A really cool chat with Alex Thomson of Growth Gurus based in Malta.

Martin: Good afternoon Mr Thomson.

Alex: Good afternoon Mr Henley. How are you?

Martin: I'm well thanks man, how are you?

Alex: I'm very good thank you it's a pleasure to see you.

Martin: Yeah it's good to see you too man.

Martin: So, listen, thanks ever so much for agreeing to spend this time with me. I've given you a sense of what this is all about. I'm interested to get different marketing perspectives, my big thing, the theme of everything I'm doing at the moment is why don't people understand marketing and why don't they invest in marketing. You know as well as I do this is how you get to be successful in business but people don't want to do the one thing that they need to do to make that happen which is their marketing. That's my angle at the moment but it doesn't have to be your angle, that's absolutely fine.

Martin: Where I'm coming from with you is … I'm getting different people's perspectives so like I've told you Ed was the first person I spoke to; he was working in marketing agencies in the 70s; Jem was working in digital marketing since 1992, before there was a web. I'm thinking of you guys, I know you started your business three four years ago, you are clearly much younger than the rest of us so I'm thinking of you guys as the young guns and I'm expecting to get a different perspective. How does that sound?

Alex: It's perfect. I'll give you a bit of a recap of where I started and where I am today and part of that involves you as you know so. I started, let's say, my marketing journey in the events industry. My life before being a digital marketeer was as an event organiser, DJ and music producer. I used to do that in the UK, and Amsterdam, and Malta and, for me, social media was my secret weapon, the elder generation of people in music hadn't quickly adapted to it and because I was there from the days of high five and everything else I was able to communicate quicker with younger crowds and that was my secret weapon. As a DJ I had the weapon of social media from the very early days which helped me rise up and find that as something interesting.

Alex: I studied in Amsterdam and got my degree in Audio Production, it must have been seven or eight years ago. I got robbed, essentially, by a venue that took absolutely everything.  They had made me pay everything out for three months, that's all the events, all the expenses and everything, that was sometimes normal in our relationship but then come 01st of January the manager came hugged me and said I'm so sorry and I was like what was this guy doing? It was New Year's Eve, I had a few drinks, wasn't paying attention, next morning I went back to get my pay check, the entire place was deserted. Within eight hours they had emptied the place, left, and so I was out of pocket for the three months backwards, that's usually what you use to to live off in the entertainment industry, or in my case, for January, February and March.

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What is Keyword Research?

It's the eighth exciting installment in our WTF Marketing series where we are cutting through the marketing BS to support businesses to be more successful.

In this episode Martin Henley of The Effective Marketing Company answers the questions: What is Keyword Research? Why should you do keyword research? How do you do keyword research? Demonstrates how to use the Google Keyword Planner and answers the question when to do keyword research?

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Martin: Shall we start at the beginning? Can you tell us how are you qualified to talk to us about your part of marketing which is brand and identity?

Bobby: Yes. Thank you very much. My main current qualification is I'm the founder and creative director of Autotelic Arts, you can check our website out autotelic.art. What we do is high vibrational branding, the main focus of that is finding the most pure and powerful parts of my customers identities and then using those to build a brand that positions them as the pioneers of positive impact and change in their area of work.

I've had the company almost two years now and in this capacity I am specifically looking for positive impact businesses who, to get some guidance on that, could could be working in any one of the sustainability goals, there’s, I think, there's 12 or 17 of those. Any number of those and really, as someone who's an artist at heart, my intention is to use my creativity to help them make a bigger impact and to reach more people in a more effective way. Previously to that I've  had a long career working in the digital industries in London. I've  worked with tech startups leading the creative side for them and coming up with creative concepts. I've  worked for multi-platform production agencies doing a lot of digital deliverables and I've  worked for a lot of ad agencies during the boom period of flash, doing a lot of interactive rich media content. The general trajectory of my career has been coming from a creative heart but branching out to to work amongst the wonderful array of elaborate digital spheres that came up over the last 15 to 20 years.

Nowadays I've really come back to what's close to my heart which is the creative side and working very closely with people to realise a high vibrational identity and brand for them.

Martin: Okay, so that's interesting. So you've done traditional businesses like  tech startups who are your clients typically now? Who are you working with currently?

Bobby: Typically my clients will be in the personal development or spiritual development worlds. They will be highly empathic and very talented, compassionate professionals who use their skills to help others grow and transcend their life context; either heal trauma or grow and develop greater capacity to go about their own lives. To give you a quick example that might be yoga. For instance, one of my clients is called The Baptiste Foundation and they take the the healing and the personal development capabilities of yoga into underprivileged communities like inner city kids. They're very active in the states, primarily based there. Another client is a psychologist and clinical sexologist who is also a Wim Hof trainer and instructor. He created this wonderful program that focuses on a three-day retreat where he uses the the power ...

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What is Market Research?

It's the seventh exciting installment in our WTF Marketing series where we are cutting through the marketing BS to support businesses to be more successful.

In this episode Martin Henley of The Effective Marketing Company answers the questions: What is Market Research? Why do you need Market Research? When do you do Market Research and How to do Market Research?

If you like it you can subscribe on the Effective Marketing Blog, you will find that at www.effectivemarketingcompany.co.uk

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Martin: Good afternoon Mr Fifield.  Tim: Good afternoon Mr Henley.  

Martin: How are you? You are looking extraordinarily well.  

Tim: Yeah I feel strong, I feel vital, I feel energetic.  

Martin: Excellent, let's hope I can cope with all of that this afternoon.  

Thank you so much for for agreeing to spend some time with me this afternoon. I know this is going to be an interesting conversation because every conversation I've ever had with you has been really interesting. I don't know too much about you I've always known you as the most enthusiastic, most excited, most committed person networking around Sussex. I know that you do marketing, I've known you for 15 years, I don't actually know what kind of marketing it is that you do. What I'm interested to do is find out more about you this afternoon, how you're feeling about marketing and what recommendations you might make to people in this weird, awful situation that we find ourselves in currently.

Is that cool?  

Tim: That’s absolutely superb.  

Martin: Okay is there anything that you'd like to tell the very few people who will ever see this?  

Tim: Well to your other friend I would like to say that essentially I show up in the world in three distinct ways. I am a Business Development Director for a company called Britweb who are a full-service digital agency based in Sussex, so that's one tick. The other tick is I am highly theatrical, I write plays, direct and occasionally I appear in plays. I'm also the Training Director for a networking organization which is global but my particular area is Sussex so three distinct ways that I show up in the world.

Martin: Fantastic, I’d forgotten all about your comedy and all about your acting, I miss that man. I forgot all about your theatrics, actually I didn't forget all about your theatrics at all.  

That kind of brings me to my first question, which I always ask which is how are you qualified to talk to us about marketing? What is your marketing experience ? That's the question, how are you qualified to talk to us about marketing.  

Tim: Great question. Essentially my background in marketing goes back probably to 1997 when I started my first web design business. At the time it was all about technology and it certainly wasn't about business opportunity, it was just about getting stuff online. Over that time, obviously, we've had huge amounts of change in the digital space and I've gone along with that. Now I'm helping advising businesses from startup through to corporate global corporate brands, people like Electra who manufacture MRI scanners and CT scanners. etc. Advising them on the best way to take advantage of the web, to deepen and widen their digital footprint.

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What is Situational Analysis is the sixth exciting installment in our WTF Marketing series where we are cutting through the marketing BS to support businesses to be more successful.  

In this episode Martin Henley of The Effective Marketing Company answers the questions: What is Situational? What is Analysis? What is situational Analysis? Why you need situational analysis and and how to do situational analysis.  

If you like it you can subscribe on the Effective Marketing Blog, you will find that at www.effectivemarketingcompany.co.uk  

You can support this channel by checking out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/EffectiveMarketingCo

Martin: Good morning Mr Kile   

Chuck: Good morning Martin, how are you? I'm doing good yourself?  

Martin: I'm really good thank you, thanks for taking the time to speak to me, I understand you've seen bits of some of the videos, I don't know if you know what I'm up to. I'm on this mission with my what the fuck series that I was talking to you about, whenever that was, two years ago. It actually was in production for the first part of this year and then the pandemic came and screwed it all up but I'm on that mission again now.  

My take is that I ran a marketing agency for nine years properly and it was torture. I kind of feel a bit like Oliver Stone, I spent my time in the trenches and now I'm not in the trenches anymore it's my opportunity to tell the world about the horrors that went on with a view to making marketing easier and more accessible to other people.  

The reason I wanted to speak to you is because you're quite different from the people I've spoken to before. I started with Ed, Ed was working in agencies in London, marketing agencies in London, in the 70s. I spoke to Jem, Jem was working on the internet before there was a worldwide internet since 1992. I spoke to Jim, Jim's a business owner who was cheating SEO right at the very beginning and did very well out of it and has learned all those lessons. Then I spoke to Ionut who's ex-agency now internal marketing department, head of marketing, no he's not head of marketing, he is the big one, chief marketing officer, that's what he is.

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What is Marketing Strategy? It's the fifth video in our exciting WTF Marketing series where we are cutting through the marketing BS to support businesses to be more successful.

In this episode Martin Henley of The Effective Marketing Company answers the questions: What is marketing strategy? What is marketing? What is strategy? What is the difference between strategy and plan? Why do you need a marketing strategy and how do you do marketing strategy?    

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Today's guest is Ionut Danifield - Marketing graduate, former agency owner and now Chief Marketing Officer for an international car accessories manufacturer.

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This is the fourth in our exciting WTF Marketing series where we are cutting through the marketing BS to support businesses to be more successful.

In this episode Martin Henley of The Effective Marketing Company answers the questions:

What is sales? Why do salespeople have such a bad reputation? What's the difference between sales and marketing? How do you do sales?  How do you get leads?

If you like it you can subscribe on the Effective Marketing Blog to get notifications in your inbox, you will find that at www.effectivemarketingcompany.co.uk

You can support this channel by checking out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/EffectiveMarketingCo