Embracing Marketing Mistakes

The £400 Billboard That Made Headlines: Mark Rofe’s Love-Seeking PR Stunt

Prohibition PR Season 2 Episode 22

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What does a £400 billboard, 1,400 unsold England flags, and a taxi website have in common? For digital PR expert Mark Rofe, they’re all part of a journey filled with creative risks, quirky mistakes, and invaluable marketing lessons. In this episode of Embracing Marketing Mistakes, Mark shares the story of his viral billboard campaign that turned a bold idea into global headlines. With appearances on BBC, This Morning, and even Jimmy Fallon, Mark explains how he used humour, creativity, and a bit of luck to make the stunt a massive PR win.

Mark also shares his entrepreneurial side hustles, from his misstep selling England car flags to building an e-commerce Christmas tree business. Each miscalculation taught him valuable lessons in branding, targeting, and navigating unexpected challenges—insights he now uses to teach marketers how to stand out in the crowded digital landscape. This episode goes beyond the usual PR chatter and explores the real-world impact of risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking.

For marketers looking to learn practical, no-nonsense strategies, Mark shares his favourite quick and “lazy” ways to secure coverage, along with actionable advice on crafting campaigns that capture attention. Packed with humour, real-world anecdotes, and expert tips, this episode will leave you inspired to embrace your own marketing experiments—mistakes and all.

Curious if your content strategy is ready to crush it in 2025? Let’s find out together! Book a free 15-min discovery call with Chris to get tailored insights that can skyrocket your brand’s growth. Ready to take the leap?

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Mark Rofe :

I always started off thinking that I was going to make a ton of money online. That's basically what I thought, and I started off kind of making my own websites when I was 16. I had like a voucher code affiliate site and I just thought that's it. This is it. I'm going to make tons of money now.

Will Ockenden:

How do you approach a digital PR campaign and how does a typical campaign look, I suppose?

Mark Rofe :

The links that you've built before had a minimal impact, but now that tech SEO has been fixed, the website can now experience the full benefit of those links that you've been building.

Will Ockenden:

How did you find that experience? Because I don't even think many PRs do that.

Chris Norton:

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast that helps you smash your revenue targets by learning from the unfortunate mistakes of the world's best marketers. I'm your host, chris Norton, and today I'm thrilled to introduce Mark Rofe, a man who has worn many hats in his career from viral billboard heartthrob trust me, that's an interesting story to Christmas tree entrepreneur Mark captured global attention for his Dating Mark campaign, which saw his face on a billboard in search for love. Today, he's the founder of entitled Digital PR Newsletter and the Digital PR Course, where he helps aspiring PR professionals excel in their careers. He's also the proud owner of Christmastreescouk, proving that creativity and adaptability are often at the heart of success, and we talk a lot about that. So in this week's episode, we'll dive into Mark's unique career journey, the mistakes he's learned from along the way and there's a lot of them and his best advice for those looking to stand out in the world of digital PR. We also examine how he turned challenges into opportunities and we discuss a ton of PR tips which are useful for any aspiring marketing team. So, as always, sit back, relax and let's hear how you can use digital PR hacks to grow your brand in 2025. Enjoy, mark Rolfe, welcome to the show.

Chris Norton:

Thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be, here.

Chris Norton:

So you're over in Barcelona. Then I mean, the digital PR world's obviously doing doing well over in Barcelona. How, how? How have you ended up in Barcelona from the UK then? Do you want to explain what you're doing over there?

Mark Rofe :

oh well, I guess I'll just be honest with you. I think I just wanted to change and, um, I kind of had enough of the UK a little bit. Um, yeah, so I've I've lived in Dubai before as well. That wasn't quite for me. Barcelona is a little bit closer and it is a little bit more me. I really like it here. But, yeah, miss the UK sometimes You're always going to miss where you're from as well, so nowhere is perfect. But overall, yeah, I like it here.

Will Ockenden:

So we've been looking at your work, history and particularly your Twitter profile and the way you describe yourself is pretty funny and you've done everything. You describe yourself as a wannabe billboard pinup, you're involved in Christmas trees and you're a digital PR specialist. So do you want to kind of give us a little bit of a synopsis of of your career history and, I suppose, how you? See yourself professionally.

Mark Rofe :

I mean, I think that's a tough one. I think I always started off thinking that I was going to make a ton of money online. That's basically what I thought. And I started off kind of making my own websites. When I was 16, I had like a voucher code affiliate site and I just thought that's it, this is it. I'm gonna make tons of money now. And I soon found out no one was visiting it, no one was finding it, and then that just took me down um a world of going from, I guess, like making my own affiliate websites down to SEO, which then led to kind of the PR side of things. So that's kind of where I'm at now. That, yeah, I've always kind of been experimenting with things, whether it is on my own projects, you know, or within basically my work, and with that experimentation comes mistakes as well, which is obviously what I'm going to talk to you about today yeah we're looking forward to hearing about them definitely but before we get into the mistakes, um, um, your career, like will said is is slightly different.

Chris Norton:

So you, because the people we get on here, we we're in, we're, we obviously work in public relations. 90 of people we get on here aren't really in pr, though they're usually in in some form of marketing or and your area of expertise is PR. And the bit I like about what you do because I subscribe to your newsletter, I have done for ages and we've followed each other on social media for years is that you're really, really practical with your tips and, like you know, you just said there in your introduction that you've missed the UK. You've done a recent stint stunt, should I say, where you ended up flying all over the place, didn't you? Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Mark Rofe :

yes, so basically with my newsletter, I'm sending it out each week and I'm always trying to give some kind of practical tips. I think sometimes, um, the theory tips are kind of helpful as well, but really I remember when I was starting I just want to know how people did stuff and just how stuff worked. So really I'm just trying to create something that I wish was there, you know, when I was kind of starting out. Um, so, yeah, recently I live in Barcelona and I recently flew to Gatwick just to have a Nando's and then come back to Barcelona again. Um, I managed to do it in. Yeah, I managed to do it in a day. I think my flights were really cheap, to be honest with you, like 40 pounds or something like that there and back, but the purpose of that was to kind of explore, uh, how news agencies worked.

Mark Rofe :

So I worked with a company who I basically I took lots of photos and videos when I did this journey and I gave it to them and I might not be correct in how I'm kind of going about how it works, but basically it seems like I give them the photos and the video and the story. I still own it, but they would then go and approach publications and sell that to them. I think, like maybe they license it out or something along those lines. But the whole reason I did it basically was just to have some content for my newsletter. So I just explained how it worked a little bit. I think it got featured. It got featured in a few places. It didn't go super viral or anything like that, but it was in some national newspapers, though, wasn't it.

Mark Rofe :

Yeah, yeah, the sun, it was an lbc, um, a few of the regionals off the top of my head and basically, um, yeah, I made a little bit of money from that, just by licensing it out. I can't say how much, but it was enough to basically make the money back that I'd paid on going to the uk and getting a nando's and then coming back again, which I also appreciate is really, really bad for the environment as well. Um, I did feel, to be honest, we did feel guilty doing it, but then suddenly that went away a little bit when I saw that there were a few empty seats on the plane as well, because, you know, I felt like at least I didn't take someone else's space and I did, and I don't know how, um, how good these things are, but I did try and off credit the sorry, offset the emissions with some carbon credits. I don't know how they managed to do that kind of thing, but yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell really, and you sold.

Chris Norton:

So you sort of used a third part, like what are these news um agencies then to sell your story.

Mark Rofe :

How did you find that experience?

Chris Norton:

Because I don't even think many PRs do that where they unless you're a publicist and maybe you've got a celebrity, you've got a killer story and you want to sell an interview, you know, if you've got a real bit of insight on a celebrity. I'm not going to name any celebrities in case I get sued, but you know what I mean.

Mark Rofe :

Like they sell their stories, don't they? But often pr agencies don't really do that. So how did you go about it? Yeah, I mean to be honest with you. I just contacted the news agency. I said, hey, I'm doing this thing. Would that be of interest as a story? You know, would you be able to take it on as a story? Do you think that'd be of interest? Do you think it would kind of work?

Mark Rofe :

Now, they could have taken that on and then it got no coverage from it, in which case they wouldn't have made any money. I wouldn't have made any money from it, and you know, that can kind of happen. But I think that's why I wanted to kind of talk about it and that's why I wanted to include it within my newsletter, because I think it is something that not many people kind of know about or know how it works. I mean, from my of view, I'm normally sending out stories to try and get coverage for clients, you know, and I'm not charging anything for that, and it's just kind of eye opening. I guess that when I have situations where my stories don't cover them, I'm giving it to them for free and I think they're good enough to kind of get covered and I'm just like oh, but hang on, but over here you're paying for stories. That was kind of a bit.

Will Ockenden:

That was kind of a bit like um eye-opening that they're paying for stories when you know lots of them getting sent for free all the time as well yeah, crazy. So, um, taking a little bit of a step back mark, obviously you specialize in um, digital pr, online pr, whatever you you kind of call it. Now, that's very much a kind of a discipline and a term I think sort of emerged over the last five, six years. At risk of stating the obvious, do you want to explain exactly what digital PR is for our listeners, compared with, perhaps, traditional PR that people would no doubt be familiar with?

Mark Rofe :

yeah. So the way that I tend to talk about it and I just need to think for one second to make sure I explain it in the best way is that digital pr takes the tactics of traditional pr? Um and receives some of the benefits from pr as well as seo um. So it's kind of you're getting PR benefits and SEO benefits and I think it's mostly kind of SEO people or companies that would be doing digital PR. But I think that that's kind of changing a little bit now as well.

Mark Rofe :

I think that digital PR and PR were kind of more separate, kind of different aims like different aims, so different objectives, and I think they're kind of becoming more aligned now. But yeah, I think one of the other differences would be that the benefits from digital PR are more focused. So PR, you know the traditional PR differs in terms of the benefits and where it's kind of the mediums as well maybe you're doing podcasts and you know lots of different things whereas digital PR is more about online coverage, getting coverage online and then trying to get a link back to the website and not just getting a link back to the website, but maybe a certain section of the website to try and boost rankings in certain positions for wherever that website kind of maybe needs it and is there again.

Will Ockenden:

You might not be able to answer this exactly right, but is there a kind of a formula for what makes the perfect online pr story? I think traditionally, people think, um, you know, you need some sort of on-site asset, whether that's a calculator or an infographic or whatever that the journalist naturally wants to link, to give them a reason to link, rather than just saying can I have a link? Um, in your view, kind of what you know what, how do you approach a digital PR campaign and how does a typical campaign look? I suppose?

Mark Rofe :

yeah, I mean, I think it really depends on the story and the client and and a few other things as well. I think the main thing that I'm looking for when I'm kind of thinking about it is okay, I've got this story, similar, I guess, to the traditional. I've got this story, I think it's going to work, I'm going to put it out there. But my main aim is like right, how do I make sure that the journalist does give a link back to my client's website? I guess that's maybe the main consideration, and it really pains me when I see some campaigns that have been done and they get a ton of coverage and there's just like no links whatsoever to to the website. I think, um, you know, sometimes it's not a very difficult thing to do.

Mark Rofe :

I think a couple of years back, duolingo did a campaign where, um, you know the the translation app, where they basically offered to translate your tattoo. You know, if you've got a tattoo done in a different language, they offered to get that translated for you and if it was incorrect I think it was that they would then pay to correct it for you. I think it was something along those lines Got tons of coverage, did really great for me and they actually had like an asset on the website, so like where they kind of um spoke about the campaign a little bit and about what you needed to do, so there was an asset on the website, but much of the coverage you got just didn't get any links and I was just like, oh no, like you know, just a little bit of a tweak maybe within the press release, being like here's where you can apply or whatever you know, give the reason, a generous reason, to link that. That would have really helped them to see some of those seo benefits as well.

Will Ockenden:

Yeah, because it's a huge wasted opportunity. I mean the amount of effort and time that goes into creating a concept and creating such a brilliant campaign, and then I suppose it's a huge wasted opportunity, isn't it, if they're failing to do that but that's it.

Mark Rofe :

I mean there's obviously still great, still did great. There's still benefits from that, maybe more like the traditional PR benefits. But just that little bit of extra that wouldn't have required much effort at all, it wouldn't have made any difference in terms of level of effort, would have made a big difference potentially in terms of the SEO benefits.

Chris Norton:

Yeah, yeah, I mean digital PR for me feels like there's so many clever things that you can do, but a lot of people, a lot of marketing people listening to this. There'll be people listening to this marketing people that don't often see either the ROI, the return on investment, in public relations, but all the ROI in digital PR, they'll go oh great. So we're sort of in this space, mark, just to give you a feel. We call ours integrated PR, so we do traditional and digital, because we've always done it that way and we'll create the assets and things like that. But we don't just specifically focus on digital PR.

Chris Norton:

We aim to get links wherever possible, but some clients and you'll know this well, maybe not, I don't know because you're in a slightly different space but some clients just don't really value links. Some clients are obsessed with links. Some clients don't really care, and I think it depends on I suppose it depends on the business function and who's hired you to do the PR campaign, why it's being done like the Duolingo example you've just given. Do you find that that some people just don't value your links? So then do you have to do another level of measurement to demonstrate the, the difference or the business impact that you've made?

Mark Rofe :

yeah, I think it's a tricky one. I think that there's some that I'm maybe working on the the opposite end, where the link is the only thing that people care about and sometimes you don't get a link but there's still benefits in that. Um, at the end of the day, you know you're building, building brands, like getting brand mentions. All we're really trying to do is give signals to google's or whatever search engines about you know, our client. That in the end hopefully results in kind of an uptick in um seo performance. Um, I don't know.

Mark Rofe :

Yeah, every client is kind of different. It depends, I guess, maybe that a little bit on their background or where they see things. Some are very yeah, oh, we need to get a link, oh, my god, that you didn't get a link, that's bad. Whereas some others are just like great, you got coverage, I'm happy with that. They just, they just know and I'm probably stating the obvious here but it's much easier to clients that just understand that maybe they can't see when you do something and the direct impact, but just know that it's all good and it's all helpful and in the long term that, yeah, it's only going to be good for the brand it's a bit weird as well with links and SEO, because obviously you've got with traditional public relations, you get the coverage.

Chris Norton:

You go here's to the client, here's your coverage, here's the traffic, or whatever. But with links and SEO it's like and you'll know this terminology because you'll have been in loads and loads of meetings like this Well, we've got you an extra 50 links and then you have to wait a while for the, for the, the google juice, to pass through to the site for the difference to be made, isn't it? They used to say? It used to say it was six to eight weeks. I don't know what, what you say these days. How do you reference that to a client as an example of a return on investment, or do you not do that anymore?

Mark Rofe :

I think it's very difficult and I think that I am personally trying to move away from just volume of links, because you could do a piece and get coverage and can get syndicated across loads of regionals in the UK, like the Reach PLC types. You end up with like 50 links or something like that, and I'm not saying that's bad, that's useful to have, that's great. But equally you could get one piece of coverage on the BBC. Let's say you get a link as well, and if you're just doing it based on link volume, you're essentially saying that those 50 syndications on those regionals did better than just that one piece of coverage with a link on the BBC. And that doesn't really make sense to me. That, uh, you know that link on the bbc and just one placement, rather than spread across maybe the 50 regionals or something like that. Um, so yeah, I think things are kind of changing. I don't really know if that answers your question, by the way. Well, it's just.

Chris Norton:

It's just the fact that what I meant by that is that you're so our um like I say, from prohibition side of things integrate pr. We get the coverage and we get links. You, your clients will hire you. I want this many links to, to whatever the. The issue is is then demonstrating the impact from that um output. Should we say which we? We've got a system that we use, but I just wondered what did the world of digital pr if they've got some sort of clever, sophisticated measurement of those? 50 links appeared in january, for instance, and the net result of traffic increased by whatever, by I don't know, the end of march is is that fair? Is that how you do it or not?

Mark Rofe :

I think it's one of those things that I personally haven't cracked and I don't know if anyone in the industry has has either. To be honest with you. But I think the there are some things that you can maybe look at, and I think you have to take a long-term view over it. I don't think that you could do like one campaign and let's say, get, get 50 links one month and then just be and then just wait to see the benefits from that. I think it needs to be like an ongoing, long-term approach that needs to be happening consistently. I'm not saying necessarily get 50 pieces of coverage or links every month, but over a longer term period let's see what's happening. Are things going up or are things going down? You can look at other things, maybe, like brand search volume. Is brand search volume going up? If it is, that's great, that's helpful.

Mark Rofe :

But at the end of the day, especially when it's kind of Google, you're beholden to an algorithm where things are constantly in flux and things are constantly changing. You could get a ton of links to a website, but if the content isn't up to scratch, if the technical SEO isn't up to scratch, if the technical SEO isn't up to scratch, those links that you've gained are going to have. Like you know, they're not going to be yeah, they're not exactly that. It's going to reach like a point where it's going to have this much impact and then you'll get a tech SEO come along and fix the website and you'll see rankings go like booming, yeah, and what. Often. What is happening there is just that the links that you built before had had a minimal impact, but now that tech seo has been fixed, the website can now experience the full benefit of those links that you've been building.

Mark Rofe :

Um, that you know, sometimes things like that can happen. Um, yeah, in terms of measurement, I don't think anyone's cracked it fully. I think that there's been efforts to and I think there'll continue to be efforts to to do that. But it's just kind of looking at things over a long term, yeah, and maybe, maybe, looking, maybe you can break it down a little bit, like, maybe, if you tried to build links to like a certain page, if you keep hammering that page with relevant uh links, let's, does that page go up? Maybe you can do some kind of things like that so getting a bit practical for a second.

Will Ockenden:

Just, I mean, we'll move on from links in a moment. Um, how do we, you know, let's say we've got a good, we've got a great PR story, we're pitching it, you know it. What? What are the kind of the principles to getting a link from a journalist? And to break that down a bit more, do do you? Do you ask for a link? Do you actually, when you're media pitching, do you say can we have a link? Do you? Do you kind of lean, you know, do you just hope that your website is sufficiently interesting that they will link? And also, do we need follow links as well, or no follow links?

Mark Rofe :

Yeah.

Will Ockenden:

Lots of questions there.

Mark Rofe :

No, it's all good. I think that sometimes when I I spoke to like a pr person I think it was, um, last summer and I was talking a little bit about this and they were just like, oh, I've never asked for a link, like you know kind of felt dirty to them to kind of do that. Um, the way that I would approach it is, if I can, I want to give them an asset to link to, like just something that's on the page that maybe that they can kind of look at, maybe it's a study that they can reference or something like that, something that's on the website, because if you're giving a journalist a reason to link, that they're more likely to do it right.

Will Ockenden:

So something that adds value to whatever story you're-.

Mark Rofe :

Exactly.

Will Ockenden:

Something that genuinely adds value.

Mark Rofe :

Yeah, exactly. So that's the first thing that I'll try to do. Often I'll make sure that I've got a link, I've linked to that asset, maybe a couple of times within the press release, at least like two or three times. Or maybe if I've got like a table in the press release, I'll say like for the full data table, see here, you know. Then they've got like a you know link to uh, to the client website.

Mark Rofe :

Sometimes it's not always possible to have, um, a linkable asset on the website, particularly if you're doing maybe like news jacking or something like that. Um, when I pitch those types of things, I will tend to have some copy right at the end of it and it will say something along the lines of you know, it would be really helpful if you could include a link back to da, da, da, you know, wherever I kind of wanted it to. You know, often maybe the home page of the website for the client or something like that. And my experience has been that when you do that, you know we're helping each, do that, you know we're helping each other out. Really, you know, journalists want that content. If we're able to give it to them and you know, and it's good quality, then they probably don't mind with kind of helping out with things like that. You know, it's kind of a reciprocation, but also if you have kind of that copy at the bottom. So if I've got a linkable asset campaign sorry to go back I will say if you use this, any of the photos or data or whatever it is from the story, a link back to you know, and then I have the linkable asset page, would be, you know, would be appreciated If I've got something like that. That then means that if I don't get the link, I can kind of just go back to the journalist and just say, hey, like you know I did say at the end, if you're able to give a link, that would be, you know, be really appreciated. And nine times out of ten, you know, they don't mind and they're kind of happy to do it. Um, I think the ones that don't, either they can't do it or, like some some publications, just just flat out won't do it, or, you know, it just really depends on the person you get at the other end. Maybe they're having a bad day, maybe they don't feel like it, maybe they're really busy or whatever, but yeah, nine times out of ten, they won't mind doing it. Um, and also I think it goes back to, if we to what we talked about earlier. I'm like these publications are paying for stories. Sometimes, you know, like, like, with that Barcelona to Gatwick Nando's trip, they're paying for that and I'm literally just saying like, hey, have this for free, just please like if you wouldn't mind adding a link. So sometimes I think about it kind of like that.

Mark Rofe :

Um, and back to your question on no follow links.

Mark Rofe :

To be honest with you, in the past if I got a link and I saw it was nofollow, I was I'd feel a bit deflated about it.

Mark Rofe :

I'd be like, oh, I did that and it was for nothing kind of thing. Because, just to explain, nofollow, links historically were not meant to pass kind of any seo value. But over the years that's changed and I'm just going to paraphrase here Google has basically said I think this has lasted maybe five years now that they might basically ignore that it's nofollow and let it kind of carry some weighting in the ranking. So for me, if I get a link now, I don't even check, to be honest with you, I'm just happy that, whether it's follow or nofollow, I'm just happy that I've got a link, but I think that's changing as well. I think that I'm just happy to to even get coverage now. I think, the way things are going and things you know with ai um, that it probably will be potentially just good enough to just get a mention yeah interesting and that's fascinating actually to hear you know um sort of inverted commas.

Will Ockenden:

Traditional prs consider asking for links to be um you know a dirty word, um and I think amongst some prs that is the case because they don't. They don't really know how to even have that conversation. So that's, that's great advice.

Mark Rofe :

Thank you for that um, yeah, I think it just goes back to you know, if we look at the duolingo one that I spoke about before, like why would you not ask, like if I, if I look at the potential downside, it's it's just no and that that's fine. But you've got way more upside that, literally, you lose nothing as long as you ask in the right way and you go about it in the right way yeah, um, so let's go.

Chris Norton:

You've supplied more mistakes and entertaining content in your questionnaire. We usually ask for one or two, but you've supplied some belters here that people could learn from. So do you want to tell us a bit about your C-string story?

Mark Rofe :

Oh gosh, so OK. So this is going back maybe 2011, 2012, and it was a lot easier to rank websites on Google back then and when I was looking at some kind of some tools just to see what was getting searched. I was looking for it to create like a new affiliate website and I saw that c-strings were getting searched quite a bit. Now c-string, when I looked it up, was like this underwear and I'll let you go away and look it up if you want to look at it. It's kind of like a g-string, but it's a bit different.

Chris Norton:

It's like it's just called a c-string I'm not gonna ask you why you were googling c-strings mark I can't remember.

Mark Rofe :

To be honest, I was just looking for any websites that I could maybe stumbled across it stumbled across it yeah, yeah.

Mark Rofe :

So yeah, I've registered a domain cstringorguk. Back then, if you had just like what's called an exact match domain so cstringcouk or orguk it made it very, very easy just to rank for that word. Like that doesn't work so well anymore, but back then it was just easy, like you just hit the first page of google and yeah. So that's what I did. I hit the first page of google for the word c string. I was getting all these visits to my website and I thought that you know, I'll make some affiliate commissions by, you know, selling all these or promoting all these c strings. I think I made like one sale.

Mark Rofe :

I just I was just puzzled by it for quite a while, but when I looked into it, it's because the word c-string is also like a web developer term for something. So all these people that I thought was searching for this underwear called c-strings actually weren't searching for that underwear. So the web developers searching for something, probably code, related to c-string. So that was my mistake. It wasn't a very costly mistake, it just mostly cost my time. But I think the lesson there was you know, it was a good lesson for me among, like search intent within Google, like understanding you know, if you're searching for something, someone else is searching maybe the same thing, but you actually potentially have different intents for that search.

Chris Norton:

I wonder if that one sale was a web developer actually searching for a C-string pair of underpants.

Mark Rofe :

Do you know what I mean? One sale was a web developer actually searching for a c-string pair of underpants converted someone who didn't even want it. Yeah, I think I remember I got like such a low commission for it as well. It's probably like a pound, but I was just happy that, oh, I made a sale.

Mark Rofe :

Great, you know you, but you were expecting the ping ping, ping, ping all the sales to come flying in yeah, I mean, I didn't really know what I was doing back then either, but but that's what this is all about. I think when you experiment like that, you learn from it and next time I'm not going to say you become good, but you get a little less worse, and then you learn, the next time less, and then maybe you do become good, or okay, or whatever.

Chris Norton:

Yeah, and um you've also shared something about England flags, which my producer will love because, yeah, um loves his football yeah so obviously you went out and you bought 1,400 England flags with the the bold intention of making a lot of money. Mark, you're gonna make you with. Little Mark was thinking he was gonna make millions from 1,400 England flags, right where did you store them first of all?

Mark Rofe :

well, I'll tell you the a bit of a background. I think that I knew that the world cup was coming up and I thought this is going to be great. I found some I think it was on ebay. I found some bankrupt stock of like England car flags and they were just ridiculously cheap and I just like they cost pence like per unit okay so my idea was right.

Mark Rofe :

Oh, there was. I think there's 1,400 of them and I was like, right, I'll buy them, because I know during the world cup I can probably just flog them for and make like a pound each or something off each one. So I can't my math isn't very good but I want to say I spent like a couple of hundred quid and I thought I could send that couple of hundred quid into, like you know, like 1400 relatively easily. That's what. That was my plan. So, yeah, I bought them all, um, stored them in my mum's garage and then when I went to measure them they were just that little bit too big so that you couldn't really post them because the postage costs were too expensive. It was something silly, like it would cost like three pounds to post. I was like this isn't gonna work, you know to for like a cheap flag, whereas if it was like under a certain size, it it was down to like 50p or something similar like that.

Mark Rofe :

So those flags, I didn't sell a single one. They all got stored in my mum's garage, all 1,400 and they just, she just wasn't very happy. Um, fortunately fortunately for me at the time she worked in a uh, like a party shop from like my local town and they sell like all kinds of weird and random stuff and they so they just basically put them in the shop. I just gave them to the shop and it wasn't until so this happened like over 10 years ago and it wasn't until maybe two years ago that they finally sold the last one. Um, so they were there for so long and in that world cup that I initially tried to sell them in as well, I think england went out super early as well. It was just a total disaster. So I don't really know what the lesson is from that. Maybe just measure. Make sure you measure stuff before you post it.

Chris Norton:

Yeah, the cost of postage and you've looked. What I like about this is each each, each mistake has got a lesson learned. And the next one is probably one of the ones that really intrigued me the most, which is you had a taxi website that you were doing, um, some digital work for, didn't, didn't you?

Mark Rofe :

yeah, so basically I decided to move. I thought google didn't like affiliate websites so I was like, right, let me do do something where there is an affiliate website that doesn't look like one. So I had the idea. I saw someone else doing it first, actually in Edinburgh, so I decided to do it for Manchester and Nottingham, where I got taxi domain names. So I had like Nottinghamtaxicouk. I got my own phone number and I put it on that website, redirected that phone number to a local taxi company in Nottingham and I ranked that website and I was getting like a couple of thousand phone calls to that number each month.

Mark Rofe :

So my idea was to sell each phone call to that taxi company for maybe like 50p per phone call. I think it was so for me. I was thinking that I could make, without much work, kind of like 500, like or a thousand or a pound a month there, you know, and it was going to be something that they would only pay for when they got a call, you know. So it was going to work. It was going to work well for them. So that was my idea. Um, I then tried to sell those calls to a taxi company in nottingham and I got some interest and I was really excited that they wanted a meeting now. I live down south in the uk so I drove all the way to nottingham, which is like a four-hour journey. I got there and I met them and then they said, yeah, we can offer you 50 pound a month. And I was like oh man like.

Mark Rofe :

So what I had in my mind was, like you know, 500 a pound, like a thousand pound a month, which, to be honest, is kind of like a side income was would have been really, really helpful for me to. Then it was just 50 pound a month and I was like I thought that they were taking the piss, to be honest because, this was before uber. I think it probably cost me that much money to just redirect those cycles to them each, each month, so it just wasn't worth it.

Will Ockenden:

Plus the picture of driving there and back Exactly.

Mark Rofe :

So four hours one way, so it's probably like I wasted a whole day, and I guess my learning from that was maybe that could have just been something that was discussed on a phone call and maybe I could have done better at qualifying them, to be honest. But hey, these are all learning lessons, aren't?

Chris Norton:

they Great, all three great. I mean you've shared about eight. I couldn't go through them all on the show. I was like we should have them all again.

Mark Rofe :

You shared that many and they just made me laugh.

Chris Norton:

I was laughing as I was reading them and I was like we need to cover some of them.

Will Ockenden:

So great fuck-ups, ups, by the way, we'd love to hear them. And um, you know anyone else coming on the show? Um, we, we like, we like real, you know, we like genuine stories, so that's that's great. To hear um back to your newsletter, so, yeah, it's great. Yeah, we'll give you a chance to kind of plug where people can find you at the end of the show. But I suppose what we like about it, which chris mentioned, is how practical it is, and you've recently done um, an edition that focuses on um. I think it was lazy ways to get pr coverage. Quick and lazy ways to get pr coverage. Do you want to talk us through a bit of those, a few of those, because there'll be a lot of prs listening. You know, sometimes there's pressure from a client. You desperately need to get some coverage for a brand.

Mark Rofe :

Talk us through some of your favorites yeah, I think I'm just trying to remember that one, I think it was. Basically there's a lot of general requests that just get put up on Twitter and using the hashtag like journal request, and it was literally, if you use this tool called if this than that, then you can basically, every time a journalist uses that hashtag along maybe with your keyword, you'll get an alert, so it'll go straight to email and then you can respond to it. So I set that up for my girlfriend, because so she's a relationship therapist and she was like, hey, can you help me with pr? And I was like, oh god, I've got to, I've got to do that, have I? And I was like sure, like yeah, I can do that, no problem with you. And I just thought this was a really good way to do it for her. So I set up these alerts and using words like maybe like dating or relationship expert, so if those words came up alongside the hashtag journal request, she would get an email and then she could just kind of take full control about which pitches she wanted to respond to or not.

Mark Rofe :

And so, yeah, by herself would would just mean by me setting that up, she's able to get a few pieces of coverage and, you know, do quite well out of it. And, yeah, I think that was a newsletter topic that worked quite well, I think, because we all just want to do things the easy way, don't we? But, um, I do think things are getting a little bit more difficult. I would say I think there's more competition. Um, I would say that we're probably a lot more people sending the same sort of stories to the same journalists and there's fewer journalists, um, so, yeah, it's becoming more difficult, I would say is so being lazy is maybe using a lazy strategy can be part of a strategy, but working smarter is a is a more of a positive spin on it.

Mark Rofe :

That sounds great. I should have said that, yeah, that's a smart way to work, I think, um yeah, what about um?

Will Ockenden:

something I'm quite interested in is is tiktok as a um, as a kind of, I suppose, as a tool that prs can use. Now, do you have a kind of a view on that, how you can, for example, you? Know the trending feature yeah, so you know, certain, certain stories will trend on tiktok and then they can be repackaged for journalists. Is that something you you ever use as a as a tactic?

Mark Rofe :

I personally haven't, but I think it can work quite well, especially when we're living in a world full of kind of misinformation at the moment. So, especially if people see something like maybe it is a hack or a tip that they see on tiktok that's been given by someone who's who's not a professional, so maybe when it comes to things like health or safety and things like that, a lot of people might watch it and kind of think that it's a good idea when maybe it can be dangerous. So I think things like that and you know this is why you shouldn't do this tikt you know those types of stories can work quite well. So yeah, I've personally not done that, but I can see the appeal and I can see why they work.

Chris Norton:

Can I ask a question? Talking of trends, and we've talked about websites and things that you've I mean, when Will opened he said that you'd had multiple descriptions of what you've been doing, but the Christmas trees so for those of you listening, put in christmastreescouk. Obviously, we've just been. Christmas was four or five weeks ago now, the day of recording. How was christmastreescouk, how did it do and how have you built that up? What do you do with it? Because I'm fascinated that somebody in digital PR has got a Christmas tree business on the side.

Mark Rofe :

Yeah, so I guess I'll start off with the story behind that is I've got I don't want to call it an addiction, but if I see a good domain name, sometimes I can't help but kind of go for it and I saw that come up for sale in December 2019 on an auction website and I thought, oh, if that doesn't go for a lot, I'll grab that, because I'd love to do something with that one day. So, yeah, I bought it. We had the pandemic come along and then in my mind I was thinking this might be the year that I do it, because I was thinking that maybe people won't be able to go out to buy their Christmas trees if we're still in some kind of lockdown. So that's when I launched the website.

Mark Rofe :

Um, I haven't got like a Christmas tree farm or anything like that, but the way that it essentially works is that I partnered with a company who then, uh, will do the fulfillment side of things for me. So my job is essentially to get the traffic, to get the sales, and they will handle the uh, yeah, handle the fulfillment of the trees. Basically, that's how it works in a nutshell. I think I just always wanted to do something like this as well, I remember as a kid, um, going to get like a real christmas tree and I just thought that this looks like such a good way to make money. You just have a bit of land, have some trees and you just, you only have to work one month of the year or something that's what I thought the reality is.

Mark Rofe :

The reality is, after speaking to them now, it's very different. You know, those, those trees need take years to grow, they need looking after throughout the year as well, um, and then it's also difficult to manage having all your sales kind of come in that one month rather than kind of spread out the year, and so I just thought that my way of getting into that just a little bit would be to kind of have this e-commerce website that kind of sells them. I think I've made things a little bit tricky for myself. I think it would have been way easier if I sold artificial trees. There's some challenges with selling like real christmas trees, um, but it's good fun.

Chris Norton:

I think do you sell a lot of trees? Have you sold a lot? How, how? How far up page one are you to give us a feel?

Mark Rofe :

um, to be honest, I haven't. I haven't looked. I don't rank for christmas trees, all right, and I probably, and I probably won't ever rank for that. I think that's a bit of a head scratcher for a lot of people that work in seo. Yeah, because if you do google christmas trees, it's not really a specific enough keyword. Uh, so are you looking to buy a Christmas tree? Are you looking for photos of Christmas trees? It could be anything like that If you were to buy a Christmas tree. Those types of keywords quite often will return results. For artificial trees and I'm selling real ones it's dominated by the big companies, maybe like b&q and things like that okay, in terms of sales it's it's very modest.

Mark Rofe :

To be honest with you, I think that if I've maybe spent more time and an effort on it, it could become something. Uh, you know, that does that's quite lucrative, but at the moment, um, I'm kind of content with with how things are right yeah, interested in side, I mean you are, that's what we should call you.

Chris Norton:

This pod should be called captain side hustle, because everything you're always looking for a side hustle aren't you?

Will Ockenden:

I love the entrepreneurialism of it all yeah I think, you mentioned your girlfriend a minute ago, so I'm assuming the billboard did you meet her through your um billboard?

Mark Rofe :

campaign do you want to tell us a bit about that yeah, so I have like a funny story about it. So, yeah, back in 2020. So yeah, I put up a billboard to get a girlfriend um, you put a billboard up to get a girlfriend oh yeah, well, to get a date.

Mark Rofe :

To get a date. Um, I put it up in manchester it it went absolutely everywhere like you name it. It went there. It was like I was on this morning with at the time, um, phil and holly. It was on the jimmy fallon night late night show in the us. It was on the ellen show brilliant.

Mark Rofe :

Honestly, it just it. It just went, absolutely it went insane and um, like homepage of the BBC as well. I had it sounds weird saying this, but I had like 1,000, over 1,000 people like apply to date me from it, but yeah.

Chris Norton:

And what was your selection criteria?

Mark Rofe :

Oh man, I had to pay someone to help me sort it out, because there were some guys that had applied because I'd clearly not learned from my qualifying of leads from earlier on. You know with the kind of the taxi website, and then I had like ages and things like that. So I had to pay someone to basically go through my inbox and kind of put them into folders. But I think I had a criteria of like between certain age and living in a certain you know. They had people apply from all over the world. Someone in Australia, probably things weren't going to work.

Chris Norton:

So I had to put them in for a different date. Yeah, but a date in Sydney would have been worth it if they paid all expenses there.

Mark Rofe :

Yeah, exactly yeah, but no from it. I did get a girlfriend from it. Unfortunately, things didn't work out in that respect. I think I paid like 400 odd pounds for the billboard for two weeks and from media appearances I made my money back and then people thought I was good at PR. All I did was buy a billboard, so it all kind of worked out OK for me.

Will Ockenden:

Mark, do you know what? It's a brilliant PR stunt really, isn't it? I mean, it's so unusual, and that's how PR works, and that's how the media works.

Chris Norton:

It's always a billboard, though that's what's weird. We've done a number of campaigns and it's the billboard stuff that seems to get the PR coverage. And you're like, it's sort of weird because billboards are advertising, but they always end up being this. If you use them as part of the stunt which you're, it's like a mechanism of the stunt, isn't it?

Will Ockenden:

exactly, yeah, serial being a good example of that.

Chris Norton:

So this yeah the question is did you get clients off the back of said stunt?

Mark Rofe :

I was working at an agency at the time and we so I was working at rise at seven and we did have a few inquiries off off the back of it. Um, but honestly it was looking back now it was kind of terrifying experience because I didn't know what to expect. I mean, since then I've seen five, six, maybe seven other people go ahead and do it, but at the time I hadn't seen anyone else kind of do that. I didn't know what the reaction was going to be like. I was living in Sheffield but I didn't want to put it up in Sheffield in case things backfired, so I put it up in Manchester. I'm laying down in the photo and I'm wearing sunglasses, so if things did backfire I could hopefully remain relatively kind of anonymous.

Chris Norton:

We're definitely going to put this on the video mate, the video version of it. That billboard's popping right up.

Mark Rofe :

Yeah, I thought that I would just not just the billboard itself that I've got, like I had an accompanying website with it as well. I thought, if I tried to make it so bad that it was almost good. You know, the font is in comic sans and everything and um some of those shots are brilliant, though you're kind of.

Will Ockenden:

I think. In one are you like reclining, are you reclining on a sofa? And it's sort of shot in soft focus. It's trying to remember. It's a bit cheesy, isn't it?

Mark Rofe :

yeah, there's some. Yeah, it's purposely bad. I just thought like, and I just tried to make it funny, I think, because I didn't want to come across as like a loser. So I thought if I came across as like, oh, he's a loser but it's a bit funny, then you know I was kind of okay with that. So that that was the approach I was going for. But my girlfriend actually, because I've met her before, I did the billboard like we weren't dating or anything. But we started dating, kind of like, later on and at the time she saw it she didn't apply or anything like that. She actually she hated it, she thought it was ridiculous. So, yeah, it's kind of funny how things turn out.

Chris Norton:

The question is where would she have appeared in the list of potential?

Mark Rofe :

Well, we won't put that in Number one. Of course, yeah, of course, absolutely.

Will Ockenden:

Yeah yeah, exactly.

Chris Norton:

Any more questions Will?

Will Ockenden:

No, I think that's pretty succinct, but I think that's really good. I think that's great Mark.

Chris Norton:

I feel like we could interview you like three or four times. There's so much stuff to discuss with you? Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. If people want to get a hold of you, or you've got a training course, you've got a brilliant training course and you've got a brilliant newsletter, do you want to tell?

Mark Rofe :

people how they can find those and how they can find you, yeah, so I'm not very original when it comes to naming things, so I've got a digital PR course. It's just digitalprcoursecom.

Will Ockenden:

How long?

Mark Rofe :

did it take you to come up with that? Yeah, I know I've also got a digital PR newsletter as well where I'm sending, hopefully like an actionable tip, like each week. Most people seem to like it, so I guess it must be okay. That's just at digitalprnewslettercom.

Will Ockenden:

It's the theme here't you. You should start an agency, and I'd love to know what that would be the digitalpragencycom exactly.

Mark Rofe :

I'm going to register that as soon as we finish this, to make sure that no one else can get hold of it.

Chris Norton:

Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Thanks for coming on the show fascinating. Yeah, that was brilliant. I really enjoyed it.

Mark Rofe :

No worries, thank you for having me um, yeah, I enjoyed being on the show as well. Yeah, thanks.

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