Category: Podcast

Alex Debecker is co-founder and CMO of ubisend, an AI company that helps businesses solve challenges with conversational software (aka ‘chatbots’). He moved to the UK in 2016, after having built and sold a marketing agency in Belgium

Over the last three years, the company’s client list has seen significant growth, with clients including the likes of Unilever, Google, NHS and Archant. Recognised as thought leaders in their field, ubisend push the boundaries of AI and trailblaze best practices of this nascent chatbot technology.

As CMO, Alex’s role has been pivotal in raising the profile of ubisend and acquiring their impressive client list.

On today’s show, Alex and Sean discuss a range of topics, including:

• A run through of what exactly a chatbot is, what they’re powered by and what they can do
• How the likes of Siri, Alex and Google Home share chatbot qualities
• Situations in which a chatbot is particularly useful and examples of sectors where they aren’t suitable
• Advancements in chatbot technology and how this might continue to develop
• How chatbots can understand context to maintain longer, more complex conversations
• The ways in which chatbots can learn and evolve
• The necessary resources and time to effectively implement chatbot technology
• How chatbots can be a useful source of information about customers and what analytical data can be extracted
• The integration of chatbots with other third-party solutions, systems and technology to gather even more data. Which of these systems work best with chatbots in different sectors
• Alex’s thoughts on the “creep” factors in a world where chatbot technology is increasingly difficult to distinguish from human interaction and why it’s important that chatbots don’t pretend to be human
• How to weigh up the initial cost of implementation vs. the potential ROI
• The future of chatbots and how it will simplify search for users

Want to find out more about ubisend or chatbot technology in general? Get in touch:

Website- ubisend.com

ubisend’s Twitter- @ubisend

Alex’s Twitter- @alexdebecker

Case studies mentioned in the podcast:
HR chatbot reduces inbox traffic by 43%

Sales chatbot generates 30,000+ leads

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review.

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This week, we speak to Mark Williams-Cook, Digital Marketing Director of Candour. With 15 years of experience in the digital marketing industry, Mark has spent his time working at senior management and director level at three major UK digital marketing agencies, working as a full-time affiliate, making and flipping websites, one of the first in the YouTube Partner Programme and built and sold SaaS tools for both SEO and social media.

Over the years, Mark has worked with the likes of Expedia, Hitachi, FatFace and Groupon on their search marketing. On top of this, he’s talked at digital conferences (BrightonSEO, Retra and TalkingTech to name just a few) and is Chartered Institute of Marketing Faculty speaker- he’s even designed one of the first iterations of their digital bootcamp. In addition to this, he currently runs three digital marketing courses with Jarrold Training for Search Engine Optimisation, Google Adwords and Google Analytics.

However, even with all of these achievements, what pleased his mum was something a little lower-key. Mark wrote a chapter on SEO in Build a Brand in 30 Days and she said this made her happy as it was something tangible because she didn’t really understand what he did for a living.

Mark’s current goal is to make Candour the best possible place to work in order to attract amazing staff who can create great results for clients.

Sean and Mark cover a number of topics, including:

• The different types of SEO that should be considered
• Just how large the job of ‘SEO’, what skills are required and how more people might need to be involved than you’d first think
• The importance of mobile SEO in today’s world
• How the loading speed of your website might impact SEO rankings
• The role that links play and how quality trumps quantity
• Where content fits in the SEO plan and how quality is so important
• How we can and should be using Google’s AI
• The personalisation of search in light of Google’s AI
• Daily tasks for an SEO and how measuring and tracking your rankings is vital
• Why SEO might not always be the answer

Want to know more? Get in touch with Mark!

Candour- https://withcandour.co.uk/

Search Norwich – searchnorwich.org

Twitter- @thetafferboy

Resources:

SEMrush

Lighthouse

We’d like to thank our show sponsor Opteo.

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool and much more. If you run one Google Ads account or 100 Opteo will save you time and enhance your ad management skills. Smart, powerful, and built to make life easier. It will automate routine Google Ads tasks, and alert you automatically to trends and even make automatic recommendations. You can then spend more time on high-level strategy and creative work.

We use Opteo in our agency to make us more efficient and effective.

Go to opteo.com/clickandconvert to claim your 6 week free trial.

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

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On this week’s Click and Convert podcast, Sean interviews Naeem Arif. With nearly 30 years of experience as a business owner and management consultant, Naeem has provided consultancy to CEOs, directors and senior leaders of major corporations around the world. He’s developed a formidable reputation for his success over the years in an array of different industries, including retail, hospitality, manufacturing, consulting and the public sector.

He has experience working with some of the world’s biggest brands – Jaguar Land Rover, BBC and British Airways to name but a few – and has been involved with 26 different transformation projects, helping to deliver over £1 bn of success during this time and providing support with the most recent business challenges, such as the GDPR and brexit.

However, this hasn’t been at the cost of his own business ventures. Naeem is also the CEO of a number of multi-award-winning companies, employing 22 people in the Midlands.

On top of all of this, Naeem has shared his expertise in his four Amazon best-seller books, published in English, Mandarin and Russian, and today, he shares his expertise with us.

Sean and Naeem cover a whole host of topics, including:

• What Naeem means by advocating ‘Business Basics First’, as referred to in his latest book Customer First: How the best loved brands convert and retain customers
• Where responsibility for customer service should lie within a business, and how it can extend further than your ‘customer service’ staff
• Practical advice for becoming a ‘customer first’ business and how all employees must share the same mindset for it to become possible
• The main stages of a customer-first transformation journey, and the importance of realising, and accounting for the fact, that a customer’s experience of your business isn’t necessarily a linear journey.
• Why leading on price is never a good idea- make customers value your business through a unique product or service
• How businesses can understand, and calculate, lifetime value and how doing good deeds for your customers can reap long-term rewards
• An explanation of the three key sections in Naeem’s book: Create, Share and Retain. Naeem also explains why businesses should focus more energy on the retain stage
• What Naeem thinks the modern customer journey looks like and how speed, simplicity and having multiple touch points are vital components
• How businesses can monitor and measure their own customer service level and how the Net Promoter Score is one of the easiest way to do this.

Got more questions for Naeem? Get in touch:

Email: naeem@NAConsulting.co.uk

Twitter: @NAConsultingLtd

Facebook: /NAConsultingLtd

LinkedIn: /naeemarif

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

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On this week’s show is AJ Wilcox, long-time digital marketer who fell in love with the LinkedIn Ads platform in 2011. In 2014, AJ founded B2Linked.com, a company that specialises in LinkedIn Ads account management, training and consulting. Since 2014, he has managed hundreds of accounts on the network, reaching a combined total of $110 million in ad spend, and has worked directly with several among LinkedIn’s top 10 accounts.

AJ’s faith has had a huge impact on his entrepreneurial journey. He was offered multiple job opportunities after he was fired from his last job, and prayed to God to understand what he should do. The answer was to turn them all down and start his own business- and AJ has never looked back since!

Sean and AJ discuss a number of different topics, including:

• Who should consider advertising on LinkedIn and how you can determine whether it might be right for your business
• The value in advertising via social media platforms versus Google ads.
• How advertising on LinkedIn differs from on platforms such as Facebook and Google, and what you need to consider
• The impact mobile LinkedIn users will have on your advertising strategy
• The role organic engagement plays alongside ad activity
• How sales navigator can be highly beneficial to pushing your LinkedIn ads
• How enlisting the help of an agency can help you see results from the LinkedIn ads platform faster
• AJ’s thoughts on how easy it is to use the LinkedIn ads management interface following a recent update
• The impact of video ads on engagement rates
• Which sorts of ads businesses should use when they first start out on the platform
• The performance of lead ads versus ads that drive people to sign up on a website
• How adding a personal touch to your targeted ads can make a huge difference to conversion rates, and how this is possible on a large scale
• How you should deal with social media leads in the sale process

Got more questions? Get in touch!

• • Email
  • Twitter: @wilcoxaj

Resources:

• AJ’s checklist

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

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On this week’s show, Sean speaks to Paul Miller, founder of CozyPhones and Next Level Licensing. Paul has been expanding his e-commerce brand since 2015, and speaks of the importance of seeking licensing opportunities for his products. Having locked in a licensing deal with Nickelodeon in 2017, Paul’s brand skyrocketed and culminated in a global mass market distribution deal. Nowadays, Paul shares his expertise with others, helping businesses how to follow his path and achieve growth to a size they could only dream of before. Today, Paul is hear to teach us how to reach new heights through the power of licensing.

Sean and Paul discuss a number of different topics, including:

• How Paul got to where he is now, and at what moment he realised the value in product licensing
• What type of businesses should think about product licensing, and any prerequisites they should be aware of- quality is a must
• The potential that can be unlocked when you license your products and how value lies in more than just profit margins
• The dangers and pitfalls that must be taken into account
• Tips for evaluating potential licensors
• How licensing your product to more than one brand can be beneficial
• The wider opportunities for product licensing
• The fees and costs associated with product licensing
• The next steps for listeners that have an interest in licensing a product

Resources Paul mentions:

Amazing Freedom

Paul’s own free course

Prosper Show 2019

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

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On this week’s show Sean interviews Jon MacDonald, founder and president of The Good, a conversion rate optimization firm that helps brands convert more of their existing website traffic into buyers.

With names like Adobe, Nike and The Economist on its client list, it’s fair to say that The Good has been a success- confirmed by its position on Oregon’s list of top 20 fastest growing private companies.

Hardly surprising, given that many brands that have worked with The Good have seen a 100% increase in revenue, on average.

Jon knows a thing or two about encouraging site visitors to take action, and shares his expertise on conversion optimisation in publications, such as Entrepreneur and Inc.

In addition to this, Jon volunteers for several causes throughout the Pacific Northwest and is an active committee member of industry associations and peer groups, such as Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO).

Sean and Jon discuss a number of topics in today’s show, including:

• Jon’s background and how he came about founding The Good
• Why Jon hasn’t been tempted to diversify The Good’s services, and why there’s value in expertise
• Jon’s personal approach to CRO: The Conversion Growth Programme
• The nature of tests that Jon runs to establish the best method of conversion optimisation for clients and how false data can misguide businesses
• The most common issues among clients at the start of new CRO projects: navigation and branded terms
• When clients should expect to see gains, and when improvements are likely to level out
• The specificities of two services offered by The Good: Data-Driven Redesign and Audit-Only Research. These are just two CRO services that clients can choose
• How companies that can’t afford to invest in third-party services can implement their own CRO strategy and how these techniques can put companies at a much better starting place if they do invest in a service, such as The Good at a later date.

Want to learn more? Check out The Good’s content. Sign up to the weekly email list for tips on how you can help your own business with CRO.

Does your website receive at least 10k hits each month? Try out The Good’s free landing page assessment.

Contact John directly: jon@thegood.com

Website: thegood.com

Twitter: @jonmacdonald

Services Jon mentions:

Google Analytics

Hotjar

Google Optimize

Optimal Workshop

Usability Hub

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

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This week, Sean interviews Daniel Daines-Hutt, Co-founder of AmpMyContent. Both Daniel and his business partner, Freyja Spaven, are internationally recognized experts in Content Creation, Strategy and Sales Systems. Having originally started a clothing company to gain the right to remain living in New Zealand, AmyMyContent were stocked in five stores and selling thousands of items both in store and online within five weeks. This business development forced Daniel and Freyja to focus on the use of both content marketing and promotion for traffic and retargeting for more sales, which is how he has become such an expert.

Daniel now works behind-the-scenes at AmyMyContent to create the paid traffic systems and automations, as well as writing about paid traffic and the promotion of paid content. While Daniel also talks about the sister site to their main venture, InboundAscension, it’s at AmpMyContent that he shares the lessons he learned along the way.

One of Daniel’s most recent achievements is that his guide to paid content promotion featured as article of the week on GrowthHackers. It’s this (30,000 word!) article, advising how to generate a 22:1 ROI promoting blog posts, to a cold audience using Facebook ads, that Sean and Daniel discuss in this week’s show. Sean and Daniel cover a range of topics, including:

• Why more people should promote the content that they work so hard to create, and why it’s not necessarily as simple as hitting the ‘boost’ button on Facebook
• A run through of the four main parts to Daniel’s process and how each is integral to the overall process
• Why businesses must have a strategy and understand the goal of each piece of content
• The importance of knowing business numbers to be able to develop a successful strategy
• How understanding your audience inside and out is also paramount
• How to create the best ad copy for your audience to achieve the highest number of clicks and conversions
• Why it’s important to invest time and money into your business ads on Facebook, and how you don’t need to have a huge budget to do this
• When design comes into play with ads, and why it shouldn’t be the first thing you think about
• Which tools and processes are best to track ads and report on them
• The vital role of testing when it comes to Facebook ads

Want to know more about what Daniel has to say?

Follow on Twitter: @InboundAscend

Subscribe to the newsletter

Bonuses resources:

Guide to creating killer content

‘Manifesto’ about promoting posts

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

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On this week’s podcast, Sean speaks with Jim Huffman, founder of growth agency GrowthHit and author of The Growth Marketer’s Playbook: A Strategic Guide to Growing a Business in Today’s Digital World

On top of this, Jim has scaled another online business to three million impressions per month in under 18 months and is currently overseeing the marketing for C-backed ecommerce brand that has 100,000 members and does over seven figures in monthly sales- so it’s hardly surprising that his startups have been featured by The Wall Street Journal, TODAY, Forbes, TechCrunch, GQ and Wired. As if that wasn’t enough, Jim is a marketing instructor for the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and has advised brands like Mattel, FedEx, Sephora and Clorox. He also shares his expertise as a Techstars growth mentor and a teacher of digital marketing at General Assembly and, in this podcast, Jim shares his knowledge of growth marketing with Sean.

In the podcast, Jim and Sean touch on a number of topic areas, including:

• What exactly is growth marketing and why it’s so important to businesses
• The main reasons that startups fail in today’s business world and how knowing your customers is one of the most important elements in success
• The benefit of frameworks in business growth and the idea behind Jim’s own FACT framework
• How and when a business knows that it’s ready for growth and ways in which startups can recognise and uncover growth opportunities
• How businesses can ensure they have the right marketing infrastructure in place to grow successfully and how to go about planning and prioritising the next steps in the growth journey
• The primary tactical elements businesses should consider once they’re ready to acquire new customers, convert interest into sales and scale up the process
• Jim’s top recommendations for marketing tech tools, starting with the basics of project management to tracking tools.

Want to learn more about growth marketing? Buy Jim’s new book to delve deeper into his knowledge and put his advice into practise using the exclusive promo code for Click and Convert listeners: seanclark

Connect with Jim Huffman on Twitter

Other resources:

• ClickMinded
• Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
• Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

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On this week’s show we have Todd Earwood, founder and CEO of MoneyPath. Todd and his team help to build growth campaigns, specific to the particular needs of clients.

As an advocate of webinars, Todd believes that these are hugely underused as a marketing campaign. Having helped his clients produce webinars for a number of years, HubSpot and GotoWebinar urged Todd to share his webinar formula, which led to the creation of his webinar training program. Webinar Works.

Today, on the Click and Convert podcast, Todd shares his expertise on the use of webinars for marketing, using ROI marketing to drive sales.

On the show, Sean and Todd discuss a number of different topics, including:

• How to set realistic goals for webinar marketing, and what expectations customers should have
• What type of content works in webinars, and how to go about identifying potential topics for your webinars
• The sectors that webinars work for, and how this marketing technique isn’t more or less suited to any particular sector
• Where webinars fit into the sales process, and how it isn’t necessarily the same in every situation
• The best way to promote your webinars, and how to balance the investment of time and money in this promotion.
• How there are many more types of webinar than simply live vs pre-recorded, and the benefits of each, providing you’re being honest to your customers
• The importance of being sophisticated in your direct response marketing technique in your webinars and how to do this
• The best webinar platforms, for both experienced webinar producers and webinar newcomers and how it can be worth investing more in a higher-quality platform
• Audience size target should be a good ratio of how many people actually sign up to how many people actually listen to the webinar and how high-intent leads are most valuable. The importance of targeting those who didn’t listen as a follow up
• Todd finishes the webinar with one key takeaway: the best webinars have more than just one person talking

Connect with Todd Earwood on Twitter

Bonus for all listeners: https://www.webinarworks.io/clickconvert

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

 

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On this week’s Click and Convert podcast, we speak with Nick Usborne copywriting and web writing expert.

Nick has written for some of the world’s best-known brands Citibank, Apple,
Chrysler, MSN.com and New York Times to name just a few, having won 15 rewards for direct response copywriting in his time.

But it’s not just his own writing that is so impressive; Nick is also known for the training courses he gives to other copywriters and businesses looking to improve the quality of content on their websites.

Nick attributes his success to ‘conversational copywriting’, on which he shares his experience and expertise in today’s interview.

Sean and Nick discuss a range of different topics, including:

• What exactly is conversational copywriting, and what makes it different to standard copywriting
• The main elements of conversational copywriting and why it works so well
• How businesses can use conversational copywriting to drive sales, for both long and short form ads, including Google Ads and Facebook Ads- you just need to encourage your audience to click
• How anyone can employ these techniques, regardless of their existing copywriting skills and resources and how you can go about developing a conversational voice in your copy
• Examples of companies that have successfully used conversational copywriting and conversation in their advertising. It applies to more businesses than you might expect.
• The next step for someone looking to understand more about conversational copywriting and how they can use in their own writing.

Looking for more information on conversational copywriting? Visit Nick’s website or take advantage of his free course on conversational copywriting for listeners of the Click and Convert podcast.

Follow Nick on Twitter: @nickusborne

Check out one of Nick’s books

Nick’s examples of conversational copywriting done well:

• Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula
• Ann Handley of Marketing Profs
• Johnny Walker Ads

As always if you have any questions you can get in touch via Twitter @SeanClark.

Subscribe to this podcast via iTunes, Stitcher and now on Spotify. If you like it we’d be grateful if you could leave a review

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