Episode Transcript
Hello, and welcome to episode 38 of coffee with cash today we are talking about the power of consistency
I think consistency is probably the most underrated value that digital agencies or marketing agencies in general bring to an organization. So like,
oftentimes, you know, when we add a picture, we're speaking to a prospective client, and they'll say, okay, so what are you going to? What are you going to do that we couldn't do ourselves? And honestly, speaking, nothing, you know, really, like, there's nothing, we don't invent stuff. We don't do anything we haven't. Like, we have some proprietary knowledge. But that's not like the majority of the work that we do. What we do, that most companies can't do is we just relentlessly focus on a single thing and consistently do it until it works, or we know it does not work. And that's so important that digital, especially with like the algorithms nowadays, it's so easy to just like, say, I'm gonna do this email campaign, you send an email campaign, it gets like a 0.01%, open rate, and you're like, ah, that didn't work, we're never going to do email again, then that becomes like a narrative inside an organization that like, oh, we tried to email back in 2006. And it didn't work then. So why would it work now? Okay.
You got to be consistent.
I should definitely get a table here, right? You've got to be consistent. You got to be consistent, you got to be willing to keep trying, right? You can make micro adjustments. But generally speaking, once you've done the initial plan, you've understood your target market, you've understood the channels that they're in. And then you've gone through like the next level of detail, which is the content types and how to present those pieces of content, you got to consider like, we don't do anything less than 20 times before making a judgement. So let's say that we've got like, if you're on Tik Tok, and you see us on Tik Tok, you'll notice that we got a few viral videos. They weren't the first of that type of viral video.
We've done quite a few before. And they hadn't gone viral, which we just followed the exact same sort of process. And then they did made some micro changes, some small changes. What's interesting, though, is that when the first one went viral, the other ones also went viral, right? So imagine if we've done the first one and gone, oh, that doesn't work, forget it. It doesn't work like that you got, you got to be willing to be consistent, you got to be willing to like keep trying the same thing with just micro adjustments. And that takes an element of stoicism. It takes an element of just being really calm and relaxed it tell you, I don't know if anyone follows football. Back in the day, not too long ago, seven years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago, kind of remember, Brendan Rodgers became the manager of Liverpool. And I love Brendan Rodgers, like a lot of Liverpool fans don't but because he the way he speaks is quite hyperbolic he he talks and hyperbole is a lot. But
what I loved about him was how entirely focused it was on a single style of play, and a single method of working and how much he trusted and believed in that how, regardless of the situation and be consistent. And by the way, you know, he took us very close to a title for the first time in like, at that time in like 25 years. So I remember we'll play it Hey, was bolted away, or something. And we were one nil down. Then we scored in the second half. Start the second half, then we scored like a minute 60. And then we had 30 minutes, basically a bolton and just launching long balls into the box, and the last 10 minutes. Like what harrowing because they just kept launching the ball motion the ball. And eventually we weren't we one to one. And the interviewer at the end of the game asked Brendan, he said.
So, you know, how did you feel? You must have been quite nervous in the last 10 minutes of the game and said, well, not really. I mean, we were wondering, they were the ones that were nervous. They were the ones who were having to chase the game with practice this every day over and over and over again. We practice defending long balls over and over again. That's what we do. We are consistent in the way that we play. We dominate the ball, and he was so calm about it. And even if you look at him on the on the sideline, he was just so calm because he totally trusted the method that they were using.
There is this concept of trust the process, and I hate I've always hated that term trust the process because what if the process is wrong, right? I'm doing this thing with them.
Dr. Trevor Kashi at the moment TKL it's called Trevor cashew nutrition
And it's like entirely eye opening. And one of the things that Dr. Kay says is don't trust the process, because that's dumb, engage in the process,
engage in the process. And that is way more profound. So let's go back to our viral videos that we had recently. So we have a process and we have an idea. And we're following that process. And we keep going, and nothing goes viral. Now, we can sit there and just say, okay, nothing's gone, let's just stop. Or we could blindly just keep doing the same thing that we're doing. But actually, the better thing to do is to engage in what has worked, what has, what are the micro changes that might be made to optimize this better, it's better just engage in that process. And so we did we, what we always do, we engage in the process of growth, and then we
make micro changes, and those micro changes eventually yield more knowledge, sometimes they take you half a step back, sometimes they take you half a step forward, sometimes they take you all the way back. And sometimes they take you all the way forward. But micro changes allow you to understand variants, the changes, but the key is to be consistent, you've got an email campaign, then don't view that as one email, view that as 50 emails over the next six months, and then decide how that's going to set up or over the next month, it doesn't matter and decide how you're going to segment and decide what's going to what are your measures of success, and work through that process consistently, over and over and over again. And when you find that a subject line has a 5% shift in your open rate, you use that subject, line again, but don't just assume that that's the best, tweak it again, see, you know, multivariate tests, a B test, see what things can improve and use the whole don't just trust the process, really engage in it, engage in the individual steps.
So when clients come to us and say, what do we bring to the table, what we bring is consistency, a relentless ability to just keep driving forward. That's what we do as an agency. Now, obviously, we bring creativity in different skill sets, like video editors, and all of that, but at the heart of what we do is, what what in the heart of what we do is what we don't do. We don't give up. We just refuse to give up. We just keep going. And eventually, you find the answers. Now, for some clients, the answers are pretty quick and easy. They they walk around the one client we had in the peanut butter industry. And that, you know, we we had like viral videos in week three, which is like unheard of. And then we've got another client in like the travel industry, it took us eight months, eight months, but we didn't quit, we didn't give up. We just kept going. The client was always happy in those eight months, because comparatively their numbers were increasing. Our standard isn't increasing numbers. Our standard is, you know,
exploding, right? That's what we want for our clients. So
took eight months. But eventually, after eight months, we figured it out and boom, the way it went. And then we had multiple bits of viral content generated multiple leads in different areas. And, you know, transformed how that business operates. Consistency, never accept giving up like, it just doesn't. I don't understand why people do it. If you've got a new business and you you're thinking, I always have this thought, in my mind, actually, whenever I'm starting a new business venture or with a client or whatever it is like something I tend to my team all the time, whenever they're like on the verge and they're like, Oh, God, I just won't quit. I just want to give it up as an okay, cool. I understand that. I respect that you feel that way. Just do me one more favor.
Don't quit today. Do it tomorrow.
Just do one more day. And then when the day comes, okay, cool. So I know you feel this way. But let's just do one more day. And if you just keep doing that one more day, you will eventually crack it, you'll eventually crack whatever it is that you're trying to crack. Consistency is just like, such high value.
I think one of the other elements of consistency is that if you're doing something consistently,
you're always making progress. This is where a number of like client soap or normal businesses fail, right is that they'll have a marketing manager or they'll even have a marketing team. And that marketing team will be almost beholden to the sales team or to the leadership or whatever it is and they'll keep shifting tactics. And they'll never really settle on that one method and doing it over again. And I think that
whilst you're chasing greatness, you're still moving forward. And that's one of the great things about like really focusing on consistency is that your child
Seeing the big thing, whatever the big thing is, but the fact that you're chasing means that you're still moving forward, how that translates is that in your reach in your engagement in your leads, whatever it is that you're measuring, those things are still improving month or month or month, right, but you're going after something really huge. So for you, you're not satisfied. But if you're consistent, you're always making improvement, you're always moving forward.
It takes a lot of willpower to be consistent. It takes a lot of willpower to restrain yourself from change, especially nowadays. Like nowadays, we want to we want to viral video, like from the first video that we post or we want to generate 1000 leads from a single campaign and you're like my Hold'em. And I say nowadays, because isn't that, basically how all of our screen time is dedicated, dedicated to fast change shift. And in fact, it's totally skewed. Because if you scroll through your real speed, what are you seeing, really, you're seeing the most viral content, you're seeing the content that has the highest amount of engagement. And so what you're really seeing in your mind is, oh, my God, all of this content, it's got great engagement, and my content sucks. But if you just click on any one of those pages, and scroll back three months, six months, nine months, 12 months, whatever it is, you'll see that early videos had like five years,
the only difference between them and you is they were consistent, and you're watching their content. That's it. That's the only difference that is stayed consistent. They learn through the process, they engaged in the process, and then they move themselves forward.
And so it takes a lot of willpower to not
shift tactic all the time.
I think that's like the enemy of growth is like constant change. You've got to just be stoic, be consistent trust that you know what you're doing, you've got the experience, you've done your research, and then engage in the content that you're delivering and tweaking as you need to.
Think I'm
sorry, if anyone is listening. I'm drinking my coffee. This is literally coffee with cush today.
And it's my first coffee of the day. And my head isn't working at 100% until I've had at least three coffees. So
to everyone else who's a coffee addict Hello.
Stay motivated through the process can be a challenge, right?
Staying motivated, because,
again, if we go back to the algorithms, what are we really looking at when we're when we're playing without what the algorithms really do to us? Biologically? If it was like a little shot? No, they're a little happy pill, a little happy shot to the brain, endorphins, whatever you want to call it.
I'm not a scientist, as you can tell, but well that that little happy shot. We crave that much like I crave this coffee. Yeah, we crave it. And so that brings us back to the app. I think one of the things that tiktoks done exceptionally well that none of the other platforms have yet con gone to, is they've created that same endorphin shot. Gamification in the Creator experience, people who have never recorded themselves on video ever before people who've never released a real they've never even released such as a picture of themselves on Facebook can go viral on Tiktok. Because it it gamified is that experience, it gives you a boost in viewers or engagement just sort of almost randomly, although it's not random there is method to the madness. So
that in itself keeps you motivated, because it makes you what you keep chasing that feeling again. But But what if you're like running lead generation campaigns, and it's been three weeks and you've gotten no leads or one lead or two leads? How do you stay motivated? How do you keep the people around you motivated? And how do you fight back against your boss who's saying, Well, look, we've spent this and we're not getting any value back for it? Well,
if you trust the research you did, then
know that the process you're going through is going to work, right? take advice from other people. But honestly, there isn't a paid ad campaign that works on day one. They just don't it takes time. That's why all of the platforms have a learning phase. What do you think that is? You think that's just the way to collect money from you. It's not it's the algorithms learning what works. If an ad works for Facebook, then it works for you. Or if an ad works for you. It works for Facebook.
Facebook wants ads that are going to engage people. Of course it does. So it works really, really hard to make sure that your ad is successful. If you're unsuccessful, you're going to spend more money. If you're unsuccessful, its audience is going to engage harder on the platform. It's literally a win win. There is no value in any of these platforms delivering junk to you. Right? The only value they produce is bringing the right audience to your campaign. But it takes time, it is not an overnight thing. It takes time, be patient with it, be consistent. And of course, when it comes to micro tweaking, all the ad platforms are ideal for that. Because you can like depending on your budget, either written 50 different creatives with micro changes on each creative, or big changes if you want it. But the point is, they're all experiments running simultaneously. And if you give the platform all that data, it will work harder for you, it will work harder to find the right creative, the right combination of creative and text, the right combination of headline and description, it will work really hard to find that correct combination and deliver that to the correct audience whilst it's working as well to find the right audience. So be patient, be consistent. Relax, it's alright. It's going to work in the end.
What if it doesn't work?
At what point do you give give up?
Well, you don't.
It doesn't Simple as that is my point is that you don't ever give up. You don't ever quit on a platform or on a process that you're going through. You micro tweak, you make micro adjustments, it could be that two months down the line, you've made, like 30 micro adjustments, but your creative or whatever it is that you're trying to push all your your your content, whatever it is, is now fundamentally different than it was on day one. Right? But as long as you're engaging in the data, micro tweaking based on real like information on real data, you're learning every single step you don't quit, don't quit, you keep moving forward, you keep trying.
But you do have to have measurements, right? You need to know if and when you're going to be successful.
I think this is probably one of the other things when folks say to us,
you know, what are you bringing to the table? With history, it's about numbers. We like we live and breathe on numbers. That's what we do. And we never do anything without predicting success. I used to do this when I was back in, in the UK, probably 2012 1314.
That's when I started anyway.
I used to open Instagram, or Facebook, mostly Instagram, and then rolled down my feed. And I would stop before the engagement numbers right before the number of likes, I would I would pause. And I would look at the content. And I would predict in my mind. I sound like right geekier. But okay, I'm going to accept that
predicted my mind the number of likes, and then I'd look. So I could look at some content, think this is amazing. I was probably got 2300 likes, and then I'd look and it was 420. So much lower than I thought but still quite high, then I'd go okay, if he's got 420 likes, this could be one of his first major pieces of content. So I predict that he only has
320 followers, then I go and look at his profile and see how many followers it's got. And if he had way more followers, but less than I'd be like, okay, so if he's got only 400 views or million followers, but under 400 likes, this must be a totally new type of content. And I just keep going through that process and that process of like guessing what was happening. And then I'd be wrong 90% of the time, but I learn every single scroll and be learning to automate. And so that ethos of really making sure that we're on top of our numbers, and not just on top of the numbers, not just reporting, predicting, predicting is the key. So predicting what the numbers are going to be, I think is really, really important. And being brave enough to predict, takes bravery, I think that this number is going to be
whatever it is, and then knowing that you're going to be wrong, you're always wrong and never 100% Right. You're either way too high, way too low or somewhere about right but it's never exactly the number that you think it's going to be.
That's kind of like gamification for yourself. It's like you're gamifying your own content, your own work. You're gamifying it through prediction. I think this is again that's like super valuable.
You've learned so much by just looking at your numbers. And sometimes I often say I don't know if this is true, maybe somebody is like,
a background in this kind of stuff can tell me. But I always think that like,
just the act of looking at the numbers, even if you don't necessarily understand or are able to interpret them there. And then at that moment in time, something happens in your brain that two or three days later, you make a decision. And you think, where does that decision come from? And it came from those numbers, and you're not really sure why it came from those numbers. Something happens, like it's like your brain sort of doing like a process in the background. And then it sort of chucked out an answer for you. It could be an hour later or three days later. And that answer tends to be like a good evolution a good next step or a good micro change. So yeah, just like looking at the numbers being on top of the numbers all the time, we're on top of all of our clients, way more than our client, we send them a report at the end of every month, I'm pretty sure none of them, like fully read the report, they'll look at the summary page. And we make sure that like the summary says, here's all the things that have happened this month, because mostly people I think, read that first page. And they think that we just do that like using like an automated present. We don't We manually write we do a lot of stuff automated, right. But those reports, we manually write them, we write those reports, like every single month, and I'm sure the client thinks it's for their benefit. And of course it is for their benefit. But really, it's for our benefit, because we want to know, okay, what happened to all of the stuff that we did this month? What happened to the macro changes? What's the overall impact, and we're comparing month on month, every single time, like, so we write those reports first for us, first for us, as you know, digital marketers, and then for our clients. We read every page because we write it and our clients, I don't know, maybe they do, maybe I'm not being fair. Maybe they read through, I know somebody I know somebody because they asked questions about like page 16? Hey, we saw like a shift in the ranking of this keyword. What was behind that? And the interesting thing is we always have an answer. We always know because we've been doing all of these macro changes. We've been doing all of these experiments throughout the month. So we always know the answer. I think that adds a lot of confidence to clients as well, if they ask a question, and you have like a really specific, that was a specific example. By the way.
It was a key word for a client. That was I can't remember exactly where but it was the clients of boxing gym. And it was something to do with Mike Tyson. And we'd ranked in previous weeks for that keyword in the 90s. And then suddenly, like over that month, we were ranking one with a snippet.
So ranking one with a snippet in all major markets, basically. And so that was it wasn't hidden, but it was like quite far down into the report. And the client asked them what happened so that we're now ranking for that keyword. And we knew exactly what would happen. We'd gotten like five high value backlinks for that blog post on through our through our outreach. And so yeah, that just all shifted the ranking of that of that particular piece of content. But we were able to answer straightaway. It wasn't like we have to go and do some research and find out we know what we're doing. Like we live it every single day. We're consistent with it every single day. And I think that yeah, that's the point of this podcast today.
Be consistent lacks, don't
like chop and change all the time micro adjustments micro changes. Listen, when I'm saying micro, I literally mean micro like one word change, or one font size change, you know what I mean? Like, one change, that's, that's a micro adjustment if you're changing your creative entirely, or if you're changing your approach to talent, or if you're ditching An entire channel. That's not a micro adjustment. That's that's just jumping from channel to channel and tactic to tactic and you'll never be successful doing that you just won't you got a you got to give the channels the time you got to give them the effort in order to be able to achieve their results. So
yeah, that was the that was what we were able to talk about. It was kind of a topic in in the office today we got like four new trainees at the moment. And yeah, we're always trying to get disappointed trainees do get disappointed early because that part of their task is they have to credit accounts from zero around the topics are the one who screen while on cats and another one created one art and then they get disheartened because like some the content doesn't get a lot of traction early, of course, because a brand new account. And so we're always like trying to say firstly, you got to relax, nobody's judging you. You're judging yourself harder than we would ever do. And secondly, you've got to be consistent. You've got to be consistent, have a plan, execute the plan and you
Keep doing over and over again, if you want to make changes, make small changes, and then you'll see the results and obsess over your numbers. And in those exercises, all I'm really doing is, you know, I don't mean sometimes I look at the content, but mostly I'll come in the office and say, how are your numbers from yesterday? And for the first two weeks, they'll, like, flail around on their phone. And then after the first two weeks, normally, I said, How are you numbers? Instead, they'll say, oh, 4% up on the day before? Good. That's what I want. I want them to be that obsessed over the numbers. And really, the exercise is an exercise in keeping people calm, and getting them to trust that data.
So if it's good enough for our team, pretty sure it's good enough for you guys. Alright, that was episode 38 With covenant Kush. We've got a long list of episodes coming up. So I will talk to you again next week.
