Duray - VG - SEO (00:01) Hello everyone, my name is Duray, I am the South African SEO and today I am joined by Guy Woodcock from GJD. Guy, how are you this morning? You alright? Guy Woodcock (00:13) really well. Thank you, thanks for having me. Duray - VG - SEO (00:16) absolute pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for being part of the wise build bridges season three. For those that don't know the wise build bridges is a podcast dedicated to highlighting marketeers and founders who are standing out in a crowded space, offering practical advice for marketeers and founders to get the visibility that they need. It's all built on the notion of in challenging times, the wise build bridges, not barriers. So it's a good opportunity for marketeers and founders to learn a little bit more of some practical tips. ⁓ And some insights that you've been able to find out on your journey ⁓ into marketing. So Guy with that in mind, tell us a little bit about your journey into marketing. So many people fall into the space, but how did you find yourself as marketing manager today? Guy Woodcock (01:04) It's a really long story, but I'll try and keep it as short and brief as possible. think for me... My misunderstanding what marketing is led me to wanting to study marketing and then I just fell in love with it and I've been really lucky to be spending nearly 20 years of my life studying and working in an area that I really enjoy. my first year out of school, I went to work for a logistics company and I found that looking at spreadsheets all day and those type of things really wasn't for me. But what I really enjoyed was we worked with the Port of Boston and I got to go to the port, meet the people taking containers off ships and I got to meet the ship's captains, welcome them to the UK, sign their custom documents and spend 10, 15 minutes with them. And what that helped me realise is that I'm a people person, I like building relationships, I like interacting. And for me... I felt that marketing was the perfect job that would allow me to work with people and build those relationships. Of course, as I started studying it and learning so much more about it, marketing is so much more than that. But that was the gateway. That's what got me interested and that's what kind of gave me the marketing bug. And it's kind of all progressed from there. Duray - VG - SEO (02:31) That's amazing. Yeah, that marketing bug ⁓ that seems to grab so many people that once you're in it, it really is a fun ⁓ career. And you've certainly had an interesting one and one that goes a long way. Tell us a little bit more about the work that is done at GJD. What it is that you guys do on a day-to-day basis and what is it that makes you guys special from everyone else? Guy Woodcock (02:57) GJD is a fantastic company to work for. I really enjoy it here. I've worked in lots of different industries. What I liked about GJD is that I am working in the factory where everything is produced. I can go down to the production manager. I can see the quality of what's being made. So GJD makes security equipment predominantly around detectors and illuminators. So what that means is detectors help notify a system that someone has come onto your premises and illuminators help either light it up with white light or they'll support your security cameras by providing infrared. meaning that your camera can then see and get a much better picture of the perpetrator. But what we very much focus on is products that will actually allow you to do something whilst the event is happening to prevent it rather than just trying to create something that will help you catch someone after the event has happened. So I found that because GJD focuses on Duray - VG - SEO (03:55) Mmm. Guy Woodcock (04:10) Good products and high quality. It just gives me a story that I want to tell and that's what shapes everything I do within the company. It's the little things that people don't think of here that mean a lot to me. We have a return rate of like 0.7%, which is incredible. And the other thing I noted on my first day was I went to the detectors and they were being shipped out and batteries were being put in. And they were being fitted with high quality Duracell batteries because they know that that is the best. That's going to mean that the product lasts longer, works longer and is not. and it's going to be far more reliable. Those batteries should last one to two years before they need replacing. So if you put in a maintenance plan, people will go back year on year. But we know the batteries will last compared to rather than trying to penny pinch and save a little bit by putting in some cheap batteries that only going to last three months, GJD just spend that little bit extra to make sure that we get the quality bang on. And when a company is making those little details into quality, as a marketer, I get excited because it then means I can have communications with customers that is about the story, the quality, the why. And it's not just a, can do it at this price. It's not a price related campaign, which are necessary, but can sometimes get a little bit stale and boring. Duray - VG - SEO (05:44) Yeah, absolutely. I think that's brilliant. I love that story. That's fantastic. On your first day to recognize that must be reassuring to know that this company is one that's actively trying to really support your customers. You said something interesting there, that the communication with customers. Tell me a little bit more about how you communicate with your customers and how that helps shape what it is that you do and the campaigns that you deliver. Guy Woodcock (06:13) Yeah, absolutely. I've been at previous companies where marketing has been sat almost behind this invisible wall. We're sat behind our computer. We're sending out emails. We're relying on customer feedback from the sales team. And we're not getting our hands dirty and hands on. For me, I work best in my role when I can physically meet the customers. in fact, before meeting you today, yesterday I was in... Middlesbrough, I was meeting with a customer and I was actually discussing the marketing for the next year with them. I got to see their facilities. I got to see what makes them unique. And it was amazing. Going to shows, getting to talk to people, going to golf days, which is a keen interest of mine, I start to get a feel for the company for their individuality. I've been to some companies make it very, very relaxed and it's just like a game with your mates. Other companies, it's a big grand in five star hotel, formal food, public speaker, great. Another one had a disco, it had a party. So you start to see how each customer, their company and that personality is different. And by doing that, you can tailor your messaging and what you're going to do with them in a different way. You can... you can adapt yourself to their tone of voice as it were. Duray - VG - SEO (07:45) Yeah, absolutely. I think it's so important that being able to have that reciprocal relationship with your customer so that you can build your marketing around the things that make a difference. Guy Woodcock (07:55) People will always buy from people and if you can get to understand the person better that's only going to make your job as a marketer easier. Duray - VG - SEO (08:09) So let's dig into that a little bit. You mentioned to understand those people better. There's research you can do, but how can marketeers understand their audience even better? Guy Woodcock (08:10) think we. So, think different people have different ways of doing things. So I myself am quite creative mind, I'm very content driven, I'm not the most analytical person in the world. So there are ways. And there is definitely the importance of doing desk research and looking into industries. And you can get segmentation really down into the detail of what different people are like, where buyers are, where they are geographically. You can do all that and that helps. But I don't think there's anything beats actually getting out into the field and talking to people. having calls like we're doing now you you start to pick up on little things so my entire strategy for GJD has been born out from a conversation I'd found out that from speaking to them, GJD had promised some marketing to support a company and hadn't done it. And our focus had been very much on going to events. And that became everything that we were about. And so much so that we'd lost the relationship with the distributors and the installers that we closely work with. And so from that conversation and talking and realizing that relationships had to be rebuilt, That was, that's then shaped the marketing strategy that I've done in year one, which was get out, meet with distributors, get to know them, get to know the people, find out what they want, what do they offer, how can we support? And then from those conversations, that's what's driving. Do they want emails? Do they want graphic design? Do we... ⁓ Duray - VG - SEO (09:54) Mm. Hmm. Guy Woodcock (10:19) Do they want leaflets? Do they want merchandise? And then you can figure out what each people want. Some people are very heavily into events. Other people are very heavy into on-site training. Other people are very much in email and social media. so you... It's a lost art. I'm talking to people and my style has always been to pick up the phone. Duray - VG - SEO (10:36) Hmm. Guy Woodcock (10:47) an amusing story if I go on a tangent for a second was that there's a person I'm a good friend with, he's a print broker. I've used him for years. Whichever company I go to, I use him because I know that he checks my work, he makes sure that everything is accurate. I'll speak to him, even if we're not doing work together, a couple of times a month, just chatting and see how things are going. I was one day in a social event with him. Duray - VG - SEO (10:51) Mmm, please. Guy Woodcock (11:17) and he spoke about, what's the name of that lad that works with Claire? I'm like, there's no lad that works with Claire, Tony. And he goes, yeah you know, what's his name, what's his name? Jude. And I went, Tony, Jude's a woman. She's not a man that works with Claire, she's a woman that works with Claire. And what had become obvious to me is that Tony had worked with Jude for two years, but they'd never spoken to each other. everything had only ever been done via email and so he had assumed over those two years by email that Jude was a man and I think email is important it helps document things it gets things in writing Duray - VG - SEO (11:47) Hmm. Mmm. Guy Woodcock (12:03) But sometimes you just lose that little bit of something if you don't pick up the phone and talk to people. Or nowadays it's even easier. We've got Teams, we've got Google Meets, we've got Zoom. There are so many ways that you can actually build relationships now that wasn't available when I started in marketing. And I think it's essential that we don't lose the basic art of talking to our customers. Duray - VG - SEO (12:19) Mm. I think that's something that we're seeing consistent among a number of the interviews I'm having in regards to the Wise Bill Bridges podcast is that with the introduction of AI, can marketing lose its human touch and ultimately people buy from people? So a question I want to ask you, as you know, this podcast is brought to everyone through Viaduct Generation. We're an SEO agency in London and we focus on acquisition, right? You mentioned a few things in there terms of nurturing your audience through email and social media and a few other methods, but talk to me a little bit about customer acquisition and is that something, is there any lesson that you can offer that you've learned over the last few years? Guy Woodcock (13:23) Sorry, can you just re-ask the question in a different way? What do you mean by customer acquisition about attracting new customers? that what you're me to talk about? Okay, no problem. Yeah. Duray - VG - SEO (13:33) Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll ask the question again. I'll ask the question again. So Guy, you mentioned ⁓ fantastic ways there of nurturing your audience, right? In terms of building real relationships with them, getting them on the phone, speaking to them. But a lot of what we focus on here at Viaduct Generation is SEO and on bringing new customers to the to top of funnel. Do you have any lessons that you've learned over the last few years that my audience here at the Wise Bull Bridges might find helpful? Guy Woodcock (14:03) Yeah, I think, especially for companies that are doing SEO, think getting your website right is absolutely essential. Even now, I look at a lot of websites and they are brochure sites. For me, I believe if you're gonna invest in SEO, pay-per-click, social advertising, Google remarketing, any of that, you need to make sure you get your basics right and that starts with your website. And there are two key things I would say to that on either one. The first is make data capture easy on your website. You want to attract new customers, but then when they get to the website, have a form of above the line, make it obvious very quickly, make it a short form so that you can gather your information, get your key points in with a form and then let feed people. So many times you see websites, if they have a form, it's buried in the footer and by which point people don't get down that far. You want to capture people. Look, SEO is amazing. I think. it is very underrated of how important it is. I think PPC sometimes gets a bit of a glory because it can get quick wins. But whichever way you go, it takes investment. So if you do not have a website that is going to capture the people as soon as they're on the pages, and not just a link to a contact us page, actually have the form, make the life easy for the customer. When I was a previous company, Duray - VG - SEO (15:36) Mm. Guy Woodcock (15:56) That was our big target and we could instantly see the number of leads coming in and we could actually start saying the website has done this, it has done this. And let's face it, more and more as marketers we are being put under pressure to show our value, to show our worth and if we can have a table, even if it's just in the simple Excel spreadsheet of this is the number of leads we've generated and we have passed over to these salespeople, that's... That is then evidence that you are worth the money that people are investing. So the form is a key element. And then the second thing is, make sure you get a good copywriter to write it. I love GJD to bits, but my next project next year is to rewrite the website because the website has been written to be too product focused. It is too technical. doesn't pass what an old boss of mine would call the so what test. So it might say something like, ⁓ D-TEK 2 comes with dual tech technology with blah-dee-blah-dee-blah. And I'm reading it going, so what? And actually, all you want to know is the D-TEK 2 has been reliably working for 20 years. It will detect and it reduces unwanted alarms. Duray - VG - SEO (17:06) Hmm. Guy Woodcock (17:19) meaning you can put it there knowing it will do its job. And these are the scenarios where you can use it. And so I've worked with some fantastic copywriters in my time, people that I love to go back to regularly. And I think it's one of those, if you do a website, invest in a copywriter, I mean, we all know. ChatGPT is brilliant, but actually a good copywriter will have a conversation like you and I are having now, it goes back to those conversations. They will pull out the little bits that make you unique and they will help you put in a way that best expresses your company so that people will engage with you and it won't be dull. And if you put that on your website, combined with good lead capture forms, the two things will work. extremely well and then your SEO and your PPC will pay off. That is a strategy that I put in place. So before I joined GJD, I did have my own business for two and a half years. I've been on the side of the entrepreneur. I've been on the side of the people that have to really grab to get any type of money. And I had a client. the debt advice service and the SEO and the copywriting strategy and the form, that's what we put in place and we saw substantial increases in the number of people that were then going down their funnel, their lead funnel. So that would be my key thing. If you're gonna use SEO, you're gonna use PPC, that is my recommendation. Duray - VG - SEO (19:16) Yeah, I think that's brilliant guy. think something that I always say is we've to make the juice worth the squeeze, right? So like if you're going to invest thousands of pounds into an SEO agency, or you're going to have a substantial PPC budget, if you have a low converting site, Guy Woodcock (19:23) Yeah. Duray - VG - SEO (19:32) then we're going to have to spend so much money to get decent returns, right? But before investing so much money into acquisition and bringing new eyeballs to the website, we have to make it a good looking website, a website that is high converting. We can drive horses to water, but we can't make these horses drink without fantastic forms and simple forms and clear calls to action. I think that's really good advice. I love that. Make sure that your form is really easy to complete. and make sure that there's a highly trained copywriter that understands your business. think that's brilliant advice. Guy Woodcock (20:05) But I think I'm gonna add a third thing to round that up, the word collaboration. So as you said, whether it's PPC, whether it's SEO, whether it's the agency doing that, make sure freelancers, agencies, they don't mind working together. They actually, they're not that scary, the people. And so make sure your copywriter is talking to your SEO agency. Because actually, A lot of the copywriters I know now are training and learning about SEO and you put the two companies together and they will work together which means that the wording on your website will be effective and help the SEO as well. And so just get people to collaborate. Let's not have people fighting each other. Let's have them working together. Duray - VG - SEO (20:59) Yeah, absolutely. I think that's brilliant. Guy, you touched previously on your entrepreneurial journey and I love the name of your business, The Marketing Guy. Absolutely brilliant. Someone would have guessed you might work in marketing. ⁓ But I know that you did a lot of work in the last few years raising some money for charity. Can you tell me a little bit about that and some of the charities that mean a lot to you? Guy Woodcock (21:08) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, I think... Charity always works best in a company if there's a personal connection. So for me, when I ran my own company, there were two charities that were very important to me. One was Springhill Hospice, because my wife worked there. She was a doctor, and she'd come home and talk about the great work that Springhill was doing in the local community. And then there was another one called Nara. N.A.R.A. the breathing charity and that's because my my son when he was born had a had this really bad habit he'd go to sleep and then he'd forget to breathe which can be quite scary and Nara provided us with a machine that monitored his breathing and it would alarm every ⁓ if it it would alarm after 20 seconds the non-breathing and that was the note for my wife and I to run up the stairs and just start a lasso and so that it'll be like, start breathing. So it was a really small charity and so I started raising some money for them. I did the Yorkshire Three Peaks. I really pushed hard to get support for that. And that is a charity that really small. They have an annual turnover of a hundred thousand pounds and I had a great group of friends and family that did it with me. The companies we all worked for did some match giving and we were able to raise £10,000 and that was amazing. I then worked for a company called Iconic and again I talk about the personal touch. The sales director's son Joey, he's such a personality, great lad. Duray - VG - SEO (23:13) Amazing. Guy Woodcock (23:30) but he's got muscular dystrophy, or Duchenne. And Duchenne UK is a charity to support families and children living with that disease and for research. Because currently the life expectancy of someone with Duchenne is just early to mid-20s. There is no cure. It is a severe life-limiting disease. And so... Obviously that was something that was important to Tony, his family, but also the larger iconic family. So we wanted to do something and when I joined and I started doing the social media calendar, Tony was like, I want to keep up a message about Deshend. And I very much said early on, that's great, but if we don't do anything ourselves, the message is gonna get a bit tiresome. We need to raise some money. We need to do something. And so I was set a task of finding something that would be great for team bonding and bringing the team together, but also raising money for charity. And I came up with this crazy idea of doing a fire walk. we found, again, I spoke to people I knew at Spring Hill Hospice that had done this. They put me in touch with a highly respected company that's done all the safety checks. And what they do is they create 15 foot That's always the shortest charity walk you're gonna ever have to do 15 feet, but then they put it on with burning hot coals and then they spend an hour and a half training you how to get into the right mindset and then you just walk over these hot coals and Most of us actually ended up doing it twice And I believe Duray - VG - SEO (25:14) you Guy Woodcock (25:26) we raised over £50,000 with that event. It was an incredible number. I was blown away by the amount that we were able to raise. ⁓ Duray - VG - SEO (25:35) Wow. That's awesome, mate. Guy Woodcock (25:43) 18 months later, nearly two years later, we ended up doing a Yorkshire pigs challenge, again to raise money, and I think that time we raised around 20,000. So I think it's one of those where my biggest achievement at Iconic, Jimmy, we did loads of things there. We built a new website, we changed the perception, we made it a lead website, we did all these wonderful things. But if you ask me the best thing about my time at Iconic, it will be those two charity events. It will be... Duray - VG - SEO (25:50) Mm. Awesome. Hmm. Guy Woodcock (26:13) the team bonding, will be the spirit, camaraderie that you create doing something like that and knowing that you're helping a charity, especially one that is really close to you and meaningful to you. that makes a difference. I think sometimes we go to large corporate companies and they will have very good and well-deserving charities, but if people can't feel that connection to the charity, it's a lot harder to get people's involvement. So if you're a business and you're wanting to find the charity for, or think about your charity for 2025 or 2026, speak to your staff, speak to your team, find the story. Somewhere there'll be someone that has a personal connection to a charity and then build out from that because then you will get everybody involved and they will want to help that. Duray - VG - SEO (27:14) Yeah, Guy, thank you so much for that. You strike me as a person who really cherishes in making a significant impact. And I love the fact that your best memories are the memories made with others and shared with others. A lot of what the Wise Build Bridges is about is about connecting younger marketeers and opening the doors and sharing with them the things that you've learned. So looking back at the start of your career, What advice would you have given your younger self, especially if you were to be starting out in marketing today? Guy Woodcock (27:52) I answer the question slightly differently. What I would suggest to young marketers now is different to what I would have suggested to me back at the time. I'm, to upset you younger listeners, I'm old enough where my tuition fees were £1,200 a year. For me going to university to have that degree made sense. Nowadays, I'm not so sure that it does. I think apprenticeships, think that the becoming a marketing assistant and finding a company that will invest in you and most jobs I applied for when I started wanting a marketing degree and that was, you needed it to get your foot in the door. Nowadays, a lot of people will do... except the CIM marketing diploma as well through the various levels and I have seen There's a lady I worked with years ago, Natasha, and she started off as a personal assistant and went into marketing. And I've kind of followed her career from afar on LinkedIn, and I think she's shown the modern way that you can do marketing. It's the, do the training, do it on the job. That would be my advice. I think that probably carries more weight now. The university is great, it's a great experience, but I do think now if that scares people there is a very legitimate alternative. The secondary cautionary tale I would say is that. Marketing is a lot more involved in getting your hands dirty than you might think. I've had a couple of people that have tried to work with me and do apprenticeships that essentially wanted to get into marketing to become influencers. They wanted to know how to push their own social media channel. And I think that's just one very select sub thing of marketing. And I think if that's what you want to do, great, that's fine. But I think if you really want to get into pure marketing, you need to be aware that actually it will be late nights at a stand making sure things work. It will mean carrying equipment. It will mean knowing how to put up and down a pull-up banner. Anybody that works in marketing should be an expert in how to put up and put down a pull-up banner. ⁓ It's those unseen sides. I love making videos. The best. best working days of my gear are when we go and make videos and we have the film crew in. But that will inevitably involve me fetching a light or carrying something or carrying boxes. you mean people, not everybody likes to be on camera. If you work in marketing, you kind of accept that you're to get pushed in front of the camera from time to time. So do you mean I have to push myself out of my comfort zone at times to do that. But I think it's one of those things of Duray - VG - SEO (31:03) Yeah. Yeah. Guy Woodcock (31:13) just understand that marketing is portrayed to be a glamorous job and it really isn't. There is a lot of hard work, a lot of graft behind it, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I love the profession, I love what we do. I love the opportunity to be able to tell stories and it's not necessarily the job that will make you rich, but I wouldn't have, I wouldn't. want to change the career I've had for anything. Duray - VG - SEO (31:48) On that note, think that's a fantastic way to finish. Guy, thank you so much for your insights and for your tips shared with the Wise Build Bridges. If people would like to get hold of you, how can they find you? Guy Woodcock (31:50) Thanks. ⁓ People want to get hold of me then follow me on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. will connect, I will chat with people on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to get hold of me. Yeah, I would recommend LinkedIn as the best way to get hold of me and if people want to chat, I... always make time in my diaries, I will spend time trying to help people. So if there are people looking for apprenticeships, if there people wanting to know how I get into the industry, please follow me on LinkedIn, please connect with me. Send me a message. Take the time to think about it and write it, I would say, because we can all spot the automated chat GPT messages. So yeah, send me a personal message. Let me know your situation and how I can help. and I can't make any promises, but I will do what I can. Duray - VG - SEO (33:02) So for those that want to connect and ask Guy a few more questions, here's Guy Woodcock on LinkedIn working at GJD. Guy, thank you very so much. Guy Woodcock (33:14) Thanks for having me.