won’t forget it, because it’s something I’d love to learn from you.

Azeem Ahmad:
Really, really insightful. I can’t believe, what, 11 minutes, and this is just like solid gold. You’re making a case for me to make my future podcasts shorter and shorter, because this is too broad there.

Azeem Ahmad:
Let’s talk about separating yourself from the competition. How do brands with more authority stand out from those who don’t?

Amanda Milligan:
Yeah. I don’t know if this even exactly answers your question, but I think that a lot of companies have to have a moment of self-reflection, of how they actually are different from their competitors, and what their unique expertise is in.

Amanda Milligan:
That’s more of a branding exercise, really. I mean, you have to know the answer to this in order to do the rest of it right. And as a marketer, it will be a little bit of wrangling, maybe, with partners or leadership, or whomever it is, to pick their brains and be like, “What actually makes us different, even outside of just the product or service? What about us and our internal company knowledge is going to be really useful to people? What do we uniquely know?”

Amanda Milligan:
And people who are able to harness that really well, and it’s relevant to what they’re offering, that stands out. Because they’re showing that it’s different.

Amanda Milligan:
It’s like, their particular perspective is different from everything else in the same industry. If you’re too generic, if you’re publishing the same stuff everyone else is publishing, because you’re trying to rank for the same things, but you’re not doing anything particularly interesting, it’s harder to build authority that way, anyway.

Amanda Milligan:
You have more competition. This aligns with the arguments for long tail keywords, even though they’re not as high volume, but at least you’re different, and you’re honing in on the people who really care. But I think that that’s fundamentally what you have to do, because those companies that excel at it do get a lot, all the attention.

Amanda Milligan:
They’re the ones who people understand. Not only do they trust what they’re saying over time, but they get the brand. It’s just, it’s like the branding’s packed into this whole effort. That’s why there’s so much benefit, really.

Amanda Milligan:
Authority is not just a marketing play. It’s a branding thing. Like I said, I mentioned sales already, it can affect so many aspects of a business, but it does that kind of moment where everybody sits down, and they all agree, “This is who we are as a company.”

Amanda Milligan:
I think that is something that’s hard to do sometimes, “Oh, we have this product and it’s cool, and we know that people like it when they use it, but what is actually different about us?” So I think that’s like, when brands get that right, those are the ones that stand out the most.

Azeem Ahmad:
With that, you’ve led me perfectly to the question that I wanted to ask you was literally about, selling this in, or selling this upwards. As you mentioned there, getting everybody around the figurative table, to agree.

Azeem Ahmad:
Let’s talk about the C-suite or senior leadership, for example, who aren’t interested in building authority, literally, those types of people who stereotypically say, “Did we sell more of the product X, did we get more leads? So none of this about authority.” What response would you give to somebody who really isn’t interested in building their authority?

Amanda Milligan:
That’s a great question. It’s kind of my favorite question, because I feel like, it’s the most common thing ever in our industry, to struggle with that part.

Amanda Milligan:
We all know why this stuff matters, at least on a basic level. Implementation’s the hard part, but even harder is just getting the buy-in to implement, right?

Amanda Milligan:
I think one of the solutions is just literally not to even frame it with authority, when you go with that high up. We know, we can talk about it now, authority is an aspect of it, but you’re absolutely right.

Amanda Milligan:
We’re drawing those conclusions, like yes, it is more intangible than other things. However, if you can get buy-in to at least do one post, or … I heard a lot of people when I had the podcast that you were on, that was awesome.

Amanda Milligan:
A lot of people came on and said, because I would ask them the same question, and a lot of people said, “Just get buy-in for a trial, call it a trial or a test.”

Amanda Milligan:
Okay, so you do that part and show, “Listen, I’m talking about authority, but I’m actually talking about, ‘This is what it tangibly looks like. It looks like this post, or it looks like this study that we did. And this is the result of that.'”

Amanda Milligan:
The results of that are what they’re going to care about. Either you run the test, or you pull it from a competitor that’s doing something very similar. That’s always the easiest way, if you can activate their jealousy, that a competitor’s doing something very similar.

Amanda Milligan:
But then, like you mentioned, how is this ranking? How is this driving links that are benefiting other parts of the site? Tying it to the things that you know that person cares about is still going to be the most important thing. The authority building is a vehicle to get to those places.

Amanda Milligan:
It’s only if you’re trying to get buy-in for authority, if you know you’re doing it, the more nebulous, “We just want to be more well known,” it’s still good to tie those to something, if it’s search, like I said, the keywords and the links work.

Amanda Milligan:
But if it’s something else, if it’s branding … Again, pull the competitors. Do they have a founder who’s all over the place and Super Bowl respected, what is their brand search like?

Amanda Milligan:
You want to pull all of whatever metrics you can to ~prove, “Listen, we’re not being talked about enough. We’re not being linked to organically enough, just naturally. People don’t know who we are. Or they don’t know what they’d answer to this question.

Amanda Milligan:
What could we do to become the go-to source? I don’t know, does that answer your question? I kind of went off in a few tangents.

Azeem Ahmad:
Literally, my brain is going 100 mph here. Sadly, we are coming towards the end of the podcast. However, I can’t let you go without asking you a couple more questions.

Azeem Ahmad:
This one’s sort of off the cuff, really. Recently, more and more people who are new to marketing digital marketing in general, have reached out to me and told me that they had been listening to the podcast.

Azeem Ahmad:
One question that I’ve been adding in to all of my guests is basically this. Let’s say somebody brand new to the industry is listening to the almost 20 minutes of absolute knowledge bombs that you have shared today.

Azeem Ahmad:
Now their brain is full, completely new to the industry. This is a brand new topic to them. Where would you advise that they begin to approach this topic?

Azeem Ahmad:
Because there’s so many different areas or facets you can sort of get into. But for somebody brand new, Amanda, what would you recommend? Or where would you recommend that they start?

Amanda Milligan:
Yeah, this is honestly, we talked about how one of the hardest things is getting buy-in, the second hardest thing is prioritization. So I totally understand.

Amanda Milligan:
If you feel that way, that is not an uncommon feeling. I feel that way, every time I go to a conference, it’s, “Cool. That was a lot. Now I don’t know how to follow up on all of that.”

Amanda Milligan:
I think the first thing you do is take a look at what you’re already doing, and say, “What applies here, and what’s already working? And how can I keep doing that?”

Amanda Milligan:
That’s always the easiest thing to do, and it’s also just the most sensible thing to do. You’re already identifying what works, you might as well invest a little more.

Amanda Milligan:
Then if you want to trying to explore more, like I mentioned the funnel, if you’re like, “Okay, I am that person who hasn’t really done any authority building outside of the bottom of the funnel,” then take that moment to say, “What do we, what can we uniquely offer? What information can we put together, that’s going to be authoritative, and useful to our audience?”

Amanda Milligan:
And pick one thing, just start at one place. Maybe there’s a question you’ve always wanted to answer with a survey, and you think that people are going to find it fascinating. Try that, and then don’t get caught up in the million of other things.

Amanda Milligan:
Don’t start using six new marketing channels, just to get out there as much as you can. Pick that one thing that you think you’re going to get buy-in for, that people are going to be interested in, and use that as your stepping stone into all these other initiatives.

Azeem Ahmad:
Amazing, much like everything that you’ve said in this episode and shared. This has been absolutely brilliant. I can’t let you go, firstly, without thanking you for being an awesome guest, which I will do again, before I press Stop Recording.

Azeem Ahmad:
But most importantly, if anybody’s listened to this, would love to find out more about you, or connect with you, or follow you. How can they do that?

Amanda Milligan:
Sure. I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter. The most, definitely Twitter, and love/hate relationship over there. Twitter, I’m @millanda, M-I-L-L-A-N-D-A.

Amanda Milligan:
But please feel free to e-mail me, if you have follow-up questions, you want to talk about any of this? I’m not kidding, I can talk about this all day.

Amanda Milligan:
My e-mail is a [email protected]. So shoot me an e-mail, say you heard me on the show, and you had, you wanted to follow up about something, and I’m happy to talk about it.

Amanda Milligan:
Or DM me on Twitter, or whatever it is. I’m happy to help. And thank you so much for having me, truly.

Azeem Ahmad:
The guests can’t see, but I’m doing a hand on heart thing. Honestly, this has been brilliant. Thank you so much.

Azeem Ahmad:
I’ll make sure to share your social handle and your e-mail address in the show notes, but that is pretty much it. All it’s left to say is, this has been absolutely brilliant, so much knowledge dropped in 20 minutes or so.

Azeem Ahmad:
I cannot thank you enough for being an absolutely awesome. This is where I shut up. The final word on your episode goes to you, so take it away.

Amanda Milligan:
Well, thank you, Azeem, you’re wonderful. Thank you for everything that you do for the industry. I just want to shout you out to end this episode, and thank you all for listening.

The wonderful Andy Thornton joins me on the show to discuss the important topic of LGBTQ+ inclusion in the marketing sector.

Listen now, right above the subscribe button, or pick your favourite listening platform from this list:

Spotify: Click here
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(Full transcript at bottom of page.)

Andy Thornton is a Digital Marketing Executive for Noisy Little Monkey and a Stonewall LGBTQ+ Person of Faith Rolemodel. They trained with the School of Sexuality Education and have delivered workshops on LGBTQ+ identity and inclusion to schools, universities and even festival-goers! 

Andy has a sociology background and won the Peter Cressey Award at the University of Bath in 2020. He’s done research into Queer and religious exclusion and have written, illustrated, and published a children’s book called Rebekah’s Secret Grandpa. Their current obsessions are TikTok marketing, Trans rights and tea.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Defining what it means to be a marketer who is part of the LGBTQ+ community.
  
• Why pronouns/identity are important to address as marketers.
  
• Examples of brands/companies who tackle the issue of community inclusion well.
  
• Resources to learn more about this for those who are new to this area.
  
• What should non-LGBTQ+ marketers do to make workplaces more inclusive.
  
• Advice for queer marketers struggling in non-inclusive workplaces who don’t know where to start.

…and much more!

Useful Links:

Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks

My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/AzeemDigital

My website: https://iamazeemdigital.com/

Sign up to “The Marginalised Marketer” newsletter: https://iamazeemdigital.com/the-marginalised-marketer-newsletter/

Andy Twitter: https://twitter.com/humansatsuma

Episode Transcript:

Azeem Ahmad:
Hello. And welcome back to the Razee Digital Asks Podcast. This is the all-round digital marketing podcast. What I was going to say there is, this is a topic that I’m really looking forward to learning more about. My guest is laughing already. We’re talking all about LGBTQ+ inclusion in the marketing sector. I’ve got a wonderful guest called Andy, who I’ll let him introduce himself in a moment. I’m going to start by saying that I’m really, really excited to talk about a topic like this, because it’s something that I shamefully do not know enough about, so I am very glad that he has agreed to join me. My friend, welcome to the show.

Andy Thornton:
Thanks mate. Happy to be here.

Azeem Ahmad:
You are an absolute legend. For those who don’t know who you are, would you mind giving a short intro to yourself? Who you are, what you do, and why you are such a brilliant human being?

Andy Thornton:
My name’s Andy, my pronouns are they and he, and I work in digital marketing for a fantastic agency called Noisy Little Monkey. The easiest way to introduce myself is through a slew of labels. So I’m going to start with that one. I’m a Christian, I’m autistic, I’m dyslexic, I’m non-binary, I’m queer, but I’m also obsessed with the color yellow, it’s becoming an increasing problem. I’m an illustrator. And I really love marketing, like an embarrassing amount. I talk about it at dinner parties, it’s not good.

Azeem Ahmad:
That is what it’s all about. And I was very fortunate to have the chance, thanks to our friends at Noisy Little Monkey to meet you at their most recent version of BrightonSEO and we got to hang out for a little bit. And for those who don’t know, Andy is an absolute legend. And I’m going to say that lots of times during this episode. Let’s get right into it before we start, though, what I’m going to say is what I said to you when I met you in person. And like I said, at the start of this episode, this is something that I am learning about. So for yourself and for the listeners, if I make a mistake, apologies in advance, but please know this is coming from a place of learning and I’m going to make mistakes along the way. So I’m going to hold my hands up in advance and just say, I’m trying to learn more, which is why I’ve engaged with you. Please, don’t hate me.

Andy Thornton:
Can I add my own caveat to that?

Azeem Ahmad:
Go on.

Andy Thornton:
Which is, I think people can always tell the difference between someone who’s trying and someone who isn’t. So for me, I’d much rather that you are engaging in it trying and getting it wrong, but learning from your mistakes, then you’re like that’s too terrifying. I’m not even going to bother.

Azeem Ahmad:
Okay, good.

Andy Thornton:
We’ve all got to learn.

Azeem Ahmad:
Deal made, right? Let’s jump into this. So we’re talking all about LGBTQ plus inclusion in the marketing sector, and I think the best place to start Andy is, essentially, two pronged questions. So either how do you define, or what does it mean to you to be a marketer who is part of the LGBTQ plus community?

Andy Thornton:
So I love this question because it’s not really a thing. In the sense of there’s not a defined community. Often I use queer and LGBTQ plus interchangeably. Some people who are LGBTQ plus may not define themselves as queer, but just to let you know, I’m going to be doing that. But you’ve got women in SEO or you’ve got like the B digital platform for black marketers. That’s emerging at the moment. Like there are loads of communities within marketing for margin groups, but we don’t really have that for the LGBTQ plus community.

Andy Thornton:
But I think for me personally, it’s about kind of the way that we do everything in marketing. So like marketing is power. That’s a bold statement, but I’m going to stick with it, in the sense of, we have the power to kind of change our society, to influence our society if we’re doing our job right. And so, for me, as like a queer person in the marketing industry, I think there’s so much potential for change there and there’s so much potential to kind of show people how glorious and how amazing, kind of like a queer inclusive LGBTQ plus inclusive society can be. We can change that narrative if we know what we’re doing.

Azeem Ahmad:
Love that, love that. That’s brilliant. And so thank you for sharing that. I wanted to touch on part of that. So I think part of what you just said, it involves pronouns as part of identity. And recently I’ve noticed that more and more people starts to include their pronouns in their social bios, for example, or for example, at conferences, you can now have them on your badges, lanyards is the word I’m looking for. So for me, I guess I’d love to learn from you directly. Why do you think that that pronouns or identity is important to address for us as marketers?

Andy Thornton:
Yeah, it’s interesting because I think pronouns has become such like a overwhelming social issue that if you looked at the media, you’d think that the number one issue for trans people is pronouns. The number one issue for trans people is like legal recognition and rights, but people getting your pronouns right massively affects your daily life. And it’s a really easy thing to get, right. And it’s a really easy thing to get wrong. So I think pronouns are really important because it kind of demonstrates other issues and it demonstrates like somebody being a safe person or not. And then like identity broadly in marketing is so important. Like that’s all we ever talk about. Right? We’re always talking about like focus on your customers, think about your personas. Like it’s really important to kind of dig into identity. That’s one of the reasons I love marketing, but in doing that often we can kind of maintain these like stereotypes or these kind of binary narratives, which are, I was going to say dangerous. That’s maybe a stretch, but they can be because they kind of uphold other issues.

Andy Thornton:
So if things like, you know, if you are an SEO, who’s worth their salt, then stuff you write is going to be at the top of Google. And if you are doing even small things like using, they instead of he or she that’s, non-binary inclusive, or when you write alt descriptions, if you don’t know the gender of the person you are writing about not if they look male or female, but if you don’t know, like you haven’t been told by them what their gender is, then you don’t know. So you can say, oh, this is a masculine person with short hair doing this. Or you can say, this is a person with long hair doing this. Right. And even things to like that, you are helping yourself get a better idea. And you’re also kind of changing the thing, the way that people see sources of authority, talking about people and talking about these issues.

Azeem Ahmad:
Brilliant. You’ve very nicely led me to my next question about sources of authority. And you just touched on what brands can be doing there. Do you have any examples that you can share with the listeners of brands or companies who are tackling this issue really well?

Andy Thornton:
Yeah. I think like gay people love Starbucks. I don’t know if you ever noticed that it’s like a gay people love Starbucks, right. And in 2019 they did this and this is advertising but it proves my point. They did this ad of a trans kid and it was kind of the person wasn’t getting their, they weren’t hearing their name and then they go to Starbucks and they hear their name for the first time. Right. And like that, that’s a real experience that happened to me. That was the first time I heard someone use my chosen name and it’s a true experience for a lot of trans people. So they, they did their research, they worked with trans people and they got it right. And I think people really appreciated that. So the big, any good examples like that. Like happy socks when you recently did a partnership with the fluid project, which is like a, this is like a BTC example, they are a run organization and then they also donated to charity.

Andy Thornton:
So there was a lot of like actual interaction with LGBTQ plus people, as long as you’re asking actual people of the community to do it, then you can’t go too far wrong, but also pay them. That helps. And I think also make sure that you are diversifying who you ask, like there’s a big problem within the community of like what’s colloquially called the hagiarchy, but it’s like white CIS, which means trans gay men who kind of are only one step removed from the like, I don’t know, ideal of like a white CIS straight man. Right. And so often they kind of dominate queer spaces and they can be transphobia or racist. And that’s not like a real kind of representation of queerness. So I think if you’re going to be asking influences or like charities, like who are queer for advice and to work with them on projects, it’s really important to make sure that you’re not just asking white gay men. You can’t, you can’t be queer inclusive if you’re not kind of anti-racist and you’re not inclusive of disabled people as well. That just doesn’t work.

Azeem Ahmad:
Thanks very much for that. So look, we’re about 10 minutes in 11 minutes in and my head is full already. I’m learning a lot. So honestly, thank you so much. This is, this is brilliant. I wanted to move on and say, look, let’s imagine that a brand or an agency is listening to this completely new about this area or aspect of inclusion. And they’re thinking, right. Okay. I need to take action. And what Andy’s sharing with us, what resources would you recommend to them where they can sort of start and get involved and take action.

Andy Thornton:
So Google’s a good one, but it’s good to, it’s good to be careful what you’re, what you’re Googling. So the Stonewall glossary is really good. It’s like a list of kind of queer related terms. So if you’ve got no idea what’s going on, go and read that because then at least you’ll kind of be able to understand some of what people are saying. The things not to say series on YouTube, really good, because it’s, again, it’s actual people from various communities like talking about how to interact with them. And that’s really helpful bit of a basic answer, but like content creators on Instagram and books are really good for like actually kind of getting a personal understanding of people. So Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-menon really good as is In Their Shoes by Jamie Windust and Dr. Devon Price on Instagram. They’ve got like a PhD and they have such a nuanced to kind of understanding of it.

Andy Thornton:
So I, I really enjoy their content, but I think it’s also important to say that we are still working this out, everyone is still working this out. So as long as you kind of don’t work with anyone who is explicitly anti-queer, explicitly anti L G B T like that’s something that at Noisy Little Monkey. We will only work with clients who we kind of agree with morally and learn from the people who are willing to talk about it. So I’m one of them. I’m a queer person, but I’m also somebody who’s studied sociology and who’s really interested in these topics and I’m willing to kind of talk about it. You know, don’t go up to whatever employee you have in your workplace and be like, Hey, so gay rights. But you know, there are lots of people who are doing the work. So I think it’s just about kind of Finding, going to source and finding what they say, which I think is true for all marginalized communities. Really.

Azeem Ahmad:
Absolutely. And I have to side step for a second and say, you are doing my job better than me. Cause the way that you’re linking these together is fantastic. So you mentioned about colleagues there and that’s my next question for you. So what should non LGBTQ plus marketers do to make their workplaces more inclusive?

Andy Thornton:
Great question. This is a shameless plug, but I went on another podcast, obviously not as good as this one called Nobody Panic. And I did a episode on how to be a good trans ally. So if you search how to be a good trans ally on Spotify, Nobody Panic. It should come up. So like listen to that, because I go into like big detail on that.

Andy Thornton:
In terms of like workplaces at digital gaggle, which is the event that Noisy Little Monkey held earlier, we came up with this thing that was like, cry, build a gang leave. So if you are like a queer person, who’s like struggling, then that’s the kind of three step plan.

Andy Thornton:
But I think like if you are not a queer person, then as you said at the start, like putting pronouns in your bio, putting pronouns in your email. So we’ve got all of ours in our signature and that’s really good, challenging things that people say on calls. Like if somebody presumes, if you don’t know the gender of somebody use their pronouns until you find it out because like that normalizes it. And also I think it’s so much easier to do the work when it’s not about you. So go to your HR. If you’re lucky enough to have one go to your line manager, your CEO and say, Hey, what are the queer, LGBTQ plus policies at work? Can I just make sure that we’re doing everything we can to make this a safe space? Do we think about this in our hiring? Like, and actually putting that work in before you need to, does that make sense? So before somebody comes out in the office, make it easy for them to do so because it’s really hard.

Azeem Ahmad:
That is brilliant. Honestly. Brilliant.

Andy Thornton:
You’re so nice to me.

Azeem Ahmad:
Wait till I press stop recording. You mentioned in your previous answer there, Andy, about queer marketers who might be struggling. And I’d love to just pick on that a little bit more. So if there are people listening to this in the marketing industry who are queer and are struggling and who feel like their workplace is not inclusive at all, what advice would you give to them? Maybe if they don’t know where to start for example, what, what advice would you give to those people?

Andy Thornton:
Well, first of all, I’d be on Twitter because we need a community happening here. I think yeah. The first thing would be if you have a HR talk to them. I know a lot of like smaller agencies or in house, like smaller companies, maybe don’t but also sometimes HR can be not great. So I think the first thing would be to identify your biggest ally. So that’s the person who you think is going to be you like most receptive and kind of sit them down in a private like chill environment and just be like, Hey, I’m finding some of these things a little bit difficult. Like, do you think you could help me work them out or help me have those conversations? Just so you know, you’ve got someone on your team and then be clear and focus on small wins.

Andy Thornton:
So like identify the things that are really getting to you and try and fix those first. Like you are not responsible for making the whole company better, but if it’s affecting your experience of the workplace, you should do something about that. It was some thing my colleague, Josh, said to me, because I feel I’m very British. I feel really bad correcting people or I used to feel really bad correcting people on my pronouns. And Josh said, well, you know, if I got your name wrong, you’d immediately tell me. Wouldn’t you? Because like that’s awkward and it’s wrong. So why have pronouns any different?

Andy Thornton:
I’ve found it much easier in these kind of situations to employ the model that cow on sex education, which the team V show on Netflix, it’s great. They get misgendered and they say, oh, I use they them pronouns, but no worries. And it’s kind of firm, but calm and it just deescalates the situation. So when I’m talking to other people in the marketing industry and they’re like, ah. I’m like oh, this is it. Don’t worry about it. Like I’m going to correct you. And then we’re all going to move on, because this is not the most important thing we’ve got to talk about now.

Azeem Ahmad:
Love That. And definitely minus to sex education on Netflix, nobody needs to know about that. All the things that you’ve mentioned, all the resources that you’ve mentioned throughout this podcast definitely share links of me and I’ll add them in to the show notes. Sadly, we do have to part way soon, Andy, but one of the things that I’m keen, I know. Yeah. One of the things that I’m keen to do is obviously just give you an open section for you to talk about anything that you want here that we haven’t covered, that you think might benefit the listeners. So essentially the floor, digital audio space, whatever you want to call it, all yours, mate.

Andy Thornton:
I think I’m going to take this precious moment to say, please stop turning your logos into rainbows simply for the month of June. It’s my biggest pet peeve. Hey, there’s so many memes on the internet about all the rainbow flags being pulled down July the first, right? So yeah, I think the biggest thing is it’s not that hard to avoid tokenism, but you do have to put in the work and I really appreciate you being like, I might get this wrong, but you’re only going to start getting it right with practice and with reading. And you know, we’re all learning. We’re all trying to get better at so many different things. And this is just one of them. Yeah. I think that’s everything. Your questions were great.

Azeem Ahmad:
The listeners can’t see, but I’ve got what I thought was the praying emoji, virtual high fives for you there.

Andy Thornton:
Love it.

Azeem Ahmad:
Before you go, Andy, I would love for people to be able to find out more about you and follow you. So essentially this is the part of the episode, right before the end, where you share all your details and hopefully social media following goes through the roof.

Andy Thornton:
Can’t wait. I mean you are famous. So I’m really, it’s just riff off that. No. So on a LinkedIn I’m Andy Thornton, A N D Y, and I’ve got a blog on LinkedIn of like 10 ways to make your workplace more inclusive. And that’s not just for LGBTQ plus people. That’s kind of for all different groups. I’m on Twitter and Instagram as humans satsuma. My Twitter is like professional marketing based and my Instagram is not professional, but follow it anyway. I do. I do put quite a lot of like resources on there. So if you’re interested in that, then, then feel free to follow it. And I tweet about kind of inclusion quite a lot. I’ve only just got Twitter. So any support is really welcome.

Andy Thornton:
I’m also always happy to field questions, like lots of people aren’t, and it’s not their job, but I am. And I’m explicitly saying that I am. So please use me as a resource. Although I would say if Google can answer the question, don’t ask me, so don’t message me. What does non-binary mean, because you can Google it. And then the final thing is I work for Noisy Little Monkey and we do quite a lot of marketing blogs. I write quite a lot of them. So check those out as well.

Azeem Ahmad:
Also, like I said, definitely share those links with me please. I guess what is left me to say is a massive, massive thank you. This has been really, really insightful. It’s definitely one that I’ll be coming back to, believe me. If these listeners number rise, it’ll probably be me coming back to it over and over again. But I really appreciate you taking the time out to, to share this with me and with the listeners. So thank you so, so much. If you enjoy this episode, please, first of all, before even subscribe and liking all that usual nonsense, I’ll talk about, go and follow Andy. Thank him for sharing his knowledge and wisdom. And then when you’ve done a comeback run this episode up 10 more times and then like it, share it, subscribe it, knock onto your next door neighbor and tell them that you’ve just a lot about this stuff and that you want to share it with them. If they don’t work in marketing, it would be a little bit weird, but still pass the message on Andy, thank you so much and take care.

Andy Thornton:
Thank you so much, mate. I’m so happy to be here. Cheers.

The brilliant Jessica Pardoe joins me on the show to discuss how best newcomers can start their marketing career, and how to avoid burnout too – as well as a few more tips thrown in!

Listen now, right above the subscribe button, or pick your favourite listening platform from this list:

Spotify: Click here
Apple Podcasts: Click here

Use a different listening platform? Choose it here.
(Full transcript at bottom of page.)

Jessica is a PR Account Manager at Source PR in Cheshire, and you’ll regularly find her on social media sharing her knowledge, and helping others.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Thinking of her own career, what the one thing is that she wishes she could go back and do differently when she started.
• What she thinks some of the common misconceptions are that people have when starting their marketing careers.
• One piece of advice she could give someone who is brand new to the industry.
• Tips for newcomers to the industry who are often keen to progress quickly and preventing overwork.
• What people can do to prevent burnout.
• How has the pandemic changed PR?
• Advice from Jess on how to settle into a new job when on-boarding is purely remote.

…and much more!

Useful Links:

Episode sponsored by Absolute Digital, check them out here: https://absolute.digital/

Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks

My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/AzeemDigital

My website: https://iamazeemdigital.com/

Sign up to “The Marginalised Marketer” newsletter: https://iamazeemdigital.com/the-marginalised-marketer-newsletter/

Jessica Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessicapardoePR

Episode Transcript:

Azeem Ahmad:
Hello. And welcome back to another episode of the Azeem Digital Asks podcast. Super excited. I have a brilliant guest with me today and she’s making her podcasting debut. So please listen to this episode. And when you finished, rewind it back to start and listen to it again 10 times, because she’ll love that. We’re talking all about starting your marketing career the right way and avoiding burnout with Jessica Pardoe.

Azeem Ahmad:
Before we begin, a quick word from the sponsor. This episode is sponsored by Absolute Digital media, a leading UK based digital marketing agency, specializing in search paper click and digital PR. With seven award wins under their belt already this year, they understand what it takes to make a business stand out from its competitors and generate greater visibility in return. Check them out. And I will drop a link to them in the show notes. Right, Jessica, welcome to the show.

Jessica Pardoe:
Hello. Thank you.

Azeem Ahmad:
How are you doing?

Jessica Pardoe:
I’m okay. Thank you. Yeah. Good.

Azeem Ahmad:
I’m very excited to be able to facilitate your podcasting debut. I’m excited to learn more from you. So let’s start right from the very beginning and give the listeners an introduction to yourself.

Jessica Pardoe:
Okay. Hello, I’m Jess. And I’m an account manager at Source PR, which is a lovely little PR and social media agency just based down in Cheshire.

Azeem Ahmad:
Awesome. Right. So we’re talking all about how you can start your marketing career the right way and how to avoid burnout. So let’s start from the very beginning then, Jessica. Do you prefer Jessica or do you prefer Jess?

Jessica Pardoe:
Either’s fine. But normally Jess.

Azeem Ahmad:
Okay. I’ll go with Jess. So Jess, thinking of your own career, what is one thing you wish you could go back and do differently when you started?

Jessica Pardoe:
I think if I was to say one thing, it would definitely be to look out for any red flags very much at the beginning of my career. It’s something I actually wrote about recently on my blog and it seemed to resonate with quite a lot of people. I wish that at the time I was better educated on them and that’s something that I am trying to help people with now too. And I say this because I had a bit of a bumpy start to my career with a few knocks to my confidence, unfortunately.

Jessica Pardoe:
And I think looking back, I wish that I’d just had ample training from the get go that could have helped me identify things that were potentially wrong and the things where I should have been getting help where I wasn’t. I don’t necessarily regret anything in my career, because I do think that you shouldn’t ever have any solid regrets. And ultimately, all of my experience has led me to where I am today. But I think if I could do things differently, I’d have done research into the industry a little bit more and knowing kind of what makes a good and bad employer from the beginning.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yeah. That’s brilliant. I couldn’t agree with you any more. I’d love to dig into that a little bit further then. So you mentioned it briefly there, but what would you say are some of the most common misconceptions that people have when they start their marketing careers?

Jessica Pardoe:
Well, I don’t know if this is just me thinking of my own career, my own experiences, but there seems to be a misconception that those starting out should know what to do straight away. I mean, certainly people I’ve spoken to privately on Twitter seem to have been thrown in very much to deep ends in their first roles in the industry.

Jessica Pardoe:
But in reality, PR isn’t really taught in schools and in universities, and definitely digital PR isn’t. So I think that some form of training should come a standard for all graduates and anyone coming into junior careers in marketing. I mean, even in other disciplines, such as general marketing. Although it’s as subject that a lot do study at university, that doesn’t mean that they’re going to come into a role straight away and exactly know how things work.

Jessica Pardoe:
The industry changes so often that really we need to nip that misconception in the bud right away and make sure that new starters are settled into their roles with the right support. As like I mentioned, things do change so often in marketing, in PR and SEO and all those other industries, I think we need to stop assuming that graduates are going to be able to come into a role and be able to do it from the get go. And I think that’s where a lot of problems can arise very early on.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yeah. Again, the listeners can’t see, but I’m nodding my head away. A lot of what you’re saying is resonating massively. Thank you for sharing. I’m temporarily going to side step and ask you a question that I haven’t prepared you for. Sorry.

Jessica Pardoe:
Okay.

Azeem Ahmad:
How much of that, so you mentioned there about people starting jobs, their first jobs, being expected to basically hit the ground running, how much of that do you think lies in the job descriptions that people see before they apply? Do you think the job descriptions are incorrect or correct and there’s misconceptions? How much of it do you think lies there?

Jessica Pardoe:
I think that with job descriptions, a lot of them are very detailed. And as a graduate and just speaking from experiences myself, I was willing to just kind of go into anything to get that experience that I knew I needed, because there’s always that real struggle of getting that experience under your belt initially, because a lot of places do want experience. So job descriptions themselves, they can be quite difficult to navigate and to know what you’re going into. Because often, and especially marketing, they have a lot of different responsibilities.

Jessica Pardoe:
But I think again, speaking from personal experience and what happened to me in my career, it would’ve been great to have initial training, even though that isn’t particularly specified. Because like I say, you can’t expect somebody to walk into a graduate role and know exactly what to do. Even though they might have applied for a role that says you need to be able to do this and that, I think if you’re applying for a junior role or something that’s postgraduate, there is a certain level of expectation there that you would be showing how to do that. And it wouldn’t be assumed that you’d know how to do it straight away, because that’s just simply not the case. You’ve just come out of university and you’re not going to know how to do certain things. That’s just the standard.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yeah. Another fantastic answer. I’m really glad this conversation is happening. So thank you again for sharing that. I think that leads me quite nicely onto my next question for you then. So if there was one piece of advice that you could give to somebody who is brand new to the industry or who is about to take their first steps into the industry, what would that be?

Jessica Pardoe:
I would say definitely, definitely, definitely do your research and make sure that you’re committing to a role that will treat you fairly and that holds all the right progression and training opportunities in place. I think as we’re beginning to speak about this a little bit more and certainly over the past year or so, I’ve really noticed that employers are beginning to talk more about what they’re doing for their employees mental health and how they’re training good people and offering ongoing training as well, which is really, really important because the industry is always changing.

Jessica Pardoe:
So I would say definitely, definitely do research and look out for that. And remember that your notice period as well is just as much for you as it is for your employer. So if you are on a three month probation, for example, that gives you ample time to make sure that you’re in the right role before you commit to anything long term. And I think that’s really important for new graduates and people who are just starting out in the industry to know.

Azeem Ahmad:
Oh, this is 24 carat solid gold. This is brilliant. Thanks for sharing. So let’s move on and let’s talk about burnout and using newcomers as an example. So certainly in my experience, what I’ve seen is that many newcomers to the industry, pandemic aside for a moment, they’re quite keen to progress really quickly. And some will even overwork, which does often lead to burnout. So in terms of time management, what advice would you give to somebody in new to the industry in how best to manage their time?

Jessica Pardoe:
Let me just start by saying that I totally get that. And I totally get wanting to get ahead in your career. I’ve very much been like that myself. But what I would say is you don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. So if you start off by overworking yourself, coming in early, leaving late, that’s very much showing that that will be expected from you moving forward. And as you kind of get into your career a little bit more, if you’re staying at the same place, you’re going to realize that you don’t want that to become the norm for you.

Jessica Pardoe:
But to go back to your question, I would a hundred percent say, learn how to switch off. I would never endorse having your work emails or Slack on your personal phone, because I think you need that down time to think about personal life. And spend time with your friends and family as well, which is really important for mental health. But one thing I do always think, and this might be a little bit controversial, but here we go, is that if you’re having to work late every night, then you’re either not good at managing your time or you’re being given too much to do. And often with people who are new into the industry, it’s often the latter.

Jessica Pardoe:
So both of those are fundamental problems and something that should be nipped in the bud. And it is the responsibility of your employer or your manager to identify that and to help you so you don’t feel that pressure to be starting early and working late. Nobody should have to do that, despite what the PR industry might have you believe. So if you’re finding that’s the case, I would definitely advise reaching out to someone within your place of work or indeed someone without… Outside of your work as well. My DMS are always open to anyone who thinks their situation might not be quite right and wants to talk to somebody about it. But I would always advise reaching out to somebody if you feel that something’s not right.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yeah. Again, I find myself agreeing furiously. Absolutely brilliant. I wanted to pick on something that you just said there. Pick on is probably the wrong phrase, but one of the things you mentioned there was either not managing time correctly or being given too much work to do.

Jessica Pardoe:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Azeem Ahmad:
So like I just said, complete agree. I definitely think it falls on either side of that fence. Speaking of the latter, if a newcomer to the industry, keen to impress, but has a lot of work on their plate, recognizes that they’ve got a lot of work. How do advise they bring that up with the people that they report into in a professional way, rather than just saying, “Oh, I haven’t hit this deadline because I’ve got too much work to do.” What’s the best way that somebody can approach that?

Jessica Pardoe:
Look, I don’t think it’s an easy thing. I’ll just say that from the start. I think it’s very difficult, especially if you’re new into a company. You have to expect that it’s not going to be easy to say, “Look, I think I’m doing too much or I’ve not got enough time to do what you’re asking me to do.” But I would say speak to someone you trust. And that might not be your direct manager, it might perhaps be the managing director or even somebody from another department. And I would say, “This is my experience. And I’m finding it quite difficult. Is there anything that you can advise?”

Jessica Pardoe:
You might not feel comfortable going straight to your boss straight away, because that might not be easy for you. But I would say talk to somebody. And as a manager myself as well, I would really appreciate honesty from my execs. If they are struggling to get things done, then the best thing that they can do is let me know about it. Because often it will just be the case that perhaps they’ve got a little bit too much on their plate or that things are taking longer than we initially thought. And that’s not a problem and that’s definitely not on them, but it’s something that we should look to nip in the bud straight away.

Jessica Pardoe:
So I would say talk to somebody that you trust. If you’re really finding it difficult to talk to someone within your agency, perhaps reach out to anyone else within the industry and ask if they’ve had similar experiences. And they might be able to help as well. But either way, I would say definitely talk to someone, nip it in the bud as soon as you can, and make sure that your problems are heard straight away, because your managers will normally appreciate that as well.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yes, absolutely. Open lines of communication are key. Thanks for sharing that. Let’s look at the other side of the fence then, working too hard leading into burnout. How would you suggest that people prevent this, especially when they’re starting out?

Jessica Pardoe:
Well, like I said, I’d say a thousand percent create that separation between your work life and your personal life. One of the big things for me is not having emails on your phone and that kind of thing. No Slack, no emails, not even talking about work outside of working hours. I think that’s really important because it helps create that switch off and it helps you to have time to think about anything but work. And that creates a really good balance in your life.

Jessica Pardoe:
I’d also say that if you are feeling burnt out, then like I say, talk to a manager about it because they might not even know. And from experience, talking about these things definitely does help. So yeah, I’d say my two top things would be making sure that you keep your work life separate so that you have time to switch off and talking to people. And like I say, maybe even people outside of your workplace. And my DMs are absolutely always open for anybody who wants to talk about such things.

Azeem Ahmad:
Brilliant. Thank you for sharing. And if you’re listen to this, I strongly suggest that you take Jess up on that offer and reach out to her. Being as we’ve got time, I want to pick your brains about a couple more things. I’m enjoying putting you on the spot, because I’m really enjoying this episode. You mentioned earlier on about the pandemic changing PR.

Jessica Pardoe:
Yes.

Azeem Ahmad:
What did you mean by that?

Jessica Pardoe:
I think that probably the biggest thing that the pandemic has changed, and everyone will be able to resonate with this, is everyone going to working from home. That required a lot of trust from our employees. And it also required us to give ourselves better work life balance because it’s so easy to start work early and finish late when your work is at home, where you are spending the most time. So I think from the pandemic, it’s been really important to learn how to combat that and how to create a good separation, whether that’s actively putting away your things at the end of the night or whether it’s having, if you’re fortunate enough to have an office, closing the door on that office and then not worrying about it for the rest of the night.

Jessica Pardoe:
And I’m not saying as well that you should feel worried about your job or that it should be bringing you stress outside of work. What I am saying is that it’s really important not to think about work all the time, because then it’ll consume you. And this is coming from someone who absolutely loves their job. I love what I do and I feel happy every day at work. But if I think about work all the time, then there’s every chance that I will start to stop enjoying it in the way that I do. So I think that’s really important.

Jessica Pardoe:
And as more of us continue to work from home, even post lockdown and that kind of thing, I think it’s really important to just keep on creating that separation and just acknowledging the change as well. The pandemic has changed PR, it has changed the way that we work and it has changed the way that we do things. So I think understanding that and giving yourself some slack and learning how to navigate. And I hate the phrase, but the new normal is really important. And I think that’s something to bear in mind.

Azeem Ahmad:
Brilliant. Yeah. And I presume when you say, give yourself some slack, you do not mean the conversational chat app, of course.

Azeem Ahmad:
The last thing I wanted to ask you then before I let you go, because sadly we are coming towards the end of the episode. This is something selfishly that I would love to learn more from you about because for context, during the pandemic, I move jobs. And I’m very much a people person so I enjoy the fact that if I was starting a new job, for example, traditionally, I’d be setting a meeting room, having an induction, blah, blah. However, all of my onboarding was remote.

Azeem Ahmad:
I imagine as things are now, things aren’t looking good from a pandemic point of view, let’s say devil’s advocate. And I hate that phrase, but things worsen again, people have to stick to remote working to keep everybody safe. Somebody’s starting in the industry brand new and is starting remotely. So all of the introductions and learning is going to behind 13, 14 inch laptop screen. What advice would you give to somebody in how best to navigate their first steps into the industry from behind a computer screen?

Jessica Pardoe:
I think that, and I hate to use the phrase “It depends,” because it’s so cliche. But it really does depend on how you feel about the virtual learning and virtual working as to how you would kind of deal with that. But for me, I personally do, I am the same as you. I like to be in the office. I like to have connections with my colleagues and chat and be able to catch up. And I remember reading something that Zoom in particular can be quite difficult for our mental health, because it’s really hard to read body language over a screen.

Jessica Pardoe:
So I think taking things like that into account and perhaps looking at varying up the ways that you communicate with your team, especially as you kind of come into a new role and get to know those people is really important. So it might be that certain meetings are done over Zoom. It might be that you have more informal phone calls that you are not waiting around to take because that can be anxiety inducing as well, or it might even just be keeping in touch over platforms, such as Slack. We use Hangouts every day and we just kind of chat informally, either about work or about other things.

Jessica Pardoe:
And I find that that really helped me keep connected in the pandemic. And I think for a new starter, that would be really important. Because it’s kind of with your colleagues, but without the pressure of having to appear on Zoom or having to think about the way that you’re talking over the phone, for example. So that would be my piece of advice. And that’s coming from someone who does kind of thrive of human connection. I find that vary in the ways you communicate does really, really help. And that has helped me and hopefully it will help any new starters to the industry as well. But fingers crossed there shan’t be another lockdown. I would like to think that we won’t be in that situation again. But like you said, you absolutely never know.

Azeem Ahmad:
Yeah. 100%. I hope there isn’t as well. Jess, absolutely brilliant. Genuinely one of the most enjoyable episodes that I’ve recorded. So thank you very much for sharing your knowledge, your wisdom. If people are listening to this and they’re thinking, “I would love to connect with you, I’d love to follow you, find out more about you.” How can they do that?

Jessica Pardoe:
I would say that I’m most active on Twitter, so you can find me at Jessica Pardoe PR. And I’m also Jessica Pardoe on LinkedIn as well. So if you wanted to connect with me there, that’s absolutely fine. And while I’m here, I’d also like to say that you might like to pop my agency a little follow on Twitter too. They’re at Source_tweets. That’s Source_tweets. And I’d really appreciate a little follow for them too. Thank you.

Azeem Ahmad:
Well, I’ll send you an invoice after for that. I’m only joking. This has been brilliant, Jess. Thank you so much. I’m very pleased and honoured that you chose this podcast to do your podcasting debut. I can tell you this is going to be a hit with the listeners, for sure. I’ve been nodding furiously. Once again, from me to you, thank you so much. And if anybody’s listening to this thinking, “I would love to convert us with this person,” reach out, do it. She is brilliant, very kind, very helpful. And as you already heard, full of knowledge. I’m going to shut up now and I’m going to give you the last word on your episode.

Jessica Pardoe:
Thank you. I would just say exactly what you’ve just said. If anyone’s feeling that they might be at risk of burnout or if they feel like what their situation is, isn’t quite right for them, then please, please do reach out to me. I’m always happy to chat.

Jessica Pardoe:
And I do chat to quite a lot of people on Twitter as well about these kinds of things. I like to say that my DMs are quite a safe space. And if anyone feels like they want to talk about something that they wouldn’t want to talk to anyone else about, then absolutely, I’m your person. So feel free to DM me on Twitter or find me on LinkedIn. I’m happy to chat on either.

How can small, and medium sized businesses start to recover from the effects of COVID? That’s exactly what my brilliant guest on this episode – Riley Hope – will share the answers to.

Listen now, right above the subscribe button, or pick your favourite listening platform from this list:

Spotify: Click here
Apple Podcasts: Click here

Use a different listening platform? Choose it here.
(Full transcript at bottom of page.)

Riley Hope is an organic digital marketer with over five years of experience, with a majority of experience specialising in SEO for small-medium enterprises. She also has an academic background and has written multiple papers on SEO and the SME sector. .

In this episode, we discuss:

• How SMBs have been affected by COVID.
• Some of the key mistakes she’s seen SMBs make during the pandemic.
• How she thinks SMBs should plan if the COVID situation worsens.
• How can SMB’s start to recover from an SEO POV.

…and much more!

Useful Links:

Episode sponsored by Absolute Digital, check them out here: https://absolute.digital/

Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks

My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/AzeemDigital

My website: https://iamazeemdigital.com/

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Riley Twitter: https://twitter.com/reillyhope13

Episode Transcript

Azeem Ahmad:
Hello, and welcome back to the Azeem Digital Asks all-round digital marketing podcast. What a great episode and a great guest I have got for you today. We’re talking all about using SEO as part of a COVID recovery for SMBs with the awesome Riley Hope.

Azeem Ahmad:
Before we begin, a quick word from the sponsor. This episode is sponsored by Absolute Digital Media, a leading UK-based digital marketing agency specialising in search, pay-per-click and digital PR. With seven award wins under their belt already this year, they understand what it takes to make a business stand out from its competitors and generate greater visibility in return. Check them out. I will drop a link to them in the show notes.

Azeem Ahmad:
But now, onto the show. Riley, welcome to the show.

Riley Hope:
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Azeem Ahmad:
How is it going?

Riley Hope:
It’s going good. I’m in New York so it’s very foggy and cold out. I don’t know how it is in the UK.

Azeem Ahmad:
Pretty much the same, but all year round mostly.. Would you like to tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, who you are and give yourself a great intro?

Riley Hope:
Yeah, sure. My name is Riley, or rileyhope on social media. I am an organic digital marketing specialist and I mostly work in SEO for small businesses as well as third sector organizations. I’m in the works of developing a social enterprise model that utilizes SEO as a social mission, and focuses on COVID revitalization as well as accessibility. The model utilizes a unique pricing formula that helps make it more financially accessible to small businesses.

Riley Hope:
Aside from that, I actually just finished grad school literally yesterday. I submitted my dissertation last night. Where I explored a lot about COVID-19 revitalization through SEO and organic marketing. I also work as an SEO director at a boutique

agency, and I’m also currently rebuilding my Animal Crossing village on my Switch.

Azeem Ahmad:
Wow, what an introduction. That right there is exactly why I’m excited to have you on the show and talk about this topic.

Azeem Ahmad:
First thing’s first though, a massive congratulations on finishing grad school. You must be relieved.

Riley Hope:
Yeah, to say the least. I didn’t know what to do with myself last night, so I got Chipotle and watched Dragonball.

Azeem Ahmad:
All good. Right, into the meat and bones of the show. We’re talking about SEO as part of a COVID recovery for SMBs. I am very much team SMB, if you see or hear things that I post on Twitter especially when new updates come out because they’re often forgotten about. So less of me, more of you.

Azeem Ahmad:
Riley, in your experience, how would you say that SMBs have been affected by COVID?

Riley Hope:
The Washington Post, Matt Stoller, who is the director of the American Economic Liberties Project, called an “extinction level event for small businesses.” The devastation has taken a global toll. I’m sure that you’ve seen businesses closing down where you are, and I’ve seen them close down near me and all across the country.

Riley Hope:
Small businesses actually take up a majority of our economy. Yet during the pandemic, we saw mass closures with the lockdown restrictions. A study from Yelp came out that estimated that 60% of businesses reported that they were closed or now permanently closed. And then, the Atlantic Council went on to actually state, especially in developing markets, small businesses contribute nearly half of the GDP and generate nearly 70% of jobs. The recovery of SMBs is crucial to the global economy.

Riley Hope:
And then, Oxfam, with this has also stated that half a billion people are expected to be pushed into poverty as a result of the pandemic. Yet at the same time, 32 of the world’s largest companies saw their profits jump over $100 billion. The Washington Post went on to also report that 100,000 small businesses in America closed permanently across the USA in the first two months. And during those same months, five of the biggest American companies turned over large revenue and 50 of those companies saw their revenue grow by over 2%.

Riley Hope:
This is the steepest business loss in the history of the USA and we’ve seen this, of course, across the world as well. But in particular to the USA, active American business owners dropped by 22%, which has summed out to a decline of 3.3 million between February and April 2020. This also carries over, so we see the pandemic also disproportionately affected immigrant and minority owned businesses, with African-American owned businesses experiencing the largest loss in the US with a devastating 41% elimination of active businesses.

Azeem Ahmad:
That is incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think many people like myself had an awareness of some level of the impact on SMBs. But, those numbers are sobering, to say the least. Thank you very much for firstly putting in the work and sharing that with everybody.

Azeem Ahmad:
I’d love to dig a little bit deeper into, of the SMBs that survived is probably the wrong word, but the ones who are going through the pandemic now, what would you say are some of the key mistakes that you’ve seen SMBs make during the pandemic?

Riley Hope:
I’ve seen a variety, but I think the key mistake that sums everything up is not enough positive attention is being paid to these digital platforms. I think it can be daunting to a lot of people. They don’t want to mess up their site, they don’t want to mess up how their Instagram feed looks, how their Twitter looks, their Google My Business, or really any platform. There’s so much information on all of these things, especially when it comes to SEO. Or, some of it’s wrong, some of it’s right, some of it’s half right but only if it applies to that industry or what you’re trying to do.

Riley Hope:
I think that anxiousness of, “Oh, if I mess my site up, I don’t know how to get it back,” or, “I don’t know what to post on Instagram, or Facebook or My Business.” And, while there are guidelines and, in SEO’s case, best practice guidelines, I think that there is, for a lot of us in the industry, that it’s fun. There is a learning curve with everything. When you’re adding content with a new WordPress builder or a different site builder, it takes a bit of time to get used to it.

Riley Hope:
I was helping someone set up a new site as part of my research and they were having an issue that happened with a plugin I have never used before. I was like, “I have no idea.” So we just hopped on a Google Meet and screen shared. Yeah, we had to restore the site a few times but we figured it out. I think there needs to be more open dialogue about that, just trying things out. And, about the infobesity of organic digital marketing, especially in SEO.

Riley Hope:
And then, as long as small businesses are staying ethical and not essentially trying to deceive, whether it be the search algorithm or their consumers, I think treating online tools as learning tools is important. Especially as we have these constant updates rolling out, we saw Core Web Vitals come out in the past year, plenty of Google My Business updates and then so many other things.

Riley Hope:
And also, I think just sticking to what is true for that small business. Everyone has a reason why they started their business, aside from making money to some extent. Whether it’s, “Oh, I like to thrive on my days off so I’m going to open up a shop on Instagram and a website,” to even the local restaurant in your town, conveying that kind of reasoning online, in your site, in your social media, whatever else you use, can help people connect and relate to that business.

Azeem Ahmad:
I could not agree with you more. That is gold. I’m sitting here listening to you live now thinking, “This is incredible.”

Riley Hope:
Thank you.

Azeem Ahmad:
I feel guilty that this is free. This is really, really insightful. Thank you so much.

Azeem Ahmad:
So the situation as it stands, we’re not out of the pandemic.

Riley Hope:
Right.

Azeem Ahmad:
Certainly over here in the UK, it looks like things are starting to worsen up as winter season approaches, cases are certainly rising. I’m sure it’s the same over there, certainly from the news that I am seeing.

Azeem Ahmad:
From an SMB point of view, how do you think that SMBs should plan if the COVID situation worsens?

Riley Hope:
I would say plan to be mostly digital. Whatever happened back in 2020, in those first couple months, that March, April, May time where things started to shut down, we saw internet usage rates spike. That spike has essentially maintained.

Riley Hope:
Outline what you’re trying to do, whether that’s trying to get new customers, increase your site presence or just to post on your Google My Business more. We’re seeing businesses become more and more increasingly digital, whether that’s picking up groceries curbside, which I will now never go back into a grocery store unless I absolutely have to. Buying more stuff online rather than going into a shop, learning online or anything in between, it’s important that small businesses are ready to serve people online.

Riley Hope:
Have that Facebook app on your phone, Instagram, granted they’re not down. Have a way that’s easy for you to manage your sites. Use an affordable CRM system, whether that’s using Wix’s site and their tools that they have managed into it, MailChimp has some great solutions that I’ve seen that are affordable. There are form plugins that track data and keep data per GDPR and whatever privacy laws where you are. Use what’s easy and effective to manage your current leads and to get those new customers coming in.

Riley Hope:
Not everyone excels at everything, especially not the first few times. Don’t be afraid to mess up and try new things. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help. Join some Facebook groups, that’s how I got into SEO. Join some online communities. The digital community on Twitter, of course, is abundant. Plant a cell online and if your business has to pause, like a lot of cosmetology based businesses, a lot of restaurants had to close down due to lockdown measures and it seems like there is no light at the end of that tunnel, there will be. We’ve gotten this far, don’t stop, keep posting, keep editing, keep working towards your digital goals.

Riley Hope:
Nothing in the organic digital marketing sense is every immediate. It may take some time to see those results but keep at it and surround yourself and your business with supportive people.

Azeem Ahmad:
Amazing, I couldn’t agree with you more. Consistency is key. I’m a big, big advocate of that so it pleases me to hear another person say that, too. So massive thank you from that.

Azeem Ahmad:
Let’s talk about SEO specifically then, and then afterwards I’m definitely going to pick your brains about this whole outage. But first of all, SEO specifically, as you mentioned, it’s not a quick win. Certainly, if you do it the right way. How can SMBs start to recover, from an SEO point of view?

Riley Hope:
The path to recovery, especially for SEO, it’s muddy. It’s not going to be the same for everyone. But, utilizing a lot of free or discounted tools, a lot of small businesses that I spoke with in my research, they either weren’t aware that they could use some tools, or they didn’t want to try to learn them because they thought they were too complex. I think, going back to what I said about getting in those communities, but also for small businesses in particular, affordability is a key factor. Saving that 10 bucks a week, at least for me, means that I can go to McDonald’s and get an iced coffee for that week. That stuff is important. So using Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, those are powerful and free tools.

Riley Hope:
Something that I noticed in my research is that people underestimated the power that Google My Business can have. So even if you don’t have a physical address, you can use a service area listing and people can find you that way or click through to your site. And then, also enabling messaging in Google My Business as well.

Riley Hope:
If you have or are starting out with a site, let’s say that you didn’t have a site before and you want to start out with WordPress, Astra has a lot of great and free starter templates that you can import, and they’re easy switch out with a variety of different types of builders. Gutenberg I think is one, I don’t know if I’m saying that right. Wix is also affordable and they have themes. WordPress isn’t great for everyone, I know that’s a lot of feedback that I got, too.

Riley Hope:
Screaming Frog is free for small sites, so that’s under 500 URLs, I think. It helps you see a lot of data very quickly, and you can export that to Google Sheets and color code it, do whatever you need to do to look at it. Sitevalve is a great tool and it isn’t free, but it’s very affordable. Utilizing Google Trends is free. I personally like to use the AdWords keyword planner as well. The SEM director at my agency got me onto that so I like to use that for keyword research.

Riley Hope:
There are definitely other great tools out there, that are affordable or that have a free trial, but those are ones that I’ve personally used and can recommend. And then, you can use that data from these tools to build a better site and an optimized site. SEO isn’t just saying, “Okay, Google likes this so that’s all I have to do,” and I think that’s where a lot of small businesses get lost. It’s thinking about the people coming to your site, and you being able to manage the site and those inquiries coming in. You want to think about your customer base, like who your customer base is and how that site looks to them. Is there content on the pages that’s going to fulfill what they’re looking for or what you’re trying to bring forth?

Riley Hope:
Going back to the grocery store example, if you’re running your own corner store and anything akin, and someone is searching for “grocery curbside pickup near me,” do you have content on your site that is geared towards that? Can that customer find how to place an order, pay for that order and when to pick it up efficiently? Do you have staff on hand who know how to look for those incoming orders and get them ready at the pickup time? If you make that search to sales purchase easy for your customer, then they’ll probably come back.

Riley Hope:
For me, I don’t have a lot of grocers in my town but the one that I do use regularly, I can see all their specials through their Facebook. And then, I go to their site or their Google My Business listing, message them through there and then say, “I need a special, whatever, whatever.” And then, I get a reply within an hour with my total, pay online and then I go pick up my order when they said it would be ready. That process is important. Even if you get more customers on social media, having that flow into a website is important. You can track that data better and see how many people are coming to your site from where. You can also show for more queries and more searches with the content on your site.

Riley Hope:
You can also make an order and inquiry process, and use a CRM integration to track and retain your customers. A CRM, I should have said this before, it’s a customer management system. There’s a lot of different ones within WordPress. There’s MailChimp, that’s the most common one I see. I work in auto so I know a lot of the auto based ones. But, there’s a lot of good ones out there that can cater towards different types of businesses and industries. I think that’s an important part of business, especially when small businesses need to recover and get new customers while keeping those current customers.

Azeem Ahmad:
Amazing. Once again, that answer right there is literally an audio strategy for any small or medium business to start to recover from COVID, the impacts of COVID, on a digital point of view. Amazing. Thank you so much.

Azeem Ahmad:
Right before I let you go though, I am going to put you on the spot now because you mentioned earlier about the outage earlier this month, of most of social media. I don’t know whether you saw or whether you didn’t saw so apologies if I’m repeating myself, but a lot of the discussion once everything came back online that I saw certainly was, “Well, this is a classic example of why you should never stick to one channel. You should be on every channel, all the time.” Personally, I completely disagree with that.

Riley Hope:
Yeah.

Azeem Ahmad:
Feel free to hold your own opinion on that, absolutely. But, I personally disagree. So from a small business point of view, thinking of Facebook for example, if that business is active and successful on Facebook, it should stick with that until they grow to the point of diversification.

Azeem Ahmad:
But, since you mentioned it, I’d love to get your thoughts. How do you think these outages impacted small businesses? And, where do you stand on the debate of you should be active everywhere, or you should just do one channel, get it right and then grow?

Riley Hope:
I think on a global point, those outages were devastating, especially in non-Western countries that use What’s App. I’m in a lot of wholesale groups and when What’s App went out, you would have thought the world ended because nobody had a way to communicate with anyone. And especially, as an international student as well, from an academic side those outages were devastating. I couldn’t talk to anyone.

Riley Hope:
And then, I agree with you on not everyone has the capacity to do eight million things at a time. It’s great if you do. But, not every small business owner or micro enterprise owner can manage a site, an Etsy or whatever type of eCommerce platform that they use, a Facebook, an Instagram, a Twitter, a this and a that. And now, TikTok is coming in. I think a lot of people forget that businesses are run by people. If you’re doing well on Instagram, then keep doing well on Instagram. Am I going to recommend that you have a site? Yeah. But, I’m also going to recommend that you put content on it that can be updated once a year, or every 12 months, whatever.

Riley Hope:
I just said every 12 months and once a year. I do this all the time, where I just mix up numbers because I was never taught math right. America.

Riley Hope:
If something is working for you, then do that. And also, sites are expensive. That’s something that SEO is like, “Oh, you can put WordPress on for free.” Yeah, if you want to pay $100 a year for hosting. Somebody was recommending me a paid builder and I was like, “I can’t justify somebody who makes $30,000 a year spend that much of their income on a site builder when there are free ones out there.”

Azeem Ahmad:
Amazing. Literally, the audience can’t see but I’m just nodding going, “This is gold.”

Azeem Ahmad:
Speaking of the audience, if they are listening to this and wondering how they could find out more about you, connect with you on social media, where can they find you, Riley?

Riley Hope:
I’m actually redoing my site, but it will be back up November 1st. That’s rileyhope.com, R-I-L-E-Y hope.com. And then, on Twitter my name is spelled wrong but it’s R-E-I-L-L-Y hope13, and I am on Twitter all the time.

Azeem Ahmad:
Amazing. Yeah, fantastic. From me to you, this is sadly the end of the episode. But, what an episode it has been. I’m really looking forward to editing this back, and just piling through the show notes and making a ton of my own notes. All that’s left for me to say, Riley, is thank you so much for being a guest. Thank you so much for being an incredible guest, I should say, sharing so much knowledge. I have found this valuable, I am positive the listeners will find it valuable, too. So a huge, huge thank you for being awesome.

Riley Hope:
Awesome. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this.