[00:00:09.300] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.810] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:10.260] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:12.300] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:14.460] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about what we've been doing in our self-employed businesses. Apologies for not being here last week. Sometimes it happens that our schedules get really busy and we're unable to be here on a Friday at one o'clock. However, this is, well last week was the first time that we actually missed one, and this is going to be Episode 13?

[00:00:43.590] - Taylor
I think 13.

[00:00:44.190] - Gordon
Episode 13 I believe it is. So we've done pretty well, I think getting to this point and only missing one of them. For those people who were there ready to watch it, I'm very sorry if we disappointed you. I do apologise. However, we're back.

[00:00:58.350] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:00:59.010] - Gordon
And revived, ready to go with lots of new topics to talk about. Um, would you like to start today or shall I?

[00:01:07.080] - Taylor
I think you should start this week.

[00:01:08.320] - Gordon
OK, so let's just go through a few things that I've been doing during the week, and then I've got my topic of the week that I can talk to you about. So this week has been a lot of integrations for me. I've spoken before about automating your business and the software that you use. And one of the software packages I use is called "Pabbly Connect," and it connects one piece of software with another piece of software with another piece of software, that haven't been built to talk to each other easily. So it connects them together. And it's very good. It's very new. It's a bit like "Zappia" or Zappia, depending on how you pronounce it, or "Integramat". That's another one.

[00:01:56.820] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:57.630] - Gordon
And they do exactly the same sort of thing. And there was a lifetime deal on this, which is one of the things that I will talk about in a future episode, which I think will be really, really useful to a lot of our viewers. However, I bought a lifetime deal for this, and they are building the system up and allowing it to interact and connect a lot more software every single day. They're adding about five... On average about five integrations or software, every single day, which is amazing, Plus making the connection, sorry, making the conversions within the software work well. So if you've got, for example, a date in one format coming out of one software and you need it in a different format for another software, there's conversions that do that. And they've been adding a lot to it over the last 40 days, I think is how long it's been out. So it's not long, just over a month. And it's getting better and better and better. And I've got so many different things that I'm thinking how I can do this or what I can use it for that's going to help me to automate my business. Talking of automating, one of the other things I did this week is, I looked at the automation I already have using a different system, that automatically sends out emails to people about renewals of hosting or their domain name or other services that I offer. And one of the things that I found is that the way my system works is that it sends people an email when they've got 30 days before the renewal, asking them to let me know if they'd like to renew. And if I don't hear, another one goes out at 14 days, and then another one at seven days, and then the day before. And then after it's expired, another one goes out and says, "this is now expired, we will be taking it off our system." And that was working really well, people were coming back to me. In fact, I had several people this morning who came back to me and they only just received their 30 day renewal. So it's working great because it's bringing customers in earlier than it would normally. So I've got plenty of time to do the renewals for them without having to worry about, you know, "do they want it renewed? It's going to expire tomorrow." One thing I was finding is that I sent an invoice out and I'd told my system that it had been renewed, and an invoice had been sent and that was the end of the system. So this week, I've added a new email that goes out automatically saying "this money, this invoice is overdue. Please make payment as soon as possible." And it will continue to do that every six days until it is marked as paid by me. And the reason I've done it on six days and not seven days, for example, is because having six days means that it's going to go out on a different day every single week. So if, for example, some people are busy on a particular day, they may not get their emails, and it might just get buried among newer emails and it might never get looked at because they don't check their email on that particular day at that sort of time. So by sending it at different days, same time, but different days, it's going to end up if they don't pay their invoice long enough for six weeks, seven weeks, it's going to end up that it will be sent on every single day of the week so that they should receive it on a day when they are actually going to act on it. Hopefully, it's not going to get to that point because there will be a cut-off point. Normally, three weeks or so will be the cut-off point for me when I will stop their services and manually phone them to let them know that their services are going to stop. But I'm really pleased with that because it's another automation. It's another thing that I don't have to worry about now because it's chasing them for the payment of the invoice without me doing anything.

[00:06:14.350] - Taylor
Yeah, it's good.

[00:06:15.100] - Gordon
Anything you want to talk about that you've been up to this week?

[00:06:18.340] - Taylor
So this week has been kind of getting new clients and waiting, getting the content in so that I can start designing the websites to then send off. Normally the design, well getting the content, the design, and send it to them, and getting feedback normally spans over, I would say about two weeks or so, depending on how fast they get me the content and how busy I am in terms of when I can get the kind of design done. However, this week it's been interesting. So I was contacted by a black cab driver who does tours of London and surrounding areas in the South East, the south of England. So to like Hever Castle, Bath, you know, loads of different castles and kind of...

[00:07:11.530] - Gordon
So different tours.

[00:07:12.610] - Taylor
Historic... Yeah. And he takes them on tours and London, he knows London inside out so he can, you know, there's all the kind of hidden secrets and things. And he does these tours and he's, you know, he does really well. He's won two awards this year and it's only him.

[00:07:30.250] - Gordon
Can you give him a shout out? Do we know the address?

[00:07:33.220] - Taylor
His website is currently under construction because I'm doing it. But it's "bespokeblackcabtours.co.uk" So if you go to it, you might see the old website. However, the new one will be done soon. And so, yeah, he's a great driver. He knows, he gets a lot of work as well, and he hadn't had the best website. And seven months ago he contacted a web design company to redo his website.

[00:07:58.660] - Gordon
Yep. Good idea.

[00:07:59.590] - Taylor
And then seven months down the line, the website still wasn't finished. There were lots of bugs and errors. And the webs, the company were just not with it. They would come to him and say, "do you like this header?" And he'd go, "Yeah, I love it, it looks good." And then two weeks later, they would send a message going, "how about this header, do you like this?" And he's kind of gone, "hang on. I've already said I'm happy with that one." So they were just redoing, going over stuff.

[00:08:27.130] - Gordon
They weren't listening to the customer. Ok.

[00:08:28.780] - Taylor
He confirmed, you know, it and then they're going, "how about this?" And then, yeah, instead of fixing the errors. So he came to me last week, I think it was. And we you know, we had a chat and I said, you know, see if I could help him. And between last week and this week, I have sent him a quote, got payment, got content, designed the website and sent it off, got confirmation and approval and built the website. And I have the final few things, kind of adding in Google Analytics, reviews and kind of the legal documents.

[00:09:07.240] - Gordon
Sorry, let's just go back a step. You got the content?

[00:09:10.840] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:09:11.530] - Gordon
Wow. OK, so we've said this before, the content is always the sticking point.

[00:09:16.420] - Taylor
Most of it was already on the website so it was just...

[00:09:19.540] - Gordon
Because of the previous website.

[00:09:20.650] - Taylor
However, there were a couple of things and we spoke to him. I said, "how about we add an about page?" You know, "how about we, you know, add some more content to the home page and make it look a lot nicer." And he sent it to me, I think it was the day after we, he confirmed that he wanted to go ahead with the quote, which is, you know, really good. And that goes to show that if you're an active client, your work and your project will get done extremely quicker.

[00:09:46.270] - Gordon
Extremely quickly.

[00:09:47.470] - Taylor
Extremely quickly compared to other people's projects.

[00:09:50.890] - Gordon
Yeah, we have said this before, and it's a case in point. If you are having work done and the designer or whoever is working for you, requests content of any sort, if you drag your heels doing it, the designer will just move on to other projects while they're waiting, and it gets to the point when you eventually give your content to them and they say, "yep, thank you very much, I'm doing something else now, so I'll come back to it as soon as I possibly can." And all of a sudden you've lost that window to get the job done quickly. So, yeah, if you are asked for content always, as this is a prime example, always get it to them as soon as you possibly can.

[00:10:32.570] - Taylor
Even if it's not even content, even if it's just replying. You know, I get some clients, that I send them an email asking for kind of confirmation or approval and I don't hear back for four or five, two weeks. You know, however, the cab driver, he replied back the same day, you know, sometimes within an hour or two.

[00:10:52.100] - Gordon
It just goes to show that the new website is really important to him, because he made it a priority to make sure that if anything came in from Taylor asking for him to send them something, he would jump on it. He'd get onto that and get it done, because he knows that a new website is going to bring him a lot of business. And people who drag their feet, they lose out on the time that their website is being built. They don't have sales happening in that time. So they need to get it on, they need to get the website up and running quickly to start making those sales. And your cab driver obviously understands this, which is great.

[00:11:31.280] - Taylor
Yeah and he was very impressed by the fact that I, it's probably one of the quickest turnarounds in terms of, quote, design, kind of...

[00:11:39.770] - Gordon
Approval.

[00:11:40.310] - Taylor
Approval and then development. You know, I've only got a few last things to do, kind of the legal documents and things like that.

[00:11:46.700] - Gordon
Which is great. Really cool. It's nice to have customers like that.

[00:11:50.300] - Taylor
It is. Yeah.

[00:11:50.630] - Gordon
Really good. It just makes our life a lot easier. Means we can do the best work for you.

[00:11:55.400] - Taylor
And, you know, I end up looking a lot better because, you know, like I said, he came to me a week ago and saying, "can I get a website?" or "can you help me?" And stuff? And this other company had spent seven months dwindling. I don't know what they were doing over the past seven months, but doing something.

[00:12:11.900] - Gordon
Well, the other thing is, if you're working on a project, if we're... Sorry, let me start again. If we're working on a project and we need something from the customer, we're there, we're right in the middle of it. We know where everything is, what everything's doing and what we require. If we then have to wait two weeks to get that content, we've then got to get ourselves back into, "right, where were we? What were we doing? What does that do? Where does this go?" We have to sort of re-learn what we've already done, because it's been two weeks and in that time we've done other projects. So, yeah, getting content or approval or just replying basically as quickly as you can, is a really good thing for you to do to get your services done quickly.

[00:12:56.640] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely. So how about you? What have you?

[00:12:59.420] - Gordon
So something I wanted, my topic for the week is advertising. So this is something that I discovered and started thinking about just beginning of lockdown. And it was something I hadn't considered at all up to this point. And then as soon as I was introduced to the concept, I thought, "yeah, that makes perfect sense" and started thinking about it. It's like, "yeah, OK, I'm starting to understand," and I think it's going to be of use to the people watching or listening this as well. So it's 'interruption' and 'permission' based advertising. So what do I mean by that? Let's go to interruption advertising first. Most advertising is interruption based. Now, what I mean by that is people are doing something when your advert is presented to them. So, for example, you might be watching a show on TV, and all of a sudden you get an advert break and it's interrupting the show. You just want to get back to the show, the adverts come on and it's like, "OK, right we'll make a cup of tea or whatever we do, fast forward if it's recorded. But it's an interruption to what you are currently doing. Let's look at radio, exactly the same. You're listening to music; you're listening to a chat show and adverts come on, again you don't really want to hear the adverts, you're not there for the adverts. They just are interrupting your listening on the radio. Let's look at other types. We've got posters or billboards. You're driving along and there's a billboard with an advert on it. It's interrupting your journey. You haven't gone there specifically to see the advert, unless, of course, it's your advert, in which case you very possibly have gone to look at it. But everyone just drives straight past, it's there, it's interrupting you. You might look at it if you sit in traffic. What other interruption based? Facebook! There's a perfect example of interruption based advertising, you're going through Facebook looking to see what your friends are doing, or more commonly for me, looking at business groups that I'm in, and there'll be a, you know, a big whopping great big advert in the middle of what I'm looking at, that may be of interest to me because Facebook and online advertising can target people. It may be that I've been to a website and I've looked at something and then I've gone to Facebook and an advert has been shown to me because it knows I've been to that website. That's a subject for another episode of this, because that could work really well for your business. But you get this whopping great big advert, you scroll past it and get back onto what you were doing. It's interrupting your reading of what your friends are up to.

[00:16:04.640] - Taylor
E-commerce shops?

[00:16:05.930] - Gordon
E-commerce shops yeah, so you're there to... So hang on no, e-commerce shops is slightly different. You... So, we'll come to that in a second. So interruption based advertising does work. However, in my opinion, it's not as effective as permission based advertising. So permission based advertising means that people are expecting the adverts, ok? So, to put that into context, you just mentioned e-commerce. So if I'm on an e-commerce website and I'm looking, I'm there because I want to buy something, and I get shown an advert for one of the products, that's permission based. Now, it's got permission because I'm at the website, I'm on the e-commerce pages, I'm looking at their products. Therefore, it's going to get a lot more click through and conversion than it would do if it was shown on my Facebook feed, for example. Now, the biggest permission based advertising, well, there's two big permission based advertising that, in my opinion, works really well. The first one is email. So if you've got an email permission based advertising campaign, it means that the people who are on your list, the people you're emailing, have already agreed for you to send this information to them. It means they're interested. They put their hand up and they said, "yep, I'd like to know about your products or services or treatment. Let me know whenever you've got information about it." So an email campaign to people who've already opted in to hear that information, is permission based. That will get a lot more click throughs than an advert showing in Facebook. But, the biggest for me, the biggest permission based advertising is Google. Now, unlike any other that I can think of, any other internet based advertising, you go to Google for one of a few reasons. It could be that you want to find out some information. That information might be, you know, how many... What's the population of London? You know, it could be as simple as that. Just a question that you have. It could be that you're looking to go somewhere and you want to get some information about it. Information is one thing that you go to Google for. Another thing that you go to Google for is because you want to buy something and you want to search for a particular product or service or treatment. And if you're doing that, you are actively searching for this product, service, treatment that you have entered. Therefore, any adverts that are shown at that point are permission based because you have requested them. And that is why advertising on Google does so well; as long as your keywords are targeted. You need to make sure that those keywords are highly targeted so that you're not showing an advert for a children's play centre to someone who's looking for cosmetics. Big no no. However, if someone's looking online, "can you find me a children's play centre near Crawley," an advert for a play centre near Crawley coming up is perfect.

[00:19:40.400] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:19:40.790] - Gordon
You are going to get such a big click through rate, as long as your ads are targeted like that from Google, because it is permission based. So, have a think about the advertising you're doing, and think about is there a way that you can move away from interruption based advertising and maybe don't move away completely, but take some of your advertising budget away from interruption based and move it into permission based, and see if you get a higher conversion rate. It's a really good test. My guess is you will, you'll see a much higher return on the investment that you are spending on your advertising in a permission based format than an interruption based format.

[00:20:31.110] - Taylor
Very good.

[00:20:31.560] - Gordon
It makes sense when you think about it. I had never considered it. I'd never considered why Google ads were doing better than a television ad, for example. Plus, there's a cost, you know, there's an enormous cost difference in those two different types of advertising. So, yeah, look into it and let us know in the comments if you try something, and it comes out well, let us know if it doesn't come out well. I'm guessing there are going to be some sectors of business where that won't work so well. I can't think of any off the top of my head. But if you try it and it doesn't work, let us know so that we can be educated. Everyone can learn from what your testing has proven.

[00:21:15.570] - Taylor
Cool. Yeah, that's good.

[00:21:16.800] - Gordon
I think that's it.

[00:21:17.490] - Taylor
Yeah, me too.

[00:21:18.990] - Gordon
So, as always, thank you very much for joining us, This Week With. We can be found on Facebook and on YouTube. We have the links on the page now, on the video now. For those who are listening, they'll be in the show notes. Do you want to tell them about our website?

[00:21:41.070] - Taylor
You can find any previous episodes which are labelled and have all the show notes, and also the audio version on our website at thisweekwith.co.uk. That's the easiest way to find any previous episodes if you're trying to find them. So yeah.

[00:21:59.160] - Gordon
Yeah. So thank you for joining us. My name's Gordon. I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:22:04.050] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:22:06.420] - Gordon
We'll see you next week. Bye bye.

[00:22:09.660] - Taylor
Bye.

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