Episode 7
Connecting with Your Customers - The Power of Digital Conversations with Richard Singleton
Connecting with your customers has never been more important—and that’s exactly what we’re diving into in this episode of Marketing Magic in Minutes. The brilliant Richard Singleton joins me from whY-us? Digital Marketing to explore the power of real, authentic digital conversations.
We’re talking about more than just posting—this is about creating genuine, two-way engagement that builds trust and sets you apart. Richard shares some fantastic insights that’ll get you rethinking how you show up online.
Remember to download my FREE GUIDE to get started.
Visit www.tracyheatley.com and use the code POD2025 to win a power-hour session with me!
Transcript
Foreign Heatley. And thank you for tuning in to this episode of Better Marketing. Marketing Magic in minutes. This episode is all about connecting with your customers.
The power of Digital Conversations with my special guest, Richard Singleton. Richard is a digital marketer. He runs a digital marketing agency called why O Marketing. Welcome to this episode, Richard.
Speaker B:Hi, Tracy. Thanks for having us.
Speaker A:I feel very honoured actually. This is your first ever podcast, isn't it?
Speaker B:It is, yeah.
Speaker A:This is the debut debut for Richard Singleton. So the first thing I want to talk about, we might as well get to it, try and add as much value as we can to my listeners.
So on the basis that we're talking about connecting with your customers, I know that digital marketing is your area of expertise, so I'm looking forward to chatting to you.
And the first thing I was thinking we could talk about is essentials of digital conversations, namely the importance of being authentic and having two way interactions with customers across digital platforms.
I'll tell you what's prompted this is I actually wrote a blog on this, I don't know, many months ago because I kept seeing things on social media about people wanting to train other people in how to be authentic on social media. And I thought that's quite a contradiction in terms really, isn't it? So what are your thoughts on this?
Speaker B:Authenticity is key, especially in a service led industry.
For ourselves, there is a lot of competition out there and how you come across or how you portray yourself or how you deliver the work you want to give to people. You know, we work in a world of recommendations and referrals, don't we, that come through social media and such like.
And when we're on social media, it's all about personal branding and identification. If you want to be trusted, if you want to be seen as the person to go to with insights and knowledge, then you have to be authentic with that.
People see through you very quickly and very easily. You want to put across your best impressions. You can try and get away with things, but I think it's very easy to be found out.
Speaker A:Yeah, I agree. I think the authenticity is key and you know, one of the things we tell people in marketing is to be aware of your competition and things like that.
But that doesn't mean that you should have the temptation there to copy them. It's a way of understanding them, isn't it? So that you can differentiate yourselves rather than trying to be something that you're not.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I'd say it comes across if you, especially if you're trying to give sort of advice and experiences Then people can very easily look things up. I'm not particularly good at lying. I could get found out straight away.
If naturally you can just have the patter, then I think yes, you will get away with it to a degree, but the bricks will come tumbling down once you do get found out.
Speaker A:Do you think the message is don't say that you could do something that you can't. Be yourself personality wise and stick to your own brand guidelines? I guess. Do you think?
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah. Set them to start with.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a good start. Yeah.
Speaker B:Have them, have them to start with, understand what they are and what the boundaries are. I've come on this podcast, as I say, for the first time now. So you know this is audio, so this is different to doing a video.
So people listening to something you know they can hear in your voice. I think if you are, or if you, if you're over enthusiastic, that can also come across as just pushing the boundaries a bit too much.
But yeah, authenticity is key.
Speaker A:Let's talk about the two way communication because I think quite often, especially with social media, it's easy for business is to think it's all about posting as much as they can and that's it. But a lot of the success comes from the interaction.
Speaker B:Well, it depends obviously what you're trying to achieve and what your industry is, what the services that you're offering. Quite a few of my clients within marketing are B2B business to business rather than business to consumer. So they are quite targeted audiences.
So if you're going to put things on social media that's about a specific service or a skill, you might not get as much interaction or engagement because it's a small pool of people that you're aiming at as if you were going to just talk generally about your business or what you do because other people outside of your direct target market can also join in the conversation.
So for example, one of our clients in commercial cleaning for the food industry, it's all right, there's a lot of food manufacturers out there, but it is quite a targeted place.
So if you're looking for interaction, you have to be quite open with your post to encourage debate, ask questions, what do you think this is how we did this? Would you do it differently if you encourage in debate? You got to be prepared for feedback and constructive feedback hopefully.
Speaker A:And what are your thoughts on those businesses actually then going and interacting with their potential customers? Let's talk about LinkedIn for example. You know, it's not just about posting and getting instructions on your post. Is it?
It's about connecting and communicating with other people.
Speaker B:Yeah. So getting, I think you get in engagement with quality people.
First of all, do your research, look for people that do engage, try and build up a rapport with them first. Build up a relationship with them potentially through direct messaging.
And I'm not saying that you're pre planning or pre emptying things with people, but at least you can know what's going to trigger a reaction from someone or a group of people if you perhaps you're going to tag them in the post.
Speaker A:Yeah.
And while this episode is not specifically about LinkedIn, it is probably worth mentioning that when you go onto somebody's profile and look at the activity, you can actually see when they were last active. And if they've not been active for a few months, then they're not going to be regularly using that platform anyway.
So you might want to spend your time interacting with people that are.
Speaker B:Exactly. And as I say, you might build up the conversations and relationship in direct messages first.
Don't expect people to react and comment to you if you're not prepared to do it to other people. Have a look through posts, comment on other people's constructively.
You'll start to build up that rapport with them that encourages them then to comment on yours back. It's a two way thing. You can't expect everyone to do it for you. You not do it back.
Speaker A:Yeah. The purpose of this episode is to kind of get that across.
You can reach out to customers across your digital platforms, but you can form those relationships and that trust across those platforms as well, can't you?
Speaker B:You can, yeah. And this is where, you know, you talk about trust and equality. I get quite frustrated by people that only talk about numbers.
For some people it's just a vanity parade how many comments they've gotten. Such like the algorithm likes lots of comments, but what is the actual goal?
Do you just want that number or do you want quality comments that creates engagement that then encourages other comments?
Or are you just going to put something controversial out to just get the numbers up because you know that people will react angry, you know what, what is your purpose? What is your goal for it?
Speaker A:I'll keep going back to LinkedIn but for example, if you're looking at the numbers, I had a post a few months ago on LinkedIn. I think it was, it got minimal fair views because I'd been very naughty and put a link in the thing.
So I didn't expect it to go viral, but I think it had something like 397views. Which is not a lot considering. But I got business out of that.
Speaker B:Post, obviously at the time of recording. Blue sky have said now that they are encouraging people to put external links in their post now. They're not suppressing those like other platforms.
You know, it is all about being open on there. So on Blue sky now they are encouraging you. You're not going to get penalized for putting external links in.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's good to know. Top tips by Richard Singleton. Let's have a chat about the technology then and integrating technologies.
So things like AI chatbots, CRM systems, which I know is an area of expertise of yours. You are the guy that loves all those data flow charts and putting a CRM together for businesses, aren't you?
Speaker B:Love a process flow chart.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah. So I don't know whether listeners can hear your smile, but I can see your smile as we're talking and I know that that floats your boat.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
And it's amazing once you get going with a flowchart, how much it does float other people's boats that they can see something that they just had in their head and they're trying to get it out. Yeah. Yes. Visually doing floor. Just loads of different softwares now that you can do them in.
Whether they be free or paid, there's lots of different ones.
Speaker A:I think, Richard, at some point over the next couple of months you should come back on and we should just do an episode that's just about CRM. I personally think it's really important for small businesses to have them. Do you have a second debut?
You don't do, but your second appearance on a podcast. But we'll chat about it, I think in more detail because it's really important.
Speaker B:But that is utilizing, as you say, different softwares.
Speaker A:Let's touch on it a little bit because there are a few ways that businesses can use it and all the in the chat box and the AI. So if it's a small business that's not got the CRM yet, you know, what technologies would you advise small businesses to get specifically for that?
Speaker B:People do have different opinions on this, but personally I am a fan of web chats. For one, if I'm a customer asking a question and I go on a web chat, I've got evidence of the answer.
So if they don't do what they said we could do, you've got evidence of the answer, but also you can learn a lot from them. So you might want a direct question answering. And yes, you probably nowadays will go through a chat Box AI before you get to a human.
But more often than not, there is a way to then ask to speak to a human or an agent, as they might call them, on a web chat.
Speaker A:And I think that's really important, isn't it, for those customers that would prefer that human touch? You know, they know that they can go through that process and get to it. But I don't know what the percentages of.
Maybe it's to do with demographics or in age, maybe. But you know, you're going to have users of different ages that are going to expect different things, aren't they?
Speaker B:It also depends on when someone wants the answer. So this is a service and you have strict hours of 9 till 5 and there's nobody there after that time. People want answers now.
People generally don't have much patience. They can't wait for the next day.
So if you do have a web chat feature on your website, people can still make inroads into getting their questions answered. So if you're doing that, it might be that you only have that switched on in the evening.
Now, when you talk about interlinking digital, that means then that typically it will ask the user for an email address.
The reason for that is obviously to go into a marketing database, but again, that gives you evidence because they'll email you a transcript of the conversation. So as a customer, I've now got evidence that I tried to get the question answered. This was the answer I was given.
And you've got it, you've got it all written down. But what is moving on now is you'll start to see the AI web chat on websites, but it's going to be video, our video software.
At the moment we're working on a AI Frequently Asked Questions video.
Now this isn't something that's immediate, but we're working on that because people might now prefer to see somebody answering the question rather than typing where you see your little dots that someone's typing. But that's very much going to be AI generated.
Speaker A:Yeah, I look forward to seeing that. You don't know how that's going to work just yet though.
Speaker B:No, working on it at the moment. There's a collection of us that are working on it. So the idea is there, but it will be AI.
It's only like going to a Frequently Asked Questions page on a website where it's all typed out. Well, instead it'll be somebody talking the answer and then this links into. Then I don't know if you've got Google or Siri or Alexa Switched on.
Speaker A:They will know because Siri will join in the conversation.
Speaker B:But again, this will help with voice search because instead of typing, if I'm asking one of these speakers a question through voice, it will recognize it more as voice rather than types. And so it'll be interesting to see how the audio response through visual video web chat interacts with that.
Speaker A:I know I'm a fan of AI. So in terms of the impact of digital conversations then on customer relations, we've kind of touched on that, haven't we? A little bit.
And there's some case studies and things there for people to look at. It's probably worth me mentioning actually, Richard, at this point that you mentioned about your video software.
So I'll just mention that quickly because you have video software platform that users can subscribe to. Essentially it's for quick videos, isn't it? So it will, once you've set it up, it will automatically brand videos.
It's for those quick, say one to three minute type videos, isn't it? And somebody wants to not spend a massive amount of time editing and let it do quite a lot of things for you.
So that's what you're talking about, isn't it? That when you're talking about the, the AI and integration, it's an app.
Speaker B:Correct. So the objective of the video software is humans, social media algorithms, they're all pushing us down video.
You were talking about interaction earlier on video. Then you know, it gives it a face, a real person to what you're saying.
So we're being pushed down the route of video and we've got fantastic opportunities through TikTok and Instagram or then you've got your softwares like Capcut and Canva where you can edit all these videos. And that is great and it's got its perfect place.
But the other problem is we haven't all got time to be editing and putting fancy graphics on here and motion and there and such that we haven't got time.
So what you were saying there is this video software is simply record your video on the phone or a laptop, upload it to the software, click four buttons to brand it up, get captions, put some background music on, and then you have a video within a couple of minutes. So that then as you said, is short video. So you can now use these within web chat.
So you will do quick video answers which will be servicing the purpose of frequently asked questions. And the answer is in a video. So then it is then interactive for lots of people or reasons.
Speaker A:And if we've got Any small businesses tuning in and listening now that are recoiling at the thought rather of doing video, you're not on your own. I love audio, I hate recording myself. But we have to just get over ourselves and just do it, don't we?
Speaker B:We do. And I didn't like it, I didn't enjoy it. But it's just repetition. The more you do it, the more you get over it.
Think of it, if you drive a car, the thought of getting into a one ton metal box and being a danger to everybody on the road and then you do your lessons and you do your test and you get used to it and it just becomes a natural instinct. And that's the same thing with video.
Speaker A:The reason why I go more for audio and podcasts is because I used to be a radio presenter. So I'm perfectly comfortable with that. I'm not suggesting that I need to become a TV presenter to get on video.
I just need to get out of myself and just do it. Don't I? Just do it. We've chatted a lot about how businesses can interact. We've touched on a little bit about future trends.
But I guess if you are going to sum it up, Richard, and you could give the listeners maybe three things that they can be doing now to kind of future proof their customer engagement through digital conversations. What would they be?
Speaker B:One is being able to provide answers quick.
So as we said earlier on, out of hours and such like, unfortunately people don't tend to have a lot of patience because everything else is just instant. Think about how you can answer questions quickly. The second one is there are so many different softwares out there that you can use.
So you gotta put a bit of time in to do your research. Just think about the cost, the frequency of paying for it. Essentially we are creating content. Content takes up storage space.
So just look at the little like the small prints. Just to see are you limited by how much storage space you've got and then work out the costs on that.
And the third one is to look at your existing software to see what you can integrate with it or not. Software technology is moving very fast.
Typically we have got like Zapier, we've got different softwares that we can connect different programs up with.
So how are you going to connect that up is one, you've got to do your research on that and then you will get, you will get to a solution quite quickly because you'll start to understand what all the different softwares can do. You will get to a solution quite quickly, but you've got, you got to have patience.
You've got to set your, like anything, set your objectives, understand your budget and then realize what results you can deliver.
Speaker A:And you can trial most of them anyway, can't you? So take, take the trial, I guess, and use it, you know, don't fall into the trap of getting trial software and then not using it.
Speaker B:I think like with anything. Yeah. Understand your plan, what you're trying to achieve, and then you can deliver on that. But I do keep harping back to.
I think people want things quickly.
You might not be able to give them the full answer straight away, but you can give them reassurance that they're in the right place and that you are working on delivering the answer.
Speaker A:I think sometimes even if it's just responding in a way that says, thank you, we've received this and we will get back to you and this is when we will come back to you.
Speaker B:I know you said three, but I'm going to give you a four.
Speaker A:That's all right. Four is good.
Speaker B:Test it.
The world of notifications, it's great on one hand, so you know where you're up to, but you've got to be careful that you've checked what notifications are going out. So I had a client, they asked a question to them that was quite simple, an action that they wanted me to take on a website.
But I knew that if I took that action, it would affect three different things that they hadn't thought about.
So I needed to be quite clear, right, if you do A, then it will affect B, C and D in this way, which might be negative if you've not thought it through. So I had to create different tasks for them and they were getting a notification on each task.
Now, it was important that they did so they understand they got these. To be honest, they weren't overly keen on getting all the notifications, but it's just weighing up the clarity.
You're talking before about authenticity. You know, make sure you see in this case notifications what goes out each time you do an action on a piece of software.
Speaker A:That's really important about how they interact and things. And the storage was a great point as well, actually. So there's been some really good stuff there for our listeners.
If you would like to know more about these digital conversations, anything to do with CRM or the video software that we've kind of touched on briefly while we've been chatting, then do contact Richard directly from my US Marketing. I think it's good to wrap up there. Do you think, I think there's some good tips that our listeners can action now really on that.
So thank you very much for listening. I'm Tracey Heatley. I really appreciate you tuning into the Better Networking Marketing Magic in Minutes podcast.
Remember to subscribe and leave a review if you would be so kind.
And also remember if you head over to my website which is betternetworking.co.uk and you download the business strategy guide, you will go into a competition to potentially win a free one hour power hour with me. So thanks Richard. Anything else you'd like to add or.
Speaker B:Just make sure you do stay on a digital journey. Don't get left behind. It might seem intimidating at first but be on it, be on it, be on it. Yes. And seek help.
Speaker A:Thank you very much. We'll wrap everything up there. Thank you for tuning in to this episode. I'll be back with you for another episode next week.
And remember, better marketing, better business.
