Your business data tells a story and that story can help you tell your business story. But how do you find that story? And what do you do with it when you do find it?
Michael Humphrey is the co-founder of Digibubble a digital marketing agency. In this episode he shares with Katie how you can use data to craft compelling stories and help you understand your customers more. He also shares a tip or two about AI and making the most of ChatGPT.
Key Takeaways
- Digital advertising can make a difference in marketing, but not every business needs a website.
- Data analysis can uncover stories hidden in business data, and AI tools can assist in this process.
- Understanding customer profiles and crafting personalized messages is crucial for effective marketing.
- Building relationships and maintaining authenticity are key to business success.
- Calculating ROI in digital advertising is essential for strategic decision-making.
Guest Information
MICHAEL HUMPHREY -Co-Founder, Digibubble
Website: digibubble.co.uk
Email: mike@digibubble.co.uk
Links to tools Michael mentioned:
ROI for digital advertising – https://www.digibubble.co.uk/roi-calculator/
Bonus tool – check how far your website meets Google’s standards:
Website Grader – https://www.digibubble.co.uk/website-grader/
Your host:
KATIE FLAMMAN (she/her) – Voiceover Artist, Presenter, Announcer, Podcaster, Founder of Storyteller Media.
Website: www.katieflamman.co.uk
Podcast: https://katieflamman.co.uk/the-storytelling-for-business-podcast/
Voiceover services: https://katieflamman.co.uk/voiceover-services/explainer-videos/
Presenting services: https://katieflamman.co.uk/presenting/
Get in touch for a FREE demo read of your script:
Email: katie@katieflamman.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1892 249 001
Follow Katie on Socials (do mention the podcast!):
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-flamman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katieflamman/
X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatieFlamman
Transcript
“Hello, and welcome to Storytelling For Business, the podcast that helps you build better customer relationships by telling stories your clients want to hear. I’m Katie Flamman. I’m a voiceover artist specializing in business storytelling.
I work from my own recording studio and I do a bit of everything, corporate videos, ad campaigns, training modules and answer phone messages. My clients include Pearson, Pfizer and Volkswagen, helping them all to share brand stories and business developments. But why all the buzz about storytelling?
Can it really make a difference to your marketing? In this series, we’re finding out. I’m talking to storytelling experts and regular business owners too.
And today’s guest is a bit of both. I met Michael Humphrey at a training day for small business owners on using digital tools and getting more tech savvy. And I thought you’d enjoy meeting him too.
So let’s go. You might think digital is something new, but today’s guest has been immersed in the world of ones and zeros for 25 years. Michael Humphrey is the co-founder of Digibubble, a digital marketing agency which helps businesses with websites, online advertising, e-commerce platforms, digital marketing, and they’ll basically hold your hand as you navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Tech developments move, as we all know, at lightning speed and there’s a lot to keep up with. For some, digital advertising is a no-brainer. For others, it can be a daunting prospect.
Michael is committed to helping his clients to achieve a positive return on their investments in the digital world. Digibubble believes in nurturing relationships, building trust and supporting clients for long-term digital success. And I’m so happy Michael’s here.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me.
So Digibubble does quite a lot of things. How did it all come about?
Well, I suppose right at the early stages. I was GCSEs at school. So it was like 95, 96, I was doing my GCSEs.
I went to college with not too many GCSEs, but enough to get there. And some, and I really had just a bit of lack of direction at that point. And I sat with a career advisor.
I was, it stays with me. And she sat and said to me, you’ve thought about this internet, this coming up, the www.is gonna, might stick, is quite good. And I was always one foot in coding, one foot in out and about.
So I thought it could, it could work out quite well. Yeah, I just, I just went at it. I decided to study it for college in my second, so I got A levels and GMVQs, that sort of stuff.
And then I went on to university and studied advertising and digital communication. And then from there, I got my first job about 2003, working in digital. And this was just when the newspapers were coming away from print, or not coming away from print, waking up to the internet.
And everybody thought it was a bit of a fad. So I was out there with my little, my little three piece suit, hitting the streets as a 21 year old lad. And that’s where it all started really, a good bit of sound career advice.
And yeah, I’ve just been at it ever since really.
So what was, when you were coding, like when you were at school, what sort of stuff were you doing?
Games mainly. So you used to get a couple of computer, ZX Spectrum was a game, the Amiga, Commodore 64. And you used to get a magazine delivered to your house once a month and on the back, they give you the code for a new game.
So me and my brother used to sit there for maybe a week before we could start playing the game, coding it and writing it and playing around. And after a while, you sort of learned that you could change the shirt color of your little character in the game, or you could change the sunset time in, or you started being able to break the code down. It really got quite enjoyable.
So yeah, and I’ve never been into it enough that I could make a career out of it. I still don’t code now. I’ve got a business partner, Keith.
He does all the real heavy lifting and the real brains now, but yeah, a little bit of hobby coding here and there, I don’t mind.
Yeah, it’s very interesting, isn’t it? And how the careers advisor and back then, people were like, oh, this internet thing. And now, I mean, is it possible to have a business without a website, for example?
Do you think?
Yes, I do. And we do talk to a lot of companies where you think it’s just not appropriate. It’s just not right.
And sometimes if you have a look at, we’ve just had our bathroom done, the plumber hasn’t got a website and he’s stacked up with work until the mid part of next year. The reason is because quality talks. So it doesn’t matter what you do or how you broadcast or the message that you put online.
If fundamentally the workings of your business are honest and your integrity is there and you work well and you produce a good end product, the website is sort of a means to an end. It’s a way of getting additional customers if you need it. But if you’ve got a good word of mouth for a good referral stream, then yeah, it doesn’t need to take priority.
I mean, have one. If people are doing their research and they’re looking up, I wanna get the number of this van that just drove past me that looks like could be good, then be available, be there. But how far down the rabbit hole, I think is a better way of looking at it.
You can just have a presence that gets you found and people know where you are. And then make sure you’ve got a digital platform that allows you to evolve. So if your aspirations decide to pick it up a little bit in the future, then yeah, be ready for it.
We do a bit of Google ads and we’re a digital business, but how we gain our businesses through offline means. I do a lot of business networking. I do thought leadership talks.
I’m part of BNI across the region. So these are referrals. These are relationships that I’ve built with people that they know actually Mike’s the go-to guy.
He’s gonna give me some good advice. And I’ll always put a number against the project. I’ll always quote if people are asking for quotes, but they’ll always find that the advice they get is honest and decent.
And I think we get most of our business from those referrals, from those relationships. And we spend a lot of time and money on our website and it generates maybe 20%, 10 to 20% of our actual new business inquiries come from it.
Really interesting. I think relationships is what it’s all about. And this podcast has, we bang on about it, being authentic, being honest, being real and building relationships with people.
And it’s all about trust, isn’t it really?
That’s always a hard one to convey because especially online, anybody can write a website, any of a variant degree is you can get the content and say, we’re the most forward thinking company, blue sky, flagpole waving company you’ve ever found, get all of the marketing blur, get AI and robots to write you the most appealing content you’ve ever done. But if actually the fundamental root of your business is that you’re not very good, that will soon work its way to the surface.
Yeah, or you’re either not very good or you’re pretending to be something that you’re not. But yeah, I agree. And you said about AI.
I mean, how much are people who are chatting with you now, they’re like, oh, Michael’s into digital. He must know or care about AI. What’s your take on it?
This is quite funny. I think having a longer career through digital, I’ve seen this cycle happen quite a lot. So very early in my career, I was sitting with press buyers, big power suits, three piece power suits, cigars in the office, all this sort of, they’re telling, no, the internet is a fad, it won’t stick around.
No one’s going to ever buy anything online. You know, is the future is going to kill all our jobs? What’s happening to the journalist?
What’s happening about authentic journalism? And it’s evolved that is policed itself, it’s been regulated, it’s evolved with the market, it’s found its niche and it serves a really valid purpose. Five years into the internet, affiliate marketing comes along and everyone’s on rev share, everyone’s on there.
No, traditional ad buying online is the best way. You know, that’s a fad, it won’t stick. There’s no authenticity, you’re like, okay, cool.
And it just sort of, then programmatic came along. So we’re doing retargeting, we’re doing data profiling. Oh, that won’t happen, that’s not regulated, it’s a fad.
And now we’ve just got the same with AI. You know, everyone’s saying it’s a fad, it won’t last. Our jobs are at risk, it doesn’t offer value, it doesn’t offer integrity.
And it’s a really powerful tool. And I think we like with everything, we just like to embrace it. We’re a tech led marketing company.
So it’s in our best interest to make sure that we’re at the forefront of these conversations and being able to use the tool appropriately. And I think you can’t replace the value of genuine thought, you know, of somebody actually putting down an opinion. And AI hasn’t got an opinion, you have to tell it what your opinion is.
So it can really support content, it can really support companies that are looking for a cheaper way of building out content. It can really help content writers sort of get over the initial steps of staring at a blank piece of paper. It’s got lots and lots of applications.
My personal favorite application for it is asking it to do an Excel formula. So with the months of my life, I must have been staring at an Excel sheet, trying to work out why I keep getting errors. And now you just put it into AI and just say, give me a formula to sort column A from column B and make it blue.
And it gives you the string back and that can be accelerated as well. And the same can happen with how we’ve got coders in the office. If we’re coming across a string that’s creating an issue, plug it into AI and tell me where is my issue?
What is the problem? What am I doing wrong? So it’s got a real good application.
It’s like a spotlight, a problem solving spotlight tool kind of thing. I think for me, I’ve got Google Analytics 4 on my website and I know it’s important to have Google analyzing my website and how many people are visiting and how long they stay and what pages they like and all that kind of thing. But opening up Google Analytics 4 just makes my knees go weak.
And actually, maybe I could ask AI to open it up for me and tell me what lessons I could learn. Is that something it can do?
Yeah, you can take a full Excel sheet, so export all of your data from GA4 as much as you can onto a CSV. There’s a little plus icon in ChatGPT, or most of your systems that are using that will allow you to upload a document. So you put all of that in and say, okay give me a demographic breakdown based on season.
And it will give you, okay, women interact with your website more through the summer months. Men do quarter four and you’ll really get a good breakdown of how it’s working. But again, like with everything, it’s about what you put in.
So if the data you’re pulling out is weak, the information you’re going to get from the back of it is weak. But if you’re with GA4 and you’ve got a good analytics platform on your website, there’s no reason you can’t export that, plug it into an AI and ask that to break down what’s going on. And that will really start painting the story.
And that’s it, isn’t it? There’s a story there behind the numbers and the data. And I guess you have to figure out what that story is.
And then you have to package it up in a way that isn’t like death by PowerPoint, to actually then connect with that audience in an emotional way that’s going to hook them back in. That’s a tricky little manoeuvre, isn’t it?
Yeah, I think it’s finding the story. I’ve always been quite good at looking at the data and building out a pattern of what’s going on and sort of separating yourself away from your business, because we’re very good at laying in jargon, laying in our own opinion. We’ve been sitting in the market for 20 odd years.
So how we conduct ourselves and how we interact with the industry is very different to how our customers are going to do it. So it allows you to sort of build out that pitch. Actually, we had a really good one when I was doing these Grow Digital Talks that we met at.
We had a guy come along and he said with his data, he’s like, I can’t work out why my mobile, I get loads of traffic on mobile, but not a lot on desktop, but then everybody buys on desktop. So we’re like, OK, so we started to look at his data and this is just sitting in the room of his laptop. And we could see that the new visitor count on mobile was really, really high.
It’s about 80% new visitors coming from mobile. Everyone on desktop is a returning visitor. So what that tells us is that people are prospecting they’re doing their research on the train, they’re doing something where they’re thinking about you on the go, you are a point of contact at that point, but they’re not going to interact with you, they’re not going to put their card details and they’re not going to purchase from your business until they’re at home in front of their computer.
Or sat in the office.
Sat in the office, something like that. So then you start thinking, okay, now we’ve got a different level of marketing to go with it. So actually the message that we put out for mobile is more brand, it’s more focused on the story around authenticity, around the quality, around congratulating them for finding the right place, everything that we can look at.
We can also look at the keywords they searched to look at you. If they’re looking for high quality carpenter near me, then the message you put out to these news guys are around quality, is around the sort of trigger points that get them in. And we saw that there was a huge increase in the amount of the conversions against desktop.
And we saw that in the last couple of weeks that it’s been going just for running a little ad campaign on the side. So it makes a lot of difference being able to break that down and paint a picture and actually write it down a lot. So if you ever did it, I drew my A levels and all of this sort of stuff, you had to write down who’s your customer yet to really describe who they were.
This is Tony.
Dream customer avatar.
Yeah. Yeah. You build that out.
Tell me about Tony.
Yeah. Oh, he’s a really interesting guy. It doesn’t exist.
But I’ve got his life story. But even that now, data allows you to paint a picture also. What’s the percentage chance that this person is going to be female?
60% if you’re looking at your audience. Okay. You can start breaking that down into, well, how many of those are transacting or going through abandon.
So you could start bringing up a list of saying, right, the highest potential to transact with my business is men over 45. The people that are going to abandon the cart are women under 25. So you can have a look at the cart process.
And if it feels a bit formal, if it feels a bit, there’s too many steps. You’ve you sort of lost the beautiful design flow that you had through your website stops at checkout, because you haven’t given that the design time, then the more emotive creatures in the world, which forgive the broad brush stroke and Terry, the top typically women, you know, they’ll sort of switch. Oh, this has got a bit formal now terms and conditions, big, heavy, right.
Oh, I’ve got to agree to this and that. And then there’s a pop up that comes in. Now you’ve lost me.
I was part of an emotional journey with you. And now you’ve just slammed me over loads of terms and conditions. So actually soften it out.
Okay, before you proceed, we have to go through some legalities. Is this okay? As they say?
That’s just the language, isn’t it?
Just the language. Yeah. So you can really, but knowing what language to use is, is going to be key to the audience that you’re in front of. And knowing exactly who that person is, imagining them sat on their sofa or wherever and knowing what they might be thinking. And you’re right. I mean, I didn’t study marketing, but I’ve learned about it in the last 10 years from running my business.
I kind of just used to, you know, post about some things on the internet. And now-
Still work that, didn’t it?
Well, yes and no, but I’ve learned, I’ve studied marketing. And then I’ve also, from the scripts I get from my clients, who are a lot of them businesses, doing marketing. So I’ve kind of, I’ve had a lot of free insights into their processes and what they’re thinking about, but one of those things was, was create your dream client avatar.
And I was like, well, I don’t know, I can look back at who’s contacted me for work and figure out are they men or women. But beyond that is really hard without that data to actually kind of populate that, that image and colour it in.
And now you could do it with your GA4, you’ll be able to say, okay, my ideal customer lives in this town. They will have a lifetime value of X amount. They’re male or female.
They’re in this age. They’ve got active interests in apparel, hobbies and games, family days out. They’ve got an Apple iPhone version five.
They like to spend about four to five minutes browsing between now and then. So your analytics builds out that dream customer profile. So it’s fair enough that you sit there in your mind because probably when you go through that exercise, anytime I’ve gone through that exercise, first place I look is the corner of the room.
So I’m thinking, oh, let me have a think. It shouldn’t be you thinking. You should be looking at your data and saying, right, well, I’ve got my business and yeah, I had ambitions for who I’m going to reach when I first started.
But now I’m 10 years in, who the lifetime value of our customers for us, it worked out that we we ended up finding a niche in engineering and manufacturing companies. And we never set out to hit engineering and manufacturing. We started out with loads of personal trainers and all sorts of stuff.
So where we found it is that engineering and manufacturing companies had the passion, had the expertise, have evolved something themselves, usually really, really risk, like high risk level to what engineering they’ve had to put a lot of money to get to where they are. So they’re not afraid of spending money correctly. If you can give them the confidence that they’re investing well, then you’re more likely into the door.
And for us from sort of outsourced digital marketing, when you go and sit with them and you say, OK, who’s looking after your website? It’s probably some poor guy sitting on reception. I do the Instagram and the tweets and the emails and GA4 is not quite working, but it does a bit.
And we’ve got a MailChimp account, but I don’t know where the URL is or these sort of things happen. So actually coming in and say, we’re going to come and support you because you’ve got expertise, you’ve got passion and a huge range of content and insights to share. So yeah, we really sort of crafted out that niche and it was our stats that told us.
And then now, now I say, if I’m actively pursuing a course, if I’m going to pay to acquire a lead, it’s going to be with an engineer in a manufacturing and they’re going to match a very specific profile and we know the lifetime value of that. So if we are employed a third party company, lead generation, anything like that, we can go to them and say, no, you need to generate this lead for six pounds, seven pounds. And we know that we’re going to close three and five of them.
So fill your boots.
So just to kind of clarify what you mean by that, it’s going to cost you six or seven pounds in digital advertising. So like Google ads or presumably Google ads. And that’s going to turn around a lead worth, do you have to figure out what the end amount is going to be worth?
Yeah. So I always call it reverse engineering. Let’s say if we build a website for a customer worth a thousand pounds and we know that we’re closing one in ten leads that come through, we’re closing into a thousand pounds of business average, then we know that we’ve got a thousand pounds of profit to spend on, to acquire ten leads.
That’d be a hundred pounds per lead. But our margins are only going to be 20% of that, maybe. So that hundred pound per lead goes to 20 pound per lead.
Now we only want to spend 15, 25% of our budget on marketing. So now we’re looking at something closer to a five pound, two pound fifty between two pound fifty to five pound per lead, because we’re going to spend, let’s say 50 quid to get 10 leads in the door, knowing that we’re going to close one of them worth a thousand pounds. So yeah, getting that, we’ve got like that tool that we did during the workshop, which more than happy to circulate that tool if you need to, but we’re big on ROI.
And actually the first thing we like to do is sit down with a customer and work that out because it’s eye opening when they see it, oh, right, okay, so what if I actually need to spend £2.50 a lead? Because a lot of people have the misconception, okay, I’m happy to spend £1,000 on an inquiry if that gets me £1,000 worth of business. You say, well, you’re paying for a flat line, you’re playing effectively failure.
That’s not scale, that’s not growth. That’s you wasting time really, because you could have done nothing and you’ll be in exactly the same place. And it’s quite strange.
Sometimes I sit in front of people and they’re like, this is eye-opening, why haven’t we ever done this? I think, how have you not done this? And I don’t know whether it’s just a common sense vein or just people not being aware or anything.
I think a lot of it is awareness that you think, right, you’ve got Google Analytics, you know that it’s telling you what your e-commerce basket values are like, but what do I do with it? Once I’ve got it all, what happens? What now?
So actually sitting with someone and just sort of levelling that out and having that conversation is being really key. So yeah, we quite enjoy sitting with customers, having that initial conversation, it gives them a lot of confidence that we’re heading in the right direction and we’ve got the main, we’ve got a goal. There’s too much of a market and there’s a bit of theory, just, oh, it might work and good luck and you know, let’s do it.
Make it happen, make it return on your investment. Well, I think I’ve only got one question really left, which is, where’s your story going to go in the next kind of five years? You talked about maybe still being around for some of those businesses that you’ve helped or spoken to, but what about you personally or in your business?
Got any ridiculous goals?
There is one ridiculous goal, I’ll save it for the end, but I think business wise, we’ve just tipped over the edge of having something that’s scalable now, and so for the next five years at least, what we want to do is we’ve got this six of us, as far as Digibubble is concerned, four of us are in the office full time, and that as a foundation crew is outstanding. We’ve gone through a fair few highs, we’ve had our ups and our downs, but right now, we’re sitting on a really solid foundation of people that have got the right integrity, are willing to learn, really, really positive, it’s a great environment to be in, and it’s where the company, where I like the company to be, just how it’s ethos, and I enjoy walking in in the morning. So the next five years for Digibubble is that we want to expand that, but not lose the values, not lose that enjoyment.
Make sure that we keep that, it’s been really hard, especially as me and my business partner, Keith, friends that go way back, so it’s been really hard to make sure that we still enjoy ourselves and still create a professional environment that’s not just two mates messing about. And now it feels like we’ve done that and we’ve got the right crew. So while that’s happened, I’ve got, I’m just putting together a proposal, I’ve been working at a proposal for the last couple of years with Hawley Town, where we’re trying to build a community work hub.
So it’s in the high street. So they’ve got loads of money flying around for reimagining the high street and level upping and all of this sort of stuff. So yeah, we’re building Works Perfect, it’s called.
We’re just going through an application for some grants now, but it’s a walking work center. It’s got 32 desks in it, but it’s also got two pop up retail units in the in the front window. So if you’re a small local jewelry maker, and you just want to see if there’s capacity on the high street for you to get some footfall.
Test it out. Come into Works Perfect, take the window. We’ve lined that up.
I’ve been talking to the Department of Work and Pensions because it always frustrates me how the benefit system kills entrepreneurial spirit. Because if I sit there and say, right, I want my, you can’t call it the dole anymore, but job allowance, I don’t know what they call it, so I want my money. And they say, okay, well, have you applied for five jobs this week?
So I haven’t. No, I’ve been working on the next best idea. It’s brilliant.
You need to go. Here’s one. Tesco driver, checkout little, street sweeper, bin man.
They’re all there. You can go get a job now. And if you don’t put these CVs in and try hard, you won’t get your money.
So we’re talking with them to run a mentoring program through Works Perfect that allows you to beep in. And as long as you’re assigning your hours to Works Perfect on involving your own business and you’ve got a mentor, then it can work towards your job allowance, counts towards your credits. So I just think I just little bit sideways thinking on that.
And that’s been that was sort of coming out of COVID that started. So yeah, we think we’re just now starting to look at some money and get the plan together. So yeah, I think the next five years that might be something.
That’s brilliant. Thank you so, so much. Well, it’s been a real eye opener talking to you, Michael, about websites and beyond.
So thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Thank you very much for having me, Katie.
Did you find that useful? I hope there was something in that chat for everyone, whatever your level of digital knowledge. So what did I learn?
Well here are my key takeaways. One, don’t panic if your company isn’t crushing the internet. Not every business even needs a website.
But having some kind of online presence will make you discoverable when potential clients are doing their research. And if your website or Facebook page includes reviews from happy customers, even better. Two, there are stories hidden in your business data.
And you can use AI tools to find them if you want. If your website has analytics, an AI tool like ChatGPT can look at that data and give you useful insights on the nitty-gritty of what’s happening at the point of sale, or when and how people interact with your site. Three, digital advertising isn’t for everyone.
But it can be very successful if you know exactly who your ideal client is, how many leads it takes to generate a sale, and how much your average sale is worth. Then you can work out how much to spend on a pay-per-click campaign. Check the show notes from Michael’s handy calculator tool to help you figure this all out.
Four, don’t forget what Mike said about relationships. At the end of the day, if you’re good at what you do, friendly and helpful person, your business will grow, whether you’re a digital whiz or not. And if you’d like Michael Humphrey help with your digital marketing, do give Digibubble a shout.
The contact details are in the show notes. And tell Michael I sent you.
Next time, from digital to physical, using your body to get your story straight.
“So what is a story? First of all, a story has to have some very basic ingredients. Number one, it needs to have a character, and it needs to have an event.
And then it needs to have real emotion and transformation. Things can’t go back to being the same, otherwise, why would you bother telling it?”
That ‘s somatic story coach, Stacia Keogh, with a formula for story success and tips for getting out of your head and into your body. And you don’t even have to wait, episode 19, Physical: Body and Soul, is sitting in your phone waiting for you. Well done to previous me for making that happen, but actual right now me needs a cup of tea, so it’s time for this me to go.
I’m Katie Flamman, and that’s quite enough of that. And this is Storytelling For Business. Till next time, goodbye.”
From Storytelling For Business: Digital: Story Data, 29 Feb 2024
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