Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Lisa Corwood with Fueled Agency. Why don't you give us an overview of your recent experience in terms of marketing and what brought you to that agency.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Sure. Thank you so much for having me. So Fueled Agency was actually founded on us. We, myself and my husband had a car dealership in the uk.
Gosh, many years ago. Well, say many years ago. Probably about 10 or so years ago now.
We were doing our own organic marketing at the time. Obviously, Meta was still very new. And we sat there and we were thinking, how on earth do we get all of these vehicles out in front of people that we want to see them, but without saying, here's another vehicle, come and buy this, and just being repetitive. So we were constantly coming up with these ideas that were unique and interesting. Probably one of the absolute best ones was where's Wally? What we did was we dressed up one of our team as Wally and we got him tied behind the cars and we'd go and video around the forecourt and then he would sort of pop out. People could see, and they'd put a timestamp on when they saw him. And we just saw this spike in engagement because people were genuinely interested and they knew that if they found him and spotted him, they'd get £50 worth of fuel credit to go and put in their car. So it was hitting a whole new audience at the time. We were like, right, are we going to push with this or are we going to work with an agency? And we started working with an agency to generate us leads and revenue.
Just like, it's not as fun as what we were doing. We know we can push this further. So that was the start of what the agency was based on. We were finding that people were feeling the exact same struggles. How do we get out there? How do we get in front of the camera? So that was the crux of what it was founded on. We were spending our own money on paid for ads. And we were just like, you know what? We've kind of got an idea what's working. Let's just, let's run with it.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I love that concept of looking at a creative process that engages the audience. You know, it's not always necessarily about just hitting the fundamentals of like, I've got a car, look at this car. This car has this thing, look at this thing. Sometimes you do do better if you find ways to engage with the audience, engage with the community.
I was just talking with Kyle Bailey on an interview Yesterday about how you can use, you know, charitable events, use like a community cleanup program to, to reach your geographic audience. You can participate in community, you know, gathering drives and gain some, some visibility and positive outcome from that. I know, you know, law offices often do, you know, free counseling for, for a particular type of case.
And I've seen particularly good effects of, you know, staging an event, a charitable event or a giveaway or something in your physical location. That way you can double down and put out on, you know, event aggregator sites because every community has two or three. You know, this hip Cookville here in Tennessee where I live has, hey, Nashville music, Nashville Scene, you know, a dozen duplicate sites that are trying to grab a pie of that event. Those event eyeballs, but those can turn into genuine links, mentions and positive community feedback. What's been your experience with either with clients or in general and you know, trying to engage in the community as a strategy?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: I think there's two ways of doing it. I've seen people who do it very, very well, like you say, and I've seen people who have done it unfortunately not so well. And I think people think, well, what I'll do is I'll make myself a member of all of these groups particular on Facebook and I will just go in there and I will just share. This is what I do and this is my number and this is how to contact me. And I think there's so many better ways to do it. I mean, living over in Mallorca, Facebook is a massive part of the expat community. And I don't know if you've seen any stats recently, but just dropped this morning in my inbox was the increase in use on Facebook because I think at the moment people are genuinely at the cost of living across Europe and, and in the UK are genuinely going into groups and they're asking genuine questions. Where can I, how can I find this? And I think especially with the rise of ChatGPT and AI, sort of substitute in towards those now questions that people are asking and pushing up sponsored links. I think if you're going to do this really well, you have to be genuine. You have to go into the group and you have to provide value. And this is something that I like to educate clients on a lot. If you're gonna go in there, don't just as if you were gonna walk in a room, go and speak to people, actually respond to them, ask them what their questions are and their pain points. Don't just walk in, shout what you're saying and go out, treat It. As if it's a group of people, not, you know, a place to just spray and pray.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: I couldn't agree more. I've been on Reddit for an embarrassingly long amount of time for like, 20 years.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: And the one thing that I can say about that community is that there's a huge negative reaction to, you know, just the spray and pray. People who just come in and are like, look at me, I'm. I'm doing this thing. You're like, no, no, go away. No, I mean, it's like, you know, you. If you would imagine just a room full of people and somebody just comes in, like, dressed as a car because they have a car dealership. Really? Like, that is embarrassing. Like, you're embarrassing yourself. Like, nobody likes that, so.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Exactly. But it's so easy to forget. It's so easy as a business owner to go, well, I just share it. Because I'm just sharing. And we have got to this point where we just go. And we just scroll past it.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Yeah. There is. There is ad blindness. You know, it. It reminds me of the early days of the Internet, you know, 2000s to 2005, where there was suddenly, like, you know, a billion banners on every site and you just kind of like, tuned it out. This is not, at a certain point, like, there's diminishing returns on excessive advertising. And I think, you know, even with SEO, you know, there is a tipping point where what you're doing turns into spam, you know, and there's a point where you push it too far, too hard. I think it comes back to what Matt Brooks of SEO Tarek always talks about, which is the power of. Of genuine branding, about the values of your company.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: And, you know, if you don't take time to set aside and think through what it is that you're bringing to the table, then you're much more tempted to just, you know, bang the drum wherever you can and just get out there, you know, like, hire a sign flipper out there. Like, just. Just do it. There's a lot like, no, like, what are your values? How are you going to get those across? If you're saying that your values are that you understand people, you understand your audience, then why are you hiring somebody to stand out there in a monkey suit spinning a sign? The two things don't connect.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: No.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: What's been your experience with setting strategy that matches with branding that can amplify those brand signals that are becoming more important in both LLMs and traditional search?
[00:07:49] Speaker B: I think looking at what, what we've been doing and what we've been seeing success with when it comes to. And I always come back to the. No matter what business it is, it comes down to the idea. If as a business owner, you don't have an idea where to start, that is where nine times out of 10, see it with designing websites with content that's going out there. And I'm sure you see it a lot with SEO with blogs. And you know, unless you've got the idea and that idea relates to your market, you're going down the completely the wrong path. And you can go down that very, very quickly. And I think one of the things that we've done with one of our clients very, very recently is they've been sat there going, well, we're a boring business. We don't really know what to put out. So we just put out these canvas style designs with a little bit of text on the top and we're like, okay, who is going to read that? Because I'm not going to read it. Why don't we talk about your customers? Like, let's invite your customers in, why don't they talk about you? They're on Facebook, tell all about you. Let's get them in, let's interview them, let's see what they've really got to say and let's push all of this sort of content out, the educational side of things, what you do and why you do it. And then when we've started to do that, we're building an ecosystem which matches up with the website, with their blogs, with their social, and we're encouraging their audience to pop in and out of all these different areas to get this information that they need. And I think moving into 2026, that's going to be crucial for anybody who's got a business to look at their ecosystem, their SEO, their social, their website. And how does all of that connect and where does that person fall in? And if they fall in, where do they then go? And if they fall out and they come back in, are they going to feel comfortable enough falling back in and where are they going to go?
[00:09:41] Speaker A: I love that because I think that the I'm in a boring industry is such a.
It's such an out. It's a cheap out.
Because if you the more quote unquote boring an industry is, the more fanatical certain people are about information within it. You know, like if you're a subject matter expert in a quote unquote boring business, you get them talking about what it is that they do. You Know, the differentiators, like the problems that it solves, the aspects of it. There's always way more depth than, you know, an exciting industry of, hey, you know, it's jewelry. It's so exciting.
Yeah, it's just shiny. It's just kind of pretty. But it's not actually, like, not boring. It's actually really boring. Jewelry is really boring. You wear it.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: And do you know what I think we all forget though as well, is that no matter what business it is, if it's selling a product, if it's shiny, if it's like Lamborghinis or diamond rings, behind all of that is a team that make that happen. Tell everybody about it. If you, if you are selling a really high ticket luxury item and your customer feels like they know your team before they walk through the door, the chances of them making a purchase are higher because they feel like they can ask the question. So, you know, getting that sort of content together and putting that out, even if it is like, you know, from a vlog, from a blog, or from like a docu style sort of content, do it.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: I agree. You know, if you're delivering precast concrete walls to somebody, you can still do a good job of, you know, creating video showing, oh, hey, this is the old slab style that was here. It was falling apart, wasn't doing its job. Here's what it looks like after, and show your team doing it. Show the expertise on the ground as you're putting it into place.
Anybody that's in the field, with a service area business in the field executing on these things, they have that. So you just need to provide the lens and put that camera there and give the prompts, you know, record that in that situation. You know, one of my other guests was recommending, you know, like as if you're a painter in an area and, or you're a roofer, you're driving through an area, you know, stop by, you know, one of the, you know, neighborhood signs that says Cookeville or no, and talk about, hey, we're headed into this area, there's a huge hailstorm, we're doing a bunch of repairs, you know, creating regional content, connecting with the community.
And I think that, I think what you're really saying is, you know, businesses that don't take the time to nurture their community and, and are just doing outward facing, throwing the hook out again and again and trying to pull in the fish, pull in the value again and again are going to. You got a hole in your boat and you keep pulling the fish in and then they're slipping out and you're not keeping them. So it's a tremendously wasteful. It's like employers who spend so much time hiring people and they would rather hire somebody than pay a decent wage, give somebody a raise, give them even a position, a higher position over a year. You know what a dollar a year raise is not too much to ask for somebody that stuck with you and learned your industry.
People are trading at. You know, I worked at a corporation for a while where they thought that a 2% raise annually was generous. I'm like, inflation goes up more than that. I'm losing money every year working for you.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: And this is the thing, I mean, I think as a business owner, and it doesn't matter how small your business is or how big it is. Look at the funnel. Like look at the layers where you're creating content and how you're trying to connect with your ideal customer. And the analogy that you said about, you know, turning up into a, an area where there's a hailstorm and saying we're going to be here. That's exactly it. It's creating the content that's going to speak to people at different points and it's going to nurture them to come and to make a purchase. That is a big thing. And this is something I talked about recently on my YouTube that's going out on Friday was about if you got 20 leads right now into your business, where would they go and what would happen with them? And if you don't have an answer to that? Well, there's something that you need to look at. You need to look at your funnel and need to look at your ecosystem because it's likely that you're creating all of this content and you're doing all of this work and nothing's going to happen.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think another thing I'd like you to chime in on is looking at your other businesses, not as necessarily competitors, but as co marketing opportunities. You know, if you're selling stair handrails, then you should be coordinating with carpenters who work on stairs. You should be doing reaching out and doing co marketing with home renovators. You should be doing, looking for realtors who specialize in working with house flippers who are going to be consistently running into houses that need that and tapping into their desire for a market. Give them a piece of your marketing and you tap into other people's marketing budget.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: And there's nothing wrong with that. I think what we do tend to do is we get in, in that zone and we kind of forget and is so easily done. Like I can say I've, I've done it in the past where you go, no. And instead of thinking, actually if I, if I network with, with these sorts of people, there is possibility for us to collab and to do something and you've got an audience and I've got an audience. So ultimately we're both cross promoting each other. And I think it's. Sometimes it's so easy where people do tend to think, well, how's that going to look? How can it affect my brand? And obviously if you have got a big business, then that's a massive consideration to look at who you are working with and what that can do. But I think it's something that everybody should be looking into and especially with, you know, the amount of social networks that are out there now, the amount of visibility that is possible, stuff that every marketer would have dreamed of, you know, 20, 30 years ago.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: What are some of the verticals that you've been working with clients in recently? Because there's a dramatic difference in the ecosystem for, you know, just literally for SEO. You know, like Google has a really hard cap and doesn't treat people that are trying to rank for SEO in a specific region with Nashville or Cookeville the same as they treat, you know, locksmiths, the same as they treat E commerce, the same as they treat a service area business. So I'm curious what your industry specific or vertical specific experience has been and how it differentiated and what you had to learn to kind of adapt to the reality within that niche.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: I think the most interesting change has definitely been since now, I think it's called many different things. SEO has gone from just SEO keywords to now search everywhere optimization.
And when Instagram sort of made their change, TikTok was already allowing search on its platform. And seeing how that has changed for our clients and especially looking, I would say in the experience industry and the hotel industry, knowing that you can sit there and you can be on a platform as something that people still, you know, TikTok people still refer to it as like the dancing platform where you go on and you create a dance. You can be on there one minute and then, you know, five, 10 minutes later you could have booked a luxury holiday over to the Maldives. It's literally that quick, right? And yeah, the one thing that we have definitely seen is that customers will hop from one to the other to the other to get what they are looking for. They won't just take a review a five star review on booking.com as gospel. They will go from there. They will check out the Instagram channel. What does that look like? How am I going to feel when I walk into that environment? They'll then go and check out their TikTok. Well, what do their team look like? Can I trust them? If I've got a Rolex, I'm going to leave it in the room. What do staff look like? Okay, Then they'll go over to Facebook.
They might ask a question on a local site. Has anybody stayed here? And then they'll probably go back to Instagram and send the video over to their husband or to their partner and say, do you like it? Because I'm thinking about this. So I think, like what you're saying, there's certain things across those platforms that they don't like. You know, on Instagram, if you're putting very spammy graphics out as a business, but you're selling a high quality service, well, you need to speak on a higher level rather than just allowing a copy and paste or a design graphic to go out. And it's constantly changing, which is why it's so important that I think when you're working with somebody and know you all appreciate this, especially when it comes to SEO, you need to work with somebody who understands the industry, who is keeping on top of it and is aware of these changes because it's changing so fast.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: The pace of change is one of the changes has sped up. And I think, I think it has to do with the. Not AI directly, but the acceptance of the nature of the models of AI because there's such intense pressure for them to release the next, you know, version, which as far as a business cycle goes, it's completely like, it's beta testing on the public live and, you know, five, 10, 10 years.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is, I mean, I see it, I speak to people and business owners, say, oh, we need to write blogs. And you think, oh, right, okay, so what blogs are you going to write? And they're like, well, we're going to write blogs for AI and it's like, okay, then we're gonna write them for AI and then we're just gonna stuff them right down at the bottom and then that's how it's gonna work. I'm like, okay, okay, yeah, okay. I'm not an SEO specialist, but I think, okay, so where is all of this content gonna go? What's that gonna look like in 10 years time when all of this AI as the term is slop as such where is all of that gonna go?
What is that going to look like in the landscape of things? Where is it all going to be stored and what does that look like? And then for content, is it a race to the bottom with AI generated images, AI generated videos? @ what point is somebody going to go, do you know what? I don't want to see Donald Trump doing this anymore. I don't want to see that. At what point is someone going to go, enough now, enough of the funny stuff. Let's move on from that, because I'm kind of done. I've had enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scary. Yeah. I mean, I'm not against AI, not gainst it as such, but use it in collaboration or in conjunction. Don't solely. Can't solely rely on it. I mean, like you say about the reference to plastic in macaroni and cheese, a meme. Come on.
If we can't teach our children what real ingredients look like, then that's a bit of an issue, isn't it? If our children are thinking they need to put a bit of plastic in, I mean, come on.
Yeah. So we've actually just got back from the States, so we had a family trip over to California. We spent a couple of days in West Hollywood, went down to Orange county and then we flew into New York.
It was a bit of a refreshing visit, but also it was so nice to go there and just get insight, to have some different bits of information coming through on our feeds, to look at things from a different point of view and to just be outside of Europe and see what things look like over there. I think for us, that was fantastic and it gave us so many new ideas and ideas that I know our clients will absolutely capitalise on next year, but sort of looking into next year. I think there's so much going on already and so many things that we're starting to see that coming into place. And I think for us, it's just continual investment, making sure that we are ahead of the changes that are happening. We're up to date with things that are coming into place. The fact that hashtags on LinkedIn and on Instagram are absolutely no longer needed. You know what? Just making sure that when we are creating content, it's content that inspires, educates or allows people to connect with, not just content for the sake of going out. I think next year we've actually got a conference which we're looking at booking, but we're just waiting on confirmation of a few speakers and probably a little bit of travel back into from Mallorca over to the UK with some of our clients that we're working with as well. So it's going to be an exciting year, I think. Yeah.
Yeah. You can find me on LinkedIn. So Lisa Corwood. And I've got a nice yellow background. And you can also find me on YouTube as well. I'll give you the. The links and on Instagram. Thank.
